baylor barron sheaff aff umkc round1

8/11/2019 Baylor Barron Sheaff Aff UMKC Round1

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1AC


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1AC PlanThe United States should legalize nearly all marihuana in the United States .


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Border region is a critical hotspot - no adaptationBGC 9 (Border Governors Conference, Strategic Guidelines for the Competitive and SustainableDevelopment of the U.S.- Mexico Transborder Region, Woodrow Wilson International Center for

Scholars, September, http://www.wilsoncenter.org/publication/strategic-guidelines-for-the-competitive-and-sustainable-development-the-us-mexico)

Due to its vastness the U.S.-Mexico border region encompasses an important wealth of natural resources and diverseecosystems . Freshwater, marine, and wetland ecosystems , deserts, rangelands, and several forest

types constitute sensitive and invaluable natural features . For example, the Chihuahuan Desert supports 350 of the 1 500

known species of cacti in the world. Many of these species are found only in single valleys. In the western region, the Sonoran Deserthas the greatest diversity of vegetation of any desert in the world . A prominent feature of the Chihuahuan andSonoran deserts is the occurrence of mountain ranges separated by extended valleys. These ranges provide habitats not present in thevalleys and host species that contribute to the biodiversity of the border territory . Urban settlements, along withagriculture and cattle ranches, generally occupy the valleys. Big waterways , like the Rio Grande or the Colorado River, traverse the

international border and support millions of people in large cities and rural towns. The Rio Grande or Ro Bravo, as it isknown in Mexico, ows through ve Mexican states and three U.S. states, and a dozen Native American nations. All rely on it forirrigation . From the headwaters in the Rocky Mountains, through the semi-arid Colorado Plateau and the arid Chihuahuan Desert, to its

nal subtropical ending in the Gulf of Mexico, the Rio Grande sustains a diversity of critical ecosystems and is

crucial for wildlife , including animals as diverse as beavers, bears, kangaroo rats, and migratory birds. The Colorado River also sustainsa very biodiverse region encompassing six U.S. states and two Mexican states. The ecosystems along the Colorado are facing unprecedentedpressure from economic activities. The ecosystems water needs are rare ly considered as agricultural production, industry, and a rapidly

growing urban population use all but a trickle of the rivers water. The Gulf of Mexico supports productive sheries , whichare largely dependent on the estuaries, lagoons, wetlands and fres hwater inows from the Rio Grande. The coastal habitats at themouth of the Rio Grande are particularly important as breeding grounds and maturation areas for

commercial sheries in the Gulf of Mexico . In the Pacic coastal area, a saltwater lagoon and slo ugh mark the seaward end ofthe Tijuana River within the Tijuana River National Estuarine Research Reserve (TRNERR). Established in 1982 to restore and preserve theintegrity of the estuary as a functioning ecosystem supporting a diversity of sh and wildl ife resources, this protected area encompasses 2 500

acres of beach, dune, mudat, saltmarsh, riparian, coastal sage, and upland habitats. The reserve is home to eight threatenedand endangered species , including the light-footed clapper rail and the California least tern among others.

That causes extinctionChivian 11 , Dr. Eric S. Chivian is the founder and Director of the Center for Health and the GlobalEnvironment (CHGE) at Harvard Medical School and directs the Biodiversity and Human Health Progam.He is also an Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. Chivian works with theUnited Nations on how to address the pressing environmental problems the world is facing. (SpeciesExtinction, Biodiversity Loss and Human Health , http://www.ilo.org/oshenc/part-vii/environmental-health-hazards/item/505-species-extinction-biodiversity-loss-and-human-health, 2011)

Human activity is causing the extinction of animal, plant and microbial species at rates that

are a thousand times greater than those which would have occurred naturally (Wilson l992),

approximating the largest extinctions in geological history . When homo sapiens evolved, some l00 thousand years ago,


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the number of species that existed was the largest ever to inhabit the Earth (Wilson l989). Current rates of species loss are reducing these levels to the lowest sincethe end of the Age of Dinosaurs, 65 million years ago, with estimates that one-fo urth of all species will become extinct in the next 50 years (Ehrlich and Wilson l99l).In addition to the ethical issues involved - that we have no right to kill off countless other organisms, many of which came into being tens of millions of years prior

to our arrival - this behaviour is ultimately self-destructive, upsetting the delicate ecological balance on which

all life depends, including our own , and destroying the biological diversity that makes soils fertile, creates the air we breathe andprovides food and other life-sustaining natural products, most of which remain to be discovered. The exponential growth in human population coupled with a n even

greater rise in the consumption of resources and in the production of wastes, are the main factors endangering the survival of o ther species. Globalwarming, acid rain, the depletion of stratospheric ozone and the discharge of toxic chemicals into the air,

soil and fresh- and salt-water ecosystems - all these ultimately lead to a loss of biodiversity. But it is habitat destruction

by human activities, particularly deforestation, that is the greatest destroyer. This is especially the case fo r tropicalrainforests. Less than 50% of the area originally covered by prehistoric tropical rainforests remains, but they are still being cut and burned at a rate of approximatelyl42,000 square kilometres each year, equal in area to the countries of Switzerland and the Netherlands combined; this is a loss of forest cover each second the size

of a football field (Wilson l992). It is this destruction which is primarily responsible for the mass extinction of

the worlds species . It has been estimated that there are somewhere between l0 million and l00 million different species on Earth. Even if aconservative estimate of 20 million total world species is used, then l0 million species would be found in tropical rainforests, and at current rates o f tropicaldeforestation, this would mean 27,000 species would be lost in tropical rainforests alone each year, or more than seventy -four per day, three each hour (Wilson

l992). This article examines the human health implications resulting from this widespread loss of biological diversity. It is the authors belief thatif people fully comprehended the effect these massive species extinctions will have - inforeclosing the possibility of understanding and treating many incurable diseases, and

ultimately, perhaps, in threatening human survival - then they would recognize that the

current rates of biodiversity loss represent nothing less than a slowly evolving medicalemergency and would demand that efforts to preserve species and ecosystems be given the highest priority.


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1AC Scenario 2Legalization of marijuana would legalize hemp under the CSA

Duppong 9 (Thomas A., J.D. candidate at the University of North Dakota School of Law, NOTE:INDUSTRIAL HEMP: HOW THE CLASSIFICATION OF INDUSTRIAL HEMP AS MARIJUANA UNDER THECONTROLLED SUBSTANCES ACT HAS CAUSED THE DREAM OF GROWING INDUSTRIAL HEMP IN NORTHDAKOTA TO GO UP IN SMOKE, 2009, 85 N. Dak. L. Rev. 403, Lexis)

Background of the Controlled Substances Act The CSA was initiated under Title II of the Comprehensive DrugPrevention and Control Act of 1970 . n128 The CSA went into effect on May 1, 1971. n129 It streamlined federal drug enforcement byreplacing more than fifty pieces of drug legislation. n130 The purpose of the CSA was to focus the federal government's efforts in curtailing the spread of drug use inAmer-ica. n131 The subsequent enforcement of the criminal and regulatory provisions [*417] of the CSA were consolidated into the DEA under the Department ofJustice in 1973. n132 By creating the CSA, the federal government established a single system of control for bo th narcotic and psychotropic dr ugs for the first time in

United States history. n133 In effect, the CSA makes it illegal "to manufacture, distribute, dispense, orpossess ... a controlled substance" except as authorized by the CSA . n134 An essential component of thisregulatory scheme was to implement a series of categories or "schedules" in order to distinguish potency among various drugs. n135 The CSA has implemented fiveschedules and determined various findings in order to properly classify each drug through three categories: (1) the drug' s potential of abuse; (2) its medical

relevance; and (3) the safety of use of the drug. n136 B. Classification of Marijuana Under the Controlled Substances Act The CSA classifiesmarijuana in the first category of schedules, placing it among the most harmful anddangerous drugs. n137 Marijuana meets the criteria for a Schedule I controlled substance because of its THC content, which is a psychoactivehallucinogenic substance with a high potential for abuse. n138 Another key classification made by the CSA regarding marijuana was its broad definition of the drug.

n139 The CSA defines marijuana as follows: The term ""marihuana" means all parts of the plantCannabis sativa L., whether growing or not; the seeds thereof; the resin extracted from anypart of such plant; and every compound, manufacture, salt, derivative, mixture, orpreparation of such plant, its seeds or resin. Such term does not include the mature stalks of such plant, fiber produced from suchstalks, oil or cake made from the seeds of such plant, any other compound, manufacture, salt, derivative, mixture, or preparation of such mature stalks (except

[*418] the resin extracted therefrom), fiber, oil, or cake, or the sterilized seed of such plant which is incapable of germination. n140 This effectivelyplaced the entire use of the hemp plant, whether for drug use or as industrial hemp, squarelyunder the control of the CSA. n141 Therefore, the DEA views industrial hemp containing .3%THCthe same as marijuana grown for drug use which commonly contains a 24% THC level , oreighty times more THC. n142 The CSA permits the United States Attorney General to establish theschedules of drugs in accordance with the CSA. n143 The Attorney General must consider several factors in determining whethera drug should be controlled or removed from the schedule. n144 Also, the Attorney General, when appropriate, is authorized to enforce any rules, regulations, and

procedures in order to execute the purpose of the CSA. n145 These duties have been shifted to the Administrator andDeputy Administrator of the DEA, which allows them to maintain or exempt substances fromthe schedule. n146 Accordingly, when the DEA executes rules regarding controlled substances, thenewly implemented rules have the full force of the law. n147 C. The DEA Issues New Rules The DEA's powerto make rulings on its regulation of industrial hemp is an important tool for the agency toinfluence the regulation of industrial hemp . n148 The most recent substantive rulings on industr ial hemp are pro-vided in the nexttwo sections to develop a better understanding of the [*419] proper role of the CSA as well as to present various regulatory issues facing American industrial hempproducers. Also, the subsequent section provides a brief overview of the DEA regist ration requirements, which is the basis to understand the purpose o f the North

Dakota registration requirements. 1. DEA Issues an "Interpretive Ruling" Since its inception , the DEA has interpreted every productthat contains any amount of THC to be a Schedule I controlled substance . n149 In response to increasedrequests for clarifications on industrial hemp law, the DEA, on October 9, 2001, issued an interpretive ruling. n150 The purpos e of the interpretive ruling was tomake clear that the listing of THC "refers to both natural and synthetic THC." n151 This ruling initiated a lawsuit from the Hemp Industries Association (HI A) becausethe ruling would have banned them from selling their products. n152 In Hemp Indus tries Association v. Drug Enforcement Administration (Hemp I), n153 Americanhemp importers challenged the validity of the DEA's interpretive ruling of October 9, 2001. n154 Since the ruling would have banned many industrial hemp products


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that the petitioners sold, the HIA petitioned the Ninth Circuit to declare the rule invalid. n155 The HIA argued that the interpretive r ule issued by the DEA waslegislative and, therefore, subjected the DEA to the notice and comment procedure required by the Administrative Procedures A ct (APA). n156 [*420] Whether theruling was interpretive or legislative was a critical determination because if the DEA's rule had the effect of a legislative rule, it would be invalid, because the agencycannot make legislative rules under the APA. n157 The DEA argued that its interpretative ruling did not have the effect of a legislative ruling. n158 However, thecourt concluded that because the interpretive ruling would have altered the way in which American hemp retailers could operate, it had the force of law. n159 Also,because the DEA did not post notice or co mment regarding the rule, the DEA did not properly implement the ruling even if it was a legislative rather than aninterpretive ruling. n160 The Ninth Circuit subsequently granted HIA's request and declared the ruling invalid. n161 2. DEA Issues a "Final Ruling" On March 21,2003, the DEA issued the agency's final rules regarding the listing of industrial hemp products containing THC. n162 The purpose of the rules was to clarify the DEA's

position that the CSA applied to both natur al and synthetic THC. n163 Although the Ninth Circuit held that the DEA's interpretive rule had the effect of a legislativerule, the DEA determined that the October 2001 rule was consistent with APA principles. n164 Acco rding to the DEA, the agency's final ruling only prohibited hempproducts that did not enter the human body, regardless of THC content. n165 It did not matter whether the product was grown naturally or synthetically. n166 TheDEA's examples of exempted industrial hemp products that contain THC included, but were not limited to, paper, rope, clothes, animal feed mixtures, and personalcare products. n167 The exemption effectively altered the scheduling from all products with THC to all products containing TH C, excluding products that are notused for human consumption. n168 The practical reason behind the DEA's exemption of industrial hemp products [*421] was due to the DEA's belief that theregulation of these products was not an appropriate prioritization of its time. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals permanently enjoined the enforcement of the finalrule. n169 In Hemp Industries Association v. Drug Enforcement Administration (Hemp II), n170 American importers of hemp chall enged the DEA's final rule, whichregulated any product that contained any amount of natural or synthetic THC. n171 The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals held that the DEA could regula te syntheticTHC of any kind. n172 However, the court also held that the D EA could not regulate naturally-occurring THC not contained within or derived from marijuanaproducts, because non-psychoactive hemp is not included in Schedule I. n173 The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals held that the DEA's definition of TH C contradictsthe "unambiguously expressed intent of Congress in the CSA" and therefore cannot be upheld. n174 Moreover, the court determined that the inclusion of hempproducts would place non-psychoactive industrial hemp in Schedule I for the first time and therefore voided the DEA's rule making THC applicable to all parts of the

Cannabis plant. n175 3. DEA Registration Requirements Although 21 C.F.R. 1308.35 exempted certain products fromthe CSA Schedule I list, the DEA clearly stated that the exemptions did not change the rule for

the manufacturing or cultivation of any THC-containing product, which still requiresregistration under the CSA . n176 Registration through the DEA is an essential component of the CSA as it "provides for control by the JusticeDepartment of problems related to drug abuse" and "makes transactions outside the legitimate distribution chain illegal." n177 The importanceplaced on registration and the ability of the DEA to control the manufacturing of THC-containing products has prohibited North [*422] Dakota farmers from growing industrial hemp eventhough the .3% THC content makes it illegal.

Hemp production solves deforestationWinterborne 12 director at Esoteric Hydroponics

*Jeffrey, 5/1. Medical Marijuana / Cannabis Cultivation: Trees of Life at the University of London +

Deforestation is a major threat. Hemp is an outstanding substitute for wood in the paperindustry as it is an extremely fast growing and renewable crop . Hemp can be harvested every three to four months whereas forests take many years to regenerate. One hectare of hemp yields the equivalent volume of usable fibre as 3-4hectares of forest . In short, one hectare of industrial hemp preserves 3-4 hectares of forest. Thegreenhouse effect is very much in the news at the moment. Interestingly. growing hemp is a very efficient way of absorbing carbondioxide, especially if it is used as a means of reducing deforestation. In addition, the hemp planthelps to replenish and detoxify the soil; it uses far less fertiliser, fungicides, herbicides or

pesticides than other crops. and it

needs less amounts of water too. Hemp grows well in a variety of climates and conditions

as long as they are frost-free tor at least 90 days or more per year. At the very least. hemp makes excellent green manure, especially when used as a rotational crop. Hemp stabilises and enriches the soil and ensures fieldsare free from weeds negating the needs and costs of herbicides. Its value on this point alone, even if no part of the plant is being utilised is immense. Any additional benefits. be they industrial or monetary, represent abonus.

Climate change puts deforestation on the brink reducing human causes is key toprevent tipping pointsCotter 14 Senior Scientist from Greenpeace International Science Unit


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[Janet, 3/31. "What does the IPCC WGII report say on forests?"www.greenpeace.org/international/Global/international/briefings/climate/2014/IPCC-WGII-Forests.pdf]

Deforestation accounts globally for about 12% of total man-made greenhouse gas emissions (GHG).Deforestation causes roughly the same GHG emissions as both transport (13%) and ag riculture (12%). Forests are

crucially important in soaking up humankinds GHG emissions . Unfortunately, deforestation largelycancels out this effect. While forests have taken up about 45% of the CO2 emissions to the atmosphere since 1750, this is roughlybalanced by emissions from deforestation. Climate change is an additional stressor for forest ecosystems .Increased tree mortality has occurred in some regions, notably western and boreal North America either as aresult of high temperatures, drought , and/or changes in the distribution and abundance of insect pests and diseaseswhich have been attributed, at least in part, to warming. In addition, the fire regime in the boreal forests has intensified in recent decades.

What do the findings mean in practice? For forests, mitigation and adaptation go together. I n order for humans to adapt toclimate change, we need forests because they provide essential services, such as water, food and raw materials . Maintaining forests as intact , i.e. as unbroken tracts of forest landscape, increasestheir resilience to climate change . This also enables the species living within them, to adapt to climate change and maintain

these services. For the Amazon, a combination of deforestation and climate change could to lead to a tipping point, where the forest cover could change rapidly into savannah. This would cause not only a loss in biodiversity, but release carbon to the atmosphere, leading to additional climate change . However, climate change alone will not cause this tipping point to be reached thiscentury, especially if warming remains below 2C. Reductions in deforestation rates will also navigate us awayfrom such a tipping point. The massive decline in deforestation rates for the BrazilianAmazon between the years 2005-2012 demonstrates 8hat policy-led approaches to curb deforestation canwork (see IPCC WG2 Ch. 4). However, the reverse is also true as witnessed by last years increases in deforestation in the Amazon as aresult of a severely weakened domestic forest policy. What Greenpeace says about climate change and forests Deforestation together withclimate change makes for a vicious cocktail. Climate change is expected to increase periods of drought in tropical forests. At the same time,

deforestation fragments the remaining forest, making it more vulnerable to drought-induced fires. Fires then release carbon, triggering even faster climate change. Last years massive forest fires in Indonesia were a starkreminder of what the future might look like if we do not end deforestation by the end of this decade.

Deforestation leads to extinctionWatson 6

Captain Paul Watson, Founder and President of Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. 9/17/06, ThePolitics of Extinction. http://www.eco-action.org/dt/beerswil.html

The destruction of forests and the proliferation of human activity will remove more than 20percent of all terrestrial plant species over the next fifty years. Because plants form thefoundation for entire biotic communities, their demise will carry with it the extinction of anexponentially greater number of animal species -- perhaps ten times as many faunal speciesfor each type of plant eliminated . Sixty-five million years ago, a natural cataclysmic event resulted in extinction of thedinosaurs. Even with a plant foundation intact, it took more than 100,000 years for faunal biological diversity to re-establish itself. Moreimportantly, the resurrection of bio logical diversity assumes an intact zone of tropical forests toprovide for new speciation after extinction. Today, the tropical rain forests are disappearing


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more rapidly than any other bio-region, ensuring that after the age of humans , the Earth will remain abiological, if not a literal desert for eons to come. The present course of civilization points to ecocide -- the death of nature. Like a run-a-

way train, civilization is speeding along tracks of our own manufacture towards the stone

wall of extinction . The human passengers sitting comfortably in their seats, laughing, partying, and choosing to not look out the

window. Environmentalists are those perceptive few who have their faces pressed against the glass, watching the hurling bodies of plants andanimals go screaming by. Environmental activists are those even fewer people who are trying desperately to break into the fortified engine ofgreed that propels this destructive specicidal juggernaut. Others are desperately throwing out anchors in an attempt to slow the monster downwhile all the while, the authorities, blind to their own impending destruction, are clubbing, shooting and jailing those who would save us all.SHORT MEMORIES Civilized humans have for ten thousand years been marching across the face of the Earth leaving deserts in their footprints.Because we have such short memories, we forgot the wonder and splendor of a virgin nature. We revise history and make it fit into our presentperceptions. For instance, are you aware that only two thousand years ago, the coast of North Africa was a mighty forest? The Phoenicians andthe Carthaginians built powerful ships from the strong timbers of the region. Rome was a major exporter of timber to Europe. The temple o fJerusalem was built with titanic cedar logs, one image of which adorns the flag of Lebanon today. Jesus Christ did not live in a desert, he was aman of the forest. The Sumerians were renowned for clearing the forests of Mesopotamia for agriculture. But the destruction of the coastalswath of the North African forest stopped the rain from advancing into the interior. Without the rain, the trees died and thus was born themighty Sahara, sired by man and continued to grow southward at a rate of ten miles per year, advancing down the length of the continent ofAfrica. And so will go Brazil. The precipitation off the Atlantic strikes the coastal rain forest and is absorbed and sent skyward again by thetrees, falling further into the interior. Twelve times the moisture falls and twelve times it is returned to the sky -- all the way to the Andesmountains. Destroy the coastal swath and desertify Amazonia -- it is as simple as that. Create a swath anywhere between the coast and themountains and the rains will be stopped. We did it before while relatively primitive. We learned nothing. We forgot. So too, have we forgottenthat walrus once mated and bred along the coast of Nova Scotia, that sixty million bison once roamed the North American plains. One hundredyears ago, the white bear once roamed the forests of New England and the Canadian Maritime provinces. Now it is called the polar bearbecause that is where it now makes its last stand. EXTINCTION IS DIFFICULT TO APPRECIATE Gone forever are the European elephant, lionand tiger. The Labrador duck, giant auk, Carolina parakeet will never again grace this planet of ours. Lost for al l time are the Atlantic greywhales, the Biscayan right whales and the Stellar sea cow. Our children will never look upon the California condor in the wild or watch the Palos

Verde blue butterfly dart from flower to flower. Extinction is a difficult concept to fully appreciate. What hasbeen is no more and never shall be again. It would take another creation and billions of yearsto recreate the passenger pigeon. It is the loss of billions of years of evolutionary programming. It is the destruction of beauty,the obliteration of truth, the removal of uniqueness, the scarring of the sacred web of life To be responsible for an extinction is to commitblasphemy against the divine. It is the greatest of all possible crimes, more evil than murder, more appalling than genocide, more monstrousthan even the apparent unlimited perversities of the human mind. To be responsible for the complete and utter destruction of a unique andsacred life form is arrogance that seethes with evil, for the very opposite of evil is live. It is no accident that these two words spell out eachother in reverse. And yet, a reporter in California recently told me that "all the redwoods in California are not worth the life on one humanbeing." What incredible arrogance. The rights a species, any species, must take precedence over the life of an individual or another species. Thisis a basic ecological law. It is not to be tampered with by primates who have molded themselves into divine legends in their own mind. For eachand every one of the thirty million plus species that grace this beautiful planet are essential for the continued well-being of which we are all apart, the planet Earth -- the divine entity which brought us forth from the fertility of her sacred womb. As a sea-captain I like to compare thestructural integrity of the biosphere to that of a ship's hull. Each species is a rivet that keeps the hull intact. If I were to go into my engine roomand find my engineers busily popping rivets from the hull, I would be upset and naturally I would ask them what they were doing. If they toldme that they discovered that they could make a dollar each from the rivets, I could do one of three things. I could ignore them. I could ask themto cut me in for a share of the profits, or I could kick their asses out of the engine room and off my ship. If I was a responsible captain, I woulddo the latter. If I did not, I would soon find the ocean pouring through the holes left by the stolen rivets and very shortly after, my ship, my crewand myself would disappear beneath the waves. And that is the state of the world today. The political leaders, i.e., the captains at the helms oftheir nation states, are ignoring the rivet poppers or they are cutting themselves in for the profits. There are very few asses being kicked out of

the engine room of spaceship Earth. With the rivet poppers in command, it will not be long until the biospheric

integrity of the Earth collapses under the weight of ecological strain and tides of death comepouring in. And that will be the price of progress -- ecological collapse, the death of nature,and with it the horrendous and mind numbing specter of massive human destruction.


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Deforestation leads to zoonotic diseaseSingh 13 PhD, Virologist working in the area of Emerging Viruses at Centre for Cellular and MolecularBiology

(Sunit, Viral Infections and Global Change, Googlebook)

Landscape changes that result in deforestation simultaneously impact climate change and the emergence ofviral zoonoses . Healthy forests sequester atmospheric carbon on a g lobal scale and stabilize temperature and rainfall patterns on a localscale (Patz and Olson, 2006). Large-scale development projects that result in extreme landscape changes , like mining and timberextraction in Central Africa, contribute to climate change through deforestation and facilitate the emergence ofzoonotic disease (Daszak et al., 2000; Wolfe et al., 2005, 2007). Deforestation facilitates contact betweenpeople and novel zoonotic viruses . For example, large-scale natural resource projects draw laborers and theirfamilies to extraction sites, resulting in increased population density and corresponding use ofthe forest itself. As people work and live in these degraded ecological systems, they may comeinto contact with novel zoonoses through direct contact such as hunting, butchering, and

consumption of wildlife (Bowen-Jones and Pendry, 1999; Wolfe et al., 2005) or through indirect contact includingecological overlap of human livelihood spaces with wildlife habitat. Selective deforestation, whereby humans extract high-value timber,increases spatial fragmentation, thereby increasing the variety of zoonotic pathogens that can infect huntersand humans engaged in other activities (Wolfe et al., 2005).

New zoonotic diseases cause extinction no burnout because infectivity precedessymptomsQuammen 12 award-winning science writer, long-time columnist for Outside magazine, writer forNational Geographic, Harper's, Rolling Stone, the New York Times Book Review and others, 9/29

(David, Could the next big animal -to- human disease wipe us out?, The Guardian, pg. 29, Lexis)

Infectious disease is all around us . It's one of the basic processes that ecologists study, along with predation and competition.Predators are big beasts that eat their prey from outside. Pathogens (disease-causing agents, such as viruses) are small beasts that eat their

prey from within. Although infectious disease can seem grisly and dreadful, under ordinary conditions, it's every bit as

natural as what lions do to wildebeests and zebras. But conditions aren't always ordinary . Just aspredators have their accustomed prey, so do pathogens. And just as a lion might occasionally depart from its normal behaviour - to kill a cow

instead of a wildebeest, or a human instead of a zebra - so a pathogen can shift to a new target. Aberrations occur . When a pathogenleaps from an animal into a person, and succeeds in establishing itself as an infectious presence, sometimes causing illness or death, the result

is a zoonosis . It's a mildly technical term, zoonosis, unfamiliar to most people, but it helps clarify the biological complexities behind the

ominous headlines about swine flu, bird flu, Sars, emerging diseases in general, and the threat of a global pandemic. It 's a word of thefuture, destined for heavy use in the 21st century . Ebola and Marburg are zoonoses. So is bubonic plague. So was the so-called Spanish influenza of 1918-1919, which had its source in a wild aquatic bird and emerged to kill as many as 50 million people. All of thehuman influenzas are zoonoses. As are monkeypox, bovine tuberculosis, Lyme disease, West Nile fever, rabies and a strange new affliction

called Nipah encephalitis, which has killed pigs and pig farmers in Malaysia. Each of these zoonoses reflects the action of a pathogen that can "spillover", crossing into people from other animals . Aids is a disease of zoonotic origin caused by a virusthat, having reached humans through a few accidental events in western and central Africa, now passes human-to-human. This form ofinterspecies leap is not rare; about 60% of all human infectious diseases currently known either cross routinely or have recently crossedbetween other animals and us. Some of those - notably rabies - are familiar, widespread and still horrendously lethal, killing humans by the


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thousands despite centuries of efforts at coping with their effects. Others are new and inexplicably sporadic, claiming a few victims or a few

hundred, and then disappearing for years. Zoonotic pathogens can hide. The least conspicuous strategy is tolurk within what's called a reservoir host: a living organism that carries the pathogen whilesuffering little or no illness . When a disease seems to disappear between outbreaks, it's often still lingering nearby, within somereservoir host. A rodent? A bird? A butterfly? A bat? To reside undetected is probably easiest wherever biological diversity is high and theecosystem is relatively undisturbed. The converse is also true: ecological disturbance causes diseases to emerge. Shake a tree and things fallout. Michelle Barnes is an energetic, late 40s-ish woman, an avid rock climber and cyclist. Her auburn hair, she told me cheerily, came from abottle. It approximates the original colour, but the original is gone. In 2008, her hair started falling out; the rest went grey "pretty muchovernight". This was among the lesser effects of a mystery illness that had nearly killed her during January that year, just after she'd returnedfrom Uganda. Her story paralleled the one Jaap Taal had told me about Astrid, with several key differences - the main one being that MichelleBarnes was still alive. Michelle and her husband, Rick Taylor, had wanted to see mountain gorillas, too. Their guide had taken them throughMaramagambo Forest and into Python Cave. They, too, had to clamber across those slippery boulders. As a rock climber, Barnes said, she tendsto be very conscious of where she places her hands. No, she didn't touch any guano. No, she was not bumped by a bat. By late afternoon theywere back, watching the sunset. It was Christmas evening 2007. They arrived home on New Year's Day. On 4 January, Barnes woke up feelingas if someone had driven a needle into her skull. She was achy all over, feverish. "And then, as the day went on, I started developing a rashacross my stomach." The rash spread. "Over the next 48 hours, I just went down really fast." By the time Barnes turned up at a hospital insuburban Denver, she was dehydrated; her white blood count was imperceptible; her kidneys and liver had begun shutting down. An infectiousdisease specialist, Dr Norman K Fujita, arranged for her to be tested for a range of infections that might be contracted in A frica. All came backnegative, including the test for Marburg. Gradually her body regained strength and her organs began to recover. After 12 days, she lefthospital, still weak and anaemic, still undiagnosed. In March she saw Fujita on a follow-up visit and he had her serum tested again for Marburg.

Again, negative. Three more months passed, and Barnes, now grey-haired, lacking her old energy, suffering abdominal pain, unable to focus,got an email from a journalist she and Taylor had met on the Uganda trip, who had just seen a news article. In the Netherlands, a woman haddied of Marburg after a Ugandan holiday during which she had visited a cave full of bats. Barnes spent the next 24 hours Googling every articleon the case she could find. Early the following Monday morning, she was back at Dr Fujita's door. He agreed to test her a third time forMarburg. This time a lab technician crosschecked the third sample, and then the first sample. The new results went to Fujita, who calledBarnes: "You're now an honorary infectious disease doctor. You've self-diagnosed, and the Marburg test came back positive." The Marburgvirus had reappeared in Uganda in 2007. It was a small outbreak, affecting four miners, one o f whom died, working at a site called Kitaka Cave.But Joosten's death, and Barnes's diagnosis, implied a change in the potential scope of the situation. That local Ugandans were dying ofMarburg was a severe concern - sufficient to bring a response team of scientists in haste. But if tourists, too, were involved, tripping in and outof some python-infested Marburg repository, unprotected, and then boarding their return flights to other continents, the place was not just aperil for Ugandan miners and their families. It was also an international threat. The first team of scientists had collected about 800 bats fromKitaka Cave for dissecting and sampling, and marked and released more than 1,000, using beaded collars coded with a number. T hat team,including scientist Brian Amman, had found live Marburg virus in five bats. Entering Python Cave after Joosten's death, another team ofscientists, again including Amman, came across one of the beaded collars they had placed on captured bats three months earlier and 30 milesaway. "It confirmed my suspicions that these bats are moving," Amman said - and moving not only through the forest but from one roostingsite to another. Travel of individual bats between far-flung roosts implied circumstances whereby Marburg virus might ultimately betransmitted all across Africa, from one bat encampment to another. It voided the comforting assumption that this virus is strictly localised. Andit highlighted the complementary question: why don't outbreaks of Marburg virus disease happen more often? Marburg is only on e instance to

which that question applies. Why not more Ebola? Why not more Sars? In the case of Sars , the scenario could have been verymuch worse . Apart from the 2003 outbreak and the aftershock cases in early 2004, it hasn't recurred. . . so far. Eight thousand cases arerelatively few for such an explosive infection; 774 people died, not 7 million. Several factors contributed to limiting the scope and impact of theoutbreak, of which humanity's good luck was only one. Another was the speed and excellence of the laboratory diagnostics - finding the virusand identifying it. Still another was the brisk efficiency with which cases were isolated, contacts were traced and quarantine measures were

instituted, first in southern China, then in Hong Kong, Singapore, Hanoi and Toronto. If the virus had arrived in a different

sort of big city - more loosely governed, full of poor people, lacking first-rate medical institutions - it might have burned

through a much larger segment of humanity. One further factor, possibly the most crucial, was inherent in the way Sars

affects the human body: symptoms tend to appear in a person before, rather than after, that person becomes highly infectious. That allowedmany Sars cases to be recognised, hospitalised and placed in isolation before they hit their peak of infectivity. With influenza and many other

diseases, the order is reversed. That probably helped account for the scale of worldwide misery and death during the 1918 -1919influenza . And that infamous g lobal pandemic occurred in the era before globalisation . Everything nowadays moves aroundthe planet faster, including viruses. When the Next Big One comes, it will likely conform to the same

perverse pattern as the 1918 influenza: high infectivity preceding notable symptoms . That

will help it move through cities and airports like an angel of death . The Next Big One is a subject that


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disease scientists around the world often address. The most recent big one is Aids, of which the eventual total bigness cannot even be

predicted - about 30 million deaths, 34 million living people infected, and with no end in sight. Fortunately, not every virus goesairborne from one host to another. If HIV-1 could, you and I might already be dead. If the rabies viruscould, it would be the most horrific pathogen on the planet. The influenzas are well adapted forairborne transmission , which is why a new strain can circle the world within days. The Sars virus travels this route, too, or anyway bythe respiratory droplets of sneezes and coughs - hanging in the air of a hotel corridor, moving through the cabin of an aeroplane - and thatcapacity, combined with its case fatality rate of almost 10%, is what made it so scary in 2003 to the people who understood it best.

Human-to-human transmission is the crux. That capacity is what separates a bizarre, awful, localised ,intermittent and mysterious disease (such as Ebola) from a global pandemic . Have you noticed the persistent, low-level buzzabout avian influenza, the strain known as H5N1, among disease experts over the past 15 years? That's because avian flu worries them deeply,though it hasn't caused many human fatalities. Swine flu comes and goes periodically in the human population (as it came and went during2009), sometimes causing a bad pandemic and sometimes (as in 2009) not so bad as expected; but avian flu resides in a different category ofmenacing possibility. It worries the flu scientists because they know that H5N1 influenza is extremely virulent in people, with a high lethality. Asyet, there have been a relatively low number of cases, and it is poorly transmissible, so far, from human to human. It'll kill you if you catch it,very likely, but you're unlikely to catch it except by butchering an infected chicken. But if H5N1 mutates or reassembles itself in just the rightway, if it adapts for human-to-human transmission, it could become the biggest and fastest killer disease since 1918. It got to Egypt in 2006and has been especially problematic for that country. As of August 2011, there were 151 confirmed cases, of which 52 were fatal. Thatrepresents more than a quarter of all the world's known human cases of bird flu since H5N1 emerged in 1997. But here's a critical fact: thoseunfortunate Egyptian patients all seem to have acquired the virus directly from birds. This indicates that the virus hasn't yet found an efficientway to pass from one person to another. Two aspects of the situation are dangerous, according to biologist Robert Webster. The first is thatEgypt, given its recent political upheavals, may be unable to staunch an outbreak of transmissible avian flu, if one occurs. His second concern isshared by influenza researchers and public health officials around the globe: with all that mutating, with all that contact between people andtheir infected birds, the virus could hi t upon a genetic configuration making it highly transmissible among people. "As long as H5N1 is out there

in the world," Webster told me, " there is the possibility of disaster . . . There is the theoretical possibility that it can acquire

the ability to transmit human-to-human." He paused. "And then God help us." We're unique in the history of mammals. No otherprimate has ever weighed upon the planet to anything like the degree we do . In ecological terms, we are

almost paradoxical: large-bodied and long-lived but grotesquely abundant. We are an outbreak . And here's the thing

about outbreaks: they end . In some cases they end after many years, in others they end rather soon. In some cases they endgradually, in others they end with a crash. In certain cases, they end and recur and end again. Populations of tent caterpillars, for example,seem to rise steeply and fall sharply on a cycle of anywhere from five to 11 years. The crash endings are dramatic, and for a long while theyseemed mysterious. What could account for such sudden and recurrent collapses? One possible factor is infectious disease, and viruses inparticular.


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1AC Scenario 3Scenario 2 is Agriculture

Legalization benefits sustainable ag -- efficiency, irrigation strategies and fertilizer

researchGrover 13 (Sami, November 13 th , Why the legalization of marijuana may be good for agriculture,http://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/politics/stories/why-the-legalization-of-marijuana-may-be-good-for-agriculture, AB)

The growing availability of legalized (and semi-legalized) marijuana may have implications for all of us from a

massive increase in tax revenues to new employment opportunities. Take sustainable farming , for instance. Traditionally, covert

marijuana growers have earned themselves a bad rap , at least environmentally speaking. From indoor growers' massive consumption of electricity to deforestation and agricultural pollution ,a lack of regulation combined with the promise of massive cash rewards have led to an "anything goes"

mentality , which has resulted in significant harm in the past. But growers have also learned to be resourceful , and TheGuardian reports that their use of energy-efficient LED grow lights in particular is getting attention frommainstream farmers: Cary Mitchell , a professor of horticulture at Purdue University, thinks the marijuana industry'swork with LED technology might have practical applications in mainstream commercial agriculture . [...]"They've undoubtedly been doing this for years and years ," Mitchell says about the cannabis growers' use of LEDs. " Since

they don't publish their research , we don't really know how far they've taken the optimization . They

probably are ahead of the specialty crop commercial production industry." Energy-efficiency isn't the

only benefit that may come with legalization. From better management of irrigation to monitoring offertilizer runoff , bringing the industry out in the open has the potential to greatly mitigate the

harmful impacts of cultivation . As I've speculated before, marijuana growing may also provide a gateway for

some young people into horticulture as a profession.

Legalization allows sustainable tech to spillover to the commercial ag marketKennedy 13 (Bruce is an award-winning journalist and communications professional who has coveredinternational news, including business reportage, for MSN Money, CNN, NPR, Reuters Television andAOL's Daily Finance web site, Greener marijuana: can a budding industry grow sustainableagriculture?, http://www.theguardian.com/su stainable-business/hubs-energy-efficiency1, AB)

In a nondescript, unmarked warehouse in Denver's industrial outskirts, row upon row of marijuana plants ranging from little cuttings to

tree-like bushes extend into virtual cannabis forests. A tropical atmosphere comes from carefullyregulated humidity and lighting controls in each room , assisted by fans and vents. This "grow" facility belongs tomedical marijuana center Denver Relief, and it boasts something else besides healthy buds: state-of-the-art LED technology

that offers the potential to dramatically cut energy consumption , not only for marijuana, but also for

other large-scale commercial agriculture . After decades of history as an outlawed business, complete with incidents of

violence and destruction, the US marijuana industry is maturing . While possessing and selling marijuana is still a federal crime,medical marijuana is now legal in 20 states, plus Washington DC, which together make up more than one-third of the country. Beginning in


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environmental responsibility to its customers and communities, especially if it is to become further

decriminalized

Reforming industrial ag key to solve extinctionRonnie Cummins , International Director of the Organic Consumers Association, 10/7/ 10 (Agricultureand Human Survival: The Road Beyond 10/10/10, http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/10/07-9)

Despite decades of deception and mystification, a critical mass at the g rassroots is waking up. A new generation of food and climate activists

understands that greenhouse gas-belching fossil fuels, industrial food and farming , and our entire global economy pose a

mortal threat , not just to our present health and well being, but also to human survival . Given the severity ofthe Crisis, we have little choi ce but to step up our efforts. As 35,000 climate activists at the historic globa l climate summ it in April of 2010 in Cochabamba, Bolivia shouted, We must changethe System, not the climate. Changing the System, means defending our selves, the future generations, and the biological carrying capacity of the planet from the ravages of profit at anycost capitalism. Changing the System, means safeguarding our delicately balan ced climate, soils, oceans, and atmosphere from the fatal consequences of fossil fuel-induced climate change.Changing the System means exposing, dismantling, and replacing, not just individual out -of-control corporations like Monsanto, Halliburton, and British Petroleum, and out-of-controltechnologies like gene-altered crops and mountaintop removal; but our entire chemical and energy- intensive industrial economy, starting, at least for many of us , with Food Inc.s destructivesystem of industrial food a nd farming. Changing the system, means going on the offensive and dismantling the most controversial and vulnerable flanks of our suicide economy: coal plants,

gas guzzlers, the military- industrial complex, and industrial agricultures Genetically Modifi ed Organisms (GMOs) and factory farms. Frankenfoods and Industrial Agriculture Highly subsidizedGM crops - comprising 40% of U.S. cropland, and 10% of global crops - and the junk food and unhealthy processed foods and beverages derived from them, are the most profitable andstrategically important components of industrial agriculture. Taxpayer subsidized GMOs and factory farms allow Food Inc. (corporate agribusiness) to poison the public and pollute theatmosphere and environment. Subsidized GM and monoculture crops - along with cheap soy, corn, and chemical additives - allow the McDonalds, Cargills and Wal -Marts of the world to sell

junk food, meat, and beverages at much lower prices than healthy, non-chemical foods. GMO crops and their compani on pesticides and chemical fertilizers arethe cash cows and vanguard of a global farming and food distribution system that consumesprodigious amounts of fossil fuels and emits tremendous amount of climate-destabilizing greenhousegases . GMOs provide the ideological and technological foundation for the factory farms and mono-crop plantations that aredestroying the climate, the soils, and the planet. Either we bring them down, or they will bring usdown . According to Monsanto and the global war on bugs, war on biodiversity, chemical farming lobby, patented GMO seeds, crops, biofuels, animals, and trees can miraculously killpests, reduce pesticide use, boost yields, alleviate world hunger, reduce petroleum use, and help farmers adapt to drought, pestilence, and global warming. As a growing "Millions AgainstMonsanto" corps understand, the Biotech Bullies are dangerous liars. Industrial agriculture, GMOs, and so-called cheap food have destroyed public health and wrecked the environment.Genetically Modified (GM) crops have neither reduced pesticide use, nor chemical fertilizer use. They kill pests, but they also give rise to superweeds and superpests. GM crops, like allindustrial monoculture crops, use vast amounts of fossil fuel and water. GMO and their companion chemicals (pesticides and chemical fertilizers) destroy the greenhouse gas sequesteringcapacity of living soils and kill off non- patented plants, trees, and animals. Most GM crops, 90% of which are derived from Monsantos patented seeds, are genetically engineered to boost thesales of toxic pesticides such as Roundup, and thereby increase toxic pesticide residues in foods. GM crops do not produce higher yields, nor provide more nutritious foods. GM soybeans, themost important industrial agriculture crop, along with corn, consistently have lower yields, while chemical-intensive GM food crops contain far fewer vitamins and essential trace minerals thanorganic foods. Nor has gene-splicing (unlike organic farming) produced plant or tr ee varieties that can adapt to global warming. Nonetheless GM crops remain Food Inc.s propaganda posterchild. The unfortunate bottom line is that 65 years of chemical and GM agriculture, a literal World War Three on public heal th, rural communities, and the environment, have nearly killed us.Humans and our living environment have been poisoned, not only by pesticides, nitrate fertilizers, greenhouse gas pollution, and contaminated factory-farmed food, but also by the mutantorganisms and patented chemical residues that accompany these genetically modified foods and crops. Either we make the Great Transition to a relocalized economy whose foundation isrenewable energy and solar-based (as opposed to GMO and petroleum-based) organic food and fiber production, or else we are destined to burn up the planet and destroy ourselves. Despitemass media brainwashing (Better living through chemistry Monsanto can feed the world GMO crops and trees can reduce fossil fuel use and climate-destabilizing greenhouse ga ses),consumers and farmers are seeing through the lies. Defying the efforts of the powerful industrial agriculture/biotech lobby, a growing number of activists and concerned citizens areconnecting the dots and taking action. As a consequence Monsanto has become one of the most hated corporations on earth. A critical mass of research reveals that genetically engineeredcrops, now covering almost 40% of U.S. cropland (173 million acres of GM crops) and 10% of global farm acreage (321 million acres), pollute the environment, kill essential soil micro-organisms, generate superweeds and pests, decrease biodiversity, aid and abet seed monopolization, encourage massive use of toxic pesticides and chemical fertilizer, spew out massiveamounts of climate-destabilizing greenhouse gases, and seriously damage animal and human health. Injecting genetically engineered hormones into dairy cows to force them to give more milkis reckless and dangerous. Monsantos genetically engineered Bovine Growth Hormone rBGH, now mar keted by Eli Lilly, increases the risks of breast, prostate, and colon cancer for those whoconsume the milk. It also severely damages the health of the cows. Residue levels of Monsantos toxic he rbicide, Roundup, fou nd routinely in non-organic foods, destroy animal and humanreproductive systems. Haphazardly ramming indeterminate amounts of patented foreign DNA, bacteria, and antibiotic-resistant genes into the genomes of already non-sustainable energy andpesticide-intensive crops and foods (corn, soy, cotton, canola, sugar beets, alfalfa) in order to increase the sales of Monsanto or Bayer's GMO companion herbicides or to facilitate monopolycontrol over seeds by the Gene Giants is not only non-sustainable, but criminal. Rejection of this out-of-control GM technology is a major driving force in the rapid growth of organic food andfarming, as well as the growing demand for mandatory safety testing and labeling of GMOs. In the EU, where GM-tainted foods must be labeled, GMO crops are almost non-existent (although

large quantities of GM animal feed are still being imported into the EU from the U.S., Canada, Brazil, and Argentina). Local and organic food production is nowgrowing faster than GMO/industrial food and farming; improving public health and nutrition, reducing fossil fuel use andgreenhouse gas pollution, sequestering billions of tons of CO2 in the soil (up to seven tons of CO2 per acre peryear), and providing economic survival for a growing number of the worlds 2.8 billion small farmers and rural villagers. The growth oforganic agriculture and relocalized food and farming systems are encouraging, but obviously organicsare still the alternative, rather than the norm. As we enter into the Brave New World of global warming and climate chaos,many organic advocates are starting to realize that we need to put more emphasis, not just on the health and pollution hazards of GMOs; butrather we need to broaden our efforts and mobilize to abolish the entire system of industrial food and farming. As we are now learning,


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industrial agriculture and factory farming are in fact a primary (if not the primary ) cause of global warming

and deforestation . Even if were able to rip up all of Monsantos GMO crops tomorrow, business as usual, chemical-intensive,

energy-intensive industrial agriculture is enough to kill us all. On the other hand, if were going to take down industrial agriculture, one ofthe best ways to leverage our efforts is to target the most hated corporation in the world, Monsanto. Besides contaminating our food, destroying the environment and moving, by any meansnecessary, to gain monopoly control over seeds and biodiversity, Monsanto and their Food Inc. collaborators are guilty of maj or climate crimes. These crimes include: confusing the publicab out the real causes of (and solutions to) global warming; killing the soils ability to sequester greenhouse gas es; releasing massive amounts of greenhouse gases (CO2, methane and nitrous

oxide) into the atmosphere; promoting bogus industrial corn and soy-derived biofuels (which use just as many fossil fuel, and release just as many greenhouse gases as conventional fuels);monopolizing seed stocks and taking climate-friendly varieties off the market; promoting genetically engineered trees; and last but not least, advocating dangerous geoengineering schemessuch as massive GM plantations of trees or plants than reflect sunlight. The negotiators and heads of state at the December 2009 Copenhagen Climate negotiations abandoned the summitwith literally no binding agreement on meaningful greenhouse gas (carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide, methane, and black carbon) reduction, and little or no acknowledgement of the major rolethat industrial food and farming practices play in g lobal warming. Lulled by the worlds lead ers vague promises to reduce global warming, and still believing that new technologicalbreakthroughs can save us, the average citizen has no idea how serious the present climate crisis actually is. A close look at present (non-legally binding) pledges by the Obama Administrationand other governments to reduce GHG pollution shows that their proposed, slightly modified busin ess as usual practices will still result in a disastrous global average temperature increase of3.5 to 3.9 C by 2100, according to recent studies. This will not only burn up the Amazon, the lungs of the planet, but also transform the Arctic into a region that is 10 to 16 degrees C warmer,releasing most of the regions permafrost carbon and methane and unknown quantities of methane hydrates, in the process basically putting an end to human beings ability to live on theplanet. We are literally staring disaster in the face. In the follow up to the Copenhagen Climate Summit this year, which is to be held in Cancun, Mexico (Nov. 29-Dec. 10) we, as members ofglobal civil society, must raise our voices loud and clear. We must make it clear that we are years, not decades away, from detonating runaway feedback mechanisms (heating up and burning

up the Amazon and melting the Arctic permafrost) that can doom us all. Industrial Food and Farming: A Deadly Root of Global Warming Although transportation,industry, and energy producers are obviously major fossil fuel users and greenhouse gas polluters, not enough people

understand that the worst U.S. and global greenhouse gas emitter is Food Incorporated, transnational industrial food

and farming , of which Monsanto and GMOs constitute a major part. Industrial farming, including 173 million acres of GE soybeans, corn,cotton, canola, and sugar beets, accounts for at least 35% of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions (EPAs ridiculously low estimates range from 7% to

12%, while some climate scientists feel the figure could be as high as 50% or more). Industrial agriculture , biofuels, and non-sustainablecattle grazing - including cutting down the last remaining tropical rainforests in Latin America and Asia for GMO and chemical-intensive animal

feed and biofuels - are also the main driving forces in global deforestation and wetlands destruction, whichgenerate an additional 20% of all climate destabilizing GHGs. In other words the direct (food, fiber, and biofuelsproduction, food processing, food dis tribution) and indirect damage (deforestation and destruction of wetlands) of industrialagriculture , GMOs, and the food industry are the major cause of global warming. Unless we take down Monsanto andFood Inc. and make the Great Transition to a relocalized system of organic food and farming, we and ourchildren are doomed to reside in Climate Hell.


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1AC Scenario 4Scenario 3 is WarmingLegalization leads to greater disclosure of energy usage- its key to solve air pollutionand warmingElkind 14 (Ethan, Climate Policy Associate with a joint appointment at UC Berkeley School of Law andUCLA School of Law/taught at UCLA Law Schools Frank Wells Environmental Law Clinic, February 10 th 2014, How Legalizing Marijuana Could Help Fight Climate Change, http://legal -planet.org/2014/02/10/how-legalizing-marijuana-could-help-fight-climate-change/, AB)

Now that the two states that jus t legalized marijuana sent their football teams to the Supe rbowl this year, its clear that the stars arealigning for legalizing marijuana nationwide . Sure, legalizing marijuana makes fiscal , moral, and

practical sense, but what about the benefits to the environment ? Well, it turns out that even the fight

against climate change could potentially be enhanced by making cannabis and the grow

operations that produce it legal .It starts with the grow sites. Regular Legal Planet readers may recall co-blogger Rick

Frank writing about the local hazards and pollution caused by illegal grow operations on public lands. But theres another, potentially

broader environmental issue at stake with legalizing and mainstreaming grow operations : enabling

the improved collection of energy data to help target energy conservation and efficiency

programs . Energy data are critical to the fight against climate change and other harmful

forms of air pollution . Policy makers , especially here in California (as represented by Ken Alex, Legal Planet guest blogger

and senior advisor to Governor Jerry Brown), would like to get a better sense of where the most energy isbeing used. If they could access energy data by neighborhoods, industry, and time of use , among

other categories, policy makers could target the most inefficient customers with incentives and

rates to become more efficient . Reducing this electricity usage would have major benefits in

terms of reducing air pollution (including greenhouse gas emissions ) from power plants andsaving ratepayers money from the avoided construction of new plants . Not to mention that the

customers themselves would be nefit from paying for less electricity . So wha t is standing in the way of

giving policy makers access to the vital data? Privacy concerns . Even though the energy data are anonymized andaggregated, a vocal segment of ratepayers doesnt like even the remote possibility that the government could use these data t o know when

youre ho me, when you leave for work, or how your business operates. Overall, most people have little to hide when it

comes to electricity usage. But indoor marijuana growers sure do , and they are quietly constituting a

major force in opposition to greater disclosure of energy data . And they have reason for concern. Indocumented cases, police have issued subpoenas for electricity data to bust pot growers. This is not a small industry either: a 2012 study by

Evan Mills of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (the Lab was not involved in his work) indicated that these grow operationscould be responsible for up to 2% of nationwide household electricity usage, at a total cost of$6 billion (in fact, the growers themselves may be our first target for implementing improved efficiency measures, given their potentially

wasteful, unregulated ways). So its not a stretch to think that legalizing marijuana nationwide, and allowing

commercial grow operations to proceed in a regulated fashion, could have the additional


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benefit of defusing some of the major privacy objections to releasing environmentally

beneficial energy data . Of course, the privacy objections arent just limited to marijuana growers, and even with legalization, some

residential growers may still want or need to remain anonymous. But sensible marijuana policies could make amajor difference in alleviating privacy concerns, unlocking the data that can lead to sound

and strategic energy efficiency programs.

Energy disclosure is the biggest and best internal link to stopping runaway warmingFagotto and Graham 13 (Elena, Ph.D. at Erasmus University Rotterdam and senior researcher atHarvard University and Mary is a research fellow at both KSG and the Georgetown University LawCenter, http://issues.org/2 3-4/fagotto-2/ , Full Disclosure: Using Transparency to Fight ClimateChange, November 27 th , AB)

An essential first step in any effective climate change policy is to require major contributors

to fully disclose their greenhouse gas emissions . Congressional leaders are finally working

seriously on long term-approaches to counter climate change . But all the major proposals leave

a critical policy gap because they would not take effect for at least five years . Meanwhile, U.S.

greenhouse gas emissions continue to increase , and company executives continue to make decisions that

lock in the emissions of future power plants, factories, and cars. Congress could fill that policy gap now by

requiring greater transparency . In the immediate future, legislating product labeling and factory reporting of

greenhouse gas emissions would make markets work bette r. Such disclosure would expose

inefficiencies and allow investors , business partners , employees , community residents , andconsumers to compare cars , air conditioners , lawn mowers , and manufacturing plants . As people

factored that information into everyday choices , company executives would have new incentives to

cut emissions sooner rather than later . Greater transparency would also help jump start whatever

cap-and-trade or other regulatory approach emerges from the current congressional debate. A carefully constructed

transparency system is therefore an essential element of U.S. climate change strategy . Such a

system would fill a legislative void and provide immediate benefits as Congress continues its

debate. Congress is debating long-term approaches to climate change. Barbara Boxer (D-CA), chair of the Senate Environment and PublicWorks Committee, and John Dingell (D-MI), chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, are holding wide-ranging hearings, andSpeaker Nancy Pelosi (DCA) has created a select committee to coordinate climate change action in the House. Three major bills proposevariations on a cap-and-trade approach to cutting greenhouse gas e missions. All combine industry emission limits or caps with government -created markets for trading emission permits. The bills differ mainly in the p rogressive severity of caps and in how they are set. The mostambitious proposal, introduced by Boxer and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), proposes caps that would reduce emissions to 80% below 1990 levels

by 2050. Ironically, though, even if the 110th Congress approves some variation on a cap-and-trade approach, the new

law will not create any immediate incentives for manufacturers, power providers, factory

farms, and other major contributors to reduce emissions . If President Bush signed such legislation in 2008, his


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action would only signal the beginning of another debate over the rules that would govern the system. That debate is likely to belong and acrimonious because the fine print of the regulations will determine which companies are the realwinners or losers from government action . Regulations will govern the mechanics of tradingemission permits, the allocation of caps among industries and companies, and the timing of

compliance all costly and contentious issues for energy-intensive businesses. Such delay may be inevitable but its

costs will be high . Even conservative projections conclude that U.S . greenhouse gas

emissions will continue to increase rapidly during the next decade and will produce increasingly serious

consequences. The administrations latest climate action report , circulated in draft, projects that a 19% increasein emissions between 2000 and 2020 will contribute to persistent drought, coastal flooding, and water shortages in many parts of thecountry and around the world. That increase could be as high as 30% under a business-as-usual scenario. The U.S. Environmental ProtectionAgency (EPA) reports that carbon dioxide emissions, the most common greenhouse gas, increased by 20% from 1990 to 2005, and emissions ofthree more potent fluorinated gases, hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocompounds, and sulfur hexafluoride, weighted for their relative

contribution to climate change, increased by 82.5%. The United States still holds the dubious distinction of

being the worlds largest producer of greenhouse gases . Each large contributor to increasing U.S. g reenhouse

gas emissions has a unique story. Carbon dioxide emissions from generating electricity, responsible for 41% of total U.S. emissions from fossilfuel combustion in 2005, continue to increase faster than energy use because dramatic increases in the price of natural gas have led somepower providers to increase their reliance on coal. The most recent estimates of the federal Energy Information Administration project thatsuch emissions will increase 1.2% a year from 2005 to 2030. (The burning of petroleum and natural gas results in 25% and 45% less carbonemissions per unit respectively than does the burning of coal.) Power companies are investing now in facilities that will shape the next half-century of electricity generation and the next half-century of greenhouse gas emissions. Many of the more than 100 new coal-fired powerplants on the drawing boards will have useful lives of 50 years or more. Carbon emissions from the incineration of municipal solid waste, noteven including paper and yard trimmings, increased 91% from 1990 to 2005 as more plastics, synthetic rubber, and other wastes frompetroleum products were burned. Carbon emissions from cement manufacture increased 38% as construction activity increased to meet thedemands of the growing U.S. economy. Carbon emissions from the burning of gasoline, diesel fuel, and jet fuel to power cars, trucks, planes,and other forms of transportation increased 32% during the same period because of increased travel and the stagnation of fue l efficiency

across the U.S. vehicle fleet, according to th e EPA. Executives will need powerful incentives to alter current

plans in order to make significant reductions in greenhouse gas emissions any time soon .

Most are understandably reluctant to place their companies at a competitive disadvantage by

making bold and often costly emission-cutting moves unilaterally . In fact, the prolonged congressional debate maymake executives more reluctant to act early since their companies may reap large emission-cutting credits once regulations take effect. So far,

neither the administration nor Congress has come up with any way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the next critical years. A

carefully constructed transparency system would mobilize the power of public opinion ,

inform choice , and help markets work better now . Requiring disclosure for each proposed and

existing major factory and power plant as well as for each new car, truck, furnace, refrigerator, and other energy-intensive product would

expose their relative carbon efficiencies as well as their total contributions to such

emissions. Once disclosed , emissions data could be used by mayors and governors to design and carry out

emission-reduction plans ; by local zoning and permitting authorities to place conditions on

the construction or alteration of plants ; by investors to more accurately predict material risks;by consumers to choose among cars, air conditioners, and heating systems ; and by employees to decide where they want towork. Environmental groups, industry associations, and local and national media could use theinformation to help to pinpoint the most inefficient factories and cars.


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Warming is real and anthropogenicProthero 12

(M.A., M.Phil., and Ph.D. degrees in geological sciences from Columbia University, and a B.A. in geologyand biology from the University of California, Riverside, Professor of Geology at Occidental College in Los

Angeles, and Lecturer in Geobiology at the California Institute of Technology, How We Know GlobalWarming is Real and Human Caused Skeptic. Altadena: 2012. Vol. 17, Iss. 2; pg. 14, 10 pgs, proquest)

How do we know that global warming is real and primarily human caused ? There are numerous lines of

evidence that converge toward this conclusion. 1. Carbon Dioxide Increase . Carbon dioxide in our atmosphere

has increased at an unprecedented rate in the past 200 years. Not one data set collected over a long enough span of time shows

otherwise. Mann et al. (1999) compiled the past 900 years' worth of temperature data from tree rings, icecores, corals, and direct measurements in the past few centuries, and the sudden increase of temperature of the past century stands outlike a sore thumb. This famous graph is now known as the "hockey stick" because it is long and straight through most of its length, thenbends sharply upward at the end like the blade of a hockey stick. Other graphs show that climate was very stable within a narrow range ofvariation through the past 1000, 2000, or even 10,000 years since the end of the last Ice Age. There were minor warming events during theClimatic Optimum about 7000 years ago, the Medieval Warm Period, and the slight cooling of the Little Ice Age in die 1700s and 1800s. But

the magnitude and rapidity of the warming represented by the last 200 years is simply

unmatched in all of human history. More revealing, die timing of this warming coincides with the Industrial Revolution, whenhumans first began massive deforestation and released carbon dioxide into the atmosphere by burning an unprecedented amount of coal,

gas, and oil. 2. Melting Polar Ice Caps . The polar icecaps are thinning and breaking up at an

alarming rate . In 2000, my former graduate advisor Malcolm McKenna was one of the first humans to fly over the North Pole insummer time and see no ice, just open water. The Arctic ice cap has been frozen solid for at least the past 3 million years (and maybe

longer),4 but now the entire ice sheet is breaking up so fast that by 2030 (and possibly sooner) less thanhalf of the Arctic will be ice covered in the summer. 5 As one can see from watching the news, this is anecological disaster for everything that lives up there, from the polar bears to the seals and walruses to the animals they feed upon, to the 4million people whose world is melting beneath their feet. The Antarctic is thawing even faster. In February-March 2002, the Larsen B iceshelf - over 3000 square km (the size of Rhode Island) and 220 m (700 feet) thick- broke up in just a few months, a story typical of nearly allthe ice shelves in Antarctica. The Larsen B shelf had survived all the previous ice ages and interglacial warming episodes over the past 3million years, and even the warmest periods of the last 10,000 years- yet it and nearly all the other thick ice sheets on the Arctic,

Greenland, and Antarctic are vanishing at a rate never before seen in geologic history. 3. Melting Glaciers . Glaciers are

all retreating at the highest rates ever documented . Many of those glaciers, along with snow melt, especially inthe Himalayas, Andes, Alps, and Sierras, provide most of the freshwater that the populations below the mountains depend upon - yet thisfresh water supply is vanishing. Just think about the percentage of world's population in southern Asia (especially India) that depend on

Himalayan snowmelt for their fresh water. The implications are staggering. The permafrost that once remained solidly frozen even inthe summer has now thawed, damaging the Inuit villages on the Arctic coast and threatening all

our pipelines to die North Slope of Alaska. This is catastrophic not only for life on the permafrost, but as it thaws, thepermafrost releases huge amounts of greenhouse gases which are one of the major contributors to globalwarming. Not only is the ice vanishing, but we have seen record heat waves over and over again, killing thousands of people, as each year joins the list of the hottest years on record. (2010 just topped that list as the hottest year, surpassing the previous record in 2009, and weshall know about 2011 soon enough). Natural animal and plant populations are being devastated all over the g lobe as their environmentschange.6 Many animals respond by moving their ranges to formerly cold climates, so now places that once did not have to worry about

disease-bearing mosquitoes are infested as the climate warms and allows them to breed further north. 4. Sea Level Rise. Allthat melted ice eventually ends up in the ocean, causing sea levels to rise , as it has many times inthe geologic past. At present, the sea level is rising about 3 -4 mm per year, more than ten times the rate of 0.10.2 mm/year that has


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occurred over the past 3000 years. Geological data show that the sea level was virtually unchanged over thepast 10,000 years since the present interglacial began. A few mm here or there doesn't impress people, until you consider that therate is accelerating and that most scientists predict sea levels will rise 80-130 cm in just the next century. A sea level rise of 1.3 m (almost 4feet) would drown many of the world's low-elevation cities, such as Venice and New Orleans, and low-lying countries such as theNetherlands or Bangladesh. A number of tiny island nations such as Vanuatu and the Maldives, which barely poke out above the oceannow, are already vanishing beneath the waves. Eventually their entire population will have to move someplace else.7 Even a small sea level

rise might not drown all these areas, but they are much more vulnerable to the large waves of a storm surge (as happened with HurricaneKatrina), which could do much more damage than sea level rise alone. If sea level rose by 6 m (20 feet), most of die world's coastal plainsand low-lying areas (such as the Louisiana bayous, Florida, and most of the world's river deltas) would be drowned.

Uncertainty means vote aff without action, our ability to predict exactly what willhappen and adapt is minimalKim, 2012 (Dr. Jim Yong, President of the World Bank Group, Turn Down The heat: why a 4C warmerworld must be avoided, November, World Bank,http://climatechange.worldbank.org/sites/default/files/Turn_Down_the_heat_Why_a_4_degree_centrigrade_warmer_world_must_be_avoided.pdf)

It is my hope that this report shocks us into action. Even for those of us already committed to fighting climate change, I hope it causes us to

work with much more urgency. This report spells out what the world would be like if it warmed by 4 degrees Celsius, which is what scientistsare nearly unanimously predicting by the end of the century, without serious policy changes. The 4C scenarios are

devastating: the inundation of coastal cities ; increasing risks for food production potentially leading to higher malnutritionrates; many dry regions becoming dryer, wet regions wetter; unprecedented heat waves in many regions, especially in thetropics; substantially exacerbated water scarcity in many regions; increased frequency of high-intensity tropical cyclones ;

and irreversible loss of biodiversity, including coral reef systems . And most importantly, a 4 C world is so different from

the current one that it comes with high uncertainty and new risks that threaten our ability to

anticipate and plan for future adaptation needs. The lack of action on climate change not only risks putting prosperity out ofreach of millions of people in the developing world, it threatens to roll back decades of sustainable development. It is clear that we already

know a great deal about the th reat before us. The science is unequivocal that humans are the cause of global warming, and major changes arealready being observed: global mean warming is 0.8C above pre industrial levels; oceans have warmed by 0.09C since the 1950s and areacidifying; sea levels rose by about 20 cm since pre-industrial times and are now rising at 3.2 cm per decade; an exceptional number of extreme

heat waves occurred in the last decade; major food crop growing areas are increasingly affected by drought. Despite the global

communitys best intentions to keep global warming below a 2 C increase above pre-industrial climate , higher

levels of warming are increasingly likely . Scientists agree that countries current United Nations Framework Convention onClimate Change emission pledges and commitments would most likely result in 3.5 to 4C warming. And the longer those pledges remainunmet, the more likely a 4C world becomes. Data and evidence drive the work of the World Bank Group. Science reports, including thoseproduced by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, informed our decision to ramp up work on these issues, leading to, a WorldDevelopment Report on climate change designed to improve our understanding of the implications of a warming planet; a Strategic Frameworkon Development and Climate Change, and a report on Inclusive Green Growth. The World Bank is a leading advocate for ambitious action onclimate change, not only because it is a moral imperative, but because it makes good economic sense. But what if we fail to ramp up efforts on

mitigation? What are the implications of a 4 C world ? We commissioned this report from the Potsdam Institute for Climate ImpactResearch and Climate Analytics to help us understand the state of the science and the potential impact on development in such a world. It

would be so dramatically different from todays world that it is hard to describe accurately; much relies on complex projections and interpretations. We are well aware of the uncertainty that surrounds these scenarios and we know that

different scholars and studies sometimes disagree on the degree of risk. But the fact that such scenarios cannot be

discarded is sufficient to justify strengthening current climate change policies. Finding ways to avoid that scenario is vital for thehealth and welfare of communities around the world. While every region of the world will be affected, the poor and most vulnerable would be


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hit hardest. A 4C world can, and must, be avoided. The World Bank Group will continue to be a strong advocate for international and regionalagreements and increasing climate financing. We will redouble our efforts to support fast growing national initiatives to mitigate carbonemissions and build adaptive capacity as well as support inclusive green growth and climate smart development. Our work on inclusive greengrowth has shown that through more efficiency and smarter use of energy and natural resources many opportunities exist to drasticallyreduce the climate impact of development, without slowing down poverty alleviation and economic growth. This report is a stark reminder that

climate change affects everything . The solutions dont lie only in climate finance or climate projects. The solutions lie

in effective risk management and ensuring all our work, all our thinking, is designed with the threat of a 4 C degree world in mind . The World Bank Group will step up to the challenge.

Every reduction keyNuccitelli 12

[Dana, is an environmental scientist at a private environmental consulting firm in the Sacramento,California area. He has a Bachelor's Degree in astrophysics from the University of California at Berkeley,and a Master's Degree in physics from the University of California at Davis. He has been researching

climate science, economics, and solutions as a hobby since 2006, and has contributed to SkepticalScience since September, 2010, http://www.skepticalscience.com/realistically-what-might-future-climate-look-like.html, HM]

We're not yet committed to surpassing 2C global warming, but as Watson noted, we are quickly running out of time to

realistically give ourselves a chance to stay below that 'danger limit'. However, 2C is not a do-or-die threshold. Every bit of CO2

emissions we can reduce means that much avoided future warming , which means that much avoided climate change impacts . As Lonnie Thompson noted, the more global warming we manage to mitigate, the less adaption and suffering we will be forced tocope with in the future. Realistically, based on the current political climate (which we will explore in another post next week), limiting global

warming to 2C is probably the best we can do. However, there is a big difference between 2C and 3C, between 3C and 4C, andanything greater than 4C can probably accurately be described as catastrophic, since

various tipping points are expected to be triggered at this level. Right now, we are on track

for the catastrophic consequences (widespread coral mortality, mass extinctions, hundreds of millions of people adversely

impacted by droughts, floods, heat waves, etc.). But we're not stuck on that track just yet , and we need to

move ourselves as far off of it as possible by reducing our greenhouse gas emissions as soon and as

much as possible . There are of course many people who believe that the planet will not warm as much, or that the impacts of theassociated climate change will be as bad as the body of scientific evidence suggests. That is certainly a possiblity, and we very much hope that

their optimistic view is correct. However, what we have presented here is the best summary of scientific evidence

available, and it paints a very

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