Julian Switala

Mega LD Backfile

Cant Touch This

* * * * * MEGA LD BACKFILE * * * * *

* * * * * Written by Julian Switala * * * * *

* * * * * Instructions * * * * *

1. !!!USE THE DOCUMENT MAP VIEW FUNCTION!!!

2. !!!MINIMIZE EVERYTHING IN THE DOCUMENT MAP FIRST!!!
3. This file has internal link, impact, and framework cards applicable to all possible LD resolutions.
4. I suggest reading and cutting articles specific to the topic for links and uniqueness.
5. A LOT of the cards overlap and can be reasonably placed in different categories. However, there
are very few duplicate cards (cards that could be in multiple categories probably only appear once
in the file). Thus, if you're looking for a particular card in what seems like its most likely
categorization, you may not find it there and will have to search elsewhere in the file. You should
find what youre looking for if you search hard enough. (Some defensive cards might be in the
offensive sections etc.).
6. As such, I would advise against using this file in-round since the cards arent partitioned enough
and many different cards are lumped together under a very broad heading. I would recommend
writing blocks pre-round with this file. However, if you need carded answers to arguments you
havent heard before or if you know the file extremely well, then go for it.
7. And given how LD works, youll probably be successful just by reading the taglines of these cards
and then making short extrapolations and analytics on the fly
8. Have fun!

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*****IMPACTS*****
**Terrorism**
Biological terrorism threatens extinction
Clifford E. Singer, Spring 2001, Swords and Ploughshares,
http://www.acdis.uiuc.edu/homepage_docs/pubs_docs/S&P_docs/S&P_XIII/Singer.htm
There are, however, two technologies currently under development that may pose a more serious threat to
human survival. The first and most immediate is biological warfare combined with genetic engineering.
Smallpox is the most fearsome of natural biological warfare agents in existence. By the end of the next
decade, global immunity to smallpox will likely be at a low unprecedented since the emergence of this
disease in the distant past, while the opportunity for it to spread rapidly across the globe will be at an all time
high. In the absence of other complications such as nuclear war near the peak of an epidemic, developed
countries may respond with quarantine and vaccination to limit the damage. Otherwise mortality there may
match the rate of 30 percent or more expected in unprepared developing countries.. With development of
new biological technology, however, there is a possibility that a variety of infectious agents may be
engineered for combinations of greater than natural virulence and mortality, rather than just to overwhelm
currently available antibiotics or vaccines.
Terrorism against the U.S. ends the world It collapses the economy and triggers nuclear war with
Russia, China and North Korea
Corsi 05
[Jermome, Corsi - PhD from Harvard - D/L 7,11,09 http://911review.org/Wget/worldnetdaily.com/NYC_hit_by_terrorist_nuke.html - Horrific scenario:
NYC hit by
terrorist nuke 4/20/2005]
In the span of less than one hour, the nation's largest city will have been virtually wiped off the map. Removal of debris will take
several years, and recovery may never fully happen. The damage to the nation's economy will be measured in the trillions of
dollars, and the loss of the country's major financial and business center may reduce America immediately to a secondclass status. The resulting psychological impact will bring paralysis throughout the land for an indefinite period of time. The
president may not be able to communicate with the nation for days, even weeks, as television and radio systems struggle to come
back on line. No natural or man-made disaster in history will compare with the magnitude of damage that has been done to
New York City in this one horrible day. The United States retaliates: 'End of the world' scenarios The combination of horror and
outrage that will surge upon the nation will demand that the president retaliate for the incomprehensible damage done by
the attack. The. There will be no such phone calls when the attack will not have been anticipated until the instant the terrorists
detonate their improvised nuclear device inside the truck parked on a curb at the Empire State Building. Nor will there be any
possibility of finding any clues, which either were vaporized instantly or are now lying physically inaccessible under tons of
radioactive rubble. Still, the president, members of Congress, the military, and the public at large will suspect another attack
by our known enemy Islamic terrorists. The first impulse will be to launch a nuclear strike on Mecca, to destroy the whole
religion of Islam. Medina could possibly be added to the target list just to make the point with crystal clarity. Yet what would we
gain? The moment Mecca and Medina were wiped off the map, the Islamic world more than 1 billion human beings in
countless different nations would feel attacked. Nothing would emerge intact after a war between the United States and
Islam. The apocalypse would be upon us. Then, too, we would face an immediate threat from our long-term enemy, the former
Soviet Union. Many in the Kremlin would see this as an opportunity to grasp the victory that had been snatched from them
by Ronald Reagan when the Berlin Wall came down. A missile strike by the Russians on a score of American cities could
possibly be pre-emptive. Would the U.S. strategic defense system be so in shock that immediate retaliation would not be
possible? Hardliners in Moscow might argue that there was never a better opportunity to destroy America. In China, our
newer Communist enemies might not care if we could retaliate. With a population already over 1.3 billion people and with their
population not concentrated in a few major cities, the Chinese might calculate to initiate a nuclear blow on the United States.
What if the United States retaliated with a nuclear counterattack upon China? The Chinese might be able to absorb the blow and
recover. The North Koreans might calculate even more recklessly. Why not launch upon America the few missiles they have
that could reach our soil? More confusion and chaos might only advance their position. If Russia, China, and the United
States could be drawn into attacking one another, North Korea might emerge stronger just because it was overlooked while the
great nations focus on attacking one another. So, too, our supposed allies in Europe might relish the immediate reduction in

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power suddenly inflicted upon America. Many of the great egos in Europe have never fully recovered from the disgrace of
World War II, when in the last century the Americans a second time in just over two decades had been forced to come to their
rescue. If the French did not start launching nuclear weapons themselves, they might be happy to fan the diplomatic fire
beginning to burn under the Russians and the Chinese. Or the president might decide simply to launch a limited nuclear
strike on Tehran itself. This might be the most rational option in the attempt to retaliate but still communicate restraint. The
problem is that a strike on Tehran would add more nuclear devastation to the world calculation. Muslims around the world would
still see the retaliation as an attack on Islam, especially when the United States had no positive proof that the destruction of
New York City had been triggered by radical Islamic extremists with assistance from Iran. But for the president not to retaliate
might be unacceptable to the American people. So weakened by the loss of New York, Americans would feel vulnerable in
every city in the nation. "Who is going to be next?" would be the question on everyone's mind. For this there would be no effective
answer. That the president might think politically at this instant seems almost petty, yet every president is by nature a politician.
The political party in power at the time of the attack would be destroyed unless the president retaliated with a nuclear strike
against somebody. The American people would feel a price had to be paid while the country was still capable of exacting
revenge.

Nuclear terrorism causes immediate retaliation causing hundreds of millions of deaths.

Easterbrook 1
[CNN - D/L - 7,11,2009 - http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0111/01/gal.00.html - Nov 1 2001]

EASTERBROOK: Well, what held through the Cold War, when the United States and Russia had
thousands of nuclear weapons pointed at each other, what held each side back was the fact that
fundamentally they were rational. They knew that if they struck, they would be struck in turn.
Terrorists may not be held by this, especially suicidal terrorists, of the kind that al Qaeda is attempting to
cultivate. But I think, if I could leave you with one message, it would be this: that the search for terrorist
atomic weapons would be of great benefit to the Muslim peoples of the world in addition to members,
to people of the United States and Western Europe, because if an atomic warhead goes off in
Washington, say, in the current environment or anything like it, in the 24 hours that followed, a
hundred million Muslims would die as U.S. nuclear bombs rained down on every conceivable military
target in a dozen Muslim countries. And that -- it is very much in the interest the Muslim peoples of
the world that atomic weapons be kept out of the hands of Islamic terrorists, in addition to being in
our interests.
Nuclear terrorism causes extinction.
Sid-Ahmed 4
[Mohamed, Sid-Ahmed - Al Ahram Weekly, Extinction! - D/L 7,12,09- Weekly Political Analyst http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2004/705/op5.htm - 8/26/04 -]

What would be the consequences of a nuclear attack by terrorists? Even if it fails, it would further
exacerbate the negative features of the new and frightening world in which we are now living. Societies
would close in on themselves, police measures would be stepped up at the expense of human rights,
tensions between civilisations and religions would rise and ethnic conflicts would proliferate. It would
also speed up the arms race and develop the awareness that a different type of world order is
imperative if humankind is to survive. But the still more critical scenario is if the attack succeeds. This
could lead to a third world war, from which no one will emerge victorious. Unlike a conventional war
which ends when one side triumphs over another, this war will be without winners and losers. When nuclear
pollution infects the whole planet, we will all be losers.
Extinction

Alexander 00 (Yonah, Professor and Director, Inter-University Center for Terrorism, Terrorism
in the Twenty-First Century: Threats and Responses, DEPAUL BUSINESS LAW JOURNAL v.
12, Fall 1999/Spring 2000, p. 66-67.)

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More specifically, present-day terrorists have introduced into contemporary life a new scale of terror violence in terms of both threats and responses that has made clear that we have

Perhaps the most significant

dangers that evolve from modern day terrorism are those relating to the safety, welfare, and rights of ordinary
people; the stability of the state system; the health of economic [*67] development; the expansion of
democracy; and possibly the survival of civilization itself.
entered into an Age of Terrorism with all of its serious implications to national, regional, and global security concerns. n25

Terrorism Risks Extinction

Gordon 02 (Harvey, Visiting Lecturer, Forensic Psychiatry, Tel Aviv University, The Suicide
Bomber: Is It a Psychiatric Phenomenon? PSYCHIATRIC BULLETIN v. 26, 2002, pp. 285-287.
Available from the Wrold Wide Web at: http://pb.rcpsych.org/cgi/content/full/26/8/285)
the existence of
weapons of mass destruction now renders terrorism a potential threat to the very existence of human life (Hoge
& Rose, 2001). Such potential global destruction, or globicide as one might call it, supersedes even that of genocide in its
lethality. Although religious factors are not the only determinant of suicide bombers, the revival of religious fundamentalism towards the end
of the 20th century renders the phenomenon a major global threat . Even though religion can be a force for good, it can equally be abused
Although terrorism throughout human history has been tragic, until relatively recently it has been more of an irritant than any major hazard. However,

as a force for evil. Ultimately, the parallel traits in human nature of good and evil may perhaps be the most durable of all the characteristics of the human species. There is no need to
apply a psychiatric analysis to the suicide bomber because the phenomenon can be explained in political terms. Most participants in terrorism are not usually mentally disordered
and their behaviour can be construed more in terms of group dynamics (Colvard, 2002). On the other hand, perhaps psychiatric terminology is as yet deficient in not having the depth
to encompass the emotions and behaviour of groups of people whose levels of hate, low self-esteem, humiliation and alienation are such that it is felt that they can be remedied by
the mass destruction of life, including their own.

Bioterror will cause extinction

Steinbrenner, Brookings Senior Fellow, 1997
[John D. , Foreign Policy, "Biological weapons: a plague upon all houses," Winter, InfoTrac]
Although human pathogens are often lumped with nuclear explosives and lethal chemicals as
potential weapons of mass destruction, there is a n obvious, fundamentally important difference:
Pathogens are alive, weapons are not. Nuclear and chemical weapons do not reproduce themselves
and do not independently engage in adaptive behavior; pathogens do both of these things . That
deceptively simple observation has immense implications. The use of a manufactured weapon is a singular event. Most
of the damage occurs immediately. The aftereffects, whatever they may be, decay rapidly over time and distance in a
reasonably predictable manner. Even before a nuclear warhead is detonated, for instance, it is possible to estimate the
extent of the subsequent damage and the likely level of radioactive fallout. Such predictability is an essential component
for tactical military planning. The use of a pathogen , by contrast, is an extended process whose scope and
timing cannot be precisely controlled. For most potential biological agents, the predominant drawback is that they
would not act swiftly or decisively enough to be an effective weapon. But for a few pathogens - ones most likely to have
a decisive effect and therefore the ones most likely to be contemplated for deliberately hostile use - the risk runs in the
other direction. A lethal pathogen that could efficiently spread from one victim to another would be

capable of initiating an intensifying cascade of disease that might ultimately threaten the entire
world population. The 1918 influenza epidemic demonstrated the potential for a global contagion of this sort but not
necessarily its outer limit. Nobody really knows how serious a possibility this might be, since there is
no way to measure it reliably.
Bioterror is the only impact that risks extinction
Ochs 02

(Richard Ochs, Chemical Weapons Working Group Member, 2002 Biological Weapons must be
Abolished Immediately, June 9, http://www.freefromterror.net/other_articles/abolish.html)
genetically engineered biological weapons, many without a known
cure or vaccine, are an extreme danger to the continued survival of life on earth . Any perceived military value
Of all the weapons of mass destruction, the

or deterrence pales in comparison to the great risk these weapons pose just sitting in vials in laboratories. While a "nuclear
winter," resulting from a massive exchange of nuclear weapons, could also kill off most of life on earth and severely
compromise the health of future generations, they are easier to control. Biological weapons, on the other hand, can
get out of control very easily, as the recent anthrax attacks has demonstrated . There is no way to guarantee the
security of these doomsday weapons because very tiny amounts can be stolen or accidentally released and then grow or be
grown to horrendous proportions. The Black Death of the Middle Ages would be small in comparison to the potential damage
bioweapons could cause. Abolition of chemical weapons is less of a priority because, while they can also kill millions of people

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outright, their persistence in the environment would be less than nuclear or biological agents or more localized. Hence,
chemical weapons would have a lesser effect on future generations of innocent people and the natural environment. Like the
Holocaust, once a localized chemical extermination is over, it is over. With nuclear and biological weapons, the killing will
probably never end. Radioactive elements last tens of thousands of years and will keep causing cancers virtually forever.

Potentially worse than that, bio-engineered agents by the hundreds with no known cure could wreck even
greater calamity on the human race than could persistent radiation. AIDS and ebola viruses are just a
small example of recently emerging plagues with no known cure or vaccine. Can we imagine hundreds of
such plagues? HUMAN EXTINCTION IS NOW POSSIBLE.
Biological terrorism causes extinction
Richard Ochs, Chemical Weapons Working Group Member, 2002
[Biological Weapons must be Abolished Immediately, June 9,
http://www.freefromterror.net/other_.../abolish.html]
Of all the weapons of mass destruction, the genetically engineered biological weapons, many without a known cure or
vaccine, are an extreme danger to the continued survival of life on earth. Any perceived military value or deterrence pales in
comparison to the great risk these weapons pose just sitting in vials in laboratories. While a "nuclear winter," resulting from a
massive exchange of nuclear weapons, could also kill off most of life on earth and severely compromise the health of future
generations, they are easier to control. Biological weapons, on the other hand, can get out of control very easily, as the recent
anthrax attacks has demonstrated. There is no way to guarantee the security of these doomsday weapons because very tiny
amounts can be stolen or accidentally released and then grow or be grown to horrendous proportions. The Black Death of
the Middle Ages would be small in comparison to the potential damage bioweapons could cause. Abolition of chemical weapons is
less of a priority because, while they can also kill millions of people outright, their persistence in the environment would be less
than nuclear or biological agents or more localized. Hence, chemical weapons would have a lesser effect on future generations of
innocent people and the natural environment. Like the Holocaust, once a localized chemical extermination is over, it is over. With
nuclear and biological weapons, the killing will probably never end. Radioactive elements last tens of thousands of years and will
keep causing cancers virtually forever. Potentially worse than that, bio-engineered agents by the hundreds with no known
cure could wreck even greater calamity on the human race than could persistent radiation. AIDS and ebola viruses are just
a small example of recently emerging plagues with no known cure or vaccine. Can we imagine hundreds of such plagues?
HUMAN EXTINCTION IS NOW POSSIBLE.

A terrorist attack escalates to a global nuclear exchange

Speice 06
)Speice 06 06 JD Candidate @ College of William and Mary

[Patrick F. Speice, Jr., NEGLIGENCE AND NUCLEAR NONPROLIFERATION:

ELIMINATING THE CURRENT LIABILITY BARRIER TO BILATERAL U.S.-RUSSIAN NONPROLIFERATION ASSISTANCE PROGRAMS, William & Mary Law Review,
February 2006, 47 Wm and Mary L. Rev. 1427])

Accordingly, there is a significant and ever-present risk that terrorists could acquire a nuclear device or
fissile material from Russia as a result of the confluence of Russian economic decline and the end of stringent Sovietera nuclear security measures. 39 Terrorist groups could acquire a nuclear weapon by a number of methods ,
including "steal[ing] one intact from the stockpile of a country possessing such weapons, or ... [being] sold or given one
by [*1438] such a country, or [buying or stealing] one from another subnational group that had obtained it in one of
these ways." 40 Equally threatening, however, is the risk that terrorists will steal or purchase fissile material and
construct a nuclear device on their own. Very little material is necessary to construct a highly destructive nuclear
weapon. 41 Although nuclear devices are extraordinarily complex, the technical barriers to
constructing a workable weapon are not significant. 42 Moreover, the sheer number of methods that could be
used to deliver a nuclear device into the United States makes it incredibly likely that terrorists could successfully
employ a nuclear weapon once it was built. 43 Accordingly, supply-side controls that are aimed at preventing terrorists
from acquiring nuclear material in the first place are the most effective means of countering the risk of nuclear
terrorism. 44 Moreover, the end of the Cold War eliminated the rationale for maintaining a large military-industrial
complex in Russia, and the nuclear cities were closed. 45 This resulted in at least 35,000 nuclear scientists becoming
unemployed in an economy that was collapsing. 46 Although the economy has stabilized somewhat, there [*1439] are
still at least 20,000 former scientists who are unemployed or underpaid and who are too young to retire, 47 raising the
chilling prospect that these scientists will be tempted to sell their nuclear knowledge, or steal nuclear material to sell, to
states or terrorist organizations with nuclear ambitions. 48 The potential consequences of the unchecked spread of

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nuclear knowledge and material to terrorist groups that seek to cause mass destruction in the United States are truly
horrifying. A terrorist attack with a nuclear weapon would be devastating in terms of immediate
human and economic losses. 49 Moreover, there would be immense political pressure in the United States to
discover the perpetrators and retaliate with nuclear weapons, massively increasing the number of casualties and
potentially triggering a full-scale nuclear conflict. 50 In addition to the threat posed by terrorists, leakage of nuclear
knowledge and material from Russia will reduce the barriers that states with nuclear ambitions face and may trigger
widespread proliferation of nuclear weapons. 51 This proliferation will increase the risk of nuclear attacks
against the United States [*1440] or its allies by hostile states , 52 as well as increase the likelihood
that regional conflicts will draw in the United States and escalate to the use of nuclear weapons. 53
A nuclear terrorist attack will trigger every single impact scenario
Zedillo 06

(Ernesto Zedillo, Former President of Mexico Director, Yale Center for the Study of Globalization,
FORBES, January 9, 2006, p. 25)
Even if you agree with what's being done in the war on terror, you still could be upset about what's not happening: doing
the utmost to prevent a terrorist nuclear attack. We all should have a pretty clear idea of what would follow
a nuclear weapon's detonation in any of the world's major cities. Depending on the potency of the device

the loss of life could be in the hundreds of thousands (if not millions), the destruction of property in
the trillions of dollars, the escalation in conflicts and violence uncontrollable, the erosion of
authority and government unstoppable and the disruption of global trade and finance unprecedented.
In short, we could practically count on the beginning of another dark age.
Biological terrorist attack would cause extinction
Steinbruner, 97 (John, Sr. Fellow @ Brookings institution, Biological Weapons: A Plague upon All Houses, Foreign Policy,
Winter 1997-1998, p. 85-96, JSTOR)
Ultimately the world's military, medical, and business establishments will have to work together to an unprecedented degree if
the international community is to succeed in containing the threat of biological weapons. Although human pathogens are

often lumped with nuclear explosives and lethal chemicals as potential weapons of mass destruction, there
is an obvious, fundamentally important difference: Pathogens are alive, weapons are not. Nuclear and
chemical weapons do not reproduce themselves and do not independently engage in adaptive behavior;
pathogens do both of these things. That deceptively simple observation has immense implications. The use of a
manufactured weapon is a singular event. Most of the damage occurs immediately. The aftereffects, whatever
they may be, decay rapidly over time and distance in a reasonably predictable manner. Even before a nuclear warhead is
detonated, for instance, it is possible to estimate the extent of the subsequent damage and the likely level
of radioactive fallout. Such predictability is an essential component for tactical military planning. The use of a
pathogen, by contrast, is an extended process whose scope and timing cannot be precisely controlled. For
most potential biological agents, the predominant drawback Biological Weapons is that they would not act swiftly or decisively
enough to be an effective weapon. But for a few pathogens ones most likely to have a decisive effect and

therefore the ones most likely to be contemplated for deliberately hostile use-the risk runs in the other
direction. A lethal pathogen that could efficiently spread from one victim to another would be capable of
initiating an intensifying cascade of disease that might ultimately threaten the entire world population. The
1918 influenza epidemic demonstrated the potential for a global contagion of this sort but not necessarily its outer limit.

Use of biological weapons or a bioterror weapon risks the entire population.

Steinbrunner 97 (John Steinbrunner, senior fellow at Brookings & Chair of Committee on Int'l Security and arms control of the
NAS, "Biological Weapons," Foreign Policy)

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It is a considerable comfort and undoubtedly a key to our survival that, so far, the main lines of defense against this threat have not
depended on explicit policies or organized efforts. In the long course of evolution, the human body has developed physical barriers
and a biochemical immune system whose sophistication and effectiveness exceed anything we could design or as yet even fully
understand. But evolution is a sword that cuts both ways: New diseases emerge, while old diseases mutate and adapt. Throughout
history, there have been epidemics during which human immunity has broken down on an epic scale. An infectious agent believed
to have been the plague bacterium killed an estimated 20 million people over a four-year period in the fourteenth century,
including nearly one-quarter of Western Europe's population at the time. Since its recognized appearance in 1981, some 20
variations of the HIV virus have infected an estimated 294 million worldwide, with 1.5 million people currently dying of AIDS
each year. Malaria, tuberculosis, and cholera once thought to be under controlare now making a comeback. As we enter the
twenty-first century, changing conditions have enhanced the potential for widespread contagion. The rapid growth rate of the total
world population, the unprecedented freedom of movement across international borders, and scientific advances that expand the
capability for the deliberate manipulation of pathogens are all cause for worry that the problem might be greater in the future than
it has ever been in the past. The threat of infectious pathogens is not just an issue of public health, but a fundamental security
problem for the species as a whole.

The worst of terrorism is yet to come nuclear conflict, chemical terrorism, and biological terrorism
are probable in the future
The West Australian; 10/22/08; (Quals: edited daily newspaper published in Perth, Western Australia,
and is owned by ASX-listed West Australian Newspapers Holdings Ltd); Grim report warns of a
global war; Intelligence services warn Obama he could have less global power to face growing threats
from rogue nuclear states; LexisNexus
The use of nuclear weapons will grow increasingly likely by 2025, US intelligence warns in a bleak
report on global trends that forecasts a tense, unstable world shadowed by war. The political,
economic and military influence of the US will decline substantially and the advance of western
democracy was far from guaranteed, the National Intelligence Council analysis , Global Trends 2025: A
Transformed World, says. "The world of the near future will be subject to an increased likelihood of
conflict over scarce resources, including food and water, and will be haunted by the persistence of
rogue states and terrorist groups with greater access to nuclear weapons," it said. The report predicts that
some African and south Asian states may wither and organised crime could take over at least one state in central Europe.
Struggling to find a bright spot, researchers concluded that terrorism could decline if "economic growth continues in the
Middle East and youth unemployment is reduced". However, "opportunities for mass-casualty terrorist attacks

using chemical, biological or, less likely, nuclear weapons will increase as technology diffuses and
nuclear power programs expand". Based on a survey of global trends by analysts from all US intelligence
agencies, the report was more pessimistic about the status of the world's superpower than in the four previous outlooks
that were made public. The report said the international system constructed after World War II would be

almost unrecognisable by 2025 with new powers emerging in a globalising economy, the historic
transfer of wealth from West to East and the growing influence of "non-state actors". "Although the
United States is likely to remain the single most powerful actor, its relative strength, even in the military
realm, will decline and US leverage will become more strained," it said. The authors said they did not
believe there would be a "complete breakdown of the international system" but warned "the next 20 years of
transition to a new system are fraught with risks". While the authors note nothing in their report is certain,
they say it is an effort to stimulate thinking within the incoming US administration. "It is not a prediction," Thomas
Fingar, the deputy director of national intelligence for analysis, said. "Nothing that we have identified in this report is
determinative." Mr Fingar said these "trends, developments and drivers" were subject to intervention and manipulation.
The report is a sobering reminder to US president-elect Barack Obama of the challenges he faces leading a country that
might no longer "call the shots alone". The report has good news for some countries: \x{2002}A technology to replace
oil may be under way or in place by 2025. \x{2002} Multiple financial centres will be "shock absorbers" for the world
financial system. \x{2002}India, China and Brazil will rise, the Korean peninsula will be unified in some form and new
powers are likely from the Muslim non-Arab world. The report highlighted the risk of a Middle East arms race with
countries considering technologies useful for making nuclear weapons. The report said it was not certain the same
deterrents in the Cold War would emerge in a nuclear armed Middle East. Instead, a nuclear arsenal might be seen as
"making it safe" to engage in low-intensity conflicts, terrorism or even larger conventional attacks, the report said.
"Those states most susceptible to conflict are in a great arc of instability stretching from Sub-

Saharan Africa through North Africa into the Middle East, the Balkans, the Caucasus, South and

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Central Asia and parts of South East Asia," the report said. While the appeal of terrorist groups such as alQaida was likely to wane dramatically between now and 2025, violent extremists might become more lethal
through access to biological weapons or even nuclear devices, according to the report, which is
designed to give policymakers a "beyond-the-horizon" view
Terror groups in the near future will likely have some of the most lethal technologies within reach and
are probable to use them
The Atlantic Council; 10/20/08; (Quals: The Council embodies a non-partisan network of leaders and
diplomats who aim to bring ideas to power and to give power to ideas); Global Trends 2025: A
Transformed World; http://www.acus.org/publication/global-trends-2025-transformed-world
Terrorism, proliferation, and conflict will remain key concerns even as resource issues move up on the
international agenda. Islamic terrorism is unlikely to disappear by 2025, but its appeal could diminish if economic growth continues and youth
unemployment is mitigated in the Middle East. Economic opportunities for youth and greater political pluralism probably would dissuade some from joining
terrorists ranks, but othersmotivated by a variety of factors, such as a desire for revenge or to become martyrswill continue to turn to violence to pursue
their objectives. In the absence of employment opportunities and legal means for political expression, conditions will be ripe for disaffection, growing radicalism,

Terrorist groups in 2025 will likely be a combination of descendants of

long-established groupsthat inherit organizational structures, command and control processes, and training
procedures necessary to conduct sophisticated attacksand newly emergent collections of the angry and
disenfranchised that become self-radicalized. For those terrorist groups that are active in 2025, the diffusion
of technologies and scientific knowledge will place some of the worlds most dangerous capabilities within
their reach. One of our greatest concerns continues to be that terrorist or other malevolent groups might
acquire and employ biological agents, or less likely, a nuclear device, to create mass casualties.
and possible recruitment of youths into terrorist groups.

Terrorism Causes Extinction

Sid-Ahmed, political analyst 04 (Mohamed, Managing Editor for Al-Ahali, Extinction! August 26September 1, Issue no. 705, http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2004/705/op5.htm)
What would be the consequences of a nuclear attack by terrorists? Even if it fails, it would further exacerbate the
negative features of the new and frightening world in which we are now living. Societies would close in on themselves,
police measures would be stepped up at the expense of human rights, tensions between civilisations and religions
would rise and ethnic conflicts would proliferate. It would also speed up the arms race and develop the awareness that
a different type of world order is imperative if humankind is to survive. But the still more critical scenario is if the attack
succeeds. This could lead to a third world war, from which no one will emerge victorious. Unlike a conventional war
which ends when one side triumphs over another, this war will be without winners and losers. When nuclear pollution
infects the whole planet, we will all be losers.

Terrorism Risks Extinction

Alexander, professor and director of the Inter-University for Terrorism Studies 2003 (Yonah;)
Terrorism myths and realities Washington Times 8/28 l/n WBW
Last week's brutal suicide bombings in Baghdad and Jerusalem have once again illustrated dramatically that the
international community failed, thus far at least, to understand the magnitude and implications of the terrorist threats to
the very survival of civilization itself. Even the United States and Israel have for decades tended to regard terrorism
as a mere tactical nuisance or irritant rather than a critical strategic challenge to their national security concerns. It is
not surprising, therefore, that on September 11, 2001, Americans were stunned by the unprecedented tragedy of 19 al
Qaeda terrorists striking a devastating blow at the center of the nation's commercial and military powers. Likewise,
Israel and its citizens, despite the collapse of the Oslo Agreements of 1993 and numerous acts of terrorism triggered
by the second intifada that began almost three years ago, are still "shocked" by each suicide attack at a time of
intensive diplomatic efforts to revive the moribund peace process through the now revoked cease-fire arrangements
[hudna]. Why are the United States and Israel, as well as scores of other countries affected by the universal
nightmare of modern terrorism surprised by new terrorist "surprises"? There are many reasons, including
misunderstanding of the manifold specific factors that contribute to terrorism's expansion, such as lack of a universal
definition of terrorism, the religionization of politics, double standards of morality, weak punishment of terrorists, and
the exploitation of the media by terrorist propaganda and psychological warfare. Unlike their historical counterparts,
contemporary terrorists have introduced a new scale of violence in terms of conventional and unconventional threats

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and impact. The internationalization and brutalization of current and future terrorism make it clear we have entered an
Age of Super Terrorism [e.g. biological, chemical, radiological, nuclear and cyber] with its serious implications
concerning national, regional and global security concerns.

Nuclear terrorism possesses the possibility to create doomsday and extinction for humanity
Turchin, Studying @ Moscow State University, 08
(Alexei, Structure of the Global Catastrophe, http://www.scribd.com/doc/6250354/STRUCTURE-OF-THE-GLOBALCATASTROPHE-Risks-of-human-extinction-in-the-XXI-century-) BB
Nuclear terrorism as the factor of global catastrophe The phenomenon of nuclear terrorism in itself - that is anonymous
explosion of a bomb of small capacity - cannot lead to human extinction. At the same time such event will sharply
strengthen all global risks. (And if people learn to make bombs in house conditions, say, thanks to successes in cold
nuclear fusion, one this fact can be enough for extinction of people.) Such explosion can provoke war, or lead to death
of the country leaders, having strengthened the general disorganisation and having deprived operating structures of
the wisdom necessary for the decision of rather serious global problems. It can result also to crackdown and an
establishment of a society of the total control which will result in appearance of movement of resistance in the spirit of antiglobalists and to new acts of terrorism. 2.10.
Conclusions on risks of application of the nuclear weapon Nuclear catastrophe threat is often underestimated or overestimated. Underestimation basically is connected with reasonings that
catastrophe is improbable because it didnt happened for a long time. This is incorrect reasoning as it is subject to action of effect of observation selection about which we will speak further in chapter
14 in section "Cancellation of defence which provided to us Antropic principle, and effect of easing of vigilance in due course. Revaluation is connected with widespread representations about
nuclear winter and radioactive contamination as inevitable factors of extinction of all mankind after nuclear war, and this revaluation conducts to deny response, the leader to risk understating.
Though the "usual" nuclear winter and contamination, most likely, will not lead to full extinction of mankind in itself (though can create conditions for the subsequent extinction on set of the reasons),

there are ways to use the nuclear weapon in a special way to create the Doomsday Machine which will exterminate
all people with high probability.
but

Terrorist attack is coming, not if, but when itll cause mass panic, massive destruction but prevention
is possible
Drezner 05
(Daniel W., Prof. of International Politics @ Tufts U., 9/8/05, Katrina is not the Worst-Case Scenario,
http://drezner.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2005/09/08/katrina_is_not_the_worst_case_scenario)
Amy Zegart -- danieldrezner.com's resident expert on homeland security and intelligence reform -- e-mailed me these
thoughts on Katrina's lessons for defending against terrorist attacks: The devastation from Hurricane Katrina is not the
worst case scenario. The worst case scenario is a man made disaster with no warning: a catastrophic terrorist attack
with a nuclear or biological agent. Make no mistake. The question is not whether such an attack will occur, but when .
What can we do? Start by facing reality. It is not too soon to begin assessing what went wrong with emergency response in New Orleans and what makes terrorism different from natural disasters.
Some initial thoughts: 1. The keystone cops response in New Orleans stems, in part, from a flawed model of how to train for disaster. Training drills almost never prepare officials for the worst. New
Orleans conducted disaster exercises in 2000 and 2004 for hurricanes, but these drills did not include the possibility of a levee failure. In Los Angeles, a major port security exercise, Determined
Promise 2004, tested a new mobile radio patch unit that enables different emergency response agencies to talk to each other. Surprise surprise: the system worked well. Of course it did. When
everyone knows disaster will begin at noon on Monday, they miraculously remember to bring the right radios and brush up on instructions about how to use them properly. Even worse, not only do
many exercises avoid facing truly disastrous scenarios, they define success by how smoothly everything goes. This gives a false sense of comfort, or to use a technical term, it's STUPID. Instead, we
need to drill into officials that the right measure of success is how much they learn. If things do not go wrong in a drill, then the exercise was not useful. 2. At every level of government, elected

. Terrorists will strike.

Prevention will be far lower than 100%. If you start by acknowledging, rather than avoiding, this reality, you get a
different approach: concentrate funding, planning, and efforts on potential events that would bring catastrophic
consequences, rather than spreading resources too thin. Hurricane hits Florida, bad. Hurricane hits New Orleans
rendering the entire city uninhabitable, catastrophe. Suicide bombs at shopping malls, bad. Nuclear bomb blasting a
major U.S. city into oblivion, unacceptable. The goal should be to ensure that government is best prepared to prevent
and respond to the worst possible outcomes rather than splitting time and money between an endless array of
possibilities. Politicians hate thinking like this because it's scary and it's politically unattractive: they actually have to make choices about what ranks high on the priority list and what does not.
officials work from a fictional premise: that they can, and should, protect everyone from every possible disastrous event. But the truth is hurricanes will hit

And that is guaranteed to piss off more people than it pleases. In the three years after 9/11 Congress distributed roughly $13 billion in homeland security funding to the states using a formula that
redefines crazy: 40% of the funds went to every state, regardless of population or terrorist targets. Rural areas with no major targets got a disproportionate share of the funds, while the most likely

:
Natural disasters are obvious when they occur. Many types of terrorist attacks (biological attacks, radiological
contamination) are not. If you think the slow pace of response to Katrina is bad, imagine the outbreak of an infectious
disease, where fast diagnosis is all that stands between a few deaths and national tragedy. Natural disasters often
come with warning. Terrorist attacks do not. This difference is huge. It is easy to forget, amidst the desperate struggle
for survival by New Orleans residents, that many thousands more did successfully evacuate before the hurricane hit. In
a massive terrorist attack, the likely scenario would be mass panic.
terrorist targets, like Los Angeles, got the shaft. Note to self: move back to Kentucky soon. Zegart also has a sobering reminder -- it is easier to cope with natural disasters than terrorist attacks

A terrorist attack would destroy the economy through a shutdown of borders and commerce, lead to
retaliation and destroy standard of living
Saga Foundation 08 (Non-partisan, Non-profit for Nuclear Safety, July 2008, Nuclear Terrorism: Local Effects, Global Consequences
http://www.sagafoundation.org/SagaFoundationWhitePaperSAGAMARK7282008.pdf)
Our principal conclusion is that the economic aftershocks flowing not only from a nuclear terrorist attack itself but from a predictable set of decisions a U.S. president could be expected to make in the
wake of such an attack would inflict extraordinary economic damage on the nation stretching far beyond the point of attack. Beyond responding with aid to the scene of an attack,

the first

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order of business for a president following a nuclear terrorist strike would be to determine if another strike was about to
occur and to do everything possible to prevent it. Virtually all the important presidential decisions in the wake of the September 11 attacks the suspension of all air
travel; mandates to secure cockpit doors; the redesign of airport security; the dispatch of U.S. forces to Afghanistan; the institution of surveillance of terror suspects were designed to prevent followon attacks. Punishing the aggressors was an important but secondary issue. In a nuclear attack scenario, presidential decisions revolving around this imperative would be taken regardless of

Shutdown of freight commerce/border

closures. The likelihood that a nuclear weapon would be clandestinely brought into our country would in all likelihood
prompt a national initiative to seal the borders and freeze and search virtually all freight conveyances, whether trucks,
ships or planes, delivering a major shock to the economy and bringing home to the entire populace the enormity of what has occurred, as stocks of basic
supplies vanished almost overnight . Retaliation. The president would be under enormous pressure to respond swiftly and forcefully to such an attack, even if the geographic or geo-political
point of origin was uncertain. The science of nuclear forensics, which can enable specialists to identify the source of nuclear
material used in a bomb even post-explosion, would provide some key clues as to the source of the attack. As a
consequence, there would be tremendous pressure to hold someoneterror groups and their state sponsors
whether another attack was planned or actually took place. Among the post-attack presidential decisions we deem highly likely:

responsible, engendering immediate and forceful retaliation.

Suspension of civil liberties

. Extraordinary concern about further nuclear

attacks following an initial attack would drive a series of decisions restricting freedom of movement and conferring extraordinary powers on government agencies charged with preventing another

all
freight traffic to a halt, shut down the nations ports, empty the nations grocery shelves, and bring most manufacturing
to a virtual standstill. Even if this shut-down were temporary, our economic system of just-in-time inventory would
mean that basic staples would very quickly become unavailable, delivering a psychological blow to the populace and a
strike. The point cannot be emphasized enough: Not the attack itself but the fear of a follow-on attack and the response to that fear would drive a set of decisions that would almost certainly bring

devastating shock to national and international financial markets. We live with the possibility of a nuclear terrorist attack today, but the possibility of a future attack once the first attack occurred would
be deemed so much greater as to create an entirely new reality in terms of the political and economic functioning of the nation. Although preparation for disaster is an important part of any homeland
security plan, we contend that the point of studying and understanding the full range of consequences of an act of nuclear terrorism is to motivate the government and the people to ensure that such
an attack never happens. We are not seeking a better civil defense plan or trying to revive a duck and cover strategy. We are trying to clearly lay out the consequences of failure so that the
necessary steps are taken with the necessary energy and urgency.

Nuclear terrorist attack destroys the world economy and causes retaliation leading to global war
Diamond, Washington fellow of the Saga Foundation, 08
(John, 10/9/08, A financial apocalypse isn't nearly as scary as a nuclear one,
http://blogs.usatoday.com/oped/2008/10/a-financial-apo.html) BB
The aftershocks As the Saga Foundation a non-profit organization focused on the threat of terrorism involving
weapons of mass destruction argued in a recent white paper, the vast damage at and around a nuclear ground zero
would be dwarfed in scope by the national and global economic aftershocks . These aftershocks would stem not only from the explosion itself but
also from a predictable set of decisions a president would almost certainly have to make in grappling with the possibility of a follow-on attack. Assuming, as the experts believe likely, that such a

the president could be expected to close the nation's borders, halt all freight commerce
and direct a search of virtually any moving conveyance that could transport a nuclear weapon. Most manufacturing
would then cease. In a nation that lives on just-in-time inventory, these developments could empty the nation's shelves in days. The effects of
post-attack decision-making go far beyond this example. If U.S. intelligence determined that one or more countries had somehow
aided and abetted the attack, we would face the prospect of full-scale war. Even short of that, the nation would
demand, and the president would almost certainly order, a level of retaliation at the suspected locus of the attacking
group that would dwarf the post-9/11 military response. The possibility of follow-on attacks could transform our notions of civil liberties and freedom forever. And
weapon would have to be smuggled into the country,

as former 9/11 Commission co-chairman Lee Hamilton has pointed out, a nuclear terrorist attack would prompt a collapse in public faith in the government's ability to protect the American people.
Think your 401(k) hurts now? The presidential nominees, and the American people, should reconsider the tendency to view these two issues economic crisis and the threat of

catastrophic terrorism as separate problems. A nuclear attack on a U.S. city would not only devastate the target and
kill possibly hundreds of thousands, it would also create instantaneous national and global economic ripple effects with
incalculable consequences. To put it in personal terms, if you think things are tough in the nation's financial sector now, imagine what your 401(k) or your paycheck might look
like six months after a nuclear detonation in Lower Manhattan or downtown Washington. Saga's study merely began what must become a much larger-scale effort to understand in the fullest detail
possible the consequences of an act of nuclear terrorism, not only the attack itself but also the decisions that would almost certainly follow. The idea is not to depress people but to motivate them.
While some of the consequences are obvious, others are not, and it is the less understood aftershocks that could damage our world as well as transform it and not for the better.

Terrorist attack would bring the global economy to a standstill

Saga Foundation 08
(Non-partisan, Non-profit for Nuclear Safety, July 2008, Nuclear Terrorism: Local Effects, Global Consequences
http://www.sagafoundation.org/SagaFoundationWhitePaperSAGAMARK7282008.pdf) BB
Localizing these nuclear terror scenarios helps people envision and comprehend the unthinkable but it also creates a
misleading perception that the damage from such an attack would be confined to the site of the attack itself. In
considering these scenarios, former Senator Sam Nunn, who has worked for two decades to secure the worlds
nuclear material, has observed that these ground- zero narratives provide only the physical impact of nuclear
terrorism. If you were trying to draw a circle to mark the overall impact of the blast in social, economic, and security
terms -- the circle would be the equator itself. No part of the planet would escape the impact. People everywhere would
fear another blast. Travel, international trade, capital flows, commerce would initially stop, and many freedoms we have
come to take for granted would quickly be eroded in the name of security. The confidence of America and the world
would be shaken to the core.

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Terrorists cannot be deterred, an attack would destroy the global economy

Ferguson 06
(Charles D., March 2006, Preventing Catastrophic Nuclear Terrorism, Council On Foreign Relations,
http://www.cfr.org/content/publications/attachments/NucTerrCSR.pdf) BB
The threat of a nuclear attack by terrorists has never been greater. Over the past two decades, terrorist violence and destructiveness have grown. As the September 11, 2001, attacks demonstrated,
al-Qaeda and al-Qaedainspired terrorists desire to inflict mass casualties. Al-Qaeda and other terrorist organizations have expressed interest in and searched for unconventional means of attack,

these weapons, only a nuclear detonation will guarantee immediate massive

destruction. A nuclear explosion would immediately devastate the heart of a city and could kill hundreds of thousands
of people. In the longer term, hundreds of thousands more could suffer from radiation sickness and cancer, and thousands of square miles of property would experience radioactive
contamination requiring several years and billions of dollars to decontaminate . The broader economic costs of the attack could soar into the trillions of
dollars, potentially threatening the national economy and even disrupting the global economy. The probability of
nuclear attack has increased because traditional deterrence threatening assured destruction against a valued asset
such as a national territorydoes not work against the terrorist groups most likely to covet nuclear weapons. Such groups are usually not tied to a particular geographic
such as chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear weapons. Of

location. Moreover, these terrorist organizations are often guided by religious, quasi-religious, or cult leaders who align themselves with a supreme being rather than with a nation-state that needs
protection.

Mueller ignores that efforts to deter attacks have been successful and that bin Ladens popularity in
many areas is still high
Paul R. Pillar, faculty of the Security Studies Program at Georgetown University, a retired intelligence officer who
served as deputy chief of the counterterrorist center at the CIA and as National Intelligence Officer for the Near East
and South Asia from 2000 to 2005, 09-07-06, Are We Safe Yet?
Nevertheless, just as paranoids can have real enemies, so too can a hyped threat be real -- as this particular threat is.
There are sound explanations for the absence of major terrorist attacks in the United States over the past five years
that are quite consistent with there being a serious threat that could manifest itself in such an attack tomorrow. Mueller
attempts to dismiss several of those explanations by arguing that each one, by itself, is incapable of accounting for the
absence of follow-on attacks. But each explanation may provide part of the reason for that absence, and considering
several such explanations together should leave us unsurprised that the United States has not suffered a new attack
even in the presence of a continued threat. Yes, the enhanced homeland security measures cannot thwart all possible
terrorist plots, but they have made many of them more difficult and probably have had a broader deterrent effect. Yes,
Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan did not remove the wherewithal for all jihadists worldwide to prepare new
plots, but it did deal a significant blow to al Qaeda and made it appreciably more difficult for bin Laden to direct terrorist
operations. And so forth. Even some of Mueller's own arguments about the jihadists' being well on their way to the
trash heap of history are hardly reassuring when placed in context. There has indeed been a welcome backlash
against jihadist terrorism in some parts of the Muslim world, but the same Pew survey results that showed evidence of
such a backlash in Jordan also showed bin Laden's continued and even growing stature in other countries -- such as
Nigeria, where a clear majority of Muslims now express at least some confidence in him. And it is true that 9/11 was an
act of desperation, in the sense that the jihadists had earlier failed to foment revolutions in the countries of most
interest to them. But that is exactly why turning their fire against the United States -- bin Laden's strategic stroke of
genius -- was, and still is, so attractive to them.

Bioterrorism leads to extinction

Kellman 08 (Barry, Professor of Law, Director, International Weapons Control Center, International Human Rights Law Institute @ DePaul
U., Futurist, May 2008, Bioviolence: A Growing Threat, http://www.britannica.com/bps/additionalcontent/18/31535413/Bioviolence-AGrowing-Threat)
According to the National Academies of Science, "The threat spectrum is broad and evolving in some ways predictably, in other ways unexpectedly. In the future, genetic engineering and other
technologies may lead to the development of pathogenic organisms with unique, unpredictable characteristics." For as far into the future as we can possibly see, every passing day it be- comes
slightly easier to commit a vio lent catastrophe than it was the day before. Indeed, the rapid pace of advancing science helps explain why policies to prevent such a catastrophe are so complicated.

Since there have been no

catastrophic bioviolence attacks, these experts argue, terrorists lack the intention to make bioweapons. Hopefully, they
are correct. But an enormous amount of evidence suggests they are wrong. From the dawn of biology's ability to
isolate pathogens, people have pursued hostile applications of biological agents. It is perilous to ignore this extensive
history by presuming that today's villains are not fervent about weaponizing disease. Not a single state admits to having a bioweapons
Bioviolence Jihad? Some experts argue that terrorists and fanatics are not interested in bio- violence and that the danger might therefore be overblown.

program, but U.S. intelligence officials assert that as many as 10 states might have active programs, including North Korea, Iran, and Syria. Moreover, many terrorist organizations have expressed
interest in acquiring biological weapons. Whatever weight the taboo against inflicting disease might have for nation-states, it is obviously irrelevant to terrorists, criminals, and lunatics.

Deterrence by threat of retaliation is essentially meaningless for groups with suicidal inclinations

who are likely to intermingle with

innocent civilians. Al-Qaeda and affiliated Islamic fundamentalist organizations have abling them to spread in regions where there is no natural immunity. The polio virus has been synthesized from
scratch; its creators called it an "animate chemical." Soon, it may be resynthesized into a form that is contagious even among vaccinated populations. Recreation of long-eradicated livestock
diseases could ravage herds severely lacking in genetic diversity, damage food supplies, and cause devastating economic losses. Perhaps the greatest biothreat is the manipulation of the flu and
other highly contagious viruses, such as Ebola. Today, scientists can change parts of a virus's genetic material so that it can perform specific functions. The genomic sequence of the Spanish flu virus
that killed upwards of 40 million people nearly a century ago has been widely published; any savvy scientist could reconstruct it. The avian flu is even more lethal, albeit not readily contagious via

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casual aerosol delivery. A malevolent bio- scientist might augment its contagiousness. The Ebola virus might be manipulated so that it kills more slowly, allowing it to be spread farther before its
debilitating effects al- together consume its carrier. A bit further off is genetic manipulation of the measles virus--one of the great killers in human history--rendering useless the immunizations that

Advanced drug delivery systems can be used to disseminate

lethal agents to broad populations. Bio- regulators--small organic compounds that modify body systems-- could enhance targeted delivery technologies. Some experts are
most of us receive in early childhood. Soon, laboratory resynthesis of smallpox may be possible.

concerned that new weapons could be aimed at the immune, neurological, and neuroendocrine systems. Nanotechnology that lends itself to mechanisms for advanced disease detection and drug
delivery--such as gold nanotubes that can administer drugs directly into a tumor--could also de- liver weaponized agents deep into the body, substantially raising the weapon's effectiveness.

techniques that were on the frontiers of science only a dec- ade or two ago are rapidly mutating A looming
danger confronts the world--the threat of bioviolence. It is a danger that will only grow in the future, yet we are increasingly failing to confront it. With every passing
Altogether,

day, committing a biocatastrophe becomes a bit easier, and this condition will perpetuate for as long as science progresses. Biological warfare is as old as conflict, of course, but in terms of the

. If the objective is to inflict

mass death and panic on a mixed population, however, emerg- ing bioweapons offer remarkable potential. We would
be irresponsible to presume that radical jihadists like al- Qaeda have ignored said potential.
objectives of traditional warfare-- gaining territory or resources, compelling the surrender of an opposing army--biological weapons weren't very effective

Successful attack causes extinction.

Ochs MA in Natural Resource Management 02 from Rutgers University and Naturalist at Grand Teton National Park
[Richard, BIOLOGICAL WEAPONS MUST BE ABOLISHED IMMEDIATELY, Jun 9,
http://www.freefromterror.net/other_articles/abolish.html]

Of all the weapons of mass destruction, the genetically engineered biological weapons, many without a known cure or
vaccine, are an extreme danger to the continued survival of life on earth. Any perceived military value or deterrence pales in
comparison to the great risk these weapons pose just sitting in vials in laboratories. While a "nuclear winter," resulting from a massive
exchange of nuclear weapons, could also kill off most of life on earth and severely compromise the health of future generations, they are
easier to control. Biological weapons, on the other hand, can get out of control very easily, as the recent anthrax
attacks has demonstrated. There is no way to guarantee the security of these doomsday weapons because very tiny
amounts can be stolen or accidentally released and then grow or be grown to horrendous proportions. The Black Death of the
Middle Ages would be small in comparison to the potential damage bioweapons could cause. Abolition of chemical weapons is less of a priority because, while they can also kill millions of people
outright, their persistence in the environment would be less than nuclear or biological agents or more localized. Hence, chemical weapons would have a lesser effect on future generations of innocent
people and the natural environment. Like the Holocaust, once a localized chemical extermination is over, it is over. With nuclear and biological weapons, the killing will probably never end.

worse than that, bio-engineered agents by the

hundreds with no known cure could wreck even greater calamity on the human race than could persistent radiation.
AIDS and ebola viruses are just a small example of recently emerging plagues with no known cure or vaccine. Can we
imagine hundreds of such plagues? HUMAN EXTINCTION IS NOW POSSIBLE. Ironically, the Bush administration has just changed the U.S.
Radioactive elements last tens of thousands of years and will keep causing cancers virtually forever. Potentially

nuclear doctrine to allow nuclear retaliation against threats upon allies by conventional weapons. The past doctrine allowed such use only as a last resort when our nations survival was at stake. Will
the new policy also allow easier use of US bioweapons? How slippery is this slope? Against this tendency can be posed a rational alternative policy. To preclude possibilities of human extinction,
"patriotism" needs to be redefined to make humanitys survival primary and absolute. Even if we lose our cherished freedom, our sovereignty, our government or ourConstitution, where there is life,
there is hope. What good is anything else if humanity is extinguished? This concept should be promoted to the center of national debate.. For example, for sake of argument, suppose the ancient
Israelites developed defensive bioweapons of mass destruction when they were enslaved by Egypt. Then suppose these weapons were released by design or accident and wiped everybody out? As

, extinction is worse. Our generation, our century, our epoch needs to take the long view. We truly hold in our
hands the precious gift of all future life. Empires may come and go, but who are the honored custodians of life on earth? Temporal politicians? Corporate competitors?
bad as slavery is

Strategic brinksmen? Military gamers? Inflated egos dripping with testosterone? How can any sane person believe that national sovereignty is more important than survival of the species? Now that
extinction is possible, our slogan should be "Where there is life, there is hope." No government, no economic system, no national pride, no religion, no political system can be placed above human
survival. The egos of leaders must not blind us. The adrenaline and vengeance of a fight must not blind us. The game is over. If patriotism would extinguish humanity, then patriotism is the highest of
all crimes.

Bioviolence would bring civilization to a standstill and destroy global governance

Kellman 08
(Barry, Professor of Law, Director, International Weapons Control Center, International Human Rights Law Institute @
DePaul U., Futurist, May 2008, Bioviolence: A Growing Threat,
http://www.britannica.com/bps/additionalcontent/18/31535413/Bioviolence-A-Growing-Threat)
There are challenges in executing such an attack, but fanatical terrorist organizations seem to have an endless supply
of willing suicide attackers. All this leads to the most important characteristic of bioviolence: It raises incomparable
levels of panic. Contagious bioviolence means that planes fly empty or perhaps don't fly at all. People cancel vacation
and sible, but it is certainly not irrational. Even the most passionate terrorists must realize that conventional at- tacks
are not bringing the West to its knees. The 9/11 strikes, the bombing of the Madrid and London subways, and
numerous smaller attacks have all put civilization on edge, but history marches inexorably forward. A few thousand
people can be killed, yet Western armies still traverse the world, and Western economies still determine winners and
losers. From this perspective, the stakes must be raised. Bioviolence is perhaps the most dire, easiest means to
execute existential danger. What Might Bioviolence Accomplish? Envision a series of attacks against capitals of
developing states that have close diplomatic linkages with the United States. The attacks would carry a well-publicized
yet simple warning: "If you are a friend of the United States, receive its officials, or support its policies, thousands of
your people will get sick." How many attacks in how many cities would it take before international diplomacy, to say
nothing of international transit, comes to a crashing halt? In comparison to use of conventional or chemical weapons,
the potential death toll of a bioattack could be huge.

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Cyber terror attack is the greatest threat to human life

Bucci, IBM's Issue Lead for Cyber Security Programs, Ex-Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense, 09
(Steven P., June 12, 2009, The Confluence of Cyber Crime and Terrorism
http://www.heritage.org/Research/NationalSecurity/hl1123.cfm) BB
Terrorists will recognize the opportunity the cyber world offers sooner or later. They will also recognize that they need
help to properly exploit it. It is unlikely they will have the patience to develop their own completely independent
capabilities. At the same time, the highly developed, highly capable cyber criminal networks want money and care little
about the source. This is a marriage made in Hell. The threat of a full nation-state attack, either cyber or cyber-enabled
kinetic, is our most dangerous threat. We pray deterrence will continue to hold, and we should take all measures to
shore up that deterrence. Terrorists will never be deterred in this way. They will continue to seek ways to successfully
harm us, and they will join hands with criminal elements to do so. A terrorist attack enabled by cyber crime capabilities
will now be an eighth group of cyber threats, and it will be the most likely major event we will need to confront. Some
would say that cyber crime is a purely law enforcement issue, with no national security component. That is a dubious
"truth" today. This is not a static situation, and it will definitely be more dangerously false in the future. Unless we get
cyber crime under control, it will mutate into a very real, very dangerous national security issue with potentially
catastrophic ramifications. It would be far better to address it now rather than in the midst of a terrorist incident or
campaign of incidents against one of our countries. Terrorism enabled by cyber criminals is our most likely major cyber
threat. It must be met with all our assets.

Loose nukes cause nuclear war and terrorism. GDS

Allison, director of the Center for Science and International Affairs, 96
(Graham, director of the Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University's
Kennedy School of Government, Houston Chronicle, Russia's Loose Nukes a Serious Threat to US,
April 1,
http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/publication/1012/russias_loose_nukes_a_serious_threat_to_us.htm
l)
The greatest single threat to the security of America today, and indeed the world, is the threat from loose nuclear
weapons and weapons-usable material from Russia. "Loose nukes' - the loss, theft or sale of weapons-usable nuclear
materials or nuclear weapons themselves from the former Soviet arsenal - is not a hypothetical threat; it is a brute fact.
Since the disappearance of the Soviet Union, the number of reported, suspected and documented cases of diversion
of weapons-usable nuclear material has been increasing steadily. Ominously, we have been able to document six
cases in which weapons-grade material has been stolen and nearly 1,000 instances involving the theft of lower-grade
material. If a rogue actor - a state like Iran, Iraq, Libya or Cuba, or a terrorist group like Hamas or Japan's Aum
Shinrikyo - obtained as little as 30 pounds of highly-enriched uranium, or less than half that weight in plutonium, they
could produce a nuclear device in a matter of a month or two with design information that is publicly available,
equipment that can be readily purchased in the commercial market and modest levels of technical competence found
in graduates of any respectable engineering program. If the terrorists who attacked the World Trade Center in New
York or the Federal Office Building in Oklahoma City had used the same truck they drove, filled not with the explosives
they used, but rather with a weapon that started with a softball-sized lump of uranium, what would have been the
consequences? They could have created an explosion equal to 10,000 to 20,000 tons of TNT, which would demolish
an area of about three square miles. Oklahoma City would have disappeared. As the most open society in the world,
the United States is also most vulnerable to nuclear terrorist attack. Literally millions of uninspected packages arrive in
this country every day.
Bioweapons spread or use causes extinction

Steinbruner 98 John D. Steinbruner, Senior Fellow, Brookings Institution, Biological Weapons: A Plague Upon All
Houses, FOREIGN POLICY n. 109, Winter 1997/1998, pp. 85-96, ASP.
Although human pathogens are often lumped with nuclear explosives and lethal chemicals as potential weapons of mass destruction, there is an obvious, fundamentally important difference: Pathogens are alive,
weapons are not. Nuclear and chemical weapons do not reproduce themselves and do not independently engage in adaptive behavior; pathogens do both of these things. That deceptively simple observation has immense
implications. The use of a manufactured weapon is a singular event. Most of the damage occurs immediately. The aftereffects, whatever they may be, decay rapidly over time and distance in a reasonably predictable
manner. Even before a nuclear warhead is detonated, for instance, it is possible to estimate the extent of the subsequent damage and the likely level of radioactive fallout. Such predictability is an essential component for
tactical military planning. The use of a pathogen, by contrast, is an extended process whose scope and timing cannot be precisely controlled. For most potential biological agents, the predominant drawback is that they

for a few pathogens - ones most likely to have a decisive effect and therefore the ones
most likely to be contemplated for deliberately hostile use - the risk runs in the other direction. A lethal pathogen that could
efficiently spread from one victim to another would be capable of initiating an intensifying cascade of disease that might ultimately
threaten the entire world population. The 1918 influenza epidemic demonstrated the potential for a global contagion of this sort but not necessarily its outer limit. Nobody really knows how
would not act swiftly or decisively enough to be an effective weapon. But

serious a possibility this might be, since there is no way to measure it reliably. Before the first atomic device was tested, there was genuine concern that such an explosion could ignite the Earth's atmosphere. American
physicists were able to provide a credible calculation that proved the contrary. It would be comparably important to establish that no conceivable pathogen could kill a substantial portion of the entire human population,
but current scientific knowledge simply cannot support such a determination. If anything, the balance of uncertain judgment would probably have to lean the other way.

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High level of mobility causes extinction

Polyak 4 (Mark G Polyak, Senior Analyst in Division of Integrated Biodefense, "The Threat of
Agroterrorism: Economics of Bioterrorism", Business & Finance, Summer/Fall, , 2004
http://www.ciaonet.org/olj/gjia/gjia_sumfall04/gjia_sumfall04_004.pdf)
<Foot-and-mouth disease (FMD), a highly contagious viral infection that primarily attacks cattle, pigs,
and sheep, offers an excellent example of how this might happen. FMD comprises over 70 different
strains and, when aerosolized, is capable of spreading over 170 miles from its source.23 According to
both U.S. and New Zealand experts, intentional terrorist and/or criminal introduction of FMD
represents the most likely source of agroterrorism over the next 20 years .24 FMD can be transmitted
intentionally or naturally through direct or indirect contact with infected animals, spread through the
air from infected animals, contaminated cattle feed, or artificial insemination.25 If intentionally
introduced in only one U.S. state, FMD could reach twenty three states within five days. The ensuing
government action could be as severe as destroying an estimated 23 million animals. Response
operations, including the treatment and disposal of animals, could require up to 700,000 people .26
Organizational issues aside, the economic consequences of such an attack would be enormous. The
estimated cost of an FMD attack in California alone for the first few weeks is between $6 and $13
billion.
27>

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**Environment**
Environmental Decay Risks Collapse Of Civilization

Dernbach 98 (John C. Associate Professor, Law, Widener University, Sustainable

Development as a Framework for National Governance, CASE WESTERN RESERVE
UNIVERSITY LAW REVIEW v. 49, Fall 1998, p. 16.)
The global scale and severity of environmental degradation and poverty are unprecedented in human history. Major adverse
consequences are not inevitable, but they are likely if these problems are not addressed. Many civilizations collapsed or
were severely weakened because they exhausted or degraded the natural resource base on which they
depended. n76 In addition, substantial economic and social inequalities have caused or contributed to many wars and revolutions. n77 These problems are intensified by the
speed at which they have occurred and are worsening, making it difficult for natural systems to adapt. The complexity of natural and human systems also means that the effects of
these problems are difficult to anticipate. The potential impact of global warming on the transmission of tropical diseases in a time of substantial international travel and commerce is
but one example.

Biodiversity loss guarantees multiple scenarios for extincton, including nuclear war
Takacs, Environmental Humanities Prof @ CSU Monteray Bay, 1996 (David, The Idea of
Biodiversity: Philosophies of Paradise pg. 200-201)
biodiversity keeps the world running. It has value and of itself, as well as for us. Raven, Erwin, and Wilson oblige us to think about the value of biodiversity
by eliminating rivets, we play Russian roulette with global
ecology and human futures: It is likely that destruction of the rich complex of species in the Amazon basin could trigger rapid changes in global climate patterns.
Agriculture remains heavily dependent on stable climate, and human beings remain heavily dependent on food. By the end of the century the extinction of perhaps a million
species in the Amazon basin could have entrained famines in which a billion human beings perished. And if our species is very
unlucky, the famines could lead to a thermonuclear war, which could extinguish civilization . 13 Elsewhere Ehrlich uses different
particulars with no less drama: What then will happen if the current decimation of organic diversity continues? Crop yields will be
more difficult to maintain in the face of climatic change, soil erosion, loss of dependable water supplies, decline of
pollinators, and ever more serious assaults by pests. Conversion of productive land to wasteland will
accelerate; deserts will continue their seemingly inexorable expansion. Air pollution will increase, and local
climates will become harsher. Humanity will have to forgo many of the direct economic benefits it might have
withdrawn from Earth's wellstocked genetic library. It might, for example, miss out on a cure for cancer; but that will make little difference. As ecosystem
services falter, mortality from respiratory and epidemic disease, natural disasters, and especially famine will
lower life expectancies to the point where cancer (largely a disease of the elderly) will be unimportant. Humanity will
bring upon itself consequences depressingly similar to those expected from a nuclear winter. Barring a nuclear conflict, it appears that
civilization will disappear some time before the end of the next century - not with a bang but a whimper.14
So

for our own lives. The Ehrlichs rivet-popper trope makes this same point;

Biodiversity is key to preventing extinction

Madgoluis 96
(Richard Margoluis, Biodiversity Support Program, 1996, http://www.bsponline.org/publications/showhtml.php3?10)

Biodiversity not only provides direct benefits like food, medicine, and energy; it also affords us a
"life support system." Biodiversity is required for the recycling of essential elements, such as carbon,
oxygen, and nitrogen. It is also responsible for mitigating pollution, protecting watersheds, and
combating soil erosion. Because biodiversity acts as a buffer against excessive variations in weather and climate, it
protects us from catastrophic events beyond human control. The importance of biodiversity to a healthy
environment has become increasingly clear. We have learned that the future well-being of all
humanity depends on our stewardship of the Earth. When we overexploit living resources, we threaten our
own survival.
Biodiversity loss outweighs all impacts
Tobin 90
(Richard Tobin, THE EXPENDABLE FUTURE, 1990, p. 22 )

Norman Meyers observes, no other form of environmental degradation is anywhere so significant as the
fallout of species. Harvard biologist Edward O. Wilson is less modest in assessing the relative
consequences of human-caused extinctions. To Wilson, the worst thing that will happen to earth is not

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economic collapse, the depletion of energy supplies, or even nuclear war. As frightful as these events might
be, Wilson reasons that they can be repaired within a few generations. The one process ongoingthat will
take millions of years to correct is the loss of genetic and species diversity by destruction of natural habitats.
Ecodestruction increases disease
Worldwatch Institute, 96 (Infectious Diseases Surge: Environmental Destruction, Poverty To Blame
http://www.worldwatch.org/node/1593)
Rates of infectious disease have risen rapidly in many countries during the past decade, according to a new study released
by the Worldwatch Institute. Illness and death from tuberculosis, malaria, dengue fever, and AIDS are up sharply; infectious
diseases killed 16.5 million people in 1993, one-third of all deaths worldwide, and slightly more than cancer and heart
disease combined. The resurgence of diseases once thought to have been conquered stems from a deadly mix of exploding
populations, rampant poverty, inadequate health care, misuse of antibiotics, and severe environmental degradation, says the
new report, Infecting Ourselves: How Environmental and Social Disruptions Trigger Disease. Infectious diseases take their
greatest toll in developing countries, where cases of malaria and tuberculosis are soaring, but even in the United States,
infectious disease deaths rose 58 percent between 1980 and 1992. Research Associate Anne Platt, author of the report, says,
"Infectious diseases are a basic barometer of the environmental sustainability of human activity. Recent outbreaks result
from a sharp imbalance between a human population growing by 88 million each year and a natural resource base that is
under increasing stress." "Water pollution, shrinking forests, and rising temperatures are driving the upward surge in
infections in many countries," the report says. "Only by adopting a more sustainable path to economic development can we
control them." "Beyond the number of people who die, the social and economic cost of infectious diseases is hard to
overestimate," Platt says. "It can be a crushing burden for families, communities, and governments. Some 400 million
people suffer from debilitating malaria, about 200 million have schistosomiasis, and nine million have tuberculosis." By the
year 2000, AIDS will cost Asian countries over $50 billion a year just in lost productivity. "Such suffering and economic
loss is doubly tragic," says Platt, "because the cost of these diseases is astronomical, yet preventing them is not only simple,
but inexpensive." The author notes, "The dramatic resurgence of infectious diseases is telling us that we are approaching
disease and medicine, as well as economic development, in the wrong way. Governments focus narrowly on individual
cures and not on mass prevention; and we fail to understand that lifestyle can promote infectious disease just as it can
contribute to heart disease. It is imperative that we bring health considerations into the equation when we plan for
international development, global trade, and population increases, to prevent disease from spreading and further
undermining economic development." The report notes that this global resurgence of infectious disease involves old,
familiar diseases like tuberculosis and the plague as well as new ones like Ebola and Lyme disease. Yet all show the often
tragic consequences of human actions: Population increases, leading to human crowding, poverty, and the growth of megacities, are prompting dramatic increases in dengue fever, tuberculosis, and HIV/AIDS. Lack of clean water is spreading
diseases like cholera, typhoid, and dysentery. Eighty percent of all disease in developing countries is related to unsafe
drinking water and poor sanitation. Poorly planned development disrupts ecosystems and provides breeding grounds for
mosquitoes, rodents, and snails that spread debilitating diseases. Inadequate vaccinations have led to resurgences in measles
and diphtheria. Misuse of antibiotics has created drug-resistant strains of pneumonia and malaria.

Environmental collapse threatens health and civilization collapse

WHO, 5 (Ecosystems and Human Well-being: Health Synthesis http://www.who.int/globalchange/ecosys
tems/ecosysq1.pdf)
In a fundamental sense, ecosystems are the planet's life-support systems - for the human species and all other forms of life
(see Figure 1.1). The needs of the human organism for food, water, clean air, shelter and relative climatic constancy are
basic and unalterable. That is, ecosystems are essential to human well-being and especially to human health defined by
the World Health Organization as a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being. Those who live in materially
comfortable, urban environments commonly take for granted ecosystem services to health. They assume that good health
derives from prudent consumer choices and behaviours, with access to good health care services. But this ignores the role
of the natural environment: of the array of ecosystems that allow people to enjoy good health, social organization,
economic activity, a built environment and life itself. Historically, overexploitation of ecosystem services has led to the
collapse of some societies (SG3). There is an observable tendency for powerful and wealthy societies eventually to
overexploit, damage and even destroy their natural environmental support base. The agricultural-based civilizations of
Mesopotamia, the Indus Valley, the Mayans, and (on a micro-scale) Easter Island all provide well documented examples.
Industrial societies, although in many cases more distant from the source of the ecosystem services on which they depend,
may reach similar limits. Resource consumption in one location can lead to degradation of ecosystem services and

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associated health effects in other parts of the world (SG3). At its most fundamental level of analysis, the pressure on
ecosystems can be conceptualized as a function of population, technology and lifestyle. In turn, these factors depend on
many social and cultural elements. For example, fertilizer use in agricultural production increasingly is dependent on
resources extracted from other regions and has led to eutrophication of rivers, lakes and coastal ecosystems.
Notwithstanding ecosystems' fundamental role as determinants of human health, sociocultural factors play a similarly
important role. These include infrastructural assets; income and wealth distribution; technologies used; and level of
knowledge. In many industrialized countries, changes in these social factors over the last few centuries have both enhanced
some ecosystem services (through more productive agriculture, for instance) and improved health services and education,
contributing to increases in life expectancy. The complex multifactorial causation of states of health and disease
complicates the attribution of human health impacts to ecosystem changes. A precautionary approach to ecosystem
management is appropriate.

Environmental destruction causes new diseases

WHO, 5 (Ecosystems and Human Well-being: Health Synthesis http://www.who.int/globalchange/ecosys
tems/ecosysq1.pdf)
Disturbance or degradation of ecosystems can have biological effects that are highly relevant to infectious disease
transmission (C14). The reasons for the emergence or re-emergence of some diseases are unknown, but the following
mechanisms have been proposed: altered habitat leading to changes in the number of vector breeding sites or reservoir
host distribution; niche invasions or transfer of interspecies hosts; biodiversity change (including loss of predator species
and changes in host population density); human-induced genetic changes in disease vectors or pathogens (such as
mosquito resistance to pesticides or the emergence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria); and environmental contamination by
infectious disease agents (such as faecal contamination of source waters).

Environmental degradation increases war, instability, and hurts the economy

UN, 4 (United Nations News Center, Environmental destruction during war exacerbates instability November 5, 2004,
http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=12460&Cr=conflict&Cr1=environment,
"These scars, threatening water supplies, the fertility of the land and the cleanliness of the air are recipes for instability
between communities and neighbouring countries," he added.
Citing a new UNEP report produced in collaboration with the UN Development Programme (UNDP) and the Organisation
for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), Mr. Toepfer stressed that environmental degradation could undermine
local and international security by "reinforcing and increasing grievances within and between societies."
The study finds that a decrepit and declining environment can depress economic activity and diminish the authority of the
state in the eyes of its citizens. It also points out that the addressing environmental problems can foster trust among
communities and neighbouring countries.

Environmental degradation destroys cropland

Homer-Dixon, 91 (Thomas- Professor of Political Science and Director of the Peace and Conflict Studies Program at the
University of Toronto, International Security On The Threshold: Environmental Changes as Causes of Acute Conflict 199,
http://www.library.utoronto.ca/pcs/thresh/thresh2.htm)
Decreased agricultural production is often mentioned as potentially the most worrisome consequence of environmental
change,47 and Figure 2 presents some of the causal scenarios frequently proposed by researchers. This illustration is not
intended to be exhaustive: the systemic interaction of environmental and agricultural variables is far more complex than the
figure suggests.48 Moreover, no one region or country will exhibit all the indicated processes: while some are already
clearly evident in certain areas, others are not yet visible anywhere.
The Philippines provides a good illustration of deforestation's impact, which can be traced out in the figure. Since the
Second World War, logging and the encroachment of farms have reduced the virgin and second-growth forest from about
sixteen million hectares to 6.8-7.6 million hectares.49 Across the archipelago, logging and land-clearing have accelerated
erosion, changed regional hydrological cycles and precipitation patterns, and decreased the land's ability to retain water
during rainy periods. The resulting flash floods have damaged irrigation works while plugging reservoirs and irrigation
channels with silt. These factors may seriously affect crop production. For example, when the government of the
Philippines and the European Economic Community commissioned an Integrated Environmental Plan for the still relatively
unspoiled island of Palawan, the authors of the study found that only about half of the 36,000 hectares of irrigated farmland
projected within the Plan for 2007 will actually be irrigable because of the hydrological effects of decreases in forest
cover.50

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Figure 2 also highlights the importance of the degradation and decreasing availability of good agricultural land, problems
that deserve much closer attention than they usually receive. Currently, total global cropland amounts to about 1.5 billion
hectares. Optimistic estimates of total arable land on the planet, which includes both current and potential cropland, range
from 3.2 to 3.4 billion hectares, but nearly all the best land has already been exploited. What is left is either less fertile, not
sufficiently rainfed or easily irrigable, infested with pests, or harder to clear and work. 51
For developing countries during the 1980s, cropland grew at just 0.26 percent a year, less than half the rate of the 1970s.
More importantly, in these countries arable land per capita dropped by 1.9 percent a year. 52 In the absence of a major
increase in arable land in developing countries, experts expect that the world average of 0.28 hectares of cropland per
capita will decline to 0.17 hectares by the year 2025, given the current rate of world population growth. 53 Large tracts
are being lost each year to urban encroachment, erosion, nutrient depletion, salinization, waterlogging, acidification, and
compacting. The geographer Vaclav Smil, who is generally very conservative in his assessments of environmental
damage, estimates that two to three million hectares of cropland are lost annually to erosion; perhaps twice as much
land goes to urbanization, and at least one million hectares are abandoned because of excessive salinity. In addition,
about one-fifth of the world's cropland is suffering from some degree of desertification. 54 Taken together, he concludes,
the planet will lose about 100 million hectares of arable land between 1985 and 2000.55
Biodiversity environment is on the brink; if we destroy it anymore we risk extinction:
Brown, 06 Professor of Physiology at West Virginia University 2006 (Paul Brown PhD Notes from a Dying Planet 20042006: One Scientists Search for Solutions p. 4)
Before we came along, species evolved and went extinct for billions of years, creating and filling a diversity of ecological niches.
Organisms used energy from the sun to grow and reproduce, recycling the materials needed for life through an interdependent
worldwide ecosystem. Mechanisms existed to maintain ecological stability ensuring that the environment didn't change too fast for
evolution to keep up. Our biosphere recovered from calamitous events like asteroid collisions, even though only a minority of
species made it through some of those catastrophes. Today's ongoing catastrophe may eliminate all but the smallest and simplest of
life forms. Our species has flourished, but without realizing it, we've changed our environment too fast for other species to adapt.
A system's stability can only be eroded so far, after which it becomes unstable. We're approaching a point where the world's
ecosystem will change too fast even for us to adapt. We will become extinct. It's already too late for us to return to the world as we
found it or even as it was ten years ago. We've wiped out too many species. However, we can protect the remaining fragile
stability. In a word, we must seek sustainability, which means consuming resources only as fast as they're replenished. All the
trends on our graph have to be reversed, until they're all back to pre-industrial levels or lower. This doesn't mean returning to a preindustrial quality of life-in fact; we should all be able to live much better once there are fewer of us. But we have to take effective
action very soon, before it's too late
We are on the brink- we have stretched all of the earths resources to the end
Brown, 06- Earth Policy Institute- July 3rd 2006 (Lester, Plan B 2.0, "Rescuing a Planet Under Stress", 2006, p.1,
http://www.energybulletin.net/l7779.htmI)
Our global economy is outgrowing the capacity of the earth to support it, pushing our early twenty-first century civilization ever
closer to decline and possible collapse. In our preoccupation with quarterly earnings reports and year-to-year economic growth, we
have lost sight of how large the human enterprise has become relative to the earth's resources. A century ago, annual growth in the
world economy was measured in billions of dollars. Today it is measured in trillions. As a result, we are consuming renewable
resources faster than they can regenerate. Forests are shrinking, grasslands are deteriorating, water tables are falling, fisheries are
collapsing, and soils are eroding. We are using up oil at a pace that leaves little time to plan beyond peak oil, or the period during
which demand for oil far exceeds all available supply. And we are discharging greenhouse gases into the atmosphere faster than
nature can absorb them, setting the stage for a rise in the earth's temperature well above any since agriculture began.

Environmental Degradation causes extinction

Suurkla Chairman of Physicians and Scientists 6, (Jaan, M.D., for Responsible Application of Science
and Technology (PSRAST), World-wide cooperation required to prevent global crisis; Part one the
problem, Physicians and Scientists for Responsible Application of Science and Technology, 6/24,
http://www.globalissues.org/article/171/loss-of-biodiversity-and-extinctions)
The world environmental situation is likely to be further aggravated by the increasingly rapid, large scale global extinction
of species. It occurred in the 20th century at a rate that was a thousand times higher than the average rate during the preceding 65 million years. This is likely to
destabilize various ecosystems including agricultural systems. In a slow extinction, various balancing mechanisms can
develop. No one knows what will be the result of this extremely rapid extinction rate. What is known, for sure, is that the world ecological system has
been kept in balance through a very complex and multifacetted interaction between a huge number of species. This
rapid extinction is therefore likely to precitate collapses of ecolosystems at a global scale . This is predicted to create

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large-scale agricultural problems, threatening food supplies to hundreds of millions of people. This ecological prediction does not
take into consideration the effects of global warming which will further aggravate the situation. Industrialized fishing has contributed importantly to mass extinction due to
repeatedly failed attempts at limiting the fishing. A new global study concludes that 90 percent of all large fishes have disappeared from the worlds oceans in the past half
century, the devastating result of industrial fishing. The study, which took 10 years to complete and was published in the international journal Nature, paints a grim picture
of the Earths current populations of such species as sharks, swordfish, tuna and marlin. The loss of predatory fishes is likely to cause multiple complex imbalances in
marine ecology. Another cause for extensive fish extinction is the destruction of coral reefs. This is caused by a combination of causes, including warming of oceans,
damage from fishing tools and a harmful infection of coral organisms promoted by ocean pollution. It will take hundreds of thousands of years to restore what is now being
destroyed in a few decades. According

to the most comprehensive study done so far in this field, over a million species will be
lost in the coming 50 years. The most important cause was found to be climate change

Biodiversity loss risks extinction even minor losses trigger the impact
Danovaro 8 [Professor Roberto Danovaro, Scitizen.Com, February 12, 2008. Deep-Sea Biodiversity Conservation
Needed to Avoid Ecosystem Collapse. http://scitizen.com/stories/Biodiversity/2008/02/Deep-Sea-BiodiversityConservation-Needed-to-Avoid-Ecosystem-Collapse/]
The exploration of the abysses of our planet is one of the last frontiers of ecological research . The dark portion of the biosphere likely
hosts millions of undiscovered-yet new species. A global scale study conducted on biodiversity collected down to 8000 m depth
reveals for the first time that small invertebrates (including worms and crustacea) play a key role in sustaining the overall functioning of
these ecosystems. This study concludes that even a minor loss of biodiversity can cause a major impact on the functioning
of the global biosphere. In the future, we should start protecting not only large flag species, but also the almost invisible and sometime
monstrous creatures that inhabit the abyss and the ocean interior. Hard to believe, but so far we dedicated more efforts on the exploration of the
Moon or on searching the life on Mars than on exploring the deep interior of our oceans. The total amount of seafloor recovered from depths higher
than 4 km (which is the average depth of the oceans) is equivalent to less than the surface of a football pitch. Till few decades ago, we believed that
deep-sea habitats were the equivalent of the terrestrial deserts, devoid of life. But recently we accumulated evidence that the dark side of the

biosphere is plenty of life and characterized by an enormous number of species. Despite the deep-sea ecosystems
are apparently far from us and difficult to reach and investigate there is an increasing evidence that they are
susceptible to the direct and indirect impact of human activities . At the same time they help sustaining human life by
providing essential goods and services (including food, biomass, bioactive molecules, oil, gas, minerals) and contribute to climate
regulation, nutrient regeneration and supply to the upper ocean. The oxygen produced in the upper ocean , for instance, is
about half of the total oxygen produced on Earth and largely depends on the availability of the nutrients regenerated in
the deep-sea floor. Therefore, for their profound involvement in global biogeochemical and ecological processes deep
seas are essential for the air, water and food we consume and consequently crucial for the sustainable functioning of
our biosphere and for human wellbeing. Deep-sea ecosystems are becoming a target for industries for exploiting the huge natural
resources (trawling, drilling, dumping, oil, gas and mineral extraction) and are already being threatened by other pollution sources. These
impacts might have important consequences on these highly vulnerable ecosystems determining biodiversity losses . A
study published on January 8th on Current Biology, a prestigious publication of Cell Press, provides for the first time evidence that the functioning of
the deep-sea ecosystems depends on the richness of species living there. The researchers of a joint team collaborating within the frame of the
project Hermes (Hotspot ecosystems along European Margins) and to the EU network of excellence MARBEF, found that the health and

functioning of the deep-sea ecosystems are not only linked to biodiversity, but also increase exponentially with the
increase of the diversity of species living there. In this study, it was found that sites with a higher diversity of species support
exponentially higher rates of ecosystem processes and an increased efficiency with which those processes are performed. Overall, these results
suggest that a higher biodiversity can enhance the ability of deep-sea benthic systems to perform the key biological and
biogeochemical processes that are crucial for their sustainable functioning . This finding, which has no equivalents on terrestrial
ecosystems, has an important consequence: the loss of deep-sea species poses a severe threat to the future of the ocean s. In
fact, a biodiversity loss by 20-25% is expected to reduce drastically (by 50%) the functions of these ecosystems, whilst a species loss by 50% could
lead to ecosystem collapse. The exponential increase in ecosystem function as species numbers rise indicates that
individual species in the deep sea make way for more species, and facilitate each other life . Facilitation among species
could be therefore the most efficient strategy to increase the ecological performance of the communities. Deep seas are the largest
ecosystem on Earth, covering approximately 65% of the total surface. As such it is possible to conclude that facilitation could be the
most common typology of interactions among life forms. There are several possible applications of this finding to other systems, and
even to human societies, as facilitation could be the most convenient interaction for the overall wellbeing of the ecosystems
and humans. Overall the results of this study indicate that we need to preserve biodiversity, and especially deep-sea
biodiversity, because otherwise the negative consequences could be unprecedente d. In particular we must care also about
species that are far from us and [essentially] invisible. To do this we must preserve deep-sea habitats of these life forms. An

immediate policy action can be crucial for the sustainability of the functions of the largest ecosystems on the planet.

Biodiversity is critical to prevent extinction

Margoluis director of the Analysis Management Program of the Biodiversity 96 (Richard, Biodiversity
Support Program, 1996, http://www.bsponline.org/publications/showhtml.php3?10)

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Biodiversity not only provides direct benefits like food, medicine, and energy; it also affords us a "life support system."
Biodiversity is required for the recycling of essential elements, such as carbon, oxygen, and nitrogen. It is also
responsible for mitigating pollution, protecting watersheds, and combating soil erosion. Because biodiversity acts as a
buffer against excessive variations in weather and climate, it protects us from catastrophic events beyond human
control. The importance of biodiversity to a healthy environment has become increasingly clear. We have learned that
the future well-being of all humanity depends on our stewardship of the Earth. When we overexploit living resources,
we threaten our own survival.

Loss of biodiversity leads to extinction GDS

Diner, Major, 94
(Major David N.; Instructor, Administrative and Civil Law Division, The Judge Advocate General's
School, United States Army) "The Army and the Endangered Species Act: Who's Endangering
Whom?" 143 Mil. L. Rev. 161l/n WBW
Biologically diverse ecosystems are characterized by a large number of specialist species, filling narrow ecological
niches. These ecosystems inherently are more stable than less diverse systems. "The more complex the ecosystem,
the more successfully it can resist a stress. . . . [l]ike a net, in which each knot is connected to others by several
strands, such a fabric can resist collapse better than a simple, unbranched circle of threads -- which if cut anywhere
breaks down as a whole." 79 By causing widespread extinctions, humans have artificially simplified many ecosystems.
As biologic simplicity increases, so does the risk of ecosystem failure. The spreading Sahara Desert in Africa, and the
dustbowl conditions of the 1930s in the United States are relatively mild examples of what might be expected if this
trend continues. Theoretically, each new animal or plant extinction, with all its dimly perceived and intertwined affects,
could cause total ecosystem collapse and human extinction. Each new extinction increases the risk of disaster. Like a
mechanic removing, one by one, the rivets from an aircraft's wings, 80 mankind may be edging closer to the abyss.

Loss of ecosystems outweighs all other impacts because it is irreversible

William Weeks, of the Nature Conservancy, 1991 [/May, Subcommittee on Fisheries and Wildlife
Conservation
In fact, when compared to all other environmental problems, human caused extinctions are likely to be of far greater
concern. Extinction is the permanent destruction of unique life forms and the only irreversible ecological change that
humans can cause. No matter what the effort or sincerity of intentions, extinct species can never be replaced. From
the standpoint of permanent despoliation of the planet, Norman Meyers observes, no other form of environmental
degradation is anywhere so significant as the fallout of species. Harvard biologist Edward O. Wilson is less modest
in assessing the relative consequences of human-caused extinctions. To Wilson, the worst thing that will happen to
earth is not economic collapse, the depletion of energy supplies or even nuclear war. As frightful as these events
might be, Wilson reasons that they can be repaired within a few generations. The one process ongoing that will take
millions of years to correct is the loss of genetic and species diversity by destruction of natural habitats.

Biodiversity loss solves earth-life (DDW)

Tonn, Urban Planning Prof @ Tennessee, 07 (Bruce E. Tonn, Futures v. 39, no. 9, Futures Sustainability,
ln)
The first principle is the most important because earth-life is needed to support earth-life. Ecosystems are composed of
countless species that are mutually dependent upon each other for nutrients directly as food or as by-products of earthlife (e.g., as carbon dioxide and oxygen). If the biodiversity of an ecosystem is substantially compromised, then the entire
system could collapse due to destructive negative nutrient cycle feedback effects. If enough ecosystems collapse worldwide,
then the cascading impact on global nutrient cycles could lead to catastrophic species extinction. Thus, to ensure the
survival of earth-life into the distant future the earth's biodiversity must be protected.

Ocean biodiversity is key life on earth

Physorg.com 7 [December 27th, 2007, Deep-sea species' loss could lead to oceans' collapse, study suggests,
http://www.physorg.com/news117980575.html]
The loss of deep-sea species poses a severe threat to the future of the oceans, suggests a new report publishing early online on
December 27th and in the January 8th issue of Current Biology, a publication of Cell Press. In a global-scale study, the researchers found
some of the first evidence that the health of the deep sea, as measured by the rate of critical ecosystem processes,

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increases exponentially with the diversity of species living there. For the first time, we have demonstrated that deepsea ecosystem functioning is closely dependent upon the number of species inhabiting the ocean floor , said Roberto
Danovaro of the Polytechnic University of Marche, in Italy. This shows that we need to preserve biodiversity, and especially deep-sea
biodiversity, because otherwise the negative consequences could be unprecedented . We must care about species that are far
from us and [essentially] invisible. Ecosystem functioning involves several processes, which can be summarized as the production, consumption,
and transfer of organic matter to higher levels of the food chain, the decomposition of organic matter, and the regeneration of nutrients, he
explained. Recent investigations on land have suggested that biodiversity loss might impair the functioning and sustainability of
ecosystems, Danovaro said. However, the data needed to evaluate the consequences of biodiversity loss on the ocean floor had been
completely lacking, despite the fact that the deep sea covers 65% of the Earth and is by far the most important ecosystem for

the cycling of carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus of the biosphere. The deep sea also supports the largest biomass
of living things, including a large proportion of undiscovered species . In the new study, Danovaros team examined the biodiversity
of nematode worms and several independent indicators of ecosystem functioning and efficiency at 116 deep-sea sites. Nematodes are the most
abundant animals on earth and account for more than 90% of all life at the bottom of the sea. Earlier studies have also suggested that nematode
diversity is a good proxy for the diversity of other deep-sea species. They found that sites with a higher diversity of nematodes support exponentially
higher rates of ecosystem processes and an increased efficiency with which those processes are performed. Efficiency reflects the ability of
an ecosystem to exploit the available energy in the form of food sources, the researchers said. Overall, they added, our results
suggest that a higher biodiversity can enhance the ability of deep-sea benthic systems to perform the key biological and
biogeochemical processes that are crucial for their sustainable functioning . The sharp increase in ecosystem functioning as
species numbers rise further suggests that individual species in the deep sea make way for more species or facilitate one
another, Danovaro said. Thats in contrast to terrestrial-system findings, which have generally shown a linear relationship between diversity and
ecosystem functioning, he noted, suggesting complementary relationships among species. Deep-sea ecosystems provide goods
(including biomass, bioactive molecules, oil, gas, and minerals) and services (climate regulation, nutrient regeneration and supply to the [upper
ocean], and food) and, for their profound involvement in global biogeochemical and ecological processes, are essential for
the sustainable functioning of our biosphere and for human wellbein g, the researchers concluded. Our results suggest that the
conservation of deep-sea biodiversity can be crucial for the sustainability of the functions of the largest ecosystem on

the planet.

Loss of biodiversity and ocean ecosystems collapses the economy and results in extinction
Heinberg 8 [Richard Heinberg, Post Carbon Institute, Nov 25 2008Top of the Food Chain,
http://www.postcarbon.org/top_food_chain]
http://www.eoearth.org/article/Food_webToday comes the startling news of a British government report showing a drop
in oceanic zooplankton of 73 percent since 1960. For many people, this may seem relatively inconsequential as
compared to daily cataclysmic revelations about the state of the national and global economy. This reaction is
understandable: we care first and foremost about our own immediate survival prospects, and a new and greater
Depression will mean millions losing their homes, millions more their jobs. It's nothing to look forward to. It takes some
scientific literacy to appreciate the implications of the catastrophic loss of microscopic sea animals. We need to
understand that these are food for crustaceans and fish, which are food for sea birds and mammals. We need to
appreciate the importance of the oceanic food web in the planetary biosphere. At the top of the global food chain sits a
species that we really do care aboutHomo sapiens. The ongoing disappearance of zooplankton, amphibians,
butterflies, and bees is tied directly or indirectly to the continuing growth of our own speciesboth in population (there
are nearly seven billion of us large-bodied omnivores, more than any other mammal) and in consumptive voracity
(water, food, minerals, energy, forestsyou name it). It's at this point in the discussion that some of us start feeling
guilty for being human, and others of us tune the conversation out because there's apparently not much we can do to
fundamentally change the demographic and economic growth trends our species has been pursuing for hundreds, if
not thousands of years. But the current economic Armageddon (that we care about) is related to human-induced
biodiversity loss (that many of us don't notice) in systemic ways. Both result from pyramid schemes: borrowing and
leveraging money on one hand; on the other, using temporary fossil energy to capture ever more biosphere services
so as to grow human population and consumption to unsustainable levels. Our economic pyramid is built out of great
hewn blocks of renewable and non-renewable resources that are being made unavailable to other organisms as well
as to future generations of humans. The financial meltdown tells us these trends can't go on forever. How the mighty
have fallen!Masters of the Universe reduced to begging for billion-dollar handouts in front of a television audience.
Next will come a human demographic collapse (resulting from the economic crisis, with poor folks unable to afford food
or shelter), as mortality begins to exceed fertility. In all of this it's important to remember that the species on the lower
levels of the biodiversity pyramid have been paying the price for our exuberance all along. The pyramid appears to
collapse from the top, while in fact its base has been crumbling for some time.

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Species loss causes cascading extinctions that destroy the biological

underpinnings for survival
Wooldridge 09, Frosty. Guest lecturer at Cornell University, bicycled around the world. Our troubled country; species
extinction March 16 2009 http://www.examiner.com/x-3515-Denver-Political-Issues-Examiner~y2009m3d16-Ourtroubled-country-species-extinction
What might be the optimum number of extinct species that would fall short of the cascading effect? At what point
would we supersede the cascading effect to create an avalanche of even more extinctions of other creatures that
depended on the web of life? At what point would that affect human survival as in the case of the pollinators? As you
can see, we already create horrific consequences in the natural world with our current 306 million Americans. Its not
only here in the USA, but worldwide! As you will read in Chapter 18: Destroying our Oceans, PBS showed hundreds
of thousands of tons of discarded fishing nets retrieved by Scuba divers. The nets had been destroying reefs and
marine life because nothing in nature could deal with the nylon. It rolled around the ocean bottom, washed by eternal
tides, while it destroyed millions of marine creatures caught in its indolent grasp. Fishing captains cut it loose
knowing the kind of death their nets created for all marine life victimized by those man-made products. On a worldwide
scale, we kill 100 million sharks annually along with uncounted other creatures. How morally unconscionable and
utterly reprehensible! Lets fast-forward to 2035 with another 100 million people added to North America. Remember,
the human race globally will have added two billion more humans by that time. Their impact can only multiply our
global impact for devastating species extinction unprecedented in history. In fact, scientists tell us that five extinction
sessions occurred since the dawn of time. The sixth one moves forward in this century. What causes it? The human
race!

Air pollution results in extinction. (DDW)

Driesen, Professor of Law, Syracuse, Buffalo Environmental Law Journal, 3 (David,, Fall,
2002 / Spring, 2003, p. LN)
Air pollution can make life unsustainable by harming the ecosystem upon which all life depends and harming the
health of both future and present generations. The Rio Declaration articulates six key principles that are relevant to air
pollution. These principles can also be understood as goals, because they describe a state of affairs [*27] that is worth
achieving. Agenda 21, in turn, states a program of action for realizing those goals. Between them, they aid
understanding of sustainable development's meaning for air quality. The first principle is that "human beings. . . are
entitled to a healthy and productive life in harmony with nature", because they are "at the center of concerns for
sustainable development." n3 While the Rio Declaration refers to human health, its reference to life "in harmony with
nature" also reflects a concern about the natural environment. n4 Since air pollution damages both human health and
the environment, air quality implicates both of these concerns.

Their sources exaggerate to secure funding

Dr Roche, whose PhD in agricultural science is from University College, Dublin, The Daily News (New Plymouth, New
Zealand), September 25, 2003
"The point is further highlighted when you look at the concern of people for the global environment. All countries
considered the global environment to be in a significantly worse state than either their national or local environment.
He identified three sources of our negative perception -- researchers, environmental organisations and the media." Dr
Roche said researchers were arguably the most important communicators of environmental pessimism because they
were generally people with academic credentials and therefore seen as credible. "We are always researching
negative aspects of the environment. After all, there is no point in researching something we know is OK. Therefore,
we only hear bad stories about the environment, never good. "However, research also contributes to our fear of global
demise in a much more sinister way. The constant need to attract scarce funding often forces researchers to release
preliminary data before it is full analysed, thereby giving a false impression of the size of the problem and it also
encourages scientists to release more scary scenarios than actually exist." Dr Roche said the environmental
movements themselves were also an outlet for the pessimistic environmental story. "Environmental organisations
are well funded and therefore have a vested interest in research results and resultant political decisions. In other
words, if research was to show there was no environmental problem, people funding the environmental organisations
would find some other way to spend their money. It is in their interest to 'offer up scary scenarios'." On the media's
role in negative perceptions, Dr Roche said everyone had heard the pessimistic stories -- the loss of rainforests and
other wildlife habitats, the rapid extinction of species, the depletion of natural resources, the benefits of organic food,
the increased incidence of cancer (often blamed on modern ways of producing food), global warming, famine, floods
and other major weather events on the increase).

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Biodiversity is critical to prevent extinction

Richard Margoluis, Biodiversity Support Program, 1996, http://www.bsponline.org/publications/showhtml.php3?10

Biodiversity not only provides direct benefits like food, medicine, and energy; it also affords us a "life support
system." Biodiversity is required for the recycling of essential elements, such as carbon, oxygen, and nitrogen. It is also
responsible for mitigating pollution, protecting watersheds, and combating soil erosion. Because biodiversity acts as a buffer against excessive variations in weather
and climate, it protects us from catastrophic events beyond human control . The importance of biodiversity to a healthy environment has

become increasingly clear. We have learned that the future well-being of all humanity depends on our stewardship of
the Earth. When we overexploit living resources, we threaten our own survival.

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**Disease**
Disease Extinction
Frank Ryan, M.D., 1997, Virus X, p. 366
How might the human race appear to such an aggressively emerging virus? That teeming, globally intrusive species, with its
transcontinental air travel, massively congested cities, sexual promiscuity, and in the less affluent regions where the virus is
most likely to first emerge a vulnerable lack of hygiene with regard to food and water supplies and hospitality to biting insects'
The virus is best seen, in John Hollands excellent analogy, as a swarm of competing mutations, with each individual strain
subjected to furious forces of natural selection for the strain, or strains, most likely to amplify and evolve in the new ecological
habitat.3 With such a promising new opportunity in the invaded species, natural selection must eventually come to dominate viral
behavior. In time the dynamics of infection will select for a more resistant human population. Such a coevolution takes rather
longer in "human" time too long, given the ease of spread within the global village. A rapidly lethal and quickly spreading virus
simply would not have time to switch from aggression to coevolution. And there lies the danger. Joshua Lederbergs prediction can
now be seen to be an altogether logical one. Pandemics are inevitable. Our incredibly rapid human evolution, our overwhelming
global needs, the advances of our complex industrial society, all have moved the natural goalposts. The advance of society, the
very science of change, has greatly augmented the potential for the emergence of a pandemic strain. It is hardly surprising that
Avrion Mitchison, scientific director of Deutsches Rheuma Forschungszentrum in Berlin, asks the question: "Will we survive! We
have invaded every biome on earth and we continue to destroy other species so very rapidly that one eminent scientist foresees the
day when no life exists on earth apart from the human monoculture and the small volume of species useful to it. An increasing
multitude of disturbed viral-host symbiotic cycles are provoked into self-protective counterattacks. This is a dangerous situation.
And we have seen in the previous chapter how ill-prepared the world is to cope with it. It begs the most frightening question of all:
could such a pandemic virus cause the extinction of the human species?
Future diseases risk extinction
Byline Kavita Daswani, South China Morning Post (Hong Kong), 1996, Leading the way to a cure for AIDS, Lexis
Despite the importance of the discovery of the "facilitating" cell, it is not what Dr Ben-Abraham wants to talk about. There is a
much more pressing medical crisis at hand - one he believes the world must be alerted to: the possibility of a virus deadlier than
HIV. If this makes Dr Ben-Abraham sound like a prophet of doom, then he makes no apology for it. AIDS, the Ebola outbreak
which killed more than 100 people in Africa last year, the flu epidemic that has now affected 200,000 in the former Soviet Union they are all, according to Dr Ben-Abraham, the "tip of the iceberg". Two decades of intensive study and research in the field of
virology have convinced him of one thing: in place of natural and man-made disasters or nuclear warfare, humanity could face
extinction because of a single virus, deadlier than HIV. "An airborne virus is a lively, complex and dangerous organism," he said.
"It can come from a rare animal or from anywhere and can mutate constantly. If there is no cure, it affects one person and then
there is a chain reaction and it is unstoppable. It is a tragedy waiting to happen." That may sound like a far-fetched plot for a
Hollywood film, but Dr Ben -Abraham said history has already proven his theory. Fifteen years ago, few could have predicted the
impact of AIDS on the world. Ebola has had sporadic outbreaks over the past 20 years and the only way the deadly virus - which
turns internal organs into liquid - could be contained was because it was killed before it had a chance to spread. Imagine, he says, if
it was closer to home: an outbreak of that scale in London, New York or Hong Kong. It could happen anytime in the next 20 years
- theoretically, it could happen tomorrow. The shock of the AIDS epidemic has prompted virus experts to admit "that something
new is indeed happening and that the threat of a deadly viral outbreak is imminent", said Joshua Lederberg of the Rockefeller
University in New York, at a recent conference. He added that the problem was "very serious and is getting worse". Dr BenAbraham said: "Nature isn't benign. The survival of the human species is not a preordained evolutionary programme. Abundant
sources of genetic variation exist for viruses to learn how to mutate and evade the immune system." He cites the 1968 Hong Kong
flu outbreak as an example of how viruses have outsmarted human intelligence. And as new "mega-cities" are being developed in
the Third World and rainforests are destroyed, disease-carrying animals and insects are forced into areas of human habitation.
"This raises the very real possibility that lethal, mysterious viruses would, for the first time, infect humanity at a large scale and
imperil the survival of the human race," he said.
Disease risks Extinction
Steinbruner, John D., Sr. Fellow, Brookings Institution, Biological Weapons: A Plague Upon All Houses, FOREIGN
POLICY n. 109, Winter 1997/1998, pp. 85-96,
It is a considerable comfort and undoubtedly a key to our survival that, so far, the main lines of defense against this threat
have not depended on explicit policies or organized efforts. In the long course of evolution, the human body has developed
physical barriers and a biochemical immune system whose sophistication and effectiveness exceed anything we could design
or as yet even fully understand. But evolution is a sword that cuts both ways: New diseases emerge, while old diseases mutate
and adapt. Throughout history, there have been epidemics during which human immunity has broken down on an epic scale.
An infectious agent believed to have been the plague bacterium killed an estimated 20 million people over a four-year period

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in the fourteenth century, including nearly one-quarter of Western Europe's population at the time. Since its recognized
appearance in 1981, some 20 variations of the HIV virus have infected an estimated 29.4 million worldwide, with 1.5 million
people currently dying of AIDS each year. Malaria, tuberculosis, and cholera - once thought to be under control - are now
making a comeback. As we enter the twenty-first century, changing conditions have enhanced the potential for widespread
contagion. The rapid growth rate of the total world population, the unprecedented freedom of movement across international
borders, and scientific advances that expand the capability for the deliberate manipulation of pathogens are all cause for
worry that the problem might be greater in the future than it has ever been in the past. The threat of infectious pathogens is
not just an issue of public health, but a fundamental security problem for the species as a whole.
Drug resistant diseases threaten human extinction
Discover Magazine, Corey Powell, Twenty Ways the World Could End, October 2000,
http://discovermagazine.com/2000/oct/featworld
If Earth doesn't do us in, our fellow organisms might be up to the task. Germs and people have always coexisted, but
occasionally the balance gets out of whack. The Black Plague killed one European in four during the 14th century; influenza
took at least 20 million lives between 1918 and 1919; the AIDS epidemic has produced a similar death toll and is still going
strong. From 1980 to 1992, reports the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, mortality from infectious disease in the
United States rose 58 percent. Old diseases such as cholera and measles have developed new resistance to antibiotics.
Intensive agriculture and land development is bringing humans closer to animal pathogens. International travel means
diseases can spread faster than ever. Michael Osterholm, an infectious disease expert who recently left the Minnesota
Department of Health, described the situation as "like trying to swim against the current of a raging river." The grimmest
possibility would be the emergence of a strain that spreads so fast we are caught off guard or that resists all chemical means
of control, perhaps as a result of our stirring of the ecological pot. About 12,000 years ago, a sudden wave of mammal
extinctions swept through the Americas. Ross MacPhee of the American Museum of Natural History argues the culprit was
extremely virulent disease, which humans helped transport as they migrated into the New World.
Diseases kill military readiness
Peterson, Susan, associate professor of Government at the College of William & Mary, Epidemic Disease and National Security,
Security Studies 12, no. 2 (winter 2002/3), http://people.wm.edu/~smpete/files/epidemic.pdf
Military readiness. Even when disease is not deliberately used, it can alter the evolution and outcome of military conflict by
eroding military readiness and morale. As Jared Diamond notes, .All those military histories glorifying great generals
oversimplify the ego-deflating truth: the winners of past wars were not always the armies with the best generals and weapons,
but were often merely those bearing the nastiest germs to transmit to their enemies..142 During the European conquest of the
Americas, the conquistadors shared numerous lethal microbes with their native American foes, who had few or no deadly
diseases to pass on to their conquerors. When Hernando Cortez and his men first attacked the Aztecs in Mexico in 1520, they
left behind smallpox that wiped out half the Aztec population. Surviving Aztecs were further demoralized by their vulnerability
to a disease that appeared harmless to the Europeans, and on their next attempt the Spanish succeeded in conquering the Aztec
nation.143 Spanish conquest of the Incan empire in South America followed a similar pattern: In 1532 Francisco Pizarro and
his army of 168 Spaniards defeated the Incan army of 80,000. A devastating smallpox epidemic had killed the Incan emperor
and his heir, producing a civil war that split the empire and allowed a handful of Europeans to defeat a large, but divided
enemy.144 In modern times, too, pandemic infections have affected the ability of military forces to prosecute and win a war.
The German Army chief of staff in the First World War, General Erick Von Ludendorf, blamed Germany.s loss of that war at
least partly on the negative effects of the 1918 influenza epidemic on the morale of German troops.145 In the Second World
War, similarly, malaria caused more U.S. casualties in certain areas than did military action.146 Throughout history, then, IDs
have had a significant potential to decimate armies and alter military history.
Pandemics kill military readiness
Hesko, Major Gerald, Air Command at Staff College, Pandemic Influenza: Military Operational Readiness Implications, 4/06
There exists in the world today the possibility of a great influenza pandemic matching those of the past century with the
potential to far exceed the pain, suffering and deaths of past pandemics. Although global pandemics are difficult to accurately
predict, scientists theorize that another pandemic on a scale of the deadly 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic is imminent. If a
pandemic influenza occurs, as predicted by many in the medical and scientific community, the number of Americans affected
could easily overwhelm our medical capability resulting in untold suffering and deaths. Although an influenza pandemic, if it
occurs, has the potential to devastate and threaten our society, an equally alarming consequence is the effects it could have on
the operational readiness of the United States military establishment. With our current engagements in Afghanistan and Iraq,
along with other smaller engagements world-wide, if an influenza pandemic were to strike the military, our level of operational
readiness, preparedness and ability to defend our vital national interests could be decreased or threaten. As a result of the

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pending threat of an influenza pandemic, the United States military, must take decisive actions to mitigate the potential
devastation an influenza pandemic might have on operational readiness.
Disease kills military readiness
Suburban Emergency Management Project, Disease Outbreak Readiness Update, U.S. Department of Defense
Biot Report #449: July 25, 2007, http://www.semp.us/publications/biot_reader.php?BiotID=449)
An infectious disease pandemic could impair the militarys readiness, jeopardize ongoing military operations abroad, and
threaten the day-to-day functioning of the Department of Defense (DOD) because of up to 40% of personnel reporting sick or
being absent during a pandemic, according to a recent GAO report (June 2007). Congressman Tom Davis, ranking member of
the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform in the U.S. House of Representatives, requested the GAO investigation.
(1) The 40% number (above) comes from the Homeland Security Councils estimate that 40% of the U.S. workforce might not
be at work due to illness, the need to care for family members who are sick, or fear of becoming infected. (2) DOD military
and civilian personnel and contractors would face a similar absentee rate, according to the GAO writers.
Disease increases the likelihood of war and genocide
Peterson, Susan, associate professor of Government at the College of William & Mary, Epidemic Disease and National Security,
Security Studies 12, no. 2 (winter 2002/3), http://people.wm.edu/~smpete/files/epidemic.pdf
How might these political and economic effects produce violent conflict? Price-Smith offers two possible answers: Disease
.magnif[ies].both relative and absolute deprivation and.hasten[s] the erosion of state capacity in seriously affected societies.
Thus, infectious disease may in fact contribute to societal destabilization and to chronic low-intensity intrastate violence, and in
extreme cases it may accelerate the processes that lead to state failure..83 Disease heightens competition among social groups
and elites for scarce resources. When the debilitating and deadly effects of IDs like AIDS are concentrated among a particular
socio-economic, ethnic, racial, or geographic group, the potential for conflict escalates. In many parts of Africa today, AIDS
strikes rural areas at higher rates than urban areas, or it hits certain provinces harder than others. If these trends persist in states
where tribes or ethnic groups are heavily concentrated in particular regions or in rural rather than urban areas, AIDS almost
certainly will interact with tribal, ethnic, or national differences and make political and military conflict more likely. PriceSmith argues, moreover, that .the potential for intra-elite violence is also increasingly probable and may carry grave political
consequences, such as coups, the collapse of governance, and planned genocides..84
Disease risks extinction
Toolis, Kevin, The Express, April 28, 2009, Pandemic Pandemonium, lexis
It destroyed the Roman Empire, wiped out most of the New World and killed millions in Europe. How disease - not just Mexico's
swine fever - has shaped the planet SCIENTISTS call it the Big Die Off, when a terrifying new virus rips through a species and
kills up to a third of the entire population. And we all now could be facing a new apocalypse, though no one yet knows how potent
the new strain of Mexican swine fever will be, or how many millions could die. Yet if history teaches us anything it tells us that the
greatest danger the human race faces is not some crackpot North Korean dictator but a six-gene virus that could wipe out one third
of the global population. Our real enemy, a new plague virus, is so small you can barely see it even with an advanced electron
microscope. It has no morality, no thought or no plan. All it wants to do is reproduce itself inside another human body. We are just
another biological opportunity, a nice warm place to feed and replicate. Viruses are as old as life itself. What is startling though is
how vulnerable our globalised societies are to the threat of a new deadly plague. Before World Health Organisation scientists
could identify this new H1N1 virus it had travelled halfway across the world via international flights.
Pandemic is inevitable and risks civilization. Evidence to the contrary is bull
New Scientist, major journal and winner of the Royal Statistical Society, Award for Statistical Excellence in Journalism,
April 5, 2008, "Will a pandemic bring down civilisation?"
http://www.newscientist.com/channel/being-human/mg19826501.400-will-a-pandemic-bring-down-civilisation.html
Will a pandemic bring down civilisation? FOR years we have been warned that a pandemic is coming. It could be flu, it could be
something else. We know that lots of people will die. As terrible as this will be, on an ever more crowded planet, you can't help
wondering whether the survivors might be better off in some ways. Wouldn't it be easier to rebuild modern society into something
more sustainable if, perish the thought, there were fewer of us. Yet would life ever return to something resembling normal after a
devastating pandemic? Virologists sometimes talk about their nightmare scenarios - a plague like ebola or smallpox - as
"civilisation ending". Surely they are exaggerating. Aren't they? Many people dismiss any talk of collapse as akin to the streetcorner prophet warning that the end is nigh. In the past couple of centuries, humanity has innovated its way past so many predicted
plagues, famines and wars - from Malthus to Dr Strangelove - that anyone who takes such ideas seriously tends to be labeled a
doom-monger. There is a widespread belief that our society has achieved a scale, complexity and level of innovation that make it

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immune from collapse. "It's an argument so ingrained both in our subconscious and in public discourse that it has assumed the
status of objective reality," writes biologist and geographer Jared Diamond of the University of California, Los Angeles, author of
the 2005 book Collapse. "We think we are different." Ever more vulnerable A growing number of researchers, however, are
coming to the conclusion that far from becoming ever more resilient, our society is becoming ever more vulnerable (see page 30).
In a severe pandemic, the disease might only be the start of our problems. No scientific study has looked at whether a pandemic
with a high mortality could cause social collapse - at least none that has been made public. The vast majority of plans for
weathering a pandemic all fail even to acknowledge that crucial systems might collapse, let alone take it into account. There have
been many pandemics before, of course. In 1348, the Black Death killed about a third of Europe's population. Its impact was huge,
but European civilisation did not collapse. After the Roman empire was hit by a plague with a similar death rate around AD 170,
however, the empire tipped into a downward spiral towards collapse. Why the difference? In a word: complexity. In the 14th
century, Europe was a feudal hierarchy in which more than 80 per cent of the population were peasant farmers. Each death
removed a food producer, but also a consumer, so there was little net effect. "In a hierarchy, no one is so vital that they can't be
easily replaced," says Yaneer Bar-Yam, head of the New England Complex Systems Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
"Monarchs died, but life went on." Individuals matter The Roman empire was also a hierarchy, but with a difference: it had a
huge urban population - not equalled in Europe until modern times - which depended on peasants for grain, taxes and soldiers.
"Population decline affected agriculture, which affected the empire's ability to pay for the military, which made the empire less
able to keep invaders out," says anthropologist and historian Joseph Tainter at Utah State University in Logan. "Invaders in turn
further weakened peasants and agriculture." A high-mortality pandemic could trigger a similar result now, Tainter says. "Fewer
consumers mean the economy would contract, meaning fewer jobs, meaning even fewer consumers. Loss of personnel in key
industries would hurt too." Bar-Yam thinks the loss of key people would be crucial. "Losing pieces indiscriminately from a highly
complex system is very dangerous," he says. "One of the most profound results of complex systems research is that when systems
are highly complex, individuals matter." One of the most profound results is that when systems are highly complex, individuals
matter The same conclusion has emerged from a completely different source: tabletop "simulations" in which political and
economic leaders work through what would happen as a hypothetical flu pandemic plays out. "One of the big 'Aha!' moments is
always when company leaders realise how much they need key people," says Paula Scalingi, who runs pandemic simulations for
the Pacific Northwest economic region of the US. "People are the critical infrastructure." Vital hubs Especially vital are "hubs" the people whose actions link all the rest. Take truck drivers. When a strike blocked petrol deliveries from the UK's oil refineries
for 10 days in 2000, nearly a third of motorists ran out of fuel, some train and bus services were cancelled, shops began to run out
of food, hospitals were reduced to running minimal services, hazardous waste piled up, and bodies went unburied. Afterwards, a
study by Alan McKinnon of Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, UK, predicted huge economic losses and a rapid deterioration in
living conditions if all road haulage in the UK shut down for just a week. What would happen in a pandemic when many truckers
are sick, dead or too scared to work? Even if a pandemic is relatively mild, many might have to stay home to care for sick family
or look after children whose schools are closed. Even a small impact on road haulage would quickly have severe knock-on effects.
One reason is just-in-time delivery. Over the past few decades, people who use or sell commodities from coal to aspirin have
stopped keeping large stocks, because to do so is expensive. They rely instead on frequent small deliveries. Cities typically have
only three days' worth of food, and the old saying about civilisations being just three or four meals away from anarchy is taken
seriously by security agencies such as MI5 in the UK. In the US, plans for dealing with a pandemic call for people to keep three
weeks' worth of food and water stockpiled. Some planners think everyone should have at least 10 weeks' worth. How long would
your stocks last if shops emptied and your water supply dried up? Even if everyone were willing, US officials warn that many
people might not be able to afford to stockpile enough food. Two-day supply Hospitals rely on daily deliveries of drugs, blood
and gases. "Hospital pandemic plans fixate on having enough ventilators," says public health specialist Michael Osterholm at the
University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, who has been calling for broader preparation for a pandemic. "But they'll run out of
oxygen to put through them first. No hospital has more than a two-day supply." Equally critical is chlorine for water purification
plants. Hospital pandemic plans fixate on having enough ventilators. But they'll run out of oxygen first It's not only absentee
truck drivers that could cripple the transport system; new drivers can be drafted in and trained fairly quickly, after all. Trucks need
fuel, too. What if staff at the refineries that produce it don't show up for work? "We think that if we can make people feel safe
about coming to work, we'll have about 25 per cent staff absences if we get a flu pandemic like the one in 1918," says Jon Lay,
head of global emergency preparedness for ExxonMobil. If that happens, then by postponing non-essential tasks, and making sure
crucial suppliers also hang tough, "we can maintain the supply of products that are critical to society". Some models, however,
suggest absenteeism sparked by a 1918-type pandemic could cut the workforce by half at the peak of a pandemic wave. "If we
have 50 per cent absences, it's a different story," says Lay, who says his company has not modelled the impact of absence on that
scale. And what if a pandemic is worse than 1918? Critical infrastructure All the companies that provide the critical infrastructure
of modern society - energy, transport, food, water, telecoms - face similar problems if key workers fail to turn up. According to US
industry sources, one electricity supplier in Texas is teaching its employees "virus avoidance techniques" in the hope that they will
then "experience a lower rate of flu onset and mortality" than the general population. The fact is that the best way for people to
avoid the virus will be to stay home. But if everyone does this - or if too many people try to stockpile supplies after a crisis begins
- the impact of even a relatively minor pandemic could quickly multiply. Planners for pandemics tend to overlook the fact that
modern societies are becoming ever more tightly connected, which means any disturbance can cascade rapidly through many
sectors. For instance, many businesses - including New Scientist's parent company - have contingency plans that count on some
people working online from home. Models show there won't be enough bandwidth to meet demand, says Scalingi. And what if the

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power goes off? This is where the complex interdependencies could prove disastrous. Refineries make diesel fuel not only for
trucks but also for the trains that deliver coal to electricity generators, which now usually have only 20 days' reserve supply,
Osterholm notes. Coal-fired plants supply 30 per cent of the UK's electricity, 50 per cent of the US's and 85 per cent of Australia's.
Powerless The coal mines need electricity to keep working. Pumping oil through pipelines and water through mains also requires
electricity. Making electricity depends largely on coal; getting coal depends on electricity; they all need refineries and key people;
the people need transport, food and clean water. If one part of the system starts to fail, the whole lot could go. Hydro and nuclear
power are less vulnerable to disruptions in supply, but they still depend on highly trained staff. With no electricity, shops will be
unable to keep food refrigerated even if they get deliveries. Their tills won't work either. Many consumers won't be able to cook
what food they do have. With no chlorine, water-borne diseases could strike just as it becomes hard to boil water. Communications
could start to break down as radio and TV broadcasters, phone systems and the internet fall victim to power cuts and absent staff.
This could cripple the global financial system, right down to local cash machines, and will greatly complicate attempts to maintain
order and get systems up and running again. Even if we manage to struggle through the first few weeks of a pandemic, long-term
problems could build up without essential maintenance and supplies. Many of these problems could take years to work their way
through the system. For instance, with no fuel and markets in disarray, how do farmers get the next harvest in and distributed?
Closing borders As a plague takes hold, some countries may be tempted to close their borders. But quarantine is not an option any
more. "These days, no country is self-sufficient for everything," says Lay. "The worst mistake governments could make is to
isolate themselves." The port of Singapore, a crucial shipping hub, plans to close in a pandemic only as a last resort, he says. Yet
action like this might not be enough to prevent international trade being paralysed as other ports close for fear of contagion or for
lack of workers, as ships' crews sicken and exporters' assembly lines grind to a halt without their own staff, power, transport or fuel
and supplies. Quarantine is not an option any more. These days, no country is self-sufficient Osterholm warns that most
medical equipment and 85 per cent of US pharmaceuticals are made abroad, and this is just the start. Consider food packaging.
Milk might be delivered to dairies if the cows get milked and there is fuel for the trucks and power for refrigeration, but it will be
of little use if milk carton factories have ground to a halt or the cartons are an ocean away. "No one in pandemic planning thinks
enough about supply chains," says Osterholm. "They are long and thin, and they can break." When Toronto was hit by SARS in
2003, the major surgical mask manufacturers sent everything they had, he says. "If it had gone on much longer they would have
run out." The trend is for supply chains to get ever longer, to take advantage of economies of scale and the availability of cheap
labour. Big factories produce goods more cheaply than small ones, and they can do so even more cheaply in countries where
labour is cheap. Flawed assumptions Lay points to recent hurricanes in the US and the 2005 fire at the Buncefield oil depot in the
UK as examples of severe disruptions to the normal supply chain. In all of these instances, he points out, supplies from refineries
were maintained. But those disasters were localised, and help could come from unaffected places nearby. Disaster planners usually
focus on single-point events of this kind: industrial accidents, hurricanes or even a nuclear attack. But a pandemic happens
everywhere at the same time, rendering many such plans useless. "There are numerous assumptions behind our conclusions," Lay
admits. "If they prove to be flawed, we could struggle." Planners focus on single-point events like the Buncefield fire, but a
pandemic happens everywhere The main assumption is how serious a pandemic could be. Many national plans are based on
mortality rates from the mild 1957 and 1968 pandemics. "No government pandemic plans consider the possibility that the death
rate might be higher than in 1918," says Tim Sly of Ryerson University in Toronto, Canada. Even a rerun of 1918 could be bad
enough. In a 2006 study, economist Warwick McKibbin of the Lowry Institute for International Policy in Sydney, Australia, and
colleagues based their "worst-case" scenario on the same death rate as in 1918. The result, their model predicts, would be 142
million deaths worldwide, leading to a massive global economic slowdown that would wipe out 12.6 per cent of global GDP.
Death rate This scenario assumes around 3 three per cent of those who fall ill die. Of all the people known to have caught H5N1
bird flu so far, 63 per cent have died. "It seems negligent to assume that H5N1, if it goes pandemic, will necessarily become less
deadly," says Sly. And flu is far from the only viral threat we face.
Disease outweighs terrorism and WMDs
Zakaria, Fareed, Editor of Newsweek International, October 2005, A threat worse than terror
www.fareedzakaria.com/ARTICLES/newsweek/103105.html
A flu pandemic is the most dangerous threat the United States faces today," says Richard Falkenrath, who until recently served in
the Bush administration as deputy Homeland Security adviser. "It's a bigger threat than terrorism. In fact it's bigger than anything I
dealt with when I was in government." One makes a threat assessment on the basis of two factors: the probability of the event, and
the loss of life if it happened. On both counts, a pandemic ranks higher than a major terror attack, even one involving weapons of
mass destruction. A crude nuclear device would probably kill hundreds of thousands. A flu pandemic could easily kill millions.
Pandemics kill 100 million
Falkenrath, Richard A., Senior Fellow in Foreign Policy Studies at The Brookings Institution, Committee on Senate Health,
Education, Labor and Pensions, CQ Congressional Testimony, March 16, 2006
A catastrophic disease event is admittedly an extreme scenario, residing at the very highest end of the threat spectrum. With
respect to manmade threats - bioterrorism - I am not suggesting that such a scenario can be easily effectuated or is imminent.
Nonetheless, I do not believe that the trends are in our favor. With every passing year, the latent technological potential of

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states and non-state actors to use disease effectively as a weapon rises inexorably. With respect to naturally occurring disease
threats, no one can estimate precisely the likelihood, timing, or consequence of the appearance of a new human pathogen.5
However, for at least one potentially catastrophic disease, even the conservative World Health Organization concludes that "the
world may be on the brink of another pandemic."6 According to the WHO, a pandemic along the lines of the relatively mild
pandemic of 1957 would result in 2 million to 7.4 million deaths worldwide. A pandemic with the death rate of the 1918
Spanish flu - perhaps the most extreme human disease event in history - could result in several million fatalities in the United
States and perhaps over one hundred million abroad. In sum, when viewed in comparison to all other conceivable threats to
U.S. national security, the catastrophic disease threat is and for the foreseeable future will remain the gravest danger we face.
No state, no terrorist group, no ideology or system of government, no other tactic or target or category of weapons, no
technological accident, and no other natural phenomenon, presents as terrifying a combination of likelihood, poor defenses and
countermeasures, and consequence.
Disease outweighs nuclear war
Dalton, Alastair, journalist, Deadly Virus Will Destroy Life on Earth, THE SCOTSMAN, October 17, 2001, Lexis
Humans will have to move to other planets to survive a biological catastrophe that will hit the Earth within the next 1,000 years,
Professor Stephen Hawking warned yesterday. The world's most famous physicist said he was more worried about a virus than
nuclear weapons destroying life and said future generations would have to face living in space. Prof Hawking said he was
optimistic life would continue, but warned the danger of extinction remained because of man's aggressive nature. Other leading
scientists agreed that humans would have to take action to avoid being wiped out like previous dominant Earth species, such as the
dinosaurs, but said there was no need for any immediate panic.
Chronic diseases cost over a trillion and kill almost 2 million a year.
Reed, Jennifer Booth, Programs aim to prevent chronic diseases, May 18, http://www.newspress.com/article/20090518/HEALTH/905180345/1013/LIFESTYLES
Policymakers are eyeing chronic disease management and preventive medicine as significant keys to reining in health care costs
and reforming the health system. The seven most common chronic diseases cost the U.S. economy more than $1 trillion in
treatment and lost productivity. Almost half of Americans suffer from one or more chronic conditions, and chronic diseases kill 1.7
million people in the United States every year. Many of the illnesses are preventable.
We are on the brink of extinction due to the next lethal virus
Jupiter Scientific, org. devoted to the promotion of science and scientific education, 2003,
http://www.jupiterscientific.org/sciinfo/sars.html
Typically each year, between 600 million and 1 billion people around the world catch the flu, and 20,000 people die from
influenza. In 1918, the Spanish Flu killed an estimated 20 million people worldwide. In the fourteenth century, 25 million
Europeans, or one-fourth of the population, died from the bubonic plague, and in India and China, the disease claimed 12 million
and 15 million victims respectively. On one hand, these pandemics were more contagious than SARS and modern medical
methods were not available; on the other hand, airline travel makes it is easier for SARS to spread globally. This is why the World
Heath Organization has proposed restrictions on certain travel. Initially, the symptoms of SARS are flu-like: a fever greater than
38.0C (100.4F), a headache and an overall feeling of discomfort that may include muscle aches and a soar throat. Within a week,
SARS patients usually develop a dry cough, diarrhea and have difficulty breathing due to pneumonia. In 10 to 20 percent of the
cases, respiratory problems become so acute that patients must be put on a mechanical ventilator. Somewhat less than half of such
patients die. Several laboratory tests exist to detect the SARS virus. While SARS is not the deadly disease leading to death on a
massive scale envisioned in the Jupiter Scientific report The Hong Kong Chicken Virus, it has a few of the required features. It is
very fortunate that medical organizations have mobilized in they way that they have. When the next lethal viral scare comes, we
may not be so lucky. The end of humanity could be just a cough away.
Infections are the root cause of malnutrition
Ulrich E. Schaible and Stefan H. E. Kaufmann. May 1, 2007. (Ulrich E. Schaible is at the London School of Hygiene and
Tropical Medicine, Department of Infectious and Tropical Diseases, Immunology Unit, London, United Kingdom. Stefan H. E.
Kaufmann is at the Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology, Department of Immunology, Berlin, Germany. PLoS Medicine.
Malnutrition and Infection: Complex Mechanisms and Global Impacts
http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pmed.0040115#cor1)
Infection itself contributes to malnutrition. The relationship of malnutrition on immune suppression and infection is complicated
by the profound effects of a number of infections on nutrition itself. Examples of how infections can contribute to malnutrition are:
(1) gastrointestinal infection can lead to diarrhea; (2) HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and other chronic infections can cause cachexia and
anemia; and (3) intestinal parasites can cause anemia and nutrient deprivation [13]. Stimulation of an immune response by

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infection increases the demand for metabolically derived anabolic energy and associated substrates, leading to a synergistic vicious
cycle of adverse nutritional status and increased susceptibility to infection. Under inflammatory conditions such as sepsis,
mediators increase the catabolic disease state characterised by enhanced arginine use. Furthermore, arginase is induced during
infection and uses up arginine as substrate. It has been suggested that depletion of this amino acid impairs T cell responses [14],
and exceeding the bodys arginine production leads to a negative nitrogen balance [15].
New malaria drugs will solve any outbreak because it works against resistant strains
McNeil Jr., Donald G., Science and health reporter for the New York Times specializing in plagues, pestilences, diseases of the
world's poor, AIDS, malaria, avian flu, SARS, mad cow disease, etc. New York Times, Malaria Drug May Soon Be Set for
U.S. Debut, 12/22/08
The Food and Drug Administration is expected soon to approve the first malaria drug in the United States to contain artemisinin,
the wormwood derivative from China that is the latest and much heralded cure for malaria in Africa and Asia. Although there are
only about 1,500 cases of malaria treated in the country each year virtually all in people just back from the tropics the
approval would also make the drug available to the military and to Americans planning to go abroad. According to the Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention, most of those travelers returning from the tropics with malaria had been visiting relatives in
Africa, India, Haiti or Central America. About 10 percent went abroad as tourists and about 2 percent as members of the military.
The drug, Coartem, is made by the Swiss company Novartis. It combines artemether, an artemesinin derivative, with lumefantrine,
a drug developed by Chinese scientists, which does not kill parasites as quickly but lingers in the blood longer. By mopping up
parasites that artemisinin misses, lumefantrine helps prevent resistance that would defeat the drug, as happened with previous socalled miracle cures like chloroquine. Novartis saysthe F.D.A.s legal deadline for a decision is this Friday. On Dec. 3, an F.D.A.
advisory committee of independent experts voted 18 to 0 to endorse the drugs effectiveness. The agency usually takes its
committees advice. About the expected approval, Dr. Claire Panosian, president of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and
Hygiene, who treats malaria cases in Los Angeles, said: Im thrilled. Its a great breakthrough to have another antimalarial in the
U.S. Novartis sells Coartem (pronounced koh-AHR-tem) to the World Health Organization and medical charities for about 80
cents per course of treatment, which it says is the production cost. It has sold nearly 200 million treatments for use in Africa and
claims they have saved 500,000 lives. Coartem was introduced in 2001; it is approved in more than 80 countries, including 16 in
Europe. Novartis had had little interest in registering it here because the market is so small and the food and drug agencys
requirements are expensive even when the application fee, more than $1 million for a new drug, is waived, as it was for
Coartem. Novartis came under pressure to register it here because so much taxpayer money was being spent on it after the $1.2
billion Presidents Malaria Initiative passed in 2005.
The U.S. government has enough smallpox vaccine to prevent an outbreak
Elana Pearl Ben-Joseph, Medical doctor and consulting medical editor for KidsHealth, Smallpox, TeenHealth, 2006,
http://kidshealth.org/teen/infections/skin_rashes/smallpox.html SMB
The smallpox vaccine also would prevent the spread of disease because it can:
prevent people from becoming infected if they're vaccinated quickly after exposure to the virus
make the illness less severe in people who do become infected if they're vaccinated within a few days
After the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and the anthrax scare that same year, the U.S. government took the precaution of
asking several companies to begin making smallpox vaccine again. Today, there's enough vaccine on hand to protect the American
people in the event of a smallpox outbreak. Public health officials have a rapid response plan ready to vaccinate anyone exposed to
the disease, as well as people who come into contact with them. So although a person doesn't need to get vaccinated at the
moment, the vaccine is there in case it's needed. Given that the vaccine can stop the spread of the disease, experts believe it's
unlikely that terrorists will go to the trouble of producing and using smallpox as a biological weapon it would take too long and
have little effect.
Infectious disease problem anywhere pose threats everywhere
Alexander Irwin, Joyce Millen & Dorothy Fallows, Institute for Health and Social Justice, 2003, Global AIDS: Myths and Facts, p.
154
In an era of global trade and tourism, widespread labor migration, and frequent cross-border refugee flows, health protection must
be understood in global terms. The historic importance of globalization can be easily overstated. Yet the rapid circulation of people
and goods across national and continental boundaries poses significant challenges for public health officials today. The
implications for the control of infectious diseases in particular are far-reaching. Theoretical modeling by epidemiologists has
shown that even modest increases in international linkages between populations (for example through tourism, migration, or
business travel) may substantially increase rates of infectious disease transmission) Recent outbreaks of West Nile virus across the
US and of multiple-drug-resistant tuberculosis in New York City attest to the transcontinental mobility of pathogens. In the words
of one bioethicist, we are witnessing the "microbial unification" of the world. Wealthy countries will attempt to shield their
populations from this international proliferation of infectious agents with intensified policing of their national boundaries, for
example through immigration restrictions against people with HIV, like the ones currently in place in the US. The success of such

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policiesto say nothing of their moral legitimacywill be partial, at best. Exploding HIV/AIDS epidemics in Africa, South Asia,
the Caribbean, and Eastern Europe pose an ongoing health threat to US citizens traveling or working abroad, and infections will
continue to make their way onto American soil.
Infectious disease problem anywhere pose threats everywhere
Obijiofor Aginam, Law Professor Carleton University, 2005, Global Health Governance: international law and public health in a
divided world, p. 5-6
There are many good reasons why the promotion of public health in a multilateral context deserves heightened interest and
attention from scholars, national policy makers, multilateral institutions and civil society in an emerging 'global neighbourhood'.
Prominent among them is the increased global interdependence between nation states and populations. As people, goods, and
services cross national boundaries in volumes hitherto unseen, disease pathogens permeate geo-political boundaries to threaten
populations in distant places with unprecedented speed. The phenomenon and process of globalization and the consequent
vulnerability of national boundaries have altered the traditional distinction between national and international health. Exploring the
politics along the 'domestic-foreign Frontier, Rosenau identifies a response that treats the emergent frontier as becoming more
rugged and, thus, as the arena in which domestic and foreign issues converge, intermesh, or otherwise become indistinguishable
within a seamless web While foreign policy still designates the efforts of societies to maintain a modicum of control over their
external environments, new global interdependence issues such as pollution, currency crises, AIDS and the drug trade have so
profoundly changed the tasks and goals of foreign policy officials.' One consequence of globalization is the mutual vulnerability of
populations within the 'global village' to the transnational spread of deadly infectious diseases and other non-communicable
threats. Microbes carry no national passports, neither do they recognize geo-political boundaries or state sovereignty. Propelled by
travel, trade, tourism, the phenomenon of globalization, and a host of other factors, public health threats occasioned by an outbreak
of a disease in one remote part of the world can easily transcend national boundaries to threaten populations in distant places. The
world is fast becoming a single germ pool in which there are no health sanctuaries or safe havens from pathogenic microbes. This
study explores the concept of mutual vulnerability and juxtaposes it with the 'South-North health divide': disparities and unequal
distribution of disease burdens between industrialized and developing worlds and the implications of these disparities for
multilateral health governance. It also makes policy recommendations to narrow the apparent regime deficit between multilateral
health policies and the realities of public health programs on the ground, especially in the developing world. In our interdependent
yet divided world, all of humanity is vulnerable to the prevailing, emerging, and re-emerging threats of disease. This vulnerability
calls for enlightened self-interest as nation-states grapple with the challenges of using legal-governance mechanisms to forge a
humane and effective multilateral/global health order. Although the scope of this inquiry is interdisciplinary in that it draws from
seminal works in public health and epidemiology, history, international relations, and the social sciences, it falls substantially
within the parameters of international law. Its primary domain is law, its focus is multilateral institutions, and its subject of analysis
is the international legal response to the globalization of public health.
Globalization increases disease spread
Kelley Lee, Senior Lecturer, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, 2003, Globalization and Health, p. 111
Yet, even as the global eradication of smallpox was being celebrated in the late 1970s, an unprecedented achievement of medical
science and international cooperation, dark clouds were on the horizon. Malaria, the target of eradication efforts for decades, was
proving a resilient and even growing problem. Tuberculosis, quietly forgotten despite killing around one million people annually
(primarily in the developing world), was declared a global emergency by WHO in 1993. Twenty diseases that had been in
decline have re-emerged or spread geographically between 1973 and 1999 including multi-drug-resistant forms of TB, malaria,
and cholera. And new challenges loomed. Twenty-nine new diseases were identified during the same period, of which HIV/AIDS
is perhaps the most prominent. Worldwide infectious diseases are a leading cause of death, accounting for up to one-third of all
deaths in 1998. By 2001, total deaths to date from AIDS surpassed 20 million, thus exceeding deaths from the bubonic plague
during the Middle Ages and influenza in 1918-19 (estimated 20 million each). Even in a wealthy country like the United States,
there has been a doubling of deaths from infectious diseases since the late 1990s. These developments have shaken the confidence
of the health community, and complacency has been replaced by fears that contagion is back with a vengeance. The element of
time is central to these contemporary fears about the resurgence of infectious disease. As well as the changing spatial distribution
of disease, there is growing evidence that current forms of globalization provide fertile conditions for the more rapid spread of
certain infections. The movement of people via modern transportation systems, rapid urbanization without adequate water,
sanitation and public health facilities, human-induced environmental changes, and the intensified exchange of goods and services
may be contributing to the increased speed with which infectious agents can arise and spread worldwide. A new sense of
vulnerability to infectious disease, in short, has accompanied the present era of accelerating globalization. In this context, lethal
diseases that are fastest to spread have captured popular imaginations. The dreaded Ebola virus has become mythologized as
embodying the worst of nightmares among infectious diseasesthe quick and the deadly.
Globalization increases disease spread
Ethne Barnes, Research Assistant in Paleopathology, Wichita State, 2005, Diseases and human evolution, p. 7
Geography determines where diseases come from and influences what types of diseases will occur within each environment. In the
past, most infectious microbes and parasites were confined to their place of origin within specific geographic regions. Human

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beings, sharing the same environment with these microbes for generations, adapted to them. However, changes in environment and
human behavior fostered changes in local microbes. The movements of people have had the greatest impact, allowing several
microbes to move out of their place of origin and adjust to new environments. Changes in local environments over the past five
centuries, caused by overcrowded cities and more widespread population movements throughout the world, have greatly altered
the ranges of many microbes. Today, massive population movements and rapid travel have blurred the geographic boundaries that
once separated different ecosystems and their resident microbes.
Globalization increases disease spread
Ronald Barrett et al, Department of Anthropology, Emory University, 1998, Annual Review of Anthropology, Volume 27:247-71,
[EBSCO] p. 263
Noting the rapidity with which the Spanish Flu spread throughout the world in the days of steamships and isolationism, Garrett
grimly suggested how such an outbreak could spread in the present age of international economics and jet travel (Garrett 1994), a
timely subject given the recent appearance of a potentially lethal influenza strain in Hong Kong poultry markets with H5 antigens,
to which humans have no known history of previous exposure (Cohen 1997; Shortridge 1995). With revolutionary changes in
transportation technology (Reid & Cossar 1993; Wilson 1996), worldwide urbanization (Muktatkar 1995; Phillips 1993), and the
increasing permeability of geopolitical boundaries (Farmer 1996), human populations are rapidly converging into a single global
disease ecology (McNeill 1976).
Globalization increases disease spread
Ethne Barnes, Research Assistant in Paleopathology, Wichita State, 2005, Diseases and human evolution, p. 7
Geography determines where diseases come from and influences what types of diseases will occur within each environment. In the
past, most infectious microbes and parasites were confined to their place of origin within specific geographic regions. Human
beings, sharing the same environment with these microbes for generations, adapted to them. However, changes in environment and
human behavior fostered changes in local microbes. The movements of people have had the greatest impact, allowing several
microbes to move out of their place of origin and adjust to new environments. Changes in local environments over the past five
centuries, caused by overcrowded cities and more widespread population movements throughout the world, have greatly altered
the ranges of many microbes. Today, massive population movements and travel have blurred the geographic boundaries that once
separated different ecosystems and their resident microbes.
Globalization increases disease spread
Peter Jaret, National Geographic Society, 2003, Impact: Dispatches from the front lines of global health, p. 50-1
Surging human numbers also put unprecedented pressure on the environment, causing new health concerns. Experts worry
especially about human incursions into remote tropical areas rich in biological diversity, including long-sequestered germs. And in
the U.S. and Europe reforestation has caused a resurgence of the spirochete that causes Lyme disease, carried by deer and deer
ticks. As people have built more houses in an on the edges of forests, ticks have spread the infection to people. In South America,
the conversion of grassland to agricultural fields set the stage for large outbreaks of Junin virus, carried by rodents.
Over land use spreads disease
Tony McMichael, Epidemiology Professor, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, 2001, Human Frontiers,
Environments, and Disease: past patterns, uncertain futures, p. 333-4
Intrusive patterns of land use are also a frequent source of new infectious agents. This has been well illustrated over the past few
decades by the emergence of various new haemorrhagic fever viruses in rural settings in South America and elsewhere. These
diseases, spread by rodents, mosquitoes or midges, have arisen in response to forest and grassland clearance, often in association
with extensive agricultural mono-cropping. Meanwhile, extensions of forest-edge malaria also occur whenever roads, tracks and
clearings hugely multiply the amount of 'edge' to which humans are exposed. This forest edge is a likely site for encounters with
infectious agents. A classical example is yellow fever. This vector-borne viral disease originates from high in the forest canopy of
Eastern Africa, where the virus unobtrusively circulates, via the Aedes africanus mosquito, among several local monkey species.
Most of the monkeys are infected; but they are not affected having coevolved over many millions of years, monkey, mosquito
and virus all do well. Land use also affects infectious disease patterns by eliminating and fragmenting natural habitat, thereby
reducing biological diversity. The resultant weakened and disordered ecosystems are susceptible to colonization of overgrowth by
opportunistic species, many of which transmit infectious agents. The loss of predators enables their prey species such as rodents,
insects, and algae to proliferate. For example, frogs, birds, spiders and bats naturally control mosquito populations, upon which
they feed. If these predators are diminished then the enlarged mosquito populations are better able to transmit malaria, dengue,
yellow fever, filariasis and several types of encephalitis. Birds, snakes, and cats eat rodents and rodents carry hantaviruses, various
arenaviruses, Lyme disease-infected ticks, and the bacteria of human bubonic plague and leptospirosis. Hence, the clearing of
forested land in Bolivia in the early 1960s and the accompanying blanket spraying of DDT to control malaria mosquitoes led,
respectively, to infestation of cropland by Calomys mice and the poisoning of the rodents predators (village cats). This resulted in
the appearance of a new viral fever, the Bolivian (Machupo) Haemorrhagic Fever, which killed around one-seventh of the
population. The ways in which we manage water resources also affect the likelihood of infectious diseases. The building of large
dams has affected various vector-borne infectious diseases. For example, outbreaks of Rift Valley Fever occurred in the Nile Valley

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in1977 and in Mauritania in 1987 following the damming of major rivers. The building of the Aswan dam on the Nile River
resulted also in a sevenfold increase in schistosomiasis. Lymphatic filariasis in the southern Nile Delta has undergone a 20-fold
increase in prevalence since the 1960s, primarily due to an increase in breeding sites for the vector mosquito Culex Pipiens that
followed the rise in the water table due to extensions of irrigation. The situation has been exacerbated by the evolution of pesticide
resistance in mosquitoes due to the heavy use of pesticide by local farmers, and by rural-to-urban commuting among farm workers.
Environmental harm spreads disease
Andrew T. Price-Smith, Professor Political Science University of North Dakota, 2001, Plagues and Politics: infectious disease and
international policy, ed. Andrew Price-Smith, p. 3
Unfortunately, the one lesson that we can take away from the emergence of HIV and hepatitis, and the re-emergence of
tuberculosis and cholera, is that the microbial world will continue to adapt to human-induced changes in the global ecology. Thus,
the greater the degree of degradation that humanity visits upon fragile ecosystems, the more unpredictable the response from the
microbial world as it is pushed to evolve faster to compensate for its changing environment. Indeed, the harder we attempt to push
the microbes to the margin, the faster they will continue to evolve. Many prominent epidemiologists now warn that HIV/AIDS
should be considered a shot across the bow, and that it is precisely because of the mechanics of biological evolution (and
humanitys increasing ability to tamper with it) that we will continue to observe the emergence of new potentially virulent
microorganisms. Given that microbial evolution is inevitable, it would be prudent to anticipate the emergence of lethal pathogens
in the years ahead.
Kids highly affected by disease I
Pamela Hartigan et al, Pan American Health Organization, 2002, Engendering International Health: the challenge of equity, eds. G.
Sen, A George & P. Ostlin, p. 40
Most estimated deaths due to malaria occur among young children. The disease kills 3,000 children under five years of age per
day, an average of 1 child every 30 seconds. As shown by malaria, infectious diseases are unevenly distributed across age, with
infants and children carrying a heavier proportionate burden worldwide. Nearly 70% of all deaths from communicable disease
occur in those under age fourteen years, with girls losing a higher proportion of sex-specific DALYs than boys. Diarrhea, acute
respiratory infections, malaria, and measles are major child killers in low- and middle income countries.
Disease kills 13 million a year
GAO Reports, Report Number, GAO-01-772, Challenges in Improving Infectious Disease Surveillance, August 31, 2001, p. Lexis
According to the World Health Organization, infectious diseases account for more than 13 million deaths every year, including
nearly two-thirds of all deaths among children under age 5. Although the great majority of these deaths occur in developing
countries, infectious diseases do not recognize international boundaries. They present a substantial threat to people in all parts of
the world. In recent years, this threat has grown in volume and complexity. New diseases have emerged, others once viewed as
declining in significance have resurged in importance, and many have developed substantial resistance to known antimicrobial
drugs. This picture is complicated by the potential deployment of infectious disease pathogens as weapons of war or instruments of
terror.
Disease outweighs war
Lauren Z. Asher, Law Student, Cardozo Journal of International and Comparative Law, Spring, 2001, 9 Cardozo J. Int'l & Comp.
L. 135, p. 135
The spread of infectious disease is surging and as it spreads, the need for international regulation also expands. Throughout history
epidemics have been responsible for millions of deaths and the number will undoubtedly rise, due in part to the increasing ease and
speed of international travel. Statistically, disease is a more formidable killer than war, with the power to completely destabilize
governments.
Bacteria and viruses dont preserve their hosts
Alan P. Zelicoff & Michael A. Bellomo, former Senior Scientist at Sandia National Laboratories & Contracts & Proposal Manager
@ ARES Corporation, 2005, Microbe, p. 115-6
It is helpful to begin with a misnomer, one that we are all taught in school. It goes like this: Bacteria and viruses become more and
more benign the longer they are in contact with their host populations. In other words, organisms adapt toward a symbiotic (i.e.
cooperative) relationship with their hosts. This, we are told, explains why serious infectious diseases were on the wane in many
places in the world. It is also the explanation for why, in certain settings like refugee camps, there would inevitably be a sudden
explosion in cases of diarrhea that would slowly dissipate as the organism learned to adapt to its hostsbecause by killing its
hosts the organism was depriving itself of new victims. It seemed to make sense, and we happily regurgitated this knowledge on
examinations. Until recently, the same paradigm was taught in medical schools and schools of public health: Organisms evolved
toward causing milder and milder diseases so as to guarantee that they could pass back and forth among their hosts and continue
their own existence. But all of this is quite wrong.

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Disease outweighs bioterror

David R. Franz, Chief Biological Scientist, Midwest Research Institute, 2005, Microbe, p. ix
Naturally occurring microbes are becoming increasingly deadly. Many can outdo even the most capable biowarrior. Just look at the
natural evolution of the bird flu threat over the past six to seven years. In 1997, it was a danger only to poultry flocks. Two or three
years later it became lethal to forty-four people and killed 73 percent of them. Those are Ebola-like mortality rates!
Disease spread causes incurable pandemics leading to human extinction
South China Morning Post in 96
(Kavita Daswani, Leading the way to a cure for AIDS, 1-4, L/N)
Despite the importance of the discovery of the "facilitating" cell, it is not what Dr Ben-Abraham wants to talk about. There is a
much more pressing medical crisis at hand - one he believes the world must be alerted to: the possibility of a virus deadlier than
HIV. If this makes Dr Ben-Abraham sound like a prophet of doom, then he makes no apology for it. AIDS, the Ebola outbreak
which killed more than 100 people in Africa last year, the flu epidemic that has now affected 200,000 in the former Soviet Union they are all, according to Dr Ben-Abraham, the "tip of the iceberg".Two decades of intensive study and research in the field of
virology have convinced him of one thing: in place of natural and man-made disasters or nuclear warfare, humanity could face
extinction because of a single virus, deadlier than HIV. "An airborne virus is a lively, complex and dangerous organism," he said.
"It can come from a rare animal or from anywhere and can mutate constantly. If there is no cure, it affects one person and then
there is a chain reaction and it is unstoppable. It is a tragedy waiting to happen." That may sound like a far-fetched plot for a
Hollywood film, but Dr Ben -Abraham said history has already proven his theory. Fifteen years ago, few could have predicted the
impact of AIDS on the world. Ebola has had sporadic outbreaks over the past 20 years and the only way the deadly virus - which
turns internal organs into liquid - could be contained was because it was killed before it had a chance to spread. Imagine, he says, if
it was closer to home: an outbreak of that scale in London, New York or Hong Kong. It could happen anytime in the next 20 years
- theoretically, it could happen tomorrow. The shock of the AIDS epidemic has prompted virus experts to admit "that something
new is indeed happening and that the threat of a deadly viral outbreak is imminent", said Joshua Lederberg of the Rockefeller
University in New York, at a recent conference. He added that the problem was "very serious and is getting worse". Dr BenAbraham said: "Nature isn't benign. The survival of the human species is not a preordained evolutionary programme. Abundant
sources of genetic variation exist for viruses to learn how to mutate and evade the immune system." He cites the 1968 Hong Kong
flu outbreak as an example of how viruses have outsmarted human intelligence. And as new "mega-cities" are being developed in
the Third World and rainforests are destroyed, disease-carrying animals and insects are forced into areas of human habitation.
"This raises the very real possibility that lethal, mysterious viruses would, for the first time, infect humanity at a large scale and
imperil the survival of the human race," he said.
Epidemics will cause human extinction
Discover in 00
(Twenty Ways the World Could End by Corey Powell in Discover Magazine, October 2000,
http://discovermagazine.com/2000/oct/featworld)
If Earth doesn't do us in, our fellow organisms might be up to the task. Germs and people have always coexisted, but occasionally
the balance gets out of whack. The Black Plague killed one European in four during the 14th century; influenza took at least 20
million lives between 1918 and 1919; the AIDS epidemic has produced a similar death toll and is still going strong. From 1980 to
1992, reports the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, mortality from infectious disease in the United States rose 58
percent. Old diseases such as cholera and measles have developed new resistance to antibiotics. Intensive agriculture and land
development is bringing humans closer to animal pathogens. International travel means diseases can spread faster than ever.
Michael Osterholm, an infectious disease expert who recently left the Minnesota Department of Health, described the situation as
"like trying to swim against the current of a raging river." The grimmest possibility would be the emergence of a strain that spreads
so fast we are caught off guard or that resists all chemical means of control, perhaps as a result of our stirring of the ecological pot.
About 12,000 years ago, a sudden wave of mammal extinctions swept through the Americas. Ross MacPhee of the American
Museum of Natural History argues the culprit was extremely virulent disease, which humans helped transport as they migrated into
the New World.
Diseases will inevitably lead to human extinction
Fox in 97
(LTC C. William, Jr., M.D., external researcher and Commander of Bayne-Jones Army Hospital, PARAMETERS, U.S.
Army War College Quarterly, Vol. XXVII, No. 4, Winter 1997-98, p. 12136, Phantom Warriors: Disease as a Threat to
US National Security, http://www.carlisle.army.mil/usawc/Parameters/97winter/fox.htm)
It is difficult to overstate the effects of disease on life in Africa. Of all the world's populations, Africans have the least chance of
survival to the age of five. After that age, diseases and the effects of poor diets and other health threats in the environment begin to
take a serious toll. If fortunate enough to make it to adulthood, Africans are the least likely of the world's peoples to live beyond

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the age of 50. The diseases to be discussed are among the primary reasons for this depressing statistic. They also pose a potential
threat to US national security. HIV is a pandemic killer without a cure, and viruses such as Ebola-Zaire are merely a plane ride
away from the population centers of the developed world. Viruses like Ebola, which are endemic to Africa, have the potential to
inflict morbidity and mortality on a scale not seen in the world since the Black Plague epidemics of medieval Europe, which killed
a quarter of Europe's population in the 13th and 14th centuries. These diseases are not merely African problems; they present real
threats to mankind. They should be taken every bit as seriously as the concern for deliberate use of weapons of mass destruction.
Even if the epidemic is under control it would halt trade and crush the global economy
Heymann in 5
(David, Executive Director of Communicable Diseases at the WHO, Emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases from
plague and cholera to Ebola and AIDS: a potential for international spread that transcends the defences of any single
country, 13:1, March, p. 29-31)
Plagues and Politics is not about the individual human suffering and death that occur from emerging and re-emerging infections.
Rather it is about the impact of infectious diseases on society and nations, providing clear and convincing evidence of the severe
economic impact that can come from sometimes irrational and unjustified reactions to the emergence or reemergence of an
infectious disease, reactions that often take the form of trade barriers, restricted travel and decreased tourism. Clearly demonstrated
is the perceived vulnerability of the general public and politicians to a newly emerged infectious disease when, in the absence of
the evidence that would permit rational risk analysis, reactionary irrational and economicallydamaging measures are applied to
prevent their spread.
Co-evolution is a true process lack of natural immunity allows Virus-X to cause extinction
THE WEEKEND AUSTRALIAN in 97
(Frank Ryan, SMALL BUT PERFECTLY LETHAL, 9-27, L/N)
THERE is a question we need to ask ourselves about emerging viruses. It is a question none of us really wants to face, because the
answer might be very frightening. What would happen if a new virus as lethal as AIDS spread around the world by coughing or
sneezing, like a cold or a flu? Such a virus would threaten the whole human species. This is what I imply by the title of my book
Virus-X: the emergence of a virus-X would represent an extinction threat to all humanity.
To decide if this is real or fantasy, we need to ask more fundamental questions about viruses. Where do new viruses really come
from? Why do such viruses emerge to infect people? Why are some, thankfully a minority, so lethal that they kill virtually
everybody they infect? The investigation of the sin nombre hantavirus epidemic came up with a very curious finding. The virus
comes from the humble deer-mouse, the commonest and toughest wild rodent in America.
The virus infects the deer-mouse all its life yet it causes no illness at all. Why should a virus that causes such lethal disease in
people cause no disease at all in its wild host? Today we know that every species of rodent on Earth has a hantavirus that "coevolves" with it. These viruses live with their rodent hosts throughout their lives yet never harm them. The relationship is more
profound even than that. We now believe that virus and host have lived together in an intimate partnership over millions of years,
dating back perhaps to the time in the distant past when the rodents first diversified into the most successful mammals on earth.
This co-evolution of two very different life-forms does not seem to fit at all with the conventional views of viruses as the ultimate
predators, driven by the "red in tooth and claw" expression of Darwinian evolution. It appears that every species of life on Earth
has its own viruses that are co-evolving with it. And that means there are millions of unknown species of viruses out there in the
wilderness areas. As I travelled from New Mexico around the world, gathering interviews from many of the senior scientists in the
viral field, I found that this equilibrium between virus and its host was the norm. In every case where the long-standing host of a
virus in nature had been found, a similar relationship seems to have applied. The AIDS viruses cause no disease at all in their
African primate hosts, the Lassa fever virus causes no disease in its rodent host, the Australian horse virus causes no disease in its
host bat. I am confident that when we find the true host of the Ebola virus, we shall find the same intimate relationship. There is a
mystery in this strange and wonderful partnership, or symbiosis, of two very different life forms. You can see what the virus gets
out of it -a secure home in which to live and reproduce -but why does the host put up with the presence of the virus over millions
of years? To answer this, I have put forward a new evolutionary hypothesis. The virus protects its host against rivals in the ongoing evolutionary struggles that take place in the wild. What the virus contributes, therefore, is "aggression", and so I have called
the relationship "aggressive symbiosis". A virus lives in the landscape of the genome -the chromosomes and very control
mechanism of life itself -so viruses behaving aggressively are extremely dangerous.
When, as a scientist, you put forward a new hypothesis, you are obliged to prove it experimentally. But the experiment to prove
"aggressive symbiosis" has already been performed, even if the scientists conducting it had a different aim in mind. It was
conducted in the Murray Valley in Australia in 1950.
Introduced into south-eastern Australia in 1859, rabbits had found a paradise where, in the absence of predators, they had
undergone a huge population explosion. In consequence Australia was suffering a plague of rabbits. The local authorities used
biological warfare to get rid of them. When biologists infected local rabbits with the myxoma virus and released them into the
wild, they provoked a true virus-X scenario. Three months after the start of the wet season (the virus is transmitted by mosquitoes),

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99.8 per cent of the rabbits over an area the size of western Europe were dead. What few people realise is that this myxoma virus
was the symbiotic partner of the Brazilian wood-rabbit, Sylvillagus brasiliensis, in which it causes no serious disease at all. Since
only the virus had been imported, there was no rival species of rabbit to take over the vacated territory. This allowed the virus to
select a new symbiotic partner. Over time, the tiny percentage of local rabbits naturally resistant to the myxomatosis virus began to
multiply. The result was the proliferation of a new breed of rabbit, living in equilibrium with their own co-evolving species of
myxoma virus. This is what I believe to be the natural cycle of virus and new host, over evolutionary time scales, in nature. I am
not saying mice or rabbits carry aggressive viruses in their travel-cases with people in mind. A virus that co-evolves with a mouse
will be designed by evolution to attack rival mice, and a monkey virus to attack other monkeys. People get in the way when they
intrude upon the cycles in nature. Crucially, I think this is the reason why new plague viruses are appearing more and more
frequently these days. We are invading wilderness areas faster than ever before. No such intrusions are more dangerous than our
destruction of the rainforest. There is an additional cause for worry. Far more of us live on Earth today than was ever the case
before and we gather in enormous numbers in our cities, which are linked by international air travel. A new pandemic virus spread
by coughing and sneezing would perambulate the globe at the speed of a passenger jet. This combination of risk factors makes it
inevitable that, as we continue to invade and destroy wilderness areas, we will suffer serious new epidemics.
In some situations, parasites and hosts cannot coexist.
de Castro, et al in 05
(Francisco, and Benjamin Bolker, both of Department of Zoology, University of Florida Mechanisms of disease-induced
extinction Ecology Letters v. 8 p. 117-126 http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/links/doi/10.1111/j.14610248.2004.00693.x/full/)
Using the same model for sexually or vector transmitted diseases, define the conditions that allow a frequency-transmitted disease
to coexist with its host. Coexistence is impossible if infected individuals do not reproduce and density-dependent effects are equal
for infected and uninfected hosts. One well-studied class of vector-transmitted diseases is pollinator-borne fungi, which also fall
under the category of sexually-transmitted diseases, and typically sterilize their hosts. Using a deterministic model of the
interaction of the castrating fungus Ustilago violacea and its host, the perennial herb Lychnis viscaria, show that the parasite can
drive it to extinction as transmission efficiency approaches 100%. Analyze the case of a vector-transmitted pathogen (U. violacea)
of the plant Silene alba. They model transmission as dependent on the frequency of diseased plants, since the parasite is vectortransmitted (although they do not model the vector population explicitly). With a high transmission rate of the pathogen and low
host recruitment, the predicted result is the local extinction of both host and pathogen populations.
Quarantine is only effective in very specific situations
Day, et al. in 06 (Troy, @ Department of Mathematics and Statistics and Department of Biology @ Queens University, Andrew
Park @ Department of Biology @ Queens University and Department of mathematics and Statistic @ York University and
Department of Limnology @ Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology, Neal Madras @ Department of
Mathematics and Statistics @ York University, Abba Gumel @ Department of Mathematics @ University of Manitoba, and
Jianhong Wui @ Department of Mathematics and Statistics @ York University, American Journal of Epidemiology, Vol. 163, No.
5, Pg. 479-485, When Is Quarantine a Useful Control Strategy for Emerging Infectious Diseases?,
http://aje.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/163/5/479)
First, if the duration of the asymptomatic period is too short, then it is unlikely that much can be done to identify infected
individuals prior to their developing symptoms. Of course, there might still be a benefit in attempting to do so through the
increased rate at which symptomatic individuals are removed from the population, but this is a matter of quarantine's being useful
through its effects on enhancing isolation procedures rather than being useful in itself. Second, if the duration of the asymptomatic
period is too long, then it will be extremely difficult to identify those individuals that are likely to have been infected by a given
infected person (by virtue of their having had many contacts during the asymptomatic phase). Furthermore, if the asymptomatic
period is very long, then the quarantine period must also be correspondingly long. Such lengthy quarantine periods would be very
difficult to implement, again making it unlikely that q can be made very large. For example, even though the value of is large for
hepatitis B, it is unlikely that q could be large enough for quarantine to prove a useful control measure for this disease. In
summary, the above results suggest that the number of infections averted through the use of quarantine is expected to be very low
provided that isolation is effective. If isolation is ineffective, then the use of quarantine will be most beneficial only when there is
significant asymptomatic transmission and if the asymptomatic period is neither very long nor very short
Certain diseases cannot not be stopped by quarantine
US Department of Human and Health Services in 07 (HHS Pandemic Influenza Plan: Supplement 8 Community Disease Control
and Prevention, May 15th 2007, http://www.hhs.gov/pandemicflu/plan/sup8.html)
Containment measures applied to individuals (e.g., isolation and quarantine) may have limited impact in preventing the
transmission of pandemic influenza, due to the short incubation period of the illness, the ability of persons with asymptomatic
infection to transmit virus, and the possibility that early symptoms among persons infected with a novel influenza strain may be

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non-specific, delaying recognition and implementation of containment. Nevertheless, during the Pandemic Alert Period with a less
efficiently transmitted virus, these measures may have great effectiveness, slowing disease spread and allowing time for targeted
use of medical interventions. In addition, implementing these measures early in a pandemic when disease is first introduced into
the U.S. and when the scope of the outbreak is focal and limited may slow geographical spread and increase time for vaccine
production and implementation of other pandemic response activities. Later, when disease transmission is occurring in
communities around the U.S., individual quarantine is much less likely to have an impact and likely would not be feasible to
implement. Thus, community-based containment measures (e.g., closing schools or restricting public gatherings) and emphasizing
what individuals can do to reduce their risk of infection (e.g., hand hygiene and cough etiquette) may be more effective disease
control tools.
A global epidemic would kill 100 million people no other threat compares
Falkenrath 06 - Senior Fellow in Foreign Policy Studies @ The Brookings Institution [Richard, PUBLIC HEALTH MEDICAL
PREPAREDNESS, Committee on Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, CQ Congressional Testimony, March 16, 2006
Thursday, pg. l/n]
A catastrophic disease event is admittedly an extreme scenario, residing at the very highest end of the threat spectrum. With respect
to manmade threats - bioterrorism - I am not suggesting that such a scenario can be easily effectuated or is imminent. Nonetheless,
I do not believe that the trends are in our favor. With every passing year, the latent technological potential of states and non-state
actors to use disease effectively as a weapon rises inexorably. With respect to naturally occurring disease threats, no one can
estimate precisely the likelihood, timing, or consequence of the appearance of a new human pathogen.5 However, for at least one
potentially catastrophic disease, even the conservative World Health Organization concludes that "the world may be on the brink of
another pandemic."6 According to the WHO, a pandemic along the lines of the relatively mild pandemic of 1957 would result in 2
million to 7.4 million deaths worldwide. A pandemic with the death rate of the 1918 Spanish flu - perhaps the most extreme human
disease event in history - could result in several million fatalities in the United States and perhaps over one hundred million
abroad. In sum, when viewed in comparison to all other conceivable threats to U.S. national security, the catastrophic disease
threat is and for the foreseeable future will remain the gravest danger we face. No state, no terrorist group, no ideology or system
of government, no other tactic or target or category of weapons, no technological accident, and no other natural phenomenon,
presents as terrifying a combination of likelihood, poor defenses and countermeasures, and consequence.
State failure spreads disease
Vladimir M. Kaczynski, Associate Professor, School of Marine Affairs; Adjunct Associate Professor, Jackson School of
International Studies, U.S POLICY TOWARD THE THIRD WORLD, 2005,
http://www.sma.washington.edu/research/pog/policy_world.html
Many of the poorest countries in the world, and especially societies with state failure, are subject to horrific conditions of disease.
Like international crime, the disease burden is both a cause and consequence of economic and political failures. A heavy
infectious-disease burden, such as year-round transmission of malaria, causes a sustained reduction in economic growth for many
reasons: individual workers are less productive, children are much less likely to finish school and to reach their cognitive potential,
sectors such as tourism and agriculture are directly affected, and foreign investors are deterred. State collapse feeds these problems
because failed states lack the financial and institutional means to deliver vital public health services. The AIDS pandemic has
ravaged sub-Saharan Africa in part because no African government has the means to fight this scourge with its own resources, and
donors have generally not provided sufficient resources. As a recent National Intelligence Estimate on the global infectious-disease
threat clearly indicates, the United States stands at risk as a result of the uncontrolled spread of infectious disease in the poorest
countries and failed states. Risks to the United States include direct financial costs as it responds to the epidemic crises abroad;
destabilization of foreign societies as a result of the crippling disease burden; and the spread of deadly pathogens, including multi
-- drug-resistant strains, across international borders. Notably, Europe has already spent billions of dollars combating "mad cow"
disease and will now spend vast sums fighting footand-mouth disease in European cattle and sheep. AIDS, of course, illustrates a
newly emergent pathogen that arrived from Africa and has caused immense suffering and economic loss in the United States
(although only a small fraction of the human devastation that has occurred in Africa itself). One can only wonder whether better
public health surveillance and medical treatment, along with a healthier general population in Africa, might have controlled the
epidemic much earlier, and either slowed or stopped its introduction to other parts of the world.
Disease kills the economy
Jonas Gahr Store et al, WHO, 2003, Global Health Challenges for Human Security, eds. L. Chen, J. Leaning, & V. Narasimhan, p.
75
Much attention on globalization has been focused on the expansion of private markets. Yet many do not appreciate that global
health and security are preconditions for efficient trade and the functioning of private markets. A well performing global private
economy depends upon the control of contagious diseases. Indeed, the earliest international health regulations emerged from the
imperative to control infectious diseases that could potentially impede trade. Today, the disruptive effects of SARS, AIDS, bovine
spongiform encephalitis, and hoof-and-mouth disease illustrate the powerful economic impacts of epidemics. As a result of the
recent SARS epidemic, international organizations no doubt will acquire stronger powers to control contagious diseases. For this
reason the International Health Regulations, the longest ongoing international agreement in health, are currently undergoing

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revision after last being revised in 1969. The Regulations list notifiable contagious diseases in an effort to reduce the spread of
infections while minimizing disruption to international trade and travel. It is possible to visualize over time additional international
regulations for noninfectious health hazards such as certain addictive substances.
Disease kills economies of 3rd world nations
David L. Heymann, Executive Director-WHO, 2003, Global Health Challenges for Human Security, eds. L. Chen, J. Leaning, & V.
Narasimhan, p. 110-1
In industrialized countries, global pandemics such as influenza, where supplies of vaccines and antivirals are clearly insufficient,
have the capacity to destabilize populations, and the panic that they incite could cause great social disruption. In developing
countries, where economies are fragile and infrastructures weak, outbreaks and epidemics are far more directly disruptive. In these
countries, the destabilizing effect of high-mortality endemic diseases, including malaria and tuberculosis as well as AIDS, is
amplified by emerging and epidemic-prone diseases, as they disrupt routine control programs and health services, often for
extended periods, due to the extraordinary resources and logistics required for their control. For example, outbreaks of epidemic
meningitis, which regularly occur in the African meningitis belt, disrupt normal social functions and bring routine health services
to the brink of a standstill as containment depends on the emergency vaccination of all populations at risk. During the recent SARS
outbreak in China, programs for childhood immunization, AIDS, and tuberculosis were halted for months as all staff and resources
were diverted to SARS control. The resurgence of African sleeping sickness, which is also a disease of livestock, has disrupted
productive patterns of land use and jeopardized food security in remote rural areas. Recent outbreaks of dengue in Latin America
required the assistance of military forces, sometimes from neighboring countries, for their containment. Outbreaks of new or
unusual diseases can cause public panic to a degree that calls into question governments capacity to protect its population. For
example, management of the SARS outbreak jeopardized political careers in several countries. In addition, the dramatic
interruption of trade, travel, and tourism that can follow news of an outbreak places a further economic burden on impoverished
countries with little capacity to absorb such shocks.
Disease kills the economy
Andrew T. Price-Smith, Assistant Professor Department of Political Science University of North Dakota, 2001, Plagues and
Politics: infectious disease and international policy, p. 104-5
The empirical evidence presented in the previous chapter clearly demonstrates that infectious disease rates show a significant
negative correlation with macroeconomic national indicators such as per capita GNP, per capita government expenditure, and net
long-term capital inflow. It is increasingly apparent that the current resurgence in infectious disease portends increasing poverty
and economic destabilization in severely affected countries. At the microeconomic level, I have noted, ERIDs adversely affect
economic well-being within families and firms the general quality of the labor force, the formation and maintenance of human
capital, and various sectors of the economy. It is logical to conclude that these microeconomic effects will, through multiplier
effects, generate significant negative macroeconomic outcomes. Direct costs to the economy will be enormous, and indirect costs
will include output lost as a result of increasing mortality and (to a lesser extent) disease-induced morbidity. The four factors of
production are capital, land, technology, and labor. Ainsworth argues that if the first three of these [factors] grows at a constant
rate the slower growth in labor caused by the epidemic willslow the growth of output. However, ERIDs act synergistically to
exert negative effects on capital (both human capital and foreign investment) and land (diminishing access due to endemic
infestation). This negative synergy should result insignificant limits on national economic growth, and it may result in growing
poverty and national economic decline (particularly within the developing countries). This supposition is borne out by the data
presented in the previous chapter. He Continues: Thus, the spread of disease impedes the investment of foreign capital, erodes
human capital resources (thereby limiting the endogenous supply of social and technical ingenuity within a state), and renders
some land and its natural resources economically useless. ERIDs may also affect technological attributes of the economy, insofar
as disease-induced mortality may reduce the endogenous pool of skilled individuals (such as scientists and doctors) who would
otherwise have contributed to endogenous technological innovation.
Disease kills the economy
William B. Karesh, et al, Wildlife Conservation Society, 2005, Emerging Infectious Diseases: vol 11, no. 7, July, p. 1001
In addition to the direct health effects of the pathogens on persons and animals, animal-related disease outbreaks have caused
hundreds of billions of dollars of economic damage globally, destabilizing trade and producing devastating effects on human
livelihoods. The rash of emerging or reemerging livestock disease outbreaks around the world since the mid 1990s, including
bovine spongiform encephalopathy, foot-and-mouth disease, avian influenza, swine fever, and other disease, has cost the worlds
economies $80 billion.
Disease kills the economy
Bob Weinhold, Environmental Health Perspectives, January 2004, Infectious Diseases: The Human Costs of our Environmental
Errors, Volume 112, Number 1, http://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/members/2004/112-1/focus.html
Costs from infectious diseases can be substantial worldwide. The 2003 SARS outbreak cost China and Canada about 1% of their
economies, primarily through lost tourism and travel revenues, the NIC reported in the August 2003 publication SARS: Down But
Still a Threat. In sub-Saharan Africa, workforce havoc wrought by HIV/AIDS and malaria alone are expected to reduce gross

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domestic product by 20% or more by 2010, the NIC reported in Global Infectious Disease Threat. In the United Kingdom, cases of
bovine spongiform encephalopathy and variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in 1995 led to mass cattle slaughters and a three-year
beef embargo, costing the British economy US$5.75 billion. Even the relatively low number of U.S. infectious disease cases costs
more than $120 billion per year to treat, noted the NIAID in Microbes: In Sickness and in Health.
Disease kills the economy all factors of production produces a multiplier effect that indefinitely stunts growth
Andrew T. Price-Smith, Assistant Professor Department of Political Science University of North Dakota, 2001, Plagues and
Politics: infectious disease and international policy, p. 104-5
The empirical evidence presented in the previous chapter clearly demonstrates that infectious disease rates show a significant
negative correlation with macroeconomic national indicators such as per capita GNP, per capita government expenditure, and net
long-term capital inflow. It is increasingly apparent that the current resurgence in infectious disease portends increasing poverty
and economic destabilization in severely affected countries. At the microeconomic level, I have noted, ERIDs adversely affect
economic well-being within families and firms the general quality of the labor force, the formation and maintenance of human
capital, and various sectors of the economy. It is logical to conclude that these microeconomic effects will, through multiplier
effects, generate significant negative macroeconomic outcomes. Direct costs to the economy will be enormous, and indirect costs
will include output lost as a result of increasing mortality and (to a lesser extent) disease-induced morbidity. The four factors of
production are capital, land, technology, and labor. Ainsworth argues that if the first three of these [factors] grow at a constant rate
the slower growth in labor caused by the epidemic willslow the growth of output. However, ERIDs act synergistically to exert
negative effects on capital (both human capital and foreign investment) and land (diminishing access due to endemic infestation).
This negative synergy should result in significant limits on national economic growth, and it may result in growing poverty and
national economic decline (particularly within the developing countries). This supposition is borne out by the data presented in the
previous chapter. [he Continues] Thus, the spread of disease impedes the investment of foreign capital, erodes human capital
resources (thereby limiting the endogenous supply of social and technical ingenuity within a state), and renders some land and its
natural resources economically useless. ERIDs may also affect technological attributes of the economy, insofar as disease-induced
mortality may reduce the endogenous pool of skilled individuals (such as scientists and doctors) who would otherwise have
contributed to endogenous technological innovation.
Disease kills the economy
Scott Newman et al, conservation medicine scientist-Wildlife Trust, July 2005, MLO, The nature of emerging zoonotic diseases:
ecology, prediction and prevention, www.mio-online.com, p. 16
SARS cost the Chinese and Canadian economies over $50 billion US dollars associated with medical treatment, disease control,
and lost revenue associated with the abrupt halt of their tourism industries. Foot-and-mouth disease and bovine spongiform
encephalopathy (mad cow disease) cost the British economy a combined $30 to $40 billion US dollars in lost revenue resulting
from farm closures and trade restrictions. Even today, the potential threat of exposure to mad cow disease continues to prevent
some people from eating beef, a cost that cannot be appropriately calculated. Costs to respond to the Avian influenza outbreak
continue to increase on a daily basis; if this disease becomes the next pandemic, costs will soar to unprecedented levels. Disease
outbreaks also result in intangible costs, (e.g., the psychological impact of losing ones farm or livelihood after an outbreak and the
loss of human lives from the disease itself). There is also the continued economic burden that chronic infectious diseases place on
healthcare systems (e.g., HIV/AIDS) and the ongoing emotional stress on healthcare workers.
Disease kills economic development
Andrew T. Price-Smith, Assistant Professor Department of Political Science University of North Dakota, 2001, Plagues and
Politics: infectious disease and international policy, p. 13
The negative effects of infectious disease in the domain of economic productivity include reductions in gross domestic product
(GDP) and in government expenditure per capita, decreases in worker productivity, labor shortages and increased absenteeism,
higher costs imposed on household units (particularly on the poor), reductions in per capita income, reduced savings and increases
in income inequalities within a society that may in turn generate increased governance problems. Disease also generates
disincentives to invest in the education of children, impedes the settlement of marginal regions and the development of natural
resources, negatively affects tourism, and results in the embargoing of infected goods. The significant negative association
between increasing disease levels and the economic prosperity of affected societies may lead to increases in absolute and relative
economic deprivation in affected states. These effects, taken together, demonstrate how the worldwide resurgence of infectious
disease is likely to produce negative outcomes for the prosperity of states.
Disease destroys security - outweighs war
Andrew T. Price-Smith, Professor Political Science University of North Dakota, 2001, Plagues and Politics: infectious disease and
international policy, ed. Andrew Price-Smith, p. 165
Emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases are significant obstacles to the political stability and economic development of
seriously affected societies. Thus, the global resurgence of infectious disease presents a direct and significant long-term threat to
international governance and prosperity. Over the broad span of human history, infectious disease has consistently accounted for
the greatest proportion of human morbidity and mortality, easily surpassing war as the foremost threat to human life and prosperity.

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Historians have long argued that infectious disease has had a profound impact on the evolution and at times the dissolution of
societal structures, governments, and empires. Indeed, Robert Fogel argues that much of Englands prosperity, if not the Industrial
Revolution itself, resulted from the conquest of high morbidity and mortality in Britain during the late eighteenth and early
nineteenth centuries. This was largely because of significant advances in public health and in the increasingly equitable
distribution of food. However, even in the era of modern medicine, states annually suffer much greater mortality and morbidity
from infectious disease than from casualties incurred during inter-and intra-state military conflict.
Disease kills military readiness
Andrew T. Price-Smith, Assistant Professor Department of Political Science University of North Dakota, 2001, Plagues and
Politics: infectious disease and international policy, p. 127-8
Aside from the effects of disease on poverty and governance, disease has historically exhibited direct negative effects on military
forces through the debilitation and/or death of military personnel. The presence of infectious disease in foreign military theaters
has resulted in the exposure of troops to previously unknown pathogens. Such exposure to novel or recrudescent pathogens affects
military readiness, force structure, and recruitment. Patrick Kelley warns that in certain cases military forces from the developed
countries are at increased risk of contracting exotic pathogens from foreign military theaters owing to differential immunity: The
fact that our troops tend to grow up under good hygienic conditions further means that upon reaching adulthood they tend to be
immunologic virgins compared with members of many potential opposing forces who spent their childhood in hygienic squalor.
As a result, some infectious, to which our opponents may have almost universally become immune during childhood, can pose a
significant health threat to a deployed US force. The military effect of differential immunity was well illustrated in the colonization
of the New World.
Disease prevents protecting foreign policy interests
Andrew T. Price-Smith, Assistant Professor Department of Political Science University of North Dakota, 2001, Plagues and
Politics: infectious disease and international policy, p. 122-3
Furthermore, the destabilization of the developing countries affects the interests of the developed nations in myriad ways, and
there is evidence that US policy makers are cognizant of the threat that the resurgence of infectious disease poses to the broader
security and foreign policy interests of United States. In the Clinton administrations national security strategy of enlargement and
engagement, the proliferation of infectious disease was identified as a novel threat to American foreign policy interests,
particularly to the central policy pillars of global economic growth and the expansion and consolidation of stable and functional
democracies throughout the developing countries and in the former Soviet Union: New diseases such as AIDS, and other
epidemics which can be spread through environmental degradation, threaten to overwhelm the health facilities of developing
countries, disrupt societies and stop economic growth. Developing countries must address these realities with national sustainable
development programs that offer viable alternatives. US leadership is of the essence to facilitate that progress. If such alternatives
are not developed, the consequences for the planets future will be grave indeed.
Quarantines bad
Cardozo Journal of International and Comparative Law, 2001, Lauren Z. Asher, 9 Cardozo J. Int'l & Comp. L. 135, p. 157-9
Infectious-disease outbreaks create emergencies in which national governments often have to temporarily limit human rights. Such
limits take the form of quarantine and mandatory medical testing and other, less predictable forms that can lead to the derogation
of non-derogable rights. n126 Basic human rights include the right to be "free from actions that are injurious to the inherent dignity
and security of the human being." n127 This right encompasses freedom from genocide, slavery, torture, and arbitrary
imprisonment - the basic rights of a person. n128 These rights stand in contrast to political rights, including freedom of speech,
freedom of the press, and democracy. n129 These are the non-derogable rights, and they are, for the most part, held universally by
all nations regardless of political belief. n130 Human rights issues relating to quarantine, private health records, and mandatory
treatment arise when nations apply law in an international arena. n131 Quarantine is a complicated political action because in
choosing to stop the free transit of people, infringement of basic human rights becomes more prevalent. n132 Sequestration raises
the following human rights issues: (1) discrimination against carriers of the disease; (2) the deprivation of liberty inherent in the
imposition of public health measures without establishing that the person creates a significant health risk to society; (3) the failure
to maintain the privacy of health information; and (4) the failure of governments to disseminate relevant public health information.
n133 Compulsory public health measures will lead to unnecessary deprivation of liberty and security if enacted without the
necessary determination that society is at risk. n134 This is not to say that quarantine is not a useful tool in the hands of
international law, but only that it will not always be the best weapon against contagious disease and that it must be undertaken with
the utmost forethought. Countries occasionally (though with decreasingly less frequency) exercise quarantine, even though it has
historically proven ineffective in controlling epidemics. n135 As long as quarantine remains a part of international health law,
countries must use it sparingly and conscientiously to avoid human rights unnecessary violations.
Disease risks state failure and authoritarianism
Andrew T. Price-Smith, Assistant Professor Department of Political Science University of North Dakota, 2001, Plagues and
Politics: infectious disease and international policy, p. 130

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The evidence suggests that the spread of infectious disease throughout military populations jeopardizes military readiness,
international cooperation, and the ability of a state to preserve its territorial integrity. At the intra-state level, disease depletes force
strength through the loss of skilled military personnel, reduces the supply of able draftees or recruits, and imposes costs that
constrain military budgets, all of which impair the states capacity to defend itself against a potential aggressor and limits the
states ability to project power abroad for both peacekeeping and coercive measures. The premature death and debilitation of a
significant proportion of a states population erodes worker productivity, undermines state prosperity, and induces a great deal of
psychological stress in the populace. The destructive effect of disease-induced mortality in human-capital-intensive institutions
generates institutional fragility and undermines the legitimacy of authority structures and ruling elites, thus impairing the states
ability to govern effectively, and may compromise transitions to democratic forms of governance. Disease-induced poverty,
misery, military weakness, and governance problems may contribute to policies of repression and a slide toward increasing
authoritarianism as the weakening state seeks to maintain order. In extreme cases, disease may act as a significant stressor that tips
the balance and may precipitate state failure, although disease is likely to generate this effect in combination with other stressors
such as pre-existing inter-ethnic hostilities. This was problematic for the Clinton administrations strategy of engagement and
enlargement, which placed a premium on the establishment and strengthening of democratic regimes around the world. In
summary, at the state level, the emergence and resurgence of infectious disease may have significant implications for state
survival, stability and prosperity.
Disease risks state collapse and genocide
Andrew T. Price-Smith, Assistant Professor Department of Political Science University of North Dakota, 2001, Plagues and
Politics: infectious disease and international policy, p. 124
The balance of the evidence suggests that disease will generate a pervasive negative effect on political polarization and promote
competition between elites within a climate of declining fiscal resources and increasing deprivation. The probability of intra-elite
conflict will increase as a result of the absolute decline in resources available to that state, which is reflected in declining national
fiscal measures such as per capita GDP, in declining foreign investment, and in an eroding saving base (see chapter 3). Under the
rubric of environmental scarcity, Thomas Homer-Dixon suggests that, in the context of declining resource availability, political
elites will attempt to capture increasingly scarce renewable resources such as water, crop land, and timber. There is every reason to
assume that this dynamic of intra-elite competition will hold in the context of increasing economic scarcity, wherein elites must
increasingly compete over their portions of an ever-diminishing economic pie. Though I have previously argued that class-based
conflict between elites and the poor is one possible result of increasing disease prevalence, the potential for intra-elite violence is
also increasingly probable and may carry grave political consequences, such as coups, the collapse of governance, and planned
genocides.
Disease risks state collapse
Andrew T. Price-Smith, Assistant Professor Department of Political Science University of North Dakota, 2001, Plagues and
Politics: infectious disease and international policy, p. 13-4
At the unit level, in the domain of governance, high disease incidence undermines the capacity of political leaders and of their
bureaucracies to govern effectively as the infection of government personnel results in the debilitation and death of skilled
administrators whose job is to oversee the day-to-day operations of governance. Disease-induced mortality in human capitalintensive institutions generates institutional fragility that tends to undermine the stability of a nascent democratic society. In
Zimbabwe, an estimated 230 percent of urban adults in the 19-45 age group are HIV positive, and at least three government
ministers have succumbed to AIDS in recent years. Huguette Labelle of the Canadian International Development Agency
estimated that as of 1999 about half the members of Zambias armed forces and police forces were HIV positive. When these
individuals perish, there will be enormous negative repercussions for governance, with a likely corresponding rise in crime, civil
unrest and low-intensity violence.
Disease increases intra-state violence in 3rd world nations
Andrew T. Price-Smith, Assistant Professor Department of Political Science University of North Dakota, 2001, Plagues and
Politics: infectious disease and international policy, p. 122
In addition to the shift in the loci of conflict from the inter-state to the intra-state level, the political scientists Mohammed Ayoob
notes that the majority of these recent conflicts now occur in the developing countries. This is, of course, consistent with the
finding that states with low endogenous capacity should be more vulnerable to stressors on their economies and institutions of
governance. Thus, the proliferation of infectious disease directly threatens institutions of governance in the developing countries
and raises the probability of intra-state violence in seriously affected regions.
Disease collapses state due to exacerbating wealth gap
Andrew T. Price-Smith, Assistant Professor Department of Political Science University of North Dakota, 2001, Plagues and
Politics: infectious disease and international policy, p. 14
Disease exerts a negative effect on state capacity at the unit level that may produce pernicious outcomes at the systems level.
Within the domain of economics, as disease produces a significant drag on the economies of affected countries, we may see
chronic underdevelopment, which may in turn exert a net drag on world trade and impair prosperity. In all likelihood owing to the

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nature of spiral dynamics inherent in the relationship between infectious disease and state capacity, countries with low initial state
capacity will suffer greater losses over time from increasing prevalence of infectious disease within their populations. Owing to
this negative spiral effect, diseases negative influence on the economic development of states may exacerbate the economic divide
between developed and developing countries. Furthermore, the negative effects of infectious disease are not confined to the
developing countries. At the systems level, trade goods from disease-affected regions (for example, British beef and Hong Kong
chickens) may be subject to international embargo. As infectious agents continue to emerge and re-emerge, and as agricultural
crops and animal stocks become increasingly infested, we should expect that presumably infected trade goods from affected states
will be embargoed, tourism to affected regions may decline, and economic damage to affected states will likely increase. This
volume demonstrates that increasing levels of disease correlate with a decline in state capacity. As state capacity declines, and as
pathogen-induced deprivation and increasing demands upon the state increase, we may see an attendant increase in the incidence
of chronic sub-state violence and state failure. State failure frequently produces chaos in affected regions as neighboring states seal
their borders to prevent the massive influx of disease-infected refugee populations. Adjacent states may also seek to fill the power
vacuum and may seize valued territory from the collapsing state, prompting other proximate states to do the same and so
exacerbating regional security dilemmas.
Disease risks state collapse
Andrew T. Price-Smith, Assistant Professor Department of Political Science University of North Dakota, 2001, Plagues and
Politics: infectious disease and international policy, p. 130
The evidence suggests that the spread of infectious disease throughout military populations jeopardizes military readiness,
international cooperation, and the ability of a state to preserve its territorial integrity. At the intra-state level, disease depletes force
strength through the loss of skilled military personnel, reduces the supply of able draftees or recruits, and imposes costs that
constrain military budgets, all of which impair the states capacity to defend itself against a potential aggressor and limits the
states ability to project power abroad for both peacekeeping and coercive measures. The premature death and debilitation of a
significant proportion of a states population erodes worker productivity, undermines state prosperity, and induces a great deal of
psychological stress in the populace. The destructive effect of disease-induced mortality in human-capital-intensive institutions
generates institutional fragility and undermines the legitimacy of authority structures and ruling elites, thus impairing the states
ability to govern effectively, and may compromise transitions to democratic forms of governance. Disease-induced poverty,
misery, military weakness, and governance problems may contribute to policies of repression and a slide toward increasing
authoritarianism as the weakening state seeks to maintain order. In extreme cases, disease may act as a significant stressor that tips
the balance and may precipitate state failure, although disease is likely to generate this effect in combination with other stressors
such as pre-existing inter-ethnic hostilities. This was problematic for the Clinton administrations strategy of engagement and
enlargement, which placed a premium on the establishment and strengthening of democratic regimes around the world. In
summary, at the state level, the emergence and resurgence of infectious disease may have significant implications for state
survival, stability and prosperity.
Disease risks severe poverty and death
Jonathan Ban, Chemical and Biological Arms Control Institute, 2001, CBACI Study: Health, Security and US Global Leadership,
www.cbaci.org/pubs/special_reports/number_2.pdf, p. 14
Ultimately, there is a negative synergy among health problems, especially infectious diseases, population dynamics, environmental
degradation, weak government structures, and long-standing grievances. This synergy creates a downward spiral dynamic between
declining health indicators and the states capacity to respond effectively, which in turn results in a continued deterioration of
public health. This spiral is most intense in developing countries and has been described as Thirdworldization, a particularly
pernicious pattern in which deteriorating levels of health care, immunization, sanitation, education, and the total burden of disease
in a society interact with poverty and ecological disturbances to roll back the level of development in the fight for improved
quality of life. It is little wonder that disease frequently is included on the lists of factors that precipitate the collapse of
governments (together with crime, civil war, hunger, and drugs).
Disease has empirically collapsed states
Andrew T. Price-Smith, Assistant Professor Department of Political Science University of North Dakota, 2001, Plagues and
Politics: infectious disease and international policy, p. 10-1
As William McNeill proposed in Plagues and Peoples, microbes have been relentless adversaries of humanity and of human
societies since time immemorial. Current anthropological evidence suggests that the expansion and collapse of various societies
throughout history may have resulted in part from the tranmission of lethal and/or debilitating pathogens. Thucydides account of
the eventual fall of Athens during the Peoponnesian ars pays particular attentio to the devastating effect that the plague had on
Athenian governance, and by extension the Athenian war effort: The bodies of the dying were heaped one on top of the other, and
half-dead creatures could be seen staggering about in the streets or flocking around the fountains in their desire for water. For the
catastrophe was so overwhelming that men, not knowing what would happen next to them, became indifferent to every rule of
religion or law. Athens owed to the plague the beginnings of a state of unprecedented lawlessness. Seeing how quick and abrupt
were the changes of fortunepeople now began openly to venture on acts of self-indulgence which before then they used to keep
in the dark. As for what is called honor, no one showed himself willing to abide by 9its laws, so doubtful was it whether one would

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survive to enjoy the name for it. No fear of god or law of man had a restraining influence. As for the gods, it seemed to be the same
thing whether one worshipped them or no, when gods, it one saw the good and the bad dying indiscriminately. As for offences
against human law, no one expected to live long enough to be brought to trial and punished. McNeill argued that the collapse of
the Byzantine Roman Empire in the sixth century AD resulted from the plague of Justinain, which was a consequence of the
merging of two previously isolated disease pools via Asian trade routes (the Silk Road).
Disease risks state collapse by increasing governance problems
Andrew T. Price-Smith, Assistant Professor Department of Political Science University of North Dakota, 2001, Plagues and
Politics: infectious disease and international policy, p. 13-4
At the unit level, in the domain of governance, high disease incidence undermines the capacity of political leaders and of their
bureaucracies to govern effectively as the infection of government personnel results in the debilitation and death of skilled
administrators whose job is to oversee the day-to-day operations of governance. Disease-induced mortality in human capitalintensive institutions generates institutional fragility that tends to undermine the stability of a nascent democratic society. In
Zimbabwe, an estimated 230 percent of urban adults in the 19-45 age group are HIV positive, and at least three government
ministers have succumbed to AIDS in recent years. Huguette Labelle of the Canadian International Development Agency
estimated that as of 1999 about half the members of Zambias armed forces and police forces were HIV positive. When these
individuals perish, there will be enormous negative repercussions for governance, with a likely corresponding rise in crime, civil
unrest and low-intensity violence.
States are unable to adapt to disease issues
Andrew T. Price-Smith, Professor Political Science University of North Dakota, 2001, Plagues and Politics: infectious disease and
international policy, ed. Andrew Price-Smith, p. 169-70
States and societies may at this point use adaptive resources to mitigate the effects of ERIDs on state capacity. The states ability to
adapt is limited by several factors. First, the initial level of state capacity will determine the scale of adaptive resources that can be
mobilized to deal with the ERID problem. States with higher initial capacity will therefore have greater technical, financial and
social resources to adapt to crises. State adaptation will also be affected by exogenous inputs of capital and social and technical
ingenuity, courtesy of international organizations such as the World Health Organization, United Nations Childrens Fund, and
NGOs such as the International Committee of the Red Cross. It may also be compromised by certain outcomes generated by
intervening variables, such as war, famine, and ecological destruction. Exogenous inputs (EIs) take the form of capital, technology
and ingenuity into the state from external sources such as IOs, NGOs, and direct foreign aid supplied by donor countries.
Exogenous inputs, such as direct foreign capital infusions, also directly affect the resources available tot the state to respond to
crises and, therefore, augment the efficacy of adaptation responses.
Disease-induced state collapse will spread war throughout the entire continent and risk further state collapse
Roger Kaplan, THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY, February 1994, http://dieoff.org/page67.htm
West Africa is becoming the symbol of worldwide demographic, environmental, and societal stress, in which criminal anarchy
emerges as the real "strategic" danger. Disease, overpopulation, unprovoked crime, scarcity of resources, refugee migrations, the
increasing erosion of nation-states and international borders, and the empowerment of private armies, security firms, and
international drug cartels are now most tellingly demonstrated through a West African prism. West Africa provides an appropriate
introduction to the issues, often extremely unpleasant to discuss, that will soon confront our civilization. To remap the political
earth the way it will be a few decades hence--as I intend to do in this article--I find I must begin with West Africa. There is no
other place on the planet where political maps are so deceptive--where, in fact, they tell such lies--as in West Africa. Start with
Sierra Leone. According to the map, it is a nation-state of defined borders, with a government in control of its territory. In truth the
Sierra Leonian government, run by a twenty-seven-year-old army captain, Valentine Strasser, controls Freetown by day and by day
also controls part of the rural interior. In the government's territory the national army is an unruly rabble threatening drivers and
passengers at most checkpoints. In the other part of the country units of two separate armies from the war in Liberia have taken up
residence, as has an army of Sierra Leonian rebels. The government force fighting the rebels is full of renegade commanders who
have aligned themselves with disaffected village chiefs. A pre-modern formlessness governs the battlefield, evoking the wars in
medieval Europe prior to the 1648 Peace of Westphalia, which ushered in the era of organized nation-states. As a consequence,
roughly 400,000 Sierra Leonians are internally displaced, 280,000 more have fled to neighboring Guinea, and another 100,000
have fled to Liberia, even as 400,000 Liberians have fled to Sierra Leone. The third largest city in Sierra Leone, Gondama, is a
displaced-persons camp. With an additional 600,000 Liberians in Guinea and 250,000 in the Ivory Coast, the borders dividing
these four countries have become largely meaningless. Even in quiet zones none of the governments except the Ivory Coast's
maintains the schools, bridges, roads, and police forces in a manner necessary for functional sovereignty. The Koranko ethnic
group in northeastern Sierra Leone does all its trading in Guinea. Sierra Leonian diamonds are more likely to be sold in Liberia
than in Freetown. In the eastern provinces of Sierra Leone you can buy Liberian beer but not the local brand. In Sierra Leone, as in
Guinea, as in the Ivory Coast, as in Ghana, most of the primary rain forest and the secondary bush is being destroyed at an
alarming rate. I saw convoys of trucks bearing majestic hardwood trunks to coastal ports. When Sierra Leone achieved its
independence, in 1961, as much as 60 percent of the country was primary rain forest. Now six percent is. In the Ivory Coast the
proportion has fallen from 38 percent to eight percent. The deforestation has led to soil erosion, which has led to more flooding

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and more mosquitoes. Virtually everyone in the West African interior has some form of malaria. Sierra Leone is a microcosm of
what is occurring, albeit in a more tempered and gradual manner, throughout West Africa and much of the underdeveloped world:
the withering away of central governments, the rise of tribal and regional domains, the unchecked spread of disease, and the
growing pervasiveness of war. As many internal African borders begin to crumble, a more impenetrable boundary is being
erected that threatens to isolate the continent as a whole: the wall of disease. Merely to visit West Africa in some degree of safety, I
spent about $500 for a hepatitis B vaccination series and other disease prophylaxis. Africa may today be more dangerous in this
regard than it was in 1862, before antibiotics, when the explorer Sir Richard Francis Burton described the health situation on the
continent as "deadly, a Golgotha, a Jehannum." Of the approximately 12 million people worldwide whose blood is HIV-positive, 8
million are in Africa. In the capital of the Ivory Coast, whose modern road system only helps to spread the disease, 10 percent of
the population is HIV-positive. And war and refugee movements help the virus break through to more-remote areas of Africa. Alan
Greenberg, M.D., a representative of the Centers for Disease Control in Abidjan, explains that in Africa the HIV virus and
tuberculosis are now "fast-forwarding each other." Of the approximately 4,000 newly diagnosed tuberculosis patients in Abidjan,
45 percent were also found to be HIV-positive. As African birth rates soar and slums proliferate, some experts worry that viral
mutations and hybridizations might, just conceivably, result in a form of the AIDS virus that is easier to catch than the present
strain. It is malaria that is most responsible for the disease wall that threatens to separate Africa and other parts of the Third World
from more-developed regions of the planet in the twenty-first century. Carried by mosquitoes, malaria, unlike AIDS, is easy to
catch. Most people in sub-Saharan Africa have recurring bouts of the disease throughout their entire lives, and it is mutating into
increasingly deadly forms. "The great gift of Malaria is utter apathy," wrote Sir Richard Burton, accurately portraying the situation
in much of the Third World today. Visitors to malaria-afflicted parts of the planet are protected by a new drug, mefloquine, a side
effect of which is vivid, even violent, dreams. But a strain of cerebral malaria resistant to mefloquine is now on the offensive.
Consequently, defending oneself against malaria in Africa is becoming more and more like defending oneself against violent
crime. You engage in "behavior modification": not going out at dusk, wearing mosquito repellent all the time. And the cities keep
growing. I got a general sense of the future while driving from the airport to downtown Conakry, the capital of Guinea. The fortyfive-minute journey in heavy traffic was through one never-ending shantytown: a nightmarish Dickensian spectacle to which
Dickens himself would never have given credence. The corrugated metal shacks and scabrous walls were coated with black slime.
Stores were built out of rusted shipping containers, junked cars, and jumbles of wire mesh. The streets were one long puddle of
floating garbage. Mosquitoes and flies were everywhere. Children, many of whom had protruding bellies, seemed as numerous as
ants. When the tide went out, dead rats and the skeletons of cars were exposed on the mucky beach. In twenty-eight years Guinea's
population will double if growth goes on at current rates. Hardwood logging continues at a madcap speed, and people flee the
Guinean countryside for Conakry. It seemed to me that here, as elsewhere in Africa and the Third World, man is challenging nature
far beyond its limits, and nature is now beginning to take its revenge. Africa may be as relevant to the future character of world
politics as the Balkans were a hundred years ago, prior to the two Balkan wars and the First World War. Then the threat was the
collapse of empires and the birth of nations based solely on tribe. Now the threat is more elemental: nature unchecked. Africa's
immediate future could be very bad. The coming upheaval, in which foreign embassies are shut down, states collapse, and contact
with the outside world takes place through dangerous, disease-ridden coastal trading posts, will loom large in the century we are
entering. (Nine of twenty-one U.S. foreign-aid missions to be closed over the next three years are in Africa--a prologue to a
consolidation of U.S. embassies themselves.) Precisely because much of Africa is set to go over the edge at a time when the Cold
War has ended, when environmental and demographic stress in other parts of the globe is becoming critical, and when the postFirst World War system of nation-states--not just in the Balkans but perhaps also in the Middle East--is about to be toppled, Africa
suggests what war, borders, and ethnic politics will be like a few decades hence. To understand the events of the next fifty years,
then, one must understand environmental scarcity, cultural and racial clash, geographic destiny, and the transformation of war. The
order in which I have named these is not accidental. Each concept except the first relies partly on the one or ones before it,
meaning that the last two--new approaches to mapmaking and to warfare--are the most important. They are also the least
understood. I will now look at each idea, drawing upon the work of specialists and also my own travel experiences in various parts
of the globe besides Africa, in order to fill in the blanks of a new political atlas. The Environment as a Hostile Power For a while
the media will continue to ascribe riots and other violent upheavals abroad mainly to ethnic and religious conflict. But as these
conflicts multiply, it will become apparent that something else is afoot, making more and more places like Nigeria, India, and
Brazil ungovernable. Mention "the environment" or "diminishing natural resources" in foreign-policy circles and you meet a brick
wall of skepticism or boredom. To conservatives especially, the very terms seem flaky. Public-policy foundations have contributed
to the lack of interest, by funding narrowly focused environmental studies replete with technical jargon which foreign-affairs
experts just let pile up on their desks. It is time to understand "the environment" for what it is: the national-security issue of the
early twenty-first century. The political and strategic impact of surging populations, spreading disease, deforestation and soil
erosion, water depletion, air pollution, and, possibly, rising sea levels in critical, overcrowded regions like the Nile Delta and
Bangladesh--developments that will prompt mass migrations and, in turn, incite group conflicts--will be the core foreign-policy
challenge from which most others will ultimately emanate, arousing the public and uniting assorted interests left over from the
Cold War. In the twenty-first century water will be in dangerously short supply in such diverse locales as Saudi Arabia, Central
Asia, and the southwestern United States. A war could erupt between Egypt and Ethiopia over Nile River water. Even in Europe
tensions have arisen between Hungary and Slovakia over the damming of the Danube, a classic case of how environmental
disputes fuse with ethnic and historical ones. The political scientist and erstwhile Clinton adviser Michael Mandelbaum has said,
"We have a foreign policy today in the shape of a doughnut--lots of peripheral interests but nothing at the center." The

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environment, I will argue, is part of a terrifying array of problems that will define a new threat to our security, filling the hole in
Mandelbaum's doughnut and allowing a post- Cold War foreign policy to emerge inexorably by need rather than by design.
..Also, war-making entities will no longer be restricted to a specific territory. Loose and shadowy organisms such as Islamic
terrorist organizations suggest why borders will mean increasingly little and sedimentary layers of tribalistic identity and control
will mean more. "From the vantage point of the present, there appears every prospect that religious . . . fanaticisms will play a
larger role in the motivation of armed conflict" in the West than at any time "for the last 300 years," Van Creveld writes. This is
why analysts like Michael Vlahos are closely monitoring religious cults. Vlahos says, "An ideology that challenges us may not
take familiar form, like the old Nazis or Commies. It may not even engage us initially in ways that fit old threat markings." Van
Creveld concludes, "Armed conflict will be waged by men on earth, not robots in space. It will have more in common with the
struggles of primitive tribes than with large-scale conventional war." While another military historian, John Keegan, in his new
book A History of Warfare, draws a more benign portrait of primitive man, it is important to point out that what Van Creveld really
means is re-primitivized man: warrior societies operating at a time of unprecedented resource scarcity and planetary overcrowding.
Van Creveld's pre-Westphalian vision of worldwide low-intensity conflict is not a superficial "back to the future" scenario. First of
all, technology will be used toward primitive ends. In Liberia the guerrilla leader Prince Johnson didn't just cut off the ears of
President Samuel Doe before Doe was tortured to death in 1990--Johnson made a video of it, which has circulated throughout West
Africa. In December of 1992, when plotters of a failed coup against the Strasser regime in Sierra Leone had their ears cut off at
Freetown's Hamilton Beach prior to being killed, it was seen by many to be a copycat execution. Considering, as I've explained
earlier, that the Strasser regime is not really a government and that Sierra Leone is not really a nation-state, listen closely to Van
Creveld: "Once the legal monopoly of armed force, long claimed by the state, is wrested out of its hands, existing distinctions
between war and crime will break down much as is already the case today in . . . Lebanon, Sri Lanka, El Salvador, Peru, or
Colombia." If crime and war become indistinguishable, then "national defense" may in the future be viewed as a local concept. As
crime continues to grow in our cities and the ability of state governments and criminal-justice systems to protect their citizens
diminishes, urban crime may, according to Van Creveld, "develop into low-intensity conflict by coalescing along racial, religious,
social, and political lines." As small-scale violence multiplies at home and abroad, state armies will continue to shrink, being
gradually replaced by a booming private security business, as in West Africa, and by urban mafias, especially in the former
communist world, who may be better equipped than municipal police forces to grant physical protection to local inhabitants.
Future wars will be those of communal survival, aggravated or, in many cases, caused by environmental scarcity. These wars will
be subnational, meaning that it will be hard for states and local governments to protect their own citizens physically. This is how
many states will ultimately die. As state power fades--and with it the state's ability to help weaker groups within society, not to
mention other states--peoples and cultures around the world will be thrown back upon their own strengths and weaknesses, with
fewer equalizing mechanisms to protect them. Whereas the distant future will probably see the emergence of a racially hybrid,
globalized man, the coming decades will see us more aware of our differences than of our similarities. To the average person,
political values will mean less, personal security more. The belief that we are all equal is liable to be replaced by the overriding
obsession of the ancient Greek travelers: Why the differences between peoples?...Indeed, it is not clear that the United States will
survive the next century in exactly its present form. Because America is a multi-ethnic society, the nation-state has always been
more fragile here than it is in more homogeneous societies like Germany and Japan. . Issues like West Africa could yet emerge
as a new kind of foreign-policy issue, further eroding America's domestic peace. The spectacle of several West African nations
collapsing at once could reinforce the worst racial stereotypes here at home. That is another reason why Africa matters. We must
not kid ourselves: the sensitivity factor is higher than ever. The Washington, D.C., public school system is already experimenting
with an Afrocentric curriculum. Summits between African leaders and prominent African-Americans are becoming frequent, as are
Pollyanna-ish prognostications about multiparty elections in Africa that do not factor in crime, surging birth rates, and resource
depletion. The Congressional Black Caucus was among those urging U.S. involvement in Somalia and in Haiti. At the Los Angeles
Times minority staffers have protested against, among other things, what they allege to be the racist tone of the newspaper's Africa
coverage, allegations that the editor of the "World Report" section, Dan Fisher, denies, saying essentially that Africa should be
viewed through the same rigorous analytical lens as other parts of the world. Africa may be marginal in terms of conventional latetwentieth-century conceptions of strategy, but in an age of cultural and racial clash, when national defense is increasingly local,
Africa's distress will exert a destabilizing influence on the United States.
The fact that we have survived past pandemics is irrelevant risk high now
Andrew T. Price-Smith, Assistant Professor Department of Political Science University of North Dakota, 2001, Plagues and
Politics: infectious disease and international policy, p. 4-5
Critics of health security argue that microbes and humanity have coexisted for millennia, and besides the collapse of a few
empires and the deaths of billions, the human species has managed to survive. All of this is true, yet the human species finds itself
in a very different situation now: individuals can travel around the world rapidly by airplane, and overpopulation and the growth of
megacities have created entirely new disease pools that will allow new pathogens to emerge and flourish. This brave new world
is also witnessing human-induced worldwide environmental destruction that results in the release of pathogens from their ancient
reservoirs in the core of rain forests, and where virulent new microbes result in the widespread destruction aquatic life. Rapid
worldwide changes may accelerate the diffusion, the lethality, and the resistance of the plethora of species within the microbial
world, of which we have identified very few. While certain familiar diseases acquire resistance and conquer or reclaim territory
within the human ecology, it is also likely that the natural processes of zoonotic transfer will persist and that new human pathogens

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will continue to emerge. The emergence of disease does not threaten the survival of the human species, yet it most certainly
threatens the prosperity and stability of human societies and political structures.

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**Bio-Technology**
Biotech causes mass starvation terminator genes cross over

Kimbrell, executive Director of the International Center for Technology Assessment and Executive Director of the
Center for Food Safety, senior attorney and policy director of the Greenhouse Crisis Foundation, senior consultant with
the Environmental Law Institute in their International Environmental Law Project , 5/12/09, (Andrew, Myth Seven
Biotechnology Will Solve the Problems of Industrial Agriculture excerpted from Fatal Harvest: The Tragedy of
Industrial Agriculture, http://ukiahcommunityblog.wordpress.com/2009/05/12/myth-seven-%E2%80%93biotechnology-will-solve-the-problems-of-industrial-agriculture/)
Far from being an answer to world hunger, genetic engineering could be a major contributor to starvation. There are currently
more than a dozen patents on genetically engineered terminator technology. These seeds are genetically engineered by
biotech companies to produce a sterile seed after a single growing season, insuring that the worlds farmers cannot save their
seed and instead will have to buy from corporations every season. Does anyone believe that the solution to world hunger is to
make the crops of the world sterile? With more than half of the worlds farmers relying on saved seeds for their harvest,
imagine the mass starvation that would result should the sterility genes escape from the engineered crops and contaminate nongenetically engineered local crops, unintentionally sterilizing them. According to a study by Martha Crouch of Indiana
University, such a chilling scenario is a very real possibility.

Biotech kills biodiversity genetic pollution, superweeds

Kimbrell, executive Director of the International Center for Technology Assessment and Executive Director of the
Center for Food Safety, senior attorney and policy director of the Greenhouse Crisis Foundation, senior consultant with
the Environmental Law Institute in their International Environmental Law Project , 5/12/09, (Andrew, Myth Seven
Biotechnology Will Solve the Problems of Industrial Agriculture excerpted from Fatal Harvest: The Tragedy of
Industrial Agriculture, http://ukiahcommunityblog.wordpress.com/2009/05/12/myth-seven-%E2%80%93biotechnology-will-solve-the-problems-of-industrial-agriculture/)
The idea that biotechnology is beneficial to the environment centers on the myth that it will reduce pesticide use by creating plants
resistant to insects and other pests. In actuality the governments own independent research has disproved this claim. A study by
the U.S. Department of Agriculture in 2000 revealed that there is no overall reduction in pesticide use with genetically engineered
crops. Even as it does nothing to alleviate the chemical pollution crisis, biotech food brings its own very different pollution
hazard: biological and genetic pollution. In 2000, Purdue University researchers found that the release of only a few genetically
engineered fish into a large native fish population could make that species extinct in only a few generations. Meanwhile,
scientists at Cornell University discovered that the pollen from Bt-corn could be fatal to the Monarch butterfly and other
beneficial insects. The Union of Concerned Scientists has shown that the genetically engineered Bt crops could lead to pests
becoming resistant to Bt. This non-chemical pesticide is essential to organic and conventional farmers throughout the country.
If plant pests develop a resistance to it, this could fatally undermine organic farming in the United States. Another significant
environmental issue with GE foods is that the crops are notoriously difficult to control. They can migrate, mutate, and crosspollinate with other plants. If a pest- or herbicide-resistant strain were to spread from crops to weeds, a superweed could result
and be nearly impossible to stop. Overall, the environmental threat of biotechnology caused 100 top scientists to warn that careless
use could lead to irreversible, devastating damage to the environment.
Biotech is key to preventing bioterror
Maurer 7 - Stephen M. Maurer, J.D. Director of the Goldman School Project at the University of California, Berkeley

on Information Technology and Homeland Security Lifeboat Foundation BioShield http://lifeboat.com/ex/bio.shield

2007
The new realities of terrorism and suicide bombers pull us one step further. How would we react to the devastation caused by a virus or
bacterium or other pathogen unleashed not by the forces of nature, but intentionally by man? No intelligence agency, no matter how astute, and no military, no matter how powerful and
dedicated, can assure that a small terrorist group using readily available equipment in a small and apparently innocuous setting can not mount a
first-order biological attack. With the rapid advancements in technology, we are rapidly moving from having to worry about statebased biological programs to smaller terrorist-based biological programs . It's possible today to synthesize virulent pathogens from
scratch, or to engineer and manufacture prions that, introduced undetectably over time into a nation's food supply, would after a
long delay afflict millions with a terrible and often fatal disease. It's a new world. Though not as initially dramatic as a nuclear
blast, biological warfare is potentially far more destructive than the kind of nuclear attack feasible at the operational level of the
terrorist. And biological war is itself distressingly easy to wage. It would be more cost effective if those funding the BioShield set specific goals and gave prize money to
the people/organizations that accomplished them than simply funding research without such goals. We propose that we take the measure of this threat and make
preparations today to engage it with the force and knowledge adequate to throw it back wherever and however it may strike. It is

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time to accelerate the development of antiviral and antibacterial technology for the human population. The way to combat this serious and
ever-growing threat is to develop broad tools to destroy viruses and bacteria . We have tools such as those based on RNA interference that can block gene expression.
We can now sequence the genes of a new virus in a matter of days, so our goal is within reach! We call for the creation of new technologies and the
enhancement of existing technologies to increase our abilities to detect, identify, and model any emerging or newly identified
infective agent, present or future, natural or otherwise we need to accelerate the expansion of our capacity to engineer vaccines
for immunization, and explore the feasibility of other medicinals to cure or circumvent infections, and to manufacture, distribute,
and administer what we need in a timely and effective manner that protects us all from the threat of bioengineered malevolent
viruses and microbial organisms. Time is running out.

Biotech is inevitableChina and India

McConnell 07 - USINFO Staff Writer [Kathryn McConnell, Asia Seen as Next Focus of Agricultural Biotech Production: India, China,
Vietnam take the lead in research, expert says, 16 February 2007, pg. http://usinfo.state.gov/xarchives/display.html?p=washfileenglish&y=2007&m=February&x=20070216144428AKllennoCcM6.266421e-02]edlee

Washington -- The next decade of research in crops improved by biotechnology will include a major role for the rapidly
increasing number of projects in Asia, according to the head of a leading agricultural research institute. Countries in
Asia increasingly are investing in agricultural biotechnology research aimed at helping them meet their growing needs
for food, feed, fiber and fuel, said Clive James, chairman of the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech
Applications (ISAAA).ISAAA is a nonprofit international network based at Cornell University in New York with centers in
the Philippines and Kenya. Biotech crops, also known as genetically modified crops, increasingly are being grown in
and approved for import by Asian countries, James said in a recent interview with USINFO. The researcher, recently
back from visiting several countries in Asia, said acceptance is strong among farmers in such countries as India,
China, Pakistan, Japan, Vietnam, South Korea and the Philippines where traditional crops often are destroyed by
insects or harsh environmental conditions. These farmers stand to benefit financially from increased harvests due to
genetic improvements that make certain crops resistant to insects and because such crops need fewer applications of
insecticides, James said. "The development of biotechnology will be a major development for all of agriculture" as
scientists look for ways to improve a variety of crops that also effectively will be able to counter soil erosion and
conserve moisture, James said. Plants with genes conferring some degree of drought tolerance, which are expected
to become available in approximately 2010 or 2011, will be particularly important for developing countries as drought is
the most prevalent and important constraint to increased crop productivity worldwide, he said. India is emerging as a
key biotech leader in Asia, surpassing China for the first time in the number of hectares planted with biotech seed,
James said. In 2006, India tripled from the previous year the area it planted in biotech cotton, its first commercialized
biotech crop. India now has a total of 3.8 million biotech hectares while China has 3.5 million such hectares. The other
countries in the top eight in of terms of number of hectares devoted to growing biotech crops are: the United States
(54.6 million hectares), Argentina (18 million), Brazil (11.5 million), Canada (6.1 million), Paraguay (2 million) and South
Africa (1.4 million), according to an ISAAA report on the global status of biotech crops released in January. After cotton
the next main crop to be commercialized in Asia likely will be "golden rice" -- rice enhanced with vitamin A, which is
important for vision and the respiratory, urinary and intestinal tracts, James said. Vitamin A deficiency can lead to
children becoming prematurely blind. China, the largest investor in Asia in biotech research, is expected to spend
$200 million on biotech in 2007. "China has made a clear decision to invest in biotech because it doesn't want to be
dependent on other countries for food, fiber or fuel," James said.

2)But US Key
a)US spillover
Taylor 2
Taylor, Senior Fellow and Director of RFFs Center for Risk Management, 02 (Michael R., Resources
for the Future, A nonprofit and nonpartisan think tank located in Washington, DC that conducts
independent research - rooted primarily in economics and other social, American Patent Policy,
Biotechnology, and African Agriculture http://www.rff.org/rff/Documents/RFF-RPT-Patent-ExecSum.pdf)
The U.S. government's stances on biotechnology and patents invite such an inquiry. U.S.-based
companies and researchers generate much of the world's innovation in plant biotechnology. The U.S.
government is a strong advocate of developing biotechnology for the needs of not only U.S. farmers,
but also farmers in developing countries. 10 The U.S. patent system has enthusiastically embraced
plant biotechnology by issuing thousands of patents, and the United States generally champions
strong patent protection worldwide, favoring international adherence to the stringent U.S. model. It is
thus important to explore how U.S. patent policy might be changed to harmonize U.S. positions on
patents, biotechnology, and the need for progress in developing-country agriculture, thereby
enhancing both food security [*325] of developing countries and broad U.S. foreign policy interests. It

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is particularly important and timely to address these questions as the "development round" of trade
negotiations launched by the World Trade Organization ("WTO") at Doha unfolds with heavy emphasis
on agriculture, and as the international debate heats up about the role of intellectual property in
development. 11

b)only US biotech solves--industry

Kowalski 2
Kowalski JD at University of California at Davis 02 (Tara Kowalski, International Patent Rights and Biotechnology:
Should the United States Promote Technology Transfer to Developing Countries?, Loyola of Los Angeles International
& Comparative Law Review, Winter 2002, 25 Loy. L.A. Int'l & Comp. L. Rev. 41)
Developing countries currently lack sufficient access to biotechnology in two respects. First, they do
not have an adequate quantity of biotechnology to address their needs. Second, developed countries,
which conduct most biotechnology research and development (R&D), create products for developed
markets. Therefore, most current biotechnology does not address problems that are unique to
developing countries. The United States is currently the world leader in both the production and
consumption of biotechnology. 24 U.S. international patent filings demonstrate its dominance in the
area of biotechnology R&D. 25 In the first half of the 1990s, the United States held priority of 63% of
international biotechnology patents and 59% of the most highly cited biotechnology inventions. 26
Federal grants and private industry are the two primary sources of funding for biotechnology R&D in
the United States. The United States provides more funding for biotechnology R&D than any other
government in the world.

3)China doing biotech

Qifa 99 Reasearcher on biotechnology @ Huazhong Agricultural University

[Qifa Zhang, China: Agricultural Biotechnology

Opportunities to Meet the Challenges of Food Protection, in Agricultural Biotechnology and the Poor, ed. G. J. Persley and M. M. Lantir
(Washington, D.C.: Consultive Group on International Agricultural Research, 1999),

http://www.cgiar.org/biotech/rep0100/zhang.pdf.]edlee
In the last 15 years there have been rapid developments in China in scientific infrastructure and also research
programs in biotechnology and molecular biology of various crop plants. Infrastructure developments include the
establishment of National Key Laboratories in the general areas of agricultural biotechnology and crop genetics and
breeding, in north, central and south China. These laboratories are well equipped for biotechnology and molecular
biology research. In addition, there are open laboratories supported by the Ministry of Agriculture, the Ministry of
Education, and the Chinese Academy of Sciences. These laboratories have provided good opportunities for
biotechnology research.
Financial Resources
During the same period, regular funding channels were formed at the central government level, which support basic
and applied research. This includes the establishment of the National Natural Science Foundation of China and The Chinese Foundation of
Agricultural Scientific Research and Education. Major research initiatives and programs were also established at the state level and by various

The most important programs for biotechnology R&D are the National Program on High Technology
Development (also known as the 863 Program) and the National Program on the Development of Basic Research (also
known as 973), both of which included agricultural biotechnology as a major component. Programs were set up to promote young
ministries.

scientists by awarding special grants from the National Natural Science Foundation, the 863 Program, and also various ministries. Similar
systems, although smaller, were also developed by local governments in many provinces .

International funding channels also opened to

Chinese scientists during this period, including those of the Rockefeller Foundation, McKnight Foundation, the
International Foundation for Science, and the European Union-China collaboration programs. The availability of
financial support has enhanced research capacity and has promoted the development of young scientists . Some of the
programs have a training component as well. Scientific Advances Rapid advances have been made in molecular biology
and biotechnology research in China in the 1990s. These include genomic studies in rice and other cereals, development of molecular
marker technologies, identification, and mapping and molecular cloning of a large number of agriculturally useful genes. These studies have
resulted in powerful tools for crop improvement (for example, marker-assisted selection) that can be applied to develop new
cultivars and hybrid parents. Transformation technologies have also been firmly established in many laboratories for
most of the crop species, including major cereal crops such as corn, rice, and wheat that are often considered difficult
to transform. Transgenic plants can now be routinely produced for crops such as rice, corn, wheat, cotton, tomato,
potato, soybean, rapeseed, and other crops, using Agrobacterium, particle bombardment or other methods. Pg .45-46

Biotech would be used to vaccinate against all strains of the flu

Macrae 6

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FIONA MacRAE, Daily Mail The Vaccine to prevent every Strain of Flu
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/health/healthmain.html?
in_article_id=425227&in_page_id=1774 12-29-06
British scientists are on the verge of producing a revolutionary flu vaccine that works against all major types of the
disease. Described as the 'holy grail' of flu vaccines, it would protect against all strains of influenza A - the virus behind
both bird flu and the nastiest outbreaks of winter flu. Just a couple of injections could give long-lasting immunity unlike the current vaccine which has to be given every year. The brainchild of scientists at Cambridge biotech firm
Acambis, working with Belgian researchers, the vaccine will be tested on humans for the first time in the next few
months. A similar universal flu vaccine, being developed by Swiss vaccine firm Cytos Biotechnology, could also be
tested on people in 2007 - and the vaccines on the market in around five years. Importantly, the vaccines would also
be quicker and easier to make than the traditional jabs, meaning vast quantities could be stockpiled against a global
outbreak of bird flu. Martin Bachmann, of Cytos, said: "You could really stockpile it. In the case of a pandemic, that
would be a huge advantage. "If you were to start world like a tidal wave, killing millions? The burning question is, will
there be a human influenza pandemic, Secretary Leavitt told reporters. On behalf of the WHO, I can tell you that
there will be. The only question is the virulence and rapidity of transmission from human to human.586 The DirectorGeneral of the World Health Organization concurred: [T]here is no disagreement that this is just a matter of time.587
The world just has no idea what its going to see if this thing comes, the head of the CDCs International Emerging
Infections Program in Thailand said, but then stopped. When, really. Its when. I dont think we can afford the luxury of
the word if anymore. We are past ifs.588 The Chief Medical Officer of Great Britain,589 the Director-General of
Health of Germany,590 the director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control,591 the Senior United Nations Coordinator
for Avian and Human Influenza,592 and the director of the U.S. National Security Health Policy Center593 all agree
that another influenza pandemic is only a matter of time. As the director of Trust for Americas Health put it, This is not
a drill. This is not a planning exercise. This is for real.

Biotech development creates a world of democracy, clean air and water while ending oppression and
malnutrition
Glickman 99
Dan Glickman Secretary of Agriculture How Will Scientists, Farmers, And Consumers Learn to Love
Biotechnology And What Happens If They Don't? http://www.usda.gov/news/releases/1999/07/0285
July 13, 1999
"Public policy must lead in this area and not merely react. Industry and government cannot engage in
hedging or double talking as problems develop, which no doubt they will. "At the same time, science
will march forward, and especially in agriculture, that science can help to create a world where no one
needs to go hungry, where developing nations can become more food self-sufficient and thereby
become freer and more democratic, where the environmental challenges and clean water, clean air,
global warming and climate change, must be met with sound and modern science and that will
involve biotechnological solutions. "Notwithstanding my concerns raised here today, I would caution
those who would be too cautious in pursuing the future. As President Kennedy said, "We should not let
our fears hold us back from pursuing our hopes." "So let us continue to move forward thoughtfully
with biotechnology in agriculture but with a measured sense of what it is and what it can be. We will
then avoid relegating this promising new technology to the pile of what- might-have-beens, and instead
realize its potential as one of the tools that will help us feed the growing world population in a
sustainable manner.

Biotech is key to increasing yields and resistancesolves hunger and prevents bio-D loss
Reuters 8(Alister Doyle, Environmental Correspondent, Biotechnology a key to solving food crisisUS says, 6/3/08,
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L03566931.htm)
ROME, June 3 (Reuters) - Biotechnology can help solve the world's food crisis with benefits such as flood-resistant
rice in Bangladesh or higher cotton yields in Burkina Faso, a senior U.S. official said at a U.N. food summit on
Tuesday. "Biotechnology is one of the most promising tools for improving the productivity of agriculture and increasing
the incomes of the rural poor," U.S. Agriculture Secretary Ed Schafer said. "We are convinced of the benefits it offers
to developing countries and small farmers," he told a U.S.-led briefing on the sidelines of the June 3-5 summit seeking
ways to combat high food prices when climate change may aggravate shortages. Some green groups say geneticallyengineered crops threaten biodiversity while many European consumers are wary of eating products dubbed by critics
as "Frankenfoods". Schafer said biotechnology, including genetically-modified organisms (GMOs), could help produce
more food by raising yields and producing crops in developing nations that are resistant to disease and pests.
"Genetic engineering offers long-term solutions to some of our major crop production problems," said Philippine
Agriculture Minister Arthur Yap.

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Biotech solves bioterror

Maurer 7
Stephen M. Maurer, J.D. Director of the Goldman School Project at the University of California, Berkeley on
Information Technology and Homeland Security LIFEBOAT FOUNDATION BIOSHIELD HTTP://LIFEBOAT.COM/EX/BIO.SHIELD
2007
The new realities of terrorism and suicide bombers pull us one step further. How would we react to the devastation
caused by a virus or bacterium or other pathogen unleashed not by the forces of nature, but intentionally by man? No
intelligence agency, no matter how astute, and no military, no matter how powerful and dedicated, can assure that a
small terrorist group using readily available equipment in a small and apparently innocuous setting cannot mount a
first-order biological attack. With the rapid advancements in technology, we are rapidly moving from having to worry
about state-based biological programs to smaller terrorist-based biological programs. It's possible today to synthesize
virulent pathogens from scratch, or to engineer and manufacture prions that, introduced undetectably over time into a
nation's food supply, would after a long delay afflict millions with a terrible and often fatal disease. It's a new world.
Though not as initially dramatic as a nuclear blast, biological warfare is potentially far more destructive than the kind
of nuclear attack feasible at the operational level of the terrorist. And biological war is itself distressingly easy to wage.
It would be more cost effective if those funding the BioShield set specific goals and gave prize money to the
people/organizations that accomplished them than simply funding research without such goals. We propose that we
take the measure of this threat and make preparations today to engage it with the force and knowledge adequate to
throw it back wherever and however it may strike. It is time to accelerate the development of antiviral and antibacterial
technology for the human population. The way to combat this serious and ever-growing threat is to develop broad tools
to destroy viruses and bacteria. We have tools such as those based on RNA interference that can block gene
expression. We can now sequence the genes of a new virus in a matter of days, so our goal is within reach! We call
for the creation of new technologies and the enhancement of existing technologies to increase our abilities to detect,
identify, and model any emerging or newly identified infective agent, present or future, natural or otherwise we need
to accelerate the expansion of our capacity to engineer vaccines for immunization, and explore the feasibility of other
medicinals to cure or circumvent infections, and to manufacture, distribute, and administer what we need in a timely
and effective manner that protects us all from the threat of bioengineered malevolent viruses and microbial organisms.
Time is running out.

Biotech tracks/combats ag teror

Greenwood 5
JIM GREENWOOD PRESIDENT AND CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, BIOTECHNOLOGY INDUSTRY
ORGANZATION, Remarks before congress http://www.bio.org/foodag/action/20050614.asp June 14 ,
2005
Biotechnology can be used to detect desirable genes in livestock populations. This new tool can
improve breeds, help select the healthiest animals for feedlot management and provide consumers
with a certification of meat quality. DNA sequencing technology can be used to create advanced
animal identification methods to track meat products from birth to plate in a very short time frame (24
hours) thereby protecting consumers from both accidental and intentional contamination of
the food supply . Livestock cloning accelerates the reproduction of the healthiest and most productive livestock, allowing
farmers and ranchers to breed top quality animals for food production. The development and subsequent adoption of this
technology could not have been possible without a strong regulatory system to ensure the safe use of these products for both
human health and the environment. We recognize that strong regulatory systems are essential to consumer confidence and we

work closely with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Food and Drug Administration and the
Environmental Protection Agency, all of whom play important roles in providing science-based
assessments of our products. We recognize that this dependence on a strong regulatory system will only increase as we

move to the development of what is often referred to as "second generation" biotechnology products. We also urge the U.S.
government to continue to require our trading partners to adhere to international treaties that support science-based regulatory
regimes and the intellectual property rules that fuel the innovation engine that drives our industry.

Biotech solves AIDs

US Dept of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics Career Guide to Industries: Pharmaceutical and medical Manufacturing
http://www.bls.gov/oco/cg/cgs009.htm Dec 20 2005
The pharmaceutical and medicine manufacturing industry has produced a variety of medicinal and other health-related
products undreamed of by even the most imaginative apothecaries of the past. These drugs save the lives of millions
of people from various diseases and permit many ill people to lead normal lives. Thousands of medications are
available today for diagnostic, preventive, and therapeutic uses. In addition to aiding in the treatment of infectious
diseases such as pneumonia, tuberculosis, malaria, influenza, and sexually transmitted diseases, these medicines
also help prevent and treat cardiovascular disease, asthma, diabetes, hepatitis, cystic fibrosis, and cancer. For
example, antinausea drugs help cancer patients endure chemotherapy; clot-buster drugs help stroke patients avoid

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brain damage; and psychoactive drugs reduce the severity of mental illness for many people. Antibiotics and vaccines
have virtually wiped out such diseases as diphtheria, syphilis, and whooping cough. Discoveries in veterinary drugs
have controlled various diseases, some of which are transmissible to humans. Advances in biotechnology and
information technology are transforming drug discovery and development. Within biotechnology, scientists have
learned a great deal about human genes, but the real worktranslating that knowledge into viable new drugshas
only recently begun. So far, millions of people have benefited from medicines and vaccines developed through
biotechnology, and several hundred new biotechnologically-derived medicines are currently in the pipeline. These new
medicines, all of which are in human clinical trials or awaiting FDA approval, include drugs for cancer, infectious
diseases, autoimmune diseases, neurologic disorders, and HIV/AIDS and related conditions. Many new drugs are
expected to be developed in the coming years. Advances in technology and the knowledge of how cells work will allow
pharmaceutical and medicine manufacturing makers to become more efficient in the drug discovery process. New
technology allows life scientists to test millions of drug candidates far more rapidly than in the past. Other new
technology, such as regenerative therapy using stem cell research, also will allow the natural healing process to work
faster, or to enable the regrowth of missing or damaged tissue. There is a direct relationship between gene discovery
and identification of new drugsthe more genes identified, the more paths available for drug discovery. Discovery of
new genes also can lead to new diagnostics for the early detection of disease. Among other uses, new genetic
technology is being explored to develop vaccines to prevent or treat diseases that have eluded traditional vaccines,
such as AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis, and cervical cancer.

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**Space Colonization**
Must have Space colonies to avoid inevitable human extinction

Oberg 99
[James Oberg - Space Writer and a former space flight engineer based in Houston- D/L 7-11-09 http://www.jamesoberg.com/books/spt/new-CHAPTERSw_figs.pdf - The Impact of Space Activities
Ordinary Citizens and the World - 1998]

Upon

The creation of a new frontier thus presents itself as Americas and humanitys greatest social need.
Nothing is more important: Apply what palliatives you will, without a frontier to grow in, not only
American society, but the entire global civilization based upon Western enlightenment values of
humanism, reason, science, and progress will die.
Perhaps the space enthusiasts overstate the stakes, but maybe not. History teaches that there is no inherent
advantagegeographic, ethnic, philosophicalthat guarantees future success to any nation, except by the
exercise of successful cultural patterns. Every generation needs to evaluate its parent cultures history,
identify and extract the traits responsible for success, modify them as modern conditions require, and then
apply them with the same energy and passion that former generations did.
We have the great gift of yet another period when our nation is not threatened; and our world is free
from opposing coalitions with great global capabilities. We can use this period to take our nation and
our fellow men into the greatest adventure that our species has ever embarked upon. The United
States can lead, protect, and help the rest of mankind to move into space. It is particularly fitting that
a country comprised of people from all over the globe assumes that role. This is a manifest destiny
worthy of dreamers and poets, warriors and conquerors.
In his last book, Pale Blue Dot, Carl Sagan presents an emotional argument that our species must venture
into the vast realm of space to establish a spacefaring civilization. While acknowledging the very high
costs that are involved in manned spaceflight, Sagan states that our very survival as a species depends
on colonizing outer space. Astronomers have already identified dozens of asteroids that might someday
smash into Earth. Undoubtedly, many more remain undetected. In Sagans opinion, the only way to avert
inevitable catastrophe is for mankind to establish a permanent human presence in space. He compares
humans to the planets that roam the night sky, as he says that humans will too wander through space. We will
wander space because we possess a compulsion to explore, and space provides a truly infinite prospect of
new directions to explore. Sagans vision is part science and part emotion. He hoped that the
exploration of space would unify humankind. We propose that mankind follow the United States and our
allies into this new sea, set with jeweled stars. If we lead, we can be both strong and caring. If we step
back, it may be to the detriment of more than our country.
One hundred trillion humans are lost every second of delayed colonization

Bostrom, Professor of Philosophy at Yale & Oxford, 2K4 (Nick, Astronomical Waste: The
Opportunity Cost
of Delayed Technological Development, http://www.nickbostrom.com/astronomical/waste.html)
"As I write these words, suns are illuminating and heating empty rooms, unused energy is being flushed down black holes, and our great common endowment
of negentropy is being irreversibly degraded into entropy on a cosmic scale. These are resources that an advanced
civilization could have used to create value-structures, such as sentient beings living worthwhile lives. The rate of this loss boggles the mind. One
recent paper speculates, using loose theoretical considerations based on the rate of increase of entropy, that the loss of potential human lives in our own galactic supercluster is at
least ~10^46 per century of delayed colonization.[1] This estimate assumes that all the lost entropy could have been used for productive purposes, although no currently known
technological mechanisms are even remotely capable of doing that. Since the estimate is meant to be a lower bound, this radically unconservative assumption is undesirable. We
can, however, get a lower bound more straightforwardly by simply counting the number or stars in our galactic supercluster and multiplying this number with the amount of computing
power that the resources of each star could be used to generate using technologies for whose feasibility a strong case has already been made. We can then divide this total with the
estimated amount of computing power needed to simulate one human life. As a rough approximation, let us say the Virgo Supercluster contains 10^13 stars. One estimate of the
computing power extractable from a star and with an associated planet-sized computational structure, using advanced molecular nanotechnology[2], is 10^42 operations per second.
[3] A typical estimate of the human brain's processing power is roughly 10^17 operations per second or less.[4] Not much more seems to be needed to simulate the relevant parts of
the environment in sufficient detail to enable the simulated minds to have experiences indistinguishable from typical current human experiences.[5] Given these estimates, it follows
that the potential for approximately 10^38 human lives is lost every century that colonization of our local supercluster is delayed; or equivalently, about 10^31 potential human lives
per second. While this estimate is conservative in that it assumes only computational mechanisms whose implementation has been at least outlined in the literature, it is useful to

. Suppose that about 10^10 biological

humans could be sustained around an average star . Then the Virgo Supercluster could contain 10^23 biological humans. This corresponds to a
have an even more conservative estimate that does not assume a non-biological instantiation of the potential persons

loss of potential equal to about 10^14 potential human lives per second of delayed colonization. What matters for present purposes is not the exact numbers but the fact that they are

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Even with the most conservative estimate, assuming a biological implementation of all persons, the potential for one hundred
trillion potential human beings is lost for every second of postponement of colonization of our supercluster .[6]"
huge.

Space Exploration key to solving extinction

Oberg, 1999 (James, Space Engineer Johnston Space Center, Space Power Theory)
We have the great gift of yet another period when our nation is not threatened; and our world is free from opposing
coalitions with great global capabilities. We can use this period to take our nation and our fellow men into the greatest
adventure that our species has ever embarked upon. The United States can lead, protect, and help rest of mankind to
move into space. It is particularly fitting that a country comprised of people from all over the globe assumes that role.
This is a manifest destiny worthy of dreamers and poets, warriors and conquers. In his last book, Pale Blue Dot, Carl
Sagan presents an emotional argument that our species must venture into the vast realm of space to establish a
spacefaring civilization. While acknowledging the very high costs that are involved in manned spaceflight, Sagan
states our very survival as a species depends on colonizing outer space. Astronomers have already identified dozens
of asteroids that might someday smash into Earth. Undoubtedly, many more remain undetected. In Sagans opinion,
the only way to avert inevitable catastrophe is for mankind to establish a permanent human presence in space. He
compares humans to the planets that roam the night sky, as he says that humans will too wander through space. We
will wander space because we possess a compulsion to explore, and space provides a truly infinite prospect of new
directions to explore.

Extinction
Spudis, Principal Investigator in the Planetary Geology Program of the NASA 2004, Paul Office of
Space Science, Solar System Exploration Division and Senior Professional Staff, Johns Hopkins
University Applied Physics Laboratory, August 4,
http://www.spudislunarresources.com/Opinion_Editorial/The%20Space%20Program%20and%20the
%20Meaning%20of%20Life.htm
The race to the Moon did more than prove American technical skill and the power of a free society. The real lesson and gift
from Apollo was a wholly unexpected glimpse into our future. From both the chemical and physical evidence of impact (which we learned from the
record of the lunar rocks) and the fossil record, we discovered that large body collisions had occurred in our past and will occur again in our future. Such catastrophes resulted in the

we discovered that ultimately, life on

Earth is doomed. Our new understanding of impact as a fundamental geological force, leaves us only with the question of
when, not if, the next large collision will occur. And when is something we cannot predict. Human civilization is cumulative. Our culture provides positive
widespread destruction of life, in some cases instantaneously eliminating more than 90% of all living species. In short,

and beautiful things through music, art and knowledge it embodies the wisdom of all who have gone before us. With that wisdom, we have rejected the evil doctrines of slavery,
Nazism and communism. People live longer, happier and more productive lives as time goes on. So one must ask, are we here for a reason and if so, to what purpose? Before
passing the torch to their children, humans feel the need to create something of long-term value something that will exist long after their time here on Earth. Be it a garden or a

Will the prospect of our extinction harden our resolve to survive, or will
it hasten the decay of our culture? Without an escape hatch, our children will lose focus - lose sight of goals and grand
visions. The Presidents Vision for Space directs us to extend human reach by developing new capabilities in space travel.
Returning to the Moon will facilitate that goal. There we will gain technical ability and learn how to use the abundant energy
and material resources waiting on other worlds. With the knowledge of how to live off the land in space, we can move out
into the universe populating one world after another. We must not die out here on Earth. Our values, culture and ability
to leave this planet set us apart as a species. We have looked into the past and have seen the future of our world. Life here on
Earth is destined for extinction. By venturing forth beyond Earth, we can ensure our survival. To extend and preserve
humanity and human achievement, we must advance new capabilities in space travel. The President has asked for $1 Billion
(about 0.0004 of the Federal budget) spread over the next four years, to begin this journey. As we acquire capability with
resources derived from the Moon and elsewhere, we will create a spacefaring infrastructure.
cure for cancer, we want to leave this world a little bit better than we found it.

Space colonization means we survive global nuclear war, bioweapon use, and environmental
destruction
Koschara, Major in Planetary Studies 1 (Fred, , L5 Development Group,
http://www.l5development.com/fkespace/financial-return.html)
Potentially one of the greatest benefits that may be achieved by the space colonies is nuclear survival, and the ability
to live past any other types of mass genocide that become available. We have constructed ourselves a house of
dynamite, and now live in fear that someone might light a match. If a global nuclear war were to break out, or if a
deadly genetic experiment got released into the atmosphere, the entire human race could be destroyed in a very short
period of time. In addition, many corporate attitudes seem concerned with only maximizing today's bottom line, with no

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concern for the future. This outlook leads to dumping amazingly toxic wastes into the atmosphere and oceans, a move
which can only bring harm in the long run. Humanity has to diversify its hold in the universe if it is to survive. Only
through space colonization is that option available, and we had all best hope we're not to late

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**Food Shortages / Famine**

Biotechnology is key to increasing crop yields and resistance to disease, solving for hunger. Additionally, any asserted
threats to biodiversity are asinine.

Reuters 8 (Alister Doyle, Environmental Correspondent, Biotechnology a key to solving food crisisUS says,
6/3/08, http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L03566931.htm)
Biotechnology can help solve the world's food crisis with benefits such as flood-resistant rice in Bangladesh or
higher cotton yields in Burkina Faso, a senior U.S. official said at a U.N. food summit on Tuesday. "Biotechnology is one of the most promising tools for
improving the productivity of agriculture and increasing the incomes of the rural poor," U.S. Agriculture Secretary Ed Schafer said. "We are convinced of the
ROME, June 3 (Reuters) -

benefits it offers to developing countries and small farmers," he told a U.S.-led briefing on the sidelines of the June 3-5 summit seeking ways to combat high food prices when climate change may aggravate shortages.

Some green groups say genetically-engineered crops threaten biodiversity while many European consumers are wary of eating products dubbed by critics as
"Frankenfoods". Schafer said biotechnology, including genetically-modified organisms (GMOs), could help produce more food by raising yields and
producing crops in developing nations that are resistant to disease and pests. "Genetic engineering offers long-term solutions to
some of our major crop production problems," said Philippine Agriculture Minister Arthur Yap.
Food insecurity triggers genocidal wars threatening survivalour evidence indicates that its comparatively worse than
nuclear war

Trudell 5 - Trudell, J.D. Candidate 2006, 05 (Robert H., Fall, Food Security Emergencies And The Power Of
Eminent Domain: A Domestic Legal Tool To Treat A Global Problem, 33 Syracuse J. Int'l L. & Com. 277, Lexis)
2. But, Is It Really an Emergency? In his study on environmental change and security, J.R. McNeill dismisses the scenario where environmental degradation destabilizes an area so much that "security problems and ...
resource scarcity may lead to war." 101 McNeill finds such a proposition to be a weak one, largely because history has shown society is always able to stay ahead of widespread calamity due, in part, to the slow pace of

Rwanda illustrated, the environment can breakdown quite rapidly - almost before one's eyes when food insecurity drives people to overextend their cropland and to use outmoded agricultural practices . 103 Furthermore, as Andre
and Platteau documented in their study of Rwandan society, overpopulation and land scarcity can contribute to a breakdown of society itself. 104
any major environmental change. 102 This may be so. However, as the events in

Mr. McNeill's assertion closely resembles those of many critics of Malthus. 105 The general argument is: whatever issue we face (e.g., environmental change or overpopulation), it will be introduced at such a pace that
we can face the problem long before any calamity sets in. 106 This wait-and-see view relies on many factors, not least of which are a functioning society and innovations in agricultural productivity. But, today, with up

the very fabric of society is under increasing world-wide pressure. 107 Genocide,
anarchy, dictatorships, and war are endemic throughout Africa; it is a troubled continent whose problems threaten global security
and challenge all of humanity. 108 As [*292] Juan Somavia, secretary general of the World Social Summit, said: "We've replaced the threat of the nuclear bomb
with the threat of a social bomb." 109 Food insecurity is part of the fuse burning to set that bomb off. It is an emergency and we must
put that fuse out before it is too late
to 300,000 child soldiers fighting in conflicts or wars, and perpetrating terrorist acts,

Blips in food prices kill billions

Tampa Tribune, 1-20-1996
On a global scale, food supplies - measured by stockpiles of grain - are not abundant. In 1995, world production
failed to meet demand for the third consecutive year, said Per Pinstrup-Andersen, director of the International Food
Policy Research Institute in Washington, D.C. As a result, grain stockpiles fell from an average of 17 percent of
annual consumption in 1994-1995 to 13 percent at the end of the 1995-1996 season, he said. That's troubling,
Pinstrup-Andersen noted, since 13 percent is well below the 17 percent the United Nations considers essential to
provide a margin of safety in world food security. During the food crisis of the early 1970s, world grain stocks were at
15 percent. "Even if they are merely blips, higher international prices can hurt poor countries that import a significant
portion of their food," he said. "Rising prices can also quickly put food out of reach of the 1.1 billion people in the
developing world who live on a dollar a day or less." He also said many people in low-income countries already
spend more than half of their income on food.

Food insecurity triggers genocidal wars threatening survivalour evidence indicates that its
comparatively worse than nuclear war
Trudell 5 - Trudell, J.D. Candidate 2006, 05 (Robert H., Fall, Food Security Emergencies And The Power
Of Eminent Domain: A Domestic Legal Tool To Treat A Global Problem, 33 Syracuse J. Int'l L. & Com. 277,
Lexis)
2. But, Is It Really an Emergency? In his study on environmental change and security, J.R. McNeill dismisses the scenario where environmental degradation destabilizes an area so much that
"security problems and ... resource scarcity may lead to war." 101 McNeill finds such a proposition to be a weak one, largely because history has shown society is always able to stay ahead of

Rwanda illustrated, the environment

can breakdown quite rapidly - almost before one's eyes - when food insecurity drives people to overextend their cropland and to
use outmoded agricultural practices. 103 Furthermore, as Andre and Platteau documented in their study of Rwandan society, overpopulation
and land scarcity can contribute to a breakdown of society itself . 104 Mr. McNeill's assertion closely resembles those of many critics of Malthus. 105 The
widespread calamity due, in part, to the slow pace of any major environmental change. 102 This may be so. However, as the events in

general argument is: whatever issue we face (e.g., environmental change or overpopulation), it will be introduced at such a pace that we can face the problem long before any calamity sets in. 106
This wait-and-see view relies on many factors, not least of which are a functioning society and innovations in agricultural productivity. But, today, with up to 300,000 child soldiers fighting in conflicts

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the very fabric of society is under increasing world-wide pressure. 107 Genocide, anarchy,
dictatorships, and war are endemic throughout Africa; it is a troubled continent whose problems threaten global security
and challenge all of humanity. 108 As [*292] Juan Somavia, secretary general of the World Social Summit, said: "We've replaced the threat of the
nuclear bomb with the threat of a social bomb." 109 Food insecurity is part of the fuse burning to set that bomb off. It is an
emergency and we must put that fuse out before it is too late .
or wars, and perpetrating terrorist acts,

Comparatively worse than nuclear war

Trudell 5
Trudell, J.D. Candidate 2006, 05 (Robert H., Fall, Food Security Emergencies And The Power Of Eminent Domain: A
Domestic Legal Tool To Treat A Global Problem, 33 Syracuse J. Int'l L. & Com. 277, Lexis)
2. But, Is It Really an Emergency? In his study on environmental change and security, J.R. McNeill
dismisses the scenario where environmental degradation destabilizes an area so much that "security
problems and ... resource scarcity may lead to war." 101 McNeill finds such a proposition to be a weak
one, largely because history has shown society is always able to stay ahead of widespread calamity
due, in part, to the slow pace of any major environmental change. 102 This may be so. However, as the
events in Rwanda illustrated, the environment can breakdown quite rapidly - almost before one's eyes when food insecurity drives people to overextend their cropland and to use outmoded agricultural
practices. 103 Furthermore, as Andre and Platteau documented in their study of Rwandan society,
overpopulation and land scarcity can contribute to a breakdown of society itself. 104 Mr. McNeill's
assertion closely resembles those of many critics of Malthus. 105 The general argument is: whatever
issue we face (e.g., environmental change or overpopulation), it will be introduced at such a pace that
we can face the problem long before any calamity sets in. 106 This wait-and-see view relies on many
factors, not least of which are a functioning society and innovations in agricultural productivity. But,
today, with up to 300,000 child soldiers fighting in conflicts or wars, and perpetrating terrorist acts,
the very fabric of society is under increasing world-wide pressure. 107 Genocide, anarchy,
dictatorships, and war are endemic throughout Africa; it is a troubled continent whose problems
threaten global security and challenge all of humanity. 108 As [*292] Juan Somavia, secretary
general of the World Social Summit, said: "We've replaced the threat of the nuclear bomb with the
threat of a social bomb." 109 Food insecurity is part of the fuse burning to set that bomb off. It is an
emergency and we must put that fuse out before it is too late.

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**War**
Even if some people survive a nuke war, civilization will collapse, causing extinction
Bostrum '02
[Nick Bostrum - Prof of Philosophy at Yale University - D/L 7,10,09 http://www.nickbostrom.com/existential/risks.html - Analyzing Human Extinction Scenarios and Related Hazards - last
updated April 15, 2002]

Existential risks are distinct from global endurable risks. Examples of the latter kind include: threats
to the biodiversity of Earths ecosphere, moderate global warming, global economic recessions (even
major ones), and possibly stifling cultural or religious eras such as the dark ages, even if they encompass
the whole global community, provided they are transitory (though see the section on Shrieks below). To
say that a particular global risk is endurable is evidently not to say that it is acceptable or not very
serious. A world war fought with conventional weapons or a Nazi-style Reich lasting for a decade
would be extremely horrible events even though they would fall under the rubric of endurable global risks
since humanity could eventually recover. (On the other hand, they could be a local terminal risk for many
individuals and for persecuted ethnic groups.) I shall use the following definition of existential risks:
Existential risk One where an adverse outcome would either annihilate Earth-originating intelligent life or
permanently and drastically curtail its potential. An existential risk is one where humankind as a whole is
imperiled. Existential disasters have major adverse consequences for the course of human civilization for all
time to come.The US and Russia still have huge stockpiles of nuclear weapons. But would an all-out
nuclear war really exterminate humankind? Note that: (i) For there to be an existential risk it suffices that
we cant be sure that it wouldnt. (ii) The climatic effects of a large nuclear war are not well known
(there is the possibility of a nuclear winter). (iii) Future arms races between other nations cannot be
ruled out and these could lead to even greater arsenals than those present at the height of the Cold
War. The worlds supply of plutonium has been increasing steadily to about two thousand tons, some ten
times as much as remains tied up in warheads ([9], p. 26). (iv) Even if some humans survive the shortterm effects of a nuclear war, it could lead to the collapse of civilization. A human race living under
stone-age conditions may or may not be more resilient to extinction than other animal species.
Nuke war outweighs all other impacts
Schell 4
[Jonathan, Nuclear war author and guest speaker at Emory, Princeton, and Yale, The Jonathan Schell
Reader: On
the United States at War, Thee Long Crisis of the American Republic, and The Fate of the
Earth, pg 88-89]

But it is clear that at present, with some twenty thousand megatons of nuclear explosive power in existence,
and more being added every day, we have entered into the zone of uncertainty, which is to say the zone
of risk of extinction. But the mere risk of extinction has a significance that is categorically different
from, and immeasurably greater than, that of any other risk, and as we make our decisions we have to
take that significance into account. Up to now every risk has been contained within the frame of life,
extinction would shatter the frame. It represents not the defeat of some purpose but an abyss in which all
human purposes would be drowned for all time. We have no right to place the possibility of this limitless,
eternal defeat on the same footing as risks that we run in the ordinary conduct of our affairs in our
particular transient moment of human history. To employ a mathematical analogy, we can say that although
the risk of extinction may be fractional, the stake is, humanly speaking, infinite, and a fraction of infinity
is still infinity. In other words, once we learn that a holocaust might lead to extinction we have no right
to gamble, because if we lose, the game will be over, and neither we nor anyone else will ever get
another chance. Therefore, although, scientifically speaking, there is all the difference in the world between
the mere possibility that a holocaust will bring about extinction and the certainty that their use would put an
end to our species. In weighing the fate of the earth and, with it, our own fate, we stand before a mystery, and

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in tampering with the earth we tamper with a mystery. We are in deep ignorance. Our ignorance should
dispose us to wonder, our wonder should make us humble, our humility should inspire us to reverence and
caution, and our reverence and caution should lead us to act without delay to withdraw the threat we now
pose to the earth and to ourselves. In trying to describe possible consequences of a nuclear holocaust, I have
mentioned the limitless complexity of its effects on human society and on the ecosphere -- a complexity that
sometimes seems to be as great as that of life itself. But if these effects should lead to human extinction, then
all the complexity will give way to the utmost simplicity -- the simplicity of nothingness. We -- the human
race -- shall cease to be.
PREVENTING NUCLEAR EXTINCTION IS THE ONLY WAY TO PRESERVE VALUES
Schell 82, (Jonathan ,journalist, FATE OF THE EARTH, 1982, p. 184.)
of all the modest hopes of human beings, the hope that [hu]mankind will survive is the most modest, since it only
brings us to the threshold of all other hopes. In entertaining it, we do not yet ask for justice, or freedom , or for
happiness, or for any of the other things that we may want in life. We do not even necessarily ask for our personal survival; we ask only
that we be survived. We ask for assurance that when we die as individuals , as we know we must, [hu]mankind will live
on. Yet once the peril of extinction is present, as it is for us now, the hope for human survival becomes the most
tremendous hope, just because it is the foundation for all the other hopes, and in its absence every other hope
will gradually wither and die. Life without hope for human survival is a life of despair.
For

IN A NUCLEAR WORLD WE HAVE TO WEIGH CONSEQUENCES

Bok 88, (Sissela , Professor, Philosophy, Brandies University, APPLIED ETHICS AND ETHICAL
THEORY, ed. D. Rosenthal & F. Shehadi, 1988.)
The same argument can be made for Kants other formulations of the Categorical Imperative: So act as to use humanity, both in your person and in the person of every other, always

No one
with a concern for humanity could consistently will to risk eliminating humanity in the person of himself and every other or to risk the death of all
members in a universal Kingdom of Ends for the sake of justice. To risk their collective death for the sake of following ones
conscience would be, as Rawls said, irrational, crazy, And to say that one did not intend such a catastrophe, but that
one merely failed to stop other persons from bringing it about would be beside the point when the end of the world was
at stake. For although it is true that we cannot be held responsible for most of the wrongs that others commit, the Latin maxim presents a case where we would have to
take such a responsibility seriously- perhaps to the point of deceiving, bribing, even killing an innocent person, in order that the
world would not perish.
at the same time as an end, never simply as a means: and So act as if you were always through actions in a law-making member in a universal Kingdom of Ends.

Even a regional nuclear war would destroy all life on Earth ozone loss and UV rays prove
Gache, Science News Editor, 08
Gabriel Gache, Science News Editor for Softpedia, an online science and technology news resource 8th of
April 2008 http://news.softpedia.com/news/Regional-Nuclear-War-Would-Destroy-the-World-82760.shtml
Global or not, a nuclear war would kill us all. And if nuclear weapons didn't do the job, then the Sun would. According
to recent studies, a regional global war would cause the ozone layer of the Earth to be destroyed in as little as a
decade, all living beings being at the mercy of the Sun's ultraviolet rays. Ultraviolet light has the ability to alter the
human DNA, but other organisms may be at risk as well. 100 Hiroshima-sized bombs would be enough to determine
substantial changes in Earth's atmosphere. Take India and Pakistan for example; both have a nuclear arsenal of about 50
nuclear warheads bearing 15 kilotons of explosive material. In case the disagreements between the two countries reach very high
levels as to make use of their entire nuclear arsenal, global disaster is soon to follow. "The figure of 100 Hiroshima-sized bombs
compares pretty accurately to the approximately 110 warheads that both states reportedly possess between them," says professor
of non-proliferation and international security in the War Studies Group at King's College, Wyn Bowen. Michael Mills of the
University of Colorado at Boulder, US, and colleagues used computer models to study how 100 Hiroshima-sized bombs would
affect the atmosphere. Michael Mills from the University of Colorado reckons that such a nuclear war in South Asia would

decay about 40 percent of the ozone layer in the middle latitudes and 70 percent in the high latitudes of the northern
hemisphere. "The models show this magnitude of ozone loss would persist for five years, and we would see
substantial losses continuing for at least another five years," says Mills. Mills extracted his results from computer models.
Previous models were created during the 1980s, however those investigations revealed that impact of the nuclear detonations
would be much more moderate. This might be because the old models do not take into consideration the columns of soot rising at
altitudes of 80 kilometers into Earth's atmosphere, as Mills considers. Once the soot is released into the upper atmosphere, it would
block and absorb most of the solar energy, thus determining a heating of the surrounding atmosphere, process that facilitates the

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reaction between nitrogen oxides and ozone. Ultraviolet rays influx, caused by the decay of the ozone layer, would

increase by 213 percent, causing DNA damage, skin cancers and cataract in most - if not all - living beings.
Alternatively, plants would suffer damage twice, as the current due to ultraviolet light. "By adopting the Montreal
Protocol in 1987, society demonstrated it was unwilling to tolerate a small percentage of ozone loss because of serious
health risks. But ozone loss from a limited nuclear exchange would be more than an order of magnitude larger than
ozone loss from the release of gases like CFCs," says co-author of the study Brian Toon. "This study is very
conservative in its estimates. It should ring alarm bells to remind us all that nuclear war can destroy our world far faster
than carbon dioxide emissions," says Dan Plesch, of the Centre for International Studies and Diplomacy at
theSchool of Oriental and African Studies, UK, although he notes that no one knows how likely a nuclear exchange is.
The impact is extinction

Gordon 02, (Harvey, Visiting Lecturer, Forensic Psychiatry, Tel Aviv University, The Suicide
Bomber: Is It a Psychiatric Phenomenon? PSYCHIATRIC BULLETIN v. 26, 2002, pp. 285-287.
Available from the Wrold Wide Web at: http://pb.rcpsych.org/cgi/content/full/26/8/285)
the existence of
weapons of mass destruction now renders terrorism a potential threat to the very existence of human life (Hoge
& Rose, 2001). Such potential global destruction, or globicide as one might call it, supersedes even that of genocide in its
lethality. Although religious factors are not the only determinant of suicide bombers, the revival of religious fundamentalism towards the end
of the 20th century renders the phenomenon a major global threat . Even though religion can be a force for good, it can equally be abused
Although terrorism throughout human history has been tragic, until relatively recently it has been more of an irritant than any major hazard. However,

as a force for evil. Ultimately, the parallel traits in human nature of good and evil may perhaps be the most durable of all the characteristics of the human species. There is no need to
apply a psychiatric analysis to the suicide bomber because the phenomenon can be explained in political terms. Most participants in terrorism are not usually mentally disordered
and their behaviour can be construed more in terms of group dynamics (Colvard, 2002). On the other hand, perhaps psychiatric terminology is as yet deficient in not having the depth
to encompass the emotions and behaviour of groups of people whose levels of hate, low self-esteem, humiliation and alienation are such that it is felt that they can be remedied by
the mass destruction of life, including their own.

Fighting Nuclear War is the highest ethical priority

Markusen and Harris 1984, [Eric and John, Professors @ University of Minnesota, and Southwest
State University, The Role of Education in Preventing Nuclear War, Harvard Educational Review,
vol. 5, n1. pg 282-303]
Preventing nuclear war is the greatest ethical priority of our age . This means that we
This will require risks and
sacrifices. At the very least, whatever peace of mind we have managed to maintain will be sorely
tested by a concentration of the possibility of mega death. Many of our customary activities, and those of our friends, will seem trivial when considered
in the context of the nuclear threat. We must assume the responsibility to make great changes in our nation and our
world,, even though it will require us to change our lives . Although these words of Bruno Bettelheim were originally addressed to the question of why the
Knowledge is power, and knowledge entails responsibility.

must examine our attitudes and our priorities in the light of the threat of nuclear war. We must learn about this threat, teach others, and act upon our knowledge.

Jews allowed themselves to become caught up in the lethal madness of the Holocaust, they have much to say to us. When a world goes to pieces and inhumanity reigns supreme, man cannot go on living his private life as he was wont
do, and would like to do; he cannot as the loving head of a family, keep the family living together peacefully, undisturbed by the surrounding world; nor can he continue to take pride in his profession or possessions, when either will
deprive him of his humanity, if not also of his life. In such times, one must radically reevaluate all of what one has one, believed in, and stood for in order to know how to act. In short, one has to take a stand on the new reality a firm
stand, not one of retirement into an even more private world.

Testing Earth Goes Death Star

Chalko 03 [Dr. Tom, Msc, PhD, Head of Geophysics Division & Sci Reearch @ Mt Best, Can a
Neutron Bomb accelerate Global Volcanic Activity? NU Journal of Discovery, March,
nujournal.net/neutron_bomb.pdf, 9-12-06//uwyo-ajl]
Consequences of using modern nuclear weapons can be far more serious than previously imagined. These consequences relate to the fact that most of the heat generated in the

superpowers have been developing

neutron bombs

planetary interior is a result of nuclear decay. Over the last few decades, all
so-called "
" [1].
These bombs are designed to emit intensive neutron radiation while creating relatively little local mechanical damage. Military seem very keen to use neutron bombs in combat,
because lethal neutron radiation can penetrate even the largest and deepest bunkers. However, the military seem to ignore the fact that a neutron radiation is capable to reach

a neutron beam stimulates nuclei of

radioactive isotopes inside the planet to disintegrate . Stimulated disintegration, in turn, produces more neutrons. This process causes not only an
significant depths in the planetary interior. In the process of passing through the planet and losing its intensity,

increase in radiation levels but also increased nuclear heat generation in the planetary interior, far greater than the energy of the bomb itself. It typically takes many days or even
weeks for this extra heat to conduct/convect to the surface of the planet and cause increased seismic/volcanic activity. Due to this variable and seemingly inconsistent delay, nuclear
tests are not currently associated with seismic/volcanic activity, simply because it is believed that there is no theoretical basis for such an association. Perhaps you heard that after
every major series of nuclear test there is always a period of increased seismic activity in some part of the world. This actually cannotbe explained by direct energy from the
explosion. The mechanism of neutron radiation accelerating decay of radioactive isotopes in the planetary interior a process that generates more neutrons and heat, however, is a
very realistic explanation of Observable Reality. The process of accelerating volcanic activity is nuclear in essence. Accelerated decay of radioactive isotopes already present in the

their neutron radiation is capable to induce

global overheating of the planetary interior, global volcanic activity and, in extreme circumstances, may even
cause the entire planet to be demolished. So far, nuclear tests on Earth were limited to a few per year. Can we really predict what will happen if the US
planetary interior provides the necessary energy. The TRUE danger of modern nuclear weaponry is that

army uses dozens of their Neutron Bombs to destroy all suspected and potential weapon sites in Iraq?

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War turns everything - causes destroys health, human rights, the environment, and causes domestic
violence
Levy and Sidel, 7 (Barry Levy- Adjunct Professor of Community Health at Tufts University School of Medicine, Victor
Sidel- Professor of Social Medicine at the Albert Einstein Medical College, War and Public Health, Edition 2, 2007)
War accounts for more death and disability than many major diseases combined. It destroys families, communities, and
sometimes whole cultures. It directs scarce resources away from protection and promotion of health, medical care, and
other human services. It destroys the infrastructure that supports health. It limits human rights and contributes to social
injustice. It leads many people to think that violence is the only way to resolve conflictsa mindset that contributes to
domestic violence, street crime, and other kinds of violence. And it contributes to the destruction of the environment and
overuse of nonrenewable resources. In sum. war threatens much of the fabric of our civilization.

War helps transmit HIV/AIDS

Unicef 96
(Unicef, 1996, Sexual violence as a weapon of war http://www.unicef.org/sowc96pk/sexviol.htm)

In addition to rape, girls and women are also subject to forced prostitution and trafficking during
times of war, sometimes with the complicity of governments and military authorities. During World
War II, women were abducted, imprisoned and forced to satisfy the sexual needs of occupying forces, and many Asian
women were also involved in prostitution during the Viet Nam war. The trend continues in today's conflicts.
The State of the World's Children 1996 report notes that the disintegration of families in times of war leaves women and
girls especially vulnerable to violence. Nearly 80 per cent of the 53 million people uprooted by wars today are women
and children. When fathers, husbands, brothers and sons are drawn away to fight, they leave women, the very young
and the elderly to fend for themselves. In Bosnia and Herzegovina, Myanmar and Somalia, refugee families frequently
cite rape or the fear of rape as a key factor in their decisions to seek refuge. During Mozambique's conflict, young boys,
who themselves had been traumatized by violence, were reported to threaten to kill or starve girls if they resisted the
boys' sexual advances. Sexual assault presents a major problem in camps for refugees and the displaced, according to
the report. The incidence of rape was reported to be alarmingly high at camps for Somali refugees in Kenya in 1993.
The camps were located in isolated areas, and hundreds of women were raped in night raids or while foraging for
firewood. UNHCR (the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees) has had to organize security patrols, fence
camps with thorn bushes and relocate the most vulnerable women to safer areas. Some rape victims who were
ostracized were moved to other camps or given priority for resettlement abroad. UNHCR has formal guidelines for
preventing and responding to sexual violence in the camps, and it trains field workers to be more sensitive to victims'
needs. Refugee women are encouraged to form committees and become involved in camp administration to make them
less vulnerable to men who would steal their supplies or force them to provide sex in return for provisions. The high

risk of infection with sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), including HIV/AIDS, accompanies all
sexual violence against women and girls. The movement of refugees and marauding military units
and the breakdown of health services and public education worsens the impact of diseases and
chances for treatment. For example, one study has suggested that the exchange of sex for protection
during the civil war in Uganda in the 1980s was a contributing factor to the country's high rate of
AIDS.
Nuclear war would eliminate the global food supply
Sagan, 84
[Carl Sagan, Director of the Laboratory for planetary studies at Cornell University. 84, Winter. Foreign Affairs. Nuclear
War and Climatic Catastrophe]
The immediate human consequences of nuclear explosions range from vaporization of
populations near the hypocenter, to blast-generated trauma (from flying glass, falling beams, collapsing skyscrapers and the like), to burns, radiation sickness, shock and severe psychiatric disorders . But our concern
here is with longer-term effects. It is now a commonplace that in the burning of modern tall buildings, more people succumb to
toxic gases than to fire. Ignition of many varieties of building materials, insulation and fabrics generates large amounts of such
pyrotoxins, including carbon monoxide, cyanides, vinyl chlorides, oxides of nitrogen, ozone, dioxins, and furans. Because of
differing practices in the use of such synthetics, the burning of cities in North America and Western Europe will probably generate
more pyrotoxins than cities in the Soviet Union, and cities with substantial recent construction more than older, unreconstructed
cities. In nuclear war scenarios in which a great many cities are burning, a significant pyrotoxin smog
might persist for months. The magnitude of this danger is unknown. The pyrotoxins, low light levels, radioactive

fallout, subsequent ultraviolet light, and especially the cold are together likely to destroy almost all of
Northern Hemisphere agriculture, even for the more modest Cases 11 and 14. A 12 to 15C temperature reduction

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by itself would eliminate wheat and corn production in the United States, even if all civil systems and
agricultural technology were intact.' With unavoidable societal disruption, and with the other environmental stresses just
mentioned, even a 3,000-megaton "pure" counterforce attack (Case 11) might suffice. Realistically, many fires would be set even in such
an attack (see below), and a 3,000-megaton war is likely to wipe out U.S. grain production. This would

represent by itself an unprecedented global catastrophe: North American grain is the principal reliable
source of export food on the planet, as well as an essential component of U.S. prosperity. Wars just before
harvesting of grain and other staples would be incrementally worse than wars after harvesting. For many scenarios, the effects will extend
(see Figure 2) into two or more growing seasons. Widespread fires and subsequent runoff of topsoil are among the many additional
deleterious consequences extending for years after the war. Something like three-quarters of the U.S. population lives in or near cities. lin
the cities themselves there is, on average, only about one week's supply of food. After a nuclear war it is conceivable that enough of
present grain storage might survive to maintain, on some level, the present population for more than a year. But with the
breakdown of civil order and transportation systems in the cold, the dark and the fallout, these stores would
become largely inaccessible. Vast numbers of survivors would soon starve to death.

War hurts animal rights

Ernst 09
(Stephanie Ernst, 5-29-09, Animals in War: You Don't Have to Be Human to Die by the Millions
http://animalrights.change.org/blog/view/animals_in_war_you_dont_have_to_be_human_to_die_by_the_millions)
The Animals in War Memorial in London, unveiled in 2004, bears the following as part of i ts inscription:

"They had no choice." "They" refers to the literally millions of animals killed in twentieth-century
wars--horses, mules, donkeys, pigeons, elephants, glow worms, and camels among them. Indeed, " eight million
horses and countless mules and donkeys died in the First World War . They were used to transport
ammunition and supplies to the front and many died, not only from the horrors of shellfire but also in
terrible weather and appalling conditions" (emphasis mine), a brief history on the monument's Web site
explains--and that was only one war and only one set of animals among many different animals.
A BBC article further explains, "The monument pays special tribute to the 60 animals awarded the PDSA Dickin Medal
- the animals' equivalent of the Victoria Cross - since 1943." Fifty-four of the 60, including 32 pigeons, were used in
World War II. And before anyone is inclined to say or think "just pigeons" or "just messages," consider what the birds
were forced to endure to get the messages back and forth. Examples: " Winkie, a pigeon that flew 129 miles
with her wings clogged with oil to save a downed bomber crew," and "Mary of Exeter, another pigeon,
which flew back with her neck and right breast ripped open, savaged by hawks kept by the Germans at Calais." (Note
the BBC's irritating use of "which" and "that" here instead of "who.") Sometimes people make remarks about such
animals "giving" their lives. But they didn't give their lives. They didn't choose to enlist. Their fate was
decided for them. It was the ultimate, no-recourse draft. For that reason, I am glad for that so-true inscription: "They
had no choice." And animals certainly don't have to be dragged to active battlefields to suffer and die because of
humans' wars. The U.S. military shoots, injures, and kills animals on our soil regularly, as part of training.

War destroys Forests and Biodiversity

Sierra Club, 2003
(No publish date, references 2003 in the past tense, http://www.sierraclub.ca/national/postings/war-and-environment.html)
Throughout history, war has invariably resulted in environmental destruction. However, advancements in military
technology used by combatants have resulted in increasingly severe environmental impacts. This is well illustrated by
the devastation to forests and biodiversity caused by modern warfare. Military machinery and explosives have caused
unprecedented levels of deforestation and habitat destruction. This has resulted in a serious disruption of ecosystem
services, including erosion control, water quality, and food production. A telling example is the destruction of 35% of
Cambodias intact forests due to two decades of civil conflict. In Vietnam, bombs alone destroyed over 2 million acres
of land.[13] These environmental catastrophes are aggravated by the fact that ecological protection and restoration
become a low priority during and after war. The threat to biodiversity from combat can also be illustrated by the
Rwanda genocide of 1994. The risk to the already endangered population of mountain gorillas from the violence was of
minimal concern to combatants and victims during the 90-day massacre.[14] The threat to the gorillas increased after
the war as thousands of refugees, some displaced for decades, returned to the already overpopulated country. Faced with
no space to live, they had little option but to inhabit the forest reserves, home to the gorilla population. As a result of
this human crisis, conservation attempts were impeded. Currently, the International Gorilla Programme Group is
working with authorities to protect the gorillas and their habitats. This has proven to be a challenging task, given the
complexities Rwandan leaders face, including security, education, disease, epidemics, and famine.[15]

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Chemical and Biological Warfare would destroy the environment-Vietnam proves

Sierra Club, 2003
(No publish date, references 2003 in the past tense, http://www.sierraclub.ca/national/postings/war-and-environment.html)
One of the most striking examples of military disregard for environmental and human health is the use of chemical and
biological agents in warfare. The American militarys use of Agent Orange during the Vietnam War is one of the most
widely known examples of using environmental destruction as a military tactic. Agent Orange is a herbicide that was
sprayed in millions of liters over approximately 10% of Vietnam between 1962 and 1971. It was used to defoliate
tropical forests to expose combatants, and destroy crops to deprive peasants of their food supply.[16] [17] The
environmental and health effects were devastating. The spraying destroyed 14% of South Vietnams forests,
including 50% of the mangrove forests. Few, if any, have recovered to their natural state. [18] A key ingredient of Agent
Orange is dioxin, the most potent carcinogen ever tested.[19] It is therefore not surprising that Agent Orange has been
linked to an array of health problems in Vietnam including birth defects, spontaneous abortions, chloracne, skin and
lung cancers, lower IQ and emotional problems for children (Forgotten Victims).[20] Similar to toxic chemical spills,
Agent Orange continues to threaten the health of Vietnamese. In 2001, scientists documented extremely high levels of
dioxin in blood samples taken from residents born years after the end of the Vietnam War. Studies attribute such high
levels to food chain contamination: Soil contaminated with dioxin becomes river sediment, which is then passed to fish,
a staple of the Vietnamese diet.[21] This is a clear reminder that poisoning our environments is akin to poisoning

War has become privatized, fueling a stronger capitalism

Ferguson 08
Francis Ferguson, PhD Economist , 3-22-08, The Privatization of War
http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_francis__080320_the_privatization_of.htm
Since 2000, there has been a huge increase in private contracts let by the US government. Spending on private contractors
has risen from $174.4 billion to $377.5 billion, an increase of 86%. Over this same period, private contractors' collections
for the Department of Defense increased from $133 billion to $279 billion annually, an increase of 102.3%. These
expenditures represent a unique new source of revenue and profit for American business, because much of what it being
purchased are services which would previously have been done by military personnel. (source
http://oversight.house.gov/story.asp?ID=1071) With these tasks shifting to private contractors, workers can be hired in low
wage nations such and put to work doing menial labor for the troops. This is not to say these services come cheap. They do
not. Contractors such as Kellogg Brown and Root (KBR) charge handsomely for the meals, laundry and logistics provided.
They just don't pay the workers who perform these tasks much. The difference, of course, is profit. What was once a
relatively minor expense to taxpayers in the form of Army pay for soldiers performing kitchen duties, now becomes a major
source of bottom line revenue for private companies who previously got nothing from these services. In addition to new
opportunities for profit in a war theater, there are new opportunities for corruption. Third World contract workers have
reported their employers withholding their passports, effectively making them indentured servants. KBR and it's
subsidiaries have been discovered charging premium prices for meals they never served and with supplying contaminated
drinking water to the troops. Government investigators report literally billions of dollars have gone missing with no
accounting for who received them or what was done with the money. The Center for Public Integrity
(www.publicintegrity.org/wow/bio.aspx?act=pro&fil=IQ) has a listing of contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan and the value
of the contracts they hold. Many of the contracts are awarded without competitive bidding, and billions of dollars have
literally gone missing. The Chicago Tribune reports ongoing investigations of Kellogg Brown and Root and various of
their sub-contractors for gross violations and fraud. www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-kbr-war-profiteersfeb21,1,5231766.story. All of this is symptomatic of deeper problems. We have privatized war, an in so doing, we have
reduced the populace's natural resistance to war and increased its profitability. With contracting, our military can be smaller.
This means the conflicts can be more easily handled with a voluntary, professional military. Conscription can more easily
be avoided along, as can the political backlash from potential draftees and their relatives. With privatization, a greater
portion of military spending flows as profit to American businesses. Spending on contractor services can expand massively
within the context of war. Wartime allows emergency measures and expenditures which can proceed without customary
bidding or oversight. The result is a river of profit with little economic gain for the nation.

In times of war nations ignore civil liberties to deal with threats Britain proves
Posner 92
HeinOnline -- 92 Mich. L. Rev. 1679 1993-1994, EXECUTIVE DETENTION IN TIME OF WAR , IN THE HIGHEST
DEGREE ODIOUS: DETENTION WITHOUT TRIAL IN WARTIME BRITAIN. By A. W. Brian Simpson. Oxford:
Clarendon, Press. 1992. Pp. x, 453. $62.

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The absence of a comparative dimension is a closely related source of Simpson's disparagement of his country's
response to national emergency. Peacetime civil liberties are a luxury that nations engaged in wars of survival do not
believe they can afford. The question for the realistic civil libertarian is not whether Britain curtailed civil liberties more
than either seemed at the time or was in retrospect necessary, but whether it reacted more or less temperately than
other nations in comparable circumstances would do or have done. So far as I can judge, the answer to this question
is more temperately - than the United States, for example, which was far less endangered.8 Of course there are perils
in using a purely relative standard. The administration of Regulation 18B caused hardships and, in hindsight at least,
seems not to have contributed materially to Britain's survival or to have shortened the war. If there are lessons here
that might enable Britain or the United States to deal more effectively with the problem of internal security in wartime
the next time the problem arises, they ought to be drawn. But the only lesson Simpson draws is that Britain should not
have destroyed "about 99 per cent of public records dealing with detention, which is in line with general practice" (p.
422) and should not be refusing access, half a century later, to most of the rest. I am sure this observation is right, but
it makes for rather a tepid ending to the book; the ending reads as if the British government's greatest sin with respect
to the wartime detention program was to make it difficult for academics to write the program's history.

Dehumanization is used as propaganda during wars

Vinulan-Arellano 03. [Katharine, March 22 yonip.com Stop Dehumanization of People to Stop Wars
http://www.yonip.com/main/articles/nomorewars.html]
In war time, dehumanization is a key element in propaganda and brainwashing. By portraying the enemy as less than
human, it is much easier to motivate your troops to rape, torture or kill. Ethnic cleansing or genocide would always be
perceived as a crime against humanity if human beings belonging to another race or religion are not dehumanized.
Throughout history, groups or races of human beings have been dehumanized. Slaves, Negroes, Jews, and now, Muslims.
Up to now, women are dehumanized in many societies -- they are made sexual objects, treated as second-class human
beings. The proliferation of the sex trade are indications of the prevailing, successful dehumanization of women,
worldwide. During wars, mass rape of women is common.

Administrations use wartime to consolidate power and destroy democratic institutions

Forward Newspaper, 2008
L.L.C. Apr 11, 2008, The President in Wartime. (2008, April 11). Retrieved July 23, 2009, from Ethnic NewsWatch (ENW).
(Document ID: 1478699201). New York, N.Y.: Apr 11, 2008. Vol. 111, Iss. 31700; pg. 12, 1 pgs
The Bush administration recently declassified a secret Justice Department memo from 2003 that shows just how serious
a threat our democracy faces in the current war on terrorism. Unfortunately, the threat revealed in the memo is not from
Al Qaeda, but from us. The memo was addressed to the legal department of the Pentagon. It was meant to advise the
military on how far it may lawfully go in roughing up captured terrorism suspects during interrogation. The answer was,
pretty far indeed. It was the considered legal opinion of the chief legal office of the United States, the Department of
Justice, that the president of the United States is - well, above the law. "In wartime, it is for the President alone to
decide what methods to use to best prevail against the enemy," wrote the memo's author, John Yoo, then a Justice
Department lawyer. In fact, Yoo wrote, "Even if an interrogation method arguably were to violate a criminal statute, the
Justice Department could not bring a prosecution because the statute would be unconstitutional as applied in this
context." That is, the law would conflict with the Constitution's designation of the president as commander in chief,
charged with doing whatever necessary to protect the nation during wartime. There's "original intent" for you. And who
decides what constitutes "wartime"? According to the Constitution, the Senate does. But that's old stuff. Nowadays,
we're at war whenever the president says we are. All he has to do is decide we're under attack - or threatened with attack
- and order our troops to open fire. And when does the war end? When the president says so. Right now, for example,
we face an enemy so shadowy and ubiquitous - terrorism - that the war could last, we're told, for a generation. Until
then, according to the Bush Justice Department, the president may do whatever he thinks necessary to protect us. In
other words, anything he wants. The Yoo memo was withdrawn a year after its drafting, following a revolt by
government lawyers. But a similar Yoo memo, issued to the CIA, remains.in force. Congress passed a law overriding it
a few years ago, but the president vetoed the bill. It's hard to imagine what terrorists could do that would threaten our
democracy more than this president's notion of his power. Next time we choose a president, we ought to find out how
the contenders define the job.

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War increases the spread of fatal disease

Boston Globe 07. [05-07, Spread of disease tied to U.S. combat deployments
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2007/05/07/spread_of_disease_tied_to_us_combat_deployments/]
A parasitic disease rarely seen in United States but common in the Middle East has infected an estimated 2,500 US
troops in the last four years because of massive deployments to remote combat zones in Iraq and Afghanistan, military
officials said. Leishmaniasis , which is transmitted through the bite of the tiny sand fly, usually shows up in the form of
reddish skin ulcers on the face, hands, arms, or legs. But a more virulent form of the disease also attacks organs and
can be fatal if left untreated. In some US hospitals in Iraq, the disease has become so commonplace that troops call it
the "Baghdad boil." But in the United States, the appearance of it among civilian contractors who went to Iraq or
among tourists who were infected in other parts of the world has caused great fear because family doctors have had
difficulty figuring out the cause. The spread of leishmaniasis (pronounced LEASH-ma-NYE-a-sis) is part of a trend of
emerging infectious diseases in the United States in recent years as a result of military deployments, as well as the
pursuit of adventure travel and far-flung business opportunities in the developing world, health officials say. Among
those diseases appearing more frequently in the United States are three transmitted by mosquitoes: malaria, which
was contracted by 122 troops last year in Afghanistan; dengue fever; and chikungunya fever.

War would increase immune system deficiency and create dangers of new and deadly diseases
Sagan, former professor at Stanford and Harvard, 84
(Carl Sagan, former professor at Stanford and Harvard, Pulitzer prize winning author, 19 84, Foreign Affairs, Nuclear
War and Climatic Catastrophe p. Lexis)
Each of these factors, taken separately, may carry serious consequences for the global ecosystem: their interactions
may be much more dire still. Extremely worrisome is the possibility of poorly underatood or as yet entirely
uncontemplated synergisms (where the net consequences of two or more assaults on the environment are much more
than the sum of the component parts). For example, more than 100 rads (and possibly more than 200 rads) of
external and ingested ionizing radiation is likely to be delivered in a very large nuclear war to all plants,
animals and unprotected humans in densely populated regions of northern mid-latitudes. After the soot and dust
clear, there can, for such wars, be a 200 to 400 percent increment in the solar ultraviolet flux that reaches the ground,
with an increase of many orders of magnitude in the more dangerous shorter-wavelength radiation. Together, these

radiation assaults are likely to suppress the immune systems of humans and other species, making
them more vulnerable to disease. At the same time, the high ambient-radiation fluxes are likely to
produce, through mutation, new varieties of microorganisms, some of which might become
pathogenic. The preferential radiation sensitivity of birds and other insect predators would enhance
the proliferation of herbivorous and pathogen-carrying insects. Carried by vectors with high radiation
tolerance, it seems possible that epidemics and global pandemics would propagate with no hope of
effective mitigation by medical care, even with reduced population sizes and greatly restricted human mobility.
Plants, weakened by low temperatures and low light levels, and other animals would likewise be vulnerable to
preexisting and newly arisen pathogens.

War helps the spread of disease

VOA News, 05

(Voice of America News, 8-31-05, Poverty and Conflict Contribute the Spread of
Infectious Diseases, http://www.voanews.com/english/archive/2005-08/2005-08-31-voa23.cfm)
says war also spreads disease because it often creates large populations of refugees . And
they're moving from one town to another, or one country to another ( and) they may bring with them
some prevalence of disease that may not be a disease that is present in that other country.
Mr. Parkinson adds, It's also probably no coincidence that the great Spanish flu epidemic of 1918 was
associated with troop movements in Europe and especially afflicted the United States because that was the time
Dr. Garcia

of the U.S. involvement in the war, and the troop movements back and forth created a great vector for infection.
The epidemic itself killed more people than died in the entire war -- an estimated 20 to 40 million people died from the
epidemic.

Where there are soldiers and conflict, there are also prostitutes and rape. This has led to a rapid

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spread of AIDS in many war-torn African countries, say public health officials.
Conflict impacts disease in other ways, too, said Dr. Joseph Malone, director of the U.S. Navy's program to track
emerging global infections. Basic services such as clean water, availability of food, are threatened when

there's substantial conflict and generally the health care infrastructure and availability of medicines
is generally reduced whenever there's conflict and even any supplies that might be available can be
diverted to non-helpful uses.
War creates a cycle of violence that spills over to domestic violence
Levy and Sidel, 7 (Barry Levy- Adjunct Professor of Community Health at Tufts University School of Medicine, Victor
Sidel- Professor of Social Medicine at the Albert Einstein Medical College, War and Public Health, Edition 2, 2007)
War often creates a cycle of violence, increasing domestic and community violence in the countries engaged in war. War
teaches people that violence is an acceptable method for settling conflicts. Children growing up in environments in which
violence is an established way of settling conflicts may choose violence to settle conflicts in their own lives. Teenage gangs
may mirror the activity of military forces Men, sometimes former military servicemen who have been trained to use
violence, commit acts of violence against women; there have been instances of men murdering their wives on return from
battlefield.

War causes domestic violence and crime

Levy and Sidel, 7
(Barry Levy- Adjunct Professor of Community Health at Tufts University School of Medicine, Victor Sidel- Professor of
Social Medicine at the Albert Einstein Medical College, War and Public Health, Edition 2, 2007)

War accounts for more death and disability than many major diseases combined. It destroys families,
communities, and sometimes whole cultures. It directs scarce resources away from protection and promotion of
health, medical care, and other human services. It destroys the infrastructure that supports health. It limits human rights and
contributes to social injustice. It leads many people to think that violence is the only way to resolve conflicts
a mindset that contributes to domestic violence, street crime, and other kinds of violence. And it
contributes to the destruction of the environment and overuse of nonrenewable resources. In sum. war threatens much

of the fabric of our civilization.

War leads to economic recession
Baumann, 08
(Nick Baumann, assistant editor, 2-29-08, Is the Economy a Casualty of War?
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2008/02/economy-casualty-war)

Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz has blamed the Iraq war for sending the United
States into a recession. On Wednesday, he told a London think tank that t he war caused the credit crunch and
the housing crisis that are propelling the current economic downturn . Testifying before the Senate's Joint
Economic Committee the following day, he said our involvement in Iraq has long been "weakening the American
economy" and "a day of reckoning" has finally arrived. Stiglitz's contention that the war is causing the
nation's economic woes has become an increasingly popular meme in Democratic circles. (And a source of
indignation in Republican ones. Before Stiglitz's testimony, White House spokesman Tony Fratto said, "People like Joe
Stiglitz lack the courage to consider the cost of doing nothing and the cost of failure.") Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), a
leading anti-war voice and cochair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, is among leading Democrats who echo
Stiglitz's view. "The war is the primary reason for this recession and we have to drum that home ," she
told me. Meanwhile, a coalition of progressive and anti-war groupsincluding MoveOn.org and Americans United for
Changeannounced a $20 million campaign to convince voters that the war is related to the nation's ongoing economic
troubles, an effort that is headlined by former Senator John Edwards and his wife Elizabeth. Polls show that voters trust
the Democrats over the Republicans to manage both the Iraq War and the economy, so pitching these two issues as
interconnected could make political sense. The war and the economy are undoubtedly linked, but there's a potential
problem for anyone who claims the war led to a recession: Many economists say this isn't so.

War creates economic slowdowns and hurts the dollar

Hart and Shapiro, 08

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(Robert Shapiro is formerly the undersecretary of commerce in the Clinton administration and currently the head of
Sonecon, LLC, an economic consulting firm. Gary Hart is a former U.S. Senator from Colorado and currently a professor at
the University of Colorado.1-30-08, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/01/30/the-iraq-recession-debate_n_84060.html)
I think there is a sound case that the war policy has produced conditions that contribute in a fairly
modest way to the slow down. There are two main factors as I see it in regards to the slow down: the [crisis in the]
housing sector, which has reduced people's sense of their wealth... and the subprime mess, which is reducing business
investment and is doing so by screwing up the balance sheets of financial institutions.
Having said that, there is no doubt that the Iraq war is a significant factor in the current level of oil
prices. Not the most important factor but a significant factor... For American consumers whose consumption is

being squeezed, relatively more of their income has to go to energy, and that expense is just getting
exported. It's not stimulating the U.S. economy. The war is [also] a part of America' current account
deficit. It contributes to that and [that] is what's driving down the dollar.
Media and politicians rarely distinguish between government spending and government investments . War costs are
spending... When spent unnecessarily, that is without contributing to national security (i.e., Iraq), war costs are, in
effect, money down a rat hole. All spending over and above revenues creates deficits that must be
financed with borrowing, either from foreigners or future generations. So money spent on an
unnecessary war requires borrowing which drives down the value of the dollar and hurts our
economy.
Wars sacrifice soldiers to protect future generations, making the queer expendable to protect
conceptions of family norms
Donna Miles, Writer, Jan. 18, 2005
(Staff Writer for American Forces Press Service, Bush Begins Inaugural Celebration With
Military 'Salute', http://www.defenselink.mil/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=24328)
The president credited the men and women in uniform for helping extend that same power to more than 50
million people in Afghanistan and Iraq during the past four years. He called the first free elections in Afghanistan's
5,000-year history and the upcoming elections in Iraq "landmark events in the history of liberty." "And none of it would
have been possible without the courage and the determination of the United States armed forces," he said. Bush told the
troops their service and sacrifice in the war on terror is making America safer for today and the future. " Your

sacrifice has made it possible for our children and grandchildren to grow up in a safer world," he
said. But this success has come at a great cost and through tremendous sacrifice , the president noted.
He acknowledged the long separations families must endure, the wounds many service members
will carry with them for the rest of their lives, the heroes who gave their lives, and the families who
grieve them. "We hold them in our hearts," Bush said. "We lift them up in our prayers."
Modern warfare devastates the environment- it destroys ecosystems
Worldwatch Institute, 2008
(January/February
issue,
Modern
Warfare
Causes
Unprecedented
Environmental
Damage,
http://www.worldwatch.org/node/5544)
Washington, D.C. Modern warfare tactics, as seen in the American war in Vietnam, the Rwandan and Congolese civil wars, and
the current war in Iraq, have greatly increased our capacity to destroy the natural landscape and produce devastating environmental
effects on the planet, according to Sarah DeWeerdt, author of War and the Environment, featured in the January/February 2008
issue of World Watch. Wartime destruction of the natural landscape is nothing new, but the scope of destruction seen in more
recent conflicts is unprecedented. For one thing, there is the sheer firepower of current weapons technology, especially its shockand-awe deployment by modern superpowers. The involvement of guerrilla groups in many recent wars draws that firepower
toward the natural ecosystemsoften circumscribed and endangered oneswhere those groups take cover, writes DeWeerdt.
The deliberate destruction of the environment as a military strategy, known as ecocide, is exemplified by the U.S. response to
guerrilla warfare in Vietnam. In an effort to deprive the communist Viet Cong guerrillas of the dense cover they found in the
hardwood forests and mangroves that fringed the Mekong Delta, the U.S. military sprayed 79 million liters of herbicides and
defoliants (including Agent Orange) over about one-seventh of the land area of southern Vietnam. By some estimates, half of the
mangroves and 14 percent of hardwood forests in southern Vietnam were destroyed during Operation Trail Dust, threatening
biodiversity and severely altering vegetation. Less deliberate, but still devastating, were the environmental effects that stemmed

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from the mass migration of refugees during the Rwandan genocide in 1994. Nearly 2 million Hutus fled Rwanda over the course of
just a few weeks to refugee camps in Tanzania and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, making it the most massive population
movement in history. Approximately 720,000 of these refugees settled in refugee camps on the fringes of Virunga National Park,
the first United Nations World Heritage site declared endangered due to an armed conflict. The refugees stripped an estimated 35
square kilometers of forest for firewood and shelter-building materials. The dense forests also suffered as a result of the wide paths
clear-cut by the Rwandan and Congolese armies traveling through the park to reduce the threat of ambush by rebel groups. The
longterm ecological effects of the current war in Iraq remain to be seen. Looking to the effects of the recent Gulf War as a guide,
scientists point to the physical damage of the desert, particularly the millimeter-thin layer of microorganisms that forms a crust on
the topsoil, protecting it from erosion. Analysis of the area affected by the Gulf War has already shown an increase in sandstorms
and dune formation in the region, and one study suggests that desert crusts might take thousands of years to fully recover from the
movement of heavy vehicles. Warfare is likely to have the most severe, longest-lasting effects on protected areas that harbor
endangered species, and slow-to-recover ecosystems such as deserts. Even in the most fragile environments, sometimes nature
and peoplecan surprise us, writes DeWeerdt. But turn and look in another direction and you are likely to see warfares
enduring scars.

War destroys infrastructure harming the environment

Sierra Club, 2003
(No publish date, references 2003 in the past tense, http://www.sierraclub.ca/national/postings/war-and-environment.html)
The degradation of infrastructure and basic services brought on by war can wreak havoc on the local environment and public
health. Countries water supply systems, for example, can be contaminated or shut down by bomb blasts or bullet damage to pipes.
[7] In Afghanistan, destruction to water infrastructure combined with weakened public service during the war resulted in bacterial
contamination, water loss through leaks and illegal use.[8] The consequence was an overall decline in safe drinking water
throughout the country. Water shortages can also lead to inadequate irrigation of cropland. Agricultural production may also be
impaired by intensive bombing and heavy military vehicles traveling over farm soil.[9] The presence of landmines can also render
vast areas of productive land unusable.[10] Additional war-related problems which compound degradation of the natural and
human environment include shortages in cooking fuel and waste mismanagement during and after military conflicts. During the
most recent warfare in Iraq, individuals were forced to cut down city trees to use as cooking fuel.[11] In Afghanistan, the creation
of poorly located, leaky landfill sites resulted in contaminated rivers and groundwater.[12]

War destroys the environment- both during and preparing for war
Levy and Sidel, 7 (Barry Levy- Adjunct Professor of Community Health at Tufts University School of Medicine, Victor
Sidel- Professor of Social Medicine at the Albert Einstein Medical College, War and Public Health, Edition 2, 2007)
Finally, war and the preparation for war have profound impacts on the physical environment (see Chapter 5). The disastrous
consequences of war for the environment are often clear. Examples include bomb craters in Vietnam that have filled with
water and provide breeding sites for mosquitoes that spread malaria and other diseases; destruction of urban environments
by aerial carpet bombing of major cities in Europe and Japan during World War II; and the more than 600 oil-well fires in
Kuwait that were ignited by retreating Iraqi troops in 1991, which had a devastating effect on the ecology of the affected
areas and caused acute respiratory symptoms among those exposed. Less obvious are the environmental impacts of the
preparation for war, such as the huge amounts of nonrenewable fossil fuels used by the military before (and during and
after) wars and the environmental hazards of toxic and radioactive wastes, which can contaminate air, soil, and both surface
water and groundwater. For example, much of the area in and around Chelyabinsk, Russia, site of a major nuclear weapons
production facility, has been determined to be highly radioactive, leading to evacuation of local residents (see chapter 10).

War desensitizes culture and politics to fascist authoritarian structures

Kallis, 04
(Aristotle, DOI: 10.1177/0265691404040007 2004; 34; 9 European History Quarterly Aristotle A. Kallis
Consensus Ideological Production, Political Experience and the Quest for Studying Inter-War Fascism in
Epochal and Diachronic Terms)
A further revision of the early spirit of fascism came in the form of its idiosyncratic coexistence with traditional right-wing
authoritarian structures. In intellectual terms, fascism had very little to do with conservative notions of authoritarianism, in spite of
its oppositional convergence with radical forms of conservatism.67It advocated instead a more direct, transcendental type of
communication between nation and charismatic leader, as well as a collective representation and negotiation of sectional interests
within the framework of the party and its various societal extensions. However, the coopting of the fascist leaderships by powerful
traditional lite groups sealed the fate of fascisms relations to the mainstream Right by forcing the former to operate in a system

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which perpetuated central elements of the conventional Rightist authoritarian tradition. Compared to this (more conventional) type
of rule, fascism offered a populist solution to the problem of generating social support and ensuring active societal unity through
the ritualization of controlled mass participation. Yet, this combination of novelty with an essentially traditional framework of
politics was hardly conducive to the pursuit of the mythical core of fascist nationalist utopianism. The result was a tension inside
the regimes with at least a fascist variant between fascism and authoritarianism a tension that was never fully resolved, but
which affected the evolution of inter-war fascism in two ways. First, it completed the ideologicalpolitical expropriation of fascism
by the Right, in contrast to its initially mixed (or at least not exclusively right-wing) intellectual roots and active revolutionary
anti-system spirit. Second, it compelled fascism to wage a constant struggle to defend its own political contours from the
restrictive grip of its conservative sponsors/partners and the authoritarian legacies of its political framework . In analytical terms,
this means that a categorical distinction between the regime-variant of fascism and conservative authoritarianism is meaningless,
in so far as fascism accepted an institutional, not violently revolutionary, approach to its own political emancipation from the
mainstream Right and thus could never fully eliminate continuities between new and old Right.68 By the time that even the
most advanced fascist systems of Germany and Italy had accelerated their rhythm of consolidation with their newfound selfconfidence, they had absorbed already crucial features of conventional authoritarianism (not least the leaders monopoly of power)
into their general worldview. Kallis, Studying Inter-war Fascism 31

War causes sexual violence and reifies the subjugation of women.

Eaton 04. [Shana JD Georgetown University Law Center 35 Geo. J. Int'l L. 873 Summer lexis]
While sexual violence against women has always been considered a negative side effect of war, it is only in recent
years that it has been taken seriously as a violation of humanitarian law. In the "evolution" of war, women themselves
have become a battlefield on which conflicts are fought. Realizing that rape is often more effective at achieving their
aims than plain killing, aggressors have used shocking sexual violence against women as a tool of conflict, allowing
battling forces to flaunt their power, dominance, and masculinity over the other side. The stigma of rape is used to
effectuate genocide, destroy communities, and demoralize opponents-decimating a woman's will to survive is often
only a secondary side effect.
Sexual violence against women during wartime had to reach horrifying levels before the international community was
shocked enough to finally take these atrocities seriously. It took the extremely brutal victimization of vast numbers of
women, played out against a backdrop of genocide, to prove that rape is not simply a natural side effect of war to be
lightly brushed aside.
The conflicts in both Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia put women's rights directly in the spotlight, and the
international community could no longer avoid the glare. In both Yugoslavia and Rwanda, ethnic cleansing was central
to the conflict. Raping women helped to achieve this aim in a number of ways, from forced impregnation, where
offspring would have different ethnicities than their mothers, to the use of sexual violence to prevent women from
wanting to have sex again (thus limiting their likelihood of bearing children in the future). Additionally, rape was used as
a means of destroying families and communities. Raping a woman stigmatized her, making it unlikely that she would
ever want to return home, and in many cases, ensuring that if she did return home that she would be rejected.
Civilians, particularly women, came to be used as tools to achieve military ends, putting the human rights of these
women at the heart of the conflict.

War conditions cause sexual violence

Levy and Sidel, 7 (Barry Levy- Adjunct Professor of Community Health at Tufts University School of Medicine, Victor
Sidel- Professor of Social Medicine at the Albert Einstein Medical College, War and Public Health, Edition 2, 2007)
Women are especially vulnerable during war (see Chapter 12). Rape has been used as a weapon in many wars- in
Korea, Bangladesh, Algeria, India, Indonesia, Liberia, Rwanda, Uganda, the former Yugslavia, and elsewhere. As acts
of humiliation and revenge, soldiers have raped the female family members of their enemies. For example, at least
10,000 women were raped by military personnel during the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The social chaos brought
about by war also creates situations and conditions conductive to sexual violence.

Funds are prioritized for war over health services

Levy and Sidel, 7 (Barry Levy- Adjunct Professor of Community Health at Tufts University School of Medicine, Victor
Sidel- Professor of Social Medicine at the Albert Einstein Medical College, War and Public Health, Edition 2, 2007)
Many countries spend large amounts of money per capita for military purposes. The countries with the highest military
expenditures are shown in Table I -1. War and the preparation for war divert huge amounts of resources from health

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and human services and other productive societal endeavors. This diversion of resources occurs in many countries. In
some less developed countries, national governments spend S10 to $20 per capita on military expenditures but only SI per
capita on all health-related expenditures. The same type of distorted priorities also exist in more developed countries. For
example, the United States ranks first among nations in military expenditures and arms exports, but 38th among nations in
infant mortality rate and 45th in life expectancy at birth. Since 2003. during a period when federal, state, and local
governments in the United States have been experiencing budgetary shortfalls and finding it difficult to maintain adequate
health and human services, the U.S. government has spent almost $500 b i l l i o n for the Iraq War, and is spending (in 2007)
more than $2 billion a week on the war.

One more military engagement would deplete US ground forces and utterly destroy US hegemony
Perry 06
(The U.S. Military: Under Strain and at Risk, The National Security Advisory Group, January 2006, William J. Perry,
Chair)
In the meantime, the United States has only limited ground force capability ready to respond to other contingencies.
The absence of a credible strategic reserve in our ground forces increases the risk that potential adversaries will be
tempted to challenge the United States Since the end of World War II, a core element of U.S. strategy has been
maintaining a military capable of deterring and, if necessary, defeating aggression in more than one theater at a time.
As a global power with global interests, the United States must be able to deal with challenges to its interests in
multiple regions of the world simultaneously. Today, however, the United States has only limited ground force capability
ready to respond outside the Afghan and Iraqi theaters of operations. If the Army were ordered to send significant
forces to another crisis today, its only option would be to deploy units at readiness levels far below what operational
plans would require increasing the risk to the men and women being sent into harms way and to the success of the
mission. As stated rather blandly in one DoD presentation, the Army continues to accept risk in its ability to respond
to crises on the Korean Peninsula and elsewhere. Although the United States can still deploy air, naval, and other
more specialized assets to deter or respond to aggression, the visible overextension of our ground forces has the
potential to significantly weaken our ability to deter and respond to some contingencies.

War causes overstretch reducing hegemony- UK proves

Ferguson, 03
(Niall, Hegemony or Empire?, September/October 2003, Foreign Affairs)
Yet another, narrower definition is offered by Geoffrey Pigman, in his introduction to a useful and original chapter in Two
Hegemonies on agricultural trade liberalization in the 1990s. Pigman describes a hegemon's principal function as underwriting a
liberal international trading system that is beneficial to the hegemon but, paradoxically, even more beneficial to its potential rivals.
Pigman traces this now widely used definition of the word back to the economic historian Charles Kindleberger's seminal work on
the interwar economy, which describes a kind of "hegemonic interregnum." After 1918, Kindleberger suggested, the United
Kingdom was too weakened by war to remain an effective hegemon, but the United States was still too inhibited by protectionism
and isolationism to take over the role. This idea, which became known, somewhat inelegantly, as "hegemonic stability theory," was
later applied to the post-1945 period by authors such as Arthur Stein, Susan Strange, Henry Nau, and Joseph Nye. In this literature,
the fundamental question was how far and for how long the United States would remain committed to free trade once other
economies -- benefiting from precisely the liberal economic order made possible by U.S. hegemony -- began to catch up with it.
Would Americans revert to protectionist or mercantilist policies in an effort to perpetuate their hegemony, or stick with free trade at
the risk of experiencing relative decline? This is what Stein called "the hegemon's dilemma," and it appeared to him to be
essentially the same problem faced by the United Kingdom before 1914. Paul Kennedy drew a similar parallel in his influential
The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers.

Wars create homelessness

Markee 03
(Markee, Patrick,Senior Policy Analyst for Coalition for the Homeless, 3-27-03
http://www.coalitionforthehomeless.org/FileLib/PDFs/war_and_homelessness.pdf)

It is axiomatic that wars create homelessness in the territories where combat occurs. Every war that
the
United States has been involved in, from the Revolutionary War to Desert Storm, has at least temporarily
displaced populations and destroyed the homes of civilians. Even the undeclared wars that the
United States has sponsored and supported, in Latin America and elsewhere , produced hundreds of

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thousands of refugees and uprooted rural and urban populations. However, since the Civil War there have
been no sustained military battles fought on United States territory, so most Americans have no first-hand contact with
the immediate impact of homelessness resulting from war. In contrast, our armed forces veterans do have first-

hand experience with homelessness that is a direct consequence of American military and domestic
policies. This briefing paper provides an overview of the impact of homelessness on armed forces veterans, both
historically and currently. Throughout American history there has been high incidence of homelessness among veterans,
primarily as a result of combat related disabilities and trauma and the failure of government benefits to provide adequate
housing assistance for low-income and disabled veterans. The paper concludes that, absent a dramatic change in
Federal policies, the war on Iraq will create a new generation of homeless veterans.

War leaves veterans unemployed and homeless

Markee 03
(Markee, Patrick,Senior Policy Analyst for Coalition for the Homeless, 3-27-03
http://www.coalitionforthehomeless.org/FileLib/PDFs/war_and_homelessness.pdf)

The post-Civil War era witnessed a much more significant growth in homelessness nationwide .
Indeed, asKusmer notes, even the words tramp and bum, as applied to the homeless, can be traced to the Civil War
era.3 One reason was the enormous economic dislocation generated by the war and the succeeding
economic recession, and by the 1870s vagrancy was recognized as a national issue . Many of the new
nomads riding the rails and congregating in cities were Civil War veterans, and many had suffered physical injuries and
trauma during the war. As the early 1870s recession deepened, many cities responded by creating new antivagrancy
legislation. In 1874 the number of reported vagrants in Boston was 98,263, more than three times the number just two
years earlier. From 1874 to 1878 the number of vagrancy arrests in New York City rose by half.4 The homelessness
crisis of the Great Depression, which affected many World War I veterans, was dramatically abated in the early 1940s
by the enlistment of tens of thousands of Americans in the armed forces and by the wartime economic upswing. In New
York City, according to Kusmer, In one two-month period in 1943, 100 Bowery residents joined the armed forces,
while another 200 acquired jobs in hospitals, restaurants, or on the railroads.5 With the end of World War II,
however, homelessness re-emerged as a significant problem in many cities. In New York City, demand
for emergency shelter rose in the late 1940s, with as many as 900 men bedding down in the Lodging House Annex (later
the Municipal Shelter) on East 3rd Street in the 1948-49 winter.6 Homelessness would have continued to
affect many thousands of World War II veterans were it not for the national economic upturn and the
benefits provided by the G.I. Bill. With the advent of the Vietnam War, however, the link between
homelessness and military veterans finally came to the attention of the general public. As Kusmer
writes, Only a few years after the end of the waranew wave of homeless persons, mostly in their 20s and 30s and
disproportionately black or Hispanic, began to appear on city street corners. Many were Vietnam veterans, unable to
find work after being discharged.7 By the late 1970s, when modern homelessness fully emerged, a significant portion
of the homeless men seen sleeping outdoors in vast numbers in New York City and other large cities were armed forces
veterans. Many veterans suffered from post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), substance abuse disorders, and physical
disabilities caused by their experiences in combat. The 1991 Gulf War, the last major conventional war involving the
United States military, also left many veterans recovering from physical and mental disabilities and confronting
homelessness. A 1997 survey of 1,200 homeless veterans nationwide who resided at mission shelters found that 10
percent of them were Gulf War veterans. 8 In New York City, homeless service providers also reported

assisting significant numbers of Desert Storm veterans.

Wartime consensus favors inherently homophobic military culture
Dennis Sewell, 1993
(January 27, THE GUARDIAN FEATURES PAGE; Pg. 17, lexis)
If the public reasons why the armed forces are so set against admitting homosexuals bear such little scrutiny, is there an unspoken
reason? A homophobia that dare not speak its name? Certainly there is a profoundly ingrained distaste for homosexuals prevalent
among private soldiers and NCOs. This stems partly from a fear of becoming the object of unwanted homosexual attentions. Also
there is a knee-jerk association of the homosexual with the effeminate or effete. To men brought up in an exaggeratedly macho
culture, one of the most effective taunts within the group is that of being "queer". OFFICERS, of course, are keen to distance
themselves from this way of thinking or behaving. Such attitudes are, they say, part of ordinary working-class culture and not

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specific to the military. They themselves, being middle class and having, doubtless, seen homosexual behaviour at their public
schools, affect a personal insoucience about the whole issue. But they insist "the lads won't have it". This, too, we have heard
before. The slow progress made by blacks in becoming senior NCOs or officers in the British Army owed much to the same kind
of argument. Working-class culture was inherently racist, officers would say. Once the lads were told they were jolly well going to
have to lump it, of course they accepted black officers. But in the case of homosexual servicemen, there is a complicating factor.
Whereas officers did not, on the whole, condone racist attitudes, they are often complicit in fostering homophobic attitudes. They
make and enjoy the jokes just as much as the men. Indeed, for the more insecure, a little queer baiting has been one way of proving
their own masculinity. They will find it hard now to tell the lads that they were wrong all along.

Wars are fought by the poor who are sacrificed for the upper classes turning case
Tyson, Wash Post, 05
(Ann Scott Youths in Rural U.S. Are Drawn To Military, Recruits' Job Worries Outweigh War Fears, Ann Scott Tyson, Washington
Post Staff Writer, Friday, November 4, 2005; Page A01)
As sustained combat in Iraq makes it harder than ever to fill the ranks of the all-volunteer force, newly released
Pentagon demographic data show that the military is leaning heavily for recruits on economically depressed, rural
areas where youths' need for jobs may outweigh the risks of going to war . More than 44 percent of U.S. military
recruits come from rural areas, Pentagon figures show. In contrast, 14 percent come from major cities. Youths living in
the most sparsely populated Zip codes are 22 percent more likely to join the Army, with an opposite trend in cities.
Regionally, most enlistees come from the South (40 percent) and West (24 percent). Many of today's recruits are
financially strapped, with nearly half coming from lower-middle-class to poor households, according to new Pentagon
data based on Zip codes and census estimates of mean household income. Nearly two-thirds of Army recruits in 2004
came from counties in which median household income is below the U.S. median. Such patterns are pronounced in
such counties as Martinsville, Va., that supply the greatest number of enlistees in proportion to their youth populations.
All of the Army's top 20 counties for recruiting had lower-than-national median incomes, 12 had higher poverty rates,
and 16 were non-metropolitan, according to the National Priorities Project, a nonpartisan research group that analyzed
2004 recruiting data by Zip code.

War creates many mental health issues

Levy and Sidel, 7 (Barry Levy- Adjunct Professor of Community Health at Tufts University School of Medicine, Victor
Sidel- Professor of Social Medicine at the Albert Einstein Medical College, War and Public Health, Edition 2, 2007)
Given the brutality of war. many people survive wars only to be physically or mentally scarred for life (see Box 1-1). Millions of
survivors are chronically disabled from injuries sustained during war or the immediate aftermath of war. Approximately onethird of Ihe soldiers who survived ihe civil war in Ethiopia, for example, were injured or disabled, and at least 40,000 individuals
lost one or more limbs during the war.' Antipersonnel landmines represent a serious threat to many people'' (see Chapter 7).
For example, in Cambodia, I in 236 people is an amputee as a result of a landmine explosion.'0
Millions more people are psychologically impaired from wars, during which they have been physically or sexually assaulted or have
physically or sexually assaulted others; have been tortured or have participated in the torture of others; have been forced to serve as
soldiers against their will; have witnessed the death of family members; or have experienced the destruction of their communities or
entire nations (sec Chapter4). Psychological trauma may be demonstrated in disturbed and antisocial behaviors, such as aggression
toward family members and others. Many soldiers, on returning from military action, suffer from posttraumatic stress disorder
(PTSD). which also affects many civilian survivors of war.

Wartime spending causes poverty

Henderson, 98
(Errol Anthony Henderson, Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Florida, The Journal of Politics,
Vol. 60, No. 2 (May, 1998), pp. 503-520, Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Southern Political Science
Association, http://www.jstor.org/stable/2647920)
ThisanalysisattemptedtoascertaintowhatextentarelationshipobtainedbetweenmilitaryspendingandpovertyintheUnited
States. With the declining significance of macroeconomic forces, types of government spending have become salient in
influencingpovertyratechanges.Partialsupportwasfoundfortheviewthat increasedmilitaryspending,intheaggregate, is
associatedwithincreasedpoverty thoughtheseeffectsare different forpeacetime andwartime.Peacetimemilitaryspending
increasespoverty,morethanlikelythroughitsimpactonincreasinginequalityandunemployment,whilewartimespendinghasthe
reverse effect. When disaggregated, military personnel spending is shown to decrease poverty while other components are
associatedwithincreasingpoverty.Althoughmilitarypersonnelspendingreducespoverty,militarybuildupssincetheKoreanWar

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haveincreasedtheshareofprocurementspendingattheexpenseofpersonnelexpenditures(Chan1995).Inaddition,totheextent
that increaseddefensespendingisfinancedthroughdeficitspending,theinflationaryimpactalsodisproportionatelyharmsthe
poor.Whileincreasedaggregatemilitaryspendingfailsasanantipovertypolicy,focusedspendingonmilitarypersonnelmay
decreasepoverty,suggestingitspotentialasacountercyclicalinstrument.However,argumentsinfavorofsuchmilitaryspending
increasesaremostpersuasivelyputforthonthebasisofnationalsecurityconcernswithinahostileinternationalenvironmentorin
thepresenceofanarmsracewithamajorpowerrival.NeitherconditionobtainsinthepostColdWarclimate.Thefindings
comport with the present discourse on military spending dominated by discussions of the "peace dividend" resulting from
decreaseddefensebudgets(Chan1995).Whilethesefindingssuggestthatreducedaggregatedefensespendingisassociatedwith
decreased poverty, defense reductions will have different impacts across regions, occupations, and ethnic groups. Defense
cutbackswillprobablyhavemoredeleteriousimpactsonstatesthatareheavilyreliantupondirectandindirectmilitaryspending,
suchasCalifornia,Texas,Virginia,NewYork,Florida,Pennsylvania,andOhio.Inaddition,economicconversioninitiativesare
dominatedbyconcernsforrelieffordefensecontractorsandtheirusuallyhighskilledworkforce.Tobesure,skilledworkersin
affectedregionswillfacedifficultiesasoccupationssuchasaeronautics,industrialandmechanicalengineering,andmetalworking
decline;however,lowskilledlaborersaremorelikelycandidatesforpoverty.

Empirically war spending has disproportionately hurt the poor

Henderson, 98
(Errol Anthony Henderson, Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Florida, The Journal of Politics,
Vol. 60, No. 2 (May, 1998), pp. 503-520, Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Southern Political Science
Association, http://www.jstor.org/stable/2647920)
ThisarticleexaminestheextenttowhichmilitaryspendingisassociatedwithpovertyintheUnitedStatesfortheperiod195992.
The relationship is complicated by macroeconomic factors such as economic growth and unemployment. Increased military
spendingisassociatedwithincreasingpoverty;however,thereisaninverserelationshipbetweenwartimemilitaryspendingand
povertyandadirectrelationshipbetweenpeacetimemilitaryspendingandpoverty.Also,militarypersonnelspendingisinversely
correlatedwithpovertywhileOperationsandMaintenance(O&M),procurement,andResearchandDevelopment(R&D)spending
are directly correlated with poverty. These findings suggest the antipoverty policy alternatives of increased social welfare
spending, defense conversion that is poverty sensitive, or increased spending on military personnel, which is usually only
accompaniedbywarmobilization.Thelastoptionisuntenableassocialpolicyandthefirstoptionisunlikelyinthepresent
politicalclimate;therefore,thepoormustrelyonmore"efficientlytargeted"conversioninitiatives.

Conflict causes chronic poverty

Goodhand 03
(Johnathan Goodhand, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, 2003 http://www.pikpotsdam.de/research/research-domains/transdisciplinary-concepts-and-methods/favaia/workspace/documents/world-developmentvolume-31-issue-3-special-issue-on-chronic-poverty-and-development-policy/pages629-646.pdf)
Research studies on the costs of conflict show that although the effects of war vary according to the
nature, duration and phase of the conflict, the background economic and social conditions and the level of compensatory
action by national governments or the international community protracted conflicts are likely to produce
chronic poverty. This particularly applies to collapsed state, warlord type conflicts characterized by

the systematic and deliberate violation of individual and group rights. In such conflicts the
deliberate impoverishment of the population may be used as a weapon of war. 9 Violent conflict is
therefore likely to be both a driver and maintainer of intergenerationally transmitted (IGT)
poverty: Poor societies are at risk of falling into no-exit cycles of conflict in which ineffective governance, societal
warfare, humanitarian crises, and the lack of development perpetually chase one another (Gurr et al., 2001, p. 13). (b)
Macro effects of conflict

Conflict has direct and indirect costs. The direct impacts including battlefield deaths, disablement
and displacement have long-term costs for societies. Chronic poverty is likely to increase due to
higher dependency ratios caused by an increased proportion of the old, women and disabled in the
population. But the indirect costs are likely to have a more significant impact on IGT poverty. Many
more people die from wars as a result of lack of basic medical services, the destruction of rural life and transport and
collapse of the state, than from direct battlefield deaths. 10

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War destroys womens rights

Marshall, founder of the feminist peace network, 04
(Lucinda Marshall Founder of the Feminist Peace Network, Feminist Writer and Activist, 12-18-04
Unacceptable: The Impact of War on Women and Children http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1219-26.htm)
Women and children account for almost 80% of the casualties of conflict and war as well as 80% of the
40 million people in world who are now refugees from their homes. It is one of the unspoken facts of militarism that

women often become the spoils of war, their deaths are considered collateral damage and their
bodies are frequently used as battlegrounds and as commodities that can be traded.
"Women and girls are not just killed, they are raped, sexually attacked, mutilated and humiliated.
Custom, culture and religion have built an image of women as bearing the 'honour' of their
communities. Disparaging a woman's sexuality and destroying her physical integrity have become a
means by which to terrorize, demean and 'defeat' entire communities , as well as to punish,
intimidate and humiliate women," according to Irene Khan of Amnesty International.
Sexual violence as a tool of war has left hundreds of thousands of women raped, brutalized, impregnated and infected
with HIV/AIDS. And hundreds of thousands of women are trafficked annually for forced labor and sexual slavery.
Much of this trafficking is to service western troops in brothels near military bases. Even women serving in the military
are subjected to sexual violence. U.S. servicewomen have reported hundreds of assaults in military academies and while
serving on active duty. The perpetrators of these assaults have rarely been prosecuted or punished.

The impact of war on children is also profound. In the last decade, two million of our children have
been killed in wars and conflicts. 4.5 million children have been disabled and 12 million have been left
homeless. Today there are 300,000 child soldiers, including many girls who are forced to 'service' the troops.

War restricts womens freedom and suppresses their basic human rights
Abeyesekera, director of a humans rights organization, 03
(Sunila Abeyesekera, director of Inform, a Sri Lankan human rights organization 02-03

http://www.awid.org/eng/Issues-and-Analysis/Library/A-Women-s-Human-Rights-Perspectiveon-War-and-Conflict)
At the same time, wars and conflicts have led to a host of negative consequences for unarmed women
civilians and dependent family members, children, the old and the infirm. Figures worldwide point to the fact that the
majority of refugees and internally displaced persons are female . The erosion of democratic space that
often accompanies conflict and war also propel women into a more active role in political and social life. In moments
when men and male-dominated traditional political and social formations, such as political parties and trade unions, are
reluctant or unable to come forward in defense of human rights and democratic principles, groups of women have had
the courage to stand up to the armed might of both state and non-state actors. War and conflict also push women into
decision-making positions in their families and communities, in particular in the role of head of household.
Most conflicts and wars emerge out of processes of identity formation in which competing identity groups and
communities resort to violence to affirm their equal status in society. Given this dynamic, conflict and war

situations result in the heightening of all forms of conservatism and extremism including religious
fundamentalism, ultra-nationalism and ethnic and linguistic chauvinism. The hardening of identitybased roles ascribed to men and women within the community that happen as a part of this process
often has disastrous consequences for women. It restricts their mobility and freedom, imposes dress
codes, confines them to the domestic sphere, brings them under the rigid control of male members
of the family and the community and, most critically, places them in the role of 'bearers of the
community's honour' and traditions. Thus, the rape and violation of the women of the 'enemy'
community becomes a critical military strategy in all identity-based wars and conflict.
Wartime culture results in racism
Dieckmann et al., 97
(Bernhard Dieckmann, Christoph Wulf, Michael Wimmer, Violence--racism, nationalism, xenophobia, 134

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War is as important as any other medium-term socio-economic or political factor in leading to a rise in racism. In fact,
anyone studying the history of race during the twentieth century cannot avoid the conclusiuon that the worst
persecution of minorities has occurred during wartime. Apart from genocide, illustrated by the Annenian genocide in
World War I and the Nazi Holocaust in World War Two, states such as Britain and Brazil experienced some of their
worst twentieth century outbreaks of violence during the First World War. The explanations as to why war leads to an
increase in intolerance are many, but revolve around the increase in ostracisation of out groups, facilitated by the
seizure of control, directly or indirectly, by the military, as members of the dominant society fell closer together to fight
the external enemy.

War props up systems of racism and domination

Martin 90. [Brian, Associate Professor of Science, Technology, and Society at the University of Wollongong, ,
Uprooting War, Freedom Press, [http://www.uow.edu.au/arts/sts/bmartin/pubs/90uw/index.html]
Antagonism between ethnic groups can be used and reinforced by the state to sustain its own power. When one ethnic
group controls all the key positions in the state, this is readily used to keep other groups in subordinate positions, and
as a basis for economic exploitation. This was clearly a key process in apartheid in South Africa, but is also at work in
many other countries in which minority groups are oppressed. From this perspective, the dominant ethnic group uses
state power to maintain its ascendancy. But at the same time, the use of political and economic power for racial
oppression helps to sustain and legitimate state power itself. This is because the maintenance of racial domination and
exploitation comes to depend partly on the use of state power, which is therefore supported and expanded by the
dominant group. From this perspective it can be said that the state mobilises racism to help maintain itself.
There are several other avenues used by the state to mobilise support. Several of these will be treated in the following
chapters, including bureaucracy and patriarchy. In each case, structured patterns of dominance and submission are
mobilised to support the state, and state in turn helps to sustain the social structure in question, such as bureaucracy
or patriarchy. To counter the state, it is necessary both to promote grassroots mobilisation and to undermine the key
structures from which the state draws its power and from which it mobilises support.

War facilitates the rape of women to force unwanted pregnancies and to further ethnic cleansing
Robson 93
(Robson, has a Master's degree in African Literature and is an award winning writer, 06-93 http://www.newint.org/issue244/rape.htm)

No-one will ever know the exact number of women and girls raped during the conflict in former
Yugoslavia. But Heraks accounts of his forced participation in rapes of Bosnian Muslim women his commander
had told him it was good for morale accord with evidence recounted to human-rights observers and
journalists throughout the region. Though all figures must be treated with caution in a war so plagued by propaganda,
these witnesses tell of the organized and systematic rape of at least 20,000 women and girls by the Serbian military and
the murder of many of the victims. Muslim and Croatian as well as some Serbian women are being raped in

their homes, in schools, police stations and camps all over the country. The sexual abuse of women
in war is nothing new. Rape has long been tolerated as one of the spoils of war, an inevitable feature
of military conflict like pillage and looting. What is new about the situation in Bosnia is the attention it is
receiving and the recognition that it is being used as a deliberate military tactic to speed up the process
of ethnic cleansing. According to a recent report by European Community investigators, rapes are being
committed in particularly sadistic ways to inflict maximum humiliation on victims , their families, and
on the whole community. 1 In many cases the intention is deliberately to make women pregnant and to
detain them until pregnancy is far enough advanced to make termination impossible . Women and girls
aged anything between 6 and 70 are being held in camps throughout the country and raped repeatedly by gangs of
soldiers. Often brothers or fathers of these women are forced to rape them as well. If they refuse, they are killed.

Wars undermine human rights

Ganesan and Vines 04. [Arvind, Business and Human Rights Program Director @ HRW Alex, Senior Researcher @
HRW, Head of Africa Programme Chatham House, Royal Institue of Intl Affairs, Engine of War: Resources, Greed,
and the Predatory State, Human Rights Watch World Report 2004 http://hrw.org/wr2k4/download/14.pdf]

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Internal armed conflict in resource-rich countries is a major cause of human rights violations around the world. An
influential World Bank thesis states that the availability of portable, high-value resources is an important reason that
rebel groups form and civil wars break out, and that to end the abuses one needs to target rebel group financing. The
focus is on rebel groups, and the thesis is that greed, rather than grievance alone, impels peoples toward internal
armed conflict. Although examination of the nexus between resources, revenues, and civil war is critically important,
the picture as presented in the just-described greed vs. grievance theory is distorted by an overemphasis on the
impact of resources on rebel group behavior and insufficient attention to how government mismanagement of
resources and revenues fuels conflict and human rights abuses. As argued here, if the international community is
serious about curbing conflict and related rights abuses in resource-rich countries, it should insist on greater
transparency in government revenues and expenditures and more rigorous enforcement of punitive measures against
governments that seek to profit from conflict. Civil wars and conflict have taken a horrific toll on civilians throughout the
world. Killings, maiming, forced conscription, the use of child soldiers, sexual abuse, and other atrocities characterize
numerous past and ongoing conflicts. The level of violence has prompted increased scrutiny of the causes of such
wars. In this context, the financing of conflict through natural resource exploitation has received increased scrutiny over
the last few years. When unaccountable, resource-rich governments go to war with rebels who often seek control over
the same resources, pervasive rights abuse is all but inevitable. Such abuse, in turn, can further destabilize conditions,
fueling continued conflict. Factoring the greed of governments and systemic rights abuse into the greed vs. grievance
equation does not minimize the need to hold rebel groups accountable, but it does highlight the need to ensure that
governments too are transparent and accountable. Fundamentally, proper management of revenues is an economic
problem, and that is why the role of IFIs is so important. But it is an economic problem that also has political
dimensions and requires political solutions. Political will and pressure, including targeted U.N. sanctions where
appropriate, can motivate opaque, corrupt governments to be more open and transparent. Where such pressure is
lacking, as in Liberia prior to enforcement of sanctions, continued conflict, rights abuse, and extreme deprivation of
civilians all too commonly are the result.

Modern warfare involves crippling civilian infrastructure and violating human rights
Levy and Sidel, 7 (Barry Levy- Adjunct Professor of Community Health at Tufts University School of Medicine, Victor
Sidel- Professor of Social Medicine at the Albert Einstein Medical College, War and Public Health, Edition 2, 2007)
Modern military technology, especially the use of high-precision bombs, rockets, and missile warheads, has now made it
possible to attack civilian populations in industrialized societies indirectlybut with devastating resultsby targeting the
facilities on which life depends, while avoiding the stigma of direct attack on the bodies and habitats of noncombatants. The
technique has been termed "bomb now, die later."
U.S. military action against Iraq in the 1991 Persian Gulf War and in the Iraq War has included the specific and selective
destruction of key aspects of the infrastructure necessary to maintain ci vi l i an life and health (see Chapter 15). During the
bombing phase of the Persian Gulf War this deliberate effort almost totally destroyed Iraq's electrical-power generation and
transmission capacity and its civilian communications networks. In combination with the prolonged application of
economic sanctions and the disruption of highways, bridges, and facilities for refining and distributing fuel by conventional
bombing, these actions had severely damaging effects on the health and survival of the civilian population, especially
infants and children. Without electrical power, water purification and pumping ceased immediately in all major urban areas,
as did sewage pumping and treatment. The appearance and epidemic spread of infectious diarrheal disease in infants and of
waterborne diseases, such as typhoid fever and cholera, were rapid. At the same lime, medical care and public health
measures were totally disrupted. Modern multistory hospitals were left without clean water, sewage disposal, or any elec tricity beyond what could he supplied by emergency generators designed to operate only a few hours per day. Operating
rooms, x-ray equipment, and other vital facilities were crippled. Supplies of anesthetics, antibiotics, and other essential
medications were rapidly depleted. Vaccines and medications requiring refrigeration were destroyed, and all immunization
programs increased. Because almost no civilian telephones, computers, or transmission lines were operable, the Ministry of
Health was effectively immobilized. Fuel shortages and the disruption of transportation limited civilian access to medical
care.
Many reports provide clear and quantitative evidence of violations of the requirements of immunity for civilian
populations, proportionality, and the prevention of unnecessary suffering. They mock the concept of life integrity rights.
In contrast to the chaos and social disruption that routinely accompany armed conflicts, these deaths have been the
consequence of and explicit military policy, with clearly foreseeable consequences to human rights of civilians. The U.S.
military has never conceded that its policies violated human rights under the Geneva Conventions or the guidelines under
which U.S. military personnel operate. Yet the ongoing development of military technology suggests thatabsent the use
of weapons of mass destructionviolations of civilians human rights will be the preferred method of warfare in the
future.

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Increased military spending from war would tradeoff with health care and other social services
Tasini , executive director of labor research association ran for senate in NY, 8-13-7 (Jonathan , Guns
Versus Butter -- Our Real Economic Challenge , http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jonathantasini/guns-versus-butter-our_b_60150.html)
Guns versus butter. It's the classic debate that really tells us a lot about our priorities that we set for
the kind of society we can expect to live in -- how much money a country spends on the military
versus how much money is expended on non-military, domestic needs. To perhaps explain the obvious,
buying a gun (or missile defense or a sophisticated bomber) means you don't have those dollars for
butter (or a national health care plan or free college education ). At some basic level, we all know that
those tradeoffs exist but, sometimes, numbers bring home the meaning of this equation in stunning fashion. What
made me think of this is a set of revealing numbers that jumped out at me the other day -- numbers that underscore why
there is, in my opinion, something lacking in the message of most of the Democratic presidential candidates and our
party's leadership.

War spending trades off with Medicaid Bush and the Iraq war proves
Star Tribune 5 ("Social programs would bear brunt of deficit reduction", February 8, @Lexis)
President Bush sent Congress a $2.57 trillion budget Monday that would drastically cut or shut down 150
government programs and slash spending on Medicaid , farming and low-income housing, while
boosting money for defense and homeland security. In what Bush described as the most austere budget of his
presidency, discretionary spending would grow by 2.1 percent - less than the projected rate of inflation. Meanwhile,
non-defense spending would be cut by nearly 1 percent - the first such proposed cut since the Reagan
administration. Hardest hit is Medicaid, which could cost Minnesota as much as $712 million over the
next decade.

War causes starvation

Messer 96
(Ellen Messer, University of Michigan, Ph.D., 1996,

http://www.unu.edu/unupress/unupbooks/uu22we/uu22we0j.htm)

After the wars, communities decimated and depopulated by physical and human losses can remain
underproductive and hungry for years, as food wars and the conditions leading up to them remain a
legacy of armed conflict that is not easily remedied without outside assistance. Individuals, households, and
communities must regain access to land, water, and other sources of livelihood, and human resources and social
infrastructure must somehow recover. Communities in many cases must be re-formed, especially where areas have
experienced complete or selective depopulation. Production and markets must be re-established, so that goods can flow
and livelihoods rebound. During prolonged warfare, whole generations may be conscripted into the

military; with no other schooling, they must later be socialized into peacetime occupations if they
are not to revert to violence and brigandage as a source of entitlements. In the African conflicts of
Mozambique, Liberia, and Sierra Leone, destruction of kinship units was a deliberate military strategy to remove
intergenerational ties and community bonds and create new loyalties to the military. These grown youths now need
sustenance, and basic and specialty education, if they are to contribute to a peacetime economy and society, and to
general food security. After decades of civil war, these countries also lack skilled agricultural, social, and

health professionals to speed recovery. They require agricultural, health, educational, and economic
services to rebuild societies, as well as physical infrastructure such as agricultural works, transport and
communication lines, and market-places destroyed in the wars.

Wars, like the Iraq war, have increased a chance of a terror attack
People Press 05
(Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, 7-21-05, http://people-press.org/report/251/more-say-iraq-warhurts-fight-against-terrorism)
The public is growing more skeptical that the war in Iraq is helping in the effort to fight terrorism . A plurality
(47%) believes that the war in Iraq has hurt the war on terrorism , up from 41% in February of this year. Further, a

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plurality (45%) now says that the war in Iraq has increased the chances of terrorist attacks at home , up from 36%
in October 2004, while fewer say that the war in Iraq has lessened the chances of terrorist attacks in the U.S. (22% now and 32% in
October). Another three-in-ten believe that the war in Iraq has no effect on the chances of a terrorist attack in the U.S. Older
Americans are more skeptical than younger people that the war in Iraq is helping the effort to fight terrorism. A 56% majority of
those age 50 and over say the war in Iraq has hurt the war on terrori sm, up from 39% in February. Those younger
than age 50 are divided on this issue, with 45% saying the war in Iraq has helped and 41% saying it hurt the war on terrorism; that
pattern has remained stable since February.

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A.) Nuclear war produces aerosol spikes killing phytoplankton

Crutzen and Birks 83
(Paul, Director of the Air Chemistry Division of the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry, and John, Associate Professor of Chemistry and Fellow of the Cooperative
Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, in The Aftermath: The Human and Ecological Consequences of Nuclear War, ed. Peterson, p.84)

If the production of aerosol by fires is large enough to cause reductions in the penetration of sunlight to
ground level by a factor of a hundred, which would be quite possible in the event of an all-out nuclear war,
most of the phytoplankton and herbivorous zooplankton in more than half of the Northern Hemisphere
oceans would die (36). This effect is due to the fast consumption rate of phytoplankton by zooplankton in
the oceans. The effects of a darkening of such a magnitude have been discussed recently in connection with
the probable occurrence of such an event as a result of the impact of a large extraterrestrial body with the
earth (37). This event is believed by many to have caused the widespread and massive extinctions which
took place at the Cretacious-Tertiary boundary about 65 million years ago.

B.) Phytoplankton depletion collapses the global carbon cycle causing extinction
Bryant 03
(Donald, Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at Penn State, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, The beauty in small things revealed,
Volume 100, Number 17, August 19, http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/100/17/9647)

Oxygenic photosynthesis accounts for nearly all the primary biochemical production of organic matter on
Earth. The byproduct of this process, oxygen, facilitated the evolution of complex eukaryotes and
supports their/our continuing existence. Because macroscopic plants are responsible for most terrestrial
photosynthesis, it is relatively easy to appreciate the importance of photosynthesis on land when one views the lush
green diversity of grasslands or forests. However, Earth is the "blue planet," and oceans cover nearly 75% of

its surface. All life on Earth equally depends on the photosynthesis that occurs in Earth's oceans. A
rich diversity of marine phytoplankton, found in the upper 100 m of oceans, accounts only for 1% of the
total photosynthetic biomass, but this virtually invisible forest accounts for nearly 50% of the net
primary productivity of the biosphere (1). Moreover, the importance of these organisms in the biological
pump, which traps CO2 from the atmosphere and stores it in the deep sea, is increasingly recognized as a major
component of the global geochemical carbon cycle (2). It seems obvious that it is as important to understand
marine photosynthesis as terrestrial photosynthesis, but the contribution of marine photosynthesis to the
global carbon cycle was grossly underestimated until recently . Satellite-based remote sensing (e.g., NASA
sea-wide field sensor) has allowed more reliable determinations of oceanic photosynthetic productivity to be made (refs.
1 and 2; see Fig. 1).

A). Nuclear war causes massive ozone depletion

Sagan and Turco 90
(Carl, David Duncan Professor of Astronomy and Space Sciences at Cornell, and Richard, Professor of Atmospheric Sciences at UCLA, A Path Where No Man
Thought: Nuclear Winter and the End of the Arms Race, p. 57)

But in a nuclear war, the atmosphere would be so perturbed that our normal way of thinking about the ozone
layer needs to be modified. To help refocus our understanding, several research groups have constructed models
that describe the ozone layer following nuclear war . The principal work has been carried out by research
teams at the National Center for Atmospheric Research and at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (ref. 4.9). Both find
that there is an additional mechanism by which nuclear war threatens the ozone layer. With massive quantities of
smoke injected into the lower atmosphere by the fires of nuclear war, nuclear winter would grip not only the
Earth's surface, but the high ozone layer as well. The severely disturbed wind currents caused by solar
heating of smoke would, in a matter of weeks, sweep most of the ozone layer from the northern midlatitudes
deep into the Southern Hemisphere. The reduction in the ozone layer content in the North could reach a
devastating 50% or more during this phase. As time progressed, the ozone depletion would be made still
worse by several effects: injection of large quantities of nitrogen oxides and chlorine-bearing

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molecules along with the smoke clouds; heating of the ozone layer caused by intermingling of hot smoky air
(as air is heated, the amount of ozone declines); and decomposition of ozone directly on smoke particles
(carbon particles are sometimes used down here near the ground to cleanse air of ozone).

B). Ozone depletion causes extinction

Greenpeace 95
(Full of Homes: The Montreal Protocol and the Continuing Destruction of the Ozone Layer, http://archive.greenpeace.org/ozone/holes/holebg.html)

When chemists Sherwood Rowland and Mario Molina first postulated a link between chlorofluorocarbons and ozone
layer depletion in 1974, the news was greeted with scepticism, but taken seriously nonetheless. The vast majority of
credible scientists have since confirmed this hypothesis. The ozone layer around the Earth shields us all
from harmful ultraviolet radiation from the sun. Without the ozone layer, life on earth would not exist.
Exposure to increased levels of ultraviolet radiation can cause cataracts, skin cancer, and immune
system suppression in humans as well as innumerable effects on other living systems . This is why
Rowland's and Molina's theory was taken so seriously, so quickly - the stakes are literally the continuation of

life on earth.
Nuclear war would result in the death of the entire ocean ecosystem
Perkins, professor of effects of nuclear war, 01
(Simon Perkins, professor in the effects of nuclear war, May 22, 2001, Climate Conditions
http://www.compsoc.man.ac.uk/~samp/nuclearage/lonterm.html )
Assuming that you have been lucky enough to survive the initial hazards of a nuclear explosion what would happen
next? Above ground zero the huge clouds of dust and debris will rise to 10 miles into the atmosphere. When
merged together these clouds will effectively block out all sunlight plunging the sky into darkness for at
least several weeks after. During this period the temperature will fall dramatically. Along the continent this could
be as much as a 40c drop. For counties along the Northern Hemisphere this is enough produce an Arctic winter.
Fortunately for us small islands like the UK will have a less dramatic temperature decrease due tot he warming effect of
the oceans. Looking at some past examples of volcanic eruptions can give us some idea of biological effects; the severe
cold would destroy most crops, rivers would freeze over and many animals would die of cold and hunger.
The effect on tropical plants and creatures would be even more profound and biologists have concluded that many
species will become extinct. Surely most of the plants and animals in the deep oceans would have a better chance?
The average drop in the world's oceans would be only about 1 C 3 and as most species are acclimatised to the cold
conditions anyway. This would be the case in the Artic regions were species are used to long dark periods but for those
in tropical waters most would die from lack of nutrients and light. The lack of light would disrupt the food
chain of microscopic creatures dependent of photoplankton (algae). Within a few months all the fish

would die off , the population decline for many species would be irreversible.
A). Nuclear winter following exchange kills all plant and animal life
SGR 03
(Scientists
for
Global
Responsibility,
Newsletter,
http://www.sgr.org.uk/climate/NuclearWinter_NL27.htm)

Does

anybody

remember

the

Nuclear

Winter?

July

27,

Obviously, when a nuclear bomb hits a target, it causes a massive amount of devastation, with the heat, blast and
radiation killing tens or hundreds of thousands of people instantly and causing huge damage to
infrastructure. But in addition to this, a nuclear explosion throws up massive amounts of dust and smoke.
For example, a large nuclear bomb bursting at ground level would throw up about a million tonnes of dust. As a
consequence of a nuclear war, then, the dust and the smoke produced would block out a large fraction of the
sunlight and the sun's heat from the earth's surface, so it would quickly become be dark and cold temperatures would drop by something in the region of 10-20C - many places would feel like they were in an
arctic winter. It would take months for the sunlight to get back to near normal. The drop in light and temperature
would quickly kill crops and other plant and animal life while humans, already suffering from the direct
effects of the war, would be vulnerable to malnutrition and disease on a massive scale.

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B). We have high probability degree changes devastate entire ecosystems risking extinction
Sagan and Turco, 1990
(Carl and Richard, astrophysicist and astronomer at Cornell University, and founding director of UCLA's Institute of the Environment, A Path Where No Man
Thought: Nuclear Winter and the End of the Arms Race, pg 22)

Life on Earth is exquisitely dependent on the climate (see Appendix A). The average surface temperature of
the Earth averaged, that is, over day and night, over the seasons, over latitude, over land and ocean, over coastline
and continental interior, over mountain range and desertis about 13C, 13 Centigrade degrees above the temperature
at which fresh water freezes. (The corresponding temperature on the Fahrenheit scale is 55F.) It's harder to change the
temperature of the oceans than of the continents, which is why ocean temperatures are much more steadfast over the
diurnal and seasonal cycles than are the temperatures in the middle of large continents. Any global temperature
change implies much larger local temperature changes, if you don't live near the ocean. A prolonged global
temperature drop of a few degrees C would be a disaster for agriculture; by 10C, whole ecosystems

would be imperiled; and by 20C, almost all life on Earth would be at risk. The margin of safety is
thin.
C) Nuclear war collapses ecosystems and kills all biodiversity
Ehrlich et al, 1983
(Paul R. Ehrlich, Stanford University; Mark A. Harwell, Cornell University; Carl Sagan, Cornell University; Anne H. Ehrlich, Stanford University; Stephen J.
Gould, Harvard University; biologists on the Long-Term Worldwide Biological Consequences of Nuclear War (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 25 and 26 April 1983).,
Science, New Series, Vol. 22, No. 4630, Dec. 23, 1983, pg 1293-1300, jstor)

The 2 billion to 3 billion survivors of the immediate effects of the war would be forced to turn to natural
ecosystems as organized agriculture failed. Just at the time when these natural ecosystems would be asked to support
a human population well beyond their carrying capacities, the normal functioning of the ecosystems themselves
would be severely curtailed by the effects of nuclear war. Subjecting these ecosystems to low temperature, fire,
radiation, storm, and other physical stresses (many occurring simultaneously) would result in their increased
vulnerability to disease and pest outbreaks, which might be prolonged. Primary productivity would be dramatically
reduced at the prevailing low light levels; and, because of UV-B, smog, insects, radiation, and other damage to plants, it
is unlikely that it would recover quickly to normal levels, even after light and temperature values had recovered. At the
same time that their plant foods were being limited severely, most, if not all, of the vertebrates not killed outright by
blast and ionizing radiation would either freeze or face a dark world where they would starve or die of thirst because
surface waters would be frozen and thus unavailable. Many of the survivors would be widely scattered and often sick,
leading to the slightly delayed extinction of many additional species. Natural ecosystems provide civilization with a
variety of crucial services in addition to food and shelter. These include regulation of atmospheric composition,
moderation of climate and weather, regulation of the hydrologic cycle, generation and preservation of soils, degradation
of wastes, and recycling of nutrients. From the human perspective, among the most important roles of ecosystems are
their direct role in providing food and their maintenance of a vast library of species from which Homo sapiens has
already drawn the basis of civilization (27). Accelerated loss of these genetic resources through extinction would be one
of the most serious potential consequences of nuclear war. Wildfires would be an important effect in north temperate
ecosystems, their scale and distribution depending on such factors as the nuclear war scenario and the season. Another
major uncertainty is the extent of fire storms, which might heat the lower levels of the soil enough to damage or destroy
seed banks, especially in vegetation types not adapted to periodic fires. Multiple airbursts over seasonally dry areas such
as California in the late summer or early fall could burn off much of the state's forest and brush areas, leading to
catastrophic flooding and erosion during the next rainy season. Silting, toxic runoff, and rainout of radionuclides could kill much of the fauna of fresh and coastal waters, and concentrated radioactivity levels in
surviving filter-feeding shellfish populations could make them dangerous to consume for long periods of time. Other
major consequences for terrestrial ecosystems resulting from nuclear war would include: (i) slower detoxification of air
and water as a secondary result of damage to plants that now are important metabolic sinks for toxins; (ii) reduced
evapotranspiration by plants contributing to a lower rate of entry of water into the atmosphere, especially over
continental regions, and therefore a more sluggish hydrologic cycle; and (iii) great disturbance of the soil surface,
leading to accelerated erosion and, probably, major dust storms (28). Revegetation might superficially resemble
that which follows local fires. Stresses from radiation, smog, erosion, fugitive dust, and toxic rains, however,
would be superimposed on those of cold and darkness, thus delaying and modifying postwar succession in ways that
would retard the restoration of ecosystem services (29). It is likely that most ecosystem changes would be short term.
Some structural and functional changes, however, could be longer term, and perhaps irreversible, as ecosystems
undergo qualitative changes to alternative stable states (30). Soil losses from erosion would be serious in areas

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experiencing widespread fires, plant death, and extremes of climate. Much would depend on the wind and precipitation
patterns that would develop during the first postwar year (4, 5). The diversity of many natural communities would
almost certainly be substantially reduced, and numerous species of plants, animals, and microorganisms

would become extinct.

D). Biodiversity collapse causes extinction
Diner Judge Advocate Generals Corps-1994
[Major David N., United States Army Military Law Review Winter, p. lexis]

causing widespread extinctions, humans have artificially simplified many ecosystems. As biologic simplicity
increases, so does the risk of ecosystem failure . The spreading Sahara Desert in Africa, and the dustbowl conditions of the 1930s in the
United States are relatively mild examples of what might be expected if this trend continues. Theoretically, each new animal or plant extinction ,
with all its dimly perceived and intertwined affects, could cause total ecosystem collapse and human extinction. Each new
extinction increases the risk of disaster. Like a mechanic removing, one by one, the rivets from an aircraft's
wings, n80 mankind may be edging closer to the abyss.
By

Nuclear war precedes all ethics

Nye, Harvard Professor, 86
Joseph Nye, prof. of IR at Harvard University, 1986 Nuclear Ethics, p. 24
This leads us to the last and most difficult problem with nuclear weapons: that they risk nuclear holocaust. This holocaust is
a case of extreme (excessive?) violence, since it may very well entail the end of all human civilization as well as the
destruction of numerous other forms of life (probably everything except cockroaches). It is difficult to see how such a war
can be viewed as following St. Augustine's just war standard of creating peace. Even outside the precepts of just war, it is
hard to see the utilitarian aspects of such a war. It is extremely hard to defend as a step towards ultimate good, unless you
believe that the world needs to be completely destroyed and started anew. Since nuclear holocaust is a combination of
massive destruction and residual effects, possibly including the remaking of all life on the planet through genetic mutations
and nuclear winter, it is essentially just an extension, albeit extreme, of the combination of excessive violence and residual
effects. Since our earlier analysis of these two areas failed to provide an ethical framework for either of them even in
isolation, we shall not even begin to try to defend their combination, nuclear holocaust, as ethically acceptable.

Nuclear war is the end of all ethics

Nye, Harvard Professor, 86
Joseph Nye, prof. of IR at Harvard University, 1986 Nuclear Ethics, p. 24
The first of these ethical points is rather simple: if the intent of the overall war is ethically unsound, then the use of
any weapons in such a cause is wrong, be they clubs or nuclear missiles. This fact does not let us differentiate
ethically between nuclear and non-nuclear arms, but merely returns us to a basis for our original assumption that war
can be just. This point does bear on the ethicality of all- out nuclear war, however, since although the announced intent
of the war may be to save the earth from the yoke of Communism or Imperialism, the actual end of the war would
probably be a silent, smoking planet. Each of us must draw our own conclusions as to the ethicality of such an
action, based on our own cultural, religious, political, and ethical backgrounds. But it is an old ethical axiom that no
right action aims at greater evil in the results, and my personal feelings on all out war is that there is no provocation
that can ethically support such devastation.9 In the eloquent words of John Bennett, "How can a nation live with its
conscience and . . . kill twenty million children in another nation . . .?"10

With all the problems that the status quo presents a nuclear war will defiantly happen but with so
many nuclear countries we cannot find out where it will start.
Hirsch 05 [Jorge, Ph.D. @ Univ. of Chicago, professor of physics at Cal, member of the American Physical Society, a society of
physicists opposed to the use of nuclear weapons, Dec. 16, 2005, Nuclear Deployment for an Attack on Iran
http://www.antiwar.com/orig/hirsch.php?articleid=8263]
The nuclear hitmen: Stephen Hadley, Stephen Cambone, Robert Joseph, William Schneider Jr., J.D. Crouch II, Linton
Brooks, and John Bolton are nuclear-weapons enthusiasts who advocate aggressive policies and occupy key positions in
the top echelons of the Bush administration. A nuclear doctrine that advocates nuclear strikes against non-

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nuclear countries that precisely fit the Iran profile: the "Nuclear Posture Review" and the "Doctrine
for Joint Nuclear Operations." The doctrine of preemptive attack adopted by the Bush
administration and already put into practice in Iraq, and the "National Strategy to Combat Weapons
of Mass Destruction" (NSPD 17), which promises to respond to a WMD threat with nuclear
weapons. 150,000 American soldiers in Iraq, whose lives are at risk if a military confrontation with
Iran erupts, and who thus provide the administration with a strong argument for the use of nuclear
weapons to defend them. Americans' heightened state of fear of terrorist attacks and their apparent
willingness to support any course of action that could potentially protect them from real or imagined
terrorist threats. The allegations of involvement of Iran in terrorist activities around the world [1], [2], including acts
against America [1], [2], and its alleged possession of weapons of mass destruction. The determination of the
bipartisan 9/11 Commission that Iran has connections with al-Qaeda. Senate Joint Resolution 23,
"Authorization for Use of Military Force," which allows the president "to take action to deter and
prevent acts of terrorism against the United States" without consulting Congress, and the War
Powers Resolution [.pdf], which "allows" the president to attack anybody in the "global war on
terror." The Bush administration's willingness to use military power based on unconfirmed intelligence and defectors'
fairy tales. The fact that Iran has been declared in noncompliance [.pdf] with the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, which
makes it "legal" for the U.S. to use nuclear weapons against Iran. The course of action followed by the Bush
administration with respect to Iran's drive for nuclear technology, which can only lead to a diplomatic impasse. The
Israel factor [1], [2] .

Mutually assured destruction insures a quick escalation of a nuclear war hence leading to all out
destruction.
Nuclear Files 2009, Project of the Nuclear Age Peace Project.
(Mutually
Assured
Destruction,
http://www.nuclearfiles.org/menu/key-issues/nuclear-weapons/history/coldwar/strategy/strategy-mutual-assured-destruction.htm)
When the Soviet Union achieved nuclear parity with the United States, the Cold War had entered a new phase. The cold
war became a conflict more dangerous and unmanageable than anything Americans had faced before. In the old cold
war Americans had enjoyed superior nuclear force, an unchallenged economy, strong alliances, and a trusted Imperial
President to direct his incredible power against the Soviets. In the new cold war, however, Russian forces achieved
nuclear equality. Each side could destroy the other many times. This fact was officially accepted in a military

doctrine known as Mutual Assured Destruction, a.k.a. MAD. Mutual Assured Destruction began to
emerge at the end of the Kennedy administration. MAD reflects the idea that one's population could
best be protected by leaving it vulnerable so long as the other side faced comparable vulnerabilities.
In short: Whoever shoots first, dies second.
Seriously, there will be wars: economics, security dilemma, nationalism
Mearsheimer, Distinguished Professor of Political Science, 1999.
(John Mearsheimer, Is Major War Obsolete? 1999, http://www.ciaonet.org/conf/cfr10/index.html)
A second reason that states go to war which, of course, is dear to the heart of realists like me, and thats to enhance their security. Take
the United States out of Europe, put the Germans on their own; you got the Germans on one side and the Russians on the other, and in between a
huge buffer zone called eastern or central Europe. Call it what you want. Is it impossible to imagine the Russians and the Germans
getting into a fight over control of that vacuum? Highly likely, no, but feasible, for sure. Is it hard to imagine Japan and China getting
into a war over the South China Sea, not for resource reasons but because Japanese sea-lines of communication run through there and a
huge Chinese navy may threaten it? I dont think its impossible to imagine that. What about nationalism, a third reason? China, fighting in
the United States over Taiwan? You think thats impossible? I dont think thats impossible. Thats a scenario that makes me very nervous. I can
figure out all sorts of ways, none of which are highly likely, that the Chinese and the Americans end up shooting at each other.
It doesnt necessarily have to be World War III, but it is great-power war. Chinese and Russians fighting each other over Siberia? As many of you know, there
are huge numbers of Chinese going into Siberia. You start mixing ethnic populations in most areas of the world outside the United States and its usually a
prescription for big trouble. Again, not highly likely, but possible. I could go on and on, positing a lot of scenarios where great powers have good reasons to go
to war against other great powers. Second reason: There is no question that in the twentieth century , certainly with nuclear weapons

but even before nuclear weapons, the costs of going to war are very high. But that doesnt mean that war is ruled out. The
presence of nuclear weapons alone does not make war obsolescent. I will remind you that from 1945 to 1990, we lived in a world
where there were thousands of nuclear weapons on both sides, and there was nobody running around saying, War is obsolescent. So you cant make

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the argument that the mere presence of nuclear weapons creates peace. India and Pakistan are both going down the
nuclear road. You dont hear many people running around saying, Thats going to produce peace. And, furthermore, if you believe nuclear weapons
were a great cause of peace, you ought to be in favor of nuclear proliferation. What we need is everybody to have a nuclear weapon in
their back pocket. You dont hear many people saying thats going to produce peace, do you?

Even Mandelbaum thinks you should default to war

Mandelbaum, Professor of American Foreign Policy at Johns Hopkins University 1999
Michael, Christian A. Herter Professor of American Foreign Policy, The Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University; Director, Project
on East-West Relations, Council on Foreign Relations Is Major War Obsolete?
An introductory note: The position Im proposing in this discussion occupies the high ground morally. After all, we all wish to believe that major war is obsolete. But it
does not occupy, I must in all honesty say, the high ground intellectually. History and logic weigh on the other side. The burden of proof or, I should say, the burden of
argument, for this is a proposition that cannot be proven, is on me. And many of you here will recognize this argument as the descendant of a familiar one, one two
centuries old that originates with the philosopher Immanuel Kant, which was proposed in dramatic form by the American President Woodrow Wilson, which is identified
with the liberal Anglo-American view of the world.

War is not impossible it is just out of style at the Moment

Mandelbaum, Professor of American Foreign Policy at Johns Hopkins University 1999
Michael, Christian A. Herter Professor of American Foreign Policy, The Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University; Director, Project
on East-West Relations, Council on Foreign Relations Is Major War Obsolete?

There have been four such wars in the modern period: the wars of the French Revolution, World War I, World War II,
and the Cold War. Few though they have been, their consequences have been monumental. They are, by far, the most
influential events in modern history. Modern history which can, in fact, be seen as a series of aftershocks to these four
earthquakes.So if I am right, then what has been the motor of political history for the last two centuries that has been
turned off? This war, I argue, this kind of war, is obsolete; less than impossible, but more than unlikely. What do I mean
by obsolete? If I may quote from the article on which this presentation is based, a copy of which you received when
coming in, Major war is obsolete in a way that styles of dress are obsolete. It is something that is out of fashion and,
while it could be revived, there is no present demand for it. Major war is obsolete in the way that slavery, dueling, or
foot-binding are obsolete. It is a social practice that was once considered normal, useful, even desirable, but that now
seems odious. It is obsolete in the way that the central planning of economic activity is obsolete. It is a practice once
regarded as a plausible, indeed a superior, way of achieving a socially desirable goal, but that changing conditions
have made ineffective at best, counterproductive at worst.

Energy competition increases the risk of major power escalation

Klare, A professor of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College, 2008
(Michael T.,"The End of the World as You Know It,", http://zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/17176)
Until very recently, the mature industrial powers of Europe, Asia, and North America consumed the lion's share of energy
and left the dregs for the developing world. As recently as 1990, the members of the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development
(OECD), the club of the world's richest nations, consumed approximately 57% of world energy; the Soviet
Union/Warsaw Pact bloc, 14% percent; and only 29% was left to the developing world. But that ratio is changing: With strong economic growth in
the developing countries, a greater proportion of the world's energy is being consumed by them. By 2010, the developing world's share of energy use is
expected to reach 40% and, if current trends persist, 47% by 2030. China plays a critical role in all this. The Chinese alone are

projected to consume 17% of world energy by 2015, and 20% by 2025 -- by which time, if trend lines continue, it will have
overtaken the United States as the world's leading energy consumer. India, which, in 2004, accounted for 3.4% of world energy use, is
projected to reach 4.4% percent by 2025, while consumption in other rapidly industrializing nations like Brazil, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, and Turkey is
expected to grow as well.These rising economic dynamos will have to compete with the mature economic powers for

access to remaining untapped reserves of exportable energy -- in many cases, bought up long ago by the private
energy firms of the mature powers like Exxon Mobil, Chevron, BP, Total of France, and Royal Dutch Shell. Of necessity, the
new contenders have developed a potent strategy for competing with the Western "majors": they've created state-owned companies of their own and
fashioned strategic alliances with the national oil companies that now control oil and gas reserves in many of the major energy-producing nations.

War does pay industrial capacity, raw materials, security

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Mearsheimer, Distinguished Professor of Political Science, 1999.

(John Mearsheimer, Is Major War Obsolete? 1999, http://www.ciaonet.org/conf/cfr10/index.html)
Let me make three quick points on that. One is, theres a book by Peter Liberman, who actually teaches at Queens College, called Does Conquest Pay? which
addresses this issue. And it shows very nicely that even though we live in the post-industrial age, conquest does pay, and that you can

extract resources when you conquer countries in the modern age. Second point is, even if you dont buy that argument, you can still make the
raw-materials argument, which is the one that I went to because its the easier argument to make, involving things like the South China Sea
and oil in the Persian Gulf. And my third and final point would be, even if you take the economic arguments off the table-lets say that they just dont hold
any water-the security arguments remain alive and well. We knocked the Soviet Union down the toilet bowl during the Cold War. It produced
no economic benefits for us, but what it did was it eliminated our principal competitor, which, from a realists perspective, is a
wonderful thing. And I think most people in the audience think it was a wonderful thing. It had no economic benefits, but it had significant
strategic benefits, because we wanted no peer competitors in the world because thats the way we like it.

This misunderstand the nature of rationality the decision to go to war is rational, but not based on
perfect information
Mearsheimer, Distinguished Professor of Political Science, 1999.
(John Mearsheimer, Is Major War Obsolete? 1999, http://www.ciaonet.org/conf/cfr10/index.html)
The whole subject of rationality is a fascinating subject. I want to emphasize here that when I say states behave rationally, that doesnt mean
that they cant then go out and make moves that produce catastrophes. The fact of the matter is that states behaving rationally
oftentimes miscalculate and end up shooting themselves in the foot. One very important aspect of international politics is the
fact that when states make decisions, not only are they making those decisions based on imperfect information , but in many cases
they are dealing with other states that are going to considerable lengths to fool them, to confuse them, to provide them with information that is incorrect
misinformation. Because youre working with imperfect information and because youre oftentimes being confused by the

adversary, you often times goof in a big way. I would make the argument just to highlight that when Hitler decided to invade the Soviet Union in June 1941,
although it fortunately ended up with him shooting himself in a bunker in Berlin in April 1945, when he went into the Soviet Union, in my opinion, it was the
result of a relatively rational decision-making process. They just miscalculated; they just guessed wrong.

Democracies dont avoid war entirely; theyre just less likely to fight certain types of wars
Jervis, Professor of International Politics, Columbia University, 02
(Adlai E. Stevenson , Theories of War in an Era of Leading Power Peace, American Political Science Review 96:1
14)

The explanations for the democratic peace are thoughtful and often ingenious, but not conclusive. Many of
them lead us to expect not only dyadic effects, but monadic ones as welli.e., democracies should be generally peaceful,
not just peaceful toward each other, a finding that most scholars deny (but not all: Rummel 1995). They also imply that one democracy
would not seek to overthrow another, a proposition that is contradicted by American behavior
during the Cold War.9 Furthermore, most of the arguments are built around dyads but it is not entirely clear that the posited causes would apply to
multilateral groupings like the Community. The more recent arguments implicitly dispute rather than fully engage older ones that focus on the obstacles to

the incentives that leaders have to seek short-run

success at the cost of investing for the long run, the recruitment of inexperienced leaders, the
parochialism that makes democracies prone to misunderstand others (Almond 1950; Lippmann 1955). Because
extensive citizen participation can easily lead to emotional identification with the country, high
levels of nationalism can be expected in democracies. Because public opinion has greater influence and pays only sporadic
effective foreign policies in democracies: the fickleness of public opinion,

attention to foreign policy, consistency and commitments should be harder rather than easier for them. These once-familiar views may be incorrect, but they
deserve careful attention.

Nuclear weapons cant build a security community

Jervis, Professor of International Politics, Columbia University, 02
(Adlai E. Stevenson , Theories of War in an Era of Leading Power Peace, American Political Science Review 96:1
14)
While there is a great deal to this argument, it is not without its problems. First, because this kind of deterrence rests on the perceived
possibility of war, it may explain peace, but not a security community. Second, mutual deterrence can be used as a platform
for hostility, coercion, and even limited wars. In what Glenn Snyder (1965; also see Jervis 1989, 1923, 74106) calls the stabilityinstability
paradox, the common realization that all-out war would be irrational provides a license for threats and lower levels of
violence. In some circumstances a state could use the shared fear of nuclear war to exploit others. If the state thinks that the

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other is preoccupied with the possibility of war and does not anticipate that the state will make the concessions needed to reduce this danger, it
will expect the other to retreat and so can stand firm. In other words, the fact that war would be the worst possible
outcome for both sides does not automatically lead to uncoerced peace, let alone to a security community

Organizations lack full deterrence capabilitiesLack of civilian control means states are more likely
to strike preemptively or abandon nuclear discipline
Clark, director of the national security studies program at California State University, 1997
(Mark T., Deterrence in the Second Nuclear Age-book reviews: Neorealism versus Organizational Theory,
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0365/is_n1_v41/ai_19238111)
Sagan's critique is a healthy antidote to Waltz's optimism. In his view, there are two principal arguments that suggest
pessimism about any future with a greater number of nuclear-armed adversaries. From his study of militaries, Sagan
finds that their organizational behavior inclines them towards deterrence failure. It is not that militaries want war but
that, of all groups in a society, they are the most likely to believe war is probable and are most inclined to adopt
preventive or preemptive strategies. Military officers are more skeptical of nonmilitary solutions to conflicts than are
their civilian counterparts, according to Sagan. It also makes sense, in classical military terms, to adopt preventive or
preemptive strategies, since no military prefers to fight on its adversary's terms. Taking the offensive alleviates some of
these problems.
Secondly, Sagan argues that newly armed nuclear states will lack the positive mechanisms of civilian control. Here,
Sagan's critique is very strong. By examining the history of the U.S. nuclear safety record he is able to document many
near accidents and bureaucratic snafus that could have led to catastrophic accidents, and in this way he points out the
weakness in Waltz's arguments. Sagan comments:Waltz asked why should we expect new nuclear states to
experience greater difficulties than did the old ones? The evidence of the number of near-accidents with U.S. nuclear
weapons during the Cold War suggests that there would be reason enough to worry about nuclear accidents in new
nuclear states even if their safety difficulties were "only" as great as those experienced by old nuclear powers (p.
80).He adds six reasons why new nuclear powers are unlikely to compile the safety record of the United States. But if
the problem is acute for newly emergent nuclear powers that develop their programs indigenously, it will be doubly so
for those that inherit or buy their programs. They will lack even the discipline that a new nuclear nation will accrue by
investing enormous amounts of time, talent, and treasure into developing its nuclear program.

Deterrence theories rely on false assumptions of state rationalityOrganizations are constrained by

conflicting interests and calculation uncertainties
Clark, director of the national security studies program at California State University, 1997
(Mark T., Deterrence in the Second Nuclear Age-book reviews: Neorealism versus Organizational Theory,
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0365/is_n1_v41/ai_19238111)
Perhaps even more important is Sagan's critique of Waltz's assumptions about rational deterrence logic. By using organizational
theory, Sagan demonstrates problems with all three of the assumptions necessary for rational deterrence theory to
work: There must not be a preventive war during the transition period when both states do not have nuclear weapons.
Both states must develop an assured destruction potential (however defined) and a secure retaliatory capability. Nuclear
arsenals must not be prone to accidental or unauthorized use (p. 51). In each case, the neorealist assumption is
shown to be in error.Pure rationality is not possible, argues Sagan, for at least a couple of reasons: "First, large
organizations function within a severely 'bounded,' or limited, form of rationality: they have inherent limits on calculation and
coordination and use simplifying mechanisms to understand and respond to uncertainty in the outside world." Because of
that, organizations develop rules and procedures to assist in making decisions. Rather than search for the most "rational"
decision, then, organizations more often take the first option that is minimally satisfying. "Second, complex organizations
commonly have multiple, conflicting goals, and the process by which objectives are chosen and pursued is intensely political"
(pp. 52-53). As a result, rather than being completely subordinated to higher authorities, many organizations compete for
preeminence in the policy process, often defying authority for long periods of time.

Deterrence theories of rationality failNuclear states dont operate on a generalized model of costbenefit analysis
Clark, director of the national security studies program at California State University, 1997
(Mark T., Deterrence in the Second Nuclear Age-book reviews: Neorealism versus Organizational Theory,
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0365/is_n1_v41/ai_19238111)

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There is a larger problem with the model of the rational decision maker that Sagan does not address. The rational model is
borrowed from macroeconomics. In it, a fictional "rational man" is depicted as evaluating the costs and benefits of each choice,
then choosing the best possible option. But the economic model does not posit that bad economic decisions are never made.
Rather, the model says that macroeconomic behavior - the aggregate of choices - looks as if it were based on rational,
cost-benefit evaluations. In sum, the model is useful for understanding the behavior of the market as a whole. But it is neither
accurate nor useful to compare the aggregated behavior of millions of consumers with the behavior of tens of
countries. There is no analogy: not enough of a pattern can emerge from so few participants. Moreover, even if a
marketlike pattern did emerge, a few bad decisions would still be made, as they are made in the market. The difference is
that in the context of nuclear proliferation even a few bad choices can have devastating consequences.
In the end, then, Waltz shows why proliferation is likely to occur, and Sagan shows some of the problems that proliferation will
engender. Of the two arguments, no doubt, Sagan's will be more attractive to policymakers. Too much faith in the rationality of
states is required for Waltz's predictions.

Military organizations cause deterrence failure

Sagan, Associate Professor of Political Science and Chair of the International Relations Program at
Stanford University, 1995
(Scott D., The Spread of Nuclear Weapons: A Debate, p.49)
There are two central arguments. First, I argue that professional military organizations-because of common biases,
inflexible routines, and parochial interests-display organizational behaviors that are likely to lead to deterrence failures
and deliberate or accidental war. Unlike the widespread psychological critique of rational deterrence theory-which
maintains that some political leaders may lack the intelligence or emotional stability to make deterrence work6-this
organizational critique argues that military organizations, unless professionally managed through a checks-andbalances system of strong civilian control, are unlikely to fulfill the operational requirements for stable nuclear
deterrence.

Ineffective civilian control undermines deterrencemilitary organizations ignore security interests

Sagan, Associate Professor of Political Science and Chair of the International Relations
Program at Stanford University, 1995
(Scott D., The Spread of Nuclear Weapons: A Debate, p.49)
Second, I argue that there are strong reasons to believe that future nuclear-armed states will lack the positive
mechanisms of civilian control. Many current and emerging proliferators have either military-run governments or weak
civilian-led governments in which the professional military has a strong and direct influence on policymaking. In such
states, the biases, routines, and parochial interests of powerful military organizations, not the "objective" interests of
the state, can determine state behavior. In addition, military organizations in many proliferators are "inward-looking,"
focusing primarily on issues of domestic stability and internal politics, rather than on external threats to national
security. When such militaries are in power, senior officers' energies and interests necessarily shift away from
professional concerns for the protection of national security; when civilians are in power, but are extremely fearful of
military coups, defense policy is designed to protect their regime, not the nation's security, and officers are promoted
according to their personal loyalty to current leaders, not their professional competence. In either case, such extensive
military involvement in domestic politics, whether active or latent, means that the military's professional competence as
a fighting force, and also as a manager of a deterrent force, will suffer. Finally, some new nuclear states have been
"born nuclear": Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan inherited nuclear weapons from the Soviet Union without inheriting
its stable civil-military relations, historical learning experience, or extensive command and control mechanisms.

Economics cannot explain the absence of war

Jervis, Adlai E. Stevenson Professor of International Politics, Columbia University, 2002
(Robert, Theories of War in an Era of Leading Power Peace. American Political Science Review 96:1
14.)
There are four general arguments against the pacific influence of interdependence. First, it is hard to go from the
magnitude of economic flows to the costs that would be incurred if they were disrupted, and even more difficult to
estimate how much political impact these costs will have, which depends on the other considerations at play and the
political context. This means that we do not have a theory that tells us the magnitude of the effect. Second, even the
sign of the effect can be disputed: interdependence can increase conflict as states gain bar- gaining leverage over

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each other, fear that others will exploit them, and face additional sources of disputes (Barbieri 1996; Keohane 2000,
2001; Waltz 1970, 1979, Chap. 7). These effects might not arise if states expect to remain at peace with each other,
however. Third, it is clear that interdependence does not guarantee peace. High levels of economic integration did not
prevent World War I, and nations that were much more unified than any security community have peacefully dissolved
or fought civil wars. But this does not mean that inter- dependence is not conducive to peace. Fourth, interdependence
may be more an effect than a cause, more the product than a generator of expectations of peace and cooperation.
Russett and Oneal (2001, 136) try to meet this objection by correlating the level of trade in one year, not with peace in
that year, but with peace in the following one. But this does not get to the heart of the matter since trade the year before could be a product of expectations of future good relations.

Institutions have positive effects, but theyre not strong enough to restrain war
Jervis, Adlai E. Stevenson Professor of International Politics, Columbia University, 2002
(Robert, Theories of War in an Era of Leading Power Peace. American Political Science Review 96:1
14.)
International Organizations. Even those who argue for the pacifying effect of common memberships in international
organizations aver that the magnitude of this effect is relatively slight, at least in the short run (Russett and Oneal
2001, Chap. 5), and so my discussion is brief. The causal mechanisms are believed to be several: enhanced
information flows, greater ability to solve problems peacefully, an increased stake in cooperative behavior linked to the
risk of being ex- cluded from the organization if the state behaves badly, and possibly a heightened sense of common
identity (Keohane 1984; much of the literature is summarized by Martin and Simmons 1998). Harder to pin down but
perhaps most important are processes by which joint membership alters states' conceptions of their interest, leading
them to see it not only as calling for cooperative reciprocations, but also as extending over a longer time- horizon and
including benefits to others (Jervis 1999, 2001; March and Olsen 1998). The obvious reasons to doubt the importance
of shared institutional membership are that the incentives do not seem great enough to tame strong conflicts of interest
and that membership may be endogenous to common interests and peaceful relations. States that expect war with
each other are less likely to join the same international organizations and political conflicts that are the precursors to
war may destroy the institutions or drive some members out, as Japan and Germany withdrew from the League of
Nations during the 1930s. Even with a strong correlation and reasonable con- trol variables, the direction of causality is
difficult to establish.

The possibility of nuclear extinction outweighs all other impacts-even if the risk of extinction is small,
its magnitude requires evaluation before all else
Schell, professor at Wesleyan University , 1982
(Jonathan, , former writer and editor at the New Yorker, The Fate of the Earth, pg. 93-94)
<To say that human extinction is a certainty would, of course, be a misrepresentationjust as it would be a misrepresentation to
say that extinction can be ruled out. To begin with, we know that a holocaust may not occur at all. If one does occur, the
adversaries may not use all their weapons. If they do use all their weapons, the global effects, in the ozone and elsewhere, may be
moderate. And if the effects are not moderate but extreme, the ecosphere may prove resilient enough to withstand them without
breaking down catastrophically. These are all substantial reasons for supposing that mankind will not be extinguished in a nuclear
holocaust, or even that extinction in a holocaust is unlikely, and they tend to calm our fear and to reduce our sense of urgency. Yet
at the same time we are compelled to admit that there may be a holocaust, that the adversaries may use all their weapons, that the
global effects, including effects of which we are as yet unaware, may be severe, that the ecosphere may suffer catastrophic
breakdown, and that our species may be extinguished. We are left with uncertainty, and are forced to make our decisions in a state
of uncertainty. If we wish to act to save our species, we have to muster our resolve in spite of our awareness that the life of the
species may not now in fact be jeopardized. On the other hand, if we wish to ignore the peril, we have to admit that we do so in the
knowledge that the species may be in danger of imminent self-destruction. When the existence of nuclear weapons was made
known, thoughtful people everywhere in the world realized that if the great powers entered into a nuclear-arms race the human
species would sooner or later face the possibility of extinction. They also realized that in the absence of international agreements
preventing it an arms race would probably occur. They knew that the path of nuclear armament was a dead end for mankind. The
discovery of the energy in massof "the basic power of the universe"and of a means by which man could release that energy
altered the relationship between man and the source of his life, the earth. In the shadow of this power, the earth became small and
the life of the human species doubtful. In that sense, the question of human extinction has been on the political agenda of the world
ever since the first nuclear weapon was detonated, and there was no need for the world to build up its present tremendous arsenals
before starting to worry about it. At just what point the species crossed, or will have crossed, the boundary between merely having
the technical knowledge to destroy itself and actually having the arsenals at hand, ready to be used at any second, is not precisely
knowable. But it is clear that at present, with some twenty thousand megatons of nuclear explosive power in existence, and with
more being added every day, we have entered into the zone of uncertainty, which is to say the zone of risk of extinction.

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But the mere risk of extinction has a significance that is categorically different from, and immeasurably greater than,
that of any other risk, and as we make our decisions we have to take that significance into account. Up to now, every
risk has been contained within the frame of life; extinction would shatter the frame. It represents not the defeat of some
purpose but an abyss in which all human purposes would be drowned for all time. We have no right to place the
possibility of this limitless, eternal defeat on the same footing as risks that we run in the ordinary conduct of our affairs
in our particular transient moment of human history. To employ a mathematical analogy, we can say that although the risk of
extinction may be fractional, the stake is, humanly speaking, infinite, and a fraction of infinity is still infinity. In other
words, once we learn that a holocaust might lead to extinction we have no right to gamble, because if we lose, the
game will be over, and neither we nor anyone else will ever get another chance. Therefore, although, scientifically
speaking, there is all the difference in the world between the mere possibility that a holocaust will bring about extinction and the
certainty of it, morally they are the same, and we have no choice but to address the issue of nuclear weapons as though
we knew for a certainty that their use would put an end to our species. In weighing the fate of the earth and, with it, our
own fate, we stand before a mystery, and in tampering with the earth we tamper with a mystery. We are in deep ignorance. Our
ignorance should dispose us to wonder, our wonder should make us humble, our humility should inspire us to reverence and
caution, and our reverence and caution should lead us to act without delay to withdraw the threat we now pose to the earth and to
ourselves. In trying to describe possible consequences of a nuclear holocaust, I have mentioned the limitless complexity of its
effects on human society and on the ecospherea complexity that sometimes seems to be as great as that of life itself. But if these
effects should lead to human extinction, then all the complexity will give way to the utmost simplicitythe simplicity of
nothingness. Wethe human raceshall cease to be.>

Climate Change
A) Nuclear war blocks out sunlight, causing earth temperatures to drop at least 20C by turning off
the greenhouse effect
Sagan and Turco, astrophysicist and astronomer at Cornell University, and founding director of
UCLA's Institute of the Environment, 1990
(Carl and Richard, astrophysicist and astronomer at Cornell University, and founding director of UCLA's Institute of the
Environment, A Path Where No Man Thought: Nuclear Winter and the End of the Arms Race, pg 23-4)
<In a nuclear war, powerful nuclear explosions at the ground would propel fine particles high into the stratosphere.
Much of the dust would be carried up by the fireball itself. Some would be sucked up the stem of the mushroom cloud. Even
much more modest explosions on or above cities would produce massive fires, as occurred in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
These fires consume wood, petroleum, plastics, roofing tar, natural gas, and a wide variety of other combustibles. The
resulting smoke is far more dangerous to the climate than is the dust. Two kinds of smoke are generated. Smoldering
combustion is a low-temperature flameless burning in which fine, oily, bluish-white organic particles are produced. Cigarette
smoke is an example. By contrast, in flaming combustionwhen there's an adequate supply of oxygenthe burning organic
material is converted in significant part to elemental carbon, and the sooty smoke is very dark. Soot is one of the blackest
materials nature is able to manufacture. As in an oil refinery fire, or a burning pile of auto tires. or a conflagration in a modern
skyscrapermore generally in any big city firegreat clouds of roiling, ugly, dark, sootv smoke would rise high above the
cities in a nuclear war, and 'spread first in longitude, then in latitude.The high-altitude dust particles reflect additional
sunlight back to space and cool the Earth a little. More important are the dense palls of black smoke high in the
atmosphere; they block the sunlight from reaching the lower atmosphere, where the greenhouse gases mainly reside.
These gases are thereby deprived of their leverage on the global climate. The greenhouse effect is turned down and
the Earth's surface is cooled much more.Because cities and petroleum repositories are so rich in combustible
materials, it doesn't require very many nuclear explosions over them to make so much smoke as to obscure the entire
Northern Hemisphere and more. If the dark, sooty clouds are nearly opaque and cover an extensive area, then the
greenhouse effect can be almost entirely turned off. In the more likely case that some sunlight trickles through, the
temperatures nevertheless may drop 10 or 20C or more, depending on season and geographical locale. In many places, it
may at midday get as dark as it used to be on a moonlit night before the nuclear war began. The resulting
environmental changes may last for months or years.If the greenhouse effect is a blanket in which we wrap ourselves
to keep warm, nuclear winter kicks the blanket off. This darkening and cooling of the Earth following nuclear war
along with other ancillary consequencesis what we mean by nuclear winter. (A more detailed discussion of the global climate
and how nuclear winter works is given in Appendix A.)>

B) Even a 10 Celsius change in average Earth temperature risks extinction

Sagan and Turco, astrophysicist and astronomer at Cornell University, and founding director of
UCLA's Institute of the Environment, 1990
(Carl and Richard, astrophysicist and astronomer at Cornell University, and founding director of UCLA's Institute of the
Environment, A Path Where No Man Thought: Nuclear Winter and the End of the Arms Race, pg 23-4)

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<Life on Earth is exquisitely dependent on the climate (see Appendix A). The average surface temperature of the Earth
averaged, that is, over day and night, over the seasons, over latitude, over land and ocean, over coastline and continental
interior, over mountain range and desertis about 13C, 13 Centigrade degrees above the temperature at which fresh
water freezes. (The corresponding temperature on the Fahrenheit scale is 55F.) It's harder to change the temperature of the
oceans than of the continents, which is why ocean temperatures are much more steadfast over the diurnal and seasonal cycles than
are the temperatures in the middle of large continents. Any global temperature change implies much larger local
temperature changes, if you don't live near the ocean. A prolonged global temperature drop of a few degrees C would
be a disaster for agriculture; by 10C, whole ecosystems would be imperiled; and by 20C, almost all life on Earth
would be at risk.* The margin of safety is thin.>

Nuclear war would create a dust-induced winter that causes extinction

Phillips, PhD, Physics, Cambridge, 2000
(Alan, , Nuclear Winter Revisited, Oct, www.peace.ca/nuclearwinterrevisited.htm)
Altogether, nuclear winter would be an ecological disaster of the same sort of magnitude as the major extinctions of
species that have occurred in the past, the most famous one being 65 million years ago at the cretaceous extinction.
Of all the species living at the time, about half became extinct. The theory is that a large meteor made a great crater in
the Gulf of California, putting a trillion tons of rock debris into the atmosphere. That is a thousand times as much
rock as is predicted for a nuclear war, but the soot from fires blocks sunlight more effectively than rock debris. In
nuclear winter there would also be radioactive contamination giving worldwide background radiation doses many
times larger than has ever happened during the 3 billion years of evolution. The radiation would notably worsen
things for existing species, though it might, by increasing mutations, allow quicker evolution of new species (perhaps
mainly insects and grasses) that could tolerate the post-war conditions. (I should just mention that there is no way the
radioactivity from a nuclear war could destroy "all life on earth". People must stop saying that. There will be plenty of
evolution after a war, but it may not include us.)

Human extinction likely even if people survive mass inbreeding wipes them out
Bochkov, Member of the Medical Academy of Sciences and Director of the Institute of Genetics at the
USSR Academy of Sciences, 1984
(Academician, , The Cold and the Dark: The World After Nuclear War, p. 141-142)
Academician Bochkov: When we talk about the ecological and biological consequences of a nuclear war, we are of course
focusing on humankind. Thus, in thinking about the possibilities of human survival after a nuclear catastrophe, we should not be
afraid to reach the conclusion that the conditions that would prevail would not allow the survival of human beings as a species. We
should proceed from the assumption that man has adapted to his environment during a long evolutionary process and has paid the
price of natural selection. Only over the past few thousand years has he adapted his environment to his needs and has created, so to
speak, an artificial environment to provide food, shelter, and other necessities. Without this, modem man cannot survive.
Compared to the dramatic improvements made in the technological environment, biological nature has not changed in the recent
past. In the statements of Dr. Ehrlich and Academician Bayev, we have heard about the many constraints there would be on the
possibility of man's survival after a nuclear catastrophe. Because we also have to look at the more long-range future, I would like
to point out that most long-term effects of a nuclear war will be genetic. If islands of humanityor as Dr. Ehrlich has said, groups
of people on islands somewhere in the oceanshould survive, what will they face in terms of genetic consequences? If the
population drops sharply, the question then arises of the critical numbers of a population that would be necessary to ensure its
reproduction. On the one hand there will be minimum numbers of human beings; on the other hand, because of the small numbers,
there will be isolation. There will definitely be inbreeding, and lethal mutations will come to the fore as a result of this, because of
fetal and neonatal exposure to radiation and because of exposure to fallout. New mutations will arise and genes and chromosomes
will be damaged as a result of the radiation, so there will be an additional genetic load to bear. There will be natural aberrations
and death at birth, so that the burden of hereditary illnesses will be only part of a large load. This undoubtedly will be conducive to
the elimination of humanity, because humankind will not be able to reproduce itself as a species.

Nuclear war depletes ozone, causing extinction

Sagan and Turco, astrophysicist and astronomer at Cornell University, and founding director of
UCLA's Institute of the Environment, 1990
(Carl and Richard, astrophysicist and astronomer at Cornell University, and founding director of UCLA's Institute of the
Environment, A Path Where No Man Thought: Nuclear Winter and the End of the Arms Race, pg 57-8)
Not all of these factors are taken into account in the new calculations. The eventual depletion of the ozone layer in the Northern
Hemisphere following a nuclear war could reach 70%: that is, only 30% of the present ozone would be left In the Southern Hemisphere, where less

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than 15% of the human population lives, the ozone content would initially increase by 30% or more, due to the arrival of Northern Hemisphere ozone. Later, some
reduction would occuralthough whether to less than prewar levels is currently unknown. The resulting ultra-violet hazards are very serious,
including a greatly enhanced incidence of skin cancer, especially in light-skinned people; cataracts; and a further assault on the human immune system. These
effects, of course, would be restricted to those who venture out-of-doorsbut in the aftermath of a nuclear war, a large number of survivors would have to be outof- doors. By far the most serious consequence of such severe depletion of the ozone layer, however, applies to people indoors and outdoors, because everyone has
to eat: Ozone depletion threatens the food chains on which almost all life on Earth depends. In the oceans, there are tiny

microscopic plants, called phytoplankton, which are highly vulnerable to increases in ultraviolet light; and which, directly or
indirectly, other animals in the marine food chainincluding humanseat. Land plants, including crops, are also vulnerable to
increased ultraviolet light, as are most microbes, including those essential for the food chain. (Ultraviolet lamps were once used in hospital
operating rooms to kill potential disease microorganisms.) We are far too ignorant of the global ecological interactions to understand fully what propagating
biological consequences an assault on the ozone layer would entail (refs. 4. 10, 6.3). But it doesnt take a great depth of understanding to recognize that if you rip
up the base of the food chain, you may generate a disaster among the beings that totter precariously near the pinnacle. Recovery of the ozone shield
would probably take several years. By then enormous damage would have been wrought.

Nuclear war causes massive ozone depletion

Sagan and Turco, astrophysicist and astronomer at Cornell University, and founding director of
UCLA's Institute of the Environment, 1990
(Carl and Richard, astrophysicist and astronomer at Cornell University, and founding director of UCLA's Institute of the
Environment, A Path Where No Man Thought: Nuclear Winter and the End of the Arms Race, pg 57-8)
But in a nuclear war, the atmosphere would be so perturbed that our normal way of thinking about the ozone layer needs to be
modified. To help refocus our understanding, several research groups have constructed models that describe the ozone layer
following nuclear war. The principal work has been carried out by research teams at the National Center for Atmospheric Research
and at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (ref. 4.9). Both find that there is an additional mechanism by which nuclear war
threatens the ozone layer. With massive quantities of smoke injected into the lower atmosphere by the fires of nuclear war, nuclear
winter would grip not only the Earth's surface, but the high ozone layer as well. The severely disturbed wind currents caused by
solar heating of smoke would, in a matter of weeks, sweep most of the ozone layer from the northern midlatitudes deep into the
Southern Hemisphere. The reduction in the ozone layer content in the North could reach a devastating 50% or more during this
phase. As time progressed, the ozone depletion would be made still worse by several effects: injection of large quantities of
nitrogen oxides and chlorine-bearing molecules along with the smoke clouds; heating of the ozone layer caused by intermingling
of hot smoky air (as air is heated, the amount of ozone declines); and decomposition of ozone directly on smoke particles (carbon
particles are sometimes used down here near the ground to cleanse air of ozone).

Ozone depletion causes extinction

Greenpeace in 95
(Full of Homes: The Montreal Protocol and the Continuing Destruction of the Ozone Layer,
http://archive.greenpeace.org/ozone/holes/holebg.html)
When chemists Sherwood Rowland and Mario Molina first postulated a link between chlorofluorocarbons and ozone layer
depletion in 1974, the news was greeted with scepticism, but taken seriously nonetheless. The vast majority of credible scientists
have since confirmed this hypothesis.
The ozone layer around the Earth shields us all from harmful ultraviolet radiation from the sun. Without the ozone layer, life on
earth would not exist. Exposure to increased levels of ultraviolet radiation can cause cataracts, skin cancer, and immune system
suppression in humans as well as innumerable effects on other living systems. This is why Rowland's and Molina's theory was
taken so seriously, so quickly - the stakes are literally the continuation of life on earth.

Nuclear war destroys ocean ecosystems

Harte, Professor of Energy and Resources at UC Berkeley, 1984
(John,, The Cold and the Dark: The World After Nuclear War, p. 112-113)
The effect of a period of prolonged darkness on aquatic organisms has been estimated by experimentation in my
laboratory and by mathematical modeling carried out by Drs. Chris McKay and Dave Milne. Both types of research
produced similar results. Food chains composed of phytoplankton, zooplankton, and fish are likely to suffer greatly from light
extinction. After just a few days of darkness, phytoplanktonthe base of the food chainwould die off or go into a dormant
stage. Within roughly two months in the temperate zone in late spring or summer, and within three to six months in that
zone in winter, aquatic animals would show drastic population declines that for many species could be irreversible. These
estimates (based on light reduction) probably underestimate the consequences for marine life of postnuclear-war conditions
because they take no account of thermal effects, and they do not include the effect of increased water turbidity arising from
shoreline erosion and from soot and dust deposition. The sensitivity of marine life in the tropics to prolonged darkness is likely to

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be greater than that of marine life in the temperate zone because nutrient reserves are lower and metabolic requirements are greater
in the tropics. In the polar regions, where adaptation to dark winters is a requirement for life, the sensitivity would be
lessened. Freshwater lakes would become highly anoxic after the dust settles and the temperatures increase. Massive
amounts of organic wastes, including thawing corpses, would render water supplies lethal. There is little reason to
believe that the major forms of aquatic life that presently serve as food sources for us would survive a nuclear war
occurring in spring or summer in sufficient numbers to be of much use to human beings, at least in the first few postwar
years.

All life on earth is dependent upon the oceans-if it dies we die

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, 1998
(Year of the Ocean Report, http://www.yoto98.noaa.gov/yoto/meeting/mar_env_316.html)
<The ocean plays a critical role in sustaining the life of this planet. Every activity, whether natural or anthropogenic, has far
reaching impacts on the world at large. For example, excessive emissions of greenhouse gases may contribute to an increase the
sea level, and cause potential flooding or an increase in storm frequency; this flooding can reduce wetland acreage and increase
sediment and nutrient flows into the Gulf of Mexico, causing adverse impacts on water quality and reducing habitat for
commercial fisheries. This in turn drives up the cost of fish at local markets nationwide. The environment and the economic health
of marine and coastal waters are linked at the individual, community, state, regional, national and international levels. The
interdependence of the economy and the environment are widely recognized. The United States has moved beyond viewing health,
safety, and pollution control as additional costs of doing business to an understanding of broader stewardship, recognizing that
economic and social prosperity would be useless if the coastal and marine environments are compromised or destroyed in the
process of development (Presidents Council on Sustainable Development, 1996).Much about the ocean, its processes, and the
interrelationship between land and sea is unknown. Many harvested marine resources depend upon a healthy marine environment
to exist. Continued research is needed so that sound management decisions can be made when conflicts among users of ocean
resources arise. Although much progress has been made over the past 30 years to enhance marine environmental quality and ocean
resources, much work remains. The challenge is to maintain and continue to improve marine water quality as more people move to
the coasts and the pressures of urbanization increase. Through education, partnerships, technological advances, research, and
personal responsibility, marine environmental quality should continue to improve, sustaining resources for generations to come.
"It does not matter where on Earth you live, everyone is utterly dependent on the existence of that
lovely, living saltwater soup. Theres plenty of water in the universe without life, but nowhere is there
life without water. The living ocean drives planetary chemistry, governs climate and weather, and
otherwise provides the cornerstone of the life-support system for all creatures on our planet, from
deep-sea starfish to desert sagebrush. Thats why the ocean matters. If the sea is sick, well feel it. If it
dies, we die. Our future and the state of the oceans are one."

Nuclear war causes massive forest loss, soil erosion and climate change
Woodwell, of Ecosystems Center of the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole,1983
(G.M. Director, in The Aftermath: The Human and Ecological Consequences of Nuclear War, ed. Peterson, p. 135138)
The radiation exposures required to transform a forested zone into an impoverished landscape are well within the range of
contemporary war, a few hundred to many thousands of roetgens. The areas affected might be large, tens to hundreds of square
miles per bomb. Enough bombs are available that minor military and civilian centers, universities, colleges, small industrial or
scientific centers, even individual laboratories, can all be individually favored with nuclear attention, providing overlapping zones
affected by blast, heat and ionizing radiation from the fireballs. The fallout fields will also overlap, and cover hundreds of
thousands of square miles.The biotic effects of such transitions are beyond human experience. The uncertainties of weather would
cause anomalies in the distribution of fallout, sparing some areas, depositing heavier doses elsewhere. The result would probably
be a mottled necrosis of the landscape, with whole valleys escaping virtually untouched by fallout, others scorched by radiation
and subsequently by fires feeding on the devastation. The process started by irradiation from fallout would proceed variously in
different places. Certain areas of the tropics serve as a model for impoverishment: once the tree canopy has been destroyed, the
soils made vulnerable to erosion, and the stock of nutrients lost, the potential for recovery to forest is lost indefinitely. In other
areas recovery is rapid, soils are not lost, fires do not compound the damage and the site becomes revegetated with forest in a
decade or so. Between these extremes lie a full range of intermediate possibilities, all of which involve varying degrees of biotic
impoverishment. (However, an increased frequency of the small-bodied, rapidly-reproducing organisms that we so often find in
competition with man and label "pests" can be expected. a corollary of the disturbance is the stimulation of indigenous pests that
thrive on weakened plants. For instance Ips, a bark-beetle destroyed weakened pines in the Brookhaven Irradiated Forest, and
extraordinarily high populations of aphids and other insects occurred on radiation weakened trees). The impoverishment includes
the loss of both forest products for man and the loss of the array of services the biota normally performs in maintaining an

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environment suitable for man.I have emphasized effects on forests because forests dominate the natural vegetation in most of the
habitable sections of the globe. Forests, moreover, have an extraordinarily large influence on the rest of the biosphere. They have
the capacity for fixing and releasing enough carbon to change the CO2 content of the atmosphere by several parts per million in a
few weeks. The massive destruction of forests following an exchange of nuclear weapons can be expected to contribute a further
surge in the rate of release of CO2 from the biota and soils into the atmosphere, compounding the growing problem of a CO2caused climatic warming. Such analyses, however, are sufficiently complex and uncertain to be speculative, and require a much
more elaborate analysis than can be offered here.

A nuclear winter would result in temperatures lower than those during the Ice Age
Sagan and Turco, astrophysicist and astronomer at Cornell University, and founding director of
UCLA's Institute of the Environment, 1990
(Carl and Richard, astrophysicist and astronomer at Cornell University, and founding director of UCLA's Institute of the
Environment, A Path Where No Man Thought: Nuclear Winter and the End of the Arms Race, pg 24-6)
<A typical temperature of a point on the land surface of the Earth , averaged over latitude, season, and time of day, is roughly 15C (59F). If
there were no greenhouse effect whatever, the corresponding temperature would be about ~20C ( 4F). The difference
between the planetary environment with the greenhouse effect and without it is the difference between clement conditions and deep freeze . Tampering with the greenhouse effect
especially in ways that reduce itcan be very risky. These two temperatures, with and without the greenhouse effect, are shown near the top in Figure 1. If we were to double the present
concentration of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphereas will happen in a few decades if present trends continuethe surface temperature will likely increase by a few degrees, as the diagram shows. Following a

During an Ice Age, the global temperatures are a few degrees colder yet, approaching
the freezing point of water. And in a nuclear winter, depending on severity, the temperatures can become still colder,
ranging well below freezing. Just how cold it gets depends on many variables, including how the nuclear war is "fought," as we describe later. But even the middle range of these
nuclear winter effects (see Figure f) represents the severest climatic catastrophe ever to have occurred during the tenure of
humans on this planet. Even in the range of temperature overlap, a mild nuclear winter is harsher than a severe Ice Age, because of its
rapid onset (weeks rather than centuries or millennia)although its duration is much briefer.>
major volcanic explosion the temperature can decrease by as much as a few degrees.

War causes disease

David P. Fidler Professor of Law 03
(David P. Fidler Professor of Law, Indiana University School of Law, George Washington International Law Review, 35 Geo.
Wash. Int'l L. Rev. 787, 2003 p. 818-9)

War and pestilence make up two of the four horsemen of the apocalypse; and for good reason
they are old allies. War has long been a prolific creator of opportunities for the spread of infectious
diseases. War disrupts the normal, peacetime relationship between humans and microbes decidedly
in favor of the microbes. This powerful synergy between war and infectious diseases explains why infections
diseases factor prominently in international law on arms control and armed conflict.

War increases disease spread

Price-Smith Assistant Prof of Political Science 01
(Andrew T. Price-Smith (Andrew T, Assistant Professor Department of Political Science University of North Dakota, 2001
Plagues and Politics: infectious disease and international policy, p. 129)
Thus,

warfare (and peacekeeping) can act as a direct disease amplifier, creating those physical
conditions (poverty, famine, destruction of vital infrastructure, and large population movements) that are
particularly conducive to the spread and mutation of disease.
War is dehumanizing to the aggressors, turning the case.
Shahabi, Political activist, 08
(Mehrnaz Shahabi, Political activist, anti-war campaigner, translator, 4/25/08, http://www.campaigniran.org/casmii/index.php?
q=node/4753)
The shameful exposition by the American presidential hopeful, Hillary Clinton, of her mass genocidal
intentions towards Iranians was tragic proof of the dehumanising impact of warmongering on an elite
western mind. It is said that humanity is the first casualty of war and this has been starkly clear, not only in the
murderous boasting of the presidential candidate's preparedness to "totally obliterate" an entire nation, to prove her
appeal as the American president, but worse still, in the meek and acquiescent response or no response at all of the
western mainstream journalists, politicians and intelligentsia.

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War dehumanizes victims and aggressors, turning the case.

Bennett, former director of the International Crisis Group in the Balkans, 97
(Christopher Bennett, former director of the International Crisis Group in the Balkans, author of Yugoslavia's Bloody Collapse, 97,
The Ethnicity Reader: Nationalism, Multiculturalism, and Migration, compilation edited by Montserrat Guibernau and John Rex,
pp. 128-129)

The key to an understanding of the inhumanity of the Yugoslav wars is the phenomenon of war itself. The
state of mind which is capable of committing atrocities is one which has been disturbed by war, not some
mythical Balkan mentality. For war is dehumanizing; it destroys the very fabric of society and leaves

psychologically unstable people in its wake, people who have lost contact with reality and are no
longer in control of their own actions. After almost half a century of peace in the Western world, in
which time many people have grown up without experiencing conflict, the brutality of war, albeit via a
television screen, has come as a nasty shock. But war, and especially a protracted civil war, is brutal.

War increase gender inequality

Goldstein, 4
[Joshua S., Professor of International Relations, American University, War and Gender: How Gender Shapes the War
System and Vice Versa, second paperback edition, Cambridge University Press, page(s) 398-399]
Other authors found, however, in a sample of 33 gathering-hunting societies, that warfare decreases
women's status, although this connection may change in some societies where men are away for extended periods. The authors
consider 13 indicators of women's status in coding their sample of societies. They ignore indicators relating to ritual status, which they find
to vary independently, and concentrate on indicators of domestic and political status which more often vary together. (Their status variable
is a single, ordinal three-point scale in which women are ranked as relatively high on neither, one, or both of the dimensions of domestic
and political status.)' A statistical analysis of 90 "small scale, preindustrial societies" connects war

frequency with such gender-related measures as the strength of cross-cutting ties between
communities within a society (e.g. marriage, trading), the presence of male kin "interest groups" (patrilineality), socioeconomic
complexity, harsh child socialization practices, affectionate socialization practices, and "male gender identity conflict" (see p. 240) . The
study finds that, despite the tremendous diversity in both war practices and gender roles, some
differences are usually found between more warlike and more peaceful societies. correlations as
are found more plausibly derive from war's effect on gender relations than the reverse.

North south conflict causes extinction

Krieger President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation 06 (David, ,
http://www.wagingpeace.org/articles/2006/09/15_krieger_northsouth.htm)
North and South are approximations, reflecting both a geographic and economic divide. There is no monolithic North, nor South. There is South
within North and North within South, inasmuch as in the North there exists much poverty and in the South there is a stratum enjoying great wealth in
most societies. In general, though, the North tends toward industrialization, wealth, dominance and exploitation, while the South, which has a long
history of domination by the North in colonial and post-colonial times, tends toward poverty, including extreme and sometimes devastating poverty .

Within both South and North powerful subcultures of militarism and extremist violence have emerged that, when linked
to nuclear weapons, threaten cities, countries, civilization and the future of life. Nuclear weapons have been primarily
developed and brandished by the North, and used to threaten other countries, North and South. The South, which for the most part has lacked the
technology to develop nuclear weapons, has begun to cross this technological threshold and join the North in obtaining these weapons of mass
annihilation. The original nuclear weapons states - the US, Soviet Union, UK, France and China - were largely of the dominant North, although the
Soviet Union had major areas of poverty and China, although geographically in the North was the exception, reflecting the poverty of the South after
having been subjected to humiliating colonial domination and exploitation. Israel, an outpost of the North surrounded by oil-rich but underdeveloped
countries of the South, surreptitiously developed a nuclear arsenal. India and Pakistan, coming from a background of poverty and colonial
domination, developed nuclear arsenals after it became clear that the other nuclear weapons states were intent upon indefinitely maintaining their
nuclear arsenals rather than fulfilling their obligations for nuclear disarmament. Both countries were clearly on the Southern side of the economic
and colonial divide, as was the final nuclear weapons state, North Korea, which is thought to have developed a small arsenal of nuclear weapons .

The world is at a critical nuclear crossroads. In one direction lies an increasing number of nuclear weapons states and
nuclear-armed terrorist organizations, a world of unfathomable danger. In the other direction, lies a nuclear weaponsfree world. It is the responsibility of those of us alive today on our planet to choose in which direction we shall travel.
We do not have the option of standing still, with North and South, rich and poor, dominant and exploited frozen in time
and inequity. Terrorism is inherent in the possession and implicit threat of use of nuclear weapons by any country. Such state terrorism creates
the possibility that extremist non-state actors, who can neither be located nor deterred, will gain possession of these weapons or the materials to
make them and threaten or use nuclear weapons against even the most powerful, nuclear-armed countries. <Card Continues> Unfortunately, the
leaders of the nuclear weapons states don't appear to recognize the imperative to end the nuclear weapons era, and continue to cling to their
nuclear arms as instruments of dominance. Einstein recognized early in the Nuclear Age that these new weapons required a change in thinking. He
famously said, "The splitting of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking, and thus we drift toward

unparalleled catastrophe." That is the nature of our drift, toward catastrophe, but a catastrophe in which the likelihood

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of the dominant powers becoming the victims is as great as their further victimization and dominance of the South .
Nuclear weapons give more power to the relatively weak than they do to the powerful. With nuclear weapons, the weak can destroy the powerful.
The powerful, on the other hand, would certainly destroy their own souls by attacking the weak with nuclear weapons. In the end, nuclear weapons
are equalizers and equal opportunity destroyers. The question that the North needs to consider seriously is whether it wishes a world with many
nuclear powers, including non-state actors, or a world with no nuclear weapons. What exists between these poles, including the current nuclear
status quo, is not sustainable. It must tip in one direction or the other. If it tips toward many nuclear weapons powers, the price will be widespread
annihilation. If it tips in the direction of eliminating nuclear weapons, humanity may save itself from destruction by its most powerful and cowardly
tools of warfare. In the Nuclear Age, the South has attempted to pull itself up by its bootstraps, while the North has wasted huge resources on the
development of its weaponry in general and on its nuclear weaponry in particular. The United States alone has spent over $6 trillion on its nuclear
arsenal and its delivery systems since the beginning of the Nuclear Age. It is worth contemplating how our world might have been different if these
resources had been used instead to eradicate poverty and disease and provide education and hope in the far corners of the world. Would the North
still be resented, as it is now, by the politically aware poor and dispossessed? In analyzing the North-South divide in nuclear weaponry,
one realizes that this divide has benefited neither the North nor the South, and is bound to end in disaster for all. But the
same is true of the North-South divide absent nuclear weapons. A relationship of domination, enforced by any means - military, economic or political
- is not sustainable. This divide is perhaps most dangerous when it could ignite a nuclear conflagration, but it is still
dangerous when the divide breeds terrorism in response to structural violence. It is not only the nuclear divide that must be ended by the
elimination of nuclear weapons, but the greater divide between the North and South that must be closed . The world cannot continue

indefinitely half-slave and half-free, half mired in poverty and half indulged in abundance. Resources are not limitless
and modern communications make each half aware of the status of the other half . The Narrowing Nuclear Divide Nuclear
weapons, the ultimate weapon of cowardice, may be seen as a symbol of what separates rather than what unites the world. Nuclear weapons turn
the North into cowards and bullies and the South into victims that may most effectively find their heroism and personhood in acts of resistance.
Ending the nuclear threat by eliminating nuclear weapons will lead to finding more equitable and decent ways of settling differences between states
of the North and South, ways that will in the end benefit both sides of this divide. In 1955, Bertrand Russell, Albert Einstein and nine other
distinguished scientists issued an appeal, the Russell-Einstein Manifesto. This appeal concluded with these thoughts: "There lies before us, if we
choose, continual progress in happiness, knowledge, and wisdom. Shall we, instead, choose death, because we cannot forget our quarrels? We
appeal as human beings to human beings: Remember your humanity, and forget the rest. If you can do so, the way lies open to a new Paradise; if
you cannot, there lies before you the risk of universal death." More than fifty years later, the warning in the Russell-Einstein Manifesto rings true .

Nuclear weapons confront humankind with the risk of universal death. We are challenged, North and South alike, to
end this risk to humanity and to the human future. To effectively end this risk will require that peoples of North and
South to join hands and form a bond rooted in their common humanity and their common concern with protecting and passing on
the planet and all its natural and man-made treasures in tact to future generations.

Nuclear war devastates agriculture growth ozone damage

ACDA, independent agency in the US government, 1996
[US Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, Worldwide effects of nuclear war, October 1996, Project Gutenberg,
http://www.scribd.com/doc/13364069/Worldwide-Effects-of-Nuclear-War]
More worrisome is the possible effect of nuclear explosions on ozone in the stratosphere. Not until the 20th century was the
unique and paradoxical role of ozone fully recognized. On the other hand, in concentrations greater than I part per million
in the air we breathe, ozone is toxic; one major American city, Los Angeles, has established a procedure for ozone alerts
and warnings. On the other hand, ozone is a critically important feature of the stratosphere from the standpoint of
maintaining life on the earth. The reason is that while oxygen and nitrogen in the upper reaches of the atmosphere can block
out solar ultraviolet photons with wavelengths shorter than 2,420 angstroms (A), ozone is the only effective shield in the
atmosphere against solar ultraviolet radiation between 2,500 and 3,000 A in wavelength. (See note 5.) Although ozone is
extremely efficient at filtering out solar ultraviolet in 2,500-3,000 A region of the spectrum, some does get through at the
higher end of the spectrum. Ultraviolet rays in the range of 2,800 to 3,200 A which cause sunburn, prematurely age human
skin and produce skin cancers. As early as 1840, arctic snow blindness was attributed to solar ultraviolet; and we have since
found that intense ultraviolet radiation can inhibit photosynthesis in plants, stunt plant growth, damage bacteria, fungi,
higher plants, insects and annuals, and produce genetic alterationslear war destroys agriculture and food production
Cochrane and Mileti, professors at Colorado State University, 1986
[Hal Cochrane and Dennis Mileti, The Medical Implications of Nuclear War, editors: Fred Solomon and Robert Q.
Marston, pg. 400, http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=940&page=400]
Agriculture: A point which seems self-evident but has not been the subject of systematic research is the effect of the
postattack weather on the economy. Without question, the combination of colder temperatures, envisioned by Sagan
(Ehrlich et all., 1985), and radiation would reduce agricultural yields. One might also expect that increased variance in
rainfall accompanying the new environmental conditions would induce surviving farers to abandon specialized crops.
Diversification might be the only option available for coping with fluctuating temperature and moisture. It is clear that
abandoning specialization would depress production. Lastly, the effects of nuclear winter on soil losses have yet to be
addressed. It is not implausible to expect significant amounts of wind erosion for several years after the war. The magnitude
of such losses and their subsequent impact on agriculture have not yet been established.

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Nuclear war makes democracies vulnerable perception of threats

Krebs, professor of political science at the U of Minnesota, 2009
[Ronald R. Krebs, In the Shadow of War: The Effects of Conflict on Liberal Democracy, Cambridge University Press,
journals.cambridge.org]
The relationship between democracy and war has been much studied in international relations. Yet, while the democratic
peace continues to be rened and revised, the reversethe effects of war on democracyhas received less systematic
attention. Students of international political economy have devoted substantial attention to the second-image reversed,
but they have had fewer counterparts in international security. The most plausible explanation for this relative neglect is that
international relations emerged in the shadow of mass industrialized war fare and the prospect of nuclear war, and the
elds overriding concern was how to prevent a catastrophe in which millions would perish. This understandable focus on
the causes of war came at the expense of research into its consequences. Moreover, assumptions about both the nature of
war (an event) and the purpose of social science (to explain regularities) combined to make the study of war s
consequences seem fruitless. But war, this article has suggested, is a process, embedded in and potentially transforming
social life. War is more than war fare: it entails the emergence and perception of threat as well as the mobilization of
societal resources, and these are distinct political phenomena with distinct ramications for democratic politics.
International conict, especially when unpacked in this fashion, is a recurring feature of global politics, not an outlier.
Large-scale war fare may be obsolete among developed nations, but conict, mobilization, and the use of force are not.
Understanding wars consequences for democratic politics is important for its own sake, but it will also lead to betterspecied models of war initiation and termination. Further research may, by clarifying the costs of crisis and war time
measures, help civilize an often-strident public debate. Hand observed that the spirit of liberty may determine the survival
of democracy. But, during rough times, the fate of regimes may rest precisely on the margins. It is there that the difference
may lie between a democracy that limps along, compromised yet intact, and one that abandons its heritage

Nuclear war erodes democracy deterrence

Falk, professor of international relations at Princeton, 1982
[Richard Falk, writer, speaker, activist on world affairs, and an appointee to two United Nations positions, Nuclear
Weapons and the End of Democracy, Central and Eastern Europe Online Library, ceeol.com]
In this essay, my concern is with the structural relevance of nuclear weaponry and strategy to the future of democracy. The
central contention is that the existence of nuclear weapons, even without any occurrence of nuclear war, interferes with
democratic governance in fundamental ways. In other words, we dont have to wait for Armageddon to begin paying the
price, as measured by the quality of democracy, for a system of international security constructed around the central
imagery of nuclear deterrence. To presume this relevance of nuclear armaments and doctrines to democracy is itself
somewhat unusual. For instance, one searches in vain the pages of the Trilateral Commissions notorious study, The Crisis
of Democracy, for any reference to the erosion of democratic governance as a consequence of the nuclear revolution; the
Trilateralists idea of crisis is based on the alleged erosion of authority and stability through the undisciplined tactics of
social movements demanding reform that surfaced in the late 1960s, a phenomenon described elsewhere in positive terms
as the beginnings of a participatory model of democratic revitalization.3 In the background, of course, is a concern about
the preconditions for capitalist efficiency under contemporary conditions, including a fear that the work ethic, achievement
syndrome, and greed impulse are being drained away by cultural developments, including a substantially alienated
intelligentsia in so-called mature capitalist countries. 4

Nuclear war derails the economy banking and social services

Katz and Osdoby, author of Life After Nuclear War and graduate student at Johns Hopkins, respectively, 1982
[Arthur M. Katz and Sima R. Osdoby, The Social and Economic Effects Of Nuclear War, Cato Institute,
http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa009.html]
Casualties, evacuation, and land denial would create severe national and local economic dislocations. Approximately onethird of the U.S.'s manufacturing capacity lies within the geographic areas most affected by fallout.[5] A major evacuation
would leave the regional economy in a shambles. Because of economic interdependence, the problem of "bottlenecking" -serious disruption of the national economy -- would be likely. Bottlenecking is the disruptive effect that losses in a key
industry (e.g., steel) have on other dependent economic activities (automobiles and machine tool production). Even modest
reductions in capacity of basic, pivotal industries can have severe, widespread effects on the economy. Despite the
possibility of product substitution (e.g., plastics for steel) or high inventories of selected products, the short- and mid-term
ramifications of a disruption of even 25 to 50% of the affected region's manufacturing activities (equivalent to 8 to 15% of
national economic activities) would be a serious blow to the national economy. This disruption could easily last several
months, and in a post-attack stalemate with the possibility of future attack requiring prolonged urban evacuation, it would

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become worse. There are other likely consequences that are less obvious. The banking system would face a particularly
severe burden, for example -- potential bankruptcies; defaults on basic time payments, such as mortgages and major
appliances; and major shifts of monies by individuals during evacuation. In contaminated areas individuals or businesses
would be unable to gain access to money, especially in local banks, for long periods. In general, it would be virtually
impossible for banks, either regionally or nationally, to pursue "normal" lending and borrowing policies. Payments such as
rents and salaries to businesses or individuals would also have to be deferred. Business insurance would certainly not cover
this type of catastrophe. On a scale unknown in U.S. experience, there would probably be a massive outcry for the federal
government to provide regional disaster loans to prevent bankruptcy and help resettle workers and their families from
severely contaminated areas. The injured and evacuated population would create enormous social service demands
(medical care, welfare, emergency housing, etc.) requiring huge sums of money to be spent rapidly. Unprecedented
government intervention would probably be demanded to save industries from bankruptcies, allocate goods, and determine
industrial priorities. Since individual, industrial, and even regional economic stability would depend on which industries
and plants were decontaminated and/or received needed financial support first, implementing these governmental policies
would be politically explosive.

Nuclear war wrecks the economy psychological effects

Katz and Osdoby, author of Life After Nuclear War and graduate student at Johns Hopkins respectively, 1982
[Arthur M. Katz and Sima R. Osdoby, The Social and Economic Effects Of Nuclear War, Cato Institute,
http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa009.html]
The experience of nuclear war is likely to have devastating psychological effects, especially for Americans, whose homes
and institutions have essentially escaped the ravages of recent wars. The very short period required to carry out highly
destructive nuclear attacks would intensify the emotional impact, particularly those reactions associated with denial of the
true extent of the damage or fostering flight from and resistance to reentering damaged areas. Robert J. Lifton, in his study
of Hiroshima survivors, described the psychological effect as "a sudden and absolute shift from normal existence to an
overwhelming encounter with death."[20] The reaction, as reported by a witness to the disaster, Father Siemes: "Among the
passersby, there are many who are uninjured. In a purposeless, insensate manner, distraught by the magnitude of the
disaster, most of them rush by and none conceives the thought of organizing help on his own initiative. They are concerned
only with the welfare of their own families."[21] In some cases even families were abandoned. The result of this experience
was, as Fred Ikle described it 25 years ago, a deep aversion to returning to the cities to rebuild the economy. "And thus a
very different situation will exist from that envisaged in most civil defense plans (in the 1950s)."[22] The economic
implications of this type of withdrawal would be serious.

Nuclear war destroys ecosystems exacerbates all environmental issues

Harwell and Harwell, professors at Cornell University, 1986
[Mark A. Harwell and Christine C. Harwell, The Medical Implications of Nuclear War, editors: Fred Solomon and
Robert Q. Marston, pg. 122-123, http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=940&page=122]
These conclusions were based primarily on the understanding of plant responses to light, temperature, and moisture levels;
by contrast, animal responses, especially with respect to propagation of effects of one species to another through speciesspecies interactions, were considered to be more speculative and probably never fully predictable. It is clear that inadequate
data bases and simulation model resources exist for precise characterization of ecosystem responses, particularly to the less
extreme range of physical disturbances. Nevertheless, the various approaches outlined above suggest the cross-system
vulnerability estimates provided in Table 3. Other analyses addressed by prospects for recovery for various ecosystems and
the processes by which recovery could be affected. The consensus was that nuclear war-induced disturbances to the
environment would include virtually every environmental problem of concern todayhabitat destruction, species
extinction, air pollutants, toxic chemicals, acid precipitation, ozone depletiononly on a scale of totally unprecedented
extent and intensity. Precisely what the full ecological ramifications of every such stresses would be and the specific
pathways that subsequent recovery would follow are urgently in need of a concerted research effort in the general field of
stress ecology. Other considerations, however, show clearly that even without any disturbance to ecosystems, these natural
systems could support only a very small fraction, on the order of 1 percent or less, of the current human population on
Earth. The reason for this is that there would simply not be the base of utilizable energy sufficient to maintain 5 billion
people if we did not have agricultural and other human-controlled systems to rely on. Thus, the carrying capacity of natural
ecosystems is greatly exceeded by the current human population, and disruptions in human support systems that would
force humans to rely substantially on natural systems for sustenance would necessarily lead to reductions in the human
population. This fact provides the overriding incentive to examine the vulnerability of agricultural and food distribution
systems to disruptions following a nuclear war.

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Nuclear war destroys ecosystems UV radiation

ACDA, independent agency in the US government, 1996
[US Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, Worldwide effects of nuclear war, October 1996, Project Gutenberg,
http://www.scribd.com/doc/13364069/Worldwide-Effects-of-Nuclear-War]
It is possible, however, that a major increase in solar ultraviolet might overwhelm the defense of some and perhaps many
terrestrial life forms. Both direct and indirect damage would then occur among the bacteria, insects, plants, and other links
in the ecosystems on which human well-being depends. This disruption, particularly if it occurred in the aftermath of a
major war involving many other dislocations, could pose a serious additional threat to the recovery of postwar society. The
National Academy of Sciences report concludes that in 20 years the ecological systems would have essentially recovered
from the increase in ultraviolet radiationthough not necessarily from radioactivity or other damage in areas close to the
war zone. However, a delayed effect of the increase in ultraviolet radiation would be an estimated 3 to 30 percent increase
in skin cancer for 40 years in the Northern Hemispheres mid-latitudes.

Nuclear war kills marine ecosystems

Harwell and Harwell, professors at Cornell University, 1986
[Mark A. Harwell and Christine C. Harwell, The Medical Implications of Nuclear War, editors: Fred Solomon and
Robert Q. Marston, pg. 122, http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=940&page=122]
The vulnerabilities of ecological systems were found to differ among ecosystems, types of disturbances, and time of year.
For example, temperate forests were found to be most sensitive to acute, extreme temperature changes that occur during the
spring or summer, whereas marine ecosystems were quite tolerant to changes in air temperatures. However, marine
ecosystems were found to be very vulnerable to disruptions in the levels of incident sunlight, with acute reductions in
insulation resulting in the collapse of phytoplankton and, perhaps, zooplankton populations on a large scale. Grassland
ecosystems and the wheat-growing areas of Australia were assessed to be most vulnerable to chronic disturbances in
precipitation, which is during the summer in the case of African grasslands and during the winter in the case of Australian
wheat-growing areas.

Nuclear war devastates the pharmaceutical industry

Cochrane and Mileti, professors at Colorado State University, 1986
[Hal Cochrane and Dennis Mileti, The Medical Implications of Nuclear War, editors: Fred Solomon and Robert Q.
Marston, pg. 394, http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=940&page=394]
How quickly might the pharmaceutical industry be rebuilt and sufficient production of pharmaceuticals and biologicals be
resumed? There is, of course, no definitive answer to such a question; however, some indicators are worth noting. Most
industry analysts would agree that a nuclear attack on the Northeast would devastate pharmaceutical research and
development. The high concentration of skilled lab technicians and scientists in the region would be difficult to replace,
given that many of the nations prestigious institutions of higher learning would perish in the same attack. Such losses
would have an incalculable impact on the nations ability to advance pharmacological research, one which may take
decades to recover. The impact such a loss would have on a global scale may, however, be less significant since the Swiss
and Japanese have made great strides to advance their own capacity to carry on independent research.

Nuclear war destroys the ozone layer

Martin, professor of social sciences at the University of Wollongong, 1982
[Brian Martin, Critique of nuclear extinction, Journal of Peace Research, 1982,
http://www.uow.edu.au/arts/sts/bmartin/pubs/82jpr.html]
(b) Ozone. Nuclear war would cause an increase in ultraviolet light from the sun which reaches the earth's surface, due to
reductions in stratospheric ozone caused by its catalytic destruction by nitrogen oxides produced in nuclear explosions. This
would increase the incidence of skin cancer (which is mostly non-lethal) and possibly alter agricultural productivity, but
would be most unlikely to cause widespread death.[7]

Nuclear war destroys relief operations

Thompson, renowned scientist and author, 1986
[James Thompson, Ph.D at Middlesex Hospital in London, The Medical Implications of Nuclear War, editors: Fred
Solomon and Robert Q. Marston, pg. 292, http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=940&page=292]

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Localized disasters such as explosions and fires give a partial view of likely reactions, which, in the case of nuclear war,
would be repeated across whole continents. Earthquakes and floods give a better understanding of large-scale and
generalized destruction, though it is correspondingly more difficult to comprehensively evaluate how everyone reacted. All
these disasters differ from the nuclear case in that there is always an undamaged outside world able to offer some help and
assistance. Furthermore, the imponderable effects of radiation will impose a delay on rescue attempts, since most people
will be unable to establish when it is safe to come out from what remains of their shelters. The electromagnetic pulse is
likely to have severely damaged the communication networks on which all effective relief operations depend. Most of all,
the probable extent of the physical destruction to civilization would be so extensive as to make unlikely any concerted
rescue operation, even if it could be mounted. Most people would be concerned with their own survival, and the illusion of
centrality that is held by disaster victims would, for many, be more of a reality than an illusion.

Nuclear war cripples medical responses hastens disease spread

Katz and Osdoby, author of Life After Nuclear War and graduate student at Johns Hopkins respectively, 1982
[Arthur M. Katz and Sima R. Osdoby, The Social and Economic Effects Of Nuclear War, Cato Institute,
http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa009.html]
What would this level of destruction mean? If in the most heavily contaminated and damaged regions, all the doctors
survived and hospitals were usable, there would be one doctor for every 50 or 100 injured, and between 10 and 30 patients
per available hospital bed. Even if the entire national health care system was used, the patient-doctor ratio would be
between 25 and 50 to 1 and patients per hospital bed between 10 and 20 to 1. Care for patients suffering from other medical
problems, such as heart attack and cancer, would be significantly degraded for an extended time because of the competing
and continuing demands of those injured by fallout, the loss of physicians and hospitals (because of contamination) in
specific regions, and potential reductions in the manufacture and distribution of medical supplies (about 30% of all drugs
are manufactured in the regions most affected by fallout). For a more specific example, to treat a single patient exposed to
substantial levels of radiation (200 Radiation Equivalent Man -- REMS -- or more) would require massive medical
resources -- intensive care, bone marrow transplants, blood transfusions and antibiotics. In this type of attack hundreds of
thousands -- perhaps millions -- would require complex bone marrow transplants to assure survival. Because of reduced
resistance to infectious diseases, all clinical cases (a radiation dose exceeding 50 REMS) would need continuous protection
against infection, involving high doses of antibiotics, etc. Treating large numbers would rapidly drain existing supplies and
professional energy. As antibiotics supplies dwindled and immunization proved ineffective in this radiation-weakened
group, a huge reservoir of potential disease carriers would develop. Diseases such as polio might reappear. Other key
elements of medical care support systems, such as medical insurance and records, would be disrupted and in chaos after
evacuation.

Nuclear war accelerates the spread of epidemics

Katz and Osdoby, author of Life After Nuclear War and graduate student at Johns Hopkins respectively, 1982
[Arthur M. Katz and Sima R. Osdoby, The Social and Economic Effects Of Nuclear War, Cato Institute,
http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa009.html]
Providing high quality medical care requires high capital investment and long training periods; thus post-attack medical
care norms may continue to be dramatically below current standards for a considerable time, with negative implications for
labor productivity and other aspects of economic recovery. Significant radioactive fallout or the breaching of
immunological barriers in the aftermath of the attack would permit a high incidence of epidemic disease.[16]. The loss of
major medical research centers will be devastating to research on improved disease treatment. The heavy burden of
chronically ill or permanently injured survivors will continuously tax the reduced medical capabilities and disoriented
social service support system, leading to a general deterioration of all medical care. Because malnutrition lowers resistance
to disease, medical problems would be exacerbated if the food supply system proves ineffective. Serious mental health
problems will arise from the impact of the attack -- particularly a sense of impotence from watching people die who in a
"normal" society would have lived -- or from the stress of the post-attack recovery period. The implications of all these
problems would be a society burdened and preoccupied with human suffering, unable to cope successfully with its
demands. The credibility of the remaining leadership and its ability to focus resources for recovery might very well hinge
on how it was able to manage the medical effects of nuclear war.

Nuclear war exacerbates racism evacuations force choices on which groups to save
Katz and Osdoby, author of Life After Nuclear War and graduate student at Johns Hopkins respectively, 1982
[Arthur M. Katz and Sima R. Osdoby, The Social and Economic Effects Of Nuclear War, Cato Institute,
http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa009.html]

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If evacuation were to result in a prolonged relocation, divisive social conflicts, as well as economic and social dislocation,
would be likely. Under much more favorable conditions in Great Britain during World War II, relationships between
evacuees and their hosts degenerated quickly under the influence of prolonged stress, uncertainty, substantial class and
urban-rural differences, and inadequate social service resources. This experience was not unique. Japan and Germany in
World War II, and even the Netherlands in peacetime, experienced these type of conflicts. Under a limited war scenario in
the United States, to absorb the evacuated population the number of people living in a single house or apartment in the host
areas would have to increase six times (from three people to eighteen). It is not hard to imagine the conflict and stress that
type for crowding would create.[7] Thus these problems are likely to be much more intractable under the "limited" war
scenarios because of insufficient social services and the massive numbers of people involved. In threatened but unaffected
metropolitan areas, decisions about who will be evacuated and when could become politically explosive -- fraught with
fears of one group or another becoming the expendable victims. This is not to mention the problem of deciding when and
how to evacuate special populations -- prisoners, patients in acute and chronic care facilities, etc.

War increases sex trafficking increases sexism

Nikolic-Ristanovic, professor in Social education at Belgrade University, 2005
[Vesna Nikolic-Ristanovic, Sex Trafficking: The Impact of War, Militarism and Globalization in Eastern Europe,
Womens Center for Democracy & Human Rights, 2005, http://www.globalizacija.com/doc_en/e0058sim.htm]
War and militarism particularly influence sex trafficking in women. Their impact is mostly connected to specific war and
post-war situations, but sex trafficking may also be the consequence of the very presence of military in the region,
regardless of whether there is war going on or not. Thus, the impact of militarism on sex trafficking is not necessarily
connected to war, although war may produce militarist cultural ideals about gender which increase the vulnerability of
women to socio-economic factors that lead to sex trafficking. [4] Moreover, examples from recent history show that the
expansion of prostitution due to the extended presence of military forces has long-term consequences on the development
of sex trafficking on both local and global levels. [5]

Nuclear testing increases pollution nuclear war would heighten those effects
Motherearth.org, NGO that works on issues related to disarmament, human rights and the environment, no date
[Motherearth.org, The Effects of nuclear weapons, no date given, but clearly later than 2000,
http://www.motherearth.org/nuke/begin2.php#3]
The production of nuclear weapons has polluted vast amounts of soil and water at hundreds of nuclear weapons facilities all
over the world. Many of the substances released, including plutonium, uranium, strontium, cesium, benzene,
polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), mercury and cyanide, are carcinogenic and/or mutagenic and remain hazardous for
thousands, some for hundreds of thousands, of years. Contaminants from nuclear weapons production and testing have
often travelled far down wind and down stream. Production facilities for nuclear weapons are heavily polluted, for example
in the United States there are over 4500 contaminated Department of Energy sites. The manufacture and testing of weapons
involves the leakage of nuclear material. Of all the activities concerning nuclear weapons, testing has been the most
destructive of the environment. Even placing tests underground does not avoid atmospheric pollution. Radioactivity
released from atmospheric nuclear testing - including plutonium, strontium, cesium, carbon-14, and radioactive iodine - has
been widely dispersed throughout the world. Underground tests have contaminated soil and groundwater. Many square
miles in Russia, Belarus and the US have been rendered unusable by contamination of the soil. Also the Irish sea and the
Arctic Ocean have been poisoned.

Nuclear war increases starvation jacks the agriculture industry

ACDA, independent agency in the US government, 1996
[US Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, Worldwide effects of nuclear war, October 1996, Project Gutenberg,
http://www.scribd.com/doc/13364069/Worldwide-Effects-of-Nuclear-War]
Finally, at least brief mention should be made of the global effects resulting from disruption of economic activities and
communications. Since 1970, an increasing fraction of the human race has been losing the battle for self-sufficiency in
food, and must rely on heavy imports. A major disruption of agriculture and transportation in the grain-exporting and
manufacturing countries could thus prove disastrous to countries importing food, farm machinery, and fertilizers
especially those which are already struggling with the threat of widespread starvation. Moreover, virtually every economic
area, from food and medicines to fuel and growth engendering industries, the less-developed countries would find they
could not rely on the undamaged remainder of the developed world for trade essentials: in the wake of nuclear war the
industrial powers directly involved would themselves have to compete for resources with those countries that today are
described as less-developed.

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Nuclear war leads to an ice age the timeframe is quick

Time Magazine, 2009
[Eban Harrell, writer for Time Magazine, Time, January 22, 2009,
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1873164,00.html]
In the 1980s, climate scientists in Russia and the U.S. theorized that all-out nuclear war between the superpowers would
result in a "nuclear winter," as smoke from the atomic explosions blackened the sky and sent summer temperatures
plummeting below freezing killing crops and eventually starving all those who survived the initial explosions. Now that
the risks of an all-out U.S.-Russian exchange have diminished, scientists are looking at the climactic effects of regional
nuclear war and the predictions are still sobering. Tensions between India and Pakistan have been high recently. If they
escalated to all-out nuclear war, what would be the effect to the global climate? We looked at a scenario in which each
country used 50 Hiroshima-sized weapons, which they are believed to have in their arsenals. That's enough firepower to kill
around 20 million people on the ground. We were surprised that the amount of smoke produced by these explosions would
block out sunlight, cool the planet, and produce climate change unprecedented in recorded human history. Your study
predicts mass cooling. With all the heat and radioactivity of the explosions, why wouldn't nuclear war warm the planet? It
has nothing to do with the radioactivity of the explosions although that would be devastating to nearby populations. The
explosions would set off massive fires, which would produce plumes of black smoke. The sun would heat the smoke and
lift it into the stratosphere that's the layer above the troposphere, where we live where there is no rain to clear it out. It
would be blown across the globe and block the sun. The effect would not be a nuclear winter, but it would be colder than
the little ice age [in the 17th and 18th centuries] and the change would happen very rapidly over the course of a few
weeks.

Nuclear war leads to global cooling the impacts are felt worldwide
Blumberg, professor of Public Relations at Rutgers, 2006
[Joseph E. Blumberg, Regional Nuclear War Could Devastate Global Climate, NASA, December 11, 2006,
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/view.php?id=31591]
While a regional nuclear confrontation among emerging third-world nuclear powers might be geographically constrained,
Robock and his colleagues have concluded that the environmental impacts could be worldwide. "We examined the climatic
effects of the smoke produced in a regional conflict in the subtropics between two opposing nations, each using 50
Hiroshima-size nuclear weapons to attack the others most populated urban areas," Robock said. The researchers carried out
their simulations using a modern climate model coupled with estimates of smoke emissions provided by Toon and his
colleagues, which amounted to as much as five million metric tons of "soot" particles. "A cooling of several degrees would
occur over large areas of North America and Eurasia, including most of the grain-growing regions," Robock said. "As in the
case with earlier nuclear winter calculations, large climatic effects would occur in regions far removed from the target areas
or the countries involved in the conflict." When Robock and his team applied their climate model to calibrate the recorded
response to the 1912 eruptions of Katmai volcano in Alaska, they found that observed temperature anomalies were
accurately reproduced. On a grander scale, the 1815 eruption of Tambora in Indonesia the largest in the last 500 years
was followed by killing frosts throughout New England in 1816, during what has become known as "the year without a
summer." The weather in Europe was reported to be so cold and wet that the harvest failed and people starved. This
historical event, according to Robock, perhaps foreshadows the kind of climate disruptions that would follow a regional
nuclear conflict. But the climatic disruption resulting from Tambora lasted for only about one year, the authors note. In their
most recent computer simulation, in which carbon particles remain in the stratosphere for up to 10 years, the climatic
effects are greater and last longer than those associated with the Tambora eruption.

Nuclear wars effects target the unemployed -- anxiety and economic reactions
Kiraly, psychiatrist and author, 1986
[S. J. Kiraly, Psychological Effects Of The Threat of Nuclear War, Can. Fam. Physician, January 1986,
http://ukpmc.ac.uk/articlerender.cgi?artid=1433613]
Kimmel examined the role of anxiety in criminal behavior and identified the threat of nuclear war as a source of stress and
anxiety for adults in correctional setting before and after the release into society. HE considered crimes such as forgery,
embezzlement, sexual crimes, violence and family abandonment in non-psychopaths. As preventative treatment, he
recommended that counseling be available to the former subgroups to enable them to deal with these anxiety-laden issues
both in and out of prison. Matterman described the chain reaction of health breakdown which was set in motion when
mans basic needs were threatened. He blamed the arms race for economic hardship causing unemployment and a
deterioration in group morale and individual and national self esteem, correlating psychiatric morbidity with work

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deprivation, as did Brenner who reported that a 1% rise in unemployment was associated with a 5. 7% rise in crime rate,
3.4% more hospital admissions and 4.1% increase in suicides.

Nuclear wars decimate urban centers

Wolpert, professor at UCLA, 2006
[Stuart Wolpert, Regional Nuclear War Could Devastate Large Cities and Threaten Global Population through Climate
Change, New Studies Indicate, UCLA News, December 11, 2006, http://newsroom.ucla.edu/portal/ucla/PRNRegional-Nuclear-War-Could-Devastate-7553.aspx]
Megacities attacked with nuclear devices, through war or terrorism, would likely be abandoned indefinitely, inducing mass
migration and long-term economic decline, Turco said. Turco in the 1980s headed a group whose members included
Owen "Brian" Toon, a co-author on the current research, and the late Carl Sagan that originally defined the "nuclear
winter" phenomenon, a phrase that Turco coined. For a regional-scale nuclear conflict, fatality estimates range from 2.6
million to 16.7 million, Turco said. "Considering the relatively small number and sizes of the weapons perhaps less than
one megaton in total yield the potential devastation would be catastrophic and long-term," said Toon, professor and chair
of the department of atmospheric and oceanic sciences at the University of Colorado at Boulder. "A single low-yield
nuclear detonation in an urban center could lead to more fatalities, in some cases by orders of magnitude, than occurred in
major historical wars." The scientists estimated the quantities of soot the highly absorbing component of smoke that
would be generated in urban firestorms ignited by nuclear detonations. This effort was led by Toon, together with Turco and
University of Colorado student Charles Bardeen. At Rutgers, Alan Robock, professor of environmental sciences and
associate director of the Center for Environmental Prediction at Rutgers' Cook College, professor Georgiy Stenchikov and
postdoctoral associate Luke Oman (now at Johns Hopkins University) employed a coupled atmosphere-ocean climate
model to simulate the effects of the putative smoke emissions in perturbing the global climate system and causing regional
climatic anomalies. The amount of soot emitted by firestorms was found to exceed 5 million metric tons in many cases.
Because so many people live in megacities, the quantity of black smoke generated per kiloton of explosive yield could be
more than 100 times larger than previously estimated for a full-scale superpower nuclear exchange involving thousands of
megatons, according to one of the journal papers.

Megacities are centers of urban poverty

Kraas, professor of geography at the University of Cologne, 2008
[Frauke Kraas, Megacities our global urban future, EU Commerz, April 9, 2008,
http://www.eucommerz.com/index.php?/article/0063_megacities_our_global_urban_future/210/]
Megacities are also focuses of global risk. They are increasingly vulnerable systems because they often harbor pronounced
poverty, social inequality and environmental degradation, all of which are linked together by a complex system supplying
goods and services. People from different socio-economic groups and corresponding political allegiances may become
segregated geographically, creating disparities and conflict. Population density increases vulnerability to natural and
manmade hazards. Thus, megacities, exposed to the global environmental, socio-economic and political changes to which
they contribute, are both victims and producers of risk.

Conventional war escalates

Roth, professor in IR at Goucher College, 2007
[Ariel Ilan Roth, Nuclear Weapons in Neo-Realist Theory, REFLECTION, EVALUATION, INTEGRATION,
International Studies Review, pg 369-384]
Critical, though not explicit, in Waltz is the belief that a war between nuclear powers will be hard to maintain at the
conventional level. Waltz (Waltz and Sagan 2003:9) allows that such a sub-nuclear war may be fought but considers the risk
of it escalating to the nuclear level with its accompanying certain destruction as too high for the risk tolerance of most
leaders. The strategic studies literature has played host to this debate for decades. Some, like Snyder (1965), have argued
that nuclear weapons are, in a sense, mutually negating, creating what has been called the stability-instability paradox,
wherein stability at the nuclear level breeds instability at the conventional level. It is, in this conception, as if two duelists
stand with guns loaded and cocked at each others heads yet proceed to have their fight with daggers instead (Jervis
1989:19-20). Others, like Barry Posen (1982), have argued that even though nuclear states may wish to limit their conflict
to conventional weapons, actions that occur during wartime can lead to what he calls inadvertent escalation. In his Cold
War Turned Hot example, NATO attacks near Soviet ballistic submarine bases could draw a nuclear response even though
the aim of NATO is not to harm the strategically stabilizing Soviet submarine-based missile arsenal (Posen 1982:29-30).
Such an interaction would then escalate further as American targets were hit with nuclear weapons and a war that was
supposed to be both limited and sub-nuclear is now an apocalyptic doomsday. The prospects for inadvertent escalation are

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recognized by Jervis (1989:21) as well who comments that because escalation can occur although no one wants it to,
mutual second-strike capability does not make the world safe for major provocations and limited wars. This conclusion
leads to the first of Jervis (1989:23-24) expected outcomes from what he calls the nuclear revolution, namely, that there
will be peace among the great powers.

Nuclear detonation collapses electronic structures permanently

(ODATSD(NM)) 2008 The Office of the Deputy Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Nuclear Matters, Nuclear
Matters: A Practical Guide, http://www.acq.osd.mil/ncbdp/nm/nmbook/index.htmv
The gamma rays and neutrons produced by a nuclear detonation are transient initial nuclear radiation which can affect
electronic components and associated circuitry by penetrating deep into materials and electronic devices. Gamma rays can
induce stray currents of electrons that generate harmful electromagnetic fields similar to EMP. Neutrons can collide with
atoms in key electronic materials causing damage to the crystal (chemical) structure and changing electrical properties.
While all electronics are susceptible to the effects of TREE, smaller, solid-state electronics such as transistors and
integrated circuits are most vulnerable to these effects. Although initial nuclear radiation may pass through material and
equipment in a matter of seconds, the damage is usually permanent.

Nuclear detonations create EMPs, which destroy electronic and communication systems
Federal Emergency Management Agency June 4th 2009, Nuclear Blast
http://www.fema.gov/hazard/terrorism/nuclear/index.shtm
In addition to other effects, a nuclear weapon detonated in or above the earths atmosphere can create an electromagnetic
pulse (EMP), a high-density electrical field. An EMP acts like a stroke of lightning but is stronger, faster, and shorter. An
EMP can seriously damage electronic devices connected to power sources or antennas. This includes communication
systems, computers, electrical appliances, and automobile or aircraft ignition systems. The damage could range from a
minor interruption to actual burnout of components. Most electronic equipment within 1,000 miles of a high-altitude
nuclear detonation could be affected. Battery-powered radios with short antennas generally would not be affected. Although
an EMP is unlikely to harm most people, it could harm those with pacemakers or other implanted electronic devices.

Nuclear detonations create EMPs, resulting in a widespread loss of electronics and communications
infrastructure
Wilson, Specialist in Technology and National Security Foreign Affairs, Defense, and Trade Division,
2006 Clay, High Altitude Electromagnetic Pulse (HEMP) and High Power Microwave (HPM) Devices: Threat Assessments,
CRS Report for Congress, http://digital.library.unt.edu/govdocs/crs/data/2006/upl-meta-crs-8769/RL32544_2006Apr14.pdf
Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) is an instantaneous, intense energy field that can overload or disrupt at a distance numerous
electrical systems and high technology microcircuits, which are especially sensitive to power surges. A large scale EMP
effect can be produced by a single nuclear explosion detonated high in the atmosphere. This method is referred to as High-Altitude EMP
(HEMP). A similar, smaller-scale EMP effect can be created using non-nuclear devices with powerful batteries or reactive chemicals. This method is
called High Power Microwave (HPM) Several nations, including reported sponsors of terrorism, may currently have a capability

to
use EMP as a weapon for cyber warfare or cyber terrorism to disrupt communications and other parts of the U.S. critical
infrastructure. Also, some equipment and weapons used by the U.S. military may be vulnerable to the effects of EMP. The threat of an EMP
attack against the United States is hard to assess, but some observers indicate that it is growing along with worldwide access to newer
technologies and the proliferation of nuclear weapons. In the past, the threat of mutually assured destruction provided a lasting deterrent
against the exchange of multiple high-yield nuclear warheads. However, now even a single, specially designed low-yield nuclear
explosion high above the United States, or over a battlefield, can produce a large-scale EMP effect that could result in a
widespread loss of electronics, but no direct fatalities, and may not necessarily evoke a large nuclear retaliatory strike by the U.S. military. This,
coupled with the possible vulnerability of U.S. commercial electronics and U.S. military battlefield equipment to the effects
of EMP, may create a new incentive for other countries to develop or acquire a nuclear capability.

US private electronic infrastructure will be severely damaged due to a nuclear detonation

Wilson, Specialist in Technology and National Security Foreign Affairs, Defense, and Trade Division,
2006 Clay, High Altitude Electromagnetic Pulse (HEMP) and High Power Microwave (HPM) Devices: Threat Assessments,
CRS Report for Congress, http://digital.library.unt.edu/govdocs/crs/data/2006/upl-meta-crs-8769/RL32544_2006Apr14.pdf
What is the United States doing to protect critical infrastructure systems against the threat of electromagnetic pulse? What
is the appropriate response from the United States to a nuclear HEMP attack, where there may be widespread damage to
electronics, but relatively little, or possibly no loss of life as a direct result? How could the United States determine which
nation launched a HEMP attack? After experiencing a HEMP effect, the United States may retain its capability to use
strategic weapons for nuclear retaliation, but will the U.S. industrial base and critical infrastructure be crippled and

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incapable of supporting a sustained military campaign? During such time, would the United States be capable of a making
an effective response should other nations chose to make military advances in other parts of the
world? Some assert that little has been done by the private sector to protect against the threat from electromagnetic pulse,
and that commercial electronic systems in the United States could be severely damaged by either HEMP or smaller-scale
HPM.40 Officials of several U.S. power stations and public utilities have stated that their electrical systems currently have
no protection against electromagnetic pulse.41 However, electric power and telephone utilities have been known to fail as a
result of solar storms which cause effects similar to, but less severe than HEMP from a nuclear blast. Commercial
electronic surge arresters used for lightning strikes reportedly do not clamp fast enough to protect against the instantaneous
effects of electromagnetic pulse, and some may also not have great enough current carrying capacity.

Nuclear attack would destroy military communications, they are routed through civilian Internet
Wilson, Specialist in Technology and National Security Foreign Affairs, Defense, and Trade Division,
2006 Clay, High Altitude Electromagnetic Pulse (HEMP) and High Power Microwave (HPM) Devices: Threat Assessments,
CRS Report for Congress, http://digital.library.unt.edu/govdocs/crs/data/2006/upl-meta-crs-8769/RL32544_2006Apr14.pdf
In 2005, DOD reportedly completed its response to the 2004 commission report,but it has not yet implemented a proposed
EMP Action Plan (classified), which wasrecently submitted to the Secretary of Defense. 43The effects of large-scale HEMP
have been studied over several years by the Defense Atomic Support Agency, the Defense Nuclear Agency, and the Defense
Special Weapons Agency, and is currently being studied by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA). However, the
application of the results of these studies has been uneven across military weapons and communications systems. Some
analysts state that U.S. strategic military systems (intercontinental ballistic missiles and long-range bombers) may have
strong protection against HEMP, while most U.S.
weapons systems used for the battlefield do not, and that this uneven protection is undoubtedly known to our potential
adversaries.44 Some analysts reportedly state that limited testing has shown that modern commercial equipment may be
surprisingly resistant to the effects of electromagnetic pulse, and in addition to the SCAMP system, some military systems
using commercial equipment are retrofitted to increase resistance to EMP.45 However, there is disagreement among
observers about whether test procedures used by the U.S. military may have been flawed, leading to erroneous conclusions
about the effects of electromagnetic pulse on commercial electronics.46 The U.S. military has adopted a policy where
possibly vulnerable commercial electronic equipment is now used extensively in support of complex U.S. weapons
systems. For example, a large percentage of U.S. military communications during Operation Iraqi Freedom was reportedly
carried by commercial satellites, and much military administrative information is currently routed through the civilian
Internet.47 Many commercial communications satellites, particularly those in low earth orbit, reportedly may degrade or
cease to function shortly after a high altitude nuclear explosion.48 However, some observers believe that possible HEMP
and HPM vulnerabilities of military information systems are outweighed by the benefits gained through access to
innovative technology and increased communications flexibility that come from using state-of-the-art electronics and from
maintaining connections to the civilian Internet and satellite systems.

Even a regional nuclear war can devastate the global climatescientific studies prove
UCLA International Institute 2006 Dec. 11, Regional Nuclear War Could Devastate Global Climate,
http://www.international.ucla.edu/article.asp?parentid=59428
"Considering the relatively small number and size of the weapons, the effects are surprisingly large. The potential
devastation would be catastrophic and long term," said Richard Turco, professor of atmospheric and oceanic sciences, and a
member and founding director of UCLA's Institute of the Environment. Turco once headed a team including Toon and Carl
Sagan that originally defined "nuclear winter."
While a regional nuclear confrontation among emerging third-world nuclear powers might be geographically constrained,
Robock and his colleagues have concluded that the environmental impacts could be worldwide.
"We examined the climatic effects of the smoke produced in a regional conflict in the subtropics between two opposing
nations, each using 50 Hiroshima-size nuclear weapons to attack the other's most populated urban areas," Robock said. The
researchers carried out their simulations using a modern climate model coupled with estimates of smoke emissions
provided by Toon and his colleagues, which amounted to as much as five million metric tons of "soot" particles.
"A cooling of several degrees would occur over large areas of North America and Eurasia, including most of the graingrowing regions," Robock said. "As in the case with earlier nuclear winter calculations, large climatic effects would occur
in regions far removed from the target areas or the countries involved in the conflict."
When Robock and his team applied their climate model to calibrate the recorded response to the 1912 eruptions of Katmai
volcano in Alaska, they found that observed temperature anomalies were accurately reproduced. On a grander scale, the
1815 eruption of Tambora in Indonesia -- the largest in the last 500 years -- was followed by killing frosts throughout New
England in 1816, during what has become known as "the year without a summer." The weather in Europe was reported to
be so cold and wet that the harvest failed and people starved. This historical event, according to Robock, perhaps
foreshadows the kind of climate disruptions that would follow a regional nuclear conflict.

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Despite less risk of global war, proliferation has created probable scenarios for regional Nuclear
conflicts, hurting the global climate system
Mills et. Al. 2007 Massive global ozone loss predicted following regional nuclear conflict, Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences of the United States 105.14 (April 8, 2008), Accessed through Academic OneFile
Although the risk of global nuclear war has diminished since the 1980s, the proliferation of nuclear weapons has produced
greater risks of a regional nuclear conflict. At the same time, global climate models have improved considerably. Toon et
al. (9) recently assessed the damage that might result from the arsenals of the world's newest nuclear powers, and showed
that the direct effects of even a small number of relatively low-yield nuclear weapon explosions in modern megacities could
produce unexpectedly large numbers of fatalities. Their analysis shows that a nuclear attack on a single country involving
50 Hiroshima-size (15 kt) bombs could generate 15 Tg of black carbon aerosol particles in the upper troposphere, after an
initial 20% removal in black rains induced by firestorms. A regional nuclear conflict between India and Pakistan, for
example, in which each used 50 such weapons is estimated to produce 6.6 Tg of black carbon. Robock et al. (10) used
these smoke estimates in a state-of-the-art general circulation model to produce the first predictions of the climatic effects
of a regional nuclear exchange. Their calculations suggest aerosols would be lofted within days to the upper stratosphere.
The absorption of sunlight by the stratospheric soot produces a global average surface cooling of 1.25C persisting for
several years and large reductions in precipitation associated with the Asian summer monsoon and other disruptions to the
global climate system.

Nuclear War Kills millions and creates extensive pollution

Robuck 09 ( Alan, January 6, Encyclopedia of the Earth, Nuclear Winter,.
http://www.eoearth.org/article/Nuclear_winter)
A nuclear explosion is like bringing a piece of the Sun to the Earth's surface for a fraction of a second. Like a giant match, it
causes cities and industrial areas to burn. Megacities have developed in India and Pakistan and other developing countries,
providing tremendous amounts of fuel for potential fires. The direct effects of the nuclear weapons, blast, radioactivity,
fires, and extensive pollution, would kill millions of people, but only those near the targets. However, the fires would
have another effect. The massive amounts of dark smoke from the fires would be lofted into the upper troposphere, 10-15
kilometers (6-9 miles) above the Earth's surface, and then absorption of sunlight would further heat the smoke, lifting it into
the stratosphere, a layer where the smoke would persist for years, with no rain to wash it out.

Even a minor nuclear war creates climate change, global ozone depletion, and a nuclear winter
threatening the entire planet
Robuck 09 ( Alan, January 6, Encyclopedia of the Earth, Nuclear Winter,.
http://www.eoearth.org/article/Nuclear_winter)
Based on new work published in 2007 and 2008 by some of the pioneers of nuclear winter research who worked on the
original studies, we now can say several things about this topic.
New Science: A minor nuclear war (such as between India and Pakistan or in the Middle East), with each country using 50
Hiroshima-sized atom bombs as airbursts on urban areas, could produce climate change unprecedented in recorded human
history. This is only 0.03% of the explosive power of the current global arsenal. This same scenario would produce global
ozone depletion, because the heating of the stratosphere would enhance the chemical reactions that destroy ozone. A
nuclear war between the United States and Russia today could produce nuclear winter, with temperatures plunging below
freezing in the summer in major agricultural regions, threatening the food supply for most of the planet. The climatic effects
of the smoke from burning cities and industrial areas would last for several years, much longer than we previously thought.
New climate model simulations, that have the capability of including the entire atmosphere and oceans, show that the
smoke would be lofted by solar heating to the upper stratosphere, where it would remain for years. New Policy
Implications:The only way to eliminate the possibility of this climatic catastrophe is to eliminate the nuclear weapons. If
they exist, they can be used. The spread of nuclear weapons to new emerging states threatens not only the people of those
countries, but the entire planet. Rapid reduction of the American and Russian nuclear arsenals will set an example for the
rest of the world that nuclear weapons cannot be used and are not needed.

Regional Nuclear war fought with the current nuclear arsenal creates a nuclear winter
Robuck 09 ( Alan, January 6, Encyclopedia of the Earth, Nuclear Winter,.
http://www.eoearth.org/article/Nuclear_winter)
New studies show that a regional nuclear conflict, which targeted large population centers in the sub-tropics with 100
Hiroshima-size weapons about 0.3% of the global nuclear arsenal , could produce as many fatalities as World War II 1

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and would significantly disrupt the global climate for at least a decade. 2 Following this small exchange, the world would
rapidly experience cold conditions not felt since pre-industrial times. U.S.-Russian arms accords have reduced by twothirds the total number of nuclear weapons in the worlds nuclear arsenals since nuclear winter was first described in the
1980s. The new research confirms that the smoke produced by a war fought with the current global nuclear arsenal would
still produce a nuclear winter.3 Under such conditions, daily minimum temperatures in the worlds large agricultural areas
would fall below freezing for more than a year and cause the collapse of modern agriculture and the starvation of billions of
people.

A Regional Nuclear War has worldwide impacts, including ozone, the environment, and starvation
Wired 2k8 (Regional Nuclear War Would Cause Worldwide Destruction, Wired, By Alexis Madrigal,
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/04/regional-nuclea/
Think you might escape the aftereffects of a limited nuclear war that happens on the other side of the globe from you?
Think again. Imagine that the long-simmering conflict between India and Pakistan broke out into a war in which each side
deployed 50 nuclear weapons against the other countrys megacities. Karachi, Bombay, and dozens of other South Asian cities catch fire
like Hiroshima and Nagasaki did at the end of World War II. Beyond the local human tragedy of such a situation, a new study looking at the
atmospheric chemistry of regional nuclear war finds that the hot smoke from burning cities would tear holes in the ozone
layer of the Earth. The increased UV radiation resulting from the ozone loss could more than double DNA damage, and increase cancer rates across
North America and Eurasia. "Our research supports that there would be worldwide destruction," said Michael Mills, co-author of the
study and a research scientist at the University of Colorado at Boulder. "It demonstrates that a small-scale regional conflict is capable of
triggering larger ozone losses globally than the ones that were previously predicted for a full-scale nuclear war." Combined
with the climatic impact of a regional nuclear war which could reduce crop yields and starve hundreds of millions
Mills modeling shows that the entire globe would feel the repercussions of a hundred nuclear detonations, a small fraction of just the U.S. stockpile. After
decades of Cold War research into the impacts that a full-blown war between the Soviet Union and the United States would have had on the globe, recent
work has focused on regional nuclear wars, which are seen as more likely than all-out nuclear Armageddon. Incorporating the latest atmospheric
modeling, the scientists are finding that even a small nuclear conflict would wreak havoc on the global environment (.pdf)
cooling it twice as much as its heated over the last century and on the structure of the atmosphere itself. Mills work, which appears online today in the
Proceedings of the National Academies of Science, used a model from National Center for Atmospheric Research to look at the impact of throwing 5
million metric tons of black carbon, or soot, into the atmosphere. He found that when a cluster of cities are burning together, they end up creating their
own weather, pumping soot 20,000 feet into the atmosphere. Once there, sunlight would heat the smoke, and drive it up 260,000 feet above the earths
surface. Along the way, the hot soot would cause a variety of atmospheric changes with a net result of huge reductions in ozone,
which in the stratosphere serves as sunblock for the earth. In the middle latitudes, the researchers found the ozone layer would be

reduced by 25 to 45 percent, with the polar regions losing 50 to 70 percent of their ozone coverage . This thinning is known
as a "hole" in the ozone layer, and would be many times the size of the famed hole over Antarctica. According to research cited by the paper, the
increase in ultraviolet light falling to earth at the 45-degree latitude a little south of Portland, Oregon would cause damage to DNA to increase 213
percent. "It would have a dramatic effect on skin cancer and cataracts and be very damaging to crops and ecosystems," Mills
said. The reduced levels of ozone would persist for five years, with substantial reductions in ozone continuing for another
five years after that. Even if the cause of the war were local, its impacts would be felt across the globe. "Pretty much everywhere [would
be] affected," Mills concluded.

Even regional nuclear war can create a hole in the ozone

The Denver Post 4/8/2008 CU study: Regional nuclear war means global ozone devastation
By Katy Human, Staff Writer, The Denver Post http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_8851151
In 2001, India and Pakistan nearly came to nuclear blows over Kashmir. Now, a new study shows that even a regional
nuclear war could create an ozone hole around most of the planet, making skin cancer and cataract rates skyrocket, killing
fish, amphibians and other organisms. An ozone hole would last for at least a decade, according to work published in the
current edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Co-authors include University of Colorado
researchers Michael Mills and Brian Toon, and National Center for Atmospheric Research scientists Douglas Kinnison and
Rolando Garcia. Two years ago, the team of scientists showed that a small-scale nuclear war could kill as many people as
World War II did and disrupt climate for more than a decade. In the latest work, the scientists scrutinized the potential effect
of a conflict on the Earth's ozone layer, which protects people and other organisms from damaging solar radiation.
They concluded that 25 to 40 percent of the ozone would be lost at mid-latitudes, with a 50 to 70 percent loss at northern
high latitudes - the federal Environmental Protection Agency estimated that a one percent reduction in ozone concentration
can lead to a one-to-three percent increase in certain types of skin cancer. "The world has become a far more dangerous
place when the actions of two countries on the other side of the world could have such a drastic impact on the planet," Toon
said.

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Nuclear war breaks down ozone, and the threat of war is increasing
Reuters 2008 April 8th, Maggie Fox, India Pakistan Nuclear war would create ozone hole,
http://www.livemint.com/2008/04/08231716/IndiaPakistan-nuclear-war-wou.html
Washington: Nuclear war between India and Pakistan would cause more than slaughter and destructionit would knock a
big hole in the ozone layer, affecting crops, animals and people worldwide, US researchers said on Monday. Fires from
burning cities would send 5 million tonnes (mt) of soot or more into the lowest part of the Earths atmosphere known as the
troposphere, and heat from the sun would carry these blackened particles into the stratosphere, the team at the University of
Colorado reported. The sunlight really heats it up and sends it up to the top of the stratosphere, said Michael Mills of the
Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, who chose India and Pakistan as one of several possible examples. Up
there, the soot would absorb radiation from the sun and heat surrounding gases, causing chemical reactions that break down
ozone. We find column ozone losses in excess of 20% globally, 25% to 45% at mid-latitudes, and 50% to 70% at northern
high latitudes persisting for five years, with substantial losses continuing for five additional years, Mills team wrote in the
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. This would let in enough ultraviolet (UV) radiation to cause cancer,
damage eyes and skin, damage crops and other plants and injure animals. Mills and colleagues based their computer model
on other research on how much fire would be produced by a regional nuclear conflict. Certainly, there is a growing
number of large nuclear-armed states that have a growing number of weapons. This could be typical of what you might
see, Mills said.

Nuclear war is the only proven scenario for global extinction --- Nanotechnology, global poverty, HIV,
climate change, and other impacts dont cause extinction
Milan irkovi, Senior Research Associate at the Astronomical Observatory of Belgrade and
Assistant Professor of the Department of Physics at the University of Novi Sad in Serbia and Montenegro,
September 17th 2008, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientist, How can we reduce the risk of global extinction?
Farther out in time are technologies that remain theoretical but might be developed this century. Molecular nanotechnology
could allow the creation of self-replicating machines capable of destroying the ecosystem. And advances in neuroscience
and computation might enable improvements in cognition that accelerate the invention of new weapons. A survey at the
Oxford conference found that concerns about human extinction were dominated by fears that new technologies would be
misused. These emerging threats are especially challenging as they could become dangerous more quickly than past
technologies, outpacing societys ability to control them. As H.G. Wells noted, Human history becomes more and more a
race between education and catastrophe. Such remote risks may seem academic in a world plagued by immediate
problems, such as global poverty, HIV, and climate change. But as intimidating as these problems are, they do not threaten
human existence. In discussing the risk of nuclear winter, Carl Sagan emphasized the astronomical toll of human extinction:
A nuclear war imperils all of our descendants, for as long as there will be humans. Even if the population remains static,
with an average lifetime of the order of 100 years, over a typical time period for the biological evolution of a successful
species (roughly ten million years), we are talking about some 500 trillion people yet to come. By this criterion, the stakes
are one million times greater for extinction than for the more modest nuclear wars that kill only hundreds of millions of
people. There are many other possible measures of the potential lossincluding culture and science, the evolutionary
history of the planet, and the significance of the lives of all of our ancestors who contributed to the future of their
descendants. Extinction is the undoing of the human enterprise.

Nuclear war risks global catastrophe, destructive to life as well as social and political stability
Robuck 09 ( Alan, January 6, Encyclopedia of the Earth, Nuclear Winter,.
http://www.eoearth.org/article/Nuclear_winter)
The work on nuclear winter in the 1980's, and the realization that both direct and indirect effects of nuclear war would be a
global catastrophe, led to the end of arms race and the end of the Cold War. In response to the comment "In the 1980s, you
warned about the unprecedented dangers of nuclear weapons and took very daring steps to reverse the arms race," in an
interview in 2000, Mikhail Gorbachev said "Models made by Russian and American scientists showed that a nuclear war
would result in a nuclear winter that would be extremely destructive to all life on Earth; the knowledge of that was a great
stimulus to us, to people of honor and morality, to act in that situation."[1]
Since the 1980's, the number of nuclear weapons in the world has decreased to 1/3 of the peak number of more than 70,000.
The consequences of regional-scale nuclear conflicts are unexpectedly large, with the potential to become global
catastrophes. The combination of nuclear proliferation, political instability, and urban demographics may constitute one of
the greatest dangers to the stability of society since the dawn of humans. The current and projected American and Russian
nuclear arsenals can still produce nuclear winter. Only nuclear disarmament will prevent the possibility of a nuclear
environmental catastrophe.

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War increases disease spread, medical care and reduce carrying capacity
Carins 2009 John, Asian J. Exp. Sci., Vol. 23, No. 1, 2009; 7-17
Blood, Toil, Tears, and Sweat, John Cairns, Jr., Department of Biological Sciences, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and
State University, http://www.johncairns.net/Papers/2%20Blood%20Toil%20Tears.pdf
In a turbulent world, much can go wrong; however, the probability of disasters can be markedly reduced if a global
consensus determines to give nuclear war, pandemic diseases, and more climate tipping points a priority status. In an era of
increasing resource scarcity, nations will be tempted to use military force to acquire resources necessary to continue a
cornucopian lifestyle. This approach will deprive other nations of resources and increase the probability of resource wars.
Wars are already producing millions of refugees who will diminish the per capita resources of the nation to which they flee.
If the refugees spread widely through the host country, they will inevitability increase the probability of transmitting
diseases. If they accumulate in refugee camps without potable water, sanitary facilities, housing, food, and medical
assistance, disease transmission will be rampant. Such
camps could also become epicenters from which pandemic diseases spread globally.
Nuclear wars will almost certainly decrease Earths carrying capacity for humans, both regionally and globally. Health care
systems and medical systems that are already strained might well collapse completely with quite foreseeable consequences.
Even if nuclear war, pandemic diseases, and climate change tipping points are avoided, sustainable use of the planet will
not be possible if the human population is not first substantially
reduced and then stabilized well within Earths carrying capacity. Resource wars, starvation, disease, and substantial
ecological overshoot provide persuasive evidence that humankind is not even close to achieving sustainable use of the
planet. Nuclear wars, pandemic diseases, and excessive greenhouse gas emissions (i.e., beyond Earths assimilative
capacity) make achieving sustainability ever more difficult.

Nuclear winter causes extinction

The Columbia Missourian 6/11/2009 Steven Starr seeks to revolutionize views on nuclear weapons
BY Darren Milosevich http://www.columbiamissourian.com/stories/2009/06/11/steven-starr-nuclear-expert/
Nuclear winter is a term used to describe the dramatic global climate change that could follow a nuclear war. According to
Starrs Web site, a hypothetical nuclear war between India and Pakistan fought with 100 Hiroshima-sized nuclear weapons
would throw 5 million tons of smoke into the stratosphere, enough to block 10 percent of the sun's rays from reaching the
northern hemisphere shortening growing seasons and causing the lowest temperatures in 1,000 years. After 10 years, 40
percent of that smoke would still be in the stratosphere. The average nuclear warhead today is between eight and 50 times
more powerful than the 15 kiloton bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Nuclear war is essentially suicide for humanity, Starr
said.

A nuclear war between just two countries using less than 1% of the worlds nuclear arsenal
results in rapid and long -lasting cooling
Robock Et. Al. 2007 (Alan Robock, Professor in the Department of Environmental Sciences at Rutgers University,
Brian Toon and Charles Bardeen, University of Colorado, Richard Turco, UCLA, Georgiy Stenchikov, Rutgers
University, and Luke Oman, Johns Hopkins University, Climate Effects of a Regional Nuclear Conflict, IPRC Climate,
2007. <http://climate.envsci.rutgers.edu/pdf/iprc_climate_NW.pdf.>)
With support from the National Science Foundation, we studied the following scenario: A nuclear war between two
countries in which each country is using 50 Hiroshima -size (15 kilotons) weapons to attack the others most populated
urban areas with populations that could exceed 10 million. These 100 bombs represent less than 0.03% of the
explosive power of the current nuclear arsenal worldwide. In our 100 - weapon scenario, we estimate that five megatons of smoke
would result from urban firestorms rising into the upper troposphere due to pyro -convection. Direct fatalities due to fire and smoke would be
comparable to those worldwide in World War II. Furthermore, the megacities exposed to atmospheric fallout of long -lived radionuclides would likely
have to be abandoned indefinitely, with severe national and international implications. We also anticipate substantial perturbations of

global ozone. To investigate the climate response to this massive smoke injection, we conducted simulations with a
state -of -the -art general circulation model, ModelE from the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, which
includes a module to calculate the transport and removal of aerosol particles. Our experience with this model shows it
simulates realistically the climate response to large volcanic eruptions. Article continues. In the model, the black carbon
particles in the aerosol layer are heated by absorption of shortwave radiation. This heating induces vertical motions
and the aerosols are lofted close to the top of the stratosphere, much higher than is typical of weakly absorbing
volcanic sulfate aerosols. As a result, the carbon aerosols have a very long residence time and continue to affect
surface climate for more than a decade. The mass e -folding time for the smoke is six years; for typical volcanic eruptions, one year; and
for tropospheric aerosols, one week. The global -average surface shortwave radiation in response to the aerosols decreases by up to 15 W/m2
(Figure 1). Five years after the initial smoke injection, the global -average perturbation is still at 7 W/m2. This exceeds the maximum global

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-average surface cooling of 4 W/m2 following the 1991 Mt. Pinatubo volcanic eruption, the largest of the 20th century. The cooling is also greater
than the global average increase of 1.5 W/m2 at the surface or 4 W/m2 at the tropopause for a doubling of atmospheric CO2. The smoke cloud

lowers surface temperature significantly (Figure 1). (Stratospheric temperatures are also severely perturbed.) A global
average surface cooling of 1.25C persists for years. After a decade, the cooling is still 0.5C (Figure 1). The
temperature changes are largest over land. article continuesPrecipitation recovers faster than temperature, but both lag the forcing.
For comparison, the global average net surface -shortwave forcing from a model simulation of the 1991 Mt. Pinatubo eruption is shown. 18 IPRC
Climate, vol. 7, no. 1, 2007 most of the grain -growing regions, are several degrees cooler. As in the case with the earlier nuclear winter

calculations, large climatic effects are felt in regions far removed from the countries involved in the conflict. As a result
of Earths surface cooling, evapotranspiration slows and the global hydrological cycle is weakened, with global
precipitation reduced by about 10% (Figure 1). Although rainfall decreases mostly in the Intertropical Convergence Zone, as observed after
the 1991 Pinatubo eruption, large areas on the continents are also affected, including the Asian summer monsoon. The temperature,
precipitation, and insolation changes would affect agriculture greatly. For example, the growing season in some
regions of North America and Europe are shortened by 10 to 20 days. Such a reduction in growing season may
completely eliminate crops that have insufficient time to reach maturity. And these reductions continue for several
years. To put the results in a larger historical context, the greatest volcanic eruption of the past 500 years, the 1815 Tambora eruption in Indonesia,
resulted in a Year Without a Summer in 1816 in the Northern Hemisphere. Killing frosts disrupted agriculture throughout the summer in New
England and led to significant emigration. In Europe, the wet cold summer caused a widespread harvest failure, resulting in

famines and economic collapse. That climatic disruption only lasted one year. Because the black carbon aerosols in
the current nuclear simulation are lofted into the upper stratosphere where their residence time is close to a decade,
the climatic effects of the fivemegaton case are significantly greater and more persistent than those following the
Tambora eruption.
Nuclear war triggers rapid climate cooling and global devastation
Davidson 06 (Keay Davidson, Chronicle Science Writer, Small Nuclear War Could Severely Cool the Planet. San
Francisco Chronicle 12 Dec. 2006. <http://www.sfgate.com/cgi -bin/article/article?f
-/c/a/2006/12/12/MNGE5MTRI31.DTL>).
A regional nuclear war between Third World nations could trigger planetwide cooling that would likely ravage
agriculture and kill millions of people, scientists reported Monday. For many years, Western military scientists and
strategists have assumed that the damage from small -scale regional nuclear wars would be limited to continents on
which they occurred. Now, in a revamping of the "nuclear winter" debate of the 1980s, new and far more sophisticated
computer models show that even these little nuclear wars could create global devastation. Scientists, reporting their
findings at the American Geophysical Conference in San Francisco, said vast urban firestorms ignited by war would
send thick, dark clouds into the upper atmosphere, blocking the sun's rays and cooling much of the planet, with severe
climatic and agricultural results. The soot might remain in the upper atmosphere for up to a decade. "All hell would
break loose," said Prof. Richard Turco of UCLA's department of atmospheric and ocean sciences. In some places, the
planet could cool more than it did during the so -called Little Ice Age of the 17th century, when glaciers advanced over
much of northern Europe, said Alan Robock of Rutgers University, speaking Monday at a news conference at the
Moscone Center, where the conference is being held this week. "It would be very difficult for agriculture," he said. The scientists'
research is a new twist on the nuclear winter hypothesis, which attracted attention in the early 1980s. Back then, planetary scientist Carl Sagan and
others warned that a much larger nuclear war between the United States and Soviet Union would lead to extensive atmospheric cooling and
agricultural failure on a much greater scale and kill far more people. The hypothesis sparked widespread scientific and political controversy. It

faded from public attention toward the end of the Cold War, after which many U.S. strategists concluded that major
nuclear wars that threatened all civilization were improbable. But that judgment was premature, because of the recent
emergence of small - and medium -sized nations that either have or are trying to develop nuclear weapons, the
scientists warned. They said that worldwide, a regional nuclear war could kill tens of millions of people, partly because
even a small number of nuclear blasts could generate enough smoke to trigger a global climate change. The nuclear
explosions and smoke could also damage the ozone layer in the upper atmosphere, they said. That layer shields Earth's surface from cancer
-causing radiation from the sun. Initially, about 20 percent of the soot would be washed out of the atmosphere by rainfall, said Turco, who was one
of the pioneers of the original nuclear winter hypothesis. However, much of the rest of the soot would rise skyward and warm as it was baked by the
sun. That warming would make the soot more buoyant and force it even higher into the sky until it penetrated the stratosphere - - just above the tops
of thunderclouds - - where high -speed winds would quickly spread the soot throughout the atmosphere, Turco and his colleagues said. The climatic
effects of the regional nuclear wars were computer -modeled by Turco and colleagues including another veteran nuclear winter theorist, Owen Brian
Toon, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Colorado; his student colleague, Charles Bardeen; Robock; scientist Georgi Stenchikov, also of
Rutgers; and Luke Oman of Johns Hopkins University. Alluding to the spread of nuclear weapons to medium -sized nations such as North Korea,
Turco said: "The only way to solve this problem is through diplomacy. Force won't do it. We need to be looking forward to complete disarmament of
nuclear weapons."

Even a minor terrorist attack with nuclear weapons could plunge the planet into an
unprecedented nuclear winter
CNN News 06 (CNN News citing a report by the Geophusical Union in San Francisco, 12 Dec. 2006. <
http://www.abcnews.go.com/Technology/Story?id -2720173&page -1>)

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The decline of the Soviet Union may have left many Americans feeling safer from nuclear war, but a disturbing new
study argues that an attack by terrorists sponsored by a small nuclear state could be just as lethal. Nuclear wasteland
Scientists say that even a small nuclear war, between small countries or carried out by terrorists could have global
repercussions. Such an attack "could generate casualties comparable to those once predicted for a full -scale nuclear
exchange in a superpower conflict," says the report, presented Monday during the fall meeting of the American
Geophysical Union in San Francisco. Furthermore, Americans should not think of themselves as isolated from
potential small -scale, regional nuclear conflicts in such distant areas as the Middle East or Asia. The impact of such an
encounter would be global, probably plunging the planet into a "nuclear winter" and blanketing wide areas of the world
with radioactive fallout. The report, which cautions that there are many uncertainties in its own conclusions, was
produced by a team of scientists who have been long active in studying the consequences of nuclear war. The study
assumes that weapons used by terrorists, or smaller states, would be much smaller than those available to the
superpowers, probably on the scale of those dropped on Japan during World War II. But the results would be
catastrophic because the weapons would most likely be targeted at major cities. "The current combination of nuclear
proliferation, political instability, and urban demographics forms perhaps the greatest danger to the stability of society
since the dawn of humanity," Brian Toon of the University of Colorado in Boulder told a press conference prior to the
presentation. The number of countries known to have nuclear weapons has grown to eight, but as many as 40 have some fissionable material
and could produce bombs fairly quickly, the scientists said, basing their conclusions partly on studies by the National Academy of Sciences, the
Department of Defense, and their own years -long research. Toon said Japan, for example, has enough nuclear material on hand to produce 20,000
weapons, and "most think they could do it in weeks." Many of the conclusions are based on the consequences of two nations, each with 50 bombs,
delivering their full complement of weapons on each other. That's not a hypothetical figure, they suggested, because both India and Pakistan are
believed to have at least that many weapons. So what would happen if they had at it? About 20 million persons in that area would die,

the scientists concluded. But the weapons would send up such a plume of smoke that the upper atmosphere would
become opaque, blocking out so much solar radiation that temperatures around the world would plummet. "You
would have a global climate change unprecedented in human history," said Alan Robock, associated director of
the Center for Environmental Prediction at Rutgers Cook College and a member of the research team. "It would
instantaneously be colder than the little ice age." There would be shorter growing seasons, less rain, less sun,
and starvation around the world.
Small nuclear skirmishes cause rapid global cooling and famine for billions
Oman Et. Al. 07 (G. Oman, 1Department of Environmental Sciences Rutgers University, A. Robock1, 1Department of Environmental Sciences
Rutgers University, L. Stenchikov1, 1Department of Environmental Sciences Rutgers University, O. B. Toon2, 2Department of Atmospheric and
Oceanic Sciences and Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics University of Colorado, C. Bardeen2, 2Department of Atmospheric and
Oceanic Sciences and Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics University of Colorado and R. P. Turco3, 3Department of Atmospheric and
Oceanic Sciences University of California, Climatic consequences of regional nuclear conflicts Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics. Published: 19
April 2007. < http://www.atmos -chem -phys.net/7/2003/2007/acp -7 -2003 -2007.pdf.>)

We use a modern climate model and new estimates of smoke generated by fires in contemporary cities to calculate the
response of the climate system to a regional nuclear war between emerging third world nuclear powers using 100
Hiroshima -size bombs (less than 0.03% of the explosive yield of the current global nuclear arsenal) on cities in the
subtropics. We find significant cooling and reductions of precipitation lasting years, which would impact the global food
supply. The climate changes are large and longlasting because the fuel loadings in modern cities are quite high and
the subtropical solar insolation heats the resulting smoke cloud and lofts it into the high stratosphere, where removal
mechanisms are slow. While the climate changes are less dramatic than found in previous nuclear winter simulations
of a massive nuclear exchange between the superpowers, because less smoke is emitted, the changes are more long
-lasting because the older models did not adequately represent the stratospheric plume rise.
Introduction The casualties from the direct effects of blast, radioactivity, and fires resulting from the massive use of
nuclear weapons by the superpowers would be so catastrophic that we avoided such a tragedy for the first four
decades after the invention of nuclear weapons. The realization, based on research conducted jointly by Western and
Soviet scientists (Crutzen and Birks, 1982; Aleksandrov and Stenchikov, 1983; Turco et al., 1983, 1990; Robock, 1984;
Pittock et al., 1986; Harwell and Hutchinson, 1986; Sagan and Turco, 1990), that the climatic consequences, and
indirect effects of the collapse of society, would be so severe that the ensuing nuclear winter would produce famine
for billions of people far from the tar - Correspondence to: A. Robock ([email protected]) get zones, may
have been an important factor in the end of the arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union (Robock,
1989). article continuesA global average surface cooling of 1.25 C persists for years, and after a decade the
cooling is still 0.5 C (Fig. 3). The temperature changes are largest over land. A map of the temperature change for the
Northern Hemisphere summer one year after the smoke injection is shown in Fig. 5. A cooling of several degrees
occurs over large areas of North America and Eurasia, including most of the grain -growing regions. As in the case with
nuclear winter calculations, large climatic effects would occur in regions far removed from the target areas or the
countries involved in the conflict. Northern Hemisphere winter temperature changes are also large (Fig. 6). Snow
feedbacks enhance and prolong the climate response, as seen in areas of snow and sea ice changes - 22 - 486 487
Figure 4. article continues As a result of the cooling of the Earths surface, evapotranspiration is reduced and the

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global hydrological cycle is weakened. The resulting global precipitation is reduced by about 10% (Fig. 3). Figure 8
shows maps of precipitation change for the Northern Hemisphere summer one year after the smoke injection.
Smoke from a nuclear exchange leads to severe agricultural shifts as temperatures plummet
below freezing across the northern hemisphere
Robock et. Al. 2007 (Alan Robock, Department of Environmental Sciences, Rutgers University, Luke Oman,
Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Johns Hopkins University, and Georgiy L. Stenchikov, Department of
Environmental Sciences, Rutgers University, NUCLEAR WINTER REVISITED WITH A MODERN CLIMATE MODEL
AND CURRENT NUCLEAR ARSENALS: STILL CATASTROPHIC CONSEQUENCES Journal of Geophysical
Research Atmosphere, Apr. 2007, < http://www.envsci.rutgers.edu/~gera/nwinter/nw6accepted.pdf>)
Twenty years ago, the results of climate model simulations of the response to smoke and dust from a massive nuclear
exchange between the superpowers could be summarized as nuclear winter, with rapid temperature, precipitation,
and insolation drops at the surface that would threaten global agriculture for at least a year. The global nuclear arsenal
has fallen by a factor of three since then, but there has been an expansion of the number of nuclear weapons states,
with additional states trying to develop nuclear arsenals. We use a modern climate model to re -examine the climate
response to a range of nuclear wars, producing 50 and 150 Tg of smoke, using moderate, and large portions of the
current global arsenal, and find that there would be significant climatic responses to all the scenarios.article
continuesThe effects of the smoke cloud on surface temperature are extremely large (Fig. 2). Stratospheric
temperatures are also severely perturbed (Fig. 3). A global average surface cooling of 7C to 8C persists for years,
and after a decade the cooling is still 4C (Fig. 2). Considering that the global average cooling at the depth of the last
ice age 18,000 yr ago was about 5C, this would be a climate change unprecedented in speed and amplitude in the
history of the human race. The temperature changes are largest over land. Maps of the temperature changes for the
Northern Hemisphere summers for the year of smoke injection (Year 0) and the next year (Year 1) are shown in Fig. 4.
Cooling of more than 20C occurs over large areas of North America and of more than 30C over much of Eurasia,
including all agricultural regions. There are also large temperature changes in the tropics and over Southern
Hemisphere continents. Large climatic effects would occur in regions far removed from the target areas or the
countries involved in the conflict. As examples of the actual temperature changes in important grain -growing regions,
we have plotted the time series of daily minimum air temperature for grid points in Iowa, United States, at 42N,
95W, and in Ukraine at 50N, 30E (Fig. 5). For both locations (shown in Fig. 4), minimum temperatures rapidly
plummet below freezing and stay there for more than a year. In Ukraine, they stay below freezing for more
than two years. Clearly, this would have agricultural implications. As a result of the cooling of the Earths surface,
evapotranspiration is reduced and the global hydrological cycle is weakened. In addition, Northern Hemisphere
summer monsoon circulations collapse, because the driving continent -ocean temperature gradient does not develop.
The resulting global precipitation is reduced by about 45%.
A nuclear winter destroys civilizations biological support systems and imminent extinction
Ehrlich Et. Al. 1983 (Ehrlich PR, Harte J, Harwell MA, Raven PH, Sagan C, Woodwell GM, Berry J, Ayensu ES,
Ehrlich AH, Eisner T, Long -term biological consequences of nuclear war Pub Med, <
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6658451?ordinalpos -1&itool
-EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum>)
Subfreezing temperatures, low light levels, and high doses of ionizing and ultraviolet radiation extending for many
months after a large -scale nuclear war could destroy the biological support systems of civilization, at least in the
Northern Hemisphere. Productivity in natural and agricultural ecosystems could be severely restricted for a year or
more. Postwar survivors would face starvation as well as freezing conditions in the dark and be exposed to near -lethal
doses of radiation. If, as now seems possible, the Southern Hemisphere were affected also, global disruption of the
biosphere could ensue. In any event, there would be severe consequences, even in the areas not affected directly,
because of the interdependence of the world economy. In either case the extinction of a large fraction of the Earth's
animals, plants, and microorganisms seems possible. The population size of Homo sapiens conceivably could be
reduced to prehistoric levels or below, and extinction of the human species itself cannot be excluded.
New studies show that nuclear winter impacts will eliminate substantial agricultural growth
for years
Robock et. Al. 2007 (Alan Robock, Department of Environmental Sciences, Rutgers University, Luke Oman,
Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Johns Hopkins University, and Georgiy L. Stenchikov, Department of
Environmental Sciences, Rutgers University, NUCLEAR WINTER REVISITED WITH A MODERN CLIMATE MODEL
AND CURRENT NUCLEAR ARSENALS: STILL CATASTROPHIC CONSEQUENCES Journal of Geophysical
Research Atmosphere, Apr. 2007, < http://www.envsci.rutgers.edu/~gera/nwinter/nw6accepted.pdf>)

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The amplitude of the climate changes from the 5 Tg, 50 Tg and 150 Tg cases are compared to those from global
warming of the past century in Fig. 8 and climate change of the past 1000 yr in Fig. 9. In both cases it is clear that all
cases would produce unprecedented long lasting climate change. The 50 Tg and 150 Tg cases produce cooling as
large or larger than that experienced 18,000 yr ago during the coldest period of the last Ice Age. Harwell and
Hutchinson [1986] clearly described the impacts of nuclear winter. They assumed that there would be no food
production around the world for one year and concluded that most of the people on the planet would run out of food
and starve to death by then. Our results show that this period of no food production needs to be extended by many
years, making the impacts of nuclear winter even worse than previously thought. Agriculture would be affected by
many factors, including temperature changes, precipitation changes, and changes in insolation [e.g., Robock et al.,
1993; Maytn et al., 1995]. As an example, Fig. 10 shows changes in the length of the freeze-free growing season for
the third full growing seasons in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres. Such large reductions in growing season
would completely eliminate crops that have insufficient time to reach maturity. Also, global ozone loss is likely [Toon et
al., 2006], with effects on downward ultraviolet radiation [Vogelmann et al., 1992] and atmospheric circulation. Further
analysis of these and other effects, which is beyond the scope of this paper, is needed.

WAR INCREASES INFECTIOUS DISEASES

David P. Fidler, Associate Professor of Law, Indiana University School of Law, Minnesota Law Review,
April, 1997, 81 Minn. L. Rev. 771, p. 800-1
Historically, war has been conducive to infectious diseases by creating conditions ripe for outbreaks.
While the prospects for traditional interstate war are probably smaller in the post-Cold War era, social
unrest and civil war are currently prominent issues in international relations. With civil unrest and war
come the breakdown of political authority, public health services and facilities, and large movements of
refugees that generate a rich environment for infectious diseases. Infectious diseases do not require,
however, actual military conflict to cause epidemics in unsettled countries. For example, the harsh
economic and social transitions to democracy and capitalism underway in the newly independent states
of the former Soviet Union triggered a diptheria epidemic that, according to WHO, threatened to spin
out of control into a global public health emergency.

WAR INCREASES INFECTIOUS DISEASE SPREAD

David P. Fidler, Associate Professor of Law, Indiana University School of Law, American University
International Law Review, 1998, 14 Am. U. Int'l L. Rev. 1, p. 16
Two defining features of the international system - trade and war - have long been identified as factors
in the spread of infectious diseases. It is important to remember, however, that trade and war spread
microbes long before the modern international system developed, as evidenced by the ravages
diseases inflicted on the Athenian and Roman empires. William McNeill argued, for example, that Asia,
Europe, and the Middle East became essentially one germ pool through trade and travel before the
modern European state system emerged. Trade and war between sovereign states can be seen merely
as a continuation of patterns begun in ancient times. The question becomes whether there were any
features of the international system that amplified the disease-spreading potential of trade and war.

NUCLEAR WAR WOULD INCREASE IMMUNE SYSTEM

DEFICIENCY AND CREATE DANGERS OF NEW AND DEADLY
DISEASES
Carl Sagan, B.A., B.S., and PhD University of Chicago, former professor of biology and genetics at
Stanford and professor of astronomy and astro-physics at Harvard, former Director of the Laboratory for
Planetary Studies at Cornell, two-time winner of the NASA medal for scientific achievement, Peabody
award recipient, and Pulitzer prize winning author, 1984 (Foreign Affairs, Nuclear War and Climatic
Catastrophe p. Lexis)
Each of these factors, taken separately, may carry serious consequences for the global ecosystem: their
interactions may be much more dire still. Extremely worrisome is the possibility of poorly underatood or
as yet entirely uncontemplated synergisms (where the net consequences of two or more assaults on the
environment are much more than the sum of the component parts). For example, more than 100 rads
(and possibly more than 200 rads) of external and ingested ionizing radiation is likely to be delivered in
a very large nuclear war to all plants, animals and unprotected humans in densely populated regions of

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northern mid-latitudes. After the soot and dust clear, there can, for such wars, be a 200 to 400 percent
increment in the solar ultraviolet flux that reaches the ground, with an increase of many orders of
magnitude in the more dangerous shorter-wavelength radiation. Together, these radiation assaults are
likely to suppress the immune systems of humans and other species, making them more vulnerable to
disease. At the same time, the high ambient-radiation fluxes are likely to produce, through mutation,
new varieties of microorganisms, some of which might become pathogenic. The preferential radiation
sensitivity of birds and other insect predators would enhance the proliferation of herbivorous and
pathogen-carrying insects. Carried by vectors with high radiation tolerance, it seems possible that
epidemics and global pandemics would propagate with no hope of effective mitigation by medical care,
even with reduced population sizes and greatly restricted human mobility. Plants, weakened by low
temperatures and low light levels, and other animals would likewise be vulnerable to preexisting and
newly arisen pathogens.

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**Resource Wars**
Resource wars cause proliferation of WMDs and major power nuclear war
Wooldridge, free lance writer, once lectured at Cornell University, 2009
(Frosty, Humanity galloping toward its greatest crisis in the 21st century

http://www.australia.to/index.php?
option=com_content&view=article&id=10042:humanity-galloping-toward-its-greatest-crisis-in-the-21st-century&catid=125:frosty-wooldridge&Itemid=244

It is clear that most politicians and most citizens do not recognize that returning to more of the same is a recipe for
promoting the first collapse of a global civilization. The required changes in energy technology, which would benefit not
only the environment but also national security, public health, and the economy, would demand a World War II type
mobilization -- and even that might not prevent a global climate disaster. Without transitioning away from use of fossil
fuels, humanity will move further into an era of resource wars (remember, Africom has been added to the Pentagons
structure -- and China has noticed), clearly with intent to protect US interests in petroleum reserves. The
consequences of more resource wars, many likely triggered over water supplies stressed by climate disruption, are
likely to include increased unrest in poor nations, a proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, widening inequity
within and between nations, and in the worst (and not unlikely) case, a nuclear war ending civilization.

Resource scarcity causes global war and genocide

Klare, professor of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College,
2006
(Michael, Mar 6 2006, The coming resource wars http://www.energybulletin.net/node/13605)
It's official: the era of resource wars is upon us. In a major London address, British Defense Secretary John Reid
warned that global climate change and dwindling natural resources are combining to increase the likelihood of violent
conflict over land, water and energy. Climate change, he indicated, will make scarce resources, clean water, viable
agricultural land even scarcerand this will make the emergence of violent conflict more rather than less likely.
Although not unprecedented, Reids prediction of an upsurge in resource conflict is significant both because of his
senior rank and the vehemence of his remarks. The blunt truth is that the lack of water and agricultural land is a
significant contributory factor to the tragic conflict we see unfolding in Darfur, he declared. We should see this as a
warning sign. Resource conflicts of this type are most likely to arise in the developing world, Reid indicated, but the
more advanced and affluent countries are not likely to be spared the damaging and destabilizing effects of global
climate change. With sea levels rising, water and energy becoming increasingly scarce and prime agricultural lands
turning into deserts, internecine warfare over access to vital resources will become a global phenomenon. Reids
speech, delivered at the prestigious Chatham House in London (Britains equivalent of the Council on Foreign
Relations), is but the most recent expression of a growing trend in strategic circles to view environmental and resource
effectsrather than political orientation and ideologyas the most potent source of armed conflict in the decades to
come. With the world population rising, global consumption rates soaring, energy supplies rapidly disappearing and
climate change eradicating valuable farmland, the stage is being set for persistent and worldwide struggles over vital
resources. Religious and political strife will not disappear in this scenario, but rather will be channeled into contests
over valuable sources of water, food and energy.

Resource wars lead to extinction

Moore, member of many ornithological organizations, 2008
(Stan, March 29, Peak Oil and Economic Growth: Where Do We Go From Here?
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/3759)
The other consideration that is NEVER mentioned in this regard is the highly disproportionate DISTRIBUTION OF
WEALTH amongst all of humanity among and between nations. There is plenty of wealth to go around if there was
equitable distribution of wealth. If mankind does not change its perception of greed as ecologically and economically
unhealthy then not only will the earth's planetary life support system ultimately fail, but violence, wars, (especially
resource wars) threaten all of humanity, but the end result is tragedy or even extinction of the human species itself as
an unsustainable irruptive species with infinite resource "needs" on a finite planet.

Oil wars lead to major power nuclear war and extinction

Klare, professor of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College,
2008
(Michael, The rise of the new energy world order, http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/JD17Dj04.html)

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A growing risk of conflict. Throughout history, major shifts in power have normally been
accompanied by violence - in some cases, protracted violent upheavals. Either states at the
pinnacle of power have struggled to prevent the loss of their privileged status, or challengers
have fought to topple those at the top of the heap. Will that happen now? Will energy-deficit
states launch campaigns to wrest the oil and gas reserves of surplus states from their control
- the George W Bush administration's war in Iraq might already be thought of as one such attempt or
to eliminate competitors among their deficit-state rivals? The high costs and risks of modern warfare
are well known and there is a widespread perception that energy problems can best be solved
through economic means, not military ones. Nevertheless, the major powers are employing
military means in their efforts to gain advantage in the global struggle for energy, and no one
should be deluded on the subject. These endeavors could easily enough lead to unintended
escalation and conflict. One conspicuous use of military means in the pursuit of energy is
obviously the regular transfer of arms and military-support services by the major energy-importing
states to their principal suppliers. Both the United States and China, for example, have stepped up
their deliveries of arms and equipment to oil-producing states like Angola, Nigeria and Sudan in
Africa and, in the Caspian Sea basin, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. The United States
has placed particular emphasis on suppressing the armed insurgency in the vital Niger Delta region of
Nigeria, where most of the country's oil is produced; Beijing has emphasized arms aid to Sudan,
where Chinese-led oil operations are threatened by insurgencies in both the South and Darfur.
Russia is also using arms transfers as an instrument in its efforts to gain influence in the major
oil- and gas-producing regions of the Caspian Sea basin and the Persian Gulf. Its urge is not to
procure energy for its own use, but to dominate the flow of energy to others. In particular, Moscow
seeks a monopoly on the transportation of Central Asian gas to Europe via Gazprom's vast pipeline
network; it also wants to tap into Iran's mammoth gas fields, further cementing Russia's control over
the trade in natural gas. The danger, of course, is that such endeavors, multiplied over time, will
provoke regional arms races, exacerbate regional tensions and increase the danger of greatpower involvement in any local conflicts that erupt. History has all too many examples of such
miscalculations leading to wars that spiral out of control. Think of the years leading up to World War I.
In fact, Central Asia and the Caspian today, with their multiple ethnic disorders and great-power
rivalries, bear more than a glancing resemblance to the Balkans in the years leading up to
1914. What this adds up to is simple and sobering: the end of the world as you've known it. In the
new, energy-centric world we have all now entered, the price of oil will dominate our lives and power
will reside in the hands of those who control its global distribution.

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**Water Wars**
Water wars escalate and go nuclear ends in extinction
Hoffman, June 18, 2009
(W. T., Reading about dryness thats NOT dry reading artist and musician and avid reader
http://www.amazon.com/Heart-Dryness-Bushmen-Permanent-Drought/dp/0802715583)
Water wars must be on all our minds. It was even the premise of the last 007 film, "Quantum of Solace". Faced with a
future where global warming, desertification, global banking conglomerates buying up water rights, and forced
relocation paints a picture of a dystopian society where water becomes the new oil, (since OIL is the now the new
GOLD), we all need to wonder what our options are. Move humanity to Mars? Not likely. Mass extinction, or nuclear
wars waged by rogue states with limited nuclear capability? Let's hope not. Yet by 2030, half the world could be facing
severe water shortages, so its time to face the problem, and get a handle on it NOW.

Water wars are likely and lead to mass migration, unsustainable human living, and worldwide conflict
Levitt, MSN Environmental writer, 2009
(Tom, Water Wars: How the world is facing a critical shortage http://environment.uk.msn.com/climatechange/article.aspx?cp-documentid=9259609)
As water shortages and access to clean water become more critical so the potential for conflicts is becoming greater.
"If the wars of the 20th century were fought over oil, the wars of this century will be fought over water." The World Bank
It is often women and children who are responsible for collecting water everyday International cooperation on water is
generally good. In many cases it has to be with 13 river basins around the world shared by five or more countries,
according to the UN. But that might change. Just because there have not been outbreaks of war does not mean that
we will not see any in the future, said Northover. The Pacific Institute has been tracking water conflicts for over 20
years. Over a two-year period from 2006-7 it documented nine flashpoints. These included; 12 deaths in Ethiopia
after clashes between farmers over competition for water; Tamil Tiger rebels cut the water supply to government-held
villages in north-eastern Sri Lanka; Hezbollah rockets damaged a wastewater treatment plant in Israel, the Lebanese
government claim their facilities along the Litani River have been damaged in Israeli attacks. The Future As both the
world and urban populations continue to rise, the need for more efficient use of water, particularly in agriculture,
becomes ever pressing. However, even with such improvements, some areas of the world could still become
unsustainable for human living. It is the mass migration as a consequence of this that campaigners worry could fuel
future conflicts.

The brink is miniscule one conflict over water would unleash a global nuclear war
Weiner, Prof at Princeton Department of Molecular Biology, 1990
(Johnathan, The Next 100 Years: Shaping the Fate of Our Living Earth, p. 214)
If we do not destroy ourselves with the A-Bomb and the H-Bomb, then we may destroy ourselves with the C-Bomb ,
the change Bomb. And in a world as interlinked as ours, one explosion may lead to the other. Already in the Middle
East, from Northern Africa to the Persian Gulf and from the Nile to the Euphrates, tensions over dwindling water
supplies and rising populations are reaching what many experts describe as a flashpoint. A climate shift in that single
battle-scarred nexus might trigger international tensions that will unleash some of the 60,000 nuclear warheads the
world has stockpiled since Trinity.

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**Warming**
Warming will cause escalatory nuclear wars.
Harris and Townsend 4
[Harris, Paul and Townsend, Mark - The Observer - D/L 7,12,09 http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2004/feb/22/usnews.theobserver - 2/22/09]

Climate change over the next 20 years could result in a global catastrophe costing millions of lives in
wars and natural disasters. A secret report, suppressed by US defence chiefs and obtained by The
Observer, warns that major European cities will be sunk beneath rising seas as Britain is plunged into a
'Siberian' climate by 2020. Nuclear conflict, mega-droughts, famine and widespread rioting will erupt
across the world. The document predicts that abrupt climate change could bring the planet to the edge
of anarchy as countries develop a nuclear threat to defend and secure dwindling food, water and
energy supplies. The threat to global stability vastly eclipses that of terrorism, say the few experts privy
to its contents.
Runaway warming leads to extinction.
Henderson 6

2009

[Bill, Environmental Scientist, Aug 19, Runaway Global Warming Denial, Accessed on July 13,
http://www.countercurrents.org/cc-henderson190806.htm]

The scientific debate about human induced global warming is over but policy makers - let alone the happily
shopping general public - still seem to not understand the scope of the impending tragedy. Global warming
isn't just warmer temperatures, heat waves, melting ice and threatened polar bears. Scientific understanding
increasingly points to runaway global warming leading to human extinction. If impossibly Draconian
security measures are not immediately put in place to keep further emissions of greenhouse gases out of
the atmosphere we are looking at the death of billions, the end of civilization as we know it and in all
probability the end of man's several million year old existence, along with the extinction of most flora
and fauna beloved to man in the world we share.
Warming causes planetary explosion
Chalko 1
[Tom, Apr 8, No second chance: can Earth explode as a result of Global Warming?
http://sci-e-research.com/geophysics.html ]

Imagine a gigantic object of 1220 km radius that slowly becomes smaller, lighter and gives off heat for
millions of years. What could it be? It can only be an object that generates heat by nuclear decay. The main
consequence of the above is that all heat generated inside Earth is of radionic origin. In other words, Earth in
its entirety can be considered a nuclear reactor fuelled by spontaneous fission of various isotopes in the
super-heavy inner core, as well as their daughter products of decay in the mantle and in the crust. Life on
Earth is possible only because of the efficient cooling of this reactor - a process that is limited
primarily by the atmosphere. Currently this cooling is responsible for a fine thermal balance between
the heat from the core reactor, the heat from the Sun and the radiation of heat into space, so that the
average temperature on Earth is about 13 deg C. Since the radionic heat is generated in the entire volume of
nuclear fuel (the entire Earth) and cooling can occur only at the surface, the hottest point of the planet should
be in the very center of the planet. This article examines the possibility of the "meltdown" of the central
part of the inner core due to the reduced cooling capacity of the atmosphere, which traps progressively
more solar heat due to the so-called greenhouse effect. Factors that can accelerate the meltdown process,
such as an increased solar activity coinciding with increased emissions of greenhouse gasses are discussed.
The most serious consequence of such a "meltdown" could be a gravity-buoyancy based segregation of

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unstable isotopes in the molten inner core. Such a segregation can "enrich" the nuclear fuel in the core
to the point of creating conditions for a chain reaction and a gigantic atomic explosion . Can Earth
become another "asteroid belt" in the Solar system?
Warming Destroys All Life On EarthRunaway Greenhouse Followed By Martian Deep Freeze
Brandenburg & Paxson (Phds) 99 [John & Monica, Dead Mars, Dying Earth, p. 232 //wndi03]
One can imagine a scenario for global catastrophe that runs similarly. If the human race adopted a mentality like the crew
aboard the ship Californian- as some urge, saying that both ozone hole and global warming will disappear if statistics are properly examined, and we
need do nothing about either- the following scenario could occur.
The ozone hole expands, driven by a monstrous synergy with global warming that puts more catalytic ice crystals into the stratosphere, but this affects the far north and south and not

The sea rise, the tropic roast but the media networks no longer cover it. The Amazon
rainforest becomes the Amazon desert. Oxygen levels fall, but profits rise for those who can provide it in
bottles.
An equatorial high pressure zone forms, forcing drought in central Africa and Brazil, the Nile dries up and the
monsoons fail, Then inevitably, at some unlucky point in time, a major unexpected event occurs a major volcanic
the major nations heartlands.

eruption, a sudden and dramatic shift in ocean circulation or a large asteroid impact ( those who think freakish accidents do not occur have paid little attention to life or mars), or a

Suddenly the gradual climb in global temperatures

goes on a mad excursion as the oceans warm and release large amounts of dissolved carbon dioxide from
their lower depths into the atmosphere. Oxygen levels go down precipitously as oxygen replaces lost oceanic
carbon dioxide. Asthma cases double and then double again. Now a third of the world fears breathing.. As the oceans dump carbon dioxide, the
greenhouse effect increases, which further warms, the oceans, causing them to dump even more carbon.
Because of the heat, plants die and burn in enormous fires which release more carbon dioxide, and the
oceans evaporate, adding more water vapor to the greenhouse. Soon, we are in what is termed a runaway
greenhouse effect, as happened to Venus eons ago. The last two surviving scientist inevitably argue, one telling the other, See! I told you the missing sink was in the
nuclear war that starts between Pakistan and India and escalates to involve China and Russia

ocean!

Earth, as we know it dies. After this Venusian excursion in temperatures, the oxygen disappears into the soil, the oceans evaporate and are lost and the dead earth
loses it ozone layer completely.
Earth is too far from the sun for it to be the second Venus for long. Its atmosphere is slowly lost- as is its water- because of ultraviolet bombardment breaking up all the molecules
apart from carbon dioxide. As the atmosphere becomes thin, the earth becomes colder. For a short while temperatures are nearly normal, but the ultraviolet sears and life that tries to
make a comeback. The carbon dioxide thins out to form a think veneer with a few wispy clouds and dust devils.

Earth becomes the second Mars- red,

desolate, with perhaps a few hardy microbes surviving.

Warming Causes The Earth To Go Death Star

Dr. Tom J. Chalko, MS, Engineering & PhD, Laser Holography, Global Warming: Can Earth
Explode? 2002, http://www.bioresonant.com/news.htm.
The real danger for our entire civilization comes not from slow climate changes, but from overheating the planetary interior.
Galileo discovered that Earth moves. Copernicus discovered that Earth moves around the Sun. In 2000 Tom Chalko, inspired by Desmarquet's report, discovered that the solid
nucleus of our planet is in principle a nuclear reactor and that our collective ignorance may cause it to
overheat and explode. The discovery has been published in June 2001 by the new scientific journal NUJournal.net. Polar ice caps melt not because the air there is
warmer than 0 deg Celsius, but because they are overheated from underneath. Volcanoes become active and erupt violently not because the Earth's interior "crystallizes", but
because the planetary nucleus is a nuclear fission reactor that needs COOLING. It seems that the currently adopted doctrine of a "crystalline inner core of Earth" is

more

dangerous for humanity than all weapons of mass destruction taken together,

because it prevents us from imagining, predicting

and preventing truly global disasters. In any nuclear reactor, the danger of overheating has to be recognized early. When external symptoms intensify it is usually too late to prevent
disaster. Do we have enough imagination, intelligence and integrity to comprehend the danger before the situation becomes irreversible? Did you see the figure above? It seems that

if we do not do anything today about Greenhouse Emissions that cause the entire atmosphere to trap more
Solar Heat, we may not survive the next decade. In a systematically under-cooled spherical core reactor the
cumulative cause-effect relationship is hyperbolic and leads to explosion . It seems that there will be no second chance... If you doubt
whether a planet can explode - you need to see a witness report of a planetary explosion in our Solar system. Plato (428-348 BC) reported that the explosion of the planet Phaeton
had been perceived by our ancestors on Earth to be as bright as lightning... * the first few months of 2002 were the WARMEST ever recorded on Earth. The trend continues. *
Huge parts of Antarctic and Arctic ice have already melted. Key Antarctic glaciers (Hektoria, Green and Evans for example) increased their melting rate 8 times in 3 years (between
2000 and 2003, Geophys. Res. Lett., 31, L18401). When glaciers begin to slide to the ocean, the sea level rise will cause a global planetary flood. * Volcanoes become active
under Arctic Ocean and in Antarctica * The Largest Volcanoes on Earth are losing their snow-caps * Oceans are warmer than ever. Their increased evaporation produces large
amount of clouds, rain and widespread flooding * In heated oceans all currents are severely disrupted * Mountain glaciers melt around the globe * The weather around the
globe becomes more violent every month What causes 8-fold increase in Antarctic glacier melting in just 3 years? Sun does not deliver 8 times the energy under the Antarctic ice
does it? Some scientists predict that effects of "global warming" will take many decades. Can they explain the increase of the melting rate of Antarctic glaciers 8 times in 3 years?
Overheating of the fission heated planetary interior can... The matter seems URGENT. Please forward this page (or the link to it) to ANY scientist or person of integrity whom you
know. Our ONLY chance seems to be to UNDERSTAND and PROVE to everyone what will happen if we do not change our attitude to atmospheric pollution. Avoid the mass media it seems that they are controlled by those who run the "economy" and are interested in keeping humanity misinformed to the greatest extent possible. To withhold, distort or otherwise
interfere with the truth about the Planetary Core is a Crime Against Humanity - one of the greatest crimes that man can commit.
Money cannot save the Planet. Only Understanding can. Focus on Understanding. It cannot be undone.

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Global Warming Extinction

David Stein, Science editor for The Guardian, 2006, Global Warming Xtra: Scientists warn about Antarctic melting,
http://www.agoracosmopolitan.com/home/Frontpage/2008/07/14/02463.html
Global Warming continues to be approaches by governments as a "luxury" item, rather than a matter of basic human survival. Humanity is
being taken to its destruction by a greed-driven elite. These elites, which include 'Big Oil' and other related interests, are intoxicated by "the high" of
pursuing ego-driven power, in a comparable manner to drug addicts who pursue an elusive "high", irrespective of the threat of pursuing that "high" poses
to their own basic survival, and the security of others. Global Warming and the pre-emptive war against Iraq are part of the same selfdestructive prism of a political-military-industrial complex, which is on a path of mass planetary destruction, backed by
techniques of mass-deception."The scientific debate about human induced global warming is over but policy makers - let alone the happily shopping
general public - still seem to not understand the scope of the impending tragedy. Global warming isn't just warmer temperatures, heat waves,
melting ice and threatened polar bears. Scientific understanding increasingly points to runaway global warming leading to
human extinction", reported Bill Henderson in CrossCurrents. If strict global environmental security measures are not immediately put
in place to keep further emissions of greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere we are looking at the death of billions, the end of
civilization as we know it and in all probability the end of humankind's several million year old existence, along with the
extinction of most flora and fauna beloved to man in the world we share.
US key to preventing warming extinction

Batten, 2007 [Kit, The Lessons of Bali: The U.S. Needs to Lead on Global Warming,
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2007/12/bali_lessons.html, December 17]
It is imperative that the United States play a more constructive role to help the community of nations promptly begin to reduce
their emissions of global warming pollution. This is essential if we hope to avoid the worst effects of global warming . In its last
year in office, the Bush administration must do more than get out of the way. And the U.S. Congress must pass comprehensive global warming legislation that
not only caps greenhouse gas emissions but also promotes low-carbon technologies, renewable electricity, greater efficiency, and more green job creation. This
way the United States can take the lead once again in this planetary effort. Our globe depends on it.

Warming leads to nuclear war and famine that kills hundreds of millions of people
Pfeiffer 2004
[Dale Allen, Geologist, Global Climate Change & Peak Oil, The Wilderness Publications, Online]
But the real importance of the report lies in the statement of probability and in the authors' recommendations to the
President and the National Security Council. While no statistical analysis of probability is given in the report as it has
been released (any such statistical analysis would most likely be classified), the authors state that the plausibility of

severe and rapid climate change is higher than most of the scientific community and perhaps all of
the political community is prepared for.6 They say that instead of asking whether this could happen,
we should be asking when this will happen . They conclude: It is quite plausible that within a decade the
evidence of an imminent abrupt climate shift may become clear and reliable.7 From such a shift , the report claims,
utterly appalling ecological consequences would follow. Europe and Eastern North America would
plunge into a mini-ice age, with weather patterns resembling present day Siberia. Violent storms
could wreak havoc around the globe. Coastal areas such as The Netherlands, New York, and the West coast of
North America could become uninhabitable, while most island nations could be completely
submerged. Lowlands like Bangladesh could be permanently swamped. While flooding would become the rule along
coastlines, mega-droughts could destroy the world's breadbaskets. The dust bowl could return to America's Midwest .
Famine and drought would result in a major drop in the planet's ability to sustain the present human
population. Access to water could become a major battleground hundreds of millions could die as
a result of famine and resource wars. More than 400 million people in subtropical regions will be put at grave
risk. There would be mass migrations of climate refugees, particularly to southern Europe and North America. Nuclear
arms proliferation in conjunction with resource wars could very well lead to nuclear wars.8 And none
of this takes into account the effects of global peak oil and the North American natural gas cliff. Not pretty.

Runaway warming leads to extinction

Pfeiffer 2004
[Dale Allen, Geologist, Global Climate Change & Peak Oil, The Wilderness Publications, Online]
The possibility of runaway global warming is not as distant a threat as we may wish. It is a threat which
worries some of the greatest minds living among us today. Stephen Hawking, physicist, best selling author of A
Brief History of Time, and claimant of the Cambridge University post once occupied by Sir Isaac Newton (the Lucasian

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Chair of Mathematics), has

been quoted as saying, "I am afraid the atmosphere might get hotter and hotter
until it will be like Venus with boiling sulfuric acid. "1 The renowned physicist was joined by other notables
such as former President Jimmy Carter, former news anchor Walter Cronkite, and former astronaut and Senator John
Glenn in drafting a letter to urge President Bush to develop a plan to reduce US emissions of greenhouse gases.2

Former British Environmental Minister Michael Meacher is also worried about the survival of the
human race due to global warming.
Global Warming causes extinction
Stein editor for The Guardian 06 (David, Science, 2006, Global Warming Xtra: Scientists warn
about Antarctic melting,
http://www.agoracosmopolitan.com/home/Frontpage/2008/07/14/02463.html)
Global Warming continues to be approaches by governments as a "luxury" item, rather than a matter of basic human survival.
Humanity is being taken to its destruction by a greed-driven elite. These elites, which include 'Big Oil' and other related interests, are
intoxicated by "the high" of pursuing ego-driven power, in a comparable manner to drug addicts who pursue an elusive "high", irrespective of
the threat of pursuing that "high" poses to their own basic survival, and the security of others. Global Warming and the preemptive war against Iraq are part of the same self-destructive prism of a political-military-industrial complex, which is on a
path of mass planetary destruction, backed by techniques of mass-deception." The scientific debate about human induced
global warming is over but policy makers - let alone the happily shopping general public - still seem to not understand the scope of the
impending tragedy. Global warming isn't just warmer temperatures, heat waves, melting ice and threatened polar bears.
Scientific understanding increasingly points to runaway global warming leading to human extinction" , reported Bill
Henderson in CrossCurrents. If strict global environmental security measures are not immediately put in place to keep

further emissions of greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere we are looking at the death of billions, the end of
civilization as we know it and in all probability the end of humankind's several million year old existence, along with
the extinction of most flora and fauna beloved to man in the world we share.

Global warming causes extinction

Bayou Buzz, 7 (April 1. IPCC: Global Warming Highway To Extinction.
http://www.bayoubuzz.com/News/World/Politics/IPCC_Global_Warming_Highway_To_Extinction__3
305.asp)
Climate change is paving a highway to extinction which could see billions of people
perish from hunger, malnutrition, disease, extreme weather events, heat-induced stress and
lack of drinkable water by the year 2050, according to the latest report of the UNs
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change due to be released in Belgium next Friday. Climate scientist
Andrew Weaver of the University of Victoria in British Columbia told the Associated Press that the report maps out
the consequences of climate change degree by degree, as temperatures rise. He said this presents a clear
highway to extinction, but on this highway there are many turnoffs. This is showing you where the road is
heading. The road is heading toward extinction. Dr Weaver is one of the lead authors of the first IPCC report, issued
in February. That report confirmed the strong scientific consensus that climate change is real and is caused by human
activity related to greenhouse gas emissions. If the global temperature rose by 1 degree Celsius (1.8
degrees Fahrenheit) up to 1.7 billion people would not have enough water. Infectious diseases and

allergenic pollens would also substantially increase, and amphibians would begin to go
extinct. A further increase of 1 degree Celsius would see one-third of the worlds species
approach extinction and at least 2 billion people facing death as a result of hunger,
malnutrition, disease, extreme weather events, heat-induced stress and lack of drinkable
water. Life on the planet would reach this threshold by the year 2050 if greenhouse gas emissions were not reduced
substantially.

Warming is real, anthropogenic, and causes extinction (DDW)

Deibel, Professor of IR @ National War College, 07 (Terry L. Foreign Affairs Strategy: Logic for American
Statecraft, Conclusion: American Foreign Affairs Strategy Today)

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Finally, there is one major existential threat to American security (as well as prosperity) of a nonviolent nature, which,
though far in the future, demands urgent action. It is the threat of global warming to the stability of the climate upon
which all earthly life depends. Scientists worldwide have been observing the gathering of this threat for three decades
now, and what was once a mere possibility has passed through probability to near certainty. Indeed not one of more
than 900 articles on climate change published in refereed scientific journals from 1993 to 2003 doubted that
anthropogenic warming is occurring. In legitimate scientific circles, writes Elizabeth Kolbert, it is virtually impossible
to find evidence of disagreement over the fundamentals of global warming. Evidence from a vast international scientific monitoring effort
accumulates almost weekly, as this sample of newspaper reports shows: an international panel predicts brutal droughts, floods and violent storms across the planet over the next century; climate
change could literally alter ocean currents, wipe away huge portions of Alpine Snowcaps and aid the spread of cholera and malaria; glaciers in the Antarctic and in Greenland are melting much
faster than expected, andworldwide, plants are blooming several days earlier than a decade ago; rising sea temperatures have been accompanied by a significant global increase in the most

Earths warming
climate is estimated to contribute to more than 150,000 deaths and 5 million illnesses each year as disease spreads ;
widespread bleaching from Texas to Trinidadkilled broad swaths of corals due to a 2-degree rise in sea
temperatures. The world is slowly disintegrating, concluded Inuit hunter Noah Metuq, who lives 30 miles from the Arctic Circle. They call it climate changebut we
destructive hurricanes; NASA scientists have concluded from direct temperature measurements that 2005 was the hottest year on record, with 1998 a close second;

just call it breaking up. From the founding of the first cities some 6,000 years ago until the beginning of the industrial revolution, carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere remained relatively constant

. Unfortunately,
atmospheric CO2 lasts about a century, so there is no way immediately to reduce levels, only to slow their increase,
we are thus in for significant global warming; the only debate is how much and how serous the effects will be . As the
newspaper stories quoted above show, we are already experiencing the effects of 1-2 degree warming in more violent
storms, spread of disease, mass die offs of plants and animals, species extinction , and threatened inundation of lowlying countries like the Pacific nation of Kiribati and the Netherlands at a warming of 5 degrees or less the Greenland
and West Antarctic ice sheets could disintegrate, leading to a sea level of rise of 20 feet that would cover North
Carolinas outer banks, swamp the southern third of Florida, and inundate Manhattan up to the middle of Greenwich
Village. Another catastrophic effect would be the collapse of the Atlantic thermohaline circulation that keeps the winter
weather in Europe far warmer than its latitude would otherwise allow. Economist William Cline once estimated the
damage to the United States alone from moderate levels of warming at 1-6 percent of GDP annually; severe warming
could cost 13-26 percent of GDP. But the most frightening scenario is runaway greenhouse warming, based on positive
feedback from the buildup of water vapor in the atmosphere that is both caused by and causes hotter surface
temperatures. Past ice age transitions, associated with only 5-10 degree changes in average global temperatures, took
place in just decades, even though no one was then pouring ever-increasing amounts of carbon into the atmosphere.
Faced with this specter, the best one can conclude is that humankinds continuing enhancement of the natural
greenhouse effect is akin to playing Russian roulette with the earths climate and humanitys life support system . At
worst, says physics professor Marty Hoffert of New York University, were just going to burn everything up; were going
to heat the atmosphere to the temperature it was in the Cretaceous when there were crocodiles at the poles, and then
everything will collapse. During the Cold War, astronomer Carl Sagan popularized a theory of nuclear winter to
describe how a thermonuclear war between the Untied States and the Soviet Union would not only destroy both
countries but possibly end life on this planet. Global warming is the post-Cold War eras equivalent of nuclear winter at
least as serious and considerably better supported scientifically. Over the long run it puts dangers form terrorism and
traditional military challenges to shame. It is a threat not only to the security and prosperity to the United States, but
potentially to the continued existence of life on this planet.
at about 280 parts per million (ppm). At present they are accelerating toward 400 ppm, and by 2050 they will reach 500 ppm, about double pre-industrial levels

Runaway warming causes extinction

Henderson, NQA, 06 (Henderson, Bill, 206, Runaway Global Warming Denial, CounterCurrents,
August 19, countercurrents.org/cc-henderson190806.htm)
The scientific debate about human induced global warming is over but policy makers - let alone the happily shopping
general public - still seem to not understand the scope of the impending tragedy. Global warming isn't just warmer
temperatures, heat waves, melting ice and threatened polar bears. Scientific understanding increasingly points to
runaway global warming leading to human extinction. If impossibly Draconian security measures are not
immediately put in place to keep further emissions of greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere we are looking
at the death of billions, the end of civilization as we know it and in all probability the end of man's several million
year old existence, along with the extinction of most flora and fauna beloved to man in the world we share. Runaway
global warming: there are 'carbon bombs': carbon in soils, carbon in warming temperate and boreal forests and in a
drought struck Amazon, methane in Arctic peat bogs and in methane hydrates melting in warming ocean waters. For
several decades it has been hypothesized that rising temperatures from increased greenhouse gases in the
atmosphere due to burning fossil fuels could be releasing some of and eventually all of these stored carbon
stocks to add substantually more potent greenhouse gases to the atmosphere.. Given time lags of 30-50 years,
we might have already put enough extra greenhouse gases into the atmosphere to have crossed a threshold to
these bombs exploding, their released greenhouse gases leading to ever accelerating global warming with
future global temperatures maybe tens of degrees higher than our norms of human habitation and therefor
extinction or very near extinction of humanity.

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Global warming ends human civilization

The New York End Times 6 [The New York End Times is a non-partisan, non-religious, non-ideological,
free news filter. We monitor world trends and events as they pertain to two vital threats - war and extinction.
We use a proprietary methodology to quantify movements between the extremes of war and peace, harmony
and extinction. http://newyorkendtimes.com/extinctionscale.asp]
We rate Global Climate Change as a greater threat for human extinction in this century. Most scientists forecast
disruptions and dislocations, if current trends persist. The extinction danger is more likely if we alter an environmental
process that causes harmful effects and leads to conditions that make the planet uninhabitable to humans.
Considering that there is so much that is unknown about global systems, we consider climate change to be the
greatest danger to human extinction. However, there is no evidence of imminent danger.
Nuclear war at some point in this century might happen. It is unlikely to cause human extinction though. While several
countries have nuclear weapons, there are few with the firepower to annihilate the world. For those nations it would be
suicidal to exercise that option. The pattern is that the more destructive technology a nation has, the more it tends
towards rational behavior. Sophisticated precision weapons then become better tactical options. The bigger danger
comes from nuclear weapons in the hands of terrorists with the help of a rogue state, such as North Korea. The size of
such an explosion would not be sufficient to threaten humanity as a whole. Instead it could trigger a major war or even
world war. Under this scenario human extinction would only be possible if other threats were present, such as disease
and climate change. We monitor war separately. However we also need to incorporate the dangers here .

Global warming results in global droughts killing millions and collapsing economies
Engelhardt 9 [Tom Engelhardt, editor of Tomdispatch.com, is co-founder of the American Empire Project and author of The End of Victory
Culture. February 19, 2009. Is Economic Recovery Even Possible on a Planet Headed for Environmental Collapse?,
http://www.alternet.org/water/127625/is_economic_recovery_even_possible_on_a_planet_headed_for_environmental_collapse/]
It turns out that you don't want to be a former city dweller in rural parts of southernmost Australia, a stalk of wheat in China or Iraq, a soybean in Argentina, an almond or grape in northern California,
a cow in Texas, or almost anything in parts of east Africa right now. Let me explain. As anyone who has turned on the prime-time TV news these last weeks knows, southeastern Australia has been

It's already dry climate has been growing ever hotter. "The great drying, " Australian environmental scientist Tim Flannery calls it. At its
After more than a
decade of drought, followed by the lowest rainfall on record, the eucalyptus forests are now burning. To be exact, they
are now pouring vast quantities of stored carbon dioxide, the greenhouse gas considered largely responsible for global
warming, into the atmosphere. In fact, everything's been burning there. Huge sheets of flame, possibly aided and abetted by arsonists, tore through whole towns. More than 180
people are dead and thousands homeless. Flannery, who has written eloquently about global warming, drove through the fire belt, and reported: "It was as if a great cremation
had taken place I was born in Victoria, and over five decades I've watched as the state has changed. The long, wet and cold winters that seemed insufferable to me as a boy vanished
burning up.

epicenter, Melbourne recorded its hottest day ever this month at a sweltering 115.5 degrees, while temperatures soared even higher in the surrounding countryside.

decades ago, and for the past 12 years a new, drier climate has established itself I had not appreciated the difference a degree or two of extra heat and a dry soil can make to the ferocity of a fire.
This fire was different from anything seen before." Australia, by the way, is a wheat-growing breadbasket for the world and its wheat crops have been hurt in recent years by continued drought.

central China is experiencing the worst drought in half a century. Temperatures have been unseasonably high
and rainfall, in some areas, 80% below normal; more than half the country's provinces have been affected by drought,
leaving millions of Chinese and their livestock without adequate access to water. In the region which raises 95% of the
country's winter wheat, crop production has already been impaired and is in further danger without imminent rain. All of
this represents a potential financial catastrophe for Chinese farmers at a moment when about 20 million migrant
workers are estimated to have lost their jobs in the global economic meltdown. Many of those workers, who left the countryside for China's
booming cities (and remitted parts of their paychecks to rural areas), may now be headed home jobless to potential disaster. A Wall Street Journal report concludes, "Some scientists
warn China could face more frequent droughts as a result of global warming and changes in farming patterns." Globejumping to the Middle East, Iraq, which makes the news these days mainly for spectacular suicide bombings or the
politics of American withdrawal, turns out to be another country in severe drought. Americans may think of Iraq as
largely desert, but (as we were all taught in high school) the lands between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, the "fertile crescent," are
considered the homeland of agriculture, not to speak of human civilizatio n. Well, not so fertile these days, it seems. The worst drought in
at least a decade and possibly a farming lifetime is expected to reduce wheat production by at least half; while the
country's vast marshlands, once believed to be the location of the Garden of Eden, have been turned into endless
expanses of baked mud. That region, purposely drained by dictator Saddam Hussein to tame rebellious "Marsh Arabs," is now experiencing the draining power of nature. Nor is
Iraq's drought a localized event. Serious drought conditions extend across the Middle East , threatening to exacerbate local conflicts
from Cyprus and Lebanon to Gaza, the West Bank, and Israel where this January was reported to have been the
hottest and driest in 60 years. "With less than 2 months of winter left," Daniel Pedersen has written at the environmental website Green Prophet, "the region has received only
Meanwhile,

6%-50% of the annual average rainfall, with the desert areas getting 30% or less." Leaping continents, in Latin America, Argentina is experiencing "the most intense, prolonged and expensive drought

One of the world's largest grain exporters, it has already

lost five billion dollars to the drought. Its soybeans -- the country is the third largest producer of them -- are wilting in the fields; its corn -- Argentina is the
world's second largest producer -- and wheat crops are in trouble; and its famed grass-fed herds of cattle are dying -1.5 million head of them since October with no end in sight . Dust Bowl Economics In our own backyard, much of the state of Texas -- 97.4% to be exact -- is
in the past 50 years," according to Hugo Luis Biolcati, the president of the Argentine Rural Society.

now gripped by drought, and parts of it by the worst drought in almost a century. According to the New York Times, "Winter wheat crops have failed. Ponds have dried up. Ranchers are spending
heavily on hay and feed pellets to get their cattle through the winter. Some wonder if they will have to slaughter their herds come summer. Farmers say the soil is too dry for seeds to germinate and
are considering not planting." Since 2004, in fact, the state has yoyo-ed between the extremities of flood and drought. Meanwhile, scientists predict that,

as global warming

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strengthens, the American southwest, parts of which have struggled with varying levels of drought conditions for years,
could fall into "a possibly permanent state of drought." We're talking potential future "dust bowl" here. A December 2008 U.S. Geological
Survey report warns: "In the Southwest , for example, the models project a permanent drying by the mid-21st century that reaches the
level of aridity seen in historical droughts, and a quarter of the projections may reach this level of aridity much earlier."
http://www.amazon.com/dp/1844672573/ref=nosim/?tag=nationbooks08-20 And talking about drought gripping breadbasket regions, don't
forget northern California which "produces 50 percent of the nation's fruits, nuts and vegetables, and a majority of [U.S.] salad,
strawberries and premium wine grapes." Its agriculturally vital Central Valley, in particular, is in the
third year of an already monumental drought in which the state has been forced to cut water deliveries to farms by up
to 85%. Observers are predicting that it may prove to be the worst drought in the history of a region "already reeling from housing foreclosures, the
credit crisis, and a plunge in construction and manufacturing jobs." January, normally California's wettest month, has been wretchedly dry and the snowpack in the northern Sierra Mountains, crucial

Northern California, in fact, offers a glimpse of the havoc that the

extreme weather conditions scientists associate with climate change could cause, especially when combined with
other crises. In a Los Angeles Times interview, new Secretary of Energy Steven Chu offered an eye-popping warning (of a sort top government officials simply don't
give) about what a global-warming future might hold in store for California, his home state. Interviewer Jim Tankersley summed up Chu's thoughts this
way: "California's farms and vineyards could vanish by the end of the century , and its major cities could be in jeopardy, if Americans do
not act to slow the advance of global warming... In a worst case... up to 90% of the Sierra snowpack could disappear,
all but eliminating a natural storage system for water vital to agriculture. 'I don't think the American public has gripped in its gut what could happen,'
[Chu] said. 'We're looking at a scenario where there's no more agriculture in California .' And, he added, 'I don't actually see how
they can keep their cities going' either." As for East Africa and the Horn of Africa , under the pressure of rising temperatures, drought has
become a tenacious long-term visitor. For East Africa, the drought years of 2005-2006 were particularly horrific and
now Kenya, with the region's biggest economy, a country recently wracked by political disorder and ethnic violence, is
experiencing crop failures. An estimated 10 million Kenyans may face hunger, even starvation, this year in the wake of
a poor harvest, lack of rainfall, and rising food prices; if you include the drought-plagued Horn of Africa, 20 million
people may be endangered, according to the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. Recently, climatologist David Battisti and Rosamond Naylor,
director of Stanford University's Program on Food Security and the Environment, published a study in Science magazine on the effect of extreme heat on crops. They concluded,
based on recent climate models and a study of past extreme heat waves, that there was "a 90% chance that, by the
end of the century, the coolest temperatures in the tropics during the crop growing season would exceed the hottest
temperatures recorded between 1900 and 2006." According to the British Guardian, under such circumstances Battisti and Naylor believe "[h]alf of the
world's population could face severe food shortages by the end of the century as rising temperatures take their toll on
farmers' crops... Harvests of staple food crops such as rice and maize could fall by between 20% and 40% as a result
of higher temperatures during the growing season in the tropics and subtropics ." Not surprisingly, it's hard to imagine -- perhaps I mean swallow -to the state's water supplies and its agricultural health, is at less than half normal levels.

such an extreme world, and so most of us, the mainstream media included, don't bother to. That means certain potentially burning questions go not just unanswered but unasked. The Grapes of
Wrath (Updated) Mind you, what you've read thus far represents an amateur's eye view of drought on our planet at this moment. It's hardly comprehensive. To give but one example,

Afghanistan has only recently begun to emerge from an eight-year drought involving severe food shortages -- and, as journalist
Christian Parenti writes, it would need another "five years worth of regular snowfall just to replenish its aquifers." Parenti adds: "As snow packs in the Himalayan and Hindu Kush ranges continue to

the rivers flowing from them will diminish and the economic situation in all of Central Asia will deteriorate badly.

recede,
" Nor
is this piece meant to be authoritative, exactly because I know so relatively little. Think of it as a reflection of my own frustration with work not done elsewhere -- and, by the way, thank heavens for
Google University. Yes, Googling leaves you on your own, can be time-consuming, and tends to lead to cul-de-sacs ("Nuggets end 17-year drought in Orlando"), but what would we do without it?
Thanks to good ol' G.U., anyone can, for instance, check out the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Drought Information Center or its U.S. Drought Monitor, or the National Weather
Service's Climate Prediction Center and begin a self-education. Now let me explain why I even bothered to write this piece. It's true that, if you're reading the mainstream press, each of the droughts
mentioned above has gotten at least some attention, several of them a fair amount of attention (as well as some fine reporting), and the Australian firestorms have been headlines globally for weeks.
The problem is that (the professional literature, the science magazines, and a few environmental websites and blogs aside) no one in the mainstream media seems to have thought to connect these
dots or blots of aridity in any way. And yet it seems a no-brainer that mainstream reporters should be doing just that. After all, cumulatively these drought hotspots, places now experiencing record or
near-record aridity, could be thought of as representing so many burning questions for our planet. And yet you can search far and wide without stumbling across a mainstream American overview of

104 million people are

now living under "exceptional drought conditions." Scientists generally agree that, as climate change accelerates
throughout this century (and no matter what happens from here on in, nothing will evidently stop some form of acceleration), extreme weather of every sort,
including drought, will become ever more the planetary norm . In fact, experts are suggesting that, as the Washington Post reported recently, "The pace
drought in our world at this moment. This seems, politely put, puzzling, especially at a time when University College London's Global Drought Monitor claims that

of global warming is likely to be much faster than recent predictions, because industrial greenhouse gas emissions have increased
more quickly than expected and higher temperatures are triggering self-reinforcing feedback mechanisms in global ecosystems."
Now, no one can claim beyond all doubt that global warming is the cause of any specific drought, or certainly the only cause anyway. As with the Texas drought, a La Nia weather pattern in the
Pacific is often mentioned as a key causal factor right now. But the crucial point is what the present can tell us about the impact of a global pattern of extreme weather, especially extreme drought, on
what will surely be a more extreme planet in the relatively near future. If global temperatures are on the rise and more heat means lower crop yields, then you're talking about more Kenyas, and not
just in Africa either. You're probably also talking about desperation, upheaval, resource conflicts, and mass out-migrations of populations, even -- if scientists are right -- from the American Southwest.
(And in case you don't think such a thing can happen here, remember Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath or think of any of Dorothea Lange's iconic photos of the "Okies" fleeing the American

Right now, the global economic meltdown has massively depressed fuel prices (key to farming,
and commodity prices have generally fallen as well, including food prices. Whatever the
future economic weather, however, that is not likely to last. So here's a burning question on my mind: We're now experiencing the extreme
effects of economic bad "weather" in the wake of the near collapse of the global financial system. Nonetheless, from the White House to the media,
dustbowl of the 1930s.) Burning Questions

processing, and transporting most crops to market)

speculation about "the road to recovery" is already underway. The stimulus package, for instance, had been dubbed the "recovery bill," aka the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, and the

a real recovery will begin is certainly in the air

question of when we'll hit bottom and when -- 2010, 2011, 2012 -. Recently, in a speech in Singapore, Dominique
Strauss-Kahn, head of the International Monetary Fund, suggested that the "world's advanced economies" -- the U.S., Western Europe, and Japan -- were "already in depression," and the "worst
cannot be ruled out." This got little attention here, but President Obama's comment at his first press conference that delay on his stimulus package could lead to a "lost decade," as in Japan in the
1990s (or, though it went unmentioned, the U.S. in the 1930s), made the headlines. If, indeed, this is "the big one," and does result in a "lost decade" or more, here's what I wonder: Could the sort of
"recovery" that everyone assumes lies just over a recessive or depressive horizon not be there? What if our lost decade lasts long enough to meet an environmental crisis involving extreme weather
-- drought and flood, hurricanes, typhoons, and firestorms of unprecedented magnitude -- possibly in some of the breadbasket regions of the planet? What will happen if the rising fuel prices likely to
come with the beginning of any economic "recovery" were to meet the soaring food prices of environmental disaster? What kind of human tsunami might that result in? Once we start connecting
some of today's drought dots, wouldn't it make sense to try to connect a few of the prospective dots as well? After all, if you begin to imagine what the worst might look like, you can also begin to
think about what might be done to mitigate it. Isn't that more sensible than looking the other way? If the kinds of hits regional agriculture is now taking from record-setting drought became the future
norm, wouldn't we then be bereft of our most reassuring formulations in bad times? For example, the president spoke at that press conference of our present moment as "the worst economic crisis
since the Great Depression ."

On an extreme planet, no such comforting "since the..." would be available, nor would there be any historical

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road map for what was coming at us, not if we had already run out of history. Maybe the world we knew but scarce months ago is
already, in some sense, long gone. What if, after a lost decade, we were to find ourselves living on another planet? Feel free, of course, to
ignore my burning questions. After all, I'm only an amateur with the flimsiest of credentials from Google U. Still, I do keep wondering when the media pros will finally pitch in, and what they'll tell us is
on that distant horizon, the one with the red glow.

Warming will doom the oceans for the next 100,000 years
Keim 9 [Brandon Keim, January 26, 2009, Climate Change Could Choke Oceans for 100,000 Years,
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/01/futureoceans/#previouspost]
According to a simulation of planetary warming trends, failure to drastically cut greenhouse gas pollution within the
next half century could choke Earths oceans for the next 100,000 years . With warmer temperatures reducing its ability
to absorb oxygen, much of the water would become barren and lifeless. Oceanic food chains could be profoundly
disrupted. "What mankind does for the next several decades will play a large role in climate on Earth over the next
tens of thousands of years," said geochemist Gary Shaffer of the University of Copenhagen. This is because, according to climate scientists,
it will take at least that long for natural processes to remove fossil fuel emissions from the atmosphere, giving longterm consequences to humanitys short-term habits. Shaffers team modeled two likely sets of emissions, as forecast by the the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Under the first, known as the B1 scenario, nations move relatively rapidly towards a
carbon-neutral global economy, with greenhouse emissions peaking by 2050. This would result in circa-2100
temperatures about 6 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than now. Though terrestrially dramatic, such a rise would, according to
Shaffers calculations, produce long-term ocean warming peaking in several thousand years at about 2 degrees
Fahrenheit. Such a rise would fall well within the range of ocean adaptation. But if countries continue to burn fossil
fuels until theyve become prohibitively expensive the A2, or "business-as-usual" scenario then atmospheric carbon
dioxide concentrations will increase until the centurys end. Planetary temperature could rise by 12 degrees Fahrenheit
within that time, triggering oceanic warming of at least 5 degrees Fahrenheit over the next several thousand years.
Current ocean ecosystems would be unable to sustain themselves . "Oxygen minimum zones could expand by 10 or 20 times. And
the ocean would, in addition to having low oxygen, have a very different ecosystem," said Shaffer, lead author on the study published Sunday in
Nature Geoscience. "It would affect the ability of the ocean to produce fish, shellfish, the types of things that people eat. Its not just
oxygen: its a switch in ecosystem structure."

Assuming weakness in Shaffers models warming will destroy the entirety of the ocean
ecosystem
Keim 9 [Brandon Keim, January 26, 2009, Climate Change Could Choke Oceans for 100,000 Years,
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/01/futureoceans/#previouspost]
As with any simulation, uncertainty

surrounds the ability of Shaffers model, developed by the Danish Center for Earth
System Science, to precisely anticipate the outcome of the planets complex and intertwined geological, biological and
meteorological processes. According to Andreas Schmittner, an Oregon State University geochemist and co-author of a study that simulated
ocean oxygen levels for the next 2,000 years, Shaffers teams model relies on "a number of strong assumptions." "It does not
simulate changes in ocean circulation," he said. "The assumptions made to account for ocean circulation are therefore
questionable." Shaffer acknowledged that the simulation was relatively low-resolution compared to those used for
near-future, locale-specific predictions. But when primed with historical climate data, the model successfully
reproduced climate changes measured since 1765. It also paralleled Schmittners comparatively short-term
projections. "It reemphasizes the valid point that global warming will lead to a decrease in ocean oxygen levels with
potentially adverse consequences for marine life," said Schmittner. University of Virginia marine biologist Robert Diaz, an
expert on oceanic dead zones, said the "results are are exactly in line with what I would expect for long-term patterns
in ocean oxygen." Shaffers team assumes that ocean circulation will be weakened by increases in high-latitude temperatures
and rainfall: Because water becomes less dense as it warms, surface layers will be slow to sink, delaying the normal cycle of surface turnover and
oxygen absorption. This is, Shaffer acknowledged, by no means certain. The converse effect an acceleration of surface sinking and circulation
does not appear to have taken place when the last Ice Age chilled planetary waters. But even without a circulation slowdown, warm
waters will absorb less oxygen, and the effects could be catastrophic. Depleted surface life , said Shaffer, will reduce the
amount of nutrients falling to deep waters and the ocean floor. Since most bacteria that break down organic material

require oxygen, theyd be replaced by nitrate- and phosphorus-fueled bacteria. The plankton that normally feed on
them and form the basis of marine food chains would starve . The simulation also makes another assumption: that methane
ice now buried under ocean sediments wont melt. Should that happen, some of the methane a potent greenhouse
gas would bond with free oxygen, further choking oceans. The rest of it would bubble into the atmosphere, further
warming Earth. Neither do Shaffers projections account for the affects of ocean acidification produced by carbon dioxide-saturated water a
phenomenon that, independently of temperature changes, wreak havoc on coral reefs, crustaceans and shellfish. "You put those together and you
have a potent mix," he said.

CO2 emissions causes depletion of oxygen levels which leads to extinction

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Tatchell, 8 [Peter, 8/13/2008, The oxygen crisis: Could the decline of oxygen in the atmosphere undermine our health
and threaten human survival?, The Guardian, Aug 13,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/aug/13/carbonemissions.climatechange]
The rise in carbon dioxide emissions is big news. It is prompting action to reverse global warming. But little or no attention is
being paid to the long-term fall in oxygen concentrations and its knock-on effects. Compared to prehistoric times, the level of
oxygen in the earth's atmosphere has declined by over a third and in polluted cities the decline may be more than 50%.
This change in the makeup of the air we breathe has potentially serious implications for our health. Indeed, it could ultimately
threaten the survival of human life on earth, according to Roddy Newman, who is drafting a new book, The Oxygen Crisis. I am not a
scientist, but this seems a reasonable concern. It is a possibility that we should examine and assess. So, what's the evidence? Around 10,000 years
ago, the planet's forest cover was at least twice what it is today, which means that forests are now emitting only half the amount of oxygen.
Desertification and deforestation are rapidly accelerating this long-term loss of oxygen sources. The story at sea is much the same. Nasa reports
that in the north Pacific ocean oxygen-producing phytoplankton concentrations are 30% lower today, compared to the 1980s. This is a huge drop in
just three decades. Moreover, the UN environment programme confirmed in 2004 that there were nearly 150 "dead zones" in the world's oceans
where discharged sewage and industrial waste, farm fertiliser run-off and other pollutants have reduced oxygen levels to such an extent that most or
all sea creatures can no longer live there. This oxygen starvation is reducing regional fish stocks and diminishing the food
supplies of populations that are dependent on fishing . It also causes genetic mutations and hormonal changes that can
affect the reproductive capacity of sea life, which could further diminish global fish supplies. Professor Robert Berner of Yale
University has researched oxygen levels in prehistoric times by chemically analysing air bubbles trapped in fossilised tree amber. He suggests that
humans breathed a much more oxygen-rich air 10,000 years ago. Further back, the oxygen levels were even greater. Robert Sloan has listed the
percentage of oxygen in samples of dinosaur-era amber as: 28% (130m years ago), 29% (115m years ago), 35% (95m years ago), 33% (88m years
ago), 35% (75m years ago), 35% (70m years ago), 35% (68m years ago), 31% (65.2m years ago), and 29% (65m years ago). Professor Ian Plimer
of Adelaide University and Professor Jon Harrison of the University of Arizona concur. Like most other scientists they accept that oxygen levels in the
atmosphere in prehistoric times averaged around 30% to 35%, compared to only 21% today and that the levels are even less in densely
populated, polluted city centres and industrial complexes, perhaps only 15 % or lower. Much of this recent, accelerated change is down
to human activity, notably the industrial revolution and the burning of fossil fuels . The Professor of Geological Sciences at Notre
Dame University in Indiana, J Keith Rigby, was quoted in 1993-1994 as saying: In the 20th century, humanity has pumped increasing
amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere by burning the carbon stored in coal, petroleum and natural gas. In the process, we've
also been consuming oxygen and destroying plant life cutting down forests at an alarming rate and thereby short-circuiting the cycle's natural
rebound. We're artificially slowing down one process and speeding up another, forcing a change in the atmosphere. Very
interesting. But does this decline in oxygen matter? Are there any practical consequences that we ought to be concerned about? What is the effect
of lower oxygen levels on the human body? Does it disrupt and impair our immune systems and therefore make us more prone to cancer and
degenerative diseases? Surprisingly, no significant research has been done, perhaps on the following presumption: the decline in oxygen levels has
taken place over millions of years of our planet's existence. The changes during the shorter period of human life have also been slow and
incremental until the last two centuries of rapid urbanisation and industrialisation. Surely, this mostly gradual decline has allowed the human body
to evolve and adapt to lower concentrations of oxygen? Maybe, maybe not. The pace of oxygen loss is likely to have speeded up
massively in the last three decades, with the industrialisation of China, India, South Korea and other countries, and as a consequence
of the massive worldwide increase in the burning of fossil fuels. In the view of Professor Ervin Laszlo, the drop in atmospheric
oxygen has potentially serious consequences. A UN advisor who has been a professor of philosophy and systems sciences, Laszlo
writes: Evidence from prehistoric times indicates that the oxygen content of pristine nature was above the 21% of total volume that it is today. It has
decreased in recent times due mainly to the burning of coal in the middle of the last century. Currently the oxygen content of the Earth's atmosphere
dips to 19% over impacted areas, and it is down to 12 to 17% over the major cities. At these levels it is difficult for people to get sufficient oxygen to
maintain bodily health: it takes a proper intake of oxygen to keep body cells and organs, and the entire immune system, functioning at full efficiency.

At the levels we have reached today cancers and other degenerative diseases are likely to develop. And at 6 to 7% life
can no longer be sustained. Scaremongering? I don't think so. A reason for doomsaying? Not yet. What is needed is an authoritative
evidence-based investigation to ascertain current oxygen levels and what consequences, if any, there are for the long-term wellbeing of our species
and, indeed, of all species.

Warming causes acidity decimates phytoplankton which are key to the oceans and oxygen
Lynas 2k8 (Mark, climate change writer, journalist, Our Future on a Hotter Planet, p.78-79)
Phytoplankton are also crucial to the global carbon cycle. Collectively they are the largest producer of calcium
carbonate on Earth, removing billions of tones of carbon from circulation as their limestone shells rain down onto
the ocean floor. Theres nothing new about this process: The chalk in the cliffs and downs of southern England
originally formed as the lime sludge from countless billions of dead coccolithophores back in the Cretaceous era. But
as the oceans turn more and more acidic, this crucial component of the planetary carbon cycle could slowly grind to a
halt. With fewer plankton to fix and remove it, more carbon will remain in the oceans and atmosphere,
worsening the problem still further. Phytoplankton are also hit directly by rising temperatures, because warmer
waters on the surface of the ocean shut off the supply of upwelling nutrients that these tiny plants need to grow. As
with acidification, changes are already detectable today: In 2006 scientists reported a decline in plankton
productivity of 190 megatonnes (212.8 megatons) a year as a result of the current warming trend. Together these two
factors, warming and acidification represent a devastating double blow to ocean productivity. As Katherine
Richardson, professor of biological oceanography at Aarhus University in Denmark says: These marine creatures
do humanity a great service by absorbing half the carbon dioxide we create. If we wipe them out, that
process will stop. We are altering the entire chemistry of the oceans without any idea of the consequences. Wiping

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out phytoplankton by acidifying the oceans is rather like spraying weed killer over most of the worlds land vegetation,
from rain forests to prairies to Aortic tundra, and will have equally disastrous effects. Just as deserts will spread on land
as global warming accelerates, so marine deserts will spread in the oceans as warming and acidification
take their unstoppable toll.

Extinction
Laszlo 2k1 (Dr. Ervin, founder-director of the General Evolution Research Group and as past president of the International
Society for the Systems Sciences, Marcroshift, p.36)
Evidence from prehistoric times indicates that the oxygen content of pristine nature was above the 21% of total
volume that it is today. It has decreased in recent times due mainly to the burning of coal in the
middle of the last century. Currently the oxygen content of the Earth's atmosphere dips to 19% over impacted
areas, and it is down to 12 to 17% over the major cities. At these levels it is difficult for people to get sufficient oxygen
to maintain bodily health: it takes a proper intake of oxygen to keep body cells and organs, and the entire immune system,
functioning at full efficiency. At the levels we have reached today cancers and other degenerative
diseases are likely to develop. And at 6 to 7% life can no longer be sustain

Warming makes global conflict inevitable.

The New American, 7 (11/7 http://www.thenewamerican.com/node/6153)
Climate change acts as a threat multiplier for instability in some of the most volatile regions of the wo
rld. Projected climate change will seriously exacerbate already marginal living standards in many Asian, African, and
Middle Eastern nations, causing widespread political instability and the likelihood of failed states. Unlike most
conventional security threats that involve a single entity acting in specific ways and points in time,
climate change has the potential to result in multiple chronic conditions, occurring globally within the same time frame.
Economic and environmental conditions in already fragile areas will further erode as food production declines,
diseases increase, clean water becomes increasingly scarce, and large populations move in search of resources.
Weakened and failing governments, with an already thin margin for survival, foster the conditions for internal conflicts,
extremism, and movement toward increased authoritarianism and radical ideologies. The U.S. may be drawn more
frequently into these situations, either alone or with allies, to help provide stability before conditions worsen and are
exploited by extremists. The U.S. may also be called upon to undertake stability and reconstruction efforts once a
conflict has begun, to avert further disaster and reconstitute a stable environment.

Warming results in methane burps causes 10 degrees of warming within the decade
Sun 2k8 [Wesley G. Hughes, Staff Writer, Geologist sees methane `doomsday',Article Launched: 06/07/2008 11:15:57 PM
PDT, pg. http://www.sbsun.com/ci_9518593?source=most_viewed]
RIVERSIDE - He calls it the Doomsday Scenario. Imagine alligators swimming at the North Pole. It happened once and it

could happen again if Martin

Kennedy's hypothesis comes true. And if Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" made you nervous, imagine something 50 times worse. If we as a society can't
stop it, it could mean the end of civilization. Kennedy says, "I don't know how a nuclear power could survive if most of its
population is dying." Kennedy is no nut case. He is a highly respected professor of geology at UC Riverside; and his scenario was
published recently in the peer-reviewed journal Nature. It involves something no one had paid much attention to before: methane. We in the Inland
Empire are familiar with it as a byproduct of cow poop. But Kennedy's methane is no BS, cowboy. It is trapped in the permafrost under the ice cap in
high latitudes at the top of the world. If the ice cap melts - as the Greenland ice sheet rapidly is - the methane will be released and methane
is 50 times more active than carbon as a greenhouse gas, the scientist said. The Earth has 5,000 gigatons of carbon dioxide in its deposits of oil and
natural gas. Big numbers. But there are 10,000 gigatons of methane under the ice sheets and in the ocean floor near the coasts. That's twice the
amount of carbon dioxide and 100 times more powerful. Methane lingers in the atmosphere for five or 10 years before oxidation converts it to carbon dioxide. The
more methane released as the ice melts, the warmer it becomes, melting more ice releasing increasingly more methane. As the ice melts, the planet
loses its reflectability - the albedo effect - absorbing more of the heat from the sun and increasing the warmth. It's like putting your hand on a white car in the hot
summer sun and then putting it on a black one. "Ouch." Total meltdown of the Greenland ice sheet would deepen the oceans by 20 feet, flooding places like New
York City and turning Florida into a reef. Kennedy began working on his hypothesis five years ago and his research took him back to his native
Australia. There he found ancient methane seeps that could be tied to earlier global ice melts and the "Snowball Earth" of 635 million years ago. That occurred just
before animal life appeared on Earth, Kennedy said, "suggesting some kind of environmental link." The life possibly kick-started by the first methane age could be
wiped out by a second. The tipping point for that phenomenon is unknown, Kennedy said. It occurred the first time when methane was loosed in a runaway
feedback. The tipping point for a new methane age could occur in a decade, Kennedy said. But we are primed for it and when it occurs the
world could warm at a rate of tens of degrees. "It's an abrupt mechanism," Kennedy said. "It's an entirely different climate-warming
scenario. In the first global warming from carbon dioxide, the Earth didn't go through catastrophic change. "We think we are increasing the probability of abrupt
climate change," the scientist said. "When we understand the tipping point," Kennedy said, we'll be able to better predict the climate's future in the next century."
He said the Greenland ice sheet is not stable and is melting rapidly. Fourteen of the past 20 years have been the hottest in world
history, Kennedy said. A methane age would wreak havoc with the climate, plant and animal life and humanity, Kennedy said. The results

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are unpredictable and could be catastrophic with more Hurricane Katrinas, dust bowls, monsoons, floods and famine. The
Global Climate and Environmental Change Program, a two-year master's degree program at UCR.

scientist is director of the

Extinction of all life

Lynas 07 Professor of History and politics @ University of Edinburgh

(Mark Lynas, British author, journalist, environmental activist, degree in

history and politics @ University of Edinburgh G2: Six steps to hell The Guardian 4-23-07, lexis]

The Eocene greenhouse event fascinates scientists not just because of its effects, which also saw a major mass
extinction in the seas, but also because of its likely cause: methane hydrates. This unlikely substance, a sort of ice-like
combination of methane and water that is only stable at low temperatures and high pressure, may have burst into the atmosphere from the seabed
in an immense "ocean burp", sparking a surge in global temperatures (methane is even more powerful as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide).
Today vast amounts of these same methane hydrates still sit on subsea continental shelves. As the oceans warm, they

could be released once more in a terrifying echo of that methane belch of 55 million years ago.

In the process, moreover, the

seafloor could slump as the gas is released, sparking massive tsunamis that would further devastate the coasts. Again, no one knows how likely
this apocalyptic scenario is to unfold in today's world. The good news is that it could take centuries for warmer water to penetrate down to the

it could happen much sooner in shallower seas that see a

stronger heating effect (and contain lots of methane hydrate) such as in the Arctic. It is also important to realise that the early
bottom of the oceans and release the stored methane. The bad news is that

Eocene greenhouse took at least 10,000 years to come about. Today we could accomplish the same feat in less than a century. If there is one
episode in the Earth's history that we should try above all not to repeat, it is surely the catastrophe that befell the planet at the end of the Permian
period, 251 million years ago. By the end of this calamity, up to 95% of species were extinct. The end-Permian wipeout is the nearest this planet
has ever come to becoming just another lifeless rock drifting through space. The precise cause remains unclear, but what is undeniable is that the
end-Permian mass extinction was associated with a super-greenhouse event. Oxygen isotopes in rocks dating from the time suggest that
temperatures rose by six degrees, perhaps because of an even bigger methane belch than happened 200 million years later in the Eocene.
Sedimentary layers show that most of the world's plant cover was removed in a catastrophic bout of soil erosion. Rocks also show a "fungal spike"
as plants and animals rotted in situ. Still more corpses were washed into the oceans, helping to turn them stagnant and anoxic. Deserts invaded
central Europe, and may even have reached close to the Arctic Circle. One scientific paper investigating "kill mechanisms" during the end-Permian

methane hydrate explosions "could destroy terrestrial life almost entirely". Acting much like today's fuelair explosives (or "vacuum bombs"), major oceanic methane eruptions could release energy equivalent to 10,000
times the world's stockpile of nuclear weapons.
suggests that

Warming causes Earth to explode

Chalko 2k2 (THOMAS J. CHALKO---GEO PHYSICIST @ MT. BEST ACADEMY AUSTRALIA
http://www.bioresonant.com/news.htm, Global Warming: Can Earth EXPLODE ?)
The real danger for our entire civilization comes not from slow climate changes, but from
overheating the planetary interior. Galileo discovered that Earth moves. Copernicus discovered that Earth moves
around the Sun. In 2000 Tom Chalko, inspired by Desmarquet's report, discovered that the solid nucleus of our planet
is in principle a nuclear reactor, it is eccentric, and that our collective ignorance may cause it to
overheat and explode. The discovery has been published in June 2001 by the new scientific journal
NUJournal.net.
Polar ice caps melt not because the air there is warmer than 0 deg Celsius, but because they are
overheated from underneath. Volcanoes become active and erupt violently not because the Earth's interior
"crystallizes", but because the planetary nucleus is a nuclear fission reactor that needs COOLING. It seems that the
currently adopted doctrine of a "crystalline inner core of Earth" is more dangerous for humanity than all weapons
of mass destruction taken together, because it prevents us from imagining, predicting and preventing truly
global disasters. In any nuclear reactor, the danger of overheating has to be recognized early. When external
symptoms intensify it is usually too late to prevent disaster. Do we have enough imagination, intelligence and integrity
to comprehend the danger before the situation becomes irreversible? It seems that if we do not do
anything today about Greenhouse Emissions that cause the entire atmosphere to trap more Solar
Heat, we may not survive the next decade. In a systematically under-cooled spherical core reactor the
cumulative cause-effect relationship is hyperbolic and leads to explosion. It seems that there will be no second
chance... If you doubt whether a planet can explode - you need to see a witness report of a planetary explosion in
our Solar system. Plato (428-348 BC) reported that the explosion of the planet Phaeton had been perceived by our
ancestors on Earth to be as bright as lightning...
The last few years were the WARMEST ever recorded on Earth. The trend
continues. Huge parts of Antarctic and Arctic ice have already melted. Key Antarctic glaciers (Hektoria, Green and Evans for example) increased
their melting rate 8 times in 3 years (between 2000 and 2003, Geophys. Res. Lett., 31, L18401). When glaciers begin to slide to the ocean, the sea
level rise will cause not only tsunamis but a global planetary flood. Volcanoes become active under Arctic Ocean and in Antarctica In the past,
volcanic activity was followed by decades of dormancy. Today, when volcanoes erupt they remain active and the neighboring
volcanoes erupt... The Largest Volcanoes on Earth have lost their snow-caps Oceans are warmer than ever. Their increased evaporation
produces large amount of clouds, rain and widespread flooding Oceans around Antarctica at depths of 5 km are less salty and less dense
confirming that Antarctica is melting from underneath. The fresh water is lighter than salt water, so it should be on top... In heated oceans all
currents are severely disrupted Mountain glaciers melt around the globe The weather around the globe becomes more violent every month Trees
begun to BLOOM in winter. Photos on the left show Australian blackwood trees blooming in August (Mt Best, Victoria). This is equivalent to
European and USA trees blooming in February. Plants detect "season" by monitoring the soil temperature . Energy of earthquakes
systematically increases. The graph on the left depicts the annual quake energy since record begun in 1973, computed on the basis of USGS
scientific data from all quakes above 4.0 magnitude since 1973. The data is compared (scaled) to 1973 quake energy. The energy of earthuakes 7.0

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and above increased 6 times in the same period... According to the current "scientific" dogmas, the planetary interior
"crystallizes" and becomes less liquid as the time goes on. So, tectonic plate motion should become slower in time and
quakes should become less frequent and less energetic. The evidence presented in the graph on the left demonstrates exactly
the opposite. In the period of time when the planetary climate changed by a small fraction of one degree, earthquakes have become
5 times more energetic. I wonder why no one on Earth makes any notice of this? WHY ??? NASA measurements confirm (Science 308, 14311435) that Earth absorbs more energy from the Sun that it is able to reflect to space - about 0.85 MegaWatt per square kilometer more. Pollution
increases daily and Solar activity is on the increase until 2012. Global increase in tectonic, volcanic and seismic activity seems certain. Have we
reached the point of no return?
Some people claim that the observable earthquake energy rise is due to "improved equpiment" and/or
"increasing the number of seismic stations". This claim cannot be true. Waves from large quakes travel around the globe and are detectable
ANYWHERE. Since time of Cold War there is enough seismic stations on Earth to pin-point location of a nuclear explosion (a quake 4.0) within a
few km. Increasing number of seismic stations and better equipment can only be responsible for the increase in the number of "small" quakes
being detected. The global energy of "small" earthquakes (below 7.0) increased only by 40% since 1973. In contrast, the global energy of quakes
7.0 and above increased 6 times in the same period. This is not any theory. It is an observable FACT. What causes an 8-fold increase in Antarctic
glacier melting in just 3 years? Sun does not deliver 8 times the energy under the Antarctic ice does it? Some scientists predict that effects of
"global warming" will take many decades. Can they explain the increase of the melting rate of Antarctic glaciers 8 times in 3 years? Overheating of
the fission heated planetary interior can...

Warming causes crop failures despite CO2 fertilization this results in extinction
Robert Strom, Professor Emeritus of planetary sciences in the Department of Planetary Sciences at the University of
Arizona, 07 (studied climate change for 15 yrs, the former Director of the Space Imagery Center, a NASA Regional Planetary
Image Facility, Hot House, p. 211+)

Agriculture is critical to the survival of civilization. Crops feed not only us but also the domestic animals we use for
food. Any disruption in food production means a disruption of the economy, government, and health. The increase in
CO2 will result in some growth of crops, and rising temperatures will open new areas to crop production at higher
latitudes and over longer growing seasons; however, the overall result will be decreased crop production in most parts
of the world. A 1993 study of the effects of a doubling of CO2 (550 ppm) above pre-industrial levels shows that there will be
substantial decreases in the world food supply (Rosenzweig et al., 1993). In their research they studied the effects of global warming on four crops (wheat,
rice, protein feed, and coarse grain) using four scenarios involving various adaptations of crops to temperature change
and CO2 abundance. They found that the amount of world food reduction ranged from 1 to 27%. However, the optimistic value of 1% is almost certainly much too low, because it
assumed that the amount of degradation would be offset by more growth from "CO2 fertilization." We now know that this is not the case, as explained below and in Chapter 7. The most
probable value is a worldwide food reduction between 16 and 27%. These scenarios are based on temperature and CO2 rises that
may be too low, as discussed in Chapter 7. However, even a decrease in world food production of 16% would lead to large-scale starvation
in many regions of the world.Large-scale experiments called Free-Air Concentration Enrichment have shown that the effects of higher CO2 levels on crop growth is about 50%
less than experiments in enclosure studies (Long et al., 2006). This shows that the projections that conclude that rising CO2 will fully offset the losses due to higher temperatures are wrong. The
downside of climate change will far outweigh the benefits of increased CO2 and longer growing seasons. One researcher (Prof. Long) from the University of Illinois put it this way:Growing crops
much closer to real conditions has shown that increased levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will have roughly half the beneficial effects previously hoped for in the event of climate change. In
addition, ground-level ozone, which is also predicted to rise but has not been extensively studied before, has been shown to result in a loss of photosynthesis and 20 per cent reduction in crop yield.
Both these results show that we need to seriously re-examine our predictions for future global food production, as they are likely to be far lower than previously estimated. Also, studies in Britain and

only a few days of hot temperatures can severely reduce the yield of major food crops such as wheat, soy
beans, rice, and groundnuts if they coincide with the flowering of these crops. This suggests that there are certain thresholds above which crops
Denmark show that

become very vulnerable to climate change.The European heat wave in the summer of 2003 provided a large-scale experiment on the behavior of crops to increased temperatures. Scientists from
several European research institutes and universities found that the growth of plants during the heat wave was reduced by nearly a third (Ciais et al., 2005). In Italy, the growth of corn dropped by
about 36% while oak and pine had a growth reduction of 30%. In the affected areas of the mid- west and California the summer heat wave of 2006 resulted in a 35% loss of crops, and in California a
15% decline in dairy production due to the heat-caused death of dairy cattle. It has been projected that a 2 C rise in local temperature will result in a $92 million loss to agriculture in the Yakima
Valley of Washington due to the reduction of the snow pack. A 4'C increase will result in a loss of about $163 million. For the first time, the world's grain harvests have fallen below the consumption
level for the past four years according to the Earth Policy Institute (Brown, 2003). Furthermore, the shortfall in grain production increased each year, from 16 million tons in 2000 to 93 million tons in

In developing nations the impact will be much more severe. It is

the impact of global warming on crops and domestic animals will be most felt. In general, the world's most
crucial staple food crops could fall by as much as one-third because of resistance to flowering and
setting of seeds due to rising temperatures. Crop ecologists believe that many crops grown in the tropics are near, or at,
their thermal limits. Already research in the Philippines has linked higher night-time temperatures to a reduction in rice yield. It
is estimated that for rice, wheat, and corn, the grain yields are likely to decline by 10% for every local 1 C increase in
temperature. With a decreasing availability of food, malnutrition will become more frequent accompanied by damage to
the immune system. This will result in a greater susceptibility to spreading diseases. For an extreme rise in global temperature (> 6
'C), it is likely that worldwide crop failures will lead to mass starvation, and political and economic
chaos with all their ramifications for civilization.
2003. These studies were done in industrialized nations where agricultural practices are the best in the world.

here that

Warming causes genocide and war GDS

CSM, 7
(June 21 2007, The Christian Science Monitor, Global warming may uproot millions,
http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0621/p10s01-wogi.html)

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Similarly, political instability resulting from climate-caused forced migration is becoming a major concern among senior
military officers, reports the International H"There will be less water available for Israel, but there will also be less water
available for Israel's neighbors, and that will make [compliance with] existing peace treaty commitments more difficult
between Israel and Jordan. ... And it makes difficult future agreements to be struck between Israel and the Palestinian
Authority, between Israel and Syria, and between Israel and Lebanon." Thousands of people have died or been driven
from their homes in the Darfur region of Sudan, says UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon in a recent column in The
Washington Post. Mr. Ban sees a direct link between social and political unrest in Darfur and its roots in an ecological
crisis, at least partly attributable to climate change. Ban writes: erald Tribune . In a recent report, retired senior officers
warned that in the next 30 to 40 years, wars could be fought over water resources, hunger instability from worsening
disease and rising sea levels, and refugees fleeing other effects of global warming. "The chaos that results can be an
incubator of civil strife, genocide and the growth of terrorism," the 35-page report predicted. "We will pay for this one
way or another," wrote retired Marine Corps Gen. Anthony Zinni, former commander of US forces in the Middle East,
Central Asia, and the Horn of Africa. "We will pay to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions today, and we'll have to take an
economic hit of some kind. Or we will pay the price later in military terms, and that will involve human lives."

Warming will cause mass starvation.

AFP, November 22, 7 (p. lexis)
An agrarian crisis is brewing because of climate change that could jeopardise global food supplies and increase the
risk of hunger for a billion poorest of the poor, scientists warned Thursday. South Asia and Africa would be hardest
hit by the crisis, which would shift the world's priorities away from boosting food output year after year to bolstering the
resilience of crops to cope with warm weather, they said. Rice, the staple for billions of people, is most vulnerable to
global warming, said Dyno Keatinge, deputy director general of research at the International Crops Research Institute
for the Semi-Arid Tropics. "It is the world's most consumed crop and it makes everything else pale in comparison,"
Keatinge told reporters in Hyderabad, southern India, where the research institute has organised a conference on the
impact of climate change on farming. "We have the opportunity to grow other crops that are more resistant to higher
temperatures such as sorgum and millet, but changing people's food habits is very difficult, he said.
The rice yield
could fall "very quickly in a warmer world" unless researchers find alternative varieties or ways to shift the time of rice
flowering, he added, demanding governments allocate more money to research. Environmentalists and agricultural
scientists are mounting pressure on governments to act quickly to stem carbon emissions responsible for climate
change, ahead of next month's global summit in Bali, Indonesia. They also want bigger budgets to combat damage
already done and cope with risks into the future. According to the crop research institute, one billion of the world's
poorest are vulnerable to the impact of climate change on agriculture -- from desertification and land degradation to
loss of biodiversity and water scarcity. India accounts for about 26 percent of this population, China more than 16
percent, with other Asian countries making up 18 percent and sub-Saharan Africa the remainder. "Climate change
will generally reduce production potential and increase the risk of hunger," said Martin Parry, co-chair of the InterGovernmental Panel on Climate Change that shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with former US vice president Al
Gore.
"Where crops are grown near their maximum temperature tolerance and where dry land, non-irrigated
agriculture predominates, the challenge of climate change could be overwhelming, especially on subsistence farmers,"
he said.

Each degree of warming linearly increases the risk of war.

Dr. Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, Visiting Prof. Physics @ Oxford, 8
(http://www.wbgu.de/wbgu_jg2007_engl.pdf)
Climate change is only just beginning, but its impacts will steadily intensify in the coming decades. WBGU shows that firstly,
climate change could exacerbate existing environmental crises such as drought, water scarcity and soil degradation, intensify landuse conflicts and trigger further environmentally induced migration. Rising global temperatures will jeopardize the bases of many
peoples livelihoods, especially in the developing regions, increase vulnerability to poverty and social deprivation, and thus put
human security at risk. Particularly in weak and fragile states with poorly performing institutions and systems of government,
climate change is also likely to overwhelm local capacities to adapt to changing environmental conditions and will thus reinforce
the trend towards general instability that already exists in many societies and regions (Box 1). In general it can be said that the
greater the warming, the greater the security risks to be anticipated

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The economy is heading towards a collapse worse than the great depression-green
investment is key to avoid it.
Phil Izzo, Staff Writer-WSJ, 12/11/8 (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122894049567595513.html?
mod=rss_whats_news_us)
The current recession may turn out to be the longest and most painful downturn since the Great Depression , according to
economists in the latest Wall Street Journal economic-forecasting survey. "For the household sector, this will be the worst event
we've had in the post-World War II period," said Bruce Kasman of J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. The 54 economists who participate
in the survey, on average, forecast quarterly contractions in gross domestic product for the current quarter and the first two periods
of 2009. The Commerce Department's preliminary estimate showed a 0.5% decline in quarterly GDP for the third quarter. If the
economists' predictions bear out, it would mark the first time GDP has contracted in four consecutive quarters during the postwar
period. On average, economists expect the downturn to conclude in June 2009. Last week, the National Bureau of Economic
Research dated the start of recession in December 2007. That puts the downturn at 18 months, the longest period of decline since
the Great Depression. The recessions of 1973-75 and 1981-82 both lasted 16 months. "The downturn would be deeper still, in
our view, were it not for an ultra-aggressive combination of monetary and fiscal stimulus that will soon move into high gear,"
Morgan Stanley economists Richard Berner and David Greenlaw said in a research note. "Authorities are pulling out all the stops:
Quantitative easing by the Fed and the largest-ever fiscal stimulus package likely will promote stability in the economy late in
2009 and a moderate recovery in 2010." WSJ's Phil Izzo talks with Kelsey Hubbard about the results of the latest survey showing
economists believe the current recession will last into June 2009, making it the longest since the Great Depression. Many
economists cited a major expected fiscal-stimulus package as the key to pulling the U.S. out of recession . Details about the
government intervention remain unclear. "The precise date is likely to depend on timing of the stimulus package," said Lou
Crandall of Wrightson ICAP.

Warming will cause extinction.

Oliver Tickell, Environmental Researcher, 8/11/8
(http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/aug/11/climatechange) [Quals Added]
We need to get prepared for four degrees of global warming, Bob Watson [PhD in Chemistry, Award for Scientific Freedom and
Responsibility from the American Association for the Advacement of Science] told the Guardian last week. At first sight this looks
like wise counsel from the climate science adviser to Defra. But the idea that we could adapt to a 4C rise is absurd and
dangerous. Global warming on this scale would be a catastrophe that would mean, in the immortal words that Chief Seattle
probably never spoke, "the end of living and the beginning of survival" for humankind. Or perhaps the beginning of our
extinction. The collapse of the polar ice caps would become inevitable, bringing long-term sea level rises of 70-80 metres. All the
world's coastal plains would be lost, complete with ports, cities, transport and industrial infrastructure, and much of the world's
most productive farmland. The world's geography would be transformed much as it was at the end of the last ice age, when sea
levels rose by about 120 metres to create the Channel, the North Sea and Cardigan Bay out of dry land. Weather would become
extreme and unpredictable, with more frequent and severe droughts, floods and hurricanes. The Earth's carrying capacity would be
hugely reduced. Billions would undoubtedly die. Watson's call was supported by the government's former chief scientific adviser,
Sir David King [Director of the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment at the University of Oxford], who warned that "if
we get to a four-degree rise it is quite possible that we would begin to see a runaway increase". This is a remarkable
understatement. The climate system is already experiencing significant feedbacks, notably the summer melting of the Arctic sea
ice. The more the ice melts, the more sunshine is absorbed by the sea, and the more the Arctic warms. And as the Arctic warms, the
release of billions of tonnes of methane a greenhouse gas 70 times stronger than carbon dioxide over 20 years captured under
melting permafrost is already under way. To see how far this process could go, look 55.5m years to the Palaeocene-Eocene
Thermal Maximum, when a global temperature increase of 6C coincided with the release of about 5,000 gigatonnes of carbon into
the atmosphere, both as CO2 and as methane from bogs and seabed sediments. Lush subtropical forests grew in polar regions, and
sea levels rose to 100m higher than today. It appears that an initial warming pulse triggered other warming processes. Many
scientists warn that this historical event may be analogous to the present: the warming caused by human emissions could propel us
towards a similar hothouse Earth.

CO2 emissions will destroy the oceans.

Geoffery Lean, Environmental Editor of the Independent, 8/1/4 (The Independent, l/n)
The world's oceans are sacrificing themselves to try to stave off global warming, a major international research programme has
discovered. Their waters have absorbed about half of the carbon dioxide emitted by human activities over the past two

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centuries, the 15-year study has found. Without this moderating effect, climate change would have been much more rapid and
severe. But in the process the seas have become more acid, threatening their very life. The research warns that this could kill off
their coral reefs, shellfish and plankton, on which all marine life depends. News of the alarming conclusions of the research headed by US government scientists - follows the discovery, reported in Friday's Independent, of a catastrophic failure of North
Sea birds to breed this summer, thought to be the result of global warming. The disaster - forecast in The Independent on Sunday
last October - appears to have been caused by plankton moving hundreds of miles to the north to escape from an unprecedented
warming on the sea's waters. Sand eels - millions of which normally provide the staple diet of many seabirds and large fish - have
disappeared, because they, in turn, depend on the plankton. The new study warns of an even more alarming collapse throughout the
world's oceans if climate change continues. It is the result of a mammoth research effort, which has taken and analysed 72,000
samples of seawater from 10,000 different places in the oceans since 1989. Led by scientists working for the US National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Seattle, it has also involved teams of researchers from Australia, Canada, Spain,
Japan, South Korea and Germany. It has discovered, for the first time, that the seas and oceans have soaked up almost half of all
human emissions of carbon dioxide, the main cause of global warming, since the start of the Industrial Revolution. By doing so
they have greatly slowed climate change, and almost certainly prevented it from already causing catastrophe. "The oceans are
performing this tremendous service to humankind by reducing the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere," says Dr
Christopher Sabine, one of the leaders of the research. But, he adds, this is coming at a great cost because the act of salvage "is
changing the chemistry of the oceans". The research concludes that "dramatic changes", such as have not occurred for at least 20
million years, now appear to be under way. They could have "significant impacts on the biological systems of the oceans in ways
that we are only beginning to understand". As the water naturally absorbs carbon dioxide from the air, it forms carbonic acid.
And the acid then mops up calcium carbonate, a substance normally plentiful in the oceans that sea creatures use to make the
protective shells that they need to survive. The scientists say that if the world goes on producing more and more carbon
dioxide, this shell formation will become increasingly difficult, while the world will heat up anyway. The results are incalculable,
because so may shelled creatures live in the seas, ranging from clams and corals to the plankton and other tiny creatures that form
the base of the entire food chain of the oceans. The surface waters and upper 10 per cent of the oceans - which contain most
of the life - are the most acidic, the research shows. The acidity also varies around the world. The North Atlantic - the nearest
ocean to the world's most polluting countries, is the most affected; the southern ocean that encircles Antarctica the least.
When the scientists took a species of snail from the relatively unpolluted waters of the far north of the Pacific, near the Arctic
Circle, and put it in seawater with carbon dioxide levels similar to those found elsewhere, the animals' shells began to dissolve.
Dr Peter Brewer, of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute - who was not himself involved in the research - calls the
results "a wake-up call". He adds: "The numbers are crystal clear. The analysis is impeccable. There is no uncertainty about this.
These impacts of a high carbon dioxide ocean are real, and are measurable today." The research also explodes a heavily
touted "solution" to global warming. Critics of international action, including members of the Bush administration, say that there is
little need to curb carbon dioxide emissions because the gas could be collected and injected into the oceans for disposal.
However, the study shows that this cure could be even worse than the disease.

Extinction.
Robin Craig, Assc. Prof. Law @Indiana, Winter, 3 (34 McGeorge L. Rev. 155, l/n)
Biodiversity and ecosystem function arguments for conserving marine ecosystems also exist, just as they do for terrestrial
ecosystems, but these arguments have thus far rarely been raised in political debates. For example, besides significant tourism
values - the most economically valuable ecosystem service coral reefs provide, worldwide - coral reefs protect against storms
and dampen other environmental fluctuations, services worth more than ten times the reefs value for food production. Waste
treatment is another significant, non-extractive ecosystem function that intact coral reef ecosystems provide. More generally,
ocean ecosystems play a major role in the global geochemical cycling of all the elements that represent the basic building
blocks of living organisms, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, and sulfur, as well as other less abundant but necessary
elements. In a very real and direct sense, therefore, human degradation of marine ecosystems impairs the planets ability
to support life. Maintaining biodiversity is often critical to maintaining the functions of marine ecosystems. Current evidence
shows that, in general, an ecosystems ability to keep functioning in the face of disturbance is strongly dependent on its
biodiversity, indicating that more diverse ecosystems are more stable. Coral reef ecosystems are particularly dependent on
their biodiversity. Most ecologists agree that the complexity of interactions and degree of interrelatedness among component
species is higher on coral reefs than in any other marine environment. This implies that the ecosystem functioning that
produces the most highly valued components is also complex and that many otherwise insignificant species have strong effects
on sustaining the rest of the reef system. Thus, maintaining and restoring the biodiversity of marine ecosystems is critical to
maintaining and restoring the ecosystem services that they provide. Non-use biodiversity values for marine ecosystems have
been calculated in the wake of marine disasters, like the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska. Similar calculations could derive
preservation values for marine wilderness. However, economic value, or economic value equivalents, should not be the sole or
even primary justification for conservation of ocean ecosystems. Ethical arguments also have considerable force and merit. At

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the forefront of such arguments should be a recognition of how little we know about the sea - and about the actual effect of
human activities on marine ecosystems. The United States has traditionally failed to protect marine ecosystems because it was
difficult to detect anthropogenic harm to the oceans, but we now know that such harm is occurring - even though we are not
completely sure about causation or about how to fix every problem. Ecosystems like the NWHI coral reef ecosystem should
inspire lawmakers and policymakers to admit that most of the time we really do not know what we are doing to the sea and
hence should be preserving marine wilderness whenever we can - especially when the United States has within its territory
relatively pristine marine ecosystems that may be unique in the world. We may not know much about the sea, but we do know
this much: if we kill the ocean we kill ourselves, and we will take most of the biosphere with us. The Black Sea is almost
dead, its once-complex and productive ecosystem almost entirely replaced by a monoculture of comb jellies, starving out fish
and dolphins, emptying fishermens nets, and converting the web of life into brainless, wraith-like blobs of jelly. More
importantly, the Black Sea is not necessarily unique. The Black Sea is a microcosm of what is happening to the ocean systems
at large. The stresses piled up: overfishing, oil spills, industrial discharges, nutrient pollution, wetlands destruction, the
introduction of an alien species. The sea weakened, slowly at first, then collapsed with shocking suddenness. The lessons of
this tragedy should not be lost to the rest of us, because much of what happened here is being repeated all over the world. The
ecological stresses imposed on the Black Sea were not unique to communism. Nor, sadly, was the failure of governments to
respond to the emerging crisis. Oxygen-starved dead zones appear with increasing frequency off the coasts of major cities
and major rivers, forcing marine animals to flee and killing all that cannot. Ethics as well as enlightened self-interest thus
suggest that the United States should protect fully-functioning marine ecosystems wherever possible - even if a few fishers go
out of business as a result.

CO2 will decimate insect biodiversity, killing tropical forests.

Jonathan Adams, Asst. Prof. Ecology @ Rutgers and Ning Zeng, Assc. Prof. Meteorology @ U of Maryland, 7
(Vegetation-Climate Interaction: How Vegetation Makes the Global Environment, p.215)
However, it is important to bear in mind that the plants themselves are generally bigger when they are C02-fertilized, and
the extra amount lost to hungry insects in these experiments actually works out to be less as a percentage of the total leaf
area. Also, insects which have to eat more leaf material to extract enough protein are generally placed in a difficult
situation: it takes a lot of work for the insect to digest the extra material, and the insect may also have to take in extra
amounts of poisons the host plant produces in the process of consuming more leaf. The insect may also have to spend more
time feeding out on the leaf exposed to enemies when it cannot get enough protein. In fact, the evidence is that overall with
C02 fertilization the advantage is tipped in favor of the plant, against the insect. It seems that insects on C02-fertilized
plants not only consume a smaller proportion of leaf tissue, they grow more slowly and die more often. Most species in the
world are herbivorous insects, and it is rather frightening to consider what effects this sort of change might have on
insect biodiversity in the tropics and elsewhere. It is quite possible that a large change in nutrient content will push
many species over the edge into extinction. It is widely considered by ecologists that a large part of the reason so many
species of tropical trees can coexist in the tropical rainforests is that selective insect herbivores prevent each tree species
from becoming too abundant. If we start to see these specialized herbivores dropping out of existence because of a direct
C02 effect, many tropical trees may go extinct because the most competitive species among them are no longer so closely
density-limited and can now push the others out.

Extinction.
David Takacs, Prof. Envtl Humanities @ Cal State, 96 (The Idea of Biodiversity, p. 200-201)
So biodiversity keeps the world running. It has value and of itself, as well as for us. Raven, Erwin, and Wilson oblige us to think
about the value of biodiversity for our own lives. The Ehrlichs rivet-popper trope makes this same point; by eliminating rivets, we
play Russian roulette with global ecology and human futures: It is likely that destruction of the rich complex of species in the
Amazon basin could trigger rapid changes in global climate patterns. Agriculture remains heavily dependent on stable climate, and
human beings remain heavily dependent on food. By the end of the century the extinction of perhaps a million species in the
Amazon basin could have entrained famines in which a billion human beings perished. And if our species is very unlucky, the
famines could lead to a thermonuclear war, which could extinguish civilization. 13 Elsewhere Ehrlich uses different particulars
with no less drama:What then will happen if the current decimation of organic diversity continues? Crop yields will be more
difficult to maintain in the face of climatic change, soil erosion, loss of dependable water supplies, decline of pollinators, and ever
more serious assaults by pests. Conversion of productive land to wasteland will accelerate; deserts will continue their seemingly
inexorable expansion. Air pollution will increase, and local climates will become harsher. Humanity will have to forgo many of the
direct economic benefits it might have withdrawn from Earth's wellstocked genetic library. It might, for example, miss out on a
cure for cancer; but that will make little difference. As ecosystem services falter, mortality from respiratory and epidemic disease,

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natural disasters, and especially famine will lower life expectancies to the point where cancer (largely a disease of the elderly) will
be unimportant. Humanity will bring upon itself consequences depressingly similar to those expected from a nuclear winter.
Barring a nuclear conflict, it appears that civilization will disappear some time before the end of the next century - not with a
bang but a whimper.14

Digher carbon dioxide levels will destroy biodiversity-models and fossil records prove.
Ward, professor of geological sciences at University of Washington, 2008 [Peter, Under a Green Sky: Global Warming, the Mass
Extinctions of the Past, and What They Tell Us About Our Future, p. 134-138]
The best of the methods is a computer program developed by the great Robert Berner of Yale University. His program depends on
inputs ranging from estimates of the rate of sediment burial to direct measurement of carbon isotope values from carbonate rocks.
Known as GEOCARB, the model shows the major trends in carbon dioxide through time, while a second such model known as
GEOCARBSULF allows estimates of ancient oxygen levels through time. Combined, these results have given us a new, and in
many ways largely unexpected, view of how much these two gases have varied through time. That levels of atmospheric carbon
dioxide must have varied through time became evident after geologists discovered times in Earth's history when much of Earth
was tropical, and other times when there were glaciations on larger scale than the recent Pleistocene epoch glacial events. Although
there were several possible causes, such as variation in solar heating over time or changes in heating from the interior of Earth,
detailed research into both eventually ruled them out, leaving greenhouse gases as the major suspect for having caused
climate shifts. The study of ice cores from glaciers formed in the Pleistocene epoch finally demonstrated that carbon dioxide values can and did vary, and not
just in the long term but over astonishingly short time intervals, some as short as a decade. Although none of the various models such as GEOCARB attempting to
calculate carbon dioxide and oxygen levels over the last 500 million years has such precision, they can discern longer-term (greater than a million years) changes
(Figure 6.1). The carbon dioxide curve is striking. Compared with today, it was high for much of the Paleozoic era, but as oxygen began its climb some 375 million
years ago, the levels of carbon dioxide plummeted and only rose again sometime into the Mesozoic era; the gas was plentiful through much of the era, culminating
in a maximum in the late Jurassic period, of about 150 million years ago, and then declin ing throughout the Cenozoic era, coming to a minimum level" today. But
as we shall see, even the last 200 years have produced an upswing of carbon dioxide that is of too short a duration to be visible on this long-term graph . The

long-term decline in carbon dioxide over the past 100 mil lion years is both interesting and misleading. The gradual reduction is
due to the slow enlargement of the continents and to the increased amount of carbon locked up in vast mineral deposits, which
erode and liberate carbon at a slower rate than others of their composition are formed. Ultimately, the long-term drop will spell
doom for our Earth as a habitable planet, as Don Brownlee and I explained in our 2003 book, The Life and Death of Planet Earth.
But that eventuality is far, far in the future, and the reduction in atmospheric carbon dioxide has halted and reversed with a
vengeance over not only the past centuries of the Industrial Age of humans but also in fact dating back through the millennia that
humans have engaged in agriculture. The carbon dioxide makes pretty clear that times of high carbon dioxide-and especially times
when carbon dioxide levels rap idly rose-coincided with the mass extinctions. Here is the driver of extinction. Here is the cause of
the changes in the ancient conveyer belts-short-term warming caused by increases in greenhouse gases. The flood basalts that also
correspond with those extinctions is the source of the greenhouse gases. Lest the models used to support this argument seem
unsatisfactory, the other method for ascertaining past carbon dioxide levels pro vides independent corroboration of my hypothesis.
Paleobotanists have done some very clever work on fossil leaves that resulted in an important breakthrough in the quest to find a relative measure of an cient carbon
dioxide levels. Their method enables a paleobotanist to say whether carbon dioxide levels were rising, falling, or constant dur ing million-year intervals, and
furthermore, the method enables an investigator to estimate how many times higher or lower the carbon dioxide levels were than some base-level observation. The
measure turns out to be both clever and simple, as is so often the case with wonderful breakthroughs. Botanists looking at modern plant leaves had done
experiments whereby they grew plant species in closed systems where the amount of carbon dioxide could be raised or lowered relative to the level found in our
atmosphere (about 360 parts per million when these experiments were first conducted). Plants, it turns out, are highly sensitive to carbon dioxide levels, because the
carbon dioxide in the atmosphere serves as their source for carbon the major building block of life. They acquire this mainly through tiny portals in their leaves
called stomata; the stomata allow carbon dioxide in and water out . When grown in high levels of carbon dioxide, the plants produced a small

number of stomata, as just a few sufficed with the gas plentiful; when grown in low levels, the opposite was true. Such a clear
result delighted the experimenters, which included a colleague of Berner's named David Beerling, now teaching at the University
of Sheffield in England. Leaf stomata are readily observable on most well-preserved fossil leaves, and when the investigators
turned to the fossil record, the results confirmed Berner's model results. LET US BRING THIS ALL TOGETHER. IT IS HERE
PROPOSED THAT EACH OF the greenhouse extinctions had a similar cause, and here we can summarize the sequential steps.
First, the world warms over short intervals of time because of a sudden increase of carbon dioxide and methane, caused initially by
the formation of vast volcanic provinces called flood basalts. The warmer world affects the ocean circulation systems and disrupts
the position of the conveyer currents. Bottom waters begin to have warm, low-oxygen water dumped into them. Warming
continues, and the decrease of equator-to-pole temperature differences reduces ocean winds and surface currents to a near
standstill. Mixing of oxygen ated surface waters with the deeper, and volumetrically increasing, low-oxygen bottom waters
decreases, causing ever-shallower water to change from oxygenated to anoxic. Finally, the bottom water is at depths where light
can penetrate, and the combination of low oxygen and light allows green sulfur bacteria to expand in numbers and fill the lowoxygen shallows. They live amid other bacteria that produce toxic amounts of hydrogen sulfide, and the flux of this gas into the at mosphere is as much as 2,000 times what it is today. The gas rises into, the high atmosphere, where it breaks down the ozone layer
and the subsequent increase in ultraviolet radiation from the sun kills much of the photosynthetic green plant phytoplankton. On its
way up into the sky, the hydrogen sulfide also kills some plant and animal life, and the combination of high heat and hydrogen
sulfide creates a mass extinc tion on land. These are the greenhouse extinctions. The sequence of events outlined above can be

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considered a combined hypothesis for the cause of greenhouse extinctions and can be named the conveyer disruption hypothesis.
There was obviously variability in each extinction, but if the extinctions are examined in a fashion similar to how taxonomists
classify living organisms as a species, it seems quite clear that the mass extinctions considered here as greenhouse extinctions are a
different beast than the K- T, our now sole known impact extinction.

Biodiversity loss will cause extinction-this cycle is unique.

Jerry Coyne, Professor of Ecology at University of Chicago and Hopi Hoekstra, Professor of Biology at Harvard, 9/24/7
(http://www.truthout.org/article/jerry-coyne-and-hopi-e-hoekstra-the-greatest-dying)
Aside from the Great Dying, there have been four other mass extinctions, all of which severely pruned life's diversity. Scientists
agree that we're now in the midst of a sixth such episode. This new one, however, is different - and, in many ways, much worse.
For, unlike earlier extinctions, this one results from the work of a single species, Homo sapiens. We are relentlessly taking over the
planet, laying it to waste and eliminating most of our fellow species. Moreover, we're doing it much faster than the mass
extinctions that came before. Every year, up to 30,000 species disappear due to human activity alone. At this rate, we could lose
half of Earth's species in this century. And, unlike with previous extinctions, there's no hope that biodiversity will ever recover,
since the cause of the decimation - us - is here to stay. To scientists, this is an unparalleled calamity, far more severe than global warming, which is,
after all, only one of many threats to biodiversity. Yet global warming gets far more press. Why? One reason is that, while the increase in temperature is
easy to document, the decrease of species is not. Biologists don't know, for example, exactly how many species exist on Earth. Estimates range widely,
from three million to more than 50 million, and that doesn't count microbes, critical (albeit invisible) components of ecosystems. We're not certain about
the rate of extinction, either; how could we be, since the vast majority of species have yet to be described? We're even less sure how the loss of some
species will affect the ecosystems in which they're embedded, since the intricate connection between organisms means that the loss of a single species can
ramify unpredictably. But we do know some things. Tropical rainforests are disappearing at a rate of 2 percent per year. Populations of most large fish
are down to only 10 percent of what they were in 1950. Many primates and all the great apes - our closest relatives - are nearly gone from the wild.
And we know that extinction and global warming act synergistically. Extinction exacerbates global warming: By burning rainforests, we're not only
polluting the atmosphere with carbon dioxide (a major greenhouse gas) but destroying the very plants that can remove this gas from the air. Conversely,
global warming increases extinction, both directly (killing corals) and indirectly (destroying the habitats of Arctic and Antarctic animals). As extinction
increases, then, so does global warming, which in turn causes more extinction - and so on, into a downward spiral of destruction. Why, exactly, should
we care? Let's start with the most celebrated case: the rainforests. Their loss will worsen global warming - raising temperatures, melting icecaps, and
flooding coastal cities. And, as the forest habitat shrinks, so begins the inevitable contact between organisms that have not evolved together, a scenario
played out many times, and one that is never good. Dreadful diseases have successfully jumped species boundaries, with humans as prime recipients. We
have gotten aids from apes, sars from civets, and Ebola from fruit bats. Additional worldwide plagues from unknown microbes are a very real possibility.
But it isn't just the destruction of the rainforests that should trouble us . Healthy ecosystems the world over provide hidden services like

waste disposal, nutrient cycling, soil formation, water purification, and oxygen production. Such services are best rendered by
ecosystems that are diverse. Yet, through both intention and accident, humans have introduced exotic species that turn biodiversity
into monoculture. Fast-growing zebra mussels, for example, have outcompeted more than 15 species of native mussels in North
America's Great Lakes and have damaged harbors and water-treatment plants. Native prairies are becoming dominated by single
species (often genetically homogenous) of corn or wheat. Thanks to these developments, soils will erode and become
unproductive - which, along with temperature change, will diminish agricultural yields. Meanwhile,with increased pollution and
runoff, as well as reduced forest cover, ecosystems will no longer be able to purify water; and a shortage of clean water spells
disaster. In many ways, oceans are the most vulnerable areas of all. As overfishing eliminates major predators, while polluted and warming waters kill off
phytoplankton, the intricate aquatic food web could collapse from both sides. Fish, on which so many humans depend, will be a fond memory. As phytoplankton
vanish, so does the ability of the oceans to absorb carbon dioxide and produce oxygen. (Half of the oxygen we breathe is made by phytoplankton, with the rest
coming from land plants.) Species extinction is also imperiling coral reefs - a major problem since these reefs have far more than recreational value: They provide
tremendous amounts of food for human populations and buffer coastlines against erosion. In fact, the global value of "hidden" services provided by ecosystems those services, like waste disposal, that aren't bought and sold in the marketplace - has been estimated to be as much as $50 trillion per year, roughly equal to the
gross domestic product of all countries combined. And that doesn't include tangible goods like fish and timber . Life as we know it would be impossible

if ecosystems collapsed. Yet that is where we're heading if species extinction continues at its current pace.

Extinction also has a huge impact on

medicine. Who really cares if, say, a worm in the remote swamps of French Guiana goes extinct? Well, those who suffer from cardiovascular disease. The
recent discovery of a rare South American leech has led to the isolation of a powerful enzyme that, unlike other anticoagulants, not only prevents blood
from clotting but also dissolves existing clots. And it's not just this one species of worm: Its wriggly relatives have evolved other biomedically valuable
proteins, including antistatin (a potential anticancer agent), decorsin and ornatin (platelet aggregation inhibitors), and hirudin (another anticoagulant).
Plants, too, are pharmaceutical gold mines. The bark of trees, for example, has given us quinine (the first cure for malaria), taxol (a drug highly
effective against ovarian and breast cancer), and aspirin. More than a quarter of the medicines on our pharmacy shelves were originally derived from
plants. The sap of the Madagascar periwinkle contains more than 70 useful alkaloids, including vincristine, a powerful anticancer drug that saved the life
of one of our friends. Of the roughly 250,000 plant species on Earth, fewer than 5 percent have been screened for pharmaceutical properties. Who
knows what life-saving drugs remain to be discovered? Given current extinction rates, it's estimated that we're losing one valuable drug every two years.
Our arguments so far have tacitly assumed that species are worth saving only in proportion to their economic value and their effects on our quality of
life, an attitude that is strongly ingrained, especially in Americans. That is why conservationists always base their case on an economic calculus. But we
biologists know in our hearts that there are deeper and equally compelling reasons to worry about the loss of biodiversity: namely, simple morality and
intellectual values that transcend pecuniary interests. What, for example, gives us the right to destroy other creatures? And what could be more thrilling
than looking around us, seeing that we are surrounded by our evolutionary cousins, and realizing that we all got here by the same simple process of
natural selection? To biologists, and potentially everyone else, apprehending the genetic kinship and common origin of all species is a spiritual experience
- not necessarily religious, but spiritual nonetheless, for it stirs the soul. But, whether or not one is moved by such concerns , it is certain that our

future is bleak if we do nothing to stem this sixth extinction. We are creating a world in which exotic diseases flourish but natural

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medicinal cures are lost; a world in which carbon waste accumulates while food sources dwindle; a world of sweltering heat,
failing crops, and impure water. In the end, we must accept the possibility that we ourselves are not immune to extinction. Or, if
we survive, perhaps only a few of us will remain, scratching out a grubby existence on a devastated planet . Global warming will
seem like a secondary problem when humanity finally faces the consequences of what we have done to nature: not just another
Great Dying, but perhaps the greatest dying of them all.

Climate change will destroy biodiversity worldwide-most qualified scientists agree.

China Daily, 7/216, http://english.people.com.cn/200607/21/eng20060721_285286.html
The Earth is on the brink of "major biodiversity crisis" fuelled by the steady destruction of ecosystems, a group of the world's most distinguished scientists and
policy experts warn yesterday. Nineteen leading specialists in the field of biodiversity, including Robert Watson, chief scientist at the World Bank, and Professor
Georgina Mace, director of the Institute of Zoology , are calling for the urgent creation of a global body of scientists to offer advice and urge
governments to halt what they call a potentially "catastrophic loss of species". "All the scientific evidence points to the fact that
whatever measure of vulnerability you take, whether it is local populations, species or ecosy
stem, we know that the rate at
which we are altering them now is faster than it has been in the past," Georgina Mace said in an interview. Mace, director of
science at the Institute of Zoology in London, is one of the 19 scientists from 13 countries who signed a declaration published in
the journal Nature explaining why an intergovernmental body is needed. Destruction of natural habitats and the effects of climate
change are causing species to die out at 100 to 1,000 times faster than the natural rate, leading some scientists to warn we are
facing the next mass extinction. Nearly one-quarter of the world's mammals, one-third of amphibians and more than one-tenth of
bird species are threatened with extinction. Climate change alone is expected to force a further 15-37 per cent of species to the
brink of extinction within the next 50 years. Writing in the journal yesterday, the experts, from countries ranging from China, Chile and Canada to South Africa, Germany and the
United States, urge for the new body, the international mechanism of scientific expertise on biodiversity (IMOSEB), to be set up to force better biodiversity policies around the world .
"We are on the verge of a major biodiversity crisis . Virtually all aspects of diversity are in steep decline and a large number of
populations and species are likely to become extinct this century. Despite this evidence, biodiversity is still consistently undervalued and given inadequate
weight in both private and public decisions," the authors say.

Biodiversity loss will cause extinction-this cycle is unique.

Jerry Coyne, Professor of Ecology at University of Chicago and Hopi Hoekstra, Professor of Biology at Harvard, 9/24/7
(http://www.truthout.org/article/jerry-coyne-and-hopi-e-hoekstra-the-greatest-dying)
Aside from the Great Dying, there have been four other mass extinctions, all of which severely pruned life's diversity. Scientists
agree that we're now in the midst of a sixth such episode. This new one, however, is different - and, in many ways, much worse.
For, unlike earlier extinctions, this one results from the work of a single species, Homo sapiens. We are relentlessly taking over the
planet, laying it to waste and eliminating most of our fellow species. Moreover, we're doing it much faster than the mass
extinctions that came before. Every year, up to 30,000 species disappear due to human activity alone. At this rate, we could lose
half of Earth's species in this century. And, unlike with previous extinctions, there's no hope that biodiversity will ever recover,
since the cause of the decimation - us - is here to stay. To scientists, this is an unparalleled calamity, far more severe than global
warming, which is, after all, only one of many threats to biodiversity. Yet global warming gets far more press. Why? One reason is
that, while the increase in temperature is easy to document, the decrease of species is not. Biologists don't know, for example,
exactly how many species exist on Earth. Estimates range widely, from three million to more than 50 million, and that doesn't
count microbes, critical (albeit invisible) components of ecosystems. We're not certain about the rate of extinction, either; how
could we be, since the vast majority of species have yet to be described? We're even less sure how the loss of some species will
affect the ecosystems in which they're embedded, since the intricate connection between organisms means that the loss of a single
species can ramify unpredictably. But we do know some things. Tropical rainforests are disappearing at a rate of 2 percent per
year. Populations of most large fish are down to only 10 percent of what they were in 1950. Many primates and all the great apes our closest relatives - are nearly gone from the wild. And we know that extinction and global warming act synergistically.
Extinction exacerbates global warming: By burning rainforests, we're not only polluting the atmosphere with carbon dioxide (a
major greenhouse gas) but destroying the very plants that can remove this gas from the air. Conversely, global warming increases
extinction, both directly (killing corals) and indirectly (destroying the habitats of Arctic and Antarctic animals). As extinction
increases, then, so does global warming, which in turn causes more extinction - and so on, into a downward spiral of destruction.
Why, exactly, should we care? Let's start with the most celebrated case: the rainforests. Their loss will worsen global warming raising temperatures, melting icecaps, and flooding coastal cities. And, as the forest habitat shrinks, so begins the inevitable contact
between organisms that have not evolved together, a scenario played out many times, and one that is never good. Dreadful diseases
have successfully jumped species boundaries, with humans as prime recipients. We have gotten aids from apes, sars from civets,
and Ebola from fruit bats. Additional worldwide plagues from unknown microbes are a very real possibility. But it isn't just the
destruction of the rainforests that should trouble us. Healthy ecosystems the world over provide hidden services like waste

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disposal, nutrient cycling, soil formation, water purification, and oxygen production. Such services are best rendered by
ecosystems that are diverse. Yet, through both intention and accident, humans have introduced exotic species that turn biodiversity
into monoculture. Fast-growing zebra mussels, for example, have outcompeted more than 15 species of native mussels in North
America's Great Lakes and have damaged harbors and water-treatment plants. Native prairies are becoming dominated by single
species (often genetically homogenous) of corn or wheat. Thanks to these developments, soils will erode and become
unproductive - which, along with temperature change, will diminish agricultural yields. Meanwhile,with increased pollution and
runoff, as well as reduced forest cover, ecosystems will no longer be able to purify water; and a shortage of clean water spells
disaster. In many ways, oceans are the most vulnerable areas of all. As overfishing eliminates major predators, while polluted
and warming waters kill off phytoplankton, the intricate aquatic food web could collapse from both sides. Fish, on which so many
humans depend, will be a fond memory. As phytoplankton vanish, so does the ability of the oceans to absorb carbon dioxide and
produce oxygen. (Half of the oxygen we breathe is made by phytoplankton, with the rest coming from land plants.) Species
extinction is also imperiling coral reefs - a major problem since these reefs have far more than recreational value: They provide
tremendous amounts of food for human populations and buffer coastlines against erosion. In fact, the global value of "hidden"
services provided by ecosystems - those services, like waste disposal, that aren't bought and sold in the marketplace - has been
estimated to be as much as $50 trillion per year, roughly equal to the gross domestic product of all countries combined. And that
doesn't include tangible goods like fish and timber. Life as we know it would be impossible if ecosystems collapsed. Yet that is
where we're heading if species extinction continues at its current pace. Extinction also has a huge impact on medicine. Who
really cares if, say, a worm in the remote swamps of French Guiana goes extinct? Well, those who suffer from cardiovascular
disease. The recent discovery of a rare South American leech has led to the isolation of a powerful enzyme that, unlike other
anticoagulants, not only prevents blood from clotting but also dissolves existing clots. And it's not just this one species of worm:
Its wriggly relatives have evolved other biomedically valuable proteins, including antistatin (a potential anticancer agent), decorsin
and ornatin (platelet aggregation inhibitors), and hirudin (another anticoagulant). Plants, too, are pharmaceutical gold mines.
The bark of trees, for example, has given us quinine (the first cure for malaria), taxol (a drug highly effective against ovarian and
breast cancer), and aspirin. More than a quarter of the medicines on our pharmacy shelves were originally derived from plants. The
sap of the Madagascar periwinkle contains more than 70 useful alkaloids, including vincristine, a powerful anticancer drug that
saved the life of one of our friends. Of the roughly 250,000 plant species on Earth, fewer than 5 percent have been screened for
pharmaceutical properties. Who knows what life-saving drugs remain to be discovered? Given current extinction rates, it's
estimated that we're losing one valuable drug every two years. Our arguments so far have tacitly assumed that species are worth
saving only in proportion to their economic value and their effects on our quality of life, an attitude that is strongly ingrained,
especially in Americans. That is why conservationists always base their case on an economic calculus. But we biologists know in
our hearts that there are deeper and equally compelling reasons to worry about the loss of biodiversity: namely, simple morality
and intellectual values that transcend pecuniary interests. What, for example, gives us the right to destroy other creatures? And
what could be more thrilling than looking around us, seeing that we are surrounded by our evolutionary cousins, and realizing that
we all got here by the same simple process of natural selection? To biologists, and potentially everyone else, apprehending the
genetic kinship and common origin of all species is a spiritual experience - not necessarily religious, but spiritual nonetheless, for
it stirs the soul. But, whether or not one is moved by such concerns, it is certain that our future is bleak if we do nothing to stem
this sixth extinction. We are creating a world in which exotic diseases flourish but natural medicinal cures are lost; a world in
which carbon waste accumulates while food sources dwindle; a world of sweltering heat, failing crops, and impure water. In the
end, we must accept the possibility that we ourselves are not immune to extinction. Or, if we survive, perhaps only a few of us
will remain, scratching out a grubby existence on a devastated planet. Global warming will seem like a secondary problem when
humanity finally faces the consequences of what we have done to nature: not just another Great Dying, but perhaps the greatest
dying of them all.

Climate change outweighs and amplifies all other environmental concerns

Hansen, head of NASA Goddard Institute and prof. of Environmental Sciences, Columbia University, 2008
(James E. Hanson. Head of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York City and adjunct professor in the
Department of Earth and Environmental Science at Columbia University. Al Gores science advisor. Introductory chapter for the
book
State
of
the
Wild.
Tipping
point:
Perspective
of
a
Scientist.
April.
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/2008/StateOfWild_20080428.pdf)
Climate change is emerging while the wild is stressed by other pressures habitat loss, overhunting, pollution, and invasive
speciesand it will magnify these stresses. Species will respond to warming at differing paces, affecting many others through the
web of ecological interactions. Phenological events, which are timed events in the life cycle that are usually tied to seasons, may
be disrupted. Examples of phenological events include when leaves and flowers emerge and when animals depart for migration,
breed, or hibernate. If species depend on each other during those timesfor pollination or food the pace at which they respond
to warmer weather or precipitation changes may cause unraveling, cascading effects within ecosystems. Animals and plants
respond to climate changes by expanding, contracting, or shifting their ranges. Isotherms, lines of a specific average temperature,
are moving poleward by approximately thirty-five miles (56 km) per decade, meaning many species ranges may in turn shift at that
pace.4 Some already are: the red fox is moving into Arctic fox territory, and ecologists have observed that 943 species across all

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taxa and ecosystems have exhibited measurable changes in their phenologies and/or distribution over the past several decades.5
However, their potential routes and habitat will be limited by geographic or human-made obstacles, and other species territories.
Continued business-as-usual greenhouse gas emissions threaten many ecosystems, which together form the fabric of life on Earth
and provide a wide range of services to humanity. Some species face extinction. The following examples represent a handful. Of
particular concern are polar species, because they are being pushed off the planet. In Antarctica, Adelie and emperor penguins are
in decline, as shrinking sea ice has reduced the abundance of krill, their food source.6 Arctic polar bears already contend with
melting sea ice, from which they hunt seals in colder months. As sea ice recedes earlier each year , populations of polar bears in
Canada have declined by about 20 percent, with the weight of females and the number of surviving cubs decreasing a similar
amount. As of this writing, the US Fish and Wildlife Service is still considering protecting polar bears, but only after it was taken
to court for failure to act on the mounting evidence that polar bears will suffer greatly due to global warming. 7 Life in many
biologically diverse alpine regions is similarly in danger of being pushed off the planet. When a given temperature range moves up
a mountain, the area with those climatic conditions becomes smaller and rockier, and the air thinner, resulting in a struggle for
survival for some alpine species. In the Southwest US, the endemic Mount Graham red squirrel survives on a single Arizona
mountain, an island in the sky, an isolated green spot in the desert. The squirrels, protected as an endangered species, had
rebounded to a population of over 500, but their numbers have since declined to between 100 and 200 animals.8 Loss of the red
squirrel will alter the forest because its middens are a source of food and habitat for chipmunks, voles, and mice. A new stress on
Graham red squirrels is climatic: increased heat, drought, and fires. Heat-stressed forests are vulnerable to prolonged beetle
infestation and catastrophic fires. Rainfall still occurs, but it is erratic and heavy, and dry periods are more intense. The resulting
forest fires burn hotter, and the lower reaches of the forest cannot recover. In the marine world, loggerhead turtles are also
suffering. These great creatures return to beaches every two to three years to bury a clutch of eggs. Hatchlings emerge after two
months and head precariously to the sea to face a myriad of predators. Years of conservation efforts to protect loggerhead turtles on
their largest nesting area in the US, stretching over 20 miles of Florida coastline, seemed to be stabilizing the South Florida
subpopulation. 9 Now climate change places a new stress on these turtles. Florida beaches are increasingly lined with sea walls to
protect against rising seas and storms. Sandy beaches seaward of the walls are limited and may be lost if the sea level rises
substantially. Some creatures seem more adaptable to climate change. The armadillo, a prehistoric critter that has been around for
over 50 million years, is likely to extend its range northward in the US. But the underlying cause of the climatic threat to the
Graham red squirrel and other speciesfrom grizzlies, whose springtime food sources may shift, to the isolated snow vole in the
mountains of southern Spainis business-as-usual use of fossil fuels. Predicted warming of several degrees Celsius would
surely cause mass extinctions. Prior major warmings in Earths history, the most recent occurring 55 million years ago with the
release of large amounts of Arctic methane hydrates,10 resulted in the extinction of half or more of the species then on the planet.
Might the Graham red squirrel and snow vole be saved if we transplant them to higher mountains? They would have to compete
for new niches and there is a tangled web of interactions that has evolved among species and ecosystems. What is the prospect
that we could understand, let alone reproduce, these complex interactions that create ecological stability? Assisted migration is
thus an uncertain prospect. 11 The best chance for all species is a conscious choice by humans to pursue an alternative energy
scenario to stabilize the climate.

Rate of warming prevents adaptation.

Slocum, Zoologist, 2008 (http://www.southernstar.ie/article.php?id=814)
Secondly, Mr Lawson makes the spurious assertion that climate change models fail to take account of the infinite adaptability of
the human species to changing temperatures citing two of the worlds most successful economies, Finland and Singapore, where
the population and those driving economic stability live at the extremes of the temperature spectrum. The adaptability of the
human race is quite irrelevant. It is the impact of climate change on the diversity of ecosystems on which man depends that is of
paramount importance. Life on earth has always had to deal with climate change; indeed the need to adapt to changes in rainfall
and temperature has been a major driver in developing biodiversity and life on earth is quite capable of adapting to changes in
climate. However, the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment report argues forcibly that the major reason that many species will find
it difficult to adapt to projected climate change in the 21st century is the speed at which change will occur , preventing entire
ecosystems from adapting to adverse conditions fast enough, leading to widespread species extinction. Add to this the other manmade, existing challenges of pollution, excessive predation, such as commercial fishing and introduction of alien, competitive
species, and the ability of organisms to adapt to rapidly changing climatic conditions will likely be severely compromised. Poorer
communities around the globe will be impacted disproportionately as water, soil and other naturally regenerating resources become
degraded to the point where human life may regionally, become unsustainable.

Warming shifts the entire global security calculus-only the conflicts it causes will lead to extinction.
Peter Schwartz, chair of the Global Business Network, and Doug Randall, co-head of the Global Business Networks consulting
practice, October 3 (An Abrupt Climate Change Scenario and Its Implications for United States National Security, p. Google)

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Today, carrying capacity, which is the ability for the Earth and its natural ecosystems including social, economic, and cultural
systems to support the finite number of people on the planet, is being challenged around the world. According to the International
Energy Agency, global demand for oil will grow by 66% in the next 30 years, but its unclear where the supply will come from. Clean water is
similarly constrained in many areas around the world. With 815 million people receiving insufficient sustenance worldwide, some would say that
as a globe, were living well above our carrying capacity, meaning there are not sufficient natural resources to sustain our behavior. Many point to
technological innovation and adaptive behavior as a means for managing the global ecosystem. Indeed it has been technological progress that has
increased carrying capacity over time. Over centuries we have learned how to produce more food, energy and access more water. But will the
potential of new technologies be sufficient when a crisis like the one outlined in this scenario hits? Abrupt climate change is likely to stretch

carrying capacity well beyond its already precarious limits. And theres a natural tendency or need for carrying capacity to become
realigned. As abrupt climate change lowers the worlds carrying capacity aggressive wars are likely to be fought over food, water,
and energy. Deaths from war as well as starvation and disease will decrease population size, which overtime, will re-balance with carrying
capacity. When you look at carrying capacity on a regional or state level it is apparent that those nations with a high carrying capacity, such as the
United States and Western Europe, are likely to adapt most effectively to abrupt changes in climate, because, relative to their population size,
they have more resources to call on. This may give rise to a more severe have, have-not mentality, causing resentment toward those nations with
a higher carrying capacity. It may lead to finger-pointing and blame, as the wealthier nations tend to use more energy and emit more greenhouse
gasses such as CO2 into the atmosphere. Less important than the scientifically proven relationship between CO2 emissions and climate change is
the perception that impacted nations have and the actions they take. The Link Between Carrying Capacity and Warfare Steven LeBlanc,

Harvard archaeologist and author of a new book called Carrying Capacity, describes the relationship between carrying capacity
and warfare. Drawing on abundant archaeological and ethnological data, LeBlanc argues that historically humans conducted
organized warfare for a variety of reasons, including warfare over resources and the environment. Humans fight when they outstrip
the carrying capacity of their natural environment. Every time there is a choice between starving and raiding, humans raid. From
hunter/gatherers through agricultural tribes, chiefdoms, and early complex societies, 25% of a populations adult males die when
war breaks out. Peace occurs when carrying capacity goes up, as with the invention of agriculture, newly effective bureaucracy, remote
trade and technological breakthroughs. Also a large scale die-back such as from plague can make for peaceful times---Europe after its major
plagues, North American natives after European diseases decimated their populations (that's the difference between the Jamestown colony failure
and Plymouth Rock success). But such peaceful periods are short-lived because population quickly rises to once again push against carrying
capacity, and warfare resumes. Indeed, over the millennia most societies define themselves according to their ability to conduct war, and warrior
culture becomes deeply ingrained. The most combative societies are the ones that survive. However in the last three centuries , LeBlanc points
out, advanced states have steadily lowered the body count even though individual wars and genocides have grown larger in scale.

Instead of slaughtering all their enemies in the traditional way, for example, states merely kill enough to get a victory and then put
the survivors to work in their newly expanded economy. States also use their own bureaucracies, advanced technology, and
international rules of behavior to raise carrying capacity and bear a more careful relationship to it. All of that progressive
behavior could collapse if carrying capacities everywhere were suddenly lowered drastically by abrupt climate change. Humanity
would revert to its norm of constant battles for diminishing resources, which the battles themselves would further reduce even
beyond the climatic effects. Once again warfare would define human life.

Warming creates a unique scenario for global war.

Peter Schwartz, chair of the Global Business Network, and Doug Randall, co-head of the Global Business Networks consulting
practice, October 3 (An Abrupt Climate Change Scenario and Its Implications for United States National Security, p. Google)
Human civilization began with the stabilization and warming of the Earths climate. A colder unstable climate meant that humans could neither
develop agriculture or permanent settlements. With the end of the Younger Dryas and the warming and stabilization that followed, humans could
learn the rhythms of agriculture and settle in places whose climate was reliably productive . Modern civilization has never experienced

weather conditions as persistently disruptive as the ones outlined in this scenario. As a result, the implications for national security
outlined in this report are only hypothetical. The actual impacts would vary greatly depending on the nuances of the weather
conditions, the adaptability of humanity, and decisions by policymakers. Violence and disruption stemming from the stresses
created by abrupt changes in the climate pose a different type of threat to national security than we are accustomed to today.
Military confrontation may be triggered by a desperate need for natural resources such as energy, food and water rather than by
conflicts over ideology, religion, or national honor. The shifting motivation for confrontation would alter which countries are most
vulnerable and the existing warning signs for security threats. There is a long-standing academic debate over the extent to which
resource constraints and environmental challenges lead to inter-state conflict. While some believe they alone can lead nations to
attack one another, others argue that their primary effect is to act as a trigger of conflict among countries that face pre-existing
social, economic, and political tension. Regardless, it seems undeniable that severe environmental problems are likely to
escalate the degree of global conflict.

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Obsession with short term impacts kills progress.

Gerry Hueston, member of the Business Council of Australia's Sustainable Growth Taskforce, 8/27/8
(http://www.climateark.org/shared/reader/welcome.aspx?linkid=105454)
Now, the challenge is to translate our evolution in principles into practical actions, as the Green Paper becomes a White Paper.
Now is certainly not the time to be mired down in unproductive arguments, and yet it is evident business and NGOs have got off to
a bad start. Many have quickly settled into the old terms of debate: presenting an adversarial paradigm of business wanting optouts from meaningful action. This paradigm is flawed. I support early action on climate change and I support emissions trading as
it provides a broad-based response to reducing our emissions, and in a way that can allow the impact on the Australian economy to
be carefully managed. But for a decade now, progress has been thwarted by an obsession with the risks to the short-term
economy. Unfortunately this progress is still at threat unless all parties become involved in a policy debate that includes getting
the balance right both now and in the future. There is no doubt risks to our economy are real: without proper mitigations, there
will be a trade distortion due to early action, it will disadvantage Australian businesses which compete internationally, and it will
put at risk thousands of jobs across the economy. Critically, there also will be a social impact as families on low incomes face a
disproportionate burden from higher fuel and energy costs. These risks are unintended, unproductive and unnecessary; and unless
we tackle them they will continue to be able to thwart meaningful progress and put at risk Australia's energy security. Even the
sickest of patients cannot take his medicine unless the side-effects are treated. The less mitigation there is for the risks, the less
meaningful the carbon price can be. It is clear then that we must get the right mitigation policies in place if we are to avoid
excessive trade distortion, enable Australian businesses to compete both at home and abroad, secure present and future
employment and cushion the impact on those in our community who are disadvantaged. Mitigation is not opting out. It in no way
undermines the effectiveness of a Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme. It is, in fact, the confidence that Australia can get these
mitigation policies right that encouraged the business community to abandon its reticence on climate change, and to become
involved in preparing for action. Business, government and NGOs must stop debating whether to support these policies and start
focusing on practical details that look at how to make them work. After all, there is plenty at stake. Worldwide we're at an
inflection point on our future energy mix. Energy demands are rising rapidly and with that so are greenhouse gas emissions. A
global trading system should be Australia's ultimate objective; otherwise some high-emitting nations will enjoy a "free-ride" on the
reductions of others. But just because it's not achievable immediately, should not deter Australia from starting now. The only way
to effect change is to set an example and find ways for co-operation. But we won't be able to move on to a focused and fruitful
discussion that can lead to effective change both at home and abroad until we acknowledge that the broad principles in the Green
Paper are sound.

Even if we dont win a 100% risk of warming vote ______ - need to avoid large impacts.
Sheri Goodman [et al.], Executive Director of the Military Advisory Board, The CNA
Corporation, 7
(National security and the threat of climate change, The CNA Corporation Military Advisory Board, Google)
Adm. Bowman notes that today, a raging debate is underway over a potential set of climate-induced global changes that could have
a profound impact on Americas national security interests. Our Military Advisory Board has heard the arguments, some depicting
neardoomsday scenarios of severe weather and oceanic changes exacerbated by man-made emissions of greenhouse gases to our
environment, others depicting a much less severe outcome as merely one in many observed cyclic weather patterns over time, with
virtually no man-made component. Adm. Bowman concludes that regardless of the probability of the occurrence, the projected
weather-driven global events could be dire and could adversely affect our national security and military options significantly. He
therefore argues that the prudent course is to begin planning, as we have in submarine operations, to develop a similar defense in
depth that would reduce national security risks even if this is a low probability event, given the potential magnitude of the
consequences. He feels that as the debate over cause, effect, and magnitude continues, we in the military should begin now to take
action to provide a resilient defense against the effects of severe climate change, not only within our own borders, but also to
provide resiliency to those regions of unrest and stress that already are threatening our national security today.

Even if the science isnt perfect, we know bad things could happen-err _________
Sheri Goodman [et al.], Executive Director of the Military Advisory Board, The CNA
Corporation, 7
(National security and the threat of climate change, The CNA Corporation Military Advisory Board, Google)
We seem to be standing by and, frankly, asking for perfectness in science, Gen. Sullivan said. People are saying they want to be
convinced, perfectly. They want to know the climate science projections with 100 percent certainty. Well, we know a great deal,

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and even with that, there is still uncertainty. But the trend line is very clear. We never have 100 percent certainty, he said. We
never have it. If you wait until you have 100 percent certainty, something bad is going to happen on the battlefield. Thats
something we know. You have to act with incomplete information. You have to act based on the trend line. You have to act on your
intuition sometimes. In discussing how military leaders manage risk, Gen. Sullivan noted that significant attention is often given
to the low probability/high consequence events. These events rarely occur but can have devastating consequences if they do .
American families are familiar with these calculations. Serious injury in an auto accident is, for most families, a low probability/high consequence event. It may be
unlikely, but we do all we can to avoid it. During the Cold War, much of Americas defense efforts focused on preventing a Soviet missile attackthe very
definition of a low probability/high consequence event. Our effort to avoid such an unlikely event was a central organizing principle for our diplomatic and military
strategies. When asked to compare the risks of climate change with those of the Cold War, Gen. Sullivan said, The Cold War was a specter, but climate change

is inevitable. If we keep on with business as usual, we will reach a point where some of the worst effects are inevitable. If we
dont act, this looks more like a high probability/high consequence scenario, he added. Gen. Sullivan shifted from risk assessment to risk
management. In the Cold War, there was a concerted effort by all leadershippolitical and military, national and internationalto avoid a potential conflict, he
said. I think it was well known in military circles that we had to do everything in our power to create an environment where the national command authoritythe
president and his senior adviserswere not forced to make choices regarding the use of nuclear weapons. The situation, for much of the Cold War, was stable,
Gen. Sullivan continued. And the challenge was to keep it stable, to stop the catastrophic event from happening. We spent billions on that strategy. Climate
change is exactly the opposite . We have a catastrophic event that appears to be inevitable. And the challenge is to stabilize thingsto

stabilize carbon in the atmosphere. Back then, the challenge was to stop a particular action. Now, the challenge is to inspire a
particular action. We have to act if were to avoid the worst effects.

We have an ethical obligation to future generations that makes us responsible to act even if
there is zero certainty about climate science
Cerutti, Professor of Political Philosophy at the University of Florence, 2007
(Furio Cerutti, Global Challenges for Leviathan: A Political Philosophy of Nuclear Weapons and Global Warming. Lexington
Books. p. 112-113)
In ethical terms the inertia phenomenon burdens on us a still greater responsibility towards future generations (granted we
recognize any such responsibility, a fundamental problem which shall be discussed later in this book). If we live in an environment
threatened by possibly irreversible inertial processes, we are responsible for not worsening the life conditions of those who will
later dwell on a planet that will be more endangered than it is for us, because the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere
and their inertial impact will be in any case greater than it is in our time. Hence arises to us an obligation to decrease emissions as
far as it is compatible with the preserva tion not of our "life style," but of acceptable standards of civilization and consumption,
which entails economic growth, but not growth of any kind and at any cost. Further enhancement of our knowledge about climate
change and especially the role of inertia may justify strengthening or abating the precautionary measures the present stand of
knowledge leads us to take. The "precautionary principle" is a wide and (because of its costs) problematic ethical matter, which
shall not be examined in this book. For our inquiry suffice it to say that precaution in matters of global challenges establishes an
obligation to act for the care of future generations with measures whose volume may seem to be disproportionate to the present
degree of certainty about the threat level. In other words, if our doing nothing or little can endanger their elementary life
conditions, we are justified by the dimension of what might be at stake if we take those measures. Even if there is no
certainty, the simple likelihood of a very large human suffering is reason enough to be cautious , as we have seen in the risk
chapter (one) of this book. The need to learn more and not draw wholesome and hurried conclusions is one thing, cheap skepticism
on present knowledge versus reasonable preoccupation with it is another.

Things that climate change will cause are the most likely source of future wars.
Richard A. Mathew, Associate Professor of International and Environmental Politics at the University of California, Irvine, May,
8
(Global Climate Change: National Security Implications, p. google)
According to last years Human Security Report put out by the University of British Columbia, the world is overall becoming a
more peaceful, more cooperative, and less violent place. This is obviously, on the whole, encouraging. But although there have
been great gains 62 in terms of reducing the number of people killed in war and displaced by war, there are, nonetheless, many
seemingly intractable areas of extreme violence. These areas do largely coincide with areas where one finds conditions of scarcity
or violent competition for control of a natural resource like oil or gold.

Failure to act now means climate change throws the world into chaos.
John Podesta, President of the Center for American Progress and Peter Ogden, Senionr National Security Analyst at the
Center for American Progress, Winter, 7

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(The Security Implications of Climate Change, The Washington Quarterly 31.1)

Consequently, even though the IPCC projects that temperature increases at higher latitudes will be approximately twice the global
average, it will be the developing nations in the earth's low latitudinal bands, as well as sub-Saharan African countries, that will be
most adversely affected by climate change. In the developing world, even a relatively small climatic shift can trigger or exacerbate
food shortages, water scarcity, destructive weather events, the spread of disease, human migration, and natural resource
competition. These crises are all the more dangerous because they are interwoven and self-perpetuating: water shortages can lead
to food shortages, which can lead to conflict over remaining resources, which can drive human migration, which can create new
food shortages in new regions. Once underway, this chain reaction becomes increasingly difficult to stop. It is therefore critical
that policymakers do all they can to prevent the domino of the first major climate change consequence, whether it be food scarcity
or the outbreak of disease, from toppling. The most threatening first dominos, where they are situated, and their cascading
geopolitical implications are identified in this essay.

Need to act now.

Stephanie B. Ohshita, Assistant Professor of Environmental Science & Management at the U of San Francisco, Summer, 7
(The Scientific and International Context for Climate Change Initiatives, 42 U.S.F. L. Rev. 1)
Another key message of the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report is the urgency of taking action now. n40 The sooner we begin
significant reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, the less we will suffer from adverse impacts. Means of taking action are
available now, in the form of more efficient electrical appliances, more efficient industrial processes, greater use of public
transportation, vehicles with better fuel economy, and zero-carbon energy sources like wind and solar power. To achieve even
more significant emission reductions, we must strengthen research and development of new energy technologies. But new
technology alone cannot avert devastating climate change. We also need changes in our economic system: phase out of fossil fuel
subsidies, economic incentives for low-and no-carbon products and activities, and economic penalties for those activities that harm
the long-term well-being of the planet's hospitable climate. At the same time, we must also face the damage already done and adapt
to climate impacts already occurring.

No turns-negatives of warming outweigh the positives.

Kurt Cambell, Co-Founder of the Center for a New American Security Frontier, November, 7
(The Age of Consequences: The Foreign Policy and National Security Implications of Global Climate Change, p. Google)
A few countries may benefit from climate change in the short term, but there will be no winners. Any location on Earth is
potentially vulnerable to the cascading and reinforcing negative effects of global climate change. While growing seasons might
lengthen in some areas, or frozen seaways might open to new maritime traffic in others, the negative offsetting consequences
such as a collapse of ocean systems and their fisheriescould easily negate any perceived local or national advantages.
Unchecked global climate change will disrupt a dynamic ecological equilibrium in ways that are difficult to predict. The new
ecosystem is likely to be unstable and in continual flux for decades or longer. Todays winner could be tomorrows big-time
loser.

No turns-the negatives outweigh the positives.

Richard A. Mathew, Associate Professor of International and Environmental Politics at the University of California, Irvine, May,
8
(Global Climate Change: National Security Implications, p. google)
Further complicating matters, we also know that there will be winners and losers as the worlds climate changes. Not everyone will
experience the same kind of problems, and some areas will find the changes conducive to human settlement and increased 64
agricultural output and so on. But overall, the expected downside massively outweighs any predicted upside. The menu of
likely threats includes severe weather events, changes in the food supply, massive flooding, and dramatic changes in microbial
activity that will lead to the spread of infectious disease. Indeed, many analysts believe that we are very close to a global
pandemic. They anticipate a transfer of disease from the animal kingdom to the human kingdom that will be highly virulent. A lot
of these transfers have taken place in the past 3 decades because environmental conditions are changing and because people are
being forced into marginal environments where they come into close contact with pathogens with which they have not had any
contact in the past.

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Anthropogenic warming is unprecedented it has never occurred on this scale for 22,000 years.
Joos, Climate and Environmental Physics, Physics Institute, and Spahni, Oeschger Centre for Climate Change Research,
University of Bern, 2007 [Fortunat and Renato, edited by Susan Solomon, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration,
Rates of change in natural and anthropogenic
http://www.pnas.org/content/105/5/1425.abstract, Dec 12]

radiative

forcing

over

the

past

20,000

years,

The rate of change of climate codetermines the global warming impacts on natural and socioeconomic systems and their
capabilities to adapt. Establishing past rates of climate change from temperature proxy data remains difficult given their limited
spatiotemporal resolution. In contrast, past greenhouse gas radiative forcing, causing climate to change, is well known from ice
cores. We compare rates of change of anthropogenic forcing with rates of natural greenhouse gas forcing since the Last Glacial
Maximum and of solar and volcanic forcing of the last millennium. The smoothing of atmospheric variations by the enclosure
process of air into ice is computed with a firn diffusion and enclosure model. The 20th century increase in CO2 and its radiative
forcing occurred more than an order of magnitude faster than any sustained change during the past 22,000 years. The average rate
of increase in the radiative forcing not just from CO2 but from the combination of CO2, CH4, and N2O is larger during the
Industrial Era than during any comparable period of at least the past 16,000 years. In addition, the decadal-to-century scale rate of
change in anthropogenic forcing is unusually high in the context of the natural forcing variations (solar and volcanoes) of the past
millennium. Our analysis implies that global climate change, which is anthropogenic in origin, is progressing at a speed that is
unprecedented at least during the last 22,000 years.

Warming crushes agriculture-multiple reasons.

Science, June 11, 4 http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/reprint/304/5669/396.pdf
The biggest looming issue may be global warming. Lal notes that erosion already contributes to warming, because some of the
carbon in soil-laden water running off fields wafts into the atmosphere. Yet fields could sop up some of this carbon, Lal says, if
farmers adopt practices to reduce erosion and retain nutrients, as is encouraged by the Kyoto Protocol on climate change (see p.
1623). Inevitably, a hotter world is likely to have less organic matter in its soils, Dukes Schlesinger notes. Such vital nutrients
decompose as temperatures rise, releasing carbon. Deserts will also expand as the interiors of continents become drier. Erosion
rates could rise if soils dry out and storms increase, Lal says. The risks of soil degradation are going to go up, but how much, we
dont know, he says. Soil degradation is no longer seen as a matter of global survival, says Wiebe. But its still an issue. It will
keep coming back. In a warming world, it could come back to haunt us.

Warming has a net negative effect on ag-outweighs fertilization.

Nicholas SternHead of the British Government Economic Service7
(The Economics of Climate Change: The Stern Review, google)
Carbon dioxide is a basic building block for crop growth. Rising concentrations in the atmosphere will have benefits on agriculture
both by stimulating photosynthesis and decreasing water requirements (by adjusting the size of the pores in the leaves). But the
extent to which crops respond depends on their physiology and other prevailing conditions (water availability, nutrient availability,
pests and diseases). Until recently, research suggested that the positive benefits of increasing carbon dioxide concentrations might
compensate for the negative effects of rising mean temperatures (namely shorter growing season and reduced yields). Most crop
models have been based on hundreds of experiments in greenhouses and field-chambers dating back decades, which suggest that
crop yields will increase by 20 30% at 550 ppm carbon dioxide. Even maize, which uses a different system for photosynthesis
and does not respond to the direct effects of carbon dioxide, shows increases of 18 25% in greenhouse conditions due to
improved efficiency of water use. But new analysis by Long et al. (2006) showed that the high-end estimates were largely based on
studies of crops grown in greenhouses or field chambers, whereas analysis of studies of crops grown in near-field conditions
suggest that the benefits of carbon dioxide may be significantly less an 8 15% increase in yield for a doubling of carbon
dioxide for responsive species (wheat, rice, soybean) and no significant increase for non-responsive species (maize,
sorghum). These new findings may have very significant consequences for current predictions about impacts of climate change on
agriculture. Parry et al. (2004) examined the impacts of increasing global temperatures on cereal production and found that
significant global declines in productivity could occur if the carbon fertilisation is small (figures below). Regardless of the strength
of the carbon fertilisation effect, higher temperatures are likely to become increasingly damaging to crops, as droughts intensify
and critical temperature thresholds for crop production are reached more often.

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Warming kills photosynthesis-outweighs fertilization.

Lester Brown, Director and Founder of the global institute of Environment in the U.S., 8 (Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save
Civilization)
Higher temperatures can reduce or even halt photosynthesis, prevent pollination, and lead to crop dehydration.
Although the elevated concentrations of atmospheric C02 that raise temper ature can also raise crop yields, the
detrimental effect of higher temperatures on yields overrides the C02 fertilization effect for the major crops. In a
study of local ecosystem sustainability, Mohan Wali and his colleagues at Ohio State University noted that as temperature rises, photosynthetic activity in plants increases until the temperature reaches 20 degrees Celsius (68 degrees
Fahrenheit). The rate of photosynthesis then plateaus until the temperature hits 35 degrees Celsius (95 degrees
Fahrenheit), whereupon it begins to decline, until at 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit), photosynthesis
ceases entirely '? The most vulnerable part of a plant's life cycle is the pollination period. Of the world's three food
staples-rice, wheat, and corn-corn is particularly vulnerable. In order for corn to reproduce, pollen must fall from the
tassel to the strands of silk that emerge from the end of each ear of corn. Each of these silk strands is attached to a
kernel site on the cob. If the kernel is to develop, a grain of pollen must fall on the silk strand and then journey to the
kernel site. When temperatures are uncommonly high, the silk strands quickly dry out and turn brown, unable to play
their role in the fertilization process. The effects of temperature on rice pollination have been studied in detail in the
Philippines. Scientists there report that the pollination of rice falls from 100 percent at 34 degrees Celsius to near zero
at 40 degrees Celsius, leading to crop failure.IR ''

CO2 helps weeds more than crops.

Southwest Farm Press, 4/9/8 (http://southwestfarmpress.com/news/climate-weeds-0409)
One of the major characteristics of a warming planet is an increase in the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Rising
carbon dioxide has been shown to help vegetable and grain crops grow more quickly, become more drought-resistant and produce
potentially higher yields. Unfortunately, though, the impact of rising carbon dioxide seems to be far more pronounced in the
weeds that compete with crops than in the crops themselves.Weeds are survivors, said Lee Van Wychen, director of science
policy for the Weed Science Society of America. They can fill various niches and thrive under a wide range of conditions. While
we have about 45 major crops in the U.S., there are more than 400 species of different weeds associated with those crops. There is
always another weed species ready to become a major competitor with a crop if growing conditions change, such as an increase in
carbon dioxide levels.The impact of rising carbon dioxide levels on weeds can be striking. In a study conducted by Dr. Lewis
Ziska of the U.S. Department of Agricultures Agricultural Research Service, weeds grown under urban conditions of warmer
temperatures and more carbon dioxide conditions anticipated for the rest of the world in 50 years grew to four times the height
of those in a country plot 40 miles outside the city, where carbon dioxide and temperature reflected background conditions.

No offense-even if CO2 makes more plants they have no nutrition.

Jonathan Adams, Assistant Professor in Ecology at Rutgers University, and Ning Zeng, associate professor of meteorology at
University of Maryland and an affiliate at the Earth System Science Interdisciplinary Center, 7
[Vegetation-Climate Interaction: How Vegetation Makes the Global Environment, p.215]
Even though plants may benefit from C02 fertilization, humans who also want to eat them may suffer from some of the
same problems as insects do. Experiments on wheat and rice suggest that with C02 fertilization their grain contains
proportionally more starch and less protein than when they are grown at background C02 levels. This may mean
poorer nutrition for human populations in some parts of the world where protein intake is already very limited.
Analogous problems might also come up for mammalian herbivores that feed off wild plant materials. If the decline in
nutrient content is severe enough, some may go extinct.

CO2 causes majority of warming.

Pew Center for Global Climate Change, June, 3
(Climate-friendly Energy Policy: Options for the Near Term, Google)
The majority of U.S. greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions84 percentare in the form of carbon dioxide (CO2), resulting almost
entirely from the combustion of fossil fuels. As a result, energy policies that reduce fossil fuel use will reduce GHG emissions.
Fossil fuel use can be reduced by: (1) deploying technologies that increase energy efficiency (e.g., more efficient power plants,

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cars, and appliances) and (2) employing non-fossil fueled energy sources (e.g., solar, wind, geothermal, biomass, hydroelectric,
nuclear energy, or renewables-based hydrogen). CO 2 emissions also can be reduced by shifting from high-carbon to lower-carbon
fuels (e.g., shifting from coal to natural gas in the electricity sector), and by employing carbon capture and sequestration
technologies.

CO2 sinks dont work-consensus of scientists.

Ross Gelbspan, Environmental Editor of the Washington Post, 4 (Boiling Point, p. 155-156)
On one level, most trading proposals involve reforesting areas in developing countries or protecting existing forests and grasslands
to absorb carbon emissions. But the science underlying the reactions of vegetation to enhanced carbon concentrations seems not to
have penetrated the policy arena. A slew of recent scientific findings have determined that the capacity of the world's forests and
grasslands to absorb more carbon dioxide is about exhausted. One team of seventeen scientists, studying the carbonabsorption
potential of the world's vegetation, concluded in a report in the journal Science in 2000, "[T]here is no natural savior waiting to
assimilate all the ... C02 in the coming century." Another team of scientists, headed by William Schlesinger of Duke Universiry,
surrounded pine trees with enhanced carbon dioxide for seven years. At the end of the experiment, Schlesinger concluded that the
world cannot rely on forests to store our excess carbon dioxide. The best solution, he added, is to burn less coal, oil, and natural
gas. "Rather than trying to gather up marbles that have spilled, let's not spill 'em in the first place," he said. As to the potential of
the world's vegetation to absorb heat-trapping carbon, Schlesinger told U.S News er World Report."I would count on nothing."

1. Warming will shut down the thermohaline current-negative feedbacks are overwhelmed-consensus
goes aff.
Timothy Lenton [et al.], School of Environmental Science, University of East Anglica, 8
(Tipping elements in the Earths climate system , Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Vol. 105)
Atlantic Thermohaline Circulation (THC). A shutoff in North Atlantic Deep Water formation and the associated Atlantic
THC can occur if sufficient freshwater (and/or heat) enters the North Atlantic to halt density-driven North Atlantic Deep
Water formation (41). Such THC reorganizations play an important part in rapid climate changes recorded in
Greenland during the last glacial cycle (42, 43). Hysteresis of the THC has been found in all models that have been
systematically tested thus far (44), from conceptual box representations of the ocean (45) to OAGCMs (46). The
most complex models have yet to be systematically tested because of excessive computational cost. Under sufficient
North Atlantic freshwater forcing, all models exhibit a collapse of convection. In some experiments, this collapse is
reversible (47) (after the forcing is removed, convection resumes), whereas in others, it is irreversible (48) indicating
bistability. In either case, a tipping point has been passed according to condition 1. The proximity of the present climate
to this tipping point varies considerably between models, corresponding to an additional North Atlantic freshwater input
of 0.10.5 Sv (44). The sensitivity of North Atlantic freshwater input to anthropogenic forcing is also poorly known, but
regional precipitation is predicted to increase (12) and the GIS could contribute significantly (e.g., GIS melt over 1,000
years is equivalent to 0.1 Sv). The North Atlantic is observed to be freshening (49), and estimates of recent increases
in freshwater input yield 0.014 Sv from melting sea ice (18), 0.007 Sv from Greenland (29), and 0.005 Sv from
Eurasian rivers (50), totaling 0.026 Sv, without considering precipitation over the oceans or Canadian river runoff. The
IPCC (12) argues that an abrupt transition of the THC is very unlikely (probability 10%) to occur before 2100 and that
any transition is likely to take a century or more. Our definition encompasses gradual transitions that appear
continuous across the tipping point; hence, some of the IPCC runs (ref. 12, p. 773 ff) may yet meet our criteria (but
would need to be run for longer to see if they reach a qualitatively different state). Furthermore, the IPCC does not
include freshwater runoff from GIS melt. Subsequent OAGCM simulations clearly pass a THC tipping point this century
and undergo a qualitative change before the next millennium (48). Both the timescale and the magnitude of forcing are
important (51), because a more rapid forcing to a given level can more readily overwhelm the negative feedback that
redistributes salt in a manner that maintains whatever is the current circulation state.

2. Warming causes an ice age-best evidence proves.

Leigh Dayton, Science Writer for the Australian, 4 (The Australian, Lexis)
IN the latest Hollywood blockbuster, The Day After Tomorrow, the world is plunged into a sudden and deadly ice age because
humanity tossed too many "greenhouse gases" into the atmosphere. Now, new evidence from the longest ice core ever drilled from
Antarctica provides compelling evidence that we're racing towards an icy future. And it's thanks to modern global warming and the
climate instability it can trigger. A consortium of researchers from eight nations, led by Eric Wolff of the British Antarctic Survey

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in Cambridge, has retrieved a core from the 3km-thick ice at a site known as Dome C in East Antarctica. The core reveals in
remarkable detail what the climate of Earth was like over the past 740,000 years. Writing in the journal Nature, Dr Wolff and his
colleagues with the European Project for Ice Coring in Antarctica (EPICA) report they have discovered the telltale signs of eight
ice ages in that period of time. The new work adds to studies of other Antarctic ice cores, finding that four climate cycles, glacial to
inter-glacial to glacial, occurred over the past 430,000 years. According to the team, preliminary analysis of the core shows
conditions at the end of one of those early ice ages were similar to conditions at the end of the last ice age, some 12,000 years ago.
That earlier warm inter-glacia period lasted 28,000 years. Given the temperature and atmospheric similarities between that period
and today, the EPICA scientists conclude we'd be headed for another balmy 16,000 years "without human intervention". Today,
levels of the key greenhouse gases, carbon dioxide and methane, are escalating rapidly. The gases, produced mainly by burning
fossil fuels and other industrial activities, reflect light back towards Earth, triggering global warming. Ironically, warming can set
off a chain of atmospheric, oceanic and climatological changes that can trigger a sudden climate switch ... and a new ice age.

3. Tech can stop a natural ice age.

James Hansen, Prof. Environmental Sciences @Columbia University, 7 (http://arxiv.org/pdf/0706.3720)
Thus the natural tendency today, absent humans, would be toward the next ice age, albeit the tendency would not be very strong
because the eccentricity of the Earths orbit is rather small (0.017). However, another ice age will never occur, unless humans go
extinct. Although orbital changes are the pacemaker of the ice ages, the two mechanisms by which the Earth becomes colder in
an ice age are reduction of the long-lived GHGs and increase of ice sheet area. But these natural mechanisms are now
overwhelmed by human-made emissions, so GHGs are skyrocketing and ice is melting all over the planet. Humans are now in
control of global climate, for better or worse. An ice age will never be allowed to occur if humans exist, because it can be
prevented by even a thimbleful of CFCs (chlorofluorocarbons), which are easily produced.

D4. Our turns outweigh on timeframe-natural ice age not coming for 70,000 years.
Berger and Loutre, Universit catholique de Louvain, Institut d'Astronomie et de Gophysique, 2 [Andr. and M.F., An
Exceptionally Long Interglacial Ahead? Science 23 August, Vol. 297. no. 5585, pp. 1287 1288]
When paleoclimatologists gathered in 1972 to discuss how and when the present warm period would end (1), a slide into the next
glacial seemed imminent. But more recent studies point toward a different future: a long interglacial that may last another 50,000
years. An interglacial is an uninterrupted warm interval during which global climate reaches at least the preindustrial level of
warmth. Based on geological records available in 1972, the last two interglacials (including the Eemian, ~125,000 years ago) were
believed to have lasted about 10,000 years. This is about the length of the current warm interval--the Holocene--to date. Assuming
a similar duration for all interglacials, the scientists concluded that "it is likely that the present-day warm epoch will terminate
relatively soon if man does not intervene" (1, p. 267). Some assumptions made 30 years ago have since been questioned. Past
interglacials may have been longer than originally assumed (2). Some, including marine isotope stage 11 (MIS-11, 400,000 years
ago), may have been warmer than at present (3). We are also increasingly aware of the intensification of the greenhouse effect by
human activities (4). But even without human perturbation, future climate may not develop as in past interglacials (5) because the
forcings and mechanisms that produced these earlier warm periods may have been quite different from today's. Most early
attempts to predict future climate at the geological time scale (6, 7) prolonged the cooling that started at the peak of the Holocene
some 6000 years ago, predicting a cold interval in about 25,000 years and a glaciation in about 55,000 years. These projections
were based on statistical rules or simple models that did not include any CO2 forcing. They thus implicitly assumed a value equal
to the average of the last glacial-interglacial cycles [~225 parts per million by volume (ppmv) (8)]. But some studies disagreed
with these projections. With a simple ice-sheet model, Oerlemans and Van der Veen (9) predicted a long interglacial lasting another
50,000 years, followed by a first glacial maximum in about 65,000 years. Ledley also stated that an ice age is unlikely to begin in
the next 70,000 years (10), based on the relation between the observed rate of change of ice volume and the summer solstice
radiation. Other studies were more oriented toward modeling, including the possible effects of anthropogenic CO2 emissions on
the dynamics of the ice-age cycles. For example, according to Saltzman et al. (11) an increase in atmospheric CO2, if maintained
over a long period of time, could trigger the climatic system into a stable regime with small ice sheets, if any, in the Northern
Hemisphere. Loutre (12) also showed that a CO2 concentration of 710 ppmv, returning to a present-day value within 5000 years,
could lead to a collapse of the Greenland Ice Sheet in a few thousand years. On a geological time scale, climate cycles are believed
to be driven by changes in insolation (solar radiation received at the top of the atmosphere) as a result of variations in Earth's orbit
around the Sun. Over the next 100,000 years, the amplitude of insolation variations will be small (see the figure), much smaller
than during the Eemian. For example, at 65N in June, insolation will vary by less than 25 Wm-2 over the next 25,000 years,
compared with 110 Wm-2 between 125,000 and 115,000 years ago. From the standpoint of insolation, the Eemian can hardly be
taken as an analog for the next millennia, as is often assumed. The small amplitude of future insolation variations is exceptional.
One of the few past analogs (13) occurred at about 400,000 years before the present, overlapping part of MIS-11. Then and now,

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very low eccentricity values coincided with the minima of the 400,000-year eccentricity cycle. Eccentricity will reach almost zero
within the next 25,000 years, damping the variations of precession considerably.

Night warming thesis is wrong.

Gregg Easterbrook, Staff Writer for The New Republic, 11/8/99, (The New Republic, p. Lexis)
Of course, most people want spring to come earlier, and the longer the frost-free season is, the happier farmers are. The mild
warming of this century surely contributed to the postwar global flowering of agriculture, which has staved off widely predicted
Malthusian catastrophes. Research shows that the warming that has occurred so far has come mainly in the form of less- cold
nighttime lows in winter, rather than hotter daytime highs in summer; less-cold winter nights are a boon, moderating energy
demand. The fear is that an artificial greenhouse effect will not follow its current course. In the rainfall and early-spring studies
may reside a warning that changing climate patterns may begin to harm agriculture--for instance, by shifting precipitation away
from currently tilled regions. Higher summertime daylight maximums may eventually be in store, scorching crops and increasing
energy demand. There could be nasty surprises no one currently projects

Ice wont completely melt for centuries.

Free Press 8/24/8 (http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?
AID=/20080824/NEWS07/808240434/1009/NEWS07)
The rapid melting has raised speculation that Canada's Northwest Passage linking the Atlantic and Pacific oceans could one day
become a regular shipping lane. But scientists caution that it could be centuries before the Arctic is completely ice-free all year
round.

Soot causes warming.

Scientific American, 2/8/1 (http://www.sciam.com/print_version.cfm?articleID=00031A3A-C01F1C5A-B882809EC588ED9F)
Though it pours ominously out of chimneys, forest fires and the exhaust pipes of diesel-run vehicles (right), soot has received little
attention from scientists studying global warming. Results published today in the journal Nature, however, suggest that soot, 90
percent of which comes from burning fossil fuels and biomass, may be a leading cause of rising world temperatures. "Sootor
black carbonmay be responsible for 15 to 30 percent of global warming," says Stanford University researcher Mark Z. Jacobson,
the author of the report. "Yet it's not even considered in any of the discussions about controlling climate change." The conventional
model of global heat balance holds that greenhouse gases warm the earth by trapping infrared radiation, while aerosol particles in
the atmosphere reflect sunlight back into space, reducing the amount of heat the planet absorbs. The aerosols, in this view, cool the
earth in the same way that light-colored clothing keeps you cooler on a hot day than dark-colored clothing. But according to the
new findings, soot in these atmospheric aerosols may cancel out the sulfate that makes them such effective cooling agents by
darkening the aerosols so that they soak up more radiation. Jacobson notes that of the few previous studies that considered the
impact of soot on global warming, most assumed that soot doesn't mix with other particles in the atmosphere. His own research,
based on computer simulations, suggests quite the opposite, indicating that within five days of entering the atmosphere, particles of
pure soot will probably end up in mixtures. Simulating how millions of tons of mixed soot would affect climate yielded dramatic
results. "These black carbon mixtures turn out to be one of the most important components of global warming," Jacobson observes,
"perhaps second only to carbon dioxide." Thus, reducing soot emissions could be one effective way to counter global warming, he
says.

Short life and variation means warming swamps SO2.

US Global Change Research Program Seminar, 1996
(April 25, http://www.usgcrp.gov/usgcrp/seminars/960425SM.html)
The current mean global warming influence from anthropogenic increases in greenhouse gas concentrations and
from associated changes in atmospheric chemistry since the 18th century is estimated to be about +2.5 watts per
square meter. By comparison, the continuing emissions of sulfur dioxide from coal combustion and other sources

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are estimated, with considerable uncertainty, to be causing an average cooling influence of about -1.3 watts per
square meter, thus reducing the current warming influence of greenhouse gases by about half. Recent projections
of increases in global mean surface temperature suggest a best estimate of 2C temperature rise by the year 2100,
with a range from about 0.8 to 3.5C depending on emissions projections for greenhouse gases and aerosols and
climate sensitivity. These projections by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) are roughly one
degree lower than similar projections in 1990 because account is being taken of past and future cooling influences
from changes in the aerosol concentration. While the radiative effects of aerosols work in the opposite direction of
greenhouse gases, their climatic effects are not simply opposing because of the very different spatial and temporal
distributions of their influence. Greenhouse gases exert their influence night and day, all year long. By contrast,
forcing by anthropogenic aerosols occurs mostly by day, mostly in the summer, and mostly near and downwind of
aerosol sources. While the cooling influence of aerosols is thus seasonal regional, the climate response can
extend hemispherically, and even globally, as the atmospheric circulation patterns adjust to the differential patterns
of warming and cooling. The long lifetime of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere (typically decades to centuries)
and the short lifetime of sulfate aerosols (typically days to weeks) means that the greenhouse-gas-induced
warming will more and more strongly dominate the aerosol cooling influence in the future. Also, because of the
health effects of fine aerosol particles, allowing a greater build-up of aerosols cannot be used to continue to offset
the greenhouse gas effect without leading to deleterious health and ecological effects.

Sulfates have a limited range it even makes warming worse.

Berreby, Writer in The New York Times Magazine, The New Republic, The Slate, The Sciences,
1993
(July, David, http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1511/is_n7_v14/ai_13923194/print)
*Charlson, a professor of both atmospheric sciences and chemistry at the University of Washington in Seattle, studying
aerosols since the 1960s
(separate paragraph) But opposite in effect. Is the aerosol umbrella, then, a mandate to do nothing about global
warming? Or to do nothing about reducing sulfur emissions? In a word, Charlson says, no. To him, the notion that
humanity could fine-tune a system as big and complex as the climate is laughable. "There's always this temptation
to tell ourselves we can handle it, that we're bigger than it is," he says. "Personally, I find that attitude very
arrogant. It assumes that we understand climate well enough to engineer it, and we don't."Some of Charlson's
findings about the parasol effect suggest that it won't help at all with some serious aspects of the global warming
problem, such as rising sea levels. Sulfate aerosols may even make some warming effects worse, Charlson says.
The reasons lie in the fundamental difference between greenhouse gases--which rise to the stratosphere and
cover the globe--and sulfates, which travel only a few hundred miles. Because sulfates have such a limited range,
almost all man-made aerosols are floating above the Northern Hemisphere, where 90 percent of industrial activity
is still concentrated. By contrast, the Southern Hemisphere gets almost no such "protection" from man-made
sulfates. Even in the relatively clean air of Seattle, Charlson says, "the amount of light scattered by haze is
probably 10 to 100 times higher than it is in the Southern Hemisphere." With one hemisphere bearing the full brunt
of global warming while the other is protected by an umbrella of pollution, he says, seas would still rise uniformly
all over the globe, as the warmer southern waters expand. In other words, sulfates can't save the Maldives, the
low-lying island nation in the Indian Ocean. But a rise in sea levels, Charlson says, might not be the biggest effect
to worry about. Much more important, he points out, could be the increased difference in temperature between the
two hemispheres. That's likely to affect the large-scale weather systems on which people depend. "More frequent
occurrence of drought is a possibility," Charlson says. "Or of violent storms. Or the opposite--less frequent storms.
I'd give either chance equal billing. The thing people need to understand is that a slight regional shift in any
direction is a big concern. Last year in the mountains around Seattle we had more precipitation as rain and less as
snow than normal. And the snowpack is our reserve of water that fills the reservoirs in late spring. So just because
the balance of snow to rain changed, we had a drought here."

Dlimate change outweighs nuke war-probability.

Jurgen Scheffran, Adjunct Associate Professor of Political & Atmospheric Science @ the University of Illinois, May/June, 8
(Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Vol. 64, No. 2)
In The Seventh Decade, Jonathan Schell asks why the threat of nuclear war receives much less public attention today than global
warming, when both hold the possibility of global security disasters: The two perils have a great deal in common. Both are the
fruit of swollen human powerin the one case, the destructive power of war; in the other, the productive power of fossil-fuel
energy. Both put stakes on the table of a magnitude never present before in human decision making. Both threaten life on a
planetary scale. Both require a fully global response. Anyone concerned by the one should be concerned with the other. It would be

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a shame to save the Earth from slowly warming only to burn it up in an instant in a nuclear war. Despite their similarities, these
threats are quite different. Nuclear war results from the short-term decisions of a small group of actors and eradicates select targets
within seconds. Global warming is not caused by a particular enemy, but by the emissions of all human beings, although
humans across the globe are affected asymmetrically by its impacts over longer timescales. It is certain
that climate change is occurring, despite large uncertainties about the magnitude, frequency, and
distribution of risk. The likelihood of nuclear war increases with nuclear proliferation and hawkish doctrines,
but can hardly be quantified.

Warming outweighs nuke war-magnitude.

The New York End Times 6 (http://newyorkendtimes.com/extinctionscale.asp)
We rate Global Climate Change as a greater threat for human extinction in this century. Most scientists forecast
disruptions and dislocations, if current trends persist. The extinction danger is more likely if we alter an environmental
process that causes harmful effects and leads to conditions that make the planet uninhabitable to humans.
Considering that there is so much that is unknown about global systems, we consider climate change to be the
greatest danger to human extinction. However, there is no evidence of imminent danger. Nuclear war at some point in
this century might happen. It is unlikely to cause human extinction though. While several countries have nuclear
weapons, there are few with the firepower to annihilate the world. For those nations it would be suicidal to exercise that
option. The pattern is that the more destructive technology a nation has, the more it tends towards rational behavior.
Sophisticated precision weapons then become better tactical options. The bigger danger comes from nuclear weapons
in the hands of terrorists with the help of a rogue state, such as North Korea. The size of such an explosion would not
be sufficient to threaten humanity as a whole. Instead it could trigger a major war or even world war. Under this
scenario human extinction would only be possible if other threats were present, such as disease and climate change.
We monitor war separately. However we also need to incorporate the dangers here .

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**Proliferation**
Prolif will trigger preemptive nuclear wars around the planet
Utgoff 02

[Victor a Utgoff - deputy director of strategy, forces, and resources division of institute for defense
analysis
- proliferation, missile defense and American ambitions, survival, summer, - p. 87-90 8/22/2002]
Since the Cold War, the US has retained all its allies. In addition, NATO has extended its protection to some
of the previous allies of the Soviet Union and plans on taking in more. Nuclear proliferation by India and
Pakistan, and proliferation programmes by North Korea, Iran and Iraq, all involve states in the opposite
situation: all judged that they faced serious military opposition and had little prospect of establishing a
reliable supporting alliance with a suitably strong, nuclear-armed state. What would await the world if strong
protectors, especially the United States, were [was] no longer seen as willing to protect states from nuclearbacked aggression? At least a few additional states would begin to build their own nuclear weapons and
the means to deliver them to distant targets, and these initiatives would spur increasing numbers of the
worlds capable states to follow suit. Restraint would seem ever less necessary and ever more dangerous.
Meanwhile, more states are becoming capable of building nuclear weapons and long-range missiles. Many,
perhaps most, of the worlds states are becoming sufficiently wealthy, and the technology for building
nuclear forces continues to improve and spread. Finally, it seems highly likely that at some point, halting
proliferation will come to be seen as a lost cause and the restraints on it will disappear. Once that happens,
the transition to a highly proliferated world would probably be very rapid. While some regions might be
able to hold the line for a time, the threats posed by wildfire proliferation in most other areas could create
pressures that would finally overcome all restraint. Many readers are probably willing to accept that
nuclear proliferation is such a grave threat to world peace that every effort should be made to avoid it.
However, every effort has not been made in the past, and we are talking about much more substantial efforts
now. For new and substantially more burdensome efforts to be made to slow or stop nuclear proliferation, it
needs to be established that the highly proliferated nuclear world that would sooner or later evolve without
such efforts is not going to be acceptable. And, for many reasons, it is not. First, the dynamics of getting to
a highly proliferated world could be very dangerous. Proliferating states will feel great pressures to obtain
nuclear weapons and delivery systems before any potential opponent does. Those who succeed in outracing
an opponent may consider preemptive nuclear war before the opponent becomes capable of nuclear
retaliation. Escalation of violence is also basic human nature. Once the violence starts, retaliatory
exchanges of violent acts can escalate to levels unimagined by the participants before hand. Intense and
blinding anger is a common response to fear or humiliation or abuse. And such anger can lead us to impose
on our opponents whatever levels of violence are readily accessible. In sum, widespread proliferation is
likely to lead to an occasional shoot-out with nuclear weapons, and that such shoot-outs will have a
substantial probability of escalating to the maximum destruction possible with the weapons at hand.
Unless nuclear proliferation is stopped, we are headed toward a world that will mirror the American
Wild West of the late 1800s. With most, if not all, nations wearing nuclear six-shooters on their hips,
the world may even be a more polite place than it is today, but every once in a while we will all gather on a
hill to bury the bodies of dead cities or even whole nations.
Proliferation Risks Extinction

Stuart Taylor Jr., journalist, LEGAL TIMES, September 16, 2002, LN.
The truth is, no matter what we do about Iraq, if we don't stop proliferation another five or ten potentially unstable nations may go nuclear before long, making it ever more likely that
one or more bombs will be set off on our soil by terrorists or terrorist governments. Even an airtight missile defense will be useless against a nuke hidden in a truck, a shipping
container, or a boat.

Unless we get serious about stopping proliferation, we are headed for "a world filled with nuclear-weapons
states where every crisis threatens to go nuclear," where "the survival of civilization truly is in question from
day to day," and where "it would be impossible to keep these weapons out of the hands of terrorists, religious cults, and criminal organizations," So writes Ambassador

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Thomas Graham Jr., a moderate Republican who served as a career arms-controller under six presidents and led the successful Clinton administration effort to extend the Nuclear
Nonproliferation Treaty.

Iran prolif Nuclear War

Cirinione 05, (Joseph, Senior Associate and Director for Non-Proliferation, Carnegie
Endowment for International Peace, Proliferation Threats and Solutions, NOTRE DAME
JOURNAL OF LAW, ETHICS & PUBLIC POLICY v. 19, 2005, p. 341.)
. If Iran becomes a
nuclear state, other states in the region will , for their own geo-political reasons, feel like they have to match the nuclear
weapon capability in kind. For example, Egypt might restart the nuclear program that it had in the 1960s. Saudi Arabia, who heavily financed Pakistan's nuclear
The primary danger to the United States and the world from the emergence of new nuclear states is the regional instability that will likely result

weapons program, might use their influence in Pakistan and invite Pakistan to station nuclear weapons on Saudi territory. Turkey would consider their nuclear options. A new

there would be a chain reaction

throughout the region surrounding a new nuclear state. Suddenly, a Middle East with one nuclear power - Israel would become a region of two, three, or four nuclear powers. This scenario, in combination with existing
unresolved tensions, political disputes, and territorial and religious disputes, would be a recipe for nuclear war.
government in Iraq, if there is a stable government in Iraq at that point, might consider restarting Iraq's nuclear effort. In sum,

Nuclear arms race would cause pollution and destroy the environment
Sierra Club, 2003
(No publish date, references 2003 in the past tense, http://www.sierraclub.ca/national/postings/war-and-environment.html)
The looting of Iraqi nuclear facilities in 2003, which occurred after U.S. led forces entered the country, has offered
another blow to social and environmental security in the region. The most troubling of cases concerns the Tuwaitha
nuclear plant, located 48 kilometres south of Baghdad, where an estimated two hundred blue plastic barrels containing
uranium oxide were stolen. After dumping the radioactive contents and rinsing out the barrels in the rivers, povertystricken residents used the containers for storing basic amenities like water, cooking oil and tomatoes. Extra barrels
were sold to other villages or used to transport milk to distanced regions, thus making the critical problem increasingly
widespread.[22] The mishandling of the radioactive material has profound effects on the environment and on the people
and animals that depend on it. Toxic substances seep into the ground (rendering the soil unsafe), disperse through the air
(spreading wide-scale pollution), and taint water and food supplies. Iraqs national nuclear inspector has forecasted that
over a thousand people could die of leukemia.[23] In addition to stolen radiological materials, computers and important
documents have also gone missing.[24] Given the right mix of technology and materials, radiological weapons such as
dirty bombs and possibly even weapons of mass destruction (WMD) could be produced. It is worth noting that
uranium oxide can be refined with the proper machinery and expertise in order to produce enriched uranium, a key
ingredient in a nuclear bomb.[25] There is concern that such materials could end up in the hands of the very terrorist
groups the US and UK military are trying to disable. [26] Unfortunately the coalition forces inability to effectively
secure nuclear sites in Iraq may well have exacerbated the situation the war was supposed to avoid: the unlawful
proliferation and use of WMD weapons.

Proliferation leads to extinction

Utgoff, Deputy Director of Strategy, Forces, and Resources Division 02 of Institute for Defense
Analysis (Victor A., Summer 2002, Survival, p.87-90 Victor A Utgoff, Deputy Director of Strategy,
Forces, and Resources Division of Institute for Defense Analysis, Summer 2002, Survival, p.87-90)
In sum, widespread proliferation is likely to lead to an occasional shoot-out with nuclear weapons, and that such shoot
outs will have a substantial probability of escalating to the maximum destruction possible with the weapons at hand.
Unless nuclear proliferation is stopped, we are headed towards a world that will mirror the American Wild West of the
late 1800s. With most, if not all, nations wearing nuclear six shooters on their hips, the world may even be a more
polite place than it is today, but every once in a while we will all gather together on a hill to bury the bodies of dead
cities or even whole nations.

WMDs cause nuclear wars and extinction GDS

Taylor, Senior Writer with the National Journal, 02
(Stuart Taylor, Senior Writer with the National Journal and editor at Newsweek, 9-16-2002, Legal
Times)

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The truth is, no matter what we do about Iraq, if we don't stop proliferation, another five or 10 potentially unstable
nations may go nuclear before long, making it ever more likely that one or more bombs will be set off anonymously on
our soil by terrorists or a terrorist government. Even an airtight missile defense would be useless against a nuke
hidden in a truck, a shipping container, or a boat. [Continues] Unless we get serious about stopping proliferation, we
are headed for "a world filled with nuclear-weapons states, where every crisis threatens to go nuclear," where "the
survival of civilization truly is in question from day to day," and where "it would be impossible to keep these weapons
out of the hands of terrorists, religious cults, and criminal organizations."

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**Poverty**
Poverty is the worst form of structural violence and more devastating than a thermonuclear war
Abu-Jamal, 98
[Mumia, Abu-Jamal - journalist and political activist - A Quiet and Deadly Violence - D/L 7,15,09 http://www.angelfire.com/az/catchphraze/mumiaswords.html - 9/19/98]

But, as remarkable, and harrowing as this level and degree of violence is, it is, by far, not the most violent
features of living in the midst of the American empire.
We live, equally immersed, and to a deeper degree, in a nation that condones and ignores wide-ranging
"structural' violence, of a kind that destroys human life with a breathtaking ruthlessness. Former
Massachusetts prison official and writer, Dr. James Gilligan observes;
By "structural violence" I mean the increased rates of death and disability suffered by those who occupy the
bottom rungs of society, as contrasted by those who are above them. Those excess deaths (or at least a
demonstrably large proportion of them) are a function of the class structure; and that structure is itself a
product of society's collective human choices, concerning how to distribute the collective wealth of the
society. These are not acts of God. I am contrasting "structural" with "behavioral violence" by which I mean
the non-natural deaths and injuries that are caused by specific behavioral actions of individuals against
individuals, such as the deaths we attribute to homicide, suicide, soldiers in warfare, capital punishment, and
so on. --(Gilligan, J., MD, Violence: Reflections On a National Epidemic (New York: Vintage, 1996), 192.)
This form of violence, not covered by any of the majoritarian, corporate, ruling-class protected media, is
invisible to us and because of its invisibility, all the more insidious. How dangerous is it--really? Gilligan
notes: [E]very fifteen years, on the average, as many people die because of relative poverty as would be
killed in a nuclear war that caused 232 million deaths; and every single year, two to three times as
many people die from poverty throughout the world as were killed by the Nazi genocide of the Jews
over a six-year period. This is, in effect, the equivalent of an ongoing, unending, in fact accelerating,
thermonuclear war, or genocide on the weak and poor every year of every decade, throughout the world.
[Gilligan, p. 196] Worse still, in a thoroughly capitalist society, much of that violence became internalized,
turned back on the Self, because, in a society based on the priority of wealth, those who own nothing are
taught to loathe themselves, as if something is inherently wrong with themselves, instead of the social order
that promotes this self-loathing. This intense self-hatred was often manifested in familial violence as when
the husband beats the wife, the wife smacks the son, and the kids fight each other. This vicious, circular, and
invisible violence, unacknowledged by the corporate media, uncriticized in substandard educational systems,
and un- understood by the very folks who suffer in its grips, feeds on the spectacular and more common
forms of violence that the system makes damn sure -that we can recognize and must react to it. This fatal and
systematic violence may be called The War on the Poor.
Poverty is the root cause of war and violence
Sachs 7
[ Professor of Economics, Columbia, '07 [Jeffrey Sachs, "No Development, No Peace," Project Syndicate, July 31, 2007,
http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/sachs131 download date: 7-15-09]

extreme poverty is a major cause, and predictor, of violence. the worlds poorest places, like darfur, are
much more likely to go to war than richer places. this is not only common sense, but has been verified by
studies and statistical analyses. in the uneps words, there is a very strong link between land degradation,
desertification, and conflict in darfur. Extreme poverty has several effects on conflict. first, it leads to
desperation among parts of the population. competing groups struggle to stay alive in the face of a
shortage of food, water, pasture land, and other basic needs. second, the government loses legitimacy
and the support of its citizens. third, the government may be captured by one faction or another, and

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then use violent means to suppress rivals. Darfur, the poorest part of a very poor country, fits that dire
pattern. livelihoods are supported by semi-nomadic livestock-rearing in the north and subsistence farming in
the south. it is far from ports and international trade, lacks basic infrastructure such as roads and electricity,
and is extremely arid. it has become even drier in recent decades because of a decline in rainfall, which is
probably the result, at least in part, of man-made climate change, caused mostly by energy use in rich
countries. declining rainfall contributed directly or indirectly to crop failures, the encroachment of the desert
into pasturelands, the decline of water and grassland for livestock, and massive deforestation. rapid
population growth from around one million in 1920 to around seven million today made all of this far
more deadly by slashing living standards. the result has been increasing conflict between pastoralists and
farmers, and the migration of populations from the north to the south. after years of simmering conflicts,
clashes broke out in 2003 between rival ethnic and political groups, and between darfur rebels and the
national government, which in turn has supported brutal militias in scorched earth policies, leading to
massive death and displacement. while international diplomacy focused on peacekeeping and on
humanitarian efforts to save the lives of displaced and desperate people, peace in darfur can be neither
achieved nor sustained until the underlying crises of poverty, environmental degradation, declining
access to water, and chronic hunger are addressed. stationing soldiers will not pacify hungry, impoverished,
and desperate people. only with improved access to food, water, health care, schools, and income-generating
livelihoods can peace be achieved. the people of darfur, sudans government, and international development
institutions should urgently search for common ground to find a path out of desperate violence through
darfurs economic development, helped and supported by the outside world. the unep report, and experiences
elsewhere in africa, suggests how to promote economic development in darfur. both people and livestock
need assured water supplies. in some areas, this can be obtained through boreholes that tap underground
aquifers. in other areas, rivers or seasonal surface runoff can be used for irrigation. in still other areas, longerdistance water pipelines might be needed. in all cases, the world community will have to help pay the tab,
since sudan is too poor to bear the burden on its own. with outside help, darfur could increase the
productivity of its livestock through improved breeds, veterinary care, collection of fodder, and other
strategies. a meat industry could be developed in which darfurs pastoralists would multiply their incomes by
selling whole animals, meat products, processed goods (such as leather), dairy products, and more. the
middle east is a potentially lucrative nearby market. to build this export market, darfur will need help with
transport and storage, cell phone coverage, power, veterinary care, and technical advice. social services,
including health care and disease control, education, and adult literacy programs should also be promoted.
living standards could be improved significantly and rapidly through low-cost targeted investments in
malaria control, school feeding programs, rainwater harvesting for drinking water, mobile health clinics, and
boreholes for livestock and irrigation in appropriate locations. cell phone coverage could revolutionize
communications for sparse populations in darfurs vast territory, with major benefits for livelihoods, physical
survival, and the maintenance of family ties. the only way to sustainable peace is through sustainable
development. if we are to reduce the risk of war, we must help impoverished people everywhere, not
only in darfur, to meet their basic needs, protect their natural environments, and get onto the ladder of
economic development.
Poverty Makes Global Nuclear War Inevitable

Caldwell 03 (Joseph George Caldwell, PhD, The End of the World, and the New World Order,
updae of an article published 10/26/00, March 6, 2003,
www.foundation.bw/TheEndOfTheWorld.htm.
It would appear that global nuclear war will happen very soon, for two main reasons , alluded to above. First, human
poverty and misery are increasing at an incredible rate. There are now three billion more desperately poor
people on the planet than there were just forty years ago. Despite decades of industrial development, the number of wretchedly poor people
continues to soar. The pressure for war mounts as the population explodes . Second, war is motivated by resource scarcity -- the desire of one
group to acquire the land, water, energy, or other resources possessed by another. With each passing year, crowding and misery increase, raising the motivation for war to higher
levels.

Poverty is the deadliest form of structural violence it is equivalent to an ongoing nuclear war.

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Gilligan, 96 [James, Former Director of Mental Health for the Massachusetts Prison System,
Violence, p.]
every fifteen years, on the average, as many people die because of relative poverty as would be killed in a
nuclear that caused 232 million deaths; and every single year, two to three times as many people die from
poverty throughout the world as were killed by the Nazi genocide of the Jews over a six-year period. This is, in effect, the
equivalent of an ongoing, unenending, in fact accelerating, thermonuclear war, or genocide, perpetuated on the weak and poor ever year
In other words,

of every decade, throughout the world.

Ongoing global poverty outweighs nuclear war- only our ev is comparative

Spina 2k
(Stephanie Urso, Ph.D. candidate in social/personality psychology at the Graduate School of the City University of
New York, Smoke and Mirrors: The Hidden Context of Violence in Schools and Society, p. 201)
This sad fact is not limited to the United States. Globally, 18 million deaths a year are caused by structural
violence, compared to 100,000 deaths per year from armed conflict. That is , approximately every five years, as
many people die because of relative poverty as would be killed in a nuclear war that caused 232 million
deaths, and every single year, two to three times as many people die from poverty throughout the
world as were killed by the Nazi genocide of the Jews over a six-year period. This is, in effect, the

equivalent of an ongoing, unending, in fact accelerating, thermonuclear war or genocide,

perpetuated on the weak and the poor every year of every decade, throughout the world.
Poverty poses the greatest threat to the worldwe have a moral obligation to eradicate it
Vear 04
(Jesse Leah, Co-coordinates POWER--Portland Organizing to Win Economic Rights, "Abolishing Poverty: A
Declaration of Economic Human Rights," http://www.peaceworkmagazine.org/pwork/0407/040704.htm)

Locked in the cross-hairs of domestic and foreign policies which intentionally put our bodies in
harm's way, our terror is the terror of poverty - a terror boldly and callously proliferated by our own
government. Surely one doesn't need the surveillance powers of high-definition weapons-grade satellites to see the faces
of the some 80 million poor people struggling just to survive in America; to see the worried faces of homeless mothers
waiting to be added to the waiting list for non-existent public housing; to find the unemployment lines filled with
parents who aren't eligible to see a doctor and who can't afford to get sick; to see the children stricken with preventable
diseases in the midst of the world's best-equipped hospitals; to hear the rumble in the bellies of millions of hungry
Americans whose only security is a bread line once a week; or to detect the crumbling of our nation's under-funded,
under-staffed schools. Meanwhile, billions are spent waging wars and occupying countries that our school children can't
even find on a map. Surely it doesn't take a rocket scientist to detect the moral bankruptcy of a nation -

by far the world's richest and most powerful - which disregards the basic human needs of its own
despairing people in favor of misguided military adventures that protect no one , whether in nations halfway across the globe, or in the outer reaches of our atmosphere. To see these things one needs neither a high-powered
satellite nor a specialized degree. One needs only to open one's eyes and dare to see the reality before them. Yet even
as you look you still might not see the millions of poor people in America. My face is only one of 80
million Americans who never get asked for in-depth television interviews or for our expert commentary regarding the
state of the economy or the impact of our nation's policies. In addition to all the indignities suffered by poor people in
America, we must suffer the further indignation of being disappeared - kept discretely hidden away from the eyes, ears,
and conscience of the rest of society and the world. The existence of poverty in the richest country on earth cannot
remain a secret for long. Americans, like the majority of the world's peoples, are compassionate, fair-minded people .

When exposed, the moral hypocrisy of poverty in America cannot withstand the light of day any
more than the moral hypocrisy of slavery or race or sex discrimination could . That's where the Poor
People's Economic Human Rights Campaign comes in. With this campaign, we are reaching out to the international
community as well as the rest of US society to help us secure what are our most basic human rights, as outlined in
International Law. According to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, an International Treaty signed in 1948 by
all UN member nations, including the United States, all nations have a moral and legal obligation to ensure
the basic needs and well-being of all their citizens. Among the rights outlined in the Declaration are the rights
to food, housing, health care, jobs at living wages, and education. Over half a century after signing this document,
despite huge economic gains and a vast productive capacity, the United States has sorely neglected its
promise. In a land whose founding documents proclaim life, liberty, and justice for all, we must hold this nation

to its promises.

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Violence is too deeply entrenched into our society to end poverty, even Gilligan concedes
Alvarez, Professor in the department of criminal justice at Northern Arizona University and
Bachman, Professor and Chair of the Sociology and Criminal Justice Department at the
University of Delware 2007

(Alex Alvarez, Professor in the department of criminal justice at Northern Arizona University and
Ronet Bachman, Professor and Chair of the Sociology and Criminal Justice Department at the
University of Delware, 2007 Violence: the enduring problem Chapter 1 ,Pg. 19-20,
http://www.sagepub.com/upm-data/17422_Chapter_1.pdf
We also worry about violence constantly, and change our behavior in response to perceived threats of
violence. We avoid certain parts of town, add security features to our homes, and vote for get
tough laws in order to protect ourselves from violent offenders . At the time this chapter was written,
Americans were fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan and news reports were full of fallen soldiers, car bombings, torture of
prisoners, and beheadings of hostages. In short, whether domestically or internationally, violence is part
and parcel of American life. In fact, the sociologists Peter Iadicola and Anson Shupe assert that violence is

the overarching problem of our age and suggest that every social problem is influenced by the
problem of violence.47 James Gilligan, a medical doctor who directed the Center for the Study of Violence at
Harvard Medical School, put it this way: The more I learn about other peoples lives, the more I realize
that I have yet to hear the history of any family in which there has not been at least one family
member who has been overtaken by fatal or life threatening violence , as the perpetrator or the victim
whether the violence takes the form of suicide or homicide, death in combat, death from a drunken or reckless
driver, or any other of the many nonnatural forms of death.48 So its safe to say that violence is not foreign

to us, but rather is something with which we rub shoulders constantly.We know violence through
our own lived experiences and the experiences of our family, friends, and neighbors, as well as
through the media images we view. At a deeper level, this means that our identities as citizens,
parents, children, spouses, lovers, friends, teammates, and colleagues are often shaped by violence,
at least in part. Who we are as individuals and as human beings is shaped by the culture within
which we live.How we define ourselves, the ways in which we relate to others, and our notions of
what we stand for and what we believe in, are all determined in large part by the influences and
experiences of our livesor, as the great English Poet Alfred Lord Tennyson once wrote, I am a part of all that I
have met.49 In a similar vein, although a bit less poetically, the sociologists Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann
suggest, Identity is a phenomenon that emerges from the dialectic between individual and society.50 In short, our

life experiences shape who we are. Therefore, if violence is a part of our reality, then it plays a role
in shaping us as human beings and influences how we understand the world around us. To
acknowledge this is to understand that violence is part of who we are and central to knowing
ourselves and the lives we lead. Because of this prevalence and its impact on our lives, some have
suggested that Americans have created and embraced a culture of violence . Culture is a nebulous concept
that includes values, beliefs, and rules for behavior. These qualities detail what is expected, what is valued, and what is
prohibited.51 Essentially, then, this argument contends that our history and experiences have resulted in a system of
values and beliefs that, to a greater extent than in some other cultures, condones, tolerates, and even expects a violent
response to various and specific situations.52 Other scholars have further developed this theme by arguing that, instead
of a culture of violence in the United States, there are subcultures of violence specific to particular regions or
groups. First articulated by the criminologists Wolfgang and Ferracuti, this viewpoint suggests that members of some
groups are more likely to rely on violence. As they suggest Quick resort to physical combat as a measure of daring,
courage, or defense of status appears to be a cultural expectation . . . When such a cultural response is elicited from an
individual engaged in social interplay with others who harbor the same response mechanism, physical assaults,
altercations, and violent domestic quarrels that result in homicide are likely to be relatively common.53 This argument
has been applied to various subcultural groups such as Southerners, young African American males, and others.54 The
South historically has had much higher rates of violence than other regions of the country and many have suggested that
it is a consequence of Southern notions of honor that demand a violent response to certain provocations. The argument
suggests that Southern culture, in other words, is more violence prone than other regional cultures. Violence, then, is
something that appears to be embedded in our values and attitudes, which is why some have suggested that violence
is as American as apple pie.55

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Humanity has a moral obligation to alleviate poverty

UN General Assembly Press Release. December 2006.
United NationsWORLD HAS MORAL OBLIGATION TO FIGHT POVERTY, PROTECT HUMAN
RIGHTS OF MOST VULNERABLE, SAYS GENERAL ASSEMBLY PRESIDENT IN HUMAN
RIGHTS DAY MESSAGE 2006 www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2006/gasm380.doc.htm
Following is the message by Sheikha Haya Rashed Al Khalifa ( Bahrain), President of the General Assembly, on the
occasion of Human Rights Day, observed 10 December: This year, we commemorate Human Rights Day with the theme
Fighting Poverty: a matter of obligation not charity. When poverty is so immediate and the suffering so intense,
the world has a moral and strategic obligation to fight poverty and to address the human rights concerns of the most
vulnerable. The poorest are more likely to experience human rights violations, discrimination or other forms of
persecution. Being poor makes it harder to find a job and get access to basic services, such as health care, education
and housing. Poverty is above all about having no power and no voice. History is littered with well-meaning, but
failed solutions. If we are to eradicate poverty and promote human rights, we need to take action to empower the
poor and address the root causes of poverty, such as discriminateon and social exclusion. It is because human rights,
poverty reduction and the empowerment of the poor go hand in hand that we all have a moral duty to take action.

We have a moral obligation to solve poverty

Al Khalifa, President of the General Assembly, 06
Sheikha Haya Rashed Al Khalifa ( Bahrain), President of the General Assembly 8 December 2006
http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2006/gasm380.doc.htm
When poverty is so immediate and the suffering so intense, the world has a moral and strategic obligation to fight poverty
and to address the human rights concerns of the most vulnerable. The poorest are more likely to experience human rights
violations, discrimination or other forms of persecution. Being poor makes it harder to find a job and get access to basic
services, such as health care, education and housing. Poverty is above all about having no power and no voice. History is
littered with well-meaning, but failed solutions. If we are to eradicate poverty and promote human rights, we need to take
action to empower the poor and address the root causes of poverty, such as discrimination and social exclusion. It is
because human rights, poverty reduction and the empowerment of the poor go hand in hand that we all have a moral duty to
take action.

Poverty makes extinction inevitable

Gilligan professor of Psychiatry at the Harvard Medical School 96 [James, , Director of the Center for
the Study of Violence, and a member of the Academic Advisory Council of the National Campaign
Against Youth Violence, Violence: Our Deadly Epidemic and its Causes, p 191-196]
The deadliest form of violence is poverty. You cannot work for one day with the violent people who fill our prisons and mental hospitals for the criminally insane
without being forcible and constantly reminded of the extreme poverty and discrimination that characterizes their lives. Hearing about their lives, and about their families and friends, you are forced to
recognize the truth in Gandhis observation that the deadliest form of violence is poverty. Not a day goes by without realizing that trying to understand them and their violent behavior in purely
individual terms is impossible and wrong-headed. Any theory of violence, especially a psychological theory, that evolves from the experience of men in maximum security prisons and hospitals for the
criminally insane must begin with the recognition that these institutions are only microcosms. They are not where the major violence in our society takes place, and the perpetrators who fill them are
far from being the main causes of most violent deaths. Any approach to a theory of violence needs to begin with a look at the structural violence in this country. Focusing merely on those relatively
few men who commit what we define as murder could distract us from examining and learning from those structural causes of violent death that are far more significant from a numerical or public
health, or human, standpoint. By structural violence I mean the increased rates of death, and disability suffered by those who occupy the bottom rungs of society, as contrasted with the relatively
lower death rates experienced by those who are above them. Those excess deaths (or at least a demonstrably large proportion of them) are a function of class structure; and that structure is itself a
product of societys collective human choices, concerning how to distribute the collective wealth of the society. These are not acts of God. I am contrasting structural with behavioral violence, by
which I mean the non-natural deaths and injuries that are caused by specific behavioral actions of individuals against individuals, such as the deaths we attribute to homicide, suicide, soldiers in

. *The lethal effects of structural violence

operate continuously, rather than sporadically, whereas murders, suicides, executions, wars, and other forms of
behavioral violence occur one at a time. *Structural violence operates more or less independently of individual acts; independent of individuals and groups (politicians,
political parties, voters) whose decisions may nevertheless have lethal consequences for others. * Structural violence is normally invisible, because it may
appear to have had other (natural or violent) causes. The finding that structural violence causes far more deaths than
behavioral violence does is not limited to this country. Kohler and Alcock attempted to arrive at the number of excess deaths caused by socioeconomic inequities
warfare, capital punishment, and so on. Structural violence differs from behavioral violence in at least three major respects

on a worldwide basis. Sweden was their model of the nation that had come closes to eliminating structural violence. It had the least inequity in income and living standards, and the lowest
discrepancies in death rates and life expectancy; and the highest overall life expectancy in the world. When they compared the life expectancies of those living in the other socioeconomic systems

18 million deaths a year could be attributed to the structural violence to which the citizens of all the other nations
. The 14 to 18 million deaths a
year caused by structural violence compare with about 100,000 deaths per year from armed conflict. Comparing this
against Sweden, they found that

were being subjected. During the past decade, the discrepancies between the rich and poor nations have increased dramatically and alarmingly

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frequency of deaths from structural violence to the frequency of those caused by major military and political violence,
such as World War II (an estimated 49 million military and civilian deaths, including those by genocideor about eight million per year, 1939-1945), the Indonesian massacre of 1965-66 (perhaps

even a hypothetical nuclear exchange between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R.
(232 million), it was clear that even war cannot begin to compare with structural violence, which continues year
after year. In other words, every fifteen years, on the average, as many people die because of relative poverty as
would be killed by the Nazi genocide of the Jews over a six-year period. This is, in effect, the equivalent of an
ongoing, unending, in fact accelerating, thermonuclear war, or genocide, perpetrated on the weak and poor every
year of every decade, throughout the world. Structural violence is also the main cause of behavioral violence on a
socially and epidemiologically significant scale (from homicide and suicide to war and genocide). The question as to
which of the two forms of violencestructural or behavioralis more important, dangerous, or lethal is moot, for they
are inextricably related to each other, as cause to effect.
575,000) deaths), the Vietnam war (possibly two million, 1954-1973), and

Poverty Causes extinction through disease, environmental degradation, terrorism and war
Rice senior fellow at the Brookings Institution 6 (Susan E, and a former assistant secretary of state for
African affairs. The National Interest, Spring
http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/Files/rc/articles/2006/spring_globaleconomics_rice/20060401.pdf)
When American s see televised images of bone-thin children with distended bellies, their humanitarian instincts take over. They dont typically look at unicef footage and

poverty is not solely a humanitarian concern. In real ways, over the long term, it can threaten U.S.
national security. Poverty erodes weak states capacity to prevent the spread of disease and protect the worlds forests and
watershedssome of the global threats Maurice Greenberg noted in the Winter 2005 issue. It also creates conditions conducive to transnational
criminal enterprises and terrorist activity, not only by making desperate individuals potentially more susceptible to recruitment,
but also, and more significantly, by undermining the states ability to prevent and counter those violent threats. Poverty can also give rise
to the tensions that erupt in civil conflict, which further taxes the state and allows transnational predators greater freedom of
action. Americans can no longer realistically hope that we can erect the proverbial glass dome over our homeland and live safely
isolated from the killersnatural or man-madethat plague other parts of the world. Al-Qaeda established training camps in conflict-ridden Sudan and
Afghanistan, purchased diamonds from Sierra Leone and Liberia, and now targets American soldiers in Iraq. The potential toll of a global bird-flu pandemic
is particularly alarming. A mutated virus causing human-to-human contagion could kill hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Americans.
Today, more than half the worlds population lives on less than $2 per day, and almost 1.1 billion people live in extreme
poverty, defined as less than $1 per day. The costs of global poverty are multiple. Poverty prevents poor countries from devoting sufficient
resources to detect and contain deadly disease. According to the World Health Organization (who), low- and middle-income countries suffer 90
percent of the worlds disease burden but account for only 11 percent of its health care spending . Poverty also dramatically
increases the risk of civil conflict. A recent study by the uks Department for International Development showed that a country at $250 gdp per capita has on
average a 15 percent risk of internal conflict over five years, while a country at $5,000 per capita has a risk of less than 1
percent. War zones provide ideal operational environs for international outlaws. If in the old days the consequences of extreme poverty
perceive a threat that could destroy our way of life. Yet global

could conveniently be confined to the far corners of the planet, this is no longer the case. The end of U.S.-Soviet competition, the civil and regional conflicts that ensued,

the complex nexus of transnational security

threats: infectious disease, environmental degradation, international crime and drug syndicates, proliferation of small
arms and weapons of mass destruction, and terrorism . Often these threats emerge from impoverished, relatively remote regions of
the world. They thrive especially in conflict or lawless zones, in countries where corruption is endemic, and in poor, weak
states with limited control over their territory or resources.
and the rapid pace of globalization have brought to the fore a new generation of dangers. These are

There are many causes of poverty- plan cant solve them all.

The Global Development Research Center 2005. (Causes of Poverty. MSU Women and
International Development. http://www.gdrc.org/icm/poverty-causes.htm)
Acute causes of poverty:
Warfare: The material and human destruction caused by warfare is a major development problem. For example, from
1990 to 1993, the period encompassing Desert Storm, per capita GDP in Iraq fell from $3500 to $761. The drop in
average income, while a striking representation of the drop in the well-being of the average Iraqi citizen in the
aftermath of the war, fails to capture the broader affects of damages to the infrastructure and social services, such as
health care and access to clean water. Agricultural Cycles: People who rely on fruits and vegetables that they produce
for household food consumption (subsistence farmers) often go through cycles of relative abundance and scarcity. For
many families that rely on subsistence production for survival, the period immediately prior to harvest is a 'hungry
period.' During these periods of scarcity, many families lack sufficient resources to meet their minimal nutritional needs.
Being familiar with these cycles has enabled development practitioners to anticipate and prepare for periods of acute
need for assistance. Droughts and Flooding: Besides the immediate destruction caused by natural events such as
hurricanes, environmental forces often cause acute periods of crisis by destroying crops and animals. Natural
Disasters: Natural disasters such as hurricanes and earthquakes have devastated communities throughout the world.
Developing countries often suffer much more extensive and acute crises at the hands of natural disasters, because

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limited resources inhibit the construction of adequate housing, infrastructure, and mechanisms for responding to
crises.
A. Turn: Poverty is essential to capitalism
American Economic Association 1972 (Capitalism and Poverty in America: Paradox or Contradiction American Economic Review) KM

Poverty and inequality have an important role to play in capitalism; these conditions are by no means entirely
dysfunctional. First , extreme wage and income inequality is necessary to induce workers to perform alienating work
for external rather than internal rewards under job conditions they do not control (R. C. Edwards and A. MacEwan,
pp.354-355) Second, the existence of a poverty underclass (a lumpen proletariat) serves as a warning to the nonpoor
that their fate could be much worse, thereby mitigating labor militancy by dividing labor along status lines. Third, to the
extent that the poor form a reserve army of the unemployed, wages are depressed, some unions are weakened, and
labors ability to obtain a greater share of income generated in production is mitigated. Fourth the non-poors real
income is substantially increased by poverty (especially the working poor) since commodities and services can be
obtained at lower prices so long as wages are depressed by the existence of the poor and capital retains its power to
extract profits. In this way, we all benefit from the existence of poverty, though usually one only hears of the direct
beneficiaries of povertyslumlords, exploiting factory owners and the like. In large part, the tenacity of poverty in the
face of wars against it can be explained by these important functional attributes of poverty in a capitalist society. This
does not mean that the social system as we know it today would not survive without the precise amount of poverty and
degree of inequality we presently have. Rather, functionalism, as used here, means that things work better if there is a
substantial degree of inequality and poverty. We could perhaps reduce poverty and inequality somewhatthe
marginal adjustment sought by orthodox social scientists and politicianswithout producing substantive qualitative
change. In fact, a small amount of cross-class mobility is important in legitimating existing power relationships and in
stabilizing the social system. However, at some point quantitative reductions in poverty and inequality would result in a
qualitative change in the system as we know it today. To the extent that stratification within the working class militates
against class unity and class consciousness, the poverty subclass in the short term manifests more of a functional
rather than an antagonistic relationship with capitalism. The dominance of the functional over antagonistic relationship,
however, need not prevail for all time. The manifest functional attribute of poverty conceals but does not nullify the
underlying contradictions of capitalism, which can become antagonistic as the poor become liberated from their
subordinance to capitalism.
B. Capitalism is key to world peace

Doug Bandow 2005 (senior fellow at the Cato Institute. He served as a special assistant to
President Reagan. Added to cato.org on November 12, 2005. This article appeared in the
Korea Herald on November 10, 2005. A Capitalist peace?
http://www.reason.com/news/show/32985.html)
In a world that seems constantly aflame, one naturally asks: What causes peace? Many people, including U.S. President George
W. Bush, hope that spreading democracy will discourage war. But new research suggests that expanding free markets is a far
more important factor, leading to what Columbia University's Erik Gartzke calls a "capitalist peace." It's a reason for even the
left to support free markets. The capitalist peace theory isn't new: Montesquieu and Adam Smith believed in it. Many of Britain's
classical liberals, such as Richard Cobden, pushed free markets while opposing imperialism. But World War I demonstrated that
increased trade was not enough. The prospect of economic ruin did not prevent rampant nationalism, ethnic hatred, and security
fears from trumping the power of markets. An even greater conflict followed a generation later. Thankfully, World War II left war
essentially unthinkable among leading industrialized - and democratic - states. Support grew for the argument, going back to
Immanual Kant, that republics are less warlike than other systems. Today's corollary is that creating democracies out of
dictatorships will reduce conflict. This contention animated some support outside as well as inside the United States for the invasion
of Iraq. But Gartzke argues that "the 'democratic peace' is a mirage created by the overlap between economic and political
freedom." That is, democracies typically have freer economies than do authoritarian states. Thus, while "democracy is desirable for
many reasons," he notes in a chapter in the latest volume of Economic Freedom in the World, created by the Fraser Institute,

"representative governments are unlikely to contribute directly to international peace." Capitalism is by far the more
important factor. The shift from statist mercantilism to high-tech capitalism has transformed the economics behind war.
Markets generate economic opportunities that make war less desirable. Territorial aggrandizement no longer provides
the best path to riches. Free-flowing capital markets and other aspects of globalization simultaneously draw nations
together and raise the economic price of military conflict. Moreover, sanctions, which interfere with economic
prosperity, provides a coercive step short of war to achieve foreign policy ends. Positive economic trends are not enough
to prevent war, but then, neither is democracy. It long has been obvious that democracies are willing to fight, just usually not each
other. Contends Gartzke, "liberal political systems, in and of themselves, have no impact on whether states fight." In particular,
poorer democracies perform like non-democracies. He explains: "Democracy does not have a measurable impact, while nations
with very low levels of economic freedom are 14 times more prone to conflict than those with very high levels." Gartzke considers
other variables, including alliance memberships, nuclear deterrence, and regional differences. Although the causes of conflict vary,

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the relationship between economic liberty and peace remains. His conclusion hasn't gone unchallenged. Author R.J.
Rummel, an avid proponent of the democratic peace theory, challenges Gartzke's methodology and worries that it "may well lead
intelligent and policy-wise analysts and commentators to draw the wrong conclusions about the importance of democratization."
Gartzke responds in detail, noting that he relied on the same data as most democratic peace theorists. If it is true that democratic
states don't go to war, then it also is true that "states with advanced free market economies never go to war with each other, either."
The point is not that democracy is valueless. Free political systems naturally entail free elections and are more likely to protect other
forms of liberty - civil and economic, for instance. However, democracy alone doesn't yield peace. To believe is does is dangerous:
There's no panacea for creating a conflict-free world. That doesn't mean that nothing can be done. But promoting open
international markets - that is, spreading capitalism - is the best means to encourage peace as well as prosperity .
Notes Gartzke: "Warfare among developing nations will remain unaffected by the capitalist peace as long as the economies of many
developing countries remain fettered by governmental control." Freeing those economies is critical. It's a particularly important
lesson for the anti-capitalist left. For the most part, the enemies of economic liberty also most stridently denounce war, often in nearpacifist terms. Yet they oppose the very economic policies most likely to encourage peace. If market critics don't realize the obvious
economic and philosophical value of markets - prosperity and freedom - they should appreciate the unintended peace dividend.

Trade encourages prosperity and stability; technological innovation reduces the financial value of conquest;
globalization creates economic interdependence, increasing the cost of war. Nothing is certain in life, and people are
motivated by far more than economics. But it turns out that peace is good business. And capitalism is good for peace.

The only way to solve poverty globally is to reverse climate change.

Richard Odingoen Monday, May 15, 2006 (Vice chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change and works at the University of Nairobi, Kenya, We Can't Solve Poverty Until
We Stop Climate Change http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0515-29.htm)
Reducing poverty globally means facing the climate challenge. It will not be solved by debt relief or token financial
transfers. It will require a true shift in policy. It requires a determined effort to empower rural communities. Put at its
most simple, there is no point in giving a family a sack of food every time a drought wipes out its crops - that's just not
sustainable. The only way to make sure they can feed themselves, without continual charity hand-outs, is to reverse
the climate change that is turning their land into desert.
Poverty does not cause war.
Morris Miller. April 2000. (Faculty of Administration, University of Ottawa, Canada , consultant on
international development issues, former Executive Director and Senior Economist at the World Bank,
Winter 2000 Interdisciplinary Science Reviews, Vol. 25, Iss. 4, Poverty as a cause of wars? )
During this last century war has taken more lives and wrought more damage than in all of human history. Its
persistence - with over a hundred armed conflicts on the scale of war raging in the last decade - prompts a search for
causes, since diagnosis comes before a cure. Many fingers point to the stress of poverty as a major contributing factor,
but both anecdotal and modelling approaches reveal that poverty has not been and is not now a significant proactive
or enabling factor: if poverty were to become a thing of the past there would be no assurance that wars would be
eliminated or even significantly reduced. Poverty is associated with societal stress and with sporadic and endemic
societal violence, but stress does not lead to war or play a major role in enabling the rise to power of war prone leaders
and their associated elites unless other factors are at play. The causal factors conducive to war making are varied but
all are characterised by tribal, religious, and ethnic rivalries that political leaders exploit to mobilise support for war,
and/or by the lust for money or hegemonic power of the political leadership. It is exceptionally difficult to prevent the
rise of leaders who, for various self-serving reasons, are able to gain power and are prone to pursue policies leading to
war. The way to thwart these ambitions is to create conditions, nationally and internationally, that are inimical to the rise
to power of such leaders and, if they do gain power, to make the realisation of their war bent policies too costly to
them. At the national level of governance the essential elements of policies to create such war inhibiting conditions are
education, especially at the primary level, a free independent media, and a guaranteed protection of political and civil
rights - in a phrase, democratic governance. At the international level of governance the support calls for financial and
other forms of assistance that would enable national governments to carry through the democracy enhancing
programmes and projects related to education and to political and civil rights, and measures to strengthen democratic
control of the system of international institutions and to constrain the exercise of national sovereignty in those areas
where doing so enhances the global common good, one key element of which is the radical diminution of international
and intrastate wars. Economic and social rights are the other aspects that comprise the concept of human rights, and,
though they are mutually reinforcing, for tactical reasons the struggle to achieve these rights should be pursued on a
separate track from the struggle to gain political and civil rights that appear to face less formidable obstacles and could

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thus, in the short and medium term, progress sufficiently to have a significant impact in reducing the occurrence and
intensity of wars.
Status quo policies make solving poverty impossible.

Partha Dasgupta. June 2003. (Professor of Economics-University of Cambridge. World

Poverty: Causes and Pathways.
http://www.earthinstitute.columbia.edu/cgsd/documents/dasgupta_worldpoverty.pdf)
Many developing nations are in debt and poverty partly due to the policies of international institutions such as the
International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. Their programs have been heavily criticized for many years for
resulting in poverty. In addition, for developing or third world countries, there has been an increased dependency on
the richer nations. This is despite the IMF and World Banks claim that they will reduce poverty. Following an ideology
known as neoliberalism, and spearheaded by these and other institutions known as the Washington Consensus (for
being based in Washington D.C.), Structural Adjustment Policies (SAPs) have been imposed to ensure debt repayment
and economic restructuring. But the way it has happened has required poor countries to reduce spending on things
like health, education and development, while debt repayment and other economic policies have been made the
priority. In effect, the IMF and World Bank have demanded that poor nations lower the standard of living of their people .
Corruption is a major cause of poverty-this must be solved first.

Anup Shah. October 29, 2008. (Editor of Globalissues.org. Structural Adjustment-A major
cause of poverty. http://www.globalissues.org/article/3/structural-adjustment-a-major-causeof-poverty)
Corruption is both a major cause and a result of poverty around the world. It occurs at all levels of society, from local
and national governments, civil society, judiciary functions, large and small businesses, military and other services and
so on. Corruption affects the poorest the most, whether in rich or poor nations. The issue of corruption is very much
inter-related with other issues. At a global level, the international (Washington Consensus-influenced) economic
system that has shaped the current form of globalization in the past decades requires further scrutiny for it has also
created conditions whereby corruption can flourish and exacerbate the conditions of people around the world who
already have little say about their own destiny.

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**Trade**

Trade prevents conflict and protectionism increases risk of war

Bordreaux 6
[Chairman of Economics Department at George Mason University 2006 (Donald, Christian Science
Monitor,
Want World Peace?
Support Free Trade, November 20,
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/1120/p09s02-coop.html]

Protectionists (of whatever party) believe that consumers who buy goods and services from foreigners cause
domestic employment - and wages - to fall. Economists since before Adam Smith have shown that this belief
is mistaken, largely because foreigners sell things to us only because they either want to buy things from us
or invest in our economy. These activities employ workers here at home and raise their wages. Mountains of
empirical evidence show that protectionism is economically destructive. The facts also show that
protectionism is inconsistent with a desire for peace - a desire admirably expressed by many Democrats
during the recent campaigns. Back in 1748, Baron de Montesquieu observed that "Peace is the natural
effect of trade. Two nations who differ with each other become reciprocally dependent; for if one has an
interest in buying, the other has an interest in selling; and thus their union is founded on their mutual
necessities." If Mr. Montesquieu is correct that trade promotes peace, then protectionism - a retreat from
open trade - raises the chances of war. Plenty of empirical evidence confirms the wisdom of
Montesquieu's insight: Trade does indeed promote peace. During the past 30 years, Solomon Polachek, an
economist at the State University of New York at Binghamton, has researched the relationship between trade
and peace. In his most recent paper on the topic, he and co-author Carlos Seiglie of Rutgers University
review the massive amount of research on trade, war, and peace. They find that "the overwhelming
evidence indicates that trade reduces conflict." Likewise for foreign investment. The greater the amounts
that foreigners invest in the United States, or the more that Americans invest abroad, the lower is the
likelihood of war between America and those countries with which it has investment relationships.
Professors Polachek and Seiglie conclude that, "The policy implication of our finding is that further
international cooperation in reducing barriers to both trade and capital flows can promote a more
peaceful world."
Free trade drives the U.S. and world economy- increased jobs, goods, and less people in poverty
Markheim 7
[Daniella Markheim, Jay Van Andel Senior Analyst in Trade Policy, Center for International Trade and
(CITE) Why Free Trade Works for America, the Heritage Foundation, April 16, 2007 Accessed July 15, 2009]

Economics

The gains from freer trade are substantial. Today, the $12 trillion U.S. economy is bolstered by free
trade, a pillar of America's vitality. In 2005, U.S. exports to the rest of the world totaled $1.2 trillion and
supported one in five U.S. manufacturing jobs. Jobs directly linked to the export of goods pay 13 percent
to 18 percent more than other U.S. jobs.[1] Moreover, agricultural exports hit a record high in 2005 and now
account for 926,000 jobs.[2] In Colorado, international trade supports one of every 20 private-sector jobs and
more than 16 percent of manufacturing jobs. International trade supports an estimated 6.1 percent of Ohio's
total private-sector employment and more than 20 percent of all manufacturing jobs. In South Carolina, trade
supports one of every 10 private-sector jobs and more than 23 percent of manufacturing jobs.[3] State by
state across America, international trade promotes opportunity.
The service sector accounts for roughly 79 percent of the U.S. economy and 30 percent of the value of
American exports.[4] Service industries account for eight out of every 10 jobs in the U.S. and provide more
jobs than the rest of the economy combined. Over the past 20 years, service industries have contributed about
40 million new jobs across America.[5] As today's global economy offers unparalleled opportunities for

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the U.S., continuing to expand trade by lowering barriers to goods and services is in America's
economic interest. Freer trade policies have created a level of competition in today's open market that
engenders innovation and leads to better products, higher-paying jobs, new markets, and increased
savings and investment. Small business, a critical component of the U.S. economy, creates two out of
every three new jobs and accounts for about one-quarter of America's exports.[6] Freer trade has been a
driving force behind America's high standard of living and promises even more if trade barriers can be
broken down even further. The Institute for International Economics estimates that over the past 50 years,
trade liberalization has brought an additional $9,000 per year to the typical American household.[7] The
North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the Uruguay Round of the WTOthe two major
agreements of the 1990sgenerate annual benefits of $1,300$2,000 for the average American family of
four.[8] Freer trade enables more goods and services to reach American consumers at lower prices,
giving families more income to save or spend on other goods and services. Moreover, the benefits of free
trade extend well beyond American households. Free trade helps to spread freedom globally, reinforces
the rule of law, and fosters economic development in poor countries. The World Bank reports that in
the 1990s, per capita real income grew three times faster in developing countries that lowered trade
barriers than in developing countries that did not do so. In fact, over the past 25 years, roughly 500
million people have been lifted from poverty largely as a result of freer trade and market reforms.[9]
Trade Ensures Massive Poverty, Social Disorder, And Multilple Scenarios For Eco-Doom
Jerry Mander, Program Director, Foundation for Deep Ecology, Facing the Rising Tide, THE
CASE AGAINST THE GLOBAL ECONOMY, ed. J. Mander & E. Goldwmith, 1996, p. 3-4.
The occasional descriptions or predictions about the global economy that are found in the media usually come from the leading advocates and beneficiaries
of this new order: corporate leaders, their allies in government, and a newly powerful centralized global trade bureaucracy. The visions they offer us are

Shockingly enough, the euphoria they express is based

on their freedom to employ, at a global levelthrough the new global free trade rules , and through deregulation and
economic restructuring regimeslarge-scale versions of the economic theories, strategies, and policies that have
proven spectacularly unsuccessful over the past several decades wherever theyve been applied. In fact,
these are the very ideas that have brough us to the grim situation of the moment: the spreading
disintegration of the social order, and the increase in poverty, landlessness, homelessness, violence,
alientation, and deep within the hearts of many people, extreme anxiety about the future. Equally important,
these are practices that have led us to the near breakdown of the natural world, as evidenced by such
symptoms as global climate change, ozone depletion, massive species loss, and near maximum levels of air,
soil, and water pollution. We are now being asked to believe that the development processes that have further impoverished people and
unfailingly positive, even utopian: Globalization will be a panacea for our ills.

devastated the planet will lead to diametrically different and highly beneficial outcomes, if only they can be accelerated and applied everywhere, freely,
without restriction; that is, when they are globalized. Thats the bad news. The good news is that it is not too late to stop this from happening.

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**Democracy**
Democracy Solves The Evil Of DemocideMass Death Otherwise

Rummel 96, (Rudolph J. Rummel, Professor Emeritus of Political Science, University of Hawaii,
Chapter 8: An Enlightened Foreign Policy, THE MIRACLE THAT IS FREEDOM: THE
SOLUTION TO WAR, VIOLENCE, GENOCIDE, AND POVERTY, Martin Monograph Series No. 1.,
Martin Institute for Peace Studies and Conflict Resolution, University of Idaho, 1996. Available
from the World Wide Web at: http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/MTF.CHAP8.HTM, accessed
4/28/05.)
there is mass democide, the most destructive of human lives than any other form of violence.

Then
Except in the case
of the Nazi Holocaust of European Jews, few people know how murderous the dictators of this world have been and could be. Virtually unknown is the fact that the number of nonJewish Poles, Russians, Ukrainians, Yugoslavs, Frenchmen, Germans, and on, murdered by Hitler surpasses by two or three times the Jews he killed. Then there are the shocking
tens of millions murdered by Stalin and Mao, and the other millions wiped out by Pol Pot, Ho Chi Minh, Kim Il-sung, and their kind. Just omitting foreigners, who are most often

Adding foreigners they have killed raises

the toll to an incredible near 170,000,000. Adding to this unbelievable toll since 1987 is the million people the Hutu rulers of Rwanda may have
murdered during a war, such thugs have murdered about 123,000,000 of their own people from 1900 to 1987.

slaughtered in four months (Chapter 6. Even now, these mass murders still go on in Burma, Sudan, Afghanistan, North Korea, Rwanda, Burundi, Zaire, Sierra Leone, Liberia, and the
Congo, just to mention the most glaring examples. Serb democide It should be clear, then, why I refer to the rulers of these murderous regimes as thugs. I am not a diplomat nor
government official and do not have to worry about the delicate sensitivities of these rulers. I can speak truth to power, and call thugs the thugs they are. As should be clear from this
book and web site, they often murder people by carefully thought out plans, they set up a bureaucracy to do so, they train people for this purpose, and then they order the killing.
Sometimes they murder people because of their race, ethnicity, or religion; their parents or other relative's political activities, or beliefs, or speech; or their lack of proper enthusiasm
for their glorious rulers. Sometimes they established a murder quota to fill, or kill people randomly to set an example. While we can approximate how many these thugs have killed,
we cannot even guess at the heartbreak and misery these deaths have caused their loved ones, and how many of these grieving survivors have died of a broken heart or committed
suicide. Moreover, the term murder hardly carries the full weight of the pain and misery of the victims. Some lucky ones died quickly with a shot to the back of the head, or had their
head decapitated. Most died quite wretchedly, in pain from torture or beatings; by drowning, being buried or burned alive; or in agony from wounds. Many died from intentionally
administered starvation, thirst, exposure, or disease. Some died horribly as the result of repeated human medical experiments. We have no pain/misery index to measure all this
except for the incredible pile of corpses these thugs have created in nearly one century. We must assume that a penumbra of pain and misery, of love and hope squashed, and a

What is true about freedom and internal violence is also so for this
mass democide. As clear from Table 8.1, the more freedom a people have, the less likely their rulers are to murder
them. The more power the thugs have, the more likely they will murder their people. Could there be a greater moral good than to end or minimize such mass murder? This is what
freedom does and for this it is, emphatically, a moral good.
future stolen surrounds each of these millions of corpses. Castration

Democracy prevents multiple scenarios for extinction

Diamond, 95
[Larry, senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, "Promoting Democracy in the 1990s: Actors and Instruments, Issues
and Imperatives." A Report to the Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict Carnegie Corporation of New York.
December 1995. http://www.wilsoncenter.org/subsites/ccpdc/pubs/di/fr.htm Downloaded 7-15-09]

The experience of this century offers important lessons. Countries that govern themselves in a truly
democratic fashion do not go to war with one another. They do not aggress against their neighbors to
aggrandize themselves or glorify their leaders. Democratic governments do not ethnically "cleanse" their
own populations, and they are much less likely to face ethnic insurgency. Democracies do not sponsor
terrorism against one another. They do not build weapons of mass destruction to use on or to threaten
one another. Democratic countries form more reliable, open, and enduring trading partnerships. In the long
run they offer better and more stable climates for investment. They are more environmentally responsible
because they must answer to their own citizens, who organize to protest the destruction of their
environments. They are better bets to honor international treaties since they value legal obligations and
because their openness makes it much more difficult to breach agreements in secret. Precisely because,
within their own borders, they respect competition, civil liberties, property rights, and the rule of law,
democracies are the only reliable foundation on which a new world order of international security and
prosperity can be built.

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Democracy preserves human life

Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict 95

(October, "Promoting Democracy in the 1990's," http://wwics.si.edu/subsites/ccpdc/pubs/di/1.htm)
Nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons continue to proliferate. The very source of life on Earth, the global
ecosystem, appears increasingly endangered. Most of these new and unconventional threats to security are

associated with or aggravated by the weakness or absence of democracy, with its provisions for legality,
accountability, popular sovereignty, and openness. LESSONS OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY The experience of
this century offers important lessons. Countries that govern themselves in a truly democratic fashion do not go
to war with one another. They do not aggress against their neighbors to aggrandize themselves or glorify their
leaders. Democratic governments do not ethnically "cleanse" their own populations, and they are much less
likely to face ethnic insurgency. Democracies do not sponsor terrorism against one another. They do not build
weapons of mass destruction to use on or to threaten one another. Democratic countries form more reliable, open,
and enduring trading partnerships. In the long run they offer better and more stable climates for investment. They
are more environmentally responsible because they must answer to their own citizens, who organize to protest the
destruction of their environments. They are better bets to honor international treaties since they value legal obligations
and because their openness makes it much more difficult to breach agreements in secret. Precisely because, within
their own borders, they respect competition, civil liberties, property rights, and the rule of law, democracies are

the only reliable foundation on which a new world order of international security and prosperity can be built.
Democracies dont go to war long timeframe for decision-making, free elections, separation of
powers, and an affinity with peace and compromise prove
.
Mandelbaum, Christian A. Herter professor of American foreign policy at the Paul H. Nitze
School of Advanced Intl Studies, director of East-West project at the council on foreign relations,
1999
(Michael, Is Major War Obsolete? pp. 6-7)
Sovereign states are pushed towards an economic rather than a military emphasis because they
are governed by democratic principles. The first and, for debellicisation, the most relevant of these
principles is popular sovereignty, control of the government by the populace. Most people are more interested in
becoming wealthy than in risking their lives in war. Yet another reason for the obsolescence of major war at
the twentieth centurys close, therefore, is the fact that a growing number of sovereign states are
increasingly democratic. To be sure, the trend is neither uniform nor irreversible. Few of the states that it touched
faithfully replicated the Westminster model of parliamentary government. The trend towards the conduct of public
affairs according to the rule of law, with due consideration for the rights of all that is, the trend toward liberal
democracy was considerably weaker.16 Nonetheless, the tendency for governments to be chose by

election rather than through the hereditary principle or by force of arms was, after the Cold War,
pronounced. Democracies tend not to go to war, at least not with one another. While the
association of democratic political systems with peaceful international conduct may not rise to the
level of a Newtonian law of history, neither can the post-1945 absence of armed conflict between
and among democracies reasonably be classified as completely coincidental, or due entirely to the
exigencies of the periods geopolitics. The correlation is not wholly spurious. 17

Democracy presents institutional obstacles to war by empowering the part of society that, in the
twentieth century, pays the highest price for conflict: the public. It mandates the open conduct of
public business, making surprise attacks more difficult to launch. It often establishes a division of power
among different bodies, making any decision, including a decision for war, time-consuming. Standard
features of democratic government elections, transparency, and the separation of powers make
the infernal machine of war difficult to operate. The democratic version of that machine is noisy, it has many
moving parts, and the parts themselves can rebel against the operators. Democracy has, moreover, a cultural
affinity with peace: the standard procedures of compromise, accommodation and the peaceful

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resolution of disputes within the border of a democracy, when extended to relations with other sovereign
states, reduce the chance of armed conflict. Democratic politics contribute to warlessness in yet another way.
They help to weaken the effects of, although they do not eliminate, the one cause of war that has survived the
twentieth century intact, the cause that stands, in the eyes of some, as the chief obstacle to universal debellicisation:
the structure of international politics.

Democracy solves nuclear and biological warfare, genocide, and environmental destruction
Diamond Hoover Institution, Stanford University 1995 , Larry, December, PROMOTING
DEMOCRACY IN THE 1990S, 1p. http://www.carnegie.org//sub/pubs/deadly/diam_rpt.html //
Nuclear, chemical and biological weapons continue to proliferate. The very source of life on Earth, the global
ecosystem, appears increasingly endangered. Most of these new and unconventional threats to security are
associated with or aggravated by the weakness or absence of democracy, with its provisions for legality, accountability,
popular sovereignty and openness. The experience of this century offers important lessons. Countries that govern
themselves in a truly democratic fashion do not go to war with one another. They do not aggress against their neighbors to aggrandize themselves
or glorify their leaders. Democratic governments do not ethnically "cleanse" their own populations, and they are much less likely
to face ethnic insurgency. Democracies do not sponsor terrorism against one another. They do not build weapons of
mass destruction to use on or to threaten one another. Democratic countries form more reliable, open, and enduring trading
partnerships. In the long run they offer better and more stable climates for investment. They are more environmentally responsible
because they must answer to their own citizens, who organize to protest the destruction of their environments. They are
better bets to honor international treaties since they value legal obligations and because their openness makes it much more difficult to breach agreements in secret. Precisely because, within their
own borders, they respect competition, civil liberties, property rights, and the rule of law, democracies are the only reliable foundation on which a new world order of international security and
prosperity can be built.

Democracy is key to peace and stability

Muravchik Resident Scholar 1 American Enterprise Institute

[Joshua, "Democracy and Nuclear Peace," 7-11-01, Presented before

the NPEC/IGCC Summer Faculty Seminar, UC-San Diego, http://www.npec-web.org/Syllabus/Muravchik.pdf]

One interesting piece of Russett's research should help to point him away from his doubts that democracies are
more peaceful in general. He aimed to explain why democracies are more peaceful toward each other. Immanuel Kant was the first to observe, or rather to
forecast, the pacific inclination of democracies. He reasoned that "citizens will have a great hesitation in calling down on themselves all the miseries of war."8 But this valid

. Democracy is not just a mechanism; it entails a spirit of

compromise and self-restraint. At bottom, democracy is the willingness to resolve civil
disputes without recourse to violence. Nations that embrace this ethos in the conduct of
their domestic affairs are naturally more predisposed to embrace it in their dealings with
other nations. Russett aimed to explain why democracies are more peaceful toward one
another. To do this, he constructed two models. One hypothesized that the cause lay in the mechanics of democratic decision-making (the "structural/institutional model"), the
other that it lay in the democratic ethos (the "cultural/normative model"). His statistical assessments led him to conclude that: "almost always the
cultural/normative model shows a consistent effect on conflict occurrence and war . The
insight is incomplete. There is a deeper explanation

structural/institutional model sometimes provides a significant relationship but often does not."9 If it is the ethos that makes democratic states more peaceful toward each other, would
not that ethos also make them more peaceful in general? Russett implies that the answer is no, because to his mind a critical element in the peaceful behavior of democracies toward

too pat. The attitude of live-and-let-live

cannot be turned on and off like a spigot. The citizens and officials of democracies
recognize that other states, however governed, have legitimate interests, and they are
disposed to try to accommodate those interests except when the other party's behavior
seems threatening or outrageous.
other democracies is their anticipation of a conciliatory attitude by their counterpart. But this is

Democracy has caused peace and improved government globally, it is the most important tool for
human survival.
Teune, American Academy of Political and Social Science 2 (Henry Teune, , Global Democracy, May, TOR)
GLOBALIZATION exploded in the 1990s following the second democratic revolution. That era of globalization began in the middle of the 1970s. It was signaled by the oil crisis of 1973, a massive
increase in the debt of developing countries from loans processed by the oil importing countries, and the promise and then the reality of the opening of China. It took another decade before the
collapse of the Soviet Union, the home of the last great secular communalisms of the twentieth century, and the embrace of democracy by its successor states. By that time, nearly all the political
barriers to the encapsulation of the world into a single economic system were gone. Only then, at the beginning of the 1990s, did globalization receive general notice. But democratization and
globalization, even though tied together in a cascade of visible changes, were treated more or less independently. They both, however, were part of broader developmental processes, locked in a
dynamic relationship still to be understood fully. The main question of today is democracy on a global scale. The issues concerning global institutions and processes accountable to people
everywhere have superseded those of national and local democracy of only a few years ago. It has long been believed that world development required including poor countries and populations into
a global economy of growth, either to avoid the threat of angry disruptions or to sustain the moral underpinnings of capitalism. Today, an additional matter has been piled on top of this one:

inclusion of the world's populations into global democratic institutions and political
processes on a foundation of an expanded normative system of human rights. The outlines
of a global democracy can be seen now only through visionary lenses . During the past three decades, social scientists
and professional observers described an emerging global political economy, but without democracy.1 It took most of the 1990s to grasp that without democracy, globalization could not continue in a peaceful, orderly

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Democracy began to become the bedrock of the prosperity promised by globalization. It may well
turn out to be the best invention for human survival and the betterment of everyday living.
Indeed, in time, democracy in large-scale societies may be judged the most important
discovery of the twentieth century since vaccines . Governments systematically killing their
own peoples and nearly nonstop international wars of scale marked the first half of the
twentieth century (Rummel 1996). By that century's end, the beginning of the institutionalization
of a second democratic revolution, not only had major international wars ceased, but
almost all governments openly subscribed to the principle that they should improve
people's lives and should not kill, incarcerate, or expel them . As important was the muting of any credible national political
fashion.

challenges to rudimentary human rights. The killing of masses of people by legitimate authorities may be the most important international fact of the first half of the twentieth century. But the most
important fact of this era of globalization is that almost all governments, save one or two, stopped doing that around the century's end, following the spread of democracy.

Democracy solves war and extinction

Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict , 1995 October, Promoting Democracy in the
1990s, http://www.carnegie.org//sub/pubs/deadly/dia95_01.html, accessed on 12/11/99
OTHER THREATS This hardly exhausts the lists of threats to our security and well-being in the coming years and decades. In the former Yugoslavia nationalist aggression tears at the stability of
Europe and could easily spread. The flow of illegal drugs intensifies through increasingly powerful international crime syndicates that have made common cause with authoritarian regimes and have
utterly corrupted the institutions of tenuous, democratic ones. Nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons continue to proliferate. The very source of life on Earth, the global ecosystem, appears

new and unconventional threats to security are associated with or aggravated by the
weakness or absence of democracy, with its provisions for legality, accountability, popular sovereignty, and openness.
LESSONS OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY The experience of this century offers important lessons. Countries that
govern themselves in a truly democratic fashion do not go to war with one another. They do not aggress against their
neighbors to aggrandize themselves or glorify their leaders. Democratic governments do not ethnically "cleanse" their
own populations, and they are much less likely to face ethnic insurgency. Democracies do not sponsor terrorism against one another. They do not build weapons of mass destruction to
increasingly endangered. Most of these

use on or to threaten one another. Democratic countries form more reliable, open, and enduring trading partnerships. In the long run they offer better and more stable climates for investment.

They are more environmentally responsible because they must answer to their own citizens, who organize to protest the destruction of
their environments. They are better bets to honor international treaties since they value legal obligations and because their openness makes it much more difficult to breach agreements in secret.
Precisely because, within their own borders, they respect competition, civil liberties, property rights, and the rule of law, democracies are the only reliable foundation on which a new world order of
international security and prosperity can be built.

This is vital to human survival

Montague co-director Environmental Research Foundation 98 [Peter Montague, and publisher of
Rachaels Environment and Health News, 14 October 1998 http://www.greenleft.org.au/1998/337/20135]
The environmental movement is treading water and slowly drowning. There is abundant evidence that our efforts -and they have been formidable, even heroic -- have largely failed. After 30 years of exceedingly hard work and
tremendous sacrifice, we have failed to stem the tide of environmental deterioration. Make no mistake: our efforts have had a beneficial effect.
Things would be much worse today if our work of the past 30 years had never occurred. However, the question is, Have our efforts been adequate? Have we succeeded? Have we even come close
to stemming the tide of destruction? Has our vision been commensurate with the scale and scope of the problems we set out to solve? To those questions, if we are honest with ourselves, we must

. Openness. Open,
democratic decision-making will be an essential component of any successful strategy. After the Berlin wall fell, we
got a glimpse of what had happened to the environment and the people under the Soviet dictatorship. The Soviets had
some of the world's strictest environmental laws on the books, but without the ability for citizens to participate in
decisions, or blow the whistle on egregious violations, those laws meant nothing. For the same reason that science
cannot find reliable answers without open peer review, bureaucracies (whether public or private) cannot achieve
beneficial results without active citizen participation in decisions and strong protection for whistle-blowers. Errors
remain uncorrected, narrow perspectives and selfish motives are rewarded, and the general welfare will not usually be
promoted. The fundamental importance of democratic decision-making means that our strategies must not focus on
legislative battles. Clearly, we must contend for the full power of government to be harnessed toward achieving our
goals, but this is quite different from focusing our efforts on lobbying campaigns to convince legislators to do the right thing from time to time. Lobbying can mobilise people for the short term, but
answer No. What, then, are we to do? This article is intended to provoke thought and debate, and certainly is not offered as the last word on anything

mobilising is not the same as organising. During the past 30 years, the environmental movement has had some notable successes mobilising people, but few successes building long-term
organisations that people can live their lives around and within (the way many families in the '30s, '40s and '50s lived their lives around and within their unions' struggles). The focus of our strategies
must be on building organisations that involve people and, in that process, finding new allies. The power to govern would naturally flow from those efforts. This question of democracy is not trivial. It is
deep. And it deeply divides the environmental movement, or rather movements. Many members of the mainstream environmental movement tend to view ordinary people as the enemy (for example,
they love to say, We have met the enemy and he is us.). They fundamentally don't trust people to make good decisions, so they prefer to leave ordinary people out of the equation. Instead, they
scheme with lawyers and experts behind closed doors, then announce their solution. Then they lobby Congress in hopes that Congress will impose this latest solution on us all. Naturally, such
people don't develop a big following, and their solutions -- even when Congress has been willing to impose them -- have often proven to be expensive, burdensome and ultimately unsuccessful.

open democratic decision-making is essential to survival. Only by informing people, and trusting
their decisions, can we survive as a human society. Our technologies are now too complex and too powerful to be left
solely in the hands of a few experts. If they are allowed to make decisions behind closed doors, small groups of
experts can make fatal errors. One thinks of the old Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) justifying above-ground
nuclear weapons testing. In the early 1950s, their atomic fallout was showering the population with strontium-90, a
highly radioactive element that masquerades as calcium when it is taken into the body. Once in the body, strontium-90 moves into the
Experts. In the modern era,

bones, where it irradiates the bone marrow, causing cancer. The AEC's best and brightest studied this problem in detail and argued in secret memos that the only way strontium-90 could get into
humans would be through cattle grazing on contaminated grass. They calculated the strontium-90 intake of the cows, and the amount that would end up in the cows' bones. On that basis, the AEC

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reported to Congress in 1953, The only potential hazard to human beings would be the ingestion of bone splinters which might be intermingled with muscle tissue in butchering and cutting of the
meat. An insignificant amount would enter the body in this fashion. Thus, they concluded, strontium-90 was not endangering people. The following year, Congress declassified many of the AEC's
deliberations. As soon as these memos became public, scientists and citizens began asking, What about the cows' milk? The AEC scientists had no response. They had neglected to ask whether

Secrecy in government and corporate decision-making continues

to threaten the well-being of everyone on the planet as new technologies are deployed at an accelerating pace
after inadequate consideration of their effects. Open, democratic decision-making is no longer a luxury. In the modern
world, it is a necessity for human survival.
strontium-90, mimicking calcium, would contaminate cows' milk, which of course it did.

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**Rape**
Rape is a fate worse than death and causes traumatic long-term psychological problems

Glazer 97, Assistant District Attorney of Bronx County, 97 [Yale, "Child Rapists Beware! The
Death Penalty and Louisiana's Amended Aggravated Rape Statute", American Journal of
Criminal Law, Fall, 25 Am. J. Crim. L. 79]
Rape is one of the fastest growing violent crimes reported in the United States ; it is estimated that a rape is reported every two to
six minutes and that one of every six women will be raped at some point in their lives. Studies of rape show it to be a violent and brutal crime, often involving sexual humiliation and

Rape is unique among acts of violence: it shatters not only a victim's physical well-being but also her emotional
world. Psychologists say that the surviving victim's sense of self-esteem, security and basic trust may be irreparably
damaged." Rape has been called a "fate worse than death. " As a result of being raped, victims often suffer extreme trauma, both physically
and emotionally. The symptoms experienced by rape victims have been compared in severity to post-traumatic
stress disorder observed in war veterans. Rape often induces a cycle of behavioral problems that extend well
beyond the time when the physical damage from the assault has healed. Women often experience "intense attacks on [their] psychic equilibrium,"
physical abuse. "

often requiring intensive psychotherapy treatments. Other long-term consequences of rape include self-destructive behavior, impaired self-esteem, interpersonal problems, and a
greater likelihood of becoming a drug or alcohol addict.

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**Economy**
Economic collapse causes World War Three
Mead, 9 Henry A. Kissinger Senior Fellow in U.S. Foreign Policy at the Council on Foreign Relations
(Walter Russell, Only Makes You Stronger, The New Republic, 2/4/09,
http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=571cbbb9-2887-4d81-8542-92e83915f5f8&p=2)
History may suggest that financial crises actually help capitalist great powers maintain their leads--but it has other, less
reassuring messages as well. If financial crises have been a normal part of life during the 300-year rise of
the liberal capitalist system under the Anglophone powers, so has war. The wars of the League of Augsburg and the
Spanish Succession; the Seven Years War; the American Revolution; the Napoleonic Wars; the two World
Wars; the cold war: The list of wars is almost as long as the list of financial crises. Bad economic times can breed
wars. Europe was a pretty peaceful place in 1928, but the Depression poisoned German public opinion and helped
bring Adolf Hitler to power. If the current crisis turns into a depression, what rough beasts might
start slouching toward Moscow, Karachi, Beijing, or New Delhi to be born? The United States may not, yet,
decline, but, if we can't get the world economy back on track, we may still have to fight.

Prolonged Recession yields nuclear war- must avert it now- empirically proven
Sean ODonnell Staff Writer, Baltimore Examiner, B.A. in History from the University of Maryland 2/26/09, Will this recession
lead to World War II, http://www.examiner.com/x-3108-Baltimore-Republican-Examiner~y2009m2d26-Will-this-recession-leadto-World-War-III
Could the current economic crisis affecting this country and the world lead to another world war? The answer may be
found by looking back in history. One of the causes of World War I was the economic rivalry that existed between the
nations of Europe. In the 19th century France and Great Britain became wealthy through colonialism and the control of
foreign resources. This forced other up-and-coming nations (such as Germany) to be more competitive in world trade
which led to rivalries and ultimately, to war. After the Great Depression ruined the economies of Europe in the 1930s,
fascist movements arose to seek economic and social control. From there fanatics like Hitler and Mussolini took over
Germany and Italy and led them both into World War II. With most of North America and Western Europe currently
experiencing a recession, will competition for resources and economic rivalries with the Middle East, Asia, or South
American cause another world war? Add in nuclear weapons and Islamic fundamentalism and things look even worse.
Hopefully the economy gets better before it gets worse and the terrifying possibility of World War III is averted. However
sometimes history repeats itself.

Inflation leads to extinction

Sennholz, Head of the Department of Economics at Grove City College and noted writer and lecturer on monetary and economic
principles and practices, No Date Given
It is not money, as is sometimes said, but the depreciation of money the cruel and crafty destruction of money
that is the root of many evils. For it destroys individual thrift and self-reliance as it gradually erodes
personal savings. It benefits debtors at the expense of creditors as it silently transfers wealth and
income from the latter to the former. It generates the business cycles, the stop-and-go boom-and-bust
movements of business that inflict incalculable harm on millions of people. For money is not only
the medium for all economic exchanges, but as such also the lifeblood of the economy. When money
suffers depreciations and devaluations it invites government price and wage controls, compulsory distribution
through official allocation and rationing, restrictive quotas on imports, rising tariffs and surcharges,
prohibition of foreign travel and investment, and many other government restrictions on individual
activities. Monetary destruction breeds not only poverty and chaos, but also government tyranny. Few
policies are more calculated to destroy the existing basis of a free society than the debauching of its
currency. And few tools, if any, are more important to the champion of freedom than a sound monetary system.
Trade wars nuclear war.
Spicer, 1996 economist; member of the British Parliament, [Michael, The Challenge from the East and
the Rebirth of the West, p. 121]
The choice facing the West today is much the same as that which faced the Soviet bloc after World War II: between

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meeting head-on the challenge of world trade with the adjustments and the benefits that it will bring, or of attempting to
shut out markets that are growing and where a dynamic new pace is being set for innovative production. The problem
about the second approach is not simply that it won't hold: satellite technology alone will ensure that the consumers will
begin to demand those goods that the East is able to provide most cheaply. More fundamentally, it will guarantee the
emergence of a fragmented world in which natural fears will be fanned and inflamed. A world divided into rigid

trade blocs will be a deeply troubled and unstable place in which suspicion and ultimately envy will
possibly erupt into a major war. I do not say that the converse will necessarily be true, that in a free trading world
there will be an absence of all strife. Such a proposition would manifestly be absurd. But to trade is to become
interdependent, and that is a good step in the direction of world stability. With nuclear weapons at
two a penny, stability will be at a premium in the years ahead.
Economic growth is the surest way to stop prolif

Burrows & Windram 94 (William & Robert, Critical Mass, p. 491-2)

Economics is in many respects proliferations catalyst. As we have noted, economic desperation drives Russia and some of the
former Warsaw Pact nations to peddle weapons and technology. The possibility of considerable profits or at least balanced
international payments also prompts Third World countries like China, Brazil, and Israel to do the same. Economics, as well as
such related issues as overpopulation, drive proliferation just as surely as do purely political motives. Unfortunately, that subject is
beyond the scope of this book. Suffice it to say that, all things being equal, well-of, relatively secure societies like todays Japan
are less likely to buy or sell superweapon technology than those that are insecure, needy, or desperate. Ultimately, solving
economic problems, especially as they are driven by population pressure, is the surest way to defuse proliferation and enhance
true national security.
Strong economy is the best way to preserve a healthy environment, avoiding command-and-control policies

Shiller 99 (Erin, Policy Fellow of Environmental Studies @ Pacific Research Institute, Ventura County Star, April 20, ln)
As income levels rise, people begin to demand higher environmental standards. As a society, this effect is cumulative -- thus, we
expect even better environmental quality as our economy grows. Until now, environmental policy has relied almost entirely on
command-and-control regulation. While such regulation has had its successes, it also hinders the very economic growth that has
allowed for environmental improvements.
Further, the marginal cost of pollution reduction is continually rising. Stated another way, a smaller aggregate amount of pollution
means that each further reduction is more costly than the last, and the health benefits produced are less significant and felt by
fewer people.
For this reason, environmentalists should not regard economic concerns as a hindrance to effective policy, but should embrace
economic growth as the key to further environmental improvements. Moreover, if Americans want the improvement that has
occurred over the past generation to continue, they will look to innovative new policies that incorporate and even promote
economic growth. Such policies not only best address today's environmental situation, but provide the most promising future for
tomorrow's environment as well.
Economic decline no protection of the environment

Sanders 90 (Jerry, Univ of Cal Berkley, Academic Coordinator in Peace and Conflict; Global Ecology and World Economy:
Collision Course or Sustainable Future? Pg. 397)
In a period of economic stagnation and trade competition, a declining hegemonic power will think less about maintaining world
order than about shoring up its position relative to new challengers and upstarts. Multilateral cooperation will run up against simlar
constraints, due to suspicions that others may gain at ones expense by free riding on the public goods provided by
environmental protection, trade regulation, or collective security regimes. The tendency will be for states to withhold the resources
and the legitimacy required for supranational structures to work. And left to fend for themselves in a climate of economic
stagnation, individual nations will be little able and even less inclined to end their destabilizing environmental practices.
Thus the groundwork will be laid for a chain reaction of conflicts across a spectrum of relations, with one nation after another
forced into escalating confrontation along several fronts.

War more violence against women

Richards 04 (Cindy, A new vision for V movement Chicago Sun-Times, June 9, ln)

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"I think the war, the jobs and the economy are all very connected to violence against women, " Ensler said.
"Let's begin with war. I have been outspoken about the war from the very beginning. I see not only consequences of war

toward human beings, but toward women. Let's begin with rape. The rate of violence toward women
escalates in war," said the playwright and activist who has traveled to war-torn regions in Bosnia, Pakistan, Afghanistan,
Kosovo

and

the

Middle

East.

"War is really about taking what you want when you want it without consent. It really perpetuates a rape
mentality. Take Iraq as an example. Saddam Hussein was as evil as they come. Under his regime, 1 million died, women were
raped, people were tortured. That existed for 30 years and we never intervened on behalf of the people being tortured and raped. If
this were a war about stopping human rights violations, that was a war that should have been called 20 years ago."
Economic growth solves terrorism

Wanandi 02 (Jusuf, member of the board of trustees @ Center for Strategic and International Studies, A Global Coalition
against International Terrorism p. 184-9)
A robust global economy is a condition sine qua non in the battle against terrorism. By destroying a root cause of frustration
namely, grinding poverty a healthy economy denies terrorists a fresh source of recruits.
Economic decline terrorism

Johnson 97 (Bryan T, fellow @ heritage foundation, Defining the US Role in the Global Economy Mandate for Leadership
IV. Feb)
Stagnant economics and declining living standards in many Muslim countries breed a popular discontent that fuels the growth of
radical Islamic fundamentalism. Widespread unemployment in Muslim countries such as Algeria, Egypt, and Iran has created a
mass of disillusioned young men who form a reservoir of potential recruits for the radical Islamic groups. These restless poor,
called the dispossessed by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, often join militant groups in search of hope and a sense of personal
empowerment. This is causing an increase in radical Islamic fundamentalism, which often results in increased international
terrorism.
Global nuclear war

Mead, 92 (Walter Russell, Fellow on the Council of Foreign Relations, New Perspectives Quarterly, pg. 28)
billions - of people have pinned their hopes on the international market economy. They and their leaders have embraced market principles -- and drawn closer
if the global economy stagnates - or even shrinks? In that case, we will face a new
period of international conflict: South against North, rich against poor. Russia, China, India - These countries with their billions of people and their nuclear weapons will
pose a much greater danger to world order than Germany and Japan did in the 30s.
Hundreds of millions -

to the west -- because they believe that our system can work for them. But what if it can't? What

Several scenarios for nuclear war

Ferguson, 4 History Professor, Harvard

(Niall, A World Without Power, Foreign Policy)
The reversal of globalization--which a new Dark Age would produce--would certainly lead to economic stagnation and even
depression. As the United States sought to protect itself after a second September 11 devastates, say, Houston or Chicago, it would inevitably become a less
open society, less hospitable for foreigners seeking to work, visit, or do business. Meanwhile, as Europe's Muslim enclaves grew , Islamist extremists'
infiltration of the EU would become irreversible, increasing trans- Atlantic tensions over the Middle East to the breaking point.
An economic meltdown in China would plunge the Communist system into crisis, unleashing the centrifugal forces that undermined
previous Chinese empires. Western investors would lose out and conclude that lower returns at home are preferable to the risks of default abroad. The worst
effects of the new Dark Age would be felt on the edges of the waning great powers. The wealthiest ports of the global economy--from New York to Rotterdam
to Shanghai--would become the targets of plunderers and pirates. With ease, terrorists could disrupt the freedom of the seas, targeting oil tankers,
aircraft carriers, and cruise liners, while Western nations frantically concentrated on making their airports secure. Meanwhile, limited nuclear wars could

devastate numerous regions, beginning in the Korean peninsula and Kashmir, perhaps ending catastrophically in the Middle
East. In Latin America, wretchedly poor citizens would seek solace in Evangelical Christianity imported by U.S. religious orders. In Africa, the great
plagues of AIDS and malaria would continue their deadly work. The few remaining solvent airlines would simply suspend services to many
cities in these continents; who would wish to leave their privately guarded safe havens to go there? For all these reasons, the prospect of an apolar
world should frighten us today a great deal more than it frightened the heirs of Charlemagne. If the United States retreats from global
hegemony--its fragile self-image dented by minor setbacks on the imperial frontier --its critics at home and abroad must not pretend that they are
ushering in a new era of multipolar harmony, or even a return to the good old balance of power. Be careful what you wish for. The
alternative to unipolarity would not be multipolarity at all. It would be apolarity--a global vacuum of power.

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Global war

Spicer, Olin Foundation, 96

(The Challenge from the East and the Rebirth of the West, p. 121)
The choice facing the West today is much the same as that which faced the Soviet bloc after World War II: between
meeting head-on the challenge of world trade with the adjustments and the benefits that it will bring, or of attempting
to shut out markets that are growing and where a dynamic new pace is being set for innovative production. The
problem about the second approach is not simply that it wont hold: satellite technology alone will ensure that
consumers will begin to demand those goods that the East is able to provide most cheaply. More fundamentally, it will
guarantee the emergence of a fragmented world in which natural fears will be fanned and inflamed. A world divided
into rigid trade blocs will be a deeply troubled and unstable place in which suspicion and ultimately envy will possibly
erupt into a major war. I do not say that the converse will necessarily be true, that in a free trading world there will be
an absence of all strife. Such a proposition would manifestly be absurd. But to trade is to become interdependent, and
that is a good stop in the direction of world stability. With nuclear weapons at two a penny, stability will be at a
premium in the years ahead.

Continued economic decline causes nuclear war.

Mead 09
[Walter Russel Mead - the Henry A. Kissinger Senior Fellow in U.S. Foreign Policy at the Council
Relations and the author of God and Gold: Britain, America and the Making of the
Modern World.
http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.ht...e83915f5f8&p=2 D/L 7,18,09]

on
Foreign
2/4/09
-

So far, such half-hearted experiments not only have failed to work; they have left the societies that have tried
them in a progressively worse position, farther behind the front-runners as time goes by. Argentina has lost
ground to Chile; Russian development has fallen farther behind that of the Baltic states and Central Europe.
Frequently, the crisis has weakened the power of the merchants, industrialists, financiers, and professionals
who want to develop a liberal capitalist society integrated into the world. Crisis can also strengthen the
hand of religious extremists, populist radicals, or authoritarian traditionalists who are determined to
resist liberal capitalist society for a variety of reasons. Meanwhile, the companies and banks based in these
societies are often less established and more vulnerable to the consequences of a financial crisis than more
established firms in wealthier societies. As a result, developing countries and countries where capitalism has
relatively recent and shallow roots tend to suffer greater economic and political damage when crisis strikes-as, inevitably, it does. And, consequently, financial crises often reinforce rather than challenge the global
distribution of power and wealth. This may be happening yet again. None of which means that we can just sit
back and enjoy the recession. History may suggest that financial crises actually help capitalist great powers
maintain their leads--but it has other, less reassuring messages as well. If financial crises have been a normal
part of life during the 300-year rise of the liberal capitalist system under the Anglophone powers, so has war.
The wars of the League of Augsburg and the Spanish Succession; the Seven Years War; the American
Revolution; the Napoleonic Wars; the two World Wars; the cold war: The list of wars is almost as long
as the list of financial crises. Bad economic times can breed wars. Europe was a pretty peaceful place in
1928, but the Depression poisoned German public opinion and helped bring Adolf Hitler to power. If the
current crisis turns into a depression, what rough beasts might start slouching toward Moscow,
Karachi, Beijing, or New Delhi to be born? The United States may not, yet, decline, but, if we can't get
the world economy back on track, we may still have to fight.
Extinction results from a economic collapse.
Bearden, 2k

[Bearden, U.S. Army (Retired), T.E., LTC, U.S. Army, The Unnecessary Energy
How to Solve It Quickly,- 4/24/2000 http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3aaf97f22e23.htm - D/L 7,18,09]

Crisis:

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History bears out that desperate nations take desperate actions. Prior to the final economic collapse, the
stress on nations will have increased the intensity and number of their conflicts, to the point where the
arsenals of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) now possessed by some 25 nations, are almost certain
to be released. As an example, suppose a starving North Korea launches nuclear weapons upon Japan and
South Korea, including U.S. forces there, in a spasmodic suicidal response. Or suppose a desperate Chinawhose long-range nuclear missiles (some) can reach the United States-attacks Taiwan. In addition to
immediate responses, the mutual treaties involved in such scenarios will quickly draw other nations into the
conflict, escalating it significantly. Strategic nuclear studies have shown for decades that, under such
extreme stress conditions, once a few nukes are launched, adversaries and potential adversaries are then
compelled to launch on perception of preparations by one's adversary. The real legacy of the MAD concept is
this side of the MAD coin that is almost never discussed. Without effective defense, the only chance a
nation has to survive at all is to launch immediate full-bore pre-emptive strikes and try to take out its
perceived foes as rapidly and massively as possible. As the studies showed, rapid escalation to full
WMD exchange occurs. Today, a great percent of the WMD arsenals that will be unleashed, are
already on site within the United States itself. The resulting great Armageddon will destroy civilization
as we know it, and perhaps most of the biosphere, at least for many decades.
Economic decline leads to global nuclear war and totalitarian regimes
Cook, former analyst for the US Treasury Department, 2007
Richard Cook, Writer, Consultant, and Retired Federal Analyst U.S. Treasury Department, 6/14/2k7 "It's Official: The Crash of
the U.S. Economy has begun," Global Research, http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=5964

Times of economic crisis produce international tension and politicians tend to go to war rather than
face the economic music. The classic example is the worldwide depression of the 1930s leading to
World War II. Conditions in the coming years could be as bad as they were then. We could have a really big
war if the U.S. decides once and for all to haul off and let China, or whomever, have it in the chops.
If they dont want our dollars or our debt any more, how about a few nukes? Maybe well finally
have a revolution either from the right or the center involving martial law, suspension of the Bill of
Rights, etc., combined with some kind of military or forced-labor dictatorship. Were halfway there
anyway. Forget about a revolution from the left. They wouldnt want to make anyone mad at them for being too
radical.

Global nuclear war

Mead 9 (Walter Russell Mead the Henry A. Kissinger Senior Fellow in U.S. Foreign Policy at the
Council on Foreign Relations, Only Makes You Stronger, The New Republic, February 4, 2009)
History may suggest that financial crises actually help capitalist great powers maintain their leads--but it has other, less reassuring
messages as well. If financial crises have been a normal part of life during the 300-year rise of the liberal capitalist system under
the Anglophone powers, so has war. The wars of the League of Augsburg and the Spanish Succession; the Seven Years War; the
American Revolution; the Napoleonic Wars; the two World Wars; the cold war: The list of wars is almost as long as the list of
financial crises. Bad economic times can breed wars. Europe was a pretty peaceful place in 1928, but the Depression poisoned
German public opinion and helped bring Adolf Hitler to power. If the current crisis turns into a depression, what rough
beasts might start slouching toward Moscow, Karachi, Beijing, or New Delhi to be born? The United States may not, yet,
decline, but, if we can't get the world economy back on track, we may still have to fight.

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US economic collapse would lead to resource wars, nuclear wars, and extinction it comes before all
other impacts
Newsflavor, 9 (Newsflavor is a network of journalists that cover current events, political coverage, world
news, and opinions, April 9, Will an Economic Collapse Kill You? http://newsflavor.com/opinions/will-aneconomic-collapse-kill-you/)
It may or may not sound likely to you, but the economy is on the brink of collapse. The stock market is riding a sled
down a steep hill. The United States government is spending money faster than it can print it. opinRight now the
government is passing bills and proposals that will give trillions of dollars to failing companies and bankrupt manufacturers. They believe that by giving these companies
resources to invest and expand, the economy will expand. The problem with this plan is that the same companies that are receiving billions of dollars in aid arent
prepared to handle this money better than they used capitol in the past. Chances are these companies still have the same investors and management that they did prebailout, so whos to say that they wont make the same mistakes theyve made in the past? The most likely thing to happen is that these companies are going to spend
this money the same way they have in the past and that these companies are going to go bankrupt, again. These companies are the lynchpin of the economy, such as
major insurance providers, banks, investment firms, manufacturers, etc. If these companies or firms were to collapse, the economy would be falling down the same pit as

Not just the United States economy, because the U.S. is a major trade partner in this world, and most
other countries are dependent on the United States one way or another, a United States collapse would cause a
domino effect on the worlds economy. If the United States economy failed, for example, we could see Iraq, Iran, and
Russia fall with them, because all of their economies are reliant off the selling of oil. Then the nations who are reliant
on their economies would fail, etc. Now its time to look at the consequences of a failing world economy. With five
official nations having nuclear weapons, and four more likely to have them there could be major consequences of
another world war. The first thing that will happen after an economic collapse will be war over resources. The United
these companies.

States currency will become useless and will have no way of securing reserves. The United States has little to no capacity to produce oil, it is totally
dependent on foreign oil. If the United States stopped getting foreign oil, the government would go to no ends to secure more, if

there were a war with any other major power over oil, like Russia or China, these wars would most likely
involve nuclear weapons. Once one nation launches a nuclear weapon, there would of course be retaliation,
and with five or more countries with nuclear weapons there would most likely be a world nuclear war. The risk
is so high that acting to save the economy is the most important issue facing us in the 21st century.

Economic Decline Causes Extinction from terrorism

Torgerson, Professor and Chair of the Department of Political Studies, 1999 (Douglas, Trent
University Ontario, The Promise of Green Politics: Environmentalism and the Public Sphere, p. 145-146)
By adopting an uncompromising posture, green radicalism serves to high-light the danger that green reforms might well be absorbed and rendered
ineffective by the established order. Against reforims, green radicals emphasize the need to thoroughly transform prevailing institutions and ways of
viewing the human/nature relationship. In the absence of coherent and plausible programs for radical transformation, however, desperate scenarios
of crisis and catastrophe become inviting: The very best thing for the planet, one radical green has thus declared, might be a
massive worldwide economic depression: Amid the terrible hardships this would create for countless people, at least the machinery
would stop for a while, and the Earth could take a breather.5 Needless to say, this repugnant hope ignores the obvious range of

potential consequences arising from such a scenario. Social insecurity and human misery could intensify human
conflicts and promote neglect of environmental concerns as people desperately sought to protect themselves, there
could also be increased terrorism, even warfare of a type and scale that would prove enormously destructive to life on
earth.

The global financial crisis will intensify and create ideal breeding grounds for terrorism
Bremmer 9 (Ian, president of Eurasia Group, a political-risk consultancy, Call: Global
Recession = More Terrorism, Foreign Affairs, 3/4/09,
http://eurasia.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2009/03/04/the_global_recession_heightens_ter
rorist_risks )
In the Pakistani city of Lahore on Tuesday, a dozen gunmen attacked a bus carrying members of Sri Lanka's cricket team, killing six policemen and a driver and injuring several of the athletes. Press
accounts of the assault suggest a level of coordination similar to that used by the Pakistan-based militants who killed 173 people at several sites in Mumbai in September. Across Pakistan, suicide

There are two

important reasons why the threat of global terrorism is growing. The first is long-term and structural.
The second is more directly tied to the global financial crisis. Both have everything to do with what's happening in Pakistan. First, a report
bombers killed two people in 2005, six in 2006, 56 in 2007, and 61 in 2008. Suicide attackers killed more people in Pakistan last year than in either Iraq or Afghanistan .

released in December from the U.S. Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction, Proliferation, and Terrorism hints at both sets of problems. The report notes an increasing

it is more likely than not

that a weapon of mass destruction will be used in a terrorist attack somewhere in the world by the end
of 2013."Destructive (and potentially destructive) technologies are now more accessible than at any
time in history for small groups and even individuals . This will dramatically increase the baseline threat
supply of nuclear technology and material around the world and warns that "without greater urgency and decisive action by the world community,

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of disruptive violence from non-state actors over time. It's not just biological and nuclear material. GPS
tracking devices help pirates operating off Somalia's coast venture further from shore and undertake increasingly ambitious attacks on private and
commercial vessels.Second, it's unlikely that we'll see the "greater urgency and decisive action by the world

community" called for in the report. For the moment, political leaders around the world are too busy wrestling with the effects of the global
financial crisis on their domestic economies (and their political standing) to coordinate action against such a diffuse threat. But there's
another reason why the financial crisis heightens the risk of global terrorism. Militants thrive in places
where no one is fully in charge. The global recession threatens to create more such places.No matter
how cohesive and determined a terrorist organization, it needs a supportive environment in which to
flourish. That means a location that provides a steady stream of funds and recruits and the support (or at least acceptance) of the local population. Much of the counter-terrorist success we've
seen in Iraq's al Anbar province over the past two years is a direct result of an increased willingness of local Iraqis to help the Iraqi army and US troops oust the militants operating there. In part,
that's because the area's tribal leaders have their own incentives (including payment in cash and weaponry) for cooperating with occupation forces. But it's also because foreign militants have
alienated the locals.The security deterioration of the past year in Pakistan and Afghanistan reflects exactly the opposite phenomenon. In the region along both sides of their shared border, local tribal
leaders have yet to express much interest in helping Pakistani and NATO soldiers target local or foreign militants. For those with the power to either protect or betray the senior al-Qaeda leaders
believed to be hiding in the region, NATO and Pakistani authorities have yet to find either sweet enough carrots or sharp enough sticks to shift allegiances. The slowdown threatens to slow the

as more people lose

their jobs, their homes, and opportunities for prosperity -- in emerging market countries or even within
minority communities inside developed states -- it becomes easier for local militants to find volunteers.
This is why the growing risk of attack from suicide bombers and well-trained gunmen in Pakistan
creates risks that extend beyond South Asia. This is a country that is home to lawless regions where local and
international militants thrive, nuclear weapons and material, a history of nuclear smuggling, a cashstarved government, and a deteriorating economy. Pakistan is far from the only country in which terrorism threatens to spill
progress of a number of developing countries. Most states don't provide ground as fertile for militancy as places like Afghanistan, Somalia, and Yemen. But

across borders. But there's a reason why the security threats flowing back and forth across the Afghan-Pakistani border rank so highly on Eurasia
Group's list of top political risks for 2009 -- and why they remain near the top of the Obama administration's security agenda.

A recession now presents the ideal conditions for terrorist recruitment

The Irish Times 8
(Leaked British Report warns recession may lead to surge in terrorism, 9/2/08, Lexis)
An economic downturn in Britain could aggravate racial tensions and grievances that help to feed terrorist
recruitment, according to a leaked British government document.The draft letter from the Home Office warned that a recession could
create conditions likely to increase support for radical Islamist groups.As jobs become more scarce , "we
should expect increased public hostility to migrants", said the leaked memo, entitled Responding to Economic
Challenges."There is also a risk of a downturn increasing the appeal of far-right extremism and racism,
which presents a threat as there is evidence that grievances based on experiencing racism are one of
the factors that can lead to people becoming terrorists," the memo claimed. The warning came after British finance minister
Alistair Darling said the current slump could be the worst for 60 years - increasing pressure on prime minister Gordon Brown, who is trailing the
opposition Conservatives in the polls.The downturn has already seen house prices tumble, the pound fall against

the dollar and economic growth grind to a halt for the first time since 1992.A Home Office spokeswoman said yesterday that the
letter contained draft advice to Mr Brown's 10 Downing Street office, but was never sent."We do not normally comment on leaked documents but this is draft advice that the home secretary has not
cleared and has not been sent to Number 10," the department added in a statement."It is, however, appropriate that the Home Office considers the effects the economic climate may have on crime
and other policy areas."Britain has been a frequent target of plots by militant groups which accuse it of waging war against Islam by supporting the United States in the invasions of Afghanistan and
Iraq.The MI5 intelligence agency has said it knows of at least 2,000 British-based individuals who pose a direct threat to national security because of their support for terrorism.In 2005, four young
British Muslims with links to al-Qaeda carried out suicide bombings on London's transport network, killing 52. - (Reuters)

Intensifying economic recession will push us over the brink toward apocalypsecrime, suicide, and
mass devastation is inevitable
The Sunday Times, 2/1/09 (Judith Duffy, Scotlands health boss sees apocalypse now, 2009, Lexis)
SCOTLAND'S most senior public health official has warned that "humanity is on a path towards
unprecedented catastrophe" and the Scottish economy is sinking at a faster rate than at any time since the Great
Depression.In an apocalyptic report to the Scottish government, Dr Laurence Gruer, NHS Health Scotland's
director of public health science, warned that the recession is likely to have a devastating effect on
social cohesion and health.He predicts a rise in levels of property crime, fraud, racism, drug abuse,
child abuse, domestic violence, obesity, depression and suicide. Coupled with environmental factors
such as the depletion of natural resources, he claims the downturn could have dire consequences for
the population."This upheaval can be expected to create changes in socioeconomic conditions in Scotland of a
magnitude not seen since the early 1980s ... the causes of the recession are unprecedented and the rapidity and
severity of their onset are only matched by the Great Depression of 1929."Humanity is on a path towards
catastrophe on an unprecedented scale but which has already been tasted by the devastated
residents of coastal Bangladesh, Myanmar and Louisiana, by the idle fishermen of the shrinking Aral
Sea and the respiratory casualties of numerous air polluted cities."Gruer blames the "have-itall" mindset of

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western consumerist societies and its impact on the environment and people in developing countries."The risk of
depression and the possibility of suicide may increase when unemployment is combined with financial problems such
as losing one's home or relationship breakdown," says his report."With many more people struggling to make
ends meet, some may be tempted into property crime, fraud or drug dealing ... there may also be
possible increases in wife and child abuse and neglect ... the potential for increased racism and other
forms of discrimination and harassment against immigrants due to perceived competition for jobs
should be anticipated and responded to." The report has been criticised by politicians, who warn that Gruer's language could cause unnecessary anxiety."In the
circumstances, prophesying doom and gloom is not a constructive way forward, neither does it help people cope with the current problems," said Mary Scanlon, health spokeswoman for the Scottish
Conservatives.."It is for the public authorities to give the best advice and support, rather than adding to anxiety and depression."Richard Simpson, Labour's public health spokesman, said:
"Something so full of doom and gloom at a time of uncertainty creates a sense of despair that is unnecessary and inappropriate. Dr Gruer should stick to his specific remit on public health."Simpson
added that the current economic crisis could not be compared to the Great Depression because of the vast improvements in the nation's health and the global response to the credit crunch.The
Great Depression, the most severe economic slump in modern history, was triggered by the Wall Street crash.Gruer believes that the socioeconomic changes caused by the current crisis would be
as significant as those brought in by Margaret Thatcher's government in the 1980s.He adds that the falling value of sterling could also lead to elderly people, who had planned to spend their
retirement living abroad, returning to Scotland, adding to the burden on health and social services.

Global economic collapse is time sensitive -- the crisis collapses government law enforcement and
regime threatening instability
Klare, 9 (Michael T. Author and Professor of Peace and World-Security Studies at Hampshire College,
March 19, 2009 The Second Shockwave http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-t-klare/the-secondshockwave_b_176358.html)
Regime-Threatening Unrest As these effects ripple through the developing world and millions upon millions of people face
increasingly harsh conditions, social and political unrest of all forms will increase. Such unrest, involving angry protests over plants
closings, mass layoffs, and government austerity measures, has already erupted in Europe, Russia, and China, and now threatens to spread to other areas of
the world. Until now, such disorder has been limited to urban riots and rock-throwing incidents, but it is easy to imagine far more violent forms of turmoil
-- including the outbreak of armed rebellion or civil strife. This danger was raised in a third report worthy of attention, an annual threat assessment
delivered by the Director of National Intelligence, Admiral Dennis C. Blair, to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence on February 12. Although
much of Blair's report focuses on familiar issues like Iran's nuclear aspirations and the war in Afghanistan, it devotes considerable attention to the prospect
of social and political turmoil arising from the current economic meltdown. "The primary near-term security concern of the United States

is the global economic crisis and its geopolitical implications," the report noted. In tracking this concern, "time is probably
our greatest threatStatistical modeling shows that economic crises increase the risk of regime-threatening instability if
they persist over a one to two year period." Of course, the crisis has already lasted more than one year in the United States
and appears destined to persist much longer in both the developed and developing areas -- and so the danger of "regimethreatening instability" has to be taken very seriously indeed. In his public testimony, Admiral Blair didn't provide a country-by-country
assessment of where he expected to see instability. But he did point to several areas that are at particular risk, including Africa, Latin America, and Central
Asia. Speaking of the latter, for example, he noted that Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan, "with their highly-personalized
politics, weak institutions, and growing inequalities are ill-equipped to deal with the challenges posed by Islamic violent extremism, poor economic
development, and problems associated with energy, water, and food distribution." All of these countries, moreover, are particularly vulnerable to the global
economic crisis, particularly as remittances fall. "Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan have heavily depended on migrant worker remittances

from both Russia and Kazakhstan for a significant portion of their gross domestic product -- up to 45% in the case of
Tajikistan -- and will be severely affected by the financial crisis." Economic deprivation is also spurring an increase in
crime and piracy in certain areas, Blair testified. This is especially so in parts of West Africa, where poverty and diminished state capacity
facilitated the trans-shipment of narcotics from Latin America to Europe. "Traffickers have successfully co-opted government and lawenforcement officials in these countries, further undermining weak and economically impoverished governments who lack
adequate law enforcement and judicial capacity," the report notes. Blair pointed in particular to Guinea-Bissau, which he described as
"Africa's first narco-state. On March 3, the country's president, Joo Bernardo Vieira, was killed in what some observers believe was a dispute between
rival drug interests. In more recent testimony, Blair has tied political unrest in the developing world even more closely to global economic conditions.
Speaking of the current turmoil in Pakistan, for example, he told a House committee on February 25: "The government is losing authority in the

North and the West, and even in the more developed parts of the country, mounting economic hardships and frustration over
poor governance have given rise to greater radicalization." While it's perhaps too early to specify where outbreaks of
"regime-threatening instability" might occur as a result of the economic crisis, the analysis derived from recent World Bank and
FAO reports suggests that many developing nations are at significant risk. The wealthier nations have experienced only the first shockwave from the
global economic crisis. The effects of the second shockwave -- on the world's less-developed nations -- have yet to be felt. From all indications, the
consequences of the second wave are likely to be even more earth-shattering than the first.

Economic prosperity solves Chinas perception of the US and overall Hegemony

Glaser and Morris, 9 (Bonnie S. and Lyle, Jamestown Foundation Writers, Chinese Perceptions of U.S.
Decline and Power, July 9, http://www.jamestown.org/single/?no_cache=1&tx_ttnews%5Btt_news
%5D=35241&tx_ttnews%5BbackPid%5D=7&cHash=2d090405f7)
For the past few years, the Western world has been abuzz with talk of Chinas rise. Most statesmen, pundits and
academics have concluded that Chinas rise is inevitable, but as of yet there has been no consensus on the
implications of Chinas rise for the rest of the world. While Westerners debate issues like whether and how China can

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be molded into becoming a responsible stakeholder in the international system, the Chinese have been quietly
conducting a debate of their own. After more than a decade of judging the international structure of power as
characterized by yi chao, duo qiang (one superpower, many great powers) [1]with a substantial gap between the
United States and other major powersChinese scholars are debating whether U.S. power is now in decline and if
multipolarity (duojihua) is becoming a reality. A key precipitating factor is the global financial crisis, which has
sown doubts in the minds of some Chinese experts about the staying power of U.S. hegemony in the
international system. Chinese perceptions of American power are consequential. Chinas assessment of the global
structure of power is an important factor in Chinese foreign policy decision-making. As long as Chinese leaders
perceive a long-lasting American preeminence, averting confrontation with the United States is likely seen as the best
option. If Beijing were to perceive the U.S. position as weakening, there could be fewer inhibitions for China to avoid
challenging the United States where American and Chinese interests diverge. Since the late-1990s, Beijing has
judged the United States as firmly entrenched in the role of sole superpower. As long as the comprehensive national
power of China and the other major powers lagged far behind the United States, and the ability of China to forge
coalitions to counterbalance U.S. power remained limited, Beijing concertedly avoided challenging U.S. interests
around the world; for example, when the United States invaded Iraq. Yet, Chinas recent evaluation that the United
States is overextended with wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, coupled with a perceived U.S. weakness in the wake of the
financial crisis, could imbue Chinese policy makers with the confidence to be more assertive on the international
stage in ways that may be inconsistent with American interests. The debate in China over a possible U.S. decline is not
new, however. After the end of the Cold War, Chinese experts embarked on a rigorous examination of the new global
environment that would emerge after the collapse of the Soviet Union and communism in Eastern Europe. At that time
other rapidly expanding economies, especially Japan and Germany, were perceived as having become powerful U.S.
competitors in high technology. Some Chinese experts began to predict the emergence of a post-Cold War multipolar
world order, a greater balance among major powers, resistance toward Western values and an increased emphasis
worldwide on economic and diplomatic approaches as opposed to military might [2]. These predictions proved overly
optimistic, however, and Beijing subsequently concluded that the United States would maintain its status as sole
superpower for the next 15 to 20 years, if not longer [3].

Financial crisis strengthens Russian hardlinersmakes war more likely

Gjelten 9
(Tom, NPR Correspondent and graduate of the University of Minnesota, Downturn Raises Risk Of Global Financial
Warfare, National Public Radio, 2/19/09, http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=100832254 )
Worries About Eastern Europe. Another critical area is Eastern Europe. Governments from Poland to
Romania are seeing their currencies plummet compared with the dollar and the euro; this means a
decline in the standard of living. After the collapse of the Soviet bloc, these countries turned away from
socialism and toward free markets and Western democracy." For these countries, this is the first time
anything like this has happened," said David Gordon, the former national intelligence officer for economic issues.
"They did have a lot of economic change at the end of communism. But this is really the first time you've had
this very, very deep crisis that really could challenge the westward orientation, the orientation toward
markets." Another danger is that Russia could take advantage of the economic vulnerability of these
countries and try to reassert control over them, perhaps by offering new loans or withholding energy
supplies. Russia has been hurt far more than the United States by the economic crisis. But Gordon who
now leads research for the Eurasia Group said the downturn has strengthened the position of
aggressive, hard-line elements in Russia, making them more determined to challenge U.S.
economic and political power. "Their perception was, they were doing things right, and now the United States
has brought on this financial crisis that's undermining them, so I think it's reinforced a reflexive anti-American view,"
Gordon said.

An Economic Crisis is recipe for disastercrumbling democracies and Russian aggression are
inevitable
Ferguson, 9 (Niall, world-renowned Scottish historian who's currently a Professor at Harvard
University, an expert on financial and economic history. Niall Ferguson joins Lateline, ABC
Australia, < http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2008/s2502602.htm> //ak)
I think it's almost certain. Although it's conventional to refer to this as the 'global financial crisis', it's more
than that. You know, it's a crisis of globalisation. What we're seeing is a breakdown of the system of
international trade. The latest figures for exporters out of the major Asian economies are truly terrifying. We haven't
seen a collapse of global trade like this since the early 1930s. And you don't need to know a whole lost history to know

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that the Great Depression of the '30s was very quickly followed by enormous political upheavals.
Democracies failed all over Europe, central and Eastern Europe in particular, and those democracies
that failed were very quickly failed by dictatorships that were bent on aggression. And I think one of the
most troubling symptoms of this crisis right now is the combination of breakdown in Eastern Europe,
economies falling off cliffs, and really quite aggressive rhetoric from the Russian leader, although he's
supposed to just be the Prime Minister, but in fact he's the leader, Vladimir Putin. I was extremely unnerved by Mr
Putin's speech at the recent Davos World Economic Forum which I attended, because he said quite explicitly that
in times of crisis, you should expect certain countries to engage in aggressive foreign policy as a way of
distracting populations from their economic troubles. Well, if he's thinking that way, it seems to me only a
matter of time before Russian foreign policy takes another turn for the wors

Economic collapse is time sensitive and threatens government security

Miller, 9 (Greg, Staff Writer for Los Angeles Times, World economy tied to U.S. security; Intelligence
director warns Congress of fallen governments and hamstrung allies, February 13, LA Times, Lexis)
The nation's new intelligence chief warned Thursday that the global economic crisis is the most serious security
peril facing the United States, threatening to topple governments, trigger waves of refugees and undermine
the ability of America's allies to help in Afghanistan and elsewhere. The economic collapse "already looms as the
most serious one in decades, if not in centuries," said Dennis C. Blair, director of national intelligence, in his first appearance before
Congress as the top intelligence official in the Obama administration. Blair's focus on the economic meltdown represents a sharp contrast from the
testimony of his predecessors in recent years, who devoted most of their attention in the annual threat assessment hearing to the issues of terrorism
and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Blair's conclusions are likely to bolster President Obama's case for swift action on a nearly $800-billion
stimulus package nearing final approval in Congress. "Time is probably our greatest threat," Blair said. "The longer it takes

for the recovery to begin, the greater the likelihood of serious damage to U.S. strategic interests." He said that
one-quarter of the world's nations had already experienced low-level instability attributed to the economic
downturn, including shifts in power. He cited anti-government demonstrations in Europe and Russia, and he warned that much of Latin
America and the former Soviet satellite states lacked sufficient cash to cope with the spreading crisis . "The most likely potential fallout
for U.S. interests will involve a flows from the Caribbean could also impact homeland security." The decline in oil
prices in recent months might benefit consumers in the short term and "put the squeeze on the adventurism of producers like Iran and Venezuela,"
Blair said, but he warned that prolonged price drops could result in a supply crunch if they lead to cuts or delays in investment in oil development
and infrastructure. Economic crises in recent decades have tended to be confined to specific regions -- such as the Asian

financial meltdown of the 1990s -- meaning affected countries could rebuild by focusing on exporting more of their
goods. But "countries will not be able to export their way out of this one because of the global nature" of the crisis,

Blair
said. U.S. intelligence analysts fear there could be a backlash against American efforts to promote free markets because the crisis was triggered by
the United States. "We're generally held to be responsible," Blair said. Blair's written testimony also looks at other security threats. The United
States' most dangerous enemy remains Al Qaeda, he said, but he noted that the terrorist network "is less capable and effective than it was a year
ago" because of the toll U.S. missile strikes and other measures have taken on the militants' sanctuary in Pakistan. Some of Blair's most pessimistic
language was reserved for Afghanistan, where the security situation has deteriorated substantially because of rampant government corruption and a
resurgent Taliban, which carried out fresh attacks in the nation's capital this week. As a result, Blair said, the upcoming Afghan presidential election
"will present a greater security challenge" than the most recent campaign, in 2004, and he added that "insurgents probably will make a concerted
effort to disrupt it." Blair's comments came as the Obama administration is close to a decision on sending tens of thousands of additional troops to
Afghanistan. On Iran, Blair said that the Islamic nation "is clearly developing all the components of a deliverable nuclear weapons program" and that
only an internal political decision might prevent the country from crossing the weapons threshold. Otherwise, he said, "they could have a weapon as
early as 2010, but it might take them until 2015."

Economic decline makes US objectives and policies impossible

Blair, 9 (Dennis C. Director of National Intellegence, Annual Threat Assessment of the
Intelligence Community for the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, February 12,
http://intelligence.senate.gov/090212/blair.pdf)
The crisis presents many challenges for the United States. It started in the United States, quickly spread to other industrial
economies and then, more recently, to emerging markets. The widely held perception that excesses in US financial markets
and inadequate regulation were responsible has increased criticism about free market policies, which may make it difficult
to achieve long-time US objectives, such as the opening of national capital markets and increasing domestic demand in
Asia. It already has increased questioning of US stewardship of the global economy and the international financial
structure.

The economic crisis turns the case by reducing welfare entitlements

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Digital Journal, 9 (Newstex Web, The hypocritical hyperbola- The Add A Penguin approach to
crisis, Mar. 14, Lexis)
The fact that theres almost no substance in the debate isnt mentioned. That the noisy vacuum trying to pass itself
off as political savvy is achieving a grand total of squat isnt being noticeably examined, either. Since October 2008,
the United States (of America, you remember, big place, used to have healthy literate people who lived in buildings?
Thats the one.) has faced imminent catastrophic financial collapse, a totally dysfunctional market economy, two wars,
a post nuclear housing sector, credit catatonia, massive increases in unemployment, and the shredding of global trade.
Private capital alone is estimated to have lost a flippant $31 trillion, and thats a figure which appears to be based on
known, identifiable losses. These whimsical events have cost, at a rough guesstimate, the equivalent of ten World War
Twos. The difference so far is that the United States won in World War Two, and didnt have tens of millions of
economic casualties staggering around for years afterwards. 10% of the population werent living on food stamps and
spending their days trying to find someone who knows whats happening about their welfare entitlements.

Global economic collapse turns the case causes food crisis, economic hardships, and increases
poverty
Klare, 9 (Michael T. Author and Professor of Peace and World-Security Studies at Hampshire College,
March 19, 2009 The Second Shockwave http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-t-klare/the-secondshockwave_b_176358.html)
While the economic contraction is apparently slowing in the advanced industrial countries and may reach bottom in the not-too-distant future, it's only
beginning to gain momentum in the developing world, which was spared the earliest effects of the global meltdown. Because the crisis
was largely precipitated by a collapse of the housing market in the United States and the resulting disintegration of financial products derived from the
"securitization" of questionable mortgages, most developing nations were unaffected by the early stages of the meltdown, for the simple reason that they possessed
few such assets. But now, as the wealthier nations cease investing in the developing world or acquiring its exports, the crisis is hitting them with a vengeance. On
top of this, conditions are deteriorating at a time when severe drought is affecting many key food-producing regions and poor farmers lack the wherewithal to buy
seeds, fertilizers, and fuel. The likely result: A looming food crisis in many areas hit hardest by the global economic meltdown. Until

now, concern over the human impact of the global crisis has largely been focused -- understandably so -- on unemployment and
economic hardship in the United States, Europe, and former Soviet Union. Many stories have appeared on the devastating impact of plant closings,
bankruptcies, and home foreclosures on families and communities in these parts of the world. Much less coverage has been devoted to the meltdown's impact on
people in the developing world. As the crisis spreads to the poorer countries, however, it's likely that people in these areas will experience hardships
every bit as severe as those in the wealthier countries -- and, in many cases, far worse. The greatest worry is that most of the gains achieved in eradicating

poverty over the last decade or so will be wiped out, forcing tens or hundreds of millions of people from the working class and the
lower rungs of the middle class back into the penury from which they escaped. Equally worrisome is the risk of food scarcity in
these areas, resulting in widespread malnutrition, hunger, and starvation. All this is sure to produce vast human misery, sickness, and death, but could also result in
social and political unrest of various sorts, including riot, rebellion, and ethnic strife. The president, Congress, or the mainstream media are not, for the most part,
discussing these perils. As before, public interest remains focused on the ways in which the crisis is affecting the United States and the other major industrial
powers. But the World Bank, the Food and Agriculture Organization, and U.S. intelligence officials, in three recent reports, are paying increased attention to the
prospect of a second economic shockwave, this time affecting the developing world.Sinking Back Into Penury In late February, the World Bank staff prepared a
background paper for the Group of 20 (G-20) finance ministers meeting held near London on March 13 and 14. Entitled "Swimming Against the Tide: How
Developing Countries Are Coping with the Global Crisis," it provides a preliminary assessment of the meltdown's impact on low-income countries (LICs). The
picture, though still hazy, is one of deepening gloom. Most LICs were shielded from the initial impact of the sudden blockage in private capital flows because they
have such limited access to such markets. "But while slower to emerge," the report notes, "the impact of the crisis on LICs has been no less significant as the effects
have spread through other channels." For example, "many LIC governments rely on disproportionately on revenue from commodity exports, the prices of which
have declined sharply along with global demand." Likewise, foreign direct investment is falling, particularly in the natural resource sectors. On top of this,
remittances from immigrants in the wealthier countries to their families back home have dropped, erasing an important source of income to poor communities. Add
all this up, and it's likely that "the slowdown in growth will likely deepen the deprivation of the existing poor." In many LICs, moreover,

"large numbers of people are clustered just above the poverty line and are therefore particularly vulnerable to economic volatility
and temporary slowdowns." As the intensity of the crisis grows, more and more of these people will lose their jobs or their other sources
of income (such as those all-important remittances) and so be pushed from above the poverty line to beneath it. The resulting outcome: "The economic
crisis is projected to increase poverty by around 46 million people in 2009."

1 Billion People are starving now because of the recessionmass starvation and deaths are inevitable
if the economy continues on its current track
Wilkes, 2009 (UN: Economic Crisis Pushes World Hunger To All-Time High,
http://watchingthewatchers.org/article/22195/economic-crisis-pushes-world-hunger //ak)
The number of hungry people in the world is projected to reach an all-time high of 1.02 billion this year,
according to a report published by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). The report blames this latest spike in world

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hunger chiefly on the

global economic recession, which has increased unemployment and reduced incomes
among the poor, leading to greater food insecurity. The report, published on Friday, estimates that over 1
billion people will go hungry each day in 2009, a first in human history. This is a significant increase over last year's
estimate of 915 million hungry people. According to the FAO, this increase of around 100 million people is not a result of poor harvests, as in the
past, but rather a poor economy. "A dangerous mix of the global economic slowdown combined with stubbornly

high food prices in many countries has pushed some 100 million more people than last year into chronic
hunger and poverty," said Jacques Diouf, Director-General of the FAO. "The silent hunger crisis affecting
one sixth of all of humanity poses a serious risk for world peace and security." Although food prices have
declined from their record high levels in mid-2008, the report states that global food prices are still high
compared to previous years, and that domestic prices remain prohibitively high in developing countries. In Mauritania, for example, a
staple food such as wheat still costs over 600 USD per tonne, whereas in the United States the price has fallen below 300 USD. The current
economic situation has intensified the problem created by high food prices. Many sources of income for developing countries,
including remittances, foreign direct investment, foreign aid, and international trade, are expected to undergo severe declines. In addition, because
of the global nature of the economic crisis, previously-used mechanisms such as currency depreciation and borrowing from international credit
markets are more limited in their scope, according to the FAO. In developing countries, the report says, the urban poor are likely to be

most affected by the economic slowdown, as their ability to find work is most dependent on factors like
foreign investment and export demand. However, rural areas could also be affected, as an urban backmigration to the farms would put more pressure on an already strained rural job market. Budget
constraints would lead families to purchase more grain products, which are cheaper than meat, dairy products, and other foods
rich in protein. The result of such diet changes is often malnutrition . Investment in agriculture, according to Director-General Diouf, is the
key to overcoming poverty and hunger in poorer countries. These countries "must be given the development, economic and policy tools required to
boost their agricultural production and productivity", he said. Kanayo F. Nwanze, President of the International Fund for Agricultural Development,
says that investment in agriculture is not only essential for overcoming hunger, but also for promoting economic growth in developing countries. "To
unleash this potential and reduce the number of hungry people in the world," he said, the international community must ensure that farmers "have
access not only to seeds and fertilisers but to tailored technologies, infrastructure, rural finance, and markets." However, the economic slowdown
has forced the UNs World Food Programme to shut down some of its operations, as it receives less financial aid from donor countries. Out of a
required yearly budget of 6.4 billion USD, the agency currently has less than one-fourth of that amount.

Growth is key to prevent war

Gjelten covers intelligence and other national security issues for NPR News 9 (Tom, University of
Minnesota, , U.S. diplomacy and military affairs from the State Department and the Pentagon,
Economic Crisis Poses Threat To Global Stability NPR news, 2/18,
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=100781975)
More Cooperation Needed Throughout history, wars

have often been preceded by serious economic crises. World War II followed
the Great Depression, for instance. With such concerns in mind, Democratic Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee, invited several experts to testify last week at a roundtable on the foreign policy implications of this economic crisis. "The biggest single step the U.S. could
take to send a message abroad and try to restore confidence would be what?" he asked. The answers were not encouraging. The steps that most need to be taken, the
panel agreed, are the ones that are probably most difficult politically: Troubled U.S. banks, they all said, need to be nationalized, at least temporarily (that's probably a
non-starter). The United States should lead the way in resisting protectionist pressures (but the U.S. stimulus package includes a Buy American provision). And
governments around the world need to work together (the opposite has happened). "What we've seen is a lack of coordination [among countries] of economic policy to
address what is truly a global crisis," says Desmond Lachman of the American Enterprise Institute. "Otherwise, you're going to have countries very much at cross-

In times of economic stress, governments may

protect their own national companies from foreign competition, even if it means the global economy suffers . The World
Bank is predicting that trade this year could shrink by more than 2 percent . Some analysts even say the world is going through a
period of deglobalization after years of increasing economic integration. That's a trend that could aggravate
international tensions. It's the job of intelligence agencies to focus on America's intelligence community has said the global economic crisis is now
the top threat to the nation's security. The downturn could produce political instability and damage the ties that hold
countries together. Countries might even be tempted to engage in financial warfare , officials say. But while the CIA and other U.S. spy
purposes, and the danger is you're getting beggar-thy-neighbor policies pretty much in evidence."

agencies are now convinced that they need to pay close attention to the international financial crisis, intelligence officers aren't necessarily prepared to analyze the new
threat. So they are bringing in outside help. James Rickards, an expert in the emerging field of "threat finance," is advising the director of national intelligence. "Obviously,
they had economists," Rickards said. "And they looked at what is the GDP of Russia, what is the GDP of China that kind of macroeconomic work always went on. But
this is different." 'A Pearl Harbor On The Dollar' The concern now is not the gross size of countries' economies, but how money moves between countries, and the way

Chinese now hold about $1 trillion worth of U.S.

debt, including Treasury notes and other securities. That gives them enormous power over the U.S. economy. Were
they to suddenly sell risk and prepare their governments for what could happen, which is why they are now rehearsing
all the worrisome scenarios that could result from the international financial crisis
those movements can turn into a kind of financial warfare. Take China and the United States. The

Economic growth solves extinction GDS

Auslin & Lachman, resident scholar and Desmond Lachman is a resident fellow at AEI, 09
[Michael Auslin is a resident scholar and Desmond Lachman is a resident fellow at AEI, The Global
Economy Unravels, March 6, http://aei.org/publications/pubID.29502,filter.all/pub_detail.asp]

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What do these trends mean in the short and medium term? The Great Depression showed how social and global
chaos followed hard on economic collapse. The mere fact that parliaments across the globe, from America to Japan,
are unable to make responsible, economically sound recovery plans suggests that they do not know what to do and
are simply hoping for the least disruption. Equally worrisome is the adoption of more statist economic programs around
the globe, and the concurrent decline of trust in free-market systems. The threat of instability is a pressing concern.
China, until last year the world's fastest growing economy, just reported that 20 million migrant laborers lost their jobs.
Even in the flush times of recent years, China faced upward of 70,000 labor uprisings a year. A sustained downturn
poses grave and possibly immediate threats to Chinese internal stability. The regime in Beijing may be faced with a
choice of repressing its own people or diverting their energies outward, leading to conflict with China's neighbors.
Russia, an oil state completely dependent on energy sales, has had to put down riots in its Far East as well as in
downtown Moscow. Vladimir Putin's rule has been predicated on squeezing civil liberties while providing economic
largesse. If that devil's bargain falls apart, then wide-scale repression inside Russia, along with a continuing
threatening posture toward Russia's neighbors, is likely. Even apparently stable societies face increasing risk and the
threat of internal or possibly external conflict. As Japan's exports have plummeted by nearly 50%, one-third of the
country's prefectures have passed emergency economic stabilization plans. Hundreds of thousands of temporary
employees hired during the first part of this decade are being laid off. Spain's unemployment rate is expected to climb
to nearly 20% by the end of 2010; Spanish unions are already protesting the lack of jobs, and the specter of violence,
as occurred in the 1980s, is haunting the country. Meanwhile, in Greece, workers have already taken to the streets.
Europe as a whole will face dangerously increasing tensions between native citizens and immigrants, largely from
poorer Muslim nations, who have increased the labor pool in the past several decades. Spain has absorbed five million
immigrants since 1999, while nearly 9% of Germany's residents have foreign citizenship, including almost 2 million
Turks. The xenophobic labor strikes in the U.K. do not bode well for the rest of Europe. A prolonged global downturn,
let alone a collapse, would dramatically raise tensions inside these countries. Couple that with possible protectionist
legislation in the United States, unresolved ethnic and territorial disputes in all regions of the globe and a loss of
confidence that world leaders actually know what they are doing. The result may be a series of small explosions that
coalesce into a big bang.

Growth solves extinction

Zey, executive director of the Expansionary Institute 98 (Michael G., , Professor at Montclair State ,
Seizing the Future, p. 34, pp. 39-40)
no outside force guarantees the continued progress of the human species, nor does anything mandate that the
human species must even continue to exist. In fact, history is littered with races and civilizations that have disappeared without a trace. So, too,
could the human species. There is no guarantee that the human species will survive even if we posit, as many have, a special purpose to the species existence. Therefore, the
species innately comprehends that it must engage in purposive actions in order to maintain its level of growth and progress. Humanitys future is conditioned by what I
call the Imperative of Growth, a principle I will herewith describe along with its several corollaries. The Imperative of Growth states that in order to survive, any nation,
indeed, the human race, must grow, both materially and intellectually. The Macroindustrial Era represents growth in the areas of both technology and human development, a natural
stage in the evolution of the species continued extension of its control over itself and its environment. Although 5 billion strong, our continued existence depends on our
ability to continue the progress we have been making at higher and higher levels . Systems, whether organizations, societies, or cells, have three
basic directions in which to move. They can grow, decline, or temporarily reside in a state of equilibrium. These are the choices. Choosing any alternative to growth , for
instance, stabilization of production/consumption through zero-growth policies, could have alarmingly pernicious side effects, including extinction.
However,

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**Racism**
Must Reject

Barndt 91 [Joseph, Co-director of Ministry Working to Dismantle Racism, "Dismantling

Racism" p. 155//wdc]
the walls of racism can be dismantled. We are not condemned to an inexorable fate, but are offered the vision and the possibility
Brick by brick, stone by stone, the prison of individual, institutional, and cultural racism can be destroyed.
You and I are urgently called to joing the efforst of those who know it is time to tear down, once and for all, the walls of racism.The
danger point of self-destruction seems to be drawing even more near. The results of centuries of national and worldwide conquest and
colonialism, of military buildups and violent aggression, of overconsumption and environmental destruction
may be reaching a point of no return. A small and predominantly white minority of the global population derives its power and privelage from the sufferings of
vast majority of peoples of all color. For the sake of the world and ourselves, we dare not allow it to continue.
But we have also seen that
of freedom.

Failure To Combat Racism Risks Extinction

Joseph Barndt, Co-Director, Crossroads, DISMANTLING RACISM, 1991, p. 155-156
The limitations imposed on people of color by poverty, subservience, and powerlessness are cruel, inhuman, and unjust: the effects of uncontrolled power privilege, and greed, which

the walls of racism can be dismantled. We are not

condemned to an inexorable fate, but are offered the vision and the possibility of freedom. Brick by brick,
stone by stone, the prison of individual, institutional, and cultural racism can be destroyed. You and I are
urgently called to join the efforts of those who know it is time to tear down, once and for all, the walls of
racism. The danger point of self-destruction seems to be drawing even more near . The results of centuries of national and
are the marks of our white prison, will inevitably destroy us. But we have also seen that

worldwide conquest and colonialism, of military buildups and violent aggression, of overconsumption and environmental destruction, may be reaching a point of no return. A small and
predominately white minority of the global population derives its power and privilege from the suffering of the vast majority of peoples of color.

For the sake of the

world and ourselves, we dare not allow it to continue .

Racism is the root cause of violence

Foucault '76
[Michel, Society Must be Defended: Lectures at the College de France, 1975-1976, p. 254-257 Trans. David Macey]
What in fact is racism? It is primarily a way of introducing a break into the domain of life that is

under

power's control: the break between what must live and what must die .

The appearance within the biological

continuum of the human race of races, the distinction among races, the hierarchy of races, the fact that certain races are described as good and that
others, in contrast, are described as inferior: all this is a way of fragmenting the field of the biological that power controls. It is a way of separating out
the groups that exist within a population. It is, in short, a way of establishing a biological type caesura within a population that appears to be a
biological domain. This will allow power to treat that population as a mixture of races, or to be more accurate, to treat the species, to subdivide the
species it controls, into the subspecies known, precisely, as races. That is the first function of racism: to fragment, to create caesuras within the
biological continuum addressed by biopower. Racism also has a second function. Its role is, if you like, to allow the establishment of a positive
relation of this type: "The more you kill, the more deaths you will cause" or "The very fact that you let more die will allow you to live more." I would
say that this relation ("If you want to live, you must take lives, you must be able to kill") was not invented by either racism or the modern State. It is
the relationship of war: "In order to live, you must destroy your enemies." But racism does make the relationship of war-"If you want to live, the other
must die" - function in a way that is completely new and that is quite compatible with the exercise of biopower. On the one hand ,

racism
makes it possible to establish a relationship between my life and the death of the other that is not a
military or warlike relationship of confrontation, but a biological-type relationship: "The more
inferior species die out, the more abnormal individuals are eliminated , the fewer degenerates there will be in the
species as a whole, and the more Ias species rather than individual-can live, the stronger I will be, the more vigorous I will be. I will be able to
proliferate." The fact that the other dies does not mean simply that I live in the sense that his death guarantees my safety; the death of the other, the
death of the bad race, of the inferior race (or the degenerate, or the abnormal) is something that will make life in general healthier: healthier and purer.
This is not, then, a military, warlike, or political relationship, but a biological relationship. And the reason this mechanism can come into play is that
the enemies who have to be done away with are not adversaries in the political sense of the term; they are threats, either external or internal, to the
population and for the population. In the biopower system, in other words, killing or the imperative to kill is acceptable only if it results not in a
victory over political adversaries, but in the elimination of the biological threat to and the improvement of the species or race. There is a direct
connection between the two. In a normalizing society,

race or racism is the precondition that makes killing

acceptable. When you have a normalizing society, you have a power which is, at least superficially, in the first instance, or in the first line a
biopower, and racism is the indispensable precondition that allows someone to be killed, that allows others to be killed. Once the State functions in the
biopower mode, racism alone can justify the murderous function of the State. So you can understand the importance-I almost said the vital
importance-of racism to the exercise of such a power: it is the precondition for exercising the right to kill. If the power of normalization wished to
exercise the old sovereign right to kill, it must become racist. And if, conversely, a power of sovereignty, or in other words, a power that has the right
of life and death, wishes to work with the instruments, mechanisms, and technology of normalization, it too must become racist. When I say "killing,"
I obviously do not mean simply murder as such, but also every form of indirect murder: the fact of exposing someone to death, increasing the risk of
death for some people, or, quite simply, political death, expulsion, rejection, and so on. I think that we are now in a position to understand a number of
things. We can understand, first of all, the link that was quickly-I almost said immediately-established between nineteenth-century biological theory
and the discourse of power. Basically, evolutionism, understood in the broad sense-or in other words, not so much Darwin's theory itself as a set, a

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bundle, of notions (such as: the hierarchy of species that grow from a common evolutionary tree, the struggle for existence among species, the
selection that eliminates the less fit) naturally became within a few years during the nineteenth century not simply a way of transcribing a political
discourse into biological terms, and not simply a way of dressing up a political discourse in scientific clothing, but a real way of thinking about the
relations between colonization, the necessity for wars, criminality, the phenomena of madness and mental illness, the history of societies with their
different classes, and so on. Whenever, in other words, there was a confrontation, a killing or the risk of death, the nineteenth century was quite
literally obliged to think about them in the form of evolutionism. And we can also understand why racism should have developed in modern societies
that function in the biopower mode; we can understand why racism broke out at a number of .privileged moments, and why they were precisely the
moments when the right to take life was imperative. Racism

first develops with colonization, or in other words, with

colonizing genocide. If you are functioning in the biopower mode, how can you justify the need to
kill people, to kill populations, and to kill civilizations? By using the themes of evolutionism, by
appealing to a racism. War. How can one not only wage war on one's adversaries but also expose
one's own citizens to war, and let them be killed by the million (and this is precisely what has been
going on since the nineteenth century, or since the second half of the nineteenth century), except by
activating the theme of racism
The terminal impact is extinction
Feagin, Fmr President-American Sociological Association, 6
(Systemic Racism: A Theory of Oppression, P. 9)
Indeed, this planet will not survive much longer if we continue to rely so heavily on the white men now at the helm
for key ideas, policies, and actions in regard to the worlds ecology, economy, and politics. Systemic racism has killed
not only people, but many important human values, scores of excellent ideas, and countless innovations and
inventions. One need not be melodramatic to suggest that the survival of the planet likely depends on the speedy
elimination of racial oppression and other major social oppressions.

Must reject every instance of racism --- impacts violence and dehumanization
Memmi, Professor Emeritus of Sociology, University of Paris 97
(Albert, RACISM, 1997, p. 163. (DRGCL/B1048)
The struggle against racism will be long, difficult, without intermission, without remission, probably never achieved. Yet
for this very reason, it is a struggle to be undertaken without surcease and without concessions. One cannot be
indulgent toward racism; one must not even let the monster in the house, especially not in a mask. To give it merely a
foothold means to augment the bestial part in us and in other people, which is to diminish what is human. To accept the
racist universe to the slightest degree is to endorse fear, injustice and violence. It is to accept the persistence of the
dark history in which we still largely live. It is to agree that the outsider will always be a possible victim (and which
[person] man is not [themself] himself an outsider relative to someone else?). Racism illustrates in sum, the inevitable
negativity of the condition of the dominated; that is, it illuminates in a certain sense the entire human condition. The
anti-racist struggle, difficult though it is, and always in question, is nevertheless one of the prologues to the ultimate
passage from animality to humanity. In that sense, we cannot fail to rise to the racist challenge

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**Human Rights**
Human rights creditability key To survival

Copelon 99, (Rhonda, Professor, Law, CUNY, The Indivisible Framework of International
Human Rights, NEW YORK CITY LAW REVIEW, 1998/1999, p. 71-72.)
The indivisible human rights framework survived the Cold War despite U.S. machinations to truncate it in the international arena. The framework is
there to shatter the myth of the superiority [*72] of the U.S. version of rights, to rebuild popular expectations, and to help develop a culture and
jurisprudence of indivisible human rights. Indeed, in the face of systemic inequality and crushing poverty,
violence by official and private actors, globalization of the market economy, and military and environmental depredation,
the human rights framework is gaining new force and new dimensions. It is being broadened today by the
movements of people in different parts of the world, particularly in the Southern Hemisphere and significantly of women, who understand the protection
of human rights as a matter of individual and collective human survival and betterment. Also emerging is a notion of third-generation
rights, encompassing collective rights that cannot be solved on a state-by-state basis and that call for new mechanisms of accountability, particularly affecting Northern countries. The

Given the poverty and inequality in the

United States as well as our role in the world, it is imperative that we bring the human rights framework to
bear on both domestic and foreign policy.
emerging rights include human-centered sustainable development, environmental protection, peace, and security. 38

Global human rights violations make extinction inevitable

Human Rights Web, 94 (An Introduction to the Human Rights Movement Created on July 20, 1994 /
Last edited on January 25, 1997, http://www.hrweb.org/intro.html)
The United Nations Charter, Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and UN Human Rights convenants were written and implemented in the aftermath of the Holocaust, revelations coming from the
Nuremberg war crimes trials, the Bataan Death March, the atomic bomb, and other horrors smaller in magnitude but not in impact on the individuals they affected. A whole lot of people in a number of
countries had a crisis of conscience and found they could no longer look the other way while tyrants jailed, tortured, and killed their neighbors. Many also realized that advances in technology and

Large numbers of people in many countries lived under

the control of tyrants, having no recourse but war to relieve often intolerable living conditions. Unless some way was
found to relieve the lot of these people, they could revolt and become the catalyst for another wide-scale and possibly
nuclear war. For perhaps the first time, representatives from the majority of governments in the world came to the
conclusion that basic human rights must be protected, not only for the sake of the individuals and countries involved,
but to preserve the human race.
changes in social structures had rendered war a threat to the continued existence of the human race.

A policy based on human rights is needed to combat oppression globally

Shattuck, 1994 (John Shattuck, former Assistant Secretary of State, 9-12-1994, Federal News Service,
lexis)
On the disintegration side, we are witnessing ugly and violent racial, ethnic and religious class conflict in Haiti, in
Bosnia, in Central Asia, in Africa, most horribly in Rwanda -- all places where I have traveled in recent months and witnessed unspeakable suffering and
abuses of the most fundamental rights. The new global community has yet to develop an adequate response to these horrors. We must intensify our search for new

spiral
into uncontrollable violence and reprisal, for new ways of mobilizing the international community to address an avalanche of humanitarian crises. These
ways of holding individuals and governments accountable for gross human rights violations, for new ways of anticipating and preventing conflicts before the y

are daunting tasks. Why then has the Clinton administration made protecting human rights and promoting democracy such a major theme in our foreign policy? The
answer I think lies not only in our values, which could be reason enough, but in the strategic benefits to the United States of a policy that emphasizes our values. We
know from historical experience that democracies are more likely than other forms of government to respect human rights, to settle conflicts peacefully, to observe
international and honor agreements, to go to war with each other with great reluctance, to respect rights of ethnical, racial and religious minorities living within their
borders, and to provide the social and political basis for free market economics. In South Africa, in the Middle East, and now remarkably perhaps even in Northern
Ireland, the resolution of conflict and the broadening of political participation is releasing great economic and social energies that can provide better lives for all the people

repressive governments are painfully clear. In the 20th century, the

number of people killed by their own governments under authoritarian regimes is four times the number killed
in all of this century's wars combined. Repression pushes refugees across the borders and triggers wars.
Unaccountable governments are heedless of environmental destruction, as witnessed by Chernobyl and the
ecological nightmares of Eastern Europe.
of these long-suffering regions. By contrast, the costs to the world of

Human rights terminal impact is extinction.

Copelon law at City University of New York 1999 Rhonda, , (3 N.Y. City L. Rev. 59)
The indivisible human rights framework survived the Cold War despite U.S. machinations to truncate it in the
international arena. The framework is there to shatter the myth of the superiority [*72] of the U.S. version of
rights, to rebuild popular expectations, and to help develop a culture and jurisprudence of indivisible human rights.
Indeed, in the face of systemic inequality and crushing poverty, violence by official and private actors,
globalization of the market economy, and military and environmental depredation, the human rights framework is

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gaining new force and new dimensions. It is being broadened today by the movements of people in different parts
of the world, particularly in the Southern Hemisphere and significantly of women, who understand the protection of
human rights as a matter of individual and collective human survival and betterment. Also emerging is a notion
of third-generation rights, encompassing collective rights that cannot be solved on a state-by-state basis and that
call for new mechanisms of accountability, particularly affecting Northern countries. The emerging rights include
human-centered sustainable development, environmental protection, peace, and security. 38 Given the poverty
and inequality in the United States as well as our role in the world, it is imperative that we bring the human
rights framework to bear on both domestic and foreign policy

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**Oceans**
Oceans key to survival
Craig '03
(Robin Kundis Craig -- Associate Professor of Law, Indiana University School of Law McGeorge Law Rev Winter
elipses in original)

The world's oceans contain many resources and provide many services that humans consider
valuable. "Occupy[ing] more than [seventy percent] of the earth's surface and [ninety-five percent] of the biosphere,"
17 oceans provide food; marketable goods such as shells, aquarium fish, and pharmaceuticals; life support
processes, including carbon sequestration, nutrient cycling, and weather mechanics; and quality of
life, both aesthetic and economic, for millions of people worldwide. 18 Indeed, it is difficult to overstate
the importance of the ocean to humanity's well-being: "The ocean is the cradle of life on our planet,
and it remains the axis of existence, the locus of planetary biodiversity, and the engine of the
chemical and hydrological cycles that create and maintain our atmosphere and climate." 19 Ocean and
coastal ecosystem services have been calculated to be worth over twenty billion dollars per year, worldwide. 20 In
addition, many people assign heritage and existence value to the ocean and its creatures, viewing the world's seas as a
common legacy to be passed on relatively intact to future generations.

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**Ozone**
Ozone depletion causes extinction
Greenpeace, 1995
(Full of Homes: The Montreal Protocol and the Continuing Destruction of the Ozone Layer,
http://archive.greenpeace.org/ozone/holes/holebg.html.)
When chemists Sherwood Rowland and Mario Molina first postulated a link between chlorofluorocarbons and ozone
layer depletion in 1974, the news was greeted with scepticism, but taken seriously nonetheless. The vast majority of
credible scientists have since confirmed this hypothesis. The ozone layer around the Earth shields us all from

harmful ultraviolet radiation from the sun. Without the ozone layer, life on earth would not exist.
Exposure to increased levels of ultraviolet radiation can cause cataracts, skin cancer, and immune
system suppression in humans as well as innumerable effects on other living systems. This is why
Rowland's and Molina's theory was taken so seriously, so quickly - the stakes are literally the continuation of
life on earth.
Ozone destruction causes mass extinction
Palenotological Research Insitute, No Date
(Paleontological Research Institute, PERMIAN EXTINCTION, no date,
http://www.priweb.org/ed/ICTHOL/ICTHOLrp/82rp.htm)
Lastly, a new theory has been proposed- the Supernova explosion. A supernova occurring 30 light years away from
earth would release enough gamma radiation to destroy the ozone layer for several years. Subsequent exposure to

direct ultra-violet radiation would weaken or kill nearly all existing species. Only those living deep in the
ocean will be secured. Sediments contain records or short-term ozone destruction- large amounts of NOx gasses
and C14 plus global and atmospheric cooling. With sufficient destruction of the ozone layer, these problems
could cause widespread destruction of life.This was the biggest extinction event in the last 500 million years ,
and researchers want a theory that is scientifically rigorous. Therefore, all these theories are possible but also have
many faults and create much controversy in determining if it is the one exact theory which will explain this historic
mass extinction.

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**Multipolarity**
Collapse causes nuclear war, economic collapse, and epidemics.

Ferguson, History and Finance Professor at New York University, 2K4 (Niall, A World Without
Power, Foreign Policy, July / August)
one can imagine
the world's established powers--the United States, Europe, and China--retreating into their own regional spheres of influence. But what of the
Could an apolar world today produce an era reminiscent of the age of Alfred? It could, though with some important and troubling differences. Certainly,

growing pretensions to autonomy of the supranational bodies created under U.S. leadership after the Second World War? The United Nations, the International Monetary Fund, the
World Bank, and the World Trade Organization (formerly the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade) each considers itself in some way representative of the "international
community." Surely their aspirations to global governance are fundamentally different from the spirit of the Dark Ages? Yet universal claims were also an integral part of the rhetoric of
that era. All the empires claimed to rule the world; some, unaware of the existence of other civilizations, maybe even believed that they did. The reality, however, was not a global
Christendom, nor an all-embracing Empire of Heaven. The reality was political fragmentation. And that is also true today. The defining characteristic of our age is not a shift of power
upward to supranational institutions, but downward. With the end of states' monopoly on the means of violence and the collapse of their control over channels of communication,
humanity has entered an era characterized as much by disintegration as integration. If free flows of information and of means of production empower multinational corporations and
nongovernmental organizations (as well as evangelistic religious cults of all denominations), the free flow of destructive technology empowers both criminal organizations and terrorist
cells. These groups can operate, it seems, wherever they choose, from Hamburg to Gaza. By contrast, the writ of the internationl community is not global at all. It is, in fact,
increasingly confined to a few strategic cities such as Kabul and Pristina. In short, it is the nonstate actors who truly wield global power--including both the monks and the Vikings of

a world
without a hyperpower might quickly find itself reliving. The trouble is, of course, that this Dark Age would be an altogether more
our time. So what is left? Waning empires. Religious revivals. Incipient anarchy. A coming retreat into fortified cities. These are the Dark Age experiences that

dangerous one than the Dark Age of the ninth century. For the world is much more populous-roughly 20 times more--so friction between the world's disparate "tribes" is bound to be
more frequent. Technology has transformed production; now human societies depend not merely on freshwater and the harvest but also on supplies of fossil fuels that are known to
be finite. Technology has upgraded destruction, too, so it is now possible not just to sack a city but to obliterate it. For more than two decades, globalization-the integration of world
markets for commodities, labor, and capital--has raised living standards throughout the world, except where countries have shut themselves off from the process through tyranny or

The reversal of globalization--which a new Dark Age would produce--would certainly lead to economic stagnation and even depression.
the United States sought to protect itself after a second September 11 devastates, say, Houston or Chicago, it would inevitably become a less open
society, less hospitable for foreigners seeking to work, visit, or do business. Meanwhile, as Europe's Muslim enclaves grew, Islamist extremists' infiltration of the EU would
become irreversible, increasing trans-Atlantic tensions over the Middle East to the breaking point. An economic meltdown in China would plunge the
Communist system into crisis, unleashing the centrifugal forces that undermined previous Chinese empires. Western investors would lose out and conclude that lower
returns at home are preferable to the risks of default abroad. The worst effects of the new Dark Age would be felt on the edges of the waning great powers. The wealthiest
ports of the global economy--from New York to Rotterdam to Shanghai--would become the targets of plunderers and pirates. With ease, terrorists
could disrupt the freedom of the seas, targeting oil tankers, aircraft carriers, and cruise liners, while Western nations frantically concentrated on making their
airports secure. Meanwhile, limited nuclear wars could devastate numerous regions , beginning in the Korean peninsula and Kashmir, perhaps
ending catastrophically in the Middle East. In Latin America, wretchedly poor citizens would seek solace in Evangelical Christianity imported by U.S. religious orders. In Africa, the
great plagues of aids and malaria would continue their deadly work . The few remaining solvent airlines would simply suspend services to
civil war.
As

many cities in these continents; who would wish to leave their privately guarded safe havens to go there? For all these reasons, the prospect of an apolar world should frighten us

If the United States retreats from global hegemony--its fragile self-image

its critics at home and abroad must not pretend that they are ushering in a new
era of multipolar harmony, or even a return to the good old balance of power. Be careful what you wish for. The alternative to unipolarity
would not be multipolarity at all. It would be apolarity-a global vacuum of power. And far more dangerous forces
than rival great powers would benefit from such a not-so-new world disorder.
today a great deal more than it frightened the heirs of Charlemagne.
dented by minor setbacks on the imperial frontier-

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**Hegemony**
Hegemony is critical to world peace and stability

Wiarda, Professor at the National War College, 96 (Howard, US Foreign and Strategic Policy in
the Post-Cold War Era, p. 227)
The preceding chapters have highlighted not only the diverse geopolitical regions of the world but also the varied, often vital. US interests and reasons for remaining involved in all of

governments and peoples look

to the United States to lead, to serve as an honest broker, as not only the worlds strongest power but also its most trustworthy.
One cannot conceive of a unified European defense policy without the U nited States: the Russian aid program would surely
collapse without the United States: and in Asia the United States is seen as the balancing force keeping China, Japan, and the two
Koreas away, potentially, from each others throats. The peace process in the Middle East has no chances of success
without the United States: and humanitarian assistance in Africa would surely dry up if the United States were not involved and so
on. It is clear that both US interests and the worlds interests demand that we remain a major player in that world. But we are in a new era,
them. What may perhaps be most striking to the reader is not just the amount and variety of US interests but how in each of these areas

which demands that all those interests be redefined, sorted out, and reformulated. Both we and the rest of the world need to recognize that fact. US foreign policy and its global
interests obviously cannot be abandoned but they do need to be reconstructed.

Withdrawl sparks global power wars in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East, economic collapse,
proliferation, and nuclear war

Khalilzad, Policy Analyst at the Rand Corporation, 95 (Zalmay, Losing the Moment?: The
United States and the World after the Cold War, The Washington Quarterly, Spring)
What might happen to the world

if the United States turned inward? Without the United States and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), rather than
West European nations might compete with each other for domination

cooperating with each other, the

of East-Central Europe and the
Middle East. In Western and Central Europe, Germany -- especially since unification -- would be the natural leading power. Either in cooperation or competition with Russia, Germany
might seek influence over the territories located between them. German efforts are likely to be aimed at filling the vacuum, stabilizing the region, and precluding its domination by rival
powers. Britain and France fear such a development. Given the strength of democracy in Germany and its preoccupation with absorbing the former East Germany, European
concerns about Germany appear exaggerated. But it would be a mistake to assume that U.S. withdrawal could not, in the long run, result in the renationalization of Germany's

Japan would have to look after its own security and build up its
military capabilities. China, Korea, and the nations of Southeast Asia already fear Japanese hegemony. Without U.S. protection, Japan is likely to increase its military capability
dramatically -- to balance the growing Chinese forces and still-significant Russian forces. This could result in arms races, including the possible
acquisition by Japan of nuclear weapons. Given Japanese technological prowess, to say nothing of the plutonium stockpile Japan has acquired in the
development of its nuclear power industry, it could obviously become a nuclear weapon state relatively quickly, if it should so decide. It could also build
long-range missiles and carrier task forces. With the shifting balance of power among Japan, China, Russia, and potential new regional powers such as India,
Indonesia, and a united Korea could come significant risks of preventive or proeruptive war. Similarly, European competition for regional dominance
could lead to major wars in Europe or East Asia. If the United States stayed out of such a war -- an unlikely prospect -- Europe or East Asia could
become dominated by a hostile power. Such a development would threaten U.S. interests. A power that achieved such dominance would seek to exclude
the United States from the area and threaten its interests-economic and political -- in the region. Besides, with the domination of Europe or East Asia, such a power
might seek global hegemony and the United States would face another global Cold War and the risk of a world war even more
catastrophic than the last. In the Persian Gulf, U.S. withdrawal is likely to lead to an intensified struggle for regional
domination. Iran and Iraq have, in the past, both sought regional hegemony. Without U.S. protection, the weak oil-rich states of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) would be
unlikely to retain their independence. To preclude this development, the Saudis might seek to acquire, perhaps by purchase, their own nuclear
weapons. If either Iraq or Iran controlled the region that dominates the world supply of oil, it could gain a significant capability to damage the U.S. and world economies. Any
security policy. The same is also true of Japan. Given a U.S. withdrawal from the world,

country that gained hegemony would have vast economic resources at its disposal that could be used to build military capability as well as gain leverage over the United States and
other oilimporting nations. Hegemony over the Persian Gulf by either Iran or Iraq would bring the rest of the Arab Middle East under its influence and domination because of the shift

the peace process would be fundamentally undermined, increasing the

risk of war between the Arabs and the Israelis. The extension of instability, conflict, and hostile hegemony in East Asia,
Europe, and the Persian Gulf would harm the economy of the United States even in the unlikely event that it was able to avoid involvement in major wars and
in the balance of power. Israeli security problems would multiply and

conflicts. Higher oil prices would reduce the U.S. standard of living. Turmoil in Asia and Europe would force major economic readjustment in the United States, perhaps reducing U.S.
exports and imports and jeopardizing U.S. investments in these regions. Given that total imports and exports are equal to a quarter of U.S. gross domestic product, the cost of

turmoil

would

increase

proliferation

necessary adjustments might be high. The higher level of

in the world
also
the likelihood of the
of weapons of mass
destruction (WMD) and means for their delivery. Already several rogue states such as North Korea and Iran are seeking nuclear weapons and long-range missiles. That danger would

The result would be a much more dangerous world in which many states
possessed WMD capabilities; the likelihood of their actual use would increase accordingly. If this happened, the security of every nation in
only increase if the United States withdrew from the world.
the world, including the United States, would be harmed.

Air power is the single most important aspect of military power, nothing else even comes close.

WARDEN 1997 (Col. John A Warden 111, USAF (ret.), president of Venturist, Inc., Airpower
Confronts an Unstable World, Ed. Hallion, pp 239-240)
, air power dominates warfare. Those who have air power overwhelm those who
don't; those who don't have it spend their energies trying to get it, thwart it or escape it. It is control of the
high ground writ large-but unlike the old days when high ground was largely an accident of the situation, in
the new world, air power allows the user to move the high ground to wherever it is needed. Air power, when
measured in terms of output per dollar or life invested, is the cheapest, most effective method of fighting in
human historyand the advent of precision makes it even cheaper.
As the 20th Century draws to a close

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US hegemony key to check multiple scenarios for nuclear war.

Kagan 7 Senior Associate @ the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
(End of Dreams, Return of History, Policy Review, Hoover Institution,
http://www.hoover.org/publications/policyreview/8552512.html)
Finally, there is the United States itself. As a matter of national policy stretching back across numerous administrations,
Democratic and Republican, liberal and conservative, Americans have insisted on preserving regional predominance in
East Asia; the Middle East; the Western Hemisphere; until recently, Europe; and now, increasingly, Central Asia. This
was its goal after the Second World War, and since the end of the Cold War, beginning with the first Bush administration
and continuing through the Clinton years, the United States did not retract but expanded its influence eastward across
Europe and into the Middle East, Central Asia, and the Caucasus. Even as it maintains its position as the
predominant global power, it is also engaged in hegemonic competitions in these regions with China in East and
Central Asia, with Iran in the Middle East and Central Asia, and with Russia in Eastern Europe, Central Asia, and the
Caucasus. The United States, too, is more of a traditional than a postmodern power, and though Americans are loath to
acknowledge it, they generally prefer their global place as No. 1 and are equally loath to relinquish it. Once having
entered a region, whether for practical or idealistic reasons, they are remarkably slow to withdraw from it until
they believe they have substantially transformed it in their own image. They profess indifference to the world and claim
they just want to be left alone even as they seek daily to shape the behavior of billions of people around the globe. The
jostling for status and influence among these ambitious nations and would-be nations is a second defining
feature of the new post-Cold War international system. Nationalism in all its forms is back, if it
ever went away, and so is international competition for power, influence, honor, and status. American
predominance prevents these rivalries from intensifying its regional as well as its global predominance.
Were the United States to diminish its influence in the regions where it is currently the strongest power, the other
nations would settle disputes as great and lesser powers have done in the past: sometimes through
diplomacy and accommodation but often through confrontation and wars of varying scope, intensity, and
destructiveness. One novel aspect of such a multipolar world is that most of these powers would possess
nuclear weapons. That could make wars between them less likely, or it could simply make them more catastrophic.
It is easy but also dangerous to underestimate the role the United States plays in providing a measure of
stability in the world even as it also disrupts stability. For instance, the U nited States is the dominant
naval power everywhere, such that other nations cannot compete with it even in their home waters. They either happily
or grudgingly allow the United States Navy to be the guarantor of international waterways and trade routes,
of international access to markets and raw materials such as oil. Even when the U nited States engages
in a war, it is able to play its role as guardian of the waterways. In a more genuinely multipolar world,
however, it would not. Nations would compete for naval dominance at least in their own regions and possibly
beyond. Conflict between nations would involve struggles on the oceans as well as on land. Armed embargos,
of the kind used in World War i and other major conflicts, would disrupt trade flows in a way that is now
impossible. Such order as exists in the world rests not merely on the goodwill of peoples but on a foundation
provided by American power. Even the European Union, that great geopolitical miracle, owes its founding to
American power, for without it the European nations after World War ii would never have felt secure enough to
reintegrate Germany. Most Europeans recoil at the thought, but even today Europes stability depends on the
guarantee, however distant and one hopes unnecessary, that the United States could step in to check any
dangerous development on the continent. In a genuinely multipolar world, that would not be possible
without renewing the danger of world war. People who believe greater equality among nations would be
preferable to the present American predominance often succumb to a basic logical fallacy. They believe the order
the world enjoys today exists independently of American power. They imagine that in a world where American

power was diminished, the aspects of international order that they like would remain in place. But
thats not the way it works. International order does not rest on ideas and institutions. It is shaped by
configurations of power. The international order we know today reflects the distribution of power in
the world since World War ii, and especially since the end of the Cold War. A different configuration of power, a
multipolar world in which the poles were Russia, China, the United States, India, and Europe, would produce its

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own kind of order, with different rules and norms reflecting the interests of the powerful states that would have a
hand in shaping it. Would that international order be an improvement? Perhaps for Beijing and Moscow it would. But it
is doubtful that it would suit the tastes of enlightenment liberals in the United States and Europe. The current order, of
course, is not only far from perfect but also offers no guarantee against major conflict among the worlds great powers.
Even under the umbrella of unipolarity, regional conflicts involving the large powers may erupt. War could erupt
between China and Taiwan and draw in both the United States and Japan. War could erupt between Russia and Georgia,
forcing the United States and its European allies to decide whether to intervene or suffer the consequences of a Russian
victory. Conflict between India and Pakistan remains possible, as does conflict between Iran and Israel or other Middle
Eastern states. These, too, could draw in other great powers, including the United States. Such conflicts may be
unavoidable no matter what policies the United States pursues. But they are more likely to erupt if the
United States weakens or withdraws from its positions of regional dominance. This is especially true in East
Asia, where most nations agree that a reliable American power has a stabilizing and pacific effect on the
region. That is certainly the view of most of Chinas neighbors. But even China, which seeks gradually to
supplant the United States as the dominant power in the region, faces the dilemma that an American withdrawal
could unleash an ambitious, independent, nationalist Japan. In Europe, too, the departure of the United
States from the scene even if it remained the worlds most powerful nation could be destabilizing. It could
tempt Russia to an even more overbearing and potentially forceful approach to unruly nations on its
periphery. Although some realist theorists seem to imagine that the disappearance of the Soviet Union put an end to
the possibility of confrontation between Russia and the West, and therefore to the need for a permanent American role in
Europe, history suggests that conflicts in Europe involving Russia are possible even without Soviet
communism. If the United States withdrew from Europe if it adopted what some call a strategy of offshore
balancing this could in time increase the likelihood of conflict involving Russia and its near
neighbors, which could in turn draw the United States back in under unfavorable
circumstances. It is also optimistic to imagine that a retrenchment of the American position in the Middle
East and the assumption of a more passive, offshore role would lead to greater stability there. The vital
interest the United States has in access to oil and the role it plays in keeping access open to other nations
in Europe and Asia make it unlikely that American leaders could or would stand back and hope for

the best while the powers in the region battle it out. Nor would a more even-handed policy toward
Israel, which some see as the magic key to unlocking peace, stability, and comity in the Middle East, obviate the
need to come to Israels aid if its security became threatened. That commitment, paired with the
American commitment to protect strategic oil supplies for most of the world , practically ensures a heavy
American military presence in the region, both on the seas and on the ground . The subtraction of American
power from any region would not end conflict but would simply change the equation. In the Middle
East, competition for influence among powers both inside and outside the region has raged for at least two
centuries. The rise of Islamic fundamentalism doesnt change this. It only adds a new and more threatening dimension
to the competition, which neither a sudden end to the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians nor an immediate
American withdrawal from Iraq would change. The alternative to American predominance in the region is not

balance and peace. It is further competition. The region and the states within it remain relatively
weak. A diminution of American influence would not be followed by a diminution of other external
influences. One could expect deeper involvement by both China and Russia, if only to secure their interests. 18
And one could also expect the more powerful states of the region, particularly Iran, to expand and fill the
vacuum. It is doubtful that any American administration would voluntarily take actions that could shift the balance of
power in the Middle East further toward Russia, China, or Iran. The world hasnt changed that much. An American
withdrawal from Iraq will not return things to normal or to a new kind of stability in the region. It will
produce a new instability, one likely to draw the U nited States back in again. The alternative to

American regional predominance in the Middle East and elsewhere is not a new regional stability.
In an era of burgeoning nationalism, the future is likely to be one of intensified competition among
nations and nationalist movements. Difficult as it may be to extend American predominance into the future, no
one should imagine that a reduction of American power or a retraction of American influence and global involvement
will provide an easier path.

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Rising asymmetric balancing, diplomatic countermovements, and overstretch coupled with massive
expenditure has rendered the decline of hegemony imminent
Khanna 08 (Parag, America Strategy Program sr. fellow, 1/27, p. 1, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/27/magazine/27world-t.html?
_r=1&oref=slogin)

It is 2016, and the Hillary Clinton or John McCain or Barack Obama administration is nearing the end of its second term. America has pulled out of Iraq but has about 20,000 troops in the
independent

state of Kurdistan, as well as warships anchored at Bahrain and an Air Force presence in Qatar. Afghanistan is stable; Iran is nuclear.
China has absorbed Taiwan and is steadily increasing its naval presence around the Pacific Rim and, from the Pakistani port of Gwadar, on the
Arabian Sea. The European Union has expanded to well over 30 members and has secure oil and gas flows from North Africa, Russia and the Caspian

Americas standing in the world remains in steady decline. Why?

Werent we supposed to reconnect with the United Nations and reaffirm to the world that America can, and should, lead it
to collective security and prosperity? Indeed, improvements to Americas image may or may not occur, but either way, they
mean little. Condoleezza Rice has said America has no permanent enemies, but it has no permanent friends either. Many saw the
invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq as the symbols of a global American imperialism; in fact, they were signs of imperial
overstretch. Every expenditure has weakened Americas armed forces, and each assertion of power has
awakened resistance in the form of terrorist networks, insurgent groups and asymmetric weapons like suicide bombers.
Americas unipolar moment has inspired diplomatic and financial countermovements to block
American bullying and construct an alternate world order. That new global order has arrived, and
there is precious little Clinton or McCain or Obama could do to resist its growth.
Sea, as well as substantial nuclear energy .

US withdrawal would result in a new dark age and collapse the global economy
Ferguson, 4 (Niall. Prof of history @ Harvard. Hoover Digest, A World without Power July/August 4.
http://www.hooverdigest.org/044/ferguson.html)
So what is left? Waning empires. Religious revivals. Incipient anarchy. A coming retreat into fortified cities. These are the
Dark Age experiences that a world without a hyperpower might quickly find itself reliving. The trouble is, of course, that
this Dark Age would be an altogether more dangerous one than the Dark Age of the ninth century. For the world is much
more populousroughly 20 times moremeaning that friction between the worlds disparate tribes is bound to be more
frequent. Technology has transformed production; now human societies depend not merely on fresh water and the harvest
but also on supplies of fossil fuels that are known to be finite. Technology has upgraded destruction, too; it is now possible
not just to sack a city but to obliterate it. For more than two decades, globalizationthe integration of world markets for
commodities, labor, and capitalhas raised living standards throughout the world, except where countries have shut
themselves off from the process through tyranny or civil war. The reversal of globalizationwhich a new Dark Age would
producewould certainly lead to economic stagnation and even depression. As the United States sought to protect itself
after a second September 11 devastates, say, Houston or Chicago, it would inevitably become a less open society, less
hospitable for foreigners seeking to work, visit, or do business. Meanwhile, as Europes Muslim enclaves grew, Islamist
extremists infiltration of the E.U. would become irreversible, increasing transatlantic tensions over the Middle East to the
breaking point. An economic meltdown in China would plunge the communist system into crisis, unleashing the centrifugal
forces that undermined previous Chinese empires. Western investors would lose out and conclude that lower returns at
home were preferable to the risks of default abroad. The worst effects of the new Dark Age would be felt on the edges of
the waning great powers. The wealthiest ports of the global economyfrom New York to Rotterdam to Shanghaiwould
become the targets of plunderers and pirates. With ease, terrorists could disrupt the freedom of the seas, targeting oil
tankers, aircraft carriers, and cruise liners, while Western nations frantically concentrated on making their airports secure.
Meanwhile, limited nuclear wars could devastate numerous regions, beginning in the Korean peninsula and Kashmir,
perhaps ending catastrophically in the Middle East. In Latin America, wretchedly poor citizens would seek solace in
evangelical Christianity imported by U.S. religious orders. In Africa, the great plagues of AIDS and malaria would continue
their deadly work. The few remaining solvent airlines would simply suspend services to many cities in these continents;
who would wish to leave their privately guarded safe havens to go there?

Soft Power is not key to sustain US status as global superpowermilitary and economic strength
sustaining it now
Kagan, 8 (Robert, Council on Foreign Relations member, History's Back, August 25, 2008, The Weekly
Standard, ProQuest)
The apparent failure in Iraq convinced many people that the United States was weak, hated, and in a state of decline. Nor has anyone
bothered to adjust that judgment now that the United States appears to be winning in Iraq. Yet by any of the usual measures of power ,
the United States is as strong today, even in relative terms, as it was in 2000. It remains the sole superpower, even as the

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other great powers get back on their feet. The military power of China and Russia has increased over the past
decade, but American military power has increased more. America's share of the global economy has
remained steady, 27 percent of global GDP in 2000 and 26 percent today. So where is the relative decline? So long
as the United States remains at the center of the international economy, the predominant military power, and the
leading apostle of the world's most popular political philosophy; so long as the American public continues to support American
predominance, as it has consistently for six decades; and so long as potential challengers inspire more fear than sympathy among their
neighbors, the structure of the international system should remain as the Chinese describe it: "one superpower

and many great powers."

Hard Power outweighs and is key to soft power

Bremmer, 9 (Ian, president of Eurasia Group, Obama or not, U.S. still needs hard power, 2/9/09,
http://eurasia.foreig npolicy.com/posts/2009/02/09/the_durable_value_of _hard_power)
But you don't have to be a hawk to believe that, over the longer term, it's the country's hard power advantages that will ensure
that America remains indispensable for the world's political and economic stability -- even as its soft power loses some
of its appeal relative to that of other states. The erosion of the U.S. soft power advantage has already begun. The global
financial crisis has inflicted a lot of damage on the American argument that unfettered capitalism is the best
model for steady economic expansion. The rise of "state capitalism," as practiced in China, Russia, the Persian Gulf states and
several other places, has created an attractive alternative. Breakout growth over the past several years in several emerging market
countries ensures that American brands now share shelf space around the world with products made in dozens of developing states. The
icons of American popular culture, central to U.S. soft power appeal, now share stage and screen with celebrities from a growing number of
other countries. The Bush administration's unpopularity in much of the world has merely added momentum to these trends. America's
hard power advantages have their limitations, as well, but their value is less subject to the ebbs and flows of popular
opinion and cultural attraction. The United States now spends more on its military than every other nation in the
world combined. For all the fear in Washington (and elsewhere) that China's military spending continues to grow and that Russian
foreign policy has become more aggressive, U.S. military spending outpaces China's by almost ten to one and Russia's by about 25 to one.

It will be decades before any other state can afford to challenge the balance of global military power-assuming
that any becomes willing to accept the costs and risks that come with global ambitions. U.S. military strength
will remain useful for the next several decades -- not only for the waging of wars and not just for Americans.
Governments around the world that depend on the import of oil and natural gas to fuel their economies are hard
at work crafting plans for a technological transition toward a more diversified energy mix . But that's a long-term
process. For the next several years, the world's oil and gas will continue to come from unstable (and potentially
unstable) parts of the world -- the Middle East, the Caspian Sea basin, West Africa, etc. Only the United States has a global naval
presence. That's why other countries will continue to count on Washington to protect the transit of all this oil and gas
from threats like terrorist attack and even piracy. Why should China or India accept the costs and risks that go with safeguarding
the Strait of Hormuz, the world's most important energy bottleneck, when America will do it for them? That gives U.S. policymakers leverage
they wouldn't otherwise have with their counterparts in other governments. The U.S. provision of global public goods will also
extend to new military challenges. As Iran and others master uranium enrichment technology, their nuclear clout may provoke
neighboring states toward even greater reliance on Washington as guarantor of regional security and stability. That's not a bad thing if it
helps ease the fears and pressures that might otherwise beget a nuclear arms race. As several Eastern European governments worry over
the implications of Russia's increasingly belligerent approach toward some of its neighbors -- an anxiety heightened by Europe's
dependence on Russian natural gas, Moscow's demonstrated willingness to turn off the taps, and last August's war with Georgia -- they'll
turn to a U.S.-led NATO to ease their fears. The U.S. military will also remain an essential weapon in America's soft
power arsenal -- by delivering relief to victims of natural disasters abroad, for example . An Obama administration
grappling with a financial crisis and a hard landing of the U.S. economy can't draw on American military resources as recent presidents have
done. But a willingness to balance soft power with a credible promise to continue to provide global public goods -- and to defend US
security with force where necessary -- will ensure that America remains an indispensable nation for many years to

come.

US Hard Power key to Soft PowerChina provea

Holmes, 9 (Kim, Former Assistant Secretary of State, THE IMPORTANCE OF HARD POWER, June 12, 2009,
States News Service, Lexis)
For America to be an effective leader and arbiter of the international order, it must be willing to maintain a world-class
military. That requires resources: spending, on average, no less than 4 percent of the nation's gross domestic product on
defense. Unfortunately, Mr. Obama's next proposed defense budget and Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates' vision for
"rebalancing" the military are drastically disconnected from the broad range of strategic priorities that a superpower like
the United States must influence and achieve. If our country allows its hard power to wane, our leaders will lose
crucial diplomatic clout. This is already on display in the western Pacific Ocean, where America's ability to hedge
against the growing ambitions of a rising China is being called into question by some of our key Asian allies .
Recently, Australia released a defense white paper concerned primarily with the potential decline of U.S. military
primacy and its implications for Australian security and stability in the Asia-Pacific . These developments are anything but
reassuring. The ability of the United States to reassure friends, deter competitors, coerce belligerent states and

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defeat enemies does not rest on the strength of our political leaders' commitment to diplomacy; it rests on the
foundation of a powerful military. The United States can succeed in advancing its priorities by diplomatic means
only so long as it retains a "big stick." Only by building a full-spectrum military force can America reassure its many friends and
allies and count on their future support. The next British leader - and the rest of our allies - need to know they can count on the U.S. to
intervene on their behalf any time, anywhere it has to. That will require hard power, not just soft, diplomatic words murmured whilst strolling
serenely along "Obama Enhanced Coverage Linking Obama -Search using Biographies Plus News News, Most Recent 60 Days Beach."

Hard power is key outweighs soft power

Harris, 9 ( Robin, former adviser at the United Kingdom Treasury and Home Office, Securing the West: The
U.S., the U.K., and Present Dangers, April 30, 2009, http://ww w.heritage.org/Research/Europe/sr0051.cfm)
Yet history shows that the interests of a nation rarely change quickly, and neither do the risks it faces. So while it
is understandable to pledge (as President Obama did in his speech to Congress on February 24) "a new era of
engagement," it would be imprudent to assume (as he also optimistically asserted) that "there is no force more
powerful than the example of America." There are, in fact, many more powerful forces, and others will wield
them if the U.S. does not. Nor is it evident that the application of "soft power" (or "smart power" as U.S.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has dubbed it) offers any escape from the choices about hard power which
America and its allies face.[15] The acknowledged benefits of the military "surge" in Iraq and the new President's
own decision on a swift reinforcement of American forces in Afghanistan would certainly suggest as much. More
important than declared intentions may be imposed restraints--above all, those created by the recession and the
enormous increases in public expenditure and borrowing by America that are designed to counter it. If growth
rates remain anemic and the burden of debt becomes oppressive, the U.S. and other Western powers may be
unwilling to contemplate risky and expensive foreign initiatives, and the resultant perception of weakness might,
in turn, embolden the West's enemies. So there may be trouble ahead, and that--rather than an era of crisis-free
consensus--is the assumption upon which Western planners should prudently work. This does not, of course,
provide an answer to the question of exactly what resources to deploy. It does, though, provide a starting point-one which should be familiar because it corresponds to "Thatcher's Law," according to which "the unexpected
happens." In her final considered pronouncement on the matter, written shortly after 9/11, Mrs. Thatcher
developed this idea further: Military planners always have a thankless task. In peacetime they are accused of
dreaming up unnecessarily ambitious war-fighting scenarios, and then demanding the money to pay for them.
But, when dangers loom, they are criticized for insufficient foresight. Moreover, a global superpower's military
planners have a special problem. This is that a major threat to stability in any continent is by definition a threat to
the superpower's own vital interests. And the nightmare is that several serious regional conflicts may occur
simultaneously. To the question of what precise overall capabilities, and thus exactly what levels of defence
spending, are necessary to cope with such scenarios I can only answer: "More than at present--and possibly
much more than you think."[16] The world would be safer if today's leaders gave signs of agreeing with this
rationally pessimistic thesis. Any exhaustive list of current security threats would be beyond the scope of this
paper. Some are so general as to be difficult to distinguish from the ordinary conditions of humanity, others are
impossible to quantify, and still others are quite specific. There is an unhelpful tendency to throw into the same
basket like and unlike, immediate and distant, specific and systemic, manageable and apocalyptic.

US Hard Power is key to deter aggressionits the key factor

Morris, 8 (Randy, retired Air Force colonel, Reader's Forum: It's not that difficult a concept; military strength
can lead to peace ,March 10, 2008, The Athens News, ProQuest)
Some of the world's bad people control countries and inflict harm upon others on a terrible scale. I'm grateful we
have a military willing to protect peace-loving people around the world from these tyrants. I believe today the
U.S. is the only country with both the capability and the will (depending on the president in office) to replace
tyranny with freedom by force when no other viable options exist. I believe pacifists have drawn the wrong
lessons from the last century. The lessons they seem to have learned are U.S. foreign policy is manifestly evil
(depending on who is our president at the time) and a strong military is dangerous because if we are strong,
some idiot conservative will want to kill people for sport. The lesson I draw from the last century is that when the
U.S. is either weak militarily, lacks the will to defend its interests and those of its friends, or both, those bad
people who run countries feel the risk from outside forces is low enough that they can do as they wish. No
international body to date has presented sufficient deterrence to these bad actors. Only when things get
completely out of control, and thousands or millions of innocents are dead, does the rest of the world rise to the
occasion. I wish pacifists would consider this point: When the U.S. military is strong and lethal, and our president
shows the will to use that force for good when necessary, the bad people realize the risks are too high . They
decide, as in the famous line from the movie "WarGames," that the "only winning move is not to play." The result
of this deterrence? FEWER INNOCENT PEOPLE DIE. Does it make me happy that the U.S. has this role in the

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world? No. Do I wish the U.S. could share the load more and not take on this burdensome responsibility? Yes.
Do I expect our elected leaders to understand this reality and act responsibly, despite the unrelenting personal
vitriol from pacifists? Yes. The result if the U.S. is unable or unwilling to hold tyrants in check? MORE
INNOCENT PEOPLE DIE.

Economic strength key to hard and soft power

Scott, 9 (David, Democratic member of the US House of Representatives, FOREIGN POLICY IMPLICATIONS
OF U.S. EFFORTS TO ADDRESS THE INTERNATIONAL FINANCIAL CRISIS: TARP (TROUBLED ASSET RELIEF
PROGRAM), TALF (TERM ASSET-BACKED SECURITIES LOAN FACILITY) AND THE G-20 PLAN;, June 10,
2009, Federal News Service, Lexis)
The United States has been and certainly still is the financial backstop of the world. Make no mistake about it.
We are still number one. Hanging on by our fingernails, but we're still number one. We still provide the lion's
share of funding for most multinational financial and development institutions. The U.S. dollar has been the
currency of choice for international transactions and investments for decades. Investing in U.S. treasuries has
been the safest form of investment for even longer. And moreover, the American consumer has been the driver
of economic engines not just in this country but in numerous developing countries through our purchasing
power. This is what makes and will continue to make America the greatest nation in the world. Some say it is our
military's strength, and it's certainly there. But is our financial capacity, it is our economic capacity that drives the
world. We have historically been able to wield our tremendous economic power alongside our military might to
undergird our diplomatic efforts and achieve our foreign policy objectives. But it's been not just military; it's been
economic power. However, it seems that in the wake of our ongoing financial crisis our economic power or at
least the perception of that power, as I alluded to at the very beginning with my remarks on China and Russia, is
beginning to unravel. And so while much of the discussion today will focus on multinational financial institutions
such as IMF and the World Bank, I think it is worth examining the effect that a changed perception of U.S.
financial powers will have on our efforts to influence events around the world. Everything is image. It's not what
we think of ourselves; it's what other people think about us. So much like the view of our military strength has
been lessened by the quagmires in Iraq and Afghanistan, so too it seems the view of our economic might has
become more negative as we are bogged down in this recession. We've already seen talk from OPEC about
shifting away from dollar-based pricing of oil. So our economic leverage is beginning to wane somewhat. So as
we move forward with our domestic financial rescue plans and with finding multinational institutions in an effort
to spark global recovery I feel that we must keep in mind that our ability to influence other nations lies largely in
our economic might, real and perceived.

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**Extinction**
Extinction Is An Incomparable EvilNothing Can Outweigh It

Rolston 98, Professor, Philosophy, Colorado State University, Environmental Philosophy, 1998,
p. 136.
Every extinction is an incremental decay in this stopping of life, no small thing. Every extinction is a kind of
superkilling. It kills forms (species) beyond individuals. It kills essences the soul as well as the body. It kills collectively, not just
distributively. It kills birth as well as death. Afterward nothing of that kind either lives or dies . A shutdown of the life stream is the most destructive
event possible. Never before has this level of question superkilling by a superkiller -- been deliberately
faced. What is ethically callous is the maelstrom of killing insensitivity to forms of life and the sources of producing them. What is required is principled responsibility to the
biospheric earth. Several billions years worth of creative toil, several million species of teeming life, have been handed over to the care of this late-coming species in which mind has
flowered and morals have emerged. Life on earth is a many slendored thing: extinction dims its luster. If, in this world of uncertain moral convictions, it makes any sense to claim that
one ought not kill individuals, without justification, it makes more sense to claim that one ought not to superkill the species, without superjustification. That moves from what is to what
ought to be, and the fallacy is not committed by naturalists who so argue but by humanists who cannot draw these conclusions.

Preventing extinction is the only way to preserve values

Schell 82, (Jonathan ,journalist, FATE OF THE EARTH, 1982, p. 184.)
of all the modest hopes of human beings, the hope that [hu]mankind will survive is the most modest, since it only
brings us to the threshold of all other hopes. In entertaining it, we do not yet ask for justice, or freedom , or for
happiness, or for any of the other things that we may want in life. We do not even necessarily ask for our personal survival; we ask only
that we be survived. We ask for assurance that when we die as individuals , as we know we must, [hu]mankind will live
on. Yet once the peril of extinction is present, as it is for us now, the hope for human survival becomes the most
tremendous hope, just because it is the foundation for all the other hopes, and in its absence every other hope
will gradually wither and die. Life without hope for human survival is a life of despair.
For

Extinction dwarfs all other impact calculus you must treat the RISK of extinction as morally
equivalent to its certainty
Schell, Visiting Fellow at the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization, 82
Jonathan Schell, Fate of the Earth, pp. 93-96 1982
On the other hand, if we wish to ignore the peril, we have to admit that we do so in the knowledge that the species may be in
danger of imminent self-destruction. When the existence of nuclear weapons was made known, thoughtful people everywhere in
the world realized that if the great powers entered into a nuclear-arms race the human species would sooner or later face the
possibility of extinction. They also realized that in the absence of international agreements preventing it an arms race would
probably occur. They knew that the path of nuclear armament was a dead end for mankind. The discovery of the energy in mass
of "the basic power of the universe" and of a means by which man could release that energy altered the relationship between man
and the source of his life, the earth. In the shadow of this power, the earth became small and the life of the human species doubtful.
In that sense, the question of human extinction has been on the political agenda of the world ever since the first nuclear weapon
was detonated, and there was no need for the world to build up its present tremendous arsenals before starting to worry about it. At
just what point the species crossed, or will have crossed, the boundary between merely having the technical knowledge to destroy
itself and actually having the arsenals at hand, ready to be used at any second, is not precisely knowable. But it is clear that at
present, with some twenty thousand megatons of nuclear explosive power in existence, and with more being added every day, we
have entered into the zone of uncertainty, which is to say the zone of risk of extinction. But the mere risk of extinction has a
significance that is categorically different from, and immeasurably greater than that of any other risk and as we make our
decisions we have to take that significance into account. Up to now, every risk has been contained within the framework of life;
extinction would shatter the frame. It represents not the defeat of some purpose but an abyss in which all human purpose
would be drowned for all time. We have no right to place the possibility of this limitless, eternal defeat on the same footing as
risk that we run in the ordinary conduct of our affairs in our particular transient moment of human history. To employ a
mathematician's analogy, we can say that although the risk of extinction may be fractional, the stake is, humanly speaking,
infinite, and a fraction of infinity is still infinity. In other words, once we learn that a holocaust might lead to extinction we
have no right to gamble, because if we lose, the game will be over, and neither we nor anyone else will ever get another
chance. Therefore, although, scientifically speaking, there is all the difference in the world between the mere possibility that a
holocaust will bring about extinction and the certainty of it, morally they are the same, and we have no choice but to address the
issue of nuclear weapons as though we knew for a certainty that their use would put an end to our species. In weighing the
fate of the earth and, with it, our own fate, we stand before a mystery, and in tampering with the earth we tamper with a mystery.
We are in deep ignorance. Our ignorance should dispose us to wonder, our wonder should make us humble, our humility should

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inspire us to reverence and caution, and our reverence and caution should lead us to act without delay to withdraw the threat we
now post to the world and to ourselves.

Extinction comes first we cant come back

In the face of nuclear annihilation an ethic of responsibility to future generations must come first
its the only ethical choice
Krieger, 2k7
(David, President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, Responsibility in an Era of Consequences, May 17,
http://www.wagingpeace.org/articles/2007/05/17_krieger_Responsibility_In_An_Era.htm, AD: 6/30/09) jl
The inaugural meeting of the World Future Council was recently held in Hamburg, Germany. It brought together 50
Councilors from all continents, chosen for their diversity and pioneering commitment to building a better world. At the
conclusion of the four-day meeting, the Council released the Hamburg Call to Action, a document calling for action to
protect the future of all life. It began, Today we stand at the crossroads of human history. Our actions and our failures to
act will decide the future of life on earth for thousands of years, if not forever. The Call to Action is a challenge to each
of us to take responsibility for assuring a positive future for humanity and for preserving life on our planet. The document
states: Today there is no alternative to an ethics of global responsibility for we are entering an era of consequences. We
must share, co-operate and innovate together in building a world worthy of our highest aspirations. The decision lies with
each one of us! We are challenged to consider what we are individually and collectively doing not only to radically
undermine our present world through war and its preparation, resource depletion, pollution and global warming, but also
the effects of what we are doing upon future generations. Those of us alive now have the responsibility to pass the world
on intact to the next generation, and to assure that our actions do not foreclose the future.
The Hamburg Call to Action is a great document and I urge you to read and reflect upon it. But I draw your attention
specifically to the section on nuclear weapons: Nuclear weapons remain humanitys most immediate catastrophic threat.
These weapons would destroy cities, countries, civilization and possibly humanity itself. The danger posed by nuclear
weapons in any hands must be confronted directly and urgently through a new initiative for the elimination of these
instruments of annihilation.

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**Dehumanization**
Loss of ones value to life is the greatest impact
ZIMMERMAN IN 1994 [Michael; Professor of Philosophy at Tulane University; Contestinq Earth's Future; Berkeley: University of California Press; 1994; p. 119-120]
Heidegger asserted that human self-assertion, combined with the eclipse of being, threatens the relation between being and human
Dasein. Loss of this relation would be even more dangerous than a nuclear war that might "bring about the complete
annihilation of humanity and the destruction of the earth . 1114 This controversial claim is comparable to the Christian teaching that it is
better to forfeit the world than to lose one's soul by losing one's relation to God. Heidegger apparently thought along these lines: it is possible that after
a nuclear war, life might once again emerge, but it is far less likely that there will ever again occur an ontological clearing through which such life could manifest itself. Further,

since modernity's one dimensional disclosure of entities virtually denies them any "being" at all, the loss of
humanity's openness for being is already occurring.,, Modernity's background mood is horror in the face of
nihilism, which is consistent with the aim of providing material "happiness" for everyone by reducing nature to
pure energy.s6 The unleashing of vast quantities of energy in nuclear war would be equivalent to modernity's
slowmotion destruction of nature: unbounded destruction would equal limitless consumption. If humanity
avoided nuclear war only to survive as contented clever animals , Heidegger believed we would exist in a state of
ontological damnation: hell on earth, masquerading as material paradise . Deep ecologists might agree that a world of material human
comfort purchased at the price of everything wild would not be a world worth living in, for in killing wild nature, people would be as good as dead. But most of them could not agree
that the loss of humanity's relation to being would be worse than nuclear omnicide, for it is wrong to suppose that the lives of millions of extinct and unknown species are somehow
lessened because they were never "disclosed" by humanity

Dehumanization outweighs all other impacts

Berube, 1997
(Berube, David. Professor. English. University of South Carolina. Nanotechnological Prolongevity: The
Down Side. 1997. http://www.cas.sc.edu/engl/faculty/berube/prolong.htm.)
Assuming we are able to predict who or what are optimized humans, this entire resultant worldview
smacks of eugenics and Nazi racial science. This would involve valuing people as means. Moreover,
there would always be a superhuman more super than the current ones, humans would never be able
to escape their treatment as means to an always further and distant end. This means-ends dispute is at
the core of Montagu and Matson's treatise on the dehumanization of humanity. They warn: "its
destructive toll is already greater than that of any war, plague, famine, or natural calamity on record -- and
its potential danger to the quality of life and the fabric of civilized society is beyond calculation. For that
reason this sickness of the soul might well be called the Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse.... Behind
the genocide of the holocaust lay a dehumanized thought; beneath the menticide of deviants and
dissidents... in the cuckoo's next of America, lies a dehumanized image of man... (Montagu & Matson,
1983, p. xi-xii). While it may never be possible to quantify the impact dehumanizing ethics may have had on
humanity, it is safe to conclude the foundations of humanness offer great opportunities which would be
foregone. When we calculate the actual losses and the virtual benefits, we approach a nearly
inestimable value greater than any tools which we can currently use to measure it. Dehumanization is

nuclear war, environmental apocalypse, and international genocide. When people become things, they
become dispensable. When people are dispensable, any and every atrocity can be justified. Once justified,
they seem to be inevitable for every epoch has evil and dehumanization is evil's most powerful weapon.
Dehumanization outweighs every other impact
Montagu and Matson, scientist and professor 83
Ashley Montagu, Esteemed Scientist and Writer; and Floyd Matson, Professor of American Studies at
University of Hawaii The dehumanization of man, http://64.233.187.104/search?q=cache:hnDfqSFkJJwJ:www.crossx.com/vb/archive/index.php/t-939595.html+montagu+matson+dehumanization&hl=en

The contagion is unknown to science and unrecognized by medicine (psychiatry aside); yet its wasting
symptoms are plain for all to see and its lethal effects are everywhere on display. It neither kills outright
nor inflicts apparent physical harm, yet the extent of its destructive toll is already greater than that of any
war, plague, famine, or natual calamity on record -- and its potential damage to the quality of human life
and the fabric of civilized society is beyond calculation. For that reason, this sickness of the soul might
well be called the Fifth Hourseman of the Apocalypse. Its more conventional name, of course, is
dehumanization.

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The state is dehumanizing because of bureaucracy and the ability to make war.
Stephens, software engineer, 04
(Robert L. Stephens, software engineer, 6/2/04, http://robertlstephens.com/essays/essay_frame.php?
essayroot=stephens-robert-l/&essayfile=002BadInfluence.html)
Dehumanization, of a sort, is yet one more inevitable consequence of the sheer size and structure of the
modern state. There is simply no way for the agents of an organization claiming to "serve" hundreds of thousands (or
hundreds of millions!) of people to know anything about the vast majority of those individuals beyond some
disembodied entries on a tax return, or an arbitrary accounting convenience like a Social Security number. To borrow a
phrase often used by critics of large private enterprises, the modern state is "beyond human scale."

Another, more insidious, form of dehumanization is inseparable from the political process that is the
very essence of the state. To see this, let's first consider the most extreme act of the state: war. In order to
break down people's natural resistance to the killing of other human beings, states have historically made
dehumanization of the enemy one of the major components of their war propaganda. With the enemy
reduced to less-than-human status, it's easier to justify the use of lethal force against him.

The government is inherently dehumanizing because it seeks to control people.

Morrison, J.D., Boston College Law School, 06
(Steven R. Morrison, J.D., Boston College Law School, Criminal Law, Fall 06, Dartmouth Law Journal, Dehumanization and
Recreation: A Lacanian Interpretation of the Federal Sentencing Guidelines, pp. 120-121,
http://works.bepress.com/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1002&context=steven_morrison)
At this point, we have discussed how the law denies a persons humanity. However, it creates something new in
its place, since "[a]t each instant of its intervention, this law creates something new. Every situation is transformed by its
intervention." The re-creation of an individual depends on what will best eliminate discordant ideas, since "[a]
discordant statement [is] unknown in law." This may be seen as Lacans way of saying `that the law as a master

will do what it must to preserve its power, that is, to preserve "the existing relations of production
and the moral and social order." Therefore, if society views minorities as criminal, then the PSG will shape itself
to fulfill that prophesy. If judges are seen as abusive of their discretion in judging, then the FSG will create judges that
are "mere automatons, permitted only to apply a mathematical formula." lf the Sentencing Commission becomes
sympathetic toward the idea of downward departures and the rigid strictures of PROTECT, then Congress will create a
Commission that becomes a mere tool for a tough-on-crime policy of sentence increases. The master wants

uniformity, predictability, and severity, and will censor and recreate others in its drive to achieve
these goals.
Dehumanization is the worst impact, it brings the society to total damnation: a loss of all value to life,
justifies all genocides and atrocities.
Fasching, Professor of Religious Studies in the University of South Florida 1993
[Darrell J., Part II of The ethical challenge of Auschwitz and Hiroshima: Apocalypse or Utopia?, Chapter 4
"The Ethical Challenge of Auschwitz and Hiroshima to Technological Utopianism", part 4 "The Challenge of
Auschwitz and Hiroshima: From Sacred Morality to Alienation and Ethics", Ebooks]
Although every culture is inherently utopian in its potentiality, the internal social dynamic through which its symbolic world-view is maintained as a sacred order has a tendency to transform it into a
closed ideological universe (in Karl Mannheim's sense of the ideological; namely, a world-view that promises change while actually reinforcing the status quo) that tends to define human identity in

Historically the process of dehumanization has typically begun by redefining the

other as, by nature, less than human. So the Nazis did to the Jews, and European Americans did to the Native
Americans, men have done to women, and whites to blacks. By relegating these social definitions to the realm of
nature they are removed from the realm of choice and ethical reflection. Hence those in the superior categories need
feel no responsibility toward those in the inferior categories . It is simply a matter of recognizing reality. Those who are the objects of such definitions find
terms advantageous to some and at the expense of others.

themselves robbed of their humanity. They are defined by and confined to the present horizon of culture and their place in it, which seeks to rob them of their utopian capacity for theonomous self-

The cosmicization of social identities is inevitably legitimated by sacred narratives , whether religious
or secular-scientific (e.g., the Nazi biological myth of Aryan racial superiority), which dehumanize not only the victims
but also the victors. For to create such a demonic social order the victors must deny not only the humanity of the other
who is treated as totally alien but also their own humanity as well. That is, to imprison the alien in his or her enforced
subhuman identity (an identity that attempts to deny the victim the possibility of self-transcendence) the victor must
imprison himself or herself in this same world as it has been defined and deny his or her own self-transcendence as
well. The bureaucratic process that appears historically with the advent of urbanization increases the demonic potential of this process, especially the modern state bureaucracy organized around
transcending self-definition .

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the use of the most efficient techniques to control every area of human activity. The result is, as Rubenstein

reminds us, the society of total domination in which

virtually nothing is sacred, not even human life.

The heart of such a bureaucratic social order is the sacralization of professional roles within the bureaucratic structure
such that technical experts completely identify themselves with their roles as experts in the use of techniques while totally surrendering the question of what those technical skills will be used for to

It is no accident that the two cultures that drew the world into the cataclysm of
World War II, Germany and Japan, were militaristic cultures, cultures that prized and valued the militaristic ideal of the
unquestioningly obedient warrior. In these nations, the state and bureaucratic order became one and the same. As
Lewis Mumford has argued, the army as an invention of urban civilization is a near-perfect social embodiment of the ideal
of the machine. 37 The army brings mechanical order to near perfection in its bureaucratic structure, where human
beings are stripped of their freedom to choose and question and where each individual soldier becomes an automaton
carrying out orders always "from higher up" with unquestioning obedience.
the expertise of those above them in the bureaucratic hierarchy.

Dehumanization leads to war and genocide.

Maiese 03 (Michelle CR Info: The Conflict Resolution Information Source- dehumanization; is a graduate student of
Philosophy at the University of Colorado, http://crinfo.beyondintractability.org/essay/dehumanization/?nid=1082)
While deindividuation and the formation of enemy images are very common, they form a dangerous process that
becomes especially damaging when it reaches the level of dehumanization. Once certain groups are stigmatized as
evil, morally inferior, and not fully human, the persecution of those groups becomes more psychologically acceptable.
Restraints against aggression and violence begin to disappear. Not surprisingly, dehumanization increases the
likelihood of violence and may cause a conflict to escalate out of control. Once a violence break over has occurred, it
may seem even more acceptable for people to do things that they would have regarded as morally unthinkable before.
Parties may come to believe that destruction of the other side is necessary, and pursue an overwhelming victory that
will cause one's opponent to simply disappear. This sort of into-the-sea framing can cause lasting damage to
relationships between the conflicting parties, making it more difficult to solve their underlying problems and leading to
the loss of more innocent lives. Indeed, dehumanization often paves the way for human rights violations, war crimes,
and genocide. For example, in WWII, the dehumanization of the Jews ultimately led to the destruction of millions of
people.[9] Similar atrocities have occurred in Rwanda, Cambodia, and the former Yugoslavia.

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**AIDS**
The spread of AIDS causes mutations that risk extinction
Ehrlich and Erlich 90
Paul Ehrlich and Anne Ehrlich, Professors of Population studies at Stanford University, THE POPULATION
EXPLOSION, 1990, p. 147-8
Whether or not AIDS can be contained will depend primarily on how rapidly the spread of HIV can be slowed through
public education and other measures, on when and if the medical community can find satisfactory preventatives or
treatments, and to a large extent on luck. The virus has already shown itself to be highly mutable, and
laboratory strains resistant to the one drug, AZT, that seems to slow its lethal course have already been reported."
A virus that infects many millions of novel hosts, in this case people, might evolve new transmission
characteristics. To do so, however, would almost certainly involve changes in its lethality. If, for instance, the virus
became more common in the blood (permitting insects to transmit it readily), the very process would almost certainly
make it more lethal. Unlike the current version of AIDS, which can take ten years or more to kill its victims , the
new strain might cause death in days or weeks . Infected individuals then would have less time to spread the
virus to others, and there would be strong selection in favor of less lethal strains (as happened in the case of
myxopatomis). What this would mean epidemiologically is not clear, but it could temporarily increase the

transmission rate and reduce life expectancy of infected persons until the system once again
equilibrated. If the ability of the AIDS virus to grow in the cells of the skin or the membranes of the
mouth, the lungs, or the intestines were increased, the virus might be spread by casual contact or
through eating contaminated food. But it is likely, as Temin points out, that acquiring those abilities would so
change the virus that it no longer efficiently infected the kinds of cells it now does and so would no longer cause AIDS.
In effect it would produce an entirely different disease . We hope Temin is correct but another Nobel laureate,
Joshua Lederberg, is worried that a relatively minor mutation could lead to the virus infecting a type of white blood cell
commonly present in the lungs. If so, it might be transmissible through coughs.

AIDS spread and mutations will cause extinction

Lederberg 91
(Joshua Lederberg, Molecular biologist and Nobel Prize winner in 1958, 1991
In Time of Plague: The History and Social Consequences of Lethal Epidemic Disease, p 35-6)
Will Aids mutate further ? Already known, a vexing feature of AIDS is its antigenic variability, further complicating the task of
developing a vaccine. So we know that HIV is still evolving. Its global spread has meant there is far
more HIV on earth today than ever before in history . What are the odds of its learning the tricks of airborne
transmission? The short is, No one can be sure. But we could make the same attribution about any virus;
alternatively the next influenza or chicken pox may mutate to an unprecedented lethality . As time
passes, and HIV seems settled in a certain groove, that is momentary reassurance in itself. However, given its other ugly
attributes, it is hard to imagine a worse threat to humanity than an airborne variant of AIDS . No rule of
nature contradicts such a possibility; the proliferation of AIDS cases with secondary pneumonia multiplies
the odds of such a mutant, as an analogue to the emergence of pneumonic plague.

AIDS kills readiness- it decreases troops and erodes govt control

Peterson, 3 (Susan- associate professor of Government at the College of William & Mary, Security Studies 12, no. 2
(winter 2002/3), Epidemic Disease and National Security http://people.wm.edu/~smpete/files/epidemic.pdf)
Still, IDs. impact in the contemporary international system may be somewhat different. Unlike other diseases, AIDS has an
incubation period of ten years or more, making it unlikely that it will produce significant casualties on the front lines of a
war. It will still, however, deplete force strength in many states. On average, 20.40 percent of armed forces in sub-Saharan
countries are HIV-positive, and in a few countries the rate is 60 percent or more. In Zimbabwe, it may be as high as 80
percent.147 In high incidence countries, AIDS significantly erodes military readiness, directly threatening national security.
Lyndy Heinecken chillingly describes the problem in sub-Saharan Africa: AIDS-related illnesses are now the leading cause
of death in the army and police forces of these countries, accounting for more than 50% of inservice and post-service

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mortalities. In badly infected countries, AIDS patients occupy 75% of military hospital beds and the disease is responsible
for more admissions than battlefield injuries. The high rate of HIV infection has meant that some African armies have been
unable to deploy a full contingent, or even half of their troops, at short notice.. [In South Africa, because] participation in
peace-support operations outside the country is voluntary, the S[outh] A[frican] N[ational] D[efence] F[orce] is grappling
with the problem of how to ensure the availability of sufficiently suitable candidates for deployment at short notice. Even
the use of members for internal crime prevention and border control, which subjects them to adverse conditions or
stationing in areas where local in- frastructure is limited, presents certain problems. Ordinary ailments, such as diarrhoea
and the common cold, can be serious enough to require the hospitalization of an immune-compromised person, and, in
some cases, can prove fatal if they are not treated immediately.148 Armed forces in severely affected states will be unable
to recruit and train soldiers quickly enough to replace their sick and dying colleagues, the potential recruitment pool itself
will dwindle, and officers corps will be decimated. Military budgets will be sapped, military blood supplies tainted, and
organizational structures strained to accommodate unproductive soldiers. HIV-infected armed forces also threaten civilians
at home and abroad. Increased levels of sexual activity among military forces in wartime means that the military risk of
becoming infected with HIV is as much as 100 times that of the civilian risk. It also means that members of the armed forces
comprise a key means of transmitting the virus to the general population; with sex and transport workers, the military is
considered one of the three core transmission groups in Africa.149 For this reason, conflict-ridden states may become
reluctant to accept peacekeepers from countries with high HIV rates. Rather than contributing directly to military defeat in
many countries, however, AIDS in the military is more likely to have longer term implications for national security. First, IDs
theoretically could deter military action and impede access to strategic resources or areas. Tropical diseases erected a
formidable, although obviously not insurmountable, obstacle to colonization in Africa, India, and Southeast Asia. French
and later American efforts to open the Panama Canal, similarly, were stymied until U.S. mosquito control efforts effectively
checked yellow fever and malaria. Second, in many countries AIDS already strains military medical systems and their
budgets, and it only promises to divert further spending away from defense toward both military and civilian health. Third,
AIDS in the military promises to have its greatest impact by eroding a government.s control over its armed forces and further
destabilizing the state. Terminally ill soldiers may have little incentive to defend their government, and their government
may be in more need of defending as AIDS siphons funds from housing, education, police, and administration. Finally, high
military HIV/AIDS rates could alter regional balances of power. Perhaps 40.50 percent of South Africa.s soldiers are HIVinfected. Despite the disease.s negative impact on South Africa.s absolute power, Price-Smith notes, AIDS may increase that
nation.s power relative to its neighbors, Zimbabwe and Botswana, with potentially important regional consequences. 150
AIDS poses obvious threats to the military forces of many countries, particularly in sub- Saharan Africa, but it does not
present the same immediate security problems for the United States. The authors of a Reagan-era report on the effects of
economic and demographic trends on security worried about the effects of the costs of AIDS research, education, and
funding on the defense budget,151 but a decade of relative prosperity generated budget surpluses instead. These surpluses
have evaporated, but concerns about AIDS spending have not reappeared and are unlikely to do so for the foreseeable future,
given the relatively low levels of HIV-infection in the United States. AIDS presents other challenges, including prevention
education and measures to limit infection of U.S. soldiers and peacekeepers stationed abroad, particularly in high risk
settings, and HIV transmission by these forces to the general population. These concerns could limit U.S. actions where
American interests are at stake.152

Aids kills military readiness

Upton, 4 ( Maureen- member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a fellow of the 21st Century Trust, World Policy
Journal, Global Public Health Trumps the Nation-State Volume XXI, No 3, Fall 2004,
http://www.worldpolicy.org/journal/articles/wpj04-3/Upton.html)
The political economist Nicholas Eberstadt has demonstrated that the coming Eurasian AIDS pandemic has the potential to
derail the economic prospects of billions of peopleparticularly in Russia, China, and Indiaand to thereby alter the
global military balance.5 Eurasia (defined as Russia, plus Asia), is home to five-eighths of the worlds population, and its
combined GNP is larger than that of either the United States or Europe. Perhaps more importantly, the region includes four
of the worlds five militaries with over one million members and four declared nuclear states. Since HIV has a relatively
long incubation period, its effects on military readiness are unusually harsh. Officers who contract the disease early in their
military careers do not typically die until they have amassed significant training and expertise, so armed forces are faced
with the loss of their most senior, hardest-to-replace officers.

AIDS will spread globally and cause extinction

Muchiri, 2k (Michael, Staff Member at Ministry of Education in Nairobi, Will Annan finally put out
Africas fires? Jakarta Post, March 6, lexis)

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The executive director of UNAIDS, Peter Piot, estimated that Africa would annually need between $ 1 billion to $ 3 billion to combat the disease, but currently receives only $ 160
million a year in official assistance. World Bank President James Wolfensohn lamented that Africa was losing teachers faster than they could be replaced, and that AIDS was now more

Statistics show that AIDS is the leading killer in sub-Saharan Africa, surpassing people killed
in warfare. In 1998, 200,000 people died from armed conflicts compared to 2.2 million from AIDS. Some 33.6 million people
have HIV around the world, 70 percent of them in Africa, thereby robbing countries of their most productive members and
decimating entire villages. About 13 million of the 16 million people who have died of AIDS are in Africa, according to the UN.
What barometer is used to proclaim a holocaust if this number is not a sure measure? There is no doubt that AIDS is the most
serious threat to humankind, more serious than hurricanes, earthquakes, economic crises, capital crashes or floods. It has no cure
yet. We are watching a whole continent degenerate into ghostly skeletons that finally succumb to a most excruciating,
dehumanizing death. Gore said that his new initiative, if approved by the U.S. Congress, would bring U.S. contributions to fighting AIDS and other infectious diseases to $ 325
effective than war in destabilizing African countries.

million. Does this mean that the UN Security Council and the U.S. in particular have at last decided to remember Africa? Suddenly, AIDS was seen as threat to world peace, and Gore
would ask the congress to set up millions of dollars on this case. The hope is that Gore does not intend to make political capital out of this by painting the usually disagreeable
Republican-controlled Congress as the bad guy and hope the buck stops on the whole of current and future U.S. governments' conscience. Maybe there is nothing left to salvage in Africa
after all and this talk is about the African-American vote in November's U.S. presidential vote. Although the UN and the Security Council cannot solve all African problems, the AIDS
challenge is a fundamental one in that it threatens to wipe out man.

The challenge is not one of a single continent alone because Africa cannot be
quarantined. The trouble is that AIDS has no cure -- and thus even the West has stakes in the AIDS challenge. Once sub-Saharan
Africa is wiped out, it shall not be long before another continent is on the brink of extinction. Sure as death, Africa's time has run
out, signaling the beginning of the end of the black race and maybe the human race.
The only thing that can solve AIDS is a vaccine
Bristol, Nellie, October 26 2007 (U.S. Health Policy Reporter, Battling HIV/AIDS, CQ Researcher)- K.M.

The AIDS epidemic will require huge investments in treatment, prevention, care and vaccine and microbicide
development for the foreseeable future. Millions more infected individuals will receive ARVs, a regime that will continue
for the rest of their lives. UNAIDS estimates that despite the vast increases in AIDS-related resources, there is still an
$8.1 billion funding gap between what is available and what is needed for 2007, a disparity expected to grow. In
addition, improved drugs will be necessary to ward against resistance. "We still need to have a robust pipeline of new drugs
because whenever you have to give drugs essentially for the life of the patient, there will always be important issues of the evolution
of resistance" and drug intolerance, NIAID's Fauci notes.Leaders in affected countries need to take stronger roles in promoting
prevention, he says, because they bear ultimate responsibility for solving the AIDS dilemma. He cites good leadership in Uganda
and other places but also says there has been an "appalling lack of leadership" as well as "contradictory" and "counterproductive
activity on the part of South Africa."South Africa, which has one of the highest HIV AIDSinfection rates in the world, has been
criticized for its anemic response to the disease. Its health minister has consistently questioned the safety of ARVs. She told an
international group last year that beetroot and garlic will treat the virus. A Roman Catholic archbishop in Mozambique recently
declared his belief that Western-donated condoms are infected with HIV. But Fauci attributes many leadership lapses to "other
confounding problems" facing low- and middle-income countries: "You don't blame them for not focusing only on preventing HIV
infection when a million of their children and their babies die each year of malaria, and they have 1.6 million deaths from
tuberculosis and hundreds of thousands of deaths from diarrheal disease and respiratory disease."As the AIDSepidemic continues
unabated and costs mount, U.S. AIDSCoordinator Dybul worries about dwindling interest in the disease. "AIDS fatigue worries me a
lot," he says. He also calls for increased focus on subtle variations in the disease in geographic regions. The key, he says, is to

assess "in a country, where your last 1,000 infections come from and target [interventions] to that not where were
your last 1,000 new infections five years ago. Where are they today, and how do we in a very nimble way react? If
we're not careful around that, it's going to be years before we can catch up on our mistakes."Prevention, he adds, will
dictate how the disease progresses. "Prevention is ultimately the key to where we'll be in 10 years, and [deciding] what
combination of prevention modalities we need going forward to get us to a point where we can bring infections down as
much as possible."The expertise is available, he says, but he wonders about the will. "I know we can do all that the question is
will we?" he asks.Vaccine supporters remain determined despite the cancellation recently of one of the most promising clinical trials.
The formulation, developed by Merck, was shown to be ineffective. Nonetheless, IAVI's Koff predicts "incremental progress" on the
cell-mediated formula. Progress on a true 100 percent effective prevention vaccine is trickier. "The unknown is when will you crack
the neutralizing antibody problem," he says. It is an area where "we need an invention" to produce an effective product. He adds
that recent investments in several consortia devoted to developing a neutralizing antibody vaccine will "really optimize the potential
for innovation and invention." Despite the challenges and frustrations, he says, a vaccine is essential. "Simply saying that

we're going to end this epidemic, or make a major impact on it, with the antiretrovirals or education alone is you know a
little bit of Kumbaya and Pollyanna," he says. Other prevention strategies are all part of the package, but "to really
make a significant impact on blunting the epidemic, you're going to need the vaccine."
Alternate Causality: Sex Workers:

AVERT.ORG No Date Given. (HIV Prevention and Sex Workers. http://www.avert.org/sexworkers.htm)

Both sex workers and their clients are often highly mobile. This can both increase the vulnerability of these groups to
HIV, and facilitate the spread of HIV between countries and regions. Migration and sex work are often linked, as poor
migrants who have newly arrived in an area sometimes turn to sex work because they cannot find any other way to
make money. As well as selling sex themselves, migrants may also become the clients of sex workers, sometimes as a
means of escaping the loneliness that often accompanies migration. In addition to voluntary migration, people

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trafficking whereby people, usually women and children, are forcibly moved between areas is also linked to the
spread of HIV in some cases. Large numbers of trafficked women and children are forced into sex work every year.
There is little information available about HIV prevalence rates amongst these populations, but even in countries where
HIV is relatively uncommon, they are still highly vulnerable to HIV infection, because they are rarely able to negotiate
condom use, are often forced to endure multiple sex partners, and may be subjected to violent sex. 5
Alternate Causality: Needle sharing.

Mark Cichoki, 9/03/07 (Registered Nurse & Info checked by the Medical Review Board, Needle
Exchange Programs, http://aids.about.com/od/needleexchange/a/exchangework.htm) DP
More than a million people in the United States inject drugs, at a cost to society (in health care, lost productivity,
accidents, and crime) of more than $50 billion a year. Obviously, people who inject drugs imperil their health. But if they
become infected with HIV or Hepatitis C they also imperil their needle sharing partners, sexual partners and offspring
as well. One-third of all AIDS cases are linked to injection drug use. For women, 64 percent of all AIDS cases are due
to injection drug use or sex with partners who inject drugs. Injection drug use is the source of infection for more than
half of all children born with HIV.

Extinction
Muchiri 2000 [Michaei Kibaara Staff Member at Ministry of Education in Nairobi, Will Annan finally put out Africas
fires? Jakarta Post, March 6, LN]
The executive director of TJNAIDS, Peter Pint, estimated that Africa would annually need between $1 billion to $ 3
billion to combat the disease, but currently receives only $160 million a year in official assistance. World Bank
President James Wolfensohn lamented that Africa was losing teachers faster than they could be replaced, and that
AIDS was now more effective than war in destabilizing African counties. Statistics show that AIDS is the leading killer
in sub-Saharan Africa, surpassing people killed in warfare. In 1998, 200,000 people died from armed conflicts
compared to 2.2 million from AIDS. Some 33.6 million people have HIV around the world, 70 percent of them in Africa,
thereby robbing countries of their most productive members and decimating entire villages. About 13 million of the 16
million people who have died of AIDS are in Africa, according to the UN. What barometer is used to proclaim a
holocaust if this number is not a sure measure? There is no doubt that AIDS is the most serious threat to humankind,
more serious than hurricanes, earthquakes, economic crises, capital crashes or floods. It has no cure yet. We are
watching a whole continent degenerate into ghostly skeletons that finally succumb to a most excruciating,
dehumanizing death. Gore said that his new initiative, if approved by the U.S. Congress, would bring U.S. contributions
to fighting AIDS and other infectious diseases to $ 325 million. Does this mean that the UN Security Council and the
U.S. in particular have at last decided to remember Africa? Suddenly, AIDS seen as threat to world peace, and Gore
would ask the congress to set up millions of dollars on this case. The hope is that Gore does not intend to make
political capital out of this by painting the usually disagreeable Republican-controlled Congress as the bad guy and
hope the buck stops on the whole of current and future U.S. governments conscience. Maybe there is nothing left to
salvage in Africa after all and this talk is about the African-American vote in Novembers U.S. presidential vote.
Although the UN and the Security Council cannot solve all African problems, the AIDS challenge is a fundamental one
in that it threatens to wipe out man. The challenge is not one of a single continent alone because Africa cannot be
quarantined. The trouble is that AIDS has no cure -- and thus even the West has stakes in the AIDS challenge. Once
sub-Saharan Africa is wiped-out, it shall not be long before another continent is on the brink of extinction. Sure as
death, Africas time has run out, signaling the beginning of the end of the black race and maybe human race.

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**Air Pollution**

Air pollution will lead to extinction

Driesen 03
(David, Associate Professor, Syracuse University College of Law. J.D. Yale Law School, 1989, Fall/Spring, 10 Buff.
Envt'l. L.J. 25, p. 26-8)

Air pollution can make life unsustainable by harming the ecosystem upon which all life depends
and harming the health of both future and present generations . The Rio Declaration articulates six key
principles that are relevant to air pollution. These principles can also be understood as goals, because they describe a
state of affairs that is worth achieving. Agenda 21, in turn, states a program of action for realizing those goals. Between
them, they aid understanding of sustainable development's meaning for air quality. The first principle is that "human
beings. . . are entitled to a healthy and productive life in harmony with nature", because they are "at the center of
concerns for sustainable development." While the Rio Declaration refers to human health, its reference to life "in
harmony with nature" also reflects a concern about the natural environment. Since air pollution damages both
human health and the environment, air quality implicates both of these concerns. Lead, carbon monoxide,
particulate, tropospheric ozone, sulfur dioxide, and nitrogen oxides have historically threatened urban air quality in the
United States. This review will focus upon tropospheric ozone, particulate, and carbon monoxide, because these
pollutants present the most widespread of the remaining urban air problems, and did so at the time of the earth summit.
6 Tropospheric ozone refers to ozone fairly near to the ground, as opposed to stratospheric ozone high in the
atmosphere. The stratospheric ozone layer protects human health and the environment from ultraviolet radiation, and its
depletion causes problems. By contrast, tropospheric ozone damages human health and the environment. 8 In the
United States, the pollutants causing "urban" air quality problems also affect human health and the environment well
beyond urban boundaries. Yet, the health problems these pollutants present remain most acute in urban and suburban
areas. Ozone, carbon monoxide, and particulate cause very serious public health problems that have
been well recognized for a long time. Ozone forms in the atmosphere from a reaction between volatile organic
compounds, nitrogen oxides, and sunlight. Volatile organic compounds include a large number of hazardous air
pollutants. Nitrogen oxides, as discussed below, also play a role in acidifying ecosystems. Ozone damages lung tissue. It
plays a role in triggering asthma attacks, sending thousands to the hospital every summer. It effects young children and
people engaged in heavy exercise especially severely. Particulate pollution, or soot, consists of combinations of a wide
variety of pollutants. Nitrogen oxide and sulfur dioxide contribute to formation of fine particulate, which is associated
with the most serious health problems. 13 Studies link particulate to tens of thousands of annual premature deaths in the
United States. Like ozone it contributes to respiratory illness, but it also seems to play a [*29] role in triggering heart
attacks among the elderly. The data suggest that fine particulate, which EPA did not regulate explicitly until recently,
plays a major role in these problems. 16 Health researchers have associated carbon monoxide with various types of
neurological symptoms, such as visual impairment, reduced work capacity, reduced manual dexterity, poor learning
ability, and difficulty in performing complex tasks. The same pollution problems causing current urban health
problems also contribute to long lasting ecological problems. Ozone harms crops and trees. These harms affect
ecosystems and future generations. Similarly, particulate precursors, including nitrogen oxide and sulfur dioxide,
contribute to acid rain, which is not easily reversible. To address these problems, Agenda 21 recommends the adoption
of national programs to reduce health risks from air pollution, including urban air pollution. These programs are to
include development of "appropriate pollution control technology . . . for the introduction of environmentally sound
production processes." It calls for this development "on the basis of risk assessment and epidemiological research." It
also recommends development of "air pollution control capacities in large cities emphasizing enforcement programs
using monitoring networks as appropriate." A second principle, the precautionary principle, provides support for the
first. As stated in the Rio Declaration, the precautionary principle means that "lack of full scientific certainty shall not
be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation" when "there are
threats of serious or irreversible damage." Thus, lack of complete certainty about the adverse environmental and human
health effects of air pollutants does not, by itself, provide a reason for tolerating them. Put differently, governments

need to address air pollution on a precautionary basis to ensure that humans can life a healthy and
productive life.

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** Anthrax**
A small amount of anthrax could be effective in killing millions of people
Wake, 01
Ben Wake The Ottawa Citizen October 13, 2001 Saturday Final EDITION
http://www.lexisnexis.com:80/us/lnacademic/results/docview/docview.do?
docLinkInd=true&risb=21_T7030650745&format=GNBFI&sort=RELEVANCE&startDocNo=26&resultsUrlKey=29_T703
0641352&cisb=22_T7030650748&treeMax=true&treeWidth=0&csi=8363&docNo=4
.The potential impact on a city can be estimated by looking at the effectiveness of an aerosol in producing downwind
casualties. The World Health Organization in 1970 modeled the results of a hypothetical dissemination of 50 kg of
agent along a 2-km line upwind of a large population center. Anthrax and tularemia are predicted to cause the
highest number of dead and incapacitated, as well as the greatest downwind spread. A government study
estimated that about 200 pounds of anthrax released upwind of Washington, D.C., could kill up to 3 million
people. Here is a list of all of the recognized Biological Weapons.

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**Freedom**
Violation of freedom negates the value of human existence and represents the greatest threat to human
survival
Rand 89
(Ayn Rand, Philosopher, July 1989, The Virtue of Selfishness: A New Concept of Egoism, p. 145)
A society that robs and individual of the product of his effort, or enslaves him, or attempts to limit the freedom of his
mind, or compels him to act against his own rational judgment, a society that sets up a conflict between its ethics and
the requirements of mans nature is not, strictly speaking, a society, but a mob held together by institutionalized gangrule. Such a society destroys all values of human coexistence, has no possible justification, and
represents, not a source of benefits, but the deadliest threat to mans survival. Life on desert island is

safer than and incomparably preferable than existence in Soviet Russia or Nazi Germany.

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**Genocide**
Genocide threatens extinction
Diamond 92
(Diamond, THE THIRD CHIMPANZEE, 1992, p. 277)
While our first association to the world genocide is likely to be the killings in Nazi concentration camps, those were
not even the largest-scale genocide of this century. The Tasmanians and hundreds of other peoples were modern targets
of successful smaller extermination campaigns. Numerous peoples scattered throughout the world are
potential targets in the near future. Yet genocide is such a painful subject that either wed rather not
think about it at all, or else wed like to believe that nice people dont commit genocide only Nazis do. But our

refusal to think about it has consequences weve done little to halt the numerous episodes of
genocide since World War II, and were not alert to where it may happen next . Together with our
destruction of our own environmental resources, our genocidal tendencies coupled to nuclear
weapons now constitute the two most likely means by which the human species may reverse all its
progress virtually overnight.
Genocide should always be weighed before other impacts
Rice 05
(Susan Rice, Brookings Institute, WHY DARFUR CANT BE LEFT TO AFRICA, August 7, 2005,
http://www.brookings.org/views/articles/rice/20050807.htm)

Never is the international responsibility to protect more compelling than in cases of genocide.
Genocide is not a regional issue. A government that commits or condones it is not on a par with one that, say, jails
dissidents, squanders economic resources or suppresses free speech, as dreadful as such policies may be. Genocide
makes a claim on the entire world and it should be a call to action whatever diplomatic feathers it
ruffles.
Ethnic conflicts spillover to regional wars
Kamal Shehadi, Research Associate at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, December 1993,
ETHNIC SELF DETERMINATION AND THE BREAK UP OF STATES, 1983, p. 81
This paper has argued that self-determination conflicts have direct adverse consequences on international
security. As they begin to tear nuclear states apart, the likelihood of nuclear weapons falling into the hands of
individuals or groups willing to use them, or to trade them to others, will reach frightening levels. This
likelihood increases if a conflict over self-determination escalates into a war between two nuclear states. The
Russian Federation and Ukraine may fight over the Crimea and the Donbass area; and India and Pakistan
may fight over Kashmir. Ethnic conflicts may also spread both within a state and from one state to the next.
This can happen in countries where more than one ethnic self-determination conflict is brewing: Russia,
India and Ethiopia, for example. The conflict may also spread by contagion from one country to another if
the state is weak politically and militarily and cannot contain the conflict on its doorstep. Lastly, there is a
real danger that regional conflicts will erupt over national minorities and borders.
Genocide outweighs all impacts
B. Harff-Gur, Northwestern, HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION AS A REMEDY FOR GENOCIDE,
1981, p. 40
One of the most enduring and abhorrent problems of the world is genocide, which is neither particular to a
specific race, class, or nation, nor is it rooted in any one, ethnocentric view of the world. Prohibition of
genocide and affirmation of its opposite, the value of life, are an eternal ethical verity, one whose practical
implications necessarily outweigh possible theoretical objections and as such should lift it above prevailing
ideologies or politics. Genocide concerns and potentially effects all people. People make up a legal system,

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according to Kelsen. Politics is the expression of conflict among competing groups. Those in power give the
political system its character, i.e. the state. The state, according to Kelsen, is nothing but the combined will
of all its people. This abstract concept of the state may at first glance appear meaningless, because in reality
not all people have an equal voice in the formation of the characteristics of the state. But I am not concerned
with the characteristics of the state but rather the essence of the state the people. Without a people there
would be no state or legal system. With genocide eventually there will be no people. Genocide is ultimately a
threat to the existence of all. True, sometimes only certain groups are targeted, as in Nazi Germany.
Sometimes a large part of the total population is eradicated, as in contemporary Cambodia. Sometimes
people are eliminated regardless of national origin the Christians in Roman times. Sometimes whole
nations vanish the Amerindian societies after the Spanish conquest. And sometimes religious groups are
persecuted the Mohammedans by the Crusaders. The culprit changes: sometimes it is a specific state, or
those in power in a state; occasionally it is the winners vs. the vanquished in international conflicts; and in its
crudest form the stronger against the weaker. Since virtually every social group is a potential victim,
genocide is a universal concern.
Genocide risks destruction on a global level allowing future genocide causes extinction
Campbell, Professor Of Political Science And International Relations 2001
(Kenneth J., University of Delaware, Assistant Genocide and the Global Village, p. 15-16)
Regardless of where or on how small a scale it begins, the crime of genocide is the complete ideological repudiation
of, and a direct murderous assault upon, the prevailing liberal international order. Genocide is fundamentally
incompatible with, and destructive of an open, tolerant, democratic, free market international order. As genocide
scholar Herbert Hirsch has explained: The unwillingness of the world community to take action to end genocide and
political massacres is not only immoral but also impractical. [W]ithout some semblance of stability, commerce, travel,
and the international and intranational interchange of goods and information are subjected to severe disruptions.
Where genocide is permitted to proliferate, the liberal international order cannot long survive. No group will be safe;
every group will wonder when they will be next. Left unchecked, genocide threatens to destroy whatever security,
democracy, and prosperity exists in the present international system. As Roger Smith notes: Even the most powerful
nationsthose armed with nuclear weaponsmay end up in struggles that will lead (accidentally, intentionally,
insanely) to the ultimate genocide in which they destroy not only each other, but [humankind] mankind itself, sewing
the fate of the earth forever with a final genocidal effort. In this sense, genocide is a grave threat to the very fabric of
the international system and must be stopped, even at some risk to lives and treasure. The preservation and growth of
the present liberal international order is a vital interest for all of its membersstates as well as non-stateswhether or
not those members recognize and accept the reality of that objective interest. Nation states, as the principal members
of the present international order, are the only authoritative holders of violent enforcement powers. Non-state actors,
though increasing in power relative to states, still do not possess the military force, or the democratic authority to use
military force, which is necessary to stop determined perpetrators of mass murder. Consequently, nation-states have a
special responsibility to prevent, suppress, and punish all malicious assaults on the fundamental integrity of the
prevailing international order.

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**Constitution**
The Constitution is the most important thing to preserve
Eidmoe 92
(John A. Eidsmoe is a Constitutional Attorney, Professor of Law at Thomas Goode Jones School of Law and Colonel
with the USAF, 1992 3 USAFA J. Leg. Stud. 35, p. 57-9)
Other misfortunes may be borne, or their effects overcome. If disastrous war should sweep our commerce
from the ocean, another generation may renew it; if it exhaust our treasury, future industry may replenish it; if
it desolate and lay waste our fields, still under a new cultivation, they will grow green again, and ripen to future
harvests. It were but a trifle even if the walls of yonder Capitol were to crumble , if its lofty pillars should fall,
and its gorgeous decorations be all covered by the dust of the valley. All these might be rebuilt. But who shall

reconstruct the fabric of demolished government? Who shall rear again the wellproportioned
columns of constitutional liberty? Who shall frame together the skilful architecture which united national
sovereignty with State rights, individual security, and public prosperity? No, if these columns fall, they will be
raised not again. Like the Coliseum and the Parthenon, they will be destined to a mournful, a melancholy
immortality. Bitterer tears, however, will flow over them, than were ever shed over the remnants of a more glorious
edifice than Greece or Rome ever saw, the edifice of constitutional American liberty. It is possible that a constitutional
convention could take place and none of these drastic consequences would come to pass. It is possible to play Russian
roulette and emerge without a scratch; in fact, with only one bullet in the chamber, the odds of being shot are only one
in six. But when the stakes are as high as one's life, or the constitutional system that has shaped this

nation into what it is today, these odds are too great to take the risk.
We have a moral obligation to prevent violations of the constitution whenever possible
Levinson 2k
Daryl Levinson, professor of law at University of Virginia, Spring

2000 UC Law Review

Extending a majority rule analysis of optimal deterrence to constitutional torts requires some explanation,
for we do not usually think of violations of constitutional rights in terms of cost-benefit analysis and
efficiency. Quite the opposite, constitutional rights are most commonly conceived as deontological

side-constraints that trump even utility-maximizing government action. Alternatively,

constitutional rights might be understood as serving rule-utilitarian purposes. If the disutility to
victims of constitutional violations often exceeds the social benefits derived from the rights-violating
activity, or if rights violations create long-term costs that outweigh short-term social benefits, then

constitutional rights can be justified as tending to maximize global utility, even though this requires
local utility-decreasing steps. Both the deontological and rule-utilitarian descriptions imply that the

optimal level of constitutional violations is zero; that is, society would be better off, by whatever
measure, if constitutional rights were never violated.

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**SARS**
A SARS bioweapon would kill 50 million people
Conant, 06
Paul, House Subcommittee on Prevention of Nuclear and Biological Attack,July 2006 http://www.angelfire.com/ult/znewz1/bioterror.html

Concerned about this point, subcommittee Chairman John Linder, R-Ga., asked whether someone with a
"modicum of talent in this business" might genetically alter the SARS virus and "make it more virulent,
spread faster and make it more difficult to treat? The "short answer is yes," replied Brent, though the
recombinant virus might actually be weaker than the original Still, resynthesized SARS spread by
suicidal coughers is a real concern, said Brent.Anthrax, though not contagious in humans, is the
more serious threat, said witnesses, Callahan noting that "you don't have to store it, it lives
forever, and you don't have to feed it." The pathogen is also easy to obtain because the
disease afflicts animals in many places, he said.However, Callahan put avian influenza -- bird flu -as a top concern because of its extreme mortality in humans. If a mutated bird flu pathogen
becomes contagious among humans and remains extremely deadly, it could kill some 50
million people worldwide, experts have said. http://www.angelfire.com/ult/znewz1/bioterror.html

SARS could soon spread worldwide and cause extinction

Chase, New Age Christian, 2009
(T., January 5 Revelation 13: Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) - A New Age / Bible Prophecy Discussion
http://www.revelation13.net/SARS.html)
In mid-March 2003, it was announced to the world that there was a new Pneumonia-like disease causing a spreading
epidemic in the world. A new disease epidemic of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), started in Guangdong
Province in China in November 2002, and then spread to other countries in Asia: Hong Kong, Vietnam, Indonesia,
Phillipines, Thailand. It had also spread to Canada and the U.S.. Many initial cases had been linked to a Hotel in Hong
Kong. It is a Pneumonia-like illness with an incubation period of 2 to 7 days. Although SARS has not been seen for
years, there is a great danger of it in the future returning and spreading worldwide. Apparently it is related
Astrologically to Saturn being at its brightest at the start of 2003 (Saturn is equivalent to Satan, and Satan on earth
would also be the dragon, Red China). SARS initially spread rapidly around the world, and showed signs of mutating
for the worse, becoming more deadly, so there was talk of SARS being a doomsday bug, that will mean the end of the
world or at least the end of civilization. SARS seems to be stopped now, but it could come back. This bug initially
sounded like the movie "The Omega Man" where an apocalyptic doomsday virus exterminates most of humanity,
turning the survivors into religious cult fanatics. Another doomsday virus movie is "Twelve Monkeys".

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**Flu**
Influenza and viruses lead to extinction
Yu, Dartmouth Undergraduate Journal of Science, 09
(Victoria, May 22, DUJS aims to increase scientific awareness within the Dartmouth community by providing an
interdisciplinary forum, Human Extinction: The Uncertainty of Our Fate, http://dujs.dartmouth.edu/spring-2009/humanextinction-the-uncertainty-of-our-fate)
A pandemic will kill off all humans. In the past, humans have indeed fallen victim to viruses. Perhaps the best-known
case was the bubonic plague that killed up to one third of the European population in the mid-14th century (7). While
vaccines have been developed for the plague and some other infectious diseases, new viral strains are constantly
emerging a process that maintains the possibility of a pandemic-facilitated human extinction. Some surveyed
students mentioned AIDS as a potential pandemic-causing virus. It is true that scientists have been unable thus far to
find a sustainable cure for AIDS, mainly due to HIVs rapid and constant evolution. Specifically, two factors account for
the viruss abnormally high mutation rate: 1. HIVs use of reverse transcriptase, which does not have a proof-reading
mechanism, and 2. the lack of an error-correction mechanism in HIV DNA polymerase (8). Luckily, though, there are
certain characteristics of HIV that make it a poor candidate for a large-scale global infection: HIV can lie dormant in the
human body for years without manifesting itself, and AIDS itself does not kill directly, but rather through the weakening
of the immune system. However, for more easily transmitted viruses such as influenza, the evolution of new strains
could prove far more consequential. The simultaneous occurrence of antigenic drift (point mutations that lead to new
strains) and antigenic shift (the inter-species transfer of disease) in the influenza virus could produce a new version of
influenza for which scientists may not immediately find a cure. Since influenza can spread quickly, this lag time could
potentially lead to a global influenza pandemic, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (9). The
most recent scare of this variety came in 1918 when bird flu managed to kill over 50 million people around the world in
what is sometimes referred to as the Spanish flu pandemic. Perhaps even more frightening is the fact that only 25
mutations were required to convert the original viral strain which could only infect birds into a human-viable strain
(10).

Even a mild pandemic collapses the global economy and kills millions
Osterholm, Director of the center for infectious Disease Research and Policy,
2005
Michael, Preparing for the next Pandemic, Foreign Affairs, Vol. 84, Iss. 4, July/August
Summary: If an influenza pandemic struck today, borders would close, the global economy would shut down,
international vaccine supplies and health-care systems would be overwhelmed, and panic would reign. To limit the
fallout, the industrialized world must create a detailed response strategy involving the public and private sectors. FEAR
ITSELF Dating back to antiquity, influenza pandemics have posed the greatest threat of a worldwide calamity caused
by infectious disease. Over the past 300 years, ten influenza pandemics have occurred among humans. The most
recent came in 1957-58 and 1968-69, and although several tens of thousands of Americans died in each one, these
were considered mild compared to others. The 1918-19 pandemic was not. According to recent analysis, it killed 50 to
100 million people globally. Today, with a population of 6.5 billion, more than three times that of 1918, even a "mild"
pandemic could kill many millions of people. A number of recent events and factors have significantly heightened
concern that a specific near-term pandemic may be imminent. It could be caused by H5N1, the avian influenza strain
currently circulating in Asia. At this juncture scientists cannot be certain. Nor can they know exactly when a pandemic
will hit, or whether it will rival the experience of 1918-19 or be more muted like 1957-58 and 1968-69. The reality of a
coming pandemic, however, cannot be avoided. Only its impact can be lessened. Some important preparatory efforts
are under way, but much more needs to be done by institutions at many levels of society.

Pandemic influenza would destroy the global economy SARS proves

Osterholm, Director of the center for infectious Disease Research and Policy,
2005
Michael, Preparing for the next Pandemic, Foreign Affairs, Vol. 84, Iss. 4, July/August
The arrival of a pandemic influenza would trigger a reaction that would change the world overnight. A vaccine would
not be available for a number of months after the pandemic started, and there are very limited stockpiles of antiviral
drugs. Plus, only a few privileged areas of the world have access to vaccine-production facilities. Foreign trade and
travel would be reduced or even ended in an attempt to stop the virus from entering new countries - - even though

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such efforts would probably fail given the infectiousness of influenza and the volume of illegal crossings that occur at
most borders. It is likely that transportation would also be significantly curtailed domestically, as smaller communities
sought to keep the disease contained. The world relies on the speedy distribution of products such as food and
replacement parts for equipment. Global, regional, and national economies would come to an abrupt halt -- something
that has never happened due to HIV, malaria, or TB despite their dramatic impact on the developing world. The closest
the world has come to this scenario in modern times was the SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) crisis of
2003. Over a period of five months, about 8,000 people were infected by a novel human coronavirus. About ten
percent of them died. The virus apparently spread to humans when infected animals were sold and slaughtered in
unsanitary and crowded markets in China's Guangdong Province. Although the transmission rate of SARS paled in
comparison to that of influenza, it demonstrated how quickly such an infectious agent can circle the globe, given the
ease and frequency of international travel. Once SARS emerged in rural China, it spread to five countries within 24
hours and to 30 countries on six continents within several months. The SARS experience teaches a critical lesson
about the potential global response to a pandemic influenza. Even with the relatively low number of deaths it caused
compared to other infectious diseases, SARS had a powerful negative psychological impact on the populations of
many countries. In a recent analysis of the epidemic, the National Academy of Science's Institute of Medicine
concluded: "The relatively high case-fatality rate, the identification of super-spreaders, the newness of the disease, the
speed of its global spread, and public uncertainty about the ability to control its spread may have contributed to the
public's alarm. This alarm, in turn, may have led to the behavior that exacerbated the economic blows to the travel and
tourism industries of the countries with the highest number of cases." SARS provided a taste of the impact a killer
influenza pandemic would have on the global economy. Jong-Wha Lee, of Korea University, and Warwick McKibbin, of
the Australian National University, estimated the economic impact of the six-month SARS epidemic on the Asia-Pacific
region at about $40 billion. In Canada, 438 people were infected and 43 died after an infected person traveled from
Hong Kong to Toronto, and the Canadian Tourism Commission estimated that the epidemic cost the nation's economy
$419 million. The Ontario health minister estimated that SARS cost the province's health-care system about $763
million, money that was spent, in part, on special SARS clinics and supplies to protect health-care workers. The SARS
outbreak also had a substantial impact on the global airline industry. After the disease hit in 2003, flights in the AsiaPacific area decreased by 45 percent from the year before. During the outbreak, the number of flights between Hong
Kong and the United States fell 69 percent. And this impact would pale in comparison to that of a 12- to 36-month
worldwide influenza pandemic.

Unchecked swine flu leads to extinction

Brown, Washington Post Staff Writer, 09
(David, May 17, 200,9 Suburban Edition, A-Section; Pg. A03, Age of Flu Victims Has Big Implications; Scientists Say
Relative Youth of Ill People Is Evidence of Pandemic Potential lexis)
Exactly how swine flu fits into the pantheon of flu pandemics will not be known for a while. It will take months -- and
many more victims -- for its full personality and behavior to emerge. But one thing is clear: This is a lot more than just
seasonal flu out of season. After a brief moment when news of the outbreak in Mexico made swine flu look like a
horseman of the apocalypse, public health officials have spent much effort reassuring people that most of the time, the
virus causes a mild illness that can be ridden out at home. Yet, officials at the World Health Organization, the Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention and elsewhere do not want the public to get blase. Pandemic flu strains -- and this
new H1N1 strain is all but certain to cause the 21st century's first pandemic -- are unpredictable. Any contagious
disease that most of the world's 6.8 billion people can catch is inherently dangerous.

Bird flu would kill millions and result in a post apocalyptic world
Turchin, Studying @ Moscow State University, 08 (Alexei, Structure of the Global
Catastrophe, http://www.scribd.com/doc/6250354/STRUCTURE-OF-THE- GLOBAL-CATASTROPHE-Risks-of-humanextinction-in-the-XXI-century-)

Bird flu. As it was already repeatedly spoken, not the bird flu is dangerous, but possible mutation of strain H5N1, capable to be
transferred from human to human. For this purpose, in particular, should change attaching fibers on a surface of the virus that would
attached not in the deep in lungs, but above where there are more chances for virus to get out as cough droplets. Probably, that

it

is rather simple mutation. Though there are different opinions on, whether H5N1 is capable to mutate this way, but in
history already there are precedents of deadly flu epidemics. The worst estimation of number of possible victims of muteted bird flu
was 400 million humans. And though it does not mean full extinction of mankind, it almost for certain will send the world on a certain
postapocalyptic stage.

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Bird flu results in every impact imaginable including global state collapse and disintegration of public
order
The Guardian 2006 (Bird flu 'could be 21st-century Black Death' Jan. 27.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2006/jan/27/birdflu.health)
Avian flu has the potential to develop into a global pandemic that would be as devastating as the Black Death of the 14th
century, the World Economic Forum warned yesterday in its assessment of the risks threatening stability and prosperity. In a worst-case
outcome, experts charged with weighing up systemic dangers said there might be riots to gain access to supplies of
vaccines, a collapse of public order, a partial flight from the cities and large-scale migration. The report published at the WEF's annual
meeting in Davos said there was only a small risk of a return to the economic and social chaos caused by the Black Death, and it would only occur if bird flu conflated with other risks to the global

An outbreak of H5NI [avian flu] human to human transmission could have devastating impacts globally across
all social and economic sectors, disrupting efficient processes, severely degrading response capabilities and
exacerbating the effects of known weaknesses in different systems," said the report. The assessment, undertaken by
risk experts at the insurance companies Swiss Re and Marsh and McLennan (MMC), and Merrill Lynch, identified
terrorism, an oil-price spike, natural disasters and a bird-flu pandemic as the big threats in 2006. It added that the speed at which
global risks travelled thanks to globalisation could lead to "rapid and unexpected contagion of global risks across
industries and geographical areas. The interplay of multiple global risks and their combined ripple effects can create
potentially disastrous "perfect storms" - cumulative events which cause damage far in excess of the sum of each
individual risk event." Avian flu has spread from China as far west as eastern Europe and the number of deaths caused has been relatively small. The WEF
report said nevertheless that there was a remote chance that bird flu could have far more dramatic effects . "These impacts might include the disruption
of supply chains and trade flows; an exacerbation of financial imbalances and the transformation of intellectual
property regimes for pharmaceutical products; rioting to gain access to scarce supplies of antivirals and vaccines; a
collapse of public order; partial de-urbanisation as people flee population centres; the extinction of trust in
governments; decimation of specific human skill sets; and forced, large-scale migration, associated with the further
collapse of already weak states."
community. "

Avian flu kills a billion people with 60% mortality

Chandra Deputy National sEcurity Advisor of India 2004 (Satish, , Global Security: A Broader Concept for
the 21st Century, May 7-10, http://www.csdr.org/2004book/chandra.htm)
It is 2015. Despite much debate and warning, the world has done little to address the
buildup of greenhouse gases and the consequent acceleration of global warming, which is
accompanied by increasingly unpredictable world weather patterns . Extreme heat, storms, and droughts have created havoc
for farmers. Mega-droughts are affecting major granaries. The worlds agricultural production and freshwater resources are seriously stretched, reducing the planets carrying capacity. Deaths from famine and drought
are in the hundreds of thousands. Violent and frequent storms are lashing Western Europe, leading to the abandonment of low-lying cities such as The Hague. Rising sea levels have made countries such as Bangladesh

This scenario, as frightening as it is, pales in comparison with what

could overtake us by 2007 if the highly pathogenic form of bird flu H5N1 becomes
transmittable human to human; all it would take for this to happen is a simple gene shift in
the bird flu virus, which could happen any day . In a globalized world linked by rapid air travel, the disease would spread
like a raging forest fire. If it did, it would overwhelm our public health system, cripple our economies, and wipe out a
billion people within the space of a few monthsa 60 percent mortality rate is estimated .
Both of these scenarios may seem alarmist, but they are within the realm of possibility. We
are, however, in a position to put in place structures and programs to mitigate and possibly
even prevent such disasters. But a no-regrets strategy demands that this be done before it is too late.
nearly uninhabitable, resulting in mass migration.

The next wave of the swine flu will explode around the world, turning into the biggest pandemic
Barry, visiting scholar at the Tulane/Xavier Center for Bioenvironmental Research 9 , is the
author of The Great Influenza (John M. Barry Where Will the Swine Flu Go Next? April 27, 2009,
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/28/opinion/28barry.html)
As the swine flu threatens to become the next pandemic, the biggest questions are whether its transmission from
human to human will be sustained and, if so, how virulent it might become. But even if this virus were to peter out
soon, there is a strong possibility it would only go underground, quietly continuing to infect some people while
becoming better adapted to humans, and then explode around the world. What happens next is chiefly up to the virus.
But it is up to us to create a vaccine as quickly as possible. Influenza viruses are unpredictable because they are able
to mutate so rapidly. That capacity enables them to jump easily from species to species, infecting not only pigs and
people but also horses, seals, cats, dogs, tigers and so on. An avian virus responsible for the 1918 pandemic jumped
first from birds to humans, then from humans to swine (as well as other animals). Now, and not for the first time, pigs
have given a virus back to humans. Mutability makes even existing, well-known flu viruses unpredictable. A new virus,
formed by a combination of several existing ones as this virus is, is even less predictable. After jumping to a new host,
influenza can become more or less virulent in fact, different offshoots could go in opposite directions before a

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relatively stable new virus emerges. Influenza pandemics have occurred as far back in history as we can look, but the
four we know about in detail happened in 1889, 1918, 1957 and 1968. The mildest of these, the so-called Hong Kong
flu in 1968, killed about 35,000 people in the United States and 700,000 worldwide. Ordinary seasonal influenza, in
comparison, now kills 36,000 Americans a year, because the population has a higher proportion of elderly people and
others with weak immune systems. (If a virus like the Hong Kong flu hit today, it would probably kill more people for the
same reason.) The worst influenza pandemic, in 1918, killed 675,000 in the United States. And although no one has a
reliable worldwide death toll, the lowest reasonable number is about 35 million, and some scientists believe it killed as
many as 100 million at a time when the worlds population was only a quarter of what it is today. The dead included
not only the elderly and infants but also robust young adults. Whats important to keep in mind in assessing the threat
of the current outbreak is that all four of the well-known pandemics seem to have come in waves. The 1918 virus
surfaced by March and set in motion a spring and summer wave that hit some communities and skipped others. This
first wave was extremely mild, more so even than ordinary influenza: of the 10,313 sailors in the British Grand Fleet
who became ill, for example, only four died. But autumn brought a second, more lethal wave, which was followed by a
less severe third wave in early 1919. The first wave in 1918 was relatively mild, many experts speculate, because the
virus had not fully adapted to humans. And as it did adapt, it also became more lethal. However, there is very good
evidence that people who were exposed during the first wave developed immunity much as people get protection
from a modern vaccine. A similar kind of immune-building process is the most likely explanation for why, in 1918, only 2
percent of those who contracted the flu died. Having been exposed to other influenza viruses, most people had built up
some protection. People in isolated regions, including American Indian reservations and Alaskan Inuit villages, had
much higher case mortality presumably because they had less exposure to influenza viruses. The 1889 pandemic
also had a well-defined first wave that was milder than succeeding waves. The 1957 and 1968 pandemics had waves,
too, though they were less well defined. In all four instances, the gap between the time the virus was first recognized
and a second, more dangerous wave swelled was about six months. It will take a minimum of four months to produce
vaccine in any volume, possibly longer, and much longer than that to produce enough vaccine to protect most
Americans. The race has begun.

Were on the brink of a global swine flu pandemic which would outweigh nuclear war
UPI, 9 (Martin Sieff, 4 May 2009, Swine flu-HIV could devastate human race,
http://www.upi.com/news/issueoftheday/2009/05/04/Swine-flu-HIV-could-devastate-human-race/UPI43071241461493/)
The global swine flu threat is receding, but it could return in a far more deadly form in the fall. The warning was given
Monday by Dr. Margaret Chan, head of the 193-nation World Health Organization, in an interview with the Financial
Times of London. Chan warned that the swine flu virus known as H1N1 that caused the Mexico City-centered outbreak
could return in the fall as a far more dangerous mutation. After last week's warnings, school closings across the United States and the near shuttering of Mexico
City, the current outbreak seems to have peaked. The WHO said Monday there were 985 confirmed cases of H1N1 spread over 20 countries. There have been 25 confirmed deaths. As of Monday
there were 286 reported cases of swine flu in 36 U.S. states. Both U.S. and Mexican authorities expressed confidence that the spread of the disease was slowing down. The World Health

strands of the swine flu virus come

from pigs, humans and birds. Experts believe that the virus mutated into its current form in the bodies of pigs. Health
authorities are particularly worried that the capability to mutate already exhibited by the virus could eventually let it
combine with the human immunodeficiency virus, which causes AIDS. That could cause a lethally dangerous global
health problem on a comparable scale to the 1918 Spanish influenza epidemic that eventually infected more than 500
million people -- more than one-quarter of the human race -- and killed 10 percent of them. That death toll of 50 million
was more than five times the total fatalities of World War I. The epidemic killed more Americans than died in World War I and World II combined.
Organization said the higher number of reports of cases from Mexico -- 590 -- comes from testing of previously gathered samples. The four

Canadian health officials said Sunday they have confirmed that the H1N1 swine flu virus had, in at least one case, leaped back into a herd of 200 pigs. That raised the
possibility it could mutate again in pigs and move back into the human population. Chan told the Financial Times that, given the potential scale of the possible threat, the
World Health Organization did not overreact to the swine flu threat. While the number of new cases hasn't grown as fast as expected, Chan said the disease could return
in a few months in a much more lethal strain. She also said she would rather be over-prepared than have to answer questions about why the World Health Organization
didn't take sufficient action. The reaction of the U.S. government headed by President Barack Obama and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano was measured,
restrained and less tough than that of the 27-nation European Union or of nations like China in closing cross-border traffic or imposing comprehensive screening. The
Chinese government was horrified at the possibility tha t

swine flu could spread among its 1.3 billion people, almost 20 percent of the
human race. Its emergency measures, however, have infuriated the Mexican government and led to a major diplomatic
row between the two nations. Mexican travelers were quarantined in hotels, and the Mexican ambassador to China was not allowed to meet with one group he tried to
visit. The anger of the Mexican government at the Chinese measures, however, has obscured the real possibility that the global impact of swine flu has been limited
precisely because of the swift measures that were taken globally to contain it. The global swine flu crisis recalls the so-called millennium bug, which was supposed to
crash computers around the world as the machines' internal clocks turned over Jan. 1, 2000. That didn't happen, but some experts said that was because the precautions
taken helped prevent the problem. Some said there wasn't a problem to begin with. The whole controversy revolved around a negative proposition that couldn't be

history is filled with little-known

but horrifying examples of global pandemics from diseases like Spanish flu, cholera, syphilis or bubonic plague that
swept the world, killing hundreds of millions of people, destroying civilizations and reshaping the demographic patterns
of the planet. In a modern world of unprecedented population scale and social mobility, Chan's caution therefore
proved. Skeptics are already arguing that the global fever over swine flu should fall into the same category. However, human

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appears completely justified. The alternative is to risk a biological disaster that could eventually prove more
devastating than a thermonuclear war.
Swine flu will not cause extinction-two reasons.
a. missing a molecular signature
b. cross-reactive immunities

Peter Palese 05-02-09 (chairman of the department of microbiology at the Mount Sinai School
of Medicine in New York., Why Swine Flu Isnt So Scary, The Wall Street Journal)
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124122223484879119.html SMB
Still, there is more evidence that a serious pandemic is not imminent. In 1976 there was an outbreak of an H1N1 swine
virus in Fort Dix, N.J., which showed human-to-human transmission but did not go on to become a highly virulent
strain. This virus was very similar to regular swine influenza viruses and did not show a high affinity for the human
host.Although the swine virus currently circulating in humans is different from the 1976 virus, it is most likely not more
virulent than the other seasonal strains we have experienced over the last several years. It lacks an important
molecular signature (the protein PB1-F2) which was present in the 1918 virus and in the highly lethal H5N1 chicken
viruses. If this virulence marker is necessary for an influenza virus to become highly pathogenic in humans or in
chickens -- and some research suggests this is the case -- then the current swine virus, like the 1976 virus, doesn't
have what it takes to become a major killer.
Since people have been exposed to H1N1 viruses over many decades, we likely have some cross-reactive immunity
against the swine virus. While it may not be sufficient to prevent illness, it may very well dampen the impact of the virus
on mortality. I would postulate that by virtue of this "herd immunity," even a 1918-like H1N1 virus could never have the
horrific effect it had in the past. The most likely outcome is that the current swine virus will become another (fourth)
strain of regular seasonal influenza.
Dont believe the affirmative cries of Swine Flu reaching pandemic levels- its exaggerated.

McNeil Jr. 06-11-09 (New York Times Journalist, To Flu Experts, Pandemic Confirms the
Obvious, New York Times) http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/12/world/asia/12flu.html?_r=1
It came as no surprise on Thursday when the World Health Organization declared that the swine flu outbreak had
become a pandemic. The disease has reached 74 countries, and probably met the technical definition of a pandemic
or global spread weeks ago. Nearly 30,000 cases have been reported, but disease experts think hundreds of
thousands or millions of people have actually been infected. So the agency made official what had become obvious:
that the H1N1 virus is spreading quickly in different parts of the world, and its chief, Dr. Margaret Chan, said, Further
spread is considered inevitable. The announcement does not mean that the illness, which has been mild in most
people, has become any worse. The term pandemic reflects only the geographic spread of a new disease, not its
severity. Pandemics typically infect about a third of the world in a year or two, and sometimes strike in successive
waves.Globally, we have good reason to believe that this pandemic, at least in its early days, will be of moderate
severity, said Dr. Chan, director general of the health agency. So far, 144 people have died from H1N1.The decision to
raise the pandemic alert from Phase 5 to Phase 6, its highest level, is meant to signal to countries to step up their
efforts to deal with the disease.It also means that the health organization is asking drug makers to start making vaccine
as quickly as possible, with the hope of having some batches ready by September. Efforts to make a vaccine are under
way, and stockpiles of antiviral drugs have been opened. But the agency does not recommend closing borders or
restricting travel.This is not a surprise, said Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, the new director of the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention. For all intents and purposes, the United States government has been in Phase 6 of the
pandemic for some time now.
The WHO has exaggerated the threat of Swine Flu-the most severe cases have already
peaked.

Michael Fumento. June 19, 2009. (Director of the Washington, D. C.-based Independent
Journalism Project, where he specializes in science and health issues. The WHOs Fabricated
Pandemic http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2009/06/19/michaelfumento-the-who-s-fabricated-pandemic.aspx)
A global flu pandemic is a "when, not an if." So the World Health Organization (WHO) has been crying for five years.
Now it can boast it was right. Problem is, the mildest pandemics of the 20th century killed at least a million people
worldwide, and old-fashioned seasonal flu strikes every nation yearly, killing an estimated 250,000 to 500,000. But only
144 people had succumbed to H1N1 swine flu when the WHO declared its pandemic -- far less than seasonal flu's

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daily toll. Further, in Mexico, where the outbreak began and where it has been the most severe, cases had already
peaked.
The Swine Flu wont turn into the Spanish flu of 1918 there are too many safeguards.

Richard Martin. May 2, 2009. (St. Petersburg Times Staff Writer. From swine flu to bubonic
plague, epidemics have always stirred fear and terror
http://www.tampabay.com/news/health/medicine/article997373.ece)
Alcabes sees no point in panicking. He and other scientists say it's false reasoning to imagine a reprise of the 1918
Spanish flu because there are now public health systems and agencies that make it their business to track the flu and
educate the public on appropriate prevention measures. In a paper titled "Panic In Place of Public Health," Alcabes
cited the two flu pandemics that have occurred since 1918 in 1957 and 1968 that resulted in far fewer deaths.
And he added that if the Spanish flu had happened today instead of 1918, the number of deaths would have been
limited by medical advances such as the timely use of antibiotics to treat secondary infections. Siegel agreed, pointing
to the ability to discover viruses just as they're emerging. That's a new tool , he said. But with that comes a lot of
responsibility. "One thing that hasn't occurred is learning a new language to describe risk so that we don't scare
everybody," he said.
Governmental protections prevent Swine Flu from collapsing the economy and causing
extinction.

Peter Palese 05-02-09 (chairman of the department of microbiology at the Mount Sinai School
of Medicine in New York., Why Swine Flu Isnt So Scary, The Wall Street Journal)
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124122223484879119.html SMB
Finally, we have a vastly improved infrastructure to deal with novel emerging diseases, including influenza. The
preparedness plans developed against the avian flu threat dramatically improved overall surveillance. The entire
genomic sequences of several swine viruses were sequenced within several days -- not weeks or months. We would
probably not have learned so fast about the swine virus were it not for these improved capabilities. Our government
has initiated major advances to develop new and improved manufacturing processes. Exciting new vaccine and
antiviral approaches are also in the pipeline, and they show promise of tipping the balance in favor of humans against
a devious virus. Universal influenza vaccines (one long-lasting vaccine against all strains) and broadband antivirals
(comparable to broadly effective antibiotics) are being developed in academic laboratories and in innovative small
biotech companies. This work has been primarily funded by government agencies, and it will pay off by diminishing the
future impact of influenza on the health of our citizens and the economy of our country. It is prudent to prepare against
swine influenza, but equally important to keep a balanced outlook and an awareness of our current capabilities.
making a traditional vaccine at the start of a pandemic, there is no way there would be enough." The Government
believes a bird flu pandemic is inevitable, killing 50,000 people in Britain alone. However, it acknowledges that the bug
could be much more lethal - infecting one in two people and claiming more than 700,000 lives.

Bird flu causes extinction

Greger, 06
(Michael, Bird Flu: A Virus of Our Hatching)
Other public health authorities have expressed similar sentiments on a global scale. World Health Organization
executive director David Nabarro was recently appointed the bird flu czar of the United Nations. At a press
conference at UN headquarters in New York, Nabarro tried to impress upon journalists that were dealing here with
world survival issuesor the survival of the world as we know it.583 The reality is that if a pandemic hits,
explained the executive director of Trust for Americas Health, a public health policy group, its not just a health
emergency. Its the big one.584 Similar fears reportedly keep U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Mike
Leavitt awake at night. Its a world-changing event when it occurs, Leavitt said in an interview. It reaches beyond
health. It affects economies, cultures, politics and prosperitynot to mention human life, counted by the
millions.585 Yes, but what are the odds of it actually happening? What are the odds that a killer flu virus will
spread across the

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**TB**
TB collapses the economy
Fonkwo, International Consultant on Public Health, 2008 (Peter Ndeboc, International Consultant on Public Health,
EMBO reports 9, S1, S13S17 (2008), http://www.nature.com/embor/journal/v9/n1s/full/embor2008110.html)
During the past couple of decades, however, microbes have shown a tenacious ability to adapt, re-adapt, survive and
challenge human ingenuity (Table 1). The impact of these diseases is immense and is felt across the world. In addition
to affecting the health of individuals directly, infectious diseases are also having an impact on whole societies,
economies and political systems. In the developing world in particular, crucial sectors for sustained development such
as health and education, have seen a marked loss of qualified personnel, most notably to human immunodeficiency
virus (HIV)/acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS), tuberculosis (TB) and malaria. These and other infectious

agents not only take an enormous physical toll on humanity, but also cause significant economic
losses both directly in the developing world and less directly in the developed world. It is therefore a matter not
only of public health, but also of economic interest, to invest in and organize an internationally
coordinated strategy to fight the major infectious diseases, or at least to bring them under control Of
.

course, one could simply think the solution would be to try to eliminate the pathogens and/or their vectors from their
natural reservoirs or hosts. After all, this was successfully done with smallpox, for example. Cholera and malaria were
similarly brought under control in the USA and southern Europe. Unfortunately, it is not easy to predict where and when
most infectious agents will strike or which new diseases will emerge. The reasons for their persistence are manifold and
include biological, social and political causes. Pathogens constantly change their genetic make-up, which challenges the
development of vaccines against infectious diseases. This genetic flexibility allows many infectious agents to mutate or
evolve into more deadly strains against which humans have little or no resistance: the HIV and influenza viruses, for
example, constantly mutate and recombine to find their way through the host defence mechanisms. "From the
evolutionary perspective, they [viruses and bacteria] are 'the fittest' and the chances are slim that human ingenuity will
ever get the better of them" (Stefansson, 2003). Mass migrations, trade and travel are notoriously effective at spreading
infectious diseases to even the most remote parts of the globe (Table 2). Mass migrations are often the result of
emergency situations such as floods, wars, famines or earthquakes, and can create precarious conditionssuch as poor
hygiene and nutrition or risky sexual behaviourswhich hasten the spread of infectious diseases. Global trade and
travel introduce new pathogens into previously virgin regions , where the diseases find a more vulnerable

population and can develop into epidemics; this was the case
when West Nile virus
arrived in New York City, from where it quickly spread throughout North America. In the present-day
, for example, in the late 1990s,

global village, the next rabies or Ebola epidemic could occur anywhere in the world. Increasing urbanization and the
growth of urban slums that lack sanitation and clean water, provide fertile ground for infections. Many cities and
townships in the developing world expands at the expense of pristine land, thereby disturbing natural habitats and
bringing humans into more intimate contact with unknown and possibly dangerous microorganisms. Human forays into
virgin areas of the African equatorial forests have brought us into contact with the Ebola virus, although its real origin
has not yet been identified. When humans live in close contact with animals, pathogens are sometimes able to change
hosts and infect humans (Parish et al, 2005). The new hostin this case, a humanis often not as adapted to these
zoonotic diseases as the original host. The past outbreaks of avian influenza, severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS),
hantavirus, Nipah virus and the HIV epidemic were all due to pathogens that were normally found in animals, but which
subsequently found a new, susceptible host in humans. Moreover, the misuse and overuse of antibiotics is eroding our
ability to control even common infections. Many bacteria have become resistant to even the most powerful antibiotics
or combinations of antibiotics; similarly, the once first-line drugs against malaria are now almost useless. Promiscuous
sexual behaviour and substance abuse remain the main means of transmission of blood-borne infectious diseases such as
HIV and hepatitis. In areas of extreme poverty, given the increased resort to the sex trade for survival, sexual
transmission of these diseases is accelerated. In many developing countries, commercial sex workers and long-distance
truck drivers have contributed greatly to the spread of such infectious diseases from one community to another. In
addition, institutional settingssuch as child-care centres, hospitals and homes for the elderlyprovide an ideal
environment for the transmission of infectious diseases because they bring susceptible individuals into close contact
with one another. Wars, natural disasters, economic collapse and other catastrophes, either individually or in
combination, often cause a breakdown in healthcare systems, which contributes further to the emergence, re-emergence
and persistence of otherwise easily controllable diseases. Yet these diseases do not necessarily require an emergency
situation to be able to thrive. Complacency within the population or health-service providers could be
equally dangerous under otherwise normal conditions. Cutbacks in prevention programmes

, a lack of trained staff

and a lack of early-detection systems allow infectious diseases to gain a foothold in otherwise
healthy populations. It is often not the lack of tools, but the lack of an appropriate healthcare

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infrastructure and personnel that handicaps the response to infectious diseases. More generally, there is not
yet enough commitment to control infectious diseases at the political level. The absence of a direct and obvious link
between disease control and the benefits for public health makes it difficult to sustain public-health policies.
Programmes to prevent and treat infectious diseases in developing countries depend largely on indigenous health
workers, most of whom are unfortunately not motivated enough to deliver the goods. Given the multiplicity and
complexity of the reasons behind this general demotivation, only a strong political will can improve the situation.
Finally, public-health experts also worry that global climate change could contribute further to the spread of both
pathogens and their vectors such as mosquitoes or birds, as their migratory patterns and normal habitats are likely to
change. The burden of infectious disease is therefore likely to aggravate, and in some cases even provoke
economic decay,
and political destabilization, especially in the developing world and former
communist countries. As of the year 2001, one billion people lived on less than US$1 per day. Countries with a per
capita income of less than US$500 per year spend, on average, US$12 per person per year on health. According to the
World Health Organization (WHO), infectious diseases caused 32% of deaths worldwide, 68% of deaths in Africa and
37% of deaths in Southeast Asia (WHO, 1999). These diseases account for 90% of the health problems worldwide and
kill about 14 million people annually, 90% of whom are from the developing world. They have killed more people than
famine, war, accidents and crimes together. AIDS, TB and malaria are increasingly being acknowledged as important
factors in the political and economic destabilization of the developing world. However, the developed world is not
spared either. As of the year 2000, the number of annual deaths owing to infectious diseases was estimated at roughly
170,000 in the USA (Gordon, 2000). HIV and pneumonia/influenza are among the 10 leading causes of death in the
USA. At present, approximately one million Americans are infected with HIV. The WHO estimates that 33.4 million
people have contracted HIV worldwide since the beginning of the epidemic in 1983 and about 2.3 million of these died
in the year 1998 alone. In the USA and many other countries, AIDS is now the leading cause of death among young
adults (Fauci et al, 1996). The United Nations Joint Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS; Geneva Switzerland)
estimates that another 115 million people will die by 2015 in the 60 countries most affected by AIDS ( UNAIDS, 2006).
The economic costs of infectious diseases especially HIV/AIDS and malariaare significant. Their

further

social fragmentation

increasing toll on productivity owing to deaths and chronic debilitating illnesses, reduced
profitability and decreased foreign investment has had a serious effect on the economic growth of some poor
,

countries. According to the WHO, the economic value of the loss-of-life owing to HIV/AIDS in 1999 was estimated at
about 12% of the gross national product (GNP) in sub-Saharan African countries, and the virus could reduce the gross
domestic product of some by 20% or more by 2010. Some of the hardest hit countries in sub-Saharan Africaand
possibly in South and Southeast Asiawill face severe demographic changes as HIV/AIDS and associated diseases
reduce human life-expectancy by as much as 30 years and kill as many as 23% of their populations, thereby creating a
huge orphan cohort. Nearly 42 million children in 27 countries will lose one or both parents to AIDS by 2010, and 19 of
the hardest-hit countries will be in sub-Saharan Africa (WHO, 2003). These demographic changes also affect economic
growth, as endemic diseases deplete a country of its work force. A 10% increase in life expectancy at birth (LEB) is
associated with a rise in economic growth of 0.30.4% per year. The difference in annual growth owing to LEB between
a typical high-income country with a LEB of 77 years and a typical less-developed country with a LEB of 49 years is
roughly 1.6% per year, and is cumulative over time The relationship between disease and political instability
is indirect but real. A wide-ranging study on the causes of instability indicates that TB prevalence a
good indicator of overall quality of life correlates strongly with political instability, even in countries that
have already achieved a measure of democracy (Van Helden, 2003). The severe social and economic
.

impact of infectious diseases is likely to intensify the struggle for the political power to control
scarce resources. Health must therefore be regarded as a major economic factor and investments in health as a
profitable business. According to the WHO, TB affects working hours in formal and informal economies, as well
as within households (WHO, 2008). Country studies document that each TB patient loses, on average, 34 months of
work time annually due to the disease, and lost earnings amount to 2030% of household income. Families of
people who die from the disease lose approximately 15 years of income. The global burden of TB in
economic terms can therefore be easily calculated: given 8.4 million patients yearly according to the most recent
WHO estimates (Kim et al, 2008), the majority of whom are potential wage-earners, and assuming a 30% decline in
average productivity, the toll amounts to approximately US$1 billion each year. Annual deaths are estimated at two
million and, with an average loss of 15 years of income per death, there is an additional deficit of US$11 billion. Every
12 months TB therefore causes roughly US$12 billion to disappear from the global economy. The social
cost of the lost productivity further increases the burden on society. By contrast, a 50% reduction in TB-related deaths
would cost US$900 million per year, but the return on investment by 2010 would be 22 million people cured, 16 million
deaths averted and US$6 billion saved. Each year there are between 400 and 900 million febrile infections owing to
malaria (0.72.7 million deaths), more than 75% of which are among African children, and less than 20% of these
malaria cases ever see a doctor for treatment. Pregnant women have a higher risk of dying from the infection or of
,

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having children with low birth weight. Children suffer cognitive damage and anaemia, and families spend up to 25% of
their income on treatment. A study by Gallup & Sachs (2000) showed that countries with endemic malaria had income
levels in 1995 that were only 33% of those in countries that do not suffer from malaria. Countries with a severe malaria
burden grew 1.3% less per year, compared with those without. Gallup & Sachs estimated the aggregate loss owing to
the disease in some 25 countries at approximately US$73 billion in 1987, which represented more than 15% of the GDP.
AIDS/HIV also creates an enormous burden for the global economy. In the year 2000, 36.1 million people were living
with AIDS (25 million of whom were in sub-Saharan Africa), 5.3 million people were infected (3.8 million in subSaharan Africa) and three million people died (2.4 million in sub-Saharan Africa), and AIDS has caused 21.8 million
deaths to date. This has a heavy economic impact on society. According to the WHO Macroeconomics Report, the
economic burden of AIDS on sub-Saharan Africa is approximately 72 million disability-adjusted life years (DALY), and
each AIDS death is estimated to have resulted in 34.6 DALYs lost, on average, in 1999 ( WHO, 2003). Assuming that
each DALY is valued at the per capita income, the economic value of lost life years in 1999 caused by AIDS represents
11.7% of the GNP. If each DALY is valued at three times the per capita income, the losses represent 35.1% of the GNP.
In addition, infectious diseases n general, especially those that can cause an epidemic continue to make costly
disruptions to trade and commerce in every region of the world (Table 3). Emerging and re-emerging diseases,
many of which are likely to appear in poorer countries first, can easily spread to richer parts of the world. The burden of
infectious disease already weakens the military capabilities of various countries and international peace-keeping efforts.
This will contribute further to political destabilization in the hardest-hit parts of the world. In slowing down social and
economic development, diseases challenge democratic developments and transitions, and contribute to civil conflicts.
i

Finally, trade embargoes or restrictions on travel and immigration owing to outbreaks of infectious
disease will cause more friction between developing and developed countries, and hinder global
commerce to the greater detriment of poor countries. The effects of infectious diseases over the next decades depend
on three variables: the relationship between increasing microbial resistance and scientific efforts to develop new
antibiotics and vaccines; the future of developing and transitional economies, especially with regard to improving the
basic quality of life for the poorest people; and the success of global and national efforts to create effective systems of
surveillance and response. Depending on these variables, the relationship between humans and infectious diseases, and
their impact on the human race, could take one of the following pathways. The optimistic scenario foresees steady
improvement whereby ageing populations and declining fertility, socioeconomic advances, and improvements in health
care and medical research will lead to a 'health transition' in which infectious diseases will be replaced by non-infectious
diseases such as diabetes, heart disease and cancer, as major health challenges. By contrast, the pessimist scenario of
steady deterioration foresees little or no progress in countering infectious diseases in the future. According to this
scenario, a vicious spiral will develop between infectious diseases and poverty. Major diseases such as
HIV/AIDSwill reach catastrophic proportions as the viruses spread throughout populations as a
result of increased resistance to multi-drug treatments and the unavailability of expensive treatments in
developing countries, which face the majority of the problem. The third and most likely scenario foresees an initial
deterioration followed by limited improvement. Persistent poverty in the least-developed countries will create
conditions that sustain reservoirs of infectious diseases. Microbial resistance will continue to increase faster than the
pace of drug and vaccine development. The threat, in particular from HIV/AIDS, TB or malaria, will cause such

massive socio-economic and cultural upheaval that it will eventually affect a critical mass of
humanity This will create the necessary pressure for a movement towards better prevention and control efforts, with
.

new and effective drugs and vaccines made affordable. This will only later result in demographic changes such as
reduced fertility and ageing populations, and a gradual socioeconomic improvement in most countries. The good news
is that infectious diseases can be easily prevented through simple and inexpensive methods (Sidebar A). This requires
correct education and the spread of knowledge; however, even these simple measures will not be enough to bring
infectious diseases under control if there is no political and international commitment. Governments must be made

to understand the stakes involved in fighting infectious diseasesthis is the only way to guarantee
that the necessary resources will be allocated in sufficient quantities and on time . We need a global
commitment to address the most prominent infectious diseases and to complement local initiatives with special attention
to the least-developed countries (Alilio, 2001; Stop TB Partnership, 2006). This will require analytical and advisory
services in order to help countries generate and act on information about the status and dynamics of most infectious
diseases, and to estimate their social and economic impact. Such information is essential for advocacy, and for making
appropriate and timely decisions. In the face of limited resources, joint efforts will have to focus on the main killer
diseasesincluding HIV/AIDS, TB and malariain order to have the greatest impact. Medical treatment, psychosocial
supportincluding palliative care for debilitating diseasesand highly active anti-microbial therapy will be essential.
In addition, the prevailing problem of the physical and financial inaccessibility of most of these drugs will have to be
addressed. Last, best practices will have to be identified and scaled up. This will require special efforts to identify and
overcome legal barriers, and to analyse, country-by-country, financial and non-financial resources with a view to

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mobilizing support internationally. In conclusion, infectious diseases constitute a major problem for the world, but even
more so for the developing world. No country can afford to remain aloof in the battle against these diseases, especially
given the potentially far-reaching and devastating effects that they could have on the human race at large. Increasing
globalization means that the big questions in relation to epidemics will be those of where and whenand not whether
the next epidemic emerges, as historical examples have shown. Therefore, all stakeholdersresearchers, politicians,
health professionals, the financial sector and the community at largemust take the necessary bold steps forward

Even from the purely economic point of view, the investment in the fight against infectious diseases
is evidently good business: the world economy and, subsequently, individual family economies stands to
benefit from such investments. We already know a lot of what we must do; we just need to do it. The future of
the human race depends on our actions today.
TB collapses the economy
Thomas, Writer for the WHO, 4/8/05 (Chris, Writer for the World Health Organization (WHO), 4/8/05
http://www.usaid.gov/press/frontlines/fl_apr05/pillars.htm )

TB tends to threaten the poorest and most marginalized groups of people. It disrupts the social
fabric of society and slows or undermines gains in economic development. An overwhelming 98
percent of the 2 million annual TB deathsand some 95 percent of all new casesoccur in
developing countries. On average, TB causes three to four months of lost work time and lost
earnings for a household. USAID has been a key player in the Stop TB Partnership, an effort of more than 350
partner governments and organizations. Aside from funding, the Agency invests in the Stop TB Partnership and GDF
by providing technical support. This helps poor countries improve their drug management systems, trains local TB
experts, and helps health ministries draw up comprehensive TB strategies. USAID has been particularly involved in
administering DOTS, a system of observing people while they take the full course of medicine to prevent drug-resistant
strains from developing.

The timeframe for TB is immediate

Lite, 4/1/09 (Jordan Lite, 4/1/09, Scientific American http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/60-secondscience/post.cfm?id=drug-resistant-tuberculosis-a-time-2009-04-01 )

The growing prevalence of drug-resistant tuberculosis is a "potentially explosive situation," the

World Health Organization's director general, Margaret Chan, said today at the opening of a three-day
meeting on the problem.Representatives from 27 countries affected by multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDRTB) and extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis (XDR-TB) are gathering in Beijing to discuss how to
address the trend. MDR-TB is resistant to first-line drugs; XDR-TB doesnt respond to those meds or
second-line therapies. More than 500,000 MDR-TB cases occur annuallyonly 3 percent of them treated according
to WHO standardsand XDR-TB exists in more than 50 countries, the agency says. People with HIV, whose immune
systems are already weakened by the AIDS-causing virus, are at increased risk of TB. "Call it what you maya

time bomb or a powder keg," Chan said today, according to the Associated Press. "Any way you
look at it, this is a potentially explosive situation."
TB causes extinction
Bio-Medicine, 2007 one of the Internets leading online Organizations devoted to biology and
medicine, http://www.bio-medicine.org/medicine-news/The-Dreaded-Disease-Tuberculosis-Raises-ItsUgly-Head-20674-1/The Dreaded Disease Tuberculosis Raises Its Ugly Head When Mr. Andrew Speaker and his wife returned to United States
from Europe they were immediately quarantined by the health officials . Speaker and his family have been fighting back ever since, disputing the accounts of government health officials who contended he
had been warned not to fly because he posed an infection risk to others. The disease in Speaker came to fore when he went for a check up for a rib injury. His X-ray picked up shadow in his right lung and
TB was suspected. Only after intense test it was realized that the TB was drug resistance. But Speaker was not aware of it till late. Until a few weeks ago, many Americans had never heard of extensively
drug-resistant tuberculosis, or XDR-TB. But Speaker got plenty of press as he was ordered into federal quarantine, having crisscrossed the Atlantic on commercial flights while infected with extensively

the drug-resistant strains are winning. Of the 9 million new TB

cases each year, an estimated 450,000 are multi-drug resistant, or MDR. Only two-thirds of MDR TB patients are cured.
The World Health Organization estimates that in 2005, there were 27,000 cases in 37 countries of XDR TB, which is
resistant to at least three of the six second-line drugs used when the first drugs fail. The cure rate for XDR TB patients is just one-third. Scariest of all,
two women in Italy recently died from a fully resistant type of TB that's officially incurable. (Scientists are dubbing it XXDR TB.) Today, TB terrorizes those whose immunity has
been weakened by HIV, hunger, alcoholism or other diseases. If the new strains become dominant, everyone is at risk. The
drug-resistant tuberculosis (XDR-TB). In the 1970s, eradicating TB appeared possible. Now,

rising worldwide number of XDR-TB cases like Speaker's may herald the end of a glorious 60-year holiday from many common and highly contagious diseases -- such as polio, measles and cholera -- that
once routinely ravaged vast swaths of humanity. Ironically, there has long been a disturbing tendency to romanticize the white plague, as tuberculosis is also known. But in real life

, tuberculosis

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is a messy, agonizing and debilitating ordeal. Once the tubercle bacilli gain the momentum to proceed unchecked through
the body, there is no romance to be found. The actual experience of tuberculosis is one of exhaustion, drenching bouts of sweating, groaning, a cough punctuated by
uncontrollable spurts of blood. XDR TB is already too widespread to quarantine. We need to combat it globally before it becomes
pandemic. Last week, the WHO asked governments worldwide to pay up the $3 billion a year needed to fund existing TB programs and an additional $1 billion a year to combat XDR TB. In the U.S., Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and
others proposed spending $300 million on TB next year, much of it on research. Given that isolating and treating a single XDR patient can cost up to $250,000, the case for spending far more on prevention and control is self-evident. Today, more
than one-third of the world's more than 6 billion people have been exposed to the tuberculosis germ. Five to 10 percent of them, or at least 100 million, will develop symptomatic TB. Each will infect 10 to 20 people before they are either successfully

Approximately 420,000, or 5 percent, of them have a drugresistant strain that requires several more medications than drug-sensitive cases do; about 30,000 of these 420,000 cases are
even more difficult and expensive to treat, the highly lethal XDR-TB.
treated or they die. Last year, active -- and contagious -- tuberculosis was diagnosed in more than 8.8 million people.

The impact is staggering TB kills tens of millions three times as many as AIDS
Tarwater, J.D. Candidate @ Georgetown 1 University Law Center
(Jeremy R., Georgetown Immigration Law Journal, The Tuberculosis & HIV Debate in Immigration Law:
Critical Flaws in United States Academic Anti-Exclusion Arguments, Winter 2001, 15 Geo. Immigr. L.J.
357, )
V. TUBERCULOSIS The interconnectedness of HIV/AIDS with sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) and TB "grows increasingly apparent as biomedical and behavioral scientists learn more about
people's susceptibility and risk." n53 Amongst the relatively recent emergence of the HIV/AIDS pandemic, the seriousness of TB has seemingly fallen upon deaf ears in academic circles. Though
many articles speak vehemently for and against the HIV-positive exclusion of immigrants from the United States, few discuss the implications of the significant effects TB and HIV interconnectedness

Tuberculosis, even without an HIV/AIDS dual infection, is worthy of global emergency status.

have on the U.S. and World populations.

The first epidemics began in 1780 during the industrial revolutions of England and peaked in the early 1800s. n54 The epidemic began to decline in North America from a peak in 1900 of 194 cases
per 100,000 persons to less than ten cases per 100,000 in 1982 - the decline was mostly due to improved socioeconomic conditions and the discovery of treatment drugs to fight the disease. n55
Oddly, in 1985 the incidence of TB began to increase up until 1992, when it again began to decline till hitting an [*366] all-time low of 8.7 cases per 100,000 in 1995. n56 The causes for the excess
cases in North America seen in the period between 1985 and 1993 were due to many factors including immigration, ineffective and underfunded public health services, and the HIV epidemic. n57
Today the U.S. rate hovers somewhere below ten cases per 100,000, but it is as high as 300 per 100,000 in some areas and twenty-four per 100,000 in some large cities such as Boston. n58

Today, two billion people, or one-third the world's population, are infected with Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the cause
of TB. n59 Of these, at least twenty million are estimated to be active cases. n60 Within what is classified as avoidable
adult deaths, TB accounts for approximately twenty-six percent or 2.7 million. n61 Thirty-one million people in total will
die of TB in the 1990's (compared to ten million who will die of AIDS). n62 Significant is that transmission of TB is
airborne and thus coughing, sneezing, and even singing can transmit the bacteria. TB is extremely infectious, fifty
percent of people exposed to the TB bacteria are usually infected with latent TB, and ten to fifteen percent of those
individuals will go on to develop the active TB disease. n63 The disease is usually pulmonary (in the lungs) but can
occur in any organ. Even more frightening is the emergence of a Multi-Drug Resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB), a mutant form of the
more common Mycobacterium tuberculosis strain. n64 MDR-TB is a man-made phenomenon caused by the inconsistent or unsuccessful treatment of the common TB disease. An incomplete course
of medication may leave behind a new TB bacteria which is made resistant to the drugs previously utilized. This new mutant strain of bacteria, MDR-TB, will multiply and can be spread by the
infectious patient to other victims by air. MDR-TB is resistant to at least two antibiotics, but strains have been observed which are resistant to as many as nine drugs. n65 MDR-TB outbreaks have
been seen in regions all over the world from Russia [*367] to South Africa, and from London to New York City. n66 A study by the World Health Organization (WHO) in 1997 found MDR-TB in every

MDR-TB is a highly
dangerous disease, especially because it is airborne, and it is on the rise even in the United States. In the thirty-nine states of the
one of the thirty-five countries it studied, and researchers estimate that MDR cases account for upwards of fourteen percent of the world's current TB case total. n67

U.S. where reporting was collected, at least one MDR-TB case was found. n68 In twenty-seven percent of the hospitals which had a case of MDR-TB, there were not proper facilities available to treat
the mutant strain. n69 Even more problematic, New York City has reported a "w" strain of the MDR-TB observed in over one hundred cases which is resistant to every major TB treatment drug

n70 Drug treatment for this mutant strain of TB is difficult and very expensive;

available.
costs are estimated at $ 250,000, a figure almost one
hundred times more than the price of treating a usual case of TB in the United States. n71 In developing nations, nearly all patients with recorded MDR-TB die because the cost is so prohibitive and

developed nations fare little better where fifty percent of patients with the resistant TB die due to the difficulty of
treatment. n72

TB is already the second biggest killer in the world. Left unchecked it would go global.
Middle East Online News 3/24/02 l/n
Washington - March 24 has been designated by the World Health Organization as World Tuberculosis Day. This very date, 120 years ago, Dr. Robert Koch - a German medical researcher announced to the European medical community that he had discovered the bacterium that causes tuberculosis. His discovery was considered a medical breakthrough that promised to put an end to

tuberculosis continues to kill millions of people every year. In the late 19th
century, tuberculosis a bacterial disease spread through the air - killed one out of every seven
people in the United States and in Europe. Today, this infectious disease remains the second
leading killer in the world after AIDS, with more than two million TB-related deaths each year.
the disease. But today, over a century later ,

Tuberculosis strikes somewhere in the world every second.

According to Michael Iademarco of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, the disease primarily
plagues developing countries. "Countries such as India, and China, Vietnam, the Philippines. There is a list of 23 high burdened countries in the world. It's from this set of 23 countries that 80 percent
of the world's TB burden comes from," he says. Dr. Iadenmarco says that poverty and poor health conditions contribute significantly to the spread of tuberculosis in those countries. "Many of these 23
high burdened countries, for example, are lower or low income countries. So, they don't have adequate health infrastructure and so, therefore, it is very difficult to coordinate, organize and provide
the drugs for adequate TB control. A more social reason is that TB historically is a very stigmatizing disease. People don't want other people to know that they have tuberculosis. This prevents people

Today, tuberculosis appears to be a disease of the developing world.

But, if it is not checked, it could spread anywhere, including the United States.
from going and seeking appropriate treatments," he says.

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**International Law**
Accepting customary international legal norms is key to solving multiple global issues.
Charney03[10/03JonathanI.Charney,OftheBoardofEditors.Supportforthispaperwasprovided

bytheVanderbiltUniversitySchoolofLaw.ResearchassistancewasprovidedbyJennifer
McGinty,J.D.VanderbiltUniversity,1993.UniversalInternationalLaw,Lexis]
Toresolvesuchproblems,itmaybenecessarytoestablishnewrulesthatarebindingonallsubjectsofinternationallawregardless
oftheattitudeofanyparticularstate.Forunlessallstatesarebound,anexemptedrecalcitrantstatecouldactasaspoilerforthe
entireinternationalcommunity.Thus,statesthatarenotboundbyinternationallawsdesignedtocombatuniversalenvironmental
threatscouldbecomehavensfortheharmfulactivitiesconcerned.Suchstatesmighthaveaneconomicadvantageoverstatesthat
areboundbecausetheywouldnothavetobearthecostsoftherequisiteenvironmentalprotection.Theywouldbefreeriderson
thesystemandwouldbenefitfromtheenvironmentallyprotectivemeasuresintroducedbyothersatsomecost.Furthermore,the
exampleofsuchfreeridersmightunderminethesystembyencouragingotherstatesnottoparticipate,andcouldthusderailthe
entireeffort.Similarly,inthecaseofinternationalterrorism,onestatethatservesasasafehavenforterroristscanthreatenall.
Warcrimes,apartheidorgenocidecommittedinonestatemightthreateninternationalpeaceandsecurityworldwide.Consequently,

forcertaincircumstancesitmaybeincumbentontheinternationalcommunitytoestablishinternationallawthatisbindingonallstatesregardless
ofanyonestate'sdisposition.Unfortunately,thetraditionsoftheinternationallegalsystemappeartoworkagainsttheabilitytolegislate
universalnorms.Statesaresaidtobesovereign,thusabletodetermineforthemselveswhattheymustormaydo.Stateautonomycontinuesto
servetheinternationalsystemwellintraditionalspheresofinternationalrelations.Thefreedomofstatestocontroltheirowndestiniesand
policieshassubstantialvalue:itpermitsdiversityandthechoicebyeachstateofitsownsocialpriorities.Few,ifany,statesfavoraworld
governmentthatwoulddictateuniformbehaviorforall.Consequently,manywritersusethelanguageofautonomywhentheydeclarethat
internationallawrequirestheconsentofthestatesthataregovernedbyit.Manytakethepositionthatastatethatdoesnotwishtobeboundbya
newruleofinternationallawmayobjecttoitandbeexemptedfromitsapplication.Ifsovereigntyandautonomyprevailedinallareasof
internationallaw,however,onecouldhardlyhopetodeveloprulestobindallstates.Inacommunityofnearlytwohundreddiversestates,itis
virtuallyimpossibletoobtaintheacceptanceofalltoanynorm,particularlyonethatrequiressignificantexpensesorchangesinbehavior.
Completeautonomymayhavebeenacceptableinthepastwhennostatecouldtakeactionsthatwouldthreatentheinternationalcommunityasa
whole.Today,theenormousdestructivepotentialofsomeactivitiesandtheprecariousconditionofsomeobjectsofinternationalconcernmake
fullautonomyundesirable,ifnotpotentiallycatastrophic.InthisarticleIexplorethelimitsofstateautonomytodeterminewhethersomeorallof
internationallawmaybemadeuniversallybindingregardlessofthepositionofoneorasmallnumberofunwillingstates.Toaccomplishthis
objective,Ibeginbyanalyzingthesecondaryrulesofrecognition(thedoctrineofsources)usedtoestablishprimaryrulesofinternationallaw.
Whiletreatiesmayrequiretheconsentofindividualstatestobebindingonthem,suchconsentisnotrequiredforcustomarynorms.Finally,I
exploreingreaterdepththeactualprocessesbywhichmanycustomarylawnormshavecomeintobeinginthelasthalfofthetwentiethcentury.
Thecontemporaryprocessthatisoftenusedissignificantlydifferentfromthatdescribedintheclassictreatisesontheformationofcustomary
law.Contemporaryproceduraldevelopmentsplacetheinternationallegalsystemclosertothemoreformalnotionsofpositivelaw,facilitating
thedevelopmentofuniversalinternationallaw.Theseproceduraldevelopmentsstrengthentheargumentthatthesystemmayestablishgeneral
internationallawbindingonallstates,regardlessoftheobjectionofasmallnumberofstates.Likemanyothers,Itakethepositionthatthere
existsaninternationallegalsystemwithstandardsandproceduresformaking,applyingandenforcinginternationallaw. n6Asajurisprudential
matter,thesourceoftheobligationtoabidebyinternationallawisamatterofdebate.Perhapsthemostpopulartheoryisthatstatesbecome
boundtotheinternationallegalsystemonthebasisofasocialcontract,actualconsentortacitconsent.n7Othertheoriesdispensewithconsent
as thesourceofastate'sobligationtoabidebyinternationallaw.Theprincipalonesmaintain(1)thatnaturallawimposesadutyonthose
locatedwithintheterritorialscopeofthelegalsystemtoabidebyit,especiallywhenitislegitimateandjust;n8(2)thatprinciplesoffairplayor
gratitudebindthosewhobenefitfromthelegalsystemtoabidebyitsrules;n9and(3)thatutilitarianconsiderationsbasedonthevalueofthe
ruleorofthesystemtoindividualsobligatethemtoabidebythelaw.n10Dependinguponthetheory,theconsentofstatesmayormaynotbe
foundattherootofallinternationallaw.Bethatasitmay,thesystemofinternationallawservesthepracticalinterestsofstates. Asistrueof

allsocieties,theinternationalcommunityhasaneedforrulestoimpartadegreeoforder,predictabilityandstabilitytorelations
amongitsmembers.Therulesofthesystemalsopermitmemberstoavoidconflictandinjury,andpromotebeneficialreciprocal
andcooperativerelations.Theymayevenpromotevaluesofjusticeandmorality.Theinternationallegalsystemissupportednot
onlybystates'interestsinpromotingindividualrules,butalsobytheirinterestsinpreservingandpromotingthesystemasa
whole.Thus,statescollectivelyandseverallymaintainaninterestinencouraginglawabidingbehavior.Thereisalsoaneffective
decentralizedsystemforimposingsanctionsonviolatorsofthelawthroughindividualstateandcollectiveactsofdisapproval,
denialandpenalties.Fearofsanctions,thedesiretobeviewedbyothersaslawabiding,anddomesticinstitutionalinclinationsto
conformtorulesdenominatedaslawfurtherimpelstatestocomplywithinternationallaw.Despitethedecentralizednatureofthe
international legal system, there are strong reasons why states need international law and are compelled to abide by it. Its
decentralizedstructureplacessomelimitsonwhatcanbeaccomplished,butwithinthoselimitsinternationallawhasanimportant
role.Eventhoughindividualstatesmayfindshorttermadvantagesinviolatingthelawinparticularsituations,theirlongterm
interestsarelikelytobeservedbestbythesystem.Becausethedecentralizedinternationallegalsystemisgoverneddirectlybythe
subjectsofthelaw,i.e.,states,itinherentlyfavorsrulesoflawthatoptimizetheinterestsofstates. Despitethedifferencesin

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power and influence ofstates, noindividual or small group ofstatesisnowdominant.Decisions tendtoreflect the power
relationshipsandtherightofallstatestoparticipateinreachingthem.Whenthelawmakersthemselvesaretheprimarysubjectsof
thelaw,thelawshouldreflecttheircollectiveinterests.

Theonlyalternativetointernationallawisgenocideandnuclearwar.
Shaw01[10/3/01MartinShawProfessorofInternationalRelationsandPoliticsattheUniversityof
Sussex.Theunfinishedglobalrevolution:intellectualsandthenewpoliticsofinternationalrelations
http://www.martinshaw.org/unfinished.pdf]
Thenewpoliticsofinternationalrelationsrequireus,therefore,togobeyondtheantiimperialismoftheintellectualleftaswellas
ofthesemianarchisttraditionsoftheacademicdiscipline.Weneedtorecognizethreefundamentaltruths.First,inthetwentyfirst
centurypeoplestrugglingfordemocraticlibertiesacrossthenonWesternworldarelikelytomakeconstantdemandsonour
solidarity.Courageousacademics,studentsandotherintellectualswillbeintheforefrontofthesemovements.Theydeservethe
unstintingsupportofintellectualsintheWest.Second,theoldinternationalthinkinginwhichdemocraticmovementsareseenas
purelyinternaltostatesnolongercarriesconvictiondespitethelingeringnostalgiaforitonboththeAmericanrightandtheanti
Americanleft.Theideathatglobalprinciplescanandshouldbeenforcedworldwideisfirmlyestablishedinthemindsofhundreds
ofmillionsofpeople.Thisconsciousnesswillapowerfulforceinthecomingdecades.Third,globalstateformationisafact.
Internationalinstitutionsarebeingextended,and(likeitornot)theyhaveasymbioticrelationwiththemajorcentreofstate
power,theincreasinglyinternationalisedWesternconglomerate.Thesuccessoftheglobaldemocraticrevolutionarywavedepends
firstonhowwellitisconsolidatedineachnationalcontextbutsecond,howthoroughlyitisembeddedininternationalnetworks
ofpower,atthecentreofwhich,inescapably,istheWest.Fromonthesepoliticalfundamentals,strategicpropositionscanbe
derived.First,democraticmovementscannotregardnongovernmentalorganisationsandcivilsocietyasendsinthemselves.They
mustaimtociviliselocalstates,renderingthemopen,accountableandpluralistic,andcurtailthearbitraryandviolentexerciseof
power.Second,democratisinglocalstatesisnotaseparatetaskfromintegratingthemintoglobalandoftenWesterncentred
networks.Reproducingisolatedlocalcentresofpowercarrieswithitclassicdangersofstatesascentresofwar.84 Embedding
globalnormsandintegratingnewstatecentreswithglobalinstitutionalframeworksareessentialtothecontrolofviolence. (Toput
thisanotherway:theproliferationofpurelynationaldemocraciesisnotarecipeforpeace.)Third,whiletheglobalrevolution
cannotdowithouttheWestandtheUN,neithercanitrelyonthemunconditionally.Weneedthesepowernetworks,butweneed
to tame them too, to make their messy bureaucracies enormously more accountable and sensitive to the needs of society
worldwide.ThiswillinvolvethekindofcosmopolitandemocracyarguedforbyDavidHeld85.Itwillalsorequireustoadvance
aglobalsocialdemocraticagenda,toaddresstheliterallycatastrophicscaleofworldsocialinequalities.Thisisnotaseparate
problem:socialandeconomicreformisanessentialingredientofalternativestowarlikeandgenocidalpower;thesefeedoffand
reinforcecorruptandcriminalpoliticaleconomies.Fourth,
ifweneedtheglobalWesternstate,ifwewanttodemocratiseitand
makeitsinstitutionsfriendliertoglobalpeaceandjustice,wecannotbeindifferenttoitsstrategicdebates.Itmatterstodevelop
international political interventions, legal institutions and robust peacekeeping as strategic alternatives to bombing our way
throughzonesofcrisis.Itmattersthatinternationalinterventionsupportspluraliststructures,ratherthanratifyingBosniastyle
apartheid.86AspoliticalintellectualsintheWest,weneedtohaveoureyesontheballatourfeet,butwealsoneedtoraisethem
tothehorizon.Weneedtograspthehistoricdramathatistransformingworldwiderelationshipsbetweenpeopleandstate,aswell
asbetweenstateandstate.Weneedtothinkabouthowtheturbulenceoftheglobalrevolutioncanbeconsolidatedindemocratic,
pluralist,internationalnetworksofbothsocialrelationsandstateauthority.Wecannotbesimplyoptimisticaboutthisprospect.
Sadly,itwillrequirerepeatedviolentpoliticalcrisestopushWesternandothergovernmentstowardstherequiredrestructuringof
worldinstitutions.87WhatIhaveoutlinedisahugechallenge;butthealternativeistoseetheglobalrevolutionsplutterintopartial
defeat,ordegenerateintonewgenocidalwarsperhapsevennuclearconflicts.Thepracticalchallengeforallconcernedcitizens,
andthetheoreticalandanalyticalchallengesforstudentsofinternationalrelationsandpolitics,areintertwined.

International law key to global human rights

Ignatieff April 4-7, 2000. The Tanner Lectures on Human Values, Princeton Univ.
http://www.tannerlectures.utah.edu/lectures/Ignatieff_01.pdf
We know from historical experience that when human beings have defensible rightswhen their agency as
individuals is protected and enhancedthey are less likely to be abused and oppressed. On these grounds, we
count the diffusion of human rights instruments as progress even if there remains an unconscionable gap
between the instruments and the actual practices of states charged to comply with them. Calling the global
diffusion of Western human rights a sign of moral progress may seem Eurocentric. Yet the human rights

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instruments created after 1945 were not a triumphant expression of European imperial self-conscience but a
reection on European nihilism and its consequences, at the end of a catastrophic world war in which European
civilization very nearly destroyed itself. Human rights was a response to Dr. Pannwitz, to the discovery of the
abomination that could occur when the Westphalian state was accorded unlimited sovereignty, when citizens of
that state lacked criteria in international law that could oblige them to disobey legal but immoral orders. The
Universal Declaration represented a return by the European tradition to its natural law heritage, a return intended
to restore agency, to give individuals the juridical resources to stand up when the state ordered them to do
wrong. 2. The Juridical, Advocacy, and Enforcement Revolutions Historically speaking, the Universal
Declaration is part of a wider reordering of the normative order of postwar international relations, designed to
create re-walls against barbarism. The juridical revolution included the UN Charter of 1945, outlawing
aggressive war between states; the Genocide Convention of 1948, protecting religious, racial, and ethnic groups
against extermination; the revision of the Geneva Conventions of 1949, strengthening noncombatant immunity;
and nally the international convention on asylum of 1951 to protect the rights of refugees. Before the Second
World War, only states had rights in international law. With the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948,
the [Ignatieff] Human Rights 289 rights of individuals received international legal recognition.3 For the rst
time, individualsregardless of race, creed, gender, age, or any other statuswere granted rights that they
could use to challenge unjust state law or oppressive customary practice.

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**Justice**
Justice must save humanity and weigh
Sissela Bok, Professor of Philosophy, Brandeis, Applied Ethics and Ethical Theory, Ed. David
Rosenthal and Fudlou Shehadi, 1988
The same argument can be made for Kant's other formulations of the Categorical Imperative: "So act as to use humanity, both in your own person and in the person of every other, always at the same time as an end, never simply as a

No one with a concern for humanity could consistently

risk eliminating humanity in the person of himself and every other or to risk the death of all members in a universal Kingdom of Ends for the sake of justice.
To risk their collective death for the sake of following one's conscience would be, as Rawls said, "irrational, crazy." And to say that one did not intend such a
catastrophe, but that one merely failed to stop other persons from bringing it about would be beside the point when
the end of the world was at stake, For although it is true that we cannot be held responsible for most of the wrongs that others commit, the Latin maxim presents a case where
we would have to take such a responsibility seriously - perhaps to the point of deceiving, bribing, even killing
an innocent person, in order that the world not perish.
means"; and "So act as if you were always through actions a law-making member in a universal Kingdom of Ends."
will to

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**Patriarchy**
Failure to change the current patriarchal discourse makes nuclear holocausts inevitable.
Reardon, UN consultant and human rights education author 93 (Betty, a, Women and PeaceFeminist Visions of Global Secunty, p. 30-31)
In an article entitled "Naming the Cultural Forces That Push Us toward War" (1983), Charlene Spretnak focused on
some of the fundamental cultural factors that deeply influence ways of thinking about security. She argues that
patriarchy encourages militarist tendencies. Since a major war now could easily bring on massive annihilation of
almost unthinkable proportions, why are discussions in our national forums addressing the madness of the nuclear
arms race limited to matters of hardware and statistics? A more comprehensive analysis is badly needed. . . A clearly
visible element in the escalating tensions among militarized nations is the macho posturing and the patriarchal ideal of
dominance, not parity, which motivates defense ministers and government leaders to "strut their stuff' as we watch with
increasing horror. Most men in our patriarchal culture are still acting out old patterns that are radically inappropriate for
the nuclear age. To prove dominance and control, to distance one's character from that of women, to survive the
toughest violent initiation, to shed the sacred blood of the hero, to collaborate with death in order to hold it at bay--all of
these patriarchal pressures on men have traditionally reached resolution in ritual fashion on the battlefield. But there is
no longer any battlefield. Does anyone seriously believe that if a nuclear power were losing a crucial, large-scale
conventional war it would refrain from using its multiple-warhead nuclear missiles 12 because of some diplomatic
agreement? The military theater of a nuclear exchange today would extend, instantly or eventually, to all living things,
all the air, all the soil, all the water. If we believe that war is a "necessary evil," that patriarchal assumptions are simply
"human nature," then we are locked into a lie, paralyzed. The ultimate result of unchecked terminal patriarchy will be
nuclear holocaust. The causes of recurrent warfare are not biological. Neither are they solely economic. They are also
a result of patriarchal ways of thinking, which historically have generated considerable pressure for standing armies to
be used. (Spretnak 1983)

Gender oppression is the root cause of environmental destruction

Cuomo, Associate Professor of Philosophy and Women's Studies 2 (Chris, @ University of
Cincinnati, ETHICS & THE ENVIRONMENT, p.3)
I take that phrase "power and promise," an unusually optimistic measure for anything in the contemporary discipline of
philosophy, from the title of Karen Warren's widely-read and often reprinted 1991 essay, "The Power and Promise of
Ecological Feminism." That essay includes an argument that is basic to Warren's Ecofeminist Philosophy, and that is
commonly characterized as the fundamental insight of ecofeminism. The view argued for is that a "logic of domination"
that divides the world into bifurcated hierarchies is basic to all forms of oppression and domination. This logic (which
Warren also calls a "conceptual framework") is a way of thinking that encourages separating from and mistreating
nature and members of subordinated groups, for no good reason. In addition, the conceptual frameworks that are used
to justify racism, sexism, and the mistreatment of nature (efe.), are interwoven and mutually reinforcing. Some
ecofeminists find that the very aspects of identity and otherness (gender, race, class, species, efe.) are created
through conceptual frameworks that encourage domination rather than connection, but Warren remains agnostic about
such ontological issues. Her emphasis instead is on a more basic point - that the morally loaded concepts through
which we understand ourselves and reality (and through which "we" humans have historically constructed knowledge)
are at the core of the terrible ecological and social messes we currently face.

Patriarchy makes environmental collapse, sexism, and war inevitabilities extinction is inevitable.
Warren and Cady Professor @ Macalester U 96 (Karen,., and Duane, Professor @ Hamline, Bringing
peace home: feminism, violence, and nature, 1996, p.12-13)
Operationalized, the evidence of patriarchy as a dysfunctional system is found in the behaviors to which it gives rise, (c) the unmanageability, (d) which results. For example, in the United States,

one out of every three or four women will be raped by someone she knows; globally, rape, sexual
harassment, spouse-beating, and sado-massochistic pornography are examples of behaviors practiced, sanctioned, or
tolerated within patriarchy. In the realm of environmentally destructive behaviors, strip-mining, factory farming, and
pollution of the air, water, and soil are instances of behaviors maintained and sanctioned within patriarchy. They, too,
rest on the faulty beliefs that it is okay to rape the earth, that it is mans God-given right to have dominion (that is domination) over the earth, that nature has
only instrumental value that environmental destruction is the acceptable price we pay for progress. And the presumption of warism, that war is a natural,
righteous, and ordinary way to impose dominion on a people or nation, goes hand in hand with patriarchy and leads to
dysfunctional behaviors of nations and ultimately to international unmanageability. Much of the current unmanageability of contemporary life in
current estimates are that

patriarchal societies, (d) is then viewed as a consequence of a patriarchal preoccupation with activities, events, and experiences that reflect historically male-gender-identified beliefs, values,

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precisely those concerns with nuclear proliferation, war, and

environmental destruction, and violence towards women, which many feminists see as the logical outgrowth of
patriarchal thinking. In fact, it is often only through observing these dysfunctional behaviorsthe symptoms of dysfunctionalitythat one can truly see that and how patriarchy serves to
attitudes, and assumptions. Included among these real-life consequences are

maintain and perpetuate them. When patriarchy is understood as a dysfunctional system, this unmanageability can be seen for what it isas a predictable and thus logical consequence of
patriarchy. The theme that global environmental crises, war, and violence generally are predictable and logical consequences of sexism and patriarchal culture is pervasive in ecofeminist literature.

a militarism and warfare are continual features of a patriarchal society because

they reflect and instill patriarchal values and fulfill needs of such a system. Acknowledging the context of patriarchal conceptualizations that feed
Ecofeminist Charlene Spretnak, for instance, argues that

militarism is a first step toward reducing their impact and preserving life on Earth. Stated in terms of the foregoing model of patriarchy as a dysfunctional social system, the claims by Spretnak and

Patriarchal conceptual frameworks legitimate impaired thinking (about women, national and
regional conflict, the environment) which is manifested in behaviors which, if continued, will make life on earth difficult,
if not impossible. It is a stark message, but it is plausible. Its plausibility lies in understanding the conceptual roots of various woman-nature-peace connections in regional, national, and
other feminists take on a clearer meaning:

global contexts.

Gender oppression is the root cause of violence.

Peterson, Associate Professor of Political Science 00 (V. Spike, @ the University of Arizona, SAIS
REVIEW, "Rereading Public and Private: The Dichotomy that is Not One." Vol. 20, Iss. 2; pg. 11 NMG)
Gender-sensitive accounts go beyond this by bringing everyday practices, reproductive processes, and the politics of subjectivity into relation with states, security, and political economy questions.
For example, conventional neglect of the family impoverishes our understanding not only of how reproductive labor keeps our worlds "working," but also of how individual and collective identities,
cultural practices, divisions of labor, group ideologies, and socio-cultural [End Page 18] meaning systems are (re)produced and resisted. In various ways, some more direct than others, these are

Consider that the family/household is the primary site of reproductive labor

that makes all societal reproduction possible, of subject formation and cultural learning that naturalizes ideologies and
encourages group identifications (religious, racial/ethnic, national), and of gender-socialization that encourages boys to
be independent, competitive, in control, and "hard," and girls to be relationship-oriented, non-aggressive, nurturing,
and "soft." 19 Moreover, neglect of the private (as familial and personal) has prevented IR theorists from taking desire
and emotional investments seriously. Modernist dichotomies fuel this bias by casting reason as antithetical to--rather
than inseparable from--emotion. Our fear of "contaminating" objective reason and research by acknowledging the role
of emotion and commitment has impoverished our study of and knowledge about major social dynamics. As a
consequence, in regard to security studies, we are tragically ill-informed in the face of often violent social forces such
as nationalism, neo-fascism, and fundamentalism, in part because scholars avoid dealing with the power of emotional
engagement and its effects on political identification and allegiance . Regarding political economy, we deny the effects of subjective identities in
crucial factors in sustaining (and contesting) the state and its legitimacy.

structuring labor markets, job performance, and national productivity. And we are only beginning to grasp the interaction of desires and identities with consumption patterns and hence the global
political economy. Even less familiar, but increasingly salient: we are ill-prepared to analyze the dependence of financial markets on psychological phenomena (risk-assessment, "trust" in the stock
market), and what we must acknowledge are "non-rational" features of the international financial system. Regarding security issues--a focal point of IR inquiry--feminists argue that gendered

acts of direct violence are committed by men. Yet not all

men are violent, and societies vary dramatically in exhibiting violence, which suggests that biologistic explanations are,
at best, nave. Whatever else is entailed in accounting for systematic violence, it is absolutely remarkable--one might
even suggest irrational--that so little attention has been devoted to assessing the role of masculinity in this maledominated arena. Feminists insist that our investigations of violence--from war atrocities to schoolyard killings and
domestic battering--take seriously how masculinity is constructed, internalized, enacted, reinforced, and glorified. In IR,
such recognition requires that we seriously consider the question: Is militarism without masculinism possible?
identities are key to manifestations of violence. Empirical evidence indicates that, worldwide, most

Gender oppression fuels militarism that is the root cause of otherization and violence.
Peterson and Runyan, professor of political science 99 (V. Spike and Anne @ the University of Arizona
and professor of womens studies @ Wright State University, Global Gender Issues, 2nd edition, p. 56-57)
A willingness to engage in violence is built into our constructions of masculinity and is exacerbated by militarization--the
extension of military practices into civilian life. And to the extent that we define national security as the defense and protection of sovereignty, militarization becomes hard to avoid . Believing
that peace requires preparation for war, we become locked into arms races and other self-perpetuating cycles. These
involve sacrificing social welfare objectives in favor of defense spending and training young people-men and women-to risk lives and practice violence in the name of putatively higher objectives.
There are no simple formulas for determining appropriate trade-offs between "butter" and "guns," and we are not suggesting that security concerns are illusory or easily resolved. But in a climate of

the construction of security in

military terms--understood as direct violence--often masks the systemic insecurity of indirect or structural violence.31 The
militarization, we must be careful to assess the ostensible gains from encouraging violence because the actual costs are very great. Moreover,

latter arises from social, economic, and political structures that increase the vulnerability of particular groups to forms of harm (e.g., greater infant mortality among poor women who have re- duced

When we ignore this fact, we ignore the

security of the majority of the planet's occupants. Finally, because violence is gendered, militarization has a reciprocal
relationship to masculinist ideologies: The macho effects of military activities, the objectifying effects of military
technologies, and the violent effects of military spending interact, escalating not only arms races but also direct and
indirect sexual violence. What the gendered division of violence constructs is a world shaped by hostile forces and the
naturalization of war against "the feminine." In a self-repeating cycle, threats (real or fictive) increase preparations for
defense and/or retaliation that are inextricable from conditions of structural violence. An oppositional lens magnifies
and legitimates self-other, us- them, friend-enemy, aggressive-passive, soldier-victim, and protector-protected
dichotomies. The latter dichotomy is institutionalized in protection rackets: creating a threat and then charging for
protection against it. Some theorists argue that nation-states engage in such rackets by creating a system of mutually
threatening centralized governments and charging citizens taxes and military service to support effective defense of state boundaries.32 Feminists have similarly identified
marriage as a protection racket. Under conditions of systemic male violence, women are forced to seek protection by entering into disadvantageous marriages to individual men . People often
access to health-care services). Structural violence especially affects the lives of women and other subordinated groups .

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fail to see the repetition of the same pattern in different situations, to recognize the self-perpetuating and costly nature
of this violence, and to seek a way to break these self-destructive cycles.33

Gender polarization risks destruction of the planet.

Bem, 93 (Sandra Lipsitz, Professor of Psychology at Cornell, The Lenses of Gender 1993, p. 193)
In addition to the humanist and feminist arguments against gender polarization, there is an overarching moral
argument that fuses the antihumanist and antifeminist aspects of gender polarization. The essence of this moral
argument is that by polarizing human values and human experiences into the masculine and feminine, gender
polarization not only helps to keep culture in the grip of males themselves; it also keeps the culture in the grip of highly
polarized masculine values to emphasize making war over keeping the peace, taking risks over giving care, and even
mastering nature over harmonizing with nature that when allowed to dominate societal and even global decision
making, they create the danger that humans will destroy not just each other in massive numbers but the planet.

Patriarchy kills us allSpretnak MA in English from Berkely 89 (, Author, Source: Charlene, Exposing
the Nuclear Phallacies, Editor, Diana EH Russell, Page: 53-54, Title: Charlene, Exposing the Nuclear
Phallacies, CD)
Women and men can live together and can relate to other societies in any number of cultural configurations, but ignorance of the configurations themselves locks a
populace into blind adherence to the status quo. In the nuclear age, such unexamined acceptance may be fatal as certain cultural assumptions in our own society are

major war could now easily bring on massive annihilation of almost unthinkable
proportions, why are discussions in our national forums addressing this madness of the nuclear arms race
limited to matters of hardware and statistics ? A more comprehensive analysis is needed-unless, as the doomsayers claim, we collectively
harbor a death wish and no not really want to look closely at dynamics propelling us steadily toward the brink of extinction. The cause of nuclear arms
proliferation is militarism . What is the cause of militarism? The traditional militarist explanation is that the masters of war in the military-industrial complex
pushing us closer and closer to war. Since a

profit enormously from defense contracts and other war preparations. A capitalist economy periodically requires the economic boon that large-scale government
spending, capitol investment, and worker sacrifice produce during a crisis of war. In addition, American armed forces, whether nuclear or conventional, are stationed
worldwide to protect the status quo, which requires vast and interlocking American corporate interests. Such an economic analysis alone in inadequate, as the recent

Militarism and warfare are

continual features of patriarchal society because they reflect and instill patriarchal values and fulfill essential
needs of such a system . Acknowledging the context of patriarchal conceptualizations that feed militarism is a
first step toward reducing their impact and preserving life on Earth.
responses to the nuclear arms race that ignore the cultural orientation of the nations involved: They are patriarchies.

Only by breaking down patriarchy can we protect human survival

Steans Lecturer on International Relations 98 [Jill, , International Relations Theory, University of
Birmingham, Gender and International Relations: An Introduction, p. 102-103]
war, violence and womens oppression all grow from the same root. Military
institutions and states are inseparable from patriarchy. War is not then, as realists and neo-realists would hold, rooted in the nature of man or the anarchy of
In this view, not only is war part of womens daily existence, but

the international realm. However, the hegemony of a dominance-orientated masculinity sets the dynamics of the social relations in which all are forced to participate. Some
feminists argue that patriarchal societies have an inherent proclivity towards war because of the supreme value placed on control and the natural male tendency towards displays of
physical force. Though primarily concerned with the discourse of war, politics and citizenship, Harstock argues that the association of power with masculinity and virility has very
real consequences. She argues that it gives rise to a view of community both in theory and in fact obsessed with the revenge and structured by conquest and domination.
Furthermore, according to Harstock,

the opposition of man to woman and perhaps even man to man is not simply a transitory opposition
of arbitrary interests, but an opposition resting on a deep-going threat to existence. She argues that we re-encounter in the context of gender, as in
class, the fact that the experience of the ruling group, or gender, cannot simply be dismissed as false. This raises the question of how we conceptualize and understand not only the
patriarchal state, but also the relationship between the patriarchal nation-state requiring in the context of competitive struggle with other states militarism and internal hierarchy. [IT
CONTINUES] Human survival may depend upon breaking the linkage between masculinity, military capacity and death. It is for
feminists and others committed to peace to provide new thinking about the nature of politics, to redefine political community and our ideas of citizenship and, in so doing, confront
the barracks community directly with its fear of the feminine. Feminist challenges to dominant conceptions of citizenship, political community and security and feminist
revisions are the subject of chapter 5.

Patriarchy is the root cause of wars

Reardon 93
(Betty A. Reardon, Director of the Peace Education Program at Teachers College Columbia
University, 1993, Women and Peace: Feminist Visions of Global Security, p. 30-2 (PDNSS6401))
In an article entitled Naming the Cultural Forces That Push Us toward War (1983), Charlene Spretnak focused on
some of the fundamental cultural factors that deeply influence ways of thinking about security. She argues that
patriarchy encourages militarist tendencies. Since a major war now could easily bring on massive annihilation
of almost unthinkable proportions, why are discussions in our national forums addressing the madness of the nuclear
arms race limited to matters of hardware and statistics? A more comprehensive analysis is badly needed . . . A clearly

visible element in the escalating tensions among militarized nations is the macho posturing and the
patriarchal ideal of dominance, not parity, which motivates defense ministers and government

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leaders to strut their stuff as we watch with increasing horror. Most men in our patriarchal culture are still
acting out old patterns that are radically inappropriate for the nuclear age. To prove dominance and control, to
distance ones character from that of women, to survive the toughest violent initiation , to shed the
sacred blood of the hero, to collaborate with death in order to hold it at bay all of these patriarchal pressures on
men have traditionally reached resolution in ritual fashion on the battlefield. But there is no longer any
battlefield. Does anyone seriously believe that if a nuclear power were losing a crucial, large-scale conventional war it
would refrain from using its multiple-warhead nuclear missiles because of some diplomatic agreement? The military

theater of a nuclear exchange today would extend, instantly or eventually, to all living things, all the
air, all the soil, all the water. If we believe that war is a necessary evil, that patriarchal assumptions are simply
human nature, then we are locked into a lie, paralyzed. The ultimate result of unchecked terminal patriarchy will be
nuclear holocaust. The causes of recurrent warfare are not biological. Neither are they solely economic. They are also

a result of patriarchal ways of thinking, which historically have generated considerable pressure for
standing armies to be used. (Spretnak 1983)
Patriarchy is the root of all violence and war
Hooks 04
(hooks, professor of English at City College, 2004 (bell, The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity and Love. P 26-27))

Citizens in this nation fear challenging patriarchy even as they lack overt awareness that they are
fearful, so deeply embedded in our collective unconscious are the rules of patriarchy . I often tell
audiences that if we were to go door-todoor asking if we should end male violence against women, most people would
give their unequivocal support. Then if you told them we can only stop male violence against women by ending male
domination, by eradicating patriarchy, they would begin to hesitate, to change their position. Despite the many

gains of contemporary feminist movement-greater equality for women in the workforce, more
tolerance for the relinquishing of rigid gender roles- patriarchy as a system remains intact, and
many people continue to believe that it is needed if humans are to survive as a species. This belief
seems ironic, given that patriarchal methods of organizing nations, especially the insistence on violence as a
means of social control, has actually led to the slaughter of millions of people on the planet.

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**Nanotech**
Unregulated nanotech causes extinction-arms race
CRN Center for Responsible Nanotechnology 04 (, Disaster Scenarios, 7-19-04,
http://crnano.typepad.com/crnblog/2004/07/disaster_scenar.html)
Highly plausible. A nano arms race appears almost inevitable, and would probably be unstable as discussed in the military
capabilities study (#20). A nano-enabled war would probably be lethal to many civilians. As pointed out by Tom McCarthy,
"Military planners will seek a target that is large enough to find and hit, and that cannot be easily replaced. The natural
choice, given the circumstances, will be civilian populations." Both full-scale war and unconventional/terroristic war will
target civilians, who will be nearly impossible to defend without major lifestyle changes. It would be easy to deploy enough
antipersonnel weapons to make the earth unsurvivable by unprotected humans.

Nanotechnology causes extinction through grey goo

Bostrom, 2 (Nick, PhD Faculty of Philosophy at Oxford University, Existential Risks: Analyzing
Human Extinction Scenarios and Related Hazards, Journal of Evolution and Technology, Vol. 9,
March 2002 http://www.nickbostrom.com/existential/risks.html)
In a mature form, molecular nanotechnology will enable the construction of bacterium-scale self-replicating mechanical
robots that can feed on dirt or other organic matter [22-25]. Such replicators could eat up the biosphere or destroy it by
other means such as by poisoning it, burning it, or blocking out sunlight. A person of malicious intent in possession of
this technology might cause the extinction of intelligent life on Earth by releasing such nanobots into the environment.
[9] The technology to produce a destructive nanobot seems considerably easier to develop than the technology to
create an effective defense against such an attack (a global nanotech immune system, an active shield [23]). It is
therefore likely that there will be a period of vulnerability during which this technology must be prevented from coming
into the wrong hands. Yet the technology could prove hard to regulate, since it doesnt require rare radioactive isotopes
or large, easily identifiable manufacturing plants, as does production of nuclear weapons [23]. Even if effective
defenses against a limited nanotech attack are developed before dangerous replicators are designed and acquired by
suicidal regimes or terrorists, there will still be the danger of an arms race between states possessing nanotechnology.
It has been argued [26] that molecular manufacturing would lead to both arms race instability and crisis instability, to a
higher degree than was the case with nuclear weapons. Arms race instability means that there would be dominant
incentives for each competitor to escalate its armaments, leading to a runaway arms race. Crisis instability means that
there would be dominant incentives for striking first. Two roughly balanced rivals acquiring nanotechnology would, on
this view, begin a massive buildup of armaments and weapons development programs that would continue until a
crisis occurs and war breaks out, potentially causing global terminal destruction. That the arms race could have been
predicted is no guarantee that an international security system will be created ahead of time to prevent this disaster
from happening. The nuclear arms race between the US and the USSR was predicted but occurred nevertheless.

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**Electric Grid Failure**

Electricity grid failure causes the collapse of civilization
Rifkin, president of the Foundation on Economic Trends, 02
The founder and president of the Foundation on Economic Trends, Fellow at the Wharton Schools
Executive Education Program (Jeremy, The Hydrogen Economy: The Creation of the World-Wide
Energy Web and the Redistribution of Power on Earth, p.163-164 )
It is understandable that we would be unmindful of the critical role that oil plays in feeding our families, because the process of growing food is so removed in time and place from our urban lives. The

The electrical grid is the central nervous system that

coordinates a densely populated urban existence. Without electrical power, urban life would cease to exist, the
information age would become a faded memory, and industrial production would grind to a halt. The fastest way to
ensure the collapse of the modern era would be to pull the plug and turn off the flow of electricity. Light, heat, and
power would all stop. Civilization as we know it would come to an end. It is hard to imagine what life would be like
without electricity, although it has only been utilized as a source of energy for less than a century. Most of our great-grandparents were born into a world with electricity. Today, we
take electricity for granted. That is because, food, it is abundantly available . We rarely think about where it comes from or how it gets to us. It is a
kind of stealth force, tucked away inside wires overhead, buried in the ground, or hidden inside our walls. Colorless and odorless, it is an invisible but indispensable'
presence in our lives.
same holds true for the electricity that we have come to rely on to maintain our daily routines.

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**Native Americans**
Death of Native culture leads to extinction.
Barsh Professor of Native American Studies at the University of Lethbridge 93 (Russel
Lawrence, , University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform, Winter, 1993, 25 U. MICH. J. L. REF. 671)
There no longer seems to be much difference in the Westernization of the Third World and of the indigenous world.
Indigenous societies are usually more isolated geographically, so the process of convergence is understandably
slower. But they are catching up. While world leaders lament the loss of biological diversity, which holds the key to the
renewal and survival of ecosystems, our planet rapidly is losing its cultural diversity, which holds the key to the renewal
and survival of human societies. Scientists and scholars search for an alternative in their theories while real alternative
cultures disappear. It will be a real struggle to reassert an indigenous perspective on social justice, democracy, and
environmental security. The hardest part of the struggle will be converting words to action, going beyond the familiar,
empty rhetoric of sovereignty and cultural superiority. The struggle will be hardest here in the United States, where the
gaps between rhetoric and reality have grown greater than anywhere on earth. This is the best place to begin,
however, because this is the illusory "demonstration" that is studied by the rest of the world, including the indigenous
peoples of other regions. Are American Indians ready to accept this global responsibility? The current generation of
tribal leadership appears unwilling to try. It is firmly committed by its actions to the materialist path, and it is neutralized
by its dependence on a continuing financial relationship with the national government and developers. The next
generation of American Indians may be another matter. Disillusioned and critical, they may yet find a voice of their
own that is both modern and truly indigenous, and they may have the courage to practice the ideals that their parents
merely sloganize. Let us hope so. There is no alternative for Indian survival or for global survival.

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**Totalitarianism / Tyranny**
Tyranny risks incalculable death
VanDeMark, United States Naval Academy 01 (Brain, November 578 Annals 186 lexis)
"The chief business of twentieth-century philosophy," wrote R. G. Colling-wood, "is to reckon with twentieth-century history."
And what a bloody century it was--almost beyond imagination. The flower of a generation of European youth was wasted in the
muddy trenches of Flanders during World War I. British and American bombing of Germany and Japanese cities during World War
II led to the death of hundreds of thousands of noncombatants. The victims of Stalin's tyranny numbered in the millions. The
number of Mao's victims was greater. And Pol Pot killed a higher proportion of his own population than either Stalin or Mao.
More recently, there was the terrible bloodbath in Rwanda. Yet even after taking stock of all of these brutalities, to ponder Hitler's
campaign of genocide against the Jews of Europe is to look into the very heart of darkness. No explanation or apology is needed
for giving the unprecedented inhumanity of the twentieth century a central place in recent history.

Totalitarianism outweighs extinction because it destroys all positive value to life.

Caplan Department of Economics and Center for Study of Public Choice 06 [Bryan, at
George Mason University, The Totalitarian Threat, January 06]
It is obviously harder to refine my numbers than it is to refine estimates of the probability of an extinction-level asteroid
impact. The regularities of social science are neither as exact nor as enduring as the regularities of physical science.
But this is a poor argument for taking social disasters like totalitarianism less seriously than physical disasters like
asteroids. We compare accurately-measured to inaccurately-measured things all the time. Which is worse for a
scientist to lose: 1 point of IQ, or his "creative spark"? Even though IQ is measured with high accuracy, and creativity
is not, loss of creativity is probably more important. Finally, it is tempting to minimize the harm of a social disaster like
totalitarianism, because it would probably not lead to human extinction. Even in Cambodia, the totalitarian regime with
the highest death rate per-capita, 75% of the population remained alive after three years of rule by the Khmer Rouge.
(Margolin 1999b) But perhaps an eternity of totalitarianism would be worse than extinction. It is hard to read Orwell
and not to wonder: Do you begin to see, then, what kind of world we are creating? It is the exact opposite of the stupid
hedonistic Utopias that the old reformers imagined. A world of fear and treachery and torment, a world of trampling
and being trampled upon, a world which will grow not less but more merciless as it refines itself. Progress in our world
will be progress towards more pain. The old civilizations claimed that they were founded on love or justice. Ours is
founded upon hatred. In our world there will be no emotions except fear, rage, triumph and self-abasement.
Everything else we shall destroy everything... There will be no loyalty, except loyalty towards the Party. There will be
no love, except the love of Big Brother. There will be no laughter, except for the laugh of triumph over a defeated
enemy. There will be no art, no literature, no science. When we are omnipotent we shall have no more need of
science. There will be no distinction between beauty and ugliness. There will be no curiosity, no enjoyment of the
process of life. All competing pleasures will be destroyed. (1983: 220)

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**Separation of Powers**
Rule of law key to freedom and prevents nuclear extinction.
Rhyne, Washington Lawyer 58 (Charles S. Rhyne Law Day Speech for Voice of America delivered on the
first Law Day, 1958)
Law and courts exist to protect every citizen of the United States in his person and property and in his individual rights
and privileges under the Constitution. The ultimate power to change or expand the law in our system remains with its
source, the people. They can elect as lawmakers those who will vote for wise laws and vote out of office those who do
not. They can also amend the Constitution as experience dictates the necessity of change. In these days of soulsearching and re-evaluation and inventorying of basic concepts and principles brought on by the expansion of mans
vision to the new frontiers and horizons of outer space, we want the people of the world to know that we in America
have an unshakable belief in the most essential ingredient of our way of lifethe rule of law. The law we honor is the
basis and foundation of our nations freedom and the freedom for the individual which exists here. And to Americans
our freedom is more important than our very lives. The rule of law has been the bulwark of our democracy. It has
afforded protection to the weak, the oppressed, the minorities, the unpopular; it has made it possible to achieve
responsiveness of the government to the will of people. It stands as the very antithesis of Communism and
dictatorship. When we talk about justice under our rule of law, the absence of such justice behind the Iron Curtain is
apparent to all. When we talk about freedom for the individual, Hungary is recalled to the minds of all men. And when
we talk about peace under lawpeace without the bloodbath of warwe are appealing to the foremost desire of all
peoples everywhere. The tremendous yearning of all peoples for peace can only be answered by the use of law to
replace weapons in resolving international disputes. We in our country sincerely believe that mankinds best hope for
preventing the tragic consequences of nuclear-satellite-missile warfare is to persuade the nations of the entire world to
submit all disputes to tribunals of justice for all adjudication under the rule of law. We lawyers of America would like to
join lawyers from every nation in the world in fashioning an international code of law so appealing that sentiment will
compel its general acceptance. Mans relation to man is the most neglected field of study, exploration and development
in the world community. It is also the most critical. The most important basic fact of our generation is that the rapid
advance of knowledge in science and technology has forced increased international relationships in a shrunken and
indivisible world. Men must either live together in peace or in modern war we will surely die together. History teaches
that the rule of law has enabled mankind to live together peacefully within nations and it is clear that this same rule of
law offers our best hope as a mechanism to achieve and maintain peace between nations. The lawyer is the technician
in mans relationship to man. There exists a worldwide challenge to our profession to develop law to replace weapons
before the dreadful holocaust of nuclear war overtake our people.

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**Neoliberalism**
Enforcing neoliberalism causes endless wars
Hardt and Negri, Professor of Comp. Lit. at Duke and Anarchist Intellectual, 2004,
(Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Multitude, NM, p.176-178

Big government actually never went away, but certainly it has become 'more clearly evident in recent years,
especially since September 11, 2001.' The various military and legal projects for global security led primarily
by the United States since that date, for example, are oriented in part toward stabilizing and guaranteeing the
global economic order. In some respects, after September 11 the private forms of authority over the global economy, such as
the new Lex mercatona, along with all the mechanisms or international trade and the macroeconomic equilibria that.make them
possi-, J>le, went into crisis. The dominant nation-states had to intervene to guarantee all levels of economic
interactionsfinancial transactions, insurance relationships, air transportation, and so forth. The crisis gave a
quick reminder of just how much capital needs a sovereign authority standing behind it, a truth that rises up into view every time
there are serious cracks in the market order and hierarchy. The big government that guarantees market order must be in

pan a military power. Capital occasionally has to call on an army to force open unwilling markets and
stabilize existing ones. In the early nineteenth century, for example, British capital needed the British military to open up the
Chinese market with its victory in the Opium 'War. This is not to say, however, that all military actions are explained by specific
economic interests. It is not adequate to think, for example, that the U.S.-led military ac-i dons in recent decadesAfghanistan and
Iraq, much less Somalia, Haiti, and Panamawere primarily directed at a specific economic advantage, such as access to cheap
oil. Such specific goals are secondary. The primary link between military action and economic interest exists only

at a much more general level of analysis, abstract from any particular national inter est. Military force must
guarantee the conditions for the functioning of the world market, guaranteeing, that is, the divisions of labor
and power of the global political body. This effort is paradoxical, however, because the relationship between security and
profits cuts two ways. On one hand, the deployment of state military power is necessary to guarantee the security
of the global markets but, on the other hand, the security regimes tend to raise national borders and obstruct
the global circuits of production and trade that had been the basis of some of the greatest profits . The United
States and other military powers must discover a way to make the interests of security and economic profits compatible and
complementary. We should be clear that the newly prominent need for a big government to support the economy, especially since
September 11, does not represent in any way a return to Keyncsianism. Under Keynesianism the nation-state supported the
stability and growth of the economy by providing mechanisms to mediate the conflicts and interests of the working class and in the
process expanded the social demand for production. The forms of sovereignty we see now, on the contrary, reside completely on
the side of capital without any mediatory mechanisms to negotiate its conflictual relationship with labor. It is interesting in this
regard how ambivalent the position of capital is when risk is the dominant characteristic of economic activity and development,
and indeed of all social interaction. The world is a dangerous place, and the role of big government and military
intervention is to reduce risks and provide security while maintaining the present order.> / W ? 8

Neoliberalism makes poverty inevitable

Hardt and Negri, Professor of Comp. Lit. at Duke and Anarchist Intellectual, 2004,
(Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Multitude, NM, p.277-280)

After recognizing the extent of poverty in the world today, one has to recognize also its uneven geographical
distribution. In each nation-state, poverty is distributed unequally along lines of race, ethnicity, and gender.
In many countries throughout the world, for example, there are significantly higher rates of poverty among
women than men, and many ethnic minorities, such as the indigenous populations throughout the Americas,
have significantly higher rates of poverty. Local and national variations in the rate of poverty, however, are dwarfed by
the inequalities of wealth and Dovcrtv on a global scale. South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa account for about 70
percent of the global population living on less than a dollar a day, up from about 60 percent ten yean ago. The average
income of the richest 20 countries is thirty-seven times greater than the average in the poorest twentya gap that has
doubled in the past forty years.68 Even when these figures are adjusted for purchasing powersince some basic
commodities cost more in rich countries than in poorthe gap is astonishing. The construction of the global market

and the global integration of the national economies has not brought us together but driven us apart,
exacerbating the plight of the poor. There are millions of specific expressions across the world of indignation and

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generosity with respect to die poor, often through courageous ^crs of charity and self-sacrifice. Nonprofit, and religious
charity organizations provide enormous assistance for those in need, but they cannot change the system that
produces and reproduces poverty. It is impressive, in fact, how so many people who begin in volunteer charity work
pass to activism and protest against the economic system.fry. Some protests against the systemic reproduction of
poverty, such as the Jubilee Movement International, focus on the fact that foreign debt obligations serve as a
mechanism that keeps the poor countries poor and their populations hungry.69 It is clear that no matter what economic
policies they enact the poorest countries cannot repay their current foreign debts or even keep up with interest
payments, perpetuating an inescapable cycle of misery. Furthermore, many claim that these debts were incurred originally through dubious or illegitimate means. It is always the same story: debt serves as a legal mechanism of
enslavement.70 The difference here is that this logic of bondage is applied not merely to the individual indentured
worker or even to a specific racial group or indigenous population (where the assumption of a civilizing mission is the
basis of debt) but rather to entire nations. ; In more general terms many economic grievances against the global
system arc based on the assumption that the inequalities and injustices of the global economy result primarily from the
fact that political powers are less and less able to regulate economic activity. Global capital, the argument goes, since
its movement and reach extend well beyond the limits of national space, cannot be effectively controlled by states.
Many labor unions, particularly in the dominant countries, protest the fact that the mere threat of the mobility of capital
die threat, for example, of moving production and jobs to another country where state regulations anoVor labor costs
are lower and more favorablecan convince states to abandon or temper their own regulatory powers. States

conform to and even anticipate the needs of capital for fear of being subordinated in the global economic
system. This creates a son of race to the bottom among nation-states in which the interests of labor and
society as a whole take a backseat to those of capital. Neoliberalisrn is generally the name given to this form
of state economic policy. Neoliberalism, as we claimed in part 2, is not really a regime of unregulated capital
but rather a form of state regulator that best facilitates the global movements and profit of capital. Once again
in the era of neoliberalism, it might be helpful to think of the state as the executive committee assigned the
task of guaranteeing the long-term well-bring of "collective capital The fundamental task of the neoliberal
state, fron this perspective, like all forms of the capitalist state, Is to regulate "capitalist development in the
interest of global capital itself.
Furthering the neoliberal agenda justifies genocide and extinction.
Santos, Director of the Center for Social Studies at the University of Coimbra, 20 03
(Boaventura de Sousa Santos, Collective Suicide?, Publicado na Folha de Sao Paulo em 28 de Marco de 2003, NM,
http://www.ces.uc.pt/opiniao/bss/072en.php)
According to Franz Hinkelammert, the West has repeatedly been under the illusion that it should try to save
humanity by destroying part of it. This is a salvific and sacrificial destruction, committed in the name of the need
to radically materialize all the possibilities opened up by a given social and political reality over which it is
supposed to have total power. This is how it was in colonialism, with the genocide of indigenous peoples, and

the African slaves. This is how it was in the period of imperialist struggles, which caused millions of deaths
in two world wars and many other colonial wars. This is how it was in Stalinism, with the Gulag and in
Nazism, with the holocaust. And now today, this is how it is in neoliberalism, with the collective sacrifice
of the periphery and even the semiperiphery of the world system. With the war against Iraq, it is fitting to
ask whether what is in progress is a new genocidal and sacrificial illusion, and what its scope might be. It is above
all appropriate to ask if the new illusion will not herald the radicalization and the ultimate perversion of the
western illusion: destroying all of humanity in the illusion of saving it

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**Free Speech**
Restricting freedom of speech opens the door to genocide
DSouza, Former Executive Director of ARTICLE 19, 1996 (Frances, Article 19 is a human rights
organisation devoted to promoting freedom of expression. She also taught anthropology at Oxford and the
London School of economics, Free Speech - Free Media: Rights under Threat?, Public Hearing, 4/25,
http://www.europarl.eu.int/hearings/speech/freedom_en.htm)
In the absence of freedom of expression which in-cludes a free and independent media, it is impossible to protect
other rights, including the right to life. Once governments are able to draw a cloak of secrecy over their actions and to
remain unaccountable for their actions then massive human rights violations can, and do, take place. For this reason
alone the right to freedom of expression, specifically protected in the major international human rights treaties, must be
considered to be a primary right. It is significant that one of the first indications of a government's intention to depart
from democratic principles is the ever increasing control of information by means of gagging the media, and preventing the freeflow of information
from abroad. At one end of the spectrum there are supposedly minor infringements of this fundamental right which occur daily in Western democracies and would include abuse of national security
laws to prevent the publication of information which might be embarrassing to a given government: at the other end of the scale are the regimes of terror which employ the most brutal moves to

the absence of free

speech and an independent media, it is relatively easy for governments to capture, as it were, the media and to
fashion them into instruments of propaganda, for the promotion of ethnic conflict, war and genocide.
suppress opposition, information and even the freedom to exercise religious beliefs. It has been argued, and will undoubtedly be discussed at this Hearing, that in

And our impact outweighs extinction ---- censorship is worse than death
Kay, journalist for New Yorker 97 (Jonathan, and editor of the National Post, 1997
(http://www.omnivore.org/jon/orwell/George%20Orwell's%20First%20Amendment.html)
Since total outward conformity is necessary for survival in Orwells nightmare world, the human concept of self collapses to an
abstraction but that does not mean that it disappears altogether. Because he at least has dominion over his own mind, the
heretic Winston Smith, 1984s protagonist, is very much a real human who commands the readers total empathy. The fact that
he lives in a world without physical freedom and dignity is irrelevant. He is human because he has the power to remember past
events and to love others and to control his own thoughts. The recanted Winston Smith of 1984s final pages, however, is not
nearly a true human being though he actually enjoys more physical freedom and more dignity than his human precursor. His
humanity has been ripped out in the Ministry of Love. The physical death which awaits him is an afterthought to the
annihilation he has already suffered. Human life loses a good deal of its value when the physical self is not free. The lesson of
1984 is that this loss pales compared to the nullification of the human spirit which results when a human loses control of his
own thinking processes. The most important political struggle is that which takes place between individuals and society for
control of the inner mind. Under the Orwellian rubric, the bounds of freedom of speech must be defined in the shadow of this
struggle.

Violations of free speech destroy value to life

Dwyer, Associate Prof. of Philosophy at UMBC, 2001 [Susan, University of Maryland, Baltimore County,
Sats: The Nordic Journal of Philosophy 2 (2001): 1-18,
http://www.umbc.edu/philosophy/dwyer/papers/freespeech.html]
Let us return to the central topic: free speech. From the perspective just sketched, the value of a marketplace of ideas
that notion so central to the consequentialist justification of free speech lies not so much in its long-term all-thingsconsidered good consequences (the avoidance of dogmatism, democracy, truth, etc.) Rather, free speech is seen as a
necessary condition for the realization of any human goods. Constraints on inquiry and expression are constraints on
humanity itself. Echoing this thought, Nagel (1995) writes: That the expression of what one thinks and feels should be
overwhelmingly one's own business, subject to restriction only when clearly necessary to prevent serious harm distinct
from the expression itself, is a condition of being an independent thinking being. It is a form of moral recognition that
you have a mind of your own: even if you never want to say anything to which others would object, the idea that they
could stop you if they did object is in itself a violation of your integrity (96). A simple yet powerful fact both explains
why speech is valuable in and of itself and justifies its stringent protection: when speech is threatened, we are
threatened. Direct nonconsequentialism stands in stark contrast to consequentialist approaches which, as we have
seen, make the value of speech contingent on its effects. And unlike indirect nonconsequentialism, it makes our status
as language users, not our autonomy, the ground for limiting the state's attempts to interfere with our liberty. To repeat:
direct nonconsequentialism asserts that speech is valuable because linguistic capacities are the expression of the
essence of creatures (us) to whom we attribute the highest moral status. The way in which the direct nonconsequentialist makes explicit what is
special about speech helps to make sense of a commonly experienced wariness regarding restrictions on speech we hate. We worry equally when the state seeks to prohibit the speech of sexists or

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Flat-Earthers. The consequentialist thinks this reaction is explained by attributing to us the belief that any state restriction of speech is the thin end of a wedge: we are discomforted by the thought of
the muzzled sexist or Flat-Earther because we think our speech may be next. This may well be the right account of human psychology in these matters. But it is hardly an explanation of the prima

In bringing out the idea that speech is the expression of

our essence, the direct nonconsequentialist is able to capture the true nature of our reaction to state restrictions on
others' speech we do not particularly care for. Direct nonconsequentialism also gives substance to a powerful idea that some influential critics notably, Catharine
facie wrongness of restrictions on lunatics' and sexists speech. Our discomfort is a moral discomfort.

Mackinnon (1987) find hopelessly abstract. This is the thought that [e]very time you strengthen free speech in one place, you strengthen it everywhere (164). And seeing how direct
nonconsequentialism does so will help illustrate some of the practical implications of this strategy for justifying free speech. Proponents of legislation designed to restrict or prohibit problematic
speech and courts that rule on the constitutionality of such legislation, often reason in terms of how free speech interests are to be balanced with other interests. For example, proponents of speech
codes argue that racist speech harms minorities interests in social and political equality; and in the United States, the constitutionality of restrictions on fighting words is defended in light of the
states interests in maintaining law and order. These arguments imply that the expressive rights of individual racists and troublemakers may sometimes be infringed in order to promote the good of

But as the history of free speech debates reveal, once we admit that collective interests can trump individual
rights, it is extremely difficult consistently to maintain the belief that a right to free speech imposes severe limits on
what the state may do. The direct nonconsequentialist justification of free speech avoids this particular difficulty.
Recall, we are working within the context of constitutional provisions that is, we are thinking about rationales for
stringent protections of speech, where these are understood as mechanisms for keeping the government out of some
aspect of our lives. In this sense, such provisions express rights had by individuals against the state. But the direct
nonconsequentialists account of the basis of these rights suggests that it is a mistake to think of them as radically
individualistic. True, each of us has a right to free speech, but we have that right in virtue of our membership in a
collective the species H. sapiens where every member has the same right for the same reason. Thus, in stressing
that a universal feature of the species language mastery grounds protections on speech, the direct
nonconsequentialist avoids individualizing the right to free speech in a way that makes it perpetually vulnerable to the
assertion of some collective good. If we think of a persons right to free speech as protecting just one aspect of his
liberty among others, we run the risk of obscuring what is morally relevant about speech. The hatemonger and the
pornographer each have a right to free speech, but this is not to be understood in terms of their being free to act on
contingent desires they have. My occurrent desire to eat ice-cream holds no weight in the big scheme of things; even I
would concede that it is permissible for the state to thwart my satisfying this desire, if doing so meant promoting some
very important collective good. But speech is different. It is worthy of protection not because people want to say
certain things, but (to repeat) because speech expresses our very nature. What someone wants to say is neither here
nor there. Thus, in decoupling the value of free speech from individual desires, direct nonconsequentialism gives
content to the idea that when we strengthen (protect) free speech in one place, we strengthen (protect) it everywhere.
some collective.

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