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Sharkfin vs. Halogen – 1NC
A. Interpretation
The plan must substantially alter the shape and structure of environmental policy.
My interpretation isn't much different from the one in the 1AC. However, I'm emphasizing that the
plan must substantially alter the environmental policy's form; tweaking its condition isn't enough to be
topical. Sharkfin in CX says the plan changes the policy's shape/structure, so I'm holding the plan to
that expectation.
B. Violation
The plan is a tweak, not a reformation.
It doesn't alter the shape/structure of the government's policy; it only increases two variables while
keeping the system intact. It improves or worsens condition, but not form. Therefore, since it doesn't
meet Sharkfin's definition of changing shape/structure, the plan isn't topical.
C. Voters
A negative ballot is necessary for the following reasons.
First, unfair division of ground.
Affirmative teams have basically infinite prep time. They have all season to work on their cases,
whereas negative teams have the season to research a plethora of cases. It's extremely unfair to skew
this imbalance by running cases that negatives can't even predict, forcing them to resort to generic,
non-case-specific arguments. Almost everyone would go 3-3 at tournaments by dodging negative
research. By losing the debate, a non-topical affirmative team is discouraged from making debate
unfair.
Second, killed education.
Debates should be educational – a great value of debating is to reinforce strategies to use in future
rounds. When I debate a non-topical case, there's no way that I can predict teams to run it at
tournaments. That educational opportunity goes to waste. Winning a debate should encourage
affirmative teams to promote education, not to avoid it.
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A. Interpretation
I define environmental policy the same as environmental law, which Encyclopedia Britannica defines
as:
Encyclopædia Britannica. 2009. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 20 July 2009 http://search.eb.com/eb/article-9344534
Principles, policies, directives, and regulations enacted and enforced by local, national, or international entities to
regulate human treatment of the nonhuman world.
B. Violation
The plan is effectually topical.
It doesn't change the way the government regulates human treatment of nature. It only tweaks a
governmental policy that indirectly affects how non-governmental companies treat nature.
C. Standards
Sharkfin in CX rules out the possibility of the government using a non-environmental policy to address
environmental issues. Therefore, any policy in the world is environmental policy as long as it's
intended to help the environment. My interpretation is better for the following reasons.
First, plan-in-a-vacuum.
A plan should be deemed topical independently of its intent. This is how to weed out absurd squirrel
cases like these:
- Curfew to prevent people from driving at night, reducing carbon dioxide emissions;
- Capping family sizes to address overpopulation;
- Mortgage bailouts to affect the development of new houses.
My interpretation meets this standard because whether or not a policy's purpose is to benefit the
environment, if it regulates human interactions with nature, it's topical. If it doesn't, it's non-topical.
Those squirrels are topical according to Sharkfin's definition.
Second, clarity and consistency.
Sharkfin's interpretation makes it easy to whimsically decide whether or not a plan is topical. It could
be topical in one round, because the affirmative team intends to help the environment, but non-topical
in the next round, because the next team has no environmental intention. My interpretation stays the
same regardless of people's intent.
D. Voters
Cross-apply fairness and education from topicality on “significantly reform.”
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A. Framework
Mindsets matter.
A debate must be evaluated by the philosophies supported, in addition to the plan. The plan is only
imaginary – if the affirmative team wins this debate, nothing actually happens in congress. However,
their win would encourage the mindset that they promote, which tangibly affects all of us. Mindsets
that actually affect us should be evaluated before the hypothetical world because they are more
important.
B. Link
The case promotes capitalism.
The case's main premise is that competitive enterprise, stimulated by the government, solves energy
problems. Moreover, capitalistic enterprise is defended as a good system with which we should work.
C. Analysis
First, in promoting capitalistic enterprise, the affirmative philosophy buttresses consumerism.
George Liodakis, professor of social science, writes in 2001 (George, Professor of Social Science at Technical University of
Crete, The people-nature relation and the historical significance of the Labour Theory of Value, Capital and Class, Spring 2001,
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3780/is_200104/ai_n8940388) JXu
If our interpretation of Marx's labour theory of value is correct, it becomes clear that an ecological revision or correction of this theory, contrary to what is
often argued, is not necessary, at least in its specific historical context. As I have shown, the
problem is not the Marxian approach to value and the
people-nature relation, but the
character of capitalism, which on the one hand, considering the natural forces as 'a gift
to capital, leads to the squandering of natural resources and the degradation of the environment, while
value, on the other hand, as the historically specific and dominant reflection of economic calculation in capitalism, is objectively determined by the
quantity of necessary 'abstract' labour, disregarding the substantial contribution of nature in production.
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D. Consequence
Infinite consumption and technological progress will eliminate nature.
Kohák writes in 2000 (Erazim, Professor Emeritus Philosophy Boston University, The Green Halo: A Bird’s Eye View of Environmental Ethics,
p.3-4)
When today we speak of an ecological crisis we are basically articulating a realization that this primitive,
seemingly self-evident ethics will no longer do. We made do with it for three centuries and in a sense even longer. Ancient
Romans treated nature with the same total unconcern as we. The deserts around Carthage, once Rome's
granary, and deforested rocky slopes of southern Italy testify to that. The monks who brought the beaver to extinction in
the Czech lands in the eighteenth century—beaver was considered fish and so allowable on fast days—were no more considerate. We have simply
assumed that, whatever we do, nature is always more powerful and can make good the damage. Still during the Second
World War we used to hear on the radio how many gross register tons of crude oil, destined for England, the German navy sank. We were anxious for
England but never dreamed of considering the fate of the oceans and the fish. We simply assumed nature would set it right and, in general, it worked out
that way. It works out no longer. All available indicators show that humankind is drastically crippling the ability of
the biosphere to make up for human interventions and to preserve an environment suitable for our kind
of life. Nature has not changed—it still is what it has been throughout the countless millennia of its evolution. Nor did
our approach to nature change—we are still acting wholly in the spirit of "cowboy ethics," interested only in our own
wishes and sublimely unconcerned about the consequences of our doing, just as drivers care little about the effect of their
exhaust fumes on the city, people, or nature. After all, we have a right and we have always done so . . .
Seemingly, nothing has changed, so why worry? Because something has changed. Figuratively speaking, we have
run out of yellow paint for covering up the damage we are causing (see p. i). The effects of the heedless disregard which for
centuries we could paint over with cosmetic measures will no longer be hid. Our mode of living upon this Earth is
endangering its ability to support our kind of life. That is what the global ecological crisis for the twenty-first century is all about: we are using
more than the Earth can replace. In the Czech Republic, the government for years refused to admit what scientists and citizens see ever
more clearly, that our conceptions of being human on this Earth are in direct conflict with the conditions of sustainability of life. As the mythical King
Canute commanded in his royal authority that the tide should stop rising, so until very recently first our Communist, then our neo-liberal leaders
proclaimed that there is no ecological threat and acted accordingly, perhaps in the hope that what they will not acknowledge will not exist.
E. Alternative
We should reject capitalism and affirm the immanent presence of revolution, because all that
stops the revolution is a lack of belief in it.
Slavoj Žižek, professor of sociology, writes in 2004 (“Revolution at the Gates, Zizek on Lenin – The 1917 Writings” p.259-260)
In a genuine revolutionary breakthrough, the utopian future is neither simply fully realized, present, nor simply evoked as a distant
promise which justifies present violence – it is rather as if in a unique suspension of temporality, in the short circuit
between the present and the future, we are – as if by Grace – briefly allowed to act as if the utopian future is (not yet fully
here, but) already at hand, there to be seized. Revolution is experienced not as a present hardship we have to endure for
the sake of the happiness and freedom of future generations, but as the present hardship over which this future
happiness and freedom already cast their shadow – in it, we are already free even as we fight for
freedom; we are already happy even as we fight for happiness, no matter how difficult the circumstances. Revolution
is not a Merleau-Pontyan wager, an act suspended in the futur anterieur, to be legitimized or de-legitimized by the long-term outcome of present acts; it is,
as it were, its own ontological proof, an immediate index of its own truth.
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LAST IS ON-CASE
On solvency
His evidence says that loan guarantees would be a “useful incentives,” but they aren't. The plan will
fail to stimulate the nuclear industry; here's why.
First, loan guarantees are empirically denied.
Nuclear Information and Resource Service 2008 “Round 2 of Nuclear Loan Guarantee Battle About to Begin. Let's Stop Them
Entirely This Time!” Feb 20 http://www.nirs.org/alerts/02-20-2008/1
As you know, in December Congress voted to authorize $18.5 Billion in taxpayer-backed loan guarantees for the
construction of new atomic reactors (along with $2 billion for a uranium enrichment plan, $8 billion for various coal technologies and
$10 billion for renewables and efficiency projects). The Congressional authorization is only good through Fiscal Year 2009.
The guarantees have been available for 2 years and haven't made a difference. The first inherency card
conveniently leaves out the fact that the new reactors are merely expected in the future. There's no
reason to believe they'll be built.
Second, nuclear reactors are too expensive to be cost-competitive.
Nuclear Information and Resource Service in 2008 (False Promises, Jessie Carr and Dulce Fernande, adapted by the staff of
Nuclear information and resource center, http://www.nirs.org/falsepromises.pdf)
While the nuclear industry argues that nuclear power is cheaper than some other forms of electricity generation, it counts only the price of operating the
Operating costs of nuclear power plants are relatively low, but to argue
plants, not the full costs of building them.
these are the true costs of nuclear power is disingenuous, like arguing that it is cheap to drive a Rolls
Royce counting only the price of gasoline and leaving out the purchase price. In fact, the cost of nuclear
power is extremely high at the beginning and end of the operational cycle of a nuclear power plant:
construction costs for reactors built since the mid-1980’s have ranged from $2-$6 billion, averaging more than
$3,000 per kW of electric generating capacity (in 1997 dollars). Historically, nuclear power has been anything but cost
effective. The capital cost for construction of a reactor is very high, and cost overruns are highly probable
for new reactors. Initial industry cost estimates of $1,500- $2,000 per kW of electric generating capacity for the new generation of nuclear plants
appear to have been based on wishful thinking: the first actual applications (from Constellation Energy and NRG Energy) project costs about twice that.
The prices of recently built nuclear power plants in Japan were much higher, ranging between $1,796 and $2,827 per kW, in 2003 dollars. In October
2007, Moody’s Investors Service estimated that new US reactors are likely to cost $5,000 to $6,000 per kW. The
Congressional Research
Service indicates that average construction costs have totaled more than $3,000 per kW, and that the nuclear
industry’s claims that new plant designs could be built for less than that amount (if a number of identical plants were built) have not been demonstrated.
Indeed, nuclear construction cost estimates in the US have been notoriously inaccurate. The estimated
costs of some existing nuclear units were wrong by factors of two or more, The total estimated cost of 75 of today’s
existing nuclear units was $45 billion (in 1990 dollars). The actual costs turned out to be $145 billion (also in 1990 dollars). Perhaps, the most
striking example of cost overruns was the Shoreham nuclear plant in New York. With an initial
estimated cost of $350 million, the plant ended up costing $5.4 billion when it was completed 20 years
later, about 15 times the original cost. The plant never produced a single kW of commercial power, and the cost
overruns of the project contributed to saddling Long Island with some of the nation’s highest electricity
rates. Europe’s most recent nuclear project, the European Pressurized Water Reactor at Olkiluoto in Finland, is running over budget and causing
financial losses for French builder Areva, which is building the reactor under a 3 billion euro fixed-price contract. The company’s operating income for
2006 was severely affected by the construction delays, and the company took a loss of some $900 million (US) for the year. The loss is due to a
“significant” provision the group made to account for past and expected future costs of delays at Olkiluoto. In November 2006, the French media reported
the reactor was already 24 months behind schedule, despite only 20 months of construction undertaken! Construction costs already have reached 4.5
billion euros, and some independent economists such as Steve Thomas of the University of Greenwich in the UK predict final actual costs for the reactor
could top 5 billion euros (about $7 billion (US)).
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In conclusion, the plan can't be legitimately considered because it promotes non-topicality, which
destroys education and research, and it bolsters capitalism, which will destroy nature. But even if it is
considered, it can't do a thing because there's neither enough uranium nor enough market
competitiveness for the nuclear reactors to succeed. Therefore, vote negative.
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