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- Cap Bad---Environment---A2: Cap Works
- Growth trashes the environment – soil erosion, biodiversity, deforestation
Cap Bad---EnvironmentCapitalism destroys the environment and causes extinctionHansen 16 Author for Forbes Drew Hansen, xx-xx-xxxx, "Unless It Changes, Capitalism Will Starve Humanity By 2050," Forbes, https://www.forbes.com/sites/drewhansen/2016/02/09/unless-it-changes-capitalism-will-starve-humanity-by-2050/#3f630c777ccc Capitalism has generated massive wealth for some, but it’s devastated the planet and has failed to improve human well-being at scale. • Species are going extinct at a rate 1,000 times faster than that of the natural rate over the previous 65 million years (see Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard Medical School). • Since 2000, 6 million hectares of primary forest have been lost each year. That’s 14,826,322 acres, or just less than the entire state of West Virginia (see the 2010 assessment by the Food and Agricultural Organization of the UN). • Even in the U.S., 15% of the population lives below the poverty line. For children under the age of 18, that number increases to 20% (see U.S. Census). • The world’s population is expected to reach 10 billion by 2050 (see United Nations' projections). Capitalism is unsustainable in its current form. How do we expect to feed that many people while we exhaust the resources that remain? Human activities are behind the extinction crisis. Commercial agriculture, timber extraction, and infrastructure development are causing habitat loss and our reliance on fossil fuels is a major contributor to climate change. Public corporations are responding to consumer demand and pressure from Wall Street. Professors Christopher Wright and Daniel Nyberg published Climate Change, Capitalism and Corporations last fall, arguing that businesses are locked in a cycle of exploiting the world's resources in ever more creative ways. "Our book shows how large corporations are able to continue engaging in increasingly environmentally exploitative behaviour by obscuring the link between endless economic growth and worsening environmental destruction," they wrote. Yale sociologist Justin Farrell studied 20 years of corporate funding and found that "corporations have used their wealth to amplify contrarian views [of climate change] and create an impression of greater scientific uncertainty than actually exists." Corporate capitalism is committed to the relentless pursuit of growth, even if it ravages the planet and threatens human health. We need to build a new system: one that will balance economic growth with sustainability and human flourishing. Cap Bad---Environment---A2: Cap WorksGrowth causes environmental collapse – err neg because of tipping points-Not empirically denied because the rate of destruction is unprecedented -We control uniqueness – their evidence focuses on snapshots -Resilience ignores “death by a thousand cuts” Milman 15 ---- Oliver, syndicated environmental reporter for Mother Jones/The Guardian/UN University, “Rate of environmental degradation puts life on Earth at risk, say scientists,” 1/15, http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/jan/15/rate-of-environmental-degradation-puts-life-on-earth-at-risk-say-scientists?CMP=EMCNEWEML6619I2 Humans are “eating away at our own life support systems” at a rate unseen in the past 10,000 years by degrading land and freshwater systems, emitting greenhouse gases and releasing vast amounts of agricultural chemicals into the environment, new research has found. Two major new studies by an international team of researchers have pinpointed the key factors that ensure a livable planet for humans, with stark results. Of nine worldwide processes that underpin life on Earth, four have exceeded “safe” levels – human-driven climate change, loss of biosphere integrity, land system change and the high level of phosphorus and nitrogen flowing into the oceans due to fertiliser use. Researchers spent five years identifying these core components of a planet suitable for human life, using the long-term average state of each measure to provide a baseline for the analysis. They found that the changes of the last 60 years are unprecedented in the previous 10,000 years, a period in which the world has had a relatively stable climate and human civilisation has advanced significantly. Carbon dioxide levels, at 395.5 parts per million, are at historic highs, while loss of biosphere integrity is resulting in species becoming extinct at a rate more than 100 times faster than the previous norm. Since 1950 urban populations have increased seven-fold, primary energy use has soared by a factor of five, while the amount of fertiliser used is now eight times higher. The amount of nitrogen entering the oceans has quadrupled. All of these changes are shifting Earth into a “new state” that is becoming less hospitable to human life, researchers said. “These indicators have shot up since 1950 and there are no signs they are slowing down,” said Prof Will Steffen of the Australian National University and the Stockholm Resilience Centre. Steffen is the lead author on both of the studies. “When economic systems went into overdrive, there was a massive increase in resource use and pollution. It used to be confined to local and regional areas but we’re now seeing this occurring on a global scale. These changes are down to human activity, not natural variability.” Steffen said direct human influence upon the land was contributing to a loss in pollination and a disruption in the provision of nutrients and fresh water. “We are clearing land, we are degrading land, we introduce feral animals and take the top predators out, we change the marine ecosystem by overfishing – it’s a death by a thousand cuts,” he said. “That direct impact upon the land is the most important factor right now, even more than climate change.” There are large variations in conditions around the world, according to the research. For example, land clearing is now concentrated in tropical areas, such as Indonesia and the Amazon, with the practice reversed in parts of Europe. But the overall picture is one of deterioration at a rapid rate. “It’s fairly safe to say that we haven’t seen conditions in the past similar to ones we see today and there is strong evidence that there [are] tipping points we don’t want to cross,” Steffen said. “If the Earth is going to move to a warmer state, 5-6C warmer, with no ice caps, it will do so and that won’t be good for large mammals like us. People say the world is robust and that’s true, there will be life on Earth, but the Earth won’t be robust for us. “Some people say we can adapt due to technology, but that’s a belief system, it’s not based on fact. There is no convincing evidence that a large mammal, with a core body temperature of 37C, will be able to evolve that quickly. Insects can, but humans can’t and that’s a problem.” Steffen said the research showed the economic system was “fundamentally flawed” as it ignored critically important life support systems. “It’s clear the economic system is driving us towards an unsustainable future and people of my daughter’s generation will find it increasingly hard to survive,” he said. “History has shown that civilisations have risen, stuck to their core values and then collapsed because they didn’t change. That’s where we are today.” The two studies, published in Science and Anthropocene Review, featured the work of scientists from countries including the US, Sweden, Germany and India. The findings will be presented in seven seminars at the World Economic Forum in Davos, which takes place between 21 and 25 January. Growth trashes the environment – soil erosion, biodiversity, deforestationJackson 9 ---- Tim, ecological economist and professor of sustainable development (Surrey), Professorial Fellow to the Economic and Social Research Council, “Prosperity without Growth: Economics for a Finite Planet,” London: Earthscan, http://www.ipu.org/splz-e/unga13/prosperity.pdf The realization that the credit crisis and the ensuing recession were part of a systemic failure in the current economic paradigm is reinforced by an understanding of the resource and environmental implications of economic growth. The commodity price 'bubble' that developed over several years and peaked in mid-2008 had clearly burst by the end of the year (Figure 1.2). It now seems likely that the very high prices attributed to key commodities in mid-2008 were in part the result of speculation and in part the result of identifiable supply-side problems such as limited refinery capacity in the face of high demand. But this short-term bubble sat on top of a rising trend in commodity prices that cannot entirely be explained away in these terms. Environmental factors, resource and land scarcities, also played a key part and will inevitably continue to do so as the economy recovers. As Chapter 1 has already suggested, concerns around peak oil are gathering momentum. The natural rate of decline in established oil fields is now believed to be as high as 9 per cent a year." Economic expansion in China and the emerging economies has accelerated the demand for fossil fuels, metals and non-metallic minerals (sec Chapter 5) and will inevitably reduce the reserve life of finite resources. The competition for land between food and bio-fuels clearly played a part in rising food prices. And these demands in their turn are intimately linked to accelerating environmental impacts: rising carbon emissions, declining biodiversity, rampant deforestation, collapsing fish stocks, declining water supplies and degraded soils. The material and environmental impacts of growth were paramount in prompting this inquiry. The economic crisis may appear to be unrelated; but it is not. The age of irresponsibility demonstrates a long-term blindness to the limitations of the material world. This blindness is as evident in our inability to regulate financial markets as it is in our inability to protect natural resources and curtail ecological damage. Our ecological debts are as unstable as our financial debts. Neither is properly accounted for in the relentless pursuit of consumption growth. To protect economic growth we have been prepared to countenance — and have even courted — unwieldy financial and ecological liabilities, believing that these arc necessary to deliver security and keep us from collapse. But this was never sustainable in the long-term. The financial crisis has shown us that it isn't even sustainable in the short-term. The truth is that we have failed to get our economics working sustainably even in financial terms. For this reason, responses to the crisis which aim to restore the status quo arc deeply misguided and doomed to failure. Prosperity today means nothing if it undermines the conditions on which prosperity tomorrow depends. And the single biggest message from the financial meltdown of 2008 is that tomorrow is already here. Continued growth trashes biodiversity and causes soil erosion causing extinction – collapse now is better – we’re on THE tipping pointYule 13 ---- Jeffrey V, Ph.D. in Ecology and Evolution (Stony Brook), Assistant Professor of Biology and Environmental Science (Louisiana Tech), Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies (Maine), “Biodiversity, Extinction, and Humanity’s Future: The Ecological and Evolutionary Consequences of Human Population and Resource Use,” Humanities 2013, 2, 147–159, 4/2, http://www.mdpi.com/2076-0787/2/2/147 1. Introduction As a species. Homo sapiens sapiens has either already arrived or will shortly arrive at a fork in the road, and the route we choose will determine what sort of world our species will occupy. One road leads to a relatively biodiverse future in which a significant majority of today's non-domestic species persist. The other leads to a future in which the majority of today's non-domestic species are extinct. Along both courses, we suspect that global human population will likely stabilize below the current estimated total of slightly above seven billion. Our species has already experienced and, to a considerable extent, contributed to a significant extinction event, so both prehistoric and historic human actions have already shaped global biology. At issue now is the extent and direction of ongoing human effects on global ecology and evolution, including the probability that our species will be a long-term or short-term component of global biological communities. In speculating about humanity's biological future, it is important to recognize that the details depend on how far into the future we opt to look. Ours is not an especially old species. Depending on the criteria used to differentiate modern humans from our ancestors, we are either at least a 200,000 year-old species (based on anatomy) or a 50,000 year-old species (based on behavioral criteria) [1]. Assuming a future of roughly the same duration as our past, we will generally look less than 100,000-200,000 years into the future. While that amount of time is vast from a human cultural perspective— and, indeed, from the ecological and evolutionary perspectives of microorganisms—from other perspectives, it is comparatively brief. Two ecological topics provide a useful starting point for our consideration of humanity's future: population size and carrying capacity. Population size, abbreviated A?, refers to the number of individuals of a particular species living in a particular place. Carrying capacity, abbreviated K, refers to the number of individuals of a particular species that a habitat can support without the species* use of that habitat rendering it less able to support that species in the future. For instance, a deer population in excess of a habitat's K might so thoroughly consume available plants that the soil is left bare, allowing erosion that leaves the habitat incapable of supporting the same numbers and types of plants and, consequently, the same number of deer as before. However, whether or not overpopulation degrades habitat, if a species' N exceeds a habitat's K for that species, the species' A' must decline from an increased death rate, decreased reproductive rate, and/or emigration to other habitats. Ecologists are frequently interested in the ,V of species and AT of particular habitats for those species, but since organismal populations and habitat carrying capacities fluctuate (e.g., with season due to changes in temperature and precipitation) and are notoriously difficult to calculate, ecologists frequently wish for more and better data. Although A' and K may initially sound like highly specialized academic subjects, they are a matter of overarching concern not simply for ecologists but for demographers, politicians, and, whether they realize it or not, the general public. At issue for all concerned parties are two unknowns: the K of planet earth for humans and the present and future human A'. 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 1.3 Mb. Share with your friends:
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