DeDevelopment Neg cfjmp lab’s DeDev File Uniqueness

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2NC DeDev Solves

Economic crisis reverses the trend of CO2 emissions – 2008 proves

Alier 10/1 - Joan Martínez Alier is a Professor at the Department of Economics and Economic History, Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona, since 1975. He has directed the Doctoral Programme in Environmental Sciences (in the option of Ecological Economics and Environmental Management) since 1997, at the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology (ICTA) of the UAB. He was a research fellow / senior associate member of St. Antony's College, University of Oxford (1966-73 y 1984-85), and visiting professor at the Universidade Estadual de Campinas (Brasil) in 1974, Free University of Berlin in 1980-81, Stanford University and University of California (Davis) (1988-89), Yale University, 1999- 2000, and FLACSO Sede-Ecuador, 1994-95 and 2007. He is a member since 2000 of the Scientific Committee of the European Environment Agency. He is a founding member and has been president (2006, 2007) of the International Society for Ecological Economics. He has a doctorate in Economics (Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona). His research interests comprise Agrarian History, Environmental History, Ecological Economics, Environmental Policy, Political Ecology. In 2008, he is directing the research projects “Social Metabolism, trends and reactions" (MEC, Spain) and CEECEC (“Civil Society Engagement with Ecological Economics”) (FP7, EU), and takes part in the integrated project ALARM (FP6). He direct also the research group (00571) Economic Institutions, Standards of Living, and Environment, recognised by the Catalan government. He is the author of many academic articles, and a member of the editorial committee of Ecological Economics, Environmental Values, Journal of Agrarian Change and other journals. He has written and still writes for alternative journals such as Cuadernos de Ruedo Ibérico, Bicicleta, Mientras Tanto, Archipiélago, and he has edited since 1990 the journal Ecología Política (Icaria Editorial, Barcelona). He works with environmental groups such as Acción Ecológica, Quito, and its Instituto de Estudios Ecologistas del Tercer Mundo whose honorary rector he is. His main books (in ERnglish) are Labourers and Landowners in Southern Spain (1971), Haciendas, Plantations and Collective Farms: Cuba and Peru (1977), Ecological Economics: Energy, Environment and Society (1987), Varieties of Environmentalism: Essays North and South (with Ramachandra Guha, 1997), The Environmentalism of the Poor: a Study of Ecological Conflicts and Valuation (2002). He has edited with Robert Costanza and Olman Segura, Getting down to earth: practical applications of ecological economics (1996), with Alf Hornborg and John Mc Neill, Rethinking Environmental History: World-Systems History and Global Environmental Change (2007), and with Inge Ropke, Recent Developments in Ecological Economics (2 vols, 2008). (2013, Joan Martínez, The Encyclopedia of Earth, “Herman Daly Festschrift: Socially Sustainable Economic Degrowth”, http://www.eoearth.org/view/article/153488/ // SM)

The world peak in carbon dioxide emissions has been reached because of the economic crisis. Emissions are now (finally?) going down. This might become a unique historical chance. In May 2008 it was announced that carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere was at a record level of 387 parts per million (ppm) according to the measurements at the Mauna Loa observatory in Hawai. This meant an increase of 30 per cent above the level of 300 ppm that Svante Arrhenius used in his article of 1895, when he pointed out that burning coal would increase the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and would increase temperatures. Between 1970 and 2000, the concentration had increased by 1.5 ppm per year, since 2001 and until 2007 growth in concentration reached 2.1 ppm. In early 2008 the world was still travelling at all speed towards 450 ppm to be reached in about thirty years. The great increase in the prices of oil, gas, and other commodities until July 2008, and the economic crisis in the second half of 2008 and in 2009, stopped economic growth and changed the trend in carbon dioxide emissions. From the point of view of climate change, the economic crisis should certainly be welcome.

AT: Emission Cuts

Climate Change Can’t Be Solved In a Consumer Society- Immediate Economic Collapse is Crucial

Trainer, 10 [Ted Trainer, Ph.D and Professor at the University of New South Wales, Australia, 6-2010, The Problems of Climate Change Cannot Be Solved By Consumer Societies, Journal of Cosmology, http://journalofcosmology.com/ClimateChange106.html]

One of the fundamental contributing factors to the many global problems threatening civilization and the living creatures of this planet, is simply our grossly unsustainable level of over-consumption and the consequence production of waste (Cairns 2010; NAS 2010a,b,c). The rate at which the rich countries use up resources is far beyond that which can be kept up for long, even more so as the ability to mass consume spreads to the emerging middle classes in developing nations (reviewed by Moriarty and Honnery 2010). Yet it appears that many people totally fail to grasp the magnitude of the threats posed by increased consumption which is necessarily accompanied by the emissions of green house gases and other poisons and wastes (Meinschausen et al., 2009; NAS 2010a,b,c). The reductions required to prevent catastrophe are so big that they probably cannot be achieved within a consumer-capitalist society the very foundations of which rest upon economic growth and the devouring of resources (Moriarty and Honnery 2010). As detailed in three major monographs published by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS 2010a,b,c), by the year 2050, the U.S. must cut carbon emissions by 50% to 80% from 1990 levels. However, even if these drastic cuts were immediately put into effect, the U.S., would still produce 200 billion tons of greenhouse gases between the years 2010 and 2050. To survive, extremely radical change to our systems and culture are necessary (Cairns 2010; Meinschausen et al., 2009; Moriarty and Honnery 2010). Here are three lines of argument leading to this conclusion. 1. Several resources are already becoming alarmingly scarce, including petroleum, water, land, fish and food (Cairns 2010; Moriarty and Honnery 2010). If all the world’s people today were to consume resources at the per capita rate we in rich countries do, the annual supply rate would have to be more than 5 times as great as at present (Mason 2003); and if the world's population were to increase to 9 billion it would have to be about 8 times as great. Mason (2003) shows how these scarcities will probably come to a head in “the 2030 Spike”. 2. The per capita area of productive land needed to supply one Australian with food, water, settlements and energy, is 8 ha. The US figure is closer to 12 ha (reviewed by Moriarty and Honnery 2010). But when world population reaches 9 billion the per capita area of productive land available in the world will be less than .8 ha (Mason 2003). In other words the Australian footprint is already 10 times that which it will be possible for all to have. 3. An Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (NAS 2010a,b,c), have concluded that average global atmosphere temperatures were about 1.4 degrees warmer in the 2000-2010 decade compared with a century ago and that future fossil-fuel emissions of greenhouse gases will increase temperatures by 4 degree in the year 2015 and 11 degrees by 2100. In May of 2010, NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration independently reported that 2010 has been the warmest year so far recorded worldwide. Increase temperatures result in glacial melt, and rising sea levels. Therefore, ocean levels could rise by 5 feet by the end of the century. As most large cities are located near the coast and inland water ways, rising sea levels would require the movement of infrastructure and hundreds of millions of city dwellers to higher ground. The only way to combat this is through drastic reductions in carbon emissions to nearly 1990 levels (Meinschausen et al., 2009; NAS 2010a,b,c)

AT: Tech Solves (General)

Traditional innovation fails – three warrants

Chapple 13 – Alice Chapple is an economist and a specialist in impact investment and impact assessment. She is director of ImpactValue, a consultancy that helps investors and businesses to design their activities to have a more positive impact on people and the environment. Before establishing Impact Value, Alice worked as Director of Sustainable Financial Markets at Forum for the Future. She worked on projects exploring the scope for innovative financial instruments, more effective valuation techniques, better risk assessment, and longer-term investment strategies. Areas of research while at Forum for the Future included finance for clean technologies, sustainability reporting, the market potential for impact investment, the future of social impact bonds, and structural barriers preventing the transition to a low-carbon economy. She worked with a wide range of organizations including Aviva Investors, Barclays, the Co-operative Group, the Department for International Development, Friends Provident Foundation, Actis and the Rockefeller Foundation. Prior to Forum for the Future, she worked for many years at UK development finance institution CDC as financial analyst, fund manager and social and environmental advisor. In the late 1990s, she established a program for evaluation of development impact and in the 2000s she designed processes for fund managers to assess the social, environmental and governance aspects of their investments. Alice has an MA in Economics from Cambridge University and is a chartered accountant. (1/22/13, Alice, Guardian Professional, “Finding a sustainable model of economic growth fit for the future”, http://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/sustainable-model-economic-growth-future-supply // SM)

Traditional economics tells us that the market will sort us out. When resources become scarce, the price goes up, people start innovating to develop or market alternatives, and the problem is resolved. However, there are at least three fundamental problems with that analysis: First, those of us who are richer are cushioned against the impacts of scarcity or instability, while poorer people are already suffering from a lack of water, less fertile land, changing climate and resulting conflicts. We won't react until we are the ones feeling the pain. Second, our accounting system simply doesn't put an adequate value on many of the resources – and particularly the ecosystems services – we depend on, so that the price does not reflect the importance of maintaining them and the market does not send the right signals. Third, there is a time lag. By the time the market recognises the problem, starts to value these resources and sends the signals, it may be too late. It takes time to develop alternatives – clean technologies to replace fossil fuels, new ways to purify or access water, new farming techniques that are less damaging to the topsoil. It is therefore surely irrational to assume that we will be able to pull a technological or economic rabbit out of the tired old business model's hat without a more deliberate process.

Tech fails – capitalism is inherently opposed to sustainable existence

Rohricht 6/27 – Master’s Candidate, American University, School of International Service, M.A. Ethics, Peace, and Global Affairs. B.A. Professional Writing and B.A. Philosophy at Kutztown University of Pennsylvania. (2014, Alyssa, “Capitalism & Climate Change”, CounterPunch, http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/06/27/capitalism-climate-change/ // SM)

Searching for market-based solutions to the climate crisis will not work. When capitalism attempts to put a price on the natural world, it takes into account only the interests of those with the greatest purchasing power. Capital accumulation is the primary objective, and any costs that can be externalized onto nature and the global poor will be. Technology in the capitalist system has helped us to create ever-more energy-efficient processes, yet a paradoxical relationship arises, where increased energy-efficiency leads to increased economic expansion, negating any reduction in resource-use. Likewise, transforming our infrastructure to more sustainable energy sources would require a such massive output of GHGs from fossil fuels to build that implementing the change would push us over the climate cliff. Geoengineering, the solution touted by many cheerleaders of the capitalist system as the saving grace of humanity, absurdly argues for altering the earth’s natural systems even further, hoping that capitalism can continue undiminished. Technology may help pass the buck to future generations, but it will not solve the problem. Capitalism would have us grow indefinitely, but the earth’s natural carrying capacity would have us reverse this trend. The interminable drive for accumulation on which capitalism is solely focused has led humanity down a path of near-disaster with the very systems that we rely on to sustain life – human and otherwise. If we continue down this path of relentless accumulation inherent in the capitalist system, we cannot stop the climate disaster.

AT: Tech Solves (Geoengineering)

Geoengineering fails – disastrous side effects and failure to address the systematic causes of the increase in GHGs

However, further investing in technologies and in geoengineering is not a bold, new decision, as Giddens contends. It is doubling down on exactly what we have been doing for decades. Solar Radiation Management (SRM) techniques (one area of geoengineering) such as adding sulfate aerosols to the stratosphere to increase the albedo effect – the amount of the Sun’s energy that is reflected back into space – and cool the planet are being seriously considered by many scientists and policy makers. The absurdity of pursuing massive projects that would greatly alter the natural systems of the earth and that could have disastrous side effects is evident. Gavin Schmidt, climate modeler at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, created the following analogy for geoengineering: Imagine the climate as a small boat on a choppy ocean, rocking back and forth. One of the passengers in the boat decides to stand up and deliberately rock the boat violently to the protests of the other passengers. Another passenger suggests that with his knowledge of chaotic dynamics, he can counterbalance the rocking of the first passenger. To do so, he needs many sensors, computational resources, and so on so that he can react efficiently, though he cannot guarantee that it will absolutely stabilize the boat, and since the boat is already unsteady, it may make things worse. Schmidt asks, “So is the answer to a known and increasing human influence on climate an ever more elaborate system to control the climate? Or should the person rocking the boat just sit down?” Market reactions to large-scale geoengineering such as releasing sulfate aerosols, would result in the continued acceleration of resource use and further capital accumulation, not to mention, it would do little to solve our problems. Sulfate injection, to start, doesn’t actually help to remove any CO2 from the atmosphere. It also doesn’t address other areas of climate change, including ocean acidification, which has far-reaching implications for many species of marine life. What’s worse, since sulfate injection only manages to reflect more of the sun’s energy without addressing any of the systematic causes of the increase of greenhouse gases (GHG) in the atmosphere, further increases of GHGs can continue, thus assuming the deployment of future sulfate injections and other geoengineering “solutions” to no end.

Geoengineering Makes Warming Worse – It Creates Expansive Temperature Increases

Heyes, 2-26 [ J.D. Heyes, Journalist for NaturalNews.com and Public Policy Analyst, 2-26-2014, Geoengineering could cause real global warming, Natural News.com. http://www.naturalnews.com/044076_geoengineering_global_warming_solar_radiation.html#]

NaturalNews) Climate-change researchers at the University of Washington (UW), in considering a range of mitigation scenarios, say that the injection of sulfate particles into the earth's atmosphere to reflect sunlight away from the planet's surface to curb warming might pose a further threat if it is not maintained indefinitely and additionally supported with strict restrictions on greenhouse gas emissions. The results of the study, published Feb. 18 in IOP Publishing's journal Environmental Research Letters, "has highlighted the risks of large and spatially expansive temperature increases if solar radiation management (SRM) is abruptly stopped once it has been implemented," said a press release from the university. The scientists said SRM is one proposed method of geoengineering that is being floated as a potential technique to control warming. It involves injecting tiny sulfate-based aerosols into the upper atmosphere to reflect sunlight and cool the planet -- theoretically, anyway. "The technique has been shown to be economically and technically feasible; however, its efficacy depends on its continued maintenance, without interruption from technical faults, global cooperation breakdown or funding running dry," said the press release. Temps could rise if the technique is stopped? According to the UW study, global temperature increases could eventually double if SRM is implemented for a period of decades and then stopped suddenly -- in relation to expected temperature increases if the technique is not implemented at all. The scientists utilized a global climate model to demonstrate that if an extreme emissions pathway -- RCP8.5 -- is followed up until the year 2035, which would allow for temperatures to rise 1°C above the 1970-1999 mean, and the technique is implemented for 25 years and then ended suddenly, global temperatures could rise by 4°C in the following decades. Such a rate of increase, which would be caused by the resultant buildup of background greenhouse gas emissions, could grow beyond boundaries experienced in the 20th century, the scientists said. "According to our simulations, tropical regions like South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa are hit particularly hard, the very same regions that are home to many of the world's most food insecure populations," said lead author of the research, Kelly McCusker, from the University of Washington. "The potential temperature changes also pose a severe threat to biodiversity." "The primary control over the magnitude of the large temperature increases after an SRM shutoff is the background greenhouse gas concentrations. Thus, the greater the future emissions of greenhouse gases, the larger the temperature increases would be, and, similarly, the later the termination occurs while GHG emissions continue, the larger the temperature increases," continued McCusker. "The only way to avoid creating the risk of substantial temperature increases through SRM, therefore, is concurrent strong reductions of GHG emissions." Not everyone is convinced that geoengineering is the right approach in the first place, however. Need for perspective "Although not necessarily a negative impact, measuring any potential of solar radiation management (including the use of stratospheric aerosol injection) is nearly impossible - the climate is too complex an entity in order to do so effectively," David Baake, an expert with Money Crashers, told me. "There's also the possibility that the use of such aerosols may actually decrease precipitation and rainfall on a global level. And since the possibility exists that such aerosols can transform into sulphuric acid, acid rain levels may rise. "It may further deplete the ozone as well. And finally, the use of solar radiation management has its benefits," Baake continued, "but it does nothing to solve the underlying causes of global warming - it only serves as a stopgap solution." Indeed, longtime environmental activist Pablo Solomon argues, the entire issue of global warming and climate change needs some perspective. "The debate over 'climate change' should not be censored and the opposition bullied into submission," Solomon said in an email to Natural News. "The Left continues to literally threaten those who oppose the global warming view. It is nearly impossible to get a grant or even a university job if you openly oppose the global warming theory. I was appalled when President Obama basically said the debate was over so shut up and get in line. In science, the debate is never over and never should be." Solomon added that, if anything, slight warming of the planet would be advantageous. "We are over populated and what resources we have are poorly distributed," he said. "A slight climate change over several centuries--and that is what is really possible not a sudden sea level rise of Biblical proportions--would create vast new areas of farmland in Canada, Poland, Russia," and other cold regions of the planet.

AT: Cap Good - Agriculture

Capitalism leads to unsustainable agriculture – deteriorates nature

Karl Marx first employed the concept of metabolic interactions between humans and nature in the 19th century, recognizing the “complex interdependence” between the two. Since man lives from nature and derives the very necessities to survive from it, nature is his body. He is a part of nature and they are inextricably linked and so man must be in “dialogue” with it in order to survive. This complex interchange he likened to the metabolism – or material exchange – within the body. But as man began to adopt practices that disrupted this interchange, a rupture occurred with the relations between man and the natural world. This rupture, driven by capitalist expansion, intensified with large-scale agriculture, harmful industries, and the global market. Marx saw this rupture, or metabolic rift, occur as populations began to flock toward cities. In contrast to traditional agriculture, where waste from food is recycled back into the soil, this new type of agriculture meant nutrients (food) were being shipped to cities to feed the growing population, and thus not cycled back into the soil. This caused the natural fertility of the soil to decline and nutrients in the city to accumulate as waste and pollution. As soil fertility worsened, more and more intensive agricultural methods were needed, increasing the use of artificial fertilizers, further harming the nutrient cycles of the soil. Capitalism continued to demand higher and higher yields, requiring more and more intensive and harsh farming methods, greater fertilizer use, and so on, creating a cycle of deterioration of the natural processes, and a rift between man and nature. Humans have disrupted the natural processes of the earth in unimaginable ways. The very composition of the air we breathe is being altered by our ever-growing emissions of GHGs. The system we have put our faith in for many years rests on a ceaseless hunger for accumulation, spurred on by fossil fuels. As our energy sources become more and more scarce and difficult to find and extract, instead of scaling back and recognizing nature’s natural boundaries, capitalism doubles down and employs even more dangerous methods.

AT: EKC

Kuznets Theory isn’t Applicable to Climate Change

UNEP,3-11 [United Nations Environmental Programme, 3-11-2014, THE ENVIRONMENTAL KUZNETS CURVE, Make Wealthy History: Because The Earth Can’t Afford Our Lifestyle, http://makewealthhistory.org/2014/03/11/the-environmental-kuznets-curve/]

So the first problem is that the curve theory doesn’t hold across all environmental problems. It doesn’t apply to the most serious issue of our time, climate change. Of course, proponents of the curve simply say that carbon emissions do have a peak at which they would start declining, and we just haven’t reached the required per capita income threshold – so perhaps just a little, more economic growth is what we need. Since we’ve already overshot the safe limits and begun to destabilise the climate, one wonders how much faith we want to put in the theory. Given that there are tipping points that would throw the climate into unstoppable climate change, increasing emissions is a luxury we don’t have. The second problem is that the Environmental Kuznets Curve really only applies within countries. Britain’s economy has moved away from heavy industry, but we haven’t stopped using the goods of heavy industry – we still want to drive petrol-driven cars and build things out of cement. Our own mines have closed, but we still use vast quantities of tin and copper and iron from elsewhere. Our environmental impact has been displaced, not eliminated. “Countries may improve their decoupling performance most easily by outsourcing material-intensive extraction and processing to other countries and by importing concentrated products instead” says the UNEP.

Kuznets Go Neg – Results Show An Increase In Warming

Francois, 4-14 [ Joseph Francois, Professor of Economic at Johannes Kepler University, 4-14-2014, "Revisiting the Environmental Kuznets Curve" , Global Trade Analysis Project, https://www.gtap.agecon.purdue.edu/resources/res_display.asp?RecordID=4417]

The view that human released CO2 emissions are one of the main causes of anthropogenic global warming is now widespread among the scienti c community. Ranging from rising sea levels to land and water shortages the e ects of climate change on the global ecosystem and the world economy will be severe. This makes the existence of a U-shaped relationship between economic development and pollution the Holy Grail of environmental economics. While there is theoretical support for this so called Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC), epirical evidence is far from robust, sometimes even contradicting theoretical suggestions. Here we test for the existence of an inverted U-shaped relationship between carbon dioxide emissions and real income for a panel of 78 individuals (66 countries and 12 composite regions) for the years 1997, 2001, 2004 and 2007. We contribute to the literature in two ways. First, by applying multi-region input output (MRIO) methodology on the GTAP database we can also take CO2 consumption into account besides established production-based measures. Secondly, we also apply a threshold model alongside conventional lniear models on our dataset. Applying the linear models we can adress methodological issues of the existing literature. Our results show a linear relationship between real income and the production and consumption of CO2 emissions. We have some support for the hypothesis that consumption of CO2 is indeed increasing with income, which we want to testify with an threshold approach. The existence or non-existence of an EKC for CO2 is of considerable importance of the design of global mitigation mechanisms and agreements on climate.

EKC flips neg—economic growth leads to warming

Tierney 9 [John Tierney writes a column, Findings, for the Science Times section. He previously wrote the Big City column for the Times Magazine and the Metro section, the Political Points column for the Washington bureau, and an Op-Ed column. He is the co-author, with the social psychologist Roy Baumeister, of the New York Times best-seller, Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength (Penguin Press, 2011). An excerpt, “Do You Suffer from Decision Fatigue?”, ran in the Times Magazine. It was reviewed in the Times by Steven Pinker and named one of Amazon’s Best Books of 2011. “Use Energy, Get Rich and Save the Planet” April 20, 2009 http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/21/science/earth/21tier.html?_r=1&] JAKE LEE

When the first Earth Day took place in 1970, American environmentalists had good reason to feel guilty. The nation’s affluence and advanced technology seemed so obviously bad for the planet that they were featured in a famous equation developed by the ecologist Paul Ehrlich and the physicist John P. Holdren, who is now President Obama’s science adviser.¶ Their equation was I=PAT, which means that environmental impact is equal to population multiplied by affluence multiplied by technology. Protecting the planet seemed to require fewer people, less wealth and simpler technology — the same sort of social transformation and energy revolution that will be advocated at many Earth Day rallies on Wednesday.¶ But among researchers who analyze environmental data, a lot has changed since the 1970s. With the benefit of their hindsight and improved equations, I’ll make a couple of predictions:¶ 1. There will be no green revolution in energy or anything else. No leader or law or treaty will radically change the energy sources for people and industries in the United States or other countries. No recession or depression will make a lasting change in consumers’ passions to use energy, make money and buy new technology — and that, believe it or not, is good news, because...¶ 2. The richer everyone gets, the greener the planet will be in the long run.¶ I realize this second prediction seems hard to believe when you consider the carbon being dumped into the atmosphere today by Americans, and the projections for increasing emissions from India and China as they get richer.¶ Those projections make it easy to assume that affluence and technology inflict more harm on the environment. But while pollution can increase when a country starts industrializing, as people get wealthier they can afford cleaner water and air. They start using sources of energy that are less carbon-intensive — and not just because they’re worried about global warming. The process of “decarbonization” started long before Al Gore was born.¶ The old wealth-is-bad IPAT theory may have made intuitive sense, but it didn’t jibe with the data that has been analyzed since that first Earth Day. By the 1990s, researchers realized that graphs of environmental impact didn’t produce a simple upward-sloping line as countries got richer. The line more often rose, flattened out and then reversed so that it sloped downward, forming the shape of a dome or an inverted U — what’s called a Kuznets curve. (See nytimes.com/tierneylab for an example.)¶ In dozens of studies, researchers identified Kuznets curves for a variety of environmental problems. There are exceptions to the trend, especially in countries with inept governments and poor systems of property rights, but in general, richer is eventually greener. As incomes go up, people often focus first on cleaning up their drinking water, and then later on air pollutants like sulfur dioxide.¶ As their wealth grows, people consume more energy, but they move to more efficient and cleaner sources — from wood to coal and oil, and then to natural gas and nuclear power, progressively emitting less carbon per unit of energy. This global decarbonization trend has been proceeding at a remarkably steady rate since 1850, according to Jesse Ausubel of Rockefeller University and Paul Waggoner of the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station.¶ “Once you have lots of high-rises filled with computers operating all the time, the energy delivered has to be very clean and compact,” said Mr. Ausubel, the director of the Program for the Human Environment at Rockefeller. “The long-term trend is toward natural gas and nuclear power, or conceivably solar power. If the energy system is left to its own devices, most of the carbon will be out of it by 2060 or 2070.”¶ But what about all the carbon dioxide being spewed out today by Americans commuting to McMansions? Well, it’s true that American suburbanites do emit more greenhouse gases than most other people in the world (although New Yorkers aren’t much different from other affluent urbanites).¶ But the United States and other Western countries seem to be near the top of a Kuznets curve for carbon emissions and ready to start the happy downward slope. The amount of carbon emitted by the average American has remained fairly flat for the past couple of decades, and per capita carbon emissions have started declining in some countries, like France. Some researchers estimate that the turning point might come when a country’s per capita income reaches $30,000, but it can vary widely, depending on what fuels are available. Meanwhile, more carbon is being taken out of the atmosphere by the expanding forests in America and other affluent countries. Deforestation follows a Kuznets curve, too. In poor countries, forests are cleared to provide fuel and farmland, but as people gain wealth and better agricultural technology, the farm fields start reverting to forestland.¶ Of course, even if rich countries’ greenhouse impact declines, there will still be an increase in carbon emissions from China, India and other countries ascending the Kuznets curve. While that prospect has environmentalists lobbying for global restrictions on greenhouse gases, some economists fear that a global treaty could ultimately hurt the atmosphere by slowing economic growth, thereby lengthening the time it takes for poor countries to reach the turning point on the curve.¶ But then, is there much reason to think that countries at different stages of the Kuznets curve could even agree to enforce tough restrictions? The Kyoto treaty didn’t transform Europe’s industries or consumers. While some American environmentalists hope that the combination of the economic crisis and a new president can start an era of energy austerity and green power, Mr. Ausubel says they’re hoping against history.¶ Over the past century, he says, nothing has drastically altered the long-term trends in the way Americans produce or use energy — not the Great Depression, not the world wars, not the energy crisis of the 1970s or the grand programs to produce alternative energy.¶ “Energy systems evolve with a particular logic, gradually, and they don’t suddenly morph into something different,” Mr. Ausubel says. That doesn’t make for a rousing speech on Earth Day. But in the long run, a Kuznets curve is more reliable than a revolution.

AT: Efficiency/Renewables

DeDev Solves Warming – Efficient Consumption and Renewables Isn’t Sufficient

Garret & Siegel, 09 [Tim Garrett, Associate Professor of Atmospheric Science, Lee J. Siegel, Science New Specialist, University of Utah Public Relations, 11-22-2009, IS GLOBAL WARMING UNSTOPPABLE? THEORY ALSO SAYS ENERGY CONSERVATION DOESN'T HELP, The University of Utah: News Center, http://www.unews.utah.edu/old/p/112009-1.html]

Nov. 22, 2009 - In a provocative new study, a University of Utah scientist argues that rising carbon dioxide emissions - the major cause of global warming - cannot be stabilized unless the world's economy collapses or society builds the equivalent of one new nuclear power plant each day. "It looks unlikely that there will be any substantial near-term departure from recently observed acceleration in carbon dioxide emission rates," says the new paper by Tim Garrett, an associate professor of atmospheric sciences. Garrett's study was panned by some economists and rejected by several journals before acceptance by Climatic Change, a journal edited by renowned Stanford University climate scientist Stephen Schneider. The study will be published online this week. The study - which is based on the concept that physics can be used to characterize the evolution of civilization - indicates: Energy conservation or efficiency doesn't really save energy, but instead spurs economic growth and accelerated energy consumption. Throughout history, a simple physical "constant" - an unchanging mathematical value - links global energy use to the world's accumulated economic productivity, adjusted for inflation. So it isn't necessary to consider population growth and standard of living in predicting society's future energy consumption and resulting carbon dioxide emissions. "Stabilization of carbon dioxide emissions at current rates will require approximately 300 gigawatts of new non-carbon-dioxide-emitting power production capacity annually - approximately one new nuclear power plant (or equivalent) per day," Garrett says. "Physically, there are no other options without killing the economy." Getting Heat for Viewing Civilization as a "Heat Engine" Garrett says colleagues generally support his theory, while some economists are critical. One economist, who reviewed the study, wrote: "I am afraid the author will need to study harder before he can contribute." "I'm not an economist, and I am approaching the economy as a physics problem," Garrett says. "I end up with a global economic growth model different than they have." Garrett treats civilization like a "heat engine" that "consumes energy and does 'work' in the form of economic production, which then spurs it to consume more energy," he says. "If society consumed no energy, civilization would be worthless," he adds. "It is only by consuming energy that civilization is able to maintain the activities that give it economic value. This means that if we ever start to run out of energy, then the value of civilization is going to fall and even collapse absent discovery of new energy sources." Garrett says his study's key finding "is that accumulated economic production over the course of history has been tied to the rate of energy consumption at a global level through a constant factor." That "constant" is 9.7 (plus or minus 0.3) milliwatts per inflation-adjusted 1990 dollar. So if you look at economic and energy production at any specific time in history, "each inflation-adjusted 1990 dollar would be supported by 9.7 milliwatts of primary energy consumption," Garrett says. Garrett tested his theory and found this constant relationship between energy use and economic production at any given time by using United Nations statistics for global GDP (gross domestic product), U.S. Department of Energy data on global energy consumption during1970-2005, and previous studies that estimated global economic production as long as 2,000 years ago. Then he investigated the implications for carbon dioxide emissions. "Economists think you need population and standard of living to estimate productivity," he says. "In my model, all you need to know is how fast energy consumption is rising. The reason why is because there is this link between the economy and rates of energy consumption, and it's just a constant factor." Garrett adds: "By finding this constant factor, the problem of [forecasting] global economic growth is dramatically simpler. There is no need to consider population growth and changes in standard of living because they are marching to the tune of the availability of energy supplies." To Garrett, that means the acceleration of carbon dioxide emissions is unlikely to change soon because our energy use today is tied to society's past economic productivity. "Viewed from this perspective, civilization evolves in a spontaneous feedback loop maintained only by energy consumption and incorporation of environmental matter," Garrett says. It is like a child that "grows by consuming food, and when the child grows, it is able to consume more food, which enables it to grow more." Is Meaningful Energy Conservation Impossible? Perhaps the most provocative implication of Garrett's theory is that conserving energy doesn't reduce energy use, but spurs economic growth and more energy use. "Making civilization more energy efficient simply allows it to grow faster and consume more energy," says Garrett. He says the idea that resource conservation accelerates resource consumption - known as Jevons paradox - was proposed in the 1865 book "The Coal Question" by William Stanley Jevons, who noted that coal prices fell and coal consumption soared after improvements in steam engine efficiency. So is Garrett arguing that conserving energy doesn't matter? "I'm just saying it's not really possible to conserve energy in a meaningful way because the current rate of energy consumption is determined by the unchangeable past of economic production. If it feels good to conserve energy, that is fine, but there shouldn't be any pretense that it will make a difference." Yet, Garrett says his findings contradict his own previously held beliefs about conservation, and he continues to ride a bike or bus to work, line dry family clothing and use a push lawnmower. An Inevitable Future for Carbon Dioxide Emissions? Garrett says often-discussed strategies for slowing carbon dioxide emissions and global warming include mention increased energy efficiency, reduced population growth and a switch to power sources that don't emit carbon dioxide, including nuclear, wind and solar energy and underground storage of carbon dioxide from fossil fuel burning. Another strategy is rarely mentioned: a decreased standard of living, which would occur if energy supplies ran short and the economy collapsed, he adds. "Fundamentally, I believe the system is deterministic," says Garrett. "Changes in population and standard of living are only a function of the current energy efficiency. That leaves only switching to a non-carbon-dioxide-emitting power source as an available option." "The problem is that, in order to stabilize emissions, not even reduce them, we have to switch to non-carbonized energy sources at a rate about 2.1 percent per year. That comes out to almost one new nuclear power plant per day."

Efficiency fails – Jevon’s Paradox

Rohricht 6/27 – Master’s Candidate, American University, School of International Service, M.A. Ethics, Peace, and Global Affairs. B.A. Professional Writing and B.A. Philosophy at Kutztown University of Pennsylvania. (2014, Alyssa, “Capitalism & Climate Change”, CounterPunch, http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/06/27/capitalism-climate-change/ // SM)

Pursuing ‘sustainable’ energy sources is an equally dubious response to the climate crisis. Just as with geoengineering, the thought is that human ingenuity and investment in new technologies will lead to cleaner and more efficient industrial practices, thus reducing our GHG emissions. Yet this ignores the very nature of the capitalist system of endless growth and accumulation, and given the opportunity to expand further while expending less on energy and resources, capitalism will naturally expand to fill the newly opened space. This concept is often called Jevon’s Paradox, after William Stanley Jevons, a 19th century economist who sought to examine why increased efficiency in the use of coal led to increased consumption. What Jevons noted was a positive correlation between efficiency and resource consumption, observing that as the use of coal became more efficient and thus more cost effective, it became more desirable to consumers, creating more demand and thus more production and consumption. On and on it goes. This is called the “rebound effect” whereby gains in efficiency lead to a drop in the price of a given commodity and a rise in demand and consumption. Any gains in efficiency, then, do not lead to a decrease in consumption, but often have the opposite effect. In fact, over the period of 1975 to 1996, carbon efficiency increased dramatically in the US, Japan, the Netherlands, and Austria. However, studies show that during the same period, total emissions of carbon dioxide and per capita emissions increased across the board. Thus gains in fossil fuel efficiency have resulted in increased use by the capitalist, industrialized societies. As Karl Marx noted, capitalism prevents the rational application of technologies because gains are only reinvested in the capitalist system and used to further expand and grow capital accumulation.

AT: Renewables

Renewables fail – huge emissions required to switch and massive environmental damage

Rohricht 6/27 – Master’s Candidate, American University, School of International Service, M.A. Ethics, Peace, and Global Affairs. B.A. Professional Writing and B.A. Philosophy at Kutztown University of Pennsylvania. (2014, Alyssa, “Capitalism & Climate Change”, CounterPunch, http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/06/27/capitalism-climate-change/ // SM)

Renewable energy poses similar problems. Drastic measures would need to be taken to change the entire infrastructure currently built around fossil fuels. In order to keep global warming to a 2°C increase by purely technical means, about 80% of the world’s energy use would have to be switched to carbon-neutral technologies like wind, solar, and bio-fuels. An article in the New Yorker on inventor Saul Griffith noted that this “would require building the equivalent of all the following: a hundred square metres of new solar cells, fifty square metres of new solar-thermal reflectors, and one Olympic swimming pool’s volume of genetically engineered algae (for biofuels) every second for the next twenty-five years; one three-hundred-foot-diameter wind turbine every five minutes; one hundred-megawatt geothermal-powered steam turbine every eight hours; and one three-gigawatt nuclear power plant every week.” To construct all of this carbon-neutral technology would require emitting huge amounts of GHGs into the atmosphere, over and above what we are already emitting to continue running the current system. Furthermore, large-scale renewables can be just as destructive as other forms of energy. Large-scale dams used for hydropower – a supposedly “clean” energy – have led to destruction of habitats for both aquatic and land species, destruction of flood plains, river deltas, wetlands, and ocean estuaries, reduction of water quality and nutrient cycling and have been known to cause earthquakes. Biofuels, similarly, cause huge environmental damage, sometimes using more energy to grow and transport the crops than energy gained from it, not to mention the issue of creating competition for arable land with the food industry. Once again, a boon for the capitalist economy in creating new industry in ‘sustainable energy’ is to the great detriment of the environment and the climate, so long as the harms caused by these new technologies can be written off as externalities. Focusing on technology – whether through methods to increase efficiency, through sustainable energy, or through geoengineering – do nothing to change the underlying capitalist system of unfettered growth that has been at the source of the climate change problem from the beginning. They are merely attempts at treating the symptoms of climate change, not the cause.

A switch to renewables can’t solve – Growth consumes resources and energy no matter what kind it is – tech only allows us to find and process energy not create it – due to declining marginal returns growth inherently limits technological advancement – collapse is inevitable

Korowicz, ’14 - David Korowicz is a physicist who studies the interactions between economics, energy, climate change, food security, supply chains, and complexity. David is an independent consultant. He was a ministerial appointment to the council of Comhar, Ireland’s sustainable development commission. He was head of research at The Ecology Foundation, and is on the executive committee of Feasta, The Foundation for the Economics of Sustainability: a Think Tank, (David, “How to be Trapped: An Interview with David Korowicz”, Resilience, http://www.resilience.org/stories/2014-03-19/how-to-be-trapped-an-interview-with-david-korowicz)//Roetlin
If so, cannot we just switch to green growth? DK: First of all, if it is growth, it will still be energy and resource consuming. Secondly, the starting point will still be path dependent and thus constrained. Thirdly, technology cannot make energy, only help to find, process and distribute what is already there. And what’s potentially left, renewable or not, is less economy-adaptive, is of lower quality and lower energy return than what it’s replacing. So there is no magic way around our central predicament. Anyway, what do we mean by ‘switch’? It suggests a level of insight and control of the globalised economy that we do not have. It implies a rapid transformation that in reality is inherently rate limited (energy revolutions have happened over many decades), and dependent upon the continuing coherence of the globalised economy and its constituent critical systems. In addition problem solving in a complex society suffers from declining marginal returns. New solutions require more and more scientific, economic and social efforts and economies of scale and resources. They don’t live in a vacuum, they live in this interdependent system- the globalised economy. For example, the smallest particle, the electron, discovered in the 1890’s was done by Thompson on a lab bench; now it takes 10,000 PhD’s and a 27km high tech ring, and the coherence of our modern globalized economy to reveal the newest particle, the Higgs Boson. The discovery of penicillin in the 1920’s in today’s money cost almost nothing and had a revolutionary impact; now we are spending €100’s of millions to make minor improvements on niche drugs. To ‘solve’ the problems of growth with green growth still requires the rising cost of complex problem solving- and that requires rising energy and resource flows- which themselves are suffering from declining marginal returns (Energy-Return-On-Energy-Invested). In the end though, we’ve run out of time. The implications of crossing the limits to growth are the complex globalised systems (financial, monetary, adaptive social behaviors, supply-chains, critical infrastructures, factories, resource access and processing, R&D etc) needed to invent, manufacture, and deploy at scale begin to stress, lose resilience and finally break down. In such a case our green growth aspirations will fall away from our grasp as the socio-economic ground collapses beneath our feet.

Renewable energy can only generate enough electricity to sustain “3% of the rich world per capita electricity consumption rate” the amount of coal required to keep us up and running would still create unsafe levels of greenhouse gases

Plug the gaps with fossil fuels? Could the gaps left when there is little sun or wind be filled by use of coal without risking the greenhouse problem? Unfortunately the gaps are far too big. The IPCC emission scenarios[4] indicate that to keep the carbon concentration in the atmosphere to a safe level world per capita fossil fuel use should cut world carbon emissions to no more than 2 GT/y. For the expected 9 billion people this means average per capita carbon use would have to be about .11 tonnes p.a. This amount would generate about .03 kW … which is about 3% of the rich world per capita electricity consumption rate. Electricity conclusions? Renewables could provide a considerable fraction of electricity demand, probably in excess of 25% in some countries, but a) much of the generating capacity would have to be duplicated in the form of fossil or nuclear plant for use when there is little sun or wind, b) the amount of coal use still required would far exceed safe greenhouse gas emission limits.

The affs investment in renewables will just be wasted when we eventually dedevlop – it would be more productive to just let the collapse happen

But it is still better to have green growth than business-as-usual? If we did it right, then investing in some of the things that are considered in green growth plans could help to make us more resilient in the future, but only marginally. Mostly though, green growth is designed for and adaptive with the assumption of continued economic growth and the persistence of system integration within the global economy. For example, if we are putting renewable energy onto a large-scale networked grid and we hit a crisis because or our financial system fails, say, and the demand drops by 80%, then a lot of that variable supply may end up being effectively useless. One reason is because a certain level of base-load on a grid is needed to support a level of variable (renewable) supply, another is that the network loses economies of scale. In such a scenario it may become just another wasted investment. It would be more resilient if we were to put renewable energy into localized networks, adaptive to variability, resilient to supply-chain breaks, and used to protect something critical for collective welfare such as sanitation. Such an investment would make no economic sense at present, it’s completely inefficient. Again though, I think we’ve pretty much running out of time for any type of growth.

AT: Wind

Wind energy isn’t a viable solution – wind doesn’t blow all the time and there’s no way to store large amounts of electricity – backup generators running on fossil fuels would be required, defeating the purpose

Trainer, ’07 - Senior Lecturer in Sociology, School of Social Work, University of New South Wale (Ted, “Renewable Energy: No Solution for Consumer Society”, Inclusive Democracy, http://www.inclusivedemocracy.org/journal/vol3/vol3_no1_Trainer_renewable_energy.htm#_edn3)//Roetlin

It is necessary to divide a discussion of renewable energy potential into two parts, one to do with electricity and the other to do with liquid fuels. Liquid fuels set the biggest problem. 1. Electricity Many sources could contribute some renewable electricity, but the big three are wind, photovoltaic solar and solar thermal. a) Wind An examination of wind maps indicates that the annual quantity of wind energy that is available could well be considerably greater than demand, but the important question is what fraction of this can be harvested in view of the variability problem; that is, sometimes there is little or no wind. In the past it was usually assumed that for this reason wind might be able to contribute up to 25% of demand. However, the Germans with far more wind mills than any other country, and the Danish with the world’s highest ratio of wind output to electricity consumption, have run into problems “integrating” wind into the grid while wind is supplying only about 5% of demand[2]. (Denmark’s output is equivalent to c.18% of demand but most of this is not used locally and is exported.) A mill at a good site might run over time at 33% of its maximum or “peak” capacity, but this should not be taken as a performance likely from a whole wind system. Sharman reports that even in Denmark in 2003 the average output of the wind system was about 17% of its peak capacity and was down to around 5% for several months at a time. The E.On Netz report for Germany, the country with more wind mills than any other, also says that in 2003 system capacity was 16%, and around 5% for months. They stress that 2003 was a good wind year. Another significant problem is that because the wind sometimes does not blow at all, in a system in which wind provided a large fraction of demand there might have to be almost as much back-up capacity from other sources as there is wind generating capacity. E.On Netz has emphasised this problem with respect to the German experience. So if we built a lot of wind farms we might have to build almost as many coal, gas or nuclear power stations to turn to from time to time. This means that renewable sources tend to be alternative rather than additive. We might have to build two or even four separate systems (wind, PV, solar thermal and coal/nuclear) each capable of meeting much or all of the demand, with the equivalent of one to three sitting idle all the time. This would obviously be very expensive. In addition, electricity distribution grids would have to be reinforced and extended, especially to cope with the new task of enabling large amounts of power to be sent from wherever the winds were high at that time. Centralised coal or nuclear generators do not have this problem. These costs must be added to get the full cost of renewable systems. Davey and Coppin[3] carried out a valuable study of what the situation would be if an integrated wind system aggregated output from mills across 1,500 km of south east Australia. Coppin points out that this region has better wind resource than Europe in general. Linking mills in all parts of the region would reduce variability of electricity supply considerably, but it would remain large. Calms would affect the whole area for days at a time. My interpretation of their Figure 3 is that the aggregated system would be generating at under 26% of capacity about 30% of the time, and for 20% of the time it would be under 20% of capacity. Clearly a very large wind system would have to be backed up by some other large and highly reliable supply system, and that system would be called on to do a lot of generating (…and would exceed safe greenhouse emission limits). Electricity storage? These problems of variability and integration could be overcome if electricity could be stored in large quantities. This can’t be done and satisfactory solutions are not foreseen. The best option is to use electricity to pump water up into dcams, then generate with this later. This works well, but the capacity is very limited. World hydro generating capacity is about 7 – 10% of electricity demand, so there would often be times when it could not come anywhere near topping up supply.

AT: Solar

Solar energy is too intermittent – because of the lack of an ability to store large amounts of power it can only feed surplus into a grid – it’s only works if coal or nuclear plants are running 24/7 to act as a “battery”

b) Photovoltaic solar electricity The big problem with PV is that it too is an intermittent source, and its possible contribution to a wholly renewable energy system is therefore quite limited without the capacity for very large scale storage. No matter how cheap it became, it can power nothing for some 16 hours a day, or over a run of cloudy days. It is fine (though costly) when it can feed surpluses from house roofs etc., into a grid running on coal, while drawing power from that grid at night. But this only works when a lot of coal or nuclear power plants are running all the time to act as a giant “battery” into which PV can send surpluses.

AT: Solar Thermal

During the winter solar thermal generators both 1. Are unable to store energy and 2. Function at 20% capacity – the only other type cant store energy at all and are even more expensive

c) Solar Thermal Electricity After wind, Europe’s best option for renewable electricity will probably be solar thermal plants located in the Sahara region. These will impose significant transmission losses but their big advantage is their capacity to store energy as heat to generate and transmit electricity when it is needed. However, the magnitude of the potential is uncertain, and especially doubtful in winter. Solar thermal trough systems do not work very well in lower solar incidence. Even in the best locations output in winter is about 20% of summer output. The winter incidence of solar energy in the Sahara is not that impressive, perhaps 6 kWh/m/d towards Libya and Egypt and a long way south of the Mediterranean. Solar thermal dishes perform better than troughs in winter, but they cost more and their big disadvantage is that because each tracks the sun it is difficult to take heat via flexible couplings to a central generator or store. They are being developed with Stirling engine generators at each focal point, meaning that heat energy can’t be stored to generate electricity when it is needed. Central receiver or tower systems can store, but like troughs they have reduced winter performance. It is likely that solar thermal systems will be located only in the hottest regions, will have to supply major demand centres by long transmission lines, and will not be able to make a large contribution in winter.

AT: Hydrogen

Hydrogen fuel is extremely inefficient – you’ll only get at most 25% of the energy you put in

Hydrogen There are weighty reasons why we are not likely to have a hydrogen economy. If you make hydrogen from electricity you lose 30% of the energy that was in the electricity. If you then compress, pump, store and re-use the hydrogen the losses at each of these steps will result in something like only 25% of the energy generated being available for use, e.g., to drive the wheels of a fuel-cell powered car.

AT: Biomass

To produce enough liquid fuel for rich countries only we’d need 24 billion hectares of biomass plantations – the earth has 13billion total

2. Liquid fuels The limits to the hope of meeting liquid fuel demand via renewable energy sources are much clearer than those for meeting electrical demand. A very large scale supply would have to be via ethanol produced from woody biomass. The current view among the main researchers and agencies is that in the future it will be possible to produce about 7 GJ of ethanol (net of all production energy costs) from each tonne of biomass.[5] People in rich countries such as Australia use about 128 GJ of liquids (oil plus gas) per year, so to provide this via ethanol would require 16.3 tonnes of biomass each year. It is probable that for very large scale biomass production the yield will be 7 t/ha/y. This would mean each person would need 2.6 hectares of land growing biomass to provide for their liquid and gas consumption (in the form of ethanol net, not primary energy amount.) To provide the 9+ billion people we will probably have on earth by 2060 we would therefore need 24 billion hectares of biomass plantations. This is a slight problem here … because the world’s total land area is only 13 billion hectares, and the total forest, cropland and pasture adds to only about 8 billion hectares, just about all heavily overused already. So vary the above assumptions as you wish (e.g., assume 15 t/ha/y for willows grown in Europe) and there is no possibility of explaining how all people could ever have something like the present rich world liquid fuel consumption from biomass.

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