China DAUS Gambling precedent is key to Chinas censorship apparatus---the aff erases the loopholeQin 11 (Julia Ya Qin, Professor of Law, Wayne State University Law School, Chinese Journal of International Law, 2011, 10(2), 271, Pushing the Limits of Global Governance: Trading Rights, Censorship and WTO JurisprudenceA Commentary on the ChinaPublications Case, http://chinesejil.oxfordjournals.org/content/10/2/271.full)49. Prior to this case, China had kept a perfect record of complying with adverse WTO decisions. In the first two cases in which its measures were found to be WTO-inconsistent,79 China fully implemented DSB rulings, including making amendment to major national legislation.80 And it had every incentive to keep that record. Being the top exporter in the world, China relies on the WTO system to maintain an open global trading environment. Non-compliance with DSB rulings would cost dearly in political capital as China fights against protectionist trends in the post-financial crisis era. Domestically, however, the political climate has not been conducive to making the type of systemic changes required by the WTO ruling. Threatened by rising social unrest in recent years, the government has been tightening its grip on the media, the Internet and the censorship machine.81 If there was previously some hope that the Party reformists might be able to embrace the WTO decision and leverage it to advance their political reform agenda,82 any such hope has been dashed after anonymous online calls for a revolution in China prompted the government to react with harsh crackdowns.83 51. In response to China's failure to meet the deadline for implementation, the United States may initiate additional WTO proceedings to compel compliance.84 Under the current political climate, however, the prospects for full compliance remain poor. 52. A lack of full compliance can lead to an eventual request by the United States for WTO-sanctioned trade retaliations. In this regard, China may take to heart the United States' practice in USGambling,85 a case that bears a certain resemblance to ChinaPublications. In that case, Antigua challenged the US regulations prohibiting Internet gambling as a breach of the US commitment to liberalize recreational services under the GATS. The United States contended that its services commitments did not include Internet gambling. To justify its measures, the United States also invoked the public morals exception of GATS Article XIV(a), which contains similar language as GATT XX(a). Siding with Antigua, the WTO judiciary found that the United States had committed to liberalize Internet gambling, and that while its measures were designed to protect public morals, the United States had failed to demonstrate that the measures met the non-discrimination requirements under the chapeau of Article XIV.86 After losing the case, the United States claimed it had committed an oversight in drafting its services schedule.87 Instead of removing the restrictions, the United States has since renegotiated its schedule with other Members to exclude gambling from its GATS commitments.88 With respect to Antigua, the United States has accepted WTO-sanctioned trade retaliation of $21 million per year.89 Similar to the United States in USGambling, China could also claim an oversight in drafting the coverage of its trading rights commitments. Unlike the United States, however, China might not be able to renegotiate its commitments due to the legal uncertainty surrounding possible amendment to the Accession Protocol.90 Nonetheless, China may follow the US example in accepting WTO-sanctioned retaliation,91 especially if the amount is manageable.92 [Footnote 91 begins here] 91 See Wu, above n.9, fn.55 (indicating that a proposal was made for China to follow suit with US's non-compliance in USGambling). [Footnote 91 ends here]Key to Chinese and CCP Stability MacKinnon 9 (REBECCA MacKINNON, FELLOW, OPEN SOCIETY INSTITUTE, AND ASSISTANT PROFESSOR, JOURNALISM AND MEDIA STUDIES CENTRE, THE UNIVERSITY OF HONG KONG, CONGRESSIONAL-EXECUTIVE COMMISSION ON CHINA, February 27, 2009, "DOES CHINA HAVE A STABILITY PROBLEM?", http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CHRG-111hhrg48223/html/CHRG-111hhrg48223.htm)As with everything in China, positives and negatives tend to exist simultaneously, which makes studying China particularly interesting. That is certainly the case with the Internet and sociopolitical change in China. I think in the West we tend to focus on the relationship between the Internet and China as sort of more as the negative side, that it's a challenge to the regime, that it enables a platform--a very new platform--for the airing of grievances, for exposing official abuse and protest. But the Chinese Government has so far managed, through censorship and manipulation, to stop localized incidents from metastasizing into national movements. This is in part due to the Chinese Government's success--while technically censorship is not perfect, it works well enough when combined with surveillance and law enforcement that dissent that is expressed on the Internet and is expressed every day does not get turned into nationwide political movements, for the most part, or they are nipped in the bud before they can turn into specific action. Another point is that, although the economic crisis, as Charlotte mentioned, poses a particular challenge to China this year, and we have this anniversary year with the 20th anniversary of the 1989 crackdown, and many other anniversaries coming up, the Chinese Communist Party has really displayed an ability to learn and adapt to the Internet age and has been experimenting with innovative new approaches to using the Internet as a tool for maintaining legitimacy.ExtinctionYee and Storey 2 (Herbert Yee, Professor of Politics and IR, Hong Kong Baptist University --AND-- Ian Storey, Lecturer in Defence Studies at Deakin, 02The China Threat: Perceptions, Myths and Reality, p5)The fourth factor contributing to the perception of a China threat is the fear of political and economic collapse in the PRC, resulting in territorial fragmentation, civil war and waves of refugees pouring into neighbouring countries. Naturally, any or all of these scenarios would have a profoundly negative impact on regional stability. Today the Chinese leadership faces a raft of internal problems, including the increasing political demands of its citizens, a growing population, a shortage of natural resources and a deterioration in the natural environment caused by rapid industrialisation and pollution. These problems are putting a strain on the central government's ability to govern effectively. Political disintegration or a Chinese civil war might result in millions of Chinese refugees seeking asylum in neighbouring countries. Such an unprecedented exodus of refugees from a collapsed PRC would no doubt put a severe strain on the limited resources of China's neighbours. A fragmented China could also result in another nightmare scenario - nuclear weapons falling into the hands of irresponsible local provincial leaders or warlords.2 From this perspective, a disintegrating China would also pose a threat to its neighbours and the world.Spec-- Aff must specify which branch passes the plan they dont -- Vote Neg 1. Ground robs courts, congress, executive counterplans, agent specific disads and case arguments2. Conditionality resolved means a firm course of action not specifying allows them to shift and clarify in the 2AC3. No solvency theres no actor as the United States, only specific branchesCPThe United States federal government should: Clarify that the UIGEA applies to horseracing Amend the Interstate Horseracing Act of 1978 so that it prohibits remote internet gambling Adjust the UIGEA to fit within GATS article XIVs public morals exception.

CP solves the WTO advantage but only affects horse-race bettingBloom 8 (Heather, South Carolina Journal of International Law and Business, "Upping the Ante: The Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act's Noncompliance with World Trade Organization Law")Armed with a public morals rationale, the United States has taken significant steps in the past decade to prohibit offshore internet gambling. In 2003, the small country of Antigua and Barbuda ("Antigua") brought a claim at the World Trade Organization (WTO) against the United States.' Antigua argued that the U.S. prohibition of offshore internet gambling violated commitments the U.S. had made under the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS). 2 The Panel agreed with Antigua that U.S. federal laws governing internet gambling are inconsistent with U.S. commitments and are not justified by public morals. 3 The WTO panel's decision was a victory for Antigua, the smallest nation ever to bring a WTO complaint against the U.S.4 The WTO Appellate Body, however, significantly reversed the Panel's findings, holding that the U.S. could justify the prohibition under public policy, except with regard to horseracing. 5 Despite the WTO's decision that the U.S. modify its interstate horseracing laws, 6 the U.S. failed to comply with the recommendation in 2006. 7 Instead, President George W. Bush signed the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006 (UIGEA), which prohibits remote internet gambling, except on horseracing, by requiring (1) financial institutions to identify and block illegal internet gambling transactions; and (2) gambling businesses to stop payments through credit card, "electronic fund transfer," or check. 8 The recently enacted UIGEA violates WTO law, in particular as analyzed against the backdrop of the WTO Appellate Body's decision in United States-Measures Affecting the Cross-border Supply of Gambling and Betting Services (the Antigua case). To comply with WTO law, the U.S. should (1) clarify that the UIGEA applies to horseracing; (2) amend the Interstate Horseracing Act of 1978 so that it prohibits remote internet gambling; and (3) adjust the UIGEA to fit within GATS article XIV's "public morals" exception.

KGambling is meaningless consumption creates access to global capital marketsReith 13 (Gerda, Professor at U. of Georgia, Techno economic systems and excessive consumption: a political economy of pathological gambling)

This article argues that gambling is a paradigmatic form of consumption that captures the intensified logic at the heart of late modern capitalist societies. As well as a site of intensified consumption, it claims that gambling has also become the location of what has been described as a new form of social pathology related to excess play. Drawing on Castells (1996) notion of techno-economic systems, it explores the ways that intersections between technology, capital and states have generated the conditions for this situation, and critiques the unequal distribution of gambling environments that result. It argues that, while the products of these systems are consumed on a global scale, the risks associated with them tend to be articulated in bio-psychological discourses of pathology which are typical of certain types of knowledge that have salience in neo-liberal societies, and which work to conceal wider structural relationships. We argue that a deeper understanding of the political and cultural economy of gambling environments is necessary, and provide a synoptic overview of the conditions upon which gambling expansion is based. This perspective highlights parallels with the wider global economy of finance capital, as well as the significance of intensified consumption, of which gambling is an exemplary instance. It also reveals the existence of a geo-political dispersal of harms, conceived as deteriorations of financial, temporal and social relationships, which disproportionately affect vulner able social groups. From this, we urge an understanding of commercial gambling based on a critique of the wider social body of gambling environments within techno economic systems, rather than the (flawed) individual bodies within them. No society has ever been quite so addictive as . . . [America], which did not invent gambling, to be sure, but which did invent compulsive consumption Fredric Jameson 2004: 52 As Jameson has noted in his essay on The Politics of Utopia (2004). gambling is a type of consumption that is aligned with compulsion. It is also a phenom- enon which is illustrative of wider trends in capitalist modernity: he goes on. late capitalism has at least brought the epistemological benefit of revealing the ultimate structure of the commodity to be addiction itself (or. if you prefer. has produced the very concept of addiction in all its metaphysical richness)` (2()04: 52). However. despite its centrality as a key form of cultural and economic production, gambling has been under-theorized in the sociological literature. We hope to go some way to addressing this lacunae in an argument that explores the cultural. political and economic conditions upon which its expan- sion is based. To begin. we note the recency and intensity of the development of commercial gambling itself, which was transformed between the 1980s and 2000s when the governments of North America, Australasia and Europe liberalised previously strict regulatory regimes. At the same time, they pursued a set of policies that deregulated financial markets and allowed an expansion of cheap credit, creating the conditions for the growth of a massive global industry. formational capitalism: a period of capitalist restructuring in which deregulation, privatization and the dismantling of the social contract between labour and capital worked to maximize profits and globalize production, circulation and markets The technological innovations of micro-electronics, computers and telecommunications that were crucial to these developments ultimately created a new technoeconomic system which was informational, global and networked (1996: 77). The emergence of a modern gambling industry can be seen as a microcosm of these developments. Within it, capitalist restructuring and technological innovations particularly with respect to information and communication technologies revolutionized the ways that games of chance could be played and marketed, and, by extension, the ways that they could be experienced by millions of consumers around the globe. As a consequence, commercial gam- bling has today become a site of intensified consumption. Alongside this, however, it has also become the site of what has been described as a new social pathology. New forms of knowledge based on biomedicine and the psy sciences (Rose 1999) have brought into being new types of subject and, along with other twentyfirst century forms of excess consumption, such as binge drinking (Nicholls 2006) and obesity (Campos 2004), we now have a population (or, more accurately, segments of populations) classified as pathological or compulsive gamblers.Neoliberalism is epistemologically bankrupt wrecks equality and the environmentHolleman 12 assistant professor of sociology at Amherst, PhD in sociology from the University of Oregon (Hannah, June, sociology dissertation, University of Oregon, Energy justice and foundations for a sustainable sociology of energy, https://scholarsbank.uoregon.edu/xmlui/bitstream/handle/1794/12419/Holleman_oregon_0171A_10410.pdf?sequence=1)

As Marilyn Waring noted twenty years ago, under this system, when there is an environmental catastrophe, like the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska, or the current BP oil spill in the Gulf, companies make an enormous profit cleaning up, or at least professing to do so. GDP goes up. If someone is sick, if they die a long, drawn-out death from cancer, there is profit to be made. There is no money to be made in human and ecological health and well-being. If communities grow their own food, the global food market significantly decreases; if people walk rather than drive, the oil and car companies dont make money. If education is free, who benefits? Maybe most people, and the society at large, maybe even the environment, but not necessarily the shareholders. Therefore, it is much more economically efficient to let the market shape education. Today students take out larger and larger loans to buy more expensive books, to get less education engendered by fewer teachers. This is capitalist efficiency. The surplus is efficiently transferred from one segment of the population to another, those at the top. The same goes for letting the market shape energy policy. Those arguing today for market intervention in the climate crisis often fail to mention that it is absolutely already the market shaping energy policy. This is precisely the problem. It is very efficient for the market to extract oil at bargain prices from countries without militaries to stop them. It is very efficient, in terms of profit, to have the most vulnerable in society pay the costs of energy production, and to keep polluting, all the while terrifying people that new energy developments might be their only chance of economic survival. Nevermind where the real money goes and what happens with the boom goes bust. The current version of capitalist ideology, which absorbs energy scholars (and even environmental socialists) often unwittingly, was consciously shaped to co-opt the language of social movements seeking freedom from the yolk of capitalism and imperialism. It is no surprise that the market would co-opt green rhetoric today. Economists having the greatest ideological influence on political debates and social science today, the architects of neoliberal ideology, have sought to re-write the history of capitalist development as the constitution of liberty, and the basis of free society (Hayek 1960; Friedman 1962; Van Horn, Mirowski, and Stapleford, eds. 2011). There can be no acknowledgement of slavery, racism, sexism, or ecological destruction among other issues, because all of these undermine the basic thesis neoliberal writers actively promote as political ideology. To make their argument, these writers must present capitalism as raising all boats, color-blind, gender-neutral, and free of class coercion, the globalization of which results in a flat, happy world, even if it is hot (Friedman 2005, 2008). Unfortunately, these ideas dominate the political sphere, and contemporary notions of organizational, community, and national development. In academia, many theorists celebrate the alleged leveling of social differences owing to globalization (Pellow 2007, 41). The blinders imposed by this view continue to infect energy studies despite the work of critical energy scholars. Spreading capitalism thus becomes the solution for poverty associated with inequalities caused by oppression based on race, class, gender, and position in the world system, as well as the solution to environmental and energy crises. This is the basic modernization thesis. The Ecological Modernization Reader (Mol, Sonnenfeld, and Spaargaren 2009) presents these systematized views regarding the environmental crisis, which are increasingly influential in environmental sociology. York and Rosa (2003) and Foster (2012) have pointed out the empirical, theoretical, and philosophical roots of, and problems associated with this perspective as a basis for understanding ecological and social crises and solutions. But, we can expect this view to persist as long as social relations remain intact because the logic of modernization is seductive precisely because it is the logic of capitalism (Foster 1999b, 2002, 2009, 2012). The processes of capitalism, including its ideological developments, are the background conditions in which those integrated into the market economy live, as fish swim in water, they are the social gravity we might naturally feel is right, but dont necessarily see, as much a part of our lives as the air we breathe (York and Clark 2006). In contrast to the modernization thesis, environmental justice scholars, among other critical theorists and activists have sought to expose the mythological basis of neoliberalism and transcend the system. The work of environmental justice scholars, feminist ecologists, and ecological rift theorists, marshaling the empirical evidence, represent powerful critiques of the modernization thesis. Taken together with the insights in existing critical work on energy, they provide an alternative approach to energy that belies the notion that there is no alternative. They share a common commitment, as social scientists and activists, to reality. Part of this reality is that actual class and racial inequalities around the global and between North and South have only worsened in the past half-centurythe same period during which the late modern state of capitalism took hold (Pellow 2007, 41). Despite views that we live in a post-racial society, (or one where men are finished and women are taking over [Sohn 2011]), in fact economic globalization has seriously undermined the gains of the civil rights and labor movement and the general antiracist struggle in the United States and undercut the global benefits of the anticolonial struggles occurring throughout the global South (Pellow 2007, 43). Moreover, economic globalization and the intensified spread of ecological destruction are intimately linked because the TNCs [transnational corporations] themselves were the ones creating and pushing both globalization and toxins on the world markets, facilitating greater control over nations, communities, human bodies, and the natural world itself(43). Today, neoliberal mythology has severely hindered the development of a wider environmental justice consciousness in the broader public, and amongst activists and academics. In energy studies this view is especially pronounced in the focus on technology, carbon markets, voluntary certification schemes, and alternative energies that basically allow business to continue as usual (Foster 2002, 9-25; Rogers 2010; Holleman 2012). The critical literature emerging from what I call an energy justice perspective in ecological rift theory, systems ecology, feminist and critical human ecology, and environmental justice scholarship has drawn out the social and ecological crises of the current energy regime. This is in contrast to too many well-intentioned scholars and activists who buy into the main tenets of the modernization thesis, and thus are reluctant to break with capitalism as a system, or worse, they promote it, ignoring or ignorant of the enormous costs. This has led to the view that our task as environmentalists is getting economics to internalize the externalities, to bring under the pricing system the work of natural systems and human services (labor). For energy this means carbon markets and trade in other forms of pollution and raising energy prices. While it is clear that as long as we have this system, goals should include wealth redistribution and businesses shouldering the costs of their polluting practices, long-term, internalizing more of the world in the market system is a total death strategy. The logic of the market is clear. An energy justice movement, with the intention of healing the ecological rift and transcending social injustice, on the other hand has as its base the goal of externalizing the internalities. This is an ecological and social imperative. Understanding the nature of the current system, Daniel Yergins worse-than-nothing approach to energy is the logical response of capital. Carbon markets and the new biotech boom also make sense. If the point is accumulation, sources of profit must be found at every turn and crises represent especially ripe opportunities (Klein 2007). The problem today is not capitalisms lack of response to the climate crisis, capital was never developed as a system geared toward ecological reproduction or meeting human needs. It is a system geared toward profit at all cost and can have no rational response. The problem is that capitalism organizes so many of our productive activities in the first place. The sooner this is recognized, the sooner we can start thinking of real alternatives, and understand ourselves as subjects, not merely objects of the system, as protagonists of our own future. We can move beyond playing the passive consumers of the next product capitalism has on offer, green or otherwise, packaged as a solution to energy crises. Examples like the carbon market schemes, or Daniel Yergins view of what constitutes energy revolution, make clear that theres no way we can just subcontract our environmental conscience to the new breed of green marketers (McKibben 2010). Energy and social inequality, the challenges of our generation The social and ecological costs of our energy regime today are clear, though the ways these are both the result of and exacerbate social inequality and oppression are often misunderstood or ignored. While the future is unwritten, projections, if business continues as usual, indicate environmental and social catastrophe with much of the damage irreversible. Without significant social change, we should prepare for, among other depredations, increased warfare to secure energy resources to meet increased demand. The most recent British Ministry of Defence Strategic Trends report suggests that nations will increasingly use energy security to challenge conventional interpretations on the legality of the use of force (108). Environmentally and socially destructive energy sectors are projected to grow the next thirty years, such as nuclear energy and biofuel, while expected fossil fuel demand also goes only one way, up: Global Energy use has approximately doubled over the last 30 years and, by 2040, demand is likely to grow by more than half again. Despite concerns over climate change, demand is likely to remain positively correlated to economic growth with fossil fuels, meeting more than 80% of this increase. Urban areas will be responsible for over 75% of total demand. (Strategic Trends, 106) Even a U.S. government official has recognized publicly that our patterns of energy use create geopolitical instability. The ways we use energy are disrupting the climate system and threaten terrifying disruptions in decades to come (Sandalow 2009). These realities only partially illustrate energys extensive contribution to what K. William Kapp (1950) referred to as capitalisms systemic unpaid costs. As Anderson (1976) put it: the growth society operates as if it had tunnel vision and nearsightedness; the accumulation of capital is pursued without regard for the side-effects or for longrange consequences, leaving to nature and the larger community these uncalculated costs (140). Prefiguring contemporary discussions and movement framing, Anderson referred to these accumulated unpaid costs, or externalities as the ecological debt, the result of the exploitation of both nature and humans for the sake of economic growth at all costs (142-43), undermining the natural and social conditions of production. As indicated previously, with energy demand expected only to increase as the economy expands, the unpaid costs associated with its extraction and use will continue to accumulate, but on a scale heretofore unseen. The science is clear that if we do not severely curtail energy use, we will cross critical thresholds in the biospheres ability to recycle waste and regulate the earths temperature. The consequences of crossing such planetary boundaries will be irreversible (Hansen 2009; Solomon, et al. 2009; Cullen 2010; Foster 2011). This is a new juncture in humanitys relation to the rest of nature. However, the costs of climate change, among other environmental crises generated by energy production and use, which is driven largely by economic growth, already are visited upon communities and other social groups in a dramatically unequal waythis we may understand as a defining feature of energy injustice. This social inequality, indeed, is a necessary feature of capitalism, making human exploitation and the assault on the environment possible, and energy injustice inevitable in the current system: Environmental deterioration will continue so long as there is a class system, since the profits of environmental neglect accrue primarily to one class whereas the costs are borne primarily by another (Anderson 1976, 139). Scholars studying the ecological and social rift of capitalism, including those working on environmental racism and feminist ecology, have expanded the understanding of how these processes are gendered and racialized. Work on unequal ecological exchange amply has demonstrated that inequality between nations and regions also increases the burdens of environmental injustice. Studies from all of these perspectives have drawn out inequalities embedded in our current patterns of energy decision-making, extraction, use, and waste disposal, documenting energy injustice through various theoretical lenses. Alternative reject the affs neoliberal policy proposal establishing pedagogies in this debate space is the only way to reclaim critical education.Giroux 12 (Henry A. Giroux, Global TV Network Chair in English and Cultural Studies at McMaster University, 19 June 2012, Beyond the Politics of the Big Lie: The Education Deficit and the New Authoritarianism, http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/9865-beyond-the-politics-of-the-big-lie-the-education-deficit-and-the-new-authoritarianism)The democratic deficit is not, as many commentators have argued, reducible to the growing (and unparalleled) inequality gap in the United States, the pervasiveness of lending fraud, favorable tax treatment for the wealthy, or the lack of adequate regulation of the financial sector. These are important issues, but they are more symptomatic than causal in relation to the democratic decline and rise of an uncivil culture in America. The democratic deficit is closely related, however, to an unprecedented deficit in critical education. The power of finance capital in recent years has not only targeted the realm of official politics, but also directed its attention toward a range of educational apparatuses - really, a vast and complex ideological ecosystem that reproduces itself through nuance, distraction, innuendo, myths, lies and misrepresentations. This media ecosystem not only changes our sense of time, space and information; it also redefines the very meaning of the social and this is far from a democratic process, especially as the architecture of the Internet and other media platforms are largely in the hands of private interests.(13) The educational pipelines for corporate messages and ideology are everywhere and have for the last twenty-five years successfully drowned out any serious criticism and challenge to market fundamentalism. The current corrupt and dysfunctional state of American politics is about a growing authoritarianism tied to economic, political and cultural formations that have hijacked democracy and put structural and ideological forces in place that constitute a new regime of politics, not simply a series of bad policies. The solution in this case does not lie in promoting piecemeal reforms, such as a greater redistribution of wealth and income, but in dismantling all the institutional, ideological and social formations that make gratuitous inequality and other antidemocratic forces possible at all. Even the concept of reform has been stripped of its democratic possibilities and has become a euphemism to "cover up the harsh realities of draconian cutbacks in wages, salaries, pensions and public welfare and the sharp increases in regressive taxes."(14) Instead of reversing progressive changes made by workers, women, young people, and others, the American public needs a new understanding of what it would mean to advance the ideological and material relations of a real democracy, while removing American society from the grip of "an authoritarian political culture."(15) This will require new conceptions of politics, social responsibility, power, civic courage, civil society and democracy itself. If we do not safeguard the remaining public spaces that provide individuals and social movements with new ways to think about and participate in politics, then authoritarianism will solidify its hold on the American public. In doing so, it will create a culture that criminalizes dissent, and those who suffer under antidemocratic ideologies and policies will be both blamed for the current economic crisis and punished by ruling elites. What is crucial to grasp at the current historical moment is that the fate of democracy is inextricably linked to a profound crisis of contemporary knowledge, characterized by its increasing commodification, fragmentation, privatization and a turn toward racist and jingoistic conceits. As knowledge becomes abstracted from the rigors of civic culture and is reduced to questions of style, ritual and image, it undermines the political, ethical and governing conditions for individuals to construct those viable public spheres necessary for debate, collective action and solving urgent social problems. As public spheres are privatized, commodified and turned over to the crushing forces of turbo capitalism, the opportunities for openness, inclusiveness and dialogue that nurture the very idea and possibility of a discourse about democracy cease to exist. The lesson to be learned in this instance is that political agency involves learning how to deliberate, make judgments and exercise choices, particularly as the latter are brought to bear on critical activities that offer the possibility of change. Civic education as it is experienced and produced throughout an ever-diminishing number of institutions provides individuals with opportunities to see themselves as capable of doing more than the existing configurations of power of any given society would wish to admit. And it is precisely this notion of civic agency and critical education that has been under aggressive assault within the new and harsh corporate order of casino capitalism. Anti-Public Intellectuals and the Conservative Re-Education Machine The conservative takeover of public pedagogy with its elite codifiers of neoliberal ideology has a long history extending from the work of the "Chicago Boys" at the University of Chicago to the various conservative think tanks that emerged after the publication of the Powell memo in the early seventies.(16) The Republican Party will more than likely win the next election and take full control over all aspects of policymaking in the United States. This is especially dangerous given that the Republican Party is now controlled by extremists. If they win the 2012 election, they will not only extend the Bush/Obama legacy of militarism abroad, but likely intensify the war at home as well. Political scientist Frances Fox Piven rightly argues that, "We've been at war for decades now - not just in Afghanistan or Iraq, but right here at home. Domestically, it's been a war [a]gainst the poor [and as] devastating as it has been, the war against the poor has gone largely unnoticed until now."(17) And the war at home now includes more than attacks on the poor, as campaigns are increasingly waged against the rights of women, students, workers, people of color and immigrants, especially Latino Americans. As the social state collapses, the punishing state expands its power and targets larger portions of the population. The war in Afghanistan is now mimicked in the war waged on peaceful student protesters at home. It is evident in the environmental racism that produces massive health problems for African-Americans. The domestic war is even waged on elementary school children, who now live in fear of the police handcuffing them in their classrooms and incarcerating them as if they were adult criminals.(18) It is waged on workers by taking away their pensions, bargaining rights and dignity. The spirit of militarism is also evident in the war waged on the welfare state and any form of social protection that benefits the poor, disabled, sick, elderly, and other groups now considered disposable, including children. The soft side of authoritarianism in the United States does not need to put soldiers in the streets, though it certainly follows that script. As it expands its control over the commanding institutions of government, the armed forces and civil society in general, it hires anti-public intellectuals and academics to provide ideological support for its gated communities, institutions and modes of education. As Yasha Levine points out, it puts thousands of dollars in the hands of corporate shills such as Malcolm Gladwell, who has become a "one man branding and distribution pipeline for valuable corporate messages, constructed on the public's gullibility in trusting his probity and intellectual honesty."(19) Gladwell (who is certainly not alone) functions as a bought-and-paid mouthpiece for "Big Tobacco Pharma and defend[s] Enron-style financial fraud ... earning hundreds of thousands of dollars as a corporate speaker, sometimes from the same companies and industries that he covers as a journalist."(20) Corporate power uses these "pay to play" academics, anti-public intellectuals, the mainstream media, and other educational apparatuses to discredit the very people that it simultaneously oppresses, while waging an overarching war on all things public. As Charles Ferguson has noted, an entire industry has been created that enables the "sale of academic expertise for the purpose of influencing government policy, the courts and public opinion [and] is now a multibillion-dollar business."(21) It gets worse, in that "Academic, legal, regulatory and policy consulting in economics, finance and regulation is dominated by a half dozen consulting firms, several speakers' bureaus and various industry lobbying groups that maintain large networks of academics for hire specifically for the purpose of advocating industry interests in policy and regulatory debates."(22) Such anti-public intellectuals create what William Black has called a "criminogenic environment" that spreads disease and fraud in the interest of bolstering the interests, profits and values of the super wealthy.(23) There is more at work here than carpet bombing the culture with lies, deceptions and euphemisms. Language in this case does more than obfuscate or promote propaganda. It creates framing mechanisms, cultural ecosystems and cultures of cruelty, while closing down the spaces for dialogue, critique and thoughtfulness. At its worst, it engages in the dual processes of demonization and distraction. The rhetoric of demonization takes many forms: for example, calling firefighters, teachers, and other public servants greedy because they want to hold onto their paltry benefits. It labels students as irresponsible because of the large debts they are forced to incur as states cut back funding to higher education (this, too, is part of a broader effort by conservatives to hollow out the social state). Poor people are insulted and humiliated because they are forced to live on food stamps, lack decent health care and collect unemployment benefits because there are no decent jobs available. Poor minorities are now subject to overt racism in the right-wing media and outright violence in the larger society. Anti-public intellectuals rail against public goods and public values; they undermine collective bonds and view social responsibility as a pathology, while touting the virtues of a survival-of-the-fittest notion of individual responsibility. Fox News and its embarrassingly blowhard pundits tell the American people that Gov. Scott Walker's victory over Tom Barrett in the Wisconsin recall election was a fatal blow against unions, while in reality "his win signals less a loss for the unions than a loss for our democracy in this post-Citizens United era, when elections can be bought with the help of a few billionaires."(24) How else to explain that Tea Party favorite Walker raised over $30.5 million during the election - more than seven times Barrett's reported $3.9 million - largely from 13 out-of-state billionaires?(25) This was corporate money enlisted for use in a pedagogical blitz designed to carpet bomb voters with the rhetoric of distraction and incivility. The same pundits who rail against the country's economic deficit fail to connect it to the generous tax cuts they espouse for corporations and the financial institutions and services that take financial risks, which sometimes generate capital, but more often produce debts and instability that only serve to deepen the national economic crisis. Nor do they connect the US recession and global economic crisis to the criminal activities enabled by an unregulated financial system marked by massive lending fraud, high risk speculation, a corrupt credit system and pervasive moral and economic dishonesty. The spokespersons for the ultrarich publish books arguing that we need even more inequality because it benefits not only the wealthy, but everyone else.(26) This is a form of authoritarian delusion that appears to meet the clinical threshold for being labeled psychopathic given its proponents' extreme investment in being "indifferent to others, incapable of guilt, exclusively devoted to their own interests."(27) Nothing is said in this pro-market narrative about the massive human suffering caused by a growing inequality in which society's resources are squandered at the top, while salaries for the middle and working classes stagnate, consumption dries up, social costs are ignored, young people are locked out of jobs and any possibility of social mobility and the state reconfigures its power to punish rather than protect the vast majority of its citizens. The moral coma that appears characteristic of the elite who inhabit the new corporate ethic of casino capitalism has attracted the attention of scientists, whose studies recently reported that "members of the upper class are more likely to behave unethically, to lie during negotiations, to drive illegally and to cheat when competing for a prize."(28) But there is more at stake here than the psychological state of those who inhabit the boardrooms of Wall Street. We must also consider the catastrophic effects produced by their values and policies. In fact, Stiglitz has argued that, "Most Americans today are worse off than they were fifteen years ago. A full-time worker in the US is worse off today then he or she was 44 years ago. That is astounding - half a century of stagnation. The economic system is not delivering. It does not matter whether a few people at the top benefitted tremendously - when the majority of citizens are not better off, the economic system is not working."(29) The economic system may not be working, but the ideological rationales used to justify its current course appear immensely successful, managing as they do to portray a casino capitalism that transforms democracy into its opposite - a form of authoritarianism with a soft edge - as utterly benign, if not also beneficial, to society at large. Democratic Decline and the Politics of Distraction Democracy withers, public spheres disappear and the forces of authoritarianism grow when a family, such as the Waltons of Walmart fame, is allowed "to amass a combined wealth of some $90 billion, which is equivalent to the wealth of the entire bottom 30 percent of US society."(30) Such enormous amounts of wealth translate into equally vast amounts of power, as is evident in the current attempts of a few billionaires to literally buy local, state and federal elections. Moreover, a concentration of wealth deepens the economic divide among classes, rendering more and more individuals incapable of the most basic opportunities to move out of poverty and despair. This is especially true in light of a recent survey indicating that, "Nearly half of all Americans lack economic security, meaning they live above the federal poverty threshold but still do hot have enough money to cover housing, food, healthcare and other basic expenses.... 45 percent of US residents live in households that struggle to make ends meet. That breaks down to 39 percent of all adults and 55 percent of all children."(31) The consequential impacts on civic engagement are more difficult to enumerate, but it does not require much imagination to think about how democracy might flourish if access to health care, education, employment, and other public benefits was ensured equally throughout a society and not restricted to the rich and wealthy alone. And yet, as power and wealth accrue to the upper 1 percent, the American public is constantly told that the poor, the unions, feminists, critical intellectuals and public servants are waging class warfare to the detriment of civility and democracy. The late Tony Judt stated that he was less concerned about the slide of American democracy into something like authoritarianism than American society moving toward something he viewed as even more corrosive: "a loss of conviction, a loss of faith in the culture of democracy, a sense of skepticism and withdrawal" that diminishes the capacity of a democratic formative culture to resist and transform those antidemocratic ideologies that benefit only the mega corporations, the ultrawealthy and ideological fundamentalists.(32) Governance has turned into a legitimation for enriching the already wealthy elite, bankers, hedge fund managers, mega corporations and executive members of the financial service industries. Americans now live in a society in which only the thinnest conception of democracy frames what it means to be a citizen - one which equates the obligations of citizenship with consumerism and democratic rights with alleged consumer freedoms. Antidemocratic forms of power do not stand alone as a mode of force or the force of acting on others; they are also deeply aligned with cultural apparatuses of persuasion, extending their reach through social and digital media, sophisticated technologies, the rise of corporate intellectuals and a university system that now produces and sanctions intellectuals aligned with private interests - all of which, as Randy Martin points out, can be identified with a form of casino capitalism that is about "permanent vigilance, activity and intervention."(33) Indeed, many institutions that provide formal education in the United States have become co-conspirators with a savage casino capitalism, whose strength lies in producing, circulating and legitimating market values that promote the narrow world of commodity worship, celebrity culture, bare-knuckle competition, a retreat from social responsibility and a war-of-all-against-all mentality that destroys any viable notion of community, the common good and the interrelated notions of political, social and economic rights. University presidents now make huge salaries sitting on corporate boards, while faculty sell their knowledge to the highest corporate bidder and, in doing so, turn universities into legitimation centers for casino capitalism.(34) Of course, such academics also move from the boardrooms of major corporations to talk shows and op-ed pages of major newspapers, offering commentary in journals and other modes of print and screen culture. They are the new traveling intellectuals of casino capitalism, doing everything they can to make the ruthless workings of power invisible, to shift the blame for society's failures onto the very people who are its victims and to expand the institutions and culture of anti-intellectualism and distraction into every aspect of American life. Across all levels, politics in the United States now suffers from an education deficit that enables a pedagogy of distraction to dictate with little accountability how crucial social problems and issues are named, discussed and acted upon. The conservative re-education machine appears shameless in its production of lies that include insane assertions such as: Obama's health care legislation would create death panels; liberals are waging a war on Christmas; Obama is a socialist trying to nationalize industries; the founding fathers tried to end slavery; and Obama is a Muslim sympathizer and not a US citizen. Other misrepresentations and distortions include: the denial of global warming; the government cannot create jobs; cuts in wages and benefits create jobs; Obama has created massive deficits; Obama wants to raise the taxes of working- and middle-class people; Obama is constantly "apologizing" for America; and the assertion that Darwinian evolution is a myth.(35) Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney continues spinning this spider web of lies unapologetically, even when members of his own party point out the inconsistencies in his claims. For instance, he has claimed that, "Obamacare increases the deficit,"(36) argued that Obama has "increased the national debt more than all other presidents combined" and insisted that Obama has lied about "his record on gay rights." He has falsely claimed that, "Obama promised unemployment below eight percent,"(37) dodged the truth regarding "his position on climate change" and blatantly misrepresented the truth in stating that, "he pays a 50% tax rate."(38) Diane Ravitch has recently pointed out that in making a case for vouchers, Romney has made false claims about the success of the DC voucher program.(39) The politics of distraction should not be reduced merely to a rhetorical ploy used by the wealthy and influential to promote their own interests and power. It is a form of market-driven politics in which educational force of the broader culture is used to create ideologies, policies, individuals and social agents who lack the knowledge, critical skills and discriminatory judgments to question the rule of casino capitalism and the values, social practices and power formations it legitimates. Politics and education have always mutually informed each other as pedagogical sites proliferate and circulate throughout the cultural landscape.(40) But today, distraction is the primary element being used to suppress democratically purposeful education by pushing critical thought to the margins of society. As a register of power, distraction becomes central to a pedagogical landscape inhabited by rich conservative foundations, an army of well-funded anti-public intellectuals from both major parties, a growing number of amply funded conservative campus organizations, increasing numbers of academics who hock their services to corporations and the military-industrial complex, and others who promote the ideology of casino capitalism and the corporate right's agenda. Academics who make a claim to producing knowledge and truth in the public interest are increasingly being replaced by academics for hire who move effortlessly among industry, government and academia. Extreme power is now showcased through the mechanisms of ever-proliferating cultural/educational apparatuses and the anti-public intellectuals who support them and are in turn rewarded by the elites who finance such apparatuses. The war at home is made visible in the show of force aimed at civilian populations, including students, workers, and others considered disposable or a threat to the new authoritarianism. Its most powerful allies appear to be the intellectuals, institutions, cultural apparatuses and new media technologies that constitute the sites of public pedagogy, which produce the formative culture necessary for authoritarianism to thrive. While a change in consciousness does not guarantee a change in either one's politics or society, it is a crucial precondition for connecting what it means to think otherwise to conditions that make it possible to act otherwise. The education deficit must be seen as intertwined with a political deficit, serving to make many oppressed individuals complicit with oppressive ideologies. As the late Cornelius Castoriadis made clear, democracy requires "critical thinkers capable of putting existing institutions into question.... while simultaneously creating the conditions for individual and social autonomy."(41) Nothing will change politically or economically until new and emerging social movements take seriously the need to develop a language of radical reform and create new public spheres that support the knowledge, skills and critical thought that are necessary features of a democratic formative culture. Getting beyond the big lie as a precondition for critical thought, civic engagement and a more realized democracy will mean more than correcting distortions, misrepresentations and falsehoods produced by politicians, media talking heads and anti-public intellectuals. It will also require addressing how new sites of pedagogy have become central to any viable notion of agency, politics and democracy itself. This is not a matter of elevating cultural politics over material relations of power as much as it is a rethinking of how power deploys culture and how culture as a mode of education positions power. James Baldwin, the legendary African-American writer and civil rights activist, argued that the big lie points to a crisis of American identity and politics and is symptomatic of "a backward society" that has descended into madness, "especially when one is forced to lie about one's aspect of anybody's history, [because you then] must lie about it all."(42) He goes on to argue "that one of the paradoxes of education [is] that precisely at the point when you begin to develop a conscience, you must find yourself at war with your society. It is your responsibility to change society if you think of yourself as an educated person."(43) What Baldwin recognizes is that learning has the possibility to trigger a critical engagement with oneself, others and the larger society - education becomes in this instance more than a method or tool for domination but a politics, a fulcrum for democratic social change. Tragically, in our current climate "learning" merely contributes to a vast reserve of manipulation and self-inflicted ignorance. Our education deficit is neither reducible to the failure of particular types of teaching nor the decent into madness by the spokespersons for the new authoritarianism. Rather, it is about how matters of knowledge, values and ideology can be struggled over as issues of power and politics. Surviving the current education deficit will depend on progressives using history, memory and knowledge not only to reconnect intellectuals to the everyday needs of ordinary people, but also to jumpstart social movements by making education central to organized politics and the quest for a radical democracy.

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Growth is unsustainable complexity theory and law of diminishing returns means growth has reached maximum efficiency and will inevitably collapseMacKenzie 8 (Debora, science journalist New Scientist, Why the demise of civilisation may be inevitable, New Scientist, Vol. 197 Issue 2650, p32-35, 4-2, http://www.climateark.org/shared/reader/welcome.aspx?linkid=97741)DOOMSDAY. The end of civilisation. Literature and film abound with tales of plague, famine and wars which ravage the planet, leaving a few survivors scratching out a primitive existence amid the ruins. Every civilisation in history has collapsed, after all. Why should ours be any different? Doomsday scenarios typically feature a knockout blow: a massive asteroid, all-out nuclear war or a catastrophic pandemic (see "Will a pandemic bring down civilisation?"). Yet there is another chilling possibility: what if the very nature of civilisation means that ours, like all the others, is destined to collapse sooner or later? A few researchers have been making such claims for years. Disturbingly, recent insights from fields such as complexity theory suggest that they are right. It appears that once a society develops beyond a certain level of complexity it becomes increasingly fragile. Eventually, it reaches a point at which even a relatively minor disturbance can bring everything crashing down. Some say we have already reached this point, and that it is time to start thinking about how we might manage collapse. Others insist it is not yet too late, and that we can - we must - act now to keep disaster at bay. Environmental mismanagement History is not on our side. Think of Sumeria, of ancient Egypt and of the Maya. In his 2005 best-seller Collapse, Jared Diamond of the University of California, Los Angeles, blamed environmental mismanagement for the fall of the Mayan civilisation and others, and warned that we might be heading the same way unless we choose to stop destroying our environmental support systems. Lester Brown of the Earth Policy Institute in Washington DC agrees. He has long argued that governments must pay more attention to vital environmental resources. "It's not about saving the planet. It's about saving civilisation," he says. Others think our problems run deeper. >From the moment our ancestors started to settle down and build cities, we have had to find solutions to the problems that success brings. "For the past 10,000 years, problem solving has produced increasing complexity in human societies," says Joseph Tainter, an archaeologist at Utah State University, Logan, and author of the 1988 book The Collapse of Complex Societies. If crops fail because rain is patchy, build irrigation canals. When they silt up, organise dredging crews. When the bigger crop yields lead to a bigger population, build more canals. When there are too many for ad hoc repairs, install a management bureaucracy, and tax people to pay for it. When they complain, invent tax inspectors and a system to record the sums paid. That much the Sumerians knew. Diminishing returns There is, however, a price to be paid. Every extra layer of organisation imposes a cost in terms of energy, the common currency of all human efforts, from building canals to educating scribes. And increasing complexity, Tainter realised, produces diminishing returns. The extra food produced by each extra hour of labour - or joule of energy invested per farmed hectare - diminishes as that investment mounts. We see the same thing today in a declining number of patents per dollar invested in research as that research investment mounts. This law of diminishing returns appears everywhere, Tainter says. To keep growing, societies must keep solving problems as they arise. Yet each problem solved means more complexity. Success generates a larger population, more kinds of specialists, more resources to manage, more information to juggle - and, ultimately, less bang for your buck. Eventually, says Tainter, the point is reached when all the energy and resources available to a society are required just to maintain its existing level of complexity. Then when the climate changes or barbarians invade, overstretched institutions break down and civil order collapses. What emerges is a less complex society, which is organised on a smaller scale or has been taken over by another group. Tainter sees diminishing returns as the underlying reason for the collapse of all ancient civilisations, from the early Chinese dynasties to the Greek city state of Mycenae. These civilisations relied on the solar energy that could be harvested from food, fodder and wood, and from wind. When this had been stretched to its limit, things fell apart. An ineluctable process Western industrial civilisation has become bigger and more complex than any before it by exploiting new sources of energy, notably coal and oil, but these are limited. There are increasing signs of diminishing returns: the energy required to get each new joule of oil is mounting and although global food production is still increasing, constant innovation is needed to cope with environmental degradation and evolving pests and diseases - the yield boosts per unit of investment in innovation are shrinking. "Since problems are inevitable," Tainter warns, "this process is in part ineluctable." Is Tainter right? An analysis of complex systems has led Yaneer Bar-Yam, head of the New England Complex Systems Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to the same conclusion that Tainter reached from studying history. Social organisations become steadily more complex as they are required to deal both with environmental problems and with challenges from neighbouring societies that are also becoming more complex, Bar-Yam says. This eventually leads to a fundamental shift in the way the society is organised. "To run a hierarchy, managers cannot be less complex than the system they are managing," Bar-Yam says. As complexity increases, societies add ever more layers of management but, ultimately in a hierarchy, one individual has to try and get their head around the whole thing, and this starts to become impossible. At that point, hierarchies give way to networks in which decision-making is distributed. We are at this point. This shift to decentralised networks has led to a widespread belief that modern society is more resilient than the old hierarchical systems. "I don't foresee a collapse in society because of increased complexity," says futurologist and industry consultant Ray Hammond. "Our strength is in our highly distributed decision making." This, he says, makes modern western societies more resilient than those like the old Soviet Union, in which decision making was centralised. Increasing connectedness Things are not that simple, says Thomas Homer-Dixon, a political scientist at the University of Toronto, Canada, and author of the 2006 book The Upside of Down. "Initially, increasing connectedness and diversity helps: if one village has a crop failure, it can get food from another village that didn't." As connections increase, though, networked systems become increasingly tightly coupled. This means the impacts of failures can propagate: the more closely those two villages come to depend on each other, the more both will suffer if either has a problem. "Complexity leads to higher vulnerability in some ways," says Bar-Yam. "This is not widely understood." The reason is that as networks become ever tighter, they start to transmit shocks rather than absorb them. "The intricate networks that tightly connect us together - and move people, materials, information, money and energy - amplify and transmit any shock," says Homer-Dixon. "A financial crisis, a terrorist attack or a disease outbreak has almost instant destabilising effects, from one side of the world to the other." For instance, in 2003 large areas of North America and Europe suffered blackouts when apparently insignificant nodes of their respective electricity grids failed. And this year China suffered a similar blackout after heavy snow hit power lines. Tightly coupled networks like these create the potential for propagating failure across many critical industries, says Charles Perrow of Yale University, a leading authority on industrial accidents and disasters. Credit crunch Perrow says interconnectedness in the global production system has now reached the point where "a breakdown anywhere increasingly means a breakdown everywhere". This is especially true of the world's financial systems, where the coupling is very tight. "Now we have a debt crisis with the biggest player, the US. The consequences could be enormous." "A networked society behaves like a multicellular organism," says Bar-Yam, "random damage is like lopping a chunk off a sheep." Whether or not the sheep survives depends on which chunk is lost. And while we are pretty sure which chunks a sheep needs, it isn't clear - it may not even be predictable - which chunks of our densely networked civilisation are critical, until it's too late. "When we do the analysis, almost any part is critical if you lose enough of it," says Bar-Yam. "Now that we can ask questions of such systems in more sophisticated ways, we are discovering that they can be very vulnerable. That means civilisation is very vulnerable." So what can we do? "The key issue is really whether we respond successfully in the face of the new vulnerabilities we have," Bar-Yam says. That means making sure our "global sheep" does not get injured in the first place - something that may be hard to guarantee as the climate shifts and the world's fuel and mineral resources dwindle. Tightly coupled system Scientists in other fields are also warning that complex systems are prone to collapse. Similar ideas have emerged from the study of natural cycles in ecosystems, based on the work of ecologist Buzz Holling, now at the University of Florida, Gainesville. Some ecosystems become steadily more complex over time: as a patch of new forest grows and matures, specialist species may replace more generalist species, biomass builds up and the trees, beetles and bacteria form an increasingly rigid and ever more tightly coupled system. "It becomes an extremely efficient system for remaining constant in the face of the normal range of conditions," says Homer-Dixon. But unusual conditions - an insect outbreak, fire or drought - can trigger dramatic changes as the impact cascades through the system. The end result may be the collapse of the old ecosystem and its replacement by a newer, simpler one. Globalisation is resulting in the same tight coupling and fine-tuning of our systems to a narrow range of conditions, he says. Redundancy is being systematically eliminated as companies maximise profits. Some products are produced by only one factory worldwide. Financially, it makes sense, as mass production maximises efficiency. Unfortunately, it also minimises resilience. "We need to be more selective about increasing the connectivity and speed of our critical systems," says Homer-Dixon. "Sometimes the costs outweigh the benefits." Is there an alternative? Could we heed these warnings and start carefully climbing back down the complexity ladder? Tainter knows of only one civilisation that managed to decline but not fall. "After the Byzantine empire lost most of its territory to the Arabs, they simplified their entire society. Cities mostly disappeared, literacy and numeracy declined, their economy became less monetised, and they switched from professional army to peasant militia." Staving off collapse Pulling off the same trick will be harder for our more advanced society. Nevertheless, Homer-Dixon thinks we should be taking action now. "First, we need to encourage distributed and decentralised production of vital goods like energy and food," he says. "Second, we need to remember that slack isn't always waste. A manufacturing company with a large inventory may lose some money on warehousing, but it can keep running even if its suppliers are temporarily out of action." The electricity industry in the US has already started identifying hubs in the grid with no redundancy available and is putting some back in, Homer-Dixon points out. Governments could encourage other sectors to follow suit. The trouble is that in a world of fierce competition, private companies will always increase efficiency unless governments subsidise inefficiency in the public interest. Homer-Dixon doubts we can stave off collapse completely. He points to what he calls "tectonic" stresses that will shove our rigid, tightly coupled system outside the range of conditions it is becoming ever more finely tuned to. These include population growth, the growing divide between the world's rich and poor, financial instability, weapons proliferation, disappearing forests and fisheries, and climate change. In imposing new complex solutions we will run into the problem of diminishing returns - just as we are running out of cheap and plentiful energy. "This is the fundamental challenge humankind faces. We need to allow for the healthy breakdown in natural function in our societies in a way that doesn't produce catastrophic collapse, but instead leads to healthy renewal," Homer-Dixon says. This is what happens in forests, which are a patchy mix of old growth and newer areas created by disease or fire. If the ecosystem in one patch collapses, it is recolonised and renewed by younger forest elsewhere. We must allow partial breakdown here and there, followed by renewal, he says, rather than trying so hard to avert breakdown by increasing complexity that any resulting crisis is actually worse. Tipping points Lester Brown thinks we are fast running out of time. "The world can no longer afford to waste a day. We need a Great Mobilisation, as we had in wartime," he says. "There has been tremendous progress in just the past few years. For the first time, I am starting to see how an alternative economy might emerge. But it's now a race between tipping points - which will come first, a switch to sustainable technology, or collapse?" Tainter is not convinced that even new technology will save civilisation in the long run. "I sometimes think of this as a 'faith-based' approach to the future," he says. Even a society reinvigorated by cheap new energy sources will eventually face the problem of diminishing returns once more. Innovation itself might be subject to diminishing returns, or perhaps absolute limits. Studies of the way cities grow by Luis Bettencourt of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, New Mexico, support this idea. His team's work suggests that an ever-faster rate of innovation is required to keep cities growing and prevent stagnation or collapse, and in the long run this cannot be sustainable. Transition away from growth is key any delay makes the inevitable collapse more devastatingBarry 10 (Glen, President and Founder Ecological Internet. Ph.D. in Land Resources from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Resisting Global Ecological Change, 1-5, http://www.ecoearth.info/blog/2010/01/earth_meanders_resisting_globa.asp)Shared survival requires powering down, going back to the land, and ecological resistance. The human family faces imminent and (Copenhagen would suggest) inevitable collapse of the biosphere the thin layer of life upon an otherwise lifeless planet that makes Earth habitable. Marshes and rivers and forests and fish are far more than resources they and all natural ecosystems are a necessity for humanitys existence upon Earth. A few centuries of historically unprecedented explosion in human numbers and surging, albeit inequitable, consumption and resultant resource use, ecosystem destruction and pollution; is needlessly destroying being for all living things. Revolutionary action such as ending coal use, reforming industrial agriculture and protecting and restoring old forests and other natural ecosystems, is a requirement for the continuation of shared human being. Earth is threatened by far more than a changing atmosphere causing climate change. Cumulative ecosystem destruction not only in climate, but also water, forests, oceans, farmland, soils and toxics -- in the name of progress and development -- threatens each of us, our families and communities, as well as the Earth System in total and all her creatures. Any chance of achieving global ecological sustainability depends urgently upon shifting concerns regarding climate change to more sufficiently transform ourselves and society to more broadly resist global ecological change. Global ecological, social and economic collapse may be inevitable, but its severity, duration and likelihood of recovery are being determined by us now. It does not look good as the environmental movement has been lacking in its overall vision, ambition and implementation. The growing numbers of ecologically literate global citizens must come forward to together start considering ecologically sufficient emergency measures to protect and restore global ecosystems. We need a plan that allows humans and as many other species as possible to survive the coming great ecological collapse, even as we work to soften the collapse, and to restore to the extent practicable the Earths ecosystems. This mandates full protection for all remaining large natural ecosystems and working to reconnect and enlarge biologically rich smaller remnants that still exist. It is time for a hard radical turn back to a fully functioning and restored natural Earth which will require again regaining our bond with land (and air, water and oceans), powering down our energy profligacy, and taking whatever measures are necessary to once again bring society into balance with ecosystems. This may mean taking all measures necessary to stop those known to be destroying ecosystems for profit. As governments dither and the elite profit, it has become dreadfully apparent that the political, economic and social structures necessary to stop human ecocide of our and all lifes habitats does not yet exist. The three hundred year old hyper-capitalistic and nationalistic growth machine eating ecosystems is not going to willingly stop growing. But unless it does, human and most or all other life will suffer a slow and excruciating apocalyptic death. Actions can be taken now to soften ecological collapse while maximizing the likelihood that a humane and ecologically whole Earth remains to be renewed. Growth causes warming and extinctionBarry 8 (Dr. Glen, President and Founder Ecological Internet, Economic Collapse and Global Ecology, 1-14, http://www.countercurrents.org/barry140108.htm)Given widespread failure to pursue policies sufficient to reverse deterioration of the biosphere and avoid ecological collapse, the best we can hope for may be that the growth-based economic system crashes sooner rather than later Humanity and the Earth are faced with an enormous conundrum -- sufficient climate policies enjoy political support only in times of rapid economic growth. Yet this growth is the primary factor driving greenhouse gas emissions and other environmental ills. The growth machine has pushed the planet well beyond its ecological carrying capacity, and unless constrained, can only lead to human extinction and an end to complex life. With every economic downturn, like the one now looming in the United States, it becomes more difficult and less likely that policy sufficient to ensure global ecological sustainability will be embraced. This essay explores the possibility that from a biocentric viewpoint of needs for long-term global ecological, economic and social sustainability; it would be better for the economic collapse to come now rather than later. Economic growth is a deadly disease upon the Earth, with capitalism as its most virulent strain. Throw-away consumption and explosive population growth are made possible by using up fossil fuels and destroying ecosystems. Holiday shopping numbers are covered by media in the same breath as Arctic ice melt, ignoring their deep connection. Exponential economic growth destroys ecosystems and pushes the biosphere closer to failure. Humanity has proven itself unwilling and unable to address climate change and other environmental threats with necessary haste and ambition. Action on coal, forests, population, renewable energy and emission reductions could be taken now at net benefit to the economy. Yet, the losers -- primarily fossil fuel industries and their bought oligarchy -- successfully resist futures not dependent upon their deadly products. Perpetual economic growth, and necessary climate and other ecological policies, are fundamentally incompatible. Global ecological sustainability depends critically upon establishing a steady state economy, whereby production is right-sized to not diminish natural capital. Whole industries like coal and natural forest logging will be eliminated even as new opportunities emerge in solar energy and environmental restoration. This critical transition to both economic and ecological sustainability is simply not happening on any scale. The challenge is how to carry out necessary environmental policies even as economic growth ends and consumption plunges. The natural response is going to be liquidation of even more life-giving ecosystems, and jettisoning of climate policies, to vainly try to maintain high growth and personal consumption. We know that humanity must reduce greenhouse gas emissions by at least 80% over coming decades. How will this and other necessary climate mitigation strategies be maintained during years of economic downturns, resource wars, reasonable demands for equitable consumption, and frankly, the weather being more pleasant in some places? If efforts to reduce emissions and move to a steady state economy fail; the collapse of ecological, economic and social systems is assured. Bright greens take the continued existence of a habitable Earth with viable, sustainable populations of all species including humans as the ultimate truth and the meaning of life. Whether this is possible in a time of economic collapse is crucially dependent upon whether enough ecosystems and resources remain post collapse to allow humanity to recover and reconstitute sustainable, relocalized societies. It may be better for the Earth and humanity's future that economic collapse comes sooner rather than later, while more ecosystems and opportunities to return to nature's fold exist. Economic collapse will be deeply wrenching -- part Great Depression, part African famine. There will be starvation and civil strife, and a long period of suffering and turmoil. Many will be killed as balance returns to the Earth. Most people have forgotten how to grow food and that their identity is more than what they own. Yet there is some justice, in that those who have lived most lightly upon the land will have an easier time of it, even as those super-consumers living in massive cities finally learn where their food comes from and that ecology is the meaning of life. Economic collapse now means humanity and the Earth ultimately survive to prosper again. Human suffering -- already the norm for many, but hitting the currently materially affluent -- is inevitable given the degree to which the planet's carrying capacity has been exceeded. We are a couple decades at most away from societal strife of a much greater magnitude as the Earth's biosphere fails. Humanity can take the bitter medicine now, and recover while emerging better for it; or our total collapse can be a final, fatal death swoon. A successful revolutionary response to imminent global ecosystem collapse would focus upon bringing down the Earth's industrial economy now. As society continues to fail miserably to implement necessary changes to allow creation to continue, maybe the best strategy to achieve global ecological sustainability is economic sabotage to hasten the day. It is more fragile than it looks. Humanity is a marvelous creation. Yet her current dilemma is unprecedented. It is not yet known whether she is able to adapt, at some expense to her comfort and short-term well-being, to ensure survival. If she can, all futures of economic, social and ecological collapse can be avoided. If not it is better from a long-term biocentric viewpoint that the economic growth machine collapse now, bringing forth the necessary change, and offering hope for a planetary and human revival. I wish no harm to anyone, and want desperately to avoid these prophesies foretold by ecological science. I speak for the Earth, for despite being the giver of life, her natural voice remains largely unheard over the tumult of the end of being. Economic decline doesnt cause warFerguson 6 (Niall, Professor of History Harvard University, Foreign Affairs, 85(5), September / October, Lexis)Nor can economic crises explain the bloodshed. What may be the most familiar causal chain in modern historiography links the Great Depression to the rise of fascism and the outbreak of World War II. But that simple story leaves too much out. Nazi Germany started the war in Europe only after its economy had recovered. Not all the countries affected by the Great Depression were taken over by fascist regimes, nor did all such regimes start wars of aggression. In fact, no general relationship between economics and conflict is discernible for the century as a whole. Some wars came after periods of growth, others were the causes rather than the consequences of economic catastrophe, and some severe economic crises were not followed by wars.Growth causes war--Resource wars --Struggle for expansion--World Wars--Full war chestsTrainer 2 (Ted, Senior Lecturer of School of Social Work University of New South Wales, If You Want Affluence, Prepare for War, Democracy & Nature, Vol. 8, No. 2, EBSCO)

If this limits-to-growth analysis is at all valid, the implications for the problem of global peace and conflict and security are clear and savage. If we all remain determined to increase our living standards, our level of production and consumption, in a world where resources are already scarce, where only a few have affluent living standards but another 8 billion will be wanting them too, and which we, the rich, are determined to get richer without any limit, then nothing is more guaranteed than that there will be increasing levels of conflict and violence. To put it another way, if we insist on remaining affluent we will need to remain heavily armed. Increased conflict in at least the following categories can be expected. First, the present conflict over resources between the rich elites and the poor majority in the Third World must increase, for example, as development under globalisation takes more land, water and forests into export markets. Second, there are conflicts between the Third World and the rich world, the major recent examples being the war between the US and Iraq over control of oil. Iraq invaded Kuwait and the US intervened, accompanied by much high-sounding rhetoric (having found nothing unacceptable about Israels invasions of Lebanon or the Indonesian invasion of East Timor). As has often been noted, had Kuwait been one of the worlds leading exporters of broccoli, rather than oil, it is doubtful whether the US would have been so eager to come to its defence. At the time of writing, the US is at war in Central Asia over terrorism. Few would doubt that a collateral outcome will be the establishment of regimes that will give the West access to the oil wealth of Central Asia. Following are some references to the connection many have recognised between rich world affluence and conflict. General M.D. Taylor, US Army retired argued ... US military priorities just be shifted towards insuring a steady flow of resources from the Third World. Taylor referred to fierce competition among industrial powers for the same raw materials markets sought by the United States and growing hostility displayed by have-not nations towards their affluent counterparts.62 Struggles are taking place, or are in the offing, between rich and poor nations over their share of the world product; within the industrial world over their share of industrial resources and markets.63 That more than half of the people on this planet are poorly nourished while a small percentage live in historically unparalleled luxury is a sure recipe for continued and even escalating international conflict.64 The oil embargo placed on the US by OPEC in the early 1970s prompted the US to make it clear that it was prepared to go to war in order to secure supplies. President Carter last week issued a clear warning that any attempt to gain control of the Persian Gulf would lead to war. It would be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States.65 The US is ready to take military action if Russia threatens vital American interests in the Persian Gulf, the US Secretary of Defence, Mr Brown, said yesterday.66 Klares recent book Resource Wars discusses this theme in detail, stressing the coming significance of water as a source of international conflict. Global demand for many key materials is growing at an unsustainable rate. the incidence of conflict over vital materials is sure to grow. The wars of the future will largely be fought over the possession and control of vital economic goods. resource wars will become, in the years ahead, the most distinctive feature of the global security environment.67 Much of the rich worlds participation in the conflicts taking place throughout the world is driven by the determination to back a faction that will then look favourably on Western interests. In a report entitled, The rich prize that is Shaba, Breeze begins, Increasing rivalry over a share-out between France and Belgium of the mineral riches of Shaba Province lies behind the joint Franco Belgian paratroop airlift to Zaire. These mineral riches make the province a valuable prize and help explain the Wests extended diplomatic courtship 68 Then there is potential conflict between the rich nations who are after all the ones most dependent on securing large quantities of resources. The resource and energy intensive modes of production employed in nearly all industries necessitate continuing armed coercion and competition to secure raw materials.69 Struggles are taking place, or are in the offing, between rich and poor nations over their share of the world product, within the industrial world over their share of industrial resources and markets 70 Growth, competition, expansion and war Finally, at the most abstract level, the struggle for greater wealth and power is central in the literature on the causes of war. warfare appears as a normal and periodic form of competition within the capitalist world economy. world wars regularly occur during a period of economic expansion. 71 War is an inevitable result of the struggle between economies for expansion.72 Choucri and North say their most important finding is that domestic growth is a strong determinant of national expansion and that this results in competition between nations and war.73 The First and Second World Wars can be seen as being largely about imperial grabbing. Germany, Italy and Japan sought to expand their territory and resource access. Britain already held much of the world within its empire which it had previously fought 72 wars to take! Finite resources in a world of expanding populations and increasing per capita demands create a situation ripe for international violence.74 Ashley focuses on the significance of the quest for economic growth. War is mainly explicable in terms of differential growth in a world of scarce and unevenly distributed resources expansion is a prime source of conflict. So long as the dynamics of differential growth remain unmanaged, it is probable that these long term processes will sooner or later carry major powers into war.75 Security The point being made can be put in terms of security. One way to seek security is to develop greater capacity to repel attack. In the case of nations this means large expenditure of money, resources and effort on military preparedness. However there is a much better strategy; i.e. to live in ways that do not oblige you to take more than your fair share and therefore that do not give anyone any motive to attack you. Tut! This is not possible unless there is global economic justice. If a few insist on levels of affluence, industrialisation and economic growth that are totally impossible for all to achieve, and which could not be possible if they were taking only their fair share of global resources, then they must remain heavily armed and their security will require readiness to use their arms to defend their unjust privileges. In other words, if we want affluence we must prepare for war. If we insist on continuing to take most of the oil and other resources while many suffer intense deprivation because they cannot get access to them then we must be prepared to maintain the aircraft carriers and rapid deployment forces, and the despotic regimes, without which we cannot secure the oil fields and plantations. Global peace is not possible without global justice, and that is not possible unless rich countries move to The Simpler Way.

WTO -- No extinction diseases favor limited lethality and medicine will checkPosner 4 (Richard, Judge US Court of Appeals, Catastrophe: Risk and Response, p. 22-24)

Yet the fact that Homo sapiens has managed to survive every disease to assail it in the 200,000 years or so of its existence is a source of genuine comfort, at least if the focus is on extinction events. There have been enormously destructive plagues, such as the Black Death, smallpox, and now AIDS, but none has come close to destroying the entire human race. There is a biological reason. Natural selection favors germs of limited lethality; they are fitter in an evolutionary sense because their genes are more likely to be spread if the germs do not kill their hosts too quickly. The AIDS virus is an example of a lethal virus, wholly natural, that by lying dormant yet infectious in its host for years maximizes its spread. Yet there is no danger that AIDS will destroy the entire human race. The likelihood of a natural pandemic that would cause the extinction of the human race is probably even less today than in the past (except in prehistoric times, when people lived in small, scattered bands, which would have limited the spread of disease), despite wider human contacts that make it more difficult to localize an infectious disease. The reason is improvements in medical science. But the comfort is a small one. Pandemics can still impose enormous losses and resist prevention and cure: the lesson of the AIDS pandemic. And there is always a lust time.-- Burn out stops diseaseLederberg 99 (Joshua, Professor of Genetics Stanford University School of Medicine, Epidemic The World of Infectious Disease, p. 13)