Chicago Debate League 2013/14 Core Files
AC: Cuban Ethanol Affirmative 108
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1AC: Cuban Ethanol Affirmative 108Contention One is Inherency: The United States’ trade embargo with Cuba makes it impossible to access Cuban-grown sugarcane ethanol, even though the U.S. is purchasing this product from other countries. 1) Recent partnerships with Brazil prove the U.S. is investing heavily in ethanol-based biofuels. REUTERS, 12 [Brian Wilson, staff writer; “Insight: U.S. and Brazil - At last, friends on ethanol,” 9/12, http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/09/14/us-brazil-us-ethanol-idUSBRE88D19520120914] After years at each other's throats, Brazil and the United States are working together to promote the use of ethanol in a collaboration that could revolutionize global markets and the makeup of the biofuel itself. The breakthrough came in January when Washington allowed a three-decade-old subsidy for U.S. ethanol producers to expire and ended a steep tariff on foreign biofuels. The tariff, in particular, had poisoned diplomatic relations between the world's top two ethanol-producing countries for years. Since then, industry executives and government officials from both countries have seen tangible progress in efforts to boost the production and consumption of ethanol around the world, they told Reuters. The two nations have been lobbying foreign governments to create new markets in Africa and Latin America, planning joint "road shows" to attract new investments in biofuel companies, and pushing for a uniform global standard for ethanol, which could make it easier to trade the biofuel across borders. 2) U.S. policymakers are interested in importing sugarcane ethanol from Latin America, but are ignoring Cuba. SPECHT, 12 [Jonathan, Legal Advisor for Pearlmaker Holsteins, Inc. B; J.D., Washington University in St. Louis; “Raising Cane: Cuban Sugarcane Ethanol’s Economic and Environmental Effects on the United States,” 4/24, http://environs.law.ucdavis.edu/issues/36/2/specht.pdf] This does not mean, however, that corn-based ethanol, thus far the major liquid-fuel petroleum alternative pursued by the United States, is the best answer. While it has benefitted the Midwest economically, the domestic ethanol industry has also contributed to a number of negative environmental effects. There is, however, another liquid fuel option other than fossil-fuel based gasoline and corn-based ethanol. The Obama Administration’s energy plan includes a wide range of strategies to reduce U.S. fossil fuel consumption, yet one strategy is notably absent from the Blueprint : replacing a percentage of U.S. gasoline with ethanol imported from outside the United States. A number of influential commentators, such as Thomas Friedman and The Economist, have called for the United States to encourage the importation of sugarcanebased ethanol from countries like Brazil. But the possibility of importing ethanol from Cuba has been largely ignored by influential opinion-makers as well as the United States government. While by no means a silver bullet for solving the United States’ energy problems, importing ethanol made from sugarcane grown in Cuba would bring a number of environmental and economic benefits — partially offset by regionalized economic harms — to the United States. This possibility, at the very least, deserves much greater consideration and evaluation than it has thus far received. 1AC: Cuban Ethanol Affirmative 109Contention Two is the first Harms scenario: Environmental Destruction. Other types of fuel either emit harmful greenhouse gases when used, or require the destruction of critical habitats to grow. This causes environmental collapse. 1) U.S. policies favoring corn-based ethanol over sugar-based ethanol force farmers to plant only corn which massively increases fertilizer use. This is 300 times worse for global warming than carbon dioxide emissions. SPECHT, 12 [Jonathan, Legal Advisor for Pearlmaker Holsteins, Inc. B; J.D., Washington University in St. Louis; “Raising Cane: Cuban Sugarcane Ethanol’s Economic and Environmental Effects on the United States,” 4/24, http://environs.law.ucdavis.edu/issues/36/2/specht.pdf] The process by which incentives for ethanol production change land use patterns and thereby impact climate change, known as indirect land use change (ILUC), happens roughly as follows. 63 By increasing demand for corn, cornbased ethanol production drives up the price of corn. As the price of corn increases, farmers want to grow more of it. By making corn more appealing to farmers to grow than other crops, and thereby increasing national levels of cornproduction, the corn-based ethanol industry makes the negative environmental effects of corn production more widespread. Conventional corn-growing techniques involve applying more pesticides and fertilizers to corn than is usually applied to other row crops such as soybeans. 64 This effect is exacerbated when high corn prices disincentivize crop rotation. 65 A common technique in American agriculture today is rotating corn and soybeans. 66 Because soybeans are a nitrogen-fixing crop (that is, they take nitrogen out of the atmosphere and release it into the soil), corn grown on land that was used to grow soybeans the year before requires a lesser input of nitrogen fertilizer. By boosting the price of corn relative to other crops like soybeans, however, the domestic ethanol industry encourages farmers to use the same piece of land to grow corn year after year. Growing corn on the same land in successive years rather than rotating it with soybeans significantly increases the climate change effects of corn production because “nitrogen fertilizer applications are typically fifty pounds per acre higher for corn planted after corn” and “nitrous oxide has a global warming potential more than 300 times that of [carbon dioxide].” 67 Additionally, the application of fossil fuel-derived nitrogen fertilizer has other environmental impacts beyond exacerbating climate change. The collective nitrogen runoff of the Mississippi River basin has caused a process called hypoxia, which kills off most marine life, in a region of the Gulf of Mexico. Scientists have linked the so-called Dead Zone to corn production and, thus, to the domestic ethanol industry. 68 Directory: wp-content -> uploads -> 2011 2011 -> Voices of the Old Sea Norman Lewis 2011 -> Malevil Robert Merle 2011 -> The Elephant Keeper’s Children Peter Hoeg 2011 -> Jv packet •Mars Colonization Affirmative •Mars Colonization Negative 2011 -> Registration Form (Rev. 8-86) omb no. 1024-0018 2011 -> All America Looks Up to Virginia;” Virginia and the Declaration of Independence 2011 -> Rao bulletin 2011 -> Christopher Columbus was born between 25 August and 31 October 1451 in 2011 -> The Battle of Frenchtown (1855), Washington Territory: the Political and Demographic Context rev 9/4/11 2011 -> Seti aff •seti neg •Asteroids Aff Download 3.16 Mb. Share with your friends:
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