COUNTERPLAN GENERIC

Liam BaskinTara Cooper

Andy JuEthan Krantz

Paige Lawrence Miriam Mokhemar

Myles Powell Manasi Singh

Christine Smet Michael Valladares

INTERNATIONAL CP TO DO THE PLAN

DESALANATION – ISRAEL CP

This counterplan would probably be worded the same as the aff plan, except for substituting the Israeli government for the USFG

Even if it doesn't solve all the aff advantages, it will probably solve most. Solving some may be worth it.

The competition is by net benefit, avoiding the DAs to USFG action – politics, spending, tradeoffs, etc The CP is not mutually exclusive. The argument is that the perm of do both would still get the DAs to USFG.

A good CX would press the aff as to whether the plan solves all of the advantages. Their saying yes means the CP alone would also solve all of the advantages and there is no double solvency from the perm of do both.

Make sure you get the aff to concede that, for their plan, they can’t continue to work with Israel in constructing desal plants (double bind: T or CP). Therefore, they can’t perm: they can’t both get rid of Israel and work with Israel

COUNTERPLAN SOLVENCY

Counterplan - Israel should (do the plan) [incorporate aff wording for "do the plan"]

Israel uses the tech better than the USWalsh, 14 Bryan Walsh, senior energy writer for Time Magazine, March 24, 2014, “Ocean’s Dilemma,” http://time.com/22998/oceans-dilemma/

While seawater desalination has become a vital technology in the arid countries of the Middle East– desalination produces a

quarter of Israel’s water , for example– its promise has never quite been fulfilled in the U.S. , hobbled by high costs and

environmental concerns. But the desperation of a severe drought has a way of focusing policymakers’ attention on any possible solution, and right now California is in a drought for the ages. The state had its driest year on record in 2013, and 2014 doesn’t seem much better. At the beginning of March, more than 90% of California was in some category of drought. “We have to live with a very serious drought of uncertain duration,” Governor Jerry Brown said in his State of the State speech in January.

Israel has mastered the technologyAP 14 Associated Press, 2014 May 31, 2014 “Israel's desalination program averts future water crises,” http://www.haaretz.com/life/nature-environment/1.596270

After experiencing its driest winter on record, Israel is responding as never before — by doing nothing. While previous droughts have been accompanied by impassioned public service advertisements to conserve, this time around it has been greeted with a shrug — thanks in large part to an aggressive desalination program that has transformed this perennially parched land into perhaps the most well-hydrated country in the region. "We have all the water we need, even in the year which was the worst year ever regarding precipitation," said Avraham Tenne, head of the desalination division of Israel's Water Authority. "This is a huge revolution." By solving its water woes, Israel has created the possibility of transforming the region in ways that were unthinkable just a few years ago. But reliance on this technology also carries some risks, including the danger of leaving a key element of the country's infrastructure vulnerable to attack. Situated in the heart of the Middle East, Israel is in one of the driest regions on earth, traditionally relying on a short, rainy season each winter to replenish its limited supplies. But rainfall only covers about half of Israel's water needs, and this past winter, that amount was far less. According to the Israeli Meteorological Service, northern Israel, which usually gets the heaviest rainfalls, received just 50 to 60 percent of the annual average. Tenne said the country has managed to close its water gap through a mixture of conservation efforts , advances that allow nearly 90 percent of wastewater to be recycled for agricultural use and, in recent years, the construction of desalination plants. Since 2005, Israel has opened four desalination plants, with a fifth set to go online later this year. Roughly 35 percent of Israel's drinking-quality water now comes from desalination . That number is expected to exceed 40 percent by next year and hit 70 percent in 2050. The Sorek desalination plant, located roughly 15 kilometers (10 miles) south of Tel Aviv, provides a glimpse of that future. With a loud humming sound, the massive complex produces roughly 20 percent of Israel's municipal water, sucking in seawater from the nearby Mediterranean through a pair of 2.5-meter-wide pipes, filtering it through advanced "membranes" that remove the salt, and churning out clean drinking water. A salty discharge, or brine, gets pumped back into the sea, where it is quickly absorbed. The facility, stretching nearly six football fields in length, opened late last year. Avshalom Felber, chief executive of IDE Technologies, the plant's operator, said Sorek is the "largest and most advanced" of its kind in the world, producing 624,000 cubic meters of potable water each day. He said the production cost is among the world's lowest, meaning it could provide a typical family's water needs for about $300 to $500 a year. "Basically this desalination, as a drought-proof solution, has proven itself for Israel," he said. "Israel has become ... water independent, let's say, since it launched this program of desalination plants ."

Israel is tech leader in desalinationOdenheimer and Nash, 14 Alisa Odenheimer and James Nash, Bloomberg News reporters from Jerusalem and California, February 12, 2014, “Israel Desalination Shows California Not to Fear Drought,” http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-02-13/israel-desalination-shows-california-not-to-fear-drought.html

Six decades of providing water in a country that’s 60 percent desert have made Israel a technological leader in the field , a model that points the way for drought-stricken California. Desalination of sea water, reuse of treated sewage for agriculture, software creating an early-warning system for leaks, computerized drip irrigation and careful accounting of every drop have become the norm in Israel, the world’s 40th biggest economy. Officials in California, which would be the 10th largest if it were a nation, are paying attention. Israel has been dealing with such conditions throughout its history. Last month was the driest January on record in a large part of the Jewish state. The climate has forced the country to go to unusual lengths to lower consumption and raise supply, methods it now uses as a matter of routine. In Israel, desalination now provides about one-quarter of the country’s water supply. Each of IDE’s three plants in Israel provides roughly double the output anticipated from the facility in Carlsbad, California, MacLaggan said by telephone. In Israel, 75 percent of the country’s sewage is recycled, the highest percentage in the world , according to Mekorot, Israel’s national water company. More than 50 percent of water used

in ag riculture comes from treated sewage , said Avraham Israeli, head of the Israel Water Association. Medjool dates grown in Israel with recycled wastewater are among the most coveted in U.S. food stores.

SOLVES US SHORTAGE

Israel willing to help USEisenstadt & Pollock 12 Michael Eisenstadt and David Pollock, Michael Eisenstadt is director of the Military and Security Studies Program at The Washington Institute. David Pollock is the Institute's Kaufman fellow, November 7, 2012, “Friends with Benefits: Why the U.S.-Israeli Alliance Is Good for America,” http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/view/friends-with-benefits-why-the-u.s.-israeli-alliance-is-good-for-america

Israeli innovators have also come up with novel solutions to the water and food security challenges posed by population growth, climate change, and economic development. By necessity, given the geography of the Middle East, Israel is a world leader in water conservation and management and high-tech agriculture. Israel recycles more than eighty percent of its wastewater -- the highest level in the world -- and has pioneered widely used techniques of conserving or purifying water, including drip irrigation and reverse osmosis desalination. And a number of Israeli companies are leaders in the development of renewable energy sources; BrightSource Industries, for example, is building a solar power plant in California using Israeli technology that will double the amount of solar thermal electricity produced in America. These innovations, bolstered by the substantial American investment in Israel, contribute to long-term U.S. domestic and foreign policy objectives relating to sustainable development.

Israel helping US with desalinationOdenheimer and Nash, 14 Alisa Odenheimer and James Nash, Bloomberg News reporters from Jerusalem and California, February 12, 2014, “Israel Desalination Shows California Not to Fear Drought,” http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-02-13/israel-desalination-shows-california-not-to-fear-drought.html

North of San Diego, Israel’s IDE Technologies Ltd. is helping to build what it says will be the largest seawater desalination plant in the Western Hemisphere. The facility, when finished in 2016, will be able to provide 50 million gallons of potable water a day. Three smaller plants already operate in California, and 15 more have been proposed.

RELATIONS NET BENEFIT

Relations with IsraelA) Relations weakening

Ahren 14 Raphael Ahren, diplomatic correspondent at The Times of Israel, March 19, 2014, “Is Ya’alon single-handedly destroying US-Israel relations?” http://www.timesofisrael.com/is-yaalon-single-handedly-destroying-us-israel-relations/

Exactly one year after Israel’s thirty-third government was sworn in, Ya’alon this week underlined his status as Jerusalem’s new

critic-in-chief of the Obama administration, with a series of harsh attacks that have already started taking

their toll on bilateral relations. A senior US official on Tuesday blasted Ya’alon’s “disturbing pattern” of

insults directed against the American government, accusing him of “undermining” the US-Israeli relationship.

“We were shocked by Moshe Ya’alon’s comments, which seriously call into question his commitment to

Israel’s relationship with the United States,” an anonymous senior administration official told Israeli correspondents in Washington.

“Moreover, this is part of a disturbing pattern in which the defense minister disparages the US administration

and insults its most senior officials. Given the unprecedented commitment that this administration has made to

Israel’s security, we are mystified why the defense minister seems intent on undermining the relationship.” But

Ya’alon , a former vice prime minister, did not cease to attack Washington for its alleged weakness in dealing with crises all over the Middle

East and in other parts of the world, including the Russian-Ukrainian standoff.

B) Scientific collaboration will boost relations [FIND BETTER CARD!!!]Wagner, 6 Dr. Caroline S. Wagner, research scientist at the George Washington University Center for International Science and Technology Policy, and a research leader at the RAND Corporation, Santa Monica, California, 2006 “International collaboration in science and technology: promises and pitfalls,” http://knowledge.cta.int/en/Dossiers/S-T-Policy/ACP-agricultural-S-T-dialogue/Early-dialogues-on-S-T-policy/S-T-Policy-for-Development/International-collaboration-in-science-and-technology-promises-and-pitfalls

For researchers in developing countries, the benefit of joining a global network, even if only by linking to a

neighbouring country, is that they are just a ‘handshake’ away from other members of the network. These

networks create links in science so that researchers are only three or four steps away from each other in a

broad global network of knowledge creators .13 These links increase the chances of knowledge exchange in

multiple directions, from advanced to developing countries, and vice versa. Local links also increase the

likelihood that knowledge creation focuses on issues relevant to the developing countries rather than on issues

that concern only scientists in advanced countries.

C) Strong relations important for global security, keeping terrorists awayUnited With Israel, 14 United With Israel, February 2, 2014, “The USA Does Need Israel!” http://unitedwithisrael.org/usa-does-need-israel/)

“The United States has taken advantage of access to unique Israeli capabilities in key ‘niche’ areas of military

technology… Israeli technology promotes American interests. Increasingly, US homeland security and military

agencies are turning to Israeli technology to solve some of their most vexing technical problems,” the report

states. Through joint training and exercises as well as exchanges on military doctrine, the United States has

benefited in the areas of counter-terrorism cooperation, tactical intelligence, and experience in urban warfare.

Counter-terrorism and intelligence cooperation is deep and extensive, with the United States and Israel

working to advance their common interest in defeating the terrorism of Hamas, Hezbollah and al-Qaeda…

sharing information, supporting preventive actions, deterring challenges, and coordinating overall strategy.”

Moreover, the report stressed, “ Israel’s integrated, multi-layered command-and-control network contributes to the US

military’s ability to defend against the Iranian missile threat .” Israel and the US enjoy broad intelligence

cooperation , they said, and “This intimate relationship reinforces overall US intelligence efforts by providing Washington with access to Israel’s unique set

of capabilities for collection and assessments on key countries and issues in the region, since Israel is able to focus resources and attention on certain targets of

central importance to the United States. “As Israel’s strategic intelligence collection capabilities mature, this cooperation

and exchange of intelligence information will increasingly serve US national interests ,” the report said. “The conclusion of

our analysis,” Blackwill and Slocombe wrote, “is that the US-Israel relationship is a significant asset to US national interests

and the potential for even greater US benefits from deeper cooperation is substantial .”

D) [insert card] Terrorism a risk to US and global security

SATELLITES – EUROPEAN SPACE AGENCY

This counterplan would probably be worded the same as the aff plan, except for substituting Europe or Russia for the USFG. It might be good to put some data sharing provision in the CP so the US et al would get the info.

Even if it doesn't solve all the aff advantages, it will probably solve most. Solving some may be worth it.

The competition is by net benefit, avoiding the DAs to USFG action – politics, spending, tradeoffs, etc The CP is not mutually exclusive. The argument is that the perm of do both would still get the DAs to USFG.

A good CX would press the aff as to whether the plan solves all of the advantages. Their saying yes means the CP alone would also solve all of the advantages and there is no double solvency from the perm of do both.

MAPPING – EUROPE SATS

Europe has mapping satellitesAmos ’14-Jonathan Amos, BBC science correspondent, April 3, 2014 “EU launches flagship Sentinel satellite project to monitor Earth” http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-26875544

The Sentinel-1a spacecraft has been put in orbit on a mission to map the planet's surface using radar. It will be followed by a fleet of other satellites - also called Sentinels - over the next five years. Brussels is describing its Copernicus programme as the biggest ever effort to characterise our world. Sentinel-1 Sentinel-1a will play an important role in responding to natural disasters When the full satellite system is operational, it will be producing daily some eight terabytes of data to detail the state of Earth's land surface, its oceans and its atmosphere.

European satellite mapping program is massive commitmentAmos ’14-Jonathan Amos, BBC science correspondent, April 3, 2014 “EU launches flagship Sentinel satellite project to monitor Earth” http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-26875544

European nations have so far committed 7.5bn euros (£6.2bn; $10.3bn) to the project. But the vision for Copernicus is that it is unending - that every Sentinel satellite is replaced at the demise of its mission, ensuring there is continuity of information deep into this century. "Once all the Sentinel satellites have been launched, the Copernicus programme will be the most efficient and fullest Earth-observation programme in the world," said European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso. "This investment will allow Europe to establish itself at the forefront of research and innovation in a cutting-edge sector - namely, space. Many skilled jobs have been created and many more are yet to come."

The European Union has launched its first of many satellites in it’s Copernicus ProgramAmos ’14-Jonathan Amos, BBC science correspondent, April 3, 2014 “EU launches flagship Sentinel satellite project to monitor Earth” http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-26875544

The Sentinel-1a spacecraft has been put in orbit on a mission to map the planet's surface using radar. It will be followed by a fleet of other satellites - also called Sentinels - over the next five years. Brussels is describing its Copernicus programme as the biggest ever effort to characterize our world. Sentinel-1 Sentinel-1a will play an important role in responding to natural disasters When the full satellite system is operational, it will be producing daily some eight terabytes of data to detail the state of Earth's land surface, its oceans and its atmosphere.

REMOTE SENSING – EUROPE SATS

The Envisat was the latest Remote Sensing Satellite from the ESA, it’s operation ran until 2012, and like its counterparts: ERS-1 and ERS-2, it exceeded its estimated performance.ESA 14 -European Space Agency, Latest news in space exploration, 2014 “Mission Overview” http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Observing_the_Earth/Envisat/Mission_overview

Launched on 1 March 2002 on an Ariane-5 rocket from Europe’s spaceport in French Guyana, Envisat was the largest Earth observation spacecraft ever built. The eight-tonne satellite orbited Earth more than 50 000 times over 10 years – twice its planned lifetime. The mission delivered thousands of images and a wealth of data used to study the workings of the Earth system, including insights into factors contributing to climate change.

Contact with Envisat was suddenly lost on 8 April 2012. Following rigorous attempts to re-establish contact and the investigation of failure scenarios, the end of the mission was declared on 9 May 2012. But ten years of Envisat’s archived data continues to be exploited for studying our planet. The high-tech machine was engineered by a European consortium of companies from 13 countries under the lead of Astrium Germany (MIPAS, Sciamachy) with big contributions for the platform and on the instrumentation side from the UK (ASAR, AATSR) and France (GOMOS). Envisat had 10 instruments to provide continuous observation and monitoring of Earth's land, atmosphere, oceans and ice caps.

GENERAL – EUROPE SATS

The European Nations have committed a large sum of money into an independent project called the Copernicus Programme.Amos ’14-Jonathan Amos, BBC science correspondent, April 3, 2014 “EU launches flagship Sentinel satellite project to monitor Earth” http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-26875544

European nations have so far committed 7.5bn euros (£6.2bn; $10.3bn) to the project. But the vision for Copernicus is that it is unending - that every Sentinel satellite is replaced at the demise of its mission, ensuring there is continuity of information deep into this century. "Once all the Sentinel satellites have been launched, the Copernicus programme will be the most efficient and fullest Earth-observation programme in the world," said European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso. "This investment will allow Europe to establish itself at the forefront of research and innovation in a cutting-edge sector - namely, space. Many skilled jobs have been created and many more are yet to come."

ESA has put satellites as its main priorities and is the leader of space development in Europe.ESA Portal ’14-European Space Agency, Latest news in space exploration, April 3, 2014 “N° 11–2014: EUROPE LOFTS FIRST COPERNICUS ENVIRONMENTAL SATELLITE” http://www.esa.int/For_Media/Press_Releases/Europe_lofts_first_Copernicus_environmental_satellite

ESA has Cooperation Agreements with eight other Member States of the EU. Canada takes part in some ESA programmes under a Cooperation Agreement. ESA is also working with the EU on implementing the Galileo and Copernicus programmes. By coordinating the financial and intellectual resources of its members, ESA can undertake programmes and activities far beyond the scope of any single European country. ESA develops the launchers, spacecraft and ground facilities needed to keep Europe at the forefront of global space activities. Today, it launches satellites for Earth observation, navigation, telecommunications and astronomy, sends probes to the far reaches of the Solar System and cooperates in the human exploration of space.

European Space Agency is willing to the spend money AQlthough it’s overall funding is behind NASA, the percentage of its budget that goes to Earth Observation is 10% higher. 22.3% (915.9 million out of its 4.102 billion dollar budget) opposed to NASA’s 10% (1.8 billion out of 17.5 billion dollar budget) it has been empirically proven that ESA is willing to spend more on Earth Observation in the future. Kringen ’14- Baard Kringen, Writer for Nordic Space, June 27, 2014 “An Engine in Space Research – European Space Agency Fifty Years” http://nordicspace.net/2014/06/27/an-engine-in-space-research-european-space-agency-fifty-years/

In 1989, the budgets were calculated in Accounting Units, a theoretical money unit before the Euro was introduced. Today the unit is Euro and the size of the budgets is rather difficult to compare, but the distribution in percent is still relevant. In 1989, like today, France, Germany and Italy were the largest contributors with smaller shares from the other member states. The biggest difference today is the number of member states, a number that has increased from 13 to 20. Today’s total budget is 4100 million Euros, a small decrease from 2013, mainly due to the economic situation in some of the member states. (To comparison, NASA’s 2013 budget was 17,8 bill. US Dollar, or about 13 000 M Euros.) The distribution between the sectors in 2014 is compared with the distribution twenty-five years ago: ESA budgets in percents related to the year 1989 and 2014 Science: from 9.8 to 12.3 %, Earth Observation: 9.0 to 22.3 %, Telecommunication and applications: 9.8 – 7.9 %, Space Station and platforms/human spaceflight: 17.1 – 9.0, Space transportation: 38.7 - 15.1 %, Navigation: 0.0 - 15,9 % and other, general, technology etc. from 15.0 to 17.5%.

NASA has said it is willing to devote more time into its space exploration instead of satellitesCommittee on science space and technology ‘14- Committee on Science Space and technology, committee of the United States House of Representatives, March 27, 2014 “Smith and Palazzo: NASA’s Priority Should Be Space Exploration” http://science.house.gov/press-release/smith-and-palazzo-nasa-s-priority-should-be-space-exploration

The Committee on Science, Space, and Technology today held a hearing with NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, Jr. to examine the Obama administration’s fiscal year 2015 (FY15) budget and its priorities. Members on both sides of the aisle raised numerous concerns with the priorities represented in the President’s proposal that cuts NASA’s

funding by $185 million. The President’s budget again seeks to fund an Asteroid Retrieval Mission (ARM), a mission that experts and Congress have sharply criticized. Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas) highlighted testimony before the Committee by NASA Advisory Council Chairman, Dr. Steve Squyres, who said, “I see no obvious connection between [ARM] and any of the technologies or capabilities that are required for Martian exploration.” Chairman Smith: “The Administration continues to push an asteroid retrieval mission on NASA without any connection to a larger exploration roadmap and absent support from the scientific community or NASA’s own advisory bodies. It is a mission without a realistic budget, without a destination and without a certain launch date. The Committee has heard a number of concerns about the mission, as well as many promising alternatives. For instance, the Committee recently held a hearing on the potential for a flyby mission to Mars and Venus in 2021. While the mission is not without challenges, it is intriguing and would catch the public’s imagination. The White House’s approach has been to raid NASA’s budget to fund the Administration’s environmental agenda. There are 13 other agencies that are involved in climate change research, yet only one conducts space exploration. NASA needs to remember its priorities – and that priority is space exploration.” Members questioned the Obama administration’s commitment to human spaceflight. Congress has made clear that the Space Launch System (SLS) is a top priority of the Human Exploration program, yet for the third year in a row the administration has reduced the budget for this vital asset. The President’s budget seeks a reduction of $219 million for launch vehicle development. While over the last seven years, NASA’s Earth Science Division funding has increased over 63 percent.

EU is trying to increase relations with ESA, this includes 12 billion dollars of funding over 6 years period. Gibney ’14- Elizabeth Gibney, Writer for Times Higher Education, February 7, 2014 “EU may set up body in European Space Agency” http://blogs.nature.com/news/2014/02/eu-may-set-up-body-in-european-space-agency.html

The European Union (EU) may set up a dedicated directorate within the European Space Agency (ESA) to resolve mismatches in the way the two bodies cooperate. The option emerged as the leading contender in a report published by the European Commission on 6 February, which scoped out several scenarios for their future relationship. The “pillar” or “chamber” would allow EU projects to be run under EU rules but from within ESA. A second route explored in the report, based largely on results of an external study by Munich-based Roland Berger Strategy Consultants, would be to improve cooperation under the status quo, with an improved interface between the two. Other options — for example to turn ESA wholesale into an EU agency — curried little favour. The EU currently allocates around three-quarters of its space budget to ESA, making it the agency’s largest contributor. ESA already delivers dedicated EU-funded projects such as the global satellite navigation system Galileo and the Earth observation programme Copernicus. But the two organisations run in very different ways. While ESA is under direct control of member states, the EU reports to both member states and the European Parliament. In its industrial dealings, ESA operates under a policy of juste retour that guarantees states contracts roughly proportionate to their financial contributions, while the EU goes on the principle of best value. Nor do the two bodies have the same membership: among ESA’s members are Norway and Switzerland, with Canada also an associate. The Commission says this membership asymmetry could become a particular concern as ESA and the EU move into more defence-related activities. The Commission laid out the case for reforming the relationship based on these asymmetries in 2012, with member state ministers also backing a change in February last year. Ministers will discuss the findings when the Competitiveness Council meets on 21 February, with the Commission planning to further analyse the options over the coming year. Depending on the outcome — as well as dialogue with ESA — the Commission says it could produce concrete proposals towards the end of 2014 or early 2015. ESA is expected to take a decision about the evolution of the agency during its council meeting in December. Speaking at the sixth annual Conference on EU space policy in Brussels last month, UK science minister David Willetts outlined his government’s objection to bringing ESA into the EU structure. “This suggestion has caused a lot of distraction and delay, while our competitors outside Europe focus on growth and make progress,” he says. The EU has plans to increase its spending on space. Between 2014 and 2020, it will spend almost €12bn on funding space activities — a doubling of investment compared to the previous financial planning period.

ESA is trying to expand its range of countries in its council, by doing so it benefits Europeans and raise technology levels.Messier ’13- Douglass Messier, Parabolic Arc Managing Director, February 26, 2013 “ESA Faces the Limits of Expansion, Growing Power of EU” http://www.parabolicarc.com/ 2013/02/26/esa-faces-the-limits-of-expansion-growing-power-of-eu/

At the European Space Agency (ESA) ministerial meeting on Nov. 20-21 in Naples, there was a new flag flying outside. The red-and-white flag of Poland, which had joined space agency the day before, was raised among those of ESA’s other 19 member states. Poland became the third — and wealthiest — former Eastern Bloc nation to join ESA behind the

Czech Republic and Romania. The nation’s ascendance brought the number of full ESA member states to 20 from the original 10 countries that created the space agency in 1975. Canada is an associate member. Ten other European nations, nine of which have cooperative agreements with ESA, attended the quadrennial ministerial meeting as observers with hopes of eventually joining the space agency as full members. Behind them, there is another group of 10 countries — most of which are still emerging from the fall of communism two decades ago — that could one day join ESA. The possible expansion of the space agency to 30 or even 40 members representing 700 million Europeans raises is an exciting prospect. ESA has successfully pooled the collective talents of Europeans to create a world-class space agency. It also has brought broad practical benefits to the European people and helped to raise up the technology levels of poorer nations on the continent.

The EU is already the highest funder for the ESA, funding projects like Global Navigation, even though there have been rough patches.Messier ’13- Douglass Messier, Parabolic Arc Managing Director, February 26, 2013 “ESA Faces the Limits of Expansion, Growing Power of EU” http://www.parabolicarc.com/ 2013/02/26/esa-faces-the-limits-of-expansion-growing-power-of-eu/

During the past decade, the European Union has become increasingly involved in space research and development. In May 2004, the 27-nation EU signed a framework agreement with the independent ESA that allowed for cooperation between the two organizations. Three years later, the Lisbon Treaty that overhauled the EU’s operating rules gave the union authority over space, defense and security policies on the continent. The EU has poured billions of euros into funding the European Global Navigation Satellites Systems (GNSS), space research programs, and other initiatives both on its own and in cooperation with the space agency. ESA, for example, has been responsible for building the GNSS satellites and ground systems. ESA’s 2012 budget shows how important EU funding has become to its operations. The union contributed €867.7 million ($1.144 billion) to the space agency’s budget. That is more than any national government and constituted 21.58 percent of the €4.020 billion ($5.3 billion) total. Germany was the next largest contributor with €750.5 million. The EU is not entirely happy with its cooperation with ESA. In a recent communication to the European Council and Parliament, the European Commission identified a number of areas where differences between the two organizations are causing problems with cooperation and recommended changes that threaten ESA’s independence.

The EU is considering adding on additional nations to its core, countries like Israel and Ukraine have strong space operations that could benefit from this addition. Note: The 11 nations talked about in this card are: Hungary, Estonia, Slovenia, Turkey, Ukraine, Latvia, Cyprus, Slovak Republic, Lithuania, Israel, and Malta.Messier ’13- Douglass Messier, Parabolic Arc Managing Director, February 26, 2013 “ESA Faces the Limits of Expansion, Growing Power of EU” http://www.parabolicarc.com/ 2013/02/26/esa-faces-the-limits-of-expansion-growing-power-of-eu/

Three nations — Hungary, Estonia and Slovenia — have engaged in all three phases required to join ESA. Hungary could potentially join the space agency the year or in 2014, while Estonia and Slovenia could possibly join by 2016 if ESA is happy with their progress. All three of these nations are relatively poor, with Estonia having the highest per capita GDP at $24,142. Their combined GDPs total $211.7 billion, which is below Ireland even with a total population that is three times larger. The combined GDP of all 11 nations with cooperative agreements with ESA is just under $1.6 trillion, compared with a combined GDP of $18.2 trillion for all 20 ESA member states. Of the other eight nations, Israel and Cyprus are the only ones with per capita GDPs above $30,000. Israel has the second largest economy in the group at $242.9 billion, while the Cypriot economy is the second smallest at nearly $24.7 billion. Both Israel and Ukraine have highly developed space sectors that would both add to ESA’s capabilities and compete with existing members for contracts. Ukraine produces three launch vehicles — Zenit, Dnepr and Cyclone 4 — and builds the first stage for Orbital Sciences Corporation’s new Antares booster and the upper stage for Europe’s Vega rocket. The nation also is building a launch complex in Brazil for the Cyclone 4 launches. Israel also has a space sector is internationally competitive, with its own launch vehicle and lines of optical and radar reconnaissance satellites. The nation has arguably the most advanced space technology base among the 11 nations with which ESA has cooperation agreements. ESA officials say full membership for both Israel and Ukraine is possible, but neither could join any time soon. There are also political obstacles, as Space News recently observed: Both nations have made repeated inquiries about joining the 20-nation ESA, but neither is currently on the path to membership pending detailed discussions with ESA’s current member states, ESA Director-General Jean-Jacques Dordain said Jan. 24. Briefing reporters here, Dordain said neither he nor ESA has any objection to non-European Union members joining ESA. Canada is already an associate ESA member, and Norway and

Switzerland have been in the agency for many years. But how far ESA can expand outside the 27-nation European Union (EU) remains a question now that the agency and the EU’s executive commission have closer relations and the commission uses ESA as a technical manager for many of its programs. The European Commission in November already raised questions about whether ESA-European Commission relations might suffer because of Norway and Switzerland, especially if ESA is asked to perform military space work for the European Commission…. Ukraine has not yet applied formally to join ESA, Dordain said, but has left little doubt that it would do so if ESA governments signaled that this would be welcome. ESA membership by all 11 nations listed above would expand the space agency’s authority to nearly 637.5 million European citizens. The great bulk of that population expansion would take place in Turkey and Ukraine, two nations with relatively large economies but the lowest per capita GDPs in the group. Turkey, Ukraine and Israel lie on the periphery of ESA and Europe, which is largely focused on Western and Eastern Europe. If you exclude these three nations as members, the other eight nations have a combined GDP of $412.3 billion and a total population of 25.1 million. So, expansion to this core doesn’t add that much to the ESA’s bottom line. It should be noted that eight of the 11 nations are members of the EU. Bulgaria is the only EU member that does not have a cooperation agreement with the space agency. Croatia, which is set to join the EU on July 1, 2013, also lacks an agreement.

REMOTE SENSING – RUSSIA SEE ALSO – EUROPE REMOTE SENSING

Gazprom is setting to start a remote sensing satellite facility.Interfax-America ‘13-Interfax-America Inc., Breaking business, political and general news including Russia, CIS, Central Europe, China and world news, May 29, 2013“GAS; Gazprom to create remote sensing center in Tomsk” http://search.proquest.com/docview/1366684254?pq-origsite=summon

Russian gas giant Gazprom and the Tomsk region are working together to create a remote sensing space system center in Tomsk to observe the state of Gazprom's industrial facilities, the gas company reported after a meeting between its CEO Alexei Miller and Governor Sergei Zhvachkin on Wednesday. Miller and the governor reached a preliminary agreement to establish a technical innovation center for the gas industry in the region jointly with OJSC Tomsk Vakhrushev Electromechanical Plant.

Russia has private companies willing to invest in Remote Satellite and have already started using them.Close-Up Media ‘14-Close Up Media Inc. News, Views, Insights Close-Up Media is an independent digital media company dedicated to covering the world of business, June 25, 2014 “Sputnix Launches Russian Private Earth Remote Sensing Satellite” http://search.proquest.com/docview/1539591038?pq-origsite=summon

Sputnix reported that ISC Kosmotras successfully launched a cluster of small spacecraft by the RS-20 rocket (Dnepr) on 20 June 2014. According to a company release, the first Russian private Earth remote sensing satellite of the Sputnix Company, named TabletSat-Aurora, was also set into its target orbit. Sputnix said it is planned to receive the data from the microsatellite to a SCANEX ground network UniScan[TM], with the data to be used in commercial, scientific, educational and environmental projects. "It is an important event for us," says Alexander Serkin, ISC Kosmotras CEO, "For 20 years we have been working with globally famous companies - spacecraft developers, the majority of them are private ones. And today we have an opportunity to participate in the implementation of a private space project in Russia. We are certainly proud to be a part of this event." After its ascent to orbit, subsystems developed by the company will be tested. The first signal from TabletSat-Aurora has already been received. "The company consider TabletSat-Aurora as a universal platform for placement of scientific and commercial applications payloads," clarifies Stanislav Karpenko, Sputnix CTO. Sputnix is a Russian company, developing and producing small satellite platforms and systems. International Space Company (ISC) Kosmotras Core company business activities are associated with implementation of the Dnepr Program - a peaceful use of the SS-18 ICBMs withdrawn from service.

Russia is innovating and developing their remote sensing, this is backed by the authorities.Gershenzon ‘05- O.N. Gershenzon, Vice-President of ScanEx, General Director of NGO Transparent World Member of GOFC/GOLD, Exact Date not specific “Earth remote sensing space programs available in Russia” http://www.scanex.ru/en/publications/pdf/publication2.pdf

Every year can witness innovations on the Earth remote sensing market in Russia. In 2004, commercial distribution of RADARSAT-1 radar images and of 1 m resolution data of the US and Israeli commercial systems started. With the developing remote sensing market Russia becomes more and more proactive in the world information space. Russian remote sensing market specifics: - vast territory of the country (17 mln km2 ), which makes aerial survey almost inefficient for large-scale projects, with remote sensing systems – as the only available means to resolve a number of tasks; - increased urge of local and regional authorities and market participants to use space data to resolve practical tasks and to develop own geo-information centers; - permanent crisis of domestic space industry resulting in only one operable Meteor- 3M satellite №1 in the national space fleet with the middle resolution scanner; - poor telecommunications system in the regions resulting in unavailability of the centralized Internet access to remote sensing data; - strict constraints on spatial data (in resolution, geo-reference accuracy and map scales).

Arkady Rotenberg has already decided to invest 28 million into a Remote Sensing Company, shows that not just government is interested in Remote Sensing. Schutzberg ‘13- Adena Schutzberg, Executive Editor of Directions Magazine, October 28, 2013 “Russian Billionaire Invests in Remote Sensing Company Skanex” http://apb.directionsmag.com/entry/russian-billionaire-invests-in-remote-sensing-company-skanex/363194

Billionaire Arkady Rotenberg has invested $28 million and bought the majority share in Skanex, a leading provider of remote sensing in Russia. Analysts believe that the businessman is interested in the possibility of participating in the establishment of a real-estate cadaster, to which a sum of about $1.7 billion is allocated. The company does 80% of its business with the government and serves Yandex (the Russian search engine) imagery for mapping offerings. But the future looks even brighter for Skanex since Russia has allocated funds for a nationwide cadastre. In early October 2013, the Russian government approved the federal target program "Development of a unified state system of registration of the real-estate cadaster" for the period of 2014–2019. The volume of its financing should reach 54 billion rubles ($1.7 billion). Skanex has a good chance of competing in the bid for participation in the project, according to FCG partner Alexander Minkin. "Mr. Rothenberg set his sights on the money," said IFH FIBO Group analyst Vasily Yakimkin. Under the federal target program, by January 1, 2017, all subjects of the Russian Federation will move to a single open geocentric coordinate system, which will increase the accuracy of the state real-estate cadaster, reduce the time of state registration of rights and cadastral registration (up to seven and five days, respectively), and increase the share of public services provided in electronic form to at least 70 percent of the total volume.

THAI FISHERS SLAVERY – CHINA

China has a history of influence in ThailandCaswell, 8 Ryan L. Caswell, August 10, 2008, “China’s Regional Influence, An Emerging Superpower” http://realtruth.org/articles/080804-003-asia.html

In 1975, China was the first country on the UN Security Council to establish friendly ties with Thailand . Since then, China

and Thailand have enjoyed favorable relations. Thailand has welcomed Chinese influence in their country through

competitive trade and an active role in the Asia Cooperation Dialogue, which seeks to align Asiatic sub-regions under one voice. Thailand also supports the “One China for Asia” movement, which seeks to realign breakaway provinces under Chinese control. In

early July 2008, the prime minister of Thailand , Mr. Samak Sundaravej, visited Beijing to discuss trade and to expand strategic

cooperation with Presiden t Hu Jintao . Both governments expressed their continued desire to serve as a model

for other Asiatic nations.

China gaining more influence than USPonnudurai 11, Parameswaran Ponnudurai, English News Director at Radio Free Asia, July 10, 2011, “China's Influence to Grow in Thailand?” http://www.rfa.org/english/commentaries/east-asia-beat/thailand-07102011113649.html)

Thailand is expected to play a bigger regional role under its newly elected government, with China possibly

wielding greater influence on the traditional U.S. ally, experts say. "If Thaksin's idea is influential in Yingluck's foreign policy formulation, one thing

we can expect from [Yingluck’s] government is attempts by Thailand to revive its influence in regional affairs ,"

said Pongphisoot Busbarat, a research associate at the Australian National University. Yingluck's vision, he added, may at the same time inevitably "further anchor" China's influence in

Thailand and the Greater Mekong sub-region including Burma, Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam, all of which share the Mekong River. Thailand, a U.S. treaty ally, has become more

comfortable with China's rising power than most other countries in Southeast Asia , according to diplomatic cables released recently by WikiLeaks.

Thaksin had beefed up links with China during his five-year premiership, when bilateral trade jumped more

than four fold to U.S. $25.33 billion in 2006 on the back of increasing Chinese investments and military

exchanges.

China crowds out US, and Thailand can’t say no to BeijingEhrlich 2011, Richard S. Ehrlich, Bangkok-based journalist for Asia Sentinel, July 28, 2011, “China Comes to Thailand” http://www.asiasentinel.com/econ-business/china-comes-to-thailand/

There is perhaps nowhere in Southeast Asia where the growing influence of China – economically, militarily

and diplomatically – is being felt more than in Thailand, long one of the United States’ most steadfast regional allies. “People in Thailand are worried," said a former foreign ministry diplomat, placing down his glass

of red wine. "China's economy is so big, and ours is so small, that we cannot compete with all the Chinese things being sold here. It is especially a problem for Thai SMEs,” small and medium-sized enterprises. "China will own us," said an

interpreter for top government leaders, expressing her concern at Beijing's rapidly growing influence on Bangkok's economy. "Of course China will also own America, but your economy is so big you can just tell Beijing that you won't pay all the

money you owe, and they can't do anything about it. But Thailand is small. We can't say no to Beijing. Thailand will be like a vassal of China,” The birthday party attendants aren’t alone. US corporations

are also fretting about how to compete in a region where the shared knowledge of Chinese dialects and an

ancient heritage , give China unique advantages over America. Much of Thailand’s political and business elite are ethnic Chinese. China's ability to sell food, household goods and other items at lower

prices than even Thai manufacturers has also pleased customers in this Southeast Asian nation while imperiling manufacturers. Beijing is simultaneously increasing its military and cultural

influence in Thailand, trying to wean Bangkok away from Washington and other foreign governments while

expanding China's own reach southward. Many of the Chinese who survived, however, advanced upward and their descendants

now occupy some of Thailand's highest political, economic, military and cultural positions. Today, Chinese

faces, fashions and symbols are promoted in Thai advertisements and pop culture as badges of financial

success. Many Thais admire local Chinese for educating their kids in Thailand's private "Chinese schools"

while keeping their families united and working hard as a business team. Chinese and Thai special forces held

a 15-day joint anti-terrorism drill, "Strike-2010," during October in China's southern Guilin city to practice shooting, assaults and strategy. During the same month, more than 100 troops and officers from the China Marine Corps' amphibious special warfare

unit participated in a 10-day "Blue Strike-2010" drill with their Thai counterparts, using light weapons, underwater combat equipment, amphibious reconnaissance and anti-terrorism equipment. It was the first time Chinese marines had

conducted a drill with a foreign army abroad. But China has sold inferior weaponry to Thailand, making some Thai military officials wary of becoming dependent on Chinese supplies. The cable's section subtitled, "China Rising, US

Fading?" warned: "Indications that the US's historically close relationship with Thailand and the region is being challenged

by the rise of China have become increasingly evident in recent years in a variety of arenas, not just

economically but diplomatically, culturally, politically, and even in some security areas ." "We have also noticed

an ever increasing quality to the Chinese diplomatic presence in Thailand ,” the cable said. “Many Chinese diplomats are fully fluent in Thai, led by the Chinese Ambassador, who

has spent 17 years of his career posted here and routinely makes local TV appearances.

China influence surpassing that of USEhrlich 2011, Richard S. Ehrlich, Special to The Washington Times, July 31, 2011 “China muscling U.S. aside in Thailand” http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/jul/31/china-muscling-us-aside-in-thailand/?page=all

The United States is worried about China’s growing influence in Thailand, as Washington’s prestige appears

to be fading with America’s oldest South Asian ally. Mr. John pointed out “China’s sustained, successful efforts to court Southeast

Asia and Thailand” in his report to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. Thai “government officials and academics sympathetic

to the U.S. see the dynamic of China rising — and the U.S. receding — likely to continue, unless the U.S. takes more vigorous action to

follow-up with sustained efforts to engage on issues that matter to the Thai [people] and the region, not just what is perceived as the U.S.’s own agenda,” Mr. John said in the cable released by the anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks. Mr. John

also said China is competing strongly with the United States on the cultural front, noting “many Chinese

diplomats [who] are fully fluent” in the Thai language. China also avoids criticizing Thailand. In 2006, when

Thailand’s military staged a coup and toppled the prime minister, Washington suspended $24 million in

military assistance and restricted high-level meetings. China described the coup as Bangkok’s internal affair,

gave Thailand $49 million in military aid and increased the number of exchange students at Chinese and Thai

military staff colleges. Beijing also persuaded the Thai military to participate in yearly, small-scale special

forces joint exercises. Last year, Chinese and Thai special forces held a 15-day joint antiterrorism drill, and

more than 100 Chinese marines from an amphibious special warfare held exercises with their Thai

counterparts. Thailand’s incoming prime minister, Yingluck Shinawatra, appears eager to expand business ties with China.

She favors a Chinese proposal to construct high-speed trains and replace Thailand’s decrepit railway. Today many ethnic Chinese hold some of Thailand’s highest

political, economic, military and cultural positions. Chinese faces, fashions and symbols are promoted in Thai

advertisements and pop culture as badges of financial success.

China rising from the ashes of US influence in Thailand Crispin 10, Shawn W Crispin, Asia Times Online's Southeast Asia Editor, July 20, 2010 “ASIA HAND -- US slips, China glides in Thai crisis” http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Southeast_Asia/LG20Ae01.html

The diplomatic skirmish underscored the ongoing drift between the long-time treaty allies and the comparative

regional rise of China. In the wider US-China competition for influence in Southeast Asia, analysts and diplomats believe that Beijing's more pragmatic diplomacy throughout the recent Thai

crisis stole yet another march from Washington's more interventionist approach. While China has significant diplomatic sway over neighboring Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar, the US has maintained strong strategic

ties to Thailand and historically has frequently intervened in Bangkok's internal politics. The US-Thai strategic relationship peaked in significance during the Cold War, but relations have since drifted without a clear

common strategic threat to mobilize against. Meanwhile, a series of commercial disputes, including hotly contested intellectual property issues, have strained bilateral ties. (See When allies drift apartAsia Times

Online, February 14, 2009.) China has quietly bid to capitalize on that drift and is now locked in a subtle, but intensifying,

competition with the US for Thai influence. One Chinese official, who spoke with ATol on condition of anonymity, suggested that the US had "blundered" by intervening so

overtly in recent Thai events and credited his embassy with taking a more nuanced approach to the crisis. While the US managed to peeve both sides to Thailand's conflict, China maintained a policy of non-

interference in an ally's sovereign affairs. The Chinese envoy said Beijing signaled its commitment more economically by serving as the largest

foreign investor to Thailand in the first quarter and by promoting bilateral trade, which was up 70% year-on-

year over the same period. At the same time, Thailand has gradually expanded military-to-military relations with

China, with many new joint initiatives launched during former premier Thaksin's tenure. According to the

Chinese Embassy official, the two sides have now conducted three different joint special forces exercises and

are scheduled to hold their first joint naval exercise later this year. "The closeness of our cultural ties plays an

important role in our relations," said Thai trade representative Kiat. "Religion plays a role, the generations of

overseas Chinese migrating to our country and their role during difficult times, they are all important ties. Do

we have the same ties with US? Not similar, not at the same level ... The fact that the Chinese government sees

the importance of this issue we appreciate, because it's a strength." However, with economic power has come

diplomatic confidence and sophistication. The current Chinese ambassador to Thailand, Guan Mu, is a fluent

Thai speaker and has served in the country for 18 years in different capacities. That ease and familiarity, some

Thai officials suggest, has given China a personal edge over the US Embassy's top envoy. When anti-Thaksin

protesters seized Bangkok's international airports in 2008, China arranged the largest foreign evacuation in its

history by airlifting 3,000 of its nationals out of the country. But many believe that China's commercial and

cultural pushes into Thailand are the front edge of a longer-view strategy to neutralize the US's strategic

presence on its southern littoral. And while Thailand's destabilizing conflict is in neither superpower's

immediate interests, it seems China has gained where the US has lost.

China combatting human trafficking

China cracking down on human trafficking, nationally and internationally Human Trafficking Report, 2011, “China,” http://www.humantrafficking.org/countries/china

In 2010, China increased its attention to trafficking of women and children nationwide; continued inter-agency

coordination on anti-trafficking initiatives; established nationwide and local hotlines to report trafficking

cases; increased funding for labor inspections; significantly increased prosecutions for offenses the government

labeled as trafficking; updated the criminal code to expand the prohibition on forced labor and increase the

prescribed penalty; worked with foreign governments and INTERPOL to improve law enforcement

coordination on trafficking; and trained shelter managers on victim protection. China is also working on

drafting a National Plan of Action for anti-trafficking efforts, but the details are not yet public .20 The

government has undertook significant efforts to improve interagency and other internal coordination among

those involved in combating trafficking throughout the country through its State Council’s Inter-Ministerial

Meeting Office against Human Trafficking. In April 2010, central government authorities provided guidelines to local judicial and law enforcement officers and prosecutors on strengthening sentences for convicted traffickers and arranged

training seminars on how to implement the guidelines.24 Authorities reported rescuing 10,385 women and 5,933 children from trafficking situations

in 2010; including cases of kidnapping for illegal adoption. The government also reported rescuing 109 victims of forced labor.25 The government

has established four nationwide hotlines to report suspected cases of human trafficking or access referral

services for victims, including a trade union hotline for reporting labor abuses. Hotlines have also been

established at a provincial level to report human trafficking . The Ministry of Public Security translated and circulated anti-trafficking training materials from the IOM to train new police recruits. While the

government did not institute formal procedures to systematically identify victims of all forms of trafficking, it has begun to provide training to law enforcement officers on identifying trafficking as part of mandatory training for new recruits.26 Prevention The Chinese

government continues to advance efforts throughout China to prevent trafficking in persons, in some instances

with assistance from international organizations and NGOs. China’s highest-rated television channel has run

17 two-hour broadcasts raising awareness on human trafficking. The government also continues to disseminate

worker rights information and anti-trafficking messages in train and bus stations and through media such as

cell phones, television, and the internet. The government also works with the ILO to incorporate messages on avoiding human trafficking situations into school curricula.29 International Cooperation The Chinese government ratified the 2000 UN

TIP Protocol in 2009. The government has also increased cooperation with foreign governments to address issues of

smuggling and trafficking and to coordinate victims rescue, particularly with those countries bordering China ,

as well as with South Africa, the United Kingdom, France, and the DRC.31

China making strides in combatting human trafficking Lim 13 Benjamin Kang Lin, Reuters correspondent, September 28, 2013, “Police In China Rescue 92 Kidnapped Children In Huge Human Trafficking Ring Bust” http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/28/china-kidnapped-children_n_4006935.html

BEIJING, Sept 28 (Reuters) - Chinese police have rescued 92 children and two women kidnapped by a gang for sale and

arrested 301 suspects, state media said on Saturday, in one of the biggest busts of its kind in years. Police

simultaneously swooped on locations in 11 provinces recently after a six-month investigation, China Central Television

and state news agency Xinhua said, quoting the Ministry of Public Security. The government would impose harsher punishment on people

who buy kidnapped children, state television said. Xinhua said the government would also punish parents who sell

their children. China has trumpeted the success of an intensified crackdown on the kidnapping and sale of

children and women recently. In 2011, police said they had rescued more than 13,000 abducted children and

23,000 women over the past two years or so.

China cracking down on human trafficking rings successfully Wee 11 Sui-Lee Wee, Reuters editor, July 27, 2011 “China Human Trafficking Ring Crackdown Saves 89 Infants” http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/07/27/china-human-trafficking-ring-crackdown-infants-saved-_n_910684.html

BEIJING (Reuters) - Chinese police rescued 89 infants kidnapped for sale and arrested 369 people they said were

linked to two human trafficking rings this month, state media reported Wednesday. In the first case, the traffickers, who

were mostly Vietnamese residents, abducted children from Vietnam and sold them in China 's southern regions of

Guangdong and Guangxi, the China Daily newspaper said, citing an unnamed officer from Guangdong's provincial department of public security. In mid-July, police

detained 39 suspects in connection with trafficking and rescued eight infants, aged 10 days to seven months,

who had been drugged with sleeping pills, the newspaper said. In another crackdown this month, police arrested 330

people suspected of involvement in the trafficking of baby girls, the newspaper said. The police operation took place across 14 provinces.

The 81 infants rescued were aged 10 days to four months and are now in the care of institutions, the report said.

Police set up a special task force in February following the discovery of a child kidnap ring in the Guangxi region, the

newspaper said. Another trafficking operation was broken up in the poor southwestern province of Yunnan this May. The report said that police have

uncovered 39,194 cases of human trafficking in China since April 2009, the majority of the cases involving women or children.

OCEAN MINING – GREAT BRITAIN

This counterplan would probably be worded the same as the aff plan, except for substituting United Kingdom or Great Britain (see what England is called in the UN or in its embassies) for the USFG. It might be good to put some sharing provision in the CP so the US et al would get access – maybe even hire some US companies.

Even if it doesn't solve all the aff advantages, it will probably solve most. Solving some may be worth it.

The competition is by net benefit, avoiding the DAs to USFG action – politics, spending, tradeoffs, etc The CP is not mutually exclusive. The argument is that the perm of do both would still get the DAs to USFG.

A good CX would press the aff as to whether the plan solves all of the advantages. Their saying yes means the CP alone would also solve all of the advantages and there is no double solvency from the perm of do both.

The UK can deep sea mineBBC News 14 (BBC News, “UK Seabed Resources joins deep-ocean mineral-mining rush”, https://ramumine.wordpress.com/tag/uk-seabed-resources/, 4/27/14, 7/16/14, MEM)

UK Seabed Resources is a subsidiary of the British arm of Lockheed Martin. It has plans for a major prospecting operation in the Pacific. The company says surveys have revealed huge numbers of so-called nodules – small lumps of rock rich in valuable metals – lying on the ocean floor south of Hawaii and west of Mexico. The exact value of these resources is impossible to calculate reliably, but a leading UN official described the scale of mineral deposits in the world’s oceans as “staggering” with “several hundred years’ worth of cobalt and nickel”. An expedition to assess the potential environmental impact of extracting the nodules will be launched this summer amid concerns that massive “vacuuming” operations to harvest the nodules might cause lasting damage to ecosystems. With the support of the British government, UK Seabed Resources has secured a licence from the United Nations to explore an area of seabed twice the size of Wales and 4,000m deep. Under the UN’s Convention on the Law of the Sea, mining rights on the ocean floor are controlled by a little-known body, the International Seabed Authority, which since 2001 has issued 13 licences – with another six in prospect. These licences, valid for 15 years, have been bought for $500,000 each by government organisations, state-owned corporations and private companies from countries including China, India, Russia, Japan and South Korea. The high prices fetched for copper, gold and rare-earth minerals are leading to a surge in interest in mining the ocean floor. The idea first surfaced in the 1970s but was dropped because the costs were too high and the technology could not cope. The nodules are known to contain up to 28% metal – 10 times the proportion found on land. A similarly high metal content is found in another target for seabed mining: hydrothermal vents, chimneys formed by extremely hot water, rich in minerals. We reported on the discovery of the world’s deepest vents last month. Stephen Ball, chief executive officer of Lockheed Martin UK, owner of UK Seabed Resources, says the engineering experience of offshore oil and gas operations and the trend to rising mineral prices have now combined to make seabed mining feasible.

Britain would let US companies get involvedHall 13 (Kerry Hall, a Vancouver-based journalist, a member of the Canadian Association of Journalists as well as the Editors’ Association of Canada, Britain plunges into deep sea mining with American company, http://www.mining.com/britain-plunges-into-deep-sea-mining-with-american-company-17294/, 3/21/14, 7/16/14, MEM)

Britain's prime minister announced Thursday the country would partner with an American company to mine the depths of the Pacific Ocean for metals and rare earth minerals , reports the Guardian. David Cameron said the international seabed mining industry could garner the national economy 40 billion pounds ($60 billion) during the next 30 years. US-based Lockheed Martin (NYSE: LMT) — the world's biggest defence contractor — via its subsidiary UK Seabed Resources will spearhead the exploration of a British licence off the coast of North

America. The company says their data revealed large numbers of small rocks, rich in copper, nickel, cobalt and rare earths, on the ocean floor west of Mexico and south of Hawaii, reports the BBC. The plan is to vacuum up the lumps from the sea floor, at depths of about 4 kilometres, and pipe them to the surface.

Seabed mining is better for the environmentISA 13 (International Seabed Authority,  is an intergovernmental body based in Kingston, Jamaica, that was established to organize and control all mineral-related activities in the international seabed area beyond the limits of national jurisdiction, an area underlying most of the world’s oceans and includes the EU, 2013 http://www.isa.org.jm/en/about/faqs#1, da 7/15/14, MEM)

20.  Seabed mining has a smaller footprint, and has a more environmentally friendly process than landing mining.  It does not impact waterways, has reduced carbon emission as a result of limited heavy machinery with less overburden meaning a smaller volume of non-valuable rock is removed and disposed of before the resource is exposed.  Additionally, seabed mining does not require additional roads, surface ore-transport systems, buildings or other permanent infrastructure that could be disruptive to indigenous or native populations.

METHANE HYDRATES – JAPANSEE STRATEGY AND THEORY ABOVE ON MINING

Japan can successfully mine methane hydrates the next couple of yearsBBC News 13 (BBC news, “Japan extracts gas from methane hydrate in world first”, http://www.bbc.com/news/business-21752441, 3/17/13, 7/17/14, MEM)

Japan says it has successfully extracted natural gas from frozen methane hydrate off its central coast, in a world first. Methane hydrates, or clathrates, are a type of frozen "cage" of molecules of methane and water. The gas field is about 50km away from Japan's main island, in the Nankai Trough. Researchers say it could provide an alternative energy source for Japan which imports all its energy needs. Other countries including

Canada, the US and China have been looking into ways of exploiting methane hydrate deposits as well. Pilot experiments in recent years,

using methane hydrates found under land ice, have shown that methane can be extracted from the deposits. Continue reading the main story Methane clathrate - 'Fire ice' Offshore deposits present a potentially enormous source of methane but also some environmental concern, because the underwater geology containing them is unstable in many places. "It is the world's first offshore experiment producing gas from methane hydrate," an official from the economy, trade and industry ministry told the AFP news agency. A survey of the gas field is being run by state-owned Japan Oil, Gas and Metals National Corporation (JOGMEC). Engineers used a depressurisation method that turns methane hydrate into methane gas. Production tests are

expected to continue for about two weeks. Government officials have said that they aim to establish methane hydrate production technologies for practical use within five years. A Japanese study estimated that at least 1.1tn cubic metres of methane hydrate exist in offshore deposits. This is the equivalent of more than a decade of Japan's gas consumption

INTERNATIONAL CP TO CONSULT/COOPERATE

OCEAN MINING - CONSULT THOSE AFFECTED

The counterplan should be written to consult those affected by mining and to increase mining only on the condition of consent and in a way approved by those consenting.

You may need to make some theory argument that we have to assume the plan is done now, otherwise the aff could delay action and time frame out of all disadvantages.

The plan and counterplan are mutually exclusive; you cannot both act now unconditionally and act conditionally in the future.

If the plan includes some consultation or cooperation provision, CX must ask if those other than the USFG say no is the plan done anyway.

If the aff says no, then run T. If they say yes, the unconditional/conditional mutually exclusive competition is set up.

If the aff perms the plan and CP, CX must ask if those other than the USFG say no in the world of the perm is plan done anyway. Yes means the perm doesn't get the advantages of consulting – it's the same as the plan. No should be indicted as an illegitimate perm; the perm is intrinsic or sever – it does not include the whole plan, which was unconditional.

Those potentially affected by deep sea mining should be consultedOcean Foundation 13 The Deep Sea Mining Campaign, a Project of the Ocean Foundation Thursday 7 November 2013 Vanuatu world leader on best practice Deep Sea Mining decision-makinghttp://www.deepseaminingoutofourdepth.org/media-release-vanuatu-world-leader-on-best-practice-deep-sea-mining-decision-making/

The world’s first license to operate a deep sea mine has been granted in PNG by the former Somare Government to Canadian company Nautilus Inc for its Solwara 1 mine. “The fact that this license was granted without the Free Prior and Informed Consent[2] of the communities that will be affected has created a storm of public protest. This was undoubtedly a significant factor in Nautilus’ decision to suspend operations a year ago,” stated Ms Rosenbaum.Community leaders are now pressuring PNG PM O’Neill to not allow Nautilus to resume its operations or pay the company the money a recent arbitration hearing ruled it should.[3][4][5]Oigen Schultz, Director of Zero Inc, a community organisation in New Ireland Province said, “Local communities have NOT sanctioned the Solwara 1 project. No one knows what the impacts of this form of mining will be.” “We are calling for our PNG National Government to place a moratorium on sea bed mining until New Ireland Province communities have provided their consent to the mine’s go-ahead.”In stark contrast to the PNG Government, the Vanuatu Government is embarking on a national deep sea mining consultation process. Under the oversight of the Hon. Ralph Regenvanu, Minister for Land and Natural Resources, the Vanuatu national consultations aim to model best practice Public Participation in Deep Sea Mining Decision-Making.”The process will draw on the principles and approaches embedded in Free Prior and Informed Consent and the Precautionary Principle[6]. It will be open and transparent and will ensure that if any licences are awarded it is with the consent of Vanuatu’s civil society and on the basis of independently verified science-based risk assessments.Wence Magun, National Coordinator for the Madang based Mas Kagin Tapani said “We call on PM O’Neil and the PNG Government to WAKE UP and to now commit to a National PNG consultation similar to Vanuatu’s.”

Prior consent is requiredOcean Foundation 13 The Deep Sea Mining Campaign, a Project of the Ocean Foundation Thursday 7 November 2013 Vanuatu world leader on best practice Deep Sea Mining decision-making

http://www.deepseaminingoutofourdepth.org/media-release-vanuatu-world-leader-on-best-practice-deep-sea-mining-decision-making/ [2] Free Prior and Informed ConsentFPIC is recognized in many international law instruments. Of these, the UN Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP, 2007) provides one of the clearest articulations of FPIC. Its key elements are defined as:Free – Consent is free from force, intimidation, manipulation, coercion or pressure by any government or company.

Prior – Consent is obtained prior to government authorisations, allocation of exploration permits, operating

licences etc.Informed – all the relevant information must be presented to communities and civil society in an accurate, and accessible manner independent of vested interestsConsent – requires that communities and civil society have the right to say “Yes” or “No” to the project in accordance with community decision-making processes and at each stage of a project. It means that civil society can withhold consent or can determine the conditions for consent if it is given

METHANE HYDRATES COOPERATION

SEE THEORY STUFF UNDER OCEN MINING CONSULTATION

Methane hydrates require international cooperationEnergy.gov 12 (Energy.gov, US department of Energy, “U.S. and Japan Complete Successful Field Trial of Methane Hydrate Production Technologies”, http://energy.gov/articles/us-and-japan-complete-successful-field-trial-methane-hydrate-production-technologies, 5/2/12, 7/16/12, MEM)

The Department is making $6.5 million available in Fiscal Year 2012 Funding Opportunity Announcement for research into technologies to locate, characterize and safely extract natural gas from methane hydrate formations like those in the Arctic and along the U.S. Gulf Coast. Specifically, projects will address (1) deepwater gas hydrate characterization via direct sampling and/or remote sensing field programs; (2) new tools and methods for monitoring, collecting, and analyzing data to determine reservoir response and environmental impacts related to methane hydrate production; and (3) clarifying methane hydrates role in the environment, including responses to warming climates. 2) As part of the President’s budget proposal for Fiscal Year 2013, the Department is requesting an additional $5 million to further gas hydrates research both domestically, and in collaboration with international partners. The exact nature of that research effort will be determined in the coming months; however, a longer duration test of methane hydrate extraction on the North Slope on an existing gravel bed pad that can accommodate year-round operations is envisioned. Such an effort would again require engaging private sector and international partners.

OCEAN RESEARCH REQUIRES COOPERATION CONSENT

SEE THEORY STUFF UNDER OCEN MINING CONSULTATION

Prior consent needed for research in Coastal StatesUNCLOS 13 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea 2013 UNCLOS at 30http://www.un.org/depts/los/convention_agreements/pamphlet_unclos_at_30.pdf

Marine scientific research is a critical underpinning of effective measures to preserve the marine environment and ensure the sustainable use of ocean resources. The Convention requires States and competent international organizations to promote and facilitate marine scientific research, including through cooperation. Since coastal States have sovereignty over their territorial sea, they have sole entitlement to research in these waters. In the exclusive economic zone and continental shelf, the prior consent of the coastal State is required for any research activity. The Convention states that, under normal circumstances, consent for research should be granted, and not unreasonably delayed or denied. In the 30 years since the adoption of the Convention, considerable progress has been made in marine science, including the discovery of new species and new features in the ocean depths.

COOPERATION REQUIRES PRIOR AGREEMENT

Cooperation requires prior consultation and agreement before committing to actMendis 6 Chinthaka Mendis - United Nations / Nippon Foundation Fellow 2006 Sovereignty vs. trans-boundary environmental harm: The evolving International law obligations and the Sethusamuduram Ship Channel Project http://www.un.org/depts/los/nippon/unnff_programme_home/fellows_pages/fellows_papers/mendis_0607_sri_lanka.pdf

In this context the international environmental law principle of duty to cooperate needs to be considered. This

principle manifests itself as an obligation whereby States must inform and consult one another, prior to engaging in any activity or initiative that is likely to cause trans-boundary environmental harm, so that the State of origin of the potentially dangerous activity may take into consideration the interests of any potentially exposed State. The principle of information and consultation has been reiterated for almost thirty years by the different organizations. It can be found in many recommendations or resolutions: the aforementioned 1978 UNEP Draft Principles of Conduct on Shared Natural Resources; UN General Assembly Resolutions 3129 and 3281 of December 1973 (the Charter of Economic Rights and Duties of States); OECD Council recommendations on Transfrontier Pollution and the Implementation of a Regime of Equal Right of Access and Non-Discrimination in Relation to Transfrontier Pollution and ILA resolutions of 1966 and 1982 are all some of early examples in this regard.

Prior consent on ocean issues is a duty under international lawVan Dyke 2K Jon M Van Dyke, professor University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa William S. Richardson School of Law 2000 "Sharing Ocean Resources – in a Time of Shortages and Selfishness" H. N. Scheiber (ed.), The Law of the Sea, 3-36. http://www.hawaii.edu/elp/publications/faculty/JVD/Sharing_Ocean_Resources.pdf

The duty to consult flows from the duty to consider the interests of other states and the duty to inform. The duty to consider the interests of other states was recognized with regard to fishing rights in, for instance, the Fisheries Jurisdiction cases,91 and has been codified in a number of international treaties,92 including Article 87 (on the freedom of the high seas) of the 1982 U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea. Article 87 has been described as"the most prominent instance in which the duty to consult must be implied from a duty to consider other states' interests.,,93 Another important recent recognition of the duty to consult is found in the 1979 Convention on Long-Range Transboundary Air Pollution.94

COOPERATION – ARCTIC

Cooperation on Arctic is crucialHossain 13 Dr. Kamrul Hossain, , Senior Research Scientist, Adjunct Professor of International Law, Northern Institute for Environmental and Minority Law (NIEM) / Arctic Centre 2013 International Arctic Law –IntArcticLaw http://www.arcticcentre.org/InEnglish/RESEARCH/The-Northern-Institute-for-Environmental-and-Minority-Law/Research-projects---NIEM/International-Arctic-Law

The Arctic is a region that ties together three continents: Asia, Europe and North America. Eight states are located within these three continents and are defined as Arctic states. However, none of these states, in their entirety, fall within the region as a whole. The Arctic only covers the northern region of each state. Over the past two or three decades the Arctic, once originally thought of as a peripheral region, began to attain a new status toward the end of the 1980s. The Arctic is part of a complex system of political, social, and economic dynamics linking actors inside and outside the region. The region is of tremendous significance, both in terms of its untapped resources (becoming readily available as climate change increases sea ice depravation) and in terms of the region’s geopolitical standing. It is suggested that whilst there are emerging economic opportunities, there are also significant concerns regarding the levels of change, which the region shall gradually undergo. International law will play an increasingly relevant role in the Arctic due to the region’s composition – eight states with territorial borderlines on land and sea, as well as sea areas beyond national jurisdiction. Unlike Antarctica, the Arctic has no single international governance regime. This is much due to the fact that one polar region is a continent covered with ice, uninhabited, and surrounded by ocean, whereas the other is an ocean surrounded by land and ice masses, making up the territories of sovereign states. Arctic governance is widely recognised as a complex system of fragmented international and regional regulations, which are complemented by non-binding soft law mechanisms, usually as a result of Arctic Council initiatives. These two types of legal apparatuses enshrined within the region, herald an age of diverse, convoluted challenges, which can only be dealt with responsibly through international cooperation between Arctic states and non-Arctic actors or states. It also remains to be seen whether

external actors could influence Arctic governance in the following years to come; particularly the EU, which claims legitimacy in Arctic affairs and exercises its regulatory system in a number of Arctic states through mechanisms empowered by European Law. The aim of this project is to develop a comprehensive understanding of the practical role which international law plays in the broader context of Arctic governance. This broader context would also include the aforementioned complex geopolitical dynamics in which diplomacy and international relations play a significant role.

Prior consultation on development is criticalEbinger ET AL 14 Charles K. Ebinger, John P. Banks and Alisa Schackmann, Brookings Institute, Offshore Oil and Gas Governance in the Arctic: A Leadership Role for the U.S., March 24, 2014, http://www.brookings.edu/research/reports/2014/03/offshore-oil-gas-governance-arctic

The private sector should be better integrated into efforts to strengthen Arctic governance. Since hydrocarbon development in the Arctic will be undertaken by companies, they need to be involved in the process of establishing standards. This does not mean that oil and gas operators dictate their final form. Rather they should have a seat at the table of a collaborative process from the early stages of any effort. There are a number of industry entities undertaking such efforts, as well as efforts among consortia of companies researching oil spill response technology or providing mutual aid in response capabilities. Collaboration is the key to leverage the expertise and resources—both financial and in equipment and infrastructure while taking advantage of lessons learned and sharing best practices.

Competing claims in the Arctic risk conflictBorgerson, 8 (Scott G, International Affairs Fellow at the Council of Foreign Relations, March/April 2008, Foreign Affairs, “Arctic Meltdown The Economic and Security Implications of Global Warming,” http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/63222/scott-g-borgerson/arctic-meltdown, AS)

The Arctic Ocean is melting, and it is melting fast. This past summer, the area covered by sea ice shrank by more than one million square miles, reducing the Arctic icecap to only half the size it was 50 years ago. For the first time, the Northwest Passage -- a fabled sea route to Asia that European explorers sought in vain for centuries -- opened for shipping. Even if the international community manages to slow the pace of climate change immediately and dramatically, a certain amount of warming is irreversible. It is no longer a matter of if, but when, the Arctic Ocean will open to regular marine transportation and exploration of its lucrative natural-resource deposits.Global warming has given birth to a new scramble for territory and

resources among the five Arctic powers. Russia was the first to stake its claim in this great Arctic gold rush, in 2001. Moscow submitted a claim to the United Nations for 460,000 square miles of resource-rich Arctic waters, an area roughly the size of the states of California, Indiana, and Texas combined. The UN rejected this ambitious annexation, but last August the Kremlin nevertheless dispatched a nuclear-powered icebreaker and two submarines to plant its flag on the North Pole's sea floor. Days later, the Russians provocatively ordered strategic bomber flights over the Arctic Ocean for the first time since the Cold War. Not to be outdone, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced funding for new Arctic naval patrol vessels, a new deep-water port, and a cold-weather training center along the Northwest Passage. Denmark and Norway, which control Greenland and the Svalbard Islands, respectively, are also anxious to establish their claims.While the other Arctic powers are racing to carve up the region, the United States has remained largely on the sidelines. The U.S. Senate has not ratified the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), the leading international treaty on maritime rights, even though President George W. Bush, environmental nongovernmental organizations, the U.S. Navy and U.S. Coast Guard service chiefs, and leading voices in the private sector support the convention. As a result, the United States cannot formally assert any rights to the untold resources off Alaska's northern coast beyond its exclusive economic zone -- such zones extend for only 200 nautical miles from each Arctic state's shore -- nor can it join the UN commission that adjudicates such claims. Worse, Washington has forfeited its ability to assert sovereignty in the Arctic by allowing its icebreaker fleet to atrophy. The United States today funds a navy as large as the next 17 in the world combined, yet it has just one seaworthy oceangoing icebreaker -- a vessel that was built more than a decade ago and that is not optimally configured for Arctic missions. Russia, by comparison, has a fleet of 18 icebreakers. And even China operates one icebreaker, despite its lack of Arctic waters. Through its own neglect, the world's sole superpower -- a country that borders the Bering Strait and possesses over 1,000 miles of Arctic coastline -- has been left out in the cold.Washington cannot afford to stand idly by. The Arctic region is not currently governed by any comprehensive multilateral norms and regulations because it was never expected to become a navigable waterway or a site for large-scale commercial development. Decisions made by Arctic powers in the coming years will therefore profoundly shape the future of the region for decades. Without U.S. leadership to help develop diplomatic solutions to competing claims and potential conflicts, the region could erupt in an armed mad dash for its resources.

Arctic Council can get cooperationYoung 2K Oran R. Young, Institute of Arctic Studies, Dartmouth College August 2000The Structure of Arctic Cooperation: Solving Problems/Seizing Opportunities* http://www.arcticparl.org/files/static/conf4_sac.pdf

The Arctic Council has an opportunity to move to the cutting edge in devising cooperative arrangements well-suited to the increasingly complex international/transnational landscape of the 21st century. But it cannot capitalize on this opportunity unless those steeped in traditional diplomatic practices exhibit the self-confidence needed to experiment with innovative procedures designed to open up the council to new players and to legitimize its claim to function as the voice of the Arctic.

Leaving disputes unresolved creates multiple scenarios for war Borgerson, 9 (Scott G, International Affairs Fellow at the Council of Foreign Relations, 3/25/09, Foreign Affairs, “The Great

Game Moves North As the Arctic Melts, Countries Vie for Control,” http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/64905/scott-g-borgerson/the-great-game-moves-north, AS)

The Arctic is the fastest-warming region on earth and continues to melt at a breathtaking rate. Last summer, for the first time in history, the polar icecap retreated far enough to open sea routes north of Eurasia as well as North America, and it is expected to be completely ice-free during the summer months in 2013. Boreal forests are appearing where there was once just frozen tundra, and last summer, the first wild fire was recorded north of Alaska's Brooks range, in a region where the local Inuit dialects lack a word for forest fire.In an article in Foreign Affairs last year, I described how not only is the climate changing fast, but the region's geopolitics are also rapidly transforming. As the Arctic coastal states begin to make claims over both these transit passages and newly accessible deep-water resources, a Great Game is developing in the world's far north.The next few years will be critical in determining whether the region's long-term future will be one of international harmony and the rule of law, or a Hobbesian free-for-all. Although the Bush administration took a huge step by publishing a new Arctic policy during its final week in office, the Obama administration must do far more to keep Washington from being further marginalized in this geostrategically important region.The polar icecap in the central Arctic Ocean thinned by half between 2001 and 2007. Other signs -- such as warmer deep-water ocean currents, greater albedo feedback loops, and massive ice shelves breaking free -- point to further melting. Scientists are increasingly concerned that the thawing permafrost will disgorge millions of tons of methane, unleashing what some refer to as a "climate bomb," a runaway warming cycle that could dramatically raise the planet's temperature.The Arctic may be open to year-round shipping within a few decades, if not sooner. Eventually, the Arctic, like the Baltic Sea or Great Lakes, will freeze in the winter and melt in the summer. Shipping companies are taking notice. The German-based Beluga Shipping company, for example, is planning to move cargo from the Atlantic to the Pacific via the Northeast Passage this summer unassisted by icebreaker escort.Last July, the U.S. Geological Survey released the first-ever comprehensive assessment of the region's oil and gas potential, and the numbers are staggering. Based on a resource appraisal of technically recoverable hydrocarbons, the Arctic contains about 13 percent of the world's undiscovered oil and about 30 percent of the world's undiscovered natural gas. Together this represents 22 percent of all untapped but technically recoverable hydrocarbons. More than 80 percent of these resources lie

offshore.Due to the ongoing global economic crisis, development of these oil and gas fields has proceeded in fits and starts. The price of energy needs to be high enough to make production in such an extreme environment economically viable. To complicate matters even more, some Arctic coastal states have not settled on the regulatory standards for development. The U.S. Ninth Circuit Court, for example, ruled last November that before the Royal Dutch Shell company can move forward with exploratory drilling in the Beaufort Sea north of Alaska -- for which it had already paid the U.S. government billions of dollars in leases -- the U.S. Interior Department needs to further study the environmental impacts of drilling on the sea's bowhead whale population and nearby indigenous communities.Similarly, Norway has barred production of oil and gas in some of its northern waters, despite the Norwegian company StatoilHydro partnering with Gazprom, the state-owned Russian energy giant, in the Russian Arctic. While Norway is struggling with this contradiction, Russia seems to have no such qualms and has dived headlong into massive Arctic nonrenewable energy projects. Gazprom hopes to bring the enormous Shtokman field, in the Barents Sea, on stream by 2013. The field holds enough gas to provide all of the United States' electricity needs for six years, and Gazprom is eagerly eyeing the U.S. energy market, envisioning regular shipments of liquefied natural gas to import facilities in Maryland and Georgia.Given the high stakes and pace of Arctic climate change, countries that border the ocean are working to extend their sovereignty in the region. After its controversial flag-planting on the North Pole seafloor in 2007, Russia moved to further bolster its Arctic presence in 2008. In addition to strategic bomber flights to the edge of U.S., Canadian, Norwegian, and Danish airspace, the Russian navy began patrolling Arctic waters last summer for the first time since the Cold War. On the eve of President Barack Obama's first visit to Canada in late February, the Canadian air force scrambled fighter jets to intercept Russian long-range bombers.The Russian federal government plans to invest more than a billion dollars in the northern port of Murmansk, doubling the port's capacity by 2015. Moscow also pledged last summer to build at least three new nuclear icebreaker ships to join what is already the world's largest icebreaker fleet. And much to the chagrin of environmentalists, Moscow completed a reactor vessel for the first floating nuclear power plant in October 2008.Russia has developed a muscular new national security program that views the Arctic as a strategically vital territory. Last September, Nikolai Patrushev, the former head of the FSB (the successor agency to the KGB) and current secretary of the Russian Security Council, declared that "the Arctic must become Russia's main strategic resource base," and a forthcoming Russian plan for developing the Arctic over the next decade reportedly threatens that it "cannot be ruled out that the battle for raw materials will be waged with military means."Russia is not alone. Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper held a cabinet meeting last August in the Arctic town of Inuvik, more than 2,500 miles north of Ottawa, to pledge his commitment to defend Canadian Arctic sovereignty. In 2008, Canada conducted its largest military exercise ever in the region and blocked the sale of Canadian radar technology to a U.S. buyer on national security grounds. In addition, Ottawa committed $40 million to scientific research projects to support its Arctic seabed claims. Meanwhile, Greenland passed a home-rule referendum in November that will eventually lead to independence from Denmark "in the not too distant future," in the words of Hans Enoksen, the current Siumut prime minister; the European Union has a new Arctic policy and plans for building its own icebreaker; and at the end of January, NATO held a conference in Iceland about its future mission in the Arctic.Even Asian countries with no Arctic coastlines are getting into the game. The Chinese sent its icebreaker, the Snow Dragon, on its third Arctic expedition last summer. Beijing successfully earned observer status to the Arctic Council and also plans to install its first long-term deep-sea monitoring system in the Arctic to keep an eye on long-term marine changes and the impacts of global warming on China's climate. South Korean and Singaporean shipyards are building massive new icebreakers and ice-strengthened tankers to navigate new Arctic routes. Japan is closely watching the shorter shipping routes opening up in the region, which will benefit Japanese businesses due to the country's northern latitude.Last May, top officials from the United States, Canada, Denmark, Norway, and Russia gathered in Greenland to declare their mutual commitment to the rule of law and to behaving peacefully in the new Arctic. At the same time, Arctic countries are closely collaborating on mapping the area's seafloor, with scientists from one country frequently sailing on icebreakers of another. On the face of it, everyone seems to be getting along swimmingly.But all of this camaraderie is at odds with the

growing remilitarization of the Arctic. The region is in the midst of transforming from a frozen, sleepy backwater into a potential epicenter of world affairs. How this all plays out in the geopolitical development of the region is a story that is very much still being written. The plot is full of characters espousing the rhetoric of cooperation yet pursuing their self-interests, and the conclusion could lead in multiple directions.The United States, however, remains largely asleep at the wheel. In the future, contests over fresh water, political instability from forced migrations, and increasingly severe pandemics due to global warming will become only more common.

Relations will continue to be tense unless something is done soonHong 11 Nong Hong. "Arctic Energy: Pathway to Cooperation or Conflict in the High North." Journal of Energy Security. N.p., 31 May 2011.

Political challenge for oil companies that show interest in energy extraction may stem from unresolved boundary disputes. Besides, the opening up of Arctic sea routes once only navigable by icebreakers threaten to complicate delicate relations between countries with competing claims to Arctic territory — particularly as once inaccessible areas become ripe for exploration for oil and natural gas. The United States, Russia and Canada are among the countries attempting to claim jurisdiction over Arctic territory alongside Nordic nations.

Reducing Tensions now is imperativeHong 11 Nong Hong. "Arctic Energy: Pathway to Cooperation or Conflict in the High North." Journal of Energy Security. N.p., 31 May 2011.The high cost of doing business in the Arctic suggests that only the world’s largest oil companies, most likely as partners in joint venture projects, have the financial, technical, and managerial strength to accomplish the costly, long-lead-time projects dictated by Arctic conditions. Incentives to settle outstanding disputes would rise with the increasing potential economic returns posed by exploitation and the resulting polarization within the international system. While there are disagreements between the Arctic states on maritime boundaries, there are still reasons to believe that these disagreements can be resolved amicably. The existing vehicles for dispute resolution and cooperation in the region, UNCLOS and the Arctic Council, will also help to reduce tensions

STATES

RENEWABLE PORTFOLIO STANDARDS

RPS SOLVES RENEWABLES

States’ RPS policies are effective solvency mechanisms for renewable energy developmentEIA 12 U.S. Energy Information Administration, “Most states have Renewable Portfolio Standards”, Energy Information Administration, February 3, http://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.cfm?id=4850

Although several RPS proposals have advanced part way through the U.S. Congress in recent years, there is currently no RPS program in place at the National level. However, 30 States and the District of Columbia had enforceable RPS or other mandated renewable capacity policies, as of January 2012. In addition, seven States had voluntary goals for renewable generation. These

programs vary widely in terms of program structure, enforcement mechanisms, size, and application. A large range of policies

are considered to be under the RPS umbrella. In general, an RPS sets a minimum requirement for the share of electricity

to be supplied from designated renewable energy resources by a certain date/year. Often, the selected eligible resources are

tailored to best fit the State's particular resource base or local preferences. Some States also set targets for specific types of

renewable energy sources or technologies to encourage their development and use. Many State RPS programs have "escape clauses" if the extra cost of renewable generation exceeds a specified threshold. (Detailed descriptions of State RPS programs are available from the Database of State Incentives for Renewables & Efficiency.) Another common feature of many State policies is a renewable electricity credit (REC) trading system structured to minimize the costs of compliance. Under these policies, a producer who generates more renewable electricity than required to meet its own RPS obligation may either trade or sell RECs to other electricity suppliers who may not have enough RPS-eligible renewable electricity to meet their own RPS requirement. In some cases, a State will make a certain number of credits available for sale. Such a system accommodates timing differences associated with planning and construction of new generation. Only one entity—the generator or the REC holder—may take credit for the

renewable attribute of generation from RPS-eligible sources. An RPS is one policy mechanism to encourage development of

renewable energy . States with RPS policies have seen an increase in the amount of electricity generated from eligible

renewable resources. At the same time, other States without RPS policies have also seen significant increases in renewable generation over the past few years resulting from a combination of Federal incentives, State programs, and market conditions. Increases in renewable generation have been driven by the availability of Federal tax incentives, as well as by State RPS policies.

State Standards force renewables into a competitive market positionUCS13 Union of Concerned Scientists, “How Renewable Electricity Standards Deliver Economic Benefits”, Renewables: Energy You Can Count On, May 2013, http://www.ucsusa.org/assets/documents/clean_energy/Renewable-Electricity-Standards-Deliver-Economic-Benefits.pdf

Essential to this clean energy success story has been the state “renewable electricity standard” (com-monly called an

RES)1 —one of the most popular and effective tools for encouraging renewable energy development. This report discusses the central role that state RES policies are playing to help stimu-late such development and its economic benefits. Experiences with RES policies in several states are highlighted to illustrate the scale and diversity of these policies and outcomes. We also review some critical challenges that jeopardize the continued success of state RES policies—and the nation’s transition to a clean, sustainable, and prosperous energy economy. Finally, we conclude with

recommendations for over-coming these challenges. RES policies require electric utilities to gradually increase the amount of renewable energy in their power supplies. This goal is typically accomplished by specifying a percentage that must

come from renew-able energy resources by a certain year—25 percent by 2025, for example. An RES policy is a market-based policy that stimulates competition among renewable energy developers and creates an ongoing incentive to reduce costs. The RES also represents a way to value the environmental and other important public benefits that are not priced in the energy

market. The standard thus provides a more level playing field for renewable energy to compete with fossil fuel resources, which have received decades of subsidies and preferential treatment. In states with RES policies in place, at least 33,000

mega-watts (MW) of new renewable capacity—equivalent to about 50 average-sized coal plants— were added between 1998 and 2011 (Barbose 2012).2 Moreover, the required amount of renew-able energy will ramp up over time; the Union of Concerned Scientists projects that RES policies will support more than 103,000 MW of renew-able energy capacity by 2025 (Figure 2). At least 87,000 MW of this total is expected to come from new renewable energydevelopment3 —enough new clean power to meet the electricity needs of 50 million typical homes.

RPS serves as a model for renewable energy development and regional cooperation—more effective and long-term than federal controlLeon 13 Warren Leon, Executive Director of the Clean Energy States Alliance, “The State of State Renewable Portfolio Standards”, Clean Energy States Alliance, June 2013, http://www.cesa.org/assets/2013-Files/RPS/State-of-State-RPSs-Report-Final-June-2013.pdf

RPSs have catalyzed far-reaching changes, altering the decisionmaking and operations of electricity regulators,

utilities, the energy industry, and other stakeholders In many states, the RPS has been the catalyst for a wide range of changes. When a state

institutes an RPS goal, such as requiring ten percent of a state’s electricity supply to come from designated clean energy sources, it concentrates the mind and alters the behavior of the various players involved in supplying and overseeing the state’s electricity. These organizations, businesses, and individuals begin to think of all the changes they need to make in order to meet the RPS mandate. This can involve changes in how utilities and other electricity suppliers contract for electricity, how public utility commissions plan for new transmission capacity, and how

project developers decide about which projects to develop. It has required the creation of new systems for tracking the production and sale of electricity from renewables and to modify existing systems.10 Because of RPSs, electricity

planning, regulation, and tracking are all different than they would otherwise be. RPSs have also given many participants in the electricity system experience with clean energy technologies. For diverse stakeholders, the implications of significant renewable energy development are now much better known and are given much greater attention. For example,

before RPSs, most utilities had little familiarity or experience with smaller-scale, more distributed, variable-output electric power generation technologies. RPSs have caused market players to think about renewable energy development in a context that transcends state boundaries. For one thing, almost all states use renewable energy certificates (RECs) as the mechanism for compliance with the RPS. These certificates typically occur in electronic form. A REC is created every time a qualifying renewable energy facility generates one megawatt-hour of electricity. Tracking RECs verifies that the correct quantities of renewable energy have indeed been generated to satisfy the RPS. RECs have become the common currency for renewable energy generation, serving as a building block for a national market for renewable energy. Beyond the existence of tracking systems

, with their out-of-state compliance feature, encourage state energy policymakers to think beyond the boundaries of their state and to consider the potential renewable energy resources throughout their region. This has increased the cross-state contact among policymakers. In almost all cases, government policies work best when they are stable and give market players clear guidance on what the rules will be for an extended period of time. In that way, those players can

develop and implement plans that respond efficiently and appropriately to what the rules and regulations will be. One of the problems with federal clean energy policy—which has largely been promoted through the tax code—is that it is unpredictable, with changes coming

frequently and without sufficient time for developers, utilities, or the clean energy industry to plan . The production tax credit for wind energy has exemplified this inefficient approach, with the credit lapsing several times before being renewed, generally for just a short period of time.15

States’ RPS policies provide effective incentives for renewables investmentPoovey 13 Bill Poovey, Staff Writer, “BMW energy manager says S.C. needs renewable portfolio standard”, GSA Business, October 21, http://www.gsabusiness.com/news/49236-bmw-energy-manager-says-s-c-needs-renewable-portfolio-standard?rss=0

The energy manager for BMW Manufacturing USA and Canada said he wants to see a renewable portfolio standard in South Carolina that would provide incentives for using solar, wind and other such resources that are readily available. “That would be huge for us,” Cleveland Beaufort said. Beaufort said Duke Energy is guaranteed a return on its investments and should be leading the way toward increased use of alternative energy resources without creating higher costs. “If utilities are required to use renewables, that will force the industry to also offer incentives,” Beaufort said. “You don’t want to do it on the backs of moms and pops.”

RPS’s have bipartisan support and provide multiple benefits—low cost, reduced pollution, increased renewable investmentCaperton 12 Richard W. Caperton, policy analyst with the Energy Opportunity team at American Progress, “Renewable Energy Standards Deliver Affordable, Clean Power”, Center for American Progress, April 11, http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/green/report/2012/04/11/11397/renewable-energy-standards-deliver-affordable-clean-power/

Twenty-six other states also have renewable energy standards, which require a certain amount of the electricity sold within a state to come from renewable energy. These policies lead to cleaner air, economic development, and a more resilient electrical grid. Fortunately for consumers in the 29 states with renewable energy standards, these critics are wrong.

There are no data showing that these standards cause electricity rates to skyrocket. When state policymakers implemented these standards they crafted them to meet the needs of their state in a commonsense way. Contrary to naysayers’ claims, these are not radical policies. In fact, there’s a long history of bipartisan support for renewable energy standards. These policies were signed into law by former Republican governors like George W. Bush (Texas), Christie Todd Whitman (New Jersey), and Tim Pawlenty (Minnesota), as well as former Democratic governors like Jennifer Granholm (Michigan), Janet Napolitano (Arizona), and Gray Davis (California). Using renewable energy instead of fossil fuels has many public health benefits, such as reducing the harmful air pollution that causes asthma. These standards create opportunities for new businesses, which can build renewable energy projects. These standards can drive down the cost of specific technologies through the “learning by doing” process, in which technologies like solar panels get cheaper as we gain more experience making them. There are also some very important—and often ignored—reasons why these standards can positively impact electricity rates. The Union of Concerned Scientists has documented how shifting electricity generation from natural gas to renewables causes natural gas prices to go down, making the remaining natural gas generation cheaper than it was before. Renewable energy standards also ensure resource diversity. In fact, some states call their renewable energy standard a “renewable portfolio standard” to emphasize that renewables are a valuable part of a diverse portfolio of energy resources. Such a diverse portfolio reduces exposure to any single energy source, reducing risk to consumers. State studies back this up. State governments in Maine and Michigan, for example, have looked at the relationship of their renewable energy standards and electricity rates and found that the standards have a minimal impact on rates, if any.

RPS Requirements provide an incentive for investment and development of renewablesClarke 14 Chris Clarke, renewable energy analyst and news, 2014 “EXPLAINER: RENEWABLE PORTFOLIO STANDARDS”, KCET, http://www.kcet.org/news/rewire/explainers/explainer-renewable-portfolio-standards.html

In order to promote the development of a renewable energy infrastructure, many governments have passed laws that require a certain percentage of power used within their borders is generated via renewable energy. These laws, which set

a standard for the amount of renewable energy in a region's energy generation portfolio, are referred to as Renewable Portfolio Standards (RPS).In order to comply with the RPS, power providers must track and verify which proportion of their output is renewable in origin. This is done using a market-based credit system. Every megawatt-hour of power verified by an independent agency to derive

from renewables grants the owner of that power a Renewable Energy Certificate (REC). These certificates can be bought, sold, or traded. This provides an incentive for utilities and other energy companies to increase their renewables capacity, as they can then sell extra RECs to utilities who are lagging behind in meeting their RPS obligations. In California, the California Energy Commission (CEC) does the year-end accounting for the RECs and reports the results to the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), which uses those results to enforce compliance with the RPS.

RPS creates renewables demand and spurs industry competitivenessEPA 14 United States Environmental Protection Agency, “Renewable Portfolio Standards”, EPA, April 17, http://www.epa.gov/agstar/tools/funding/renewable.html

A Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) provides states with a mechanism to increase renewable energy generation using a cost-effective, market-based approach that is administratively efficient. An RPS requires electric utilities and other retail

electric providers to supply a specified minimum amount of customer load with electricity from eligible renewable energy sources. The goal of an RPS is to stimulate market and technology development so that, ultimately, renewable energy will be economically competitive with conventional forms of electric power. An RPS creates market demand for renewable and clean energy supplies. Currently, states with RPS requirements mandate that between 4 and 30 percent of electricity be generated from renewable sources by a specified date. While RPS requirements differ across states, there are generally three ways that electricity suppliers can comply with the RPS:

RPS provides an affordable incentive for renewablesJaffe 6/3/14 Mark Jaffe, energy issues for The Denver Post, energy and corporate finance reporter for Bloomberg News, Knight Fellow at Stanford University and a Neiman Fellow at Harvard, “Meeting renewable energy targets turns out to be inexpensive”, The Denver Post, June 3, http://blogs.denverpost.com/thebalancesheet/2014/06/03/renewable-energy-5/12062/

It turns out that adding renewable energy to the electricity generation mix doesn’t end up costing all that much, in at least one case it has even saved money. In Colorado the cost came to less than a penny per kilowatt-hour in

2012. Among the 24 states with renewable portfolio standards that were analyzed, the cost of complying between

2010 and 2012 was equal on average, roughly 1 percent of retail electricity rates, according to study by two national laboratories. “The

cost is fairly modest, though not insignificant,” said Galen Barbose, one of the study’s co-authors and a Lawrence Berkeley researcher. But

since most states, including Colorado, cap the rate impacts of renewable energy the pressure likely will not translate to higher bills. “The takeaways from the study that the costs for meeting the standards have been pretty modest,” Barbose said. “But going forward meeting the targets will put pressure on compliance costs, but most state’s have some kind of cost containment that will blunt that upward pressure.”

RPSs increase energy diversity and promote competition This would not come from an energy aff because it deals with the diversity of renewables eligible under the RPSs

that leads competition. Potentially leads to a net benefit of blackouts or competitiveness.

Rader and Hempling 01 (Scott Hempling, Director of the National Regulatory Research Institute, Nancy Rader, Ph.D. in Social Sciences and a Professor at Ithaca College in the Department of Social Sciences, “The Renewables Portfolio Standard: A Practical Guide,” http://energy.gov/sites/prod/files/oeprod/DocumentsandMedia/narucrps.pdf)

Resource diversity benefits. If added in significant quantity, renewables will increase the diversity of energy resources

supplying electricity to the electric system. Increased diversity , in turn, contributes to price stability, improves system

reliability, and promotes competition : • Renewables contribute to price stability because of the tempering effect of fixed-cost resources in an

electric system that relies heavily on variable-cost fuels. • Renewables improve system reliability by reducing the number of power plants that a single event will affect similarly. Examples: -- Renewable energy plants are generally smaller in size and greater in number compared with fossil fuel and nuclear plants. An outage at a renewable energy plant will therefore affect a smaller amount of capacity than will an outage at a multi-hundred megawatt gas, coal or nuclear plant. -- A shortage in gas storage capacity or a gas pipeline rupture will similarly affect many natural gas plants; -- A coal miners' strike may affect a number of coal plants; -- An environment-related court or agency ruling requiring higher water flows to protect fish may reduce production at a number of large hydro plants. • Renewables promote competition among different types of fuels, and among retailers that utilize different types of fuels. For example, if some retailers have a significant fraction of renewable energy under

contract at fixed prices, it will add competitive pressure on retailers who rely on gas and coal, and their fuel suppliers, to keep their prices down.

STATES CAN SPECIFY ENERGY TYPE

States define what renewables are eligible for meeting an RPSRader and Hempling 01 (Scott Hempling, Director of the National Regulatory Research Institute, Nancy Rader, Ph.D. in Social Sciences and a Professor at Ithaca College in the Department of Social Sciences, “The Renewables Portfolio Standard: A Practical Guide,” http://energy.gov/sites/prod/files/oeprod/DocumentsandMedia/narucrps.pdf)

The RPS is a policy that obligates each retail seller of electricity to include in its resource portfolio (that is, the resources procured by the retail seller

to supply its retail load) a certain amount of electricity from renewable energy resources, such as wind, solar, geothermal, hydro, and various

forms of biomass and ocean energy . The retailer can satisfy this obligation by either (a) owning a renewable energy facility and producing its own

power, or (b) purchasing power from someone else's facility. RPS statutes or rules can allow retailers to "trade" their obligation. Under this trading approach, the retailer, rather than maintaining renewable energy in its own energy portfolio, instead purchases tradable credits that demonstrate that someone else has generated

the required amount of renewable energy. In fashioning a state's RPS, policy makers make several key decisions. They define the overall

renewable energy goal, define the types of renewable energy resources that will qualify for meeting the obligation , and

translate the overall goal into the specific obligations of each retail seller. Once the RPS statutes and implementing regulations are adopted ,

the government's role is limited to the administrative aspects of the policy: certifying that renewable energy generators meet

the eligibility criteria established in the RPS law , managing a tradable credit accounting system, verifying retailers' compliance, and

imposing noncompliance penalties if necessary.

Just some notes. Hawaii, Oregon, and Massachusetts already include OTEC, Wave Energy, and Tidal Energy in their RPSs Michigan already includes Offshore Wind in its RPS, though it deals with the lakes adjacent to it, not the

oceans Most, if not all states include Wind in their RPSs, which could easily be grouped to include offshore Wind.

STATE PROGRAMS

37 States plus DC and 4 Territories have an RPSEPA 13 (Environmental Protection Agency of the United States, March 2013, “State Funding Resources and Renewable Portfolio Standards,” http://www.epa.gov/lmop/publications-tools/funding-guide/state-resources/index.html)

As of March 2013 , 37 states, the District of Columbia, Guam, N. Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico and the U.S.

Virgin Islands have enacted an RPS or a renewable portfolio goal (RPG), where LFG is potentially an eligible renewable energy resource

(see the map below).

States are bandwagoning around RPS now and it has broad political supportLeon 13 Warren Leon, Executive Director of the Clean Energy States Alliance, “The State of State Renewable Portfolio Standards”, Clean Energy States Alliance, June 2013, http://www.cesa.org/assets/2013-Files/RPS/State-of-State-RPSs-Report-Final-June-2013.pdf

Perhaps the most remarkable achievement of RPSs is their sheer ubiquity, with an RPS being in place in 29 states plus the District of

Columbia and Puerto Rico. Just 20 years ago, only Iowa had an RPS.4 Since then, state after state has joined in , despite the fact that the states

differ greatly in their available clean energy resources, the structure of their electricity system, and the price of electricity for ratepayers. It is especially

noteworthy that the vast majority of the RPSs were established through legislation or a ballot initiative, reflecting broad

political support for them, with the exception of the greater Southeast (from West Virginia to Louisiana), where North Carolina is the only one of 12

states with an RPS, 74% of the remaining 38 states plus DC have one. An additional eight states—Virginia in the Southeast and seven others spread across

the country—have voluntary renewable energy goals. This leaves only three states outside the Southeast—Idaho, Nebraska, and Wyoming—without either an RPS or voluntary goals.

Only states can incentivize renewables with RPS—large-scale fed action or subsidies failApt, Lave, and Pattanariyankool 13 Jay Apt, Lester B. Lave, and Sompop Pattanariyankool, executive director of the Electricity Industry Center at Carnegie Mellon University’s Tepper School of Business and Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of Engineering and Public Policy, Higgins Professor of Economics at Carnegie Mellon University and co-director of the Electricity Industry Center, Ph.D. student in economics at the Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon University, “A National Renewable Portfolio Standard? Not Practical”, Issues, November 27, http://issues.org/25-1/apt-4/

A national RPS is a bad idea for three reasons. First, “renewable” and “low greenhouse gas emissions” are not synonyms; there are several other practical and often less expensive ways to generate electricity with low CO2 emissions. Second, renewable sources such as wind, geothermal, and solar are located far from where most people live. This means that huge numbers of unpopular and expensive transmission lines would have to be built to get the

power to where it could be used. Third, since we doubt that all the needed transmission lines would be built, a national RPS without sufficient transmission would force a city such as Atlanta to buy renewable credits, essentially bribing rural states such as North Dakota to use their wind power locally. However, the abundant renewable resources and low population in these areas mean that supply could exceed local demand. Although the grid can handle 20% of its power coming

from an intermittent source such as wind, it is well beyond the state of the art to handle 50% or more in one area. At that percentage, supply disruptions become much more likely, and the highly interconnected electricity grid is subject to cascading blackouts when there is a disturbance, even in a remote area. Renewable energy sources are a key part of the nation’s future, but wishful thinking does not provide an adequate foundation for public policy. The national RPS that gathered 159 cosponsors in the last Congress would be expensive and difficult to attain; it could cause a backlash that might doom renewable energy even in the areas where it is

abundant and economical. Consider the numbers. Past mandates and subsidies have increased wind’s share of generated

electric energy to 0.8% of total U.S. generation and geothermal’s share to 0.4%. Generation from photovoltaic cells and ocean waves and currents totals less than 0.02%. Wood and municipal waste provide 1.3%, and conventional hydroelectric 6% (but large hydroelectric power is generally excluded from RPS

calculations). The near-term potential for acquiring significant additional generation from any of the renewable sources except wind is small. Thus, a renewable portfolio standard requiring 15 to 30% of electricity from renewable sources requires that wind generation be expanded at least 15-fold and perhaps more than 30-fold.

RPS SOLVES CLIMATE

State Commitment to renewables substantially curtails climate impactsUCS 9 Union of Concerned Scientists, “Successful Strategies: Renewable Electricity Standards”, Fact Sheet, February 2009, http://www.ucsusa.org/assets/documents/clean_energy/climate-solutions-res-12-06-update.pdf

This commitment to increasing renewable energy at the state level will have a significant impact on reducing CO2 emissions. By 2025, state standards will reduce total annual CO2 emissions by more than 183 million metric tons (MMT)—the equivalent of taking 30 million cars off the road or planting a forest large enough to cover the entire state of Washington. In addition to realizing significant reduction of harmful emissions, the states have also found that renewable standards are an effective means to help meet critical fuel diversity, energy security, and economic goals. In fact, this approach has been so successful that 18 states—including Minnesota, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and most recently Illinois—

have revisited and significantly increased or accelerated their annual requirements. With only five percent of the world population, the United States produces nearly 25 percent of annual global heat-trapping emissions. iv Electricity generation accounts for fully one-third of these emissions. v We have a responsibility

and a compelling interest to significantly reduce these harmful emissions. Renewable electricity standards offer a smart, affordable climate solution with a proven track record.

Strengthening RPSs will significantly reduce carbon emissionsSekar and Sohngen 14 (Samantha Sekar, A master's student in the Environment and Natural Resources Soil Science graduate specialization area, Brent Sohngen, a professor of environmental and resource economics in the Department of Agricultural, Environmental and Development Economics at The Ohio State University. He also leads Ohio State’s Environmental Policy Initiative. Dr. Sohngen received his doctorate in environmental and resource economics from Yale University in 1996, April 2014, “The Effects of Renewable Portfolio Standards on Carbon Intensity in the United States,” http://www.rff.org/RFF/Documents/RFF-DP-14-10.pdf)

The projected emissions change in the counterfactual case is positive in every year, with the percent difference in carbon dioxide emissions growing over time beginning in year 2000. Once RPS begin to take effect around the country, there is a modest 0.1 percent decrease in carbon dioxide emissions compared with the counterfactual when RPS are not implemented. As a greater number of RPS are implemented and as

their stringency increases, the difference between the two cases also increases, leading to almost a 4 percent change in 2010 . Given that by 2010

the RPS have been in effect for only a few years in many states , this is a fairly significant impact . The gap between the

two cases is likely to continue to widen as RPS are fully implemented across the nation.

RPS AVOIDS COST / ECONOMIC PROBLEMS

States’ RPS policies function at a minimal financial costLeon 13 Warren Leon, Executive Director of the Clean Energy States Alliance, “The State of State Renewable Portfolio Standards”, Clean Energy States Alliance, June 2013, http://www.cesa.org/assets/2013-Files/RPS/State-of-State-RPSs-Report-Final-June-2013.pdf

Although it requires a full cost-benefit evaluation to determine all the many indirect economic costs and benefits of an RPS,19 the available estimates suggest that the impact on electricity rates so far has been modest. When LBNL examined the 2009–2011 compliance reports of the 18 states for which cost data was available, the researchers found that the RPS in only one state—Arizona—had an impact on electricity rates greater than 2.3 percent. The rate impact was well below one percent in 12 of the 18 states.20 The consistently low impact on rates shown in compliance reports and cost- benefit studies is especially noteworthy, because the studies have used a variety of methods and, of course, different people to conduct the assessments. They have been carried out in a range of states in different regions with differently structured RPSs and different political make-ups. 21 Moreover, the state compliance reports generally do not account for indirect positive effects of an RPS on electricity rates, such as price-suppression effects produced by reducing the need for expensive peaking electricity generators to come online during times of peak demand. And a single- minded focus on the short-term RPS rate impacts can ignore the considerable benefits that the state gets from renewable energy development, including cleaner air, reduced greenhouse gas emissions, decreased water use, more local jobs, and lower risk of rate increases should natural gas prices rise in the future.22

RPSs are effective & improve the economyWhite et al. 13 (Scott W. White, Kansas energy information network chair, Cai Steger and Kimi Narita, strong members of the Natural Resources Defense Council, 3/01/13, “The Renewable Portfolio Standard Works for Kansas,” http://www.nrdc.org/energy/renewable-portfolio-standards/files/RPS-KS-rebuttal-IB.pdf)

In 2009, Kansas legislators, in a heavily bipartisan effort, approved the renewable energy Standards Act, creating a[n] renewable portfolio standard ( RPS), which required many of the state’s utilities to generate or purchase increasing amounts of renewable

energy over the next decade. 1 Since that time, the RPS has helped to create jobs and grow Kansas’s economy .

Nonetheless, the RPS is now under fire from fossil-fuel interests arguing that the Kansas RPS drives up electricity prices, and therefore acts as a drag on a state’s economy. 2 This joint review by the Natural resources Defense Council and the Kansas e nergy Information Network shows that those claims are based on false assumptions and a flawed methodology. It has been more than three years since the passage of the RPS, and all six Kansas utilities affected by it are on track to achieve the standard’s targets.

Three of the six have already met the 20 percent threshold, seven years ahead of schedule . 3 Kansas has some of the best

wind resources in the nation, and the 19 wind projects currently in operation are creating thousands of jobs and providing millions of dollars to local economies, particularly in Western Kansas

The states’ RES methods spur economic growth—jobs and tech demandSEIA 14 Solar Energy Industry Association, 2014 “Renewable Energy Standards”, Solar Energy Industry Association, http://www.seia.org/policy/renewable-energy-deployment/renewable-energy-standards

More than half of all U.S. states have some type of renewable energy standard or goal in place. National RES policies

have been considered by Congress but have yet to be signed into law. RES policies are designed to encourage competition between energy project developers to take advantage of the vast renewable energy resources that exist in the United States.

Numerous studies have shown that an ambitious RES will help to create thousands of new jobs, spur economic development, reduce pollution, and save consumers money on their utility bills. According to analyses by the U.S. Department of

Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Lab (LBNL), RES policies do not significantly raise electricity rates, and often result in cost savings

for consumers. They also spur local demand for renewable technologies, creating jobs and economic development.

RPS creates significant job opportunities and helps the economyLeon 13 Warren Leon, Executive Director of the Clean Energy States Alliance, “The State of State Renewable Portfolio Standards”, Clean Energy States Alliance, June 2013, http://www.cesa.org/assets/2013-Files/RPS/State-of-State-RPSs-Report-Final-June-2013.pdf

While it is difficult to know exactly how many jobs RPSs have created, there can be little doubt that some new jobs can be traced to them. Renewable energy companies seeking to expand their operations in the United States have sought out locations where the

existence of an RPS indicates a commitment to renewable energy on the part of the state. A recent report by the Union of

Concerned Scientists discusses the many ways in which renewable energy development has gone hand in hand with

job growth , and it includes case studies of a few states. For example, it makes a link between the Colorado Renewable Energy

Standard (RES) and in-state jobs. “Wind power is currently the largest contributor to Colorado’s annual RES requirements, with more than 2,300 MW of installed capacity providing enough electricity to power some 500,000 homes. In 2011, Colorado’s wind industry supported 4,000 to 5,000 jobs, made property tax payments totaling more than $10 million, and paid about $5.4 million in land lease payments.” 12

DESALINATIONStates working in desalinationSalcido 8 Rachael E. Salcido. Associate Professor of Law, University of the Pacific, McGeorge School of Law “Offshore Federalism and Ocean Industrialization” emk

There is also the potential for state development to interfere with federal environmental protection objectives off-shore. While not nearly as far along in terms of implementation in the United States, desalination operations may ulti-mately be another competing user of ocean water and coastal space. n58 Several states have considered constructing de-

salination plants, where ocean water is converted to fresh potable water. n59 In addition to taking ocean waters out of the

commons, waste product from the desalination plants would likely be discharged back into the ocean. n60 The liquid waste produced may contain high salt

concentrations, chemicals used in the desalination [*1367] process, and toxic metals. n61 Desalination would address the shortfall of freshwater for consumption in areas faced with drought, lack of groundwater, and remoteness from originating freshwater sources or their diversions. n62 However, it may also spur addi-tional coastal population growth and in turn put significantly more pressure on already degraded coastal ecosystems. n63

California can build the plantsRogers 14 (Paul Roger, San Jose Mercury news, “Nation's largest ocean desalination plant goes up near San Diego; Future of the California coast,” http://www.mercurynews.com/science/ci_25859513/nations-largest-ocean-desalination-plant-goes-up-near, 5/29/14, 7/17/14, MEM)

The crews are building what boosters say represents California's best hope for a drought-proof water supply: the largest ocean desalination plant in the Western Hemisphere. The $1 billion project will provide 50 million gallons of drinking water a day for San Diego County when it opens in

2016. Since the 1970s, California has dipped its toe into ocean desalination --talking, planning, debating. But for a variety of reasons -- mainly cost

and environmental concerns-- the state has never taken the plunge. Until now. Fifteen desalination projects are proposed along the coast from Los Angeles to San Francisco Bay. Desalination technology is becoming more efficient. And the state is mired in its third year of drought. Critics and backers alike are wondering whether this project in a town better known as the home of Legoland and skateboard icon Tony Hawk is ushering in a new era. Will California -- like Israel, Saudi Arabia and other arid coastal regions of the world -- finally turn to the ocean to quench its thirst? Or will the project finally prove that drinking Pacific seawater is too pricey, too environmentally harmful and too impractical for the Golden State? "Everybody is watching Carlsbad to see what's going to happen," said Peter MacLaggan, vice president of Poseidon Water, the Boston firm building the plant. "I think it will be a growing trend along the coast," he said. "The ocean is the one source of water that's truly drought-proof. And it will always be there."

States can build desalination plants- examples proveBloomberg BNA 13 (Bloomberg BNA, water law and policy monitor, “U.S. Desalination Industry Grows Since 2000; Seen as Essential to

Meeting Supply Needs”, http://www.bna.com/us-desalination-industry-n17179876105/, 8/21/13, 7/17/14, MEM) In addition, the use of desalination--the process of turning salt or brackish water into freshwater--to provide clean water for drinking, industrial use, and irrigation lacks broad public support largely because of the significant amount of energy required and the questions about waste disposal. Despite these hurdles, however, the United States ranks fourth among markets for desalinated water behind Saudi Arabia, the United Arab

Emirates, and Spain, according to an International Desalination Association presentation from 2011. Supporters of the technology say this “drought-proof tool” and the ability to tap new sources of water make desalination an enticing and necessary industry for the road ahead. Desalination is best used as a part of an integrated water plan, water officials from San Diego, Tampa, Fla., and El Paso, Texas, told BNA. That means water management and

conservation come first. Water reuse--or water that has been reclaimed through the wastewater treatment process , but may not be suitable for drinking or domestic use--can fulfill a need by providing supply for irrigation or industrial users. Desalination can supplement these measures to ensure an adequate supply of clean water. Desalination Already in Use Desalination and water reuse already play a significant role in addressing water supply needs, Mike

Hightower, Sandia National Laboratories lead on an Energy Department project reviewing energy and water needs and issues, said. More than 40 percent of domestic supplies--water for drinking, cooking, and bathing, among other purposes--comes from desalination and wastewater reuse. That breaks down to roughly 30 percent from wastewater reuse and 13 percent from desalination nationwide, Hightower said. “You can see already that even though people don't know it, desalination and wastewater reuse are a large percentage of the domestic [commercial and residential] water supply in the United States,” Hightower

told BNA. The number of desalination plants within the United States grows exponentially when industrial plants are considered because industrial facilities greatly outnumber municipal ones. A Pacific Institute study,Desalination, With a Grain of Salt, found there were roughly 2,000 desalination plants larger than 300,000 gallons per day operating in the United States as of 2005 when industrial plants are figured in. There is little information available regarding private, industrial desalination plants, although the private sector typically has more funds available than municipalities. This means the industrial sector may have access to more expensive technologies and solutions than the municipal

sector, Mickley told BNA. Communities with Right Geography, Need Desalination has grown faster in certain states. As of 2010, Florida had the most municipal desalination plants with 148, followed by California at 45, Texas with 30, and North Carolina having 12, according to Mickley's paper. Mickley runs his own water and wastewater technology consulting firm and specializes in desalination and membrane technology.

Water wars are coming- building Desalination averts water warsBrinkley 13 (Joel Brinkley, Hearst professional in residence at Stanford University, a Puliter prize-winning former correspondent for the New York Times, “Avert water wars - build desalination plants”, http://www.sfgate.com/opinion/brinkley/article/Avert-water-wars-build-desalination-plants-5002898.php, 11/22/13, 7/17/14, MEM)

Get ready for the water wars. Most of the world's population takes water for granted, just like air - two life-sustaining substances. After all, the human body is nearly two-thirds water. But a Hindustan Times blogger said that in India right now, as in so many other places around the globe, drinkable water has become such a precious commodity that it's dragging the world into "water wars to follow the ones for the control of fuel oil." Climate change is drying up lakes and rivers almost everywhere. In Australia, for example, an unprecedented heat wave brought on massive wildfires and critical water shortages. As water grows scarce, more countries are building dams on rivers to hog most of the water for themselves, depriving the nations downstream. Already, Egypt had threatened to bomb the Grand Renaissance Dam upstream on the Nile River in Ethiopia. And as the Earth's population crossed the 7 billion mark last year, more and more water sources are so polluted that drinking the water can kill you. No one's counting, but various government and private estimates indicate that worldwide, tens of thousands of children die every day from drinking contaminated water. By most estimates, half the world's people live in places where clean water is not easily available. Bangalore, India, for example once had 400 lakes in its vicinity. Now, the New Indian Express newspaper wrote, only 40 are left, and all of them are polluted. Hence the fights. One of the biggest areas of conflict is the India-Pakistan-China nexus. Multiple rivers intertwine the countries, and as water levels fall, all three are building dams to keep much of the water for themselves. China has built more dams than any other nation, making numerous countries angry because Chinese rivers flow into more adjacent states than from any other state. And yet, even with 14 different downstream border states, China refuses to agree to any water treaties. Right now, China has approved plans to build 54 more dams on rivers, many of which serve as the lifeblood of neighboring states. In China's north, "desertification" is turning vast areas into dust bowls. So the government is trying to divert 6 trillion gallons of water per year from the Yangtze River to reclaim the area, worrying people in other parts of China who rely on the Yangtze for their own water. In Iran, farmers in one region destroyed a water-pump station that was carrying water away from their area to the city of Yazd. That started a fight with security forces, but the farmers are remaining on station to make sure the pump is not rebuilt. A recent NASA study warned of an "alarming rate of decrease in total water storage" in Iraq's "Tigris and Euphrates river basins, which currently have the second-fastest rate of groundwater storage loss on Earth, after India." The report warned that water scarcity could become another cause of conflict. Egypt's military threats against Ethiopia begin to make sense when you realize that Egypt's 84 million people draw 95 percent of their water from the Nile River. A common saying is that without the Nile there is no Egypt. The U.S. House of Representatives recently held a hearing on water shortages and other threats in Central Asia, and Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Costa Mesa (Orange County), warned of another potential conflict, quoting Uzbekistan's president, Islam Karimov: "Uzbekistan will even use weapons if necessary" against its northern neighbor Kazakhstan "to get the water passing through (Kyrgyzstan) territory that we intend to accumulate in reservoirs." In Sri Lanka this month, the Daily News wrote: "We can live many days without food, but without water it is about three days." Still, "we can't seem to get the right water to the right people at the right time. ... More people have access to cell phones than safe water." So where is all this water going? With ever-rising temperatures, more and more water evaporates and returns to the ground as rain. But most of it falls into the oceans. That's one reason sea levels are rising worldwide, threatening vast coastal areas. But all of that leaves the world with an expensive but straightforward solution to the water-shortage problem everywhere. Build desalination plants, as Australia, Israel, Saudi Arabia and other well-off, water-stressed states are already doing. Soon enough, whichever country starts marketing these critically important plants worldwide will make a lot of money and grow to be seen as a savior for millions of the world's people.

Desalination solves Middle East warMEE 5/20 (Middle East Eye, reports middle eastern news, “Water wars loom large in Middle East's future”, http://www.middleeasteye.net/news/water-wars-loom-large-middle-easts-future-1631762779, 5/20/14, 7/17/14, MEM)

It’s not as if all this has gone unnoticed. The Middle East’s water issue has been the subject of news articles, analyses by groups such as the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, and studies by think tanks and humanitarian groups for years. The Istanbul conference of scientists, policy analysts and academics from eight countries - conducted on an island in the Sea of Marmara under the title “High and Dry: Addressing the Middle East Water Challenge” by the Hollings Center and the Prince Muhammad Bin Fahd Strategic Studies Program at the University of Central Florida - is the latest of many such gatherings. But little has come of them because the region has never been stable enough for sufficient

time to make any comprehensive, multilateral solution possible. According to analyses by the World Bank, the US State Department and others, a majority of the countries defined as “water-poor” - those with access to less than 1,000 cubic metres per person per year - are in the Middle East and North Africa. The State Department also predicts that climate change will add to the problem by bringing “consistently lower levels of rainfall.” No government or international agency can increase rainfall or snow runoff. But the Istanbul conferees heard that the example of

Saudi Arabia - the world’s largest country without a river - shows that a great deal can be done in countries with deep pockets and enough time to focus on the issue. Saudi Arabia reorganised its government in the 1990s to centralise water planning and management. Most of the country’s water for personal and household use is supplied by massive desalination plants. The decision to build them, starting in the 1970s, was an obvious one for the kingdom. But the plants are expensive to construct and operate, leaving them beyond the financial reach of a country like Yemen. Saudi Arabia meanwhile leads the region in the recapture and reuse of wastewater. Under a new regulation from last year, for example, its giant dairy farms are required to operate on recycled water purchased from the National Water Company rather than on groundwater as in the past. Once the world’s fifth- or sixth-largest exporter of wheat - the production of which requires massive amounts of water - Saudi Arabia has banned the cultivation of wheat as of 2016 and is refocusing its agriculture on greenhouse production of vegetables and fruit. Growing animal fodder crops such as alfalfa has been banned; owners of livestock are required to purchase imported fodder, conference participants said. Plagued by leaks in distribution pipes that drained off as much as 25 percent of the water it had, Saudi Arabia privatised its distribution network and encouraged foreign engineering and management companies to participate. Saudi Arabia has raised the price of water for businesses and institutions, but it has not yet ended the subsidies for households that make water so cheap; there is little incentive to limit consumption. Doing so would be politically risky in a country where subsidies for water, gasoline, and electricity are expected by a population that has no vote or other influence over the government. Egypt, by far the most populous country in the region, has a different consumer attitude problem. Egyptians have taken the availability of water for granted since completion of the Aswan High Dam in 1970. As a result, they use waster casually in the home and pump more irrigation water than is necessary onto their fields. But Egypt’s biggest concern now is Ethiopia’s plan to construct a giant hydroelectric dam on the headwaters of the Nile, reducing the flow and the amount of water stored in Lake Nasser, behind the Aswan Dam. Asked recently if negotiations over Nile water allocations were taking place between Egypt and the upstream countries, Foreign Minister Nabil Fahmy replied, “No. I wish they were.” Participants in Istanbul agreed that there is no single remedy for the water crisis.. The available fixes range from the simple and obvious, such as consumer education and the installation of low-flow bathroom fixtures, to the aspirational, such as the development of desalination plants powered by solar energy, which are thus affordable

MARINE PROTECTED AREAS

The states are more than capable to set up their own MPA’sBarcott 11 Bruce Barcott “The Unfulfilled promise of the World’s Marine Protected Areas” Environment 360. 16 June 2011.

Here’s the background: In the 1990s, the marine aquarium trade was killing off the yellow tangs of Hawaii. A coral reef fish the size of a silver-dollar pancake, yellow tangs are highly valued by aquarium owners. The commercial aquarium fishery off the west coast of the Big Island employed only about three-dozen divers, but together they caught about 250,000 aquarium fish every year. Biologists estimated they were shipping half of all local yellow tang into the tanks of America’s dental offices. The take grew so alarming that in 2000 the state of Hawaii stepped in and established a network of nine no-collection zones around the Big Island. These protected areas were a form of marine reserves — areas fully protected from all fishing, removal, or disturbance of marine life. And they weren’t small. The state closed 35 percent of the Big Island coastline to aquarium fish collection.

States can create PMAsAgardy et al 3 TUNDI AGARDY, Sound Seas, Bethesda, MD, USA ET AL Conserv: Mar. Freshw. Ecosyst.,13 : 353–367 (2003) Dangerous targets? Unresolved issues and ideological clashes around marine protected areas http://cmbc.ucsd.edu/content/1/docs/agardy.pdf

To understand the range of views developing in the international marine conservation community, we must begin with an examination of differing perceptions of MPAs at the most basic level. The term marineprotected area arose out of a historic quilt of meanings that was formed as protected areas began to springup in coastal and marine areas around the world, each with its own label and implications. MPAs arevariously defined as purely in-water designations, as coastal management units that include terrestrial andmarine areas, as strictly protected reserves, or as any kind of marine managed area (Agardy, 1997b). Themost commonly used definition of MPA internationally is that provided by IUCN, ‘any area of inter-tidalor sub-tidal terrain, together with its overlying water and associated flora, fauna, historical, or culturalfeatures, which has been reserved by law or other effective means to protect part or all of the enclosedenvironment’ (Kelleher and Kenchington, 1992). This generic description has metamorphosed somewhat in subsequent discussions and treaty negotiations. For example, background documents for the Conventionon Biological Diversity state that ‘MPAs are coastal or oceanic management areas designed to conserve ecosystems together with their functions and resources’ (deFontaubert et al., 1996). In the United States, MPAs have been defined as ‘any area of the marine environment that has been reserved by Federal, State,territorial, tribal, or local laws or regulations to provide lasting protection for part or all of the natural or cultural resources therein’ (US Presidential Executive Order 13158, 26 May, 2000). Eichbaum et al.(1996)define marine and coastal protected areas as ‘areas of the coastal zone or open ocean (or both) that are the of management for the broad purpose of conservation and sustainable use’. As a result of the diverse definitions and objectives for MPAs, a profusion of specific terms to describe various sorts of MPAs have been adopted, including marine park, marine reserve, fisheries reserve, closed area, marine sanctuary, MACPAs/MCPAs (marine and coastal protected areas), nature reserve, ecological reserve, replenishment reserve, marine management area, coastal preserve, area of conservation concern, sensitive sea area, biosphere reserve, ‘no-take area’, coastal park, national marine park, marine conservation area and marine wilderness area.

MPA’s will work in the USNOAA 6/9/14 NOAA "Marine Protected Areas." National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. 6 June 2014.

Marine protected areas (MPAs) are areas of the oceans or Great Lakes that are protected for a conservation purpose. If you have ever gone fishing in central California, diving in the Florida Keys, or boating in Thunder Bay, you have visited one of these MPAs. In the United States, there are over 1,600 MPAs spanning a range of habitats, including the open ocean, coastal areas, inter-tidal zones, estuaries, and the Great Lakes. Nearly all of these areas allow multiple uses. About 41 percent of U.S. marine waters are protected in some way, with three percent in highly protected in no-take MPAs to protect sensitive species and habitats.

Government run MPA’s are not reaching their full potentialStokstad 14 Erik Stokstad “Why Won't Simply Creating Lots of Marine Reserves Save Sea Life?” American Association for the Advancement of Science. 5 February 2014.

Overall, the authors considered just nine of the MPAs (about 10%) to be effective, having four or more attributes of good governance and design. And the few reserves that got high marks in all five areas, such as the Kermadec Marine Reserve in New Zealand, had exponentially greater benefits, including nearly 2000% more sharks than in fished coastlines, they report in this week’s issue of Nature.The takeaway message, the authors write, is that “global conservation targets based on area alone will not optimize protection of marine biodiversity. More emphasis is needed on better MPA design , durable management and compliance to ensure that MPAs achieve their desired conservation value. ”

Most MPA’S are currently ineffective Barcott 11 Bruce Barcott “The Unfulfilled promise of the World’s Marine Protected Areas” Environment 360. 16 June 2011.

Nearly all MPAs are tiny, few of them have the high “reserve” levels of protection, and most lack the sharp teeth of enforcement. “Although it is not possible to develop an exact account, fully protected, no-take areas cover only a small portion of MPA coverage, while a large proportion of MPAs are ineffective or only partially effective, ” the IUCN noted last year in its report, “Global Ocean Protection.”

OFF SHORE WINDStates investing in offshore nowSalcido 8 Rachael E. Salcido. Associate Professor of Law, University of the Pacific, McGeorge School of Law “Offshore Federalism and Ocean Industrialization” emk

A second example of a potential new offshore development with significant human benefits is the Cape Wind off-shore wind farm proposed for Nantucket Sound, Massachusetts. The project is currently in the permitting stage and con-struction of wind turbines is [*1363] projected for 2010. n31 The project is anticipated to occupy twenty-four square miles in federal waters offshore Massachusetts and consist of 130 3.6-megawatt wind turbines. n32 The Minerals Man-agement Service (MMS), within the Department of the Interior (DOI), is

creating a regulatory process to facilitate leas-ing of the area for the project to move forward. n33 One of the purported benefits of the project is an increase in renewa-ble energy. n34 Yet it has become clear that potential federalism issues are raised in the generation of offshore wind ener-gy. Like aquaculture developments, the resource developed offshore must be transmitted across state areas to reach con-sumers onshore, thus triggering state regulation of submerged lands. n35 Furthermore, the acceptance of the potential impacts to state interests has already generated litigation. n36 While the use of wind as an alternative energy source to fossil fuels has environmental advantages, the impacts on the marine and coastal resources - including bird and marine life mortalities and [*1364] destruction of marine habitat - are certainly not insignificant. n37 Thus, a citizen group, publicly endorsed by some state officials antagonistic to the federal project, sued to prevent continued project progress. n38 In Alliance To Protect Nantucket Sound, Inc. v. U.S. De-partment of the Army, a residents' association (Alliance) challenged the approval of an offshore data tower that was proposed to test the feasibility of the wind farm in an area of Nantucket Sound. n39 The specific area, Horseshoe Shoals, is located on the OCS in an area subject to federal jurisdiction. n40 Alliance argued that the Corps did not have authority under section 10 of the Rivers and Harbors Act to issue a permit for the data tower. n41 Alliance also argued that Cape Wind Associates did not have the requisite property interests necessary to obtain a permit pursuant to Corps regulations. n42 The court found that OCSLA (as amended in 1978), which authorized the Corps to prevent obstructions to naviga-tion, also extended the Corps' jurisdiction to all artificial islands and all installations for exploring, developing, or pro-ducing resources, or other installations of devices. n43 The jurisdiction was not limited just to structures extracting miner-als. n44 Alliance also argued that the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) required that the federal government publish a finding of no significant impact because the proposed action was one "without precedent." n45 One of the main criticisms of the proposal was the impact to scenic values. n46 Opponents contended that in the future, if the project were approved, windmills would sit in the center of the sound, destroying the aesthetic appeal and natural beauty of the sound. n47

States solve offshore wind farmsEberhardt 6 ROBERT W. EBERHARDT* Senior Notes Editor, 2005-2006, New York University Environmental Law Journa “FEDERALISM AND THE SITING OF OFFSHORE WIND ENERGY FACILITIES” emk

This Part focuses on two ways in which states exercise regulatory authority over the development of offshore wind energy projects: (1) through control of submerged lands within three miles of the coastline; and (2) through federal consistency review under the Coastal Zone Management Act ("CZMA"),22 which provides states with a mechanism to exert influence over federal agency activities, including activities

authorizing the use of the outer continental shelf (the lands further than three miles from the coastline). The state authority over submerged lands gives states particularly robust opportunities to control the siting of offshore wind energy facilities (even

those facilities with turbines proposed for the outer continental shelf), because all facilities will require connection to the electricity grid through submarine cables running from the turbines to shore. Although the scope of state authority under the CZMA is less

expansive than state control of submerged lands, consistency review provides additional opportunities for states to stop or delay offshore projects. States currently exercise considerable control over the use of lands beneath the navigable waters of United States, including lands underlying the ocean adjacent to state coastlines (sometimes referred to as the "marginal seas"). Before the middle of the twentieth century, federal common law recognized that states possessed regulatory authority over lands beneath navigable waters.23 However, this changed substantially after the Supreme Court's decision in United States v. California2.4 When the State of California began in the 1930s to issue leases for offshore development of oil, gas, and other minerals in lands under the marginal sea, the federal government brought a suit to confirm exclusive federal rights over the marginal seas and to obtain an injunction stopping continued trespass by private parties under the authority of leases obtained from California.25 In California, the Court granted relief to the federal government when it held that the federal government, by virtue of its responsibilities concerning national defense and international affairs, has "paramount rights" over the three-mile belt of ocean adjacent to the coastline, and that these rights include "full dominion over the resources of the soil 26 In the Submerged Lands Act of 1953 ("SLA"), Congress exercised the federal authority over the marginal seas recognized in California to grant the states title to adjacent "lands beneath navigable waters" and control over their associated natural resources, including (but not limited to) oil, gas, other minerals, and marine animal and plant life.27 On the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, "lands beneath navigable waters" include all lands under tidal waters between the mean high tide line and a parallel line three geographical miles from the coastline.28 Under this definition, "lands beneath navigable waters" encompasses lands described at common law as "tidelands" (lands between the high and low water marks) and "submerged lands" (lands seaward of the low water mark).2 9 The grant of title and authority to the states came with explicit reservations of federal jurisdiction over lands beneath navigable waters to regulate navigation, flood control, and hydroelectric facilities. 30 Congress also reserved for federal control the natural resources of the continental shelf’s subsoil and seabed, which extend seaward from the outer boundary of lands beneath

navigable waters.31 States have exercised the title and control granted by the federal common law and later by Congress to enact statutes that govern the use of their respective submerged lands, and offshore project sponsors will need to comply with the requirements of a host state's regulatory regime before beginning construction. Individually these regulatory regimes reflect the idiosyncratic history and environmental priorities of particular states; in the aggregate, they define a range of state policy options for managing the use of submerged lands. In general, states can control the

use of submerged lands by regulating private activity using a permit system; regulating the conveyance of property interests such as licenses, leases, or easements to private parties; or using a combination of the two. 3 2 The options defined by existing regimes also include preferences for particular categories of uses; 33 preferences for conveyances of state-owned submerged lands to particular parties, such as riparian owners;34 requirements that conveyances be subject to specified conditions;35 the delegation of state regulatory authority to local governments; 36 and the adoption of policies for specific uses like submarine cables. 37

STATES SOLVE ENVIRONMENT

States solve Boledovich 1 Glenn Boledovich, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration “YOU SAY YOU WANT A DEVOLUTION: FEDERALISM AND COASTAL ZONE CONSISTENCY” http://webapp1.dlib.indiana.edu/virtual_disk_library/index.cgi/4916229/FID3790/pdf_files/boledovi.pdf emk

A more defensible, consistent, and devolutionary approach would be to embrace the CZMA and consistency as an example of best practices for intergovernmental cooperation. On its face, the CZMA seems a near perfect fit with the Administration’s devolutionary policies. The Act provides national goals and objectives, but leaves the specifics of how to achieve those goals to the States. At its core it is a grant program, providing matching funds for State development and implementation of their plans. It acknowledges regional differences and needs. It encourages States to develop innovative management approaches and to serve as “laboratories of experimentation” that can serve as models for others. It provides a conduit to funnel federal technical and scientific expertise in support of State efforts. It promotes regional, interstate coordination. In short, the CZMA promotes the kind of cooperative federalism and intergovernmental partnership that is consistent with and supportive of devolution and provides a “national” (as opposed to solely federal) paradigm for meeting the challenges of the new century. Of course, after nearly 30 years, the CZMA model may need some tweaking. For example, instead of overturning or limiting the reach of consistency, efforts should be focused on improving the procedures and processes under which it operates—not to weaken the provisions, but to clarify and support the timely conclusion of the consistency review process. In addition to consistency, the CZMA provides a well-established federal/state revenue sharing mechanism. Recent efforts to provide a share of federal OCS oil and gas revenues to impacted States could be codified into the CZMA. For example, the Coastal Impact Assistance grants proposed under the Conservation and Reinvestment Act (CARA), could be readily administered through the existing CZMA program. At present, H.R. 701 would create a duplicative grant program in the Department of Interior, requiring States to develop what amounts to a second coastal management plan. Duplicating the existing CZMA program would create confusion and overlapping responsibilities at the federal level. CONCLUSION Devolution is part of an inherent cycle of federalism that is characterized by shifting balances of power between States and the federal government. Today we are 30 years into a devolutionary trend and the power of States has increased over this time. Barring a major crisis, the trend will continue. In the interim, States have become increasingly sophisticated and capable. They also have become more active in defending and promoting their interests. The new Administration has been outspoken in its support for devolving authority to the States, and its budget proposal specifically targets shifting increased authority to the States on environmental issues. Regarding the coast, this commitment to States’ rights is about to be tested as the pro-State consistency provisions are weighed against the national interest in increased OCS oil and gas development. To date, the energy concerns have not risen to the point of a major national crisis, and it will be politically difficult and risky to try to weaken consistency under these conditions. Furthermore, the benefits of doing so are much in doubt, i.e., weakening CZMA consistency arguably will do little to increase OCS development. A better and more consistent course for the Administration and Congress would be to support the CZMA, while improving the consistency process and procedures. In fact, the CZMA could serve as model for effective intergovernmental coordination and communication in this age of devolution.

Current regulations fail because states need more power for effective environmental protectionAdler 7/14 JONATHAN H. ADLER- Johan Verheij Memorial Professor Of Law Director, Center For Business Law And Regulation Case Western Reserve University School Of Law Senior Fellow Property & Environment Research Center “House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Environment and the Economy Hearing” http://insurancenewsnet.com/oarticle/2014/07/14/house-energy-and-commerce-subcommittee-on-environment-and-the-economy-hearing-a-529739.html#.U8fUN41dXIo emk

There are many reasons to believe that environmental protections would be more successful, and environmental programs would be

more cost-effective, were responsibility divided between the federal and state governments in a more justifiable manner. Ideally, the federal government should reorient its efforts toward those areas in which the federal government possesses an institutional advantage, due to economies of scale (as with scientific research), or where state and local governments are incapable of addressing environmental problems, such as where there are substantial interstate spillovers. Ensuring a greater "match" between the scope of environmental problems and the institutions entrusted with

addressing such concerns would enhance the efficiency, effectiveness, and equity of existing environmental protection efforts. n88 Seeking to expand federal environmental regulations to the outermost limits of federal regulatory authority is not a recipe for effective environmental policies. The federal government, like all governments, has limited resources. Congress only appropriates so much money to federal regulatory agencies and there is only so much time federal regulators may devote to any given concern. In addition, there are inherent limits to what central regulatory agencies are able to accomplish due to information and other constraints. These realities strongly counsel focusing federal efforts on those environmental concerns that have a distinctively federal character and in those areas where states are particularly unlikely or

unable to address environmental problems, such as when activities in one state spill over into another. Authorizing - or, worse, mandating - the federal government to oversee and regulate all manner of localized environmental concerns is wasteful and inefficient - and sacrifices opportunities for meaningful environmental gains. Short of rewriting existing environmental statutes, one way of providing greater state flexibility and freeing the federal government to focus on truly national concerns would be to create a formal mechanism whereby states could opt out of some federal regulatory requirements. Elsewhere I have proposed a policy of "ecological forbearance," under which states could petition federal agencies for waivers from federal requirements where there are no compelling reasons to enforce the federal rule. n89 Such a policy would enable states to experiment with alternative means of environmental protection, thereby reopening the laboratories of democracy in environmental policy. It also would have the potential to free up federal resources to focus on those areas in which interstate spillovers or economies of scale require greater federal

involvement. Despite the environmental successes of the past three decades, the overlapping and contradictory state and federal rules do not lead to efficient or effective environmental protection. It is in some senses an historical accident that state leadership in environmental policy was supplanted by federal regulation, and environmental policy could be improved if states regained more of their historic role. The federal government did not come to dominate environmental policy because a more decentralized system was leading to environmental ruin, and much of the what the federal government does in environmental policy could be left to the states. Thus constitutional constraints on federal power in environmental policy is nothing to fear. Indeed, environmental protection could be improved if federal dominance was confined to those areas in which the federal government has something unique to contribute.

States tighten more than the federal governmentHogue 3/31/14 Cheryl Hogue U.S. Environmental Protection Agency regulation of chemicals; international climate change policy; global environmental treaties; governance of geoengineering; EPA research; federal regulatory policies. Congress Considers States’ Regulations http://cen.acs.org/articles/92/i13/Congress-Considers-StatesRegulations.html

For years, states have taken steps to regulate commercial chemicals that aren’t controlled by existing federal rules. Washington, Maine, and California have led the way. For instance, makers of toys, potty chairs, and other children’s items must report to Washington state whether their products contain vinyl chloride, cobalt compounds, or some 60 other substances the state lists as “chemicals of high concern to children.” Maine has reporting requirements similar to Washington’s. Through these, Maine officials learned which household paints contain nonylphenol ethoxylates—surfactants being phased out of laundry detergents because they break down into nonylphenol, a compound toxic to aquatic organisms. California is taking a different approach. A state initiative will require

consumer product manufacturers to find safer alternatives or to eliminate substances the state determines are risky to people’s health. Now, Congress is weighing whether to strip Washington, Maine, California, and other states of the authority to regulate chemicals in these and other ways. As it stands, if the Environmental Protection Agency hasn’t regulated a commercial chemical under the federal Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), states now are free to restrict that chemical. And states—concerned with the health and safety of their citizenry—are acting because the 38-year-old TSCA makes it cumbersome to nearly impossible for EPA to control chemicals in commerce. States are taking on key roles that EPA can’t because of weaknesses in the outdated TSCA, said Michael Belliveau, executive director of the Environmental Health Strategy Center, a Maine-based advocacy group. The laws in Maine and Washington, for instance, have provided information about chemicals in products that wasn’t publicly available before, Belliveau told C&EN. Industry and advocacy groups, including Belliveau’s, are calling for Congress to modernize TSCA and make it easier for EPA to act on chemicals that pose serious risk to health or the environment. Legislators on Capitol Hill are actively working on doing just that. But a major sticking point for lawmakers is whether states should keep their

authority on commercial substances. Environmental and health activists, joined by a number of state attorneys general and some businesses, want states to retain their existing authority. Democrats, for the most part, agree. On the other hand, chemical manufacturers are calling for TSCA rewrite legislation to override existing and future state laws on commercial substances. Many Republicans back this stance. Chemical manufacturers are worried about the increasing number of bans that states have imposed on certain substances in products, such as bisphenol A in baby

formula cans. But they are most alarmed about laws establishing state programs for chemical regulation, like those in

Washington, Maine, and California. They see a growing patchwork of state regulations. “This year alone, 15 state legislatures have introduced unique chemical regulation proposals,” the American Chemistry Council, an association of chemical manufacturers, told C&EN. Uncertainty

about how these wide-ranging state efforts will shake out has ACC troubled. “If enacted, these programs would take varying approaches for identifying chemicals and products that would be potentially targeted for action.” Sympathetic to the chemical industry’s concerns is Rep. John M. Shimkus (R-Ill.). He is a pivotal player in TSCA reform as chairman of the House of Representatives Energy & Commerce Subcommittee on Environment & the Economy. In late February, Shimkus released a draft Republican bill, not yet formally introduced, to modernize TSCA. It would preempt state chemical laws (C&EN, March 10, page 7).

States have already implemented antiwarming effortsCama 07/14 Timothy Cama-TheHill reporter http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/212165-study-states-can-handle-epa-power-plant-rules “Study: States can handle EPA power plant rules”

An independent analysis of the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) proposal to limit carbon dioxide pollution from power plants concluded that states are “well positioned” to handle the federal government’s requirements under the rules. The Analysis Group said Monday that there will be costs associated with compliance, but “such costs will be much lower than the benefits to public health and to the overall economy from lower CO2 and other air emissions.” If states design programs effectively, near-term electricity rate increases will be modest, and electric bills will fall in the long run, the group said. “Several states have already put a price on carbon dioxide pollution, and their economies are doing fine,” Susan Tierney, an adviser at the group who worked on the report, said in a statement. “The bottom line: the economy can handle — and actually benefit from — these rules.” The Analysis Group, a consulting firm, made its conclusions based on states that have already made efforts to reduction carbon pollution. The Energy Foundation and the Merck Family Fund — two groups that advocate for energy efficiency — provided funding for the research, but the Analysis Group said its report was

independent. The EPA has devoted much of the last month and a half to promoting the proposal, aiming for a smooth rollout while shoring up support for it. The agency predicted that electricity prices would increase due to the rule, but energy efficiency measures would result in net decreases in power bills.

States can do moreChou 7/16/14 Ben Chou policy analyst for NRDC's water program in Washington, DC “Obama Administration Recognizes the Climate-Resiliency Benefits of Green Infrastructure” http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/bchou/obama_administration_recognize.html

As we‘ve seen play out repeatedly in communities across the U.S., the impacts of climate change are already here. Multiple wildfires are currently burning in Western states, California’s drought is only intensifying, and extreme storms have caused flooding and heavy winds from the East Coast to the Rockies. To help manage these extremes, federal agencies, states, and local communities are increasingly taking action. For example, California state officials just yesterday took unprecedented action to curtail water waste amid an historic drought. And today, the Obama Administration revealed a range of actions to help state and local communities better prepare for climate change impacts. These actions provide critical resources and further help communities across the country become more resilient to the climate change impacts already being experienced and those expected in the future. As part of President Obama’s announcement, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is launching a Green Infrastructure Collaborative to further the implementation of green infrastructure practices in communities across the U.S. Working collaboratively, federal agencies will provide funding for green infrastructure projects in at least 25 communities across the country, provide technical assistance to help cities incorporate green infrastructure into planning efforts, and recognize and award innovative green infrastructure projects. As I’ve written about previously, green infrastructure techniques (e.g., green roofs, rain gardens, roadside plantings, porous pavement, and rainwater harvesting) are an important component for making communities more resilient to climate risks. These techniques use soils and vegetation in the built environment to absorb runoff close to where it falls, helping to reduce the flooding risks associated with more frequent and intense rainfall events. They also provide numerous other benefits such as greening the urban landscape, enhancing water supplies, cutting heating and cooling energy costs, and enhancing property values. While we fully support President Obama’s efforts to make communities better prepared for climate change impacts, there are more opportunities for federal agencies to act to promote green infrastructure. First and foremost, EPA should resume its efforts to set national standards to control runoff pollution using green infrastructure. As my colleague Jon Devine explained last year in this post – and as remains true today – EPA passed on a golden opportunity to implement green infrastructure to protect water quality and to reduce urban flood risks. States also can provide more opportunities for green infrastructure projects. We recently completed an issue paper discussing how EPA’s Clean Water and Drinking Water State Revolving Funds (SRFs) can be utilized to make communities more resilient. Specifically, the SRFs can better support green infrastructure projects by scoring projects that integrate green infrastructure higher, requiring projects intended to reduce sewer overflows or improve stormwater management to implement cost-effective green infrastructure measures, and setting aside a certain percentage of funds for green infrastructure projects and programs. Today’s announcement is certainly a step in the right direction, but we’ll continue to push federal agencies to fully consider climate risks in their planning and operations – and to increase reliance on green infrastructure as a climate resiliency strategy – so that all communities have the necessary tools and resources to be better prepared.

Federal enforcement depends on the statesGallucci 7-16 /14 Maria Gallucci covers energy & the environment “White House Outlines Climate Change Initiatives To Protect States, Cities And Tribes From Effects Of Global Warming” http://www.ibtimes.com/white-house-outlines-climate-change-initiatives-protect-states-cities-tribes-effects-1629842

President Obama is set to unveil a series of climate change initiatives on Wednesday aimed at helping communities across the country prepare for rising sea levels, enduring droughts, more frequent flooding and other warming-related issues. The actions are based on earlier recommendations by the president’s State, Local and Tribal Leaders Task Force on Climate Preparedness. The group of 26 officials has been meeting since November to discuss how federal agencies can best respond to communities’ needs as more disruptive weather events could strain water and electricity supplies, the New York Times reported. A White House climate change report in May, called the National Climate Assessment, found that climate change is likely to affect every location in the United States The task force and its initiatives are part of Obama’s broader Climate Action Plan, which

operates under the aegis of the president’s executive power, to take decisive action in the face of political resistance and gridlock in Congress. Last month, he outlined an Environmental Protection Agency plan to require states to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from power plants within their borders. The proposal faces stiff opposition from some Republican lawmakers and coal-state Democrats who argue the carbon cuts would hamstring state economies and destroy the coal industry. Obama will meet with the task force on Wednesday for the final time, the Hill reported. The members, including four Republican officials, will submit their final recommendations to the White House this fall. The measures involve a slew of initiatives at a

number of federal agencies, including: · Department of Agriculture. The department will award nearly $240 million to eight states to help improve electricity infrastructure in rural areas. A government study released earlier this year found that climate change will hamper utility companies’ ability to provide power as extreme weather damages power lines and hotter temperatures drive up electricity demand, the Times noted. The agency is also expected to announce funds for rural areas struggling with drought. · U.S. Geological Survey. The scientific agency and other federal partners will spend $13.1 million to develop an advanced 3-D mapping system that will help local governments with water resource planning, identifying landslide areas and reducing coastal erosion. · Department of Interior. The largest U.S. landowner will establish a $10 million program through its Bureau of Indian Affairs to train tribal leaders on climate resilience initiatives and provide technical assistance. Obama will also direct Interior Secretary Sally Jewell and EPA chief Gina McCarthy to create an interagency group that will provide tribes with climate change data, the Hill said. · Federal Emergency Management Agency. FEMA will release new guidance for multi-hazard mitigation plans -- last issued in 2008 -- to ensure that states consider climate change as they plan for future natural disasters. The agency will also create a Mitigation Integration Task Force to help

communities struck by disasters not only with recovery, but by making them stronger and safer. · National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The NOAA,

a scientific agency, will provide new guidance on coastal management to help localities account for the impacts of climate change on coastal environments, including higher sea levels, eroding beaches and stronger storm surges. · Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. America’s public health institute will publish a guide called “Assessing Health Vulnerability to Climate Change” to help identify health risks associated with climate change. The guide will follow a White House report released in June that outlines six major health issues that Americans could face because of rising global temperatures, including an increase in heat strokes, higher incidents of asthma attacks and the spread of infectious diseases.

National Ocean Policy failsHall 12 Marleanna Hall projects coordinator at the Resource Development “Looming ocean policy: How will it impact Alaska?” http://www.akrdc.org/newsletters/2012/april/loomingoceanpolicy.html emk

The National Ocean Council recently accepted comments on the Draft Implementation Plan of the National Ocean Policy, a policy that will likely add another layer of bureaucracy with no added benefit to the environment. The National Ocean Policy will likely negatively impact the nation’s economy, adding more regulations to industries including fishing, transportation, oil and gas development, and tourism, causing harm to the livelihood of millions of Americans. Alaskans, with 34,000 miles of coastline, 3,000 rivers, and over three million lakes, have a significant stake in National Ocean Policy, and will be impacted more than other states by the Policy. Coastal and rural Alaskan communities may become financially devastated by National Ocean Policy enforcement. In a March 2 letter, Department of Fish and Game Commissioner Cora Campbell, wrote “Alaska is committed to protecting the health and productivity of its coastal and marine resources.” She noted that any major proposed policy change related to the oceans has the State’s full attention. The Draft Plan includes 53 actions and almost 300 benchmarks, of which more than half are supposed to be completed by the end of 2013. The Draft Plan calls for the federal government to make a “land grab” of millions of acres, both on and offshore, as well as apply regulations to both land and water based activities . It is a policy of RDC to support efforts to

reduce federal interference and devolve more authority to the states. The National Ocean Policy does not do

that. Alaska’s resources are vital to its economy. Alaska, and the U.S., can benefit from largely untapped resources such as the

estimated 27 billion barrels of oil and the 132 trillion cubic feet of natural gas in the Outer Continental Shelf. RDC recently advocated that development of these resources must not be further restricted or further hindered by unnecessary bureaucratic delay. As currently proposed, National Ocean Policy will further limit domestic energy development and harm the nation’s economy, business and industry leaders warn. They maintain that access to resources must be allowed, and uncertainty and unnecessary regulations that offer no added benefit to the environment avoided. Responsible development of these resources creates jobs in rural Alaska communities. Local economies could be at risk if overly burdensome regulations are added to existing and new projects. In part, Alaska was granted statehood due to its vast natural resources, with Congress expecting the new 49th state to utilize its natural resources to build and sustain its economy. RDC Executive Director, Rick Rogers, testified April 2 to the U.S. House Natural Resources Committee’s Subcommittee on Fisheries, Oceans, Wildlife and Insular Affairs in Anchorage addressing “Alaska’s Sovereignty In Peril: The National Ocean Policy’s Goal To Federalize Alaska.” Congressman Don Young hosted the Alaska meeting, and U.S. Senator Lisa Murkowski was also present.

States have better regulations-regionalismAdler 98 Johnathan H. Adler Professor of Law at Case Western “A New Environmental Federalism” http://home.earthlink.net/~jhadler/federalism.html

Comparing state and federal resource management creates another stark picture. National forests lose money on timber sales and have a poor record of environmental protection; state forests, such as those in Montana, turn a profit form timber management and have superior environmental performance.16 States such as Texas and New Hampshire have taken steps to make their parks self-sufficient while improving the services offered to local residents.17 Environmental concern has focused on the plight of fisheries in recent years,

and with good reason. Overfishing plagues many fish stocks. Virginia implemented individual transferable quotas for a state fishery, and the program is popular with environmentalists and fishers alike. Yet federal law prohibits regional fishing councils from adopting similar steps in coastal fisheries purportedly under federal protection. State officials, closer to the environmental and economic concerns of their residents than those of federal officials, are seeking to solve environmental problems. Regrettably, federal environmental standards and regulatory requirements stand in the way. States that attempt new approaches to pressing problems often must seek federal approval; failure to comply with EPA demands can result in severe sanctions, including the loss of highway funds and the direct

imposition of federal controls. Federal environmental regulations, along with the mindset that all environmental problems require national solutions, are a serious obstacle to the policy innovation necessary to address contemporary environmental concerns.

STATES SOLVE CLIMATE

State government practices set a model for federal solutionsFischer 10 Douglas Fischer, Chief Editor at The Daily Climate, “Local Governments Lead Efforts to Combat Climate Change”, May 21, 2010, http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/local-governments-lead-efforts-to-combat-climate-change/

Call them the Silicon Valley garages of climate policy. Local efforts to trim emissions, change economies and alter behavior are serving as idea labs where mistakes can be made and novel approaches honed in preparation for setting national climate and energy policy. These ideas can have a powerful influence in the climate debate, say policy experts: Within the recently released climate bill are many lessons learned in these local laboratories. And as discussion in Congress intensifies, many lawmakers will find themselves pushed by proponents of these municipal efforts to extend their reach to the national stage. "There's no doubt cities are the place where all these things are being tried," said Julia Parzan, coordinator of the Urban Sustainability Directors Network, a group of civic leaders dedicated to sharing the experiences of various municipal sustainable development efforts. "And when they're hitting walls, they're going for (changes in) state policy and federal policy." Exhibit A is the firestorm of revisions to municipal codes and state laws concerning how residential renewable energy and energy efficiency projects are financed. It started in the spring of 2007, when staffers for the City of Berkeley, Calif., were casting about for a way to make roof-top solar affordable for a typical homeowner. The ah-ha moment came as Cisco DeVries, then the top aide to Mayor Tom Bates, was untangling some knots in a neighborhood push to establish an underground utilities district, where homeowners agree to taxes on their properties to bury electric wires and cables.

State governments are key to proper Climate Change response – geographic locationICLEI 7 Local Governments for Sustainability, Center for Science in the Earth System (The Climate Impacts Group) Joint Institute for the Study of the Atmosphere and Ocean University of Washington, “Preparing for Climate Change: A Guidebook for Local, Regional, and State Governments”, http://www.icleiusa.org/action-center/planning/adaptation-guidebook

There are several fundamental reasons for local, regional and state governments to be proactive in preparing for climate change impacts. Localities, regions and states are on the front lines of climate change impacts, and have a responsibility to respond. Climate change is a global trend, but one which localities, regions and states will experience to different degrees and in different ways. Also, by nature, public programs and policy strategies designed at the federal or international level have a limited level of specificity, whereas local, regional and state governments are in a stronger position to tailor climate change preparedness strategies to their specific circumstances, and to the unique set of climate change impacts that they expect to face. Therefore, while higher levels of government can and must provide funding and support for climate change preparedness strategies on the ground, local, regional and state governments have an equal or even greater responsibility to plan proactively as well.

FEDERALISM GOOD

Federalism is vital to individual rights in the USYoung and Blondel 13 (Ernest A. Young is a professor for the Duke University School of Law, Dartmouth debater, NDT semifinalist. Erin C. Blondel is an associate at Robbins, Russell, Englert, Orseck, Untereiner & Sauber LLP. September 17th, 2013. “Federalism, Liberty, and Equality in United States v. Windsor.” http://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/serials/files/supreme-court-review/2013/9/youngblondel.pdf. MV.)

Less well understood is that rights and structure intersect at the doctrinal level as well. The Court’s opinion in Windsor beautifully

illustrates that intersection . Federalism principles played a critical role in defining the contours of the equality

right at stake, limiting which governmental interests could weigh against that right, and influencing the level of

deference that the Court owed to how Congress had weighed those rights and interests . Rather than choosing

between federalism and rights-based approaches to the case, Windsor demonstrated how federalism can become an integral part of the rights calculus.

Federalism is key to strong free tradeCalebresi 95 (Stephen Calebresi, Associate Professor, Northwestern University School of Law. B.A. 1980, J.D. 1983, Yale, “Reflections on United States v. Lopez: "A GOVERNMENT OF LIMITED AND ENUMERATED POWERS": IN DEFENSE OF UNITED STATES v. LOPEZ,” 94 Mich. L. Rev. 752, Michigan Law Review, December, 1995, MV)

A fourth and vital advantage to international federations is that they can promote the free movement of goods and labor both among the

components of the federation by reducing internal transaction costs and internationally by providing a unified front that reduces the costs of collective action when bargaining with other federations and nations. This reduces the barriers to an enormous range of utility-maximizing transactions thereby producing an enormous increase in social wealth. Many federations have been formed in part for this reason, including the United States, the European Union, and the British Commonwealth, as well as all the trade-specific "federations" like the GATT and NAFTA.

Free trade boosts human rightsHafner-Burton 13 (Emilie M. Hafner-Burton is a professor at the Graduate School of International Relations and Pacific Studies and director of the School’s new Laboratory on International Law and Regulation. July 2nd 2013. “Forced to be Good.” http://books.google.com/books?id=BjrQ6YQC6d8C&source=gbs_navlinks_s. MV.)

When the International Bill of Human Rights took effect in 1976, no PTAs said anything about protecting the rights of people or

enforcing those rights through the suspension of agreements. Today, rules about human dignity have become a

legitimate domain of commerce to be regulated through preferential trade agreements almost everywhere .

PTAs govern various types of human rights in more than one hundred and fifty countries at present , supplying

rhetoric and rules linking markets to standards protecting people's human rights.6 These are standards continually dis-missed by the World Trade Organization (WTO), which says little about protecting human beings! The United States has signed free trade agreements promoting human rights for workers and children with almost two dozen countries, and several more agreements are being negotiated. Europe has signed trade agreements protecting fundamental human rights and freedoms with more than one hundred countries, and still more are under way. Many of these rules are enforceable through trade penalties.8 What do these regulations look like? The US free trade agreement with Singapore, which took effect in 2004, is one example. This agreement obliges parties to "strive to ensure" that human rights—in particular, the right of association; the right to organize and bargain collectively; labor protections for children; and acceptable minimum wages, hours of work, and safe health conditions—"are

recognized and protected by domestic law" (Article 17.1). It requires that both the U nited S tates and Singapore

effectively enforce these laws and promote public awareness of them

CAN DEVOLVE POWER TO STATES

Devolution would produce a more effective and efficient countryJanes 01 (Jackson Janes is the Executive Director of the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies at the Johns Hopkins University in Washington, DC, where he has been affiliated since 1989. 2001, “Reforming Governance,” http://books.google.com/books?id=n4yAkvR2kTAC, MV)

Proponents of real devolution argue that it will produce a more efficient and effective federal government and more

robust and responsive states . The generally recognized objectives of devolution include (1) more efficient provision and production of

public services; (2) better alignment of the costs and benefits of government for a diverse citizenry; (3) better fits between public goods and their spatial characteristics; (4) increased competition, experimentation, and innovation in the public sector; (5) greater responsiveness to citizen preferences; and (6) more transparent accountability in policymaking.

Congress has the authority to devolve power to the States – welfare provesMichigan in Brief 98 (Michigan in Brief, a reference docutment about Michigan state government and policy, April 1st 1998, “Devolution,” http://www.michiganinbrief.org/edition06/text/issues/issue-20.htm, MV)

Perhaps the most visible devolved policy has been in the welfare system. In the early 1990s several governors began pushing for flexibility in the way they were permitted to use federal dollars to operate safety-net programs, most notably welfare and health. Various governors (including Michigan’s John Engler) sought and were granted waivers enabling their states to deviate from standard, federally established procedures for delivering certain human services programs, including AFDC (Aid to Families with Dependent Children). State chief executives in both parties, united under the umbrella of the National Governors Association, brought about a series of state and federal actions that altered the roles of the various layers of government: They gained increased state authority to determine the scope of public policy. Following success with their initial waiver efforts, the governors began seeking broader shifts in public policy and found an ally in Bill Clinton who, during his 1992 campaign, had promised to "end welfare as we know it." In August 1996, President Clinton signed a welfare reform bill that fulfilled that promise. Known as the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA), it ends the federally established AFDC program and delegates authority to state governments to design and implement Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF). States still receive federal money—although the amount is diminishing—but they now have considerable flexibility in how they use it; they are designing programs that serve their own needs best. The result is that among the states there are differing eligibility standards, various eligibility time limits, and divergent work/training requirements tied to receiving benefits. In some states, decision-making authority has been further devolved, to the county or local level; in the latter case, many communities have formed nonprofit organizations to structure and deliver programs. Others have opted for letting the private sector handle, through

contract, what traditionally were government service-delivery responsibilities . Devolution of the welfare system is but one

example of the trend toward shifting greater authority to the states and limiting federal government’s role . For

example, Congress has adopted legislation that will severely limit the federal government’s role in agricultural production,

Congress has the authority to devolve power to the States – speed limit provesYowell 05 (Robert O. Yowell is an assistant professor of Political Science at Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches, Texas. June 21st, 2005. “The Evolution and Devolution of Speed Limit Law and the Effect on Fatality Rates.” http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1541-1338.2005.00152.x/full)

Speed limits were the province of the states until the 1970s when, in an effort to save energy, the central government nationalized

the maximum speed at 55 miles per hour. The national standard remained until the 1980s, when a partial devolution

transferred some power to set speed limits back to the individual states . At that time, states could increase the

maximum speed to 65 miles per hour on (at fewest) four-lane, controlled access highways in low population density areas. Some

states elected to loosen the limits within their borders, while others did not, citing concerns of highway safety as paramount . The

1990s saw the complete devolution of speed limit control to the states, when Congress returned to the states

unlimited control .

PREEMPTION DOCTRINE

Federal preemption doctrine makes the counterplan mutually exclusiveYoung 99 Ernest A. Young, Visiting Assistant Professor of Law, Villanova University School of Law. B.A., Dartmouth College, 1990; J.D., Harvard Law School, 1993. (NDT Semifinalist debating for Dartmouth)The George Washington Law Review January, 1999 67 Geo. Wash. L. Rev. 273 ARTICLE: Preemption at Sea lexis

Preemption occurs when federal law trumps state lawmaking authority, either because the state law conflicts with federal law, or because Congress is taken to have intended that no state should regulate the particular area at issue. n101 Gibbons v. Ogden, n102 for example, recognized that [as] to such acts of the State Legislatures ... [that] interfere with, or are contrary to the laws of Congress, made in pursuance of the constitution, ... in every such case, the act of Congress ... is supreme; and the law of the State, though enacted in the exercise of powers not controverted, must yield to it. n103Preemption is peculiarly an issue of concurrent power: The problem arises only where both the federal and state governments are assumed, in the absence of action by the other, to have authority to regulate the particular issue involved. n104 [*289] The basic principles of preemption law are well established, if not entirely free from theoretical dispute. n105 A typical formulation runs as follows:The Supremacy Clause of Article VI of the Constitution provides Congress with the power to pre-empt state law. Preemption occurs when Congress, in enacting a federal statute, expresses a clear intent to pre-empt state law, when there is outright or actual conflict between federal and state law, where compliance with both federal and state law is in effect physically impossible, where there is implicit in federal law a barrier to state regulation, where Congress has legislated comprehensively, thus occupying an entire field of regulation and leaving no room for the States to supplement federal law, or where the state law stands as an obstacle to the accomplishment and execution of the full objectives of Congress. n106

Preemption applies to ocean policyYoung 99 Ernest A. Young, Visiting Assistant Professor of Law, Villanova University School of Law. B.A., Dartmouth College, 1990; J.D., Harvard Law School, 1993. (NDT Semifinalist debating for Dartmouth)The George Washington Law Review January, 1999 67 Geo. Wash. L. Rev. 273 ARTICLE: Preemption at Sea lexis

In this Article, Professor Young proposes that the present approach to maritime preemption should be abandoned. That approach - under which the general maritime law made by federal courts almost always preempts state law - has never crystallized into a coherent or workable rule. And any broad rule of maritime preemption is inconsistent not only with Erie, but also with the founding generation's assumptions about maritime law and with modern preemption doctrine. Professor Young concludes that admiralty law should have no preemptive effect, and that other mechanisms can adequately protect the legitimate federal interests that exist in maritime cases

Ocean salmon ranching example proves federal preemptionEfaplomatidis 2K Maria Efaplomatidis, law student St. John's Journal of Legal Commentary Fall, 2000 15 St. John's J.L. Comm. 25 NOTE: FEDERAL PREEMPTION OF STATE SAFETY REGULATIONS: INTERNATIONAL ASS'N OF INDEP. TANKER OWNERS V. LOCKE

n19. See U.S. Const. art. III, 2, cl. 1 (stating that judicial power extends "to all Cases of admiralty and maritime jurisdiction"); see also Harrington, supra note 7, at 4 (arguing that Admiralty Clause bars any delegation of maritime power from federal government to states); see, e.g., Berg, supra note 18, at 112 (noting that Admiralty Clause has been used as source of federal preemption of ocean ranching regulation). But cf. Ernst A. Young, Preemption at Sea, 67 Geo. Wash. L. Rev. 273, 277 (1999) (asserting that clause is not valid basis for federal preemption rights in maritime law).

Courts will strike down state laws even when Congress expressly does not preempt oil spill example provesAschenbeck 1 Kristen A. Aschenbeck, J.D. candidate 2001, University of San Diego School of LawSan Diego Law Review Summer, 2001 38 San Diego L. Rev. 951 lexis

Prior to the Locke decision, coastal states such as Washington, pursuant to the "savings clauses" contained in the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 (OPA 90), n5 enacted more stringent laws than those passed by Congress. OPA 90 and its savings clauses n6 establish liability standards and financial prerequisites associated with the release of oil into the marine environment. n7 The State of Washington maintained that Congress "expressly indicated its intent not to preempt

state law in the [*953] field of oil-spill prevention when it passed 1018 of the Oil Pollution Act of 1990." n8 The Supreme Court declined to apply such a broad interpretation of section 1018. The Court emphasized the importance of a uniform federal regime and applied an expanded preemption analysis to strike down most of the challenged Washington laws concerning oil tankers. n9

Federal law can implicitly preempt – does not have to be in the planMassaro 1 Deborah J. Massaro, law student Delaware Journal of Corporate Law 2001 26 Del. J. Corp. L. 585 COMMENT: REMOVAL OF THE ERISA PREEMPTION SHIELD: WILL THE THIRD CIRCUIT'S APPROACH MAKE A DIFFERENCE? -IN RE U.S. HEALTHCARE, INC. LEXIS

C. Preemption DoctrineThe Supremacy Clause of the United States Constitution grants Congress the power to preempt state law. n30 This clause states that the law of the federal government "shall be the supreme Law of the Land; . . . any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any state to the Contrary notwithstanding." n31 Empowered by this clause, there are three ways in which Congress may preempt a state law. n32 Congress may expressly or implicitly preempt state law when enacting federal legislation. n33 Additionally, to the extent that a state law conflicts with a federal law, the federal law will preempt the state law. n34

STATES CAN PAY

State tax base is the same as federal – if aff can pay, so can counterplanMason, 2013 (Ruth Mason is a Hunton & Williams Professor of Law, has a J.D., Harvard Law School, 2001, an a B.A., Columbia University, 1997. April 2013. “DELEGATING UP: STATE CONFORMITY WITH THE FEDERAL TAX BASE” Duke Law Journal. http://scholarship.law.duke.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3382&context=dlj)

Whereas Congress uses tax incentives to affect the behavior of private taxpayers, this Article argues that federal tax incentives also affect the states because most states incorporate federal definitions of income into their own tax laws. For example, the starting point for calculating individual income taxes in almost all states is the taxpayer’s federal “adjusted gross income” or “taxable income.” As this Article explains, these federal income definitions reflect a variety of controversial tax policy decisions made at the federal level. When states incorporate by reference federal income definitions, states automatically import federal tax policies into state law. Although states set their own income tax rates, and although states deviate from federal tax law on some issues, all state income taxes closely track the federal tax base. The usual reason given for federal-state tax-base conformity is administrability. Assessing state income taxes upon the federal tax base eases states’ legislative and enforcement burdens, and it reduces taxpayers’ compliance burdens. This Article provides a fuller account of the benefits of tax-base conformity. For example, state conformity with the federal tax base results in states using the same tax bases as each other—that is, federal-state tax-base conformity results in de facto state tax-base harmonization. Among other advantages, state tax-base harmonization facilitates interstate commerce by reducing transaction costs for taxpayers with economic activities in more than one state. Harmonization also reduces the risk to taxpayers of double state taxation, as well as the risk to states of tax-base erosion through tax arbitrage. Finally, state bases that conform with the federal base also likely contain fewer protectionist provisions or provisions that discriminate against residents of other states than would autonomously drafted state tax bases.

STATES MISC Cooperation between the states and the federal solves betterGibbons 1 Lieutenant Patrick J. Gibbons B.A., University of Virginia, 1992; M.A., University of Virginia, 1993; J.D., University of Virginia 2001 “Too Much of a Good Thing? Federal Supremacy & the Devolution of Regulatory Power: The Case of the Coastal Zone Management Act” emk

The federal environmental legislation of the 1970s has as its hallmark the "cooperative federalism" approach to di-viding state and federal [*98] responsibility and authority. n128 Cooperative federalism was Congress's answer to the challenge of finding the best possible fit between environmental problems and regulatory responses. n129 The goal of cooperative federalism is to preserve state autonomy and responsibility while providing a level of uniformity to envi-ronmental programs. n130 Generally, states are given the opportunity to assume all or a portion of the responsibility for a regulatory program provided they meet standards set by Congress or a designated agency. n131 As an additional incen-tive, the federal government usually funds at least part of the program. n132 The resulting scheme balances the "general perception that groups seeking better levels of environmental quality are relatively more effective at the federal level, and, therefore, federal regulation is likely to be more protective of the environment" n133 against the argument that the states are the more appropriate vehicle of regulation. n134 Cooperative federalism offers some distinct advantages over more or less-centralized systems. Ideally, it moves de-cision-making to the lowest level of government that can internalize all the economic consequences of a decision and still conform to central government policies. n135 Varieties of cooperative federalism such as the Coastal Zone Manage-ment Act also provide state oversight of federal compliance; the federal government, as the Stratton Commission recog-nized, is itself a major polluter. n136 With cooperative federalism, "United States environmental policy makers have es-tablished a clear trend towards independent oversight of all governmental polluters." n137 There are however strong arguments in favor of centralizing some environmental decisions. Professor Daniel Esty points out that the psychological externalities of local decisions may not be captured by a decentralized system, particu-larly when the boundaries of a resource or problem [*99] are not fixed. n138 "Decentralized decision-making may ex-clude from representation, albeit passively, the views of significant numbers of citizens." n139 His proposed solution to this "choice of public" n140 problem is to set decision-making power at the appropriate community (rather than political) level, defined by citizenship instead of geographic boundaries. n141 For example, management decisions related to the Grand Canyon should arguably reflect the value all Americans place on the Grand Canyon and not just that of Arizo-nans. n142

Government interferes with state actionGibbons 1 Lieutenant Patrick J. Gibbons B.A., University of Virginia, 1992; M.A., University of Virginia, 1993; J.D., University of Virginia 2001 “Too Much of a Good Thing? Federal Supremacy & the Devolution of Regulatory Power: The Case of the Coastal Zone Management Act” emk

In bifurcating the consistency requirement between federal agency activities and federally-licensed or permitted ac-tivities, Congress created two levels of consistency activity. n167 In the case of federal agency activity, federal lands are specifically excluded from the state coastal zone and the state CZMP. n168 Nevertheless, activities which "directly affect" the coastal zone must be consistent with the state CZMP to "the maximum extent practicable." n169 "Directly affecting" is an expansion of state authority from the earlier "in the coastal zone" language of the 1972 Act which Congress amended to address Secretary of the Interior v. California. n170 "To the maximum extent practicable" is intended to en-sure a high level of compliance while still allowing for unforeseen changes in circumstance. n171 The fact that activity takes place on federal lands limits the state's ability to interfere directly with the activity but does not exempt it from a consistency determination. n172 It is intended to impact only those activities which the federal agency has undertaken within its discretion, i.e. activities it is not otherwise required to undertake. n173 In the arena of federally-licensed or permitted activities, states have more direct power. The person or organization petitioning for a permit or [*103] license must attach a certification to the application stating that the activity is con-sistent with the state CZMP. n174 It must submit a copy to the state as well for its review, n175 and the burden is on the applicant to prove that its proposed activity is consistent. n176 Within the prescribed time for action, the state may object to the activity and prevent it. n177 This effectively results in state veto power over activity that would otherwise be feder-ally controlled. n178 States are limited in this respect only as to matters of overriding national interest. n179 In California Coastal Comm'n v. Granite Rock Co., the Supreme Court decided the question of whether the federal lands exemption pre-empted state regulatory authority over private activities conducted on federal land. n180 Granite Rock was a mining company with a permit to mine federal land. n181 They sued on the theory that mining federal land should be exempt from state regulation under the federal lands exclusion of ß 1456(c)(3). n182 The Court disagreed, citing the Senate Re-port: "There is no attempt to diminish state authority through federal preemption. The intent

of this legislation is to en-hance state authority by encouraging and assisting the states to assume planning and regulatory powers over their coastal zones." n183 State regulations not in conflict with the operation or objectives of federal law are consequently not categorically pre-empted by the CZMA. n184

INDIGENOUS

Counterplans could either 1. exempt indigenous people from the plan – a plan inclusive counterplan, or 2. the counterplans could consult the indigenous.

The counterplan to exempt is LESS than the plan and therefore mutually exclusive. A legitimate perm must include the whole plan, so there is no perm that can solve. Stated differently, any perm that solves is illegitimate because it is a sever perm, it includes less than the entire plan.

The consult counterplan should be written to consult the indigenous and to act only on the condition of consent and in a way approved by those consenting.

You may need to make some theory argument that we have to assume the plan is done now, otherwise the aff could delay action and time frame out of all disadvantages.

The plan and counterplan are mutually exclusive; you cannot both act now unconditionally and act conditionally in the future.

If the plan includes some consultation or cooperation provision, CX must ask if those other than the USFG say no is the plan done anyway.

If the aff says no, then run T. If they say yes, the unconditional/conditional mutually exclusive competition is set up.

OCEAN POLICY CAN INFRINGE ON INDIGENOUS

Tribes have treaty based fishing rights – the plan ignores themNOAA 13 US Department of Commerce, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Tribal MPA Programs October 22, 2013 Tribal MPA Programs http://marineprotectedareas.noaa.gov/aboutmpas/programs/tribal/

Several Indian tribes in Western Washington, Alaska and the Great Lakes have treaty-reserved fishing rights. These tribes share co-management authority and responsibility for marine resources in their usual and customary fishing areas with the federal government and/or states, depending on the specific resource and area identified. Tribes that have sole management authority may choose to establish MPAs as a tool to meet conservation goals for areas where they have management responsibilities.For areas where tribes share co-management authority with the federal government and/or states, any entity wishing to establish MPAs must do so through government-to-government consultations.How will the national system help tribal MPAs?

Courts have held fishing regulations violate indigenous sovereigntyColumbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission 10 The Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission coordinates management policy and provides fisheries technical services for the Yakama, Warm Springs, Umatilla, and Nez Perce tribes. Fisheries Timeline 2010 http://www.critfc.org/about-us/fisheries-timeline/

The Supreme Court upheld   U.S. v. Washington  (Boldt Decision).Columbia River, Puget Sound, and Washington coastal tribes sued the Secretary of Commerce over ocean fishing regulations because a large percentage of treaty fish were being caught in waters managed by the Department of Commerce. Columbia River tribes also sued in 1980, 1981, and 1982 (Confederated Tribes, et al. v. Kreps; Yakama, et al. v. Klutznik; Hoh v. Baldrige; and Yakama, et al. v. Baldrige). As a result, the federal government was held to have a legal obligation to regulate the ocean fishery to ensure that a reasonable number of salmon reached tribal fishing places on the Columbia River. - See more at: http://www.critfc.org/about-us/fisheries-timeline/#sthash.moYll1Y3.dpuf

Native Americans are a major concern in creating policies regarding the Ocean. Wiggins, 09 (Patricia Wiggins served in the California State Assembly and in the California State Senate. November 21, 2009. “Protecting ecosystems -- and our ways of life” http://www.lexisnexis.com/hottopics/lnacademic/)

The Marine Life Protection Act, passed in 1999, mandates a comprehensive review of existing marine reserves, and, when necessary, allows for the creation of new reserves for marine ecosystem protection. This was

a good idea for our state, as well as for the marine life along the nearly 1,100 miles of California coastline. Now we find ourselves with fast-approaching deadlines for the creation of Marine Protected Areas, and some people are awaiting the outcome with

trepidation. They fear the end of their livelihoods, the end of cultural practices, or the hand of "big brother." And they worry that the largest share of the resource will be set aside for conservation, driven by big environmental groups who seek to protect our coast -- whether we want it or not. The planning process for the North Central Coast Region (Monterey to Point Arena) is now winding down, while the North Coast Region (Point Arena to Oregon border) process is just getting started. And what has been the North Coast Region's initial response? Rejection, by virtually all stakeholders, of any and all processes controlled from outside the region, particularly from Sacramento. Nothing brings people together like the hand of

the state. I believe there is a strong link between our environmental interests and our commercial and recreational fishing

interests, as well as our Native American coastal tribes -- we all depend on a clean and well-managed ocean for success. And if the MLPA serves to bring together old antagonists, then surely that's a good thing. I am pleased to see indications that our three counties which make up the North Coast region -- Humboldt, Del Norte and Mendocino -- are moving in the direction of working together with other key stakeholder groups to develop a science-based "external proposal" specifying the designation of Marine Protected Areas for the coast. The Tri County MLPA working group is the first of its kind to be formed as a response to the implementation of the MLPA process. Hopefully, the counties and their collaborators will be well-represented on the regional stakeholder group, so that the external proposal is an on-ramp to a functional process for the whole region. From the onset of the MLPA process for

the coastal regions in the 2nd Senate District, I have been concerned about the people who make their living from, and have long-term cultural ties to, the ocean. Both Native Americans, who are recognized as sovereign nations ,

and people who fish for their families' livelihoods, deserve proper recognition in this process . I am adamant that subsistence practices

and cultural access to the ocean's marine resources must be recognized and honored by the MLPA process. Finally, I think it is very important that any ocean "zoning" recognize other actions in the region. As we determine protected areas, let us also discuss wave energy sites, lease lands for ocean drilling, and the impacts of pipelines and subsurface disturbance, including noise. Any planning efforts for the ocean would be shortsighted if they do not acknowledge current, parallel efforts. There are a host of wonderful and intelligent people who have volunteered for the MLPA process.Local folks from the coast, including David Hankin from the Humboldt State University Fisheries Department and former Assemblywoman Virginia Strom-Martin, will be representing us in this process on the science advisory team and blue ribbon task force, respectively. Humboldt County Supervisor Jimmy Smith will also serve on the

task force. The outcome of the MLPA is designed to be ecosystem driven. It is those ecosystems that support the communities of the coast and ocean. I have faith that the counties, the tribes, the scientists and your representatives can create something that protects the marine ecosystems, and respects the rights and ways of life of the people of the diverse, wonderful North Coast.

MPAs VIOLATE SOVEREIGNTY

MPAs infringe on indigenous fishing rights and deny self determination Thanawala 11 Sudhin Thanawala, Associated Press San Fransisco (AP) February 2011 Tribes lead fight against fishing restrictions http://indiancountrynews.com/index.php/news/193-culture/wildlife/11171-tribes-lead-fight-against-fishing-restrictions

Northern California Native American tribes are clashing with state wildlife regulators over plans to restrict fishing off parts of the rugged coastline from the Oregon border south to Point Arena in Mendocino County.The tribes, including the Yurok, the state's largest, say proposals for marine protection areas along the North Coast infringe on their fishing rights.Those proposals – currently before the state fish and game commission – were crafted under California’s 1999 Marine Life Protection Act, which was aimed in part at preventing overfishing and restoring depleted fisheries. “The main issue is the Marine Life Protection Act has the potential to make criminals out of cultural practitioners,” said Nick Angeloff, historic preservation officer for the Bear River Band of the Rohnerville

Rancheria. “ It is the biggest threat to tribal sovereignty in decades.”Although the state has created marine protected areas along other parts of its coastline, opposition until now has mostly been from commercial fishermen concerned about their livelihoods. On the North Coast, tribes have been the effort’s main critics. At stake for them, tribal representatives say, are cultural practices dating back thousands of years and their sovereign rights. “We are part of this ecosystem,” said Yurok Chairman Thomas O’Rourke, Sr. “We have never stopped gathering. We have never stopped harvesting, and we will continue to gather, hunt and harvest from the waters of the ocean.”

MPAs can infringe on tribal rights. California created an exemption to avoid that problem. The aff plan doesn't do thatBacher 11 Dan Bacher, American Albacore Fishing Association Saturday, February 12th, 2011 Kashia Pomo Tribe Wins Victory in Defense of Tribal Gathering Rights http://www.americanalbacore.com/category/marine-protected-areas/page/2

The Kashia Pomo Tribe in Sonoma County won a major victory in defense of their tribal fishing and gathering rights on Thursday, February 3.The California Fish and Game Commission in Sacramento voted to allow the Tribe to continue gathering and conducting ceremonies in a marine protected area at Stewarts Point. The decision made permanent an emergency provision that the Commission approved last year to allow the Tribe to continue fishing and gathering off the site for one year.“Our people believe we first walked onto the Earth right there at Stewarts Point, and a lot of our traditions are passed down along that coast,” said Reno Franklin, vice chair of the tribe, as quoted in the February 9 article by Matt Weiser in the Sacramento Bee (http://www.sacbee.com/2011/02/09/3387802/state-officials-allow-kashia-pomo.html).Archeological evidence indicates the tribe has used Stewarts Point and the surrounding shoreline for 12,000 years, according to Franklin. It has been a source of food including mussels, abalone, seaweed and fish, as well as a place for ceremonies.

SHOULD CONSULT / GET PRIOR CONSENT

Ocean Foundation 13 The Deep Sea Mining Campaign, a Project of the Ocean Foundation Thursday 7 November 2013 Vanuatu world leader on best practice Deep Sea Mining decision-makinghttp://www.deepseaminingoutofourdepth.org/media-release-vanuatu-world-leader-on-best-practice-deep-sea-mining-decision-making/

[2] Free Prior and Informed ConsentFPIC is recognized in many international law instruments. Of these, the UN Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP, 2007) provides one of the clearest articulations of FPIC. Its key elements are defined as:Free – Consent is free from force, intimidation, manipulation, coercion or pressure by any government or company.Prior – Consent is obtained prior to government authorisations, allocation of exploration permits, operating licences etc.Informed – all the relevant information must be presented to communities and civil society in an accurate, and accessible manner independent of vested interestsConsent – requires that communities and civil society have the right to say “Yes” or “No” to the project in accordance with community decision-making processes and at each stage of a project. It means that civil society can withhold consent or can determine the conditions for consent if it is given

Involving Native Americans in conversations about policies that violate treaty rights create increased participation, can help better maintain ecological systems, and ensure their way of life is maintained. Also, the State was no right to destroy or infringe on treaties. Cosens, 10 (Barbara Cosens: Professor, University of Idaho, College of Law and co-principal investigator on the Waters of the West Initiative; former Assistant Professor, Environmental Studies Program, San Francisco State University; former mediator for the Walker River basin; former legal counsel. 2010 “Transboundary River Governance in the Face of Uncertainty: Resilience Theory and the Columbia River Treaty” Journal of Land, Resources, & Environmental Law. http://www.lexisnexis.com/hottopics/lnacademic/)

The 2009 Columbia River symposium examined both change since 1964, and going forward in five categories: (1)

change in values concerning the river; (2) change in empowerment of local communities and in particular, of Native American and First Nation governments; (3) change in the viability of populations of anadromous fish that spawn within the Columbia River system; (4) change in energy demand; and (5) climate change. This paper will briefly summarize some of the important points raised by participants in the Symposium, supplementing where appropriate from the literature, in each of these categories. Change in values concerning the river: Two approaches to evaluating changes in values were used by participants in the Symposium: examination of the adoption of new laws reflecting a change in societal values concerning the environment; and a reconnaissance level survey of stakeholders in the basin done by students at the University of Montana. n96 The post-1964 law with the largest impact on operation of Columbia River dams on the U.S. side of the border is the Endangered Species Act adopted in 1973. n97 NOAA Fisheries (then National Marine Fisheries Service) began listing anadromous fish in the Columbia River system in 1991, and today eight salmon and four steelhead species that rely on habitat within the basin are listed. n98 Although numerous factors impact these species, operation of dams for hydropower has been identified as a major factor and operation of the Federal Columbia River Power System (the part of the hydropower system at federal dams in the U.S. portion of the basin), has been the subject of numerous Biological Opinions and subsequent challenges resulting recently in what some refer to as operation of the river by the federal district court. n99 Although the ESA and subsequent listings reflect a change in values and [*246] provide a powerful lever for inclusion of issues concerning anadromous fish in any negotiation concerning operation of dams on the river, the current gridlock in the judicial system may be a further indication that the solution will come through a form of governance able to adapt to changing values rather than a lawsuit. Environmental historians Paul Hirt n100 and Adam Sowards n101 looked at a more subtle yet pervasive change in laws that reflect a trend surely to impact any effort to update the Columbia River Treaty. Beginning with, or resulting in, the passage of the Freedom of Information Act in 1966, n102 and the National Environmental Policy Act in 1970, n103 the expectation of the public for access to and participation in governmental decision making began to increase dramatically in the United States. n104 As evidenced by contributions to the book to follow the Symposium by scholars studying implementation of the European Union Water Framework Directive, n105 this phenomenon is not confined to the United States. n106 This global demand for greater public input to natural resource decision making is also evidenced in the adoption of NEPA-like requirement in over eighty countries, n107 and the inclusion of public involvement requirements for water development projects funded by the World Bank. n108 As will be discussed below, utilization of this greater demand for participation can actually contribute to resilience in water resource governance. A reconnaissance level situation assessment of stakeholders in the Columbia River basin done by students at the University of Montana under the direction of consortium member Dr. Matthew McKinney confirmed this expectation of public [*247] input within the basin. n109 A situation assessment uses a defined list of questions and an initial list of major players with respect to the particular issues. n110 It then proceeds with a "snowball" sampling method which consists of ending each interview by asking who else the interviewer should speak to. n111 The interview process ends when no new information is being obtained. n112 In the context of the class used by Dr. McKinney to interview stakeholders in the Columbia River basin, this endpoint was not reached. Twenty-seven people were interviewed on both sides of the international border and the final recommendations included that the assessment must be expanded. n113 The initial assessment nevertheless identified several key perceptions. First, if measured by the 1964 goal of flood protection and increased power production, the Columbia River Treaty has been an

outstanding success. n114 Second, among the key issues identified by stakeholders that were not addressed in 1964, but should be in the future, the health of the salmon fishery, and participation by affected communities, Native American tribes and First Nations, stood out as themes repeated by many interviewees. n115 This perception is paralleled by the dramatic change in empowerment among basin communities addressed next. Changes in empowerment of local communities and in particular, of Native American and First Nation governments: As discussed in Part II, local participation in knowledge generation and decision making is an important factor for resilience in governance involving ecological systems. However, this participation

has led to enhanced empowerment and capacity of basin communities, suggesting that they have the capacity to participate and are likely to demand participation in any decision on whether to and how to modify the Treaty: (1) legal recognition of the treaty rights of certain Native American tribes to participate in the harvest and management of Columbia basin fisheries within the United States; (2) establishment of the Northwest Power and Conservation Council in the United States in 1980; (3) Constitutional recognition of the rights of First Nations in Canada in 1982; and (4) legislative recognition of the Columbia Basin Trust in Canada in 1995. This increased local and regional capacity will be an important component of moving toward resilience in governance discussed below. To begin, it is important to understand these changes. First, among the rights secured by certain Columbia basin tribes south of the 49th Parallel at the council of Walla Walla in 1855, is the right to continue to use [*248] their

former fishing grounds on lands outside the newly designated reservations. n116 For example, Article 3 of the Nez Perce Treaty reserves: "the exclusive right of taking fish in all the streams where running through or bordering said reservation is further secured to said Indians; as also the right of taking fish at all usual and accustomed places in common with citizens of the Territory." n117 The language stating that the right is "in common with citizens of the Territory," was interpreted by Judge Boldt of the U.S. District Court, Washington in 1974, to entitle treaty tribes to up to 50% of the harvestable fish that pass (or would pass absent harvest en route n118) the usual and accustomed fishing places. n119 At the time of the council in 1855, non-Indian fishing in the area was

minor; n120 however, once canneries made large scale commercial fishing possible, n121 non-Indian harvest began to present major competition for the fish. However, the ruling recognizing the legal right of Native American's equal access to fish would not come until over a decade after the Columbia River Treaty was finalized. In affirming the District Court, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals interpreted the right of treaty tribes "in common with citizens of the Territory," as analogous to a co-tenancy, stating: Cotenants stand in a fiduciary relationship one to the other. Each has the right to full enjoyment of the property, but must use it as a reasonable property owner. A cotenant is liable for waste if he destroys the property or abuses it so as to

permanently impair its value ... By analogy, neither the treaty Indians nor the state on behalf of its citizens may permit

the subject matter of these treaties to be destroyed.

Native Americans have been cooperating with the USFG for years.US Department of State, 11 (23 June, 11. “U.S. Enters New Era in Ocean Governance” http://london.usembassy.gov/eande117.html)

From remote corners of the nation, from the farthest Pacific territories, members of U.S. ocean communities came to Washington June 21–23 to undertake a task never before attempted on a national scale. They are offering up their ideas, needs and questions to support a new national policy for the oceans, the

coastlines and the Great Lakes. They are the pioneers in what the head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) calls “a new era for ocean governance” that will empower the nation’s diverse geographic interests to develop plans cooperatively, thus reducing conflicts over uses of America’s coastal waters. Marine ecologist and NOAA Administrator Jane Lubchenco explained the concept in an early June speech: “an era when our scientific understanding of the impacts of humans on coastal and ocean ecosystems is being used to inform our management decisions; an era when policy connects

jobs, communities and economies with healthy ecosystems.” In proclaiming June as National Oceans Month, President Obama explained how the

oceans that lap American shores play such a large role in the country’s work and play, its prosperity and serenity. “Waterborne commerce, sustainable commercial fisheries, recreational fishing, boating, tourism, and energy production are all able to contribute to job growth and strengthen our economy because of the bounty of our oceans, coasts and Great Lakes.” Obama said. “While we embrace our oceans as crucial catalysts

for trade, bountiful sources of food, and frontiers for renewable energy, we must also recommit to ensuring their safety and sustainability, and to being vigilant guardians of our coastal communities.” The numbers speak to the economic significance of the seas: in 2007, 2.3 million jobs and more than $138 billion of the U.S. gross domestic product were generated by ocean-related activities. About 156 million people live in coastal counties, where they hold 69 million jobs that contribute $7.9 trillion to the nation’s economy. In June 2010, Obama set a process in motion to balance and serve these varied interests when he authorized adoption of a National Policy for the Stewardship of the Ocean, Our Coasts, and the Great Lakes. Major goals, certainly, but achieving them is just beginning. “You will determine the path,” said Lubchenco to the diverse

Washington audience of several hundred representing almost as many interests. State, county and city officeholders were present, along with fishermen, Native Americans, regulators, environmental group and military members. The nation’s heritage and

history have a role in this process, and they took form in names and faces at the planning workshop. Micah McCarty is the chairman of the Makah Tribal Council, which represents a Native American tribe in the state of Washington. His tribe has had an agreement with the federal government on shared use and access to coastal resources that dates back 150 years, creating a “profound” example of mutual cooperation in resource use, he said. While the new policy has a Washington birthplace, it is supposed to take shape in each and every jurisdiction along the more than 150,000 kilometers of coastline. In Broward County, Florida, on the Atlantic coast, “We are on the front lines,” said Kristin Jacobs, a Broward county commissioner. “We’re the people that the public is going to run to” when they see high tides breaching sea walls and flooding low-lying streets and homes. Those events are occurring frequently in some areas of the Florida Peninsula, which is bounded by the Atlantic on the east and the Gulf of Mexico on the west.

SHOULD CONSULT ON MPAs

The federal government has an obligation to consult on MPAsNOAA 13 US Department of Commerce, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Tribal MPA Programs October 22, 2013 Tribal MPA Programs http://marineprotectedareas.noaa.gov/aboutmpas/programs/tribal/

Executive Order 13158 directs NOAA and the Department of Interior to "consult with...tribes...and other entities to promote coordination of federal, state, territorial, and tribal actions to establish and manage MPAs." Because the federal government has a trust responsibility to all federally recognized tribes, conservation goals and management practices for MPAs affecting tribal resources should be established through government-to-government consultations.What are some examples of tribal MPAs?Several Indian tribes in Western Washington, Alaska and the Great Lakes have treaty-reserved fishing rights. These tribes share co-management authority and responsibility for marine resources in their usual and customary fishing areas with the federal government and/or states, depending on the specific resource and area identified. Tribes that have sole management authority may choose to establish MPAs as a tool to meet conservation goals for areas where they have management responsibilities.For areas where tribes share co-management authority with the federal government and/or states, any entity wishing to establish MPAs must do so through government-to-government consultations.How will the national system help tribal MPAs?Numerous opportunities to enhance coordination and collaboration with tribes on issues related to MPAs are possible through the development of the national system. Some of these opportunities could include a range of potential partnerships aimed at the sharing of information; enhancing technical, scientific, and management capacity; and developing conservation strategies for marine resources of mutual concern.The MPA Center will work closely with tribes to determine their interest in participating in the national system. Tribal governments that elect to participate in the national system will be full partners and will have an equal voice in decision making to set priorites for collaborative efforts at the regional and national levels.

SHOULD CONSULT ON ARCTIC

Prior consent of Arctic indigenous is the best policyFjellheim 6 Rune S. Fjellheim, Executive Secretary at the Arctic CouncilIndigenous Peoples’ Secretariat GÁLDU ČÁLA 4/2006 Journal of Indigenous Peoples Rights No. 4/2006 Oil and Gas Exploitation on Arctic Indigenous Peoples’ Territories Human Rights, International Law and Corporate Social Responsibility http://www.galdu.org/govat/doc/oilengelsk2.pdf

One might be able to predict this kind of development in the planning of such projects. A major concern for Indigenous Peoples is, however, how they can plan for their future existence after a project is over. Historically the results for Indigenous Peoples have been devastating. During the prosperous period they have often been marginalized and their traditional social structures have been destroyed. They have usually not benefited economically or socially from the project, neither collectively nor as individuals, and they are left to deal with the environmental and social damage that ensues from it. As argued previously, Indigenous Peoples are in the risk zone of losing on all fronts: both prior to the project, during and after the end of the project period. Both governments and corporations take on an enormous responsibility when entering into such projects, and the ethical, legal and political challenges are gigantic. The only and, perhaps, the most promising, opportunity for Arctic Indigenous Peoples is that all of the Arctic states, and most if not all of the corporations involved in the Oil and Gas exploitation in the region, have committed themselves to respecting and promoting Indigenous Peoples’ rights. To overcome the shortcomings of SIAs and to meet international human rights standards and their concept of Free, prior and informed consent, direct and binding negotiations with Indigenous Peoples may well be the best approach.

SOVEREIGNTY IMPACT

Infringing on indigenous sovereignty is racistRazvi, 06 (Haider Rizvi is the former deputy parliamentary leader of Muttahida Qaumi Movement in the National Assembly of Pakistan and a senior leader of MQM. March 11, 2006 “U.S. Found in Violation of Native Americans' Rights, Anti-Racism Treaty” Common Dreams. http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0311-07.htm)

A United Nations committee took the rare step Friday of assailing the U.S. government for violating Native Americans' land rights and said Washington had run afoul of an international anti-racism treaty. The independent Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) said Friday it had ''credible information alleging that the Western Shoshone indigenous people are being denied their traditional rights to land'' and asked federal authorities to cease all activities on tribal land--including efforts to set up commercial mining operations. Native American advocates hailed the finding as a victory. ''This is a tremendous victory for the Shoshone people,'' said Laura Inouye of the aid group Oxfam America. ''The UN decision acknowledges the U.S. government's violations of Shoshone civil, political, economic, and cultural rights.'' ''''Hopefully, they will now be granted the justice that the US government has denied them for years,'' added Inouye, whose organization had backed the Western Shoshone. Some non-natives also refer to the Western Shoshone as ''Snake Indians'' although in their own language tribe members are called Newe people. U.S. officials were unavailable for immediate comment on the decision, which effectively challenged the U.S. government's assertion of federal ownership of 90 percent of Shoshone lands covering about 60 million acres and stretching across the states of Nevada, Idaho, Utah, and California. The United States recognized Western Shoshone rights to the land under the 1863 Treaty of Ruby Valley. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1979 that the pact gave Washington trusteeship over tribal lands, however. The federal government, saying that tribe members had abandoned traditional land tenure and

practices and citing ''gradual encroachment'' by non-natives as evidence, has claimed much of the land as federal territory. The Western Shoshone, in their petition to the UN panel, countered that ''gradual encroachment'' in fact took place as part of a U.S. policy to steal their lands, and that this constituted racism. The 18-member UN panel of experts, set up to monitor global compliance with the 1969 International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, last August asked Washington to

respond to those claims. Federal authorities missed a year-end deadline to do so. On Friday, the Geneva-based panel said Washington's claim to the land ''did not comply with contemporary human rights norms, principles, and standards that govern

determination of indigenous property rights. '' The panel cited special concern over reported federal and legislative efforts to privatize

ancestral lands, to turn them over to mining and energy companies, and to open a nuclear waste dump on tribal territory without consulting and over the

objections of the Western Shoshone people. It further assailed U.S. authorities for reportedly using arrests, hunting and fishing restrictions, grazing fees, and other measures to intimidate tribe members. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, an organ of the Washington-based Organization of American States, had issued similar findings in 2003. U.S. officials and legislators, however, said the issue effectively was resolved by the Western Shoshone Claims Distribution Act of 2004, which they said a majority of the tribe's 10,000-odd members had endorsed and which provides for a settlement of around $145 million in exchange for the land. Many Western Shoshone objected to the law, saying it violates the Treaty of Ruby Valley and offers compensation based on 1872 land prices of their land, and questioned the measure's legislative

propriety. Shoshone representatives said they went before the UN panel because they had exhausted all other legal options to prevent the U.S. government

from taking over their ancestral lands, adding that federal operations there already had disrupted their traditional life and threatened their health and environment. ''This battle has been going on for quite some time, but we've seen a dramatic increase in the federal government and the companies' rush to finalize what they consider a settlement in order to get a hold of our lands for activities that are contaminating

our water and our air,'' said tribal leader Steven Brady. ''We are very pleased that our rights are finally being taken seriously and we look forward to positive actions being taken by the U.S.,'' Brady added in a statement from Geneva. Other tribal leaders regarded their prospects with caution. ''We are Shoshone delegates speaking for a Nation threatened by extinction,'' said Bernice Lalo, who also appeared before the UN panel. ''We have endured murder of our Newe people for centuries, as chronicled in military records, but now we are asked to endure a more painful death from the U.S. governmental agencies, a separation from land and spiritual renewal.'' Joe Kennedy, a member of the Western Shoshone delegation, voiced particular concern over federal plans to dump nuclear waste at Nevada's Yucca Mountain, which the Western Shoshone count

as their land under the Treaty of Ruby Valley. ''Our people have suffered more nuclear testing than anywhere else in the world and they are continuing underground testing despite our protests,'' Kennedy said of the U.S. government. ''Yucca Mountain is being hollowed out in order to store nuclear waste. We cannot stand for it. This earth, the air, the water are sacred.''

Protecting treaty rights is key to indigenous survivalLe, 12 (Phuong Le s a Seattle-based writer, reporter, blogger with more than 17 years experience working for The Associated Press and major daily newspapers. July 1, 2012. “Treaty fishing rights are at risk, Western Washington tribes say.” The Seattle Times. http://seattletimes.com/html/localnews/2018578949_treaty02m.html)

More than 150 years ago, American Indian tribes in Western Washington ceded much of the state to the federal government in return for guarantees of salmon and other fishing rights. Now, those tribes say their treaty rights with the U.S. are at risk because the region is losing habitat that salmon need to survive. They say their treaty rights won't mean much if there's no salmon to harvest, and they're warning the federal government that they could resort to court action if more isn't done. "The tribes' treaty rights, the basis of their economy, culture and way of life are at stake," said Mike Grayum, executive director of Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission, an organization of 20 treaty tribes including the Hoh, Upper Skagit, Puyallup, Tulalip, Nooksack and Nisqually. "Their very

being is dependent on these natural resources. They don't exist without them. From the tribes' perspective, everything is at stake here. Their backs are against the wall." Frustrated by the lack of progress in recovering salmon in Puget Sound and along the coast, the Western Washington tribes last summer took their concerns to the White House. In a report, they charged that the federal government has not lived up to its obligations under treaties signed in 1854 and 1855. The agreements preserved the tribes' right to harvest fish and shellfish in traditional grounds outside their reservation, a right reaffirmed in the 1974 Boldt decision and others. "We need a change," said Billy Frank Jr., chairman of the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission and a member of the Nisqually Tribe, who was involved with fish-in protests in the early 1970s. "We're on a course that's going down. If we don't turn it around, there's not going to be anything left. ... We have to turn it around." Last fall the White House Council on Environmental Quality directed regional leaders of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Department of Agriculture to come up with a plan to address the tribes' concerns. In May, those agencies agreed to better use their existing regulatory authorities and incentive programs to protect and restore salmon habitat. They also proposed a forum between tribes and federal agencies to resolve local habitat problems with tribes around Puget Sound and along the Washington coast. Bob Turner, assistant regional administrator for the salmon management division of NOAA's National Marine Fisheries Service, said the agencies take seriously the issues the tribes raised. "We need to do something to reverse the trends. We aren't gaining ground on habitat productivity," he said. "We are not in disagreement about the goal or concern." The tribe is working on how to respond to the federal agencies.

"We would characterize it as a positive step forward ... but it's a small step," Grayum said. "It still comes up short of what we think is needed." Despite millions of dollars spent on salmon recovery efforts in the region, steelhead and salmon such as the Puget Sound chinook continue to struggle. Development, logging, loss of wetlands and flood plains, overfishing, pollution, bulkheads along shorelines, increased human activity and other factors have contributed to their decline. "The fundamental problem is that we're losing habitat faster than we can restore it," Grayum said. For many tribes that have lived for centuries along Washington's rivers and bays, fishing for salmon, digging clams and catching crabs are central to tribal cultural identity, as well as important for subsistence and commercial reasons. "To be Jamestown is to walk down to the beach to get food for our families to share with our neighbors and to gather our foods in a fashion that we have done for centuries and know that they're going to be there," said Elaine Grinnel, 76, a member of the Jamestown S'Kallam Tribe on the Olympic Peninsula. "At no time did anybody have to go without food because it was so available. When you live on the beach and the tides are going in and out, there's food there. You could always go fishing, you could always go crabbing," she added. Grinnel worried that the resources won't be there for future generations if more isn't done to protect habitat. The tribes say federal agencies have been overly focused on restricting harvest in recent years while ignoring improvements in habitat. Jeanette Dorner, salmon and ecosystem recovery director for the Puget Sound Partnership, said the tribes' concerns are very relevant to her agency's work. "To recover salmon, we have to recover the Puget sound ecosystem," she said. "We have to stop destroying critical habitat and we need to restore natural processes and habitat. If we don't make progress on all of those things together, then we can't recover the salmon," Dorner said. The tribes blame the lack of political will and coordinated federal leadership, the government's failure to enforce its laws, as well as the uneven application of salmon conservation measures. "We ceded all this land to the United States for a contract to protect our salmon, our way of life, our culture. We're gatherers and we're harvesters. And they forgot about us," Frank said.

Recent empirics reveal that promotion of self-determination is the only strategy to improve the lives of Native AmericansCornell and Kalt 10 Stephen Cornell and Joseph P. Kalt, Director of the Udall Center for Studies in Public Policy, Ford Foundation Professor of International Political Economy, AMERICAN INDIAN SELF-DETERMINATION: THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF A SUCCESSFUL POLICY”, The Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development, October 2010, http://www.hks.harvard.edu/var/ezp_site/storage/fckeditor/file/pdfs/centers-programs/centers/wiener/wps/Kalt_Cornell_on_American_Indians_for_JOPNA_102010.pdf

With its start marked most saliently by the passage in 1975 of the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act (US Public Law 95-638), the era of formal policies of tribal self-determination began with halting steps. The vast majority of tribes embarked on strategies of meaningful self-rule under conditions of stark poverty, utilizing externally designed governmental systems,21 lacking meaningful experience in business and governmental decision making among the living population, and bearing legacies of federally-imposed systems of education. By the second half of the 1980s, however, self-determination had become a widespread and systematic restructuring of tribal governments and their relations with the federal government. This restructuring has acquired a name as the “nation building” movement. It is being manifested by wholesale changes in tribal institutions and policies as the Indian nations themselves rewrite their constitutions, generate increasing shares of their revenues through their own taxes

and business enterprises, establish their own courts and law enforcement systems, remake school curricula, and so on, across the panoply of functions commonly associated in the United States with state governments. In sum, federal promotion of tribal self-government under formal policies known as “ self-determination ” is turning out to be, after a century or more of failed efforts, to improve the lives of the U.S. indigenous people, the only strategy that has worked. In so doing, the strategy is improving the well-being of its poorest and, arguably, historically most oppressed and disempowered people. As such, however, it raises questions regarding its political origins and stability: Put into full force by the mid-1970s, why has the federal policy of self-governance for Indian nations survived as long as it has? While it certainly accords with the demands of vocal Native leadership and activists – and one would be hard-pressed to find a federally recognized tribe that would choose to

go back to the era of federal management of tribal affairs – at no more than one and one-half percent of the U.S. population , the

Indian voice in national U.S. politics is miniscule . Moreover, with the strong push by Indian nations to control their own

affairs and to be free of, particularly, state government authorities, the tribes have been pushing hard against state interests as Indian governments build economies and governments that move jurisdiction, tax bases, and program funding out of state government hands. Then, too, the general electorate in the United States is demonstrably ill-informed as to Indian affairs, with non-Indians having virtually no knowledge of the legal rights of tribes and many seeing

“real” Indians as “gone .”31 We now turn to an exploration of the political economy underlying the U.S. federal government’s

current policies of self-determination through self-government by Indian tribes. The public policy effect of the federal policy of self-determination for federally recognized American Indian tribes has not only been greater control for tribal citizens and their governments over the management of tribal affairs, but greater control over the institutions of governance—all with the attendant overriding goal of better meeting the Federal Government’s interest in and obligations to the promotion and ensuring of tribal socio-economic development and well-being.48 In short, federal policy specifically has been aimed at placing tribal governments in the capacity previously occupied by the Federal Government, i.e., the agent by which

tribal citizens can choose, design, implement, and enforce those policies and functions deemed necessary to

create an environment in which public affairs and private commerce can flourish. As we have seen, while problems remain and legacies of past social and economic stress are prominent, policies of self-determination have spurred development progress in Indian Country.

indigenous rights are a litmus test for all rightsMcSloy 3 Steven Paul McSloy, Associate, Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP. Formerly General Counsel, Oneida Indian Nation of New York; Assistant Professor of Law, St. John's University School of Law. New England Law Review Spring, 2003 37 New Eng. L. Rev. 733

American Indian law is often metaphorical. As Chief Justice Marshall stated in one of the foundational Indian law cases, the relationship between American Indian nations and the United States is like "that of a ward to his guardian." n1 The classic Indian law metaphor, however, is the "miner's canary." As Felix Cohen, the Blackstone of American Indian law, wrote in 1953, the year he died:The Indian plays much the same role in our American society that the Jews played in Germany. Like the miner's canary, the Indian marks the shifts from fresh air to poison gas in our political atmosphere; and our treatment of Indians, even more than our treatment of other minorities, reflects the rise and fall in our democratic faith. n2

The US meets every definition of committing genocide against the Native Americans. Any action to undermine Native American lifestyle is perpetuating the “last acceptable racism.”

Piccard, 13 (Ann Piccard is a professor of law and has a B.A., Florida State University, a J.D., Stetson University, and a LL.M., University of London, United Kingdom. 12/13/2013. “Death by Boarding School: “The Last Acceptable Racism” and the United States’ Genocide of Native Americans.” http://www.law.gonzaga.edu/law-review/files/2014/01/5-Piccard-P137-186.pdf)

There is a special kind of racism in this country against Native Americans, and it is the “last acceptable racism.”2 The author of that poignantly accurate description of most Americans’ attitudes towards Native Americans, who is both a Native American

and a Jew, noted, Not that long ago, white administrators of Indian boarding schools told our children that the “Indian in you shall die.” This kind of treatment and forced thinking has a lasting generational effect. It can be difficult to break through that type of programming. Many of our people, however, have shaken off these forced ideological shackles to speak the truth and demand long overdue respect. Our voice is getting

louder. Our words are being said with more frequency and emphasis. But people need to hear us. Societal racism should no longer be an

ad hoc affair, which is routinely accepted when directed against a certain group. It should be universally

condemned. Perpetuating past wrongs and dehumanizing concepts hurts everyone.3 This last acceptable racism is rarely mentioned in the U.S. However, one day in a very small town in northern Minnesota, in an area that has been economically depressed ever since the decline of the taconite and iron ore mining industry several decades ago, I watched two Native American men park a pickup truck in front of the local pawn shop. I could tell the young men were Native Americans only because of the Bois Forte Band license plate on their truck; other than that, they looked, sounded, and acted like most of the other men in that rural north woods town. Upon reflection, of course, I realized that their skin was slightly darker than most residents of the town; I also began to notice that I did not see dark-skinned people working or shopping in any of the town’s stores. My eye was untrained, a fact that I attribute to my upbringing in the Deep South,6 where I was in a small minority of white children who were raised by our parents to see and to protest (and refuse to accept) the prevailing racism toward African-Americans. The subtle differences in appearances between the Native Americans and the “whites” in Minnesota had gone unnoticed by my Southern eyes. But as we watched the young men take their chain saws into the pawnshop that day, my husband remarked that men in northern Minnesota who hock their chain saws must be in pretty bad shape, because how could they survive, let alone make a living, without such tools? The image of these two young men stayed with me, and led me to ask why and how the local Native Americans had been reduced to such dire straits in this rugged and isolated northern Minnesota town. As I began to pay attention, I realized that the Bois

Forte people, whose reservation lands are so close to the town of Cook, were largely invisible. They were not in the post office, not in

the bank, and certainly not in the restaurants or on the motorboats on the lake. How this group of Native Americans lost their livelihoods, their self-sufficiency, and much of their own history and culture, in a relatively short time, symbolizes the last acceptable racism in the U.S. Even the name "Bois Forte Band" is a product of the federal government; the indigenous peoples of North America certainly did not use such labels for themselves. There are many factors that contribute to mainstream acceptance of

racism against Native Americans. This article only examines the role played by the United States' Indian boarding schools in the genocide of Native Americans--genocide that destroyed a people physically just as much as it did culturally, decimating families, communities, and traditions--using the Bois Forte Band of the so-called Chippewa tribe in northeastern Minnesota to provide a context for the analysis. The Indian boarding school system examined in this article bears no resemblance to the handful of currently operating boarding schools that are scattered across the country. For example, the Chemawa school in Oregon has been in operation in some form since the late 1800s, but in its present form it requires that applicants submit a lengthy application not unlike a college application, and the school's philosophy statement explicitly recognizes that the students' ability to adapt to change must be "interwoven with reverence and the inclusion of traditional Native American tribal cultural values." This is a far cry from the old "kill the Indian, save the man" philosophy of the original Indian boarding schools. Part one of this article provides an overview of why the United States, since its inception, has felt not just entitled but obligated to make every effort to bring about the complete annihilation of those peoples who were indigenous to this continent. It is not the goal of this article to chronicle the many, many ways in

which the United States' people and government have abused, cheated, deceived, murdered, and decimated those people who were here before the first *141 Europeans arrived on this continent. Instead, this article aims only to demonstrate that the use of the Indian boarding schools was an act of genocide under international law, particularly with regard to the Bois Forte Band of Ojibwe. This narrow

focus is the result of a conscious effort to avoid unnecessary stereotyping; every member, of every band, of every tribe of Native

Americans is an individual human being, whose experiences are unique and personal. There is no point in casting a

wide net that tries to snare all of those experiences and lifetimes in one neat package. As noted elsewhere, "Native peoples are not a monolithic group. Each indigenous nation has its own story to tell with regard to human rights violations." Part one of this article also provides a summary of the history of the Bois Forte band of Native Americans. It will especially reference the ongoing intergenerational trauma created by the federal government's mandatory boarding school "education" for the band's children, designed not to

educate those children but, instead, to instill in them the whites' belief that everything "Indian" was bad, inferior, and evil. The second part examines the

development of the international human rights norms regarding genocide as a crime against humanity,

and demonstrates why the United States' use of Indian boarding schools meets every definition of genocide , whether

ratified or customary international law. Part three looks for a solution, and examines the Canadian government's response to its own system of residential schools for the Natives in Canada, including monetary reparations and a Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Canada's response stands in sharp contrast to the United States' complete lack of response, and this article suggests that even an inadequate response is better than none at all. *142 Finally, the fourth part

calls for the federal government to adhere to its international human rights law obligations to prevent and punish genocide in all its forms. The U.S. attitudes that ignore the past and permit the "last acceptable racism" are indeed the same thing as killing the dead a second time.

Native Americans suffer unemployment, environmental racism, poverty, and death by the hands of the US government.

Argue, 13 (Steven Argue is a former leader of the socialist California Peace and Freedom Party. 2/3/2013. “Forced Sterilizations, Racist Terror, and the Native American Uprising of 1972-1973” http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2013/02/03/18731287.php)

Currently, there are roughly 5.2 million Native Americans in the United States. From the beginnings of European colonization they have suffered genocide

and theft of land. On the small tracts of land left to Native Americans they suffer 70% unemployment. One out of every four Native Americans is officially living in poverty. 29.9% of Native Americans have no health insurance. Many Native Americans on reservations still lack running water and electricity. Native Americans are three times more likely to be homeless than are non-Natives. Life expectancy for Native Americans in

South Dakota is 65.99 years while it is 80.79 years for whites in the same state. Native American infant mortality is nearly double what it is for whites, with Native American infants 1.7 times more likely to die than white infants in their first year of life. Poverty and neglect is common on reservations. For instance, on the Pine Ridge Reservation of South Dakota median income is $2,600 to $3,400 a year, unemployment is 83-85%, 97% of people are below the federal poverty line, housing is of poor quality and scarce, and there is a lack of commercial infrastructure, technology, and industry to provide any income.

Life expectancy on the reservation is 48 years for men and 54 years for women. Radioactive contamination from uranium mining is blamed for an epidemic of cancers and miscarriages on the reservation. Native Americans are also subjected to environmental racism and, as a result, suffer increased cancers and other problems inflicted on their economy, health, and environment. For instance, in 1997 the Clinton / Gore administration

abandoned 1993 rules directed at controlling paper mill dioxin pollutants. That dioxin is being dumped into rivers where contaminated fish are eaten by Native American residents of reservations. Radiation is also a problem. For instance, Navajo, Ogallala Lakota, Nez Perce, Hopi, South Piute, Spokane, Western Shoshone, Yakima, Colville, Coeur d'Alene, Kalispell, Umatilla, Klickitat, and

Cherokee reservation lands and waters have all been horribly contaminated by uranium tailings and other nuclear wastes. For example, radioactive waste was disposed of across the ground on Cherokee land, supposedly as fertilizer. In 1973, when traditional Indians of the Pine Ridge Reservation and the American Indian Movement (AIM) occupied the town of Wounded Knee, all of these conditions existed, and much worse. Native American women suffered rampant forced sterilization by the government. Native children were sent to boarding schools where they suffered many injustices, including beatings for speaking their native languages. In addition to being subjected to continued genocide, Native Americans

were among those being drafted and commanded to carry out the American War in Vietnam. Violence against Natives in the United States, including rape and murder, was so prevalent in some areas that Natives avoided even driving through certain towns. In addition, in the movies, the hero John Wayne murdered Indians while racist stereotypes prevailed. While the struggle for the rights of Native Americans is far from complete, the heroic struggles of AIM members and allies helped remedy some of these problems. Today AIM has been splintered and nearly destroyed through a combination of FBI sponsored death squad murders, police violence, FBI violence, frame-ups, infiltration, disruption, and a tactic known as “snitch jacketing”, where FBI infiltrators create animosity, distrust, and violence by accusing loyal members of being FBI. From that violence, and still existing infiltrators, the FBI has done much to destroy the unity and reputation of AIM. Before considering such accusations, one must become familiar with AIM’s accomplishments and the murderous enemy they were up against. AIM’s Exposure of Forced Sterilization One of AIM’s first big successes was in exposing the U.S. government’s genocidal policy of forced sterilization. Documentation of the policy was discovered and exposed by AIM when they occupied and trashed the Washington headquarters of the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) for a week in

1972. The sterilizations were carried out with federal funding by the Indian Health Service (IHS) through coercion or without the knowledge or consent of the victims. As documents revealed, this forced sterilization program was carried out by the IHS under the leadership of the BIA. Sterilizations would be carried out without consent while performing other procedures, like appendectomies, or, in other cases, women would be falsely convinced of the need for hysterectomies. In other cases, coercion was used, with healthcare professionals demanding sterilizations in return for future health care needs or keeping their children. Women were lied to in other ways as well, like being convinced that

hysterectomies were reversible. Full blooded Indians were particularly targeted. A 1974 study found that 42% of Native American women of child bearing age had been sterilized. And, not surprisingly, the Bureau of Census Reports documented a steep decline in Native American births between 1960 and 1980. Native American women were not the only victims. Similar government programs have been uncovered that targeted Blacks, Latinas, and the poor in a number of states, including 20,000 women who were sterilized in the state of California. The United States carried out similar programs internationally. For instance, the Peace Corps carried out sterilizations of Quechua Indian women in Bolivia without their knowledge or consent. In

Peru, the brutal U.S. backed government of Alberto Fujimori carried out 300,000 forced sterilizations of Quechua women between 1996 and 2000. In 1975 the U.S. Congress, for the first time, passed laws making the use of federal funds in carrying out forced sterilizations and forced abortions illegal. In 1976, the U.S. government, through the General Accounting Office, admitted to a policy of forced sterilization directed at Native American women. In 1988, the U.S. government, for the first time, adopted the 1948 United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide which prohibits “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, such as...imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group…” Many people think that eugenics fell out of favor in the United States after Adolf Hitler’s infamous go at it, but the practice was alive and well in the United States up until at least the mid-1970s. AIM’s exposure of these crimes, found out through occupying enemy territory at BIA

headquarters in 1972, was a first step towards the apparent elimination of the policy in the United States. Racist Terror, Government Impunity In 1972, Native American rancher, Raymond Yellow Thunder, was attacked by racists, stripped from the waste down, and forced into an American Legion bar where people made fun of him, forced him to dance, and put cigarettes out on him. Raymond was then taken out back, beaten nearly to his death, and stuffed into the trunk of a car where he died. Before AIM became involved, two of the white murderers of Raymond Yellow Thunder, Melvin and Leslie Hare, were charged with assault and battery and released without bail. This was par for the course in South Dakota where, despite murderous violence against Native Americans being common, no white had ever been

convicted for murdering a Native American in South Dakota’s entire history. Whites faced the same impunity for their racist terror against Native Americans in South Dakota as occurred against Blacks in the South. In South Dakota, racists freely

kept signs up on their bars, stores and restaurants saying, “No Dogs or Indians Allowed”. The capitalist state was allowing the same kind of racist terror as had occurred in the south under the semi-fascist rule of KKK death squads working with local police, courts, and the Democrat Party. Protesting for justice for Raymond Yellow Thunder, 4,000 Native Americans marched on the town of Porcupine and took it over for four days. After AIM protests, criminal charges were upped from the meaningless charges of “assault and battery” to three people being charged with second-degree manslaughter and a fourth charged with false imprisonment. The Hare brothers were convicted and sentenced to a year in prison. For the first time in South Dakota’s history, whites did time for murdering a Native American. While a year’s sentence is obviously insufficient for kidnapping, torture, and murder, this punishment by the U.S. government marked the end of a 200 year open season on the lives of Native Americans. The last time there had been any justice for the murder of Native Americans in South Dakota was in 1876 when warriors of the Lakota, Northern Cheyenne, and Arapaho nations, led by Crazy Horse, defeated Custer’s forces at the Battle of the Little Big Horn. Custer was killed along with 267 of the Indian murdering soldiers under his command. Custer and his forces were involved in an ongoing genocide against Native

Americans. This included Custer’s attack on a Cheyenne village on the Washita River on November 27, 1868 where Custer’s forces slaughtered 100 Cheyenne men, women, and children, burned their village, and slaughtered 800 horses. At the Battle of the Little Bighorn, Custer had it coming. Part of the reason Crazy Horse brought a unified force of Native Americans together against the U.S. military was the fact that he could see what was coming for the

future of Plains Indians as a stream of devastated Native American refugees flowed into the Dakotas from Minnesota. In Minnesota it was open season on Native Americans. Mass murder included the hanging of 38 Native Americans in Mankato, Minnesota on December 26, 1862. It was the biggest mass hanging in U.S. history. Abraham Lincoln actually gave it his official OK. This author grew-up in Minnesota. I was taught in elementary school that there had only been one hanging in Minnesota’s history, the hanging of a woman, and it was botched. Minnesota patriotism was

instilled in us as we were taught that this was why Minnesotans got upset with the death penalty early on and abolished it. As usual, America’s propagandistic history treated Native Americans as non-people, and by the way it was written, the Mankato mass hanging of 38 people never happened. In 1973, of all places, a town named Custer, South Dakota became the next horrific ground zero in the struggle against racist murder. The incident started at Buffalo Gap, South Dakota when a 22 year-old Native American, Wesley Bad Heart Bull, tried to order a drink at a bar. For this “crime”, the whites in the bar dragged him out and beat him. One person involved, a white businessman named Darold Schmidt, said, “I’m going to kill an Indian” before he stabbed and killed Wesley Bad Heart Bull. Despite witnesses to this premeditated murder, Schmidt was charged with second degree manslaughter and released on a $5000 bond. Wesley’s mother, Sarah Bad Heart Bull, called in AIM. A court hearing on the case was being held in Custer and AIM brought 200 people. All but four of the people supporting Wesley were denied entrance to the court by cops in full riot gear. Cops attacked protesters, Native Americans fought back, grabbing the swinging night sticks from the cops and giving back what the cops had attempted to deliver. Fed up with the racist police violence and lack of justice, people ran to a gas station where they got gasoline to make Molotov cocktails. With these they burned down the courthouse, chamber of commerce, and two police cars causing $2 million dollars in damage. Darold Schmidt pleaded guilty to Second Degree Involuntary Manslaughter and served one day in jail. For trying to enter the courthouse, Sarah Bad Heart Bull, was struck by police in the face with a baton and she served a five month sentence on a charge of assaulting an officer. AIM leaders Dennis Banks and Russell Means were convicted on charges of inciting a riot. In reality, it was a brutal and racist system that incited that riot. It was the audacious action in Custer, combined with festering anger over a multitude of injustices that helped serve as an inspiration for the next action, the 73 day armed occupation of the town of Wounded Knee, South Dakota. Today, as the propaganda campaign has intensified against everything done by AIM, including Wounded Knee, it is important to review the gains Native American people made, in large part as a result of the sacrifices made at Wounded Knee. Wounded Knee woke many Native Americans up to a struggle for their own survival, woke the majority of Americans to the continued existence of Native Americans as an oppressed people who deserved support, and put the U.S. government in a position of desiring those sorts of situations to go away, granted, partly through the brutal repression that took place, but also through granting concessions.

The US must be held accountable for genocide. Because the USFG cant be prosecuted, they have a moral obligation to right the wrongs committed against the Native Americans.

Glauner, 02 (Lindsay Blauner is a Californian lawyer who received her degree from DePaul Univ COL; Chicago IL. “The US and the Crime of Genocide Against Native Americans” http://racism.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1379:unitedstates02&catid=121:articles-related-to-indigenous-peoples&Itemid=140)

On September 8, 2000, the head of the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) formally apologized for the agency's participation in the "ethnic cleansing" of

Western tribes. From the forced relocation and assimilation of the "sauvage" to the white man's way of life to the forced sterilization of Native Americans, the BIA set out to "destroy all things Indian." Through the exploration of the United States' Federal Indian policy, it is evident that this policy intended to "destroy, in whole or in part," the Native American population. The extreme disparity in the number of Native American people living within the United States' borders at the time Columbus arrived, approximately ten million compared to the approximate 2.4 million Indians and Eskimos

alive in the United States today, is but one factor that illustrates the success of the government's plan of "Manifest Destiny." No longer can we remain indifferent and justify these acts of genocide committed by the United States government, its agencies, and its personnel against Native Americans as a result of colonization or the need to establish a prosperous union. Instead, the United States government, its agencies, and those involved with carrying out the measures designed to inflict genocidal acts against the Native American population must be held in violation of customary international law, as well as conventional international law, as proscribed in the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (Genocide Convention). The term "genocide" was coined by Raphael Lemkin in 1944 and was derived from the Greek word genos, which means tribe or race, and the Latin word cide, which is commonly found in words such as homicide, infanticide, and fratricide. In his first enunciation of "genocide," Lemkin defined the term in two different ways: (1) "the practice of extermination of nations and ethnic groups as carried out by invaders" and (2) "[the] destruction of the national pattern of the

oppressed group; the other, the imposition of the national pattern of the oppressor." Currently, "genocide" is commonly defined as "acts committed with intent to destroy in whole or in part a national, ethnical, racial or religious group." The crime of "genocide" is recognized as one of the most heinous international crimes under customary international law. A practice is proscribed as a crime under customary international law through the existence of the following: (1) uniformity of state practice, (2) generality of state practice, and (3) the opinion that state practice is required by law. Customary international law also recognizes any crime that is universally condemned by the international community as a jus cogens international crime, which gives rise to obligations erga omnes. In accordance with customary international law, an obligation erga omnes requires a state party to extradite or prosecute perpetrators of these crimes found within its territory. Because the international community has universally condemned genocide, as evidenced in part by the ratification of the Genocide Convention, it has risen to the level of a jus cogens international crime. As a

result, any individuals, agencies, or states that commit genocide must be held accountable.

UN declarations have laid the foundation for US action against Native Americans. The US needs to stop infringing on the rights of the Native Americans in the Oceans. General, 10 (Karla E. General (Kawenniiostha) is an attorney at the Indian Law Resource Center, Washington, DC. She is Deer Clan and a citizen of the Mohawk Nation, from the Akwesasne Mohawk Territory. 2010. “Treaty Rights and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples” http://www.indianlaw.org/content/treaty-rights-and-un-declaration-rights-indigenous-peoples)

The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples presents a unique and timely opportunity for Native nations to redefine or reaffirm their relationships with the United States. Though the federal government ended treaty-making with Native nations in 1871, this should not limit how Native nations relate to the federal government today. The UN Declaration – with its extensive statement of indigenous rights — is a tool that can be used to facilitate a new era of indigenous-State relations, one that includes upholding treaty obligations, fulfilling promises, and creating new legally enforceable government-to-government agreements. Simply put, a treaty is an agreement between two nations or sovereigns. Article 37 of the UN Declaration explicitly recognizes the right of indigenous peoples to have their treaties, agreements, and other constructive arrangements with States recognized, observed, and enforced. The United States, initially contemplating Native nations as preconstitutional and extraconstitutional international sovereigns, ratified 370 treaties and entered into 45 more with Native nations between 1778 and 1871. Treaties served as the moral and legal compass that was to guide the interactions between

the United States and Native nations. Since the treaty-making period, however , the United States and Native nations

have developed very different views of what treaties mean in practice . In 1870, the United States Supreme Court

ruled in The Cherokee Tobacco case that an act of Congress can supersede treaty provisions. One year later, Congress

formally ended treaty-making with Native nations. Since then, the United States has furiously chipped

away treaty rights and treaties themselves, turning sacred promises into hollow words . In its 1903 Lone Wolf

v. Hitchcock decision, the United States Supreme Court even went so far as to hold that Congress has the power to allot a tribe’s land in violation of a treaty. This interpretation and narrowing of treaty rights clearly conflicts with the international treatment of treaty rights, especially as envisioned in the UN Declaration and the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties. Generally, Native nations that have made treaties view their treaties as the foundation of their relationship with the United States, a nation-to-nation relationship based on mutual respect, equality, and diplomacy. For example, one of the earliest recorded treaties between a Native nation and European nation, the Kaswentah (“two row”) treaty, made between the Haudenosaunee (“People of the Longhouse,” or Six Nations) and the Dutch in 1613, acknowledges the two parties as equals who will not interfere with the internal affairs of the other. The United States, as successor to the Dutch and Great Britain, must assume the obligations of the Kaswentah treaty with the Haudenosaunee. Although the United States made various political and legal commitments to Native nations through treaty-making, Native nations are, unfortunately, no strangers to violations of their treaty rights. Many Native nations continue to battle against encroachments on treaty-guaranteed lands and restrictions on or even complete negation of their treaty-protected hunting and fishing rights both on and off the reservation. For the 40 Native nations near international borders, restrictions on traveling within their own recognized homelands may implicate treaty rights. Today, at the Akwesasne Mohawk Territory, Akwesasronon (“People of Akwesasne”) are severely restricted from traveling freely throughout their homeland. The Akwesasne Mohawk Territory predates the formation of the United States and Canada, and, as a result, has been encroached upon by international, state, provincial, and county borders. The movement of Akwesasronon is seriously restricted even though the Jay Treaty of 1794, a treaty signed by the United States and Great Britain, provides that indigenous peoples are guaranteed the right to freely travel across the United States-Canada border. Akwesasronon are faced with exceedingly long wait times at the border, the risk of having vehicles seized for failure to report to Customs, encroachment upon their lands by federal officials, and the seizure of identification documents because they do not conform to new federal requirements. Under the federal requirements, tribes can use an Enhanced Tribal Card as identification so long as it is approved by the Department of Homeland Security; six tribes now have a signed agreement in place for the use of an Enhanced Tribal Card, and six more are awaiting approval. However, the new identification cards require indigenous individuals to declare American or Canadian citizenship which has not been, up until now, a requirement Akwesasronon have had to meet. The UN Declaration recognizes a number of rights which may be violated by the travel restrictions at Akwesasne, as well as at other Native nations located on the international borders. In the Preamble, the Declaration affirms not only the right of indigenous peoples to equality, but also the right to be different and to be respected as such. The ability of a Native nation to freely determine its political status, not as Americans or Canadians, but as Kanienkehaka (“People of the Flint,” or Mohawk) or as some other indigenous nation, is recognized in Article 3 of the Declaration (“Indigenous peoples have the right to self-determination. By virtue of that right they freely determine their political status …”). Article 36(1) recognizes the right of indigenous peoples to maintain relationships across borders, including activities for spiritual, cultural, political, economic, and social purposes, and Article 36(2) provides that States have an obligation to ensure implementation of the right. What does this mean for Native

nations seeking to exercise treaty rights and to freely move throughout their territories? Though the United States will no longer enter into treaties with Native nations, Native nations can at least work to ensure respect for and enforcement of existing treaty obligations and can try to establish new agreements and ways of working together and moving forward to preserve their existence as indigenous nations. Native nations can work with the United States to renew treaties in light of the UN Declaration through the development of legally enforceable government-to-government agreements. Now is the time for UN Declaration implementation, and it is up to Native nations to call upon the United States to honor existing treaty rights, fulfill promises made, and enter into agreements and other constructive arrangements to move us forward together, as originally envisioned in the Kaswentah treaty 400 years ago.

MODEL OF SELF DETERMINATION INCREASES INTERNATIONAL STABILITY

Ignorance of the rights of indigenous peoples gives rise to conflicts—empirically proven through AfricaBujra 2 Abdalla Bujra, Social Anthropologist, Former Executive Secretary of CODESRIA, “African Conflicts: Their Causes and Their Political and Social Environment”, Development Policy Management Forum, No. 4, 2002, http://dpmf.org/Publications/Occassional%20Papers/occasionalpaper4.pdfWith the imposition of British colonialism, there was a transformation in ethnic relations. Alien and undemocratic governance, feudal institutions,

and practices were superimposed on ethnic groups to which all these were anathema. Furthermore, there was enforced physical and

social segregation over settlements, schools, control of markets, and between the so-called migrants and the so-called indigenous peoples. Conflicts, besides being

ethnic, also had a religious dimension. Post-colonial reforms were superficial, and there was no deep attempt to mediate conflicts in inter-ethnic relations. In recent times, more than ever before, the state occupies the centre of the stage in giving impetus to the divisions and complex conflicts which manifest themselves in ethnic forms. The multi-ethnic nature of Southern Kaduna zone is not the cause of the numerous

and deep ethnic conflicts. Some of the problems are located in the conditions of existence and the absence of rights faced by the ethnic

communities and people.

Democracies that do not respect ethnic rights are the most unstable regimesDFID 10 Department for International Development, “Building Peaceful States and Societies”, Department for International Development, 2010, http://www.gsdrc.org/docs/open/CON75.pdfElites have often used centralised and highly personalised political parties as a way of embedding a political settlement. Many fragile countries are characterised by hegemonic party systems, where the distinction between the state and the ruling party is blurred (Mozambique, Angola,

Cambodia). Many political settlements result in hybrid state s, where formal, democratic institutions co-exist with more informal ones

(rooted in traditional or indigenous social structures) in ways that are not mutually reinforcing. Research suggests that these partial democracies

are the most unstable regime type. 28 Peace processes should engage all parties that are sufficiently powerful to prolong conflict, but should

not be limited to armed groups. Negotiations should incorporate those who have historically been excluded (e.g. women or indigenous

minorities ).32 They are most effective when there is a peace process support strategy involving formal and informal levels, including leaders of conflict parties

(track 1), individuals close to them (track 2), and CSOs (track 3) that can address perceptions and stereotypes which sustain conflict .3

Social changes such as self-determination policies create stability within a nationSuzuki 75 Eisuke Suzuki, Editor in Chief of Yale Journal of International Law, “Self-Determination and World Public Order: Community Response to Territorial Separation”, Virginia Journal of International Law, Vol. 16, 1975-1976, p. 779-807, 1975-6, http://heinonline.org/HOL/Page?handle=hein.journals/vajint16&div=44&g_sent=1&collection=journals#793

As demands for territorial separation continue, the words of Woodrow Wilson retain their vitality. “National aspirations must be respected; people may

now be dominated and governed by their own consent. ‘Self-determination’ is not a mere phrase . It is an imperative

principle of action , which statesmen will henceforth ignore at their peril .”18 The present body politic is a temporal social

phenomenon which will continually evolve and change over time and space. Change itself is an integral part of social phenomena. The crucial

question is how does international law respond to claims for territorial separation? Repudiation of a previous decision reflects the most basic pattern of democratic decisionmaking and democratic processes of change.57 Decisions which are incompatible with the perspectives of group

members to which the decisions are applied rarely create their intended value effects. Review, therefore, is an inescapable function of any social process.58 A

review or social change in general may be considered an innovative function in creating stability : it is an integral part of group

dynamics which synchronizes disparity between the self and the environment by changing either the environment or the predispositions of the self.59 Change

and stability are , in this respect, mutually reinforcing. Our fundamental view-point is the following: If principles of authority are to control the

flow of decision, it is ultimately essential that they be embedded in the expectations of the effective participants in the world community. At no time can it be

taken for granted that human expectations, or the demands and identifications with which they interlock, are unchanging. Nor can it be validly asserted,

without appropriate verification, that the words of treaties or other written documents, mirror community expectations. Since viewpoints are in flux, today’s structure of expectation is open to change, and in fact is bound to change, as new conditions arise and new suggestions are put forward and assimilated.60

Violence and tensions rise from failure to provide rights to ethnic groups—TurkeyGönen 6/11 Emre Gönen, Turkish political scientist specializing in EU affairs and Director of a joint European Studies Master's Program with Istanbul Bilgi University and Universiteit Leiden of the Netherlands, “CHANGING STRUCTURES IN THE KURDISH QUESTION”, Daily Sabah, June 11, http://www.dailysabah.com/columns/emre_gonen/2014/06/11/changing-structures-in-the-kurdish-question

It is a fact that Kurds in Turkey still do not fully enjoy rights extended to minority cultures and entities in the EU: The Turkish state administration is extremely centralized, especially the ongoing system that was inherited from the 1980 coup d'état, and any attempt to decentralize

or establish a bit of local devolution is seen and heralded as the dismantling of the Turkish Republic. The terrible demise of

the Ottoman Empire has left scars that take a very long time to heal. The spark that has ignited a large fire happened two days ago in Lice, a mediumsize town north of Diyarbakır, where military forces shot two demonstrators. In the aftermath of their funerals, which were the occasion

of large mass protestations, some individuals defied the Turkish military by climbing on a flag post within an Air Force base and taking down the

Turkish flag. The military had enough presence of mind not to shoot them down, but this has created an incredible outcry among Turks in a

deeply divided society , pertaining to the Kurdish issue. The PKK has refused to recognize Öcalan's authority on this matter, and this is the

first time they are doing it openly and in public. Still, apart from the PKK, everyone wants the bloodshed to come to an end in Turkey,

not least the opposition, which inadvertently accused the military of being too lenient against the protestor who took the flag down. Every political movement, on the eve of presidential elections, tries to optimize its weight and influence, and possibly the armed branch of the PKK is not immune to the attraction of such negotiations.

UNIQUENESS

The US is taking any legal steps necessary to ensure that Native Americans have full access to their lands, territories, and natural resources.State Department 11 (The United States Department of State, “Announcement of U.S. Support for the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Initiatives to Promote the Government-to-Government Relationship & Improve the Lives of Indigenous Peoples” May 26, 2011 http://usun.state.gov/documents/organization/153239.pdf)

The United States recognizes that some of the most grievous acts committed by the United States and many other States against indigenous peoples were with regard to their lands, territories, and natural resources. For this reason, the United States has taken many steps to ensure the protection of Native American lands and natural resources, and to provide redress where appropriate. It is also for this reason that the United States stresses the importance of the lands, territories, resources and redress provisions of the Declaration in calling on all States to recognize the rights of indigenous peoples to their lands, territories, and natural resources. Consistent with its understanding of the intention of the States that negotiated and adopted the Declaration, the United States understands these provisions to call for the existence of national laws and mechanisms for the full legal recognition of the lands, territories, and natural resources indigenous peoples currently possess by reason of traditional ownership, occupation, or use as well as those that they have otherwise acquired. The Declaration further calls upon States to recognize, as appropriate, additional interests of indigenous peoples

in traditional lands, territories, and natural resources. Consistent with that understanding, the United States intends to

continue to work so that the laws and mechanisms it has put in place to recognize existing, and

accommodate the acquisition of additional, land, territory, and natural resource rights under U.S. law function properly and to facilitate, as appropriate, access by indigenous peoples to the traditional lands, territories and natural resources in which they have an interest. U.S. agency initiatives in this area are numerous.

Perhaps most significantly, the Obama Administration has acquired over 34,000 acres of land in trust on behalf of Indian tribes, which is a 225 percent increase since 2006. Lands held in trust for tribes are used for housing, economic development, government services, cultural and natural resource protection, and other critical purposes. Recovering and protecting the tribes’ land base is a hallmark objective of this Administration. After the recent Supreme Court decision in Carcieri v. Salazar, Congress introduced, and the Administration has fully supported, legislation to reaffirm the authority of the United States to take land into trust on behalf of all federally recognized Indian tribes. In addition, the United States intervened in a federal suit, Saginaw Chippewa Indian Tribe of Michigan and United States v. Granholm, and worked to facilitate a settlement that recognizes the tribe’s entire reservation to be Indian Country, resolving over a century of disputes over the boundaries and existence of the reservation. The court approved that settlement on November 23, 2010. This settlement, which involves the tribe, the United States, the State of Michigan, and local governments, will promote greater intergovernmental cooperation and provide the clarity necessary for effective law enforcement and civil regulation on the reservation. The United States has also sought to protect tribal lands, and tribal jurisdiction over those lands, in several other court cases, including the City of Sherrill v. Oneida Indian Nation, Cayuga Nation v. Gould, and Water Wheel v. LaRance. Other agency initiatives include the release by the Forest Service of $37.3 million in Recovery Act funds directly to tribes for wild land fire management and the improvement of habitat and watersheds. Of the total Forest Service funding received under the Recovery Act, $213 million was provided to benefit tribes and tribal lands. The Obama Administration has also made extensive efforts to resolve longstanding Native American legal claims against the United States and private entities related to lands, natural resources, and other issues.

]

BIOREGIONALISM

CP SolvesCP solves – current structures are the root of environmental exploitation and subjugation of the Other – bioregionalism confronts and restructures hierarchies of dominationMessersmith-Glavin 11 Paul Messersmith-Glavin, board member of the Institute for Anarchist Studies, member of the editorial collective of the journal Perspectives on Anarchist Theory, political activist who helped found the Youth Greens, member of the Left Green Network and the Love and Rage Revolutionary Anarchist Federation, part of the Parasol Climate Collective, Between Social Ecology and Deep Ecology: Gary Snyder’s Ecological Philosophy, The Anarchist Library, January 9, 2011, http://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/paul-messersmith-glavin-between-social-ecology-and-deep-ecology-gary-snyder-s-ecological-philos//CSSnyder’s insights concerning wilderness and human society’s destruction of it come at a critical time in human evolution. Since the industrial revolution the capitalist mode of production has been polluting the air, land and water at an alarming rate. The problems of deforestation, water and air pollution and chemicals in the food supply may only be overshadowed by the effects of catastrophic climate change. The increasing presence of greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide and methane, in the atmosphere threaten to raise global temperatures by as much as 9 degrees Fahrenheit by the end of this century if business as usual continues. At this date, rather than reducing emissions, capitalism is in fact increasing them. This will truly be disastrous for humanity, affecting the southern hemisphere more than the northern, but wrecking civilizations across the globe . [63] Snyder speaks to the starkness of the situation: “What we are witnessing in the world today is an unparalleled waterfall of destruction of a diversity of human cultures; plant species; animal species, of the richness of the biosphere and the millions of years of organic evolution that have gone into it.”[64] Like social ecology, which links the domination of humans by humans with the attempt to dominate nature, Snyder draws a similar parallel: “A society that treats its natural surroundings in a harsh and exploitative way will do the same to ‘other’ people. Nature and human ethics are not unconnected. The growing expansion of ecological consciousness translates into a deeper understanding of interconnectedness in both nature and history, and we have developed a far more sophisticated grasp of cause and effect relationships.”[65] Bookchin implores the ecological movement to examine the nature of hierarchy in society, and to explore dominant power

relations in order to understand the root causes of ecological destruction. He is quick to point out that it is not science or technology per se that is the problem. Snyder concurs, calling these things “straw men,” and asks the question, “Who is being served by them?” He answers, “A small number of owners who have centralized it, production, the banks, and even the government so to speak.” Like Bookchin’s advocacy of a libertarian technology, one that serves human needs in harmony with nature, Snyder asks if it is possible to have a “technology that is bioregionally appropriate and serves the needs of the people at the same time?” Snyder offers the opinion that a libertarian technology “would have developed considerably longer ago if it had not been to the disadvantage of centralized economies to explore solar technologies...A decentralized energy technology could set us free. It’s only the prevailing economic and government policies that block us from exploring that further. There is a people’s technology.”[66] A ‘peoples’ technology’ would serve human needs, rather than corporate profit. For Snyder, the centralization of power is a central problem. The decentralization of energy production would shift power back to the people from the hands of corporations. A ‘people’s technology’ would also work with, rather than against, the processes of the natural world. In contrast to many advocates of deep ecology who, as Luke points out, mostly want to preserve nature for field trips, with deep ecology “a philosophy for properly outfitted mountain climbers, backpackers, and field biologists,”[67] advocates of environmental justice, those who advance the interests of the poor, would find an ally in Snyder. According to Snyder: “environmental concerns and politics have spread worldwide. In some countries the focus is almost entirely on human health and welfare issues. It is proper that the range of the movement should run from wildlife to urban health. But there can be no health for humans and cities that bypasses the rest of nature. A properly radical environmental position is in no way anti-human. We grasp the pain of the human condition in its full complexity, and add the awareness of how desperately endangered certain key species and habitats have become.”[68] Thus the attempt to separate the concerns of

the city from those of the wild must be fought. As Snyder points out, “it’s all one front ultimately. It only serves the interests of the industrial capitalist cancer to have people think it’s two fronts, that environment is white people’s concern and jobs poor people’s and black people’s concern...The natural world, as anyone should see, is being ripped off, exploited, and oppressed just as our brothers and sisters in the human realm are being exploited and oppressed.”[69] Thus Snyder joins social concerns with the effort to stop the destruction of the natural world. Bioregionalism and Reinhabitation September heat. The Watershed Institute meets, planning more work with the B.L.M. And we have visitors from China, Forestry guys, who want to see how us locals are doing with our plan. Editorials in the paper are against us, a botanist is looking at rare plants in the marsh. from “What to Tell, Still,” danger on peaks[70] As we have seen, Snyder is a critic of the State. But what would he propose to replace this mode of social organization? For Snyder, and the larger bioregional movement in general, the answer is obvious: the bioregion. A bioregion is an area defined by its natural boundaries, and is “posited on the idea that the human community is only one of the communities on any given part of the planet, and that the other communities — plant life, animal life, mineral life — inside the landscape with its watershed divisions, its soil types, its annual

rainfall, its temperature extremes, all of that constitutes a biome, an ecosystem, or, as they like to say, a natural nation.”[71] In getting to know one’s bioregion, one can better understand the natural context within which we live. We can learn where our water comes from, where our waste goes, and how best to live within our surroundings. For Snyder, “the ethics or morality of this is far more subtle than merely being nice to squirrels.”[72] This is a huge undertaking, and is the task that awaits us: “We haven’t discovered North America yet. People live on it without knowing what it is or where they are. They live on it literally like invaders. You know whether or not a person knows where he is by whether or not he knows the plants. By whether or not he knows what the soils and waters do.”[73] In contrast to being stewards of the land, understanding where we really are, in Americans, Snyder sees “a nation of fossil fuel junkies, very sweet people and the best hearts in the world. But nonetheless fossil fuel junkies of tremendous mobility zapping back and forth, who are still caught on the myth of the frontier, the myth of boundless resources and a vision of perpetual materialistic growth.”[74] Reorganizing society along bioregional lines alone is not enough. We would also need to incorporate social ecology’s emphasis on confronting human forms of domination, such as racism, sexism, and hetero-patriarchy, for this to really approximate a libratory alternative to the State. History is littered with examples of cultures which were bioregionally

defined, but which maintained internal hierarchies and forms of domination. Many so called Primitivists such as John Zerzan advocate for a return to hunter-gatherer societies to solve the problems of civilization and reconcile humans’ relationship with nature. Snyder advocates for learning from primitive cultures. Quoting the economic anthropologist Marshall Sahlins, he says that “the upper Paleolithic was the original affluent society, and (Sahlins) estimates that they worked an average of 15 hours a week...There is no class of landless paupers in primitive culture. Landless paupers belong to civilization.”[75] In an echo of the myth of the fall from grace, Snyder sites the anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss, who “says that civilization has been in a long decline since the Neolithic,”[76] but he believes that “we cannot again have seamless primitive cultures, or the purity of the archaic, (but) we can have neighborhood and community.”[77] In response to criticisms, and in contrast to other advocates of Primitivism, Snyder says, “It isn’t really a main thrust in my argument or anyone else’s I know that we should go backward.”[78] But how do we move forward? For Snyder, the bringing together of social and ecological concerns is the best way to address the ecological crisis : to understand the roots of the destruction of wilderness in the hierarchies inherent in capitalist, patriarchical culture. For Snyder this means “supporting any cultural and economic revolution that moves clearly toward a free, international, classless world.”[80] Marxists, and leftists generally, understand the divisions within human society, but often fail when addressing ecological issues. For Snyder, this is because they “have been unable to bring themselves to think of the natural world as part of the dialectic of exploitation; they have been human-centered — drawing the line at exploitation of the working class.” Snyder believes that his “small contribution to radical dialectic is to extend it to animals, plants: indeed, to the whole of life.”[81] In addition to not understanding the import of ecological issues, and of the necessity of developing an ecological consciousness, Marxists have also fallen short in their appreciation for so called primitive peoples. For Snyder, “Marxists, granted the precision of their critique on most points, often have a hard time thinking clearly about primitive cultures, and the usual tendency is to assume that they should become civilized.”[82] Rather than primitive peoples becoming civilized, Snyder advocates that civilized people learn from the wisdom of the “non-civilized.” In contrast to Western critics of Buddhism and Asian philosophies in general, including Bookchin, who say that these worldviews lead to a passive acceptance of the way things are and a kind of quietism, Snyder posits that “to act responsibly in the world doesn’t mean that you always stand back and let things happen: you play an active part, which means making choices, running risks, and karmically dirtying your hands to some extent. That’s what the Bodhisattva ideal is all about.

CP solves – reinhabitation Davidson 9 Steward Davidson, PhD in Politics from the University of Strathclyde, School of Law and Social Sciences, Glasgow Caledonian University Feb. 13, 2009, pages 51-2, “Ecoanarchism: a critical defense,” Journal of Political Ideologies, http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/13569310802636489//CS

Bioregionalism is a strand of ecoanarchism that focuses on contemporary society’s disconnection from its natural base. According to

its proponents, our cultural and economic practices have come to be at odds with the maintenance of the ecological systems we rely on for the provision of our material life. The causes of this situation are typically traced to the dysfunctional spatial configuration of social forms of organization, be they political or economic. For bioregionalists the typically large scale of the nation-state as a territorial unit, when combined with the centralized nature of the state as a decision-making body, ensures that it is insufficiently responsive to the idiosyncratic needs of specific ecosystems. State actors make decisions at a distance from the specific sites at which the effects of resource

extraction or consumption are felt. Similarly, markets of extensive geographical reach serve to mask the origins of products, the manner in which they are produced and the impact this production has on nature. Indeed, they disguise the extent of our dependence upon nature in general.

Bioregionalists also question the manner in which political boundaries are superimposed onto geographical regions in an ecologically arbitrary manner—one which fails to take account of actually existing natural regions and their boundaries. As Snyder points out: We are accustomed to accepting the political boundaries of counties and states, and then national boundaries, as being some sort of regional definition; and although, in some cases, there is some validity to those lines ... the lines are quite often arbitrary and serve only to confuse people’s sense of natural associations and relationships.15 These spatial issues, then, contribute to what may be termed society’s epistemic disconnection from nature. Bioregionalists often point out that as a species we lack knowledge of the complexity of the processes and relationships which constitute the bioregions we inhabit, and of the carrying capacities that represent their ecological limits. Moreover, bioregionalists of a deep ecological bent add that human identification with non-human nature and the wider biotic community is undermined by such issues.16 McGinnis et al., for example, mourn the loss of an ‘ecology of shared identity’.17This ‘loss’ is particularly worrying for deep ecologists given the insistence that an ecological consciousness based on cross-species identification is an essential prerequisite for a caring attitude

towards the environment.18 The result of these individual forms of disconnection is a more general cultural

disconnection from nature. The mass culture associated with contemporary society is abstract and rootless; it

is a homogenous social entity disconnected from and floating above the patchwork quilt of idiosyncratic,

heterogeneous bioregions which constitute the material basis of society. As such, for bioregionalists, any society

bearing such a maladaptive culture cannot help but damage those natural regions which it inhabits but disregards. As Berg and

Dasmann explain, for bioregionalists, the remedy to this malady is reinhabitation , which entails ‘becoming native to a place

through becoming aware of the particular ecological relationships which operate within and around it’.19 Humans need to return to the practice of living-in-place—to ‘following the necessities and pleasures of life as they are uniquely presented by a particular site, and evolving ways to ensure long-term occupancy of that site’.20 Bioregionalists call for the creation of decentralized, self-sufficient, self-ruling communities, where land is held in common at the community level, creating what Joel Kovel terms a form of primitive

communism.21 Moreover, to ensure that the majority of natural processes are contained within the boundaries of the polity, ‘bioregional boundaries should reflect the self-producing and self-withdrawing characteristic of living systems’.22 As Milbraith emphasizes, the idea that ‘economic, social and

political life should be organised by regions that are defined by natural phenomena’ is a central principle of bioregionalism.23 These proposals will, according

to bioregionalists, facilitate the creation of bioregion-based cultures, where ‘culture is integrated with nature at the level of the particular ecosystem’. Such cultures ‘are knowledgeable of past and present indigenous cultural foundations, and seek to incorporate the best elements of these traditions in “newly indigenous” or “future primitive” configurations’. Typically, bioregionalists claim that bioregion-based cultures are to be reinforced and celebrated through ceremonies and rituals, dance and language. However, Chet Bowers also

emphasizes the importance of moving the education curriculum away from the generation of abstract, decontextualized forms of knowledge, which are underlined by anthropocentric and technocratic assumptions, and towards a bioregionally-orientated curriculum, which is context-driver, place-specific and orientated towards relational thinking. Kirkpatrick Sale, on the other hand – one of bioregionalism’s leading theoreticians – links the idea of bioregional learning to the discussion of appropriate scale: The only way people will apply ‘right behaviour’ and behave in a responsible way is if they have been persuaded to see the problem concretely and to understand their own connections to it directly—and this can only be done at a limited scale ... Then people will do the ‘correct thing’ not because it is thought to be themoral, but rather the practical, thing to do.27 The implication that decentralization is necessary for the cultivation of a bioregionally-aware citizenry would seem to put the cart before the horse, at least as far as political strategy is concerned. However, more importantly, in such statements we see a harder edge to bioregionalism—an edge which is often hidden under the veneer of bioregional learning and cultural adaptation. Sale insists that decentralization ‘solves so many of the abstract and theoretical problems the philosophers dither themselves into’; it allows one to avoid the ‘abstruse effluvia of ethical responses’, which, for Sale, are so much just ‘rarefied academic issues’.28As the above quote indicates, the manner in which decentralization does this is by demonstrating the practicality of ecologically ‘correct behaviour’: ‘people do not, other things being equal, pollute and damage those natural systems on which they depend for life and livelihood’.29

Ethics First

We have an ethical obligation to restore harmony – a social transformation is a prerequisite to effective policymakingDavidson 9 Steward Davidson, PhD in Politics from the University of Strathclyde, School of Law and Social Sciences, Glasgow Caledonian University Feb. 13, 2009, pages 55-6, “Ecoanarchism: a critical defense,” Journal of Political Ideologies, http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/13569310802636489//CS

Murray Bookchin, father of social ecology, is in many ways the latest major thinker to hail from the Aristotelian-Hegelian teleological tradition, the influence of which is made manifest in his account of evolution as a directional process—a dialectical unfolding of latent potentialities inherent in all natural phenomena. For Bookchin, evolution progresses towards complexity, diversity and subjectivity. Humans, as self-conscious beings, currently stand on the highest rung of the evolutionary ladder. However, self-consciousness is not a capacity which marks humans off from nature; it is a natural outcome of an evolutionary process which ‘eventually yields mind and intellectuality’.52 Humans should therefore be considered as ‘nature rendered self-conscious’.53 Bookchin incorporates the social realm into this evolutionary process, viewing it as a natural growth from that which existed prior to humans: It is eminently natural for humanity to create a ‘second nature’ from its evolution in ‘first nature’. By second nature, I mean the development of a uniquely human culture, a wide variety of institutionalised human communities, an

effective human technics, a richly symbolic language, and a carefully managed source of nutriment.For Bookchin, this self-

evolving patterning, this ‘grain’ of evolution, is implicitly ethical . The values of mutualism, freedom and subjectivity

are not strictly human values or concerns; they are objective values which inhere in all natural phenomena. The actualization of these potentialities, however, should not be considered inevitable. As Clark points out, ‘the unfolding of potentiality is best described as a “tendency or nisus”, rather than the “sure win” of classical teleology’.55Such an open-ended, contingent teleology is necessary if Bookchin is to be able to claim, as indeed he does, that second nature—our social ecologies— are at odds with first

nature, or natural ecology, in that they ‘cut across the grain of nature’, or run counter to the general thrust of evolution . It is

humanity’s responsibility as the ‘self-reflexive voice of nature’ to transform society in a way which restores the

harmony between first and second nature. This involves not only explicating those values which are implicit in nature, but

also finding social expressions for these values. In other words, we must derive the principles of our social ecology from

natural ecology; we must discover and implement those social principles which assist the evolutionary process

in the direction of greater freedom and subjectivity, thus creating ‘a radical integration of second nature with

first along far-reaching ecological lines’ .56As Eckersley notes, paraphrasing Aldo Leopold’s land ethic, Bookchin’s

naturalistic ethic dictates that ‘a thing is right when it tends to foster the diversity, complexity, complementarity and spontaneity of the ecosystem. It is wrong when it tends otherwise’.57 By deriving the principles of his social ecology from natural ecology, Bookchin believes himself to have imbued humanity and nature with ‘a common ethical voice’. The social principles which Bookchin derives from an examination of the ‘grain of nature’ are unity-in-diversity, spontaneity and non-hierarchical relations. Evolution is, for Bookchin, ‘immanently self-elaborating’ and ‘spontaneously self-organising’. As such, ‘a true politics of freedom will only be attained when society is based on self-management’.58His studies of nature, therefore, ultimately provide the ontological justification for his vision of a stateless society— libertarian municipalism. This vision is, for Bookchin, based on an

ethic which is grounded in nature, and as such is designed to complement evolution . The state, on the other hand, as the

hierarchical institution par excellence, is unnatural and runs counter to the thrust of evolution . Bookchin

describes libertarian municipalism as involving ‘a redefinition of politics, a return to the word’s original Greek meaning as the management of the community or polis by means of direct face-to-face assemblies of the people in the formulation of public policy based on an ethics of complementarily and solidarity’.59 This requires that we ‘decentralise our cities and establish entirely new ecocommunities’.60 These ‘libertarian municipalities’, represent the ‘living cell which forms the basic unit of political life ... from which everything else must emerge: confederation, interdependence, citizenship, and freedom’;61 they are to be ‘artistically moulded to the ecosystems in which they are located’;62 and are to allow for ‘direct popular administration ... yet be large enough to foster cultural diversity and psychological uniqueness’.63 At their heart lie their popular assemblies, which, for Bookchin, ‘are the minds of a free society’.64… Bookchin is also more willing to accept the need for cooperation beyond the level of the municipality. His confederal vision consists of ‘a network of administrative councils whose members or delegates are elected from a of administrative councils whose members or delegates are elected from popular face-to-face democratic assemblies. in the various villages. towns. and even neighborhoods of large cities'.75 As noted above. Sale accepts the need for inter- bioregional cooperation. but warns against institutionalized interaction beyond this level. Bookchin. however. is less concerned with achieving self-sufficiency and autarky: 'Economic interdependence is a fact of life today. and capitalism itself has made parochial autarchies a chimera. While municipalities and regions can seek to attain a considerable measure of self-sufficiency. we have long left the era when self-sufficient communities that can indulge their prejudices are possible." The important point. for Bookchin. is to ensure that power nonetheless is placed firmly in the hands of individual municipal assemblies. To this end. he stipulates that:

'Policymaking is exclusively the right of popular community assemblies' ." The confederal councils fulfil purely

administrative and coordinative functions. while their members are 'strictly mandated. recallable. and responsible to the assemblies’. The fact of economic interdependence. however. is not the only reason Bookchin advocates confederalism. He goes on to observe that 'many in the ecology movement tend to ignore the very real problems with "localism"'.7° In particular. Bookchin emphasizes that 'decentralism [and] sell'-sufficiency . . . do not constitute a guarantee that we will achieve a rational ecological society. In fact. [these principles] have at one time or another supported parochial communities. oligarchies. and even despotic regimes'. For such reasons. 'there is a compelling need for democratic and truly communitarian fomis of interdepen- dence-in short. for libertarian forms of confederalismim Such forms of interdependence. for Bookchin. provide an escape route from the relativism which is so unappealing in Sale's bioregionalism: lf particular communities or neighborhoods-or' a minority grouping of them-choose to go their own way to a point where hurnan rights are violated or where ecological mayhem is permitted. the majority in a local or regional confederation has every right to prevent such rnalfeasances through its confederal council."

Libertarian municipalism solves for the impacts of social structure on the environmentPalmer 3 Joy A. Palmer, advises several Global500 companies, 2003, “Murray Bookchin,” Fifty Key Thinkers on the Environment, pages 243-244, http://www.spaz.org/~crackhouse/!!!%20d(-_-)b%20!!!%20occult%20&%20esoteric%20archive%2066677793/Palmer%20-%20Fifty.Key.Thinkers.on.the.Environment.Jan.2001.pdf#page=256//CS

Social ecology can be described as a form of eco-anarchism, in which the cause of the ecological crisis lies in structures of hierarchy and power associated with the modern bureaucratic state and corporate capitalism. Bookchin has summarized social ecology as made up of ‘an organic way of thinking…dialectical naturalism …a mutualistic social and ecological ethics…the ethics of complementarity…a new technics…eco-technology;

and… new forms of human association…eco-communities’.3 The main principles of social ecology are: 1 that the domination of nature

by humans has its roots in the historical emergence of patterns of hierarchy and domination within human

society ; 2 a dialectical approach to understanding the relationship between human society and the natural world. Underpinning many

of his ideas is a reworking of dialectical thinking which combines Hegel’s dialectical system of logic with ecological thinking in order to ‘naturalize’ the dialectical tradition. His ‘dialectical naturalism’ contrasts with Hegel’s dialectical idealism and Marx’s dialectical materialism. 3 a rejection of eco-centrism and the idea that humans are ‘simply one species amongst others’, and anthropocentric views which pit humans over, above or against nature. This is expressed by the notion of how ‘first nature’ (non-human world) ‘grades into’ ‘second nature’ (human culture), and how the latter is derived from the former; 4 a philosophy of nature in which

values and practices such as freedom, subjectivity and mutualism are present in germinal form within nature and constitutive of its evolutionary telos; 5 a

rejection of both the modern nation-state and corporate capitalism and a revolutionary-Utopian vision of

decentralized, ecologically sustainable, participatory democratic communities in which the economy is run on

mutualist and co-operative lines . Bookchin’s work on social ecology has recently developed into what he calls ‘libertarian

municipalism’. In the words of his partner and fellow theorist of social ecology, Janet Biehl, libertarian municipalism is ‘the revolutionary forms of freedom that give organizational substance to the idea of freedom. In brief, libertarian municipalism seeks to revive the democratic possibilities

latent in existing local governments and transform them into direct democracies.’4For Bookchin, libertarian municipalism is defined as. 'a

confederal society based on the co-ordination of municipalities in a bottom-up system of administration as

distinguished from the top-down rule of the nation- state' .' It differs from bioregionalism in its concern with the issue of interaction

between communities and the rejection of the bioregional model of small-scale, self-sufficient communities. promoted by other environmental thinkers such as Rudolf Bahro. The confederal nature of the arrangement means it is a voluntary political association of autonomous communities with sovereignty retained at the local level Yet, the relativism that typifies some anarchist political anangemcnts is explicitly ruled out.

As he puts it, 'Parochialism can be checked not only by the compelling realities of economic interdependence but

by the commitment of municipal minorities to defer to the majority wishes of paricipating communities." Here

economic-ecological interdependence goes hand in hand with political autonomy and self-determination. Autarky is not a central rxinciple of social ecology, as it is for other radical green deoentralist approaches such as bioregionalism.

Framework of bioregionalism solves our skewed social structuresMcGinnis 5 Michael Vincent McGinnis, Bioregionalism, July 28, 2005//CS

Figures of regulation: is a workable phrase for the new equivalents to customs that we need to learn. Late Industrial society with its misplaced faith in technological solutions (to problems caused by unlimited applications of technology in the first place) is out of control. Our social organism is like an embryo that is suffering damage but there are no internal checks on our activities to re-establish a balance with the capacities of natural systems. The point of figures of regulation is that they would incorporate the concept that individual requirements and those of society are tied to the life processes of a bioregion. A bioregional model can identify balance points in our interactions with natural systems. and figures of regulation can operate to direct or limit activities to achieve balance. The idea of a figure as a series of movements in a dance is useful for understanding the multilayered nature of figures of regulation. The performance of a dance follows a distinct sense of rightness that would otherwise exist only as an idea. and it suggests connectedness with many other activities and ideas. It is a process that makes the invisible visible. As a dance unfolds it implies further action that is self-referenced by what has gone before. Figures of regulation are assemblages of values and ideas that can similarly become ingrained in patterns of activity. major evolution in the bioregional movement occurred in

the mid-19805, and can be attributed to the organizing skills of homesteader and appropriate technology activist David Haenke. In the late 1970s Haenke and a small group of dedicated colleagues were instrumental in establishing the Ozark AreaCommunity Congress (OACC). the first broadly-based bioregional organization. OACC's annual congress. held every year since 1980, provided a template for the practical "application o fa locally-oriented and place-based bioregionalism. As word of the success of OACC spread, similar organizations were established in a growing variety of locales, first in Kansas and later across the continent. ln many cases. representatives from newly organizing bioregions would either visit OACC annual meetings, or Haenke would travel to participate in a distant inaugural gathering. These new bioregion-based groups spawned exotically titled periodicals Konza (Kansas Area Watershed Council), Katuah (Bioregional journal of the Southern Appalachians), Talking Oak Leaves (Seasonal Newsletter of the Ozark Area Community Congress), Mesechabe (Mississippi Delta Greens) and Down Wind Newsletter of the Wild Onion Alliance). Each of these publications represents Grass-roots bioregionalism at its best, offering a mix of local news, place-related essays, poetry, announcement of community events, and carefully thought out consideration of aspects of bioregionalism. Several memorable issues of Mesechabe, arguably the most eclectic bioregion-based periodical, contained a first translation of a journal made during anarchist-geographer Elisee Reclus' l855 journey to New Orleans. As part of his legendary role as the tireless "johnny Appleseed" of bioregional organizers, Haenke published a booklet titled Ecological Politics and Bioregionalism (1984). Where earlier bioregional polemicists had been preoccupied with ecological connection actualized by a renewed anarchic primitivism, Haenke expounds a more pragmatic variant of bioregional purpose. In a tone that epitomizes mid-continent pragmatism he invokes the existence of ecological laws that will guide the positive transformation of bioregion-based societies. By adopting a style of writing that mimics the rhythm of a fundamentalist sermon Haenke describes how involves strict use of regenerative agriculture. appropriate technology. renewable energy sources. cooperative economics. land trusts. ecologically-based health policy. and aggressive "peace offensives." Haenke's bioregional vision is rural, practical and focused-his focus is on the politicization and institutionalization of bioregionalism. In 1984. Haenke utilized the bioregional vision that he developed in Ecological Politics and Bioregionalism as a framework for organizing and convening the first North American Bioregional Congress. Over 200 participants from several continents were attracted to this landmark event, in which policies in twenty- three areas of bioregional concern were developed by committees, debated in plenary sessions, adapted as deemed necessary, and adopted by consensus. These policies are depicted in Table 2.2. The written record of this gathering, North American Bioregional Congress Proceedings (Henderson at al. I984), as well as the proceedings of four hi-annual Continental Congresses/Gatherings that have followed (Hart cl ul. I987; Zuckerman 1989; Dolcini at al. l99l; Payne I992), are key sources that reveal how the concept of bioregionalism has expanded. A second vital source of bioregional history emanating from the continental congresses are daily newsletters issued under the name Voice of the Turt;e . Each issue summarizes reports from the previous day's events. as well as a variety of poems. personal statements and related important contextual material.The published proceedings of congresses and gatherings held in scores of individual bioregions provide detail regarding ways in which the definition of bioregionalism has been adapted to suit the needs and nuance o fdifferent cultural and biophysical settings. Noteworthy publications. among many others. include Kansas Ami ll/'atm'Iu-d (K/l W) Council Rcsolutiom (Kansas Area Watershed Council 1982), The Sc-tom! Biorcgional Congas: of I'ac_iflr Casradia: I'rorccdin_q.<, Rcsouraw and Dircrlory (Scott and Carpenter 1988) and I'ror¢'¢'din_q.\': Firs! Biort-_Qional C<m_qr¢'ss qflhe Upper Blacklaml Prairie (Maishall 1989).

Aff Ans

CP fails – no collective action, no justice, no adherence to principlesDavidson 9 Steward Davidson, PhD in Politics from the University of Strathclyde, School of Law and Social Sciences, Glasgow Caledonian University Feb. 13, 2009, pages 48-9, “Ecoanarchism: a critical defense,” Journal of Political Ideologies, http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/13569310802636489//CS

Whilst questions regarding strategies for social change are undoubtedly important, it is to this third reason for green political theory’s turn to the state that this article applies itself. It focuses on the question of whether the statist critique of the ecoanarchist vision of a stateless society has indeed proven decisive. The first sections outline the core components of this critique by identifying those deficiencies with ecoanarchist political structures—and particularly those that cast doubts on ecoanarchism’s green credentials—which are perceived by its various detractors as indicative of the need for a state. However, rather than simply listing then responding to whatever criticisms of ecoanarchism can be gleaned from the existing literature, the central characteristics of the statist critique are derived from a critical analysis of two strands of ecoanarchism—bioregionalism and social ecology. This approach enables the article to locate criticisms of ecoanarchism within, and outline their relation to, these broader theoretical models, and thereby facilitates a more comprehensive, contextualized understanding of these supposed deficiencies. Moreover, taking a critical stance towards a theory that is going to be defended is good practice, as it ensures that the critique being responded to is sufficiently robust. The reasons for focusing on bioregionalism and social ecology are two-fold. First, they are the two dominant strands of ecoanarchism; and second, their near-polar variance on several issues means that any account focusing on these two models does justice to the breadth of the ideology. Bioregionalists and social ecologists disagree, amongst other things, on matters of ontology, ethics and definitions of community. Most important, though, given the focus of this article, is that they diverge significantly on questions of political organization. Bioregionalists tend to be more committed to the principle of autarky, whereas social ecologists advocate confederal structures. Indeed, Barry goes as far as arguing that ‘as one moves along the green political continuum from bioregionalism to social ecology, the ecoanarchist position “shades into” an understanding of green politics which sees its primary goal as the democratic transformation of the state and civil society’.13 Out of the various

potential deficiencies identified with these particular strands, three issues stand out as being core to a more general

statist critique of ecoanarchist political structures: difficulties with securing collective action among individual

communities; problems with guaranteeing inter-polity distributive justice; and difficulties ensuring

ecocommunities adhere to democratic procedures and universalistic green principles such as equality, justice

and fairness . The final sections, however, demonstrate that, while there are legitimate criticisms which may be levelled at both

bioregionalism and social ecology—hence the title ‘a critical defence’—the idea that the statist critique has scored a decisive victory may be premature. First, green statists have tended to overstate the need for a federal body with powers of coercion. And second, they generally failure to recognize that many of the criticisms aimed at anarchist political structures can be directed at the state system itself. It must be stressed, though, that this argument—that the statist critique of ecoanarchist political structures is unconvincing—does not conclusively demonstrate the superiority of ecoanarchist visions over statist ones—nor is it designed to. This article is primarily a response to those criticisms of ecoanarchist political structures forwarded by supporters of the state, rather than a direct attack on the state itself.

The local focus of bioregionalism makes solvency impossible Davidson 9 Steward Davidson, PhD in Politics from the University of Strathclyde, School of Law and Social Sciences, Glasgow Caledonian University Feb. 13, 2009, pages 48-9, “Ecoanarchism: a critical defense,” Journal of Political Ideologies, http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/13569310802636489//CS

Barry attacks the ‘autarky imperative’ upon which this type of thinking is based, on the basis that it precludes the redistribution of resources across bioregional boundaries, which Barry regards as ‘a core part of any green or environmentally informed theory of global distributive justice’. Such transactions, whether trade or charity based, would be seen by bioregionalists as undermining the creation of an adaptive fit between a community’s economy and culture and the specific bioregion it inhabits. The upshot is, as Barry notes, ‘that those living in resource-poor ecosystems are condemned to their fate’. Barry is correct in this assessment; however, the above analysis would seem to indicate that this is Sale’s aim rather than an unintentional consequence of his system. It is worth stressing, though, that it is not the scale of political arrangements proposed by bioregionalists that causes distributional issues here. Although bioregionalists aim to match political and natural boundaries, they are faced with the problem that natural regions are overlapping, of different sizes, ‘like Chinese boxes, one within another, forming a complex arrangement from the largest to the smallest’. They are also faced with the problem that morphoregions-the smallest type of bioregion identified by Sale-can cover several thousand square miles, whereas Sale claims that the most appropriate scale for a political community would be between 1000 and 10,000. Obviously each 10,000 strong village commune cannot be allocated land totaling several thousand miles. Sale also recognizes that there will be ‘countless occasions’ which call for cooperation between communities. The

conclusion for Sale is that ‘isolationsim and self-sufficiency at a local scale is simply impossible, like fingers trying

to be independent of hand and body’ . He envisages instead a bioregional confederation of communities: ‘Communication

and information networks would be-would need to be-maintained among the communities of a bioregion and possibly some kind of political deliberative and decision-making body would eventually seem to be necessary’. Given the size of bioregions, as they are conceptualized by Sale, it is clearly not the scale of such confederations that is the central cause of distributional difficulties. Many nation-states are of comparable scale. What is problematic is Sale’s insistence that ‘Any larger political form is not only superfluous, it stands every chance of being downright dangerous’. For ecostatists, this precludes the achievement of redistributive justice, which requires state-like coordinating bodies. A further potential problem created by the autarky imperative concerns the consequent lack of centralized institutions fulfilling an information-pooling function. As the traditional green slogan indicates, the capacity to ‘act locally’ is dependent upon the ability to ‘think globally’. However, as de Geus notes, ‘local communities lack a general overview of the total ecological situation’”. Developing the critique further, Goodin claims that, even if such communities

were furnished with an understanding of the ‘total ecological situation’, it is still the case that: The paridgmatically

contemporary problems of climate change and ozone depletion, unlike the earlier problems of pollution and

population control, simply cannot reliably be solved through actions by nations (still less bioregions) one at a time.

The systematic, coordinated efforts of all are required.

Perm – Generic/NativesPerm solves – community renewal and experience is key to coexistence with the EarthBooth 2000 Annie Booth, Associate Professor in Environmental Studies at the University of Northern British Columbia, “The Native American Worldview,” Ways of Knowing: Acceptable Understandings Within Bioregionalism, Deep Ecology, Ecofeminism, and Native American Cultures, The Trumpeter, Vol. 16, No. 1, 2000, http://trumpeter.athabascau.ca/index.php/trumpet/article/view/145/170//CSAllen argues that Native American cultures are based on visions and dreams, and the survival of those cultures requires regular and dedicated renewal of those visions by members of the community.24 In one sense, the personal experience of vision questing becomes the basis for community survival. This idea is very similar to what ecofeminists are attempting to articulate. The idea of vision questing as a source of

knowledge has also been adopted by deep ecological practitioners, although with a slightly different purpose. In deep ecology, vision questing is a way of realigning the private individual with his or her appropriate place in the universe. Vision questing serves this function for Native Americans as well, but there is a far greater emphasis (perhaps its primary emphasis) on community renewal. The linkage between such esoteric sources of knowledge and the applied “rational” knowledge of the physical world is demonstrated by the perhaps 40,000 years of generally successful, although not perfect, coexistence with North American ecosystems. It is this sort of blood and bone knowledge of the earth that bioregionalists are attempting to regain through their own experience. A Yurok holy man talks of “seeing” as essential in true knowledge: To see means to see what is actually there, what actually exists; not what you want to be there, but what is really there. It’s all seeing (emphasis in original).25 What he is talking about is not projecting human wants and desires, but seeing the land for what it is and what it can do, the essence of bioregionalism. Such seeing, however, only comes with experience and living with the earth.

Perm – Deep EcologyPerm solves – deep ecology rejects the Cartesian rationality bioregionalism is based on but accesses its transformative potential Booth 2000 Annie Booth, Associate Professor in Environmental Studies at the University of Northern British Columbia, “The Deep Ecology Worldview,” Ways of Knowing: Acceptable Understandings Within Bioregionalism, Deep Ecology, Ecofeminism, and Native American Cultures, The Trumpeter, Vol. 16, No. 1, 2000, http://trumpeter.athabascau.ca/index.php/trumpet/article/view/145/170//CSIn contrast to bioregionalism, both supporters of deep ecology and ecological feminism have invested much time in a debate over appropriate ways of knowing. In part this seems to be because both are intimately involved with creating an alternative to the western techno-industrial world view and one contrast they draw is in appropriate knowledge. In the western world view there is a long history of stressing the logical, the rational, and the linear in acceptable knowledge, and of basing the exploration of the world, science, on the Cartesian model with its emphasis on those traits.6 Both deep ecology and ecological feminism arose, in part, from the perception that this narrow conception of appropriate knowledge was severely lacking. Supporters of deep ecology and ecofeminism have therefore spent much time arguing that other ways of knowing had to be revalued, or, if necessary, re-created. Deep ecology supporters, even when discussing the practical application of knowledge, often seem caught in more formal, more philosophical, less applied forms of discussion than do bioregionalists and, until recently, ecofeminists. First and foremost disciplinary academics, deep ecological theorists advocate the use of other forms of knowledge, but have themselves employed rational, logical arguments following philosophic traditions.7 Since this is what they have been trained to do, it is not surprising, but it has lent a sense of mixed-messages to their ideas. One wonders where the “alternative way of knowing” really is while ploughing through tedious, elaborate and unnecessarily complex presentations loaded with jargon on the importance of intuitive understanding. Interestingly, until recently, ecofeminist theorists managed to avoid this mixed-message problem, perhaps because, while academically trained, many were not professional academics. With the growth of interest in ecofeminism, and with everybody and anybody jumping on the publication bandwagon, many ecofeminist writings are also becoming overly academic. Some recent contributions to the field have been tedious, elaborate, jargon-laden and unnecessarily complex. In spite of presentation problems, deep ecology makes a considerable effort to elaborate on the necessity of ways of knowledge that are outside traditional western world views. As in bioregionalism, there is a new stress on valuing and encouraging emotional and creative forms of understanding as equal to the rational and linear. And it stresses the importance of experience as a form of understanding and knowledge. For example, look at how one theorist, Bill Devall, explains the

principal attributes of deep ecology: The term “deep ecology” refers to finding our bearings, to the process of grounding ourselves through fuller experience of our connection to earth . . . Deepness is felt in the way we are experiencing our lives. Deepness of thinking means articulating basic priorities, or more or less intuitive beliefs. Deepness means exploring our dreams to recognize our archaic unity with all life and basic symbols . . . Deepness implies an attitude of dwelling-in-the-moment, meditating; letting one’s own rhythms and perceptual room open up; respecting and including what is there, what comes, involving the flow of actions from the level of unconsciousness that William Reich calls ‘eros’ (emphasis added).8 A key task in deep ecology is the cultivation of ecological consciousness: of being aware of our surroundings and of those beings that are around us as well. Part of this consciousness is clearly intuitive for it involves appreciating the “actuality of rocks, wolves, trees and rivers . . ..” What this means, I think, is seeing such things not as background for our lives, however important, but as real, vital and as much in the foreground of existence as each of us is in our minds. There is little in Cartesian rationality that could adequately demonstrate this to us, without reference to utility, something clearly different from what Devall is arguing. Logical arguments have long been used to make the case that other forms of life are not worthy of our sustained interest and concern: they are different, and when they do share attributes with us (the ability to feel pain, for example) it is in some lesser, different way. Seeing other forms of life, including a group life such as a river, as of equal relevance as we are ourselves is an intuitive leap. When it seems to occur in people it is often as part of an emotional response: we feel that we are right, as in the case of many animal rights activists. And to discredit them, they are dismissed as non-logical and irrational, clearly implying that such considerations are inappropriate ways of understanding the question in “real” life. Thus, intuition becomes, as an alternative, an important way of knowing the world, as does feeling and emotion. Deep ecology supporters, then, centre themselves on intuition as an acceptable knowledge. Arne Naess characterizes comfort with such knowledge as something ingrained, and perhaps particular to, people attracted to deep ecology. An interview with Naess included the following exchange: Stephan Bodian: This brings us back to the question of information versus intuition. Your feeling is that we can’t expect to have an ideal amount of information but must somehow act on what we know? Arne Naess: Yes. It’s easier for deep ecologists than for others because we have certain fundamental values, a fundamental view of what’s meaningful in life, what’s worth maintaining. . . the quality of life, in the sense of basic satisfaction in the depths of one’s heart or soul, should be maintained or increased. This view is intuitive, as are all important views, in the sense that it can’t be proven. As Aristotle said, it shows a lack of education to try to prove everything, because you have to have a starting point. You can’t prove the methodology of science, you can’t prove logic, because logic presupposes fundamental premises.9 Such intuited understanding is the basis for much of deep ecology’s platform. Experience is also a basis for knowledge. In this, deep ecology shares an understanding with bioregionalism, which also appears to value experiential learning. Knowing something in your bones is essential to the transformation of the individual and society that ecophilosophy is attempting to create, and is only found through bone-influencing experience. However, I think the two consider experiences on different levels. Bioregionalists seem to see much of that vital experience coming from the work of living with the land, of making a living from it without doing harm. It is experience that is grounded, quite literally, in soil and sun and green plants and house building and celebration. Gut-level experience. The supporters of deep ecology, however, seem to speak of the essential knowledge of experiences as more mental than physical activity. While grounded in the physical activities many deep ecology enthusiasts engage in—aikido and other martial arts, mountain climbing, hiking, for instance—the result of these experiences should be a transformational mental change, although derived from experience. Warwick Fox writes, Rather than dealing with moral injunctions, transpersonal ecologists are. . . inclined far more to what might be referred to as experiential invitations: readers or listeners are invited to experience themselves as intimately bound up with the world around them. . . (emphasis in original).10 This experience of knowing the self as part of the rest of the world, caught up in it inextricably, is at the core of deep ecology’s transformative potential. It is however, something very

different from the experiences at the heart of bioregionalism, which focus on connections at a far more pragmatic level.

Perm – EcofeminismPerm solves – both bioregionalism and ecofeminism stress bodily experience – need the aff to prevent manipulation of ethical principlesBooth 2000 Annie Booth, Associate Professor in Environmental Studies at the University of Northern British Columbia, “The Ecofeminist Worldview,” Ways of Knowing: Acceptable Understandings Within Bioregionalism, Deep Ecology, Ecofeminism, and Native American Cultures, The Trumpeter, Vol. 16, No. 1, 2000, http://trumpeter.athabascau.ca/index.php/trumpet/article/view/145/170//CSIn contrast with bioregionalism and deep ecology, an ecofeminist sense of appropriate knowledge is not easily defined, principally because it has not been clearly defined in ecofeminism. Rather, there are conflicting theories under debate. There is none of the generally-agreed-upon, open-to-personal-interpretation theory found in deep ecology or bioregionalism. At the heart of ecofeminist debate is the role of the rational and objective versus the role of the emotional and the subjective. As with deep ecology and bioregionalism, ecological feminism began as a critique and rejection of the western cultural worldview with its overemphasis on rationality, and linearity. It argued against a Cartesian science which elevated the material and objective above the spiritual and the subjective as appropriate ways of knowing the world.11 However, from the first, the

ecofeminist discussion has been a more critical and complicated enterprise, perhaps because ecofeminist supporters perceived that they had more to lose. The consequences of the wrong argument seemed likely to include the ongoing oppression of women and the loss of a badly needed liberating opportunity. This sense of possible loss may account for the fact that many ecofeminists approached the debate in a highly combative way. Ecofeminist debate may also be more combative because it has been part of an older debate inherited from feminist theory, with no resolution apparent for either feminists or ecofeminists. At the heart of the debate was ecofeminism’s early need to reclaim subjectivity, feeling, emotion, and caring as legitimate sources of knowledge, precisely because they were disregarded feminine values which needed reclamation. The concepts themselves seem to have been lost in the controversy that raged over whether anything could count solely and truly as a “feminine” attribute. (This argument has been carried on on many fronts, not merely over valid ways of knowing. It is at the heart of the splits in the ecofeminist movement today.) Whether seeking to reclaim them as “feminine” ways of knowing (i.e. ways particularly associated with, or possibly unique to, women) or merely arguing that such ways need to be re-valued, ecofeminist theories have argued the following: an ecofeminist (or feminist) way of knowing must acknowledge “the central importance of the erotic, the private, the personal. . . Its central ontological category is not substance, but relation.”12 Ecofeminist knowledge, says Rose,

transcends dichotomies, insists on the scientific validity of the subjective, on the need to unite cognitive and affective domains; it emphasizes holism, harmony, and complexity rather than reductionism, domination and linearity.13 Finally, ecofeminist knowledge stresses the importance of understanding found through personal connection and caring.14 An excellent example of such a knowledge is demonstrated in the interest many ecofeminists have taken in the animal rights movement.15 Whatever one thinks of such interests, the interests are clearly felt by those involved: the animal rights activists are often motivated by a personal love of animals or by experiences with abused animals. Like deep ecology and bioregionalism, ecological feminism stresses the importance of experience, and personal experience at that. However, the ecofeminists seem to be talking about experience in a sense more related to bioregionalism than deep ecology . There is a stress on bodily experience , on what is

learned through working with muscle and bone, rather than the mental exercises some supporters of deep ecology advocate. Thus, French writes of returning to the mediating experience of pleasure as it stresses to the individual the importance of the body’s experiences.16 It is the body which links us to our feelings: All knowledge is rooted in our sensuality. We know and value the world, if we know and value it, through our ability to touch,

to hear, to see. Perception is foundational to conception. Ideas are dependent on our sensuality. Feeling is the basic bodily ingredient that mediates our connectedness to the world. . . In the absence of feeling there is no rational ability to evaluate what is happening.17 Ecofeminists such as French, Harrison, Kheel, and others argue that it is these feelings which we must recover as legitimate sources of knowledge. It is feeling and personal experiences which lead us to care, a possible solution to the techno-industrial worldview’s alienated and ecologically destructive approach to the world. Both Lahar and Kheel argue that, without a sense of personal connection and caring about an object or event, we will not be able to act in an ethically sound manner. Abstract ethical principles (such as are found in traditional philosophy and often in deep ecology) are insufficient as they fail to evoke any true commitment and can easily be manipulated to meet other ends.18 Both the emphasis on emotion and on caring, have come under attack by other ecofeminists. Biehl in particular sees this growing focus as a rejection of the benefits and value of rationality, a dangerous trend she argues. Biehl argues it is the ecofeminists’ focus on holism that leads them to embrace a personal, experiential subjectivity as a feminine value. Yet there is nothing liberating for either women or men in a complete embrace of subjectivity or of experiential caring as a basis for improving our relations with each other or the natural world: Not only is ‘caring’ compatible with hierarchy, if it is grounded in any way in ‘women’s nature’—or men’s for that matter—let alone in social constructions, it lacks any institutional form. It simply rests on the tenuous prayer that individuals will be motivated to ‘care.’ But individuals may easily start or stop caring. They may care at their whim. They may not care enough. They may care about some but not others. Lacking an institutional form and dependent on individual whim, ‘caring’ is a slender thread on which to base an emancipatory political life.19 To embrace experience, feeling, and subjectivity as legitimate ways of knowing is, according to Biehl and other critics, to reject rationality, and a necessary objectivity. It is to throw away the best in western cultures along with the worst of its rational excesses. Yet, for all their enthusiastic reclamation of emotion and subjectivity, I don’t see ecofeminists taking that step. Most are legitimately wary of moving from one extreme to another: from hyper-rationality to hyper-emotionality. As Plumwood and King point out, to focus on emotion and subjectivity to the exclusion of other forms of knowledge is to fall into the old dualistic trap ecofeminists set out to criticize: either emotion or rationality.20 “Feminism and the Revolt of Nature.” Heresies # 13 4(1): 12–16. pp. 13–14. They are not alone in this belief. Plumwood, Kheel, and Code also argue the need to have both objectivity and subjectivity, reason and emotion, experience and idea.21 While somewhat divided amongst themselves, ecofeminists seem to arrive at a sense of appropriate knowledges that is similar to that of deep ecology and bioregionalism, and yet it is also a good deal more complex.

Epistemology FirstBioregionalism accepts a practical epistemology as acceptable knowledge – theoretical construction is a prerequisite to environmental discussionsBooth 2000 Annie Booth, Associate Professor in Environmental Studies at the University of Northern British Columbia, “The Bioregional Worldview,” Ways of Knowing: Acceptable Understandings Within Bioregionalism, Deep Ecology, Ecofeminism, and Native American Cultures, The Trumpeter, Vol. 16, No. 1, 2000, http://trumpeter.athabascau.ca/index.php/trumpet/article/view/145/170//CS The sources of “knowledge” are key to whether that collection of ideas, facts, and data points are accepted as knowledge. And the sources themselves tell a great deal about the individual or group associated with those sources. Witness the extensive and careful critique of “techno-industrial” or “Cartesian” derived knowledge by both ecological feminists and deep ecologists (some of which is reviewed later in this article). Justifiably, they suggest that the characteristics of “acceptable” knowledge—rationality, linearity and objectivity—obscure or distort how we understand the world around us. Another issue to consider is the importance of validation conferred by the source. The responses people have to different presentations of “knowledge” are instructive. Presentations of “knowledge” through television and movies are often better absorbed by non-philosophers than articles in Nature or even Scientific American or Popular Science or the Trumpeter. If we are to create sources of “environmental knowledge” for the public, then perhaps the “play’s the thing.” However, the source needs legitimation and acceptance on the part of philosophers as well. Bioregionalists have not spent much time constructing debates over appropriate sources of knowledge. This is not to say they do not engage in some theoretical construction and debate, but rather that they seem more interested in the practical applications of ideas, rather than how such ideas were derived. In a passage on scale and morality, for example, Sale continually stresses words such as “practical,” “concrete,” and “direct connections.” He speaks of the point of knowledge “where abstractions and intangibles give way to the here and now, the seen and felt, the real and known.”1 These are the qualities which are valued in a knowledge base. Broadly, however, there seems to be an inclination among bioregionalists to accept most sources of knowledge (emotional, rational, mythical,

factual, abstract, artistic or logical) as useful and/or necessary. For example, a bioregionalist “bundle,” which is created around a specific bioregion, contains a variety of materials. One focused on the Lower Hudson bioregion contains the following: a history of the region written by Thomas Berry, which examined the geological, ecological, and human history of the region as well as its current composition; a set of to-scale architectural drawings for a community designed around the region’s natural constraints, with suggestions for heating, gardening, energy conservation, and facilitating social interaction; a lovely short poem on the estuary; a artistic poster demonstrating species interconnections in the region (emphasizing species currently and formerly present); a drawing of an unidentified but presumably native fish.2 Similar bundles also exist for the San Francisco Bay Watershed and the Rocky Mountains as well as other bioregions. The importance of knowledge derived from art, poetry, literature, even drama, seems to be of as much importance as is knowledge derived from more conventional sources, which, for bioregionalists, might include ecology, biology and history. Artistic understandings are thought to be particularly important for the creative and spiritual well-being of people and the broader community.3 An article in Raise the Stakes (one important source of bioregional information) even focuses on the use of drama to promote urban bioregional ideas. Drama attracts people through visceral appeal rather than intellectual arguments.4 Such a broad understanding of appropriate knowledge, in an applied way, distinguishes bioregionalism from many ecosophies and from the techno-industrial worldview. Many bioregionalists also stress the importance of emotions and feelings as a source of information, sometimes in an almost mystical fashion: What is actually there? We see one thing, feel another, hear yet another. Look at the grass blade under a microscope and it’s something else again. What is it if we don’t touch it, don’t touch it with our senses, don’t touch it with our mind. . . just BE THERE with it (emphasis in original).5 However, such stresses come without much theoretical support or debate: it is simply accepted as natural.

THEORY STUFFWe spent a day coming up with theor defenses of the counterplans

STATES

STATE CP IS GOOD

Counterplan tests the federal agentAff should be responsible for all of their policy, including the agent

Only the counterplan focuses the debate on agentAgent disads alone get lost in the wash of all the other case and plan issues. Only the counterplan can isolate the agent issue.

Size of the topic justifies the CPThere are so many possible cases that we can't be well prepared to debate them all, especially early in the year. The counterplan helps level the playing field.

Literature justifies the CPWe read solvency evidence and indicate states are acting. This is a real issue.

Competition is a sufficient check on counterplans.If the counterplan competes, it should be a legitimate issue.

AT - 50 STATE FIAT NOT REAL

Counterplan is not all 50 states (depending on neg strategy) It's only coastal states. These states do have common policies on fishing, shipping etc

Fiat means we debate shouldWe don't pretend anything happens. We just consider what ought to be done

Academia proves value of debating shouldThousands of political science and legal scholars have produced millions of pages on the issue of federalism – the issue of whether states or the USFG should be the actor. This real world debate is not prevented of 50 state fiat arguments.

ADD ARGUMENTS FROM STATE CP IS GOOD

STATES AND INTERNATIONAL AGENT

AT - WE'RE FEDERAL POLICY MAKERS

The aff arguments is that since we're role-playing federal policy makers, only federal policies are legit.

Debate is not role-playingYou're you and I'm me. We're individuals debating about whether the federal government should take topical action. Our counterplan competes with federal action.

Role playing excludes important argumentsFor example, kritiks would never be an issue in Congress.

Role playing add bad issuesFor example, the popularity of the plan, the effect on party politics and campaign contributions etc would be considerations.

If they are federal policy makers, then we are state/international actors.So the debate is still decided on the counterplan.

INTERNATIONAL AGENT

INTERNATIONAL AGENT CP IS GOOD

Counterplan tests the federal agentAff should be responsible for all of their policy, including the agent

Only the counterplan focuses the debate on agentAgent disads alone get lost in the wash of all the other case and plan issues. Only the counterplan can isolate the agent issue.

Size of the topic justifies the CPThere are so many possible cases that we can't be well prepared to debate them all, especially early in the year. The counterplan helps level the playing field.

Literature justifies the CPWe read solvency evidence and indicate other countries are acting. This is a real issue.

Competition is a sufficient check on counterplans.If the counterplan competes, it should be a legitimate issue.

AT - INTERNATIONAL FIAT IS UNLIMITING

Possible agent nations is limited in practiceThe need for solvency evidence and net benefits limits the number of possible counterplans

The affirmative only needs to justify USFGAdvantages to USFG action answer the counterplan regardless of what country is the agent.

Literature gives the aff warningIt's their aff. They should know who else could do the plan

ADD ARGUMENTS FROM INTERNATIONAL AGENT CP IS GOOD

PLAN INCLUSIVE COUNTERPLANSLIKE THE INDIGENOUS EXCEPTION

PICs ARE GOOD

PICs are need to test each part of the plan. PICs can isolate specific provisions.

PICs promote responsible affirmative advocacyThey the affirmative responsible for all the actions they support with the plan. They need to do better plan writing.

Only PICs focus the debate on the specific part of the planDisads alone get lost in the wash of all the other case and plan issues

Competition is the best standard for counterplansThe counterplan is competitive thaand that legitimizes it.

AT - PICS CAN BE SMALL TRIVIAL DIFFERENCES

This is not a reason to reject ALL PICs.All positions are potentially abusive, but ours is not. Vote against trivial PICs, but not this one. Rejecting all PICs because some could be bad is like throwing the baby out with the bath water.

There is no abuse in this roundWe make an important exception, as indicated in our net benefit.

The need for supporting evidence stops trivial exceptionsThe PIC can't be run unless an advocate in the literature thinks its important.

Impact to net benefits precludes trivial exceptionsWe have to win a net benefit that outweighs the additional plan action. That stops trivialization.

ADD ARGUMENTS FROM INTERNATIONAL AGENT CP IS GOOD

AT – NOT TEXTUALLY COMPETITIVE

The counterplan is functionally competitiveYou cannot do both because the counterplan does less than the plan.

Functional competition is enoughThere is no reason the counterplan has to also be textual competitive. The functional reason to reject the plan is enough

Nothing is textually competitiveYou can always write both the plan and the counterplan on the same sheet of paper. Not being able to do both proves all competition is really functional competition.

Makes the plan a moving target - this makes textual competition a bad standard. In 1AC, they advocated doing the whole plan; now they support a textual perm that is less than the entire plan. This is really just a sever perm.

Makes the opposite of the plan not competitiveA counterplan banning the plan by adding the word "not" isn't textually competitive. That absurdity proves the standard bad.

Trivializes competitionTextual competition makes minor changes in word order, punctuation, etc. competitive. Imagine a debate over the comma versus the semi-colon.

CONSULT / CONDITIONING COUNTERPLANS

AT – PERM DO THE PLAN AND CONSULT

The counterplan is competitiveYou cannot both act NOW WITHOUT CONSENT and WAIT to act until there has been consultation and act ONLY if there is consent.

Adoption of the plan is the link – it precludes genuine consultation At adoption, it is known that the plan is definitely going to be done whether there is consent or not. Our link is to getting consent, genuine consultation that respects others, not just talking to them.

This is an intrinsicness permThe plan acts now and acts regardless of consent. The perm changes the plan. It doesn't include the whole plan as read in 1AC. The plan has become a moving target.

Aff delay of the plan is illegitimateOtherwise they could wait to act after the links to any disads – like doing the plan after the midterms.

Aff conditional adoption is illegitimateIf they can condition the plan on consent, they could condition the plan on there being no DAs

AT – UNLIMITED POSSIBLE CONDITIONS

This is not a reason to reject ALL CPs requiring consultation and consentAll positions are potentially abusive. Vote against abusive ones, but not this one. Rejecting all consult counterplans because some could be bad is like throwing the baby out with the bath water.

There is no abuse in this roundOur counterplan consults those who are directly affected by the plan and our net benefits are tied specifically to not getting consent for this plan.

The need for supporting evidence stops abuseThe CP can't be run unless an advocate in the literature thinks there should be a consent requirement with this plan.

AT – CONSULT IS NORMAL MEANS

There is no proof that this is normal means.They have to read evidence on this issue to have any hope of winning this answer.

Our evidence proves it is not normal meansFor example, past MPAs have been set up in violation of indigenous fishing rights

This is not legitimate normal meansDelay and conditional adoption make the plan a moving target to avoid all DAs

This makes them not topical – not increase.The consent requirement means the plan is not an on-face increase, but only an increase by effects. Effects unlimit because everything affects ocean development.