Gonzaga Debate Institute 2011 Mercury Scholars seti aff
AC – Int’ l Science Cooperation Adv. 2/
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1AC – Int’ l Science Cooperation Adv. 2/Warming is real and anthropogenic Brown, founder Earth Policy Institute, 8 (Lester R., , Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization, p. 49-50) Since 1970, the earth’s average temperature has risen by 0.6 degrees Celsius, or 1 degree Fahrenheit. Meteorologists note that the 23 warmest years on record have come since 1980. And the seven warmest years since recordkeeping began in 1880 have come in the last nine years. Four of these—2002, 2003, 2005, and 2006—were years in which major food-producing regions saw their crops wither in the face of record temperatures.7 The amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere has risen substantially since the start of the Industrial Revolution, growing from 277 parts per million (ppm) to 384 ppm in 2007. The annual rise in the atmospheric CO2 level, one of the world’s most predictable environmental trends, is the result of the annual discharge into the atmosphere of 7.5 billion tons of carbon from burning fossil fuels and 1.5 billion tons from deforestation. The current annual rise is nearly four times what it was in the 1950s, largely because of increased emissions from burning fossil fuels. As more CO2 accumulates in the atmosphere, temperatures go up.8 Global Warming causes extinction Stein editor for The Guardian 06 (David, Science, 2006, “Global Warming Xtra: Scientists warn about Antarctic melting,” http://www.agoracosmopolitan.com/home/Frontpage/2008/07/14/02463.html) Global Warming continues to be approached by governments as a "luxury" item, rather than a matter of basic human survival. Humanity is being taken to its destruction by a greed-driven elite. These elites, which include 'Big Oil' and other related interests, are intoxicated by "the high" of pursuing ego-driven power, in a comparable manner to drug addicts who pursue an elusive "high", irrespective of the threat of pursuing that "high" poses to their own basic survival, and the security of others. Global Warming and the pre-emptive war against Iraq are part of the same self-destructive prism of a political-military-industrial complex, which is on a path of mass planetary destruction, backed by techniques of mass-deception."The scientific debate about human induced global warming is over but policy makers - let alone the happily shopping general public - still seem to not understand the scope of the impending tragedy. Global warming isn't just warmer temperatures, heat waves, melting ice and threatened polar bears. Scientific understanding increasingly points to runaway global warming leading to human extinction", reported Bill Henderson in CrossCurrents. If strict global environmental security measures are not immediately put in place to keep further emissions of greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere we are looking at the death of billions, the end of civilization as we know it and in all probability the end of humankind's several million year old existence, along with the extinction of most flora and fauna beloved to man in the world we share. Only successful international cooperation can solve Winchester, Director of the Center for the Study of Global Change, Indiana University—Bloomington, 9 N.Brian, Project Muse, “Emerging Global Governance”, Feb 2009, http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/indiana_journal_of_global_legal_studies/v016/16.1.winchester.html, 6.23.11, SW) While environmental values have steadily gained widespread, even global, acceptance, they are often in conflict with economic interests and international politics. Environmentalism is further challenged by scientific uncertainty involving effects that will in some cases only become manifest far into the future. Nonetheless, accompanying this global environmental awakening has been an extraordinary number of international environmental agreements. It is these international regimes, involving a variety of non-state actors, which suggest movement toward an evolving, complex form of global environmental governance. "One idea now gaining political currency is to upgrade the U.N. Environment Programme into a World Environment Organization (WEO) on a par with the WTO,"61 but what is clear is that this is no longer a matter simply for states or intergovernmental organizations. Private firms, NGOs, subunits of governments, and the transitional and transgovernmental networks that result all play a role.62 Whatever the eventual global political dispensation, there is likely to be wider participation and more transparency and accountability, and that should please democrats everywhere. To forge a more coherent global environmental management policy, governments must be persuaded that their national self-interest is inextricably tied to the global common good and to act accordingly. |