West Coast Publishing Ocean 2014 affirmative page

Debating on the Affirmative

Ben Menzies, Whitman College
This is a consideration of the key affirmative arguments on the topic. As much of the topic will revolve around similar advantage ground with potentially slightly different plan mechanisms, we will first examine the core advantage areas.

Biodiversity

The Earth’s oceans are a key source of global biodiversity. Indeed, according to the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), “The ocean constitutes over 90% of the habitable space on the planet, an estimated 50-80% of all life on earth is found under the ocean surface, [and] by the year 2100, without significant changes, more than half of the world’s marine species may stand on the brink of extinction.” This indicates that immediate action is needed to preserve a key reservoir of global biodiversity.

Biodiversity advantages tend to focus on the propensity for large-scale species collapse as a result of the extinctions of “keystone species.” Keystone species are so-called due to their capacity to sustain large ecological chains of other species, hence their extinction has a chain reaction that also causes other species to go extinct. Given the magnitude of ocean ecosystems, there is also a clear threshold for global extinction if large numbers of ocean species were to go extinct. Because biodiversity is a question of science rather than politics, it can be a very strategic affirmative impact.

Biodiversity advantages tend to be difficult to defend against competitive counterplans. Because solving biodiversity tends to merely be a question of protecting the relevant species, it can be difficult to defend a warrant for why the agent or plan mechanism is uniquely key to solve the advantage. Therefore, any case that includes a biodiversity advantage should also include an advantage designed to defeat particularly threatening counterplans. Furthermore, isolating specific species as the target of the plan’s protection could help bolster a biodiversity advantage. If a certain species exists only in US waters, it would make a counterplan to have China perform the same preservation less persuasive, since the only way China could solve for that species would be by invading US space. Furthermore, if the plan mechanism is specifically tailored to address a given species, a negative team that reads an advantage counterplan to increase biodiversity in another way would likely not capture the same benefit. For instance, a plan mechanism that safeguards certain fish species would not be answered by a counterplan that improved algae reproduction (potentially).

Warming

The phenomenon of global climate change due to the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the Earth’s atmosphere is a largely established scientific fact. The effects of anticipated global warming are expected to have profound impacts on the oceans, making management of those accumulating problems a potentially relevant source of affirmative ground. Moreover, the ocean is a key potential source of renewable energies that could mitigate global dependence on fossil fuels.

Warming advantages rely on emphasizing that, despite the long-term nature of most impacts to warming (most scientists agree that the worst impacts of climate change will occur decades from now), there is a short-term window for solvency before those long-term impacts become inevitable. Hence, warming can still compete with disadvantage impacts on the level of timeframe. Furthermore, climate change is one of the largest impacts imaginable in terms of magnitude and probability. It is a very powerful impact for weighing against disadvantage links. The most difficult aspect of a warming advantage for the affirmative is winning solvency, as the magnitude of global warming often dwarfs the scope of the affirmative plan. Plans that boost ocean-based renewables can avoid this problem by emphasizing the need for specific achievable thresholds to be met or by arguing that ocean renewables will solve impediments to land-based renewables that make both viable alternatives.

On the other hand, an intriguing possibility offered by the oceans topic is the potential for affirmatives based on managing the effects of climate change on the oceans. As the oceans are likely to bear significant burden of climate change reflected in rising sea levels, coral population collapse, ocean acidification, temperature changes, and an increase in violent weather patterns, affirmatives could develop strategies in order to mitigate the consequences of these effects. This would allow creative affirmative teams to avoid the typical warming solvency debate as the plan would not need to “solve” greenhouse gases; rather, it could simply avert a particular impact to warming. Specific impact evidence of the malignancy of the impact in question would also likely overwhelm negative warming defense that would be concerned with the overall warming phenomenon rather than adaptation. Indeed, much “negative” evidence on the warming impact suggests “adaptation” as a superior response to “prevention” – precisely the strategy such an affirmative would be pursuing.

Oil/Economy

The ocean is a key potential source of fossil fuels, with significant development remaining to be done in order to extract both oil and natural gas from ocean geologic formations. The failure to extract oceanic fossil fuel resources are due to barriers that are regulatory, technological, and economic in nature. All of those can potentially be addressed by affirmative plans by encouraging the development of drilling and extraction infrastructure in the ocean. Furthermore, many such affirmatives will contain embedded warrants to defeat counterplans, as federal policy tends to be the largest impediment to further development of such resources. Hence, only policy change on the federal level would be able to resolve the harms related to not developing those resources.

Related impact areas include American global hegemony and the American economy. Much of American dominance revolves around access to cheap strategic resources such as oil. Fossil fuel resources also provide the American military with key advantages over potential challengers, deterring the rise of global counterbalancing. A hegemony advantage can be very effective as an answer to potential international counterplans; if American access to strategic resources is essential to global peace, no other country could effectively solve the advantage.

Economic scenarios could also be strategic advantage ground. American economic potential is highly dependent on fossil fuel resources, with a significant component of the American economy being directly involved in the production of fossil fuel resources, and nearly all of the economy dependent on cheap oil and natural gas for transportation. With increasing pressure on terrestrial fossil fuel resources due to declining well capacity and increasing regulations on land-based oil sources (as well as developing hostility towards the practice of hydraulic fracturing for natural gas), reliable sources of domestic energy production are important for preventing spikes in prices across the American economy. As fossil fuel resources are so important for every sector of the economy, a failure to secure such resources are likely to result in rapid, massive, and escalating damage to the American economy. The centrality of reliable oil resources to overall economy health is thus highly strategic in arguing economic cases, as most defense to the economy depends on isolating the affirmative as affecting only a small portion of the American economy. As with hegemony advantages, advantages focused on the American economy are likely to be well defended against international counterplans. On the other hand, advantage counterplans such as the approval of the Keystone XL pipeline and agent counterplans such as the 50 States counterplan offer potential challenges.

Food

The ocean is a key source of food around the world, and the growing world population is likely to continue straining it further. Therefore, many affirmative could focus on better management of the ocean as a source of food in order to stave of global famine impacts. Such impacts are useful insofar as they often do not rely on specific geopolitical predictions, obviating the usefulness of impact defense. However, specific warrants for the necessity of the plan versus a competitive counterplan are often difficult to generate. Furthermore, anyone reading a food-based advantage should be aware of the “catch-22” involved – winning a large enough internal link to massive starvation can make the plan insufficient to solve, while the amount of hunger the plan can solve will often not be a significant impact. Furthermore, food advantages can often be difficult to weigh against more typical “war” scenarios that result in quicker, larger magnitude impacts. A good way to leverage the advantage against this kind of negative strategy is to argue that problems of famine in fact trigger the war scenarios of the negative disadvantage.

Affirmatives can manage existing fish production to deal with the growing problem of overfishing. This can include ecosystem management to support greater fish populations, increased use of fisheries through aquaculture in order to increase the overall supply of fish, or direct regulation of the fishing market in order to prevent the overfishing itself. Isolating particular mechanisms that are necessarily federal or American in nature are likely to be most successful, as few persuasive reasons exist for why alternative actors would be insufficient to resolve the harms of overfishing or insufficient production of fish.

Potential affirmatives

Here are a few suggestions for affirmative plans and corresponding advantages that can help guide your topic research on the affirmative.
Ratify the United Nations Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST):

The United States was a key part of the initial negotiations on the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, which sought to create a universal international law framework on maritime resources and territories, yet the US has still not ratified the treaty decades later. One potential advantage concerns the US’s inability to check global rivals pursuing maritime territorial expansion, such as China in the South China Sea or Russia in the Arctic region. In both cases, the United States is unable to mount credible pressure because it is not a party to the legal framework, which means that potentially destabilizing conflicts can spin out of control. Furthermore, the treaty involves an extensive legal framework concerning environmental protection of the ocean. Should the US ratify the treaty, it would likely increase the credibility of those protections.

Increase research grants for aquaculture techniques

Aquaculture is agricultural production centered on marine species such as fish. Despite being the world’s leader in agriculture generally, the US lags far behind the rest of the world in aquacultural research and innovation. Many experts recommend that NOAA increase its funding and assistance for the development of better techniques in aquaculture in order to increase the supply of available food. This could be the basis of an advantage based on reducing the overfishing of wild fish species, which are often crucial for ocean ecosystems.

Streamline regulations and permitting process for aquaculture

In addition to producing new techniques for aquaculture in order to deliver better methods of “farming the ocean,” the US could reduce the length of the burdensome permitting process for new aquacultural ventures as well as the overall mountain of red tape that surrounds the industry. This would allow the US to increase its market share of the global market for aquaculture exports, a crucial lynchpin of the global food market. With the importance of agricultural exports to the US economy, the fact that the US imports over 90% of its aquacultural products represents a major weakness in the economy that could the basis for an economy based advantage.

Increase incentives for deployment of OTEC

Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion, or OTEC, is a technology for producing renewable energy based on the thermal currents of the ocean. Although it has long been thought to hold tremendous potential for widespread clean energy development, the government provides few incentives for private investors to jump-start the technology. Providing comparable incentives, such as tax credits and loan guarantees, that are available to other forms of energy could ensure that OTEC becomes competitive with established energy sources. Widespread deployment of OTEC could be the key to resolving global CO2 emissions, leading to a warming advantage, as well as US oil dependency, which could benefit the US economy.

Increase incentives for deployment of offshore wind farms

Although wind turbines have become an increasingly common sight around the United States, the ocean constitutes a potentially promising site for further expansion of the wind energy industry. Without the constraints of population centers and difficult terrain that plague the development of onshore wind, offshore floating wind farms provide the possibility of predictable outputs and massive development to create a market challenge to traditional “dirty” energy sources like coal and oil. Providing production tax credits to offshore wind farms that are comparable to established energy sources could encourage significant investment in this form of clean energy in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to global warming.

Increase marine protection areas

Despite their effectiveness in preserving ocean ecosystems, marine protection areas remain highly under-utilized in US maritime environmental policy. Excluding a particularly large protected tract in Hawaii, less than 1% of the US ocean is a protected space, yet significant documentary evidence indicates greater rates of biodiversity are related to declared protection areas. Increasing the amount of protected areas could enable ocean ecosystems to rebound astronomically, potentially averting a global crisis for ocean biodiversity.

Increase permits for oil drilling in the Outer Continental Shelf

The Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) is a huge resource of US domestic oil production. Although some drilling exists now, a significant portion of the OCS remains off limits to developers despite new innovations in drill safety and sensitivity to ocean ecosystems. Opening up the rest of the OCS to development could substantially reduce the US’s dependence on foreign oil, which would increase the US’s ability to project leadership globally through a more powerful military posture. It could also have significant ripple effects throughout the US economy due to the availability of cheap oil.

Increase permits for development of natural gas resources in the Outer Continental Shelf

Much like oil drilling in the OCS, development of natural gas resources in the OCS is strictly regulated. These regulations could be significantly reduced, allowing for a massive expansion in US access to natural gas. Natural gas has the potential to displace significant quantities of oil in the US economy. Natural gas could be a more secure resource for US transportation infrastructure, and access to cheap natural gas in particular benefits the ailing US manufacturing sector. US manufacturing has long been the backbone of the US economy broadly.