Interp: The us includes the territories and land over which it has jurisdiction

Shipping Lanes Frontline

1. Economic collapse doesn’t cause war

Ferguson 6

(Niall Ferguson is the Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History at Harvard University, September/October 2006, “ The Next War of the World”,http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/61916/niall-ferguson/the-next-war-of-the-world)

Nor can economic crises explain the bloodshed. What may be the most familiar causal chain in modern historiography links the Great Depression to the rise of fascism and the outbreak of World War II. But that simple story leaves too much out. Nazi Germany started the war in Europe only after its economy had recovered. Not all the countries affected by the Great Depression were taken over by fascist regimes, nor did all such regimes start wars of aggression. In fact, no general relationship between economics and conflict is discernible for the century as a whole. Some wars came after periods of growth, others were the causes rather than the consequences of economic catastrophe, and some severe economic crises were not followed by wars.

2. Growth unsustainable and makes war and environmental degradation inevitable

Ted Trainer, University of New South Wales, 2011[“The radical implications of a zero growth economy”, real-world economics review, issue no. 57, http://www.paecon.net/PAEReview/issue57/Trainer57.pdf]MW

The planet is now racing into many massive problems, any one of which could bring about the collapse of civilization before long. The most serious are the destruction of the environment, the deprivation of the Third World, resource depletion, conflict and war, and the breakdown of social cohesion. The main cause of all these problems is over-production and over-consumption – people are trying to live at levels of affluence that are far too high to be sustained or for all to share. Our society is grossly unsustainable – the levels of consumption, resource use and ecological impact we have in rich countries like Australia are far beyond levels that could be kept up for long or extended to all people. Yet almost everyone’s supreme goal is to increase material living standards and the GDP and production and consumption, investment, trade, etc., as fast as possible and without any limit in sight. There is no element in our suicidal condition that is more important than this mindless obsession with accelerating the main factor causing the condition. The following points drive home the magnitude of the overshoot. If the 9 billion people we will have on earth within about 50 years were to use resources at the per capita rate of the rich countries, annual resource production would have to be about 8 times as great as it is now. If 9 billion people were to have a North American diet we would need about 4.5 billion ha of cropland, but there are only 1.4 billion ha of cropland on the planet. Water resources are scarce and dwindling. What will the situation be if 9 billion people try to use water as we in rich countries do, while the greenhouse problem reduces water resources. The world’s fisheries are in serious trouble now, most of them overfished and in decline. What happens if 9 billion people try to eat fish at the rate Australian’s do now? Several mineral and other resources are likely to be very scarce soon, including gallium, indium, helium, and there are worries about copper, zinc, silver and phosphorous. Oil and gas are likely to be in decline soon, and largely unavailable in the second half of the century. If 9 billion were to consume oil at the Australian per capita rate, world demand would be about 5 times as great as it is now. The seriousness of this is extreme, given the heavy dependence of our society on liquid fuels. Recent "Footprint" analysis indicates that it takes 8 ha of productive land to provide water, energy, settlement area and food for one person living in Australia. (World Wildlife Fund, 2009.) So if 9 billion people were to live as we do about 72 billion ha of productive land would be needed. But that is about 10 times all the available productive land on the planet. The most disturbing argument is to do with the greenhouse problem. It is very likely that in order to stop the carbon content of the atmosphere rising to dangerous levels CO2 emissions will have to be totally eliminated by 2050 (Hansen says 2030). (Hansen, 2009, Meinschausen et al., 2009.) Geo-sequestration can’t enable this, if only because it can only capture about 85% of the 50% of emissions that come from stationary sources like power stations. These kinds of figures make it abundantly clear that rich world material “living standards” are grossly unsustainable. We are living in ways that it is impossible for all to share. We are not just a little beyond sustainable levels of resource consumption -- we have overshot by a factor of 5 to 10. Few seem to realise the magnitude of the overshoot, nor therefore about the enormous reductions that must be made.

3. Collapse now creates a mindset shift towards small local civilizations

Lewis 2k - Ph.D. University of Colorado at Boulder (Chris H, “The Paradox of Global Development and the Necessary Collapse of Global Industrial Civilization” http://www.cross-x.com/archives/LewisParadox.pdf)
With the collapse of global industrial civilization, smaller, autonomous, local and regional civilizations, cultures, and polities will emerge. We can reduce the threat of mass death and genocide that will surely accompany this collapse by encouraging the creation and growth of sustainable, self-sufficient regional polities. John Cobb has already made a case for how this may work in the United States and how it is working in Kerala, India. After the collapse of global industrial civilization, First and Third World peoples won't have the material resources, biological capital, and energy and human resources to re-establish global industrial civilization. Forced by economic necessity to become dependent on local resources and ecosystems for their survival, peoples throughout the world will work to conserve and restore their environments. Those societies that destroy their local environments and economies, as modern people so often do, will themselves face collapse and ruin.
4. Delaying transition makes the impacts of collapse worse- no preparedness

Heinberg, Senior Fellow-in-Residence at Post Carbon institute, 2010 (Richard, February, “China or the U.S.:Which Will be the Last Nation Standing”, http://richardheinberg.com/213-china-or-the-u-s-which-will-be-the-last-nation-standing)

Okay, so there is no serious effort on the part of U.S. or Chinese leaders to avoid collapse in the long run (say, over the next 10 to 20 years). Perhaps this is because they have concluded that it is impossible to do so—there are just too many trends leading in the same direction, and actually dealing with any of those trends head-on would entail huge, immediate political risks. In reality, however, it is much more likely that they simply refuse seriously to think about these trends and their implications, because they do have another option—to postpone collapse through deficit spending, bailouts, and more financial bubbles, while enacting their parts in a climate-policy kabuki play and engaging in resource geopolitics. This way blame will at least fall on the next set of leaders. Postponing collapse is itself a big job, enough so as to take all of one’s attention away from having to contemplate the awfulness and inevitability of what is being postponed. Do these short-term efforts in any way reduce the risk of dissolution? Hardly. In fact, the longer the reckoning is delayed, the worse it will be. What would make more sense than just trying to put off the inevitable is quite simply to build resilience throughout society, re-localizing basic social systems involving food, manufacture, and finance. There is no need to rehearse the existing discourse about this strategy: readers who are not familiar with it can find plenty of useful pointers at www.transitiontowns.org, or in the books and articles of authors such as Rob Hopkins, Albert Bates, David Holmgren, Pat Murphy, and Sharon Astyk (and in some of my own writings, including Museletter #192). It is understandably hard for national politicians to think along those lines. Building societal resilience means disregarding the dictates of economic efficiency; it means systematically reducing the power of the central government and national/global commercial institutions (banks and corporations). It also means questioning the central dogma of our modern world: the efficacy and possibility of unending economic growth. So if the best outcome lies in a strategy of resilience and re-localization, and our national leaders can’t even contemplate such a strategy, that means those leaders are, in one sense at least, irrelevant to our future. Some blog readers are so in tune with this line of thinking that they no longer see any point in paying attention to the global scene. They may even think this article is a waste of time (and I expect to get an email or two to that effect). But following world events is more than a matter of infotainment: when and how China and the U.S. come apart at the seams is a question of far greater consequence than that of whether the New Orleans Saints or the Indianapolis Colts will win the Superbowl. The reality is that no nation, and no community will be able to completely protect itself from the sudden, harsh winds that will rush to fill the vacuum left by an implosion of either superpower. By the way, my apologies to the other 190 or so nations of the world, large and small: my singling out of the U.S. and China for discussion does not signify that other countries are unimportant, or that their destinies will not be as unique as their cultures and geographies; merely that those destinies will probably unfold in the context of a global collapse spreading from the two nations we have been discussing. For any nation—India, Bolivia, Russia, Brazil, South Africa—and for any community or family, survival will require some comprehension of the direction of large events, so as to get out of the way when debris is flying and to anticipate opportunities to regroup.
5. Recession proves degrowth is the best way to cut emissions and environmental degradation

Schneider et al 10

(François Schneider is an industrial ecologist and degrowth researcher. He worked on the development of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology at the INSA engineering school in Lyon and at the CML in Holland. Giorgos Kallis, Joan Martinez-Alier Crisis or opportunity? Economic degrowth for social equity and ecological sustainability. Introduction to this special issue, Spainhttp://degrowth.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/Schneider_Crisis-or-opportunity.pdf)

The Paris Conference took place when the economic crisis of 2008–09 was yet about to start (although our contributors were asked to revise their articles and reflect on the implications of the crisis). As Kallis, Martinez-Alier and Norgaard [43] argue, the crisis is a result of unsustainable growth. Irresponsible borrowing and the cultivation of fake expectations in the housing market were not accidents, but a systemic failure of a system struggling to keep up with growth rates that could not be sustained by its biophysical base (the ‘‘real’’ economy). Furthermore, the crisis marks a failure of ‘‘economicism’’, the doctrine of mainstream, neo-classical economics which refuses to accept any material reality beyond the beliefs of investors and consumers. The collapse of the fictitious economy had real impacts. Because of the economic crisis, and despite growth in India, China, Indonesia, the world trend towards increased emissions of carbon dioxide (3 per cent growth in emissions per year up to 2007) has been stopped, and there has been a reduction of three per cent[44]. This is too little compared with the IPCC recommended reduction of over 60 per cent but it shows that more than the Kyoto commitment and more than technological changes, it is economic degrowth that achieves greenhouse gas emission reductions. Similarly, because of the decrease in external demand for exports, the rate of deforestation in the Brazil Amazon has decreased to ‘‘only’’ 7000 sq. km. in the year 2008 [45]. Economic degrowth can be good for the environment. It helped to reach goals that 20 years of talking about sustainable development did not achieve. Nevertheless, scientists and politicians have not been considering degrowth as an option. The IPCC projections [46] (or the Stern report [47]) never considered that the peak of carbon dioxide emissions could be reached in 2007. Will this be just one peak in cordillera of peaks leading to climate disaster? The consequences of economic degrowth have been absolute reductions of emissions and extractions, and perhaps to some extent avoidance of outsourcing/delocalization of environmental impacts. In a context of economic degrowth, increased efficiency in resource use is not accompanied by a rebound effect [48]. The rate of substitution of renewable energies (wind, photovoltaic) for other energies may increase more easily when the overall use of energy is stable or declines. It is likely that the reduction of natural resource extraction and CO2 emissions is larger than the degrowth rate of the economy because in times of economic shrinking it seems (at least in the present crisis) that material and energy intensive industries are heavily affected, leading to an actual decoupling. For instance, the cement output has decreased faster than the overall economy in many countries; in Spain in the first four months of 2009, cement demand dropped by about 45% [49]. If well targeted ‘‘green Keynesianism’’ rather than ‘‘public works Keynesianism’’ and ‘‘car subsidy Keynesianism’’ had been applied, the dematerialization of the economy could have advanced further in the economic crisis of 2008–09.

Arctic Science thing

1. South China Morning Post is terrible evidence- cites a quack doctor who didn’t go to school. Don’t evaluate it

2. Diseases burn out – no spread

Morse, 04 (Stephen, PhD, director of the Center for Public Health Preparedness, at the Mailman School of Public Health of Columbia University, May 2004, “Emerging and Reemerging Infectious Diseases: A Global Problem,” http://www.actionbioscience.org/newfrontiers/morse.html, Hensel)

Morse: A pandemic is a very big epidemic. It requires a number of things. There are many infections that get introduced from time to time in the human population and, like Ebola, burn themselves out because they kill too quickly or they don’t have a way to get from person to person. They are a terrible tragedy, but also, in a sense, it is a lucky thing that they don’t have an efficient means of transmission. In some cases, we may inadvertently create pathways to allow transmission of infections that may be poorly transmissible, for example, spreading HIV through needle sharing, the blood supply, and, of course, initially through the commercial sex trade. The disease is not easily transmitted, but we provided, without realizing it, means for it to spread. It is now pandemic in spite of its relatively inefficient transmission. We also get complacent and do not take steps to prevent its spread.

3. Diseases evolve to be less dangerous – no impact

Achenbach, 03 (Joel, Washington Post staff writer, November 2003, “Our Friend, the Plague,” National Geographic, http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0311/resources_who.html, Hensel)

Whenever a new disease appears somewhere on our planet, experts invariably pop up on TV with grave summations of the problem, usually along the lines of, "We're in a war against the microbes"—pause for dramatic effect —"and the microbes are winning." War, however, is a ridiculously overused metaphor and probably should be bombed back to the Stone Age. Paul Ewald, a biologist at the University of Louisville, advocates a different approach to lethal microbes. Forget trying to obliterate them, he says, and focus instead on how they co-evolve with humans. Make them mutate in the right direction. Get the powers of evolution on our side. Disease organisms can, in fact, become less virulent over time. When it was first recognized in Europe around 1495, syphilis killed its human hosts within months. The quick progression of the disease—from infection to death—limited the ability of syphilis to spread. So a new form evolved, one that gave carriers years to infect others. For the same reason, the common cold has become less dangerous. Milder strains of the virus—spread by people out and about, touching things, and shaking hands—have an evolutionary advantage over more debilitating strains. You can't spread a cold very easily if you're incapable of rolling out of bed.

Oil Spills

1. Turn: trade causes spills

Mahony 11 (Honor, EU Observer, “Arctic shipping routes unlikely to be ‘Suez of the north”)

Environment And then there is the environmental impact of increased shipping. More traffic means there is a greater risk of oil spill. The ships will introduce alien species through their hull water and are likely to interrupt the migratory patterns of marine mammals. Carbon emissions could accelerate ice melting even further, and this in a region where the average temperature has risen almost twice as fast as the rest of the world's. Other ship emissions , such as SOx and NOx, may also have unforeseen consequences on the Arctic environment. Norwegian explorer Borge Ousland says it is vital not to forget that changes in the Polar regions could have global ef-fects. "It is easy to look at the Polar regions as an isolated area but any change in temperature has an effect on the rest of the world," he said recently. "I am very worried about what I have seen in the last 20 years. When I went up to the North Pole for the first time in 1990, the ice was three to four metres thick. In 2007 we measured the ice for the Norwegian Polar Institute and the coverage of ice was now 1.7 metres thick."

2. Alt cause to biod outweigh.

Pynn 7 [Larry, staff writer at The Vancouver Sun, “Global warming not biggest threat: expert,” The Vancouver Sun, http://www2.canada.com/vancouversun/news/story.html?id=6e2988da-31ab-4697-810d-7a008306d571&p=1]
"We all worry about climate change, as we should, but it doesn't mean we shouldn't worry about protecting habitat," says James Grant, a biology professor at Concordia University in Montreal and co-author of a new report on threats to endangered species in Canada. "The really immediate causes right now for many species are things like farming, urbanization and habitat loss caused by the direct things we do." Research by Grant and his pupils shows the biggest threat is habitat loss at 84 per cent, overexploitation 32 per cent, native species interactions 31 per cent, natural causes 27 per cent, pollution 26 per cent, and introduced species 22 per cent. On average, species are threatened by at least two of the six categories. Human activities representing the biggest source of habitat loss and pollution are not industrial resource extraction, but agriculture at 46 per cent and urbanization at 44 per cent. "Farming is huge," Grant said in an interview. "The Prairies are one of the most affected habitats in the world. We've turned them into wheat fields." The southern Okanagan-Similkameen is another example, home to about one-third of species at risk in B.C. as well as a thriving agricultural industry, including vineyards, and increased urban development.