Professional Documents
Culture Documents
INDEX
index................................................................................................................................................................................1
lcfs 1ac 1.........................................................................................................................................................................5
lcfs 1ac 2.........................................................................................................................................................................6
lcfs 1ac 3.........................................................................................................................................................................7
lcfs 1ac 4.........................................................................................................................................................................8
lcfs 1ac 5.........................................................................................................................................................................9
lcfs 1ac 6.......................................................................................................................................................................10
lcfs 1ac 7........................................................................................................................................................................11
lcfs 1ac 8.......................................................................................................................................................................12
lcfs 1ac 9.......................................................................................................................................................................13
lcfs 1ac 10.....................................................................................................................................................................14
lcfs 1ac 11......................................................................................................................................................................15
lcfs 1ac 12.....................................................................................................................................................................16
lcfs 1ac 13.....................................................................................................................................................................17
lcfs 1ac 14.....................................................................................................................................................................18
lcfs 1ac 15.....................................................................................................................................................................19
lcfs 1ac 16.....................................................................................................................................................................20
inherency – alternatives not inevitable..........................................................................................................................21
lcfs solves – biofuel shift..............................................................................................................................................22
lcfs solves – viable alt fuels..........................................................................................................................................23
lcfs solves – new tech....................................................................................................................................................24
lcfs solves – new tech....................................................................................................................................................25
lcfs solves - infrastructure.............................................................................................................................................26
lcfs solves – markets best..............................................................................................................................................27
lcfs solves - emissions...................................................................................................................................................28
lcfs solves – emissions..................................................................................................................................................29
lcfs solves – emissions..................................................................................................................................................30
lcfs solves - emissions...................................................................................................................................................31
lcfs solves - conservation..............................................................................................................................................32
lcfs solves – stops tar sands, oil shales..........................................................................................................................33
lcfs solves – oil dependence..........................................................................................................................................34
lcfs solves - oil dependence..........................................................................................................................................35
lcfs solves – oil dependence..........................................................................................................................................36
lcfs Solves – 75% gasoline............................................................................................................................................37
lcfs solves – shift to cellulosic......................................................................................................................................38
lcfs solves – shift to cellulosic......................................................................................................................................39
lcfs solves – shift to cellulosic......................................................................................................................................40
lcfs solves – global agreements.....................................................................................................................................41
lcfs solves – creates carbon sinks..................................................................................................................................42
lcfs solves – food prices................................................................................................................................................43
lcfs solves – global poverty...........................................................................................................................................44
lcfs solves - oceans........................................................................................................................................................45
lcfs solves – cancer from pollution...............................................................................................................................46
lcfs solves - competitiveness.........................................................................................................................................47
lcfs solves - latin american narcoterrorism...................................................................................................................48
lcfs solves – worldwide modeling.................................................................................................................................49
lcfs solves – regulations key.........................................................................................................................................50
lcfs solves – stops health care collapse.........................................................................................................................51
lcfs solves – saves rainforests.......................................................................................................................................52
lcfs solves – at: other countries overwhelm..................................................................................................................53
lcfs solves – china model..............................................................................................................................................54
cellulosic – displaces corn.............................................................................................................................................55
cellulosic good – food prices........................................................................................................................................56
LCFS 1AC 1
Bush has halted EPA research which states are dependent on for LCFS implementation. Only federal
government action ensures that life-cycle carbon emissions are accurately measured.
Peckham, 08 (Jack Peckham, Diesel Fuel News. “U.S. EPA Biofuels 'Life-Cycle Analysis' Lacks Certification
Scheme.” 3-3-08. avail. InfoTrack General Reference Center)
U.S. EPA is working to develop a "life-cycle analysis" (LCA) scheme for biofuels (including biodiesel) to ensure
they won't cause even worse greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions than ordinary fuels. Recent studies (including two
articles in the latest Science magazine) indicate that biofuels can cause several times worse GHG emissions than
ordinary petroleum fuels, if biofuels expansion leads to unfavorable land-use changes. As EPA mobile sources
director Margo Oge explained to the annual Clean Heavy Duty Vehicle Conference (CHDVC, sponsored by Westart)
here, EPA recently had to suspend earlier internal work on possible ways to cut carbon from transportation fuels,
"until the Administration decides how to proceed" with the requirements of the 2007 energy bill, she said. That bill,
mandating 36 billion gallons of "renewable" fuels by 2022, requires up-to 15 billion gallons of corn-based ethanol, 1
billion gallons of renewable biodiesel, and billions more gallons of cellulosic-based biofuels that must not come
from corn starch. At least part of such cellulosic biofuels could wind up as diesel fuel blendstock. The bill has
"aggressive schedules" for minimum biofuel blending volumes as well as mandatory "life-cycle" analyses to ensure
that biofuels result in true reductions in net GHG, rather than increases, Oge pointed out. This will require EPA to
discuss LCA issues with biofuels producers, environmental advocates, refiners and states -- "especially California,"
she said. California Air Resources Board (CARB) aims to come up with its own "low-carbon fuel standard" (LCFS)
by end-2008, Oge noted. Asked here when EPA might complete work on greenhouse "life-cycle analyses" (LCA) of
various biofuels, including the impact of land-use changes, Oge wouldn't commit to a fixed date. But she said that
EPA has made "tremendous progress" on a corn-ethanol LCA methodology, which has been shared with California
Air Resources Board (CARB). Eventually, "when we go out with a proposed rule, we'll have an LCA methodology
for all renewables," including feedstocks such as cellulosic, she said. "It's not an easy task and we take it very
seriously," she added. "We don't want unintended consequences; we don't want to make greenhouse gas emissions
worse, nor [unfavorable] impacts on water or food."
Thus the plan: The United States federal government should substantially increase alternative energy
incentives by phasing in a ten percent lifecycle carbon fuel standard.
LCFS 1AC 2
A. FOOD PRICES
Corn ethanol causes skyrocketing food prices—leading to failed states, economic collapse and mass
starvation.
Brown 07 (Lester, President of the Earth Policy Institute, June 17, 2007, “BIOFUELS BLUNDER:
Massive Diversion of U.S. Grain to Fuel Cars is Raising World Food Prices, Risking Political Instability”,
http://www.earth-policy.org/Transcripts/SenateEPW07.htm)
The escalating share of the U.S. grain harvest going to ethanol distilleries is driving up food prices worldwide.
Investment in fuel ethanol distilleries has soared since gasoline prices jumped at the end of 2005. Once completed,
distilleries now under construction could double U.S. ethanol output, turning nearly 30 percent of next year's U.S.
grain harvest into fuel for automobiles. This unprecedented diversion of the world's leading grain crop to the
production of fuel will affect food prices everywhere, risking political instability. The U.S. corn crop, accounting
for 40 percent of the global harvest and supplying nearly 70 percent of the world's corn imports, looms large in the
world food economy. Annual U.S. corn exports of some 55 million tons account for nearly one fourth of world grain
exports. The corn harvest of Iowa alone exceeds the entire grain harvest of Canada. Substantially reducing this
export flow would send shock waves throughout the world economy. In six of the last seven years, total world grain
production has fallen short of use. As a result, world carryover stocks of grain have been drawn down to 57 days of
consumption, the lowest level in 34 years. (See data.) The last time they were this low wheat and rice prices
doubled. Already corn prices have doubled over the last year, wheat futures are trading at their highest level in 10
years, and rice prices are rising. Soybean prices are up by half. If the United States were to suffer intense heat and severe drought this summer in the
Corn Belt, rising grain prices could quickly take the world into uncharted territory. The countries initially hit by rising food prices are those where corn is the staple food. In Mexico, one of more
than 20 countries with a corn-based diet, the price of tortillas is up by 60 percent. Angry Mexicans in crowds of up to 75,000 have taken to the streets in protest, forcing the government to
institute price controls on tortillas. Food prices are also rising in China, India, and the United States, countries that contain 40 percent of the world's people. While relatively little corn is eaten
directly in these countries, vast quantities are consumed indirectly. The milk, eggs, cheese, chicken, ham, ground beef, ice cream, and yogurt in the typical refrigerator are all produced with corn.
In effect, the refrigerator is filled with corn. And the price of every one of these items in the refrigerator is affected by the price of corn. Rising grain and soybean prices are driving up meat and
egg prices in China. January pork prices were up 20 percent above a year earlier, eggs were up 16 percent, while beef, which is less dependent on grain, was up 6 percent. For China, which
suffered the most massive famine in human history in 1959-61, these food price rises could be approaching a politically dangerous level. In India, the overall food price index in January 2007
was 10 percent higher than a year earlier. The price of wheat, the staple food in northern India, has jumped 11 percent, moving above the world market price. In the United States, the U.S.
Department of Agriculture projects that the wholesale price of chicken in 2007 will be 10 percent higher on average than in 2006, the price of a dozen eggs will be up a whopping 21 percent, and
milk will be 14 percent higher. And this is only the beginning. In the past, food price rises have usually been weather related and always temporary. This situation is different. As more and more
The food and
fuel ethanol distilleries are built, world grain prices are starting to move up toward their oil-equivalent value in what appears to be the beginning of a long-term rise
energy economies, historically separate, are now merging. In this new economy, if the fuel value of grain exceeds its
food value, the market will move it into the energy economy. As the price of oil climbs so will the price of food. If oil jumps from $60 to $80 a barrel,
you can bet that your supermarket bills will also go up. If oil climbs to $100, how much will you pay for a dozen eggs? From an agricultural vantage point, the automotive demand for fuel is
insatiable. The grain it takes to fill a 25-gallon tank with ethanol just once will feed one person for a whole year. Converting the entire U.S. grain harvest to ethanol would satisfy only 16 percent
of U.S. auto fuel needs. Since the United States is the leading exporter of grain, shipping more than Canada, Australia, and Argentina combined, what happens to the U.S. grain crop affects the
entire world. With the massive diversion of grain to produce fuel for cars, exports will drop. What was for decades the world's breadbasket is fast becoming the U.S. fuel tank. The number of
. The United Nations currently lists
hungry people in the world has been declining for several decades, but in the late 1990s the trend reversed and the number began to rise
34 countries as needing emergency food assistance. Many of these are considered failing states, including Chad,
Iraq, Liberia, Haiti, and Zimbabwe. Since food aid programs typically have fixed budgets, if the price of grain
doubles, food aid will be reduced by half. Urban food protests in response to rising food prices in low and middle
income countries, such as Mexico, could lead to political instability that would add to the growing list of failing
states. At some point, spreading political instability could disrupt global economic progress. Against this backdrop, Washington is
consumed with "ethanol euphoria." President Bush in his State of the Union address set a production goal for 2017 of 35 billion gallons of alternative fuels, including grain-based and cellulosic
ethanol, and fuel from coal. Given the current difficulties in producing cellulosic ethanol at a competitive cost and given the mounting public opposition to coal fuels, which are far more carbon-
intensive than gasoline, most of the fuel to meet this goal might well have to come from grain. This could take most of the U.S. grain harvest, leaving little grain to
<Brown Continues>
meet U.S. needs, much less those of the hundred or so countries that import grain. The stage is now set for direct competition for grain between the 800 million people who own automobiles, and
millions of those on the lower rungs of the global economic ladder will start falling
the world's 2 billion poorest people. The risk is that
off as rising food prices drop their consumption below the survival level. Soaring food prices could lead to urban
food riots in scores of lower-income countries that rely on grain imports, such as Indonesia, Egypt, Algeria, Nigeria,
and Mexico. The resulting political instability could in turn disrupt the global economy, directly affecting all
countries.
LCFS 1AC 3
“Many Americans see terrorism as the principal threat to security,” said Brown, “but for much of humanity, the
effect of water shortages and rising temperatures on food security are far more important issues. For the 3 billion
people who live on 2 dollars a day or less and who spend up to 70 percent of their income on food, even a modest
rise in food prices can quickly become life-threatening. For them, it is the next meal that is the overriding concern.”
Failed states threaten to collapse and cause terrorism Krasner and Pascual ’05 (Stephen D., professor at Stanford
University , and Carlos, director of Foreign Policy at the Brookings Institute, “Addressing State Failure,” Foreign
Affairs, July/August, lexis nexis, 07-01-08) In today's increasingly interconnected world, weak and failed states pose
an acute risk to U.S. and global security. Indeed, they present one of the most important foreign policy challenges of
the contemporary era. States are most vulnerable to collapse in the time immediately before, during, and after
conflict. When chaos prevails, terrorism, narcotics trade, weapons proliferation, and other forms of organized crime
can flourish. Left in dire straits, subject to depredation, and denied access to basic services, people become
susceptible to the exhortations of demagogues and hatemongers. It was in such circumstances that in 2001 one of the
poorest countries in the world, Afghanistan, became the base for the deadliest attack ever on the U.S. homeland,
graphically and tragically illustrating that the problems of other countries often do not affect them alone. The
international community is not, however, adequately organized to deal with governance failures.
Bearden 2000 T.E., LTC U.S. Army (Retired), ["The Unnecessary Energy
Crisis: How to Solve It Quickly,"
http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3aaf97f22e23.htm, June 24]
History bears out that desperate nations take desperate actions. Prior to the final economic collapse, the stress on
nations will have increased the intensity and number of their conflicts, to the point where the arsenals of weapons of
mass destruction (WMD) now possessed by some 25 nations, are almost certain to be released. As an example,
suppose a starving North Korea launches nuclear weapons upon Japan and South Korea, including U.S. forces there,
in a spasmodic suicidal response. Or suppose a desperate China-whose long-range nuclear missiles (some) can reach
the United States-attacks Taiwan. In addition to immediate responses, the mutual treaties involved in such scenarios
will quickly draw other nations into the conflict, escalating it significantly. Strategic nuclear studies have shown for
decades that, under such extreme stress conditions, once a few nukes are launched, adversaries and potential
adversaries are then compelled to launch on perception of preparations by one's adversary. The real legacy of the
MAD concept is this side of the MAD coin that is almost never discussed. Without effective defense, the only
chance a nation has to survive at all is to launch immediate full-bore pre-emptive strikes and try to take out its
perceived foes as rapidly and massively as possible. As the studies showed, rapid escalation to full WMD exchange
occurs. Today, a great percent of the WMD arsenals that will be unleashed, are already on site within the United
States itself. The resulting great Armageddon will destroy civilization as we know it, and perhaps most of the
biosphere, at least for many decades.
LCFS 1AC 4
Failed states cause terrorist safe-havens – only strong governance solves
Krasner and Pascual ’05 (Stephen D., professor at Stanford University, and Carlos, director of Foreign Policy at
the Brookings Institute, “Addressing State Failure,” Foreign Affairs, July/August, lexis nexis, 07-01-08)
Further complicating matters, modern conflicts are far more likely to be internal, civil matters than to be clashes
between opposing countries. "State death" as a result of external invasion, common before World War II, has almost
disappeared since 1945. The lack of good governance in weak states means they often do not have the ability to deal
with disaffected or criminal groups within their own borders. Recent scholarship suggests that civil strife is no more
likely in ethnically or religiously divided countries than it is in homogeneous ones. Internal discord is more likely to
arise in countries suffering from poverty, a highly unequal income distribution, recent decolonization, weak
institutions, ineffective police and counterinsurgency forces, and difficult terrain -- conditions that allow small
guerrilla bands to thrive. Valuable raw materials, such as diamonds or oil, also tend to spark conflict among
competitors who want to seize control of the wealth. Warring groups generally have easy access to weapons and
may even control territory, giving them a base for launching attacks on the state, its citizens, or its neighbors. Other
nonstate actors, including transnational terrorist organizations, can also take root in such environments, posing a
threat to global security. These elements of state weakness constitute structural threats akin to dead leaves that
accumulate in a forest. No one knows what spark will ignite them, or when. Over the long run, the only real way to
create lasting peace is to promote better governance.
LCFS 1AC 5
B. WATER
Corn-based ethanol destroys water resources and causes erosion
O'Hanlon and Fales 07 (Michael and Steve, Senior Fellow of Foreign Policy and Agronomist Associate Director of
the Biorenewables Program, "Beyond Corn-Based Ethanol", Iowa State University, Brookings Institute, October 26,
2007, http://www.brookings.edu/opinions/2007/1026_ethanol_ohanlon.aspx)
The concept of corn-based ethanol is sound — that is, up to a point. As several of the panelists, including Jerry
Schnoor, Mani Subramanian, and Tonya Peeples of the University of Iowa's engineering schools, one of us, Steve
Fales of Iowa State's agronomy department, and John Miranowski of Iowa State's economics department
underscored, however, there are lots of downsides to pushing the corn-based ethanol concept too far. The gist of the
panelists' remarks was that it should be viewed as a transitional biofuel and not the final objective in and of itself. It
can help us create markets for biofuel, refineries to make it, infrastructure (like dedicated pipelines) to move it
around the country, and demand for cars utilizing it. But the real breakthrough will have to be of a different type. As
Jerry Schnoor emphasizes, when you put a gallon of Iowa ethanol in your flex-fuel vehicle, you're also effectively
putting several pounds of Iowa topsoil into the Mississippi River and ultimately the Gulf of Mexico. That is because
plowing fields for annual crops inevitably creates substantial erosion — not to mention the usual pesticides and
fertilizer runoff characteristic of intensive agriculture. Most of Iowa's potential farmland, about 23 million acres, is
already devoted to corn and beans. The popularity of ethanol may, however, lead farmers to cultivate an additional 1
million acres now in the conservation reserve program, with associated environmental consequences. While
growing corn for ethanol production in Iowa can be done without irrigation, doing so in the dryer Plains states
cannot. Using modern methods, It takes about 2,000 gallons of water to grow a bushel of corn. The Plains states
were already depleting their water tables unsustainably before America's recent ethanol trend took root, meaning
they have little room for further expansion (in fact, they have no real capacity for expansion). Corn-based ethanol
now produces more energy than is required to produce it. So its net effect on energy balances is positive and
desirable. But it does require fossil energy to produce — in the form of fertilizers, diesel fuel for tractors, and more
often than not the fuel to operate refineries. On average, corn ethanol only yields about 30 percent more energy than
is consumed in production. This efficiency is improving all the time, but not enough to make corn ethanol the real
biofuel of choice for the longer term. In addition, the United States has about 450 million acres of farmland of all
types under cultivation today. Up to 100 million acres more would be needed to reach the president's goal using
corn-based ethanol. It will be impractical to find that much new farmland; substantial amounts of food crops from
existing farmland would have to be displaced to do so. The alternative is to use some other raw material.
LCFS 1AC 6
Perhaps the most devastating analysis of the global water crisis comes from hydrological engineer Michal Kravèík
and his team of scientists at the Slovakia non-governmental organization (NGO) People and Water. Kravèík, who
has a distinguished career with the Slovak Academy of Sciences, has studied the effect of urbanization, industrial
agriculture, deforestation, dam construction, and infrastructure and paving on water systems in Slovakia and
surrounding countries and has come up with an alarming finding. Destroying water's natural habitat not only creates
a supply crisis for people and animals, it also dramatically diminishes the amount of available fresh water on the
planet. Kravèík describes the hydrologic cycle of a drop of water. It must first evaporate from a plant, earth surface,
swamp, river, lake or the sea, then fall back down to earth as precipitation. If the drop of water falls back onto a
forest, lake, blade of grass, meadow or field, it cooperates with nature to return to the hydrologic cycle. "Right of
domicile of a drop is one of the basic rights, a more serious right than human rights," says Kravèík. However, if the
earth's surface is paved over, denuded of forests and meadows, and drained of natural springs and creeks, the drop
will not form part of river basins and continental watersheds, where it is needed by people and animals, but head out
to sea, where it will be stored. It is like rain falling onto a huge roof, or umbrella; everything underneath stays dry
and the water runs off to the perimeter. The consequent reduction in continental water basins results in reduced
water evaporation from the earth's surface, and becomes a net loss, while the seas begin to rise. In Slovakia, the
scientists found, for every 1 percent of roofing, paving, car parks and highways constructed, water supplies decrease
in volume by more than 100 billion meters per year. Kravèík issues a dire warning about the growing number of
what he calls the earth's "hot stains"—places already drained of water. The "drying out" of the earth will cause
massive global warming, with the attendant extremes in weather: drought, decreased protection from the
atmosphere, increased solar radiation, decreased biodiversity, melting of the polar icecaps, submersion of vast
territories, massive continental desertification and, eventually, "global collapse."
LCFS 1AC 7
LCFS 1AC 8
A. PEAK OIL
We’ve reached peak oil now – global suppliers, the IEA, and OPEC are only forecasting decline in oil supply.
The Guardian 2008 (June 19 “Oil output outside OPEC at risk of no growth in 2008” Reuters,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/feedarticle/7596372)
LONDON, June 19 (Reuters) - Oil supply from countries outside OPEC, source of three in every five barrels, is
stalling this year and may even decline, keeping the heat under record-high oil prices. The International Energy
Agency (IEA) and the U.S. government have cut forecasts for supply growth in 2008, in part due to delays at new
fields and declining output at existing ones. "There is a risk of zero non-OPEC growth," said Mike Wittner, oil
analyst at Societe Generale, who forecasts non-OPEC supply will expand by 400,000 barrels per day (bpd) this year.
"As far as our forecast is concerned, there is definitely downside to our numbers." Struggling supply outside OPEC
has helped fuel the surge in oil prices to a record near $140 a barrel, adding a strain to the world economy. It also
increases reliance on OPEC oil exporters to meet rising demand. Signs that oil supply is faltering in parts of the
world are leading to growing interest in peak oil, the view that production is nearing a high point and will then fall.
Influential forecasters such as the IEA, adviser to 27 industrialised countries, have been lowering forecasts for
supply from non-OPEC countries, but still predict an expansion. Output from non-OPEC will grow by 460,000 bpd
in 2008 from 2007, the IEA said in a monthly report on June 10, down from growth of 680,000 bpd previously
forecast. Others say even that may prove optimistic. Analysts at investment bank Barclays Capital expect non-
OPEC supply to decline by 40,000 bpd this year, while Credit Suisse sees non-OPEC supply as flat or negative
through 2012 or longer. Another bank, Citigroup, said on June 9 that non-OPEC supply was at risk of posting no
growth this year. There are several reasons why supply from non-OPEC has fallen short of forecasts in recent years.
Delays at new fields, faster-than-expected declines at existing ones and unforeseen events such as hurricanes in the
U.S. Gulf of Mexico have meant production came in lower than first thought. Oilfields in places such as the North
Sea and Mexico are seeing declines while output in Russia, the world's second-largest exporter and the engine of
growth outside OPEC in recent years, has faltered. Russian oil supply in May averaged 9.95 million bpd, the fifth
straight month of decline from a year ago, according to the IEA. It expects Russian supply to be largely flat in 2008
at 10.1 million bpd. Barclays questions if the IEA's prediction of a surge in non-OPEC supply in the last few
months of 2008 will materialise, saying that the IEA's figures show a second-quarter drop of 500,000 bpd year-on-
year. "We believe that the IEA is significantly overstating the short-term ability of non-OPEC supply to bounce
back and moderate the current situation," the bank said. Some in the industry are more pessimistic about supply.
Billionaire oil investor T. Boone Pickens said on Tuesday that he believed world crude production has topped out at
85 million bpd. Peak oil has its detractors, such as BP Plc Chief Executive Tony Hayward. The Organization of the
Petroleum Exporting Countries is still expected by the IEA and others to expand its supply capacity this year.
Others avoid the term but still see non-OPEC output levelling off. "The rate of year-on-year decline in Russia and
Mexico has been surprising and it doesn't show any sign of letting up," Wittner said. "Non-OPEC output is certainly
hitting a plateau." (Editing by William Hardy).
LCFS 1AC 9
Middle Eastern oil fuels terrorism – U.S. aggression over oil breeds resentment and oil profits finance
terrorist networks.
Sandlow, May 22, 2008 (“Rising Oil Prices, Declining National Security,” The Brookings Institute, David B.
Sandlow, Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institute in Foreign Policy,
http://www.brookings.edu/experts/sandalowd.aspx, Accessed 06-23-08)
First, oil dependence strengthens Al Qaeda and other Islamic terrorists. The United States is in a long war. Islamic
fundamentalists struck our shores and are determined to do so again. Like the Cold War, this struggle has many
causes and will last for generations. Unlike the Cold War, oil dependence plays a central role in the struggle. For
more than 50 years, the need to protect oil flows has shaped U.S. policy and relationships in the Persian Gulf.
During the Cold War, we supported the Shah of Iran in part to keep oil flowing from the region. In 1980, President
Carter declared that attempts by outside forces to gain control of the Persian Gulf would be “repelled by any means
necessary, including military force.” In 1991, with Saddam Hussein in Kuwait, President George H.W. Bush told
Congress that war was necessary because “[v]ital economic interests are at risk…Iraq itself controls some 10% of
the world’s proven oil reserves. Iraq plus Kuwait controls twice that.” After removing Saddam from Kuwait in 1991,
U.S. troops remained in Saudi Arabia where their presence bred great resentment. These steps to secure oil flows
have come at a cost. By making us central players in a region torn by ancient rivalries, oil dependence has exposed
us to resentment, vulnerability and attack. Osama bin Laden’s first fatwa, in 1996, was titled “Declaration of War
against the Americans Occupying the Land of the Two Holy Places.” Today, deep resentment of the U.S. role in the
Persian Gulf remains a powerful recruitment tool for Islamic fundamentalists. Yet the United States faces severe
constraints in responding to this resentment. With half the world’s proven oil reserves, the world’s cheapest oil and
the world’s only spare production capacity, the Persian Gulf will remain an indispensable region for the global
economy so long as modern vehicles run only on oil. To protect oil flows, the U.S. policymakers will feel compelled
to maintain relationships and exert power in the region in ways likely to fuel Islamic terrorists. Compounding these
problems, the huge money flows into the Persian Gulf from oil purchases help finance terrorist networks. Al Qaeda
raises funds from an extensive global network, with Islamic charities and NGOs playing an important role. Saudi
money provides critical support for madrassas with virulent anti-American views.
LCFS 1AC 10
LCFS 1AC 11
Major oil shocks would plunge the world into nuclear war.
Lauria 08 – (Joe - New York-based investigative journalist. A freelance member of the Sunday Times of London
Insight team, he has also worked on investigations for the Boston Globe and Bloomberg News., The Huffington
Post, April 14, “The Coming War with Iran: It’s About the Oil, Stupid,”
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/04/14/8282/)
The Saudis would not mind seeing the Iranian regime go. But the Saudis may also be on the list. The US may have
to destabilize and control Saudi Arabia some day too. The Wall Street Journal a few years ago revealed that in the
1970s under Nixon, Kissinger had plans drawn up for the US invasion and occupation of the Saudi oil fields. Those
plans can be dusted off. The American oil wars are being launched out of weakness, not strength. The American
economy is teetering and without control of the remaining oil it will collapse. There will be massive chaos in any
case, when only enough oil remains for the American elite and whomever they choose to share it with. That will
leave an oil-starved China and India, both with nuclear weapons, with no alternative but to bow to America or go to
war. It’s not about greed any more. It’s about survival. Because the leadership of this country was initially too
greedy to switch from oil to solar, wind, geothermal and other renewable alternatives, it may now be too late. Had
the hundreds of billions of dollars poured into the invasion and occupation of Iraq been put into alternative energy
the world might have had a fighting chance. Now that is far from certain. What is certain is that these wars are not
about democracy. They are not about WMD. The coming one will not even be about Iran’s nuclear weapons project.
It’s about the oil, stupid.
LCFS 1AC 12
Peak oil and US dependency will crush the economy and spur wars – switching to renewable is key.
Howley, June 13, 2008 (John, energy policy consultant, “Oil Insecurity: America’s Choice” Dissent Magazine,
http://dissentmag.wordpress.com/2008/06/13/oil-insecurity-americas-choice/)
Our nation’s economic well-being today depends on maintaining secure access to petroleum supplies at stable
prices. If domestic oil production continues to decline and demand continues to grow, the U.S. increasingly will
have to look for foreign oil to meet its needs. Two-thirds of the world’s remaining oil reserves are in the politically
volatile Middle East where wars have already been fought over the control of oil, where the U.S. is currently
occupying by force the country with the second largest proven reserves, and where U.S. foreign and military policies
increasingly are condemned. The vast majority of proven oil reserves around the world are controlled by
authoritarian, undemocratic governments with poor records of advancing human rights or human development for
their citizens. Within these trends are the seeds for further violence and suffering. Today, we in the U.S. face a
choice: continue to increase our dependence on imported oil using any means necessary to secure access to it,
including war and threats of war, or, undertake a sustained, national mobilization to free us from oil dependence by
reducing consumption and investing in energy efficiency, renewable fuels, and public and alternative transportation.
By reducing our reliance on petroleum, and helping other countries (both the oil-rich and the oilpoor) do the same,
we can make our country safer, our economy stronger, and our world less vulnerable to economic crises and war.
LCFS 1AC 13
We don’t even need to win that peak oil will occur now – the oil industry lacks the infrastructure to meet the
rising demand so the effects will be the same.
Leggett, ’05 (Jeremy, former member of the UK Government Renewables advisory board, The Empty Tank,
Random House, New York. p. 57-59)
Let us suppose for a moment that the late toppers are correct. The topping point, as defined by reserves available in
principle, is off in the 2020s or 2030s, and we can look forward to growing-supplies of relatively cheap oil for a
decade or more. There is another aspect of the problem: whether or not the production capacity is sufficient. Oil
industry analyst Michael Smith, who took his Ph.D. in geology just after me-sitting in the same chair as I did in the
research lab-is an expert in this subject. He has spent most of his vocational life as an oil industry geologist working
around the world, particularly in the Middle East. "Reserves are largely irrelevant to the peak;' he says. "Production
capacity is the important thing-how quickly you can get it out. It is an engineering problem, not a geological
problem." Of the eleven countries in the Middle East, only five are significant oil producers: Iran, Iraq, Kuwait,
Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, known sometimes [end page 57] as the Middle East 5. They produce
around 20 million barrels a day today, a quarter of the global total. If global demand rises at the average rate of the
last thirty years, 1.5 percent per year, these five countries will have to meet around two thirds of the demand, Smith
calculates. Let us assume they can do what they say they can, no more, no less. Where does that leave us? Saudi
Arabia says it can lift production from 9.5 million barrels per day today to 12 million barrels by 2016 and 15 million
barrels beyond that. This despite 50 percent of the oil coming from the Ghawar field, where a water cut is already
reported. Smith adds up all the reported capacities in the Middle East 5 and finds that if the rate of demand growth
continues at 1.5 percent they will fail to meet global demand by as soon as 2011. If it rises to 2.5 percent the demand
gap appears in 2008. If it is 3.5 percent-the rates in China and the U.S. of late-the gap is already here. "What's
more," Smith adds, referring back wryly to the starting assumption, "I do not truly believe the claims of the Middle
East 5. Although I don't believe Saudi and Iranian claims in particular, I think their politicians do believe them. I
don't think there is a conspiracy, more a division of labor such that no one knows the whole story, each part of which
has wide error bars. The summed result is inevitably the most positive conclusion which goes to the politicians. I've
seen this in all the oil companies I have worked for. At the November 2004 conference on oil depletion at the Energy
Institute, Michael Smith showed a slide at the end of his presentation that gave a pictorial summary of his views. It
showed a group of firemen posing for the camera outside a burning house." The investment bank Goldman Sachs
drew attention to the problem of access to oil on a global scale in a much quoted 2004 report. "The industry is not
running out of oil-reserves are large and continue to grow;' it asserts-though failing to offer evidence of this
analysis." What the industry is running out of is the ability to access this oil:' Two decades of chronic
underinvestment in the 1980s and 1990s are responsible. During this time the industry has been feasting on reserves
discovered in the 1960s and earlier with infrastructure capitalized in the 1970s, after the first oil shock. Global oil
demand is now closing fast on tanker capacity and refining capacity. The peak year for tanker capacity was way
back in 1981. So too was the peak for refinery capacity.
LCFS 1AC 14
LCFS will decrease oil dependence through new tech and market flexibility.
Farrell and Sperling, 2007 (Alexander E. and Daniel, May 18, San Francisco Chronicle, “Getting the Carbon Out”,
Farrell is an associate professor at UC Berkeley and Sperling is professor and director of the Institute of
Transportation Studies at UC Davis, http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-
bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/05/18/EDGKOP3EFJ1.DTL&hw=Getting+the+Carbon+Out&sn=001&sc=1000)
A low carbon fuel standard has two primary strengths. First, it creates a durable but flexible framework to guide the
transition to a low-carbon future. Second, it stimulates innovation and investment in low-carbon and very-low-
carbon fuels and vehicles. The first advantage is key to the second. Oil companies and automakers consistently tell
us that they are amenable to carbon controls that are predictable and based on science. Indeed, several major oil
companies tell us they support this proposal and believe it should be adopted broadly, beyond California. They say
they prefer this approach over mandates for specific technologies and fuels. They appreciate the flexibility and
certainty it provides, though they will undoubtedly quibble over the magnitude or speed of the emission-reduction
requirements. The low-carbon fuel standard addresses not only global warming, but the intertwined problems of
high oil prices and foreign oil dependence. It does so by stimulating private companies to develop new technologies
and bring them to market. Thus, it will, for the first time, create viable alternatives to petroleum, which lessens the
need for oil imports and undermines OPEC cartel pricing. The result will be less volatile and, yes, lower fuel prices.
A national LCFS will spark massive private sector investment, creating a viable alternative fuel within ten
years and serving as a global model.
Daschle, 07 (Tom Daschle, former Senator. “Food for Fuel?”
http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20070901faresponse86512/tom-daschle-c-ford-runge-benjamin-senauer/food-for-
fuel.html)
The current generation of biofuels has significant environmental benefits. The U.S. federal policy that requires
minimum levels of oxygenates in U.S. gasoline has improved air quality in the United States while increasing the
use of biofuels -- two of the primary benefits that Senator Bob Dole and I sought when we successfully pushed for
that policy in 1991. The current generation of biofuels also helps reduce the emission of greenhouse gases. An
interesting analysis released by the Natural Resources Defense Council last May showed that corn-based ethanol
outperforms gasoline when the two fuels' full production and use cycles are compared. Innovation in the biofuel
industry is leading to even greater greenhouse gas reductions, regardless of the feedstock. Runge and Senauer themselves argue that
the next generation of biofuels will dramatically lessen greenhouse gases. But not content to highlight these benefits, the authors stack the deck by focusing on the costs of developing these fuels.
The problem is that their cost predictions take no account of the effects of innovation or of policy proposals that appear likely to be implemented over the next several years (and which they
support). One such proposal is for a U.S.-wide carbon cap-and-trade system, which would immediately provide an economic advantage to fuels with lower carbon content. Although such a
system is unlikely to come into being under the current president, most analysts believe that it will by 2012. Another significant proposal is for new state and federal incentives for low-carbon
. By mandating that a growing percentage of
fuels, such as the program now being implemented in California, which is set to take full effect by November 2008
the market for transportation fuel be set aside for low-carbon fuels, such programs would unleash a tidal wave of
private-sector investment and technological innovation that would ultimately bring about something of a low-
carbon-fuel Manhattan Project. In stark contrast to the head-in-the-sand policies of the Bush administration, the
example of these policies could serve as a beacon to the rest of the world and encourage similar behavior elsewhere,
including in China and India. Under either of these policies, both the costs associated with carbon-intensive fossil
fuels and the incentives for innovation in low-carbon fuels would dramatically increase. Thus, it is reasonable to
expect cellulose-based ethanol to be competitive far sooner than in ten years, the time frame predicted by Runge and
Senauer.
LCFS 1AC 15
Only federal action solves worldwide – the plan restores US environmental credibility and spurs global
investment in renewables.
Podesta, Stern and Batten 07 ("Capturing the Energy Opportunity: Creating a Low-Carbon Economy: Part of
Progressive Growth, CAP’s Economic Plan for the Next Administration" John - President and Chief Executive
Officer of American Progress. Todd - Senior Fellow at American Progress. Kit - Managing Director for Energy and
Environmental Policy. Center for American Progress. November 27, 2007.
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2007/11/energy_chapter.html)
All major carbon-emitting nations, including key developing countries such as China and India, will have to be part
of the solution. In fact, most of the future emissions growth will be generated by developing countries who
collectively will account for over 75 percent of global emissions growth by 2030. But far-reaching, mandatory U.S.
action has to come first. Without that, the United States will have no credibility to argue for broader global
participation. American action will spur developing world action in two separate ways. First, the policy changes
needed to cut carbon emissions in the United States are jobproducing and growth-generating actions. Other countries
will emulate them, just as China, Russia, Brazil, and other countries have adopted building energy codes and
appliance efficiency standards based on U.S. models. Second, the technologies needed to promote low-carbon
economies are increasingly produced and sold in a global market. When America buys compact fluorescent lamps,
most of them are made in China, so China automatically develops the manufacturing technology to use them
domestically. When America requires that computers and TVs become more efficient, it affects the market in India
and Africa. And conversely, when America lags in efficiency or renewable energy technology, either the rest of the
world also lags or else other developed countries grab the market and control the export sales to the developing
world.
LCFS 1AC 16
No other incentive solves the aff. Absent a focus on lifecycle carbon emissions the market will ensure that
high-pollution biofuels win out.
Greene, 07 (Nathanael Greene, senior policy analyst for the Natural Resources Defense Council. Testimony before
the House Committee on Energy Independence & Global Warming. 10-24-07.
http://docs.nrdc.org/air/air_07102401A.pdf )
To achieve the full potential of biofuels, policies must focus on the benefits that can be achieved by the policies
rather than just the feedstocks, conversion technologies or the number of gallons produced. Current federal biofuels
policies, from the RFS to the various tax credits, simply reward volume and are based on the assumption that “more
is better.” Moving forward, it is critical that these policies mature to a “better is better” approach and start to
reward good performance. Nowhere is the need for better performance more evident and urgent than when
considering the global warming pollution impacts of biofuels. It is possible to produce ethanol derived from corn in
a way that produces less than half of the lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions of gasoline (per BTU of delivered
fuel). Conversely it is possible to produce ethanol from cellulosic feedstocks in a manner that produces far more
CO2 than gasoline. Unless our policies value, encourage and ultimately require biofuels to produce greenhouse gas
reductions, the market will provide whatever is cheapest and fastest. There is no reason to believe that such fuels
will be better than gasoline. Consider, for example, a dry mill corn ethanol plant. Greenhouse gas emissions from
corn production can be minimized by obtaining the corn from a farm that practices no-till cultivation. In addition,
by collecting a portion of the corn stover along with the grain the ethanol plant can meet its thermal energy needs
with this biomass energy source rather than fossil fuels. Finally, fermentation produces carbon dioxide in a pure
stream that can be easily captured for geologic sequestration. Using Argonne National Laboratory’s GREET model,
we estimate that the lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions from ethanol produced at such a plant would be 7.5 pounds
per gasoline gallon equivalent, or more than 70% lower than gasoline. NRDC has examined the greenhouse gas
emissions from a wide variety of feedstock and conversion process combinations using the Argonne GREET model
(see Figure 3 and Appendix). EPA conducted a similar analysis for a fact sheet released in conjunction with its final
rule for implementing the Renewable Fuels Standard enacted in EPACT 2005. 5 EPA’s results are shown in Figure
4 and are very similar to ours (note that EPA displays results relative to conventional gasoline, which is set to zero
on their chart.) Now consider a cellulosic ethanol plant. While such plants are often considered to be
environmentally superior to corn ethanol plants, this is not necessarily the case, depending on how the cellulosic
feedstock is produced. For example, if the biomass for the cellulosic ethanol plant is obtained by converting to
biomass production land that had been enrolled in the conservation reserve program (CRP), then the forgone
conservation benefits and carbon benefits must be accounted for. The CRP has enrolled more than 1 million acres
in forest cover, including hardwoods, longleaf pine, and other softwoods. These forests provide both important
ecological services and sequester a substantial amount of carbon. Converting such lands to biofuels production
would not only rapidly return to the atmosphere the carbon sequestered since the trees were planted, but would also
forgo future carbon sequestration on this land. The net result would be CO2 emissions to the atmosphere many times
greater than the annual greenhouse gas benefits from cellulosic ethanol production on this land. Land conversion
need not be this direct to undermine the environmental benefits of biofuel production. Devoting an increased share
of U.S. agricultural output to fuel production rather than grain exports will result in increased demand for animal
feed from sources abroad. If any significant portion of this additional feed is obtained by converting mature forests
into pasture or cropland the CO2 emissions from this land use change could greatly exceed the emission reductions
from the use of biofuels. The Argonne GREET model and most lifecycle analyses conducted to date have either
ignored these land use related emissions or minimized them. These emissions, however, are unavoidably caused by
using certain crops and types of land for biofuels feedstocks and they have the potential to negate all of the global
warming benefits of an expanded RFS.
US won’t switch to alternatives in the status quo – multiple factors ensure continued support for fossil fuels.
Elhefnawy, 2008 (Nadar, Apirl 1, Visiting Assistant Professor of Literature at the University of Miami, “The
Impending Oil Shock,” Informaworld, ProQuest, Accessed 06-30-08)
Energy-efficient states will also have an easier time transitioning to alternatives, and here again the United States is
in an unenviable position. Even were America not already so far behind in this area, it faces two special difficulties
that European and Asian nations do not. The first is that the ‘culture of oil’ has much deeper roots in the national
infrastructure and culture of the United States (for example in urban design and the status of public transport), which
would force it to make more strenuous efforts just to keep up.53 The second difficulty, the exceptional strength of
the oil lobby in the United States, reinforces this. It was largely because of oil-lobby pressure in the early 1980s that
the US Federal Government abandoned tax credits and regulations aimed at fostering alternative energy sources,
measures intended to create a ‘free market’ in energy.54 Abandoning these measures tilted the market in favour of
more established sources, not least because coal, oil, gas and nuclear energy attained their market position because
of a long history of government subsidy. Given the complexity of the issue and that many forms of government
assistance are indirect, such as favourable terms on leases of government land to oil drillers, estimates of such
support vary wildly.55 Nevertheless, the figure easily ran into several hundred billion federal dollars during the last
century – investments never made in renewable energy.56 This remained the case even after the 1973 embargo, the
federal government spending six times as much on researching energy production from fossil fuels and nuclear
energy as on renewables between 1972 and 1995.57 Such support of oil is actually increasing, at least when the
‘security subsidy’ of military protection for energy production and transport is taken into account.58 As a result of
these two factors, the ‘US alternative energy industry was not only left to sink or swim among more mature
competition, but was put at a disadvantage and withered’, while the ‘oil, gas and nuclear lobbies received the lion’s
share of government support’.59 To give one example, the US share of the world’s installed wind-energy capacity
fell from 92% in 1988 to a meagre 35% by 1995, with American energy production from wind actually registering
negative growth for several years during the 1990s.60 While growth since 1999 has been rapid, as of 2005 the US
share of world capacity was still a mere 15%, behind Spain and Germany, the latter country producing twice as
much electricity from wind as did the United States.61 Not surprisingly, wind energy’s contribution to American
electricity production remains modest, well under 1% – compared with 6% for Germany and over 20% for
Denmark.62
Low carbon fuel standards will spark a shift to cellulosic ethanol and other biofuels, reducing CO2 emissions.
Daschle, 07 (Tom Daschle, former Senator. “Food for Fuel?”
http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20070901faresponse86512/tom-daschle-c-ford-runge-benjamin-senauer/food-for-
fuel.html)
The legislation promoting a low-carbon fuel standard now being considered by Congress will attract investment for
next-generation facilities that convert animal waste and other waste (replacing fossil fuel inputs) into biogas and
biofertilizers. As energy costs rise, farmers will increasingly rely on low- and no-till cultivation techniques. And as
their incomes improve, they will have more capital available to employ other environmentally friendly techniques.
An acre of corn, one of the rare plant species to use a carbon-dioxide-efficient photosynthesis system, removes more
carbon dioxide from the atmosphere than does an acre of mature Amazonian rain forest, and next-generation biofuel
technologies -- including those using nonfood cellulosic feedstocks -- will increasingly contribute to the critically
important goal of reducing, as the author Michael Pollan has put it, humans' "carbon footprint."
The development of LCFS stimulates investment in new tech—status quo mandates and taxes will fail.
Sperling, 07 (Daniel, 6-21, 2007, Los Angeles Times, “A new carbon standard; Taxes on CO2 emissions alone won't
get us where we need to go”, Main News, pg . A21, Editorial Pages Desk, professor and director of the Institute of
Transportation Studies at UC Davis, co-leader of the UC study of proposed low-carbon fuel standard, Proquest)
Here is what we can say – and did, in our recent recommendations to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Air
Resources Board: Cutting carbon emissions from transportation fuels with mandates and taxes won’t work.
But a new approach using a low-carbon fuel standard will. This new standard will require oil companies and
other fuel providers to reduce carbon and other greenhouse gas emissions of transportation fuels by at least 10% by
2020. It will be up to the providers to choose how to do that, including blending low-carbon biofuels into
conventional gasoline, selling low-carbon fuels, such as hydrogen, and buying credits from providers of other low-
carbon fuels, such as low-carbon electricity or natural gas. This allows businesses to identify new technologies and
strategies that work. The low-carbon fuel standard picks neither winners nor losers. Instead, it sends a fuels-neutral
signal that alternatives are welcome in California’s $50-billion-a-year transportation fuels marketplace. The Wall
Street Journal recently described a new “fuels gold rush” as innovators and well-funded distributors battle for
California’s emerging alternative fuels market. Real solutions to global warming are needed. Let’s just be sure
they’re effective.
The status quo blocks innovation and CO2 levels are only increasing; plan opens up space for new energy
resources.
Sperling and Farrell, 2007 (Alexander E. and Daniel, August, “A Low Carbon Fuel Standard for California, Part 2:
Policy Analysis”, Institute of Transportation Studies, UC Davis Research Report, Farrell is an associate professor at
UC Berkeley and Sperling is professor and director of the Institute of Transportation Studies at UC Davis,
http://pubs.its.ucdavis.edu/publication_detail.php?id=1084)
The LCFS provides a durable framework for reducing the large amount of greenhouse gases, especially CO2, that
are emitted from today’s petroleum-based transport fuel system. It will facilitate the introduction of low-carbon fuels
and restrain the trend toward investments in more carbon intense transport fuels. These unconventional resources,
including heavy oil, tar sands, oil shale and coal, have higher, sometimes much higher, carbon emissions than fuels
made from conventional petroleum. The LCFS is a response to this recarbonization of transportation fuels, as well as
the many market failures blocking innovation and investments in low-carbon alternatives to petroleum.
Ethanol indeed reduces air pollution—in small doses. Ethanol has become a much-needed replacement for the
gasoline additive MBTE (a possible carcinogen and pervasive groundwater pollutant) to help gasoline burn cleaner.
Blending a small amount of ethanol with gasoline reduces carbon monoxide, volatile organic compounds, and
particulates. But when you look at the entire life-cycle of ethanol—from growing to harvest to processing to
combustion—burning E85 (85 percent ethanol) as fuel actually produces more carbon monoxide, volatile organics,
particulates, and oxides of sulfur and nitrogen than an energy-equivalent amount of gasoline, according to the
University’s [University of Minnesota] study. And ethanol doesn’t do much to address the big issue: global
warming. “We found corn ethanol as currently produced saves about 12 percent greenhouse gases from gasoline,”
Hill says. And that’s if the corn is grown on existing fields. “If you take land out of CRP you may have a net
greenhouse gas release.” That would actually exacerbate global warming.
Corn and sugar cane are common sources of ethanol. Aside from emitting fewer greenhouse gases than coal or oil
when burned as fuel, these biofuel crops remove carbon from the atmosphere while they are growing -- thus making
them nearly carbon-neutral. But the studies show that ethanol may be even more dangerous for the environment than
fossil fuels are. As the Princeton study points out, clearing previously untouched land to grow biofuel crops releases
long-sequestered carbon into the atmosphere. While planting corn and sugar cane in already tilled land is fine, a
problem arises when farmers churn up new land to grow more fuel or the food and feed displaced by biofuel crops.
The impact of these land-use changes is enormous. As the study from the Nature Conservancy warns, "converting
rainforests, peatlands, savannas, or grasslands to produce biofuels in Brazil, Southeast Asia and the United States
creates a 'biofuel carbon debt' by releasing 17 to 420 times more carbon dioxide than the fossil fuels they replace."
There are other negative effects. Massive amounts of water are needed to irrigate cornfields, setting up potential
competition between farms and homes. The runoff of pesticides and nitrogen-based fertilizers used by farmers could
lead to increased pollution and oxygen-depleted waterways. The natural gas used to make the fertilizer adds to the
carbon deficit created by biofuels.
Only alternative fuels can solve dependence – domestic oil production still leaves us vulnerable to peak oil
crises.
Sandalow, 2008 (Freedom From Oil, David B. Sandalow, Energy and Environment Scholar and senior fellow at the
Brookings Institution, chair of the Energy and Climate Working Group of the Clinton Global Initiative, McGraw-
Hill: New York, New York, 2008. p. 3)
Today, oil imports are indeed a problem, adding to the trade deficit. But they are hardly the fundamental problem
when it comes to oil. Even if imports dropped dramatically, we would still face serious national security threats from
the world's dependence on oil. (We haven't imported a drop of oil from Iran in more than 25 years, but that fact
doesn't prevent Iran from playing its oil card in negotiations over its nuclear program.) We'd still face serious
environmental threats from heat-trapping gases. (Emissions from imported and domestic oil are the same.) We'd still
face wild price swings. (In the summer of 2000, British truckers went on strike over rising oil prices. At the time, the
United Kingdom was energy independent, exporting oil into world markets. That fact didn't protect British truckers
from rising world prices.) The fundamental problem with oil is that we have no substitutes. If every American could
choose between oil, ethanol, biodiesel and electricity from the grid when fueling their cars, Saudi Arabia's influence
would decline sharply. Emissions of heat-trapping gases would plummet. Drivers' exposure to swings in world oil
markets would fall.
Even if our crop yields aren’t optimally efficient, we will replace 75% of gasoline.
Dale 06 (Professor of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science at MSU, Bruce E. “Impacts of Cellulosic
Ethanol on the Farm Economy” http://www.aspeninstitute.org/atf/cf/%7BDEB6F227-659B-4EC8-8F84-
8DF23CA704F5%7D/FINALEthanolText.pdf)
Land Devoted to Cellulosic Crops—We have about 450 million acres of cropland in the United States with
approximately another 580 million acres of grassland pasture and range. Forest use land totals about 640 million
acres, for a total of nearly 1700 million acres of land potentially available to produce feedstocks for ethanol
production. Approximately 40 million of these acres are in the Conservation Reserve Program, a government
program designed to take more fragile lands out of conventional grain or oilseed production. If we devote only 100
million acres to energy crop production and obtain an average of 15 tons of biomass per acre per year on that
acreage and then convert that biomass to ethanol at 100 gallons perton (approximately 85 percent of the theoretical
maximum yield), we will produce 150 billion gallons of ethanol per year. This is equivalent to about 75 percent of
the gasoline we currently use, taking into account ethanol’s lower energy content per gallon.
LCFS will move farmers away from corn ethanol and towards cellulosic.
Carey 2008 (John, senior correspondent in BusinessWeek's Washington bureau and received awards from the
American Institute of Biological Sciences and former editor of The Scientist and the National & International
Wildlife magazines, “Is Ethanol Getting a Bum Rap?” May 1)
Instead of throwing out biofuels, the key is to speed up the transition from corn to crops that offer more benefits.
There's a surprisingly simple way to do it: Judge fuels on how much greenhouse gas is emitted during their entire
production and transport, including emissions caused by converting land from food crops and other uses to fuel
crops. Then ratchet down the amount of carbon that's allowed. This low-carbon fuel standard approach sets the
market free to pick the best fuels to meet the standard. It immediately rules out biofuels from palm oil plantations
carved out of the rainforest, for instance. It would also steer farmers away from corn because of corn ethanol's lack
of substantial greenhouse gas benefits. "Almost all of the pathways for using food crops to make energy will look
very bad with a carbon metric," explains UC Davis' Sperling, who has worked on the approach. "The low-carbon
fuel standard is one of the most outstanding policy instruments we have ever developed," he says. Make this
approach widespread, and it should be possible to have our biofuels and eat our crops, too.
Low carbon fuel standards spur the market demands for cellulosic feedstock.
Johnson 08 ("Low-carbon fuels important to stem transportation sector’s emissions." Senator Tim - member of the
Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. The Hill. 1/30/08 http://thehill.com/op-eds/low-carbon-fuels-
important-to-stem-transportation-sectors-emissions-2008-01-30.html)
The goal of a low-carbon fuel standard is to spur technological innovation in the transportation fuels sector. The
blending of low-carbon fuels, including ethanol with gasoline and biodiesel with diesel fuel is a bridge to developing
even better low-greenhouse gas fuels that will replace oil-based transportation fuels. Robust development of
available low-carbon fuels will spur the market to demand E85 and advanced biofuels from cellulosic feedstocks
resulting in nearly zero greenhouse gas emissions over the full fuel cycle. We have to act prudently so that any new
policy does not pick winners and losers and remains technology-neutral in developing biofuels. In order to avoid this
political temptation we will need to pay particular attention in determining how renewable fuels’ greenhouse gas
emissions are measured and verified. We can undo a lot of the positive gains of the existing biofuels industry if we
move too quickly in adopting a low-carbon fuel standard that fails to recognize different regions of the country will
produce different types of bio-fuels. Investing in the development and deployment of low-carbon fuels and
improving the measurement of the greenhouse gas effects of these fuels should be part of a comprehensive climate
change and energy security strategy. If we are deliberate and exhaustive in how we structure a low-carbon fuels
plan, the market will respond and provide benefits to consumers in the form of competitively priced and clean fuels.
Let’s not fail to address this challenge by building on what we accomplished last year.
LCFS will increase investment in cellulosic ethanol and massive decrease carbon emissions.
Monahan 07 (Patricia, Union of Concerned Scientists, June 2007, “Issue Brief: Low Carbon Fuel Standard”,
http://www.ucsusa.org/assets/documents/clean_vehicles/ca-low-carbon-fuel-standard-fact-sheet_final.pdf)
California’s vanguard approach to controlling global warming pollution, including the Global Warming Solutions
Act (AB32), is putting the state’s fleet of vehicles on a lowcarbon track. With strong standards for new vehicles and
a new policy on the horizon to reduce global warming pollution from fuels, California is leading the way in
decarbonizing transportation. The low carbon fuel standard is ground-breaking policy that would, for the first time
ever, hold fuel providers responsible for global warming pollution from the production and use of transportation
fuels. This program does not “pick winners” by focusing on specific fuels, but instead relies on performance criteria,
requiring each gallon of fuel (on an energy-equivalent basis) to meet a declining standard for global warming
pollution. The standard is for the full lifecycle of the fuel, promoting carbon reduction along all links in the fuel
supply chain. The standard protects the state from high carbon fuels, like liquid coal, and builds a market for lower
carbon alternatives, which could include ethanol, hydrogen, or electricity. The standard can also foster investment in
very low carbon fuels, such as cellulosic ethanol, with the potential to radically cut global warming pollution by 70
to 90 percent or more. Key challenges include accurately accounting for global warming pollution from all
feedstocks and fuels, while promoting air quality and sustainable fuel production.
LCFS would switch production of over half of corn-based ethanol to cellulosic ethanol.
Crane and Prusnek 07 (David and Brian, Senior Advisor and Cabinet Secretary to Governor Schwarzenegger,
January 8, 2007, “The Role of a Low Carbon Fuel Standard in Reducing Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Protecting
Our Economy”, http://gov.ca.gov/index.php?/fact-sheet/5155/)
Adoption of a Low Carbon Fuel Standard will substantially reduce global warming pollution, cut petroleum
dependency and create a sustainable and growing market for cleaner fuels. Based on the mix of strategies shown in
Table 3, we estimate that a fuel standard requiring an initial reduction of 10 percent in the greenhouse gas impacts of
passenger vehicle fuels by 2020 will: Cut global warming pollution from the passenger vehicle fleet by 10 percent,
equivalent to removing 3 million cars from the road. Displace 20 percent of on-road gasoline consumption with low-
carbon fuels, reducing consumption by up to 3.2 billion gallons of gasoline per year, equivalent to the output of 2.5
average-sized California refineries.19 Expand the size of the current renewable fuels market in California (already
the largest in the nation) by 3 to 5 times. Instead of today’s corn, over half of the ethanol is likely to be made from
extremely low-carbon, cellulosic feedstocks such as agricultural waste and switchgrass.20 Place on California’s
roads more than 7 million alternative fuel and hybrid vehicles, approximately 20 times the number of such vehicles
on California’s roads today.
Energy costs, not biofuels, are responsible for food price inflation.
Greene and Lynd, 08 (Nathanael Greene, senior policy analyst for the Natural Resources Defense Council. Lee
Lynd, Professor of Engineering at Dartmouth and Chief Scientific Officer of Mascoma Corporation."Rethink
Biofuels But Watch the Bath Water" 5-13-08.
http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/ngreene/oped_on_biofuels_food_prices_a.html)
Biofuels are a modest part of the food price picture, consuming only 4 percent of world grain, and there is little
evidence that food prices would be much lower if we did not produce biofuels. The primary reasons for skyrocketing
food prices include our rising energy costs, increased demand for meat in developing countries, drought, and
misguided national and international agricultural policies.
A low carbon fuel standard is key to US job growth and international competitiveness.
Kammen, 07 (Daniel M. Kammen, Distinguished Chair in Energy at UC Berkeley and Co-Director of the Berkeley
Institute of the Environment. Testimony before the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works. “Green
Jobs Created by Global Warming Initiatives” http://www.unep.org/civil_society/GCSF9/pdfs/karmen-senate.pdf)
On February 21, 2007 California Governor Schwarzenegger and Senator McCain called for a federal LCFS. An
important piece of the LCFS should be the inclusion of electricity as a fuel to support the development and use of
plug-in hybrid vehicles in areas where the average grid power is sufficiently low-carbon to result in a net reduction
in greenhouse gas emissions. A low carbon fuel standard will promote the development of at least two important
industries: a sustainable biofuels sector; and the evolution of the plug-in hybrid sector. Both of these are area of
potentially strong and sustained job growth. At present, however, Detroit automakers have expressed concerns about
the job benefits of a clean energy economy. A study conducted by the University of Michigan found, in fact, that job
losses could occur if Detroit does not become more innovative and competitive. Integration of bioenergy/ethanol
resources and work to develop the commercially successful plug-in hybrid industries could both become major areas
of new job growth. Significantly, bioenergy work – agriculture and distilling – and battery construction and vehicle
construction are areas where high wages can be expected. Green jobs can accrue across the entire economy, from
laboratory research and development positions, to traditionally unionized work in plumbing, electrical wiring, and
civil engineering. Following the critically important Green Jobs initiative Senator Sanders spearheaded in the
Senate, the House Green Jobs Act (initially sponsored by Solis and Tierny, HR 2847, now part of the HR 3221, the
Renewable Energy and Energy Conservation Act of 2007) invests in worker training and career opportunities for
low-income Americans. These efforts are to be applauded, and could be the model for expanded job access and
development efforts in a wide range of energy related industries. In addition to supporting domestic job creation,
clean energy is an important and fastest growing international sector, and one where overseas policy can be used to
support poor developing regions – such as Africa (Jacobsen and Kammen, 2007) and Central America – as well as
regaining market share in solar, fuel cell and wind technologies, where European nations and Japan have invested
heavily and are reaping the benefits of month to year backlogs in clean energy orders. Some of those orders are for
U. S. installations, but many more could be if we choose to make clean and green energy a national priority for both
domestic installation and overseas export.
Instead of throwing out biofuels, the key is to speed up the transition from corn to crops that offer more benefits.
There's a surprisingly simple way to do it: Judge fuels on how much greenhouse gas is emitted during their entire
production and transport, including emissions caused by converting land from food crops and other uses to fuel
crops. Then ratchet down the amount of carbon that's allowed. This low-carbon fuel standard approach sets the
market free to pick the best fuels to meet the standard. It immediately rules out biofuels from palm oil plantations
carved out of the rainforest, for instance. It would also steer farmers away from corn because of corn ethanol's lack
of substantial greenhouse gas benefits. "Almost all of the pathways for using food crops to make energy will look
very bad with a carbon metric," explains UC Davis' Sperling, who has worked on the approach. "The low-carbon
fuel standard is one of the most outstanding policy instruments we have ever developed," he says. Make this
approach widespread, and it should be possible to have our biofuels and eat our crops, too.
All major carbon-emitting nations, including key developing countries such as China and India, will have to be part
of the solution. In fact, most of the future emissions growth will be generated by developing countries who
collectively will account for over 75 percent of global emissions growth by 2030. But far-reaching, mandatory U.S.
action has to come first. Without that, the United States will have no credibility to argue for broader global
participation. American action will spur developing world action in two separate ways. First, the policy changes
needed to cut carbon emissions in the United States are jobproducing and growth-generating actions. Other countries
will emulate them, just as China, Russia, Brazil, and other countries have adopted building energy codes and
appliance efficiency standards based on U.S. models. Second, the technologies needed to promote low-carbon
economies are increasingly produced and sold in a global market. When America buys compact fluorescent lamps,
most of them are made in China, so China automatically develops the manufacturing technology to use them
domestically. When America requires that computers and TVs become more efficient, it affects the market in India
and Africa. And conversely, when America lags in efficiency or renewable energy technology, either the rest of the
world also lags or else other developed countries grab the market and control the export sales to the developing
world. Clearly there are many reasons why the United States needs to capture the energy opportunity by creating a
low-carbon economy. So, too, do the rest of the nations of the world. American leadership is paramount, both at
home and abroad.
China’s economic officials predict that China will build another large coal-based electric-generating unit every week
for the next decade. (India is in a similar situation, trying to provide basic electrical service for its own huge
population and fast-growing economy.) Why would China decide, on its own use, to use more expensive climate-
friendly, carbon-clean coal technologies? Especially when it sees the United States refusing to adopt the carbon
limits and expanding it sown carbon emissions every year, even though its economy is still relatively mature?
Obviously, the answer is that China won’t make a unilateral commitment to the more expensive approach of doing it
right. It needs international encouragement, financial assistance, and a commitment that it can grow and provide its
people with basic services and resources to build the nation’s economy and quality of life. They are 1.3 billion
people who are striving to achieve basic human comforts and conveniences of life (which we can sell them, if we get
on it). We are 300 million people living in a more mature economy with much higher energy use per capita.
Conservatives the United States who decry any U.S. commitment to cut global warming emissions are without a
concomitant commitment by the Chinese are demagogues who don’t want to solve the problem. The Chinese will
likely need to increase, not reduce. While we bring our emissions down, China’s emissions will rise. Our goal
should be to keep those increases to a bare minimum that helps China join the international economy. That kind of
stabilization will be good for the world economy and world climate.
The key for the United States to meet aggressive biofuel goals is to move from corn-based biofuels to cellulosic
biofuels, the latter of which is produced from agricultural plant waste, such as rice straw or corn stover, or dedicated
crops such as switchgrass, a fast-growing, drought-resistant perennial grass, or algae. Cellulosic feedstocks can
potentially provide much greater quantities of biofuel with lower “lifecycle” CO2 emissions—meaning the amount
of CO2 emitted during the production and transportation of the biofuel as well as during its use in automobiles—
than corn-based ethanol. In addition, diversified sources of cellulosic ethanol would compete with corn-based
ethanol in the marketplace, helping to stabilize the cost of corn as a key source of food and feed. Two early
generation cellulosic ethanol plants are currently under construction in Georgia78 and Louisiana, signaling that this
technology is making strides. A recent University of Minnesota study suggests that mixed grasses grown on
marginal land without fertilizers or pesticides would produce 51 percent more energy per acre than corn grown on
fertile land.80 And fewer greenhouse gases are emitted during the cultivation of dedicated energy crops for
cellulosic biofuel production because less petroleum-based fuel is used than in the cultivation of traditional crops.
Moreover, dedicated energy crops themselves can absorb CO2 emissions through photosynthesis; perennial grasses
can absorb 14 times the CO2 that they produce after a decade of growth.81 Additionally, a portion of the waste
products generated during the production of the biofuel can become the biomass fuel needed to power biorefineries,
further reducing emissions compared with coal-based power generation. Nor is ethanol the only renewable biofuel.
Cellulosic ethanol production prevents the danger that food cropping will turn into more lucrative fuel-cropping.
The supply of raw material is also more abundant than corn-based ethanol production. The use of fertilizers and
watering essential for corn for ethanol production is also not required to such an extent for cellulosic ethanol.
Important as well is the fact that traditional ethanol uses fossil fuels as part of it manufacture, whereas cellulosic
ethanol uses only lignin, which has energy content equal to coal. Lignin is a bi-product of the conversion process
from bio-mass to ethanol, and does not need to be procured extra. Thus, no expensive fossil fuel is required for the
cellulosic manufacturing process, and best of all, the amount of harmful CO2 produced while using the lignin is
totally compensated by the absorption from the original plants in photosynthesis. The environment also does not
have to suffer from the greenhouse emissions that are usual in the production of traditional ethanol.
The usage of the perennial switchgrass for cellulosic ethanol also bodes well for the environment and
efficiency. This grass has a deep root system which helps prevents soil erosion and contributes toward soil fertility.
Since it is a species native to the U.S., it is the best adapted to the climate and soils, using water efficiently and
needing less pesticides and fertilizers. It can be grown in land which is unsuitable for any other sort of cash crops.
New research is looking towards substituting soybeans with switchgrass for production of animal feed proteins,
because one can grow more switchgrass per hectare than soybeans. This would make switchblade grass a popular
option for farmers as it will have double value in terms of ethanol feedstock and affordable production of animal
feed, because switchblade grass production is still to be incorporated into the U.S. agricultural system.
Multiple studies prove that cellulosic ethanol reduces emissions substantially more than corn.
Food and Water Watch 07 (“The Rush to Ethanol: Not All Biofuels are Created Equal”,
http://www.newenergychoices.org/uploads/RushToEthanol-rep.pdf)
Different studies have produced different figures, but corn-based ethanol consistently shows less impressive
greenhouse gases emissions reductions than other biofuels. DOE numbers show that, compared to gasoline, corn-
based ethanol reduces greenhouse gas emissions by 18 percent to 28 percent, while cellulosic ethanol offers a
reduction of 87 percent. A 1999 report by the Argonne National Laboratory concluded that corn-based ethanol could
only reduce emissions by up to 32 percent compared to gasoline, while cellulosic ethanol could attain up to 118
percent reductions.
Cellulosic ethanol is easy to produce and creates substantially more energy than corn.
O'Hanlon and Fales 07 (Michael and Steve, Senior Fellow of Foreign Policy and Agronomist Associate Director of
the Biorenewables Program, "Beyond Corn-Based Ethanol", Iowa State University, Brookings Institute, October 26,
2007, http://www.brookings.edu/opinions/2007/1026_ethanol_ohanlon.aspx)
Cellulosic ethanol is the real key. It is made from plant biomass — be it prairie grass (perhaps helping give Iowans their elusive third crop after corn and soybeans, as well
as permitting more arid states to contribute as well), poplar and other such soft woods, cornstalks, or even algae, depending largely on which part of the country is at issue, and its agricultural
cellulosic ethanol will require further advances in microbiology that have given
advantages. To be economical, producing large amounts of
rise to the kinds of enzymes needed to break down its complex structures into simpler molecules. That process is
well under way. Advances will also be needed in increasing sustainable plant yields to supply enough biomass.
Cellulosic ethanol may need subsidies to be economical for a time — it's a brand-new industry. But it will produce
huge net benefits in terms of energy security eventually, quite likely going well beyond existing ethanol goals for
2017. Unlike its corn-based cousin, cellulosic ethanol is estimated to provide anywhere from 3 to 8 times as much
as energy as is required to make it. And a great deal of land presently underutilized could be dedicated to this
purpose. Materials for biofuels can be produced in virtually every region in the nation in one form or another. This
will make it possible to create an industry with many players, and will foster energy security by distributing
production and risk over a wide area.
The expansion of the cellulosic ethanol manufacturing industry should provide an economic boost to more than just
those companies making the fuel. Over the next decade or so, around $100 billion will be needed to build around
200 cellulosic alcohol-making plants. The building boom will be a big plus for steel and concrete manufacturers, as
well as for firms that supply the chemicals needed to turn farm wastes into fuels and the computer hardware and
software that's needed to control fuel making processes. Ethanol plant construction will be a boon, too, for
engineering firms such as Jaks LLC, B.G. Katz, Alico and others that will design a new generation of boilers,
fermenters, distillers and other equipment. Businesses and communities should see benefits beyond the money
spent to construct the new plants.
Cellulosic biofuels offer a chance to have an environmentally meaningful impact on petroleum use while benefiting
farmers, entrepreneurs and consumers. I have many investments in biofuels companies. Some say I believe in
biofuels because I have invested in them. The truth is that I invest in biofuels because I believe they can help our
environment, economy and national security. Just as the word "drug" can refer to aspirin or cocaine, "biofuel" refers
to a variety of products that vary dramatically in their environmental impact and effects on food prices. For instance,
biodiesel from food oils such as soybean or palm oil has traditionally created environmental negatives. But corn
ethanol has been a stepping stone to cellulosic ethanol, a preferred alternative that is likely to achieve unsubsidized
market competitiveness with oil within a few years. We face an energy crisis, an environmental crisis and a terrorism
crisis all related to oil. High-cost options to reduce consumption, such as hybrid and electric cars, sound good but
are unlikely to materially reduce carbon emissions. To have a meaningful impact, at least half of the next billion cars
manufactured on this planet must be low-carbon. The only cost-effective option (measured in cost per ton of carbon
emissions avoided or grams of carbon emissions per mile driven) likely to achieve broad market acceptance in the
next 20 years is cellulosic-fuel cars.
For the urban poor, rising food prices are disastrous, but for the developing world's rural poor (about 67 percent of
those who live on less than a dollar a day), food price increases can boost incomes as subsistence farms become
more economic. That's why developing countries such as India and Brazil have pressed to reduce Western food
subsidies and increase food prices -- so their farmers can generate income. Cellulosic biofuels, because of biomass's
potential for raising rural incomes, may be among the most valuable poverty alleviation tools we have for Africa.
The current rise in corn-based ethanol production will devastate global food security.
Runge and Senauer 07 (C. Ford and Benjamin, McKnight University Professor of Applied Economics and Law
and Director of the Center for International Food and Agricultural Policy at the University of Minnesota, Professor
of Applied Economics and Co-director of the Food Industry Center at the University of Minnesota, “How Biofuels
Could Starve the Poor”, Foreign Affairs, May/June 2007, http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20070501faessay86305/c-
ford-runge-benjamin-senauer/how-biofuels-could-starve-the-poor.html)
Now, thanks to a combination of high oil prices and even more generous government subsidies, corn-based ethanol
has become the rage. There were 110 ethanol refineries in operation in the United States at the end of 2006,
according to the Renewable Fuels Association. Many were being expanded, and another 73 were under construction.
When these projects are completed, by the end of 2008, the United States' ethanol production capacity will reach an
estimated 11.4 billion gallons per year. In his latest State of the Union address, President George W. Bush called on
the country to produce 35 billion gallons of renewable fuel a year by 2017, nearly five times the level currently
mandated. The push for ethanol and other biofuels has spawned an industry that depends on billions of dollars of
taxpayer subsidies, and not only in the United States. In 2005, global ethanol production was 9.66 billion gallons, of
which Brazil produced 45.2 percent (from sugar cane) and the United States 44.5 percent (from corn). Global
production of biodiesel (most of it in Europe), made from oilseeds, was almost one billion gallons. The industry's
growth has meant that a larger and larger share of corn production is being used to feed the huge mills that produce
ethanol. According to some estimates, ethanol plants will burn up to half of U.S. domestic corn supplies within a few
years. Ethanol demand will bring 2007 inventories of corn to their lowest levels since 1995 (a drought year), even
though 2006 yielded the third-largest corn crop on record. Iowa may soon become a net corn importer. The
enormous volume of corn required by the ethanol industry is sending shock waves through the food system. (The
United States accounts for some 40 percent of the world's total corn production and over half of all corn exports.) In
March 2007, corn futures rose to over $4.38 a bushel, the highest level in ten years. Wheat and rice prices have also
surged to decade highs, because even as those grains are increasingly being used as substitutes for corn, farmers are
planting more acres with corn and fewer acres with other crops. This might sound like nirvana to corn producers, but
it is hardly that for consumers, especially in poor developing countries, who will be hit with a double shock if both
food prices and oil prices stay high. The World Bank has estimated that in 2001, 2.7 billion people in the world were
living on the equivalent of less than $2 a day; to them, even marginal increases in the cost of staple grains could be
devastating. Filling the 25-gallon tank of an SUV with pure ethanol requires over 450 pounds of corn -- which
contains enough calories to feed one person for a year. By putting pressure on global supplies of edible crops, the
surge in ethanol production will translate into higher prices for both processed and staple foods around the world.
Biofuels have tied oil and food prices together in ways that could profoundly upset the relationships between food
producers, consumers, and nations in the years ahead, with potentially devastating implications for both global
poverty and food security.
Corn-based ethanol production strains the agricultural sector – prices are rising across the board.
Runge and Senauer 07 (C. Ford and Benjamin, McKnight University Professors of Applied Economics and Law
and Co-Directors of the Center for International Food and Agricultural Policy at the University of Minnesota, “How
Biofuels Could Starve the Poor”, Foreign Affairs, May/June 2007,
http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20070501faessay86305/c-ford-runge-benjamin-senauer/how-biofuels-could-starve-
the-poor.html)
With the price of raw materials at such highs, the biofuel craze would place significant stress on other parts of the
agricultural sector. In fact, it already does. In the United States, the growth of the biofuel industry has triggered
increases not only in the prices of corn, oilseeds, and other grains but also in the prices of seemingly unrelated crops
and products. The use of land to grow corn to feed the ethanol maw is reducing the acreage devoted to other crops.
Food processors who use crops such as peas and sweet corn have been forced to pay higher prices to keep their
supplies secure -- costs that will eventually be passed on to consumers. Rising feed prices are also hitting the
livestock and poultry industries. According to Vernon Eidman, a professor emeritus of agribusiness management at
the University of Minnesota, higher feed costs have caused returns to fall sharply, especially in the poultry and
swine sectors. If returns continue to drop, production will decline, and the prices for chicken, turkey, pork, milk, and
eggs will rise. A number of Iowa's pork producers could go out of business in the next few years as they are forced
to compete with ethanol plants for corn supplies. Proponents of corn-based ethanol argue that acreage and yields can
be increased to satisfy the rising demand for ethanol. But U.S. corn yields have been rising by a little less than two
percent annually over the last ten years, and even a doubling of those gains could not meet current demand. As more
acres are planted with corn, land will have to be pulled from other crops or environmentally fragile areas, such as
those protected by the Department of Agriculture's Conservation Reserve Program. In addition to these fundamental
forces, speculative pressures have created what might be called a "biofuel mania": prices are rising because many
buyers think they will. Hedge funds are making huge bets on corn and the bull market unleashed by ethanol. The
biofuel mania is commandeering grain stocks with a disregard for the obvious consequences. It seems to unite
powerful forces, including motorists' enthusiasm for large, fuel-inefficient vehicles and guilt over the ecological
consequences of petroleum-based fuels. But even as ethanol has created opportunities for huge profits for
agribusiness, speculators, and some farmers, it has upset the traditional flows of commodities and the patterns of
trade and consumption both inside and outside of the agricultural sector.
Biofuels divert food and cause prices to skyrocket –plunging hundreds of millions into hunger.
Runge and Senauer 08 (C. Ford and Benjamin, McKnight University Professors of Applied Economics and Law and Co-Directors of the Center for International Food and
Agricultural Policy at the University of Minnesota, "How Ethanol Fuels the Food Crisis", Foreign Affairs, May 28, 2008) http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20080528faupdate87376/c-ford-runge-
benjamin-senauer/how-ethanol-fuels-the-food-crisis.html)
In the year since the publication of our article, "How Biofuels Could Starve the Poor" (May/June 2007), the average
price of corn has increased by some 60 percent, soybeans by 76 percent, wheat by 54 percent, and rice by 104
percent. What at first seemed alarmist has turned out to be an underestimate of the effects of biofuels on both
commodity prices and the natural environment. These price increases are substantial threats to the welfare of
consumers, especially in poor developing countries facing food deficits. They are especially burdensome to the rural
landless and the urban poor, who produce no food at all. Josette Sheeran, the Executive Director of the World Food
Program, calls this a global "tsunami of hunger." Robert Zoellick, President of the World Bank, estimates that there
are 100 million newly poor and hungry people as a result of rising food prices. Although controversy remains over
how much of the food price increase since 2006 can be attributed to biofuels, their effects cannot be overlooked. In
2008, 30 percent of the U.S. corn crop will be used for ethanol.
Corn prices impact all food prices because they are a feedstock – without action, the problem will only get
worse.
Clayton 08 ("As global food costs rise, are biofuels to blame?" Mark - Staff writer of the Christian Science Monitor.
The Christian Science Monitor. January 28, 2008 http://features.csmonitor.com/environment/2008/01/28/as-global-
food-costs-rise-are-biofuels-to-blame/)
Whatever the reason, prices for grains such as corn and soybeans are up. Despite a record US corn crop in fall 2007,
corn prices are near a record high of about $5 a bushel in mid-January. Because corn is feedstock, higher corn prices
can affect food prices. The average price of milk rose 29 percent last year, for instance, and eggs 36 percent. “More
people are coming to the conclusion that there is a food-fuel link,” says Siwa Msangi of the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), a
Washington food-security research organization. “The historic pattern of the past, where food prices were in a long-term decline, could be at an end.” But the major reason grain prices are
biofuels play
spiking, he and others note, is fast-rising demand for higher-quality food like meat, poultry, and dairy products by the increasingly affluent people of China and India. Still,
a role in higher grain prices, says Dr. Babcock. His findings are bolstered by a study last month in which Mr.
Msangi’s IFPRI estimated that future biofuel expansion could increase international corn prices between 26 and 72
percent by 2020, depending on how aggressive the expansion turns out to be. Under two scenarios IFPRI examined,
“the increase in crop prices resulting from expanded biofuel production was accompanied by a net decrease in the
availability of … food” for the world’s poor, the study found. As prices rise, of course, producers worldwide have
incentive to grow more corn or other crops, such as wheat, that might be in demand instead of corn. But that’s not happening
yet. In an apparent effort to moderate food prices and quell social unrest “ which in turn curbs growers’ incentive to produce more – Russia this month is expected to place a 40 percent export
tax on wheat. Argentina, too, has limited its wheat exports. “The price of corn, soybeans, and livestock feed is not going to go down,” Babcock says . America’s new energy bill
“pretty much guarantees that feed costs and land rent are going to stay high.”
Rising food prices are devastating the third world – food riots are erupting.
Curry 08 (Tom, MSNBC Political Correspondent and National Affairs Writer, March 14, 2008, “Why your food is
costing more money: Wheat, corn and soybean prices are surging; is ethanol to blame?”,
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23632933/)
Last week, in a speech to the European Parliament Development Committee, Josette Sheeran, the Executive Director
of the UN World Food Program, said her agency now faces a $500 million shortfall “just due to soaring food and
fuel costs — up more than 40 percent since (last) June — which will lead to ration cuts unless we receive additional
help soon.” She added that “high food prices have created an urgent situation throughout many developing countries
and have directly hit WFP’s ability to respond to those needs.” Sheeran noted that in some countries food was
available, but cost too much for the poor to buy it, or, as she put it “markets full of food with scores of people simply
unable to afford it. These conditions have triggered food riots from Cameroon to Burkina Faso to Indonesia to
Mexico and beyond.” Food, she reminded the European Parliament, is a geostrategic issue, just as oil is. “This
challenge may be one of the most critical peace and security issues of our time. Fragile democracies are feeling the
pressure of food insecurity; food riots have erupted throughout the globe,” she said.
Critics of the program argue that a corn shortage could be exacerbated by the government's demand for ethanol, thus
raising food prices even further for consumers. "A lot depends on how badly this weather has devastated the corn
crop," said Thomas Elam, an agricultural economist at Indiana University who was commissioned by the Balanced
Food and Fuel Coalition to release a study on the matter. "A smaller crop will be devastating to meat, dairy, and
poultry producers if the Renewable Fuels Standard is maintained, and consumers will suffer as food and fuel costs
rise." About 5% of the world's corn supply goes to producing bio fuels - representing a whopping three years of
growth in typical crop production, according to Elam. "Corn will have to go to at least $8 a bushel to squeeze out
enough food use to keep up with corn for ethanol," he said. "Food prices will be significantly impacted by corn if
RFS goes to 10.5 billion gallons for 2009." How significantly? Collins said food costs could rise 23% to 35% above
the normal annual inflation rate of 2.5% over the next two to three years if the RFS mandates are not reduced. Elam
said food price inflation rate could go as high as 7% without a mandate reduction. The USDA also maintains
ethanol has an impact on food prices, even if it is an indirect link. "Higher ethanol production definitely and directly
raises the price of corn," said USDA economist Ephraim Leibtag. "Higher corn prices have an impact on food prices
on the retail level." By contrast, if the government were to reduce the RFS by just half, both Elam and Collins agree
that corn prices would fall $2 a bushel, which could save more than $9 billion in feed and food costs.
The dubious economics of corn-based ethanol, Pimentel writes, are threefold: In general gasohol is priced higher at
the pump than gasoline yet yields poorer mileage per gallon. Taxpayers are the source of $1.4 billion a year in
subsidies that help make ethanol production profitable for agribusiness firms. In addition to paying tax dollars for
ethanol subsidies, says Pimentel, consumers can be expected to pay significantly higher food prices in the market
place. Why? He cites the National Center for Policy Analysis' 2002 estimate that ethanol production is adding more
than $1 billion to the cost of beef production. This, he says, is because producing the required corn feedstock for
ethanol reduces the overall corn supply, adding about 2 cents a bushel to the price farmers receive for their corn, by
his calculation. "Because about 70 percent of the corn grain is fed to U.S. livestock, doubling or tripling ethanol
production can be expected to increase corn prices further for beef and livestock production and ultimately increase
costs for the consumer," Pimentel states. "Most of us wouldn't mind paying a premium for a homegrown fuel that's
truly efficient, environmentally friendly and renewable," Pimentel said in an interview. "But ethanol from corn is
none of those." Making a gallon of ethanol from corn, he calculates, requires about 29 percent more energy -- from
fossil fuels -- than a gallon of ethanol can provide. At the same time, he said, ethanol has only two-thirds the energy
content of the same volume of gasoline. Also, he noted, "Corn farming takes a terrible toll on the environment -- it
causes more soil erosion and requires more insecticides, herbicides and nitrogen fertilizer than any other crop. And
every gallon of ethanol produced results in 13 gallons of effluent pollution." Said Pimentel, "I can't call that
renewable."
During the last half-century, agricultural fields have become bigger, obliterating the wetlands and biodiverse
landscape that once characterized rural areas. As all but the rockiest, steepest, or wettest land was cultivated, 99
percent of our native prairie disappeared and all but a fraction of our original wetlands were drained. Many prairie
species, especially birds, became rare or endangered. In Illinois, for example, seven species of grassland birds,
including upland sandpipers, meadowlarks, and several species of sparrows, declined more than 90 percent between
the late 1950s and the mid-1980s. Game species, such as ducks and pheasants, have also suffered. In recent decades,
the federal government has rented land from farmers across the United States, especially highly erodible land,
through the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP). These set-aside acres are planted with native grasses and trees
and slowly restored. Since the program began, CRP lands have showed impressive increases in grassland birds such
as bobolink and dickcissel. In one study in Iowa, the number of pheasants increased 13-fold on CRP lands. But as a
burgeoning ethanol program boosts demand for corn, crop prices are predicted to rise. As they do, Tiffany says,
farmers will be tempted to pull their acres out of CRP and put them back into production. In fact, the National Grain
and Feed Association recently asked a U.S. House Agriculture Committee to alter CRP to free up more farmland to
raise crops for a burgeoning biofuels industry.
Corn production requires massive amounts of fertilizer, killing infants and fish.
Breining, 2007 (Greg, January 11, University of Minnesota Magazine, Jan-Feb issue, “Five Reasons Corn Ethanol
Won’t Save the Planet”, Breining writes for several publications, including the New York Times, National
Geographic Traveler, and Wildlife Conservation.)
Corn hungers for high-nitrogen fertilizers. It thirsts for water, including from ancient aquifers. And it’s addicted to
chemicals. None of these conditions are good for the environment. Corn requires heavy doses of fertilizer—an
average of 135 pounds of nitrogen spread on every acre—as well as phosphorus and phosphate. Corn accounts for
nearly half of the crop nutrient use in the nation; nothing else comes close. Corn also requires heavy applications of
herbicides and insecticides; corn makes up approximately a quarter of the acres of crops planted in the United States
but accounts for nearly two-thirds of total herbicide use. Trouble is, these chemicals don’t stay put. Excess nitrogen
leaches into the groundwater, posing potentially fatal hazards to infants. Pesticides pollute nearby lakes and streams,
killing fish such as smallmouth bass. Runoff of soil and phosphorus causes algae blooms in nearby lakes. Nitrogen
and phosphorus from the Midwest Farm Belt flow down the Mississippi River, feeding algae growth and
decomposition that create “hypoxia”—an oxygen-depleted “dead zone” roughly the size of New Jersey in the Gulf
of Mexico.
It is now almost universally accepted in some circles that bio-fuels such as ethanol are the answer to America’s
energy woes. Additionally, many ethanol enthusiasts have said that use of ethanol rather than fossil fuels will help
reduce greenhouse gas emissions which global warming adherents believe may cause climate change. Yet, a new
study conducted at University of Edinburgh concludes that ethanol actually produces substantially more greenhouse
gas than fossil fuels. Nowhere is this trend towards ethanol as the answer more obvious than in the United States
where policy makers have recently made a dramatic shift towards corn-based ethanol. They have mandated more
ethanol and heavily subsidized its production at taxpayer expense -- on the assumption that it will reduce our need
for oil and reduce greenhouse gases all at the same time. Just one problem -- it won’t reduce greenhouse gases, but
rather increases them. And it is doubtful that corn-based ethanol is at this time an economically viable energy
solution. If it were viable, it would not have required taxpayer subsidies for the past 30 years. The University of
Edinburgh study concludes that ethanol made from corn produces up to 50 percent more green house gases than
fossil fuels. And ethanol made from rapeseed produces up to 70 percent more green house gases than fossil fuels.
(Rapeseed is also the source from which canola oil is made.) Both corn-based and rapeseed-based ethanol produced
high levels of nitrous oxide, twice as much as previously believed, which is 296 times more powerful as a
greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide -- a gas naturally “exhaled” by plants and produced in combustion of fossil
fuels.
Oil dependence motivates imperialism in Africa and the militarization of U.S. foreign policy.
Juhasz, June 17 (“AFRI(OIL)COM”, Foreign Policy in Focus, Antonia Juhasz, Foreign Policy In Focus policy
analyst, Associate Fellow with the Institute for Policy Studies, and Fellow with Oil Change International,
http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/5301, Accessed 06-23-08)
In recognition of "the emerging strategic importance of Africa," in February 2007 President Bush ordered the
creation of AFRICOM, the U.S. Africa Command. AFRICOM, like CENTCOM (Central Command) and EUCOM
(European Command), centralizes all authority for the U.S. military operating in the African region under one
command structure. AFRICOM also transfers many duties that previously belonged to nonmilitary US agencies –
such as building schools and digging wells – to the jurisdiction of the Department of Defense. While fighting
terrorism in Africa is the primary reason given for the establishment of AFRICOM, oil appears to be the more
pressing motivator. "A key mission for U.S. forces [in Africa] would be to insure that Nigeria’s oilfields, which in
the future could account for as much as 25 percent of all U.S. oil imports, are secure," explains General Charles
Wald, deputy commander of U.S. forces in Europe in an interview with Wall Street Journal writer Greg Jaffe. To
secure and maintain access to oil – if not for the nation, then most certainly for our oil companies – the Bush
administration has increasingly turned toward the U.S. military. Author Kevin Phillips coined the term "petrol-
imperialism" to describe the Bush administration’s policies in this regard, "the key aspect of which is the U.S.
military’s transformation into a global oil protection force." Under the rubric of the Global War on Terror, the Bush
administration has implemented the greatest realignment of U.S. forces since the end of the Cold War. With a map of
Big Oil’s overseas operations, the world’s remaining oil reserves, and oil transport routes, one can now track the
realignment and predict future deployments of the U.S. military.
African militarization causes backlash and destroys relations with African countries.
Makinda, 07 (Samuel Makinda, CSIS Africa Policy Forum. “Why AFRICOM Has Not Won Over Africans”
http://forums.csis.org/africa/?p=72)
Perhaps AFRICOM has a contribution to make in helping Africa achieve these objectives, but if so, this has not been
explained by American officials. Rather than a clear vision, U.S. officials have painted a confusing picture of an
organization that seemingly plans to mix economic development and governance promotion activities, heretofore the
responsibility of civilian agencies, with military activities. Africans, given the history of military coups that once
plagued the continent, tend to regard this militarization of civilian space with great misgivings. Yet spokespeople for
AFRICOM continue to speak of the inclusion of experts from the U.S. Agency for International Development
(USAID) and other civilian agencies in AFRICOM as if it were a virtue. Why have U.S. officials insisted that the
command’s role would include addressing such issues as political instability, human rights abuses, good governance,
poverty alleviation, the building of health clinics and schools, and the digging of wells? These issues represent
serious challenges in Africa, but a cross-section of people believe the military should be used to tackle them only in
cases of emergency. Proposing them as long-term goals of the new combatant command has given the impression
that the United States does not fully understand the concerns of Africans. It has also opened the way for critics to
suggest that the American government’s good governance, development, and security rationales for a military
command are a smokescreen intended to hide other and possibly nefarious objectives for AFRICOM. Africans
know that the militarization of political and economic space by African military leaders has been one of the factors
that has held Africa back for decades. While African states are trying to put the culture of military rule behind them,
the United States appears determined to demonstrate that most civilian activities in Africa should be undertaken by
armed forces. To some African policy makers, this suggests that the U.S. Government lacks sympathy for what
Africans so deeply want today, namely democratic systems in which the armed forces remain in the barracks.
U.S. foreign policy should acknowledge the importance of Africa in the realm of global multilateral diplomacy. On a
bilateral, state-to-state level, and within the realm of intergovernmental organizations, African states are more
crucial in generating support than ever. It is often forgotten that Sub-Saharan African states count for 41 votes in the
UN General Assembly. The Republic of Congo, Ghana, and South Africa all currently hold temporary seats on the
UN Security Council. In trade negotiations at the World Trade Organization African states count for a third of the
votes. Such a pool of states provides diplomatic opportunities for the United States within the framework of these
institutions. The African Union as an organization is growing and trying to expand its legitimacy, modeling many of
its still forming institutions after aspects of the European Union. Yet in the AU the United States has a consolidated
contact point for diplomatic initiatives for security and economic related programs. Taken into account at an
international level, winning African support will be key for international support for U.S. global action in the future.
Switch to alternative energy is key- dependency on foreign oil means creates failed foreign policy in the
Middle East.
Parmley, 06 (Julia Parmley-writes for University of Delaware newspaper, April 6 2006, "U.S must end dependency
on oil, experts say," http://www.udel.edu/PR/UDaily/2006/apr/global040606.html).
Depending on volatile countries in the Middle East for oil poses a threat to national security, Gal Luft, co-director of
the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security, said Wednesday evening, April 5, during a Global Agenda series
lecture at UD. “The reality is most of the world's oil is concentrated in areas and countries that are unstable, corrupt,
dictatorial and, in some cases, deeply resentful of the United States,” he said. “Seventy-one percent of the world's oil
reserves are in the hands of Muslim countries at a time in which our relationship with the Muslim world is at an all-
time low.” In his lecture, Luft said lack of oil in the U.S. increases its dependency on other countries. Although the
U.S. possesses only 3 percent of the world's oil, it consumes 25 percent. Luft, co-chairperson of the Set America
Free Coalition, said the U.S. is supporting terrorism by paying Middle Eastern countries for their oil. “We are
funding those countries that are the richest proliferators of radical Islam,” he said. “We are fighting the war on
terrorism, and we are paying for both sides of the war. On one hand, we are sending our troops and daughters all
over the world to fight for freedom and democracy. At the same time, every time we arrive into a gas station, we end
up sending dollars and cents to those who don't like us.” Luft: “Sixty percent of our oil is coming from abroad, and
this figure is growing by the day.” Luft said the U.S. cannot win the war on terror while relying so heavily on the
Middle East. “I do not think we can meet these goals as long as we are dependent on oil, to the degree that we are
today,” he said. “Sixty percent of our oil is coming from abroad, and this figure is growing by the day.” Luft said
terrorists are targeting the U.S. through oil pipeline sabotage. More than 1.5 billion barrels of oil have been lost as a
result of sabotage. Luft also said the U.S. could be exhausting the reserve of cheap oil and that oil prices could rise
in the next five years. The U.S. needs to find alternatives to oil, Luft said. Instead of gasoline, flexible fuels--such as
ethanol, methane and electricity--can be used to power cars, he said. Noting that it could take 20 years to replace an
oil-dependent economy, Luft said that it is critical to the country's safety and prosperity to begin the transformation
now. “Everyday we delay the beginning of the process is one more day, in the future, we will have to be under
severe adversity,” he said. Luft said the U.S. should take the lead in lessening its dependence on oil and that other
countries will follow.
Oil dependence hurts U.S.-Sino relations – competition over oil exacerbates differences on foreign policy
issues.
Downs, 2006 (“How Oil Fuels U.S.-Sino Fires,” The Brookings Institute, Erica S. Downs, China Energy Fellow at
the Brookings Institute, http://www.brookings.edu/opinions/2006/0904china_downs.aspx, Accessed 06-23-08)
The emergence of China over the past decade as a major importer of oil has catapulted energy toward the top of the
list of issues -- up there with trade and Taiwan -- that are major sources of friction in Sino-American relations.
China's rapidly rising demand for energy is stoking anxiety in Washington that there is not enough oil in the world to
satisfy the appetites both of America's 300 million gas-guzzling citizens and of 1.3 billion Chinese. In turn,
America's unease has raised concerns in Beijing that the U.S. might deny China access to the oil it needs for
continued economic growth. Much has been made over this looming fight. Yet the real conflict brewing between the
two powers isn't because of direct competition for physical barrels of crude, but rather because oil is inextricably
linked to other foreign policy issues on which Beijing and Washington don't see eye to eye. Oil's increasing role in
China's foreign policy reflects a surging demand. China is second only to the U.S. in world consumption, and it's
No. 3 in imports, following the U.S. and Japan. Its demand has more than doubled in the past decade. China
consumes 7 million barrels a day, one-third the U.S. level, and it imports 3.3 million bbl. a day, one-quarter the U.S.
level. But the International Energy Agency projects Chinese demand in 2011 will be 9.1 million bbl. a day, with
imports of 5.3 million bbl. China's growing domestic oil deficit has prompted it to follow in the footsteps of other
major importers to ensure access to oil. China is diversifying its suppliers, encouraging its national oil companies to
acquire assets abroad, and cultivating closer diplomatic relations with exporting nations. Although these are moves
long employed by other countries, their adoption by China has sounded alarm bells in Washington. (Remember the
furor over CNOOC's ill-fated bid for Unocal last year?) The two most prominent spots where China's search for oil
collides with American interests are the Sudan (the largest source of foreign production for Chinese companies) and
Iran (China's No. 3 supplier of crude imports). While Washington sees a major power using its permanent seat on the
U.N. Security Council to frustrate efforts to halt genocide in Darfur and to slow international action to curb Iran's
nuclear ambitions, Beijing sees international policies of limited efficacy that might jeopardize its oil supply. So far,
China has weighed its oil interests against the interests of the international community on a case-by-case basis. In
the case of Sudan, the scales have tipped in favor of oil. Beijing weakened the language of at least one Security
Council resolution to punish the Sudanese government for the atrocities in Darfur, but recently agreed to the
deployment of U.N. forces there if supported by the African Union. In the case of Iran, which requires balancing
competing interests such as oil, regional stability, and the Sino-American relationship, Beijing has sided with the
international community to date. China voted as a member of the board of governors of the International Atomic
Energy Agency in February, under pressure from Washington, to report the Iran nuclear issue to the U.N. and
supported the July 31 Security Council resolution threatening sanctions if Iran does not halt uranium enrichment.
However, deeper energy ties to Iran (the No. 2 holder of global oil and gas reserves) might tempt Beijing to tip the
scales in the other direction. Indeed, the risk for Washington is that China's growing dependence on imported oil
will increasingly prompt Beijing to give higher priority to oil than to international issues such as the protection of
human rights, nuclear nonproliferation, and good governance.
The perception of peak oil exacerbate tensions with great powers – like China.
Yetiv, June 24, 2008 (Steve, The Virginian Pilot “Calculating Peak oil’s due date” Lexis)
Fears about peak oil could also exacerbate tensions among great powers. For example, note China's obsessive
concern about energy and Washington's growing concern about China's rising power. Imagine how tense Sino-U.S.
relations could become against the backdrop of dwindling oil supplies or even the rising perception of such
dwindling supplies.
Stable U.S.-China relations can also help prevent Chinese aggression towards Taiwan. The bottom line is whether or
not Beijing can be persuaded to accept the status quo between the two countries. The U.S. commitment to Taiwan
inextricably links relations between Taipei and Beijing to the relationship between Beijing and Washington. If the
PRC perceives other areas of its relationship with the United States to be strong, such as U.S.-China trade and
negotiations over China's membership in the WTO, it has less incentive to disrupt the status quo in the Taiwan Strait.
Provocative U.S. actions may lead Beijing to believe that it has little to gain by maintaining peaceful relations with
the United States.
THE high-intensity scenario postulates a cross-strait war escalating into a full-scale war between the US and China.
If Washington were to conclude that splitting China would better serve its national interests, then a full-scale war
becomes unavoidable. Conflict on such a scale would embroil other countries far and near and -horror of horrors
-raise the possibility of a nuclear war. Beijing has already told the US and Japan privately that it considers any
country providing bases and logistics support to any US forces attacking China as belligerent parties open to its
retaliation. In the region, this means South Korea, Japan, the Philippines and, to a lesser extent, Singapore. If China
were to retaliate, east Asia will be set on fire. And the conflagration may not end there as opportunistic powers
elsewhere may try to overturn the existing world order. With the US distracted, Russia may seek to redefine Europe's
political landscape. The balance of power in the Middle East may be similarly upset by the likes of Iraq. In south
Asia, hostilities between India and Pakistan, each armed with its own nuclear arsenal, could enter a new and
dangerous phase. Will a full-scale Sino-US war lead to a nuclear war? According to General Matthew Ridgeway, commander of the US Eighth Army which fought against the
Chinese in the Korean War, the US had at the time thought of using nuclear weapons against China to save the US from military defeat. In his book The Korean War, a personal account of the
military and political aspects of the conflict and its implications on future US foreign policy, Gen Ridgeway said that US was confronted with two choices in Korea -truce or a broadened war,
which could have led to the use of nuclear weapons. If the US had to resort to nuclear weaponry to defeat China long before the latter acquired a similar capability, there is little hope of winning a
China possesses about 20 nuclear warheads that can destroy
war against China 50 years later, short of using nuclear weapons. The US estimates that
major American cities. Beijing also seems prepared to go for the nuclear option. A Chinese military officer disclosed
recently that Beijing was considering a review of its "non first use" principle regarding nuclear weapons. Major-
General Pan Zhangqiang, president of the military-funded Institute for Strategic Studies, told a gathering at the
Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars in Washington that although the government still abided by that
principle, there were strong pressures from the military to drop it. He said military leaders considered the use of
nuclear weapons mandatory if the country risked dismemberment as a result of foreign intervention. Gen Ridgeway
said that should that come to pass, we would see the destruction of civilisation.
US-Sino relations solve multiple scenarios for nuclear war and environmental destruction.
Desperes, 01 (John Desperes, Fellow, RAND Corporation. “China, the United States, and the Global Economy.” p.
227-8
Indeed, U.S.-Chinese relations have been consistently driven by strong common interests in preventing mutually
damaging wars in Asia that could involve nuclear weapons; in ensuring that Taiwan's relations with the mainland
remain peaceful; in sustaining the growth of the U.S., China, and other Asian-Pacific economies; and, in preserving
natural environments that sustain healthy and productive lives. What happens in China matters to Americans. It
affects America's prosperity. China's growing economy is a valuable market to many workers, farmers, and
businesses across America, not just to large multinational firms like Boeing, Microsoft, and Motorola, and it could
become much more valuable by opening its markets further. China also affects America's security. It could either
help to stabilize or destabilize currently peaceful but sometimes tense and dangerous situations in Korea, where U.S.
troops are on the front line; in the Taiwan Straits, where U.S. democratic values and strategic credibility may be at
stake; and in nuclear-armed South Asia, where renewed warfare could lead to terrible consequences. It also affects
America's environment. Indeed, how China meets its rising energy needs and protects its dwindling habitats will
affect the global atmosphere and currently endangered species.
US-Sino relations solve terrorism, proliferation, disease, war, and the economy.
Wenzhong, 04 (Zhou Wenzhong, PRC Ministry of Foreign Affairs. 2-7-04. “Vigorously Pushing Forward the
Constructive and Cooperative Relationship Between China and the United States,” http://china-
japan21.org/eng/zxxx/t64286.htm)
China's development needs a peaceful international environment, particularly in its periphery. We will continue to
play a constructive role in global and regional affairs and sincerely look forward to amicable coexistence and
friendly cooperation with all other countries, the United States included. We will continue to push for good-
neighborliness, friendship and partnership and dedicate ourselves to peace, stability and prosperity in the region.
Thus China's development will also mean stronger prospect of peace in the Asia-Pacific region and the world at
large. China and the US should, and can, work together for peace, stability and prosperity in the region. Given the highly
complementary nature of the two economies,China's reform, opening up and rising economic size have opened broad horizon for sustained China-US trade and economic cooperation. By
deepening our commercial partnership, which has already delivered tangible benefits to the two peoples, we can do still more and also make greater contribution to global economic stability and
Terrorism, cross-boundary crime, proliferation of advanced weapons, and spread of deadly diseases pose a
prosperity.
common threat to mankind. China and the US have extensive shared stake and common responsibility for meeting
these challenges, maintaining world peace and security and addressing other major issues bearing on human survival
and development. China is ready to keep up its coordination and cooperation in these areas with the US and the rest
of the international community.
Oil dependence makes freedom impossible – petro-tyrannies oppress their citizens and the U.S. has
increasingly curtained civil rights in the name of counterterrorism
Zubrin ’07 (Robert, Ph.D. in Nuclear Engineering from the University of Washington, President of Pioneer
Astronautics, Energy Victory: Winning the War on Terror by Breaking Free of Oil, Prometheus Books: Amherst,
New York, 2007. p. 251)
The enemy's control of the global oil supply is a threat to the freedom of all people around the world. Indeed, the
worst victims are the populations of the petrotyrannies themselves, for by giving their governments unlimited
expense accounts, it endows the powerful with the ability to trample their subjects at will. Gifts make slaves. In
European history, the acquisition of vast unearned New World treasure by Spain led to the degradation of the
enterprising classes and caused the abortion of the development of representative institutions in that country. In
contrast, the need of England to develop its sources of revenue through commerce and manufacturing forced the
British monarchy to consult with Parliament and enact measures suitable for growing the productive powers of the
nation. Similarly, in the Middle East today, those nations with the least oil have the most literacy, education, and
freedom. The people of Arabia will never be free so long as their rulers have no need of their human capacities. The
enemy control of oil also threatens our own freedom, in three different ways. On the one hand, there are those who
would use the need to counter the oil cartel as a pretext to demand measures of economic strangulation, thereby -
furthering their quest to expand state power at the expense of the individual. On another, there are those who would
respond to the perils posed by the terrorists funded by the enemy oil with ever more intrusive police actions. The
Bush administration has already begun to enact measures along such lines, and more will certainly follow, regardless
of who is in power, if the terror attacks are allowed to continue. It is an axiom of political science that liberty will
not thrive in a state of siege.
Dependence on foreign oil restricts foreign policy – fuels conflict and trades off with democracy promotion,
human rights protection, and economic development.
Duffield, 2008 (Over a Barrel: The Cost of U.S. Foreign Oil Dependence, John S. Duffield, Professor of Political
Science at Georgia State University, Stanford University Press: Stanford, CA, p. 207-208)
The most substantial U.S, responses to the economic costs and risks of foreign oil dependence have taken the form
of foreign and military policies toward actual or potential oil producing regions and states. These policies have been
intended to reduce the size and risk of potential oil supply disruptions and price shocks and, more generally, to
ensure reliable access to foreign oil supplies at reasonable prices for the United States and its economic and security
partners, Overall, these external policies appear to have enjoyed at least some success in helping to stabilize world
oil supplies, Certainly, the last two [end page 207] and a half decades have seen nothing like the oil shocks of the
1970s, although this favorable record can also be attributed at least in part to changes in the global oil market.
Nevertheless, these foreign and military policies have also imposed substantial costs, which are much larger than
most people have realized. American diplomacy and various forms of military and economic assistance aimed at
strengthening and influencing the policies of oil producing states have involved additional financial expenditures.
Perhaps even more important, U.S. foreign policy has also entailed numerous intangible costs. These have included
reduced freedom of action and a reluctance to pursue other valued foreign policy goals, such as the promotion of
democracy, the protection of human rights, good governance, and economic development, where they have
conflicted with oil-related interests. The costs have also taken the form of increased entanglement, or risk thereof, in
local and regional conflict. Such costs have been most prominent in the Persian Gulf, but they have been
increasingly present in other regions, such as the Gulf of Guinea and the Caspian Sea (sec Chapter 6).
United States oil dependence undermines democracy and supports oppressive regimes – oil wealth diffuses
democratic pressure and secures military loyalty.
Sandalow, 2008 (Freedom From Oil, David B. Sandalow, Energy and Environment Scholar and senior fellow at the
Brookings Institution, chair of the Energy and Climate Working Group of the Clinton Global Initiative, McGraw-
Hill: New York, New York, 2008. p. 25)
Fourth, oil dependence undermines democracy and good governance around the world. Oil wealth corrodes
democratic institutions. This dynamic is not inevitable, but it is widespread. A growing body of scholarly work
explores this topic, concluding that oil wealth is strongly associated with corruption and authoritarian rule." A few
examples underscore this trend. Bahrain, the Persian Gulf country with the smallest oil reserves, was also the first to
hold free elections. 14 As oil prices climbed in recent years, both Vladmir Putin and Hugo Chavez moved away
from democratic institutions and toward more authoritarian rule. In Nigeria, oil abundance contributes to widespread
corruption. Several explanations have been offered. Oil-rich leaders can diffuse democratic pressure with low taxes
and generous payments. They can use wealth to command the loyalty of internal security forces, stifling any
democratic pressures that emerge. Income generated by exporting oil appreciates a country's currency, pricing out
other local goods on the international market and further deepening the country's reliance on the income from the
natural resource. Meanwhile, exports of oil do not create the skills or social patterns that lead to a vibrant middle
class and, in turn, to democracy. 15 Our dependence on oil, and in particular our consumption each year of more
than 25% of global production, plays a central role in perpetuating these trends. Without the United States as a major
consumer, prices for oil would drop and democratic pressures would grow in many countries around the world.
High oil prices undermine democracy in oil producers – it allows the government to ignore public opinion
Friedman, ’06 (Thomas L., columnist for the New York Times, “The First Law of Petropolitics,” Foreign Policy,
May/June, http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=3426&print=1, 07-01-08)
The First Law of Petropolitics posits the following: The price of oil and the pace of freedom always move in
opposite directions in oil-rich petrolist states. According to the First Law of Petropolitics, the higher the average
global crude oil price rises, the more free speech, free press, free and fair elections, an independent judiciary, the
rule of law, and independent political parties are eroded. And these negative trends are reinforced by the fact that the
higher the price goes, the less petrolist leaders are sensitive to what the world thinks or says about them. Conversely,
according to the First Law of Petropolitics, the lower the price of oil, the more petrolist countries are forced to move
toward a political system and a society that is more transparent, more sensitive to opposition voices, and more
focused on building the legal and educational structures that will maximize their people’s ability, both men’s and
women’s, to compete, start new companies, and attract investments from abroad. The lower the price of crude oil
falls, the more petrolist leaders are sensitive to what outside forces think of them.
High oil prices prevent democratization in producer countries – it allows the government to pay off special
interest groups and increase authoritarian security regimes
Friedman, ’06 (Thomas L., columnist for the New York Times, “The First Law of Petropolitics,” Foreign Policy,
May/June, http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=3426&print=1, 07-01-08)
The second mechanism through which oil dampens democratization, argues Ross, is the “spending effect.” Oil
wealth leads to greater patronage spending, which in turn dampens pressures for democratization. The third
mechanism he cites is the “group formation effect.” When oil revenues provide an authoritarian state with a cash
windfall, the government can use its newfound wealth to prevent independent social groups—precisely those most
inclined to demand political rights—from forming. In addition, he argues, an overabundance of oil revenues can
create a “repression effect,” because it allows governments to spend excessively on police, internal security, and
intelligence forces that can be used to choke democratic movements. Finally, Ross sees a “modernization effect” at
work. A massive influx of oil wealth can diminish social pressures for occupational specialization, urbanization, and
the securing of higher levels of education—trends that normally accompany broad economic development and that
also produce a public that is more articulate, better able to organize, bargain, and communicate, and endowed with
economic power centers of its own. The First Law of Petropolitics tries to build on such arguments but to take the
correlation between oil and politics one step further. What I am arguing in positing the First Law of Petropolitics is
not only that an overdependence on crude oil can be a curse in general but also that one can actually correlate rises
and falls in the price of oil with rises and falls in the pace of freedom in petrolist countries. The connection is very
real. As these graphs demonstrate, the pace of freedom really starts to decline as the price of oil really starts to take
off. The reason this connection between the price of oil and the pace of freedom is worth focusing on today is that
we appear to be at the onset of a structural rise in global crude oil prices. If that is the case, this higher price level is
almost certain to have a long-term effect on the character of politics in many weak or authoritarian states.
Oil dependence tanks the economy – wealth transfer hurts domestic production and decreases the GDP by
trillions.
Duffield, 2008 (Over a Barrel: The Cost of U.S. Foreign Oil Dependence, John S. Duffield, Professor of Political
Science at Georgia State University, Stanford University Press: Stanford, CA, p. 31-33).
Every day, millions of barrels of crude oil and petroleum products arrive in the United States from abroad via tanker
and pipeline. And every day, hundreds of millions of dollars flow out of the country to pay for those imports (see
Figure 3.1) [end page 31] Since the early 1970s, crude oil and petroleum products have accounted for a substantial
amount of total U.S. imports, reaching nearly one-third of the total in 1980. Although this share dropped to well
below 10 percent in the late 1980s and again in the 1990s as a result of temporary declines in both oil prices and the
level of imports, it has grown steadily in recent years, reaching 15 percent in 2005. Net oil imports have also
represented a large fraction of the U.S. trade deficit, fluctuating between 20 and 42 percent during the past decade. In
2000, the bill for petroleum imports passed 1 percent of U.S. gross national product (GDP) for the first time since 1985 (Holdren 2004, 44). Altogether, according to one estimate, Americans sent
52.2 trillion abroad for oil between 1975 and 2003, (Lovins et al. 2004, 15). Wealth Transfers Abroad Some fraction of this steady outflow of dollars represents a net transfer of wealth abroad. If
,
world oil prices were set by market forces alone, then the amount paid would closely reflect the marginal cost of producing and transporting the last barrel of oil. For several reasons, however
the world oil market is less than fully competitive. In many oil producing countries, governments rather than market
forces determine the amount of oil produced. In addition, oil exporting states have often attempted to coordinate
output levels in order to influence world price. This coordination has taken place primarily through the Organization
of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), whose twelve current members include ten of the world's thirteen
largest oil exporters. But it has sometimes also involved important non-OPEC exporters, such as Mexico and Russia.
The net result is that world oil prices have typically been higher than they would have been in the presence (11'
perfectly competitive oil markets. And to as long as U.S. oil prices are set by world markets and world prices are
artificially high, consumers will transfer wealth producers, both at home and abroad. The size of the transfer to
foreign producers, which is of primary concern here, is equal to the quantity of U.S. oil imports times the difference
between the actual price and the competitive market price (Greene, Jones, and Leiby 1998, 60). Initially, this transfer
takes the form of financial exchanges, but eventually, oil exporters may be expected to claim payment in real terms
by purchasing goods and services from the United States. Thus more domestic output will have to go to exports,
leaving fewer goods and services for consumption at home (Mork 1982, 119). The principal question is not whether
oil prices have been higher than [end page 32] competitive levels, but just how big this difference has been.
Estimates of the competitive market price rest heavily on a number of assumptions. As a result, economists haw
disagreed over whether the difference is significant or minimal (Leiby et al. 1997, S-6,). Nevertheless, the lack of
consensus has not prevented economists from attempting to measure it. A 1993 Oak Ridge National Laboratory
(ORNL) study chose $9.10 per barrel in 1990 dollars as a reasonable estimate for the period 1972-91. Using that
figure, it calculated that the annual transfer of wealth to foreign suppliers during those two decades added up to $1.2
trillion, or a present value of $1.9 trillion, in 1990 dollars. Even if the competitive market price were assumed to have risen by 2 percent a year, the net
wealth transfer would still have amounted to $1.0 trillion, or at present value of $1.76 trillion, in 1990 dollars (Greene and Leiby l990, 30, 35-37). A later Oak Ridge study, using three different
indicators, produced a slightly lower but still substantial estimate. It put the competitive market value at $11.27 per barrel for the years 1970 and 1999 and estimated the total wealth transfer
Thus if these government studies arc reasonably accurate,
abroad over that period at $1.16 trillion in 1998 dollars (Greene and Tishchishvna 2001, 17, 24).
U.S. consumers have transferred significantly more than $1 trillion to foreign oil producers so far, and the figure is
still growing. Loss of Potential Gross Domestic Product The overall economic effect of chronic foreign oil
dependence, as a consequence of both higher than competitive prices and the transfer of wealth abroad, is a decrease
in potential total economic output, as measured by gross domestic product (GDP).
Oil shocks decrease economic output and increase unemployment for years.
Duffield, 2008 (Over a Barrel: The Cost of U.S. Foreign Oil Dependence, John S. Duffield, Professor of Political
Science at Georgia State University, Stanford University Press: Stanford, CA, p. 41-42)
As Philip Verleger has pointed out, with market mechanisms, the fundamental problem of disruptions is not physical
shortages but price increases and their economic consequences (Verleger 1994, 7). Thus, broadly speaking, oil
shocks can haw three negative effects. First, they may result, at least temporarily, in increased outlays for oil
imports. Oil consumption and oil production are relatively unresponsive (inelastic) to price hikes in the short run.
Thus sudden reductions in supply can cause prices to rise dramatically, and it can take a while before higher prices
result in significantly lower demand and greater levels of domestic supply. One reason for this lack of
responsiveness is that increased oil production [end page 41] and the replacement of oil burning machinery with
substitutes that are more efficient or use other energy sources require large capital investments and long lead times.
In the meantime, consumers must pay inflated prices for the oil they continue to import, which effectively reduces
their income and purchasing power. The country must export more goods and services to pay for each barrel of
imported oil (Leiby et al. 1997, 5-7; Bohi and Toman 1996, 74; Huntington 2005, 4).Second, oil shocks may reduce
over the longer term a country's potential economic output, assuming that prices remain at an elevated level. In
response to higher energy prices, firms may use less energy, which reduces the amount of output that can be
produced with a given amount of capital and labor. As a result, the productivity of both labor and capital declines
(GAO 1996, 32). In a sense, this effect is no different from that of a more gradual price increase. Thus the most
distinctive cost of oil shocks is how they may temporarily cause economic output to fall below even the now
diminished full potential, or what are called macroeconomic adjustment costs. As one study explains: In the short
run, the economy must adjust by re-balancing outputs and inputs of labor, materials, energy, and capital in ways that
may end up costing more than is necessary in the long-run if more than the loss of potential GDP. Wages and prices
do not adjust immediately to the new price of oil for reasons such as cost-of-living provisions in labor contracts and
entitlement programs. Substitution of other energy sources and other factors of production for oil take time because
of the durability of ... energy-using equipment. The GNP level that can be reached in the short-run is necessarily
lower than that which could be reached if the economy were able to adjust to the long-run, optimal, prices and
wages. (Leiby et al. 1997, S-8) The magnitude of these costs depends on the size of the oil price increase as well as
the vulnerability of the economy to adjustment losses for a price shock of a given size (Leiby et al. 1997, S-9).
Because these costs result from the economy’s inability to respond quickly, they are temporary and are believed to
dissipate within three to five years (Greene and Tishchishyna 2001, 16). In the meantime, however, the economy
will experience inflationary pressures and increased unemployment (OT A 1991, 106).
High energy prices undermine U.S leadership, increase Russian expansionism, tank the U.S. economy, hurt
democracy, and spur Iranian proliferation
Bloomberg, 06 (Brendan Murray, "Bush Leverage With Russia, Iran, China Falls as Oil Prices Rise" 5-1-06
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000087&sid=ar4D7HVGikXo&refer=top_world_news) AMK
May 1 (Bloomberg) -- President George W. Bush, already weakened at home by the soaring cost of oil, is finding
that it's also eroding his ability to achieve his foreign-policy goals. ``It's a geopolitical nightmare,'' says William
Cohen, a former Republican senator from Maine and defense secretary under President Bill Clinton who is now
chairman of the Cohen Group, a Washington-based consulting firm. Such nations as Iran, Russia and China ``don't
see us as the colossus that can cause them any harm, either by our economy or by our prestige.'' Record-high energy
prices are weakening Bush's prospects of assembling an international coalition to counter Iran's nuclear ambitions.
They are diminishing his chances of influencing energy-rich nations such as Russia and isolating troublesome ones
including Venezuela and Sudan. And they are straining U.S. economic and diplomatic ties with China, whose oil
needs are skyrocketing. Prices show no signs of abating in the last two-and-a-half years of Bush's presidency, with
oil futures hovering near $72 a barrel through the November 2008 presidential election. That's creating a windfall
for oil-producing nations that may thwart Bush's goal of promoting democracy and free markets from Asia to the
Middle East and halting the spread of nuclear arms. Bush acknowledged last week that high oil prices have
decreased the U.S.'s power to sway events. ``Some of the nations we rely on for oil have unstable governments or
agendas that are hostile to the United States,'' he said in an April 25 speech to ethanol producers in Washington.
``These countries know we need their oil, and that reduces our influence.'' Security Concern Bush called the U.S.
dependence on imports a ``national- security concern,'' saying the nation now gets about 60 percent of its oil from overseas, up from 25 percent two decades
ago. An ABC News/Washington Post poll showed that 74 percent of Americans disapprove of the way Bush is handling gasoline prices, while 23 percent approve. The poll, conducted April 6-9,
,
also showed Bush's overall approval rating fell to a record-low 38 percent. While his weakened standing with Americans limits his ability to marshal support for his policies at home
energy- producing countries that view oil as political and diplomatic currency are emboldened, recognizing that the
American economy depends largely on them. `Tied Bush's Hands' ``The high crude prices have tied Bush's hands,''
says David Goldwyn, president of Goldwyn International Strategies, a Washington-based consulting firm, and an
assistant energy secretary during the Clinton administration. ``These very high prices really empower other leaders
to act with impunity.'' It isn't only oil producers that are ignoring U.S. wishes. China, the world's second-largest consumer of petroleum products behind the U.S., is seeking energy
resources wherever it can find them. That includes negotiating for investments in nations such as Iran, Nigeria and Sudan, where Bush is seeking to improve human rights and push democracy.
Chinese President Hu Jintao followed his April 20 visit to the U.S. with a trip to Nigeria, Africa's biggest oil producer, to seek drilling rights. China has accounted for more than 40 percent of the
Putin has frustrated the Bush
growth in global oil demand during the past four years, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Russian President Vladimir
administration by rolling back democratic rights in his country and seeking to dominate former Soviet republics.
Putin has also been reluctant to pressure North Korea and Iran to not develop nuclear weapons. He has resisted U.S.
efforts to impose sanctions on Iran, as has China. Difficulty With Russia The Bush administration is having difficulty with Russia even though the U.S. buys little
oil or natural gas from the country, says Jim Goldgeier, a professor of international affairs at George Washington University in Washington. ``It's not so much our dependence,'' Goldgeier says.
``The bigger impact has been the effect of Russia's energy development on its own assertiveness in foreign policy. There's a real sense that they don't need us very much, so they don't need to
In Iran, the world's second-
listen to us.'' Last year, Russia earned $117 billion from exports of oil and oil products, and another $32 billion from gas, government figures show.
largest holder of oil and gas reserves, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has rejected a UN deadline to suspend the
nuclear program. On April 28, the UN's nuclear agency told the Security Council that Iran has enriched uranium and
is stonewalling efforts to determine whether the program is intended for the production of nuclear weapons. Oil
Earnings Iran earned $45 billion in oil revenue in the year ended March 20, almost 50 percent more than it generated
a year earlier, the government says. That income helps keep society calm and reformers at bay. ``High oil prices help
the people who are in power to stay in power,'' says Michael Mussa, a senior economist at the Washington-based
Institute for International Economics. White House spokeswoman Dana Perino says rising oil prices reflect U.S.-led
global economic growth that has benefited many developing nations. She also says increasing oil revenue has
benefited some governments that are hostile to the U.S. ``High prices have supported some regimes that do not share
our values,'' Perino says.
Heg is good.
Khalilzad, 95 (Zalmay, Washington Quarterly, Spring, lexis)
Under the third option, the United States would seek to retain global leadership and to preclude the rise of a global
rival or a return to multipolarity for the indefinite future. On balance, this is the best long-term guiding principle and
vision. Such a vision is desirable not as an end in itself, but because a world in which the United States exercises
leadership would have tremendous advantages. First, the global environment would be more open and more
receptive to American values -- democracy, free markets, and the rule of law. Second, such a world would have a
better chance of dealing cooperatively with the world's major problems, such as nuclear proliferation, threats of
regional hegemony by renegade states, and low-level conflicts. Finally, U.S. leadership would help preclude the rise
of another hostile global rival, enabling the United States and the world to avoid another global cold or hot war and
all the attendant dangers, including a global nuclear exchange. U.S. leadership would therefore be more conducive
to global stability than a bipolar or a multipolar balance of power system.
A major terrorist attack on oil supplies would crash the world economy and gut US military missions.
Gartenstein-Ross, May 20, 2008 (Daveed, vice president of Foundation for Defense of Democracies “The High
Cost of Oil Dependence” http://www.defenddemocracy.org/publications/publications_show.htm?doc_id=686169)
Actual terrorist targeting has made clear that this is not empty rhetoric. After a September 2005 shootout between
militants and Saudi police in the seaport of al-Dammam, police found forged documents that would have provided
the terrorists access to some of the country’s key oil and gas facilities. Saudi interior minister Prince Nayef told the
daily newspaper Okaz that the cell had planned to attack these facilities. In April 2007, Saudi Arabia announced that
“it foiled an al Qaeda-linked plot to attack oil facilities and military bases.” Indeed, former CIA agent Robert Baer
warned back in 2003 that tactics in which al-Qaeda already had a demonstrated proficiency could succeed in taking
a great deal of Saudi oil off the market instantaneously. He stated that “a single jumbo jet with a suicide bomber at
the controls . . . would be enough to bring the world’s oil-addicted economies to their knees” if crashed into a major
offshore loading facility. Following such an attack, the substantially reduced worldwide supply of oil would be
joined by an inflated risk premium. While it is difficult to determine the ceiling for oil prices if such a scenario
unfolded, Sawt al-Jihad may have been correct: diminished access to the military’s lifeblood could spell doom for
the U.S. ventures in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Failed energy policies mean that we are losing the war on terror.
Zubrin ’07 (Robert, Ph.D. in Nuclear Engineering from the University of Washington, President of Pioneer
Astronautics, Energy Victory: Winning the War on Terror by Breaking Free of Oil, Prometheus Books: Amherst,
New York, 2007. p 11)
America is losing the war on terror. For the past thirty-five years, we have allowed the enemy's power to grow, and
as a result, a cult that was once an anachronistic curiosity has now become a worldwide menace. Saudi Arabia is the
primary global financier of the Islamist terror cult. In 1972, Saudi foreign exchange earnings were $2.7 billion. In
2006 they topped $200 billion. Over the same period, the United States' dependency upon foreign oil grew from 30
percent to 60 percent and our annual oil import bill grew from less than $4 billion to more than $260 billion. As a
result of our failure to enact a competent energy policy, our country is being looted, and the enemy's power has been
fabulously multiplied. We are financing a war against ourselves. And with the rapid industrialization of China and
India increasing global demand for oil, prices are set to soar even further. Unless action is taken, things are about to
get much worse.
Middle Eastern oil fuels terrorism – U.S. presence breeds resentment and monetary flows finance terrorist
networks.
Sandlow, May 22, 2008 (“Rising Oil Prices, Declining National Security,” The Brookings Institute, David B.
Sandlow, Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institute in Foreign Policy,
http://www.brookings.edu/experts/sandalowd.aspx, Accessed 06-23-08)
First, oil dependence strengthens Al Qaeda and other Islamic terrorists. The United States is in a long war. Islamic
fundamentalists struck our shores and are determined to do so again. Like the Cold War, this struggle has many
causes and will last for generations. Unlike the Cold War, oil dependence plays a central role in the struggle. For
more than 50 years, the need to protect oil flows has shaped U.S. policy and relationships in the Persian Gulf.
During the Cold War, we supported the Shah of Iran in part to keep oil flowing from the region. In 1980, President
Carter declared that attempts by outside forces to gain control of the Persian Gulf would be “repelled by any means
necessary, including military force.” In 1991, with Saddam Hussein in Kuwait, President George H.W. Bush told
Congress that war was necessary because “[v]ital economic interests are at risk…Iraq itself controls some 10% of
the world’s proven oil reserves. Iraq plus Kuwait controls twice that.” After removing Saddam from Kuwait in 1991,
U.S. troops remained in Saudi Arabia where their presence bred great resentment. These steps to secure oil flows
have come at a cost. By making us central players in a region torn by ancient rivalries, oil dependence has exposed
us to resentment, vulnerability and attack. Osama bin Laden’s first fatwa, in 1996, was titled “Declaration of War
against the Americans Occupying the Land of the Two Holy Places.” Today, deep resentment of the U.S. role in the
Persian Gulf remains a powerful recruitment tool for Islamic fundamentalists. Yet the United States faces severe
constraints in responding to this resentment. With half the world’s proven oil reserves, the world’s cheapest oil and
the world’s only spare production capacity, the Persian Gulf will remain an indispensable region for the global
economy so long as modern vehicles run only on oil. To protect oil flows, the U.S. policymakers will feel compelled
to maintain relationships and exert power in the region in ways likely to fuel Islamic terrorists. Compounding these
problems, the huge money flows into the Persian Gulf from oil purchases help finance terrorist networks. Al Qaeda
raises funds from an extensive global network, with Islamic charities and NGOs playing an important role. Saudi
money provides critical support for madrassas with virulent anti-American views.
Even a small terrorist attack causes the US to lash out, resulting in global war
Schwartz-Morgan, 01 (Nicole, Assistant Prof Politics and Econ – Royal Military College of Canada, Wild
Globalization and Terrorism, http://www.wfs.org/mmmorgan.htm)
The terrorist act can reactivate atavistic defense mechanisms which drive us to gather around clan chieftans.
Nationalistic sentiment re-awakens, setting up an implacable frontier which divides "us" from "them," each group solidifying
its cohesion in a rising hate/fear of the other group. (Remember Yugoslavia?) To be sure, the allies are trying for the moment to avoid the language of polarization, insisting that "this is not a
war," that it is "not against Islam," "civilians will not be targeted." But the word "war" was pronounced, a word heavy with significance which forces the issue of partisanship. And it must be
understood that the sentiment of partisanship, of belonging to the group, is one of the strongest of human emotions. Because the enemy has been named in the media (Islam), the situation has
Another spectacular attack, coming on top of an economic recession could easily radicalize the
become emotionally volatile.
latent attitudes of the United States, and also of Europe, where racial prejudices are especially close to the surface and
ask no more than a pretext to burst out. This is the Sarajevo syndrome: an isolated act of madness becomes the pretext for a war that is just as mad, made of ancestral rancor, measureless
ambitions, and armies in search of a war. We should not be fooled by our expressions of good will and charity toward the innocent victims of this or other distant wars. It is our own comfortable
circumstances which permit us these benevolent sentiments. If conditions change so that poverty and famine put the fear of starvation in our guts, the human beast will reappear. And if epidemic
, fear will unleash hatred in the land of the free, flinging missiles indiscriminately toward any
becomes a clear and present danger
supposed havens of the unseen enemy.
Disorder within Russia and the resulting strains within the military could easily cause a lapse or a breakdown in the
Russian military's guardianship of nuclear weapons. 38 Accordingly, there is a significant and ever-present risk that
terrorists could acquire a nuclear device or fissile material from Russia as a result of the confluence of Russian
economic decline and the end of stringent Soviet-era nuclear security measures. 39 Terrorist groups could acquire a
nuclear weapon by a number of methods, including "steal[ing] one intact from the stockpile of a country possessing
such weapons, or ... [being] sold or given one by [*1438] such a country, or [buying or stealing] one from another
subnational group that had obtained it in one of these ways." 40 Equally threatening, however, is the risk that
terrorists will steal or purchase fissile material and construct a nuclear device on their own. Very little material is
necessary to construct a highly destructive nuclear weapon. 41 Although nuclear devices are extraordinarily
complex, the technical barriers to constructing a workable weapon are not significant. 42 Moreover, the sheer
number of methods that could be used to deliver a nuclear device into the United States makes it incredibly likely
that terrorists could successfully employ a nuclear weapon once it was built. 43 Accordingly, supply-side controls
that are aimed at preventing terrorists from acquiring nuclear material in the first place are the most effective means
of countering the risk of nuclear terrorism. 44 Moreover, the end of the Cold War eliminated the rationale for
maintaining a large military-industrial complex in Russia, and the nuclear cities were closed. 45 This resulted in at
least 35,000 nuclear scientists becoming unemployed in an economy that was collapsing. 46 Although the economy
has stabilized somewhat, there [*1439] are still at least 20,000 former scientists who are unemployed or underpaid
and who are too young to retire, 47 raising the chilling prospect that these scientists will be tempted to sell their
nuclear knowledge, or steal nuclear material to sell, to states or terrorist organizations with nuclear ambitions. 48
The potential consequences of the unchecked spread of nuclear knowledge and material to terrorist groups that seek
to cause mass destruction in the United States are truly horrifying. A terrorist attack with a nuclear weapon would be
devastating in terms of immediate human and economic losses. 49 Moreover, there would be immense political
pressure in the United States to discover the perpetrators and retaliate with nuclear weapons, massively increasing
the number of casualties and potentially triggering a full-scale nuclear conflict. 50 In addition to the threat posed by
terrorists, leakage of nuclear knowledge and material from Russia will reduce the barriers that states with nuclear
ambitions face and may trigger widespread proliferation of nuclear weapons. 51 This proliferation will increase the
risk of nuclear attacks against the United States [*1440] or its allies by hostile states, 52 as well as increase the
likelihood that regional conflicts will draw in the United States and escalate to the use of nuclear weapons. 53
Oil shocks will collapse developing countries and lead to great power wars.
Elhefnawy, April 1, 2008 (Nadar, Visiting Assistant Professor of Literature at the University of Miami, “The
Impending Oil Shock,” Informaworld, ProQuest, Accessed 06-30-08)
Some states, particularly in the underdeveloped world, may not even be able to obtain sufficient energy resources to
keep their economies functioning. Less-developed nations differ widely in the energy-intensiveness of their
economies as well, but given the relatively low resource productivity of many; their obsolete, poorly maintained or
otherwise inadequate infrastructure; and their obligation to pay for high-priced oil in hard currency; low-income oil
importers will be in an especially poor position. In contrast to developed states enjoying more developed institutions
and better access to capital and technology, less-developed nations have fewer of the resources needed to adapt to
new circumstances, and any price shock would weaken such resources as they do have.71 Indeed, with adequate
supplies of energy priced out of the reach of consumers, businesses and government, basic services might fail and
states cease to be viable, even as developed nations continue to get by. Any price shock would come in an
environment already favouring state failure: recent years have seen stagnating growth in Latin America and Africa;
the removal of a great deal of foreign support for weak governments (a process that started with the Cold War’s
end); and continued population growth in the poorest regions, putting pressure on infrastructure and resource bases.
Many of these problems will get worse rather than better, particularly the relationship between population size and
natural resources such as water and arable land. The salinated and damaged farmland on which a third of the world’s
crops are presently grown is a case in point.72 Aside from the expensive repairs such lands require, drip-irrigation
and other methods needed to keep them productive are much more energy intensive than current practices. Not
having access to the required energy may mean disaster. Moreover, there will be spillover effects, such as refugee
flows and the emergence of havens for terrorism and organised crime, as in Afghanistan and Somalia. There is also
the danger that where one state fails, another may move in, either formally or informally. These interventions may
be motivated by a sense of threat (guerrillas using the territory of failed states as a base of refuge), or the sighting of
an opportunity to grab territory and resources – both of which were factors in the numerous invasions of the Democratic Republic of the Congo by its neighbours
since the mid 1990s.73 The heightened risk of state failure will drive inreasingly desperate efforts to avoid it, especially given the lower efficacy of market-driven solutions in impoverished
countries.74 Weak states may make ‘neo-feudal’ arrangements with sub-state actors like warlords, private militias and private corporations to shore up their positions. Alternatively, they may
become more centralised and controlling, even totalitarian, and other, stronger nations may feel compelled to prop them up, despite the unsavoury character of their regimes.75 There may also be
76 The
an increased demand for peacekeeping missions, demand that will likely overwhelm the ability of the major military powers to deliver; indeed, they have already been overwhelmed.
problem could become still more severe, not only because of more numerous crises, but because the lopsided
conventional wars the major powers are most likely to fight require relatively few ‘boots on the ground’, while
nation-building in the ever more populous and urbanised developing world requires larger numbers. Smaller
countries are not the only ones at risk. The failure of large but economically fragile states on the model of the Soviet
collapse is conceivable, and even more problematic at the global level, given that their size compounds their problems, making them more difficult
to bail out or prop up, and introducing problems that are not a consideration with smaller states, such as the proliferation of sophisticated weaponry. The moment before a large nation collapses is
especially fraught with peril.77 The Soviet Union made surprisingly little effort to resist dissolution in 1991, but there is no certainty that the next great power to go this way will not flail about
. Great-power conflict is not out of the question; it may even be the most likely cause of conflict in
dangerously prior to collapse
the future, particularly if crises bring radical ideologies to the fore.78
Major oil shocks would plunge the world into nuclear war.
Lauria 08 – (Joe - New York-based investigative journalist. A freelance member of the Sunday Times of London
Insight team, he has also worked on investigations for the Boston Globe and Bloomberg News., The Huffington
Post, April 14, “The Coming War with Iran: It’s About the Oil, Stupid,”
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/04/14/8282/)
The Saudis would not mind seeing the Iranian regime go. But the Saudis may also be on the list. The US may have
to destabilize and control Saudi Arabia some day too. The Wall Street Journal a few years ago revealed that in the
1970s under Nixon, Kissinger had plans drawn up for the US invasion and occupation of the Saudi oil fields. Those
plans can be dusted off. The American oil wars are being launched out of weakness, not strength. The American
economy is teetering and without control of the remaining oil it will collapse. There will be massive chaos in any
case, when only enough oil remains for the American elite and whomever they choose to share it with. That will
leave an oil-starved China and India, both with nuclear weapons, with no alternative but to bow to America or go to
war. It’s not about greed any more. It’s about survival. Because the leadership of this country was initially too
greedy to switch from oil to solar, wind, geothermal and other renewable alternatives, it may now be too late. Had
the hundreds of billions of dollars poured into the invasion and occupation of Iraq been put into alternative energy
the world might have had a fighting chance. Now that is far from certain. What is certain is that these wars are not
about democracy. They are not about WMD. The coming one will not even be about Iran’s nuclear weapons project.
It’s about the oil, stupid.
OIL prices nearly broke through $US120 a barrel this week, setting another record for the world's most
indispensable energy commodity. What was striking was what did not happen: there was no shortage of oil, no
sudden embargo, no exporter turning off its spigot. Some attacks on oil pipelines in Nigeria was all it took. The
weak US dollar, worries about terrorism and speculation on commodity markets certainly played a role. But, of
course, so did demand. Producers are struggling to pump as much as they can to quench the thirst not only of the
developed world, but fast-growing developing nations such as China and India, the two most populous countries. To
many experts, the steadily rising price underscored longer-term fears about a system that has supplied cheap oil for
more than a century. "This is the market signaling there is a problem, that there is a growing difficulty to meet
demand with new supplies," said UBS global oil economist Jan Stuart. Today's tensions are only likely to worsen in
coming years. Consider a few numbers. The planet's population is expected to grow by 50% to 9 billion by the
middle of the century. The number of cars and trucks is projected to double in 30 years — to more than 2 billion —
as developing nations rapidly modernise. And twice as many passenger planes, more than 36,000, will in all
likelihood be flying in 20 years. All of that will require a lot more oil — enough that global oil consumption will
jump by 35% by 2030, according to the International Energy Agency, a leading global energy forecaster for the US
and other developed nations. Producers will have to find and pump an additional 11 billion barrels every year. And
that's only 22 years away, a heartbeat for the petroleum industry, where the pace of finding and tapping supplies is
measured in decades. The pursuit of oil will be just part of the energy challenge. The world's energy demand —
including oil, coal, natural gas, nuclear power, as well as renewable energy sources such as wind, solar and hydro
power — is set to rise by 65% over the next two decades, according to the IEA. But petroleum, the dominant fuel of
the 20th century, will remain the top energy source. It accounts for more than a third of energy needs, ahead of coal
and natural gas. Refined into petrol, kerosene or diesel fuel, oil has no viable substitute as a transport fuel, and that is
not likely to change much in the next 30 years. The problem is that no one can say for sure where all this oil is
going to come from. That might not sound like such a bad thing for those concerned about carbon emissions and
climate change. High prices might force people to conserve and encourage development of alternatives. But the
energy crunch might also result in a global scramble for resources, energy wars, and much higher energy prices.
High oil prices cause civil wars and state collapse in producer states
Ross, June, ’08 (Michael L., associate professor of political science at the University of California, “Blood Barrels:
Why Oil Wealth Fuels Conflict,” Foreign Affairs, May/June, lexis nexis, 07-01-08)
The world is far more peaceful today than it was 15 years ago. There were 17 major civil wars -- with "major"
meaning the kind that kill more than a thousand people a year -- going on at the end of the Cold War; by 2006, there
were just five. During that period, the number of smaller conflicts also fell, from 33 to 27. Despite this trend, there
has been no drop in the number of wars in countries that produce oil. The main reason is that oil wealth often wreaks
havoc on a country's economy and politics, makes it easier for insurgents to fund their rebellions, and aggravates
ethnic grievances. Today, with violence falling in general, oil-producing states make up a growing fraction of the
world's conflict-ridden countries. They now host about a third of the world's civil wars, both large and small, up
from one-fifth in 1992. According to some, the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq shows that oil breeds conflict between
countries, but the more widespread problem is that it breeds conflict within them. The number of oil-producer-based
conflicts is likely to grow in the future as stratospheric prices of crude oil push more countries in the developing
world to produce oil and gas. In 2001, the Bush administration's energy task force hailed the emergence of new
producers as a chance for the United States to diversify the sources of its energy imports and reduce its reliance on
oil from the Persian Gulf. More than a dozen countries in Africa, the Caspian basin, and Southeast Asia have
recently become, or will soon become, significant oil and gas exporters. Some of these countries, including Chad,
East Timor, and Myanmar, have already suffered internal strife. Most of the rest are poor, undemocratic, and badly
governed, which means that they are likely to experience violence as well. On top of that, record oil prices will yield
the kind of economic windfalls that typically produce further unrest. Oil is not unique; diamonds and other minerals
produce similar problems. But as the world's most sought-after commodity, and with more countries dependent on it
than on gold, copper, or any other resource, oil has an impact more pronounced and more widespread.
Reports of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib, "waterboarding," and CIA renditions and "black sites" have been even
more devastating to the United States' image in Europe. Europeans across the political spectrum used to have a
strong sense of shared values with Americans. Recent revelations have broken that bond. The growing values gap is
also apparent when it comes to environmental policy. It is not just the Green Party in Germany that regards climate
change as a planetary peril. From the Conservative Party in the United Kingdom to the Christian Democratic parties
on the continent, thinking green has taken hold regardless of political ideology. With Washington now seen as
dragging its feet in the face of such an awesome danger, the average European has come to doubt whether the
United States is a responsible member of the international community. This perception is an unprecedented threat to
the United States' role as a global leader. One notable exception was Washington's reaction to the 2005 Asian
tsunami, which demonstrated that a dramatic U.S. response can have a real effect on world opinion and, crucially, on
the attitudes of moderate Muslims.
We’ve reached peak oil now – global suppliers, the IEA, and OPEC are only forecasting decline in oil supply.
The Guardian, June 19, 2008 (“Oil output outside OPEC at risk of no growth in 2008” Reuters,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/feedarticle/7596372)
LONDON, June 19 (Reuters) - Oil supply from countries outside OPEC, source of three in every five barrels, is
stalling this year and may even decline, keeping the heat under record-high oil prices. The International Energy
Agency (IEA) and the U.S. government have cut forecasts for supply growth in 2008, in part due to delays at new
fields and declining output at existing ones. "There is a risk of zero non-OPEC growth," said Mike Wittner, oil
analyst at Societe Generale, who forecasts non-OPEC supply will expand by 400,000 barrels per day (bpd) this year.
"As far as our forecast is concerned, there is definitely downside to our numbers." Struggling supply outside OPEC
has helped fuel the surge in oil prices to a record near $140 a barrel, adding a strain to the world economy. It also
increases reliance on OPEC oil exporters to meet rising demand. Signs that oil supply is faltering in parts of the
world are leading to growing interest in peak oil, the view that production is nearing a high point and will then fall.
Influential forecasters such as the IEA, adviser to 27 industrialised countries, have been lowering forecasts for
supply from non-OPEC countries, but still predict an expansion. Output from non-OPEC will grow by 460,000 bpd
in 2008 from 2007, the IEA said in a monthly report on June 10, down from growth of 680,000 bpd previously
forecast. Others say even that may prove optimistic. Analysts at investment bank Barclays Capital expect non-
OPEC supply to decline by 40,000 bpd this year, while Credit Suisse sees non-OPEC supply as flat or negative
through 2012 or longer. Another bank, Citigroup, said on June 9 that non-OPEC supply was at risk of posting no
growth this year. There are several reasons why supply from non-OPEC has fallen short of forecasts in recent years.
Delays at new fields, faster-than-expected declines at existing ones and unforeseen events such as hurricanes in the
U.S. Gulf of Mexico have meant production came in lower than first thought. Oilfields in places such as the North
Sea and Mexico are seeing declines while output in Russia, the world's second-largest exporter and the engine of
growth outside OPEC in recent years, has faltered. Russian oil supply in May averaged 9.95 million bpd, the fifth
straight month of decline from a year ago, according to the IEA. It expects Russian supply to be largely flat in 2008
at 10.1 million bpd. Barclays questions if the IEA's prediction of a surge in non-OPEC supply in the last few
months of 2008 will materialise, saying that the IEA's figures show a second-quarter drop of 500,000 bpd year-on-
year. "We believe that the IEA is significantly overstating the short-term ability of non-OPEC supply to bounce
back and moderate the current situation," the bank said. Some in the industry are more pessimistic about supply.
Billionaire oil investor T. Boone Pickens said on Tuesday that he believed world crude production has topped out at
85 million bpd. Peak oil has its detractors, such as BP Plc Chief Executive Tony Hayward. The Organization of the
Petroleum Exporting Countries is still expected by the IEA and others to expand its supply capacity this year.
Others avoid the term but still see non-OPEC output levelling off. "The rate of year-on-year decline in Russia and
Mexico has been surprising and it doesn't show any sign of letting up," Wittner said. "Non-OPEC output is certainly
hitting a plateau." (Editing by William Hardy).
Peak oil is here- population and demand increases and production plateaus prove.
Davis, 2008 (Daniel L., May 5, Washington Times, Staff Writer, “The Coming Crisis”)
The issue is not simply a concern that we will have to pay outrageous prices for a gallon of gas. If that were the
worst of it, the situation would be difficult but manageable. The reality, however, goes deeper and is much more
troubling. There are multiple problems affecting the world that are having a decidedly negative net effect: a global
rise in demand for crude oil, the plateau in the production of crude oil (which may indicate the peak has already
been reached) and continued global population growth. Together, these three factors are serving to shove the world
into a crisis that has ominous possibilities. When there isn't enough oil to satisfy global demand, the price obviously
rises. Perhaps less obvious, however, is the effect this price increase has on the world's ability to produce food.
Every stage of the food production cycle is affected by petroleum and a rise in the price of a barrel of oil has
compounding effects: It costs more to run the farm machinery, more to buy the fertilizer, more to take it to market
and more for processing. In the United States, this results in raised eyebrows at the grocery store. In parts of the
world where upwards of 75 percent of a family's income goes to buying food, it results in social unrest and riots.
The United Nations estimates that global population is growing at the rate of 78 million people a year — roughly the
equivalent of adding the population of Germany to the world every year. According to Energy Information
Administration data released earlier this month, global petroleum production has been on a relatively level plateau
for the past 44 consecutive months. But at the same time, the economies of China and India have continued growing,
which accelerates the consumption of petroleum-related products and increases the amount and quality of food each
person eats. These three facts have conspired to produce a global shortage of crude oil which has exacerbated the
world's inability to feed itself. If the world cannot produce significantly more barrels of oil per day, while at the
same time the developing world's appetite continues to increase and the global population continues its climb, there
won't be enough oil to go around or enough food for everyone to eat. In just the past two weeks we have been given
a foretaste of what that might mean as news organizations have reported rioting and social unrest in developing
countries around the world as a result of food shortages; Canadian Bank analyst Jeff Rubin predicted oil prices will
"soar to $225 a barrel by 2012." Many experts expect these twin afflictions to remain for the foreseeable future. This
is not the time for more talk and half-measures. Facts on the ground demand urgent, robust and sustained action at
the highest levels of government.
Aleklett, 2008 (May 19, Kjell, Financial Times, Commentary, “The market sets high oil prices to tell us what to
do”, professor at Uppsala University, Sweden, and President of ASPO – International)
“Global supplies of crude oil will peak as early as 2010 and then start to decline, ushering in an era of soaring
energy prices and economic upheaval – or so said an international group of petroleum specialists meeting Friday”.
This quote was a result of the first meeting of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas (ASPO) in May
2002 in Uppsala, Sweden. In response to press inquiries ASPO claimed: “The world oil depletion curve is based on
all available information on oil reserves and estimates of the amounts yet-to-find, and indicates that world oil
production will reach a peak (87 million barrels per day) around 2010 and decline thereafter.” Remarkably, this
forecast seems today to still be on target. At the 2007 ASPO conference former US Secretary of Energy James
Schlesinger said:”…and therefore to the peakists I say, you can declare victory. You are no longer the beleaguered
small minority of voices crying in the wilderness. You are now the mainstream. You must learn to take yes for an
answer and be gracious in victory.” But the concept of peak oil relates to the fact that oil is a finite resource and that
at some point, world oil production will reach a maximum and go into decline. Because oil is a life-blood of
economies worldwide, the decline of world oil production is certain to result in severe negative consequences,
particularly for oil importers. The world can be divided into those countries that import oil and those countries that
are oil exporters. Current daily export volumes are around 50 million barrels per day, Mbpd, with the rest of the 85
Mbpd produced every day consumed by the oil producing nations. The top five oil importers are USA, Japan, China,
Germany and South Korea, who rely on exports from the top five exporters of oil, Saudi Arabia, Russia, Norway,
Nigeria and Venezuela.The US Energy Information Administration (EIA) forecasts that the US will need an
additional 7 Mbpd by 2030. By that time production within the US will have declined by around 2 Mbpd, requiring
an increase in imports of 9 Mbpd. Production within China appears to be near a maximum now and will also decline
in the near future. With a strong increase in consumption, China will want to increase imports by the same order as
the US. Summing import expectations from all of the importing countries an increase in import demand of the order
of 30 million barrels per day seems to be required by 2030, but that cannot happen if world oil production soon
peaks and then goes into decline.
The consensus of experts supports that we have reached peak oil. Our economy is poised for total devastation
and resource wars.
Savinar 2007 (Matt – an attorney and scholar on Peak Oil who has appeared frequently in the House, Fortune
Magazine, and the Wall Street Journal, "Are We 'Running Out'? I Thought There Was 40 Years of the Stuff Left,”
google: refineries key to US economy collapse, < http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/>)
In practical and considerably oversimplified terms, this means that if 2000 was the year of global Peak Oil,
worldwide oil production in the year 2020 will be the same as it was in 1980. However, the world’s population in
2020 will be both much larger (approximately twice) and much more industrialized (oil-dependent) than it was in
1980. Consequently, worldwide demand for oil will outpace worldwide production of oil by a significant margin. As
a result, the price will skyrocket, oil-dependant economies will crumble, and resource wars will explode. The issue
is not one of "running out" so much as it is not having enough to keep our economy running. In this regard, the ramifications of
Peak Oil for our civilization are similar to the ramifications of dehydration for the human body. The human body is 70 percent water. The body of a 200 pound man thus holds 140 pounds of
water. Because water is so crucial to everything the human body does, the man doesn't need to lose all 140 pounds of water weight before collapsing due to dehydration. A loss of as little as 10-
, an oil-based economy such as ours doesn't have to deplete its entire reserve
15 pounds of water may be enough to kill him. In a similar sense
of oil before it begins to collapse. A shortfall between demand and supply as little as 10-15 percent is enough to
wholly shatter an oil-dependent economy and reduce its citizenry to poverty. The effects of even a small drop in
production can be devastating. For instance, during the 1970s oil shocks, shortfalls in production as small as 5%
caused the price of oil to nearly quadruple. The same thing happened in California a few years ago with natural gas:
a production drop of less than 5% caused prices to skyrocket by 400%. Fortunately, those price shocks were only
temporary. The coming oil shocks won't be so short-lived. They represent the onset of a new, permanent condition.
Once the decline gets under way, production will drop (conservatively) by 3-6% per year, every year. Almost all
independent estimates from now disinterested scientists indicate global oil production will peak and go into
terminal decline within the next five years.
Oil peak is here – prices are going to remain high and oil production is on the decline.
The North Platte Telegraph, June 25, 2008, (Mark Young, “Outlook bleak oil prices”
http://www.nptelegraph.com/articles/2008/06/25/news/60000388.txt)
The strain on your wallet that happens every time you pull into the gas station will see brief moments of ease, but
according to some experts, the glory days of cheap fuel are not only gone, but the situation will get steadily worse.
Dr. Robert Kaufmann, a professor at Boston University and considered to be an expert on world oil supply presented
his cause and effect presentation to reporters around the country Tuesday afternoon via telephone and the picture he
paints is not pleasant. Kaufmann said that both Republicans and Democrats are not thinking far enough ahead to
fend off a potential crisis that will confront the world in another one to three decades."The bottom line is that oil is a
wonderful fuel and easy to get out of the ground," said Kaufmann. "When we look back at this 100 to 150 years
from now, we'll be known as the petroleum age just as ancestors were known as the stone age or the bronze age.
Kaufmann said that oil is a finite source and that many experts are predicting a peak in oil production within the next
few years up to another three decades, but all agree that the peak is coming and when it does, "That's when the real
shortages and price hikes are going to happen," he said. He said that there is going to be room for oil prices to drop
in the short term, but that we will never likely see a barrel of oil less than $60 again and will probably not get close
to that. "The argument is that oil prices won't collapse and in reality, the fundamentals of supply and demand will
keep prices high," he said. Oil production is already on the decline and Kaufmann said offshore drilling and
opening up the Alaska Wildlife National Refuge is not going to help.
Oil peak coming soon – demand is rising but production is leveling off – prefer our evidence it sites the IEA,
OPEC, and leaders of oil companies.
Financial Times 2007 (Javier Blas, “World will face oil crunch ‘in five years’” July 9,
http://www.thepeakist.com/world-will-face-oil-crunch-%E2%80%98in-five-years%E2%80%99/)
The world is facing an oil supply “crunch” within five years that will force up prices to record levels and increase
the west’s dependence on oil cartel Opec, the industrialised countries’ energy watchdog has warned. In its starkest
warning yet on the world’s fuel outlook, the International Energy Agency said “oil looks extremely tight in five
years time” and there are “prospects of even tighter natural gas markets at the turn of the decade”. The IEA said that
supply was falling faster than expected in mature areas, such as the North Sea or Mexico, while projects in new
provinces such as the Russian Far East, faced long delays. Meanwhile consumption is accelerating on strong
economic growth in emerging countries.The problem is exacerbated by the fact that supply from non-members of
the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries will increase at an annual pace of 1 per cent, or less than half
the rate of the demand rise. The widening gap between rising consumption and lagging non-Opec supply will force
Opec to sharply increase its production in the next five years. Lawrence Eagles, head of the IEA’s oil market division, told the Financial Times: “If we
get to the point were there is insufficient supply, the only way to balance the market will be through higher prices and a drop in demand.” The IEA Medium Term Oil Market Report came as oil is
approaching last year’s record high. Brent crude oil on Monday rose 72 cents to a 11-month high of $76.34 a barrel. Refineries are already paying record high prices as producing countries have
cut the discount at which they sell their oil relative to Brent, according to an analysis by the FT. Most of the discounts had been reduced to levels not seen since 2004 and some even to six-years
lows.Oil demand will grow at an annual rate of 2.2 per cent during the next five years, up from a previous estimate of
2 per cent, to reach 95.8m barrels a day in 2012. China, the Middle East and other emerging countries will lead the
increase. Rex Tillerson, the chairman and chief executive of ExxonMobil, said recently that he thought non-Opec
oil production was close to levelling off. He told the FT: “We still see capacity for a little more growth, but pretty
modest, and then in our own energy outlook it begins to plateau. And that results then in this call on Opec.”
Peak oil now – OPEC, oil companies and the IEA said oil production has slowed
Yetiv 2008 (Steve, June 24, The Virginian Pilot “Calculating Peak oil’s due date” Lexis)
WITH OIL prices skyrocketing, Americans are feeling serious pain at the pump and are trying to figure out why.
Part of the answer may be that we are approaching peak oil sooner than many people would have expected. "Peak
oil" refers to a key turning point when global oil production peaks, signaling a future of slowly decreasing world oil
production. No one can say when it will arrive, but one fact at least suggests that it may come sooner rather than
later: Until recently, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries barely tried to stem the rise of oil prices
from $50 per barrel in February 2007 to more than $130 per barrel today. In the past, OPEC, and especially Saudi
Arabia, have often increased oil production to try to prevent prices from rising high enough to trigger alternative
energy exploration; a Western political backlash; and the ire of the gendarme of the Persian Gulf -- the United
States. When I visited OPEC headquarters in May 2003, OPEC researchers underscored how the organization was
keeping the price of the OPEC oil basket around $22-$28 per barrel (roughly $25-$31 on the New York Mercantile
Exchange). OPEC succeeded in doing so more than 80 percent from June 2001 to June 2003. Recently, the Saudis
announced that they will boost daily oil production by 200,000 barrels per day by the end of July, though most of
this oil will probably not be sweet crude, which the world most needs. Moreover, Saudi Arabia reiterated that it has a
$50 billion plan to increase production by another 30 percent in the coming years. But, even so, how can we explain
the lack of any action until now, as prices have spiked dramatically? The answer is multipronged, but peak oil may
be a factor. OPEC behavior may be a signal that it cannot easily meet long-run global oil demand, on demand. Even
if the Saudis reach 12.5 million barrels per day, that would still be well short of meeting such demand, unless they
can boost production further. The International Energy Agency recently underscored its concern that future global
oil demand will outstrip oil supply. The U.S. Energy Information Administration significantly scaled back how many
barrels of oil it expected the Saudis to produce in 2010.
Peak oil now – even oil executives are starting to admit the truth.
Fanney 2008 (Robert, former defense analyst, June 12, “OPEC Member Libya – Peak Oil Coming Soon”
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/818095/opec_member_libya_peak_oil_coming_soon.html?page=2&cat=7
5)
Over the past few years we have seen an incessant rise in oil prices. At the same time, members of OPEC have been
in denial of any kind of trouble. Word from OPEC blamed speculators, the dollar, increasing demand -- anything but
supply. Well it seems things are starting to change. According to a news report from Reuters, Shokri Ghanem,
chairman of Libya's National Oil Corporation, is coming out of the closet on the issue of peak oil. When asked in a
press interview if supply was part of the issue in relation to prices he stated "It will be, in the future. Speculation is
playing an important role but it is not the only factor. It is the erosion of the dollar, it is geopolitics, is refinery
bottlenecks, it is the increase in demand, it is peak oil getting soon." Peak oil is coming soon. Never before has a
member of OPEC so much as mentioned the issue of peak oil. The admission is tantamount to stating that OPEC is
no longer sitting at the helm of world oil production. In short, it is an invalidation of the cartel's power to control
prices on the downside. For such an admission to come from even a minor member of OPEC is sign of a sea change
in the reality facing oil producers around the world. Excuses, false figures and industry denial has all served to
create the sense that the oil industry and national oil companies were in control and that the world could trust them
to continue to supply energy for the foreseeable future. Now, it seems a growing minority in both the oil industry
and now in OPEC are starting to tell the truth.
Oil prices will remain high – key producers are cutting production.
Mouawad 08 ("If you think the oil situation is bad, worse is to come." Jad - a staff reporter for The New York Times
covering the energy industry. The New York Times. April 26, 2008. http://business.theage.com.au/if-you-think-the-
oil-situation-is-bad-worse-is-to-come-20080425-28ma.html)
The world's oil supplies are already stretched. Countries outside the OPEC cartel — which have been the main
source of discoveries and production since the 1970s — have said they expect little to no growth in production this
year. The North Sea and Alaska are slowly running out, and producers there are struggling to keep production from
falling. Russia's phenomenal oil surge is coming to an end. A top executive of Lukoil, the country's second-largest
oil group, said last week that Russia's production was unlikely to increase much. Nigeria is battling a violent
militancy. And Mexico, the third most important supplier of crude to the US, has been stuck in a crippling political
debate over keeping out foreign investors while witnessing a dramatic production drop that some analysts say may
be irreversible. What about OPEC? The 13 members of the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries
account for three-quarters of the world's proven oil reserves. But for various reasons, most of those countries are
making it harder, if not impossible, for foreign oil companies to invest within their borders. With energy prices
rising, OPEC producers are reaping record revenue, which has reduced the incentive to dip into their supplies by
boosting production. At the same time, major oil companies such as Exxon Mobil, BP and Chevron are finding it
harder to compete worldwide, as national oil companies erode their once-dominant positions. Fourteen of the top 20
oil companies are state-owned giants, such as Saudi Aramco and Russia's Gazprom. That leaves Western oil
companies in control of less than 10% of oil and gas reserves. Facing higher costs, these companies are also having
greater difficulty finding new oil deposits. Despite spending more than $US100 billion on exploration last year, the
five largest international oil companies found less oil last year than they pumped.
Peak oil and US dependency will crush the economy and spur wars – switching to renewable is key.
Howley, June 13, 2008 (John, energy policy consultant, “Oil Insecurity: America’s Choice” Dissent Magazine,
http://dissentmag.wordpress.com/2008/06/13/oil-insecurity-americas-choice/)
Our nation’s economic well-being today depends on maintaining secure access to petroleum supplies at stable
prices. If domestic oil production continues to decline and demand continues to grow, the U.S. increasingly will
have to look for foreign oil to meet its needs. Two-thirds of the world’s remaining oil reserves are in the politically
volatile Middle East where wars have already been fought over the control of oil, where the U.S. is currently
occupying by force the country with the second largest proven reserves, and where U.S. foreign and military policies
increasingly are condemned. The vast majority of proven oil reserves around the world are controlled by
authoritarian, undemocratic governments with poor records of advancing human rights or human development for
their citizens. Within these trends are the seeds for further violence and suffering. Today, we in the U.S. face a
choice: continue to increase our dependence on imported oil using any means necessary to secure access to it,
including war and threats of war, or, undertake a sustained, national mobilization to free us from oil dependence by
reducing consumption and investing in energy efficiency, renewable fuels, and public and alternative transportation.
By reducing our reliance on petroleum, and helping other countries (both the oil-rich and the oilpoor) do the same,
we can make our country safer, our economy stronger, and our world less vulnerable to economic crises and war.
Peak oil will collapse the economy and enable fascists to destroy civilization.
Leggett, ’05 (Jeremy, former member of the UK Government Renewables advisory board, The Empty Tank,
Random House, New York. p.191-192)
The crisis will play out in television images around the world. Frantic oil traders will scream at each other on trading
floors, eyes wild and hair akimbo. These will hardly be scenes conducive to calm in other markets, and share prices
will begin to slide. "Oil Running Out:' the headlines will read. It won't be. It will merely be half gone, and so
becoming very, very expensive-very, very quickly. Leaders of the Consumer States and the Producer States will get
together for a crisis summit, looking appropriately grim in their suits and flowing robes, respectively. They will be
able to think of nothing much to say that will ease the panic. And so it will spread further. Producer Number One has
allowed a mountain of consumer debt to pile up, most of-it in houses. The price of houses will collapse. Stock
markets will crash. Within a short period, human wealth-little more than a pile of paper at the best of times, even
with confidence about the future high among traders will shrivel. The inescapable consequences of the crisis will
then roll out in slow motion. Companies will go bankrupt by the hundreds and then thousands. Workers will fall into
unemployment by the hundreds of thousands and then millions. Once affluent cities with street cafes will have
queues at soup kitchens and armies of beggars on the streets. The crime rate will soar. The Earth has always been a
dangerous place, but now it will become a tinderbox. It has happened before. We can sense, in the months and years
after October 1929, what is likely to happen this time. Then, the economic depression had nothing to do with oil,
just a general catastrophic collapse of confidence by traders. It has taken us many years to dig ourselves out of the
mess since. In the aftermath of the stock market crash at that time, the problems were compounded by the
emergence of a further category of Fundamentalist, the Fascists. The Fascists believed in having one powerful leader
and a big secret police force with well equipped torture chambers. Democracy and Cosmopolitan Tolerance were
most definitely not on the agenda of these guys, although they tended to pretend otherwise until they got into power.
They fed on the anger of the newly unemployed poor. They whipped up hate against a [end page 191] third category
of religious human, people who follow neither Christ nor Muhammad, and believe that the son of their version of
God has yet to visit the Earth. These people have often been traders, then and now. In the years after 1929, they were
often residually rich among all the general hardship. The Fascists of the time burned their homes, then herded them
into trains and sent them to concentration camps. In the worst of the many examples of genocide in human history,
the Fascists then began systematically to exterminate these people by the millions. Nobody came to their rescue
because by this time the Fascists of the day had plunged the Earth into a planet-wide war. Now, around 2010 years
after Christ's birth, it will start to look as though the whole bloody business might be beginning all over again.
Fascists once more will crawl out of the woodwork and get to work on the poor. This will happen in many nation-
states. In the wake of the incident with the passenger jets and the iconic buildings, Consumer Number One has
fanned a state of fear among its populace. In that environment, it has put in place many state instruments of
repression. Emergency laws permit incarceration without trial. Special prison camps have been set up. Laws on
torture have been relaxed and this gruesome business has been outsourced to nation-states friendly to Consumer
Number One but with even more lax laws concerning torture chambers.
Every major recession in the United States since 1971 has been preceded by an oil crisis. Today oil prices are at a
21-year high. For all the present optimism about global growth, perhaps a recession is just around the corner. This
has happened so many times before that market professionals should be getting used to it. But they are getting
younger and may need a backgrounder in economic history to appreciate market reality rather than unjustified
optimism. Let us turn the clock back. In 1980 crude oil prices shot up to $78 per barrel (adjusted to 2002 price
levels) in the aftermath of the Iranian Revolution; a US recession followed. In 1990 oil prices hit $41 in the wake of
Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait; the US suffered an economic slowdown and the UK had its worst post-war
recession. Today industry experts see very little prospect of a fall in oil prices over the summer. The International
Energy Agency says the demand for oil has risen by more than five per cent over the past year of which more than a
third has come from the overheating Chinese economy. The rest of excess demand is down to global economic
recovery fuelled by very low US interest rates. On the supply side, there does appear to be a serious issue, despite
official denials from Opec members. Last week Russia signaled that it was now pumping oil at full capacity of 9.3
million barrels per day, and could manage no more. There was also a brief interruption to supplies in Iraq due to
sabotage of a major oil pipeline. Meanwhile, refining capacity in the US is insufficient to meet current demand
levels. In such an environment the revelations about the abuse of Iraqi prisoners and the public relations fall-out,
have helped to push world oil prices to a 21-year high. It is fair to point out that if adjusted for inflation, oil prices
are less than they were 13 years ago, but we probably have not seen the 2004 highs yet. The reason that oil crises
quickly turn into economic recessions for the oil consumer nations is that higher oil prices lead to consumer and
asset price inflation that has to be tackled with higher interest rates. The alternative of leaving inflation to spiral out
of control would be even more damaging. Now the higher oil prices go, the higher interest rates will have to rise to
bring down inflation. And the higher interest rates go, the deeper will be the business slowdown or recession.
Equities and bonds, which tend to overshoot on the downside, could be in for a very rough ride indeed. Oil crises
and stock market crashes go together like birds of a feather.
We’ve hit peak oil – there are no more large undiscovered reserves.
Klare, June 26, (Michael T., professor of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College, “End of the
Petroleum Age?” Foreign Policy in Focus, http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/5326, Accessed 06-30-08)
Only one giant field has been discovered in the past 25 years – Kashagan in Kazakhstan’s sector of the Caspian Sea
– and it has turned out to be an unmitigated disaster. With estimated reserves of 7-13 billion barrels of oil and
natural gas liquids, Kashagan was originally expected to come on line in 2005 at a cost of $50 billion. As a result of
environmental hazards, government intervention, and disputes among members of the consortium established to
operate the field, it is now scheduled to begin pumping oil in 2011 at the earliest at a minimum cost of $135 billion.
Recently the Brazilian state firm Petrobras has announced an equally large discovery in the deep waters of the
Atlantic, some 150 miles off the coast of Rio de Janeiro. Although very promising, the Tupi field will take many
years to develop and will require the use of more costly and advanced technology than any now in widespread use.
These new discoveries may add one or two million barrels of oil per day to existing output in 2015 and beyond, but
by that point output from existing fields is likely to be considerably lower than it is today. Nobody can predict
exactly where combined worldwide production will stand at that time. But more and more analysts are coming to the
conclusion that the output of conventional (i.e., liquid) petroleum will peak at about 95 million barrels per day in the
2010-2012 time-frame and then begin an irreversible decline. The addition of a few million added barrels from Kashagan or Tupi will not alter this trend.
There is, of course, much talk about other, “unconventional” sources of oil: untapped reserves in Alaskan wilderness areas and America’s outer continental shelf, Canadian tar sands, Rocky
Mountain shale rock. True, these various prospects – if brought to fruition and putting aside the massive costs and environmental risks involved – could add anywhere from a 750,000 barrels a
day (in the case of Alaskan oil) to a few million barrels (in the case of the others) to global energy supplies in the years ahead. But , when all is said and done, none of
this can stop the inevitable closing of the Petroleum Age.
ANWR drilling would reduce oil prices by less than a dollar per barrel.
WSJ, 08 (Wall Street Journal Market Watch. “ANWR drilling could cut 75 cents from oil prices, DOE says” 5-22-
08. http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/anwr-drilling-could-cut-75/story.aspx?guid=%7B26229D0C-EC53-
4FF1-BC12-6CE405A403AC%7D&dist=msr_4)
Producing oil from the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska could cut crude oil prices by about 75 cents per
barrel by 2025, the Energy Department said Thursday in a special analysis prepared for Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska.
The price decline would be about 0.6% of the current spot price. Under federal law, no drilling is now allowed in
ANWR. Under the most likely case, production would begin in 2018 and peak in 2027 at 780,000 barrels per day,
with total production of 2.6 billion barrels.
Tech and drilling can’t solve the peak oil problem—it’s only going to get worse.
Hirsch, 2008 (Dr. Robert, May 20, author of Peaking of World Oil Production: Impacts, Mitigation, and Risk
Management, senior advisor at Management Information Services, the following is a CNBC transcript of an
interview with Dr. Hirsch, transcript accessed from http://www.theoildrum.com/node/4019)
Peak oil--the idea is that it would hit a sharp peak and then production in the world would hit a sharp peak then drop
off. And what's happened is that we hit plateau in world oil production, and that plateau has been ongoing since
about the middle of 2004. HOST: Dr. Hirsch, there are a lot of people when we talk about peak oil who say there are
going to be technologies that are always developed. There will be new ways to get oil, whether it's from coal,
whether it's from the oil shales, and they say that means we will never actually hit peak oil. What do you say to those
people? HIRSCH: They're incorrect, and the reason that they're incorrect is that they don't understand the magnitude
of the problem and how long it's going to take to bring substitute liquid fuels on and to introduce energy efficiency
on a massive scale. That's something that we analyzed and it takes decades. And the reason, simply, is that the
magnitude of the problem is enormous. [McTeer says we should drill more.] HOST: Dr. Hirsch, what do you say to
that--the idea that we should be drilling in places like ANWR and drilling offshore. Would that solve this problem of
a plateau in oil production? HIRSCH: There's no single thing that's going to solve this problem because it's as
massive as one can possibly imagine. And the prices that we're paying at the pump today I think are going to be the
good old days because others who watch this very closely forecast that we are going to be hitting $12 and $15 per
gallon.
Even if new oil resources exist, they will take a decade or more to produce. We need fuel sooner.
Mouawad 08 ("If you think the oil situation is bad, worse is to come." Jad - a staff reporter for The New York Times
covering the energy industry. The New York Times. April 26, 2008. http://business.theage.com.au/if-you-think-the-
oil-situation-is-bad-worse-is-to-come-20080425-28ma.html)
The problem is that in many corners of the world, geopolitics, more than geology, has removed much of those
reserves from the reach of independent oil companies. "There are plenty of resources in the globe," Exxon chairman
Rex Tillerson recently told an investor conference. The difficulty, he said, was "just continuing to have access to all
of the opportunities". Over the past century, the world burned through a trillion barrels of oil. Another 1.2 trillion
barrels of known conventional reserves wait to be tapped, according to BP, one of the world's biggest oil companies.
It sounds a lot. But given the growth in demand, a trillion of those barrels will be used up in less than 30 years. What
then? Many analysts estimate another trillion barrels of yet-to-be-found oil remains, but in remote places such as the
Arctic Ocean, where it will be expensive to extract, or in countries that might restrict access. The big companies
have been in a global dash to find and pump more oil. But it takes time, sometimes a decade, before the first barrels
from a new field are pumped and sold. What of the alternatives? Corn ethanol, which was sold as a quick fix to the
US's dependency on oil imports, is an imperfect substitute. It is now blamed for driving up food prices while
emitting more carbon dioxide and providing a third less energy per gallon than petrol.
Historically the food and energy economies have been largely separate, but now with the construction of so many
fuel ethanol distilleries, they are merging. If the food value of grain is less than its fuel value, the market will move
the grain into the energy economy. Thus as the price of oil rises, the price of grain follows it upward. A University
of Illinois economics team calculates that with oil at $50 a barrel, it is profitable—with the ethanol subsidy of 51¢ a
gallon (equal to $1.43 per bushel of corn)—to convert corn into ethanol as long as the price is below $4 a bushel.
But with oil at $100 a barrel, distillers can pay more than $7 a bushel for corn and still break even. If oil climbs to
$140, distillers can pay $10 a bushel for corn—double the early 2008 price of $5 per bushel. The World Bank
reports that for each 1 percent rise in food prices, caloric intake among the poor drops 0.5 percent. Millions of those
living on the lower rungs of the global economic ladder, people who are barely hanging on, will lose their grip and
begin to fall off. Projections by Professors C. Ford Runge and Benjamin Senauer of the University of Minnesota
four years ago showed the number of hungry and malnourished people decreasing from over 800 million to 625
million by 2025. But in early 2007 their update of these projections, taking into account the biofuel effect on world
food prices, showed the number of hungry people climbing to 1.2 billion by 2025. That climb is already under way.
Since the budgets of international food aid agencies are set well in advance, a rise in food prices shrinks food
assistance. The U.N. World Food Programme (WFP), which is now supplying emergency food aid to 37 countries, is
cutting shipments as prices soar. The WFP reports that 18,000 children are dying each day from hunger and related
illnesses.
Higher food prices cause massive starvation and a worldwide health crisis – the impact is linear.
Reuters, 08 (“Food crisis threatens health and economy” 6-3-08.
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/news/fullstory_65332.html)
More than 20 countries already have serious problems of malnutrition and stunted growth as a result of the food
crisis that has set back anti-poverty efforts by years, the World Health Organisation head said on Tuesday. In an
interview in Rome, where world leaders are meeting to discuss global food shortages, WHO Director-General
Margaret Chan said soaring commodity prices stood to threaten the lives of sick people, pregnant women, and
children. "We are already beginning to see signs that the world has close to one billion people who are suffering
from hunger," she told Reuters, adding that more people will die from "different types of morbidity" if the problem
worsens. People with HIV/AIDS and other immune-destroying diseases need good nutrition to remain healthy, and
those made weak by diarrhea, pneumonia, malaria and measles would become sicker or die if they cannot eat well,
the United Nations agency chief said. Adequate food is also key to keeping pregnant and lactating women and their
babies alive, and necessary to ward off malnutrition that can stunt the growth of children, she warned. "Their
conditions will be further exacerbated because of malnutrition," she said. "For healthy people like you and me, the
food crisis hit our pockets. But for the poor people, it means less food. The quantity and the quality of their meals
will suffer," she said. "If food prices go up, it means they have less money for health services, because in many of
these countries these people depend on out-of-pocket expenditure for health services."
The ethics of pursuing biofuel in a world that is threatened by massive flooding caused by climate change -- if we
are to believe the doom and gloom merchants -- are questionable, and presents a dilemma to government strategists.
The chasm between the haves and have-nots is broadening, so can it be right for developed nations to deny those
less fortunate a right to life itself just so their fat-cat citizens can fill their gas-guzzling tanks? Setting aside the
moral issue, there is also a political argument. Hungry people, who feel they have little to lose, will topple
governments and turn to more extremist leaderships that would be incompatible with the West as allies. We’ve heard
about water wars. We may also be looking at food wars. Finally, how’s this for a glaring obscenity? According to
Susie Mesure, writing in the Independent, “Britons throw away half of the food produced each year . . . enough to
meet half of Africa’s food import needs.” Consumers, supermarkets and restaurants are all major culprits in the
chucking out of a “£20bn food mountain while at the same time the WFP warns it is dangerously running out of
resources." The only way to solve these problems is for the world to come together under the auspices of the United
Nations to come up with real solutions. The UN has already begun talks with Eastern European countries in an
endeavor to persuade them to free up agricultural land to grow essential crops. Investment in desalination plants that
would enable some countries to become less dependent on rain is something else that should be considered. It
seems to me that biofuels are not the way forward given that death rates are dropping and the world’s population is
due to explode to some 9.3 billion by 2050. If enough people are forced to choose between consuming ethanol and
bread, of course, that prediction is likely to be proved wrong.
POLLUTION IMPACTS—EXTINCTION
Though private and public investment in conventional biofuel expansion has created and will continue to create
opportunities for economic development, the growth of new lower-carbon biofuels will open the door to
significantly larger markets. Farmers and renewable fuel providers stand to reap the benefits once the United States
develops a national climate change strategy and lower-carbon products are appropriately valued. Policies that
promote low-carbon biofuels should therefore provide incentives and regulatory certainty for the developing
biofuels industry, which in turn will give investors confidence that a market for advanced biofuels will exist. In
addition, policies should focus on the desired performance of a fuel (i.e., its reductions in carbon intensity) rather
than “picking winners” by predetermining which alternative fuels or feedstocks will prevail in the marketplace. By
allowing companies to compete with one another to produce the lowest-carbon fuels, both the public and the
environment benefit because price and performance determine the eventual winners.
The oil and gas industry is moving at a cautious pace to invest in alternative fuel infrastructure and retail outlets.
There is good reason for their caution. Substantial investments are required, the best locations for those investments
may be unclear and which alternative fuels will succeed best in the marketplace remains unknown. The correct
prescription under these circumstances is for the government to step in and provide financial incentives that will
overcome many barriers that have impeded the development of alternative fuels. These financial incentives must be
of sufficient term to demonstrate a commitment to build out a sector or at least fully test its viability. The on-again,
off-again, short-term nature of many governmental financial incentives leave investors guessing about the
government’s policies and, therefore, are unwilling to make sustained financial commitments. In addition, investors
are seeking to have regulatory rules established and kept consistent, predictable and transparent. Establishing
regulatory rules will increase investors’ confidence that their financial analysis has properly accounted for regulatory
costs and risks.
Regulatory certainty promotes development of low carbon fuels and new energy industries. The LCFS provide
certainty to the growing clean energy market that sustainable markets for their products will exist but does so in a
manner that does not select which alternative fuels will prevail in the marketplace. Technology and other companies
then compete with one another to sell into that market, allowing price and quality considerations to determine
eventual winners. Reducing risk through regulatory certainty is also a benefit to energy companies.5 Expands
consumer choice. The LCFS will communicate to producers and consumers that the GHG reduction requirements of
AB32 will be met by expanding rather than limiting consumer choice. Because consumers will continue to seek the
lowest prices for their transportation fuels and the new standard will allow fuel providers to meet its requirements in
a flexible and consumer-responsive manner, the LCFS will inspire competition among creators and suppliers of low-
carbon products seeking to sell their products to fuel providers needing to meet the new standard.6
AT: SPENDING DA
Military expenditures to protect oil constitute a large portion of the federal budget.
Duffield, 2008 (Over a Barrel: The Cost of U.S. Foreign Oil Dependence, John S. Duffield, Professor of Political
Science at Georgia State University, Stanford University Press: Stanford, CA, p. 208)
U.S. military policies undertaken in response to foreign oil dependence have made an even larger dent in the federal
budget. The United States has spent on the order of several billions of dollars per year on additional military
capabilities and routine peacetime operations that have been directly, and often exclusively, associated with the
defense of American oil interests in the Persian Gulf. To these marginal costs must be added a share of the cost of
the U.S.-based general purpose forces and strategic lift, the maintenance and augmentation of which has been
increasingly justified in terms of Persian Gulf contingencies. These additional costs amounted to roughly $28-36
billion per year in the 1980s and $30-51 billion per year in the 1990s and early 2000s (in 2006 dollars). Not to be
overlooked arc the escalating costs of major U.S. combat operations in the region since the 1980s, which have
culminated in the ongoing war in Iraq (see Chapter 6).
AT: VOLUNTARY CP
Private action is not enough – government action is needed.
Johnson 08 ("Low-carbon fuels important to stem transportation sector’s emissions." Senator Tim - member of the
Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. The Hill. 1/30/08 http://thehill.com/op-eds/low-carbon-fuels-
important-to-stem-transportation-sectors-emissions-2008-01-30.html)
It is important to recognize that we are already moving toward a low-carbon fuel policy. The recently passed energy
bill includes a requirement that ethanol derived from corn in conventional ethanol facilities must achieve a 20
percent greenhouse gas emissions reduction compared to baseline lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions in order to
count toward the annual renewable fuel standard. Even more significantly, advanced biofuels derived from materials
other than cornstarch must achieve a 50 percent greenhouse gas reduction requirement, with cellulosic biofuels
achieving a 60 percent greenhouse gas emissions reduction requirement. The challenge now facing policymakers is
that the market will need to do a lot more if a low-carbon fuel standard is to be a viable national fuels policy. That
type of transformative change is not rewarded through quick returns on investment and, therefore, government has a
role to play.
A mandates approach fails – it is less efficient and requires an impossible level of coordination.
Farrell, 2007, (Alexander E., Energy and Resources Group Director, Testimony to the House Subcommittee on
Energy and Air Quality, http://energycommerce.house.gov/cmte_mtgs/110-eaq-hrg.041807.Farrell-testimony.pdf,
April 18)
In an idealized case, an economy-wide approach would be efficient at achieving the first goal of reducing GHG
emissions up to 2020. But because the real world entails imperfect information, transaction costs, differential taxes,
different regulation (e.g. competitive industries like the oil sector, and regulated utilities like the electric power
sector) and other less-than-ideal conditions, an economy-wide approach would be suboptimal. This suggests that the
efficiency disadvantages of a sectoral approach might be less important than when considering a hypothetical ideal
economy. However, sectoral policies should still be designed to be as economically efficient as possible. A sectoral
approach is significantly better than an economy-wide approach at achieving the second goal, technological
innovation, because 1) social discount rates are much lower than private discount rates, 2) research into
environmental technologies is a public good, and, 3)the sectors vary enormously in terms of industrial organization,
GHG mitigation costs, capital structure, taxes, regulation, and other factors (Norberg-Bohm 1999; Taylor, Rubin et
al. 2006). Each of these three reasons is briefly discussed in turn.
The biggest advantage of LCFS is that it allows for enormous flexibility while carbon taxes cannot.
Reich 07 ("A Low-Carbon Fuel Standard?" Robert - Secretary of Labor and Professor at the University of
California Berkeley. The Economist View. June 21, 2007.
http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2007/06/a-low-carbon-fu.html)
The one sector where carbon taxes will work well is electricity generation, which accounts for ... 40% of U.S.
emissions... The carbon tax works because electricity producers can choose among a wide variety of commercial
energy sources — from carbon-intense coal to lower-emitting natural gas to zero-emission nuclear or renewable
energy. A modest tax of $25 per ton of carbon dioxide would increase the retail price of electricity made from coal
by 17%. Given the many choices, this would motivate electricity producers to seek out lower-carbon alternatives.
The result would be innovation, change and decarbonization. And elected officials are no more qualified to pick
winners than are university scientists. I just returned from ... Washington, where ... lobbyists have stirred a buzz for
ethanol and ... coal-based liquids. But ethanol made from corn provides little reduction in greenhouse gas emissions,
and coal liquids threaten huge increases. Here is what we can say...: Cutting carbon emissions from transportation
fuels with mandates and taxes won't work. But a new approach using a low-carbon fuel standard will. This new
standard will require oil companies and other fuel providers to reduce carbon and other greenhouse gas emissions of
transportation fuels by at least 10% by 2020. It will be up to the providers to choose how to do that, including
blending low-carbon biofuels into conventional gasoline, selling low-carbon fuels, such as hydrogen, and buying
credits from providers of other low-carbon fuels, such as low-carbon electricity or natural gas. This allows
businesses to identify new technologies and strategies that work. The low-carbon fuel standard picks ... sends a
fuels-neutral signal that alternatives are welcome in [the]... transportation fuels marketplace. ... Real solutions to
global warming are needed. Let's just be sure they're effective.
AT: RFS CP
Renewable fuel standards can’t solve – only a low carbon fuel standard encourages innovation and
discourages the use of high-carbon fuels.
ESA, 07 (Ecological Society of America, nonpartisan ecological science organization. “Global Warming, Biofuels &
the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007” http://www.esa.org/biofuels/presentations/Greene_poster.pdf)
It is possible, and taking Searchinger's numbers at face value very likely, that the amount of low-carbon biofuels we
can procure through real politics and real markets is much smaller than we would hope. This makes the urgency
around getting a federal low-carbon fuel standard (LCFS) all the greater. An LCFS is a better approach to
encouraging innovation among fuels and reducing global warming pollution than a Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS)
because it is technology-neutral, allowing any type of low-carbon fuel to compete in reducing the average GHG
intensity of fuels, including electricity. Furthermore while the new RFS provides a minimum level of lifecycle GHG
performance, an LCFS encourages the best performance. Finally, an LCFS discourages high-carbon fuels such as
liquid coal, oil shale, and tar sands, while an RFS has no direct impact on them. The stakes are high for producing
biofuels in the right way: global warming, disrupted agricultural markets, eco-system destruction and more. EISA is
driving forward low-carbon biofuels with an eye to these issues, but only by coupling this policy and eventually a
LCFS with the best scientific and economic research can we actually get there.
EPA carbon reduction research has stalled – federal action is necessary to ensure that life-cycle carbon
emissions are accurately measured. Plus, states are dependent on EPA research for implementation.
Peckham, 08 (Jack Peckham, Diesel Fuel News. “U.S. EPA Biofuels 'Life-Cycle Analysis' Lacks Certification
Scheme.” 3-3-08. avail. InfoTrack General Reference Center)
U.S. EPA is working to develop a "life-cycle analysis" (LCA) scheme for biofuels (including biodiesel) to ensure
they won't cause even worse greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions than ordinary fuels. Recent studies (including two
articles in the latest Science magazine) indicate that biofuels can cause several times worse GHG emissions than
ordinary petroleum fuels, if biofuels expansion leads to unfavorable land-use changes. As EPA mobile sources
director Margo Oge explained to the annual Clean Heavy Duty Vehicle Conference (CHDVC, sponsored by Westart)
here, EPA recently had to suspend earlier internal work on possible ways to cut carbon from transportation fuels,
"until the Administration decides how to proceed" with the requirements of the 2007 energy bill, she said. That bill,
mandating 36 billion gallons of "renewable" fuels by 2022, requires up-to 15 billion gallons of corn-based ethanol, 1
billion gallons of renewable biodiesel, and billions more gallons of cellulosic-based biofuels that must not come
from corn starch. At least part of such cellulosic biofuels could wind up as diesel fuel blendstock. The bill has
"aggressive schedules" for minimum biofuel blending volumes as well as mandatory "life-cycle" analyses to ensure
that biofuels result in true reductions in net GHG, rather than increases, Oge pointed out. This will require EPA to
discuss LCA issues with biofuels producers, environmental advocates, refiners and states -- "especially California,"
she said. California Air Resources Board (CARB) aims to come up with its own "low-carbon fuel standard" (LCFS)
by end-2008, Oge noted. Asked here when EPA might complete work on greenhouse "life-cycle analyses" (LCA) of
various biofuels, including the impact of land-use changes, Oge wouldn't commit to a fixed date. But she said that
EPA has made "tremendous progress" on a corn-ethanol LCA methodology, which has been shared with
California Air Resources Board (CARB). Eventually, "when we go out with a proposed rule, we'll have an LCA
methodology for all renewables," including feedstocks such as cellulosic, she said. "It's not an easy task and we take
it very seriously," she added. "We don't want unintended consequences; we don't want to make greenhouse gas
emissions worse, nor [unfavorable] impacts on water or food."
The EPA is key – they have unique experience with alternative fuels and the infrastructure necessary to do
the plan
Greene, 07 (Nathanael Greene, senior policy analyst for the Natural Resources Defense Council. Testimony before
the House Committee on Energy Independence & Global Warming. 10-24-07.
http://docs.nrdc.org/air/air_07102401A.pdf )
Here I outline key principles that should be incorporated into any expansion of the renewable fuels standard through
a combination of robust performance standards, careful definitions of what qualifies as renewable fuel, and
incentives to promote voluntary management practices that protect ecological values. • An increase in the RFS
should be done as an amendment to the existing RFS under the Clean Air Act and implemented by EPA EPA cannot
carry out its job of protecting public health and welfare without having the authority to regulate the quality of our
nation’s fuel supplies under the Clean Air Act. Among federal agencies, EPA has the most experience and expertise
related to transportation fuels, and is already responsible for implementing the current RFS program.
The CP fiat of state uniformity undermines flexibility, crushing solvency. Only federal baselines allow for
state innovation.
Litz, 08 (Franz T. Litz, senior fellow at the World Resources Institute and Pew Center on Global Climate Change.
“Toward A Constructive Dialogue On Federal And State Roles In U.S. Climate Change Policy.” June 2008.
http://www.pewclimate.org/docUploads/StateFedRoles.pdf)
While the heavy state and federal approaches take advantage of the strengths of the state or federal governments,
respectively, a Federal and State Partnership Approach aims to draw on the strengths of both levels of government.
Under this approach, the federal government would set nationwide greenhouse gas reduction targets and implement
key national “anchor” programs that are aimed at obtaining significant uniform reductions across all 50 states. At the
same time, the states would be tapped to achieve additional reductions through those policies and programs that
benefit from state and local design and implementation. In developing the federal anchor programs, furthermore,
states would serve as on-the-ground implementers where appropriate, and opportunities to allow states to continue to
serve as “first movers” would be preserved to the extent that the benefits of national implementation are not unduly compromised. It is important here to consider the
potential need for both federal anchor programs as well as complementary policies that are designed to adjust for market failures or local circumstances. For example, much attention has been
paid to the need for a national cap-and-trade program to reduce emissions across multiple sectors of the economy. Some of the federal proposals to date seek to cover transportation fuels to
reduce emissions from the transportation sector. Yet while broad coverage has advantages, consumer behavior is generally not very responsive in the short term to incremental increases in the
. States may be in a better position to design
price of transportation fuels.44 As a result, tackling transportation emissions is likely to require more than cap-and-trade
complementary measures designed to encourage consumers to both buy more energy efficient vehicles and travel
fewer miles. Indeed, the traditionally state and local areas of transportation and land-use planning could play a
significant role in this complementary effort. Because of the potential need to achieve emissions reductions beyond
those that can be accomplished through federal anchor programs, the shared approach aims to divide roles to reach
the best policy outcome.
Uniform fiat precludes state flexibility in adapting to federal regulations. Takes out solvency.
Adelmen and Engel, 07 (David Adelman and Kristen Engel, James E. Rogers College of Law at the University of
Arizona. Minnesota Law Review. “Adaptive Federalism: The Case Against Reallocating Environmental Regulatory
Authority” http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1016767)
Adaptive federalism, like its dynamic counterparts, rejects the exclusive focus of the matching principle on
optimization. It recognizes that static optimizing strategies, on their own, are a prescription for turgid policymaking
that is prey to the complexities of environmental problems. Rather than engaging in the charade of identifying the
one putatively “efficient” level of government for environmental policymaking, an adaptive model is structurally
designed to contend with unpredictable change. The basic philosophies of the two approaches could not be much
different—one is premised on stable equilibrium conditions and rigid control; the other seeks to exploit disruptive
change as a source of resilience and adaptability. The basic elements of an adaptive model—fragmented operation
on multiple scales—are clearly evident in the multilevel jurisdictional structure of the federal system. The
overlapping state-federal regulatory authority of dynamic federalism follows naturally from this arrangement.
Similarly, the existence of multiple jurisdictions at a variety of geographic scales mirrors the fragmented structure of
adaptive systems that is essential to maintaining diversity, although in this case of environmental policies. Adaptive
federalism simultaneously sustains competitive legislative and administrative processes that promote the refinement
of policies (including ones consistent with static, full-cost internalization) and processes that produce a diverse range
of policy options. This pluralistic model supports the open-ended innovation and testing essential to managing
unpredictable change, while not ignoring the importance of regulatory efficiency—both are treated as critical.
Adaptive federalism, if accepted, would support and enhance the dynamic, multi-jurisdictional elements of the
current system of environmental federalism. As we have seen, this approach is incompatible with the single-level
framework dictated by the classical matching principle. For putatively local issues, such as those related to drinking
water standards or land use, an adaptive model would allow for a significant federal role. Conversely, for putatively
national (or international) issues, such as biodiversity or climate change, it would encourage state and local policy
innovation. The multilevel approach of adaptive (and dynamic) federalism is not costless. Uniformity,
accountability, and finality are all sacrificed to some degree by allowing multiple jurisdictions to address
environmental problems simultaneously. However, in many, if not most,areas of environmental regulation,
uniformity is as much a problem as it is a virtue. One need only consider widespread calls from regulated industries
for “flexible” standards, such as those found in market-based regulations, and the vehement opposition to command-
and-control regimes.95 Finality, which is often in opposition to adaptability, is also a double-edged sword in
constantly changing natural, technological, and commercial environments.
The perm solves – federal government action sets a baseline and allows states to expand upon it
Litz, June ’08 (Franz, Senior Fellow at the World Resources Institute, “Toward a Constructive Dialogue on Federal
and States Roles in U.S. Climate Change Policy,” http://www.pewclimate.org/docUploads/StateFedRoles.pdf,
Accessed 06-27-08)
In the United States to date, states have taken most of the significant actions to address climate change. Yet
enactment of a nationwide program requiring reductions across the entire United States is both necessary and
increasingly likely. This prospect raises a number of questions as to the appropriate division of responsibilities
between state and federal governments across the many areas where climate change action is needed. The key
question is not whether responsibility for climate change action should rest exclusively with the federal government
or the states, but rather how and to what degree the federal government and the states should share responsibility for
tackling the problem. A number of arguments exist to support state-level action on climate change. States have
historically played a role as effective first-movers on important environmental issues, functioning as policy
innovators, testing policies that have later been adopted at the federal level. States also bring an understanding of the
unique circumstances within their boundaries and a familiarity with their stakeholders. States drive federal action,
sometimes insisting that policies be strengthened even after the federal government has acted. There are also
numerous arguments in favor of a strong federal role in climate policy. A federal program would bring every state
into the climate change effort and tend to level the playing field for businesses in all 50 states. Federal action offers a
platform for engaging with other nations in forging an international emissions reduction agreement. A national GHG
cap-and-trade program would keep costs manageable and drive climate friendly technological innovation, and could
link with other markets around the world. Given the strong reasons for both state and federal action on climate
change, it is perhaps not surprising that historically state and federal governments have chosen to share authority
over most areas where climate change action is needed. This is true across most air pollution control, energy supply,
energy efficiency, transportation, forestry and agricultural policy areas. Rather than asking whether federal or state
government is best able to address climate change, the more relevant question is which level of government should
tackle which parts of the challenge. Precisely how to delineate state and federal roles in a comprehensive nationwide
climate change program should be the focus of a constructive national dialogue. This paper evaluates several
possible approaches along a continuum from heavy reliance on federal action to heavy reliance on state action. The
scenarios examined differ in the degree to which responsibility for reductions is shared between federal and state
governments, but each recognizes that some action will be required at both levels. Federal action on climate change
is needed to achieve the significant reductions science demands and to establish a minimum level of uniformity
across the U.S. economy. This federal action can preserve room for states to continue in their important roles as
policy innovators, on-the-ground implementers, and policy drivers, and to capitalize on the significant experience in
the states across the many aspects of climate change action. A federal climate change program will be most
successful if it is designed with the relative strengths of each level of government in mind.
TOPICALITY
LCFS is an alternative energy incentive.
Farrell, UC Berkley News, 2007 (Alex, May 18 “UC Berkley’s Alex Farrell join governor in introducing low-
carbon fuel standards for state” http://berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2007/05/18_carbon.shtml)
Farrell emphasized that the proposed low-carbon fuel standards are meant to offer oil companies incentives for
technological innovation and investment in alternative fuels, not to dictate the way in which companies will meet the
standard.