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Warming 1AC v5
1AC
Contention 1: The Climate
Warming is real and anthropogenic – 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 distort evidence.
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.
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.
We still have time before we hit that threshold – but action is necessary now.
Hare & Ancygier 7/12 (Bill Hare is a physicist with twenty-five years experience in climate science, impacts and
policy responses to climate change and stratospheric ozone depletion. He is a visiting scientist in the Earth System
Analysis – Research Domain I at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impacts Research since 2002; Dr. Andrzej Ancygier is a
climate policy analyst mainly focusing on the impact of the energy policy on the CO2 emissions in different countries;
"Three reasons to be cheerful about limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees"; 7-12-2016; Climate Analytics Blog;
http://climateanalytics.org/blog/2016/three-reasons-to-be-cheerful-about-limiting-global-warming-to-1-5degrees.html; DT)
The recent streak of record-breaking temperatures has shown that climate change is not waiting for the world to take decisive action. But the
adoption of the
Paris Agreement was a clear signal that the world is ready to take climate change seriously. 175 countries signed and 15
of these ratified the climate deal during the signing ceremony. Now there is every indication the agreement could enter into force this year.
Many countries, led by the two biggest emitters, China and the United States, have signaled their intent to ratify by the end of 2016,
leaving just four countries and 1.72% of global emissions needed for it to become official. There can be no doubt that the window of opportunity
to limit global warming to below 1.5°C, a key target of the 2015 Paris Agreement, is closing fast. But there are
encouraging signs around the world that this can still be done, even if there is still a very long way to go. Here are three of the most positive
1. Green energy is getting cheaper The costs of climate mitigation have
decreased drastically. According to NREL’s Transparent Costs Database, wind energy costs in the US are now on a par with coal-fired
power. In May 2016 the price of photovoltaic (PV) energy fell to less than three US cents a kilowatt at an auction in Dubai. Even
in not-so-sunny Germany, solar energy costs have been decreasing steadily: in a recent auction in December 2015, prices fell to eight euro cents per
kilowatt hour. We can expect further cost decreases in the coming years. According to a recent report, by the end of the decade, the cost of
onshore wind should decrease by a quarter, off-shore wind by a third and photovoltaics by almost two-thirds. By the mid2020s, solar PV and onshore wind should cost 5 or 6 US cents per kilowatt hour on average. This is significantly below the
cost of energy from nuclear and coal. As a result of decreasing costs and additional benefits, investment in renewables exploded in
2015 despite low oil prices. Meanwhile, renewable energy investment reached a record US$286 billion, generating 152 gigawatts of new capacity. This is
more than the combined installed capacity from all sources for the whole African continent. 2. Carbon dioxide emissions have stopped rising In
2014 and 2015, the CO₂ emissions from the energy sector stalled despite the global economy growing by 3%. According to the
International Energy Agency, in 2014, emissions increased by less than 0.2% and by only 0.03% last year. BP’s estimates for both years
developments that will help the world reach its target.
were slightly higher, (0.5% in 2014 and 0.1% in 2015), but that was a significant change of trend compared to the average annual emission growth of around 2.6%
over the past decade. The
major factor in this flattening trend was a fall in emissions of the two biggest emitters: China and
the United States. In China, despite an increase in power consumption by 3%, power generation from fossil fuels
decreased by 2%. This led emissions to fall by 1.5% last year. In the United States, emissions decreased by 2% despite healthy
economic growth. Meanwhile, developing countries are taking advantage of the significant fall in the costs of renewables.
While India’s emissions grew by over 5% last year, the second most populous country in the world has embarked on one of the fastest renewable expansion
programmes anywhere on the planet. At the same time, India
is taking steps to curb coal investments. The choice between renewables
and coal in India might be the most important factor when it comes to global efforts to reduce emissions. 3. Green jobs
are good for the economy Every major transition is accompanied by fears of job losses. But the positive economic
impacts of new technologies are given less attention. In 2014, more than 7.7 million people worked in the renewables
sector, excluding large hydropower plants. A third of these jobs were in the photovoltaic sector, and an additional one million were
employed in wind power – technologies which barely existed two decades ago. Another report shows that doubling the
share of renewables in the energy mix by 2030 would triple the number of jobs in the sector and increase global GDP by
1.1%. That’s the equivalent to US $1.3 trillion. In 2016, India plans to roll out 30 million solar irrigation pumps, which would have significant economic
and sustainable development benefits for farmers, saving US$3 billion per year on subsidies. The funds required for this transition could be partly
covered by savings from removing fossil fuel subsidies. The IMF has found that elimination of post-tax subsidies in 2015
would have increased government revenues by US$2.9 trillion and significantly reduced environmental and social
impacts of fossil fuels. In May 2016, G7 leaders committed to eliminate “inefficient fossil fuel subsidies” by 2025. The G20 is also under pressure to agree on a
timetable for phasing out subsidies. Time for leadership The ingredients for transforming energy systems and decarbonising the
economy are already there. We are deploying more technologies that can peak emissions and accelerate their decrease.
To speed up this transformation, governments must adopt policies that ensure investments in renewable energy are
secure and provide clear signposts for everyone participating in the process of decarbonisation. Political leadership
now is fundamental to prevent a slide-back to coal, and to stand up to vested interests, while providing finance and
technology to the regions that need it most.
Emissions reductions will immediately reduce the rate of warming – there is no time lag.
Downey 13 (Fiona: Concordia media relations; "Global warming: irreversible, not inevitable"; 4-2-2013; Concordia
University; http://www.concordia.ca/cunews/main/releases/2013/04/02/global-warming-irreversible-notinevitable.html; DT)
Carbon dioxide emission cuts will immediately affect the rate of future global warming Concordia and MIT researchers show
Montreal, April 2, 2013 – There is a persistent misconception among both scientists and the public that there is a delay
between emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) and the climate’s response to those emissions. This misconception has led
policy makers to argue that CO2 emission cuts implemented now will not affect the climate system for many decades .
This erroneous line of argument makes the climate problem seem more intractable than it actually is, say Concordia University’s Damon Matthews and MIT’s Susan
Solomon in a recent Science article. The researchers show that immediate
decreases in CO2 emissions would in fact result in an
immediate decrease in the rate of climate warming. Explains Matthews, professor in the Department of Geography, Planning and Environment, “If
we can successfully decrease CO2 emissions in the near future, this change will be felt by the climate system when the
emissions reductions are implemented – not in several decades." “The potential for a quick climate response to prompt
cuts in CO2 emissions opens up the possibility that the climate benefits of emissions reductions would occur on the
same timescale as the political decisions themselves.” In their paper, Matthews and Solomon, Ellen Swallow Richards professor of Atmospheric
Chemistry and Climate Science, show that the onus for slowing the rate of global warming falls squarely on current efforts at
reducing CO2 emissions, and the resulting future emissions that we produce. This means that there are critical implications
for the equity of carbon emission choices currently being discussed internationally. Total emissions from developing
countries may soon exceed those from developed nations. But developed countries are expected to maintain a far
higher per-capita contribution to present and possible future warming. “This disparity clarifies the urgency for lowcarbon technology investment and diffusion to enable developing countries to continue to develop,” says Matthews.
“Emission cuts made now will have an immediate effect on the rate of global warming,” he asserts. “I see more hope for
averting difficult-to-avoid negative impacts by accelerating advances in technology development and diffusion, than for
averting climate system changes that are already inevitable. Given the enormous scope and complexity of the climate
mitigation challenge, clarifying these points of hope is critical to motivate change.”
Mitigation must come before adaptation – we can adapt to 2 degrees but only if we limit the
temperature to that threshold first.
Harper 15 (Peter: independent researcher, studied biology and experimental psychology, part of Centre for Alternative
Technology; “Against Adaptation”; November 23, 2015; http://peterharper.org/the-blog/2015/11/23/againstadaptation; DT)
Since we first started thinking seriously about climate
change the debate has tended to polarise between ‘mitigationists’ who thought
prevention was better than cure, and ‘adaptationists’, who thought the opposite. It has become an article of faith that neither side is
entirely right; that we need to split our climate budgets into mitigation and adaptation pots, the former to slow things down, the latter to help us cope with climate
change that is already inevitable. This sounds reasonable and humane and I applaud the sentiment behind it. Nevertheless I wish to argue against it. Most
climate scientists believe we should strive to avoid increasing the risk of crossing thresholds which could trigger large
changes. Currently the working threshold is 2°C. Giving ourselves a reasonable chance of avoiding this threshold requires
an all-out effort starting more or less immediately, and if this is the case, we should not (yet) divert resources to
adaptation, simply because the consequences of failure are so very grave. A medical analogy suggests itself. Suppose a person is
injured in a traffic accident, bleeding profusely and in severe pain. A well-equipped paramedic arrives on the scene.
Should she administer morphine for pain relief or act to stop the bleeding? It is fairly obvious that it should be bleeding
first, pain after. If the injured person had died on account of wrongly prioritised treatment, relatives would have justifiably distressed. The climate issue
is similar: if we fail to prevent irreversible change, posterity will suffer from our mistaken priorities. There is a lot of
posterity to come, and a great deal of potential suffering. That is the basic ethical argument. In practical terms, good choices are
made difficult by the asymmetry of mitigation and adaptation in terms of costs and benefits. Any action taken by an
individual, city or nation to mitigate climate change has a minuscule beneficial effect and an appreciable personal cost. It
only works in aggregate if everybody else does it too. In total contrast, action for adaptation has a tangible benefit, now
or in the near future. “Why not let others make the sacrifices? My (or my country’s) resources are better spent making sure we are OK whatever the outcome
of mitigation efforts.” One can see that there is likely to be increasing temptation to divert resources away from mitigation
(which helps everybody) towards adaptation (which helps Me). Already, much ‘climate discussion’ (for example in
agriculture) is simply assumed to be about adaptation, and the more we allow it as a significant item of discussion, the
more resources in money, time, imagination, technology will be siphoned off, legitimised by the sentiment that ‘well we
have to do both’. Self-interest will ensure that mitigation is relegated to a distant second place. Then we really are stuffed. So I
say, No Adaptation until it is clear we have ‘stopped the bleeding’. Argue with that.
Several impact 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.
Three – warming exponentially kills biodiversity.
ScienceDaily 13 (Recent and accurate science news, supported by hundreds of organizations; “Climate change will
cause widespread global-scale loss of common plants and animals, researchers predict”; May 12, 2013; University of
East Anglia; https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/05/130512140946.htm; DT)
Research published today in the journal Nature Climate Change looked at 50,000 globally widespread and common
species and found that more than one half of the plants and one third of the animals will lose more than half of their
climatic range by 2080 if nothing is done to reduce the amount of global warming and slow it down. This means that geographic
ranges of common plants and animals will shrink globally and biodiversity will decline almost everywhere. Plants,
reptiles and particularly amphibians are expected to be at highest risk. Sub-Saharan Africa, Central America, Amazonia
and Australia would lose the most species of plants and animals. And a major loss of plant species is projected for North
Africa, Central Asia and South-eastern Europe. But acting quickly to mitigate climate change could reduce losses by 60 per
cent and buy an additional 40 years for species to adapt. This is because this mitigation would slow and then stop global
temperatures from rising by more than two degrees Celsius relative to pre-industrial times (1765). Without this mitigation, global
temperatures could rise by 4 degrees Celsius by 2100. The study was led by Dr Rachel Warren from the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at UEA.
Collaborators include Dr Jeremy VanDerWal at James Cook University in Australia and Dr Jeff Price, from UEA's school of Environmental Sciences and the Tyndall
Centre. The research was funded by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC). Dr Warren said: "While there has been much research on the effect of climate
change on rare and endangered species, little has been known about how an increase in global temperature will affect more common species. "This
broader
issue of potential range loss in widespread species is a serious concern as even small declines in these species can
significantly disrupt ecosystems. "Our research predicts that climate change will greatly reduce the diversity of even very
common species found in most parts of the world. This loss of global-scale biodiversity would significantly impoverish
the biosphere and the ecosystem services it provides. "We looked at the effect of rising global temperatures, but other symptoms of
climate change such as extreme weather events, pests, and diseases mean that our estimates are probably conservative.
Animals in particular may decline more as our predictions will be compounded by a loss of food from plants. "There will
also be a knock-on effect for humans because these species are important for things like water and air purification, flood
control, nutrient cycling, and eco-tourism. "The good news is that our research provides crucial new evidence of how swift
action to reduce CO2 and other greenhouse gases can prevent the biodiversity loss by reducing the amount of global
warming to 2 degrees Celsius rather than 4 degrees. This would also buy time - up to four decades - for plants and animals to
adapt to the remaining 2 degrees of climate change." The research team quantified the benefits of acting now to mitigate climate change and
found that up to 60 per cent of the projected climatic range loss for biodiversity can be avoided. Dr Warren said: "Prompt and stringent action
to reduce greenhouse gas emissions globally would reduce these biodiversity losses by 60 per cent if global emissions
peak in 2016, or by 40 per cent if emissions peak in 2030, showing that early action is very beneficial. This will both reduce the amount of
climate change and also slow climate change down, making it easier for species and humans to adapt."
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.
Contention 2: Solvency
Plan: The United States Federal Government should substantially increase engagement with the
People’s Republic of China by enhancing bilateral cooperation on climate policies including sharing
information, collaborating on solutions, and mobilizing green finance.
The Paris climate agreement set up a framework for countries to invest in climate policies – the
plan mobilizes financing for US and China to meet their pledges, expands the level of bilateral
cooperation, and spills over to help green financing in other countries.
Hart et. al 6/13 (Melanie Hart is a Senior Fellow and Director of China Policy at the Center for American Progress.
Pete Ogden is a Senior Fellow at the Center. Kelly Sims Gallagher is professor of energy and environmental policy at The
Fletcher School, Tufts University; “Green Finance: The Next Frontier for U.S -China Climate Cooperation”; Center for
American Progress; 6/13/16; https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/security/report/2016/06/13/139276/greenfinance-the-next-frontier-for-u-s-china-climate-cooperation/; DT)
When it comes to the climate arena, the
United States and China are enjoying a wave of international goodwill resulting from the
role each played in rallying other nations to achieve the iconic Paris climate agreement. In November 2014, China and the United States stood
shoulder to shoulder as the first two countries to announce their post-2020 national greenhouse gas emission reduction
targets and remained constructive partners on the path to reaching a historic outcome in Paris this past December. Now, as the
United States and China put new policies in place to achieve their national targets and fulfill their domestic and
international commitments, both countries confront a common challenge: mobilizing sufficient investment at home to
meet domestic energy, climate, and environmental protection goals, while at the same time steering outbound
investments toward sustainable projects in other nations that support, rather than undermine, those nations’ climate
targets. In this Center for American Progress issue brief, the authors consider the key domestic and international policies that were recently—or are currently
being—put in place by China and the United States to achieve their respective climate goals. In addition, we evaluate the implications of these policies—both positive
and negative—for green investment domestically and globally. Finally, we provide recommendations for enhanced cooperation in this space. How green financing
enables emission reductions China
and the United States emerged from Paris with clear climate goals but incomplete blueprints
for how they would achieve them. To a large extent, this was inevitable, as there are no silver bullets for the kinds of ambitious
transformations that the United States and China have committed to achieving. Rather, both countries need to develop a
range of new policies across a number of interrelated sectors to either replace or build upon the policy landscape that
currently exists. Regardless of the path each country pursues, however, one thing is increasingly clear: Mobilizing finance will be critical to
achieving the needed emission reductions. In this regard, China is guided by three top-tier national climate targets: Peak
carbon dioxide emissions around 2030, and aim to peak before 2030 if possible Increase the nonfossil fuel portion of the
nation’s energy mix from 11.2 percent at year-end 2014 to around 20 percent around 2030 Reduce carbon intensity—
which is the amount of carbon emitted per unit of gross domestic product, or GDP—to 60 percent to 65 percent below 2005 levels around
2030. China already has a number of domestic policy measures in place to move it toward these climate goals. Those existing policy measures
include increasingly stringent energy efficiency standards for motor vehicles, industrial equipment, and appliances; a feed-in-tariff scheme that pays renewable
energy producers a premium for the power they generate; and fast-track coal control and emission peak programs that impose particularly ambitious coal use and
emission reduction targets in regions that,
when added together, produced more than 66 percent of China’s GDP in 2014. In addition,
under China’s new five-year plan for 2016 to 2020, its leaders are working to reform the electric regulatory system and
impose more stringent coal caps in the nation’s inland and western regions. Power-sector reform will be particularly critical to this effort
because China’s state-run power grid has been a bottleneck for clean energy expansion. In September 2015, Chinese President Xi Jinping stated that Beijing plans
to move the nation toward a “green dispatch” system that would put renewable energy at the top of the priority list for
transmission across the nation’s overloaded power grids. That would be a critical step toward meeting China’s international commitment to
nearly double the nonfossil fuel portion of its energy mix by 2020. China’s other major new climate policy is a national emissions trading
system that is expected to cover the nation’s power sector as well as six or more major industries starting in 2017. The
effectiveness of these and other new policies remains to be seen, but there is wide recognition that any path forward will require scaled-up
investment. When Chinese officials speak of “green finance”—which they do increasingly frequently—they are referring
precisely to the public and private investment that China will require to meet its environmental challenges, which
include its climate targets. According to the latest estimates, China will need to invest up to $6.7 trillion in low-carbon industries
by 2030, or around $300 billion to $445 billion per year over the next 15 years to meet its goals under the Paris
Agreement. According to China’s Institute of Finance and Capital Markets, at most, only 10 percent to 15 percent of that investment will
come from public funds; the vast majority will need to come from the private sector. Meanwhile, in the absence of comprehensive energy and climate
legislation, the Obama administration is working to implement a series of policies and regulations needed to put the United
States on a track to achieve its Paris commitment of 26 percent to 28 percent reduction in greenhouse gas pollution below 2005 levels by 2025. As
of 2015, U.S emissions were 12 percent below 2005 levels, so the trajectory is consistent with the target. At the federal level, this includes the Clean Power
Plan, which will for the first time regulate greenhouse gas emissions from power plants; performance standards for motor
vehicles; regulations on methane emissions from new oil and gas sources; and reforms to U.S policy on coal leasing on
public lands, all of which are being complemented by action at the state and local levels. All told, the United States and China are
making significant efforts to reduce domestic emissions. Both countries are demonstrating strong leadership on domestic climate
policy, and that has opened up new opportunities for mutually beneficial bilateral and multilateral cooperation. The
United States and China are already collaborating through the Climate Change Working Group, which has launched
multiple collaborative projects under the U.S -China Strategic and Economic Dialogue, or S&ED; the U.S -China Clean
Energy Research Center, which brings U.S and Chinese experts together for joint clean energy technology development;
and the Mission Innovation initiative, which aims to raise research and development funding across multiple sectors,
including clean energy sectors in the United States and China. U.S. and Chinese officials also are engaged in a Domestic Policy Dialogue,
formally established at the 2015 S&ED, which is a bilateral forum for sharing lessons learned from each nation’s climate policy experiences to date. Going
forward, there is room to expand these initiatives. Possible areas for enhanced cooperation on domestic policy include
reducing non-carbon dioxide greenhouse gas emissions, improving measurement capabilities for land-use and forestrysector climate impacts and for policies for the power sector, technological innovation, and resilience policy. Mobilizing green
financing to meet domestic investment needs Despite the array of collaborative exchanges that are already underway, the United
States and China are not yet collaborating in any significant manner on one of their most important shared challenges:
how to mobilize private-sector investment to achieve their emission reduction goals. Building out a new clean energy
economy requires significant investment capital. Going forward, both nations will try out different approaches to catalyze those investments.
Domestic climate policy and investment policy are mutually reinforcing. Without clear, stable, and consistent climate policies, private firms
cannot easily finance investments in low-carbon technologies. Understandably, banks are unwilling to make loans to projects
where a reasonable return on investment cannot be expected. This is where policies such as Production Tax Credits, or
PTCs; feed-in tariffs for renewables; performance standards; carbon taxes; or emissions trading programs come into play
by creating economic return for cleaner technology industries. Such policies create markets for low-carbon technologies
and thereby spur greater investment in clean energy. Even so, barriers to financing still can exist for newer technologies
that are perceived as risky. Here again, smart renewable investment incentives delivered though Investment Tax Credits, or ITCs; Production Tax Credits, or
PTCs; or loan guarantees can help firms obtain financing that otherwise would be unavailable through private capital markets. The United States has
fostered support for domestic clean energy investment through policies designed to reduce the cost of capital necessary
to finance these projects. These policies include tax breaks in the federal tax code and several loan programs. To help
companies seeking to commercialize new clean energy technologies, for instance, the U.S Department of Energy disburses Title XVII loan guarantees for clean energy
projects and Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing, or ATVM, loans for automakers to increase transportation fuel efficiency. Title XVII loan guarantees help
fledgling clean energy companies secure investment at more affordable rates than they would on their own because the federal government assumes some of the
financial risk associated with new technologies. These types of programs
allow companies to attract the investment necessary to develop
commercial-scale production and build the clean energy marketplace. The federal programs have helped create or save
an estimated 56,000 jobs through 2015 and have prevented 25 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions,
equivalent to removing 5.28 million cars from the road. On the other side of project development, the federal government provides
an ITC and a PTC to attract investment in new clean energy projects. These two tax credits are central to U.S clean electricity
development and can be claimed by clean electricity generators and investors according to the cost of initial
investments or electricity produced over time. From 2000 to 2013, the PTC supported the generation of approximately 417 billion kilowatt hours of
clean electricity and recently has been extended with a phasedown through 2020. The ITC, which has been extended with a phasedown through 2022, predominantly
supports solar projects and has been credited with helping the solar industry grow by more than 1,600 percent since 2006 and increasing solar employment in the
United States by 86 percent since 2011. These programs
and others—including the Advanced Energy Manufacturing Tax Credit, the
Energy Efficiency and Conservation Loan Program, and Qualified Energy Conservation Bonds—have all supported more
than $442 billion of clean energy investment in the United States since 2007. Since 2008, they have helped wind and
solar power more than triple in capacity and will continue to fuel growth. For example, by 2020, the extension of the ITC is
expected to support an additional 100 gigawatts of solar power and some $40 billion in investment specifically because
of its extended tax credit. In 2015, $56 billion was invested in U.S clean energy sectors, which amounts to an 8 percent
increase from the year before. China, meanwhile, leads the world in clean energy investment. In 2015, $110.5 billion was
invested in China’s clean energy sector, a 17 percent increase over the previous year and twice the U.S investment total
of $56 billion. Much of this investment has been driven by the market formation policies in support of renewable energy
discussed above, most notably China’s feed-in tariffs for wind and solar power. Now Chinese leaders are introducing a new array of
financial incentives designed to move beyond clean energy market stimulation measures to address specific market
failures in clean energy finance. As mentioned above, even when there are good market demand signals for clean energy, individual technologies
and firms still can fall through the cracks, particularly if they are working on breakthrough technologies that do not yet
have a strong track record of commercial market success and are therefore seen as risky investments in private capital
markets. Just like the United States, China is looking for ways to lower the risks and transaction costs associated with
such investments. Beijing is rolling out multiple new initiatives on this front, some of which could provide new opportunities for U.S -China cooperation.
Green finance vs. climate finance Some investment is described as ‘green finance,’ some as ‘climate finance,’ and some
as both Green finance refers to financing or financing mechanisms—for example, loans, bonds, or insurance—that
support any project with environmental benefits, both climate and nonclimate related, from public transportation to
clean energy to improved water quality. Green finance also can refer to efforts by businesses and banks to track and
disclose the climate implications of their investments and/or incorporate climate indicators—such as a potential carbon
price—into their cost-benefit and risk-return analyses. Climate finance, often referred to as international climate finance,
generally refers to the suite of public and private assistance and investment that flows between countries to support
reduced greenhouse gas emissions and enhanced resiliency. Chinese policymakers tend to use the term “climate
finance” when referring to the climate financing commitments made in the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate
Change. Chinese leaders kick-started this new green finance effort last September when the Central Committee of the
Communist Party of China and the Chinese State Council jointly issued an “Integrated Reform Plan for Promoting
Ecological Progress” that, for the first time, specifically called for the establishment of a “green finance” system in China. The
high-level document orders Chinese officials at multiple levels of government to experiment with new green finance
mechanisms, including: – Green bonds. Beijing is encouraging banks, corporations, and municipalities to conduct
research on and experiment with issuing debt securities earmarked for green projects. – Green stock indices. Beijing is
encouraging stock market regulators to experiment with indices that exclude fossil fuel projects and other projects with
high environmental or climate risks. – Preferential green loans. Beijing is encouraging regulators to experiment with new
programs such as loan guarantees or interest subsidies that reduce the costs associated with green project loan
financing. Beijing echoed this green finance call again in its 13th Five-Year Plan released in March 2016. China’s new fiveyear development plan for 2016 to 2020 encourages the development of a “green finance system” with particular focus
on green loans, green bonds, and a new green development fund. China’s green finance push appears to be following the same trajectory as
other Chinese policy initiatives: The central government pilots several programs around the country, watches to see how those
programs change behavior, and then tweaks the policies as needed to fine tune the outcomes while scaling up to the
national level. See Figure 1 in the PDF for the Chinese government agencies that are leading the nation’s green finance push. Of the new financing tools, green
bonds have generated the most enthusiasm in China. In December 2015, the People’s Bank of China, or PBOC, issued the
country’s first green financial bond guidelines to lay a regulatory framework for green bonds issued by banks and
corporations. China’s National Development and Reform Commission, or NDRC, followed suit later that month with
green bond regulations for enterprises and municipalities. As soon as that regulatory framework emerged, investors
rushed in. In the first quarter of 2016, China issued $7.9 billion in green bonds, accounting for nearly half the global
quarterly total of $16.9 billion. Quickly, China overtook the United States as the largest green bond issuer in the world. The
United States came in second at $3.4 billion. Some analysts predict that China’s green bond markets could raise $230 billion in
sustainable investments over the next five years. Those are impressive investment totals, but it is not yet clear how much impact
they are having in terms of redirecting capital flows away from dirtier projects and toward cleaner projects. One particularly
difficult problem is the question of what counts as a so-called green project in China. The PBOC and the NDRC have issued different investment
edicts, so a project eligible for green bonds under the PBOC guidelines and catalogue may not be eligible under the
NDRC guidelines. One commonality between the two is that both allow some coal projects to qualify for green bonds. The NDRC
regulations include investments in energy efficiency and emission reduction technologies for coal plants, and the PBOC
regulations state that green bonds can be used to invest across the coal sector, including in high-efficiency, supercritical,
or ultra-supercritical coal-fired power plants; coal washing and processing technologies; coal mining; and petroleum
refining. Beyond concerns about conflicting implementation, these regulations seem to be inconsistent with Beijing’s recent decision to halt new coal construction.
In addition, it is unclear if—and to what extent—China’s green bonds are sufficiently concessionary—that is to say, do they offer
terms that are more attractive than what companies could get otherwise on the commercial market to shift the
investment landscape and redirect investment flows toward green projects? Put another way, in the absence of green bonds, would
these same projects have been financed anyway? Going forward, China could improve the effectiveness and integrity of this program by
tightening and standardizing the definitions for what types of projects are eligible and determining the effects of various
forms of concessionality on project selection and overall portfolio impact to ensure that green bonds are in fact a costeffective policy tool. International finance: Going green or brown? In the post-Paris era, the United States and China not only will
need to grapple with domestic green finance challenges but also will play critical roles in determining whether the world
meets the climate challenge through their roles in overseas investment and assistance. Moreover, there is reason to be
concerned that absent policy intervention, China’s overseas investments will skew “brown”—toward fossil-fuel-intensive
energy infrastructure—rather than “green”—toward a low-carbon pollution future. This would undermine global efforts
to achieve the goals of the Paris climate agreement. While this section of the brief focuses on policies in the United States and China that shape
and direct overseas investments and assistance, it is important keep in mind the central role of the host country to which the investments flow in all of this. The
Paris Agreement provides some very useful parameters in this regard, as virtually every country in the world has
committed to a plan to reduce domestic emissions and, collectively, to the goal of limiting global temperature rise to
below 2 degrees Celsius. The United States has ramped up its international climate assistance over the past six years,
reaching $15.6 billion of public support between 2010 and 2015. This includes bilateral assistance; public support
provided by the U.S ’s development finance institution and export credit agency, which in turn leverages significant
additional private green finance; and U.S support though multilateral institutions such as the World Bank. As part of this effort,
the United States has committed to provide $3 billion to the Green Climate Fund by 2020 and delivered its first
installment of $500 million earlier this year. The other side of the coin is the extent to which the United States is working to limit its
public support for overseas assistance and investment and public assistance for highly polluting technologies,
infrastructure, and other projects that do not move countries along a path of sustainable economic development
consistent with the Paris climate agreement. On this front, the United States also has made progress, though more work
remains to be done. In 2013, President Barack Obama announced that the administration would not provide public support for
new coal plants overseas except in “rare circumstances,” a policy now shared by the World Bank and a number of other
countries around the world. The administration’s announcement also helped make possible a 2015 agreement by all
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development export credit agencies to eliminate financing for new coal
plants that were not ultra-supercritical by 2017, albeit with exceptions for supercritical coal power plants smaller than
500 megawatt capacity and subcritical coal power plants smaller than 300 megawatt capacity built in International
Development Association-eligible countries. In addition, in 2014, President Obama issued executive order 13677, which
requires U.S government agencies to factor climate resilience considerations systematically into the federal
government’s international development work. In other words, U.S foreign assistance programs should not promote
maladaptation to climate change or worsening resilience. In China, the situation is more complicated and, from a climate
perspective, potentially perilous if the necessary policy guidelines are not instituted quickly. On one hand, China has for the
first time demonstrated a new willingness to participate directly and publicly in international climate aid efforts by
launching and then pledging 20 billion renminbi, or $3.2 billion, for the new China South-South Cooperation Fund on
Climate Change. China also supports green finance initiatives internationally though the World Bank and other
multilateral development banks. In contrast to these instances of positive investment strategies that promote sustainable economic growth and
development through cleaner energy, adaptation, and climate resilience, the Chinese government does not appear to have any overarching
technical guidelines or policies governing its overseas development investments or aid to avoid negative investment
outcomes. Unlike the United States, for example, China does not impose limitations on public financing for highly polluting
projects in other nations, such as high-emission coal plants. The lack of overseas investment guidelines is triggering
concerns that China may continue to make green investments at home and brown investments abroad. Some observers
speculate that this investment inconsistency could be intentional. Coal, steel, cement, and other pollution-intensive heavy
industry sectors are suffering from overcapacity in China. Where overcapacity is particularly acute, investing in heavy
industry projects abroad is generally seen as a winning strategy for creating new export markets to absorb excess
production in an era of declining demand at home. In the open market, firms would react to weaker demand by scaling back
production or closing down. If clean energy policies swing demand from coal to renewable sources, the market should
follow suit. In China, however, coal and other heavy industry sectors are dominated by state-owned enterprises with
strong local government ties, access to cheap capital, and a tendency to leverage both of those advantages to keep their
factories running regardless of the market’s ability to absorb what is produced. One thing those sectors have done when
demand slows at home is to seek new markets abroad, often using state funds to do so. China’s new Belt and Road program is the
epitome of that strategy. Under the program, Beijing is leveraging the nation’s diplomatic ties to help Chinese companies secure
projects in other nations and then backing those projects through the country’s $40 billion Silk Road investment fund.
Some observers are concerned that rising overcapacity in China’s domestic coal sectors combined with unclear environmental and
climate standards for outbound investments will trigger a new wave of overseas Chinese coal investments that could
counteract some of the good work China is doing at home to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Officials in Shanxi
Province—one of China’s biggest coal-producing regions—state that they are actively pushing coal companies to “go out” and build
projects in Indonesia, Pakistan, and other Belt and Road nations to draw down the province’s excess coal capacity. If the
goal is to maximize coal consumption in other nations, those investments could pose significant greenhouse gas emission risks . The
Global Economic Governance Initiative at Boston University has compiled a new data set on China’s overseas energy investments. Based on this data set, it appears
that between 2001
and 2016, the Chinese government has supported the construction of more than 50 coal-fired power
plants abroad. A majority of these power plants—58 percent—use subcritical coal technology, which is the most energy
inefficient form of coal-fired power plant and therefore the type that is most carbon intensive. Most of the remainder were
supercritical plants, which are approximately 12 percent more efficient than subcritical plants. One such plant, in Egypt, was an ultra-supercritical
plant, which is the most energy efficient coal-fired power plant technology available. On an annual basis, this fleet of more
than 50 coal-fired power plants was estimated to release 594 million metric tons of carbon dioxide, equivalent to 11
percent of total U.S. emissions in 2015 and 6 percent of total Chinese emissions in 2014—the latest year for which data are available.
If a 30-year lifetime for these plants is assumed, they will emit 17,828 metric tons of carbon dioxide cumulatively, equal
to slightly more than U.S. and Chinese emissions put together on an annual basis. China already is one of the biggest
providers of international energy assistance through the China Development Bank and the Export-Import Bank of China. Now, it is establishing
major new financial institutions, including the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, or AIIB; the New Development
Bank, which is often referred to as the bank of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, or the BRICS
Development Bank; President Xi’s signature Belt and Road initiative; and China’s South-South Cooperation Fund on
Climate Change. In light of this, guideline clarifications for both bilateral development aid and overseas investments
represent an important opportunity for U.S -China collaboration going forward. Not only would clarified policy
statements be useful to guide investments and potentially harmonize standards, but the two nations could also once
again demonstrate joint leadership. China and the United States could collaborate on positive, climate-friendly
investment strategies—including on specific projects—and establish information-sharing protocols regarding these
investments. Moreover, both countries could experiment with a wider range of investment programs, learning from
each other’s successes. The most recent U.S -China joint statement—on the occasion of President Xi’s September 2015
visit to Washington, D.C.—provides a promising diplomatic opening for bilateral engagements. During the visit, China pledged
to “strengthen green and low-carbon policies and regulations with a view to strictly controlling public investment
flowing into projects with high pollution and carbon emissions both domestically and internationally.” For its part, the
United States reaffirmed its existing commitment to end “public financing for new conventional coal-fired power plants
except in the poorest countries.” Both nations reiterated these commitments at the June 2016 U.S -China Strategic and
Economic Dialogue, or S&ED, meetings in Beijing. Given this alignment, the United States and China could work to
maximize economic benefits for developing countries while minimizing environmental, social, and climate risks. Policy
recommendations The United States and China have a near-term opportunity to work together on their respective
implementation plans for the Paris climate agreement. It is critical for both nations to get the implementation right—not
only because they are the world’s largest greenhouse gas emitters but also because U.S and Chinese policy successes
can provide a blueprint for the rest of the world to follow. To that end, U.S and Chinese leaders should expand
cooperation as follows: Enhance bilateral cooperation on domestic policy. This would include work in the areas of gases
other than carbon dioxide, improved measurement capabilities for land-use change and the forestry sector,
technological innovation, and resilience. Devise common definitions for “climate finance” and “green finance” and set
up a new collaborative initiative on domestic clean energy finance policy. The United States and China have different
economic and political systems, so the same financing solutions will not always apply in both nations. However, China
and the United States have enough in common that both would benefit from the exchange of best practices and lessons
learned as they relate to clean energy finance. Clarify guidelines for both bilateral development aid and overseas
investments. Not only would clarified policy statements be useful to guide investments and potentially harmonize
standards, but the two countries could also once again demonstrate leadership by collaborating on positive, climatefriendly investment strategies and projects. Establish information-sharing protocols regarding these investments to
promote transparency, learning, and improved practices over time. Launch a U.S.-China collaboration on mobilizing
green finance abroad. These types of foreign investment should be aimed at helping the least-developed countries
achieve the goals and targets that they set for themselves—such as their Nationally Determined Contributions—as part of
the Paris Agreement. Conclusion Just as the United States and China played decisive roles in the world’s ability to reach a
climate agreement in Paris, the two countries will play decisive roles in the world’s ability to fulfill the terms of the
accord. This will require that the United States and China not only mobilize green financing domestically—which is
necessary to meet both countries’ respective national clean energy and carbon pollution reduction commitments—but
also that they use their individual public overseas investment tools and assistance to help achieve the targets committed
to in Paris. Through engagement and cooperation, green finance can be another constructive plank in the U.S -China
climate relationship.
Green finance is key to a successful Paris agreement – it gets us under 2 degrees.
Thwaites et. al 15 (Joe: Research Analyst for World Resources Institute, "What Does the Paris Agreement Do for
Finance?," World Resources Institute, http://www.wri.org/blog/2015/12/what-does-paris-agreement-do-finance, DDI
GS)
Delivering on the new Paris Agreement requires countries to effectively implement their national climate plans, as well
as increase their ambition over time. Achieving both of these goals requires a key item—finance. So what did the Paris deal
deliver in this regard? 1) A clear signal to shift trillions. One of the core aims of the Paris Agreement is to make all financial flows consistent with a pathway towards
low-emissions, climate-resilient development. This
is the first time countries have collectively agreed to this and, coupled with the
goal to keep global warming below 2 degrees C (3.6 degrees F) and to pursue efforts to limit it to 1.5 degrees C, the
Agreement sends a strong signal that all finance—both public and private—needs to be directed towards the climate
challenge. Numerous investor commitments in the lead-up to and during the Paris talks showed that there is a strong
and growing momentum towards this shift. In the coming months and years, the challenge is to match these commitments to
invest in climate solutions with countries’ ambitious national climate and development plans that urgently require
financing. Aligning finance with the Agreement also requires moving investments out of sectors and activities that drive
climate change, such as fossil fuels, which are incompatible with achieving the temperature goals. 2) A recognition that we need more public funding, and more
funders The Agreement reaffirms that developed countries must continue to provide public funding for developing countries to
mitigate and adapt to climate change, while also encouraging other countries to provide support on a voluntary basis. A
number of developing countries have already elected to contribute climate finance, with nine making contributions to the
Green Climate Fund. The Agreement recognizes this and encourages other countries to join in. Already, Brazil’s President Dilma
Rousseff said the country is considering contributing climate finance, joining other emerging economies like China, which pledged to provide $3.1 billion
over three years. Public finance is especially vital for activities where it is difficult to attract private investment, such as
adaptation, which has historically lagged behind mitigation in terms of funding. While the Agreement fell short of quantifying adaptation
finance goals, countries agreed to balance overall public climate finance flows between adaptation and mitigation. Developed countries
also committed to significantly increase support for adaptation before 2020. Lastly, countries agreed that the Adaptation Fund, created under the Kyoto Protocol,
could play a role in implementing the Paris Agreement. The Fund has been particularly valued by developing countries since it allows national
institutions to access finance directly, without going through an international entity. 3) A commitment to continue mobilizing $100 billion a year, with a new goal on
the horizon Developed
countries had already committed to mobilize $100 billion a year in climate finance by 2020, and in
Paris, they agreed to continue mobilizing finance at this level until 2025. Significantly, all countries agreed to contribute to
the global effort to mobilize finance beyond previous efforts, with developed countries taking the lead. Finance will also
be part of the collective review of nations’ progress every five years. These elements provide some indication that climate finance
will continue to grow over time, but there are outstanding questions about how this will happen. Prior to 2025,
governments agreed to set a new, higher collective goal for finance, though it is unclear when this goal will be decided,
what time period it will cover, and which countries will be responsible for meeting it. Finally, in recognition of concerns
about progress towards the $100 billion goal, developed countries are urged to come up with a “concrete roadmap.” 4)
Better reporting The Paris Agreement marks a step forward in reporting and improving transparency of finance, which is
essential to ensure accountability and avoid “double-counting.” Developed countries committed to continue reporting
every two years on finance they have provided and mobilized, but also to start reporting on public funding they intend
to provide in following years. Other countries are also encouraged to do this. Next year, countries will commence processes to decide
the specific information to be reported, when, and how it will be reviewed, as well as methodologies for determining
what should count towards climate finance goals, and how to count it. This is essential for ensuring that, as countries work to
meet their goals, the predictability and quality, as well as the quantity of climate finance improves. The Agreement also
encourages developing countries to report on finance received, as well as their needs. This can help improve tracking of
funding commitments and set the level of ambition for future climate finance goals.
US-China cooperation is uniquely key – it builds momentum in support of the Paris Climate treaty
and they’re the largest emitters.
Wang 15 (Fengfeng: International News Editor of Xinhua News Agency, Beijing Foreign Studies University; “Spotlight:
Xi, Obama meet in Paris, pledging cooperation on ties, climate change”; XinhuaNet; Nov. 30, 2015;
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2015-12/01/c_134870744.htm; DT)
PARIS, Nov. 30 (Xinhua) -- Chinese President Xi Jinping, who is attending the opening session of a major United Nations climate change conference here, met with his
U.S. counterpart Barack Obama on Monday. The
two heads of state discussed ways to push forward bilateral ties while pledging
concerted effort to make the Paris negotiations a success. CONCERTED EFFORT ON CLIMATE During the meeting, Xi told Obama that it is
important for the two countries to partner with each other to help the Paris climate conference deliver its expected
targets, saying climate change is a huge challenge faced by mankind. Obama, in his turn, emphasized the importance of
China U.S. efforts to fight climate change. "Nowhere has our coordination been more necessary or more fruitful than
the topic that we're here to discuss during the Paris conference, and that is how the world can come together to arrest
the pace of climate change," he said. As the two largest carbon emitters, Obama said, we have both determined that it is our
responsibility to take action, noting that "our leadership on this issue has been vital." The two presidents are meeting on the sidelines
of the 21st Conference of the Parties (COP 21) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The highly-anticipated meeting aims to
yield a new international agreement to reduce greenhouse gases beyond 2020 when the 1997 Kyoto Protocol expires. The
two leaders agreed the Paris
conference provided a vital opportunity to enhance action and tackle the challenge of climate change, vowing to work
with each other and other sides to ensure that the conference will achieve an ambitious and successful result. China and
the United States, the largest developing and developed countries in the world, together account for about 40 percent
of the global greenhouse gas emission. Cooperation between the two countries to combat climate change has become a
highlight in their bilateral relationship in recent years. When Xi and Obama met last November in Beijing during Obama's state visit to China
they made a surprise joint announcement on climate change, sending a strong signal that the two biggest economies in
the world were to join hands to tackle the global challenge. Two months ago, when Xi paid a state visit to the United States, the two heads
of state issued a joint presidential statement on climate change, reaffirming determination to implement domestic
climate policies, strengthen bilateral coordination and cooperation and to promote sustainable development and the
transition to green, low-carbon as well as climate resilient economies. China also pledged a 20-billion-yuan (3-billion-U.S. dollar) fund to
help other developing countries combat climate change, according to the statement. In both documents, the two presidents have made their
personal commitment to a successful outcome of the Paris climate change conference.
China will say yes – wants to take leadership in the green finance sector.
Lehr 16 (Deborah Lehr serves as the Chief Executive Officer of Basilinna, a strategic business consulting firm focused on
China and the Middle East. In addition, Ms. Lehr is a Senior Fellow of the Paulson Institute, a think tank founded by
former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson located at the University of Chicago; "Green Finance: A Strategic Imperative for
China"; 6-13-2016; Diplomat; http://thediplomat.com/2016/06/green-finance-a-strategic-imperative-for-china/; DT)
With last month’s high-profile signing ceremony of the Paris Agreement by 174 countries at the United Nations, the complicated
process to turn these historic commitments on climate change into reality has begun. Yet away from the cameras, the more difficult
process of financing implementation of these commitments is getting a boost from what may seem an unlikely source: the Chinese government. China will host
the G20 Summit in September and its leadership has made “green finance” one of the pillar issues of its presidency.
Reflecting this priority, China is becoming the global testing ground for innovative concepts in green finance with an
ambitious domestic program for financing green growth. If successful, this model could drive standards and practices for
the rest of the world. The concept of green finance is a relatively new, but through necessity, China is staking out a
leadership position. As China struggles with air pollution as well as soil and water contamination during a time of slowing economic growth, the
transition to low carbon growth has become an opportunity to spur economic growth. As Zhou Xiaochuan, governor of China’s central
bank, said during the recent Spring IMF/World Bank meetings in Washington, DC, “green finance is a strategic priority.” Zhou estimates the costs of cleaning up
China’s environment alone will run over $600 billion annually for at least five years. The
Chinese government can meet only 15 percent of that
estimate. Alternate sources of funding must be found — a problem that will be replicated in many countries as pressure
to implement the Paris Agreement increases. Globally, the challenge of increasing public and private sector investment into green projects is not one
of a lack of financial resources. There are significant amounts of private capital seeking green investment opportunities. The challenge is efficiently
matching this private capital to existing and new green opportunities. For that to occur, the global community must develop
the necessary financial infrastructure to move green finance from what is now viewed as a cottage industry to become
part of the financial mainstream. Governments should take the lead in creating the policy and regulatory environment
for attracting private capital. This structure should include providing long-term incentives, such as subsidies or
preferential terms for green projects, as well as introducing means to promote the adoption of green practices. To be
successful, in short, green investments must appeal to private investors. China is attempting to do just that. While the international financial community
is debating definitions of “green,” China is moving full speed ahead. Last year, China announced its intention to merge its seven
experimental carbon exchanges into a national market by 2017. The challenges are enormous — from inadequate reporting of emissions data
to oversupply of permits that drive down price. But if China succeeds, it will create the world’s largest carbon exchange. At the end of
2015, the People’s Bank of China launched the catalogue of green bonds. China now accounts for 50 percent of the world’s green bond market, issuing a breathtaking $80 billion worth in the past six months alone. These
numbers will continue to grow rapidly, especially if the Chinese
government implements the proposed policy and regulatory changes needed to ensure that high quality green projects
are available for investment. To strengthen the project pipeline, the Chinese government is honing in on promoting greater energy efficiency in its vast
building stock. China is home to half of the world’s construction, and buildings account for some 40 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. The central
government intends to upgrade building codes with higher standards for new and retrofitted construction projects. Individual cities are planning to go even further.
Zhuhai, a 1.5 million-person city in Guangdong province, is planning on adopting a 100 percent green building requirement for all future municipal construction. China
State Construction, the world’s largest construction company with over 7,000 projects globally, is planning to upgrade its own green standards for the materials used
in its building, bridge, and high-speed train projects and is exploring how to ensure that its suppliers do so as well. In support of this drive for greater building
efficiency, China’s 13th Five-Year Plan calls for the development of innovative funding models, including public-private partnerships. The Office of the Central Leading
Group on Financial and Economic Affairs and the Paulson Institute are supporting the development of a Green Building Energy Efficiency Fund. This
unique
structure aims to combine government and NGO support with U.S. technology and Chinese financing. It is a prime
example of how U.S. innovation can be combined with the opportunities available in the Chinese market to mutual
benefit. There is still a long way to go both in China and internationally. But as President Xi Jinping hosts his G20
counterparts in Hangzhou this September, he will be in a strong position to build international consensus around green
finance, just as he did in Paris on the climate change commitments. If successful, this G20 meeting could become as significant to green
economic growth as the Paris Climate Summit was to climate change.
Contention 3: Framing
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)
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.
Timeframe shouldn’t be a part of your calculus – the “we can solve later” logic
spirals into an infinite loss and causes eco-apathy.
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.
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. 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
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.
They showed