MoneyGram Foundation Core Files (Kritik)

Capitalism Kritik DUDA 2014-2015JV DivisionCapitalism Kritik Table of Contents (1/2)

Summary3Glossary4

1NC Shell: Capitalism Kritik 1NC5-7

Links: Link Renewable Energy Incentives8Link Aquaculture9Link Arctic Oil10Link Green Technology11Link Climate Change12Link Preventing Environmental Disaster13Link Energy Poverty14Link Food Security15Link Jobs/Unemployment16Link Ports/Shipping17

Impacts: Impact No Value to Life18Impact Environmental Collapse19Impact Economic Collapse20Impact Global Poverty21Impact War22

Alternative: Alternative Solves Overcomes Capitalism23Alternative Solves Climate Change24Alternative Solves Environmental Collapse25

Answers to Affirmative Answers: ANSWERS TO: Permutation Mutually Exclusive26ANSWERS TO: Permutation Total Rejection Key27ANSWERS TO: Perm Green Capitalism Fails28-29ANSWERS TO: No Alternative to Capitalism30ANSWERS TO: Capitalism is Human Nature31ANSWERS TO: Capitalism is Sustainable32

Capitalism Kritik Table of Contents (2/2)

Affirmative Answers: Permutation Green Capitalism33ANSWERS TO: Green Capitalism Fails34Alternative Fails No Alternative to Capitalism35Alternative Fails Capitalism is Human Nature36Alternative Fails Capitalism is Sustainable37Alternative Fails Cant Overcome Capitalism38Alternative Fails Cant Solve Climate Change39Capitalism Good Environment40Capitalism Good Economic Growth41Capitalism Good Global Poverty42Capitalism Good War43

Summary

This argument claims that the fundamental goal of ocean exploration or development is to find ways to more effectively turn the ocean into a resource that can be exploited for profit. Whether by exploring it to find new resources to exploit, or developing already existing resources into commodities, this economic paradigm (called capitalism) ultimately depends on a form of thought that treats the world around us as nothing more than a potential opportunity to make a profit.

Because this economic system is concerned first and foremost with economic growth and human benefit, it will arguably sacrifice long-term environmental well-being for short-term profits. At its worst, capitalism potentially also causes wars as countries attempt to secure resources and also devalues human beings because they are valued only in terms of their economic potential.

The alternative to this paradigm would reject exploration and development for the purpose of adding value to the economy, and instead promote a form of existence that was more concerned with the long-term sustainability of the environmental resources that make life possible.

At the end of this file, you will also find affirmative answers to this argument for example, you can argue that: capitalism is an inevitable system of economic exchange, capitalism helps the environment because we have a vested interest in protecting our resources if we own them, or that technological advances made possible by capitalism help reduce the impact that humans have on the environment. Glossary

Capitalism an economic system in which the means of production is privately owned and operated for profit. In other words, goods are produced by privately owned companies (not the government) for the sake of making money.

Neoliberalism the name given to an economic ideology that promotes the reduction of the public sector and the expansion of private sector.

Economic rationality a framework for understanding social and economic behavior, which is typically associated with the pursuit of profits.

Sustainability able to be maintained over the long term in this context, it describes whether or not economic growth fueled by the consumption of ocean resources can be sustained for long periods of time.

Green technology technology developed to protect the environment. Efficient heating and cooling systems, electric cars, or offshore wind turbines could arguably be called green technologies.

Green capitalism an offshoot of capitalism that believes environmental problems can be remedied with free market mechanisms and economic growth.

No value to life a concept that refers to what happens when we stop treating people as if they have inherent value and start thinking of them as tools towards a specific end for example, we think of someone as useful only as long as they can make money.

Permutation a term used in debate to argue that a negative counterplan or alternative can be implemented alongside the affirmative plan. For example, an affirmative team might argue that we can reject capitalism while developing renewable energy sources.

Human nature a concept that refers to an inherent trait of humankind. For example, if you said all humans are competitive, you are arguing that human nature is competitive.

Commons refers to a common resource a resource that is not privately owned, but shared by all people. The open ocean is a commons, because no nation or individual can claim it for themselves. Tragedy of the Commons a concept that refers to disasters that happen when individuals consume a resource in a way that hurts everyone. For example: 5 companies harvest fish from the open ocean to make money until there arent enough for everyone to eat.

Commodify is a verb that describes the act of reducing something (a person, an animal, a resource like trees) to its economic value.

Renewable energy a form of energy that can be replenished / cant be exhausted. For example: oil is NOT a renewable form of energy because it is a finite resource. Capitalism Kritik 1NC (1/3)

A. LINK: The affirmative commodifies the ocean by framing it as a resource that can be exploited for self-interested gain and economic growth

Mansfield, Professor of Geography at Oklahoma State University, 2004(Becky, Neoliberalism in the oceans, Geoforum, 35:3, May, SCIENCEDIRECT)

Examining the ways that past policy orientations toward sheries have inuenced the development of neoliberal approaches to ocean governance, I contend that neoliberalism in the oceans centers specically around concerns about property and the use of privatization to create markets for governing access to and use of ocean resources. Within the Euro American tradition that has shaped international law of the sea, the oceans (including the water column, seabed, and living and mineral resources) were long treated as common propertythe common heritage of mankind (Pardo, 1967)open to all comers with the means to create and exploit oceanic opportunities. Although historically there has also been continual tension between this openness of access and desire for territorialization (especially of coastal waters), treating the oceans as a commons is consistent with the idea that oceans are spaces of movement and transportation, which have facilitated mercantilism, exploration, colonial expansion, and cold war military maneuvering (Steinberg, 2001).1 Oceans have also long been sites for resource extraction, yet it has not been until recent decades that new economic desires and environmental contradictions have contributed to a pronounced move away from open access and freedom of the seas. New technologies for resource extraction combined with regional overexploitation have contributed to conflicts over resources, to which representatives from academia, politics, and business have responded by calling for enclosing the oceans within carefully delimited regimes of property rights, be those regimes of state, individual, or collective control. At the center of this new political economy of oceans, as it has evolved over the past 50 years, has been concern about the commons, and the extent to which common and open access property regimes contribute to economic and environmental crises, which include overfishing and overcapitalization. As such, the question of the commons has been at the center of numerous, seemingly contradictory approaches to ocean governance and fisheries regulation. Thus, the first argument of the paper is that neoliberal approaches in fisheries cannot be treated simply as derivative of a larger neoliberal movement that became entrenched starting in the 1980s. Instead, examining trajectories of neoliberalism in fisheries over the past half century reveals that the emphasis on property and the commons has contributed to a more specific dynamic of neoliberalism operating in ocean fisheries and, therefore, to distinctive forms of neoliberalism. To be clear, it is not the emphasis on property in itself that ties this history into neoliberalism, but rather the particular perspective that links property specifically to market rationality. The underlying assumption of all the approaches to property discussed in this paper is that market rationality (i.e. profit maximization) is natural. Given this, property rights harness this rationality to the greater good, while a lack of property rights inevitably leads to economic and environmental problems. It is this set of assumptions that underlies the neoliberal emphasis on privatization and marketization.

Capitalism Kritik 1NC (2/3)

B. IMPACT: This drive to exploit natural resources for economic gain underlies a pattern of environmental destruction which will result in ecological collapse and extinction.

Clark & Clausen, professors of sociology at North Carolina State & Fort Lewis College, 2008(Brett and Rebecca, The Oceanic Crisis: Capitalism and the Degradation of Marine Ecosystem, Monthly Review, 60:3, July, Online: http://monthlyreview.org/2008/07/01/the-oceanic-crisis-capitalism-and-the-degradation-of-marine-ecosystem/)

The world is at a crossroads in regard to the ecological crisis. Ecological degradation under global capitalism extends to the entire biosphere. Oceans that were teeming with abundance are being decimated by the continual intrusion of exploitive economic operations. At the same time that scientists are documenting the complexity and interdependency of marine species, we are witnessing an oceanic crisis as natural conditions, ecological processes, and nutrient cycles are being undermined through overfishing and transformed due to global warming. The expansion of the accumulation system, along with technological advances in fishing, have intensified the exploitation of the world ocean; facilitated the enormous capture of fishes (both target and bycatch); extended the spatial reach of fishing operations; broadened the species deemed valuable on the market; and disrupted metabolic and reproductive processes of the ocean. The quick-fix solution of aquaculture enhances capitals control over production without resolving ecological contradictions. It is wise to recognize, as Paul Burkett has stated, that short of human extinction, there is no sense in which capitalism can be relied upon to permanently break down under the weight of its depletion and degradation of natural wealth.44 Capital is driven by the competition for the accumulation of wealth, and short-term profits provide the immediate pulse of capitalism. It cannot operate under conditions that require reinvestment in the reproduction of nature, which may entail time scales of a hundred or more years. Such requirements stand opposed to the immediate interests of profit. The qualitative relation between humans and nature is subsumed under the drive to accumulate capital on an ever-larger scale. Marx lamented that to capital, Time is everything, man is nothing; he is at the most, times carcase. Quality no longer matters. Quantity alone decides everything.45 Productive relations are concerned with production time, labor costs, and the circulation of capitalnot the diminishing conditions of existence. Capital subjects natural cycles and processes (via controlled feeding and the use of growth hormones) to its economic cycle. The maintenance of natural conditions is not a concern. The bounty of nature is taken for granted and appropriated as a free gift. As a result, the system is inherently caught in a fundamental crisis arising from the transformation and destruction of nature. Istvn Mszros elaborates this point, stating: For today it is impossible to think of anything at all concerning the elementary conditions of social metabolic reproduction which is not lethally threatened by the way in which capital relates to themthe only way in which it can. This is true not only of humanitys energy requirements, or of the management of the planets mineral resources and chemical potentials, but of every facet of the global agriculture, including the devastation caused by large scale de-forestation, and even the most irresponsible way of dealing with the element without which no human being can survive: water itself.In the absence of miraculous solutions, capitals arbitrarily self-asserting attitude to the objective determinations of causality and time in the end inevitably brings a bitter harvest, at the expense of humanity [and nature itself].Capitalism Kritik 1NC (3/3)

C. ALTERNATIVE: Our alternative is to reject the market logic underlying the affirmative.

Rejecting market competition is an act of economic imagination that can create real alternatives to capitalism.

White & Williams, professors of economic geography & public policy at Sheffield University, 2012(Richard and Cohn, Escaping Capitalist Hegemony: Rereading Western Economies in the Accumulation of Freedom, pg. 131-32)

The American anarchist Howard Ehrlich argued, "We must act as if the future is today." What we have hoped to demonstrate here is that noncapitalist spaces are present and evident in contemporary societies. We do not need to imagine and create from scratch new economic alternatives that will successfully confront the capitalist hegemony thesis, or more properly the capitalist hegemony myth. Rather than capitalism being the all powerful, all conquering, economic juggernaut, the greater truth is that the "other" noncapitalist spaces have grown in proportion relative in size to the capitalism realm. This should give many of us great comfort and hope in moving forward purposefully for, as Chomsky observed: "[a]lternatives have to be constructed within the existing economy, and within the minds of working people and communities."' In this regard, the roots of the heterodox economic futures that we desire do exist in the present. Far from shutting down future economic possibilities, a more accurate reading of "the economic" (which decenters capitalism), coupled with the global crisis that capitalism finds itself in, should give us additional courage and resolve to unleash our economic imaginations, embrace the challenge of creating "fully engaged" economies. These must also take greater account of the disastrous social and environmental costs of capitalism and its inherent ethic of competition. As Kropotkin wrote: Don't compete!competition is always injurious to the species, and you have plenty of resources to avoid it! Therefore combinepractice mutual aid! That is the surest means for giving to each and all to the greatest safety, the best guarantee of existence and progress, bodily, intellectual, and moralThat is what Nature teaches us; and that is what all those animals which have attained the highest position in the respective classes have done. That is also what man [skithe most primitive manhas been doing; and that is why man has reached the position upon which we stand now." A more detailed and considered discussion of the futures of work, however, is beyond the scope of this chapter. What we have hoped to demonstrate is that in reimagining the economic, and recognizing and valuing the noncapitalist economic practices that are already here, we might spark renewed enthusiasm, optimism, insight, and critical discussion within and among anarchist communities. The ambition here is similar to that of GibsonGraham, in arguing that: The objective is not to produce a finished and coherent template that maps the economy "as it really is" and presents... a ready made "alternative economy." Rather, our hope is to disarm and dislocate the naturalized dominance of the capitalist economy and make a space for new economic beeomingsones that we will need to work to produce. If we can recognize a diverse economy, we can begin to imagine and create diverse organizations and practices as powerful constituents of an enlivened noncapitalist policies of place.

Link Renewable Energy Incentives

[] Relying on market mechanisms to facilitate the transition to green energy will make warming, international competition, structural violence and war inevitable.

Abramsky, fellow at the Institute of Advanced Studies in Science, Technology & Society, 2010(Koyla, Racing to "Save" the Economy and the Planet: Capitalist or Post capitalist Transition to a Postpetrol World?, in Sparking A Worldwide Energy Revolution, ed. Koyla Abramsky, pg. 26-7)

The fact that coal and oil are finite resources means that there is a longterm tendency in the direction of their phaseout, regardless of what intentional shortterm interventions are carried out or not. Many proponents of renewable energy simply advocate leaving this phase6ut process to the market. It is hoped that rising oil and coal prices will make these fuels increasingly less attractive. Efforts are focused on developing a renewable energy sector that is able to compete, rather than directly confronting, suppressing, and ultimately dismantling the coal and oil industries. However, leaving the phaseout of oil and coal to the market has at least three crucial implications. First, such a phaseout is likely to actually prolong the use of fossil fuels. As long as these energy sources are profitable to extract and to use, they will be. Down to the last remaining drops of oil or lumps of coal. Although resources are finite, they are still relatively abundant Even those analysts who give the most pessimistic (though realistic) perspectives on resource availability, such as those included in this book, do not predict a complete exhaustion of resources in the very near future. And, from the perspective of climate change, a prolongation of fossil fuel use is the exact opposite of what needs to happen, phaseout must be sped up, not prolonged. Linked to this, the second consequence of a marketbased phaseout of oil and coal will mean that the remaining oil and coal resources are frittered away for immediate profit rather than to build the infrastructure for a transition process. Given that building a new energy system will require massive amounts of energy inputs in a very concentrated period of time, this is a recipe for disaster. The third important consequence is that leaving the transition process to the market is likely to be increasingly coercive and conductive if competition is left to determine who controls the last of these resources and for what purposes they are used. This means competition between workers globally, competition between firnis, and competition between states. This translates to massive inequalities, hierarchies, and austerity measures being imposed on labor (both in and outside the energy sectan); massive bankruptcies of smaller firms and concentration and centralization of capital; and last, but not least, military conflicts between states. Accepting a marketbased phase out of oil and coal is accepting in advance that the rising price of energy and a transition away from coal and oil is paid by labor and not capital, when in actual fact the question of who pays still remains to be determined. The answer will only come through a process of collective global struggle, which occurs along class lines within the worldeconomy. It is important to correctly identify these lines of struggle at the outset, otherwise it will be a struggle lost before the fight even begins. Collectively planning energy use and fossil fuel phaseout is proving to be an enormously difficult social process, but it is likely to be far less socially regressive if based on cooperation, solidarity, and collectivelydefined social needs, rather than if it is based around competition and profit.Link Aquaculture

[] Aquaculture is a superficial solution to a complex problem it involves subjecting nature to further exploitation and will exclusively benefit large corporations while environmental destruction and global hunger get worse.

Clark & Clausen, professors of sociology at North Carolina State & Fort Lewis College, 2008(Brett and Rebecca, The Oceanic Crisis: Capitalism and the Degradation of Marine Ecosystem, Monthly Review, 60:3, July, Online: http://monthlyreview.org/2008/07/01/the-oceanic-crisis-capitalism-and-the-degradation-of-marine-ecosystem/)

The immense problems associated with the overharvest of industrial capture fisheries has led some optimistically to offer aquaculture as an ecological solution. However, capitalist aquaculture fails to reverse the process of ecological degradation. Rather, it continues to sever the social and ecological relations between humans and the ocean. Aquaculture: The Blue Revolution? The massive decline in fish stocks has led capitalist development to turn to a new way of increasing profitsintensified production of fishes. Capitalist aquaculture represents not only a quantitative change in the intensification and concentration of production; it also places organisms life cycles under the complete control of private for-profit ownership.31 This new industry, it is claimed, is the fastest-growing form of agriculture in the world. It boasts of having ownership from egg to plate and substantially alters the ecological and human dimensions of a fishery.32 Aquaculture (sometimes also referred to as aquabusiness) involves subjecting nature to the logic of capital. Capital attempts to overcome natural and social barriers through its constant innovations. In this, enterprises attempt to commodify, invest in, and develop new elements of nature that previously existed outside the political-economic competitive sphere: As Edward Carr wrote in the Economist, the sea is a resource that must be preserved and harvested.To enhance its uses, the water must become ever more like the land, with owners, laws and limits. Fishermen must behave more like ranchers than hunters.33 As worldwide commercial fish stocks decline due to overharvest and other anthropogenic causes, aquaculture is witnessing a rapid expansion in the global economy. Aquacultures contribution to global supplies of fish increased from 3.9 percent of total worldwide production by weight in 1970 to 27.3 percent in 2000. In 2004, aquaculture and capture fisheries produced 106 million tons of fish and aquaculture accounted for 43 percent.34 According to Food and Agriculture Organization statistics, aquaculture is growing more rapidly than all other animal food producing sectors. Hailed as the Blue Revolution, aquaculture is frequently compared to agricultures Green Revolution as a way to achieve food security and economic growth among the poor and in the third world. The cultivation of farmed salmon as a high-value, carnivorous species destined for market in core nations has emerged as one of the more lucrative (and controversial) endeavors in aquaculture production.35 Much like the Green Revolution, the Blue Revolution may produce temporary increases in yields, but it does not usher in a solution to food security (or environmental problems). Food security is tied to issues of distribution. Given that the Blue Revolution is driven by the pursuit of profit, the desire for monetary gain trumps the distribution of food to those in need.36 Industrial aquaculture intensifies fish production by transforming the natural life histories of wild fish stocks into a combined animal feedlot. Like monoculture agriculture, aquaculture furthers the capitalistic division of nature, only its realm of operation is the marine world. In order to maximize return on investment, aquaculture must raise thousands of fish in a confined net-pen. Fish are separated from the natural environment and the various relations of exchange found in a food web and ecosystem. The fishs reproductive life cycle is altered so that it can be propagated and raised until the optimum time for mechanical harvest.

Link Arctic Oil

[] Arctic development sidesteps drastically needed changes in energy production and locks us into carbon fuel consumption this makes climate change and environmental destruction inevitable.

Cole, Editor at A World To Win, 2013(Penny, Capitalism's Arctic plan, A World to Win, July 26, Online: http://www.aworldtowin.net/blog/capitalisms-arctic-plan-get-oil-destroy.html)

Once you say that of course you are really saying "anytime" because emissions of all greenhouse gases continue to rise and no effort is being made to halt or slow them. A feedback effect could kick in at any moment. A slowing of the rise in temperatures over the last few years provided a breathing space. But instead of using this to take urgent action to halt the growth in emissions, it was simply exploited by climate change deniers to say there is no global warming. Now we know that much of the heat was being absorbed into the deep oceans and as they lose their capacity to soak up more, warming will take off again. Indeed, the overall upward trend has never halted, with all the hottest summers on record taking place during this disputed period. Corporations and governments may be greedily eyeing the Arctic, but alongside the process already in train, this scenario would result in the worst possible conditions for agriculture. The worst effects would be in Africa, Asia and South America, but no country is immune as farmers from Europe and America can testify. But the opposite of action to halt emissions is happening; Lloyds of London estimates more than $100bn will be invested in extraction and shipping in the Arctic in the next five years. Writing these blogs, one begins to feel a bit like the Trojan prophetess Cassandra who was locked up as a madwoman by fellow citizens for warning them the war with the Greeks could only end in disaster. But so be it the truth can always bear repeating, which is that without system change we cannot begin to start to slow and then reverse climate change. If the corporations are permitted to start operating in the Arctic, the consequences are unthinkable. Solutions are tantalisingly within reach from permaculture, perennial grains, recycling of waste products to support organic farming, to abandoning fossil fuels in favour of locally-planned renewable energy strategies, and, in the case of the Arctic, leaving the fossil fuels and minerals in the ground! But capitalism cannot permit this approach. As Bolivian climate strategist Pablo Solon puts it: In this race to the top, capital needs to colonize territories and natural resources, decrease the cost of human labour, develop new technologies and promote new financial, investment and trade rules that allow capital to have more and more profit. As a result, capitalism has already, in Solons words, "reached and surpassed the limits of the Earth system". To redress the damage, and to have a future for humanity, we must move to a model where humans work in harmony with nature and that means that the absolute supremacy of growth and profit must be overthrown.

Link Green Technology

[] A shift to green technology wont alter the dynamics of capitalist oppression 3rd world countries will still be subjected to mass violence and exploitation for the sake of profit.

White, fellow of Cultural and Innovation Studies at the University of East London, 2002(Damian, A Green Industrial Revolution? Sustainable Technological Innovation in a Global Age, Environmental Politics, Vo1.II. No.2, Summer, pp. 1-26)

The first point is essentially negative. Notably, it draws attention to the fact that even if all the obstacles to a green industrial revolution posed by the structuring of the current political economy are addressed - ifthere are notforces to make things differently - the type of eco-technological and ecoindustrial reorganisation that triumphs could simply serve and reinforce the patterns of interest of dominant groups. A neo-liberal version of the 'green industrial revolution' could simply give rise to eco-technologies and forms of industrial reorganisation that arc perfectly compatible with extending social control, military power, worker surveillance and the broader repressive capacities of dominant groups and institutions. It might even be that a corporate dominated green industrial revolution would simply ensure that employers have 'smart' buildings which not only give energy back to the national grid but allow for new 'solar powered' employee surveillance technologies. What of a sustainable military-industrial complex that uses green warfare technologies that kill human beings without destroying ecosystems? To what extent might a 'nonhero' dominated green industrial revolution simply ensure that the South receives ecotechnologies that primarily express Northern interests (for example, embedding relations of dependency rather than of self management and autonomy?). In short then, a green industrial revolution could simply give rise to new forms of 'green governmentality' [Dorier et aI., 1999].

Link Climate Change

[] Centering on climate change trades off with a focus on the neoliberal social forces driving it this displaces non-warming environmental crises and makes warming inevitable.

Crist, professor of Science and Technology in Society at Virginia Tech, 2006(Eileen, Beyond the Climate Crisis: a Critique of Climate Change Discourse, Telos, Winter, pg. 29-55, Online)

Yet the deepening realization of the threat of climate change, virtually in the wake of stratospheric ozone depletion, also suggests that dealing with global problems treaty-by-treaty is no solution to the planets predicament. Just as the risks of unanticipated ozone depletion have been followed by the dangers of a long underappreciated climate crisis, so it would be nave not to anticipate another (perhaps even entirely unforeseeable) catastrophe arising after the (hoped-for) resolution of the above two. Furthermore, if greenhouse gases were restricted successfully by means of technological shifts and innovations, the root cause of the ecological crisis as a whole would remain unaddressed. The destructive patterns of production, trade, extraction, land-use, waste proliferation, and consumption, coupled with population growth, would go unchallenged, continuing to run down the integrity, beauty, and biological richness of the Earth. Industrial-consumer civilization has entrenched a form of life that admits virtually no limits to its expansiveness within, and perceived entitlement to, the entire planet.19 But questioning this civilization is by and large sidestepped in climate-change discourse, with its single-minded quest for a global-warming techno-fix.20 Instead of confronting the forms of social organization that are causing the climate crisisamong numerous other catastrophesclimate-change literature often focuses on how global warming is endangering the culprit, and agonizes over what technological means can save it from impending tipping points.21 The dominant frame of climate change funnels cognitive and pragmatic work toward specifically addressing global warming, while muting a host of equally monumental issues. Climate change looms so huge on the environmental and political agenda today that it has contributed to downplaying other facets of the ecological crisis: mass extinction of species, the devastation of the oceans by industrial fishing, continued old-growth deforestation, topsoil losses and desertification, endocrine disruption, incessant development, and so on, are made to appear secondary and more forgiving by comparison with dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system. In what follows, I will focus specifically on how climate-change discourse encourages the continued marginalization of the biodiversity crisisa crisis that has been soberly described as a holocaust,22 and which despite decades of scientific and environmentalist pleas remains a virtual non-topic in society, the mass media, and humanistic and other academic literatures. Several works on climate change (though by no means all) extensively examine the consequences of global warming for biodiversity, 23 but rarely is it mentioned that biodepletion predates dangerous greenhouse-gas buildup by decades, centuries, or longer, and will not be stopped by a technological resolution of global warming. Climate change is poised to exacerbate species and ecosystem lossesindeed, is doing so already. But while technologically preempting the worst of climate change may temporarily avert some of those losses, such a resolution of the climate quandary will not put an end towill barely addressthe ongoing destruction of life on Earth.

Link Preventing Environmental Disaster

[] The rhetoric of environmental protection is easily twisted to silence criticism it justifies destructive consumptive practices under the guise of green consumerism.

Brockington and Duffy, professors of development at the Universities of Manchester and London, 2010(Dan and Rosaleen, "Capitalism and conservation: the production and reproduction of biodiversity conservation," Antipode 42:3, pgs: 469-484)

One of the central themes of this collection is that conservation is proving instrumental to capitalisms growth and reproduction. It provides an environmental fix (as Harvey might put it). As Igoe and colleagues observe (this issue), where Green Marxists have predicted environmental impediments that would threaten capitalisms prosperity (OConnor 1988), in fact these very impediments are the source of new forms of accumulation. Consumers thrive on scarcity, anxiety, fear (all help create demand), so perhaps the flourishing of capitalism in conservation, which deals in similar currency, should not be such a surprise. It is still important, however, to understand how this union is being achieved. Tackling that question is one of the main achievements of the essay by Igoe and colleagues. Following Sklair and others they propose the existence of hegemonic mainstream conservation interests composed of an alliance of corporate, philanthropic and NGO interests (Sklair 2001). Mainstream conservation (one part of Sklairs sustainable development historic bloc) proposes resolutions to environmental problems that hinge on heightened commodity production and consumption, particularly of newly commodified ecosystem services. Their views are promulgated through a mutually reinforcing collection of spectacularmedia productions circulated in advertisements and on the web. The power of these productions lies not in their robustness, logic or rigour, but rather because they are presented and consumed within societies dominated by spectacle (Debord 1995 [1967]). That is, these are societies where representations of, and connection to, places, people and causes have long been mediated through commodified images. In consuming these images people are given the romantic illusion that they are adventurously saving the world (p 502) while the deleterious ecological impacts of these very purchases, and the lifestyles they require, are neatly erased. By focusing consumers attention on distant and exotic locales, the spectacular productions . . . conceal the complex and proximate connections of peoples daily lives to environmental problems, while suggesting that the solutions to environmental problems lay in the consumption of the kinds of commodities that helped produce them in the first place (p 504).]

Link Energy Poverty [] Focusing on price reduction as a solution to energy poverty disengages debates from the root causes of poverty this makes it impossible to address economic inequality.

Chester, professor of political economy at the University of Sydney, 2013(Lynne, Energy impoverishment: Addressing capitalisms new driver of inequality, Online: https://www.aeaweb.org/aea/2014conference/program/retrieve.php?pdfid=460)

The growing numbers of energy impoverished have not been stemmed and the impacts are becoming more embedded (Heffner and Campbell 2011). Policy measures, like social policy more generally and poverty-related programs, resemble retrospective compensation. There is no welfare safety net as there is for income-related poverty. Policy responses focus on a particular overt sign of the problem. This approach fails to treat the overall manifestation of the problem. It also is not preventative because the causes are not addressed, that is, the conjunction of rising energy prices, low income and poor housing energy efficiency. Despite the role of price, electricity pricing debates are not engaging with this phenomenon and its consequences. Nor is energy impoverishment forming part of more general debates about income-related poverty, deprivation and social exclusion despite the growing body of evidence. In the electricity pricing discourse, the social consequences are treated as the realm of social not economic policy. Pricing debates are structured around the recovery of the costs of electricity generation transmission, distribution and retailing. A pricing regulator may note the distributional impacts of a price increase and even advocate social policy solutions but these matters are not an integral part of the structure of electricity prices. The formation of electricity prices needs to be reframed to engage with the issue of energy impoverishment given the critical role that regulated prices for network services has played in the generation of energy impoverishment. The social inequalities discourse is skewed towards either the social structures which generate social inequalities or alternatively, the reduction of inequalities through tax and welfare redistributive mechanisms. The discourse about effective policy measures to address and eliminate energy impoverishment needs to identify the institutional solutions price formation - to deal with the root causes of energy impoverishment not its manifestation (e.g. electricity bill arrears, disconnections) or consequences (e.g. deprivation, social exclusion). Second, solutions should not be sought within the confines of the welfare state. Policy measures to eliminate and prevent a reoccurrence of energy impoverishment need to be developed without embodying welfare. Finally, energy debates are framed around a conception of the consumer as a buyer underpinned by assumptions about behaviour and energy use with shifts in electricity prices. Poverty, deprivation and social exclusion debates are framed around the impoverished as social beings within a broader living standards and participation framework. These two disconnected debates need to intersect and only then will effective policy measures be developed to ensure the energy consumer, as a social being, does not experience energy impoverishment.

Link Food Security

[] Relying on large-scale aquaculture to produce fish will worsen global hunger food production must start from an ethic of social responsibility to be effective.

Hannah, professor of philosophy at Kwantlen Polytechnic University, 2008(Bill, Food Insecurity, Aquaculture, and the Nature of Technology, University of Alberta Health Law Review, 16:4, Online: http://www.hli.ualberta.ca/HealthLawJournals/~/media/hli/Publications/HLR/16-4-hannah.pdf)

Although aquaculture has a long history, there is a modern version of aquaculture that, in places, is still undergoing instrumentalization15 This modern version, again, hopes to increase production, increase access to food, create jobs, etc. There remain crucial points of ambivalence where aquaculture can be conditioned and will subsequently condition the development of its surroundings. This development will head either toward socially responsible versions of production, consumption, etc. or it will lead further down the path that has lead to widespread food insecurity. If the choice is made to build the capacity to farm highly valuable species the [primary instrumentalization] will involve a lot of inputsbuilding a facility, acquiring feed, labour, water etc. These aspects become part of the technique. The SI of this will include a change in the surrounding market, access to trade, a larger environmental impact, and so on. These changes also become part of the technique. The impacts of this particular choice on food insecurity are most likely negative in the long run. High value fish will be too expensive for local people to purchase. The kind of facility required will only be able to be maintained by those who already have access to land and the ability to obtain and keep the permits required, and so on. If, on the other hand, those involved choose to build the capacity to farm less valuable, though nutritious, species the primary and secondary instrumentalization begins to take on a different character. This character will condition the ends differently. Aquacultures primary design in this case could involve integrated inputs from farmers (feed and fertilizer), a simple pond, and rainwater input. These techniques become a part of a different trajectory. The SI in this case could involve a stabilization of local markets, an integration of farmers, and a more positive ecological impact. In the end, the impact of this version of aquaculture on food security is more positive. The instrument itself, aquaculture, is conditioned in such a way as to create inexpensive fish, with little input of water, feed, etc. This story shows the ambivalence of aquaculture. It is unlike the story offered by the neutral tool, technophilic outlook because it recognizes the substantive features of the technology. Aquaculture in this sense is not an abstract, ahistorical technology, but a located technique, one that is influential and changeable. The story differs from the technophobic view because it shows that there are choices within the design of technology that determine the path, the ends, of that technology. More importantly, the story shows that it is at least possible for technology to head toward socially responsible ends, rather than always, or necessarily driving us toward domination, efficiency, or profit.

Link Jobs/Unemployment

[] Focusing on a lack of jobs in the United States whitewashes the massive, hopeless unemployment outside of the 1st World we need to account for the global scope of worker exploitation to fix economic inequality.

Zizek, Director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities, 2012(Slavoj, CAPITALISM CAN NO LONGER AFFORD FREEDOM, ABC.au, May 25, Online: http://www.abc.net.au/religion/articles/2012/05/25/3511327.htm)

In his recent re-reading of Marx's Capital, Fredric Jameson identifies the inherent contradiction of the world market: that it is the very success of capitalism (higher productivity, and so forth) which produces unemployment (renders more and more workers useless), and thus that what should be a blessing (less hard labour required) becomes a curse. As Jameson puts it, the world market is thus "a space in which everyone has once been a productive laborer, and in which labor has everywhere begun to price itself out of the system." That is to say, in the ongoing process of capitalist globalization, the category of the unemployed acquires a new dimension beyond the classic notion of the "reserve army of labor," and should now include "those massive populations around the world who have, as it were, 'dropped out of history', who have been deliberately excluded from the modernizing projects of First World capitalism and written off as hopeless or terminal cases." We should thus include among the unemployed those so-called "failed states" (like Congo and Somalia), victims of famine or ecological disasters, those trapped in pseudo-archaic "ethnic hatreds," objects of philanthropy or (often the same people) of the "war on terror." The category of the unemployed should thus be expanded to encompass a wide range of the global population, from the temporary unemployed, through the no-longer employable and permanently unemployed, up to people living in slums and other types of ghettos (that is, all those often dismissed by Marx himself as "lumpen-proletarians") and, finally, all those areas, populations or states excluded from the global capitalist process, like blank spaces in ancient maps. Does not this extension of the circle of the "unemployed" point to the fact that what once lay in the inert background of History becomes a potential agent of emancipatory struggle? Just recall Marx's dismissive characterization of the French peasants in his Eighteenth Brumaire: "the great mass of the French nation is formed by the simple addition of homologous magnitudes, much as potatoes in a sack form a sack of potatoes ... Insofar as there is merely a local interconnection among these small-holding peasants, and the identity of their interests forms no community, no national bond, and no political organization among them, they do not constitute a class. They are therefore incapable of asserting their class interest in their own name, whether through a parliament or a convention. They cannot represent themselves, they must be represented." In the great twentieth-century revolutionary mobilizations of peasants (from China to Bolivia), these "sacks of potatoes" excluded from the historical process began actively to represent themselves. But Jameson then makes the crucial observation that this new category of the "unemployed" is itself a form of capitalist exploitation - the exploited are not only workers producing surplus-value appropriated by capital, they also include those structurally prevented from getting caught up in the capitalist vortex of exploited wage labour, including entire geographical zones and even nation states.

Link Ports/Shipping

[] Modern port development works to further distance us from the terrifying scale of capitalist production shipping commodities through the Arctic keeps them out of sight, out of mind.

Steinberg, professor of geography at the University of London, 2010(Philip E., Sekula, Allan and Nol Burch, The Forgotten Space, reviewed by Philip E. SteinbergOnline: http://societyandspace.com/reviews/film-reviews/sekula/)

In Allan Sekula and Nol Burchs The Forgotten Space, the key vehicle for obscuring the underlying workings of capitalism is not the commodity but the shipping container in which the commodity is transported. Like the commodity analyzed by Marx, the shipping container is visible, but only for what it hides. Analysis therefore requires one to peel off layers of obfuscation. Just as Marxs project of uncovering the secret social relations of production that are hidden behind the commodity became ultimately a multifaceted study of capitalism, Sekula and Burchs study of the seemingly humble shipping container expands into a study of containerization. And containerization, it is revealed, represents and enables a series of technological and structural transformations that have added a new dimension to capitalist globalization by enhancing the speed and efficiency of transportation through new levels of abstraction. An outer shell of corrugated steel is placed around the commodity, and this new, impenetrable cloak further obscures the social relations of production by which commodities, spaces, and indeed the means of human existence are reproduced. Sekula and Burchs aim is to bring these forgotten spaces of containerization out into the open, and, in the process, to reveal their secrets. Notwithstanding the singular title, the films power lies in the way it depicts a range of spaces that are forgotten amidst the mobilities of global capitalism. The port, formerly at the centre of the maritime city, is relocated to a peripheral, cordoned off warehouse complex staffed by a skeleton crew that has little to no physical contact with the container, let alone the commodity. Thus the port is forgotten by urban residents. Transportation inland from the port is channelled into dedicated high-speed freight corridors in which, to quote the driver of a train on one such corridor in The Netherlands, its like a long tunnel. These transit corridors would be forgotten as well, were it not for the noise of the speeding train permeating through open cuts in the countryside. The commodity itself is all but forgotten within the sterile space of the container. Workers in the shipping industry often have no idea what they are transporting. The sea, which formerly had provided a counter-narrative of freedom and unpredictability amidst the regimentation of the capitalist organization of space is forgotten by the crews of factory-like containerships that read computer screens instead of feeling the rhythm of the waves and the gusts of the winds. And, although little is made of this point in the film, it goes without saying that all of these spacesthe port, the ship, the train, the truck, the sea, and the internal space of the containerare forgotten by consumers. When a commodity arrives at ones door, or is picked off a shelf, its underlying processes of transportation, like its underlying processes of production, are obscured and abstracted, as are the social relations and labour arrangements that enable these processes to function. As Sekula argues in his 1995 book (and photo exhibition) Fish Story, the modern intermodal transport industry represents a particularly advanced form of the capitalist processes of abstractionand, one could add, forgetting identified by Marx (Sekula 1995).

Impact No Value to Life

[] The imposed value system of development paradigms reduces all life to commodity for exchange this facilitates mass violence and exclusion.

Shiva, ecologist, activist, editor, and author of many books, 2003 (Vandana, ZNet Daily Commentaries, Globalisation and Its Fallout, April 2, Online: http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2003-04/02shiva.cfm)

The first is the market fundamentalism of globalization itself. This fundamentalism redefines life as commodity, society as economy, and the market as the means and end of the human enterprise. The market is being made the organizing principle for the provisioning of food, water, health, education and other basic needs, it is being made the organizing principle for governance, it is being made the measure of our humanity. Our being human is no longer predicated on the fundamental human rights enshrined in all constitutions and in the U.N. declaration of human rights. It is now conditional on our ability to "buy" our needs on the global marketplace in which the conditions of life -- food, water, health, knowledge have become the ultimate commodities controlled by a handful of corporations. In the market fundamentalism of globalization, everything is a commodity, everything is for sale. Nothing is sacred, there are no fundamental rights of citizens and no fundamental duties of governments. The market fundamentalism of globalization and the economic exclusion inherent to it is giving rise to, and being reinforced and supported by politics of exclusion emerging in the form of political parties based on "religious fundamentalism"/xenophobia/ethnic cleansing and reinforcement of patriarchies and castism. The culture of commodification has increased violence against women, whether it is in the form of rising domestic violence, increasing cases of rape, an epidemic of female foeticide, and increased trafficking in women.

Impact Environmental Collapse

[] Capitalisms commodification of the environment will destroy it in the name of profit.

Weiskel, Harvard Seminar on Environmental Values, 1997(Timothy C., Selling Pigeons in the Temple: The Danger of Market Metaphors in an Ecosystem, July 6, Online: http://ecojustice.net/coffin/ops-008.htm)

Market metaphors truncate the range of policy options open to environmental leaders, and the vocabulary and images these metaphors generate completely fail to capture what we humans value most about our rich and complex world of everyday human experience. The insidious thought control exercised by market metaphors in the public discourse needs to be squarely confronted and firmly rejected. Only by stepping outside the make-believe world of these market metaphors is it possible to see why they mystify rather than clarify our environmental circumstance. Essentially, market metaphors are based on a logical fallacy that projects a fundamental falsification of reality. Despite frequent appeals to the "real world," market advocates live in a self-contained world of abstract modeling, statistical fantasies and paper currency that serves as a proxy measure of wealth. In fact, the real world is quite a different place, consisting of the physical parameters of all life forms that can be measured in terms of meters from sea-level, metric tons of gas emissions and degrees of temperature variation. The human economy needs to be understood as a subset of this physical ecosystem and not the other way around. Environmental policy based on an inverted representation of reality cannot help but fail in the long run. It is for this reason that economism -- the belief that principles of market economics can and should always be used to resolve environmental public policy dilemmas -- represents such a palpable failure of political leadership. Further, the attempt to substitute economism for meaningful public policy constitutes a blatant abdication of the public trust. This tragic abdication of the public trust through the relentless pursuit of economism has fueled the current righteous indignation of global citizens sensitive to the environment and concerned about the prospect of human survival. Politicians under the spell of economism fail to grasp what growing numbers of decent citizens sense and seek to affirm from a very deep level of conviction, and that is simply this: biodiversity must be saved for its intrinsic, expressive, and relational value -- not simply for the momentary advantage it may yield in some economist's cost-benefit calculations. If global policy makers do not free themselves from the trap of market mantras, their claim to leadership will be seen to be vacuous and illegitimate in the long run. This will be so because misplaced market metaphors cannot help but prove fatal in mediating human relationships with the environment. Taken together they have the power to drive industrial civilization into the sad syndrome of "overshoot-and-collapse" so often characteristic of failed economies of accumulation throughout human history. Unless radically different forms of valuation can be rediscovered, unless public leaders can learn to embrace and articulate them, and unless these leaders can then proceed to formulate effective public policy based on these new values to change collective human behavior, we will witness the demise of industrial society as the unavoidable outcome of "business as usual."

Impact Economic Collapse

[] Capitalism cannot be stabilized economic shocks are inevitable in a system that prioritizes short-term profits over long-term sustainability.

Shannon, editor of the Routledge Journal of Contemporary Anarchist Studies, 2012(Deric and Abby Volcano, Capitalism in the 2000s in The Accumulation of Freedom, pg. 87-88)

As Asimakopoulos explains in this collection, capitalism is prone to periodic "crises." This isn't necessarily a new insighta. system based on capital investments creates "bubbles" in expanding industries (i.e., housing, the "dot corn boom," etc.) that cannot last, but that investors want to make a quick buck off (or a few million, for that matter). When these bubbles "burst" (when they are no longer profitable), investors stop raking in profits and this can lead to economic downturnsto recessions or, in the case of the current crisis, depressions. But what do we mean with this discourse of"crisis?" A quick look at the ultrarich doesn't show a drastic reduction in comfort and lifestyle. And while unemployment, poverty; precarity, and privation are affecting larger sections of the world's population, those problems are business as usual for a significant portion of the world. And yet we declare capitalism in "crisis" now, For children working in sweatshops, for entire countries struggling with food insecurity and hunger, for continents grappling with an AIDS crisis that disproportionately affects our most marginalized populations, for trafficked women and children, for queer youth struggling to obtain basic resources and kicked out of their homes by fundamentalist parents, for those people living with the legacy of colonization and slaveryfor the majority of the world's inhabitants capitalism IS the crisis. But the discourse of "crisis" isn't employed until it starts hurting the collective bottom line of the wealthy. 'This, in and of itself, can be used as an opportunity to discuss the need for socialist alternatives. And the truth is that capitalism requires these "crises" to function. People talk about events like the 1987 stock market crash, the Asian financial crisis of 1997, and the dotcorn and housing bubbles and bursts as though they are anomalies. These things are regular features of capitalism. And those not at the top tiers of our global class system (about 95 percent of the world) are experiencing crisis every single daya constant crisis of sorts. So the discourse surrounding crises themselves seem to uphold that capitalism is more or less functioning the rest of the time. More and more people are coming to the realization that this is not the caseand we need to be pressing this point as we battle against austerity. If we want to avoid "austerity," we need to smash capitalism to pieces. No amount of goodhearted reform or Keynesian policy is going to substantively address the social crisis that is capitalism.

Impact Global Poverty

[] Capitalism is responsible for global poverty the destruction of natural resources and exploitation of 3rd world labor is a silent war that kills millions every year.

Szentes Professor at the University of Budapest, 2008(Tams, Globalisation and prospects of the world society, 4/22, Online: http://www.eadi.org/fileadmin/Documents/-Events/exco/Glob.___prospects_-_jav..pdf)

It s a common place that human society can survive and develop only in a lasting real peace. Without peace countries cannot develop. Although since 1945 there has been no world war, but --numerous local wars took place, --terrorism has spread all over the world, undermining security even in the most developed and powerful countries, --arms race and militarisation have not ended with the collapse of the Soviet bloc, but escalated and continued, extending also to weapons of mass destruction and misusing enormous resources badly needed for development, --many invisible wars are suffered by the poor and oppressed people, manifested in mass misery, poverty, unemployment, homelessness, starvation and malnutrition, epidemics and poor health conditions, exploitation and oppression, racial and other discrimination, physical terror, organised injustice, disguised forms of violence, the denial or regular infringement of the democratic rights of citizens, women, youth, ethnic or religious minorities, etc., and last but not least, in the degradation of human environment, which means that --the war against Nature, i.e. the disturbance of ecological balance, wasteful management of natural resources, and large-scale pollution of our environment, is still going on, causing also losses and fatal dangers for human life. Behind global terrorism and invisible wars we find striking international and intrasociety inequities and distorted development patterns , which tend to generate social as well as international tensions, thus paving the way for unrest and visible wars. It is a commonplace now that peace is not merely the absence of war. The prerequisites of a lasting peace between and within societies involve not only - though, of course, necessarily - demilitarisation, but also a systematic and gradual elimination of the roots of violence, of the causes of invisible wars, of the structural and institutional bases of large-scale international and intra-society inequalities, exploitation and oppression. Peace requires a process of social and national emancipation, a progressive, democratic transformation of societies and the world bringing about equal rights and opportunities for all people, sovereign participation and mutually advantageous co-operation among nations. It further requires a pluralistic democracy on global level with an appropriate system of proportional representation of the world society, articulation of diverse interests and their peaceful reconciliation, by non-violent conflict management, and thus also a global governance with a really global institutional system. Under the contemporary conditions of accelerating globalisation and deepening global interdependencies in our world, peace is indivisible in both time and space. It cannot exist if reduced to a period only after or before war, and cannot be safeguarded in one part of the world when some others suffer visible or invisible wars. Thus, peace requires, indeed, a new, demilitarised and democratic world order, which can provide equal opportunities for sustainable development. Sustainability of development (both on national and world level) is often interpreted as an issue of environmental protection only and reduced to the need for preserving the ecological balance and delivering the next generations not a destroyed Nature with overexhausted resources and polluted environment. However, no ecological balance can be ensured, unless the deep international development gap and intra-society inequalities are substantially reduced.

Impact War

[] Capitalism is the driving force behind conflict imperialist powers will inevitably go to war to secure exclusive access to natural resources.

Barrigos, activist and author, 2007 (Rebecca, War: Why capitalism is to blame, July, Online: http://www.sa.org.au/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1367&Itemid=1)

When burgeoning capitalist powers like the United States and Germany sought to expand their influence, they came into unavoidable conflict with the empires of the more established capitalist nations. The aspirations of US and German capitalism could only be achieved through war, and it was this dynamic which plunged the world into the turmoil and barbarism of World War I, and which led Lenin to conclude that the competition between powerful nations to dominate parts of the world, imperialism, defines modern capitalism and makes war inevitable. The dynamic of capitalist competition in the system is still alive and well today, and is precisely the factor driving the recent wars in the Middle East. The Marxist understanding that capitalism breeds war cannot just be reduced to the argument that every war is motivated by a grab for resources. After all, there were no valuable resources in Vietnam. The US intervened there as part of their Cold War rivalry with the Soviet Union for control of "spheres of influence". In this period, both powers were seeking dominance of the world economy. They sought to contain each other's influence by forging alliances with friendly regimes around the globe who would uphold their imperialist interests. And of course if this didn't work, both superpowers were prepared to forcibly bring contested areas into their fold. So the US invasion of Vietnam and the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan were essentially proxy wars in which each superpower was trying to weaken the other and limit its expansion. Similarly today, US capitalism is not reliant on the oil reserves in the Middle East, but US control of this strategically important and resource-rich part of the globe is crucial to maintaining their status as the world's only superpower. Just as their real enemy in Vietnam was not the Viet Cong but the Soviet Union, so today their real, if undeclared, enemies are their present-day economic rivals, Europe and China. The latter in particular is seen as a medium to long term threat to US global domination. The US emerged the victors in the Cold War, but American domination of the world economy has been in decline since the mid-1970s. The US state has been forced to go to further lengths to secure the profit rates for its capitalist class and to ensure that their influence is not superseded by a rival power. So the "war on terror", which has seen up to a million people killed in Iraq and tens of thousands more in Afghanistan, is a reflection of the continuing and ruthless competition at capitalism's core. It had nothing to do with bringing "peace and democracy" to the Middle East, nor was it just about oil, and even less about the crazed ambitions of Bush. In fact to those at the top of society this war makes perfect sense, and fits in with the whole logic of a system that places the pursuit of profits ahead of the lives of people everywhere. Of course they don't tell us this. Because the capitalists rely on workers to carry out their wars for profit, they never honestly declare their intentions at the outset of any war. Historically, the ruling class has always sought to clothe their real rationale for wars in the rhetoric of "fighting for democracy". So the "war on terror", with all its corresponding anti-Muslim racism, has provided the US with the ideological cover for their imperialist interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Alternative Solves Overcomes Capitalism

[] We should simply withdraw from activities that support capitalism that alone is enough to empty it of momentum.

Herod, faculty at the University of Massachusetts at Boston, 2007(James, Getting Free, http://www.jamesherod.info/?sec=book&id=1)

It is time to try to describe, at first abstractly and later concretely, a strategy for destroying capitalism. This strategy, at its most basic, calls for pulling time, energy, and resources out of capitalist civilization and putting them into building a new civilization. The image then is one of emptying out capitalist structures, hollowing them out, by draining wealth, power, and meaning out of them until there is nothing left but shells. This is definitely an aggressive strategy. It requires great militancy, and constitutes an attack on the existing order. The strategy clearly recognizes that capitalism is the enemy and must be destroyed, but it is not a frontal attack aimed at overthrowing the system, but an inside attack aimed at gutting it, while simultaneously replacing it with something better, something we want. Thus capitalist structures (corporations, governments, banks, schools, etc.) are not seized so much as simply abandoned. Capitalist relations are not fought so much as they are simply rejected. We stop participating in activities that support (finance, condone) the capitalist world and start participating in activities that build a new world while simultaneously undermining the old. We create a new pattern of social relations alongside capitalist relations and then we continually build and strengthen our new pattern while doing every thing we can to weaken capitalist relations. In this way our new democratic, non-hierarchical, non-commodified relations can eventually overwhelm the capitalist relations and force them out of existence. This is how it has to be done. This is a plausible, realistic strategy. To think that we could create a whole new world of decent social arrangements overnight, in the midst of a crisis, during a so-called revolution, or during the collapse of capitalism, is foolhardy. Our new social world must grow within the old, and in opposition to it, until it is strong enough to dismantle and abolish capitalist relations. Such a revolution will never happen automatically, blindly, determinably, because of the inexorable, materialist laws of history. It will happen, and only happen, because we want it to, and because we know what were doing and know how we want to live, and know what obstacles have to be overcome before we can live that way, and know how to distinguish between our social patterns and theirs. But we must not think that the capitalist world can simply be ignored, in a live and let live attitude, while we try to build new lives elsewhere. (There is no elsewhere.) There is at least one thing, wage-slavery, that we cant simply stop participating in (but even here there are ways we can chip away at it). Capitalism must be explicitly refused and replaced by something else. This constitutes War, but it is not a war in the traditional sense of armies and tanks, but a war fought on a daily basis, on the level of everyday life, by millions of people. It is a war nevertheless because the accumulators of capital will use coercion, brutality, and murder, as they have always done in the past, to try to block any rejection of the system. They have always had to force compliance; they will not hesitate to continue doing so. Alternative Solves Climate Change

[] Only a shift away from capitalism can solve climate change.

Dawson, Professor of English at CUNY, 2010(Ashley, Climate Justice: The Emerging Movement Against Green Capitalism, South Atlantic Quarterly, Volume 109, Number 2)

Genuine solutions to the climate crisis cannot emerge from climate negotiations, whether on a domestic or international level, unless significant pressure pressure that outweighs that of powerful corporate interests is brought to bear by a globally linked, locally grounded group of social movements mobilizing around the theme of climate justice. This will take genuine organizing a task that the Left in general and cultural studies in particular has been prone to shy away from.15 Such organizing is a particularly urgent task on both a practical and a theoretical level given the predominantly anarchist, anti-statist character of the global justice movement in the North. Rather than abdicating engagement with the organs of state power, the crisis of our times requires transformation of these organs through practices of radical democracy. In addition, however, a movement for climate justice needs a theoretical grasp of the economic, political, and ecological stakes at play in the new Green Capitalist order. As I have already indicated in brief, this new order is characterized by significant greenwashing, ideological flim-flam around issues such as offsets and carbon trading, that needs to be laid bare so that those affected by the inequalities of Green Capitalism can mobilize in solidarity with rather than scapegoating the new orders victims. In what follows I sketch the recent birth of a climate justice movement. In the US, this movement builds on the deep and powerful roots of the environmental justice movement, which in turn draws on the organizing tactics, cultural forms, and ideological stance of the Civil Rights movement. This emergent climate justice movement will, I argue, play a pivotal role in challenging Green Capitalism, both in the US and internationally. We cannot expect such a challenge to come from the mainstream environmental movement. As the comments of the Environmental Defense Fund official quoted above suggest, many prominent conservation organizations have bought into the new Green Capitalist order. In addition, although some of them have made significant strides of late, many of these mainstream organizations have failed to incorporate the perspectives of communities worst affected by the toxic byproducts of unregulated industrial growth. This failure stems not simply from their closeness to pro-corporate interests, but also from a reifying epistemological stance towards nature embodied in the wilderness ethic, one which sees the environment and human beings and their social struggles in antithetical terms. Building on several decades of activism within the environmental justice movement, the emerging movement for climate justice challenges the wilderness ethic, and in so doing strives to center discussion and militancy around the climate crisis in an engagement with issues of inequality and injustice. The stance of the climate justice movement is, as a result, far more attuned to the issues that drive environmental activism throughout the global South.16 The movement for climate justice thus promises to be a vehicle for mobilizing the kind of transnational, grassroots alliances that will be decisive in the unfolding fight against ecocide.

Alternative Solves Environmental Collapse

[] Abandoning capitalism is key to solve the environment even a switch to clean energy would only accelerate numerous trends towards ecological collapse and extinction.

Smith, economic historian, 2014(Richard, Green Capitalism: The God That Failed, Truth Out, January 9, Online: http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/21060)

Stern asserted that "the world does not have to choose between averting climate change and promoting growth and development."(40) But if the science is right that we need to keep emissions below 400 ppm, or even get them back below 350 ppm, then more growth is out of the question. Indeed, we would have to make radically deeper cuts in GDP than even the 7 percent reduction per year that Stern calculates would be necessary just to get us down to 450 ppm. Because, under capitalism, a contraction of economic output on anything like that scale would mean economic collapse and depression, it is difficult to see how we can make the reductions in greenhouse gases we have to make to avoid climate catastrophe unless we abandon capitalism. This is the dilemma. So far most scientists have tended to avoid getting into the contentious economic side of the question. But with respect to the issue of growth, the science is unequivocal: Never-ending growth means the end of civilization, if not humanity itself - and in the not-so-distant future. For a summary of the peer-reviewed science on this subject, read a few chapters of Mark Lynas' harrowing Six Degrees.(41) Global warming is surely the most urgent threat we face, but it is far from the only driver of global ecological collapse. For even if we switched to clean renewable electric power tomorrow, this would not stop the overconsumption of forests, fish, minerals, fresh water. It would not stop pollution or solve the garbage crisis or stop the changes in ocean chemistry. Indeed, the advent of cheap, clean energy could even accelerate these trends.(42) Numerous credible scientific and environmental researchers back up what the climate scientists have been telling us, to demonstrate why perpetual growth is the road to collective social suicide. For example: In 2005 the United Nations Millennium Ecosystem Assessment team of 1,300 scientists from 95 countries issued a landmark report on humanity's overconsumption of "nature's services." The scientists reported that 60 percent (15 of 24) of the ecosystems examined that are critical for human survival are being "degraded or used unsustainably," including fresh water, capture fisheries, coral reefs, wetlands, drylands and forests. Around the world, many of these are deteriorating or on the verge of collapse. Thus nature's ability to provide the resources for growing future populations is very much in doubt unless radical steps are taken soon.

ANSWERS TO: Permutation Mutually Exclusive

[]

[] The permutation is impossible the alternative is a refusal to exploit nature for economic profit this is not compatible with the plans commodification of nature.

Plastow, researcher at the University of Exeter, 2010 (Robert, Neoliberalism in environmental governance: a paradoxical double movement May 2010)

At its core neoliberalism believes in the unparalleled capability of the market in the distribution and allocation of goods and services in meeting the diverse needs of people all over the world, displaying a commitment to extending the competitive relations of the market as far as possible, keeping state intervention to a minimum (Castree, 2008: 143; Holifield, 2004: 286). When we direct this ideology towards the environment and neoliberalise nature, we confront a potential paradox in that conserving nature is operated by commodifying it, balancing the antithetical acts of destroying existing and creating new biophysical resources, (Castree, 2008: 150). For Polanyi, pricing nature in this way creates what he calls 'fictitious commodities' out of things such as water and trees whose value is more than merely monetary or defined by their use but of intrinsic, cultural, biological and social value which exceed any transaction price, (Castree, 2008). Such commodification, Polanyi argues, is contradictory as these phenomena are not 'true' commodities that can be managed purely by price signals and controlled by the market, (Polanyi, 1944). This is because nature is not produced for sale, so when it is drawn into the market to behave and be treated as a regular commodity, a social (re)production of nature is created and proves problematic due to its unproduced character in truth, (McCarthy and Prudham, 2004). It is contested that this leads to a 'double-movement' wherein attempts to expand the market due to its popularity and success push it too far and create animosity with populations resulting in resistance, placing limits on market rule, (Castree, 2008; Polanyi, 1944). This has been evidenced in Bolivia where neoliberalisation met with locally organised resistance and ultimately political change in the form of Evo Morales' unification of cocaleros, workers and indigenous groups, which was made possible in many ways by the governmental decentralisation resulting from the neoliberal policies that preceded it, (Geddes, 2010; Perrault, 2005). Resistance groups also target the neoliberal global rule centres such as the World Trade Organisation, the International Monetary Fund and the G8, not just to disrupt their business but also to highlight the inequities and perversities that make up their rules as well as the organisations themselves, (Peck and Tickell, 2005: 400). At the present moment, the impact of the credit crunch and global recession also add serious challenges to the neoliberal agenda, so although it appears hegemonic and monolithic, it is not without its weaknesses or criticism and has faltered many times, (Castree, 2009; Geddes, 2010; McCarthy and Prudham, 2004).It does still command great power; Robertson notes that through the use of pricing mechanisms neoliberalism is the latest attempt by capital to colonize and dominate the rationalities of other systems with which it articulates, notably the political and ecological, and is successful,(Robertson, 2004: 371).

ANSWERS TO: Permutation Total Rejection Key

[]

[] The permutation fails profit motives will always win in a vacuum we must wholeheartedly reject them to guarantee environmental survival.

Plastow, researcher at the University of Exeter, 2010 (Robert, Neoliberalism in environmental governance: a paradoxical double movement May 2010)

However, Benton sees a clash between economic and ecological rationalities in that it makes good commercial sense for firms to externalise production costs, which is ecologically irrational, (Benton, 1991; Castree, 2008). The externalities created by production, pass the environmental costs onto society and the biophysical world, creating an ecological contradiction that sees neoliberal capitalism gnawing away at the resource base that supports it, (O'Connor, 1998; Pepper, 1993). Hence, it is argued, that without sufficient self-regulation by firms or states, capitalist societies will continue to create ecological crises, (Castree, 2008; O'Connor, 1998). However, by making firms internalise externalities, in other words making the polluter pay, market- based instruments provide an incentive for innovation of new technologies and are therefore more cost-effective than traditional regulation, (Jordan et al, 2003). It is hoped that through efficiency gains and better management, private companies will be able to lower prices, improve performance, and increase cost recovery, enabling systems to be upgraded and expanded, (Bakker, 2007: 437). By encoding the natural world as a form of the economic world, cost-benefit analysis and market criteria can be applied to decision-making processes, (Lemke, 2001), within the dominant, hegemonic discourse of neoliberal capitalism. This commodification of nature, or its neoliberalisation (Castree, 2008), requires the creation of new marketable property rights, employing markets as allocation mechanisms, and incorporating environmental externalities through pricing, then, as a result of the economic-rationality of neoliberalism: environmental goods will be more efficiently allocated if treated as economic goodsthereby simultaneously addressing concerns over environmental degradation and inefficient use of resources, (Bakker, 2007: 434). Government is also seen to benefit and make political gains by using such new environmental policy instruments, as they cut public expenditure for environmental management and open up trade and investment, (Jordan et al, 2003), which encourages the eternal quest for the political holy grail of economic growth.

ANSWERS TO: Perm Green Capitalism Fails

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[] Profit motive fails to solve environmental problems increases in efficiency cause increases in consumption and economic incentives for environmental degradation are greater than for protection.

Ehrenfeld, Department of Ecology at Rutgers University, 2008(David, The Environmental Limits to Globalization, Conservation Biology, Vol. 22 No. 5)

Bram Buschers (2008) critique of the neoliberalization of conservation is right on the mark. The reduction of all conservation problems to economic terms is counter-productive and dangerous. Trusting to market forces and the laws of supply and demand to correct inequities and restore healthy equilibria does not work in economics and certainly does not work in conservation. It has been known for many years that good economics will not necessarily promote conservation. For example, Clark (1973) showed, with respect to whaling, that taking quick profits by exploiting whales to extinction and then reinvesting the profits in growth industries was, unfortunately, economically superior to reducing the whale harvest to a sustainable level. Even earlier, in 1865, William Stanley Jevons (York 2006) demonstrated that, paradoxically, increases in the efficiency of use of a resource often led to increases in the consumption of the resource. More recently, Haitao et al. (2007) have described how turtle farming for profit and, allegedly, for conservation, is driving endangered species of turtles in China to extinction. And Guo (2007) and Morell (2007) have explained why commercial tiger farms in China are likely to have a deleterious effect on populations of wild tigers. I discuss these and related issues at greater length in my book Becoming Good Ancestors (Ehrenfeld 2009). Nor is the incessant harping on ecosystem services, important as they are, likely to bring us viable and durable conservation. As McCauley (2006) states, We will make more progress in the long run by appealing to peoples hearts rather than to their wallets. If we oversell the message that ecosystems are important because they provide services, we will have effectively sold out on nature. Some may argue this view is naive. To the contrary, the naive view, as Buscher points out, is that the neoliberal economic approach always leads to winwin solutions of our most intractable problems. Effective conservation, like life itself, requires a delusion-free reconciliation of economic with moral concerns.

ANSWERS TO: Perm Green Capitalism Fails

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[] Technology doesnt solve capitalist environmental destruction too much overconsumption.

Heinberg, writer for the International Forum on Globalization, 2009 (Richard, and Jerry Mander writer for Post Carbon Institute, Searching For a Miracle: Net Energy Limits & the Fate of Industrial Society, Post Carbon Press, 2009)

Even our once great hopes that world governments would rally to achieve positive collective outcomes in some arenas; for example, at the United Nations climate change talks in Copenhagen, as well as other venues, are proving sadly fatuous. But certain things are ever-more clear: Global institutions, national governments, and even many environmental and social activists are barking up the wrong trees. Individually and as groups, they have not faced the full gravity and meaning of the global energy (and resource) conundrums. They continue to operate in most ways out of the same set of assumptions that weve all had for the past century that fundamental systemic changes will not be required; that our complex of problems can be cured by human innovation, ingenuity, and technical efficiency, together with a few smart changes in our choices of energy systems. Most of all, the prevailing institutions continue to believe in the primacy and efficacy of economic growth as the key indicator of systemic well-being, even in light of ever-diminishing resources. It will not be necessary, according to this dogma, to come to grips with the reality that ever-expanding economic growth is actually an absurdity in a finite system, preposterous on its face, and will soon be over even if activists do nothing to oppose it. Neither does the mainstream recognize that economic systems, notably capitalism, that require such endless growth for their own viability may themselves be doomed in the not very long run. In fact, they are already showing clear signs of collapse. As to any need for substantial changes in personal lifestyles, or to control and limit material consumption habits? Quite the opposite is being pushedincreased car sales, expanded housing starts, and increased industrial production remain the focused goals of our economy, even under Mr. Obama, and are still celebrated when/if they occur, without thought of environmental consequences. No alterations in conceptual frameworks are encouraged to appreciate the now highly visible limits of nature, which is both root source of all planetary benefits, and inevitable toxic sink for our excessive habits.

ANSWERS TO: No Alternative to Capitalism

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[] A stable roadmap for change isnt necessary raising awareness of capitalist injustice is enough.

Kovel, Professor of Social Studies at Bard College, 2002(Joel, THE ENEMY OF NATURE: THE END OF CAPITALISM OR THE END OF THE WORLD, p. 5)

However uncertain the end point, the first two steps on the path are clearly laid out, and are within the reach of every conscientious person. These are that people ruthlessly criticize the capitalist system from top to bottom, and that they include in this a consistent attack on the widespread belief that there can be no alternative to it. If one believes that capital is not only basically unjust but radically unsustainable as well, the prime obligation is to spread the news, just as one should feel obliged to tell the inhabitants of a structurally unsound house doomed to collapse of what awaits them unless they take drastic measures. To continue the analogy, for the critique to matter it needs to be combined with an attack on the false idea that we are, so to speak, trapped in this house, with no hope of fixing it or getting out. The belief that there can be no alternative to capital is ubiquitous and no wonder, given how wonderfully convenient the idea is to the ruling ideology.2 That, however, does not keep it from being nonsense, and a failure of vision and political will. Whether or not the vision of ecosocialism offered here has merit, the notion that there is no other way of organizing an advanced society other than capital does not follow. Nothing lasts for ever, and what is humanly made can theoretically be unmade. Of course it could be the case that the job of changing it is too hard and capital is as far as humanity can go, in which instance we must simply accept our fate stoically and try to palliate the results. But we dont know this and cannot know this. There is no proving it one way or the other, and only inertia, fear of change or opportunism can explain the belief in so shabby an idea as that there can be no alternative to capital for organizing society.

ANSWERS TO: Capitalism is Human Nature

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[] Human nature can be changed its not set in advance and educational transformation in spaces like debate can generate movement away from neoliberalism

Schor, professor of economics at Boston College, 2001(Julie, Plenitude: The New Economics of True Wealth, pgs. 11-12)

And we don't have to. What's odd about the narrowness of the national economic conversation is that it leaves out theoretical advances in economics and related fields that have begun to change our basic understandings of what motivates and enriches people. The policy