1AC

1AC
 1AC Plan
The United States Federal Government should substantially
restrict private sector greenhouse gas emissions in areas
where it retains exclusive regulatory jurisdiction by requiring
federal agencies to apply a proxy carbon price in regulatory
decisions based on a social cost of carbon value consistent
with limiting climate change to 2 degrees Celsius.
 1AC Carbon Assets
Emissions cuts are failing to keep pace with Paris pledges now,
locking in a late and abrupt low-carbon transition; risks policy
collapse and catastrophic warming through a hard landing
Daniel Gros 16, Director of Economy and Finance @ Centre for European Policy
Studies, Dirk Schoenmaker, Feb 2016, Reports of the Advisory Scientific Committee
No 6 / February 2016 Too late, too sudden: Transition to a low-carbon economy and
systemic risk, By: ESRB Advisory Scientific Committee ESRB ASC Report No 6 /
February 2016 European Systemic Risk Board,
https://www.esrb.europa.eu/pub/pdf/asc/Reports_ASC_6_1602.pdf
Previous and current emission reduction pledges suggest a highly uncertain environment regarding the speed and
Despite the increasing frequency of
timing of the transition to a low-carbon economy.
declarations about the importance of climate change and the growing consensus around a
new agreement under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC),
global emissions continue to grow . It is therefore hard to forecast the
true speed at which emissions might be abated.

Extrapolating from existing emissions pledges and the targets consistent

with limiting global warming to 2C suggests that a late and sudden
transition to a low-carbon economy is a plausible scenario . Using country-level
emissions pledges and global climate targets, the International Energy Agency (IEA) calculates that, following
current trends, the so-called "carbon budget" (i.e. the stock of greenhouse gases in the
atmosphere compatible with a rise in average global temperatures of less than 2C) would be exhausted
by 2040. Under those projections, emissions would need to drop below zero beyond that date. Alternatively, if
the abatement of emissions were to start earlier , the transition to a low-
carbon economy can be more gradual . The later the transition starts, the
more likely it is that either the targeted limit will be revised (at the risk of
catastrophic physical implications ) or the transition to the low-carbon
economy will be late and abrupt (see Figure B1).

Current uncertainty over climate policy means investors will

continue to sink capital into high-risk fossil fuel assetsthis
causes the carbon bubble to collapse in the short term as
financial institutions lose trust in energy firms asset
valuationsthe resulting loan and liquidity spiral risks massive
financial shocks
Francis Weyzig 14, policy advisor on tax justice and economic inequality at
Oxfam Novib (Netherlands) and former policy advisor financial stability at the Dutch
central bank, with Barbara Kuepper, Jan Willem van Gelder, and Rens van Tilburg,
The Price of Doing Too Little Too Late The impact of the carbon bubble on the EU
financial system, Feb 2014, http://reinhardbuetikofer.eu/wp-
content/uploads/2014/03/GND-Carbon-Bubble-web1.pdf
Thefossil fuel assets owned by listed companies mentioned in the background chapter, of which
only 20-40% of can be sold if they have a proportional share in the global carbon budget, reflects
current proven reserves (so-called P1 oil and gas reserves, and coal
reserves). Their potential reserves, including fossil fuel assets that are still
being developed (so-called P2 oil and gas reserves, and coal resources), are twice as large. The
capital investments of fossil fuel firms are mainly aimed at increasing the
amount of proven, marketable reserves. Thus, until the implications of the carbon

bubble are fully realised, fossil fuel firms will initially continue to make
large investments in developing reserves that will only increase the total
amount of stranded assets [113]. They finance new investments partly with
retained profits (equity capital) and partly with debt (bonds and loans). If
fossil fuel firms were to stop investing in the development of new
reserves , which would happen in the low-carbon breakthrough scenario,
they would not need to obtain new loans and issue new bonds to finance
those investments. They would also have a larger cash flow available to
repay existing loans and bonds (or to increase dividend payments or buy back shares). This
would limit future losses for shareholders and creditors resulting from
the carbon bubble.

By contrast, in an uncertain transition scenario, the ongoing capital

expenditures would eventually generate larger losses on equity as well
as on bonds and loans . For the fossil fuel sector as a whole, capital
expenditures related to the development of new reserves would be fully
lost if global warming were to be eventually contained, as the total carbon budget is fixed. Even if only 300
billion out of the annual investments were related to the development of new reserves, that would be equivalent to
10% of the current stock market value of oil, gas and coal mining businesses. Thus, the additional losses will be
significant compared to the existing exposures of financial institutions.

Third, due to uncertainty about future developments, it will be difficult for

financial institutions to assess the climate-related risks of their loan and
investment portfolios. It will not be clear if, how and at what pace a
transition to a lowcarbon economy will take place. Institutional investors
may therefore take little action to mitigate losses on high-carbon assets.
They will have sufficient time to divest from these assets before they finally lose a large part of their value but,
initially, there will be no clear future vision that would justify such

divestments from a purely financial perspective. However, the

unpredictable adjustment path of two steps forward, one step back, will gradually
increase volatility in the value of high-carbon assets. As a consequence, financial
institutions will find high-carbon assets more risky. The same applies to investment in
renewable energy and energy savings, however. Thus, it is likely that after a few years of increasing volatility and
uncertainty, financial institutions will start to restrict the financing of both high-carbon and low-carbon businesses.

If uncertainty about the value of high-carbon (and low-carbon) assets becomes

very high, a particularly grim outcome is possible, with higher risks for
financial stability. Financial institutions may no longer trust how other
financial institutions value their exposures to fossil fuel firms and some
banks and insurance companies could become stigmatised. This is similar
to what happened regarding exposures to the mortgage backed securities
and bonds of certain Euro countries during the debt crisis. The stigmatised institutions

could then run into funding and liquidity problems, not because of actual

losses but because other financial institutions suspect they may be

hiding losses. Some financial markets could stop functioning altogether ,
such as the market for the corporate bonds of high-carbon fossil fuel and
low-carbon sustainable energy companies, similar again to what happened
in the mortgage-backed security and sovereign bond markets. The lack of
reliable market prices would further increase uncertainty over valuations
and fears over hidden losses . Stock markets are very unlikely to become illiquid, as these
continued to function even during worst of the debt crisis, but l arge losses on equity exposures
would add to the distress of financial institutions and provoke a general
loss of confidence. This could trigger various types of shocks , including a
credit squeeze due to banks funding constraints, a flight to low-risk
investments with overreacting markets, government support for troubled
banks and insurance companies, or restructurings involving the bail-in of
other financial institutions.

That ripples through the entire economy affects every

industry that uses fossil fuels
Dirk Schoenmaker 16, Senior Fellow at Bruegel and Professor of Banking and
Finance at Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University Rotterdam; and
Rens van Tilburg, senior researcher at SOMO (Centre for Research on Multinational
Corporations, 4/22/16, Financial risks and opportunities in the time of climate
change, http://bruegel.org/2016/04/financial-risks-and-opportunities-in-the-time-of-
climate-change/

One of the most studied risks to the financial system stemming from ecological

imbalances is the so called carbon bubble (Carbon Tracker, 2011), or the overvaluation of fossil-fuel

Staying within a 2C
reserves and related assets should the world manage to tackle global warming.
temperature rise puts a limit on future carbon emissions and hence on the amount of
fossil fuels that can be burned, requiring a sharp bending of the current
trend (Figure 1)4.
This could strand many existing fossil fuel reserves. Without carbon sequestration, McGlade and
Ekins (2015) estimate that if global warming is to be kept below 2C up to 2050, approximately 35 percent of known
oil reserves, 52 percent of gas reserves and 88 percent of coal reserves are unburnable (Table 1). The numbers are
slightly lower if carbon is sequestrated.

Private oil, gas and coal mining companies own about a quarter of fossil fuel
reserves; sovereigns and their oil, gas and coal companies own the remainder . If a
large part of these reserves cannot be extracted or extraction becomes commercially
unviable, the valuation of these companies and their ability to repay their

debt is reduced. The equity, bond and credit exposures of EU financial

institutions to firms holding fossil-fuel reserves and to fossil-fuel
commodities are substantial . Table 2 shows that the total exposure of 1,061 billion is 38 percent
equity financed and 62 percent debt financed (Weyzig et al, 2014). Such large numbers raise
concerns about the potential consequences of these investments if a large part
of the oil, gas and coal reserves ends up stranded .

The costs of late transition go well beyond The energy sector

Though these exposures and potential losses are large, on their own they will
probably not cause a systemic crisis in a healthy economy and financial
sector. However, the effect of the bursting of the carbon bubble will
not be limited to the oil, gas and coal sectors alone . A sudden
transition will be a shock to all sectors that use fossil fuels as an input,

either in the production or in the use of their products and services. There are potentially major
implications between sectors (electricity powered high speed trains versus fossil fuel jet planes)

and within sectors (car manufacturers that specialise in electric cars versus heavy car manufacturers).

The financial impact will therefore be much greater than the numbers
here indicate .

If the transition is sudden and late, the financial system could be affected by
its exposure to carbon-intensive real and financial assets. Moreover, reduced energy
supply and increased energy costs would impair macroeconomic activity, as the hard landing forces a rapid
transition away from fossil-fuel based energy production.

Whilea gradual transition would allow for a gradual write-down of long-

lasting carbon-intensive infrastructures and assets, a rapid transition
would force more radical write-downs because of the negligible scrap
value of stranded assets and not fully anticipated losses . Current market pricing
might reflect both a lack of awareness of the challenges posed by climate change and uncertainty about the path of
policy (ASC, 2016).
Financial system instability risks global warthe 08 financial
crisis left cracks in the system that undermine
interdependence
Harold James 14, Professor of history at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson
School who specializes in European economic history, 7/2/14, "Debate: Is 2014, like
1914, a prelude to world war?," http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-
debate/read-and-vote-is-2014-like-1914-a-prelude-to-world-war/article19325504/
As we get closer to the centenary of Gavrilo Princips act of terrorism in Sarajevo, there is an ever more vivid fear:
it could happen again . The approach of the hundredth anniversary of 1914 has
put a spotlight on the fragility of the worlds political and economic security
systems. At the beginning of 2013, Luxembourgs Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker was widely ridiculed for

evoking the shades of 1913. By now he is looking like a prophet. By 2014, as the security situation in
the South China Sea deteriorated, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe cast China as the
equivalent to Kaiser Wilhelms Germany; and the fighting in Ukraine and in Iraq is a sharp
reminder of the dangers of escalation. Lessons of 1914 are about more than simply the
dangers of national and sectarian animosities. The main story of today as then is the

precariousness of financial globalization , and the consequences that political leaders draw
from it. In the influential view of Norman Angell in his 1910 book The Great Illusion, the
interdependency of the increasingly complex global economy made war
impossible. But a quite opposite conclusion was possible and equally
plausible and proved to be the case . Given the extent of fragility, a clever
twist to the control levers might make war easily winnable by the
economic hegemon. In the wake of an epochal financial crisis that almost
brought a complete global collapse, in 1907, several countries started to
think of finance as primarily an instrument of raw power, one that could and should
be turned to national advantage. The 1907 panic emanated from the United States but affected the rest of the
world and demonstrated the fragility of the whole international financial orderThat r. The aftermath of the 1907
crash drove the then hegemonic power Great Britain - to reflect on how it could use its financial power. Between
1905 and 1908, the British Admiralty evolved the broad outlines of a plan for financial and economic warfare that
would wreck the financial system of its major European rival, Germany, and destroy its fighting capacity. Britain
used its extensive networks to gather information about opponents. London banks financed most of the worlds
trade. Lloyds provided insurance for the shipping not just of Britain, but of the world. Financial networks provided
the information that allowed the British government to find the sensitive strategic vulnerabilities of the opposing
alliance. What pre-1914 Britain did anticipated the private-public partnership that today links technology giants
such as Google, Apple or Verizon to U.S. intelligence gathering. Since last year, the Edward Snowden leaks about
the NSA have shed a light on the way that global networks are used as a source of intelligence and power. For
Britains rivals, the financial panic of 1907 showed the necessity of mobilizing financial powers themselves. The
United States realized that it needed a central bank analogous to the Bank of England. American financiers thought
that New York needed to develop its own commercial trading system that could handle bills of exchange in the
same way as the London market. Some of the dynamics of the pre-1914 financial world
are now re-emerging . Then an economically declining power, Britain,
wanted to use finance as a weapon against its larger and faster growing competitors, Germany
and the United States. Now America is in turn obsessed by being overtaken by China
according to some calculations, set to become the worlds largest economy in 2014. In the aftermath of

the 2008 financial crisis, financial institutions appear both as dangerous

weapons of mass destruction , but also as potential instruments for the application of national
power. In managing the 2008 crisis, the dependence of foreign banks on
U.S. dollar funding constituted a major weakness, and required the
provision of large swap lines by the Federal Reserve . The United States provided that
support to some countries, but not others, on the basis of an explicitly political logic, as Eswar Prasad demonstrates
in his new book on the Dollar Trap. Geo-politics is intruding into banking practice elsewhere. Before the Ukraine
crisis, Russian banks were trying to acquire assets in Central and Eastern Europe. European and U.S. banks are
playing a much reduced role in Asian trade finance. Chinese banks are being pushed to expand their role in global
commerce. After the financial crisis, China started to build up the renminbi as a major international currency. Russia
and China have just proposed to create a new credit rating agency to avoid what they regard as the political bias of
the existing (American-based) agencies. The next stage in this logic is to think about how financial power can be
directed to national advantage in the case of a diplomatic tussle. Sanctions are a routine (and not terribly
financial
successful) part of the pressure applied to rogue states such as Iran and North Korea. But
pressure can be much more powerfully applied to countries that are
deeply embedded in the world economy. The test is in the Western
imposition of sanctions after the Russian annexation of Crimea . President
Vladimir Putins calculation in response is that the European Union and the United States cannot possibly be serious
about the financial war. It would turn into a boomerang: Russia would be less affected than the more developed and
complex financial markets of Europe and America. The threat of systemic disruption
generates a new sort of uncertainty , one that mirrors the decisive feature
of the crisis of the summer of 1914. At that time, no one could really know
whether clashes would escalate or not. That feature contrasts remarkably with almost the
entirety of the Cold War, especially since the 1960s, when the strategic doctrine of Mutually
Assured Destruction left no doubt that any superpower conflict would
inevitably escalate. The idea of network disruption relies on the ability to achieve advantage by surprise,
and to win at no or low cost. But it is inevitably a gamble, and raises prospect that others might, but also might not
there is an enhanced temptation
be able to, mount the same sort of operation. Just as in 1914,

to roll the dice , even though the game may be fatal .

Economic decline will go nuclear

Stein Tnnesson 15, Research Professor, Peace Research Institute Oslo; Leader
of East Asia Peace program, Uppsala University, 2015, Deterrence,
interdependence and SinoUS peace, International Area Studies Review, Vol. 18,
No. 3, p. 297-311
Severalrecent works on China and SinoUS 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 interdependent 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
decisions for war and peace are taken by
(Ravenhill, 2014; Yoshimatsu, 2014: 576); and fourth,
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
If leaders on
decision-makers to economic development and their assessments of risks and opportunities.

either side of the Atlantic begin to seriously fear or anticipate their own nations

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
This could have unforeseen consequences
distress, and exacerbating nationalist emotions.
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.

The magnitude of risk is huge, and the tail risk matters the
most43 trillion dollars worth of assets could be lost, roughly
equal to 30% of ALL global assets
Brian Gardner 15, managing editor for The Economist Intelligence Unit's thought
leadership division in EMEA, with Christopher Watts, peer reviewed by 19 experts in
global finance and climate change including Al Gore, THE COST OF INACTION:
RECOGNISING THE VALUE AT RISK FROM CLIMATE CHANGE,
https://www.eiuperspectives.economist.com/sites/default/files/The%20cost%20of
%20inaction_0.pdf
[Numbers to words]
The asset management industryand thus the wider community of
investors of all sizes is facing the prospect of significant losses from the
effects of climate change. Assets can be directly damaged by floods, droughts and severe storms, but
portfolios can also be harmed indirectly, through weaker growth and lower asset returns. Climate change
is a long-term, probably irreversible problem beset by substantial
uncertainty . Crucially, however, climate change is a problem of extreme risk :
this means that the average losses to be expected are not the only source
of concern; on the contrary, the outliers , the particularly extreme
scenarios, may matter most of all.
To highlight the relevance of climate change to the asset management industry and beyond, this research estimates
the value at risk (VaR)1 to 2100 as a result of climate change to the total global stock of manageable assets (the
The worlds current stock of manageable assets is estimated to
climate VaR).
be US$143trn [one hundred forty-three trillion] . The resulting expected
losses to these assets identified in our findings, in discounted, present
value terms, are valued at US$4.2trn [four point two trillion]roughly on a
par with the total value of all the worlds listed oil and gas companies or
Japans entire GDP. This is the average (mean) expected loss, but the value-
at-risk calculation includes a wide range of probabilities, and the tail
risks are far more serious .

Warming of 5C could result in US$7trn [seven trillion] in losses more

than the total market capitalisation of the London Stock Exchange - while
6C of warming could lead to a present value loss of US$13.8trn [thirteen
point eight trillion] of manageable financial assets, roughly 10% of the
global total.

These values are based on the discount rate of a private investor, a

reasonable baseline as the affected losses mentioned above will be on the
privately held pool of global assets. However, as climate change is also a
systemic problem, with issues of wider societal concern, it is often appropriate to apply
a lower discount rate , consistent with public-sector actors that have
longer time horizons than individuals. When the expected losses are
considered from the point of view of a government, employing the same
discount rates as the Stern Review,4 they rise dramatically. From the
public-sector perspective, the expected value of a future with 6C of
warming represents present value losses worth US$43trn 30% of the
entire stock of manageable assets . By way of scale, the current market
capitalisation of all the worlds stockmarkets is around US$70trn.5
And, the impact is short terminvestor confidence could swing
against the industry even in the short run
Mark Kinver 15, Environment reporter, BBC News, 11-12-15, Climate risk could
undermine investments, report warns, http://www.bbc.com/news/science-
environment-34797272

A report has warned that investors could be hit hard amid changes in short-term
market swings , triggered by climate impact concerns .

University of Cambridge experts said global investment portfolios could see losses of
up to 45%.

No investor was "immune from the risks posed by climate change", they added.
In a recent speech to the City, Bank of England Governor Mark Carney said climate change would "threaten
financial resilience".

The report, Unhedgeable Risk: How Climate Change Sentiment Impacts Investment, was commissioned by the
University of Cambridge Institute for Sustainable Leadership (CISL) and the Investment Leaders Group.

the short-term risks associated with how investors reacted to

It focused on

climate-related information, such as policy decisions to market

confidence and extreme weather events .
No immunity

The authors said the report's findings added to previous studies that had analysed the direct, physical effects of
climate change on long-term economic performance.

no investor is immune from the risks posed by

"This new research suggests that

climate change, even in the short run ," explained CISL Sustainable Economy director Dr Jake
Reynolds.

"It is surprisingly difficult to distinguish between risks that can be addressed by an individual investor through smart
hedging strategies and ones that are systematic and require much deeper transformations in the economy to deal
with," he added.

"That's what this report attempts to do."

potential short-term impacts on investor sentiment/confidence

The study focused on

that could emerge at any time , such as an extreme weather event or the outcome of the UN climate
talks in Paris.

The authors modelled the impacts using three scenarios:

Two degrees: limiting average global temperature rise to 2C (3.6F) above pre-industrial levels, a strategy favoured
by climate experts

Baseline: where past trends continue (business-as-usual) and there is "no significant change in the willingness of
government to step up actions on climate change"

No mitigation: no "special consideration of environmental challenges, rather the hope of pursuing self-interest will
allow adaptive responses to any climate change impacts as they arise"

These scenarios were applied to four "typical investment portfolios" in order to understand the resilience or
vulnerability of investments to climate-related shifts in market confidence.
"One of the key findings (from the modelling) is that it reveals the potential for very
significant , short-term financial impacts for investors whereas previously, I think, a
lot of the analysis had pointed to the longer term, multi-decadal impacts," explained CISL Finance Sector director
Andrew Voysey.
 1AC Mitigation
Paris is accelerating the green paradox --- signal of climate
policy without implementation -- immediate emissions limits
are the only way of staving off irreversible climate change
Laurence J. Kotlikoff 16, William Fairfield Warren Professor at Boston University,
a Professor of Economics at Boston University, a Fellow of the American Academy of
Arts and Sciences, a Fellow of the Econometric Society, a Research Associate of the
National Bureau of Economic Research, President of Economic Security Planning,
Inc., et al., 10/3/16, Will the Paris Accord Accelerate Climate Change?,
http://www.kotlikoff.net/sites/default/files/paris-accord-accelerate%20%287%29.pdf
In the 2015 Paris Accord, 195 countries agreed to limit the planets temperature rise to 2 above pre-industrial
levels. The Accord calls for moderate measures through 2025 and tougher

measures thereafter. Unfortunately, the Accord includes neither an enforcement mechanism nor any
compliance deadlines. Consequently, the Accord represents a voluntary arrangement
that countries may fail to honor until they have been identified and called to account, both of
which can take time. The Accord did accomplish one thing . It sent dirty-
energy producers a clear message that their days are number .

This use it or lose it message that reserves of oil, natural gas, and coal
will become stranded assets may be accelerating fossil fuel extraction
and CO2 emissions . Since 2010, global oil production has risen by 10 percent,1 global coal production by
9 percent,2 and global natural gas production by 11 percent.3 Yet slower, not quicker release of
CO2 is critical to limiting the planets temperature rise. Hence , the Paris
accord, in not mandating immediate emission-limitation policy , may
actually be accelerating climate change . This is Sinn (2008)s well known
Green Paradox.

This paper illustrates the Green Paradox arising from delaying climate change
policy . Our vehicle is a two-period OLG model featuring dirty and clean energy. Dirty energy, referenced
as oil, is exhaustible and in inelastic supply. Clean energy, referenced as solar,
eventually supplies all energy needs but, depending on policy, this outcome may,
paradoxically, occur too soon to prevent irreversible climate
damage . Indeed, the earlier solar takes over, the worse matters can be for
the climate.
The life-cycle model is the appropriate framework for studying climate policy since it captures the negative
externality current generations impose on future generations in using fossil fuels. Climate policys natural objective
is to achieve an abatement path that makes no generation worse off and at least some generations better off. The
search for such efficient abatement policies moves the climate-policy debate from the realm of ethics to that of
economic efficiency.

Our reference here to ethics alludes to the use of infinite-horizon models in which optimal climate policy is set
based on the infinitely-lived, representative agents time-preference factor. The recent paper by Golosov et al.
(2014) is an example. Its optimal carbon tax formula depends critically on the representative agents time-
preference rate.4 But Altonji et al. (1992, 1997), Hayashi et al. (1996), and other studies, particularly Lee and
Mason (2011) analyses of the postwar change in the shape of the age-consumption profile, provide strong evidence
against the intergenerational altruism required by single-agent models. Indeed, were such intergenerational
altruism ubiquitous, there would be no reason to analyze climate change policy. Agents with such preferences would
set optimal climate policy to protect their progeny. This is true even if one considers different clans within a single
country or in different countries. As shown in Kotlikoff (1983) and Bernheim and Bagwell (1988), the assumption of
intergenerational altruism combined with the assumption that agents from different clans become altruistically
linked with one another implies effective altruistic linkages across essentially everyone on the planet. In this case,
there is global agreement on enacting first-best dirty energy policy. Stated differently, a climate-change policy
problem cant arise in models with infinitely-lived agents because such agents would automatically internalize the
externality.

This said, were intergenerational altruism ubiquitous and operational, Golosov et al. (2014)s elegant and
impressive paper would provide an excellent guide to the planets single dynasty for setting abatement policy. But
since this appears not to be the case, their model and similar models must be viewed as entailing the optimization
of social welfare functions in which the time-preference rate becomes a central parameter for optimal carbon policy.
Since there is no economic basis for choosing the preferences of social planners, "optimal" carbon policy devolves
into a matter of ethical conviction.

If one leaves ethics aside and focuses on economics in the context of selfish life-cycle agents, optimal policy
analysis becomes a matter of determining the set of policies that produce Pareto improvements. Once that set is
determined, the job of the economist is finished and it is up to policymakers to determine what policies, if any, to
undertake.

The natural means of achieving an efficient climate policy is levying a time-varying carbon tax rate, but using, as
climate
needed, generation-specific redistribution to achieve a Pareto improvement. Unfortunately, as we show,

accords that permit delayed limitation of emissions encourage a fast

rather than a slow fossil-fuel burn , which may be economically inefficient; i.e., they can
be worse than doing nothing , producing a Pareto loss.

The same is true of policies that accelerate technical improvement in

clean energy . Telling dirty energy producers that they will face much
stiffer competition from clean energy sources in the relatively near term
sends the same "use it or lose it" message and, unfortunately, also lead to a
faster burn .
To be clear, our model was designed solely to extend lessons about exhaustible resource extraction first taught by
Hotelling (1931). It is far too simple to provide precise policy prescriptions. Its use of two periods, rather than
annual periods limits its ability to accurately capture annual climate change processes. Furthermore, using a two-
period, rather than an annual-period model constrains the potential for dynamic policy adjustment through time
stressed by Cai et al. (2013) and others. The choice of long time periods can also, as Cai et al. (2013) stress, affect
both policy prescriptions and overlook stochastic changes to the economy and to climate damage.

Still, our models main message would surely carry over to far more detailed models, including models with more
complex preferences, uncertainty, and statedependent policies. The reason is that our model is about the expected

time-path of policy and the point that getting the policy timing wrong can be worse
than running no policy whatsoever .5 To be sure, our point that optimal policy
requires immediate action can be seen in the optimal tax policies computed by Cai et al. (2013),
Golosov et al. (2014), and others. But the literature seems devoid of, or at least short on, studies examining the
cost of policy delay.
Existing private sector pricing methods & infrastructure
planning fail - erodes the capacity for rapid US mitigation,
which is critical to meeting climate objectives. Failure triggers
stranded assets, investors losses, and disrupts the capital
allocation decisions necessary to hit our GHG targets
Alison Cassady 16, Director of Domestic Energy Policy, Center for American
Progress, Gqynne Taraska, Associate Director of Energy Policy, April 2016, Proxy
Carbon Pricing, Center for American Progress, https://cdn.americanprogress.org/wp-
content/uploads/2016/04/13143140/CarbonPricing.pdf
State and federal governments have two primary motivations to use a proxy carbon price to evaluate the long-term
government
financial viability of their investments and decisions in a carbon-constrained world. First,
officials should be motivated by fiscal prudence and the need to prepare
the U nited S tates and its local economies for the global pivot to clean
energy. If a fossil fuel investment becomes stranded due to carbon
constraints in the future , it will do more than harm the investors
bottom line. Unwise commitments to carbon-intensive energy
infrastructure could leave the broader U.S. economy unable to adapt
quickly in a world that needs to limit warming to 2 degrees Celsius above
preindustrial levelsthe generally recognized ceiling above which climate change could be catastrophic. Second,
government actors should be motivated by the commitment to propel the low-carbon shift domestically.
Infrastructure projectssuch as pipelines, power plants, and fossil fuel
export terminalshave lifetimes that measure in decades. Given that such
projects drive climate change cumulatively rather than on an individual
basis, government officials need a tool that evaluates potential projects
in the context of their consistency with a low-carbon future rather than
solely in the context of their individual climate effects. A proxy carbon price could be
one such tool. Government officials could apply a proxy price to a proposed

project to see whether it would be financially viable in a world in which

the price of fossil fuels includes the costs of climate change .

Successful financing is key to build the renewable energy

infrastructure necessary to solve 2 degree warmingshifting
investment planning is key to supply sufficient capital to fund
the transition
Brian Gardner 15, managing editor for The Economist Intelligence Unit's thought
leadership division in EMEA, with Christopher Watts, peer reviewed by 19 experts in
global finance and climate change including Al Gore, THE COST OF INACTION:
RECOGNISING THE VALUE AT RISK FROM CLIMATE CHANGE,
https://www.eiuperspectives.economist.com/sites/default/files/The%20cost%20of
%20inaction_0.pdf
For those investors who recognise and measure the long-term climate-
related risks embedded in their portfolio, there are a number of options. A
clear opportunity is to identify and invest in companies that are better
placed to benefit from a transition to a low-carbon economyand to shift
funds from those that are more heavily dependent on carbon for returns.
In many cases these investment opportunities have the potential to
generate attractive returns , as well as representing an opportunity for
institutional investors to mitigate carbon-related risks embedded in their
portfolio. The business case to invest in a transition to a low-carbon
economy is becoming extremely compelling, says David Blood, managing
partner of Generation Investment Management. And thats whats going
to drive change.

Furthermore, substantial financing is required as the world economy

transitions towards a low-carbon future, presenting opportunities for
investors to mitigate their risks, decarbonise their portfolios and diversify
their returns. These opportunities include areas such as renewable energy
and energy efficiency. In the current low interest rate environment,
investments in renewable energy infrastructure are an attractive
investment proposition with stable distributions for institutional
investors, says Tobias Reichmuth, CEO and co-founder of SUSI Partners, a Zurich-
based company specialising in investing in sustainable infrastructure.

Indeed, the IPCC estimates that additional investment of between

US$190bn and US$900bn is required annually in the energy sector alone
if the rise in average global temperatures is to be capped at 2C .15 Based
on International Energy Agency (IEA) data, Mercer, a consulting firm, estimates that
additional cumulative investment in efficiency improvements, renewable energy,
biofuels and nuclear and carbon capture and storage (CCS) could expand in the
range of US$3trn to US$5trn by 2030.16

A zero carbon world is possibleextensive technical reports

demonstrate massive global scale up of renewables can
happen
Mark Fischetti 15, senior editor at Scientific American, overseeing coverage of
energy and the environment, 139 Countries Could Get All of their Power from
Renewable Sources, November 19, 2015,
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/139-countries-could-get-all-of-their-power-
from-renewable-sources1/
Mark Jacobson and Mark Delucchi have done it again. This time theyve spelled out how
139 countries can each generate all the energy needed for homes, businesses,
industry, transportation, agricultureeverythingfrom wind, solar and water power
technologies, by 2050. Their national blueprints, released Nov. 18, follow similar plans they have
published in the past few years to run each of the 50 U.S. states on renewables, as well as the entire world. (Have a
 The plans, which list exact
look for yourself, at your country, using the interactive map below.)
numbers of wind turbines, solar farms, hydroelectric dams and such, have
been heralded as transformational, and criticized as starry eyed or even nutty. Determined,
Jacobson will take his case to leaders of the 195 nations that will meet at the U.N. climate talks, known as COP 21,
which begin in Paris on Nov. 29. His point to them: Although international agreements to reduce carbon dioxide
emissions are worthwhile, they would not even be needed if countries switched wholesale to renewable energy,
ending the combustion of coal, natural gas and oil that creates the vast majority of those emissions, and without
Jacobson, a civil and
any nuclear power. The people there are just not aware of whats possible, says
environmental engineering professor at Stanford University and director of
the schools Atmosphere and Energy Program. He is already scheduled to speak twice at
the meeting, and will spend the rest of his time trying to talk one on one with national leaders and their aids. Click
here for a larger version of the visualiztion Jacobson thinks the 139 national plans will get traction
not only because they offer a path to lower emissions, but because in total,
they would create 24 million construction jobs and 26.5 million operational jobs, all spanning 35 years,
offsetting 28.4 million jobs lost in the fossil fuel industries. That would leave a net gain of about 22
million jobs. Going 100 percent renewable would also prevent 3.3 to 4.6
million premature deaths a year through 2050 that would have happened because of air
pollution from those fossil fuels. These numbers are what gets peoples attention, Jacobson says. Jacobson and
Delucchi, a research scientist at the U niversity of C alifornia at Davis, presented their 100
percent renewables construct to the public for the first time in a 2009 feature article in Scientific American. It
explained how the world could derive all of its power, including for
transportation, from 1.7 billion rooftop solar systems, 40,000 photovoltaic power plants, 3.8 million wind
turbines, 900 hydroelectric plants, 490,000 tidal turbines and so on. The whole idea originated with the Scientific
American article, Jacobson says. Now there are five or six nonprofit organizations that use 100 percent in their
Walmart, Google and Starbucks have said they want to go to 100
name.
percent renewable energy. So have a number of cities. The goal of our plans for U.S.
states and the 139 countries is to have places set their own 100 percent goals. Some have. AS a first step, New
York and California have both passed legislation calling for about 60 percent of their power to come from a
Clinton has endorsed a 100 percent goal for the
renewable energy mix by 2030. Hillary
U.S. by 2050. Energy demand across the 139 nations by 2050 would be met with a
broad set of wind, water and solar technologies : 19.4 percent onshore wind farms, 12.9
percent offshore wind farms, 42.2 percent utility-scale photovoltaic arrays, 5.6 percent rooftop solar panels, 6.0
percent commercial rooftop solar panels, 7.7 percent concentrated solar power arrays, 4.8 percent hydroelectricity,
and 1.47 percent geothermal, wave and tidal power. Jacobson, Delucchi and more than a
dozen colleagues from around the world have posted the details, country
by country, in a self-published paper they released online. Hoping to make it available for
COP, they have yet to publish it in a journal, but they intend to, Jacobson says. The previous plans have all been
The big knock against renewables such as wind and solar is that they are
published.
intermittent; the wind doesn't always blow and the sun doesn't always shine. That means large amounts of
energy storage are needed to save up excess power generated when these technologies are going full bore, which
Storage adds substantial cost and complexity to a renewable
can then be tapped when they are low.
But Jacobson has an answer. By using a smart mix of technologies
energy system.
that complement one another during different parts of the day and different weather
conditions, storage can be kept to a minimum. He, Delucchi and two colleagues explain how this can work across
the U.S. in a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that will be published Nov. 23. The
engineering detail in all these papers and plans is staggering. The
document released for the 139 countries provides an itemized mix of technologies
and costs for every nation, as well as how much land and rooftop area would be required. Since
2009 the two researchers, working with many others, have honed the
numbers again and again. Now what is needed most, Jacobson says, is exposure. We have talked to
hundreds of expert and politicians. Now we need to reach hundreds of millions of people, in hopes that they will
see the possibilities and begin to call for them.

Warming is real and has catastrophic consequences, based on

the consensus of studies---skeptics are wrong, since the upper
estimates of climate impacts are most likely to occur
Bob Ward 15, policy and communications director at the Grantham Research
Institute on Climate Change and the Environment and the ESRC Centre for Climate
Change Economics and Policy at the London School of Economics and Political
Science, Your complete guide to false propaganda masquerading as serious
commentary about climate change, 12/3/15,
http://www.lse.ac.uk/GranthamInstitute/news/your-complete-guide-to-false-
propaganda-masquerading-as-serious-commentary-about-climate-change/
The article by Matt Ridley and Benny Peiser of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, which lobbies against
policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, recycles a series of sceptic talking points , to
create a false impression of the science and economics of climate change.
They start with the standard ploy of misrepresenting the scientific evidence for climate change.

First they claim that global mean surface temperature has gone up only very slowly. They
add that the world is barely half a degree Celsius (0.9 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than it was about 25 years
In fact, the World Meteorological Organisation has warned that the last five years are the
ago.
warmest such period since instrumental records began in the 19th century , and that
the average global temperature for 2015 is likely to be about 1 centigrade degree
higher than the average during the pre-industrial era, before the burning of fossil fuels started
to dump large volumes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

Viscount Ridley and Dr Peiser downplay the significance of this rise in global mean surface
the
temperature, which may seem small compared to local daily fluctuations. But it should be remembered that
global mean surface temperature during the last Ice Age was only about 5 centigrade
degrees lower than today. During the last major interglacial period (PDF), which ended about 116,000
years ago, global mean surface temperature was no more than 2 centigrade degrees higher than today, but the
polar land-based ice sheets on West Antarctica and Greenland were much smaller, and global mean sea level was
This shows the profound consequences of what
between 5 and 10 metres higher than today.
may appear to be relatively small changes in global mean surface temperature .
Viscount Ridley and Dr Peiser next seek to obscure the impacts of the rise in global mean surface temperature that
has already occurred, falsely claiming that on a global scale, as scientists keep confirming, there has been no
increase in frequency or intensity of storms, floods or droughts. This is blatantly misleading.

The most authoritative assessment of the scientific evidence, published by the

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2013, concluded (PDF): Changes in many extreme
weather and climate events have been observed since about 1950 , including a likely rise
in the frequency of heatwaves in large parts of Europe, Asia and Australia, and an increase in the number or
intensity of heavy precipitation events in North America and Europe.

the
Viscount Ridley and Dr Peiser try to hide the true picture on floods and droughts by ignoring the fact that
impact of climate change varies between regions , which means some parts of the world are
becoming drier while other parts are becoming wetter.

Hence the IPCC noted that (PDF) although the most evident flood trends appear to be in northern high latitudes,
where observed warming trends have been largest, in some regions no evidence of a trend in extreme flooding has
been found.
And on drought, the IPCC found that it is likely that the frequency and intensity of drought has increased in the
Mediterranean and West Africa and decreased in central North America and north-west Australia since 1950.

Similarly the data for storms across the world also presents a complex picture, but the IPCC noted that it is virtually
certain there has been an increase in the frequency and intensity of the strongest tropical cyclones since the
1970s in the North Atlantic basin.

the attempt by Viscount Ridley and Dr Peiser to focus only on global trends is really an
Hence,
obfuscation of the evidence of regional changes.
They also turn a blind eye to the growing number of studies that have analysed how
climate change has increased the probability of different types of extreme weather .
Recent research by scientists around the world found that climate change influenced the probability of the
frequency and severity of many extreme weather events in 2014.

While it is true that the world is becoming better at reducing the death toll from natural disasters, such as extreme
weather events, Viscount Ridley and Dr Peiser fail to acknowledge that the lives and livelihoods of millions of
people are being exposed to greater risks because of climate change , as the Global
Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction (PDF) pointed out earlier this year.

The authors next move on to the hoary old chestnut of polar sea ice. They state that Arctic sea ice has recently
sea ice extent in the
melted more in summer than it used to in the 1980s. Again, this is misleading. In fact,
Arctic has been reducing through all seasons. This year, the peak winter extent was
the lowest on record, and the summer extent has been decreasing at a rate of about
13 per cent per decade, according to the United States National Snow and Ice Data Center. On current
trends, the Arctic could become entirely ice free during summer months over the course of
this century.

Viscount Ridley and Dr Peiser try to muddy the water further by referring to Antarctic sea ice, which has been
increasing in extent. The reasons for this are unclear, although scientists are confident that it does not disprove
global warming.

They also refer to one recent study that suggests the land-based ice in East Antarctica and the interior of West
Antarctica is increasing, although other scientists have questioned its significance compared with many other
studies that have found strong overall decreases. In addition, recent research has suggested that parts of the
West Antarctic ice sheet may already have become destabilised .
Next Viscount Ridley and Dr Peiser claim that sea level rise continues its centuries-long slow rise about a foot a
century- with no sign of recent acceleration. This is simply wrong. The IPCC concluded (PDF): The
rate of sea
level rise since the mid-19th century has been larger than the mean rate during the
previous two millennia. Research published in May 2015 found evidence for a further
acceleration in global sea level rise during the last decade . The IPCCs projections indicate
that if atmospheric levels of greenhouse gases continue to rise at a steep rate, global sea level could be
between about 1.5 and 2.5 feet higher by the end of this century compared with the start,
with further big rises over the decades and centuries to follow.

the authors move on to a

Not content with their false portrayal of the scientific evidence,
misrepresentation of the IPCCs report itself, suggesting it projected a potential rise
in global mean surface temperature by the end of this century of 1.5 to 4.5 centigrade degrees. This
is not true. The IPCC report (PDF) provides four main scenarios. One shows that global
mean surface temperature might be 0.3 to 1.7 centigrade degrees higher by the end of this
century compared with the end of the 20th century, if annual emissions of greenhouse gases are
reduced significantly. However, if annual emissions rise steeply during this century, global
mean surface temperature could be 2.6 to 4.8 centigrade degrees higher after 100 years.
Next, the authors draw on the controversial work of Professor Richard Tol, who, like Viscount Ridley, is a member of
the 26-man (and all the members are male) Academic Advisory Council of the Global Warming Policy Foundation.
This was a brave move as the last time Viscount Ridley cited Professor Tols work, it turned out to
contain serious errors that nullified his conclusions.
In this case, Viscount Ridley and Dr Peiser refer to a working paper (PDF) by Professor Tol, which also required
correction earlier this year after I pointed out that the first published version contained errors.

But even the corrected version contains serious mistakes. For instance, it claims that among 11 previous estimates
of the worldwide economic impacts of global warming by 2.5 centigrade degrees, three found net benefits. Yet the
of the 26 estimates of the economic impact of
data table shows just one positive value. In fact,
warming collected by Professor Tol, only two are positive, and in both cases omitted
important consequences, such as changes in extreme weather.
Viscount Ridley and Dr Peiser quote from Professor Tols paper about the likely economic impacts that might be
expected during this century: The welfare change caused by climate change is equivalent to the welfare change
caused by an income change of a few percent. However, Professor Tols confident conclusion is undermined by the
shortcomings and limitations highlighted by the IPCC in its assessment of the economic impacts (PDF):

Global economic impacts from climate change are difficult to estimate. Economic impact estimates completed over
the past 20 years vary in their coverage of subsets of economic sectors and depend on a large number of
assumptions, many of which are disputable, and many estimates do not account for catastrophic changes, tipping
points, and many other factors. With these recognized limitations, the incomplete estimates of global annual
economic losses for additional temperature increases of ~2C are between 0.2 and 2.0% of income (1 standard
deviation around the mean) (medium evidence, medium agreement). Losses are more likely than not to be greater,
rather than smaller, than this range (limited evidence, high agreement). Additionally, there are large differences
between and within countries. Losses accelerate with greater warming (limited evidence, high agreement), but few
quantitative estimates have been completed for additional warming around 3C or above.

Indeed, the integrated assessment models used to estimate the economic impacts of climate change are
considered by many researchers to be extremely inadequate, with Professor Robert Pindyck declaring in a recent
paper: These models have crucial flaws that make them close to useless as tools for policy analysis.

As a result of these crucial flaws, these estimates of the economic impacts represent a stark contrast to the
scientific evidence of the risks from climate change. For instance, the IPCC report (PDF) concluded:
Without additional mitigation efforts beyond those in place today, and even with adaptation,
warming by the end of the 21st century will lead to high to very high risk of severe,
widespread and irreversible impacts globally (high confidence). In most scenarios without
additional mitigation efforts (those with 2100 atmospheric concentrations >1000 ppm CO2-eq),
warming is more likely than not to exceed 4C above pre-industrial levels by 2100 .
The risks associated with temperatures at or above 4C include substantial species
extinction, global and regional food insecurity, consequential constraints on common
human activities and limited potential for adaptation in some cases (high confidence). Some risks of
climate change, such as risks to unique and threatened systems and risks associated with extreme weather events,
are moderate to high at temperatures 1C to 2C above pre-industrial levels.

Viscount Ridley and Dr Peiser go on to assert that upper end of the IPCCs estimates of the value of climate
sensitivity, defined as the warming resulting from a doubling of the atmospheric concentration of carbon
dioxide, is looking even more implausible in theory and practice.

However, the IPCC report (PDF) noted that the values of equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS), the long-
term warming due to a doubling of carbon dioxide concentration, and the transient climate response (TCR), the
short-term warming resulting from a doubling of carbon dioxide concentration over 70 years, can be
estimated using a number of methods , including by being diagnosed from climate models,
constrained by analysis of feedbacks in climate models, patterns of mean climate and variability in models
compared to observations, temperature fluctuations as reconstructed from paleoclimate archives, observed and
modelled short-term perturbations of the energy balance like those caused by volcanic eruptions, and the observed
Based on an assessment of studies
surface and ocean temperature trends since pre-industrial times.
using the full range of methods, the IPCC concluded that there is a 66 per cent probability
that the value of the TCR lies in the range 1C to 2.5C , and a 66 per cent
probability that the ECS value lies between 1.5C and 4.5C.
Butthe authors justify their contrary conclusion by cherry-picking recent studies that
support their assertion that climate sensitivity must have a low value . They refer to a
2013 study by Alexander Otto and co-authors, but this was taken into account by the IPCC report. They also refer to
they ignore all of the other recent
a more recent study by Bjorn Stevens published this year. But
papers on climate sensitivity, such as studies by Miguel Martinez-Boti and co-authors, Steven Sherwood
and co-authors, and Thomas Frlicher and co-authors. The final report (PDF) of an international workshop for
there is no consensus that the
researchers held in Ringberg, Germany, earlier this year revealed that
value climate sensitivity lies towards the bottom of the IPCC range. So the authors
assertion about climate sensitivity is simply not supported by a consideration of the full range of recent research.

Warming is an existential risk to the whole planetadaptation

alone fails
Naomi Klein 14, award-winning journalist, syndicated columnist, former Miliband
Fellow at the London School of Economics, member of the board of directors of
350.org, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate, pp. 12-14
But the bigger problemand the reason Copenhagen caused such great despairis that because governments did
not agree to binding targets, they are free to pretty much ignore their commitments. Which is precisely what is
happening. Indeed, emissions are rising so rapidly that unless something radical changes within our economic
structure, 2 degrees now looks like a utopian dream. And its not just environmentalists who are
raising the alarm. The World Bank also warned when it released its report that were on track
to a 4-C warmer world [by centurys end] marked by extreme heat waves, declining
global food stocks, loss of ecosystems and biodiversity, and life-threatening sea
level rise. And the report cautioned that, there is also no certainty that adaptation to a 4-C
world is possible. Kevin Anderson, former director (now deputy director) of the Tyndall
Centre for Climate Change, which has quickly established itself as one of the U.Ks premier
climate research institutions, is even blunter; he says 4 degrees Celsius warming7.2
degrees Fahrenheitis incompatible with an organized, equitable, and civilized global
community. We dont know exactly what a 4 degree Celsius world would look like, but even the best-case
scenario is likely to be calamitous. Four degrees of warming could raise global sea levels by 1
or possibly even 2 meters by 2100 (and would lock in at least a few additional meters over future
centuries). This would drown some island nations such as the Maldives and Tuvalu, and inundate many coastal
areas from Ecuador and Brazil to the Netherlands to much of California and the northeastern United States as well
as huge swaths of South and Southeast Asia. Major cities likely in jeopardy include Boston, New York, greater Los
Angeles, Vancouver, London, Mumbai, Hong Kong, and Shanghai. Meanwhile, brutal heat waves that can
kill tens of thousands of people, even in wealthy countries, would become entirely
unremarkable summer events on every continent but Antarctica . The heat would
also cause staple crops to suffer dramatic yield losses across the globe (it is possible that
Indian wheat and U.S. could plummet by as much as 60 percent), this at a time when demand will be
surging due to population growth and a growing demand for meat . And since crops will be
facing not just heat stress but also extreme events such as wide-ranging droughts, flooding, or pest outbreaks, the
losses could easily turn out to be more severe than the models have predicted .
When you add ruinous hurricanes, raging wildfires, fisheries collapse s, widespread
disruptions to water supplies, extinctions, and globe-trotting diseases to the mix, it
indeed becomes difficult to imagine that a peaceful, ordered society could be
sustained (that is, where such a thing exists in the first place). And keep in mind that these are the
optimistic scenarios in which warming is more or less stabilized at 4 degrees Celsius
and does not trigger tipping points beyond which runaway warming would occur.
Based on the latest modeling, it is becoming safer to assume that 4 degrees could bring about a
number of extremely dangerous feedback loopsan Arctic that is regularly ice-free in September,
for instance, or, according to one recent study, global vegetation that is too saturated to act as a
reliable sink, leading to more carbon being emitted rather than stored. Once this happens, any
hope of predicting impacts pretty much goes out the window . And this process may be
starting sooner than anyone predicted. In May 2014, NASA and the University of California, Irvine
scientists revealed that glacier melt in a section of West Antarctica roughly the size of France now
appears unstoppable. This likely spells down for the entire West Antarctic ice sheet, which according to
lead study author Eric Rignot comes with a sea level rise between three and five metres. Such an event will
The disintegration, however, could unfold over
displace millions of people worldwide.
centuries and there is still time for emission reductions to slow down the process
and prevent the worst. Much more frightening than any of this is the fact that plenty of
mainstream analysts think that on our current emissions trajectory, we are headed for even
more than 4 degrees of warming. In 2011, the usually staid International Energy
Agency (IEA) issued a report predicting that we are actually on track for 6 degrees
Celsius10.8 degrees Fahrenheitof warming. And as the IEAs chief economist put it: Everybody, even the
school children, knows that this will have catastrophic implications for all of us. (The evidence
indicates that 6 degrees of warming is likely to set in motion several major tipping
pointsnot only slower ones such as the aforementioned breakdown of the West Antarctic ice sheet, but possibly
more abrupt ones, like massive releases of methane from Arctic permafrost.) The accounting
giant PricewaterhouseCoopers as also published a report warning businesses that we are headed for 4-C , or even
6-C of warming. These various projections are the equivalent of every alarm in your house going off
simultaneously. And then every alarm on your street going off as well, one by one by one. They mean, quite simply,
that climate change has become an existential crisis for the human species .
The only historical precedent for a crisis of this depth and scale was the Cold War fear that we were headed toward
nuclear holocaust, which would have made much of the planet uninhabitable. But that was (and remains) a threat;
The vast majority of nuclear scientists
a slim possibility, should geopolitics spiral out of control.
never told us that we were almost certainly going to put our civilization in peril if we
kept going about our daily lives as usual, doing exactly what we were already going,
which is what climate scientists have been telling us for years . As the Ohio State University
climatologist Lonnie G. Thompson, a world-renowned specialist on glacier melt, explained in 2010,
Climatologists, like other scientists, tend to be a stolid group. We are not given to
theatrical rantings about falling skies. Most of us are far more comfortable in our laboratories or gathering
data in the field than we are giving interviews to journalists or speaking before Congressional committees. When
then are climatologists speaking out about the dangers of global warming? The answer
is that virtually all of us are now convinced that global warming poses a clear and
present danger to civilization.
Climate change is a risk multiplier for global warfare defense
planners are already preparing for climate conflicts
Paul Gilding 12, corporate advisor on climate change and sustainability, core
faculty at Cambridge Universitys Program for Sustainability Leadership,
Spring/Summer 2012, The Mother of All Conflicts, Brown Journal of World Affairs,
Vol. XVIII, Issue II, https://www.brown.edu/initiatives/journal-world-
affairs/sites/brown.edu.initiatives.journal-world-
affairs/files/private/articles/18.2_Gilding.pdf
Watching the public debate and media coverage regarding climate change, one could get the impression that the
world is not taking the climate threat seriouslythat the issue is stuck in a quagmire of uncertainty, political
posturing, and competing national interests. But away from the public eye, professionals within the military and the
security establishment who objectively analyze risks and threats are rapidly sharpening their focus. they recognize
climate changealong with other ecological and resource constraintscould be the
that

defining threat to global stability in the twenty-1st century, and they see
significant implications for the role and focus of security professionals.

The level of engagement is becoming widespread. In April 2010, 33 retired generals and admirals wrote to the
United States Senate majority and minority leaders, stating that climate change is threatening Americas security
[...] it exacerbates existing problems by decreasing stability, increasing conflict, and incubating the socioeconomic
conditions that foster terrorist recruitment. the State Department, the National Intelligence Council, and the CIA all
agree, and all are planning for future climate-based threats.1

The analysis by defense experts recognizes the very long-term nature of a changing climate, and the risk that
self-reinforcing climate feedbacks could push the issue beyond humanitys
capacity to control it. This was strongly articulated in a comprehensive review of the subject by the
Royal United Services Institute, a respected British defense think tank, which concluded: In the next decades,
climate change will drive as significant a change in the strategic security environment as the end of the Cold War.
If uncontrolled, climate change will have security implications of similar
magnitude to the World Wars , but which will last for centuries .2
Given the scale of such a threat, it is encouraging that our defense experts are paying attention. Even a cursory
it will have far-reaching impacts on the
examination of the science suggests that
geopolitics and security of the world, inevitably involving the military,
which will be forced to respond to conflicts triggered by food and refugee
crises and managing the consequences of failed states .
THIS IS NOT JUST ONE MORE SECURITY THREATIT COULD BE THE DEFINING SECURITY

THREAT OF THE CENTURY

Is the climate threat that serious? Statements that argue climate change will have security implications of similar
magnitude to the World Wars that will last for centuries make it sound less like a threat to national security and
more like a threat to the stability of civilization.

To determine the severity of the climate threat and to frame the relationship between climate change and conflict, it
is useful to return to the roots of conflict itself. Conflict has been and always will be a part of human society and
plays an important role in the geopolitical landscape of the world. the inevitability of conflict suggests that the goal
should be to manage rather than eliminate it. To accomplish this goal, there are two options: reduce the causes or
manage the consequences. The latter option is well understood and the markers of success or failure are clearer,
partly because it is easier to identify actions and measure progress. For example, land mines can be dealt with by
treaties and the impact of these treaties measured by the extent of the weapons use. Similarly, nuclear
nonproliferation can be judged by the number of nations with weapons. Dealing with such issues in this way is a
process with which we are familiar; likewise with intervening early in conflicts to prevent escalation by actions such
as deploying peacekeeping forces.
The focus on reducing the causes of conflict, however, is both less developed and more complicated, partly because
causes are generally numerous and interrelated. Since conflict is inevitable, a further complicating issue is that
what we think of as causes are more often actually multipliers they
create the conditions in which conflict caused by other issues can be
triggered or accelerated . A good case in point was extreme weather and
its resulting impacts during 2010 and 2011, with droughts in Russia and floods
in Canada causing a global spike in food prices that saw wheat prices double in seven months.
Noting that such food price increases were widely seen as a triggerthough not a causeof the Arab Spring, Sarah
Johnstone and Je8rey Mazo, writing in the journal Survival, argued that this was a textbook example of what
analysts mean when they talk of complex causality and the role of climate change as a threat multiplier.3 this
complexity makes issues like climate change fiendishly messy and all the more diffcult
to manage . Perhaps as a result, while policy makers analyze and plan for climate change as a security threat,
they rarely advocate action to reduce the threatat least not with the same strength of commitment as with other
security questions, such as terrorism or rogue-state nuclear programs.

It is in this context that we will face a century where these more diffuse and indirect causesnot just climate
change, but poverty, food and resource constraint, and refugee flowscould well be the major global drivers of
conflict. This view, particularly with regard to climate change, is now widely held by an increasing number of senior
military officers and foreign policy experts around the world. For example, Rear Admiral Neil Morisetti, the United
Kingdoms Climate Security Envoy, said, the impact of climate change is likely to be most severe in areas where it
coincides with other stresses, such as poverty, demographic growth, and resource shortages: areas through which
much of the worlds trade already passes. We are also in agreement that climate change will accelerate global
Concern about the climate
instability and that it is likely to shape our future missions and tasks.4

threat is widespread internationally , as Morisetti also notes: When I talk to

colleagues from Africa and Southeast Asia it is apparent that they are
already taking into account the consequences of climate change when
determining their priorities.5
While it is inherently hard to forecast the precise local consequences of climate change, the scenarios outlined
above illustrate why defense planners and experts are paying more attention to the issues. There is an emerging
recognition that climate change is one in a series of resource constraints that are likely to intersect, resulting in
conflict and tension. For example, food supply is threatened by a changing climate, as well as underlying threats to
supply such as degraded soils, depleted aquifers, and rapidly increasing demand from the developing world, all of
which compound the problem. The interrelationships between climate and other resource constraints are widely
recognized. Retired U.S. Marine Corps general Anthony Zinni, former commander of U.S. Central Command,
participated in a high-level Military Advisory Board review on the subject, which concluded that climate change
would act as a threat multiplier by exacerbating conflict over resourcesespecially in light of declining food
production, border and mass migration tensions, and other factorsthereby increasing political instability and
creating failed states.6

The findings of this report agree with those of the con6dential assessment of the security implications of climate
change made by the National Intelligence Council (NIC). Thomas Fingar, the former chairman of the NIC, which
coordinates the United States 16 intelligence agencies told Congress that climate change, if left unchecked, has
wide-ranging implications for national security because it will aggravate existing problems, especially in already
vulnerable areas such as Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East.7 According to an NIC briefing document, by
placing added stress on resources, climate change will exacerbate internal state pressures, and generate
interstate friction through competition for resources or disagreement over responses and responsibility for
migration.8

While conflict has many causes, the concern of defense experts is that climate change and other resource
constraints, such as food supply, will tip the balance, thereby increasing conflict and ultimately causing the collapse
of states. In 2010, the Pentagons Quadrennial Defense Review acknowledged that climate change would act as an
accelerant of instability or conflict, placing a burden to respond on civilian institutions and militaries around the
world.9 Another study examining the correlation between temperatures and civil war in Sub-Saharan Africa in
recent decades concluded that civil wars in the region are likely to increase by th0 percent by 2030.10 that level of
conflict likely means millions of deaths and an international impact. A more complete and more disturbing picture is
provided in Gwynne Dyers book Climate Wars. 11 Dyer, a military and international affairs
journalist with a solid understanding of climate change science, portrays
the collapse of the E uropean U nion in the 2030s. In his scenario, northern African refugees overrun
southern Europe, and southern Europeans flee to the northern states to escape an expanding Sahara. Dyer

sees potential for nuclear conflict between India and Pakistan over water
resources and a completely militarized U nited S tates Mexico border as the
United States seeks to keep out massive waves of immigrants.
In light of these and many other studies with thorough analysis by credible global experts in climate science, food
supply, resource constraint, and economics, it is not hard to conceive of a serious, collapse-inducing global crisis.12

Possible consequences include:

- Global famine with hundreds of millions facing starvation conditions and

associated security crises.

- A series of wars raging in the Middle East and elsewhere over water .

- Armed conflict between China, India, and Pakistan over millions of

refugees resulting from political breakdowns and food shortages.

- the drowning of people and nations in low-lying islands during storm surges.

- the global insurance industry going into insolvency in the face of a series
of climate disasters and the run-on effects in the banking industry of using
uninsured assets as debt collateral.
- the collapse of global share markets when the risks of all these scenarios are priced into share portfolios, including
what is referred to as the carbon bubblean inevitable collapse in the value of fossil fuel assets if the world acts to
slash carbon dioxide emissions.13

WE SHOULD ASSUME THE WORLD WILL NOT YET RESPOND TO THESE RISKSTHE SITUATION WILL DETERIORATE
CONSIDERABLY BEFORE STRONG ACTION IS TAKEN

Given the geopolitical and security implications of climate change, the worlds foreign policy, military, and security
establishments should be paying a great deal of attention to these issues as matters of some urgency. As suggested
by the assessments discussed earlier, many experts are already concluding that climate and resource issues pose
major risks. So is that enough? Isnt this just one more in a series of potential causes of conflict and threat
multipliers that needs attention? In short, no. Because of its complexity and capacity to exacerbate other risks,
climate change is likely to be the defining cause of conflict, security, and economic risk of the coming century. To
understand why, we will look at the context of the global response to the climate risk to date. this brings us back to
where we started: the nature of conflict, the trends that exacerbate it, and the poor record in e8ectively managing
such causes.

Paris failed to produce business certainty for investment

decisions required for transition to a sustainable global carbon
economy
Robert Falkner, Sept., 2016, London School of Economics and Political Science
Forthcoming in International Affairs, The Paris Agreement and the new logic of
international climate politics, 92(5), September 2016,
https://static1.squarespace.com/static/538a0f32e4b0e9ab915750a1/t/578695782e6
9cf3d5af71013/1468437881212/Falkner_2016_TheParisAgreement.pdf
Finally, given that the decarbonization of the global economy will be down to decisions by economic actors, the
Paris Agreement will ultimately be judged by the effect it has on global markets .
International regimes and governmental regulation can provide a supportive regulatory framework, but it is
companies that decide on the direction of technological innovation, R&D expenditure and investment flows. In this
context, an international treaty such as the Paris Agreement can hope to shape business decisions in three ways: it
can send a signal to markets about the international communitys long-term political objectives; it can put in place
governance mechanisms that create incentives for low-carbon business decisions; and it can encourage and
support voluntary efforts by private actors.

global business leaders had encouraged governments to create

With regard to signalling,

an ambitious climate agreement that would produce certainty for long-term investment

decisions . 48 By strengthening the temperature target and adopting carbon neutrality as the long-term goal,
theParis Agreement does indeed send a clear signal to global markets, marking out the
long-term direction of travel for the global economy. However, the lack of detail
on the time frame for and path way towards long-term carbon neutrality has
weakened the strength of the signal . Furthermore, the Paris Agreement put in place a
framework for creating governance mechanisms, but postponed the tricky task of agreeing
specific rules. The parties renewed international support for developing and expanding
carbon markets, endorsing the creation of a new type of carbon asset, so-called internationally
transferred mitigation outcomes. They also established an UNFCCC-governed mechanism that will support
international transfers of emission reductions, but without agreeing the specific rules and procedures that will
govern it; these will need to be agreed by future COPs. And finally, the Paris conference became a catalyst for the
creation of a wide range of voluntary initiatives that engage business actors and others in collaborative efforts to
Paris
reduce emissions, promote best-practice models and encourage technology transfer.49 In this way, the
accordcan become an orchestrator of climate action well beyond the realm of
traditional international governance, drawing on the governance capabilities of
other actors that the climate regime itself lacks .50
 1AC Solvency
Current SCC values underestimate risk and will wreck the
transition to a global low carbon economy by locking in too low
of a carbon price
Mark C. Trexler 8-9, 16, PhD from Berkeley in International Environmental Policy,
Lead Author for the IPCC, 30+ years of regulatory and energy policy experience,
8/9/2016, A Back Door National Price on Carbon?,
http://climatographer.com/2016/08/09/carbon-price/
Minnesota recently engaged in an administrative proceeding to update its externality values for power sector
should adopt
planning. The proceeding quickly turned into a contested decision-making as to whether the state
the federal Social Cost of Carbon (SCC), currently set at ~$41/ton CO2 (2015
dollars). Peabody Coal and others decided to use the proceeding to litigate the whole topic of climate
change, in addition to the specifics of the SCC.

The Administrative Law Judges decisionIn the Matter of the Further Investigation Into Environmental and
Socioeconomic Costs Under Minnesota Statutes is a detailed 150+ pages. The ALJ concluded that climate change
is real, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Changes work is a reasonable representation of the best available
science, and the federal SCC is the best available measure of the damages associated with CO2 emissions.

The idea that an ALJ would spend a year taking testimony on every key aspect of climate change and the SCC in
order to rule that climate change is indeed real seems a bit absurd; are ALJs in every state going to litigate climate
change? Yet the ruling does have potentially significant implications. Heres why:

The U.S. government inter-agency task force that came up with the
federal Social Cost of Carbon intended that the SCC be used for regulatory
rulemaking. A number of efforts are underway, however, to use the SCC in
other environmental and policy decision-making processes , from Minnesotas
externality values to the c ost- b enefit a nalysis underpinning federal coal
leasing (among others). New York just took a huge step towards deploying the
SCC more broadly, using it in establishing a minimum price for power from the
states nuclear plants. If the SCC continues to spread in this and other way, it could

quickly turn into a back-door national carbon price with BIG impacts.

Until now, the SCC had not been challenged in a courtroom . The Minnesota
ruling at least suggests the SCC might stand up to a more formal judicial
challenge .

The federal SCC value of $41/ton is intentionally risk-neutral . But its

strange to use a risk-neutral value to address a risk like climate change, and many
economists argue the number should be far higher. If $41/ton becomes the
go to number when the number should be much higher, it could
seriously impede the transition to a low-carbon economy .

At the end of the day there are real risks in basing climate policy on the kinds of

economic analysis and choices found in the SCC . You could win the battle and lose the
war , as Dietz et al. make clear in their April 2016 Nature Climate Change journal article Climate value at risk
of global financial assets. The authors use one of the models that underlies the federal SCC to evaluate the value
at risk from climate change for the worlds portfolio of investment assets. They conclude that a Business as Usual
(BAU) of 2.5oC of warming by 2100 would likely cost investors 1.77% of the value of their global assets.
Successfully reducing climate change to 2oC would reduce that cost to 1.18%.

Federal agencies should apply a higher carbon proxy price for

permitting decisions for private infrastructure development
that risk higher emissions and blow US reduction targets
catastrophic warming is inevitable without a proxy price
targeted to meet the 2 degree goal.
Alison Cassady 16, Director of Domestic Energy Policy, Center for American
Progress, Gqynne Taraska, Associate Director of Energy Policy, April 2016, Proxy
Carbon Pricing, Center for American Progress, https://cdn.americanprogress.org/wp-
content/uploads/2016/04/13143140/CarbonPricing.pdf
Since 2010, the U.S. executive branch has considered the social cost of carbon which refers to the amount of financial damage to
society caused by each ton of greenhouse gas emissionswhen evaluating the costs and benefits of potential regulations that affect
emissions. This activity falls under Executive Order 12866, signed by President Bill Clinton in 1993, which mandates agencies to
evaluate the costs and benefits of potential regulations. In recent years, the social cost of carbon has been considered in the
The figures for the
evaluation of rulemakings such as fuel economy standards and power plant regulations.29

social cost of carbon currently in use by the U.S. government range from
$11 to $105 per metric ton in 2015 depending on the discount rate and
the projected severity of climate effects and increase over time .30 A
logical next step would be for government officials to use the social cost
of carbon as a proxy price when evaluating the financial viability of
potential long term investments . The social cost of carbon has the
advantage of being already established as an interagency metric and
representing a range of values, which can be used as a stress test for
potential investments..

Alternatively , government agencies could tie the proxy price to the price
needed to drive a reduction in emissions of more than 80 percent from
2005 levels by 2050 the U.S. midcentury decarbonization goalor a
price that is consistent with the scenario of limiting warming to 2
degrees Celsius. The International Energy Agency, or IEA, estimates that applying a $140
carbon price economy wide by 2040 would be consistent with emissions
reductions compatible with the 2-degree Celsius goal .31 Government
officials could use this as the basis for a proxy price when reviewing
infrastructure projects. Using a proxy carbon price in energy infrastructure permitting decisions This section

focuses on federal permitting for energy infrastructure, the shape of which will
determine if the world is able to stave off the worst effects of climate
change . In 2012, the IEA examined cumulative carbon emissions from the global energy system and warned that the
worlds existing power plants, factories, and other infrastructure had
already locked in almost four-fifths of the global carbon budgetthe
amount of carbon pollution the world can emit before 2035 without
exceeding a 2-degree Celsius increase of warming and triggering
dangerous climate change.32 The U.S. government, in close coordination with the states,
plays a key role in permitting many types of long-lived energy-related
infrastructure, such as interstate and cross-boundary pipelines and
transmission lines , fossil fuel export facilities , and power plants . Numerous
federal and state agencies share permitting responsibilities, and the permitting process differs by agency and type of project.
Broadly speaking, however, two stages of the permitting process offer the potential for government agencies to use their discretion
to apply a proxy price to inform decision-making: during the environmental review phase and during the assessment of
nonenvironmental factors. Environmental review For major federal actions, the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA,
requires the relevant federal agency to assess a proposed projects potential environmental effects on the human environment and
examine alternatives to mitigate these effects.33 NEPA is an important tool for federal agencies to inform federal decision-makers of
the potential environmental consequences of a decision before that decision is made. To assess the long-term financial viability of an
infrastructure project, however, federal regulators need to do more than examine the direct and indirect greenhouse gas impact of a
proposed project; they also need to assess how the project would perform in a carbon-constrained world. NEPA focuses on direct
effects of the proposed project on the environment and indirect effects that are reasonably foreseeable.34 As a result, the NEPA
review process does not provide an obvious opportunity to evaluate the effects of a carbon price on the financial viability of a
project. One recent and high-profile environmental impact statement, however, offers a lens into how federal regulators could
incorporate a proxy price into the environmental assessment of certain projects.

Other countries model US changes in the SCCrates that put a

high value on global impacts are key to US climate cred and
global regulatory implementation
Rachel Cleetus 16, Ph.D., Senior Climate Economist, Union of Concerned
Scientists; with Frank J. Convery, Ph.D., Chief Economist, Environmental Defense Fund, Jayni Hein,
Policy Director, Institute for Policy Integrity, NYU School of Law, Peter H. Howard, Ph.D., Economic
Director, Institute for Policy Integrity, NYU School of Law, Benjamin Longstreth, Senior Attorney, Natural
Resources Defense Council, Nathaniel O. Keohane, Ph.D., Vice President, International Climate,
Environmental Defense Fund, Richard L. Revesz, Director, Institute for Policy Integrity, NYU School of
Law, Jason A. Schwartz, Legal Director, Institute for Policy Integrity, NYU School of Law,Thomas Sterner,
Ph.D., Senior Contributing Economist, Environmental Defense Fund, Gernot Wagner, Ph.D., Lead Senior
Economist, Environmental Defense Fund, Peter Zalzal, Senior Attorney and Director of Special Projects,
Environmental Defense Fund, Comments on Proposed Exception to the Colorado
Roadless Rule (RIN 0596AD26) and Supplemental Draft Environmental Impact
Statement (November 2015), Comments submitted by: Environmental Defense
Fund, Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University School of Law, Natural
Resources Defense Council, and Union of Concerned Scientists, January 15,
http://gwagner.com/wp-content/uploads/Joint-Comments-on-SCC-and-SCM-in-Forest-
Service-SDEIS.pdf
[Note this evidence is edited for language]
National and ForestOnly Perspectives Are
III. The Global Perspective Is Appropriate; the
Misleading and Irrational in the Context of Climate Change In weighing the costs and
benefits of the rule, the Forest Service explains that: If concerns are limited to potential GHG damages to
the U.S. population, the proposed action is acceptable (or neutral). If decisions account for . . . populations outside
statement suggests a
the U.S., . . . noaction might be the preferred alternative.63 This
misunderstanding of the application of the global Social Cost of Carbon and
Social Cost of Methane estimates to U.S. government decisionmaking . The global
estimates are not simply intended to internalize into U.S. decisionmaking
the climate effects that U.S. actions impose on nonU.S. populations;
rather, as explained in this section, the U.S. government has adopted global Social
Cost of Carbon and Social Cost of Methane estimates as part of a strategy to
motivate reciprocal actions by foreign countries that will directly benefit
U.S. populations. To avoid a global tragedy of the commons that could
irreparably damage all countries, including the United States, every nation should set policy
according to global Social Cost of Carbon and Social Cost of Methane values.64 Climate and
clean air are global common resources, meaning they are freely available to all countries, but any one countrys use
i.e., pollutionimposes harms on the polluting country as well as the rest of the world. Because carbon pollution
does not stay within geographic borders but rather mixes in the atmosphere and affects climate worldwide, each
ton of carbon emitted by the United States not only creates domestic harms, but also imposes large externalities on
the rest of the world. Conversely, each ton of carbon abated in another country benefits the United States along
with the rest of the world. If all countries set their carbon emission levels based on only domestic costs and
benefits, ignoring the large global externalities, the aggregate result would be substantially suboptimal climate
protections and significantly increased risks of severe harms to all nations, including the United States. Thus, basic
economic principles demonstrate that the United States stands to benefit greatly if all countries apply global Social
Cost of Carbon and Methane values in their regulatory decisions. Indeed, the United States stands to gain hundreds
A
of billions or even trillions of dollars in direct benefits from efficient foreign action on climate change.65
rational tactical option in the effort to secure that economically efficient
outcome is for the U nited S tates to continue using global S ocial C ost of C arbon
values itself. 66 The U nited S tates is engaged in a repeated strategic
and Methane

game of international negotiations and regulatory coordination, in which

several significant playersincluding the United States, England, Norway, and
France have already adopted a global framework.67 For example, Canada and
Mexico have explicitly borrowed the U.S. estimates of a global S ocial C ost of
C arbon to set their own fuel efficiency standards.68 For the U nited S tates to now depart from
this collaborative dynamic by reverting to a domesticonly SCC estimate could
undermine the countrys longterm interests in climate negotiations and
could jeopardize emissions reductions underway in other countries, which are
already benefiting the United States. Negotiation is key to the Presidents constitutional foreign affairs powers,
and the Supreme Court has recognized the special importance of our nation speaking with one voice.69 The
development and analysis of U.S. regulations are essential parts of the
dialogue between the U nited S tates and foreign countries about climate
change. Through the Interagency Working Group, the President has instructed all federal agencies to use a
global Social Cost of Carbon value as one important step in negotiations to encourage other countries to take
reciprocal actions that also account for global externalities. As the Interagency Working Group explained,
Emphasizing the need for a global solution to a global problem, the United States has been actively involved in
seeking international agreements to reduce emissions. . . . When these considerations are taken as a whole, the
interagency group concluded that a global measure of the benefits from reducing U.S. emissions is preferable.70 If
different agencies use different Social Cost of Carbon and Methane values in assessing and setting regulatory
The Presidents
policies, it would risk sending mixed signals to the international community.

constitutional powers to negotiate international agreements would be

seriously [hampered] impaired if federal agencies stop relying on a single,
harmonized, global Social Cost of Carbon value. Finally, global S ocial C ost of
C arbon and Methane values are in the national interest because harms experienced
by other countries could significantly affect the U nited S tates. Climate damages in
one country could generate large spillover effects to which the United States is especially vulnerable. As seen
historically, economic disruptions in one country can cause financial crises that reverberate globally at a breakneck
pace. Similarly, national security analysts increasingly emphasize that the geopolitical instability associated with
climatic disruptions abroad poses serious threats to the United States.71 A global framework properly recognizes
that climate change will threaten the United States with significant and shifting international spillover effects.
Moreover, because the current models do not account for interregional
spillover effects, the provisional and highly speculative range of
domesticonly benefits that the Interagency Working Group tentatively
approximated (i.e., 723% of the global value) is almost certainly an underestimate, as
the Working Group readily acknowledges.72 Basing nationalonly and forestonly perspectives
on this speculative, underestimated range and presenting such
calculations alongside and on equal footing with the global perspective is
deeply misleading. NEPA further supports a global perspective on costs and benefits of climate change.
In a provision on International and National Coordination of Efforts, NEPA states that all agencies of the Federal
Government shall . . . recognize the worldwide and longrange character of environmental problems.73 Using
global S ocial C ost of C arbon and Methane values to analyze and set policy is
consistent with these instructions. Furthermore, NEPA requires agencies to,
where consistent with the foreign policy of the U nited S tates, lend
appropriate support to initiatives, resolutions, and programs designed to maximize
international cooperation in anticipating and preventing a decline in the quality of mankinds world
environment.74 As explained above, using the global values supports the federal

governments strategy to encourage international cooperation on

climate change.

Adjusting climate risk to limit warming to 2 degrees is the only

way to take the tail risk into accountkey to avoid massive
asset loss
Simon Dietz 16, London School of Economics and Political Science, ESRC Centre
for Climate Change Economics and Policy and Grantham Research Institute on
Climate Change and the Environment, with Alex Bowen, Charlie Dixon & Philip
Gradwell, Climate value at risk of global financial assets, Nature Climate Change
6, 676679 (2016), https://webbrain.com/attach?brain=C00CB79D-B952-3F63-E801-
80048C72FBC2&attach=42131&type=1
[Numbers to words]
Investors and financial regulators are increasingly aware of climate-
change risks. So far, most of the attention has fallen on whether controls on carbon emissions will strand the
assets of fossil-fuel companies1,2 . However, it is no less important to ask , what might be the impact
of climate change itself on asset values? Here we show how a leading
integrated assessment model can be used to estimate the impact of
twenty-first-century climate change on the present market value of global
financial assets. We find that the expected climate value at risk (climate VaR)
of global financial assets today is 1.8% along a business-as-usual
emissions path. Taking a representative estimate of global financial
assets, this amounts to US$2.5 trillion. However, much of the risk is in the
tail . For example, the 99th percentile climate VaR is 16.9%, or US$24.2
[twenty four point two] trillion. These estimates would constitute a
substantial write-down in the fundamental value of financial assets.

Cutting emissions to limit warming to no more than 2 C reduces the

climate VaR by an expected 0.6 percentage points, and the 99th percentile
reduction is 7.7 percentage points. Including mitigation costs, the present
value of global financial assets is an expected 0.2% higher when warming
is limited to no more than 2 C, compared with business as usual. The 99th
percentile is 9.1% higher. Limiting warming to no more than 2 C makes
financial sense to risk-neutral investorsand even more so to the risk
averse.
2AC
Case Mitigation
 Trump
Trump wont give up US climate leadership or wreck Parishell
be advised to save US credwill walk back election rhetoric
Jean Chemnick 11-14-16, E&E News reporter, Diplomatic or deluded? Insiders
say Trump won't ditch deal,
http://www.eenews.net/climatewire/2016/11/14/stories/1060045685

President-elect Donald Trump has long insisted he would pull the U nited S tates out of the

Paris Agreement, but few climate experts meeting here seem willing to take him at
his word . Diplomats and environmental advocates assembled for the first U.N. talks since nearly 200

acknowledged that the bombastic

nations struck a landmark climate deal in December
Republican's victory last week injected substantial uncertainty into the
process. But as the dust settled, participants in briefing auditoriums and watering holes of
this ancient city offered each other hope that Trump might not walk back U.S.
climate participation after all. "We are not assuming that everything he
said in the campaign will be what he does as president, because he's
famous for changing his mind and reversing his position, sometimes in
the same talk show ," said Alden Meyer, climate strategy director for the
U nion of C oncerned S cientists. He pointed to Trump's walk-back of a statement made during the campaign
that women who have abortions deserve to be "punished." "Let's not assume he's going to act
on the kinds of statements he's made in the past," said Meyer. "Let's give him a chance
to evolve." A number of delegates over the weekend expressed similar hope for a change of heart from Trump.
That, though, seems at odds with the incoming president's repeated promises to "cancel" or at least "renegotiate"
the Paris deal that capped more than two decades of painstaking negotiations. Trump has called climate change a
"hoax" perpetrated by the Chinese to place the United States at a competitive disadvantage and has pledged to
withdraw all financial support for U.N. climate agencies and other climate change programs. A key transition aide
told E&E News that the Trump team is in fact looking for ways to withdraw from the accord once the administration
takes office (see related story). But participants in Marrakech note Trump has never
held elected office and argue he is likely to be swayed by advisers with a
more nuanced view of global policy. He'll be reluctant to harm U.S. clout
abroad , they say, as a withdrawal from Paris surely would. And they celebrated
last week's New York Times report that the real estate mogul and his children joined other business leaders in
signing an advertisement in that newspaper ahead of the 2009 U.N. climate summit in Copenhagen, Denmark,
urging President Obama to "strengthen and pass United States legislation, and lead the world by example." The
House had cleared a cap-and-trade bill ahead of the summit that the Senate was destined never to vote on. "We
need President Trump to be more like Trump the businessman and not like Trump the rabble-rousing Republican
candidate on the campaign trail," said Mohamed Adow, Christian Aid's international climate lead. He called it "very
new advisers to President-elect Trump,
encouraging" that Trump's children also signed. "As
it is good to know they, too, recognized the importance of strong action on
climate action in 2009," he said. 'Yes, the U.S. is going to show leadership'
Advocates here took it as a hopeful sign when Trump emerged from Thursday's meeting with Obama saying there
were some positive aspects of the president's Affordable Care Act, though a few acknowledged it was concerning
when he doubled down on his campaign promise to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. National delegations
were very reluctant to weigh in on the new leader of the world's most powerful nation. They spoke instead of the
"moral obligation" the United States still has to both limit its emissions and make good on the Obama team's
promises of climate aid including the $3 billion in funding for the United Nations' Green Climate Fund that the
Obama administration has had difficulty eking out of Congress and that is virtually assured now to fall by the
 Abdulla, chief negotiator for the Alliance of Small Island
wayside. But Amjad
States, said he expected Trump to do a "great job" delivering U.S.
commitments on climate change. "When it comes to developing countries,
yes, the U.S. is going to show the leadership in all the global issues
including climate change," said Abdulla, who represents a group that faces an existential threat from
rising sea levels and has sought both steep emissions reductions and financial assistance as a matter of survival.
Abdulla and others argued
"I'm sure they will do their fair share in the upcoming administration."
that Trump carried economically disadvantaged states on Election Day not
because he promised to dismantle environmental protections but because
he pledged to create economic opportunities. And he could spur economic growth more
effectively through infrastructure spending, clean energy incentives and foreign climate aid than by trying to
If concern for the U.S. economy didn't
resuscitate the U.S. coal industry, they argued.

motivate Trump to soften his climate views , zeal for its standing in the
world would, many predicted . Bucking international sentiment on climate
change could cost him in ways the candidate Trump might not have
realized. "He's had very little contact with world leaders," said Joe Ware, a
spokesman for Christian Aid. "He'll now be having weekly contact with world leaders
who will all be saying to him, 'Whatever you do, don't go and screw up our
planet, thanks very much.'" If he does, it won't help him win their
cooperation in other areas.
Case Econ DA
 2AC TL
Plan outweighs any short term slowdown its manageable a
real hard landing isnt
Jake Reynolds 15, Director, Sustainable Economy @ University of Cambridge
Institute for Sustainability Leadership, Unhedgeable risk How climate change
sentiment impacts investment, 2015,
http://www.cisl.cam.ac.uk/publications/publication-pdfs/unhedgeable-risk.pdf
Themacroeconomic analysis shows that the transition to a low-carbon
economy carries increased economic costs in the short term, but that
longer term discounted benefits make a transition more than worthwhile .
The sheer scale of structural change required for the global economy to
shift away from a future dominated by fossil fuels towards a low-carbon
economy requires tremendous investment in new capital infrastructure , in
r esearch and d evelopment, and in new business models. This transition period
lasting years will be costly to the global economy. However, the alternative may well be worse: results

from the macroeconomic analysis show that the No Mitigation scenario triggers a global

recession for three consecutive quarters , shrinking the global economy by as much as 0.1
per cent each quarter.

By comparison, the Two Degrees scenario grows at just 0.3 per cent per quarter, whereas the Baseline model offers
the fastest near-term growth, reaching 0.7 per cent per quarter. Over a longer time horizon (2015-
2050), however, the Two Degrees scenario is shown to outperform the Baseline
by 4.5 per cent with a discount rate of 3.5 per cent . While the degree of benefit varies
by portfolio type, all portfolios experienced short-term losses and long-term benefits in this scenario. Clearly, it is
only after the learning process, technological progress and construction of
new infrastructure systems are complete that the positive benefits of the
new low- carbon economy begin to accrue. Again, this process contrasts with the
No Mitigation scenario, where economic output never recovers , but is
supressed indefinitely below Baseline . mitigated.

Energy costs turn they are shooting up now because of a lack

of carbon price certaintylitigation raises prices now from bad
investments
Amy Myers Jaffe 9-13, 2016, Executive Director of energy and sustainability at
the University of California, Davis, A Price on Carbon May Be Coming Soon to the
U.S., By AMY MYERS JAFFE Updated Sept. 13, 2016 http://www.wsj.com/articles/a-
price-on-carbon-may-be-coming-soon-to-the-u-s-1473820117
For example, major U.S. utilities have to decide whether to shift into solar
energy or continue to put investment into their newer coal plants, including coal plants
with carbon capture and storage. Several major U.S. utilities have run afoul of such
decision making in recent years with significant consequences to both their
share prices and their customers . If these managements had had the
benefit of certainty about the price of carbon , the decision about such
capital investments and their payoffs would have been clearer. Long-term
cash flows would be more predictable, helping shareholders and boards alike to calculate
whether the firms could meet return expectations with one kind of fuel versus another. A settled pricing
of carbon externalities might also discourage the kind of lawsuits that have
dogged capital projects in the Southern U.S. and caused delays that are raising
costs to customers .

The plan is key to green growth --- that outweighs fossil fuel
losses
Rick McGahey 14, teaches economics and public policy at the Milano School of
International Affairs, Management and Urban Policy at the New School. He served as
executive director of the Congressional Joint Economic Committee and as assistant
secretary for policy at the Department of Labor in the Clinton administration, "A
carbon tax will create jobs for Americans", October 3,
www.cnn.com/2014/10/03/opinion/mcgahey-climate-change/

(CNN) -- Critics of climate action like to say that helping our environment
would hurt our economy . Climate-change denier Sen. Jim Inhofe has written that "manmade catastrophic global
warming was the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people" and that cap-and-trade legislation could cause the loss of
over 4 million jobs. Inhofe's views matter since he could become the new chairman of the Committee on Environment and Public

Works if Republicans win the Senate in the November elections. But three new studies show climate
action can improve the economy and create jobs . Though transitioning to
clean energy future will cause some disruption, unchecked environmental
damage would cause catastrophic economic loss. So how can climate
action help economy? Business leaders and economists said in a report
that new technologies can spur both economic growth and better climate
outcome. Finance experts at the International Monetary Fund -- hardly a
bunch of tree-huggers -- made a similar point. In their paper about carbon
pricing, they concluded that higher carbon prices can benefit individual
countries even if others don't match them. And economist Robert Pollin and his
colleagues have shown that for every $1 million of investment in clean energy,
the U.S. can create 16.7 jobs compared with only 5.3 jobs from fossil fuel
investments . Overall, green energy investments combined with carbon taxes
can create 2.7 million jobs in areas such as renewable energy, construction, manufacturing, transportation,

new technologies and services -- even taking into account the transitional job loss from
fossil fuel industries . We should pay attention to these ideas. American energy policy is backwards. Federal and
state governments give out over $20 billion in annual subsidies for fossil fuel exploration and production, which benefit highly
if the U.S. implements even a modest
profitable companies such as Exxon Mobil, Shell and BP. But
federal carbon tax, we could generate $170 billion by 2030 to create jobs
and build bridges, roads and schools, reduce budget deficits, and cut
taxes to spur private investment. Without carbon taxes, we treat our environment -- air, oceans and fresh
water -- as a garbage dump where we fill up excess carbon. But the garbage can is overflowing because carbon emitters don't pay
the full price for carbon emissions. Think of it this way: It's like a bad neighbor who dumps garbage in the neighbors' yards. That
person saves money, but everyone else pays to clean up the foul mess and the entire neighborhood suffers. Just like with trash,
carbon taxes must bear the full cost of their negative effects. The first dollar of any carbon tax must help communities and workers
in the transition to green economy. In fact, many fossil fuel job losses already have taken place. West Virginia coal mining
employment fell from 120,000 in 1950 to 25,000 by 2011. Carbon taxes are not the real threat to coal miners and their communities
-- greedy energy companies are. These companies make profit but leave fewer jobs and harm communities. Compensation to job
losers, paid from carbon tax revenues, can be modeled after federal programs such as the Trade Adjustment Assistance for
displaced trade workers or the Pentagon's program that helps communities that lose military bases. There are successful policies
that have reshaped market incentives to give clean energy and green jobs a fair chance. In 2011, Germany expanded wind turbines
and solar energy, aiming to replace all nuclear power. Thirty percent of the country's electricity is now derived from renewables.
Germany's massive investments are driving down wind turbine and solar technology prices, making them more cost-effective. Los
Angeles, urged by an alliance of environmentalists, unions and community organizations, is changing a basic city service -- the
commercial trash pickup -- to cut emissions from garbage trucks, increase recycling and encourage industries to use recycled
materials,to achieve a "zero waste" target by 2050. These new trash policies will also create better, safer and higher-paying jobs.

So the economic cost of moving to a clean energy economy is not

anywhere near what the fear-mongering of Inhofe and others would have
you believe . Instead, we can create jobs, help those who are in transition,
and save our precious common resource -- the planet where we all live. We
just have to use our brains. As one marcher at the recent People's Climate March aptly puts it in his protest sign: " Global
Warming and No Jobs -- Two Problems, One Solution." There is only
solution, and we must embrace it.
 Tail Risk Turns
Consumer households will bear the brunt of climate losses
within the next decademagnitude alone outweighs
Daniel Gros 16, Director of Economy and Finance @ Centre for European Policy
Studies, Dirk Schoenmaker, Feb 2016, Reports of the Advisory Scientific Committee
No 6 / February 2016 Too late, too sudden: Transition to a low-carbon economy and
systemic risk, By: ESRB Advisory Scientific Committee ESRB ASC Report No 6 /
February 2016 European Systemic Risk Board,
https://www.esrb.europa.eu/pub/pdf/asc/Reports_ASC_6_1602.pdf
Global warming greater than 2C would expose the global economy to
greater physical risks. Some negative physical effects of global warming (e.g. a greater
incidence of natural disasters) have already manifested themselves (Lloyds, 2014; IPCC, 2014). In the
absence of a decisive abatement of greenhouse gas emissions, global warming will likely exceed 2C. Extrapolating
from current policy and energy demand, the IEA predicts that average warming will exceed 2.6C by 2100 and
3.5C by 2200 (IEA, 2015).

Given the current stock

The severity of physical impacts will depend on the degree of global warming.
of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and current emissions pathways ,
IPCC (2014) estimates that physical effects will begin to manifest noticeably over

the next ten to fifteen years and increase thereafter. The v alue a t r isk varies
depending on the degree of warming. The Economist Intelligence Unit calculates the average (mean)
expected loss across scenarios as $4.2tn in financial assets. Under the
extreme scenario of 5-6C of global warming,8 $13.8tn of financial assets
would be destroyed (Economist Intelligence Unit, 2015).
The increase in natural disasters will likely affect the insurance industry in
particular. Losses from natural disasters have increased fourfold over the past thirty years (see Figure B4),
particularly uninsured losses. In the short term, insured losses pose challenges for the profitability and resilience of
and increasing share of uninsured losses
the insurance industry, while the costs of the large

will be borne by the larger economy . Disruptions due to natural disasters

may impact negatively the capital stock , productivity and output , as well
as public finances.

The insurance industry might also face losses due to liability risks . As the
physical implications of climate change materialise, some firms (e.g. in the carbon-intensive energy sector)
might face liability claims for their contribution to such change . The insurance
industry might be affected in their role as insurer of third-party liability claims (see PRA, 2015). In the medium- to
long-term, these losses both from natural disasters and from liability claims might shift even
more to the household and non-financial sectors as more risks become
uninsurable.
T restrictions
 2AC T Restriction Pauline
Government proxy pricing is a restriction on emissions
Sanford J. Lewis 16, environment and securities law attorney, former part time
instructor of Environmental Law in graduate programs at Tufts University and
U.C.L.A, former legal director for the National Toxics Campaign Fund, JD Michigan
Law, Re: Shareholder Proposal to Exxon Mobil Corporation Regarding stranded
assets due to climate change policy on behalf of New York State Common
Retirement Fund, Feb 22,
http://www.osc.state.ny.us/press/releases/feb16/ExxonMobilNYSCRF_2016.pdf
Exxon Mobils optimistic appraisal of the lack of effective government regulation to
implement the 2 degree scenario is also reflected in its process of setting a carbon price internally for purposes of
As stated in the Companys 2014 Report: We also address the
investment decisions.

potential for future climate-related controls, including the potential for restriction
on emissions , through the use of a proxy cost of carbon . The proxy cost
seeks to reflect all types of actions and policies that governments may take over the
Outlook period [through 2040] relating to the exploration, development, production,
transportation or use of carbon-based fuels. Our proxy cost, which in some areas may approach
$80/ton over the Outlook period, .isnot the same as a social cost of carbon, which we believe involves
countless more assumptions and subjective speculation on future climate impacts. It is simply our effort to quantify
what we believe government policies over the Outlook period could cost to our investment opportunities. 16

Counter-interpretation---Restrictions are limiting conditions

placed on an activity that make it more onerous
Alan Yanovich 11, Counsellor at the WTO Appellate Body Secretariat, 2011,
WTO Rules and the Energy Sector, in Regulation of Energy in International Trade
Law: WTO, NAFTA, and Energy Charter, p. 6-7

Article XI of the GATT 1994 provides that no prohibitions or restrictions , other

than duties, taxes or other charges, shall be applied by any WTO Member on the
importation of any product or on the exportation or sale for export of any product. Several WTO dispute
settlement panels have interpreted the term 'restriction' in a broad manner and have
emphasized that the obligation in this provision is not limited to absolute prohibitions or numerical quotas:

The question of whether [the] measure can appropriately be described as

a restriction on importation turns on the issue of whether Article XI can be considered to
cover situations where products are technically allowed into the market without
an express formal quantitative restriction , but are only allowed under
certain conditions which make the importation more onerous than if the
condition had not existed, thus generating a disincentive to import .

On a plain reading, it is clear that a 'restriction' need not be a blanket

prohibition or a precise numerical limit . Indeed, the term 'restriction' cannot
mean merely 'prohibitions' on importation, since Article XI: 1 expressly covers both 'prohibition or
 the expression 'limiting condition' used by the
restriction'. Furthermore, the Panel considers that
India - Quantitative Restrictions panel to define the term 'restriction' and which this Panel
endorses, is helpful in identifying the scope of the notion in the context of the facts

before it. That phrase suggests the need to identify not merely a condition

placed on importation, but a condition that is limiting , i.e. that has a

limiting effect. In the context of Article XI, that limiting effect must be on importation itself.23
K
 Reps Key
Apoc rhetoric good---the alternative is elitist and precludes collective
climate action
Ian Angus 13, editor of the online journal Climate & Capitalism, The Myth of
Environmental Catastrophism, Monthly Review, Sept,
http://monthlyreview.org/2013/09/01/myth-environmental-catastrophism/
Halfway through his essay, Yuen abruptly changes direction, leaving the practical argument behind and raising
his principled concern. He now argues that what he calls catastrophism leads people to
support reactionary policies and promotes the most authoritarian solutions at
the state level. Focusing attention on what he agrees is a cascading environmental disaster is dangerous
because it disables the left but benefits the right and capital. He says, Increased awareness of environmental
crisis will not likely translate into a more ecological lifestyle, let alone an activist orientation against the root causes
of environmental degradation. In fact, right-wing and nationalist environmental politics have much more to gain
from an embrace of catastrophism. Yuen says that many environmentalists, including scientists, reflexively
overlook class divisions, and so do not realize that some business and political elites feel that they can avoid the
worst consequences of the environmental crisis, and may even be able to benefit from it. Yuen apparently thinks
those elites are rightwhile the insurance industry is understandably worried about big claims, he says, the
opportunities for other sectors of capitalism are colossal in scope. He devotes much of the rest of his essay to
describing the efforts of pro-capitalist forces, conservative and liberal, to use concern about potential environmental
disasters to promote their own interests, ranging from emissions trading schemes to military expansion to
Malthusian attacks on the worlds poorest people. The solution offered by global elites to the catastrophe is a
further program of austerity, belt-tightening, and sacrifice, the brunt of which will be borne by the worlds poor.
Some of this is overstated. His claim that Malthusianism is at the core of most environmental discourse,
reflects either a very limited view of environmentalism or an excessively broad definition of Malthusianism. And he
seems to endorse David Nobles bizarre theory that public concern about global warming has been engineered by a
he is correct that the
corporate conspiracy to promote carbon trading schemes.21 Nevertheless
ruling class will do its best to profit from concern about climate change, while simultaneously
offloading the costs onto the worlds poorest people. The question is, who is he arguing
with? This book says it aims to spur debate among radicals, but none of
this is new or controversial for radicals. The insight that the interests of the ruling class are
usually opposed to the interests of the rest of us has been central to left-wing thought since before Marx was born.
Capitalists always try to turn crises to their advantage no matter who gets hurt, and they always try to offload the
costs of their crises onto the poor and oppressed. What needs to be proved is not that pro-capitalist forces are
trying to steer the environmental movement into profitable channels, and not that many sincere environmentalists
have backward ideas about the social and economic causes of ecological crises. Radicals who are active in green
movements know those things perfectly well. What needs to be proved is Yuens view that warning about
environmental disasters and campaigning to prevent them has damaging and rightward-leaning effects that are
so severe that radicals cannot overcome them. But no proof is offered. What is particularly disturbing about his
argument is that he devotes pages to describing the efforts of reactionaries to misdirect concern about climate
changeand none to the efforts of radical environmentalists to counter those forces. Earlier in his essay, he
mentioned that environmental and climate justice perspectives are steadily gaining traction in internal
environmental debates, but those thirteen words are all he has to say on the subject. He says nothing about the
historic 2010 Cochabamba Conference, where 30,000 environmental activists from 140 countries warned that if
greenhouse gas emissions are not stopped, the damages caused to our Mother Earth will be completely
irreversiblea statement Yuen would doubtless label catastrophist. Far from succumbing to apathy or
reactionary policies, the participants explicitly rejected market solutions, identified capitalism as the cause of the
crisis, and outlined a radical program to transform the global economy. He is equally silent about the campaign
against the fraudulent green economy plan adopted at last years Rio+20 conference. One of the principal
organizers of that opposition is La Via Campesina, the worlds largest organization of peasants and farmers, which
warns that the worlds governments are propagating the same capitalist model that caused climate chaos and
other deep social and environmental crises. His essay contains not a word about Idle No More, or Occupy, or the
Indigenous-led fight against Canadas tar sands, or the anti-fracking and anti-coal movements. By omitting them,
Yuen leaves the false impression that the climate movement is helpless to resist reactionary forces. Contrary to
Yuens title, the effort to build a movement to save the planet has not failed. Indeed, Catastrophism was published
just four months before the largest U.S. climate change demonstration ever! The question before radicals is not
what narrative strategy to adopt, but rather, how will we relate to the growing environmental movement? How
will we support its goals while strengthening the forces that see the need for more radical solutions? What Must Be
Done? Yuen opposes attempts to build a movement around rallies, marches, and other mass protests to get out
the truth and to demand action against environmental destruction. He says that strategy worked in the 1960s,
when Americans were well-off and nave, but cannot be replicated in todays culture of atomized cynicism. Like
many who know that decade only from history books or as distant memories, Yuen foreshortens the experience: he
knows about the mass protests and dissent late in the decade, but ignores the many years of educational work and
slow movement building in a deeply reactionary and racist time. It is not predetermined that the campaign against
climate change will take as long as those struggles, or take similar forms, but the real experience of the 1960s
should at least be a warning against premature declarations of failure. Yuen is much less explicit about what he
thinks would be an effective strategy, but he cites as positive examples the efforts of some to promote a bottom-
up and egalitarian transition by: ever-increasing numbers of people who are voluntarily engaging in intentional
communities, sustainability projects, permaculture and urban farming, communing and militant resistance to
consumerismwe must consider the alternative posed by the highly imaginative Italian left of the twentieth
century. The explosively popular Slow Food movement was originally built on the premise that a good life can be
had not through compulsive excess but through greater conviviality and a shared commonwealth. Compare that to
this list of essential tasks, prepared recently by Pablo Soln, a leading figure in the global climate justice
movement: To reduce greenhouse gas emissions to a level that avoids catastrophe, we need to: * Leave more
than two-thirds of the fossil fuel reserves under the soil; * Stop the exploitation of tar sands, shale gas and coal; *
Support small, local, peasant and indigenous community farming while we dismantle big agribusiness that deforests
and heats the planet; * Promote local production and consumption of products, reducing the free trade of goods
that send millions of tons of CO2 while they travel around the world; * Stop extractive industries from further
destroying nature and contaminating our atmosphere and our land; * Increase significantly public transport to
reduce the unsustainable car way of life; * Reduce the emissions of warfare by promoting genuine peace and
dismantling the military and war industry and infrastructure.22 The projects that Yuen describes are worthwhile,
but unless the participants are also committed to building mass environmental campaigns, they will not be helping
to achieve the vital objectives that Soln identifies. Posing local communes and slow food as alternatives to building
a movement against global climate change is effectively a proposal to abandon the fight against capitalist ecocide
in favor of creating greenish enclaves, while the world burns. Bright-siding versus Movement Building Whatever
it is not helpful or appropriate to use the word
its merits in other contexts,
catastrophism as a synonym for telling the truth about the environmental
dangers we face. Using the same language as right-wing climate science
deniers gives the impression that the dangers are non-existent or
exaggerated. Putting accurate environmental warnings in the same category as apocalyptic Christian
fundamentalism and century-old misreadings of Marxist economic theory leads to underestimation of the threats we
face and directs efforts away from mobilizing an effective counterforce. Yuens argument against publicizing the
scientific consensus on climate change echoes the myth that liberal politicians and journalists use to justify their
failure to challenge the crimes of the fossil-fuel industry. People are tired of all that doom and gloom, they say. It is
time for positive messages! Or, to use Yuens vocabulary, environmentalists need to
end apocalyptic rhetoric and find better narrative strategies. This is
fundamentally an elitist position : the people cannot handle the truth, so a
knowledgeable minority must sugarcoat it, to make the necessary changes
palatable. David Spratt of the Australian organization Climate Code Red calls that
approach bright-siding, a reference to the bitterly satirical Monty Python song, Always Look on the
Bright Side of Life. The problem is, Spratt writes: If you avoid including an honest
assessment of climate science and impacts in your narrative, its pretty
difficult to give people a grasp about where the climate system is heading
and what needs to be done to create the conditions for living in climate safety, rather than increasing and
eventually catastrophic harm.23 Joe Romm makes the same point: Youd think it would be pretty obvious that the
public is not going to be concerned about an issue unless one explains why they should be concerned.24 Of
course, this does not mean that we only need to explain the science. We need to propose concrete goals, as Pablo
Soln has done. We need to show how the scientific consensus about climate change relates to local and national
We need to work with
concerns such as pipelines, tar sands, fracking, and extreme weather.
everyone who is willing to confront any aspect of the crisis, from people who still
have illusions about capitalism to convinced revolutionaries. Activists in the wealthy countries

must be unstinting in their political and practical solidarity with the

primary victims of climate change, indigenous peoples, and impoverished
masses everywhere. We need to do all of that and more. But the first step is to tell the truthabout the
danger we face, about its causes, and about the measures that must be taken to turn back the threat. In a time
of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.
 Alt Fails

Only appealing to the existential threat of warming creates actualizes

the movements key to solve the negs impacts
Naomi Klein 16, award-winning journalist, syndicated columnist, former Miliband
Fellow at the London School of Economics, member of the board of directors of
350.org, Let Them Drown The Violence of Othering in a Warming World,
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v38/n11/naomi-klein/let-them-drown
The most important lesson to take from all this is that there is no way to
confront the climate crisis as a technocratic problem, in isolation. It must
be seen in the context of austerity and privatisation, of colonialism and
militarism, and of the various systems of othering needed to sustain them
all. The connections and intersections between them are glaring, and yet so often resistance to them is highly compartmentalised.
The anti-austerity people rarely talk about climate change, the climate change people rarely talk about war or occupation. We rarely
make the connection between the guns that take black lives on the streets of US cities and in police custody and the much larger
forces that annihilate so many black lives on arid land and in precarious boats around the world. Overcoming these disconnections
strengthening the threads tying together our various issues and movements is, I would argue, the most pressing task of anyone
concerned with social and economic justice. It is the only way to build a counterpower sufficiently robust to win against the forces
Climate change acts as an
protecting the highly profitable but increasingly untenable status quo.
accelerant to many of our social ills inequality, wars, racism but it can
also be an accelerant for the opposite, for the forces working for economic
and social justice and against militarism. Indeed the climate crisis by presenting our
species with an existential threat and putting us on a firm and unyielding
science -based deadline might just be the catalyst we need to knit
together a great many powerful movements, bound together by a belief in
the inherent worth and value of all people and united by a rejection of the
sacrifice zone mentality, whether it applies to peoples or places . We face so many
overlapping and intersecting crises that we cant afford to fix them one at a time. We need integrated
solutions, solutions that radically bring down emissions, while creating
huge numbers of good, unionised jobs and delivering meaningful justice to
those who have been most abused and excluded under the current
extractive economy.
Prizes CP
 Top Level
R&D fails no breakthroughs, delays, and trades off with deployment
Joe Romm 16, PhD, Physics, Senior Fellow, Center for American Progress,
2/23/2016, No Bill Gates, We Dont Need Energy Miracles To Solve Climate
Change , https://thinkprogress.org/no-bill-gates-we-dont-need-energy-miracles-to-
solve-climate-change-60ac8fbb9e2e#.nxixepzfh
The key points are that: The world needs about 100 times as much money for deployment of carbon-free energy as
it does for R&D; right now; Key developing countries like India are making decisions
about building coal vs. carbon-free power right now that could lock in carbon pollution for
decades ; and Genuine technology breakthroughs are exceedingly rare in the energy arena and generally take
decades and vast resources to deploy once they do make it to market. A new New York Times opinion piece by
another advocate of the miracle strategy (who interviewed Gates) asserts the billionaire pushed back against
critics who worry that his focus on what he calls energy miracles could undermine efforts to deploy todays rapidly
improving solar and wind technologies more swiftly. He said those efforts alone wouldnt meet the worlds energy
needs and also reduce greenhouse gas emissions to the extent that is necessary. Wrong and wrong. First, the link
to one of my posts means the Times is labeling me one of the critics who worry that his focus on what he calls
energy miracles could undermine efforts to deploy todays rapidly improving solar and wind technologies more
swiftly. But I dont believe that Gatess personal focus or his personal investment in energy miracles will
undermine deployment efforts. I do believe that his rhetoric that we cant solve the problem without energy
miraclesand his huge media effort to convince the public and policymakers and pundits that he is rightcould
undermine support for the far-more-necessary deployment efforts , even if
that isnt his intention. Second, while the Times asserts technology deployment efforts alone wouldnt meet the
worlds energy needs and also reduce greenhouse gas emissions to the extent that is necessary, neither Gates nor
the Times ever offer anything but handwaving to support that claim. Moreover, no one I know of is saying that
increased R&D; isnt useful or even very important. We are saying that it isnt the best use of his moneyand
that
if we dont vastly expand deployment now, all the R&D; in the world is
not going to come to fruition in time to avoid catastrophic global
warming.

Prizes fail carbon pricing is key

Shi-Ling Hsu 11, Law Professor and Associate Dean for Environmental Programs,
Florida State University, 2011, The Case for a Carbon Tax: Getting Past our Hang-
ups to Effective Climate Policy, p.76
Some in the intellectual property field have toyed
What is the solution? Catch-up or not catch-up?
with the idea of administrative prizes as an alternative to the patent
and copyright systems of rewarding successful research and development. In the
context of innovation to reduce greenhouse gases, however, the prize concept begs the question

of how an agency will define a prizeworthy outcome before it sees it. In

prize concept solves nothing in terms of finding the best

effect, the

renewable energy technologies, or more generally the best ways of

reducing greenhouse gases. The prize concept, if it can be operationalized, comes the
closest to the economists ideal of funding the right research and
development, but does not truly help in defining what right means .
Another alternative would be to have a super-carbon tax, one higher than what would be considered the optimal
Pigouvian amount, in effect granting super-premiums to those finding ways to reduce greenhouse gases. A greater-
than-optimal carbon tax may be just as bad as a too-low carbon tax, but the idea that research and development is
chronically underfunded in the nonfossil fuel sectors may justify in part the wastefulness of having a carbon tax that
is too high. Making an excessive carbon tax temporaryat least long enough for research in nonfossil fuel sectors
to catch upmay alleviate some of these concerns.

that development of greenhouse gas reduction

It has been said many times
technologies is a marathon, not a sprint, and that a stable and sufficient
price differential over a long period of time is required to provide the
business certainty needed to attract investment.120 This must be true in good economic
times and bad, and the volatility brought on by the recent recession seems to suggest that cap-and-trade programs
could be difficult to manage through economic volatility. Both carbon taxes and cap-and-trade programs can be
designed to create a stable price, but the design challenges are greater if one is setting out to implement a cap-
and-trade program. And a subsidy program can obviously be designed to provide a stable price, but at the cost of
potentially having an inefficiently large amount of activity in the subsidized area. Finally, it is worth bearing in mind
that cap-and-trade programs have some inherent limitations in encouraging innovation. If allowance prices dip, as
they have precipitously in the EUETS, innovation would have no value for some industries. In the end, there is no
perfect solution to this innovation problem, but the carbon tax provides the best base from which to experiment
with ways to reward research and development to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The plan is key only changing regulatory structure causes massive

renewables scale up
Naomi Oreskes 16, Professor of the History of Science, Harvard University,
Spring 2016, Purposeful science, Issues in Science and Technology, Volume XXXII,
Issue 3, http://issues.org/32-3/forum-30/
The worst impacts of climate change can be avoided if we pursue solutions grounded in technological and political
realities. Several recent studies by credible researchers suggest that even allowing for growth, the United States can
produce most, if not all, of its electricity from renewables, provided we do a few key things. These include putting a
price on carbon, adopting demand-response pricing, and integrating the electricity grid. (Similar results have been found
for other countries). None of these requires a breakthrough technology or form of

governance that does not already exist, but all of them do require governance. A price on carbon is the
most obvious example: it takes a government to set and collect a carbon tax, or to establish emissions trading as a legal
requirement. Re-thinking regulation is another example. As we saw in the recent U.S. Supreme Court case involving the Federal
Energy Regulatory Commission versus the Electric Power Supply Association , public utility commissions must be empowered
(no pun intended) to adapt to new conditions. Demand-response pricing requires changes in the ways utilities operate,
which requires reform of our regulatory structures or at least changes in our
interpretation and implementation of them. An integrated grid could in theory be built by the private sector, but it took the
federal government to build a nationwide system of electricity delivery and it will likely take the same to update that
system to maximize renewable utilization. However, 30 years of antigovernment rhetoric have persuaded many citizens that
government agencies are necessarily ineffective (if not inept) and erased our collective memory of the many domains in which
democratic governance has worked well. The demonization of government, coupled with the opposing romanticization of the magic
of the marketplace, has so dominated our discourse that many people now find it difficult to imagine an alternative analysis. Yet
history offers many refutations of the rhetoric of government incapacity, and gives us grounds for reasoned belief in the
capacity of democratic governance to address climate change. Placing the demands of democracy at the center of our
thought also helps us to sort through the various options available to address climate change. One potent argument for carbon
pricing is that market-based mechanisms help to preserve democracy by maximizing individual choice. The political right wing has
said many untrue things about climate change, but conservatives are correct when they stress that properly functioning markets are
To the extent that we can address climate change in bottom-
intrinsically democratic, and top-down decision making is not.
up rather than top-down ways, we should make every effort to do so. Where we cant, democratically elected government can
(and should) step in to build infrastructure, to foster research and development, to create reasonable
incentives and eliminate perverse ones, and to adopt appropriate regulatory
structures. This will require leadership, but of a kind that is completely compatible with democracy. Professor Stehr is
correct: now is not the time to abandon democracy; it is the time to recommit to it.
Oil DA
 2AC Saudi Oil DA
Oil prices headed down increased production, fundamentals,
low demand OPEC meeting doesnt solve
Panos Mourdoukoutas 11/13, Professor and Chair of the Department of
Economics, LIU Post in New York, Oil Is Heading Back To $20s, Forbes,
http://www.forbes.com/sites/panosmourdoukoutas/2016/11/13/oil-is-heading-back-
to-20s/#7a6a247e70cf
Oil bulls had a good ride in the last eight months. The black gold rallied, from mid-$20s in
January to the mid-$50s in late October. But economic fundamentals have turned bumpy
for oil bulls in the last couple of weeks, with oil heading towards the $40-
mark rather than the $60-mark as some had expected. And things will continue to
be bumpy in the near future . Oil is heading back to the January lows, as
hopes of an OPEC output freeze have been fading. In fact, OPEC members like
Iran, Libya, Iraq, and Nigeria have been raising rather than cutting oil
output since the Algiers meeting, according to recent industry reports.
Then there are American frackers, the new swing producers in the oil marketa role
previously played by Saudi Arabia. And they are ready to fill in any supply
slack, as soon as prices head north, by bringing oilrigs back on line . Thats
what happened back in July, as oil prices hovered near the $50 mark. Oil rigs were up for four weeks, according to
Baker Hughes, which keeps a weekly tally on the number of rigs in operationa trend that accelerated as oil
continued to trade around $50 in September and October. Overall, 165 oil rigs came back to operation since the
American frackers
late January, helping raise US output and cut foreign oil imports in recent weeks.
role as swing producers will become even more important under the new
administration, which is expected to ease fracking regulations. To make
matters worse for the bulls, global oil demand remains sluggish at best. The world
economy continues to grow at a slow pace under an increasing debt
burden.

Saudi turn limiting short term competition for Saudi lets

them keep pumping in the short term to finance a transition to
a renewable economy
Megan Darby 15, news editor @ Climate Home, Saudi Arabias failed oil gamble
and the climate, 10/08/2015,
http://www.climatechangenews.com/2015/08/10/saudi-arabias-failed-oil-gamble-
and-the-climate/
Saudis have historically been hostile to the climate agenda, seeing curbs on
greenhouse gas emissions as a threat to its long term prosperity. But could stronger action on
climate change worldwide help them rebalance their economy? That is the case
made by Wael Hmaidan, international director at the Climate Action Network, a global network of NGOs pushing for
a tough UN climate deal in Paris later this year. Climate action will limit short-term
competition, which will allow them to make enough profit to change their
economy for a post-fossil fuel era, he tells RTCC. The logic goes like this.
Scientists calculate around two thirds of known fossil fuel reserves need
to stay in the ground to limit global warming to 2C the international target. This
leaves a carbon budget for some continued use of coal, oil and gas. But
which sources? From a climate perspective, it makes sense to drive out coal first, as
the most polluting of the three. So strong action gives a boost to gas producers in the medium term, as a cleaner
When it comes to oil, the economically rational
source of power generation.
approach is to use the lowest cost, lowest carbon sources . Saudi Arabia,
with its well-established infrastructure, can pump far cheaper crude than
Canadian tar sands projects, for example.

Yes diversification -- Saudi Arabia sees the peak demand

writing on the wall
James Rowe 16, an Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies at the University
of Victoria in British Columbia, Saudi Arabia Simply Sees the Carbon Bubble for
What it is, March 1, http://www.desmog.ca/2016/03/01/saudi-arabia-simply-sees-
carbon-bubble-what-it

The evidence suggests that the carbon bubble is central to Saudi Arabias
decision making. U.S. State Department cables released by WikiLeaks
reveal a Saudi regime that is worried about the impact of climate
legislation on national income. Eighty per cent of the Kingdoms budget is derived from the
petroleum sector, so the prospect of not being able to sell the countrys vast oil
reserves due to global emission limits poses a massive economic and
political threat to the ruling monarchy . Saudi officials are very
concerned that a climate change treaty would significantly reduce their
income, wrote the U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia in a memo in 2010. As global concern over
climate change intensifies, the Saudis have begun factoring in the reality of
peak demand. In 2013, before oil prices started tumbling, Ali al-Naimi,
Saudi Arabias petroleum minister, told reporters demand will peak way
ahead of supply. In the lead up to climate negotiations in Paris , he acknowledged that in
Saudi Arabia, we recognize that eventually, one of these days, we are not going to
need fossil fuels. I dont know when, in 2040, 2050, or thereafter. This admission is
aligned with the scientific consensus on climate change. What makes it
remarkable is that the comment comes from the oil minister of the
worlds preeminent petrostate . The Saudis have snapped out of denial
and are actively working to diversify their economy and plan for a post-
carbon world. According to Naimi, the Kingdom plans to become a global
power in solar and wind energy.
Domestic production link turn US oil increasing now causes
supply competition -- the plan stops that drilling approval
and infrastructure will be a key determinant
Natalie Regoli 11-1-16, lead major projects partner in Baker & McKenzie's
Houston office, Crude Oil Exports from the US: Current Issues and Future Outlook,
http://www.texaslawyer.com/home/id=1202770449445/Crude-Oil-Exports-from-the-
US-Current-Issues-and-Future-Outlook?
mcode=1202619848557&curindex=1&slreturn=20160930164627
There are some indications that exports may now be starting to rise. Global
oil trading company Trafigura recently announced it is moving 5 to 7 million
barrels of crude from the U.S. gulf coast to the U.K. and the Netherlands. The
same company recently opened an office in Midland, Texas, where it will focus on moving
Permian Basin-produced oil "around the globe to the best market ," according to
the company's director of North America operations. Whether exports will begin increasing
more rapidly depends on the economics. If U.S. production remains low, and
the gap between the price of West Texas Intermediate (the U.S. benchmark) and Brent crude (the global
benchmark) remains narrow by historical standards, it is difficult to see how exports really
take off. However, if the price of WTI returns to something lower relative to Brent, exporting more crude may
begin to make sense for more players in the market. Some energy analysts have suggested there is an opportunity
for expanded exports from the U.S. due to the June 26 expansion of the Panama Canal. This past summer the
Panama Canal Authority inaugurated a new set of locks which allow for the transit of larger ships. This was the first
such expansion since the canal was completed in 1914. Despite some speculation to the contrary, the expansion of
the canal is unlikely to have a major impact on crude oil flows. This is because crude is typically loaded on vessels
classified as Very Large Crude Carriers (VLCCs) or Ultra-Large Crude Carriers (ULCCs), both of which are still too
large to transit the Panama Canal even with the new locks. Some petroleum products including propane are often
loaded on smaller vessels, some of which can transit the existing and new canal depending the ship's hull design.
Therefore, although the canal expansion may increase exports of certain petroleum products, there is unlikely to be
Now that the ban has been (mostly) lifted, other
a major impact on crude exports.

regulatory hurdles and deteriorating domestic hydrocarbon

infrastructure have come into focus. Removing the ban has theoretically
removed artificial trade impediments which caused international energy market distortions,
but without the removal of certain barriers to domestic production
including drilling on federal lands and offshore and the expansion of
pipelines and other infrastructure, the full potential of lifting the export
ban will be difficult to realize. The crucial element in the months and years
ahead is for Congress and the next president to allow industry to improve
America's energy infrastructure, which can be done at very little cost to the taxpayer. Various
regulatory hurdles to production remain , and the industry must now focus
on having permits fosr new pipelines and LNG terminals approved , as well
as gaining new approvals for oil and gas drilling on public lands. The stakes are
high, since pro-energy policies could result in as much as $150 billion more in GDP a year according to some
For the U.S. to enjoy the full
economists, increasing growth from 2 percent to about 3 percent.
potential benefits of lifting the export ban , though, lawmakers must roll back
some of the more burdensome regulations on domestic exploration,
production and transportation of oil and gas. There is no doubt that the lifting of
the crude oil ban late last year was a major development from a regulatory and foreign
policy perspective. However, the impact has been much more limited from an economic
perspectivewe simply have not seen the increase in the volume of exports that some predicted. There is some
evidence that this may be changing and more producers may be expanding their export
operations and facilities, and this expansion may increase if the gap between WTI and Brent prices
returns to historical norms rather than the current, narrow gap. Two things are certain: The underlying market
conditions are driving the development of U.S. crude oil exports, and those market conditions are constantly
changing in this industry.

Saudi collapse inevitable they need a $92 oil price thats

not going to happen
Simeon Kerr 11/10, MS, Near and Middle Eastern Studies, University of
Edinburgh, Anjli Raval, 11/10/2016, Financial Times,
https://www.ft.com/content/79a30168-a771-11e6-8b69-02899e8bd9d1
The protracted oil price slump has created a ballooning budget deficit and
a currency collapse, forcing Saudi Arabia to slash spending, implement
austerity measures and raise its international debt to fill a gaping hole in
its public finances. Iraq, which has been at war with Isis militants, will see its average annual growth rate
slow from 5.6 per cent between 2011-2015 to 2.8 per cent in 2016-2020. Gulf economy Kuwait will weaken from 3.1
per cent to 2.5 per cent over the same period, while the UAE can expect a similar fall from 4.8 per cent to 3.1 per
cent, Wood Mackenzie says. Iran, however, is the only country that will buck the trend, accelerating to an average
of 4 per cent to 2020, according to the consultancy. Its GDP has been held back by years of western sanctions
against its economy. Saudi Arabia endured the largest fall in oil revenues as a
proportion of total government revenues when oil prices slumped, and it is
depleting its cash reserves at a rapid pace. Irans dependence on oil, meanwhile, is the
lowest of all five of the Middle Eastern economies. All major oil-producing economies are
running fiscal deficits, with Saudi Arabias among the largest at 20 per
cent of GDP, according to Wood Mackenzie. The IMF offers a slightly different view with a forecast of 13 per
cent. It believes the majority of cuts to government expenditure have already taken place. The Saudi
currency has come under heavy pressure from speculators betting that
the kingdom will be forced to revalue the riyal which is pegged to the
US dollar while the domestic stock market has tumbled this year as
investors fear that diminished oil revenues may push the economy into
recession. The kingdom is able to access debt markets it recently raised $17.5bn
at its debut sovereign bond sale and it has a financial cushion that is not available to others such as Iraq. But

there is a renewed urgency in Riyadh of the need to reduce the economys dependency on oil.

Wood Mackenzie estimates that Saudi Arabia needs an oil price of $92 a barrel to
balance its budget this year a stark indication of the challenge facing
the kingdom in the current oil price environment . Kuwait has the lowest fiscal break-even
of $57 a barrel. Oil prices are currently trading around $46 a barrel and the
failure to put in place a deal that was agreed in Algiers in September
would bring more pain for producer nations. The consequences are clear
and the experience of the past two years has been noted, said Mohammed
Barkindo, the secretary-general of Opec said on Tuesday.
No middle east war---all players in the region are pragmatic
and will balance accordingly
Hadar 11/2/11former prof of IR at American U and Mount Vernon-College. PhD
in IR from American U (Leon, Overhauling U.S. Policy in the Middle East,
http://nationalinterest.org/commentary/overhauling-us-policy-the-middle-east-6087)

The shifting balance of

But the changes emerging from the so-called Arab Spring go beyond a clash between pro-Western movements and Islamist groups.

power in the Middle Easttriggered in part by eroding American influence in the region is bringing to the fore
realpolitik concerns that likely will overcome ideological considerations in
the new Middle East. The Israel-Hamas prisoner exchange, the U.S. role in Libyas civil war and the end of the U.S. military presence in Iraq all point in that direction.
Lets begin with the prisoner exchange. The interesting thing about the exchange of one Israeli soldier for more than 1,000 jailed Palestinians was not that it happened, but that it happened now, when
Islamist influence seems to be on the rise in Egypt.
Israeli leaders, with the support of most of the public and the elites, have been negotiating a deal along these lines for the last five years with Egyptian security officials playing the main role as
mediator.
But following the fall of Hosni Mubaraks pro-American in Egypt, the conventional wisdom in Cairo and Jerusalem was that the Israeli-Hamas negotiations would collapse. Pundits were predicting
that the fall of a pro-American leader committed to the peace accords between Israel and Egypt would make it difficult for any new government to embrace policies perceived as beneficial to Israel.
In fact, anti-Israel rhetoric and demonstrations emanating from Tahrir Square and elsewherecoupled with the growing diplomatic strains between the ruling Israeli Likud government and Islamist
Turkish leaders and the continuing military tensions between the Jewish state and the Ayatollahs in Tehranseemed to play directly into Israeli fears of being surrounded by a hostile Muslim entity.

Yet this nightmare scenario assumed that the Muslims in the Middle East
Egyptians, Turks, Iranians and Saudis as well as multiple tribes, sects and ethic groupswere going to form
a unified political and military front to confront Israel. This scenario is based in part on real fears about the policies of Iran and Turkey and the
rhetoric emanating from the Arab Street. But such fears have been amplified by Israeli ultra-

nationalists and American neoconservatives with an agenda: They

want to resist any serious challenge to the Israeli-Palestinian status
quo and mobilize Israelis and their Washington supporters into new confrontations in the Middle East.
That the current Egyptian military leaders have decided to help the Israelis gain
the release of Sergeant Noam Shalit was clearly not a reflection of dormant pro-Israeli
inclinations in Cairo. Neither was the freedom of the Palestinian prisoners a reflection of any support for the Palestinian cause. Like Anwar Sadat and Mubarak,
these leaders operate based on what they consider Egyptian
national interests . And those interests include preserving the peace
agreement with Israel and avoiding a military conflict with that country for the foreseeable future.
Indeed, contrary to what some Americans seem to believe, it is not the Egyptian-Israeli treaty agreement of 1979 or the billions of dollars in U.S. economic and military

assistance to Egypt that have induced the Egyptians to refrain from going to war with

Israel. The 1979 accord reflected the reality that the evolving power balance
led both Israel and Egypt to conclude that a war between them would be too
costly and detrimental to their interests .
The global and regional developments since 1979 have strengthened the determination
of both sides to maintain peace . Egypt, economically bankrupt and
unable to feed and educate its own people, is certainly not positioned to
pursue military confrontation with Israel.
Moreover, the rise in power and influence of Egypts Muslim Brotherhood makes it more likely that

future governments in in Cairo will have an interest in co-opting Gaza Strip Hamas
leaders, whose movement is a political offshoot of the Islamist party founded
in Egypt in 1928.
In a way, Hamas may be evolving into a client (mini)state of a more Islamist-oriented Egypt. In that context, Egypts interest would be in

providing Hamas with enough support to prevent it from coming

under the influence of the more radical players in the region , such as Iran. At the same time, driven by
the kind of calculus that affects any relationship between leading powers and client states, Cairo would need to ensure that Hamass
 policies would not draw Egypt into a military conflict with Israel. Helping
negotiate the Hamas-Israel deal fits nicely into such a strategy . It
encourages Hamas to start reorienting its foreign policy from Syria, and by extension
Iran, and more towards Egypt. That could create conditions for more pragmatic deals between Israel and Hamas, negotiated with Egyptian assistance. These wouldnt
likely bring about a peace accord between the two sides but might allow the ministate in the Gaza Strip to become an Egyptian protectorate of sorts that could coexist with Israel for some time to
come.

That Turkey has also played an active role in negotiating the Israel-Hamas
prisoner exchange is also an encouraging sign, notwithstanding the stresses in the relationship between Ankara and Jerusalem.
The Turks have no interest in exacerbating tensions between Israel
and its Arab neighbors because that could destabilize the Middle
East, Turkeys new diplomatic and economic frontier .
Its probably not realistic to expect the emergence of a diplomatic and military axis between
Egypt and Turkey that would join with Saudi Arabia and the other Persian Gulf oil sheikdoms to
counter the influence of Iran and its satellites in Iraq and Lebanon and to manage the power transition in Syria. Turkey and Iran, after all, share
common interests in curbing Kurdish irredentism inside their borders. Unlike the Saudis and the Israelis, Turkey wants
to avoid a military confrontation between the United States and Iran.

But the reemergence of new cooperative and competing centers of power in the
Middle East Egypt, Turkey, Iran, Saudi Arabiaprovide the United States, the European Union (EU) and Israel with new strategic
opportunities. Instead of wasting time and resources on fantastical
freedom agendas and countering the imaginary or real influence of political Islam, a more effective policy would be
to hedge ones strategic bets by forming ad hoc partnerships with these players to advance concrete interests.
Hence, in the aftermath of the agreement with Hamas, Israel could improve its relationship with Cairo and Ankara and perhaps even create the conditions for some sort of coexistence with Hamas-
ruled Gaza. This could, not coincidentally, put more diplomatic pressure on the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank.
Indeed, the Israeli-Egyptian-Turkish collaboration that led to the prisoner exchange is one example of such a creative strategic approach that seeks new opportunities rather than fixating on old
threats.
What this suggests for the United States is that there may be cost-effective ways of securing American interests in the Middle East at a time of political change there and of diminishing American
military and economic resources. Libya offers a better approach than Iraq. Rather than pursuing hegemonic and ideologically driven policies, the United States could provide incentives for other
players to handle some of the heavy lifting.
Indeed, the Iraq War could provide a case study of how not to pursue U.S. interest in the Middle East. President George W. Bush and his neoconservative advisers disregarded the ethnic and sectarian
realities in Iraq and the balance of power in the Persian Gulf. Thus they helped shift power in Iraq from the Arab-Sunnis to the Arab-Shiites, all the while strengthening Iran.
That policy only harmed U.S. interests while failing to advance democratic values in Iraq, and it antagonized regional partners (Saudi Arabia; Turkey) as well as global players with interests to protect.
The EU, for example, might have provided military and financial support to a more modest project aimed at containing Saddam Husseins Iraq.
In Libya, on the other hand, it was the European powers that took the military lead in bringing about regime change. America encouraged Britain and France to do so while it accepted a supporting
military role.

The Obama administrations policy in Libya, coupled with the announcement on

withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq by years end, may not signal that Washington is about to embrace a grand new strategy for the Middle East.
But it is does suggest it is beginning to adapt its policies to the changing balance of

power in the region.

Climate change makes the Middle East and North Africa
uninhabitable causes climate refugee exodus
Robin Andrews 16, PhD in volcanology, University of Otago, Department of
Geology, 6-5-16, Thanks To Climate Change, The Middle East And North Africa Are
Basically Screwed, http://www.iflscience.com/environment/climate-change-could-
make-middle-east-uninhabitable-no-matter-what-happens/
Man-made climate change is a problem that simply won't go away. It will increase the
likelihood of conflict in water-scarce regions for one thing, and theres already some
evidence that it played a vital role in sparking the initial uprising in Syria back in 2011. Researchers at the
Max Planck Institute for Chemistry and the Cyprus Institute in Nicosia have been studying the effects of
climate change on the notoriously dry and hot Middle East and North African
regions for some time, and they have come to a chilling conclusion. Even with the
Paris climate change agreement enforced by all signatories, who have pledged to
limit warming to no more than 2C (3.6F), these parts of the world will still become so
hot as to be uninhabitable within the near future. Their study, published in the
 notes that the peak summer temperatures in the region will
journal Climatic Change,
rise almost twice as fast compared to the global average. Temperatures will regularly
reach 46C (114F), and extremely hot days will occur five times more often than they have done since the year
2000. By 2050, in this already optimistic scenario, temperatures will not fall below 30C
(86F) at night. Combined with increasing air pollution and powerful
sandstorms, the environment will become increasingly difficult to live in,
and a massive prolonged exodus is likely. If the Paris agreement is not adhered to, things
become far, far worse. Under the business-as-usual model, by 2100, people living there will experience 200
the climate in large parts of the Middle East and
extremely hot days per year. In future,
North Africa could change in such a manner that the very existence of its
inhabitants is in jeopardy, lead author Jos Lelieveld, Director at the Max Planck Institute for
Chemistry and a professor at the Cyprus Institute, said in a statement. The team used 26 different cutting-edge
climate change simulations to make their predictions, which considered two scenarios: The first assumes that
greenhouse gas emissions fall from 2040 onwards, which generally agrees with the Paris agreements objectives;
the second assumes that nothing is done at all, and the world will warm on average by 4C (7.2F) as a result. It is
some parts of the world the low-lying
a sobering thought that, no matter what anyone does,
islands and the dry, sun-scorched areas near the equator, for example
are inexorably doomed, at least to an extent. As this study points out, the deserts will
become incredibly hostile to life. They do not buffer heat well, and they
are unable to cool efficiently through water evaporation . More than almost anywhere
else in the world, the greenhouse effect will be amplified there to a vastly
disproportionate degree. Most people look on at the refugee crisis
happening across Europe and despair and argue over the resilience of its myriad possible
causes war, revolution, sectarian violence, economic collapse, and so on. In
the near future, another type of refugee will become commonplace:
climate refugees. And this time around, the driving cause is certainly not up for debate.
1AR
Econ DA
 Uniqueness
Single bank collapse would quickly ripple through the economy
depresses consumer confidence, tanks small business credit,
and has a broad effect on stock marketsgovt bailouts will fail
not enough capital to do that again
Francis Weyzig 14, policy advisor on tax justice and economic inequality at
Oxfam Novib (Netherlands) and former policy advisor financial stability at the Dutch
central bank, with Barbara Kuepper, Jan Willem van Gelder, and Rens van Tilburg,
The Price of Doing Too Little Too Late The impact of the carbon bubble on the EU
financial system, Feb 2014, http://reinhardbuetikofer.eu/wp-
content/uploads/2014/03/GND-Carbon-Bubble-web1.pdf
If an individual financial institution faces
Potential propagation channels and feedback loops

a relatively large shock, this may trigger further shocks elsewhere in the
financial system and the broader economy . The following overview briefly outlines the
main propagation channels for individual financial institutions. What could occur if an individual pension fund
suffers losses: If the loss is large, or the funding ratio of the pension fund was already low, the employer may be
required to make an additional one-off contribution to the pension fund to cover the funding shortfall. Whether such
an obligation exists depends on the pension contract; for most pension funds, the employer may be under pressure
to make a higher contribution but there is no automatic obligation. The cost of an extra contribution may cause an
unexpected loss for the employer. If the loss is large or the funding ratio of the pension fund was already low, the
pension premiums for employees may be increased or the pension entitlements for employees and pensioners
reduced.This could have an effect on consumer confidence and demand and
hence the economic cycle. Increasing premiums has a direct effect on the
net income of employees. Decreasing entitlements has a smaller direct effect on the
income of pensioners only, but may reduce confidence among a broader group of
consumers. If the loss is large, the pension fund may lower its risk profile to reduce the risk of further losses.
In general, pension funds do this by increasing the proportion of their assets in relatively safe assets, especially low-
risk sovereign bonds, at the expense of high-risk asset classes such as listed equities, private equity and real
estate. To some extent, such a shift happens automatically if the share values of fossil fuel companies fall and a
pension fund does not rebalance its asset mix. However, a pension fund may also actively reduce its equity
investments and investments in other high-risk assets categories. Such behaviour could have a broader effect on
specific financial markets. If an individual bank suffers losses: The market value of the bank
will fall, generating losses for shareholders of the bank. If the loss is large, the risk premium
for the banks market funding will increase and the credit rating of the
bank could be adjusted downwards. This reduces the value of the bonds
issued by the bank, generating losses for bondholders. If the loss is large, the bank may try to restore its
capital ratio by reducing the size of its balance sheet. In other words, the bank could restrict new
lending, especially to high-risk segments such as small and medium
enterprises, to reduce its overall risk exposure as its capacity to bear risks has been decreased. This
could lead to higher borrowing costs or even unavailability of credit for
small businesses that are dependent on the bank and cannot easily switch to another source of credit. If
a bank with investment banking operations suffers large losses on financial investments for its own account,
traders may try to quickly sell the high-carbon assets to limit their losses .
In contrast to pension funds, it is likely that the behavioural response would be
quick and only affect the market for high-carbon assets, but it could potentially have a
broader effect on stock markets. If the loss is very large and the banks capital buffers were
already low, this may trigger the need for recapitalisation. Depending on the banks funding structure and the
market situation, private recapitalisation could take place through a claim emission, imposing further losses on
existing shareholders, or the conversion of subordinated debt, imposing losses on holders of subordinated debt
securities, including pension funds and insurance companies. When the EU Bank Recovery and Resolution Directive
comes into force, the bail-in of senior bondholders will become a possibility. (The compromise text of the directive
was agreed upon in December 2013 and is to be formally adopted by the EU Parliament and the Council). If further
the government of the banks
recapitalisation is needed and a private solution is not possible,
home country may need to provide a capital injection. This may be the case if
uninsured corporate and institutional depositors start to withdraw their money and the bank faces
difficulties in obtaining market funding , depleting the banks liquidity
buffers and creating a real danger that the bank cannot survive on its own .
In the current situation, the government may then need to step in to restore confidence. This
will increase the governments debt burden and exposes the government
to large financial risks. (The EUs single resolution fund that was agreed on in December 2013 will
initially consist of national compartments. In the coming years, the capacity of the fund therefore

mainly depends on contribu-tions from the national banking sector, which will be insufficient to

recapitalise large banks ).

 AT: Manufacturing
Renewables solve manufacturingcreates new subsectors
Roberto Lacal Arntegui 14, Energy Technology Policy Outlook, Institute for
Energy and Transport, Joint Research Centre (JRC), European Commission (EC), with
Daniela Radu, Davide Magagna of the EC, and M. Maureen Hand of the Strategic
Energy Analysis Center, National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), A system-
based approach to assessing the value of wind for society,
http://www.ieawind.org/task_26_public/26homepagePOSTINGS/eur26740.pdf
An important impact of wind deployment is the creation of industrial
activity in the country concerned. The extent of the impact is affected by international trade, in
that the national/local activities may be increased (pre-eminence of exports) or decreased (no local/national
manufacture of turbines or components). Secondary impacts include: education and
training, e.g. of technicians and researchers; research and development
activity, perhaps with the creation of new research centres; intellectual property
development, which provides long-term revenue. Industrial development can lead to
specialisation in the different manufacturing and management areas (e.g.
wind farm development, component manufacturing and RD&D), and the creation of

dedicated industrial clusters, for example, harbours for offshore wind. Large deployment
levels bring about economies of scale , a high level of specialisation and
increased efficiency.
Prizes CP
 Fail
Innovation cant come close to solving
Jeroen van den Bergh 13, Research Professor, Institute of Environmental Science
& Technology of Universitat Autnoma de Barcelona, January 2013, Environmental
and climate innovation: Limitations, policies and prices, ScienceDirect,
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0040162512001862
Important environmental innovations which will reduce greenhouse gas
emissions to the atmosphere are thus likely to take a considerable amount
of time. However, climate change is occurring at a rapid pace , and the
question is not whether we can find innovative solutions at some time in
the future but whether we can realize these sufficiently rapidly [50]. There is no
doubt that with enough time available we will be able to achieve almost anything in terms of renewable energy
technologies, of course within thermodynamic limits.But time is not on our side . This is
illustrated by history, which shows that the full realization of energy
transitions in specific countries, such as (from wood) to coal, to oil, and to
electrification took some 200, 85 and 65 years, respectively [16]. Virtually
all economic studies, regardless of the particular model and assumptions used, show that the
major part of the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions in the coming
decades is unlikely to be realized through technological innovation. Instead,
it will come from environmental regulation that alters consumer and producer decisions
about environmentally relevant inputs and outputs. This in turn will cause changes in the
production input structure and in the sector and demand structure of
national economies. Undoubtedly, this will involve the adoption of (already existing) technologies,
possibly with minor improvements, but it will not depend on extended innovation
patterns and major technological breakthroughs. This conforms to predictions by the
International Energy Agency, which state that most reductions in GHG emissions in the coming decades will come
from a more efficient use of fossil fuels and not innovations in renewable energy [17]. To understand the difference
between innovation and substitution, notice that production depends on the factors labor, capital and
environmental or energy input (or waste output). Technological change can take different forms, namely neutral
technical change and biased technical change which alters the relative productivity of the associated input factor.
Evidently, technological change will alter the opportunities for energy
substitution in production. There is a long-standing debate on capital-energy substitution in
production. According to reviews of econometric studies of aggregate production functions by Koetse et al. [23],
some 75% of the estimates suggest that energy and capital are either complements or weak substitutes. This
suggests that investment in production capital, which is necessary for most technical innovations, may not be very
effective in terms of reducing energy use and associated pollutive emissions. Acemoglu et al. [1] have presented a
general model with dirty and clean alternatives to examine whether innovation can ultimately lead to a sustainable
economy, and if so, under which conditions. They find that if the alternatives are complementary, then long run
growth needs to be stopped to avoid environmental disaster. In this case technological innovation is not fast enough
Various studies can be
to overcome the environmental effects of scale increases due to income growth.
cited to illustrate the relative contribution of technological innovation to
solving enhanced global warming. For example, a CGE study for the USA by a famous modeling
team [20] finds that over 20252040, induced technical change (ITC) reduces the
cost of economic adjustment by no more than 8%. Using a very different dynamic
optimization model for the world, Hedenus et al. [14] find that ITC (in this case carbon pricing) reduces the net
present value (NPV) of abatement costs with 310% compared with the case of exogenous technical change
(extrapolating historical trends). Moreover, specific innovation policies, such as subsidies, feed-in tariffs and green
certificates, further reduce the NPV with 47%. These magnitudes are consistent with other studies [7], [12] and
[34]. Popp [36] uses energy-related patents as a proxy for energy innovation, and finds that 1/3 of the overall
All these
response of energy use to prices was due to induced innovation, and 2/3 to factor substitution.
studies suggest that innovation and innovation policy cannot be used as
an excuse for not implementing stringent environmental regulation of
climate-relevant emissions.