A2: World Trade Organization Only Benefits the Powerful

A2: World Trade Organization Hurts Progressive Interests

The WTO produces coalition formation that focus on self-identified developing country interests and lead to colelctive mobilization

Yu, Programme Coordinator, Global Governance for Dev. Programme, South Centre, 07/2008 [Vicente Paolo B., III, “Unity In Diversity: Governance Adaptation In Multilateral Trade Institutions Through South-South Coalition-Building,” Research Papers 17, http://www. southcentre.org/index2.php?option=com_docman&task=doc_view&gid=940&Itemid=68, vii-x]

B. DEVELOPING COUNTRY PARTICIPATION IN THE UN CONFERENCE ON TRADE AND DEVELOPMENT

1. Governance Adaptation in UNCTAD: The Role of the G-77 as the Primary Developing Country Coalition Actor

Group-based dynamics have had a long history in terms of UNCTAD’s intergovernmental processes. Negotiations in the various UNCTAD conferences historically (at least until the late 1990s) were not carried out by individual countries but by groupings of countries acting together with a common platform and a main spokesperson.

Developing countries have historically participated in any negotiations – e.g. on international commodity agreements, the ministerial declaration of the UNCTAD conferences, etc. – through the vehicle of the Group of 77 and China’s (G-77 and China) Geneva chapter. The members of this chapter include all the current 132 G-77 members, including China. The G-77 as an intergovernmental developing country coalition was formed on 15 June 1964 by seventy-seven developing countries that were signatories of the “Joint Declaration of the Seventy-Seven Countries” issued at the end of the first session of UNCTAD in Geneva. It originated from the “merger of Afro- Asian countries (Group A) and Latin American countries (Group C) for the purpose of UNCTAD negotiations.”

From its origins with the birth of UNCTAD, the G-77 has now become the premier intergovernmental developing country group working together within the UN system, being very active on most issues being discussed within the UN.

In some ways, the establishment of the G-77 in UNCTAD and their ability to generate and push cohesive and united negotiating positions was both the effect and cause of developed country actions. Developing countries in the early 1960s (especially from Africa and Asia) were becoming increasingly frustrated at the way in which developed countries were not responding favorably to their requests for increased levels of international cooperation to restructure global economic relations to promote the development of developing countries. As a result, they felt that only a united and cohesive front vis-à-vis developed countries could enhance their leverage and effect changes in terms of their economic relations with developed countries. During and after UNCTAD I, as the G-77 started operating and presenting cohesive and united group positions, developed countries started responding by also adopting joint negotiating positions that were previously discussed and coordinated through their organization, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

As may be expected from a coalition the size of the G-77, with a membership of countries that have widely varying economic policies, development conditions, and economic and political ties to developed countries, a major aspect of the G-77 coordinators’ job is to try to mediate and settle the differences among the G-77’s members in order to arrive at a common position. These differences were of three main types, as an observer pointed out: “(1) those that are political and ideological in nature, (2) those between the more and the less advanced countries in the group, and (3) those resulting from the links of certain developing countries with certain developed ones.”

G-77 negotiating unity and cohesion during the 1970s and early 1980s were fostered to a large extent by their common agreement on the right of each state to determine its own development strategy on the basis of the unique cultural, social and other characteristics of each country. They argued that there is no one single universal model for development, no one-size-fits-all approach to development. But as more developing countries changed their economic policies to conform to the Washington Consensus model in order to try to adapt to and deal with the debt crisis of the early 1980s, UNCTAD began to decline in terms of relevance for both developed and developing countries alike. As a result coming into the 1990s, the G-77’s internal cohesion and unity in UNCTAD started ix to break apart. By the time of the 1992 Cartagena session of UNCTAD (UNCTAD VIII), the G-77 in UNCTAD was virtually moribund as a united and cohesive group.

However, by the end of the 1990s and the early 2000s, coming out of the various financial and developmental crises that adversely affected the development prospects of developing countries during the 1980s and 1990s, G-77 unity and cohesion in the UNCTAD context started recovering, spurred in part by the success of collective group action by developing countries in promoting a more development-focused trade agenda in the WTO. There was also an increasing recognition among developing countries that fundamental development challenges continue to remain which required developing countries to re-exert a collective effort to get their development partners to cooperate with developing countries to address these challenges effectively. The G-77’s analysis and critique of the impacts of globalization and the role that the existing system of international institutions and policies play with respect to developing countries’ development prospects also became clearer. This analysis and critique became the basis for a renewed interest in the recovery of the G-77 in UNCTAD as a major political actor in UNCTAD intergovernmental dynamics.

By the time of UNCTAD XI in Sao Paulo, Brazil, in June 2004, the G-77’s preparatory process had become stronger, with the result that once again, UNCTAD negotiating dynamics became focused on inter-group dynamics involving the G-77 as the sole negotiating vehicle for developing countries. Since UNCTAD XI, G-77 unity in the UNCTAD context has further strengthened. The 2006 process for the UNCTAD XI Mid-Term Review of the implementation of the Sao Paulo Consensus saw a G- 77 that was more pro-active and able to effectively table and articulate group negotiating positions.

IV. CONCLUSION: DEVELOPING COUNTRY GROUP ACTION AS AN ESSENTIAL COMPONENT IN GLOBAL TRADE GOVERNANCE

As can be seen from the discussion above, the ways in which developing countries participate in the governance of the WTO and UNCTAD, the two premier multilateral trade governance institutions, reflect their adaptation to perceived and real imbalances of economic and political power, both in terms of the bigger international economic system as well as with respect to the institutional governance mechanisms of these organizations.

Further enhancing developing country participation and influence in global trade policymaking and governance will require the following:

• Clear policy issue and agenda articulation – Strong group action can only take place on the basis of a shared perception by the group members of having shared issues and a shared agenda that they are committed to and which they are willing to promote. This shared understanding is important, especially in terms of continuously updating, fine-tuning and articulating a clear policy framework, a set of well-articulated policy objectives, and a clearly defined action agenda, that can be promoted in both institutional contexts. This represents an essential foundation and reference point for collective developing country group action in both the WTO and UNCTAD. This is a vital step in trying to overcome the intellectual and conceptual dependence vis-à-vis the North in which the developing countries have been entrapped. Today, the South faces the challenge of “intellectual liberation”, which has to be undertaken collectively, as a serious, systematic and sustained effort by developing countries.

• Coordination and leadership – Strong groups in both the WTO and UNCTAD show that having institutionalised coordination and group leadership mechanisms are vital to the longterm survival of the group.

• Working relationships – Given the relatively greater role that human resource constraints play in determining the extent of developing country participation, the working relationships that individual delegates have with other developing country delegates in the context of group x dynamics become very important factors in ensuring smooth intra- and inter-group coordination and action.

• Having institutional support -- Full and continuous institutional support of the highest professional quality is essential for any multilateral endeavour, especially in a multilateral setting such as the WTO and UNCTAD, where developing countries are confronted with a complex, overlapping and interrelated agenda. This continues to be one of the weakest links in strengthening collective group action by developing countries. Creating, financing, staffing and running such an institution presents a number of problems that have earlier frustrated proposals of this kind.

The underlying policy rationale which inspired the formation of the G-77 in UNCTAD in 1964 has essentially remained unchanged, and has been reconfirmed by events and developments during the last 40 years, especially during the last decade or so in both the WTO and UNCTAD. Indeed, today the need for collective and group action by developing countries is greater and more urgent than ever, for a number of reasons, including:

• The greater weight and importance of the world economy, and the related processes, for their national development and in general their economic policy and environmental space and sovereignty;

• The increasing complexity and scope of the development process, which no longer allows for sectoral and narrow approaches, and the multiplication of issues and challenges that concern all countries;

• The continued efforts by developed countries to dominate multilateral processes, institutions and outcomes, and, via these, the developing countries, their political and economic space, and their natural resources and endowments.

A2: World Trade Organization Bad for Developing Countries

DOHA is uniquely good for developing countries—the framework stress their interests and promotes effective coalitions

Yu, Programme Coordinator, Global Governance for Dev. Programme, South Centre, 07/2008 [Vicente Paolo B., III, “Unity In Diversity: Governance Adaptation In Multilateral Trade Institutions Through South-South Coalition-Building,” Research Papers 17, http://www. southcentre.org/index2.php?option=com_docman&task=doc_view&gid=940&Itemid=68, 24-25]

i. Ideational Shift – Pursuing Development and Trade Policy Choice

It can be argued that a fundamental ideational shift has indeed taken place in terms of how developing countries view the WTO, its role in their respective development processes, and their role as participants in its governance system, and underlies the basic negotiating positions of today’s WTO developing country coalitions. This ideational shift can be clearly seen in the increasingly development policy-oriented thrust of the negotiating positions of the various developing country coalitions, in which the concept of increased levels of development policy choices and flexibilities is sought to be reflected in operational terms as part of the negotiated outcomes.92

Developing country coalition-building in the WTO in the Doha negotiations is helped by the fact that the negotiating mandate established at Doha and further clarified in the July 2004 framework package provided them with both the moral and political basis for stressing the need to ensure that the negotiating outcomes support their articulated development priorities. The Doha negotiation’s mandate on promoting developing countries’ needs and interests gave developing countries the flexibility to establish for the most part a basic level of commonality of interests in many of the negotiating areas that later on formed the basis for their groups’ negotiating positions.

As a result, developing country participation in the Doha negotiations now take place both directly – as individual Members – and indirectly – as members of various groups or coalitions. In the major negotiating issues of agriculture, NAMA, and trade facilitation, this trend is much more evident (the services negotiations, with its bilateral request-offer negotiating format, are not as conducive to group-based negotiations as the others).

More than simply viewing the WTO as an international negotiating forum where trade concessions may be negotiated and exchanged, developing country coalitions now view the WTO as a negotiating forum in which the development implications of trade concessions will need to be considered as part and parcel of the philosophical moorings and values underlying the multilateral trading system. The G-20, the G-33, the NAMA-11, the Core Group on Trade Facilitation, the African Group, the ACP Group, the LDCs Group, the Small Vulnerable Economies Group, all have clearly and distinctly pegged their positions in the WTO to a clear ideational preference for linking negotiated concessions to their respective longer-term strategic development objectives and ideas.93 This developing country insistence on viewing the WTO as not merely a trade institution but as a development and trade institution has been clearly evident in all of the ministerial conferences since Seattle in 1999, and indeed was instrumental in ensuring that the mandate of the Doha negotiations is contextualized within a broader development discourse.

ii. Developing Country Coalition Building as Rational Governance Adaptation in the WTO

Working together and forming coalitions is a rational response by developing countries to both the issue of negotiating constraints and the issue of being better able to advance their development agenda. Coalitions enable developing countries to pool together resources, find strength in numbers, be represented (directly or indirectly) in various negotiating formats, and have a vehicle through which they can inject their agenda into and influence the negotiating outcome. In essence, working together in coalitions helps developing countries in the WTO to increase their power and consequently their ability to influence outcomes despite the complexity of the issues and the political dynamics that occur in the negotiations. As one author has pointed out, a function of coalitions in multilateral negotiations “is to give power to their members to help them achieve their objectives. A common platform, incorporating the minimal demands of each separate coalition member, is easier to handle and negotiate than the sum of individual items.”94

A2: Globalization Unsustainable

There are no limits to growth. Technological advancements and demographics solve.

Bisk 12 – American Israeli futurist; director of the Center for Strategic Futurist Thinking and contributing editor for strategic thinking for The Futurist magazine. He is the author of The Optimistic Jew: A Positive Vision for the Jewish People in the 21st Century. Norwich University MA, Political History Thomas Edison State College BA, Social Sciences, 500 published articles [Tsvi, , “No Limits to Growth,” https://www.wfs.org/Upload/PDFWFR/WFR_Spring2012_Bisk.pdf]

The Case for No Limits to Growth Notwithstanding all of the above, I want to reassert that by imagineering an alternative future—based on solid science and technology— we can create a situation in which there are “no limits to growth.” It begins with a new paradigm for food production now under development: the urban vertical farm. This is a concept popularized by Prof. Dickson Despommier of Columbia University.30 A 30-story urban vertical farm located on five square acres could yield food for fifty thousand people. We are talking about high-tech installations that would multiply productivity by a factor of 480: four growing seasons, times twice the density of crops, times two growing levels on each floor, times 30 floors = 480. This means that five acres of land can produce the equivalent of 2,600 acres of conventionally planted and tended crops. Just 160 such buildings occupying only 800 acres could feed the entire city of New York. Given this calculus, an area the size of Denmark could feed the entire human race. Vertical farms would be self-sustaining. Located contiguous to or inside urban centers, they could also contribute to urban renewal. They would be urban lungs, improving the air quality of cities. They would produce a varied food supply year-round. They would use 90% less water. Since agriculture consumes two-thirds of the water worldwide, mass adoption of this technology would solve humanity’s water problem. Food would no longer need to be transported to market; it would be produced at the market and would not require use of petroleum intensive agricultural equipment. This, along with lessened use of pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers, would not only be better for the environment but would eliminate agriculture’s dependence on petroleum and significantly reduce petroleum demand. Despite increased efficiencies, direct (energy) and indirect (fertilizers, etc.) energy use represented over 13% of farm expenses in 2005-2008 and have been increasing as the price of oil rises.31 Many of the world’s damaged ecosystems would be repaired by the consequent abandonment of farmland. A “rewilding” of our planet would take place. Forests, jungles and savannas would reconquer nature, increasing habitat and becoming giant CO2 “sinks,” sucking up the excess CO2 that the industrial revolution has pumped into the atmosphere. Countries already investigating the adoption of such technology include Abu Dhabi, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, and China—countries that are water starved or highly populated. Material Science, Resources and Energy The embryonic revolution in material science now taking place is the key to “no limits to growth.” I refer to “smart” and superlight materials. Smart materials “are materials that have one or more properties that can be significantly changed in a controlled fashion by external stimuli.” 32 They can produce energy by exploiting differences in temperature (thermoelectric materials) or by being stressed (piezoelectric materials). Other smart materials save energy in the manufacturing process by changing shape or repairing themselves as a consequence of various external stimuli. These materials have all passed the “proof of concept” phase (i.e., are scientifically sound) and many are in the prototype phase. Some are already commercialized and penetrating the market. For example, the Israeli company Innowattech has underlain a one-kilometer stretch of local highway with piezoelectric material to “harvest” the wasted stress energy of vehicles passing over and convert it to electricity They reckon that Israel has stretches of road that can efficiently produce 250 megawatts. If this is verified, consider the tremendous electricity potential of the New Jersey Turnpike or the thruways of Los Angeles and elsewhere. Consider the potential of railway and subway tracks. We are talking about tens of thousands of potential megawatts produced without any fossil fuels. Additional energy is derivable from thermoelectric materials, which can transform wasted heat into electricity. As Christopher Steiner notes, capturing waste heat from manufacturing alone in the United States would provide an additional 65,000 megawatts: “enough for 50 million homes.”34 Smart glass is already commercialized and can save significant energy in heating, airconditioning and lighting—up to 50% saving in energy has been achieved in retrofitted legacy buildings (such as the former Sears Tower in Chicago). New buildings, designed to take maximum advantage of this and other technologies could save even more. Buildings consume 39% of America’s energy and 68% of its electricity. They emit 38% of the carbon dioxide, 49% of the sulfur dioxide, and 25% of the nitrogen oxides found in the air.35 Even greater savings in electricity could be realized by replacing incandescent and fluorescent light bulbs with LEDS which use 1/10th the electricity of incandescent and half the electricity of fluorescents. These three steps: transforming waste heat into electricity, retrofitting buildings with smart glass, and LED lighting, could cut America’s electricity consumption and its CO2 emissions by 50% within 10 years. They would also generate hundreds of thousands of jobs in construction and home improvements. Coal driven electricity generation would become a thing of the past. The coal released could be liquefied or gasified (by new environmentally friendly technologies) into the energy equivalent of 3.5 million barrels of oil a day. This is equivalent to the amount of oil the United States imports from the Persian Gulf and Venezuela together.36 Conservation of energy and parasitic energy harvesting, as well as urban agriculture would cut the planet’s energy consumption and air and water pollution significantly. Waste-to-energy technologies could begin to replace fossil fuels. Garbage, sewage, organic trash, and agricultural and food processing waste are essentially hydrocarbon resources that can be transformed into ethanol, methanol, and biobutanol or biodiesel. These can be used for transportation, electricity generation or as feedstock for plastics and other materials. Waste-to-energy is essentially a recycling of CO2 from the environment instead of introducing new CO2 into the environment. Waste-to-energy also prevents the production, and release from rotting organic waste, of methane—a greenhouse gas 25 times more powerful than CO2. Methane accounts for 18% of the manmade greenhouse effect. Not as much as CO2, which constitutes 72%, but still considerable (landfills emit as much greenhouse gas effect, in the form of methane, as the CO2 from all the vehicles in the world). Numerous prototypes of a variety of waste-to-energy technologies are already in place. When their declining costs meet the rising costs of fossil fuels, they will become commercialized and, if history is any judge, will replace fossil fuels very quickly—just as coal replaced wood in a matter of decades and petroleum replaced whale oil in a matter of years. Superlight Materials But it is superlight materials that have the greatest potential to transform civilization and, in conjunction with the above, to usher in the “no limits to growth” era. I refer, in particular, to car-bon nanotubes—alternatively referred to as Buckyballs or Buckypaper (in honor of Buckminster Fuller). Carbon nanotubes are between 1/10,000th and 1/50,000th the width of a human hair, more flexible than rubber and 100-500 times stronger than steel per unit of weight. Imagine the energy savings if planes, cars, trucks, trains, elevators—everything that needs energy to move—were made of this material and weighed 1/100th what they weigh now. Imagine the types of alternative energy that would become practical. Imagine the positive impact on the environment: replacing many industrial processes and mining, and thus lessening air and groundwater pollution. Present costs and production methods make this impractical but that infinite resource—the human mind—has confronted and solved many problems like this before. Let us take the example of aluminum. A hundred fifty years ago, aluminum was more expensive than gold or platinum.37 When Napoleon III held a banquet, he provided his most honored guests with aluminum plates. Less-distinguished guests had to make do with gold! When the Washington Monument was completed in 1884, it was fitted with an aluminum cap—the most expensive metal in the world at the time—as a sign of respect to George Washington. It weighed 2.85 kilograms, or 2,850 grams. Aluminum at the time cost $1 a gram (or $1,000 a kilogram). A typical day laborer working on the monument was paid $1 a day for 10-12 hours a day. In other words, today’s common soft-drink can, which weighs 14 grams, could have bought 14 ten-hour days of labor in 1884.38 Today’s U.S. minimum wage is $7.50 an hour. Using labor as the measure of value, a soft drink can would cost $1,125 today (or $80,000 a kilogram), were it not for a new method of processing aluminum ore. The Hall-Héroult process turned aluminum into one of the cheapest commodities on earth only two years after the Washington Monument was capped with aluminum. Today aluminum costs $3 a kilogram, or $3000 a metric ton. The soft drink can that would have cost $1,125 today without the process now costs $0.04. Today the average cost of industrial grade carbon nanotubes is about $50-$60 a kilogram. This is already far cheaper in real cost than aluminum was in 1884. Yet revolutionary methods of production are now being developed that will drive costs down even more radically. At Cambridge University they are working on a new electrochemical production method that could produce 600 kilograms of carbon nanotubes per day at a projected cost of around $10 a kilogram, or $10,000 a metric ton.39 This will do for carbon nanotubes what the Hall-Héroult process did for aluminum. Nanotubes will become the universal raw material of choice, displacing steel, aluminum, copper and other metals and materials. Steel presently costs about $750 per metric ton. Nanotubes of equivalent strength to a metric ton of steel would cost $100 if this Cambridge process (or others being pursued in research labs around the world) proves successful. Ben Wang, director of Florida State’s High Performance Materials Institute claims that: “If you take just one gram of nanotubes, and you unfold every tube into a graphite sheet, you can cover about two-thirds of a football field”.40 Since other research has indicated that carbon nanotubes would be more suitable than silicon for producing photovoltaic energy, consider the implications. Several grams of this material could be the energy-producing skin for new generations of superlight dirigibles—making these airships energy autonomous. They could replace airplanes as the primary means to transport air freight. Modern American history has shown that anything human beings decide they want done can be done in 20 years if it does not violate the laws of nature. The atom bomb was developed in four years; putting a man on the moon took eight years. It is a reasonable conjecture that by 2020 or earlier, an industrial process for the inexpensive production of carbon nanotubes will be developed, and that this would be the key to solving our energy, raw materials, and environmental problems all at once. Mitigating Anthropic Greenhouse Gases Another vital component of a “no limits to growth” world is to formulate a rational environmental policy that saves money; one that would gain wide grassroots support because it would benefit taxpayers and businesses, and would not endanger livelihoods. For example, what do sewage treatment, garbage disposal, and fuel costs amount to as a percentage of municipal budgets? What are the costs of waste disposal and fuel costs in stockyards, on poultry farms, throughout the food processing industry, and in restaurants? How much aggregate energy could be saved from all of the above? Some experts claim that we could obtain enough liquid fuel from recycling these hydrocarbon resources to satisfy all the transportation needs of the United States. Turning the above waste into energy by various means would be a huge cost saver and value generator, in addition to being a blessing to the environment. The U.S. army has developed a portable field apparatus that turns a combat unit’s human waste and garbage into bio-diesel to fuel their vehicles and generators.41 It is called TGER—the Tactical Garbage to Energy Refinery. It eliminates the need to transport fuel to the field, thus saving lives, time, and equipment expenses. The cost per barrel must still be very high. However, the history of military technology being civilianized and revolutionizing accepted norms is long. We might expect that within 5-10 years, economically competitive units using similar technologies will appear in restaurants, on farms, and perhaps even in individual households, turning organic waste into usable and economical fuel. We might conjecture that within several decades, centralized sewage disposal and garbage collection will be things of the past and that even the Edison Grid (unchanged for over one hundred years) will be deconstructed. The Promise of Algae Biofuels produced from algae could eventually provide a substantial portion of our transportation fuel. Algae has a much higher productivity potential than crop-based biofuels because it grows faster, uses less land and requires only sun and CO2 plus nutrients that can be provided from gray sewage water. It is the primo CO2 sequesterer because it works for free (by way of photosynthesis), and in doing so produces biodiesel and ethanol in much higher volumes per acre than corn or other crops. Production costs are the biggest remaining challenge. One Defense Department estimate pins them at more than $20 a gallon.42 But once commercialized in industrial scale facilities, production cost could go as low as $2 a gallon (the equivalent of $88 per barrel of oil) according to Jennifer Holmgren, director of renewable fuels at an energy subsidiary of Honeywell International.43 Since algae uses waste water and CO2 as its primary feedstock, its use to produce transportation fuel or feedstock for product would actually improve the environment. The Promise of the Electric Car There are 250 million cars in the United States. Let’s assume that they were all fully electric vehicles (EVs) equipped with 25-kWh batteries. Each kWh takes a car two to three miles, and if the average driver charges the car twice a week, this would come to about 100 charge cycles per year. All told, Americans would use 600 billion kWh per year, which is only 15% of the current total U.S. production of 4 trillion kWh per year. If supplied during low demand times, this would not even require additional power plants. If cars were made primarily out of Buckypaper, one kWh might take a car 40-50 miles. If the surface of the car was utilized as a photovoltaic, the car of the future might conceivably become energy autonomous (or at least semi-autonomous). A kWh produced by a coal-fired power plant creates two pounds of CO2, so our car-related CO2 footprint would be 1.2 trillion pounds if all electricity were produced by coal. However, burning one gallon of gas produces 20 pounds of CO2.44 In 2008, the U.S. used 3.3 billion barrels of gasoline, thereby creating about 3 trillion pounds of CO2. Therefore, a switch to electric vehicles would cut CO2 emissions by 60% (from 3 trillion to 1.2 trillion pounds), even if we burned coal exclusively to generate that power. Actually, replacing a gas car with an electric car will cause zero increase in electric draw because refineries use seven kWh of power to refine crude oil into a gallon of gasoline. A Tesla Roadster can go 25 miles on that 7 KWh of power. So the electric car can go 25 miles using the same electricity needed to refine the gallon of gas that a combustion engine car would use to go the same distance. Additional Strategies The goal of mitigating global warming/climate change without changing our lifestyles is not naïve. Using proven Israeli expertise, planting forests on just 12% of the world’s semi-arid areas would offset the annual CO2 output of one thousand 500-megawatt coal plants (a gigaton a year).45 A global program of foresting 60% of the world’s semi-arid areas would offset five thousand 500-megawatt coal plants (five gigatons a year). Since mitigation goals for global warming include reducing our CO2 emissions by eight gigatons by 2050, this project alone would have a tremendous ameliorating effect. Given that large swaths of semi-arid land areas contain or border on some of the poorest populations on the planet, we could put millions of the world’s poorest citizens to work in forestation, thus accomplishing two positives (fighting poverty and environmental degradation) with one project. Moving agriculture from its current fieldbased paradigm to vertical urban agriculture would eliminate two gigatons of CO2. The subsequent re-wilding of vast areas of the earth’s surface could help sequester up to 50 gigatons of CO2 a year, completely reversing the trend. The revolution underway in material science will help us to become “self-sufficient” in energy. It will also enable us to create superlight vehicles and structures that will produce their own energy. Over time, carbon nanotubes will replace steel, copper and aluminum in a myriad of functions. Converting waste to energy will eliminate most of the methane gas humanity releases into the atmosphere. Meanwhile, artificial photosynthesis will suck CO2 out of the air at 1,000 times the rate of natural photosynthesis.46 This trapped CO2 could then be combined with hydrogen to create much of the petroleum we will continue to need. As hemp and other fast-growing plants replace wood for making paper, the logging industry will largely cease to exist. Self-contained fish farms will provide a major share of our protein needs with far less environmental damage to the oceans. Population Explosion or Population Implosion One constant refrain of anti-growth advocates is that we are heading towards 12 billion people by the end of the century, that this is unsustainable, and thus that we must proactively reduce the human population to 3 billion-4 billion in order to “save the planet” and human civilization from catastrophe. But recent data indicates that a demographic winter will engulf humanity by the middle of this century. More than 60 countries (containing over half the world’s population) already do not have replacement birth rates of 2.1 children per woman. This includes the entire EU, China, Russia, and half a dozen Muslim countries, including Turkey, Algeria, and Iran. If present trends continue, India, Mexico and Indonesia will join this group before 2030. The human population will peak at 9-10 billion by 2060, after which, for the first time since the Black Death, it will begin to shrink. By the end of the century, the human population might be as low as 6 billion-7 billion. The real danger is not a population explosion; but the consequences of the impending population implosion.47 This demographic process is not being driven by famine or disease as has been the case in all previous history. Instead, it is being driven by the greatest Cultural Revolution in the history of the human race: the liberation and empowerment of women. The fact is that even with present technology, we would still be able to sustain a global population of 12 billion by the end of the century if needed. The evidence for this is cited above.

A2: Globalization Causes Political Crises

Neoliberalism won’t lead to political crises.

Stelzer 9 – business adviser and director of economic policy studies at the Hudson Institute [Irwin. “Death of capitalism exaggerated,” http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,26174260-5013479,00.html]

A FUNNY thing happened on the way to the collapse of market capitalism in the face of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. It didn't. Indeed, in Germany voters relieved Chancellor Angela Merkel of the necessity of cohabiting with a left-wing party, allowing her to form a coalition with a party favouring lower taxes and free markets. And in Pittsburgh leaders representing more than 90 per cent of the world's GDP convened to figure out how to make markets work better, rather than to hoist the red flag. The workers are to be relieved, not of their chains but of credit-card terms that are excessively onerous, and helped to retain their private property - their homes. All of this is contrary to expectations. The communist spectre that Karl Marx confidently predicted would be haunting Europe is instead haunting Europe's left-wing parties, with even Vladimir Putin seeking to attract investment by re-privatising the firms he snatched. Which raises an interesting question: why haven't the economic turmoil and rising unemployment led workers to the barricades, instead of to their bankers to renegotiate their mortgages? It might be because Spain's leftish government has proved less able to cope with economic collapse than countries with more centrist governments. Or because Britain, with a leftish government, is now the sick man of Europe, its financial sector in intensive care, its recovery likely to be the slowest in Europe, its prime credit rating threatened. Or it might be because left-wing trade unions, greedily demanding their public-sector members be exempted from the pain they want others to share, have lost their credibility and ability to lead a leftward lurch. All of those factors contribute to the unexpected strength of the Right in a world in which a record number of families are being tossed out of their homes, and jobs have been disappearing by the million. But even more important in promoting reform over revolution are three factors: the existence of democratic institutions; the condition of the unemployed; and the set of policies developed to cope with the recession. Democratic institutions give the aggrieved an outlet for their discontent, and hope they can change conditions they deem unsatisfactory. Don't like the way George W. Bush has skewed income distribution? Toss the Republicans out and elect a man who promises to tax the rich more heavily. Don't like Gordon Brown's tax increases? Toss him out and hope the Tories mean it when they promise at least to try to lower taxes. Result: angry voters but no rioters, unless one counts the nutters who break windows at McDonald's or storm banks in the City. Contrast that with China, where the disaffected have no choice but to take to the streets. Result: an estimated 10,000 riots this year protesting against job losses, arbitrary taxes and corruption. A second factor explaining the Left's inability to profit from economic suffering is capitalism's ability to adapt, demonstrated in the Great Depression of the 1930s. While a gaggle of bankers and fiscal conservatives held out for the status quo, Franklin D. Roosevelt and his experimenters began to weave a social safety net. In Britain, William Beveridge produced a report setting the stage for a similar, indeed stronger, net. Continental countries recovering from World War II did the same. So unemployment no longer dooms a worker to close-to-starvation. Yes, civic institutions were able to soften the blow for the unemployed before the safety net was put in place, but they could not cope with pervasive protracted lay-offs. Also, during this and other recessions, when prices for many items are coming down, the real living standard of those in work actually improves. In the US, somewhere between 85 per cent and 90 per cent of workers have kept their jobs, and now see their living costs declining as rents and other prices come down. So the impetus to take to the streets is limited. Then there are the steps taken by capitalist governments to limit the depth and duration of the downturn. As the economies of most of the big industrial countries imploded, policy went through two phases. The first was triage - do what is necessary to prevent the financial system from collapse. Spend. Guarantee deposits to prevent runs on banks and money funds, bail out big banks, force relatively healthier institutions to take over sicker ones, mix all of this with rhetorical attacks on greedy bankers - the populist spoonful of sugar that made the bailouts go down with the voters - and stop the rot. Meanwhile, have the central banks dust off their dog-eared copies of Bagehot and inject lots of liquidity by whatever means comes to mind. John Maynard Keynes, meet Milton Friedman for a cordial handshake. Then came more permanent reform, another round of adapting capitalism to new realities, in this case the malfunctioning of the financial markets. Even Barack Obama's left-wing administration decided not to scupper the markets but instead to develop rules to relate bankers' pay more closely to long-term performance; to reduce the chance of implosions by increasing the capital banks must hold, cutting their profits and dividends, but leaving them in private hands; and to channel most stimulus spending through private-sector companies. This leaves the anti-market crowd little room for manoeuvre as voters seem satisfied with the changes to make capitalism and markets work better and more equitably. At least so far. There are exceptions. Australia moved a bit to the left in the last election, but more out of unhappiness with a tired incumbent's environmental and foreign policy. Americans chose Obama, but he had promised to govern from the centre before swinging left. And for all his rhetorical attacks on greedy bankers and other malefactors of great wealth, he sticks to reform of markets rather than their replacement, with healthcare a possible exception. Even in these countries, so far, so good for reformed capitalism. No substitutes accepted.

A2: Globalization Causes War

Economic globalization has reduced war

The last three decades prove neoliberalism decreases conflict.

Tures 01 – LaGrange political science professor [John, “Economic Freedom And Conflict Reduction: Evidence From The 1970s, 1980s, And 1990s”, http://www.freetheworld.com/papers/John_Tures.pdf]

The last three decades have witnessed an unprecedented expansion of market-based reforms and the profusion of economic freedom in the international system. This shift in economic policy has sparked a debate about whether free markets are superior to state controls. Numerous studies have compared the neoliberal and statist policies on issues of production capacity, economic growth, commercial volumes, and egalitarianism. An overlooked research agenda, however, is the relationship between levels of economic freedom and violence within countries. Proponents of the statist approach might note that a strong government can bend the market to its will, directing activity toward policies necessary to achieve greater levels of gross domestic product and growth. By extracting more resources for the economy, a powerful state can redistribute benefits to keep the populace happy. Higher taxes can also pay for an army and police force that intimidate people. Such governments range from command economies of totalitarian systems to autocratic dictators and military juntas. Other economically unfree systems include some of the authoritarian “Asian tigers.” A combination of historical evidence, modern theorists, and statistical findings, however, has indicated that a reduced role for the state in regulating economic transactions is associated with a decrease in internal conflicts. Countries where the government dominates the commercial realm experience an increase in the level of domestic violence. Scholars have traced the history of revolutions to explain the relationship between statism and internal upheavals. Contemporary authors also posit a relationship between economic liberty and peace .Statistical tests show a strong connection between economic freedom and conflict reduction during the past three decades.

Empirical data demonstrates globalization produces peace and progress

Soysa et al. 11 – Norwegian University of Science and Technology professor [Indra de, “Does Being Bound Together Suffocate, or Liberate? The Effects of Economic, Social, and Political Globalization on Human Rights, 1981–2005”, KYKLOS, Vol. 64 – February 2011 – No. 1, 20–53, ebsco]

There is a large volume of research on human rights and their determinants, but theoretical models and empirical evidence on the effects of globalization on the extent of human rights are sparse. The empirical evidence on this subject that does exist assess very simple dimensions of globalization, typically measures such as the level of trade openness or the penetration of FDI (Hafner-Burton 2005). Instead of these commonly-used proxies of globalization, we use an index that aggregates several factors that in combination capture how globalized a country is along three main dimensions—economic, political, and social globalization (Dreher et al. 2008). As far as we are aware, no study has estimated how differentially these three dimensions of globalization affect government respect for human rights and the degree of political terror, an important normative policy concern as well as a crucial aspect of future socio-political development. We employ panel data for 118 countries for which there is complete data (94 developing and 24 developed countries) over the period 1981–2005 (25 years). Our results are easily summarized: globalization and the disaggregated components along economic, social, and political dimensions predict higher human rights, controlling for a host of other factors. These results are robust to instrumental variables techniques that allow us to assess the endogenous nature of the relationship between human rights and globalization. The results support those who argue that increased globalization could build peace and social progress, net of all the other factors such as democracy and higher levels of income.

A2: Globalization Reduces Wages

Still net massive gain even when wage reductions in the developed world are considered

Washington Times, October 6, 2014, “Economic Globalization Boosts Asia, bogs down US Middle Class,” http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/oct/6/economic-globalization-boosts-asia-bogs-down-us-mi/?page=all DOA: 1-2-14

The migration of Latin American and Asian job seekers to the U.S. and Eastern European and African job seekers to Western Europe also has helped build wealth in the developing world, even as it has put “modest pressure” on the wages of low-skilled native workers in the West who compete with the migrants, he said.

The availability of such plentiful, cheap labor clearly has benefited the owners of corporations and other rich people, even as it has presented competition for poorer Americans, he said. Still, the era of globalization overall has brought big benefits to the human race, he said.

Moreover, the rise of the middle class in China and other emerging countries adds to the pool of global consumers and presents businesses and workers in the West with opportunities for growth.

“Although significant economic problems remain, we have been living in equalizing times for the world — a change that has been largely for the good,” Mr. Cowan said. “Policies on immigration and free trade sometimes increase inequality within a nation yet can make the world a better place and often decrease inequality on the planet as a whole.”

A2: Globalization Undermines Collective Bargaining

Trade coalitions are the international equivalent of collective barganging

South Centre, intergovernmental policy think tank of developing countries, 1999 [“Least Developed Countries and the WTO A Collective Bargaining Strategy,” Based on an UNCTAD press release (TAD/UNT/2813, 9 June 1999), http://www. outhcentre.org/index.php?option= com_content&task=view&id=789&Itemid=169]

Of all countries, the least developed countries (LDCs) are the most handicapped in their participation in the WTO. Lack of financial resources and skilled personnel means that individual least developed countries cannot maintain anywhere near the requisite level of knowledgeable personnel in Geneva to follow discussions and participate in negotiations. Conscious of the problems this causes them, they have now agreed to adopt a strategy of collective bargaining to further their interests in the multilateral trading system.

WTO coalitions are the basic strategy of the third world to counter-balance the first

Yu, Programme Coordinator, Global Governance for Dev. Programme, South Centre, 07/2008 [Vicente Paolo B., III, “Unity In Diversity: Governance Adaptation In Multilateral Trade Institutions Through South-South Coalition-Building,” Research Papers 17, http://www. southcentre.org/index2.php?option=com_docman&task=doc_view&gid=940&Itemid=68, 28]

There have been studies on the kinds of collective action-focused coalition building that developing countries have undertaken in the WTO.108 These have looked at the mechanics, internal dynamics, and the role that these coalitions play in WTO decisionmaking. These studies all point to the same overall conclusion – developing country coalitions are, per se and whether in their formal or informal sense, becoming an integral and important of WTO decision-making. They have become the de facto preferred response of developing countries to imbalances in power, process, and participation that existed in the GATT and which persisted into the WTO. They help harness the power of numbers in favour of those who join the group, and help improve the negotiating ability of their members by allowing them to put together a more proactive and defensive negotiating position.109 As such, they are becoming the vehicles through which some of the worst aspects of such imbalances may be remedied on an operational basis and through which developing countries can enhance their role in shaping and influencing decision-making.

They also represent a clear recognition on the part of developing countries that negotiating success in the WTO lies in improved levels and modes of coordination with other developing countries in order to effect more effective and active participation in the WTO decision-making process. As a result, developing countries have shown dramatic improvements in their ability to establish and maintain their coalitions in the context of the WTO negotiations, and they have become more strategic in doing so.

A2: Globalization Increases Rich-Poor Gap

Nothing inherent in globalization expands the rich-poor gap between countries

Washington Times, October 6, 2014, “Economic Globalization Boosts Asia, bogs down US Middle Class,” http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/oct/6/economic-globalization-boosts-asia-bogs-down-us-mi/?page=all DOA: 1-2-14

There is nothing inherent in the process of globalization that would cause the gulf between rich and poor nations to expand. In fact, the access to capital, new technology, and larger markets that comes with global integration should be expected to accelerate the convergence of less developed regions of the world and to make global trade and wealth less concentrated across countries. This dynamic has been at work inside the United States, which has itself been a continent-sized free- trade area for more than two centuries. At the turn of the last century, in 1900, per-capita income varied widely across the four major regions of the United States. While incomes in the Midwest were close to the national average, at 103 percent, incomes in the Northeast were 139 percent above the national average and those in the West were 153 percent above. In contrast, income levels in the South were only 54 percent of the national average. One century later—thanks in large measure to the free flow of goods, capital, and people within U.S. borders—regional disparities have shrunk dramatically. Today, income levels in the Northeast are only 117 percent above the national average, incomes in the Midwest and West are within 2 percentage points of the national average, and incomes in the South as a share of the national average have risen to 90 percent.25

China Responsible for the Decline in Poverty

China’s growth is responsible for 100% of the reduction in global poverty

John Ross, Senior Fellow at Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies, Renmin University of China, November 2013, China Accounts for 100% of the reduction in the number of the world’s people living in poverty, http://ablog.typepad.com/keytrendsinglobalisation/2013/11/china-world-poverty.html DOA: 1-2-15

In 2010 Professor Danny Quah, of the London School of Economics, noted: 'In the last 3 decades, China alone has lifted more people out of extreme poverty than the rest of the world combined. Indeed, China’s ($1/day) poverty reduction of 627 million from 1981 to 2005 exceeds the total global economy’s decline in its extremely poor from 1.9 billion to 1.4 billion over the same period.' The aim of this article is to analyse the situation taking data published three years after Quah's analysis; look at the trends not only of extreme poverty, which the World Bank calculates using expenditure of $1.25 a day or less; examine a slightly wider poverty definition ($2 a day expenditure), and compare the trends in other regions of the world economy.

The conclusion is simple. Quah's conclusion still holds. China is responsible for 100% of the reduction in the number of people living in poverty in the world. This finding is the necessary backdrop to any serious and informed discussion of the role of China in the world economy and its contribution to human rights.

*   *   *

There are many remarkable economic statistics about China.

• 
  China contained 22% of the world’s population when its reforms began in 1978, so the percentage of the world’s population directly benefitting from China’s rapid economic growth is seven times that of the 3% of the world’s population in the US or Japan when they began rapid growth, or the 2% of the world's population in the UK at the time of the Industrial Revolution.
  
• 
  China’s 9.9% average increase in GDP per capita during the two last five year plans is the fastest economic growth per capita ever achieved by a major country in human history.
  
• 
  In the same period China’s annual average 8.1% increase in household consumption, and 8.3% annual increase in total consumption, including state expenditure on items vital for quality of life such as education and health, was the fastest of any major economy. Coupled with a life expectancy above that which would be expected from China’s GDP per capita it is evident China experienced the most rapid increase in living standards of any country.
  

Measured in Parity Purchasing Powers (PPPs) – that is the real increase in output in steel, cars, transport, services etc. - the greatest absolute increase in output ever recorded in single year by the US was in 1999 when it added $567 billion in output. But in 2010 China added $1,126 billion – more than twice the increase in output in a single year ever achieved by any other country in human history.

Poverty rose outside of China

John Ross, Senior Fellow at Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies, Renmin University of China, November 2013, China Accounts for 100% of the reduction in the number of the world’s people living in poverty, http://ablog.typepad.com/keytrendsinglobalisation/2013/11/china-world-poverty.html DOA: 1-2-15

Nevertheless, impressive as such statistics are, from the point of view of human welfare it is another number which dwarfs all others: the contribution of China to the reduction of human poverty not only within its own borders but in its impact on the world. The astonishing fact remains that China has been responsible for the entire reduction in the number of people living in absolute poverty in the world!

To show this the table below gives the number of those in China and the world living on expenditure less than the two standard measures used by the World Bank to measure poverty. These are the criteria for extreme poverty, expenditure of less than $1.25 a day ($37.5 a month) and those living in poverty – expenditure of $2 day ($60 a month). Charts showing the trends are at the end of the article.

In 1981, on World Bank data 972 million people in China were living on an expenditure of less than $37.50 a month. By 2008 this had been reduced to 173 million, by 2009 it fell to 157 million. Consequently 662 million people were lifted out of extreme poverty in China in the twenty seven years up to 2008 and 678 million by 2009.

In contrast the number of people living in such extreme poverty outside China increased by 50 million between 1981 and 2008 – the number of people emerging from poverty was less than the population increase. This was due to the rise in the numbe of people living in extreme poverty in sub-Saharan Africa. China was consequently responsible for 100% of the world’s reduction of the number of people living in extreme poverty.

Analysing those living on $2 a day ($60 a month), still a very low figure, the trend was even more striking. The number of people in China living on an expenditure of this figure or less fell from 972 million in 1981, to 395 million in 2008, to 362 million in 2009. The number living on expenditure of $60 a month or less in China fell by 577 million by 2008, and by 610 million by 2009.

In contrast the number of those living at this level of poverty in the world outside China rose from 1,548 million in 1981 to 2,057 million in 2008 – an increase of 509 million. Again, China accounted for the entire reduction in the number of people in the world living at this level of poverty.

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