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Impact – Resource Dependence
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- Resource wars cause extinction
- Impact – Economy
Impact – Resource DependenceSolves resource dependence issues Muro et al. 11 – (2011, Mark, senior fellow and director of policy for the Metropolitan Policy Program at Brookings, Jonathan Rothwell, senior research associate and associate fellow at the Metropolitan Policy Program, Brookings, Devashree Saha, senior policy analyst and associate fellow at the MPP, “SIZING THE CLEAN ECONOMY A NATIONAL AND REGIONAL GREEN JOBS ASSESSMENT,” http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/Series/resources/0713_clean_economy.pdf) A sharpening need for resource security. The clean economy also matters for reasons of resource security: It reflects new demands that this nation and others reduce their vulnerability to resource supply shocks and related conflict.12 Currently, the United States consumes nearly 19 million barrels of oil per day—half of it imported—to power its economy, move its people and products, and manufacture its goods. 13 That leaves the entire U.S. economy vulnerable to geopolitical instability and supply disruptions abroad. 14 For example, the high and volatile energy prices of 2008 warned of a new, tighter, and more uncertain reality on the world market for fossil fuels, particularly oil. 15 Today, economic recovery, the return of oil prices to over $100 per barrel, and the Arab Awakening’s uncertain course in the Middle East and North Africa have only sharpened these concerns. And rightly so: Such uncertainty and price volatility has been shown to reduce investment across the economy, increase business costs, disrupt household budgets, and so depress domestic growth. 16 However, the “green” and low-carbon goods, processes, and services being developed by the clean economy represent an opportunity for the nation to insulate itself from price and supply shocks and begin to disentangle itself from the messy geopolitics of oil through efficiency advances and a diversification of the nation’s energy-source portfolio. 17 Resource wars cause extinctionKlare 6 Klare 06 Professor of peace and world security studies @ Hampshire College[Michael Klare, “The Coming Resource Wars,” TomPaine.com, Date: March 11, 2006, pg. http://www.waterconserve.org/shared/reader/welcome.aspx?linkid=53710&keybold=water%20land%20conflict. "As famine, disease, and weather-related disasters strike due to abrupt climate change," the Pentagon report notes, "many countries' needs will exceed their carrying capacity" -- that is, their ability to provide the minimum requirements for human survival. This "will create a sense of desperation, which is likely to lead to offensive aggression" against countries with a greater stock of vital resources. "Imagine eastern European countries, struggling to feed their populations with a falling supply of food, water, and energy, eyeing Russia, whose population is already in decline, for access to its grain, minerals, and energy supply." Similar scenarios will be replicated all across the planet, as those without the means to survival invade or migrate to those with greater abundance -- producing endless struggles between resource "haves" and "have-nots." It is this prospect, more than anything, that worries John Reid. In particular, he expressed concern over the inadequate capacity of poor and unstable countries to cope with the effects of climate change, and the resulting risk of state collapse, civil war and mass migration. "More than 300 million people in Africa currently lack access to safe water," he observed, and "climate change will worsen this dire situation" -- provoking more wars like Darfur. And even if these social disasters will occur primarily in the developing world, the wealthier countries will also be caught up in them, whether by participating in peacekeeping and humanitarian aid operations, by fending off unwanted migrants or by fighting for access to overseas supplies of food, oil, and minerals. When reading of these nightmarish scenarios, it is easy to conjure up images of desperate, starving people killing one another with knives, staves and clubs -- as was certainly often the case in the past, and could easily prove to be so again. But these scenarios also envision the use of more deadly weapons. "In this world of warring states," the 2003 Pentagon report predicted, "nuclear arms proliferation is inevitable." As oil and natural gas disappears, more and more countries will rely on nuclear power to meet their energy needs -- and this "will accelerate nuclear proliferation as countries develop enrichment and reprocessing capabilities to ensure their national security." Although speculative, these reports make one thing clear: when thinking about the calamitous effects of global climate change, we must emphasize its social and political consequences as much as its purely environmental effects. Drought, flooding and storms can kill us, and surely will -- but so will wars among the survivors of these catastrophes over what remains of food, water and shelter. As Reid's comments indicate, no society, however affluent, will escape involvement in these forms of conflict. Impact – EconomyClean tech is a key driver of future economic growth globally Muro et al. 11 – (2011, Mark, senior fellow and director of policy for the Metropolitan Policy Program at Brookings, Jonathan Rothwell, senior research associate and associate fellow at the Metropolitan Policy Program, Brookings, Devashree Saha, senior policy analyst and associate fellow at the MPP, “SIZING THE CLEAN ECONOMY A NATIONAL AND REGIONAL GREEN JOBS ASSESSMENT,” http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/Series/resources/0713_clean_economy.pdf) *VC = Venture Capital A world-wide aspiration toward economic transformation. Finally, there remains a third increasingly ascendant factor behind the clean economy’s significance: the prospect of industrial transformation. The clean economy matters, in short, because it interacts with nearly every aspect of the rest of the economy and is emerging as a site of rapid technological and process innovation world-wide.
In this regard, one of the most important heralds of both present and future innovation potential and economic transformation may be VC investment. VC backed firms are roughly three to four times more innovative (as measured by their patent production) than their counterparts that receive other forms of private investments and as it happens clean economy companies are increasingly in the sights of VCs. 27 Between 1995 and 2010, the share of U.S. VC dollars fl owing to clean economy concerns increased from 2 percent in 1995 to 16 percent in 2010. 28 Looking forward, analysts predict increasing shares of global and U.S. VC investment to fl ow into clean economy technologies. 29 Even now the pace of innovation has picked up in many clean economy sectors, and with it the possibility that the clean economy will create future jobs as well as new climate-friendly goods, services, and processes. On this front, patenting tells the story. According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), patent applications fi led at the European Patent Offi ce (EPO) related to the clean economy rose from 4.6 percent of all patents in 1987 to 7.4 percent in 2007, such that by 2007, over 9,000 clean economy patent applications were being fi led annually, just at the EPO. Some 17 percent of these patents originated with U.S. inventors. 30 In short, the clean economy increasingly looks like a promising location for the emergence of significant new technologies, processes, and industries that will shape the next economy and generate new jobs. That dozens of the world’s nations ranging from Brazil and China to South Korea and Turkey are investing heavily in such development both reinforces the emerging consensus and underscores that the “race to clean” has become an urgent competition among states for the resource productivity, jobs, and exportoriented manufacturing that will come with it. 31 Directory: file -> view view -> Western Europe after wwii view -> Author study: paul fleischman view -> Qpa1 7ela study Guide view -> November 1970 Approximately 150,000-500,000 deaths Bhola Cyclone Bangladesh view -> Grade Level: 6 Unit of Study: Caribbean glce view -> Citation: Duffield, Katy view -> Table of Contents Lesson # view -> Chinese Wind Energy Disad view -> Essay writing guidelines Download 2.21 Mb. Share with your friends:
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