Download MS 1AC Climate Lee-Meyer

MS 1AC Climate Lee-Meyer
1AC
Contention 1: Climate
Warming is real and happening now – billions will suffer – causes a multitude of environmental
catastrophes.
Maslin, prof. of climatology, 15 (Mark Maslin FRGS is a Professor of Physical Geography at University College
London. He is a Royal Society Industrial Fellowship and Founding Director of Rezatec Ltd. He is science advisor to the
Global Cool Foundation, Climatecom Strategies, Sopra-Steria, and Carbon Sense Ltd. He is member of Cheltenham
Science Festival Advisory Committee. Maslin is a leading scientist with particular expertise in past global and regional
climatic change and has publish over 150 papers in journals such as Science, Nature, Nature Climate Change, The Lancet
and Geology. He has been awarded research council, charity and Government grants of over £40 million; "Six reasons
that scientists are sure that global warming is happening"; 11-30-2015; Independent;
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/six-reasons-that-scientists-are-sure-that-global-warming-is-happeninga6753996.html; DT)
The Paris climate conference will set nations against each other, and kick off huge arguments over economic policies, green regulations and even personal lifestyle
choices. But one
thing isn’t up for debate: the evidence for climate change is unequivocal. We still control the future, however,
as the magnitude of shifting weather patterns and the frequency of extreme climate events depends on how much more
greenhouse gas we emit. We aren’t facing the end of the world as envisaged by many environmentalists in the late 1980s and early 1990s, but if we do
nothing to mitigate climate change then billions of people will suffer. Causes of climate change Greenhouse gases absorb and
re-emit some of the heat radiation given off by the Earth’s surface and warm the lower atmosphere. The most important
greenhouse gas is water vapour, followed by carbon dioxide and methane, and without their warming presence in the atmosphere the Earth’s
average surface temperature would be approximately -20°C. While many of these gases occur naturally in the atmosphere,
humans are responsible for increasing their concentration through burning fossil fuels, deforestation and other land use
changes. Records of air bubbles in ancient Antarctic ice show us that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are now at their highest
concentrations for more than 800,000 years. Evidence for climate change The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
(IPCC) presents six main lines of evidence for climate change. 1. We have tracked the unprecedented recent increase in
the amount of atmospheric carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases since the beginning of the industrial revolution.
2. We know from laboratory and atmospheric measurements that such greenhouse gases do indeed absorb heat when
they are present in the atmosphere. 3. We have tracked significant increase in global temperatures of at least 0.85°C and
a sea level rise of 20cm over the past century. 4. We have analysed the effects of natural events such as sunspots and
volcanic eruptions on the climate, and though these are essential to understand the pattern of temperature changes
over the past 150 years, they cannot explain the overall warming trend. 5. We have observed significant changes in the
Earth’s climate system including reduced snowfall in the Northern Hemisphere, retreat of sea ice in the Arctic, retreating
glaciers on all continents, and shrinking of the area covered by permafrost and the increasing depth of its active layer.
All of which are consistent with a warming global climate. 6. We continually track global weather and have seen
significant shifts in weather patterns and an increase in extreme events all around the world. Patterns of precipitation
(rainfall and snowfall) have changed, with parts of North and South America, Europe and northern and central Asia
becoming wetter, while the Sahel region of central Africa, southern Africa, the Mediterranean and southern Asia have
become drier. Intense rainfall has become more frequent, along with major flooding. We’re also seeing more heat
waves. According to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) between 1880 and the beginning of 2014, the 19
warmest years on record have all occurred within the past 20 years; and 2015 is set to be the warmest year ever
recorded. What the future holds The continued burning of fossil fuels will inevitably lead to further climate warming The
complexity of the climate system is such that the extent of this warming is difficult to predict, particularly as the largest unknown is how much greenhouse gas we
keep emitting. The IPCC has developed a range of emissions scenarios or Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs) to examine the possible range of future
climate change. Using scenarios ranging from business-as-usual to strong longer-term managed decline in emissions, the
climate model projections
suggest the global mean surface temperature could rise by between 2.8°C and 5.4°C by the end of the 21st century.
Even if all the current country pledges submitted to the Paris conference are achieved we would still only just be at the
bottom end of this range. The sea level is projected to rise by between 52cm and 98cm by 2100, threatening coastal
cities, low-lying deltas and small island nations. Snow cover and sea ice are projected to continue to reduce, and some
models suggest that the Arctic could be ice-free in late summer by the latter part of the 21st century. Heat waves,
droughts, extreme rain and flash flood risks are projected to increase, threatening ecosystems and human settlements,
health and security. One major worry is that increased heat and humidity could make physical work outside impossible. Changes in
precipitation are also expected to vary from place to place. In the high-latitude regions (central and northern regions of Europe, Asia and North America) the yearround average precipitation is projected to increase, while in most sub-tropical land regions it is projected to decrease
by as much as 20%, increasing the risk of drought. In many other parts of the world, species and ecosystems may experience
climatic conditions at the limits of their optimal or tolerable ranges or beyond. Human land use conversion for food,
fuel, fibre and fodder, combined with targeted hunting and harvesting, has resulted in species extinctions some 100 to
1000 times higher than background rates. Climate change will only speed things up. We don’t have much time left This is
the challenge our world leaders face. To keep global temperature rise below the agreed 2°C, global carbon emission must peak in
the next decade and from 2070 onward must be negative: we must start sucking out carbon dioxide from the
atmosphere.
Defer to consensus – skeptics are wrong – contradictory research, cherry-picking, curve-fitting, and
ignoring data.
Shermer 15 (Dr. Michael Shermer is Founding Publisher of Skeptic magazine, Executive Director of the Skeptics
Society, and columnist for Scientific American; "Why Climate Skeptics Are Wrong"; 12-1-2015; Scientific American;
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-climate-skeptics-are-wrong/; DT)
At some point in the history of all scientific theories, only a minority of scientists—or even just one—supported them, before evidence accumulated to the point of
general acceptance. The Copernican model, germ theory, the vaccination principle, evolutionary theory, plate tectonics and the big bang theory were all once
heretical ideas that became consensus science. How did this happen? An answer may be found in what 19th-century philosopher of science William Whewell called a
“consilience of inductions.” For
a theory to be accepted, Whewell argued, it must be based on more than one induction—or a single
generalization drawn from specific facts. It must have multiple inductions that converge on one another,
independently but in conjunction. “Accordingly the cases in which inductions from classes of facts altogether different have
thus jumped together,” he wrote in his 1840 book The Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, “belong only to the best established theories
which the history of science contains.” Call it a “convergence of evidence.” Consensus science is a phrase often heard
today in conjunction with anthropogenic global warming (AGW). Is there a consensus on AGW? There is. The tens of
thousands of scientists who belong to the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American
Chemical Society, the American Geophysical Union, the American Medical Association, the American Meteorological
Society, the American Physical Society, the Geological Society of America, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and,
most notably, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change all concur that AGW is in fact real. Why? It is not because
of the sheer number of scientists. After all, science is not conducted by poll. As Albert Einstein said in response to a 1931 book skeptical of relativity
theory entitled 100 Authors against Einstein, “Why 100? If I were wrong, one would have been enough.” The answer is that there is a convergence of
evidence from multiple lines of inquiry—pollen, tree rings, ice cores, corals, glacial and polar ice-cap melt, sea-level rise,
ecological shifts, carbon dioxide increases, the unprecedented rate of temperature increase—that all converge to a
singular conclusion. AGW doubters point to the occasional anomaly in a particular data set, as if one incongruity gainsays
all the other lines of evidence. But that is not how consilience science works. For AGW skeptics to overturn the
consensus, they would need to find flaws with all the lines of supportive evidence and show a consistent convergence of
evidence toward a different theory that explains the data. (Creationists have the same problem overturning evolutionary theory.) This they
have not done. A 2013 study published in Environmental Research Letters by Australian researchers John Cook, Dana Nuccitelli and their colleagues examined
11,944 climate paper abstracts published from 1991 to 2011. Of those papers that stated a position on AGW, about 97 percent concluded that climate
change is real and caused by humans. What about the remaining 3 percent or so of studies? What if they're right? In a
2015 paper published in Theoretical and Applied Climatology, Rasmus Benestad of the Norwegian Meteorological Institute, Nuccitelli and their
colleagues examined the 3 percent and found “a number of methodological flaws and a pattern of common mistakes.”
That is, instead of the 3 percent of papers converging to a better explanation than that provided by the 97 percent, they
failed to converge to anything. “There is no cohesive, consistent alternative theory to human-caused global warming,”
Nuccitelli concluded in an August 25, 2015, commentary in the Guardian. “Some blame global warming on the sun, others on orbital cycles of
other planets, others on ocean cycles, and so on. There is a 97% expert consensus on a cohesive theory that's
overwhelmingly supported by the scientific evidence, but the 2–3% of papers that reject that consensus are all over the
map, even contradicting each other. The one thing they seem to have in common is methodological flaws like cherry
picking, curve fitting, ignoring inconvenient data, and disregarding known physics.” For example, one skeptical paper attributed
climate change to lunar or solar cycles, but to make these models work for the 4,000-year period that the authors considered, they had to throw out 6,000 years'
worth of earlier data. Such
practices are deceptive and fail to further climate science when exposed by skeptical scrutiny, an
integral element to the scientific process.
We don’t have time to wait – warming is anthropogenic but there’s no impact unless we exceed a
tipping point of 2 degrees.
Harvey 13 (Fiona Harvey is an award-winning environment journalist for the Guardian; “IPCC: 30 years to climate
calamity if we carry on blowing the carbon budget”; https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/sep/27/ipccworld-dangerous-climate-change; The Guardian; https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/sep/27/ipcc-worlddangerous-climate-change; DT)
The world's leading climate scientists have set out in detail for the first time how much more carbon dioxide humans
can pour into the atmosphere without triggering dangerous levels of climate change – and concluded that more than
half of that global allowance has been used up. If people continue to emit greenhouse gases at current rates, the accumulation of carbon
in the atmosphere could mean that within as little as two to three decades the world will face nearly inevitable warming
of more than 2C, resulting in rising sea levels, heatwaves, droughts and more extreme weather. This calculation of the world's
"carbon budget" was one of the most striking findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the expert panel of global scientists
who on Friday produced the most comprehensive assessment yet of our knowledge of climate change at the end of their
four-day meeting in Stockholm. The 2,000-plus page report, written by 209 lead authors, also found it was
"unequivocal" that global warming was happening as a result of human actions, and that without "substantial and
sustained" reductions in greenhouse gas emissions we will breach the symbolic threshold of 2C of warming, which
governments around the world have pledged not to do. Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general, urged world leaders to pay heed to the "world's
authority on climate change" and forge a new global deal on cutting emissions. "The heat is on. Now we must act," he said. John Kerry, the US secretary of state, said
in a statement: "This is yet another wakeup call: those who deny the science or choose excuses over action are playing with fire." "Once again, the science grows
clearer, the case grows more compelling, and the costs of inaction grow beyond anything that anyone with conscience or commonsense should be willing to even
contemplate," he added. The
IPCC also rebuffed the argument made by climate sceptics that a "pause" for the last 10-15 years
in the upward climb of global temperatures was evidence of flaws in their computer models. In the summary for policymakers,
published on Friday morning after days of deliberations in the Swedish capital, the scientists said: "Each of the last three decades has been
successively warmer at the Earth's surface than any preceding decade since 1850. In the northern hemisphere, 19832012 was likely the warmest 30-year period of the last 1,400 years." Thomas Stocker, co-chair of the report working group, said
measuring recent years in comparison to 1998, an exceptionally hot year, was misleading and that temperature trends
could only be observed over longer periods, of about 30 years.
International policies fall short of that target – we still have time to meet it but immediacy is key –
expert analysis agrees.
Radford 16 (Tim Radford, a founding editor of Climate News Network, worked for The Guardian for 32 years, for most
of that time as science editor. He has been covering climate change since 1988; "Pledges Made at Paris Climate Talks
Will Not Contain Global Warming"; 7-12-2016; Truthdig;
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/pledges_made_at_the_paris_climate_talks_will_not_contain_20160702; DT)
LONDON—National
promises made late last year to contain carbon dioxide emissions will not be nearly enough to meet the
global warming target agreed last December by 195 nations, according to a new assessment. The signatories to the historic agreement
at the UN conference on climate change in Paris pledged to limit global warming to below 2°C and to aim for no more
than 1.5°C rise above pre-industrial levels. The planet has already warmed by 1°C in the last century. But, climate scientists say, the intended
nationally determined contributions (INDCs) submitted before the meeting imply global warming of between 2.6°C and
3.1°C. So more needs to be done, they report in Nature journal. “The Paris Agreement was a historical achievement for the world’s response to
climate change, aiming at limiting warming to below 1.5°C and 2°C,” says Joeri Rogelj, the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) research scholar
who led the study. Finite amount “It puts in place a flexible framework for a long-term transformation towards a low-carbon society. But our analysis shows that
these measures
need to be strengthened in order to have a good chance of keeping warming to well below 2°C, let alone
1.5°C.” The researchers argue in their study that to limit warming to any level implies that the total amount of CO2 that can ever be emitted
into the atmosphere is finite. “About two-thirds of the available budget for keeping warming to below 2°C have already been emitted,” they write.
“Global emissions urgently need to start to decline.” That it can be done, and that the Paris target is realistic and achievable, is confirmed by a
second group of researchers in Nature Climate Change journal. “In order to ensure a chance of meeting these targets, we need further
significant action from countries before 2030.” They reason that the difference between 1.5°C and 2°C is substantial, in terms
of sea level rise, the loss of the glaciers and damage to the rainforests. However, the process of containing global average
temperature rise demands a “controlled implosion” of the fossil fuel industry, and a technological explosion of
renewable energy systems. “The Paris agreement is a historic achievement and a genuine triumph of reason,” says Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, director of
the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, who led the study. “Now the pressure is on to implement that consensus in time, in order to avoid the looming
humanitarian tragedy for good.” And the latest look at the challenges, led by the IIASA team, is another instance of that pressure. The researchers
calculate—on the basis of all the INDCs submitted by the time of the Paris meeting, from up to 187 of the parties to the
conference, and responsible for up to 96% of all greenhouse gas emissions—that the entire global budget for limiting
global warming to below 2°C might have already been emitted by 2030. To put it briefly, the promises made so far are not
enough. Since the Paris Agreement requires the signatories to submit fresh and ever more ambitious INDC pledges every five years, political opportunity
exists, along with societal challenge. Range of uncertainties The latest Nature study considers a number of scenarios and a range of uncertainties, and then goes on
to frame the probabilities of success. And it concludes that “substantial enhancement or over-delivery” of the promises made so far is
necessary to maintain a reasonable chance of keeping warming to well below the 2°C target. “To go the rest of the way,
we would need to assume much more stringent action after 2030, which leads to emissions reductions of 3%-4% per
year globally,” says the report’s co-author, Niklas Höhne, founding partner of the Germany-based NewClimate Institute for Climate Policy and Global
Sustainability. “But, in practice, switching to such stringent reductions right after 2030 would be challenging, and require time. That means that in order to
ensure a chance of meeting these targets, we need further significant action from countries before 2030.”
Several scenarios –
One – warming over 2 degrees causes extinction – agriculture loss, collapse of civilization, and
reverse carbon cycle.
Simpson, citing Lynas, 13 (Larry Simpson is an Emeritus Professor who did research and teaching at the University
of California in Los Angeles regarding biology; Mark Lynas is a researcher at the Cornell Alliance for Science, advisor on
climate change to the President of the Maldives, environment activist and writer, a frequent speaker around the world
on climate change, biotechnology and nuclear power, a Visiting Research Associate at Oxford University’s School of
Geography and the Environment, a member of the advisory board of the science advocacy group Sense About Science,
and a Visiting Fellow at Cornell University’s Office of International Programs at the College of Agriculture and Life
Sciences; “Several degrees of warming”; http://larry-thoughtsandmusings.blogspot.com/2013/11/several-degrees-ofwarming.html; DT)
BETWEEN TWO AND THREE DEGREES OF WARMING Up to this point, assuming that governments have planned carefully and farmers have converted to more
appropriate crops, not too many people outside subtropical Africa need have starved. Beyond
two degrees, however, preventing mass starvation
will be as easy as halting the cycles of the moon. First millions, then billions, of people will face an increasingly tough battle to
survive. To find anything comparable we have to go back to the Pliocene – last epoch of the Tertiary period, 3m years ago. There were no continental glaciers in
the northern hemisphere (trees grew in the Arctic), and sea levels were 25 metres higher than today’s. In this kind of heat, the death of the Amazon is as
inevitable as the melting of Greenland. The paper spelling it out is the very one whose apocalyptic message so shocked in 2000. Scientists at the Hadley
centre feared that earlier climate models, which showed global warming as a straightforward linear progression, were too simplistic in their assumption that land and
the oceans would remain inert as their temperatures rose. Correctly as it would turn out, they predicted positive feedback. Warmer seas absorb
less
carbon dioxide, leaving more to accumulate in the atmosphere and intensify global warming. On land, matters would be
even worse. Huge amounts of carbon are stored in the soil, the half-rotted remains of dead vegetation. The generally
accepted estimate is that the soil carbon reservoir contains some 1600 gigatonnes, more than double the entire carbon
content of the atmosphere. As soil warms, bacteria accelerate the breakdown of this stored carbon, releasing it into the
atmosphere. The end of the world is nigh. A three-degree increase in global temperature – possible as early as 2050 –
would throw the carbon cycle into reverse. Instead of absorbing carbon dioxide, vegetation and soils start to release it.
So much carbon pours into the atmosphere that it pumps up atmospheric concentrations by 250 parts per million by
2100, boosting global warming by another 1.5C. In other words, the Hadley team had discovered that carbon-cycle feedbacks could
tip the planet into runaway global warming by the middle of this century – much earlier than anyone had expected.
Confirmation came from the land itself. Climate models are routinely tested against historical data. In this case, scientists checked 25 years’ worth of soil samples
from 6,000 sites across the UK. The result was another black joke. As temperatures gradually rose the scientists found that huge
amounts of carbon had
been released naturally from the soils. They totted it all up and discovered – irony of ironies – that the 13m tonnes of carbon British soils were emitting
annually was enough to wipe out all the country’s efforts to comply with the Kyoto Protocol.” All soils will be affected by the rising heat, but none
as badly as the Amazon’s. “Catastrophe” is almost too small a word for the loss of the rainforest. Its 7m square
kilometres produce 10% of the world’s entire photosynthetic output from plants. Drought and heat will cripple it; fire
will finish it off. In human terms, the effect on the planet will be like cutting off oxygen during an asthma attack. In the US
and Australia, people will curse the climate-denying governments of Bush and Howard. No matter what later administrations may do, it will not be enough to keep
the mercury down. With
new “super-hurricanes” growing from the warming sea, Houston could be destroyed by 2045, and
Australia will be a death trap. “Farming and food production will tip into irreversible decline. Salt water will creep up the
stricken rivers, poisoning ground water. Higher temperatures mean greater evaporation, further drying out vegetation
and soils, and causing huge losses from reservoirs. In state capitals, heat every year is likely to kill between 8,000 and 15,000 mainly elderly people.
It is all too easy to visualise what will happen in Africa. In Central America, too, tens of millions will have little to put on their tables. Even
a moderate drought there in 2001 meant hundreds of thousands had to rely on food aid. This won’t be an option when
world supplies are stretched to breaking point (grain yields decline by 10% for every degree of heat above 30C, and at
40C they are zero). Nobody need look to the US, which will have problems of its own. As the mountains lose their snow, so cities and farms in the
west will lose their water and dried-out forests and grasslands will perish at the first spark. The Indian subcontinent
meanwhile will be choking on dust. All of human history shows that, given the choice between starving in situ and moving, people move. In the latter
part of the century tens of millions of Pakistani citizens may be facing this choice. Pakistan may find itself joining the growing list of failed
states, as civil administration collapses and armed gangs seize what little food is left. As the land burns, so the sea will go
on rising. Even by the most optimistic calculation, 80% of Arctic sea ice by now will be gone, and the rest will soon follow. New York
will flood; the catastrophe that struck eastern England in 1953 will become an unremarkable regular event; and the map
of the Netherlands will be torn up by the North Sea. Everywhere, starving people will be on the move – from Central America into
Mexico and the US, and from Africa into Europe, where resurgent fascist parties will win votes by promising to keep them out. Chance
of avoiding three degrees of global warming: poor if the rise reaches two degrees and triggers carbon-cycle feedbacks
from soils and plants.
Two – upticks in emissions causes ocean acidification – results in extinction.
Huelsenbeck 13 (Matt Huelsenbeck is a marine scientist for the climate and energy campaign at Oceana; "Acid Test:
Rising CO2 Levels Killing Ocean Life (Op-Ed)"; 7-16-2013; Live Science; http://www.livescience.com/38219-oceansacidifying-with-rising-co2.html; DT)
The ocean absorbs approximately one-third of all human-caused carbon dioxide emissions at a rate of 300 tons per second,
which helps slow global climate change. But, due to that carbon dioxide absorption, the ocean is now 30 percent more
acidic than before the Industrial Revolution, and the rate of change in ocean pH, called ocean acidification, is likely unparalleled
in Earth’s history. With today’s levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide so high, the ocean’s help comes at a cost to marine
life and the millions of people who depend on healthy oceans. For the first time in human history, atmospheric carbon dioxide
levels have risen above 400 parts per million (ppm) of carbon dioxide at the historic Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii. This observatory is
where Scripps Institution of Oceanography researcher Charles David Keeling created the “Keeling Curve,” a famous graph showing that atmospheric carbon dioxide
concentrations have been increasing rapidly in the atmosphere for decades. Carbon
dioxide levels were around 280 ppm before the
Industrial Revolution, when humans began releasing large amounts of the gas into the atmosphere by burning fossil
fuels. On May 9, 2013, the reading was an alarming 400.08 ppm for a 24-hour period. This number would be even higher, however, if it were not
for the help of the oceans. [Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Breaks 3-Million-Year Record] Scientists already see ocean acidification harming
marine animals like oysters, mussels and clams as well as coral reefs and floating marine snails called pteropods, dubbed
the “potato chips of the sea” because of their significance to marine food webs. In the last decade, ocean acidification killed
many oyster larvae at the Whisky Creek oyster hatchery in Oregon, shrunk the shells of pteropods in the Southern Ocean and slowed coral
growth on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef. Society’s use of fossil fuels is putting the world’s marine life through a high-risk
chemistry experiment with no fail-safes in place and no way to turn back. Earlier in Earth’s history, changes in ocean conditions
that were much slower than today still managed to wipe out 95 percent of marine species. If emissions continue at
current rates, our planet is risking a similar mass extinction event, one that could begin within our lifetimes. These
impacts will ripple up to threaten people as well, who are at the top of the ocean food web. In September 2012, an Oceana report
entitled “Ocean-Based Food Security Threatened in a High CO2 World” ranked nations based on their vulnerability to reductions in seafood production due to climate
change and ocean acidification. Many island nations rely on seafood as one of their main food sources, since it is the cheapest and most readily available source of
protein. Threats to seafood especially threaten small-scale fishermen, who simply aren’t capable of following fish into distant waters. Reducing
carbon
dioxide emissions is the only way to confront global ocean acidification and the primary means to stop climate change.
Biodiversity loss is an impact filter – exacerbates existing crises and leads to extinction.
Torres 16 (Phil is a graduate of Cornell University with degrees in Entomology and Biology; "Biodiversity Loss: An
Existential Risk Comparable to Climate Change"; 5-20-2016; FLI - Future of Life Institute;
http://futureoflife.org/2016/05/20/biodiversity-loss/; DT)
Catastrophic consequences for civilization The consequences of this rapid pruning of the evolutionary tree of life extend beyond the obvious. There
could be
surprising effects of biodiversity loss that scientists are unable to fully anticipate in advance. For example, prior research has
shown that localized ecosystems can undergo abrupt and irreversible shifts when they reach a tipping point. According to a
2012 paper published in Nature, there are reasons for thinking that we may be approaching a tipping point of this sort in the
global ecosystem, beyond which the consequences could be catastrophic for civilization. As the authors write, a planetaryscale transition could precipitate “substantial losses of ecosystem services required to sustain the human population.” An
ecosystem service is any ecological process that benefits humanity, such as food production and crop pollination. If the global ecosystem were to cross
a tipping point and substantial ecosystem services were lost, the results could be “widespread social unrest, economic
instability, and loss of human life.” According to Missouri Botanical Garden ecologist Adam Smith, one of the paper’s co-authors, this could occur
in a matter of decades—far more quickly than most of the expected consequences of climate change, yet equally
destructive. Biodiversity loss is a “threat multiplier” that, by pushing societies to the brink of collapse, will exacerbate
existing conflicts and introduce entirely new struggles between state and non-state actors. Indeed, it could even fuel the
rise of terrorism. (After all, climate change has been linked to the emergence of ISIS in Syria, and multiple high-ranking US officials, such
as former US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and CIA director John Brennan, have affirmed that climate change and terrorism are connected.) The reality is that we
are entering the sixth mass extinction in the 3.8-billion-year history of life on Earth, and the impact of this event could
be felt by civilization “in as little as three human lifetimes,” as the aforementioned 2012 Nature paper notes. Furthermore, the
widespread decline of biological populations could plausibly initiate a dramatic transformation of the global ecosystem
on an even faster timescale: perhaps a single human lifetime. The unavoidable conclusion is that biodiversity loss constitutes an
existential threat in its own right. As such, it ought to be considered alongside climate change and nuclear weapons as one
of the most significant contemporary risks to human prosperity and survival.
Climate change is more catastrophic than other impacts – evaluate probability times magnitude,
historical precedence, and the fact that greater international action is needed to solve.
Wagner & Weitzman 15 (Gernot Warner: Lead senior economist, Environmental Defense Fund; Martin L.
Weitzman: Professor of economics, Harvard University; “How Does Climate Stack up against Other Worst-Case
Scenarios?”; 4/1/2015; http://ensia.com/voices/how-does-climate-stack-up-against-other-worst-case-scenarios; DT)
What we know about climate change is bad. What we don’t know makes it potentially much worse. But climate change isn’t the
only big problem facing society. Opinions differ on what should rightly be called an “existential risk” or planetary-scale
“catastrophe.” Some include nuclear accidents or terrorism. Others insist only nuclear war, or at least a large-scale nuclear attack,
reaches dimensions worthy of the “global” label. There are half a dozen other candidates that seem to make it on various lists of the
worst of the worst, and it’s tough to come up with a clear order of which most demands our attention and limited
resources. In addition to climate change, let’s consider asteroids, biotechnology, nanotechnology, nukes, pandemics, robots and
“strangelets,” strange matter with the potential of swallowing the Earth in a fraction of a second. That might strike some as a
rather short list. Aren’t there thousands of potential risks? One could imagine countless ways to die in a traffic accident alone. That’s surely the case. But there’s an
important difference: While traffic deaths are tragic on an individual level, they are hardly catastrophic as a class. Every entry on our list has the potential to wipe out
civilization as we know it. All are global, highly impactful and mostly irreversible in human timescales. Most are highly uncertain. One response to any list like this is
to say that each such problem deserves our (appropriate) attention, independently of what we do with any of the others. If
there’s more than one
existential risk facing the planet, we ought to consider and address each in turn. That logic has its limits. If catastrophe
policies were to eat up all the resources we have, we’d clearly have to pick and choose. But we don’t seem to be anywhere close. A
first step, then, should always be to turn to benefit-cost analysis, which in turn is something that every U.S. president since Ronald Reagan has affirmed as a guiding
principle of government policy. Ideally, society should conduct serious benefit-cost analyses for each worst-case scenario: estimate probabilities
and
possible impacts, multiply the two, and compare it to the costs of action in each instance. If climate change and asteroids and
biotechnology and nanotechnology and nukes and pandemics and robots and strangelets emerge as problems worthy of more of our attention, society should devote
more resources to each. But we can’t just hide behind standard benefit-cost analysis that ignores extremes. Each of these scenarios may also have their own variant
of “fat tails,” or underestimated and possibly unquantifiable extreme events that could dwarf all else. The analysis soon moves toward some version of a
precautionary principle focused on extreme events. The further we move away from standard benefit-cost analysis, the more acute the need to compare across
worst-case scenarios — a comparison that is getting increasingly difficult. How, then, to analyze these potential worst-case scenarios and decide which deserves more
of our attention? For one, only
two on the list — asteroids and climate change — allow us to point to history as evidence of the
enormity of the problem. For asteroids, go back 65 million years to the one that wiped out the dinosaurs. For climate, go back a bit over 3
million years to find today’s concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and sea levels up to 20 meters (66 feet)
higher than today. Asteroids come in various shapes and sizes. We begin our book Climate Shock by looking at the one that exploded above Chelyabinsk Oblast
in February 2013. The impact injured 1,500 and caused some limited damage to buildings. We shouldn’t wish for more of these impacts to happen just for the
spectacular footage, but we’d be hard pressed to call an asteroid of that size a “worst-case scenario.” NASA’s attempts at cataloguing and defending against objects
from space aims at much larger asteroids, the ones that come in civilization-destroying sizes. Astronomers may have been underestimating the likelihood of
Chelyabinsk Oblast–size asteroids all along. That’s a problem that needs to be rectified, but it’s not a problem that will wipe out civilization. If we estimated the
likelihood of a much larger impact incorrectly, the consequences could be significantly more painful. Luckily, when it comes to asteroids, there’s another feature
working for us. Science should be able to observe, catalog and divert every last one of these large asteroids — if sufficient resources are provided. That’s a big if, but
not an insurmountable one: A National Academy study puts the cost at $2 to $3 billion and 10 years’ research to launch an actual test of an asteroid deflection
technology. That’s much more than we are spending at the moment, but the decision seems rather easy: Spend the money, solve the problem, move on. Strangelets
are the opposite of the Chelyabinsk Oblast asteroid in that they have never been observed. They are straight out of science fiction and may be theoretically
impossible. If it is possible, though, there may be a chance that large heavy-ion colliders like the one ramping up once again at CERN near Geneva could create them.
That has prompted research teams to calculate the
likelihood of a strangelet actually happening. Their verdict: Concrete numbers for the
upper bound hover between 0.0000002 percent and 0.002 percent. That’s not zero, but it might as well be. So yes, swallowing
the entire planet would be the ultimate bad — clearly worse, say, than melting the poles and raising sea levels by several meters or feet. Stranger things have
happened. But strangelets very, very, very likely won’t. The same could be said of autonomous robots reproducing and taking over the world. It’s not that it can’t ever
happen, but it certainly hasn’t happened before. That doesn’t mean it won’t, but if forced to put a probability on the eventuality, it would be very, very small. If
we
could rank worst-case scenarios by how likely they are to occur, we’d have taken a huge step forward. If the chance of a
strangelet or robot takeover is so small as to be ignorable, probabilities alone might point to where to focus. But that’s
not all. The size of the impact matters, too. So does the potential to respond. What then, if anything, still distinguishes climate change
from the others remaining: biotechnology, nanotechnology, nukes and pandemics? For one, the relatively high chance of
eventual planetary catastrophe. In Climate Shock, we zero in on eventual average global warming of 6 °C (11 °F) as the final cutoff few would doubt
represents a true planetary catastrophe. Higher temperatures are beyond anyone’s grasp. Yet our current path doesn’t exclude eventual average
global warming above 6 °C. In fact, our own analysis puts the likelihood at around 10 percent, and that’s for an indisputable
global catastrophe. Climate change would trigger plenty of catastrophic events with temperatures rising by much less
than 6 °C. Many scientists would name 2 °C (3.6 °F) as the threshold, and we are well on our way to exceeding that, unless
there is a major global course correction. Second, the gap between our current efforts and what’s needed on climate
change is enormous. We are no experts on any of the other worst-case scenarios, but there at least it seems like much is already
being done. Take nuclear terrorism. The United States alone spends many hundreds of billions of dollars each year on its
military, intelligence and security services. That doesn’t stamp out the chance of terrorism. Some of the money spent may even be
fueling it, and there are surely ways to approach the problem more strategically at times, but at least the overall mission is to protect the United
States and its citizens. It would be hard to argue that U.S. climate policy today benefits from anything close to this type
of effort. As for mitigating pandemics, more could surely be spent on research, monitoring and rapid response, but here too it seems like needed additional efforts
would plausibly amount to a small fraction of national income. Third, climate change has firm historical precedence. There’s ample
reason to believe that pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere is reliving the past — the distant past, but the past nonetheless.
The planet has seen today’s carbon dioxide levels before: over 3 million years ago, with sea levels some 20 meters
higher than today, and camels roaming the high Arctic. There are considerable uncertainties in all of this, but there’s little reason to
believe that humanity can cheat basic physics and chemistry. Contrast the historical precedent of climate change with that of biotechnology, or
rather the lack of it. The fear that bioengineered genes and genetically modified organisms will wreak havoc in the wild is a prime example. They may act like invasive
species in some areas, but a global takeover seems unlikely, to say the least. Much like climate change, historical precedent can give us some guidance. But unlike
climate change, that same historical precedent gives us quite a bit of comfort. Nature itself has tried for millions of years to create countless combinations of mutated
DNA and genes. The process of natural selection all but guarantees that only a tiny fraction of the very fittest permutations has survived. Genetically modified crops
grow bigger and stronger and are pesticide-resistant. But they can’t outgrow natural selection entirely. None of that yet guarantees that scientists wouldn’t be able to
develop permutations that could wreak havoc in the wild, but historical experience would tell us that the chance is indeed slim. In fact, the best scientists working on
biotechnology seem to be much less concerned about the dangers of “Frankenfoods” and GMOs than the general public. The reverse holds true for climate change.
The best climate scientists appear to be significantly more concerned about ultimate climate impacts than the majority
of the general public and many policy makers. That alone should give us pause. Some of these same climate scientists — knowing what
they know about the science, and knowing what they know about human responses to the climate problem — seem to have moved on. And they haven’t
moved on to analyzing any of the other worst-case scenarios, believing that climate isn’t all that bad. Quite the opposite:
Some have moved on to looking for solutions to the climate crisis in an entirely different realm, searching for anything
that could pull the planet back from the brink of a looming catastrophe. Their focus: geoengineering. That, more than anything, should lead
us to put the climate problem in its proper context. Climate is not the only “worst-case scenario” imaginable. Others, too, deserve more attention. But none of
that excuses inaction on climate. And more importantly, there’s perhaps no other problem where the probability of disaster
multiplied by the magnitude of disaster is as high as with climate.
Contention 2: Solvency
Plan: The United States Federal Government should offer the People’s Republic
of China to launch the U.S.-China Partnership on Energy and Climate Change.
The plan solves – a US-China led effort is key to kick-start a global effort on
Climate Change.
Holbrooke et. al 09 (Initiative for U.S.-China Cooperation on Energy and Climate, a
partnership between: Asia Society Center on U.S.-China Relations (Richard Holbrooke,
Chairman; Vishakha Desai, President; Orville Schell, Arthur Ross Director; Banning Garrett,
Director, Initiative for U.S.-China Cooperation on Energy and Climate; Joanna Lewis, Initiative
Research Director, Assistant Professor, Georgetown University School of Foreign Service;
Jonathan Adams, Initiative Assistant Director) and Pew Center on Global Climate Change (Eileen
Claussen, President; Elliot Diringer, Vice President, International Strategies; Steven Chu,
Director, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Professor of Physics and Molecular and
Cellular Biology, University of California, Berkeley*; John Thornton, Chairman, The Brookings
Institution, Professor, Tsinghua University, Board Member, Asia Society) with help from The
Brookings Institution: Kenneth Lieberthal and David Sandalow, Council on Foreign Relations:
Elizabeth Economy and Michael Levi, Environmental Defense Fund: Peter Goldmark and David
Yarnold, and National Committee on U.S.-China Relations: Steve Orlins and Jan Berris; Common
Challenge, Collaborative Response; “A Roadmap for U.S.-China Cooperation on Energy and
Climate Change”; January 2009; http://e360.yale.edu/images/features/us-china-roadmap.pdf;
DT)
A new comprehensive program for cooperation
between the United States and China that focuses on
reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and thus mitigating the potentially catastrophic effects of climate
change, is both necessary and possible. Indeed, as this Report suggests, if human beings hope to avoid
the worst consequences of global climate change, the United States and China—respectively the
world’s largest developed and developing nations, the two largest energy consumers, and the two largest producers of
greenhouse gases—have no alternative but to become far more active partners in developing
low-carbon economies. To prevail in such a common effort, both countries will need not only bold leadership and a
new set of national policies, but also a path-breaking cooperative agenda that can be sustained over the
long run. The advent of a new U.S. presidential administration in Washington, D.C., coupled with a
central leadership in Beijing that is increasingly aware of the destructive impact and long-term dangers of climate change,
presents an unparalleled opportunity for this new strategic partnership. While the current global
economic crisis could make joint action between the United States and China more difficult, it could also provide an unexpected
impetus. If wisely allocated, funds
invested by both governments in economic recovery can help
address climate change while also advancing the “green technologies” and industries that will
lead to a new wave of economic growth. Stronger bilateral collaboration on energy and climate
change has at the same time the real prospect of helping to build a new, more stable, and
constructive foundation under Sino-American relations, the most important bilateral
relationship in the 21st century world. This Report—which was produced in partnership between Asia Society’s Center
on U.S.-China Relations and Pew Center on Global Climate Change, in collaboration with The Brookings Institution, Council on
Foreign Relations, National Committee on U.S.- China Relations, and Environmental Defense Fund—presents both a vision and a
concrete Roadmap for such Sino-U.S. collaboration. With input from scores of experts and other stakeholders from the worlds of
science, business, civil society, policy, and politics in both China and the United States, the Report, or “Roadmap,” explores the
climate and energy challenges facing both nations and recommends a concrete program for sustained, high-level, bilateral
engagement and on-the-ground action. The Report and its recommendations are based on the following understandings: That
because there is overwhelming scientific consensus that human-induced climate change is well
underway and poses grave economic and environmental risks to the world, the United States
and China need to immediately begin acting in concert, without awaiting new domestic
legislation or multilateral agreements, to jointly seek remedies for their emissions of
greenhouse gases. That because climate change is largely a consequence of soaring global use of fossil fuels, addressing
the problem will require a fundamental transformation of energy systems in both countries, as
well as worldwide, through the development and deployment of new technologies and the
widespread introduction of new energy sources capable of enhancing the diversity, reliability,
independence, and “greenness” of national energy supplies. That even during a time of global
economic upheaval, a strong bilateral effort to address the twin challenges of climate change
and energy security can succeed while also contributing to economic recovery and laying the
foundation for a prosperous, new, low carbon economy in each country. That a meaningful U.S.-China
partnership on climate change issues can be forged on the basis of equity, taking into account the respective stages of development,
capacities, and responsibilities of each country. That while
enhanced U.S.-China cooperation must begin with
collaboration between the two national governments, success will ultimately hinge on each nation’s
ability to catalyze action and investment in the marketplace. That if fashioned carefully, closer
collaboration on energy and climate can address the problem of climate change and enhance
the economic prospects of both nations while conferring on neither an unfair competitive
advantage. That by demonstrating global leadership and making significant new progress toward closer bilateral cooperation,
the world’s two largest economies will help achieve stronger multilateral agreement and action under the United Nations (UN)
Framework Convention on Climate Change. The Report
recommends that, as a first step in forging this new partnership,
the leaders of the two countries should convene a leaders summit as soon as practically possible following the
inauguration of Barack Obama to launch a “U.S.-China Partnership on Energy and Climate Change.” This
presidential summit should outline a major plan of joint-action and empower relevant officials in each
country to take the necessary actions to ensure its implementation. The Report recommends
that the partnership be directed by two parallel groups. A U.S.- China high-level council would
be established to draw up overall plans for the collaboration. The Commission would include
high-ranking environment, energy, and finance officials from both countries. It would meet
regularly to establish and review the strategic direction of the new partnership as well as to
discuss other issues of common concern, including those relating to ongoing multilateral
negotiations. In addition, each of the highlighted concrete priority areas proposed below would be guided
by a second tier of bilateral task forces. These would be composed of senior government
officials and independent experts in science, technology, business, finance, civil society, and
policy from each country. Their responsibilities would involve establishing goals, designating
joint-research areas, developing collaborative programs within each of the designated areas,
organizing concrete joint projects in each area of cooperation, and overseeing the
implementation of these projects. Areas where direct collaboration is expected to yield the quickest and most
substantial results on reducing greenhouse gas emissions have been given highest priority. They are listed below in shortened form,
but discussed in greater detail in Section IV. Priority
areas of collaboration include: - Deploying LowEmissions Coal Technologies. The likelihood that both the United States and China will continue
to rely heavily on coal for many years to come necessitates immediate and large-scale
investments in the research, development, and deployment of new technologies for the capture
and sequestration of carbon emissions from coal-fired power plants. - Improving Energy
Efficiency and Conservation. Both the United States and China have significant potential to lower
their carbon emissions through low-cost, and even no-cost, energy efficiency and conservation
measures that would have considerable impact on each country’s “carbon footprint” and energy
security. - Developing an Advanced Electric Grid. Both the United States and China rely on
outdated, decentralized, and inefficient electrical transmission systems. Both countries could
profit from research, development, and adoption of new “smart grid” technologies capable of
enabling these systems to handle larger quotients of low-carbon energy from episodic, but
renewable sources of power more cheaply and efficiently. - Promoting Renewable Energy. There
is an obvious need for both countries to develop a far broader deployment of solar, wind, and
other renewable sources of energy in order to de-carbonize their respective electricity systems,
expand their low-carbon economies, and thereby diminish their carbon emissions per unit of
GDP. - Quantifying Emissions and Financing Low-Carbon Technologies. To help facilitate
cooperation in the above areas, it will be important to continue to jointly address the crosscutting issues of quantifying and projecting emissions, and financing technology development
and deployment. That our planet is now approaching a point of no return on the question of global warming is increasingly
self-evident. Recognition of the daunting challenges that such moments pose can be unsettling,
even paralyzing. However, with bold leadership, they can also be galvanic. It is unclear as yet whether
the growing awareness of our tipping point moment will intersect in a timely manner with the new leadership that is now assuming
office in Washington and the increasingly well-informed central leadership in Beijing to catalyze both countries toward mustering
the necessary clarity of vision, intellectual resources, funding, technology, and international cooperation. What is clear, however, is
that we are in uncharted waters that will beg an unprecedented effort from both the world at large and the United States and China
in particular. For whether we choose to recognize it or not, these two countries are both crucial in the effort to address climate
change. Simply put, if
these two countries cannot find ways to bridge the long-standing divide on this
issue, there will literally be no solution. Fortunately, it is the firm conviction of those who have worked on this
Report over the past year that the United States and China will both benefit from the kind of
collaboration outlined herein. Moreover, not only would such a collaboration allow the world to take a giant step forward
in confronting the global climate change challenge, but both the United States and China would indirectly stand
to profit immeasurably from it. If their leaders jointly play their cards astutely, the two countries could find
themselves in the forefront of a new green-tech economy, and in a stronger, more strategic
partnership, better able to help lead the world to meet other 21st century challenges. This Report
presents both a vision and a concrete Roadmap for this new collaboration. With input from scores of experts, stakeholders, and
policymakers from the worlds of science, business, civil society, policy, and politics in China and the United States, the Report
explores the climate and energy challenges facing both nations and recommends a program for sustained high-level engagement
and on-the-ground action. The Report and its recommendations are based on the following understandings: Action
is Urgent.
The United States and China should start now. There is overwhelming scientific consensus that
human-induced climate change poses grave economic and environmental risks. Minimizing
these risks requires that global greenhouse gas emissions, now rising at an unprecedented rate,
peak as soon as possible and decline dramatically over the coming decades. Accomplishing this
goal will be feasible only through concerted and sustained action, beginning immediately. The
United States and China should not await new domestic legislation or multilateral agreements before launching stronger
collaborative efforts. A Path to Energy Security. Climate
change is largely a consequence of soaring global
energy use, and addressing it requires a fundamental transformation of energy systems
worldwide. This transformation presents an unparalleled opportunity to simultaneously address
the urgent energy security challenges confronting the United States, China, and other nations by
introducing new sources and technologies capable of enhancing the diversity, reliability, and
independence of national energy supplies. New Economic Opportunity. At a time of global economic upheaval,
strong efforts to address the twin challenges of climate change and energy security can
contribute to economic recovery, while laying the foundation for a prosperous new low-carbon
economy. The near-term investments that are needed will produce substantial long-term dividends
through sustainable growth and employment. Conversely, delaying these investments will risk
severe economic harm and drive up the cost of minimizing the impact of climate change.
Common but Differentiated Responsibilities. As a point of departure, an equitable partnership must be built on a shared
understanding of respective responsibilities and capacities. As the world’s largest economy and largest historic greenhouse gas
emitter, the United States must demonstrate leadership by moving swiftly to reduce its emissions through mandatory national
legislation. Although China has now surpassed the United States as the world’s largest annual emitter, its cumulative and per capita
emissions are much lower, and development and poverty reduction will remain overriding national priorities for the foreseeable
future. Having adopted a comprehensive national climate change program, National Climate Change Program, and agreed on the
need to reduce its emissions below “business as usual,”China must now deliver an ambitious and effective national effort.2 PublicPrivate Engagement. While
enhanced U.S.-China cooperation must begin with collaboration between
the national governments, success will hinge on each nation’s ability to catalyze action by the private
sector. Technology can be advanced, financing secured, and critical obstacles overcome only
through a combination of bold leadership, ingenuity, expertise, and the mustering of the
resources of leading investors, financial institutions, and companies in both the United States
and China. But governments will play a critical role in creating the regulatory environment for large-scale private investment in
and commercialization of low-carbon technologies through a wide range of tools, from tax incentives and subsidies to regulations
and research. Cooperating while Competing. Fear of competitive harm has for too long stood as an obstacle to strong climate action.
Competition can also be an engine for innovation and low-carbon growth. Under any scenario, companies and industries in the
United States and China will remain vigorous economic competitors in the global marketplace. Fashioned carefully, closer
collaboration on energy and climate can enhance the economic prospects of both nations while
conferring on neither an unfair competitive advantage. Bilateral Means to Multilateral Ends. Climate
change requires a global response, and stronger bilateral cooperation between the United
States and China must contribute to, not deter, an effective multilateral climate agreement. By
demonstrating global leadership and achieving bilateral practical progress, two of the[y] world’s
largest economies can help all nations achieve fair and comprehensive agreements under the
UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and beyond as envisioned in the Bali Action Plan.
Past diplomatic initiatives failed because they had no enforcement mechanism
and were all too small to have any impact – a US-China partnership is uniquely
key to solve.
Reynolds 6/30 (Ben Reynolds is a writer and foreign policy analyst based in New York;
"Climate Change Outcomes of the 2016 Strategic and Economic Dialogue"; 6-30-2016; China US
Focus; http://www.chinausfocus.com/finance-economy/climate-change-outcomes-of-the-2016strategic-and-economic-dialogue/; DT)
Many of the new climate change-related developments within the Strategic and Economic Dialogue emerged from
the “Second U.S.-China Climate-Smart / Low-Carbon Cities Summit.” The Summit brought U.S. and Chinese
policymakers and private sector leaders together to establish cooperative relationships to
address the challenges posed by climate change. This year, leaders of 66 U.S. and Chinese municipalities endorsed
the Summit’s “ China U.S. Climate Leaders Declaration,” verbally committing to reporting greenhouse gas emissions, establishing
emissions targets, and expanding their cooperative efforts with other municipal leaders. While
the Declaration includes
a number of commitments from states and cities in the U.S. and China to both monitor and
reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, it makes no mention of any mechanism to ensure that
the signatories live up to their statements. Previous climate accords have always struggled with
the difficulties of enforcing climate targets that are often conveniently forgotten after big
summits. In 2011, Bulgaria, Romania, and Ukraine were suspended from the Kyoto Protocol’s cap and trade markets due to
inaccurate reporting of greenhouse gas emissions. When Canada faced penalties for its failure to meet
emissions targets that same year, it simply pulled out of the Kyoto Protocol altogether. It remains to be seen
whether the signatories of this year’s Declaration will actually comply with their commitments
absent any sort of enforcement mechanisms. The Summit featured the signing of a number of interesting
agreements between various public and private sector actors, a relatively rare concrete outcome of the S&ED. The cities of Los
Angeles and Lanzhou agreed to partner in their attempts to promote clean energy, transportation, and buildings. WRI China and the
C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group committed to help Wuhan and Shenzen, a major industrial center, develop greenhouse gas
emissions inventories. PowerFlame, a U.S. company, and Beijing’s Municipal Environmental Protection Bureau agreed to conduct a
pilot project to evaluate the use of U.S. burner technologies as a means to reduce air pollution from gas-fired boilers in Beijing. This
list is not exhaustive, but all of the initiatives provide examples of commitments to concrete cooperative partnerships between
actors in China and the United States. At this year’s S&ED, the U.S. and China launched a new effort under the Climate Change
Working Group on Power Consumption, Demand, and Competition to increase the use of renewable energy in China. The irony of
this effort is palpable. China is already the world’s largest market for solar panels, and the U.S. has levied steep tariffs on solar panel
imports from Chinese manufacturers to protect its domestic industries. One of the best ways the U.S. could encourage the adoption
of solar panels would be the removal of these tariffs, which hike the price of solar panels for U.S. consumers. Finally, the U.S. and
China reiterated their commitment to the “Race to Zero Emissions” initiative, which is designed to encourage the deployment of
zero-emissions buses in American and Chinese cities. U.S. transit agencies currently operate only around 300 zero emissions buses,
while China operates at least 1,600 zero emissions buses and over 15,000 alternative fuel buses. The U.S. federal government
currently offers modest subsidies to encourage local transit authorities to adopt zero emissions buses, but adoption could likely be
greatly improved with a more generous contribution. The
various initiatives detailed above are all relatively
modest, but they represent small, productive steps toward the establishment of sustainable
societies in China and the United States. If anything, these steps are better than nothing – they
at least represent a minor commitment to meet the emissions targets established by the U.S.
and China at the Paris Agreement. As I have previously argued, even if every country in the world were
to religiously stick by its pledges under the Paris Agreement, we would still fail to prevent
potentially catastrophic global warming within the 21st century. It is obvious that a more radical
restructuring of the global economy is necessary, but we have to start somewhere. More than
anything, the challenge of climate change should highlight the absolute necessity of U.S.-China
cooperation and the extraordinary dangers of a deepening rivalry. Climate change poses a
potentially existential threat to contemporary society. The U.S. and China are the world’s two
largest emitters of carbon dioxide, and some scientists have suggested that a strong enough
pact between the two countries would be enough to put the world back on track to relative
climate stability. But the changes necessary to achieve climate stability will require painful
compromises and sacrifices, neither of which will be feasible if the world’s largest emitters view
each other with suspicion. The strategic rivalry between the U.S. and China continues to deepen, and this trend seems
likely to continue under a presumptive Clinton administration. Yet, because of the challenge of climate change, we
need the U.S. and China to embrace unprecedented levels of cooperation now more than ever.
There are few historical examples of the leaders of competing great powers embracing peaceful
cooperation to secure the common good. It will take a serious reorientation to ensure that we
place the fate of our children before the struggle for hegemony.
The Paris Agreements do very far from enough to solve global warming—most
countries’ timelines regarding implementing the Paris Talks do not stretch
beyond 2030, and many have no timeline of implementation at all.
Goldenberg 16 [Suzanne Goldenberg is the US environment correspondent of the Guardian
and is based in Washington DC. She has won several awards for her work in the Middle East, and
in 2003 covered the US invasion of Iraq from Baghdad. She is author of Madam President, about
Hillary Clinton's historic run for White House. April 22nd, 2016. “Why the Paris climate change
goals may already be slipping beyond reach”, theGuardian.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/apr/22/paris-climate-agreement-unitednations]
World leaders have failed to come to grips with the epic challenge of phasing out fossil fuels and
running the entire global economy almost entirely on clean energy by the middle of this century,
experts said this week. While more than 170 countries converged at the United Nations on Friday to demonstrate their support for
the landmark deal to fight climate change reached at Paris last December, economists and scientists warned the
accord’s goal
of keeping temperatures below 1.5-2C may already be slipping beyond reach. So far, the commitments
covered by the Paris agreement would allow warming of about 2.7C, according to the UN’s own estimates
– which would unleash rising seas, extreme heat and other upheavals. “While we should be celebrating the
signing ceremony on Friday we need to be aware of the gap, where the current contributions add up to and where we
need to go,” said Shane Tomlinson, a senior research fellow in energy and climate change at Chatham House. Countries have
to operate on two distinct time lines as they put the promises of Paris into action. First is the next five years,
when they will need to radically increase emissions cuts to avoid locking out a 2C future.Second is the
long term, when they must put plans in place for a late 21st-century economy powered almost
entirely by clean energy, the experts said. The US – despite Barack Obama’s strong advocacy for climate action and a
flurry of climate initiatives over the past two and a half years – has yet to engage in the long-term thinking
needed for a historic economic transition, according to Jeffrey Sachs, director of Columbia University’s Earth Institute
and a special advisor to Ban Ki-moon. “Why is it that with an administration that is gung-ho on climate we
are in the eighth year and there is no plan at all? No sketch, no white paper, no scenario to
2050?” Sachs told a gathering this week. Most countries’ plans do not look beyond 2030 – despite agreement in
Paris to begin phasing out greenhouse gas emissions completely by the middle of the century. Planning for a zero-carbon economy
by mid-century demands long lead times, decades even, because it involves major decisions about power plants and transmission
lines, building codes and vehicle standards, Sachs said. But most
countries were still not looking as far down the
road as 2050 – including the US. Obama, despite a flurry of climate initiatives since 2013, had yet to produce a coherent longterm plan for a 21st-century post-carbon economy, Sachs said. At the start of his presidency, Obama pledged to cut greenhouse gas
emissions 80% by 2050. “The goal has been around since the beginning of the Obama administration. But as far as I know you can’t
find out even one document that sketches out how this would be accomplished,” Sachs said. The near-universal support for the Paris
agreement would avoid the backsliding that followed the Kyoto protocol of the 1990s, experts said. But the
very nature of
the deal – which gained widespread support precisely because its decentralised structure allows countries to set their own
emissions cutting targets – makes it difficult to make big changes fast. Leaders would need the support of business
and campaign groups to turn economies around swiftly. Some countries, including the US, face multiple challenges
to their leaders’ efforts to cut emissions. Obama’s rules cutting carbon pollution from power plants face a legal
challenge from states and industry groups. Donald Trump, the leading Republican presidential candidate, has expressed doubts even
about the existence of climate change. China and India, while committing publicly to cut emissions, have also cracked down on
campaign groups that would keep them to account, Tomlinson said. And
climate pollution continued to rise in the
25 years it took negotiators to reach a deal. “The problem is that over the last decade we haven’t decarbonised our
energy system. We have carbonised our energy system,” said Ottmar Edenhofer, chief economist at the Potsdam Institute for
climate change research. Countries needed to radically ramp up ambition now – before 2020 – to avoid locking out the future of a
2C future, he said. If countries wait until 2030, the date envisaged in the Paris agreement, they would have to cut global emissions
by 6% a year to keep the 2c goal in sight. “The longer we wait for effective climate policy, the more severe and the more traumatic
will be the emissions reductions in the future,” he said.
China will say yes – wants to establish a larger leadership role in terms of
climate agreements.
Hart 15 (Melanie Hart is a Senior Fellow and Director of China Policy at American Progress;
"Assessing American Foreign Policy Toward China"; 9-29-2015; Center for American Progress;
https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/security/report/2015/09/29/122283/assessingamerican-foreign-policy-toward-china/; DT)
China’s new assertiveness creates new opportunities and new challenges for the United States. On the
positive side, China is showing an increasing willingness to play a leadership role among nations
outside the highly industrialized democratic block. China played a key role in the Iran nuclear negotiations, helping the process
through shaky moments, and Chinese nuclear experts helped Iranian officials redesign the Arak plutonium reactor so that it will
never produce nuclear fuel. On
climate change, China’s willingness to issue bold climate targets with the
United States last November challenged other developing nations to follow suit and knocked down a
firewall that has hindered global climate negotiations for decades. China also appears to be leaning harder
on North Korea. China supported the U.N. Security Council effort to sanction North Korea in response to that nation’s February 2013
nuclear test. Earlier this month, after North Korean officials announced plans to launch another long-range rocket, China’s foreign
minister warned against “taking new actions that could lead to tensions” on the Korean peninsula and called for all nations to take a
“responsible attitude.” On all of these issues, Beijing’s
ability to speak to a different audience and from a
different angle than the United States has made China a valuable diplomatic partner.
Cooperation between the US and China will influence other countries to pledge
emissions reductions – without the plan, countries won’t be on board.
Stone 15 (Jessica Stone is a Washington Correspondent focusing on American politics, trade,
and economics coverage; “China US cooperation crucial on global climate change”; CCTV
America; http://www.cctv-america.com/2015/11/29/china-us-cooperation-crucial-on-globalclimate-change; DT)
Wang Pu, a climate researcher at Harvard, said China’s
commitment fits into its economic goals of reducing
reliance on coal-powered manufacturing and moving to a services and technology-led economy
that pollutes less, and emphasizes renewables. “I would say China is definitely one of the most
important actors,” Wang said. “Climate policy is viewed by the Chinese government as both
environmental and economic policy. I think it’s a win-win solution for environment and for the
economy.” And win-win for China s relationship with the United States. Wang says finding common
ground with Americans on climate policy is also a way to manage diplomatic differences. For the
U.S., Chinese cooperation is essential to achieving a goal of President Barack Obama’s: slowing climate change, according to Elliot
Diringer of the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions. “Unless
both the U.S. and China are really committed to
this, it’s very hard to get other countries to come along,” Diringer said. “I think the U.S. administration certainly
recognized that and has worked really hard to reach out to China.” “I think China did set an example for these other
emerging economies, particularly for India,” Pu said. “I think China has had some indirect influence
over India decision to make their own national contributions.” Many experts also believe nations
around the world are watching to see if and how the U.S. reaches its reduction targets. The
U.S. has already reduced vehicle emissions and is now focusing on cutting emissions from power
production, the largest source of carbon pollution nationwide. “That is a huge example to the
rest of the world, that this is a challenge that can be met without sacrificing economic growth
and development,” Diringer said. Beijing doubts whether the U.S. political system will allow it to accept any binding climate
agreement. And Washington has reason to doubt whether Beijing will accept emissions transparency standards or commit to set
new reduction goals every five years. But both
have moved closer on other aspects of the climate
negotiations. During Chinese President Xi Jinping’s U.S. state visit in September, China matched the U.S.
contribution of nearly $3 billion to help developing countries combat climate change. And
perhaps its greatest impact, aside from reducing its own carbon footprint, will be to inspire
other major economies to pledge ambitious reduction targets. Heading into the Paris climate talks, U.N.
Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said current commitments don’t achieve the goal of holding the increase
in global temperature to two degrees Celsius. The U.S. and China in particular will need to use
their influence to enlist the help of other countries during the negotiations to change that.
Contention 3: Framing
To succumb to the disguise of time is a fatal mistake—we cannot let global
warming lull us into a feeling of false security.
Guth 07 (Dr. Joseph H. Guth: Legal Director of the Science & Environmental Health Network,
PhD in Biochemistry from University Of Wisconsin and JD from NYU; “LAW FOR THE
ECOLOGICAL AGE”; Vermont Journal of Environmental Law; 9 Vt. J. Envtl. L. 431; Winter 20072008; http://sehn.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/VJEL10068.pdf; DT)
The central presumption of the common law that environmental damage can be economically justified
can be true only so long as the world is “empty.” It becomes false when the world is “full,” when
cumulative environmental damage exceeds the capacity of the Earth to assimilate it. Thus, the belief
of Justices Livingston and Holmes that economic activity tends to benefit the public will not always be true. Once we
overshoot the Earth’s assimilative capacity, and begin to devastate the ecological systems on
which we depend, the law can no longer justify a starting presumption that economic activity
furthers the public welfare even where it causes ecological damage. Moreover, under these
conditions, cost–benefit analysis can no longer be justified as a tool for evaluating the
reasonableness of individual increments of environmental damage. Each incremental impact, if
taken alone, might have caused little or even no harm at all in an empty world. But under conditions
of ecological overshoot each increment of damage contributes to an immeasurable, indeed
infinite, loss. This infinite loss cannot be meaningfully allocated among the various increments of
damage. Once we are degrading the environment at an unsustainable rate, attempting to justify
increments of damage using cost–benefit principles is profoundly misguided and represents a
denial of the biological realities of life on the Earth. Under conditions of ecological overshoot, the core
structure of the modern common law cannot be justified as one that furthers the public welfare.
At that point, it is no longer legitimate as an American rule of law.
Apocalyptic representations are necessary to mobilize support to solve
warming – this sense of moral urgency results in an ecological ethic.
Harvard 13 ("Social Movements and Climate Change"; 6-17-2013; Harvard University Center
for the Environment; http://environment.harvard.edu/news/huce-headlines/social-movementsand-climate-change; DT)
On the climate issue, the problem is that “urgency is not felt by many people,” says Marshall Ganz, a
senior lecturer at Harvard Kennedy School. “But one thing that movements do is come up with ways to make
the important urgent.” Ganz speaks from experience. He left Harvard during his junior year to work with the civil rights
movement in Mississippi in 1964. He went on to work with Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers for 16 years, before
eventually returning to Harvard to complete a Ph.D. in sociology. One of the lessons he draws from his decades working in and
studying social movements is that moral
urgency—a sense of injustice, or even anger—is often needed to
move individuals to act. This is often accompanied by hope, or the sense of the plausible, the
possible. Action of this kind may produce change in the participants themselves, as well as in the
world around them. “If you look at the core of any social movement there are highly committed
people who are ready to take risks,” he says. “It’s not just about passing a law—at heart they are
movements of moral reform. Take the Harvard living wage campaign back in 2001, when the students sat in the
president’s office and said, ‘We’re not going to leave until it gets dealt with.’” This
had the effect of turning what the
students saw as a morally urgent problem into a practically urgent problem for decision-makers
to resolve. “How to make that cosmic sense of urgency immediately felt is one of the challenges
of this (climate) movement,” Ganz continues. “That’s where civil disobedience and that kind of activity comes in—it’s a
way of saying we’re not going to cooperate until you address this need.” Ganz met recently with a group of law school students
seeking advice on the campaign to press Harvard’s administration to divest from fossil fuel companies. He says he supports the
students’ efforts on the merits of their moral argument, but also as a means to stir up and “[that] mobilize the kind
of movement it will take to make broader and deeper change.” “There is a very strong generational dynamic
to this whole thing,” Ganz says. “Generation change is one of the great drivers of cultural and political change. Bill McKibben [’82]
gets that, which is why he has this focus on divestment: give the rising generation a strategic focus.”
War is not an impact –
1. This is the 21st century – major wars are obsolete – diplomacy, demilitarization, and political psychologies.
Sangha 11 (Karina: BA in Political Science from the University of Victoria; “The Obsolescence of
Major War: An Examination of Contemporary War Trends”; Vol 5, No 1: Spring 2011;
http://web.uvic.ca/~onpol/spring2011/Two%20-%20Sangha.pdf; DT)
Since the end of the Second World War, direct conflict among the great powers has been
seemingly non-existent, marking the longest absence of major war since the days of the Roman
Empire.8 Given the scale and frequency of major war in previous centuries, this absence may be the single most important
discontinuity that the history of warfare has ever seen.9 Though not without tension, great power relations are now
generally characterized by a sense of peace, with states carrying out aggressions through
diplomatic or economic, rather than military, means. Indeed, as the threat of major war has declined, most
great powers have chosen to invest fewer resources in developing a strong military, undergoing
a notable downsizing in both the size of their armed forces and the quantity of weapons at their
disposal since 1945.10 While most great powers had possessed forces numbering several million men throughout much of
the twentieth century, as of the late 1990s, the only states maintaining forces exceeding a million and a half were India and China,
and at that time, China had announced it would be cutting half a million of its troops.11 In addition to directly cutting their forces,
most states have also eliminated conscription, a once useful system that provided a great deal
of cannon fodder for the institution of major war.12 Air forces, naval forces, and nuclear weapons
stores have also witnessed similar reductions worldwide.13 Indicative of the current sense of great power
peace, these reductions would also seem to imply that none of the great powers anticipates a major war
to break out any time in the near future, supporting the idea that major war is becoming
obsolete. However, having said this, it is important to note that, in and of itself, the extended absence of major war is a
necessary, but not a sufficient, criterion for the obsolescence of major war. In fact, it is arguable that the current absence is
not an indication of the institution’s obsolescence, but simply a temporary period of peace within the broader cycle of major war, a
cycle linked to the rise and fall of world orders.14 On this view, international stability is tied to the presence of a hegemon that is
capable of maintaining order in an anarchic international system due to its economic and military supremacy. 15 When such
hegemony is challenged by a rising power, this theory asserts that major war is likely to break out as power becomes more equally
distributed and the control maintained by the hegemon is lost.16 Thus, just as the hegemonic presence of Great Britain ushered in a
period of peace during the nineteenth century, it would seem that the
prolonged peace we are currently
witnessing may be attributable to the dominance of the United States in the contemporary
international system, a dominance that remains open to challenge, particularly by rising powers
like China and India. In this sense, instead of indicating its obsolescence, the current absence of major war may simply be a
temporary manifestation of American hegemony that will inevitably be challenged and lost in the future, thus continuing the cycle of
major war.17 Though not entirely devoid of merit, one
should be wary of accepting this argument. Historically,
some periods of hegemony have witnessed a general sense of peace among the great powers, but this
does not mean that international stability is inherently tied to a unipolar structure. Indeed, many
studies find little to no connection between power configurations and the incidence of war in
the international system.18 Nonetheless, even if it can be accepted that war has been cyclical in the past, tied to changing
power balances, economic waves, or otherwise, this need not imply that this cycle must continue, thereby discounting the thesis at
hand. Even
if the current period of peace is temporary, trends surrounding the frequency of major
war for the past few centuries seem to indicate that such periods are becoming increasingly
more frequent and may one day become the established norm. In fact, extrapolating from the works of individuals like J.S. Levy
and Evan Luard, both of whom have performed analyses as to the frequency of major war, it is arguable that the absence we
are seeing today has been taking shape for centuries, with periods of great power peace
growing in both frequency and length. Focusing on various periods between the fifteenth and nineteenth centuries,
both Levy and Luard find the nineteenth century to be the most peaceful, followed by the twentieth, the eighteenth, the sixteenth,
and the fifteenth centuries, with the seventeenth century appearing the most warlike.19 Undeniably, the placement of the
twentieth century in this sequence is problematic, though understandable given the spans of time these two scholars were
considering. In 1984, the last year examined by Luard’s study, great power peace would have lasted for just under forty years,
placing the twentieth century neatly between the nineteenth and eighteenth centuries, which Luard records as having seen
fortythree and twenty-seven years of continuous peace, respectively.20 However, in light of the fact that the twentieth century saw
no major wars between 1945 and its conclusion, exhibiting fifty-five years of peace that continues today, the twentieth century
should arguably be readjusted in both Luard’s and Levy’s analysis as the most peaceful of those studied. Once this is done, it would
seem that, with some exceptions, these analyses
reveal an increasing tendency towards peace among the
great powers, indicating that the current absence of major war may be the cementation of a
trend that has been developing for centuries. Thus, if there is a cycle to major war, it would seem
that we are witnessing its conclusion. The significance of the current absence of major war cannot be stressed enough.
And yet, while significant, it is important to note that the years following the Second World War have not been marked by absolute
peace, not even for the great powers. Shortly after the conclusion of the Second World War, the Cold War broke out, a contest
between the Soviet Union and the United States that would define the next few decades of history. Although most of the wars
fought during this period took place in the Global South, the Soviet Union, the United States, and their respective allies often
participated in these battles, providing logistical support or even their own military forces. These proxy wars, wherein powerful
countries utilized civil conflicts in the developing world to carry out their aggressions and extend their influence, resulted in indirect
engagement among great power forces.21 Thus, although the last half century or so has not witnessed a major war in the proper
sense, the great powers have engaged in indirect battles against one another. In
the post-Cold War period, proxy
wars are no longer a[n] well exercised avenue for great power aggressions, and, as indicated
above, in recent years, even the United States and the Soviet Union have undergone notable
reductions in the size of their armed forces and the amount of weaponry at their disposal. Yet, in
spite of this, many great powers continue to prepare for and engage in war. What is noteworthy, however, is that the wars in
which great powers are currently involved seem to fundamentally differ from those of the past.
No longer do such wars seem to be primarily about expanding territory or influence, nor are they
fought between great powers. Rather, these wars now seem to be generally motivated by humanitarian
concerns, taking the form of collective operations sanctioned by multilateral institutions that
aim to ensure the stability of developing countries wrought by violence.22 The North Atlantic Treaty
Organization’s (NATO) efforts in Kosovo in 1999 and, more recently, in Afghanistan would seem indicative of
such forms of intervention, with many great powers working together to protect human rights
and promote human security worldwide. To be sure, such protection is more necessary now than ever before as less
conventional forms of violence, such as terrorism, have begun to flourish.23 Ultimately, although the great powers are
still engaged in war, such aggressions are no longer targeted at one another, nor do they appear
to be aggressions in the proper sense. It would seem that their engagement in battle has undergone an evolution
away from major war to humanitarian interventions, an evolution that can be tied to the shifting perceptions of war among
populations in the developed world. Indeed, beyond
analyses as to the frequency of major war, further
support for the obsolescence of this institution can be found in a shift towards a non-militaristic
political psychology.24 Evidenced not only by the reductions in military preparedness worldwide,
but also by cultural and political trends, this shift would seem to be cementing in the developed
world, particularly among the great powers whose behaviour is our primary concern. In the past, war
has been glorified as a heroic and virtuous endeavour, an inevitable product of human nature that cannot be overcome.25 However,
after centuries of violent warfare on the European and Asian continents, beginning as early as the seventeenth century, these views
surrounding war began to change throughout the developed world.26 The first truly active and persistent group that sought to
reform sentiments surrounding war appears to have been the Quakers, a religious group that formed in England in 1652 and
It was not until the end of the
Napoleonic Wars of 1803-1815 that anti-war sentiments truly began to flourish, with the Quakers and
others establishing the first anti-war societies in Europe and North America.28 With many minority groups opposing
or prophesising the conclusion of war, including such note-worthy scholars as Immanuel Kant and John Stuart Mill,
anti-war sentiment grew in the years leading up to the First World War, resulting in
governments of major countries having to justify war in a way that had not been needed in the
past.29 In some states, including Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Denmark, Portugal, and the Netherlands, anti-war
sentiment became so pronounced that governments sought to reform their foreign policy and
avoid war altogether.30 However, it was not until the cataclysm of World War I that anti-war
sentiments moved to the forefront in great power societies.31 Novels and memoirs of the 1920s expressed
espoused a strong reverence for life.27 Though vocal, their initial impact was limited.
these views profoundly and pushed them into even wider circulation.32 Such sentiments were also present in international politics
as almost all of the great powers of the time pursued a policy of war aversion. Arguably, World War
II would not have
broken out if it were not for the charismatic Hitler or the aggressive policies of the Japanese.33
The consequence of World War I was that most major countries had foresworn war, at least major war. World War II simply
reaffirmed these sentiments. The
growing disdain for war continued throughout the Cold War period
and appears to have cemented today among the great powers. In the United States, the world’s
current superpower, antiwar sentiment became particularly pronounced during the Vietnam
War, and negative sentiments can be seen today surrounding the Iraq War in both the United
States and the United Kingdom.34 None of these were wars were major wars, but the message remains the same,
namely that citizens in these countries are wary of devoting resources and lives to the pursuit of
war. Indeed, as indicated above, most of the great powers have reduced the amount of resources
devoted to developing strong militaries and are generally on peaceful terms with one another.
Countries like Germany and France, which, for centuries, have devoted significant amounts of time and resources to directly fighting
one another or planning to do so, are now engaged in peaceful relations. Even
Japan, a striking former aggressor
state, seems to have embraced peace. Ultimately, it would seem that the current absence of major war is
not simply a temporary lull, but a more lasting change that has been developing for centuries.
Major war is not simply absent, it is obsolescent. A wide range of causes come together to
account for such obsolescence, which we will now examine in greater detail.
2. No miscalculation – and deterrence, globalization, and democratic peace
check conflict.
Aziz 14 (John: analyst of economics, finance, geopolitics and history, “Don't worry: World War
III will almost certainly never happen,” The Week, March 06, 2014,
http://theweek.com/articles/449783/dont-worry-world-war-iii-almost-certainly-never-happen,
accessed July 13, 2016) DDI-BL
Next year will be the seventieth anniversary of the end of the last global conflict. There have been points on that timeline — such as
the Cuban missile crisis in 1962, and a Soviet computer malfunction in 1983 thaterroneously suggested that the U.S. had attacked,
and perhaps even the Kosovo War in 1999 — when a global conflict was a real possibility. Yet today
— in the shadow of a
flare up which some are calling a new Cold War between Russia and the U.S. — I believe the
threat of World War III has almost faded into nothingness. That is, the probability of a world
war is the lowest it has been in decades, and perhaps the lowest it has ever been since the
dawn of modernity. This is certainly a view that current data supports. Steven Pinker's studies into the decline of violence
reveal that deaths from war have fallen and fallen since World War II. But we should not just assume that the past is an accurate
guide to the future. Instead, we must look at the factors which have led to the reduction in war and try to conclude whether the
decrease in war is sustainable. So what's changed? Well, the
first big change after the last world war was the
arrival of mutually assured destruction. It's no coincidence that the end of the last global war coincided with the
invention of atomic weapons. The possibility of complete annihilation provided a huge disincentive to
launching and expanding total wars. Instead, the great powers now fight proxy wars like
Vietnam and Afghanistan (the 1980 version, that is), rather than letting their rivalries expand into fullon, globe-spanning struggles against each other. Sure, accidents could happen, but the
possibility is incredibly remote. More importantly, nobody in power wants to be the cause of
Armageddon. But what about a non-nuclear global war? Other changes — economic and social in nature —
have made that highly unlikely too. The world has become much more economically
interconnected since the last global war. Economic cooperation treaties and free trade
agreements have intertwined the economies of countries around the world. This has meant there has
been a huge rise in the volume of global trade since World War II, and especially since the 1980s. Today consumer goods like
smartphones, laptops, cars, jewelery, food, cosmetics, and medicine are produced on a global level, with supply-chains criss-crossing
the planet. An example: The laptop I am typing this on is the cumulative culmination of thousands of hours of work, as well as
resources and manufacturing processes across the globe. It incorporates metals like tellurium, indium, cobalt, gallium, and
manganese mined in Africa. Neodymium mined in China. Plastics forged out of oil, perhaps from Saudi Arabia, or Russia, or
Venezuela. Aluminum from bauxite, perhaps mined in Brazil. Iron, perhaps mined in Australia. These raw materials are turned into
components — memory manufactured in Korea, semiconductors forged in Germany, glass made in the United States. And it takes
gallons and gallons of oil to ship all the resources and components back and forth around the world, until they are finally assembled
in China, and shipped once again around the world to the consumer. In
a global war, global trade becomes a
nightmare. Shipping becomes more expensive due to higher insurance costs, and riskier because
it's subject to seizures, blockades, ship sinkings. Many goods, intermediate components or
resources — including energy supplies like coal and oil, components for military hardware, etc,
may become temporarily unavailable in certain areas. Sometimes — such as occurred in the Siege of Leningrad
during World War II — the supply of food can be cut off. This is why countries hold strategic reserves of things like helium, pork, rare
earth metals and oil, coal, and gas. These kinds of breakdowns were troublesome enough in the economic landscape of the early
and mid-20th century, when the last global wars occurred. But
in today's ultra-globalized and ultra-specialized
economy? The level of economic adaptation — even for large countries like Russia and the
United States with lots of land and natural resources — required to adapt to a world war would
be crushing, and huge numbers of business and livelihoods would be wiped out. In other words,
global trade interdependency has become, to borrow a phrase from finance, too big to fail. It is
easy to complain about the reality of big business influencing or controlling politicians. But big business has just about the most to
lose from breakdowns in global trade. A practical example: If Russian oligarchs make their money from selling gas and natural
resources to Western Europe, and send their children to schools in Britain and Germany, and lend and borrow money from the
West's financial centers, are they going to be willing to tolerate Vladimir Putin starting a regional war in Eastern Europe (let alone a
world war)? Would the Chinese financial industry be happy to see their multi-trillion dollar investments in dollars and U.S. treasury
debt go up in smoke? Of course, world wars have been waged despite international business interests, but the world today is far
more globalized than ever before and well-connected domestic interests are more dependent on access to global markets,
components and resources, or the repayment of foreign debts. These are huge disincentives to global war. But what of the militaryindustrial complex? While other businesses might be hurt due to a breakdown in trade, surely military contractors and weapons
manufacturers are happy with war? Not necessarily. As
the last seventy years illustrates, it is perfectly possible
for weapons contractors to enjoy the profits from huge military spending without a global war.
And the uncertainty of a breakdown in global trade could hurt weapons contractors just as much as other industries in terms of
losing access to global markets. That means weapons manufacturers may be just as uneasy about the prospects for large-scale war
as other businesses. Other changes have been social in nature.
Obviously,democratic countries do not tend to go
to war with each other, and the spread of liberal democracy is correlated against the decrease
in war around the world. But the spread of internet technology and social media has brought
the world much closer together, too. As late as the last world war, populations were separated from each other by
physical distance, by language barriers, and by lack of mass communication tools. This means that it was easy for war-mongering
politicians to sell a population on the idea that the enemy is evil. It's hard to empathize with people who you only see in slanted
government propaganda reels. Today, people from enemy countries can come together in cyberspace and find out that the "enemy"
is not so different, as occurred in the Iran-Israel solidarity movement of 2012. More importantly, violent incidents and deaths can be
broadcast to the world much more easily. Public
shock and disgust at the brutal reality of war broadcast
over YouTube and Facebook makes it much more difficult for governments to carry out large
scale military aggressions. For example, the Kremlin's own pollster today released a survey showing that 73 percent of
Russians disapprove of Putin's handling of the Ukraine crisis, with only 15 percent of the nation supporting a response to the
overthrow of the government in Kiev. There are, of course, a few countries like North Korea that deny their citizens access to
information that might contradict the government's propaganda line. And sometimes countries ignore mass anti-war protests — as
occurred prior to the Iraq invasion of 2003 — but generally
a more connected, open, empathetic and
democratic world has made it much harder for war-mongers to go to war. The greatest trend, though,
may be that the world as a whole is getting richer. Fundamentally, wars arise out of one group of people deciding that
they want whatever another group has — land, tools, resources, money, friends, sexual partners, empire, prestige — and deciding to
take it by force. Or they arise as a result of grudges or hatreds from previous wars of the first kind. We
don't quite live in a
superabundant world yet, but the long march of human ingenuity is making basic human wants
like clothing, water, food, shelter, warmth, entertainment, recreation, and medicine more
ubiquitous throughout the world. This means that countries are less desperate to go to war to seize other people's stuff.
But the tendency toward inertia is strong. It is clear at least that the incentives for world war are
far lower than they were in previous decades, and the disincentives are growing. The
apocalyptic visions of a new world war between nations or empires that three generations of
children have been raised into continue to diminish.
3. Nuclear war doesn’t cause extinction – their evidence is propaganda.
Wigner 04 (Eugene P. Wigner. Physicist, Nobel Laureate, and the only surviving initiator of the
Nuclear Age; Nuclear War Survival Skills; “Ch. 1: The Dangers from Nuclear Weapons: Myths and
Facts”; 2004; http://www.oism.org/nwss/s73p912.htm; DT)
° Facts: Unsurvivable "nuclear
winter" is a discredited theory that, since its conception in 1982, has been used
to frighten additional millions into believing that trying to survive a nuclear war is a waste of effort and resources, and that
only by ridding the world of almost all nuclear weapons do we have a chance of surviving. Non-propagandizing scientists
recently have calculated that the climatic and other environmental effects of even an all-out
nuclear war would be much less severe than the catastrophic effects repeatedly publicized by
popular astronomer Carl Sagan and his fellow activist scientists, and by all the involved Soviet scientists. Conclusions
reached from these recent, realistic calculations are summarized in an article, "Nuclear Winter Reappraised", featured in the 1986
summer issue of Foreign Affairs, the prestigious quarterly of the Council on Foreign Relations. The authors, Starley L. Thompson and
Stephen H. Schneider, are atmospheric
scientists with the National Center for Atmospheric Research.
" that on scientific grounds the global apocalyptic conclusions of the initial nuclear
winter hypothesis can now be relegated to a vanishing low level of probability." Their models
indicate that in July (when the greatest temperature reductions would result) the average temperature in the
United States would be reduced for a few days from about 70 degrees Fahrenheit to
approximately 50 degrees. (In contrast, under the same conditions Carl Sagan, his associates, and the Russian
They showed
scientists predicted
a resulting average temperature of about 10 degrees below zero Fahrenheit,
lasting for many weeks!) Persons who want to learn more about possible post-attack climatic effects also should read the
Fall 1986 issue of Foreign Affairs. This issue contains a long letter from Thompson and Schneider which further
demolishes the theory of catastrophic "nuclear winter " Continuing studies indicate there will be
even smaller reductions in temperature than those calculated by Thompson and Schneider. Soviet
propagandists promptly exploited belief in unsurvivable "nuclear winter to increase fear of nuclear
weapons and war, and to demoralize their enemies.
Prioritize inevitable extinction scenarios – reducing warming by just a billionth
of a billionth of a percent is worth a hundred billion times as much as saving a
billion lives.
Bostrom 13 (Nick: a Swedish philosopher at the University of Oxford known for his work on
existential risk, the anthropic principle, human enhancement ethics, superintelligence risks, the
reversal test, and consequentialism; “Existential Risk Prevention as Global Priority”; Global
Policy Volume 4 . Issue 1 . February 2013; http://www.existential-risk.org/concept.pdf; DT)
But even this reflection fails to bring out the seriousness of existential risk. What makes
existential catastrophes
especially bad is not that they would show up robustly on a plot like the one in Figure 3, causing a precipitous drop in world
population or average quality of life. Instead, their significance lies primarily in the fact that they would destroy the
future. The philosopher Derek Parfit made a similar point with the following thought experiment: I believe that if we destroy
mankind, as we now can, this outcome will be much worse than most people think. Compare three
outcomes: 1. Peace. 2. A nuclear war that kills 99 per cent of the world’s existing population. 3.
A nuclear war that kills 100 per cent. 2 would be worse than 1, and 3 would be worse than 2. Which is the greater of
these two differences? Most people believe that the greater difference is between 1 and 2. I believe that the difference
between 2 and 3 is very much greater. The Earth will remain habitable for at least another billion years. Civilisation
began only a few thousand years ago. If we do not destroy mankind, these few thousand years may be
only a tiny fraction of the whole of civilised human history. The difference between 2 and 3 may thus be the
difference between this tiny fraction and all of the rest of this history. If we compare this possible history to a day, what has
occurred so far is only a fraction of a second (Parfit, 1984, pp. 453–454). To
calculate the loss associated with an
existential catastrophe, we must consider how much value would come to exist in its absence. It
turns out that the ultimate potential for Earth-originating intelligent life is literally astronomical. One
gets a large number even if one confines one’s consideration to the potential for biological human beings living on Earth. If we
suppose with Parfit that our planet will remain habitable for at least another billion years, and we assume that at least one billion
potential exist for at least 1016 human lives of normal duration.
These lives could also be considerably better than the average contemporary human life, which
is so often marred by disease, poverty, injustice, and various biological limitations that could be
partly overcome through continuing technological and moral progress. However, the relevant figure is not
how many people could live on Earth but how many descendants we could have in total. One lower bound of the
number of biological human life-years in the future accessible universe (based on current
cosmological estimates) is 1034 years.7 Another estimate, which assumes that future minds will be mainly
people could live on it sustainably, then the
implemented in computational hardware instead of biological neuronal wetware, produces a lower bound of 1054 human-brainemulation subjective life-years (or 1071 basic computational operations) (Bostrom, 2003).8 If
we make the less
conservative assumption that future civilisations could eventually press close to the absolute
bounds of known physics (using some as yet unimagined technology), we get radically higher estimates of the amount of
computation and memory storage that is achievable and thus of the number of years of subjective experience that could be
realised.9 Even
if we use the most conservative of these estimates, which entirely ignores the
possibility of space colonisation and software minds, we find that the expected loss of an
existential catastrophe is greater than the value of 1016 human lives. This implies that the expected
value of reducing existential risk by a mere one millionth of one percentage point is at least a
hundred times the value of a million human lives. The more technologically comprehensive estimate of 1054
humanbrain-emulation subjective life-years (or 1052 lives of ordinary length) makes the same point even more starkly. Even if we
give this allegedly lower bound on the cumulative output potential of a technologically mature civilisation a mere 1 per cent chance
of being correct, we find that the
expected value of reducing existential risk by a mere one billionth of
one billionth of one percentage point is worth a hundred billion times as much as a billion
human lives. One might consequently argue that even the tiniest reduction of existential risk has an
expected value greater than that of the definite provision of any ‘ordinary’ good, such as the
direct benefit of saving 1 billion lives. And, further, that the absolute value of the indirect effect of
saving 1 billion lives on the total cumulative amount of existential risk—positive or negative—is
almost certainly larger than the positive value of the direct benefit of such an action.10