Arctic Oil/Gas Neg

3. They incentivize mindless all-out exploitation that makes disaster inevitable.

C. How to Learn from the Context of the Disaster: United States' Energy Policy

A third meta-lesson from the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster is that the drilling of that particular offshore well is the result not just of private choice, but of a broader national policy on energy. MMS's oil leasing and permitting decisions reflect executive branch decisions about the disposition of publicly owned oil and gas resources. n115 BP's decisions about exploration in that area were not made in a vacuum, but in the context of a set of laws and appropriations that create a variety of incentives that affect industry's behavior. Thus, to understand why the disaster occurred, it would be wise to look at the policy context that has produced the increasing rush to develop oil resources in deepwater, and increasingly in ultra-deepwater--areas that increase the complexity, risks, and uncertainty of drilling operations and potential accidents. n116 The most visible leadership on this issue comes from statements of the Oil Spill Commission and its Co-Chair Bob Graham, who has repeatedly noted that the lack of an energy policy is an important issue related to the work of the Oil Spill Commission and one that must be addressed by the legislative and executive branches. n117

 [*301]  The current energy policy provides hefty subsidies for the highly profitable oil and gas industries to continue with their unwavering focus on producing more oil and gas. n118 Although some say that the United States lacks an energy policy, it is more accurate to say that our leaders don't clearly articulate the operative energy policy. Perhaps this is because it is not a coherent one or because on close inspection it is difficult to justify in light of other stated priorities.

A primary and often overlooked component of energy policy is the national policy on the privatization of public natural resources. U.S. policy is to give away its natural resources at bargain prices presumably to promote exploitation and development. n119 A 2008 report by the Government Accountability Office compared U.S. royalty rates to those of 103 other jurisdictions, and only eleven had royalty rates lower than those of the United States. n120 Moreover, the Government Accountability Office has made repeated reports of problems with uncollected royalties and with MMS's royalty-in-kind program that has led to underestimation of the royalties owed. n121

Another significant component of the national energy policy is tax policy that directly affects investment in oil extraction. A 2005 Congressional Budget Office Report showed that many capital investments for oil extraction are taxed at a rate of nine percent, which ranks among  [*302]  the lowest rates for any industry. n122 Tax deductions and credits for the oil extraction industry amount to roughly $ 4 billion per year. n123

Looked at as a whole, the current energy policy strongly encourages all-out exploitation of remaining domestic fossil fuel resources, and deepwater oil reserves in particular. If the public and elected officials believe that the risks that produced the Macondo Well blowout are unacceptable, an energy policy that will move us towards a clean energy path is a logical response. This could include increased government support for lower carbon, lower-risk energy paths.

Despite the clear political opportunity provided by the Deepwater Horizon disaster for the President and Congress to focus attention on a broad clean energy policy, there have been few signs of any significant movement in that direction. n124 The CLEAR Act included provisions that would eliminate some of the royalty relief for deepwater drilling, eliminate the disastrous royalty-in-kind program, and require BOEMRE to study global royalty payments to inform U.S. royalty policy. n125 These are very positive steps that would reduce the mindless incentives for deepwater drilling and the unintended windfalls to oil companies. However, that Act has languished in the Senate. Moreover, even those proposed changes fail to address the broader question of whether policy should create incentives towards a cleaner energy path. In the wake of the November 2010 election, it seems highly unlikely that the Administration or Congress will have interest in this topic. n126

CONCLUSION

There is much that can be learned from the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster. Unfortunately, even learning the most specific lessons has proved a contentious and uncertain process. This Article suggests first that both industry and government must fundamentally rethink their approaches to safety and develop a culture that encourages and facilitates learning from mistakes. Second, it identifies the phenomenon of  [*303] hollow government, characterized by government lacking the resources and authority to protect the public interest and a policy process dominated by powerful economic interests, as a root cause of the BP disaster and a contributing factor to other recent national disasters, including the financial crisis. Hollow government also makes it unlikely that we will learn the third meta-lesson and address the longstanding need for a coherent energy policy. These lessons could help to avert future disasters and better enable government to protect public health, safety, and the environment. However, absent changes to address the underlying obstacles to learning, there seems little likelihood that the lessons will be learned.

2NC A2: DOI Regulation Link turn

Weak regulatory regime will encourage the industry to take unnecessary risks.

Flournoy 11—Professor and Director of the Environmental and Land Use Law Program @ University of Florida Levin College of Law [Alyson C. Flournoy, “ARTICLE: THREE META-LESSONS GOVERNMENT AND INDUSTRY SHOULD LEARN FROM THE BP DEEPWATER HORIZON DISASTER AND WHY THEY WILL NOT,” Boston College Environmental Affairs Law Review, 2011, 38 B.C. Envtl. Aff. L. Rev. 281

Although this Article's primary focus is on law and policy lessons, it is important to note that these highly visible and concrete failures will likely lead industry to respond voluntarily by adopting some practices and procedures to avoid similar failures. n27 From a law and governance perspective, however, simply allowing industry to learn voluntarily and police itself is widely viewed as inadequate for several reasons. n28 Indeed, the regulatory environment that existed at the time of the blowout relied  [*286]  heavily on industry self-regulation. n29 Investigation in the wake of the blowout has revealed that the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act (OCSLA)--the law governing development of federally owned oil and gas resources on the Outer Continental Shelf--included few standards to assure protection of health, safety, and the environment. n30 Additionally, the Minerals Management Service's (MMS) approach to regulation under the OCSLA relied heavily on standards developed by and voluntarily agreed to by industry. n31 Of course, even with this weak regulatory regime, the threat of tort liability should have provided industry with an incentive to take steps to avoid catastrophic risk. n32 However, it seems clear from most accounts that BP and its contractors failed to accurately assess the severity of the risks they faced. n33 Thus, relying on industry, market forces, and the tort liability system to deter similar conduct seems unwarranted and an abdication of government's role in protecting health, safety, and the environment.

Driling Causes Methane

Arctic drilling releases methane- causes rapid warming

Magill 5/1

Bobby Magill (writer for Climate Central), 5/1/2014, “Arctic Methane Emissions ‘Certain to Trigger Warming’”, http://www.climatecentral.org/news/arctic-methane-emissions-certain-to-trigger-warming-17374, 6/25/2014, #TheNextPKen

As climate change melts Arctic permafrost and releases large amounts of methane into the atmosphere, it is creating a feedback loop that is "certain to trigger additional warming," according to the lead scientist of a new study investigating Arctic methane emissions. ¶ The study released this week examined 71 wetlands across the globe and found that melting permafrost is creating wetlands known as fens, which are unexpectedly emitting large quantities of methane. Over a 100-year timeframe, methane is about 35 times as potent as a climate change-driving greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, and over 20 years, it's 84 times more potent.¶ Permafrost terraces in Alaska.¶ Credit: U.S. Fish and Wildife Service Alaska/flickr¶ Methane emissions come from agriculture, fossil fuel production and microbes in wetland soils, among other sources. The study says scientists have assumed that methane emissions from wetlands are high in the tropics, but not necessarily in the Arctic because of the cold temperatures there. ¶ But a spike in global methane concentrations in the atmosphere seen since 2007 can be partly traced back to the formation of fens in areas where permafrost once existed, according to the study, led by University of Guelph (Ontario, Canada) biology professor Merritt Turetsky.¶ The methane emissions stemming from melting permafrost could be critical to determining how fast the climate will change in the future.

Arctic drilling releases methane- 25 times more potent than CO2

Banerjee 13

Subhankar Banerjee (writer for Global Research), 6/30/2013, “Arctic Methane Release and Global Warming”, http://www.globalresearch.ca/arctic-methane-release-and-global-warming/5344315, 6/25/2014, #TheNextPKen

On July 25 the journal Nature published an article about the “Economic time bomb” that is slowly being detonated by Arctic warming. Gail Whiteman of Erasmus University in the Netherlands, and Chris Hope and Peter Wadhams of the University of Cambridge suggest—based on economic modeling that the “release of methane from thawing permafrost beneath the East Siberian Sea” would come with an “average global price tag of $60 trillion.” The news should have sent a shock wave through the media. But instead, predictably, the public were encouraged to celebrate—again and again, and again—the birth of the royal son.¶ My first encounter with methane release in the Arctic was in early August 2006. It was a grey, cold day along the Beaufort Sea coast in Alaska. Iñupiaq conservationist Robert Thompson and I were walking along the northwest corner of Barter Island when we came across a rather ghastly scene: an exposed coffin with human bones scattered around it. The permafrost (frozen soil) had melted away and exposed the coffin. Robert speculated that a grizzly bear broke open the coffin and scattered the human remains. What we didn’t see, however, is the methane that was released from thawing of the permafrost.¶ Title¶ Permafrost melted away and exposed the coffin, Barter Island, Alaska. Photo by Subhankar Banerjee, August 2006.¶ Methane (CH4) is a greenhouse gas that causes global warming and is more than twenty times more potent than CO2. Large amount of methane is stored in the Arctic—both terrestrial and subsea. It is released in two ways: when permafrost on land thaws from warming, the soil decomposes and gradually releases methane. In the seabed, methane is stored as a methane gas or hydrate, and is released when the subsea permafrost thaws from warming. The methane release from the seabed can be larger and more abrupt than through decomposition of the terrestrial permafrost.¶ In 2007, the extent of summer sea ice in the Arctic Ocean hit a record low—30 percent below average. This event spurred a study by scientists from the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSID) in Boulder, Colorado. The team used climate models to understand if the “unusually low sea–ice extent and warm land temperatures were related.” In 2008 they published results from their study in Geophysical Research Letters. They found:¶ “The rate of climate warming over northern Alaska, Canada, and Russia could more than triple during periods of rapid sea ice loss … The findings raise concerns about the thawing of permafrost … and the potential consequences for sensitive ecosystems, human infrastructure, and the release of additional greenhouse gases [CO2 and CH4].”¶ This was alarming news because Arctic permafrost holds “30 percent or more of all the carbon stored in soils worldwide.” In reality, the Arctic sea ice is continuing to retreat at a rapid pace. The August–September sea ice extent in the Arctic Ocean had set a new record low last year: 18 per cent below the previous record of 2007.

Methane Causes Extinction

Methane causes extinction- empirics

Fordahl 13

Matthew Fordahl (writer for ABC News), 7/27/2014, “Methane Caused Extinctions”, http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=120076, #TheNextPKen

Huge reservoirs of methane trapped beneath the ocean floor rapidly escaped during prehistoric global warming and depleted much of the sea’s oxygen, according to new research into why many forms of life suddenly vanished 183 million years ago.¶ The findings, reported in today’s issue of the journal Nature, shed new light not only on the disappearance of as many as 80 percent of some deep-sea species, but also on a process suspected in other prehistoric mass extinctions.¶ The study also raised questions about today’s sea floor reservoir of methane hydrate, which the federal government plans to study as a possible energy source.¶ Algae Fuel¶ “One of the important questions that is debated a lot today is the stability of this methane hydrate reservoir and how easy it is to release the methane that is there,” said Stephen Hesselbo, an Oxford University researcher and the study’s lead author.¶ Methane hydrate is formed beneath the sea floor when algae from the surface dies and sinks. Normally a gas, the methane is locked in an ice-like state but is susceptible to changes in pressure and temperature.¶ In the latest research, the Oxford scientists studied fossil wood deposits and identified a signal that they say indicates an unusual level of light carbon in the Earth’s atmosphere.¶ “It’s a question of trying to identify what the source of the light carbon would be,” Hesselbo said. “The best explanation in this case is that it comes from methane — methane hydrate from ocean margin sediment.”¶ Oxygen Consumer¶ The researchers believe massive volcanic eruptions during the Jurassic period initiated global warming by spewing carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Deep-sea currents also were affected.¶ Methane, freed from its suboceanic cage by warmer water, then used the oxygen in the water or atmosphere to form carbon dioxide. In either case, it would have accelerated global warming.¶ “A number of important fossil groups disappeared at exactly that time,” Hesselbo said. “The extinction and the association with the lack of oxygen has been fairly well established, but the association with methane release is something that hasn’t been realized before.”¶ Hardest hit were bottom-feeding clam-like organisms known as bivalves: An estimated 80 percent of the species disappeared. Others affected included ostracods, belemnites and some marine plants.¶ Explosive Release¶ The researchers believe the event took place over a period of 5,000 years — a blink in geologic time. The release was estimated to be 20 percent of the present-day 14,000 billion tons of gas hydrate on the sea floor.¶ “It’s an interesting novel explanation, and it seems to account for the geochemical data that they have,” said David Ottjer, a paleontologist and Earth sciences professor at the University of Southern California.¶ “They have to wiggle a fair bit to get to where they want to go for their solution, but they may be right,” he said. “It’s not necessarily that they’ve found the absolute smoking gun, but they’re probably on the right track.

Methane causes extinction

Dunham 3/31

Michael Dunham (writer for Scientific American), 3/31/2014, “Methane-spewing Microbe Blamed in Earth's Worst Mass Extinction”, http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/methane-spewing-microbe-blamed-in-earths-worst-mass-extinction/, 6/25/2014, #TheNextPKen

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Sometimes bad things come in small packages.¶ A microbe that spewed humongous amounts of methane into Earth's atmosphere triggered a global catastrophe 252 million years ago that wiped out upwards of 90 percent of marine species and 70 percent of land vertebrates.¶ That's the hypothesis offered on Monday by researchers aiming to solve one of science's enduring mysteries: what happened at the end of the Permian period to cause the worst of the five mass extinctions in Earth's history.¶ The scale of this calamity made the one that doomed the dinosaurs 65 million years ago - a six-mile wide asteroid smacking the planet - seem like a picnic by comparison.¶ The implicated microbe, Methanosarcina, is a member of a kingdom of single-celled organisms distinct from bacteria called archaea that lack a nucleus and other usual cell structures.¶ "I would say that the end-Permian extinction is the closest animal life has ever come to being totally wiped out, and it may have come pretty close," said Massachusetts Institute of Technology biologist Greg Fournier, one of the researchers.¶ "Many, if not most, of the surviving groups of organisms barely hung on, with only a few species making it through, many probably by chance," Fournier added.¶ Previous ideas proposed for the Permian extinction include an asteroid and large-scale volcanism. But these researchers suggest a microscope would be needed to find the actual culprit.¶ Methanosarcina grew in a frenzy in the seas, disgorging huge quantities of methane into Earth's atmosphere, they said.¶ This dramatically heated up the climate and fundamentally altered the chemistry of the oceans by driving up acid levels, causing unlivable conditions for many species, they added.¶ The horseshoe crab-like trilobites and the sea scorpions - denizens of the seas for hundreds of millions of years - simply vanished. Other marine groups barely avoided oblivion including common creatures called ammonites with tentacles and a shell.¶ On land, most of the dominant mammal-like reptiles died, with the exception of a handful of lineages including the ones that were the ancestors of modern mammals including people.¶ 'RADICALLY CHANGED'¶ "Land vertebrates took as long as 30 million years to reach the same levels of biodiversity as before the extinction, and afterwards life in the oceans and on land was radically changed, dominated by very different groups of animals," Fournier said.¶ The first dinosaurs appeared 20 million years after the Permian mass extinction.¶ "One important point is that the natural environment is sensitive to the evolution of microbial life," said Daniel Rothman, an MIT geophysics professor who led the study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.¶ The best example of that, Rothman said, was the advent about 2.5 billion years ago of bacteria engaging in photosynthesis, which paved the way for the later appearance of animals by belching fantastic amounts of oxygen into Earth's atmosphere.¶ Methanosarcina is still found today in places like oil wells, trash dumps and the guts of animals like cows.¶ It already existed before the Permian crisis. But genetic evidence indicates it acquired a unique new quality at that time through a process known as "gene transfer" from another microbe, the researchers said.¶ It suddenly became a major producer of methane through the consumption of accumulated organic carbon in ocean sediments.¶ The microbe would have been unable to proliferate so wildly without proper mineral nutrients. The researchers found that cataclysmic volcanic eruptions that occurred at that time in Siberia drove up ocean concentrations of nickel, a metallic element that just happens to facilitate this microbe's growth.¶ Fournier called volcanism a catalyst instead of a cause of mass extinction - "the detonator rather than the bomb itself."¶ "As small as an individual microorganism is, their sheer abundance and ubiquity make for a huge cumulative impact. On a geochemical level, they really do run the planet," he said.¶ The Permian mass extinction unfolded during tens of thousands of years and was not the sudden die-off that an asteroid impact might cause, the researchers said.¶ The most famous of Earth's mass extinctions occurred 65 million years ago when an asteroid impact wiped out the dinosaurs that ruled the land and many marine species. There also were huge die-offs 440 million years ago, 365 million years ago and 200 million years ago.

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