Spatial Mapping DA

Advice

This is a very interesting disad that I think could be seized upon by a good team and
used even more strategically during the year. The argument is that, in the squo,
Obama is performing a spatial ocean mapping process to determine and then
allocate the best parts of the oceans for renewable energy/ fossil fuels/ fishing etc.
But this will be completed in 2015, so the affirmative would interrupt that process
and derail the ability of mapping to solve for ocean sprawl.
The main thing to note is the answer to why isnt the affirmative assumed in the
mapping. A couple of arguments. First, the mapping is done by 2015 and
affirmatives have to be immediate, otherwise it robs negative disad ground by
delaying (like this disad for example). Second there is a double bind. If the
affirmative is assumed in the mapping, then vote negative on presumption. If not,
then they link.
Overall, this should be couched as an impact turn to any fossil fuel aff and may
even be better read on solvency. I think winning spatial ocean mapping good/ solves
now/ is a prerequisite to effective energy development is a slayer.
Affirmatives, likewise, should find it easy to win the claim alternative energy fails
even with mapping. Thats the main argument in the 2AC.

1NC
Spatial ocean planning underway to prevent ocean sprawlthe affirmative destroys the plans due to sprawl- kills ocean
sustainability
Earthtalk 14 (EarthTalk, EARTHTALK is a registered trademark of E - The
Environmental Magazine, 'Ocean sprawl': Seas as new Wild West, http://thetimestribune.com/news/health-science/ocean-sprawl-seas-as-new-wild-west-1.1617979,
January 19, 2014)
Q: I recently heard the term "ocean sprawl," which was a new one on me.
We all know "sprawl" as it manifests itself above sea level. But in the
oceans? Can you enlighten? A: We are all familiar by now with "urban sprawl" the uncontrolled spread of urban development into areas beyond the city. But
environmentalists warn that the next frontier in sprawl is on the high
seas, where the proliferation of fishing, shipping, tourism, resource
extraction, energy development , military exercises and other human
activity has begun to call into question just how vast our oceans really
are. According to the nonprofit Natural Resources Defense Council, our oceans
are already under siege from problems like pollution, overfishing and
acidification, and increased industrial activity offshore - leading to " ocean
sprawl" - will jeopardize the food, jobs and recreation we have come to
depend on the oceans to provide. It's hard to believe, given how much
planning goes into various types of development and human activity on
land, that the oceans are still like the Wild West - with various entities
staking claims on huge stretches of open water for different purposes. A
promising approach to combat ocean sprawl is called coastal and marine
spatial planning (CMSP) , a form of zoning for the seas to help define who
can do what and where. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration says CMSP identifies areas most suitable for various types
of activities. "Marine planning places sound science and the best available
information at the heart of decision-making and brings federal, state, tribal and
other partners together to cooperatively develop coastal and marine spatial plans,"
NOAA says. "This process is designed to decrease user conflict, improve planning
and regulatory efficiencies, decrease associated costs and delays, engage affected
communities and stakeholders, and preserve critical ecosystem functions and
services." President Barack Obama's 2010 National Ocean Policy directs NOAA and
other federal agencies to work with ocean users, industries and coastal
communities on ways to implement CMSP in America's offshore waters to
prevent ocean sprawl at home while setting an example for other nations
around the world. Nine regional planning bodies are now tasked with developing
detailed plans for their own regions by early 2015, at which point federal
policymakers will begin to coordinate implementation. In response to momentum on
CMSP, a coalition of industries, including offshore energy, shipping, fisheries,
recreation, mining and others, formed the World Ocean Council to have a say in how

and where marine spatial planning is implemented. The group organized a National
Business Forum on Marine Spatial Planning in 2011 and will take part in a World
Ocean Summit in San Francisco in February. Those of us who appreciate the sea
certainly hope that CMSP and other approaches will succeed in turning the
tide for oceans and not be undermined by special interests only
concerned with bottom lines.

And mapping will be completed in 2015 and generate

renewable energy- the affirmative interrupts the ongoing
zoning process
Chasis 9 (Sarah Chasis is a senior attorney at the Natural Resources Defense

Council, Inc. (NRDC). She has worked at NRDC for more than 30 years and currently
serves as Director of its Ocean Initiative. Her advocacy for oceans and coastal
waters has been wide-ranging. She has worked to protect sensitive ocean areas
from offshore oil drilling, promote the clean up of polluted waters at the nations
beaches, strengthen coastal zone management and oil spill prevention programs,
and improve domestic and international fisheries management. She helped
convince Congress to pass legislation requiring an end to unsustainable harvest of
ocean fisheries and has successfully promoted state initiatives to strengthen ocean
protections. In recognition of her work, Ms. Chasis was selected as the first Coastal
Steward of the Year by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Ms.
Chasis has participated in a wide variety of commissions and coalitions including
serving on the Marine Board of the National Research Council and three years
staffing NRDCs President while he served on the Pew Oceans Commission. She is an
Adjunct Professor of Clinical Law at the New York University School of Law. In 2007,
she received the Smith College Medal awarded to women who have risen to the top
of their fields while contributing their talent and expertise to the improvement of
others lives, Obamas Ocean Plan Will Help Stop Ocean Sprawl,
http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/schasis/obamas_ocean_plan_will_help_st_1.html,
December 14, 2009)
After making strong recommendations for a landmark national ocean policy in
September, President Obamas Ocean Policy Task Force has turned its attention to
stage two of its effort to increase federal ocean protection. This stage proposes
a framework for a process called coastal and marine spatial planning,
which can help America manage the increasing amount of industrial
pressure on our seas while protecting them from further degradation.
Today, the administration released the details of its Interim Coastal and Marine
Spatial Planning Framework and, once again, the outlook is promising. Let me
explain What is coastal & marine spatial planning? We look to our seas to satisfy a
lot of demands from food to energy, shipping, recreation and the discovery of new
medicines. Coastal & marine spatial planning (MSP) is the process of planning ahead
and identifying spaces in the ocean and coastal waters that are appropriate for
various uses, separating incompatible uses, while at the same time ensuring that
the environment and marine life are protected. MSP allows us to identify in advance
areas where certain industrial uses make sense, and areas where they dont. Other
countries, such as Australia, Norway and the Netherlands, are using MSP
to improve management of their ocean resources. Some states have done
this as well. For example, Massachusetts is completing a comprehensive

ocean management plan and Rhode Island is in the process of developing

one. Highlights of the Obama Administrations Coastal and Marine Spatial Planning
Framework: Today, President Obamas Ocean Policy Task Force released its proposed
recommendations for how America can plan for the future of our oceans using MSP.
These recommendations will be available for a 60-day public comment period.
NRDC is pleased to see that: The framework is grounded in environmental
protection. In particular, the guidelines and principles from the Task Forces
national ocean policy report will guide the MSP process, including a focus on
protecting, maintaining, and restoring the health and biological diversity of our
oceans, coasts, and Great Lakes. Environmental protection needs to form the
basis of any planning effort. If ocean ecosystems are not protected, they
cannot continue to provide the services, like food, jobs and recreation that
people want and need. The framework ensures seats at the table for
states and regional partnerships, as well as providing opportunity for
public input. States and regional partnerships will have the opportunity to
work with federal agencies to address what is needed in their specific
regions and to help plan. In other words were not talking about officials
in Washington drawing lines on a map. The framework sets a solid
timeline for progress. It divides the country into 9 separate regions
(Northeast, Mid-Atlantic, South-Atlantic, Gulf of Mexico, Caribbean, West
Coast, Pacific Islands, Alaska/Arctic and the Great Lakes) and sets a 2015
goal for completion and certification of regional coastal and marine
spatial plans for all the regions. It can help address important industrial
& environmental issues in each region. From siting offshore renewable
energy projects (like offshore wind off the East Coast and wave projects
off the West Coast), to protecting important fishing grounds (like Georges
Bank off New England), and safeguarding key offshore habitats (like
submarine canyons along the Atlantic Coast or migratory pathways for
endangered whales off both the Atlantic and Pacific coasts) this plan can
help address key issues in each region of the country. What does this mean
for clean energy in the U.S.? As we move toward a clean energy economy, we
are increasingly turning to renewable offshore energy like wind power
that wont spill or run out. Marine spatial planning can help expedite the
siting of these projects in an environmentally responsible way. MSP can
and should be the blueprint we use to develop the energy of the future off
our shores while also protecting our oceans. Recognizing this, several
environmental groups and offshore renewable energy companies came
together to support a common set of principles regarding MSP. Many of
these principles are reflected in the Ocean Policy Task Forces proposed
recommendations released today. By creating a roadmap for our oceans, we
can minimize conflicts from the get-go that slow down offshore
renewable energy development and get clean energy up and running
faster. Conclusion The marine spatial planning framework presented by the
Obama administration will help protect our ocean life while ensuring that
sustainable ocean development can move forward. Its an important step
toward much needed improved stewardship of our oceans.

Renewable development of the ocean key to renewable energy

leadership- squo increasing renewable focus
VAO 10 (VAO, Ocean Renewable Energy,
http://editorials.voa.gov/content/ocean-renewable-energy108327624/1482153.html, November 13, 2010)
Covering more than 70 percent of the earth's surface, oceans can produce
different types of energy, including thermal energy from the sun's heat
and mechanical energy from the action of waves and tides. The United
States has taken another important step in harnessing that energy in
ways that are safe, sustainable, and environmentally safe . The U.S.
Department of Energy, Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and
Enforcement, or BOEMRE, and the U.S. Department of Commerce's National Oceanic
and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, announced on October 26th 8 joint
research awards totaling nearly $5 million to support the responsible siting and
permitting of offshore wind energy facilities and ocean energy generated from
waves, tides, currents and thermal gradients. This research will address key
information gaps regarding the potential environmental effects of
renewable ocean energy. "The nation's oceans represent a major
potential source of clean renewable energy , and the Department of
Energy is committed to developing the innovative technologies that will
harness that potential ," said U.S. Secretary of Energy Steven Chu.
BOEMRE Director Mark Bromwich said, "We are pleased to join with our partners in
announcing these important studies that will give us insight into ocean renewable
energy development." "There are many new and exciting renewable energy
opportunities waiting for us in the ocean," said NOAA Administrator Jane Lubchenco.
"These grants will help realize that potential by understanding environmental
impacts and incorporating appropriate mitigation measures from the outset."
Research funded under each of the programs 8 topic areas will help
reduce the environmental risks and regulatory uncertainties associated
with offshore renewable energy deployment. Among the projects selected
for funding is a study of the effects of construction and operation noises
from offshore alternative energy activities on marine life. The projects
were solicited through a competitive joint funding process. This innovative
partnership between the agencies creates a common research portfolio
that meets key industry and regulatory needs. This significantly magnifies
the impact of all three agencies' research funding by eliminating
redundancies, supporting complementary work, and sharing the results of
research findings. The United States is committed to being a leader in the
development of ocean renewable energy.

Marine ecosystems are critical to the survival of all life on

earth.
Craig 3 (Robin Kundis Craig, Associate Professor of Law, Indiana University
School of Law, 34 McGeorge L. Rev. 155)

Biodiversity and ecosystem function arguments for conserving marine ecosystems also exist, just as they do for
terrestrial ecosystems, but these arguments have thus far rarely been raised in political debates. For example,
besides significant tourism values - the most economically valuable ecosystem service coral reefs provide,
worldwide - coral reefs protect against storms and dampen other environmental fluctuations, services worth more
than ten times the reefs' value for food production. n856 Waste treatment is another significant, non-extractive
ecosystem function that intact coral reef ecosystems provide. n857 More generally, " ocean

ecosystems
play a major role in the global geochemical cycling of all the elements that
represent the basic building blocks of living organisms, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen,
phosphorus, and sulfur, as well as other less abundant but necessary elements." n858 In a very real and
direct sense, therefore, human degradation of marine ecosystems impairs the
planet's ability to support life. Maintaining biodiversity is often critical to
maintaining the functions of marine ecosystems. Current evidence shows that, in
general, an ecosystem's ability to keep functioning in the face of disturbance
is strongly dependent on its biodiversity, "indicating that more diverse
ecosystems are more stable." n859 Coral reef ecosystems are particularly dependent on their
biodiversity. [*265] Most ecologists agree that the complexity of interactions and degree of interrelatedness
among component species is higher on coral reefs than in any other marine environment. This implies that the
ecosystem functioning that produces the most highly valued components is also complex and that many otherwise

Thus, maintaining
and restoring the biodiversity of marine ecosystems is critical to
maintaining and restoring the ecosystem services that they provide. Non-use
insignificant species have strong effects on sustaining the rest of the reef system. n860

biodiversity values for marine ecosystems have been calculated in the wake of marine disasters, like the Exxon
Valdez oil spill in Alaska. n861 Similar calculations could derive preservation values for marine wilderness. However,
economic value, or economic value equivalents, should not be "the sole or even primary justification for
conservation of ocean ecosystems. Ethical arguments also have considerable force and merit." n862 At the
forefront of such arguments should be a recognition of how little we know about the sea - and about the actual

The United States has traditionally failed

to protect marine ecosystems because it was difficult to detect
anthropogenic harm to the oceans, but we now know that such harm is
occurring - even though we are not completely sure about causation or about how to fix every problem.
Ecosystems like the NWHI coral reef ecosystem should inspire lawmakers and policymakers to admit that most
of the time we really do not know what we are doing to the sea and hence
should be preserving marine wilderness whenever we can - especially when the
effect of human activities on marine ecosystems.

United States has within its territory relatively pristine marine ecosystems that may be unique in the world. We may

if we kill the ocean we kill ourselves,

and we will take most of the biosphere with us . The Black Sea is almost dead, n863 its
not know much about the sea, but we do know this much:

once-complex and productive ecosystem almost entirely replaced by a monoculture of comb jellies, "starving out
fish and dolphins, emptying fishermen's nets, and converting the web of life into brainless, wraith-like blobs of jelly."
n864 More importantly, the Black Sea is not necessarily unique. The Black Sea is a microcosm of what is happening
to the ocean systems at large. The stresses piled up: overfishing, oil spills, industrial discharges, nutrient pollution,

The sea weakened, slowly at first,

then collapsed with [*266] shocking suddenness. The lessons of this tragedy should not be
lost to the rest of us, because much of what happened here is being repeated all over
the world. The ecological stresses imposed on the Black Sea were not unique to communism. Nor, sadly, was
wetlands destruction, the introduction of an alien species.

the failure of governments to respond to the emerging crisis. n865 Oxygen-starved "dead zones" appear with
increasing frequency off the coasts of major cities and major rivers, forcing marine animals to flee and killing all
that cannot. n866 Ethics as well as enlightened self-interest thus suggest that the United States should protect fullyfunctioning marine ecosystems wherever possible - even if a few fishers go out of business as a result.

Warming is anthropogenic and causes extinction

DEIBEL 7 (Terry L. Deibel, professor of IR at National War College, Foreign Affairs Strategy, Conclusion:
American Foreign Affairs Strategy Today Anthropogenic caused by CO2)

there is one major existential threat to American security (as well as prosperity) of a
It is the threat of global
warming to the stability of the climate upon which all earthly life depends. Scientists
Finally,

nonviolent nature, which, though far in the future, demands urgent action.

worldwide have been observing the gathering of this threat for three decades now,
and what was once a mere possibility has passed through probability to near
certainty . Indeed not one of more than 900 articles on climate change
published in refereed scientific journals from 1993 to 2003 doubted that
anthropogenic warming is occurring. In legitimate scientific circles, writes Elizabeth Kolbert, it is
virtually impossible to find evidence of disagreement over the fundamentals of
global warming. Evidence from a vast international scientific monitoring effort
accumulates almost weekly, as this sample of newspaper reports shows: an
international panel predicts brutal droughts, floods and violent storms across the
planet over the next century; climate change could literally alter ocean currents, wipe away huge portions of Alpine Snowcaps and aid the
spread of cholera and malaria; glaciers in the Antarctic and in Greenland are melting much faster than expected, andworldwide, plants are blooming
several days earlier than a decade ago; rising sea temperatures have been accompanied by a significant global increase in the most destructive
hurricanes; NASA scientists have concluded from direct temperature measurements that 2005 was the hottest year on record, with 1998 a close
second; Earths warming climate is estimated to contribute to more than 150,000 deaths and 5 million illnesses each year as disease spreads;
widespread bleaching from Texas to Trinidadkilled broad swaths of corals due to a 2-degree rise in sea temperatures. The world is slowly
disintegrating, concluded Inuit hunter Noah Metuq, who lives 30 miles from the Arctic Circle. They call it climate changebut we just call it breaking up.
From the founding of the first cities some 6,000 years ago until the beginning of the industrial revolution, carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere
remained relatively constant at about 280 parts per million (ppm). At present they are accelerating toward 400 ppm, and by 2050 they will reach 500
ppm, about double pre-industrial levels. Unfortunately, atmospheric CO2 lasts about a century, so there is no way immediately to reduce levels, only to
slow their increase, we are thus in for significant global warming; the only debate is how much and how serous the effects will be. As the newspaper
stories quoted above show, we are already experiencing the effects of 1-2 degree warming in more violent storms, spread of disease, mass die offs of

and animals, species extinction, and threatened inundation of low-lying countries

like the Pacific nation of Kiribati and the Netherlands at a warming of 5 degrees or less the Greenland and West
plants

leading to a sea level of rise of 20 feet that would cover

North Carolinas outer banks, swamp the southern third of Florida, and inundate Manhattan
up to the middle of Greenwich Village. Another catastrophic effect would be the collapse of the
Atlantic thermohaline circulation that keeps the winter weather in Europe far warmer than its latitude
Antarctic ice sheets could disintegrate,

would otherwise allow. Economist William Cline once estimated the damage to the United States alone from
moderate levels of warming at 1-6 percent of GDP annually; severe warming could cost 13-26 percent of GDP. But

the most frightening scenario is runaway greenhouse warming, based on positive

feedback from the buildup of water vapor in the atmosphere that is both caused by
and causes hotter surface temperatures. Past ice age transitions, associated with only 5-10 degree

changes in average global temperatures, took place in just decades, even though no one was then pouring everincreasing amounts of carbon into the atmosphere. Faced with this specter, the best one can conclude is that
humankinds continuing enhancement of the natural greenhouse effect is akin to playing Russian roulette with the
earths climate and humanitys life support system. At worst, says physics professor Marty Hoffert of New York
University, were

just going to burn everything up;

were going to het the atmosphere to the

everything will
collapse. During the Cold War, astronomer Carl Sagan popularized a theory of nuclear winter to describe how a
temperature it was in the Cretaceous when there were crocodiles at the poles, and then

thermonuclear war between the Untied States and the Soviet Union would not only destroy both countries but

Global warming is the post-Cold War eras equivalent

of nuclear winter at least as serious and considerably better supported
scientifically. Over the long run it puts dangers form terrorism and traditional military
challenges to shame . It is a threat not only to the security and prosperity to the
United States, but potentially to the continued existence of life on this planet.
possible end life on this planet.

2NC Impact

2NC Turns Energy

Failure of Spatial Mapping undermines effective energy
development writ-large- causes red tape and ad hoc drillingsquo will solve their aff
Bondareff 11 (Joan M. Bondareff, Ms. Bondareff is of counsel in the Washington,
D.C., office of Blank Rome, LLP. Before joining Blank Rome, Ms. Bondareff was chief
counsel and acting deputy administrator of the Maritime Administration, U.S.
Department of Transportation, The Impact of Coastal and Marine Spatial Planning
on Deepwater Drilling, Published in Natural Resources & Environment Volume 26,
Number 2, Fall 2011(
It has been more than one year since the BP Deepwater Horizon (DWH) rig blew up in the Gulf of Mexico, killing eleven workers on
the rig, producing the largest accidental marine oil spill in U.S. history, destroying wetlands in Louisiana, and deeply affecting the
lives of residents and fishermen along the Gulf Coast. National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore
Drilling (BP Commission), Deep Water: The Gulf Oil Disaster and the Future of Offshore Drilling (Final Report),
www.oilspillcommission.gov/sites/default/ files/documents/DEEPWATER_ReporttothePresident_FINAL. pdf. A Gulf Coast Claims Facility
has been established to administer a $20 billion fund from the responsible party, British Petroleum (BP), and final payments to
affected claimants are just being proffered by the administrator of the fund, Ken Feinberg, a well-known lawyer and manager of
similar trust funds for compensation of victims. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), as lead trustee for
natural resources damaged or lost as a result of the spill, has begun the natural resource damage assessment process required by
the Oil Pollution Act of 1990. It is difficult at this point to catalogue the extent of the damage and to foresee the impact,
psychological and otherwise, on the lives of the fishermen. In the midst of this ongoing damage assessment, claims, and restoration
process, three seemingly unrelated events have taken place. On July 19, 2010, President Obama issued Executive Order 13547
creating a new ocean policy for the United States, establishing a new National Ocean Council and calling for the creation of a series
of Coastal and Marine Spatial Plans (CMSPs) along all of our coasts, including Hawaii, Alaska, and the Great Lakes. Exec. Order No.
13547, 75 Fed. Reg. 43,023 (July 22, 2010). Initially, following the DWH spill, the administration imposed a moratorium on all
deepwater drilling permits but recently has lifted the moratorium and issued a number of new deepwater drilling permits in the Gulf

Finally, recent conflicts in Libya and the Middle East have driven up
the price of oil and gas in the United States, resulting in increasing
demands to use the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to tamp down the price
of gas at the pump and calls for increased development of offshore U.S. oil
and gas reserves. Were the United States to develop and implement a
series of CMSPs along the U.S. coasts, it could help resolve use conflicts
for offshore waters, allow the public to participate more fully in the debate
where to site current and new sources of energy, including oil and gas and
renewable sources, and potentially facilitate the issuance of additional
deepwater drilling permits. This article reviews Executive Order 13547, explains the nature of coastal and
of Mexico.

marine spatial planning, reviews the legal authority for and impact of CMSPs, and attempts to predict the impact of this planning
process on deepwater drilling. First, let us review the history of coastal and marine spatial planning. The concept of maritime spatial
planning, as it is known in Europe, originated, in part, from the boundary principles of the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea
(UNCLOS, 1982). UNCLOS allowed nations to expand their jurisdictional claims to the limits of the 200-mile Exclusive Economic Zone
(EEZ), a 12-mile territorial sea, and a 24-mile contiguous zone. Although President Reagan rejected Part XI of UNCLOS governing
deep seabed mining, he accepted the rest of UNCLOS and proclaimed that the United States had sovereign rights to explore, exploit,
conserve, and manage the natural resources of a 200-mile EEZ around the United States, thereby expanding the nations boundaries
in a manner more extensive perhaps than the Louisiana Purchase. Proclamation No. 5030, 48 Fed. Reg. 10,605 (Mar. 10, 1983). The
principle of marine spatial planning itself may have been first adopted in Agenda 21, a set of principles produced by the Rio
Conference of 1992. Finally, it is reiterated in Executive Order 13547, calling for a new ocean policy for the United States, discussed
at length below. The European Union, recognizing its dependence and proximity to the sea, took an early lead in calling upon its
member nations to develop marine spatial plans. As Fokion Fotiadis, the Director-General of the European Commissions DirectorateGeneral for Maritime Affairs and Fisheries put it recently, [t]he European Commission is committed to pursuing . . . and [facilitating]
the development and use of maritime spatial planning within the European Union as part of our new sustainable approach to
manage our seas and oceans. European Commission, Maritime Spatial Planning for the EUs Seas and Oceans: Whats It All About?
(Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union, 2010). Several European nations have developed marine spatial plans to
resolve use conflicts. For example, Belgium has developed a master plan for the Belgian part of the North Sea and designated areas
for offshore wind, marine protected areas, and sand and gravel extraction, among other uses. A similar integrated management plan
for the North Sea off the Nether lands has been developed and identifies offshore use zones for shipping routes, military exercises,
and ecologically valuable areas. Finally, Germany has established a plan to resolve conflicts among old and new energy uses.
Further analysis can be found in F. Douvere & C. N. Ehler, New Perspectives on Sea Use Management: Initial Findings from European
Experience with Marine Spatial Planning, J. Envtl. Mgmt. 90 (2009) at 7788. In the United States, early references to a
comprehensive oceans policy and the need to plan for current and new uses of the oceans appear in the reports of the two ocean
commissions, the Pew Ocean Commission and the U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy. Their reports were issued in 2003 and 2004,
respectively. Congress held hearings on the two Commission reports but did not adopt many of their recommendations. The concept
of marine spatial planning in the EEZ has never been codified in U.S. law. On June 12, 2009, President Obama established an

interagency task force on ocean policy and directed the group to report back to him in one year on the state of the oceans in the
United States. The Task Force produced its final report on July 19, 2010. See The White House Council on Environmental Quality,
Final Recommendation of the Interagency Ocean Policy Task Force (July 19, 2010), www.whitehouse.gov/files/
documents/OPTF_FinalRecs.pdf. The report identified a new ocean policy for the United States and included as one of its principal
recommendations that the United States should develop CMSPs to manage the resources of the EEZ, OCS, and territorial sea. The
Task Forces recommendations were also incorporated by reference in Executive Order 13547. In brief, the new ocean policy calls for
protecting, maintaining, and restoring the health and biological diversity of ocean, coastal, and Great Lakes ecosystems and
resources; using the best available science to inform decisions; supporting sustainable uses of the ocean, coasts, and Great Lakes;
increasing scientific understanding of these ecosystems; and ensuring a comprehensive and collaborative framework for the
stewardship of these resources. (Task Force Report, supra, at 1415). The stakeholders, including federal, state, tribal and local
authorities, regional governing bodies, NGOs, and the public and private sectors are tasked with producing CMSPs. As defined in
Executive Order 13547, the term coastal and marine spatial planning means: a comprehensive, adaptive, integrated, ecosystembased, and transparent spatial planning process, based on sound science, for analyzing current and anticipated uses of ocean,
coastal, and Great Lakes areas. Coastal and marine spatial planning identifies areas most suitable for various types or classes of
activities in order to reduce conflicts among uses, reduce environmental impacts, facilitate compatible uses, and preserve critical

In practical terms, coastal

and marine spatial planning provides a public policy process for society to
better determine how the ocean, our coasts, and Great Lakes are
sustainably used and protectednow and for future generations. Exec. Order No.
13547, 75 Fed. Reg. 43,023 (July 22, 2010) (emphasis added). While the definition is certainly a
mouthful, the ultimate goal of marine spatial planning is a transparent
and flexible planning process to identify locations for offshore uses and to
anticipate and resolve conflicts among competing uses. The area to be covered by the
ecosystem services to meet economic, environmental, security, and social objectives.

plans includes the territorial sea of the United States, the 200-mile EEZ, and the Continental Shelf landward to the mean high-water
line. The plans also will include the waters of the Great Lakes from the ordinary high-water mark to the limit of the U.S. and Canada
maritime boundary. The Task Force Report explicitly states that privately owned lands are excluded from the planning areas.
However, the waters may reach inland to cover bays and estuaries in coastal and Great Lakes settings, which could include the
internal waters of the Chesapeake Bay and Puget Sound. Membership of each regional planning group includes representatives of
federal, state, and tribal authorities pertaining to each region. States are divided into nine regions (for purposes of developing the
CMSPs), as follows: 1. Alaska/Arctic Region: Alaska; 2. Caribbean Region: Puerto Rico and U.S. Virgin Islands; 3. Great Lakes Region:
Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania*, and Wisconsin; 4. Gulf of Mexico Region: Alabama, Florida,
Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas; 5. Mid-Atlantic Region: Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia; 6.
Northeast Region: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont; 7. Pacific Islands Region: Hawaii,
Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, American Samoa, and Guam; 8. South Atlantic Region: Florida, Georgia, North
Carolina, and South Carolina; and 9. West Coast Region: California, Oregon, and Washington. [*Pennsylvania is included twice
because it is both a coastal and Great Lakes state.] For a better depiction of the regions affected, please view the NOAA map of the
United States divided into large marine ecosystems and the nine regional planning areas at Council on Environmental Quality, Final
Recommendation of the Interagency Ocean Policy Task Force, 52 (July 19, 2010),
www.whitehouse.gov/files/documents/OPTF_FinalRecs.pdf. A number of states have initiated their own ocean planning processes that
may well serve as models for the new plans. Because state jurisdiction ends generally at the 3-mile limit, working with federal
agencies on CMSPs will provide an opportunity for states to influence the outcome of the plans for the waters of the adjacent EEZ
and Great Lakes. The following states have developed ocean management plans: Massachusetts, Hawaii, California, Rhode Island,
Oregon, and Washington State. Some of the state plans have also proved useful in helping to resolve siting conflicts. For example,
the Commonwealth of Massachusetts was able to identify the location of an offshore wind project by designating two areas for
offshore wind. See Peter Brennan, Massachusetts Ocean Plan Delegates Offshore Wind Regulation, Offshore Wind Wire (Jan. 4, 2010),
www.offshorewindwire. com/2010/01/04/ocean-plan-delegates-regulation. California, on the other hand, adopted an ocean plan in
2005 that continued to call for a ban on drilling on the OCS adjacent to California. See Water Quality Control Plan, Ocean Waters of
California (2005), www.swrcb.ca.gov/water_issues/programs/ ocean/docs/oplans/oceanplan2005.pdf. The Task Force Report
established a five-year schedule for bringing the nine CMSPs into fruition. The Report anticipates that the first year will be devoted
to public and stakeholder outreach; organizing the respective federal agency representatives in each region; developing a model
agreement; organizing and convening a national workshop; and development by the National Ocean Council (NOC) of a national
information management system. In his 2012 budget, President Obama requested $6.8 million for CMSP work and $20 million for
regional ocean partnership grants to foster the work of the NOC and begin the regional planning process. Regions will have to have
some seed money to begin the planning process and staff the development of CMSPs; but, it remains to be seen whether the
request for federal funds will be agreed to in this era of budget cutting. The next two years are to be spent on development, in the
regions, of a work plan and an initial regional planning process. Over the next three years, the regions should complete their CMSPs,
submit them to the NOC for review and approval, and begin to implement the plans. The Task Force expects that all plans will be
certified and put into effect by 2015. By certification, the Task Force means a review by the NOC to ensure that the plan is
consistent with the new ocean policy above. Certification would not occur until after a thirty-day public review period. Legal
Authority for Coastal and Marine Spatial Planning and Legal Effect of Certified Plans A key unanswered question is what legal effect
the CMSPs will have once adopted and certified by the NOC. The plans are intended to guide future agency decision making, not be
the equivalent of regulations or constitute final agency decision making. (Task Force Report, supra, at 62.) This will have a direct
bearing on the impact of the CMSPs on offshore oil and gas development, especially in deep waters. If the plan is simply a document
written by bureaucrats without public participation and buy-in, it may not be a very meaningful document. On the other hand, if the
public and stakeholders participate in the plans development and federal, state, and local regulations are modified to conform to
the plan, it may become a serious roadmap to predict future sites for offshore drilling and future renewable energy platforms,
including offshore wind. The Task Force Report claims that the administration has all the authority it needs to create and develop
CMSPs. In fact, an appendix to the Report identifies more than forty statutes that serve as the basis for the authority to develop
CMSPs. Key among the laws cited are the Coastal Zone Management Act (CZMA), the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, the Clean
Water Act, the Clean Air Act, the Endangered Species Act, the Magnuson Act, and the Deepwater Port Act. Probably the closest law
that proposes the establishment of ocean plans is the CZMA, which encourages states, albeit in state waters, to develop state ocean
resource management plans. 16 U.S.C. 1451(m). As described above, several states have done so. In addition to claiming that no
additional authority is required to develop the plans, the Report also asserts that the plans will not supersede or replace existing
laws or regulations. Future challenges to CMSPs may well depend on whether all stakeholders have bought into the planning

process. At some point in the future, however, it is possible that conflicts with underlying laws will arise and agencies and
stakeholders may recommend changes to those laws to encompass new uses of the ocean and also to better resolve use conflicts.
Impact of Coastal and Marine Spatial Plans on Deepwater Drilling and Other Energy Uses of the EEZ On January 11, 2011, the BP
Commission, co-chaired by former Senator Bob Graham (D-FL) and former EPA Administrator William Reilly, issued its Final Report.
While the principal purpose of the report was to identify the root causes of the BP spill, the BP Commission also adopted a series of
policy recommendations, including one that specifically endorsed the use of marine spatial planning as a way to manage future
offshore drilling. The Commission did not recommend that offshore or deepwater drilling be banned, but, instead, stated that
drilling in deepwater does not have to be abandoned. It can be done safely. That is one of the central messages of this report. (BP
Commission Report, supra, at 293). BP Commission Recommendation E.7 provides: The appropriate federal agencies, including EPA,
Interior, and NOAA, and the Trustees for Natural Resources should better balance the myriad economic and environmental interests
concentrated in the Gulf region going forward. This would include improved monitoring and increased use of sophisticated tools like
coastal and marine spatial planning. Many of these tools and capacities will also be important to manage areas of the OCS outside
the Gulf. BP Commission Report, supra, at 282 (emphasis added). Elaborating on this recommendation, the BP Commission
encouraged Congress to fund grants for the development of regional planning bodies, at amounts requested by the president, and
to site within the plans marine protected areas that can be used as mitigation banks to help offset any future harm to the marine
environment and to help maintain robust fisheries in the Gulf. The co-chairs of the BP Commission have testified before Congress on
their recommendations. While some members of Congress, such as Congressman Sam Farr (D-CA) support the use of marine spatial
planning, others such as the Chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee, Congressman Doc Hastings (R-WA), have
questioned the utility of such plans and expressed concerns that [r]estrictive national standards, along with ocean zoning, could
place huge portions of our oceans off-limit to communities who rely on our oceans for commerce and recreations. Rep. Doc
Hastings, Regulations Stifle Drilling, Push Gas Prices Up at Pump, The Hill (Feb. 15, 2011),
http://naturalresources.house.gov/News/DocumentSingle. aspx?DocumentID=225130. Unless Congress provides the necessary seed
funding for the development of CMSPs, we will not be able to determine how effective the plans can be to meet the expectations of
the Task Force and the BP Commission. However, if states and federal agencies can begin to meet and discuss how to approach
marine spatial planning and how to identify which uses should be located where, the process may yet prove to be fruitful. There are
existing examples of federal-state discussions on uses of the ocean that may be the seeds of this discussion. In the Gulf of Mexico,
for example, interested stakeholders can help identify areas for deepwater drilling that will not impact fisheries, shipping lanes, and
marine protected areas. This may help accelerate the permitting process for offshore drilling while allaying the fears of fishermen at
the same time. Combining offshore drilling with a marine protected area and a scheme for sharing revenue could expedite the
permitting process. Along the Atlantic Coast, where offshore wind may soon become a reality, the Departments of the Interior and
Energy have already established task forces with state representatives to identify areas for offshore wind. These discussions have
led to a number of Requests for Information (RFIs) and Calls for Nominations off Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and North Carolina,
and one is about to be issued for the Commonwealth of Virginia. Eight companies have already responded to the Maryland RFI.
These task force discussions can become the basis for future marine spatial planning to include other offshore uses besides
renewable energy. Along the West Coast, where states have not wanted offshore drilling since the famed 1969 Santa Barbara
blowout, there may be a stronger interest in new forms of renewable energy, such as energy from wind, tides, and waves. It would
be overly optimistic to gainsay that investing in the development of a CMSP will facilitate new offshore drilling adjacent to the
California coastbut who knows? The Pacific Coast of the United States also could be a target for offshore wind. Developing a
marine spatial plan for renewable energy combined with protections of marine resources may expedite the development of those
resources. In the Bering Sea, with the warming of the Arctic, Native Alaskans and other stakeholders will be able to focus on the
critical issues of offshore drilling, marine mammal protection, and fisheries protections if they meet to develop a CMSP. Along the
Gulf of Alaska, there are increasing opportunities for geothermal resource development. Getting interested federal, state, and local
agencies to the table to discuss how best to bring these resources online while continuing to protect the marine mammal and
fisheries resources of the adjacent seas will lead to a transparent plan that can be updated as new resources are identified and new
priorities come forward. Eventually this kind of planning process will have to be brought to the Arctic and its increasingly open
waters, but in that case, the United States will not be the only nation at the table. There are already numerous competing uses of
the waters between and among the Hawaiian Islands that are part of the Pacific Region. To date, offshore wind proposals have been
met with local opposition. Each use, whether offshore wind, transportation, fisheries, or whales, has its own place in the pecking
order and own statutory authority and agencies. But, there is no single group that can look at the ocean and its resources as a

Developing a CMSP can achieve what no individual statute , agency, or

industry group can accomplish on its owna roadmap to future siting and
future permits. Conclusions The development of CMSPs may have a positive
whole.

impact both on deepwater drilling for oil and gas as well as for the
development of renewable resources. Even if the CMSPs are not strictly enforceable, they will
provide an excellent opportunity for interested stakeholders, at the
federal, state, and local government levels, as well as industry and NGOs,
to meet and discuss how the waters of the EEZ and Great Lakes should be
managed. It was President Reagan who declared that the United States has exclusive rights to the resources of the EEZ.
Unless the United States develops comprehensive marine spatial plans,
we will be unable to take full advantage of his proclamation and vision but
will continue to battle each permit and each new use of the ocean on a
case-by-case basis.

2NC Turns Military/ Renewables Solve Military

Green military is key to hegemony and would jumpstart
economic growth- dependency on fossil fuels risk military
flare-ups and hampering foreign policy objectives- trades off
with modernization and prevents budget cuts- the military is
key
Neader and Goldfarb 12 (Reese Neader, National Policy Director, Roosevelt

Institute Campus Network, and Daniel Goldfarb, Partner, Greenstart, Big Idea: A
Green Energy Offensive From the Department of Defense,
http://www.good.is/post/big-idea-a-green-energy-offensive-from-the-department-ofdefense/http://www.planetizen.com/node/56636, May 7, 2012)
The snarky back-and-forth of the 2012 presidential campaign may be entertaining, but this is our once-every-fouryears chance to mix it up over the big challenges the United States is facing. We're launching the Campaign for Big
Ideas to make the run for the White House smarter, bolder, and a lot more ambitious. How often do the top climate
change official at the World Wildlife Fund and a group of four-star generals share the same opinion on national

There is a growing consensus across the country that many politicians still
Americas dependence on
imported fossil fuels is hampering our countrys ability to create jobs,
reduce long-term energy costsand keep our troops safe. In the 20th century,
our military defined energy security as a top-down, geopolitical concern.
Our armed forces secured access to foreign oil and protected the shipping
lanes that brought that oil to our shores. In the 21st century, we need the military
to play a new role: spurring innovation in the race for renewable energy.
Over the past decades, the U.S. military has been a central driver of commercial
innovation. When our armed forces needed to enhance their speed of communication in the face of a nuclear
security?

dont recognize and the 24-hour news cycle refuses to acknowledge:

assault, we got the internet. When they needed to increase their ability to process information, we got the
microprocessor. Today,

our military is facing an energy crisis that requires new

breakthroughs in technology. How much does it cost the U.S. government
to protect our oil supplies? In fiscal terms, between 1976 and 2007 it cost
our military $7.3 trillion to patrol the Persian Gulf with aircraft carriers .
Between 2001 and 2006, while thousands of troops lost their lives in Afghanistan and Iraq, the militarymuch like

The U.S. economys

growth has frequently been thwarted by shocks stemming from rising oil
prices. Those rising prices arent going away. The global economy of the
21st century is being defined by the "Rise of the Rest ." Developing countries like
China and India are industrializing rapidly and bringing millions of people out of poverty. The members of
this new, global middle class demanding access to energy are already
driving up the cost of fuel. This process makes our dependence on fossil
fuels too expensive. The Department of Defense has reacted to this
challenge by investing in renewable energy innovation. In the face of growing costs
average Americanssaw its budget squeezed as oil prices climbed to record highs.

in terms of lives and fuel, our military has developed a new approach to energy innovation that fundamentally
changes the way we think about energy security .

In order to compete economically and

preserve our military dominance in the 21st century, the U.S. military is
developing technologies that promote energy ownership: energy supplies
that can be controlled by the user from production to consumption. The DoD
is investing in technologies that can supply self-sustaining units in combat theaters, from Navy aircraft carriers to
forward deployed Marine bases. A focus on distributed generation, renewable energy, and American-made
technologies is becoming increasingly ingrained in our militarys decision-making, and needs to take a larger role.

While the militarys foremost concern is operational effectiveness, a

natural alignment of national security and economic interests is helping

drive commercial innovation with the potential to spur the creation of
American jobs and reduce the federal deficit through a variety of avenues that should be
widened as the DoD doubles down on green energy. Distributed power is about increasing prosperity at home and

As military innovation continues to drive U.S.

renewable fuels technology, the nation will become increasingly energy
self-sufficient, stabilizing and then decreasing the cost of energy for the
American consumer. One of the core values of new energy technologies to
the military is that they free our soldiers from fuel resupply lines, allowing
for increased mobility and range while decreasing combat risks. Between 2003
keeping our soldiers safe abroad.

and 2007 in Iraq, the Army reports that one out of eight casualties were a result of protecting fuel convoys. At
home, the Army is trying to get bases in Texas and Colorado to Net Zero status, only using as much energy as they
produce. As these types of technologies are commercialized, home owners, farmers, and businesses will be able to

This approach can provide

domestic economic security by hedging against price shocks in energy
markets. Changing where our energy comes fromfrom international to local sources
and how it is delivered provides insurance against increasingly violent
natural disasters. Local solutions also keep money circulating in communities rather than sending our
dollars abroad to autocratic regimes and failed states. Renewable energy makes long-term
fiscal sense. The Department of Defense is the single largest consumer of liquid fuels in the world, but since
produce their own energy and sell their surplus back to the grid.

2001 the military has realized the potential cost savings of efficiency and renewable energy. Between 2007 and late
2008 the price of crude oil increased from approximately $60 a barrel to nearly $135 a barrel. The resulting cost to

Spikes in fuel prices such as

this strain our militarys infrastructure, forcing the early retirement of
planes and warships, shutting down the development of new weapons
systems, or eating into investments in personnel training. Ensuring that
the military can acquire fuel sources at stable, controllable prices will
ensure that investments in machines and manpower will not face
unexpected budget cuts in the future. The same principle applies to U.S. consumers. If youre a
DoD, and thus U.S. taxpayers, exceeded $9.7 billion for that fiscal year.

home owner, a business owner, or a farmer, access to cost-competitive renewable energy means you wont have to

Investments in renewable
technologies will free the U.S. military, and the citizens it defends, from a
volatile global oil market. The made in America clause in the 2011s Department of Defense
worry about making economic sacrifices to rising fuel costs.

Authorization Act will ensure that the return on investments in clean energy R&D are realized in the form of

The militarys understanding that we cannot shift from

imported oil to imported solar cells will create a crucial market for still
fragile clean energy technologies. Supporting these technologies and growing domestic markets
will eventually help us close our national trade imbalance. Th e military alone cannot generate
the energy innovation that our country needs. Although the Department of Defense is the
manufacturing jobs.

worlds single largest fuel buyer, it accounts for less than 2 percent of total US energy consumption. Because of the

the department will never buy enough energy

technologies from U.S. businesses to single-handedly drive the market.
Rather, it is the militarys bottom-up, community-focused approach to energy
innovation that is important: Distributed power produced by renewable
energy technology made in the United States can keep our military safe,
create jobs, and reduce the US deficit. Without firing a shot, the military can lead us to victory.
ubiquity of energy consumption,

Creating successful energy policies are key to US international

credibility and hegemony abroad- strengthen our foreign
policy agenda- failure risk collapse of allies and the rise of
competitors
Light et. al 11 (Andrew Light, Rebecca Lefton, Adam James, Andrew Light is a

Senior Fellow, Rebecca Lefton is a Policy Analyst, and Adam James is a Special
Assistant, all specializing in international climate policy on the Energy team at the
Center for American Progress, Climate Finance Is Key to U.S. Climate Credibility,
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2011/12/climate_finance.html, December 6,
2011)
For the rest of this week, 194 parties will continue the 17th meeting of the Conference of the Parties of the United
Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the United Nationss annual climate summit, held this year in

As the United States pushes its views on the various parts

of the agenda in Durban on a vast array of topics involving international
cooperation on mitigation and adaptation to climate change, its credibility
is defined by two things: first, its track record so far in reducing its own emissionsas
partial proof of how seriously it takes its commitment to resolving this global problem and second, its
contribution to assisting poorer countries to reduce their emissions where the
biggest growth in emission will occur in the coming decade. The United States has provided
significant funding for climate mitigation in developing countries so far
and should continue these commitments even amid debates over the U.S. federal budget. In
Durban, South Africa.

addition to playing our part in curbing dangerous climate pollution, expanding our commitments on international
climate finance will also enhance our national security, create jobs, and secure our relationships with some of our
most important allies, as we detail below. A key piece of this funding going forward will be our contribution to a new
Green Climate Fund that will be the key component of an effort to mobilize $100 billion in public and private climate
finance annually by 2020. On the road to creating this fund the United States should continue its commitments to
international climate finance and cooperate with other parties on expanding this funding in the near term. Climate
finance equals climate safety Providing climate finance, and building on it in the future, is necessary for any hope of
achieving climate safety. In a variety of international summits, including the G8, Major Economies Forum, and the
United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, or UNFCCC, world leaders agreed on the goal of limiting
average global temperature increase to 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. Experts agree that
greenhouse gas emissions must be cut in half by 2050 to have any chance of limiting temperature increase at 2
degrees, which is the level necessary to avoid the worst impacts of global warming. A big part of achieving these
reductions is lowering emissions in developing countries. Because larger developing countries are growing faster
and building infrastructure to accommodate a growing middle class, those parts of the world will emit significantly
more greenhouse gases as time goes on. The most recent analysis from the Energy Information Agency shows that
the Asia and Oceanic region of the world is now emitting twice as much carbon dioxide as North America.
Developing countries made a pledge in 2009 at the G8 summit in Italy to reduce their emissions 80 percent by
2050. The difference between a world where the major developing carbon polluters get a jump start on reducing
their emissions at a slower but nonetheless comparable pace and a future where they wait longer to reduce their
emissions is vast. Climate finance helps these countries take the necessary steps to get started. According to
analysis from the Environmental Protection Agency, if developing countries were to cap their emissions at 2025 and
return to 26 percent below 2005 by 2050 (the full participation scenario in the figure below), then, combined with
such aggressive action by developed countries, we would have a 75 percent chance of stabilizing temperature
increase at 2 degrees Celsius. If instead developing countries only hold emissions in 2050 at 2050 levels (the
developing country delay scenario) we will only have an 11 percent chance of holding temperature increase at 2
degrees. In light of this analysis, developed countries must make substantial investments in renewable energy and
efficiency technologies, forestry, and resilience in developing countries in order to achieve climate safety. In a
separate report with the Alliance for Climate Protection, the Center for American Progress estimates that half of the
needed reductions from developing countries needed to get us on the more sustainable development pathway
identified by the EPA will only happen if climate finance continues to flow through the decade. Our current finance
commitments The United States and other developed countries committed to $30 billion in fast start financing for
adaptation and mitigation in developing countries from 2009 to 2012 at the 2009 U.N. climate summit in
Copenhagen. The impetus for this commitment was a promise the Bush administration made in 2007, when the
UNFCCC met in Bali, Indonesia, that developed countries would provide enhanced action on the provision of
financial resources and investment to support action on mitigation and adaptation and technology cooperation to
developing countries in the face of the threat of climate change (Bali Action Plan, section 1e). While the United
States did not commit to a specific dollar figure as part of the fast-start pledge, U.S. negotiators in Durban are
defending their contribution so far to this initial fund as $5.1 billion in both development finance and funding from

Our investments so far are commendable. They need to

be continued, though, not only for the benefits they bring abroad but also because they help
to promote our national security, create jobs, and secure American
our export credit agencies.

leadership abroad. Investments in climate aid are cost effective and

promote national security Investments in adaptation and mitigation help
save money by reducing the overall impacts of climate change. It is well
understood that the physical and economic toll of climate-change-related disasters is nothing short of devastating.
As the United Kingdoms Stern Review argued, the economic impact of climate change is equivalent to losing 5

It is also a high priority to decrease the risk of

climate-related national security threats such as preventing the severe
floods or droughts in Pakistan and the Middle East that could radically
destabilize the region. In turn, climate finance is also a high-impact investment. The World Bank and
percent of GDP per year, every year.

U.S. Geological Survey estimate that investing $1 in disaster risk reduction saves $7. But what makes these
investments even more cost effective is that emission reductions are cheaper in developing countries than they are
in developed economies, and they will yield significant co-benefits including decreasing premature morbidity and
mortality by decreasing co-pollutants that are emitted as a byproduct of burning fossil fuels for energy. Finally,

these investments have a powerful ability to leverage private capital if

structured properly. As the U.S. Senate prepares to take up the Foreign Operations Appropriations Bill
from the House of Representatives it must decide on the Houses proposed cuts of such programs as the Tropical
Forest Conservation Act, which finances debt-for-nature swaps that allow developing countries to relieve debt
owed to the United States by conserving and protecting forests. This program is projected to generate $266 million
in private capital for tropical forest conservation as of December 2010. International climate finance will create

Climate finance creates jobs and opportunities for

innovation that America should not ignore in particular if assistance is in
part channeled through our export credit agencies. For instance, the United States can
economic growth and U.S. jobs

tap into what HSBC projects to be a $2.2 trillion yearly clean energy technology market and meet the global
demand for clean technologies by building a domestic market for U.S. companies in these industries and through
cooperation with developing countries. The United States has a better chance of competing for these investments if
it provides loan guarantees at the outset for such programs. Of that market, the International Energy Agency
concludes that infrastructure investment in developing countries will be around $20 trillion over the next 25 years
an additional incentive for providing loans to those countries that can mobilize private capital for infrastructure

International climate finance is crucial to forging a global

partnership with developing nations There are also numerous indirect
benefits to these targeted investments. For one, they will help forge stronger
relationships with key strategic allies and major emerging economies such
as Indonesia, India, and Brazil, and enhance Americas ability to build
investments.

global coalitions on security and economic policy. Advancing democratic

ideals by limiting the exacerbation of conflict from climate change impacts
and stopping the flow of oil money that sustains hostile and undemocratic
regimes is also a high priority for Americas foreign policy agenda. A global
climate finance initiative could help to accelerate the transition away from oil that sustains the power of these
regimes. In addition,

we stand to lose what will emerge over the rest of this

decade as a race for climate finance competitiveness. Even though the British

dramatically cut their budget in all government departments across the board to deal with their own budget crisis,
they have committed to increasing their contribution to international climate finance out to 2015. And even
countries such as China, which are not bound to contribute to the $30 billion fast-start pledge, are contributing to

If the United States continues to

slip in providing this assistance, which leaders of developing countries
around the world have little doubt they need to survive and continue to
grow in a warmer world, then the United States will find its alliances
climate adaptation assistance in countries throughout Africa.

increasingly fragmented and its competitors increasingly influentia l

around the world.

Looking ahead

Climate finance is an unrecognized lynchpin

of the United Statess foreign agenda whether seen through the lens of

security, aid, or our own economy . Maintaining funding through existing channels and
continuing to explore new options will prove indispensable in the years ahead. The need for us to continue and build
on these commitments each year will only continue. At the U.N. climate summit in Cancun, Mexico last December
all parties finally approved the creation of a Green Climate Fund capable of mobilizing $100 billion in public and
private climate finance annually by 2020. This fund assures a continuing transition to the emission reductions we
need in developing countries to have a chance at achieving climate safety. Such a continuing revolving source of
credit and finance is also the only way to provide a stable platform that will scale up the ability of private finance to
eventually provide the bulk of the support for these investments. If the commitment to funding were spotty and
unreliable from year to year then private financial institutions would not have the confidence to invest in clean
energy, efficiency, and land-use-based projects into the future. The administration cannot of course go it alone on
guaranteeing this source of global assistance. Congress must also protect climate investments each year. Without it
we will destroy our ability to share these commitments with other parties who would not be able to predict how
much we could contribute to these efforts from one year to another. It would also destroy confidence in private
investors who would need some support for investments in weaker financial markets. As we argued in our
previously mentioned report with the Alliance for Climate Protection, we must minimally aim to match our
investments over the last three years out to 2015, and with cooperation from other donor countries, aim to increase
our global goal to $60 billion during this period. Financial stability for a global economic investment in sustainable
development is absolutely necessary to solve the problem before us. The international affairs budget makes up less
than 1 percent of the federal budget. This is a small price to pay for a big return. The stakes are clear: Without
continued climate finance for developing conditions we are risking both our childrens future and the welfare of
people around the world.

2NC Renewable > Nuclear

Nuclear is useless to solve warming and alternative energy key
Hertsgaard 5 (Nuclear energy can't solve global warming Mark Hertsgaard
Sunday, August 7, 2005 Mark Hertsgaard's books include "Nuclear Inc." and "Earth
Odyssey."
But the truth is that nuclear power is a weakling in combatting global warming.
Investing in a nuclear revival would make our global warming predicament
worse, not better. The reasons have little to do with nuclear safety, which
may be why environmentalists tend to overlook them. Environmentalists center
their critique on safety concerns: Nuclear reactors can suffer meltdowns from
malfunctions or terrorist attacks; radioactivity is released in all phases of the
nuclear production cycle from uranium mining through fission; the problem of waste
disposal still hasn't been solved; civilian nuclear programs can spur weapons
proliferation. But absent a Chernobyl-scale disaster, such arguments may not prove
to be decisive. In an atmosphere of desperation over how to keep our TVs,
computers and refrigerators humming in a globally warmed world, economic
considerations will dominate. This is especially so when dissident greens like
Diamond and Brand say nuclear safety is a solvable problem. Diamond is correct
that France has generated most of its electricity from nuclear power for decades
without a major mishap. Dissident greens concede there are risks to nuclear power.
But those risks, they say, are less than the alternatives. Coal, the world's major
electricity source, kills thousands of people a year right now through air pollution
and mining accidents. Coal is also the main driver of climate change, which is on
track to kill millions of people in the 21st century -- not in the sudden bang of
radioactive explosions but the gradual whimper of environmental collapse as
soaring temperatures and rising seas submerge cities, parch farmlands, crash
ecosystems and spread disease and chaos worldwide. Fear of such an apocalypse
led the British scientist James Lovelock to become the first prominent
environmentalist to endorse nuclear power as a global warming remedy, in 2003.
Patrick Moore, a co-founder of Greenpeace (who left the group a decade ago), soon
echoed Lovelock's apostasy, as did Hugh Montefiore, a board member of Friends of
the Earth, UK. All three were criticized by fellow greens. Likewise in the United
States, the movement's major organizations remain adamantly anti-nuclear. But
environmentalists on both sides of this argument are overlooking the
strongest objection to nuclear power, even as the nuclear industry hopes
no one notices it. The objection is rooted in energy economics, hence the
oversight. As energy economist Joseph Romm argued in a blog exchange
with Brand, "It is too often the case that experts on the environment think
they know a lot about energy, but they don't." The case against nuclear
power as a global warming remedy begins with the fact that nucleargenerated electricity is very expensive. Despite more than $150 billion in
federal subsides over the past 60 years (roughly 30 times more than solar,
wind and other renewable energy sources have received), nuclear power
costs substantially more than electricity made from wind , coal, oil or
natural gas. This is mainly due to the cost of borrowing money for the
decade or more it usually takes to get a nuclear plant up and running.
Remarkably, this inconvenient fact does not deter industry officials from boasting

that nuclear is the cheapest power available. Their trick is to count only the cost of
operating the plants, not of constructing them. By that logic, a Rolls-Royce is cheap
to drive because the gasoline but not the sticker price matters. The marketplace,
however, sees through such blarney. As Amory Lovins, the soft energy guru who
directs the Rocky Mountain Institute, a Colorado think tank that advises corporations
and governments on energy use, points out, "Nowhere (in the world) do
market-driven utilities buy, or private investors finance, new nuclear
plants." Only large government intervention keeps the nuclear option
alive. A second strike against nuclear is that it produces only electricity,
but electricity amounts to only one third of America's total energy use
(and less of the world's). Nuclear power thus addresses only a small
fraction of the global warming problem, and has no effect whatsoever on
two of the largest sources of carbon emissions: driving vehicles and
heating buildings. The upshot is that nuclear power is seven times less
cost-effective at displacing carbon than the cheapest, fastest alternative -energy efficiency, according to studies by the Rocky Mountain Institute.
For example, a nuclear power plant typically costs at least $2 billion. If
that $2 billion were instead spent to insulate drafty buildings, purchase
hybrid cars or install super-efficient lightbulbs and clothes dryers, it would
make unnecessary seven times more carbon consumption than the nuclear
power plant would. In short, energy efficiency offers a much bigger bang
for the buck. In a world of limited capital, investing in nuclear power
would divert money away from better responses to global warming, thus
slowing the world's withdrawal from carbon fuels at a time when speed is
essential.

Ocean Solves Warming

Development of ocean renewable energy sufficient to solve
warming- economical and feasible
Pelc and Fujita 2 (Robin Pelc, Rod M. Fujita, Environmental Lawyers, Marine
Policy, Volume 26, Issue 6, November 2002, Pages 471479, Renewable energy
from the ocean, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0308-597X(02)00045-3, November
2002)

Growing concern over the threat of global climate change has led to
an increased interest in research and development of renewable energy
technologies. The ocean provides a vast source of potential energy
resources, and as renewable energy technology develops, investment in
ocean energy is likely to grow. Research in ocean thermal energy
conversion, wave energy, tidal energy, and offshore wind energy has led
to promising technologies and in some cases, commercial deployment.
These sources have the potential to help alleviate the global climate
change threat, but the ocean environment should be protected while
these technologies are developed. Renewable energy sources from the ocean may be exploited
Abstract

without harming the marine environment if projects are sited and scaled appropriately and environmental
guidelines are followed. Keywords Renewable energy; Marine technologies 1. Introduction Vast and powerful, the
ocean probably stores enough energy in the form of heat, currents, waves, and tides to meet total worldwide
demand for power many times over [1]. Yet the challenges facing development of ocean energy technology have
been daunting, and to date, ocean energy comprises only a miniscule proportion of worldwide energy supply. Now,
however, widespread concern over global climate change and other environmental impacts of worldwide reliance
on fossil fuels has increased interest in renewable energy. As global commitment to renewables increases in the
future, more attention is likely to become focused on the immense stores of energy in the ocean. Increased
research and development of renewable energy from the ocean may be necessary for a broad, comprehensive, and
responsible energy plan. While renewable energy from the ocean would most likely improve the environment by
replacing fossil fuel plants and reducing carbon emissions, we must ask the question and then what?. It will be
critically important to ensure that the development of new ocean energy technologies does not harm the marine
environment, which is already subject to multiple threats such as overfishing, pollution, habitat loss, and climate
change. This paper will present and compare major potential sources of renewable energy from the ocean with a
view toward developing responsible development guidelines for protecting the marine environment. 2. Renewable
energy development Energy resource use is one of the most important and contentious issues of our time.

Investments in energy efficiency and increased conservation may be the

best way to tackle energy use. But it seems unlikely that goals for reducing carbon emissions can
be met through demand-side management alone. As many as 2 billion people worldwide lack electricity today [2],
and as rapid population growth in developing countries continues, demand for electricity will almost certainly rise.
At the same time, rising standards of living and reliance on technology in developed countries may cause energy
demand to rise faster than population, even with advances in efficiency. In the United States, for example, percapita energy use declined throughout the 1970s and early 1980s due to improvements in efficiency, but has
increased since then, and is predicted to increase in the next 20 years, with higher demand for energy services [3].

In order to meet demand that is anticipated despite efforts to improve

efficiency, while limiting production of greenhouse gases, renewable
energy sources must be developed. In the United States, research on renewable energy has
lagged in part because it is difficult for any new technology to compete economically with cheap and established
fossil fuel plants. Renewables often pay off in the long term, because the fuelsunlight, wind, ocean waves, etc.
tends to be free and limitless. In the short term, renewable energy plants are sometimes prohibitively capital
intensive. However, proper accounting for externalized costs of energy production puts renewable energy in a more
favorable light, while advances in technology and economies of scale can cause the costs of such technologies to
drop considerably over time. For example, wind power cost 30 cents/kW h in the 1980s, much too high to be
economically feasible; by 1999 that cost had dropped to 5 cents/kW h, making wind power cost competitive with
fossil fuels [4], even without accounting for the costs of pollution and other adverse impacts associated with fossil
fuels. Renewable energy research has mostly focused on the development of solar, wind, biomass and geothermal
sources. While these sources are all very promising, the best and most robust energy policy will take advantage of a
full suite of renewable energy sources.

With this in mind, we anticipate that

governments, corporations, engineers, and scientists will increasingly look

to the massive amounts of energy stored in the ocean. While ocean energy
development necessarily presents some challenges, much of the infrastructure and
knowledge necessary to generate energy from the ocean already exists,
due in part to the offshore oil industry. Research suggests that overcoming
technological challenges of ocean energy should not be prohibitive [5]. Some
applications of wave, offshore wind, and possibly tidal energy may already be economically feasible for limited

3. Renewable
energy resources from the ocean 3.1. Ocean thermal energy conversion
(OTEC) 3.1.1. Background OTEC produces electricity from the natural thermal
gradient of the ocean, using the heat stored in warm surface water to
create steam to drive a turbine, while pumping cold, deep water to the
surface to recondense the steam. In closed-cycle OTEC (Fig. 1a), warm seawater heats a working
sites, and as research continues, costs of ocean energy are likely to drop to competitive levels.

fluid with a low boiling point, such as ammonia, and the ammonia vapor turns a turbine, which drives a generator.
The vapor is then condensed by the cold water and cycled back through the system. In an open-cycle plant (Fig.
1b), warm seawater from the surface is pumped into a vacuum chamber where it is flash evaporated, and the
resulting steam drives the turbine. Cold seawater is then brought to the surface and used to condense the steam
into water, which is returned to the environment. Hybrid plants (Fig. 1c), combining benefits of the two systems,
would use closed-cycle generation combined with a second-stage flash evaporator to desalinate water [1]. OTEC
plants can either be built onshore or on offshore floating platforms. Floating platforms could be larger and do not
require the use of valuable coastal land, but incur the added expense and impact of transporting energy to the
shore. Energy can be transported via seafloor cable, a well-developed but costly technology that impacts the
environment by disrupting seafloor communities, or stored in the form of chemical energy as hydrogen, ammonia or
methanol. Plantships used to produce hydrogen, ammonia or methanol would graze the ocean slowly, store
products for about a month, then transfer products to a tanker that would take the products to shore [6]. Full-size
image (50 K) Fig. 1. Schematic of OTEC operation: (a) closed-cycle system; (b) open-cycle system; and (c) hybridcycle system. Reprinted with permission from [1]. Figure options It is possible to derive ancillary benefits from both
the warm and cold water cycled through OTEC plants. In an open-cycle plant, the warm water, after being
vaporized, can be recondensed while keeping separated from the cold seawater, leaving behind the salt and
providing a source of desalinated water fresh enough for municipal or agricultural use. The cold-water effluent can
be applied to mariculture (the cultivation of marine organisms such as algae, fish, and shellfish), air conditioning
and other applications. At the National Energy Laboratory of Hawaii (NELHA), once the locus of OTEC research and
pilot programs, there are no longer any functioning, net energy-producing OTEC plants, but research into uses for
deep seawater pumped to the surface using OTEC technology continues. Cold, deep seawater brought up by OTEC
pipes is nutrient-rich-parasite and free, and can be pumped into onshore ponds producing algae or other products in
a controlled system [6]. At NELHA, private companies have already profited from raising lobsters, flounder, and
high-protein algae in mariculture ponds fed by the cold water. Additionally, this cold water has been used to grow
temperate crops such as strawberries in Hawaii's tropical climate [7]. Air conditioning and industrial cooling may be
the most lucrative of all ancillary benefits of OTEC plants. Currently, both of the two main buildings at the NELHA
lab are effectively air conditioned by cold seawater pumped through OTEC pipes [8]. 3.1.2. Current status In the
United States, OTEC research has stalled since federal funding was cut in the 1980s. Though pilot OTEC plants at
NELHA were able to successfully produce net power, they were considered uneconomical compared to fossil fuels.
No net-power-generating plants are currently operating at NELHA, but the lab has plans for a new closed-cycle
plant, scheduled for construction by summer of 2002, that will generate between 1 and 1.4 MW of power [9] and
[10]. Additionally, the US Navy is considering building an 8 MW OTEC plant with a 2 MW gas-powered backup
turbine to replace the 15 MW gas plant currently on its base on the British Island of Diego Garcia in the Indian
Ocean. Because about 5 MW of the power generated by the gas plant is devoted to air conditioning, which could be
replaced by cooling with water brought up by the OTEC pipes, the smaller capacity OTEC plant could replace the
gas plant. The plant could also help supply the island with drinking water [10]. Sea Solar Power Inc. has developed
two conceptual models for OTEC plants, one 10 MW land-based model for small islands and the other 100-MW
floating platform model for mainland use. Their model is 8 times smaller than the US government design for the
same capacity plant. It therefore would use and discharge significantly less water, and would cost about View the
MathML source as much [11]. SSP believes that though OTEC power production was not economical in the NELHA
experiment, the SSP design could be cost-effective [12]. Currently, SSP is involved in a 2-yr, $20 million project to
test and refine each of the components of the system [9]. After optimization of the system, SSP plans to begin work
on a 10 MW pilot project in Guam [12] and a 100 MW floating plant in Tamil Nadu, south India [11]. 3.1.3. Potential
In total, it is estimated that about 10 TW (10 trillion W or 10 billion kW) of power, approximately equal to the current
global energy demand [13], could be provided by OTEC without affecting the thermal structure of the ocean [10].
However, with the current cost of electricity generation from OTEC varying between 8 and 24 cents/kW h [1],
significantly higher than fossil fuel costs, it is unlikely that this resource will be fully developed unless it is
subsidized. The greatest potential for OTEC is probably for use on small island developing states (SIDS), which need
both domestic power and fresh water. Full use of ancillary benefits (fresh water, aquaculture, air conditioning, etc.)
is most likely necessary for economic feasibility. OTEC may not make a great contribution to worldwide power
needs, but it could provide significant power to several SIDS. OTEC is only viable in the tropical seas, in areas where

the thermal gradient between the surface and a depth of 1000 m is at least 22C. Regions of the open ocean with
this temperature difference, suitable for floating OTEC plants, total about 60 million km2 in area [6]. For a shorebased plant, an additional requirement is topography that allows access to very deep water (1 km or deeper)
directly offshore, conditions that exist at certain tropical islands, coral atolls, and a limited number of continental
sites. In the United States, potential sites include Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and the continental shelf of the Gulf of Mexico
[6]. Areas of the world ocean with the appropriate thermal gradient are shown in Fig. 2[1]. Full-size image (88 K) Fig.
2. Map of temperature difference between surface and 1000 m in tropical ocean. Reprinted with permission from
[1]. Figure options 3.1.4. Environmental impacts Though fairly benign in environmental impact compared to
traditional power plants, OTEC poses some potential environmental threats, especially if implemented on a large
scale. Data from existing electric generating stations on the coast provide insight into possible impacts of OTEC
plants. These stations impact the surrounding marine environment mainly through heating the water, the release of
toxic chemicals, impingement of organisms on intake screens, and entrainment of small organisms by intake pipes,
all of which are concerns for OTEC. Large discharges of mixed warm and cold water would be released near the
surface, creating a plume of sinking cool water. The continual use of warm surface water and cold deepwater may,
over long periods of time, lead to slight warming at depth and cooling at the surface [6]. Thermal effects may be
significant, as local temperature changes of only 34C are known to cause high mortality among corals and fishes.
Aside from mortality, other effects such as reduced hatching success of eggs and developmental inhibition of
larvae, which lower reproductive success, may result from thermal changes [14]. Increased nutrient loading
resulting from the discharge of upwelled water could also negatively impact naturally low-nutrient ecosystems
typical of tropical seas. Toxic chemicals, such as ammonia and chlorine, may enter the environment from an OTEC
plant and kill local marine organisms. Ammonia in closed-cycle systems would be designed not to contact the
environment, and a dangerous release would be expected to result only from serious malfunction such as a major
breakdown, collision with a ship, a greater than 100-yr storm, terrorism, or major human error [6]. The impact of
chlorine will likely be minimal, as it would be used at a concentration of approximately 0.02 ppm daily average,
while the EPA standard for marine water requires levels lower than 0.1 ppm [6]. Impingement of large organisms
and entrainment of small organisms has been responsible for the greatest mortality of marine organisms at coastal
power plants thus far [14]. The magnitude of this problem depends on the location and size of the plant; however, if
marine life is attracted to OTEC plants by the higher nutrient concentrations in the upwelled cold water, large
numbers of organisms, including larvae or juveniles, could be killed by impingement or entrainment. For floating
plants, victims of impingement would be mainly small fish, jellyfish, and pelagic invertebrates, while for land-based
plants crustaceans would be the most affected [6]. Finally, a small amount of CO2 is released to the atmosphere by
OTEC power generation. Bringing deepwater to the surface where pressure is lower allows some of the sequestered
CO2 in this deepwater to outgas, especially as the water is warmed, reducing the solubility of CO2. However, this
carbon emission is very minute compared to the emissions of fossil fuel plants. OTEC could significantly improve
quality of life in SIDS, where the current cost of power is at a premium and the benefits of desalinated water,
mariculture and air conditioning would have a major impact. Further research into environmental impacts is
necessary, but if the technology is shown to be benign, the development of OTEC for SIDS should be a priority.
Plants in developed tropical sites that face high power prices should also be encouraged, if appropriate sites at
which environmental damage will be negligible can be found. Because the governments of the SIDS that would
benefit most from OTEC cannot afford such a high capital investment, governments of developed states should
contribute to the research effort and investment for OTEC in developing countries. Appropriate measures should be
taken to control environmental impacts including: Refraining from siting OTEC plants in sensitive areas including
prime fishing grounds, spawning areas, and sensitive reef habitats. Making use of discharge for ancillary benefits,
which prevents discharges from altering local water temperature significantly. Carefully regulating the use of
toxins such as ammonia and chlorine, and avoiding coating the plants with toxic hull coatings used on ships in
harbors which are known to pollute the waters. Relying mainly on relatively small plants. While there may be
economic benefits to scaling up, large-scale plants are more likely to damage a local community through discharge
or impingement/entrainment. Also, benefits from economies of scale are likely to dwindle at the 50 MW scale [15].
Similarly, if several small OTEC plants are used these plants must be suitably spaced to prevent altering local

3.2. Wave energy 3.2.1. Background Wave energy

has long been considered one of the most promising renewable
technologies. Not only is the energy resource vast, but it is more
dependable than most renewable energy resourceswave power at a given site is
ecology too significantly at any one site [6].

available up to 90 percent of the time, while solar and wind availability tend to be available just 2030 percent of
the time [16]. There are a more than 1000 different patented proposals for wave energy devices [17], and several
have demonstrated the potential for commercially viable electricity generation [18]. 3.2.2. Current status After
several disappointing experiments dashed high expectations for wave power in the oil crisis era of the 1970s,
interest waned. But interest has increased in wave energy with the introduction of several new technologies that
dramatically increase the efficiency and feasibility of wave power, and a shift in focus toward smaller plants, making
the initial capital costs less prohibitive. Unlike OTEC, wave power is already commercial, with recent advances
continually coming from companies investing in wave energy devices around the world. The first commercial wave
plant in the world, Limpet 500, was installed on the island of Islay, Scotland, in 2000, and has been providing power
to the grid for the UK since late November 2000 [19]. The Limpet 500 is a 0.5 MW capacity plant designed by
Wavegen for siting on exposed shores, utilizing an oscillating water column design. Wavegen has also created a
near-shore device, OSPREY 2000 (Ocean Swell Powered Renewable EnergY), a 2 MW station designed for 15 m deep
water up to 1 km from shore, and the WOSP 3500, a combined OSPREY and offshore windmill unit, rated at a total
of 3.5 MW (2 MW OSPREY plus 1.5 MW wind) [20]. Also on the island of Islay, Ocean Power Delivery Ltd. of

Edinburgh, Scotland is installing a small offshore wave power device, which will power up to 200 homes. Installation
should be finished in 2002. The plant will produce 2.5 million kW h electricity/yr. With support from the Scottish
Renewable Obligation of 1999, OPDL eventually plans to install up to 900 devices, with a total capacity of 700 MW,
producing more than 2.5 billion kW h/yr [21]. In the United States, the Monitor, a hybrid system designed by DemiTek that combines tide, wave and wind power, has been working just off Asbury Park, New Jersey since August
1990. The Monitor produces enough electricity to light the city's boardwalk and convention hall. In addition, the
Monitor was deployed to help reduce wave action and protect beaches from erosion. It is anchored to the ocean
floor by cables similar to those used for offshore oil drilling, and electricity is brought to shore by an undersea cable
[22]. 3.2.3. Potential The greatest potential for wave energy exists where the strongest winds are foundat the
temperate latitudes between 40 and 60 north and south, on the eastern boundaries of oceans. One of the richest
nations in terms of potential for wave energy is the UK, with the north of Scotland having particularly high potential.
The Science and Technology Committee of the British Parliament reports that, based on estimates from the
Department of Trade and Industrys Energy Technology Support Unit, in the UK alone, wave energy devices could
practicably contribute more than 50 TW h/yr [5]. In the US, a reasonable potential for wave energy development
may exist off the Pacific northwest coast [21]. Worldwide, wave energy could potentially provide up to 2 TW of
electricity, according to the World Energy Council [23], approximately 1/5 of current global energy demand. The
economics of wave energy power, though not yet competitive with fossil fuels, are promising, and the situation is
improving with more advanced technology. Costs have dropped rapidly in the last several years, and now
companies are aiming for less than 10 cents/kW h, to as low as 5 cents/kW h, for the latest designs. This price
would allow wave plants to compete favorably with conventional power plants [24]. 3.2.4. Environmental impacts
Small-scale wave energy plants are likely to have minimal environmental impacts. However, some of the very largescale projects that have been proposed have the potential for harming ocean ecosystems. Covering very large
areas of the surface of the ocean with wave energy devices would harm marine life and could have more
widespread effects, by altering the way the ocean interacts with the atmosphere. Wave power plants act as wave
breakers, calming the sea. While this is often a desired effect in many harbors (in fact wave energy devices could be
combined with wave break devices), the result may be to slow the mixing of the upper layers of the sea which could
adversely impact marine life and fisheries. Demersal fish will probably not be directly affected; however, changes in
surface productivity linked to reduced mixing could potentially reduce food supply to benthic populations. Changes
in waves and currents would most directly impact species that spend their lives nearer the surface. Many fish
species depend in part on currents to transport larvae, so wave energy devices that alter the currents between
spawning grounds and feeding grounds could be harmful to fish populations [25]. The dampening of waves may
reduce erosion on the shoreline; whether this effect is beneficial or detrimental depends on the specific coastline
[25]. While dampening of waves may have damaging ecological effects, and more research is needed to determine
the extent of this impact, studies show that sheltering due to wave devices will have a hardly noticeable effect on
the largest waves, so that the ecological role of very large waves as a disturbance that maintains high biodiversity
will be unencumbered [17]. Wave energy promoters claim the devices could enhance marine life by providing
structure, acting in much the same way as artificial reefs. This claim should be critically evaluated for specific
projects, because the effects of artificial structures appear to be very site specific. In areas where hard substrate is
clearly limiting to production, such structures may enhance marine life. Conversely, when other factors are limiting,
artificial structures may simply draw organisms away from natural habitats and potentially increase their
vulnerability to harvest [26], [27] and [28]. Wave energy is promising, holds a huge potential to reduce reliance on
fossil fuels, and is considered to be relatively environmentally benign at this time. Further research into wave
energy is recommended. For new wave plants, particularly of large capacity, siting should be carefully considered
not only for the potential to generate power, but also for the ecosystem's reliance on and response to powerful
waves, and wave plants should be avoided where calming of the waves would result in significant community

3.3. Tidal 3.3.1. Background Tidal power has the

distinct advantage of being highly predictable, compared to solar, wind,
and wave energy. The regularity of the tides along with an immense
energy potential helps make tidal energy development attractive. The first tidal
changes or disrupt natural ecological processes.

barrages resemble dams built across the mouths of estuaries to harness the energy of the tidal flow. Unlike a
hydroelectric dam, a tidal barrage must allow water to flow in both directions, although typically, the barrage only
captures the energy of the water flowing out of the estuary from high to low tide. Tidal barrage technology is fairly
well developed, and offers very large potential in some sites. Tidal barrages have been found to be potentially
damaging to the marine environment (see Environmental impacts). More recent innovations include tidal fences
and tidal turbines, which take advantage of the currents set up by tidal flows. Tidal fences consist of turbines
stretching entirely across a channel where tidal flow sets up relatively fast currents. The turbines are designed to
allow the passage of fish, water and sediment through the channel [29]. Tidal turbines, also installed in channels
with tidal currents, resemble underwater wind turbines and require current speeds of 23 m/s; at lower velocities,
harnessing energy from the current is uneconomical, while higher velocities can damage the turbines. 3.3.2.
Current status The first and largest operational tidal barrage plant in the world, built in the early 1960s, is the La
Rance plant on the Brittany coast of northern France. Taking advantage of the 2.4 m tidal height at the mouth of the
La Rance estuary, the plant produces 240 MW of electricity. Other operation tidal plants exist at Kislaya in Russia,
Jiangxia in China, and Annapolis in Canada [30]. No commercial tidal fence plants exist at this time, but the
company Blue Energy Canada hopes to develop them in the near future. It is looking toward Southeast Asia for its
first commercial tidal fence ventures, most notably a planned fence across the Dalupiri Passage in the Philippines.
This site, with a peak tidal current of about 4 m/s, would allow for a 2200 MW peak power plant, with a base daily
average of 1100 MW. As part of a larger proposed project, Build Own Operate Transfer (BOOT), the project could

help the Philippines exceed its power needs and export electricity [29]. Tidal fence projects have also been
proposed for sites beneath the Tacoma Narrows bridge in Washington and between Point San Pablo and East
Brothers Island in San Francisco Bay [31] and [32]. Tidal turbines are not yet at the commercial development stage.
The industry leader in tidal turbine research, Marine Current Turbines Ltd., plans to begin commercial development
in 2004 after concluding a major research and development effort [33]. By 2010, the company states, 300 MW of
power could be provided by underwater tidal turbines. 3.3.3. Potential It is estimated that the United Kingdom could
generate up to 50.2 TW h/yr with tidal power plants, while western Europe as a whole could generate up to 105.4
TW h/yr. Total worldwide potential is estimated to be about 5001000 TW h/yr, though only a fraction of this energy
is likely to be exploited due to economic constraints [30]. The availability of tidal energy is very site specific, where
tidal range is amplified by factors such as shelving of the sea bottom and funneling in estuaries, reflections by large
peninsulas, and resonance effects when tidal wave length is about 4 times the estuary length, as in the bay of
Fundy [34]. Major potential sites for barrages include the Bay of Fundy in Canada, which with a mean tidal range of
11 m has the highest tides in the world, and the Severn Estuary off Britain [30]. Tidal fences and turbines could be
installed anywhere tidal flows and the constraints of topography create predictable currents of 2 m/s or greater.
3.3.4. Environmental impacts Tidal plants sited at the mouths of estuaries pose many of the same environmental
threats as large dams. By altering the flow of saltwater into and out of estuaries, tidal plants could impact the
hydrology and salinity of these sensitive environments. Estuaries serve as a nursery for many marine organisms as
well as a unique and irreplaceable habitat for estuarine organisms, and alteration of this habitat by the construction
of large tidal plants should be avoided. During the construction phase for the tidal plant at La Rance, the estuary
was entirely closed off from the ocean for 23 yr, and there was a long period before the estuary reached a new
ecological equilibrium. Changes caused by the barrage include a reduction in intertidal area, slower currents,
reduced range of salinities, and changed bottom water characteristics, all of which led to changes in the marine
community there [34]. In the future, any new tidal barrages should be constructed taking care not to close off the
estuary from the ocean during construction, and these plants should not be built until detailed environmental
assessments demonstrate a minimal impact on the marine ecosystem. Tidal fences and tidal turbines are likely to
be more environmentally benign [29]. Tidal fences may have some negative environmental impacts, as they block
off channels making it difficult for fish and wildlife to migrate through those channels. However, Blue Energy claims
that the slow-moving turbines allow both fish and water to flow right through the structures, and have no effect on
silt transport. A 20 kW prototype built in 1983 by Nova Energy, Blue Energy's predecessor, in the St. Lawrence
Seaway found zero recorded fish kill [31]. In longer-term situations, some fish kill would be inevitable, but fences
could be engineered so that the spaces between the caisson wall and the rotor foil were large enough for fish to
pass through, and the turbines could be geared down to low velocities (2550 rpm), keeping fish kill to a minimum
[32]. Marine mammals would be protected by a fence that would keep larger animals away from the structure and a
sonar sensor auto-breaking system that shuts the system down when marine mammals are detected [31]. The tidal
fences would not alter the timing or amplitude of the tides. Tidal turbines could be the most environmentally
friendly tidal power option. They do not block channels or estuarine mouths, interrupt fish migration or alter
hydrology [29]. Tidal turbines and tidal fences both may offer considerable generating capacity without a major
impact on the ocean, while tidal barrages are probably too damaging to the marine ecosystem. Research in tidal
energy should focus on turbines, fences and similar technologies. These projects should be sited and built so that
major migration channels are left open. Turbines should turn slowly enough that fish mortality is minimized and
nutrient and sediment transport is largely unaffected. Tidal fences should be built across narrow channels, but not

3.4. Offshore wind 3.4.1. Background Wind energy has

received a lot of attention lately as one of the most promising and
economically feasible technologies for clean power generation. Wind power is
blocking an entire bay or corridor.

one of the cleanest types of power available, and can be currently cost competitive with fossil fuels, depending on
siting. While most research and promotion of wind energy is focused on land-based sites, interest in offshore wind
energy is growing. Very strong winds regularly blow over the oceans, winds over the ocean attain higher speeds and
are less turbulent than winds over land, and no landforms block accessibility of the wind over the ocean. Offshore
wind power design is very similar to onshore windmills; thus much of the technology is currently well developed.
Unlike land-based wind farms, offshore wind farms require high-voltage cable laid from windmills to shore to
transport the electricity. In addition to transporting energy to shore, the main technological challenge involved in
developing offshore wind sources is creating foundations stable enough to last in the harsh ocean environment and
withstand storms, and to economically transport these foundations and anchor them offshore. 3.4.2. Current status
The majority of offshore wind power development is taking place in Denmark, which is currently planning to
generate 40 percent of its power from wind plants by 2030, mostly from offshore wind farms. Denmark has already
built two successful 5 MW pilot wind farms, at Tunoo Knob and Vindeby [35]. Several other northern European
nations are also considering investing in large offshore wind parks. The Netherlands has built two wind farms and
plans to build a third park of 100 turbines, making enough electricity for 100,000 households. Sweden recently built
a wind park of 5500 kW turbines, and Swedish companies are planning a 48 MW wind farm and possibly a park
producing as much as 750 MW. The United Kingdom also plans to make use of its great offshore wind energy
potential in the near future [36]. Currently, offshore wind power is still more expensive than either land-based wind
power or fossil fuels, but the cost is dropping and in many places offshore wind is approaching economically feasible
rates. The cost is expected to drop by 50 percent in the next 10 yr, which would put it on par with onshore wind and
natural gas [35]. New wind farms planned for Denmark will be more economical by using turbines rated up to 1.5
MW, 3 times larger than those at the pilot plants. The farms will consist of 100 or more of such turbines, taking
advantage of economies of scale and saving on the costs of undersea cables used to transport electricity to shore
[36], which comprise up to a quarter of the costs for offshore wind farms [35]. Making stable foundations that can
be transported or constructed offshore and that can resist the many challenges of the marine environment is one of

the most difficult and expensive aspects of offshore wind development. Recently, the Danish Energy Agency
discovered that by using steel, which is lighter and easier to transport than the concrete currently used, foundation
costs could be cut by one-third. This would significantly impact the overall cost of the turbines, since foundation
costs may account for 2330 percent of the total cost [35]. Recent engineering studies show that turbines may be
economically built in water up to 15 m deep, allowing a much greater area of the ocean to be utilized [36]. In these
deeper waters, winds are more strongly developed, allowing greater power to be generated from the same size
plant [35]. Over time, with economies of scale and further optimization of offshore technology, offshore prices could
be comparable to fossil fuel plants. 3.4.3. Potential There is a fairly large potential for offshore wind and many
possible sites. It is estimated that wind plants on the US coast alone could provide up to 54 GW of capacity, or 102
TW h/yr of energy, with most production from the northwest, northeast, and Gulf of Mexico coasts. Worldwide, the
potential for offshore wind may be well over a thousand TW h/yr, with most capacity off the coast of northern
Europe [37]. The technology may be especially promising if combined, as in the OSPREY model (see Wave Energy),
with other large electricity-generating offshore structures such as wave plants. This innovation can significantly
improve the economics of the plants by cutting down the costs of attaching them to the seabed. Models indicate
that combined wind and wave energy structures could be more economically efficient, environmentally benign, and
reliable than separate plants [38]. It is probable that offshore wind power will increase dramatically in the next few
decades. Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, and the UK are continuing to research larger-scale,
offshore applications [35]. While land-based wind power has been tested more extensively and generally demands
lower capital investment, offshore wind power is gaining favor for a number of reasons. Offshore wind potential is
vast. Wind speeds over the ocean can be up to 20 percent higher than over land. Because power varies with the
cube of wind speed, this translates into a huge increase in potentialup to 70 percent higher offshore than on land.
Unblocked by hills, tall buildings or other obstacles, wind power can also be more reliable offshore. Furthermore,
most of the northern European nations investing in offshore wind plants are densely populated and have little
remaining undeveloped land suitable for wind farms [36]. 3.4.4. Environmental impacts Potential impacts of
offshore wind on the environment include effects on fisheries, seabed communities, and migratory birds.
Additionally, vibrations from the windmills could disturb marine mammals. Currently, there is no evidence of
damaging effects from offshore wind turbines, but insufficient studies on environmental impact have been
conducted. For offshore wind farms, visual impact and noise pollution should be minor if the farms are not visible
from shore [39]. While most plants to date have been sited very near shore in shallow water, it is anticipated that as
the economics of offshore plants improve, future plants will be built farther from shore and in deeper waters, where
visual and noise impacts are greatly reduced [37]. One of the few noted environmental drawbacks of wind power in
general is the potential to kill birds. Careful siting of windmills to avoid important bird migration corridors can
significantly mitigate this danger. Empirical studies have concluded that diving birds at Tunoo Knob in Denmark are
not frightened from the sites of wind farms [36] and [39], and that bird mortality from collision with windmills at
Blythe Harbor, UK is significantly lower than background mortality [40]. With careful siting to avoid harm to local or
migratory birds and fish, offshore wind may be one of the most environmentally benign of ocean energy resources,
as it has a very small footprint, does not affect currents, waves or tidal flows, and does not discharge fluids or

4. Conclusions The technologies for

OTEC, wave, non-barrage tidal, and offshore wind energy are still fairly
new. Further research is needed on the environmental effects as well as
economic feasibility of renewable ocean energy projects. However,
research has shown that these technologies hold promise, and further
research and development could help address one of the most serious
threats to the environment and society, global climate change, by
reducing dependence of fossil fuels. Any energy technology has some
environmental impact. However, while fossil fuel plants lead to pollution
and global warming regardless of their size and location, the impacts of
various renewable energy technologies are likely to be highly site specific
and scale dependent. Carefully choosing sites that can withstand the
alterations to the environment caused by power plants will be crucial to
effectively develop these technologies without harming the ocean. As with
any promising but new technology, it is advisable to continue with
research efforts, but proceed cautiously, prioritizing the health of the
marine environment while producing clean energy.
change the ambient temperature of the waters [37].

Other countries model our technology- global demonstration

Traub 12/14 (James, fellow of the Centre on International Cooperation. He writes
Terms of Engagement for Foreign Policy, Transforming the future lies in our
hands, http://gulfnews.com/opinions/columnists/transforming-the-future-lies-in-ourhands-1.1118704, December 14, 2012)

Despite President Barack Obamas vow, in his first post-reelection press conference, to take decisive
action on climate change, the global climate talks in Doha dragged to a close with the US, as
usual, a target of activists wrath. The Obama administration has shown no interest in submitting to a binding treaty
on carbon emissions and refuses to increase funding to help developing countries reduce their own emissions, even
as the US continues to behave as a global scofflaw on climate change. Actually, that is
not true the last part, anyway. According to the International Energy Agency, US emissions have dropped 7.7 per
cent since 2006 the largest reduction of all countries or regions. Yes, you read that correctly. The US, which has
refused to sign the Kyoto Accords establishing binding targets for emissions, has reduced its carbon footprint faster
than the greener-than-thou European countries. The reasons for this have something to do with climate change
itself (warm winters mean less heating oil something to do with market forces the shift from coal to natural gas
in power plants) and something to do with policy at the state and regional levels. And in the coming years, as both
new gas-mileage standards and new power-plant regulations, championed by the Obama administration kick in,
policy will drive the numbers further downwards. US emissions are expected to fall 23 per cent between 2002 and
2020. Apparently, Obamas record on climate change is not quite as calamitous as reputation would have it. The
West has largely succeeded in bending downwards the curve of carbon emissions. However, the developing world
has not. Last year, Chinas emissions rose 9.3 per cent; Indias, 8.7 per cent. China is now the worlds No 1 source
of carbon emissions, followed by the US, the European Union (EU) and India. The emerging powers have every
reason to want to emulate the energy-intensive economic success of the West even those, like China, who have
taken steps to increase energy efficiency, are not prepared to do anything to harm economic growth. The real

US policy has been, first, that it is still much too timid; and second, that it has not
acted in such a way as to persuade developing nations to take the truly difficult decisions
which would put the world on a sustainable path. There is a useful analogy with the nuclear
failure of

nonproliferation regime. In an earlier generation, the nuclear stockpiles of the US and the Soviet Union posed the
greatest threat to global security. Now, the threat comes from the proliferation of weapons to weak or rogue states
or to non-state actors. However, the only way that Washington can persuade other governments to join in a tough
nonproliferation regime is by taking the lead in reducing its own nuclear stockpile which the Obama
administration has sought to do, albeit with very imperfect success. In other words, where power is more widely
distributed,

model

US action matters less in itself, but carries great weight as a demonstration

or anti-demonstration model. Logic would thus dictate that the US bind itself in a global compact to

reduce emissions, as through the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) it has bound itself to reduce nuclear
weapons. However, the Senate would never ratify such a treaty. And even if it did, would China and India similarly
bind themselves? Here the nuclear analogy begins to break down because the NPT mostly requires that states
submit to inspections of their nuclear facilities, while a climate change treaty poses what looks very much like a
threat to states economic growth. Fossil fuels are even closer to home than nukes. Is it any wonder that only EU
countries and a few others have signed the Kyoto Accords? A global version of Kyoto is supposed to be readied by
2015, but a growing number of climate change activists still very much a minority accept that this may not

tougher action on
will help persuade China, India and others that energy efficiency
need not hinder economic growth. As Michael Levi, a climate expert at the Council on Foreign
happen and need not happen. So what can Obama do? It is possible that much
emissions

Relations points out, the US gets little credit abroad for reducing emissions largely thanks to serendipitous
events. Levi argues, as do virtually all policy thinkers and advocates, that the US must increase the cost of fossil
fuels, whether through a carbon tax or cap-and-trade system, so that both energy efficiency and alternative fuels
become more attractive and also to free-up money to be invested in new technologies. This is what Obamas
disappointed supporters thought he would do in the first term and urge him to do now. Obama is probably not going
to do that. In his post-election news conference, he insisted that he would find bipartisan solutions to climate
change and congressional Republicans are only slightly more likely to accept a sweeping change in carbon pricing
than they are to ratify a climate-change treaty. The president also said that any reform would have to create jobs
and growth, which sounds very much like a signal that he will avoid new taxes or penalties (even though advocates
of such plans insist that they would spur economic growth). All these prudent political calculations are fine when
you can afford to fail. But we cannot afford to fail.

Global temperatures

0.7 degrees

strikes at

Celsius.

Disaster

really

have already

increased

degree Celsius increase, which leads to

the current global

means that, according to Fatih Birol, the International Energy
Agencys chief economist, the door to a 2 degree Celsius trajectory is about to
large-scale drought, wildfires, decreased food production and coastal flooding. However,

trajectory

of coal, oil and gas consumption

close . That is how dire things are. What, then, can Obama do that is equal to the problem? He can invest. Once
the fiscal cliff negotiations are behind him, and after he has held his planned conversation with scientists,
engineers and elected officials, he can tell the

American people that they have a once-in-a-

lifetime opportunity to transform the future

for themselves and for people everywhere.

He can propose as he hoped to do as part of the stimulus package of 2009 that the US build a smart grid to
radically improve the efficiency of electricity distribution. He can argue for large-scale investments in research and
development of new sources of energy and energy-efficient construction technologies and lots of other whiz-bang
things. This, too, was part of the stimulus spending; it must become bigger and permanent. The reason Obama
should do this is, first, because the American people will (or could) rally behind a visionary programme in a way that
they never will get behind the dour mechanics of carbon pricing. Second, because the way to get to a carbon tax is
to use it as a financing mechanism for such a plan. Third, because oil and gas are in Americas bloodstream; as
Steven Cohen, executive director of the Earth Institute, puts it:

The only thing thats going to

drive fossil fuels off the market is cheaper renewable energy . Fourth, the US
China and
India may not do something sensible but painful, like adopting carbon pricing, because the US does so, but they
will adopt new tech nologies if the US can prove that they work without harming
economic growth. Developing countries have already made major investments in
reducing air pollution, halting deforestation and practising sustainable agriculture. They are just too
modest. It is here, above all, that the US can serve as a demonstration model the
cannot afford to miss out on the gigantic market for green technology. Finally, theres leverage.

worlds most egregious carbon consumer showing the way to a low-carbon future. Global warming-denial is finally
on the way out. Three-quarters of Americans now say they believe in global warming and more than half believe
that humans are causing it and want to see a US president take action. President Obama does not have to do the
impossible. He must, however, do the possible.

Warming is Anthro
Its anthro
Powell 2/25 (science author. He has been a college and museum president and
was a member of the National Science Board for 12 years, appointed first by
President Reagan and then by President George H. W. Bush (Jim, Consensus:
99.84% of Peer-Reviewed Articles Support the Idea of Global Warming,
http://thecontributor.com/why-climate-deniers-have-no-scientific-credibility-one-piechart)
Polls show that many members of the public believe scientists substantially disagree about human-caused global
warming.

The gold standard of science is the peer-reviewed literature. If there is

disagreement among scientists, based not on opinion but on hard evidence, it will be found in the peer-reviewed
literature. I searched the Web of Science for peer-reviewed scientific articles published between January 1, 1991
and November 9, 2012 that have the keyword phrases "global warming" or "global climate change." The search
produced 13,950 articles. See my methodology. I read whatever combination of titles, abstracts, and entire articles
necessary to identify articles that "reject" human-caused global warming. To be classified as rejecting, an article
had to clearly and explicitly state that the theory of global warming is false or, as happened in a few cases, that
some other process better explains the observed warming. Articles that merely claimed to have found some
discrepancy, some minor flaw, some reason for doubt, I did not classify as rejecting global warming. Articles about
methods, paleoclimatology, mitigation, adaptation, and effects at least implicitly accept human-caused global
warming and were usually obvious from the title alone. John Cook and Dana Nuccitelli also reviewed and assigned
some of these articles; Cook provided invaluable technical expertise. This work follows that of Oreskes (Science,
2005) who searched for articles published between 1993 and 2003 with the keyword phrase global climate
change. She found 928, read the abstracts of each and classified them. None rejected human-caused global
warming. Using her criteria and time-span, I get the same result. Deniers attacked Oreskes and her findings, but
they have held up. Some articles on global warming may use other keywords, for example, climate change
without the "global" prefix. But there is no reason to think that the proportion rejecting global warming would be

out of 13,950 peer-reviewed articles published on global warming

0.16 percent , clearly reject global warming or endorse a cause

any higher. By my definition,

only 23, or
other than CO2 emissions for observed warming. The list of articles that reject global warming is here.
The 23 articles have been cited a total of 112 times over the nearly 21-year period, for an
average of close to 5 citations each. That compares to an average of about 19 citations for articles
since 1991,

answering to "global warming," for example. Four of the rejecting articles have never been cited; four have citations

had any of these articles

presented the magic bullet that falsifies human-caused global warming, that
article would be on its way to becoming one of the most-cited in the history
of science. The articles have a total of 33,690 individual authors. The top 10 countries represented, in order,
in the double-digits. The most-cited has 17. Of one thing we can be certain:

are USA, England, China, Germany, Japan, Canada, Australia, France, Spain, and Netherlands. (The chart shows

warming deniers often claim that bias prevents

them from publishing in peer-reviewed journals. But 23 articles in 18 different
journals, collectively making several different arguments against global warming, expose that claim
results through November 9, 2012.) Global

as false . Articles rejecting global warming can be published, but those that have been have earned little
support or notice, even from other deniers. A few deniers have become well known from newspaper interviews,
Congressional hearings, conferences of climate change critics, books, lectures, websites and the like. Their names

deniers
have no evidence that falsifies global warming. Anyone can repeat this search and post

are conspicuously rare among the authors of the rejecting articles. Like those authors, the prominent
must

their findings. Another reviewer would likely have slightly different standards than mine and get a different number
of rejecting articles. But no one will be able to reach a different conclusion, for only one conclusion is possible:

Within science, global warming denial has virtually no influence . Its influence is
instead

on a misguided media , politicians all-too-willing to deny science for their own gain, and a

gullible public. Scientists do not disagree about

human-caused global warming. It is the ruling

paradigm of climate science, in the same way that plate tectonics is the
ruling paradigm of geology.

We know that continents move. We know that the earth is warming and

that human emissions of greenhouse gases are the primary cause.

These are known facts about

which virtually all publishing scientists agree.

Impact XT
Warming causes extinction- tipping point
Dyer 12 (London-based independent journalist, PhD from King's College London,
citing UC Berkeley scientists (Gwynne, "Tick, tock to mass extinction date," The
Press, 6-19-12, l/n, accessed 8-15-12)
Meanwhile, a team of

respected scientists warn that life on Earth may be on the way

to an irreversible "tipping point". Sure. Heard that one before, too. Last month one of the
world's two leading scientific journals, Nature, published a paper, "Approaching a state shift in Earth's biosphere,"
pointing out that more than 40 per cent of the Earth's land is already used for human needs. With the human
population set to grow by a further two billion by 2050, that figure could soon exceed 50 per cent. "It really will be a
new world, biologically, at that point," said the paper's lead author, Professor Anthony Barnofsky of the University of
California, Berkeley. But Barnofsky doesn't go into the details of what kind of new world it might be. Scientists
hardly ever do in public, for fear of being seen as panic-mongers. Besides, it's a relatively new hypothesis, but it's a
pretty convincing one, and it should be more widely understood. Here's how bad it could get. The scientific
consensus is that we are still on track for 3 degrees C of warming by 2100, but that's just warming caused by
human greenhouse- gas emissions. The problem is that +3 degrees is well past the point where the major
feedbacks kick in: natural phenomena triggered by our warming, like melting permafrost and the loss of Arctic seaice cover, that will add to the heating and that we cannot turn off. The trigger is actually around 2C (3.5 degrees F)

After that we lose control of the process: ending our own

carbon- dioxide emissions would no longer be enough to stop the warming. We may end up trapped on
an escalator heading up to +6C (+10.5F), with no way of getting off. And +6C gives you the mass
extinction. There have been five mass extinctions in the past 500 million years, when 50 per cent or more of
higher average global temperature.

the species then existing on the Earth vanished, but until recently the only people taking any interest in this were
paleontologists, not climate scientists. They did wonder what had caused the extinctions, but the best answer they
could come up was "climate change". It wasn't a very good answer. Why would a warmer or colder planet kill off all
those species? The warming was caused by massive volcanic eruptions dumping huge quantities of carbon dioxide
in the atmosphere for tens of thousands of years. But it was very gradual and the animals and plants had plenty of
time to migrate to climatic zones that still suited them. (That's exactly what happened more recently in the Ice Age,
as the glaciers repeatedly covered whole continents and then retreated again.) There had to be a more convincing
kill mechanism than that. The paleontologists found one when they discovered that a giant asteroid struck the
planet 65 million years ago, just at the time when the dinosaurs died out in the most recent of the great extinctions.
So they went looking for evidence of huge asteroid strikes at the time of the other extinction events. They found
none. What they discovered was that there was indeed major warming at the time of all the other extinctions - and
that the warming had radically changed the oceans. The currents that carry oxygen- rich cold water down to the
depths shifted so that they were bringing down oxygen- poor warm water instead, and gradually the depths of the
oceans became anoxic: the deep waters no longer had any oxygen. When that happens, the sulfur bacteria
that normally live in the silt (because oxygen is poison to them) come out of hiding and begin to multiply.

rise all the way to the surface over the whole ocean, killing all the
oxygen-breathing life. The ocean also starts emitting enormous amounts of lethal
hydrogen sulfide gas that destroy the ozone layer and directly poison land- dwelling
species. This has happened many times in the Earth's history.
Eventually they

Emissions cause extinction- ocean acidification

Payet et al. 10 (Janot Mendler de Suarez, Biliana Cicin-Sain, Kateryna Wowk,

Rolph Payet, Ove Hoegh-Guldberg Global Forum on Oceans, Coasts, and Islands
Global Oceans Conference 2010 May 3-7, 2010, Ensuring Survival: Oceans, Climate
and Security Prepared by Janot Mendler de Suarez is a founding member of the
Pardee Center Task Force, Games for a New Climate, serves on the Council of
Advisors for the Collaborative Institute on Oceans Climate and Security at the
University of Massachusetts-Boston, and chairs the Global Oceans Forum Working
Group on Oceans and Climate. Mendler de Suarez was instrumental in the design,

testing and development of the GEF International Waters Learning Exchange and
Resource Network, or GEF-IW:LEARN. Ove Hoegh-Guldberg (born 26 September
1959, in Sydney, Australia), is the inaugural Director of the Global Change Institute
at the University of Queensland, and the holder of a Queensland Smart State
Premier fellowship (20082013). He is best known for his work on climate change
and coral reefs. His PhD topic focused upon the physiology of corals and their
zooxanthellae under thermal stress. Hoegh-Guldberg is a professor [4] at the
University of Queensland. He is a leading coral biologist whose study focuses on the
impact of global warming and climate change on coral reefs e.g. coral bleaching.[5]
As of 5 October 2009, he had published 236 journal articles, 18 book chapters and
been cited 3,373 times.[6] Dr. Biliana Cicin-Sain (PhD in political science, UCLA,
postdoctoral training, Harvard University) is Director of the Gerard J. Mangone
Center for Marine Policy and Professor of Marine Policy at the University of
Delawares College of Earth, Ocean, and Environment. Rolph Payet FRGS is an
international policy expert, researcher and speaker on environment, climate and
island issues, and was the first President & Vice-Chancellor of the University of
Seychelles, He was educated at the University of East Anglia (BSc), University of
Surrey (MBA), University of Ulster (MSc), Imperial College London, and the John F.
Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. He received his PhD from
Linnaeus University in Environmental Science, where he undertook multidisciplinary
research in sustainable tourism)
oceans play a vital role in sustaining life on Earth by generating half
of the worlds oxygen , as the largest active carbon sink absorbing a significant portion of anthropogenic carbon
dioxide (CO2), regulating climate and temperature , and providing economic
resources and environmental services to billions of people around the globe. The
oceans of our planet serve as an intricate and generous life-support system for
the entire biosphere . Ocean circulation, in constant interaction with the earths atmosphere, regulates global climate
The global

and temperature and through multiple feedback loops related to ocean warming, is also a principal driver of climate variability and
long-term climate change. Climate change is already affecting the ability of coastal and marine ecosystems to provide food security,
sustainable livelihoods, protection from natural hazards, cultural identity, and recreation to coastal populations, especially among
the most vulnerable communities in tropical areas. There is now global recognition of the importance of forests and terrestrial
ecosystems in addressing climate change. An emerging understanding, through ecosystem-based management, of the complex and
intimate relationship between climate change and the oceans offers new hope for mitigating the negative impacts of global
warming, and for building ecosystem and community resilience to the climate-related hazards that cannot be averted. Ecosystembased ocean and coastal management also generates co-benefits ranging from food security and health to livelihoods and new
technologies that contribute to progress in equitable and environmentally sustainable development towards a low-carbon future.
Recent observations indicate that impacts of our changing global climate on oceans and coasts especially in the Arcticnow far

Moreover, we know
that increasingly ocean acidification (a consequence of rising atmospheric
CO2 ) is impacting on coral reefs, marine invertebrates and as a
consequence changing the structure and nature of ocean ecosystems. The
oceans offer an important key to averting some of the potentially far-reaching, devastating
exceed the findings of the 2007 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

and long-lasting humanitarian and environmental consequences of climate change. With good governance and ecosystem-based
management, the worlds oceans and coastal regions can play a vital role in transitioning to a low-carbon economy through
improved food security, sustainable livelihoods, as well as natural protection from threats to human health, hazards and extreme
weather events. Out of all the biological carbon captured in the world, over half is captured by marine living organisms, and hence
the term blue carbon. In a 2009 report produced by three United Nations agencies, leading scientists found that carbon emissions
equal to half the annual emissions of the global transport sector are being captured and stored by marine ecosystems such as
mangroves, salt marshes and seagrass meadows. A combination of reducing deforestation on land, allied to restoring the coverage
and health of these coastal ecosystems could deliver up to 25 percent of the emissions reductions needed to avoid dangerous
climate change. But the report warns that instead of maintaining and enhancing these natural carbon sinks, humanity is damaging
and degrading them at an accelerating rate. It estimates that up to seven percent of these blue carbon sinks are being lost
annually or seven times the rate of loss of 50 years ago (UNEP 2009). Oceans and coasts must be integrated into the UNFCCC
negotiating text in order to appropriately address both the critical role of oceans in the global climate system, and the potential for
adaptive management of coastal and marine ecosystems to make significant contributions to both mitigation and adaptation.
Ecosystem-based approaches generate multiple co-benefits, from absorbing greenhouse gas emissions to building resilience to the
significant and differential impacts that coastal and island communities are facing due to global climate change. While the
international community must redouble its efforts to adopt major emissions reduction commitments, at the same time, there is a
need to focus on the scientifically supported facts about natural solutions through ecosystem-based approaches that contribute to

climate adaptation and mitigation, to human health and well-being, and to food security. This policy brief provides an overview of
the latest facts and concerns on the synergy between oceans and climate, highlights climate change impacts on ocean ecosystems
and coastal and island communities, and presents key recommendations for a comprehensive framework to better integrate vital
ocean and coastal concerns and contributions into climate change policy and action. 1. The Oceans Have a Vital Role in Combating
Climate Change The oceans are the blue lungs of the planet breathing in CO2 and exhaling oxygen. The oceans have also
absorbed over 80 percent of the heat added to the climate system (IPCC 2007), and act as the largest active carbon sink on earth.
Ocean absorption of CO2 reduces the rate at which it accumulates in the atmosphere, and thus slows the rate of global warming
(Denman 2007). Over the last 250 years, oceans have been responsible for absorbing nearly half of the increased CO2 emissions
produced by burning fossil fuels (Laffoley 2010) as well as a significant portion of increased greenhouse gas emissions due to
landuse change (Sabine et al. 2004). A combination of cyclical processes enables the ocean to absorb more carbon than it emits.
Three of the oceans key functions drive this absorption: first is the solubility pump, whereby CO2 dissolves in sea water in direct
proportion to its concentration in the atmosphere the more CO2 in the atmosphere, the more will dissolve in the ocean; second is
water temperature CO2 dissolves more easily in colder water so greater absorption occurs in polar regions; third is mixing of CO2
to deeper levels by ocean currents. Convergence of carbon-enriched currents at the poles feed into the so called ocean conveyor
belt, a global current which cycles carbon into ocean depths with a very slow (about 1500 years) turnover back to the surface. The
biological pump begins with carbon captured through photosynthesis in surface water micro-organisms, which make up 80-90
percent of the biomass in the ocean. These tiny plants and animals feed carbon into the food chain, where it is passed along to
larger invertebrates, fish, and mammals. When sea plants and animals die and part of their organic matter sinks to the ocean floor,
it is transformed into dissolved forms of carbon. The seabed is the largest reservoir of sequestered carbon on the planet. However
the efficiency of the oceans ability to capture carbon relies on the structure and health of the upper layer marine ecosystem
(Williams 2009).

Increasing oceanic concentrations of CO2 influence the physiology,

the basic functioning and critical life support

development and survival of marine organisms, and

services that ocean ecosystems provide will be different under future acidified ocean conditions (UNEP 2010). Increased
atmospheric CO2 has already increased the acidity of the ocean by 30 percent, making the ocean more acidic than it has been in
Increased ocean
acidity is likely to not only affect the biological pump and ocean food
webs , but is also likely to influence the global carbon cycle leading to an
increase in global warming (Williams 2009). Ocean Acidification: Facts, Impacts and Action Ocean
acidification is happening nowat a rate and to a level not experienced by
marine organisms for about 20 million years (Turley et al. 2006; Blackford and Gilbert 2007,
Pelejero et al. 2010). Mass extinctions have been linked to previous ocean
acidification events and such events require tens of thousands of years for the ocean to recover. Levels of CO2
the last 650,000 years, and affecting marine life, such as corals, microscopic plants and animals.

produced by humans have decreased the pH (i.e. increased the acidity) of the surface ocean by 0.1 units lower than pre-industrial
levels, and are predicted to further decrease surface ocean pH by roughly 0.4 units by 2100 (IPCC 2001). Decreases in calcification
and biological function due to ocean acidification are capable of reducing the fitness of commercially valuable sea life by directly
damaging their shells or by compromising early development and survival (Kurihara et al. 2007, Kurihara et al. 2009, Gazeau et al.
2007). Many ecosystems such as coral reefs are now well outside the conditions under which they have operated for millions of
years (Hoegh-Guldberg et al. 2007, Pelejero et al. 2010). Even if atmospheric CO2 is stabilized at 450 parts per million (ppm), it is
estimated that only about eight percent of existing tropical and subtropical coral reefs will be surrounded by waters favorable to
shell construction. At 550 ppm, coral reefs may dissolve globally (IAP 2009). Climate change is adversely impacting marine and

acidification of the oceans can impact food

security both directly and indirectly through impacts on marine ecosystems and food webs, and also

coastal ecosystems and biodiversity. Further,

threatens the oceans ability to continue providing important ecosystem services to billions of people around the world (Worm et al.

no effective means of reversing ocean acidification currently

exists at a scale sufficient to protect marine biodiversity and food webs .
There are no short-term solutions to ocean acidification . Substantial
perturbations to ocean ecosystems can only be avoided by urgent and
rapid reductions in global greenhouse gas emissions and the recognition and integration of
2006). The bottom line is that

this critical issue into the global climate change debate (UNEP 2010).

Shipping Industry Addon

MSP (marine spatial planning) key to shipping industry
sustainability
Nautical Institute 13 (Nautical Institute, Ocean Think Tank, Marine Spatial

Planning (MSP) THE SHIPPING INDUSTRY AND MARINE SPATIAL PLANNING - A

professional approach - November 2013, http://www.nautinst.org/en/forums/msp/,
November 2013)
Marine Spatial Planning (MSP) will become an increasingly important
issue for the shipping sector over the next few years.

Maritime professionals need to

engage with other users of ocean space from both a sea and shore perspective, and to take part in international,
regional and local MSP debate, to ensure that the needs of the sector are taken into full consideration. MSP

However the
finer details of where to place a fish farm, off shore wind generation field,
environmentally protected zone or shipping lane will ultimately depend on
local debate. This debate is likely to be both heated and controversial. The
oceans are a resource that society has learned to depend upon and is
increasingly exploiting. It is essential however, for the sake of the planet
discussions are taking place at strategic levels on an international, regional and national basis.

and the human race that ocean exploitation be sustainable . MSP is a tool
that brings together multiple users of the ocean including shipping,
energy, industry, government, conservation and recreation to make
informed and coordinated decisions about how to use marine areas and
resources sustainably. Balancing multiple objectives for the ocean
requires accounting for the cumulative impacts of a diverse range of
activities. The marine environment provides some benefits to specific
sectors that can be easily valued (e.g., shipping, oil and gas, fisheries,
recreation, etc.). In contrast, other benefits from oceans reach a broader group of people, often through
indirect pathways not as easily valued (e.g., provision of life support systems, climate
regulation, protection of coastal communities from storms and sea level
rise, biodiversity, and cultural and aesthetic values ). Understanding the
cumulative pressures resulting from the various uses and how these will
evolve in the future is critical, as these pressures will have specific spatial
demands, create conflicts among users, and affect the suite of benefits
humans can expect from the ocean.

The industry is key to naval power commercial shipyards are

key
NLUS 12 (Navy League of the United States, Americas Maritime Industry The
foundation of American seapower, 2012,
http://www.navyleague.org/files/americas-maritime-industry.pdf, Date Verification
http://gsship.org/industry-links/)
Defense Industrial Base: Shipbuilding The American Maritime Industry
also contributes to our national defense by sustaining the shipbuilding
and repair sector of our national defense industrial base upon which our

standing as a seapower is based. History has proven that without a

strong maritime infrastructure shipyards, suppliers, and seafarersno
country can hope to build and support a Navy of sufficient size and
capability to protect its interests on a global basis. Both our commercial
and naval fleets rely on U.S. shipyards and their numerous industrial
vendors for building and repairs. The U.S. commercial shipbuilding and repair industry also
impacts our national economy by adding billions of dollars to U.S. economic output annually. In 2004, there were 89
shipyards in the major shipbuilding and repair base of the United States, defined by the Maritime Administration as
including those shipyards capable of building, repairing, or providing topside repairs for ships 122 meters (400 feet)
in length and over. This includes six large shipyards that build large ships for the U.S. Navy. Based on U.S. Coast
Guard vessel registration data for 2008, in that year U.S. shipyards delivered 13 large deep-draft vessels including
naval ships, merchant ships, and drilling rigs; 58 offshore service vessels; 142 tugs and towboats, 51 passenger
vessels greater than 50 feet in length; 9 commercial fishing vessels; 240 other self- propelled vessels; 23 megayachts; 10 oceangoing barges; and 224 tank barges under 5,000 GT. 11 Since the mid 1990s, the industry has been
experiencing a period of modernization and renewal that is largely market-driven, backed by long-term customer
commitments. Over the six-year period from 2000-05, a total of $2.336 billion was invested in the industry, while in

The state
of the industrial base that services this nations Sea Services is of great
2006, capital investments in the U.S. shipbuilding and repair industry amounted to $270 million.12

concern to the U.S. Navy. Even a modest increase in oceangoing

commercial shipbuilding would give a substantial boost to our shipyards
and marine vendors. Shipyard facilities at the larger shipyards in the United States are capable of
constructing merchant ships as well as warships, but often cannot match the output of shipyards in Europe and
Asia. On the other hand,

U.S. yards construct and equip the best warships, aircraft carriers and submarines in
must maintain that lead . 13

the world. They are unmatched in capability, but

Naval power solves great power war

Conway et. al 7 (James General, US Marine Corps, Commandant of the
Marine Corps, Gary Roughead Admiral, U.S. navy, Chief of Naval Operations, Thad
Allen Admiral, U.S. Coast Guard, Commandant of the Coast Guard, A Cooperative
Strategy for 21st Century Seapower, p.
http://www.navy.mil/maritime/MaritimeStrategy.pdf)
The world economy is tightly interconnected . Over the past four decades, total sea borne
trade has more than quadrupled: 90% of world trade and two-thirds of its
petroleum are transported by sea. The sea-lanes and supporting shore infrastructure are
the lifelines of the modern global economy, visible and vulnerable symbols of the modern
distribution system that relies on free transit through increasingly urbanized littoral regions. Expansion of the global
system has increased the prosperity of many nations. Yet their continued growth may create increasing competition
for resources and capital with other economic powers, transnational corporations and international organizations.

Heightened popular expectations and increased competition for resources, coupled

with scarcity, may encourage nations to exert wider claims of sovereignty over greater
expanses of ocean, waterways, and natural resourcespotentially resulting in conflict .
Technology is rapidly expanding marine activities such as energy development, resource extraction, and other
commercial activity in and under the oceans.

Climate change is gradually opening up the waters

of the Arctic, not only to new resource development, but also to new shipping routes that may reshape the
global transport system. While these developments offer opportunities for growth, they are potential
sources of competition and conflict for access and natural resources. Globalization is also
shaping human migration patterns, health, education, culture, and the conduct of conflict. Conflicts are increasingly
characterized by a hybrid blend of traditional and irregular tactics, decentralized planning and execution, and non-

Weak or corrupt
governments, growing dissatisfaction among the disenfranchised, religious
state actors using both simple and sophisticated technologies in innovative ways.

extremism, ethnic nationalism, and changing demographics often spurred on by the uneven
and sometimes unwelcome advances of globalizationexacerbate tensions and are
contributors to conflict. Concurrently, a rising number of transnational actors and rogue states,
emboldened and enabled with unprecedented access to the global stage, can cause systemic disruptions in an
effort to increase their power and influence. Their actions, often designed to purposely incite conflict between other

Proliferation of weapons
technology and information has increased the capacity of nation-states and transnational actors
to challenge maritime access, evade accountability for attacks, and manipulate public perception.
parties, will complicate attempts to defuse and allay regional conflict.

Asymmetric use of technology will pose a range of threats to the United States and its partners. Even more

the appetite for nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction is growing
among nations and non-state antagonists. At the same time, attacks on legal, financial, and cyber systems
can be equally, if not more, disruptive than kinetic weapons. The vast majority of the worlds
population lives within a few hundred miles of the oceans . Social instability in increasingly
worrisome,

crowded cities, many of which exist in already unstable parts of the world, has the potential to create significant
disruptions. The effects of climate change may also amplify human suffering through catastrophic storms, loss of
arable lands, and coastal flooding, could lead to loss of life, involuntary migration, social instability, and regional
crises. Mass communications will highlight the drama of human suffering, and disadvantaged populations will be
ever more painfully aware and less tolerant of their conditions. Extremist ideologies will become increasingly

Criminal elements will also exploit this social

instability. These conditions combine to create an uncertain future and cause us to think anew
about how we view seapower . No one nation has the resources required to provide safety and security
attractive to those in despair and bereft of opportunity.

throughout the entire maritime domain. Increasingly, governments, non-governmental organizations, international
organizations, and the private sector will form partnerships of common interest to counter these emerging threats.
Maritime Strategic Concept This strategy reaffirms the use of seapower to influence actions and activities at sea
and ashore. The expeditionary character and versatility of maritime forces provide the U.S. the asymmetric
advantage of enlarging or contracting its military footprint in areas where access is denied or limited. Permanent or
prolonged basing of our military forces overseas often has unintended economic, social or political repercussions.

The sea is a vast maneuver space, where the presence of maritime forces can be
adjusted as conditions dictate to enable flexible approaches to escalation, de-escalation and
deterrence of conflicts . The speed, flexibility, agility and scalability of maritime forces provide joint or
maritime
operations, either within formal alliance structures (such as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization) or more
informal arrangements (such as the Global Maritime Partnership initiative), send powerful messages
to would-be aggressors that we will act with others to ensure collective security and prosperity.
U nited S tates seapower will be globally postured to secure our homeland and citizens from direct attack and
combined force commanders a range of options for responding to crises. Additionally, integrated

to advance our interests around the world. As our security and prosperity are inextricably linked with those of
others, U.S. maritime forces

will be deployed to protect and sustain the peaceful global

system comprised of interdependent networks of trade, finance, information, law,

people and governance. We will employ the global reach, persistent presence, and operational flexibility
inherent in U.S. seapower to accomplish six key tasks, or strategic imperatives. Where tensions are high or where

U.S. maritime
forces will be characterized by regionally concentrated, forward-deployed task forces with the combat power to
limit regional conflict , deter major power war , and should deterrence fail, win our
Nations wars as part of a joint or combined campaign. In addition, persistent, mission-tailored maritime forces will
we wish to demonstrate to our friends and allies our commitment to security and stability,

be globally distributed in order to contribute to homeland defense-in-depth, foster and sustain cooperative
relationships with an expanding set of international partners, and prevent or mitigate disruptions and crises.
Regionally Concentrated, Credible Combat Power Credible combat power will be continuously postured in the
Western Pacific and the Arabian Gulf/Indian Ocean to protect our vital interests, assure our friends and allies of our
continuing commitment to regional security, and deter and dissuade potential adversaries and peer competitors.
This combat power can be selectively and rapidly repositioned to meet contingencies that may arise elsewhere.
These forces will be sized and postured to fulfill the following strategic imperatives: Limit regional conflict with
forward deployed, decisive maritime power. Today regional conflict has ramifications far beyond the area of conflict.

Humanitarian crises, violence spreading across borders, pandemics, and the

interruption of vital resources are all possible when regional crises erupt . While this

strategy advocates a wide dispersal of networked maritime forces, we cannot be everywhere, and we cannot act to

maritime
forces will be ready to respond alongside other elements of national and multi-national power, to give
political leaders a range of options for deterrence, escalation and de-escalation .
mitigate all regional conflict. Where conflict threatens the global system and our national interests,

Maritime forces that are persistently present and combat-ready provide the Nations primary forcible entry option in
an era of declining access, even as they provide the means for this Nation to respond quickly to other crises.
Whether over the horizon or powerfully arrayed in plain sight, maritime forces can deter the ambitions of regional
aggressors, assure friends and allies, gain and maintain access, and protect our citizens while working to sustain
the global order. Critical to this notion is the maintenance of a powerful fleetships, aircraft, Marine forces, and
shore-based fleet activitiescapable of selectively controlling the seas, projecting power ashore, and protecting

No other disruption is as
potentially disastrous to global stability as war among major powers .
Maintenance and extension of this Nations comparative seapower advantage is a key
friendly forces and civilian populations from attack. Deter major power war.

component of deterring major power war . While war with another great power strikes many
as improbable, the near-certainty of its ruinous effects demands that it be actively
deterred using all elements of national power. The expeditionary character of maritime forcesour
lethality, global reach, speed, endurance, ability to overcome barriers to access, and operational agility provide
the joint commander with a range of deterrent options. We will pursue an approach to deterrence that
includes a credible and scalable ability to retaliate against aggressors conventionally, unconventionally, and with

our ability to impose local sea control ,

overcome challenges to access, force entry, and project and sustain power ashore, makes
our maritime forces an indispensable element of the joint or combined force. This
nuclear forces. Win our Nations wars. In times of war,

expeditionary advantage must be maintained because it provides joint and combined force commanders with
freedom of maneuver. Reinforced by a robust sealift capability that can concentrate and sustain forces, sea control
and power projection enable extended campaigns ashore.

2NC UQ

MSP Now
Obamas current mapping project solving now- priority on
renewables
Winter 12 (Allison Winter, E&E reporter, Alison Winter is professor of history at

the University of Chicago. She is a member of the Committee on Conceptual and

Historical Studies of Science and of the Committee on the History of Culture. Her
interests include the history of sciences of mind (and more broadly the human
sciences) since the eighteenth century, the history of modern medicine, the
historical construction of orthodoxy and heterodoxy in the sciences and medicine,
modern British history (especially Victorian studies) and historical issues of gender.
Her first book developed a social and cultural history of mesmerism in Victorian
Britain. Her current research focuses on the scientific study and medical extraction
of memory in America and Britain, Obama admin lays out action plan for new
national policy, http://www.eenews.net/stories/1059958433, January 12, 2012)
The Obama administration today released a new draft "action plan" that
directs agencies across the federal government to work together on ocean
planning and conservation. The 118-page report instructs federal agencies to post all
nonconfidential maps and research on oceans to a new central ocean data website over the next three years. It
directs federal agencies to streamline ocean and coastal permitting processes, beginning with aquaculture. It calls
on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to initiate plans this year for better sea ice mapping. And it
sketches a process for regional councils to develop comprehensive ocean plans by 2019. The draft plan from the
interagency National Ocean Council is the next step in the administration's ambitious efforts to create a wideranging national ocean policy and comprehensive planning for projects and development at sea. It is open for public
comment through the end of February. "This action plan will help focus our resources on actions that will enhance
the stewardship of coastal and marine resources on which so many communities, small businesses and American
jobs depend," said Nancy Sutley, chairwoman of the Council on Environmental Quality. President Obama signed an
executive order last summer that put the National Ocean Policy in motion. The order created a National Ocean
Council, akin to the National Security Council, on which representatives of the 27 agencies with oversight of the
oceans and Great Lakes come together to attempt to improve coordination and planning on marine issues. The
report is the council's first major effort, and it lays out actions and deadlines for the nine major objectives that were

The most controversial aspect of the ocean policy

has been plans for regional bodies across the United States to begin
"coastal and marine spatial planning." The plans would map out different
uses for the ocean and could designate areas that are prime for
development or that need to be protected as sensitive marine habitat.
Marine planning is intended to address growing demands on the ocean
included in the National Ocean Policy.

for fishing, transportation, energy and recreation. Proponents of the

plans say they would help renewable energy developers avoid situations
that have happened in the past, where companies invest time and money
in development of a project that is jettisoned for conservation reasons.
The effort draws on recommendations made by the 2004 U.S. Commission
on Ocean Policy. But Republicans on Capitol Hill have been highly skeptical of the effort. House Natural

Resources Chairman Doc Hastings (R-Wash.) has held multiple hearings to criticize the effort, which he thinks would
create a large new bureaucracy and burdensome new regulations. Hastings today said he will hold additional
hearings on the plan. "This policy isnt about protecting the ocean; it's about expanding power and government
control over Americans' lives," Hastings said in a statement. "The White House is single-handedly pushing through
far-reaching policies that could cause significant job loss and economic damage both offshore and onshore." The
draft action plan sets a long timeline for creation of the marine spatial plans that would require support from the
next two presidential administrations. The council would oversee the establishment of regional planning bodies in
four coastal regions over the next two years. The remaining five regions would establish their planning councils by
2015. Within three to five years of their establishment, each of those regional groups would develop plans for
"sustainable use and long term protection" of the oceans, coasts and Great Lakes. The council is working on a

separate handbook that will provide more detailed guidance for the regional planning process, including how the

Across the board, the

report recommends the government adopt ecosystem-based management,
strengthen regional efforts, and use and share the best science and data
and try to "promote efficiency and collaboration."
groups can comply with federal rules on openness and public comment.

Renewables Now
Focus on hydro by the DOE now
Harris 5/5 (Michael Harris, Renewable Energy World.com, DOE Unveils
Ambitious Plan for Long-Term Hydroelectric Power Development,
http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/article/2014/05/doe-unveilsambitious-plan-for-long-term-hydroelectric-power-development, May 5, 2014)
The U.S. Department of Energy today unveiled a plan
ultimately designed to dramatically increase American hydroelectric
capacity in the coming decades. The ambitious multi-year program,
announced at the National Hydropower Association's annual conference in
Washington, D.C., calls upon industry members to collaborate with the
U.S. Department of Energy and other federal agencies in creating a longterm plan allowing for the development of the nation's uncultivated
hydroelectric resources. "We have been working quite a bit with NHA and
the NHA board to try to figure out if this 'Hydropower Vision' plan makes
sense now -- today -- and trying to move toward a roadmap for this
WASHINGTON, D.C.

industry ," DOE Wind and Water Power Program manager Jose Zayas said. "We've confirmed with them that it
does make sense. We've confirmed with them that now is the time to do it." Often overlooked as a
source of readily-available renewable energy, Hydropower Vision is not
only meant to increase the sector's visibility, but also quantify and
monetize its advantages in a way that makes it an attractive option for
policymakers, developers and consumers. It is telling this story, Zayas
said, that makes the involvement of industry members so important. "It will

require participation from all of you in terms of your knowledge, your information and your voices," Zayas said.
"We're launching it here today, but these are just introductory steps that we hope to share with you to solicit not
only feedback, but also awareness. "Our goal is that by the time we are completed, most of you know what this is
about, most of you have had an opportunity to voice your opinion, and at the same time, you become agents of this
work and of this industry." The report will seek to answer a number of questions regarding the current state and
future of hydroelectric power, including market and growth opportunities; how conventional and pumped-storage
projects factor into America's energy mix; hydropower's economic, environmental and social benefits; and what
activities might be needed to realize Hydropower Vision's scope. "The key section of this report is taking that
picture, taking that understanding, taking all that information and then distilling it to the activities that all of us
must do," Zayas said. "What is the role of the government? What is the role of the industry? What is the role of
other stakeholders and what do we need to do to make these things happen in order to try to maximize the
possibility?" Already America's most prevalent source of renewable energy and an important component in
President Barack Obama's all-of-the-above energy strategy, a DOE report also released today notes that an

"Far
from being tapped out, hydropower has the potential to play an even
larger role in our diverse electricity portfolio as we strive for a cleaner
energy future and a stronger economy," NHA Executive Director Linda
Church Ciocci said. "I applaud DOE for undertaking this extensive study."
additional 65,000 MW of hydroelectric capacity exists across more than three million U.S. rivers and streams.

The report, which builds on a previous DOE study that identified 12,000 MW of capacity at the nation's existing non-

"Hydropower can double its

contributions by the year 2030," Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz said.
"We have to pick up the covers off of this hidden renewable that's right in
front of our eyes and continues to have significant potential. " DOE said it
plans to provide updates on Hydropower Vision at the HydroVision
International 2014 conference and exhibition in Nashville, Tenn., and the
2015 NHA conference before issuing a draft report during the third
powered dams, further emphasizes hydro's room for growth.

quarter of 2015.

"This is an exciting time," Zayas said. "But we believe the time is now, and we need all of

your help.''

Ocean renewable development about to skyrocket

Labonte 13 (Alison Labonte, Marine and Hydrokinetic Technology Manager,
DOE, Ocean Energy Projects Developing On and Off America's Shores,
http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/article/2013/01/ocean-energyprojects-developing-on-and-off-americas-shores, January 28, 2013)
Take a moment to think about where your electricity comes from and what comes to mind? Perhaps natural gas
pipelines and railcars filled with coal -- or maybe solar farms spread across acres of land. Adding to this mix is a

With advancements in technologies, Americans will soon be

able to tap into energy derived from the ocean. Artist rendering of Ocean Power
newcomer to the field.

Technologies' proposed wave park off the coast of Oregon. | Photo courtesy of Ocean Power Technologies.

Marine and hydrokinetic (MHK) technologies which generate power from

waves, tides or currents in ocean waters are at an early but promising
stage of development . Many coastal areas in the United States have
strong wave and tidal resources close to areas with high-energy demand.
With widespread deployment, these technologies could make substantial
contributions to our nations electricity needs. To advance the
development of these promising technologies, the Energy Department
funds research and development of MHK technologies , including
laboratory and field-testing of individual components up to demonstration
and deployment of complete, utility-scale systems. With funding and technical
assistance from the Energy Department and landmark permits issued in 2012 by the Federal Energy Regulatory

four U.S. companies are putting wave and tidal energy

projects in the water that will generate clean electricity for thousands of
homes and pave the way for continued industry growth. Ocean Power Technologies
Commission (FERC),

(OPT), a New Jersey company, is preparing to deploy its wave energy device off the coast of Oregon this spring. OPT
received Energy Department support to develop and refine its PB150, a computer-equipped buoy more than 100
feet long. The buoy captures energy by bobbing up and down as waves pass by. FERC gave OPT approval on Aug.
20 to build a grid-connected 1.5-megawatt wave power farm off the Oregon coast, making it the first wave power
station permitted in the United States. Meanwhile, another MHK developer called Columbia Power Technologies
(CPT) recently designed a new wave energy device called StingRay. A patent application has been filed for the
innovation, and testing of a physical model in a wave tank has been completed. Data produced during testing
verified that initial performance predictions from computational models were correct and that the new design
results in a much more efficient device.

2NC Links

2NC- Generic Link Wall

Plan disrupts vital renewable coordination efforts- opportunity
cost to ocean renewable development
Eilperin 9 (Juliet Eilperin, Washington Post Staff Writer, Finding Space for All in
Our Crowded Seas, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/article/2009/05/03/AR2009050301930.html, May 4, 2009)

The ocean is getting crowded : Fishermen are competing with offshore

wind projects, oil rigs along with sand miners, recreational boaters,
liquefied gas tankers and fish farmers. So a growing number of groups -including policymakers, academics, activists and industry officials -- now
say it's time to divvy up space in the sea. " We've got competition for
space in the ocean , just like we have competition for space on land," said
Andrew Rosenberg, a natural resources and environment professor at the
University of New Hampshire who has advised Massachusetts on the issue.
" How are you going to manage it? Is it the people with the most power
win? Is it whoever got there first? Is it a free-for-all?" To resolve these
conflicts, a handful of states -- including Massachusetts, California and
Rhode Island -- have begun essentially zoning the ocean, drawing up rules
and procedures to determine which activities can take place and where. The
federal government is considering adopting a similar approach, though any coherent effort would involve sorting
out the role of 20 agencies that administer roughly 140 ocean-related laws. "It's really an idea whose time has
come, and it's one of my top priorities," said Jane Lubchenco, who chairs the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration.

"By focusing on different sectors, nobody is paying attention to

the whole -- in particular, the health of the system." But conducting what
experts call "marine spatial planning" presents scientific and political
challenges, since so little of the ocean has been mapped in detail, and so
many interest groups want to use it. The federal government has mapped only 20 percent of

the "exclusive economic zone" that stretches from the U.S. coast out 200 nautical miles, and that's just its
geophysical bottom, not the habitats and species that exist at varying levels. Charlie Wahle, a senior scientist in
NOAA's National Marine Protected Area Center, said the agency is convening experts in California to chart how
groups including kayakers, the Coast Guard and fishermen use waters off the state's coast. "People have been
surprisingly willing to engage and share their information and knowledge of the way it really is, as opposed to how it
may look on maps," he said. "We're on the right path, but it's not a simple thing." Marine ecologist Larry Crowder,

the approach
makes sense because ocean resources are not "equally distributed,
one of several scientists at Duke University who have compiled data for such plans, said

whether it's oil and gas, or fish, or corals. " But he added that the sea has
so many overlapping activities that "when you begin putting these maps
together, as we've done, it quickly becomes a train wreck." The states pioneering
this approach have charted different paths. California is establishing marine protected areas along its 1,100-mile
coastline under its 1999 Marine Life Protection Act, dividing it into five regions and brokering agreements with
interest groups. Massachusetts, which enacted its Ocean Act only last year, is to finalize a comprehensive ocean
management plan by Jan. 1 that exempts fisheries but covers all other major activities. Ian Bowles, Massachusetts
secretary of energy and environmental affairs, said the state is working to determine "what are the areas of
particular ecological value that we should be protecting from other uses" and what parts of the ocean can
accommodate such diverse concerns as liquefied natural gas offloading terminals, wind projects and sand mining
for restoring eroding beaches. While a few states are leading the way in the United States, the Europeans and
Australians have done this for years. Charles Ehler, a Paris-based consultant who is drafting a manual on the subject
for UNESCO, the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, said the demand for offshore wind farms and

other activities has spurred countries such as Belgium, Germany, Norway and the Netherlands to establish specific
marine boundaries. "There's a much greater intensity of demand for offshore space in Europe than in most of the
United States," said Ehler, noting Belgium's demand exceeds its available space by 200 to 300 percent. Even
though they have a head start, policymakers overseas are struggling with many of the same questions Americans
are contemplating, including how to reconcile new and traditional ocean uses, and how climate change will affect
where marine species live. With the exception of Norway, few nations have been willing to subject fisheries to the
same management regime as such activities as renewable energy and gravel mining. "The traditional users of the
sea have been the most resistant to marine spatial planning, because they've pretty much been free to go where
they want to go and do what they want to do," Ehler said. While California includes the fishing industry in its
planning process, Massachusetts fishermen held up passage of the state's Ocean Act until they were reassured they
would be exempt. "We don't want to be told, 'Oh, and this place -- you can't go here anymore,' because we were
there all along," said Bill Adler, executive director of the Massachusetts Lobstermen's Association. He added that
the fishing industry is already regulated separately by the state. Some U.S. oil and gas executives have adopted a
similar stance, arguing that any offshore drilling projects must undergo a federal environmental assessment. "I
don't think the overall process is broken," said Marvin Odum, president of Shell Oil Co., adding that when he hears
of calls for additional ecological reviews, "From where I sit, some of it can just look like delay tactics."

But as

the country appears poised for a new push in offshore oil drilling ,
advocates such as the Ocean Conservancy's Vikki Spruill argue it needs to
take a more serious look at how it coordinates activities off its coasts .
"We wouldn't put a coal plant in a national park," Spruill said. Philippe
Cousteau, president of the nonprofit EarthEcho International, said
policymakers should put environmental considerations "first and
foremost" when deciding where to locate new drilling activities. Mary Gleason,

the Nature Conservancy's senior scientist and lead planner for marine protected areas in California's central and
north central coastal regions, said "there's a lot of drama" when the universe of users is included in ocean planning.
"There's been a negotiated solution in all of these cases, where there's been a lot of give-and-take," she said.

The plan is zero sum with renewable development- new

development alters limited marine spatial planning zones
McGlynn 10 (Emily McGlynn is a Policy Fellow in AELs New Energy Leaders
Project and will be a regular contributor to the website. She currently works at
Ecologic Institute as a Transatlantic Fellow in Berlin, Germany, where she is an
author on the EU Arctic Footprint and Policy Assessment and is a researcher on
climate, energy and transport. She previously worked in the Economics of Climate
Change department at the Technische Universitt Berlin, where she was an author
on the report Car Industry, Road Transport and an International Emission Trading
Scheme Policy Options., Saving the Oceans or the Oceans Saving Us?,
http://leadenergy.org/2010/12/saving-the-ocean-or-the-ocean-saving-us/, December
28, 2010)
Amidst all the hustle and bustle of the most recent round of UN climate negotiations in Cancun, an important event
went overlooked by many: Oceans Day. While this may at first brush sound like a save the dolphins affair, over 90
high-level participants from governments, the UN, NGOs and academia gathered to discuss not only how we can

Oceans are an enormous carbon sink, soaking

up nearly as much anthropogenic carbon dioxide as the atmosphere.
However, they are also an incredible source of energy through thermal
heat, waves, tides, currents, even salinity gradients (differences in
saltiness across bodies of water), which could ultimately provide for up
to 10% of the US energy needs. Oceans Day participants discussed how to
use oceans in fighting climate change, both through increasing the CO2
absorptive capacity of marine ecosystems and using ocean energy
technologies to displace fossil fuels. Ocean renewable energy has the
benefit of being more predictable and less intermittent than solar and
save the oceans, but how they can save us.

wind, making it easier to integrate these technologies into smart grids.

While the technology is still relatively expensive (around US$0.40/kWh),
industry leaders are confident that prices will go down as installments
scale up. The fledgling ocean and offshore renewables industries have for
several years been looking for a champion in US federal government to
strengthen the sector and encourage the much needed economies of scale.
In 2009 and 2010, bills ([111th] H.R. 6344, H.R. 2148, S.923) that would appropriate $350 million in support of
marine energy RD&D were introduced and stuck in committee. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act
(ARRA) set aside over $1.6 billion for renewable energy generation, none of which was dedicated to ocean
renewables. The DOE additionally cut its FY 2010 Water Power budget by 25% compared to 2009 (which had
previously been quadrupled from 2008 levels). The USs most ambitious scenarios see an increase in installed
capacity of marine and hydrokinetic energy (MHK) to 23 GW by 2030, which is less than the USs current 35 GW of
installed wind energy capacity. As a consolation prize, the DOE and NOAA announced in October the availability of
$5 million for joint research projects looking at siting and permitting of ocean and offshore energy development.
Compare this to the EU, which prioritizes ocean energy research in its current Framework Programme 7, and since
1990 has spent upwards of EUR 60 million with Framework Programme funding alone on marine power production
optimization, wave energy conversion, salinity gradient power, deep offshore platforms, and is working to allow
ocean energy to break into the renewables market through the Intelligent Energy Europe program. EU Member
States (including the UK, Ireland, Denmark, Portugal, France, Germany, etc.) have additionally contributed millions
toward ocean energy deployment and grid connection. EU industry predicts ocean renewables could reach 21 GW of
installed capacity in Europe by 2020. Compare this to China, which could potentially meet all its current energy
demands with ocean-based renewable energy alone. During the 11th Five-Year Plan the National Hi-Tech R&D
program and the National Key Technology R&D program have provided support to ocean energy, with even greater
support and accelerated commercialization expected through the 12th Five-Year Plan. Most significantly, in July the
Chinese Ministry of Finance appropriated 200,000,000 CNY (US$ 30,000,000) for ocean energy development, funds
which have been issued to large state-owned companies (CNOOC, Datang, Longyuan and others) as well as

the US has
managed to take several important steps towards potentially easing the
transition to using ocean energy. First, in 2009 the Bureau of Ocean
Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement (BOEMRE, formerly the
Minerals Management Service) rehauled the regulatory structure for
research projects. This figure dwarfs the USs most recent $5 million offering. Nevertheless,

energy development on the outer continental shelf, which allows for

issuing commercial leases for offshore electricity production. This is a
crucial step towards increasing testing and siting of ocean renewable
energy.

Second, in July 2009, President Obama signed an Executive Order to begin a new marine stewardship

policy for US waters, creating a National Ocean Council that would oversee the development of regional coastal and

Why is marine spatial planning important for ocean

renewable energy development? Because, as made evident by the
international and cross-sectoral interest in Oceans Day, there is likely to
marine spatial plans.

be competition for different uses of marine space, including shipping,

recreation, security, conservation, not to mention non-renewable energy
activities ( offshore hydrocarbon drilling ). If coastal and marine areas are
to be additionally used as areas for enhanced carbon sequestration, under
a developing blue carbon framework ( la green carbon in
rainforests), there is likely to be even greater contention over what
marine activities can or should be done where, without the guidance of an
overarching spatial planning framework. The task of US coastal and
marine spatial planning (CMSP), therefore, is to identif[y] areas most
suitable for various types or classes of activities in order to reduce
conflicts among uses, reduce environmental impacts, facilitate compatible
uses, and preserve critical ecosystem services to meet economic,
environmental, security, and social objectives. While onshore renewables
similarly have to deal with zoning constraints and other planning

guidelines, the marine world is a three-dimensional space, which increases

both the complexity and opportunity for planning and integrating
activities.

Link- Offshore Energy

Spatial planning is carving out space for a comprehensive
energy portfolio- ensuring oceans are green and sustainablenew single energy drilling efforts undermine
Winter 9 (Allison Winter, Alison Winter is professor of history at the University of
Chicago. She is a member of the Committee on Conceptual and Historical Studies of
Science and of the Committee on the History of Culture. Her interests include the
history of sciences of mind (and more broadly the human sciences) since the
eighteenth century, the history of modern medicine, the historical construction of
orthodoxy and heterodoxy in the sciences and medicine, modern British history
(especially Victorian studies) and historical issues of gender. Her first book
developed a social and cultural history of mesmerism in Victorian Britain. Her
current research focuses on the scientific study and medical extraction of memory
in America and Britain, Greenwire, Lawmakers eye 'zoning' for new offshore energy
projects, http://www.nytimes.com/gwire/2009/03/25/25greenwire-lawmakers-eyezoning-for-new-offshore-energy-d-10278.html?pagewanted=all, March 25, 2009)
Key House lawmakers are eyeing a new system of ocean "zoning" as one
way to safeguard marine resources as they seek to expand offshore
energy development.

Senior Natural Resources Committee members said yesterday that any new

energy legislation this year should include requirements for the government to develop comprehensive plans for
the ocean -- plans that could designate certain areas of the sea for energy development and set aside others for
special protection.

At issue is how to deal with expanding demands for energy

development in the outer continental shelf (OCS). After Congress lifted a moratorium
some lawmakers want to put a new system of zoning,
or "marine spatial planning," in place before developers rush to site oil,
wind or wave energy development offshore. "In order to make responsible
energy development decisions in the OCS, we need to know not only
where the greatest energy resources are, but also where the most critical
fisheries and marine mammal habitats are, where other important ecologically sensitive
on offshore drilling last year,

areas are located, and the current uses of the ocean areas in question," said Del. Madeleine Bordallo (D-Guam),

say the plans could

identify and protect special marine resources while providing more
chairwoman of the Oceans and Wildlife Subcommittee. If successful, advocates

certainty to energy developers who want to work offshore . Otherwise, energy

development companies could go through years of planning and development for an area where regulators or the
public later decide they do not want any development. Rep. Jim Costa (D-Calif.), chairman of the Energy and Mineral
Resources Subcommittee, said

energy legislation should include a " comprehensive

planning process " that brings stakeholders together to site areas for oil
and gas drilling, wind energy and wave energy . "I believe there are large resources out
there that we can develop cleanly and safely, and for the benefit of all Americans," Costa said. "

But I also

believe there are areas that are not appropriate for oil and gas
development."

The two subcommittees vetted the idea at a hearing yesterday that also marked the 20th

the plans could help safeguard key

marine resources as new offshore development begins -- noting that
reinstating the moratorium on offshore drilling is not an option, given the
anniversary of the Exxon Valdez oil spill. Bordallo said

administration's plans to make drilling part of a broader energy strategy.

Natural Resources Chairman Nick Rahall (D-W.Va.) also noted a need for planning, telling reporters there is a
need to delineate areas that will not be open to leasing , while reiterating
that there will not be an effort to fully reinstate offshore drilling bans.

Effective mapping prerequisite to offshore energy development

sequencing turns case
Tierney 13 (Susan F. Tierney, PhD; With Stephen Carpenter Analysis Group, Inc.,
Planning for Offshore Energy Development: How Marine Spatial Planning Could
Improve the Leasing/Permitting Processes for Offshore Wind and Offshore Oil/Natural
Gas Development, June 2013)
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY1 Americas Offshore Energy Resources: Opportunities and
Realities At first blush, development of offshore fossil fuels (such as oil and
natural gas) and renewable energy (like offshore wind) could not be more
different. But when it comes to developing these varied offshore energy
resources, they have more in common than initially meets the eye: The
United States has a huge potential, domestic resource base for both
offshore oil/gas and offshore wind. Private companies must obtain a
complex set of federal government approvals in order to gain access to
develop offshore energy resources located in the US Outer Continental
Shelf (OCS). The Department of the Interior (DOI)/Bureau of Ocean Energy
Managements (BOEM) leasing/plan-approval processes are still evolving. Important
changes were introduced for oil and gas in the aftermath of the Macondo accident
and oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico; similarly, the processes for permitting offshore
wind continues to evolve in light of the relative immaturity of the industry in the
United States. Some areas of the OCS are now off-limits for energy development,
either because of congressional or presidential action or the fact that they were not
included in the DOIs leasing program for 2012-2017. Most parts of the Atlantic, the
Eastern Gulf of Mexico, and Pacific coast areas of the contiguous 48 states are now
closed to development of oil and gas resources, and only a few designated Wind
Energy Areas in the Northeast/Mid-Atlantic OCS are open for offshore wind
development. Offshore energy development occurs in a very busy
context, with energy resources located in areas where there are many
other uses of the ocean (including valuable commercial fisheries, military
areas, shipping lanes, recreational areas, and sensitive ecological areas).
Offshore energy development is often controversial, in light of these
multiple and overlapping uses. The federal leasing/permitting process
is extremely complex and less efficient than it could be. Ocean energy
development requires extreme tenacity because the process is so technically
complex, time-consuming, and touched by so many federal and state laws and
agencies. Typically, offshore energy development communities are not
familiar with developments in ocean policy or marine spatial planning,
which also may affect development (and vice versa). Marine Spatial
Planning: Understanding Whats Happening in the Oceans Ocean planning, also
known as Marine Spatial Planning (MSP) refers to a suite of approaches that provide
for understanding, evaluating, assessing, and siting of ocean uses. In simplest

terms, MSP involves transparent and open processes for fostering better
understanding among stakeholders about what is happening in ocean areas, about
what resources and human uses are located where, and about implications of
changes in uses of the resources located in the ocean. MSP has been used around
the world at the national, regional, and state level. MSP processes had already
started in many states and regions of the United States prior to the July 2010
Presidential Executive Order that named MSP as one key component of the National
Ocean Policy. Connecting the Dots between Ocean Planning and Offshore
Energy Development Ocean planning could improve the efficiency of
various aspects of the leasing and permitting processes for offshore
energy development, even under current regulatory frameworks. This
could occur through: Improved quality and quantity of location-specific
technical information. Improved coordination and leveraging of
information collection and mapping efforts across federal agencies, across
states in regional contexts, and across federal/state efforts. Improved
access to location-specific information for federal and private-sector
decision makers, and for other interested stakeholders (including the
states, other ocean industry groups, environmental organizations, and
others). Improved quality and quantity of public and private
participation in determining the disposition of ocean resources by bringing
parties together early in the process and identifying issues that need to
be addressed when determining whether and how to allow energy
development projects. Improved efficiency of public and private
expenditures devoted to information collection/analysis and project
permitting, while reducing regulatory risk. Enhanced state/federal
cooperation on ocean resource development and protection objectives.
More proactive and less reactive government decision making.
Constructive pathways through which the federal government could
consider whether, and if so, how to open up particular areas of the OCS for
energy development.

Link- Nuclear/ Fossil Fuel

Nuclear/fossil fuels trade off with focus on ocean energy
Myers 10 (Thomas Myers, Fort Lauderdale Science Examiner, Ocean energy
helps to end dependence on fossil fuels , http://www.examiner.com/article/oceanenergy-helps-to-end-dependence-on-fossil-fuels, July 1, 2010)
After my previous article about ocean energy, I contacted the Center for Ocean
Energy Technology at Florida Atlantic University (COETFAU) and requested more
information. I was eager to read the reply from Howard P. Hanson, who is the
Professor of Geosciences, C. E. Schmidt College of Science Scientific Director at
COETFAU. Having sent a series of questions regarding ocean energy, or marine
renewable energy, his response was most informative and while his enthusiasm
may have been guarded, he seemed quite optimistic. To start, there are reports
circulating that claim that 10 to 50 percent of the world's population
would reap the rewards of marine renewable energy. Professor Hanson
quickly dispels this stating that it is the type of "hyperbole that people have used to
sell the idea of marine renewable energy to uncritical audiences." I confess that I
did, in fact, get this those figures from a presentation by the Chicago Kent College
of Law and that the presentation was exactly the type of hyperbole that Professor
Hanson describes. As the price of oil goes up, toxic crude gushes from the ocean
floor, and exhaust pipes spew unpleasant gases into our breathing air,
unquestionably detracting from our quality of life, and arguably causing global
warming, it becomes prudent to find safer, cleaner, and environmentally sound
forms of energy. "Because most electricity is generated from coal, natural gas, or
nuclear plants, marine renewable energy won't be replacing petroleum directly. To
the extent that it could free up natural gas for use in transportation, though, it could
have an impact. (This is the same argument used by T. Boone Pickens for wind
power.)" This is perhaps not as enthusiastic as we may hope, but it is certainly a
start. Professor Hanson suggests that in South East Florida, marine energy
plants could eliminate the need for two or three plants, such as the Turkey
Point plant, a nuclear power plant. While nuclear power is considered a
clean energy, there are sufficient concerns about nuclear power that have
been addressed in enough articles that I need not ennumerate them here.
Also, Professor Hanson points out that ocean energy, since it would be generated
along the coasts, it wouldn't be very helpful inland. He says that there is research to
make marine renewable energy portable, such forms being the likes of hydrogen or
ammonia, "but implementation of that is decades away." This having been said,
if we can eliminate the need for potentially dangerous power plants that
rely on nuclear fission or fusion , or rely upon the combustion of natural
gases, at least along the coast, it would free up those resources for other
uses. The biggest reason to use marine renewable energy is reliability.
"The resource itself is quite reliable. Nothing, for example, is going to stop the
Florida Current, or the waves on the west coast, or the tides." This means power
outages would be restricted to human error and equipment failure since there is no
foreseeable limit to the ocean as a resource. Unfortunately, ocean energy may take
a bit longer to develop than other renewable forms of energy. "In a way, those of us

involved in marine renewable energy R&D are playing catch-up with those
renewable resources. We share some of the technological challenges with the wind
industry, although they're more challenging in the ocean." I asked him what impact
the structures needed would have on the marine ecosystem. He cautions that we
can't really be certain what effects implementation will have on the ocean's
environment as so little is really known about it, and that there will certainly be
positive effects. "Mitigating possible negative ones is a topic that's keeping lots of
folks quite busy." Those who wish to move to a green future must
understand that risks are to be taken if we are to leave behind those
other, less efficient and more polluting forms of energy. As for the
government's consideration of marine renewable energy, though federal support
isn't so easy to find on Barack Obama's website and on whitehouse.gov, Professor
Hanson assures me that the federal government is indeed supporting marine
renewable energy and, as stated in my previous article, the U. S.
Department of Energy is particularly interested. Professor Hanson agrees
with the government's position that a diversified portfolio of renewable
energy is the best way to limit and hopefully end our dependence on fossil
fuels.

Link- Aquaculture
Development of aquaculture industries collapses spatial
mapping
Gramling 10 (Carolyn is a staff writer for Science and is the editor of the News

of the Week section. She has a doctoral degree in marine geochemistry from the
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution/Massachusetts Institute of Technology Joint
Program for Oceanography, as well as bachelors degrees in geology and history.
Her relationship with AAAS began just after defending her dissertation, when she
became a AAAS Mass Media Fellow at an NPR affiliate station in Columbus, Ohio,
Sea sprawl: Into the blue frontier of ocean development,
http://www.earthmagazine.org/article/sea-sprawl-blue-frontier-ocean-development,
March 1, 2010)
Picture it: Dozens of kilometers off the coast of Texas, a giant polygon-shaped cage constructed of steel ribs and mesh netting floats
30 or so meters beneath the waves. The cage, moored to the seafloor, is filled with tens of thousands of teeming, silvery fish.
Several kilometers away, offshore wind turbines sprout from the sea surface in a curving line, their spindly white arms churning the
atmosphere. Still farther along the horizon, a massive oil platform squats heavily on four stumpy legs over its parcel of ocean, pipes
plunging 11 kilometers into deep reservoirs within the seafloor. In the open waters between these industries, tankers and

This sea-sprawl scenario

is not yet real. In fact, how all these industries might someday coexist in
the vast real estate located in the United States deep offshore waters is
still murky. But with a growing number of industries turning their eyes to
commercial fishermen follow snaking shipping lanes that lead them toward the coast.

the vast real estate offshore, the coastal ocean of the future may soon
become a busy, crowded place. And that will require regulatory oversight
that does not now exist. A possible solution to balancing various
commercial interests and environmental concerns may rest with a concept
called marine spatial planning, the notion that government agencies,
industries and others involved in managing ocean development should
simultaneously weigh all possible uses for the ocean whether competing
or complementary before deciding how best to develop its resources.
Marine spatial planning could bridge the oversight of various agencies, such as the Environmental Protection Agency and NOAA, that
now determine different aspects of how industries can operate in deep offshore waters. Those waters, called the U.S. Exclusive
Economic Zone, extend seaward from state coastal waters out to 322 kilometers offshore. Currently, they are occupied only by

But new industries,

including deepwater aquaculture and offshore wind farms, may soon be
seeking significant portions of that watery real estate. A good example of
the tension that can arise from regulatory uncertainty is found in the
unresolved question of offshore marine aquaculture. In January 2009, a regional body that
shipping lanes, a few oil and gas rigs and migrating whales and other marine life.

regulates fishing in the Gulf of Mexico decided it had the authority to issue permits for offshore fish farming in federal waters. The
decision highlighted a long-smoldering controversy over whether the federal government, state governments or regional
stakeholders should have sovereignty over aquaculture or any business in those waters. That conflict remains unresolved:
Although it allowed the regional plan to become law, NOAA has said it will not allow any permits to be issued until it establishes its

These sorts of conflicts could be avoided through

marine spatial planning a conceptual framework that some
policymakers say is the best way to accommodate both business and
environmental objectives. Not just carving up the ocean Marine spatial planning is a
necessary first step to establishing a policy for aquaculture , hydrocarbon
exploration and other uses of our oceans, says George Leonard, director of
Aquaculture at the Ocean Conservancy in Washington, D.C. It isnt just about carving
own offshore aquaculture policy.

up the ocean and giving different users access to a piece of it, Leonard says: If

marine spatial planning is

just a way to divvy up the ocean, we will have failed. Instead, he says,
planners should take a broad view, considering the most sustainable way
to balance and supervise uses of the oceans resources including those
already existing and those that might exist in the future. Over the last year, the
issue of marine spatial planning has taken on new urgency. With the uncertain
economy and anxiety over national security, lawmakers and business want to rely less on
foreign imports and see the U.S. economy grow, whether through the
exploration and production of hydrocarbons such as oil and gas,
alternative energy sources such as wind turbines or ocean thermal energy,
or food resources such as fish farming and fisheries. In 2008, for example, Congress
allowed a nearly two-decade-old ban on drilling on the outer continental shelf to expire. If leasing of the outer continental shelf
begins in 2012 and production by 2017, as estimated, this will produce 1.6 percent of the countrys oil and 2 percent of its gas in the
near future, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Meanwhile,

the Gulf of Mexico Fishery

Management Council , one of eight regional fishery councils around the country, decided in January
2009 not to wait for a national permitting plan to lease waters for
offshore fish farming and developed a controversial permitting plan of its
own for the Gulf.

With economic and environmental concerns alike heating up, last June, President Barack Obama

established an Interagency Ocean Policy Task Force, under the administrations Council on Environmental Quality, to develop a new
national policy toward the oceans that focused on both environmental stewardship and coastal and marine spatial planning for
future industrial uses. The Task Force released its interim report in December, including a proposed framework for effective coastal
and marine spatial planning. One part of the report examined, as a test case, how marine spatial planning might be applied to
offshore traffic in the Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary off the coast of Massachusetts, where ships carrying liquefied
natural gas to port have on occasion collided with endangered right whales. By taking a multisector, multiobjective approach, the
report stated, government agencies and stakeholders can increase maritime safety and significantly reduce the risk of collisions.

The underlying message of the Ocean Policy Task Forces report is the
need for a central vision of future ocean use. Different stakeholders and
agencies will undoubtedly clash over their different goals, regulations
and boundaries, the report notes so the important thing will be to
ensure that not only individual and regional but also national objectives
for the ocean are always under consideration. Cartoon of ocean sprawl Callan Bentley National
or regional policy? Although the report emphasizes national objectives for the ocean, its not entirely clear that the national
approach will make the most sense when it comes to actually working out ocean use, says Porter Hoagland, a scientist at the Marine
Policy Center at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts. Hoagland says theres plenty of precedence for marine
planning in state waters. Recently, for example, Massachusetts completed a study of its coastal resources to understand the
historical patterns of use such as shipping and commercial and private fishing and to propose sites for new uses such as
aquaculture or renewable energy. Theres some value to that, in showing historical patterns [of use] and starting the debate,
Hoagland says. But the trouble with just looking at historical uses, he adds, is that it may end up being too limiting in the long run,
as different stakeholders emerge and old ones recede. Overall, Hoagland worries that planners may be taking an overly simplistic
approach. Much of the discussion among governments, agencies and users of ocean resources has been a kind of five-year plan:
Heres a map, were going to try to pull everybody together and engage in discussions to see what goes where, well divide up the
ocean that way and proceed on our merry way, Hoagland says. Its a crude conceptualization, but its not too far off from the
right conceptualization. Another way to think about it, Hoagland says, is that the real commodity in the oceans is not a particular
industrial resource, such as hydrocarbons, or wind or fish its simply space. Take wind power, for example, he says. Most people
think the resource here is the wind. But in fact, youre not really using up the wind in any way. Theres no measurable diminishment
of that resource. The relevant resource is the occupation of ocean space itself. If ocean space is considered the commodity,
Hoagland suggests, a market-based approach might be a more efficient or fairer way of determining what goes where in the ocean:
For example, determining whether a wind farm or, say, a squid fishery should occupy a particular region might therefore be based
on a number of factors, such as a cost-benefit analysis of the economic value and environmental costs of the wind farm to a nearby
population versus the fishery. And in this view, Hoagland says, it could make the most sense to make siting offshore aquaculture
farms, for example, a regional rather than national decision. At a regional level, you might expect that people would have a better
sense of the local environment, conditions. Even if you had national legislation, you might expect that it would devolve [some]
authority to the regional level, he says. NOAA does, however, assert that making such decisions with respect to a larger national
plan is essential. The important thing is to have a national perspective as to where, as a nation, we want to see aquaculture going,
says Susan Bunsick, a policy analyst with the NOAA Aquaculture Program in Silver Spring, Md., which focuses both on freshwater and
marine aquaculture industries, including future offshore farms. That policy, she says, should include clarifying what sort of
requirements and permitting processes should be in place. Still, she says, my personal take on it is, within a national approach you
do have to consider regional differences, so there is some interaction between the two. In general, environmental groups agree that
an overarching national policy is likely to offer more safeguards to the marine environment than a piecemeal approach to ocean
policy. The Ocean Conservancy, for example, supports the idea that NOAA would supervise offshore aquaculture, including providing
well-researched national standards for regulation and mitigation. Clearly, NOAA is the agency most capable of addressing the kinds

of risks fish farming pose to the environment, Leonard says. The oceans: A regulatory orphan U.S. regulatory fragmentation when
it comes to many ocean issues makes the oceans a regulatory orphan, as Florida State University law professor Robin Kundis Craig
wrote in the University of Colorado Law Review in 2008. Throughout the past decade, stakeholders and policymakers alike have
increasingly called for more streamlined government plans for managing ocean-based industries, including offshore aquaculture.
The U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy, convened in 2000 by Congress to assess the health of the oceans, published a report in 2004
that called for the establishment of a national council on ocean policy to coordinate the various agencies work. A similar report
published in 2003 by the Pew Oceans Commission also called for a national oceans council, finding that the confusion over
conflicting mandates between agencies made it difficult to regulate environmental concerns such as non-point-source pollution.
Shortly after the U.S. Commissions report, an interdisciplinary group of scientists focused on offshore aquaculture, outlining a policy
framework on the subject for NOAA. The group also recommended the creation of a new NOAA Office of Offshore Aquaculture to
oversee leasing, environmental review and monitoring of the fledgling industry. But none of this has happened yet. A pair of 2007
House and Senate bills to provide authority to the Department of Commerce (the department that includes NOAA) to establish a
regulatory system for offshore aquaculture in the Exclusive Economic Zone didnt even make it out of committee, in part because
they lacked sufficient environmental safeguards, Leonard says. They were widely criticized as fundamentally flawed, he adds. For
example, the bills left many environmental mitigation measures up to the discretion of the Secretary of Commerce, rather than
establishing legally binding national standards. Many of us were concerned that that kind of discretion opens the door for putting

As with questions of marine spatial planning in

general, different interests still debate whether there should be a national
aquaculture policy and regulation or regional policies. When it comes to fisheries in state
ocean ecosystems at risk, Leonard says.

waters, regional management has long taken precedence over national policy. NOAAs National Marine Fisheries Service, under the
Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act (first enacted in 1976 and later amended in 1996 and 2007), is
responsible for managing commercial fishing operations, including regulatory requirements on permits and size limits. But most of
the management decisions and fishing regulations are determined regionally by eight regional fishery management councils, each
consisting of various stakeholders related to the fishing industry, as well as state and federal representatives. The MagnusonStevens Act, which defines fishing as harvesting, also applies to offshore aquaculture, Bunsick of NOAA says. That definition has
been an ongoing source of contention: Many environmental groups contend that harvesting fish from offshore farms is vastly

Although aquaculture so far

is not big business in the United States, deepwater fish farms could have
significantly greater capacity, providing potentially tens of thousands
more tons of seafood per year to increasingly health-conscious U.S.
consumers. Stakeholders across the board find that prospect attractive,
but despite a growing interest in offshore aquaculture, there is currently
no permitting system in place to lease ocean waters for that purpose in
large part because its not clear who should do it. At issue is not just a semantic dispute; tied
different from fishing and should be subject to different regulatory requirements.

up in that definition is who would ultimately manage those offshore aquaculture operations NOAAs National Marine Fisheries
Service (via the regional councils, or not) or some other agency. Multiple agencies have jurisdiction over different aspects of offshore
aquaculture operation: Because inland and nearshore aquaculture falls under the Department of Agriculture, USDA chairs the Joint
Subcommittee on Aquaculture, formed in the 1980s after the National Aquaculture Act passed. The Army Corps of Engineers has the
authority to issue permits for offshore aquaculture facilities under the Rivers and Harbors Act. The Environmental Protection Agency,
under the Clean Water Act, issues permits for waste discharge into public waters (which would include waste produced by the fish).
And the Food and Drug Administration has jurisdiction over regulating the sale of fish that have been treated for disease. The Gulf of
Mexico pushes ahead The prospect of offshore aquaculture in the deeper federal waters is appealing for many reasons. Currently,
the United States imports more than 80 percent of the seafood it consumes, a seafood deficit that amounts to more than $9 billion
annually. And aquaculture is growing rapidly overseas: About half of the seafood imported by the United States originated in
aquaculture farms, not in the wild. That trade imbalance has raised economic and food security concerns. In 2003, the Gulf of
Mexico Fishery Management Council, one of the eight regional councils established by the Magnuson-Stevens Act, developed its own
plan to lease parcels of federal waters in the Gulf to large-scale commercial fish farms. The general consensus of the Council was
that this was an important area for development for the United States, from the standpoint of seafood supply, says Joe Hendrix, a
member of the Gulf Council and a mariculture consultant in Houston, Texas. Furthermore, he says, it makes sense for the regional
councils to manage the industry. This process will not be the same in the Northwest as the Gulf or New England. Most of the fish
species were working with are subtropical salmon farming is not the same as farming red drum. The Gulf Councils plan became
mired in years of public hearings and protests as environmental groups worried over potential flaws in the plan and challenged the
councils authority to lease federal waters. There were more public hearings than have ever been held for a plan before, Hendrix
says. Six years later, in January 2009, the Gulf Council approved the plan and sent it to the Secretary of Commerce for approval, a
necessary step to become law. Meanwhile, lawmakers, including House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Nick Rahall, DW.Va., urged the secretary to reject the plan, citing both the confusion over proper authority and environmental concerns. A regional
plan, wrote Rep. Rahall in a February 2009 letter to the then-acting commerce secretary, would hardly be able to address how to
allot ocean space to a growing list of industries. But as the months passed, the Department of Commerce remained silent on the
issue. Eventually, in September, the department announced its position: It wasnt going to take one. However, under the MagnusonStevens Act, if the commerce secretary neither approves nor disapproves such a plan, it takes effect anyway. From NOAAs
perspective, thats not ideal, Bunsick says, because the agency would prefer a national instead of region-by-region approach. Still,
NOAA wasnt prepared to say that it doesnt have authority over offshore aquaculture, as the agencys ultimate intention was to
oversee the fledgling industry via a national policy. At the same time that it announced it would take no action on the Gulf Councils
plan, NOAA also announced its intention to create a national policy for sustainable marine aquaculture, highlighting the need for
coordination and sound science. If the Gulf Councils plan turns out to conflict with that national policy, NOAAs Acting Assistant
Administrator for Fisheries James Balsiger noted in a September statement, then we will consider appropriate action. The national
policy would not be a specific permitting plan so much as a set of goals and objectives and it would not carry the force of law,
Bunsick says. Policy is more like the lens through which you evaluate something like the Gulf plan. NOAA is accustomed to a
similar working process with the fishery councils on fishing issues, she adds. Thats the kind of process wed need to go through
with this. Wheres the catch? Environmental groups are concerned that the Gulf Councils plan sets a dangerous precedent for other
regional councils. A big part of the problem with the Gulf Councils plan and with the failed congressional bills is that they still
consider offshore aquaculture to be fishing, Leonard says. Fishing is not farming, farming is not fishing, he says. Fish farming is
more like agriculture, while fishing is more like hunting. [So] when you have a law designed for how to sustainably remove fish that

live in the wild, it doesnt work as a framework to manage fish farming. For example, Leonard says, fishing management involves
figuring out how to selectively remove wild animals from an ecosystem, based on aspects of population biology, such as how long
fish live, when they reproduce, how many eggs they lay and how likely the eggs are to survive. From that, managers determine a
total allowable catch and set a limit. Fish farmers, however, have to deal with a completely different set of problems, he says, such
as how and what to feed the fish, what to do with the waste they produce, how to deal with fish escapes (which can affect
surrounding wild populations of fish) and what to do when diseases infect their fish. Its a serious square peg, round hole
problem. The Gulf Councils plan, which includes its own environmental impact assessment, doesnt address many of these issues
in an overarching way, Leonard says. Instead, the plan leaves many decisions about required environmental standards up to the
Secretary of Commerce to determine on a case-by-case basis which overlooks the potentially cumulative impacts of waste,
disease and other concerns. Bunsick says she understands the concerns: How you fish is very different from how you farm. But in
terms of statutory authority, she says, NOAAs longstanding legal opinion on aquaculture is that fishing is harvesting. There is
already precedent for this, she adds: Currently, for example, live rock harvesting of corals is conducted in the Exclusive Economic
Zone under the regulation of the regional fishery councils. A fingerling industry

The future of offshore

aquaculture in the United States is still unclear. Before the Gulf Council
can issue permits to lease federal waters for fish farming, NOAA
Fisheries must undertake a rulemaking process , which can include a
period of public comment. NOAA has said it will postpone that process
until it completes its own national policy for marine aquaculture. That,
Bunsick says, could occur sometime this spring.

Affirmative Answers

2AC
No funding for alternative energy now
McCann 12 (Bailey McCann, Editor & Publisher @CivSource, States struggle with
renewable energy investments, http://civsourceonline.com/2012/05/30/statesstruggle-with-renewable-energy-investments/, May 30, 2012)

Investment in clean energy in 2012 has dropped to its lowest levels since
2009, according to the latest renewable energy data from Ernst & Young.
Several states are struggling to get wind energy projects off the ground and
it is likely that a key federal tax incentive for wind projects will expire before
next election. Renewable energy projects of all types are facing
headwinds, China recently alleged that five US states are violating free-trade rules with their renewables
projects ratcheting up a looming trade war between the two countries. Can renewables survive? In the private
sector, more businesses are implementing energy mixing strategies in order to cut rising energy costs. However ,

as wind and solar projects are sometimes cost-prohibitive to build and

maintain, that energy mix may not be as beneficial as originally thought .

Currently china leads the world in wind capacity additions. Data from a recent Worldwatch Climate and Energy
report shows that the country has increased its wind capacity 40% since 2010. Whereas by the end of 2011, the US
accounted for a mere 17% of global wind power capacity additions. Wind power itself accounts for less than 3% of

the growth of wind power in the US relies heavily

on the federal Production Tax Credit (PTC), the tax credit finances renewables projects by
reducing corporate income tax by 2.2 for every kilowatt-hour produced. This tax credit is expected
to expire at the end of the year. On Tuesday, US Senator Chuck Grassley told employees at a wind
total US power generation. Right now,

turbine plant in his district that while the tax credit may be revived in the next legislative session it is unlikely that

Congressional Republicans have

been unable to find a pay-for despite broad based support for the measure
including support from the President, meaning that jobs in the burgeoning
sector are likely to be cut nationwide. Programs to support wind-energy
projects in states like Nevada have also been a financial flop. Few of them
the credit will be reauthorized before the November elections.

produce enough power to be financially viable and some actually neutralize any carbon savings if power generators
turn on from lack of wind in order to keep turbines moving. The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) is
working to begin funding more clean energy technology although the states deepening budget challenges may halt
any forward movement. Energy financier T. Boone Pickens, once an advocate for wind power has shifted to
advocating natural gas as a bridge fuel. At a media briefing event in Las Vegas, Nevada earlier this month, Pickens
said that a move to natural gas would lessen our dependency on foreign oil while renewables work to become
economical. You can run an 18-wheeler on natural gas, he said. He introduced a bill to Congress incentivize

Congressional
Republicans unable to find a pay-for havent let the measure through. For
40 years our country has had no energy plan, we need to put the US first,
natural gas use last year, although his bill has met the same fate as the PTC.

Pickens said.

Renewables dont solve warmingCamry curve proves

Inhaber 12 (Herbert, President of Risk Concepts, The Impossible
Dream? Why Renewables Won't Reduce CO2 Emissions by Much,
Energy Pulse, http://www.energypulse.net/centers/article/article_display.cfm?
a_id=2535, June 17, 2012)
The solution to looming global warming? Easy. Reduce man-made emissions of carbon
dioxide (CO2) by cutting down on the use of fossil fuels -- coal, petroleum and natural gas. Leave them in the
ground. The replacement? Renewables such as solar and wind power. If we phase in

natural energy sources quickly enough, we may be able to avert

catastrophic climate change. Or so the story goes. But new research shows
that it is not quite so simple. As the proportion of renewable energy
penetrating the electricity grid grows, the reduction of CO2 emissions
drops sharply. By the time wind power (and, by analogy, solar) reaches
about 20 percent of the grid, the savings in CO2 emissions are negligible,
of the order of a few percent. The result seems counter-intuitiv e -- surely the
more renewable energy, the greater the reduction of CO2 emissions, and less threat of global warming. But the
reason for this finding can be found on the miles per gallon sticker on the
windows of new cars. The mileage for highway driving is always greater than that for city -- stop and go
-- driving. When we touch the brake pedal, we change the engine speed. The lower mileage for city driving means
less efficiency from the gasoline, and more pollution per mile driven. For example, the Toyota Camry, the bestselling auto in the U.S. for years, has a highway rate of about 32 miles per gallon, and about 22 for city driving. If
we plotted these two numbers on a graph, we would see the mpg gradually decreasing as the proportion of city
driving increased. In the upper left-hand corner of the graph would be long-distance haulers, who stay on the
interstates and don't stop between fill-ups. At the bottom right-hand corner would be taxis, which rarely venture out

the same way, when back-up

electricity (mostly natural gas power plants) -- for the times the wind doesn't blow and
the sun doesn't shine -- is ramped up and down, there are more CO2
emissions compared to when the back-up is running full blast . Result -- much
of the emissions savings from using wind power or solar is lost. In analogy to the
Camry graph, when just a few wind turbines or solar collectors are part of the
grid, their effect on the grid is close to negligible. Their output displaces
fossil fuels on a one-to-one basis, and therefore there are CO2 savings. (There are, of course,
of town. There would be a smooth curve connecting the two points. In

CO2 emissions associated with the steel, copper, aluminum, and rare earths needed to build the turbines, but these

As more and more windmills and collectors enter the grid,

the curve of CO2 savings resembles the Camry curve . Natural gas turbines - back-up have to be turned on and off to account for the variability of Mother Nature. This switching generates
far more CO2 than having the gas turbines running continually. So when
we draw the curve of CO2 emissions of wind and solar, it resembles the
Camry curve I mentioned above. In the upper left-hand corner the grid penetration is very small,
indicating few turbines or collectors. CO2 savings are close to 100 percent. The curve of CO2 savings
gradually decreases, dropping to a few percent when the grid penetration
is around 20 per cent.
are relatively small).

OTEC fails
Friedman 8 (Examining the future of Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion,
http://www.oceanenergycouncil.com/index.php/OTEC-News/Examining-the-future-ofOcean-Thermal-Energy-Conversion.html)
OTEC is highly vulnerable to the elements in the marine environment. Big
storms or a hurricane like Katrina could completely disrupt energy production by mangling
the OTEC plants. Were a country completely dependent on oceanic energy, severe
weather could be debilitating. In addition, there is a risk that the salt water surrounding an
OTEC plant would cause the machinery to rust or corrode or fill up with seaweed or mud,
according to a National Renewable Energy Laboratory spokesman .
Moreover,

Climate change proves Oceans and marine bioD are resilient

alarmist predictions empirically denied
Taylor 10 [James M. Taylor is a senior fellow of The Heartland Institute and managing editor of
Environment & Climate News., Ocean Acidification Scare Pushed at Copenhagen, Feb 10

http://www.heartland.org/publications/environment
%20climate/article/26815/Ocean_Acidification_Scare_Pushed_at_Copenhagen.html]
With global temperatures continuing their decade-long decline and United Nations-sponsored global warming

alarmists at the U.N. talks spent considerable time

claiming carbon dioxide emissions will cause catastrophic ocean
acidification, regardless of whether temperatures rise. The latest scientific data,
talks falling apart in Copenhagen,

however, show no such catastrophe is likely to occur . Food Supply Risk Claimed
The United Kingdoms environment secretary, Hilary Benn, initiated the Copenhagen ocean scare with a highprofile speech and numerous media interviews claiming ocean acidification threatens the worlds food supply.
The fact is our seas absorb CO2. They absorb about a quarter of the total that we produce,
but it is making our seas more acidic, said Benn in his speech. If this continues as a problem, then it can affect
the one billion people who depend on fish as their principle source of protein, and we have to feed another 2

Benns claim of oceans becoming more

acidic is misleading, however. Water with a pH of 7.0 is considered neutral.
pH values lower than 7.0 are considered acidic, while those higher than 7.0 are
considered alkaline. The worlds oceans have a pH of 8.1, making them alkaline,
not acidic. Increasing carbon dioxide concentrations would make the oceans
less alkaline but not acidic. Since human industrial activity first began
emitting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere a little more than 200 years ago, the pH of the oceans
has fallen merely 0.1, from 8.2 to 8.1. Following Benns December 14 speech and public relations
to 3 billion people over the next 40 to 50 years.

efforts, most of the worlds major media outlets produced stories claiming ocean acidification is threatening the
worlds marine life. An Associated Press headline, for example, went so far as to call ocean acidification the evil

higher
carbon dioxide levels in the worlds oceans have the same beneficial effect
on marine life as higher levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide have on
terrestrial plant life. In a 2005 study published in the Journal of
Geophysical Research, scientists examined trends in chlorophyll
concentrations, critical building blocks in the oceanic food chain. The French and American scientists
twin of climate change. Studies Show CO2 Benefits Numerous recent scientific studies show

reported an overall increase of the world ocean average chlorophyll concentration by about 22 percent during
the prior two decades of increasing carbon dioxide concentrations. In a 2006 study published in Global Change
Biology, scientists observed higher CO2 levels are correlated with better growth conditions for oceanic life.

The highest CO2 concentrations produced higher growth rates and

biomass yields than the lower CO2 conditions. Higher CO2 levels may
well fuel subsequent primary production, phytoplankton blooms, and
sustaining oceanic food-webs, the study concluded. Ocean Life Surprisingly Resilient In a
2008 study published in Biogeosciences, scientists subjected marine
organisms to varying concentrations of CO2, including abrupt changes
of CO2 concentration. The ecosystems were surprisingly resilient to
changes

in atmospheric CO2, and the ecosystem composition, bacterial and phytoplankton abundances

and productivity, grazing rates and total grazer abundance and reproduction were not significantly affected by
CO2-induced effects. In a 2009 study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, scientists
reported, Sea star growth and feeding rates increased with water temperature from 5C to 21C. A doubling of
current [CO2] also increased growth rates both with and without a concurrent temperature increase from 12C
to 15C. Another False CO2 Scare Far

too many predictions of CO2-induced

catastrophes are treated by alarmists as sure to occur, when real-world
observations show these doomsday scenarios to be highly unlikely or
even virtual impossibilities , said Craig Idso, Ph.D., author of the 2009 book CO2, Global
Warming and Coral Reefs. The phenomenon of CO2-induced ocean acidification appears to be no different.

Oceans resilient
Kennedy 2 (Victor, Environmental science prof, Maryland, Former Director,

Cooperative Oxford Laboratory, PhD, Coastal and Marine Ecosystems and Global
Climate Change, http://www.pewclimate.org/projects/marine.cfm, 2002)
There is evidence that marine organisms and ecosystems are resilient to
environmental change. Steele (1991) hypothesized that the biological
components of marine systems are tightly coupled to physical factors,
allowing them to respond quickly to rapid environmental change and
thus rendering them ecologically adaptable . Some species also have
wide genetic variability throughout their range, which may allow for
adaptation to climate change.

We adapt to warming
Mendelsohn 9 Robert O. Mendelsohn 9, the Edwin Weyerhaeuser Davis

Professor, Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, Yale University, June
2009, Climate Change and Economic Growth, online:
http://www.growthcommission.org/storage/cgdev/documents/gcwp060web.pdf
These statements are largely alarmist and misleading . Although climate
change is a serious problem that deserves attention, societys immediate
behavior has an extremely low probability of leading to catastrophic
consequences. The science and economics of climate change is quite clear
that emissions over the next few decades will lead to only mild
consequences. The severe impacts predicted by alarmists require a century
(or two in the case of Stern 2006) of no mitigation. Many of the predicted
impacts assume there will be no or little adaptation. The net economic
impacts from climate change over the next 50 years will be small regardless. Most
of the more severe impacts will take more than a century or even a
millennium to unfold and many of these potential impacts will never
occur because people will adapt. It is not at all apparent that immediate
and dramatic policies need to be developed to thwart longrange climate
risks. What is needed are longrun balanced responses.

United States not key to solve warming and inevitable

Grose 13 (Thomas K., National Geographic News Writer, As U.S. Cleans Its
Energy Mix, It Ships Coal Problems Abroad, March 15, 2013)
Ready for some good news about the environment?

are declining. But

Emissions

of carbon dioxide

in the United States

don't celebrate just yet. A major side effect of that cleaner air in the U.S. has been the

further darkening of skies over Europe and Asia.

The United States essentially is exporting

a share of

its greenhouse gas emissions in the form of coal, data show. If the trend continues, the dramatic
changes in energy use in the United Statesin particular, the switch from coal to newly abundant natural gas for
generating electricitywill have only a modest impact on global warming, observers warn. The Earth's atmosphere
will continue to absorb heat-trapping CO2, with a similar contribution from U.S. coal. It will simply be burned

overseas instead of at home. "Switching from coal to gas only saves carbon if the coal stays in the ground," said
John Broderick, lead author of a study on the issue by the Tyndall Center for Climate Change Research at England's
Manchester University. The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) released data this week showing that
United States coal

exports hit a record

126 million short tons

in 2012,

a 17 percent increase over

the previous year. Overseas shipments surpassed the previous high mark set in 1981 by 12 percent. The United
States clearly is using less coal: Domestic consumption fell by about 114 million tons, or 11 percent, largely due to
a decline in the use of coal for electricity. But U.S. coal production fell just 7 percent. The United States, with the
world's largest coal reserves, continued to churn out the most carbon-intensive fuel, producing 1 billion tons of coal
from its mines in 2012. Emissions Sink The EIA estimates that due largely to the drop in coal-fired electricity, U.S.
carbon emissions from burning fossil fuel declined 3.4 percent in 2012. If the numbers hold up, it will extend the
downward trend that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) outlined last month in its annual greenhouse
gas inventory, which found greenhouse gas emissions in 2011 had fallen 8 percent from their 2007 peak to 6,703
million metric tons of CO2 equivalent (a number that includes sources other than energy, like methane emissions
from agriculture). In fact, if you don't count the recession year of 2009, U.S. emissions in 2011 dropped to their
lowest level since 1995. President Barack Obama counted the trend among his environmental accomplishments in
his State of the Union address last month: "Over the last four years, our emissions of the dangerous carbon
pollution that threatens our planet have actually fallen." The reason is clear: Coal, which in 2005 generated 50
percent of U.S. electricity, saw its share erode to 37.4 percent in 2012, according to EIA's new short-term energy
outlook. An increase in U.S. renewable energy certainly played a role; renewables climbed in those seven years
from 8.7 percent to 13 percent of the energy mix, about half of it hydropower. But the big gain came from natural
gas, which climbed from 19 percent to 30.4 percent of U.S. electricity during that time frame, primarily because of
abundant supply and low prices made possible by hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. The trend appears on track to
continue, with U.S. coal-fired plants being retired at a record pace. But U.S. coal producers haven't been standing
still as their domestic market has evaporated. They've been shipping their fuel to energy-hungry markets overseas,
from the ports of Norfolk, Baltimore, and New Orleans. Although

Asia U.S. coal exports to China

were on track to

demand is growing rapidly in

double

last yearEurope was the biggest

customer, importing more U.S. coal last year than all other countries combined. The Netherlands, with Europe's
largest port, Rotterdam, accepted the most shipments, on pace for a 24 jump in U.S. coal imports in 2012.

United Kingdom, the second largest customer, saw its U.S.

percent .

coal

imports jump

more than

The
70

The hike in European coal consumption would appear to run counter to big government initiatives

across the Continent to cut CO2 emissions. But in the European Union, where fracking has made only its initial
forays and natural gas is still expensive,

American coal is , well, dirt cheap .

European utilities are

now finding that generating power from coal is a profitable gambit. In the power industry, the profit margin for
generating electricity from coal is called the "clean dark spread"; at the end of December in Great Britain, it was
going for about $39 per megawatt-hour, according to Argus. By contrast, the profit margin for gas-fired plantsthe
"clean spark spread"was about $3. Tomas Wyns, director of the Center for Clean Air Policy-Europe, a nonprofit

The EU has a
cap-and-trade carbon market, the $148 billion, eight-year-old Emissions Trading System (ETS). But it's
in the doldrums because of a huge oversupply of permits . That's caused the price of
organization in Brussels, Belgium, said those kinds of spreads are typical across Europe right now.

carbon to fall to about 4 euros ($5.23). A plan called "backloading" that would temporarily extract allowances from
the market to shore up the price has faltered so far in the European Parliament. "A better carbon price could make a
difference" and even out the coal and gas spreads, Wyns said. He estimates a price of between 20 and 40 euros
would do the trick. "But a structural change to the Emissions Trading System is not something that will happen very
quickly. A solution is years off." The Tyndall Center study estimates that the burning of

all that

exported

coal could erase fully half the gains the U nited S tates has made in reducing carbon
emissions. For huge reserves of shale gas to help cut CO2 emissions, "displaced fuels must be reduced
globally and remain suppressed indefinitely," the report said. Future Emissions It is not clear that the surge in U.S.
coal exports will continue. One reason for the uptick in coal-fired generation in Europe has been the looming
deadline for the EU's Large Combustion Plant Directive, which will require older coal plants to meet lower emission
levels by the end of 2015 or be mothballed. Before that phaseout begins, Wyns says, "

there is a

bit of a

binge going on." Also, economic factors are at work. Tyndall's Broderick said American coal companies
have been essentially selling surplus fuel overseas at low profit margins, so there is a likelihood that U.S. coal
production will decrease further. The U.S. government forecasters at EIA expect that U.S. coal exports will fall back
to about 110 million tons per year over the next two years, due to economic weakness in Europe, falling
international prices, and competition from other coal-exporting countries. The Paris-based International Energy
Agency (IEA) calls Europe's "coal renaissance" a temporary phenomenon; it forecasts an increasing use of
renewables, shuttering of coal plants, and a better balance between gas and coal prices in the coming years. But

IEA does not expect that the global appetite for coal will slacken appreciably. The
agency projects that, by 2017, coal will rival oil as the world's primary energy
source, mainly because of skyrocketing demand in Asia. U.S. coal producers
have made clear that they aim to tap into that growing market.

1AR- AT: Ocean !

No impact to the environment
Easterbrook 95 (Gregg, Distinguished Fellow @ The Fullbright Foundation and
Reuters Columnist, A Moment on Earth, p. 25, 1995)
In the aftermath of events such as Love Canal or the Exxon Valdez oil spill, every reference to the environment is
prefaced with the adjective "fragile." "Fragile environment" has become a welded phrase of the modern lexicon, like
"aging hippie" or "fugitive financier." But the notion of a fragile environment is profoundly wrong. Individual animals,

The environment that contains them is close

to indestructible. The living environment of Earth has survived ice ages;
bombardments of cosmic radiation more deadly than atomic fallout; solar
radiation more powerful than the worst-case projection for ozone
depletion; thousand-year periods of intense volcanism releasing global air pollution far worse than that made
plants, and people are distressingly fragile.

by any factory; reversals of the planet's magnetic poles; the rearrangement of continents; transformation of plains
into mountain ranges and of seas into plains; fluctuations of ocean currents and the jet stream; 300-foot vacillations
in sea levels; shortening and lengthening of the seasons caused by shifts in the planetary axis; collisions of

asteroids and comets bearing far more force than man's nuclear arsenals;
and the years without summer that followed these impacts. Yet hearts
beat on, and petals unfold still. Were the environment fragile it would
have expired many eons before the advent of the industrial affronts of the
dreaming ape. Human assaults on the environment, though mischievous,
are pinpricks compared to forces of the magnitude nature is accustomed
to resisting.

Their impact evidence is alarmist and false

Kaleita 7 (Amy, PhD, Assistant Professor of Agricultural and Biosystems
Engineering @ IA State, Hysterias History: Environmental Alarmism in Context,
http://www.pacificresearch.org/docLib/20070920_Hysteria_History.pdf, 2007)
Apocalyptic stories about the irreparable, catastrophic damage that
humans are doing to the natural environment have been around for a
long time . These hysterics often have some basis in reality, but are blown
up to illogical and ridiculous proportions. Part of the reason theyre so appealing is that they
have the ring of plausibility along with the intrigue of a horror flick. In many cases, the alarmists identify a
legitimate issue, take the possible consequences to an extreme, and advocate action on the basis of these extreme

typical alarmist
approach: [Alarmists] most common error is to suppose that the worst
will always happen.82 But of course, if the worst always happened, the
human race would have died out long ago. When alarmism has a basis in reality, the
projections. In 1972, the editor of the journal Nature pointed out the problem with the

challenge becomes to take appropriate action based on that reality, not on the hysteria. The aftermath of Silent
Spring offers examples of both sorts of policy reactions: a reasoned response to a legitimate problem and a kneejerk response to the hysteria. On the positive side, Silent Springbrought an end to the general belief that all
synthetic chemicals in use for purposes ranging from insect control to household cleaning were uniformly
wonderful, and it ushered in an age of increased caution on their appropriate use. In the second chapter of her
famous book, Carson wrote, It is not my contention that chemical insecticides must never be used. I do contend
that we have allowed these chemicals to be used with little or no advance investigation of their effect on soil,
water, wildlife, and man himself. Indeed, Carson seemed to advocate reasoned response to rigorous scientific
investigation, and in fact this did become the modern approach to environmental chemical licensure and
monitoring. An hour-long CBS documentary on pesticides was aired during the height of the furor over Silent Spring.
In the documentary, Dr. Page Nicholson, a water-pollution expert with the Public Health Service, wasnt able to
answer how long pesticides persist in water once they enter it, or the extent to which pesticides contaminate
groundwater supplies. Today, this sort of information is gathered through routine testing of chemicals for use in the

environment. 20 V: Lessons from the Apocalypse Ironically, rigorous investigation was not used in the decision to
ban DDT, primarily due to the hysteria Silent Spring generated. In this example, the hysteria took on a life of its
own, even trumping the authors original intent. There was, as we have seen, a more sinister and tragic response to
the hysteria generated by Silent Spring. Certain developing countries, under significant pressure from the United
States, abandoned the use of DDT. This decision resulted in millions of deaths from malaria and other insect-borne
diseases. In the absence of pressure to abandon the use of DDT, these lives would have been spared. It would
certainly have been possible to design policies requiring caution and safe practices in the use of supplemental
chemicals in the environment, without pronouncing a death sentence on millions of people. A major challenge in
developing appropriate responses to legitimate problems is that alarmism catches peoples attention and draws
them in. Alarmism is given more weight than it deserves, as policy makers attempt to appease their constituency
and the media. It polarizes the debaters into groups of believers and skeptics, so that reasoned, fact-based
compromise is difficult to achieve. Neither of these aspects of alarmism is healthy for the development of
appropriate policy. Further, alarmist responses to valid problems risk foreclosing potentially useful responses based
on ingenuity and progress. There are many examples from the energy sector where, in the presence of economic,
efficiency, or societal demands, the marketplace has responded by developing better alternatives. That is not to say
that we should blissfully squander our energy resources; on the contrary, we should be careful to utilize them
wisely. But energy-resource hysteria should not lead us to circumvent scientific advancement by cherry-picking and
favoring one particular replacement technology at the expense of other promising technologies. Environmental
alarmism should be taken for what it isa natural tendency of some portion of the public to latch onto the worst,
and most unlikely, potential outcome. Alarmism should not be used as the basis for policy. Where a real problem
exists, solutions should be based on reality, not hysteria.

1AR- AT: Navy !

Sequestration jacks navy
Nelson 12 (Maxford Nelson, Maxford Nelson is a member of the Young Leaders
Program at The Heritage Foundation, Sequestration: White House Sounds the
Alarm, http://blog.heritage.org/2012/08/09/sequestration-white-house-sounds-thealarm/, August 9, 2012)
Administration officials recently spoke publicly for the first time about specifically how sequestration would
undermine military readiness. Testifying before the House Armed Services Committee, Deputy Defense Secretary
Ashton Carter and acting director of the Office of Management and Budget Jeffrey Zients argued that
sequestration

would be devastating to the Defense Department. However,

Congress and the Administration have shown little initiative to fix their
mistakes and avoid this self-imposed blow to national security. Passed by Congress last
August, sequestration was part of a compromise to secure an increase in the debt ceiling. In practical terms,
sequestration requires reductions in defense spending of over $500 billion over the next 10 years. Obama praised
the compromise and dismissed concerns about irresponsible spending as simply a manufactured crisis. As Zients
pointed out, Sequestration, by design, is bad policy. The cuts were simply a time-buying measure, intended to be
so severe that Congress would be forced to make sound reforms down the road. Nonetheless, Zients refused to
stray from the Administrations talking points, arguing that offsetting sequestration necessitates raising taxes on
wealthy Americans, even though such tax increases are unnecessary and would harm the economy. A year after
Obama signed the measure into law, no alternative has been implemented, and the January deadline is looming.
The Administration recently announced that military personnel accounts are exempt from the cuts, meaning that
sequestration will result in 12 percent cuts in all other defense programs. In addition to reducing training for
deploying units, halting construction projects, and limiting services to military families,

sequestration

could slow procurement of critical weapons systems.

Carter estimated that, under

sequestration, the Pentagon would purchase four fewer F-35 aircraft, one less P-8 aircraft, 12 fewer Stryker
vehicles, and 300 fewer Army medium and heavy tactical vehicles compared with the requests in the Presidents
Budget for [fiscal year] 2013. The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, though critical for maintaining U.S. air superiority, has
already suffered significant cuts. The P-8 Poseidon, designed for maritime operations, is desperately needed to

Carter also predicted

delays for the already stretched Navy in receiving the new CVN-78 carrier,
the Littoral Combat Ship, the DDG-51 destroyer, and the replacement for
Ohio-class ballistic missile submarines. Maintaining a top-notch carrier
force is a security necessity . U.S. law requires that the Navy maintain a fleet
replace the Navys aging fleet of P-3 Orions, two-thirds of which are grounded.

of at least 11 operational carriers. However , even without sequestration the

Navy faces operating below strength for nearly three years until the CVN-78
comes online in 2015. Furthermore, delays in the development of a replacement
for Ohio-class submarines will only weaken a critical element of Americas
nuclear deterrent force. Taken together, Carter warned, the cuts from
sequestration would represent a major step toward the creation of an
unready, hollow force . Protecting the nation is one of foremost duties of the federal government.
Congress should act quickly and responsibly to reorder its spending priorities to head off this defense disaster.

No challengers
Work 12 (Robert O. Work, United States Under Secretary of the Navy and VP of
Strategic Studies @ Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, "The Coming
Naval Century," May, Proceedings Magazine - Vol. 138/5/1311, US Naval Institute,
www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2012-05/coming-naval-century, 2012)
For those in the military concerned about the impact of such cuts, I would simply say four

things: Any grand strategy starts with an assumption that nation must maintain its objectives and its power in

The upcoming defense

drawdown will be less severe than past postWorld War II drawdowns.
Accommodating cuts will be hard, but manageable. At the end of the drawdown, the United
States will still have the best and most capable armed forces in the world . The President
equilibrium, its purposes within its means, and its means equal to its purposes.

well appreciates the importance of a world-class military. The United States remains the only nation able to project
and sustain large-scale military operations over extended distances, he said. We maintain superior capabilities to
deter and defeat adaptive enemies and all resources are scarce, requiring a balancing of commitments and
resources. As political commentator Walter Lippmann wrote: The to ensure the credibility of security partnerships
that are fundamental to regional and global security. In this way our military continues to underpin our national
security and global leadership, and when we use it appropriately, our security and leadership is reinforced. Most

as the nation prioritizes what is most essential and brings into better
balance its commitments and its elements of national power, we will see the
beginning of a Naval Century a new golden age of American sea power . The
Navy Is More Than Ships Those who judge U.S. naval power solely by the number of
vessels in the Navys battle force are not seeing the bigger picture. Our battle force
is just one componentalbeit an essential oneof a powerful National Fleet that includes
the broad range of capabilities, capacities, and enablers resident in the Navy,
Marine Corps, and Coast Guard. It encompasses our special-mission, prepositioning, and surge-sealift
important,

fleets; the ready reserve force; naval aviation, including the maritime-patrol and reconnaissance force; Navy and
Marine special operations and cyber forces; and the U.S. Merchant Marine. Moreover, it is crewed and operated by
the finest sailors, Marines, Coast Guardsmen, civilian mariners, and government civilians in our history, and

the heart of the

National Fleet is a NavyMarine Corps team that is transforming itself from an
organization focused on platforms to a total-force battle network that interconnects
sensors, manned and unmanned platforms with modular payloads, combat systems,
and network-enabled weapons, as well as tech-savvy, combat-tested people into a
cohesive fighting force. This Fleet and its network would make short work of
supported by a talented and innovative national industrial base. If this were not enough,

any

past U.S. Fleetand of any

potential contemporary naval adversary .

1AR- AT: Warming !

Archeology disproves environmental extinction
AFP 13 (Agence France-Presse, Climate change boosted human development:
study, May 21, 2013)
humans living in South Africa made cultural and industrial leaps in periods of
wetter weather, said a study Tuesday that compared the archaeological record of Man's
evolution with that of climate change. Anatomically modern humans, Homo sapiens, first made
PARIS Early

their appearance in Africa during the Middle Stone Age which lasted from about 280,000 to 30,000 years ago. Some
of the earliest examples of human culture and technology are found in South Africa -- with fossil evidence of

a notable period of
human advancement occurred about 71,500 years ago, and another between 64,000 and 59,000
innovative spurts whose cause has left scientists puzzled. The record reveals that

years ago. Examples of such innovation include the use of symbols, linked to the development of complex

language, in engravings, the manufacture and use of stone tools and personal adornment with shell jewellery. " We

show for the first time

that

the timing of... these periods of innovation

coincided with abrupt climate change ," study co-author Martin Ziegler of the Cardiff University
School of Earth and Ocean Sciences told AFP of the study in the journal Nature Communications. "We found that
South Africa experienced wetter conditions during these periods of cultural advance. "At the same time, large parts
of sub-Saharan Africa experienced drier conditions, so that South Africa potentially acted as a refugium for early
humans." Ziegler and a team reconstructed the South African climate over the past 100,000 years using a sediment
core drilled out from the country's east coast. The core shows changes in river discharge and rainfall. "It offers for
the first time the possibility to compare the archaeological record with a record of climate change over the same
period and thus helps us to understand the origins of modern humans," Ziegler said by email. Co-author Chris

the findings supported the view that

population growth fuelled cultural advancement through increased human
interactions. "Such climate-driven pulses in southern Africa and more widely were
probably fundamental to the origin of key elements of modern human behaviour in
Stringer of London's Natural History Museum said

Africa and to the subsequent dispersal of Homo sapiens from its ancestral homeland," concluded the study.

Alt causes to the terminal impact outweigh

Guterl 13 (Fred Guterl is an award-winning journalist and executive editor of

Scientific American. He worked for ten years at Newsweek, most recently as deputy
editor, covering the most important trends in science, technology, and international
affairs. He lives in the New York City area with his wife and two children, Animal
Forecast Could Humans Go Extinct?,
http://mobile.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/animal_forecast/2013/02/human
_extinction_could_a_mass_extinction_kill_homo_sapiens.html, February 22, 2013)
If a mass extinction is happening, climate change would not have had
much time to factor into it. Most of the species loss has so far has had
little to do with pumping carbon into the atmosphere. Humans as a
species have ravaged the Earth in many other ways. Fishing the waters
with factory trawlers, clearing forests for wood and palm oil plantations,
carrying strange flora and fauna in the bilge of ships from port to portall
these things, and more, have contributed.

Warming wont cause extinction

Barrett 7 (Scott, Professor of natural resource economics @ Columbia

University, Why Cooperate? The Incentive to Supply Global Public Goods,

introduction, 2007)
First, climate change does not threaten the survival of the human
species. 5 If unchecked, it will cause other species to become extinction (though
biodiversity is being depleted now due to other reasons). It will alter
critical ecosystems (though this is also happening now, and for reasons
unrelated to climate change). It will reduce land area as the seas rise, and in the
process displace human populations. Catastrophic climate change is possible,
but not certain. Moreover, and unlike an asteroid collision, large changes (such
as sea level rise of, say, ten meters) will likely take centuries to unfold,
giving societies time to adjust. Abrupt climate change is also possible, and
will occur more rapidly, perhaps over a decade or two. However, abrupt climate
change (such as a weakening in the North Atlantic circulation), though potentially
very serious, is unlikely to be ruinous. Human-induced climate change is an
experiment of planetary proportions, and we cannot be sur of its consequences.
Even in a worse case scenario , however, global climate change is not the
equivalent of the Earth being hit by mega-asteroid. Indeed, if it were as
damaging as this, and if we were sure that it would be this harmful, then
our incentive to address this threat would be overwhelming. The challenge
would still be more difficult than asteroid defense, but we would have done much
more about it by now.

Experts reject alarmism

Hsu 10 (Jeremy, Live Science Staff, pg. http://www.livescience.com/culture/canhumans-survive-extinction-doomsday-100719.html, July 19, 2010)

most experts , who don't view climate change as

the end for humans. Even the worst-case scenarios discussed by the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change don't foresee human extinction. "The scenarios that the
mainstream climate community are advancing are not end-of-humanity,
catastrophic scenarios," said Roger Pielke Jr., a climate policy analyst at
the University of Colorado at Boulder. Humans have the technological tools to begin tackling climate
His views deviate sharply from those of

change, if not quite enough yet to solve the problem, Pielke said. He added that doom-mongering did little to
encourage people to take action. "My view of politics is that the long-term, high-risk scenarios are really difficult to
use to motivate short-term, incremental action," Pielke explained. "The rhetoric of fear and alarm that some people
tend toward is counterproductive." Searching for solutions One technological solution to climate change already
exists through carbon capture and storage, according to Wallace

Broecker, a

geochemist and

renowned

climate scientist at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in New York

City. But Broecker remained skeptical that governments or industry would commit the resources needed
to slow the rise of carbon dioxide (CO2) levels, and predicted that more drastic geoengineering might become
necessary to stabilize the planet. "

The rise in CO2 isn't going to kill many people, and

it's not going to kill humanity ," Broecker said. "But it's going to change the entire wild ecology of

the planet, melt a lot of ice, acidify the ocean, change the availability of water and change crop yields, so we're
essentially doing an experiment whose result remains uncertain."

We will survive
Guterl 13 (Fred Guterl is an award-winning journalist and executive editor of

Scientific American. He worked for ten years at Newsweek, most recently as deputy
editor, covering the most important trends in science, technology, and international
affairs. He lives in the New York City area with his wife and two children, Animal
Forecast Could Humans Go Extinct?,
http://mobile.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/animal_forecast/2013/02/human
_extinction_could_a_mass_extinction_kill_homo_sapiens.html, February 22, 2013)
Its possibleperhaps likelythat any of these factors, or several acting at the same time, could cause a plunge in
the human population in this century or the next. United Nations estimates have the world population, now 7 billion,

When we consider such

estimates, we tend to make a questionable assumption: that the human
population will behave like no other that, after rising with breakneck
speed, it will assume a steady state precisely at its peak. Ecologists will tell you that
rising to 10 billion by the end of the century and then leveling off.

that is not usually the way it goes. Yeast cells that rapidly fill up their culture dish generally die off suddenly and in

But extinction? That is a high bar. As bad as viruses or a revolt of the machines
surely some hardy remnant would survive and carry on. For Homo
sapiens to go extinctfor every last man, woman, and child on the planet
die, once and for allit seems that something fundamental would have to
give. The foundation of life on the planet is its geochemistryits atmospheres, oceans, the elements
that comprise them, the ground beneath them, and the relationship of this vast
system to the sun. This is the stage upon which life plays out.
great numbers.
could be,

1AR- Warming Inevitable

Asia overwhelms
Knappenberger 12 (Paul Knappenberger, Assistant Director of the Cato
Institutes Center for the Study of Science, He holds an M.S. degree in
Environmental Sciences (1990) from the University of Virginia as well as a B.A.
degree in Environmental Sciences (1986) from the same institution.His over 20
years of experience as a climate researcher have included 10 years with the Virginia
State Climatology Office and 13 years with New Hope Environmental Services, Inc.,
"Asian Air Pollution Warms U.S More than Our GHG Emissions (More futility for U.S.
EPA)", www.masterresource.org/2012/06/asian-air-pollution-warming/, June 7, 2012)
The whims of foreign nations, not to mention Mother Nature, can completely offset any climate changes induced
by U.S. greenhouse gas emissions reductions. So, whats the point of forcing Americans into different energy

A new study provides evidence that air pollution emanating from Asia will
warm the U.S. as much or more than warming from U.S. greenhouse gas (GHG)
emissions. The implication? Efforts by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
(and otherwise) to mitigate anthropogenic climate change is moot . If the future
temperature rise in the U.S. is subject to the whims of Asian environmental and
energy policy, then what sense does it make for Americans to have their energy
choices regulated by efforts aimed at mitigating future temperature increases
across the countryefforts which will have less of an impact on temperatures than
the policies enacted across Asia? Maybe the EPA should reconsider the perceived
effectiveness of its greenhouse gas emission regulationsat least when it comes to impacting
temperatures across the U.S. New Study A new study just published in the scientific journal
Geophysical Research Letters is authored by a team led by Haiyan Teng from the
National Center for Atmospheric Research , in Boulder, Colorado. The paper is titled Potential
choices?

Impacts of Asian Carbon Aerosols on Future US Warming. Skipping the details of this climate modeling study and

This study uses an atmosphere-ocean fully

coupled climate model to investigate possible remote impacts of Asian
carbonaceous aerosols on US climate change. We took a 21st century mitigation scenario as a
cutting to the chase, here is the abstract of the paper:

reference, and carried out three sets of sensitivity experiments in which the prescribed carbonaceous aerosol
concentrations over a selected Asian domain are increased by a factor of two, six, and ten respectively during the

The resulting enhancement of atmospheric solar absorption (only

the direct effect of aerosols is included) over Asia induces tropospheric heating
anomalies that force large-scale circulation changes which, averaged over the
twenty-year period, add as much as an additional 0.4C warming over the
eastern US during winter and over most of the US during summer. Such remote
impacts are confirmed by an atmosphere stand-alone experiment with specified
heating anomalies over Asia that represent the direct effect of the carbon aerosols.
Usually, when considering the climate impact from carbon aerosol emissions (primarily in the form of black
carbon, or soot), the effect is thought to be largely contained to the local or regional scale
period of 20052024.

because the atmospheric lifetime of these particulates is only on the order of a week (before they are rained out).
Since Asia lies on the far side of the Pacific Oceana distance which requires about a week for air masses to
navigatewe usually arent overly concerned about the quality of Asian air or the quantity of junk that they emit

But in the Teng et al. study, the

the local heating of the atmosphere by the
Asian carbon aerosols (which are quite good at absorbing sunlight) can impart
changes to the character of the larger-scale atmospheric circulation patterns . And
into it. By the time it gets here, it has largely been naturally scrubbed clean.
authors find that, according to their climate model,

these changes to the broader atmospheric flow produce an effect on the weather
patterns in the U.S. and thus induce a change in the climate here characterized by 0.4C [surface air
temperature] warming on average over the eastern US during winter and over almost the entire US during summer
averaged over the 20052024 period. While most of the summer warming doesnt start to kick in until Asian
carbonaceous aerosol emissions are upped in the model to 10 times what they are today, the winter warming over
the eastern half of the country is large (several tenths of a C) even at twice the current rate of Asian emissions.
Now lets revisit just how much global warming that stringent U.S. greenhouse gas emissions reductions may
avoid averaged across the country. In my Master Resource post Climate Impacts of Waxman-Markey (the IPCC-

a more than 80% reduction of greenhouse gas

emissions in the U.S. by the year 2050 would result in a reduction of global
temperatures (from where they otherwise would be) of about 0.05C. Since the U.S.
is projected to warm slightly more than the global average (land warms faster than
the oceans), a 0.05C of global temperature reduction probably amounts to about
0.075C of temperature savings averaged across the U.S., by the year 2050.
Comparing the amount of warming in the U.S. saved by reducing our greenhouse
gas emissions by some 80% to the amount of warming added in the U.S. by
increases in Asian black carbon (soot) aerosol emissions (at least according to Teng
et al.) and there is no clear winner. Which points out the anemic effect that U.S.
greenhouse gas reductions will have on the climate of the U.S. and just how easily
the whims of foreign nations, not to mention Mother Nature, can completely offset
any climate changes induced by our greenhouse gas emissions reductions. And even if
based arithmetic of no gain) I calculated that

the traditional form of air pollution (e.g., soot) does not increase across Asia (a slim chance of that), greenhouse
gases emitted there certainly will. For example, at the current growth rate,

new greenhouse gas

emissions from China will completely subsume an 80% reduction in U.S.

greenhouse gas emission in just over a decade.

Once again, pointing out that a

reduction in domestic greenhouse gases is for naught, at least when it comes to mitigating climate change. So,
whats the point, really, of forcing Americans into different energy choices? As I have repeatedly pointed out,

nothing we do here (when it comes to greenhouse gas emissions) will

make any difference either domestically, or globally, when it comes to
influences on the climate.

What the powers-that-be behind emissions reduction schemes in the U.S.

are hoping for is that 1) it doesnt hurt us too much, and 2) that China and other large developing nations will follow
our lead. Both outcomes seem dubious at time scales that make a difference.

That means 6 degree warmings inevitable

AP 9 (Associated Press, Six Degree Temperature Rise by 2100 is Inevitable: UNEP,
http://www.speedy-fit.co.uk/index2.php?option=com_content&do_pdf=1&id=168,
September 24, 2009)
Earth's temperature is likely to jump six degrees between now and the
end of the century even if every country cuts greenhouse gas emissions as
proposed, according to a United Nations update. Scientists looked at emission plans from 192 nations and

The projections take into account 80

percent emission cuts from the U.S. and Europe by 2050, which are not
sure things. The U.S. figure is based on a bill that passed the House of Representatives but is running into
calculated what would happen to global warming.

resistance in the Senate, where debate has been delayed by health care reform efforts. Carbon dioxide, mostly from
the burning of fossil fuels such as coal and oil, is the main cause of global warming, trapping the sun's energy in the

Much of
projected rise in temperature is because of developing nations, which
aren't talking much about cutting their emissions, scientists said at a United Nations
press conference Thursday. China alone adds nearly 2 degrees to the projections. "We are
atmosphere. The world's average temperature has already risen 1.4 degrees since the 19th century.

headed toward very serious changes in our planet," said Achim Steiner, head of the U.N.'s environment program,
which issued the update on Thursday. The review looked at some 400 peer-reviewed papers on climate over the last

Even if the developed world cuts its emissions by 80 percent and

the developing world cuts theirs in half by 2050 , as some experts propose, the
world is still facing a 3-degree increase by the end of the century, said Robert
three years.

Corell, a prominent U.S. climate scientist who helped oversee the update. Corell said the most likely agreement out
of the international climate negotiations in Copenhagen in December still translates into a nearly 5-degree increase
in world temperature by the end of the century. European leaders and the Obama White House have set a goal to
limit warming to just a couple degrees. The U.N.'s environment program unveiled the update on peer-reviewed
climate change science to tell diplomats how hot the planet is getting. The last big report from the Nobel Prizewinning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change came out more than two years ago and is based on science

Global warming is speeding up, especially in

that means that some top-level science projections from 2007 are
already out of date and overly optimistic. Corell, who headed an assessment of warming in
the Arctic, said global warming "is accelerating in ways that we are not anticipating." Because Greenland
and West Antarctic ice sheets are melting far faster than thought , it looks like
the seas will rise twice as fast as projected just three years ago , Corell said. He
said seas should rise about a foot every 20 to 25 years.
that is at least three to four years old, Steiner said.
the Arctic, and

Low thresholdless than 2 degrees is sufficient to cause their

impacts
Harvey 11 (Fiona, Environment reporter @ the Guardian,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/nov/09/fossil-fuel-infrastructureclimate-change, November 9, 2011)
Climate scientists estimate that global warming of 2C above pre-industrial levels
marks the limit of safety, beyond which climate change becomes
catastrophic and irreversible. Though such estimates are necessarily
imprecise, warming of as little as 1.5C could cause dangerous rises in sea
levels and a higher risk of extreme weather the limit of 2C is now inscribed in
international accords, including the partial agreement signed at Copenhagen in
2009, by which the biggest developed and developing countries for the first time
agreed to curb their greenhouse gas output.

Feedbacks already triggered, developing countries outweigh,

and methane releases cause the impact
Mims 12 (Christopher, Science and technology correspondent BBC and Grist,

Climate scientists: Its basically too late to stop warming,

http://grist.org/list/climate-scientists-its-basically-too-late-to-stop-warming/, March
26, 2012)
If you like cool weather and not having to club your neighbors as you battle for scarce resources, nows the time to
move to Canada, because
Global

the story of the 21st century is

almost

written , reports Reuters.

warming is close to being irreversible, and in some cases that ship

has already sailed.

Scientists have been saying for a while that we have until between 2015 and 2020 to

start radically reducing our carbon emissions, and what do you know: That deadlines almost past! Crazy how these

our science
got better in the meantime, so now we know that no matter what we do , we can
say adios to the planets ice caps. For ice sheets huge refrigerators that slow down
the warming of the planet the tipping point has probably already been passed, Steffen said.
The West Antarctic ice sheet has shrunk over the last decade and the Greenland ice sheet has lost around
things sneak up on you while youre squabbling about whether global warming is a religion. Also,

200 cubic km (48

cubic miles) a year since the 1990s. Heres what happens next: Natural climate
feedbacks will take over and , on top of our prodigious human-caused carbon emissions, send

us over an irreversible tipping point. By 2100, the planet will be hotter

than its been since the time of the dinosaurs, and everyone who lives in red states will pretty much get
the apocalypse theyve been hoping for. The subtropics will expand northward, the bottom
half of the U.S. will turn into an inhospitable desert, and everyone who lives there
will be drinking recycled pee and struggling to salvage something from an economy
wrecked by the destruction of agriculture, industry, and electrical power
production. Water shortages, rapidly rising seas, superstorms swamping hundreds of
billions of dollars worth of infrastructure: Its all a- coming , and anyone who is aware of the political
realities knows that the odds are slim that our government will move in time to do anything to avert the biggest and

Even if our government did act , we cant

control the emissions of the developing world. China is now the biggest
emitter of greenhouse gases on the planet and its inherently unstable autocratic political
system demands growth at all costs. That means coal. Meanwhile, engineers
and petroleum geologists are hoping to solve the energy crisis by
harvesting and burning the nearly limitless supplies of natural gas frozen in methane
hydrates at the bottom of the ocean, a source of atmospheric carbon previously considered
most avoidable disaster short of all-out nuclear war.

so exotic that it didnt even enter into existing climate models.

Only carbon-negative strategies solve

Lubin 11 (Gus Lubin, Reporter @ Business Insider,

http://articles.businessinsider.com/2011-10-22/news/30309712_1_global-warminggreenhouse-gases-sea-levels, October 22, 2011)

We've ignored the climate change gurus for too long, and now it's

probably

too late to avoid dangerous levels of global warming. This is the dire conclusion
reached by Joeri Rogelj and other scientists in an article published in Nature Climate
Chinage (via Science Magazine). Using the latest data, Rogelj's team modeled 193
proposed emissions plans that were intended to keep global warming below
2C. They found that most of these plans are already obsolete. The only plans
with any hope of preventing dangerous global warming are those in which global emissions peak during this
decade. The three plans that are " very

systems that

actually

likely" to work

all

require

remove greenhouse gases

heavy use of

from the atmosphere.

energy