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Their climate progress is facilitated by colonial plunder of indigenous lands – they

further indigenous extinction rather than support resurgence
Estes 21 ---- Nick, citizen of the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe, assistant professor in the American studies
department at the University of New Mexico, and co-founder of The Red Nation, “Biden Killed the
Keystone Pipeline. Good, but He Doesn't Get A Climate Pass Just Yet,” The Guardian, 1/28/21,
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jan/28/joe-biden-keystone-pipeline-climate-crisis

Undoing four years of Trump – and the lasting damage it brought – can’t be the only barometer of climate justice. Nor
should we lower our expectations of what is possible and necessary for Native sovereignty and treaty
rights.

Biden partly owes his election victory to Native voters. Arizona voting districts with large Native populations helped flipped the
traditionally Republican state last November to his and Democrats’ favor.

Native aspirations, however, don’t entirely align with Biden’s climate agenda, the Democratic party,
or electoral politics.

In Arizona, where Biden won the Native vote, the Forest Service could, in the coming months, hand over 2,400 acres of Chi’chil
Bildagoteel, an Apache sacred site, to the Australian mining company Rio Tinto. In 2014, the Arizona Republican
senator John McCain attached a rider to a defense authorization bill to allow the transfer of land to make way for a

copper mine, which would create a nearly two-mile wide open-pit crater destroying numerous Native
burial sites, ceremonial areas and cultural items in the process. (Last year, Rio Tinto blew up Juukan
Gorge Cave, a 46,000-year-old Indigenous sacred site, to expand an iron ore mine in Australia.)

A Democratic Senate passed Resolution Copper; Obama signed it into law; and Trump fast-tracked the
environmental review during his last days in office. Resource colonialism is a bipartisan affair.

Much like the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe’s dilemma with the Dakota Access pipeline, the Apache
Stronghold, made up of members of the San Carlos Apache Tribe opposing the copper mine at Oak Flat, has little recourse. No law exists
giving Native people control of their lands outside government-defined reservation boundaries .

Rio Tinto’s copper mine aims to meet at least a quarter of the United States’ annual copper needs, an
essential metal that will be in high demand for renewable energy and electric vehicles. According to
the World Bank, three billions tons of metals and minerals like copper and lithium will be required by
2050 for wind, solar and geothermal power to meet the base target of the Paris agreement, which Biden has committed the US to
rejoining.

And before Trump left office, the Bureau of Land Management issued a final permit to the Canadian mining company
Lithium Americas to create an open-pit lithium mine at Thacker Pass on traditional Paiute land in
Nevada. The mine could bolster Biden’s $2tn “green energy” transition plan. Lithium is a key ingredient
of rechargeable batteries, and it’s what attracted Elon Musk’s Tesla battery factory to Nevada. Last October, Biden reportedly told a group
of miners that he planned to increase domestic lithium production to wean the country from foreign sources like China.

These “green” techno fixes and consumer-based solutions might provide short-term answers, but they
don’t stop the plunder of Native lands. Even the addition of Deb Haaland, a member of the Laguna Pueblo, to the Biden cabinet
won’t fundamentally change the colonial nature of the United States . We must ask ourselves why
Biden and his supporters can imagine a carbon-free future but not the end of US colonialism.

But nomatter who is US president, Indigenous people will continue fighting for the land and the future of
the planet. For us, it has always been decolonization or extinction

Their nostalgic for a US-led liberal order deflects its investments in genocidal violence
that normalizes a globalized system of racial violence.
Morefield 19 (Jeanne Morefield, Professor of Politics at Whitman College, Professorial Fellow at the
Institute for Social Justice at Australian Catholic University, PhD from Cornell University, January 8, 2019,
“Trump’s Foreign Policy Isn’t the Problem,” Boston Review, https://bostonreview.net/politics/jeanne-
morefield-trump%E2%80%99s-foreign-policy-isn%E2%80%99t-problem) gz

After two years of President Donald Trump, critics and commentators are still struggling to make sense of his foreign policy. Despite
some hopes that he might mature into the role of commander in chief, he has continued to thumb his nose at most
mainstream academic frameworks for analyzing and conducting foreign policy. Indeed, what makes
Trump’s interactions with the rest of the world so confusing is the way he flirts with, and then departs
from, the script. He may issue policies and give speeches that include words such as “sovereignty,”
“principled realism,” and “peace through strength,” but they frequently appear cheek by jowl with racist
rants, crass opportunism, nationalist tirades, and unrestrained militarism.

It is this
uncomfortable mixture of familiar and jarring that has proven disconcerting for many mainstream
international relations scholars, particularly those “intellectual middlemen” who straddle the realms of
academia, policy think tanks, and major news outlets. Yet rather than ask how U.S. foreign policy might
have contributed to the global environment that made Trump’s election possible, most have
responded to the inconsistencies of Trump’s world vision by emphasizing its departure from
everything that came before and demanding a return to more familiar times . International relations
experts thus express nostalgia for either the “U.S.-led liberal order” or the Cold War while, in outlets such as
Foreign Affairs and the New York Times, they offer selective retellings of the country’s past foreign
policies that make them look both shinier and clearer than they were . These responses do not offer much insight
into Trump himself, but they do have much to tell us about the discourse of international relations in the United States
today and the way its mainstream public analysts—liberals and realists alike—continue to disavow U.S.
imperialism.

For example, liberal

internationalists such as John Ikenberry argue that Trump is guilty of endangering the
U.S.-led global order. That system, according to Ikenberry and Daniel Deudney, emerged after World
War II, when the liberal democracies of the world “joined together to create an international order that
reflected their shared interests,” while simultaneously agreeing , as Ikenberry once put it, to transfer “the reins
of power to Washington, just as Hobbes’s individuals . . . voluntarily construct and hand over power to the Leviathan.” The vision
of cooperating nation-states may have originated in values that first “emerged in the West,” they argue,
but these values have since “become universal.” In this accounting, Trump threatens the stability of U.S.
liberal hegemony in two ways: by retreating from multilateral agreements such as the Iran nuclear
deal, and by refusing to participate in the narrative of enlightened U.S. leadership . Future great threats
to global stability, Ikenberry grumbled, were supposed to come from “hostile revisionist powers
seeking to overturn the postwar order.” Now a hostile revisionist power “sits in the Oval Office.”
By contrast, when
realists such as Stephen Walt or John Mearsheimer criticize Trump, they start from the
position that the liberal world order is a delusion, perpetuated most recently by post–Cold War members of the
“elite foreign policy establishment.” Walt and others rightly point to the baseline hypocrisy of a “liberal Leviathan,” noting that
the current fury over Russian election tampering and cyber espionage rings hollow given the long U.S.
reliance on both strategies. This view accompanies a wistful longing for the putatively gimlet-eyed
realism of the Cold War, a time when U.S. presidents understood that their role was to deter the Soviet
Union, prevent the emergence of dangerous regional hegemons, and preserve “a global balance of
power that enhanced American security.” Seen thus, Trump’s hyperbolic and embarrassing nationalism is a
symptom of the abandonment of great power politics, while his fawning treatment of Vladimir Putin
shatters any remaining hope that his self-styled “principled realism” might take us back to a more
strategically realistic time. In the words of former Secretary of Defense Ash Carter, watching the Trump–
Putin news conference was like “watching the destruction of a cathedral.”

But what is Trump actually doing to destroy this cathedral? What makes Trump’s words and behavior so objectionable? Previous presidents
have pulled out of multilateral agreements, entered into disputes with allies, and engaged in protectionism and trade wars. The majority of the
Trump administration’s planned and ongoing military deployments are in regions where the military was already deployed by previous
administrations in the name of the War on Terror. Moreover, Trump’s
national security and national policy statements
are littered with the vocabulary of the very experts who find him so terrifying . What, then, makes
Trump’s foreign policy such a singular threat?

Trump’s foreign policy is disturbing because it is uncanny—both grotesque and deeply familiar. Like a
funhouse mirror, Trump’s vision of the world reflects back a twisted image of U.S. global
politics that is and is not who we are supposed to be. For instance, deterrence strategy may
require the rest of the world to believe that the U.S. president might use nuclear weapons,
but the president is not supposed to hint that he might actually do so. The president is supposed
to be concerned with regulating the flow of immigrants but not reveal that race plays a role in these
calculations by blurting the phrase “shithole countries.” The president is supposed to believe that
the United States is the most blessed, exceptional country on Earth—as Barack Obama put it, “I believe in American
exceptionalism with every fiber of my being”—but not engage in excessive nationalism by making “total allegiance”
the “bedrock” of his politics, or combine it with a commitment to “make our Military so big,
powerful & strong that no one will mess with us.”
Sometimes Trump’s utterances hit so close to home that they surpass uncanniness. In an essay by Sigmund
Freud on the uncanny, Freud says dolls and mannequins unsettle precisely because of the possibility that they might actually be alive, a
discomfort that has inspired nightmares, works of literature, and horror movies. Trump, by contrast, is
a living nightmare. He
opens his mouth and the things-which-must-never- be-said simply fall out . Thus, when Bill O’Reilly asked
him why he supported Putin even though he is a “killer,” Trump shot back, “There are a lot of killers. You
think our country’s so innocent?”

Trump’s willingness to say such things has precipitated an existential crisis in the international relations
world. U.S. foreign policy, as an academic discourse and political practice, is built on the delicate
foundation of what Robert Vitalis has called the “norm against noticing,” This deflective move has long been the
gold standard of international relations; under its rules of play, IR experts act as if the United
States has never been an imperial power and that its foreign policy is not, and has never
been, intentionally racist. The norm against noticing thus distinguishes between the idea of the
United States as a necessary world-historical actor and the reality of how the United States acts.
In that reality, the United States has long been an imperial power with white nationalist
aspirations. Given the racialized nature of U.S. imperial expansion, it makes sense that Alexis de
Tocqueville predicted, in a chapter entitled “The Three Races of the United States,” that the United
States would one day govern “the destinies of half the globe.” In its early days, while still a slave-holding
country, the United States asserted its sovereignty through genocide on a continental scale
and annexed large portions of northern Mexico. The country went on to overthrow the
independent state of Hawaii, occupied the Philippines and Haiti, exerted its regional power
throughout Latin America, expanded its international hegemony after World War II, and
became what it is today: the world’s foremost military and nuclear power with a $716 billion
“defense” budget that exceeds the spending of all other major global powers combined .
“Taking over from the British Empire in the early twentieth-century,” argues James Tully, the
United States has used its many
military bases located “outside its own borders”—now nearly 800 in over 80 countries— to force open-
door economic policies and antidemocratic regimes on states throughout the formerly colonized world.
An extremely partial list of sovereign governments that the United States either overthrew or
attempted to subvert through military means, assassinations, or election tampering since
1949 includes Syria, Iran, Guatemala, Lebanon, the Congo, Cuba, Chile, Afghanistan,
Nicaragua, Grenada, Cuba, Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, Iraq, Yemen, Australia, Greece, Bolivia,
and Angola. Such interventionist policies have contributed substantially to today’s inegalitarian world
in which an estimated 783 million people live in profound poverty. In sum, for untold millions of
humans in the Global South, the seventy years of worldwide order, security, and prosperity
that Ikenberry and Deudney associate with Pax Americana has been anything but ordered,
secure, or prosperous.
And yet the
norm against noticing prevents foreign policy analysis from even acknowledging—let alone
grappling with—the relationship between race and imperialism that has characterized U.S.
international relations from the country’s earliest days . This regime of politely un-seeing—of deflecting
—connections between U.S. foreign policy, race hierarchy, and colonial administration was clearly not in
effect when Foreign Affairs was released under its original name: the Journal of Race Development. This began to change, however, in the
1920s. Among other contributing factors, World War I, the rise of anti-colonial revolutions, and the emergence of liberal internationalism as a
popular ideology helped
convince foreign policy experts in the United States and Europe to adopt a policy
language oriented toward “development” rather than imperialism or racial difference . Mainstream
international relations scholarship today remains committed to a narrative in which the
discipline itself and U.S. foreign policy has always been and remains race blind , concerned
solely with the relationship between sovereign states who cooperate, deter, or compete with one
another in a global system in which the United States is simply, like Caesar, the “first citizen” (Ikenberry) or
“the luckiest great power in modern history” (Walt). For liberals, this involves a studied erasure of the
imperial origins of twentieth-century internationalism in the League of Nations’ Mandate system and
the complicity of Woodrow Wilson in preserving, as Adom Getachew puts it, “white supremacy on a global
scale.” For realists, it requires both forgetting the anti-Enlightenment origins of postwar realist thought
and reinserting the “security dilemma” back into history so that, with the help of Thucydides, Machiavelli, and Hobbes,
the world can—as Slavoj Žižek says—“become what it always was.”
International relations experts will acknowledge U.S. violence and overreach when necessary, but
routinely read the illiberalism of U.S. foreign policy as an exception that is not at all representative, in
Anne Marie Slaughter’s words, of “the idea that is America.” Slaughter, with Ikenberry, can consider bad
behavior only briefly and only in the service of insisting that what matters most is not what the United
States actually does with its power but what it intends to do. Yes, “imperialism, slavery, and racism have
marred Western history,” Ikenberry and Deudney argue, but what matters is that liberalism “has always
been at the forefront of efforts—both peaceful and militant—to reform and end these practices.” Indeed,
even those public intellectuals such as Niall Ferguson and Michael Ignatieff who, after September 11,
called for the United States to embrace its status as an imperial power, framed their arguments in
deflective, liberal terms. By contrast, because realists project the security dilemma retroactively into
history (while also simultaneously excising imperialism) they can only see the U.S.
destabilization of Third World economies, assassinations, and secret bombings as tragic
necessities (great powers, claims Mearsheimer, “have little choice but to pursue power and to seek to
dominate the other states in the system”) or as the result of liberals’ ill-advised desire to force “our”
values on other nations. Both of these deflective strategies reinforce the illusion that we live , in Nikhil Pal
Singh’s words, in an “American-centered, racially inclusive world, one organized around formally equal and
independent nation states” where some states just happen to have more power than others, and
where the alternative—Russian or Chinese hegemony—is too frightening even to
contemplate.
That deflection would play such an outsized role in supporting the ideological edifice of international
relations today is hardly surprising. Turn-of-the-century British liberals who supported their empire also drew upon a variety of
different deflective strategies to reconcile the violence and illiberalism of British imperial expansion with the stated liberal goals of the Empire.
Such deflection made it impossible for these thinkers—many of whom would go on to work as some of the first international
relations scholars in Britain and help found The Royal Institute of International Affairs—to link the problems of empire with the
violence and disruption of imperialism.

Similarly, deflection
within international relations today obscures the U.S. role in maintaining the
profoundly hierarchical, racist, insecure, deeply unjust reality of the current global order. It
also makes it impossible to address how U.S. foreign policy (covert and overt) has contributed to the
destabilization of that order by creating the circumstances that give rise to “failed states,”
“rogue regimes,” and “sponsors of terrorism.” Moreover, it impedes any theorizing about how the
widespread appeal of Trump’s xenophobia at home might, in part, be the product of U.S.
foreign policy abroad, the bitter fruit of the War on Terror and its equally violent
predecessors. In other words, in the grand tradition of liberal empire, U.S. foreign policy deflection actively
disrupts the link between cause and effect that an entire science of international relations was
created to explain.
What makes Trump’s attitude toward foreign policy so uniquely unhinging for international relations experts, then, is the fact that it is essentially undeflectable. When he explains to Theresa May that refugees threaten European
culture or calls Mexican immigrants killers, he lays bare the meant-to-be unutterable fear of nonwhite migration that has haunted British, U.S., and European imperialists and foreign policy experts for over a century . When he
summons the fires of nationalism to demand an unprecedented increase in the military budget, and then gets it with the overwhelming support of House and Senate Democrats , he reveals that constitutional checks on the
commander in chief are only as good as the willingness of Congress to resist jingoism. When he calls nations populated by brown and black people shitholes, he openly advertises the unspoken white supremacist edge that has
informed U.S. economic, development, energy, and foreign policies since the late nineteenth century. Trump’s Muslim ban is simply the War on Terror on steroids. In short, Trump’s foreign policy is unprecedented not because
of what it does, but because Trump will openly say what it does—and because of what that then says about us as a nation.

The discomfort Trump provokes ought to prompt international relations experts to reflect on the failings of their discipline to reckon with the relationship between U.S. imperialism, U.S. foreign policy, and the constellation of
xenophobia, militarism, racism, and nationalism that haunts our days. The fields of intellectual and legal history and political theory are far ahead of international relations in their critical interrogation of the ideologies that
sustain empire at home and abroad. In addition, Trump’s election has emboldened activists to make increasingly explicit the connections they see between a racialized, anti-immigrant politics of domestic dispossession and
violence and the history of U.S. imperialism in the world. Unfortunately the same does not appear to be true for the majority of intellectual middlemen who set the public tone for U.S. foreign policy.

Trump is, finally, both the emperor with no clothes and the pointing child, begging to hold a big military parade so we can collectively acknowledge the naked imperialist power at the heart of U.S. foreign policy . Trump
practically screams at the United States to look at itself. And yet, the more he screams, the more the intellectual enablers avert their eyes. They are busy looking elsewhere—anywhere really—except at that nakedness.
Outweighs and implicates all aspects of US policy.
Rifkin 14 (2014. Mark Rifkin - Associate Professor of English & WGS @ UNC-Greensboro, “Settler
Common Sense: Queerness and Everyday Colonialism in the American Renaissance” pp. 7-10)
If nineteenth-century American literary studies tends to focus on the ways Indians enter the narrative frame and the kinds of meanings and associations they bear,
recent attempts to theorize settler colonialism have sought to shift attention from its effects on
Indigenous subjects to its implications for nonnative political attachments, forms of inhabitance, and
modes of being, illuminating and tracking the pervasive operation of settlement as a system. In Settler Colonialism and
the Transformation of Anthropology, Patrick Wolfe argues, “Settler colonies were (are) premised on the elimination of native

societies. The split tensing reflects a determinate feature of settler colonization. The colonizers come
to stay—invasion is a structure not an event” (2).6 He suggests that a “logic of elimination” drives settler
governance and sociality, describing “the settler-colonial will” as “a historical force that ultimately derives from the
primal drive to expansion that is generally glossed as capitalism” (167), and in “Settler Colonialism and the Elimination of the Native,” he observes
that “elimination is an organizing principle of settler-colonial society rather than a one-off (and

superceded) occurrence” (388). Rather than being superseded after an initial moment/ period of conquest, colonization persists since “the logic
of elimination marks a return whereby the native repressed continues to structure settler- colonial
society” (390). In Aileen Moreton-Robinson’s work, whiteness func- tions as the central way of understanding the domination and displacement of Indigenous
peoples by nonnatives.7 In “Writing Off Indigenous Sovereignty,” she argues, “As a regime of power, patriarchal white sovereignty operates ideologically, materially
and discursively to reproduce and main- tain its investment in the nation as a white possession” (88), and in “Writing Off Treaties,” she suggests, “ At
an
ontological level the structure of subjective possession occurs through the imposition of one’s will-to-
be on the thing which is perceived to lack will, thus it is open to being possessed,” such that “possession . . .
forms part of the ontological structure of white subjectivity” (83–84). For Jodi Byrd, the deployment of Indianness as a mobile figure
works as the principal mode of U.S. settler colonialism. She observes that “ colonization and racialization . . . have often been

conflated,” in ways that “tend to be sited along the axis of inclusion/exclusion” and that “misdirect and cloud attention from
the underlying structures of settler colonialism” (xxiii, xvii). She argues that settlement works through the
translation of indigeneity as Indianness, casting place-based political collec- tivities as (racialized) populations subject to U.S. jurisdiction and
manage- ment: “the Indian is left nowhere and everywhere within the ontological premises through which U.S.

empire orients, imagines, and critiques itself ”; “ideas of Indians and Indianness have served as the ontological ground
through which U.S. settler colonialism enacts itself ” (xix).

Vote neg for radical resurgence –a keeping with indigenous traditions and practices
Corntassel 12 (Jeff Corntassel, University of Victoria, Canada “Re-envisioning resurgence: Indigenous
pathways to decolonization and sustainable self-determination” Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education
& Society Vol. 1, No. 1, 2012, pp. 86-101,pdf)
Despite Prime Minister Harper’s assertions, that “we” in Canada “have no history of colonialism” (Ljunggren, 2009), contemporary colonialism
continues to disrupt Indigenous relationships with their homelands, cultures and communities. One
of our biggest enemies is
compartmentalization, as shape-shifting colonial entities attempt to sever our relationships to the
natural world and define the terrain of struggle. For example, policymakers who frame new government
initiatives as “economic development” miss the larger connections embedded within Indigenous
economies linking homelands, cultures and communities. By focusing on “everyday” acts of resurgence,
one disrupts the colonial physical, social and political boundaries designed to impede our actions to
restore our nationhood. In order to live in a responsible way as selfdetermining nations, Indigenous
peoples must confront existing colonial institutions, structures, and policies that attempt to displace us
from our homelands and relationships, which impact the health and well-being of present generations
of Indigenous youth and families. Indigenous resurgence means having the courage and imagination to
envision life beyond the state. Decolonization offers different pathways for reconnecting Indigenous
nations with their traditional land-based and water-based cultural practices . The decolonization process
operates at multiple levels and necessitates moving from an awareness of being in struggle, to actively
engaging in everyday practices of resurgence. After all, whether they know it or not (or even want it), every Indigenous person
is in a daily struggle for resurgence. It is in these everyday actions where the scope of the struggle for decolonization is reclaimed and re-
envisioned by Indigenous peoples. Decolonizing
praxis comes from moving beyond political awareness and/or
symbolic gestures to everyday practices of resurgence (de Silva, personal communication, 2011)i. This shift means
rejecting the performativity of a rights discourse geared toward state affirmation and recognition, and
embracing a daily existence conditioned by place-based cultural practices. How one engages in daily
processes of truth-telling and resistance to colonial encroachments is just as important as the overall
outcome of these struggles to reclaim, restore, and regenerate homeland relationships. While decolonization
and resurgence are often treated separately from each other in scholarly analysis, for the purposes of this article they are viewed as
interrelated actions and strategies that inform our pathways to resistance and freedom
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The United States federal judiciary ought to hold that Constitutional guarantees
compels enforcement of a border-adjusted carbon tax and basic income.
Constitutionalizing economic rights spills over to narrow judicial deferral AND avoids
politics – breaks down the political question doctrine.
Rotem Litinski, 11-30-2019, BA in PoliSci from Berkeley, "Economic Rights: Are They Justiciable, and
Should They Be?," American Bar Association,
https://www.americanbar.org/groups/crsj/publications/human_rights_magazine_home/

economic-justice/economic-rights--are-they-justiciable--and-should-they-be-/, b

Many have questioned whether it is constitutionally acceptable for a court to assess the progressive realization
of economic rights,
which would require the actions of several mechanisms in concert. Because the responsibility of constructing and
enforcing laws belongs to the legislative and the executive branches, respectively, judicial enforcement of
economic rights might be misconstrued as a denigration of the checks and balances system. On the other hand, judicial
review necessitates that courts evaluate the consistency of legislation and government action with constitutional ideals, aspirations, and
obligations. Ensuring the human rights of individuals to shelter, food, and basic economic stability, foundational to the realization of their
human dignity, is well within those constitutional bounds. Regardless, U.S. courts often gag themselves by denying their
power to constitutionalize socioeconomic rights.

Due to their unelected status, the role and expanse of the courts is constantly in question. But it is this status that
insulates judges from the public, enabling them to protect individuals and groups while exercising
objectivity. There is an institutional bias toward preserving the public good over individual rights because the latter creates a risk that may
conflict with a public interest, a risk that public officials want to minimize. Whereas public officials may base decisions off
public approval, insulated judges are distanced from public sentiments and can remain consistent in their values and
decisions. These factors establish the credibility needed to exercise powerful judicial review.

Economic Rights as Derivatives of Constitutional Provisions

In practice, democratic constitutions often compel

the court to gag itself to counteract judicial overextension and
relegate jurisdiction to the State. The court has an obligation—similar to the positive duties imposed on the State—to
intervene if unconstitutional legislation unreasonably infringes on the basic rights and liberties of individuals to functionally engage
in society. This obligation is as rooted in human rights and economic justice as it is in the Constitution.

PQD blocks norm development for drone warfare.

Hafetz ’17 [Jonathan; January 6; Professor of Law at Seton Hall University, J.D. from Yale University, M.
Phil. From Oxford University, B.A. from Amherst College; Just Security, “The Troubling Application of the
Political Question Doctrine to Congressional Force Authorizations,”
https://www.justsecurity.org/36021/troubling-application-political-question-doctrine-congressional-
force-authorizations/]

The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on Nov. 21 dismissed the suit brought by U.S. Army Captain Nathan Michael Smith
challenging the legality of the military campaign against ISIS under Operation Inherent Resolve. The opinion by Judge
Colleen Kollar-Kotelly rejecting the suit on political question grounds is troubling. (Judge Kollar-Kotelly also denied Smith had
standing based on his claim that continuing to fight in an unauthorized military action against ISIS would violate his oath to support and defend
the Constitution). The Obama administration’s release last month of its Report on the Legal and Policy Frameworks Guiding and Limiting the
United States’ Use of Military Force and Related National Security Considerations (“Framework Report”), while admirable in several respects
(see Marty Lederman’s comprehensive summary), crystalizes concerns about the potential ramifications of the political question ruling in Smith
v Obama.

In Smith, the plaintiff maintained that neither the 2001 nor 2002 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF)—the former enacted for al
Qaeda and the Taliban, the latter for Iraq—constituted authorization for military action against ISIS. Such action, the plaintiff therefore argued,
was unlawful under the 60-day time limit imposed by the War Powers Resolution. The district court
held that the suit presented a
nonjusticiable political question because the issues raised were primarily ones committed to the political branches of government
and because the court lacked judicially manageable standards. This holding, as Michael Glennon has argued here, and Marty has argued here,
here, and here, misconstrues and misapplies the political question doctrine. In short, a suit asking a court to interpret the scope and meaning of
a congressional force statute—and, particularly, what entities it applies to—presents a legal question squarely within the province and ability of
the judiciary to decide.

Smith’s suit, in the court’s view, would have failed anyway for lack of standing. But the
court’s political question ruling sweeps
more widely and if followed, would bar suit by future plaintiffs raising similar merits claims even where
they unquestionably had standing. Those future plaintiffs could include, for example, individuals detained
by the United States or harmed by U.S. drone strikes (including family members of individuals killed in such strikes). The ruling would
foreclose those persons from claiming that the U.S. action was illegal if it were predicated on their connection to ISIS or to another group that
fell outside current force authorizations.

The Obama administration’s Framework Report underscores these concerns, particularly as executive power is handed to a Trump
administration that could jettison existing policy constraints while further enlarging America’s forever war against terrorist groups.

The Framework Report highlights several broader trends. First, itreinforces that the U.S. armed conflict against al Qaeda
and the Taliban seems only to expand, not contract, with time. Since 2001, it has extended to other groups,
whether because they fall under the al Qaeda umbrella (like ISIS) or are deemed associated forces (as al-Shabaab recently was).

Second, the Report underscores that, under the current framework, the president generally has authority—even if he does not exercise it—to
detain and target individuals based solely on their purported membership in a military group covered by the 2001 AUMF. That authority thus
permits status-based detention or targeting, without resort to claims of self-defense.

Third, the Report reinforces that additional restrictions on this broad legal authority exist only as a matter of policy. As such, they may be
discarded by the next administration. Further, the policies themselves—which apply heightened requirements for using lethal force outside
areas of active hostilities—have proven susceptible to workarounds in practice (See the valuable New York Times reporting by Charlie Savage,
Eric Schmitt, and Mark Mazzetti on how in Somalia the U.S. military has avoided limitations in the May 2013 Presidential Policy Guidance
through assertions of an independent power of collective self-defense, which includes assistance to U.S. partners on the ground).

Courts remain an important check on elastic counterterrorism powers. This check will become even more
important in a Trump administration that expansively interprets existing—or future—force authorizations while
disregarding restraints. In the past, suits challenging particular drone strikes—both ex-ante and ex-post—have been
dismissed on threshold justiciability grounds. Smith, however, is the first decision to hold that the central underlying question—the
meaning and scope of executive power under a congressional force authorization—is itself a political question. As Smith explained
“Plaintiff asks the Court to second-guess the Executive’s application of these statutes to specific facts on the ground in an ongoing combat
mission halfway around the world” (emphasis in original). Smith’s rationale would prevent other challenges to the application of force
authorizations not only to ISIS, but also to other, yet unidentified, groups.

Extinction – miscalc AND intentional nuclear war.

Boyle ’13 [Michael; 2013; Professor of Political Science at La Salle University, former Lecture in
International Relations and Research Fellow in the Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political
Violence; International Affairs, “The Costs and Consequences of Drone Warfare,” vol. 89]
The race for drones

An important, but overlooked, strategic consequence of the Obama administration’s embrace

of drones is that it has generated a
new and dangerous arms race for this technology. At present, the use of lethal drones is seen as acceptable to US policy-
makers because no other state possesses the ability to make highly sophisticated drones with the range, surveillance capability and lethality of
those currently manufactured by the United States. Yet therest of the world is not far behind. At least 76 countries
have acquired UAV technology, including Russia, China, Pakistan and India.120 China is reported to have at least 25
separate drone systems currently in development.121 At present, there are 680 drone programmes in the world, an
increase of over 400 since 2005.122 Many states and non-state actors hostile to the United States have begun to
dabble in drone technology. Iran has created its own drone, dubbed the ‘Ambassador of Death’, which has a range of up to 600
miles.123 Iran has also allegedly supplied the Assad regime in Syria with drone technology.124 Hezbollah launched an Iranian-made drone into
Israeli territory, where it was shot down by the Israeli air force in October 2012.125

A global arms race for drone technology is already under way. According to one estimate, global spending on
drones is likely to be more than US$94 billion by 2021.126 One factor that is facilitating the spread of drones (particularly
non-lethal drones) is their cost relative to other military purchases. The top-of-the line Predator or Reaper model costs approximately US$10.5
million each, compared to the US$150 million price tag of a single F-22 fighter jet.127 At that price, drone technology is already within the
reach of most developed militaries, many of which will seek to buy drones from the US or another supplier. With
demand growing, a
number of states, including China and Israel, have begun the aggressive selling of drones, including attack drones, and
Russia may also be moving into this market.128 Because of concerns that export restrictions are harming US competitiveness in the drones
market, the Pentagon has granted approval for drone exports to 66 governments and is currently being lobbied to authorize sales to even
more.129 The Obama administration has already authorized the sale of drones to the UK and Italy, but Pakistan, the UAE and Saudi Arabia have
been refused drone technology by congressional restrictions.130 It is only a matter of time before another supplier steps in to offer the drone
technology to countries prohibited by export controls from buying US drones. According to a study by the Teal Group, the US will account for 62
per cent of research and development spending and 55 per cent of procurement spending on drones by 2022.131 As the market expands, with
new buyers and sellers, America’s ability to control the sale of drone technology will be diminished. It is likely that the US will retain a
substantial qualitative advantage in drone technology for some time, but even that will fade as more suppliers offer drones that can match US
capabilities.

The emergence of this arms race for drones raises at least five long-term strategic consequences, not all of which
are favourable to the United States over the long term. First, it is now obvious that other states will use drones in ways that are inconsistent
with US interests. One reason why the US has been so keen to use drone technology in Pakistan and Yemen is that at present it retains a
substantial advantage in high-quality attack drones. Many of the other states now capable of employing drones of near-equivalent technology
—for example, the UK and Israel—are considered allies. But this situation is quickly changing as other leading geopolitical players, such as
Russia and China, are beginning rapidly to develop and deploy drones for their own purposes. While its own technology still lags behind that of
the US, Russia has spent huge sums on purchasing drones and has recently sought to buy the Israeli-made Eitan drone capable of surveillance
and firing air-to-surface missiles.132 China has begun to develop UAVs for reconnaissance and combat and has several new drones capable of
long-range surveillance and attack under development.133 China is also planning to use unmanned surveillance drones to allow it to monitor
the disputed East China Sea Islands, which are currently under dispute with Japan and Taiwan.134 Both Russia and China will pursue this
technology and develop their own drone suppliers which will sell to the highest bidder, presumably with fewer export controls than those
imposed by the US Congress. Once both governments have equivalent or near-equivalent levels of drone technology to the United States, they
will be similarly tempted to use it for surveillance or attack in the way the US has done. Thus, through its own over-reliance on drones in places
such as Pakistan and Yemen, the US may be hastening the arrival of a world where its qualitative advantages in drone technology are eclipsed
and where this technology will be used and sold by rival Great Powers whose interests do not mirror its own.

A second consequence of the spread of drones is that many

of the traditional concepts which have underwritten
stability in the international system will be radically reshaped by drone technology. For example, much of
the stability among the Great Powers in the international system is driven by deterrence, specifically nuclear
deterrence.135 Deterrence operates with informal rules of the game and tacit bargains that govern what states, particularly those holding
nuclear weapons, may and may not do to one another.136 While it is widely understood that nuclear-capable states will conduct aerial
surveillance and spy on one another, overt
military confrontations between nuclear powers are rare because they
are assumed to be costly and prone to escalation. One open question is whether these states will exercise
the same level of restraint with drone surveillance, which is unmanned, low cost, and possibly deniable.
States may be more willing to engage in drone overflights which test the resolve of their rivals, or engage in ‘salami tactics’ to see
what kind of drone-led incursion, if any, will motivate a response.137 This may have been Hezbollah’s logic in sending a drone into Israeli
airspace in October 2012, possibly to relay information on Israel’s nuclear capabilities.138 After the incursion, both Hezbollah and Iran boasted
that the drone incident demonstrated their military capabilities.139 One could imagine two rival states—for example, India and Pakistan—
deploying drones to test each other’s capability and resolve, with untold consequences if such a probe were misinterpreted by the other as an
attack. As drones get physically smaller and more precise, and as they develop a greater flying range, the temptation to use them to spy on a
rival’s nuclear programme or military installations might prove too strong to resist. If this were to happen, drones might gradually erode
the deterrent relationships that exist between nuclear powers, thus magnifying the risks of a spiral of conflict
between them.

Another dimension of this problem has to do with the risk of accident. Drones are prone to accidents and
crashes. By July 2010, the US Air Force had identified approximately 79 drone accidents.140 Recently released documents have revealed that
there have been a number of drone accidents and crashes in the Seychelles and Djibouti, some of which happened in close proximity to civilian
airports.141 The rapid proliferation of drones worldwide will involve a risk of accident to civilian aircraft, possibly producing an international
incident if such an accident were to involve an aircraft affiliated to a state hostile to the owner of the drone. Most of the drone accidents may
be innocuous, but some will carry strategic risks. In December 2011, a CIA drone designed for nuclear surveillance crashed in Iran,
revealing the existence of the spying programme and leaving sensitive technology in the hands of the Iranian government.142 The expansion of
drone technology raises the possibility that some of these surveillance drones will be interpreted as attack drones, or that an
accident or
crash will spiral out of control and lead to an armed confrontation.143 An accident would be even more dangerous if
the US were to pursue its plans for nuclear-powered drones, which can spread radioactive material like a dirty bomb if they crash.144

Third, lethal drones

create the possibility that the norms on the use of force will erode, creating a much
more dangerous world and pushing the international system back towards the rule of the jungle. To some
extent, this world is already being ushered in by the United States, which has set a dangerous precedent that a state may simply kill foreign
citizens considered a threat without a declaration of war. Even John Brennan has recognized that the US is ‘establishing a precedent that other
nations may follow’.145 Given this precedent, there is nothing to stop other states from following the American lead and using drone strikes to
eliminate potential threats. Those ‘threats’ need not be terrorists, but could be others— dissidents, spies, even journalists—whose behaviour
threatens a government.

One danger is that drone use might undermine the normative prohibition on the assassination of leaders and government officials that most
(but not all) states currently respect. A greater danger, however, is that the US will have normalized murder as a tool of statecraft and created a
world where states can increasingly take vengeance on individuals outside their borders without the niceties of extradition, due process or
trial.146 As some of its critics have noted, the Obama administration may have created a world where states will find it easier to kill terrorists
rather than capture them and deal with all of the legal and evidentiary difficulties associated with giving them a fair trial.147

Fourth, there is a distinct danger that the world will divide into two camps: developed states in possession of drone technology, and weak
states and rebel movements that lack them. States with recurring separatist or insurgent problems may begin to police their restive territories
through drone strikes, essentially containing the problem in a fixed geographical region and engaging in a largely punitive policy against them.
One could easily imagine that China, for example, might resort to drone strikes in Uighur provinces in order
to keep potential threats from emerging, or that Russia could use drones to strike at separatist
movements in Chechnya or elsewhere. Such behaviour would not necessarily be confined to authoritarian governments; it is equally
possible that Israel might use drones to police Gaza and the West Bank, thus reducing the vulnerability of
Israeli soldiers to Palestinian attacks on the ground. The extent to which Israel might be willing to use drones in combat and surveillance
was revealed in its November 2012 attack on Gaza. Israel allegedly used a drone to assassinate the Hamas leader Ahmed Jabari and employed a
number of armed drones for strikes in a way that was described as ‘unprecedented’ by senior Israeli officials.148 It is not hard to imagine Israel
concluding that drones over Gaza were the best way to deal with the problem of Hamas, even if their use left the Palestinian population subject
to constant, unnerving surveillance. All of the consequences of such a sharp division between the haves and have-nots with drone technology is
hard to assess, but one possibility is that governments
with secessionist movements might be less willing to
negotiate and grant concessions if drones allowed them to police their internal enemies with ruthless
efficiency and ‘manage’ the problem at low cost. The result might be a situation where such conflicts are contained but not
resolved, while citizens in developed states grow increasingly indifferent to the suffering of those making secessionist or even national
liberation claims, including just ones, upon them.

Finally, drones have the capacity to strengthen the surveillance capacity of both democracies and authoritarian regimes, with significant
consequences for civil liberties. In the UK, BAE Systems is adapting military-designed drones for a range of civilian policing tasks including
‘monitoring antisocial motorists, protesters, agricultural thieves and fly-tippers’.149 Such drones are also envisioned as monitoring Britain’s
shores for illegal immigration and drug smuggling. In the United States, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) issued 61 permits for
domestic drone use between November 2006 and June 2011, mainly to local and state police, but also to federal agencies and even
universities.150 According to one FAA estimate, the US will have 30,000 drones patrolling the skies by 2022.151 Similarly, the European
Commission will spend US$260 million on Eurosur, a new programme that will use drones to patrol the Mediterranean coast.152 The risk that
drones will turn democracies into ‘surveillance states’ is well known, but the risks for authoritarian regimes may be even more severe.
Authoritarian states, particularly those that face serious internal opposition, may tap into drone technology now available to monitor and
ruthlessly punish their opponents. In semi-authoritarian Russia, for example, drones have already been employed to monitor pro-democracy
protesters.153 One could only imagine what a truly murderous authoritarian regime—such as Bashar al-Assad’s Syria—would do with its own
fleet of drones. The expansion of drone technology may make the strong even stronger, thus tilting the balance of power in authoritarian
regimes even more decisively towards those who wield the coercive instruments of power and against those who dare to challenge them.

Conclusion

Even though it has now been confronted with blowback from drones in the failed Times Square bombing, the United States has yet to engage in
a serious analysis of the strategic costs and consequences of its use of drones, both for its own security and for the rest of the world. Much
of the debate over drones to date has focused on measuring body counts and carries the unspoken assumption that if drone strikes
are efficient—that is, low cost and low risk for US personnel relative to the terrorists killed—then they must also be effective. This article has
argued that such analyses are operating with an attenuated notion of effectiveness that discounts some of the other key dynamics—such as
growing anti-
the corrosion of the perceived competence and legitimacy of governments where drone strikes take place,
Americanism and fresh recruitment to militant networks—that reveal the costs of drone warfare. In other
words, the analysis of the effectiveness of drones takes into account only the ‘loss’ side of the ledger for the ‘bad
guys’, without asking what America’s enemies gain by being subjected to a policy of constant surveillance and attack.
In his second term, President Obama has an opportunity to reverse course and establish a new drones policy which mitigates these costs and
avoids some of the long-term consequences that flow from them. A more sensible US approach would impose some limits
on drone use in order to minimize the political costs and long-term strategic consequences. One step might be to limit the use of drones to
HVTs, such as leading political and operational figures for terrorist networks, while reducing or eliminating the strikes against the ‘foot soldiers’
or other Islamist networks not related to Al-Qaeda. This approach would reduce the number of strikes and civilian deaths associated with
drones while reserving their use for those targets that pose a direct or imminent threat to the security of the United States.

Such a self-limiting approach to drones might also minimize the degree of political opposition that US drone strikes generate in states such as
Pakistan and Yemen, as their leaders, and even the civilian population, often tolerate or even approve of strikes against HVTs. Another step
might be to improve the levels of transparency of the drone programme. At present, there are no publicly articulated guidelines stipulating who
can be killed by a drone and who cannot, and no data on drone strikes are released to the public.154 Even a Department of Justice
memorandum which authorized the Obama administration to kill Anwar al-Awlaki, an American citizen, remains classified.155 Such non-
transparency fuels suspicions that the US is indifferent to the civilian casualties caused by drone strikes, a perception which in turn magnifies
the deleterious political consequences of the strikes. Letting some sunlight in on the drones programme would not eliminate all of the
opposition to it, but it would go some way towards undercutting the worst conspiracy theories about drone use in these countries while also
signalling that the US government holds itself legally and morally accountable for its behaviour.156

A final, and crucial, step towards mitigating the strategic consequences of drones would be to develop internationally
recognized standards and norms for their use and sale. It is not realistic to suggest that the US stop using its
drones altogether, or to assume that other countries will accept a moratorium on buying and using
drones. The genie is out of the bottle: drones will be a fact of life for years to come. What remains to be
done is to ensure that their use and sale are transparent, regulated and consistent with internationally recognized human
rights standards. The Obama administration has already begun to show some awareness that drones are dangerous if placed in the wrong
hands. A recent New York Times report revealed that the Obama administration began to develop a secret drones ‘rulebook’ to govern their
use if Mitt Romney were to be elected president.157

The same logic operates on the international level. Lethal drones will eventually be in the hands of those who will use them with fewer scruples
than President Obama has. Without a set of internationally recognized standards or norms governing their sale and use, drones will proliferate
without control, be misused by governments and non-state actors, and become an instrument of repression for the strong. One remedy might
be an international convention on the sale and use of drones which could establish guidelines and norms for their use, perhaps along the lines
of the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW) treaty, which attempted to spell out rules on the use of incendiary devices and
fragment-based weapons.158 While enforcement of these guidelines and adherence to rules on their use will be imperfect and marked by
derogations, exceptions and violations, the presence of a convention may reinforce norms against the flagrant misuse of drones and induce
more restraint in their use than might otherwise be seen. Similarly, a UN investigatory body on drones would help to hold states accountable
for their use of drones and begin to build a gradual consensus on the types of activities for which drones can, and cannot, be used.159 As the
progenitor and leading user of drone technology, the
US now has an opportunity to show leadership in developing an
international legal architecture which might avert some of the worst consequences of their use.
 1NC – OFF
UBI PIC

The United States federal government should institute a substantial border-adjusted

carbon tax, fund infrastructure and job care benefits, and enact election and civil
rights reforms.
Linking the tax to UBI is bad. It creates a perverse incentive to continue fossil fuel use
to fund the UBI. AND, it runs out.
1AC Howard 17, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Maine, USA. He is Co-Editor of Basic
Income Studies, and Coordinator of the US Basic Income Guarantee Network. (Michael, “A Carbon
Dividend as a Step toward a Basic Income in the United States: Prospects and Problems,”
https://blogs.bath.ac.uk/iprblog/2017/07/05/a-carbon-dividend-as-a-step-toward-a-basic-income-in-
the-united-states-prospects-and-problems/)//BB

There are two concerns about carbon fees and dividends that are specific to the question of whether
they constitute a step toward a basic income. First, a carbon dividend by design will fade away. As the
price of carbon rises, demand will fall. Eventually, the declining demand effect will surpass the rising
price effect, and the dividend will begin to decline. The policy is driven primarily by the environmental
problem, and the dividend is one use of the revenue, motivated by considerations of justice and political
feasibility. (In fact, it is conceivable that if the dividend were to become more important than the
environmental tax that funds it, it could lead to perverse efforts to reduce the environmental impact in
order to prolong and maximise the dividend. It would be useful to see some modelling of this
possibility.) Once the environmental problem is solved, there is no longer a compelling reason to provide
a dividend. Thus, viewed as a basic income, a carbon dividend is only a temporary fix.

Election reforms spur reform – it’s biggest internal to populism

1AC Pinkas 23, MA in Government and Politics at Georgetown, was a foreign policy advisor for Ehud
Barak and political advisor to Shimon Peres (Alon, “America's Possible Return to Nationalist Populism
Sends Tremors Around the Democratic World,” Haaretz, https://www.haaretz.com/us-news/2023-05-
15/ty-article/.premium/trumps-possible-return-should-send-tremors-around-the-democratic-world/
00000188-1fc9-df77-afe9-5fcdc84a0000)//BB Damien reads GREEN

American democracy ceased to be an aspiring model during the Trump years, with domestic democratic
backsliding closely accompanied by a foreign policy retreat. It’s not too early to fear that it could happen
again next year

The concept of “American declinism” has a double meaning. Originally, it was a body of scholarly research, think tank and pundit alarms about
the diminishment of U.S. global power. A corrosion of the U.S.’ relative diplomatic, military, economic, financial and soft power leads to an
inevitable decline, not dissimilar to other empires throughout history. The explanations vary from imperial fatigue and overstretch to domestic
discontent and the rise of formidable competitors – notably China. Whether “declinism” is grossly exaggerated by Washington’s turf-conscious
the Trump years –
and omniscient foreign policy elite or whether it was a real depiction of geopolitical changes, it had a field day during
produced the second meaning: a
when the United States was to a large degree reviled in the democratic world. Those years also
clear and significant decline in America’s democratic bona fides. This was the culmination of a process
where “American democracy” ceased to be a model to emulate. The “city on a hill” that freedom-seeking people the world
over were looking up to was no longer appealing. The January 6 insurrection and the rampant election denialism that ensued – and still exists in
 The obtrusive distortions in the U.S.
large quarters of the Republican Party – made the United States a suspect democracy.
political and electoral system, the blatantly unrepresentative one state-two senators principle,
congressional district gerrymandering, the Electoral College and the composition of the Supreme Court
are all known. So is the dysfunctional development of the Republican Party. However, during the Trump years, and among his faithful
cultists to this day, American democracy was and remains under assault. This is expressed boldly at state
level, where voting rights, women’s rights and LGBTQ rights are threatened and suppressed, where books
are banned but AR-15 semiautomatic rifles are encouraged as part of the political discourse. The question of whether Barack Obama and Biden
were the norm and Donald Trump the aberration, or the other way around, requires more time and perspective. President Joe Biden
represented an admirable, largely successful attempt to push back and arrest the double declinism. The question of whether Barack Obama and
Biden were the norm and Donald Trump the aberration, or the other way around, requires more time and perspective. What is pertinent at this
point is the fact that, come November 2024, Americans will once again have to choose between liberal democracy
and nationalist populism. As far as the world is concerned, that is an alarming specter. There are global
political trends negatively affecting and straining democracies: the growing alienation of people from
the political system; resentment toward government policies and state institutions; majoritarian and
authoritarian parties fanning the flames; identity politics becoming a defining aspect of identification;
fear of modernization and technology that are perceived as discriminatory, thus contributing to anti-
elite fomentation. However adverse this seems, it does not necessarily and inevitably cause “democratic backsliding” into the realm of
illiberal democracy. For example, Britain during the Brexit process, and right-wing political successes in Italy and Sweden, did not involve
any tangible backsliding in terms of normative and institutional erosion. Open gallery view A supporter listening to former President Donald
Trump speak at a campaign rally in New Hampshire last month.Credit: SPENCER PLATT - Getty Images via Anyone evoking Turkey, Hungary or
Poland as examples of hollow democracies – anocracies living in the gap between democracy and authoritarianism – is of course right. But it
must be emphasized that in all three, the liberal-democratic baseline was low. In other words, they had little to backslide from. According to the
2022 Carnegie Endowment study “Understanding and Responding to Global Democratic Backsliding,” democratic backsliding occurred in 27
Among established, purported democracies, only the
countries since 2005 – almost all in Africa, Asia or Latin America.
United States experienced what can be clearly defined as “democratic backsliding.” Democratic countries did
experience political tumult, a rise in anti-systemic right-wing parties, increasingly coarse political debate, illiberal manifestations and populist
spasms or even policies, but none demonstrated systemic failure. Not even Israel, which is currently in the midst of a form of constitutional
coup. According to a 2022 Carnegie Endowment study, democratic backsliding occurred in 27 countries since 2005 – almost all in Africa, Asia or
Latin America. Among established, purported democracies, only the United States experienced what can be clearly defined as “democratic
backsliding.” There are similarities in the virulent, demagogic rhetoric and the widely adopted terminology against elites, the judiciary, the
media, science, alleged “deep state” fiefdoms and civil society organizations. There are also common denominators in the narratives: privileged
and patronizing elites working against the “real people” who are the true sovereigns. This narrative is shared by Trump, Benjamin Netanyahu,
Rodrigo Duterte (the Philippines), Jair Bolsonaro (Brazil), Recep Tayyip Erdogan (Turkey), Narendra Modi (India) and Viktor Orbán (Hungary).
None of these countries can be solidly defined as a liberal democracy. Except for the United States. The problem is that in recent years,
particularly during the so-called Trump presidency, American democracy ceased to be a model, and the
domestic democratic retreat was closely accompanied by a foreign policy retreat, a revisionist outlook of
global commitments, abdication of responsibilities, and derisive and rancorous dismissal of alliances –
the very core of U.S. foreign policy since 1945. Against that trend was an ideological and conceptual merger of sorts between
“liberal internationalists,” or “interventionists,” and “neoconservatives.” Both sets of foreign policy approaches and values warned against the
impact that democratic backsliding – a euphemism for Trumpism – will have on America’s global stature and ability to act .
The MAGA
movement is, in essence, a form of malevolent isolationism; a supposedly updated version of the 1823
Monroe Doctrine. There is an inextricable link between what happens in Florida and Tennessee and how
the United States is viewed and regarded in the world. The very idea that democratic backsliding will
win the 2024 election, especially if Biden wins the popular vote but Trump or Ron DeSantis win the
Electoral College, will send tremors around the democratic world.

Benefits have the same distributive effect as the BI BUT avoids the dis-ad.
 1NC – OFF
Pursuant to Article V of the Constitution at least two thirds of the States should call a
constitutional convention and at least three fourths of the States should ratify a
constitutional amendment to substantially increase fiscal redistribution in the United
States by a border-adjusted carbon tax and basic income. The amendment should be
limited exclusively to this issue and no state should ratify proposals for additional
constitutional changes on other issues.
Solves and causes follow-on.
Starobin ’18 [Paul; Summer 2018; Author and journalist; American Affairs, “Who’s Afraid of an
Article V Convention?” https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2018/05/whos-afraid-of-an-article-v-
convention/]
The Convention Tool as a Prod
One hundred and five years after its ratification, the Seventeenth Amendment also stands nearly forgotten. No one alive has personal memory of
the time when state legislatures chose senators. There is no holiday to thank Louisiana, or Utah, or any other state, for making the Senate, if
something far short of deliberative perfection, at least better than it once was. As ever, America does a poor job of civic education. The problem,
too, is that the role that the states can play, and were meant to play, in our framework as “laboratories of democracy” tends to be overlooked amid
Washington’s dominance of so many facets of political life.

There is virtue, then, in renewing awareness of the part that states can play in forcing constitutional
issues onto the national agenda. This most neglected of constitutional muscles, withered from disuse, is in
want of exertion. In the first instance, as suggested by the experience of the Seventeenth Amendment, citizens of any political stripe can
profit from an understanding of how the threat of an Article V convention, on its own, might elicit a positive response
from Washington.
 1NC – OFF
Housing market is recovering now – prices are under control
Lance Lambert, 6–21–2023, the editorial director of Fortune Education. He also writes the weekly
Fortune Analytics newsletter and reports on topics ranging from the future of work to the housing
market. "Even hard–hit Western housing markets are stabilizing—just look at KB Home's latest
cancellation rate," Fortune, https://fortune.com/2023/06/21/housing–market–improvement–for–
homebuilders–and–western–markets–home–price–correction/ – ML

“The improvement in [housing] demand we started to see in February was sustained throughout our
second quarter, as we achieved monthly sequential increases in our net orders,” Mezger told investors
on Wednesday. “We are well–positioned to achieve our revenue target for 2023.”

What’s going on? Two things.

First, the national U.S. housing market stabilized this spring, as a shortage of existing home inventory
and seasonality did just enough to put the market back into equilibrium
UBI causes housing price inflation – that disrupts the economy and turns the case
Malcom Henry, ND. Senior executive, culturally competent leader with expertise in relationship
building, networking. “Popping the Housing Bubble.” https://citizen–network.org/library/popping–the–
housing–bubble.html.
UBI enthusiasts can see the prospect of their dream coming true as our economies – so utterly reliant on wage–earning – struggle to come to
terms with lockdown.
But a hasty introduction of UBI without fully understanding its effects on some
essential components of our economy could undermine its effectiveness and provide its opponents with
ammunition.
UBI will significantly increase the disposable income of the population as a whole, providing the productive economy with lots of opportunities
for new business. However, not all of these opportunities will be beneficial to us, individually or collectively.
Some of the things that we spend our money on are essential to life, and the markets for some of these essentials are effective monopolies
because of the infrastructure that’s required to deliver them – electricity, gas, water, etc. Even
with regulation the people who
control these markets are adept at inflating prices whenever there is an opportunity to do so, and UBI is
a golden opportunity.

At first glance housing might appear to lie beyond the reach of such avaricious monopoly but we have
to look beyond the bricks and mortar to see who controls prices in the housing market.

Land Registry and ONS data show us:

Average UK house price has quadrupled in the last 29 years from £57,000 to more that £233,000.

Rate of increase in house prices has been positive for all but 68 of the last 348 months.

Between January 1996 and December 2007 the rate of increase was consistently positive, ranging
between 2.1% and 28.4%.

Even in the last decade, after the financial crash of 2008/09, the rate of change has been positive apart from a
minor dip in 2011/12.
These rates of increase represent a gargantuan amount of money. Where has it come from?
Our banking system has a monopoly on the creation of money in the form of debt and since deregulation in the 1980s it has been using this
power with unrestrained gusto.

The inflation of house prices over the last three decades has been fuelled by mortgage lending, which
continues apace.
At the end of 2019 the value of new mortgage commitments (lending agreed to be advanced in the coming months) was £70.6 billion, 4.0%
higher than a year earlier.

The outstanding value of all residential mortgages at the end of 2019 was £1,499 billion, 3.8% higher than a year earlier.

To put £1,499 billion into perspective, the UK money supply (M4) at the end of 2019 was approximately £2,500 billion, which means that
around 60% of the value of all of the money in the UK economy is owed in residential mortgage repayments.

Given the UK population’s addiction to the property market it is highly probable that a significant
proportion of the additional disposable income from UBI will exacerbate the existing problem of house
price inflation.
A proportion of the population in receipt of UBI will use the extra disposable income to invest in residential property – moving to a
bigger/better home; buying a holiday home; investing in buy–to–let. Such
investments will inevitably be geared – the spare
UBI cash being multiplied threefold or more by mortgage providers.

The supply of residential property is limited by the

number of people who want to move house and the number of
new houses that are being built. Any increase in demand will certainly lead to an increase in asking
prices.
Banks will happily respond by issuing mortgages that cover the inflated prices, encouraging more people with disposable UBI income to enter
the market and contribute to further house price inflation. The more that banks lend – value and quantity – the more
income they get from fees and interest.

The net result will be higher housing costs for everyone who rents or who has to move house due to a
growing family or relocation.

But there will also be a negative effect on the rest of the economy. Money that could be used to support
productive activity will be sucked into the coffers of mortgage providers and landlords and largely lost
from general circulation.
For an economy to thrive money must be available and mobile. UBI is probably the best method of ensuring that a base load of money passes
through every corner of the economy every month but its effectiveness will be severely compromised if a significant quantity of it is diverted
into housing costs.

The continuous inflation of housing costs will also exert pressure to continuously increase the value of
UBI payments which will create difficulties in the UBI funding mechanism.
If UBI is to work as its proponents imagine then there is a range of essential goods that will have to be protected from inadvertent or
opportunistic price inflation. Housing is a prime candidate for such protection.

New housing crisis causes WWIII

Liu 18 (Qian Liu, Economist based in China, From Economic Crisis to World War III, 8 November 2018,
https://www.project–syndicate.org/commentary/economic–crisis–military–conflict–or–structural–
reform–by–qian–liu–2018–11)

The next economic crisis is closer than you think. But what you should really worry about is what comes after: in the
current social, political, and technological landscape, a prolonged economic crisis, combined with rising income inequality,
could well escalate into a major global military conflict. The 2008–09 global financial crisis almost
bankrupted governments and caused systemic collapse. Policymakers managed to pull the global
economy back from the brink, using massive monetary stimulus, including quantitative easing and near–zero (or even
negative) interest rates. But monetary stimulus is like an adrenaline shot to jump–start an arrested
heart; it can revive the patient, but it does nothing to cure the disease. Treating a sick economy requires structural reforms, which can cover everything from financial and labor
markets to tax systems, fertility patterns, and education policies.1 Policymakers have utterly failed to pursue such reforms, despite promising to do so. Instead, they have remained preoccupied with politics. From Italy to Germany,
forming and sustaining governments now seems to take more time than actual governing. And Greece, for example, has relied on money from international creditors to keep its head (barely) above water, rather than genuinely

lack of structural reform has meant that the unprecedented excess

reforming its pension system or improving its business environment. The

liquidity that central banks injected into their economies was not allocated to its most efficient uses.
Instead, it raised global asset prices to levels even higher than those prevailing before 2008. In the United States,
housing prices are now 8% higher than they were at the peak of the property bubble in 2006, according to the property website Zillow. The price–to–
earnings (CAPE) ratio, which measures whether stock–market prices are within a reasonable range, is now higher than it was both in 2008 and at the start of
the Great Depression in 1929. As monetary tightening reveals the vulnerabilities in the real economy, the collapse of asset–price bubbles will trigger
another economic crisis – one that could be even more severe than the last, because we have built up a
tolerance to our strongest macroeconomic medications. A decade of regular adrenaline shots, in the
form of ultra–low interest rates and unconventional monetary policies, has severely depleted their
power to stabilize and stimulate the economy. If history is any guide, the consequences of this mistake could
extend far beyond the economy. According to Harvard’s Benjamin Friedman, prolonged periods of economic
distress have been characterized also by public antipathy toward minority groups or foreign countries – attitudes that can
help to fuel unrest, terrorism, or even war. For example, during the Great Depression, US President Herbert Hoover signed the 1930 Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act, intended to protect

American workers and farmers from foreign competition. In the subsequent five years, global trade shrank by two–thirds. Within a decade, World War II had begun. To be sure,
WWII, like World War I, was caused by a multitude of factors; there is no standard path to war. But there is reason to believe that high levels of inequality can play a significant role in stoking conflict.3 According to research by the
economist Thomas Piketty, a spike in income inequality is often followed by a great crisis. Income inequality then declines for a while, before rising again, until a new peak – and a new disaster. Though causality has yet to be
proven, given the limited number of data points, this correlation should not be taken lightly, especially with wealth and income inequality at historically high levels. This is all the more worrying in view of the numerous other
factors stoking social unrest and diplomatic tension, including technological disruption, a record–breaking migration crisis, anxiety over globalization, political polarization, and rising nationalism. All are symptoms of failed policies

that could turn out to be trigger points for a future crisis.

 1NC – OFF
Elections push Biden to pass Saudi-Israel normalization – attention is key
Wilkinson 6/13
Tracy, LA Times, “Pariah or partner? U.S. navigates complicated, contradictory relationship with Saudi
Arabia” June 13, 2023 https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2023-06-13/saudi-arabia-u-s-navigates-
complicated-contradictory-relationship dmr
WASHINGTON — Visits to Saudi Arabia by high-profile U.S. officials are always problematic. The two countries have a love-hate relationship.
Politicians and the public criticize the Saudi kingdom’s human rights record and repression of women; its unwillingness to increase oil
production; its coziness with Russia, China and, now, even with erstwhile enemy Iran. But the
U.S. and Saudi Arabia also need each
other — for trade and for broader security arrangements in the Middle East, including conflicts in Yemen
and Sudan, where they work together to broker cease-fires or deliver humanitarian aid to devastated populations.
And the Biden administration is fervently coaxing Riyadh to establish diplomatic ties with Israel, following similar
Trump-era breakthrough gestures by a small number of other gulf or Muslim nations. Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken wrapped up a four-
day visit to the Saudi cities of Jeddah and Riyadh last week, which included a midnight meeting with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin
Salman. Salman, the de facto ruler of the nation, is a ruthless dictator, a bold reformer or both, depending on whom you ask. The 37-year-old
prince is largely considered responsible for the brutal killing and dismemberment of U.S.-based Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi inside the
Saudi Consulate in Istanbul in 2018. President Biden once called Salman a pariah and vowed to shun him, a pledge eventually reversed in a
famous fist bump between the two last year. Executions of perceived enemies of the kingdom have surged under Salman’s rule, human rights
activists say, and reports of arbitrary detention and torture of activists, including many women, persist — even as he lifted some anachronistic
restrictions on women, such as allowing them to drive cars. Despite the litany of Saudi transgressions, the Biden administration is
engaging with the kingdom as a way to demonstrate it still has influence in the Middle East — at a time
many in the region note Washington has been absent in consequential events and decisions and as China
and Russia flex their diplomatic and military muscle where the U.S. was once the unrivaled superpower.
“I would say that my presence here over the last three days is one element to demonstrate that, no, we’re certainly not leaving. We’re here to
stay,” Blinken told the Saudi-based Asharq News network Thursday when asked about the U.S. commitment to the region. “Day in, day out,
we’re working with partners throughout the region … both to deal with many of the challenges that … are real and urgent and acute, but also —
and this is so important — on an affirmative agenda for the future,” Blinken added. “We are a partner, and we’re here.” Blinken, in a
separate news conference in Riyadh, said he “discussed” human rights in his meetings with Salman and other Saudi officials and “ made
clear that progress on human rights strengthens our relationship.” He said he raised “specific” cases, including those of
several U.S. citizens who are imprisoned in the kingdom, but would not say whether he had secured guarantees of their freedom nor would he
enter into any other details. Critics accuse the Biden administration of papering over Saudi abuses and fault it for not denouncing them more
robustly, which in turn emboldens Salman. “The administration needs to abandon its behind-closed-doors approach to addressing human
rights” in Saudi Arabia, said Tess McEnery, who served on Biden’s National Security Council until last year and now heads the nongovernmental
Project on Middle East Democracy. “There need to be clear public costs to [Salman’s] repression. … For nearly a year [since the Biden visit],
we’ve seen what a policy of appeasement looks like.” The Biden administration sanctioned some members of the Saudi security apparatus for
the 2018 murder of Washington Post contributing columnist Khashoggi, but not Salman, whom U.S. intelligence officials believe probably
ordered the killing. In
Congress, lawmakers have revived legislation that could block arms sales to Saudi
Arabia based on its human rights record, and two measures have been proposed that would punish
governments for “transnational repression,” the illegal pursuit by a country outside its borders of
dissidents or critics, as happened with Khashoggi. It is a tactic also frequently used by Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose
government has been accused of hunting down and poisoning opponents in England and elsewhere. While in Saudi Arabia last week, Blinken
also came under criticism for praising what he called Saudi “progress” on its treatment of women, lauding the first female Saudi astronaut to go
into space and meeting with eight handpicked Saudi women identified by the State Department as leaders. Blinken’s remarks came even as
numerous Saudi women are being given decades-long prison sentences for what supporters say are minor offenses, such as failing to wear an
abaya on social media or tweeting criticisms of the kingdom. Substantial progress for women “is only a narrative that the Saudi government is
selling to the West,” Lina AlHathloul, a longtime Saudi activist fighting for women’s rights and free speech, said in an interview from Brussels,
where she has sought refuge from her government. “It is only window dressing. … And the government sees a green light to double down on
repression.” AlHathloul campaigned for years to free her sister Loujain, who was arrested in 2018 for driving. Loujain is out of prison now but
banned from traveling or speaking publicly. Though women have been granted the right to drive and some access to elections, Saudi Arabia’s
so-called guardianship rules remain in place, which restrict many activities such as travel or marriage for women without a male relative’s
permission. Saudi officials insist that they have made significant progress in human rights, but will only advance on their own terms. “We are
always open to having a dialogue with our friends, but we don’t respond to pressure,” Saudi Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan said at the
Riyadh news conference with Blinken. “When we do anything, we do it in our own interests. And I don’t think that anybody believes that
pressure is useful or helpful, and therefore that’s not something that we are going to even consider.” One reason the Biden administration
seeks to keep its relationship with Saudi Arabia on a cordial keel is the role the oil-rich kingdom can play in
integrating Israel into a region that has long refused to recognize Israel’s existence. The Trump administration
brokered the Abraham Accords, under which the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain for the first time opened diplomatic and economic ties with
Israel. As the powerhouse of the gulf, Saudi Arabia would be a prized addition to the declaration , but it is so
far resisting. Saudi officials cite the continued failure to resolve the Palestinian quest for an independent state. Riyadh has also listed a
series of high-stake demands, including U.S. help in developing nuclear power, but U.S. officials see that as an
opening gambit. Meanwhile, the current Israeli government is the most right-wing in its history, with possibilities for progress on the Palestinian
cause considered nonexistent. In Riyadh last week, Blinken said Saudi-Israeli normalization remained a “priority.” But the Saudi foreign minister
countered that while desirable, the goal would remain remote “without finding a pathway to peace for the Palestinian people … a pathway
towards a two-state solution, on finding a pathway towards giving the Palestinians dignity and justice.” It would also be a bad look for the
Saudis to get closer to Israel at a time when deadly clashes and attacks are surging in Israel, the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip, and
after several incursions by Israeli police into the Al Aqsa Mosque compound, said Khaled Elgindy, a senior fellow at the Washington-based
Middle East Institute. Al Aqsa is the third-holiest site in Islam, located in an area also sacred to Jews. “ The
Saudis are not in a hurry
to normalize,” he said, even as “the Biden administration has prioritized it higher on the list than [an independent state] for the
Palestinians, which is now just a talking point.” Shira Efron, research director at the U.S.-based Israel Policy Forum, said that while Israel badly
wants to enjoy the fruits of normalization, the pieces of the puzzle remain exceedingly complicated, with U.S. and Israel reluctant to accede to
the Saudis’ most robust demands. “And if
the U.S. and Saudi Arabia were able to agree on what the U.S. will give,
would Congress approve?” she said, adding that room for negotiation is likely to shrink as the U.S.
presidential election gets into full swing.
Biden PC key
Ravid 5/17 Barak, Contributing Correspondent at Axios based in Tel-Aviv, “Biden admin pushing for
Saudi-Israeli peace deal by end of year, officials say” May 17, 2023
https://www.axios.com/2023/05/17/saudi-arabia-israel-peace-normalization-deal-biden-admin dmr
The White House wants to make a diplomatic push for a Saudi-Israeli peace deal in the next six to seven months before the
presidential election campaign consumes President Biden’s agenda, two U.S. officials with knowledge of the issue told Axios. Why it matters:
Any normalization agreement between Saudi Arabia and Israel brokered by the U.S. will
likely include an upgrade in U.S.-Saudi
relations and a package of tangible deliverables from the U.S. government. Such a deal could be unpopular among
Democrats and might cost Biden a lot of political capital. Biden once vowed to make Saudi Arabia a "pariah" over the kingdom's
human rights record and the murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi. U.S. intelligence says Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin
Salman is responsible for Khashoggi's murder — an allegation Saudi Arabia denies. But
a deal could be a historic breakthrough
in Middle East peace, leading to a domino effect of more Arab and Muslim-majority countries normalizing
relations with Israel and putting U.S.-Saudi relations back on track. Driving the news: White House national security
adviser Jake Sullivan met with MBS last week in Jeddah and, among other issues, discussed the possibility of Saudi-Israeli normalization, the U.S.
officials said. After the meeting, White House Middle East czar Brett McGurk and Biden’s senior adviser Amos Hochstein traveled to Jerusalem
and briefed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Behind the scenes: According to the two U.S. officials, Sullivan told MBS the U.S. thinks
there is an opportunity to get a Saudi-Israeli deal by the end of the year. MBS said he doesn’t want to take any more
incremental steps toward warming relations with Israel, but instead, work toward one big package that will include
U.S. deliverables like stronger military cooperation, one U.S. official said. The Saudi Embassy in Washington did not respond
to specific questions related to this story. Two senior U.S. officials said it's in Saudi Arabia's interest to get a normalization
agreement with Israel while President Biden is in office because it would receive more bipartisan political
support and legitimacy in Washington, especially when it is likely to include U.S. steps toward Saudi
Arabia that would be unpopular. While Republicans in Congress generally support a deal with Saudi Arabia, many Democrats who
are critical of the kingdom will only support such an agreement if done under a president of their own party, the two U.S. officials said.
Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, who visited Saudi Arabia and Israel several weeks before Sullivan’s trip, met MBS in Jeddah and gave him a
similar message about getting a deal with Biden. "I told the crown prince that the best time to upgrade our relationship is now, that President
Biden is very interested in normalizing relationships with Saudi Arabia and, in turn, Saudi Arabia recognizing [Israel]," Graham said in a
statement after his meeting with Netanyahu in Jerusalem several days after he met MBS. “I believe that the Republican Party, writ large, would
be glad to work with President Biden to change the relationship between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia," he added. What they're saying: A National
Security Council spokesperson said the White House "does not comment on the content of private diplomatic discussions." "The United States
is fully committed to strengthening and expanding the Abraham Accords and supporting Israel’s integration into the Middle East," the
spokesperson added. "This will be an area of continued emphasis and focus for us over the coming period as we look to
achieve a more integrated, more prosperous, and more stable region that serves the interests of our partners and the United States over the
long term." Between the lines: A senior Israeli official told Axios he agrees with this analysis and also stressed the Saudis would be better off
cutting a deal with a Democratic president. The Israeli official compared it to Netanyahu’s decision to get the security assistance deal with
President Obama in 2016 and not waiting for a possible electoral win by then-presidential candidate Donald Trump. “The fact we got the deal
with Obama strengthened support by Democrats in Congress for U.S. military aid to Israel," the official said. Israel sees Saudi Arabia as the “holy
grail” of its outreach to the Arab world and has long wanted to normalize relations with the kingdom, especially since the signing of the Trump-
brokered Abraham Accords in 2020. State of play: U.S. officials say that one of the biggest hurdles to getting a wide-ranging deal between Saudi
Arabia and Israel has to do with the Saudi request to upgrade is military cooperation with the U.S. and gain access to sophisticated U.S. weapon
systems it doesn't currently have. The Saudis also want to be able to purchase munitions from the U.S. for their air force after such sales were
suspended by the Biden administration weeks after the president assumed office due to the war in Yemen. U.S. and Israeli officials say the
truce in Yemen, which was boosted by the Saudi-Iranian rapprochement, creates better conditions for improving U.S.-Saudi
ties and for moving forward with such a deal. U.S. and Israeli officials say another hurdle is the Saudi request to get U.S. support for a Saudi
nuclear program that will include uranium enrichment. The possibility of Saudi Arabia developing a nuclear energy program, including
independent uranium enrichment, is a matter of serious concern for Israel, but Israeli officials say there are several possible solutions that are
being discussed to mitigate the nuclear proliferation concerns. What to watch: Any deal will likely include a “Palestinian component” that Israel
will have to agree to. The Saudis said publicly that normalization with Israel will take place only if there is progress on the Israeli-Palestinian
peace process. It is unclear what the Saudis and the U.S. will ask for and how far Netanyahu’s far-right government will go to secure a deal.

Plan trades off

Ben Ho, 4-26-2021, associate professor of economics at Vassar College, an adjunct at Columbia
University’s Center on Global Energy Policy, and former lead energy economist at the White House
Council of Economic Advisers, "Time to Give Up on a Carbon Tax?," State of the Planet, Columbia
Climate School, https://news.climate.columbia.edu/2021/04/26/retire-carbon-tax/, KL
Since 2006, economist and former Bush-era White House adviser Greg Mankiw has been encouraging economists and policy makers to join the
Pigou Club, which advocates for a tax on carbon. The idea goes back to economist Arthur Cecil Pigou, who, in 1920, proposed to tax market
activities that generate externalities — costs that are not included in a product’s market price, such as the healthcare costs of using tobacco. In
the case of carbon, such a tax would raise revenue for the government while making sure those who choose to burn fossil fuels (say, when you
drive your car to work) adequately take into account that choice’s damage to the environment and the health and safety of others.
Although fundamentally a good idea, carbon tax proposals have repeatedly failed to gain political momentum —
and they may not even be the best solutions available. Maybe it’s time to retire the Pigou club.
A carbon tax is an idea with some consensus from economists on both the right and the left. It’s an easy sell for most Democrats, since it
increases government revenues while working to fix climate change, but it’s also appealing to Republicans because the revenue it raises would
allow the government to cut taxes on things we want more of, like income and investment. Also appealing to free market types, no bureaucrat
or congressional lobbyist would be picking which companies win or lose in the marketplace. The government simply sets a price that allows
consumers and firms to make the right choice when deciding how much to pollute — it lets the market decide. Little wonder this idea has
gotten support from prominent Republicans.
Despite its advantages, the
U.S. has seen little progress in passing a carbon tax. Some conservatives dislike the
imposition of a tax that would likely produce a massive (e.g., trillions of dollars) source of new government revenues that might be used
poorly. Conservatives also worry about the harm it would cause to workers in fossil fuel industries and
the increased prices faced by consumers. Liberals also object to the higher prices, which could
disproportionately harm those with the lowest incomes.
<<PARAGRAPH BREAKS PAUSE>>
In 2018, a tax designed to fight climate change in France led to weeks of violent “yellow vest” protests against rising fuel prices, among other concerns, causing the French government to back down. A plan for an E.U.-wide carbon tax has never been successful. Recent referenda in
Washington State have failed again and again. In fact, no U.S. state has successfully passed a carbon tax (although many U.S. states and the E.U. have passed cap and trade policies). Because for all of their vaunted benefits, carbon taxes have substantial drawbacks. I suspect that a carbon
tax would be less transformative than its advocates promise. Economists Kenneth Gillingham and James Stock find we already have dozens of existing policies that place high implicit prices on carbon reductions: e.g. renewable portfolio standards that regulate electricity (with an implicit
carbon price of $0-$190/ton), tax credits for solar power ($140-$2100/ton) or wind ($2-$260/ton), fuel economy standards ($48-$310/ton), corn ethanol standards ($-18 to $310/ton), or subsidies for electric cars ($350-$640/ton). The additional impact of a carbon tax at say the $51/ton
social cost of carbon recently adopted by the Biden administration could have a smaller effect on these specific sectors relative to the policies already in place. It is true that a carbon tax would incentivize reductions in other sectors, but there are few major sources of carbon emissions in
the U.S. that aren’t already regulated by existing policies. A carbon tax on its own isn’t even the first best policy option because it doesn’t target other externalities that are potentially more important than the direct damage of climate change. In particular it doesn’t do enough to
encourage the benefits that come when new technologies are invented, such as the innovations that have brought the price of solar down by 90% or more in the past 10-20 years. It also does little to address the infrastructure needed for a low carbon economy — infrastructure like a
smarter grid, or a network of electric vehicle charging stations. Perhaps we should be focusing on those market failures first. For example, the innovation and network benefits associated with buying an electric car today is far greater than the direct benefit from reduced use of fossil fuels.
Buying an electric car today does have a direct effect on reducing emissions, but the indirect effect of making electric cars affordable to all may be far more important. In many ways, the types of policies that politicians tend to favor — policies that heavily target innovation and then phase
out (such as subsidies for solar electricity or electric vehicles) or infrastructure projects like power grid upgrades — are preferable to Pigouvian taxes. Especially since the biggest political hurdle is getting international buy-in — getting countries like India, Nigeria and Saudi Arabia to adopt
climate-friendly policies as well. Yes, passing a U.S. carbon tax might encourage other countries to pass similar policies of their own, but a more effective way to get other countries to go green could be to spur innovations like the ones that have made solar one of the cheapest forms of
energy in much of the world and electric cars a viable alternative to gasoline-powered ones. While these seemed like pipe dreams not long ago and advocates were derided as techno-optimists, these goals now seem readily within reach (for example, GM just announced it plans to end
production of gasoline powered cars by 2035 in favor of electric). Maybe it’s time to redouble our efforts. It’s not that a carbon tax is a bad idea; in an ideal world, Pigouvian taxes are still part of a first-best policy solution. A uniformly applied carbon tax has benefits that the current
hodge-podge of targeted government programs just doesn’t. A clear price on carbon would encourage innovation in areas the government has never heard of, and create a much more efficient channel for government revenues than distortionary taxes on income and capital. It’s just that
there are other externalities with higher potential impact that maybe we should be focusing our attention on, especially since there are political costs that make subsidies and infrastructure projects more attractive than a massive tax increase. I am still a supporter of the Pigou club, but
maybe it’s time for the club to rethink its plan of action. Benjamin Ho is an associate professor of economics at Vassar College, an adjunct at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy, and former lead energy economist at the White House Council of Economic Advisers. His new
book, Why Trust Matters: An Economist’s Guide to the Ties that Bind Us, is forthcoming from Columbia University Press. 7 COMMENTS Oldest Jonathan V Marshall Jonathan V Marshall 2 years ago Ben Ho’s argument is hard to address because it’s so incoherent. At the outset, and
throughout much of the article, he argues that “it’s time to retire the Pigou club.” By the end, in contrast, he admits that carbon taxes may be “part of a first-best policy solution” and he’s “still a supporter of the Pigou club.” It never occurs to him that he has created a false dichotomy,
that carbon taxes and other measures (e.g. grid modernization) are not mutually exclusive. Ho notes that Harvard economist Greg Mankiw advocates for a carbon tax. That’s true but only .03 percent of the story. Nearly 3,600 U.S. economists, including 27 Nobel laureates, 15 former
chairs of the Council of Economic Advisers, and four former chairs of the Federal Reserve Board, signed a statement declaring that “carbon tax offers the most cost-effective lever to reduce carbon emissions at the scale and speed that is necessary.” Ho makes the astounding error of
confusing the estimated costs of regulations and subsidies in various sectors with a carbon tax of similar magnitude imposed on those same sectors. One reason many regulations impose a high cost per ton of CO2 is that they have small effects on total emissions. For example, subsidies
for electric cars do very little to discourage the purchase and use of gasoline and diesel-based vehicles, whose fuel continues to enjoy huge subsidies. A substantial carbon tax would have far greater impact on emissions, and on adoption of electric vehicles, as proven by the experience of
many countries around the world with higher fuel taxes. His argument soon devolves into a plea for relying largely on innovation to address the impending climate disaster. Virtually every serious economist supports public spending on R&D. But innovation alone will achieve results far too
slowly if fossil fuels continue to enjoy hundreds of billions of dollars in subsidies by allowing their environmental damage to go unpriced. Glenn Hubbard, former chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors in the George W. Bush administration, observed, “business people don’t
innovate because it feels good; they innovate because there’s a return to that innovation. If you want a return to that innovation, . . . you will need to put a price on carbon.” Or as Bill Gates once put it, “Without a carbon tax, there’s no incentive for innovators or plant buyers to switch”
to clean energy. A report by the Department of Energy in 2017 concluded that the most aggressive “stretch” national technology policies would reduce CO2 emissions less than 30 percent by 2040. By comparison, the Stanford Energy Modeling Forum found that a carbon tax of $50 per
ton, increasing 5 percent annually, would achieve better results in just 10 years, even without counting the impact of technology breakthroughs. It’s true that that carbon pricing policies, though common in much of the world (including Canada, the UK, and EU), have had little success in
the United States. The same could be said for most other serious climate policies. The way to achieve enact a carbon tax in the United States is not to look backward at failed models, but to heed the political experience of countries like Canada, which make such taxes popular by returning
the revenue to individuals in the form of equal dividends or tax credits. A 2017 study by the Treasury Department estimated that such a scheme would make roughly two-thirds of households financially better off, net of higher direct and indirect energy costs. That could be a winning
political formula. In short, it’s not time to “give up.” It’s time to promote national carbon fee legislation like HR 2703, the Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act. Reply Ben Ho Ben Ho Reply to Jonathan V Marshall 2 years ago Sorry for the slow reply. I hadn’t seen these comments but
they are excellent and thoughtful. Some brief replies.

<<PARAGRAPH BREAKS RESUME>>

I agree we could do both, but political
capital and legislative time is finite. A lot has been written for example about how
Obama used up his capital on healthcare reform, leaving little capital and time for anything else (like
climate change).
I did also say in the piece that the direct effects of electric car subsidies on emissions is quite small. The main effect is the cross country
spillovers. The US accounts for only 14% (and falling) of global emissions. China has mandated that 40% of cars sold will be electric by 2030.
Major car companies plan to phase out gasoline powered cars globally by 2035-2040. 2/3 of all new electricity generation (globally) is now solar
(and wind).
That kind of innovation is hard for conventional models to capture.
I agree that a carbon tax will speed things along, but I don’t see how a US carbon tax will speed things along very much in places like China or
Africa, whereas innovation will.
It’s a common mistake that revenue recycling/carbon dividend would be politically appealing. A recent Yale
poll (YPCCC) found that option to be the LEAST politically popular way to spend carbon tax revenues (even
with Republican voters).
<<PARAGRAPH BREAKS PAUSE>>
Reply Ray Welch Ray Welch 2 years ago Criticizing carbon taxes because they haven’t succeeded in the U.S. is a bit like criticizing one-legged, six-inch stools for not reaching the bar top. The problem isn’t with stools as a concept. The problem is bad design, compounded by bad
implementation. The most critical component that carbon taxes have lacked is a mechanism for economic justice. Most carbon tax proposals have been regressive. This design flaw is easily corrected. Put the carbon tax on the fossil fuel companies where they extract or import the fuels.
Then, return the collected revenue to individuals to give them a way to cope with cost increases, to the extent the FF cos pass them along. The less carbon your purchases represent, the more money you retain. How will you recognize low-carbon goods and services? Easy. They’ll tend to
be cheaper. A monthly “carbon dividend” also confers a clear sense of agency to consumers. By buying low-carbon, they benefit both themselves and the climate. This economic justice element was lacking in France. The Yellow Vests were reacting to the government imposing a direct tax
on consumers at the fuel pump, while at the same time it was reducing other taxes on the wealthy. They were not objecting to a carbon tax, per se. A monthly dividend would make the carbon tax as politically durable as Social Security. Small carbon users will be net earners, while only
big carbon users will be net payers, which seems the essence of justice to me. The second necessary carbon tax design component to add is a border tariff on goods from exporting countries, like China, who don’t have an equivalent carbon tax. This serves two purposes. It prevents U.S.
manufactures from fleeing overseas, and it incentivizes foreign exporters to put their own carbon reductions in place. A tax designed like this will have three legs (fee, dividend, border tariff) and be at the scale needed to reach the bar. Will other polices be required? Yes, of course. Prof.
Ho says, “A carbon tax ON ITS OWN [emphasis added] isn’t even the first best policy option…” I would say no policy, on its own, will reduce fossil fuel usage at the required scale and pace. EV subsidies alone certainly wouldn’t do it. Testing a tax as a single measure, but not applying the
same test to other single measures, seems tendentious. The “innovation and network benefits” Prof. Ho speaks of would be greatly enhanced by a properly designed and (therefore) politically durable carbon tax. Fee-and-dividend would support every green endeavor, not just EVs,
because it would provide a reliable planning horizon and a clear economic trajectory for the future for all players, especially businesses. It would reduce investment risk and elevate the likelihood of a good return from all green investment. If we’d have had a national fee and dividend in
place for the past ten years, I suspect EVs, charging infrastructure, battery storage, and transmission build-outs, along with other innovations, would be all substantially further along than they are now. But here’s the biggest drawback of the sectoral approach: it can’t be implemented at
the scale or speed required to meet President Biden’s goal of 50% carbon reductions (basis 2005) by 2030. Subsidies tend to focus on future assets. All future energy and products are *additive* unless there’s a direct incentive to substitute and retire existing ones. An annually escalating,
socially just carbon fee on fossil fuels (rather than on downstream products and services) would incentivize such substitutions. If polluting remains free, businesses and individuals will tend to hold onto present assets to maximize their return. Innovation efforts will tend to focus on
retaining those FF assets (and their massive free pollution subsidy) rather than on green alternatives. Another risk is that the sectoral/subsidy approach, at the scale needed to hit Biden’s targets, would attract the same or greater opposition as a socially just carbon fee, plus run the risk of
being used as evidence that the “elites” are trying to hoodwink the populace. In past alternative energy subsidy programs, tax increases and debt have been relatively easy to obscure. “Hide-the-money” worked because ambition was low, and the programs correspondingly small. But with
the scale of ambition going up an order of magnitude or two, a lot more people are going to care. Reactionary right-wing populists in particular will highlight the enormous tax and debt increases, just like they hyped the “lies” that the “elites” told (at first) about masks NOT being effective
for the coronavirus pandemic. If green subsidies fall prey to this kind of attack, they’ll be very difficult indeed to push through and sustain. Reply Ben Ho Ben Ho Reply to Ray Welch 2 years ago Sorry for the slow reply. I hadn’t seen these comments but they are excellent and thoughtful.
Some brief replies. I agree that an upstream carbon tax and dividend scheme would be ideal (from an economist’s perspective). There was a push by some prominent republicans for such a scheme back at the end of the Bush administration (that went nowhere). It’s also politically
unpopular. In a recent Yale YPCCC poll, using carbon revenues for dividends was the LEAST politically popular way to spend carbon tax revenues (Even among republican voters). I take your point that we need to worry about existing pollution sources, but I do think innovation has gone
surprisingly far. 2/3 of all new electricity generation (globally) in solar (and wind). Car companies will phase out all gasoline car sales globally by 2035-2040. But I agree that we need to do something to retire existing capital (coal plants, cars, etc) more quickly. A carbon tax would help, but
it’s not necessarily the most targeted policy to do so there either. A friend of mine at the Rocky Mountain Institute has been working on financing plans to help speed up coal plant retirement. In their estimates, a moderate carbon tax (in the $50 range), would do relatively little to shut
down a large number of existing coal plants because the fixed costs of those plants are already paid for and the plants are relatively new. So more targeted policies are needed. And a policy like Cash for Clunkers (which economists hate for its inefficiency) was much beloved by voters and
politicians. In an era where 2 trillion spending packages has become normalized, similar policies are floating around Congress currently, and I suspect are far more likely to be passed than a carbon tax. Reply Robert Archer Robert Archer 2 years ago It is hard to discern the merit in this
opinion piece. It appears to contribute to some of the unsupported narratives concerning the need for regulatory/subsidy approaches instead of a carbon tax. That narrative and this piece rely on a flawed policy approach: you can have either regulatory/subsidy policies or a carbon tax but
not both. Following are some brief comments on just a few of the views quoted below. Quote: “…carbon tax proposals have repeatedly failed to gain political momentum…” Comment: The emergence of the carbon tax policy has only occurred in the last 3-4 years against strong
headwinds of the previous administration. Several serious Bills have emerged in Congress, the political context has changed significantly both internationally (EU, UK and Canada) and domestically. Possibly this was written before the endorsement of carbon pricing by API, Business
Roundtable and Chamber of Commerce. A carbon tax by a few states would be interesting but limited and irrelevant for the global problem which requires a national price and border carbon adjustment. The Biden commitment to a 50% reduction won’t be met without a steadily rising
carbon tax, household dividend to protect the bottom 65% and a Border Carbon Adjustment to maintain competitiveness (see the EconomistsStatement.org) Quote: “In 2018, a tax designed to fight climate change in France led to weeks of violent “yellow vest” protests against rising fuel
prices, among other concerns, causing the French government to back down. Comment: The “yellow vest” canard is unfortunate and misleading. The French carbon tax began in 2014. No protest. It rose every year to 2018. No protest. It now stands around $50/ton/CO2. Why the protest?
It was because the ham-handed political decisions of a tax cut for the wealthy followed by a carbon tax increase hitting the middle class provided the fuel for the protest. It also confirms the importance of applying the revenues to a household dividend which holds the bottom 2/3
harmless as done in Canada and proposed in the U.S. Quote: “A plan for an E.U.-wide carbon tax has never been successful.” Comment: This is a straw man statement and shows a lack of knowledge of the EU system and the role that Al Gore played as Vice President in steering the EU
away from a carbon tax to the inherently flawed cap and trade program approach during the run-up to the Kyoto Protocol. It is one of the most significant diplomatic foul-ups on record. While the EU might have been able to put a carbon tax in place back then, it is highly unlikely now
because it requires a unanimous vote of all 27 members (recent Central European members will oppose). The author might have noted the initiatives of several EU countries to put in place significant carbon taxes on their own. Quote: “The additional impact of a carbon tax at say the
$51/ton social cost of carbon recently adopted by the Biden administration could have a smaller effect on these specific sectors relative to the policies already in place.” Comment: This is baseless based on my reading and does not reflect experience particularly in California. Few want to
recognize how little is being achieved in terms of causing emission reductions by the regulatory programs. Just recently the California Legislative Analysts’ Office published their report indicating that transportation emissions continue to rise despite the 21 regulatory and 21 subsidy
programs designed to reduce such emissions. Quote: “Yes, passing a U.S. carbon tax might encourage other countries to pass similar policies of their own, but a more effective way to get other countries to go green could be to spur innovations like the ones that have made solar one of
the cheapest forms of energy in much of the world and electric cars a viable alternative to gasoline-powered ones.” Comment: This is far from reality in terms of the economic behavior of developing countries in particular. Because fossil fuels will be left with a large subsidy (see IMF for
discussion of massive subsidy through external costs of fossil fuels), new technology market penetration will be between very slow and never. Free rider behavior prevails. Without a carbon price soon along with a Border Carbon Adjustment, the global problem will not be mitigated in any
significant way. The author’s focus on solar technology fails to recognize the strength of incumbents and sectors with minimal or no incentive to change, e.g., industry, buildings and commerce. Quote: “It’s just that there are other externalities with higher potential impact that maybe we
should be focusing our attention on, especially since there are political costs that make subsidies and infrastructure projects more attractive than a massive tax increase.” Comment: This sums up the flawed view well. There is no basis for saying there is higher potential in dealing with
“other externalities” (a grid upgrade?) to the exclusion of a carbon tax, household dividend and BCA. This either-or postulation is false and damaging. The author may want to refer next time to Canada’s success in putting in place its carbon tax and how they sold it politically by returning
90% of the revenues to households. Any opinion piece that discusses the carbon tax policy without addressing the revenues and household impact and without dealing with the industry competitiveness issue (addressed through a BCA) is not advancing the critical climate dialogue. Finally,
the failure to mention the regressive character of most all subsidy/regulatory programs and their impact on lower income households ignores one of the most significant factors in climate policy dialogue–equity. (see Borenstein, “The Distributional Effects of U.S. Energy Tax Credits”) Reply
Ben Ho Ben Ho Reply to Robert Archer 2 years ago Sorry for the slow reply. I hadn’t seen these comments but they are excellent and thoughtful. Some brief replies.

<<PARAGRAPH BREAKS RESUME>>

The Carbon tax is hardly new. A serious republican proposal was made when I worked for the Bush administration (it included a
Dividend) the EU had a serious push for a carbon tax in the 1990’s. The Dividend does not make it more popular, a recent poll
out of Yale (YPCC) finds that the dividend option is the least politically popular option for how to spend it.
I agree that it would be hard to change foreign behavior, but I really don’t see how a US carbon tax (even with Border adjustment) would be
that persuasive. A border adjustment would just be another small tariff among many tariffs importers already face.
I think you underestimate though the impact on technology. China has already mandated that 40% of all cars sold by 2030 will be electric.
Major car manufacturers plan to discontinue gasoline cars by 2035-2040 (globally). Solar and Wind currently make up 2/3 of all (global) new
electricity generation.
The point is, the US only accounts for 14% of emissions (and that is declining).. I care about the other 86%. I agree a
carbon tax and
dividend would be a good policy, but it continues to be politically unpopular in the US (especially the
dividend part).
Absent normalization, Iran war’s inevitable – Biden has to broker a deal to get Saudi
Arabia on board
Yaakov Katz, 5-25-2023, former fellow at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University
and was a faculty member at Harvard's Extension School, "What will come first: War with Iran or peace
with Saudi Arabia?," The Jerusalem Post, https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-744131, KL

Title: What will come first: War with Iran or peace with Saudi Arabia?
Like many things in the Middle East, timing is rarely a coincidence. On Tuesday, as IDF Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Herzi Halevi was
addressing a conference in Herzliya where he issued a threat to attack Iran, a mysterious explosion took place at a chemical factory about 100
km west of Tehran. Israel has the ability to strike Iran, Halevi said, just as reports came out of the explosion. Was one connected to
the other? Even if the chemical blast was not caused by Israel, the timing was hard to ignore and in the Middle East, sometimes
perception is all that is needed. What is also hard to ignore is the escalation in Israeli threats over the last few days. Before Halevi,
Military Intelligence chief Maj.-Gen. Aharon Haliva addressed the conference and warned that Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah is close to a
mistake that could lead to a massive war with Israel. As Halevi clarified in his speech, such a war would be painful for Israel, but it would be
doubly painful for Lebanon and even more so for Hezbollah.

Based on the two speeches and the timing of the mysterious chemical blast, one could get the impression
that a conflict is quickly brewing beneath the surface and just waiting to erupt. While this might be the case,
what is more likely happening here is the rollout of a public relations campaign by the IDF brass aimed at ensuring the opposite – that such a
war does not happen.

Will Israel go to war with Iran?

There is little doubt in Israel that an overt and direct clash with Iran will happen one day. It could be over its
nuclear program – if the ayatollahs decide to break out to a bomb and Israel decides to attack – or if an Israeli strike in Syria, for example, spills
over into Iran and draws a retaliation. Iran has an open account with Israel over the number of soldiers that have been killed in recent years –
mostly in Syria – and it has in the past tried to avenge those deaths. A successful Iranian attack would force Israel to
respond, and such a response might not be limited to Syria.
The same is true for Hezbollah. When a member of the Iran-backed group snuck into Israel in March and detonated a sizeable explosive device,
thankfully it only wounded one person. Imagine that it had done much more. Would Israel have been able to restrain itself? It likely would have
needed to do something against Hezbollah in Lebanon and, if that were to have happened, a larger conflict would have been as close
to a fait accompli as is possible.
The messages from Halevi and Haliva are heard loud and clear on the other side. The drill Hezbollah guerillas held along the border in recent
days to simulate a cross-border infiltration into an Israeli town, as well as the satellite footage revealed by AP of Iranian construction deep
underground near its nuclear facility at Natanz, are just the latest illustrations of how this battle is playing out.

For now, all sides are calculated in what they do and within Military Intelligence there is no hard piece of intelligence that says Iran is breaking
out in the coming weeks to a bomb or Hezbollah is about to invade Israel. On the other hand, as seen in the past, sometimes conflagrations
happen in this region even when they are not intended. Mistakes and miscalculations are made and the next thing we see are rockets being
launched. That can happen once again.

Will Israel normalize ties with Saudi Arabia?

ON MONDAY night, Lahav Harkov published a story in these pages revealing that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
held two phone
calls in recent weeks with the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia Mohammed Bin Salman. The calls were said to have been facilitated by
Bahraini Foreign Minister Abdullatif bin Rashid Al Zayani, whose country Israel already has diplomatic relations with under the 2020 Abraham
Accords.

The report was not surprising – Netanyahu visited Saudi Arabia at the end of 2020 and met with MBS in the presence of then-secretary of state
Mike Pompeo – and while the two leaders were said to have focused on an Israeli request to allow Israeli-Arabs to fly directly from Israel to
Saudi Arabia for the Haj, there is hope for much more.
The sense in Jerusalem right now is that there is a window of about a year to finalize a normalization deal with
Saudi Arabia. The reason is not because of something in Riyadh or Jerusalem but rather due to the upcoming presidential election in the
United States, and because it is there, in Washington DC, where the real decision has to be made about such a deal.

As seen by the phone calls, there

is communication between Saudi and Israeli leaders. There are economic ties,
security ties and even diplomatic coordination that goes on behind the scenes. Can those ties be
deepened? Of course, but for now, the question is more about the big step that needs to be taken toward full-
blown normalization.

The key to that is in Washington. Saudi Arabia has felt the cold shoulder from the US ever since Joe Biden was
elected president. It was this distancing that enabled China to insert itself into the region and broker the
rapprochement between Saudi and Iran, something that in the past would not have happened.

The message was heard in Washington and has been followed up by action . There is a new ambassador in Riyadh
who happened to have served in Jerusalem just a few years ago, and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan recently visited there as well and
spoke publicly about the administration’s desire to see Israeli-Saudi normalization happen.

To move forward with Israel, Saudi

Arabia wants to receive a few benefits from the US: arm sales, security
guarantees and even a civilian nuclear program with the ability to mine uranium and enrich it domestically.

US diplomats do not hide the fact that the decision on this will need to be made by Biden and that it will depend on more than
just US ties with MBS. A normalization deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia would be a huge win for Netanyahu. Does Biden want to give him
that right now?

Biden has not held back on his discontent with Netanyahu and his democratically-elected government. He has yet to invite the Israeli premier
to the White House and – as long as it is not clear that the coalition’s judicial reform is completely dead and buried – he might not want to.

On the other hand, Biden does need a foreign policy feather in his cap. Until now, the president’s track record in the Middle East does not look
great. There was the hasty withdrawal from Afghanistan that enabled the Taliban to quickly take over, and China’s growing role in the region.
Brokering a deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia would give the president a big win that could help on the campaign trail.

The situation is dynamic, and Netanyahu is doing all he can to move this forward. For him too, a deal with Saudi Arabia would be a huge win
and a much-needed distraction from the chaos – caused by the judicial reform, the public protests and the budget talks – that has enveloped
his government since it took office at the end of December.

Such a deal has the potential to alter the balance of power in the Middle East. With Israel’s top military officers
warning of the possibility of war, a normalization deal would be a better alternative.

Middle East War goes nuclear – Extinction

Bucci 15 (2015, Steven, PhD, Director of the Douglas and Sarah Allison Center for Foreign and National
Security Policy, Heritage Foundation, http://www.heritage.org/research/commentary/2015/4/the-
conditions-are-ripe-for-a-major-middle-eastern-war)
For years, the great nations of Europe spent huge sums of money to build their military might. They assembled themselves into blocs, all the better to play a dangerous game of power politics. Slowly, surely, they were stumbling

The Middle East today looks

toward war.∂ In June 1914, an assassin shot the heir to the throne of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and the powder keg was lit. The results were disastrous.∂

frighteningly similar to the Europe of the early 20th Century.∂ For years, the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Kingdom of Saudi
Arabia have competed—Iran, as the champion of the Shia Islamic world, the House of Saud as the de facto leader of the Sunni world.∂ Iran has a massive military, as
well as major capabilities in unconventional warfare and espionage. It influences or outright controls Hezbollah in
Lebanon, Assad in Syria, and the powerful Shia militias in Iraq. Now, Tehran is encouraging—and most likely aiding—the Al
Houthis rebelling in Yemen. ∂ The Saudis, powerful in their own right, have allied with Al Sisi in Egypt, King Abdullah in Jordan, and most
of the other Gulf Arab States. They are also allied with the Pakistanis, who have one of the largest militaries in the
world, and nuclear weapons to boot. Additionally, there is a growing possibility that the Turks may throw in with the Sunni side. ∂ It’s a

huge amount of fire power, rivalry and armed conflict concentrated in a comparatively small region. And this
tinderbox could blow up into a major conflagration , with destructive consequences unparalleled since
World War Two. But, some might say, these opposing blocs have been in place for decades, why the worry now? Quite simply, because America is no longer playing the role it has played in the region for a long,
∂

long time. ∂ For decades, the U.S. served as security guarantor and diplomatic trouble-shooter for our friends in the region. The Saudis, Jordanians, Egyptians, and other friendlies didn’t have to worry that Iran would gain regional
hegemony. They knew a strong, assertive America would keep Iran’s ambitions in check. Meanwhile, Iran and its proxies knew they could go only so far before being slowed and stopped by the judicious use of America power. The
credible threat of American hard power was enough to keep our friends calm and our enemies quiet. ∂ That has changed. Our enemies have seen the U.S. “lead from behind” in Libya, then turn its back on our consulate in
Benghazi. They’ve seen us draw a “red line” in Syria, then walk away when Assad called our bluff. They’ve seen Russia annex Crimea and bolster the separatists in eastern Ukraine while America refuses to provide military aid to
Kiev. They’ve seen us flinch at the thought of putting American boots on the ground in the fight against ISIS. ∂ Put it all together, and it’s a picture of an America that is timid, or confused, or flaccid—a nation that still talks a good
hard-power game, but lacks the will to follow through. ∂ Moreover, they see an Administration so hungry for a “legacy” deal with Iran, that the Iranians considerable negotiating skills are not even being taxed. In the G5+1 talks in
Lausanne Secretary of State John Kerry has made concession after concession with no quid pro quo from Iran—to the point that France is now emerging as the hardliner on our side of the negotiating table.∂ Our enemies aren’t the
only ones who notice these developments. Our friends do, too. What must the Saudis and the others think when they see the administration cast aside regional ally No. 1—Israel? Can their “push out the door” be far off if they get
in the way of the Administration’s single-minded drive to appease the Iranian regime? ∂ Those friends now have reason to fear that the nuclear negotiations with Iran will accelerate the U.S. withdrawal from the region or—even
worse—produce an Iranian-American rapprochement at their expense. It is this fear that has led our friends to band together to defend themselves against what they know to be a growing threat: Iran. While the Obama
administration may be willing to turn a blind eye to this threat in its pursuit of a nuclear deal, Iran’s neighbors do not have that luxury. ∂ Since the U.S. has cut back on dispensing its usual antibiotics, our jittery friends in the Middle

The result is a Middle

East now feel that they must counter—strongly and immediately—the local infections promoted and exploited by Iran. And they are sometimes doing so without consulting the U.S.∂

East more explosive and unpredictable than ever. The conditions are now ripe for a major Middle Eastern
war—one that could spill across the globe , wherever Sunni and Shia Muslims interact. All that remains missing is a spark. ∂ Impossible you
say? That June day in Sarajevo, no experts predicted the horrifying consequences of Garo Princip’s actions. ∂ Today, the Saudis are massing 150,000 troops on the border with Yemen. The Pakistanis and the Egyptians have
promised ground troops. These Sunnis Governments view their alliance as one of self-defense. But it’s a huge threat to Iran’s desires for hegemony, and Tehran may even view it as a threat to the survival of the mullahs’ regime. ∂

Washington’s misbegotten policies have fueled uncertainty on one

No one wants war, big or little. But among the power blocs of the Middle East,

side and perceived opportunity on the other. ∂ In the aftermath of the Second World War, Americans have always dreaded a clash of the superpowers. But the lesson of the
First World War is that when large regional powers—especially those driven by sectarian and apocalyptic forces—are poised to fight , any miscalculation can be equally cataclysmic. ∂

That situation exists today in the Middle East. And the Administration, far from easing the tensions, is actively destabilizing the region through its dealings with Iran.
Case
 Adv 1 – 1NC
[1] Fox news fractures any unity
Roberts 22, editor-at-large at Canary Media. He writes about clean energy and politics at his
newsletter, Volts. Previously, he covered the same subjects for five years at Vox, and before that for 10
years at Grist (David, “Do dividends make carbon taxes more popular? Not so far, study finds,” Canary
Media, https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/policy-regulation/do-dividends-make-carbon-taxes-
more-popular-not-so-far-study-finds)//BB

The lessons of this research

There was a popular theory among pundits (myself included) when the Democrats took control of the
federal government in 2020: The one thing you can’t propagandize voters on is their own lives. If
Democrats could improve voters’ social and economic circumstances in tangible ways, it would cut
through the disinformation haze and increase public support for these key policies. In retrospect, I think
that was naive. You can propagandize voters about their own lives. Or, to put it more academically, all
of our experiences, even our experiences of our own life circumstances, are mediated. We interpret
them through schema and worldviews shaped by our in-groups and the stories they tell. These days, we
get that stuff through electronic media, with which the world is saturated. Most people are not aware of
exactly how much they pay in gas or carbon taxes a year. Most people do not closely scrutinize their tax
returns or health insurance forms. And above all, most people are unaware that they already receive a
variety of government benefits, which are often buried in the tax code or otherwise hidden from view.
(The best book on this is Suzanne Mettler’s The Submerged State: How Invisible Government Policies
Undermine American Democracy.) Outside of a focus group, out in the real world, people’s assessments
of a carbon refund are less likely to be informed by careful economic R. “[I]n the two federal-tax
provinces, supporters of the Liberal Party of Canada were 3 to 8 times more likely to support the carbon
tax than Conservative Party supporters,” the paper reports. “Similarly, in Switzerland, left-leaning voters
were 48% more likely to support rebates relative to right-leaning voters.” People’s assessments of a
policy tend to echo their in-group’s assessment, which they absorb through media and peers, not
through an accounting spreadsheet. The amounts of money generally being discussed in carbon-refund
policies are not large enough to be life-changing for voters. The signal is not strong enough to break
through the noise of partisanship. Mildenberger summed it up for me over email: The entire [carbon
refund] logic requires that large parts of the public understand that they make more money from their
cheque than they are paying in taxes. But this is not what we see in Canada. And it’s no surprise. As
long as one group of actors spends its time sensationalizing and dramatizing the costs of carbon taxes,
then many people will think they are not being made whole. Why should we expect — in an American
society where even basic facts are politicized and vast portions of the public accept outright
misinformation — that carbon taxes will be immune to this? What matters is not the actual material
reality of people’s circumstances, but their perceptions of those circumstances. (Emphasis added.) That
last line squarely identifies something that Democrats have long been loath to accept. In a sense, carbon
refunds are the latest expression of a long-time technocratic dream: that a policy can be so sensible,
such a net benefit for so many people, that it will transcend politics. It will argue for itself and its logic
will be irrefutable. But if we’ve learned anything in these past few years (and I fear we haven’t), it’s that
nothing transcends politics. Nothing is experienced directly by voters, not even money showing up in
their bank account. Everything is mediated. Politics in the U.S. have been nationalized and fully
subsumed by the culture war. No policy, no matter how cleverly designed, can get around that. In our
present partisan and information environment, the measurable effect of a carbon refund on voter
finances may carry less weight than advocates hope.

[2] Populism is inevitable.

Juul ’23 [Peter; June 21; MA in Social Welfare at the University of California: Berkeley, BA at Boston
University; John Halpin; Executive Editor of TLP; “Populism rising,” The Liberal Patriot,
https://www.liberalpatriot.com/p/tlpm-digest-populism-rising, WWIS]

Populist sentiments run deep among Americans

What happened? New Ipsos polling finds nearly 7 in 10 American adults agreeing with the idea that,
“The American economy is rigged to advantage the rich and powerful,” including 8 in 10 Democrats,
nearly three quarters of independents, and more than half of Republicans.

Why does it matter? Americans across party lines hold deep populist views about the country, including
nearly three quarters of Americans who believe that, “The mainstream media is more interested in
making money than telling the truth,” and almost two thirds of Americans who feel that, “Traditional
parties and politicians don’t care about people like me.”

Disconcertingly in terms of liberal democratic norms, more than 6 in 10 Americans currently believe
that, “America needs a strong leader to take the country back from the rich and powerful,” including
equal proportions of Republicans, Democrats, and independents.

TLP’s take: America’s politics and its economic model clearly aren’t working for most Americans.
Populist sentiments throughout history have provided a necessary release valve for pent up anger and
demands, and sometimes lead to important political reforms. But the public openness to authoritarian
rule in response to perceived structural problems in American life augurs nothing good for our
government.

[3] Democracy will never collapse – but it solves nothing.

Doorenspleet ’19 — Renske; Politics Professor at the University of Warwick. 2019; “Rethinking the
Value of Democracy: A Comparative Perspective”; Palgrave Macmillan; Accessed Online via University of
Michigan Libraries; //CYang

The valueof democracy has been taken for granted until recently, but this assumption seems to be under
threat now more than ever before. As was explained in Chapter 1, democracy’s claim to be valuable does not rest on just one
particular merit, and scholars tend to distinguish three different types of values (Sen 1999). This book focused on the instrumental value of
democracy (and hence not on the intrinsic and constructive value), and investigated the value of democracy for peace (Chapters 3 and 4),
control of corruption (Chapter 5) and economic development (Chapter 6). This study was based on a search of an enormous
academic database for certain keywords,6 then pruned the thousands of articles down to a few hundred articles (see
Appendix) which statistically analysed the connection between the democracy and the four expected
outcomes.

The first finding is that a reverse

wave away from democracy has not happened (see Chapter 2). Not yet, at least.
Democracy is not doing worse than before, at least not in comparative perspective. While it is true that there is
a dramatic decline in democracy in some countries,7 a general trend downwards cannot yet be detected. It
would be better to talk about ‘stagnation’, as not many dictatorships have democratized recently, while democracies have not yet collapsed.
Another finding is that the instrumental value of democracy is very questionable. The field has been deeply polarized
between researchers who endorse a link between democracy and positive outcomes, and those who reject this optimistic idea and instead
emphasize the negative effects of democracy. There has been ‘no consensus’ in the quantitative literature on
whether democracy has instrumental value which leads some beneficial general outcomes. Some scholars claim there
is a consensus, but they only do so by ignoring a huge amount of literature which rejects their own point of view.
After undertaking a large-scale analysis of carefully selected articles published on the topic (see Appendix), this book can conclude that the
connections between democracy and expected benefits are not as strong as they seem. Hence, we should not
overstate the links between the phenomena.

The overall evidence is weak. Take the expected impact of democracy on peace for example. As Chapter 3 showed, the study of
democracy and interstate war has been a flourishing theme in political science, particularly since the 1970s. However, there are four reasons
why democracy does not cause peace between countries, and why the empirical support for the popular idea of
democratic peace is quite weak. Most statistical studies have not found a strong correlation between
democracy and interstate war at the dyadic level. They show that there are other — more powerful —
explanations for war and peace, and even that the impact of democracy is a spurious one (caveat 1). Moreover, the
theoretical foundation of the democratic peace hypothesis is weak, and the causal mechanisms are
unclear (caveat 2). In addition, democracies are not necessarily more peaceful in general, and the evidence for the
democratic peace hypothesis at the monadic level is inconclusive (caveat 3). Finally, the process of democratization
is dangerous. Living in a democratizing country means living in a less peaceful country (caveat 4). With regard to peace between countries,
we cannot defend the idea that democracy has instrumental value.

Can the (instrumental) value of democracy be found in the prevention of civil war? Or is the evidence for the opposite idea more convincing,
and does democracy have a ‘dark side’ which makes civil war more likely? The findings are confusing, which is exacerbated by the fact that
different aspects of civil war (prevalence, onset, duration and severity) are mixed up in some civil war studies. Moreover, defining civil war is a
delicate, politically sensitive issue. Determining whether there is a civil war in a particular country is incredibly diffcult, while measurements
suffer from many weaknesses (caveat 1). Moreover, there is no linear link: civil wars are just as unlikely in democracies
as in dictatorships (caveat 2). Civil war is most likely in times of political change. Democratization is a very unpredictable,
dangerous process, increasing the chance of civil war significantly. Hybrid systems are at risk as well: the chance of civil
war is much higher compared to other political systems (caveat 3). More specifcally, both the strength and type of political institutions matter
when explaining civil war. However, the type of political system (e.g. democracy or dictatorship) is not the decisive factor
at all (caveat 4). Finally, democracy has only limited explanatory power (caveat 5). Economic factors are far more
significant than political factors (such as having a democratic system) when explaining the onset, duration and severity of civil war. To
prevent civil war, it would make more sense to make poorer countries richer, instead of promoting democracy. Helping countries to
democratize would even be a very dangerous idea, as countries with changing levels of democracy are most vulnerable,
making civil wars most likely. It is true that there is evidence that the chance of civil war decreases when the extent of democracy increases
considerably. The problem however is that most countries do not go through big political changes but through small changes instead; those
small steps—away or towards more democracy—are dangerous. Not only is the onset of civil war likely under such circumstances, but civil wars
also tend to be longer, and the conflict is more cruel leading to more victims, destruction and killings (see Chapter 4).

A more encouraging story can be told around the value for democracy to control corruption in a country (see Chapter 5). Fighting corruption
has been high on the agenda of international organizations such as the World Bank and the IMF. Moreover, the theme of corruption has been
studied thoroughly in many different academic disciplines—mainly in economics, but also in sociology, political science and law. Democracy has
often been suggested as one of the remedies when fighting against high levels of continuous corruption. So far, the statistical evidence has
strongly supported this idea. As Chapter 5 showed, dozens of studies with broad quantitative, cross-national and comparative research have
found statistically significant associations between (less) democracy and (more) corruption. However, there are vast problems around
conceptualization (caveat 1) and measurement (caveat 2) of ‘corruption’. Another caveat is that democratizing countries are the poorest
performers with regard to controlling corruption (caveat 3). Moreover, it is not democracy in general, but particular political institutions which
have an impact on the control of corruption; and a free press also helps a lot in order to limit corruptive practices in a country (caveat 4). In
addition, democracies seem to be less affected by corruption than dictatorships, but at the same time, there is clear evidence that economic
factors have more explanatory power (caveat 5). In conclusion, more democracy means less corruption, but we need to be modest (as other
factors matter more) and cautious (as there are many caveats).

The perceived impact of democracy on development has been highly contested as well (see Chapter 6). Some scholars argue that democratic
systems have a positive impact, while others argue that high levels of democracy actually reduce the levels of economic growth and
development. Particularly since the 1990s, statistical studies have focused on this debate, and the empirical evidence is clear: there is no direct
impact of democracy on development. Hence, both approaches cannot be supported (see caveat 1). The indirect impact via other factors is also
questionable (caveat 2). Moreover, there is too much variation in levels of economic growth and development among the dictatorial systems,
and there are huge regional differences (caveat 3). Adopting a one-size-fitsall approach would not be wise at all. In addition, in order to increase
development, it would be better to focus on alternative factors such as improving institutional quality and good governance (caveat 4). There is
not sufficient evidence to state that democracy has instrumental value, at least not with regard to economic growth. However, future research
needs to include broader concepts and measurements of development in their models, as so far studies have mainly focused on explaining
cross-national differences in growth of GDP (caveat 5).

Overall, the instrumental

value of democracy is — at best — tentative, or — if being less mild — simply non-existent.
Democracy is not necessarily better than any alternative form of government. With regard to many of the
expected benefits — such as less war, less corruption and more economic development — democracy does deliver, but so
do nondemocratic systems. High or low levels of democracy do not make a distinctive difference. Mid-range
democracy levels do matter though. Hybrid systems can be associated with many negative outcomes, while this is also the case for
democratizing countries. Moreover, other
explanations — typically certain favourable economic factors in a country — are much
more powerful to explain the expected benefits, at least compared to the single fact that a country is a democracy or not.
The impact of democracy fades away in the powerful shadows of the economic factors.8

[4]Inequality is an internal link and too many alt causes

1AC Schmidt ’21 [Andreas; May 2021; BA in Philosophy and Economics at the University of Bayreuth,
Doctorate in Philosophy at the University of Oxford; Daan Juijin; BA and MSc from the University of
Groningen; “Economic inequality and the long-term future,” Global Priorities Institute, WWIS] Damien
reads GREEN
It is often argued that a country’s long-term performance depends to a significant extent on the quality of its institutions, including its political and legal institutions (Acemoglu, Johnson, and Robinson 2005). Economic research

mostly focuses on explaining long-term differences in growth rates. As seen above, some researchers argue that high inequality will reduce growth rates, among other things, because it can worsen institutional quality.

However, besides facilitating economic growth, public institutions have other functions that matter from
a long-term perspective. For example, disaster preparedness, education, public health, foreign policy,
science policy, and many other areas could influence long-term trajectories. If such things go badly,
they could increase existential risk. Conversely, good institutions will help reduce existential risk. For many existential risk reduction strategies likely require public goods and collective action, which in turn require good public
institutions (among other reasons, because some such public goods are unlikely to be provided by markets). So, it seems reasonable to assume that, with most other societal goals, good institutions can help deliver existential risk
reduction. Here is a cheesy analogy: targeted actions like washing your hands regularly or getting a flu shot can reduce your risk of dying from an infection. But you will also do well investing in a strong immune system, as that is an
‘all-purpose goods’ in lowering your risk of dying from any bacterium or virus. Investing in good institutions might similarly be an all-purpose-good: rather than tackling individual sources of existential risk directly, we improve
conditions for tackling whatever existential risks may come our way. There are at least two reasons why higher inequality could decrease institutional capacities for longtermist public goods. First, there is some direct evidence
that, whatever the causal pathway, inequality reduces institutional quality (which in turn typically leads to more inequality) (Chong and Gradstein 2007; Savoia, Easaw, and McKay 2010). Second, high inequality can lead to elite
capture. Empirical work on studying political and de facto legal power is difficult, yet there is a growing consensus that high levels of inequality can lead to elite capture and thereby reduce the long-term quality of legal and
political institutions (Acemoglu and Robinson 2008; 2013; Bartels 2018; Bavel 2016; Chong and Gradstein 2007; Cummins and Rodriguez 2010; Savoia, Easaw, and McKay 2010). Further, if institutions are disproportionately geared
towards elite interests, then they might be less likely to be geared towards positive longterm trajectories. We might see more rent-seeking and less investment in public goods . Moreover, if elite capture is strong enough, such
capture, and the potential inequality that comes with it, can intensify going forward (Chong and Gradstein 2007). Now, one might object and wonder whether elite interests and longtermist interests will necessarily be misaligned.
Could an enlightened elite not even be more longtermist than a more democratic system? Here are two potential arguments. First, wealthy donors fund a significant part of research and direct action on existential risk and
longtermism (the Open Philanthropy Project, for example). Indirectly, inequality might thus reduce existential risk through such funding. Second, rich people might have a lower rate of pure time preference than less well-off
people, which would make them more naturally aligned with investing in long-term causes. In response to the first argument, remember we here focus on income inequality reductions. Private funding only requires ‘enough’
wealth inequality going forward, it need not require elite capture. And reducing income inequality is unlikely to eradicate the required wealth inequality and the existence of big donors. In response to the second argument, we are
somewhat skeptical that elite capture would translate a lower impatience rate into longtermist strategies in policy. A successful 14 transmission would require influence to be systematic and well-coordinated across time and,
probably, across different elite actors. Yet lobbying and elite influence must often capitalise on shorter windows of opportunities, which makes well-coordinated intertemporal, and positive longtermist, policy capture less likely. Of
course, such considerations are speculative. But, in any case, we think that, on balance, there are stronger reasons to believe elite capture would increase – rather than decrease – existential risk. First, elite capture often comes

Second, industries like oil, gas, weapons and others are often
with rent seeking, which lowers institutional quality (Chong and Gradstein 2007).

concentrated and well organised in exerting influence in law and legislation. Their interests and influence overall
are likely to be more short-term than longtermist. Third, recent decades have seen a shift towards a stronger
shareholder value orientation in corporate governance. A common criticism of this shift is that it incentivises more short-
term decisions. Accordingly, corporate influence into public institutions will likely display short-termist bias too. Finally, we can of course
imagine that ‘prolongtermist elite capture’ could happen and gamble on that possibility. However,
if strong democratic and legal
oversight and the power to check elite influence is lost, we might struggle to reverse our gamble.
Second, high inequality is likely to reduce social capital and trust (Alesina and La Ferrara 2002; Knack and
Keefer 1997; Rothstein and Uslaner 2005). Social capital and trust in public institutions in turn are
important for effective public goods provision (Knack and Keefer 1997; Beugelsdijk, Groot, and Schaik
2004). Effective public goods provision, in turn, is important for (some) effective measures to reduce
existential risk (and, more generally, to coordinate towards more valuable long-term trajectories). Therefore,
high inequality reduce societies’ capacities to effectively respond
could to large-scale challenges like existential risk. Finally, some limited direct evidence suggests societies with
higher social capital and lower inequality exhibit better preventive and adaptive outcomes for environmental risks and can show greater resilience to external shocks (Bavel and Curtis 2019; Kahn 2005). For example, Matthew Kahn provides some evidence that more equal countries, when
controlled for GDP, have significantly lower death rates in natural catastrophes (Kahn 2005). While smaller natural catastrophes are different from global catastrophic risk scenarios, resilience in such events might be somewhat indicative of societies’ resilience to catastrophic risks. So,
good social and institutional conditions could help reduce existential risk. Consider next how, conversely, bad conditions might increase existential risk. A key driver of existential risk is conflict, both between and within nation-states (or what (Ord 2020, 175–79) calls a ‘risk factor’).
Conflicts and arms races raise human-induced existential risks such as nuclear war, the outbreak of a bioengineered virus or the launch of misaligned artificial intelligence. Note that an existential catastrophe could be set in motion either purposefully or accidentally. Both are more likely

Nuclear warheads cyberweapons bioweapons

during conflict. used purpose attack enemy states leading
, , and could all be fully to ,

to potential global escalation probability accidental catastrophes

. But as past nuclear incidents and close calls during the Cold War show, arms races also increase the of

political and social polarization increases risk of violent conflict

(Schlosser 2013). Esteban and Schneider find that formal and empirical evidence suggests that the , both

intra-nationally and internationally income

(Esteban and Schneider 2008). If income inequality increases polarization, inequality may indirectly drive existential risk. Indeed, recent evidence suggests that

inequality increase degree of polarization groups of citizens

can the between . Bonica et al. find that the degree of polarization within the 15 US House of Representatives, for example, is
accurately tracked by domestic income inequality, with correlation coefficients rising up to 0.95 depending on the chosen time-period (Bonica et al. 2013, 105–8). Of course, correlation does not imply causation and the correlation is likely at least partially the result of reverse causation or

a confounding variable. That said, we should assign a non-negligible credence to inequality partially causing polarization. Moreover, inequality and polarisation might also play some role in getting

polarising populist candidates elected

and (Piketty 2018). In a preliminary analysis of US election data, Darvas and Efstathiou find that more unequal states were more likely to vote for Donald Trump, after controlling for

variables such as income, race and education (Darvas and Efstathiou 2016). Populist politicians – like Trump, Bolsonaro and others – are bad news for existential risk reduction
likely . They are less cooperative in

delivering regional global public goods and and typically prefer riskier, and more conflictual and nationalistic policy styles.
 Adv 2 – 1NC
[1] A carbon tax fails on scope: Too small – even the best scenario cant solve
Marlo Lewis 21, senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. He writes on global warming,
energy policy, and public policy issues. Ph.D. in government from Harvard, "Why Carbon Taxes Are Anti-
Growth, Anti-Consumer, and Politically Dangerous for Conservatives," 12/01/2021,
https://cei.org/studies/why-carbon-taxes-are-anti-growth-anti-consumer-and-politically-dangerous-for-
conservatives/

Even a CO2 tax set at the politically-infeasible levels of $300 and $450 per ton would avert only about
0.1°C of global warming and one centimeter of sea-level rise by 2100, according to standard U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) climate modeling.[7] All the economic pain would produce no
detectable effects on weather patterns, crop yields, polar bear populations or any other environmental
condition people care about. The climate benefits from now to 2035 would be even more miniscule.

[2] No internal link between global modelling and the US – their card outlines that it
COULD happen, but gives 0 reasons why countries are incentivized or are currently
willing to – you should be skepitcal of their claims until they read a card with real
warrents
[3] Even extreme warming won’t cause extinction.
Ord ’20 [Dr. Toby; 2020; Senior Research Fellow in Philosophy at Oxford University, DPhil in Philosophy
from the University of Oxford; Hachette Books, “The Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future of
Humanity,” p. 110-112]

But the purpose of this chapter is finding and assessing threats that pose a direct existential risk to humanity. Even
at such extreme
levels of warming, it is difficult to see exactly how climate change could do so. Major effects of climate change
include reduced agricultural yields, sea level rises, water scarcity, increased tropical diseases, ocean
acidification and the collapse of the Gulf Stream. While extremely important when assessing the overall risks of climate change,
none of these threaten extinction or irrevocable collapse.

Crops are very sensitive to reductions in temperature (due to frosts), but less sensitive to increases. By all appearances we
would still have food to support civilization.85 Even if sea levels rose hundreds of meters (over centuries), most of
the Earth’s land area would remain. Similarly, while some areas might conceivably become uninhabitable due to water scarcity,
other areas will have increased rainfall. More areas may become susceptible to tropical diseases, but we need only look
to the tropics to see civilization flourish despite this. The main effect of a collapse of the system of Atlantic Ocean currents that
includes the Gulf Stream is a 2°C cooling of Europe—something that poses no permanent threat to global civilization.

From an existential risk perspective, a more serious concern

is that the high temperatures (and the rapidity of their change)
might cause a large loss of biodiversity and subsequent ecosystem collapse. While the pathway is not entirely clear,
a large enough collapse of ecosystems across the globe could perhaps threaten human extinction. The idea that climate change could cause
widespread extinctions has some good theoretical support.86 Yet
the evidence is mixed. For when we look at many of
the past cases of extremely high global temperatures or extremely rapid warming we don’t see a
corresponding loss of biodiversity.87
[FOOTNOTE]
We don’t see such biodiversity loss in the 12°C warmer climate of the early Eocene, nor the rapid global
change of the PETM, nor in rapid regional changes of climate. Willis et al. (2010) state: “We argue that although the
underlying mechanisms responsible for these past changes in climate were very different (i.e. natural processes rather than anthropogenic),
the rates and magnitude of climate change are similar to those predicted for the future and therefore
potentially relevant to understanding future biotic response. What emerges from these past records is
evidence for rapid community turnover, migrations, development of novel ecosystems and thresholds
from one stable ecosystem state to another, but there is very little evidence for broad-scale extinctions
due to a warming world.” There are similar conclusions in Botkin et al. (2007), Dawson et al. (2011), Hof et al.
(2011) and Willis & MacDonald (2011). The best evidence of warming causing extinction may be from the end-Permian mass
extinction, which may have been associated with large-scale warming (see note 91 to this chapter).

[END FOOTNOTE]

So the most important known effect of climate change from the perspective of direct existential risk is
probably the most obvious: heat stress. We need an environment cooler than our body temperature to be able to rid ourselves of waste
heat and stay alive. More precisely, we need to be able to lose heat by sweating, which depends on the humidity as well as the temperature.

A landmark paper by Steven Sherwood and Matthew Huber showed that with sufficient warming there would be parts of the world whose
temperature and humidity combine to exceed the level where humans could survive without air conditioning.88 With 12°C of warming, a very
large land area—where more than half of all people currently live and where much of our food is grown—would exceed this level at some point
during a typical year. Sherwood and Huber suggest that such areas would be uninhabitable. This may not quite be true (particularly if air
conditioning is possible during the hottest months), but their habitability is at least in question.

However, substantial regions would also remain below this threshold. Even with an extreme 20°C of
warming there would be many coastal areas (and some elevated regions) that would have no days
above the temperature/humidity threshold.89 So there would remain large areas in which humanity and
civilization could continue. A world with 20°C of warming would be an unparalleled human and environmental tragedy, forcing mass
migration and perhaps starvation too. This is reason enough to do our utmost to prevent anything like that from ever happening. However, our
present task is identifying existential risks to humanity and it is hard to see how any realistic level of heat stress could
pose such a risk. So the runaway and moist greenhouse effects remain the only known mechanisms through which climate change could
directly cause our extinction or irrevocable collapse.

This doesn’t rule out unknown mechanisms. We are considering large changes to the Earth that may even be unprecedented in size or speed. It
wouldn’t be astonishing if that directly led to our permanent ruin. The best argument against such unknown mechanisms is probably that the
PETM did not lead to a mass extinction, despite temperatures rapidly rising about 5°C, to reach a level 14°C above pre-industrial
temperatures.90 But this is tempered by the imprecision of paleoclimate data, the sparsity of the fossil record, the smaller size of mammals at
the time (making them more heat-tolerant), and a reluctance to rely on a single example. Most importantly, anthropogenic warming could be
over a hundred times faster than warming during the PETM, and rapid warming has been suggested as a contributing factor in the end-Permian
mass extinction, in which 96 percent of species went extinct.91 In the end, we can say little more than that direct existential risk from
climate change appears very small, but cannot yet be ruled out.
 Adv 3 – 1NC
No risk of EU collapse - they’re stronger now than ever
Teresa Eder & Jason C. Moyer 2-2-22 Jason Moyer: Program Associate, Global Europe Program.
Teresa Eder: Former Program Associate, Global Europe Program [The European Union’s U-Turn:
Emergence of a Great Power?, https://www.wilsoncenter.org/article/european-unions-u-turn-
emergence-great-power] //WA
Observers are calling the Russian invasion of Ukraine Europe’s “9/11,” and the European Union’s immediate reaction a Copernican revolution. This past weekend
saw the EU’s typical doctrine of slow process and indecisiveness go out the window. At long last, the EU acted as a geopolitical force to be reckoned with - at least
by Russia. After an initially slow start, the
European Union demonstrated an abrupt U-turn in security policy and is
finally acting like a great power capable of projecting influence. The conflict in Ukraine has stirred the emergence of a newly
awakened European Union that is willing to provide arms and seriously rethink its security posture. For the first time ever, the EU will purchase and

provide weapons and equipment to a warzone with its announcement of €450 million in weapons for
Ukraine. The EU is shutting down its airspace to Russian planes, including private jets chartered by
oligarchs. It also banned all Russian-owned media and froze Russian bank assets. These sanctions against Russia and
the support for Ukraine were a result of swift decision-making, and for good reason–because for the first time in 30 years Europe’s security order is under attack.
War in Europe was something unimaginable for the post-Cold War generation, but Russia shattered
any illusions of peace when it invaded Ukraine and made it easy for all EU members to take a stance
against Putin’s attack. Very rarely has a conflict ever been as a black-and-white, with aggressor and defender clearly identifiable. After much
soul-searching in Europe’s capitals, leaders and citizens reached the obvious conclusion: economic
appeasement of Russia had completely failed to deter Russian aggression - in fact, it only galvanized
Putin’s military action. Within the European bloc, Germany showed the biggest about-face. In just a few short days, Germany’s
approach to defense issues and its relations with Russia dramatically shifted . The new Chancellor Olaf Scholz
announced the German government will send 1,000 anti-tank weapons and 500 Stinger anti-aircraft defense systems to Ukraine, reversing its historic policy of never
sending weapons to conflict zones. He committed Germany to spending more than 2 percent of its GDP on the military, a new high water mark for defense spending
and hitting the NATO benchmark. And Germany suspended the controversial Nordstream 2 gas pipeline from Russia. Although many of these policy changes may
seem like Germany simply coming around to better alignment with the West, it reflects a dramatic upheaval of decades of foreign policy and precedent. Far

from “brain dead”, as it was declared in 2019 by French President Emmanuel Macron, Russia’s
invasion of Ukraine has reinvigorated the alliance for decades to come . This is apparent by the dramatic shift in popularity
for joining the alliance on display in Finland and Sweden. For the first time, support for Finland to join the NATO alliance exceeded 50 percent. And the European
Union’s own efforts to create a defensive union, one that would run parallel to NATO without duplication, saw its first ever action through the deployment of a
cyber division to combat cyber attacks from Russia. Although these actions are laudable, it is too soon to tell whether this upswell of unity among European Union
members can be sustained in the long run. If the war in Ukraine turns into a grinding, bloody battle between Ukrainian citizens and Russian troops, the media and
political leaders might well turn their attention to other news. Rising prices at gas stations and supermarkets could also pressure European politicians to reverse
some of the early action against the Russian economy. We are already seeing EU members walking back a promise to send fighter jets to Ukraine. The

European Union may have lost its luster in recent years, but aspiring members continue to believe in
its promise. Ukraine is perhaps the most powerful case in point. After all, it was the failed free trade agreement between
the EU and Ukraine that sparked the Maidan revolution and inspired a generation of Ukrainians to put
their lives on the line for the principles and future that the EU embodies . It’s easy to assume that
Europe’s crisis of confidence will prove a lasting condition. Indeed, internal democratic backsliding and populist political forces
have led many to doubt whether the EU could welcome and integrate new members knocking on its door. The fact that Commission president Ursula von der Leyen
offered Ukraine a path into the EU suggests that European leaders are not turning inward in this moment of peril. While it still does not mean that an EU
membership is imminent for Ukraine, it conveys that Brussels is reconsidering its public stance and realizing its own appeal. Proclamations of “the hour of Europe”
have come and gone before, but with the largest war raging on the EU’s doorstep since World War 2, nothing is guaranteed about its future trajectory. To sustain
the momentum, the EU should back up its actions by cutting its dependence on Russian oil and gas. Even before Russia’s invasion, Europe needed a renewable
energy revolution - now it has the geopolitical incentives to follow through and deploy as many solar panels and wind turbines as soon as possible. Additionally, the
sudden realization that Western appeasement of Russian oligarchs and Russia’s capture of European political elites indirectly funded Putin’s military operations
should not just lead to sanctions against the main players but be prevented in the future through anti-corruption laws. And lastly, if there was ever a time to
consider forming a European army, it is now. The United States won’t be able to provide Europe with a security umbrella the same way it has over the last 70 years.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is proving to be a hinge moment for the European Union. It is forcing the
EU to step up, united against Russian aggression. The EU was forged in history and yet has spent decades attempting to transcend it.
This is perhaps its greatest challenge: to forge an ever closer union of values in a world increasingly less hospitable to them. For that, the EU will need to ally power
with principle. The actions of the last week show that it is on the right track.

Trade is impossible to predict.

Laio 19 Jianan Liao, Shenzhen Nanshan Foreign Language School. [Business Cycle and War: A Literature
Review and Evaluation, Advances in Economics, Business and Management Research, Volume 68,
International Symposium on Social Science and Management Innovation, https://download.atlantis-
press.com/article/55913122.pdf]

Through the comparison of the two views, it can be found that both sides are too vague in the description of the concept of business
cycle. According to economists such as Joseph Schumpeter, the business cycle is divided into four phases: expansion,
crisis, recession, recovery. [12] Although there are discords in the division and naming of business cycle, it is certain that they are
not simply divided into two stages of rise and recession. However, as mentioned above, scholars who discussed the
relationship between business cycle and war often failed to divide the business cycle into four stages in
detail to analyze the relationship.

First, warcan occur at any stage of expansion, crisis, recession, recovery, so it is unrealistic to assume that
wars occur at any particular stage of the business cycle. On the one hand, although the domestic economic
problems in the crisis/recession/depression period break out and become prominent in a short time, in fact, such challenge exists
at all stages of the business cycle. When countries cannot manage to solve these problems through conventional approaches,
including fiscal and monetary policies, they may resort to military expansion to achieve their goals, a theory known as Lateral Pressure. [13]
Under such circumstances, even countries in the period of economic expansion are facing downward pressure on the economy and may try to
solve the problem through expansion. On the other hand, although the resources required for foreign wars are huge for countries in economic
depression, the decision to wage wars depends largely on the consideration of the gain and loss of wars. Even during depression, governments
can raise funding for war by issuing bonds. Argentina, for example, was mired in economic stagflation before the war on the Malvinas islands
(also known as the Falkland islands in the UK). In fact, many governments would dramatically increase their expenditure to stimulate the
economy during the recession, and economically war is the same as these policies, so the claim that a depressed economy cannot support a
war is unfounded. In addition, during the crisis period of the business cycle, which is the early stage of the economic downturn, despite the
economic crisis and potential depression, the country still retains the ability to start wars based on its economic and military power. Based on
the above understanding, war has the conditions and reasons for its outbreak in all stages of the business
cycle.

Second, the
economic origin for the outbreak of war is downward pressure on the economy rather than
optimism or competition for monopoly capital, which may exist during economic recession or economic
prosperity. This is due to a fact that during economic prosperity, people are also worried about a potential
economic recession. Blainey pointed out that wars often occur in the economic upturn, which is caused by the
optimism in people's mind [14], that is, the confidence to prevail. This interpretation linking optimism and war ignores
the strength contrast between the warring parties. Not all wars are equally comprehensive, and there have always been wars of unequal
strength. In such a war, one of the parties tends to have an absolute advantage, so the expectation of the outcome of the war is not directly
related to the economic situation of the country. Optimism is not a major factor leading to war, but may somewhat serve as
stimulation. In addition, Lenin attributed the war to competition between monopoly capital. This theory may seem plausible, but its scope
of application is obviously too narrow. Lenin's theory of imperialism is only applicable to developed capitalist countries in the late stage of the
development capitalism, but in reality, many wars take place among developing countries whose economies are still at their beginning stages.
Therefore, the theory centered on competition among monopoly capital cannot explain most foreign wars. Moreover, even wars that occur
during periods of economic expansion are likely to result from the potential expectation of economic recession, the "limits of growth" [15]
faced during prosperity – a potential deficiency of market demand. So the downward pressure on the economy is the cause of war.