1NC Frontline1NC ShellOcean exploration and development is a tool of capitalism to enhance productionPSL, 13 Party for Socialism and Liberation (The pillaging of the Earths oceans, Liberation News, May 31st 2013, http://www.pslweb.org/liberationnews/newspaper/vol-7-no-7/the-pillaging-of-the-earths-oceans.html)//jk The oceans of the world are vast and deep. They cover 71 percent of the Earths surface and contain 97 percent of the planets water. The oceans seem boundless in water, marine life and energy to sustain the planets life and atmosphere. But the oceans are experiencing profound stress, due to escalating factors directly related to capitalist production and the degradation of the environment. Alarming reports by marine scientists have been sounding the danger to the worlds oceans and the need for urgent action. The International Programme on the State of the Ocean (IPSO) warns that massive marine extinction already may be underway due to rapidly worsening stresses on marine ecosystems. But, as capitalisms search for profits intensifies, the devastation of the oceans is only accelerating. Three main stresses global warming, acidification of the oceans, and decreased oxygen have led to such declines in many of the marine ecosystems that the conditions have met or surpassed worst-case scenarios predicted in the first decade of this 21st century. IPSO stated in 2011, [W]e now face losing marine species and entire marine ecosystems, such as coral reefs, within a single generation. Unless action is taken now, the consequences of our activities are at a high risk of causing, through the combined effects of climate change, overexploitation, pollution and habitat loss, the next globally significant extinction event in the ocean. It is notable that the occurrence of multiple high intensity stressors has been a prerequisite for all the five global extinction events of the past 600 million years. Such a catastrophe would, needless to say, affect humanity and all life on Earth. Yet capitalists have rejected in international forums even basic accords to limit the exploitation of the oceans or to slow down the belching of fossil fuels into the environment. By far the biggest abuser of the environment is the United States.

Capitalism leads to nuclear war, environmental collapse, and povertyBrown 05 [5/13/05, Charles Brown is a Professor of Economics and Research Scientist at the University of Michigan, CAPITALISM, EXPLOITATION, AND OPPRESSION, http://www.cpusa.org/party-program/] GKooThe capitalist class owns the factories, the banks, and transportation the means of production and distribution. Workers sell their ability to work in order to acquire the necessities of life. Capitalists buy the workers ability to labor, but pay them only a portion of the wealth they create. Because the capitalists own the means of production, they are able to keep the surplus wealth created by workers above and beyond the cost of paying workers wages and other costs of production unpaid labor that the capitalists appropriate and use to achieve ever-greater profits. This surplus is the source of profit. These profits are turned into capital which capitalists use to further exploit the sources of all wealth nature and the working class. Capitalists are compelled by competition to seek to maximize profits. The capitalist class as a whole can do that only by extracting a greater surplus from the unpaid labor of workers, by increasing exploitation what capitalists often call increasing productivity. Under capitalism, economic development happens only if it is profitable to the individual capitalists, not for any social need or good. The profit drive is inherent in capitalism, and underlies or exacerbates all major social ills of our times. With the rapid advance of technology and productivity, new forms of capitalist ownership have developed to maximize profit and exploit new markets. The working people of our country confront serious, chronic problems because of capitalism. These chronic problems become part of the objective conditions that confront each new generation of working people. The threat of nuclear war, which can destroy all humanity, grows with the spread of nuclear weapons, space-based weaponry, and a military doctrine that justifies their use in preemptive wars and wars without end. Since the end of World War II, the U.S. has been constantly involved in aggressive military actions both big and small. These have cost millions of lives and casualties, huge material losses, as well as trillions of U.S. taxpayer dollars. Threats to the environment continue to spiral out of control, threatening all life on our planet. Millions of workers are unemployed, underemployed, or insecure in their jobs, even during economic upswings and periods of recovery from recessions. Most workers experience long years of stagnant and declining real wages, while health and education costs soar. Many workers are forced to work second and third jobs to make ends meet. Most workers now average four different occupations during their lifetime, many involuntarily moved from job to job and career to career. Often, retirement-age workers are forced to continue working just to provide health care for themselves and their families. Millions of people continuously live below the poverty level; many suffer homelessness and hunger. Public and private programs to alleviate poverty and hunger do not reach everyone, and are inadequate even for those they do reach. With capitalist globalization, jobs move from place to place as capitalists export factories and even entire industries to other countries in a relentless search for the lowest wages. Racism remains the most potent weapon to divide working people. All workers receive lower wages when racism succeeds in dividing and disorganizing them. Institutionalized racism provides billions in extra profits for the capitalists every year due to the unequal pay racially oppressed workers receive for work of comparable value. In every aspect of economic and social life, African Americans, Latinos, Native Americans, Asians and Pacific Islanders, Arabs and Middle Eastern peoples, and other nationally and racially oppressed people experience conditions inferior to that of whites. Racist violence and the poison of racist ideas victimize all people of color no matter to which economic class they belong. Attempts to suppress and undercount the vote of African American and other racially oppressed people are part of racism in the electoral process. Racism permeates the police, the courts and prison systems, perpetuating unequal sentencing, racial profiling, discriminatory enforcement, and police brutality. Capitalism causes other chronic problems in addition to racism, starting with ideological poisons used to divide the working class and allies from each other: sexism and male supremacy, national chauvinism, homophobia, anti-Semitism, and anti-communism. Much of this is spread by way of the mass media, increasingly owned and dominated by monopoly corporations. The economics of the media are based on the promotion of consumerism turning everything into a commodity and advertising to sell more goods whether they are needed or not. The democratic, civil, and human rights of all working people are constantly under attack. These attacks range from increasingly difficult procedures for union recognition and attempts to prevent full union participation in elections, to the absence of the right to strike or even unionize for many public workers. They range from undercounting minority communities in the census to making it difficult for working people to run for office because of the domination of corporate campaign financing and the high cost of advertising. These attacks also include growing censorship and domination of the media by the ultra-right; growing restrictions and surveillance of activist social movements and the Left; open denial of basic rights to immigrants; and violations of the Geneva Conventions up to and including torture of prisoners. These abuses serve to maintain the grip of the capitalists on government power. They use this power to ensure the continued economic and political dominance of their class. The legal system is thoroughly racist and anti-working class. U.S. prisons are bursting with over 2 million prisoners, with virtually no serious efforts at prevention or rehabilitation. Prisoners face widespread abuse and the anti-labor exploitation of prisoners for sub-minimum wages. Many are subject to the threat of the death penalty, which is never justified and which is frequently used against innocent victims. At the same time, capitalist crime is on the increase, and these billionaire criminals are usually not apprehended, prosecuted, or punished. Corruption, speculation, fraud, market manipulations, and theft on a massive scale are all increasing, while enforcement of laws against them is cut. Women still face a considerable differential in wages for work of equal or comparable value. They confront barriers to promotion, physical and sexual abuse, continuing unequal workload in home and family life, and male supremacist ideology perpetuating unequal and often unsafe conditions. The constant attacks on social welfare programs severely impact single women, single mothers, nationally and racially oppressed women, and all working class women. The reproductive rights of all women are continually under attack ideologically and politically. The ultra-right projects an ideology of Christian fundamentalism, which promotes restrictions on the role and activity of women in society. Violence against women in the home and in society at large remains a shameful fact of life in the U.S.

The alternative is a personal rejection of capitalism Holloway, 05 John, author of How to Change the World with Taking Power and his numerous works on the Zapatistas, Holloway edited Global Capital, National State and the Politics of Money and Post-Fordism and Social Form: A Marxist Debate on the Post-Fordist State (1992), Professor at the University of Edinburgh and currently teaches at the Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences at the Autonomous University of Puebla, August 15th, 2005, John Holloway presented these at the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, http://www.chtodelat.org/index.php?Itemid=124&id=214&option=com_content&task=viewIn thinking about this, we have to start from where we are, from the many rebellions and insubordinations that have brought us to Porto Alegre. The world is full of such rebellions, of people saying NO to capitalism: NO, we shall not live our lives according to the dictates of capitalism, we shall do what we consider necessary or desirable and not what capital tells us to do. Sometimes we just see capitalism as an all-encompassing system of domination and forget that such rebellions exist everywhere. At times they are so small that even those involved do not perceive them as refusals, but often they are collective projects searching for an alternative way forward and sometimes they are as big as the lacandon jungle or the argentinazo of three years ago or the revolt in Bolivia just over a year ago. All of these insubordinations are characterised by a drive towards self-determination, an impulse that says "No, you will not tell us what to do, we shall decide for ourselves what we must do." These refusals can be seen as fissures, as cracks in the system of capitalist domination. Capitalism is not (in the first place) an economic system, but a system of command. Capitalists, through money, command us, telling us what to do. To refuse to obey is to break the command of capital. The question for us, then, is how do we multiply and expand these refusals, these cracks in the texture of domination.5. There are two ways of thinking about this. a) The first says that these movements, these many insubordinations, lack maturity and effectiveness unless they are focussed, unless they are channelled towards a goal. For them to be effective, they must be channelled towards the conquest of state power - either through elections or through the overthrowing of the existing state and the establishment of a new, revolutionary state. The organisational form for channelling all these insubordinations towards that aim is the party. The question of taking state power is not so much a question of future intentions as of present organisation. How should we organise ourselves in the present? Should we join a party, an organisational form that focuses our discontent on the winning of state power? Or should we organise in some other way? b) The second way of thinking about the expansion and multiplication of insubordinations is to say "No, they should not be all harnessed together in the form of a party, they should flourish freely, go whatever way the struggle takes them." This does not mean that there should be no coordination, but it should be a much looser coordination. Above all, the principal point of reference is not the state but the society that we want to create.

2NC LinksArcticThe drive for profit undergirds the AFFs desire to exploit the melting Arctic frontier such a view ignores capitalisms contribution to accelerating warming and reifies the underlying cause turns the caseGingerich 13Cecilia Gingerich, MA from NYU, member of the University of London Marxist Society, (Journal of Political Inquiry at New York University, Spring Issue (2013), STABLE SYSTEM, CHANGING CLIMATE: Capitalism and the Warming of the Arctic, http://www.jpinyu.com/uploads/2/5/7/5/25757258/stable_system_changing_climate.pdf) - AWIn recent years, the effects of climate change have grown increasingly evident. From rising temperatures and sea levels to persistent droughts and unseasonal hurricanes, the last few decades have contained more environmental deviations than can be attributed to natural variation. The scientific community has reached a consensus that climate change is manmade a direct result of large quantities of greenhouse gasses being released into the atmosphere over the past few centuries. Yet few serious societal changes have been made, or even considered. Indeed, as I will explore in this paper, society has largely beenas the saying goesopen for business as usual. I begin by examining some of the basic mechanisms of capitalism and why they are incompatible with ecological sustainability. Such mechanisms include profit motive, how value is measured in a capitalist system, the process of capital accumulation, and a systemic contradiction. I then briefly critique the inclusion of these mechanisms in the green capitalist solutions to climate change that have become popular today. Next, I present the case study of climate change in the Arctic, since it is one of the regions in which climate change is occurring most rapidly. I will consider how the problematic mechanisms of capitalism I identify have contributed to the recent warming of the Arctic, and how they currently influence the policies that will determine the regions future. Lastly, having shown the basic mechanisms of capitalism to be ecologically unsustainable, I ultimately conclude that climate stability cannot be achieved through them. Journal of Political Inquiry at New York University, Spring Issue (2013) 2 II. Profit Motive and Value in a Capitalist System Perhaps the most discussed climate change issue during the past few years in the United States has been the construction of the Keystone XL Pipeline. The pipeline was proposed by the North American energy corporation TransCanada in 2008, and was designed to carry crude oil from the Athabasca Oil Sands of Alberta, Canada, to Steele City, Nebraska (Hovey 2008). People across the political spectrum have raised concerns about the environmental impact of the pipeline. Many cite the high probability of oil spills and the potential damage to several delicate ecosystems. However, it is the pipelines latent contribution to climate change that provoked famed climate scientist and activist James Hansen to proclaim that if the Keystone XL is built, it will be essentially game over for any hope of reestablishing a stable climate (McGowan 2011). Of course, some argue in favor of the pipeline by claiming that it could create new jobs and make the nation more energy independent. Still, studies vary widely on the number of permanent jobs the pipeline would provide, and while the pipeline would certainly help to make the United States less dependent on foreign oil, it would do nothing to move the country towards independence from fossil fuels. Yet the pipeline was not proposed by the government or any elected body for the benefits now under discussion. Rather, it was proposed by a mega corporation that was motivated by the sole objective of all companies in a capitalist system: profit. Profit motive is perhaps the most commonly recognized mechanism of capitalism, and it is quite controversial. While there are many ways to debate profit motive, my purpose here is to determine why it is incompatible with ecological sustainability. To understand profit motive, it is essential to understand the meaning of profit in the context of capitalism. Colloquially, the Journal of Political Inquiry at New York University, Spring Issue (2013) 3 term profit is used to express a valuable return (Merriam Webster 2013). In economics, we most commonly think of this return in terms of money. Yet money is, of course, merely a representation of value, and so it is really value itselt that must be defined in order to understand profit. The question thus becomes: how is value measured in a capitalist system? A useful starting point from which to approach this question is Karl Marxs famous distinction between a commoditys use value and its exchange value. In the first chapter of Capital Volume I, he writes that it is the usefulness of a thing that gives it a use value (Marx 1990, 126). He clarifies by stating that use value is conditioned by the physical properties of the commodity, or, in other words, is attached to the commoditys nature as a material object (ibid.). He concludes that natural resources, such as air, virgin soil, natural meadows, unplanted forests, etc., thus have use value, since they all can be useful to humans (ibid., 131). By this definition, oil (even from the tar sands of Canada) clearly has a use value, since it is a major energy source. However, it is equally clear that this is not the type of value that TransCanada is marking down in its ledgers. In order to understand the nature of the value marked in ledgers, we must turn to the other type of value Marx discusses: exchange value. Essentially, he uses this term to refer to the type of value a commodity has in the market. This is not to suggest that a commoditys exchange value is the same as its price; rather, exchange value is determined by the exchange relation between commodities. Marx uses the example of corn and iron, which have an exchange relation because a certain amount of corn equals a certain amount of iron (ibid., 127). Thus, all natural resources clearly also have this type of value in addition to their use values including the oil that the Keystone XL Pipeline would transfer for later sale. Journal of Political Inquiry at New York University, Spring Issue (2013) 4 Joel Kovel elucidates why breaking value into these two categories is incompatible with ecological sustainability in his consideration of the nature of each type of value. In The Enemy of Nature: The End of Capitalism or the End of the World?, Kovel describes the nature of use values as essentially concrete and having a qualitative function (2007, 135). He goes on to explain, Being qualitative, [use-value] retains the essential feature of differentiation, that distinct elements can recognize one another and form links and associations (ibid.). An example of this is our relation to fresh water: through its use value we are able to recognize it as a liquid substance that is part of our environment and that we, as humans, depend on to live. However, water is bought and sold in the market, and so also has an exchange value. Yet exchange value has a mystifying effect, which means that the qualitative function of water is no longer present. Explaining this characteristic of exchange value, Kovel writes, Here, in sharp contrast to use-values, the sensuous and concrete are eliminated by definition and a priori. All that is retained as the mark of exchangeability is quantity: this item, x, is exchangeable for so many of y, which in turn is exchangeable for so many of z, and so forth, with no intrinsic end (ibid., 135-136). This process of quantification is particularly hard on natural resources, because the process obscures that those resourcesand all products that rely on themare not infinitely reproducible. Quantifying natural resources obscures not only those resources positive qualitative functions, but also their negative qualitative functions. Not only is it important to be able to recognize that fresh water is needed for human life, it is also important to be able to recognize that, when burned, oil releases a gas that causes our planets climate to change. Yet since the exchange value of oil does not reflect this function, we cannot expect a company like Journal of Political Inquiry at New York University, Spring Issue (2013) 5 TransCanadawhich, like all companies in a capitalist system, recognizes only exchange valuesto recognize it. The companys ledgers are full of numbers, not a list of the qualitative functions of their product. The discussion now returns to profit motive, since in a capitalist system profit is based on exchange values. Profit is therefore represented quantitatively: numbers on a balance sheet detached from the qualitative functions of the products they represent. Clearly, the qualitative function is still important because it dictates the demand for a product. However, even this nod to a products use value does not address the issue of its possible negative effects on the environment. For example, oil will be bought and sold only as long as it is used as an energy source. For however long that lasts, the profits from such transactions will represent only oils exchange value. Thus, the companies that collect those profits need never consider anything outside that exchange value, and indeed should not if they hope to survive in a competitive market. Although qualitative functions of commodities are outside the logic of profit motive, this certainly does not mean that companies have never been forced to consider such functions. However, the key word here is forced, since factoring in any negative functionssuch as the fact that oil produces carbon dioxide, which causes climate changewould undoubtedly lead to additional costs, or less profit. Recently, some attempts have been made to remedy this conflict of interests, which I analyze in greater detail in a later section. For now, I will simply state that these attempts have been ineffective, which is unsurprising given that they aim to counter the natural progression of profit motive, one of the systems basic mechanisms. Journal of Political Inquiry at New York University, Spring Issue (2013) 6 III. The Process of Capital Accumulation No discussion of profit motive should be considered complete without considering the reason profit motive exists in capitalism and what its ultimate objective is. The reason can be found in one of the systems even more fundamental mechanisms: capital accumulation. In Kovels words, this is capitalisms foundation on an economy geared to run on the basis of unceasing accumulation in which each unit of capital must, as the saying goes, grow or die (ibid., 121). The mechanism is perhaps most obvious at the level of the individual capitalist, who needs to constantly search to expand markets and profits or lose his position in the hierarchy (ibid.). However, large corporations and national economies are also organized around this capitalist principle, and so too seek to continually expand. Indeed, even mega corporations in monopoly-dominated industries like oil and gas continue to accumulate more capital, despite the fact that they hold positions at the top of the hierarchy. This highlights one of the potential problems of capital accumulation: it can go too far. There are few who criticize the developments made possible in the technology sector during eras like the Industrial Revolution. However, as the wealth of the global capitalist system becomes concentrated in fewer and fewer handsas the mechanism demandsthe present benefits of the accumulation process might rightly be questioned. While control of all wealth by a few elites undoubtedly bodes poorly for the future of societal structures like democracy, it could also jeopardize the future of our physical environment. If the CEOs of Exxon Mobil and Royal Dutch Shell alone were able to determine whether or not we embrace energy alternatives to fossil fuel, a sound bet could be placed against the embrace of viable alternatives. Although this example might be a bit extreme, the Journal of Political Inquiry at New York University, Spring Issue (2013) 7 giants of the oil and gas industry do have a great deal of political and economic power both in the United States and globally, andaccording to the process of capital accumulationwe can expect that power to only grow. Considering this potential impact of capital accumulation on the environment, Kovel considers capital accumulation to be the root of capitals wanton ecodestructivity, since under such a regime the economic dimension consumes all else (ibid.). He goes on to note that nature is continually devalued in the search for profit along an expanding frontier and that the ecological crisis follows inevitably (ibid.). Here, he references the important relationship between the accumulation process and profit motive: accumulation is the what towards which profit motive is aimed, and also the why for which it occurs. However, the process of capital accumulation does not always progress smoothly. Marx says one of the main causes of crisis in the system is an internal contradiction between the forces of production and the relations of production. Here, forces of production refers to the combination of human labor power and all the things that aid in production (tools, machinery, land, infrastructure, materials, etc.). The term relations of production refers to the relationship between the systems two major classes, Capital and Labor, in which the former exploits the latter. The conflict of interest within this second element alone is thought to lead to social and political change. In addition, the contradiction is thought to lead to economic crises, and specifically to crises of overproduction. A crisis of overproduction occurs when there is an excess supply of a commodity, or in other words, when there is not enough demand. Such crises have occurred throughout the history of capitalism, and are frequently studied. However, sociology and economics professor Journal of Political Inquiry at New York University, Spring Issue (2013) 8 James OConnor contends that there is another contradiction in capitalism that exists between the forces of production and relations of production on one side, and the conditions of production on the other (1998, 160). He predicts that this second contradiction of capitalism will eventually produce a crisis of supply rather than demanda crisis of underproduction of capital (ibid., 161). Since the conditions of production are the added element in this second contradiction, it is important to know exactly how OConnor defines them. He looks to Marxs definitions of the conditions, which include the laborpower of workers, communal, general conditions of social production, and external physical conditions (ibid., 160). He then updates each category in modern terms, stating that laborpower is now discussed in the terms of the physical and mental well-being of workers and that communal conditions are discussed in terms like social capital and infrastructure (ibid., 160-161). He defines external physical conditions as the viability of ecosystems, and provides some specific examples, including the stability of coastlines and watersheds as well as soil, air, and water quality (ibid., 160). OConnor asserts that the conditions of production are currently external to the system, and so constitute an added cost. More specifically, he states that individual capitals lower costs by externalizing (or not including) costs on the conditions of production, which ultimately causes those costs to rise for capital overall (ibid., 177). Perhaps the most obvious examples of crises that have been caused by such costs are those related to resource scarcity, like the resource-related crises of the nineteenth century (of coal, for instance). However, as some critics have pointed out, even these crises did not significantly affect the capital accumulation process overall, despite the fact that the depletion of a specific resource is detrimental to the Journal of Political Inquiry at New York University, Spring Issue (2013) 9 environment (Foster 2002). Still, crises directly related to resource scarcity will likely become more common with increased world population and unpredictable climate change. We have seen such crises already, including the devastating drought of the summer of 2011 in Somalia, which cost tens of thousands of lives and has been linked to climate change (Straziuso 2013). The drought produced a food shortage: a crisis of underproduction. Of course, the economic effect of such a crisis in Somalia is different than it would have been in a more industrialized nation in which more food is produced to be sold on the market. However, there are already indications that similar climate change-related droughts are occurring elsewhere around the planet, including in the agricultural areas of the United States (Gaskill 2012). By focusing on specific material resources used in production, OConnors critics have applied too narrow a definition to the term conditions of production. Going back to OConnors original three-part definition, we can see that his concept of the conditions is much broader. One condition that stands out in light of climate change is infrastructure, which he lists as a communal condition of production. With two-thirds of the worlds largest cities (of populations over five million) built at least partially on low-lying coastal areas, the infrastructures of these cities are increasingly at risk of damage by rising sea levels and extreme storms caused by climate change (Greenfieldboyce 2007). Such damage has already been shown to contribute unsuspected costs to infrastructure, and if climate change intensifies, it seems likely that these costs could lead to the type of economic crisis OConnor predicted. Journal of Political Inquiry at New York University, Spring Issue (2013) 10 IV. The Limitations of Green Capitalism One of the primary reasons that it is important to clearly identify the mechanisms of capitalism discussed in the previous sections as ecologically unsustainable is because they often form the basis of proposed solutions to environmental problems. Such solutions fall into the category of green capitalism, which is a broad term used to refer to solutions that aim to resolve environmental issues through a capitalistic, market-based system. Many of the most popular proposals to combat climate change fall into this category, and have been endorsed not only by the mainstream environmental movement, but also by many leaders in the business world. Indeed, the main draw of green capitalism seems to be that it allows business to continue as usual. Specific green capitalist solutions to climate change vary widely, but here I consider a couple examples that illustrate how they encapsulate the mechanisms of capitalism. The first is the buying of carbon offsets, which allows governments, companies, and even individuals to pay a fee to offset their carbon emissions. The purpose of these offsets is to attach some value to carbon emissions, since those emissions cause climate change. Most are purchased in a compliance market in which governments or corporations must buy them in order to meet previously agreed-upon quotas (like those set by the Kyoto Protocol). These offsets allow such entities to pay to reduce fossil fuel use in general (by, say, investing in renewable energy) instead of limiting their personal fossil fuel consumption. The fact that quotas on carbon emission are being set should not be underappreciated. However, carbon offsets seem to have little to no impact on the problematic mechanisms of capitalism. Their goal is not to curb the growth of large, fossil fuel-burning corporations, and as Journal of Political Inquiry at New York University, Spring Issue (2013) 11 a consequence such corporations are able to grow, and the process of capital accumulation is able to continue. Fossil fuel-dependent corporations maintain their positions at the top of the economic hierarchy, and the use of renewable energy remains limited. In fact, global carbon dioxide emissions reached a record high of 35.6 billion tons in 2012, and the rise has been directly attributed to an increase in in carbon emissions caused by the burning of fossil fuels ("Global carbon dioxide emissions reach new record high" 2012). In light of this general support for the status quo, it is unsurprising that there exists a growing voluntary market for carbon offsets. This market differs from the compliance market in that it relies, at least in part, on marketing to attract customers. However, many of the most common marketing narratives flaunt the fact that their product requires no significant change in behavior from customers. Heather Lovell, Harriet Bulkeley, and Diana Liverman examine several such narratives in their 2009 paper Carbon Offsetting: Sustaining Consumption?, including one that they refer to as quick fix for the planet, whereby any consumer can purchase offsets now, rather than undertaking perhaps more fundamental and (so the argument goes) slower changes to corporate practices or individual behavior (2365). This narrative clearly acknowledges that carbon offsets are not aimed at achieving fundamental, systemic change. A second example of a green capitalist solution is the development of green products, particularly those that claim to support climate stability by requiring less energy in production. This solution, like carbon offsets, may have some minor benefits, such as raising awareness among consumers about how much energy goes into making the products. However, most companies that produce such products certainly do not want consumers to buy fewer products, Journal of Political Inquiry at New York University, Spring Issue (2013) 12 lest they should make less profit. Thus the products also depend on (and support) the process of capital accumulation. An example of this type of green product is Aquafinas 2009 water bottle design. It used less plastic and reduced the amount of petroleum used in manufacturing, but did not address any of the more fundamental environmental problems associated with bottling, shipping, and selling water for profit. Alternatively, some companies may state that their products are green because they are made to last longer; these companies may even urge their customers to buy fewer products and consume less. Still, the goal of such companies is to make money, and so they must sell their sustainable products at a price that prohibits the majority of people from buying them. Relying on a niche market is not a problem for a company, however, so long as it continues to make a profit. In fact, targeting a niche market may even be the objective in some cases. This highlights once again the indiscriminate, quantitative nature of profits in capitalism and the inability of green capitalism to alter that nature in any meaningful way. V. The Warming of the Arctic While the effects of climate change can be seen around the planet already, they are perhaps nowhere more evident than in the Arctic. This is undoubtedly due to the fact that in the past half-century, temperatures in the region have risen roughly twice as much as the global average (The Melting North 2012). In Greenland, for instance, this has meant an increase of 1.5C since 1951, compared with an increase of just 0.7C globally for the same period (ibid.). As temperatures have increased, the regions characteristic ice has thinned and melted at an alarming rate. This is due in part to the albedo effect, which occurs when light- reflecting snow and ice is replaced by more absorptive, darker-colored water or land (ibid.). Journal of Political Inquiry at New York University, Spring Issue (2013) 13 In July 2012, an unprecedentedand largely unpredictedmelting of the Greenland ice sheet occurred: a 97 percent surface melt over four days (Goldenberg 2012). The ice sheet contains almost seven hundred thousand cubic miles of ice, the second largest in the world after the Antarctic ice sheet (Walsh 2012). Scientists were so surprised by its melting that they admitted in a statement posted on NASA's website that they initially believed there was a mistake in their data (Goldenberg 2012). As the ice melted, it drained directly into the ocean and thus contributed to higher sea levels. For this reason, some scientists have even considered the 2012 melting of the Greenland ice sheet to be the big X factor in creating the devastating storm surges of Superstorm Sandy (Walsh 2012). Arctic sea ice has been similarly shrinking. Head of the Polar Ocean Physics Group and Cambridge professor Peter Wadhams predicted in September 2012 that it might melt completely by 2015-16 (Vidal 2012). Sea ice does not contribute to rising sea levels like melting land ice, but the loss of sea ice could also severely disrupt the regions ecosystems. For example, ice algae depend on sea ice to live, since they grow within and on the underside of sea ice during the spring (The Melting North 2012). In turn, the lifecycle of the lipid-rich crustacean known as the copepod revolves around the seasonal ice algae and phytoplankton blooms (ibid.). The copepod is a critical food source for many of the regions largest animals, including walruses and polar bears, and so these animals futures could also be jeopardized by the disappearance of sea ice and its accompanying algae (ibid.). The thawing of the regions permafrost could have even more widespread ecological consequences. Currently tons of carbon dioxide and methane (an even more potent greenhouse gas) are trapped in the permafrost, and they could be released in large quantities if Journal of Political Inquiry at New York University, Spring Issue (2013) 14 warming continues (ibid.). The reason such emissions would be undesirable is of course because greenhouse gases cause climate change. We also know how and why greenhouse gas emissions increased so drastically over the past few centuries. They came with the development of fossil fuel-powered industry and the capitalist system that supported it. Even though the region had little industrial development of its own, this historic link allows us to attribute the current climate change in the Arctic to capitalism. Allowing the system to continue unchanged can only lead to similar results, to continued warming in the Arctic and around the world. The recent transformation of the Arctic shows that the effects of climate change may occur significantly more quickly than initially predicted, which suggests that a gradual transfer from capitalism to a more ecologically sustainable system may not be drastic enough. Rather, it appears that what is needed to prevent further climate change is a rapid, fundamental break from capitalism. VI. Prospects for the Arctic Unfortunately, such a break does not appear to be taking place. The well-worn mechanisms of capitalism permeate nearly every position and policy that recently has been put forth regarding the regions future. Nearly all of societys most powerful actorsfrom corporations to states, and even international organizationshave welcomed the warming of the Arctic as a political and economic opportunity. They see in the regions natural resources the potential for profit, and in its melting sea ice the possibility of reduced shipping costs. Essentially, they see a new economic frontier. Perhaps the most discouraging policies to have emerged are those concerning the Arctics oil and gas reserves. The region is thought to contain 13 percent of the worlds Journal of Political Inquiry at New York University, Spring Issue (2013) 15 undiscovered oil and 30 percent of its undiscovered natural gas (ibid.). Of course, burning these reserves would further climate change and its accompanying disasters. Still, the United States, Norway, Russia, and Greenland have all opened their portion of the Arctic to offshore exploration (ibid.). Several major business deals have followed, including Royal Dutch Shells payment of 2.2 billion dollars for exploration rights off the shore of Alaska in 2005 and 2007 (ibid.). Although Shell found oil and gas in the area in the 1980s, it chose not to pursue it at the time because oil was then worth only fifteen dollars a barrel (ibid.). The recent deal came when that price shot up to over fifty dollars a barrel. Clearly the motivation behind Shells deal in Alaska was profit. Profit was also the motivation behind the United States entry into the deal. In fact, in the case of the Arctic, states policies have often seemed as motivated by profit as any corporations, as evidenced in the extensive debates taking place over the rights to shipping routes in the region (provided that ice melts enough to open such routes). China, for example, has expressed interest in the North-East Passage above Russia and the North-West Passage above North America, since the passages would cut thousands of miles off the nations current Atlantic-bound shipping route, which passes through the Strait of Malacca and the Suez Canal (Banyan: Asia and the Arctic dragons 2012). New shipping routes have also attracted attention because they could allow for the extraction and transportation of the regions natural resources. These include not only oil and natural gas, but also elements like gold and uranium, rare earth minerals, and gemstones (ibid.). As access to these resources has expanded, the eight nations that claim land in the ArcticDenmark, Canada, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, Sweden, and the United States Journal of Political Inquiry at New York University, Spring Issue (2013) 16 have all reevaluated their boundaries. This preparation for development comes despite the fact that the eight nations belong to an intergovernmental organization known as the Arctic Council, which initially claimed conservation as one of its primary goals (Bloom 1999). The Arctic Council recently denied the environmental organization Greenpeace observer status because several of the Arctic governments have been put off by Greenpeaces aggressive methods (The Melting North 2012). Similarly, all the nations that have been granted permanent observer status are European, and have expressed support for the economic opportunities that warming in the region present. One such opportunity that has attracted considerable attention in Europe is Arctic tourism, which is expected to grow substantially with the more human-friendly environment that rising temperatures will create (European Commission 2005). These development-oriented policies and positions provide a particularly clear example of the connection between profit motive and the process of capital accumulation. States seem particularly willing to exploit the economic potential of the Arctic, which reflects their need to recover after the economic crisis of 2008. In times of relative economic stability, it might be possible that pressure from below could force democratic governments and international organizations to consider the long-term environmental effects of their policies. However, during a period of economic instability, short-term economic interests will rise to the top of government agendas. The process of capital accumulation dictates that national economies must expand, and so we should not be surprised when states value development over conservation, especially during a time of crisis. Journal of Political Inquiry at New York University, Spring Issue (2013) 17 Also, it is important to remember the type of economic crisis James OConnor predicted in his second contradiction of capitalism, even if the governments of the world fail to do so. Already, flooding associated with higher sea levels caused by melting in the Arctic has had significant economic costs. The cost of Superstorm Sandy in the United States alone is estimated in the tens of billions of dollars (Rapoza 2012). Due to its significant damage to infrastructure, the storms impact on the conditions of production is still being felt months later. As the Arctic continues to melt, such storms will become more common, and more economic costs will follow. VII. Conclusions In June 2012, The Economist ran a sixteen-page special report on the current perils facing the Arctic from both climate change and development-oriented perspectives. In an attempt to speak to its business readers sensibilities, the magazine stated in its conclusion that The World Bank has estimated the cost of adapting to climate change between 2010 and 2050 to be seventy-five billion to one hundred billion dollars a year (The Melting North). This quantitative figure tells us nothing about the impact of climate change on our environment, or the conditions of our lives. It is possible that this figure does not reflect such changes at all. Furthermore, if policies in the Arctic are any indication, we should be wary of the way capitalism might adapt to climate change. Many of its fundamental mechanisms are incompatible with ecological sustainabilityfrom the way it measures value to the profits it defines in terms of such value. Perhaps most importantly, capitalism is based on a process of continual accumulation, and accumulation is, by its nature, unsustainable. Journal of Political Inquiry at New York University, Spring Issue (2013) 18 Since these mechanisms are inherent to the capitalist system, it is not surprising that nearly all of the powerful actors operating within that systemfrom states to private corporationshave failed to craft policies that break with the mechanisms. The rise of green capitalism to the forefront of mainstream climate change debate indicates the degree to which the mechanisms are entrenched. We can expect the positions and policies that have contributed to climate change in the Arctic and around the world to continue until the capitalist mechanisms themselves are identified as problematic, and targeted specifically.

Ocean exploration expands capitalism to new regions of the worldParrish, 13 - managing director of theWorld Wildlife Fund. His Ph.D. is in conservation ecology. (Jeffrey, Slate, Pirates of the Colder Meridians, September 12th 2013, http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2013/09/a_wwf_scientist_on_exploring_the_post_climate_change_arctic.html)//jk Scientists saw it coming. Explorers who forecast change through satellite images or capture the disappearance of glaciers on camera warned us that the massive ice sheets were melting. And in an increasingly warmer and more crowded world, weve come to accept this as fact. Moreover, the just released 2013 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report makes it clear (or at least should) to even the most fervent doubters that these changes are the fault of humans, of you and me. Yet whats surprised even the elite academy of climate scientists is the shockingly fast pace at which its happening. Tragically, and some 30 to 50 years before we expected, climate change is erasing the big white spot on top of the globe. And the gold rush has begun. Exploration isnt dead here. In this newly accessible maritime realm, treasure maps are being createdX marks the spot of new shipping lanes, untold oil and gas reserves, lodes of rare precious metals, and potential tourism destinations. Like pirates of the colder meridians, big businesses and governments are swooping in to grab the booty from a virtually unclaimed and weakly regulated region. Meanwhile environmental groups are partnering with local communities, the fishing industry, and others to help them chart their own destinies in this fresh terrain, assuring protection for indigenous communities, local economies, and stunningly iconic wildlife like whales and walruses, polar bears and pelagic birds. This is the norths new normal.

AquacultureAquacultures disruption of natural metabolic reproduction reifies capitals control over production Clark and Clausen 08Brett Clark, PhD sociology at North Carolina State University in Raleigh. Rebecca Clausen, PhD sociology at Fort Lewis College, (The Monthly Review - 2008, Volume 60, Issue 03 (July-August), http://monthlyreview.org/2008/07/01/the-oceanic-crisis-capitalism-and-the-degradation-of-marine-ecosystem/) - AWTurning the Ocean into a Watery GraveThe world is at a crossroads in regard to the ecological crisis. Ecological degradation under global capitalism extends to the entire biosphere. Oceans that were teeming with abundance are being decimated by the continual intrusion of exploitive economic operations. At the same time that scientists are documenting the complexity and interdependency of marine species, we are witnessing an oceanic crisis natural conditions, ecological processes, and nutrient cycles are being undermined through overfishing and transformed due to global warming. The expansion of the accumulation system, along with technological advances in fishing, have intensified the exploitation of the world ocean; facilitated the enormous capture of fishes (both target and bycatch); extended the spatial reach of fishing operations; broadened the species deemed valuable on the market; and disrupted metabolic and reproductive processes of the ocean. The quick-fix solution of aquaculture enhances capitals control over production without resolving ecological contradictions. It is wise to recognize, as Paul Burkett has stated, that short of human extinction, there is no sense in which capitalism can be relied upon to permanently break down under the weight of its depletion and degradation of natural wealth.44 Capital is driven by the competition for the accumulation of wealth, and short-term profits provide the immediate pulse of capitalism. It cannot operate under conditions that require reinvestment in the reproduction of nature, which may entail time scales of a hundred or more years. Such requirements stand opposed to the immediate interests of profit. The qualitative relation between humans and nature is subsumed under the drive to accumulate capital on an ever-larger scale. Marx lamented that to capital, Time is everything, man is nothing; he is at the most, times carcase. Quality no longer matters. Quantity alone decides everything.45 Productive relations are concerned with production time, labor costs, and the circulation of capitalnot the diminishing conditions of existence. Capital subjects natural cycles and processes (via controlled feeding and the use of growth hormones) to its economic cycle. The maintenance of natural conditions is not a concern. The bounty of nature is taken for granted and appropriated as a free gift. As a result, the system is inherently caught in a fundamental crisis arising from the transformation and destruction of nature. Istvn Mszros elaborates this point, stating: For today it is impossible to think of anything at all concerning the elementary conditions of social metabolic reproduction which is not lethally threatened by the way in which capital relates to themthe only way in which it can. This is true not only of humanitys energy requirements, or of the management of the planets mineral resources and chemical potentials, but of every facet of the global agriculture, including the devastation caused by large scale de-forestation, and even the most irresponsible way of dealing with the element without which no human being can survive: water itself.In the absence of miraculous solutions, capitals arbitrarily self-asserting attitude to the objective determinations of causality and time in the end inevitably brings a bitter harvest, at the expense of humanity [and nature itself].46 An analysis of the oceanic crisis confirms the destructive qualities of private for-profit operations. Dire conditions are being generated as the resiliency of marine ecosystems in general is being undermined. To make matters worse, sewage from feedlots and fertilizer runoff from farms are transported by rivers to gulfs and bays, overloading marine ecosystems with excess nutrients, which contribute to an expansion of algal production. This leads to oxygen-poor water and the formation of hypoxic zonesotherwise known as dead zones because crabs and fishes suffocate within these areas. It also compromises natural processes that remove nutrients from the waterways. Around 150 dead zones have been identified around the world. A dead zone is the end result of unsustainable practices of food production on land. At the same time, it contributes to the loss of marine life in the seas, furthering the ecological crisis of the world ocean. Coupled with industrialized capitalist fisheries and aquaculture, the oceans are experiencing ecological degradation and constant pressures of extraction that are severely depleting the populations of fishes and other marine life. The severity of the situation is that if current practices and rates of fish capture continue marine ecosystems and fisheries around the world could collapse by the year 2050.47 To advert turning the seas into a watery grave, what is needed is nothing less than a worldwide revolution in our relation to nature, and thus of global society itself.

BiofuelsBiofuels are poisoned fruit from the poisoned tree they serve only to maintain the underlying systemCock 11Jacklyn Cock, Professor Emeritus in the Department of Sociology at the University of the Witwatersrand, and an honorary research associate of the Society, Work and Development (SWOP) Institute, PhD - Rhodes University and has been a visiting scholar at Wolfson College, Oxford University, the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, the Woodrow Wilson School, Princeton University, and the Center for Historical Analysis, Rutgers University, 2011,(Green Capitalism or Environmental Justice? A Critique of the Sustainability Discourse, Focus Journal, http://hsf.org.za/resource-centre/focus/focus-63/Jacklyn%20Cock.pdf) - AWGreen capitalism. The ecological crisis is not some future and indeterminate event. It is now generally acknowledged that we are in the first stages of ecological collapse. Capitals response to the ecological crisis is that the system can continue to expand by creating a new sustainable or green capitalism, bringing the efficiency of the market to bear on nature and its reproduction. These visions amount to little more than a renewed strategy for profiting from planetary destruction1 . The business of sustainability, in this view, is simply a new frontier for accumulation in which carbon trading is the model scheme 2 . The two pillars on which green capitalism rests are technological innovation and expanding markets while keeping the existing institutions of capitalism intact. This is Thomas Friedmans green revolution which relies on linking the two. As he insists, green technology represents the mother of all markets3 . More specifically, green capitalism involves: appeals to nature (and even the crisis) as a marketing tool; developing largely untested clean coal technology through Carbon Capture and Storage, which involves installing equipment that captures carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases and then pumping the gas underground; the development of new sources of energy such as solar, nuclear and wind, thereby creating new markets; the massive development of biofuels, which involves diverting land from food production; the carbon trading regime enshrined in the Kyoto Protocols. Many of these strategies put the onus of solving climate change on changing individual life styles. This individualizing is illustrated by Al Gores documentary An Inconvenient Truth and relies heavily on manipulative advertising greenwash to persuade us of the efficacy of these strategies. Greenwash is also evident in much corporate sustainability reporting as part of their presentation of a benign image of themselves. Sustainability: the ideological anchor of green capitalism. In South Africa, as elsewhere, there has been a steep growth in the number of companies producing sustainability reports, and in the emergence of various corporate indicators and guidelines. Media coverage is growing with, in 2010 alone, a Financial Times Special Report on Sustainability, the publication of the quarterly Trialogue Sustainability Review as a supplement to the Financial Mail, and the Earth supplement to the daily newspaper, Business Day. The current emphasis is on how sustainability can increase profitability or, in the sanitized language of capital, can add value to a company. In 2004, the Johannesburg Stock Exchange introduced the Socially Responsible Investment Index (SRI) to help crystallize good triple-bottom line and governance policy and practices. Companies apply to be listed in 2008, 61 companies made it onto the index, from 105 companies that were reviewed for inclusion4 . According to an asset manager, Very important is that [social responsibility] should not mean lower returns. In fact it should sometimes mean higher returns as the profile of some of these investments can be higher risk and lower liquidity5 . Chris Laszios Sustainable Value: How the worlds leading companies are doing well by doing good emphasizes the importance of a companys reputation, goodwill and stakeholder relationships. Based on this assumption, Laszio develops a strong business case for taking a systematic approach to building stakeholder value, including shareholder value, through the integration of sustainability in all aspects of a business6 . The cynicism involved is also illustrated by a statement from a Santam executive, Even if you dont believe in climate change, it makes financial sense. In similar terms it has been claimed that the climate crisis represents a lucrative entrepreneurial opportunity7 .This is congruent with the treatment of disasters (often ecological) as exciting market opportunities, described by Klein as disaster capitalism8 . Similarly, for the JSE, [I]nvesting in sustainability makes sense9 . From July 2010 all companies listed on the JSE are required to publish an integrated sustainability report. Thus the worst corporate polluters in South Africa all now produce lengthy sustainability reports. ArcelorMittal SAs 2009 sustainability report claims that [o]ver the last year, we made an even greater commitment to engagement with all stakeholder groups by accelerating interactions with communities, employees, regulators, government and advocacy groups. This claim, however, is hotly disputed by Phineas Malapela, the chair of the Vaal Environmental Justice Alliance10. Other major polluters show a total neglect of environmental factors in their definition of sustainable development. For example, BHP Billiton, the worlds leading diversified natural resources company, describes the companys vision of Sustainable Development as follows: to be the company of choice creating sustainable value for shareholders, employees, contractors, suppliers, customers, business partners and host communities.11 The main concern of the corporations remains profitability: the awareness that shrinking natural resources could damage it, while measures such as energy efficiency could reduce costs, reduce risks and enhance a companys public image. The former CEO of Walmart recently described sustainability as the single biggest business opportunity of the 21st century and the next main source of competitive advantage12. Hence the opening claim: the sustainability discourse has been appropriated by neo-liberal capitalism. Critiques of green capitalism Critiques of green capitalism are rooted in the understanding that it is capitals logic of accumulation that is destroying the ecological conditions that sustain life: through the pollution and consumption of natural resources, destruction of habitats and biodiversity, and global warming. The expansionist logic of the capitalist system means it is not sustainable. As Barbara Harris-White claims, sustainable capitalism is a fiction13. She writes, sustainability has never been given a testable definition it has been watered down to resources sustainably available in the environment and even leached into mere growth14. Joel Kovel stresses that the cause of the ecological crisis is the expansionist logic of the capitalist system, and in similar terms, Vandana Shiva stresses, the same corporate interests that have created the crisis try to offer the disease as the cure more fossil fuel based chemical fertilizers15. If capitalism continues, the future looks grim. If capitalism remains the dominant social order we can expect unbearable climate conditions, an intensification of social and ecological crises and, as Ian Angus writes, the spread of the most barbaric forms of class rule, as the imperialist powers fight among themselves and with the global south for continued control of the worlds diminishing resources. At worst human life may not survive16. But at least in the short run as ecological breakdown accelerates, the dominant classes will survive, living in protected enclaves in what Foster calls a fortress world. Fortress World is a planetary apartheid system, gated and maintained by force, in which the gap between global rich and global poor constantly widens and the differential access to environmental resources and amenities increases sharply. It consists of bubbles of privilege amidst oceans of misery17. This retreat into fortified enclaves already exists in South Africa now the most unequal society in the world as the powerful and the privileged move into the growing number of gated communities and golf estates. However, the argument that the discourse of sustainability is the ideological anchor of green capitalism does not mean we should throw the baby out with the bathwater: the immediate challenge is to reclaim the notion of sustainability by linking it to considerations of justice.

Technological fetishism fails to alter the conditions that cause climate change and denies the role of capitalism in environmental degradation Foster, 10 - professor of sociology at the University of Oregon (John, Why Ecological Revolution, Monthly Review, http://monthlyreview.org/2010/01/01/why-ecological-revolution/, February 3rd 2010)//jk We are increasingly led to believe that the answers to climate change are primarily to be found in new energy technology, specifically increased energy and carbon efficiencies in both production and consumption. Technology in this sense, however, is often viewed abstractly as a deus ex machina, separated from both the laws of physics (i.e., entropy or the second law of thermodynamics) and from the way technology is embedded in historically specific conditions. With respect to the latter, it is worth noting that, under the present economic system, increases in energy efficiency normally lead to increases in the scale of economic output, effectively negating any gains from the standpoint of resource use or carbon efficiency - a problem known as the Jevons Paradox. As William Stanley Jevons observed in the nineteenth century, every new steam engine was more efficient in the use of coal than the one before, which did not prevent coal burning from increasing overall, since the efficiency gains only led to the expansion of the number of steam engines and of growth in general. This relation between efficiency and scale has proven true for capitalist economies up to the present day.[8] Technological fetishism with regard to environmental issues is usually coupled with a form of market fetishism. So widespread has this become that even a militant ecologist like Bill McKibben, author of The End of Nature, recently stated: There is only one lever even possibly big enough to make our system move as fast as it needs to, and thats the force of markets.[9] Green-market fetishism is most evident in what is called cap and trade - a catch phrase for the creation, via governments, of artificial markets in carbon trading and so-called offsets. The important thing to know about cap and trade is that it is a proven failure. Although enacted in Europe as part of the implementation of the Kyoto Protocol, it has failed where it was supposed to count: in reducing emissions. Carbon-trading schemes have been shown to be full of holes. Offsets allow all sorts of dubious forms of trading that have no effect on emissions. Indeed, the only area in which carbon trading schemes have actually been effective is in promoting profits for speculators and corporations, which are therefore frequently supportive of them. Recently, Friends of the Earth released a report entitled Subprime Carbon? which pointed to the emergence, under cap and trade agreements, of what could turn out to be the worlds largest financial derivatives market in the form of carbon trading. All of this has caused Hansen to refer to cap and trade as the temple of doom, locking in disasters for our children and grandchildren.[10] The masquerade associated with the dominant response to global warming is illustrated in the climate bill passed by the U.S. House of Representatives in late June 2009. The bill, if enacted, would supposedly reduce greenhouse gas emissions 17 percent relative to 2005 levels by 2020, which translates into 4-5 percent less U.S. global warming pollution than in 1990. This then would still not reach the target level of a 6-8 percent cut (relative to 1990) for wealthy countries that the Kyoto accord set for 2012, and that was supposed to have been only a minor, first step in dealing with global warming - at a time when the problem was seen as much less severe. The goal presented in the House bill, even if reached, would therefore prove vastly inadequate. But the small print in the bill makes achieving even this meager target unrealistic. The coal industry is given until 2025 to comply with the bills pollution reduction mandates, with possible extensions afterward. As Hansen observes, the bill builds in approval of new coal-fired power plants! Agribusiness, which accounts for a quarter of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, is entirely exempt from the mandated reductions. The cap and trade provisions of the House bill would give annual carbon dioxide emission allowances to some 7,400 facilities across the United States, most of them handed out for free. These pollution allowances would increase up through 2016, and companies would be permitted to bank them indefinitely for future use. Corporations would be able to fulfill their entire set of obligations by buying offsets associated with pollution control projects until 2027. To make matters worse, the Senate counterpart to the House bill, now under deliberation, would undoubtedly be more conservative, giving further concessions and offsets to corporations. The final bill, if it comes out of Congress, will thus be, in Hansens words, worse than nothing. Similar developments can be seen in the preparation for the December 2009 world climate negotiations in Copenhagen, in which Washington has played the role of a spoiler, blocking all but the most limited, voluntary agreements, and insisting on only market-based approaches, such as cap and trade.[11] Recognizing that world powers are playing the role of Nero as Rome burns, James Lovelock, the earth system scientist famous for his Gaia hypothesis, argues that massive climate change and the destruction of human civilization as we know it may now be irreversible. Nevertheless, he proposes as solutions either a massive building of nuclear power plants all over the world (closing his eyes to the enormous dangers accompanying such a course) - or geoengineering our way out of the problem, by using the worlds fleet of aircraft to inject huge quantities of sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere to block a portion of the incoming sunlight, reducing the solar energy reaching the earth. Another common geoengineering proposal includes dumping iron filings throughout the ocean to increase its carbon-absorbing properties. Rational scientists recognize that interventions in the earth system on the scale envisioned by geoengineering schemes (for example, blocking sunlight) have their own massive, unforeseen consequences. Nor could such schemes solve the crisis. The dumping of massive quantities of sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere would, even if effective, have to be done again and again, on an increasing scale, if the underlying problem of cutting greenhouse gas emissions were not dealt with. Moreover, it could not possibly solve other problems associated with massive carbon dioxide emissions, such as the acidification of the oceans.[12] The dominant approach to the world ecological crisis, focusing on technological fixes and market mechanisms, is thus a kind of denial; one that serves the vested interests of those who have the most to lose from a change in economic arrangements. Al Gore exemplifies the dominant form of denial in his new book, Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis. For Gore, the answer is the creation of a sustainable capitalism. He is not, however, altogether blind to the faults of the present system. He describes climate change as the greatest market failure in history and decries the short-term perspective of present-day capitalism, its market triumphalism, and the fundamental flaws in its relation to the environment. Yet, in defiance of all this, he assures his readers that the strengths of capitalism can be harnessed to a new system of sustainable development.[13]

Technological approaches to climate change only pass the buck on to future generations- failure to destroy the root cause of climate change makes extinction inevitable and means capitalists misuse the technology ROHRICHT, 6/29/14 M.A. Candidate, Ethics, Peace and Global Affairs- B.A., Professional Writing & B.A., Philosophy (Alyssa, Counter-Punch, Capitalism and Climate Change, http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/06/27/capitalism-climate-change/)//jk Pursuing sustainable energy sources is an equally dubious response to the climate crisis. Just as with geoengineering, the thought is that human ingenuity and investment in new technologies will lead to cleaner and more efficient industrial practices, thus reducing our GHG emissions. Yet this ignores the very nature of the capitalist system of endless growth and accumulation, and given the opportunity to expand further while expending less on energy and resources, capitalism will naturally expand to fill the newly opened space. This concept is often called Jevons Paradox, after William Stanley Jevons, a 19th century economist who sought to examine why increased efficiency in the use of coal led to increased consumption. What Jevons noted was a positive correlation between efficiency and resource consumption, observing that as the use of coal became more efficient and thus more cost effective, it became more desirable to consumers, creating more demand and thus more production and consumption. On and on it goes. This is called the rebound effect whereby gains in efficiency lead to a drop in the price of a given commodity and a rise in demand and consumption. Any gains in efficiency, then, do not lead to a decrease in consumption, but often have the opposite effect. In fact, over the period of 1975 to 1996, carbon efficiency increased dramatically in the US, Japan, the Netherlands, and Austria. However, studies show that during the same period, total emissions of carbon dioxide and per capita emissions increased across the board. Thus gains in fossil fuel efficiency have resulted in increased use by the capitalist, industrialized societies. As Karl Marx noted, capitalism prevents the rational application of technologies because gains are only reinvested in the capitalist system and used to further expand and grow capital accumulation. Renewable energy poses similar problems. Drastic measures would need to be taken to change the entire infrastructure currently built around fossil fuels. In order to keep global warming to a 2C increase by purely technical means, about 80% of the worlds energy use would have to be switched to carbon-neutral technologies like wind, solar, and bio-fuels. An article in the New Yorker on inventor Saul Griffith noted that this would require building the equivalent of all the following: a hundred square metres of new solar cells, fifty square metres of new solar-thermal reflectors, and one Olympic swimming pools volume of genetically engineered algae (for biofuels) every second for the next twenty-five years; one three-hundred-foot-diameter wind turbine every five minutes; one hundred-megawatt geothermal-powered steam turbine every eight hours; and one three-gigawatt nuclear power plant every week. To construct all of this carbon-neutral technology would require emitting huge amounts of GHGs into the atmosphere, over and above what we are already emitting to continue running the current system. Furthermore, large-scale renewables can be just as destructive as other forms of energy. Large-scale dams used for hydropower a supposedly clean energy have led to destruction of habitats for both aquatic and land species, destruction of flood plains, river deltas, wetlands, and ocean estuaries, reduction of water quality and nutrient cycling and have been known to cause earthquakes. Biofuels, similarly, cause huge environmental damage, sometimes using more energy to grow and transport the crops than energy gained from it, not to mention the issue of creating competition for arable land with the food industry. Once again, a boon for the capitalist economy in creating new industry in sustainable energy is to the great detriment of the environment and the climate, so long as the harms caused by these new technologies can be written off as externalities. Focusing on technology whether through methods to increase efficiency, through sustainable energy, or through geoengineering do nothing to change the underlying capitalist system of unfettered growth that has been at the source of the climate change problem from the beginning. They are merely attempts at treating the symptoms of climate change, not the cause. Karl Marx first employed the concept of metabolic interactions between humans and nature in the 19th century, recognizing the complex interdependence between the two. Since man lives from nature and derives the very necessities to survive from it, nature is his body. He is a part of nature and they are inextricably linked and so man must be in dialogue with it in order to survive. This complex interchange he likened to the metabolism or material exchange within the body. But as man began to adopt practices that disrupted this interchange, a rupture occurred with the relations between man and the natural world. This rupture, driven by capitalist expansion, intensified with large-scale agriculture, harmful industries, and the global market. Marx saw this rupture, or metabolic rift, occur as populations began to flock toward cities. In contrast to traditional agriculture, where waste from food is recycled back into the soil, this new type of agriculture meant nutrients (food) were being shipped to cities to feed the growing population, and thus not cycled back into the soil. This caused the natural fertility of the soil to decline and nutrients in the city to accumulate as waste and pollution. As soil fertility worsened, more and more intensive agricultural methods were needed, increasing the use of artificial fertilizers, further harming the nutrient cycles of the soil. Capitalism continued to demand higher and higher yields, requiring more and more intensive and harsh farming methods, greater fertilizer use, and so on, creating a cycle of deterioration of the natural processes, and a rift between man and nature. Humans have disrupted the natural processes of the earth in unimaginable ways. The very composition of the air we breathe is being altered by our ever-growing emissions of GHGs. The system we have put our faith in for many years rests on a ceaseless hunger for accumulation, spurred on by fossil fuels. As our energy sources become more and more scarce and difficult to find and extract, instead of scaling back and recognizing natures natural boundaries, capitalism doubles down and employs even more dangerous methods. Searching for market-based solutions to the climate crisis will not work. When capitalism attempts to put a price on the natural world, it takes into account only the interests of those with the greatest purchasing power. Capital accumulation is the primary objective, and any costs that can be externalized onto nature and the global poor will be. Technology in the capitalist system has helped us to create ever-more energy-efficient processes, yet a paradoxical relationship arises, where increased energy-efficiency leads to increased economic expansion, negating any reduction in resource-use. Likewise, transforming our infrastructure to more sustainable energy sources would require a such massive output of GHGs from fossil fuels to build that implementing the change would push us over the climate cliff. Geoengineering, the solution touted by many cheerleaders of the capitalist system as the saving grace of humanity, absurdly argues for altering the earths natural systems even further, hoping that capitalism can continue undiminished. Technology may help pass the buck to future generations, but it will not solve the problem. Capitalism would have us grow indefinitely, but the earths natural carrying capacity would have us reverse this trend. The interminable drive for accumulation on which capitalism is solely focused has led humanity down a path of near-disaster with the very systems that we rely on to sustain life human and otherwise. If we continue down this path of relentless accumulation inherent in the capitalist system, we cannot stop the climate disaster.

ExplorationOcean exploration allows the smooth transition of capital from one place to another justifies annihilation of the spaceSteinburg 99 [1999, Phillip E Steinburg is from the Department of Geography at Florida State University and holds a PhD,~ The Maritime Mystique: Sustainable Development, capital mobility, and nostalgia in the world ocean, http://mailer.fsu.edu/~psteinbe/garnet-psteinbe/s%26s.pdf] GKooRegarding the first of these images, many scholars have noted the important role that speed and the conquest of distance play in contemporary capitalism. Even those who caution that this phenomenon masks the continued importance of place (for example, Cox, 1997) or continuity with past political-economic processes (for example, Harvey, 1989) acknowledge that the ability to transgress space with unprecedented speed and agility is a defining feature of today's capitalist political economy. Within this system of hypermobile capitalism, the ocean has taken on special importance as a seemingly friction-free surface across which capital can move without hindrance: "Water is capital's element The bourgeois idealization of sea power and ocean- borne commerce has been central to the mythology of capital, which has struggled to free itself from the earth just as the bourgeoisie struggled to free itself from tilling the soil. Moving capital is liquid capital, and without movement, capital is a mere Oriental hoard .... [The ocean] is capital's favored myth-element" (Connery, 1995, pages 40, 56). There are several layers of irony here. If capital were truly able to transcend the barriers to seamless mobility imposed by the distance and nature of ocean space, then, at the point at which this transcendence were achieved, the ocean could no longer have utility. Although the ocean may be "capital's favored myth-element," its utility to capital as a transportation surface lies in the ease with which it can be annihilated. As we have seen, the ocean's service in a world of capital fluidity lies in the apparent ability of corporations such as Merrill Lynch, Concert, and AT&T to wish away both its nature and the very space it occupies. The underlying utility of the ocean as an antithetical space of movement (and the irony in capital's desire to annihilate it) is supported by Deleuze and Guatarri's iden- tification of the ocean as "a smooth space par excellence" (Deleuze and Guatarri, 1988, page 479). As sites of alterity, 'smooth' spaces serve as necessary counterpoints to the 'striated' spaces of capital whose physical and social features and points of friction enable investment, sedentaritation, enclosure, surveillance, and other processes asso- ciated with modern life (Deleuze and Guatarri, 1988, pages 474 500). Despite their utility, agents of capital progressively seek to absorb and 'modernize' these smooth' spaces because they are resistant to essential capitalist categories and institutions. Thus, the tendency to annihilate the formal independence of ocean space is indicative of a more general tendency toward self-destruction, whether this annihilation is achieved through colonization by modernist institutions of navigation and militarism (as is depicted by Virilio, 1986, pages 37 49, as well as Deleuze and Guatarri) or through physical obliteration (as is idealized by Merrill Lynch and Concert). Additionally, the intervening distance of ocean space amplifies difference, and, as poli- tical economists have long asserted, the ability to shift capital between 'different' places provides a crucial mechanism for capital accumulation (Hilferding, 1981; Lenin, 1939; Luxemburg, 1964). Capital's perverse desire to annihilate its "favored myth-element" although perhaps rational from a short-run profit-maximization standpoint runs the risk of also annihilating opportunities for the realization of value through movement, thereby reducing capital to the status of "a mere Oriental hoard."

GeoengineeringGeoengineering continues the subjection of the natural world to capitalism- it fails to solve and only fills the pockets of capitalistsROHRICHT, 6/29/14 M.A. Candidate, Ethics, Peace and Global Affairs- B.A., Professional Writing & B.A., Philosophy (Alyssa, Counter-Punch, Capitalism and Climate Change, http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/06/27/capitalism-climate-change/)//jk This is the idea of dematerializing the economy or reducing the throughput of raw materials and energy into the system without decreasing the systems output of goods and services. Basically, the economy will do more with less. By switching to more sustainable sources of energy like wind and solar, increasing the efficiency of machinery and appliances, and through geoengineering, proponents of the technological solution to climate change argue that mans ingenuity can pull us back from the brink of disaster. Economist Anthony Giddens writes in The Politics of Climate Change that we must take bold action to combat climate change, and this means taking the plunge on geoengineering projects that could save humanity from the harmful effects of climate change. We have no hope of responding to climate change unless we are prepared to take bold decisions. It is the biggest example ever of he who hesitates is lost. However, further investing in technologies and in geoengineering is not a bold, new decision, as Giddens contends. It is doubling down on exactly what we have been doing for decades. Solar Radiation Management (SRM) techniques (one area of geoengineering) such as adding sulfate aerosols to the stratosphere to increase the albedo effect the amount of the Suns energy that is reflected back into space and cool the planet are being seriously considered by many scientists and policy makers. The absurdity of pursuing massive projects that would greatly alter the natural systems of the earth and that could have disastrous side effects is evident. Gavin Schmidt, climate modeler at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, created the following analogy for geoengineering: Imagine the climate as a small boat on a choppy ocean, rocking back and forth. One of the passengers in the boat decides to stand up and deliberately rock the boat violently to the protests of the other passengers. Another passenger suggests that with his knowledge of chaotic dynamics, he can counterbalance the rocking of the first passenger. To do so, he needs many sensors, computational resources, and so on so that he can react efficiently, though he cannot guarantee that it will absolutely stabilize the boat, and since the boat is already unsteady, it may make things worse. Schmidt asks, So is the answer to a known and increasing human influence on climate an ever more elaborate system to control the climate? Or should the person rocking the boat just sit down? Market reactions to large-scale geoengineering such as releasing sulfate aerosols, would result in the continued acceleration of resource use and further capital accumulation, not to mention, it would do little to solve our problems. Sulfate injection, to start, doesnt actually help to remove any CO2 from the atmosphere. It also doesnt address other areas of climate change, including ocean acidification, which has far-reaching implications for many species of marine life. Whats worse, since sulfate injection only manages to reflect more of the suns energy without addressing any of the systematic causes of the increase of greenhouse gases (GHG) in the atmosphere, further increases of GHGs can continue, thus assuming the deployment of future sulfate injections and other geoengineering solutions to no end.

MH-370The AFF is a strategy of distraction a technique of flooding insignificant information to keep capitalist resistance in checkBremner 14Neesha Bremner, Senior Fellow of HUMA - Humanitarian Media Agency, Multi-media journalist and communications specialist, March 29, 2014, (Dames and Knights ~ Tony Abbott and the Art of Political Distraction, http://thedailyblog.co.nz/2014/03/29/dames-and-knights-tony-abbott-and-the-art-of-political-distraction/) - AWThere is an art to distracting the electorate and Abbott has embraced it whole-heartedly and with a cynical zeal. Whom else would have the cynical audacity to announce the possibility of finding debris related MH370 from within parliament after his party had lost the vote to repeal the Carbon Tax, a key platform of his partys election campaign, for the second time within four months. Yup that distracted a big chunk of the media well done Tony. And when Abbott and his Liberal Party tried to repeal the Mining Tax, another election promise, this week another fail as it was blocked by the Senate. This admittedly was covered more veraciously across the media spectrum but this government with strong support from aspects of the media is utilising distraction techniques at a level that is impressive and slightly worrying. Why are the Liberal government and its allies trying to distract the electorate, what social controls are they trying to enforce. What do they not want Australia to see? Noam Chomsky calls this the Strategy of Distraction. The key element of social control is the strategy of distraction that is to divert public attention from important issues and changes decided by political and economic elites, through the technique of flood or flooding continuous distractions and insignificant information. Another gem of distraction announced coincidentally around the time the senate blocked the Mining tax repeal and the Liberal party announced the selling of Medicare Private along with a raft of legislation to enable the selling of State assets while Senator Arthur Sinodinos hand to stand down as minister for being dodgy or a log in the flood waters of distracting nonsense was the grand announcement that Australia is taking it back to the future with the re-introduction of Dames and Knighthoods to the Australian equivalent of the honours list. Adding to this distraction is another classic technique of what Naomi Klein in the Shock Doctrine calls disaster capitalism or what Antony Loewenstein in his 2013 book Profits of Doom coins as vulture capitalism, the art of overwhelm. Or throwing so much potential or actual change at the electorate all at once the public finds it difficult to focus and therefore sweeping legislative changes can be made while people try and get their bearings. Acts of overwhelm that have fuelled the political miasma in the first six months of Abbotts Liberal government include: the on-going horrific -ness of Australias asylum seeker policy and the coinciding profit driven outsourced imprisonment of refugees, the debt mythology to justify cuts and austerity measures, royal commissions into unions and a review of general work conditions for all working Australians, a barrage of attacks on the national broadcaster