Chicago Debate League 2013/14 Core Files
AC Extension Harms – Environment: A/t #2 “Corn is Clean” 124
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- 2AC Extension Harms – Environment: A/t 3 “No Trade-off” [1/2] 125
- 2AC Extension Harms – Environment: A/t 3 “No Trade-off” [2/2] 126
2AC Extension Harms – Environment: A/t #2 “Corn is Clean” 1241) Corn itself may be clean, but it’s very dirty to farm. It requires more fertilizer than alternative crops such as soy that get replaced because of government support for ethanol, and plowing through fields releases greenhouse gases that are worse than CO2 for the atmosphere. Their evidence is written by hacks in the energy industry and corn states like Illinois. 2) Corn-based ethanol requires huge amounts of fossil-fuels for farming as well as pollution. 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 debit side of the domestic ethanol industry’s climate-change ledger begins to subtract from the credit side before the corn it uses is even planted. “America’s corn crop might look like a sustainable, solar-powered system for producing food, but it is actually a huge, inefficient, polluting machine that guzzles fossil fuel.” 61 While advocates for corn production would dispute this characterization of the industry as “inefficient” and “polluting,” it is undeniable that conventional corn production techniques use large amounts of climate change-exacerbating fossil fuels. Conventional (non-organic) corn production techniques involve annual applications of fertilizers and pesticides, both largely derived from fossil fuels. 62 3) Converting corn into ethanol accelerates greenhouse gas emissions. CBC NEWS, 08 [Stephen Strauss, staff editor; “Food vs. ethanol;” 5/15, http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/story/2008/05/13/f-strauss-ethanol.html] Particularly worrisome for him is the conversion of crops like corn and soya into ethanol. The creation of biofuel from them would save the United States, Europe and the industrialized countries, "more than $140 billion [U.S.] each year, without having to worry about the consequences for the climate and hunger," writes Castro. And he is not alone in these worries. A recent, much-discussed paper in the journal Science calculated that instead of 20 per cent savings in carbon emissions coming from ethanol, the changeover would encourage poor farmers to convert forests and grasslands to ethanol production. And by the paper's authors' measures, that would double greenhouse emissions over 30 years and increase greenhouse gases for 167 years. If corn was changed to switchgrass, which is even better for producing ethanol, emissions would go up by 50 per cent. 2AC Extension Harms – Environment: A/t #3 “No Trade-off” [1/2] 1251) The trade-off is with other crops. Their evidence says that corn fields are yielding more corn products, not that other crops are being grown in addition to corn. Our evidence says farmers have an economic incentive to stop planting soy and other crops due to subsidies for corn, which causes a trade-off. 2) Our argument is about global corn production. Brazilian ethanol incentives lead to destroying the rainforest to plant more sugar, releasing large amounts of carbon and killing valuable animal species. 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] If future legislation does not revive the United States ethanol tariff that expired at the end of 2011 and the trade embargo against Cuba is kept in place, Brazil will likely be the primary beneficiary. The argument can be made that Brazilian sugarcane-based ethanol is a more environmentally beneficial fuel source than domestic-corn based ethanol, because of the nature of sugarcane-based ethanol (discussed below). Brazilian sugarcane-based ethanol comes, however, with its own set of environmental consequences. The full debate over the environmental consequences of the Brazilian biofuel production is largely beyond the scope of this Article. Still, the primary issue in this dispute is worth noting, because it accentuates one of the most significant differences between the U.S. corn-based ethanol industry and the potential Cuban sugarcane-based ethanol industry. In Brazil, the expansion of sugarcane production to meet demand for ethanol production has led to land use changes that parallel the expansion of corn production for ethanol in the United States. Clearing portions of the Amazon rainforest — one of the most significant repositories of carbon on Earth — would represent an environmental cost of ethanol production that outweighs its benefits. The Amazon region, however, is largely unsuitable for sugarcane production. 113 But, sugarcane production is contributing to destruction of another sensitive habitat, the bio-diverse Cerrado savannah region of Brazil. 2AC Extension Harms – Environment: A/t #3 “No Trade-off” [2/2] 1263) Even without a direct trade-off, corn production hurts water supplies that are necessary for growing other crops. Corn growth requires large amounts of irrigation from endangered water supplies such as the Ogallala Aquifer, which cannot be replenished for 6,000 years. 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] Increased water consumption is another environmental consequence resulting from the expansion of corn production in Great Plains states. The approximate line dividing the portion of the United States that requires irrigation for agriculture and the portion that has sufficient rainfall for non-irrigated agriculture, the 100th Meridian West of longitude, 101 runs through the Dakotas and Nebraska. Therefore, unlike agriculture in the states that form the center of the Corn Belt, Iowa and Illinois, 102 agriculture in Nebraska and the Dakotas depends to significant degree upon irrigation. The difference in water consumption between the corn growers of Nebraska, on one hand, and those of Iowa and Illinois, on the other, is dramatic. In 2007, of 9,192,656 acres of total corn production in Nebraska, 5,839,067 acres were irrigated, representing 63% of the total acreage. 103 This fact is particularly significant because much of Nebraska gets its water from the Ogallala Aquifer, a resource of vital environmental and economic importance to the United States that stretches from Texas to South Dakota. 104 Aquifers 105 continue to provide water as long as the amount of water that flows into them exceeds the amount of water that is withdrawn. If the amount of water withdrawn from an aquifer exceeds the amount of water that recharges an aquifer, however, the aquifer will be depleted. Completely depleting the Ogallala Aquifer would have devastating consequences for the United States. Losing the ability to irrigate land from the Ogallala Aquifer would cause $20 billion worth of agricultural losses, and re-filling the aquifer would take 6,000 years. 106 Because the industry encourages increased corn production in areas irrigated with water from the Ogallala Aquifer, the depletion of this aquifer must be counted as another detrimental environmental effect of the domestic corn-based ethanol industry. 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