Tampa Prep 2009-2010 Impact Defense File
Environmental threats exaggerated
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- 3. overpoopulation makes the impact inevitable
- AT: Egyptian Instability 1/2
- B. Discontent over Mubarak
2. Environmental threats exaggeratedGordon 95 - a professor of mineral economics at Pennsylvania State University[Gordon, Richard, “Ecorealism Exposed,” Regulation, 1995, http://www.cato.org/pubs/regulation/regv18n3/reg18n3-readings.htmlEasterbrook's argument is that although environmental problems deserve attention, the environmental movement has exaggerated the threats and ignored evidence of improvement. His discontent causes him to adopt and incessantly employ the pejoratively intended (and irritating) shorthand "enviros" to describe the leading environmental organizations and their admirers. He proposes-and overuses-an equally infelicitous alternative phrase, "ecorealism," that seems to mean that most environmental initiatives can be justifited by more moderate arguments. Given the mass, range, and defects of the book, any review of reasonable length must be selective. Easterbrook's critique begins with an overview of environmentalism from a global perspective. He then turns to a much longer (almost 500- page) survey of many specific environmental issues. The overview section is a shorter, more devastating criticism, but it is also more speculative than the survey of specific issues. In essence, the overview argument is that human impacts on the environment are minor, easily correctable influences on a world affected by far more powerful forces. That is a more penetrating criticism than typically appears in works expressing skepticism about environmentalism. Easterbrook notes that mankind's effects on nature long predate industrialization or the white colonization of America, but still have had only minor impacts. We are then reminded of the vast, often highly destructive changes that occur naturally and the recuperative power of natural systems. 3. overpoopulation makes the impact inevitableHerald, The (UK) 1/20/04[The world population awareness website, The Herald] The Earth's Life-support System is in Peril - a Global Crisis. http://www.overpopulation.org/impact.html]The Earth's Life-support System is in Peril - a Global Crisis. Our planet is changing and many environmental indicators have moved outside their range of the past half-million years. If we cannot develop policies to cope with this, the consequences may be huge. We have made progress. Life expectancy and standards of living have increased for many, but the population has grown to six billion, and continues to grow. The global economy has increased 15-fold since 1950 and this progress has begun to affect the planet and how it functions. For example, the increase in CO2 is 100 PPM and growing. During the 1990's, the average area of tropical forest cleared each year was equivalent to half the area of England. The impacts of global change are complex, as they combine with regional environmental stresses. Coral reefs, which were under stress from fishing, tourism and pollutants, are now under pressure from carbonate chemistry in ocean surface waters from the increase in CO2. The wildfires that hit the world last year were a result of land management, ignition sources and extreme local weather probably linked to climate change. Poor access to fresh water is expected to nearly double with population growth. Biodiversity losses, will be exacerbated by climate change. Beyond 2050, regional climate change, could have huge consequences. The Earth has entered the Anthropocene Era in which humans are a dominating environmental force. Global environmental change challenges the political decision-making process and will have to be based on risks that events will happen, or scenarios will unfold. Global environmental change is often gradual until critical thresholds are passed. Some rapid changes such as the melting of the Greenland ice sheet would be irreversible in any meaningful timescale, while other changes may be unstoppable. We know that there are risks of rapid and irreversible changes to which it would be difficult to adapt. Incremental change will not prevent climate change, water depletion, deforestation or biodiversity loss. Breakthroughs in technologies and resource management that will affect economic sectors and lifestyles are required. International frameworks are essential for addressing global change. Never before has a multilateral system been more necessary. Will we accept the challenge or wait until a catastrophic, irreversible change is upon us? AT: Egyptian Instability 1/21. Alternate causes to political instability—A. Climate ChangeCarbon Control News in ‘7 (“In The Air”, 4-23, L/N)Participants of the teleconference, sponsored by the National Environmental Trust, also pointed to a recent report by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) which predicted the climate change effects on economically vulnerable regions of the world. Participants said Egypt and Pakistan were two examples of areas that would suffer economic and political instability from global warming. B. Discontent over MubarakStraits Times in ‘8 (John R. Bradley, “Rumblings of discontent grow louder”, 4-26, L/N)Other Arab countries, including Morocco and Yemen, have witnessed riots in recent weeks as a result of hikes in basic food prices. The growing bread queues in Egypt - the result mainly of a global hike in wheat prices - have certainly added to popular anger and discontent. But Egypt is unique in the region, and not only because it is by far the most populous Arab country (one in four Arabs is Egyptian). This anger in Egypt, tapped by a vibrant opposition print media, has deeper roots and the potential to spiral out of control. When riots broke out during the April 6 strike in an industrial town in the Nile Delta, it was telling that billboards with pictures of Mr Mubarak quickly became the focus of the rioters' wrath. Many posters of Mr Mubarak were slashed with knives or were torn down and trampled underfoot. About half of Egyptians live on less than $2US ($2S.80) a day and depend on subsidised bread, cooking oil and other basic commodities to survive. Food prices have risen more than 50 per cent in the past six months. The head of the World Bank said last month that it will take 'a generation' for Egypt's poor to see any benefits from the country's economic restructuring. The question is whether they are prepared to wait that long. The fact that the number of industrial actions continues to grow suggests that they are not. The daily Al-Misry Al-Youm recently reported a total of 222 strikes, demonstrations and protests in 2006 and 580 in 2007. There were 27 collective actions in the first week of January this year alone. Estimates of the number of workers involved in this movement range from 300,000 to 500,000. Opposition groups say some 80 per cent of the population participated in some form or another in the April 6 general strike, albeit mainly by staying at home after an unprecedented show of intimidation from the Egyptian security forces in all the main squares and traffic junctions of the country's major cities. Most dangerously for the regime, last year the strikes began to spread from the textile and clothing industry to encompass workers from the building materials, transport, food processing, baking, sanitation and even oil industries. Private-sector industrial workers comprised a more prominent component of the movement than ever before. The movement has since broadened to encompass white-collar employees, civil servants and professionals. The single largest collective action of the movement was last December's strike of some 55,000 real estate tax collectors employed by the local authorities. And doctors, lawyers, and university professors are all planning nationwide industrial action in the coming months. The regime finds itself caught between a rock and a hard place. It has been forced to add a further 15 million Egyptians to those already eligible for subsidised food, and is promising government workers significant pay increases. But this has effectively put on hold neo-liberal economic policies so crucial for attracting foreign investment, the cornerstone of government economic policy and much favoured by home-grown crony capitalists. The truly awful thing about the Mubarak regime is how ideologically bankrupt it appears to be as it muddles aimlessly along, resorting to quick-fix bribes and brute force to silence criticism. Those injured during the April 6 riots were actually handcuffed to their hospital beds. The regime's hope seems to be that things will peter out rather than explode. Egyptians, this common interpretation has it, are notoriously passive, used as they have been for thousands of years to being ruled by pharaohs and living according to agricultural patterns determined by the alluvial flow of the River Nile. But a quick glance at the past 100 years of its history tells a much different story. Egypt has been rocked every three decades or so by serious unrest: a 1919 nationalist revolution that led to partial sovereignty; riots in January 1952 against British rule that left half of Cairo burnt to ashes, followed by the overthrow of the monarchy in July that year; bread riots in 1977 that almost led to the overthrow of then president Anwar Sadat. Three decades on, Egypt is ripe for another popular uprising. If there is widespread chaos, only one group is poised to fill the vacuum: the Muslim Brotherhood, founded in 1928 and a constant thorn in the regime's side. A report this week by the government-controlled Al-Ahram Centre for Strategic and Political Studies claims that the officially outlawed group now has 2.5 million Egyptian members. The situation in Egypt today is eerily similar to that in Iran in the years leading up to the 1979 Islamic revolution. It was not foreordained that the radical Islamists led by Ayatollah Khomeini would take power in Iran: They were simply one of many groups opposing the Shah, and arguably not even the leading or most popular one. Before the Iranian revolution, the opposition to the Shah's rule was diverse. Similarly, the opposition to the Mubarak regime is diverse, made up of students, secularists, Marxists, Islamists and anti-imperialists. Moreover, the Iranian revolution began, as in Egypt today, with wildcat, uncoordinated and inchoate strikes that built upon each other. These were joined by groups with better organisation and clearer political goals, and were met by a waffling government that neither wanted to give up power nor was capable of quashing the opposition with the full force it had at its command. Islamists triumphed in Iran in 1979 because they proved themselves to be the most disciplined and ruthless force. The Muslim Brotherhood knows this history well. It is monito ring events unfold in Egypt, aware that its chance to seize power may at last be arriving. Directory: files -> documents documents -> North Mankato Taylor Library documents -> In the Red and Brown Water documents -> - documents -> I. Disaster Summary Sheet II. Tropical Cyclones documents -> Cbp and Trade Automated Interface Requirements Appendix: pga december 22, 2015 documents -> Ace abi catair customs and Trade Automated Interface Requirements documents -> Ace abi catair customs and Trade Automated Interface Requirements documents -> Mobile audio/video recording systems documents -> Cartographic Concepts for Realizing a Location Based umts service documents -> 1/ Background Statistics Human development index rank Download 2.71 Mb. Share with your friends:
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