Professional Documents
Culture Documents
A2 Elections DA (1/4)...................................................................................................................21
A2 Elections DA (2/4)...............................................................................................................................................22
A2 Elections DA (2/4)...................................................................................................................22
A2 Elections DA (3/4)...............................................................................................................................................23
A2 Elections DA (3/4)...................................................................................................................23
A2 Elections DA (4/4)...............................................................................................................................................24
A2 Elections DA (4/4)...................................................................................................................24
A2 Ethanol Tradeoff DA (1/2)..................................................................................................................................25
A2 Ethanol Tradeoff DA (1/2).....................................................................................................25
A2 Ethanol Tradeoff DA (2/2)..................................................................................................................................26
A2 Ethanol Tradeoff DA (2/2).....................................................................................................26
A2 Japan DA (1/2)....................................................................................................................................................27
A2 Japan DA (1/2)........................................................................................................................27
A2 Japan DA (2/2)....................................................................................................................................................28
A2 Japan DA (2/2)........................................................................................................................28
A2 Jobs DA (1/2)......................................................................................................................................................29
A2 Jobs DA (1/2)...........................................................................................................................29
A2 Jobs DA (2/2)......................................................................................................................................................30
A2 Jobs DA (2/2)...........................................................................................................................30
A2 Mexico DA (1/2).................................................................................................................................................31
A2 Mexico DA (1/2)......................................................................................................................31
A2 Mexico DA (2/2).................................................................................................................................................32
A2 Mexico DA (2/2)......................................................................................................................32
A2 Natural Gas DA (1/3)..........................................................................................................................................33
A2 Natural Gas DA (1/3).............................................................................................................33
A2 Natural Gas DA (2/3)..........................................................................................................................................34
A2 Natural Gas DA (2/3).............................................................................................................34
A2 Natural Gas DA (3/3)..........................................................................................................................................35
A2 Natural Gas DA (3/3).............................................................................................................35
A2 Oil DA (1/5)........................................................................................................................................................36
A2 Oil DA (1/5).............................................................................................................................36
A2 Oil DA (2/5)........................................................................................................................................................37
A2 Oil DA (2/5).............................................................................................................................37
A2 Oil DA (3/5)........................................................................................................................................................38
A2 Oil DA (3/5).............................................................................................................................38
A2 Oil DA (4/5)........................................................................................................................................................39
WNDI 2008 3
Ethanol Aff 2ACs
A2 Oil DA (4/5).............................................................................................................................39
A2 Oil DA (5/5)........................................................................................................................................................40
A2 Oil DA (5/5).............................................................................................................................40
A2 Saudi Oil DA (1/3)..............................................................................................................................................41
A2 Saudi Oil DA (1/3)..................................................................................................................41
A2 Saudi Oil DA (2/3)..............................................................................................................................................42
A2 Saudi Oil DA (2/3)..................................................................................................................42
A2 Saudi Oil DA (3/3)..............................................................................................................................................43
A2 Saudi Oil DA (3/3)..................................................................................................................43
A2 Slavery DA (1/4).................................................................................................................................................44
A2 Slavery DA (1/4).....................................................................................................................44
A2 Slavery DA (2/4).................................................................................................................................................45
A2 Slavery DA (2/4).....................................................................................................................45
A2 Slavery DA (3/4).................................................................................................................................................46
A2 Slavery DA (3/4).....................................................................................................................46
A2 Slavery DA (4/4).................................................................................................................................................47
A2 Slavery DA (4/4).....................................................................................................................47
A2 Spending DA (1/3)..............................................................................................................................................48
A2 Spending DA (1/3)..................................................................................................................48
A2 Spending DA (2/3)..............................................................................................................................................49
A2 Spending DA (2/3)..................................................................................................................49
A2 Spending DA (3/3)..............................................................................................................................................50
A2 Spending DA (3/3)..................................................................................................................50
A2 T – In the US.......................................................................................................................................................51
A2 T – In the US...........................................................................................................................51
A2 T – Incentives......................................................................................................................................................52
A2 T – Incentives..........................................................................................................................52
A2 T – 1AR Cards.....................................................................................................................................................53
A2 T – 1AR Cards........................................................................................................................53
A2 Consult CPs (1/3)................................................................................................................................................54
A2 Consult CPs (1/3)....................................................................................................................54
A2 Consult CPs (2/3)................................................................................................................................................55
A2 Consult CPs (2/3)....................................................................................................................55
A2 Consult CPs (3/3)................................................................................................................................................56
A2 Consult CPs (3/3)....................................................................................................................56
A2 Consult China (1/1).............................................................................................................................................57
WNDI 2008 4
Ethanol Aff 2ACs
A2 Neoliberalism K (4/5).............................................................................................................75
A2 Neoliberalism K (5/5).........................................................................................................................................76
A2 Neoliberalism K (5/5).............................................................................................................76
A2 Realism / Security K (1/6)...................................................................................................................................77
A2 Realism / Security K (1/6)......................................................................................................77
A2 Realism / Security K (2/6)...................................................................................................................................78
A2 Realism / Security K (2/6)......................................................................................................78
A2 Realism / Security K (3/6)...................................................................................................................................79
A2 Realism / Security K (3/6)......................................................................................................79
A2 Realism / Security K (4/6)...................................................................................................................................80
A2 Realism / Security K (4/6)......................................................................................................80
A2 Realism / Security K (5/6)...................................................................................................................................81
A2 Realism / Security K (5/6)......................................................................................................81
A2 Realism / Security K (6/6)...................................................................................................................................82
A2 Realism / Security K (6/6)......................................................................................................82
A2 Amazon DA.........................................................................................................................................................83
A2 Amazon DA.............................................................................................................................83
A2 Amazon/Slavery DA...........................................................................................................................................84
A2 Amazon/Slavery DA...............................................................................................................84
A2 Slavery DA..........................................................................................................................................................85
A2 Slavery DA..............................................................................................................................85
Plan Doha.............................................................................................................................................................86
Plan Doha................................................................................................................................86
Doha Uniqueness......................................................................................................................................................87
Doha Uniqueness..........................................................................................................................87
Relations Uniqueness................................................................................................................................................88
Relations Uniqueness...................................................................................................................88
Trade Good – A2 Development................................................................................................................................89
Trade Good – A2 Development...................................................................................................89
Trade Good – A2 Environment.................................................................................................................................90
Trade Good – A2 Environment...................................................................................................90
WNDI 2008 6
Ethanol Aff 2ACs
3. N/U – COFTA will pass – newspaper endorsements, democratic switches, and Uribe
popularity
NYT, Steven R. Weisman, 7/13/2008, “Colombia Trade Deal is Threatened,”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/13/washington/13trade.html?ref=americas
To President Bush, the free-trade deal his administration negotiated with Colombia has something for
everyone. If approved by Congress, it would open a new market for American produce and manufactured
goods. Unlike other trade deals, it would not threaten American jobs, because imports from Colombia are
already coming in nearly duty-free. And it would have the added benefit of shoring up a respected ally,
President Álvaro Uribe, who has made progress in taming the narcotics traffickers, right-wing death squads
and left-wing guerrillas that had almost made Colombia a failed state. In recent months, nearly 100
newspapers in the United States have endorsed the Colombia trade agreement. So have many top
Democrats, including Mayor Richard M. Daley of Chicago. And Mr. Uribe, who was already popular in
Congress, was widely lionized after the dramatic rescue of hostages in Colombia on July 2.
WNDI 2008 8
Ethanol Aff 2ACs
6. No I/L – 1NC Inside U.S. Trade evidence says that Pelosi will be willing to trade CFTA
for TAA passage and housing bill not ethanol tariff.
WNDI 2008 9
Ethanol Aff 2ACs
7. Case turns DA – 1AC relations evidence says plan is key to check Chavez will collapse
US hegemony.
10. No impact – Huffington Post evidence doesn’t say the US has high HR credibility in the
status quo and it doesn’t say that the deal kills military credibility which is what they’re
impact evidence is talking about.
A2 Agriculture DA (1/2)
1. N/U – 1NC Yacobucci and Seeke evidence says the US already cooperates with Brazil
over ethanol technology and that the US already imports ethanol duty free from CBI and
CAFTA states.
2. Case turns DA – 1AC Shaefer and Lieberman evidence says that lifting the tariff would
bring down food prices like corn and grain.
4. No Link – 1NC link evidence is talking about regulations like the carbon tax or RPS not
removing a tariff.
5. World bank and leading economists agree lifting tariff would relieve food prices
Des Moines Register, Philip Brasher, 7/3/2008, “U.S. urged to import, not make, ethanol,” Truth about Trade
& Technology, http://www.truthabouttrade.org/content/view/12014/54/
The skyrocketing price of grain is bringing new pressure on American and European leaders to ease
biofuel incentives, including the U.S. tariff on imported ethanol. The World Bank on Wednesday called
for the United States and the European Union to roll back biofuel mandates, subsidies and tariffs as part of
a 10-point plan to deal with soaring food costs in poor countries. The plan, which also proposes doubling
agricultural aid, was prepared for the Group of Eight economic summit meeting next week in Japan. "We're
starting to see a breakdown in international agricultural and food markets," the bank's president,
Robert Zoellick, said in an appearance at a Washington think tank. Meanwhile, a coalition of livestock
producers and food companies called on President Bush to lift the 54-cent-a-gallon tariff on imported
ethanol. The new farm bill extended the tariff through 2010. The organizations said that increasing
imports of ethanol would hold down the price of grain for animal feed and food ingredients. The groups
include the National Pork Producers Council, the American Bakers Association, dairy giant Dean Foods Co.,
meatpacker Tyson Foods, Coca-Cola Co. and PepsiCo Inc. The Iowa Turkey Federation also is among the 35
groups that endorsed the proposal. Removing the tariff on ethanol imports "will alleviate a portion of
the unnecessary feed and food price inflationary pressures that are adversely affecting our economic
well-being and American consumers," the groups wrote. The Brazilian ethanol industry is launching a small
advertising campaign this weekend in Florida and California to generate public interest in repealing the tariff.
Brazilian ethanol, which is distilled from sugar, cost about 90 cents a gallon to produce in 2007, compared
with $1.70 for corn-based ethanol, according to the World Bank. Phasing out biofuel subsidies and reducing
tariffs "would allow biofuels to be produced from the most efficient feedstock by the lowest-cost
producers, removing pressure from food prices," the bank said. A spokesman for Bush, Scott Stanzel,
said the White House is "always reviewing policies to best address the needs of the country."
WNDI 2008 11
Ethanol Aff 2ACs
A2 Agriculture DA (2/2)
Removing the tariff would reduce corn prices
The Hill, Jim Snyder, 7/7/2008, “Food, livestock groups push policies to reduce corn prices,” The Hill,
http://thehill.com/business--lobby/food-livestock-groups-push-policies-to-reduce-corn-prices-2008-07-07.html
Federal spending watchdogs have also signed on to a letter urging suspension of the tariff. But
livestock producers that rely on corn as a feed grain, soft drink makers that use corn as a sweetener and
food manufacturers that blame corn-based ethanol for raising the price of one of their main ingredients
are the main backers of the lobbying campaign. “Feed prices and supply are press5ing dairy, livestock
and poultry producers to endure one of the greatest adverse economic situations in decades, which is
ultimately adding unnecessary economic pressure to all Americans,” 36 groups wrote President Bush last
week. The American Meat Institute , Coca-Cola , the National Chicken Council and the Grocery
Manufacturers Association were among the groups and businesses that signed the letter. The letter urged
the president to suspend the ethanol tariff to “foster downward pressure for ethanol and its feedstock.”
Dave Warner, a spokesman for the National Pork Producers Council , said farmers have lost on average $30 a
pig between October 2007 and April 2008. While rising energy costs have contributed to the tough
economic times, the rising price of corn is more to blame, Warner said. He noted feed prices account for
70 percent of the costs to raise a pig to market. The pork producers brought agriculture economists and
farm lenders to a meeting with United States Department of Agriculture officials two weeks ago to talk about
how high corn prices have hurt the livestock industry and could make it harder for producers to get operating
loans in the future.
A2 Amazon DA (1/2)
1. N/U – the US already imports Brazilian ethanol duty free from CAFTA/CBI states and
cooperates with Brazil over ethanol in the status quo that’s our Seelke and Yacobucci
evidence.
2. N/U Yacobucci evidence says that Brazil is expanding its ethanol industry right now at its
maximum rater in the status quo plan doesn’t change this.
A2 Amazon DA (2/2)
5. Case turns DA – relations are key to Amazon forest preservation.
A2 Australia DA (1/3)
1. N/U – 1NC Yacobucci and Seeke evidence says the US already cooperates with Brazil
over ethanol technology and that the US already imports ethanol duty free from CBI and
CAFTA states.
3. No I/L – Coal isn’t key to the Australian economy. Other mining industries are key like
uranium and silicon, their price evidence doesn’t even use the word coal. The Roberts
evidence is generic but its talking about regulations and tax increases not a decrease in
taxes.
A2 Australia DA (2/3)
6. No I/L – the coal industry will not be destroyed by a carbon tax- its abundance in
Australia guarantees the industries survival.
Stephen Wisenthal, April 4, 2007 Wednesday, “Coal's death much exaggerated”, The Australian Financial Review,
07/24/08, http://www.lexisnexis.com/us/lnacademic/.
A carbon tax will not destroy the coal industry. Coal remains the cheapest way to generate electricity
for the world's industries. Its abundance in Australia guarantees it will play a large part in meeting
future energy needs. However it may not be business as usual - technologies will be needed to continually
lower the emissions coal produces. Those coal mining corporations that have deposits naturally lower in
carbon, such as the high hydrogen-bearing coal of New Hope's New Acland mine in Queensland, will have a
distinct advantage in this race The following companies were referenced in the original article
7. No Link - The increase in alternative energy would not trade off with the coal industry in
Australia.
Belinda Tasker, a London based writer and editor. “Clean energy switch will cost jobs: BHP” The Courier Mail
pg. 17. October 27, 2007.
http://www.lexisnexis.com/us/lnacademic/results/docview/docview.do?docLinkInd=true&risb=21_T4245334590&f
ormat=GNBFI&sort=BOOLEAN&startDocNo=1&resultsUrlKey=29_T4245334593&cisb=22_T4245334592&tree
Max=true&treeWidth=0&csi=244788&docNo=18
The head of the world's biggest miner said using nuclear, solar and wind energy sources would all help
Australia cut greenhouse gas emissions. But he said switching to such energy sources would involve trade-offs, including
massive job cuts in Australia's booming coal industry, which has played a key role in driving economic growth. ''It's a matter of trade-
offs the Government has to make, whether you close down coal power stations and rely on solar and wind,'' Mr Argus said.
''(Governments) hold the economic levers so it's about how quickly or slowly they introduce alternative sources of energy.'' Mr Argus
was speaking after addressing shareholders at BHP Billiton's annual meeting in London. During the meeting, he downplayed claims by
some investors that BHP Billiton should resist tapping into the world's biggest uranium deposit, at its Olympic Dam mine in South
Australia. He said while there were emissions associated with the life cycle of a nuclear power plant, they
were ''insignificant'' compared to the fall in carbon emissions from switching to atomic power. After the
meeting, Mr Argus said he believed nuclear power would be introduced in Australia one day, but only after people became more
''educated'' about it. ''The debate in the northern hemisphere is far more advanced than what it is in the
Australian community,'' he said. ''I think once people see nuclear is the cleanest form of energy then
they will move on to the (nuclear) waste debate, and that's where I think we should be concentrating.''
Mr Argus also called on governments around the globe to join forces with big business to develop new technologies that reduce or
capture greenhouse gases. He told shareholders that while alternative energy methods were becoming more
common, the use of coal would continue to grow.
8. Case turns DA – Crane evidence says free trade is key to the US economy.
A2 Australia DA (3/3)
10. Weak dollar means Euroswitch which undermines the US economy
The Observer Sunday February 23, 2003
At various points in time since the early 1970s, oil producers have discussed this, especially in periods
when the dollar has been weak. Opinions have tended to be wide-ranging, depending on the strategic and
trade alliances certain members have with particular trade blocs,' said Yarjani. That was an elliptical
reference to the overwhelming influence of Saudi Arabia, whose government is the staunchest ally of
the US within Opec. 'The Saudis are holding the line on oil prices in Opec and should they, for
example, go along with the rest of the Opec people in demanding that oil be priced in euros, that would
deal a very heavy blow to the American economy,' Youssef Ibrahim, of the influential US Council on
Foreign Relations, told CNN. Last year the former US Ambassador to Saudi Arabia told a committee of the
US Congress: 'One of the major things the Saudis have historically done, in part out of friendship with the
United States, is to insist that oil continues to be priced in dollars. Therefore, the US Treasury can print
money and buy oil, which is an advantage no other country has. With the emergence of other currencies
and with strains in the relationship, I wonder whether there will not again be, as there have been in the
past, people in Saudi Arabia who raise the question of why they should be so kind to the United States.'
WNDI 2008 17
Ethanol Aff 2ACs
A2 Backstopping DA (1/3)
1. N/U – 1NC Yacobucci evidence says the US is already importing ethanol duty free from
CBI and CAFTA states.
2. N/U – 1NC Yacobucci and Seeke evidence says that Brazil increase ethanol production at
a maximum rate whether or not the plan is passed.
A2 Backstopping DA (2/3)
5. Dependency allows countries to rely on oil wealth, preventing democracy or a diversified
economy from emerging
David Ivanovich, staff writer, May 18, 2003, Houston Chronicle
WASHINGTON - Call it the curse of crude. The 11 countries that comprise the OPEC cartel pocketed
nearly $ 180 billion in oil revenues last year. None is a thriving democracy. Coincidence? Oil wealth
hinders development of a tax-paying middle class, the very segment of society most likely to agitate for
a voice in government, political economists say. Bountiful crude reserves also discourage the kind of
diversification needed for a successful capitalistic economy.
6. Global democratic consolidation is essential to prevent many scenarios for war and
extinction.
Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict, October 1995, “Promoting Democracy in
the 1990’s,” http://www.carnegie.org//sub/pubs/deadly/dia95_01.html, accessed on 12/11/99
OTHER THREATS This hardly exhausts the lists of threats to our security and well-being in the coming
years and decades. In the former Yugoslavia nationalist aggression tears at the stability of Europe and could
easily spread. The flow of illegal drugs intensifies through increasingly powerful international crime
syndicates that have made common cause with authoritarian regimes and have utterly corrupted the
institutions of tenuous, democratic ones. Nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons continue to proliferate.
The very source of life on Earth, the global ecosystem, appears increasingly endangered. Most of these new
and unconventional threats to security are associated with or aggravated by the weakness or absence of
democracy, with its provisions for legality, accountability, popular sovereignty, and openness. LESSONS
OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY The experience of this century offers important lessons. Countries that
govern themselves in a truly democratic fashion do not go to war with one another. They do not aggress
against their neighbors to aggrandize themselves or glorify their leaders. Democratic governments do not
ethnically "cleanse" their own populations, and they are much less likely to face ethnic insurgency.
Democracies do not sponsor terrorism against one another. They do not build weapons of mass destruction to
use on or to threaten one another. Democratic countries form more reliable, open, and enduring trading
partnerships. In the long run they offer better and more stable climates for investment. They are more
environmentally responsible because they must answer to their own citizens, who organize to protest the
destruction of their environments. They are better bets to honor international treaties since they value legal
obligations and because their openness makes it much more difficult to breach agreements in secret. Precisely
because, within their own borders, they respect competition, civil liberties, property rights, and the rule of
law, democracies are the only reliable foundation on which a new world order of international security and
prosperity can be built.
7. No internal link – their shell evidence is from ’99 any price dip wouldn’t reach ‘90s level
means there is no impact to their da.
WNDI 2008 19
Ethanol Aff 2ACs
A2 Backstopping DA (3/3)
8. The politics of oil shapes US Mideast policy toward war
Steve Kretzmann, PetroPolitics co-organizer, 1/5/2004, washingtonpost.com
Steve Kretzmann: No conflict can ever be understood by looking at just one factor - but understanding the
politics of oil sheds important light on facts that are often obscured in the fog of war. The peace movement's
rallying cry of "No blood for oil" has resonance and power because it holds more than a grain of truth when
talking about any proposed military action in Iraq. How much is the Bush administration's push for war with
Iraq motivated by its desire to gain control of Iraq's oil fields? As one Bush adviser who chose to remain
anonymous put it: "If you were trying to talk about Iraq and if you were not encumbered by the fear that your
actions would be linked to ExxonMobil or the oil industry, you'd be talking about oil issues". Or as an oil
industry consultant put it recently when asked if oil was part of the equation: "Of course it is. No doubt." Oil
clearly has a role, and quite arguably a central one, in motivating and explaining not only the actions of
the Bush administration, but also allies like France and Russia, the Iraqi opposition, and even Saddam
Hussein. 1) Oil is unquestionably the long-term "vital interest" of the United States, Europe, and Japan in the
Persian Gulf. Factors other than oil (e.g. supposed links to terrorism and possible weapons of mass
destruction) clearly contribute to the rationale for war - but the dominant economic interest in the region
and Iraq has been, is, and will continue to be oil. There is virtually no foreign investment in the region
outside of the oil industry. Fully two-thirds of the world's proven oil supplies are in the Persian Gulf.
As long as we are dependent on oil, we are dependent on this region. According to General Anthony
Zinni, the US "must have free access to the region's resources"
A2 Bizcon DA (1/1)
1. N/U – 1NC Yacobucci and Seeke evidence says the US already cooperates with Brazil
over ethanol technology and that the US already imports ethanol duty free from CBI and
CAFTA states.
A2 Elections DA (1/4)
1. N/U – 1NC Yacobucci and Seeke evidence says the US already cooperates with Brazil
over ethanol technology and that the US already imports ethanol duty free from CBI and
CAFTA states.
2. N/U and No I/L - Obama won’t necessarily win and issues aren’t key
Steven Stark, culture commentator for NPR, 6-12-2008, “Will the Election Be All About Obama?”
RealClearPolitics, http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/06/going_dutch.html
Sure, he'll occasionally get the spotlight, and there are things he can do to improve his chances marginally.
But in the end, this election is about Barack Obama. The country wants a significant change in
direction and Obama and the Democrats are the only ones who can credibly promise to deliver it. Thus,
the results in November are going to come down to one question: can a significant portion of the
electorate abide Barack Obama as its next president? Right now, it's an open question. And for Obama
to get the answer he wants, he's going to have to be another Ronald Reagan or another Franklin
Delano Roosevelt. There is always a threshold over which nominees must pass when the electorate decides
whether a candidate can be trusted with the most powerful job in the world. For some, like General Dwight
Eisenhower in 1952, doing so is a cakewalk. For upstarts and more ideological purists, it's harder. Obama, of
course, is the upstart of upstarts. The good news for Obama is that most nominees do, in fact, successfully
make the transition, especially when there is an overriding desire for change. John F. Kennedy in 1960,
Jimmy Carter in 1976, Reagan in 1980, and Bill Clinton in 1992 all faced an initially skeptical electorate and,
through favorable debate performances and constant exposure in the general-election campaign, gradually
reassured the public that it had less to fear from the unknown than from the known. Upon closer
examination, however, the Kennedy, Carter, and Clinton comparisons may not offer much of a
precedent for Obama. After all, each of the three was a centrist who ran at his challenger from the right
as well as the left. Clinton and Carter came from the Southern GOP base and founded their appeal, in part,
on their willingness to deviate sharply from party orthodoxy. JFK, too, was a hawk on military policy,
running against Nixon from the right on the basis of a purported missile gap. In contrast, as his Senate voting
record and positions demonstrate, Obama is as liberal as they come, without any public record of straying
from his party's left-leaning causes and constituencies. That means to win, he'll have to replicate the
Reagan experience and basically lead an ideological revolution that will redraw the electoral map.
Risk assessment It's a highly risky strategy, to say the least. It's risky, in part, because Americans -- even
when they say they want change -- often don't endorse a sharp turn in direction. Yes, FDR's election in
1932 signaled a transformation, but the nation was in the midst of its worst depression. Reagan fomented a
shift in the other direction, but the economy was in tatters and another nation held our citizens hostage. Are
the Iraq War and current economic situation commensurate woes? If precedent is any guide, for the
Democrats to win, the voters will have to think so. Then there's Obama himself. FDR and Reagan were well-
known figures on the national scene for years before they finally made it to the Oval Office; they each had a
track record as governor of the nation's then-largest state (New York and California, respectively) that, in the
end, reassured voters they could be trusted with the nation's highest office. Obama, by comparison, has a
short résumé. Yes, experience can be overrated (as Hillary Clinton discovered) but if you're promising to
drastically refashion our politics, it may be more of a prerequisite than usual. Obama's uphill battle is
made even trickier by the opponent he faces. Both FDR and Reagan won the office against damaged
incumbents who, to a large number of Americans, had virtually disqualified themselves for a second term.
McCain may not be a particularly vibrant candidate (especially if his Louisiana speech of this past week
is any indication), but he's not the incumbent. Those focusing on Obama's challenges so far have tended to
dwell on the issue of race. But race isn't really the main issue. Anybody would find it difficult to do what
Obama is trying to do. He has a hard sell ahead of him, and there have been far more instances when such
"revolutionary" candidates (think William Jennings Bryan, Barry Goldwater, or George McGovern)
have found the general-election mountain far too steep to climb. Support him or not, give Obama credit
for this: he thinks big, which is why the upcoming campaign will focus almost exclusively on his ideas and
his persona. If only by doing that, he's already changed our politics.
WNDI 2008 22
Ethanol Aff 2ACs
A2 Elections DA (2/4)
3. N/U – McCain will win – Electoral College heavily tilted towards GOP
Robert Novak, Syndicated Political Columnist, 5-28-2008, “Electoral College Outlook: McCain 270, Obama
268,” Human Events, http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=26723
Electoral College: While national polls garner attention, they have no direct bearing on choosing our
next President. A state-by-state count of electoral votes is the key to analyzing the presidential race.
For the first time this year, we run through all 50 states plus the District of Columbia in order to handicap the
presidential race. Outlook: If the election were held today, we see a McCain victory by the narrowest of
margins.
5. No I/L – the McKinnon evidence says that McCain will have to distance himself from
Bush to win the election not that his popularity is linked.
A2 Elections DA (3/4)
7. Turn - Sugar lobby opposes plan and is strong
Forbes, Joshua Zumbrun, 6/30/2008, “Sugar’s Sweet Deal,” Forbes,
http://www.forbes.com/home/2008/06/27/florida-sugar-crist-biz-beltway-cx_jz_0630sugar.html
For now, discussion of a free trade deal involving the U.S. and Brazil is stalled, but American sugar producers worry that if
such an agreement were put in place, Brazil’s sugar industry would gain a stronger place in the U.S. market. A
separate tariff applies to Brazil’s foreign ethanol--one that domestic ethanol producers are keen to keep in place. Nonetheless, the
U.S. sugar industry remains strong in Washington. "They have been a notoriously powerful lobby for
decades and decades," says Cato's Edwards. As an explanation for sugar's lavish subsidies in the 2008 farm bill, which recently
became law after a veto override, look no further than Congress' Agriculture Committees. According to the Center for
Responsive Politics, the top beneficiaries of big sugar's influence for the current election cycle include
Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman Tom Harkin, D-Iowa ($35,400), House Agriculture Committee
member Tim Mahoney, D-Fla. ($33,923) and committee chairman Collin Peterson, D-Minn., ($28,900). The U.S.
Department of Agriculture says roughly 54% of total U.S. sugar-beet acreage is in the Red River Valley between Minnesota and North
Dakota. North Dakota's sole Congressman, Democrat Earl Pomeroy, has been the greatest beneficiary of
donations from sugar-related political-action committees for the 2008 election cycle, taking in $26,500, the
Center for Responsive Politics says. Peterson, whose district in western Minnesota stretches along the Red River Valley, is No. 2, with
$26,400 in PAC money. As a governor, Crist has no vote on federal farm subsidies--he can only influence what's done with Floridians'
tax money. And federal taxpayers? They're still paying to support sugar and keep prices high at the store. Sweet.
8. No I/L – Public perception of Obama is the most important question for the election –
issues aren’t key
Myron Pitts, political columnist, 7-24-2008, “General Election Really a Referendum on Obama,”
FayObserver.comhttp://www.fayobserver.com/blog/comments?bid=7&eid=6969
The more I think about it, the more I think the general election is all about Obama. This is not an original
thought. MSNBC's Pat Buchanan and others have been saying the same thing. I think that you could have
taken any Republican from the primary, except perhaps the radical Ron Paul, and the poll numbers would
be roughly the same -- Obama with a slight edge or about even. I frankly think the GOP side could be blank
-- no nominee yet -- and the poll numbers would be the same. I don't doubt that McCain is probably the best
of a weak field on the other side, but really, the general election to date is not about him or his ideas. (He
should be thankful for the latter, considering that on the two major issues, the war and the economy, his ideas
are similar to Bush's.) The entire election is whether or not people will vote for the dramatic change
that Obama represents, or whether they won't. It all comes down to whether they see that change as
potentially good or potentially bad. This makes the GOP strategy fairly simple and conventional: Bring
him down. (Another Buchanan notion.)
9. Case turns DA – 1AC relations evidence says plan is key to check Chavez will collapse
US hegemony.
A2 Elections DA (4/4)
11. Incentives coming now – Senate
Congress.org 6/12/08 (Congress.org Bill # S.3126 6/12/08
http://www.congress.org/congressorg/issues/bills/?billnum=S.3126&congress=110)
A bill to provide for the development of certain traditional and alternative energy resources, and for other
purposes
WNDI 2008 25
Ethanol Aff 2ACs
2. N/U – IATP evidence is talking about the effects of ratifying the Central American Free
Trade Agreement, that’s already passed.
3. Case turns DA – Crane evidence says free trade is key to the US economy.
9. The 1AC food prices advantage is an impact turn to this DA. The American corn ethanol
industry is artificially inflating the price of food around the world.
A2 Japan DA (1/2)
1. N/U – 1NC Yacobucci and Seeke evidence says the US already cooperates with Brazil
over ethanol technology and that the US already imports ethanol duty free from CBI and
CAFTA states.
2. N/U – Japan cannot assert environmental leadership – its CO2 emissions are rising and
the tech is too expensive
Hindustan Times, G-8 summit goes green in Japan, 7-6-2008,
http://www.hindustantimes.com/StoryPage/StoryPage.aspx?id=fe550411-081e-42bc-9628-
127b560234f0&ParentID=76e2b769-66ba-4078-8763-a0476e852a80&&Headline=G-
8+summit+goes+green+in+Japan
And even Japan, which is challenging the European Union (EU)'s role as the world's leader on climate
change, has seen its carbon dioxide emissions rise rather than fall in recent years. Moreover, the
current slowdown in the global economy risks making costly emission-reducing schemes even less
popular. As the display in Toyako proved once again, it is not only a matter of lacking political will.
Another problem is that the technology behind some the boldest environmentally friendly projects is
still either untested or too expensive.
4. No Link – the 1NC didn’t have a single piece of link evidence and there is no reason that
lifting a tariff on Brazilian ethanol would effect Japan’s energy leadership.
6. Case turns the DA – free trade is key to prevent a US/China war which is the most likely
scenario for
WNDI 2008 28
Ethanol Aff 2ACs
A2 Japan DA (2/2)
7. Turn – US modeling and guidance is necessary to help build Japanese society
Keizai Doyukai, Japan Association of Corporate Executives, September 1,
2006,http://www.doyukai.or.jp/en/policyproposals/articles/pdf/060901.pdf
As the international situation experiences increasing tensions, issues related to foreign
relations and security become more important and assume the highest priority. While firmly
conveying to succeeding generations Japan’s tragic experience of the nuclear bomb and
postwar reconstruction, it is our duty to help build a Japanese society, and an international
society, that inspires the dreams and pride of the younger generation, making use of the
country’s strengths.
WNDI 2008 29
Ethanol Aff 2ACs
A2 Jobs DA (1/2)
1. N/U – 1NC Yacobucci and Seeke evidence says the US already cooperates with Brazil
over ethanol technology and that the US already imports ethanol duty free from CBI and
CAFTA states.
2. Case turns the DA - Crane evidence says free trade is key to the US economy.
3. Turn – 1NC evidence says that DOHA rounds and WTO credibility is key to protect jobs.
1AC IPS evidence says plan is key to DOHA success.
A2 Jobs DA (2/2)
9. Relations are key the Brazilian economy
Peter Hakim, President- Inter-American Dialogue, Jan/Feb 2004, Foreign Affairs,
http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20040101faessay83111/peter-hakim/the-reluctant-partner.html
Washington needs Brasilia's cooperation to make progress on critical regional issues, such as the Free
Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), Venezuela's worsening political confrontation, and Colombia's
criminal violence and guerrilla warfare. Brazil's voice also carries weight on broader international
issues such as global trade negotiations and the struggle against AIDS. Just as surely, Brazil needs U.S.
cooperation to advance its domestic and international agendas, particularly the central challenge of
economic growth, which requires dependable access to U.S. markets, capital, and technology. Brazil
needs the United States to have any chance of energizing its long-stagnant economy, expanding job
opportunities, and accelerating social development. An adversarial relationship would be extremely
damaging to U.S. policy and interests in Latin America, more so than ever given the region's unsettled
politics and uneasy relations with the United States.
11. No link – 1NC link evidence says sugar price drops devastates jobs – plan doesn’t
change sugar tariffs.
A2 Mexico DA (1/2)
<insert A2 Oil DA + >
( ) High prices devastate the Mexican economy – links to the US and refined petroleum
importer
Newsweek, Scott Johnson, 11/8/2004, “The Mexican Paradox,” Lexis
Spirits have been high and coffers full in commodity-rich developing nations from West Africa to East Asia
recently, thanks to record-high oil prices. Countries like Nigeria, Venezuela, East Timor and, of course, the
Middle Eastern oil states are seeing record inflows as prices continue to spiral upward. Net exporter Mexico
is growing fat, too--oil has yielded an extra $12 billion in revenues so far this year. But far from being gleeful
about the boom, officials there are fretting about the impact of high oil prices on the country. The paradox is
a result of Mexico's unique place in the global economy. Unlike many oil states, Mexico has a relatively
diversified economy--only 10 percent of its exports come from oil. The problem is that the other 90
percent, including things like electronics, textiles and medical supplies, go almost wholly to the United
States. And there, high oil prices are beginning to have a dampening effect on the economy. What's
more, non-oil exports are facing increasing competition from China, which has siphoned off thousands of
Mexican manufacturing jobs. And a sclerotic state-controlled oil sector hasn't invested enough in
homegrown refineries, meaning that Mexico must buy refined petroleum from the United States, at the
going prices. The result, says Alejandro Werner, a senior adviser at the Finance Ministry, is a situation in
which "the Mexican economy may slow down, even as oil prices continue to go up." How much it
slows will depend on just how far the U.S. economy falls. According to Jonathan Heath, chief Mexico
economist for HSBC, for every $5 increase in the price of oil, U.S. growth is cut 0.4 percent. Already there
are signs that nosebleed oil prices are dampening American consumer enthusiasm. Two weeks ago Federal
Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan said that high oil prices have cut into U.S. GDP growth this year, and
warned of worse to come. If that happens, the border area Mexico shares with the United States, where
hundreds of maquiladoras churn out goods for the U.S. market, would suffer. That's a concern; after all, it
was the maquiladora sector that helped wean Mexico off its historical dependence on oil.
A2 Mexico DA (2/2)
( ) Mexican economy is empirically denied – it crashed in 2001
Latin American Economy and Business, 2-21-2006, “Mexico,” p ln
President Ernesto Zedillo, who was elected in the pivotal year of 1994 (which started with the Zapatista
uprising, continued with the assassination of the ruling Partido Revolucionario Institucional's candidate, Luis
Donaldo Colosio and ended with a catastrophically misjudged devaluation), made his priority what he
called the blindaje (literally armour-plating) of the economy to prevent his successor facing the economic
mess he had to confront. President Vicente Fox did not face a home-grown economic crisis in 2000, though
the Mexican economy was sent reeling by the sharp decline in the US economy in 2001. Like Zedillo,
Fox has focused his economic policy on ensuring macro-economic stability. The budget is now in surplus (so
it should be with oil prices where they are). Foreign debt has fallen as a proportion of total debt as the
government has borrowed more in pesos. The government even has the cash to pay off foreign debts that
mature in 2006 and 2007.
WNDI 2008 33
Ethanol Aff 2ACs
5. No link – plan isn’t a regulation or tax incentives for renewables that their evidence talks
about.
6. Case turns DA – Crane evidence says free trade is key to the US economy.
WNDI 2008 34
Ethanol Aff 2ACs
A2 Oil DA (1/5)
1. N/U – 1NC Yacobucci and Seeke evidence says the US already cooperates with Brazil
over ethanol technology and that the US already imports ethanol duty free from CBI and
CAFTA states.
2. N/U – Oil Prices are falling and have dove $10 this month
AP 07/26
Oil prices have settled sharply lower for the second straight day, capping a dizzying drop that has left
crude more than $10 cheaper in just two days of frenzied trading. Light, sweet crude for August
delivery fell $4.14 to settle at $134.60 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, after earlier
sinking as low as $132. The drop follows a $6.44 sell-off Tuesday, meaning prices have plummeted over $10
since Monday The two-day slide marks a dramatic turnaround in crude prices, which as recently as
Friday traded at record highs above $147 a barrel. Analysts are unsure whether the drop represents a long-
term shift in sentiment or simply a correction to crude's bull rally.
A2 Oil DA (2/5)
5. Case turns DA – Crane evidence says free trade is key to the US economy.
A2 Oil DA (3/5)
8. High Oil price undermine Chinese economic growth and spur social unrest
Agence France Presse – English September 11, 2005 Sunday 3:34 AM GMT
Rocketing global oil prices are eating away at the high-flying Chinese economy, provoking a slowdown
that officials and analysts warn could lead to inflation and even social unrest. "I have to admit that the rise in
oil prices is having an impact on the Chinese economy," Zhu Zhixin, vice chairman of the National Development and
Reform Commission, said at a business forum in Beijing last week. Although Zhu did not give concrete estimates, analysts say that
China's 2006 growth in gross domestic product will easily drop off by one percentage point. They also estimate the consumer
price index, its main measure of inflation, will jump two percentage points from around two percent now. While China is not as
vulnerable as other oil-reliant Asian economies, the prospect of high prices over a sustained period is a serious
concern to economic planners in Beijing, analysts said. China is the world's second biggest oil consumer. It relies on imports
for about 3.7 million barrels per day, or 40 percent of its oil needs. Demand in China is currently at 6.4 million barrels per day and
though demand growth has slowed this year, consumption is expected to continue to expand, driven by strong economics and the low
domestic retail fuel prices. Beijing fixes oil prices by using a basket of the previous month's global trading levels in London, New York
and Singapore and then allows the price to fluctuate eight percent. Even though the two-tiered system is meant to protect consumers the
discrepancy between pricing and suppliers sparked shortages of fuel this summer in southern China, pressuring the government to
liberalise prices. Overhauling the system would act as a brake on the economy, analysts said. Morgan Stanley has
revised its 2006 GDP growth forecast down to 9.3 percent from 9.5 percent and to 6.7 percent for 2007 as a result of higher oil prices.
The Asian Development Bank and the International Monetary Fund estimate a loss of about one percentage point next
year. Carl Weinberg, of High Frequency Economics, said that the cost would be significantly higher -- and it
would raise China's import bill by 47 billion dollars over one year. "We view this as a gross transfer of income to
foreign oil producers, money that otherwise would have been spent at home," he said. It would trim 2.8 percent from GDP
growth with 260,000 fewer urban jobs created, Weinberg estimated. Some economists are even more
pessimistic, estimating that every 10 percent rise in oil prices represents a GDP reduction of 0.3
percentage points and an increase in the consumer price index of 0.4 percentage points. Deutsche Bank said China
is about five times as energy-intensive as the US which means its takes five times as much energy to produce a dollar of GDP. "High
oil prices, if they were to be passed onto domestic users, would seem to impose a greater burden on China's
economy," the Deutsche Bank report said. High oil prices are becoming the norm and China's solution of forcing refiners to subsidize
low petrol and diesel costs has to end, analysts say. Angry refiners, which posted losses of 4.2 billion yuan (517 million dollars) in the
first six months, have called on the government to loosen its price policies after fuel shortages paralyzed southern parts of the country
due to production cutbacks by refiners. The shortages in July and August were widely seen as artificial as refiners were reluctant to sell
oil products at a loss. It is unclear how Beijing will respond amid growing calls for reform as it struggles to keep CPI at around two
percent -- a level it feels is necessary if it is to maintain its socio-economic contract of allowing people to get rich but not grating
political freedoms. "Can the government introduce price relaxations gradually enough so as to keep CPI at two-three percent a year?,"
asked Stephen Green, economist at Standard Chartered Bank. "The big worry is that these energy prices hit the economy all at once and
CPI rises too quickly."
WNDI 2008 39
Ethanol Aff 2ACs
A2 Oil DA (4/5)
Chinese economic decline causes war with the US
Dr. Thomas M. Kane teaches security studies at the University of Hull, UK and Dr. Lawrence W. Serewicz
recently received his Ph.D. in politics from the University of Hull, UK, Fall 2001, Parameters
Despite China's problems with its food supply, the Chinese do not appear to be in danger of widespread starvation. Nevertheless, one
cannot rule out the prospect entirely, especially if the earth's climate actually is getting warmer. The consequences of general famine in a
country with over a billion people clearly would be catastrophic. The effects of oil shortages and industrial stagnation
would be less lurid, but economic collapse would endanger China's political stability whether that collapse came with a
bang or a whimper. PRC society has become dangerously fractured. As the coastal cities grow richer and more cosmopolitan while the
rural inland provinces grow poorer, the political interests of the two regions become ever less compatible. Increasing the prospects for
division yet further, Deng Xiaoping's administrative reforms have strengthened regional potentates at the expense of central authority. As
Kent Calder observes, In part, this change [erosion of power at the center] is a conscious devolution, initiated by Deng Xiaoping in 1991
to outflank conservative opponents of economic reforms in Beijing nomenclature. But devolution has fed on itself, spurred by the natural
desire of local authorities in the affluent and increasingly powerful coastal provinces to appropriate more and more of the fruits of
growth to themselves alone. [49] Other social and economic developments deepen the rifts in Chinese society. The one-child policy, for
instance, is disrupting traditional family life, with unknowable consequences for Chinese mores and social cohesion. [50] As families
resort to abortion or infanticide to ensure that their one child is a son, the population may come to include an unprecedented
preponderance of young, single men. If common gender prejudices have any basis in fact, these males are unlikely to be a source of
social stability. Under these circumstances, China is vulnerable to unrest of many kinds. Unemployment or severe hardship, not to
mention actual starvation, could easily trigger popular uprisings. Provincial leaders might be tempted to secede,
perhaps openly or perhaps by quietly ceasing to obey Beijing's directives. China's leaders, in turn, might adopt drastic measures to
forestall such developments. If faced with internal strife, supporters of China's existing regime may return to a more
overt form of communist dictatorship. The PRC has, after all, oscillated between experimentation and orthodoxy continually
throughout its existence. Spectacular examples include Mao's Hundred Flowers campaign and the return to conventional Marxism-
Leninism after the leftist experiments of the Cultural Revolution, but the process continued throughout the 1980s, when the Chinese
referred to it as the "fang-shou cycle." (Fang means to loosen one's grip; shou means to tighten it.) [51] If order broke down, the Chinese
would not be the only people to suffer. Civil unrest in the PRC would disrupt trade relationships, send refugees
flowing across borders, and force outside powers to consider intervention. If different countries chose
to intervene on different sides, China's struggle could lead to major war. In a less apocalyptic but still grim scenario,
China's government might try to ward off its demise by attacking adjacent countries.
WNDI 2008 40
Ethanol Aff 2ACs
A2 Oil DA (5/5)
High Prices result in Philippine instability
Manila Standard August 19, 2005
IN the news this week was a proposal coming from the government's economic managers asking for emergency powers for the President
in order to allow her to deal with the crisis of high prices of crude oil. We are not talking, dear reader, simply of focused interventions
such as specific subsidies or price subsidies like what other countries are discussing. We are talking about measures that include the truly
extreme intervention of rationing. A matter of logic Now, I am no economist but something does not compute here. There is a failure in
logic involved in invoking rationing as a solution to oil price increases. Rationing is a supply solution. In easy English, if there is not
enough oil to go around, then we need to control how much oil is available for consumption. In other words, if there is a shortage of
gasoline, then the government must control availability. However, there is, in fact, no shortage. Unlike the last time rationing was
invoked in this country, there is no oil embargo today. There is no real shortage. What the government is proposing to Congress is to
allow it to have the ability to create an artificial shortage even when there is no real shortage. Unfortunately, this artificial shortage will
create some very real effects -- gas lines, quite possibly a transportation crisis, and again, quite possibly, even an unemployment crisis
resulting from factories remaining idle. Matching solution to problem A basic tenet of rational decision-making is that the right solution
can only be crafted if the problem is defined correctly. The problem, dear reader, is high oil prices. The real concern, of course, is the
effect on inflation. Last week, the Asian Institute of Management Policy Center held a conference entitled "The Global Oil Situation:
What is it to the Philippines?" In that conference, it was pointed out that an IMF study dated 2000 estimates that a 20 percent oil price
hike translates to a one year after effect of 0.8 percent in inflation and a negative 0.8 percent effect on real GDP. And, no, I did not
misplace that decimal point. The reason for this rather surprisingly small effect of oil price hikes on inflation is that the portion of
spending that is oil-related is actually a rather small amount. Alexander Escucha, president of the Philippine Economic Society, says that
he cannot recall the precise percentage for the Philippine basket of spending but that the percentage for the United States is about 5
percent. Even more interestingly, Alex points out that the last time rationing was seriously entertained seriously by government, the price
of crude was at a current price equivalent of about $ 80 per barrel. In fact, the news in oil for the day is that crude oil futures dropped to
$ 62.80 per barrel on news of increased inventories as well as refining capacity coming back on line. Presuming we are still worrying
about inflation, the correct answer, it would seem to me, would be some sort of price subsidy targeted at relieving the effect of inflation
for those that really need it. In fact, all the economists at the table agreed on two basic things. First, the best method of dealing with the
current crisis is to let market forces determine a new equilibrium for the supply-demand-price equation. Second, the solution must match
the problem. Rationing is a supply solution. It was an appropriate solution for the oil crisis caused by the oil embargoes of the last
century but it is not an appropriate solution for the current crisis that is actually being caused by high prices. Prof. Federico Macaranas,
executive director of the Asian Institute of Management's Policy Center, had this to say about the proposal of rationing as a solution to
high oil prices: "They seem to be attempting to solve a political crisis by creating a possible economic crisis." The extreme situation
Ernest Leung, former secretary of finance, said that the only justification for government intervention with market forces is to alleviate
social cost. When asked for his opinion about rationing as an intervention, he stated that rationing is so extreme a measure that it should
be invoked only under extreme circumstances. How extreme? His response: war or circumstances that would approximate the severity of
war. National Security Adviser Norberto Gonzales has been quoted as saying that the current high cost of oil can
be considered a "serious national security threat." It is difficult for me to imagine how high oil prices can
be considered a security threat. Unless, of course, the theory is that there will be massive civil unrest as a
result of rising oil prices. Given the low translation of oil price increase to inflation, this seems an unlikely
possibility. Escucha, however, pointed out that there is an SWS survey that says only about 15 percent of
Filipinos understand that rising gasoline prices are a result of rising global oil prices. The rest of the
population, apparently, blames all of this on various combinations of private sector greed and
government incompetence and corruption. The reality, of course, is that everyone is feeling the crunch of
higher oil prices. The reality is that this government cannot afford to subsidize oil prices for large volumes or
long periods. The reality is that our deficit problem continues. The reality is that the all-important EVAT law
is still stalled. The reality is that this government is still in a political crisis of confidence. The reality, it
seems to me, is that our national economic interest is still being held hostage by the fight for political
survival. And that, perhaps, is what the emergency is really all about.
4. No Impact - The Transition from Oil Will be Slow- Saudi Arabia Will Adapt
Anthony H. Cordesman, Energy Developments in the Middle East, 2004, pg.56
Time and technology will almost certainly change this situation, but not in a few years or even a few
decades- barring some massive, unanticipated breakthrough in alternative energy supplies. In fact, even if
dramatic changes did take place in the cost alternative energy supplies, it might well take a decade for
such changes to really have a decisive global impact. The world has simply invested too much in
vehicles, facilities, homes, and industrial processes that use oi, and few breakthroughs could take the
form of supplies that could be cheaply and quickly produced on a global basis.
6. Case turns DA – Crane evidence says free trade is key to the US economy.
WNDI 2008 42
Ethanol Aff 2ACs
A2 Slavery DA (1/4)
1. N/U – the US already imports Brazilian ethanol duty free from CAFTA/CBI states and
cooperates with Brazil over ethanol in the status quo that’s our Seelke and Yacobucci
evidence.
2. N/U Yacobucci evidence says that Brazil is expanding its ethanol industry right now at its
maximum rater in the status quo plan doesn’t change this.
A2 Slavery DA (2/4)
4. Brazil will expand ethanol production rapidly with or without tariff
Dan Buglass, Rural Affairs Editor, 4/24/2008, “Ethanol Fuels Growth of Brazilian Agriculture,” Lexis
Prime Ministers Gordon Brown's statement that the UK needs to reassess its commitment of producing biofuels from land formerly
devoted to crops for food production will have come as no great surprise to those who have questioned the economics of the headlong
rush to renewable sources of energy. Meanwhile, Brazil is pressing ahead from its already leading position as the
world's largest producer of ethanol. This rapidly expanding industry is based on sugar cane, with suitable
land for this crop now changing hands at up to GBP 8,000 per hectare - a valuation which sits very close to the top of the Scottish
market. But the reality is that serious investors in agricultural land, including operators from New Zealand, Australia and North America,
have now grasped the fact that production costs in Brazil are much lower than in most of the developed world. A group of 16 members
of the Scottish Association of Young Farmers' Clubs visited Brazil last December, largely as a result of sponsorship from the Cameron
Trust. The trust was set up by John Cameron, a former president of NFU Scotland, and his wife Margaret following the sale of the major
part of their extensive farming operations two years ago for price that must have approached GBP 10 million. The Camerons have no
immediate family, but have a reputation of steering the younger generation in the right direction: those chosen must prove their worth.
Andrew Stevenson from Fife was one of the group which visited Brazil. He reported this week on the scale and future potential of the
sugar and ethanol industries in South America. He said: "Sugar cane is one of the biggest growth sectors within
Brazilian agriculture for many reasons, with energy security and environmental concerns being two of
the main drivers. Renewable sources of energy in Brazil are not uncommon with 45 per cent of the requirements being fed from
these." But that is just a beginning, according to Stevenson, who was clearly impressed with what he saw during the ten-day
tour. He said: "Currently there are 350 sugar-cane plants operating in Brazil producing 20 billion litres of
ethanol and 30 million tonnes of sugar. By 2012 it is predicted that there will be 412 plants producing
38 billion litres of ethanol with an exportable surplus of 10.5 billion litres. "This source of energy, however,
requires land to produce it. Fortunately this is something that Brazil has in abundance. Currently 6.3 million hectares are
cultivated for sugar cane production and projections show that by 2020 that will have doubled." That
expansion is almost certainly to be at the cost of a further reduction in the Amazon rainforest, an exceedingly touchy subject. On a world
scale Brazil accounts for 38 per cent of ethanol production but, in terms of exports, Brazil is by far the largest player with over 65 per
cent of the market. Stevenson added: "Sugar cane is undoubtedly the most competitive feedstock to produce ethanol, with higher yields,
lower costs which are competitive with crude oil at dollars 40 per barrel, and a very positive energy and environmental balance."
A2 Slavery DA (3/4)
6. Case turns DA - 1AC food prices advantage access dehumanization because people
starving are subject to failed states and human suffering.
7 Death outweighs all their impacts – it’s the only impact you can’t recover from
Zygmunt Bauman, University Of Leeds Professor Emeritus Of Sociology, Life In Fragments: Essays In
Postmodern Morality, 95, p. 66-71.
The being-for is like living towards-the-future: a being filled with anticipation, a being aware of the abyss between future foretold and
future that will eventually be; it is this gap which, like a magnet, draws the self towards the Other,as it draws life towards the future, making life into an
activity of overcoming, transcending, leaving behind. The self stretches towards the Other, as life stretches towards the future; neither can grasp what it
stretches toward, but it
is in this hopeful and desperate, never conclusive and never abandoned
stretching-toward that the self is ever anew created and life ever anew lived. In the words of M. M. Bakhtin, it is only
in this not-yet accomplished world of anticipation and trial, leaning toward stubbornly an-other Other, that life can be lived - not in the world of the `events
that occurred'; in the latter world, `it is impossible to live, to act responsibly; in it, I am not needed, in principle I am not there at all." Art, the Other, the
future: what unites them, what makes them into three words vainly trying to grasp the same mystery, is the modality of possibility. A curious modality, at
home neither in ontology nor epistemology; itself, like that which it tries to catch in its net, `always outside', forever `otherwise than being'. The possibility
we are talking about here is not the all-too-familiar unsure-of-itself, and through that uncertainty flawed, inferior and incomplete being, disdainfully
dismissed by triumphant existence as `mere possibility', `just a possibility'; possibility is instead `plus que la reahte' - both the origin and the foundation of
being. The hope, says Blanchot, proclaims the possibility of that which evades the possible; `in its limit, this is the hope of the bond recaptured where it is
now lost."' The hope is always the hope of being fu filled, but what keeps the hope alive and so keeps the being open and on the move is precisely its unfu
filment. One may say that the paradox of hope (and the paradox of possibility founded in hope) is that it may pursue its destination solely through betraying
its nature; the most exuberant of energies expends itself in the urge towards rest. Possibility uses up its openness in search of closure. Its image of the better
being is its own impoverishment . . . The togetherness of the being-for is cut out of the same block; it shares in the paradoxical lot of all possibility. It lasts
as long as it is unfulfilled, yet it uses itself up in never ending effort of fulfilment, of recapturing the bond, making it tight and immune to all future
temptations. In an important, perhaps decisive sense, it is selfdestructive and self-defeating: its triumph is its death. The Other, like restless and
unpredictable art, like the future itself, is a mystery. And being-for-the-Other, going towards the Other through the twisted and rocky gorge of affection,
brings that mystery into view - makes it into a challenge. That mystery is what has triggered the sentiment in the first place - but cracking that mystery is
what the resulting movement is about. The mystery must be unpacked so that the being-for may focus on the Other: one needs to know what to focus on.
(The `demand' is unspoken, the responsibility undertaken is unconditional; it is up to him or her who follows the demand and takes up the responsibility to
decide what the following of that demand and carrying out of that responsibility means in practical terms.) Mystery - noted Max Frisch - (and the Other is a
mystery), is an exciting puzzle, but one tends to get tired of that excitement. `And so one creates for oneself an image. This is a loveless act, the betrayal."
Creating an image of the Other leads to the substitution of the image for the Other; the Other is now fixed - soothingly and comfortingly. There is nothing to
be excited about anymore. I know what the Other needs, I know where my responsibility starts and ends. Whatever the Other may now do will be taken
down and used against him. What used to be received as an exciting surprise now looks more like perversion; what used to be adored as exhilarating
creativity now feels like wicked levity. Thanatos has taken over from Eros, and the excitement of the ungraspable turned into the dullness and tedium of the
grasped. But, as Gyorgy Lukacs observed, `everything one person may know about another is only expectation, only potentiality, only wish or fear,
acquiring reality only as a result of what happens later, and this reality, too, dissolves straightaway into potentialities'.
WNDI 2008 47
Ethanol Aff 2ACs
A2 Slavery DA (4/4)
8. Consequentialist decision-making is imperative. Gender paraphrased.
Kai Nielsen, Professor of Philosophy, University of Calgary, Absolutism and Its Consequentialist Critics, ed.
Joram Graf Haber, 1993, p. 170-2
Forget the levity of the example and consider the case of the innocent fat man. If there really is no other way of unsticking our fat man
and if plainly, without blasting him out, everyone in the cave will drown, then, innocent or not, he should be blasted out. This indeed
overrides the principle that the innocent should never be deliberately killed, but it does not reveal a callousness toward life,
for the people involved are caught in a desperate situation in which, if such extreme action is not taken, many
lives will be lost and far greater misery will obtain. Moreover, the people who do such a horrible thing or acquiesce in
the doing of it are not likely to be rendered more callous about human life and human suffering as a result. Its
occurrence will haunt them for the rest of their lives and is as likely as not to make them more rather than less morally
sensitive. It is not even correct to say that such a desperate act shows a lack of respect for persons. We are not treating the fat man
merely as a means. The fat man's person-his interests and rights are not ignored. Killing him is something which is undertaken with the
greatest reluctance. It is only when it is quite certain that there is no other way to save the lives of the others that such a violent course of
action is justifiably undertaken. Alan Donagan, arguing rather as Anscombe argues, maintains that "to use any innocent man ill for the
sake of some public good is directly to degrade him to being a mere means" and to do this is of course to violate a principle essential to
morality, that is, that human beings should never merely be treated as means but should be treated as ends in themselves (as persons
worthy of respect)." But, as my above remarks show, it need not be the case, and in the above situation it is not the case, that in killing
such an innocent man we are treating him merely as a means. The action is universalizable, all alternative actions which would save his
life are duly considered, the blasting out is done only as a last and desperate resort with the minimum of harshness and indifference to
his suffering and the like. It indeed sounds ironical to talk this way, given what is done to him. But if such a terrible situation were to
arise, there would always be more or less humane ways of going about one's grim task. And in acting in the more humane ways toward
the fat man, as we do what we must do and would have done to ourselves were the roles reversed, we show a respect for his person. In
so treating the fat man-not just to further the public good but to prevent the certain death of a whole group of people (that is to prevent
an even greater evil than his being killed in this way)-the claims of justice are not overriden either, for each individual involved, if he is
reasonably correct, should realize that if he were so stuck rather than the fat man, he should in such situations be blasted out. Thus, there
is no question of being unfair. Surely we must choose between evils here, but is there anything more reasonable, more morally
appropriate, than choosing the lesser evil when doing or allowing some evil cannot be avoided? That is, where there is no avoiding both
and where our actions can determine whether a greater or lesser evil obtains, should we not plainly always opt for the lesser evil? And is
it not obviously a greater evil that all those other innocent people should suffer and die than that the fat man should suffer and die?
Blowing up the fat man is indeed monstrous. But letting him remain stuck while the whole group drowns is still more monstrous. The
consequentialist is on strong moral ground here, and, if his reflective moral convictions do not square either with certain unrehearsed or
with certain reflective particular moral convictions of human beings, so much the worse for such commonsense moral convictions. One
could even usefully and relevantly adapt herethough for a quite different purpose-an argument of Donagan's. Consequentialism of the
kind I have been arguing for provides so persuasive "a theoretical basis for common morality that when it contradicts some moral
intuition, it is natural to suspect that intuition, not theory, is corrupt."" Given the comprehensiveness, plausibility, and overall rationality
of consequentialism, it is not unreasonable to override even a deeply felt moral conviction if it does not square with such a theory,
though, if it made no sense or overrode the bulk of or even a great many of our considered moral convictions, that would be another
matter indeed. Anticonsequentialists often point to the inhumanity of people who will sanction such killing of
the innocent, but cannot the compliment be returned by speaking of the even greater inhumanity,
conjoined with evasiveness, of those who will allow even more death and far greater misery and then
excuse themselves on the ground that they did not intend the death and misery but merely forbore to
prevent it? In such a context, such reasoning and such forbearing to prevent seems to me to constitute a moral evasion. I say it is
evasive because rather than steeling himself to do what in normal circumstances would be a horrible and vile act but in this circumstance
is a harsh moral necessity, he [it] allows, when he has the power to prevent it, a situation which is still many times
worse. He tries to keep his `moral purity' and [to] avoid `dirty hands' at the price of utter moral failure and what
Kierkegaard called `double-mindedness.' It is understandable that people should act in this morally evasive way but this does not make it
right.
WNDI 2008 48
Ethanol Aff 2ACs
A2 Spending DA (1/3)
1. N/U – 1NC Yacobucci and Seeke evidence says the US already cooperates with Brazil
over ethanol technology and that the US already imports ethanol duty free from CBI and
CAFTA states.
3. N/U - Recession is inevitable – the best data proves that GDP growth will collapse
Caroline Baum, Bloomberg News Columnist, July 13, 2008, APP.com, Caroline Baum: Its all over but the dating
for U.S. recession
With no prospect for a near-term turnaround in the labor market, the real question becomes, at what point do
the employment declines gain the critical mass to warrant the official recession designation? "Depth
level" I posed the question to Robert Hall, chairman of the BCDC, in an e-mail this week. After emphasizing
that he was "speaking as an individual member of the committee and not as chair," he said the committee
"may reach the question of what depth level constitutes a recession, but we are not there yet." The
committee may not be there yet, but the economy most likely is. All four of the BCDC's coincident
indicators peaked late last year or early this year. The trends in the components aren't likely to reverse
anytime soon. So as Hall said, it's only a matter of determining what "depth level" will suffice to make the
recession official. What about real gross domestic product, which is still growing? The BCDC uses four
monthly indicators because they are a) more timely than quarterly GDP and b) a proxy for it. Real GDP
rose 0.6 percent in the fourth quarter and 1 percent in the first. The meager fourth-quarter increase could
turn to mush as early as July 31, when the Bureau of Economic Analysis releases its annual benchmark
revisions to the National Income and Product Accounts for the last three years. A decline in GDP in the
fourth quarter wouldn't be the depth charge the BCDC needs to designate an official cycle peak. That comes
with a long lag, sometimes after the recession has ended. It would just be a confirmation for those of us
who, to paraphrase economist Robert Solow, see a recession everywhere except in the GDP data.
4. No link – plan doesn’t require any new spending just signing a bill.
WNDI 2008 49
Ethanol Aff 2ACs
A2 Spending DA (2/3)
5. Recession is inevitable – the best data proves that GDP growth will collapse
Caroline Baum, Bloomberg News Columnist, July 13, 2008, APP.com, Caroline Baum: Its all over but the dating
for U.S. recession
With no prospect for a near-term turnaround in the labor market, the real question becomes, at what point do
the employment declines gain the critical mass to warrant the official recession designation? "Depth
level" I posed the question to Robert Hall, chairman of the BCDC, in an e-mail this week. After emphasizing
that he was "speaking as an individual member of the committee and not as chair," he said the committee
"may reach the question of what depth level constitutes a recession, but we are not there yet." The
committee may not be there yet, but the economy most likely is. All four of the BCDC's coincident
indicators peaked late last year or early this year. The trends in the components aren't likely to reverse
anytime soon. So as Hall said, it's only a matter of determining what "depth level" will suffice to make the
recession official. What about real gross domestic product, which is still growing? The BCDC uses four
monthly indicators because they are a) more timely than quarterly GDP and b) a proxy for it. Real GDP
rose 0.6 percent in the fourth quarter and 1 percent in the first. The meager fourth-quarter increase could
turn to mush as early as July 31, when the Bureau of Economic Analysis releases its annual benchmark
revisions to the National Income and Product Accounts for the last three years. A decline in GDP in the
fourth quarter wouldn't be the depth charge the BCDC needs to designate an official cycle peak. That comes
with a long lag, sometimes after the recession has ended. It would just be a confirmation for those of us
who, to paraphrase economist Robert Solow, see a recession everywhere except in the GDP data.
A2 Spending DA (3/3)
7. Weak dollar means Euroswitch which undermines the US economy
The Observer Sunday February 23, 2003
At various points in time since the early 1970s, oil producers have discussed this, especially in periods
when the dollar has been weak. Opinions have tended to be wide-ranging, depending on the strategic and
trade alliances certain members have with particular trade blocs,' said Yarjani. That was an elliptical
reference to the overwhelming influence of Saudi Arabia, whose government is the staunchest ally of
the US within Opec. 'The Saudis are holding the line on oil prices in Opec and should they, for
example, go along with the rest of the Opec people in demanding that oil be priced in euros, that would
deal a very heavy blow to the American economy,' Youssef Ibrahim, of the influential US Council on
Foreign Relations, told CNN. Last year the former US Ambassador to Saudi Arabia told a committee of the
US Congress: 'One of the major things the Saudis have historically done, in part out of friendship with the
United States, is to insist that oil continues to be priced in dollars. Therefore, the US Treasury can print
money and buy oil, which is an advantage no other country has. With the emergence of other currencies
and with strains in the relationship, I wonder whether there will not again be, as there have been in the
past, people in Saudi Arabia who raise the question of why they should be so kind to the United States.'
A2 T – In the US
1. We Meet – 1AC says reduction of tariff would be a $.54 incentive per gallon of ethanol
for consumers.
2. We Meet - lifting the tariff would be a domestic incentive for both producers and
consumers
Lauren Etter and Joel Millman, 3/9/2007, “Ethanol Tariff Loophole Sparks a Boom in Caribbean,” Alternative
Energy, http://hughbartling.blogspot.com/2007/03/ethanol-tariff-loophole-sparks-boom-in.html
Encouraging more imports of foreign ethanol would drive down prices and likely boost the American
market further. While the 54-cent tariff early on encouraged the U.S. domestic industry, now it has
become counterproductive, contends Robert Howse, a trade expert at the International Food &
Agriculture Trade Policy Council, an advocacy group sponsored largely by agricultural companies. "If we
wanted to achieve the energy goals in the U.S. we would disassemble a lot of the protectionist policies,"
he says.
Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1), 2006, Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary,
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/in.
4. No Ground Loss – Neg still guaranteed links to US alternative energy increase and gets
agent/advantage counterplans.
6. Education – AFF interpretation is key to access the core of the literature with debates
over US energy leadership and trade.
8. Topicality is not a voting issue. Good is good enough if we win our interpretation than
you should vote AFF.
9. No topical case – all affirmatives that pass on incentives to consumers outside of the US
aren’t topical.
WNDI 2008 52
Ethanol Aff 2ACs
A2 T – Incentives
1. We Meet – 1AC says reduction of tariff would be a $.54 incentive per gallon of ethanol
for consumers.
2. We Meet - lifting the tariff would be a domestic incentive for both producers and
consumers
Lauren Etter and Joel Millman, 3/9/2007, “Ethanol Tariff Loophole Sparks a Boom in Caribbean,” Alternative
Energy, http://hughbartling.blogspot.com/2007/03/ethanol-tariff-loophole-sparks-boom-in.html
Encouraging more imports of foreign ethanol would drive down prices and likely boost the American
market further. While the 54-cent tariff early on encouraged the U.S. domestic industry, now it has
become counterproductive, contends Robert Howse, a trade expert at the International Food &
Agriculture Trade Policy Council, an advocacy group sponsored largely by agricultural companies. "If we
wanted to achieve the energy goals in the U.S. we would disassemble a lot of the protectionist policies,"
he says.
3. We Meet - Even if they win 100% of their violation evidence removing the tariff would
still be a $.03/gallon incentive for ethanol
ICIS, 5/15/2008, “US Congress extends ethanol subsidy and tariff,” ICIS News,
http://www.icis.com/Articles/2008/05/15/9124273/us-congress-extends-ethanol-subsidy-and-tariff.html
The farm bill’s extension of the ethanol import tariff means that volumes of sugarcane-based ethanol
directly from Brazil will remain priced out of the US fuels market. As investment bank Friedman,
Billings & Ramsey (FBR) noted, by lowering the tax credit to 45 cents/gal while maintaining the tariff at
54 cents/gal, Congress has effectively raised the barrier to ethanol imports from 3 cents/gal to 9
cents/gal.
6. No Ground Loss – Neg still guaranteed links to US alternative energy increase and gets
agent/advantage counterplans.
8. Education – our interpretation is key to AFFs at the core of the topic ranging from RPS
to carbon tax to Brazilian ethanol. Neg interpretation prevents education.
10. Topicality is not a voting issue. Good is good enough if we win our interpretation than
you should vote AFF.
11. No topical case – all affirmatives that pass on incentives to consumers outside of the US
aren’t topical.
WNDI 2008 53
Ethanol Aff 2ACs
A2 T – 1AR Cards
Removing the tariff while maintaining subsidies would increase demand without increasing
etha
Inside Energy with Federal Lands, Jean Chemnick, 7/7/2008, “Stoppin tariff on imports of ethanol would
aid US markey, producers: Lugar,” Lexis
A senior Republican senator says eliminating the tariff on ethanol imports while maintaining other
government support for US ethanol production would give Americans access to relatively inexpensive
foreign fuel while still encouraging the growth of the domestic biofuels industry. Senator Richard Lugar
of Indiana, a strong advocate for the US ethanol industry, is virtually alone among farm-state lawmakers in
calling for an end to the 54 cent/gallon tariff. Lugar told reporters outside an American Enterprise Institute
conference last week that he believes Brazil and other countries are in a better position to supply ethanol
to America's coastal states than the US heartland can do, because there is not a pipeline infrastructure
for ethanol. Furthermore, he said, with corn prices high and ethanol prices relatively low, an infusion of
low-cost biofuels from abroad might help maintain, and expand, the demand for ethanol. Access to less
expensive biofuels from abroad would encourage blenders to use more biofuels, Lugar said. This in turn
would encourage the spread of E85, an 85% ethanol-gasoline blend. Currently, most ethanol-blended
gasoline in the US is E10.
WNDI 2008 54
Ethanol Aff 2ACs
2. Perm – Do both
4. Perm – Consult ________ as per the CP and do the plan no matter what.
a) Ground – we can’t read add-ons about the net-benefit or make our best arguments why
they’d say no. Damage is already done, the 2AC is key.
d) No literature – the US has never given a veto to another country and they have NO
evidence we should consult on the plan, destroying topic-specific education and
encouraging lazy research
e) Competes on severing certainty, which isn’t inherent to the plan – proves it’s not
competitive
f) Bad CP’s – their interpretation will legitimize the worst in anti-educational unfair
counterplans, like condition the plan on space
g) Consulation is uniquely bad on this topic – we already have to defend conditioned action
good
h) vagueness. The fact that consultation never happens means that the negative can read
an awful piece of evidence to prove plan is modified – makes the neg a moving target
i) it artificially inflates the net benefit. If this argument isn’t true, it proves they should
have read the disad alone and gone for case defense or a legitimate counterplan
j) Consulting Israel is uniquely abusive against a Syria aff, since there is nary a solvency advocate that doesn’t talk
about Israel and we already have to defend Israel compliane to solve the core advantage – they functionally kill a
fifth of the topic
WNDI 2008 56
Ethanol Aff 2ACs
( ) China will say no - China’s rising influence in Latin America is part of a global
challenge to American hegemony
Stephen Johnson, former Senior Policy Analyst for Latin America at the Heritage Foundation, 10/24/2005,
“Balancing China’s Growing Influence in Latin America,” the Heritage Foundation,
http://www.heritage.org/research/latinamerica/bg1888.cfm#_ftn3
China’s neighbors are competing for many of the same world markets, as are Europe and the United
States. Latin America is a particularly promising prospect. It is relatively unindustrialized and has an
abundance of raw materials. Moreover, authoritarian leaders and/or corrupt oligarchies control a number of
governments. Signing purchase agreements with them is much easier than dealing with the panoply of private
corporations found in more democratic countries. Challenging the United States. China’s main rival for
global preeminence is the United States. China sees the United States as preventing Taiwan’s
reunification with the mainland and thwarting Beijing’s rise as a power. Previously, China was isolated,
but now plays key roles in Asian geopolitics and aspires to do so elsewhere. Besides status as a nuclear
nation, it is a member of the U.N. Security Council, the World Trade Organization, the Group of 77
developing nations, and the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation group. It also holds observer status in the
Organization of American States. While China has become the second-largest U.S. trade partner after
Canada, it challenges U.S. influence wherever it can. In fact, it will soon have more attack submarines than
the United States, with the addition of four Russian Kilo-class subs and new diesel–electric vessels equipped
with technology that will allow them to run quieter than nuclear submarines.[1] According to former U.S.
Ambassador to Beijing James Lilly, “[T]he facts are that [the Chinese] run massive intelligence operations
against us, they make open statements against us, their high-level documents show that they are not friendly
to us.” Chinese military white papers promote power projection and describe U.S. policies as “hegemonism
and power politics.”[2] In the Western Hemisphere, the Chinese are taking advantage of failures of
half-hearted market reforms and Washington’s unwillingness to pursue neighborhood relations with
much enthusiasm. National Defense University professor Cynthia A. Watson notes, “[T]he 1990s turned
into a period of severe disappointment as free markets led to rampant corruption and unfulfilled
expectations in Latin America while Washington became the world’s superpower rather than a partner
for the region.”[3]
( ) Case turns the net benefit – Liu in 05 evidence from the 1AC says trade is key to
prevent a US/China war.
( ) Perm solves - u.s. and china are already cooperating on alternative energy
US Treasury in 2008
(“U.S. and China Deepen Their Economic Relationship” http://www.america.gov/st/texttrans-
english/2008/June/20080619150836xjsnommis0.2596334.html, June 18, 2008)
Recognizing that energy and environmental challenges represent two of the most important policy issues facing our two countries in the
twenty-first century, and the importance of joint cooperation in addressing these challenges, the United States and China
committed to strengthen long-term cooperation on energy and the environment. To this end, both countries: •
signed a Ten Year Energy and Environment Cooperation Framework and announced the first five goals to be
addressed under the framework, established five task forces and launched action plans focused on concrete cooperation for each goal,
with the aim of completing all of these action plans by SED V, and also initiated discussion on exploring the concept of EcoPartnerships
by SED V; • agreed on the critical relationship between energy security, economic growth, and
environmental protection, and on the importance of exploring energy efficiencies, alternative fuels, and
next generation technologies; and agree to recognize the importance of ensuring responsible and transparent energy
exploration and development that minimizes the negative impact on the environment and through bilateral dialogue will give full
effect to the energy security principles embraced at Aomori, Japan in the Joint Statement of the Five-Party Energy Ministers on June 7,
2008 and the Joint Statement of Energy Ministers by the G8 Plus 3 on June 8, 2008; • agree to strengthen cooperation with
the International Energy Agency (IEA) on areas of mutual interest to address energy security issues of
common concern, including global energy markets, strategic oil reserve, energy diversification, energy efficiency and
clean energy technology, and agree that in times of oil supply disruption, to consider voluntary participation in the joint action of
IEA member countries, building on the previous commitments made at the third SED meeting and the Joint Statement of the Five-Party
Energy Ministers on June 7, 2008 at Aomori, Japan;
WNDI 2008 58
Ethanol Aff 2ACs
A2 Command CP (1/3)
1. Perm do both
3. No crunch is coming
Bjorn Lomborg, Associate Professor, Department of Political Science, University of Aarhus, 2001, The Skeptical
Environmentalist, p. 4
In presenting this description I will need to challenge our usual conception of the collapse of ecosystems,
because this conception is simply not in keeping with reality. We are not running out of energy or natural
resources.’4 There will be more and more food per head of the world’s population. Fewer and fewer
people are starving. In 1900 we lived for an average of 30 years; today we live for 67. According to the UN
we have reduced poverty more in the last 50 years than we did in the preceding 500, and it has been
reduced in practically every country. Global warming, though its size and future projections are rather
unrealistically pessimistic, is almost certainly taking place, but the typical cure of early and radical fossil
fuel cutbacks is way worse than the original affliction, and moreover its total impact will not pose a
devastating problem for our future. Nor will we lose 25—50 percent of all species in our lifetime — in fact
we are losing probably 0.7 percent. Acid rain does not kill the forests, and the air and water around us
are becoming less and less polluted. Mankind’s lot has actually improved in terms of practically every
measurable indicator. But note carefully what I am saying here: that by far the majority of indicators show
that mankind’s lot has vastly improved. This does not, however, mean that everything is good enough. The
first statement refers to what the world looks like whereas the second refers to what it ought to look like.
WNDI 2008 59
Ethanol Aff 2ACs
A2 Command CP (2/3)
4. Food scarcity args are wrong—ag innovation can keep pace
Bjorn Lomborg, Associate Professor, Department of Political Science, University of Aarhus, 2001,
Environmental Conflict, p. 131-132
The record till now is clear—the world is better fed and has fewer starving people. But the question is whether this can go on. It is
often argued that the Green Revolution is running out of steam. We are beginning to experience ‘a massive loss of
momentum’, writes Lester Brown (WI, 1994: 179). Growth is slowing and ‘either levels off or shows signs of doing so’ (WI, 1998: 88).
This is true in the sense that global growth rates in yields have been declining for both rice, wheat, and corn, making up almost 50
percent of the world’s calorie intake. In the 1970s rice yield annually grew by 2.1 percent, whereas yield growth now is down to 1.5
percent annually, and the figures look similar for wheat and corn (WFS, 1996: 6: Box 1). Should we be worried? It is useful to subdivide
this into three questions. First, does the reduced growth in yields indicate that we are reaching the biological and physiological limits of
plant efficiency? Second, what is the effect of possible limits to the ordinary, developing world farmer? Third, does humanity now really
need the high growth rates? An argument is often made to suggest that we are reaching biological limits. For instance, Brown tells us
that the American wheat yield has not improved since 1983, and that this indicates an approaching limit (WI, 1998: 82ff). However, the
choice of 1983 is crucial to Brown’s argument, in that it was the previous top year. The choice of U.S. wheat is similarly decisive, since
wheat yields in almost all other regions have been steadily increasing and outcompeting the United States. Theoretically, there seems
to be very little empirical foundation to the idea of impending limits. Tony Fischer, the leader of wheat research in
the organization that led the Green Revolution, argues that: ‘It is a popular misconception that wheat research has not
made much progress since the rapid gains of the Green Revolution during the 1960s’. Actually, since that time ‘we have
steadily added to the yield potential of wheat at an average rate of about 1 percent per year’. At the same time,
the new strains have become more resistant to diseases and more efficient in their use of water and
nutrients. The International Rice Research Institute has announced a prototype of new rice yielding up to
25 percent more than the current modern high-yielding varieties.2 Second, it is important to look at the situation of ordinary
peasants. By far the largest part of the peasants in the developing countries achieve much lower yields than even the locally best ones.
Consequently, there is generally much room for improvement. FAO has specifically examined growth in yields in the developing
countries. ‘For the developing countries as a whole, the growth rates of per capita agricultural production (all products)
have not been generally lower in recent eight-year moving periods compared with earlier ones’. Therefore, the
FAO points out that ‘in the light of this evidence, it is difficult to accept a position that developments in recent years have marked a
turning point for the worse’ (FAO, 1995b: 44). Third, do we need the high growth in the future? Of course, when growth in yield for rice
has declined from 2.1 percent to 1.5 percent it could seem troublesome. But at the same time population growth has also dropped from
over 2 percent in the 1970s to less than 1.3 percent today, and it will further drop below 0.5 percent within the next fifty years. Con-
sequently, a smaller growth in production today can actually give more to each individual than what a considerably larger growth could
achieve in the 1970s. In summary, the FAO states that that there is no need to worry about the diminished growth in agricultural
production. Basically it ‘reflects some positive developments in the world demographic and development scenes’: the world population
grows ever slower, and inhabitants in more and more countries are reaching a level of food consumption where they cannot eat much
more (FAO, 1995b: 5; WFS, 1996: 1: 4.6—7). Indeed, the FAO predicts that there will be more food for more people in the year 2010
(WFS 1996: 1, table 3). It is expected that there will be fewer malnourished and that all regions will experience increasing available
calories per capita. The same general conclusion is reached by IFPRI, USDA, and the World Bank—and all three predict even lower
prices.3
5. CP doesn’t solve net benefit because its still removing government control over ethanol.
WNDI 2008 60
Ethanol Aff 2ACs
A2 Command CP (3/3)
6. Authoritarianism fails to protect the environment for Three reasons
Dr. Ross E. Mitchell is a Ph.D. Research Scientist who teaches at Gallaudet University. “Green
politics or environmental blues? Analyzing ecological democracy,” 2006. Sage Publications.
http://pus.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/15/4/459
Second, closed democratic systems are antithetical to ecological democracy by definition, but they may
actually increase environmental impacts (Dietz et al., 2001; Winslow, 2005).3 For example, peripheral
countries with high levels of political repression tend to be highly carbon intensive and their nation-
states often assume less responsibility for environ- mental protection, presumably to keep production
costs competitive (Roberts et al., 2003).4 On the other hand, wealthier countries might improve their
environments by “displacing” ecological risks and burdens elsewhere, such as shipping toxic wastes or
locating eco- logically degrading production processes outside the home state, or even globally in the case
of climate change. Still, a generally putative positive relationship between democracy and ecological
well-being/health is presumed to exist by most accounts. In any case, democracies are not homogeneous:
“certain characteristics that help determine the level of democracy in a nation, such as the free flow of
information or the level of corruption, are important determinants of how successfully a democratic
government can and will control environmental degradation” (Winslow, 2005: 781). Third,
institutionally imposed social inequities hinder the attainment of ecological democracy. With the
publicity generated from Love Canal, Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, Bhopal, and other environmental crises,
a burgeoning environmental justice movement has highlighted how racial, gender, and/or class
differences are implicated in environmental inequities (Bullard and Johnson, 2000; Kalof et al., 2002).
Strong evidence of racially distributed pollution can be found in Louisiana’s Cancer Alley, for instance
(Roberts and Toffolon-Weiss, 2001). Gender inequities that shift environmental ills to working and
nursing women have been brought out in public light by the ecofeminism movement (de Chiro, 1998;
Gaard, 1998; Mies and Shiva, 1993). A class focus “helps reveal that workers in their workplaces and homes
are more vulnerable to environmental hazards than the affluent” (Torgerson, 1999: 46), since the working
class stand to lose a healthy existence and scarce jobs.
WNDI 2008 61
Ethanol Aff 2ACs
A2 Trade CP (1/3)
1. Perm do both.
2. Solvency deficit – CP doesn’t solve the food prices or trade advantage because it doesn’t
lift the ethanol tariff.
5. Solvency deficit – 1AC IPS 07 evidence says that removing tariffs on agriculture is all
that’s needed for doha success. Their evidence is to old – Europe is now on board so HR
credibility is irrelevant.
A2 Trade CP (2/3)
7. Weak dollar means Euroswitch which undermines the US economy
The Observer Sunday February 23, 2003
At various points in time since the early 1970s, oil producers have discussed this, especially in periods
when the dollar has been weak. Opinions have tended to be wide-ranging, depending on the strategic and
trade alliances certain members have with particular trade blocs,' said Yarjani. That was an elliptical
reference to the overwhelming influence of Saudi Arabia, whose government is the staunchest ally of
the US within Opec. 'The Saudis are holding the line on oil prices in Opec and should they, for
example, go along with the rest of the Opec people in demanding that oil be priced in euros, that would
deal a very heavy blow to the American economy,' Youssef Ibrahim, of the influential US Council on
Foreign Relations, told CNN. Last year the former US Ambassador to Saudi Arabia told a committee of the
US Congress: 'One of the major things the Saudis have historically done, in part out of friendship with the
United States, is to insist that oil continues to be priced in dollars. Therefore, the US Treasury can print
money and buy oil, which is an advantage no other country has. With the emergence of other currencies
and with strains in the relationship, I wonder whether there will not again be, as there have been in the
past, people in Saudi Arabia who raise the question of why they should be so kind to the United States.'
A2 Trade CP (3/3)
9. Dependency allows countries to rely on oil wealth, preventing democracy or a diversified
economy from emerging
David Ivanovich, staff writer, May 18, 2003, Houston Chronicle
WASHINGTON - Call it the curse of crude. The 11 countries that comprise the OPEC cartel pocketed
nearly $ 180 billion in oil revenues last year. None is a thriving democracy. Coincidence? Oil wealth
hinders development of a tax-paying middle class, the very segment of society most likely to agitate for
a voice in government, political economists say. Bountiful crude reserves also discourage the kind of
diversification needed for a successful capitalistic economy.
10. Global democratic consolidation is essential to prevent many scenarios for war and
extinction.
Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict, October 1995, “Promoting Democracy in
the 1990’s,” http://www.carnegie.org//sub/pubs/deadly/dia95_01.html, accessed on 12/11/99
OTHER THREATS This hardly exhausts the lists of threats to our security and well-being in the coming
years and decades. In the former Yugoslavia nationalist aggression tears at the stability of Europe and could
easily spread. The flow of illegal drugs intensifies through increasingly powerful international crime
syndicates that have made common cause with authoritarian regimes and have utterly corrupted the
institutions of tenuous, democratic ones. Nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons continue to proliferate.
The very source of life on Earth, the global ecosystem, appears increasingly endangered. Most of these new
and unconventional threats to security are associated with or aggravated by the weakness or absence of
democracy, with its provisions for legality, accountability, popular sovereignty, and openness. LESSONS
OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY The experience of this century offers important lessons. Countries that
govern themselves in a truly democratic fashion do not go to war with one another. They do not aggress
against their neighbors to aggrandize themselves or glorify their leaders. Democratic governments do not
ethnically "cleanse" their own populations, and they are much less likely to face ethnic insurgency.
Democracies do not sponsor terrorism against one another. They do not build weapons of mass destruction to
use on or to threaten one another. Democratic countries form more reliable, open, and enduring trading
partnerships. In the long run they offer better and more stable climates for investment. They are more
environmentally responsible because they must answer to their own citizens, who organize to protest the
destruction of their environments. They are better bets to honor international treaties since they value legal
obligations and because their openness makes it much more difficult to breach agreements in secret. Precisely
because, within their own borders, they respect competition, civil liberties, property rights, and the rule of
law, democracies are the only reliable foundation on which a new world order of international security and
prosperity can be built.
WNDI 2008 64
Ethanol Aff 2ACs
A2 K 2AC (1/4)
1. Case OWs – the immanent scenarios for war and environmental destruction from the
1AC come before and outweigh the K impacts.
2. Framework
2. Ground – plan focus provides a stable locus for negative links – solves all
their offense, they can still read critiques of plan action
C. If we win our framework, Reject representation based link arguments and non-policy
alternatives
3. Death outweighs all their impacts – it’s the only impact you can’t recover from
Zygmunt Bauman, University Of Leeds Professor Emeritus Of Sociology, Life In Fragments: Essays In
Postmodern Morality, 95, p. 66-71.
The being-for is like living towards-the-future: a being filled with anticipation, a being aware of the abyss between future foretold and
future that will eventually be; it is this gap which, like a magnet, draws the self towards the Other,as it draws life towards the future, making life into an
activity of overcoming, transcending, leaving behind. The self stretches towards the Other, as life stretches towards the future; neither can grasp what it
stretches toward, but it
is in this hopeful and desperate, never conclusive and never abandoned
stretching-toward that the self is ever anew created and life ever anew lived. In the words of M. M. Bakhtin, it is only
in this not-yet accomplished world of anticipation and trial, leaning toward stubbornly an-other Other, that life can be lived - not in the world of the `events
that occurred'; in the latter world, `it is impossible to live, to act responsibly; in it, I am not needed, in principle I am not there at all." Art, the Other, the
future: what unites them, what makes them into three words vainly trying to grasp the same mystery, is the modality of possibility. A curious modality, at
home neither in ontology nor epistemology; itself, like that which it tries to catch in its net, `always outside', forever `otherwise than being'. The possibility
we are talking about here is not the all-too-familiar unsure-of-itself, and through that uncertainty flawed, inferior and incomplete being, disdainfully
dismissed by triumphant existence as `mere possibility', `just a possibility'; possibility is instead `plus que la reahte' - both the origin and the foundation of
being. The hope, says Blanchot, proclaims the possibility of that which evades the possible; `in its limit, this is the hope of the bond recaptured where it is
now lost."' The hope is always the hope of being fu filled, but what keeps the hope alive and so keeps the being open and on the move is precisely its unfu
filment. One may say that the paradox of hope (and the paradox of possibility founded in hope) is that it may pursue its destination solely through betraying
its nature; the most exuberant of energies expends itself in the urge towards rest. Possibility uses up its openness in search of closure. Its image of the better
being is its own impoverishment . . . The togetherness of the being-for is cut out of the same block; it shares in the paradoxical lot of all possibility. It lasts
as long as it is unfulfilled, yet it uses itself up in never ending effort of fulfilment, of recapturing the bond, making it tight and immune to all future
temptations. In an important, perhaps decisive sense, it is selfdestructive and self-defeating: its triumph is its death. The Other, like restless and
unpredictable art, like the future itself, is a mystery. And being-for-the-Other, going towards the Other through the twisted and rocky gorge of affection,
brings that mystery into view - makes it into a challenge. That mystery is what has triggered the sentiment in the first place - but cracking that mystery is
what the resulting movement is about. The mystery must be unpacked so that the being-for may focus on the Other: one needs to know what to focus on.
(The `demand' is unspoken, the responsibility undertaken is unconditional; it is up to him or her who follows the demand and takes up the responsibility to
decide what the following of that demand and carrying out of that responsibility means in practical terms.) Mystery - noted Max Frisch - (and the Other is a
mystery), is an exciting puzzle, but one tends to get tired of that excitement. `And so one creates for oneself an image. This is a loveless act, the betrayal."
Creating an image of the Other leads to the substitution of the image for the Other; the Other is now fixed - soothingly and comfortingly. There is nothing to
be excited about anymore. I know what the Other needs, I know where my responsibility starts and ends. Whatever the Other may now do will be taken
down and used against him. What used to be received as an exciting surprise now looks more like perversion; what used to be adored as exhilarating
creativity now feels like wicked levity. Thanatos has taken over from Eros, and the excitement of the ungraspable turned into the dullness and tedium of the
grasped. But, as Gyorgy Lukacs observed, `everything one person may know about another is only expectation, only potentiality, only wish or fear,
acquiring reality only as a result of what happens later, and this reality, too, dissolves straightaway into potentialities'.
WNDI 2008 65
Ethanol Aff 2ACs
A2 K 2AC (2/4)
4. Relying on individual-level strategies fails and guarantees global politics is dominated by
violence
George Monbiot, journalist, academic, and political and environmental activist, 2004, Manifesto for a New World Order, p. 11-13
The quest for global solutions is difficult and divisive. Some members of this movement are deeply
suspicious of all institutional power at the global level, fearing that it could never be held to account by the
world’s people. Others are concerned that a single set of universal prescriptions would threaten the diversity
of dissent. A smaller faction has argued that all political programmes are oppressive: our task should not
be to replace one form of power with another, but to replace all power with a magical essence called ‘anti-
power’. But most of the members of this movement are coming to recognize that if we propose solutions
which can be effected only at the local or the national level, we remove ourselves from any meaningful
role in solving precisely those problems which most concern us. Issues such as climate change,
international debt, nuclear proliferation, war, peace and the balance of trade between nations can be
addressed only globally or internationally. Without global measures and global institutions, it is
impossible to see how we might distribute wealth from rich nations to poor ones, tax the mobile rich and
their even more mobile money, control the shipment of toxic waste, sustain the ban on landmines, prevent the
use of nuclear weapons, broker peace between nations or prevent powerful states from forcing weaker
ones to trade on their terms. If we were to work only at the local level, we would leave these, the most
critical of issues, for other people to tackle. Global governance will take place whether we
participate in it or not. Indeed, it must take place if the issues which concern us are not to be
resolved by the brute force of the powerful. That the international institutions have been designed or
captured by the dictatorship of vested interests is not an argument against the existence of international
institutions, but a reason for overthrowing them and replacing them with our own. It is an argument for a
global political system which holds power to account. In the absence of an effective global politics,
moreover, local solutions will always be undermined by communities of interest which do not share our
vision. We might, for example, manage to persuade the people of the street in which we live to give up
their cars in the hope of preventing climate change, but unless everyone, in all communities, either
shares our politics or is bound by the same rules, we simply open new road space into which the
neighbouring communities can expand. We might declare our neighbourhood nuclear-free, but unless
we are simultaneously working, at the international level, for the abandonment of nuclear weapons, we
can do nothing to prevent ourselves and everyone else from being threatened by people who are not
as nice as we are. We would deprive ourselves, in other words, of the power of restraint. By first rebuilding
the global politics, we establish the political space in which our local alternatives can flourish. If, by
contrast, we were to leave the governance of the necessary global institutions to others, then those
institutions will pick off our local, even our national, solutions one by one. There is little point in
devising an alternative economic policy for your nation, as Luis Inacio ‘Lula’ da Silva, now president of
Brazil, once advocated, if the International Monetary Fund and the financial speculators have not first
been overthrown. There is little point in fighting to protect a coral reef from local pollution, if nothing
has been done to prevent climate change from destroying the conditions it requires for its survival.
WNDI 2008 66
Ethanol Aff 2ACs
A2 K 2AC (3/4)
5 Don’t be fooled by their alternative spin. Disengagement from traditional politics is the
worst in cynical leftist garbage – our hypothesizing about the complex inner-working of
government is key to creating space for the critique
David E. McClean, 2001, “The Cultural Left and the Limits of Social Hope,” Am. Phil. Conf., www.american-
philosophy.org/archives/past_conference_programs/pc2001/Discussion%20papers/david_mcclean.htm
Yet for some reason, at least partially explicated in Richard Rorty's Achieving Our Country, a book that I think is long overdue, leftist critics continue to cite
and refer to the eccentric and often a priori ruminations of people like those just mentioned, and a litany of others including Derrida, Deleuze, Lyotard,
Jameson, and Lacan, who are to me hugely more irrelevant than Habermas in their narrative attempts to suggest policy prescriptions (when they actually do
suggest them) aimed at curing the ills of homelessness, poverty, market greed, national belligerence and racism. I would like to suggest that it is time for
American social critics who are enamored with this group, those who actually want to be relevant, to recognize that they have a disease, and a disease
regarding which I myself must remember to stay faithful to my own twelve step program of recovery. The disease is the need for elaborate theoretical
"remedies" wrapped in neological and multi-syllabic jargon. These elaboratetheoretical remedies are more "interesting," to be
sure, than the pragmatically settled questions about what shape democracy should take in various contexts, or whether
private property should be protected by the state, or regarding our basic human nature (described, if not defined (heaven forbid!), in
such statements as "We don't like to starve" and "We like to speak our minds without fear of death"
and "We like to keep our children safe from poverty"). As Rorty puts it, "When one of today's academic leftists says that some topic has
been 'inadequately theorized,' you can be pretty certain that he or she is going to drag in either philosophy of language, or Lacanian
psychoanalysis, or some neo-Marxist version of economic determinism. . . . These futile attempts to philosophize one's
way into political relevance are a symptom of what happens when a Left retreats from activism and
adopts a spectatorial approach to the problems of its country. Disengagement from practice produces
theoretical hallucinations"(italics mine).(1) Or as John Dewey put it in his The Need for a Recovery of Philosophy, "I believe that philosophy
in America will be lost between chewing a historical cud long since reduced to woody fiber, or an apologetics for lost causes, . . . . or a scholastic, schematic
formalism, unless it can somehow bring to consciousness America's own needs and its own implicit principle of successful action." Those who suffer or
have suffered from this disease Rorty refers to as the Cultural Left, which left is juxtaposed to the Political Left that Rorty prefers and prefers for good
reason. Another attribute of the Cultural Left is that its members fancy themselves pure culture critics who view the successes of America and the West,
rather than some of the barbarous methods for achieving those successes, as mostly evil, and who view anything like national pride as equally evil even
when that pride is tempered with the knowledge and admission of the nation's shortcomings. In other words, the
Cultural Left, in this country,
too often dismiss American society as beyond reform and redemption. And Rorty correctly argues that this is a
disastrous conclusion, i.e. disastrous for the Cultural Left. I think it may also be disastrous for our social hopes, as I will explain.
Leftist American culture critics might put their considerable talents to better use if they bury some of
their cynicism about America's social and political prospects and help forge public and political possibilities in a spirit
of determination to, indeed, achieve our country - the country of Jefferson and King; the country of John Dewey and Malcom X; the country of Franklin
Roosevelt and Bayard Rustin, and of the later George Wallace and the later Barry Goldwater. To invoke the words of King, and with reference to the
American society, the time is always ripe to seize the opportunity to help create the "beloved community," one woven with the thread of agape into a
conceptually single yet diverse tapestry that shoots for nothing less than a true intra-American cosmopolitan ethos, one wherein both same sex unions and
faith-based initiatives will be able to be part of the same social reality, one wherein business interests and the university are not seen as belonging to two
separate galaxies but as part of the same answer to the threat of social and ethical nihilism. We
who fancy ourselves philosophers
would do well to create from within ourselves and from within our ranks a new kind of public intellectual who
has both a hungry theoretical mind and who is yet capable of seeing the need to move past high theory
to other important questions that are less bedazzling and "interesting" but more important to the prospect
of our flourishing - questions such as "How is it possible to develop a citizenry that cherishes a certain hexis, one which prizes the
character of the Samaritan on the road to Jericho almost more than any other?" or "How can we square the political dogma that
undergirds the fantasy of a missile defense system with the need to treat America as but one member in a community of nations under a
"law of peoples?" The new public philosopher might seek to understand labor law and military and trade
theory and doctrine as much as theories of surplus value; the logic of international markets and trade
agreements as much as critiques of commodification, and the politics of complexity as much as the
politics of power (all of which can still be done from our arm chairs.) This means going down deep into the guts of
our quotidian social institutions, into the grimy pragmatic details where intellectuals are loathe to
dwell but where the officers and bureaucrats of those institutions take difficult and often unpleasant,
imperfect decisions that affect other peoples' lives, and it means making honest attempts to truly
understand how those institutions actually function in the actual world before howling for their
overthrow commences. This might help keep us from being slapped down in debates by true policy
pros who actually know what they are talking about but who lack awareness of the dogmatic
assumptions from which they proceed, and who have not yet found a good reason to listen to jargon-
riddled lectures from philosophers and culture critics with their snobish disrespect for the so-called
"managerial class."
WNDI 2008 67
Ethanol Aff 2ACs
A2 K 2AC (4/4)
6. Perm: Do Both
If the alternative can overcome the status quo it can overcome the plan
7. Perm: Do the plan and all portions of the alternative that don’t require rejection of the
plan
8. Their alternative is vague – It doesn’t have an actor and they don’t specify the course of
action that this actor. That’s a voter:
( ) Neg shifts – vague alts let them recharacterize what their alt does to get out of all
our offense. That crushes 2AC time and strategy
A2 Capitalism K (1/4)
1. Framework
2. Ground – plan focus provides a stable locus for negative links – solves all
their offense, they can still read critiques of plan action
C. If we win our framework, Reject representation based link arguments and non-policy
alternatives
2. 1AC trade advantage is an impact turn to the criticism. Spicer evidence says that
capitalist economic interdependence is key to prevent multiple scenarios of protectionist
trade wars. Specifically, 1AC Liu evidence says that the capitalist order is key to prevent
trade wars between the US and China which Johnson says would culminate in extinction.
1AC Crane evidence says that moves away from the capitalist order collapse the economy
which Bearden says culminates in extinction.
3. Transition leads to extinction – 1AC Bearden evidence says moves away from capitalism
culminate in massive wmd use and extinction.
A2 Capitalism K (2/4)
5. Warner says the impact to environmental collapse is extinction.
6. Perm: Do Both
If the alternative can overcome the status quo it can overcome the plan
7. Perm: Do the plan and all portions of the alternative that don’t require rejection of the
plan
A2 Capitalism K (3/4)
10. Their alternative is vague – It doesn’t have an actor and they don’t specify the course of
action that this actor. That’s a voter:
( ) Neg shifts – vague alts let them recharacterize what their alt does to get out of all
our offense. That crushes 2AC time and strategy
11. We must use the institutions that exercise power to change them
Lawrence Grossburg, University which can operate within the systems of governance, understanding
that such institutions are the mediating structures by which power is actively realized. It is often by
directing opposition against specific institutions that power can be challenged. The Left has assumed from some
time now that, since it has so little access to the apparatuses of agency, its only alternative is to seek a public voice in the media through
tactical protests. The Left does in fact need more visibility, but it also needs greater access to the entire range of
apparatuses of decision making and power. Otherwise, the Left has nothing but its own self-righteousness. It is not
individuals who have produced starvation and the other social disgraces of our world, although it is individuals
who must take responsibility for eliminating them. But to do so, they must act within organizations,
and within the system of organizations which in fact have the capacity (as well as the moral responsibility) to
fight them. Without such organizations, the only models of political commitment are self-interest and charity. Charity suggests that
we act on behalf of others who cannot act on their own behalf. But we are all precariously caught in the circuits of global capitalism, and
everyone’s position is increasingly precarious and uncertain. It will not take much to change the position of any individual in the United
States, as the experience of many of the homeless, the elderly and the “fallen” middle class demonstrates. Nor are there any guarantees
about the future of any single nation. We can imagine ourselves involved in a politics where acting for another is always acting for
oneself as well, a politics in which everyone struggles with the resources they have to make their lives (and the world) better, since the
two are so intimately tied together! For example, we need to think of affirmation action as in everyone’s best interests, because of the
possibilities it opens. We need to think with what Axelos has described as a “planetary thought” which “would be a coherent thought—
but not a rationalizing and ‘rationalist’ inflection; it would be a fragmentary thought of the open totality—for what we can grasp are
fragments unveiled on the horizon of the totality. Such a politics will not begin by distinguishing between the local
and the global (and certainly not by valorizing one over the other) for the ways in which the former are
incorporated into the latter preclude the luxury of such choices. Resistance is always a local struggle,
even when (as in parts of the ecology movement) it is imagined to connect into its global structures of
articulation: Think globally, act locally. Opposition is predicated precisely on locating the points of articulation between them, the
points at which the global becomes local, and the local opens up onto the global. Since the meaning of these terms has to be understood
in the context of any particular struggle, one is always acting both globally and locally: Think globally, act appropriately! Fight
locally because that is the scene of action, but aim for the global because that is the scene of agency.
“Local struggles directly target national and international axioms, at the precise point of their insertion into the field of immanence. This
requires the imagination and construction of forms of unity, commonality and social agency which do not deny differences. Without such
commonality, politics is too easily reduced to a question of individual rights (i.e., in the terms of classical utility theory); difference ends
up “trumping” politics, bringing it to an end. The struggle against the disciplined mobilization of everyday life can only be built on
affective commonalities, a shared “responsible yearning: a yearning out towards something more and something better than this and this
place now.” The Left, after all, is defined by its common commitment to principles of justice, equality and democracy (although these
might conflict) in economic, political and cultural life. It is based on the hope, perhaps even the illusion, that such things are possible.
The construction of an affective commonality attempts to mobilize people in a common struggle,
despite the fact that they have no common identity or character, recognizing that they are the only
force capable of providing a new historical and oppositional agency. It strives to organize minorities
into a new majority.
WNDI 2008 71
Ethanol Aff 2ACs
A2 Capitalism K (4/4)
12. Don’t be fooled by their alternative spin. Disengagement from traditional politics is the
worst in cynical leftist garbage – our hypothesizing about the complex inner-working of
government is key to creating space for the critique
David E. McClean, 2001, “The Cultural Left and the Limits of Social Hope,” Am. Phil. Conf., www.american-
philosophy.org/archives/past_conference_programs/pc2001/Discussion%20papers/david_mcclean.htm
Yet for some reason, at least partially explicated in Richard Rorty's Achieving Our Country, a book that I think is long overdue, leftist critics continue to cite
and refer to the eccentric and often a priori ruminations of people like those just mentioned, and a litany of others including Derrida, Deleuze, Lyotard,
Jameson, and Lacan, who are to me hugely more irrelevant than Habermas in their narrative attempts to suggest policy prescriptions (when they actually do
suggest them) aimed at curing the ills of homelessness, poverty, market greed, national belligerence and racism. I would like to suggest that it is time for
American social critics who are enamored with this group, those who actually want to be relevant, to recognize that they have a disease, and a disease
regarding which I myself must remember to stay faithful to my own twelve step program of recovery. The disease is the need for elaborate theoretical
"remedies" wrapped in neological and multi-syllabic jargon. These elaboratetheoretical remedies are more "interesting," to be
sure, than the pragmatically settled questions about what shape democracy should take in various contexts, or whether
private property should be protected by the state, or regarding our basic human nature (described, if not defined (heaven forbid!), in
such statements as "We don't like to starve" and "We like to speak our minds without fear of death"
and "We like to keep our children safe from poverty"). As Rorty puts it, "When one of today's academic leftists says that some topic has
been 'inadequately theorized,' you can be pretty certain that he or she is going to drag in either philosophy of language, or Lacanian
psychoanalysis, or some neo-Marxist version of economic determinism. . . . These futile attempts to philosophize one's
way into political relevance are a symptom of what happens when a Left retreats from activism and
adopts a spectatorial approach to the problems of its country. Disengagement from practice produces
theoretical hallucinations"(italics mine).(1) Or as John Dewey put it in his The Need for a Recovery of Philosophy, "I believe that philosophy
in America will be lost between chewing a historical cud long since reduced to woody fiber, or an apologetics for lost causes, . . . . or a scholastic, schematic
formalism, unless it can somehow bring to consciousness America's own needs and its own implicit principle of successful action." Those who suffer or
have suffered from this disease Rorty refers to as the Cultural Left, which left is juxtaposed to the Political Left that Rorty prefers and prefers for good
reason. Another attribute of the Cultural Left is that its members fancy themselves pure culture critics who view the successes of America and the West,
rather than some of the barbarous methods for achieving those successes, as mostly evil, and who view anything like national pride as equally evil even
when that pride is tempered with the knowledge and admission of the nation's shortcomings. In other words, the
Cultural Left, in this country,
too often dismiss American society as beyond reform and redemption. And Rorty correctly argues that this is a
disastrous conclusion, i.e. disastrous for the Cultural Left. I think it may also be disastrous for our social hopes, as I will explain.
Leftist American culture critics might put their considerable talents to better use if they bury some of
their cynicism about America's social and political prospects and help forge public and political possibilities in a spirit
of determination to, indeed, achieve our country - the country of Jefferson and King; the country of John Dewey and Malcom X; the country of Franklin
Roosevelt and Bayard Rustin, and of the later George Wallace and the later Barry Goldwater. To invoke the words of King, and with reference to the
American society, the time is always ripe to seize the opportunity to help create the "beloved community," one woven with the thread of agape into a
conceptually single yet diverse tapestry that shoots for nothing less than a true intra-American cosmopolitan ethos, one wherein both same sex unions and
faith-based initiatives will be able to be part of the same social reality, one wherein business interests and the university are not seen as belonging to two
separate galaxies but as part of the same answer to the threat of social and ethical nihilism. We
who fancy ourselves philosophers
would do well to create from within ourselves and from within our ranks a new kind of public intellectual who
has both a hungry theoretical mind and who is yet capable of seeing the need to move past high theory
to other important questions that are less bedazzling and "interesting" but more important to the prospect
of our flourishing - questions such as "How is it possible to develop a citizenry that cherishes a certain hexis, one which prizes the
character of the Samaritan on the road to Jericho almost more than any other?" or "How can we square the political dogma that
undergirds the fantasy of a missile defense system with the need to treat America as but one member in a community of nations under a
"law of peoples?" The new public philosopher might seek to understand labor law and military and trade
theory and doctrine as much as theories of surplus value; the logic of international markets and trade
agreements as much as critiques of commodification, and the politics of complexity as much as the
politics of power (all of which can still be done from our arm chairs.) This means going down deep into the guts of
our quotidian social institutions, into the grimy pragmatic details where intellectuals are loathe to
dwell but where the officers and bureaucrats of those institutions take difficult and often unpleasant,
imperfect decisions that affect other peoples' lives, and it means making honest attempts to truly
understand how those institutions actually function in the actual world before howling for their
overthrow commences. This might help keep us from being slapped down in debates by true policy
pros who actually know what they are talking about but who lack awareness of the dogmatic
assumptions from which they proceed, and who have not yet found a good reason to listen to jargon-
riddled lectures from philosophers and culture critics with their snobish disrespect for the so-called
"managerial class."
WNDI 2008 72
Ethanol Aff 2ACs
A2 Neoliberalism K (1/5)
1. Framework
2. Ground – plan focus provides a stable locus for negative links – solves all
their offense, they can still read critiques of plan action
C. If we win our framework, Reject representation based link arguments and non-policy
alternatives
2. 1AC trade advantage is an impact turn to the criticism. Spicer evidence says that
neoliberal economic interdependence is key to prevent multiple scenarios of protectionist
trade wars. Specifically, 1AC Liu evidence says that the neoliberal order is key to prevent
trade wars between the US and China which Johnson says would culminate in extinction.
1AC Crane evidence says that moves away from the neoliberal order collapse the economy
which Bearden says culminates in extinction.
3. Comparative studies show that trade reduces the wealth gap between rich and poor
nations – poverty is the results from lack of trade, not trade
Joel R. Paul, Professor, University of California Hastings College of the Law. Do International Trade Institutions
Contribute to Economic Growth and Development? Virginia Journal of International Law Association Fall, 2003
The leading study to challenge these results was conducted for the World Bank by the economists David Dollar and Aart
Kraay. It divided developing countries into two groups, "globalizers" and "non-globalizers". The Dollar-
Kraay study found that from 1990-2000 industrialized countries grew at an average annual rate of 2.2% GDP
per capita, globalizing developing countries grew 5.0%, and non-globalizing developing countries grew
1.4%.n48 In other words, the globalizers sprinted ahead of the non-globalizers and narrowed the income
gap with the industrialized countries. Dollar and Kraay concluded that all developing countries should pursue
greater openness to trade as a prescription for reducing world income inequality. n49
4. Even if they’re right and trade has some negative impacts, protectionism is uniquely
worse for developing economies
Robert McGee, professor in the W. Paul Stillman School of Business at Seton Hall University, 1994, A Trade
Policy for Free Societies, p. 164
Protectionist regimes erected in developing countries have an especially detrimental effect on economic
growth, because the limited resources these countries have are being used to protect inefficient
producers at the expense of everyone else. This misallocation of resources cannot help but stifle economic growth, because resources
are diverted from their most productive uses. Although free, unrestricted trade is always the best policy, regardless of the stage of
economic development, developing countries can least afford the luxury of closing their borders to trade
and, especially, to foreign investment, because their capital base needs to be expanded. The argument that
the underdeveloped countries can never catch up with the West is just not true. The experiences of
South Korea and Hong Kong are only two examples that could be cited to refute this view. Underdeveloped countries
lack a capital base, but they do not need to grow their own capital base. All they have to do is allow unrestricted foreign investment. If
they enact legislation to protect property rights and allow foreigners to invest with minimal or no restrictions, capital and technology will
flow into the country and produce an economic boom.
WNDI 2008 73
Ethanol Aff 2ACs
A2 Neoliberalism K (2/5)
5. Open markets result in more sustainable environments – statistics prove
Ana Eiras, Economic Policy Analyst for Latin America, and Brett Schaefer, Fellow in International Regulatory
Affairs in the Center for International Trade and Economics at Heritage, September 27 2001, Trade: The Best Way
to Protect the Environment, http://www.heritage.org/Research/TradeandForeignAid/BG1480.cfm, accessed 8/24/03
Moreover, the United States is an example of the elasticity of spending for environmental protection. As incomes have risen over the
past three decades, America has increased "real spending by government and business on the environment and natural resource
protection has doubled." 6 Economically free countries typically have a more sustainable environmental policy. In January 2001, the
World Economic Forum, the Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN), and the Yale Center for
Environmental Law and Policy published an Environmental Sustainability Index (ESI). 7 The Index assigns the health of a country's
environment a single number ranging from 0 to 100, in which zero means low sustainability and 100 means high sustainability. This
number represents a country's success in coping with environmental challenges and cooperating with other countries in the management
and improvement of common environmental problems. Chart 1 illustrates the relationship between The Heritage Foundation/Wall Street
Journal 2001 Index of Economic Freedom scores and the ESI. The chart shows a strong relationship between economic freedom and
environmental sustainability. The freer the economy, the greater the level of environmental sustainability. The United States is a classic
example of economic freedom's beneficial impact on the environment. America has been a champion of economic freedom for decades
while simultaneously maintaining one of the world's cleanest environments. Countries with more open trade and investment policies
generally have higher levels of environmental sustainability. Free trade and the investment that typically follows it are two important
sources of economic growth. Therefore, an open trade policy and a business-friendly environment will not only increase growth, but also
provide the means to protect the environment. The Heritage Foundation calculated a "Trade Openness Index"
based on the 2001 Index of Economic Freedom by averaging the score for the trade policy, property
rights, capital flows and foreign investment, and regulation factors. Consider the relationship between the Trade
Openness Index and the Environmental Sustainability Index illustrated in Chart 2. In countries with an open economy, the
average environmental sustainability score is more than 30 percent higher than the scores of countries
with moderately open economies, and almost twice as high as those of countries with closed economies.
7. Death outweighs all their impacts – it’s the only impact you can’t recover from
Zygmunt Bauman, University Of Leeds Professor Emeritus Of Sociology, Life In Fragments: Essays In
Postmodern Morality, 95, p. 66-71.
The being-for is like living towards-the-future: a being filled with anticipation, a being aware of the abyss between future foretold and
future that will eventually be; it is this gap which, like a magnet, draws the self towards the Other,as it draws life towards the future, making life into an
activity of overcoming, transcending, leaving behind. The self stretches towards the Other, as life stretches towards the future; neither can grasp what it
stretches toward, but it
is in this hopeful and desperate, never conclusive and never abandoned
stretching-toward that the self is ever anew created and life ever anew lived. In the words of M. M. Bakhtin, it is only
in this not-yet accomplished world of anticipation and trial, leaning toward stubbornly an-other Other, that life can be lived - not in the world of the `events
that occurred'; in the latter world, `it is impossible to live, to act responsibly; in it, I am not needed, in principle I am not there at all." Art, the Other, the
future: what unites them, what makes them into three words vainly trying to grasp the same mystery, is the modality of possibility. A curious modality, at
home neither in ontology nor epistemology; itself, like that which it tries to catch in its net, `always outside', forever `otherwise than being'. The possibility
we are talking about here is not the all-too-familiar unsure-of-itself, and through that uncertainty flawed, inferior and incomplete being, disdainfully
dismissed by triumphant existence as `mere possibility', `just a possibility'; possibility is instead `plus que la reahte' - both the origin and the foundation of
being. The hope, says Blanchot, proclaims the possibility of that which evades the possible; `in its limit, this is the hope of the bond recaptured where it is
now lost."' The hope is always the hope of being fu filled, but what keeps the hope alive and so keeps the being open and on the move is precisely its unfu
filment. One may say that the paradox of hope (and the paradox of possibility founded in hope) is that it may pursue its destination solely through betraying
its nature; the most exuberant of energies expends itself in the urge towards rest. Possibility uses up its openness in search of closure. Its image of the better
being is its own impoverishment . . . The togetherness of the being-for is cut out of the same block; it shares in the paradoxical lot of all possibility. It lasts
as long as it is unfulfilled, yet it uses itself up in never ending effort of fulfilment, of recapturing the bond, making it tight and immune to all future
temptations. In an important, perhaps decisive sense, it is selfdestructive and self-defeating: its triumph is its death. The Other, like restless and
unpredictable art, like the future itself, is a mystery. And being-for-the-Other, going towards the Other through the twisted and rocky gorge of affection,
brings that mystery into view - makes it into a challenge. That mystery is what has triggered the sentiment in the first place - but cracking that mystery is
what the resulting movement is about. The mystery must be unpacked so that the being-for may focus on the Other: one needs to know what to focus on.
(The `demand' is unspoken, the responsibility undertaken is unconditional; it is up to him or her who follows the demand and takes up the responsibility to
decide what the following of that demand and carrying out of that responsibility means in practical terms.) Mystery - noted Max Frisch - (and the Other is a
mystery), is an exciting puzzle, but one tends to get tired of that excitement. `And so one creates for oneself an image. This is a loveless act, the betrayal."
Creating an image of the Other leads to the substitution of the image for the Other; the Other is now fixed - soothingly and comfortingly. There is nothing to
be excited about anymore. I know what the Other needs, I know where my responsibility starts and ends. Whatever the Other may now do will be taken
down and used against him. What used to be received as an exciting surprise now looks more like perversion; what used to be adored as exhilarating
creativity now feels like wicked levity. Thanatos has taken over from Eros, and the excitement of the ungraspable turned into the dullness and tedium of the
grasped. But, as Gyorgy Lukacs observed, `everything one person may know about another is only expectation, only potentiality, only wish or fear,
acquiring reality only as a result of what happens later, and this reality, too, dissolves straightaway into potentialities'.
WNDI 2008 74
Ethanol Aff 2ACs
A2 Neoliberalism K (3/5)
8. Relying on individual-level strategies fails and guarantees global politics is dominated by
violence
George Monbiot, journalist, academic, and political and environmental activist, 2004, Manifesto for a New World Order, p. 11-13
The quest for global solutions is difficult and divisive. Some members of this movement are deeply
suspicious of all institutional power at the global level, fearing that it could never be held to account by the
world’s people. Others are concerned that a single set of universal prescriptions would threaten the diversity
of dissent. A smaller faction has argued that all political programmes are oppressive: our task should not
be to replace one form of power with another, but to replace all power with a magical essence called ‘anti-
power’. But most of the members of this movement are coming to recognize that if we propose solutions
which can be effected only at the local or the national level, we remove ourselves from any meaningful
role in solving precisely those problems which most concern us. Issues such as climate change,
international debt, nuclear proliferation, war, peace and the balance of trade between nations can be
addressed only globally or internationally. Without global measures and global institutions, it is
impossible to see how we might distribute wealth from rich nations to poor ones, tax the mobile rich and
their even more mobile money, control the shipment of toxic waste, sustain the ban on landmines, prevent the
use of nuclear weapons, broker peace between nations or prevent powerful states from forcing weaker
ones to trade on their terms. If we were to work only at the local level, we would leave these, the most
critical of issues, for other people to tackle. Global governance will take place whether we
participate in it or not. Indeed, it must take place if the issues which concern us are not to be
resolved by the brute force of the powerful. That the international institutions have been designed or
captured by the dictatorship of vested interests is not an argument against the existence of international
institutions, but a reason for overthrowing them and replacing them with our own. It is an argument for a
global political system which holds power to account. In the absence of an effective global politics,
moreover, local solutions will always be undermined by communities of interest which do not share our
vision. We might, for example, manage to persuade the people of the street in which we live to give up
their cars in the hope of preventing climate change, but unless everyone, in all communities, either
shares our politics or is bound by the same rules, we simply open new road space into which the
neighbouring communities can expand. We might declare our neighbourhood nuclear-free, but unless
we are simultaneously working, at the international level, for the abandonment of nuclear weapons, we
can do nothing to prevent ourselves and everyone else from being threatened by people who are not
as nice as we are. We would deprive ourselves, in other words, of the power of restraint. By first rebuilding
the global politics, we establish the political space in which our local alternatives can flourish. If, by
contrast, we were to leave the governance of the necessary global institutions to others, then those
institutions will pick off our local, even our national, solutions one by one. There is little point in
devising an alternative economic policy for your nation, as Luis Inacio ‘Lula’ da Silva, now president of
Brazil, once advocated, if the International Monetary Fund and the financial speculators have not first
been overthrown. There is little point in fighting to protect a coral reef from local pollution, if nothing
has been done to prevent climate change from destroying the conditions it requires for its survival.
9. Perm: Do Both
If the alternative can overcome the status quo it can overcome the plan
10. Perm: Do the plan and all portions of the alternative that don’t require rejection of the
plan
WNDI 2008 75
Ethanol Aff 2ACs
A2 Neoliberalism K (4/5)
11. Their alternative is vague – It doesn’t have an actor and they don’t specify the course of
action that this actor. That’s a voter:
( ) Neg shifts – vague alts let them recharacterize what their alt does to get out of all
our offense. That crushes 2AC time and strategy
12. We must use the institutions that exercise power to change them
Lawrence Grossburg, University which can operate within the systems of governance, understanding
that such institutions are the mediating structures by which power is actively realized. It is often by
directing opposition against specific institutions that power can be challenged. The Left has assumed from some
time now that, since it has so little access to the apparatuses of agency, its only alternative is to seek a public voice in the media through
tactical protests. The Left does in fact need more visibility, but it also needs greater access to the entire range of
apparatuses of decision making and power. Otherwise, the Left has nothing but its own self-righteousness. It is not
individuals who have produced starvation and the other social disgraces of our world, although it is individuals
who must take responsibility for eliminating them. But to do so, they must act within organizations,
and within the system of organizations which in fact have the capacity (as well as the moral responsibility) to
fight them. Without such organizations, the only models of political commitment are self-interest and charity. Charity suggests that
we act on behalf of others who cannot act on their own behalf. But we are all precariously caught in the circuits of global capitalism, and
everyone’s position is increasingly precarious and uncertain. It will not take much to change the position of any individual in the United
States, as the experience of many of the homeless, the elderly and the “fallen” middle class demonstrates. Nor are there any guarantees
about the future of any single nation. We can imagine ourselves involved in a politics where acting for another is always acting for
oneself as well, a politics in which everyone struggles with the resources they have to make their lives (and the world) better, since the
two are so intimately tied together! For example, we need to think of affirmation action as in everyone’s best interests, because of the
possibilities it opens. We need to think with what Axelos has described as a “planetary thought” which “would be a coherent thought—
but not a rationalizing and ‘rationalist’ inflection; it would be a fragmentary thought of the open totality—for what we can grasp are
fragments unveiled on the horizon of the totality. Such a politics will not begin by distinguishing between the local
and the global (and certainly not by valorizing one over the other) for the ways in which the former are
incorporated into the latter preclude the luxury of such choices. Resistance is always a local struggle,
even when (as in parts of the ecology movement) it is imagined to connect into its global structures of
articulation: Think globally, act locally. Opposition is predicated precisely on locating the points of articulation between them, the
points at which the global becomes local, and the local opens up onto the global. Since the meaning of these terms has to be understood
in the context of any particular struggle, one is always acting both globally and locally: Think globally, act appropriately! Fight
locally because that is the scene of action, but aim for the global because that is the scene of agency.
“Local struggles directly target national and international axioms, at the precise point of their insertion into the field of immanence. This
requires the imagination and construction of forms of unity, commonality and social agency which do not deny differences. Without such
commonality, politics is too easily reduced to a question of individual rights (i.e., in the terms of classical utility theory); difference ends
up “trumping” politics, bringing it to an end. The struggle against the disciplined mobilization of everyday life can only be built on
affective commonalities, a shared “responsible yearning: a yearning out towards something more and something better than this and this
place now.” The Left, after all, is defined by its common commitment to principles of justice, equality and democracy (although these
might conflict) in economic, political and cultural life. It is based on the hope, perhaps even the illusion, that such things are possible.
The construction of an affective commonality attempts to mobilize people in a common struggle,
despite the fact that they have no common identity or character, recognizing that they are the only
force capable of providing a new historical and oppositional agency. It strives to organize minorities
into a new majority.
WNDI 2008 76
Ethanol Aff 2ACs
A2 Neoliberalism K (5/5)
13. Total rejection of capitalism fragments resistance – the perm solves best
J.K. Gibson-Graham, feminist economist, 1996, End of Capitalism
One of our goals as Marxists has been to produce a knowledge of capitalism. Yet as “that which is known,”
Capitalism has become the intimate enemy. We have uncloaked the ideologically-clothed, obscure
monster, but we have installed a naked and visible monster in its place. In return for our labors of
creation, the monster has robbed us of all force. We hear – and find it easy to believe – that the left is in
disarray. Part of what produces the disarray of the left is the vision of what the left is arrayed against. When
capitalism is represented as a unified system coextensive with the nation or even the world, when it is
portrayed as crowding out all other economic forms, when it is allowed to define entire societies, it
becomes something that can only be defeated and replaced by a mass collective movement (or by a
process of systemic dissolution that such a movement might assist). The revolutionary task of replacing
capitalism now seems outmoded and unrealistic, yet we do not seem to have an alternative conception
of class transformation to take its place. The old political economic “systems” and “structures” that call
forth a vision of revolution as systemic replacement still seem to be dominant in the Marxist political
imagination. The New World Order is often represented as political fragmentation founded upon economic
unification. In this vision the economy appears as the last stronghold of unity and singularity in a world of
diversity and plurality. But why can’t the economy be fragmented too? If we theorized it as fragmented in
the United States, we could being to see a huge state sector (incorporating a variety of forms of appropriation
of surplus labor), a very large sector of self-employed and family-based producers (most noncapitalist), a
huge household sector (again, quite various in terms of forms of exploitation, with some households moving
towards communal or collective appropriation and others operating in a traditional mode in which one adult
appropriates surplus labor from another). None of these things is easy to see. If capitalism takes up the
available social space, there’s no room for anything else. If capitalism cannot coexist, there’s no
possibility of anything else. If capitalism functions as a unity, it cannot be partially or locally replaced.
My intent is to help create the discursive conception under which socialist or other noncapitalist
construction becomes “realistic” present activity rather than a ludicrous or utopian goal. To achieve
this I must smash Capitalism and see it in a thousand pieces. I must make its unity a fantasy, visible as a
denial of diversity and change.
WNDI 2008 77
Ethanol Aff 2ACs
2. Framework
2. Ground – plan focus provides a stable locus for negative links – solves all
their offense, they can still read critiques of plan action
C. If we win our framework, Reject representation based link arguments and non-policy
alternatives
3. Death outweighs all their impacts – it’s the only impact you can’t recover from
Zygmunt Bauman, University Of Leeds Professor Emeritus Of Sociology, Life In Fragments: Essays In
Postmodern Morality, 95, p. 66-71.
The being-for is like living towards-the-future: a being filled with anticipation, a being aware of the abyss between future foretold and
future that will eventually be; it is this gap which, like a magnet, draws the self towards the Other,as it draws life towards the future, making life into an
activity of overcoming, transcending, leaving behind. The self stretches towards the Other, as life stretches towards the future; neither can grasp what it
stretches toward, but it
is in this hopeful and desperate, never conclusive and never abandoned
stretching-toward that the self is ever anew created and life ever anew lived. In the words of M. M. Bakhtin, it is only
in this not-yet accomplished world of anticipation and trial, leaning toward stubbornly an-other Other, that life can be lived - not in the world of the `events
that occurred'; in the latter world, `it is impossible to live, to act responsibly; in it, I am not needed, in principle I am not there at all." Art, the Other, the
future: what unites them, what makes them into three words vainly trying to grasp the same mystery, is the modality of possibility. A curious modality, at
home neither in ontology nor epistemology; itself, like that which it tries to catch in its net, `always outside', forever `otherwise than being'. The possibility
we are talking about here is not the all-too-familiar unsure-of-itself, and through that uncertainty flawed, inferior and incomplete being, disdainfully
dismissed by triumphant existence as `mere possibility', `just a possibility'; possibility is instead `plus que la reahte' - both the origin and the foundation of
being. The hope, says Blanchot, proclaims the possibility of that which evades the possible; `in its limit, this is the hope of the bond recaptured where it is
now lost."' The hope is always the hope of being fu filled, but what keeps the hope alive and so keeps the being open and on the move is precisely its unfu
filment. One may say that the paradox of hope (and the paradox of possibility founded in hope) is that it may pursue its destination solely through betraying
its nature; the most exuberant of energies expends itself in the urge towards rest. Possibility uses up its openness in search of closure. Its image of the better
being is its own impoverishment . . . The togetherness of the being-for is cut out of the same block; it shares in the paradoxical lot of all possibility. It lasts
as long as it is unfulfilled, yet it uses itself up in never ending effort of fulfilment, of recapturing the bond, making it tight and immune to all future
temptations. In an important, perhaps decisive sense, it is selfdestructive and self-defeating: its triumph is its death. The Other, like restless and
unpredictable art, like the future itself, is a mystery. And being-for-the-Other, going towards the Other through the twisted and rocky gorge of affection,
brings that mystery into view - makes it into a challenge. That mystery is what has triggered the sentiment in the first place - but cracking that mystery is
what the resulting movement is about. The mystery must be unpacked so that the being-for may focus on the Other: one needs to know what to focus on.
(The `demand' is unspoken, the responsibility undertaken is unconditional; it is up to him or her who follows the demand and takes up the responsibility to
decide what the following of that demand and carrying out of that responsibility means in practical terms.) Mystery - noted Max Frisch - (and the Other is a
mystery), is an exciting puzzle, but one tends to get tired of that excitement. `And so one creates for oneself an image. This is a loveless act, the betrayal."
Creating an image of the Other leads to the substitution of the image for the Other; the Other is now fixed - soothingly and comfortingly. There is nothing to
be excited about anymore. I know what the Other needs, I know where my responsibility starts and ends. Whatever the Other may now do will be taken
down and used against him. What used to be received as an exciting surprise now looks more like perversion; what used to be adored as exhilarating
creativity now feels like wicked levity. Thanatos has taken over from Eros, and the excitement of the ungraspable turned into the dullness and tedium of the
grasped. But, as Gyorgy Lukacs observed, `everything one person may know about another is only expectation, only potentiality, only wish or fear,
acquiring reality only as a result of what happens later, and this reality, too, dissolves straightaway into potentialities'.
WNDI 2008 78
Ethanol Aff 2ACs
8. Only realism can address violence. Critical approaches promise abstractions but don’t
provide a concrete solution.
Alastair Murray, Politics Department, University of Wales Swansea, Reconstructing Realism, 1997, p. 185-186
Linklater seems to go some way towards acknowledging this in Beyond Realism and Marxism, recognising Morgenthau's commitment,
in contrast to neorealism, to widening community beyond the nation-state. What he now suggests, however, is that `[w]hat realism offers
is an account of historical circumstances which human subjects have yet to bring under their collective control. What it does not possess
is an account of the modes of political intervention which would enable human beings to take control of their international history."' The
issue becomes less a matter of what realism does, than what it does not do, less the way it constructs the problem, than its failure to solve
it. Yet Linklater concedes that `it is not at all clear that any strand of social and political thought provides a compelling account of
"strategies of transition"'. Indeed, where he has attempted to engage with this issue himself, he has proved manifestly unable to
provide such an account. Although he has put forward some ideas of what is needed - a fundamental reorganisation of political
relations, establishing a global legal order to replace the sovereign state, and a fundamental rearrangement of economic relations,
establishing an order in which all individuals have the means as well as the formal rights of freedom - his only suggestion as to how
such objectives should be achieved seems to be that `[s]ocial development entails individuals placing themselves at odds with their
societies as they begin to question conventional means of characterising outsiders and to criticise customary prohibitions upon
individual relations with them'. His critical theoretical `transitional strategies' amount to little more than the
suggestion that individuals must demand recognition for themselves as men as well as citizens, must demand the right to enter
into complex interstate relations themselves, and must act in these relations as beings with fundamental obligations to all
other members of the species." More recently, he has proposed a vision in which `subnational and transnational citizenship are
strengthened and in which mediating between the different loyalties and identities present within modem societies is one central purpose
of the post-Westphalian state'. Such an objective is to be reached by a discourse ethics along the lines of that proposed by Habermas. Yet
such an ethics amounts to little more than the suggestion `that human beings need to be reflective about
the ways in which they include and exclude others from dialogue', scarcely going beyond Linklater's earlier emphasis on individuals
acting as men as well as citizens. Realism does at least propose tangible objectives which, whilst perhaps lacking the
visionary appeal of Linklater's proposals, ultimately offer us a path to follow, and it does at least suggest a strategy of realisation,
emphasising the necessity of a restrained, moderate diplomacy, which, if less daring than Linklater might wish, provides us with some
guidance. It is this inability to articulate practical strategies which suggests the central difficulty with such
critical theoretical approaches. The progressive urge moves a stage further here, leading them to abandon almost entirely
the problem of establishing some form of stable international order at this level in favour of a continuing revolution in search of a
genuine cosmopolis. It generates such an emphasis on the pursuit of distant, ultimate objectives that they
prove incapable of furnishing us with anything but the most vague and elusive of strategies, such an emphasis on
moving towards a post-Westphalian, boundary-less world that they are incapable of telling us anything about the
problems facing us today. If, for theorists such as Linklater, such a difficulty does not constitute a failure for critical theory within
its own terms of reference, this position cannot be accepted uncritically. Without an ability to address contemporary problems, it is
unable to provide strategies to overcome even the immediate obstacles in the way of its objective of a genuinely cosmopolitan society.
And, without a guarantee that such a cosmopolitan society is even feasible, such a critical theoretical perspective simply
offers us the perpetual redefinition of old problems in a new context and the persistent creation of new
problems to replace old ones, without even the luxury of attempting to address them.
WNDI 2008 81
Ethanol Aff 2ACs
If the alternative can overcome the status quo it can overcome the plan
7. Perm: Do the plan and all portions of the alternative that don’t require rejection of the
plan
8. Their alternative is vague – It doesn’t have an actor and they don’t specify the course of
action that this actor. That’s a voter:
( ) Neg shifts – vague alts let them recharacterize what their alt does to get out of all
our offense. That crushes 2AC time and strategy
A2 Amazon DA
Lula is committed to protecting the Amazon
States News Service, “Biofuels and High Oil Prices—Who is to Blame?” 7/10/08, Lexis-Nexis
President Lula has increasingly displayed support to protect the Amazon from
ongoing destruction. On June 19, the government extended its two-year ban on the sale of
soy from the deforested land in Amazonia until July 2009. Additionally, officials from the
Brazilian Institute of Environment and Renewable Natural Resources have already begun
bans on beef and timber from illegal Amazon lands (Mercopress). This recent
commitment could signify the government's sincerity regarding prevention of
deforestation and "its commitment to a policy of environmental registration and
licensing for land in Amazonia (Brazzil Magazine). New policies also present Brazil as
environmentally conscious to international groups such as Greenpeace, who have in the
past heavily criticized the country's lack of effort in sustaining the Amazon's integrity.
Greenpeace director Paulo Adario applauded Lula, stating, "Today's decision is
important because it proves that it's possible to guarantee food production without
cutting down one more hectare of Amazon forest." Also, in an attempt to speed the
recovery of Amazonian pastures and degraded soils, the government will offer soft loans,
ample credit for small farmers, and an insurance system designed to reduce the risks
of climate change. With the appointment of strong conservationists such as the
Minister of Environment, Carlos Minc, a UN awarded defender of the environment,
the Lula administration is taking urgent steps to enhance agricultural production and
increase Amazonian protection. If action indeed follows such rhetoric, Brazilian planners
could be on the verge of helping the country become a world player in trade while it
attempts to keep domestic prices low.
WNDI 2008 84
Ethanol Aff 2ACs
A2 Amazon/Slavery DA
The oil industry is behind the claims of deforestation and slavery
Carmen Gentile, staff writer, “Analysis: Brazil’s Leader Defends Ethanol” 6/11/08 Lexis-Nexis
Brazilian President Luis Inacio Lula da Silva said the world's oil companies are behind the bad press
regarding his country's ethanol sector, denying claims by some that the industry uses slave labor and is
responsible for deforestation in the Amazon. Da Silva [Lula], an ardent supporter of Brazilian ethanol, made
defending the world's leading producer of the biofuel one of the focal points of his most recent national
address. "I believe the main attacks against biofuels come from oil companies," said the Brazilian president
earlier this week. "We are aware of the interests held by countries that don't produce ethanol, or
produce ethanol from wheat or corn, which are not as competitiv5e." Hoping to dispel some of the
anti-ethanol rhetoric regarding its environmental impact and the treatment of sugarcane cutters, da
Silva noted that the cane processed into Brazil's sugar-based ethanol isn't grown anywhere near the
Amazon and called "absurd" accusations that the industry was in part responsible for deforestation. The one-
time labor leader turned president also denied claims that the ethanol industry relies heavily on poorly
paid sugarcane cutters who are sometimes forced to work for no pay as modern-day slaves. However,
human-rights groups have accused ethanol producers of treating their workforce like slaves and have called
for the Brazilian government to exercise greater oversight of the industry. This isn't the first time Brazil's
growing ethanol industry has come under fire. Last year, when Washington and Brasilia inked a deal to
expand ethanol production in Latin America, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and Cuban leader Fidel
Castro complained the deal in essence would reduce the amount of land used for food crops and rob the
region's hungry of vital food supplies. Da Silva rejected the comments, saying food production would not be
affected by the effort to produce alternatives to petroleum, of which Venezuela is the largest producer in the
region and counts the United States as its best customer. "All South American countries and Africa can easily
produce oil seeds for biodiesel, sugarcane for ethanol and food at the same time," he said, referring to Brazil's
ambition to work with European nations to increase sugar production in Africa to promote ethanol production
on that continent as well.
WNDI 2008 85
Ethanol Aff 2ACs
A2 Slavery DA
Free Trade empirically results in better health, especially for poor people
Roger Bate, Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, “Free Trade Improves Your
Health” 6/11/08, <http://www.aei.org/publications/filter.all,pubID.28123/pub_detail.asp>
As the USA heads into recession, protectionists are smiling. As always, they hide their self-interest
behind concern for the environment, labour standards and health (such is the rhetoric of Presidential
candidates Obama and Clinton). Indeed global competition can drive wages down and can make companies
cut corners on health care. But, as a recent article, 'Is Trade Good for Your Health?' (Review of International
Economics, Vol. 15, Issue 4, 2007) by economists Ann Owen and Stephen Wu of Hamilton College reveals,
there are enormous health benefits from free trade. By analysing a variety of data from 219 countries
over 35 years, they demonstrate that the citizens of economically freer nations are healthier than those
where the economy is more tightly controlled. They conclude that openness to trade and higher
volumes of trade are robustly associated with reductions in infant mortality and increases in life
expectancy, particularly among males in developing nations. Interestingly, the effect is even more
marked for the poorest of the poor: a small opening up of trade in the poorest developing countries
gives disproportionately larger health benefits to that country's citizens, than to the citizens of richer
nations. In terms of health, the worst off gain the most from more open trade.
WNDI 2008 86
Ethanol Aff 2ACs
Plan Doha
Brazil is key to solving the stalled Doha Talks
Jonathan Lynn, (Reuters), “Doha deal hinges on Brazil: US” October 12, 2007
There are fading hopes for the Doha round of global trade talks. The World Trade Organization
(WTO) launched the Doha round several years ago to reduce poverty and boost the global economy by
opening up world trade. US trade negotiators have become frustrated by the stalled Doha round.
The US negotiators believe that developing nations are not making enough concessions to
open up their markets. The US negotiators have asked Brazil to use its influence with
developing nations to ensure that the Doha round does not end in failure. Many developing
nations do not want to open up their manufacturing sectors to foreign-made goods. The
developing nations also want the US to end subsidies to its agriculture sector, in order to
make more room for them to export agricultural products.
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Doha Uniqueness
Relations tense now—holocaust comments prove
Bradley Klapper, Associated Press Writer, “Brazilian FM's Nazi reference rocks WTO talks” 7/20/08 Lexis-
Nexis Academic
Some pre-negotiation jabbing turned into a potentially damaging diplomatic incident Saturday when
Brazil's foreign minister said rich countries' deception in trade talks reminded him of tactics used by
Nazi propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels. His comments drew a sharp rebuke from the United States,
whose chief trade negotiator, Susan Schwab, is the daughter of Jewish Holocaust survivors. Her
spokesman described the reference to Goebbels as "incredibly wrong." The controversy threatens to
overshadow next week's last-ditch effort to save seven years of frustrating talks on a new global trade pact
toward alleviating poverty around the world. The so-called Doha trade round is already teetering on the
brink of collapse. Piresident Bush has made a Doha deal a key part of his trade agenda. Brazilian Foreign
Minister Celso Amorim said the U.S., Europe and other wealthy economies have so frequently
misrepresented the talks launched in Qatar's capital in 2001 that public perception has become totally
warped. "Goebbels used to say if you repeat a lie several times it becomes a truth," Amorim told reporters at
the World Trade Organization, where top negotiators from over two dozen countries are expected Monday for
the official start of the talks. Poorer countries have demanded cuts in the farm tariffs and subsidies used
by wealthy countries, saying they hinder Third World development. In exchange, rich countries have
insisted on better market access in developing countries for ther manufacturers and service providers.
Amorim implied that rich countries were employing Goebbels' lying tactics in describing the agricultural
concessions they claim they are willing to make, while criticizing poorer countries for refusing to liberalize
their industrial markets. "I am reminded of Goebbels," said Amorim, whose country has co-led with India a
broad coalition of developing countries at the WTO talks. Later, his spokesman qualified the remarks and
apologized to Schwab. Sean Spicer, spokesman for the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, said he was
horrified by the "personal venom" of Amorim's words. "We came here to Geneva to negotiate on substance,"
Spicer told The Associated Press. "For him to make remarks like this is so incredibly wrong. They are
insulting." Spicer noted that Schwab visited Amorim to soothe tensions immediately after negotiations
collapsed in acrimony in 2006. In an interview with the AP, Amorim's spokesman Ricardo Neiva Tavares said
the minister "regrets if Susan Schwab or anyone else was upset by his comments on a historical fact. He
certainly did not intend to hurt anyone's feelings, which he deeply respects." Associated Press writer Eliane
Engeler contributed to this report.
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Relations Uniqueness
Relations have been declining recently because of the tariff
States News Service, “BIOFUELS AND GLOBAL FOOD CRISIS - WHO IS TO BLAME? - COUNCIL ON
HEMISPHERIC AFFAIRS” 7/10/08 Lexis-Nexis
U.S.-Brazil tension, a relatively recent development, resurfaced during the UN World Food Summit in
Rome on June 3-5, encouraging the booming Brazilian sugar-based ethanol market to increase its new
development projects. This rift represents a de facto counter move against the far less-efficient U.S.
model predicated on corn-based ethanol production. Following the summit, Brazilian officials began a
weeklong tour, stopping in Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia, during which they discussed a set of commercial
agreements that will boost multilateral cooperation with several African countries. The trade agreements,
projected to begin in 2009, include an expansion in ethanol investment, urbanism, air and sea transport, and
cooperation in professional training between the two regions. In a statement that appeared in Brazzil
magazine, Brazilian Secretary of Development Ivan Ramalho remarked that he hoped the meetings would
enhance trade with other countries in order to diminish Brazil's over-reliance on the U.S. market. Brazil's
recent trade initiatives with other developing countries have emerged largely due to the reluctance of
some developed nations to lower trade subsidies. This impedes Brazil's ability to trade, adding
significantly to the current debate over rising food prices. In an official statement released after the first
set of meetings, Michel Alaby, Secretary General of the Arab Brazilian Chamber of Commerce, called for
solidarity among countries suffering from rising food prices and demanded that developed countries,
especially the U.S. and Europe, eliminate international trade barriers in the agricultural sector (Brazzil
Magazine). With the emerging agreements, Brazilian officials hope to call attention to the U.S.' highly
inefficient corn-based ethanol production at the height of a snowballing food crisis. The government aspires
to be a strong actor in the midst of the food crisis and plans to show the rest of the world the benefits of
Brazil's efficient sugar ethanol market, while it professes to be executing projects stalling the destruction of
the Amazon rainforest.
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Comparative studies show that trade reduces the wealth gap between rich and poor nations
– poverty is the results from lack of trade, not trade
Joel R. Paul, Professor, University of California Hastings College of the Law. Do International Trade Institutions
Contribute to Economic Growth and Development? Virginia Journal of International Law Association Fall, 2003
The leading study to challenge these results was conducted for the World Bank by the economists David
Dollar and Aart Kraay. It divided developing countries into two groups, "globalizers" and "non-
globalizers". The Dollar-Kraay study found that from 1990-2000 industrialized countries grew at an
average annual rate of 2.2% GDP per capita, globalizing developing countries grew 5.0%, and non-
globalizing developing countries grew 1.4%.n48 In other words, the globalizers sprinted ahead of the
non-globalizers and narrowed the income gap with the industrialized countries. Dollar and Kraay
concluded that all developing countries should pursue greater openness to trade as a prescription for
reducing world income inequality. n49
Even if they’re right and trade has some negative impacts, protectionism is uniquely worse
for developing economies
Robert McGee, professor in the W. Paul Stillman School of Business at Seton Hall University, 1994, A Trade
Policy for Free Societies, p. 164
Protectionist regimes erected in developing countries have an especially detrimental effect on economic
growth, because the limited resources these countries have are being used to protect inefficient
producers at the expense of everyone else. This misallocation of resources cannot help but stifle economic
growth, because resources are diverted from their most productive uses. Although free, unrestricted trade is
always the best policy, regardless of the stage of economic development, developing countries can least
afford the luxury of closing their borders to trade and, especially, to foreign investment, because their
capital base needs to be expanded. The argument that the underdeveloped countries can never catch
up with the West is just not true. The experiences of South Korea and Hong Kong are only two
examples that could be cited to refute this view. Underdeveloped countries lack a capital base, but they do
not need to grow their own capital base. All they have to do is allow unrestricted foreign investment. If they
enact legislation to protect property rights and allow foreigners to invest with minimal or no restrictions,
capital and technology will flow into the country and produce an economic boom.
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