Neg

1nc Shell
Inset Link
Capitalism leads to reverse evolution and the complete destruction of the entire
universe
Paul Farrell 13, behavioral economics author of many books, used to be investment banker with
Morgan Stanley; executive vice president of the Financial News Network; executive vice president of
Mercury Entertainment Corp; and associate editor of the Los Angeles Herald Examiner, 12-4-13, “10
ways capitalists get rich destroying our oceans,” Market Watch,
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/10-ways-capitalists-get-rich-destroying-our-oceans-2013-12-04.
¶ Yes, many capitalists are getting rich off the high seas, a vast reservoir of wealth holding 95% of the

planet’s water, spanning 70% of the Earth’s surface. Often called the last frontier, a return to America’s
18th century Wild West. It’s virtually unregulated, a new free market where capitalists roam like
pirates, plundering wealth and treating our oceans as a freebie gold mine and trash dump.¶ ¶ Bad
news for seven billion people living on the planet. And by 2050 we’ll be adding three billion more
people. We already know we can’t feed 10 billion. Now we’re polluting their water. Won’t be enough
clean water for all to drink, triggering wars.¶ ¶ Yes, bad news getting worse: As Alan Sielen of the
Scripps Institute of Oceanography warns in the Foreign Affairs journal: “Over the last several decades,
human activities have so altered the basic chemistry of the seas that they are now experiencing
evolution in reverse: a return to the barren primeval waters of hundreds of millions of years
ago.”Capitalism is turning back evolutionary clock a billion years¶ Evolution in reverse? Yes, planet
Earth is regressing eons to an earlier primitive era. Unregulated free-market competition on the high
seas is turning back the evolutionary clock. That doesn’t bother today’s short-term-thinking
capitalists. But it should. Because, ironically, shifting evolution into reverse will also self-destruct the
very global economy that capitalism needs for future growth.¶ Today’s capitalists see another three
billion people as the new customers needed to expand free markets globally. But in the process they are
also cutting their own throats, unaware they’re pushing a hidden self-destruct button lodged in their
brains.¶ Nature designed all systems with these built-in termination buttons. Deny it all you want, but
humans have our entrances and exits, as Shakespeare said. We all do. Same with economic systems:
Yale’s Immanuel Wallerstein sees capitalism at the end of its 500-year cycle. Solar systems last for
billions of years. Someday, as our sun cools, Earth could go the way of Mars. And the sun will
eventually exit in a blazing supernova.

Our alternative is to rid government of capitalist control and empower the working
class
Socialist Labor Party of America , 1998, The Socialist Labor Party of America tries to point out the
horrors of capitalism, “Who Are the Polluters? Capitalism Is Destroying the Earth!”
http://www.slp.org/res_state_htm/whopollute.html
Among the most serious problems facing society today is that of pollution and its environmentally
destructive effects. Air pollution, acid rain, toxic landfills, tainted and toxic drinking water, industrial
pollutants in our rivers and oceans, toxic or cancer-producing pesticides on the produce we eat,
poisons in the fish we eat, unhealthy hormones and antibiotics in meat and dairy products, nuclear
waste and accidents, radiation testing by the government on unsuspecting thousands, ozone
depletion and global warming—the list of bad news on the environment is seemingly unending. Each
of these environmental problems represents a serious menace in its own right . Take, for example, the problem
of global warming. Global Warming Carbon dioxide, water vapor and other atmospheric gases trap the
sun’s heat and warm the Earth. Without this “greenhouse effect,” life on Earth would be impossible.
But the greenhouse effect is being intensified by modern capitalist society. The buildup of carbon
dioxide is primarily the result of burning oil, gas, coal, wood and other fuels to provide energy for
capitalist industry. The profit-motivated destruction of forests the world over has also played a role because trees, like other green
plants, consume carbon dioxide. Studies have confirmed the trend toward global warming time and time again over the past two decades and
shown that the trend is accelerating. Capitalists
and capitalist government, however, have spent more time
attacking the studies than attempting to control pollution—not surprisingly, since controlling pollution
and switching to cleaner, alternative energy sources would reduce capitalist profits . Studies Ignored In 1989,
NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies prepared written testimony for Congress, which cited computer projections showing that the
greenhouse effect would cause substantial temperature increases, widespread droughts, flooding of coastal plains and other calamities; that
global warming from the greenhouse effect was already under way and that enough was already known about the human intensification of the
greenhouse effect to begin taking strong international action against air pollution. But powerful elements of the ruling
capitalist class didn't want to be pushed into taking action against air pollution—the owners of major
polluting firms and others worried about the drain on profits generally if government pollution-
control regulations were to be seriously stiffened and enforced, or if spending on pollution controls
were to be greatly increased. Bureaucrats sympathetic to those concerns in the Office of Management
and Budget decided that, since the facts of NASA’s report didn't suit them, they would have to change
the facts before publishing the report. At issue in the dispute were the computer models used to
predict climatic change. The OMB discounted the models, completely undercutting the report’s conclusion that the environmental
dangers were so certain that they warranted immediate action against air pollution. Despite a 1992 international agreement among major
capitalist nations that “recognized” the problem and promised to negotiate reductions in greenhouse
gases, history seems to be repeating itself. In September 1994, The New York Times reported a new assessment of the
problem by a United Nations panel that corroborated the conclusions of the 1989 NASA report and earlier reports. “The Earth,” the Times said,
“has entered a period of climatic change that is likely to cause widespread economic, social and environmental dislocation over the next
century if emissions of heat-trapping gases are not reduced, according to experts advising the world’s governments.” “The new feature of the
assessment,” the Times continued, “is that the experts are now more confident than before that global climate change is indeed in progress
and that at least some of the warming is due to human action....” Despite the more widespread agreement among scientists, the Times noted,
“skeptics continue to assert that the models [used in the predictions] fail to simulate the present climate realistically and hence are an unsure
guide to future climates.” The report will no doubt have little effect on the present efforts of the U.S. Congress to undercut even the inadequate
and infrequently enforced provisions of the Clean Air Act. Heads in the Sand In short, the
world’s polluters and their allies
remain so stubbornly defensive of capitalist profits that they would rather bury their heads in the
sand than face up to the fact that they—and all society—will bear far greater costs in the future, as
global warming continues. Their attitude is sheer madness, especially in view of the combined effects
of the plethora of environmental disasters facing the world today. Taken together, they add up to one
frightful, catastrophic process. This ongoing and worsening process of environmental degradation will
be difficult to reverse. The longer it continues, the greater the disastrous consequences for present
and future generations, and the greater the likelihood that the damage will be irreparable . Firm and
decisive action against all forms of pollution is long overdue. Over the last 25 years or so, millions of people have protested against one form of
pollution or another. They have demanded firm action to protect the environment and have repeatedly elected politicians who have promised
firm action. But the crisis continues. Laws Subverted The
laws that have been enacted and regulatory agencies that
have been established have at every turn been subverted by the very corporations and firms
responsible for the pollution, and by the class of capitalists that owns them. The regulations
themselves have been watered down; agencies aren't funded adequately to act on them and are
frequently corrupted by corporate interests; enforcement of even inadequate regulations has been
poor, raising the question of whether the laws and regulations were ever in-tended to be anything
more than window dressing. To understand why regulation hasn't worked and what kind of action will
work to end this worsening environ-mental nightmare, it must be understood that the environmental
crisis is fundamentally an economic and class issue. Its cause lies in the nature of the capitalist
economic system. Cause of Pollution Pollution is not an inevitable byproduct of modern industry. Methods
exist or can readily be developed to safely neutralize, recycle or contain most industrial wastes. Less
polluting forms of transportation and energy can be built. Adequate supplies of food can be grown
without deadly pesticides. The problem is that, under capitalism, the majority of people have no
power to make these kinds of decisions about production. Under the capitalist system, production
decisions are made by the small, wealthy minority that owns and controls the industries and services
—the capitalist class. And the capitalists who make up that class make their decisions to serve, first
and foremost, one goal—that of maximizing profit for themselves. That is where the environmental
crisis begins. From the capitalist point of view, it is generally less costly to dump pollutants into the
environment than to invest in pollution-control equipment or pollution-free processes. It is more
profitable to continue energy production as it is rather than invest more heavily in solar, wind or
other alternative energy sources. Likewise with every other aspect of the environmental crisis:
Socially harmful decisions are made because, in one way or another, they serve the profit interests of
the capitalist class. Capitalist-class rule over the economy also explains why government regulation is
so ineffective: under capitalism, government itself is essentially a tool of the capitalist class. Politicians
may be elected “democratically,” but because they are financed, supported and decisively influenced
by the economic power of the capitalist class, democratic forms are reduced to a farce. The capitalist
class and its government will never be able to solve the environmental crisis. They and their system
are the problem. It is up to the working class, the majority of people who actually produce society’s
goods and services and daily operate its industries, to end this crisis . The Socialist Solution The action workers must
take is to realize their latent economic and political power as operators of the industries and services by building industrywide unions
integrated into one movement with the goal of building a new society with completely different motives for production—human needs and
wants instead of profit—and to organize their own political party to challenge the political power of the capitalists, express their mandate for
change at the ballot box and dismantle the state altogether. The new society they must aim for must be one in which society itself, not a
wealthy few, would own the industries and services, and the workers themselves would control them democratically through their own
organizations based in the workplaces. In such a society, the workers themselves would make decisions governing the economy, electing
representatives to industrial councils and to a workers’ congress representing all the industries that would administer the economy. Such a
society—a socialist industrial democracy—is what is needed to solve the environmental crisis. By
placing the economic decision-
making power of the nation in the hands of the workers, by eliminating capitalist control and the
profit motive in favor of a system in which workers produce to meet their own needs and wants, the
necessary resources and labor could be devoted to stop pollution at its source and clean up the
damage already done.
Links
 Exploration Link
Our relationship to the ocean is inextricably linked to 19th century imperial logic - the
aff's exploration project will inevitably become a tool for improved exploitation and
expansion of violence
Michael S. Reidy and Helen M. Rozwadowski, June 2014 (Isis, "The Spaces In Between: Science,
Ocean, Empire", Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of The History of Science
Society, http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/676571)
The imperial context had profound implications far beyond the production of knowledge about the ocean and the immediate use of that
knowledge. The tone for the Western relationship with the sea was set in the mid-nineteenth century,
when the ocean was systematically defined by graphs and grids. Nationalism fanned cultural claims to the sea and its
resources, while the drive for imperial power prompted the extension of new industrial technologies
across and into ocean space. Britain, for instance, used its advantage in deep-sea science and technology
to connect its terrestrial possessions by a global network of undersea cables , while many nations
employed science and technology to create industrial fisheries of unprecedented size and extent .25
Imperial practice and ideology led to the assumption that marine resources should be exploited—
maximally—by people with the knowledge and power to identify and extract them.¶ This essay has explored how scientists perceived,
interacted with, and placed value on the ocean during the great age of European expansion and influence. Because use of the ocean in
that period was suffused with the doctrine of the freedom of the seas , the ocean was constructed as a
space amenable to control by any nation that could master its surface and use its resources effectively. The logic of
commercial capitalism insisted that industrialization , including the shipping of raw materials and manufactured products
and, as Jennifer Hubbard’s contribution to this forum demonstrates, its increasingly industrialized fisheries, be unconstrained by
regulation. Yet safe transportation and other uses of the sea rested on reliable knowledge of the ocean .
They depended on a highly ordered ocean space, one that was bounded by isolines and bottom profiles. The history of
the ocean in the nineteenth century is one in which nation-states gained control over the ocean environment
—not explicit political dominance of areas of the sea or absolute control over nature but, rather, the tangible ability
to use ocean space to extend imperial and industrial reach around the globe . Western, and particularly Anglo-
American, knowledge of the ocean was—and remains—inextricably connected to midcentury geopolitics
and the growth of modern science.

Deepwater exploration is also capitalist

Michael S. Reidy and Helen M. Rozwadowski, June 2014 (Isis, "The Spaces In Between: Science,
Ocean, Empire", Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of The History of Science
Society, http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/676571)
Midcentury fascination with the ocean’s great depths was as tied to nationalistic and capitalist designs as was
attention to the sea’s surface. Investigation of the ocean’s third dimension grew out of hydrographic charting
activity, itself promoted by dramatic growth in the shipping and whaling industries. Under Beaufort’s leadership, the
British Hydrographic Office produced most of the charts used worldwide . To the maturing United States at
midcentury, whose shipping and shipbuilding industries, whaling fleet, and packet service rivaled even Britain’s, this situation rankled. Maury
complained to the Secretary of the Navy that American ships had to rely on charts from other nations
not just in distant seas, but also in American waters . Although the Coast Survey had responsibility for charting harbors,
anchorages, coastlines, and fishing banks, Maury asserted naval rights to chart offshore waters as well.18
 Development Link
Development in the ocean is capitalist, oceans are deemed empty spaces for the sole
purpose of profit and power projection
Philip E. Steinberg 98, geography professor at Florida State University, 10/28/1998, “The maritime
mystique: sustainable development, capital mobility, and nostalgia in the world ocean,” Environment
and Planning Journal, http://mailer.fsu.edu/~psteinbe/garnet-psteinbe/s%26s.pdf.
Thus the ocean became discursively constructed as removed from society and the terrestrial places of
progress, civilization, and development. Movement across spaces that resisted development, although
necessary, was rhetorically defined as a subordinate activity outside social organization. The ocean
was to serve capitalism as an empty space across which the free trade of liberal capitalist fantasy
could transpire without hindrance from natural or social obstacles. As an 'other' space, the ocean was
con-structed not so much as a space within which power could be deployed (as it had been during the
mercantilist era, when control of channeled circulation was an essential component in garnering social
power) but as an empty space across which power could be projected (Latour, 1986; Law,
1986).<2>Evidence of this abstraction of ocean space during the industrial era can be observed in both
the regulatory and representational spheres. When regulations were required for certain maritime
activities, such as shipping or piracy, policymakers continued the mercantilist-era practice of avoiding
territorial control by sovereign states. However, unlike in the previous era, the sea was now also
discursively constructed as a subordi-nate arena beyond the social practice of formal interstate
competition. In the case of shipping, states largely abandoned global shipping regulation, leaving the
industry to govern itself and, in some cases, effectively giving national industry associations the
authority to negotiate international treaties (Gold, 1981). Recognizing shipping's dependence on the
maintenance of an indivisible ocean, hegemonic players developed a series of regulations and
institutions that reflected their diverse interests and their desire for systemic stability rather than
promoting regimes crudely calculated to multi-ply their social power and maximize short-term
accumulation of economic rents(Cafruny, 1987).A somewhat different route was taken with regard to
piracy, but here too regulation in ocean space was crafted so as to define the ocean as a space beyond
state competition (Thomson, 1994). Ships not flying a national flag—that is, ships not claiming
allegiance and rootedness in one of the civilised 'places' of the land—were declared to be of the wild, of
the anticivilization of the sea. They were defined in international law as hostis humani generis (the
enemy of humankind), a designation that transcended the division of land space into sovereign states
and left pirate ships legitimate prey for ships of all land-based 'civilized' nations. The axis of social power
enabling regulation of piracy in ocean space was thus scripted as a 'free-for-all' between the forces of
land space and ocean space rather than a structured, intrasystemic competition among land powers
seeking riches from assertions of social power in the sea. In representation, there was similarly a
complex set of continuities and disconti-nuities with the mercantilist era. In general, the significance of
marine space was diminished; once perceived as an arena for one of the economy's essential
activities(the movement of goods across space), the ocean was now reduced to an in-between space
that separated the terrestrial places of development. This shift in perception of the ocean can be
observed in its representation on navigational charts and other maps of the era. During the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries, maps portrayed an ocean cluttered with ships, sea monsters, and rhumb
lines, all of which were intended to portray the complex 'reality' of a space rich with natural and social
features. By the early eighteenth century, however, the ocean was perceived as a space unworthy of
social interest (Whitfield, 1996), Cartographers reduced the ocean to an empty, blue expanse, at most
punctuated by placeless latitude and longitude coordinates and often—as in LewisCarroll's parody—as
"a perfect and absolute blank" (Carroll, 1973, page 115).

(Don’t Read Unless Necessary) The aff’s development of the ocean only serves as a
way for capitalists to exploit it
Altprofits, No Date, Altprofits is a website, “Wave and Tidal Venture Capital Financing,”
http://www.altprofits.com/ref/se/re/oe/vcf/vcf.html
Wave energy technologies are the most heavily researched and funded sector in the ocean power
industry. Tidal energy technologies have received relatively less attention than wave energy technologies, despite their comparative success
in commercial deployment and in lab and in-water testing. Out of the 35 companies analyzed by Greentech Media and the Prometheus
Institute for Sustainable Development, 24 are developing wave energy technologies and only 11 are developing tidal energy technologies.
Venture capitalist and the capital markets discovered the ocean power industry for the first time in 2003.
Large amount of VC funding raised by Oceanlinx and Pelamis Wave Power, as well as Ocean Power
Technologies's first IPO on London's AIM, drove investment in 2008. There was only one VC deal in 2005, and
investment was pushed to a modern record on the back of 10 large DII funding grants, eight of which
number in the millions of dollars. 2006 was relatively dry in terms of VC and government grants. Funding in 2008 occurred largely
through non-VC equity financing arranged as follow-on investments for VC deals in 2007. Advanced ocean power companies
pursuing full-scale prototype installations began to break away from the pack in 2006, moving into 2007 on the
top of bigger VC rounds and the industry's first significant IPO. Three companies each raised $15 million VC in 2007, while Ocean
Power Technologies managed a $90 million IPO on the Nasdaq. Also in 2007, they got serious about building a world-class ocean power
program, doling out £13 million in DII grants to eight ocean power technology companies and one water transport company.
 Fossil Fuels Links
Fracking empirically sacrifices communities to the capitalist drive for Oil resources
Cole et al, 11-11-2013 (Penny Cole, Matt Woresdale, Gerry Gold, Fracking
Capitalism: Action Plans for the Eco-social Crisis
Communities are regarded as obstacles to be swept aside. In October 2013, an editorial in The Economist urged
ministers to forget about using tax breaks or spending money to encourage people to remain, or businesses to
invest, in cities and towns like Hull and Burnley. This only diverted them away from areas where “they would be
more successful”. Governments should not try to rescue failing towns, but rather encourage the people who live in them to escape,
said the business magazine.¶ In a debate on fracking in the House of Lords, Lord Howell (George Osborne’s father-in-law) let
the cat out of the bag about how the ruling élite see Britain’s poorest areas. He started off by saying that whilst fracking might
not be acceptable in the “beautiful” south-east (he meant Balcombe) it would be fine for the “desolate
North East”. Then he made it even worse in¶ his so-called apology by saying he actually meant the “unloved North West”.
Capitalism’s view of the future is that former industrial zones are not for people but for fracking.¶ The
accelerating crisis we are living through today has its origins in the rapid growth from the late 1970s onwards. A
collapse of the post-war system of fixed currencies, capital controls, tariffs and tough regulations had shown that the
forces of capitalism could not be contained within national boundaries . The old order was destroyed
and replaced by corporate- driven globalisation. An entirely new global economy emerged, alongside a
financial system that traded 24 hours a day and paid no heed to national borders or governments.

The aff's search for new forms of oil is an attempt to revive the dying capitalist system
- they're the continuation of a 500 year process of violent exploitation
Tom Keefer, 1-21-2009, (The Commoner, " Fossil Fuels, Capitalism, And Class Struggle",
http://www.commoner.org.uk/N13/01-Keefer.pdf)
The development of the vast non-conventional tar sands in Alberta, Canada are a last-ditch attempt to find a
source of fossil fuel energy capable of maintaining and expanding capitalist economic growth in an era
when supplies of conventional oil—the energy source which powered 20th-century industrialism—are peaking and
entering an irreversible period of decline. Despite massive investments in new technologies of oil discovery
and recovery, conventional oil production and non-OPEC countries has been steadily falling for the past decade or
more while the large OPEC producers have been unable in recent years to significantly boost their own
production. The shift to non- conventional "alternatives" such as the Alberta tar sands bring with them a host of
problems—including dramatically increased greenhouse gas emissions, the poisoning of the water and
the destruction of the land, the dispossession of indigenous peoples, and the exploitation of the vast
and ever-growing pool of domestic and foreign labor—all of which sharpen the contradictions of class
struggle and fossil fuel use in 21st-century capitalism. ¶ This article will seek to put the development of the tar
sands in a much larger historical context—that of the process of capitalist growth and development over the past
500 years. I will suggest that in order for us to truly understand and successfully oppose the growth of the tar
sands into what has been dubbed the largest industrial project in the history of humanity , we need to develop
theoretical perspectives which address the weaknesses at the core of the divide between most
environmental and class struggle politics today. Our ecological framework has to gain a class analysis of
the historically specificdynamics of capitalism and its reliance on energy sources , and our class struggle
politics has to integrate an analysis of the importance of the flow of energy and materials to
continued capitalist growth and development.¶ This paper will argue that over the course of its history, capitalism
has faced a number of potentially terminal crises that have arisen from the consequences of
ecological disequilibrium, the resistance of the exploited and dispossessed, and the way in which particular energy regimes have
constrained or enabled capitalist expansion. I am going to suggest that today the global capitalist system stands on the
threshold of another such moment of crisis, one which is intersected by the fault lines of ecological
collapse, thermodynamic limits and the intensification of class struggle caused by these conditions .

Fossil fuels are the largest internal link to capitalism - only they provide the resources
that enable global expansion
Tom Keefer, 1-21-2009, (The Commoner, " Fossil Fuels, Capitalism, And Class Struggle",
http://www.commoner.org.uk/N13/01-Keefer.pdf)
The capturing and unlocking of fossil fuel energy made it possiblefor capitalism to go beyond the
limitations of “biotic energies”dependent upon solar flows of energy. This in turn made possible the
development of capitalist globalization by unifying national economies and enabling the projection of
economic and military power on a global scale. As Elmar Altvater argued: As long as as ‘the societal
relationship with nature’ was based on biotic energies, on the soil and the fruit it bore, onthe speed
and range of an ox or horse drawn cart, on thetonnage, maneuverability and speed of a sailing vessel
andon the art of navigation, the material possibility of overcoming these limits of space and time was
slight and the capacity of creating a world order remained restricted.”3 Altvater suggests that this
appropriation of fossil fuel energy made possible for the first time a true “world order” in which
“the‘metabolism’ of humankind, society and nature reached a globalscale.”4 Altvater goes so far as to
argue that “without fossil energiesneither the process of capitalist production and accumulation nor
the modern monetary world market could exist.”
 Renewables and Nuclear Links
Geoengineering and renewables create new spaces for capitalist expansion - also
turns their environment impacts
Alyssa Rohricht, 6-27-2014, (Counterpunch.org, "Geoengineering and Sustainable Energy: Capitalism
and Climate Change" http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/06/27/capitalism-climate-change/)
Market reactions to large-scale geoengineering such as releasing sulfate aerosols, would result in the continued
acceleration of resource use and further capital accumulation , not to mention, it would do little to solve
our problems. Sulfate injection, to start, doesn’t actually help to remove any CO2 from the atmosphere . It
also doesn’t address other areas of climate change, including ocean acidification , which has far-reaching
implications for many species of marine life. What’s worse, since sulfate injection only manages to reflect more of the
sun’s energy without addressing any of the systematic causes of the increase of greenhouse gases
(GHG) in the atmosphere, further increases of GHGs can continue, thus assuming the deployment of
future sulfate injections and other geoengineering “solutions” to no end .¶ Pursuing ‘sustainable’
energy sources is an equally dubious response to the climate crisis. Just as with geoengineering, the thought is that
human ingenuity and investment in new technologies will lead to cleaner and more efficient industrial practices ,
thus reducing our GHG emissions. Yet this ignores the very nature of the capitalist system of endless growth and
accumulation, and given the opportunity to expand further while expending less on energy and resources,
capitalism will naturally expand to fill the newly opened space. This concept is often called Jevon’s Paradox,
after William Stanley Jevons, a 19th century economist who sought to examine why increased efficiency in the use of coal led
to increased consumption. What Jevons noted was a positive correlation between efficiency and resource
consumption, observing that as the use of coal became more efficient and thus more cost effective, it
became more desirable to consumers, creating more demand and thus more production and
consumption. On and on it goes.¶

Nuclear power exists as a tool of corporate capitalism - turns case

Corinna Lotz, 3-14-2011 (Climate and Capitalism, "A Faustian Pact With Nuclear Power",
http://climateandcapitalism.com/2011/03/14/a-faustian-pact-with-nuclear-power/)
But as a second explosion at the Yukushima nuclear plant releases another blast of radiation into the atmosphere, what began as a
natural disaster is being made worse by what some see as human folly.¶ However, we are not talking about
human madness in general so much as the interests of power-generating companies and governments in
their thrall. Why build 53 nuclear power plants in a country which lies directly on earthquake fault-lines and which only 16 years ago
experienced a major disaster in the city of Kobe?¶ The wisdom of building more and more plants, not only in earthquake-prone
areas, but near urban centres is being questioned around the world, as peak oil drives capitalist governments
to switch to nuclear power generation in an almost desperate effort to diversify energy sources.¶ Naturally there are those who
would prefer to leave the nuclear industry alone to get on with tapping the public purse . In the United
States for example, one politician claims that it would be “poor form for anyone to criticise the nuclear
industry, or pronounce the end of nuclear power, because of a natural disaster that has been a national tragedy for the Japanese people”. ¶
Others, however, have pointed clearly to the danger of increasing reliance on nuclear power generation. A
leading seismologist, Ishibashi Katsuhiko warned in 2007 about the likelihood of just such an accident. Katsuhiko, an
expert in urban safety at Kobe University, has said that Japan’s government, the power industry and the academic
community had all underestimated the potential risks posed by major quakes.¶ He points out that over past
decades the power of earthquakes has grown far greater than Japanese plants were designed to survive. In
addition, deliberate falsification of data caused a scandal at the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant in 2002.
Managers there at first refused to admit inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Authority Agency (IAEA).¶
Politicians in virtually every country have been singing the praises of increased dependence on nuclear power
stations, all of them constructed with huge government subsidies. Sixty reactors are in construction around the globe.
According to the World Nuclear Association “another 150 or more planned to come on line during the next 10 years, and over 200 further back
in the pipeline.Ӧ Ed Miliband, as energy secretary, in 2009 approved 10 more for Britain. None of them will be built without
massive state support. Energy corporations are already suggesting a carbon tax that could cost the
average household more than £200 extra per year. After initial doubts about the virtues of nuclear power, prime minister
David Cameron is now a ‘convert’.¶ The result of the expansion programme will be a huge increase in uranium mining,
with new operations already being opened up in Namibia and Kazakhstan. ¶ Uranium mining exposes miners and their
communities to high levels of carcinogenic radon gas. There is no safe way of disposing of waste,
which also carries significant health risks.¶ The idea that nuclear is a contribution to reduced carbon emissions is rubbish. The
result of extracting the uranium and the billions of tons of cement needed to build all these huge
plants will be massive CO2 emissions. It is unlikely any future savings in emissions would offset this early surge over the whole life
of a reactor.¶ A study by the Rocky Mountain Institute, which campaigns for rational use of the world’s resources, says that if every dollar
spent on nuclear power were invested instead in energy efficiency measures, it would produce seven
times greater reduction in carbon emissions. But the corporations are not going to get profits from
energy efficiency – and people using less fuel means smaller profits for them .¶ In Japan, the trauma of losing
entire towns to the tsunami and the rescue operation may for the time being put the nuclear issue into the background. But the political fall-
out could be just beginning as confidence in those who blithely continue the Faustian pact with nuclear power plummets further. ¶
 Aquaculture Link
Aquaculture is capitalist, it severs the social and ecological relations between humans
and the ocean, it’s unsustainable
Brett Clark and Rebecca Clausen 08, Clark: sociology professor at North Carolina State University,
Clausen: sociology professor at Fort Lewis College, 7-1-2008, “The Oceanic Crisis: Capitalism and the
Degradation of Marine Ecosystem,” The Monthly Review, http://monthlyreview.org/2008/07/01/the-
oceanic-crisis-capitalism-and-the-degradation-of-marine-ecosystem/.
The immense problems associated with the overharvest of industrial capture fisheries has led some
optimistically to offer aquaculture as an ecological solution. However, capitalist aquaculture fails to
reverse the process of ecological degradation. Rather, it continues to sever the social and ecological
relations between humans and the ocean.¶ Aquaculture: The Blue Revolution?¶ The massive decline in
fish stocks has led capitalist development to turn to a new way of increasing profits—intensified
production of fishes. Capitalist aquaculture represents not only a quantitative change in the
intensification and concentration of production; it also places organisms’ life cycles under the complete
control of private for-profit ownership.31 This new industry, it is claimed, is “the fastest-growing form
of agriculture in the world.” It boasts of having ownership from “egg to plate” and substantially alters
the ecological and human dimensions of a fishery.32 ¶ Aquaculture (sometimes also referred to as
aquabusiness) involves subjecting nature to the logic of capital. Capital attempts to overcome natural
and social barriers through its constant innovations. In this, enterprises attempt to commodify, invest in,
and develop new elements of nature that previously existed outside the political-economic competitive
sphere: As Edward Carr wrote in the Economist, the sea “is a resource that must be preserved and
harvested….To enhance its uses, the water must become ever more like the land, with owners, laws and
limits. Fishermen must behave more like ranchers than hunters.”33 ¶ As worldwide commercial fish
stocks decline due to overharvest and other anthropogenic causes, aquaculture is witnessing a rapid
expansion in the global economy. Aquaculture’s contribution to global supplies of fish increased from
3.9 percent of total worldwide production by weight in 1970 to 27.3 percent in 2000. In 2004,
aquaculture and capture fisheries produced 106 million tons of fish and “aquaculture accounted for 43
percent.”34 According to Food and Agriculture Organization statistics, aquaculture is growing more
rapidly than all other animal food producing sectors. ¶ Hailed as the “Blue Revolution,” aquaculture is
frequently compared to agriculture’s Green Revolution as a way to achieve food security and economic
growth among the poor and in the third world. The cultivation of farmed salmon as a high-value,
carnivorous species destined for market in core nations has emerged as one of the more lucrative (and
controversial) endeavors in aquaculture production.35 Much like the Green Revolution, the Blue
Revolution may produce temporary increases in yields, but it does not usher in a solution to food
security (or environmental problems). Food security is tied to issues of distribution. Given that the Blue
Revolution is driven by the pursuit of profit, the desire for monetary gain trumps the distribution of
food to those in need.36¶ Industrial aquaculture intensifies fish production by transforming the natural
life histories of wild fish stocks into a combined animal feedlot. Like monoculture agriculture,
aquaculture furthers the capitalistic division of nature, only its realm of operation is the marine world.
In order to maximize return on investment, aquaculture must raise thousands of fish in a confined net-
pen. Fish are separated from the natural environment and the various relations of exchange found in a
food web and ecosystem. The fish’s reproductive life cycle is altered so that it can be propagated and
raised until the optimum time for mechanical harvest.¶ Aquaculture interrupts the most fundamental
metabolic process—the ability of an organism to obtain its required nutrient uptake. Because the most
profitable farmed fish are carnivorous, such as Atlantic salmon, they depend on a diet that is high in
fishmeal and fish oil. For example, raising Atlantic salmon requires four pounds of fishmeal to produce
every one pound of salmon. Consequently, aquaculture production depends heavily on fishmeal
imported from South America to feed the farmed carnivorous species.37 ¶ The inherent contradiction in
extracting fishmeal is that industries must increase their exploitation of marineœ fish in order to feed
the farm-raised fish—thereby increasing the pressure on wild stocks to an even larger extent. Such
operations also increase the amount of bycatch. Three of the world’s five largest fisheries are now
exclusively harvesting pelagic fish for fishmeal, and these fisheries account for a quarter of the total
global catch. Rather than diminishing the demands placed on marine ecosystems, capitalist
aquaculture actually increases them, accelerating the fishing down the food chain process. The
environmental degradation of populations of marine species, ecosystems, and tropic levels continues.

The privatization of water for aquaculture is a tool of capital accumulation

John Phyne, 1997 (Studies in political economy 52, " Capitalist Aquaculture and the Quest For Marine
Tenure in Scotland and Ireland")
During the enclosure of English agriculture, commoners became subject to poaching violations for
continuing to exercise customary rights which dated from "time immemorial.t'P The law con- verted common lands
into the private property necessary for capital accumulation . Yet, in England and elsewhere, the ma- rine
environment remained subject to public, private and customary rights.f Currently, the introduction of industrial
aquaculture into a multipurpose marine environment presents conflicts analogous to the struggle for
enclosure. Industrial aquaculturalists, like capitalist farmers, want legal and en- forceable property rights
to ensure their interests in capital accumulation ." Within the context of late twentieth century capitalism,
however, this is contingent upon the legal frame- work used by the state in coastal areas.
 Arctic Links
Arctic exploration and development is an attempt to aquire new markets and
resources to power capitalist imperialism - empirically leads to global war
Spohr et al, 2013 (Alexandre Piffero Spohr, Jéssica da Silva Höring, Luíza Gimenez Cerioli, Bruna
Lersch, Josuá Gihad Alves Soares; UFRGSMUN volume 1, "The Militarization of the Arctic: Political,
Economic and Climate Challenges", http://www.ufrgs.br/ufrgsmun/2013/wp-
content/uploads/2013/10/The-Militarization-of-the-Arctic-Political-Economic-and-Climate-Changes.pdf)
1.4. Contemporary Explorations: the Arctic during the Great Wars In the late 19th century and early 20th century, the global
economy went through a period of changes, which modified the international scenario. Technologies developed
during the Industrial Revolution have enabled the increase of the production, and, in this sense, the seeking of
new markets and new raw material sources had become essential. These needs resulted in an
imperialist race - marked by the competition among the capitalist countries - that would lead to World War ¶ I.
Under these circumstances, the Arctic exploration was even more important to¶ control new routes and, thus, reach
other markets.¶ Another aspect that impacted intemational politics and contributed to the¶ interest in the
Arctic was the study of an English geographer, Halford Mackinder.Ԧ In 1904, he formulated the Heartland Theory, in
which he argues that the¶ “geographical pivot of history” is located in the north and center of the
Eurasian¶ continent, embracing the Russian territory and extending up to the Arctic Ocean¶ coastss. According to
Mackinder (1904), this region contained large quantities of¶ natural resources and the country that
controlled it would be able to, in the first¶ place, develop a powerful terrestrial hegemony and, also, canalize
means to build¶ a maritime power. It would be the rise of a power with unique capabilities in the¶
International System (Mello 1994). Since then, the Arctic dispute gained a new ¶ strategic nature and countries
increasingly invested in it.¶ Although most part of Mackinder’s Heartland corresponded to Russia, other¶
States continued funding expeditions to the Arctic in order to dominate some¶ strategic portion of it. In 1909,
Robert Peary, a North American explorer, was the¶ first to reach the North Pole, planting, as he arrived, the USA flag
there, making¶ clear the US intentions on that region (Sale 2008). Another explorer, a Norwegian¶ who had succeed in
crossing for the first time the Northwest Passage, in 1903,¶ named Roald Amundsen, led the first Arctic exploration by air, in 1925, aboard¶ an
airship (Sale 2008).¶

Arctic development is a tool of capitalist exploitation - causes warming and

international tensions
Laurent Lafrance, 8-30-2013, (World Socialist Web Site, " Canada spearheads exploitation and
militarization of the Arctic", http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/08/30/arct-a30.html)
As a second-rank world power, Canada has historically been forced to pursue its imperialist interests through an
alliance with the United States, with whom it has a deep and long-standing economic and geopolitical partnership. Yet important
differences over the Arctic have divided and continue to divide Canada and the US . Washington has never
recognized Canadian sovereignty over the Northwest Passage, and has a rival claim to Canada’s in the Beaufort Sea, site of rich deposits of oil
and natural gas.¶ Recognizing the growing geostrategic importance of the Arctic, the Obama administration published this past May the
US’s first ever “National Strategy for the Arctic Region.” After a few hypocritical phrases about protecting the environment,
the strategy document commits the US to striving to “seize the greater part of the economic
opportunities in the region.” It also pledges “to advance the security interests of the United States ” by
ensuring US ships and planes can operate “under, on, and throughout the airspace and waters of the Arctic.” ¶ Both Canada and the US
are concerned that Russia is taking the lead in exploiting the Arctic . Russia, which possesses over 90 percent of
known oil reserves in the Arctic, has the largest fleet of icebreakers in the world, and a significant and growing military presence in the region.
Moscow recently concluded key agreements with China and Japan concerning security and development in the Arctic. ¶ Under Canadian,
Norwegian and US pressure, NATO has taken an increasing interest in the far north. The US-based
“Defence One” website
published an article this week that argues a major expansion of NATO’s presence in the Arctic must be a
crucial component of the US’s “pivot to Asia,” that is, its preparations for war with China. It concludes, “To quote a US
Coast Guard rear admiral, ‘ready or not, here comes the Arctic.’ If the alliance buries its head in the snow and ignores its potential value in the
Arctic, it risks ceding the window of opportunity to Russia and China.”¶ The US was taken aback last spring when Iceland’s President, Ólafur
Ragnar Grímsson, announced a new Arctic forum, named the “Arctic Circle,” with China as a founding member, the very same day that Iceland
announced it was entering into a free trade pact with China.¶ The
accelerating effects of climate change, which
threatens the world’s population with disaster, is viewed by the capitalist elite as a golden
opportunity for massive profits. The militarization of the Arctic and the irrational exploitation of the
region’s natural resources by private capital will have devastating environmental consequences and
only further intensify the antagonisms between rival nation-states.

The attempt to exploit the melting arctic for greater profits is symptomatic of the
psychopathy of modern capitalism
David Cromwell and David Edwards, 6-10-2012, (Truth Out.org, " Arctic Ice Melt, Psychopathic
Capitalism and the Corporate Media" http://truth-out.org/news/item/11970-arctic-ice-melt-
psychopathic-capitalism-and-the-corporate-media)
Around the same time that a record low in Arctic sea ice was being recorded, a new report from the UK's
House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee urged a halt to all oil and gas drilling in the Arctic ,
at least "until new safeguards are put in place." Committee chair Joan Walley MP said: ¶ The shocking speed at which the Arctic sea
ice is melting should be a wake-up call to the world that we need to phase out fossil fuels fast. Instead we
are witnessing a reckless gold rush in this pristine wilderness as big companies and governments make a grab for the
world's last untapped oil and gas reserves.¶ Caroline Lewis, member of the committee, warned that "the race to carve up the Arctic
is accelerating faster than our regulatory or technical capacity to manage it."¶ But the record of corporate
capitalism shows that powerful industrial forces will do all they can to lobby governments to allow for
continued economic exploitation of the planet's resources. According to the US Geological Survey, within the Arctic Circle there are some 90
billion barrels of oil - 13 per cent of the planet's undiscovered oil reserves - and 30 per cent of its undiscovered natural gas. The race
for
corporate profits is now on, with Shell already committed to a "multi-year exploration program" in
the Arctic.¶ The receding Arctic ice is a "business opportunity" for those wishing to exploit newly available shipping
routes. Cargo that now goes via the Panama Canal or the Suez Canal will, in many cases, have a shorter Arctic route, ensuring
"efficiency savings" for big business.¶ Companies are also licking their lips at the prospect at getting their
hands on vast deposits of minerals as Greenland's ice cap recedes .¶ "For me, I wouldn't mind if the whole
ice cap disappears," said Ole Christiansen, the chief executive of NunamMinerals, Greenland's largest homegrown mining
company, with his eyes on a proposed gold mining site up the fjord from Nuuk, Greenland's capital. "As it melts, we're seeing new
places with very attractive geology."¶ A good example of the psychopathic mind-set at the heart of
corporate capitalism. Science writer Peter Gleick responded incredulously on Twitter: "25 foot sea rise?" For that is indeed the
catastrophic scale of global sea level rise that would occur with the melting of the Greenland ice sheet.
 Biofuels Link
Biofuels are consistently a tool of crony capitalism - turns case - the alt is a
prerequisite to solve
William O'Keefe, 7-16-2012, (Marshall Institute, "Crony Capitalism in Biofuels Policy"
http://marshall.org/energy-policy/crony-capitalism-in-biofuels-policy/)
The starting point for any consideration of a biofuels policy is an acknowledgement that the biofuels
initiatives over the past two decades have been a government sanctioned scam that did nothing more
than promote crony capitalism. They took money from taxpayers and enriched the few. These programs
have not worked and more of the same will not work either. Proponents seek profit though laws and
regulations because they can’t compete in the market place for fuels.¶ A forward looking policy should
begin with energy realities and a good understanding of what we are trying to accomplish in promoting
biofuels and the implications in pursuing them. For too long, biofuel policy decisions have been driven by the illusion of
energy independence, meaning no or very low oil imports, pursuing air quality improvements, and
addressing climate change. These pursuit of these objectives has lead to policy decisions that were
detached from reality and an understanding of economics, science, and technology.
 Energy Crisis/Oil Shocks Links
The idea of an energy crisis is nothing more than an attempt to conceal the
contradictions of capitalism - the problem isn't a lack of oil, it's the profit motive
Chang Chien 3-15-1974 (Peking Review, "Behind the So-called 'Engergy Crisis'"
https://www.marxists.org/subject/china/peking-review/1974/PR1974-11a.htm

THE major capitalist countries are going through a serious “energy crisis.” The oil supply shortage has
caused production and living conditions to be affected by a “petroleum shock.” Prices are soaring in step with oil prices
and stocks are falling in the face of bleak economic prospects. International political and economic relations also have
been influenced by the “energy crisis.” The situation is being widely discussed. Some bourgeois newspapers and
journals abroad blamed the “energy crisis” on an “exhaustion of energy resources” while others absurdly
reproached the Arab people with using oil as a weapon . These assertions which evade the heart of the
matter or shift the responsibility on to other people are simply designed to create confusion and mislead people. ¶
What is it really all about?¶ The current “energy crisis” takes mainly the form of an insufficient supply of oil . While on
the surface it may be a question of natural resources, in reality this is absolutely not so. The world’s energy resources, including those
of the main capitalist countries, are plentiful. Furthermore, with the development of production and the steady rise of human knowledge,
people are discovering and will continue to discover new sources of energy . In essence, the “energy crisis”
gripping the capitalist world is a reflection of the crisis of the capitalist system , an outcome of the sharpening
contradictions within the capitalist-imperialisi system, and a result of the monopoly capitalists’
ruthless exploitation and nefarious plunder of the people at home and abroad; today, it is also a direct result of
unbridled foreign expansion and rivalry for world hegemony by the two superpowers, U.S. imperialism and Soviet revisionism. ¶ Under the
capitalist system, “production of surplus-value is the absolute law of this mode of production” (Marx, Capital). The
nature of the monopoly capitalist class is to seek fabulous monopoly profits . In exploiting energy resources,
the capitalists do not consider the rational use of natural resources but only seek maximum profits. The
decrease and increase of the various energy resources often depend on the amount of profit they give. Once
the main source of energy, coal was known as the “food of industry .” Today, though there we still very rich deposits of coal, the
industry in general has declined in the leading capitalist countries. Even in the United States, which has the biggest reserves, coal accounts
for only one-fifth of its energy production. The reason is that as it is much more profitable to exploit oil
than to mine coal, the capitalists have, therefore, preferred to set coal aside. Although, oil c also be extracted from oil shale
and oil sand, they have not been exploited proprely, because the capitalists are not interested ; they find that
extracting oil from shale and sand is less profitable than direct oil exploitation and therefore cannot
satisfy their ravenous appetites.¶ Capitalism means waste. In the capitalist world, large quantities of
petroleum are wasted because of anarchy in production and general wastefulness in life. A large amount of
precious oil has been freely abandoned underground because indiscriminate drilling destroyed oil-
bearing formations, or because pressures were lowered so much by drawing oil recklessly that it no longer
could be made to flow out, etc. It is estimated that the present rate of oil recovery is only 35 per cent in the
United States. In other words, for every ton of oil obtained, two tons are abandoned. As to lavish waste in consumption,
this is even more shocking. Nowadays, electricity for non-productive use in the capitalist countries
takes up one-third to one-half their total electric power output. The U.S. press admits that half the energy
consumption in the United States is wasted.
 Growth Link
The aff aims to satisfy capitalism's urge for limitless growth - causes exploitation,
destruction of democracies, and destroys value to life while trying to stave off the
inevitable collapse
Richard Clark, 8-28-2012 (OpEd News, republished by the Worldd Public Forum 4-3-2014, " How and
Why Is Global Corporate Capitalism Obsolete?", http://wpfdc.org/blog/economics/19049-how-and-why-
is-global-corporate-capitalism-obsolete)
What lies at the heart of this insanity? It is this: Commanding an implacable and steady increase of top-tier individual
and corporate wealth is the core principle of global corporate capitalism . Meanwhile, recognition of any social
concern, or relationship-to-the-natural-world, that transcends the goal of increasing capital accumulation for the few, does
not occur. Why not? It's because it is extrinsic to the system, and must therefore be ignored.¶ Four critical problems
must then be recognized:¶ Dependence on growth: Global corporate capitalism relies on limitless growth -- but the
natural resources essential to wealth production are finite, i.e. limited. Super-exploitation of resources is
exhausting those resources and destroying the ecosystems with which they are associated, thereby jeopardizing
human survival as well as that of other species.¶ Propensity to war: Since the only goal of the power elite is to
accumulate (rather than more fairly distribute) wealth, the limited and shrinking resources that are essential to producing
that wealth must and will be fought over, and will be owned and controlled by the winners. For this
reason, high-tech, super-deadly warfare becomes inevitable.¶ Intrinsic & growing inequity, and the
consequently inevitable disappearance of democracy : Without any constraining outside force or internalized
principle of social equity, capital accumulation leads almost exclusively to ever more accumulation by the
few, which is to say that ever larger amounts of capital are thereby concentrated in ever fewer hands. Problem is, democracies are
corruptible: so this ever greater concentration of wealth allows the purchase of the legal and political
representation it needs to get laws passed that facilitate the further accumulation and concentration of
wealth in the hands of the moneyed and powerful few. This means that as the concentration of wealth increases,
democracy is degraded and ultimately destroyed.¶ Ironically, extreme capital accumulation is actually
unproductive of real happiness: Human happiness and wellbeing are demonstrably and empirically tied to
factors other than capital accumulation. The extreme poverty that results, for some, from this lopsided accumulation, is
clearly unproductive of happiness; but after a certain point of accumulation, so is wealth itself unproductive
of ever more happiness. This happens just as soon as wealth goes past a relatively modest level. This is not speculation: Through much study
and gathering of data, sociologists have found that happiness,
contentment and human fulfillment are most
widespread in those societies where:¶ a) there are guarantees that basic needs will be met for all,¶ b) wealth is more
equitably distributed, and¶ c) bonds between people and the natural environment remain stronger than the desire to accumulate
wealth.¶
 Biodiversity Link
Biodiversity is a construct of biotechnological capitalism, organisms are the
workhorses of the ocean
Stefan Helmreich 07, Anthropology Professor at MIT, 2007, “Blue-green Capital, Biotechnological ¶
Circulation and an Oceanic Imaginary: ¶ A Critique of Biopolitical Economy,” BioSocieties Journal,
http://web.mit.edu/anthropology/pdf/articles/helmreich/helmreich_blue-green_capital.pdf.
But the primary biotic substrate imagined for biotech capital accumulation, at least in the formal
proceedings of the conference, was ‘biodiversity’, described by Eric Mathur, from the San Diego-based
biotech firm Diversa, as ‘the basic building block for biotechnology’. Because the ocean constitutes the
majority of Earth’s biosphere, marine biotechnologists imagine marine biodiversity to be immense—and
largely undiscovered. Marine biologist William Fenical, from Scripps Oceanographic Institute, articulated
this view in an interview in Discover. A full-page photo showing Fenical holding a sea fan against his
aloha shirt has him declaring, ‘The ocean’s right there, It’s diverse as hell, and it’s waiting for us’
(Mestel,1999: 75).This enthusiasm for diversity is a key sentiment animating biotech capitalism. Since
its coinage, biodiversity has become infectiously polyvalent. Cori Hayden lists meanings it has accreted:
‘an ecological workhorse, essential raw material for evolution, a sustainable economic resource, the
source of aesthetic and ecological value, of option and existence value, a global heritage, genetic
capital, the key to the survival of life itself’ (2003: 52).For marine biotechnologists in America, marine
biodiversity represents a frontier form of biodiversity: healing waters writ large, full of new genes
awaiting amplification, delivering what marine microbiologist Rita Colwell (director of NSF 1998–2004)
early on called‘ entirely new ‘‘harvests’’ from the sea’ (1984: 3). Insofar as humans make use of this
new nature by capitalizing it, the prevailing sentiment goes, they must do so ‘sustainably’ by pro-
tecting ‘diversity’, understood as a positive value. No wonder a biotech company named itself Diversa.
Biological oceanographer Paul Falkowski from Rutgers University, in his conference lecture, was
impatient with such views. Marine biotechnology, he said, ‘is fundamentally idea-limited. We don’t think
in terms of an array of products and this is because most of us are in academia.’ More, marine biologists
‘always want to work with their favorite organisms, because they’ve learned to sentimentalize nature,
especially the sea’. We have to look closely, he said, at microbes, ‘the workhorses of the ocean’.
Academia and industry must work together; practitioners must recognize that—Falkowski underscored
the point by shouting it—‘Markets are not sentimental!
 Geoengineering/Sustainable Energy Link
Attempts at geo-engineering and sustainable energy are capitalist and will fail
Alyssa Rohricht 14, staff at American University, writer at Black Cat Revolution, 6-25-14, “Capitalism &
Climate Change – Part IV: Geoengineering and Sustainable Energy,” The Black Cat Revolution,
http://theblackcatrevolution.wordpress.com/2014/06/25/capitalism-climate-change-part-iv-
geoengineering-and-sustainable-energy/.
Technology will save the planet; at least, that’s the assertion. The claim is that capitalism, if allowed to
flourish, will naturally lead to technologies that are more sustainable and cause less harm to the
environment through market pressures. The sheer power of the human mind to innovate will be our
redemption. Production can continue unabated, meanwhile our emissions and use of natural resources
will decrease.¶ This is the idea of dematerializing the economy – or reducing the throughput of raw
materials and energy into the system without decreasing the system’s output of goods and services.
Basically, the economy will do more with less. By switching to more sustainable sources of energy like
wind and solar, increasing the efficiency of machinery and appliances, and through geoengineering,
proponents of the technological solution to climate change argue that man’s ingenuity can pull us back
from the brink of disaster. Economist Anthony Giddens writes in The Politics of Climate Change that we
must take bold action to combat climate change, and this means “taking the plunge” on geoengineering
projects that could save humanity from the harmful effects of climate change. “We have no hope of
responding to climate change unless we are prepared to take bold decisions. It is the biggest example
ever of he who hesitates is lost.Ӧ However, further investing in technologies and in geoengineering is
not a bold, new decision, as Giddens contends. It is doubling down on exactly what we have been
doing for decades. Solar Radiation Management (SRM) techniques (one area of geoengineering) such as
adding sulfate aerosols to the stratosphere to increase the albedo effect – the amount of the Sun’s
energy that is reflected back into space – and cool the planet are being seriously considered by many
scientists and policy makers. The absurdity of pursuing massive projects that would greatly alter the
natural systems of the earth and that could have disastrous side effects is evident. Gavin Schmidt,
climate modeler at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, created the following analogy for
geoengineering: Imagine the climate as a small boat on a choppy ocean, rocking back and forth. One
of the passengers in the boat decides to stand up and deliberately rock the boat violently to the
protests of the other passengers. Another passenger suggests that with his knowledge of chaotic
dynamics, he can counterbalance the rocking of the first passenger. To do so, he needs many sensors,
computational resources, and so on so that he can react efficiently, though he cannot guarantee that it
will absolutely stabilize the boat, and since the boat is already unsteady, it may make things worse.
Schmidt asks,¶ “So is the answer to a known and increasing human influence on climate an ever more
elaborate system to control the climate? Or should the person rocking the boat just sit down?” ¶ Market
reactions to large-scale geoengineering such as releasing sulfate aerosols, would result in the
continued acceleration of resource use and further capital accumulation, not to mention, it would do
little to solve our problems. Sulfate injection, to sxtart, doesn’t actually help to remove any CO2 from
the atmosphere. It also doesn’t address other areas of climate change, including ocean acidification,
which has far-reaching implications for many species of marine life. What’s worse, since sulfate injection
only manages to reflect more of the sun’s energy without addressing any of the systematic causes of the
increase of greenhouse gases (GHG) in the atmosphere, further increases of GHGs can continue, thus
assuming the deployment of future sulfate injections and other geoengineering “solutions” to no end. ¶
Pursuing ‘sustainable’ energy sources is an equally dubious response to the climate crisis. Just as with
geoengineering, the thought is that human ingenuity and investment in new technologies will lead to
cleaner and more efficient industrial practices, thus reducing our GHG emissions. Yet this ignores the
very nature of the capitalist system of endless growth and accumulation, and given the opportunity to
expand further while expending less on energy and resources, capitalism will naturally expand to fill
the newly opened space. This concept is often called Jevon’s Paradox, after William Stanley Jevons, a
19th century economist who sought to examine why increased efficiency in the use of coal led to
increased consumption. What Jevons noted was a positive correlation between efficiency and resource
consumption, observing that as the use of coal became more efficient and thus more cost effective, it
became more desirable to consumers, creating more demand and thus more production and
consumption. On and on it goes.¶ This is called the “rebound effect” whereby gains in efficiency lead to a
drop in the price of a given commodity and a rise in demand and consumption. Any gains in efficiency,
then, do not lead to a decrease in consumption, but often have the opposite effect. In fact, over the
period of 1975 to 1996, carbon efficiency increased dramatically in the US, Japan, the Netherlands, and
Austria. However, studies show that during the same period, total emissions of carbon dioxide and per
capita emissions increased across the board. Thus gains in fossil fuel efficiency have resulted in
increased use by the capitalist, industrialized societies. As Karl Marx noted, capitalism prevents the
rational application of technologies because gains are only reinvested in the capitalist system and
used to further expand and grow capital accumulation.
 Green Energy Link
Sustainable energy is only an extension of green capitalism. Even if it solves the
environment in the short term, it still fails to address the historic contradiction
between labor and capital.
Jerry Harris 10, Professor of History at DeVry University, Author of “The Dialectics of Globalization:
economic and political conflict in a transnational world”, national secretary of the Global Studies
Association of North America, “Going Green to Stay in the Black: Transnational Capitalism and
Renewable Energy,” Network for the Critical Studies of Global Capitalism,
http://netglobalcapitalism.wordpress.com/articles/going-green-to-stay-in-the-black-transnational-
capitalism-and-renewable-energy/.
Abstract: Sustainable energy use is rapidly developing, often with state support and patriotic political
rhetoric. But the solar and wind energy industries are highly transnationalized and already inserted
into global patterns of accumulation. While possibly solving some of the most pressing problems
between capitalism and environmental sustainability, green capitalism still fails to address the
contradiction between labor and capital. Therefore, any progressive strategy for social transformation
must link the fair treatment of nature and labor together.¶ Is the future of capitalism green? And will
the country that leads in green technology dominate the global economy? That is certainly the outlook
of important sectors of the capitalist class, both among long established corporations as well as new
entrepreneurs. But the green economy, particularly the energy sector, is already taking a globalized
path of development under the control of the transnational capitalist class (TCC). While innovative
corporations may emerge as dominant players, it will be as transnational corporations (TNS), not as
national champions of nation-states.¶ In the U.S. the green revolution is promoted as the way to
maintain world economic supremacy. In President Obama’s state of the union speech he said, “the
nation that leads the clean-energy economy will be the nation that leads the global economy, and
America must be that nation.” (1) Environmentalist Hunter Lovins calls on the U.S. to lead the world in
green innovation because¶ “they’ll rule the world, economically, politically, and probably militarily.” (2)
Thomas Friedman wraps green technology in red, white and blue calling it the new currency of power.
“It’s all about national power…what could be more patriotic, capitalistic and geostrategic than that?”
(3).¶ But these dreams of national greatest are already outdated. Green energy can indeed extend the
life of capitalism, but not within the confines of nation-centric logic and power. Major wind and solar
corporations already operate on a global scale, with innovations and research ongoing in Europe, India,
Japan, China and the U.S. Furthermore, the scale of the environmental crisis is beyond any one country
to solve. It calls for a global response and advanced sectors of the TCC understand these world
dimensions.¶ The environmental crisis actually offers an opportunity for capitalism to begin a new
cycle of accumulation. A way to end the repeating failures of financial speculation with a renewal of
productive capital. As Muller and Passadakis explain, “the point about the ecological crisis…is that it is
neither solved nor ignored in a green capitalist regime, but rather placed at the heart of its growth
strategy.”(4) By creating new systems of energy, transportation, architectural design and reengineering
productive processes, capitalism can greatly reduce its abuse of the environment. This would free
capital from environmentally harmful industries for new areas of investment and create profitable
opportunities in dynamic new markets. Such a strategic shift will not only solve the current crisis but
legitimize a new political regime and lay the foundation for a hegemonic bloc with a global social
base. Nonetheless, this transformation will not solve the contradiction between capital and labor, and
the TCC may lack the political resolve to move fast and far enough to avoid major environmental
disasters. But if the transformation does occur over the coming decades, it may solve the most pressing
problems between finite environmental resources and the need of capitalism to grow and profit. ¶ With
global warming widely accepted as an existential crisis capitalists have seized upon alternative and
sustainable energy as a major transformative technology. United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki
Moon has called for a worldwide “Green New Deal” that would be a “wholesale reconfiguration of
global industry.” (5) A study published by Scientific American argues for a $100 trillion dollar program,
projecting that “100 percent of the world’s energy, for all purposes, could be supplied by wind, water
and solar resources by 2030.” (6) That is a fair amount of money, but Fatih Birol, chief economist at the
International Energy Agency points out that, “Each year without an international agreement adds $500
billion to the costs – estimated at $10 trillion annually — of cleaning up the power sector to help keep
temperatures within a range that would avoid unstoppable climate changes.” (7) Given the scale of the
problem $100 trillion over 20 years sounds feasible. But dedicating $5 trillion a year from a world GDP of
$54 trillion (2007) seems impossible without a political revolution. ¶ Although still a very small part of
energy consumption, wind and solar power are rapidly expanding and total clean energy investments in
2008 were $155 billion and $145 billion in 2009. (8) Eventually renewable energy may play an economic
role similar to the digital, computer and telecommunications revolution of the past 30 years. These
technologies laid the basis for globalization and vastly expanded access to knowledge and information.
(9) Economically there was innovation, dynamic emerging corporations and new cycles of
accumulation. The technologies were also used by progressive activists across the world for organizing
and education. Just as the digital revolution spearheaded a new era of capitalist globalization, so too can
green technology open the door to the next era of growth while promoting important progressive
changes.¶ While these possibilities exist, they will develop within historic capitalist patterns that
continually reassert themselves. Digital technologies became centralized into a handful of transnational
corporations, both old and new, that today dominate the market and consume innovations through
constant buy-outs. That pattern is already appearing in the green energy field, except there will be no
singular leading location such as Silicon Valley. Solar and wind technologies are global and being
consolidated by a small number of competitive TNCs. This does not necessarily undercut their
environmental benefits. But it does undercut the democratic possibilities for a decentralized system of
energy, and fails to solve the problems between capital and labor. By examining the major wind and
solar TNCs below, we can begin to uncover the character of the new green economy.
 Ocean Trade Link
Attempts at controlling trade routes are means for capitalist accumulation
Philip E. Steinberg 98, geography professor at Florida State University, 10/28/1998, “The maritime
mystique: sustainable development, capital mobility, and nostalgia in the world ocean,” Environment
and Planning Journal, http://mailer.fsu.edu/~psteinbe/garnet-psteinbe/s%26s.pdf.
This Early Modern ocean-space regime was particularly well suited to the spatiality of the era's
mercantilist political economy. On the one hand, the interstate political-economic system was (and
remains) dependent upon competition among multiple sovereign states (Chase-Dunn, 1989; Wallerstein,
1984). The transformation of world hegemony into one global world empire would have stifled the
political competition that drove (and continues to drive) capitalism's search for ever-increasing
accumulation. On the other hand, during this early era of capitalism there were few domains in which
sovereign states could actually compete with each other for economic dominance. High-risk investments
in the mainstays of mercantilist political economy—over-seas agriculture, mineral extraction, and the
carriage trade—generally would have run at a loss if mediated solely by a 'depoliticized' free-enterprise
market (Andrews, 1984;Braudel, 1982; Davis, 1962) and there were few opportunities for profits to be
realized from investment in European production sites (Dunford and Perrons, 1983). However, rising
European powers soon discovered that by applying state violence they could claim exclusive rights to
the products of distant areas and gain monopolistic control over long-distance trade routes, and this
served as a crucial means for generating capital accumulation (Chaudhuri, 1985; Davis, 1962; Nijman,
1994).Analyzing these factors, Bunker and Ciccantell (1995; forthcoming) have suggested that the one
distinct characteristic of this early period of capitalism was that the primary means for capital
accumulation was control of trade, or channeled circulation, and they have suggested that the era be
renamed the age of transport capitalism. It follows that in a system in which economic power was
based upon controlling discrete channels of trade, the surface upon which much of this trade was
carried out (the ocean) would emerge as a site for exercising power and implementing state violence. ¶
Page 7¶ The maritime mystique <«)<) Thus, the control of trade routes rapidly became conflated with
political domination and military might, and the deep seas became constructed as a 'force-field' for
exercising these forms of power (Mollat du Jourdin, 1993), and innovations in the means for crossing
its expanse were among the driving forces in modern technological progress(HugilU 1993).
 Ocean Tourism Link
Ocean tourism is a capitalist form of consumption, it deems oceans as empty spaces
capable of being annihilated
Philip E. Steinberg 98, geography professor at Florida State University, 10/28/1998, “The maritime
mystique: sustainable development, capital mobility, and nostalgia in the world ocean,” Environment
and Planning Journal, http://mailer.fsu.edu/~psteinbe/garnet-psteinbe/s%26s.pdf.
The sea is also an object of consumption: a space (and a view) that provides historical groundings for
the tourist-oriented spectacles that increasingly characterize the 'post-modern' urban waterfront. As
scholars such as Baudrillard (1988) and Urry (1990;1994) discuss, three dominant aspects of
'postmodern' capitalism are incessant move-ment, the self-conscious production of places, and the
perpetual consumption of images (see also Harvey, 1989; Lash and Urry, 1994; Soja, 1989; 1996). These
character-istics all manifest themselves in tourism, where the tourist (by definition a moving subject)
seeks out notable places and consumes their images (Britton, 1991). Indeed, the links between tourism
and postmodernism are so strong that Urry (1990, page 87)claims that even during the modern era
tourism was "prefiguratively postmodern. "Nonetheless, for Urry, post modern tourism is distinguished
by the gazed upon object's lack of claim to authenticity and by the tourist who comprehends this
charade but still chooses to accept the presented object as an image to be consumed. The image of
the ocean as a space of nostalgia is particularly apparent in the harborside festival marketplace, an
increasingly popular urban redevelopment strategy that both reflects the spatiality of postmodern
capitalism (Kilian and Dodson, 1996) and provides an ideal backdrop for promoting consumption of
commodities within the postmodern tourist economy (Goss, 1996). In the harborside festival
marketplace, the place's mercantile past is celebrated through the fetishization of human interactions
with marine space. These marketplaces are frequently located in former customs houses or warehouses
(or perhaps in a new building constructed to look like it had served a former maritime function), fishing
nets and anchors abound, and there may even be a restored clipper ship parked outside. And, of course,
the sea itself (or a surrogate water body) is within view, providing, as it did during the industrial era,
romantic possibilities of escape, danger, and untamed nature. The difference from the industrial era is
that this image of alterity, although still linked with romantic escape, is now also linked with the
potential for asserting individuality through the consumption of commodities. The sea is represented
as a space of consumable icons and 'memories'. This representation of ocean space rests uneasily
alongside that of the ocean as an empty space without value, an obstruction to be obliterated by the
forces of hyper-mobility. On the urban waterfront, in contrast, the sea and its landward referents are
fetishized as images to be consumed. Many of the goods sold at festival marketplaces are marketed as
global exotica in which the ocean adds value by contributing to global differentiation. Yet the 'global
village' rhetoric used in marketing these products (such as 'global village') implies the time - space
compression that is idealized by the repre-sentation of the ocean as an empty space capable of being
annihilated.
 Oil Drilling Link
Oil drilling is the fuel for further capitalist exploitation, leads to more ecological
degradation, economic collapse, which culminates in extinction
Klaas V. 14, staff writer at anti-imperialism.com, 1-17-14, “CAPITALISM, PEAK OIL, AND ENDLESS
CRISIS,” Anti-Imperialism.com, http://anti-imperialism.com/2014/01/17/capitalism-peak-oil-and-
endless-crisis/.
Because of the abundance of oil in certain areas of the world, accompanied by a peculiar profitability
of capital, the world oil sector presents a very high level of geographical centralization and
concentration of capital, with approximately 100 fields producing 50% of the global supply, 25
producing 25% of it and a single field, the Ghawar field of Saudi Arabia, producing around 7%. Most of
these fields are old and well past their peak, with the others likely to enter decline within the next
decade.¶ Miller argued that conditions are such that, despite volatility, prices can never return to pre-
2004 levels, saying “it is highly likely that when the US pays more than 4% of its GDP for oil, or more
than 10% of GDP for primary energy, the economy declines as money is sucked into buying fuel instead
of other goods and service”.¶ What can a Marxist conclude from this open admission of capitalist
contradiction and desperation?¶ This is the most important realization: capitalist crisis is now necessarily
endless. There is a crossroad in front of humanity as a whole and its interest in survival: either end the
capitalist mode of production, or accept the inevitability of a Malthusian nightmare of more hunger,
more wars over resources, increasingly social Darwinist methods of population control, and whatever
will be needed to maintain the rule of capital at the expense of everyone else.¶ Without a steady and
cheap supply of oil, there is no capitalism; oil is its blood. Capital accumulation requires an energy
sources which tendentially increases its potential supply; no such energy source exists, and even if
one was found, every part of the technological infrastructure of capitalist society, running on oil,
would take a long time to be retooled or dismantled to give way to new infrastructure running on this
new energy source. This kind of transition would never be feasible in a world where the rule is
exploitation of man by man, and of nation by nation.¶ There can be no painless solution to an
ecological crisis that jeopardizes the future of humanity while world politics revolves around
defending the profits of monopoly capital, and not the general interests of human survival. The whole
point of capitalist production, production for the most immediate profit, stands in contradiction to the
well being of humanity and the production of the conditions required by human life. On top of its own
internal limit of capitalism, capital itself and its over-accumulative tendencies, capitalist production in
the era of imperialism has entered into a conflict with an external limit, something never before seen
for a mode of production on this scale: capitalism is exhausting non-reproducible resources. It is now
necessary for every individual to take up the struggle to put production and distribution under social
control.
 Resource Extraction Link
Resource extraction from the ocean is an ecological contradiction of capitalism
Philip E. Steinberg 98, geography professor at Florida State University, 10/28/1998, “The maritime
mystique: sustainable development, capital mobility, and nostalgia in the world ocean,” Environment
and Planning Journal, http://mailer.fsu.edu/~psteinbe/garnet-psteinbe/s%26s.pdf.
The image of the ocean as a resource-rich space to be rationally managed and sustainably developed
is itself in contradiction with the previous two. If the ocean is a cornucopia of exploitable but fragile
resources, then it could be neither a space amenable to annihila-tion nor even a space dominated by a
nostalgic consumable imagery. This third representation of the ocean can also be traced to the present
crisis of ocean governance resulting from the intensification of both capital fixity and mobility.
Capitalism has a tendency to increasingly abstract space and time from nature (Lefebvre, 1991) and, as
Altvater notes, this abstraction forms the basis for capitalism's ecological contradiction: "The
heterogeneity of physical transformation in real space and time-- that is, the particularity of materials,
place, and ecology—is at odds with the axiom of general comparability in the world marketplace
imposed by capitalism .... The space and time of a society, and the physical time and space of nature,
are in no way identical—and this is especially true for capitalism. The logics of their respective functional
spaces collides [sic]. Ecological crisis can, in many regards, be under-stood in terms of this collision"
(Altvatcr, 1994, pages 79-80, 82).In other words, the ecological contradiction of capitalism is rooted in its
tendency to disregard the specific material conditions of production and to abstract the temporal and
spatial contexts that place limits on the potential for transforming nature. The turn to an
environmentalist discourse can then be seen as a response to this contradiction. Altvater's thesis is
particularly persuasive when applied to the world ocean, for the rise of the environmentalist image
(the image of the ocean as a fragile resource space to be sustainably managed) can be linked directly
to the failings inherent in the spatial and temporal abstractions of the two images considered
previously. In the first case, marine space and time are wished away by denying any significant
materiality to the ocean. In the second, nostalgia similarly reproduces these abstractions, but the
abstraction is primarily temporal; the specificity of today's maritime economy is lost on consumers
gazing upon icons of the maritime past. The language of sustainable development suggests a belated
recognition of this ecological contradiction, as attempts are made to incorporate the material
obstacles of space and time into the business cycle, with corporate leadership providing environ-
mental stewardship (Bridge, 1998; O'Connor, 1994, pages 125- 151). This discourse of a resource-rich
but fragile ocean in need of comprehensive management and planning is the result (Nichols, 1999).
Thus, National Geographic asserts that individuals engaged in fishing must come to terms with "this
world of inevitable limits" and give way to long-range planning and corporate management. This
challenge has been taken up by the Marine Stewardship Council, a joint effort of the multinational food
corporation Unilever and the World Wildlife Fund designed "to harness market forces and con-sumer
power in favour of healthy, well-maintained fisheries for the future" (Marine Stewardship Council,
1997). Although National Geographic regrets the loss of the independent fishing boat owner plying the
ocean's wilds, the bureaucratization of ocean management and the privatization of rights to its
resources is presented as the maturation of our attitudes toward nature. The stewardship of marine
resources by agents of capital is naturalized through explicit parallels to the enclosure of agricultural
land in the western United States: fisheries, like post-dust-bowl agriculture, must be allowed to
evolve into "big industry: highly regulated, tidy," where rational manage-ment is applied for long-
term sustainability (Parfit, 1995). Likewise, The Economist declares:"In fact, [the ocean] is a resource
that must be preserved and harvested. To enhance its uses, the water must become ever more like the
land, with owners, laws and limits. Fishermen must behave more like ranchers than hunters" {The
Economist1998, page 4).This managerial environmentalist perspective is supportive of general
guidelines for governing the uses of the sea without actually mandating its governance as territory.
Indeed, parallels can be made with the mercantilist-era regime. Under both regimes, the ocean is
recognized as a crucial space for essential social processes but care is taken to protect it from the
ravages of competitive territorial states. The mercantilist designation of the sea as a special space of
commerce (res extra commercium), immune to territorial appropriation but susceptible to exertions of
social power, is being paralleled by a postindustrial designation of the sea as a special space of nature
(res extra naturd). In contrast to the intervening industrial era, when the sea was denigrated as a void
between the terrestrial spaces of production and consumption, the ocean is now once again
configured as a significant space wherein states and intergovernmental entities are permitted to
exercise nonterritorial power so as to manage the ocean's resources in a rational, efficiency-
maximizing manner.
 Environmental Apocalyptic Rhetoric-Link
Creating a consensus over warming using the idea that there is a threat reinforces the
squo and promotes capitalism
Peter Berglez and Ulrika Olausson, Professors of Social Sciences at Orebro University, October 15,
2013, “The Post-political Condition of Climate Change: An Ideology Approach,” Taylor and Francis //RX
The belief in climate science and its general conclusion that climate change is real and human-caused
is a necessary component of establishing the consensual understanding of a “climate threat.” It is
empirically demonstrated below how this consent also builds on ideological naturalizations. When the
scientific theories, arguments, and conclusions become naturalized, they turn into something beyond
rational questioning that does not seem to need further evidence. This belief in the anthropogenic
factor appears in the focus groups in scientifically informed and enlightened discussions; but also figures
in the uncritical and less reflective conversations which mostly refer to “what the experts say.” The most
obvious kind of naturalization of climate change is to defend and confirm its anthropogenic character
without any clear references to science. . It’s a matter of our having destroyed our planet. And that it’s
gotten to where it can’t be stopped. We can’t get rid of all the cars and... factories... . factories and all
that... I: So are we the ones who have caused this climate change? . Definitely. (Two women, group B)
POST-POLITICAL CONDITION OF CLIMATE CHANGE 61 I: What do you think are the causes of climate
change? . Well, it’s all the emissions and it’s... well, it’s everything that’s spewed out into the air.
Because it’s crazy, really, if you start thinking about it... how much one single truck pumps out in one
day. And so, if you count how many trucks we have in this city, and how many cities and so on, it’s not a
little... . So it’s clear that it’s us, human beings, who’ve ruined everything. Completely clear... (Woman,
group B) Science is always characterized by an element of uncertainty—this is built into its very
rationale. However, in the naturalization of climate change, elements of scientific uncertainty have been
washed away, and the scientific hypotheses become univocal and consensual truths: it is “completely
clear” (Woman, group B); “the changes... are only human-created” (Woman, group H); it has “never
ever happened so rapidly” (Woman, group H). A scientific conclusion such as the one about human-
induced climate change has reached the ideological level when its sources and origins no longer have to
be concretized but operate as an abstract authoritative voice. . It hasn’t been confirmed whether it’s...
how should I put it... whether it’s our fault or not. There are probably many large corporations that say
that it isn’t caused by our carbon dioxide emissions. But I still think it probably is, because when it comes
to the greenhouse effect, there’s evidence that it functions in such a way as to cause warming. That
makes it hard to deny, I think. (Woman, group D) . So I believe in natural causes. . It’s a bit... for the
moment it could be people, you know? But in the long run it’s probably... . ...nature. . But there are
quite a lot of emissions from mainly airplanes, from what I’ve heard. This must have some effect, right?
(Three men, group F) In the excerpts above, some objections are raised to the dominant idea about the
causes of climate change, but the reasoning still leads to articulations such as “there’s evidence” and
“this must have some effect.” Arguments about, and evidence of, the anthropogenic character of
climate change have abandoned their scientific origins and become deeply embedded—naturalized—in
everyday cognition and discourse; they have become common sense. Another empirical sign of climate
consensus arising through ideological processes is the development of private beliefs based on extra-
scientific or semi-scientific reasoning, mixed with the very feeling or idea that climate change is human-
made. It seems as if one decides and/or chooses to believe in it in the same sense that one might
believe in, for instance, the nation, monarchy, or God. . I believe that it’s we humans. . It’s humans, I
believe. . It’s us. And all our needs. . Our welfare. . Mm. I think so too, actually. (Four women, group G) .
Well, I believe that because we human beings are the ones who have been having an effect, that climate
change is due to the consequences of our behavior... It doesn’t feel like it’s something natural. (Woman,
group I) These kinds of utterances and standpoints might perhaps be seen as important prerequisites
for radical climate action. However, in our empirical material, which does not include radical
environmentalists, there is no visible correlation between belief in climate science and a more radical
political view of how the “climate threat” ought to be mitigated. We would argue that the
proliferation of naturalizations of climate science among the majority of the population also leads to a
neutralization of climate change as a radical political issue. Along with the mainstreaming of climate
science in society in terms of consensual “climate belief,” the climate issue moves beyond the purview
of radical ecology. When climate science becomes the headache and concern of society as a whole, it
also expands into a more diverse field where different interests are supposed to interact and get along,
compromises are to be established, and, as a consequence, the radical conflictual dimension of climate
change is neutralized. Thus, the more climate science is embraced by all of society, by rightists and
leftists, by the young and the elderly, the more diluted its political dimension becomes. Here, it is
important to pay attention to the emphasis on the particular causes of climate change, such as
“trucks,” “cars,” “factories,” “airplanes,” noted above, and how this emphasis simultaneously
represses the singular Cause, i.e., the totality of capitalism. Thus, what tends to precede the political
neutralization process is political fragmentation and particularization. Climate discourse is permeated
by a post-political rationale that allows us to connect our climate scientific belief to a pluralistic
smorgasbord of concerns—the specific CO2 emissions emanating from cars and trucks, food, tourism,
construction, agriculture, travel, etc.—and thereby also to postpone our engagement in the universal
cause (the prevailing totality), which is a much more disconcerting and demanding kind of political
commitment.

Climate change apocalyptic rhetoric results in serial policy failure and masks
capitalism, which is the root cause of environmental depletion
Also an externalization da
Cap link
Nuclear power link
Erik Swyngedouw, University of Manchester professor of Environment and Development, 20 10,
“Apocalypse Forever?: Post-political Populism and the Spectre of Climate Change,” Sagepub //RX
Environmental politics and debates over ‘sustainable’ futures in the face of pending environmental
catastrophe signal a range of populist maneuvers that infuse the post-political post-democratic
condition. In this part, we shall chart the characteristics of populism (see, among others, Canovan, 1999;
2005; Laclau, 2005; Mudde, 2004; Žižek, 2006a) as they are expressed in mainstream climate concerns.
In other words, to the extent that consensual climate change imaginaries, arguments and policies
reflect processes of de- politicization, the former are sustained by a series of decidedly populist
gestures. Here, I shall summarize the particular ways in which climate change expresses some of the
classic tenets of populism. First, the climate change conundrum is not only portrayed as global, but is
constituted as a universal humanitarian threat. We are all potential victims. ‘THE’ Environment and
‘THE’ People, Humanity as a whole in a material and philosophical manner, are invoked and called into
being. Humanity (as well as large parts of the non-human world) is under threat from climatic
catastrophes. However, the ‘people’ here are not constituted as heterogeneous political subjects, but
as universal victims, suffering from processes beyond their control. As such, populism cuts across the
idiosyn- crasies of different, heterogeneously constituted, differentially acting, and often antagonistic
human and non-human ‘natures’; it silences ideological and other constitutive social differences and
disavows conflicts of interests by distilling a common threat or challenge to both Nature and Humanity.
As Žižek puts it: . . . populism occurs when a series of particular ‘democratic’ demands [in this case, a
good environment, a retro-fitted climate, a series of socio-environmen- tally mitigating actions] is
enchained in a series of equivalences, and this enchainment produces ‘people’ as the universal political
subject . . . and all different particular struggles and antagonisms appear as part of a global
antagonistic struggle between ‘us’ (people) and ‘them’ [in this case ‘it’, i.e. CO2]. (Žižek, 2006a: 553)
Second, this universalizing claim of the pending catastrophe is socially homogenizing. Although
geographical and social differences in terms of effects are clearly recognized and detailed, these
differences are generally mobilized to further reinforce the global threat that faces the whole of
humankind (see Hulme, 2008). It is this sort of argumentation that led the latest report of the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to infer that the poor will be hit first and hardest by
climate change (IPCC, 2009), which is of course a correct assertion – the poor are by definition ill-
equipped to deal with any sort of change beyond their control – but the report continues that,
therefore, in the name of the poor, climate change has to be tackled urgently. A third characteristic of
environmental apocalyptic thought is that it reinforces the nature–society dichotomy and the causal
power of nature to derail civilizations. It is this process that Neil Smith refers to as ‘nature- washing’:
Nature-washing is a process by which social transformations of nature are well enough acknowledged,
but in which that socially changed nature becomes a new super determinant of our social fate. It
might well be society’s fault for changing nature, but it is the consequent power of that nature that
brings on the apocalypse. The causal power of nature is not compromised but would seem to be
augmented by social injections into that nature. (2008: 245) While the part-anthropogenic process of
the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is readily acknowledged, the related
ecological problems are externalized as are the solutions. CO2 becomes the fethishized stand-in for
the totality of climate change calamities and, therefore, it suffices to reverse atmospheric CO2 build-
up to a negotiated idealized point in history, to return to climatic status quo ex-ante. An extraordinary
techno- managerial apparatus is under way, ranging from new eco-technologies of a variety of kinds to
unruly complex managerial and institutional configura- tions, with a view to producing a socio-
ecological fix to make sure nothing really changes. Stabilizing the climate seems to be a condition for
capital- ist life as we know it to continue. Moreover, the mobilized mechanisms to arrive at this
allegedly more benign (past) condition are actually those that produced the problem in the first place
(commodification of nature – in this case CO2), thereby radically disavowing the social relations and
processes through which this hybrid socio-natural quasi-object (Latour, 1993; Swyngedouw, 2006) came
into its problematic being. Populist discourse ‘displaces social antagonism and constructs the enemy. In
populism, the enemy is externalized or reified into a positive ontological entity [excessive CO2] (even if
this entity is spectral) whose annihilation would restore balance and justice’ (Žižek, 2006a: 555). The
enemy is always externalized and objectified. Populism’s fundamental fantasy, for Žižek, is that of
‘intrud- ers’ who have corrupted the system. CO2 stands here as the classic example of a fetishized and
externalized foe that requires dealing with if sustainable climate futures are to be attained. Problems
therefore are not the result of the ‘system’, of unevenly distributed power relations, of the networks of
control and influence, of rampant injustices, or of a fatal flaw inscribed in the system, but are blamed on
an outsider (Žižek, 2006a: 555). That is why the solution can be found in dealing with the ‘pathological’
phenomenon, the resolution for which resides in the system itself. It is not the system that is the
problem, but its pathological syndrome (for which the cure is internal), that is posited as ‘excess’. While
CO2 is externalized as the socio-climatic enemy, a potential cure in the guise of the Kyoto principles is
generated from within the market functioning of the system itself. The ‘enemy’ is, therefore, always
vague, ambiguous, socially empty or vacuous (like ‘CO2’); the ‘enemy’ is a mere thing, not socially
embodied, named and counted. While a proper analysis and politics would endorse the view that CO2-
as-crisis stands as the pathological symptom of the normal, one that expresses the excesses inscribed in
the very normal functioning of the system (i.e. capitalism), the policy architecture around climate
change insists that this ‘excessive’ state is not inscribed in the functioning of the system itself, but is
an aberration that can be ‘cured’ by mobilizing the very inner dynamics and logic of the system
(privatization of CO2, commodifica- tion and market exchange via carbon and carbon-offset trading).
Fourth, populism is based on a politics of ‘the people know best’ (although the latter category remains
often empty, unnamed), supported by a scientific technocracy assumed to be neutral, and advocates a
direct relationship between people and political participation. It is assumed that this will lead to a good,
if not optimal, solution, a view strangely at odds with the presumed radical openness, uncertainty and
undecidability of the excessive risks associated with Beck’s or Giddens’ second modernity. The
architecture of populist governing takes the form of stakeholder partici- pation or forms of participatory
governance that operates beyond the state and permits a form of self-management, self-organization
and controlled self-disciplining (see Dean, 1999; Lemke, 1999), under the aegis of a non-disputed liberal-
capitalist order. Fifth, populist tactics do not identify a privileged subject of change (like the proletariat
for Marxists, women for feminists or the ‘creative class’ for competitive capitalism), but instead invoke a
common condition or predicament, the need for common humanity-wide action, mutual collabo- ration
and cooperation. There are no internal social tensions or internal generative conflicts; the ‘people’, in
this case global humanity, are called into being as political subject, thereby disavowing the radical
heterogene- ity and antagonisms that cut through ‘the people’. It is exactly this consti- tutive split of the
people, the recognition of radically differentiated if not opposed social, political or ecological desires,
that calls the proper democratic political into being. Sixth, populist demands are always addressed to
the elites. Populism as a project addresses demands to the ruling elites (getting rid of immi- grants,
saving the climate . . .); it is not about replacing the elites, but calling on the elites to undertake action.
The ecological problem is no exception. It does not invite a transformation of the existing socio-
ecological order but calls on the elites to undertake action such that nothing really has to change, so
that life can basically go on as before. In this sense, environmental populism is inherently reactionary,
a key ideological support structure for securing the socio-political status quo. It is inherently non-
political and non-partisan. A Gramscian ‘passive revolution’ has taken place over the past few years,
whereby the elites have not only acknowledged the climate conundrum and, thereby, answered the call
of the ‘people’ to take the climate seriously, but are moving rapidly to convince the world that, indeed,
capi- talism can not only solve the climate riddle but also that capitalism can make a new climate by
unmaking the one it has co-produced over the past few hundred years through a series of extraordinary
techno-natural and eco- managerial fixes. Not only do the elites take these particular demands of the
people seriously, it also mobilizes them in ways that serve their purposes. Seventh, no proper names
are assigned to a post-political populist politics (Badiou, 2005). Post-political populism is associated with
a politics of not naming, in the sense of giving a definite or proper name to its domain or field of action.
Only ‘empty’ signifiers like ‘climate change policy’, ‘bio- diversity policy’ or a vacuous ‘sustainable
policy’ replace the proper names of politics. These proper names, according to Rancière (1998; see also
Badiou, 2005), are what constitute a genuine democracy, that is, a space where the unnamed, the
uncounted and, consequently, unsymbolized become named and counted. Consider, for example, how
class struggle in the 19th and 20th century was exactly about naming the proletariat, its counting,
symbolization, narration and consequent entry into the techno- machinery of the state. In the 20th
century, feminist politics became named through the narration, activism and symbolization of ‘woman’
as a political category. And, for capitalism, the ‘creative class’ is the revolutionary subject that sustains
its creatively destructive transformations. Climate change has no positively embodied name or signifier;
it does not call a political subject into being that stands in for the universality of egalitarian democratic
demands. In other words, the future of a globally warmer world has no proper name. In contrast to
other signifiers that signal a positively embodied content with respect to the future (like socialism,
communism, liberalism), an ecologically and climatologically different future world is only captured in
its negativity; a pure negativity without promises of redemption, without a positive injunction that
‘transcends’/sublimates negativity and without proper subject. The realization of this apocalyptic
promise is forever post- poned, the never-land of tomorrow’s unfulfilled and unfulfillable promises.
Yet the gaze on tomorrow permits recasting social, political and other pressing issues today as future
conditions that can be retroactively re- scripted as a techno-managerial issue. The final characteristic
of populism takes this absence of a positively embodied signifier further. As particular demands are
expressed (get rid of immigrants, reduce CO2) that remain particular, populism forecloses univer-
salization as a positive socio-environmental injunction or project. In other words, the environmental
problem does not posit a positive and named socio-environmental situation, an embodied vision, a
desire that awaits realization, a fiction to be realized. In that sense, populism does not solve problems,
it moves them elsewhere. Consider, for example, the current argument over how the nuclear option is
again portrayed as a possible and realistic option to secure a sustainable energy future and as an
alternative to deal both with CO2 emissions and peak-oil. The redemption of our CO2 quagmire is
found in replacing the socio-ecologically excessive presence of CO2 with another socio-natural object,
U235/238, and the inevitable production of all manner of socio-natural transuranic elements. The
nuclear ‘fix’ is now increasingly staged (and will undoubtedly be implemented) as one of the possible
remedies to save both climate and capital. It hardly arouses expectations for a better and ecologically
sound society.

Apocalyptic imaginations depoliticizes climate change and reinforces capitalism

Erik Swyngedouw, University of Manchester professor of Environment and Development, 20 10,
“Apocalypse Forever?: Post-political Populism and the Spectre of Climate Change,” Sagepub //RX
In this consensual setting, environmental problems are generally staged as universally threatening to
the survival of humankind, announcing the premature termination of civilization as we know it and
sustained by what Mike Davis (1999) aptly called ‘ecologies of fear’. The discursive matrix through
which the contemporary meaning of the environmental condition is woven is one quilted
systematically by the continuous invoca- tion of fear and danger, the spectre of ecological annihilation
or at least seriously distressed socio-ecological conditions for many people in the near future. ‘Fear’ is
indeed the crucial node through which much of the current environmental narrative is woven, and
continues to feed the concern with ‘sustainability’. This cultivation of ‘ecologies of fear’, in turn, is
sustained in part by a particular set of phantasmagorical imaginaries (Katz, 1995). The apocalyptic
imaginary of a world without water, or at least with endemic water shortages, ravaged by hurricanes
whose intensity is amplified by climate change; pictures of scorched land as global warming shifts the
geo- pluvial regime and the spatial variability of droughts and floods; icebergs that disintegrate around
the poles as ice melts into the sea, causing the sea level to rise; alarming reductions in biodiversity as
species disappear or are threatened by extinction; post-apocalyptic images of waste lands reminis- cent
of the silent ecologies of the region around Chernobyl; the threat of peak-oil that, without proper
management and technologically innovative foresight, would return society to a Stone Age existence;
the devastation of wildfires, tsunamis, diseases like SARS, avian flu, Ebola or HIV, all these imaginaries of
a Nature out of synch, destabilized, threatening and out of control are paralleled by equally disturbing
images of a society that contin- ues piling up waste, pumping CO2 into the atmosphere, deforesting the
earth, etc. This is a process that Neil Smith appropriately refers to as ‘nature-washing’ (2008: 245). In
sum, our ecological predicament is sutured by millennial fears, sustained by an apocalyptic rhetoric
and representa- tional tactics, and by a series of performative gestures signalling an over- whelming,
mind-boggling danger, one that threatens to undermine the very coordinates of our everyday lives and
routines, and may shake up the foundations of all we took and take for granted. Table 1 exemplifies
some of the imaginaries that are continuously invoked. Of course, apocalyptic imaginaries have been
around for a long time as an integral part of Western thought, first of Christianity and later emerging as
the underbelly of fast-forwarding technological modernization and its associated doomsday thinkers.
However, present-day millennialism preaches an apocalypse without the promise of redemption. Saint
John’s biblical apocalypse, for example, found its redemption in God’s infinite love. The proliferation of
modern apocalyptic imaginaries also held up the promise of redemption: the horsemen of the
apocalypse, whether riding under the name of the proletariat, technology or capitalism, could be tamed
with appropriate political and social revolutions. As Martin Jay argued, while traditional apocalyptic
versions still held out the hope for redemption, for a ‘second coming’, for the promise of a ‘new dawn’,
environmental apocalyptic imaginaries are ‘leaving behind any hope of rebirth or renewal . . . in favour
of an unquenchable fascination with being on the verge of an end that never comes’ (1994: 33). The
emergence of new The forms of millennialism around the environmental nexus is of a particular kind
that promises neither redemption nor realization. As Klaus Scherpe (1987) insists, this is not simply
apocalypse now, but apocalypse forever. It is a vision that does not suggest, prefigure or expect the
necessity of an event that will alter history. Derrida (referring to the nuclear threat in the 1980s) sums
this up most succinctly: . . . here, precisely, is announced – as promise or as threat – an apocalypse
without apocalypse, an apocalypse without vision, without truth, without revelation . . . without
message and without destination, without sender and without decidable addressee ... an apocalypse
beyond good and evil. (1992: 66) The environmentally apocalyptic future, forever postponed, neither
promises redemption nor does it possess a name; it is pure negativity. The attractions of such an
apocalyptic imaginary are related to a series of characteristics. In contrast to standard left arguments
about the apocalyptic dynamics of unbridled capitalism (Mike Davis is a great exemplar of this; see
Davis, 1999, 2002), I would argue that sustaining and nurturing apocalyptic imaginaries is an integral and
vital part of the new cultural politics of capitalism (Boltanski and Chiapello, 2007) for which the
management of fear is a central leitmotif (Badiou, 2007). At the symbolic level, apocalyptic imaginaries
are extraordinarily powerful in disavowing or displacing social conflict and antagonisms. As such, apoca-
lyptic imaginations are decidedly populist and foreclose a proper political framing. Or, in other words,
the presentation of climate change as a global humanitarian cause produces a thoroughly
depoliticized imaginary, one that does not revolve around choosing one trajectory rather than another,
one that is not articulated with specific political programs or socio-ecological project or revolutions. It is
this sort of mobilization without political issue that led Alain Badiou to state that ‘ecology is the new
opium for the masses’, whereby the nurturing of the promise of a more benign retrofitted climate
exhausts the horizon of our aspirations and imaginations (Badiou, 2008; Žižek, 2008). We have to make
sure that radical techno-managerial and socio-cultural transformations, organized within the horizons of
a capitalist order that is beyond dispute, are initiated that retrofit the climate (Swyngedouw,
forthcoming). In other words, we have to change radically, but within the contours of the existing state
of the situation – ‘the parti- tion of the sensible’ in Rancière’s (1998) words, so that nothing really has
to change.
 Other
Urgency/ethics link
Tonči Valentić, 2008 (International Journal of Zizek Studies Vol 2 No 2, "Symbolic Violence and Global
Capitalism" http://zizekstudies.org/index.php/ijzs/article/viewFile/140/214)
The horror of violent acts and empathy for the victims inexorably function as a lure which prevents us
from thinking, for example when we are forced to act urgently, or when confronted with "humanitarian
politics" of human rights that serves as the ideology of military interventionism for specific economic-
political purposes, which utterly prevents any radical socio-political transformation (i.e. charity becomes the
humanitarian mask hiding the face of economic exploitation ). Having that in mind, there are four possible
theoretical tasks one should undertake in order to clearly articulate a theory of political violence: 1) to point out that
"structural" violence is in the heart of global capitalism, 2) to deconstruct media's coverage of crime,
terrorism as well as humanitarian crisis, 3) to unravel true motives of terrorists, 4) to expose racism
and racial violence as fear which is deeply rooted in the liberal and tolerant multicultural societies
obsessed with political correctness. Therefore, as Žižek has pointed out, subjective violence we see (the one with a clear
identifiable agent) is only the tip of an iceberg made up of "systemic" violence.

Fake activism link / do nothing alt

Tonči Valentić, 2008 (International Journal of Zizek Studies Vol 2 No 2, "Symbolic Violence and Global
Capitalism" http://zizekstudies.org/index.php/ijzs/article/viewFile/140/214)
Of course, Žižek is not a ground-breaking author regarding that issue: many anti-capitalists assert that "capitalism is violent", believing that
private property, trade and profit survive only because state (or police) violence defends them and that capitalist economies unavoidably need
war to expand. His notion of "systemic" violence also heavily relies on numerous theories on "structural violence"
denoting a form of violence in which social institutions kill people slowly by preventing them from
meeting their basic needs, leading further to social conflicts. What is really innovative, and in a way provocative, in his book is the
idea of passivity: It is "better to do nothing than to engage in localized acts whose ultimate function is to
make the system run smoother (acts like providing the space for the multitude of new subjectivities, etc .)
The threat today is not passivity, but pseudo-activity, the urge to “be active,” to “participate,” to mask
the Nothingness of what goes on. People intervene all the time, “do something,” academics participate in
meaningless “debates,” etc., and the truly difficult thing is to step back, to withdraw from it. Those in
power often prefer even a “critical” participation, a dialogue, to silence – just to engage us in a “dialogue,” to
make it sure our ominous passivity is broken ." What would then be the most plausible theoretical answer and practical advice
regarding this theoretical puzzle in which violence is utterly invisible and does not refer any more to "exertion of
physical force in order to injure or abuse", or to intentional and forceful human destruction? We need
to rethink it in terms of new biopolitical and biosocial constellation where revolutionary or
emancipatory potential might be placed at the same time in the passivity and violent activity. The first step
would be, paradoxically, to point out the meaningless of violence, to reject all teleological and theological
justifications and empirical analysis, and finally to listen in theoretical silence instead of participating
in the noise it constantly produces.
 Alt
Alt solves case - socialism resolves the inefficiencies and consumptive drives that
make nuclear power necessary
Socialist Labor Party of America, 1979 ("The Socialist Alternative to Nuclear Catastrophe",
http://www.slp.org/res_state_htm/nuc_catas79.html)
In a socialist society, the government would consist of the industrial organization of the working class at the
workplace, where workers would democratically make the decisions on how the resources available to society are to be
used, what energy sources are to be developed, what goods are to be produced, etc. Workers would collectively hold full decision-
making power over the use of all technology, nuclear or otherwise . With the abolition of the profit
motive and the transformation of the means of production from private into social property , such
decisions would be made not by a minority to serve its own vested interests, but by the working-class majority, which
could rationally assess the overall impact any decision would have on the general welfare.¶ Moreover, putting the
nation on a socialist foundation based on production for use would free the economy of the capitalist
economic imperatives that have fueled the drive toward nuclear energy . A socialist economy would be
characterized by the planning and rational allocation of resources that are rendered impossible by the
profit motive. A socialist society would reduce the need for all sources of energy by eliminating the enormous
waste that takes place today under capitalism. Planned obsolescence, shoddy products and other
manifestations of the waste that permeate capitalist production would be eliminated . Mass transit
systems would be developed. And a socialist society would accelerate the development of safe,
nonpolluting, renewable sources of energy. These efforts—coupled with the dismantling of U.S. imperialism’s massive nuclear arsenal
—would rapidly eliminate the social peril nuclear energy now poses .¶ Workers today continue to live
under the shadow of nuclear disaster, but in a socialist society workers could enjoy a material abundance
without in any way compromising their health and safety. Outrages like the one that occurred near Harrisburg
continue to expose the antisocial nature of the capitalist system for all workers to see. And as the manifold
social problems of capitalism increasingly threaten the lives and well-being of workers , it becomes more
and more imperative that they recognize the need to organize politically and economically to take control of the
economy, abolish class-divided capitalism and administer production through their own democratic
bodies.¶
Impact
 General
Capitalism causes people to resort to short-term profits rather than natural options,
causes ecological degradation and human extinction
Brett Clark and Rebecca Clausen 08, Clark: sociology professor at North Carolina State University,
Clausen: sociology professor at Fort Lewis College, 7-1-2008, “The Oceanic Crisis: Capitalism and the
Degradation of Marine Ecosystem,” The Monthly Review, http://monthlyreview.org/2008/07/01/the-
oceanic-crisis-capitalism-and-the-degradation-of-marine-ecosystem/.
The world is at a crossroads in regard to the ecological crisis. Ecological degradation under global
capitalism extends to the entire biosphere. Oceans that were teeming with abundance are being
decimated by the continual intrusion of exploitive economic operations. At the same time that
scientists are documenting the complexity and interdependency of marine species, we are witnessing an
oceanic crisis as natural conditions, ecological processes, and nutrient cycles are being undermined
through overfishing and transformed due to global warming. ¶ The expansion of the accumulation
system, along with technological advances in fishing, have intensified the exploitation of the world
ocean; facilitated the enormous capture of fishes (both target and bycatch); extended the spatial reach
of fishing operations; broadened the species deemed valuable on the market; and disrupted metabolic
and reproductive processes of the ocean. The quick-fix solution of aquaculture enhances capital’s
control over production without resolving ecological contradictions. ¶ It is wise to recognize, as Paul
Burkett has stated, that “short of human extinction, there is no sense in which capitalism can be relied
upon to permanently ‘break down’ under the weight of its depletion and degradation of natural
wealth.”44 Capital is driven by the competition for the accumulation of wealth, and short-term profits
provide the immediate pulse of capitalism. It cannot operate under conditions that require
reinvestment in the reproduction of nature, which may entail time scales of a hundred or more years.
Such requirements stand opposed to the immediate interests of profit. ¶ The qualitative relation between
humans and nature is subsumed under the drive to accumulate capital on an ever-larger scale. Marx
lamented that to capital, “Time is everything, man is nothing; he is at the most, time’s carcase. Quality
no longer matters. Quantity alone decides everything.”45 Productive relations are concerned with
production time, labor costs, and the circulation of capital—not the diminishing conditions of
existence. Capital subjects natural cycles and processes (via controlled feeding and the use of growth
hormones) to its economic cycle. The maintenance of natural conditions is not a concern. The bounty of
nature is taken for granted and appropriated as a free gift.¶ As a result, the system is inherently caught
in a fundamental crisis arising from the transformation and destruction of nature. István Mészáros
elaborates this point, stating:¶ For today it is impossible to think of anything at all concerning the
elementary conditions of social metabolic reproduction which is not lethally threatened by the way in
which capital relates to them—the only way in which it can. This is true not only of humanity’s energy
requirements, or of the management of the planet’s mineral resources and chemical potentials, but of
every facet of the global agriculture, including the devastation caused by large scale de-forestation, and
even the most irresponsible way of dealing with the element without which no human being can
survive: water itself….In the absence of miraculous solutions, capital’s arbitrarily self-asserting attitude
to the objective determinations of causality and time in the end inevitably brings a bitter harvest, at
the expense of humanity [and nature itself].46¶ An analysis of the oceanic crisis confirms the
destructive qualities of private for-profit operations. Dire conditions are being generated as the
resiliency of marine ecosystems in general is being undermined.¶ To make matters worse, sewage from
feedlots and fertilizer runoff from farms are transported by rivers to gulfs and bays, overloading
marine ecosystems with excess nutrients, which contribute to an expansion of algal production. This
leads to oxygen-poor water and the formation of hypoxic zones—otherwise known as “dead zones”
because crabs and fishes suffocate within these areas. It also compromises natural processes that
remove nutrients from the waterways. Around 150 dead zones have been identified around the
world. A dead zone is the end result of unsustainable practices of food production on land. At the same
time, it contributes to the loss of marine life in the seas, furthering the ecological crisis of the world
ocean.¶ Coupled with industrialized capitalist fisheries and aquaculture, the oceans are experiencing
ecological degradation and constant pressures of extraction that are severely depleting the
populations of fishes and other marine life. The severity of the situation is that if current practices and
rates of fish capture continue marine ecosystems and fisheries around the world could collapse by the
year 2050.47 To advert turning the seas into a watery grave, what is needed is nothing less than a
worldwide revolution in our relation to nature, and thus of global society itself.

Capitalism leads to reverse evolution and the complete destruction of the entire
universe
Paul Farrell 13, behavioral economics author of many books, used to be investment banker with
Morgan Stanley; executive vice president of the Financial News Network; executive vice president of
Mercury Entertainment Corp; and associate editor of the Los Angeles Herald Examiner, 12-4-13, “10
ways capitalists get rich destroying our oceans,” Market Watch,
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/10-ways-capitalists-get-rich-destroying-our-oceans-2013-12-04.
¶ Yes, many capitalists are getting rich off the high seas, a vast reservoir of wealth holding 95% of the

planet’s water, spanning 70% of the Earth’s surface. Often called the last frontier, a return to America’s
18th century Wild West. It’s virtually unregulated, a new free market where capitalists roam like
pirates, plundering wealth and treating our oceans as a freebie gold mine and trash dump.¶ ¶ Bad
news for seven billion people living on the planet. And by 2050 we’ll be adding three billion more
people. We already know we can’t feed 10 billion. Now we’re polluting their water. Won’t be enough
clean water for all to drink, triggering wars.¶ ¶ Yes, bad news getting worse: As Alan Sielen of the
Scripps Institute of Oceanography warns in the Foreign Affairs journal: “Over the last several decades,
human activities have so altered the basic chemistry of the seas that they are now experiencing
evolution in reverse: a return to the barren primeval waters of hundreds of millions of years
ago.”Capitalism is turning back evolutionary clock a billion years¶ Evolution in reverse? Yes, planet
Earth is regressing eons to an earlier primitive era. Unregulated free-market competition on the high
seas is turning back the evolutionary clock. That doesn’t bother today’s short-term-thinking
capitalists. But it should. Because, ironically, shifting evolution into reverse will also self-destruct the
very global economy that capitalism needs for future growth.¶ Today’s capitalists see another three
billion people as the new customers needed to expand free markets globally. But in the process they are
also cutting their own throats, unaware they’re pushing a hidden self-destruct button lodged in their
brains.¶ Nature designed all systems with these built-in termination buttons. Deny it all you want, but
humans have our entrances and exits, as Shakespeare said. We all do. Same with economic systems:
Yale’s Immanuel Wallerstein sees capitalism at the end of its 500-year cycle. Solar systems last for
billions of years. Someday, as our sun cools, Earth could go the way of Mars. And the sun will
eventually exit in a blazing supernova.
 Root Cause-Enviro
Capitalism is the root cause of environmental problems
John Bellamy Foster, November 5, 2011, originally published by MRzine, John Bellamy Foster has been
writing articles about capitalism and he cites multiple people in his works, for a complete list visit the
attached link, “Capitalism and environmental catastrophe,” Capitalism and environmental catastrophe
This is a reconstruction from notes of a talk delivered at a teach-in on "The Capitalist Crisis and the Environment" organized by the Education
and Empowerment Working Group, Occupy Wall Street, Zuccotti Park (Liberty Plaza), New York, October 23, 2011. It was based on a talk
delivered the night before at the Brecht Forum. Fred Magdoff also spoke on both occasions. The Occupy Wall Street movement arose in
response to the economic crisis of capitalism, and the way in which the costs of this were imposed on the
99 percent rather than the 1 percent. But "the highest expression of the capitalist threat," as Naomi Klein has
said, is its destruction of the planetary environment . So it is imperative that we critique that as well.1 I
would like to start by pointing to the seriousness of our current environmental problem and then turn to the
question of how this relates to capitalism. Only then will we be in a position to talk realistically about
what we need to do to stave off or lessen catastrophe. How bad is the environmental crisis? You have
all heard about the dangers of climate change due to the emission of carbon dioxide and other
greenhouse gases into the atmosphere -- trapping more heat on earth. You are undoubtedly aware
that global warming threatens the very future of the humanity, along with the existence of
innumerable other species. Indeed, James Hansen, the leading climatologist in this country, has gone so far as to say this may be
"our last chance to save humanity ."2 But climate change is only part of the overall environmental
problem. Scientists, led by the Stockholm Resilience Centre, have recently indicated that we have crossed, or are near
to crossing, nine "planetary boundaries" (defined in terms of sustaining the environmental conditions of the Holocene epoch in which
civilization developed over the last 12,000 years): climate change, species extinction, the disruption of the nitrogen-
phosphorus cycles, ocean acidification, ozone depletion, freshwater usage, land cover change , (less
certainly) aerosol loading, and chemical use. Each of these rifts in planetary boundaries constitutes an
actual or potential global ecological catastrophe. Indeed, in three cases -- climate change, species
extinction, and the disruption of the nitrogen cycle -- we have already crossed planetary boundaries
and are currently experiencing catastrophic effects. We are now in the period of what scientists call
the "sixth extinction," the greatest mass extinction in 65 million years, since the time of the dinosaurs;
only this time the mass extinction arises from the actions of one particular species -- human beings . Our
disruption of the nitrogen cycle is a major factor in the growth of dead zones in coastal waters. Ocean acidification is often called the "evil twin"
of climate change, since it too arises from carbon dioxide emissions, and by negatively impacting the oceans it threatens planetary disruption
on an equal (perhaps even greater) scale.
The decreased availability of freshwater globally is emerging as an
environmental crisis of horrendous proportions.3 All of this may seem completely overwhelming. How
are we to cope with all of these global ecological crises/catastrophes, threatening us at every turn?
Here it is important to grasp that all of these rifts in the planetary system derive from processes
associated with our global production system, namely capitalism. If we are prepared to carry out a
radical transformation of our system of production -- to move away from "business as usual" -- then
there is still time to turn things around; though the remaining time in which to act is rapidly running
out. Let's talk about climate change, remembering that this is only one part of the global
environmental crisis, though certainly the most urgent at present . Climate science currently suggests that if we burn
only half of the world's proven, economically accessible reserves of oil, gas, and coal, the resulting carbon emissions will almost certainly raise
global temperatures by 2° C (3.6° F), bringing us to what is increasingly regarded as an irreversible tipping point -- after which it appears
impossible to return to the preindustrial (Holocene) climate that nourished human civilization. At that point various irrevocable changes (such
as the melting of Arctic sea ice and the ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica, and the release of methane from the tundra) will become
unstoppable. This will speed up climate change, while also accelerating vast, catastrophic effects, such as rising sea levels and extreme weather.
Alternatively, if our object is the rational one of keeping warming below 2° C, climate science now suggests that we should refrain from burning
more than a quarter of the proven, economically exploitable fossil fuel reserves (unconventional sources such as tar sands are excluded from
this calculation).4 The central issue in all of this, it is important to understand, is irreversibility . Current climate
models indicate that if we were to cease burning fossil fuels completely at the point that global average temperature had increased by 2°C, or
450 parts per million (ppm) carbon concentration in the atmosphere (the current level is 390 ppm), the earth would still not be close to
returning to a Holocene state by the year 3000. In other words, once this boundary is reached, climate change is irreversible over conceivable
human-time frames.5 Moreover, the damage would be done; all sorts of catastrophic results would have emerged. Recently climate scientists,
writing for Nature magazine, one of the world's top science publications, have developed a concrete way of understanding the planetary
boundary where climate change is concerned, focusing on the cumulative carbon emissions budget. This is represented by the trillionth ton of
carbon. So far more than 500 billion tons of carbon have been emitted into the atmosphere since the industrial revolution. In order to have an
approximately even chance (50-50) of limiting the increase in global average temperature to 2°C, the cumulative CO2 emissions over the period
1750-2050 must not exceed one trillion tons of carbon; while in order to have a 75 percent chance of global warming remaining below 2°C, it is
necessary not to exceed 750 billion tons of carbon. Yet, according to present trends, the 750 billionth ton of carbon will be emitted in 2028, i.e.,
about sixteen years from now. If we are to avoid burning the 750 billionth ton of carbon over the next four decades, carbon dioxide emissions
must fall at a rate of 5 percent per year; while to avoid emitting the trillion ton, emissions must drop at a rate of 2.4 percent a
year. The longer we wait the more rapid the decrease that will be necessary. The trillionth ton, viewed as the point of no return, is the
equivalent of cutting down the last palm tree on Easter Island. After that it is essentially out of our hands. 6 This takes us to the social
question. The problem we face when it comes to the appropriate response to impending climate
catastrophe is not so much one of climate science -- beyond understanding the environmental
parameters in which we must act -- as social science. It is an issue of social conditions and social
agency. We live in in a capitalist society, which means a societyin which the accumulation of capital,
i.e., economic growth carried out primarily on the terms of the 1 percent at the top (the ruling
capitalist class), is the dominant tendency. It is a system that accumulates capital in one phase simply
so that it can accumulate still more capital in the next phase -- always on a larger scale. There is no
braking mechanism in such a system and no social entity in control. If for some reason the system
slows down (as it is forced to periodically due to its own internal contradictions) it enters an economic
crisis. That may be good temporarily for the environment, but it is terrible for human beings,
particularly the bottom portion of the 99 percent, faced with rising unemployment and declining
income. Overall, capitalism is aimed at exponential growth. It cannot stand still. The minimum
adequate growth rate of the system is usually thought to be 3 percent. But this means that the
economy doubles in size about every 24 years. How many such doublings of world output can the
planet take? Hence, there is a direct and growing contradiction between capitalism and the
environment, a contradiction that becomes more and more apparent as the size of the capitalist
economy begins to rival the basic biogeochemical processes of the planet . Naomi Klein has rightly characterized
the age we live in as "disaster capitalism" because of its dual economic and ecological crises -- and due
to the increasingly exploitative means the rich employ to enable them to prosper in the midst of
increasing destruction.7 There are two predominant ways of addressing the climate crisis and the environmental problem generally.
One is to look for technological ways out -- often seen as being spurred by the creation of carbon markets, but the onus is on the technology.
The argument here is that through the massive introduction of various advanced technologies we can have our pie and eat it too. We can get
around the environmental problem, it is suggested, without making any fundamental social changes. Thus, the pursuit of profits and
accumulation can go on as before without alteration. Such magic-technological answers are commonly viewed as the only politically feasible
ones, since they are attractive to corporate and political-power elites, who refuse to accept the need for system change. Consequently, the
establishment has gambled on some combination of technological miracles emerging that will allow them to keep on doing just as they have
been doing. Predictably, the outcome of this high-stake gamble has been a failure not only to decrease carbon emissions, but also to prevent
their continued increase. The turn to those alternative technologies that are already available (for example, solar power) has been hindered by
the fact that they are often less profitable or require changes in social organization to be implemented effectively. As a result, greater emphasis
is placed on: (1) nuclear energy (a Faustian bargain if there ever was one); and (b) carbon capture and sequestration technology for coal-fired
plants, which is neither economically nor ecologically feasible at present, and hence only serves to keep coal, the dirtiest fossil fuel, going.
Beyond this the only option that the vested interests (the 1% and their hangers-on) have left is to push for geoengineering technologies. This
involves such measures as dumping sulfur dioxide particles in the atmosphere to block the suns rays (with the danger that photosynthesis might
be decreased), or fertilizing the ocean with iron to promote algal growth and absorb carbon (with the possibility that dead zones might expand).
These geoengineering schemes are extremely dubious in terms of physics, ecology, and economics: all three. They involve playing God with the
planet. Remember the Sorcerer's Apprentice! Nevertheless, such technological fantasies, bordering on madness, continue to gain support at
the top. This is because attempts to shift away from our currently wasteful society in the direction of rational conservation, involving changes in
our way of life and our form of production, are considered beyond the pale -- even when the very survival of humanity is at stake. The other
approach is to demand changes in society itself; to move away from a system directed at profits, production, and accumulation, i.e., economic
growth, and toward a sustainable steady-state economy. This would mean reducing or eliminating unnecessary and wasteful consumption and
reordering society -- from commodity production and consumption as its primary goal, to sustainable human development. This could only
occur in conjunction with a move towards substantive equality. It would require democratic ecological and social planning. It therefore
coincides with the classical objectives of socialism. Such a shift would make possible the reduction in carbon emissions we need. After all,
most of what the U.S. economy produces in the form of commodities (including the unnecessary,
market-related costs that go into the production of nearly all goods) is sheer waste from a social, an
ecological -- even a long-term economic -- standpoint. Just think of all the useless things we produce
and that we are encouraged to buy and then throw away almost the moment we have bought them.
Think of the bizarre, plastic packaging that all too often dwarfs the goods themselves. Think of
military spending, running in reality at $1 trillion a year in the United States. Think of marketing (i.e.
corporate spending aimed at persuading people to buy things they don't want or need), which has
reached $1 trillion a year in this country alone. Think of all the wasted resources associated with our
financial system, with Wall Street economics. It is this kind of waste that generates the huge profits
for the top 1 percent of income earners, and that alienates and impoverishes the lives of the bottom
99 percent, while degrading the environment.8 What we need therefore is to change our economic
culture. We need an ecological and social revolution . We have all the technologies necessary to do this. It is not primarily a
technological problem, because the goal here would no longer be the impossible one of expanding our exploitation of the earth beyond all
physical and biological limits, ad infinitum. Rather the goal would be to promote human community and community with the earth. Here we
would need to depend on organizing our local communities but also on creating a global community -- where the rich countries no longer
imperialistically exploit the poor countries of the world. You may say that this is impossible, but the World Occupy Movement would have been
declared impossible only a month ago. If
we are going to struggle, let us make our goal one of ecological and
social revolution -- in defense of humanity and the planet.
 Enviro Impact
Capitalism destroys the environment
Paul B. Farrell, December 4, 2013, Paul B. Farrell is a MarketWatch columnist who has written many
articles on the change in climate, he writes articles on behavioral economics, he has written nine books
on personal finance, economics, and psychology, “10 ways capitalists get rich destroying our oceans,”
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/10-ways-capitalists-get-rich-destroying-our-oceans-2013-12-04?
pagenumber=1
SAN LUIS OBISPO, Calif. (MarketWatch) — Yes, many capitalists are getting rich off the high seas, a vast reservoir of
wealth holding 95% of the planet’s water, spanning 70% of the Earth’s surface . Often called the last frontier, a
return to America’s 18th century Wild West. it’s virtually unregulated, a new free market where capitalists roam like
pirates, plundering wealth and treating our oceans as a freebie gold mine and trash dump . Bad news for
seven billion people living on the planet. And by 2050 we’ll be adding three billion more people. We already know we can’t feed
10 billion. Now we’re polluting their water. Won’t be enough clean water for all to drink, triggering
wars. Yes, bad news getting worse: As Alan Sielen of the Scripps Institute of Oceanography warns in the Foreign Affairs journal: “Over the last
several decades, human activities have so altered the basic chemistry of the seas that they are now
experiencing evolution in reverse: a return to the barren primeval waters of hundreds of millions of
years ago.” Capitalism is turning back evolutionary clock a billion years Evolution in reverse? Yes,
planet Earth is regressing eons to an earlier primitive era. Unregulated free-market competition on
the high seas is turning back the evolutionary clock. That doesn’t bother today’s short-term-thinking
capitalists. But it should. Because, ironically, shifting evolution into reverse will also self-destruct the
very global economy that capitalism needs for future growth. Today’s capitalists see another three
billion people as the new customers needed to expand free markets globally. But in the process they
are also cutting their own throats, unaware they’re pushing a hidden self-destruct button lodged in
their brains. Nature designed all systems with these built-in termination buttons. Deny it all you want,
but humans have our entrances and exits, as Shakespeare said. We all do. Same with economic
systems: Yale’s Immanuel Wallerstein sees capitalism at the end of its 500-year cycle. Solar systems last for billions of years.
Someday, as our sun cools, Earth could go the way of Mars. And the sun will eventually exit in a blazing supernova. Grabbing short-term profits,
leaving long-term losses to the public Capitalists deny their role in their endgame, dismiss the long economic
cycle. That’s natural. Capitalist brains are designed to focus on the short term, profits, high
frequencies, microseconds, day-end closing prices, quarterly earnings, annual bonuses. Rarely longer.
Myopia is the built-in self-destruct trigger for capitalists, their society, the human race, our planet’s
water. Can’t blame them, the capitalist’s brain isn’t designed to think long-term. Why? Capitalists see a new world like the
Wild West. No lawmen, just free-market competitors, free to do whatever they want, whenever,
unregulated, uncontrolled, no restraints, skimming, mining, plundering the wealth of the high seas,
free to use, misuse and abuse vast oceans of water at no real cost. Here are 10 ways capitalists are
pocketing their short-term profits, leaving long-term losses for the public to pay: 1. Pollution creating
new oceanic garbage dump Sielen’s imagery is powerful: “The oceans’ problems start with pollution,
the most visible forms of which are the catastrophic spills from offshore oil and gas drilling or from
tanker accidents.” But that “pollution pales in comparison to the much less spectacular waste that
finds its way to the seas through rivers, pipes, runoff, and the air ... trash, plastic bags, bottles, cans”
washing into “coastal waters or discarded by ships ... drifts out to sea ... forms epic gyres of floating
waste” covering “hundreds of miles.” 2. Destruction of marine life costs jobs and more “The prospect
of vanishing whales, polar bears, bluefin tuna, sea turtles, and wild coasts should be worrying enough
on its own,” warns Sielen. “But the disruption of entire ecosystems threatens our very survival, since
it is the healthy functioning of these diverse systems that sustains life on earth.” Destruction on this
level” has massive consequences, and costs “humans dearly in terms of food, jobs, health, and quality
of life.” 3. Toxic chemicals polluting our waters It gets far worse: “The most dangerous pollutants are
chemicals” poisoning the oceans with toxins, says Sielen. They “travel great distances, accumulate in
marine life, and move up the food chain.” Mercury from burning coal “rains down on the oceans,
rivers, and lakes.” Each year hundreds of new untested industrial chemicals “build up slowly in the
tissues of fish and shellfish,” get passed to larger creatures and humans “causing death, disease, and
abnormalities,” adversely affecting “development of the brain, the neurologic system, and the
reproductive system in humans.” 4. Deadly fertilizers are polluting oceans Add to this disaster
scenario fertilizers, which are now rising at excessive levels causing “havoc on the natural
environment,” an explosive growth of algae, decomposition, a loss of “oxygen needed to support
complex marine life.” This trend is creating “dead zones devoid of the ocean life” that “have more
than quadrupled” in a decade. 5. Humans are eating too many fish World population was less than 3
billion in 1950, 6 billion in 2000. Projected at 10 billion in 2050. Sielen warns: “Humans are simply
killing and eating too many fish,” with fish supplies falling “dramatically.” Tuna, swordfish, halibut,
flounder populations dropped 90% since 1950. “Human appetite has nearly wiped those populations
out.” 6. Fish supplies disappear, demand is increasing And demand keeps growing as supplies “are
rapidly dwindling.” Exploding prices add to the demand: This year, a 489-pound bluefin tuna sold for
$1.7 million making it “profitable to employ airplanes and helicopters to scan the ocean for the fish
that remain; against such technologies, marine animals don’t stand a chance.” Small fish like sardines,
anchovy, herring, are also disappearing, meaning less food for bigger fish up the food chain. 7.
Destructive, wasteful fishing methods Unfortunately, “modern industrial fishing fleets drag lines with
thousands of hooks miles behind a vessel,” with “nets thousands of feet below the sea’s surface.”
Untargeted seals, turtles, dolphins, whales, albatross get entangled, killing millions of tons each year.
“Some of the most destructive fisheries discard 80% to 90%.” In the Gulf of Mexico, “for every pound
of shrimp ... over three pounds of marine life is thrown away.” 8. Destroying marine habitats kills
future growth Another factor destroying our oceans: “The destruction of the habitats that have
allowed spectacular marine life to thrive for millennia,” says Sielen. And yet capitalism continues the
“wholesale destruction of deep-ocean habitats ... submerged mountain chains called seamounts,”
some higher than Mt Rainier. They are “homes to a rich variety of marine life.” Yet, industrial trawlers
bulldoze their way” destroying “deep cold-water corals, some older than the California redwoods.” 9.
Acid buildup in oceans weakens marine life “The buildup of acid in ocean waters,” warns Sielen
“reduces the availability of calcium carbonate, a key building block for the skeletons and shells of
corals, plankton, shellfish, and many other marine organisms” that need it “to grow and also to guard
against predators.” 10. Our planet Earth is in hot water Echoing findings by 2,000 scientists in the
recent Fifth Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Sielen says scientists predict “climate change
will drive the planet’s temperature up by between 4 and 7 degrees Fahrenheit over the course of this
century” causing “hotter oceans ... rising sea levels ... stronger storms” as the “life cycles of plants and
animals are upended, changing migration patterns, causing other serious disruptions ... surface waters
mixing less with cooler, deeper waters,” reducing phytoplankton population, “the foundation of the
ocean’s food chain.” The recent Warsaw Agreement on Climate Change, like earlier United Nations
accords in Kyoto and Copenhagen, exposes how capitalist power-players control governmental
decision-makers, prompting Sielen’s final warning: “So long as pollution, overfishing, and ocean
acidification remain concerns only for scientists ... little will change ... Diplomats and national security
experts, who understand the potential for conflict in an overheated world, should realize that climate
change might soon become a matter of war and peace ... Business leaders should understand better
than most the direct links between healthy seas and healthy economies ... And government officials,
who are entrusted with the public’s well-being, must surely see the importance of clean air, land, and
water.” “The world faces a choice,” warns Sielen: “We do not have to return to an oceanic Stone Age.” But can we “summon the
political will and moral courage to restore the seas to health before it is too late? ” The consequences
are catastrophic ... the risks enormous ... odds very long ... fuse short ... yet the denial may be too
overwhelming.
 Root Cause-Overfishing
Capitalism causes overfishing
Brett Clark and Rebecca Clausen, July-August 2008, Brett Clark and Rebecca Clausen teach sociology,
“The Oceanic Crisis: Capitalism and the Degradation of Marine Ecosystem,”
http://monthlyreview.org/2008/07/01/the-oceanic-crisis-capitalism-and-the-degradation-of-marine-
ecosystem/
Capitalism and Marine Fishery Exploitation Humans have long been connected to the ocean’s
metabolic processes by harvesting marine fish and vegetation. Harvesting methods and processes
have varied depending on the structure of social production. Subsistence fishing is a practice woven
throughout human history, beginning with the harvesting of shellfish along seashores and shallow
lakes, and progressing with the development of tools such as stone-tipped fishing spears, fishhooks,
lines, and nets. This was originally based upon fishing for use of the fish. What was caught was used to
feed families and communities. Through the process of fishing, human labor has been intimately
linked to ocean processes, gaining an understanding of fish migrations, tides, and ocean currents. The
size of a human population in a particular region influenced the extent of exploitation. But the
introduction of commodity markets and private ownership under the capitalist system of production
altered the relationship of fishing labor to the resources of the seas. Specific species had an exchange
value. As a result, certain fish were seen as being more valuable. This led to fishing practices that
focused on catching as many of a particular fish, such as cod, as possible. Non-commercially viable
species harvested indiscriminately alongside the target species were discarded as waste. As capitalism
developed and spread, intensive extraction by industrial capture fisheries became the norm.
Increased demands were placed on the oceans and overfishing resulted in the severe depletion of wild
fish stocks. In Empty Ocean, Richard Ellis states, “Throughout the world’s oceans, food fishes once believed to be immeasurable in number
are now recognized as greatly depleted and in some cases almost extinct. A million vessels now fish the world’s oceans,
twice as many as there were twenty-five years ago. Are there twice as many fish as before? Hardly .”
How did this situation develop?10 The beginning of capitalist industrialization marked the most noticeable and
significant changes in fisheries practices. Mechanization, automation, and mass
production/consumption characterized an era of increased fixed capital investments. Profit-driven
investment in efficient production led to fishing technologies that for the first time made the
exhaustion of deep-sea fish stocks a real possibility. Such transformations can be seen in how
groundfishing, the capture of fish that swim in close proximity to the ocean’s bottom, changed
through the years. Industrialization began to influence the groundfishery around the early 1900s, as
technological developments were employed to further the accumulation of capital. The introduction
of steam-powered trawlers from England in 1906 heralded a significant change in how groundfish
were caught and rapidly replaced the sail-powered schooner fleets. Prior to steam trawling,
groundfish were caught on schooners with baited lines during long journeys at sea. Due to lack of
refrigeration and freezing, most of the cod catch was salted. The competitive markets organized under
capitalist production welcomed the increased efficiency of steam-powered vessels, without a critical
assessment of the consequences of increased harvest levels. More captured fish meant more profit.
The switch to trawling was complete by 1920, and the consequences of the second industrial
revolution organized under capitalist forces would soon change the human-nature relationship to the
ocean, extending the reach of capital. The expanded geographic range and speed of fishing fleets
allowed for increased productivity of catch as well as increased diversity of captured species that were
deemed “valuable” on the market. Technological developments and improved transportation routes
allowed the fishing industry to grow, increasing its scale of operations . Cold storage ensured that fish would be
fresh, reducing spoilage and loss of capital. In Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World, Mark Kurlansky explains, “Freezing [cod]
also changed the relationship of seafood companies to fishing ports. Frozen fish could be bought anywhere—wherever the fish was cheapest
and most plentiful. With expanding markets, local fleets could not keep up with the needs of the companies.” Advances in the transportation
infrastructure allowed people in the Midwest to consume the increased harvests of cod and haddock, leading to a significant expansion in the
market. Major marketing campaigns promoted the consumption of fish to increase sales. Together these factors enhanced the
accumulation of capital within the fishing industry, and companies invested some of this capital back
into their fleets.11 By 1930 there were clear signals that the groundfishing fleet’s ability to capture massive quantities of fish had
surpassed natural limits in fisheries. A Harvard University investigation reported that in 1930 the groundfishery landed 37 million haddock at
Boston, with another 70–90 million juvenile haddock discarded dead at sea. The sudden rise in fisheries harvest (creating a subsequent rise in
consumer demand through marketing campaigns) resulted in stress in the groundfish populations, and landings plummeted. Competitive
markets create incentives to expand production, regardless of resource decline. Thus, in reaction to decreased stocks due to overfishing,
groundfishing fleets moved farther offshore into waters off of the coast of Canada to increase the supply of valuable fish to new markets. The
fleet’s ability to continue moving into unexploited waters obscured recognition of the severe resource
depletion that was occurring. As a result, the process of overfishing particular ecosystems to supply a
specific good for the market expanded, subjecting more of the ocean to the same system of
degradation.12 The distant water fleets were made possible by the advent of factory trawlers. Factory
trawlers represent the pinnacle of capital investment and extractive intensification in the global
fisheries. In Distant Water William Warner presents a portrayal of a factory trawler’s capacity: Try to imagine a mobile and completely self-
contained timber cutting machine that could smash through the roughest trails of the forest, cut down trees, mill them, and deliver consumer-
ready lumber in half the time of normal logging and milling operations. This was exactly what factory trawlers did—this was exactly their effect
on fish—in the forests of the deep. It could not long go unnoticed. Factory trawlers pull nylon nets a thousand feet long through the ocean,
potentially capturing 400 tons of fish during a single netting. Industrial trawlers can process and freeze their catch as they travel.13 Such
technological development extended the systematic exploitation and scale of harvesting of fishes. The natural limits of fish populations
combined with capital’s need to expand led to the development of immense trawlers that increased the productive capacity and efficiency of
operations. These ships allowed fishermen to seek out areas in the ocean where valuable fish were available, providing the means to capture
massive quantities of fish in a single trip. Overcoming
the shortage of fishes in one area was accomplished by even
more intensive harvesting with new ships and equipment, such as sonar, in other regions of the
oceans. The pursuit of vast quantities of commercial fishes in different areas of the ocean expanded
the depletion of other species, as they were exploited and discarded as bycatch . The swath of the seas
subjected to the dictates of the market increased, whether a fish was sold as a commodity or thrown overboard as a waste product.14
Competition for market share between companies and capital’s investment in advanced technology intensified fishery exploitation.
Competing international companies sought nature’s diminishing bounty, causing further international
conflict in the “race for fish.” President Truman responded to these disputes by attempting to expand U.S. corporate interests. He
issued two proclamations expanding U.S. authority beyond territorial waters trying to further territorial enclosure of its adjacent seas out to the
limits of the continental shelf. Coastal
states around the world struggled to transform the property rights of
the open ocean to benefit their nations. In response to growing conflict, the United Nations convened the First United Nations
Conference on the Law of the Sea in Geneva in 1958. Eventually, most nations voted to sign the UN Law of the Sea article, “irrevocably
transforming” international law and constituting “a fundamental revision of sometimes age-old institutions.”15 (The U.S. Senate, however, has
still not ratified the Law of the Sea Convention.) In
the end, the convention established a property regime according
to the prescription of an exclusive economic zone (EEZ). The EEZ put regions of the high seas adjacent
to coastal waters entirely within the management purview of the coastal state, up to two hundred
miles from their shore. In this zone, states have exclusive rights to living and non-living resources for
extraction and economic pursuits. The collapse of fisheries due to overexploitation coupled with the
expanding seafood market forced companies to look elsewhere for “the most traded animal
commodity on the planet.” African nations—such as Senegal, Mauritania, Angola, and Mozambique—
confronting dire economic conditions sold fishing access to European and Asian nations and
companies. In the case of Mauritania, selling fishing access provided over $140 million a year, which equaled a fifth of the government’s
budget. Few countries can resist such bait, given the need for monetary resources. Industrialized
trawlers descended into African waters, combing their seas for the treasured fish commodities. In the
past three decades, Africa’s fish population in the ocean has decreased by 50 percent and thousands
of fishermen have become unemployed.16 The expansion of capitalist fishing practices continues to
decimate fisheries and spread ecological degradation, as profits and food are funneled back to core
nations. The Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that the world capture from fisheries
increased from approximately 20 million tons in 1950 to 84.2 million tons in 2005. A dominant
narrative explains that human population growth is solely responsible for this increase in capture;
however, recent research demonstrates that social structural factors such as economic growth are
also propelling the depletion. Since around 1989 the world capture of marine fish has declined by 500,000 tons per year amidst
increasing fishing effort. There have been sharp declines in the populations of tuna, cod, and marlins. During the 1960s and ’70s, shelf fisheries
in the Atlantic started to collapse as a result of overfishing. Operations moved to the deep sea. Deepwater fishing has seriously affected the
populations of deep-sea fish, such as the roundnose grenadier, onion-eye grenadier, spiny eel, spinytail skate, and blue hake. The populations
of these deep-sea fishes have plummeted by over 87 percent in seventeen years. It
is expected that these fishes will be driven
to the point of extinction—to the detriment of the ecosystems in which they live. Part of the
vulnerability of these fishes is that they can live to around sixty years of age and do not sexually
mature until their late teen years.17 Changes in the market can transform the demand for particular fish species. In the early
1900s, bluefin tuna was seen as being only suitable for use as pet food. But given their strength and size—weighing up “to three quarters of a
ton and [having] a length of four meters”—they were deemed worthy opponents to be hunted. In the later half of the twentieth century,
bluefin tuna became “the most desirable food fish in the world” with the spread of sushi and sashimi restaurants. Given the machinations of
capitalism, this has also caused them to become “the most endangered of all large fish species.” The bluefin tuna population continues to be
decimated by overfishing, and the practice of capturing half-grown tuna at sea and placing them in floating pens—known as tuna ranches—
where they are fed until they are ready for market has only worsened the situation. While this helps control the production process, it involves
catching the fishes “before they are old enough to breed” and keeping “them penned up until they are killed.” As a result of this practice and
overfishing, bluefin tuna are threatened with depletion.18 The
geographic span of ocean exploitation has widened as
capitalist operations of extraction continue. Even the Antarctic waters are increasingly under assault
as the fishing industry gears up to plunder the krill population . Since the 1970s the numbers of krill have declined by
80 percent, largely due to global warming. But fishing operations are adding to the depletion. These tiny crustaceans eat carbon-rich food near
the surface of the water, thereby they help remove the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide. They have long been one of the primary sources of food
for seals, whales, and penguins. Progressively they have been incorporated into the insatiable appetite of global capital. “Suction harvesting”
swallows up huge quantities that are processed, frozen, and stored on newly outfitted ships. From here, the krill are to be used as feed for fish-
farms (aquaculture) or transformed into omega-3 oil and other health supplements.19 Fleets
of ships burning fossil fuels to
harvest from the open oceans have exacerbated the deterioration of marine ecosystems. The
depletion of fish stock increases the distance that is necessary to travel in order to catch certain
species of fish, such as tuna and swordfish. It also expands the regional scope of exploitation , the number of species
captured as bycatch, and the scale of depletion. In 2000, 80 million tons of fish required the burning of 13 billion gallons of fuel and
the release of approximately 134 million tons of carbon dioxide. This means that global fisheries used up to 12.5 times the amount of fuel
energy that they provided as edible-protein energy.20 During the 1970s and ’80s fishing ships became more automated, with the trend toward
full automation becoming common. Today, navigational
aids, such as geographic positioning systems (GPS), and
weather prediction models enhance the ability of fishing fleets to catch the most amount of fishes in
the shortest amount of time, with the least amount of human labor. The synthesis of technical
development and transformed property rights under the competitive framework of global capitalism
has resulted in the massive extraction of marine fish and an intensified social metabolism organized
for the pursuit of profit.
 Value to life
Cap destroys VTL
Laura Kerr, PhD, 3-20-2014, (Trauma's Labyrinth, " Capitalism Exploits The Body’s Response To
Traumatic Stress", http://www.laurakkerr.com/2014/03/20/capitalism-traumatic-stress/)
The Great Recession, like financial disasters before it, took its toll on bodies and psyches as much as it did on bank accounts
and lifestyles. Suicides, family violence, stress-related diseases, and mental disorders increased during the
crisis. For many, these hardships continue. Yet even during the best of times capitalism’s dependency on social
hierarchies — coupled with its unpredictable cycles of growth and retraction — raises anxiety, sometimes to the level of
traumatic stress.¶ For decades researchers have documented the physical stress caused by social
hierarchies. For example, Nancy Adler discovered our perceived socioeconomic status is a good predictor of
cardiovascular disease, obesity, and the level of stress hormones circulating in the body. Irrespective of how
secure a person’s circumstances, a subjective interpretation of oneself as having low social status contributes to stress-related diseases.
Consequently, a poor Appalachian miner in the affluent United States experiences more status-related stress than a relatively poorer member
of an African community where the majority endure the same level of financial hardship. Furthermore, countries with the highest
levels of economic inequality have the greatest number of people with stress-related diseases .¶
Capitalism’s capricious economic cycles also contribute to stress. The body responds to threats with
agitated alertness, especially when there is a coinciding belief that taking action is necessary to avoid
being hurt. In trauma lingo, we refer to this as a state of hypervigilance , or the need to continually scan the environment
for the possibility that past threats will reemerge and once again endanger one’s survival. Living in a capitalistic and globalized
economy seems to require hypervigilance and constantly scanning for potential job loss and devaluing
retirement accounts, if not the decimation of entire market sectors and local economies .¶ For the most
financially precarious (an ever-widening sector of the population), capitalism creates a state similar to the psychological
domination that can occur when people are held in captivity. Psychological domination is more likely when 1)
the threat is unpredictable and 2) there are periods of relative safety amid the chaos and abuse. Psychologist
Judith Herman observed, “The ultimate effect of [psychological domination] is to convince the victim that the
perpetrator is omnipotent, that resistance is futile, and that her life depends upon winning his indulgence
through absolute compliance.” Certainly the psychological impact of capitalism fails to reach the severity of a person whose basic right
to freedom from harm is taken away. Rather, my argument is that capitalism is more precarious than reliable, creating
conditions that are often inhumane and that lead to traumatic stress.¶ In his book On Deep History and the Brain,
Daniel Lord Smail makes a connection between global capitalism, social hierarchies, and the body’s
reaction to threats. Smail argues capitalism exploits the body’s survival responses (i.e., freeze, fight, flight, and
submission) by creating the conditions of psychological domination as well as providing relief from the
feelings of powerlessness that capitalism and social hierarchies engender . According to Smail, capitalism
generates stress through its unpredictability and hierarchical power structures, but it also alleviates stress by
producing an economy organized around the production and circulation of addictive substances and
practices.¶ Smail notes that, from its inception in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, global capitalism was
organized around creating and feeding addictions. The first imports to Europe from Africa, the Arab World, and
the Americas were coffee, sugar, chocolate, tobacco and “spirits” — all mood-altering substances. During this time, the
term addiction gained its modern meaning as a self-inflicted behavior rather than the state of being indebted to
another (e.g., serfdom) that previously distinguished the addict. With this shift in understanding of addiction, also came a new
organization of society away from a focus on managing external forms of control to a focus on internal ways of
responding to dominance by self-medicating its effects. ¶ Today, the use of addictive substances and
activities to regulate stress is so common it is difficult to demarcate between what counts as
recreational use of substances and what constitutes lifestyle maintenance . Addictions are a
widespread way of managing feelings of agitation and overwhelm, which for many are habitual responses to
the pressure of trying to make a living in the current global econom y. Typically when we anticipate
danger, the body either becomes so activated that it enters a state of extreme agitation (referred to as “hyperarousal”) or it
moves towards a state of shut down in response to feeling profoundly overwhelmed (called “ hypoarousal”). Addictive substances
and activities are now everyday methods for escaping such states — a role religion historically served, especially in
the preindustrial world.

More VTL stuff

Alex Knight, no date (End of Capitalism, "What is Capitalism", http://endofcapitalism.com/about/2-
what-is-capitalism/, approximately 2-1-2012 or later)
Capitalism is the name of the power structure that currently dominates all human society, and which has done so for the last 500 years. It
is a system based on ecological and social exploitation for the profit of the wealthy few . I sometimes refer to
it as a “global system of abuse” because our relationship with capitalism is based on violence and submission,
even though the system would like us to believe that it has our best interests at heart .¶ Capitalism puts
tremendous pressure on all of us to make money in order to survive. Hospitals, schools, prisons, “non-profit
organizations,” and every other institution must conform to the profit motive, or be swallowed up. ¶ In the
process, life under capitalism is increasingly one of work, consumption, debt, isolation, and emotional and
spiritual emptiness. We are losing connection with the two most vital sources of meaning in our lives:
community with other people, and communion with nature.

More VTL stuff, also long term thinking, also environment (the third paragraph might
implicate the alt; be careful)
Colin Harris, 5-31-2010, (Z communications, "The Pathological Psychology of Western Capitalism",
http://zcomm.org/znetarticle/the-pathological-psychology-of-western-capitalism-by-collin-harris-1/)
What kind of human beings does such a society require in order to sustain itself? What are the
dominant psychological modes of being in Western capitalist society ? How do these concrete, systematic features
of capitalism impact upon our value/preference formation? Some core psychological modes of being under capitalism
include alientation, objectification, abstractification, and quantification . The most fundamental
psychological phenomenon with which people suffer under capitalism is that of alienation ; “a mode of
experience in which the person experiences himself as an alien…estranged from himself . He does not
experience himself as the center of his world, as the creator of his own acts .”(Fromm 111) Fromm likens Marx’s
system of alienation, in which a person’s life-activity becomes an external objectified power over them , to
idolatry. In capitalist relations of production, workers invest their energy and creative capacities into an
external idol—the commodity—which is experienced by the individual as the alienated form of their own
life forces.¶ Alienation can be thought of as a type of nexus condition, subsumed under which is peoples’ relationship to themselves,
each other, and the natural world. It is a process facilitated by the related phenomena of abstractification and quantification ,
processes which have transcended the economic realm and penetrate other spheres of social life . Fromm
recognizes the transformation of the concrete into the abstract as a crucial psychological process endemic to capitalism. All of the
concrete realities of people, nature, and society are converted into abstract forms, removed from all
contextual properties. As a result, “Western society has lost any concrete, definitive frame of reference.”
(Fromm 109) And it is into the impersonal language of quantification that the richness of human life is
abstracted. As Schumacher noted, “innumerable qualitative distinctions which are of vital importance for man and society
are suppressed; they are not allowed to surface. Thus, the reign of quantity celebrates its greatest triumphs ” in
capitalist institutions.(Schumacher 47) Insofar as quantitative differences are more easily defined, they are endowed with an
illusory appearance of scientific precision. The concrete purposefulness and qualitative properties of the
fruits of production are converted into mere exchange value; distinctive alternatives are thus forged into a
context-free language of universal interchangeability and equivalence . The quantitative nature of
economic calculus is dangerously fragmentary in that short-term gain is prioritized at the expense of long-
term consideration. Driven by the motive of personal profit and misconceiving of primary goods afforded by nature
as free and limitless, economic logic systematically ignores human dependency on the natural world. A cult
of growth emerges in capitalist society. “The idea that there could be pathological, unhealthy, disruptive or destructive
growth, is to them a perverse idea that must not be allowed to surface .” (Schumacher 51) Mathematical
economic models fail to recognize the limitations inherent in human existence and interaction with the
world; people in capitalist society internalize these misperceptions , it becoming the lens through
which they see the world.¶ Authority is a central social force in class-based societies. Ted Benton identifies two
predominant character-types that prevail in such a society. “On this corrupt foundation, men become either
rapacious, deceitful, and violent, ready to trespass on the rights of others; or servile, mercenary and
base, prepared to relinquish their own.” (Benton 116) Neither dominance nor subservience is conducive to
a free and healthy society. Fromm points out that as capitalism developed into the twentieth century , the
nature of authority was transformed from its traditional overt and coercive forms into a more anonymous
and impersonal force. Despite the horrors of traditional overt coercion, it produced a conflict, a
rebellion against irrational authority. This struggle facilitated the development of personality and the
self, providing a clear identity for people—I rebel, I struggle, I protest. With the emergence of anonymous
authority, the clear sense of self dissolves into undifferentiated parts of the impersonal whole. “The laws of
anonymous authority are as invisible as the laws of the market, and just as unassailable.” A paralyzing culture
of passive complacency and detachment develops ; “who can attack the invisible? Who can rebel against
Nobody?”(Fromm 138) Conformity is the mechanism by which anonymous authority operates, replacing
coercive force as a means of social control. Conformity is transformed into a virtue. The disappearance
of personalized identity induces acquiescence to the herd , and deviation from social convention is
synonymous with heresy. One institutional manifestation of this anonymous authority is the process of
bureaucratization. The economic and political institutions of the social infrastructure are so vast that
they require abstractification as the necessary modus operandi of its subjects. Organic connection and spontaneous
cooperation is stunted, and people are devalued to the point of indispensability . The fragmentation and
degradation inherent in this process are indicative of the alienated nature of existence in
contemporary Western culture.¶ Social systems are rooted in value systems. In capitalist society , with its
origins in Western liberal thought, the perspective of the world is individualized . Capitalism produces a
psychology of possessive individualism as the dominant characterological orientation. “The individual is understood
as essentially the proprietor of his own person or capacities …owing nothing to society for them.” (Schmookler 78)
Collective obligations are considered to be assaults on individual autonomy, rather than as integral
supportive aspects of living in a community through which people cultivate their mutual nourishment as social beings.
Individualism assumes competitive relations, promoting cynicism and anti-sociality. “By setting up a system predicated on
human selfishness, we not only recognize but encourage a selfish element in our nature, and thereby fray the moral fabric of
society. The capacity for altruistic feelings and actions tends to atrophy under the influence of such a
system.”(Schmookler 82)¶ This is the process by which, Schmookler explains, capitalist institutions subsidize our
social atomism by systematically favoring values that concern people as separate individuals and
discouraging the fulfillment of needs as an interconnected community . Society is thus deprived of the
capacity to determine those aspects of the future we wish to have in common . The social landscape is
distorted, molding people into the necessary role requirements. What arises is a “contract society” that enshrines as
right the egocentrism that is characteristic of infantile psychology. In referencing Daniel Horowitz, Schmookler
identifies a personality type build around ambition, a sense that time is money, and an obsession with
progress (defined in material terms). A new worship of success and self-fulfillment through economic
competition, positing material wealth as the measure of all value, became integral to capitalism’s
cultural code. With the development of capitalist society, traditional religious virtues gave way to the secular forces of initiative,
aggressiveness, competitiveness and forcefulness.(Schmookler 146)¶ So we see the emergence of the
modern social character as generated by the institutional forces of capitalism. This system has profound impacts on
the psychological development of its subjects. The system’s institutional arrangements promote value
systems and personality types that are antithetical to living harmoniously in a cooperative community, offered
here as the purest expression of human nature. The standard “state of nature” fallback of capitalist doctrine is merely
self-serving ideology. Our state of nature was not solitary, but communal, and we survived primarily by
forging a web of mutual compassion and interconnection.(Schmookler 148) Sociological relativism takes the intellectually
easy (and morally bankrupt) way out by simply denying a priori the existence of objective standards of
healthy human psychological development, which is to implicitly deny the existence of basic human needs ,
trapping itself in the realm of post-modern absurdity. This notion is a striking illustration of the ideological
system supportive of capitalism, and a degree of self-deception in which humanity cannot afford to
indulge.
The sicknesses that pervade contemporary Western society cry out for the radically virtuous alternative
of normative humanism offered by Erich Fromm. Examination of the concrete conditions of life under
capitalist institutions reveals a complex of psychological pathologies, the sum of which engenders an absolutely
alienated existence. Community becomes a hollow term denoting a mere aggregation of self-
interested individuals, free of mutual responsibility and obligation . Capitalist institutions are premised on
cynical assumptions regarding the social capacities of human beings; human nature is debased accordingly. As Indian
philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurti once said, "It is no measure of health to be well-adjusted to a profoundy sick
society."
 Resource wars
Cap causes resource wars
Phillipe Le Billon, 2001 (Political Geography 20, " The political ecology of war: natural resources and
armed conflicts", http://www.cddc.vt.edu/ept/eprints/ecowar.pdf)

Addressing these two lacunae within a political ecological approach requires approaching resource-linked
armed conflicts as historical processes of dialectic trans- formation of nature and social groups .
Contemporary resource-linked conflicts are rooted in the history of ‘resource’ extraction successively
translated by mercantilism, colonial capitalism, and state kleptocracy . The availability in nature of any
resource is thus not in itself a predictive indicator of conflict. Rather, the desires sparked by this availability
as well as people’s needs (or greed), and the practices shaping the political economy of any resource can
prove conflictual, with violence becoming the decisive means of arbitration . Such analysis thus requires building
on both anthropological and international relations analyses to relate a variety of scales (on the former see, de Boeck, 1998; Richards, 1996; on
the latter see, Lipschutz, 1989).
 Structural violence
Capitalism is genocidal
Ian Angus, 6-17-2013, (Climate and Capitalism, "Capitalism: A structural Genocide"
http://climateandcapitalism.com/2013/06/17/capitalism-a-structural-genocide/)
No one denies that terrible things happen in the world, but the standard response of liberals and conservatives is
that famine, plague, and war are natural problems that can never be eliminated. Human suffering is tragic, but
unavoidable. The poor – and the sick, and the hungry, and the prematurely dead – will always be with us.¶ Garry Leech disagrees. In
Capitalism: A Structural Genocide, he argues that “structural violence [is] inherent in the capitalist system ” and that “it
results in death on a genocidal scale, thereby constituting a class-based genocide that targets the
poor, particularly in the global south.Ӧ By structural violence, Leech means damage to humans caused by
“the deprivation of people’s basic needs as a result of the existing social structures.” Obvious examples
include hunger or disease caused by food and medicine being too expensive or kept off the market for
business reasons. When such violence leads to large numbers of deaths, he argues, we must call it structural genocide. ¶ The core of Capitalism:
A Structural Genocide is a series of case studies and analyses showing that capitalism
by its very nature deprives hundreds
of millions of people of the necessities of life . Just one example: every three seconds, a baby dies of
preventable disease or hunger – and in the same three seconds, military organizations spend $120,000 on
weapons.¶ The choice to spend money on guns instead of food and medicine is irrational by any humanitarian
standard, but it makes perfect sense if the prime directive is to preserve a system based on “an
inequality in power and wealth that ensures the interests of capital are prioritized over those of the
majority of human beings and nature.Ӧ Leech estimates that over 10 million people are killed every year by
capitalism’s structural genocide. His accounts of structural violence in Mexico, India and sub-Saharan Africa are compelling and
appalling. No reasonable person can read them without concluding that the system responsible must be ended.

The objective violence of capital outweighs - the impacts of the 1ac are subjective
violence that only have meaning against a nonviolent status quo
Tonči Valentić, 2008 (International Journal of Zizek Studies Vol 2 No 2, "Symbolic Violence and Global
Capitalism" http://zizekstudies.org/index.php/ijzs/article/viewFile/140/214)
The mayor task of philosophical analysis of violence in contemporary world should be developing a theory of
political violence. Obviously, there are numerous theories on the respective issue, but very few of them reflect
properly today's global socio-political constellation . For example, authors like Weber or Arendt provided
noteworthy insight, but they cannot fully cope with issues we are dealing today in the beginning of 21st
century. The main problem with violence is that it doesn't have always a deep-lying cause based on rational
articulation, which means it is impossible to understand it only using arguments of classical political
theory or moral philosophy: one had to incorporate psychoanalysis and semiotic or symbolic interpretation as well. Wherein
should we search for relationship between violence and politics in today's world ? Since violence is a
complex phenomenon, several things have to be taken into account: first of all, it is always primarily a "structural" problem,
an "objective" feature of today's capitalist societies . Second, as I mentioned before, structural (or objective)
violence is placed in the very heart of capitalism itself (this is the idea that Slavoj Žižek advocates - relying on the idea which
came from Balibar and is even earlier extracted out of Marxism). Third, violence does not necessarily refer to activity or any deeds: passivity can
also be violent. The major point here is, as Žižek would put it, that violence
presented in media (such as suicidal bombings,
humanitarian crisis, terrorist attack, and so on) actually
blinds us to the objective violence in the world where we
become "perpetrators and not just innocent victims".¶ As Žižek would argue, we consistently overlook the
objective or "symbolic" violence embodied in language and its forms , i.e. democratic state's monopoly
on legitimate violence. He asserts that "subjective and objective violence cannot be perceived from the
same standpoint: subjective violence is experienced as such against the background of the non-violent
zero-level, as a perturbation of the “normal” peaceful state of things; however, objective violence is
precisely the violence sustaining this “normal” state of things . Objective violence is invisible since it sustains the very
zero-level standard against which we perceive something as [visible] violence – in order to perceive it, one has to perform a
kind of parallax shift".
 Other
Cap kills democracy
Noam Chomsky, 3-7-2013, (Truth-out, "Noam Chomsky: Will Capitalism Destroy Civilization?"
http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/14980-noam-chomsky-will-capitalism-destroy-civilization)
Dewey called for workers to be “masters of their own industrial fate ” and for all institutions to be
brought under public control, including the means of production, exchange, publicity, transportation and communication. Short
of this, Dewey argued, politics will remain “the shadow cast on society by big business.” ¶ The truncated
democracy that Dewey condemned has been left in tatters in recent years. Now control of government is
narrowly concentrated at the peak of the income scale, while the large majority “down below” has been
virtually disenfranchised. The current political-economic system is a form of plutocracy, diverging sharply from democracy,
if by that concept we mean political arrangements in which policy is significantly influenced by the public will. ¶ There have been
serious debates over the years about whether capitalism is compatible with democracy . If we keep to
really existing capitalist democracy – RECD for short – the question is effectively answered: They are
radically incompatible.¶ It seems to me unlikely that civilization can survive RECD and the sharply attenuated
democracy that goes along with it. But could functioning democracy make a difference ?¶ Let’s keep to the most
critical immediate problem that civilization faces: environmental catastrophe. Policies and public attitudes
diverge sharply, as is often the case under RECD. The nature of the gap is examined in several articles in the current issue of Daedalus, the
journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.¶ Researcher Kelly Sims Gallagher finds that “One hundred and nine
countries have enacted some form of policy regarding renewable power, and 118 countries have set
targets for renewable energy. In contrast, the United States has not adopted any consistent and stable set
of policies at the national level to foster the use of renewable energy .Ӧ It is not public opinion that
drives American policy off the international spectrum. Quite the opposite. Opinion is much closer to the global norm
than the U.S. government’s policies reflect, and much more supportive of actions needed to confront
the likely environmental disaster predicted by an overwhelming scientific consensus – and one that’s not too far off; affecting the
lives of our grandchildren, very likely.¶ As Jon A. Krosnick and Bo MacInnis report in Daedalus: “Huge majorities have favored
steps by the federal government to reduce the amount of greenhouse gas emissions generated when utilities
produce electricity. In 2006, 86 percent of respondents favored requiring utilities , or encouraging them with tax
breaks, to reduce the amount of greenhouse gases they emit. Also in that year, 87 percent favored tax breaks for
utilities that produce more electricity from water, wind or sunlight. These majorities were maintained between 2006
and 2010 and shrank somewhat after that.

Kills science education

Noam Chomsky, 3-7-2013, (Truth-out, "Noam Chomsky: Will Capitalism Destroy Civilization?"
http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/14980-noam-chomsky-will-capitalism-destroy-civilization)The fact
that the public is influenced by science is deeply troubling to those who dominate the economy and state
policy.¶ One current illustration of their concern is the “Environmental Literacy Improvement Act” proposed to state
legislatures by ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council, a corporate-funded lobby that designs legislation to serve the needs of the
corporate sector and extreme wealth.¶ The ALEC Actmandates “balanced teaching” of climate science in K-12
classrooms. “Balanced teaching” is a code phrase that refers to teaching climate-change denial , to “balance”
mainstream climate science. It is analogous to the “balanced teaching” advocated by creationists to enable the
teaching of “creation science” in public schools. Legislation based on ALEC models has already been
introduced in several states.¶ Of course, all of this is dressed up in rhetoric about teaching critical thinking
– a fine idea, no doubt, but it’s easy to think up far better examples than an issue that threatens our survival and has been selected because of
its importance in terms of corporate profits.¶ Media
reports commonly present a controversy between two sides
on climate change.¶ One side consists of the overwhelming majority of scientists , the world’s major national
academies of science, the professional science journals and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. ¶ They agree that global
warming is taking place, that there is a substantial human component, that the situation is serious
and perhaps dire, and that very soon, maybe within decades, the world might reach a tipping point where the
process will escalate sharply and will be irreversible, with severe social and economic effects. It is rare to find such consensus on
complex scientific issues.¶ The other side consists of skeptics, including a few respected scientists who caution that
much is unknown – which means that things might not be as bad as thought, or they might be worse.¶ Omitted
from the contrived debate is a much larger group of skeptics: highly regarded climate scientists who see the
IPCC’s regular reports as much too conservative. And these scientists have repeatedly been proven
correct, unfortunately.¶ The propaganda campaign has apparently had some effect on U.S. public opinion,
which is more skeptical than the global norm. But the effect is not significant enough to satisfy the masters . That is
presumably why sectors of the corporate world are launching their attack on the educational system , in an
effort to counter the public’s dangerous tendency to pay attention to the conclusions of scientific
research.¶ At the Republican National Committee’s Winter Meeting a few weeks ago, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal warned the leadership
that “We must stop being the stupid party. We must stop insulting the intelligence of voters.” ¶ Within the RECD system it is of
extreme importance that we become the stupid nation, not misled by science and ration ality, in the
interests of the short-term gains of the masters of the economy and political system , and damn the
consequences.¶ These commitments are deeply rooted in the fundamentalist market doctrines that are
preached within RECD, though observed in a highly selective manner, so as to sustain a powerful state that serves wealth and power. ¶
AT: Aff Args
 AT: Cap Sustainable
Capitalism isn’t sustainable-this card takes into account the model that their arg is
based off of
Kivunature, March 5, 2012, Kivunature is a place where people post blogs, “Sustainable Capitalism? Nice
Idea, But …,” http://www.kivu.com/sustainable-capitalism-nice-idea-but/
CAPITALISM IS SPONTANEOUS, NOT DESIGNED. In their white paper they define: “Sustainable Capitalism as a framework
that seeks to maximize long-term economic value creation by reforming markets to address the real needs of all stakeholders while considering
all costs.” This feels really good. However it makes a very common, but completely incorrect assumption that
capitalism is something that can be designed. In fact, capitalism is a spontaneously arising
phenomenon that seeks to improve the competitive efficiency and effectiveness of participating
entrepreneurs and capitalists to control the production and distribution of products so that wealth
can be shared amongst themselves. I have treated this in other blogs, but briefly, capitalism has no master plan and
is not directed by an external goal. The people who combine their capital holdings are merely creating
a more effective competitive mechanism than individual entrepreneurship. Like competition in an
ecosystem (not like in an evolutionary system, by the way), survival of the fittest operates on the
individual animal/capitalist owner. It does not operate on the species in an ecosystem, anymore than
it operates on groups of similar corporations in an economic system (an econosystem). It specifically
operates directly on people who make decisions based on their own characteristics and the economic
results of their earlier decisions in an economic environment. In an ecosystem, an animal’s
characteristics define the scope of choices it has, just as the characteristics of a person or persons and
a business of a particular type are constrained in the choices they can make. Each plant and each
animal in an ecosystems attempts to maximize its biomass production and distribution to dominate
the ecosystem. A corporation in a capitalist system attempts to do precisely the same thing: control
the production and distribution to dominate the market. In both cases they rely on the resource base,
but do not take responsibility for maintaining the resource base — they can’t, they are too busy
competing for it. BOOTSTRAPING AND LABOUR AS AN EXPENDABLE RESOURCE Gore and Blood acknowledge
that the resource base (or at least the part they recognize as a resource base) is important and starting to be constraining: “ The
challenges facing the planet today are unprecedented and extraordinary; climate change, water
scarcity, poverty, growing inequality of income and wealth, demographic shifts, and a global economy
in a state of constant dramatic volatility and flux, to name but a few .” Capitalism is not interested in
carrying the environmental costs unless it must to compete effectively : “While governments and civil
society will need to be part of the solution to these challenges, ultimately it will be companies and
investors that will mobilize the capital needed to overcome them .” Governments can regulate if they
are outside the system, but not if they are tied into the system because they will face the same forces
as the capitalists. It is like expecting someone to lift themselves up by their bootstraps. So the first
challenge will be to separate the governance of the capitalist system from the system itself. Secondly,
it is of critical importance to recognize that capitalism includes entrepreneurs, business owners, and
capitalists only, nobody else is in the club. If you are not an entrepreneur, business owner, or
capitalist, you are not inside the capitalist system. Instead you are an expendable resource, a source
of energy and skills. If you can be replaced by something cheaper such as a horse, a person in a sweat
shop, or a machine, it will be done. ANALYZING THE RECOMMENDATIONS They recommend five key actions for immediate
adoption to accelerate the mainstreaming of Sustainable Capitalism by 2020. The first is to: “Identify and incorporate risks from stranded
assets. By this they mean to set prices of key resources and they cite three examples: carbon, water and labour. They understand the strong
market forces that encourage competitively sequestering and using the resources by corporations, but feel that what they call “fair pricing” will
come about when people realize how important it is to maintain these in the long-term. They further encourage academics to identify the
impact of “stranded assets” to underscore the importance of the concept. This is a wonderful concept, but it really flies in the face of reality.
Capitalism is based on letting the market determine the existence and pricing of a product.
Maximizing profit demands competitive actions. Defining products and setting prices to artificially
create sustainability in a capitalist system simply does not work without external regulations. There
are hundreds of examples in modern wild harvests, fisheries, hunting and gathering. The only
managed sustainable harvests are under strict regulation and enforcement regimes . History also tells us the
regulations and enforcement only come into effect once the resource base has collapsed. Gore and Blood have a notion of this requirement
because they would require that corporations be “Mandated to use integrated reporting.” Integrated reporting means accounting for all the
costs and revenue associated with environmental, social, and governance activities along with their financial results. Currently
there is
no way to figure that out and it is of no relevance inside the capitalist system because the resources
are essentially free goods that have only the costs of extraction or production associated with them.
Unless there is some actual condition that affects the cost of the goods that are currently free, the
corporate budget will continue to see and use them as a free good. Again it is only an external body
applying the equivalent of an ecological condition that will cause the capitalist to recognize the
condition as a competitive force to deal with. In nature, a force that encourages diversity and a more
distributed use of the resource base is the amount of physical cover. This is similar to the effect that a
tax might have. Issuing a tax demand to cover the cost of the free goods is not going to be easy.
Furthermore, we do not currently have the mechanism to redistribute the recycled end product of the
free good back to the environment — even if we were to collect money for it. Why does it work in
nature? It works because of two things that unfortunately absolutely no longer apply to econosystems: 1) the energy resource base is not
infinitely available for all time because we now rely on fossil fuels (in ecosystems the sun is an infinitely available resource), and 2) in nature
everything is completely recycled, and there is a large contingent of organisms dedicated to the job, where as in the econosystems of today,
almost nothing is recycled back into the system, and there re precious few corporations dedicated to the job. With these two glaring problems,
there is no possibility of a very long-term sustainability. Short-term yes, but long-term, no. Their third, fourth, and fifth requirements: “End the
default practice of issuing quarterly earnings guidance; Align compensation structures with long-term sustainable performance; and Encourage
long-term investing with loyalty-driven securities” all require reducing short-term competitiveness in favour of long-term stability. Using the
biological metaphor again, short-term competitiveness is a critical factor in ecological survival because it is the “today” aspect of acquiring and
using resources that is important in individual survival. Exactly the same principle applies in corporate competitiveness. Some species of animals
or plants that have a predictable annual need to use stored resources can spend extra energy to build reserves for a short period of time then
rest during a winter or dry period. This is also true for corporations, but constraining the use of available resources for periods longer than a
few years severely compromise competitiveness and effectively opens new niches for other competitors. SURVIVAL IN CHANGING CONDITIONS
Before moving forward, I want to re-emphasize that the useful metaphor in this context is ecology, not evolution. I state this emphatically
because free market thinkers routinely attempt to use principles of evolution in free market modelling. The time frame for evolution is a much
longer than years or decades. It is in thousands of years. There is not enough time to hope that evolution will take care of any immediate
problem for us. It might eventually, but many generations of people will have come and gone before it happens. When an ecosystem begins to
run short of one or more parts of its resource base (there are many reasons why this can happen), the system spontaneously adjusts by virtue
of what individuals in the system do in response to the aspects of the resource base that have been reduced. For example, if individuals of a
species in the system are only capable of eating grasses, and the grasslands is now shifting to an early forest environment, those grass-eating
individuals will most likely not be able to shift to eating the leaves of trees. If that is so, most will die. The few remaining individuals will find
limited grasses where trees fall down. In the same example, if there are individuals of a species that is not very common in the grasses, but
does manage to survive by nibbling on the woody stems of low growing bushes, it may easily find itself pre-adapted to take advantage of the
changed conditions by feeding on the new growth of leaf petioles of the trees. It will flourish in the new environment while the other species
declines. In this case, one species is better adapted to the changing conditions than the other one. Still within the same example, there might
easily be an animal that eats mainly grasses but also can eat the entire leaves of the low growing bushes. In this case, the animal is more
generalized and has the ability to shift from one resource to another. In the new forested environment, this more versatile species might do
even better than the one that can only eat the petioles of leaves. So in the new environment, we have the same species composition, but the
common one is now rare, the petiole eater is doing better, and the species with a more generalized eating habit is doing well. There is no direct
competition, it is just that one species is pre-adapted to the changes and the other is not: survival of the fittest without competition. In an
economic system, just as in a biological system, developing lots of specialized corporations for which there is no available resource or market or
producing lots of babies simply results in those babies or those products being wasted. In a biological system, the mother is using resources that
do not contribute to the gene pool. In the economic system, the income is being spent where there is no return on the investment. So in both
cases the rare species is there because the habitat has a niche for it, a small one, but it is an available niche nonetheless. The same is true for an
economy, there is no point in developing products that no one will buy. Also there is no point in spending a lot of money to attempt to predict
what a far-future market will want. Both ecological and economic systems take surprising turns based on spontaneous inventions or
developments that cannot easily be foreseen. Coping strategies What are the most likely physical and biological changes over the next 50
years? The sea will rise, people will need to move, near-shore infrastructure will be lost or protected, the planet will get warmer, water will be
in short supply, weather will be more extreme, Arctic and Antarctic areas will open up, tropical diseases will spread north, the deep tropics will
be very hot, the mid-latitudes will be much warmer, resource wars will increase, and a host of other changes will occur. In all of these changes
there will be early markets available for early innovation, even today. It makes good sense in situations where changes are predictable in a time
frame that makes capitalistic sense (we humans do have the ability to use our brains this way, even if it is a rare event) to develop small self-
supporting child corporations to tap these developing small market niches so that a high degree of pre-adaptation is in hand when it is needed.
By ensuring that the appendages are self-supporting, short-term capitalistic competitiveness is not lost. In other blogs, I have noted the
determinants of richness and diversity in very large economic systems akin to biomes and called them economes. One of the factors improving
richness and diversity is infrastructure. In biological systems, a complex physical environment encourages a diversity of species and a wider
distribution of resources. But the most telling infrastructure is biological wherein animals and plants can interact within the enhanced physical
structure that is itself living. I called this an organic matrix. Examples include Kelp beds and Rain forests where the infrastructure is the main
primary producer, and coral reefs where the main infrastructure producers are coralline algae (primary producers) and a wide range of
plankton feeders, extracting food from currents drifting past them (effectively also primary producers capturing the energy from another
ecosystem). The same is true of economic systems. The
greater the infrastructure the more diversity and richness
develop. This is especially true if the infrastructure is based on primary production or primary
production derived from other econosystems . The trees, kelp, and corals all provide living areas, distribution,
communication, cooperatives, and many other functions, just as a highly developed economic infrastructure might provide. The recent
expansion of social media using the Internet is one potential area for infrastructure growth while at the same time it is a market ripe with open
niches suitable for small business ventures (I will come back to this point shortly). Individuals who are not small business owners,
entrepreneurs, or capitalists are not included in the capitalist system to share wealth. Instead they are expendable resources, packages of skills
and energy to be used as needed by businesses. Given ample historical and recent evidence, as capitalism develops the labour resource is
increasingly exploited, or substituted, leaving a large body of unemployed or very low wage, even serf-like people unsupported. The only
effective self-defense in a capitalist system is “If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.” If you don’t have a job, or even if you do, it pays to develop a
business of some kind based on real markets that exist today but that are likely to be increasingly needed in the not very distant future. If this
new business can be built in the burgeoning Internet communication sector, that is probably a good bet for the next ten years.

Cap is unsustainable and autocratic

Richard Wolff, 3-29-2009, ("Peak Oil and Peak Capitalism" http://rdwolff.com/content/peak-oil-and-
peak-capitalism)
The concept of peak oil may apply more generally than its friends and foes realize . As we descend into US
capitalism’s second major crash in 75 years (with another dozen or so “business cycle downturns” in the interval between crashes), some
signs suggest we are at peak capitalism too. Private capitalism (when productive assets are owned by private individuals
and groups and when markets rather than state planning dominate the distribution of resources and products) has repeatedly
demonstrated a tendency to flare out into overproduction and/or asset inflation bubbles that burst
with horrific social consequences. Endless reforms, restructurings, and regulations were all justified in
the name not only of extricating us from a crisis but also finally preventing future crises (as Obama repeated this week). They
all failed to do that.¶ The tendency to crisis seems unstoppable, an inherent quality of capitalism. At best,
flare outs were caught before they wreaked major havoc , although usually that only postponed and
aggravated that havoc. One recent case in point: the stock market crash of early 2000 was limited in its damaging social consequences
(recession, etc.) by an historically unprecedented reduction of interest rates and money supply expansion by Alan Greenspan’s Federal Reserve.
The resulting real estate bubble temporarily offset the effects of the stock market’s bubble bursting, but when real estate crashed a few years
later, what had been deferred hit catastrophically.¶ Repeated failure to stop its inherent crisis tendency is beginning
to tell on the system. The question increasingly insinuates itself even into discourses with a long history of denying its pertinence: has
capitalism, qua system, outlived its usefulness?¶ Repeated state interventions to rescue private
capitalism from its self-destructive crises or from the political movements of its victims yielded longer or shorter periods of state capitalism
(when productive assets are owned or significantly controlled or regulated by state officials and when state planning dominates markets as
mechanisms of resource and product distribution). Yet state capitalisms have
not solved the system’s crisis tendencies
either. That is why they have repeatedly given way to oscillations back to private capitalism (e.g. the Reagan
“revolution” in the US, the end of the USSR, etc.)¶ Moreover, the history of FDR’s efforts to counteract the Great Depression teaches
fundamental lessons about capitalism as a system that cannot forever be deferred. Since the New Deal reforms then all stopped
short of transforming the structure of corporations , they left in place the corporate boards of directors and
shareholders who had both the incentives and resources to evade, undermine and abolish those
reforms. Evasion was their focus until the 1970s, and abolition since. Capitalism systematically organizes its key institutions of production –
the corporations – such that their boards of directors, in properly performing their assigned tasks, produce crises, then undermine anti-crisis
reforms, and thereby reproduce those crises¶ Hence, attention is slowly shifting to question the one aspect of capitalism that was never
effectively challenged, let alone changed, across the last century and more: the internal organization of corporations. Their decisions
about what, where, and how to produce and how to utilize profits are all made not by the mass of
workers (nor by the communities they impact) but rather by a board of directors. Composed typically of 15-20
individuals, corporate boards are tiny elites responsible to the only slightly larger elites comprising
corporations’ major shareholders. Each corporate board is charged by its major shareholders with maximizing
profit, market share, growth, or share price. The mass of workers has to live with the results of board
decisions over which they exercise next to no control. This is a position they share with the communities surrounding and
dependent on those same corporations.¶ This capitalist organization of the corporation consistently generates
investment, production, financial, marketing, and employment decisions that produce systemic instability – economic crises.
Much as this bipolar system brought us to peak oil by its expansions , so its contractions have now
brought us to peak capitalism. This system’s profoundly undemocratic organization of production
demands radical transformation.¶ Suppose, as one such transformation, that workers undertook to function as
their own board of directors. All weekly job descriptions would henceforth specify four days of particular production tasks and one
day participating in collective decisions about what, how and where to produce and what to do with profits. Having required political
autocracy to give way to democratic mechanisms, workers would then have achieved the same in
relation to the economic autocracy that structures capitalist corporations . The economy and society
would then evolve very differently from the capitalist pattern. If we are to redesign our interactions
with nature taking account of peak oil, why not redesign our enterprise structures to take account of the
history of failed efforts to contain capitalism’s crisis-producing dysfunction. ¶

Peak oil makes violent collapse inevitable - try or die for the alt
Klaas V, 1-17-2014, ("CAPITALISM, PEAK OIL, AND ENDLESS CRISIS", http://anti-
imperialism.com/2014/01/17/capitalism-peak-oil-and-endless-crisis/)
Let’s start with a simple definition from Wikipedia: “The Hubbert peak theory says that for any given geographical area, from an
individual oil-producing region to the planet as a whole, the rate of petroleum production tends to follow a bell-
shaped curve. It is one of the primary theories on peak oil.”¶ In an article by the Guardian’s Nafeez Ahmed, a renowned geologist formerly
working for British Petroleum, Richard G. Miller, has said oil production has peaked around 2008 . As you are reading this,
37 countries in the world’s oil production has already peaked , with a resulting decline in global oil production of 4.1%,
equivalent to 3.5 million b/d (barrels a day) a year. Richard G. Miller: ¶ “We need new production equal to a new Saudi
Arabia every 3 to 4 years to maintain and grow supply… New discoveries have not matched consumption
since 1986. We are drawing down on our reserves, even though reserves are apparently climbing every year. Reserves
are growing due to better technology in old fields, raising the amount we can recover – but production
is still falling at 4.1% p.a. [per annum]. […] Production of conventional liquid oil has been flat since 2008.
Growth in liquid supply since then has been largely of natural gas liquids [NGL]- ethane, propane, butane, pentane –
and oil-sand bitumen.Ӧ Miller also responded to those who have been dismissing peak oil as a systemic problem appealing to
shale oil and oil sands:¶ “Greater reliance upon tight oil resources produced using hydraulic fracturing
will exacerbate any rising trend in global average decline rates, since these wells have no plateau and
decline extremely fast – for example, by 90% or more in the first 5 years. […] [T]he Canadian oil sands will deliver only 5 
mb per day by 2030, which represents less than 6% of the IEA projection of all-liquids production by that date.” ¶ Miller also recognized the
possibility for these alternatives to alleviate the pressure on economic growth, but only for a relatively short
period of time, pointing out that tight oil production is likely to peak itself before 2020, not enough to replace the
US’ current 9 million b/d of imports.¶ Because of the abundance of oil in certain areas of the world , accompanied
by a peculiar profitability of capital, the world oil sector presents a very high level of geographical centralization
and concentration of capital, with approximately 100 fields producing 50% of the global supply , 25 producing
25% of it and a single field, the Ghawar field of Saudi Arabia, producing around 7%. Most of these fields are old and well past
their peak, with the others likely to enter decline within the next decade. ¶ Miller argued that conditions are such
that, despite volatility, prices can never return to pre-2004 levels , saying “it is highly likely that when the US pays more than 4%
of its GDP for oil, or more than 10% of GDP for primary energy, the economy declines as money is sucked into buying fuel instead of other
goods and service”.¶ What can a Marxist conclude from this open admission of capitalist contradiction and
desperation?¶ This is the most important realization: capitalist crisis is now necessarily endless. There is a crossroad
in front of humanity as a whole and its interest in survival: either end the capitalist mode of production, or accept
the inevitability of a Malthusian nightmare of more hunger, more wars over resources, increasingly social
Darwinist methods of population control, and whatever will be needed to maintain the rule of capital
at the expense of everyone else.¶ Without a steady and cheap supply of oil, there is no capitalism; oil is
its blood. Capital accumulation requires an energy sources which tendentially increases its potential
supply; no such energy source exists, and even if one was found, every part of the technological
infrastructure of capitalist society, running on oil, would take a long time to be retooled or dismantled to
give way to new infrastructure running on this new energy source. This kind of transition would never be
feasible in a world where the rule is exploitation of man by man, and of nation by nation. ¶ There can
be no painless solution to an ecological crisis that jeopardizes the future of humanity while world politics revolves
around defending the profits of monopoly capital , and not the general interests of human survival. The whole point
of capitalist production, production for the most immediate profit, stands in contradiction to the well being of
humanity and the production of the conditions required by human life . On top of its own internal limit
of capitalism, capital itself and its over-accumulative tendencies , capitalist production in the era of imperialism
has entered into a conflict with an external limit, something never before seen for a mode of production on this
scale: capitalism is exhausting non-reproducible resources . It is now necessary for every individual to take up the
struggle to put production and distribution under social control.
 AT Green Cap
Cap destroys the environment and green cap fails (beware against renewables affs)
Robert Newmann, 2-1-2006 (The Guardian, " It's capitalism or a habitable planet - you can't have
both", http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2006/feb/02/energy.comment)
There is no meaningful response to climate change without massive social change . A cap on this and a quota
on the other won't do it. Tinker at the edges as we may, we cannot sustain earth's life-support systems within
the present economic system.¶ Capitalism is not sustainable by its very nature. It is predicated on infinitely
expanding markets, faster consumption and bigger production in a finite planet . And yet this ideological
model remains the central organising principle of our lives , and as long as it continues to be so it will
automatically undo (with its invisible hand) every single green initiative anybody cares to come up with.¶ Much
discussion of energy, with never a word about power, leads to the fallacy of a low-impact, green
capitalism somehow put at the service of environmentali sm. In reality, power concentrates around wealth.
Private ownership of trade and industry means that the decisive political force in the world is private
power. The corporation will outflank every puny law and regulation that seeks to constrain its
profitability. It therefore stands in the way of the functioning democracy needed to tackle climate
change. Only by breaking up corporate power and bringing it under social control will we be able to overcome
the global environmental crisis.¶ On these pages we have been called on to admire capital's ability to take
robust action while governments dither. All hail Wal-Mart for imposing a 20% reduction in its own carbon
emissions. But the point is that supermarkets are over. We cannot have such long supply lines between us
and our food. Not any more. The very model of the supermarket is unsustainable , what with the packaging, food
miles and destruction of British farming. Small, independent suppliers, processors and retailers or community-
owned shops selling locally produced food provide a social glue and reduce carbon emissions . The
same is true of food co-ops such as Manchester's bulk-distribution scheme serving former "food deserts".¶ All hail BP
and Shell for having got beyond petroleum to become non-profit eco-networks supplying green energy. But fail to cheer
the Fortune 500 corporations that will save us all and ecologists are denounced as anti-business. Many career
environmentalists fear that an anti-capitalist position is what's alienating the mainstream from their
irresistible arguments. But is it not more likely that people are stunned into inaction by the bizarre discrepancy
between how extreme the crisis described and how insipid the solutions proposed ? Go on a march to the
House of Commons. Write a letter to your MP. And what system does your MP hold with? Name one that isn't pro-capitalist. Oh, all right then,
smartarse. But name five.¶ We are caught between the Scylla and Charybdis of climate change and peak oil. Once we
pass the planetary oil production spike (when oil begins rapidly to deplete and demand outstrips supply), there will be less
and less net energy available to humankind. Petroleum geologists reckon we will pass the world oil spike
sometime between 2006 and 2010. It will take, argues peak-oil expert Richard Heinberg, a second world war effort
if many of us are to come through this epoch. Not least because modern agribusiness puts hundreds of calories
of fossil-fuel energy into the fields for each calorie of food energy produced .¶ Catch-22, of course, is that the
very worst fate that could befall our species is the discovery of huge new reserves of oil, or even the burning
into the sky of all the oil that's already known about, because the climate chaos that would unleash would make the
mere collapse of industrial society a sideshow bagatelle . Therefore, since we've got to make the switch
from oil anyway, why not do it now?¶
 AT: Perm-Environment Affs
Attempts at combining green energy with capitalism will ultimately fail, 5 reasons,
only the alt can solve
Richard Smith 14, economic historian with PHD from UCLA, author of “To Save the Planet, Turn the
World Upside Down,” 1-9-14, “Green Capitalism: The God That Failed,” Truthout, http://truth-
out.org/news/item/21060-green-capitalism-the-god-that-failed.
Paul Hawken was right: We need a "restorative economy," an economy that lives within nature's
limits, that minimizes and even eliminates waste from production, and so on. But he was completely
wrong to imagine that we could ever get this under capitalism.¶ In what follows I am going to explain
why this is so and, in conclusion, state what I think are the implications of this critique. To start with, I'm
going to state five theses about green capitalism and then develop these arguments in the rest of this
article. ¶ 1. First, the project of "sustainable" "green" capitalism was misconceived and doomed from
the start because maximizing profit and saving the planet are inherently in conflict and cannot be
systematically aligned even if, here and there, they might coincide for a moment. That's because,
under capitalism, CEOs and corporate boards are not responsible to society; they're responsible to
private owners and shareholders. CEOs might embrace environmentalism so long as this also increases
profits, but they're not free to subordinate profit maximizing to saving the world - because to do so
would be to risk shareholder flight or worse. I claim that profit-maximization is an iron rule of
capitalism, a rule that trumps all else and sets the possibilities and limits of ecological reform - and not
the other way around, as green capitalism theorists suppose.¶ 2. Second, no capitalist government on
Earth can impose "green taxes" that would drive the coal industry or any other industry out of business,
or even force major retrenchments by suppressing production because, among other important reasons,
given capitalism, this would just provoke recession and mass unemployment - if not worse. This means
the carbon tax strategy to stop global warming is a non-starter. Without green taxes, the entire green
capitalist project collapses.¶ 3. Third, green capitalism enthusiasts vastly underestimate the gravity,
scope and speed of the global ecological collapse we face and thus unrealistically imagine that growth
can continue forever if we just tweak the incentives and penalties a bit here and there with green
taxes and such. But the capitalist market system is inherently eco-suicidal. Endless growth can end
only in catastrophic eco-collapse. No amount of tinkering can alter the market system's suicidal
trajectory. Therefore, like it or not, humanity has no choice but to try to find a way to replace
capitalism with some kind of post-capitalist ecologically sustainable economy.¶ 4. Fourth, green
capitalism theorists grossly overestimate the potential of "clean green" production and
"dematerializing" the economy, whereas, in reality, much if not most, of the economy - from resource
extraction like mining and drilling to metals smelting and chemicals production - as well as most
manufacturing and many services cannot be greened in any meaningful sense at all. This means that the
only way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by the 80 percent that scientists say we need to do to
save the humans, is to enforce a drastic contraction of production in the industrialized countries,
especially in the most polluting and wasteful sectors. Most industries will have to be sharply retrenched.
Some, the very worst polluting and wasteful, will have to be closed entirely. Because, under capitalism,
industries can't be expected to voluntarily commit economic suicide, even to save the humans, the
only way to carry out these necessary contractions and closures is to nationalize industry and socialize
the losses, redeploy labor to sectors society does actually need to develop, like renewable energy,
public transit, decent housing for all and so on and shorten the working day to spread the remaining
work around.¶ 5. Fifth, consumerism and overconsumption are not "dispensable" and cannot be
exorcised because they're not just "cultural" or "habitual." They are built into capitalism and
indispensable for the day-to-day reproduction of corporate producers in a competitive market system in
which capitalists, workers, consumers and governments alike are dependent upon an endless cycle of
perpetually increasing consumption to maintain profits, jobs and tax revenues. We can't shop our way
to sustainability because the problems we face cannot be solved by individual choices in the
marketplace. The global ecological crisis we face cannot be solved by even the largest individual
companies. Problems such as global warming, overfishing and ocean chemistry are beyond the scope
of nation states. They require national and international economic planning. That requires collective
bottom-up democratic control over the entire world economy. And because global economic
democracy could thrive only in the context of rough economic equality, this presupposes a global
redistribution of wealth as well.
Framework
 Framework - Enviro Impacts
Social change is a prerequisite to solving global warming, capitalism is unsustainable
and leads to extinction, the alt solves
Ian Angus 12, founder of Revolutionary Workers League, author of many books on the environment
and capitalism, 3-21-12, “Green energy won't save the earth without social change,” Climate and
Capitalism, http://climateandcapitalism.com/2012/03/21/green-energy-alone-wont-save-the-earth/.
The most popular techno-fix for global warming is green energy. If energy companies would only
deploy wind, hydro, solar, geothermal or nuclear, then emission-intensive fossil fuels will eventually
disappear. But will that actually work? ¶ A new study by Richard York of the University of Oregon shows
that it isn’t that simple. Rather than displacing fossil fuels, green energy sources have proven to be
mostly additive.¶ “Do alternative energy sources displace fossil fuels?” published this month in Nature
Climate Change, discusses what happened when alternative energy sources were introduced in
countries around the world, over the past fifty years. ¶ Contrary to the accepted wisdom that new green
energy replaces fossil-fuel use, York found that on average each unit of energy use from non-fossil-fuel
sources displaced less than a quarter of a unit of energy use from fossil-fuel sources.¶ The picture is
worse with electricity, where each new unit generated from green sources displaced less than one-
tenth of a unit of fossil-fuel-generated electricity. ¶ York writes:¶ “Based on all of the results presented
above, the answer to the question presented in the title of this paper – do alternative energy sources
displace fossil fuels? – is yes, but only very modestly. The common assumption that the expansion of
production of alternative energy will suppress fossil-fuel energy production in equal proportion is
clearly wrong.”¶ Why don’t the new sources replace the old? York identifies two key reasons: the
inertia of a huge existing fossil-fuel infrastructure, and the power and influence of the coal and oil
corporations.¶ “The failure of non-fossil energy sources to displace fossil ones is probably in part
attributable to the established energy system where there is a lock-in to using fossil fuels as the base
energy source because of their long-standing prevalence and existing infrastructure and to the political
and economic power of the fossil-fuel industry.” ¶ In other words, eliminating fossil-fuel as an energy
source is at least as much a social and political problem as a technical one.¶ “Of course all societies
need energy. So, obviously, if societies are to stop using fossil fuels they must have other energy
sources. However, the results from the analyses presented here indicate that the shift away from fossil
fuel does not happen inevitably with the expansion of non-fossil-fuel sources, or at least in the political
and economic contexts that have been dominant over the past fifty years around the world…. ¶ “The
most effective strategy for curbing carbon emissions is likely to be one that aims to not only develop
non-fossil energy sources, but also to find ways to alter political and economic contexts so that fossil-
fuel energy is more easily displaced and to curtail the growth in energy consumption as much as
possible.¶ “A general implication of these findings is that polices aimed at addressing global climate
change should not focus principally on developing technological fixes, but should also take into account
human behaviour in the context of political, economic and social systems.” ¶ The evidence shows that
simply introducing green energy isn’t enough: the introduction must be accompanied by “explicit
policies aimed at reducing carbon emissions.” ¶ The article is published in a scientific journal, where
political and social conclusions can only be expressed in muted form. But Richard York’s research and
conclusions reinforce the argument that he and his co-authors (John Bellamy Foster and Brett Clark)
made more explicitly in their recent book, The Ecological Rift: Capitalism’s War on the Planet. ¶ “We are
confronting the question of a terminal crisis, threatening most life on the planet, civilization, and the
very existence of future generations. … attempts to solve this through technological fixes, market
magic, and the idea of a ‘sustainable capitalism’ are mere forms of ecological denial, since they ignore
the inherent destructiveness of the current system of unsustainable development – capitalism.”

Analyzing capitalism is the only way to solve for ecological problems in the ocean
Brett Clark and Rebecca Clausen 08, Clark: sociology professor at North Carolina State University,
Clausen: sociology professor at Fort Lewis College, 7-1-2008, “The Oceanic Crisis: Capitalism and the
Degradation of Marine Ecosystem,” The Monthly Review, http://monthlyreview.org/2008/07/01/the-
oceanic-crisis-capitalism-and-the-degradation-of-marine-ecosystem/.
Scientific analysis of oceanic systems presents a sobering picture of the coevolution of human society
and the marine environment during the capitalist industrial era. The particular environmental
problems related to the ocean cannot be viewed as isolated issues or aberrations of human ingenuity,
only to be corrected through further technological development. Rather these ecological conditions
must be understood as they relate to the systematic expansion of capital and the exploitation of
nature for profit. Capital has a particular social metabolic order—the material interchange between
society and nature—that subsumes the world to the logic of accumulation. It is a system of self-
expanding value, which must reproduce itself on an ever-larger scale.4 Here we examine the social
metabolic order of capital and its relationship with the oceans to (a) examine the anthropogenic causes
of fish stock depletion, (b) detail the ecological consequences of ongoing capitalist production in relation
to the ocean environment, and (c) highlight the ecological contradictions of capitalist aquaculture.5
Aff
 2ac Frontline
1. Policy Framework first – best teaches pragmatic change. And avoids regress –
endless items become the nexus question – discourages clash with the other 99% of
the Aff.
2. Permutation do both - the alt alone amounts to running away and only legal
engagement solves
Funke Adekoya, 2013 (Daily Independent, " The lawyer as change agent: Prospects and challenges",
http://dailyindependentnig.com/2013/03/the-lawyer-as-change-agent-prospects-and-challenges/)
Corruption is now recognized as the prevailing ethos of the land and as its direct result, we see the
enthronement of embezzlement and other criminal activities as a way of life.¶ The increase in
unemployment, underdevelopment, poverty, and social vices has resulted in the prevailing sense of
insecurity in the country, whether as individuals or as a nation.¶ Our traditional cultures and moralities are being fast
eroded, and our modern institutions are all in desperate need of reform. ¶ Near a hundred years after
Nigeria was created, our very existence as a nation is under threat. Indeed there are more than a few who
believe the time has come for wholesale and profound change, in one direction or the other .¶ In such
times as we currently live, we, both individually as lawyers, and collectively as an association of lawyers, and again as a society
in general, have three clear options facing us.¶ On the one hand, we can pack our bags and leave. Ghana, South
Africa, England, America, sees an increasing number of Nigerians flooding their entry points every year.
Remember the days of the ‘Andrew’ advert on the television? However, this is not a viable option for the majority of us.
Especially so when we see the foreign nationals, the British, the Americans, the South Africans and the Chinese flocking to
take advantages of the wealth of this country, where we appear to be failing. ¶ If we are then to stay, there are
two remaining options facing us.¶ The first is to live with the status quo and accept our lot. We give up the high and noble ideals we swore to
upon being called to the Bar, and join in the rot and the decay. This is the ‘If you can’t beat them, join them’ approach. We can take the view
that there is nothing inherently wrong with living as we are told, and not challenging that which we know to be wrong, especially if the route to
riches and wealth lies in that direction. So we help corrupt politicians launder the country’s wealth, we turn a blind eye to bad or non-existent
government, and accept the spoils of office that ‘trickle down’. Indeed, when you have a family and obligations, particularly in a tough
economy, putting your life and livelihood at risk may not be an easy choice. However, we know only too well, and must acknowledge the
resultant emotional, spiritual and physical tolls this acquiescence takes on us. Indeed, we live with this everyday. The question is how much
more of this is sustainable? It may be alright for us today, but what tomorrow are we handing over to our children? ¶ This leaves us with the last
clear choice: that we, individually as lawyers, collectively as an association, and generally as a society must
become agents of the change we wish to see. This third option of seeking to institute change, should be the
natural and preferred option.¶ Truly, assuming the role of a change agent comes with great risk, not only
because the status quo and the entrenched powers will fight you , but also because we are aware that the
world in general and people in particular are resistant to change.¶ And yet, change is the only certainty. Change is the
only thing that brings progress.¶ So why us? Why should lawyers assume the role of change agents?¶ The first and the
simple answer, is that by the nature of our training and by the characteristics of our profession , we as lawyers
are natural leaders and natural change agents. If we define a change agent as either a person who, or an organization which,
is able to stimulate a process whereby people tackle essential issues and modify their values, habits and practices and priorities in order to
make progress, wesee that individually as lawyers, through representing our clients, we are change agents in their lives
and businesses.¶ The simple characteristics of successful leaders match those of the average lawyer.
Compared to the population at large, the successful leader and the average lawyer tend to be highly
educated.¶ As with leaders, lawyers frame grievances and formulate ideologies, debate with opponents,
interface with media, write, devise strategies, and engage in dialogue with internal and external elites .
Also, due to the training received, and further by everyday practice, lawyers are already constituted with
knowledge of human behavior and action. Our work and training is client-centered.¶ It is however these same attributes
that make the lawyer a good servant of society at large, and good social changers . Leadership qualities,
forensic ability, a talent for reasoning, and knowledge of the legal system – all of these aid the work of
lawyer and change agent alike.¶ As laws and regulations form the underpinning of our economic,
political and social systems, any pursuit of social change invariably involves an engagement with the
law. Drivers of change need to be located within the legal framework that defines relationships and
interactions between the State, public and private service providers, and civil society at large. The lawyer is easily
identified as a natural driver of change who has an effect on the private lives of individuals, through
something as commonplace as drafting a will or a contract, to someone who may influence policy and
society in the higher realms.¶

3.Capitalism is the most efficient form of government, its organization prevents

societal collapse
Bailey ’12, Bailey is the author of the book Liberation Biology: The Moral and Scientific Case for the
Biotech Revolution  (Prometheus, 2005), and his work was featured in The Best American Science and Nature
Writing 2004 ., “Free Markets= Sustainable Development, Reason.com,
http://reason.com/archives/2012/06/12/free-markets-are-sustainable-development/1

¶And what about the other term, sustainable? Again, looking across history and the globe, we know for a
fact that there have been, until now, no sustainable societies. All of the earlier civilizations in both
the Old and New Worlds collapsed at various times, e.g., Babylonia, Rome, the Umayyad Caliphate,
Harrapan, Gupta, Tang, Mayan, Olmec, Anasazi, Moche, just to mention a few. Of course, collapse in
this context doesn’t mean that everybody died, but that their ways of life radically shifted and often
much of the population migrated to other regions . In other words, history provides us with no models
of sustainable development other than democratic capitalism .¶ Every one of these earlier ultimately
unsustainable societies were what economics Nobelist Douglass North and his colleagues call “natural
states” in Violence and Social Orders: A Conceptual Framework for Interpreting Recorded Human
History . Natural states are basically organized as hierarchical patron-client networks in which small
militarily potent elites extract resources from a subject population. The basic deal is a Hobbesian
contract in which elites promise their subjects an end to the “war of all against all” in exchange for
wealth and power. ¶ Natural states operate by limiting access to valuable resources, e.g., by creating
and sharing the rewards of monopolies. One fundamental downside to this form of social
organization is that innovation, both social and technological, is stifled because it threatens the
monopolies through which elite patrons extract wealth. While natural states do succeed in
dramatically reducing interpersonal violence, they have one appalling consequence as Maddison’s data
show: persistently low average incomes. Again, as history teaches, civilizations organized as natural
states are not sustainable in the long run. ¶ Lots of thinkers have pondered what causes the collapse of
civilizations, i.e., why they are unsustainable over the long run. Let’s take a brief look at three recent
theories of unsustainability: climate change, complexity, and self-organized criticality cascades. In
January 26, 2001, issue of Science, Yale University Anthropologist Harvey Weiss and University of
Massachusetts Geoscientist Raymond Bradley asked, “What Drives Societal Collapse? ” They concluded,
“Many lines of evidence now point to climate forcing as the primary agent in repeated social collapse .” Basically
they argue that abrupt and long-lasting droughts caused the downfalls of civilizations in both the Old and
New Worlds. ¶ Utah State University anthropologist Joseph Tainter, author of the 1988 classic, The
Collapse of Complex Societies , asserts that societies fall apart when their problem solving institutions
fail. Tainter argues, [PDF] “Confronted with problems, we often respond by developing more complex
technologies, establishing new institutions, adding more specialists or bureaucratic levels to an
institution, increasing organization or regulation, or gathering and processing more information.” ¶
Tainter maintains that this strategy of building complex institutions ultimately fails as the result of
diminishing marginal returns to the social investment in them. Collapse occurs when accumulating
unaddressed problems overwhelm a society. Interestingly, Tainter notes, “ In a hierarchical
institution, the flow of information from the bottom to the top is frequently inaccurate and
ineffective.” ¶ In a 2002 article, “Why Do Societies Collapse? ,” published in the Journal of Theoretical
Politics, independent political scientist Gregory Brunk argues that societies are self-organizing critical
systems. The usual example of self-organizing criticality is a sand pile in which grains of sand are
constantly being added. Many land and simply find a place in the pile; some grains land and cause small
local avalanches that soon come to rest; and eventually a grain lands that causes a huge avalanche that
changes the shape of the whole pile. In a 2009 article, “Society as a Self-Organized Critical System ,” in
Cybernetics and Human Knowing, researchers Thomas Kron and Thomas Grund suggest the example of the
start of World War I as a social avalanche. In that case, an unlikely series of events involving a lost
driver gave Serbian nationalist assassin Gavrilo Princip the opportunity to kill Franz Ferdinand, the
archduke of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire, and his wife Sophie. And as the phrase goes, the rest was
history. ¶ Brunk suggests the main mechanism by which societies reach a critical point where collapses
are realized was outlined by economist Mancur Olson in his 1982 book, The Rise and Decline of
Nations: Economic Growth, Stagflation, and Social Rigidities . Olson argued that over time interest
group politics produces over-bureaucratization, essentially recreating the patron-client networks
characteristic of natural states.¶ These three theories of societal collapse can complement one another.
Long duration intense local droughts would no doubt constitute a problem that complex hierarchical
institutions would have difficulty solving, thus producing a criticality cascade that results in social
collapse. It’s important to stress that all of the social collapses cited by these authors occurred with
natural states, that is, societies organized as patron-client networks. In fact, the more recent social
collapses, e.g., the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, the Congo, Somalia, and Libya, all also occurred in
residual natural states that had persisted into the modern era .¶ The plain fact is that development
(rising incomes, health, and education) occurred only after what North and his colleagues identify as a
new form of social organization, open access orders, arose during the past two centuries. Open
access orders are basically societies organized as democratic free-market capitalism, and are
characterized by the rule of law, the proliferation of private economic, social, religious, and
political institutions, and civilian control of the military. In all of history, the only kind of
development has been capitalist development, along with parasitical versions of development that
some remaining natural states can attain for a while by imitating aspects of open access orders. By 2008,
average per capita income in Western Europe was $22,200 and in China $6,800.

4. Capitalism is sustainable
Generation Investment Management, January 2012, Generation Investment Management is
based in London and uses research to help create funding methods, “Sustainable Capitalism,”
http://www.generationim.com/media/pdf-generation-sustainable-capitalism-v1.pdf
Capitalism has great strengths and is fundamentally superior to any other system for organising
economic activity. It is more efficient in allocating resources and in matching supply and demand. It is
demonstrably effective in wealth creation. It is more congruent with higher levels of freedom and self-
governance than any other system. It unlocks a higher fraction of the human potential with
ubiquitous, organic incentives that reward hard work, ingenuity, and innovation. These strengths are
why it is at the foundation of every successful economy. Critically, capitalism has proven itself to be
adaptable and flexible enough to fit the specific needs of particular countries. Capitalism comes in
many forms, from that practised in the US to the very different model that has been adopted within communist China. The causes and
consequences of these variations are, of course, significant – but the more important fact remains: the mainstream debate is about how to
practise capitalism not whether we should choose between capitalism and some other system. Yet while the present form of capitalism has
proven its superiority, it is nevertheless abundantly clear that some of the ways in which it is now practised do not incorporate sufficient regard
for its impact on people and the planet – and are now posing a number of fundamental challenges that require attention, particularly in a
resource-constrained world of seven billion (soon to be 8-10 billion) people. These include short-termism, over-reliance on GDP growth as a
primary metric of prosperity, diverting wealth into shadow banking and financial engineering and away from addressing real needs. These
challenges also include rising inequality, increasing volatility in the global financial market, and growing contributions to the climate crisis
perpetuated by a resistance to internalise externalities. We
and others have argued for long-term responsible
capitalism for some time. We have called this Sustainable Capitalism.4 Sustainable Capitalism is more
than corporate social responsibility or impact investing, which are worthwhile endeavours compatible
with the precepts of sustainable investing, but narrower in focus. DEFINITION Sustainable Capitalism is a
framework that seeks to maximise long-term economic value creation by reforming markets to
address real needs while considering all costs and integrating ESG metrics into the decision-making
process. It applies to the entire investment value chain from entrepreneurial ventures to publicly
traded large-cap companies, from investors providing seed capital to those focused on late-stage
growth-orientated opportunities, from company employees to CEOs, from activists to policy makers
and standard setters. Sustainable Capitalism transcends borders, industries, forms of ownership, asset
classes, and stakeholders. THE ECONOMIC CASE The economic rationale for Sustainable Capitalism is
emerging through the quantitative and qualitative results of empirical research as well as real-world
examples. Mainstreaming Sustainable Capitalism by 2020 will require independent, collaborative and
voluntary action by companies, investors, government and civil society, which we hope to accelerate
by advancing the discourse on the economic benefits of sustainability .

5. Socialism fails and is worse than capitalism, seven reasons

John Hawkins 12, published at the Washington Examiner, The Hill, TPNN, Hot Air, The Huffington Post
and at Human Events, premier interviewer on the Right, founded and led the Rightroots group, a
grassroots effort that collected almost $300,000, 12-4-2012, “7 Reasons Socialism Will Make You Poorer
Than Capitalism,” Townhall.com,
http://townhall.com/columnists/johnhawkins/2012/12/04/7_reasons_socialism_will_make_you_poorer
_than_capitalism/page/full.
Given what we know in 2012, saying that capitalism will make a society richer than socialism should be
about as controversial as saying the earth is round, not flat. Yet, a recent Gallup poll shows that more
liberals have a positive view of socialism than capitalism. This is only possible because there are so many
perverse incentives that drive the promotion of socialism. If you're a politician, socialism puts power in
your hands while capitalism takes it away. If you want to use the government to control people's lives,
socialism is a wonderful vehicle to do just that while capitalism robs you of that opportunity. If you
would rather live off the dole than to work or alternately, prefer to make money off "who you know"
instead of "how good a service you provide," again socialism works better for you. Now take into
account the fact that there are no pure socialist or capitalist economies left and it becomes very easy to
muddy the water and keep people from realizing the obvious economic superiority of capitalism. ¶ 1)
Socialism benefits the few at the expense of the many: Socialism is superior to capitalism in one
primary way: It offers more security. It's almost like an extremely expensive insurance policy that
dramatically cuts into your quality of life, but insures that if worse comes to worse, you won't drop
below a very minimal lifestyle. For the vast majority of people, this would be a terrible deal. On the
other hand, if you're lazy, completely incompetent or alternately, just have a streak of very bad luck, the
meager benefits provided by socialism may be very appealing. So a socialist society forces the many to
suffer in order to make it easier for the few. It's just as Winston Churchill once noted, "The inherent
virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries." ¶ 2) Capitalism encourages entrepreneurship while
socialism discourages it: A government in a capitalist economy can quite easily give everyone equality of
opportunity with a few basic laws and regulations, but socialism strives to create equality of results. This
should frighten people who value their freedom because ultimately, as F.A. Hayek has noted, "A claim
for equality of material position can be met only by a government with totalitarian powers." You can
see this happening in America as our efforts to reduce "inequality" have led to an ever expanding
government and a vast regulatory tangle that is almost unexplainable despite the fact that it is certainly
enforceable. Capitalism encourages people to start a business and build a better life for themselves
while socialism lays in wait with IRS agents, nooses made of red tape and meddling bureaucrats looking
for businesses to control and loot.¶ 3) Capitalism leads to innovation: Coming up with new products is
often time consuming, expensive and hit or miss. Nine ideas may fail before that tenth one takes off. The
less the creative people behind these ideas are allowed to benefit, the less time, money and effort
they'll put into developing new concepts and inventions. Put another way, the bigger the risk, the bigger
the reward has to be to convince people to take it. Capitalism offers big rewards for productive people
while socialism offers makers only a parade of bureaucratic leeches who want to take advantage of
their "good fortune."¶ 4) Capitalism produces more economic growth: Capitalism produces
considerably more economic growth than socialism and as John Kennedy said, "A rising tide lifts all
boats." A fast growing economy produces more jobs, more wealth and helps everyone. Many people
assume that capitalism isn't working if there are still poor people, but that misses the point. In many
parts of the world, poverty means living in a hut with a dirt floor while in America, most poor Americans
have TVs, refrigerators and cell phones. The rich may take home a larger share of the pie in capitalism,
but the poor also benefit tremendously from living in a growing, thriving economy.¶ 5) Socialism is
too slow to adapt: Capitalism is extremely good at allocating capital to where it's most valued. It has to
be. Either you give people what they are willing to pay for or someone else will. On the other hand,
socialism is slow and stupid for a variety of reasons. Because the government is spending someone
else's money, it doesn’t get particularly concerned about losing money. Political concerns about
appearances often trump the effectiveness of a program. Moreover, even if politicians and bureaucrats
are intelligent and competent, which are big "ifs," they're simply not going to have the specific
knowledge needed to make decisions that may impact thousands of different industries. This is why
capitalism may have its share of troubles, but when there are really colossal economic screw-ups, you'll
always find the government neck deep in the whole mess.¶ 6) Socialism is inherently wasteful: Milton
Friedman once said, "Nobody spends somebody else’s money as carefully as he spends his own. Nobody
uses somebody else’s resources as carefully as he uses his own." This is very true and it means that the
more capital that is taken out of the economy and distributed, the more of it that will be wasted. The
market does a considerably better job of allocating resources than the government because there are
harsh penalties for failure. A company that makes products no one wants will go out of business. A
poorly performing government program that wastes a hundred times more money will probably receive
a bigger budget the next year.¶ 7) Capitalism works in concert with human nature while socialism
works against it: Ayn Rand said it well, "America’s abundance was created not by public sacrifices to
‘the common good,’ but by the productive genius of free men who pursued their own personal interests
and the making of their own private fortunes. They did not starve the people to pay for America’s
industrialization. They gave the people better jobs, higher wages and cheaper goods with every new
machine they invented, with every scientific discovery or technological advance—and thus the whole
country was moving forward and profiting, not suffering, every step of the way," but Adam Smith said
it better, “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our
dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.” A man will work much harder to take care of
himself, his family and his friends than he will to make money for the state, which will then waste most
of it before redistributing it to people who aren't working as hard as the man who earned it in the first
place.

6. Revolution is necessarily violent

Michael Cummings and Eric Cummings, 2011 (On Violence, "Revolutions are Violent",
http://onviolence.com/?e=531)
Michael was arguing a point that we haven’t argued enough on this website: revolutions are violent. ¶
Which may seem obvious. Except that extremists from both sides of the political spectrum casually
endorse revolutions, like my liberal activist friend endorsing a revolution--a revolution, it is safe to say,
the vast majority of the population didn’t endorse--to solve the environmental crisis. Like Occupy
Protesters who just love revolutions, idealized, romanticized and fantasized through Che Guevara T-
shirts, Youtube videos of street protests, and Guy Fawkes masks. Like Tea partiers make a point of
bringing guns to political rallies, in case they need to overthrow the government. Both sides casually
endorse violence, from Tea Party candidates to Occupy speakers. ¶ (We should make it clear that by
“revolutions”, we mean revolutions that overthrow the existing power structure, not social or
technological revolutions like the industrial revolution, the digital boom or the green revolution.) ¶ The
Arab Spring, as our most thought provoking event of 2011, should remind would-be-American-
revolutionaries what a revolution really is: the break down of society and order, a revolution in
power, which (mostly) results in violence. In this pan-Arab/north African revolution we have seen a few
civil wars (Yemen, Syria and Libya), a military invasion (Saudi Arabia into Qatar), authoritarian
crackdowns with unlawful arrests (Qatar, Eqypt, Syria and Yemen) and protesters generally arrested or
attacked throughout. It is safe to say, to those who advocated revolution, violence followed. ¶ This
completely fits into the larger narratives of the history of revolutions. The American Revolution
(Historians debate over whether this qualifies, I believe it does; it threw out the entire power structure.)
cost one in every hundred males his life. The American Revolution is the second deadliest conflict in
American history, percentage wise, with only the Civil War beating it, itself its own kind of revolution.
¶ Meanwhile, France’s revolution is symbolized by the guillotine, an industrial means of execution. The

Russian Revolution lead to the deaths of literally millions of people. The revolutions that wracked
Europe throughout the nineteenth century always included violence and death. When I studied Latin
America history in high school, my notes read, “Colonialism. Revolution. Dictator. Revolution.” It applied
to every country.¶ Violence always coincides with the outbreak of revolutions, for a few reasons:¶ First,
instability. Inherently, revolutions are unstable, by definition an overthrow of the existing power
structures. When this happens, chaos ensues. Food shortages, lack of security, a breakdown of the
social order. The best explanation for this is our blog’s namesake, On Violence, by Hannah Arendt, that
argued that violence and power are opposites. Thus, when the power structure disappears--as in
France or Russia or Libya--violence fills the gaps.¶ Second, vengeance. Most revolutions have a very
legitimate basis: people feel discriminated against, or suffer from severe economic inequality, or chafe
under colonial rule. When the masses revolt, they take their vengeance against their previous
oppressors. Look at what happened in the French revolution. Or what happened to Moammar Ghaddafi.
Or Saddam Hussein.¶ Third, civil wars. They happen when revolutionaries disagree, or the over-thrown
don’t want to leave so easily. Take the above groups advocating revolution, the Occupiers and the Tea
Partiers. They don’t agree on anything. So if one side starts a revolution, they’ll basically have to go to
war with the other side. Boom, you’ve got a civil war. This is what is happening in Syria.

7. wars collapse econ and cause labor shortages and racial violence - turns the K
Boundless, no date ("Economic Hardship and Labor Upheaval During the Transition to Peace"
https://www.boundless.com/u-s-history/world-war-i-1914-1919/the-transition-to-peace-1919-
21/economic-hardship-and-labor-upheaval-during-the-transition-to-peace/)
Demobilization proved chaotic and violent. Four million soldiers were sent home with little planning, little
money, and few benefits. A wartime bubble in prices of farmland burst, leaving many farmers bankrupt or
deeply in debt after they purchased new land. Major strikes in steel, coal, and meatpacking followed in 1919.¶ The
post–World War I recession was an economic recession that hit much of the world in the aftermath of World War
I. In many nations, especially in North America, growth continued during the war as nations mobilized their
economies to fight the war in Europe. After the war ended, however, the global economy began to decline . In the
United States, 1918–1919 saw a modest economic retreat, but the next year saw a mild recovery. A more severe recession hit the United States
in 1920 and 1921, when the global economy fell very sharply.¶ Labor and Race Tensions¶ After
World War I, serious race riots
hit Chicago, Omaha, and two dozen other cities . Race riots occurred primarily during the summer and
early autumn of 1919, which is often called the Red Summer of 1919. In most instances, whites attacked African
Americans. In some cases, groups of blacks fought back, notably in Chicago, where the greatest number of fatalities occurred.¶ The riots
followed postwar social tensions related to the demobilization of veterans of World War I, both black and
white, and competition for jobs among ethnic whites and blacks . With the manpower mobilization of World War I
and immigration from Europe cut off, the industrial cities of the North and Midwest experienced severe labor shortages. Northern
manufacturers recruited throughout the South, and an exodus ensued. By 1919,
an estimated 500,000 African Americans
had emigrated from the South to the industrial cities of the North and Midwest in the first wave of the
Great Migration, which continued until 1940. Following the war, rapid demobilization of the military
without a plan for absorbing veterans into the job market, and the removal of price controls, led to
unemployment and inflation that increased competition for jobs.¶
 Cap Good
Cap good in the context of oceans
Walter Blockhttps 8-3-2009, (Ludwig Von Mises Institute, "Water Privatization",
https://mises.org/journals/scholar/waterprivate.pdf)
And yet, there are vast areas of human existence where private property rights play no role at all:
oceans, seas, rivers and other bodies of water. But why should we expect that there would be any
better results from such “water socialism” than we have experienced from socialism on land?
Indeed,the evidence is all around us attesting to this fact: whales are an endangered species; fish
stocks are precipitously declining; oil spills are a recurring problem; droughts are becoming more and
more serious, and not only in the underdeveloped countries of the world; rivers are polluted, some so
seriously that they actually catch fire; lakes are becoming overcrowded with boaters, swimmers,
fishermen, etc., and there is no market mechanism to allocate this scarce resource amongst the
competing users; deep sea mining (manganese modules) is in a state of suspended animation due to
unclear titles; the legal status of offshore oildrilling rigs is unclear. Most revealing, water covers some
75% of the earth’s surface, but accounts for only zx% of world GDP. While no one expects an exact
proportionality between surface coverage and contribution to economic welfare, such a strong disparity
suggests that the economic system pursued in these two realms may not be totally unrelated to these
results.
 No Link
Nuclear power shouldn't be abandoned - we're too dependent and it's our best shot at
solving warming
Stuart King, 6-14-2011 (Climate and Capitalism, republished from Permanent Revolution, "
FUKUSHIMA, THE LEFT, AND NUCLEAR POWER", http://climateandcapitalism.com/2011/06/14/socialist-
arguments-for-nuclear-power/)
For much of the far left Fukushima was just a confirmation of their anti-nuclear prejudices. Socialist
Worker was typical. Its front page headline declared “Nuclear Plants are never safe: shut them all
down” (19 March, 2011). Inside its editorial declared “Every plan to build a nuclear plant in every
country across the world should be stopped – now. And all existing plants should be shut down. That’s
the message we should take from the horrific events in Japan.” ¶ Now just a moment’s thought by any
serious thinking socialist would have revealed what a ludicrous demand this was. In Britain something
like 19% of electricity comes from our nuclear power plants. Shutting them down immediately would
lead to rolling blackouts across the country. In the medium term it would lead to electricity being
produced by more CO2 polluting forms of electricity production – gas and coal – increasing global
warming with all the dangers that entails.¶ And in France where almost 80% of the country’s electricity
comes from nuclear? The economy would shut down and workers would be burning their furniture in
the dark to keep warm. Now that would be a real vote winner! ¶ The pat reply to this argument will be
that nuclear can by replaced by renewables – wind, wave and solar power – and by better energy
efficiency in homes, offices etc. Well it can’t – the figures don’t add up.¶ Building offshore wind farms,
renewing the grid to use them, developing wave power etc will take years if not a decade or more,
even if a socialist government threw all its resources behind it. Even a massive public works
programme on energy conservation in homes and offices would take many years. At the same time we
need to phase out all coal-fired power stations within the next decade or so, a really important
demand in relation to CO2 emissions – and in Britain they still produce just under a third of our
electricity.¶ Renewables cannot fill the gap if we take out nuclear power as an option.¶ As socialists we
cannot magic away these problems. We can bury our heads in the sand, raise demands that no one
takes seriously (even ourselves) or provide some scientific based and socialist answers to the problems
we face – the major one being how we put forward a program to massively reduce CO2 emissions on a
world scale to prevent global warming.¶ Nuclear power as a low CO2 producing energy source, for all its
draw-backs and dangers, will certainly be part of the solution. The lesson of Fukushima is not, as
Socialist Worker would have it, that nuclear power is an impossibly dangerous industry, but that it is
far too dangerous an industry to be in private hands and to be driven by the profit motive.¶

Nuclear power is necessary to prevent reliance on fossil fuels - key to transition away
from capitalism
David Walters, , 6-14-2011 (Climate and Capitalism, republished from Permanent Revolution, "
FUKUSHIMA, NUCLEAR ENERGY AND A SOCIALIST PROGRAM",
http://climateandcapitalism.com/2011/06/14/socialist-arguments-for-nuclear-power/)

All seaside reactors everywhere in the world now have to be seen in the light of the experience of this
tsunami and proceed to design fail-safe solutions so this can never happen again. We need to demand
that worst-case tsunami possibilities be addressed and solutions applied. And it can be done, because
humanity’s cognitive ability to analyze and address these problems within the laws of physics and
applied engineering, knows almost no bounds. But we don’t run. We address the problem and we
solve it.¶ If Japan actually shuts down 100% of their low carbon energy, that is their nuclear reactors,
which make up 30% of the installed capacity (and closer to 40% of their actual generation) then they
will have rolling blackouts and their society will go backwards, toward an increase in use of fossil fuels
(already underway with the closing of Fukushima) and away from an eventual socialist solution for
everything from feeding their nation to industrial production. And of course their contribution to global
warming, with all the dangerous consequences of that, will increase.¶ But TEPCO didn’t do any of these
things which could have prevented this accident. Like corporations all over the world, private enterprise
does only that which they deem financially and politically necessary to get by. There is also a similar
bureaucratic and cost-cutting compulsion even in state owned enterprises run, supposedly, for the
public good.¶ Nuclear has been somewhat different historically from other forms of power generation,
given the dangerous nature of generating energy from atomic fission. Everywhere it is highly
regulated. This is true even in Japan where government and corporations are incestuously entangled
with one other. In other countries, regulators have degrees more independence. Overall, there is no
more regulated industry in the world than nuclear. But, as Japan shows, there are still vital safety issues
that need to be addressed.¶ On a personal note, my own minimum experience with nuclear energy in
the US and having being a shop steward in a union local with 800 nuclear workers, has educated me on
the importance of safety, of following regulatory guidelines, and seeing the consequences of not
following those guidelines for workers involved. ¶ I was convinced after visiting nuclear power plants and
talking to my fellow union workers, that I didn’t want to work in such an environment. Because it was
unsafe? No, for just the opposite reason, in fact. The tremendous amount of NRC (Nuclear Regulatory
Agency) oversight, training, regulations and paperwork, that is, the “safety culture”, was simply too
great for me to want to deal with. The workers there take these issues so seriously that I didn’t believe
I could tolerate this work environment.
Alt Fails/Bad
 Transition Wars
wars collapse econ and cause labor shortages and racial violence - turns the K
Boundless, no date ("Economic Hardship and Labor Upheaval During the Transition to Peace"
https://www.boundless.com/u-s-history/world-war-i-1914-1919/the-transition-to-peace-1919-
21/economic-hardship-and-labor-upheaval-during-the-transition-to-peace/)
Demobilization proved chaotic and violent. Four million soldiers were sent home with little planning, little
money, and few benefits. A wartime bubble in prices of farmland burst, leaving many farmers bankrupt or
deeply in debt after they purchased new land. Major strikes in steel, coal, and meatpacking followed in 1919.¶ The
post–World War I recession was an economic recession that hit much of the world in the aftermath of World War
I. In many nations, especially in North America, growth continued during the war as nations mobilized their
economies to fight the war in Europe. After the war ended, however, the global economy began to decline . In the
United States, 1918–1919 saw a modest economic retreat, but the next year saw a mild recovery. A more severe recession hit the United States
in 1920 and 1921, when the global economy fell very sharply.¶ Labor and Race Tensions¶ AfterWorld War I, serious race riots
hit Chicago, Omaha, and two dozen other cities . Race riots occurred primarily during the summer and
early autumn of 1919, which is often called the Red Summer of 1919. In most instances, whites attacked African
Americans. In some cases, groups of blacks fought back, notably in Chicago, where the greatest number of fatalities occurred.¶ The riots
followed postwar social tensions related to the demobilization of veterans of World War I, both black and
white, and competition for jobs among ethnic whites and blacks . With the manpower mobilization of World War I
and immigration from Europe cut off, the industrial cities of the North and Midwest experienced severe labor shortages. Northern
manufacturers recruited throughout the South, and an exodus ensued. By 1919,
an estimated 500,000 African Americans
had emigrated from the South to the industrial cities of the North and Midwest in the first wave of the
Great Migration, which continued until 1940. Following the war, rapid demobilization of the military
without a plan for absorbing veterans into the job market, and the removal of price controls, led to
unemployment and inflation that increased competition for jobs.¶

Marxist revolutions are inevitably violent - it's a foundation of the theory - also
crowds out nonviolent revolutions, which turns the K
Adam Schaff, 1973 (Journal of the History of Ideas Volume 34, number 2, " Marxist Theory on
Revolution and Violence", http://www.jstor.org/stable/2708729?
seq=1&uid=3739728&uid=2129&uid=2&uid=70&uid=4&uid=3739256&sid=21104347658997)
The last paragraph of the Manifesto of the Communist Party reads: "The Communists disdain to conceal their views and
aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible over- throw of all existing
social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communist revolution. The proletarians have
nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win." ¶ This by now classic formulation includes two
statements:¶ (a) that the existing social and political system is to be changed by a revolution; ¶ (b) that a
social revolution is to be identified with an overthrow of that existing social system by violence. ¶ This
idea recurs in the works of Marx and Engels so many times that it has become trivial to identify the
labor movement guided by Marxist theory with the movement which strives for a social revolu- tion
to be attained through recourse to violence. Moreover, all this has even contributed to the almost
universal identification of the concept of social revolution with that of a revolution that resorts to
violence. This has certainly been influenced by the historical examples of all those social upheavals which have come to be termed
"revolutions," but in recent times also, to a large extent, by that image of revolution which has been outlined above and which complies with
the current¶ interpretation of Marxism.
Revolution is necessarily violent
Michael Cummings and Eric Cummings, 2011 (On Violence, "Revolutions are Violent",
http://onviolence.com/?e=531)
Michael was arguing a point that we haven’t argued enough on this website: revolutions are violent. ¶
Which may seem obvious. Except that extremists from both sides of the political spectrum casually
endorse revolutions, like my liberal activist friend endorsing a revolution--a revolution, it is safe to say,
the vast majority of the population didn’t endorse--to solve the environmental crisis. Like Occupy
Protesters who just love revolutions, idealized, romanticized and fantasized through Che Guevara T-
shirts, Youtube videos of street protests, and Guy Fawkes masks. Like Tea partiers make a point of
bringing guns to political rallies, in case they need to overthrow the government. Both sides casually
endorse violence, from Tea Party candidates to Occupy speakers. ¶ (We should make it clear that by
“revolutions”, we mean revolutions that overthrow the existing power structure, not social or
technological revolutions like the industrial revolution, the digital boom or the green revolution.) ¶ The
Arab Spring, as our most thought provoking event of 2011, should remind would-be-American-
revolutionaries what a revolution really is: the break down of society and order, a revolution in
power, which (mostly) results in violence. In this pan-Arab/north African revolution we have seen a few
civil wars (Yemen, Syria and Libya), a military invasion (Saudi Arabia into Qatar), authoritarian
crackdowns with unlawful arrests (Qatar, Eqypt, Syria and Yemen) and protesters generally arrested or
attacked throughout. It is safe to say, to those who advocated revolution, violence followed. ¶ This
completely fits into the larger narratives of the history of revolutions. The American Revolution
(Historians debate over whether this qualifies, I believe it does; it threw out the entire power structure.)
cost one in every hundred males his life. The American Revolution is the second deadliest conflict in
American history, percentage wise, with only the Civil War beating it, itself its own kind of revolution.
¶ Meanwhile, France’s revolution is symbolized by the guillotine, an industrial means of execution. The

Russian Revolution lead to the deaths of literally millions of people. The revolutions that wracked
Europe throughout the nineteenth century always included violence and death. When I studied Latin
America history in high school, my notes read, “Colonialism. Revolution. Dictator. Revolution.” It applied
to every country.¶ Violence always coincides with the outbreak of revolutions, for a few reasons:¶ First,
instability. Inherently, revolutions are unstable, by definition an overthrow of the existing power
structures. When this happens, chaos ensues. Food shortages, lack of security, a breakdown of the
social order. The best explanation for this is our blog’s namesake, On Violence, by Hannah Arendt, that
argued that violence and power are opposites. Thus, when the power structure disappears--as in
France or Russia or Libya--violence fills the gaps.¶ Second, vengeance. Most revolutions have a very
legitimate basis: people feel discriminated against, or suffer from severe economic inequality, or chafe
under colonial rule. When the masses revolt, they take their vengeance against their previous
oppressors. Look at what happened in the French revolution. Or what happened to Moammar Ghaddafi.
Or Saddam Hussein.¶ Third, civil wars. They happen when revolutionaries disagree, or the over-thrown
don’t want to leave so easily. Take the above groups advocating revolution, the Occupiers and the Tea
Partiers. They don’t agree on anything. So if one side starts a revolution, they’ll basically have to go to
war with the other side. Boom, you’ve got a civil war. This is what is happening in Syria.
 Alt Fails
Socialism fails and is worse than capitalism, seven reasons
John Hawkins 12, published at the Washington Examiner, The Hill, TPNN, Hot Air, The Huffington Post
and at Human Events, premier interviewer on the Right, founded and led the Rightroots group, a
grassroots effort that collected almost $300,000, 12-4-2012, “7 Reasons Socialism Will Make You Poorer
Than Capitalism,” Townhall.com,
http://townhall.com/columnists/johnhawkins/2012/12/04/7_reasons_socialism_will_make_you_poorer
_than_capitalism/page/full.
Given what we know in 2012, saying that capitalism will make a society richer than socialism should be
about as controversial as saying the earth is round, not flat. Yet, a recent Gallup poll shows that more
liberals have a positive view of socialism than capitalism. This is only possible because there are so many
perverse incentives that drive the promotion of socialism. If you're a politician, socialism puts power in
your hands while capitalism takes it away. If you want to use the government to control people's lives,
socialism is a wonderful vehicle to do just that while capitalism robs you of that opportunity. If you
would rather live off the dole than to work or alternately, prefer to make money off "who you know"
instead of "how good a service you provide," again socialism works better for you. Now take into
account the fact that there are no pure socialist or capitalist economies left and it becomes very easy to
muddy the water and keep people from realizing the obvious economic superiority of capitalism. ¶ 1)
Socialism benefits the few at the expense of the many: Socialism is superior to capitalism in one
primary way: It offers more security. It's almost like an extremely expensive insurance policy that
dramatically cuts into your quality of life, but insures that if worse comes to worse, you won't drop
below a very minimal lifestyle. For the vast majority of people, this would be a terrible deal. On the
other hand, if you're lazy, completely incompetent or alternately, just have a streak of very bad luck, the
meager benefits provided by socialism may be very appealing. So a socialist society forces the many to
suffer in order to make it easier for the few. It's just as Winston Churchill once noted, "The inherent
virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries." ¶ 2) Capitalism encourages entrepreneurship while
socialism discourages it: A government in a capitalist economy can quite easily give everyone equality of
opportunity with a few basic laws and regulations, but socialism strives to create equality of results. This
should frighten people who value their freedom because ultimately, as F.A. Hayek has noted, "A claim
for equality of material position can be met only by a government with totalitarian powers." You can
see this happening in America as our efforts to reduce "inequality" have led to an ever expanding
government and a vast regulatory tangle that is almost unexplainable despite the fact that it is certainly
enforceable. Capitalism encourages people to start a business and build a better life for themselves
while socialism lays in wait with IRS agents, nooses made of red tape and meddling bureaucrats looking
for businesses to control and loot.¶ 3) Capitalism leads to innovation: Coming up with new products is
often time consuming, expensive and hit or miss. Nine ideas may fail before that tenth one takes off. The
less the creative people behind these ideas are allowed to benefit, the less time, money and effort
they'll put into developing new concepts and inventions. Put another way, the bigger the risk, the bigger
the reward has to be to convince people to take it. Capitalism offers big rewards for productive people
while socialism offers makers only a parade of bureaucratic leeches who want to take advantage of
their "good fortune."¶ 4) Capitalism produces more economic growth: Capitalism produces
considerably more economic growth than socialism and as John Kennedy said, "A rising tide lifts all
boats." A fast growing economy produces more jobs, more wealth and helps everyone. Many people
assume that capitalism isn't working if there are still poor people, but that misses the point. In many
parts of the world, poverty means living in a hut with a dirt floor while in America, most poor Americans
have TVs, refrigerators and cell phones. The rich may take home a larger share of the pie in capitalism,
but the poor also benefit tremendously from living in a growing, thriving economy.¶ 5) Socialism is
too slow to adapt: Capitalism is extremely good at allocating capital to where it's most valued. It has to
be. Either you give people what they are willing to pay for or someone else will. On the other hand,
socialism is slow and stupid for a variety of reasons. Because the government is spending someone
else's money, it doesn’t get particularly concerned about losing money. Political concerns about
appearances often trump the effectiveness of a program. Moreover, even if politicians and bureaucrats
are intelligent and competent, which are big "ifs," they're simply not going to have the specific
knowledge needed to make decisions that may impact thousands of different industries. This is why
capitalism may have its share of troubles, but when there are really colossal economic screw-ups, you'll
always find the government neck deep in the whole mess.¶ 6) Socialism is inherently wasteful: Milton
Friedman once said, "Nobody spends somebody else’s money as carefully as he spends his own. Nobody
uses somebody else’s resources as carefully as he uses his own." This is very true and it means that the
more capital that is taken out of the economy and distributed, the more of it that will be wasted. The
market does a considerably better job of allocating resources than the government because there are
harsh penalties for failure. A company that makes products no one wants will go out of business. A
poorly performing government program that wastes a hundred times more money will probably receive
a bigger budget the next year.¶ 7) Capitalism works in concert with human nature while socialism
works against it: Ayn Rand said it well, "America’s abundance was created not by public sacrifices to
‘the common good,’ but by the productive genius of free men who pursued their own personal interests
and the making of their own private fortunes. They did not starve the people to pay for America’s
industrialization. They gave the people better jobs, higher wages and cheaper goods with every new
machine they invented, with every scientific discovery or technological advance—and thus the whole
country was moving forward and profiting, not suffering, every step of the way," but Adam Smith said
it better, “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our
dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.” A man will work much harder to take care of
himself, his family and his friends than he will to make money for the state, which will then waste most
of it before redistributing it to people who aren't working as hard as the man who earned it in the first
place.

Socialism fails, 14 reasons

David L. Goetsch 12, retired college Vice-President and professor of business and political science, a
business consultant, and a widely-recognized public speaker, he author of more than 70 books on
leadership, management, business, and political commentary, 1-25-12, “14 Reasons Socialism Won’t
Work in America,” Patriot Update, http://patriotupdate.com/articles/14-reasons-socialism-wont-work-
in-america/.
In Part Three of this series I explained the broad philosophical problem with socialism: its fundamental
premise that state control is superior to individual liberty and economic freedom. In this installment I
explain what adopting a socialist system would mean to Americans in practical terms. After completing
this installment, the reader should be able to explain to young Americans why socialism is a flawed
concept whether viewed as an economic system, a worldview, or in practical terms. Not only does
socialism not work, it cannot work because of the following shortcomings:¶ Replaces the family with
the state as the central unit in society¶ Undermines the family by redistributing its wealth and
indoctrinating its children in government schools¶ Allows legalized theft in the name of redistributing
wealth¶ Encourages sloth instead of productivity¶ Rewards irresponsibility, laziness, and poor
accountability¶ Encourages self-indulgence instead of self-reliance¶ Encourages finger pointing and
shifting of responsibility to others¶ Replaces the self-discipline of delayed gratification with the need
for instant gratification¶ Undermines the values that are the foundation of the traditional work ethic
(i.e. thrift, diligence, self-reliance, self-discipline, responsibility, accountability, deferred gratification,
and hard work) and replaces them with an entitlement mentality¶ Treats those who contribute to the
betterment of society the same as those who do not, even when they are capable of doing so¶
Promotes a get-something-for-nothing mentality that undermines the moral character of the
individual and society¶ Robs people of initiative, drive, and ambition¶ Undermines the spirit of
entrepreneurship, innovation, and competitiveness¶ Promotes totalitarianism, thereby undermining
freedom and liberty¶ In a radio broadcast prior to the British general election of 1945, Winston Churchill
said this about socialism: “…A socialist policy is abhorrent to the British ideas of freedom. Socialism is
inseparably interwoven with totalitarianism and…worship of the state. It will prescribe for everyone
where they are to work, what they are to work at, where they may go and what they may say. Socialism
is an attack on the right to breathe freely.” (From Friedrich Hayek: A Biography by Alan O. Ebenstein,
University of Chicago Press: 2003). Well said Mr. Churchill.

Alt fails, socialism is impossible and totalitarian, it would be modern-day slavery with
no incentive to do anything
Richard M. Ebeling 04, an American libertarian author, and was president of the Foundation for
Economic Education (FEE) from 2003 to 2008, highly recognized author and professor of economics, 10-
1-14, “Why Socialism Is Impossible,” The Freeman, http://www.fee.org/the_freeman/detail/why-
socialism-is-impossible
In the nineteenth century, critics of socialism generally made two arguments against the establishment
of a collectivist society. First, they warned that under a regime of comprehensive socialism the ordinary
citizen would be confronted with the worst of all imaginable tyrannies. In a world in which all the
means of production were concentrated in the hands of the government, the individual would be
totally and inescapably dependent on the political authority for his very existence.¶ The socialist state
would be the single monopoly provider of employment and all the essentials of life. Dissent from or
disobedience to such an all-powerful state could mean material destitution for the critic or opponent of
those in political authority. Furthermore, that same centralized control would mean the end to all
independent intellectual and cultural pursuits. What would be printed and published, what forms of art
and scientific research permitted would be completely at the discretion of those with the power to
determine the allocation of society’s resources. Man’s mind and material well-being would be enslaved
to the control and caprice of the central planners of the socialist state.1 Second, these nineteenth-
century anti-socialists argued that the socialization of the means of production would undermine and
fundamentally weaken the close connection between work and reward that necessarily exists under a
system of private property. What incentive does a man have to clear the field, plant the seed, and
tend the ground until harvest time if he knows or fears that the product to which he devotes his
mental and physical labor may be stolen from him at any time?2 Similarly, under socialism man would
no longer see any direct benefit from greater effort, since what would be apportioned to him as his
“fair share” by the state would not be related to his exertion, unlike the rewards in a market economy.
Laziness and lack of interest would envelop the “new man” in the socialist society to come.
Productivity, innovation, and creativity would be dramatically reduced in the future collectivist
utopia.3¶ The twentieth-century experiences with socialism, beginning with the communist revolution in
Russia in 1917, proved these critics right. Personal freedom and virtually all traditional civil liberties
were crushed under the centralized power of the Total State. Furthermore, the work ethic of man
under socialism was captured in a phrase that became notoriously common throughout the Soviet
Union: “They pretend to pay us, and we pretend to work.”¶
Alt fails, capitalism is the only system that work, it gives people freedom and choices,
empirics prove
Lucy Turnbull 10, former lord mayor and economic analyst from Sydney Morning Herald, 8-9-10,
“Capitalism is still the only system that works,” Sydney Morning Herald,
http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-opinion/capitalism-is-still-the-only-system-that-
works-20100808-11q55.html.
While many called for changes to regulation, nobody argues the fundamentals of liberal capitalism -
price signals, free exchange, open markets - be replaced with central planning or centralised resource
allocation.¶ While some question the relative weight societies place on economic and non-economic
objectives, nobody (other than the deepest-green greens) argues material prosperity doesn't matter.
Growth remains the best known remedy for poverty.¶ And while many argued for governments to
temporarily step in when private confidence and activity were weak, nobody can deny one lesson from
the downturn is there are limits to what governments (and government borrowing) can achieve.¶ In the
end, capitalism is the only viable system we have for organising our economy. It alone harnesses the
reality of human nature - our continual striving for progress and our competitive instincts to do our
best. It alone is compatible with political and democratic freedoms. And it alone has proven results -
advances in material wellbeing over sustained periods, lifting hundreds of millions of our fellow
humans out of grinding poverty.¶ Humans are curious, competitive and infinitely varied. The genius of
capitalism is it disaggregates power and decision-making, allowing people to choose their own road.
These different priorities, choices, ideas and values allow humanity as a whole to progress. ¶ Adam
Smith famously observed that unfettered individual self-interest was collectively beneficial: "By pursuing
his own interest, he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he intends to
promote it."¶ We need only think about how difficult it was for centrally planned economies such as
the former Soviet Union before 1991 or China before 1978 (or Cuba to this day), to foster innovation
and growth to understand the role of economic incentives and freedoms in progress.¶ Those
economies offered a revealing insight into the unfairness and rent-seeking that accompanies
government control. The Soviet elite was much less open-ended than the ranks of Fortune 500 chief
executives are today.¶

Alt fails, government centralization leads to modern-day slavery, capitalism is the only
right system, empirics prove
Robert W. Tracinski 12, editor of the Intellectual Activist, 4-1-12, “The Moral Basis of Capitalism,” The
Center for the Advancement of Capitalism,
http://www.capitalismcenter.org/Philosophy/Essays/The_Moral_Basis_of_Capitalism.htm.
Government regulation, by contrast, operates by thwarting the businessman's thinking, subordinating
his judgment to the decrees of government officials. These officials do not have to consider the long-
term results—only what is politically expedient. They do not have to back their decisions with their
own money or effort—they dispose of the lives and property of others. And most important, they do
not have to persuade their victims—they impose their will, not by reason, but by physical force.¶ The
government regulator does not merely show contempt for the minds of his victims; he also shows
contempt for their personal goals and values.¶ In a free-market economy, everyone is driven by his
own ambitions for wealth and success. That's what "free trade" means: that no one may demand the
work, effort, or money of another without offering to trade something of value in return. If both
partners to the trade don't expect to gain, they are free to go elsewhere. In Adam Smith's famous
formulation, the rule of capitalism is that every trade occurs "by mutual consent and to mutual
advantage."¶ It is common to condemn this approach as selfish—yet to say that people are acting
selfishly is to say that they take their own lives seriously, that they are exercising their right to pursue
their own happiness. By contrast, project what it would mean to exterminate self-interest and force
everyone to work for goals mandated by the state. It would mean, for example, that a young student's
goal to have a career as a neurosurgeon must be sacrificed because some bureaucrat decrees that
there are "too many" specialists in that field. Such a system is based on the premise that no one owns
his own life, that the individual is merely a tool to be exploited for the ends of "society." And since
"society" consists of nothing more than a group of individuals, this means that some men are to be
sacrificed for the sake of others—those who claim to be "society's" representatives. For examples, see
the history of the Soviet Union.¶ A system that sacrifices the self to "society" is a system of slavery—
and a system that sacrifices thinking to coercion is a system of brutality. This is the essence of any
anti-capitalist system, whether communist or fascist. And "mixed" systems, such as today's regulatory
and welfare state, merely unleash the same evils on a smaller scale.¶ Only capitalism renounces these
evils entirely. Only capitalism is fully true to the moral ideal stated in the Declaration of
Independence: the individual's right to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." Only capitalism
protects the individual's freedom of thought and his right to his own life.¶ Only when these ideals are
once again taken seriously will we be able to recognize capitalism, not as a "necessary evil," but as a
moral ideal.
 Permutation Cards
State-based reformism solves inequality and is a peaceful revolution
Glipho, 11-7-2013 (Glipho.com, "The New Bogota Rising", http://glipho.com/those-who-wander/the-
new-bogota-rising)
Hold new developments accountable for improving public spaces nearby via impact fees (basically, an
obligation on new businesses to make the surrounding area better ). ¶ "Those who have money, have
more time...The goal is to give more time to those who have the least." ¶ For centuries Bogotá has been the
political, cultural, and educational focus of Colombia ; Gustavo Petro envisions its future as site for
urban thought-leaders to truly lead the way into a more inclusive and sustainable city -- one that will be
emulated by cities world-over. While he has encountered strong opposition from the more conservative branches of government and urban
power, such as the traditionally land-owning prominent upper class, to those with business stakes in industries such as mining, Petro is
unflinching in his commitment to establishing the POT in Bogotá. ¶ At the end of his talk, he lamented that the POT is
regarded worldwide as an influential and strategically-enlightened project, yet has continually met with resistance by citizens of his own
community. "To shift in this progressive and peaceful way is Bogotá's revolution," he said . ¶

Permutation do both - the alt alone amounts to running away and only legal
engagement solves
Funke Adekoya, 2013 (Daily Independent, " The lawyer as change agent: Prospects and challenges",
http://dailyindependentnig.com/2013/03/the-lawyer-as-change-agent-prospects-and-challenges/)
Corruption is now recognized as the prevailing ethos of the land and as its direct result, we see the
enthronement of embezzlement and other criminal activities as a way of life.¶ The increase in
unemployment, underdevelopment, poverty, and social vices has resulted in the prevailing sense of
insecurity in the country, whether as individuals or as a nation.¶ Our traditional cultures and moralities are being fast
eroded, and our modern institutions are all in desperate need of reform. ¶ Near a hundred years after
Nigeria was created, our very existence as a nation is under threat. Indeed there are more than a few who
believe the time has come for wholesale and profound change, in one direction or the other .¶ In such
times as we currently live, we, both individually as lawyers, and collectively as an association of lawyers, and again as a society
in general, have three clear options facing us.¶ On the one hand, we can pack our bags and leave. Ghana, South
Africa, England, America, sees an increasing number of Nigerians flooding their entry points every year.
Remember the days of the ‘Andrew’ advert on the television? However, this is not a viable option for the majority of us.
Especially so when we see the foreign nationals, the British, the Americans, the South Africans and the Chinese flocking to
take advantages of the wealth of this country, where we appear to be failing. ¶ If we are then to stay, there are
two remaining options facing us.¶ The first is to live with the status quo and accept our lot. We give up the high and noble ideals we swore to
upon being called to the Bar, and join in the rot and the decay. This is the ‘If you can’t beat them, join them’ approach. We can take the view
that there is nothing inherently wrong with living as we are told, and not challenging that which we know to be wrong, especially if the route to
riches and wealth lies in that direction. So we help corrupt politicians launder the country’s wealth, we turn a blind eye to bad or non-existent
government, and accept the spoils of office that ‘trickle down’. Indeed, when you have a family and obligations, particularly in a tough
economy, putting your life and livelihood at risk may not be an easy choice. However, we know only too well, and must acknowledge the
resultant emotional, spiritual and physical tolls this acquiescence takes on us. Indeed, we live with this everyday. The question is how much
more of this is sustainable? It may be alright for us today, but what tomorrow are we handing over to our children? ¶ This leaves us with the last
clear choice: that we,
individually as lawyers, collectively as an association, and generally as a society must
become agents of the change we wish to see. This third option of seeking to institute change, should be the
natural and preferred option.¶ Truly, assuming the role of a change agent comes with great risk, not only
because the status quo and the entrenched powers will fight you , but also because we are aware that the
world in general and people in particular are resistant to change.¶ And yet, change is the only certainty. Change is the
only thing that brings progress.¶ So why us? Why
should lawyers assume the role of change agents?¶ The first and the
simple answer, is that by the nature of our training and by the characteristics of our profession , we as lawyers
are natural leaders and natural change agents. If we define a change agent as either a person who, or an organization which,
is able to stimulate a process whereby people tackle essential issues and modify their values, habits and practices and priorities in order to
make progress, we see that individually as lawyers, through representing our clients, we are change agents in their lives
and businesses.¶ The simple characteristics of successful leaders match those of the average lawyer.
Compared to the population at large, the successful leader and the average lawyer tend to be highly
educated.¶ As with leaders, lawyers frame grievances and formulate ideologies, debate with opponents,
interface with media, write, devise strategies, and engage in dialogue with internal and external elites .
Also, due to the training received, and further by everyday practice, lawyers are already constituted with
knowledge of human behavior and action. Our work and training is client-centered.¶ It is however these same attributes
that make the lawyer a good servant of society at large, and good social changers . Leadership qualities,
forensic ability, a talent for reasoning, and knowledge of the legal system – all of these aid the work of
lawyer and change agent alike.¶ As laws and regulations form the underpinning of our economic,
political and social systems, any pursuit of social change invariably involves an engagement with the
law. Drivers of change need to be located within the legal framework that defines relationships and
interactions between the State, public and private service providers, and civil society at large. The lawyer is easily
identified as a natural driver of change who has an effect on the private lives of individuals, through
something as commonplace as drafting a will or a contract, to someone who may influence policy and
society in the higher realms.¶

Perm do both - energy production achieves a post scarcity society that solves their
impacts
Kyle Keen, no date ("Achieving Post-scarcity: One step closer to the Future",
http://kmkeen.com/post-scarcity/)
One common theme in science fiction is post-scarcity. In essence, everyone's needs are satisfied and all but the
most outlandish desires as well. It is seen as a natural consequence as manufacturing capability and energy
production increase more rapidly than population pressure. In much of science fiction post-scarcity is
basically assumed, e.g. Star Trek. When otherwise, it is often due to a corrupt government or hostile living conditions
(Heinlein's moon colony with air rationing). Other authors make post-scarcity a central topic of the story. Ian Banks's Culture series is one such
universe. Post-scarcity can be seen as the loftiest goal for society to achieve . Even Banks has a hard time imagining
what lies beyond it, only really exploring the issue in eighth book of the series, Surface Detail. ¶ Throughout
our own history,
society tries to achieve some measure of post-scarcity where possible. Potlatch, bread and circuses, public
education and socialized healthcare are fundamental examples . Occasionally these are for less than
noble ends. Potlatch is about becoming a big-man in society. Bread and circuses is a Huxlian means of distracting the population. Public
education creates a skilled, interchangeable and docile workforce. Regardless of intent, these are all net positives and
people do not have to worry about meeting basic needs of survival. Today we are closer to true post-
scarcity than we have been at any point in history. We seem to be slowly moving towards that goal , but
there are plenty of forces pushing the other direction.

Perm do both - inside/outside coalitions

Lance Selfa, September 2008 (International Socialist Review, " Can the Left take over the Democratic
Party?", http://www.isreview.org/issues/61/feat-pushdemsleft.shtml)
The Progressive Democrats of America describes itself as “A large group of progressive grassroots
activists from across the country who want to support other progressive grassroots activists locally.” It self-
consciously styles itself as a grassroots organization that wants to reclaim the Democrats from the
clutches of the right-wing DLCers. While the denizens of the DLC insist the Democrats must move
further to the right, appease anti-abortion zealots, and demonstrate their own zeal in fighting “terrorism,” the PDA wants to
challenge the Democrats to champion working people, national health care, and an exit from Iraq .¶
PDA traces its roots to the 2004 presidential campaign of liberal Democratic Representative Dennis Kucinich and to
a lesser extent to the failed campaigns of former Vermont Governor Howard Dean and Reverend Al Sharpton. As PDA
founder Kevin Spidel told liberal journalist William Rivers Pitt, PDA was a fusion between Progressive Vote, activists in
the Kucinich campaign, and more liberal politicians and congressional aides :¶ Progressive Vote was an
organization that I and my wife, Michele White, created basically on the phone and in the living room of our house. We combined the
skill sets of folks from the Kucinich campaign —Web and technical experts, accounting, etc.—to build the
organization and infrastructure of Progressive Vote. We created an organization where the grassroots
were our advisory council. They drove our initiatives. It was truly reflective and reactive to the
grassroots. We took our lead from them, provided for their needs, and facilitated their movement to
establish these caucuses, to see that those caucuses were recognized within the Democratic Party. ¶ Early on,
when I pitched the idea of Progressive Vote to Tim Carpenter, who was Deputy Campaign Manager for Kucinich, we intended this
whole idea to be one organization we would work on together. Because I left [the] campaign sooner than Carpenter, and needed
an organizational structure to carry this idea forward, Progressive Vote came into being. Carpenter and his allies on Capitol Hill, the
relationships he has fostered for 30 years—Rainbow PUSH, the Congressional Black Caucus, leaders like Rep. Conyers and Barbara Lee, people
like Tom Hayden—those are contacts Carpenter came to the table with. We needed to be progressive “Democrats” to
provide cover to strong progressive Democratic allies . At [the] same time, we wanted Progressive Vote’s inside-outside
strategy to be representative of the entire progressive community.¶ The structure of Progressive Vote—caucus-oriented
and driven by the grassroots—needed to remain intact. We basically brought Progressive Vote into
Progressive Democrats of America, and Progressive Democrats of America became a new name.
Political allies in Congress, people like Reverend Jackson and Tom Hayden is what PDA brought to the
table. PDA is actually Progressive Vote with a new name and more political allie s. That merger and the launch
of PDA took place in Roxbury, Massachusetts, at the Progressive Democratic convention, which took place during the Democratic National
Convention last summer.7¶ This long, albeit partisan, account
of the PDA’s formation should establish two main
points that are worth keeping in mind when considering PDA’s project. First, despite all its talk about being
“grassroots,” it is still the creation of political operatives connected to the Democratic Party. Even more to
the point was the fact that one of the speakers at the PDA founding conference in Boston was John Norris, national field director of the
Kerry/Edwards campaign. “Warmly if not enthusiastically received by a crowd toting a bobbing sea of the same anti-war in Iraq and single-payer
health care signs [that the Kerry/Edwards campaign] had banned from the floor of the Fleet Center [i.e., the Democratic Convention], Norris
encouraged those assembled to commit to working with the Kerry effort to oust Bush—and promising that this time a grassroots infrastructure
would be left behind,” reported a pro-PDA account of the meeting.8
 Cap Sustainable
Capitalism is sustainable
Generation Investment Management, January 2012, Generation Investment Management is
based in London and uses research to help create funding methods, “Sustainable Capitalism,”
http://www.generationim.com/media/pdf-generation-sustainable-capitalism-v1.pdf
Capitalism has great strengths and is fundamentally superior to any other system for organising
economic activity. It is more efficient in allocating resources and in matching supply and demand. It is
demonstrably effective in wealth creation. It is more congruent with higher levels of freedom and self-
governance than any other system. It unlocks a higher fraction of the human potential with
ubiquitous, organic incentives that reward hard work, ingenuity, and innovation. These strengths are
why it is at the foundation of every successful economy. Critically, capitalism has proven itself to be
adaptable and flexible enough to fit the specific needs of particular countries. Capitalism comes in
many forms, from that practised in the US to the very different model that has been adopted within communist China. The causes and
consequences of these variations are, of course, significant – but the more important fact remains: the mainstream debate is about how to
practise capitalism not whether we should choose between capitalism and some other system. Yet while the present form of capitalism has
proven its superiority, it is nevertheless abundantly clear that some of the ways in which it is now practised do not incorporate sufficient regard
for its impact on people and the planet – and are now posing a number of fundamental challenges that require attention, particularly in a
resource-constrained world of seven billion (soon to be 8-10 billion) people. These include short-termism, over-reliance on GDP growth as a
primary metric of prosperity, diverting wealth into shadow banking and financial engineering and away from addressing real needs. These
challenges also include rising inequality, increasing volatility in the global financial market, and growing contributions to the climate crisis
perpetuated by a resistance to internalise externalities. We
and others have argued for long-term responsible
capitalism for some time. We have called this Sustainable Capitalism.4 Sustainable Capitalism is more
than corporate social responsibility or impact investing, which are worthwhile endeavours compatible
with the precepts of sustainable investing, but narrower in focus. DEFINITION Sustainable Capitalism is a
framework that seeks to maximise long-term economic value creation by reforming markets to
address real needs while considering all costs and integrating ESG metrics into the decision-making
process. It applies to the entire investment value chain from entrepreneurial ventures to publicly
traded large-cap companies, from investors providing seed capital to those focused on late-stage
growth-orientated opportunities, from company employees to CEOs, from activists to policy makers
and standard setters. Sustainable Capitalism transcends borders, industries, forms of ownership, asset
classes, and stakeholders. THE ECONOMIC CASE The economic rationale for Sustainable Capitalism is
emerging through the quantitative and qualitative results of empirical research as well as real-world
examples. Mainstreaming Sustainable Capitalism by 2020 will require independent, collaborative and
voluntary action by companies, investors, government and civil society, which we hope to accelerate
by advancing the discourse on the economic benefits of sustainability .

Cap is sustainable
Erika Karp, November 8, 2012, Erika Karp writes for Forbes and she is Managing Director and Head,
Global Sector Research, UBS Investment Bank, UBS Securities, USA and a member of the Global Agenda
Council on Financing & Capital, “Sustainable Capitalism....If not now, then when?,”
http://www.forbes.com/sites/85broads/2012/11/08/sustainable-capitalism-if-not-now-then-when/
The time is indeed now. All the pieces are in place to move forward and leverage the extraordinary
power of capitalism on behalf of the entire world. Now we have everything we need across the broad
realms of technology, science, academia, economics, government, and finance to ensure a better
future. We have the opportunity to repair an economic system which remains the greatest vehicle the
world has ever known for creating wealth and prosperity. The real question is whether we have the
force of will to follow through. In the face of a justified crisis of confidence in capitalism, we must
rebuild trust and faith in the system. We can. And now is the time. To do this though, we need to
better acknowledge the shortcomings in our abilities to deal with complex global problems. As did Hillel,
we need to pose the hard questions to the right people and to ourselves. We need two things which
are currently in deficit. The first is greater transparency into the mission, strategies, objectives and
priorities of the world’s private sector companies combined with a regulatory infrastructure which
encourages that transparency. The second is a generation of business leaders who are better at
facilitating collaboration. On the subject of transparency, I would argue that many signals now point to
the need for more systematic analysis of environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors in the
investment processes which drive capitalism. The time is now given that there are one thousand asset
management firms representing $30 trillion in assets who need to better understand business decision-
making processes associated with the inevitable trade-offs inherent in running a business for the long-
run. These firms, all signatories of the UN Principles for Responsible Investing, now have access to more
ESG data than ever before. This data can now be housed in the cloud, better analyzed, better assured,
and better disseminated through social media by the scores of investors, accountants, consultants,
investment banks and academic institutions which are demanding it. This data, which is pivotal to
decisions around financial investments as risk and return are analyzed, can now be disclosed in a more
coherent and efficient matter now that standards are being established as with the GRI (Global
Reporting Initiative) and the US launch of the SASB (Sustainability Accounting Standards Board). The
time is indeed now for better transparency. With regard to collaboration, the time has also come. As is
obvious from the course of the global financial crisis, independent action by individual economic
entities working towards their own interests will ultimately fail. “If I am only for myself, then what am
I?” Complex problems cannot be solved sequentially. There must be parallel processes, initiatives and
perspectives which can ultimately come together to find solutions. There must be a belief that solutions
for the whole will ultimately be beneficial for the individual. Collaboration can be encouraged by
leaders who are incentivized to truly steward financial, human and natural capital for the long-run.
We have indeed begun to see that in the capital markets across the corporate and investment world.
Collaboration can be accelerated by embracing diverse perspectives. Again we have begun to see a
greater recognition for this at corporate boards and with initiatives like those of Calpers and GMI in their
Diverse Director Datasource. The imperative and the infrastructure is in place, so “if not now, then
when?“ In summary, I argue that the awesome power of capitalism can be unleashed through rebuilding
confidence and conviction. Confidence and conviction can be restored through greater transparency and
collaboration. Transparency and collaboration will allow for more creativity, innovation, productivity and
growth. Obviously all these things are easy to say, but not as easy to execute. In order to actually deliver
on the promise, I would suggest that we attack complexity with simplicity as did the scholar Hillel. The
simple principle of asking questions is the best starting point. But, to ask them constructively and
consistently, and to ask again and again until the answers are forthcoming, is the trick. To elevate
consciousness around broad environmental, social and governance factors and then to ask for
accountability is essential. We must ask the right questions to the right people. Then we need to insist
upon robust answers, comparability and accountability. The future of capitalism can indeed be much
brighter if it is viewed as “a question of questions.”

People are moving towards sustainable capitalism-no risk of an impact

Al Gore and David Blood, February 16, 2012, Al Gore is Chairman of Generation Investment
Management and David Blood is managing partner of Generation Investment Management, “A
Manifesto for Sustainable Capitalism,” http://genfound.org/media/pdf-wsj-manifesto-sustainable-
capitalism-14-12-11.pdf
In the immediate aftermath of World War II, when the United States was preparing its visionary plan for nurturing democratic capitalism
abroad, Gen. Omar Bradley said, "It is time to steer by the stars, and not by the lights of each passing ship." Today, more than 60years later,
that means abandoning short-term economic thinking for "sustainable capitalism. "We are once again
facing one of those rare turning points in history when dangerous challenges and limitless
opportunities cry out for clear, long-term thinking. The disruptive threats now facing the planet are
extraordinary: climate change, water scarcity, poverty, disease, growing income inequality,
urbanization, massive economic volatility and more. Businesses cannot be asked to do the job of
governments, but companies and investors will ultimately mobilize most of the capital needed to
overcome the unprecedented challenges we now face. Before the crisis and since, we and others have
called for a more responsible form of capitalism, what we call sustainable capitalism: a framework
that seeks to maximize long-term economic value by reforming markets to address real needs while
integrating environmental, social and governance (ESG) metrics throughout the decision-making
process. Such sustainable capitalism applies to the entire investment value chain—from
entrepreneurial ventures to large public companies, seed-capital providers to institutional investors,
employees to CEOs, activists to policy makers. It transcends borders, industries, asset classes and
stakeholders. Those who advocate sustainable capitalism are often challenged to spell out why sustainability adds value. Yet the question
that should be asked instead is: "Why does an absence of sustainability not damage companies, investors and society at large?" From BP to
Lehman Brothers, there is a long list of examples proving that it does. Moreover, companies and investors that integrate
sustainability into their business practices are finding that it enhances profitability over the longer
term. Experience and research show that embracing sustainable capitalism yields four kinds of
important benefits for companies: • Developing sustainable products and services can increase a
company's profits, enhance its brand, and improve its competitive positioning, as the market
increasingly rewards this behavior.• Sustainable capitalism can also help companies save money by
reducing waste and increasing energy efficiency in the supply chain, and by improving human-capital
practices so that retention rates rise and the costs of training new employees decline.• Third, focusing
on ESG metrics allows companies to achieve higher compliance standards and better manage risk
since they have a more holistic understanding of the material issues affecting their business.•
Researchers (including Rob Bauer and Daniel Hann of Maastricht University, and Beiting Cheng,
Ioannis Ioannou and George Serafeim of Harvard) have found that sustainable businesses realize
financial benefits such as lower cost of debt and lower capital constraints. Sustainable capitalism is
also important for investors. Mr. Serafeim and his colleague Robert G. Eccles have shown that
sustainable companies outperform their unsustainable peers in the long term. Therefore, investors
who identify companies that embed sustainability into their strategies can earn substantial returns,
while experiencing low volatility. Because ESG metrics directly affect companies' long-term value,
pension funds, sovereign wealth funds, foundations and the like—investors with long-term liabilities
—should include these metrics as an essential aspect of valuation and investment strategy.
Sustainable capitalism requires investors to be good investors, to fully understand the companies they
invest in and to believe in their long-term value and potential . We recommend five key actions for immediate adoption
by companies, investors and others to accelerate the current incremental pace of change to one that matches the urgency of the situation: •
Identify and incorporate risk from stranded assets. "Stranded assets" are those whose value would
dramatically change, either positively or negatively, when large externalities are taken into account—
for example, by attributing a reasonable price to carbon or water. So long as their true value is
ignored, stranded assets have the potential to trigger significant reductions in the long-term value of
not just particular companies but entire sectors. That's exactly what occurred when the true value of
subprime mortgages was belatedly recognized and mortgage-backed assets were suddenly repriced.
Until there are policies requiring the establishment of a fair price on widely understood externalities,
academics and financial professionals should strive to quantify the impact of stranded assets and
analyze the subsequent implications for investment opportunities.• Mandate integrated reporting.
Despite an increase in the volume and frequency of information made available by companies, access
to more data for public equity investors has not necessarily translated into more comprehensive
insight into companies. Integrated reporting addresses this problem by encouraging companies to
integrate both their financial and ESG performance into one report that includes only the most salient
or material metrics. This enables companies and investors to make better resource-allocation
decisions by seeing how ESG performance contributes to sustainable, long-term value creation. While
voluntary integrated reporting is gaining momentum, it must be mandated by appropriate agencies
such as stock exchanges and securities regulators in order to ensure swift and broad adoption.• End
the default practice of issuing quarterly earnings guidance. The quarterly calendar frequently
incentivizes executives to manage for the short-term. It also encourages some investors to
overemphasize the significance of these measures at the expense of longer-term, more meaningful
measures of sustainable value creation. Ending this practice in favor of companies' issuing guidance
only as they deem appropriate (if at all) would encourage a longer-term view of the business.• Align
compensation structures with long-term sustainable performance. Most existing compensation
schemes emphasize short-term actions and fail to hold asset managers and corporate executives
accountable for the ramifications of their decisions over the long-term. Instead, financial rewards
should be paid out over the period during which these results are realized and compensation should
be linked to fundamental drivers of long-term value, employing rolling multiyear milestones for
performance evaluation.• Incentivize long-term investing with loyalty-driven securities. The
dominance of short-termism in the market fosters general market instability and undermines the
efforts of executives seeking long-term value creation. The common argument that more liquidity is
always better for markets is based on long-discredited elements of the now-obsolete "standard
model" of economics, including the illusion of perfect information and the assumption that markets
tend toward equilibrium. To push against this short-termism, companies could issue securities that
offer investors financial rewards for holding onto shares for a certain number of years. This would
attract long-term investors with patient capital and would facilitate both long-term value creation in
companies and stability in financial markets . Ben Franklin famously said, "You may delay, but time will not, and lost time is
never found again." Today we have an opportunity to steer by the stars and once again rebuild for the long-term. Sustainable
capitalism will create opportunities and rewards, but it will also mean challenging the pernicious
orthodoxy of short-termism. As we face an inflection point in the global economy and the global
environment, the imperative for change has never been greater .

We must transition to sustainable capitalism-try or die-means that the neg has no

impact-extinction is inevtiable unless we transition
Joe Keefe, No Date, Joe Keefe is the President and CEO, Pax World Management, “From Growth
Capitalism to Sustainable Capitalism: The Next 20 Years of Sustainable Investing,”
http://www.greenmoneyjournal.com/fall2012/from-growth-capitalism-to-sustainable-capitalism-the-
next-20-years-of-sustainable-investing/
Twenty years from now, we will have either successfully transitioned from our current economic
growth paradigm to a new model of Sustainable Capitalism or we will be suffering the calamitous
consequences of our failure to do so. Likewise, sustainable investing will either remain a niche
strategy or it will have supplanted mainstream investing. This is the critical point we must embrace:
sustainable investing can no longer simply present itself as an alternative to traditional investment
approaches that ignore environmental, social and governance (ESG) imperatives; it cannot simply be
for some people; it must actually triumph over and displace traditional investing. The current model
of global capitalism – call it growth capitalism – is premised upon perpetual economic growth that
must ultimately invade all accessible habitat and consume all available resources .[Footnote 1] Growth
capitalism must eventually collapse, and is in fact collapsing, for the simple reason that a finite planet cannot sustain infinite growth. Moreover,
the dislocations associated with this infinite growth paradigm and its incipient demise – climate change, rising inequality and extreme poverty,
resource scarcity (including food and water shortages), habitat loss and species extinctions, ever more frequent financial crises, to name just a
few – will increasingly bedevil global policy makers in the years ahead. The
public sector is already experiencing a high
degree of dysfunction associated with its inability to confront a defining feature of this system : the need
for perpetual growth in consumption spurs a corresponding growth in public and private debt to fuel that consumption, which has roiled
financial markets and sovereign finances across the globe. Meanwhile, the environmental fallout from this infinite growth paradigm is
becoming acute. All of earth’s natural systems – air, water, minerals, oil, forests and rainforests, soil, wetlands, fisheries, coral reefs, the oceans
themselves – are in serious decline. Climate change is just one symptom. “The problem is the delusion that we can have infinite quantitative
economic growth, that we can keep having more and more stuff, on a finite planet.”[FN 2] The problem is an economic system that makes no
distinction between capital investments that destroy the environment, or worsen public health, or exacerbate economic inequality, and those
that are aligned with earth’s natural systems while promoting the general welfare. Under growth capitalism, a dollar of output is a dollar of
output, regardless of its side effects; short-term profit is valued regardless of the long-term consequences or externalities. It
is therefore
discouraging that, in the U.S. at least, there is no serious discussion in mainstream policy circles about
alternatives to the present system. Nor do I think there will be for some time given our current political/cultural drift. Political
and economic elites, and the public itself, remain committed to growth capitalism, accustomed to
“having more and more stuff,” for a host of economic, social and psychological reasons . As Jeremy Grantham
has written, “[t]he problems of compounding growth in the face of finite resources are not easily understood by optimistic, short-term-
oriented, and relatively innumerate humans (especially the political variety).”[FN 3] Our
campaign finance system, wherein
policy makers are essentially bought off by and incentivized to advance the very interests that stand
to profit most from the current system, is no help. Making matters worse, large segments of the
public do not even accept what science teaches us about climate change, or natural systems, or
evolution, or a host of other pressing realities . The late U.S. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan once said that everyone is
entitled to their own opinion but not their own facts. Today, it seems that a growing number of people, aided and
abetted by special interests that stand to benefit from public ignorance, are increasingly opting for
their own “facts.” So, neither the public sector nor corporate and economic elites, as a result of some newfound enlightenment, seem
poised to consider alternatives to the current system. To the contrary, their first impulse will be to resist any such efforts. This is the critical
problem at the moment: while there is an array of powerful forces aligned against the type of sweeping, systemic change that is needed, there
is no organized constituency for it. There are individuals and groups who support this or that reform, or who are
focused on critical pieces of the larger puzzle (e.g., climate change, sustainable food & agriculture,
gender equality, sustainable investing), but there is no movement, no political party or leader, no
policy agenda to connect the dots. That is a shame because there is a clear alternative to growth
capitalism that has been articulated in recent years by a diverse body of economists, ecologists,
scientists and other leading thinkers – including leaders in the sustainable investment community .[FN 4]
Although there is as of yet no unified theory or common language, let alone any sort of organized movement to speak of, what has
emerged is essentially a unified vision, and that vision might best be described as Sustainable
Capitalism.[FN 5] Sustainable Capitalism may be thought of as a market system where the quality of
output replaces the quantity of output as the measure of economic well-being. Sustainable Capitalism
“explicitly integrates environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors into strategy, the
measurement of outputs and the assessment of both risks and opportunities…. encourages us to
generate financial returns in a long-term and responsible manner, and calls for internalizing negative
externalities through appropriate pricing.”[FN 6] Essentially, business corporations and markets alter
their focus from maximizing short-term profit to maximizing long-term value, and long-term value
expressly includes the societal benefits associated with or derived from economic activity. The
connections between economic output and ecological/societal health are no longer obscured but are
expressly linked.[FN 7] There is no question that growth capitalism must give way to Sustainable
Capitalism. It’s as simple, and as urgent, as that. Over the next 20 years, the sustainable investing
industry must play a pivotal leadership role in ushering in this historic transformation. We will need to
connect the dots and catalyze the movement. Why us? For the simple reason that finance is where the
battle must be joined. It is the financial system that determines how and where capital is invested,
what is valued and not valued, priced and not priced. The sustainable investment community’s role is
vital because the fundamental struggle is between a long-term perspective that fully integrates ESG
factors into economic and investment decisions and our current paradigm which is increasingly
organized around short-term trading gains as the primary driver of capital investment and economic
growth regardless of consequences/externalities. The notion that sustainable investing can simply keep to its current
trajectory – a few more assets under management here, a few more successful shareholder resolutions there, a few more GRI reports issued,
another UN conference, an occasional victory at the SEC – and achieve what needs to be achieved on the scale required is, frankly, untenable.
We need to be more ambitious in our agenda . We will also need to take a more critical stance, not only advocating for ESG
integration but against economic and investment approaches that ignore ESG concerns. We will need to consistently critique
the notion that externalities associated with economic output are somehow collateral, or that
financial return is sufficient without beneficial societal returns, or that markets are inherently efficient
and self-correcting. We will need to unabashedly offer sustainable investing not as an alternative
approach but as a better approach – as the only sensible, responsible way to invest. I believe the
sustainable investing industry will also need to align itself with a more explicit public policy agenda –
while remaining non-partisan – and work with like-minded reformers to advocate for that agenda . For
example, sustainable investors should be sounding the alarm about resource scarcity and advocating for a massive public/private investment
plan in clean energy, efficiency technologies and modernized infrastructure.[FN 8] The age of resource scarcity and the need for efficiency
solutions is upon us.[FN 9] At Pax World, we offer a fund – the Global Environmental Markets Fund (formerly the Global Green Fund) – whose
investment focus is precisely that. Our industry needs to fashion such investment solutions, and I believe there will be opportunities to do so
collaboratively as well as competitively.

Cap is sustainable-even if we create environmental problems tech is able to solve

them
John Bellamy Foster, No Date, John Bellamy Foster writes multiple books and articles about
capitalism, “Capitalism’s Environmental Crisis—Is Technology the Answer?,”
https://monthlyreview.org/2000/12/01/capitalisms-environmental-crisis-is-technology-the-answer/
The standard solution offered to the environmental problem in advanced capitalist economies is to
shift technology in a more benign direction: more energy-efficient production, cars that get better
mileage, replacement of fossil fuels with solar power, and recycling of resources. Other environmental
reforms, such as reductions in population growth and even cuts in consumption, are often advocated
as well. The magic bullet of technology, however, is by far the favorite, seeming to hold out the
possibility of environmental improvement with the least effect on the smooth working of the
capitalist machine. The 1997 International Kyoto Protocol on global warming, designed to limit the greenhouse-gas emissions of nations,
has only reinforced this attitude, encouraging many environmental advocates in the United States (including Al Gore in his presidential
campaign) to advocate technological improvement in energy efficiency as the main escape from the
environmental mess. There are two ways in which technological change can lower environmental
impact. First, it can reduce the materials and energy used per unit of output and, second, it can
substitute less harmful technology. Much of the improvement in air quality since the nineteenth
century, including its aesthetics, resulted from the reduction in the smoke and sulfur dioxide
emissions for which coal-burning is notorious. Solar energy, in contrast to other present and
prospective sources of energy, is not only available in inexhaustible supply (though limited at any
given time and place), but is also ecologically benign. Environmentalists in general therefore prefer a
shift to solar energy. Such considerations have encouraged the view that all stops should be pulled
out on promoting technologies that increase efficiency, particularly of energy, and use more benign
productive processes that get rid of the worst pollutants. I want to concentrate here on the energy
efficiency part of this. The issue of the materials used and the production technology are much more
intractable problems under the current regime of accumulation. One of the reasons for this is that
current productive processes often involve toxins of the worst imaginable kind . For example, we know that the
proliferation of synthetic chemicals, many of which are extraordinarily harmful—carcinogenic and teratogenic—is associated with the growth of
the petrochemical industry and agribusiness, producing products such as plastics and pesticides. (This was the central message of Barry
Commoner’s Closing Circle.) Yet attempts
to overcome this dependence on toxic production create a degree of
resistance from the vested interests of the capitalist order that only a revolutionary movement could
surmount. In contrast, straightforward improvements in energy efficiency have always been
emphasized by capital itself, and fall theoretically within the domain of what the system is said to be
able to accomplish—even what it prides itself in. In the past, it was common for environmentalists to compare the problems
of the “three worlds” using the well-known environmental impact or “PAT” formula (Population x Affluence x Technology=Environmental
Impact). The third world’s environmental problems, according to this dominant perspective, could be seen as arising first and foremost from
population growth rather than technology or affluence (given the low level of industrialization). The
environmental problems of
the Soviet bloc were attributed to its inferior technology, which was less efficient in terms of materials
and energy consumed per unit of out-put, and more toxic in its immediate, localized environmental
effects, than in the West. The West’s chief environmental problem, in contrast, was attributed neither
to its population growth nor its technology (areas in which it had comparative environmental
advantages), but to its affluence and the growing burden that this imposed on the environment. The
ace in the hole for the wealthy capitalist countries was always seen to be their technological prowess
—which would allow them to promote environmental improvements while also expanding their
affluence (that is, growth of capital and consumption) . What likelihood then is there that new or newly applied
technology will be able to prevent environmental degradation from expanding along with the economy? The Jevons Paradox In order to answer
this question it is useful to look at what ecological economists call the Jevons Paradox.* William Stanley Jevons (1835-1882) is best known as a
British economist who was one of the pioneers of contemporary neoclassical economic analysis, with its subjective value theory rooted in
marginal utility. Jevons first achieved national fame, however, for his work The Coal Question (1865). Jevons argued that British industrial
growth had relied on cheap coal and that the increasing cost of coal, as deeper seams were mined, would generate economic stagnation.
Substituting coal for corn, within the general Malthusian argument that says population increases faster than food supply, he observed: “Our
subsistence no longer depends upon our produce of corn. The momentous repeal of the Corn Laws throws us from corn upon coal” (The Coal
Question, 3rd edition, 194-195). Jevons argued that neither technology nor substitutability (that is, the substitution of other energy sources for
coal) could alter this. Jevons was fabulously wrong in his calculations. His main mistake was to underestimate the importance of coal substitutes
such as petroleum and hydroelectric power. Commenting on Jevons’ argument in 1936, Keynes said it was “over-strained and exaggerated”
(Essays in Biography, 1951, 259). But there is one aspect of Jevons’ argument that has attracted the admiration of ecological economists.
Chapter Seven of The Coal Question was entitled “Of the Economy of Fuel.” Here he argued that increased efficiency in using a natural
resource, such as coal, only resulted in increased demand for that resource, not a reduction in demand. This was because such improvement in
efficiency led to a rising scale of production. “It is wholly a confusion of ideas,” Jevons wrote, to suppose that the economic use of fuel is
equivalent to a diminished consumption. The very contrary is the truth. As a rule, the new modes of economy will lead to an increase of
consumption according to a principle recognized in many parallel instances…. The same principles apply, with even greater force and
distinctiveness to the use of such a general agent as coal. It is the very economy of its use which leads to its extensive consumption…. Nor is it
difficult to see how this paradox arises…. If the quantity of coal used in a blast-furnace, for instance, be diminished in comparison with the yield,
the profits of the trade will increase, new capital will be attracted, the price of pig-iron will fall, but the demand for it increase; and eventually
the greater number of furnaces will more than make up for the diminished consumption of each. And if such is not always the result within a
single branch, it must be remembered that the progress of any branch of manufacture excites a new activity in most other branches and leads
indirectly, if not directly, to increased inroads upon our seams of coal…. Civilization, says Baron Liebig, is the economy of power, and our power
is coal. It is the very economy of the use of coal that makes our industry what it is; and the more we render it efficient and economical, the
more will our industry thrive, and our works of civilization grow (140-142). Jevons went on to argue in detail that the whole history of the steam
engine was a history of successive economies in its use— and each time this led to further increases in the scale of production and the demand
for coal. “Every such improvement of the engine,” he observed, “when effected, does but accelerate anew the consumption of coal. Every
branch of manufacture receives a fresh impulse—hand labor is still further replaced by mechanical labor” (152-153). The contemporary
significance of the Jevons paradox is seen with respect to the automobile in the United States. The introduction of more energy-efficient
automobiles in this country in the 1970s did not curtail the demand for fuel because driving increased and the number of cars on the road soon
doubled. Similarly, technological improvements in refrigeration simply led to more and larger refrigerators. The same tendencies are in effect
within industry, independent of individual consumption. Technology and Accumulation Although Jevons is credited deservedly for introducing
his paradox, the full force of the problem he raises is not addressed in The Coal Question. As one of the early neoclassical economists, Jevons
had abandoned the focus on class and accumulation that characterized the work of the classical economists. His economic analysis was
primarily static equilibrium theory, ill-equipped to deal with dynamic issues of accumulation and growth. Jevons, who in many ways naturalized
capitalism, could provide no more convincing explanations for continuously increasing demand than to point to individual behavior and
Malthusian demographics. Here it is important to acknowledge that capitalism is a system that pursues accumulation and growth for its own
sake. It is a juggernaut driven by the single-minded need on the part of business for ever-greater accumulation of capital. “Accumulate,
accumulate! That is Moses and the Prophets!” wrote Marx in Capital (vol. 1, chapter 24, section 3). The only real checks
on this process
are those generated by mutual competition and impersonal market forces, and, over the long run,
periodic crises. To be sure, mainstream economists since the days of Adam Smith have claimed that capitalism is a system
devoted directly to the pursuit of wealth but indirectly to the pursuit of human needs. In reality, the first goal entirely overrides
and transforms the second. Capitalists do not restrict their activities to the production of commodities that satisfy basic human needs, such as
food, clothing, shelter, and the amenities essential to the reproduction of human beings and society. Instead, the production of more and more
profits becomes an end in itself, and the types of goods produced or their ultimate usefulness becomes completely immaterial. The use value of
commodities is more and more subordinated to their exchange value. Use values that are devoted to ostentatious consumption, and that are
even destructive to human beings and the earth (in the sense of rendering it unusable for human purposes), are manufactured and the desire
for these destructive goods is manufactured along with them through the force of modern marketing (see Paul M. Sweezy, “Capitalism and the
Environment,” Monthly Review, vol. 41, no. 2, June 1989).* It is this singleminded obsession with capital accumulation that distinguishes
capitalism from all other social systems, explaining why it can never stand still. A “stationary capitalism,” as Joseph Schumpeter observed, is a
“contradictio in adjecto” (Essays, p. 29). Competition, of the sort that forces upon capital continual trans-formations in the means of production
in order to maintain and enhance profitability, provides the essential motor behind this drive to accumulate. This is what Schumpeter, in
Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, called capitalism’s tendency toward “creative destruction;” its creation through innovation of
new and more efficient forms of production and distribution , and at the same time its destruction of previous forms of
production and distribution. Caught up in this unrelenting process of accumulation and creative destruction, the system runs roughshod over
each and every thing that stands in its path: all human and natural requirements that interfere with the accumulation of capital are considered
barriers to be overcome. The exponential growth of capitalism and the increasing consumption of raw materials and energy that goes with it
have resulted in a rapidly compounding environmental problem. It is this that lies behind what the Worldwatch Institute, in its State of the
World 1999, called “the acceleration of history”—by which they mean the increasingly rapid transformation of the planetary environment and
destruction of ecosystems. Since there is no way in which the earth’s fundamental capacity to supply the rapidly increasing demands that are
being placed on it can increase, the only way in which the problem can be solved is by somehow reducing these demands. There are three ways
of conceiving this: stabilization and even reduction of world population; improvements in technology; and more far-reaching
socioeconomic transformations. Since most demographers agree that population is gradually stabilizing but that this will not in itself solve the
problem, given that per capita consumption of materials and energies continues to rise exponentially, the search for a solution
invariably focuses on the other two aspects of the problem, and usually on the technological component.

Cap is sustainable
Nick Sorrentino, June 13, 2012, Nick Sorrentino is the co-founder and editor of
AgainstCronyCapitalism.org. A political and communications consultant with clients across the political
spectrum, “Free Market Capitalism is Sustainable,”
http://www.againstcronycapitalism.org/2012/06/free-market-capitalism-is-sustainable/
This is counter intuitive. We are told all the time that markets threaten the planet. That wanton greed (of the capitalist variety) will be nature’s
undoing. That markets are unnatural. I submit that markets
are absolutely natural. As sure as the ebb and flow of the tides reflect
the underlying order in nature, so too do the ebb and flow of markets. Not only are free
markets natural, they are sustainable
and resilient. It is central planning which is inherently unstable. If the world economy is made of millions or billions of little
exchanges each part of a massive whole, but also limited because the exchange is one of a sea of exchanges, there is a fundamental stability to
the system. If things go crazy in one part of the market for whatever reason (though a market “going crazy” is a matter of perspective) the
possibility of contagion is limited. Because there is no one central hub (a central bank, a government, etc.) the likelihood of widespread
“craziness” is mitigated. If however there is a hub, or central economic node, the possibility of broad trouble is far more likely. If the “command
center” is met with catastrophe such catastrophe quickly cascades to everything the command center commands. Prices find their own
level. Usually the biggest problems in the economy happen when this tendency of prices is restricted
in some way, usually for political purposes. When things collapse, as they always do when prices are
restricted, at some point needless damage is wreaked in the lives of economic participants and upon
the Earth. One only need look at China to see what economic planning does to the planet. Yes the fact that many of China’s rivers are
ribbons of chemicals and waste is because of the huge run up in development they have seen over the last 30 years. But it is because this
development was planned to a large extent by Beijing and because there is no real system of property rights in China that piles of noxious
externalities find their way into the South China Sea and into the lungs of Chinese children. It is because the planners control the levers that
China is building dozens of coal fired power plants every year. Central planning is a destroyer. It is from central planning that we get wars, and
things like Chernobyl. Lack of property rights is also a destroyer (or at least helps facilitate destruction). One only need look at the rape of the
world’s rain forests or the destruction of world fish stocks to see this. No one is responsible for these commons, and so they are exploited until
they are no longer useful. Put both planning and lack of property rights together and one has a recipe for disaster. Yet many
in the
environmental community want both more planning and continued reduction of property rights . As
someone who cares deeply about nature this leaves me frustrated.
 Cap Good
Cap good-10 reasons
Jed & Rachael Nunno and Nunno, December 24, 2010, Jed and Rachael Nunno write for ListVerse
and posted this article under the politics section, “Top 10 Greatest Benefits of Capitalism,”
http://listverse.com/2010/12/24/top-10-greatest-benefits-of-capitalism/
While likely to be a very controversial list, we are in the middle of one of Capitalism’s favorite seasons: Christmas, so it seems fitting to publish it
on Christmas Eve. After the death of feudalism in the 19th century, a choice was presented to the world: would the new politico-economic
system be capitalism, communism, the “Third Way” or an obscure alternative? Communism sounded great on paper but never really worked as
intended, and the most well-known group within the Third Way movement was the Nazi party, whether the rest of the movement liked it or
not.Fortunately, the country in which you are living today is almost certainly capitalist, and in this article we will investigate the numerous
benefits that democratic capitalism provides: an equal, happy, healthy society where you can have almost anything you want, for a price.10
Health Health-StudiesWith capitalism, more choice is provided than ever before. You can eat low fat
food, organic food, free-range food… and you know exactly what you’re getting due to the statistics
on the packet. There are plenty of diets easily accessible and gyms with top of the range equipment,
unparalleled in other countries. There is greater awareness than ever of the importance of fitness due
to government campaigns. All of these contribute to an extremely fit society, and, in desperation, one
can always resort to liposuction or some other sort of surgery. Which is why everyone is thin and
healthy – on the front of magazines, at least.9 Social Good Post Full 1279062663Social-Good Pt2It might seem at first glance that everyone is
selfishly working for their own money, but dig a little deeper and it becomes apparent that every job has a benefit for someone
else. Factory workers produce the products that we can’t live without; hairdressers perform a service
that benefits us body and sould; and the police work to protect us and make sure we live in a lawful
society. Even unpopular and ‘overpaid’ professions such as city bankers and sportsmen have a
positive effect on society, whether it be helping us manage our money, entertainment or something
else. The bottom line is that no matter the job; highly or poorly paid, glamorous or dirty, competitive
or ‘easy’; everyone can have the satisfaction that they, as much as the well-known public figures, are
doing their bit for society.8 Equality Equality 2No matter where you start in life, everyone has an
opportunity to make it big. The basic principle is that the harder you work, the greater your reward .
Arguably no-one epitomizes this better than Li Ka-shing, who fled China in 1940 and entered Hong Kong with next to nothing. His father having
died, Li left school at the age of 14 and labored 16 hours every day in a plastics trading company, where his sheer hard work and attention to
detail allowed him to found Cheung Kong Industries in the 1950s, after which he never looked back. Li’s net worth today is $26.5 billion.7
Human Nature Hb 19.73.1One of the most common arguments that capitalists use is that capitalism works perfectly with human nature or,
more specifically, greed. And it does. Greed is rewarded duly with large amounts of money and the entire economy is fuelled by people working
hard to furnish their own needs. In addition, greed causes competition, which is an essential part of advancing the human race. The
power
of competition is shown during wars, where huge technological achievements are made. For example,
the Jeep was invented by the Allies during WWII. Though greed and competition often damage society, one cannot deny
that these traits have moved forwards mankind at a rapid pace.6 Being the Best Running-RaceBut what about the other aspects of human
nature: altruism, patience and kindness? These have their place, too, in the capitalist world. Left-wing politicians like to claim that an extensive,
expensive welfare system is the only way to provide a safety net for the poor, but in actual fact there are tens of thousands of registered
charities providing not-for-profit activities, from The National Alliance to End Homelessness to Save the Rainforest. Centrally planned altruism is
completely unnecessary and, in fact, limits what people would otherwise give on their own initiative.5 Freedom Draft
Lens7700811Module65018471Photo 1256524790FreedomMost of you reading this list will have grown up in a world-class education system
and taken it for granted that you can choose whatever career you want. At school you selected your favorite subjects and could study them as
far as you wanted, followed by applying to a job you chose from the widest variety ever seen in history. This is capitalism at its finest: freedom
to live your life the way you want. However, some argue that advertising infringes on one’s freedom. Don’t like advertising? Don’t switch on the
TV or the radio and don’t walk around large towns or cities and you will never meet any. That is the beauty of freedom.4 Built
on
Democracy Athens-GreeceOne of the greatest things about capitalism is that it works perfectly with
democracy: everyone gets 1 vote, and thus equal power politically, whatever their race, political views
or gender. In Britain, recent legislation has even allowed some prisoners to vote. Once you reach a
certain age, you have as much power to choose the new government as everybody else above that
age – whether that be your father, your boss or Bill Gates. Right?3 Growth Private Equity IiCapitalism allows the economy to
grow exponentially. It is a basic fact of economics that the more money a firm makes, the more it can
invest in production, and the more it invests in production, the more money it makes . So long as no
unfortunate events befall the firm, this growth can, obviously, continue indefinitely. Many see a problem arising with this: there are only a
finite, or ‘scarce’ amount of resources on Earth, so this huge growth of production will one day run to a halt. However, as argued by Julian
Simon, the rarer a resource, the greater its monetary value, which leads to innovation. For example as oil begins to run out we are seeing
significant increase in prices, which has increased the reward and made it economically viable to search for new oil fields. Sites which were
previously too expensive to profitably drill have now become available; and we are also developing new methods of harnessing alternative
energy such as wind, solar and nuclear power. The oil scarcity isn’t particularly our problem, anyway, since by the time it is depleted, our
generation will be long gone.2 Viable Alternatives Z3Tbe9Perhaps the strongest argument working in favor of democratic capitalism is that
there is no alternative politico-economic system which has proved itself to work in our modern age .
Almost every attempted implementation of communism has failed (for example, look at China – they abandoned total communism long ago
and are slowly creeping towards capitalism) and any central government risks large amounts of corruption . What’s more
is that if, for example, America became socialist and imposed many strong measures on corporations to regulate their behavior, the largest
companies (Trans-National Corporations) would most likely move their industry elsewhere, and potential entrepreneurs would be scared to
invest in capital, irreparably damaging America’s economy. So as you can see, changing
the economic system isn’t even an
option.1 Happiness Happy People No StutterIf you look at this happiness map published by scholars from the University of Leicester, you
can clearly see that the foremost democratic, capitalist countries like the USA, Canada, New Zealand and
the whole of Europe are the happiest in the world. This is because in these countries, thanks to the
free-market, whatever products people want, they can get. Where do all these thousands of products
come from? Well, the less happy countries like the Asian Tiger economies tend to be the main
exporters of consumer goods. In conclusion, all these unhappy countries need to do is start consuming
more than they produce, like Europe, and the wealth and happiness will start flowing in .

Capitalism is the only moral system

Edward W. Younkins 07, professor of Accountancy and Business Administration at Wheeling Jesuit
University in West Virginia, 6-24-2007, “CAPITALISM: THE ONLY MORAL SOCIAL SYSTEM,” QL,
http://www.quebecoislibre.org/07/070624-5.htm.
A social system such as capitalism is a system of relationships and cannot be moral or immoral in the
sense that a person can be – only individuals can be moral agents. However, a social system can be
moral in its effects if it promotes the possibility and likelihood of moral behavior of mindful human
beings who act within it. It follows then, that because the formation of a social system is an act of
men, there is a moral imperative to create the kind of political and economic system that permits the
greatest possibility for self-determination and moral agency. Capitalism is that system.¶ ¶ A number of
thinkers have commented on the different senses in which a system can be said to be moral and in
which an individual human being can be said to be moral. For example, in his The Morality of Law, legal
philosopher Lon L. Fuller distinguishes between what he calls the "the morality of duty" and the
"morality of aspiration."¶ Fuller explains that the morality of duty begins at the bottom of human
achievement and establishes the fundamental rules that are necessary to have an ordered society. He
says that the basic rules impose duties regarding what is necessary in order to have social life. According
to Fuller, natural rights create a universal enforceable duty with regard to just conduct but not with
respect to good conduct. In the morality of duty penalties take priority over rewards and objective
standards can be applied to deviations from adequate performance. It is not the function of the morality
of duty to compel a man through the law to live the good and virtuous life of reason. The law, through
the enforcement of natural rights, can only create the prerequisite conditions necessary, but not
sufficient, for the attainment of one's personal flourishing in society. Securing the social order through
protected natural rights places restrictions on the means a person can use to pursue his happiness.
Capitalism is a prerequisite to a moral society, it protects individual rights
Edward W. Younkins 07, professor of Accountancy and Business Administration at Wheeling Jesuit
University in West Virginia, 6-24-2007, “CAPITALISM: THE ONLY MORAL SOCIAL SYSTEM,” QL,
http://www.quebecoislibre.org/07/070624-5.htm.
Capitalism is itself only a means and leaves it to the individual to decide the types of goals to be
pursued. The intellectual basis of capitalism is that the individual is free and has certain inviolable
natural rights. Within a system of capitalism, the proper role of government is simply to enable
people to pursue happiness on their own. Happiness cannot be given to people – they must attain it
through their own efforts. The government cannot supply more than the prerequisite conditions. ¶ No
economic system can make good men or make men good. The best that an economic system can do is
to allow men to be good. Morality requires the freedom to be immoral. Capitalism, the system that
maximizes this freedom, cannot guarantee a moral society; however, it is a necessary condition for
one. Only when an individual has choice and bears responsibility for his actions can he be moral.
Choice (i.e., free will) is the foundation of virtue. Morality involves choice and the use of practical
reason in making that choice. Capitalism is consistent with the fundamental moral principles of life
itself and, compared to other economic systems, is the most conducive to the use of man's free will,
which makes moral behavior possible. Capitalism is the only social system that is in accord with the
central role that practical reason plays in the moral lives of persons.¶ The highly individualized and self-
directed nature of personal flourishing requires that practical reason be employed by a person
confronting the particular and contingent facts of his concrete situation and determining at the time of
action what is, in those circumstances, good and proper for him. Capitalism is the only system that
protects and permits such conduct and therefore is a system compatible with human flourishing.¶
Capitalism is a political and economic system in which an individual's rights to life, liberty, and
property are protected by law. It is the system most able to make personal flourishing possible. By
securing personal freedom, capitalism makes the successful pursuit of individual happiness more
likely. A capitalist society can be viewed as a just society because all individuals are considered to be
equal under the law.¶ Capitalism is derived from a worldview that holds that: (1) man's mind is
competent to deal with reality; (2) the purpose of natural rights is to protect self-directedness; (3) it is
morally proper for each person to strive for his personal flourishing and happiness; (4) the only
appropriate social system is one in which the initiation of physical force is forbidden; and (5) it is not
necessary to first reach metaphysical or religious agreement to agree on the desirability of an
arrangement in which people do not use violence or fraud to injure others or deprive others of their
legitimately held possessions. Capitalism is the only moral social system because it protects a man's
primary means of survival and flourishing – his mind.

Transitioning away from capitalism requires a violent revolution, Lenin proves

Vladimir Lenin 1917, communist leader in Russia, 1917, “The State and the Revolution”,
https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/staterev/ch01.htm
Fifthly, the same work of Engels', whose arguments about the withering away of the state everyone
remembers, also contains an argument of the significance of violent revolution. Engels' historical
analysis of its role becomes a veritable panegyric on violent revolution. This, “no one remembers". It is
not done in modern socialist parties to talk or even think about the significance of this idea, and it plays
no part whatever in their daily propaganda and agitation among the people. And yet it is inseparably
bound up with the 'withering away" of the state into one harmonious whole.¶ Here is Engels'
argument:¶ “...That force, however, plays yet another role [other than that of a diabolical power] in
history, a revolutionary role; that, in the words of Marx, it is the midwife of every old society which is
pregnant with a new one, that it is the instrument with which social movement forces its way through
and shatters the dead, fossilized political forms — of this there is not a word in Herr Duhring. It is only
with sighs and groans that he admits the possibility that force will perhaps be necessary for the
overthrow of an economy based on exploitation — unfortunately, because all use of force demoralizes,
he says, the person who uses it. And this in Germany, where a violent collision — which may, after all,
be forced on the people — would at least have the advantage of wiping out the servility which has
penetrated the nation's mentality following the humiliation of the Thirty Years' War.[4] And this
person's mode of thought — dull, insipid, and impotent — presumes to impose itself on the most
revolutionary party that history has ever known! (p.193, third German edition, Part II, end of Chap.IV) ¶
How can this panegyric on violent revolution, which Engels insistently brought to the attention of the
German Social-Democrats between 1878 and 1894, i.e., right up to the time of his death, be combined
with the theory of the 'withering away" of the state to form a single theory? ¶ Usually the two are
combined by means of eclecticism, by an unprincipled or sophistic selection made arbitrarily (or to
please the powers that be) of first one, then another argument, and in 99 cases out of 100, if not more,
it is the idea of the “withering away” that is placed in the forefront. Dialectics are replaced by
eclecticism — this is the most usual, the most wide-spread practice to be met with in present-day official
Social-Democratic literature in relation to Marxism. This sort of substitution is, of course, nothing new; it
was observed even in the history of classical Greek philosophy. In falsifying Marxism in opportunist
fashion, the substitution of eclecticism for dialectics is the easiest way of deceiving the people. It gives
an illusory satisfaction; it seems to take into account all sides of the process, all trends of development,
all the conflicting influences, and so forth, whereas in reality it provides no integral and revolutionary
conception of the process of social development at all. ¶ We have already said above, and shall show
more fully later, that the theory of Marx and Engels of the inevitability of a violent revolution refers to
the bourgeois state. The latter cannot be superseded by the proletarian state (the dictatorship of the
proletariat) through the process of 'withering away", but, as a general rule, only through a violent
revolution. The panegyric Engels sang in its honor, and which fully corresponds to Marx's repeated
statements (see the concluding passages of The Poverty of Philosophy[5] and the Communist Manifesto,
[6] with their proud and open proclamation of the inevitability of a violent revolution; see what Marx
wrote nearly 30 years later, in criticizing the Gotha Programme of 1875,[7] when he mercilessly
castigated the opportunist character of that programme) — this panegyric is by no means a mere
“impulse”, a mere declamation or a polemical sally. The necessity of systematically imbuing the masses
with this and precisely this view of violent revolution lies at the root of the entire theory of Marx and
Engels. The betrayal of their theory by the now prevailing social-chauvinist and Kautskyite trends
expresses itself strikingly in both these trends ignoring such propaganda and agitation. ¶ The
supersession of the bourgeois state by the proletarian state is impossible without a violent revolution.
The abolition of the proletarian state, i.e., of the state in general, is impossible except through the
process of “withering away".

Cap solves war

Heath, 13, Heath is the current editor of City AM, and Deputy Editor at The Telegraph. “The world has never
had it so good - thanks partly to capitalism”, TT, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance
/economics/10412499/The-world-has-never-had-it-so-good-thanks-partly-to-capitalism.html

Take war, the worst possible affliction that can befall a society . It is often wrongly argued that
armed conflicts are the handmaiden of capitalism; in reality, they are the worst thing that can happen
to a liberal economy, destroying lives, families and capital and triggering state control, militarism and
deglobalisation. Tragically, there are still far too many conflicts costing far too many lives
but overall we live in extraordinarily peaceful times by historical standards.¶ Genghis Khan’s mad
conquests in the 13th century killed 11pc of the global population at the time, making it the worst
conflict the world has ever had the misfortune of enduring; the Second World War, which
cost more lives than any other, was the sixth worst on that measure, killing 2.6pc of the world’s
population.¶ There has been immense progress since then, especially following the end
of the Cold War.¶ The Peace Research Institute Oslo calculates that there were fewer battle deaths
(including of civilians) in the first decade of the 21st century than at any time since the Second World
War.

Cap decreases child mortality

Heath, 13, Heath is the current editor of City AM, and Deputy Editor at The Telegraph. “The world has never
had it so good - thanks partly to capitalism”, TT, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance
/economics/10412499/The-world-has-never-had-it-so-good-thanks-partly-to-capitalism.html

¶ Instead of fighting, we now trade, communicate, travel and invest ; while there is still a long
way to go in tearing down protectionist barriers, international economic integration is the
great driving force of progress.¶ We are also far less likely to die from the side-effects of
economic development and the burning of cooking and heating fuels . In 1900, one person
in 550 globally would die from air pollution every year, an annual risk of dying of 0.18pc. Today, that
risk has fallen to 0.04 pc, or one in 2,500; by 2050, it is expected to have collapsed to 0.02pc, or one in
5,000. Many other kinds of pollution are also in decline, of course, but this shift is the
most powerful.¶ In fact, we are living healthier and longer lives all round, thanks primarily to
the remarkable progress made by medicine.¶ Average life expectancy at birth in Africa has
jumped from 50 years in 2000 to 56 in 2011; for the world as a whole, it has increased from 64 to 70,
according to the World Health Organisation.¶ While people in rich countries can now
expect to reach 80, the gap is narrowing and emerging economies are catching up; in India, for
example, life expectancy has been increasing by 4.5 years per decade since the 1960s. ¶ Medical
advances have improved life measurably for any given stage of economic development.
Childhood mortality in Sub-Saharan Africa remains far too high, but in 2008 it had fallen to just a
third of that in Liverpool in 1870, even though real per capita incomes in that part of the
world remain just over half that of Liverpudlians in the 19th century.¶ The probability of a
newborn dying before their fifth birthday has dropped from a world average of 23pc in the 1950s to
6pc in the current decade. That’s still nothing to be happy about, of course, but the progress
has been remarkable. Child mortality is set to fall from 7.7pc in 2000 to 3.1pc in 2050.¶ One
reason is better nutrition. The best proxy for that is height: Latin Americans have been
growing taller for years, and since the late 20th century so have young people in Asia,
with increased prosperity allowing parents to feed their children more and better food.¶
Better sanitation is also helping: deaths caused by a lack of access to clean water have tumbled from
1.5 per 1,000 people in developing countries in 1950 to 0.4 today and are due to halve again by 2050.¶

Cap solves for illiteracy- presents better educational opportunities to populations at large
Heath, 13, Heath is the current editor of City AM, and Deputy Editor at The Telegraph. “The world has never
had it so good - thanks partly to capitalism”, TT, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance
/economics/10412499/The-world-has-never-had-it-so-good-thanks-partly-to-capitalism.html
Education is another area which has seen huge improvement globally. The UK is a scandalous
outlier here, with a recent OECD analysis showing that we are the only rich country in
which 55 to 65-year-olds are more proficient in literacy and numeracy than 16 to 24-
year-olds, a catastrophic regression.¶ But our educational suicide is unique, and
emerging markets have seen revolutionary improvements in recent decades, enhancing educational
opportunities for hundreds of millions of young people . Progress has been especially strong from
around 1970.¶ While 23.6pc of the world’s population remains illiterate, that is down from 70pc in
1900 and is the lowest it has ever been . The costs of illiteracy have fallen steadily from 12.3pc of
global GDP at the start of last century and are set to be just 3.8pc by 2050.

Capitalism Solves Sexism

Heath, 13, Heath is the current editor of City AM, and Deputy Editor at The Telegraph. “The world has never
had it so good - thanks partly to capitalism”, TT, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance
/economics/10412499/The-world-has-never-had-it-so-good-thanks-partly-to-capitalism.html

¶ Gender equality is also improving. In 1900, women made up only 15pc of the global workforce. By
2012, it reached around 40pc and is expected to hit 45pc by mid-century .

Free Market Capitalism is the only form of sustainable development

Bailey ’12, Bailey is the author of the book Liberation Biology: The Moral and Scientific Case for the
Biotech Revolution  (Prometheus, 2005), and his work was featured in The Best American Science and Nature
Writing 2004 ., “Free Markets= Sustainable Development, Reason.com,
http://reason.com/archives/2012/06/12/free-markets-are-sustainable-development/1

¶“The current global development model is unsustainable.” That is the conclusion of the High-Level
Panel on Global Sustainability, appointed earlier this year by United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki
Moon to outline the economic and social changes needed to achieve global sustainability. The Panel
urged the world leaders who will gather in Rio de Janeiro next week for the U.N. Conference on
Sustainable Development to embrace “a new approach to the political economy of sustainable
development.” ¶ U.S. Government Is ‘most successful The Panel’s report, Resilient People, Resilient
Planet: A Future Worth Choosing [PDF], specifically cited the definition of sustainable development
devised in Our Common Future , another U.N. report from an expert panel of headed by former
Norwegian Prime Minister Gro Harland Brundtland issued in 1987. “Sustainable development is
development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future
generations to meet their own needs,” declared the Brundtland report.¶ It turns out that the only
form of society that has so far met this criterion is democratic free-market capitalism. How can that
be? Let’s take a look at the two terms, sustainable and development. With regard to most of human history there has
been precious little in the way of “development.” The vast majority of people lived and died in humanity’s natural
state of disease-ridden abject poverty and pervasive ignorance. Economic historian Angus Maddison
calculated that per capita Western European incomes in 1 A.D. averaged $600 and rose by 1500 to $800
reaching $1,200 by 1820. In China average per capita income was $450 in 1 A.D. rising by 1500 to $600
and reaching $700 by 1820. And the rise was anything but steady, e.g., income in Western Europe fell
from the early Roman Empire average to $425 by 1000 A.D.
Capitalism is the most efficient form of government, its organization prevents societal
collapse
Bailey ’12, Bailey is the author of the book Liberation Biology: The Moral and Scientific Case for the
Biotech Revolution  (Prometheus, 2005), and his work was featured in The Best American Science and Nature
Writing 2004 ., “Free Markets= Sustainable Development, Reason.com,
http://reason.com/archives/2012/06/12/free-markets-are-sustainable-development/1

¶And what about the other term, sustainable? Again, looking across history and the globe, we know for a
fact that there have been, until now, no sustainable societies. All of the earlier civilizations in both
the Old and New Worlds collapsed at various times, e.g., Babylonia, Rome, the Umayyad Caliphate,
Harrapan, Gupta, Tang, Mayan, Olmec, Anasazi, Moche, just to mention a few. Of course, collapse in
this context doesn’t mean that everybody died, but that their ways of life radically shifted and often
much of the population migrated to other regions . In other words, history provides us with no models
of sustainable development other than democratic capitalism .¶ Every one of these earlier ultimately
unsustainable societies were what economics Nobelist Douglass North and his colleagues call “natural
states” in Violence and Social Orders: A Conceptual Framework for Interpreting Recorded Human
History . Natural states are basically organized as hierarchical patron-client networks in which small
militarily potent elites extract resources from a subject population. The basic deal is a Hobbesian
contract in which elites promise their subjects an end to the “war of all against all” in exchange for
wealth and power. ¶ Natural states operate by limiting access to valuable resources, e.g., by creating
and sharing the rewards of monopolies. One fundamental downside to this form of social
organization is that innovation, both social and technological, is stifled because it threatens the
monopolies through which elite patrons extract wealth. While natural states do succeed in
dramatically reducing interpersonal violence, they have one appalling consequence as Maddison’s data
show: persistently low average incomes. Again, as history teaches, civilizations organized as natural
states are not sustainable in the long run. ¶ Lots of thinkers have pondered what causes the collapse of
civilizations, i.e., why they are unsustainable over the long run. Let’s take a brief look at three recent
theories of unsustainability: climate change, complexity, and self-organized criticality cascades. In
January 26, 2001, issue of Science, Yale University Anthropologist Harvey Weiss and University of
Massachusetts Geoscientist Raymond Bradley asked, “What Drives Societal Collapse? ” They concluded,
“Many lines of evidence now point to climate forcing as the primary agent in repeated social collapse .” Basically
they argue that abrupt and long-lasting droughts caused the downfalls of civilizations in both the Old and
New Worlds. ¶ Utah State University anthropologist Joseph Tainter, author of the 1988 classic, The
Collapse of Complex Societies , asserts that societies fall apart when their problem solving institutions
fail. Tainter argues, [PDF] “Confronted with problems, we often respond by developing more complex
technologies, establishing new institutions, adding more specialists or bureaucratic levels to an
institution, increasing organization or regulation, or gathering and processing more information.” ¶
Tainter maintains that this strategy of building complex institutions ultimately fails as the result of
diminishing marginal returns to the social investment in them. Collapse occurs when accumulating
unaddressed problems overwhelm a society. Interestingly, Tainter notes, “ In a hierarchical
institution, the flow of information from the bottom to the top is frequently inaccurate and
ineffective.” ¶ In a 2002 article, “Why Do Societies Collapse? ,” published in the Journal of Theoretical
Politics, independent political scientist Gregory Brunk argues that societies are self-organizing critical
systems. The usual example of self-organizing criticality is a sand pile in which grains of sand are
constantly being added. Many land and simply find a place in the pile; some grains land and cause small
local avalanches that soon come to rest; and eventually a grain lands that causes a huge avalanche that
changes the shape of the whole pile. In a 2009 article, “Society as a Self-Organized Critical System ,” in
Cybernetics and Human Knowing, researchers Thomas Kron and Thomas Grund suggest the example of the
start of World War I as a social avalanche. In that case, an unlikely series of events involving a lost
driver gave Serbian nationalist assassin Gavrilo Princip the opportunity to kill Franz Ferdinand, the
archduke of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire, and his wife Sophie. And as the phrase goes, the rest was
history. ¶ Brunk suggests the main mechanism by which societies reach a critical point where collapses
are realized was outlined by economist Mancur Olson in his 1982 book, The Rise and Decline of
Nations: Economic Growth, Stagflation, and Social Rigidities . Olson argued that over time interest
group politics produces over-bureaucratization, essentially recreating the patron-client networks
characteristic of natural states.¶ These three theories of societal collapse can complement one another.
Long duration intense local droughts would no doubt constitute a problem that complex hierarchical
institutions would have difficulty solving, thus producing a criticality cascade that results in social
collapse. It’s important to stress that all of the social collapses cited by these authors occurred with
natural states, that is, societies organized as patron-client networks. In fact, the more recent social
collapses, e.g., the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, the Congo, Somalia, and Libya, all also occurred in
residual natural states that had persisted into the modern era .¶ The plain fact is that development
(rising incomes, health, and education) occurred only after what North and his colleagues identify as a
new form of social organization, open access orders, arose during the past two centuries. Open
access orders are basically societies organized as democratic free-market capitalism, and are
characterized by the rule of law, the proliferation of private economic, social, religious, and
political institutions, and civilian control of the military. In all of history, the only kind of
development has been capitalist development, along with parasitical versions of development that
some remaining natural states can attain for a while by imitating aspects of open access orders. By 2008,
average per capita income in Western Europe was $22,200 and in China $6,800.

Democratic capitalism is working now- providing food, education, and equal rights
Bailey ’12, Bailey is the author of the book Liberation Biology: The Moral and Scientific Case for the
Biotech Revolution  (Prometheus, 2005), and his work was featured in The Best American Science and Nature
Writing 2004 ., “Free Markets= Sustainable Development, Reason.com,
http://reason.com/archives/2012/06/12/free-markets-are-sustainable-development/1

¶Is free-market development sustainable? After all, it’s only been around for 200 years. Obviously, most
of the folks gathering next week at the U.N. conference in Rio don’t think so. Last September a U.N.-
sponsored activist conference issued a declaration,Sustainable Societies, Responsive Citizens , that urged
the replacement of “the current economic model, which promotes unsustainable consumption and
production patterns, facilitates a grossly inequitable trading system, fails to eradicate poverty, assists in
the exploitation of natural resources to the verge of extinction and total depletion, and has induced
multiple crises on Earth” with “sustainable economies in the community, local, national, regional and
international spheres.” ¶ Perhaps free-market capitalism will prove itself unsustainable in the long run.
But I don’t think so. Brunk suggests that humans don’t just take complexity cascades (avalanches) lying
down; they attempt to foresee and dampen them. “From this perspective, the fundamental reason that
civilization has advanced is because societies have become more adept in addressing the problems
caused by complexity cascades" [emphasis in original], claims Brunk. The chief way in which modern
societies have “become more adept in addressing the problems caused by complexity cascades” is free
markets. Free markets are the most robust mechanism ever devised by humanity for delivering rapid
feedback on how decisions turn out. Profits and losses discipline people to learn quickly from and fix
their mistakes. Consequently, markets are superb at using trial-and-error to find solutions to problems. ¶
What about the Brundtland report criterion? As I have argued elsewhere, "There is only
one proven way to improve the lot of hundreds of millions of poor people, and that is democratic
capitalism. It is in rich democratic capitalist countries that the air and water are becoming cleaner,
forests are expanding, food is abundant, education is universal, and women's rights respected.
Whatever slows down economic growth also slows down environmental improvement."
By vastly increasing knowledge and pursuing technological progress, past generations
met their needs and vastly increased the ability of our generation to meet our needs.
We should do no less for future generations.¶ ¶ Top-down bureaucratization of the sort
favored by the delegates who will be meeting in Rio moves societies back in the
direction of natural states in which monopolies are secured and run by elites. Innovation
would thus stall and the ability of people and societies to adapt rapidly to changing
conditions, economic and ecological, via free markets and democratic politics, would
falter. “Ironically, instead of eliminating all complexity cascades, what the increasing
bureaucratization of mature societies may do is increase the impact of the really big
cascades when they overwhelm a society's barricades,” argues Brunk. That’s entirely
correct.¶ ¶ What well-meaning activists and U.N. bureaucrats are trying to do is centrally
plan the world’s ecology. History suggests that that would work out about as well for
humanity and the natural world as centrally-planned economies did. ¶ ¶