Tournament: Wake Forest | Round: 6 | Opponent: Hooch IP | Judge: Stephen Weil
1AC v1 – Greenhill
Plan
The United States federal government should pass the Outer Continental Shelf Transboundary Hydrocarbon Agreement.
Environment

Contention one is the environment
Mexico’s oil company PEMEX has no tech or expertise to drill
Johnson 12 - Tim Johnson, Maria Moors Cabot Prize, Winner and Stanford University, Knight Fellow, citing various oil experts, 3-04-12, McClatchy Newspapers, Mexico City, “Mexican plan for Gulf deepwater wells sparks new worries” http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2012/04/03/144004/mexican-plan-for-gulf-deepwater.html#.UdA9CvmwWuk
Two years after the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history,
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"The risks are massive and the potential benefits are comparatively small."
Florida Straits ecosystems are on the brink—a spill would crush the coastline and Caribbean coral reefs – kills species
Hoffman ’12 – environment and science writer for numerous publications
(Karen, “Cuba’s Gulf of Mexico Oil Exploration Makes Strange Bedfellows”, Earth Island Journal, 3-15-2012, http://www.earthisland.org/journal/index.php/elist/eListRead/cubas_gulf_of_mexico_oil_exploration_makes_strange_bedfellows/)
Florida’s 800 miles of coast are far from as unspoiled as Cuba’s, but they
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, Cuba and Mexico to collaborate more on marine science and conservation issues.)
Scenario 1 is Warming
Independently, the plan is key to clean tech
Sarukhan 12 (Arturo Sarukhan is a distinguished affiliate in the Foreign Policyand Metropolitan Policy programs at Brookings. He focuses on hemispheric issues, Mexico-U.S. relations, immigration policy, new security threats, and the role of cities in the 21st Century. He is chairman of Global Solutions/A Podesta Company, a global strategic consulting and risk assessment firm. The grandson and son of conflict refugees in Mexico, he served as a career diplomat in the Mexican Foreign Service for 20 years and received the rank of career ambassador in 2006, February 2012, http://www.americanambassadors.org/publications/ambassadors-review/spring-2012/mexico-and-the-united-states-a-strategic-relationship)//moxley
The fourth driver of our bilateral agenda is
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 together in the development of clean fuel.
Clean tech solves climate change
Klarevas ’09 12/15/09, Louis Klarevas is a Professor at
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means of leverage that can be employed to keep potential foes in check. 

Warming is the only existential risk
Deibel ’07—Prof IR @ National War College (Terry, “Foreign Affairs
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States, but potentially to the continued existence of life on this planet.
Warming is real and anthropogenic – skeptics are bought off clowns
Prothero 12 (Donald Prothero, Professor of Geology at Occidental College, Lecturer in Geobiology at CalTech, "How We Know Global Warming is Real and Human Caused," 3/1/12, EBSCO)
How do we know that global warming is real and primarily human caused? There
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change when it threatens their survival. Neither can we as a society.
Wetlands

Contention two is wetlands
Southeastern wetlands are key to aquatic biodiversity, the hydrologic cycle, watershed health, and prevent erosion and they’re on the brink now
EPA 13 – US Environmental Protection Agency (“Protecting Wetlands in Coastal Watersheds”, Last updated on Wednesday, July 03, 2013, http://water.epa.gov/type/wetlands/cwt.cfm)
Coastal wetlands include saltwater and freshwater wetlands located within coastal watersheds — specifically USGS 8
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of carbon due to their rapid growth rates and slow decomposition rates.6
Gulf oil spills devastate wetlands environments, destroy water quality and increase soil erosion
EarthGauge 10 – a National Environmental Education Foundation Program (“Gulf Oil Spill Series: Impacts on Coastal Wetland Plants”, http://www.earthgauge.net/wp-content/EG_Gulf_WetlandPlants.pdf)
IMPACTS OF OIL ON COASTAL WETLANDS Most research on the impacts of oil in wetlands
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higher water levels and excess flooding that may prevent plants from growing back.
Wetlands are key to the hydro-cycle – the impact is extinction
Ramsar Convention 96 (“Ramsar Convention on Wetlands, Wetlands and Biodiversity, Executive Summary”, http://www.ramsar.org/about/about_biodiversity.htm, ACC: 12.20.08, p. online)
Wetlands - including (inter alia) rivers, lakes, marshes, estuaries,
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transition zones between aquatic ecosystems and terrestrial ecosystems such as forests and grasslands.
Soil erosion threatens all life on the planet
Ikerd 99 – Professor Emeritus of Agricultural Economics at University of Missouri  (John E., “Foundational Principles: Soils. Stewardship, and Sustainability,” Sep 22, http://www.ssu.missouri.edu/faculty/jikerd/papers/NCSOILS.html)
A foundation is "the basis upon which something stands or is supported" (
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water to drink, and food to eat. It’s just less obvious.

Oil spills threaten gulf sponges key to fight diseases – BP put them on the brink
Downing 10 – Larry, Reuters senior staff (“Medical Cures May Be Destroyed By Oil Spill”, 7-9-10, http://www.wftv.com/news/news/medical-cures-may-be-destroyed-by-oil-spill/nJwf4/)
The cure for cancer or malaria could be destroyed because of the oil disaster in
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It’s not only damaging to sea life, but human life as well.
Sponges solve antibiotic resistance
Sanders 9 – Laura, Ph.D. in Molecular Biology from UCLA, Neuroscience Writer for Science News (“Sponge's secret weapon revealed” Science News, 00368423, 3-14-09, v.175, iss.6)
A chemical from an ocean-dwelling sponge can reprogram antibiotic-resistant bacteria to
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the bacterium, it's not throwing up any red flags," Moeller said.
Antibiotic resistance causes extinction
Davies 08 – Julian, Fellow of the Royal Society, British microbiologist, professor emeritus, and Principal Investigator of the Davies Lab, at University of British Columbia (“Resistance redux; Infectious diseases, antibiotic resistance and the future of mankind”, EMBO Rep. 2008 July; 9(Suppl 1): S18–S21. doi:  10.1038/embor.2008.69 PMCID: PMC3327549, Science and Society)
For many years, antibiotic-resistant pathogens have been recognized as one of the
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our best efforts, continue to exact a toll on the human race. 

Economy

Contention three is the economy
PEMEX is declining – THA diversifies Mexico’s oil portfolio
Kerry et al. 12 (JOHN F. KERRY, Massachusetts, Chairman  BARBARA
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poverty alleviation to the rule of law, let alone broader economic growth.

PEMEX and oil decline will drive Mexico into a financial crisis
Krauss and Malkin 10 Clifford Kraus and Elisabeth Malkin, Krauss is a national business
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, Pemex is in a key moment in its history,” he said.

We’ll isolate two internal links to economic growth
First is cooperation
THA enables cooperation that leads to private companies to work with Mexico
Brown and Meacham 13 Neil Brown and Carl Meacham, Brown is non-resident
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partners. That is good for Mexico and for the U.S.

Specifically, cooperation over deep-water wells are key
Melgar, 2012 (Lourdes, director of the Center for Sustainability and Business at EGADE Business School of the Tecnológico de Monterrey, Summer 2012, “The Future of PEMEX,” http://www.americasquarterly.org/node/3781)
The challenge for PEMEX is to increase reserves and oil and gas production in areas
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The Mexican oil industry can no longer thrive on amendments to distorted schemes.

Second is drilling
Independently, drilling solves Mexican growth
Kerry et al. 12
(JOHN F. KERRY, Massachusetts, Chairman  BARBARA BOXER, California RICHARD G
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and friendly neighbor, Mexican oil imports support U.S. energy security
Economic decline causes Mexican collapse
Barnes 11 Joe Barnes, the Bonner Means Baker Fellow at the James A.
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Pemex's development into something like Norway's Statol would mark an important improvement.36
That causes terrorism
Michael Brown 9, Undersecretary of Emergency Preparedness and Response in the Department of Homeland
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States, just laying in wait to attack at an appropriately vulnerable time.

They’ll use bioweapons
Ken Timmerman 10, Newsmax correspondent, “FBI Director Mueller: Al-Qaida
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it is properly spread in population centers there,” al-Nasifi said.

Extinction
Anders Sandberg 8, is a James Martin Research Fellow at the Future of Humanity
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may increase as biotechnologies continue to improve at a rate rivaling Moore's Law.
Mexican stability key to heg
Kaplan ’12 – chief geopolitical analyst at Stratfor (Robert D., With the Focus on Syria, Mexico Burns, Stratfor, 3-28-2012, http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/focus-syria-mexico-burns)
While the foreign policy elite in Washington focuses on the 8,000 deaths in
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can continue to focus on serious moral questions in places that matter less.
Hegemony prevents multiple nuclear conflicts
Brooks, Ikenberry, and Wohlforth ’13
(Stephen, Associate Professor of Government at Dartmouth College, John Ikenberry is the
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that of potential rivals is by many measures growing rather than shrinking. 85

Unilateralism is inevitable – multilat doesn’t cut it
Bass 9 (James E Bass, Major, US Air Force, “Unilateral vs. Multilateral Engagement: A Scenario-Based Approach to Guiding America’s Future Foreign Policy,” Air Command and Staff College, Air University, p. 3-6, April 2009, http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA539615)
According to Stewart Patrick of the Center on International Cooperation, America’s preference for unilateral
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Bush administration’s refusal to ratify the Kyoto Protocol on climate change in 2001.

Tournament: Cal-Berkeley | Round: 2 | Opponent: Notre Dame CG | Judge: Cat Duffy

1AC Plan

Plan: the United States federal government should normalize consular financial transactions toward Cuba.

1AC Banking

The advantage is banking

The state sponsor of terror list is crowding out all Cuban banking accounts—list removal key.

Adams, 13 – Washington Post columnist ("Cuba sanctions make American banks wary, testing U.S. goal of improved ties", 11/28/13, http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/cuba-sanctions-make-american-banks-wary-testing-us-goal-of-improved-ties/2013/11/28/03a62dfe-5847-11e3-ba82-16ed03681809_story.html)**
MIAMI — The decision by a New York bank to close Cuba’s checking account in
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. "The question is, Does Cuba belong on the terror list?"

====Brink is now—transactions end MONDAY (2/17/14)====
Kline, 13 - Buffalo Business First Reporter—Business First ("Cuba receives banking extension from M26T", 12/10/13, http://www.bizjournals.com/buffalo/blog/morning_roundup/2013/12/cuba-receives-banking-extension-from-mt.html)**
M26T Bank will continue receiving deposits from Cuban consular services until Feb.
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consular services on a regular basis," the organization said in a release.

Scenario one is terror.

Two internal links—first is the Cuban economy—only the plan solves—policies block remittance transactions.

Hayden, 13 - Thomas Emmet Hayden, American social and political activist, author, and politician, who is director of the Peace and Justice Resource Center in Culver City, California. ("Ending the Cuba Travel Crisis, 12/3/13, http://www.thenation.com/article/177436/ending-cuba-travel-crisis)**
There is an opportunity for President Barack Obama to begin rolling back our Cuba sanctions
AND
. The reasons and forces behind the current policy are strong than that.

====Those are key to the Cuban economy.====
Chavez, 13 – Miami Herald ("Remittances from Cubans abroad drive the island’s economy", http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/06/12/3448098/remittances-from-cubans-abroad.html)**
Cash remittances to Cuba in 2012 surpassed all revenue coming from the main components of
AND
of travel and remittances while easing up religious, cultural and educational exchanges.

Cuban economic decline destroys effective counter-terror policy – makes conflicts in hotspots around the globe more likely.

Gorrell, 5 - Lieutenant Colonel, US Army, paper submitted for the USAWC STRATEGY RESEARCH PROJECT (Tim, "CUBA: THE NEXT UNANTICIPATED ANTICIPATED STRATEGIC CRISIS?" http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA433074-http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA433074  
Regardless of the succession, under the current U.S. policy, Cuba’s
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in an effort to facilitate a manageable transition to post-Castro Cuba?

====Second is relations—plan is necessary for the development of U.S./Cuban relations and resolving terrorism.====
Levy, 13 - University of Denver, lecturer and doctoral candidate, Huffington Post ("The U.S. Cuba Embargo: Making Diplomacy Impossible", 12/11/13, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arturo-lopez-levy/the-us-cuba-embargo-makin_b_4393837.html)**
Just before Thanksgiving, Cuban-American families who had hoped to spend the holidays
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and the long-term effort toward better relations with Cuba be advanced.

Terrorism causes extinction

Goodspeed, 12 (Peter Goodspeed, Senior Reporter of International Affairs at the National Post, "Nuclear terror threat; A ’dirty bomb’ could make cities uninhabitable, destroy global economy", March 24 2012, National Post, Full Comment, http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2012/03/24/preventing-devastating-nuclear-terrorist-attack-aim-of-world-leaders-meeting/, nikp)
Six months after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorists attacks on New York,
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way to use radiological weapons when their only goal is killing innocent people."

State failure magnifies the probability.

Manwaring, 5 – adjunct professor of international politics at Dickinson
(Max G., Retired U.S. Army colonel, Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez
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and their associated problems endanger global security, peace, and prosperity.65

Scenario two is policy coherence

====Now is key for relations—absent banks, diplomatic relations get set back two decades.====
Tamayo, 13 – Miami Herald ("Cuba consular problem in Washington may cause ripples for US diplomats in Havana", 12/6/13, http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/12/06/3800002/cuba-consular-problem-in-washington.html~~23storylink=cpy)**
Cuban diplomats in Washington have said they will wait for a fix to their banking
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of terrorism. They urged that Havana be taken off the list immediately.

Two impacts:

First is foreign policy credibility—AFF uniquely key.

Hanson, 13 - He has a degree from Santa Clara University in Political Science and Philosophy and Master of Arts in Urban Planning from the University of California, Los Angeles. ("U.S. Cuba Policy Undermining U.S. Policy on Cuba", 11/27/13, http://www.wola.org/commentary/us_cuba_policy_undermining_us_policy_on_cuba)**
In recent weeks, President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry have spoken directly
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context, they might help persuade the banks and restart our travel policy. 

Impact is multiple scenarios for global war

Coes ’11 (Ben Coes 11, former speechwriter in the George H.W. Bush administration, managed Mitt Romney’s successful campaign for Massachusetts Governor in 2002 26 author, "The disease of a weak president", The Daily Caller, http://dailycaller.com/2011/09/30/the-disease-of-a-weak-president/-http://dailycaller.com/2011/09/30/the-disease-of-a-weak-president/)
The disease of a weak president usually begins with the Achilles’ heel all politicians are
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one or the other. The status quo is simply not an option.

AFF is a global signal—immediate success generates momentum

Colvin, 08 12/13/2008 (Jake, fellow with the New Ideas Fund, a group that seeks new approaches and paradigms for U.S. national security and foreign policy. He is also Vice President for Global Trade Issues at the National Foreign Trade Council (NFTC) and oversees the Cuba initiative of USA*Engage, "The Case for a New Cuba Policy", http://web.archive.org/web/20120904201743/http://www.newideasfund.org/proposals/Colvin20-20Cuba20-20Master.pdf)
A signal to the world Beyond the domestic political benefit of acknowledging a changing Cuban
AND
have an enormous impact. I think you can do that with  Cuba.?

This spills over to solve global problems

Dickerson 1/14/10 (Sergio, Lt. Col., US Army, Strategy Research Project, "UNITED STATES SECURITY  STRATEGY TOWARDS CUBA", http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?Location=U226doc=GetTRDoc.pdf26AD=ADA518053)
Today, 20 years have passed since the fall of the Berlin Wall – it’s
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decline in the greater global order bringing  true peace for years to come.

Second is the trade—terror list devastates the Summit of Americas effectiveness.

Strain, 13 ~George Strain – professor at Baton Rouge, "Take Cuba off terror list", April 27 2013, http://theadvocate.com/news/opinion/5748256-123/letter-take-cuba-off-terror~~
Most Americans wouldn’t be able to determine what Cuba, Iran, Syria and Sudan
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prevents the United States from taking sensible steps toward normalizing relations with Cuba.

Summit is key to free trade.

IADB, 12 ~Inter-American Development Bank, "First CEO Summit of the Americas calls for greater economic cooperation among Western Hemisphere nations", Apr 14 2012, http://www.iadb.org/en/news/news-releases/2012-04-14/ceo-summit-of-the-americas,9952.html~
CARTAGENA, Colombia – The First CEO Summit of the Americas wrapped up today with
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who currently lack access to adequate nutrition, health care and education services.
Snowball protectionism results in extinction
Panzer, 08  Faculty – New York Institute of Finance.  Specializes in Global Capital Markets.  MA Columbia
~Michael J. Panzner,  Financial Armageddon: Protect Your Future from Economic Collapse, Revised and Updated Edition ~Paperback~, p. 137-138~
Continuing calls for curbs on the flow of finance and trade will inspire the United
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between Muslims and Western societies as the beginnings of a new world war.

Free trade is the biggest disincentive for war—maintaining globalization solves all their impacts

Griswold, 11 Daniel Griswold is director of the Center for Trade Policy Studies at the Cato Institute and author of Mad about Trade: Why Main Street America Should Embrace Globalization. "Free Trade and the Global Middle Class," Hayek Society Journal Vol. 9 http://www.cato.org/pubs/articles/Hayek-Society-Journal-Griswold.pdf Accessed 6/30/12-http://www.cato.org/pubs/articles/Hayek-Society-Journal-Griswold.pdf Accessed 6/30/12
 Our more globalized world has also yielded a "peace dividend." It may
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and less likely those gains will be destroyed by civil conflict and war.

1AC Solvency

Advantage two is solvency

Obama has executive authority to do the plan—means all of your DA’s are non-unique.

Thale and Anderson, 13 – ~Geoff Thale and Mavis Anderson, "Cuba, the Terrorism Report, and the Terrorist List", Washington Office on Latin America, 5/24/13, http:/www.wola.org/commentary/cuba_the_terrorism_report_and_the_terrorist_list CHB~
Recent news reports indicated that the U.S. State Department would miss the
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administration should acknowledge this profound shift by taking Cuba off the terrorist list.

OFAC sanctions deters bank confidence.

Pillar, 13 – Ex-CIA analyst ("How Terror War Hurts Cuba Policy", 12/2/13, http://consortiumnews.com/2013/12/02/how-terror-war-hurts-cuba-policy/)**
Last week the government of Cuba announced that it was ceasing nearly all of the
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them off as there is to winding them up and keeping pressure on.

Increased economic engagement is uniquely key.

Piccone, 13 (Joseph, Brookings Institute Senior Fellow and Deputy Director, Foreign Policy, Opening to Havana, 1/17/13,  http://www.brookings.edu/research/papers/2013/01/opening-to-havana)**
Your second term presents a rare opportunity to turn the page of history from an
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pave the way for greater U.S. leadership in the region.

Bank search fails.

Glynn, 13 – Buffalo News Business ("M26T giving Cuba more time to find new bank for diplomatic missions", 12/9/13, http://www.buffalonews.com/business/mt-giving-cuba-more-time-to-find-new-bank-for-diplomatic-missions-20131209)**
"The banks are understandably gun shy about doing business with anybody that might be
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via issuance, authentication of documents, and exchanges with the United States.

Tournament: ToC | Round: 1 | Opponent: Centennial KK | Judge: John Spurlock

1AC ToC

Inherency

Contention one is inherency.

OFAC financial penalties are crowding out all Cuban banking accounts.

Adams, 13 – Washington Post columnist ("Cuba sanctions make American banks wary, testing U.S. goal of improved ties", 11/28/13, http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/cuba-sanctions-make-american-banks-wary-testing-us-goal-of-improved-ties/2013/11/28/03a62dfe-5847-11e3-ba82-16ed03681809_story.html)**
MIAMI — The decision by a New York bank to close Cuba’s checking account in
AND
. "The question is, Does Cuba belong on the terror list?"

Plan

Plan: the United States federal government should normalize its consular financial transactions toward Cuba.

Terrorism

Contention two is terrorism

Three internal links—first is the economy—two reasons it’s key.

First is remittances.

Hayden, 13 - Thomas Emmet Hayden, American social and political activist, author, and politician, who is director of the Peace and Justice Resource Center in Culver City, California. ("Ending the Cuba Travel Crisis, 12/3/13, http://www.thenation.com/article/177436/ending-cuba-travel-crisis)**
There is an opportunity for President Barack Obama to begin rolling back our Cuba sanctions
AND
. The reasons and forces behind the current policy are strong than that.

====Those are key to the Cuban economy.====
Chavez, 13 – Miami Herald ("Remittances from Cubans abroad drive the island’s economy", http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/06/12/3448098/remittances-from-cubans-abroad.html)**
Cash remittances to Cuba in 2012 surpassed all revenue coming from the main components of
AND
of travel and remittances while easing up religious, cultural and educational exchanges.

Cuban economic decline destroys effective counter-terror policy – makes conflicts in hotspots around the globe more likely.

Gorrell, 5 - Lieutenant Colonel, US Army, paper submitted for the USAWC STRATEGY RESEARCH PROJECT (Tim, "CUBA: THE NEXT UNANTICIPATED ANTICIPATED STRATEGIC CRISIS?" http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA433074-http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA433074  
Regardless of the succession, under the current U.S. policy, Cuba’s
AND
in an effort to facilitate a manageable transition to post-Castro Cuba?

Second is terror transactions

Freezing Cuba’s financial ties with Al-Qaeda severs their relationship.

AFP, 14 – French News Agency, the CNN of France ("Cuba to freeze foreign funds linked to al-Qaeda, Taliban", 1/25/14, http://english.alarabiya.net/en/business/banking-and-finance/2014/01/25/Cuba-to-freeze-foreign-funds-linked-to-al-Qaeda-Taliban.html-http://english.alarabiya.net/en/business/banking-and-finance/2014/01/25/Cuba-to-freeze-foreign-funds-linked-to-al-Qaeda-Taliban.html)
The Cuban government adopted legislation to immediately freeze funds from foreign banks linked to terror
AND
meant to attract much-needed capital for the country’s sagging economic system.

State failure reverses that and magnifies the probability.

Manwaring, 5 – adjunct professor of international politics at Dickinson
(Max G., Retired U.S. Army colonel, Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez
AND
and their associated problems endanger global security, peace, and prosperity.65

====Third is relations— now is key—absent the AFF, relations get set back two decades.====
Tamayo, 13 – Miami Herald ("Cuba consular problem in Washington may cause ripples for US diplomats in Havana", 12/6/13, http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/12/06/3800002/cuba-consular-problem-in-washington.html~~23storylink=cpy)**
Cuban diplomats in Washington have said they will wait for a fix to their banking
AND
of terrorism. They urged that Havana be taken off the list immediately.

====Relations via plan action specifically key to resolve terrorism.====
Levy, 13 - University of Denver, lecturer and doctoral candidate, Huffington Post ("The U.S. Cuba Embargo: Making Diplomacy Impossible", 12/11/13, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arturo-lopez-levy/the-us-cuba-embargo-makin_b_4393837.html)**
Just before Thanksgiving, Cuban-American families who had hoped to spend the holidays
AND
and the long-term effort toward better relations with Cuba be advanced.

Groups will target Guantanamo Bay—releases of hundreds of Al-Qaeda members.

Leopold, 13 – Aljazeera, foreign investigator ("Al-Qaeda might attack Guantanamo, claims US", Aug. 06, 2013, http://www.aljazeera.com/humanrights/2013/08/2013851618340986.html-http://www.aljazeera.com/humanrights/2013/08/2013851618340986.html, gender modified)
Los Angeles, United States of America - Al-Qaeda may attempt to attack
AND
the grounds that the public has a right of access to judicial records.

Risk of nuclear terrorism is real and high now

Malin, et al, 13 ~Bunn, Matthew, Valentin Kuznetsov, Martin B. Malin, Yuri Morozov, Simon Saradzhyan, William H. Tobey, Viktor I. Yesin, and Pavel S. Zolotarev. "Steps to Prevent Nuclear Terrorism." Paper, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School, October 2, 2013, Matthew Bunn. Professor of the Practice of Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School andCo-Principal Investigator of Project on Managing the Atom at Harvard University’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. • Vice Admiral Valentin Kuznetsov (retired Russian Navy). Senior research fellow at the Institute for U.S. and Canadian Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Senior Military Representative of the Russian Ministry of Defense to NATO from 2002 to 2008. • Martin Malin. Executive Director of the Project on Managing the Atom at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. • Colonel Yuri Morozov (retired Russian Armed Forces). Professor of the Russian Academy of Military Sciences and senior research fellow at the Institute for U.S. and Canadian Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, chief of department at the Center for Military-Strategic Studies at the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces from 1995 to 2000. • Simon Saradzhyan. Fellow at Harvard University’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Moscow-based defense and security expert and writer from 1993 to 2008. • William Tobey. Senior fellow at Harvard University’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and director of the U.S.-Russia Initiative to Prevent Nuclear Terrorism, deputy administrator for Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation at the U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration from 2006 to 2009. • Colonel General Viktor Yesin (retired Russian Armed Forces). Leading research fellow at the Institute for U.S. and Canadian Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences and advisor to commander of the Strategic Missile Forces of Russia, chief of staff of the Strategic Missile Forces from 1994 to 1996. • Major General Pavel Zolotarev (retired Russian Armed Forces). Deputy director of the Institute for U.S. and Canadian Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, head of the Information and Analysis Center of the Russian Ministry of Defense from1993 to 1997, section head - deputy chief of staff of the Defense Council of Russia from 1997 to 1998.http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/publication/23430/steps_to_prevent_nuclear_terrorism.html-http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/publication/23430/steps_to_prevent_nuclear_terrorism.html~~
Introduction In 2011, Harvard’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and the Russian
AND
the intention to acquire and use nuclear weapons is as strong as ever.

Extinction

Hellman 8 (Martin E. Hellman, emeritus prof of engineering @ Stanford, "Risk Analysis of Nuclear Deterrence" SPRING 2008 THE BENT OF TAU BETA PI, http://www.nuclearrisk.org/paper.pdf-http://www.nuclearrisk.org/paper.pdf)
The threat of nuclear terrorism looms much larger in the public’s mind than the threat
AND
assume that preventing World War III is a necessity—not an option. 

Causes US-Russia miscalc—extinction

Barrett et al. 13—PhD in Engineering and Public Policy from Carnegie Mellon
AND
and Nonproliferation Initiatives, Volume 21, Issue 2, Taylor 26 Francis)
War involving significant fractions of the U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals,
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making one or both nations more likely to misinterpret events as attacks. 16

Credibility

Contention three is credibility.

AFF solves—consular services are the new forefront of U.S./Cuba policy.

Hanson, 13 - He has a degree from Santa Clara University in Political Science and Philosophy and Master of Arts in Urban Planning from the University of California, Los Angeles. ("U.S. Cuba Policy Undermining U.S. Policy on Cuba", 11/27/13, http://www.wola.org/commentary/us_cuba_policy_undermining_us_policy_on_cuba)**
In recent weeks, President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry have spoken directly
AND
context, they might help persuade the banks and restart our travel policy. 

AFF is a global signal—immediate success generates momentum

Colvin, 08 12/13/2008 (Jake, fellow with the New Ideas Fund, a group that seeks new approaches and paradigms for U.S. national security and foreign policy. He is also Vice President for Global Trade Issues at the National Foreign Trade Council (NFTC) and oversees the Cuba initiative of USA*Engage, "The Case for a New Cuba Policy", http://web.archive.org/web/20120904201743/http://www.newideasfund.org/proposals/Colvin20-20Cuba20-20Master.pdf)
A signal to the world Beyond the domestic political benefit of acknowledging a changing Cuban
AND
have an enormous impact. I think you can do that with  Cuba.?

This spills over to solve global problems

Dickerson 1/14/10 (Sergio, Lt. Col., US Army, Strategy Research Project, "UNITED STATES SECURITY  STRATEGY TOWARDS CUBA", http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?Location=U226doc=GetTRDoc.pdf26AD=ADA518053)
Today, 20 years have passed since the fall of the Berlin Wall – it’s
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decline in the greater global order bringing  true peace for years to come.

Impact is multiple scenarios for global war

Coes ’11 (Ben Coes 11, former speechwriter in the George H.W. Bush administration, managed Mitt Romney’s successful campaign for Massachusetts Governor in 2002 26 author, "The disease of a weak president", The Daily Caller, http://dailycaller.com/2011/09/30/the-disease-of-a-weak-president/-http://dailycaller.com/2011/09/30/the-disease-of-a-weak-president/)
The disease of a weak president usually begins with the Achilles’ heel all politicians are
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one or the other. The status quo is simply not an option.

Pakistan is on the brink – Indo-Pak war and loose nukes both cause extinction

William Pitt, 9 is a 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, "Unstable Pakistan Threatens the World," http://www.arabamericannews.com/news/index.php?mod=article26cat=commentary26article=2183-http://www.arabamericannews.com/news/index.php?mod=article26cat=commentary26article=2183,
But a suicide bomber in Pakistan rammed a car packed with explosives into a jeep
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Pakistan, however, needs to be placed immediately on the front burner. 

Solvency

Contention four is solvency.

Banks will work with Cuba.

Gribben, 10 – Columnist for the Telegraph ("UK banks warm to Cuba but are wary of US reproach", 11/08/10, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/yourbusiness/8118471/UK-banks-warm-to-Cuba-but-are-wary-of-US-reproach.html)**
Banks are showing signs of shifting their ground about refusing to handle financial transactions involving
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close accounts or decline transactions related to customers who have dealings with Cuba."

Obama has executive authority to do the plan—means all of your DA’s are non-unique.

Thale and Anderson, 13 – ~Geoff Thale and Mavis Anderson, "Cuba, the Terrorism Report, and the Terrorist List", Washington Office on Latin America, 5/24/13, http:/www.wola.org/commentary/cuba_the_terrorism_report_and_the_terrorist_list CHB~
Recent news reports indicated that the U.S. State Department would miss the
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administration should acknowledge this profound shift by taking Cuba off the terrorist list.

OFAC sanctions deters bank confidence.

Pillar, 13 – Ex-CIA analyst ("How Terror War Hurts Cuba Policy", 12/2/13, http://consortiumnews.com/2013/12/02/how-terror-war-hurts-cuba-policy/)**
Last week the government of Cuba announced that it was ceasing nearly all of the
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them off as there is to winding them up and keeping pressure on.

Increased economic engagement is uniquely key.

Piccone, 13 (Joseph, Brookings Institute Senior Fellow and Deputy Director, Foreign Policy, Opening to Havana, 1/17/13,  http://www.brookings.edu/research/papers/2013/01/opening-to-havana)**
Your second term presents a rare opportunity to turn the page of history from an
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pave the way for greater U.S. leadership in the region.

Bank search fails.

Glynn, 13 – Buffalo News Business ("M26T giving Cuba more time to find new bank for diplomatic missions", 12/9/13, http://www.buffalonews.com/business/mt-giving-cuba-more-time-to-find-new-bank-for-diplomatic-missions-20131209)**
"The banks are understandably gun shy about doing business with anybody that might be
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via issuance, authentication of documents, and exchanges with the United States.

Tournament: Greenhill | Round: 3 | Opponent: Coppell | Judge: Travis Henderson

Ero

Soil erosion controls the internal link to magnitude – BP spill means there on the brink, another spill means they degrade faster, destroying our ability to grow food – that’s Ikerd

~ ~ That turns any war impact – resource scarcity increases the likelihood of conflict

Gendron 26 Hoffman, 09 - The Peace and Conflict Review ("Resource Scarcity and the Prevention of Violent Conflicts", Fall 2009, Volume 4, Issue 1, http://www.review.upeace.org/index.cfm?opcion=026ejemplar=1826entrada=90)**
Resource scarcity can be defined according to three principals. The first is basic human
AND
management (Bercovitch et al., 2009, Part III, Chapter 1). 

2ac T

We meet –THA is a launching pad for long-term structural linkage, and their Haas evidence says that EE includes tech transfer

Counter-Interpretation: Economic engagement is trade, investment, lending, aid and monetary policy

Vickery, 11 – former Assistant Secretary of Commere for Trade and Development in the
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, and the monetary and regulatory interactions that effect these categories of engagement.

Prefer our interpretation:

A. Education: Our literature is core of the topic – arbitrarily excluding it means we lose key education about economic engagement

B. Aff Ground – every aff is solved by international counterplans – generics and functional limits check topic explosion and prove our aff is key to equitable ground

C. Lit checks and solves their offense – they still get links to their core generics

D. Precision – their evidence doesn’t indicate what constitutes "exclusive" economic engagement – they can shift their interpretation to arbitrarily exclude any aff just by saying it does something else

It also turns their limits arguments – everyone interprets their definitions differently

Ogburn, 95, (William Fielding Ogburn, Florida State University, Social Forces, Vol. 34, No. 1 (Oct., 1955), pp. 10-18, "Some Observations on Sociological Research", http://www.jstor.org/stable/2574254-http://www.jstor.org/stable/2574254, LOH)
It has nevertheless seemed to me that the essential literary quality in the writing of
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- works in the welcoming paper of Renan, the philosopher and historian. 

E. Good is good enough – as long as we meet a reasonable interp, we shouldn’t have to meet the best – you should prefer reasonability because it internal-link turns limits and their interp links to their offense

Extra topicality is not a voting issue – we don’t justify those parts of the bill and it is inevitable anyways because there are always things that aren’t tangentially related – potential abuse isn’t a voting issue

F. Shifting DA – They can arbitrarily shift their interpretation to fit any aff because of the ambiguity in their cards

Here’s evidence – Every form of engagement can be linked to the economy – their division is impossible

Merrick 98 (Robert R. Merrick, Lieutenant Colonel in the US Army, "Engagement: The Nation’s Premier Grand Strategy, Who’s In Charge?, April 1 1998, http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?Location=U226doc=GetTRDoc.pdf26AD=ADA342695-http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?Location=U226doc=GetTRDoc.pdf26AD=ADA342695, DTB)
Virtually everything the US government does that touches other countries can be traced back to
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to market routes also improve access to remote areas for counter narcotics activities.

2ac CP

Not going for clean tech – it only solves clean tech – it doesn’t solve naything else that was cross-x

Perm do both – pass the TH

_ conditional options are a voting issue-

A) 2AC strategy skew- cross applications prevents and deters reading 2AC offense, kills affirmative strategy

B) Advocacy skills and education - we never defend positions in the debate- kills portable skills - bolsters ideological polarization

~ ~ You get dispo
~ ~ You get one condo

2ac Obama good

====Won’t pass – GOP filibuster and PC not key====
Moran, 9/21 – Political Columnist for PJ Media ("GOP Senators Plan Filibuster of Republican House Continuing Resolution", 9/21/13, http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2013/09/21/gop-senators-plan-filibuster-of-republican-house-continuing-resolution)** GOP Senators, led by Ted Cruz, are planning on filibustering the continuing resolution that just passed the House on Friday. There is method to this madness. Harry Reid will have to get a successful cloture vote — 60 votes — to bring the continuing resolution passed by the House to the floor. Once that happens, Reid can use a procedural vote to strip the Obamacare defunding out of the bill, requiring only a simple majority. Cruz and other Republicans believe the only play they have is to pressure Harry Reid over the government shut down by forcing him to allow a straight up or down vote on the bill, including the defunding measure. Are there 6 Democratic Senators who would vote to defund? That’s what Cruz and his allies want to find out. Roll Call: Sen. Ted Cruz said Friday that Republican senators should, in effect, filibuster the House-passed continuing resolution in the Senate. The Texas Republican is calling on his colleagues to oppose limiting debate on it, warning against what he calls procedural trickery. "Step two is the Senate, where all accounts suggest Harry Reid plans to use procedural gimmicks to try to add funding back in for Obamacare," Cruz said. "If Reid pursues this plan — if he insists on using a 50-vote threshold to fund Obamacare with a partisan vote of only Democrats — then I hope that every Senate Republican will stand together and oppose cloture on the bill in order to keep the House bill intact and not let Harry Reid add Obamacare funding back in." "Now is a time for party unity; Senate Republicans should stand side-by-side with courageous House Republicans," Cruz said. The statement underscores the unwinnable procedural hand faced by conservative senators, however. They know that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid will move to strike out the Obamacare defunding language after getting the 60 votes needed to limit debate, but they can’t stop him without effectively endorsing a government shutdown. The Nevada Democrat’s move is completely in keeping with long-standing Senate rules. Pending germane amendments and motions, such as a motion to strike, are allowed simple-majority votes after debate’s been limited. "Republicans are simply postponing for a few days the inevitable choice they must face: pass a clean bill to fund the government, or force a shutdown. I have said it before but it seems to bear repeating: The Senate will not pass any bill that defunds or delays Obamacare," Reid said in a Friday statement. Cruz’s statement came shortly after the head of the Senate Conservatives Fund said likewise. "Harry Reid needs 60 votes to approve his plan to fund Obamacare. If 41 Republicans stand strong and oppose cloture, they can defeat Reid’s plan to fund Obamacare. However, if Republicans waffle and vote for cloture, it will grease the skids for Reid’s plan to fund Obamacare. It’s pretty simple — any Republican who votes for cloture is voting to fund Obamacare," SCF Executive Director Matt Hoskins said.

The 1NC link card says nothing – just says THA is politically diverse – not that it would sap Obama’s PC

PC low – Summers nomination
Koffler, 9/17 – White House Reporter ("Chuck Todd: White House Screwed Up Summers Nomination", 9/17/13, http://www.whitehousedossier.com/2013/09/17/chuck-todd-white-house-screwed-summers-nomination)**
MSNBC’s Chuck Todd this morning laid blame directly at the North Portico doorstep for President
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political capital" he can’t punish Democrats for opposing Summers, Todd said.

====Obama is pushing EPA regs – congressional backlash means fights are inevitable====
Shear, 9/20 – Columnist for NYT ("Administration to Press Ahead With Carbon Limits", 9/20/13, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/21/us/politics/obama-administration-carbon-limits.html)**
WASHINGTON — The Obama administration on Friday announced that it was not backing down from
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a vote to stop this devastating E.P.A. rule."

Obama not focused on budget vote – he won’t make concessions

Fox 9-19 (Fox News Politics, "Boehner blasts Obama for bargaining with Putin, not Congress ahead of budget vote," http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/09/19/white-house-threatens-to-veto-de-fund-obamacare-bill/-http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/09/19/white-house-threatens-to-veto-de-fund-obamacare-bill/, 9-19-13)
House Speaker John Boehner ripped President Obama for negotiating with Vladimir Putin while giving congressional
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ideological agenda that threatens our economy and the interests of the middle class." 

Oil and gas lobbies love the plan

Kollipara ’12 
(Puneet, "U.S., Mexico, reach accord on drilling below maritime border", Fuel Fix, 2-20-2012, http://fuelfix.com/blog/2012/02/20/449517/)**
The agreement announced today also would lift a moratorium on waters in a buffer area
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172 million barrels of oil and 304 billion cubic feet of natural gas.

Turns the DA

Froomkin ’11 
(Dan, "How the Oil Lobby Greases Washington’s Wheels", Huffington Post, 4-6-2011, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/04/06/how-the-oil-lobby-greases_n_845720.html)**
Clout in Washington isn’t about winning legislative battles — it’s about making sure that they
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votes to block any legislation — never even took a stab at it.

DA’s not intrinsic

Fiat solves link

Shutdown not likely

Ungar, 9/19 – Writer for Forbes and a Democratic strategist with Mercury Public Affairs (Rick, "Government Shut Down Likely To Actually Happen This Time," Forbes, 19 September 2013, http://www.forbes.com/sites/rickungar/2013/09/19/government-shut-down-likely-to-actually-happen-this-time/)//HO**
So it goes with modern government in the United States and its own version of
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to clear out the bad blood.¶ Can’t happen soon enough for me.

Winners win – empirically proven, it’s true for energy, and compromises don’t work

Gergen 1/19 – CNN Senior Political Analyst
(David, "Obama 2.0: Smarter – but wiser?", CNN, 1-19-2013, http://www.cnn.com/2013/01/18/opinion/gergen-obama-two/index.html)**
On the eve of his second inaugural, President Obama appears smarter, tougher and
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for a "grand bargain" appear to be hanging by a thread.

2ac neolib

The role of the ballot is to evaluate the simulated consequences of plan passage- anything else distracts away from the stasis point of discussion, and guts predictability
Net-benefit is Latin American policy discussions—they are necessary to create real world change – anything else is a DA to the alt’s method
González no date (Francisco E.- Riordan Roett Senior Associate Professor of Latin American Studies at Johns Hopkins and British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at Nuffield College at the University of Oxford; was a professorial lecturer at SAIS’s Bologna Center and a lecturer in politics at St. John’s College at the University of Oxford; received 2006 SAIS Excellence in Teaching Award; Ph.D., politics, University of Oxford; "POLITICS AND POLICIES"; http://lasa.international.pitt.edu/LARR/prot/fulltext/vol48no1/48-1_221-227_gonzales.pdf)
The growing interest in the interaction of policies and politics is a welcome antidote to
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reviewed in these pages make original individual and collective contributions to this endeavor.

Non-unique – passed in Mexico

No neoliberal movements

Franks, 07 Glasgow political philosophy lecturer, (Benjamin, "Who Are You to tell me to Question Authority?", Variant issue 29, http://www.variant.org.uk/29texts/Franks29.html-http://www.variant.org.uk/29texts/Franks29.html)
Potentially stronger criticisms of Giroux’s text lie precisely in his underlying hypothesis concerning the totalising
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or fails to measure up to the ’educators’ standard of critical evaluation. 

Perm do both – if the ALT is overcome the SQ – it’s probs able to overcome the residual links to the AFF

No link – already ratified in Mexico – alt cause to alt bc voting neg doesn’t reject bill in Mexico
Case is a DA to the alt - economic collapse reinforces the neoliberal model
Mead, 9 – Senior Fellow in U.S. Foreign Policy at the Council on Foreign Relations (Walter Russell, The New Republic, "Only Makes You Stronger", 2/4, http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=571cbbb9-2887-4d81-8542-92e83915f5f826p=2-http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=571cbbb9-2887-4d81-8542-92e83915f5f826p=2)
Perhaps—but the long history of capitalism suggests another possibility. After all,
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into 2008 breathing fire and boasting of its renewed great-power status. 

Alt doesn’t solve their impact- one rejection of the aff isn’t sufficient to solve

Utopian/vague alts are a reason to reject the team- block can shift out of 2AC offense

Scientific knowledge of the environment is best - it subjects itself to constant refinement based on empirical evidence

Hutcheon 93—former prof of sociology of education at U Regina and U British Columbia. Former research advisor to the Health Promotion Branch of the Canadian Department of Health and Welfare and as a director of the Vanier Institute of the Family. Phd in sociology, began at Yale and finished at U Queensland. (Pat, A Critique of "Biology as Ideology: The Doctrine of DNA", http://www.humanists.net/pdhutcheon/humanist20articles/lewontn.htm)
The introductory lecture in this series articulated the increasingly popular "postmodernist" claim that
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mean failure, in that the theory itself has altered in the process.

Neoliberalism is good – two reasons

a. Policymaking – develops better initaties in sync with global economic models – clean tech and renewable reforms disprove the impact

Markets empirically bolster models for peace

Chen, 2K (Jim, "ESSAY: PAX MERCATORIA: GLOBALIZATION AS A SECOND CHANCE AT "PEACE FOR OUR TIME", 24 Fordham Int’l L.J. 217, lexis)
The antiglobalization movement has made some extraordinary claims. Let us transplant a precept of
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unjustly privileged few. That way runs anew the road to serfdom. n197 

Method focus causes paradigm wars

Wendt, ’98 – professor of international security – Ohio State University, ’98 (Alexander, "On Constitution and Causation in International Relations," British International Studies Association)
As a community, we in the academic study of international politics spend too much
AND
sparring over epistemology is often one-sided, intolerant caricatures of science.

No root cause of war – complexity dooms monocausal explnalations

Jabri 96 Vivienne, Lecturer in International Relations at the University of Kent, Introduction: Conflict Analysis Reconsidered," Discourses on Violence: Conflict Analysis Reconsidered, Published by Manchester University Press ND, ISBN 0719039592, p. 3
The study of war has produced a number of often conflicting answers to Quincy Wright’s
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attempts to isolate common features leading up to the decision for war.2

Tournament: University of Michigan | Round: 4 | Opponent: Walter Payton | Judge: Erin Dinser

2AC gov to gov

We meet – Nieto 26 Obama met about the FW of the AFF

We meet – Plan mandates US-Mexico government interaction—prefer specific evidence using the term of art
Danvers et al 12 (William C., Staff Director., "OIL, MEXICO, AND THE TRANSBOUNDARY AGREEMENT", U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE 77-567 WASHINGTON : 2012 A MINORITY STAFF REPORT PREPARED FOR THE USE OF THE COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS UNITED STATES SENATE. 12/21/12, www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CPRT-112SPRT77567/html/CPRT-112SPRT77567.htmcandle)
The TBA contains numerous provisions in anticipation of disputes on allocation of resources under a
AND
Gulf of Mexico or in case of significant disruptions to global oil supplies.

Counter-Interpretation: Economic engagement can be unconditional and doesn’t need to be gov-to-gov

Haass and O’Sullivan, 2k - *Vice President and Director of Foreign Policy Studies at the Brookings Institution AND a Fellow with the Foreign Policy Studies Program at the Brookings Institution (Richard and Meghan, "Terms of Engagement: Alternatives to Punitive Policies" Survival _{vol. 42, no. 2, Summer 2000, http://www.brookings.edu/~~/media/research/files/articles/2000/6/summer20haass/2000survival.pdf-http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/research/files/articles/2000/6/summer haass/2000survival.pdf
The provision of economic incentives to the private sector of a target country can be
AND
a multitude of possible partners for unconditional engagement with non-state actors.}

A. Education: Key to learning about the relation between government and population – their interpretation arbitrarily excludes that

B. Aff Ground – every aff is solved by international counterplans – generics and functional limits check topic explosion and prove our aff is key to equitable ground

C. Contextual evidence – energy access is specifically included

Bakker, 11 – MA in international economics and business studies from Erasmus University Rotterdam (Ruben, "International Trade and Economic Growth: Does is matter with whom you trade?" https://www.google.com/url?sa=t26rct=j26q=26esrc=s26source=web26cd=726cad=rja26ved=0CF4QFjAG26url=http3A2F2Foaithesis.eur.nl2Fir2Frepub2Fasset2F92392FBakker2C2520R.S.25203034182520id2520thesis9239.docx26ei=uVmWUaCDCKapiALn2oDIBA26usg=AFQjCNFpBHkX9InoQIypNHSSe3aQNJSCvQ26sig2=N2-TXWuQAN-mz-S-X6ZErg26bvm=bv.46751780,d.cGE)HO
China’s rising economic engagement is tied to conspicuously strategic goals, centered on access to energy and other scarce high-value commodities (Gill et al., 2007).

D. Solves their offense – maintains the links to their core generics and there’s a specific literature base for our aff, since we’ll defend government action

E. Good is good enough – as long as we meet a reasonable interp, we shouldn’t have to meet the best – you should prefer reasonability because it internal-link turns limits and their interp links to their offense

2AC Russia CP

CP doesn’t solve
a. Wetlands – conceded drilling is inevitable, CP doesn’t set up regulatory FW to oversight safe drilling – makes the impact inevitable
b. NG 26 China – conceded that Mexico’s demand is growing – the CP is a short term solution – our Forest evidence says that regardless of exterior drilling Mexico will have to import – that destroys prices, alliances, hard power and makes Chinese and Middle East conflict inevitable because its still resilient on the market
c. Russia – CP makes Russia aggression more likely – we expand into their oil fields – decreases a chance of middle east independence
CP is object fiat – that’s a voting issue
a. Guts aff predictability bolstering 2AC time and strat skew
b. Incentivizes bad CP writing because they can fabricate an unlimited amount of artificial N/B
Perm do both

Perm do the CP – no defense of certainty/immediacy means not mutually exclusive

====CP links to the N/B – still imports oil which pisses of the White House – that’s their link====

====Passing THA is key to Mexican energy reforms – specifically cooperation with U.S. firms ====
Wood, Mexico Institute director, 13 ~Duncan, "Growing Potential for U.S.-Mexico Energy Cooperation", http://wilsoncenter.org/sites/default/files/wood_energy.pdf~~
As noted above, the history of cooperation between the United States and Mexico on
AND
and there will be a major opportunity for joint ventures with foreign firms.

====Mexican energy reforms are key to its petrochemical industry – firm investment ====
Greenwood, 9/16 – Columnist for ICIS News ("Corrected: If passed, energy reform may boost Mexico’s petchems", 9/16/13, http://www.icis.com/borealis/Article.asp?p=126q=C9BDCDE6D4B5D8B9CADBC026id=B2849AA59979AA)**
HOUSTON (ICIS)—The recently proposed energy reforms by Mexico’s president could reduce the
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," Guzman said. "The country does not have any other choice."

The chemical industry is key to solve extinction

Baum 99 – Baum, Founder of Chemical and Engineering News Washington, 12-6-99 (Rudy, "MILLENNIUM SPECIAL REPORT," C26EN Washington, Volume 77, Number 49, http://pubs.acs.org/cen/hotarticles/cenear/991206/7749spintro2.html)
Computers and the Internet are clearly one of the driving forces shaping all aspects of
AND
mysteries and provide for humanity’s basic and not-so-basic needs.

Tournament: University of Michigan | Round: 2 | Opponent: Pine Crest | Judge: Sean Farris

2AC SCS

South China Sea outweighs and controls the internal links to probability 26 magnitude – the U.S. is forced to defend targets Taiwan Sea lanes, we get drawn in – there’s no cooperation with China – petro-economics make them irrational and use nukes – that’s Mosher – it uniquely escalates – that’s Strait Times.

====Oil conflict is uniquely likely ====
Lai, 07 - UCLA Center for Chinese Studies ("China’s Oil Diplomacy: Is It a Global Security Threat?", Vol. 28, No. 3,  Third World Quarterly, pp. 519-537, published by Taylor 26 Francis, accessed via JSTOR)
In recent years China’s demands for imported oil have increased rapidly. Many observers,
AND
sort out the facts from the allegations over China’s quest for energy security. 

2AC Steel Industry

Low natural gas prices controls the steel industry – production is reverse causal and linear – absent growth we can’t produce hard-plated technology which is the vital internal link to hard power – that’s Adams. We deter all conflict via hard power, perceptive conventional forces, and alliances - specifically Russian and Middle-East scenarios which go nuclear.

2AC Solves PEMEX

====THA removes obstacles to expand deep-water drilling, revitalizes Mexican energy production, and re-orients the political climate for PEMEX reforms====
Rampton, 13 - Roberta Rampton, Reuters (Apr 29, 2013, "UPDATE 1-U.S.-Mexico deal on expanded Gulf oil drilling still in limbo," http://uk.reuters.com/article/2013/04/29/usa-mexico-oil-idUKL2N0DG1MR20130429-http://uk.reuters.com/article/2013/04/29/usa-mexico-oil-idUKL2N0DG1MR20130429)
WASHINGTON, April 29 (Reuters) - More than a year after the United
AND
the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee before he left Congress.

2AC Soil Erosion

Soil erosion controls the internal link to magnitude – BP spill means there on the brink, another spill means they degrade faster, destroying our ability to grow food – that’s Ikerd

~ ~ That turns any war impact – resource scarcity increases the likelihood of conflict

Gendron 26 Hoffman, 09 - The Peace and Conflict Review ("Resource Scarcity and the Prevention of Violent Conflicts", Fall 2009, Volume 4, Issue 1, http://www.review.upeace.org/index.cfm?opcion=026ejemplar=1826entrada=90)**
Resource scarcity can be defined according to three principals. The first is basic human
AND
management (Bercovitch et al., 2009, Part III, Chapter 1). 

2AC Renewables CP

CP doesn’t solve—
a. Wetlands – drilling is inevitable, CP doesn’t set up clean tech, means spills are inevitable
b. China – switching to renewables won’t shift our dependence from the middle-east market
Klare, 10/15 – Writer for Salon, citing several energy analysts including Barry Smitherman, chairman of the Texas Railroad Commission; Karen Moreau, New York State Petroleum Council; Ed Morse, head of global commodity research at Citigroup; and, Obama (Michael T, "Hallelujah, oil and gas forever21" Salon, 15 October 2013, http://www.salon.com/2013/10/15/hallelujah_oil_and_gas_forever/)//HO**
For years, energy analysts had been anticipating an imminent decline in global oil supplies
AND
reliance on imports, my administration is encouraging offshore oil exploration and production."

c. NG – they’ve conceded uniqueness for Mexico’s energy demand —  CP doesn’t affect Mexico’s importing, means U.S. prices skyrocket – that’s Forest

_ conditional options are a voting issue-

A) 2AC strategy skew- cross applications prevents and deters reading 2AC offense, kills affirmative strategy 26 makes contradictions more likely

B) Advocacy skills and education - we never defend positions in the debate- kills portable skills - bolsters ideological polarization

~ ~ You get dispo
~ ~ You get one condo

Perm do both - they aren’t mutually exclusive and the link turn shields the link to the net-benefit

Perm do the CP – not mutually exclusive via a defense of certainty/immediacy

~ ~ CP links to the N/B - renewable energy investment causes backlash

Leone 12 (Steve, Associate Editor of Renewable Energy World, "Part 2: Political Reality and the Way Forward for Renewable Energy," 4/3/12, http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/article/2012/04/part-2-political-reality-and-the-way-forward-for-renewable-energy)

New Hampshire, U.S.A. — Political heavyweights know this about
AND
can be revived? It’s increasingly looking like the answer may be no.

Renewables won’t catch on– low efficiency, high cost, low reliability, land scarcity, lack of storage capacity. It’s a double-bind: either market forces will drive innovation absent the aff, or they can’t cause investment

Taylor and Van Doren 11 – critic of federal energy and environmental policy, Wall Street Journal Contributor, served on congressional advisory bodies, member of International Association for Energy economics, writer for The Energy Journal, testified in Congress / editor of the quarterly journal Regulation and expert in the regulation of energy and environment, taught at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University, School of Organization and Management at Yale University, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, former postdoctoral fellow in political economy at Carnegie Mellon University (Jerry and Peter, "The Green Energy Economy Reconsidered" 4/25/11;  http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/green-energy-economy-reconsidered)//Beddow
Let’s assume, however, that we could afford that. Have we ever seen
AND
sense, all of the subsidies in the world won’t change that fact.

Recent foreign policy blunders will trigger a price spike sending shocks through the US economy. Must diversify supply.

Sheffield, 10/24 (Carrie, contributor to Forbes, former Politico, Hill, and Washington Times reporter and Fullbright Scholar, "Obama’s Failed Saudi Relations Could Spike Oil Prices," http://www.forbes.com/sites/carriesheffield/2013/10/24/obamas-failed-saudi-relations-could-spike-oil-prices/-http://www.forbes.com/sites/carriesheffield/2013/10/24/obamas-failed-saudi-relations-could-spike-oil-prices/)
The Obama administration’s strategic blunders with Syria and Iran have morphed into a diplomatic disaster
AND
downward spiral that results in pain for the U.S. economy.

Extinction

O Hanlon et al, 12
O’Hanlon 12 Kenneth G. Lieberthal, Director of the John L. Thornton China Center and Senior Fellow in Foreign Policy and Global Economy and Development at the Brookings Institution, former Professor at the University of Michigan ~"The Real National Security Threat: America’s Debt," Los Angeles Times, July 10th, http://www.brookings.edu/research/opinions/2012/07/10-economy-foreign-policy-lieberthal-ohanlon-http://www.brookings.edu/research/opinions/2012/07/10-economy-foreign-policy-lieberthal-ohanlon~~
Alas, globalization and automation trends of the last generation have increasingly called the American
AND
else is really possible if that fundamentalprerequisite to effective foreign policy is not reestablished

Reforms are key

Huacuz, 7 — Electrical Research Institute ~Jorge, "Renewable Energy in Mexico," Towards a Cleaner Planet, google books~
Mexico is at cross-roads regarding renewable energy. On the one hand,
AND
be established. Above all, a new energy culture must be created.

2AC China Imperialism K

The role of the ballot is to evaluate the simulated consequences of plan passage- anything else distracts away from the stasis point of discussion, and guts predictability
Net-benefit is Latin American policy discussions—they are necessary to create real world change – anything else is a DA to the alt’s method
González no date (Francisco E.- Riordan Roett Senior Associate Professor of Latin American Studies at Johns Hopkins and British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at Nuffield College at the University of Oxford; was a professorial lecturer at SAIS’s Bologna Center and a lecturer in politics at St. John’s College at the University of Oxford; received 2006 SAIS Excellence in Teaching Award; Ph.D., politics, University of Oxford; "POLITICS AND POLICIES"; http://lasa.international.pitt.edu/LARR/prot/fulltext/vol48no1/48-1_221-227_gonzales.pdf)
The growing interest in the interaction of policies and politics is a welcome antidote to
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reviewed in these pages make original individual and collective contributions to this endeavor.

Our China reps are good

Yoshihara, 01 Toshi Yoshihara, Strategic Studies Institute, November 2001 (http://www.iwar.org.uk/iwar/resources/china/iw/chininfo.pdf)
As a final cautionary note, the oftentimes reflexive response among some scholars to discount
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toward IW could pose an increasingly daunting and unpredictable challenge for American policymakers.

Perm do both – if the ALT is overcome the SQ – it’s probs able to overcome the residual links to the AFF

No link – already ratified in Mexico – alt cause to alt bc voting neg doesn’t reject bill in Mexico
Realism is true and inevitable – a shift away collapses into chaos.
MEARSHEIMER ’1 professor of political science at University of Chicago (John, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics, pg. 361)
The optimists’ claim that security competition and war among the great powers has been burned
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the explicit purpose of keeping the major states in each region at peace.

Even if they win that realism sucks, WE STILL WIN ——– critiquing the realist system of international realism can achieve no change and will only produce hostility.  Rejecting realism doesn’t mean other observers and practitioners will too
GUZZINI ’98 assistant prof. of polisci and IR at the Central European University (Stefano, "Conclusion: the fragmentation of realism," Realism in International Relations and International Political Economy: The Continuing Story of a Death Foretold, Published by Routledge, ISBN 0415144027, p. 235)
Third, this last chapter has argued that although the evolution of realism has been
AND
, it might be the best way to tacitly and uncritically reproduce it.

Policy analysis first – most effective way to challenge power

Taft-Kaufman ’95 
Jill Taft-Kaufman, Speech prof @ CMU, 1995, Southern Comm. Journal, Spring, v. 60, Iss. 3, "Other Ways", p pq
The postmodern passwords of "polyvocality," "Otherness," and "difference," unsupported
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political agendas, institutions, agencies, and the budgets that fuel them. 

No root cause of war – complexity dooms monocausal explnalations

Jabri 96 Vivienne, Lecturer in International Relations at the University of Kent, Introduction: Conflict Analysis Reconsidered," Discourses on Violence: Conflict Analysis Reconsidered, Published by Manchester University Press ND, ISBN 0719039592, p. 3
The study of war has produced a number of often conflicting answers to Quincy Wright’s
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attempts to isolate common features leading up to the decision for war.2

Case is a DA to the alt - economic collapse reinforces imperialism
Mead, 9 – Senior Fellow in U.S. Foreign Policy at the Council on Foreign Relations (Walter Russell, The New Republic, "Only Makes You Stronger", 2/4, http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=571cbbb9-2887-4d81-8542-92e83915f5f826p=2-http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=571cbbb9-2887-4d81-8542-92e83915f5f826p=2)
Perhaps—but the long history of capitalism suggests another possibility. After all,
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into 2008 breathing fire and boasting of its renewed great-power status. 

Alt doesn’t solve their impact- one rejection of the aff isn’t sufficient to solve

Utopian/vague alts are a reason to reject the team- block can shift out of 2AC offense

Turn- we need to use the master’s tool – working within the system enables reformism
Schatz 12 (JL, Binghamton U, "The Importance of Apocalypse: The Value of End-¬?Of-¬? The-¬?World Politics While Advancing Ecocriticism," The Journal of Ecocriticism: Vol 4, No 2 (2012))
Any hesitancy to deploy images of apocalypse out of the risk of acting in a
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where multitudes, and not governments, guide the fate of the planet.

2AC CIR

No impact to cyber-terror—-won’t cause military conflict

Thomas P.M. Barnett 13, special assistant for strategic futures in the U.S. Defense Department’s Office of Force Transformation from 2001 to 2003, is chief analyst for Wikistrat, March/April 2013, "Think Again: The Pentagon," Foreign Policy, http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/03/04/the_pentagon?page=full
As for cyber serving as a stand-alone war-fighting domain, there
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But you won’t hear that from the next-warriors on the Potomac.

Air-gapped

Won’t pass- Rubio and GOP political agenda

WJLA, 10-28 ~"Immigration reform: Obama urges Congress again to take action before end of year," ABC7, 10-28-13, http://www.wjla.com/articles/2013/10/immigration-reform-obama-urges-congress-again-to-take-action-before-end-of-year-96071.html~~23ixzz2jLXwlo2r, accessed 10-31-13, mss~

But in a blow to their effort, Sen. Marco Rubio signaled support for
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unclear whether lawmakers will vote on any measure before the year is out.

Immigration has tanked – Cruz and conservatives ensure no passage. 
Bolton, 10/29 (Alex, staff writer for the Hill, "Ted Cruz looms large over comprehensive immigration reform," http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/188422-ted-cruz-looms-large-over-comprehensive-immigration-reform)
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) has shaped the view of Republican
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push through something so unpopular with the base," the conservative strategist said.

NSA and healthcare thump the DA- and prove Obama can’t use PC

Wilson, 10-29 — Washington Post chief White House correspondent
~Scott, "Controversies show how Obama’s inattention to detail may hurt his presidential legacy," Washington Post, 10-29-13, www.washingtonpost.com/politics/recent-scandals-show-obamas-inattention-to-detail-may-cripple-his-presidential-legacy/2013/10/29/c389feb0-40a6-11e3-a751-f032898f2dbc_story.html, accessed 10-31-13, mss~
Controversies show how Obama’s inattention to detail may hurt his presidential legacy
The White House said President Obama didn’t know about NSA spying on world leaders.
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extra scrutiny. Republicans had for months said the IRS was doing so.
~Matt note: paraphrased for ableist language~

DC Circuit nominations thump- comes before the disad

Bream, 10-29 — Fox News’s Supreme Court reporter
~Shannon, "Battle brewing over Obama nominations to crucial DC appeals court," Fox news, 10-29-13, www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/10/29/battle-brewing-over-obama-nominations-to-crucial-dc-appeals-court/, accessed 10-31-13, mss~
There is a battle brewing over President Obama’s three nominees to fill open seats on
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the workload of the D.C. Circuit doesn’t justify 11 judges.

No uniqueness for the internal link – Obama has zero political capital.

Parnes, 10/18 (Amie, White house correspondent for The Hill, "Obama’s hollow debt victory," http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/329219-obamas-hollow-debt-victory-http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/329219-obamas-hollow-debt-victory)
President Obama’s victory over congressional Republicans is likely to have a short shelf life.
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House after such a bruising fight over the shutdown and the debt ceiling.

Obama rejecting House GOP concessions now

Dumain 10/14 – House Leadership Reporter, former Editorial Assistant at Congressional Quarterly (Emma, "Obama Dropped House GOP ’Like a Hot Potato’", Roll Call, 10/14/13, http://blogs.rollcall.com/218/as-senate-debt-limit-deal-crystalizes-house-gop-stays-mum/-http://blogs.rollcall.com/218/as-senate-debt-limit-deal-crystalizes-house-gop-stays-mum/)
House Republicans are mulling their next move as Senate leaders look to jam them with
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polls have shown the current situation hurting them much more than the Democrats.

The plan is an olive branch to the GOP – builds Republican support.

Grant, 13 (David, Christian Science Monitor staff writer, "Obama’s second term: Can he work with Congress?" 1/20, http://www.csmonitor.com/layout/set/print/USA/DC-Decoder/2013/0120/Obama-s-second-term-Can-he-work-with-Congress-video-http://www.csmonitor.com/layout/set/print/USA/DC-Decoder/2013/0120/Obama-s-second-term-Can-he-work-with-Congress-video)
And the president could perhaps turn down the bellicosity on the Hill by working with
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have plenty of GOP support – but that remains a large "if."

Moderate GOP concessions key to Obama’s agenda.

Balz, 10/18 (Dan, political journalist for the Washington Post, "Can Obama seize the moment and make Washington work?" http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/can-obama-seize-the-moment-to-make-washington-work/2013/10/17/d84c1934-3753-11e3-80c6-7e6dd8d22d8f_story.html-http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/can-obama-seize-the-moment-to-make-washington-work/2013/10/17/d84c1934-3753-11e3-80c6-7e6dd8d22d8f_story.html)
His calls for bipartisan cooperation were aimed at what he called the "responsible"
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govern around them by winning support from what he called the responsible Republicans. 

~ ~ Budget is the top priority – thumps all else.

Kaplan, 10/17 (Rebecca, staff @ CBS News, "Obama’s priorities for the year: Budget, immigration, and farm bill," http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-250_162-57607996/obamas-priorities-for-the-year-budget-immigration-and-farm-bill/-http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-250_162-57607996/obamas-priorities-for-the-year-budget-immigration-and-farm-bill/)
President Obama said Thursday morning that his top three priorities for the rest of the
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leadership to appoint negotiators to craft a budget deal by mid-December.

DA’s not intrinsic – rational policymaker weighs means issues won’t be focused on a H.R. bill – not a germane issue in the debate

Fiat solves link – immediate passage means to backlash

Oil and gas lobbies love the plan

Kollipara ’12 
(Puneet, "U.S., Mexico, reach accord on drilling below maritime border", Fuel Fix, 2-20-2012, http://fuelfix.com/blog/2012/02/20/449517/)**
The agreement announced today also would lift a moratorium on waters in a buffer area
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172 million barrels of oil and 304 billion cubic feet of natural gas.

Turns the DA

Froomkin ’11 
(Dan, "How the Oil Lobby Greases Washington’s Wheels", Huffington Post, 4-6-2011, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/04/06/how-the-oil-lobby-greases_n_845720.html)**
Clout in Washington isn’t about winning legislative battles — it’s about making sure that they
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votes to block any legislation — never even took a stab at it.

2AC environment

Impact is inevitable—oil will be drilled by other countries regardless of the plan—plan key to bolster environmental standards which solves better

Plan’s net beneficial— bolsters Mexico environmental and safety standards which spills over

Danvers et al 12 (William C., Staff Director., "OIL, MEXICO, AND THE TRANSBOUNDARY AGREEMENT", U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE 77-567 WASHINGTON : 2012 A MINORITY STAFF REPORT PREPARED FOR THE USE OF THE COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS UNITED STATES SENATE. 12/21/12, www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CPRT-112SPRT77567/html/CPRT-112SPRT77567.htmcandle)
 The TBA further contains requirements of data sharing and notification of likely reserves between
AND
a spill on U.S. economic interests and quality of life.

Cryo-preservation solves species loss

Cannell 99 (Michael, freelance writer, October 10, 1999, The Washington Post, "Ice Age at the Zoo," p. W14)

With his beard and khaki safari shirt, Wildt, 49, could pass as
AND
and alleviate inbreeding by injecting genetic "booster shots" into isolated groups.

Tournament: Glenbrooks | Round: 1 | Opponent: Harker | Judge: Scott Phillips
1AC

The US/Mexico border gets a lot of attention these days. Politicians want to fund it. The Border Patrol wants to protect it. Families want their relatives to cross it. Even South Park did an episode about it. The US/Mexico border has become a phenomenon embedded in the US political lexicon. From Mitt Romney calling for self-deportations to Barack Obama’s alleged comprehensive immigration reform, political discourse flows through a number of power strategies related to the border.  
To better understand the way the US/Mexico border is constructed, it is essential for us to analyze the intersection of various mechanisms of power. Sometimes they are complimentary, sometimes they are in conflict, but they are ever-present in the construction of border politics. There are no successes and no failures – only the effects of power. Understanding this site of intersecting power relations is vital to creating a counter-power that challenges dominant border politics.
Nail, 13 (Thomas, University of Denver, “The Crossroads of Power: Michel Foucault and the US/Mexico Border Wall,” Foucault Studies, February, No. 15, pp. 110=128)
However, these three types of border strategies not only conflict, they also offer
AND
optimal circulation in relation to human migrants, tourists, and border patrols.
First, we must evaluate sovereign power – the notion of a state as the ultimate authority with law as its tool to create obedience. The US/Mexico demarcation serves to establish social identities tied to sovereign, defining where one ends and the other begins.
Chacón, 10 (Justin Akers, Professor of US History and Chicano Studies @ San Diego City College, “The U.S.-Mexico border: Free trade without free people,” International Socialist Review, Issue #73, http://isreview.org/issue/73/us-mexico-border)
Since its inception as a boundary imposed by a war of expansion the U.
AND
looming large in the national mind and casting a long and confining shadow.
Next, disciplinary power, which serves to regulate the behavior of individuals and set social norms in the social body through technologies of architecture, surveillance, and policing seek to criminalize behavior and create docile bodies. This renders the migrant body an obedient yet criminal entity constructed through border processes themselves.
Nail, 13 (Thomas, University of Denver, “The Crossroads of Power: Michel Foucault and the US/Mexico Border Wall,” Foucault Studies, February, No. 15, pp. 110=128)
Several common features can also characterize the second group of political strategies I want to
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It is an opportunity to train a nation of docile and obedient bodies. 

Lastly, biopolitics is made manifest in the border. Power of life is given to the state, where it defines what is included and excluded. The result is a whole population of migrants relegated to bare life: a threat to the American population that must be controlled and exterminated.
Giorgi and Pinkus, 6 (Gabriel, Associate Professor of Spanish and Portuguese @ NYU and Karen, Professor of French and Italian and Comparative Literature @ USC, “Zones of Exception: Biopolitical Territories in the Neoliberal Era,” Diacritics, vol. 36, no. 2, “Bios,” Immunity, Life: The Thought of Roberto Esposito, Summer, pp. 99-108/JSTOR)
Contemporary discourses on economic, social, and cultural exclusion are deeply associated, especially
AND
process of separation and distinction that is constantly haunted by its own ambivalence.
These confluences of power result in thousands of incarcerations and deaths – rendering them to exist only at the margins of social well-being.
Chacón, 10 (Justin Akers, Professor of US History and Chicano Studies @ San Diego City College, “The U.S.-Mexico border: Free trade without free people,” International Socialist Review, Issue #73, http://isreview.org/issue/73/us-mexico-border)
By 2009, over seventy local law enforcement agencies were participating in the DHS’s 287g
AND
border wall rises from within this contradiction, jostling against flesh and bone.
That perceptive Hispanophobia renders an entire population as social utility.
Walsh, 10 - University College Dublin College of Arts and Celtic Studies, peer reviewed by Prof. Edward James and Dr. David Kerr (“The impact of anti-Mexican sentiment on American perceptions of Diego Rivera during the Great Depression”, August, 2010, http://www.ucd.ie/ibp/MADissertations2009/Walsh.pdf)
‘I have left the best of my life and my strength here, sprinkling
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.97 Skin colour came to define what it meant to be Mexican.
The result is the systematic elimination of Mexican and Latino immigrant populations.
Al-qaraz Ochoa, 11 (Raul, Tucson border activist and organizer @ UN Pueblo Sin Fronteras, “The New Genocide: Immigration and the U.S. – Mexico Border,” 11/2, http://antifronteras.com/2011/11/07/367/)
On the eve of Dia de Los Muertos, local Tucson, AZ community members
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, women, gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and queer identified.
The 1AC should be affirmed as a critical analysis of the power relations intersecting at the border. Only by looking to our method can we shape policies that resist status quo domination.
Nail, 13 (Thomas, University of Denver, “The Crossroads of Power: Michel Foucault and the US/Mexico Border Wall,” Foucault Studies, February, No. 15, pp. 110=128)
The official reason given by the Department of Homeland Security for building the estimated 49
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—opposed to its “contradiction,” “repression,” or “failure.”
The 1AC is in the direction of the topic – we advocate the notion of safe houses along the US/Mexican border and in the debate space. This locus undermines the strategies of power that serve to eliminate the immigrant.
Nail, 13 (Thomas, University of Denver, “The Crossroads of Power: Michel Foucault and the US/Mexico Border Wall,” Foucault Studies, February, No. 15, pp. 110=128)
This paper has presented a relatively grim picture of the US/Mexico border wall
AND
(just as we did in the case of disciplinary or biopolitical strategies).

Tournament: Ohio Valley  UK | Round: 1 | Opponent: AHS HM 3 | Judge: -

Thus, we advocate this debate from the U.S./Mexico border. Rhetorical border crossing introduces a mestizo consciousness, a dynamic epistemic strategy that weaves between all boundaries, dichotomies, and absolutes in order to create real political and social change. We can acquire the tools to defy the tension between imperialism and coloniality, to forge an open structure of social relations.

Rodriguez, 11 (Encarnacion Gutierrez , Senior Lecturer in Transcultural Studies at the University of Manchester, "Decolonizing Postcolonial Rhetoric," http://www.migrazine.at/artikel/decolonizing-postcolonial-rhetoric-english.)
Gloria Anzaldúa’s notion of borderlands underlines the epistemic condition which she defines as "la
AND
. Critical border thinking involves and implies both the imperial and colonial difference".

Tournament: Greenhill | Round: Doubles | Opponent: Stratford SO | Judge: Christina Tallungan, Gabe Murillo, Tim Mahoney
1AC v3 – Greenhill
Plan
Plan: The United States federal government should pass the Outer Continental Shelf Transboundary Hydrocarbon Agreement 

China
Advantage 1 is China
China is increasing their reliance on Middle East oil – plan checks Chinese oil expansion
González, 12 – UCB, columnist for the WSJ (“Expanded Oil Drilling Helps U.S.Wean Itself From Mideast”, June 27th, 2012, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304441404577480952719124264.html)
HOUSTON—America will halve its reliance on Middle East oil by the end of
AND
Russia's economy is "a colossal challenge," said economy minister Andrei Belousov.
China can’t develop any themselves – they have to import
Cockerham, 13 – Columnist for McClatchy (“Iraqi oil: Once seen as U.S. boon, now it’s mostly China’s”, 3/27/13, http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/03/27/187100/iraqi-oil-once-seen-as-us-boon.html#storylink=cpy)
WASHINGTON — Ten years after the United States invaded and occupied Iraq, the country’s
AND
-owned oil company PetroChina lacking the technological sophistication needed for deepwater production.

Sino-U.S. competition growing now – import dependence in the Middle East makes Chinese power projection likely
Kemp, 12 - John Kemp is a Reuters market analyst (“COLUMN-China's growing strategic stake in the Middle East: Kemp”, March 2nd 2012, http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/03/02/column-china-middle-east-oil-idUSL5E8E229T20120302)
(Reuters) - China's growing demand for imported oil, coupled with the development
AND
in the region is not an aberration but the start of a trend. 

Competition is zero-sum – there is a direct trade-off
MNI, 13 - MNI is the leading provider of news and intelligence specifically for the Global Foreign Exchange and Fixed Income Markets (“Experts: Increased US Shale Oil and Gas To Ease Rivalry W/ China”, June 12th, 2013, https://mninews.marketnews.com/index.php/experts-increased-us-shale-oil-gas-ease-rivalry-w-china?q=content/experts-increased-us-shale-oil-gas-ease-rivalry-w-china)
WASHINGTON (MNI) - Many wax lyrical about what the United States' shale oil
AND
increased domestic oil supply will not lead to less engagement with the region.
That causes US-China war, middle east instability, and south china sea conflict
Lai, 07 - UCLA Center for Chinese Studies (“China's Oil Diplomacy: Is It a Global Security Threat?”, Vol. 28, No. 3,  Third World Quarterly, pp. 519-537, published by Taylor and Francis, accessed via JSTOR)
In recent years China's demands for imported oil have increased rapidly. Many observers,
AND
sort out the facts from the allegations over China's quest for energy security.
Middle East instability cause extinction
Steinbach, 02 (DC Iraq Coalition, 3/2/02 “Israeli Weapons of Mass Destruction: a Threat to Peace” Center for Research on Globalisation. http://wagingpeace.org/articles /0203/0331steinbachisraeli.htm)
Meanwhile, the existence of an arsenal of mass destruction in such an unstable region
AND
whatever reason- the deepening Middle East conflict could trigger a world conflagration."
So does South China Sea conflict
Wittner 11 (Lawrence S. Wittner, Emeritus Professor of History at the State University of New York/Albany, Wittner is the author of eight books, the editor or co-editor of another four, and the author of over 250 published articles and book reviews. From 1984 to 1987, he edited Peace and Change, a journal of peace research., 11/28/2011, "Is a Nuclear War With China Possible?",  www.huntingtonnews.net/14446)
While nuclear weapons exist, there remains a danger that they will be used.
AND
—destroying agriculture, creating worldwide famine, and generating chaos and destruction. 

And US-China war
Straight Times 2k (Ching Cheong, Senior Writer at the Strait Times, “No one gains in a war over Taiwan,” June 25th, Lexis)
THE high-intensity scenario postulates a cross-strait war escalating into a full
AND
should that come to pass, we would see the destruction of civilization.
Natural Gas
Advantage 2 is Natural Gas
Mexico’s natural gas demand is skyrocketing but PEMEX cant produce any
Forest, 13 (Dave, contributor to Christian Science Monitor and contributing editor to the Oil and Gas Investments Bulletin, “A surprising source of demand for US natural gas,” Christian Science Monitor, July 4, http://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/Energy-Voices/2013/0704/A-surprising-source-of-demand-for-US-natural-gas)
Mexico used to have a pretty decent gas industry.¶ Between 1990 and 2008,
AND
5 Bcf/d, and Pemex is now producing less than that.
Mexico’s import demand for US natural gas will cause domestic prices to double in three years.
Forest, 13 (Dave, contributor to Christian Science Monitor and contributing editor to the Oil and Gas Investments Bulletin, “A surprising source of demand for US natural gas,” Christian Science Monitor, July 4, http://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/Energy-Voices/2013/0704/A-surprising-source-of-demand-for-US-natural-gas)
The numbers imply that Mexico’s peak demand for U.S. gas is currently
AND
in the US from $2-$4/mcf in one year.
Low natural gas prices key to the US steel industry
James, 12 (Steve, correspondent for Reuters in New York, “Analysis: Steelmakers eye gas to cut costs, drive exports,” Reuters, March 16, http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/03/16/us-steel-gas-idUSBRE82F12Y20120316)
America's steel industry, for decades a symbol of industrial decline, is betting on
AND
old symbol of American industrial power, a competitive edge in the 21st Century
Competitive steel industry is key to steel armor plating – ensures hard power
Adams, 13 (John, President of Guardian Six Consulting, LLC, Brigadier General, U.S. Army (Retired), former Deputy U.S. Military Representative to the NATO Military Committee in Brussels, “Remaking American Security: Supply Chain Vulnerabilities and National Security Risks Across the U.S. Defense Industrial Base, May, http://americanmanufacturing.org/files/RemakingAmericanSecurityMay2013.pdf)
Steel armor plate is an important component for armored ground vehicles, including personnel carriers
AND
the sheer variety of steel plates needed for U.S. platforms.
Robust conventional forces deter global conflict
Mullen, 8 (Michael G., ADM, U.S. Navy, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, “From the Chairman: It’s Time for a New Deterrence Model,” Joint Force Quarterly, October, http://inbody.net/civmilblog2/2008/09/16/its-time-for-a-new-deterrence-model/default.htm)
Secondly, the model must be credible. The enemy, or potential enemy,
AND
global missile defense systems, and modernize our strategic weapons systems and infrastructure.
American hard power preserves alliances and deters multiple flashpoints for war
Kaplan, 13 (Robert D., Chief Geopolitical Analyst at Stratfor, “The Virtues of Hard Power,” May 22, Forbes, http://www.forbes.com/sites/stratfor/2013/05/22/the-virtues-of-hard-power/)
Hard power has not been in vogue since the Iraq War turned badly in about
AND
. American hard power, thus, must never go out of fashion.
Alliances solve nuclear war
Ross ’98 Douglas, Winter 1998/1999,– professor of political science at Simon Fraser University, Canada’s functional isolationism and the future of weapons of mass destruction, International Journal, lexis
Thus, an easily accessible tax base has long been available for spending much more
AND
community have any plausible hope of avoiding warfare involving nuclear or other WMD.
Russia expansionism causes nuclear war
Blank 9 (Dr. Stephen, Research Professor of National Security Affairs at the Strategic Studies Institute of the U.S. Army War College, March, “Russia And Arms Control: Are There Opportunities For The Obama Administration?,” http://www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pdffiles/pub908.pdf)
Proliferators or nuclear states like China and Russia can then deter regional or intercontinental attacks
AND
perhaps make wars of aggression on their neighbors or their own people.172
Wetlands
PEMEX will drill inevitably but they have no tech
Johnson 12 - Tim Johnson, Maria Moors Cabot Prize, Winner and Stanford University, Knight Fellow, citing various oil experts, 3-04-12, McClatchy Newspapers, Mexico City, “Mexican plan for Gulf deepwater wells sparks new worries” http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2012/04/03/144004/mexican-plan-for-gulf-deepwater.html#.UdA9CvmwWuk
Two years after the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history,
AND

"The risks are massive and the potential benefits are comparatively small."
The plan is key to make that safe
Melgar, 2012 (Lourdes, director of the Center for Sustainability and Business at EGADE Business School of the Tecnológico de Monterrey, Summer 2012, “The Future of PEMEX,” http://www.americasquarterly.org/node/3781)
The challenge for PEMEX is to increase reserves and oil and gas production in areas
AND
The Mexican oil industry can no longer thrive on amendments to distorted schemes.
Southeastern wetlands are key to aquatic biodiversity, the hydrologic cycle, watershed health, and prevent erosion and they’re on the brink now
EPA 13 – US Environmental Protection Agency (“Protecting Wetlands in Coastal Watersheds”, Last updated on Wednesday, July 03, 2013, http://water.epa.gov/type/wetlands/cwt.cfm)
Coastal wetlands include saltwater and freshwater wetlands located within coastal watersheds — specifically USGS 8
AND
of carbon due to their rapid growth rates and slow decomposition rates.6
A spill would devastate the ecosystems
EarthGauge 10 – a National Environmental Education Foundation Program (“Gulf Oil Spill Series: Impacts on Coastal Wetland Plants”, http://www.earthgauge.net/wp-content/EG_Gulf_WetlandPlants.pdf)
IMPACTS OF OIL ON COASTAL WETLANDS Most research on the impacts of oil in wetlands
AND
higher water levels and excess flooding that may prevent plants from growing back.
Wetlands are key to the hydro-cycle – solves extinction
Ramsar Convention 96 (“Ramsar Convention on Wetlands, Wetlands and Biodiversity, Executive Summary”, http://www.ramsar.org/about/about_biodiversity.htm, ACC: 12.20.08, p. online)
Wetlands - including (inter alia) rivers, lakes, marshes, estuaries,
AND
transition zones between aquatic ecosystems and terrestrial ecosystems such as forests and grasslands.

Soil erosion causes extinction
Ikerd 99 – Professor Emeritus of Agricultural Economics at University of Missouri (John E., “Foundational Principles: Soils. Stewardship, and Sustainability,” Sep 22, http://www.ssu.missouri.edu/faculty/jikerd/papers/NCSOILS.html)
A foundation is "the basis upon which something stands or is supported" (
AND
water to drink, and food to eat. It’s just less obvious.
Oil spills threaten gulf sponges key to fight diseases – BP put them on the brink
Downing 10 – Larry, Reuters senior staff (“Medical Cures May Be Destroyed By Oil Spill”, 7-9-10, http://www.wftv.com/news/news/medical-cures-may-be-destroyed-by-oil-spill/nJwf4/)
The cure for cancer or malaria could be destroyed because of the oil disaster in
AND
It’s not only damaging to sea life, but human life as well.
Sponges solve antibiotic resistance
Sanders 9 – Laura, Ph.D. in Molecular Biology from UCLA, Neuroscience Writer for Science News (“Sponge's secret weapon revealed” Science News, 00368423, 3-14-09, v.175, iss.6)
A chemical from an ocean-dwelling sponge can reprogram antibiotic-resistant bacteria to
AND
the bacterium, it's not throwing up any red flags," Moeller said.
Antibiotic resistance causes extinction
Davies 08 – Julian, Fellow of the Royal Society, British microbiologist, professor emeritus, and Principal Investigator of the Davies Lab, at University of British Columbia (“Resistance redux; Infectious diseases, antibiotic resistance and the future of mankind”, EMBO Rep. 2008 July; 9(Suppl 1): S18–S21. doi:  10.1038/embor.2008.69 PMCID: PMC3327549, Science and Society)
For many years, antibiotic-resistant pathogens have been recognized as one of the
AND
our best efforts, continue to exact a toll on the human race.

Tournament: Greenhill | Round: 2 | Opponent: Notre Dame LP | Judge: Sara Sanchez

Erosion

Soil erosion controls the internal link to magnitude – BP spill means there on the brink, another spill means they degrade faster, destroying our ability to grow food – that’s Ikerd

~ ~ That turns any war impact – resource scarcity increases the likelihood of conflict

Gendron 26 Hoffman, 09 - The Peace and Conflict Review ("Resource Scarcity and the Prevention of Violent Conflicts", Fall 2009, Volume 4, Issue 1, http://www.review.upeace.org/index.cfm?opcion=026ejemplar=1826entrada=90)**
Resource scarcity can be defined according to three principals. The first is basic human
AND
management (Bercovitch et al., 2009, Part III, Chapter 1). 

Inherency

Plan passed the House – not the Senate

House version of the bill will fail due to the Dodd-Frank Act – a change in the bill is necessary to solve.

Alic 7/2 (Jen, geopolitical analyst, co-founder of ISA Intel, 7/2/13, "Transparency Squabble Stalls US-Mexico Oil 26 Gas Deal," http://oilprice.com/Geopolitics/North-America/Transparency-Squabble-Stalls-US-Mexico-Oil-Gas-Deal.html)//DR. H

The US House has ratified an agreement governing oil and gas development along the US
AND
to increase its oil production platform in the medium and long-term."

Thorium CP

Thorium doesn’t solve in the short term and only replaces nuclear power
Ibrahim 7/15 (Dr. Ahmad, Fellow at the Academy of Science Malaysia and Science Analyst for Strait Times, "More interest in nuke fuel thorium," http://www.nst.com.my/opinion/columnist/more-interest-in-nuke-fuel-thorium-1.319433)

DESPITE the safety issues related to nuclear power, many feel it is not wise
AND
Thorium may provide a plan on how to use the country’s thorium deposits. 

_ conditional options are a voting issue-

A) 2AC strategy skew- cross applications prevents and deters reading 2AC offense, kills affirmative strategy

B) Advocacy skills and education - we never defend positions in the debate- kills portable skills - bolsters ideological polarization

~ ~ You get dispo
~ ~ You get one condo

Debt Ceiling

Laundry list of reasons why it won’t pass

Marcus, 9/20 – Writer for Real Clear Politics (Ruth, "On Debt Ceiling, a Different Feel," Real Clear Politics, 20 September 2013, http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2013/09/20/on_debt_ceiling_a_different_feel_120005.html//HO**
Let’s hope so. But steady Washington hands worry that this time really could be
AND
existent. The ability to quickly concoct a mini-bargain is limited.

====There’s no link – their Bowman evidence says Obama can’t handle a bill – that’s our AFF ====

====Obama won’t compromise – campaign like speeches against the house means momentum flows AFF ====
KNOLLER, 9/20 – Columnist for CBS News ("Republicans "trying to mess with me" on budget, Obama says", 9/20/13, http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-250_162-57603954/republicans-trying-to-mess-with-me-on-budget-obama-says/)**
President Obama slammed House Republicans for "trying to mess with me" by passing
AND
the economy hostage if you don’t get 100 percent of what you want." 

No chance of war from economic decline—-best and most recent data

Daniel W. Drezner 12, Professor, The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University, October 2012, "The Irony of Global Economic Governance: The System Worked," http://www.globaleconomicgovernance.org/wp-content/uploads/IR-Colloquium-MT12-Week-5_The-Irony-of-Global-Economic-Governance.pdf-http://www.globaleconomicgovernance.org/wp-content/uploads/IR-Colloquium-MT12-Week-5_The-Irony-of-Global-Economic-Governance.pdf
The final outcome addresses a dog that hasn’t barked: the effect of the Great
AND
II – and not even worse – must be regarded as fortunate."42

PC low – Summers nomination
Koffler, 9/17 – White House Reporter ("Chuck Todd: White House Screwed Up Summers Nomination", 9/17/13, http://www.whitehousedossier.com/2013/09/17/chuck-todd-white-house-screwed-summers-nomination)**
MSNBC’s Chuck Todd this morning laid blame directly at the North Portico doorstep for President
AND
political capital" he can’t punish Democrats for opposing Summers, Todd said.

====Obama is pushing EPA regs – congressional backlash means fights are inevitable====
Shear, 9/20 – Columnist for NYT ("Administration to Press Ahead With Carbon Limits", 9/20/13, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/21/us/politics/obama-administration-carbon-limits.html)**
WASHINGTON — The Obama administration on Friday announced that it was not backing down from
AND
a vote to stop this devastating E.P.A. rule."

Oil and gas lobbies love the plan

Kollipara ’12 
(Puneet, "U.S., Mexico, reach accord on drilling below maritime border", Fuel Fix, 2-20-2012, http://fuelfix.com/blog/2012/02/20/449517/)**
The agreement announced today also would lift a moratorium on waters in a buffer area
AND
172 million barrels of oil and 304 billion cubic feet of natural gas.

Turns the DA

Froomkin ’11 
(Dan, "How the Oil Lobby Greases Washington’s Wheels", Huffington Post, 4-6-2011, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/04/06/how-the-oil-lobby-greases_n_845720.html)**
Clout in Washington isn’t about winning legislative battles — it’s about making sure that they
AND
votes to block any legislation — never even took a stab at it.

DA’s not intrinsic

Fiat solves link

Shutdown is inevitable, but there’s no impact – this card assumes all your warrants

Ungar, 9/19 – Writer for Forbes and a Democratic strategist with Mercury Public Affairs (Rick, "Government Shut Down Likely To Actually Happen This Time," Forbes, 19 September 2013, http://www.forbes.com/sites/rickungar/2013/09/19/government-shut-down-likely-to-actually-happen-this-time/)//HO**
So it goes with modern government in the United States and its own version of
AND
to clear out the bad blood.¶ Can’t happen soon enough for me.

Winners win – empirically proven, it’s true for energy, and compromises don’t work

Gergen 1/19 – CNN Senior Political Analyst
(David, "Obama 2.0: Smarter – but wiser?", CNN, 1-19-2013, http://www.cnn.com/2013/01/18/opinion/gergen-obama-two/index.html)**
On the eve of his second inaugural, President Obama appears smarter, tougher and
AND
for a "grand bargain" appear to be hanging by a thread.

Shutdown either inevitable and no impact or there’s no shutdown

Marcus, 9/20 – Writer for Real Clear Politics (Ruth, "On Debt Ceiling, a Different Feel," Real Clear Politics, 20 September 2013, http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2013/09/20/on_debt_ceiling_a_different_feel_120005.html//HO**
The chilling part is obvious. Having the government shut down, especially briefly,
AND
solve, repeat.¶ And this could well happen in the coming showdown.

2ac renewables t/o

This is our AFF- we transition to renewables

Renewables don’t offset fossil fuels – boomerang effect ensures it just drives up consumption

Zehner 12 – visiting Scholar at UC Berkeley (Ozzie, "Solar Cells and Wind Turbines Don’t Offset Fossil Fuel Use, According to New Book, Green Illusions," Wall Street Journal, June 12 2012, http://www.marketwatch.com/story/solar-cells-and-wind-turbines-dont-offset-fossil-fuel-use-according-to-new-book-green-illusions-2012-06-12 ) JG
Renewable energy technologies do not offset fossil fuel use in the United States according to
AND
wind turbines, and advanced biofuels are all just ways of throwing harder."

Renewables won’t catch on– low efficiency, high cost, low reliability, land scarcity, lack of storage capacity. It’s a double-bind: either market forces will drive innovation absent the aff, or they can’t cause investment

Taylor and Van Doren 11 – critic of federal energy and environmental policy, Wall Street Journal Contributor, served on congressional advisory bodies, member of International Association for Energy economics, writer for The Energy Journal, testified in Congress / editor of the quarterly journal Regulation and expert in the regulation of energy and environment, taught at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University, School of Organization and Management at Yale University, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, former postdoctoral fellow in political economy at Carnegie Mellon University (Jerry and Peter, "The Green Energy Economy Reconsidered" 4/25/11;  http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/green-energy-economy-reconsidered)//Beddow
Let’s assume, however, that we could afford that. Have we ever seen
AND
sense, all of the subsidies in the world won’t change that fact.

Renewables can’t solve warming – they supplement, not replace, dirty energy

Angus 12 – ecosocialist advocate, citing an extensive study by Richard York, professor at the University of Oregon with an MS in Environmental Studies from Bemidji State University (Iran, "Green energy won’t save the earth without social change", 3/21/12;  http://climateandcapitalism.com/2012/03/21/green-energy-alone-wont-save-the-earth/)//Beddow
The most popular techno-fix for global warming is green energy. If energy
AND
ignore the inherent destructiveness of the current system of unsustainable development – capitalism."

Now is key —- food crises are beginning —- warming ensures strong plants that can provide for the increasing globe

Idso et. al. 11—Former Professor in the Departments of Geology, Geography, and Botany and Microbiology @ Arizona State and PhD from UMinnesota and former research physicist for the Department of Agriculture—AND Keith Idso, PhD in Botany—AND Craig, PhD in Geography (Sherwood, "Is There a Need for a More Sustainable Agriculture?" Vol. 14, Iss. 24, 15 June 2011, http://co2science.org/articles/V14/N24/EDIT.php-http://co2science.org/articles/V14/N24/EDIT.php, DA: 6/23/2012JLENART)
In a paper that came to our attention a couple weeks ago, Gomiero et
AND
, and all should have a say in what to do about it. 

Food crises cause World War 3

Calvin ’98 ~William Calvin, Theoretical Neurophysiologist at the University of Washington, January 1998, Atlantic Monthly, The Great Climate Flip-Flop, Pages 47-64~
The population-crash scenario is surely the most appalling. Plummeting crop yields would
AND
longer do so if it lost the extra warming from the North Atlantic.

Consensus of experts agree no impact to climate change

Hsu 10 (Jeremy, Live Science Staff, July 19, pg. http://www.livescience.com/culture/can-humans-survive-extinction-doomsday-100719.html-http://www.livescience.com/culture/can-humans-survive-extinction-doomsday-100719.html)
His views deviate sharply from those of most experts, who don’t view climate change
AND
crop yields, so we’re essentially doing an experiment whose result remains uncertain."

Err neg – aff authors overestimate warming and underestimate adaptation

Goklany 11 - a science and technology policy analyst for the United States Department of the Interior (Indur M., "Misled on Climate Change: How the UN IPCC (and others) Exaggerate the Impacts of Global Warming" December 2011, http://goklany.org/library/Reason20CC20and20Development202011.pdf-http://goklany.org/library/Reason CC and Development 2011.pdf, PZ)
A third approach would be to fix the root cause of why developing countries are
AND
while cellular phone users went from 0 per 100 to 33 per 100.

Tournament: University of Michigan | Round: 2 | Opponent: - | Judge: 

1AC v3 – Greenhill

China

Advantage 1 is China

====China is increasing their reliance on Middle East oil – plan checks Chinese oil expansion ====
González, 12 – UCB, columnist for the WSJ ("Expanded Oil Drilling Helps U.S.Wean Itself From Mideast", June 27th, 2012, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304441404577480952719124264.html)**
HOUSTON—America will halve its reliance on Middle East oil by the end of
AND
Russia’s economy is "a colossal challenge," said economy minister Andrei Belousov.

====China can’t develop any themselves – they have to import====
Cockerham, 13 – Columnist for McClatchy ("Iraqi oil: Once seen as U.S. boon, now it’s mostly China’s", 3/27/13, http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/03/27/187100/iraqi-oil-once-seen-as-us-boon.html~~23storylink=cpy)**
WASHINGTON — Ten years after the United States invaded and occupied Iraq, the country’s
AND
-owned oil company PetroChina lacking the technological sophistication needed for deepwater production.

====Sino-U.S. competition growing now – import dependence in the Middle East makes Chinese power projection likely====
Kemp, 12 - John Kemp is a Reuters market analyst ("COLUMN-China’s growing strategic stake in the Middle East: Kemp", March 2nd 2012, http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/03/02/column-china-middle-east-oil-idUSL5E8E229T20120302)**
(Reuters) - China’s growing demand for imported oil, coupled with the development
AND
in the region is not an aberration but the start of a trend. 

====Competition is zero-sum – there is a direct trade-off====
MNI, 13 - MNI is the leading provider of news and intelligence specifically for the Global Foreign Exchange and Fixed Income Markets ("Experts: Increased US Shale Oil 26 Gas To Ease Rivalry W/ China", June 12th, 2013, https://mninews.marketnews.com/index.php/experts-increased-us-shale-oil-gas-ease-rivalry-w-china?q=content/experts-increased-us-shale-oil-gas-ease-rivalry-w-china)**
WASHINGTON (MNI) - Many wax lyrical about what the United States’ shale oil
AND
increased domestic oil supply will not lead to less engagement with the region. 

====That causes US-China war, middle east instability, and south china sea conflict ====
Lai, 07 - UCLA Center for Chinese Studies ("China’s Oil Diplomacy: Is It a Global Security Threat?", Vol. 28, No. 3,  Third World Quarterly, pp. 519-537, published by Taylor 26 Francis, accessed via JSTOR)
In recent years China’s demands for imported oil have increased rapidly. Many observers,
AND
sort out the facts from the allegations over China’s quest for energy security. 

Middle East instability cause extinction

Steinbach, 02 (DC Iraq Coalition, 3/2/02 "Israeli Weapons of Mass Destruction: a Threat to Peace" Center for Research on Globalisation. http://wagingpeace.org/articles /0203/0331steinbachisraeli.htm-http://wagingpeace.org/articles /0203/0331steinbachisraeli.htm)
Meanwhile, the existence of an arsenal of mass destruction in such an unstable region
AND
whatever reason- the deepening Middle East conflict could trigger a world conflagration."

So does South China Sea conflict

Wittner 11 (Lawrence S. Wittner, Emeritus Professor of History at the State University of New York/Albany, Wittner is the author of eight books, the editor or co-editor of another four, and the author of over 250 published articles and book reviews. From 1984 to 1987, he edited Peace 26 Change, a journal of peace research., 11/28/2011, "Is a Nuclear War With China Possible?",  www.huntingtonnews.net/14446)
While nuclear weapons exist, there remains a danger that they will be used.
AND
—destroying agriculture, creating worldwide famine, and generating chaos and destruction. 

And US-China war

Straight Times 2k (Ching Cheong, Senior Writer at the Strait Times, "No one gains in a war over Taiwan," June 25th, Lexis)
THE high-intensity scenario postulates a cross-strait war escalating into a full
AND
should that come to pass, we would see the destruction of civilization.

Natural Gas

Advantage 2 is Natural Gas

Mexico’s natural gas demand is skyrocketing but PEMEX cant produce any

Forest, 13 (Dave, contributor to Christian Science Monitor 26 contributing editor to the Oil 26 Gas Investments Bulletin, "A surprising source of demand for US natural gas," Christian Science Monitor, July 4, http://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/Energy-Voices/2013/0704/A-surprising-source-of-demand-for-US-natural-gas-http://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/Energy-Voices/2013/0704/A-surprising-source-of-demand-for-US-natural-gas)
Mexico used to have a pretty decent gas industry.¶ Between 1990 and 2008,
AND
5 Bcf/d, and Pemex is now producing less than that.

Mexico’s import demand for US natural gas will cause domestic prices to double in three years.

Forest, 13 (Dave, contributor to Christian Science Monitor 26 contributing editor to the Oil 26 Gas Investments Bulletin, "A surprising source of demand for US natural gas," Christian Science Monitor, July 4, http://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/Energy-Voices/2013/0704/A-surprising-source-of-demand-for-US-natural-gas-http://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/Energy-Voices/2013/0704/A-surprising-source-of-demand-for-US-natural-gas)
The numbers imply that Mexico’s peak demand for U.S. gas is currently
AND
in the US from 242-244/mcf in one year.

Low natural gas prices key to the US steel industry

James, 12 (Steve, correspondent for Reuters in New York, "Analysis: Steelmakers eye gas to cut costs, drive exports," Reuters, March 16, http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/03/16/us-steel-gas-idUSBRE82F12Y20120316)
America’s steel industry, for decades a symbol of industrial decline, is betting on
AND
old symbol of American industrial power, a competitive edge in the 21st Century

Competitive steel industry is key to steel armor plating – ensures hard power

Adams, 13 (John, President of Guardian Six Consulting, LLC, Brigadier General, U.S. Army (Retired), former Deputy U.S. Military Representative to the NATO Military Committee in Brussels, "Remaking American Security: Supply Chain Vulnerabilities 26 National Security Risks Across the U.S. Defense Industrial Base, May, http://americanmanufacturing.org/files/RemakingAmericanSecurityMay2013.pdf-http://americanmanufacturing.org/files/RemakingAmericanSecurityMay2013.pdf)
Steel armor plate is an important component for armored ground vehicles, including personnel carriers
AND
the sheer variety of steel plates needed for U.S. platforms.

Robust conventional forces deter global conflict

Mullen, 8 (Michael G., ADM, U.S. Navy, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, "From the Chairman: It’s Time for a New Deterrence Model," Joint Force Quarterly, October, http://inbody.net/civmilblog2/2008/09/16/its-time-for-a-new-deterrence-model/default.htm-http://inbody.net/civmilblog2/2008/09/16/its-time-for-a-new-deterrence-model/default.htm)
Secondly, the model must be credible. The enemy, or potential enemy,
AND
global missile defense systems, and modernize our strategic weapons systems and infrastructure.

American hard power preserves alliances and deters multiple flashpoints for war

Kaplan, 13 (Robert D., Chief Geopolitical Analyst at Stratfor, "The Virtues of Hard Power," May 22, Forbes, http://www.forbes.com/sites/stratfor/2013/05/22/the-virtues-of-hard-power/-http://www.forbes.com/sites/stratfor/2013/05/22/the-virtues-of-hard-power/)
Hard power has not been in vogue since the Iraq War turned badly in about
AND
. American hard power, thus, must never go out of fashion.

Alliances solve nuclear war

Ross ’98 ~Douglas, Winter 1998/1999,– professor of political science at Simon Fraser University, Canada’s functional isolationism and the future of weapons of mass destruction, International Journal, lexis~
Thus, an easily accessible tax base has long been available for spending much more
AND
community have any plausible hope of avoiding warfare involving nuclear or other WMD.

Russia expansionism causes nuclear war

Blank 9 (Dr. Stephen, Research Professor of National Security Affairs at the Strategic Studies Institute of the U.S. Army War College, March, "Russia And Arms Control: Are There Opportunities For The Obama Administration?," http://www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pdffiles/pub908.pdf)
Proliferators or nuclear states like China and Russia can then deter regional or intercontinental attacks
AND
perhaps make wars of aggression on their neighbors or their own people.172

Wetlands

PEMEX will drill inevitably but they have no tech
Johnson 12 - ~Tim Johnson, Maria Moors Cabot Prize, Winner 26 Stanford University, Knight Fellow, citing various oil experts, 3-04-12, McClatchy Newspapers, Mexico City, "Mexican plan for Gulf deepwater wells sparks new worries" http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2012/04/03/144004/mexican-plan-for-gulf-deepwater.html~~23.UdA9CvmwWuk-http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2012/04/03/144004/mexican-plan-for-gulf-deepwater.html~~
Two years after the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history,
AND

"The risks are massive and the potential benefits are comparatively small."
The plan is key to make that safe
Melgar, 2012 (Lourdes, director of the Center for Sustainability and Business at EGADE Business School of the Tecnológico de Monterrey, Summer 2012, "The Future of PEMEX," http://www.americasquarterly.org/node/3781)
The challenge for PEMEX is to increase reserves and oil and gas production in areas
AND
The Mexican oil industry can no longer thrive on amendments to distorted schemes.

Southeastern wetlands are key to aquatic biodiversity, the hydrologic cycle, watershed health, and prevent erosion and they’re on the brink now

EPA 13 – US Environmental Protection Agency ("Protecting Wetlands in Coastal Watersheds", Last updated on Wednesday, July 03, 2013, http://water.epa.gov/type/wetlands/cwt.cfm-http://water.epa.gov/type/wetlands/cwt.cfm)
Coastal wetlands include saltwater and freshwater wetlands located within coastal watersheds — specifically USGS 8
AND
of carbon due to their rapid growth rates and slow decomposition rates.6

A spill would devastate the ecosystems

EarthGauge 10 – a National Environmental Education Foundation Program ("Gulf Oil Spill Series: Impacts on Coastal Wetland Plants", http://www.earthgauge.net/wp-content/EG_Gulf_WetlandPlants.pdf-http://www.earthgauge.net/wp-content/EG_Gulf_WetlandPlants.pdf)
IMPACTS OF OIL ON COASTAL WETLANDS Most research on the impacts of oil in wetlands
AND
higher water levels and excess flooding that may prevent plants from growing back.

Wetlands are key to the hydro-cycle – solves extinction

Ramsar Convention 96 ("Ramsar Convention on Wetlands, Wetlands and Biodiversity, Executive Summary", http://www.ramsar.org/about/about_biodiversity.htm, ACC: 12.20.08, p. online)
Wetlands - including (inter alia) rivers, lakes, marshes, estuaries,
AND
transition zones between aquatic ecosystems and terrestrial ecosystems such as forests and grasslands.

Soil erosion causes extinction

Ikerd 99 – Professor Emeritus of Agricultural Economics at University of Missouri (John E., "Foundational Principles: Soils. Stewardship, and Sustainability," Sep 22, http://www.ssu.missouri.edu/faculty/jikerd/papers/NCSOILS.html)
A foundation is "the basis upon which something stands or is supported" (
AND
water to drink, and food to eat. It’s just less obvious.

Plan

Plan: The United States federal government should pass the Outer Continental Shelf Transboundary Hydrocarbon Agreement

Solvency

Plan is key – the moratorium will inevitably be repealed in January 2014 – only the plan makes the drilling effective – it’s either the plan or failure

Dlouhy 10-13-13(Jennifer A. Dlouhy covers energy policy, politics and other issues for The Houston Chronicle and other Hearst Newspapers from Washington, D.C. Previously, she reported on legal affairs for Congressional Quarterly. She also has worked at The Beaumont Enterprise, The San Antonio Express-News and other newspapers, Fuel Fix, "Senate passes bill to enact US-Mexico oil treaty", http://fuelfix.com/blog/2013/10/13/senate-passes-bill-to-enact-us-mexico-oil-treaty/).
WASHINGTON — The Senate on Saturday unanimously passed legislation to enact a long-stalled
AND
172 million barrels of oil and 304 billion cubic feet of natural gas.

Tournament: Tournament of Champions | Round: 6 | Opponent: Barstow DN | Judge: Paul Johnson

—-1AC New—-

Inherency

Contention 1 – Inherency: Chapter 11 of NAFTA allows for foreign investors to sue host nations for indirect expropriation. The vague standard has opened the floodgates for investor-state arbitration.

Beachy, 14 (Ben, Research Director for Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch, "NAFTA at 20," January, http://www.citizen.org/documents/NAFTA-at-20.pdf)
Foreign corporations have launched investor-state attacks on a wide array of consumer health and safety policies, environmental and land-use laws, government procurement decisions, regulatory permits, financial regulations, and other public interest policies that they allege as undermining "expected future profits." The number of investor-state cases has soared over the last decade – in 2012 the number of new investor-state cases launched was twice the number launched one decade earlier, as indicated in the adjacent graph. From 2000 to 2012, there was a tenfold increase in the cumulative number of investor-state cases, even though treaties with investor-state provisions have existed since the 1950s.98 When the foreign investor wins a case, the government must hand the corporation an amount of taxpayer money decided by the tribunal as compensation for the offending policy. There is no limit to the amount of money tribunals can order governments to pay corporations, and there are very limited appeal rights. Foreign firms have won more than 24360 million taxpayer dollars thus far in investor-state cases brought under NAFTA. Of the 11 claims currently pending under NAFTA, demanding a total of more than 2412.4 billion, all relate to environmental, energy, land use, financial, public health and transportation policies – not traditional trade issues.99 To see a table of all NAFTA investor-state cases filed and their statuses, visit Public Citizen’s investor-state chart at http://www.citizen.org/documents/investor-state-chart.pdf.

Governance

Indirect expropriation creates a chilling effect for innovative policy making. States lose their ability to govern under the threat of international arbitration and compensation costs.

Sinclair, 10 (Scott, senior research fellow and director of the Trade and Investment Research Project for the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, "NAFTA Chapter 11 Investor-State Disputes," October 1, http://www.policyalternatives.ca/sites/default/files/uploads/publications/National20Office/2010/11/NAFTA20Dispute20Table.pdf-http://www.policyalternatives.ca/sites/default/files/uploads/publications/National Office/2010/11/NAFTA Dispute Table.pdf)
NAFTA investor-state litigation has resulted in governments and taxpayers being forced to pay
AND
to the rule of law and democratic governance posed by NAFTA’s Chapter 11.

Scenario 1 – Economic Decline

The indirect expropriation standard guarantees structural economic collapse – when downturns occur, governments must make necessary reforms to prevent a downward spiral. NAFTA’s interpretation of Chapter 11 crushes government policies needed to stop future declines from spiraling out of control.

Van Harten, 9 (Gus, Associate Professor @ Osgoode Hall Law School, "Reforming the NAFTA Investment Regime," November, http://www.ase.tufts.edu/gdae/Pubs/rp/PardeeNAFTACh4HartenFDINov09.pdf)
So long as the U.S., Canada, and Mexico do not take
AND
supervision by a regional commission, rather than by investor-state arbitration.

US economic stability prevents isolationism – which stops global nuclear conflict.

Friedberg and Schoenfeld, 8 (Aaron, professor of politics and IR @ Princeton and senior editor of Commentary/visiting schlar at the Witherspoon Institute in Princeton, http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB122455074012352571)
With the global financial system in serious trouble, is America’s geostrategic dominance likely to
AND
. The economic crisis could be the straw that breaks the camel’s back.

Scenario 2 – Environment

New EPA regulations are coming this year – solves the largest carbon emissions.

Murrow, 12/19 (Derek, Director of Federal Energy Policy @ National Resources Defense Council, "EPA and the States Positively Engage on Carbon Pollution Standards," http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/dmurrow/epa_and_the_states_positively.html)
Electric power plants are the largest source of the dangerous carbon pollution that is driving
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forward to help protect future generations by proposing regulations in June of 2014.

They are historic and are vital to combat climate change, but industry challenges will come.

Redden, 13 (Molly, reporter in the Washington bureau for Mother Jones, "The EPA’s Bold New Agenda," http://www.motherjones.com/blue-marble/2013/12/epa-regulatory-agenda-2014)
The Environmental Protection Agency has released its to-do list for 2014, in
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plant releases—and gas-power plants to 1,000 pounds.

SCOTUS precedent means the Court will rule in favor of the EPA. The only option will be alternative litigation.

Skirble, 13 (Rosanne, reporter/journalist for Voice of America News, "US Supreme Court Case Has Climate Change Implications," 12/16/13 http://www.voanews.com/content/supreme-court-case-has-climate-change-implications/1811519.html-http://www.voanews.com/content/supreme-court-case-has-climate-change-implications/1811519.html)
In 2007, the Supreme Court ruled that the EPA had the authority to regulate
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, we have mostly won this question of EPA authority," Doniger said.

They will get challenged – the litigation will get creative.

Redden, 13 (Molly, contributing to The National Republic, "Four Ways the energy Industry Could Derail Obama’s Environmental Regulations in Court, July 25, http://www.newrepublic.com/article/113611/four-ways-industry-could-derail-obamas-environmental-regulations-http://www.newrepublic.com/article/113611/four-ways-industry-could-derail-obamas-environmental-regulations)
Obama will not announce his plans to regulate the emissions of existing power plants until
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say a thing about the strength of polluters’ legal arguments," he said.

Foreign investors consistently target environmental protection in Tribunals. Virtually any environmental measure can be subject to arbitration.

Van Harten, 9 (Gus, Associate Professor @ Osgoode Hall Law School, "Reforming the NAFTA Investment Regime," November, http://www.ase.tufts.edu/gdae/Pubs/rp/PardeeNAFTACh4HartenFDINov09.pdf)
It is likely that governments in each NAFTA state have been influenced in their regulatory
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of the NAFTA regime—to correct this aspect of the Metalclad award. 

The brink is now – the EPA rules are vital to stop global climate change.
Davenport, 13 (Coral, covers energy and environment policy for the New York Times, 6/27, "The US Just Became a Global Leader in Fighting Climate Change," http://www.nationaljournal.com/magazine/the-u-s-just-became-a-global-leader-in-fighting-climate-change-20130627-http://www.nationaljournal.com/magazine/the-u-s-just-became-a-global-leader-in-fighting-climate-change-20130627)
The U.S. had failed to be a world leader in fighting global
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But if it stands, it could trigger change on a global scale.

Warming causes extinction—4 degree projections trigger a laundry list of extinction scenarios

Roberts 13—citing the World Bank Review’s compilation of climate studies
- 4 degree projected warming, can’t adapt
- heat wave related deaths, forest fires, crop production, water wars, ocean acidity, sea level rise, climate migrants, biodiversity loss
David, "If you aren’t alarmed about climate, you aren’t paying attention" ~http://grist.org/climate-energy/climate-alarmism-the-idea-is-surreal/~~ January 10 mtc
We know we’ve raised global average temperatures around 0.8 degrees C so far
AND
, but a world that is inexorably more inhospitable with every passing decade.

Plan

Plan – The United States Trade Representative should propose to the Mexican Secretary of the Economy that the North American Free Trade Agreement Free Trade Commission issue an interpretation of Chapter 11 of the North American Free Trade Agreement excluding bona fide State police power regulations from cases involving indirect expropriation so as to apply a State appropriation criterion.

Solvency

Contention 3 – Solvency

Carving out a police powers exception to ensure the State appropriation criterion solves certainty for states and investors.

Nikiema, 12 (Suzy H., legal advisor of the International Institute for Sustainable Development’s Investment Program, "Best Practices Indirect Expropriation," March, http://www.iisd.org/pdf/2012/best_practice_indirect_expropriation.pdf)
The definition of indirect expropriation remains vague in international investment law. Approaches differ and
AND
irreconcilable, such as the economic impact and the nature of the measure. 

The plan’s action is binding on arbitral tribunals and spills over for global modeling in international law.

Kaufmann-Kohler, 11 (Gabrielle, Professor of Law @ University of Geneva, "Interpretive Power of the Free Trade Commission and the Rule of Law, Fifteen Years of NAFTA Chapter 11 Arbitration, http://www.arbitration-icca.org/media/1/13571335953400/interpretive_powers_of_the_free_trade_commission_and_the_rule_of_law_kaufmann-kohler.pdf)
Article 2001 of the NAFTA establishes the FTC, composed of "cabinet level representatives
AND
under the NAFTA are potentially relevant for the operation of many other treaties. 

Mexico follows the US lead on trade negotiations and Canada never wanted Chapter 11.

Hendl, 6 (Jennifer A., Attorney in California, JD from UC Berkeley Law School, "Toward a History of NAFTA’s Chapter Eleven," Berkeley Journal of International Law, Volume 24, Issue 2, Article 11, http://scholarship.law.berkeley.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=131826context=bjil-http://scholarship.law.berkeley.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=131826context=bjil)
Chapter Eleven, as ultimately formulated, established a substantive standard, an ad hoc
AND
was constrained by domestic politics to avoid appearing overly subservient to American demands. 

Canada jumps on board - empirically, Canada goes along with US/Mexico bilateral rules agreements. They will want to have equal participation in rule-making.

Hendl, 6 (Jennifer A., Attorney in California, JD from UC Berkeley Law School _{"Toward a History of NAFTA’s Chapter Eleven," Berkeley Journal of International Law, Volume 24, Issue 2, Article 11, http://scholarship.law.berkeley.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=131826context=bjil-http://scholarship.law.berkeley.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=131826context=bjil)
Canada’s involvement in what would become the NAFTA discussions only began after the United States
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of two separate bilateral agreements between two smaller economies and one economic powerhouse.}

Tournament: University of Michigan | Round: 5 | Opponent: Glenbrook South CM | Judge: Stephen Weil

2AC Nat Gas

Low natural gas prices controls the steel industry – production is reverse causal and linear – absent growth we can’t produce hard-plated technology which is the vital internal link to hard power – that’s Adams. We deter all conflict via hard power, perceptive conventional forces, and alliances - specifically Russian and Middle-East scenarios which go nuclear.

We control uniqueness – heg is high now and sustainable through bandwagoning – Adams. Collapse of hegemony leads a global power vacuum which empirically causes great power wars. The burden is on the negative to prove there is a viable alternative to American power.

There’s no link – we’re perceived as a benign hegemon – their link is about unilateral military action – we’re multilateral off-shore balancing
Your author votes aff
Layne 12 (Christopher Layne, PhD in political science from the University of California at Berkeley, JD from the University of Southern California Law Center, LLM in international law from the University of Virginia Law School, Mary Julia and George R Jordan professor of international affairs at the George Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A26M University, research fellow with the Center on Peace and Liberty at the Independent Institute, former associate professor of international studies at the University of Miami, former fellow in the Center for Social Theory and Comparative History at the University of California Los Angeles, former fellow at the CATO Institute, former fellow at the Center for International Studies at the University of Southern California, former MacArthur Foundation fellow in global security, former visiting professor at the Naval Postgraduate School, former research fellow at the Center for Science and International Affairs in the Kennedy School at Harvard University, former member of the professional staff at the Arroyo Center at the California Institute of Technology, former foreign policy analyst for NATO, 4-26-12, "The End of Pax Americana: How Western Decline became Inevitable," http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/04/the-end-of-pax-americana-how-western-decline-became-inevitable/256388/2/)
The United States has a legacy commitment to global stability, and that poses a
AND
such fervor that they can’t discern the world transformation occurring before their eyes.

Smooth transition is key to solve nuclear war- status quo risk extinction
Calleo 9 – David P. Calleo (University Professor at The Johns Hopkins University and Dean Acheson Professor at its Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS)) 2009 "Follies of Power: America’s Unipolar Fantasy" p. 4-5
It is tempting to believe that America’s recent misadventures will discredit and suppress our hegemonic
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the world severely at odds with one another, the world grows dangerous. 

Even if they win a risk that heg is bad- the alternative is worse, resulting in nuclear conflicts worldwide

Lieber, 05- Professor of Government and International Affairs at Georgetown University (Robert J., The American Era: Power and Strategy for the 21st Century, p. 53-54)
Withdrawal from foreign commitments might seem to be a means of evading hostility toward the
AND

of economic stagnation and civilization’s retreat into a few fortified enclaves."2

Aging crisis guarantees that other countries can’t challenge the US

Haas, 07- Assistant Professor of Political Science at Duquesne University (Mark, "A Geriatric Peace?", International Security, Volume 32, Number 1, Summer 2007, February 3rd 2010, http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/isec.2007.32.1.112?cookieSet=1, TSK)
The crowding out of military and economic development spending for increased care for the elderly
AND
alone would make it the seventh largest military spender in the world.107
We would be a benign hegemon post plan- the alternatives are worse
Krauthammer 1 (Charles, The Weekly Standard, "The Bush Doctrine;ABM, Kyoto, and the New American Unilateralism", Lexis)
The international environment is far more likely to enjoy peace under a single hegemon.
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the (at the time) weaker Kosovo Albanians against the dominant Serbs. 

2AC Senate CP

CP is the SQ or double bind – that was the politics link

Perm do both – same action, not mutually exclusive

Perm do the CP – no defense of certainty or immediacy means not mutually exclusive

The plan is unpopular, and consensus can’t be reached—it derails passage – this also takes into account oil lobbies

Taylor 13 (Phil Taylor, environment and energy reporter, E26E publishing, "E26E: U.S.-Mexico transboundary agreement mired in Congress," http://www.foreign.senate.gov/publications/download/oil-mexico-and-the-transboundary-agreement-http://www.foreign.senate.gov/publications/download/oil-mexico-and-the-transboundary-agreement, January 9, 2013)
A nearly year-old agreement to allow the joint development of oil reservoirs straddling
AND
improve bilateral relations and spur much-needed reforms in Mexico’s energy sector.

CP links to the oil DA – still a direct trade-off

Dodd frank k2 Mexico law and worker protection

GPO 6-27- Government Printing Office, ("OUTER CONTINENTAL SHELF TRANSBOUNDARY HYDROCARBON AGREEMENTS AUTHORIZATION ACT", 6-27-13, http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CREC-2013-06-27/html/CREC-2013-06-27-pt1-PgH4096-6.htm-http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CREC-2013-06-27/html/CREC-2013-06-27-pt1-PgH4096-6.htm**, CJD)
H.R. 1613 also includes language to protect American workers by removing uncertainty
AND
net result would be that Americans would lose out on this energy potential.

====Wavering once repeals the whole bill- SEC is key ====
Bennett 10- domestic and foreign investments attorney at Stroock Law firm, (Hillel, "Congress Repeals Dodd-Frank FOIA Exemption for SEC ", October 13, 2010, stroock 26 stroock 26 lavan llp, http://www.stroock.com/SiteFiles/Pub996.PDF-http://www.stroock.com/SiteFiles/Pub996.PDF**, CJD)
On October 5, 2010, President Obama signed Senate Bill 3717 ("Bill")
AND
and less open to public criticism, to facilitate SEC enforcement activities.9

Absent repeal, US economy will crumple – regulations hamstring small business

Graves 11 ~Rep. Sam Graves of Missouri is chairman of the House Small Business Committee, "Small Businesses Not Celebrating Dodd-Frank’s Birthday", July 21st, 2011, http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2011/07/21/small-businesses-not-celebrating-dodd-franks-birthday/-http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2011/07/21/small-businesses-not-celebrating-dodd-franks-birthday/,~
 The few effective provisions of Dodd-Frank are masked by its many flaws
AND
small businesses and lenders can thrive responsibly and spark growth in our economy.

Extinction

O Hanlon et al, 12
O’Hanlon 12 Kenneth G. Lieberthal, Director of the John L. Thornton China Center and Senior Fellow in Foreign Policy and Global Economy and Development at the Brookings Institution, former Professor at the University of Michigan ~"The Real National Security Threat: America’s Debt," Los Angeles Times, July 10th, http://www.brookings.edu/research/opinions/2012/07/10-economy-foreign-policy-lieberthal-ohanlon-http://www.brookings.edu/research/opinions/2012/07/10-economy-foreign-policy-lieberthal-ohanlon~~
Alas, globalization and automation trends of the last generation have increasingly called the American
AND
is really possible if that fundamentalprerequisite to effective foreign policy is not reestablished.

2AC Oil DA

Oil prices rising is uniqueness for the AFF – guts steel industry

No link – no specific warrant for how the plan pushes us over the brink – it’s just the oil in the gulf

Even if they win a link, it gets triggered so far in the future that you should ignore it – Mexico needs to refine the oil that they extract first

Zero link—-global oil market makes plan irrelevant for prices

Fong 12 Jocelyn, Media Matters Blog, "20 Experts Who Say Drilling Won’t Lower Gas Prices", March 22, mediamatters.org/blog/2012/03/22/20-experts-who-say-drilling-wont-lower-gas-pric/184040
In a pretty impressive act of journalism, the Associated Press recently conducted a "
AND
and world prices ... It just gets lost. It’s not that much."

Non-unique – U.S. production has outpaced consumption – shale reserves solve

Wilmoth, 13 (Adam, the Oklahoman, "Wilmoth: U.S. oil production outpaces imports for first time in 16 years", June 7, 2013, http://newsok.com/wilmoth-u.s.-oil-production-outpaces-imports-for-first-time-in-16-years/article/3842585, jld)
The United States took another big step toward energy independence last week. For the
AND
other dense rocks. Domestic oil production is up 46 percent from 2008.

That’s depictive of an overall trend

Bloomberg, 13 (Moming Zhou, "Crude Output Exceeds Imports for First Time in 16 Years", Jun 5, 2013 5:32 PM ET, http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-06-05/crude-output-exceeds-imports-for-first-time-in-16-years.html, jld)
"This is an extension of trends that have been well established over the last
AND
, the lowest level since November 2010, the Commerce Department reported yesterday.

No Russian economic collapse

Adomanis, 1/7/13 (Mark Adomanis, undergraduate degree in government at Harvard, master’s degree in Russian and East European Studies at the University of Oxford, Forbes, "Why Russia’s Economy Isn’t Going To Collapse", www.forbes.com/sites/markadomanis/2013/01/07/why-russias-economy-isnt-going-to-collapse/ kdh)
Hating Russia’s economy is a full-time job for many people.
AND
is obviously highly politically sensitive in "performance legitimacy" regimes like Russia’s). 

Even if, no impact to collapse

Blackwill, 09 – former associate dean of the Kennedy School of Government and Deputy Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Planning (Robert, RAND, "The Geopolitical Consequences of the World Economic Recession—A Caution", http://www.rand.org/pubs/occasional_papers/2009/RAND_OP275.pdf)
Now on to Russia. Again, five years from today. Did the global
AND
are likely to be changed in any serious way by the economic crisis.

2AC CIR

No impact to cyber-terror—-won’t cause military conflict

Thomas P.M. Barnett 13, special assistant for strategic futures in the U.S. Defense Department’s Office of Force Transformation from 2001 to 2003, is chief analyst for Wikistrat, March/April 2013, "Think Again: The Pentagon," Foreign Policy, http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/03/04/the_pentagon?page=full
As for cyber serving as a stand-alone war-fighting domain, there
AND
But you won’t hear that from the next-warriors on the Potomac.

Air gapped

Won’t pass- Rubio and GOP political agenda

WJLA, 10-28 ~"Immigration reform: Obama urges Congress again to take action before end of year," ABC7, 10-28-13, http://www.wjla.com/articles/2013/10/immigration-reform-obama-urges-congress-again-to-take-action-before-end-of-year-96071.html~~23ixzz2jLXwlo2r, accessed 10-31-13, mss~

But in a blow to their effort, Sen. Marco Rubio signaled support for
AND
unclear whether lawmakers will vote on any measure before the year is out.

Immigration has tanked – Cruz and conservatives ensure no passage. 
Bolton, 10/29 (Alex, staff writer for the Hill, "Ted Cruz looms large over comprehensive immigration reform," http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/188422-ted-cruz-looms-large-over-comprehensive-immigration-reform)
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) has shaped the view of Republican
AND
push through something so unpopular with the base," the conservative strategist said.

NSA and healthcare thump the DA- and prove Obama can’t use PC

Wilson, 10-29 — Washington Post chief White House correspondent
~Scott, "Controversies show how Obama’s inattention to detail may hurt his presidential legacy," Washington Post, 10-29-13, www.washingtonpost.com/politics/recent-scandals-show-obamas-inattention-to-detail-may-cripple-his-presidential-legacy/2013/10/29/c389feb0-40a6-11e3-a751-f032898f2dbc_story.html, accessed 10-31-13, mss~
Controversies show how Obama’s inattention to detail may hurt his presidential legacy
The White House said President Obama didn’t know about NSA spying on world leaders.
AND
extra scrutiny. Republicans had for months said the IRS was doing so.
~Matt note: paraphrased for ableist language~

DC Circuit nominations thump- comes before the disad

Bream, 10-29 — Fox News’s Supreme Court reporter
~Shannon, "Battle brewing over Obama nominations to crucial DC appeals court," Fox news, 10-29-13, www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/10/29/battle-brewing-over-obama-nominations-to-crucial-dc-appeals-court/, accessed 10-31-13, mss~
There is a battle brewing over President Obama’s three nominees to fill open seats on
AND
the workload of the D.C. Circuit doesn’t justify 11 judges.

No uniqueness for the internal link – Obama has zero political capital.

Parnes, 10/18 (Amie, White house correspondent for The Hill, "Obama’s hollow debt victory," http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/329219-obamas-hollow-debt-victory-http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/329219-obamas-hollow-debt-victory)
President Obama’s victory over congressional Republicans is likely to have a short shelf life.
AND
House after such a bruising fight over the shutdown and the debt ceiling.

Obama rejecting House GOP concessions now

Dumain 10/14 – House Leadership Reporter, former Editorial Assistant at Congressional Quarterly (Emma, "Obama Dropped House GOP ’Like a Hot Potato’", Roll Call, 10/14/13, http://blogs.rollcall.com/218/as-senate-debt-limit-deal-crystalizes-house-gop-stays-mum/-http://blogs.rollcall.com/218/as-senate-debt-limit-deal-crystalizes-house-gop-stays-mum/)
House Republicans are mulling their next move as Senate leaders look to jam them with
AND
polls have shown the current situation hurting them much more than the Democrats.

The plan is an olive branch to the GOP – builds Republican support.

Grant, 13 (David, Christian Science Monitor staff writer, "Obama’s second term: Can he work with Congress?" 1/20, http://www.csmonitor.com/layout/set/print/USA/DC-Decoder/2013/0120/Obama-s-second-term-Can-he-work-with-Congress-video-http://www.csmonitor.com/layout/set/print/USA/DC-Decoder/2013/0120/Obama-s-second-term-Can-he-work-with-Congress-video)
And the president could perhaps turn down the bellicosity on the Hill by working with
AND
have plenty of GOP support – but that remains a large "if."

Moderate GOP concessions key to Obama’s agenda.

Balz, 10/18 (Dan, political journalist for the Washington Post, "Can Obama seize the moment and make Washington work?" http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/can-obama-seize-the-moment-to-make-washington-work/2013/10/17/d84c1934-3753-11e3-80c6-7e6dd8d22d8f_story.html-http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/can-obama-seize-the-moment-to-make-washington-work/2013/10/17/d84c1934-3753-11e3-80c6-7e6dd8d22d8f_story.html)
His calls for bipartisan cooperation were aimed at what he called the "responsible"
AND
govern around them by winning support from what he called the responsible Republicans. 

~ ~ Budget is the top priority – thumps all else.

Kaplan, 10/17 (Rebecca, staff @ CBS News, "Obama’s priorities for the year: Budget, immigration, and farm bill," http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-250_162-57607996/obamas-priorities-for-the-year-budget-immigration-and-farm-bill/-http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-250_162-57607996/obamas-priorities-for-the-year-budget-immigration-and-farm-bill/)
President Obama said Thursday morning that his top three priorities for the rest of the
AND
leadership to appoint negotiators to craft a budget deal by mid-December.

DA’s not intrinsic – rational policymaker weighs means issues won’t be focused on a H.R. bill – not a germane issue in the debate

Fiat solves link – immediate passage means to backlash

Oil and gas lobbies love the plan

Kollipara ’12 
(Puneet, "U.S., Mexico, reach accord on drilling below maritime border", Fuel Fix, 2-20-2012, http://fuelfix.com/blog/2012/02/20/449517/)**
The agreement announced today also would lift a moratorium on waters in a buffer area
AND
172 million barrels of oil and 304 billion cubic feet of natural gas.

Turns the DA

Froomkin ’11 
(Dan, "How the Oil Lobby Greases Washington’s Wheels", Huffington Post, 4-6-2011, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/04/06/how-the-oil-lobby-greases_n_845720.html)**
Clout in Washington isn’t about winning legislative battles — it’s about making sure that they
AND
votes to block any legislation — never even took a stab at it.

2AC Heidegger

====1. The role of the ballot is to evaluate the simulated consequences of plan passage- anything else shifts away the stasis point for discussion, and would be unpredictable.  ====
Net-benefit is Latin American policy discussions—they are necessary to create real world change – anything else is a DA to the alt’s method
González no date (Francisco E.- Riordan Roett Senior Associate Professor of Latin American Studies at Johns Hopkins and British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at Nuffield College at the University of Oxford; was a professorial lecturer at SAIS’s Bologna Center and a lecturer in politics at St. John’s College at the University of Oxford; received 2006 SAIS Excellence in Teaching Award; Ph.D., politics, University of Oxford; "POLITICS AND POLICIES"; http://lasa.international.pitt.edu/LARR/prot/fulltext/vol48no1/48-1_221-227_gonzales.pdf)
The growing interest in the interaction of policies and politics is a welcome antidote to
AND
reviewed in these pages make original individual and collective contributions to this endeavor.

Ontology doesn’t come first: ontological unity is a mirage and judging the impacts of our actions is key to environmental ethics, and human survival

Norton, 96 – Professor of Philosophy at the Georgia Institute of Technology
Bryan, "Environmental Pragmatism," Edited by Light and Katz, pg. 106
Thus ends my explanation of, and please for, a practical environmental ethic that
AND
on larger spatio-temporal scales, essential to human and ecological communities. 

We must deploy calculative technological modes of thought in order to gain a more proper understanding of being and save humanity

Dreyfus 93 (Hubert, Prof of Philosophy @ Cal-Berkeley, The Cambridge Companion to Heidegger, p.307-308)
Only those who think of Heidegger as opposing technology will be surprised at his next
AND
the danger, the saving power" (QCT 39; TK 39).

No root cause of war – complexity dooms monocausal explnalations

Jabri 96 Vivienne, Lecturer in International Relations at the University of Kent, Introduction: Conflict Analysis Reconsidered," Discourses on Violence: Conflict Analysis Reconsidered, Published by Manchester University Press ND, ISBN 0719039592, p. 3
The study of war has produced a number of often conflicting answers to Quincy Wright’s
AND
attempts to isolate common features leading up to the decision for war.2

Alt doesn’t solve their impact- one rejection of the aff isn’t sufficient to solve

Utopian alts are a reason to reject the alt- block can shift out of 2AC offense

Perm do the alt/reject all instances

The alternative’s failure to differentiate between different forms of technology ensures it will fail – under the alternative we literally cannot distinguish electricity from atom bombs

Feenberg, 99 (Andrew, Professor of Philosophy at San Diego State Univ. Questioning Technology. Routledge. Pages 186-187.KW)
Heidegger’s critique of "autonomous technology" is thus not with¬out merit. Increasingly,
AND
see in what that relation would consist beyond a mere change of attitude. 

Preventing widespread death through the aff takes precedence to ontological questioning

Davidson 89 (Arnold I. Davidson, coeditor of Critical Inquiry, Assoc Prof of Philosophy, U of Chicago, Critical Inquiry, Winter 1989)
I understand Levinas’ work to suggest another path to the recovery of the human,
AND
but dust and ashes; and it is here that questioning must stop.

Policy analysis first – most effective way to challenge power

Taft-Kaufman ’95 
Jill Taft-Kaufman, Speech prof @ CMU, 1995, Southern Comm. Journal, Spring, v. 60, Iss. 3, "Other Ways", p pq
The postmodern passwords of "polyvocality," "Otherness," and "difference," unsupported
AND
political agendas, institutions, agencies, and the budgets that fuel them. 

Our reps are good-

Hegemonic reps are good

Sadeh et. al., ’98 – professors at CEISS, Colorado State
~E. Sadeh-http://www.sciencedirect.com.proxy.lib.umich.edu/science?_ob=RedirectURL26_method=outwardLink26_partnerName=2798326_origin=article26_zone=art_page26_linkType=scopusAuthorDocuments26_targetURL=http3A2F2Fwww.scopus.com2Fscopus2Finward2Fauthor.url3FpartnerID3D1026rel3D3.0.026sortField3Dcited26sortOrder3Dasc26author3DSadeh,2520E.26authorID3D660304484226md53Dc4129a930e9af495c196253eda4d7c2026_acct=C00000767826_version=126_userid=9931826md5=2b40b1be48fae7ebacb7990d9e15d192, James P. Lester-http://www.sciencedirect.com.proxy.lib.umich.edu/science?_ob=RedirectURL26_method=outwardLink26_partnerName=2798326_origin=article26_zone=art_page26_linkType=scopusAuthorDocuments26_targetURL=http3A2F2Fwww.scopus.com2Fscopus2Finward2Fauthor.url3FpartnerID3D1026rel3D3.0.026sortField3Dcited26sortOrder3Dasc26author3DLester,2520J.2520P.26authorID3D720275364626md53D139538a6ef5c7e5d9cab4b5af997508126_acct=C00000767826_version=126_userid=9931826md5=529fbf6c881a748a84f68ced6816a68b, and W. Z. Sadeh-http://www.sciencedirect.com.proxy.lib.umich.edu/science?_ob=RedirectURL26_method=outwardLink26_partnerName=2798326_origin=article26_zone=art_page26_linkType=scopusAuthorDocuments26_targetURL=http3A2F2Fwww.scopus.com2Fscopus2Finward2Fauthor.url3FpartnerID3D1026rel3D3.0.026sortField3Dcited26sortOrder3Dasc26author3DSadeh,2520W.2520Z.26authorID3D700364206226md53D702a184c09093e433957a64a808bc0e826_acct=C00000767826_version=126_userid=9931826md5=ccebf171139f75ea9c4ddbc50f486508, professors at the Center for Engineering Infrastructure and Sciences in Space at Colorado State University; "Modeling international cooperation in human space exploration for the twenty-first century;" published in Acta Astronautica-http://www.sciencedirect.com.proxy.lib.umich.edu/science/journal/00945765, Volume 43, Issues 7-8-http://www.sciencedirect.com.proxy.lib.umich.edu/science?_ob=PublicationURL26_tockey=23TOC235679231998239995699922325509923FLA2326_cdi=567926_pubType=J26view=c26_auth=y26_acct=C00000767826_version=126_urlVersion=026_userid=9931826md5=f4391b98e38c73e008e2b59599f9b394, October 1998, Pages 427-435; Jay~
The pessimistic scenario is characterized by political and economic divisions. International cooperation (when
AND
to advance U.S. interests and policy preferences in space exploration.

Alt doesn’t solve their impact- one rejection of the aff isn’t sufficient to solve

Utopian alts are a reason to reject the alt- block can shift out of 2AC offense

Perm do both - only the perm solves – challenging representations without challenging institutional forms of domination furthers oppression

Tuathail 96 – Prof in the Department of Geography at Virginia Polytechnic Institute
(Gearoid, Political Geography, 15(6-7), 664)

While theoretical debates at academic conferences are important to academics, the discourse and concerns
AND
needs to always be open to the patterned mess that is human history.

There is an existential imperative to frame the other as an enemy—-the alternative is violence

Reinhard, 04 (Kenneth, prof at UCLA, "Towards a Political Theology of the Neighbor," pg. 4-5, http://www.cjs.ucla.edu/Mellon/Towards_Political_Theology.pdf)
If the concept of the political is defined, as Carl Schmitt does, in
AND
ultimately appeasing contours, because they would be identifiable" (PF 83).

Security discourse affirms life

Fox, 85 (Assoc. Prof Phil. @ Queens, 1985, "Nuclear War: Philosophical Perspectives," ed. Fox and Groarke, p. 127)
There remains but one choice: we must seek a reduction of world tensions,
AND
on behalf of that wondrous and fragile entity we know as human life. 

The alternative should be evaluated based on their ability to engage 1AC institutions- society shapes individual beliefs and create behavioral patterns for macro-level trends- their pedagogy is irrelevant absent a method of engagement
Wight – Professor of IR @ University of Sydney – 6
(Colin, Agents, Structures and International Relations: Politics as Ontology, pgs. 48-50 

One important aspect of this relational ontology is that these relations constitute our identity as
AND
upon it, upon its specific characteristics, its constants and its variables’.

Extinction comes first.

Bok, 88 ~Sissela, Professor of Philosophy, Brandeis, "Applied Ethics and Ethical Theory," Ed. David Rosenthal and Fudlou Shehadi~
The same argument can be made for Kant’s other formulations of the Categorical Imperative:
AND
even killing an innocent person, in order that the world not perish.

Case is a DA to the alt- X is key to motivate action necessary to solve the advantages

Vague alts are a reason to reject the alt- it’s impossible to formulate 2AC offense against it

Tournament: Wake Forest | Round: 1 | Opponent: Henry W Grady HC | Judge: Brad Meloche
Plan
The United States federal government should pass the Outer Continental Shelf Transboundary Hydrocarbon Agreement.

Contention one is the environment
Mexico’s oil company PEMEX has no tech or expertise to drill
Johnson 12 - Tim Johnson, Maria Moors Cabot Prize, Winner and Stanford University, Knight Fellow, citing various oil experts, 3-04-12, McClatchy Newspapers, Mexico City, “Mexican plan for Gulf deepwater wells sparks new worries” http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2012/04/03/144004/mexican-plan-for-gulf-deepwater.html#.UdA9CvmwWuk
Two years after the worst … the potential benefits are comparatively small."

But PEMEX will drill inevitably
Broder and Krauss 12 – John M. Broder reported from Washington, and Clifford Krauss from Houston, both for the New York Times. (“U.S. in Accord With Mexico on Drilling”, February 20, 2012, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/21/world/americas/mexico-and-us-agree-on-oil-and-gas-development-in-gulf.html?_r=1andref=americas)
WASHINGTON — The United States and Mexico reached … policies have led to a surge in domestic production.
Florida Straits ecosystems are on the brink—a spill would be disastrous
Hoffman ’12 – environment and science writer for numerous publications
(Karen, “Cuba’s Gulf of Mexico Oil Exploration Makes Strange Bedfellows”, Earth Island Journal, 3-15-2012, http://www.earthisland.org/journal/index.php/elist/eListRead/cubas_gulf_of_mexico_oil_exploration_makes_strange_bedfellows/)
Florida’s 800 miles of coast … science and conservation issues.)
Scenario 1 is Bio-D
The Gulf is a key ocean biodiversity hotspot
Brenner 8 – Jorge Brenner, March 14th, 2008, "Guarding the Gulf of Mexico's valuable resources" www.scidev.net/en/opinions/guarding-the-gulf-of-mexico-s-valuable-resources.html
Rich in biodiversity and habitats … of western Europe.
Extinction
Craig 3, Associate Prof Law, Indiana U School Law, 2003 (McGeorge Law Review, 34 McGeorge L. Rev. 155 Lexis)
Biodiversity and ecosystem function …. the biosphere with us.

There’s an invisible threshold – resiliency doesn’t apply
Craig 11 (Robin Kundis Craig, Attorneys’ Title Professor of Law and Associate Dean for Environmental Programs, Florida State University College of Law, Tallahassee, Florida, 12/20/11 “Legal Remedies for Deep Marine Oil Spills and Long-Term Ecological Resilience: A Match Made in Hell” http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1906839)
What would happen instead if … we both impact and depend upon.185
Scenario 2 is Warming
Independently, the plan is key to clean tech
Sarukhan 12 (Arturo Sarukhan is a distinguished affiliate in the Foreign Policyand Metropolitan Policy programs at Brookings. He focuses on hemispheric issues, Mexico-U.S. relations, immigration policy, new security threats, and the role of cities in the 21st Century. He is chairman of Global Solutions/A Podesta Company, a global strategic consulting and risk assessment firm. The grandson and son of conflict refugees in Mexico, he served as a career diplomat in the Mexican Foreign Service for 20 years and received the rank of career ambassador in 2006, February 2012, http://www.americanambassadors.org/publications/ambassadors-review/spring-2012/mexico-and-the-united-states-a-strategic-relationship)//moxley
The fourth driver of our bilateral agenda … development of clean fuel.
Clean tech solves climate change
Klarevas ’09 12/15/09, Louis Klarevas is a Professor at the Center for Global Affairs at New York University, “Securing American Primacy While Tackling Climate Change: Toward a National Strategy of Greengemony”, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/louis-klarevas/securing-american-primacy_b_393223.html
By not addressing climate change … employed to keep potential foes in check. 

Warming is the only existential risk
Deibel ’07—Prof IR @ National War College (Terry, “Foreign Affairs Strategy: Logic for American Statecraft,” Conclusion: American Foreign Affairs Strategy Today)
Finally, there is one major … existence of life on this planet.
Warming is real and anthropogenic – skeptics are bought off clowns
Prothero 12 (Donald Prothero, Professor of Geology at Occidental College, Lecturer in Geobiology at CalTech, "How We Know Global Warming is Real and Human Caused," 3/1/12, EBSCO)
How do we know that global warming … Neither can we as a society.
Unmitigated carbon emissions cause extinction
Romm 12- Joe Romm is a Fellow at American Progress and is the editor of Climate Progress, “Science: Ocean Acidifying So Fast It Threatens Humanity’s Ability to Feed Itself,” 3/2/2012, http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2012/03/02/436193/science-ocean-acidifying-so-fast-it-threatens-humanity-ability-to-feed-itself/?utm_source=feedburnerandutm_medium=emailandutm_campaign=Feed3A+climateprogre
The world’s oceans may be turning …. for reef and shell-building.

Contention two is PEMEX
PEMEX is declining – THA diversifies Mexico’s oil portfolio
Kerry et al. 12 (JOHN F. KERRY, Massachusetts, Chairman  BARBARA BOXER, California RICHARD G. LUGAR, Indiana ROBERT MENENDEZ, New Jersey BOB CORKER, Tennessee BENJAMIN L. CARDIN, Maryland JAMES E. RISCH, Idaho ROBERT P. CASEY, Jr., Pennsylvania MARCO RUBIO, Florida JIM WEBB, Virginia JAMES M. INHOFE, Oklahoma JEANNE SHAHEEN, New Hampshire JIM DeMINT, South Carolina CHRISTOPHER A. COONS, Delaware JOHNNY ISAKSON, Georgia RICHARD J. DURBIN, Illinois JOHN BARRASSO, Wyoming TOM UDALL, New Mexico MIKE LEE, Utah William C. Danvers, Staff Director  Kenneth A. Myers, Jr., Republican Staff Director, “OIL, MEXICO, AND THE AGREEMENT”, December 2012, http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CPRT-112SPRT77567/html/CPRT-112SPRT77567.htm)
Progress, but can it last … alone broader economic growth.

PEMEX and oil decline will drive Mexico into a financial crisis
Krauss and Malkin 10 Clifford Kraus and Elisabeth Malkin, Krauss is a national business correspondent based in Houston covering energy for the NYT, Malkin covers environmental and energy news especially for Mexico for the NYT, March 8, 2010, “Mexico Oil Politics Keeps Riches Just Out of Reach”, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/09/business/global/09pemex.html?pagewanted=alland_r=0. To the Mexican people, one of the great achievements … a key moment in its history,” he said.

We’ll isolate three internal links to economic growth
First is Mexican energy reforms – THA is key to passage
Kerry et al. 12 (JOHN F. KERRY, Massachusetts, Chairman  BARBARA BOXER, California RICHARD G. LUGAR, Indiana ROBERT MENENDEZ, New Jersey BOB CORKER, Tennessee BENJAMIN L. CARDIN, Maryland JAMES E. RISCH, Idaho ROBERT P. CASEY, Jr., Pennsylvania MARCO RUBIO, Florida JIM WEBB, Virginia JAMES M. INHOFE, Oklahoma JEANNE SHAHEEN, New Hampshire JIM DeMINT, South Carolina CHRISTOPHER A. COONS, Delaware JOHNNY ISAKSON, Georgia RICHARD J. DURBIN, Illinois JOHN BARRASSO, Wyoming TOM UDALL, New Mexico MIKE LEE, Utah William C. Danvers, Staff Director  Kenneth A. Myers, Jr., Republican Staff Director, “OIL, MEXICO, AND THE AGREEMENT”, December 2012, http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CPRT-112SPRT77567/html/CPRT-112SPRT77567.htm)
The TBA further contains … energy reform in Mexico.
Absent reforms, sector collapse is inevitable – the opportunity cost is competitiveness
LA Times 13 (Published January 1 2013, LATimes.com, “Mexico: The hope of a nation”, http://www.latinfinance.com/Article/3142755/Mexico-The-hope-of-a-nation.html, Accessed June 30 2013, JB)
At the same time the government … competitiveness of Mexican manufacturing.
Second is cooperation
THA enables cooperation that leads to private companies to work with Mexico
Brown and Meacham 13 Neil Brown and Carl Meacham, Brown is non-resident fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States. Meacham is director of the Americas Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, June 6, 2013, “Time for US-Mexico Transboundary Agreement”, http://thehill.com/opinion/op-ed/303739-time-for-us-mexico-transboundary-agreement.
The United States-Mexico Transboundary Agreement … That is good for Mexico and for the U.S.

Specifically, cooperation over deep-water wells are key
Melgar, 2012 (Lourdes, director of the Center for Sustainability and Business at EGADE Business School of the Tecnológico de Monterrey, Summer 2012, “The Future of PEMEX,” http://www.americasquarterly.org/node/3781)
The challenge for PEMEX …amendments to distorted schemes.

Third is drilling
Independently, drilling solves Mexican growth
Kerry et al. 12
(JOHN F. KERRY, Massachusetts, Chairman  BARBARA BOXER, California RICHARD G. LUGAR, Indiana ROBERT MENENDEZ, New Jersey BOB CORKER, Tennessee BENJAMIN L. CARDIN, Maryland JAMES E. RISCH, Idaho ROBERT P. CASEY, Jr., Pennsylvania MARCO RUBIO, Florida JIM WEBB, Virginia JAMES M. INHOFE, Oklahoma JEANNE SHAHEEN, New Hampshire JIM DeMINT, South Carolina CHRISTOPHER A. COONS, Delaware JOHNNY ISAKSON, Georgia RICHARD J. DURBIN, Illinois JOHN BARRASSO, Wyoming TOM UDALL, New Mexico MIKE LEE, Utah William C. Danvers, Staff Director  Kenneth A. Myers, Jr., Republican Staff Director, “OIL, MEXICO, AND THE AGREEMENT”, December 2012, http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CPRT-112SPRT77567/html/CPRT-112SPRT77567.htm)
The centerpiece of the TBA … support U.S. energy security
Economic decline causes Mexican collapse
Barnes 11 Joe Barnes, the Bonner Means Baker Fellow at the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy, written extensively on international economics, with a focus on the geopolitics of energy, April 29, 2011, “The Future of Oil in Mexico”, http://bakerinstitute.org/publications/EF-pub-BarnesBilateral-04292011.pdf.
In summary. the slow decline of … mark an important improvement.36

That causes terrorism
Michael Brown 9, Undersecretary of Emergency Preparedness and Response in the Department of Homeland Security, “Border Control: Collapse of Mexico Is A Homeland Security and National Security Issue,” 1/14, http://michaelbrowntoday.com/journal/2009/1/15/border-control-collapse-of-mexico-is-a-homeland-security-nat.html
By failing to secure the borders … in wait to attack at an appropriately vulnerable time.

They’ll use bioweapons
Ken Timmerman 10, Newsmax correspondent, “FBI Director Mueller: Al-Qaida Still Wants Nuclear Bomb,” 3/18, http://newsmax.com/Newsfront/mueller-fbi-alqaida-nuclear/2010/03/18/id/353169
FBI Director Robert Mueller warned …population centers there,” al-Nasifi said.

Extinction
Anders Sandberg 8, is a James Martin Research Fellow at the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University; Jason G. Matheny, PhD candidate in Health Policy and Management at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and special consultant to the Center for Biosecurity at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center; Milan M. ?irkovi?, senior research associate at the Astronomical Observatory of Belgrade and assistant professor of physics at the University of Novi Sad in Serbia and Montenegro, 9/8/8, “How can we reduce the risk of human extinction?,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists,http://www.thebulletin.org/web-edition/features/how-can-we-reduce-the-risk-of-human-extinction
The risks from anthropogenic hazards … continue to improve at a rate rivaling Moore's Law.
Mexican stability key to heg
Kaplan ’12 – chief geopolitical analyst at Stratfor (Robert D., With the Focus on Syria, Mexico Burns, Stratfor, 3-28-2012, http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/focus-syria-mexico-burns)
While the foreign policy elite in Washington …moral questions in places that matter less.
Hegemony prevents multiple nuclear conflicts
Brooks, Ikenberry, and Wohlforth ’13
(Stephen, Associate Professor of Government at Dartmouth College, John Ikenberry is the Albert G. Milbank Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University in the Department of Politics and the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, William C. Wohlforth is the Daniel Webster Professor in the Department of Government at Dartmouth College “Don’t Come Home America: The Case Against Retrenchment,” International Security, Vol. 37, No. 3 (Winter 2012/13), pp. 7–51)
A core premise of deep engagement … measures growing rather than shrinking. 85

Unilateralism is inevitable – multilat doesn’t cut it
Bass 9 (James E Bass, Major, US Air Force, “Unilateral vs. Multilateral Engagement: A Scenario-Based Approach to Guiding America’s Future Foreign Policy,” Air Command and Staff College, Air University, p. 3-6, April 2009, http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA539615)
According to Stewart Patrick of the Center on International Cooperation …ratify the Kyoto Protocol on climate change in 2001.