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1NC

No offenseecon decline wont cause war

Daniel Deudney, Hewlett Fellow in Science, Technology, and Society at the Center for Energy and

Environmental Studies at Princeton, April 1991, Environment and Security: Muddled Thinking, Bulletin

of the Atomic Scientists, p. 27, google books, zzx

Poverty Wars. In a second scenario, declining living standards first cause internal turmoil. then war. If groups at all levels of affluence protect

their standard of living by pushing deprivation on other groups class war and revolutionary upheavals could result. Faced with these pressures,

liberal democracy and free market systems could increasingly be replaced by authoritarian systems capable of maintaining minimum order.9 If

authoritarian regimes are more war-prone because they lack democratic control, and if revolutionary regimes are warprone because of their

ideological fervor and isolation, then the world is likely to become more violent. The record of previous depressions supports

the proposition that widespread economic stagnation and unmet economic expectations contribute

to international conflict. Although initially compelling, this scenario has major flaws. One is that it is

arguably based on unsound economic theory. Wealth is formed not so much by the availability of cheap

natural resources as by capital formation through savings and more efficient production. Many

resource-poor countries, like Japan, are very wealthy, while many countries with more extensive

resources are poor. Environmental constraints require an end to economic growth based on growing use of raw materials, but not

necessarily an end to growth in the production of goods and services. In addition, economic decline does not necessarily

produce conflict.How societies respond to economic decline may largely depend upon the rate at

which such declines occur. And as people get poorer, they may become less willing to spend scarce

resources for military forces. AsBernard Brodie observedabout the modein era, The predisposing factors to

military aggression are full bellies, not empty ones. The experience of economic depressions over

the last two centuries may be irrelevant, because such depressions were characterized by under-

utilized production capacity and falling resource prices. In the 1930 increased military spending

stimulated economies, butif economic growth is retarded by environmental constraints, military spending will

exacerbate the problem. Power Wars. A third scenario is that environmental degradation might cause war by altering the relativepower of states; that is, newly stronger states may be tempted to prey upon the newly weaker ones, or weakened states may attack and lock in

their positions before their power ebbs firther. But such alterations might not lead to war as readily as the lessons of history suggest,

because economic power and military power are not as tightly coupled as in the past. The economic powerpositions of Germany and Japan have changed greatly since World War 11, but these changes have not been accompanied by war or threat of

war. In the contemporary world, whole industries rise, fall, and relocate, causing substantial

fluctuations in the economic well-being of regions and peoples without producing wars.There is no

reason to believe that changes in relative wealth and power caused by the uneven impact of environmental

degradation would inevitably lead to war. Even ifenvironmentaldegradation were to destroy the basic social

and economic fabric of a country or region, the impact on international order may not be very great.

Among the first casualties in such country would be the capacity to wage war.The poor and wretched

of the earth may be able to deny an outside aggressor an easy conquest, but they are themselves a minimal threat to other

states.Contemporary offensive military operations require complex organizational skills, specialized

industrial products and surplus wealth.

Collapse is inevitablehistory proves

Debora MacKenzie, writer, 4/5/08, Are we doomed?, New Scientist, Academic Search Premier, zzx


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DOOMSDAY. The end of civilisation. Literature and film abound with tales of plague, famine and wars which ravage the planet, leaving a few

survivors scratching out a primitive existence amid the ruins. Every civilisation in history has collapsed, after all. Why

should ours be any different? Doomsday scenarios typically feature a knockout blow:a massive asteroid, all-

out nuclear war or a catastrophic pandemic. Yet there is anotherchilling possibility: what if the very nature of

civilisation means that ours, like all the others, is destined to collapse sooner or later? A few researchers have

been making such claims for years. Disturbingly,

recent insightsfrom fields such as complexity theory

suggest thatthey are right. It appears that once a society develops beyond a certain level of complexity it becomes

increasingly fragile. Eventually, it reaches a point at whicheven a relatively minor disturbance can bring

everything crashing down. Some say we have already reached this point, and that it is time to start

thinking about how we might manage collapse. Others insist it is not yet too late, and that we can - we must - act now to

keep disaster at bay. History is not on our side. Think of Sumeria, of ancient Egypt andof the Maya. In his 2005best-seller, Jared Diamond of the University of California, Los Angeles, blamed environmental mismanagement for the fall of the Mayan

civilisation and others, and warned that we might be heading the sameway unless wechoose to stop destroying our

environmental support systems.

Collapse now is key to prevent environment collapse and extinctionGlen Barry, Ph.D. in "Land Resources" from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Masters of Science in

"Conservation Biology and Sustainable Development", 1/14/08, Economic Collapse And GlobalEcology, Counter Currents, http://www.countercurrents.org/barry140108.htm, zzx

Humanity and the Earth are faced with an enormous conundrum-- sufficient climate policies enjoy political support

only in times of rapid economic growth. Yet this growth is the primary factor driving greenhouse gas emissions and

other environmental ills. The growthmachine has pushed the planetwell beyond its ecological carrying

capacity, and unless constrained, can only lead to human extinction and an end to complex life . With

every economic downturn, like the one now looming in the United States, it becomes more difficult

and less likely that policy sufficient to ensure global ecological sustainability will be embraced. This essay

explores the possibility that from a biocentric viewpoint of needs for long-term global ecological, economic and social sustainability; it

would be better for the economic collapse to come now rather than later. Economic growth is a deadly

disease upon the Earth, with capitalism as its most virulent strain. Throw-away consumption and explosive population

growth are made possible by using up fossil fuels and destroying ecosystems. Holiday shopping numbers are

covered by media in the same breath as Arctic ice melt, ignoring their deep connection. Exponential economic growth destroys

ecosystems and pushes the biosphere closer to failure. Humanity has proven itself unwilling and unable to addressclimate change and other environmental threats with necessary haste and ambition. Action on coal, forests, population, renewable energy and

emission reductions could be taken now at net benefit to the economy. Yet, the losers -- primarily fossil fuel industries and their bought

oligarchy -- successfully resist futures not dependent upon their deadly products. Perpetual economic growth, andnecessary climate and

other ecological policies, are fundamentally incompatible. Global ecological sustainability dependscritically

uponestablishing a steady state economy, whereby production is right-sized to not diminish natural capital. Whole industries

like coal and natural forest logging will be eliminated even as new opportunities emerge in solar energy and environmental restoration. This

critical transition to both economic and ecological sustainability is simply not happening on any scale. The challenge ishow to carry out necessary environmental policies even as economic growth ends and consumption plunges. The natural response is going to

be liquidation of even more life-giving ecosystems, and jettisoning of climate policies, to vainly try to maintain high growth and personal

consumption. We know that humanity must reduce greenhouse gas emissions by at least 80% over coming decades.How will this and other necessary climate mitigation strategies be maintained during years of economic downturns, resource wars, reasonable

demands for equitable consumption, and frankly, the weather being more pleasant in some places? If efforts to reduce emissions and move to

a steady state economy fail; the collapse of ecological, economic and social systems is assured. Bright greens take the continued existence of a

habitable Earth with viable, sustainable populations of all species including humans as the ultimate truth and the meaning of life. Whether this


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is possible in a t ime of economic collapse is crucially dependent upon whether enough ecosystems and resources remain post collapse to allow

humanity to recover and reconstitute sustainable, relocalized societies. It may be better for the Earthand humanity's future that

economic collapse comes sooner rather than later, while more ecosystems and opportunities to

returnto nature's fold exist. Economic collapse will be deeply wrenching -- part Great Depression, part African famine. There will bestarvation and civil strife, and a long period of suffering and turmoil. Many will be killed as balance returns to the Earth. Most people have

forgotten how to grow food and that their identity is more than what they own. Yet there is some justice, in that those who have lived most

lightly upon the land will have an easier time of it, even as those super-consumers living in massive cities finally learn where their food comesfrom and that ecology is the meaning of life. Economic collapse now means humanity and the Earth ultimately

survive to prosper again. Human suffering-- already the norm for many, but hitting the currently materially affluent -- is

inevitable given the degree to which the planet's carrying capacity has been exceeded. We are a

couple decades at most away from societal strife of a much greater magnitude as the Earth's

biosphere fails.Humanity can take the bitter medicine now, and recover while emerging better for it; or our total collapse can be a final,

fatal death swoon. A successful revolutionary responseto imminent global ecosystem collapse would focus upon

bringing down the Earth's industrial economy now. As society continues to fail miserably to implement necessary changes toallow creation to continue, maybe the best strategy to achieve global ecological sustainability is economic sabotage to hasten the day. It is

more fragile than it looks.

Growth causes war

Ted Trainer, lecturer in Sociology at the University of New South Wales, 1998, "Our UnsustainableSociety: Basic Causes, Interconnections, and Solutions, The Coming Age of Scarcity: Preventing Mass

Death and Genocide in the Twenty-first Century, edited by Michael N. Dobkowski and Isidor Wallimann,

p. 91-92, google books, zzx

Some of the most disturbing implications of the limits-to-growth analysis of the global situation arise regarding the problems of peace and

conflict. The foregoing argument has been that only a few can have the life-styles that we in rich countries have,

and we can have them only for a historically short period, because there are not enough resources for

all to rise to anything like the living standards we take for granted. But we who have per capita incomes averaging

sixty times those of the poorest half of the world's people are obsessed with getting richer as fast as possible and without end. Now, if weand all others continue to pursue that goal, as population doubles, and resources become scarcer, there can

be no other conceivable outcome than increasing levels of conflict in the world. Much of the foregoing

argument has been that we have an empire, a sphere of influence, without which our living standards could

not be as high as they are. We have to be extensively involved in military activity to secure our lines of

supplyfrom the empire. We could not be sure of getting all that oil from the Middle East if we did not have aircraft carriers in theMediterranean, rapid deployment forces specially trained and ready to fly into trouble spots, minesweepers able to clear vital shipping lanes,

the military presence that stands as a warning to others that they had better not interfere with "our"

oil fields, and the contingency plans for dealing with any rebel tribesmen or any sectional uprising that might cut the pipelines. We must beable to protect our allies, interests, trading arrangements, and clients. United States Army Gen. M. D. Taylor said that "U.S. military priorities

must be shifted ... towards insuring a steady flow of resources from the Third World." He referred to "a fierce competition among industrial

powers for the same raw materials markets sought by the United States" and "growing hostility displayed by have-not nations towards their

affluent counterparts" (Cypher 1981). Speaking to American soldiers at Camp Stanly, Korea, President Johnson said, "Don't forget, there are

two hundred million of us in a world of three billion. They want what we've gotand we're not going to give it to them!" Ashley says that

"expansion is a prime source of conflict. War is mainly explicable in terms of differential growth in a world of

scarce and unevenly distributed resources" (1980, 3, 126). Nettleship makes the same point: "War is an inevitable

result of the struggle between economies for expansion" (1975, 497). Chase-Dunn says that "warfare appears as

a normal and periodic form of competition within the capitalist world economy.... World wars

regularly occur during a period of economic expansion" (1989, 108, 163). In other words, the main source of

conflict and war in the world is the ceaseless quest for greater wealth and power. We have no chance


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of achieving a peaceful world until nations stop being greedy and work out how to live without

constantly striving to grow richer. Yet, the supreme commitment in our economy is to rapid and ceaseless growth!


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2NC Sustainability

Multiple environmental signs prove its not sustainable

Robert Jensen, professor in the School of Journalism at the University of Texas, 9/1/10, A World In

Collapse?, http://www.newleftproject.org/index.php/site/article_comments/a_world_in_collapse/, zzx

Take a look at any measure of thefundamental health of the planetary ecosystem on which we are

dependent: topsoil loss, chemical contamination of soil and water, species extinction and reduction in

biodiversity, the state of the worlds oceans, unmanageable toxic waste problems, and climate

change.Take a look at the data, and the news is bad on every front. And all of this is in the context of the

dramatic decline coming in the highly concentrated energy available from oil and natural gas, and the

increased climate disruption that will come if we keep burning the still-abundant coal reserves. There

are no replacement fuels on the horizon that will allow a smooth transition. These ecological realities

will play out in a world structured by a systemof nation-states rooted in the grotesque inequality resulting

fromimperialism and capitalism, all of which is eroding what is left of our collective humanity. Collapsing

seems like a reasonable description of the world.

Oil reserves make growth unsustainablefailure to transition causes peak oil and

resource wars

Richard Heinberg, author and Senior Fellow of the Post Carbon Institute, 3/4/10, Life AfterGrowth,

http://www.countercurrents.org/heinberg040310.htm, zzx

Of course, oil does not pose our only societal limit, or even the most important one in the bigger

scheme of things: climate, water, and topsoil are clearly more crucial in the long run. But the peaking

of world oil production could potentially bring modern industrial civilization to its knees, while also

undercutting coordinated efforts to deal with all sorts of other problems. Up to this point I had little interest in the subject

of oil, or energy generally. However, as I re-read the Scientific American article, I realized the pivotal role petroleum plays in themodern worldin transportation, agriculture, and the chemicals and materials industries. I began spending hours each day studying energy

history and oil production statistics. I soon realized that the Industrial Revolution was really the Fossil Fuel Revolution,

and that our modern food system is based on cheap fossil energy. Further, the entire phenomenon of

continuous economic growthincluding the development of the financial institutions that facilitate

growth, such as fractional reserve banking and the marketing of derivativesis ultimately based on

ever-increasing supplies of cheap energy. Growth requires more manufacturing, more trade, and

more transport, and those all in turn require more energy. This means that if energy supplies can't

expand and energy therefore becomes significantly more expensive, economic growth will falter and

the financial system built on expectations of perpetual growth will fail, possibly in a rather spectacularway. As early as 1998, Campbell, Laherrre, and others were discussing a Peak Oil impact scenario that went like this. Sometime

around the year 2010,they theorized, stagnant or falling oil supplies would lead to soaring and more

volatile petroleum prices, which would precipitate a global economic crash. This rapid economic

contraction would in turn lead to sharply curtailed energy demand, so oil prices would then fall; but as

soon as the economy regained strength, demand for oil would recover, prices would again soar, and

the economy would relapse. This cycle would continue, with each recovery phase being shorter and

weaker, and each crash deeper and harder, until the economy was in ruins. Meanwhile, volatile oil prices


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would frustrate investments in energy alternatives: one year, oil would be so expensive that almost

any other energy source would look cheap by comparison; the next year, the price of oil would have

fallen so far that energy users would be flocking back to it, with investments in other energy sources looking foolish.Investment capital would be in short supply in any case because the banks would be insolvent due to the crash, and governments would be

broke due to declining tax revenues. Meanwhile, international competition for dwindling oil supplies might lead to

wars between petroleum importing nations, between importers and exporters, and between rivalfactions within exporting nations. Naturally, I also examined the arguments against the likelihood of a near-term peak in global oilproduction. What if Campbell and Laherrre were simply wrong? There are those who claim that new technologies for crude oil extraction will

increase the amount of oil that can be obtained from each well drilled, and that there are nearly endless reserves of alternative hydrocarbon

resources (principally tar sands and oil shale) whose development will seamlessly replace conventional oil, thus delaying the inevitable peak for

decades. There are also those who say that Peak Oil won't be much of a problem even if it happens soon, because the market will find

substitutes as quickly as neededwhether electric cars, hydrogen, or liquid fuel made from coal. I found all of these arguments

weak: the new oil extraction technologies won't come into wide use for several years, and will be

applicable mostly to newly developed fields(of which there are fewer and fewer each year as exploration efforts continue to

show mostly disappointing results), not to the old super-giant oilfields that produce the great bulk of oil that we

use today. Tar sands and oil shale will be slow to extract; indeed, in the case of oil shale, we may never derive liquid fuels in any substantial

quantity due to the enormous costs of processing this very low-grade material. And substitutes like electric cars, liquids from coal, and

hydrogen will take a very long time to develop and will in most cases be much more costly than theequivalent elementsof our current system of petroleum fuels and internal combustion engines. I continued to study the world energy

situation for the next few years. And, with every passing year, events appeared to be supporting the Peak Oil

thesis and undercutting the views of the oil optimists. Oil prices were trending upwardand for entirelyforeseeable reasons: discoveries of new oilfields were continuing to peter out, with most new fields being much more difficult and expensive to

develop than ones found in previous years. More oil-producing countries were seeing their extraction rates peaking and beginning to decline

despite efforts to maintain production growth using high-tech, expensive secondary and tertiary extraction methods like the injection of water,

nitrogen, or CO2 to force more oil out of the ground. Production decline rates in the world's old, super-giant oilfields, which are responsible for

the lion's share of the global petroleum supply, were accelerating. Production of liquid fuels from tar sands was expanding only slowly, while

the development of oil shale remained a hollow promise for the distant future.

Growth unsustainableenvironment and resourcesThomas Homer-Dixon, CIGI chair of global systems at the Balsillie School of International Affairs,

January/February 2011, ECONOMIES CAN'T JUST KEEP ON GROWING, Foreign Policy,http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/01/02/unconventional_wisdom?page=0,1, zzx

Humanity has made great strides over the past 2,000 years, and we often assume that our path, notwithstanding a few

bumps along the way, goes ever upward. But we are wrong: Within this century, environmental and

resource constraints will likely bring global economic growth to a halt. Limits on available resources

already restrict economic activity in many sectors, though their impact usually goes unacknowledged.

Take rare-earth elements-- minerals and oxides essential to the manufacture of many technologies. When China recently stopped

exporting them, sudden shortages threatened to crimp a wide range of industries. Most commentators

believed that the supply crunch would ease once new(or mothballed) rare-earth mines are opened. But such

optimism overlooks a fundamental physical reality. As the best bodies of ore are exhausted, miners

move on to less concentrated deposits in more difficult natural circumstances. These mines cause

more pollution and require more energy. In other words, opening new rare-earth mines outside China will result in staggering

environmental impact. Or consider petroleum, which provides about 40 percent of the world's commercial

energyand more than 95 percent of its transportation energy. Oil companies generally have to work harder to get

each new barrel of oil. The amount of energy they receive for each unit of energy they invest in


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drilling has dropped from 100 to 1 inTexas in the 1930s to about 15 to 1in the continental United States today. The

oil sands in Alberta, Canada, yield a return of only 4 to 1. Coal and natural gas still have high energy yields. So, as oil becomes harder

to get in coming decades, these energy sources will become increasingly vital to the global economy.

But they're fossil fuels, and burning them generates climate-changing carbon dioxide. If the World Bank'sprojected rates for global economic growth hold steady, global output will have risen almost tenfold by 2100, to more than $600 trillion in

today's dollars. So

even if countries make dramatic reductions in carbon emissions per dollar of GDP, globalcarbon dioxide emissions will triple from today's levelto more than 90 billion metric tons a year. Scientists tell us

that tripling carbon emissions would cause such extreme heat waves, droughts, and storms that

farmers would likely find they couldn't produce the food needed for the world's projected population

of 9 billion people. Indeed, the economic damage caused by such climate change wouldprobably, by itself,

halt growth.

Prefer our evidenceyours is just clinging to false hope

Robert Jensen, professor in the School of Journalism at the University of Texas, 9/1/10, A World In

Collapse?, http://www.newleftproject.org/index.php/site/article_comments/a_world_in_collapse/, zzx

I think not only leftists, but people in general, avoid these realities because reality is so grim. It seems overwhelming

to most people, for good reason. So, rather than confront it, people find modes of evasion. One is to deny

theres a reason to worry, which is common throughout the culture. The most common evasive strategy I hear from

people on the left is technological fundamentalismthe idea that because we want high-energy/high-tech

solutionsthat will allow us to live in the style to which so many of us have become accustomed, those solutions will be found.

That kind of magical thinking isappealing but unrealistic, for two reasons. First, while the human

discoveries of the past few centuries are impressive, they have not been on the scale required to

correct the course were on; weve created problems that have grown beyond our capacity to

understand and manage. Second, those discoveries were subsidized by fossil-fuel energy that wont

be around much longer, which dramatically limits what we will be able to accomplish through energy-

intensive advanced technology. As many people have pointed out, technology is not energy; you dont replace

energy with technology. Technology can make some processes more energy-efficient, but it cant

create energy out of thin air .


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2NC Environment Impact

Growth causes environmental destruction and extinctiontransition now is key

Glen Barry, Ph.D. in "Land Resources" from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Masters of Science in

"Conservation Biology and Sustainable Development", 7/25/11, EARTH MEANDERS: Ecology BubbleBursts, http://www.ecoearth.info/blog/2011/07/earth_meanders_ecology_bubble.asp, acc. 3/13/13

Ever since the human family embraced a growth based mentality and obsequious faith in liberal economics, we have witnessed a series of

bubbles. The most recent boom-bust cycle has been the still unresolved financial and mortgage bubbles, but bubbles go as far back as the

Dutch tulip mania of 1637. Exuberant yet clearly unsustainable growth, or inversely destruction, appears to be inherent to industrial,

speculative, and growth obsessed capitalism. Bubbles represent the human proclivity for greed, to grow too fast, overshooting demand, while

often exhausting key resources. Global ecology, the biggest bubble of all, is now collapsing and will soon burst.

Voracious economicand human growthhave raged for three centuries upon the back of dismantling ecosystems globally.Humanityseconomic outputs have been over-valued relative to the ecologically mediated resources incautiously razed for their production.

Earthscarrying capacity- meaning ecology's finite ability to provide ecosystem services and absorb pollutionhas been

surpassed. Having grown beyond what Earth can bear, the human family is said to be in "overshoot", which can only lead to

collapse. Earth is a living being and like all life can die. Earth is dying now asvirus-like humanity destroys its host's

ecosystem organs.Every day we scrape Earth of its plants and animals, dig and drill into toxic resources not meant to be unearthed,

and crap our wastes into air, land and water. Systems biology tells us an exponentially growing system in positive

feedbacksuch as the super-sized economy feasting upon finite and precious global ecologyalways eventually destroys itself.

This is particularly so givenperilous lag times ofmany ecosystem processes and losses. The ecological systems

underlyinghuman existence are beginning to burst like bubbles . Virtually every type of ecosystem and

their output fish, food, water, air, climate, forests, land, wetlands, soil, etcare now collapsing locally and regionally. We are

witnessing this steady biological impoverishment, of virtually every life-giving ecosystem, aggregate to the whole biospherethe thin mantle of

life surrounding an otherwise lifeless Earth. When speaking of a biosphere bubble burst it is accurate to say Earth is dying. And that it need

not be that way, ifonly we were able to changeto maintain ecosystems that foster all human and lifes being. Ecology has

provided a constant stream of services to humanity and other life, making Earth habitable, for what seems like eternity. Food offers oneillustrative example of humanitys utter dependence upon ecology: sun, water, soil, climate, seeds and healthy agro -ecological systems are

where food comes from - not grocery stores and mini-marts. That we need air, water, soil and other ecosystems are demonstrable truths

unlike beliefs in unknowable ancient messiahs, which have guided so much of Earth ecologys destruction. Industrial capitalism is

dependent upon destroying ecosystemsas resources for temporary increases in the well-being of some. While climate changeis one of several global ecosystems that are collapsing due to human over-use, it is important to remember there are other collapsing ecological

systemsincluding soil, water, forest, wetland, nitrogen, ocean, toxic, ecosystem, poverty, food and others - that singly and together threaten

continued human and ecological being. It is these potentially cumulative impacts of several assaults upon key global ecosystems that are most

problematic and potentially chaotic. And its not even done fairly, as 2.5 billion live on under $2 a day. The industrial growth machines

rampant misuse ofinappropriate technology to rip apartEarths life-support systems forendless frivolous wantsby

some as others starveand eke out a living must yieldto some basic truths. If we are to sustain the required ecosystem habitatsnecessary, we cannot cut and burn them simultaneously, or multiply to such numbers that we overwhelm them. If youve ever seen an over-

grazed pasture you know what over-population does to a limited land and resource basehuman population must be urgently and humanely

reduced. Hubristic faith in technological solutions to Earth being beyond its carrying capacity is fanatical madness . Continued

technological reliance to solve Earths ecological carrying capacity problem will only inflate the bubblefurther and result in

a bigger bursting, and less remnants from which to try to reconstitutean ecologically based future. Inane

techno-optimism such as geo-engineering is ecocide right up to the endpushing Earth to the wall, raping her,before killing her. It is far preferable to begin to adjust human demands upon ecology to reasonable limits. Not only is ecology truth, and you

cannot eat money, but collapsing ecosystems are not substitutable with technology. What to do? We need knowledge based solutions to

sustaining global ecology that are also just, equitable and enhance human dignity - not superstitious, illogical, greedy, and ignorant responses of

god's self-chosen ruling elites. It is too late to stop the global ecology bubble from bursting. Yet a short window


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exists,perhaps, to lessen the impactof the ecology bubble burst, and provide for some manner ofdecent existence

and potential for restorationand regeneration of a new human/nature project post-collapse. Butif we continueto do

nothing, or next to nothing, the cumulative impacts of global ecological collapse will intensify and prove to be

unrecoverable, unless met with opposing force to end the ecocidal activities surpassing ecology's limits.

Now is keywe must maintain all ecosystems

Glen Barry, Ph.D. in "Land Resources" from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Masters of Science in

"Conservation Biology and Sustainable Development", 1/5/10, EARTH MEANDERS: Resisting GlobalEcological Change, EcoEarth, http://www.ecoearth.info/blog/2010/01/earth_meanders_resisting_globa.asp, zzx

Given the momentum ofseven billion super-predators consuming ecosystemsto meet their every (and endless) whims,

it is not possible to stopsocial, economic and ecological collapse. But there is a still chance ofa worthy

human society post economic and ecological collapse if wereturn to the land, power downand resist. It is all

about having as much intact ecosystems as possible to lighten the blow and reconstitute societyand

ecosystems post-collapse. Here, and in my forth-coming book New Earth Rising, as a political ecologist I offer a very different plan to theblind faith in technological progress that removes us more from natural life-giving ecosystem processes and patterns. Perhaps this can be called

Plan ER for Earth Restoration. Powering Down It is a global ecological imperative that we begin dismantling the

industrial growth machineto return tohonest, well-lived and simple lifestylesprotecting, tending and restoring naturalagro-ecosystems. Though terribly difficult given the choices society presents us, each of us must begin the process of getting off the grid,

dramatically cutting our energy use and refusing to consume energy from burning fossil fuels. There will come a time where dismantling roads,

industries and cities will be appropriate. We must insist that societys resources are used towards these ends. But make no m istake, no

amount of renewable energy can allow current, much less predicted, excessive energy usage for

everything from our food to our transport to our housing to continue. The slowing economy in the

over-developed world is the logical conclusion of disease like growthin human populations, resource use

and consumption. Highly satisfying for some for awhile, but such ecocidal resource binging cannot and will not

last. And now the entire world, including the 2 billion that live on under $2 a day, understandably and justly want better lives. Sadly though,

through the power of corporate media, most poor style the ideal life upon the excesses of the West. This means they undervalue their ownmore ecologically sustainable and personally satisfying lifestyles and livelihoods driven by community and sharing. Life is clearly more than

what you own and consume, it is what you do and who you are that counts. And it is never too late to make positive changes. Both personally

and societally we must wean ourselves fromgluttonous energy use and conspicuous over-consumption, and demand

political and social structuresthat compel others do so as well. As individuals we are faced with much outside of our control, so itwont all happen at once, but each of us must begin disengaging ourselves from the dominant growth paradigm, and begin to achieve some

measure of self-sufficiency. Start by becoming as independent from slave wage labor and marketing neuroses as fast as financially feasible.

Those that voluntarily begin to power down will be at an enormous advantage as the ecological shit hits the fan. And there is no better place to

start than loving and being one with a piece of land. The land, think always of the land.


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2NC War Impact

Independently, global war will kill everyone by 2025 without dedev

Christopher Chase-Dunn, Director of the Institute for Research on World-Systems, University of

California-Riverside, and Bruce Podobnik, Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology and

Anthropology at Lewis and Clark College, 1999, in The Future of Global Conflict, ed. Bornschier andChase-Dunn, p. 43

While the onset of a period of hegemonic rivalry is in i tself disturbing, the picture becomes even grimmer when the influence of long-terni

economic cycles is taken into account. As an extensive body of research documents(see especially Van Duijn, 1983), the 50

to 60 year business cycle known as the Kondratieff wave (K-wave) has been in synchronous operation

on an international scale for at least the last two centuries. Utilizing data gathering by Levy (1983) on war severity,

Goldstein (1988) demonstrates that there is a corresponding 50 to 60 year cycle in the number of battle deaths

per year for the period 1495-1975. Beyond merely showing that the K-wave and the war cycle are linked in a systematic fashion,

Goldsteins research suggests that severe core wars are much more likely to occur late in the upswing phase of

the K-wave. This finding is interpreted as showing that, while states always desire to go to war, theycan afford to do so only when economic growth is providing them with sufficient resources. Modelski andThompson (1996) present a more complex interpretation of the systemic relationship between economic and war cycles, but it closely

resembles Goldsteins hypothesis. In their analysis, a first economic upswing generates the economic resources required by an ascending core

state to make a bid for hegemony; a second period of economic growth follows a period of global war and the establishment of a new period of

hegemony. Here, again, specific economic upswings are associated with an increased likelihood of the outbreak of core war. It is widely

accepted that the current K-wave, which entered a downturn around 1967-73, is probably now in the

process of beginning a new upturn which will reach its apex around 2025. It is also widely accepted

that by this period US hegemony, already unravelling, will have been definitively eroded. This

convergence of a plateauing economic cycle with a period of political multicentricity within the core

should, if history truly does repeat itself, result in the outbreak of full-scale warfare between the

declining hegemon and the ascending core powers. Although both Goldstein (1991) and Modelski and Thompson (1996)assert that such a global war can (somehow) be avoided, other theorists consider that the possibility of such a core war is

sufficiently high that serious steps should be taken to ensure that such collective suicide does not

occur(Chase-Dunn and OReilly, 1989; Goldfrank, 1987).


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2NC Warming Impact

Econ collapse is key to solve warming

Dave Cohen, "Economic Growth and Climate Change -- No Way Out?" PEAK WATCH, 2/2/10, quotes

Tim Garret, Associate Professor, Atmospheric Sciences, University of Utah and Vaclav Smil, Distinguished

Professor, Faculty of Environment, University of Manitoba, http://energybulletin.net/stories/2010-02-

03/economic-growth-and-climate-change-%E2%80%94-no-way-out-updated

Historical data suggest that only recessions decrease anthropogenic CO2 emissions. Otherwise, if the global

economy is growing, so are emissions. The consensus view, which I have called The Radical Hypothesis, presumes that at some

future inflection point, the global economy will continue to grow while emissions shrink. Since

nothing in our experience suggests theRadical Hypothesis is correct, andin so far as knowledgeable people can

agreethat it will be very hard to achieve the technological breakthroughs required to stabilize CO2 in atmosphere at acceptable levels (e.g. 450

ppmv),the most plausible way to achieve such targets, all else being equal, is a planned, orderly contraction of the global

economy. Mankind would endeavor to both decarbonize the energy inputsto the economy and decrease those inputs. This implies that

the global economy, as modeled by Tim Garrett, would be shrinking. Themere assumption that technological progress will

be sufficientto achieve the desired stabilization of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere does not guarantee success. This assumption , like the future economic

growth that depends on it, is incontrovertible only because of the faith placed in it, i.e. it must be accepted without

proof or verification. It is all well & good to say with great conviction that "failure is not an option" but in the real world, failure is definitely a

possibility, so risks grow. Worse yet, unquestioning faith in the impossibility of failure retards effortsachieve the necessary (but still unrealized) technologies required to reduce

emissions,for if technological progressPielke, et. al call this "spontaneous" innovationis guaranteed(i.e. comes "for free"), we need not try very

hardto make technological progress happen. What I have called The Assumption of Technological Progress should be tossed out in so far as it is no longer in humanity's best interests to maintain it. In a "peak oil" scenario,CO2 emissions from conventional oil will remain flat or decrease sometime in the next decade and beyond. In so far as historical experience suggests that anthropogenic emission must be growing if the economy is, this implies a

shrinking global economy. Specifically, the lack of a consistent (high & rising) oil price signal, combined with our inability to quickly & seamlessly switch to non-conventional liquids (from coal, the oil sands, etc.) to meet growing

future demand, implies that economic growth will be negative or unstable in such a scenario. Thus, business-as-usual (BAU)the standard growth story assumed by

economists, climate researchers and otherswill be disrupted for an extended period of time in a "peak oil" scenario. Ifthe global economy will be in recession or prone to recession as conventional oil supplies decrease, emissions will very likely be further reduced during the transition to other liquid fuels sources. Ken Caldeira's counter-intuitive

view that "peak oil" is not a climate savior, at least over the next few decades, does not survive close scrutiny. A new UK report from the The New Economics Foundation goes even further in the wrong direction, arguing that "peakoil" makes BAU scenarios worse. Just as Caldeira does, the NEF assumes, but does not closely examine, a painless transition to non-conventional liquids fuels from fossil sources. In his response to Dangerous Assumptions, the

University of Manitoba's Vaclav Smil emphasized that Long-range energy forecasts are no more than fairy tales. Why argue about plausible rates of future energy-

efficiency improvements? We have known for nearly 150 years that, in the long run, efficiency gains

translate into higher energy use and hence (unless there is a massive shift to non-carbon energies) into higher CO2 emissions . The speed of

transition from a predominantly fossil-fueled world toconversions of renewable flows is being grossly overestimated: all energy

transitions are multi-generational affairs with their complex infrastructuraland learning needs. Their progress cannot

substantially be accelerated either by wishful thinking or by government ministers fiats... China, the worlds largest emitter of CO2, has no intention of reducingits energy use: from 2000

to 2006 its coalconsumption rose by nearly 1.1 billion tonnes and its oil consumption increased by 55%. Consequently, the rise of atmosphericCO2 above 450 parts per million can

be prevented only by an unprecedented(in both severity and duration) depressionof the global economy, or by voluntarily adopted and strictly observed limits onabsolute energy use. The first is highly probable; the second would be a sapient action, but apparently not for this species. Although I agree in the main with Smil's conclusions, I have argued that his Either-Or proposition yields

similar outcomes. If humankind were to voluntarily adopt and strictly observe limits on absolute energy use, the global economy would shrink according to the limits imposed, as implied in Tim Garrett's work. Moreover, Smil's

reference to Jevon's Paradox (1st paragraph) also coincides with Tim Garrett's conclusion that greater energy efficiency merely stimulates greater energy consumption supporting more economic growth and higher CO2emissions

(unless accompanied by a massive, but at present unrealistic, decarbonization of the energy supply). For now, and in the "foreseeable" future, putting the breaks on economicgrowth appears to be the only practical way out of the climate dilemma. Unfortunately, this solution

is politically impossible, a circumstance which is reinforced by economists' incontestable, unshakable belief that economic growth will continue in all future emissions (energy) scenarios. This conclusionrests upon the equally incontestable, unshakable Assumption of Technological Progress. I will end by quoting climate activist George Monbiot. This passage is taken from the introduction to his book Heat. The introduction is called

The Failure of Good Intentions. Two things prompted me to write this book. The first was something that happened in May, 2005, in a lecture hall in London. I had given a talk about climate change, during which I argued that there

was little chance of preventing runaway global warming unless greenhouse gases were cut by 80 per cent. The third question stumped me. "When you get your 80 per cent cut, what will this country look like?" I hadn't thought

about it. Nor could I think of a good reason why I hadn't thought about it. But a few rows from the front sat one of the environmentalists I admire and fear the most, a man called Mayer Hillman. I admire him because he says what

he believes to be true and doesn't care about the consequences. I fear him because his life is a mirror in which the rest of us see our hypocrisy. "That's such an easy question, I'll ask Mayer to answer it." He stood up. He is 75 but he

looks about 50, perhaps because he goes everywhere by bicycle. He is small and thin and fit-looking, and he throws his chest out and holds his arms to his sides when he speaks, as if standing to attention. He was smiling. I could

see he was going to say something outrageous. "A very poor third-world country." The inescapable conclusion in 2010 is that continued economic growth at near 20th century rates in the 21st century is

incompatible with takingpositive, effective steps to mitigate anthropogenicclimate change. Moreover, such assumptions are not compatible with


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a near-term peak in the conventional oil supply. Our species faces unprecedented challenges in this new century. Our response to those challenges will define Homo sapiens

in ways we never had to come to grips with during the Holocene (roughly the last 10,000 years) or before that in the Pleistocene. The problems we face in this century are unique, even on geological time-scales extending far

into the past beyond the 200,000-year-old Human experience on Earth. Both our limitations andour abilities, such as they are, will be displayed in the bright, harshlight of the energy & climate outcomes in the 21st century. Regardless of who we pretend to be, our response to these challenges will tell us who we really are.


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Growth Good


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Growth Sustainable

Growth is sustainabletechnological advances prove

Baumol, Litan and Schramm, 2007- William J, professor of economics at NYU, Robert E., Senior Fellow

of Economic Studies at the Brookings Institute, and Carl J., President and chief executive officer of the

Kauffman Foundation (Good Capitalism, Bad Capitalism, and the Economics of Growth and Prosperity,

book)

One line of skepticism about growth arises from individuals and groups who worry that as the worlds population increases and economic

growth continues, societies will use up scarce resources and, at the same time, degrade the environment. In the early 1970s, a group called the

Club of Rome expressed such worries, fearing that eventually (and rather soon) the world would run out of energy and some c ommodities, so

that growth couldnt continue at anything like the existing pace. Today, there are those who believe, for similar reasons, that growth shouldnt

continue.The doomsayers who projected that economic growth would come to a standstill were wrong.

Since 1975, total world economic output has increased more than sevenfold.2 On a per capita basis,

world output is more than five times higher than it was thirty years ago. Growth in output, and

therefore income, per person throughout the world advanced at a far more rapid pace (nearly

ninefold) in the twentieth century than in any other century during the previous one thousand years(to the extent these things can be measured).3Per capita output continues to increase because firms

around the world continue to make more use of machines and information technology that enable

workers to be more productive and because technology itself continues to advance, making it possible

for consumers to use new products and services. There is good reason to hope that this process can

and will continue, though there are some lurking dangers, including foolish actions by governments. But should growth continue? Whatabout the supplies of energy that will be depleted in the process or the pollution that will be generated as ever more things are produced and

used? Curiously, economists who tend to be quite rational in their lives urge the worriers to have faithfaith that continued technological

progress powered by market incentives will ease these concerns. As it turns out, however, economists faith has roots in

historical fact. In the early 1800s, Thomas R. Malthus famously predicted that the worlds population

would eventually starve or, at the least, live at a minimal level of subsistence because food production

could not keep pace with the growth of population. Technological advances since that time haveproved him wrong. Through better farming techniques, the invention of new farming equipment, and

continuing advances in agricultural science (especially the recent green revolution led by genetic

engineering), food production has increased much more rapidly than population, so much so that in realterms (after adjusting for inflation), the price of food is much lower today than it was two hundred years ago, or for that matter, even fifty

years ago. Farmers, who once accounted for more than 50 percent of the population at the dawn of the twentieth century in the United States,

now comprise less than 2 percent of populationand are able to grow far more food at the same time.

Growth sustainablekey to maintaining wealth intact

Farzin 04(Y. Hossein, economics at UC Davis, Is an Exhaustible Resource Economy Sustainable?,

Wiley, 7-11-13)

I have argued that whether an economy is sustainable or not depends crucially on the specific concept of sustainability adopte d. To sharpen this argument, I have focused on a purely exhaustible resource economy and examined

the possibility of its sustain- abilityaccording to two alternative concepts: (a) permanently maintaining a constant- consumption (utility) path, and (b) keeping the value of national wealth

intact. I have shown that sustainability in the latter sense requires thatthe value of resources extracted and consumed should always be equal to the imputed interest

income from the resource asset, or, equivalently, the extraction rate should decline over time at a rate equal to the market rate of interest. What seems appealing about these

equiva- lent conditions are that:(i) they are empirically easily testable,and (ii) the former may be interpreted as dual to the SolowHartwick rule of reinvesting resource rents to sustain

a constant consumption level,and the latter as dual to the Hotelling r -percent price rule. Further, I have explicitly shown the relationship between the


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two sustainability criteria, and particularly that the sustainability of consumption flow requires that the resource asset value always

appreciates at the market interest rate. Accordingly, while sustainability in the sense of constant consumption flow is not possible for an

exhaustible resource economy, sustainability in the sense of keeping the value of national wealth intact is, provided preferences are presented by a logarithmic utility function. More generally,

the relationship between the twosustainability criteria turns out to dependcrucially on the magnitude of the social discount

rate and the degree of social aversion to intergenerational inequality. Interestingly, for plausibly small values of the former and reasonably largevalues of the latter, the implied optimal path can be quite close to paths implied by alternative c oncepts of sustainability. Much in the spirit of Heals (2001) conclusion, this finding may lessen to some degree concerns abo ut

alternative concepts of sustainability and about sustainability versus optimality. However, and perhaps ironically,such an outcome is more likely for the rich

resource- based economies than for the very poor ones. It is important to be cautious in interpreting the conclusions reached here based on a simplified model

of a purely exhaustible resource economy. For one thing, aug- menting such an economy with services of renewable natural resources

(e.g., fisheries, forests, land and water sources, and renewable energy resources) and human -made capitals (e.g., manufactured capital, human capital, and social capital), provided their utilization

rates remain within their respective regenerative capacities or reproduction limits, not only can ease the constraint of resource

exhaustibility on sustaining reasonably high living standards, it can also narrow down the gap between the utili- tarian optimal and sustainable development paths. On the other hand, st eady and high

population growth rates, as have been experienced by many poor developing countries, can act in

the opposite direction, unless technological advances continue at sufficiently high rates to increase

the productivities of natural and human-made capitals and enhance the possibilities of substituting

the latter types of capitals for the former ones. What seems fundamental in this process of technological advancement to offset the effect of population growth, and

poses a principal challenge for development policy,is the role of investment to transforma given population from its primitive form of raw labor with low productivityto its higher form of human capital knowledge stock)with fantastically higher productivity.

Constant innovation ensures resources are infinite

Geddes 4Writer and Libertarian Analyst (Marc, The monster non-socialist FAQ, 2/12,http://rebirthofreason.com/War/MonsterFAQ.shtml)

A significant disruption to supplies of critical resources can cause temporary problems, but in a free market, if

resources start to become scarce, prices rise, leading to a search of substitutes and improved

conservation efforts. The pool of resources is not fixed, because human ingenuity can find substitutes

or new sources of resources. Supplies ofmost raw materials have been increasing throughout the 20thcentury, and the cost has been falling (See the entry on Natural resources). For instance, between 1950 and 1970, bauxite (aluminium source) reserves increased by 279 per cent, copper by 179 per cent, chromite

(chromium source) by 675 per cent, and tin reserves by 10 per cent. In 1973 experts predicted oil reserves stood at around 700 billion barrels, yet by 1988 total oil reserveshad actually increased to

900 billion barrels.Production of certain kinds of resourcessuch as fossil fuels may finally be beginning to peak but

there are renewable energy sources in development which can serve as substitutes. Simplistic thermodynamic

analysis of energy production is misleading, because it's not the quantities of energyused or produced that

determine economic value, but the utility, or usefulness if that energy to humans. If energy is being usedmore efficiently you

don't need as muchof it, and some forms of energy are more valuable than others- for instance kinetic energy in the form of wind power is less valuable than the same quantity of latent energy in the form

of oil. Solar power isa virtually inexhaustiblesupply of new energy for stationary sources and the hydrogenfuel cell can serve for transportation in

place of fossil fuels. Developing these technologies costs money, so to avoid resource shortages a

good economy is essential. Libertarian capitalism is the system which generates wealth the fastest.

There are no limits to growthif it continues it will become qualitative, rather than

quantitative

Martin Lewisprofessor in the School of the Environment and the Center for International Studies at

Duke University. Green Delusions, 1992p 9-10
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Ultimately, green extremism is rooted in a single, powerful conviction: that continued economic growth is absolutely impossible, given the

limits of a finite planet. Only if this notion is discredited can the edifice of eco-radical philosophy be shaken. It can logically be shown that the

supposed necessity of devising a steady-state economy is severely misconstrued. Economic growth, strictly

speaking, isdefined as an increase in the value of goods and services produced. Yet as noted almost twenty years ago byMancur Olson (1973:4), radical greens have a significantly different conception, one that largdy ignores services and that substitutes mass for

value. To read some of their tracts, one could only conclude that economic growth requires producing ever larger quantities of steel, wheat,

and similar material goods (for example, Ornstein and Ehrlich 1989:227). The more sophisticated advocates of a steady-state economy do, how-ever, take care to distinguish between qualitative economic growth (which they sometimes support) and quantitative economic growth (which

they denounce), holding ultimately that only human bodies and material artifacts must be held at a constant level (Daly 1977). But in the end,

the bias against even nonconsumptive forms of economic growth remains. The provision of services must stabilize, warns Daly (1977:1718),

because services too require physical maintenance, while Kassiola (1990:121) cautions that services are further suspect because they are part

of the materialist value structure of industrialism. Porritt (1985: 37, 183) even worries about the economic expansion entailed by the growth

of the pollution abatement and recycling industries. Services do indeed require maintenance. Yet it is appears that as services become

more sophisticated, theyoften require less physical supportrather than more. More importantly, recent economic

progress has come to demand a certain dematerialization of value, based on miniaturization and the

development of lightweight, energy efficient, composite materials. Growth hasalso been repeatedly

stimulated asrelatively abundant resources are substituted for rare ones, the replacement of copper wire by fiber

optic (glass) cables being a prime example. Whiletheglobal economycertainly cannot grow indefinitely in volumeby pouring

out an ever mounting cavalcade of consumer disposables, it cancontinue to expand in valueby producing better goods and servicesever more efficiently. As I shall argue repeatedly throughout this work, economic growth of this type is absolutely essential. Only a strongly

expanding economic base can generate the capital necessary to retool our economy into one that does

not consume the earth in feeding itself. Ecological sanity will be expensive, and if we cannot pay the price

wemay well perish.


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Growth GoodDisease

Economic collapse would lead to the spread of AIDs and other plagues

Silk 93( Leonard, Prof of Econ @ Pace U, Foreign Affairs, Wntr v72 n1 p167(16).) ET

In the absence of such shifts of human and capital resources to expanding civilian industries, there are strong economic

pressures on arms-producing nations to maintain high levels of military production and to sell weapons,

both conventional and dual-use nuclear technology, wherever buyers can be found. Without a revival ofnational economies and the global economy, the production and proliferation of weapons will continue, creating more Iraqs,

Yugoslavias, Somalias and Cambodias - or worse. Like the Great Depression, the current economic slump has fanned the fires of

nationalist, ethnic and religious hatred around the world. Economic hardship is not the only cause of these social

and political pathologies, but it aggravates all of them, and in turn they feed back on economic

development. They also undermine efforts to deal with such global problems as environmental

pollution, the production and trafficking of drugs, crime, sickness, famine, AIDS and other plagues.

Growth will not solve all those problems by itself But economic growth- and growth alone - creates the additional

resources that make it possible to achieve such fundamental goals as higher living standards, nationaland collective security, a healthier environment, and more liberal and open economies and societies.

Growth is goodsolves disease

Reich 2010(Robert Bernard, August 17th served as the 22nd United States Secretary of Labor under

President Bill Clinton, from 1993 to 1997. Reich is currently Chancellor's Professor of Public Policy at the

Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley, a former Harvard University

professor and the former Maurice B. Hexter Professor of Social and Economic Policy at the Heller School

for Social Policy and Management at Brandeis University,http://robertreich.org/post/968048444 )

Economic growth is slowing in the United States. Its also slowing in Japan, France, Britain, Italy, Spain, and Canada. Its evenslowing in China. And its likely to be slowing soon in Germany. If governments keep hacking away at their budgets while

consumers almost everywhere are becoming more cautious about spending,global demand will shrink to the

point where a worldwide dip is inevitable. You might ask yourself: So what? Why do we need more economic growth anyway?

Arent we ruining the planet with all this growth destroying forests, polluting oceans and rivers, and spewing carbon into

the atmosphere at a rate thats already causing climate chaos? Lets just stop filling our homes with so much stuff. The answer is economic

growth isnt just about more stuff. Growth is different from consumerism. Growth is really about the

capacity of a nation to produce everything thats wanted and needed by its inhabitants. That includes

better stewardship of the environment as well as improved public health and better schools. (The GrossDomestic Product is a crude way of gauging this but its a guide. Nations with high and growing GDPs have more overall capaci ty; those with

low or slowing GDPs have less.)Poorer countries tend to be more polluted than richer onesbecause they dont have the

capacity both to keep their people fed and clothed and also to keep their land, air and water clean. Infant mortality is higher andlife spans shorter because they dont have enough to immunize against diseases, prevent them from

spreading, and cure the sick.In their quest for resources rich nations(and corporations)have too often devastated

poor onesdestroying their forests, eroding their land, and fouling their water. This is intolerable, but it isnt an indictment of

growth itself. Growth doesnt depend on plunder. Rich nations have the capacity to extract resources responsibly. That theydont is a measure of their irresponsibility and the weakness of international law. How a nation c hooses to use its productive capacityhow it

defines its needs and wants is a different matter. As China becomes a richer nation it can devote more of its

capacity to its environment and to its own consumers,for example. The United States has the largest capacity
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in the world. But relative to other rich nations it chooses to devote a larger proportion of that capacity to consumer goods, health care, and

the military. And it usescomparatively less to support people who are unemployed or destitute, pay for non-

carbon fuels, keep people healthy, and provide aid to the rest of the world. Slower growth will mean even more

competition among these goals. Faster growth greases the way toward more equal opportunity and a wider

distribution of gains.The wealthy more easily accept a smaller share of the gainsbecause they can still come out

ahead of where they were before. Simultaneously,the middle class more willingly pays taxes to support publicimprovements like a cleaner environment and stronger safety nets . Its a virtuous cycle. We had one during the

Great Prosperity the lasted from 1947 to the early 1970s. Slower growth has the reverse effect. Because economic gains

are small, the wealthy fight harder to maintain their share . The middle class, already burdened by high

unemployment and flat or dropping wages, fightsever more furiously against any additional burdens, including tax increases to

support public improvements. The poor are left worse off than before. Its a vicious cycle. Weve been in one most of the

last thirty years. No one should celebrate slow growth. If were entering into a period of even slower

growth, the consequences could be worse.


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Growth GoodEnvironment

Economic growth goes hand in hand with environmental progress

Learner, 12Howard A. Learner. 05/15/2012. Ann Arbor: Jobs, environmental progress and economic

growth can go hand-in-hand in Michigan. http://www.annarbor.com/news/opinion/jobs-environmental-

progress-and-economic-growth-can-go-head-in-hand-in-michigan.DA- 06/27/2012

The best news is that environmental progress is being achieved together withthe growing green economy that is helping

drive Michigans and the nations economic recovery. Energy efficient equipment and appliances, wind and

solar energy development, cleaner more fuel efficient cars and modern high-performance rail

development are good for job creation, good for economic growth and good for the environment.

Nonetheless, some defensive polluters and politicized critics are hauling out the old myth and false dichotomy that we must

choose between job creation and environmental progress. That wasn't true 30 years ago, and it isn't true today. Nor domost people believe in that canard. Let's look at the facts and progress of innovative clean technologies in Michigan and the Midwest.

Econ collapse pushes warming off the agenda.

Elliott2008Larry, Economics Editor at the Guardian, Can a dose of recession solve climate change?,

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008/aug/25/economicgrowth.globalrecession

There are many reasons why it is not quite as simple as that. My rudimentary understanding of the science of climate change is that

concentrations of greenhouse gases have been building up over many decades, and you can't simply

turn them off like a tap. Even a three- or four-year 1930s-style global slump would have little or no impact,

particularly if it was followed by a period of vigorous catch-up growth. On a chart showing growth since the dawn ofthe industrial age 250 years ago, the Great Depression is a blip. Similarly, Britain's trade deficit always comes down in recessions because

imports go down, but then widens again once the economy returns to its trend rate of growth. Politically, recessions are not

helpful to the cause of environmentalism. Climate change is replaced by concerns about unemploymentand stimulating growth. To be fair, politicians respond to what they hear from voters: Gordon Brown's survival as prime minister

depends on how well his package of economic measures is received, not on what he does or doesn't do to limit greenhouse gases. Looking

back, it is clear that every advance in the green movement has coincided with period of strong growth -

the early 1970s, the late 1980s and the first half of the current decade. It was tough enough to get world leaders tomake tackling climate change a priority when the world economy was experiencing its longest period of sustained growth: it will be mightily

difficult to persuade them to take measures that might have a dampen growth while the dole queues are lengthening. Those most likely to

suffer are workers in the most marginal jobs and pensioners who will have to pay perhaps 20% of their income on energy bills. Hence,

recession does not offer even a temporary solution to the problem of climate change and it is a fantasy

to imagine that it does. The real issue is whether it is possible to challenge the "growth-at-any-cost

model" and come up with an alternative that is environmentally benign, economically robust and

politically feasible. Hitting all three buttons is mightily difficult but attempting to do so is a heck of a lotmore constructive than waiting for industrial capitalism to collapse under the weight of its own contradictions.
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Growth GoodScarcity

Continued growth solves scarcity

Michael Zey, professor at the School of Business Administration at Montclair University and executive

director of the Expansionary Institute and internationally recognized expert on the economy, society

and management, as well as author. Seizing the Future, 1998p 22-23

In the Macroindustrial Era, we will witness the miracle of the species finally eliminating the scarcitythat has plagued it since time

immemorial. A variety of sophisticated and advanced technologies will create food, resources, and productsin such

quantities that we will move into a new age of abundance. In the next era, overproduction may be the only problem

facing businesses. Humanity will introduce new methods of large-scale production. This macromanufacturing will be

possible due to a number of mind-boggling innovations. One of these, the cybernetic factory, combines computers and

robotics that turn out high quantities of goods from radios to surgical equipment. Another, magnetic machinery, involves machineswhose parts never touch as they float in electromagnetic fields. This lack of friction allows them to operate at ultrahigh speeds with almost no

wear. The production of a higher quantity of goods depends on a powerful and reliable energy source. The macromanufacturing machines will

have available to them energy systems that will dwarf in output current oil- and coal-generating plants. Safer and more efficient nuclear powerplants will provide the power during the transition to fusion power. Both of these will exist during the Macroindustrial Era. As we shall see,

countries like France and Japan have staked their futures on the improvement of nuclear fission, and others are racing to develop fusion power.

Food will also be produced in abundance. Biotechnology and genetic engineering will enable the

species to produce massive amounts of food, very often in climates and soil that would have been

considered totally inhospitable to the growing of any crop. Through these technologies, we will have the power to mass-producealmost any food we so desire anywhere, both vegetable and livestock. We cannot overstate the humanitarian effect of this increase in the

quantity of goods. Such advances will create a world whose population is well fed, well clothed, and

comfortably housed for the first time in human history.


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Growth GoodSpace

Economic collapse prevents space exploration

Eric R. Hedman, Chief Technology Officer, Logic Design Corporation, April 18, 2005,

www.thespacereview.com/article/356/1

Barring any unforeseen worldwide economic collapseor natural disasterI am confident that humans will

eventually return to the Moon and go on to Mars; the question is when. The decisions that are being made now will decide if it is the time to push forward. Hugebudget deficits, the Medicare and Social Security funding crises, and the uncertainty of the duration and expense of US troops in Iraq have the potential to blindside NASA and other agencies. This is why I believe we are at the

tipping point. Decisions made now will determine if we go forward, or retreat and wait for a safer time. These decisions will also determine who will lead when we do go forward. Without rushing and making hasty misguided

decisions;the preliminary architecture, cost estimates, timeline, and potential international partnerships

need to start coming out so the President, Congress, and the American people can decide if they still

have the vision, courage, and leadership to make this journey. I believe that as a species it is our manifest destiny to do so. I only hope that the Vision forSpace Exploration was not started a decade too late for it to get us through this transition and succeed.

Failure to colonize space kills 1031 people per second.Bostrom03*professor of philosophy at Yale, Is Cosmology Relevant to Transhumanism?+

Suns are illuminating and heating empty rooms; unused energy is being flushed down black holes; our

great common endowment of negentropy is being irreversibly degraded into entropy on a cosmic

scale, as I write these words. 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 (Cirkovic 2002) . 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, lets 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 (Drexler 1992) , is 10^42 operations per second (Bradbury

2000) . A typical estimate of the human brains processing power is roughly 10^17 operations per

second (Bostrom 1998; Kurzweil 1999) or less (Moravec 1999). 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 (Bostrom 2001) . 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.


23/26


24/26

Growth GoodTech

Growth produces tech, solving any pollution it creates

Michael Zey,Montclair University, SEIZING THE FUTURE, 1998, p. 36-37.

Once we discover new capacities, both technologicaland human, we are set off in novel directions,

crossing boundaries and exploring frontierswe never thought existed. The Spanish explored the New World in order to extract natural resources such as gold from theEarth and spread Christianity. Many English settlements were established by people simply trying to escape religious intolerance. None could have guessed that their expression of progress circa 1600 would lead to the birth of an

independent nation that became the crucible for personal liberation and technological innovation. The fact that progress itself leads to new definiti ons of human growth also explains the Wests faith in progress. Our accomplishments consistently exceed our wildest dreams. Regardless of the stated purpose of a technology, the applications usually exceed such purposes.

The automobile became important as a means of redistributing the population from cities to the suburbs; the discovery of the steam engine revolutionized industry and the very concept of abundance. Third , growth

itselfcontains to their economic woes. hence, he concludes that in order to ensure the solutions to the problems it produces. Supporting this principle is the World

Banks 1992 report Development and the Environment, which blatantly states thatgrowth is a powerful antidote toa number ofills plaguing Third World

countries, including thepollution that growth supposedly generates. The report thus contends that eliminating poverty should remain the top goal of world policymakers.Although

economic growth can initially lead to suchproblems as pollution and waste, the resulting prosperity also facilitates the

developments of technologiesthat lead to cleaner air and water. In fact, once a nations per capita income

rises to about$4000 in 1993 dollars, it produces less of some pollutants per capita, mainly due to the fact that it can afford technologylike catalytic converters and sewage systems

that treata variety ofwastes. According to Norio Yamamoto, research director of the Mitsubishi Research Institute , Weconsider any kind ofenvironmental

damage to result from mismanagement of the economy . He claims that the pollution problems of poorer

regions such as eastern europe can be traced to their economic woes . Hence, he concludes thatin order to ensure

environmental safety we need a sound economy on a global basis. sothe answer to pollution, the

supposed outgrowth of progress, ought to be moreeconomicgrowth.


25/26

Growth GoodWar

Continued economic collapse will exacerbate tensions in AsiaChina may regress to a

1930s Japan-style governance, and North Korea and Iran will advance their interests

with loose nukes

Green, 9(Michael J., Senior Advisor and Japan Chair at the Center for Strategic and InternationalStudies (CSIS) and Associate Professor at Georgetown University. Asia Times Online, March 26 2009.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Asian_Economy/KC26Dk01.html AD 6/30/09) JM

Facing the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression,analysts at the World Bank and the US Central Intelligence Agency are just beginning

to contemplate the ramifications for international stability if there is not a recovery in the next year. For

the most part, the focus has been on fragile states such as some in Eastern Europe. However, the Great Depression taught us that a downward global

economic spiral can even have jarring impacts on great powers. It is no mere coincidence that the last

great global economic downturn was followed by the most destructive war in human history. In the

1930s, economic desperation helped fuel autocratic regimes and protectionismin a downward economic-security death spiral

that engulfed the world in conflict. This spiral was aided by t he preoccupation of the United States and other leading nations with economic troubles at home and insufficient attention to working with other powers

to maintain stability abroad. Today's challenges are different, yet 1933's London Economic Conference, which failed to stop the drift toward deeper depression and world war, should be a cautionary tale for

leaders heading to next month's London Group of 20 (G-20) meeting. There is no question the US must urgently actto address banking issues and to

restart its economy. But the lessons of the past suggest that we will also have to keep an eye on those fragile threads in the international system that could begin to unravel if the financial

crisis is not reversed early in the Barack Obama administration and realize that economics and security are intertwined in most of the critical challenges we face. A disillusioned rising power?Four

areas in Asia merit particular attention, although so far the current financial crisis has not changed Asia's fundamental strategic picture. China is not replacing the US asregional hegemon, since the leadership in Beijing is too nervous about the political implications of the financial crisis at home to actually play a leading role in solving it internationally. Predictions that the US will

be brought to its knees because China is the leading holder of US debt often miss key points. China's currency controls and f ull employment/export-oriented growth strategy give Beijing few choices other than

buying US Treasury bills or harming its own economy. Rather than creating new rules or institutions in international finance, or r eorienting the Chinese economy to generate greater long-term consumer demand

at home, Chinese leaders are desperately clinging to t he status quo (though Beijing deserves credit for short-term efforts to stimulate economic growth). The greater danger with

China is not an eclipsing of US leadership, but instead the kind of shift in strategic orientation that

happened to Japan after the Great Depression.Japan was arguably not a r evisionist power before 1932 and sought instead to converge with the global economy

through open trade and adoption of the gold standard. The worldwide depression and protectionism of the 1930s devastated the

newly exposed Japanese economy and contributed directly to militaristic and autarkic policiesin Asia as the

Japanese people reacted against what counted for globalization at the time. China today is similarly converging with the global economy, and manyexperts believe China needs at least 8% annual growth to sustain social stability. Realistic growth predictions for 2009 are closer to 5%. Veteran China hands were watching closely when millions of migrant

workers returned to work after the Lunar New Year holiday last month t o find factories closed and jobs gone. There were pockets of protests, but nationwide unrest seems unlikely this year, and Chinese leaders

are working around the clock to ensure that it does not happen next year either. However, the economic slowdown has only just begun and nobody is certain how it will impact the social contract in China between

the ruling communist party and the 1.3 billion Chinese who have come to see President Hu Jintao's call for "harmonious society" as inextricably linked to his promise of "peaceful development". If the Japanese

example is any precedent, a sustained economic slowdown has the potential to open a dangerous path from economic nationalism to strategic revisionism in China too. Dangerousstates It is

noteworthy that North Korea, Myanmar and Iran have all intensified their defiance in the wake of the

financial crisis, which has distracted the world's leading nati ons, limited their moral authority and sown potential discord. With Beijing worried about the potential impact of North Korean belligerence

or instability on Chinese internal stability, and leaders in Japan and South Korea under siege in parliament because of the collapse of their stock markets, leaders in the North Korean

capital of Pyongyang have grown increasingly boisterous about their country's claims to great power status as a

nuclear weapons state. The junta in Myanmar has chosen this moment to arrest hundreds of political

dissidents and thumb its nose at fellow members of the10-country Association of SoutheastAsian Nations. Iran continues its

nuclear program while exploiting differences between the US, UK and France(or the P-3 group) and China and Russia -

differences that could become more pronounced if economic friction with Beijing or Russia crowds out cooperation or if W estern European governments grow nervous about sanctions as a tool of policy. It is

possible that the economic downturn will make these dangerous states more pliablebecause of falling fuel pri ces (Iran)

and greater need for f oreign aid (North Korea and Myanmar), butthat may depend on the extent that authoritarian leaders care about

the well-being of their people or face internal political pressures linked to the economy. So far, there

is little evidence to suggest either and much evidence to suggest these dangerous states see an

opportunity to advance their asymmetrical advantages against the international system.


26/26

Economic decline sparks multiple scenarios for nuclear exchange.

Kemp 2010 Geoffrey, Director of Regional Strategic Programs at The Nixon Center, served in the White House under Ronald Reagan,special assistant to the president for national security affairs and senior director for Near East and South Asian af

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