Globalization has eradicated great power war, dedev reverses
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MISC***Authors A2: Alexander Alexander concedes it is impossible to transition to a society beyond growth – developed nations don’t care and the mindset is too deeply entrenched in individuals Alexander ‘12 Dr. Samuel, lecturer at the Office for Environmental Problems @ the University of Melbourne in Australia and founder of the Simplicity Collective, “The Sufficiency Economy: Envisioning A Prosperous Way Down”, http://simplicityinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/TheSufficiencyEconomy3.pdf 2.4. The Fantasy of Limitless Economic Growth¶ Despite the fact that the global economy is already in dangerous ecological overshoot, every nation on the planet still aims to grow its economy, without apparent limit. Economic development of some form is still obviously required in the poorest parts of the world, as noted, simply in order to provide for basic needs. But if the poorest nations are to have any 'ecological room' to do so - especially when population growth is taken into account - it follows by force of logic that the overdeveloped rich nations should not continue growing their own economies. Indeed, sustainability demands that the richest nations initiate a process of planned economic contraction, or 'degrowth' (Alexander, 2012a], with the aim of eventually arriving at some 'steady-state' economy within ecological limits. This confronting logic has proven easy enough for the rich nations to ignore, but it is impossible to escape. Not only must the growth paradigm inevitably collide with biophysical reality, it is in fact in the process of doing so (Meadows et al, 2004].¶ Needless to say, however, there are no signs that the richest nations are prepared to give up the pursuit of growth, certainly not for reasons of global equity or ecological conservation. The great obstacle that lies in the way of a macroeconomics ‘beyond growth' is the dominant ideology of growth economics that quite explicitly treats growth in GDP as the best measure of national progress and politico-economic competency (Purdey, 2010]. In fact, the growth paradigm is so deeply entrenched in mainstream political discourse in the developed nations (and increasingly elsewhere] that it is hard to imagine any of the major political parties, whether on the Left or the Right, daring to pursue or even seriously contemplate a post-growth alternative. This arguably gives rise to an acute and disturbing contradiction: We must give up the pursuit of growth, but cannot.¶ Empire thus marches on.
*Patrick T. Brandt, Ph.D. in Political Science from Indiana University, is an Assistant Professor of Political Science in the School of Social Science at the University of Texas at Dallas. **Jay Ulfelder, Ph.D. in political science from Stanford University, is an American political scientist whose research interests include democratization, civil unrest, and violent conflict, April, 2011, “Economic Growth and Political Instability,” Social Science Research Network The research described here was motivated, in part, by a desire to help anticipate political fallout from the global economic recession triggered by the financial crisis of 2008. Any attempt to do that should be tempered by recognition that, if the latest IMF forecasts are correct, the data from which these models were estimated do not include a global recession as broad and severe as the one occurring in 2008-10. While most countries’ growth rates remain within the normal range of the historical sample used here, the breadth and depth of the slowdown—as measured by the growth rate of the global economy—makes it the worst since World War II, according to the IMF. If the current crisis differs in kind from the ones that occurred in the 1970s, the 1980s, and the early 2000s, then the models may not accurately capture the effects this crisis will have on political stability.
*Patrick T. Brandt, Ph.D. in Political Science from Indiana University, is an Assistant Professor of Political Science in the School of Social Science at the University of Texas at Dallas. **Jay Ulfelder, Ph.D. in political science from Stanford University, is an American political scientist whose research interests include democratization, civil unrest, and violent conflict, April, 2011, “Economic Growth and Political Instability,” Social Science Research Network This section of the paper details the measures and data we used in our analyses. The results are discussed in the sections that follow. The dataset we describe below covers the defined measures of political instability, annually from 1972-2007.
*Patrick T. Brandt, Ph.D. in Political Science from Indiana University, is an Assistant Professor of Political Science in the School of Social Science at the University of Texas at Dallas. **Jay Ulfelder, Ph.D. in political science from Stanford University, is an American political scientist whose research interests include democratization, civil unrest, and violent conflict, April, 2011, “Economic Growth and Political Instability,” Social Science Research Network To investigate the effects of economic growth on political instability, we used several different dependent variables representing two general types of political instability: low- level instability in the form of contentious politics, and high-level instability in the form of coups d’etat and regime transitions.
Daniel W. Drezner, Professor, The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University, October 2012, “The Irony of Global Economic Governance: The System Worked,” http://www.globaleconomicgovernance.org/wp-content/uploads/IR- Colloquium-MT12-Week-5_The-Irony-of-Global-Economic-Governance.pdf
Binu, “Countercurrents Article Submission Policy”, http://www.countercurrents.org/articles.htm Countercurrents.org welcome articles from writers, activists, journalists and also from our readers who have no prior experience in writing, on topics that we deal with regularly or on topics that you think need a wider circulation. We are most likely to publish those articles which are well-written, concise, offer a unique progressive perspective and have appeal to national and international readers. Please keep submissions under 1000 words. As we are working on a shoestring budget we are not in a position to pay you remuneration. What we do is to take your ideas a little farther. We believe that "Together We Can Change The World" Since we have a small editorial staff, we cannot spend much time editing submissions. Please send us final drafts of your work. Space Extensions Space Turn 1AR – Space Turn Growth is key to getting us off the rock – continued growth is key to developing the technologies needed to sustain us off the planet. That’s Ashworth. Terrestrial extinction is inevitable in the long run from an asteroid impact, warming, nuclear war, or a disease pandemic. The only way to make sure that humans live to fight another day is the guarantee that growth continues long enough to get us off the rock. The end of growth means guaranteed extinction – have to get off the rock Also A2: “can go to space with dedev” Ashworth, ’10 (Stephen Ashworth is a long-standing Fellow of the British Interplanetary Society. He works in academic publishing in the Voltaire Foundation, part of Oxford University – Towards the Sociology of the Universe, part 2 – 18 December 2010 – http://www.astronist.demon.co.uk/space-age/essays/Sociology2.html) It is not clear whether an economic system based on ideology could perform this function of capitalism. If the ideology was growth-oriented, then it would have no reason to conflict with the existing capitalist order, but would rather work in concert with it. But in the more plausible case that it was oriented towards social stability and economic stagnation, particularly in view of the environmentalist, anti-growth or anti-consumerist agendas it might very likely serve, then it would not want to promote disruptive new technologies such as those of access to space. The idea of a socially just socialist society (if such a hypothetical entity is possible) expanding into space is therefore a questionable one. If Earth remained divided among competing centres of power, then they might make the leap to interplanetary capability even without the driving force of capitalist economics. However, the competitive Moon-race of the 1960s showed, firstly, that if one competitor drops out, the other may well lose interest to the point of abandoning capabilities developed for that competition, and secondly, that an ideologically based collectivist society is unlikely to make a good showing in the technologies required. Economic growth, however, has a vested interest in preserving and extending gains made. Given that the opportunities for growth in space are so large, it seems unlikely that the present burst of growth will reach a plateau until space has been colonised. There is in fact an inconsistency about the idea of an industrial civilisation which does not move beyond its home planet – like a lone tree in the middle of a fertile plain. Such a tree will either die off, or it will naturally reproduce until it has engendered a whole forest, in which a far greater variety of life is possible than on the unsheltered plain. Similarly, a persistent industrial civilisation on one planet will naturally tend to populate its local planetary system, because the unique feature of industrialism is its applicability to a wide range of environments, not only earthlike ones. We here refer to an interplanetary civilisation as a “universal society”, because is it capable of making a home for itself anywhere in the astronomical universe. Some comments on the sociology of such a society follow. The decision-point There exists a historically brief period of a few centuries in which a civilisation at our current level of development may take one of two very different paths: it may successfully complete the transformation from a low-tech (pre-industrial) to a high-tech (fully industrial) society, or it may fall back onto a low-tech level. Finding a stable state inbetween these two levels seems unlikely: the dynamics of growth tend towards completing the process, while the limits to growth on Earth tend towards rendering the intermediate phase of a unified globalised society insecure. The world’s energy limits are, however, not as imminent as was believed in the latter part of the 20th century. The feared peak and subsequent decline in fossil fuel production has been greatly postponed by new discoveries and new extraction technologies for shale oil and gas and for methane hydrates. Meanwhile the decade-long flatlining of global temperature estimates has led to the end of the climate mania and of the extremist anti-growth movement that grew up around it. While the limits to growth on Earth remain, they are of a long-term nature, and will allow global civilisation an adequate breathing-space to develop into a high-tech one. A high-tech society possesses by definition the technologies required for access to and use of the resources of its local planetary system, and therefore experiences an incentive to become an interplanetary society. Since technologies for safe, economic and sustainable interplanetary travel and habitation are quite hard for a monoglobal civilisation to master, a successful transition to multiglobal range is by no means a foregone conclusion. But since the reward in terms of access to new territorial, material and power resources is so great, the impact of this social decision-point on the subsequent history of the species is of unparalleled significance. Ultimately the jump to interplanetary status is necessary, not only for the long-term growth of civilisation, but also for its long-term survival. Space exploration prevents human extinction and decreases the risk of war—it’s a bigger impact than anything we could imagine on Earth. O’Neill, ’87 (Gerard K., President of the Space Studies Institute, Professor Emeritus of Physics at Princeton University where he was one of the world’s most distinguished authors and scientists in the field of space colonization, holds a Ph.D. in Physics from Cornell University, Foreword to The Overview Effect: Space Exploration and Human Evolution written by Frank White, Published by Houghton Mifflin Company, ISBN 0395430844, p. xiv-xv) It is the hope of those who work toward the breakout from planet Earth that the establishment of permanent, self-sustaining colonies of humans off-Earth will have three vital consequences. First, it will make human life forever unkillable, removing it from the endangered species list, where it now stands on a fragile Earth over-armed with nuclear weapons. Second, the opening of virtually unlimited new land area in space will reduce territorial pressures and therefore diminish warfare on Earth itself. Third, the small scale of space colonies, the largest some tens of thousands of people, will lead to local governments that are simple in form, responsive to the desires of their people, and as reachable and intimate as were the New England town meetings of America’s heritage. Beyond those immediate needs of survival and freedom, we look to our purpose as a species. We are far too diverse, far too contentious, and far too divided by conflicting religious and ideological dogmas ever to be likely to agree on a single long-term goal for humanity. And we are far too impatient, too short in our attention spans, to hold to such a goal for a time of many generations. But [end page xiv] fortunately, the realities of time and space in the era when humanity is freed of Earth’s bonds will lead inevitably to results that will transcend any program we might devise. In a relatively short time they will bring a higher degree of independence to human communities than is now possible on Earth. In a longer time the effects of genetic drift will show, as human groups separated by great distances evolve into noticeably different forms of humanity. In a much longer time — but a time still short compared to the interval over which Homo sapiens evolved — there will spread throughout our galaxy a variety of civilizations, all traceable, though some may forget their origins, to one beautiful and precious planet, circling a minor star near the galaxy’s edge. Capitalist privatization is key to space exploration and colonization Garmong, ’05 (Richard, PhD in philosophy, Cap Mag, “Privatize Space Exploration,” http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=4327) As NASA scrambles to make the July 31 window for the troubled launch of space shuttle Discovery, we should recall the first privately funded manned spacecraft, SpaceShipOne, which over a year ago shattered more than the boundary of outer space: it destroyed forever the myth that space exploration can only be done by the government. Two years ago, a Bush Administration panel on space exploration recommended that NASA increase the role of private contractors in the push to permanently settle the moon and eventually explore Mars. Unfortunately, it appears unlikely that NASA will consider the true free-market solution for America's expensive space program: complete privatization. There is a contradiction at the heart of the space program: space exploration, as the grandest of man's technological advancements, requires the kind of bold innovation possible only to minds left free to pursue the best of their creative thinking and judgment. Yet, by funding the space program through taxation, we necessarily place it at the mercy of bureaucratic whim. The results are written all over the past twenty years of NASA's history: the space program is a political animal, marked by shifting, inconsistent, and ill-defined goals. The space shuttle was built and maintained to please clashing special interest groups, not to do a clearly defined job for which there was an economic and technical need. The shuttle was to launch satellites for the Department of Defense and private contractors--which could be done more cheaply by lightweight, disposable rockets. It was to carry scientific experiments--which could be done more efficiently by unmanned vehicles. But one "need" came before all technical issues: NASA's political need for showy manned vehicles. The result, as great a technical achievement as it is, was an over-sized, over-complicated, over-budget, overly dangerous vehicle that does everything poorly and nothing well. Indeed, the space shuttle program was supposed to be phased out years ago, but the search for its replacement has been halted, largely because space contractors enjoy collecting on the overpriced shuttle without the expense and bother of researching cheaper alternatives. A private industry could have fired them--but not so in a government project, with home-district congressmen to lobby on their behalf. Space colonization means we survive global nuclear war, bioweapon use, and environmental destruction Koschara, ’01 (Fred, Major in Planetary Studies, L5 Development Group, http://www.l5development.com/fkespace/financial-return.html) Potentially one of the greatest benefits that may be achieved by the space colonies is nuclear survival, and the ability to live past any other types of mass genocide that become available. We have constructed ourselves a house of dynamite, and now live in fear that someone might light a match. If a global nuclear war were to break out, or if a deadly genetic experiment got released into the atmosphere, the entire human race could be destroyed in a very short period of time. In addition, many corporate attitudes seem concerned with only maximizing today's bottom line, with no concern for the future. This outlook leads to dumping amazingly toxic wastes into the atmosphere and oceans, a move which can only bring harm in the long run. Humanity has to diversify its hold in the universe if it is to survive. Only through space colonization is that option available, and we had all best hope we're not to late. Directory: file -> view view -> Western Europe after wwii view -> Author study: paul fleischman view -> Qpa1 7ela study Guide view -> Arctic Oil/Gas Neg 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 Download 1.56 Mb. Share with your friends:
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