T

A) Interpretation: “Primary and secondary education” refers to schooling ranging from

elementary to high school education
U.S. Department of Education 8 (International Affairs Office, U.S. Department of Education, Feb
2008. “Organization of U.S. Education: The School Level,”)

PRIMARY AND SECONDARY SCHOOLS Primary

schools are called elementary schools, intermediate (upper primary
or lower secondary) schools are called middle schools, and secondary schools are called high schools.
Heads of public primary and secondary schools are called principals, while the heads of private schools may be called principals, headmasters,
or heads of school. In addition, schools may have other administrative staff in addition to teachers and teaching assistants. There may also be
teaching assistants, counselors, librarians and computer specialists, school nurses, food service staff, custodial staff and administrative staff.
Public Schools. Primary and secondary public schools are governed by local school districts and their boards.
Policies and regulations tend to be uniform across all schools within a district, but can vary among
districts. Individual schools are administered within the confines of these general requirements, so autonomy is limited. States vary as to the
curricular freedom they give local schools, but most impose a basic statewide curricular framework which local schools may embellish to a
limited degree, and also issue a statewide list of approved textbooks for each grade level from which locals may select or, in some cases, require
the use of a single set of approved texts. Schools
are organized into elementary (primary) schools, middle schools,
and high (secondary) schools. Primary or elementary education ranges from grade 1 to grades 4-7,
depending on state and school district policy . Middle schools serve pre-adolescent and young adolescent students between
grades 5 and 9, with most in the grade 6-8 range. Middle schools in the upper grade range (7-9) are sometimes referred to as junior high
schools. Secondary or high schools enroll students in the upper grades, generally 9-12 with variations . In the
United States these tend to be comprehensive schools enrolling students of widely different interests and capabilities who follow different
educational tracks within the same school.

B) “Education” is prescribed classroom instruction

Webster’s Webster's 1913 Dictionary - http://www.webster-dictionary.org/definition/education
Education (noun): The act or process of educating; the result of educating, as determined by the knowledge skill, or discipline of
character, acquired; also, the act or process of training by a prescribed or customary course of study or discipline; as, an
education for the bar or the pulpit; he has finished his education.

C) Violation: the plan funds teaching certification programs, which are postsecondary
education --
Putnam 81 (John F. Putnam, National Center for Education Statistics. “Postsecondary Student
Terminology: A Handbook of Terms and Definitions for Describing Students in Postsecondary Education,”
March 1981.)

A postsecondary education institution is defined as an academic, vocational, technical, home study,

business, professional, or other school, college or university-or other organization or person-offering
educational credentials or offering instruction or educational services (primarily to persons who have
completed or terminated their secondary education or who are beyond the age of compulsory school
attendance) for attainment of educational,' professional, or vocational * objectives.2 Postsecondary, education
institutions may be classified as either publicly or privately controlled; the privately controlled group includes two major categories: private
nonprofit schools, and proprietary schools. Postsecondary education institutions may be grouped in the following manner, regardless of their
source(s) of funding or their method(s) of delivering instruction: * universities, colleges, and other educational institutions offering programs
leading to bachelor's, master's, first-professional, and/or doctor's degrees; * community/junior colleges and other 2-year' educational
institutions offering programs leading to associate degrees, diplomas,. certificates of completion, and/or their equivalents; .2 This is, essentially,
the definition of postsecondary educational institutions endorsed by the Federal Interagency Committee on Education and published in
"Definition of Postsecondary Educational Institution," FICE Report,, vol. 1, no. 3 (June 1974).

D) Prefer our interpretation:

1) Limits – allowing affirmatives to fund or regulate postsecondary education
drastically and unfairly expands the negative’s research burden –
2) Ground – postsecondary education skirts the core controversy of federal vs. state
regulation of schools – eliminates core generics specific to public education

T2
Interpretation---a “substantial increase” requires at least a 20% increase in funding
Carolyn Bourdeaux 14, Ph.D. in Public Administration from Syracuse University, Associate Professor of
Public Management and Policy at the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies at Georgia State University,
8-26-14, “Sustaining the States: The Fiscal Viability of American State Governments (ASPA Series in Public
Administration and Public Policy) 1st Edition”, Chapter 8, pg. 139-142

K—12 Education ¶ K—12

education funding in most states is a shared state—local responsibility with a
modest federal contribution thrown in for good measure . The bulk of state funding takes the form of some type of
formula-driven grant-in-aid to local school districts. This service area dominates the state-funded portion of state budgets, making up 35 percent
of total expenditures, and has been a major area of investment for states in the last 10 years. ¶ For
the past decade, education
policy has been dominated by the issues surrounding the federal No Child Left behind (NCLB) Act of 2002.
This legislation expanded the scope of federal influence over education , requiring that States adopt a host of new
school testing and accountability provisions. The legislation also authorized a substantial increase in federal funding
for education. Although the federal share increased by 43 percent between 2000 and 2008, these funds
only accounted for around 60 percent of the authorized increase , and there was national debate as to whether the
federal government was honoring its commitment to fully fund the legislation: Based on the calculations in Table 8.2, the federal increase was
equivalent to around $300 per student between 2000 and 2008 for the average State (in 2010 dollars). ¶ While the federal percentage change
looks large, the federal increase is dwarfed by the overall magnitude of the state and local increase. Over the same time period, States, on
average, increased funding by over $1,100 per student, an annual real rate of growth of 2.6 percent; local governments matched this dollar
increase. Further, unlike growth in federal funds, the state investment trend does not begin with the NCLB Act. That is, states' rate of growth
actually slowed relative to the late 1990s, when state real per FTE funding grew by an average of 5 percent a year (between 1996 and 2000).
Since the mid-1990s, states have been making a substantial real investment in education that is reflected
in per student numbers as well as aggregate funding levels. Between 2000 and 2008, the vast majority
made double-digit real per FTE investments in K—12 education. ¶ The impact of the Great Recession is visible in the
2010 numbers with local funding flatlining on a per student basis, state funding dropping, and federal funding actually making up slightly more
than the difference. "The federal funding includes the ARRA funds. ¶ Outlook for K—12 Education ¶ The funds provided from NCLB
ended in 2007 and reauthorization legislation has failed to pass Congress . The original act was supposed to ensure
that all students met student achievement standards by 2014; however, there is little evidence that most states reached close to the mark. For
example, a 2007 assessment of the funding increases required to meet standards in Missouri and Kansas by 2011 ranged between 46 and 10
percent, respectively, over 2007 amounts for the average district. The relatively small 10 percent increase in Kansas reflects the state setting a
IOW threshold for student achievement (Duncombe et al. 2006). ¶ The projections or plausible scenario are shown in Table 8.2 and Figure 8.1.
trends are built off of National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) expenditure and enrollment projections adjusted based on more recent
surveys reflecting the impact of the Great Recession on state and local spending. Layoffs
in the local education sector suggest
that as federal stimulus funding has vanished, states and localities have not been able to fill the gap (Oliff
et al. 2012). This could permanently lower the base for education spending going forward. This projection assumes that should funding stabilize
in 2014, state commitment will resume the 2000—2008 investment pattern, which may be aggressive given the likely pressures from Medicaid,
pensions, and other retirement obligations. Additionally, the scenario accounts for the impact of federal retrenchment on funding for education
given proposed education cuts as part of the more recent federal American Taxpayer Relief Act (ATRA) of 2013. The ATRA would reduce federal
education funding by 7.3 percent reduction in 2014, declining to 5.5 percent by 2021 (Kogan 2012). ¶ In this scenario, the results show that the
average state might reach an 8 percent per student increase over 2008 by 2020, close to the NCLB "low bar" suggested in the research on
Kansas referenced earlier. Federal education funding appears slated to drop to a level that predates the
legislation. ¶ Perhaps in tacit recognition of overly ambitious goals of the NCLB as well as the fiscally strapped circumstances of governments
at all levels, policy makers appear to be scaling back the original NCLB criteria. The Obama administration has been changing
the program through waivers, allowing states increased flexibility to revise their accountability standards in return for
setting up programs that better track and evaluate student progress and reward teachers for student improvement. While the education
community may bemoan the slowing investment in education, it is worth noting that this policy area has
realized substantial public investment. Even if the 2012 and 2013 projected declines in government spending are correct, the
2013 per student spending still represents a more than 20 percent increase from 2000 for the average
state.

That amounts to $10.8 billion of new funding---we’ll insert these equations:

- See below
“Increase” means to make larger
Cambridge 8, Cambridge Dictionary, 2008 http://dictionary.cambridge.org/define.asp?
key=increase*1+0&dict=A
increase
[Show phonetics]

verb [I/T]

to become or make (something) larger or greater

Violation---the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act was passed in 2010 and allocated $4.5
billion through 2020
Amanda Paulson 10, staff writer at the Christian Science Monitor, 12-12-10, “House votes a $4.5 billion
boost for child nutrition, school lunches,” http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2010/1202/House-
votes-a-4.5-billion-boost-for-child-nutrition-school-lunches

The bill, formally known as the

Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act, includes some of the biggest changes to the Child
Nutrition Act since the program was started nearly half a century ago.¶ ¶ The House passed it by a vote of 264 to 157
Thursday. The Senate unanimously approved it in August , and President Obama is expected to sign it soon. Among its
provisions:¶ • An additional $4.5 billion over 10 years to child nutrition programs – the first time the federal government has
increased funding for them in 30 years.

Vote Neg:

1. Limits---their interp allows for proliferation of affs that marginally increase

funding or regulation in ways that allow for virtually any change.
2. Neg ground---offense is predication off the assumption that the aff is a
substantial change to education policy---allowing miniscule changes eviscerates
core disad ground

DA
Interest rate rises are low now and controlled
Swanson 6/14 Ana Swanson covers the economy, trade and the Federal Reserve for The Washington
Post. “Fed raises interest rate, signaling confidence in the economy”, Washington Post, 6/14/17. Ghs-cw
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/06/14/fed-raises-interest-rate-signaling-
confidence-in-the-economy/?utm_term=.0b13d8d54665

The Federal Reserve raised its benchmark interest rate by a quarter-point Wednesday, the third such
increase in six months and a message of confidence in the strengthening of the U.S. economy. The
increase, which brought the Fed funds rate to between 1 percent and 1.25 percent, was highly anticipated by the market s. On Wednesday morning before the rate increase,
Fed futures pointed to a 93.5 percent chance of a rate hike. The rate hike "reflects the progress the economy has made and is expected to

make toward maximum employment and price stability," Fed Chair Janet Yellen said Wednesday in a press conference. The Fed also laid out plans to begin rolling
back the more than $4 trillion balance sheet it accumulated in an effort to prop up the economy after the financial crisis. On Wednesday, Yellen said the process was designed to be as

predictable and orderly as possible, and that the Fed hoped it would be as exciting as "watching paint dry." The increase was the second rate hike this year and the fourth since the Federal
Reserve began raising rates in December 2015. As such, consumers will begin to feel the impact of higher costs for lending — especially those with large mortgages or those who carry credit-card debt, said Greg McBride, chief
financial analyst at Bankrate. “For a lot of people, they don’t even notice,” he said. “But for those where budgets are tight and their debt burdens have been growing the last few years, this is where the signs of strain begin to

emerge.” The Fed described the rate hike as evidence of a stronger economy. It said that job gains had “moderated” but were still “solid, on average,
since the beginning of the year.” As it has in previous months, it said its interest rate remains “accommodative,” meaning that it is still low enough to help fuel economic activity. The Fed is mandated by

Congress to consider two goals: Maintaining a healthy labor market where Americans who want jobs are
able to find them, and restraining potentially destabilizing increases in prices. [These banks have been sweetening their savings accounts
as the Fed has raised rates] The U.S. job market has been growing robustly, and the unemployment rate reached a 16-year low in May. Yet metrics of inflation, including the Fed’s favored measure, have consistently come in below

the Fed said it expected inflation to remain

the Fed’s target, convincing some that the Fed should put off future interest rate hikes. In its news release Wednesday,

somewhat below its 2 percent target in the near term but to eventually rise to meet that goal. It added that it was
“monitoring inflation developments closely.” “The rate hike signals that the Fed believes the economy is improving and is going to

be resilient to those hikes,” said Tara Sinclair, a professor at George Washington University and a senior fellow at the jobs website Indeed. During the press conference on Wednesday, Yellen argued that
a gradual path of rate increases was the best way to avoid a more damaging scenario for the economy. " We want to keep the expansion on a sustainable path and

avoid the risk that ... we find ourselves in a situation where we've done nothing, and then need to raise
the funds rate so rapidly that we risk a recession," she said. "But we are attentive to the fact that inflation is running below our 2 percent objective." Board members didn’t
alter their projections for the economy and their own actions much compared with what they had expected in March. They continued to predict one more rate increase

this year, as well as three rate increases next year. Their projections indicate that the Fed expects the economy to grow
2.2 percent in 2017 and 2.1 percent in 2018 -- far below the 3 percent growth that the Trump administration is targeting. Board members did lower their estimates for the
unemployment rate and inflation, metrics that have consistently fallen below their expectations. The Fed’s decision was nearly unanimous. Eight members of the deciding Federal Open Market Committee voted in favor of the rate

The Fed also laid out a plan to gradually roll back its
increase. Only one, Neel Kashkari, the president of the Minneapolis Federal Reserve, voted against it.

balance sheet before the end of the year, a change that many analysts expect could lead longer-term
interest rates to rise, potentially raising costs for mortgage holders. The Fed currently uses the principal from maturing bonds to buy new ones, but under the new plan, it will gradually phase that out. For
Treasury securities, the Fed said it will begin reinvesting only those payments that exceed a cap of $6 billion a month, initially. Then it will lift the cap by $6 billion every three months over a period of a year, until the cap reaches a
level of $30 billion per month. For agency debt and mortgage-backed securities, the cap will be $4 billion per month initially, rising in steps of $4 billion every three months until it reaches $20 billion per month. After that, the Fed
plans to hold the caps in place “until the Committee judges that the Federal Reserve is holding no more securities than necessary.” Eventually, it said, the amount will decline to a level below that of recent years, but more than
before the financial crisis. Madhavi Bokil, a vice president at Moody’s Investor Services, said her group was closely monitoring information about how the Fed will roll down its balance sheet, to analyze what the effect might be on

We think that if the same gradual approach is followed , then any potential negative spillover
credit conditions. “

would be limited,” she said.

The plan requires massive federal spending

McCluskey 11 Neal McCluskey is the director and a policy analyst for Cato’s Center for Educational
Freedom. “Education Waste: We Have Only Ourselves to Blame”, CATO Institute, 2/15/11. Ghs-cw
https://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/education-waste-we-have-only-ourselves-blame
There’s a curious line in the summary of President Barack Obama’s proposed fiscal 2012 Department of Education budget. “Now more than ever,” it reads, “we cannot waste taxpayer dollars on programs that do not work.” It’s

curious becauseno federal education programs appear to work, yet the Obama administration is proposing to increase Education Department spending from $64 billion to $77
billion. It’s a bankrupting contradiction, but don’t get angry at Obama: We only have ourselves to blame. Educational

outcomes prove that federal education involvement has practically been the definition of profligate
spending. First, elementary and secondary schooling. While real, federal per-pupil expenditures have more than
doubled since the early 1970s, the scores of 17-year-olds on the National Assessment of Educational Progress — the so-called “Nation’s Report Card” — have been
pancake flat. We’ve spent tons with no educational returns to show. We have, though, got bloat such as a near
doubling of school employees per-student , and opulent buildings like the half-billion-dollar Robert F. Kennedy Community Schools complex that opened in Los Angeles last year. In
higher education, the federal government has focused on providing financial aid to make college more affordable. The problem is, policymakers have ignored basic economics.

The more Washington gives to students, the higher schools can raise their prices, wiping out the value of
the aid. In addition to being a major cause of the disease it wants to cure, Washington has fostered higher-ed failure by encouraging an increasing number of people often unready for college to pursue degrees. That’s a
likely reason the most recent federal assessment of adult literacy recorded big literacy drops from 1992-2003 among Americans with at least a bachelor’s degree. It’s also no doubt a significant factor behind only about 56 percent of

Both parties have used education

students in four-year programs completing their studies in six years. Wasting federal dollars on schools is not, importantly, exclusively a Democratic problem.

spending to try to signal that they “care” about Americans, especially cute little child-Americans. And while the
House GOP has identified about $4.9 billion in cuts for the Education Department, that’s less than 8 percent off the Department’s $64 billion budget. So how is all this the fault of the American people? Isn’t the real problem that
politicians lack integrity and will try to buy votes using things that sound wonderful even if they’re toxic? While it would be nice if politicians would start looking at results and stop throwing money into black holes, the fact is they’re
human, and, like all of us, they ultimately want what is best for themselves. For politicians that’s votes, and when it comes to education Americans don’t like cuts. When presented with several federal undertakings that could be
targets for deficit-reducing cuts in a recent Kaiser Family Foundation poll, education finished second only to Social Security for protection. A full 63 percent of respondents wanted no education reductions, versus 13 percent calling

Why do Americans want more

for “major” cuts. In contrast, the top candidate for gutting — foreign aid — saw 11 percent of people call for no reductions and 52 percent demand major slashing.

of a bad thing? The problem is, they don’t know it’s bad. As with most things you buy, people generally expect that
spending more on education will get a better product. Moreover, the public constantly hears, especially from huge special interests like teachers’ unions, that our
schools have been surviving on table scraps for decades. It’s no surprise, then, that average Americans — people with jobs, families, and lots of other pressing concerns that make analyzing education policy hugely cost prohibitive —

because federal money does no discernable educational good, and our

recoil at the idea of taking money from schools. But take we must,

nation can simply no longer afford pointless spending . Unfortunately, there is only one way to get sustained sanity in federal policy, and it will require slow, hard work.
People who know the reality of federal education spending must tell others about it as forcefully and clearly as possible. They must change the public’s attitude so that what’s in politicians’ self-interest will also change. Ultimately,

federal politicians must be rewarded not for giving away dollars in the name of education, but for leaving
them in the hands of hardworking taxpayers

Interest rate hikes crush the economy

Boccia 2013, Romina is a leading fiscal and economic expert at The Heritage Foundation and focuses
on government spending and the national debt, February 12 th 2013, How the United States’ High Debt
Will Weaken the Economy and Hurt Americans, http://www.heritage.org/budget-and-
spending/report/how-the-united-states-high-debt-will-weaken-the-economy-and-hurt

Debt overhang reduces economic growth significantly and for a prolonged period of time in three main ways. 1.
Higher Interest Rates. Creditors may lose confidence in the country’s ability to service its debt and
demand higher interest rates to offset the additional risk . Or, interest rates may rise simply because the
government is attempting to sell more debt than private bondholders are willing to buy at current prices .
Either way, higher interest rates raise the cost of the debt, and the government must then either tax its

citizens more, which would reduce economic activity; reduce government spending in other areas; or
take on even more debt, which could cause a debt spiral. Higher interest rates on government bonds also
lead to higher rates for other domestic investments, including mortgages, credit cards, consumer loans,
and business loans. Higher interest rates on mortgages, car loans, and other loans would make it more costly for families to borrow money. Families may
then have to delay purchasing their first home and other means of building financial security. For many Americans, the dream of starting a business would no longer
be in reach. Higher interest rates have a real and pronounced impact on the lives of ordinary citizens and translate into less investment and thus slow growth in the
rest of the economy. A weaker economy in turn would provide fewer career opportunities and lower wages and salaries for workers. However, higher interest rates
do not always materialize in countries suffering a debt overhang. According to Reinhart, Reinhart, and Rogoff, in 11 of the 26 cases where public debt was above 90
percent of GDP, real interest rates were either lower, or about the same, as during years of lower debt ratios. Soaring
debt matters for economic
growth even when market actors are willing to absorb it at low interes t.[14] Interpreted another way, in more than
half of debt overhang cases, interest rates rose. In the case of the U.S., the Federal Reserve’s policy of
repeated quantitative easing has contributed to interest rates dropping to historical lows . Interest rates will likely
rise at some point over the next several years. The Congressional Budget Office predicts that interest costs on the debt will more than double before the end of the
decade, rising from 1.4 percent of GDP in 2013 to 2.9 percent as early as 2020.[15] High levels of U.S. public debt could push interest rates even higher with severe
impacts for the American economy.
Economic decline causes global nuclear war
Stein Tønnesson 15, Research Professor, Peace Research Institute Oslo; Leader of East Asia Peace
program, Uppsala University, 2015, “Deterrence, interdependence and Sino–US peace,” International
Area Studies Review, Vol. 18, No. 3, p. 297-311

Several recent works on China and Sino–US relations have made substantial contributions to the current understanding
of how and under what circumstances a combination of nuclear deterrence and economic interdependence
may reduce the risk of war between major powers . At least four conclusions can be drawn from the review above: first, those
who say that interdependence may both inhibit and drive conflict are right. Interdependence raises the cost of
conflict for all sides but asymmetrical or unbalanced dependencies and negative trade expectations may
generate tensions leading to trade wars among inter-dependent states that in turn increase the risk of
military conflict (Copeland, 2015: 1, 14, 437; Roach, 2014). The risk may increase if one of the interdependent countries is governed by an
inward-looking socio-economic coalition (Solingen, 2015); second, the risk of war between China and the US should not just be analysed
bilaterally but include their allies and partners. Third party countries could drag China or the US into confrontation; third, in this context it is of
some comfort that the three main economic powers in Northeast Asia (China, Japan and South Korea) are all deeply integrated economically
through production networks within a global system of trade and finance (Ravenhill, 2014; Yoshimatsu, 2014: 576); and fourth, decisions
for war and peace are taken by very few people, who act on the basis of their future expectations . International
relations theory must be supplemented by foreign policy analysis in order to assess the value attributed by national decision-makers to
economic development and their assessments of risks and opportunities. If leaders on either side of the Atlantic begin to seriously
fear or anticipate their own nation’s decline then they may blame this on external dependence, appeal to
anti-foreign sentiments, contemplate the use of force to gain respect or credibility, adopt protectionist
policies, and ultimately refuse to be deterred by either nuclear arms or prospects of socioeconomic
calamities. Such a dangerous shift could happen abruptly, i.e. under the instigation of actions by a third party – or against
a third party. Yet as long as there is both nuclear deterrence and interdependence, the tensions in East Asia are unlikely to escalate to war.
As Chan (2013) says, all states in the region are aware that they cannot count on support from either China or the US if they make provocative
moves. The
greatest risk is not that a territorial dispute leads to war under present circumstances but that changes in
the world economy alter those circumstances in ways that render inter-state peace more precarious. If
China and the US fail to rebalance their financial and trading relations (Roach, 2014) then a trade war could result, interrupting transnational
production networks, provoking social distress, and exacerbating nationalist emotions. This
could have unforeseen
consequences in the field of security, with nuclear deterrence remaining the only factor to protect the
world from Armageddon, and unreliably so. Deterrence could lose its credibility: one of the two great
powers might gamble that the other yield in a cyber-war or conventional limited war, or third party countries might
engage in conflict with each other, with a view to obliging Washington or Beijing to intervene.

No inherency

Squo solves—environmental education is already becoming more prominent

Stringer ’16 (Kate Stringer, writer for The Atlantic, Education Next, The 74, and Public
Radio International, “We Can’t Solve Climate Change Without Teaching It: Why More
Classes Are Heading Outside,” Public Radio International, 2-24-16,
https://www.pri.org/stories/2016-02-24/we-can-t-solve-climate-change-without-teaching-it-why-more-
classes-are-heading) -EGA
But self-advocacy isn’t a problem for the students at Common Ground High School in New Haven, where Mercer is
a senior. She and her classmates spend their school days sometimes literally waist-deep in environmental justice issues. Common Ground,
a charter school with almost 200 students, integrates conservation, sustainability, and environmental studies into
the curriculum and across disciplines. And it’s not the only one. Some schools across the United States are finding
place-based learning creates a valuable connection between students’ local environment and their
education, especially during a time of rapid climate change. Environmentally-themed schools have grown in popularity
since the early 1990s, fueled by increasing climate-change awareness, a push for smaller, STEM-based
schools, and a desire to connect an urban population of students to nature, says Brigitte Griswold, director of youth
programs at The Nature Conservancy.

NO SOLVENCY
Education can’t solve climate change- corporate propaganda too strong
Schusler ‘17 (Tania, PhD, Natural Resource Policy & Management, Advanced Lecturer and Solutions to
Environmental Problems (STEP) Coordinator at Loyola University Chicago, “Education won’t fix policy-
but campaign finance reform might”, Pacific Standard, April 18 2017
https://psmag.com/news/education-wont-fix-climate-policy-but-campaign-finance-reform-might)- KW

The March for Science on April 22nd in Washington, D.C., with 425 satellite events planned and
the Peoples Climate March a week later, also in Washington, D.C., are expected to attract millions of
citizens and activists.

As an environmental scholar, I hear many scientists lament that the United States would achieve
concerted federal action on climate change if only politicians and the public understood science. But the
truth is that increased public understanding of science will not necessarily lead to climate action .
Before we get there, the political polarization on science needs to stop. And for that to happen, we’ll
need campaign finance reform. Science is neither red nor blue — it’s about discovering truth. Still, there is a growing
partisan gap between Democrats and Republicans in their perceptions about global warming,
despite similar levels of scientific knowledge among people identifying with either party. Results of a
recent Pew Research Center survey reinforce what many political scientists and sociologists already conclude: The most powerful predictors of
an individual’s climate change perceptions are political ideology and party identification. These divisions reflect a psychological mechanism
referred to as “cultural cognition,” which predisposes us selectively to credit or dismiss evidence of risks, including those related to climate
change, in ways that fit our existing values. In contrast to the present political polarization on climate issues, environmental protections have
historically received strong bipartisan support. Republican president Teddy Roosevelt, a leader in the early conservation movement,
helped establish over 230 million acres of public lands. Seminal environmental laws passed with sweeping bipartisan majorities during the
Richard Nixon administration. The Clean Air Act passed the Senate in 1970 without a single nay vote. Sociologists Riley Dunlap at Oklahoma
State University and Aaron McCright at Michigan State University attribute
today’s polarization on climate change to the
organized disinformation campaign waged by the “denial machine.” Via the denial machine, fossil fuel
companies have funneled money through front groups to attack climate science and scientists.
Conservative foundations and think tanks have also led this ideological war, as Naomi Klein describes in her
book This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate. A 2013 Drexel University study found conservative foundations, including Koch-
affiliated foundations and the ExxonMobil Foundation, to be the most consistent funders of climate denial efforts. At times, industry tries to
disclaim any association with such disinformation campaigns: For example, oil giant BP has distanced itself from the American Legislative
Exchange Council, which works to deny that human activities contribute to climate change. Still, leading
fossil fuel companies fail to
renounce disinformation on climate science and policy , and many of them continue to support climate
denial through influential lobbying groups, trade associations, and political action committees . During the
2016 election cycle, the oil and gas industry contributed over $100 million to federal candidates, parties, and outside groups. Eighty-nine
percent of those contributions supported Republicans. The coal-mining industry contributed $13.7 million, with 97 percent of that money
supporting Republicans. In the Pew survey, two-thirds of Americans said climate scientists should have a major role in policy decisions about
climate matters. Yet, despite strong scientific consensus that global warming is occurring thanks mainly to human activities, just under one-third
of Americans are aware of this consensus. To quote Dunlap and McCright, writing last year with sociologist Jerrod Yarush in Environment:
Science and Policy for Sustainable Development: “Two
decades of news coverage and educational campaigns since
1997 have produced only modest increases in Americans’ belief in the reality and human cause of
climate change, with gains among Democrats often offset by declines among Republicans.” Increased
public understanding of science will not overcome the powerful, industrial interests that have hijacked
the climate debate. The March for Science is a non-partisan movement celebrating science and defending evidence-based policymaking.
The People’s Climate Movementputs forward solutions to the climate crisis rooted in social and economic justice. Both ends would be advanced
A constitutional amendment allowing Congress to restrict political spending by
well by reclaiming our democracy.
incorporated entities would help address concerns about the increased influence of corporations in
politics since the 2010 Citizens United Supreme Court decision. Getting corporate interests out of politics
is key to bridging the partisan divide on climate issues. While the fossil fuel industry, conservative think tanks, right-wing
media outlets, and a handful of climate change-denying politicians have made it difficult for moderate Republican policymakers to support
federal climate action, they have not stymied action at other levels. Over 500 businesses, including Johnson & Johnson and Monsanto, are
urging President Donald Trump to not ignore the reality of climate change. These business leaders come from both political parties. Over 1,000
mayors in both blue and red states have vowed to reduce their cities’ carbon emissions as signatories to the U.S. Conference of Mayors’ Climate
Increasing public understanding of science will not lead to bipartisan action on
Protection Agreement.
climate. Rather, reclaiming democracy by getting moneyed interests out of politics is the best path to
address the climate crisis and protect our security, economy, agriculture, water supply, health, and infrastructure.
CA IMPACT 2
No Climate War
Liverman 14 (Diana, geographer, Co-director of the Institute for the Environment at the University of
Arizona and a Public Voices Fellow with The OpEd Project. “What if climate change triggers cooperation,
not conflict?” Huffington Post, 7/18/2014 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/diana-liverman/what-if-
climate-change-tr_b_5599886.html) -KW
“Climate change increases the likelihood of war and terrorism,” President Obama said earlier this summer. The Pentagon and a distinguished
committee of retired generals and admirals both produced reports earlier this year highlighting the accelerating risks of climate change to US
national security. A recent Showtime series on climate change had Tom Friedman linking climate change to political instability in the Middle
East. But what is the basis of these claims? Do we have good evidence to support the connection between climate, conflict, and war? Not really.
For a start, there has been a spirited debate among researchers about the links between climate and
violent conflict with a significant number of studies showing weak, non-existent, and even negative
correlations between climate stress and conflict. For example, one set of researchers finds strong
statistical links between higher temperatures and conflict in Africa between 1981 and 2002, and predict
a 50% increase in conflict as a result of global warming. Others find weak or no relationships between
temperatures, rainfall and conflict in parts of Africa, pointing out that other factors - such as poverty and
poor governance - are much more important and that since 2002, conflict has decreased while climate
hazards have become worse. Another problem with many of the climate conflict studies is that they - or those that read them -
confuse correlation with causation and make fundamental errors in the way they deal with space and
time. And there is also the challenge of scale where a strong relationship at one scale of aggregation
disappears when analyzed at another even though the individual data points are the same. Some studies
correlate country level data without controlling for the size of the country or its population, and find it
difficult to account for how past conflicts and histories strongly influence the present. Even those that try
to compensate for the varying size of countries by using an even grid struggle with the lack of
geographically detailed data on climate, conflict and other factors. The research studies that support the climatic basis
of conflict also make some fundamental errors in research design. Rather than looking at the full range of
climate extremes in a region and analyzing which of these led to conflict, which had no effect, and which
led to cooperation, they instead look for conflicts and then try and link them back to climatic causes. For
example, the prestigious journal Science recently published an article that claimed to analyze and synthesize more than 60 studies of climate
and conflict, concluding that in the majority of cases the studies showed a robust link between climate and conflict. Although
they had
strict criteria for selecting the studies, to my mind there is a fundamental flaw in the experimental
design. In only selecting cases where climate causes conflict it’s not surprising that they, and other
researchers, find proof of the relationship! Why didn’t they broaden the study to see how many studies
of climate impacts result in no conflict or cooperation? To be sure this poses a challenge because although a number of
groups collect data on international and domestic conflict, it is harder to corresponding data on incidents of peace and cooperation. But it
should be possible to look at data on climate extremes and analyze the full range of responses to drought and other hazards including examples
of cooperation, no response, and conflict - its already been done for water shortages to resolve debates over water wars. Many researchers and
policy makers became convinced that increasing competition over water would lead to conflict in regions such as the Middle East. But when
geographer Aaron Wolf did a careful study of 189 river basins he found that in almost all cases, competition over water led to greater
cooperation between nations and communities rather than conflict. Even in the case of Israel’s relationship to their Arab neighbors Wolf’s
research shows that the Jordan River and other shared waters have been a source of peaceful
resolution rather than serious conflict. Where cooperation resulted in robust management institutions
to manage shared waters, there is great potential to resolve the challenges posed by climate change.
Across the world, many water management institutions are already preparing for climate change by
commissioning studies, adjusting allocations, and rethinking infrastructure. On the Colorado River, the
U.S. and Mexico recently agreed to more flexible arrangements to share flows during high and low years
and to restore flows to the ecosystems of the Colorado delta. In Southeast Asia Cambodia, Laos, Thailand
and Viet Nam are cooperating through the Mekong River Commission to adapt to climate change. These
are just a few of the cases where climate change is prompting peaceful cooperation rather than violent
conflict. I was pleased that the most recent report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change provides a more nuanced analysis of
climate change risks to security. The report draws on research studies that propose a focus on ‘human security’ rather than ‘national security’ -
the risks that climate change poses to livelihoods, homes, and health. The authors conclude that the
evidence on a climate connection to violence is inconclusive, including the literature that suggests that
past climate changes have contributed to the collapse of civilizations and the argument that climate
change and drought triggered the violence in Darfur in the last decade. It is time for us to consider the possibility
that climate change can trigger cooperation, not conflict. There are many examples of cooperation. We are in the third
decade of worldwide intergovernmental cooperation to respond to the risks of climate change. We have a climate convention (UNFCCC) that has
brought nations together to peacefully negotiate a shared solution to dealing with climate risks and an unprecedented series of international
scientific assessments - the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change - that brings together thousands of researchers to communicate climate
risks to policy makers. Despite criticisms of lack of progress, the climate negotiations have resulted in transfer of funds from richer to poorer
countries, collective efforts to reduce emissions, and intensive collaboration to understand the causes and consequences of climate change. And
when climatic disasters strike, such as Hurricane Haiyan, we see outpourings of humanitarian response founded in the long tradition of
cooperation across international boundaries in response to hazards and the military helping with peaceful emergency response and recovery.
So, conflict or cooperation? To decide, we need better-designed studies, more rigorous analysis and less melodramatic claims. We need studies
that hypothesize peaceful resolution to tensions connected to resource competition and climate change, and statistical studies that use research
designs that are open to the possibilities that climate extremes might have no influence on conflict and might, in fact, have positive outcomes.
Rather than raise fears of conflict, scholars and strategists should seek best practices for cooperative and peaceful responses to the stresses of
climate change.
CA Impact 3
No impact to acidification – studies prove
Delingpole 4/30/16 --- writer for the Spectator, cites multiple studies done by experts in the field (James, “Ocean acidification:
yet another wobbly pillar of climate alarmism,” http://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/04/ocean-acidification-yet-another-wobbly-pillar-of-climate-
alarmism/)//ernst

There was a breathtakingly beautiful BBC series on the Great Barrier Reef recently which my son pronounced himself almost too depressed to
watch. ‘What’s the point?’ said Boy. ‘By the time I get to Australia to see it the whole bloody lot will have dissolved.’ The menace Boy was
describing is ‘ocean acidification’. It’s no wonder he should find it worrying, for it has been assiduously promoted by environmentalists for more
than a decade now as ‘global warming’s evil twin’. Last year, no fewer than 600 academic papers were published on the subject, so it must be
serious, right? First referenced in a peer-reviewed study in Nature in 2003, it has since been endorsed by scientists from numerous learned
institutions including the Royal Society, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the IPCC. Even the great David Attenborough
— presenter of the Great Barrier Reef series — has vouched for its authenticity: ‘If the temperature rises up by two degrees and the acidity by a
measurable amount, lots of species of coral will die out. Quite what happens then is anybody’s guess. But it won’t be good.’ No indeed. Ocean
acidification is the terrifying threat whereby all that man-made CO2 we’ve been pumping into the atmosphere may react with the sea to form a
sort of giant acid bath. First it will kill off all the calcified marine life, such as shellfish, corals and plankton. Then it will destroy all the species that
depend on it — causing an almighty mass extinction which will wipe out the fishing industry and turn our oceans into a barren zone of death. Or
so runs the scaremongering theory. The reality may be rather more prosaic. Ocean
acidification — the evidence increasingly
suggests — is a trivial, misleadingly named, and not remotely worrying phenomenon which has been
hyped up beyond all measure for political, ideological and financial reasons. Some of us have suspected this for
some time. According to Patrick Moore, a co-founder of Greenpeace, long one of ocean acidification theory’s fiercest critics, the term is ‘just
short of propaganda’. The pH of the world’s oceans ranges between 7.5 and 8.3 — well above the acid zone (which starts below ‘neutral’ pH7)
— so more correctly it should be stated that the seas are becoming slightly less alkaline. ‘Acid’ was chosen, Moore believes, because it has
‘strong negative connotations for most people’. Matt Ridley, too, has been scathing on the topic. In The Rational Optimist he wrote, ‘ Ocean
acidification looks suspiciously like a back-up plan by the environmental pressure groups in case the
climate fails to warm.’ I agree. That’s why I like to call it the alarmists’ Siegfried Line — their last redoubt should it prove, as looks
increasingly to be the case, that the man-made global warming theory is a busted flush. [Alt-Text] To the alarmist camp, of course, this is yet
further evidence that ‘deniers’ are heartless, anti-scientific conspiracy theorists who don’t read peer-reviewed papers and couldn’t give a toss if
the world’s marine life is dissolved in a pool of acid due to man’s selfishness and greed. Unfortunately for the doom-mongers, we sceptics have
just received some heavy fire-support from a neutral authority. Howard Browman, a marine scientist for 35 years, has published a review in the
ICES Journal of Marine Science of all the papers published on the subject. His verdict could hardly be more damning. The
methodology
used by the studies was often flawed; contrary studies suggesting that ocean acidification wasn’t a threat
had sometimes had difficulty finding a publishe r. There was, he said, an ‘inherent bias’ in scientific
journals which predisposed them to publish ‘doom and gloom stories’ . Ocean acidification theory appears to have
been fatally flawed almost from the start. In 2004, two NOAA scientists, Richard Feely and Christopher Sabine, produced a chart showing a
strong correlation between rising atmospheric CO2 levels and falling oceanic pH levels. But then, just over a year ago, Mike Wallace, a
hydrologist with 30 years’ experience, noticed while researching his PhD that they had omitted some key information. Their chart only started in
1988 but, as Wallace knew, there were records dating back to at least 100 years before. So why had they ignored the real-world evidence in
favour of computer-modelled projections? When Wallace plotted a chart of his own, incorporating all the available data, covering the period
from 1910 to the present, his results were surprising: there has been no reduction in oceanic pH levels in the last
-century. Even if the oceans were ‘acidifying’, though, it wouldn’t be a disaster for a number of reasons — as recently outlined in a paper by
Patrick Moore for the Frontier Centre for Public Policy. First, marine species that calcify have survived through millions
of years when CO2 was at much higher levels; second, they are more than capable of adapting — even in
the short term — to environmental change; third, seawater has a large buffering capacity which prevents
dramatic shifts in pH; fourth, if oceans do become warmer due to ‘climate change’, the effect will be for
them to ‘outgas’ CO2, not absorb more of it. Finally, and perhaps most damningly , Moore quotes a killer analysis
conducted by Craig Idso of all the studies which have been done on the effects of reduced pH levels on marine life. The impact on
calcification, metabolism, growth, fertility and survival of calcifying marine species when pH is lowered
up to 0.3 units (beyond what is considered a plausible reduction this century) is beneficial, not damaging. Marine life has
nothing whatsoever to fear from ocean acidification.

CA Impact 1
Environment resilient
Kareiva et al 12 – Chief Scientist and Vice President, The Nature Conservancy
Peter, Michelle Marvier --professor and department chair of Environment Studies and Sciences at Santa
Clara University, Robert Lalasz -- director of science communications for The Nature Conservancy, Winter,
“Conservation in the Anthropocene,” http://thebreakthrough.org/index.php/journal/past-issues/issue-
2/conservation-in-the-anthropocene/

2. As conservation became a global enterprise in the 1970s and 1980s, the movement's justification for
saving nature shifted from spiritual and aesthetic values to focus on biodiversity . Nature was described as
primeval, fragile, and at risk of collapse from too much human use and abuse . And indeed, there are
consequences when humans convert landscapes for mining, logging, intensive agriculture, and urban
development and when key species or ecosystems are lost. ¶ But ecologists and conservationists have
grossly overstated the fragility of nature, frequently arguing that once an ecosystem is altered, it is gone forever. Some
ecologists suggest that if a single species is lost, a whole ecosystem will be in danger of collapse, and that
if too much biodiversity is lost, spaceship Earth will start to come apart. Everything, from the expansion
of agriculture to rainforest destruction to changing waterways, has been painted as a threat to the
delicate inner-workings of our planetary ecosystem. ¶ The fragility trope dates back, at least, to Rachel Carson,
who wrote plaintively in Silent Spring of the delicate web of life and warned that perturbing the intricate
balance of nature could have disastrous consequences .22 Al Gore made a similar argument in his 1992 book, Earth in the
Balance.23 And the 2005 Millennium Ecosystem Assessment warned darkly that, while the expansion of agriculture and other forms of
development have been overwhelmingly positive for the world's poor, ecosystem degradation was simultaneously putting systems in jeopardy
of collapse.24¶ The trouble for conservation is that the data simply do not support the idea of a fragile nature at risk of
collapse. Ecologists now know that the disappearance of one species does not necessarily lead to the extinction
of any others, much less all others in the same ecosystem . In many circumstances, the demise of formerly
abundant species can be inconsequential to ecosystem function. The American chestnut , once a
dominant tree in eastern North America, has been extinguished by a foreign disease, yet the forest
ecosystem is surprisingly unaffected. The passenger pigeon , once so abundant that its flocks darkened the sky, went
extinct, along with countless other species from the Steller's sea cow to the dodo , with no catastrophic
or even measurable effects.¶ These stories of resilience are not isolated examples -- a thorough review
of the scientific literature identified 240 studies of ecosystems following major disturbances such as
deforestation, mining, oil spills, and other types of pollution. The abundance of plant and animal species
as well as other measures of ecosystem function recovered , at least partially, in 173 (72 percent) of these
studies.25¶ While global forest cover is continuing to decline, it is rising in the Northern Hemisphere,
where "nature" is returning to former agricultural lands .26 Something similar is likely to occur in the Southern Hemisphere,
after poor countries achieve a similar level of economic development. A 2010 report concluded that rainforests that have grown
back over abandoned agricultural land had 40 to 70 percent of the species of the original forests .27 Even
Indonesian orangutans, which were widely thought to be able to survive only in pristine forests, have been found in surprising numbers in oil
palm plantations and degraded lands.28¶ Nature is so resilient that it can recover rapidly from even the most
powerful human disturbances. Around the Chernobyl nuclear facility, which melted down in 1986, wildlife is
thriving, despite the high levels of radiation .29 In the Bikini Atoll, the site of multiple nuclear bomb tests ,
including the 1954 hydrogen bomb test that boiled the water in the area, the number of coral species has actually increased
relative to before the explosions.30 More recently, the massive 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico was
degraded and consumed by bacteria at a remarkably fast rate .31¶ Today, coyotes roam downtown Chicago,
and peregrine falcons astonish San Franciscans as they sweep down skyscraper canyons to pick off pigeons for
their next meal. As we destroy habitats, we create new ones: in the southwestern U nited States a rare and
federally listed salamander species seems specialized to live in cattle tanks -- to date, it has been found in no other
habitat.32 Books have been written about the collapse of cod in the Georges Bank, yet recent trawl data
show the biomass of cod has recovered to precollapse levels .33 It's doubtful that books will be written
about this cod recovery since it does not play well to an audience somehow addicted to stories of
collapse and environmental apocalypse.¶ Even that classic symbol of fragility -- the polar bear , seemingly
stranded on a melting ice block -- may have a good chance of surviving global warming if the changing
environment continues to increase the populations and northern ranges of harbor seals and harp seals .
Polar bears evolved from brown bears 200,000 years ago during a cooling period in Earth's history ,
developing a highly specialized carnivorous diet focused on seals. Thus, the fate of polar bears depends on two opposing trends -- the decline of
sea ice and the potential increase of energy-rich prey. The
history of life on Earth is of species evolving to take
advantage of new environments only to be at risk when the environment changes again. ¶ The wilderness
ideal presupposes that there are parts of the world untouched by humankind, but today it is impossible
to find a place on Earth that is unmarked by human activity. The truth is humans have been impacting
their natural environment for centuries. The wilderness so beloved by conservationists -- places "untrammeled by man"34 --
never existed, at least not in the last thousand years, and arguably even longer.