Adv 1 – Leadership

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Adv 2 – Ocean Science

The oceans are on the brink now – further degradation risks catastrophe

Martin 14, Paul, Global Ocean Commissioner, “Ocean Under Threat,” Insight Issue 1, http://www.lr.org/en/_images/12-6690_Insight_1-2014.pdf

“The ocean crisis could make the financial crisis look like a peanut, and the time to act is now before the crisis becomes acute.” With these words Global Ocean Commissioner and former Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin fired a warning shot across the bows of international complacency on governing the marine environment. Speaking on BBC radio’s ‘Shared Planet’ programme, he called for a “global uprising” against the destruction of the common resources of the ocean. “We’ve just come through a massive banking crisis in the UK, the eurozone and in the US,” he said. “That banking crisis occurred because banks, institutions and countries were prepared to put their own interests ahead of the global interest and in fact what they did was to trigger a global recession. “We’ve now put in place an institution called the Financial Stability Board which took 20 years of discussions of the kind that the Global Ocean Commission (GOC) has really now begun … it took a crisis to do it.” And all the evidence shows that the world cannot wait 20 years – or for a crisis to happen – to prevent the damage to the oceans from becoming irreversible. The radio programme also featured interviews with marine scientist Callum Roberts of York University in the UK and renowned oceanographer Sylvia Earle. They spoke about their first-hand experiences of seeing ocean species and habitats destroyed by human activities, including overfishing and pollution. Earle described how a whale, washed ashore on the California coast, was found to have “400lbs of plastic in its stomach”. Roberts made the striking observation that, while 12 men had walked on the moon, only three people had seen the deepest parts of the ocean. Underlining the importance of the sea to the planet’s survival, he said: “If you think of the earth as a clock, then the ocean is the mainspring that keeps it ticking over.” Blueprint for reform It is to keep that mainspring working that the GOC was formed. Paul Martin is one of 17 high-level leaders drawn from around the world to develop a blueprint for reforming governance and management of the high seas. They are aiming to produce a set of recommendations by the middle of this year for restoring the ocean to full health and sustainable productivity. The high seas account for two-thirds of the Earth’s 361 million square kilometres of ocean – the remaining third is controlled and managed by individual governments and extends up to 200 nautical miles from the shore – yet, according to the GOC’s ‘Oceans Under Threat’ report: “there is little monitoring and little policing for this vast area of the planet. Most fundamentally, the high seas sit under a legal system that has not evolved in response to modern practices, technologies or scientific understanding.” Currently the ocean provides food for more than three billion people and the oxygen it produces accounts for every second breath we take. But with the population set to grow from seven to nine billion in the next few decades, and as scientists unlock more of its secrets, the ocean’s resources will be in demand like never before. The sea will become a major source of minerals and genetic materials. Other uses include electricity generation and geo-engineering to increase absorption of carbon dioxide. Destructive fishing But the rich biodiversity that is only just being discovered is in danger from destructive fishing methods, pollution and climate change. The GOC report warns: “Illegal fishing vessels are an increasing threat to the security of nations and a commonplace scene of human rights abuses. Combating illegal fishing would improve prospects for nature, for the ecosystem services that we need, and for responsible businesses. It could also ensure that the benefits from the exploitation of ocean resources can be sustainably managed and equitably shared.”
extinction

Sielen 13, Alan b, Senior Fellow for International Environmental Policy at the Center for Marine Biodiversity and Conservation at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, “The Devolution of the Seas: The Consequences of Oceanic Destruction,” November/December, http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/140164/alan-b-sielen/the-devolution-of-the-seas

Of all the threats looming over the planet today, one of the most alarming is the seemingly inexorable descent of the world’s oceans into ecological perdition. Over the last several decades, human activities have so altered the basic chemistry of the seas that they are now experiencing evolution in reverse: a return to the barren primeval waters of hundreds of millions of years ago. A visitor to the oceans at the dawn of time would have found an underwater world that was mostly lifeless. Eventually, around 3.5 billion years ago, basic organisms began to emerge from the primordial ooze. This microbial soup of algae and bacteria needed little oxygen to survive. Worms, jellyfish, and toxic fireweed ruled the deep. In time, these simple organisms began to evolve into higher life forms, resulting in the wondrously rich diversity of fish, corals, whales, and other sea life one associates with the oceans today. Yet that sea life is now in peril. Over the last 50 years -- a mere blink in geologic time -- humanity has come perilously close to reversing the almost miraculous biological abundance of the deep. Pollution, overfishing, the destruction of habitats, and climate change are emptying the oceans and enabling the lowest forms of life to regain their dominance. The oceanographer Jeremy Jackson calls it “the rise of slime”: the transformation of once complex oceanic ecosystems featuring intricate food webs with large animals into simplistic systems dominated by microbes, jellyfish, and disease. In effect, humans are eliminating the lions and tigers of the seas to make room for the cockroaches and rats. The prospect of vanishing whales, polar bears, bluefin tuna, sea turtles, and wild coasts should be worrying enough on its own. But the disruption of entire ecosystems threatens our very survival, since it is the healthy functioning of these diverse systems that sustains life on earth. Destruction on this level will cost humans dearly in terms of food, jobs, health, and quality of life. It also violates the unspoken promise passed from one generation to the next of a better future. Humans are eliminating the lions and tigers of the seas to make room for the cockroaches and rats.
Marine ecosystem degradation puts humanity on the brink of extinction -- destructions occurring rapidly.

Black 11 – Environmental Correspondent at BBC News (Richard, June 20, “World's oceans in 'shocking' decline,”)

The oceans are in a worse state than previously suspected, according to an expert panel of scientists. In a new report, they warn that ocean life is "at high risk of entering a phase of extinction of marine species unprecedented in human history". They conclude that issues such as over-fishing, pollution and climate change are acting together in ways that have not previously been recognised. The impacts, they say, are already affecting humanity. The panel was convened by the International Programme on the State of the Ocean (IPSO), and brought together experts from different disciplines, including coral reef ecologists, toxicologists, and fisheries scientists. Its report will be formally released later this week. "The findings are shocking," said Alex Rogers, IPSO's scientific director and professor of conservation biology at Oxford University. "As we considered the cumulative effect of what humankind does to the oceans, the implications became far worse than we had individually realized. "We've sat in one forum and spoken to each other about what we're seeing, and we've ended up with a picture showing that almost right across the board we're seeing changes that are happening faster than we'd thought, or in ways that we didn't expect to see for hundreds of years." These "accelerated" changes include melting of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, sea level rise, and release of methane trapped in the sea bed. Fast changes "The rate of change is vastly exceeding what we were expecting even a couple of years ago," said Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, a coral specialist from the University of Queensland in Australia. Some species are already fished way beyond their limits - and may also be affected by other threats "So if you look at almost everything, whether it's fisheries in temperate zones or coral reefs or Arctic sea ice, all of this is undergoing changes, but at a much faster rate than we had thought." But more worrying than this, the team noted, are the ways in which different issues act synergistically to increase threats to marine life. Some pollutants, for example, stick to the surfaces of tiny plastic particles that are now found in the ocean bed. This increases the amounts of these pollutants that are consumed by bottom-feeding fish. Plastic particles also assist the transport of algae from place to place, increasing the occurrence of toxic algal blooms - which are also caused by the influx of nutrient-rich pollution from agricultural land. In a wider sense, ocean acidification, warming, local pollution and overfishing are acting together to increase the threat to coral reefs - so much so that three-quarters of the world's reefs are at risk of severe decline. The challenges are vast; but unlike previous generations, we know what now needs to happen” Life on Earth has gone through five "mass extinction events" caused by events such as asteroid impacts; and it is often said that humanity's combined impact is causing a sixth such event. The IPSO report concludes that it is too early to say definitively. But the trends are such that it is likely to happen, they say - and far faster than any of the previous five. "What we're seeing at the moment is unprecedented in the fossil record - the environmental changes are much more rapid," Professor Rogers told BBC News. "We've still got most of the world's biodiversity, but the actual rate of extinction is much higher [than in past events] - and what we face is certainly a globally significant extinction event."
Ocean collapse causes extinction.

Donahue 11 - published author of five books, former reporter for The Times Herald (James, March 7, “Pushing The Mother’s Reset Button”)

It is no secret that our planet is overpopulated and that the human existence has taxed the Mother Earth’s ecological system to the limit. The air, land and our seas are polluted, the planet’s resources are almost used up, our glaciers and icecaps are on meltdown, the weather is going through dramatic change, wildlife is going extinct, and most people are acting as if nothing is wrong. The big news story should be the looming threat of human and life extinction on our planet. Instead the talking heads devote hours to political issues, the wars that rage on and on, the economic crisis and what popular starlet has been arrested for being in possession of some illicit narcotic. The news anchors are no longer completely ignoring the weather, however. They cannot look the other way when hurricanes and typhoons ravage the land, when heavy rains flood and bring mudslides down over entire towns killing hundreds, and when mile-wide tornadoes march across the landscape flattening everything in their paths. They no longer can ignore the extreme killing heat waves and the severe arctic winter blizzards that sweep the landscape. Somehow they are still refusing to connect this extreme weather to the human footprint. A disconcerting article by Jeremy Hsu, senior science writer for the Internet web magazine LiveScience, maps a belief by some researchers “that effects of humans – from hunting to climate change – are fueling another great mass extinction. A few go so far as to say we are entering a new geologic epoch.” What Hsu wrote is that geologists find evidence that the planet has gone through numerous mass extinctions over the ages that dramatically changed the diversity of species found in oceans around the world. He says this has been found mostly in the fossil records. The warning is that humans are driving animals and sea life to extinction, and consequently altering the entire ecosystem of the planet. Once the ecosystem is gone, is there anything to save the human race from plunging into extinction along with the animals? When we think about it, humans may have a soul that makes them uniquely linked to spiritual powers, but we all occupy animal bodies born on the Mother Earth and totally dependent upon her for life in this three dimensional existence. We must breathe clean oxygen-filled air, drink clean water and eat food produced from living plants and animals to sustain life. Indeed, we are all aware that great beasts like the dinosaurs, saber-toothed tigers, mastodons and a wide variety of other strange plants and animals lived on this planet before humans arrived. Something occurred that caused a mass extinction of all of those living creatures. Now scientists are finding evidence that the world was filled with other types of life even before the age of the dinosaurs, and that they also appear to have gone extinct. Thus Hsu is suggesting that the planet has a natural reset button that gets pushed every so many hundred thousand years that dramatically changes the diversity of species and possibly cleans up the messes left behind by the outgoing epoch. He suggests that the “major changes in global temperatures and ocean chemistry, increased sediment erosion and changes in biology that range from altered flowering times to shifts in migration patterns of birds and mammals and potential die-offs of tiny organisms that support the entire marine food chain” may be the trigger that starts the planet’s reset button. If he is correct, the irony is that all of the changes listed above appear to have been brought about by human activities. Thus we may be recklessly setting ourselves up for a mass extinction event and are refusing to take a serious look at what we are doing to our planet and ourselves.

US leadership in ocean science is key to revitalizing the ocean and spills over – sparks private sector follow on

Sielen 14, Alan B, Senior Fellow for International Environmental Policy at the Center for Marine Biodiversity and Conservation at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, “Sea Change: How to Save the Oceans,” 4/16, http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/141198/alan-b-sielen/sea-change?sp_mid=45656665&sp_rid=aHVyd2pzMTJAd2Z1LmVkdQS2

Government leaders are in a unique position to seize the bully pulpit. In the United States, successes under both Republican and Democratic administrations are reminders of what is possible. Russell Train, chairman of U.S. President Richard Nixon’s Council on Environmental Quality, led efforts to secure an international agreement on prohibiting the dumping of toxic waste into the ocean at the 1972 United Nations Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm. In 1977, U.S. President Jimmy Carter, responding to a series of tanker accidents off U.S. shores, called for a major international treaty on tanker safety and pollution prevention. Eleven months later, industries and most maritime countries backed two major international agreements: the MARPOL Protocol to prevent pollution from ships and the SOLAS Protocol for the safety of life at sea. Steady U.S. leadership contributed to the adoption in 1993 of a global ban on dumping radioactive waste into the ocean. In 2006, U.S. President George W. Bush established the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands Marine National Monument, the world’s largest ocean preserve. Where government goes, the private sector can follow. Some businesses, nongovernmental organizations, and research institutions have brought the message of ocean health home to more and more people by educating consumers about such things as sustainable fisheries and the health dangers of industrial chemicals. Through a $53 million grant from Bloomberg Philanthropies, two environmental organizations and an investment firm recently joined forces to revitalize fishing off the coasts of Brazil, the Philippines, and Chile. In the United States, one of those organizations, Oceana, is also working with the energy industry and Congress to expand offshore wind production. But these are, by and large, the exceptions. Too often, government and industry have failed in their duty to safeguard the seas. The National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon spill concluded that “systematic failures in both industry practices and government policies” led to the spill. For years, the United States and other countries often stretched the definition of freedom of navigation -- a crucial principle of international law -- to avoid strict environmental standards and enforcement for vessels. Exaggerated concern over environmental regulation by defense and commercial interests continues today on issues such as restrictions on the military use of sonar to protect whales, dolphins, and other marine life and the creation of special shipping routes in ecologically sensitive areas to bypass endangered species. Although few would tolerate bulldozing the California redwoods or Madagascar’s baobab, industrial fishing fleets get away with destroying underwater Edens. The United States still hasn’t ratified the 1982 United Nations Law of the Sea Convention, which established international rules for all uses of the oceans and their resources. As a result, the United States cannot fully participate in negotiations over how the convention applies to competing claims on continental shelf resources in the Arctic, or to protecting U.S. waters from pollution originating in other countries. ALL OR NOTHING Restoring the oceans will require a shift in how governments and societies act, including a fundamental transformation in the use and management of energy, agriculture, and natural resources in general. Achieving substantial reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, transitioning to clean energy, eliminating the worst toxic chemicals, and cutting pollution from fertilizers and pesticides in watersheds will not be easy. All those are the results of long-standing political factors, economic behaviors, and consumer choices. Take climate change and ocean acidification. They are related to so many other pressing problems -- rising seas, extreme weather, destruction of ecosystems, loss of biological diversity, species extinction, drought, disease, food and freshwater scarcity, and the astronomical costs of responses -- that any strategy for the seas’ renewal is an empty vessel without concerted action on climate change and ocean acidification. The ultimate policy prescriptions for those problems might be clear -- carbon taxes, conservation, legally binding international rules to limit greenhouse gas emissions, enforceable environmental standards across industries, and advanced fuel systems, from better batteries to fuel cells. But they are still years away. In the meantime, there is a great deal that can be done. Federal and state laws should be strengthened to end pollution from industrial chemicals, many of which eventually find their way to water systems, consumer goods, and the sea. Studies have linked exposures to so-called persistent organic pollutants to declines, diseases, or abnormalities in fish, birds, and mammals, as well as reproductive, developmental, and other adverse health effects in humans. Washington can begin by updating and strengthening the Toxic Substances Control Act of 1976, which provides the regulatory basis for preventing pollution by the 80,000 industrial chemicals in commerce today and the roughly 700 new chemicals introduced each year. The law currently does not require that the health and environmental risks of chemicals be routinely assessed or that they be tested for toxicity. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) should be empowered to demand more health and safety information from the chemical industry and shift the burden for demonstrating chemical safety to chemical companies, as many European countries already do. Washington must also lead the fight against the massive amount of pollution in watersheds -- what the EPA calls “nonpoint source pollution,” or pollution from runoff, precipitation, drainage, and other diffuse sources. Industry and most state governments have failed to take effective action on their own. As a result, 40 percent of U.S. rivers, lakes, and estuaries are not clean enough for basic uses such as fishing or swimming. A leading source of this degradation is pollution from chemical fertilizers used in agriculture and from animal feed lots. Chemical runoff has also contributed to offshore dead zones, areas devoid of most ocean life, which have increased fourfold worldwide in the past decade and now number more than 600. The second largest dead zone in the world is in the United States, in the northern Gulf of Mexico. Washington should strengthen the Clean Water Act to protect watersheds, building on the Obama administration’s successful efforts to limit the amount of pollutants that flow into the Chesapeake Bay from local streams, rivers, cities, and farms.
Ocean science creates spinoff tech – solves a litany of impacts

Etzioni 9, Amitai, University Professor at The George Washington University, “Bring NASA Back to Earth,” March 20^th, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/amitai-etzioni/bring-nasa-back-to-earth_b_177328.html

Although oceans cover more than 70% of the Earth, less than 5% of them have been mapped with the same degree of detail as Mars. We have rarely ventured below 6,500 meters in the oceans, although they are more than 11,000 meters deep in places. We know much less about the deepest layers of the oceans than we know about the dark side of the moon. Yet, the potential payoffs are huge. First of all, the ocean floor is the place, bar none, where the largest amounts of untapped oil and gas are to be found. Next: NASA claims that space exploration has led to all kinds of new technology--for instance, it maintains that the coatings that allow space capsules to withstand the heat of reentry are used to make better pots and pans. But deep-sea expeditions are likely to yield even greater benefits. In order to freely explore the oceans' deepest reaches, we must learn to construct submersibles that can handle extreme pressure, as much as 18,000 pounds per square inch. The resulting materials and techniques might help us design and construct homes that could withstand cyclones, hurricanes and earthquakes. In contrast to the remote chance of discovering conditions amenable to organic life on distant planets, it is estimated that there are up to 2 million marine life forms that are yet to be discovered in the oceans. Whenever we venture deeper, we find new species; for instance, lithistids, a rare kind of sponge present only in deep waters. Such discoveries are likely to reveal secrets of earlier life on Earth, and make up for other species that are being lost due to human expansion on the surface. Moreover, deep-water habitats teem with life that contains the promise of new drugs and new cures for diseases. In what are still largely unexplored deep-water reef communities, the Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institution in Ft. Pierce, Florida, has discovered what is believed to be an anti-tumor agent (discodermolide); its value for humans is being tested in clinical trials. Also, scientists expect that organisms in the deep oceans can consume the methane that is seeping through the ocean floor and convert it into energy for themselves. They hope that we could learn to harvest such energy for our own use. The discovery that dust on Mars is finer than previously thought or that water once may have flowed down its now barren craters doesn't bowl me over. Even the seas' more obvious secrets are much richer--for instance, sunken ships. Consider the Swedish warship Vasa, which sank in 1628. Raised in the 1960s, it now tells us volumes about earlier historical periods. Perhaps most important, the oceans are a major part of our environment. They greatly affect the climate and the conditions that allow life--of real, two-legged creatures, our life--to survive. And yet we are turning one sea after another--the Mediterranean, for instance--into garbage dumps. Studying the health of oceans and how they may be protected is much more urgent than re-visiting Mars or watching shadows cross distant suns as Kepler aims to do. There are some--including researchers who do not receive grants from NASA--who believe that we can draw inspiration from walking on the moon, but not from diving into the oceans. They may be too young to remember the admiration with which many millions followed the explorations of Jacques Cousteau. All we need is a good race with other nations--measured by how much ocean we cover and who can find more goodies faster--and ocean exploration will be all the rage. Granted, Obama has more urgent priorities than worrying about either outer space or deep oceans. However, presidents have assistants, and they have assistants. Somebody, one cannot but hope, can bring some sense into setting priorities in spending those dollars dedicated to exploration. These may well be dedicated to discovering ways to fight disease and finding sustainable new sources of energy. But do not look for NASA for much help.

First – ocean exploration key to antibiotic research and drugs – resistance means new sources are key

NAS 7, The National Academies, “Oceans and Human Health: Highlights of National Academies Reports,” http://dels.nas.edu/resources/static-assets/osb/miscellaneous/Oceans-Human-Health.pdf

The ocean benefits human health and well-being in immeasurable ways. The nutritional benefits of eating fish, rich in protein and omega-3 fatty acids, make the ocean an indispensable – but not unlimited – source of healthy food. Ocean science is revealing many other ways in the ocean can benefit human health, from providing new sources of drugs to helping unravel many of the mysteries of human disease. The Ocean is the Most Promising Frontier for Sources of New Drugs. In 1945, a young organic chemist named Werner Bergmann set out to explore the waters off the coast of southern florida. Among the marine organisms he scooped from the sand that day was a Caribbean sponge that would later be called Cryptotethya crypta. Back in his lab, Bergmann extracted a novel compound from this sponge that aroused his curiosity. The chemical Bergmann identified in this sponge, spongothymidine, eventually led to the development of a whole class of drugs that treat cancer and viral diseases and are still in use today. For example, Zidovudine (AZD) fights the AIDS virus, HIV, and cytosine arabinoside (Ara-C) is used in the treatment of leukemias and lymphomas. Acyclovir speeds the healing of eczema and some herpes viruses. These are just a few examples of how the study of marine organisms contributes to the health of thousands of men, women, and children around the world. New antibiotics, in addition to new drugs for fighting cancer, inflammatory diseases, and neurodegenerative diseases (which often cannot be treated successful today), are greatly needed. With drug resistance nibbling away at the once-full toolbox of antibiotics, the limited effectiveness of currently available drugs has dire consequences for public health. Historically, many medicines have come from nature – mostly from land-based natural organisms. Because scientists have nearly exhausted the supply of terrestrial plants, animals, and microorganisms that have interesting medical properties, new sources of drugs are needed. Occupying more than 70 percent of the Earth’s surface, the ocean is a virtually unexplored treasure chest of new and unidentified species – one of the last frontiers for sources of new natural products. These natural products are of special interest because of the dazzling diversity and uniqueness of the creatures that make the sea their home. One reason marine organisms are so interesting to scientists is because in adapting to the various ocean environments, they have evolved fascinating repertoires of unique chemicals to help them survive. For example, anchored to the seafloor, a sponge that protects itself from an animal trying to take over its space by killing the invader has been compared with the human immune system trying to kill foreign cancer cells. That same sponge, bathed in seawater containing millions of bacteria, viruses, and fungi, some of which could be pathogens, has developed antibiotics to keep those pathogens under control. Those same antibiotics could be used to treat infections in humans. Sponges, in fact, are among the most prolific sources of diverse chemical compounds. An estimated 30 percent of all potential marine-derived medications currently in the pipeline – and about 75 percent of recently patented marine-derived anticancer compounds – come from marine sponges. Marine-based microorganisms are another particularly rich source of new medicines. More than 120 drugs available today derived from land-based microbes. Scientists see marine-based microbes as the most promising source of novel medicines from the sea. In all, more than 20,000 biochemical compounds have been isolated from sea creatures since the 1980s. Because drug discovery in the marine frontier is a relatively young field, only a few marine-derived drugs are in use today. Many others are in the pipeline. One example is Prialt, a drug developed from the venom of a fish-killing cone snail. The cone snail produce neuro-toxins to paralyze and kill prey; those neurotoxins are being developed as neuromuscular blocks for individuals with chronic pain, stroke, or epilepsy. Other marine-derived drugs are being tested against herpes, asthma, and breast cancer. The National Research Council report Marine Biotechnology in the Twenty-First Century (2002) concluded that the exploration of unique habitats, such as deep-sea environments, and the isolation and culture of marine microorganisms offer two underexplored opportunities for discovery of novel chemicals with therapeutic potential. The successes to date, which are based upon a very limited investigation of both deep-sea organisms and marine microorganisms, suggest a high potential for continued discovery of new drugs.
Extinction

Yu ‘9 (Victoria, “Human Extinction: The Uncertainty of Our Fate,” Dartmouth Journal of Undergraduate Science, May 22, http://dujs.dartmouth.edu/spring-2009/human-extinction-the-uncertainty-of-our-fate)

In the past, humans have indeed fallen victim to viruses. Perhaps the best-known case was the bubonic plague that killed up to one third of the European population in the mid-14th century (7). While vaccines have been developed for the plague and some other infectious diseases, new viral strains are constantly emerging — a process that maintains the possibility of a pandemic-facilitated human extinction. Some surveyed students mentioned AIDS as a potential pandemic-causing virus. It is true that scientists have been unable thus far to find a sustainable cure for AIDS, mainly due to HIV’s rapid and constant evolution. Specifically, two factors account for the virus’s abnormally high mutation rate: 1. HIV’s use of reverse transcriptase, which does not have a proof-reading mechanism, and 2. the lack of an error-correction mechanism in HIV DNA polymerase (8). Luckily, though, there are certain characteristics of HIV that make it a poor candidate for a large-scale global infection: HIV can lie dormant in the human body for years without manifesting itself, and AIDS itself does not kill directly, but rather through the weakening of the immune system. However, for more easily transmitted viruses such as influenza, the evolution of new strains could prove far more consequential. The simultaneous occurrence of antigenic drift (point mutations that lead to new strains) and antigenic shift (the inter-species transfer of disease) in the influenza virus could produce a new version of influenza for which scientists may not immediately find a cure. Since influenza can spread quickly, this lag time could potentially lead to a “global influenza pandemic,” according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (9). The most recent scare of this variety came in 1918 when bird flu managed to kill over 50 million people around the world in what is sometimes referred to as the Spanish flu pandemic. Perhaps even more frightening is the fact that only 25 mutations were required to convert the original viral strain — which could only infect birds — into a human-viable strain (10).
Nobel Prize winners vote aff

GREGER 08 – M.D., is Director of Public Health and Animal Agriculture at The Humane Society of the United States (Michael Greger, , Bird Flu: A Virus of Our Own Hatching, http://birdflubook.com/a.php?id=111)

Senate Majority Leader Frist describes the recent slew of emerging diseases in almost biblical terms: “All of these [new diseases] were advance patrols of a great army that is preparing way out of sight.”3146 Scientists like Joshua Lederberg don’t think this is mere rhetoric. He should know. Lederberg won the Nobel Prize in medicine at age 33 for his discoveries in bacterial evolution. Lederberg went on to become president of Rockefeller University. “Some people think I am being hysterical,” he said, referring to pandemic influenza, “but there are catastrophes ahead. We live in evolutionary competition with microbes—bacteria and viruses. There is no guarantee that we will be the survivors.”3147 There is a concept in host-parasite evolutionary dynamics called the Red Queen hypothesis, which attempts to describe the unremitting struggle between immune systems and the pathogens against which they fight, each constantly evolving to try to outsmart the other.3148 The name is taken from Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass in which the Red Queen instructs Alice, “Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do to keep in the same place.”3149 Because the pathogens keep evolving, our immune systems have to keep adapting as well just to keep up. According to the theory, animals who “stop running” go extinct. So far our immune systems have largely retained the upper hand, but the fear is that given the current rate of disease emergence, the human race is losing the race.3150 In a Scientific American article titled, “Will We Survive?,” one of the world’s leading immunologists writes: Has the immune system, then, reached its apogee after the few hundred million years it had taken to develop? Can it respond in time to the new evolutionary challenges? These perfectly proper questions lack sure answers because we are in an utterly unprecedented situation [given the number of newly emerging infections].3151 The research team who wrote Beasts of the Earth conclude, “Considering that bacteria, viruses, and protozoa had a more than two-billion-year head start in this war, a victory by recently arrived Homo sapiens would be remarkable.”3152 Lederberg ardently believes that emerging viruses may imperil human society itself. Says NIH medical epidemiologist David Morens, When you look at the relationship between bugs and humans, the more important thing to look at is the bug. When an enterovirus like polio goes through the human gastrointestinal tract in three days, its genome mutates about two percent. That level of mutation—two percent of the genome—has taken the human species eight million years to accomplish. So who’s going to adapt to whom? Pitted against that kind of competition, Lederberg concludes that the human evolutionary capacity to keep up “may be dismissed as almost totally inconsequential.”3153 To help prevent the evolution of viruses as threatening as H5N1, the least we can do is take away a few billion feathered test tubes in which viruses can experiment, a few billion fewer spins at pandemic roulette. The human species has existed in something like our present form for approximately 200,000 years. “Such a long run should itself give us confidence that our species will continue to survive, at least insofar as the microbial world is concerned. Yet such optimism,” wrote the Ehrlich prize-winning former chair of zoology at the University College of London, “might easily transmute into a tune whistled whilst passing a graveyard.”3154

Second – Ocean exploration key to solve water scarcity

Lang 13, David, 2013 TED fellow, co-founder of OpenROV, He is a writer for MAKE: Magazine and the author of Zero to Maker, “Underwater Exploration with David Lang,” 12/17, http://studentsrebuild.org/blog/2013-12-17/underwater-exploration-david-lang

Student Rebuilders: The world water crisis has many complex parts that are all related: drinking water scarcity, food insecurity, declining ocean health, gender inequality and climate change—just to name a few. In this blog post, Water Wisdom is focusing on ocean exploration, and the diverse ways in which innovation and technology can help us find solutions to the water crisis. We’re tremendously excited to share the work of our next guest blogger, David Lang, and his project OpenROV. OpenROV is an underwater robot that you can actually build yourself, and from checking on underwater pollution to finding the next sunken treasure, even to making new freshwater discoveries- it's just one exciting tool that can help users better understand the water systems around them. The water crisis is a big, complex issue. It means different things to different people. It has a different meaning for someone living in sub-Saharan Africa who lacks access to clean drinking water than it does to a farmer in California. But for anyone who has gone without, it's most certainly a crisis. To be perfectly honest and transparent, I'm not an expert. I'm just a guy who builds underwater robots. There are others more qualified than me (like Prof. Christiana Peppard) who can tell you more about the details of the situation. But I do know one thing: with such a multi-faceted issue, the solutions will have to come on multiple fronts. I want to offer one angle that doesn't get a lot of attention (well, until recently): exploration. In the face of crisis, it's easy to brush aside exploration as a luxury. But it's an absolute necessity. Take the most recent discovery of vast fresh water reserves underneath the ocean floor. This discovery - made only months ago - changes human understanding of fresh water on our planet. Admittedly, the economics of extracting this fresh water will need to be better understood, as well as the potential environmental impacts, but it still sheds an incredible new light on the issue. A perspective we wouldn't have if it wasn't for exploration. Humans are explorers. It's in our blood. There have always been members of our tribes and clans and cultures that took it upon themselves to wander over the horizon (and across the oceans and into space, too). It's always been the explorers who've gone ahead to find new resources and drive the species forward. But the nature of exploration has changed. It's no longer about finding things, it's about making things. Makers are the new explorers of the universe, and the technology they create will drive the new opportunities. Scratch that, the technology you create. It's an incredible moment in history. All of a sudden, the tools for making and inventing and exploring are at your fingertips. The maker movement - a combination of accessible makerspaces, powerful digital fabrication tools, and collaborative online communities - have lowered the barriers to bringing a new idea into the world. What used to take years of prototyping experience, millions of dollars of capital, and access to a cutting-edge facility can now be made by a group of amateur enthusiasts in a matter of months at a neighborhood makerspace. Sounds crazy, right? I know. I wouldn't believe it was possible if it didn't happen to us. Two years ago, my friend Eric Stackpole and I were tinkering around in his garage, trying to build an underwater robot we could use to explore a cave in Northern California (with rumors of lost treasure). Now, we're collaborating with an open-source community of amateur ocean explorers to build a network of thousands of these low-cost underwater robots. It's a thrill! No one ever told us this was possible; that we could create this network of collaborators and innovative tools (in fact, many people told us we wouldn't be able to). We just did it. And, in doing so, opened up entirely new possibilities.
Waters wars escalate- it’s blue gold

Arsenault 11 (Chris, guest lecturer the University of Toronto, Queen’s University, York University, Laurentian, Saint Mary's University and the Universidad Anáhuac, BA in history and economics from Dalhousie University and an MA in history from the University of British Columbia, “Risk of water wars rises with scarcity,” 8/26, http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2011/06/2011622193147231653.html)
The author Mark Twain once remarked that "whisky is for drinking; water is for fighting over" and a series of reports from intelligence agencies and research groups indicate the prospect of a water war is becoming increasingly likely. In March, a report from the office of the US Director of National Intelligence said the risk of conflict would grow as water demand is set to outstrip sustainable current supplies by 40 per cent by 2030. "These threats are real and they do raise serious national security concerns," Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, said after the report's release. Internationally, 780 million people lack access to safe drinking water, according to the United Nations. By 2030, 47 per cent of the world’s population will be living in areas of high water stress, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development's Environmental Outlook to 2030 report. Some analysts worry that wars of the future will be fought over blue gold, as thirsty people, opportunistic politicians and powerful corporations battle for dwindling resources. Dangerous warnings Governments and military planners around the world are aware of the impending problem; with the US senate issuing reports with names like Avoiding Water Wars: Water Scarcity and Central Asia’s growing Importance for Stability in Afghanistan and Pakistan. With rapid population growth, and increased industrial demand, water withdrawls have tripled over the last 50 years, according to UN figures. "Water scarcity is an issue exacerbated by demographic pressures, climate change and pollution," said Ignacio Saiz, director of Centre for Economic and Social Rights, a social justice group. "The world's water supplies should guarantee every member of the population to cover their personal and domestic needs." "Fundamentally, these are issues of poverty and inequality, man-made problems," he told Al Jazeera. Of all the water on earth, 97 per cent is salt water and the remaining three per cent is fresh, with less than one per cent of the planet's drinkable water readily accessible for direct human uses. Scarcity is defined as each person in an area having access to less than 1,000 cubic meters of water a year. The areas where water scarcity is the biggest problem are some of the same places where political conflicts are rife, leading to potentially explosive situations.
Water scarcity causes Pakistan collapse

RT ‘12 (Russia today, citing an intelligence report from The Office of the Director of National Intelligence “Global 'water war' threat by 2030 - US intelligence,” March 22^nd, http://rt.com/news/water-conflict-terrorism-rivers-239/)
And while the prospect of “water wars” has been touted for decades, it may start to become reality within a decade. The ODNI predicts that by 2040 water demand will outstrip current supply by 40 per cent. Impoverished volatile states will be worst off Water shortages “will hinder the ability of key countries to produce food and generate energy, posing a risk to global food markets and hobbling economic growth.” North Africa, the Middle East and South Asia will be hit the hardest, the report states. And while the coming shortage is a manageable problem for richer countries, it is a deadly “destabilizing factor” in poorer ones. As a rule, economically disadvantaged countries are already prone to political, social and religious turmoil, and failure to provide water for farmers and city dwellers can be the spark for wider “state failure.” Among those most vulnerable to this scenario are Sudan, Pakistan and Iraq, which are all locked in debilitating civil conflicts, and Somalia, which has effectively ceased to function as a state. ODNI envisages countries restricting water for its own citizens to “pressure populations and suppress separatist elements.” The report predicts many ordinary citizens will have to resort to the kind of purification tablets currently used by soldiers and hikers to obtain clean water. Most dangerously, there are whole clusters of unstable countries fighting for the same waterways. The report lists the Nile, which runs through Uganda, Ethiopia, Sudan and Egypt, the Jordan, which runs through Israel and several Arab countries, and the Indus, which is shared by Pakistan and India. These areas are managed by special commissions, and the report states that “historically, water tensions have led to more water-sharing agreements than violent conflicts.” But once there is not enough water to go around, these fragile pacts may collapse, with “more powerful upstream nations impeding or cutting off downstream flow.”

Pakistan instability causes nuclear war

Pitt ‘9 (New York Times and internationally bestselling author of two books: "War on Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn't Want You to Know" and "The Greatest Sedition Is Silence." (5/8/09, William, “Unstable Pakistan Threatens the World,” http://www.arabamericannews.com/news/index.php?mod=article&cat=commentary&article=2183)
But a suicide bomber in Pakistan rammed a car packed with explosives into a jeep filled with troops today, killing five and wounding as many as 21, including several children who were waiting for a ride to school. Residents of the region where the attack took place are fleeing in terror as gunfire rings out around them, and government forces have been unable to quell the violence. Two regional government officials were beheaded by militants in retaliation for the killing of other militants by government forces. As familiar as this sounds, it did not take place where we have come to expect such terrible events. This, unfortunately, is a whole new ballgame. It is part of another conflict that is brewing, one which puts what is happening in Iraq and Afghanistan in deep shade, and which represents a grave and growing threat to us all. Pakistan is now trembling on the edge of violent chaos, and is doing so with nuclear weapons in its hip pocket, right in the middle of one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in the world. The situation in brief: Pakistan for years has been a nation in turmoil, run by a shaky government supported by a corrupted system, dominated by a blatantly criminal security service, and threatened by a large fundamentalist Islamic population with deep ties to the Taliban in Afghanistan. All this is piled atop an ongoing standoff with neighboring India that has been the center of political gravity in the region for more than half a century. The fact that Pakistan, and India, and Russia, and China all possess nuclear weapons and share the same space means any ongoing or escalating violence over there has the real potential to crack open the very gates of Hell itself. Recently, the Taliban made a military push into the northwest Pakistani region around the Swat Valley. According to a recent Reuters report: The (Pakistani) army deployed troops in Swat in October 2007 and used artillery and gunship helicopters to reassert control. But insecurity mounted after a civilian government came to power last year and tried to reach a negotiated settlement. A peace accord fell apart in May 2008. After that, hundreds — including soldiers, militants and civilians — died in battles. Militants unleashed a reign of terror, killing and beheading politicians, singers, soldiers and opponents. They banned female education and destroyed nearly 200 girls' schools. About 1,200 people were killed since late 2007 and 250,000 to 500,000 fled, leaving the militants in virtual control. Pakistan offered on February 16 to introduce Islamic law in the Swat valley and neighboring areas in a bid to take the steam out of the insurgency. The militants announced an indefinite cease-fire after the army said it was halting operations in the region. President Asif Ali Zardari signed a regulation imposing sharia in the area last month. But the Taliban refused to give up their guns and pushed into Buner and another district adjacent to Swat, intent on spreading their rule. The United States, already embroiled in a war against Taliban forces in Afghanistan, must now face the possibility that Pakistan could collapse under the mounting threat of Taliban forces there. Military and diplomatic advisers to President Obama, uncertain how best to proceed, now face one of the great nightmare scenarios of our time. "Recent militant gains in Pakistan," reported The New York Times on Monday, "have so alarmed the White House that the national security adviser, Gen. James L. Jones, described the situation as 'one of the very most serious problems we face.'" "Security was deteriorating rapidly," reported The Washington Post on Monday, "particularly in the mountains along the Afghan border that harbor al-Qaeda and the Taliban, intelligence chiefs reported, and there were signs that those groups were working with indigenous extremists in Pakistan's populous Punjabi heartland. The Pakistani government was mired in political bickering. The army, still fixated on its historical adversary India, remained ill-equipped and unwilling to throw its full weight into the counterinsurgency fight. But despite the threat the intelligence conveyed, Obama has only limited options for dealing with it. Anti-American feeling in Pakistan is high, and a U.S. combat presence is prohibited. The United States is fighting Pakistan-based extremists by proxy, through an army over which it has little control, in alliance with a government in which it has little confidence." It is believed Pakistan is currently in possession of between 60 and 100 nuclear weapons. Because Pakistan's stability is threatened by the wide swath of its population that shares ethnic, cultural and religious connections to the fundamentalist Islamic populace of Afghanistan, fears over what could happen to those nuclear weapons if the Pakistani government collapses are very real. "As the insurgency of the Taliban and Al Qaeda spreads in Pakistan," reported the Times last week, "senior American officials say they are increasingly concerned about new vulnerabilities for Pakistan's nuclear arsenal, including the potential for militants to snatch a weapon in transport or to insert sympathizers into laboratories or fuel-production facilities. In public, the administration has only hinted at those concerns, repeating the formulation that the Bush administration used: that it has faith in the Pakistani Army. But that cooperation, according to officials who would not speak for attribution because of the sensitivity surrounding the exchanges between Washington and Islamabad, has been sharply limited when the subject has turned to the vulnerabilities in the Pakistani nuclear infrastructure." "The prospect of turmoil in Pakistan sends shivers up the spines of those U.S. officials charged with keeping tabs on foreign nuclear weapons," reported Time Magazine last month. "Pakistan is thought to possess about 100 — the U.S. isn't sure of the total, and may not know where all of them are. Still, if Pakistan collapses, the U.S. military is primed to enter the country and secure as many of those weapons as it can, according to U.S. officials. Pakistani officials insist their personnel safeguards are stringent, but a sleeper cell could cause big trouble, U.S. officials say." In other words, a shaky Pakistan spells trouble for everyone, especially if America loses the footrace to secure those weapons in the event of the worst-case scenario. If Pakistani militants ever succeed in toppling the government, several very dangerous events could happen at once. Nuclear-armed India could be galvanized into military action of some kind, as could nuclear-armed China or nuclear-armed Russia. If the Pakistani government does fall, and all those Pakistani nukes are not immediately accounted for and secured, the specter (or reality) of loose nukes falling into the hands of terrorist organizations could place the entire world on a collision course with unimaginable disaster. We have all been paying a great deal of attention to Iraq and Afghanistan, and rightly so. The developing situation in Pakistan, however, needs to be placed immediately on the front burner. The Obama administration appears to be gravely serious about addressing the situation. So should we all.

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