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(k) The term exploration means the process of searching for minerals, including (1) geophysical
surveys where magnetic, gravity, seismic, or other systems are used to detect or imply the
presence of such minerals, and (2) any drilling, whether on or off known geological structures,
including the drilling of a well in which a discovery of oil or natural gas in paying quantities is
made and the drilling of any additional delineation well after such discovery which is needed to
delineate any reservoir and to enable the lessee to determine whether to proceed with
development and production;
(l) The term development means those activities which take place following discovery of
minerals in paying quantities, including geophysical activity, drilling, platform construction, and
operation of all onshore support facilities, and which are for the purpose of ultimately producing
the minerals discovered;
(m) The term production means those activities which take place after the successful
completion of any means for the removal of minerals, including such removal, field operations,
transfer of minerals to shore, operation monitoring, maintenance, and work-over drilling;
The aff violates the only topical affs are about energy exploration and
development
Voting issue
1. Limits the energy topic is already huge adding entire categories
of small science research cases or looking through the ocean for
missing airplanes or protecting fish habitats makes it impossible to
prepare for
2. Negative ground energy creates a finite, predictable body of
literature with stable plan mechanisms that guarantee us links to
good energy disads
Its is a possessive pronoun showing ownership
Glossary of English Grammar Terms, 2005
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(http://www.usingenglish.com/glossary/possessive-pronoun.html)
Mine, yours, his, hers, its, ours, theirs are the possessive pronouns used to substitute a noun and
to show possession or ownership.
EG. This is your disk and that's mine. (Mine substitutes the word disk and shows that it belongs
to me.)
Voting issue
1. limits incentives introduce multiple new mechanisms its huge
Moran, 86 (Theodore, Investing in Development: New Roles for Private Capital?, p. 28)
Guisinger finds that if incentivesare broadly defined to include tariffs and trade controls along
with tax holidays, subsidized loans, cash grants, and other fiscal measures, they comprise more
than forty separate kinds of measures. Moreover, the author emphasizes, the value of an
incentive package is just one of several means that governments use to lure foreign investors.
Other methodsfor example, promotional activities (advertising, representative offices) and
subsidized government servicesalso influence investors location decisions. The author points
out that empirical research so far has been unable to distinguish the relative importance of
fundamental economic factors and of government policies in decisions concerning the location of
foreign investmentlet alone to determine the effectiveness of individual government
instrucments.
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2. negative ground they kill core negative strategies like free market
counterplans
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PTX
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1NC
TPA will pass now but big government proposals unite the opposition
and prevent passage
Macgillis 2-2 (Alec Macgillis, 2-2-2015, "How the Left Is Teaming Up With the Tea Party to
Tank Obamas Big Trade Deal", Slate Magazine,
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2015/02/democrats_working_with_tea_pa
rty_against_obama_s_trade_deal_the_president.html, Accessed: 2-6-2015) JO
To try to block fast track and the TPP, liberal groups and labor unions are not organizing only among
their own but are also reaching across the spectrum to conservatives skeptical of fast track and
TPP. This left-right alliance has been duly noted in recent months. What has gone underappreciated, though, is
just how much the opponents of the trade deals on the left are appealing to the right very much
on the rights own terms. After years of ridiculing the Tea Party movements talk of Obama as an
autocrat on issues such as immigration and health care, the left is now pushing those very
buttons on trade, noting that fast track would give Obama vast power s and that the TPP would create a
new international arbitration panel where corporations could challenge local, state, and national laws. Some left-leaning advocates
are going so far as to link the trade issue to the conservative litany of Obama outrages: the IRS scrutiny of Tea Party groups,
what they want to, says Rep. Keith Ellison, the liberal Democrat from Minneapolis and a leading opponent of fast track and TPP, who
has been reaching out to House Republicans on the issue. This is essentially an America issue. The last thing I want is some
international unelected body deciding these critical questions. Lori Wallach, director of Global Trade Watch at Ralph Naderfounded
Public Citizen, says she reminds conservatives that TPP would allow people to go to these extra-judicial tribunals to have the U.S.
Cruz have both come out for fast track and TPP, saying their desire to spur economic growth and assert American leadership abroad
trump their constitutional misgivings. So have the Heritage Foundation and two of the biggest conservative activist groups, Freedom
Partners and the Tea Party Express. Lining up against the trade deals are a host of other Tea Party-aligned groups and, so far, roughly
20 conservative House Republicans who have gone on the record opposing fast track. The issue has become a moment of truth for
the Tea Party movement and conservative Republicans more generally: Do they mean what theyve been saying all along about the
need for checks and balances and constitutional restraints on the executive and global bodies like the U.N.? Or were those just handy
rhetorical weapons for issues where Republicans opposed Obama, such as universal health care, weapons that can be laid aside when
GOP leadersand the business lobbydecide its in their interest to do so? Theres a great number of people in Congress on both
sides of the aisle who are very beholden to big businesswhat I call the chamber of crony capitalism, says Jay Devereaux of Unite in
Action, one of the Tea Party groups that received heightened scrutiny from the IRS. Its all about favors for their buddies, and the
average American be damned and its really unfortunate. You can track the Tea Party split on the issue by following the Twitter feed
of End Global Governance, the name given to an umbrella group of conservative organizations fighting against the trade deals on the
Hill. The group, led by Tea Party activist Stephani Scruggs, has been visiting the offices of House Republicans and reporting its mixed
results. The group reported with a distinct note of betrayal that Rep. Ken Buck, the conservative Coloradan who lost his Senate bid in
2010, was in favor of fast track, as was Rep. Tom Emmer, a new conservative House member from Minnesota. It was relieved, on the
other hand, to report that it got a warmer reception in the office of Rep. Morgan Griffith, from western Virginia. (Im not likely to
support something that gives the president so much authority, Griffith told me later. Im not sure I have the confidence in the
president and his people to get it right.) Scruggs told me that she and her allies have gotten a pretty good response overall but
that it has definitely been disheartening to see so many conservative Republicans setting aside their usual wariness of Obama now.
What comes into play here are really huge lobbies, she says. Big Ag comes in and they put on a lot of pressure, with compelling
arguments that are really well-funded. Citizen activists like myself, weve got to work a little harder. Meanwhile, out across the
country, local Tea Party groups are agitating on the issue. Terry Batton, of the Barbour County Tea Party in Alabama,
told me that fast track and TPP were hot topics at quarterly meeting of his states Tea Party coalition. Were definitely against the
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trade agreements, he said. The long and short of it is that theyre just giving away our sovereignty. In Wisconsin, Sandi Ruggles of
the states chapter of the Eagle Forum said she and her fellow members have been sending emails and making calls on the issue.
Obamas giving himself way too much authoritythats an authority that should go through Congress, she said. Rick Manning,
president of Americans for Limited Government, has been going on conservative talk shows to speak against fast track and TPP
Obamatradeand senses a growing opposition. Theres
to reach out to conservative members. And the Coalition for a Prosperous America, a group that lobbies against free-trade
agreements and has ties to both industry and organized labor, is provoking conservatives innate distrust of the GOP establishment
by noting that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnells promise to return the Senate to regular order conflicts with the rush and
lack of transparency involved in passing trade deals via fast track. McConnell said, Im bringing back regular order, but in this case
its suspending regular order, passing something with no amendments before you even know what's coming from the smoky back
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2010 executive order set up a National Ocean Council, based at the White House, that is designed to reconcile the competing
interests of different agencies and ocean users. The policy is already having an impact. The council, for example, is trying to broker a
compromise among six federal agencies over the fate of defunct offshore oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico. Recreational fishermen want
the rigs, which attract fish, to stay, but some operators of commercial fishing trawlers consider them a hazard and want them
removed. Still, activists invoking the ocean policy to press for federal limits on traditional maritime interests are having little success.
The Center for Biological Diversity cited the policy as a reason to slow the speed of vessels traveling through national marine
sanctuaries off the California coast. Federal officials denied the petition. During a House Natural Resources Committee hearing on
ocean policy last year, the panels top Democrat, Rep. Edward J. Markey (Mass.), said that opposing ocean planning is like opposing
air traffic control: You can do it, but it will cause a mess or lead to dire consequences. Rep. Steve Southerland II (R-Fla.), who is in a
tight reelection race, retorted that the policy was like air traffic control helping coordinate an air invasion on our freedoms. An
time, and later embraced by his Democratic successor, Deval L. Patrick. The whole concept of national ocean policy is to maximize
the benefit and minimize the damage. Whats not to love? Kaufman said, adding that federal officials make decisions about offshore
When Romney moved to establish ocean zoning in 2005 in Massachusetts, he warned that without it there could be a Wild West
shootout, where projects were permitted on a first come, first served basis. In Washington, however, legislation to create an ocean
zoning process failed. The policy set by Obama in 2010 calls for five regions of the country the Mid-Atlantic, New England, the
Caribbean, the West Coast and the Pacific to set up regional bodies to offer input. White House Council for Environmental Quality
spokeswoman Taryn Tuss said the policy does not give the federal government new authority or change congressional mandates. It
simply streamlines implementation of the more than 100 laws and regulations that already affect our oceans. House Natural
Resources Committee Chairman Doc Hastings (R-Wash.) said he is not opposed to a national ocean policy in theory. But he said he is
concerned that the administrations broad definition of what affects the ocean including runoff from land could open the door to
regulating all inland activities, because all water going downhill goes into the ocean. ... That potential could be there. The House
voted in May to block the federal government from spending money on implementing the policy, though the amendment has not
Two influential groups anglers and energy firms have joined Republicans in
questioning the administrations approach. In March, ESPN Outdoors published a piece arguing that the policy could
prohibit U.S. citizens from fishing some of the nations oceans, coastal areas, Great Lakes, and even inland waters. The article,
which convinced many recreational fishermen that their fishing rights were in jeopardy, should
have been labeled an opinion piece, the editor said later. Fishermen saw this as just another
area where fishing was going to be racheted down, said Michael Leonard, director of ocean
resource policy for the American Sportfishing Association, whose 700 members include the
nations major boat manufacturers, as well as fish and tackle retailers. Leonard added that the White House
passed the Senate.
has solicited some input from anglers since launching the policy and that they will judge the policy once its final implementation plan
executive director work for the firm HBW Resources, which lobbies for energy and shipping interests. Brent Greenfield, the groups
executive director, said that the public has not had enough input into the development of the policy and that his group worries about
the potential economic impacts of the policy on commercial or recreational activity. Sarah Cooksey, who is Delawares coastalprograms administrator and is slated to co-chair the Mid-Atlantics regional planning body, said the policy will streamline application
of laws already on the books. No government wants another layer of bureaucracy, she said. In Southerlands reelection race, Ocean
Champions has labeled the congressman Ocean Enemy #1 and sponsored TV ads against him. Jim Clements, a commercial
fisherman in the Florida Panhandle district, has mounted billboards against Southerland on the grounds his stance hurts local
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taxes on trade. Manufacturing workers who produce exports earn, on average, about 18% more, according to the Commerce Department. Their pay raise
can be traced to the higher productivity of competitive exporting businesses. Since World War II, U.S. trade policy has focused on lowering barriers to
manufacturing and agricultural products. But U.S. trade negotiators also use free-trade agreements (FTAs) to pry open service sectors and expand e-
service employees earned over 20% more than the average manufacturing job, and the U.S. consistently runs a trade surplus in business services. Over
the past five years, the World Bank reports, about 75% of the worlds growth has been in emerging markets, which generally have higher barriers to
trade. As Americas highly productive farmers and ranchers have seen, growing world markets are the drivers of higher sales. With the boom in U.S.
energy innovation and production, fuel exports could spur more investment and jobs in that sector, too. American families, and businesses, benefit from
higher incomes and lower-priced imports. The World Trade Organization reports that the North American Free Trade Agreement and the Uruguay Round,
the last big global trade agreement, have increased the purchasing power of an average American family of four by $1,300 to $2,000 every year. The
Peterson Institute for International Economics estimates that the new trade deals in the works could offer that family another $3,000 or more a year.
the U.S. and world economies desperately need a shift from extraordinary governmental
spending and zero-interest-rate monetary policies to growth led by the private sector. Sustained
growth can only be generated by private investment, innovation and purchases. American
companies need greater confidence in free-enterprise policies before investing their big cash
reserves. Trade policy offers an international partnership to overcome structural impediments
to growth. The negotiations for the TPP, for example, aim to create an open trade and investment network among the U.S., six current FTA
Second,
partners, and five new ones. The biggest additional market is Japan, a pivotal Pacific ally. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe wants to use the TPP to
press his own economy toward more competition, without which his goal of reviving Japan will falter. Vietnam and Malaysia would also take part; they
believe they can use the rules and disciplines of the TPP to boost growth, improve industries and services, expand global linkages, and avoid the socalled middle income trap, where countries lack of productivity growth slows the rise to higher incomes.
Nuclear war
Harris, member of the NICs Long Range Analysis Unit, and Burrows, counselor in the NIC, 09
[Mathew J. Burrows is a counselor in the National Intelligence Council (NIC), the principal drafter
of Global Trends 2025: A Transformed World, Jennifer Harris is a member of the NICs Long Range
Analysis Unit, Revisiting the Future: Geopolitical Effects of the Financial Crisis, The Washington
Quarterly, April, http://www.ciaonet.org/journals/twq/v32i2/f_0016178_13952.pdf, accessed:
7/13/13]
Increased Potential for Global Conflict Of course, the report encompasses more than economics and indeed believes the future is likely to be the result of a number of intersecting
and interlocking forces. With so many possible permutations of outcomes, each with ample opportunity for unintended consequences, there is a growing sense of insecurity. Even
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institutions (think League of Nations in the same period). There is no reason to think that this would not be true in the twenty-first
as much as in the twentieth century. For that reason, the ways in which the potential for greater conflict could grow would seem to be even
more apt in a constantly volatile economic environment as they would be if change would be steadier. In surveying those risks, the report
stressed the likelihood that terrorism and nonproliferation will remain priorities even as resource issues move up on the international agenda. Terrorisms
appeal will decline if economic growth continues in the Middle East and youth unemployment is
reduced. For those terrorist groups that remain active in 2025, however, the diffusion of technologies and scientific knowledge
will place some of the worlds most dangerous capabilities within their reach. Terrorist groups in 2025 will likely be
a combination of descendants of long established groups inheriting organizational structures, command and control processes, and training procedures necessary to conduct
newly emergent collections of the angry and disenfranchised that become selfradicalized, particularly in the absence of economic outlets that would become narrower in an
economic downturn. The most dangerous casualty of any economically-induced drawdown of
U.S. military presence would almost certainly be the Middle East. Although Irans acquisition of nuclear weapons is not
inevitable, worries about a nuclear-armed Iran could lead states in the region to develop new security
arrangements with external powers, acquire additional weapons, and consider pursuing their own
nuclear ambitions. It is not clear that the type of stable deterrent relationship that existed between the great
powers for most of the Cold War would emerge naturally in the Middle East with a nuclear Iran. Episodes of low intensity conflict and
terrorism taking place under a nuclear umbrella could lead to an unintended escalation and
sophisticated attack and
broader conflict if clear red lines between those states involved are not well established. The close proximity of potential nuclear rivals combined with underdeveloped
surveillance capabilities and mobile dual-capable Iranian missile systems also will produce inherent difficulties in achieving reliable indications and warning of an impending
. The lack of strategic depth in neighboring states like Israel, short warning and missile
flight times, and uncertainty of Iranian intentions may place more focus on preemption
rather than defense, potentially leading to escalating crises. Types of conflict that the world
continues to experience, such as over resources, could reemerge, particularly if protectionism
grows and there is a resort to neo-mercantilist practices. Perceptions of renewed energy
scarcity will drive countries to take actions to assure their future access to energy supplies. In
the worst case, this could result in interstate conflicts if government leaders deem assured
access to energy resources, for example, to be essential for maintaining domestic stability and the
survival of their regime. Even actions short of war, however, will have important geopolitical
implications. Maritime security concerns are providing a rationale for naval buildups and
modernization efforts, such as Chinas and Indias development of blue water naval capabilities. If the fiscal stimulus focus for these
countries indeed turns inward, one of the most obvious funding targets may be military. Buildup of regional naval capabilities could lead
to increased tensions, rivalries, and counterbalancing moves , but it also will create opportunities for multinational cooperation
in protecting critical sea lanes. With water also becoming scarcer in Asia and the Middle East, cooperation to
manage changing water resources is likely to be increasingly difficult both within and between states in a more
dog-eat-dog world. What Kind of World will 2025 Be? Perhaps more than lessons, history loves patterns. Despite widespread changes in the world today, there is
little to suggest that the future will not resemble the past in several respects. The report asserts that, under most scenarios, the trend toward greater
diffusion of authority and power that has been ongoing for a couple of decades is likely to
accelerate because of the emergence of new global players, the worsening institutional deficit,
potential growth in regional blocs, and enhanced strength of non-state actors and networks. The multiplicity of actors on the international scene could
nuclear attack
either strengthen the international system, by filling gaps left by aging post-World War II institutions, or could further fragment it and incapacitate international cooperation. The
diversity in both type and kind of actor raises the likelihood of fragmentation occurring over the next two decades, particularly given the wide array of transnational challenges
facing the international community. Because of their growing geopolitical and economic clout, the rising powers will enjoy a high degree of freedom to customize their political
and economic policies rather than fully adopting Western norms. They are also likely to cherish their policy freedom to maneuver, allowing others to carry the primary burden for
dealing with terrorism, climate change, proliferation, energy security, and other system maintenance issues. Existing multilateral institutions, designed for a different geopolitical
order, appear too rigid and cumbersome to undertake new missions, accommodate changing memberships, and augment their resources. Nongovernmental organizations and
philanthropic foundations, concentrating on specific issues, increasingly will populate the landscape but are unlikely to affect change in the absence of concerted efforts by
multilateral institutions or governments. Efforts at greater inclusiveness, to reflect the emergence of the newer powers, may make it harder for international organizations to
tackle transnational challenges. Respect for the dissenting views of member nations will continue to shape the agenda of organizations and limit the kinds of solutions that can be
An ongoing financial crisis and prolonged recession would tilt the scales even further in the
direction of a fragmented and dysfunctional international system with a heightened risk of
conflict. The report concluded that the rising BRIC powers (Brazil, Russia, India, and China)
seem averse to challenging the international system, as Germany and Japan did in the
attempted.
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nineteenth and twentieth centuries, but this of course could change if their widespread hopes for
greater prosperity become frustrated and the current benefits they derive from a globalizing
world turn negative.
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Cap
Focusing on the endpoint of the ecological crisis precludes
understanding of its underlying capitalist causes makes repeated
environmental destruction inevitable.
Swyngedouw 6 (Erik, Department of Geography @ Manchester, Urban and Landscape Perspectives 9, 2, p.185-205,
September)
practicing expanding energy use and widening and deepening its ecological footprint.
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infinite Otherness) as an unsurpassable horizon that already marks every act as a failure ,
incomplete and so on. Rather, such an ethics is one that fully accepts contingency but which is
nonetheless prepared to risk the impossible in the sense of breaking out of standardized
positions. We might say that it is an ethics which is not only politically motivated but which also
draws its strength from the political itself. For Zizek an ethics of the Real (or Real ethics) means
that we cannot rely on any form of symbolic Other that would endorse our (in)decisions and
(in)actions: for example, the neutral financial data of the stockmarkets; the expert knowledge of
Becks new modernity scientists, the economic and military councils of the New World Order;
the various (formal and informal) tribunals of political correctness; or any of the mysterious laws
of God, nature or the market. What Zizek affirms is a radical culture of ethical identification for
the left in which the alternative forms of militancy must first of all be militant with themselves.
That is to say, they must be militant in the fundamental ethical sense of not relying on any
external/higher authority and in the development of a political imagination that, like Zizeks own
thought, exhorts us to risk the impossible.
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attitude, while we try to build new lives elsewhere. (There is no elsewhere.) There is at least one
thing, wage-slavery, that we cant simply stop participating in (but even here there are ways we
can chip away at it). Capitalism must be explicitly refused and replaced by something else. This
constitutes War, but it is not a war in the traditional sense of armies and tanks, but a war fought
on a daily basis, on the level of everyday life, by millions of people. It is a war nevertheless
because the accumulators of capital will use coercion, brutality, and murder, as they have always
done in the past, to try to block any rejection of the system. They have always had to force
compliance; they will not hesitate to continue doing so. Nevertheless, there are many concrete
ways that individuals, groups, and neighborhoods can gut capitalism, which I will enumerate
shortly. We must always keep in mind how we became slaves; then we can see more clearly how
we can cease being slaves. We were forced into wage-slavery because the ruling class slowly,
systematically, and brutally destroyed our ability to live autonomously. By driving us off the land,
changing the property laws, destroying community rights, destroying our tools, imposing taxes,
destroying our local markets, and so forth, we were forced onto the labor market in order to
survive, our only remaining option being to sell, for a wage, our ability to work. Its quite clear
then how we can overthrow slavery. We must reverse this process. We must begin to reacquire
the ability to live without working for a wage or buying the products made by wage-slaves (that
is, we must get free from the labor market and the way of living based on it), and embed
ourselves instead in cooperative labor and cooperatively produced goods. Another clarification is
needed. This strategy does not call for reforming capitalism, for changing capitalism into
something else. It calls for replacing capitalism, totally, with a new civilization. This is an
important distinction, because capitalism has proved impervious to reforms, as a system. We
can sometimes in some places win certain concessions from it (usually only temporary ones) and
win some (usually short-lived) improvements in our lives as its victims, but we cannot reform it
piecemeal, as a system. Thus our strategy of gutting and eventually destroying capitalism
requires at a minimum a totalizing image, an awareness that we are attacking an entire way of
life and replacing it with another, and not merely reforming one way of life into something else.
Many people may not be accustomed to thinking about entire systems and social orders, but
everyone knows what a lifestyle is, or a way of life, and that is the way we should approach it.
The thing is this: in order for capitalism to be destroyed millions and millions of people must be
dissatisfied with their way of life. They must want something else and see certain existing things
as obstacles to getting what they want. It is not useful to think of this as a new ideology. It is not
merely a belief-system that is needed, like a religion, or like Marxism, or Anarchism. Rather it is a
new prevailing vision, a dominant desire, an overriding need. What must exist is a pressing
desire to live a certain way, and not to live another way. If this pressing desire were a desire to
live free, to be autonomous, to live in democratically controlled communities, to participate in
the self-regulating activities of a mature people, then capitalism could be destroyed. Otherwise
we are doomed to perpetual slavery and possibly even to extinction.
Text: The United State federal government should repeal the Renewable
Fuel Standard, eliminate federal support for the production of corn
ethanol, and slowly phase out nationwide use
CP solves dead zonescorn ethanol is one of the primary causes
Forbes 13 (Helman, Christopher. "Attention Fracktivists: Corn Ethanol Is The Real
Environmental Culprit." Forbes. Forbes Magazine, 11 Nov. 2013. Web. 06 Feb. 2014.
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<http://www.forbes.com/sites/christopherhelman/2013/11/11/attention-fracktivists-corn-ethanolis-the-real-environmental-culprit/>.) JO
Ethanol is proving terrible for the environment. Spurred by the absurd biofuel volumes mandated by the Federal Renewable Fuels
Standard, farmers in recent years have plowed over 5 millions of acres of conserved land and virgin prairie. This has released massive
amounts of carbon dioxide that had been locked in the soil. So much for ethanols promise of being a carbon-neutral replacement for
40% of Americas corn crop goes to support ethanol production. From the late 2000s through
2012 corn prices stimulated by the federal ethanol mandates soared, surpassing $7.50 a bushel last year before falling off. High
prices naturally brought overfarming of corn, destroying animal habitats and causing massive water
pollution from fertilizer runoff. The evidence of water pollution caused by ethanol is obvious:
nitrogren fertilizer applied in the corn fields has ruined wells under farmland and has seeped into
rivers that millions of people rely on for drinking water. Eventually the chemicals drift down the Mississippi,
resulting in a 5,800 square-mile dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico. And farmers are having to pump
more and more chemicals onto their fields . Because by insisting on growing cash-crop corn year after year rather than
oil. Roughly
rotating their crops, farmers are knowingly depleting the quality of their soil, which then requires ever more additives to maintain
yields. But dont take my word for it. Read The Secret, Dirty Cost of Obamas Green Power Push, a 4,000-word report published
today by the Associated Press. Dina Cappiello and her A.P. colleagues conclude that despite initial claims from President George W.
Bush, that ethanol would make the country stronger, cleaner and more secure, that hasnt been the case. On the contrary, she
writes: [T]he ethanol era has proven far more damaging to the environment than politicians promised and much worse than the
government admits today. You cant read this article and conclude that the nations farmers ought to continue plowing over more
and more land in a futile attempt to meet the federally mandated goal of 36 billion gallons of ethanol by 2022, up from 14 billion
gallons this year. And the ethanol wet dream certainly makes no sense in light of the oil and gas boom that has blessed America in
recent years. Drillers have found far more energy in the fossilized remains of ancient plant life miles under the surface than corn
farmers could hope to grow in decades. The A.P. writers dont get into the relative merits of drilling and fracking versus growing corn,
but its become increasingly clear that that the ire of the anti-fracking crowd is misplaced. Whereas fracktivists have been hardpressed to identify even a dozen sites where fracking (rather than natural methane migration) can truly be blamed for groundwater
pollution, the evidence of water pollution caused by nitrogen fertilizer is obvious and widespread
(read here about its impact on Chesapeake Bay). Fracking of oil and gas in shale formations has brought far more energy security to
our cars, which are not only getting more efficient every
can easily be made to run on natural gas or electricity rather than oil.
the U.S. than corn-based ethanol has. We simply dont need it to feed
year but
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Case
Means to justify saving the environment only breeds a utopian mindset
Stavrakakis 99 (Yannis, Visiting Professor, Department of Government, University of Essex,
Lacan and the Political, The Lacanian Object p.63-5)
intellectual, but also at the material level. But why does it have to be forced to conform? This is due, for instance, to the gap between
our harmonious fantasmatic constructions of nature and nature itself, between reality and the real. Our constructions of reality are so
there is always
a certain leftover, a disturbing element destabilising our constructions of nature. This has to be
stigmatised, made into a scapegoat and exterminated . The more beatific and harmonious is a social
fantasy the more this repressed destabilising element will be excluded from its symbolisationwithout,
strong that nature has to conform to them and not they to nature; reality is conceived as mastering the real. But
however, ever disappearing. In this regard, a vignette from the history of nature conservation can be revealing. As is well known
construction what was had to conform to what should be and what should be, that is to say nature without vermin (coyotes and
other wild predators), was accepted as more naturalmore harmoniousthan what was : These
conservationists were dedicated to reorganizing the natural economy in a way that would fulfil their own ideal vision of what nature
should be like (Worster, 1994:266). This construction was accepted by the Roosevelt administration in the USA (1901-9) and led to
the formation of an official programme to exterminate vermin. The job was given to a government agency, the Bureau of the
Biological Survey (BBS) in the Department of Agriculture, and a ruthless war started (in 1907 alone, 1,700 wolves and 23,000 coyotes
dialectic
between the beatific fantasy of nature and the demonised vermin doing if not illustrating the
Lacanian dialectic between the two sides of fantasy or between fantasy and symptom? Since we will
explore the first of these two Lacanian approaches to fantasy in Chapter 4, we will concentrate here on the fantasy/symptom
were killed in the National Parks and this policy continued and expanded for years) (Worster, 1994:263). What is this
axis. 20 As far as the promise of filling the lack in the Other is concerned, fantasy can be better understood in its relation to the
Lacanian conception of the symptom; according to one possible reading, fantasy and symptom
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are two inter-implicated terms. It is the symptom that interrupts the consistency of the field of
our constructions of reality, of the object of identification , by embodying the repressed jouissance, the
destabilising part of nature excluded from its harmonious symbolisation. The symptom here is a real kernel of enjoyment; it is the
repressed jouissance that returns and does not ever stop in imposing itself [on us] (Soler, 1991:214). If fantasy is the support that
gives consistency to what we call reality (iek, 1989:49) on the other hand reality is always a symptom (iek, 1992). Here we are
insisting on the late Lacanian conception of the symptom as sinthome. In this conception, a signifier is married to jouissance, a
signifier is instituted in the real, outside the signifying chain but at the same time internal to it. This paradoxical role of the symptom
can help us understand the paradoxical role of fantasy. Fantasy gives discourse its consistency because it opposes the symptom
(Ragland-Sullivan, 1991:16). Hence, if the symptom is an encounter with the real, with a traumatic point that resists symbolisation,
and if the discursive has to arrest the real and repress jouissance in order to produce reality, then the negation of the real within
fantasy can only be thought in terms of opposing, of stigmatising the symptom. This is then the relation between symptom and
fantasy. The self-consistency of a symbolic construction of reality depends on the harmony instituted by fantasy.
This
fantasmatic harmony can only be sustained by the neutralisation of the symptom and of the real, by a
negation of the generalised lack that crosses the field of the social. But how is this done? If social fantasy produces
the self-consistency of a certain construction it can do so only by presenting the symptom as an alien, disturbing
intrusion, and not as the point of eruption of the otherwise hidden truth of the existing social order (iek, 1991a:40). The
social fantasy of a harmonious social or natural order can only be sustained if all the persisting disorders
can be attributed to an alien intruder. To return to our example, the illusory character of our harmonious construction of
nature is shown in the fact that there is a part of the real which escapes its schema and assumes a symptomatic form (vermin, etc.);
in order for this fantasy to remain coherent, this real symptom has to be stigmatised
and eliminated. It cannot be accepted as the excluded truth of nature; such a recognition would lead
to a dislocation of the fantasy in question. When, however, the dependence of fantasy on the symptom is revealed,
then the playthe relationbetween the symptom and fantasy reveals itself as another mode of the play between the real and the
symbolic/imaginary nexus producing reality.
Non profit organizations are being set up in the status quo to create
sustainable solutions to ocean clean up using gathered plastic for fuel.
Sesini, Masters in Green Management, Energy, and Corporate Social
Responsibility at Bocconi University, 2011
(Marzia, THE GARBAGE PATCH IN THE OCEANS: THE PROBLEM AND POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS
http://www.seas.columbia.edu/earth/wtert/sofos/sesini_thesis.pdf)
Covanta Energy uses the debris collected by Project Kaisei to test its new waste-to- fuel
technology to convert the plastic into a diesel substitute using a catalytic process for converting
solid organic materials directly to mineral diesel fuel (Covanta Energy), and to showcase how
waste, and in particular plastic, can have added value if properly recycled. This in the hope that a
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larger scale cleanup effort will take place, helping protect the ocean and the marine wild life
(Covanta Energy). 16
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Finally, data on the amount, distribution, and especially environmental and economic impacts of
such pollution are key in dealing with the problem of plastic end-of-life use and implementing
programs, as well as science-based monitoring and consistent widespread sampling. Greater
research and new technology development effort are needed to assess next steps, address gaps,
and prevent plastic to enter the oceans.
As a show case of best practice that could lead the way to greater public awareness on the issue
of plastic disposal and recycling. For example a partnership between Project Kasei and Covanta
Energy set a goal of conversion of plastic to fuel of 50 tons per year.
The hope is that a larger scale cleanup effort, which will help protect the ocean and the marine
wild life, will take place as a result of this project. In addition, it is an excellent opportunity for the
private sector to test a new technology as a viable solution to address plastic dumping, and to
create secure, financial business opportunities and help identifying recycling cost- effective
solutions.
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In closing, I quite liked this comment from Harry, who watches over a particular
beach in Maine, and discusses his findings in his blog, on Slats plan: This idea that
if weve messed something up, theres science/tech out there that can fix it. That
keeps us from having to make the hard choices about our lifestyle. In this case,
there isnt. It is not possible to clean the oceans up of their debris. Not without
breaking the bank of every nation on earth and scooping out and killing all the life in
its first 100 feet of depth. Thats what we have done to our planet in just a couple
generations. Thats plastics legacy. We cannot actively go out and clean it up in any
meaningful way. What we can do is to change consumption behavior, change
materials, improve waste management; do the things that stop persistent plastic
from getting in the ocean in the first place.
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Nobody who studies ocean ecosystems would ever argue that this plastic isn't
harmful. But many documentaries and articles about the garbage patch make it
seem as if the main problem is that the garbage is killing animals. Birds and fish
mistake the plastic for food, eat it, and then slowly starve to death. Goldstein points
out that there is clear evidence that both birds and fish are eating the plastic, but
it's very hard to draw conclusions about whether eating it is killing them. Generally,
scientists are only able to examine the stomachs of animals who are already dead.
"Some studies of albatrosses show plastic correlating with poor nutrition and you
do see a lot of dead chicks with their stomachs absolutely stuffed with plastic,"
Goldstein explained. The problem is that we don't know whether there are also birds
who eat the plastic and survive. "We're not going to go around killing baby
albatrosses to examine their stomach contents," she added.
This is an even more difficult issue when it comes to fish, since she and many other
researchers have found living fish with plastic in their stomachs. It's not clear
whether these fish are suffering malnutrition, or are unharmed by eating plastic
because they can just pass it out in their excrement. Fish digestive systems are a lot
different from those of birds, so it's possible that what's harmful to the albatrosses
isn't affecting the fish as much.
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And finally, there is a class of creatures who are actually thriving as a result of the
plastic influx. These are water skater insects, small crabs, barnacles, and
invertebrates called bryozoans, who live on hard surfaces in the water. Some of
them, like the barnacles and bryozoans, can do a lot of damage to ship hulls and
have caused harm in other ecosystems they've invaded. Usually, these creatures
lead a hardscrabble life, barely making it in the deep ocean where hard surfaces are
limited to, as Goldstein put it, "the odd floating tree trunk, rare shells, feathers, or
pieces of pumice." But now, with all the plastic floating around, these once-rare
creatures are enjoying a boom time.
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The project goal for the mission, named Project Kaisei (meaning "ocean planet" in
Japanese), was not to measure the size with precision, but to test several methods
of extracting the plastic and finding ways to dispose of it properly, ideally through
recycling. Testing methods of getting the larger itemsplastic chairs, large toys
turned out to be easy. But that still left the much bigger amount of smaller items,
like partially broken down toothbrushes, combs, and bottle capsall of which can't
be as easily harvested. "The smaller pieces are the ones that are concerning," says
Mary Crowley, Kaisei's project leader and a lifelong ocean explorer. "That's what fish
and birds may be eating, and it's terrifying how widely they're being distributed."
There's no perfect way to fish it all out of the ocean, especially not without harming
ocean creatures in the process. But the crew tested several possible methods. Some
were active, involving the dragging of nets to trap and concentrate the trash to be
collected. Others were passive, consisting of large floating receptacles placed near
highly concentrated areas and then picked up later to dispose of its contents back
on land. The latter, Crowley found, is an applicable and plausible way to collect at
least the big items.