Tournament: Alta | Round: 2 | Opponent: Meadows CN | Judge:
1AC- Plan
Text: The United States federal government should substantially increase its investment in bilateral, non-hydrocarbon renewable energy production and distribution projects with the United Mexican States.
1AC- Adv
Renewables solve warming and are market competitive with fossil fuels
Renewable Energy World 12(No author; renewable energy world. 1/24/07. Renewable Energy World.com - started in 1998 by a group of Renewable Energy professionals who wanted their work to relate to their passion for renewable energy. With this passion and the desire to create a long term sustainable business, we have created perhaps the single most recognized and trusted source for Renewable Energy News and Information on the Internet. http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/corporate/about)
 Landmark analysis released by Greenpeace USA, European Renewable Energy Council (EREC) and other climate and energy advocates shows that the United States can indeed address global warming
AND
Energy efficiency improvements and renewable energy must play leading roles in the world's energy future. For the sake of a sound environment, political stability, and thriving economies, now is the time to commit to a truly secure and sustainable energy future - a future built on clean technologies, economic development, millions of new jobs, and a livable environment. Arthouros Zervos, European Renewable Energy Council (EREC) John Coequyt, Climate and Energy Unit, Greenpeace USA January 2007
Grid integration between Mexico and the U.S. would solve transmission efficiency to spur renewable energy developments
Wood, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Full Professor, Director of the Program in International Relations and Director of the¶ Canadian Studies Program at the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México (ITAM) in Mexico City, 10’ (Duncan, “Environment, Development and Growth: ¶ U.S.-Mexico Cooperation in Renewable energies,.,http://www.statealliancepartnership.org/resources_files/USMexico_Cooperation_Renewable_Energies.pdf, accessed 7/1/13, LLM).”
The need for integration of North American renewable energy markets is real and immediate. 

AND
For the United States, the development of the RE sector in Mexico offers hope¶ to states such California as they seek to satisfy growing demand for renewable energy. Continued¶ cooperation in the areas of geothermal wind, solar, and biofuels are therefore vital if Mexico’s true¶ potential is to be fully realized.
The plan ensures Mexican renewable energy development is modeled globally- it will fail now without sufficient investment
W.W.F., 6/4/13, (World Wildlife Fund), "WWF welcomes Mexico's 2050 Climate Vision; now global funding must be made available to implement such strategies," http://wwf.panda.org/wwf_news/?208932/WWF-welcomes-Mexicos-2050-Climate-Vision-now-global-funding-must-be-made-available-to-implement-such-strategies

Mexico’s launch today of a 2050 Climate Change Vision report is a welcome next step in its path to a low-carbon future
AND
Mexico to achieve what they have set themselves to achieve. Otherwise our global efforts to keep global warming below 2°C will be thwarted,” she added.
US action is necessary for modeling – drives down the price of tech and gets China and India on board
Pascual and Zambetakis 2010 (Carlos US Ambassador to Mexico, Served as VP of foreign policy @ Brookings and Evie Brookings; The Geopolitics of Energy: From Security to Survival; Energy Security; 26-27; kdf)
Among these groups, the United States has the capacity to play a pivotal¶ role.
AND
its failure to act will come back to U.S.¶ borders in a way that will make the Katrina disaster seem relatively tame.
Renewable energy dependence solves deforestation- specifically, rainforests
Wright et al. NO DATE (David Wright, Heather LaRocca, Grant DeJongh, researchers for the University of Michigan, “Amazon Deforestation and Farming”, http://sitemaker.umich.edu/sec005group6/renewable_energy)
In March of 2007, President Bush met with leaders of Brazil twice and even traveled there to look into the Brazilian biofuels market (Tilman). Brazil is a world leader in the production of biofuels, using the large amount of sugar cane produced in the country to convert it into ethanol to power vehicles.  As the world looks alternative energy sources, they begin to look to Brazil for sugar cane to produce biofuels.  

AND
 we can help to protect the rainforests. This is not saying we should completely avoid biofuels, but rather we should not pressure Brazil to expand its sugar cane production so that it can export the sugar to other countries to produce this ethanol. Rather, countries should look inside their own boarders to produce the necessary components, and not ask Brazil to start clearing the rain forests for more sugar cane production.
Latin American electricity integration decreases incentives for deforestation by solving energy poverty
Burgos, Department of Sustainable Development, Organization of American States, 2007
(Francisco J., August, Department of Sustainable Development, “Regional Electricity Cooperation and Integration in the Americas: Potential Environmental, Social and Economic Benefits,” http://www.oas.org/dsd/Documents/RegionalElectricityCooperationandIntegration.pdf, accessed 7-19-13, EB)
Annual growth in electricity generation in the Americas will continue increasing during the years between 2004 and 2030. During that period, it is estimated that power generation in Central and South America will increase from 882 billion kWh in 2004 to 1,838 billion kWh in 2030, representing an increase of 2.9 percent per year. In North America the annual growth in electricity generation is expected to change by 1.5 percent per year during this period (EIA, 2007). This increase in electricity generation will involve substantial capital investment, 

AND
deforestation in the rural area can be avoided by expanding electricity services to rural areas as part of a regional electricity cooperation approach. Other environmental benefit accrues from increased electricity integration is the mitigation of negative environmental impacts generated by new power sector facilities, which can be avoided through the interconnection of the existent power infrastructures (Zhu et al., 2004) and by the adequate operational management of these facilities, which entails the harmonization of technical and legal standards (Seymour et al., 2005). In general, regional electricity cooperation and integration can constitute a singular opportunity for environmental protection in the sense that any trends for cooperation in the electricity sector will be measure for its optimal potential outcomes, including environmental protection and climate change mitigation.
Deforestation causes over a quarter of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions annually
Houghton, Ph.D in biology, Senior Scientist Woods Hole Research Center, 2005
(Richard A., edited by Paulo Moutinho and Stephan Schwartzman, Amazon Institute for Environmental Research, “Tropical deforestation as a source of greenhouse gas emissions,” http://www.edf.org/sites/default/files/4930_TropicalDeforestation_and_ClimateChange.pdf, p. 13, EB)
Tropical deforestation, including both the permanent conversion of forests to croplands and pastures and the temporary or partial removal of forests for shifting cultivation and selective logging, is estimated to have released on the order of 1-2 PgC/yr (15-35 of annual fossil fuel emissions) during the 1990s. The magnitude of emissions depends on the rates of deforestation

AND
This paper reviews the contribution of tropical deforestation and subsequent land use to emissions of greenhouse gases. The emphasis is on carbon (principally, CO2 ).
Warming is occurring now- CO2 is the main cause, a consensus of scientists agree it’s anthropogenic, studies rule out solar radiation variation, and their evidence is flawed
Plait 13
(Phil; New study; Climate scientists Overwhelmingly Agree Global Warming is Real and Our Fault; May 17; http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2013/05/17/global_warming_climate_scientists_overwhelmingly_agree_it_s_real_and_is.html)

A new study has just come out that looked at nearly 12,000 professional scientific journal papers about global warming, and found that—of the papers expressing a stance on global warming—97 percent endorse both the reality of global warming and the fact that humans are causing it.¶ 

AND
carbon dioxide is increasingly heating us up: we are warming at a rate faster than in the past 11,000 years, and most likely far longer than that.¶ And it’s our fault. It’s well past time we do something about it, and we need to get past this false controversy. For more information, go to The Consensus Project, and see what we can do about it.¶
Warming causes extinction, makes all their impacts inevitable, and no adaptation- that outweighs any benefits of warming on timeframe
Tickell 8 (Oliver Tickell is an environmental Researcher. He is the founder of the Kyoto2 climate initiative, a researcher of the Oxford Climate Associates and specialized in international climate policy. Published August 11th, 2008 (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/aug/11/climatechange)

We need to get prepared for four degrees of global warming,

AND
Lush subtropical forests grew in polar regions, and sea levels rose to 100m higher than today. It appears that an initial warming pulse triggered other warming processes. Many scientists warn that this historical event may be analogous to the present: the warming caused by human emissions could propel us towards a similar hothouse Earth.
CO2 emissions cause warming and also independently cause extinction through ocean acidification
Joe Romm 12 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 acidic faster today from human carbon emissions than they did during four major extinctions in the last 300 million years, when natural pulses of carbon sent global temperatures soaring, says a new study in Science.
AND
But if CO2 goes into the oceans too quickly, it can deplete the carbonate ions that corals, mollusks and some plankton need for reef and shell-building.
1AC- Adv 2
US Mexican relations are at a potential reset point- the US must act now to ensure a productive economic and climate partnership¬¬- cooperation over anything else doesn’t solve
PBS 12 (“How U.S.-Mexico Relations May Shift Under President-Elect Enrique Pena Nieto” PBS Newshour, November 27 2012, http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/world/july-dec12/mexico1_11-27.html) MR
RAY SUAREZ: As cameras flashed, the newly re-elected U.S. president met this afternoon with the newly elected president of Mexico, Enrique Pena Nieto, who takes office Saturday. BARACK OBAMA: Mexico has become not simply an important bilateral partner, but is today a very important multilateral, multinational leader on a whole range of issues from energy to climate change. 

AND
Mexico is coming and wanting to bring this fully on to the agenda. It played second fiddle to security over the last presidency of President Calderon. So, they're coming and saying, this is a big issue for Mexico. It's also a big issue for the United States. So, that was front and center today and will be as these teams go forward talking to each other.
The President of Mexico has been pushing for broader economic ties with the US since his election, and relations predicated upon anything else are unsustainable
Shoichet 5/2/13 (Catherine E. Shoichet, “U.S., Mexican presidents push deeper economic ties; security issues still key” CNN, May 2 2013, http://www.cnn.com/2013/05/02/world/americas/mexico-obama-visit) MR
Two issues -- security and immigration -- often get too much attention
AND
Nieto emphasized the importance of reducing violence, and also the importance of Mexico's relationship with the United States extending beyond the drug war. "We don't want to make this relationship targeted on one single issue," he said. "We want to place particular emphasis on the potential in the economic relationship between Mexico and the United States."
Energy cooperation will make or break US-Mexico relations, and Obama’s rhetoric with the Calderon administration should’ve triggered your DA’s
Meacham, Director for the Center for Strategic and International Studies Americas Program, 2013 (Carl, May 9th, CSIS, “Presdient Obama’s Trip to Mexico and Costa Rica: What was the Outcome?, accessed 7/9/2013, J.Y.)
In many ways, President Obama’s three-day trip to Mexico and Costa Rica last week was an effort to redefine the U.S. relationship with the region,
AND
.¶ Both countries stressed that a financial architecture to mobilize investment in climate-friendly technologies is crucial to a successful agreed outcome in Copenhagen. Several countries have made specific proposals on financial mechanisms, including Mexico. Recognizing Mexico’s leadership on climate change, the United States announced its support for Mexico to host the Sixteenth United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP 16) in 2010. The United States was also pleased that Mexico will host a meeting of the Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate (MEF) in preparation for a Leaders meeting to take place in July after the G-8 meeting in Italy.
Only the plan solves – climate cooperation between the US and Mexico must be sustainable
Mabey 9 (Nick Mabey, Founder of E3G, a foundation that wants to excel the sustainable future of the world, What does the Security Community need from a ¶ Global Climate Regime?, http://www.e3g.org/docs/E3G_What_does_the_Security_Community_need_from_a_Global_Climate_Regime.pdf, November 2009, 8/1/13, CW)

The grid above presents four scenarios looking at different combinations of ¶ uncertainty over climate sensitivity (the response level of the climate system to a ¶ particular level of greenhouse gas concentrations) and the success of global ¶ mitigation policies. The scenarios illustrate the 2100 outcome assuming the ¶ current “consensus” scientific target of aiming for a 50:50 chance of achieving ¶ 2°C in 2100 (450ppm CO2 eqv). The temperatures given are global averages, ¶ but fragile regions such as Africa will experience rises at least 50 higher. An ¶ average global temperature rise of 4°C would make subsistence agriculture ¶ unviable

AND
 ¶ It is highly unlikely that the current relatively benign global security ¶ environment – with largely open trade, travel, investment and declining conflict ¶ and poverty levels – would be maintained under the pressures of a high climate ¶ sensitivity and low cooperation environment; whatever security interventions ¶ are undertaken.
US –Mexico relations are essential to US hegemony
Pastor, former US national security advisor, 2012
(Robert, July/August 2012, The American Interest, “Beyond the Continental Divide,” http://www.the-american-interest.com/article.cfm?piece=1269, accessed 7/10/13, CBC)

The best strategy to compete against China, double our exports and invigorate our economy is to deepen economic integration with our neighbors and to do it together rather than apart. AND
For all three countries, it would allow a more cooperative and effective approach to transnational issues like transportation, infrastructure, immigration, anti-narcotics policies and the environment.
That solves great power war and nuclear escalation
Kagan 12 – Senior Fellow @ the Brookings Institution, Robert, The importance of U.S. military might shouldn’t be underestimated, Washington Post, 2-2, http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-importance-of-us-military-might-shouldnt-be-underestimated/2012/02/02/gIQAX5pVlQ_story.html
These are sensible arguments. Power takes many forms, and it’s smart to make use of all of them. But there is a danger in taking this wisdom too far and forgetting just how important U.S. military power has been in building and sustaining the present liberal international order.  

AND

If the United States begins to look like a less reliable defender of the present order, that order will begin to unravel. People might indeed find Americans very attractive in this weaker state, but if the United States cannot help them when and where they need help the most, they will make other arrangements.
No backlash- US heg creates bandwagoning- others beg us to solve their problems- only decline causes aggression
Thayer 2006 – PhD, professor of security studies at Missouri State, Fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard (Bradley, The National Interest, “In defense of primacy”)

A grand strategy based on American primacy means ensuring the United States stays the world's number one power the diplomatic, economic and military leader. Those arguing against primacy claim that the United States should retrench, ei¬ther because the United States lacks the power to maintain its primacy and should withdraw from its global commitments, or because the maintenance of primacy will lead the United States into the trap of "imperial overstretch."

 AND 

American led wars in Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq stand in contrast to the UN's inability to save the people of Darfur or even to conduct any military campaign to realize the goals of its charter. The quiet effectiveness of the PSI in dismantling Libya's WMD programs and unraveling the A.Q. Khan proliferation network are in sharp relief to the typically toothless attempts by the UN to halt proliferation. You can count with one hand countries opposed to the United States. They are the "Gang of Five": China, Cuba, Iran, North Korea and Venezeula. Of course, countries like India, for example, do not agree with all policy choices made by the United States, such as toward Iran, but New Delhi is friendly to Washington. Only the "Gang of Five" may be expected to consistently resist the agenda and ac¬tions of the United States. China is clearly the most important of these states because it is a rising great power.
1AC- Solvency
Mexican renewable energy development will remain limited through 2017- funding is necessary for wind, solar, and geothermal developments
Castano 11
(Ivan, financial and political writer who has appeared in Reuters and the Dow Jones International Finance Review, “Mexico Advances Renewable Goals But “Much More" Could Be Done,” Energy World.com, June 2 2011, http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/article/2011/06/mexico-advances-renewable-goals-but-much-more-could-be-done) C.L.M.

Mexico is on track to elevate its renewable power 

AND
with wind accounting for 0.77, geothermic 2, nuclear 1.79, hydraulic 19 (from 16 now) and solar too small a share to mention.
Mexico says yes- energy cooperation is popular in the Mexican government and Nieto wants it
Amanda Maxwell, 11/30/2012, "US Mexico presidential meeting highlights opportunity for climate cooperation across the border," Switchboard, http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/amaxwell/us_-_mexico_meeting_highlights.html

Mexican President-elect Enrique Peña-Nieto visited U.S. President Barack Obama this week, just before taking office on December first. As Peña Nieto himself remarked, the meeting marked one of the rare occasions when the start of Mexican and American presidential terms nearly coincide. 

AND
Obama have a unique opportunity to forge new bonds and initiatives to ramp up collaboration on securing a clean energy and low carbon future for our two countries.
The technology is feasible, cost-competitive and could eventually completely replace fossil fuels – we just need investment
Green Energy News, 13 news and commentary related to clean, efficient and renewable energy for transportation, industry, government and home. (“Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) Report: Renewable Energy Could Power all of Latin America and Caribbean.” June 22, 2013 – Vol.18 No. 14 http://www.green-energy-news.com/nwslnks/clips613/jun13025.html)  czhang
¶ Lower prices and new technologies are making solar, wind and other resources competitive with fossil fuels for power generation¶ 

AND
Latin America represented a modest 5.4 percent. To tap into its vast potential, the region must modernize its policy and regulatory frameworks and scale up investments.
Renewable energy is feasible, doesn’t pollute water, and is resistant to extreme weather- no blackouts
USC 4/08/13 (Union of Concerned Scientists, “Benefits of Renewable Energy Use”, http://www.ucsusa.org/clean_energy/our-energy-choices/renewable-energy/public-benefits-of-renewable.html)
A More Reliable and Resilient Energy System
Wind and solar are less prone to large-scale failure because they are distributed and modular. Distributed systems are spread out over a large geographical area, so a severe weather event in one location will not cut off power to an entire region. 

AND
Wind and solar photovoltaic systems do not require water to generate electricity, and they can help mitigate risks associated with water scarcity. (For more information, see How it Works: Water for Electricity.)  
Methodologically robust studies conclude that emissions from renewables are small and lifetime energy savings outweigh
Lew et. al 12 (D. Lew and G. Brinkman, researchers for the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, and N. Kumar, P. Besuner, D. Agan, and S. Lefton, researchers for Intertek Engineering Services, “Impacts of Wind and Solar on Fossil Fueled Generators”, http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy12osti/53504.pdf)
Increased cycling on and off and ramping down to partial load of fossil-fueled generators have impacts on the costs and performance of those units. In this paper, aggregated results of top-down and bottom-up analyses for hundreds of plants have been synthesized and reported in a generic fashion to protect confidentiality while providing usable data for production simulation modeling. Startup costs, EFOR impacts, baseload VOM costs, and ramping costs are reported. The largest impacts are from on/off cycling, especially cold starts and small subcritical coal units. Generally speaking, ramping costs are relatively small, especially when units are ramped at normal ramp rates. There are many different methodologies for estimating emissions benefits of VG 

AND
This will likely reduce the cycling and ramping of the fossil-fueled units from that in previous work where these costs and impacts were not considered to this degree. This should result in a deeper level of understanding of the real impacts of wind and solar power on the power system, other generators, and emissions.

Tournament: Central Valley Bear Brawl | Round: 1 | Opponent: Coeur d Alene RF | Judge: Alexis Kostun
1AC- Plan
Text: The United States federal government should substantially increase its investment in bilateral renewable energy production and distribution projects with the United Mexican States.
1AC- Adv
Renewables solve warming and are market competitive with fossil fuels
Renewable Energy World 12(No author; renewable energy world. 1/24/07. Renewable Energy World.com - started in 1998 by a group of Renewable Energy professionals who wanted their work to relate to their passion for renewable energy. With this passion and the desire to create a long term sustainable business, we have created perhaps the single most recognized and trusted source for Renewable Energy News and Information on the Internet. http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/corporate/about)
 Landmark analysis released by Greenpeace USA, European Renewable Energy Council (EREC) and other climate and energy advocates shows that the United States can indeed address global warming
AND
Energy efficiency improvements and renewable energy must play leading roles in the world's energy future. For the sake of a sound environment, political stability, and thriving economies, now is the time to commit to a truly secure and sustainable energy future - a future built on clean technologies, economic development, millions of new jobs, and a livable environment. Arthouros Zervos, European Renewable Energy Council (EREC) John Coequyt, Climate and Energy Unit, Greenpeace USA January 2007
Grid integration between Mexico and the U.S. would solve transmission efficiency to spur renewable energy developments
Wood, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Full Professor, Director of the Program in International Relations and Director of the¶ Canadian Studies Program at the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México (ITAM) in Mexico City, 10’ (Duncan, “Environment, Development and Growth: ¶ U.S.-Mexico Cooperation in Renewable energies,.,http://www.statealliancepartnership.org/resources_files/USMexico_Cooperation_Renewable_Energies.pdf, accessed 7/1/13, LLM).”
The need for integration of North American renewable energy markets is real and immediate. 

AND
For the United States, the development of the RE sector in Mexico offers hope¶ to states such California as they seek to satisfy growing demand for renewable energy. Continued¶ cooperation in the areas of geothermal wind, solar, and biofuels are therefore vital if Mexico’s true¶ potential is to be fully realized.
The plan ensures Mexican renewable energy development is modeled globally- it will fail now without sufficient investment
W.W.F., 6/4/13, (World Wildlife Fund), "WWF welcomes Mexico's 2050 Climate Vision; now global funding must be made available to implement such strategies," http://wwf.panda.org/wwf_news/?208932/WWF-welcomes-Mexicos-2050-Climate-Vision-now-global-funding-must-be-made-available-to-implement-such-strategies

Mexico’s launch today of a 2050 Climate Change Vision report is a welcome next step in its path to a low-carbon future
AND
Mexico to achieve what they have set themselves to achieve. Otherwise our global efforts to keep global warming below 2°C will be thwarted,” she added.
US action is necessary for modeling – drives down the price of tech and gets China and India on board
Pascual and Zambetakis 2010 (Carlos US Ambassador to Mexico, Served as VP of foreign policy @ Brookings and Evie Brookings; The Geopolitics of Energy: From Security to Survival; Energy Security; 26-27; kdf)
Among these groups, the United States has the capacity to play a pivotal¶ role.
AND
its failure to act will come back to U.S.¶ borders in a way that will make the Katrina disaster seem relatively tame.
Renewable energy dependence solves deforestation- specifically, rainforests
Wright et al. NO DATE (David Wright, Heather LaRocca, Grant DeJongh, researchers for the University of Michigan, “Amazon Deforestation and Farming”, http://sitemaker.umich.edu/sec005group6/renewable_energy)
In March of 2007, President Bush met with leaders of Brazil twice and even traveled there to look into the Brazilian biofuels market (Tilman). Brazil is a world leader in the production of biofuels, using the large amount of sugar cane produced in the country to convert it into ethanol to power vehicles.  As the world looks alternative energy sources, they begin to look to Brazil for sugar cane to produce biofuels.  

AND
 we can help to protect the rainforests. This is not saying we should completely avoid biofuels, but rather we should not pressure Brazil to expand its sugar cane production so that it can export the sugar to other countries to produce this ethanol. Rather, countries should look inside their own boarders to produce the necessary components, and not ask Brazil to start clearing the rain forests for more sugar cane production.
Latin American electricity integration decreases incentives for deforestation by solving energy poverty
Burgos, Department of Sustainable Development, Organization of American States, 2007
(Francisco J., August, Department of Sustainable Development, “Regional Electricity Cooperation and Integration in the Americas: Potential Environmental, Social and Economic Benefits,” http://www.oas.org/dsd/Documents/RegionalElectricityCooperationandIntegration.pdf, accessed 7-19-13, EB)
Annual growth in electricity generation in the Americas will continue increasing during the years between 2004 and 2030. During that period, it is estimated that power generation in Central and South America will increase from 882 billion kWh in 2004 to 1,838 billion kWh in 2030, representing an increase of 2.9 percent per year. In North America the annual growth in electricity generation is expected to change by 1.5 percent per year during this period (EIA, 2007). This increase in electricity generation will involve substantial capital investment, 

AND
deforestation in the rural area can be avoided by expanding electricity services to rural areas as part of a regional electricity cooperation approach. Other environmental benefit accrues from increased electricity integration is the mitigation of negative environmental impacts generated by new power sector facilities, which can be avoided through the interconnection of the existent power infrastructures (Zhu et al., 2004) and by the adequate operational management of these facilities, which entails the harmonization of technical and legal standards (Seymour et al., 2005). In general, regional electricity cooperation and integration can constitute a singular opportunity for environmental protection in the sense that any trends for cooperation in the electricity sector will be measure for its optimal potential outcomes, including environmental protection and climate change mitigation.
Deforestation causes over a quarter of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions annually
Houghton, Ph.D in biology, Senior Scientist Woods Hole Research Center, 2005
(Richard A., edited by Paulo Moutinho and Stephan Schwartzman, Amazon Institute for Environmental Research, “Tropical deforestation as a source of greenhouse gas emissions,” http://www.edf.org/sites/default/files/4930_TropicalDeforestation_and_ClimateChange.pdf, p. 13, EB)
Tropical deforestation, including both the permanent conversion of forests to croplands and pastures and the temporary or partial removal of forests for shifting cultivation and selective logging, is estimated to have released on the order of 1-2 PgC/yr (15-35 of annual fossil fuel emissions) during the 1990s. The magnitude of emissions depends on the rates of deforestation

AND
This paper reviews the contribution of tropical deforestation and subsequent land use to emissions of greenhouse gases. The emphasis is on carbon (principally, CO2 ).
Warming is occurring now- CO2 is the main cause, a consensus of scientists agree it’s anthropogenic, studies rule out solar radiation variation, and their evidence is flawed
Plait 13
(Phil; New study; Climate scientists Overwhelmingly Agree Global Warming is Real and Our Fault; May 17; http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2013/05/17/global_warming_climate_scientists_overwhelmingly_agree_it_s_real_and_is.html)

A new study has just come out that looked at nearly 12,000 professional scientific journal papers about global warming, and found that—of the papers expressing a stance on global warming—97 percent endorse both the reality of global warming and the fact that humans are causing it.¶ 

AND
carbon dioxide is increasingly heating us up: we are warming at a rate faster than in the past 11,000 years, and most likely far longer than that.¶ And it’s our fault. It’s well past time we do something about it, and we need to get past this false controversy. For more information, go to The Consensus Project, and see what we can do about it.¶
Warming causes extinction, makes all their impacts inevitable, and no adaptation- that outweighs any benefits of warming on timeframe
Tickell 8 (Oliver Tickell is an environmental Researcher. He is the founder of the Kyoto2 climate initiative, a researcher of the Oxford Climate Associates and specialized in international climate policy. Published August 11th, 2008 (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/aug/11/climatechange)

We need to get prepared for four degrees of global warming,

AND
Lush subtropical forests grew in polar regions, and sea levels rose to 100m higher than today. It appears that an initial warming pulse triggered other warming processes. Many scientists warn that this historical event may be analogous to the present: the warming caused by human emissions could propel us towards a similar hothouse Earth.
CO2 emissions cause warming and also independently cause extinction through ocean acidification
Joe Romm 12 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 acidic faster today from human carbon emissions than they did during four major extinctions in the last 300 million years, when natural pulses of carbon sent global temperatures soaring, says a new study in Science.
AND
But if CO2 goes into the oceans too quickly, it can deplete the carbonate ions that corals, mollusks and some plankton need for reef and shell-building.
1AC- Adv 2
US Mexican relations are at a potential reset point- the US must act now to ensure a productive economic and climate partnership¬¬- cooperation over anything else doesn’t solve
PBS 12 (“How U.S.-Mexico Relations May Shift Under President-Elect Enrique Pena Nieto” PBS Newshour, November 27 2012, http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/world/july-dec12/mexico1_11-27.html) MR
RAY SUAREZ: As cameras flashed, the newly re-elected U.S. president met this afternoon with the newly elected president of Mexico, Enrique Pena Nieto, who takes office Saturday. BARACK OBAMA: Mexico has become not simply an important bilateral partner, but is today a very important multilateral, multinational leader on a whole range of issues from energy to climate change. 

AND
Mexico is coming and wanting to bring this fully on to the agenda. It played second fiddle to security over the last presidency of President Calderon. So, they're coming and saying, this is a big issue for Mexico. It's also a big issue for the United States. So, that was front and center today and will be as these teams go forward talking to each other.
The President of Mexico has been pushing for broader economic ties with the US since his election, and relations predicated upon anything else are unsustainable
Shoichet 5/2/13 (Catherine E. Shoichet, “U.S., Mexican presidents push deeper economic ties; security issues still key” CNN, May 2 2013, http://www.cnn.com/2013/05/02/world/americas/mexico-obama-visit) MR
Two issues -- security and immigration -- often get too much attention
AND
Nieto emphasized the importance of reducing violence, and also the importance of Mexico's relationship with the United States extending beyond the drug war. "We don't want to make this relationship targeted on one single issue," he said. "We want to place particular emphasis on the potential in the economic relationship between Mexico and the United States."
Energy cooperation will make or break US-Mexico relations, and Obama’s rhetoric with the Calderon administration should’ve triggered your DA’s
Meacham, Director for the Center for Strategic and International Studies Americas Program, 2013 (Carl, May 9th, CSIS, “Presdient Obama’s Trip to Mexico and Costa Rica: What was the Outcome?, accessed 7/9/2013, J.Y.)
In many ways, President Obama’s three-day trip to Mexico and Costa Rica last week was an effort to redefine the U.S. relationship with the region,
AND
.¶ Both countries stressed that a financial architecture to mobilize investment in climate-friendly technologies is crucial to a successful agreed outcome in Copenhagen. Several countries have made specific proposals on financial mechanisms, including Mexico. Recognizing Mexico’s leadership on climate change, the United States announced its support for Mexico to host the Sixteenth United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP 16) in 2010. The United States was also pleased that Mexico will host a meeting of the Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate (MEF) in preparation for a Leaders meeting to take place in July after the G-8 meeting in Italy.
Only the plan solves – climate cooperation between the US and Mexico must be sustainable
Mabey 9 (Nick Mabey, Founder of E3G, a foundation that wants to excel the sustainable future of the world, What does the Security Community need from a ¶ Global Climate Regime?, http://www.e3g.org/docs/E3G_What_does_the_Security_Community_need_from_a_Global_Climate_Regime.pdf, November 2009, 8/1/13, CW)

The grid above presents four scenarios looking at different combinations of ¶ uncertainty over climate sensitivity (the response level of the climate system to a ¶ particular level of greenhouse gas concentrations) and the success of global ¶ mitigation policies. The scenarios illustrate the 2100 outcome assuming the ¶ current “consensus” scientific target of aiming for a 50:50 chance of achieving ¶ 2°C in 2100 (450ppm CO2 eqv). The temperatures given are global averages, ¶ but fragile regions such as Africa will experience rises at least 50 higher. An ¶ average global temperature rise of 4°C would make subsistence agriculture ¶ unviable

AND
 ¶ It is highly unlikely that the current relatively benign global security ¶ environment – with largely open trade, travel, investment and declining conflict ¶ and poverty levels – would be maintained under the pressures of a high climate ¶ sensitivity and low cooperation environment; whatever security interventions ¶ are undertaken.
That’s key to climate multilateralism- perception of Mexican leadership
O’Neill 13 – PhD in Government @ Harvard, senior fellow for Latin America Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, a nonpartisan foreign-policy think tank and membership organization
(Shannon, “Mexico Makes It: A Transformed Society, Economy, and Government,” Foreign Affairs, 92.2)BB
If Mexico addresses these challenges, it will emerge as a powerful player on the international stage. 

AND
 and help construct new international financial, trade, and climate change accords.
Reliance on unilateralism will collapse US leadership and cause global wars with weapons of mass destruction
Montalván, 10 - a 17-year veteran of the U.S. Army including multiple combat tours in Iraq, master's of science from Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism (Luis, “Multilateralism is Essential for Peace in the 21st Century” Huffington Post, 4/23, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/luis-carlos-montalvan/multilateralism-is-essent_b_550332.html)

Unilateralism is the wrong approach for American Diplomacy. There is nothing to suggest its efficacy since 9/11. There is nothing to suggest its usefulness for future conflict. In allowing the US to go it alone, America's partners and allies risk the havoc and catastrophic consequences that will accompany "Imperial Overstretch." 

AND
What would happen if our National Security Strategy became a multilateral one of economic engagement, and used the brain power and resources available to mitigate these issues?" -- Lt. Col. Matthew Canfield, U.S. Army (Currently on his second tour in Iraq)¶ Concerns over economic stability, limited resources and security have divided us. Now is the time to create rather than divide common ground.
Lack of multilateralism makes all their impacts inevitable- violence, war, human rights violations, disease, poverty, and the worst effects of neoliberalism
Tharoor 3 (Minister of State for Human Resources Development (Shashi, “Why America Still Needs the United Nations”, p. 67)
The UN's relevance does not stand or fall on its conduct on any one issue. When the crisis has passed, the world will still be left with, to use Annan's phrase, innumerable "problems without passports" -- threats such as the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD), the degradation of our common environment, contagious disease and chronic starvation, human rights and human wrongs, mass illiteracy and massive displacement. 

AND

Such a system also offered the United States -- then, as now, the world's unchallenged superpower -- the assurance that other countries would not feel the need to develop coalitions to balance its power. Instead, the UN provided a framework for them to work in partnership with the United States.
1AC- Solvency
Mexican renewable energy development will remain limited through 2017- funding is necessary for wind, solar, and geothermal developments
Castano 11
(Ivan, financial and political writer who has appeared in Reuters and the Dow Jones International Finance Review, “Mexico Advances Renewable Goals But “Much More" Could Be Done,” Energy World.com, June 2 2011, http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/article/2011/06/mexico-advances-renewable-goals-but-much-more-could-be-done) C.L.M.

Mexico is on track to elevate its renewable power 

AND
with wind accounting for 0.77, geothermic 2, nuclear 1.79, hydraulic 19 (from 16 now) and solar too small a share to mention.
Mexico says yes- energy cooperation is popular in the Mexican government and Nieto wants it
Amanda Maxwell, 11/30/2012, "US Mexico presidential meeting highlights opportunity for climate cooperation across the border," Switchboard, http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/amaxwell/us_-_mexico_meeting_highlights.html

Mexican President-elect Enrique Peña-Nieto visited U.S. President Barack Obama this week, just before taking office on December first. As Peña Nieto himself remarked, the meeting marked one of the rare occasions when the start of Mexican and American presidential terms nearly coincide. 

AND
Obama have a unique opportunity to forge new bonds and initiatives to ramp up collaboration on securing a clean energy and low carbon future for our two countries.
The technology is feasible, cost-competitive and could eventually completely replace fossil fuels – we just need investment
Green Energy News, 13 news and commentary related to clean, efficient and renewable energy for transportation, industry, government and home. (“Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) Report: Renewable Energy Could Power all of Latin America and Caribbean.” June 22, 2013 – Vol.18 No. 14 http://www.green-energy-news.com/nwslnks/clips613/jun13025.html)  czhang
¶ Lower prices and new technologies are making solar, wind and other resources competitive with fossil fuels for power generation¶ 

AND
Latin America represented a modest 5.4 percent. To tap into its vast potential, the region must modernize its policy and regulatory frameworks and scale up investments.
Renewable energy is feasible, doesn’t pollute water, and is resistant to extreme weather- no blackouts
USC 4/08/13 (Union of Concerned Scientists, “Benefits of Renewable Energy Use”, http://www.ucsusa.org/clean_energy/our-energy-choices/renewable-energy/public-benefits-of-renewable.html)
A More Reliable and Resilient Energy System
Wind and solar are less prone to large-scale failure because they are distributed and modular. Distributed systems are spread out over a large geographical area, so a severe weather event in one location will not cut off power to an entire region. 

AND
Wind and solar photovoltaic systems do not require water to generate electricity, and they can help mitigate risks associated with water scarcity. (For more information, see How it Works: Water for Electricity.)  
Methodologically robust studies conclude that emissions from renewables are small and lifetime energy savings outweigh
Lew et. al 12 (D. Lew and G. Brinkman, researchers for the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, and N. Kumar, P. Besuner, D. Agan, and S. Lefton, researchers for Intertek Engineering Services, “Impacts of Wind and Solar on Fossil Fueled Generators”, http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy12osti/53504.pdf)
Increased cycling on and off and ramping down to partial load of fossil-fueled generators have impacts on the costs and performance of those units. In this paper, aggregated results of top-down and bottom-up analyses for hundreds of plants have been synthesized and reported in a generic fashion to protect confidentiality while providing usable data for production simulation modeling. Startup costs, EFOR impacts, baseload VOM costs, and ramping costs are reported. The largest impacts are from on/off cycling, especially cold starts and small subcritical coal units. Generally speaking, ramping costs are relatively small, especially when units are ramped at normal ramp rates. There are many different methodologies for estimating emissions benefits of VG 

AND
This will likely reduce the cycling and ramping of the fossil-fueled units from that in previous work where these costs and impacts were not considered to this degree. This should result in a deeper level of understanding of the real impacts of wind and solar power on the power system, other generators, and emissions.

Tournament: Central Valley Bear Brawl | Round: 1 | Opponent: Coeur d Alene RF | Judge: Alexis Kostun
AT: CO2 from oceans
Fossil fuels are the root cause of CO2 emissions – multiple indicators prove
Mackie, New Zealand chemical oceanographer, 2010
(Doug, June 26, Skeptical Science, “CO2 is Coming from the Ocean,” http://www.skepticalscience.com/co2-coming-from-ocean.htm, accessed 7/12/13, CBC)

We can be confident the extra CO2 in the atmosphere has come from the oxidation of fossil fuels and not from outgassing from the ocean or from soil/land sources by using two key observations

AND
Land use and biomass changes certainly soak up a lot of CO2, some it simply regrowth of forests etc, but the point is that the increasing CO2 in the atmosphere clearly demonstrates that they do not soak up enough.
AT: Shunning
Shunning puts an unequal burden on the people of a nation—it creates larger injustices – that means inaction is worse
Beversluis, Ph.D. in philosophy from Northwestern University, 89
Eric H., April, Public Affairs Quarterly, Vol. 3, No. 2, pp. 15-25, “ON SHUNNING UNDESIRABLE REGIMES: ETHICS AND ECONOMIC SANCTIONS”, accessed 7/3/13, VJ

Finally, shunning can itself cause injustices. Should we shun a nation that violates the rights of some or all of its citizens if the burden will fall primarily on those victims? 

AND
To the extent that the domestic incidence of such plicies can be identified, compensating policies should be divised, policies such as subsidies, opening of other markets, government purchase, etc. which can be funded out of general revenues and thereby spread the burden fairly over the whole nation.
Mexico is expending massive resources to fight trafficking- no reason to shun them
The News – Mexico, 11
(3/30/11 “Mexico: US committed to Drug War” http://politico-junkie.blogspot.com/2011/03/mexico-us-commited-to-drug-war.html 7/5/13 MG)

John Feeley, the Deputy Chief of Mission of the United States Embassy to Mexico, said on Tuesday that the U.S. government would not abandon the fight against drug trafficking and organized crime 

AND
Mexico has also played its part by launching actions against human trafficking and by guaranteeing the human rights of immigrants, Feeley added.
Must weigh consequences – their moral tunnel vision is complicit with the evil they criticize
Isaac, Professor of Political Science at Indiana University 2
(Jeffrey C, Dissent Magazine, 49(2), “Ends, Means, and Politics”, Spring, Proquest)

As writers such as Niccolo Machiavelli, Max Weber, Reinhold Niebuhr, and Hannah Arendt have taught, an unyielding concern with moral goodness
AND
to judge these effects in pragmatic and historically contextualized ways. Moral absolutism inhibits this judgment. It alienates those who are not true believers. It promotes arrogance. And it undermines political effectiveness.
Nuclear war outweighs- survival is a prerequisite to other values.
Nye, Professor of Political Science @ Harvard, 86
(Joseph S., Served as Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs; “Nuclear Ethics” pg. 45-46)

Is there any end that could justify a nuclear war that threatens the survival of the species? Is not all-out nuclear war just as self contradictory in the real world as pacifism is accused of being? Some people argue that "we are required to undergo gross injustice that will break many souls sooner than ourselves be the authors of mass murder."73 Still others say that "when a person makes survival the highest value, he has declared that there is nothing he will not betray. But for a civilization to sacrifice itself makes no sense since there are not survivors to give meaning to the sacrifical sic act.
AND
Some degree of risk is unavoidable if individuals or societies are to avoid paralysis and enhance the quality of life beyond mere survival. The degree of that risk is a justifiable topic of both prudential and moral reasoning.
Failing to prevent a horrible outcome is just as bad as causing it – the aff is moral evasion.
Nielsen, philosophy prof @ U of Calgary - 93
(Kai, Absolutism and Its Consequentialist Critics, ed. Joram Graf Haber, 1993, p. 170-2)

Forget the levity of the example and consider the case of the innocent fat man. If there really is no other way of unsticking our fat man and if plainly, without blasting him out, everyone in the cave will drown, then, innocent or not, he should be blasted out. This indeed overrides the principle that the innocent should never be deliberately killed, but it does not reveal a callousness toward life, for the people involved are caught in a desperate situation in which, if such extreme action is not taken, many lives will be lost and far greater misery will obtain. Moreover, the people who do such a horrible thing or acquiesce in the doing of it are not likely to be rendered more callous about human life and human suffering as a result. Its occurrence will haunt them for the rest of their lives and is as likely as not to make them more rather than less morally sensitive. 

AND
He tries to keep his `moral purity' and avoid `dirty hands' at the price of utter moral failure and what Kierkegaard called `double mindedness.' It is understandable that people should act in this morally evasive way but this does not make it right.
Utilitarianism is the most ethical option- no difference between killing and letting die.
Cummisky, Professor of Philosophy at Bates, 96
(David, Kantian Consequentialism, p. 131)

Finally, even if one grants that saving two persons with dignity cannot outweigh and compensate for killing one-because dignity cannot be added and summed in this way-this point still does not justify deontological constraints.
AND
In short, it is not clear how the extreme interpretation justifies the killing/letting-die distinction or even how it conflicts with the conclusion that the more persons with dignity who are saved, the better

In the face of extinction risks, policymakers must be utilitarian.
George Kateb, Professor of Politics at Princeton University. 1992
(The Inner Ocean: Individualism and Democratic Culture., Pg.12. )

The main point, however, is that utilitarianism has a necessary pace in any democratic country's normal political deliberations.
AND
That choice does not mean that those to be sacrificed are immoral if they resist being sacrificed. It follows, of course, that if a third party is right to risk or sacrifice the lives of the lesser for the lives of the greater number when the lesser would otherwise live, the lesser are also not wrong if they resist being sacrificed.
There’s a distinction between public and private morality – Governments must make utilitarian calculations
Goodin, Professor of Philosophy at the Research School of the Social Sciences at the Australian National University, 95
(Robert E., Cambridge University Press, “Utilitarianism As a Public Philosophy” pg 63)

My larger argument turns on the proposition that there is something special about the situation of public officials that makes utilitarianism more plausible
AND
That is enough to allow public policy makers to use the utilitarian calculus – if they want to use it at all – to choose general rules of conduct. Knowing aggregates and averages, they can proceed to calculate the utility payoffs from adopting each alternative possible general rule. But they cannot be sure what the payoff will be to any given individual or on any particular occasion. Their knowledge of generalities, aggregates and averages is just not sufficiently fine-grained for that.
Deontology is irrelevant in policy making -  intentions are impossible to know, only the outcome matters
Hinman, Professor of Ethics, 98
(Lawrence, Ethics: A Pluralistic Approach to Moral Theory, p. 186) 

When, for example, we want to assess the moral correctness of proposed governmental legislation, we may well wish to set aside any question of the intentions of the legislators. 

AND

Therefore, rule utilitarianism's neglect of intentions intuitively makes the most sense when we are assessing the moral worth of some large-scale policy proposed by an entity consisting of more than one individual.
Utilitarianism is the only moral option in a nuclear age.
Nye, Professor of political science @ Harvard, 86
(Joseph S., Served as Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs “Nuclear Ethics” pg. 18-19)

The significance and the limits of the two broad traditions can be captured by contemplating a hypothetical case.34 Imagine that you are visiting a Central American country and you happen upon a village square where an army captain is about to order his men to shoot two peasants lined up against a wall. 

AND
Now that it may be literally possible in the nuclear age, it seems more than ever to be self-contradictory.35 Absolutist ethics bear a heavier burden of proof in the nuclear age than ever before.
Risk of extinction shatters the framework for evaluating impacts- the impact is infinite and must be avoided at any cost.
Schell 82
Jonathan Schell 1982 “Fate of the Earth” pp. 93-96 

To say that human extinction is a certainty would, of course, be a misrepresentation – just as it would be a misrepresentation to say that extinction can be ruled out. To begin with, we know that a holocaust may not occur at all. If one does occur, the adversaries may not use all their weapons. If they do use all their weapons, the global effects in the ozone and elsewhere, may be moderate.
AND
In weighing the fate of the earth and, with it, our own fate, we stand before a mystery, and in tampering with the earth we tamper with a mystery. We are in deep ignorance. Our ignorance should dispose us to wonder, our wonder should make us humble, our humility should inspire us to reverence and caution, and our reverence and caution should lead us to act without delay to withdraw the threat we now post to the world and to ourselves.

Tournament: Berkeley | Round: 1 | Opponent: Denver School of the Arts | Judge:
Contention 1 is Eurocentrism
Eurocentrism heavily implicates the knowledge production that shapes status quo policymaking
Young, New York Times, 4/20/13
(Kevin, 4/20/13, “The Good, the Bad, and the Benevolent Interventionist: U.S. Press and Intellectual Distortions of the Latin American Left” http://www.nytexaminer.com/2013/04/the-good-the-bad-and-the-benevolent-interventionist-u-s-press-and-intellectual-distortions-of-the-latin-american-left/, date accessed 7/5/13 IGM)

The good-left/bad-left thesis may seem more enlightened and progressive than classic racist or imperialist rhetoric in that it does not lump all Latin Americans together, but in fact the clever colonizer has always distinguished between “good” and “bad” members of the subordinate group. When Columbus sailed through the Caribbean in the 1490s, he contrasted the peaceful Arawaks of Cuba to the aggressive, allegedly cannibalistic Caribs to the southeast (Hulme, 1994: 169–171, 190). European and U.S. imperialists, as well as Latin American elites, employed similar discursive strategies over the following centuries.2 In the early twentieth century, both the jingoists led by Theodore Roosevelt and the Wilsonian “idealists” contrasted the unruly children of Central America and the Caribbean with the more responsible leaders in the bigger Latin American countries. Woodrow Wilson and his appointees pledged to replace the “naughty children” of Latin America with “good men,” whom they would “teach the South American republics to elect” (Schoultz, 1998: 244, 272, 192–197; Kenworthy, 1995: 30; cf. Johnson, 1980: 209, 217; Black, 1988).  Later, following the 1959 Cuban Revolution, U.S. policy came to focus on assisting the good Latins while isolating, and often exterminating, the bad; many of the tropes used to characterize Hugo Chávez in the past decade have clear precedents in government and press depictions of Fidel Castro starting four decades earlier (Platt et al., 1987; Johnson, 1980: 113, 241; Landau, 2006; Chomsky, 2008). Similar binary depictions have long characterized Orientalist discourse toward Asian and African peoples, particularly Muslims (Mamdani, 2004).
Historically these distinctions have helped to justify outside intervention in the name of “protecting” the good from the bad, and today the “benevolent interventionist” frame often accompanies the good-left/bad-left frame. Just as Columbus was protecting the peaceful Arawaks from the savage Caribs, the U.S. government promotes democracy through its relations with the good left, protecting those countries from the bad left. By definition, all such interventions are undertaken with noble and humanitarian intent. This paternalistic discourse has remained remarkably consistent throughout the history of imperialism and internal colonialism, albeit with new rhetorical demons and pretexts in each successive epoch: corruption, endemic revolts, and European intervention in Wilson’s day, Communism during the Cold War, and autocrats, populists, terrorists, and drug cartels since the Soviet Union’s collapse. The main demons are typically external to Latin America—often associated with the “Old World,” the Soviet Union, or, more recently, various Asian and Middle Eastern countries—but there are usually internal demons, too (Kenworthy, 1995: 18–37).
Press coverage of right-wing coups against Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez in 2002 and Honduras’s Manuel Zelaya in 2009, and of the U.S. government’s role in and after those coups, offers stark examples of media support (open or tacit) for recent U.S. interventionism. In both cases the U.S. response was accompanied by reports and opinion pieces about legitimate U.S. security concerns and honest regard for democracy. In addition to praising U.S. motives, news reports, opinion pieces, and intellectual commentary often implied that Latin Americans both needed and wanted U.S. intervention.
Status quo engagement strategies reinforce imperialist policies which guarantee a hierarchal conception of international relations
Frankzi, University of London, Birkbeck College, School of Law, Graduate Student, 12
(Hannah, Center for InterAmerican Studies, Bielefeld University, Universitat Bielefeld, “Eurocentrism,” http://elearning.uni-bielefeld.de/wikifarm/fields/ges_cias/field.php/Main/Unterkapitel52, Accessed: 7/3/13, LPS.)

Researchers contributing to the Latin American Modernidad / Colonialidad research programme have drawn attention to the mythical character of this narrative by arguing that coloniality, understood as a pattern of European violence in the colonies, and modernity need to be understood as two sides of the same coin. They also stress the constitutive role of the “discovery” of the Americas which enables Europe to situate itself at the economic and epistemological centre of the modern world system. The modern idea of universal history, that is the writing of history of humankind in a frame of progressive and linear time, has also been criticised as inherently Eurocentric. This is because it construes the European development as following the normal and necessary course of history and consequently only accommodates the experience of other world regions in relation to it. The construction of the Americas through a European lens is epitomised by the fact that for a long time most accounts of American history started with the arrival of the settlers (Muthyala 2001). Strategies deployed to challenge this Eurocentric master narrative have involved replacing discovery with disaster to stress the violence inherent in the process which was a key part of European modernity.
Geopolitics of Knowledge
In contrast to more localised ethnocentrisms, Eurocentrism shapes the production of knowledge and its proliferation well beyond Europe and the western hemisphere. This is possible, critics argue, due to an epistemology which pretends that knowledge has no locus. In western thought, Descartes' proclamation of a separation of body and mind has led to an image of the cognisant subject as abstracted from all social, sexual and racial realities (Grosfoguel 2006, pp. 20ff, Gandhi 1998: 34ff). In consequence, analytical categories such as state, democracy, equality, etc., formed against the background of particular European experience and are declared to be universally valid and applicable, independent of place (Chakrabarty 2002, p. 288). This leads, according to Edgardo Lander (2002, p. 22), to a naturalisation of liberal values and a devaluation of knowledge produced outside the prescribed scientific system. Europe's successful placing of itself at the centre of history also caused universities outside Europe to teach it from a Eurocentric point of view and include predominantly “northern” thinkers in their academic canons. Postcolonial scholarship has pointed out that knowledge produced in the global South is recognised if the respective academics are working in European or US-American universities (Castro-Gómez 2005, p. 35). As a means to challenge the hegemony of Eurocentric knowledge, indigenous universities have been founded in various Latin American countries. They demand that different ways of knowing be recognised as valid and suggest that indigenous knowledge can inspire new methodologies.
US policies towards Cuba represent a systematic refusal of non-Western forms knowledge production
Slater, Professor of Geography, Loughborough University 4
(David, “The Gravity of Imperial Politics: Some Thoughts on Power and Representation”, The Arab World Geographer/Le Geographe du monde arabe, Vo 7,No 1-2, p.94-5)

The projection of American power at the turn of the 20th century assumed a variety of forms, so that while the Philippines became a colony, Cuba, until 1934, was a semi-protectorate. Violence and racist representation figured in both instances. In the Cuban case, for example, the U.S. undersecretary of war, J. C. Breckenridge, wrote in 1897 that the inhabitants of the island were "generally indolent and apathetic," "indifferent to religion," and therefore "immoral," and before any US. presence was to be institutionalized in Cuba, it would be necessary to "clean up the country," even if this meant using the "methods of Divine Providence used on the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah " Breckenridge went on to state that "we must destroy everything within our cannons' range of fire ... (w)e must impose a harsh blockade so that hunger and its constant companion, disease, undermine the peaceful population and decimate the Cuban army" (qtd. in Ricardo 1994, 45).
Geopolitical Interventionism: Historical Elements of the U.S.-Cuba Encounter
Cuba was formally placed under U.S. military rule in 1899 and this was accompanied by the dissolution of the institutions of the Cuban independence movement—the Liberation Army, the Provisional Government, and the Cuban Revolutionary Party, originally founded by Jose Marti. Cuba became a republic under U.S. tutelage in 1902. The Teller Amendment of 1898 prevented the United States from openly annexing the island. Passed by Congress when US. public opinion regarded military assistance for Cuba's struggle against Spain as heroic, the amendment stated that the United States disclaimed any intention of exercising sovereignty or control over the island except for the pacification thereof. The Teller Amendment was supported by those politicians who did not want the United States to annex an island inhabited by an "alien" people (see Smith 2000, 49) but the amendment also aimed to protect U.S. sugar producers from imports of cheap Cuban sugar. Senator Teller himself coming from the sugar-beet state of Colorado.
As Cuba was brought into the orbit of U.S. power, the notion of "manifest destiny" was invoked, as it had been invoked at the time of other U.S. interventions in the nineteenth century; one writer asserted that "it is manifest destiny that the commerce and progress of the island shall follow American channels and adopt American forms" (Benjamin 1990, 54). The Platt Amendment, which was enacted by the U.S. Congress in 1901, became a key part of the 1903 Permanent Treaty between the two countries. The Cuban constitutional convention was informed that unless it added the Platt Amendment to the new constitution, U.S. military occupation would continue (Perez, Jr. 1997, 108-11). Delegates to the convention appended the Piatt Amendment to the Cuban constitution in 1902, but only by a margin of one vote. The Platt Amendment had seven articles that, in their entirety, effectively turned Cuba into a U.S. protectorate, provoking a continuous series of anti-US. protests and mobilizations throughout the early part of the 20th century.
Our argument is that economic sanctions on Cuba frame them as a threat and refuse to identify with the people. The affirmative proposes Cuba as an example of how Eurocentrism is the primary groundwork of American policies and action.
Specifically, economic sanctions on Cuba represent a refusal of non-Western knowledge. They are an extension of past policies which posit the island as primitive and immoral
Slater, Professor of Geography, Loughborough University 4
(David, “The Gravity of Imperial Politics: Some Thoughts on Power and Representation”, The Arab World Geographer/Le Geographe du monde arabe, Vo 7,No 1-2, p.97

According to the ruling perspective from Washington, the specificity of contemporary Cuba, or more accurately of the post-1959 Castro government, has been its alliance during the Cold-War period with the Soviet Union and its continuing adherence post-1989 to a communist political system. This specificity has been used by the United States not only as a justification for classifying Cuba as a threat to the United States and the Western hemisphere and, more recently, as a "rogue state," but also as a legitimization of its embargo or blockade of Cuba—an embargo that has been condemned by the United Nations and the Inter-American Juridical Committee, which has ruled that such a measure against Cuba violates international law (Chomsky 2000,2).8
The Cuban case might be considered to be too specific to act as a basis for broader interpretations, and certainly in the context of U.S.-Latin American relations, it has a unique geopolitical significance. However, it can also be argued that U.S.-Cuban relations express, in a rather concentrated form, a persistent theme in the history of U.S.-Latin American relations; for example, there are other cases of the United States assigning to itself a role that frames relations with Latin American societies so that their sovereignty is transgressed, as is especially evident in the case of US. policy in relation to the "war on drugs."9 However, it is also important to point out that the positing of a shared U.S.-Cuban interest in "representative democracy, market economy and freedom and prosperity," as well as in "self-determination" and "self-government," finds echoes in other situations where the United States assumes the role of defining another people's sovereignty, as can be seen in the current case of the occupation of Iraq (see Ali 2003 and Gregory 2004). There is something significant and specific here which relates to the issue of the particularity of U.S. imperial power and its representations of subordinated peoples. The imperial imagination in the case of the lone superpower has a specificity that is not always contextualized. I would argue that there are three main elements of this imperial specificity.
Failure to challenge our flawed form of knowledge production inevitably leads to conflict - Excluding other types of thought through universalizing truth claims makes resistance manifest in violent ways
Barkawi, University of Cambridge Center of International Studies senior lecturer, and Laffey, University of London politics and international relations professor, 6
(Tarak and Mark, 2006, “The postcolonial moment in security studies”, Review of International Studies, vol. 32, pg. 331-333, https://umdrive.memphis.edu/rblanton/public/POLS_7508_Fall_2012/barwaki_postcolonial_RIS_2006.pdf, accessed 7/12/13, JZ)

The rootedness of the current conflict in centuries of often violent interaction between North and South is difficult to see due to security studies’ reliance on histories and geographies which reproduce Eurocentric conceptions of world politics. This problem is not peculiar to security studies. According to Barry Buzan and Richard Little, ‘there is no doubt that International Relations has been studied from a very Eurocentric perspective . . .’10 Eurocentrism is a complex idea but at its core is the assumption of European centrality in the human past and present.11 On this view, Europe is conceived as separate and distinct from the rest of the world, as self-contained and self-generating. Analysis of the past, present and future of world politics is carried out in terms – conceptual and empirical, political and normative – that take for granted this centrality and separation.12 Neither the content – social, political, economic and cultural – nor the geographical location of ‘Europe’ are fixed. Eurocentrism is about both a real and an imagined Europe. Over time, as Martin Lewis and Kären Wigen demonstrate, the location of Europe shifts, expands and contracts, eventually crossing the Atlantic and the Pacific and becoming synonymous with the ‘West’.13 Today, the ‘West’ is centred on the Anglophone US – a former European settler colony – and incorporates Western Europe, North America, Japan and the British settler societies of Oceania. There are few better examples of Eurocentrism than the notion that the end-point of development and modernisation is defined by the contemporary West.
The Eurocentrism of conventional security studies takes different forms across the theoretic perspectives that constitute the field. For realists, a ‘general theory of international politics is necessarily based on the great powers’.14 In modern history those powers are overwhelmingly located in Europe and the West. Eurocentrism is therefore intrinsic to the way in which realism is constructed in International Relations (IR).15 The great antagonists of realism, the liberals, seek to regulate conflict and alleviate its humanitarian consequences through a turn to domestic and international institutions and norms. International institutions such as the League of Nations, the United Nations and the nuclear non-proliferation regime are largely the product of interstate diplomacy dominated by Western great powers.16 Moreover, liberal democracy and the ethical principles that inform liberal opinion are the product of purportedly European histories and intellectual trajectories, most prominently those associated with the Enlightenments.17 Many constructivists share similar commitments as in attempts to make sense of international order in Hobbesian, Lockean or Kantian terms.18 Recent efforts to move beyond the realist-liberal debate, such as Critical Security Studies, draw their core concept of human emancipation from these same intellectual traditions.19 Each of these traditions, as postcolonial thinkers take pains to point out, rest on profoundly Eurocentric and racist assumptions.20 As Immanuel Kant, a figure dear to both liberal and critical scholars, observed, ‘Humanity achieves its greatest perfection with the White race’.21
Eurocentrism generates a variety of difficulties for the analysis of security relations, and world politics more generally.22 Two in particular motivate our argument here. First, as we have noted, questions of war and peace raised by great power competition are foundational for security thought and practice. As a result, security studies provides few categories for making sense of the historical experiences of the weak and the powerless who comprise most of the world’s population. By default, these experiences are conceived in categories derived from great power politics in the North. Consequently, national liberation struggles in the post-World War II era were thought of in Cold War terms by many US policymakers and defence intellectuals.23 Today, this categorical error is repeated in a new form. Armed resistance to Northern domination of the international system is subsumed largely under the category of ‘terrorism’. In contemporary usage this term legitimates state power and delegitimates the use of force by non-state actors.24 It assumes in advance that ‘terrorist’ acts are always illegitimate and unjustified. Understanding why the weak resist and the forms their resistance takes is not aided by calling them names.
Second, and related, to the extent it addresses them at all, a Eurocentric security studies regards the weak and the powerless as marginal or derivative elements of world politics, as at best the site of liberal good intentions or at worst a potential source of threats.25 Missed are the multiple and integral relations between the weak and the strong. Across diverse fields of social inquiry, it is taken for granted that the weak and the strong must be placed in a common analytic frame, as together constitutive of events, processes and structures.26 In contrast IR, and security studies in particular, mainly proceed by attending to the powerful only. As Stanley Hoffmann notes, IR takes an ‘Athenian’ perspective on the world.27 For realism, with its focus on great powers, one-sided analysis of this kind is foundational. For liberal and some critical approaches to security studies, the weak are of interest but primarily as bearers of rights and objects of emancipation, that is, for their normative value in Western political theoretic terms.28 Failing to study the weak and the strong together, as jointly responsible for making history, hamstrings IR and security studies’ ability to make sense of world politics generally and North-South relations in particular.
That the weak play an integral role in shaping world politics is harder to deny when a Southern resistance movement strikes at the heart of Northern power. In the wake of those attacks, a series of developments transformed international and domestic politics around the world in diverse ways. Wars are being fought; alliance relations reconfigured; security forces redeployed; borders reworked; civil liberties curtailed; departments of state created; and identities remade. Understanding security relations now requires that we discard Eurocentric assumptions about the world and how it works.
Our aff is key to break down normative knowledge production on intersectional forms of oppressions
Chandra, Post-Doctoral Researcher Planck Institute, 13
(Uday, Max Planck institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity, Department of Religious Diversity, Post-Doc, PhD Yale, Aug 2013, Yale University, “The Case for a Postcolonial Approach to the Study of Politics”, http://academia.edu/2364123/The_Case_for_a_Postcolonial_Approach_to_the_Study_of_Politics, Accessed 7/12/13, NC)

Towards a Postcolonial Approach to Political Science
The preceding section demonstrated how American political science research on the postcolonial world reproduces older colonial stereotypes and theories. In this section, I chart the path towards a postcolonial approach to the study of politics. Such an approach, I argue, calls for a sustained engagement with specific non-Western contexts as well as an openness to anthropological, historical, and area studies knowledge about them. A postcolonial approach can take many forms, but I highlight three possibilities here:   
(1) critiques of existing Eurocentric theories of comparative politics;
(2) bottom-up ethnographic and historical understandings of politics in particular contexts;
(3) re-evaluating key political concepts such as the state, democracy, nationalism, and war in the light of different non-Western experiences.
The first of these postcolonial approaches expands on the previous section. The aim is to examine and deconstruct mainstream political science theories about the postcolonial world by unveiling their overt biases and blindspots. These biases and blindspots, it needs to be demonstrated, are not arbitrary, but tied to distinctly Eurocentric visions of politics and society. Such visions implicitly or explicitly privilege Western experiences over non-Western ones, deny any measure of coevalness, and recast the postcolonial as backward or underdeveloped. For instance, the study of democracy exhibited clear strains of Eurocentrism insofar as they assumed a priori that modern West is the “natural” home of democracy and the postcolonial world throws up inchoate versions of modern Western democracy. Similarly, the contemporary study of civil wars is crippled by its Eurocentric view of postcolonial conflicts as a function of structural inadequacies such as weak states, economic backwardness, and primordial ethnic divisions.  
To overcome these Eurocentric views, a second kind of postcolonial approach is warranted. The aim of this approach is to offer alternatives to mainstream political science theories via in-depth, bottom-up empirical understandings of politics in postcolonial settings. Interpretive research relying on ethnographic and/or historical methods is particularly well-suited to achieve this aim. Even statistical studies that are sensitive to contextual realities in the postcolonial world can do so. The “science” underlying political science should itself be reconsidered and revised beyond its current neo-positivist confines. Investigations of vernacular practices and experiences of democracy in countries as diverse as Mexico, Nigeria, Yemen, and India are a part of this approach. So, too, are meaning-centered explanations of why ordinary men and women in postcolonial settings participate in armed social conflicts and other risky forms of collective action.   
A third kind of postcolonial approach, complementing the first two, seeks to rethink and redefine key political concepts by ridding them of their existing Eurocentric biases. The interpenetration of power and knowledge arguably leaves its deepest imprint on concepts, which are vital building blocks for social-scientific theories. What “democracy” means in India or Mexico is likely to be quite different from the United States or Canada. Difference does not, however, imply that one can be judged as inherently superior to another. The European or American experience of democracy cannot, in particular, be universalized into an abstract general model of democracy. Likewise, the notion of “civil wars” conceals a latent conviction that only strong states that can conquer their peripheries can establish a legitimate monopoly of violence within a certain territory. Whether in the Americas, Asia or Africa, this conviction is inseparable from the violence wrought by European colonialism on subject populations in its quest for political order.    
Taken together, these postcolonial approaches to the study of politics call for “provincializing Europe,” as Dipesh Chakrabarty has argued recently, so that we can avoid treating European experiences as universals. This task is simultaneously theoretical and empirical as well as intellectual and practical. As such, it supplements ongoing efforts within the United States and Europe to produce critical scholarship on racial, gender, and sexual minorities, inequalities of class and status, and the interpenetration of power and knowledge in mainstream political science. To sum up, a postcolonial approach to politics is a radical endeavor that seeks to challenge mainstream knowledge on non-Western politics and society via sustained engagements with them.

In response to the dominant paradigm that influences policies and debates, a method of decolonization is needed. We must reveal, critique and reorient ourselves towards the dominant conception of knowledge.
Baker, Professor of Education and Human Development at the University of Rochester, 12
(Michael, October 31 - November 4, , American Educational Studies Association, Annual Conference Seattle, Washington, “Decolonial Education: Meanings, Contexts, and Possibilities,” http://academia.edu/3266939/Decolonial_Education_Meanings_Contexts_and_Possiblities, Accessed: 7/7/13, LPS.)

¶ What do decoloniality and decolonial education mean?  Where does this movement come from?  What are the key ideas that underlie and comprise decolonial education?   What does decolonial education look like in practice?   My presentation will introduce a decolonial perspective on modernity and sketch the implications of this perspective for rethinking modern education beyond the epistemological boundaries of modernity.  The overall argument can be seen as an attempt to reveal, critique, and change the modern geopolitics of knowledge, within which modern western education first emerged and remains largely concealed.  ¶ Decoloniality involves the geopolitical reconceptualization of knowledge.  In order to build a universal conception of knowledge, western epistemology (from Christian theology to secular philosophy and science) has pretended that knowledge is independent of the geohistorical (Christian Europe) and biographical conditions (Christian white men living in Christian Europe) in which it is produced.  As a result, Europe became the locus of epistemic enunciation, and the rest of the world became the object to be described and studied from the European perspective.  The modern geopolitics of knowledge was grounded in the suppression of sensing and the body, and of its geo-historical location.  The foundations of knowledge were and remain territorial and imperial.  The claims to universality both legitimate and conceal the colonial/imperial relations of modernity (Mignolo, 2011).   ¶ ¶ Decolonial education is an expression of the changing geopolitics of knowledge whereby the modern epistemological framework for knowing and understanding the world is no longer interpreted as universal and unbound by geohistorical and bio-graphical contexts.  “I think therefore I am” becomes “I am where I think” in the body- and geo-politics of the modern world system (Mignolo, 2011).  The idea that knowledge and the rules of knowledge production exist within socio-historical relationships between political power and geographical space (geopolitics) shifts attention from knowledge itself to who, when, why, and where knowledge is produced (Mignolo, 2011).  The universal assumptions about knowledge production are being displaced, as knowledge is no longer coming from one regional center, but is distributed globally.  From this recognition of the geo and body politics of knowledge, education, including the various knowledge disciplines that comprise education and knowledge of education, can be analyzed and critiqued with questions such as: who is the subject of knowledge, and what is his/her material apparatus of enunciation?; what kind of knowledge/understanding is he/she engaged in generating, and why?; who is benefiting or taking advantage of particular knowledge or understanding?; what institutions (universities, media, foundations, corporations) are supporting and encouraging particular knowledge and understanding? (Mignolo, 2011, p. 189).  ¶ Decolonial thinking and writing first emerged in the initial formations of modernity from the experiences of and responses to European colonization in the Andean regions during the sixteenth century.  The colonial context created a betweeness of cosmologies for the colonized.  This consciousness of being between cultures within a dominant culture is the central feature of decolonial thought  -- thinking from the borders created by a totalizing cosmology associated with European modernity.  For example, the sixteenth century writings of Waman Puma de Ayala focused on ways to preserve Aymara and Kechua knowledge cultures and co-exist within the new world order (Mignolo, 2005).  Today, decolonization is used among indigenous intellectuals around the world, where a variety of models of decolonial education have emerged.  Decolonial thinking about education is rooted in the violent occlusion of ways of knowing and being among indigenous civilizations in the Americas within the imposition of a new world order.  The conquest of the Americas meant the demolition of indigenous education and economic systems.  European Renaissance universities, for example, were soon transplanted across the Atlantic that had no relation to the languages and histories of the native peoples.  
Eurocentrism frames decision-making - Contemporary calculus relies on logic that constructs threats.
Lander, Central University of Venezuela Professor, 2k
(Edgardo, Sociologist, Venezuelan, professor at the Central University of Venezuela and a Fellow of the Transnational Institute, 2000, Nepantla: Views from South, Volume 1, Issue 3, “Eurocentrism and Colonialism in Latin American Social Thought”, pg. 527-228¶ , http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/nepantla/summary/v001/1.3lander.html, Accessed 7/5/13, JB)

As the report points out, modern social sciences were developed in England, France, Italy ,Germany ,and the United States and were meant to deal with the social reality of those countries (Wallerstein 1996,23).From the fact that the rest of the world was segregated to be studied by other disciplines—anthropology and orientalism (23–28)—it is not possible, however, to conclude that those other territories, cultures, and peoples were not present as an implicit reference in all the disciplines. The separation between the studies of the modern European North Americans and the rest is made on the basis of assumptions in relation to others, assumptions that define them as essentially different. The superiority of modern industrial societies is defined in contrast with the inferiority of the non-modern.
The problem with Eurocentrism in the social sciences is not only that its fundamental categories were created for a particular time and place and later used in a more or less creative or rigid manner to study other realities. The problem lies in the colonial imaginary from which Western social sciences constructed its interpretation of the world. This imaginary has permeated the social sciences of the whole world, making a great part of the social knowledge of the peripheral world equally Eurocentric.7 In those disciplines, the experience of European societies is naturalized: Its economic organization—the capitalist market—is the “natural form of organizing production. It corresponds to an individual universal psychology” (Wallerstein 1996,20). Its political organization—the modern European nation state— is the “natural” form of political existence. The different peoples of the planet are organized according to a notion of progress: on one hand the more advanced, superior ,modern societies; on the other, backward, traditional, nonmodern societies. In this sense, sociology, political theory, and economics have not been any less colonial or less liberal than anthropology or orientalism, disciplines where these assumptions have been more readily acknowledged. This is the basis of the cognitive and institutional network of development and of structural adjustment politics promoted by The Washington consensus.8
It is a colonial system of knowledge that expresses and legitimizes the modern colonial world-system. Europe’s dominating position in the world structure of colonialism established a monopoly of the locus of enunciation of “objective,” scientific knowledge about the modern world (Mignolo1995,329). It is a perspective with only one subject (white, European, with the exclusion of every other subject and every other form or style of knowledge). This leads to the naturalization of this power structure, which comes to be explained as resulting from hierarchical differences in race, culture, or other classifying systems, which always envision the modern West as the maximum expression of human development. Any difference between the cultural patterns of the hegemonic powers and the rest of the world is seen as the expression of the intrinsic inferiority of all others, or as hindrances to be supplanted (forcefully if necessary) through the European-led civilizing or modernizing process. This system of knowledge has proved to be long lasting and has outlived colonialism as a foundation of today’s worldwide hegemonic structure of power (Quijano 2000).
Specificially, traditional IR studies use discourse surrounding war and peace to justify imperialist policies  
Owen, Reader in Political Theory at the University of Southampton, 2 (David, Millennium: Journal of International Studies, Vol. 31, No. 3, http://mil.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/31/3/653, pg. 659 date accessed 7/10/13 igm)

The first dimension concerns the relationship between positivist IR¶ theory and postmodernist IR ‘theory’ (and the examples illustrate the claims concerning pluralism and factionalism made in the introduction to this¶ section). It is exhibited when we read Walt warning of the danger of postmodernism as a kind of theoretical decadence since ‘issues of peace and war are too important for the field of IR to be diverted into a prolix¶ and self-indulgent discourse that is divorced from the real world’,12 or¶ find Keohane asserting sniffily that:
Neither neorealist nor neoliberal institutionalists are content with¶ interpreting texts: both sets of theorists believe that there is an¶ international political reality that can be partly understood, even¶ if it will always remain to some extent veiled.13
We should be wary of such denunciations precisely because the issue at stake for the practitioners of this ‘prolix and self-indulgent discourse’ is¶ the picturing of international politics and the implications of this picturing¶ for the epistemic and ethical framing of the discipline, namely, the¶ constitution of what phenomena are appropriate objects of theoretical or other forms of enquiry. The kind of accounts provided by practitioners of¶ this type are not competing theories (hence Keohane’s complaint) but conceptual reproblematisations of the background that informs theory- construction, namely, the distinctions, concepts, assumptions, inferences and assertability warrants that are taken for granted in the course of the debate between, for example, neorealists and neoliberal institutionalists¶ (hence the point-missing character of Keohane’s complaint).
Additionally, rhetoric surrounding sustaining hegemony, promoting democracy and sustaining the economy promote policies which are violently unequal
Sundberg, University of Helsinki political science professor, 9
(Jan, Published 2009, “Eurocentrism”, International Encyclopedia of Human Geography, Volume 3, Pg. 638, JB)

Eurocentrism has been variously de?ned as an attitude, conceptual apparatus, or set of empirical beliefs that frame Europe as the primary engine and architect of world history, the bearer of universal values and reason, and the pinnacle and therefore model of progress and development. In Eurocentric narratives, the superiority of Europe is evident in its achievements in economic and political systems, technologies, and the high quality of life enjoyed by its societies. Eurocentrism is more than banal ethnocentric prejudice, however, as it is intimately tied to and indeed constituted in the violence and asymmetry of colonial and imperial encounters. Eurocentrism is what makes this violence not only possible, but also acceptable or justi?able. As such, Eurocentrism is the condition of possibility for Orientalism, the discursive and institutional grid of power/knowledge integral to the production and domination of the Orient as Other. Signi?cant critiques of Eurocentrism emerged in the context of post-World War II shifts in geopolitical power, including anticolonial and anti-imperial revolutionary movements. Even so, Eurocentric epistemologies continue to haunt the production of knowledge in geography in signi?cant and disturbing ways.
In conventional Eurocentric tellings, Europe is the engineer and architect of modern agricultural, cultural, economic, political, and scienti?c innovations, including capitalism, democracy, and industrial, medical, and green revolutions. Concepts like ‘the rise of Europe’ and ‘the European miracle’ exemplify Eurocentric models of history and development. Europe’s so-called rise is explained in terms of superior social and environmental qualities deemed internal to it: inventiveness, rationality, capacity for abstract thought, outward looking, freedom loving, along with advantageous climate and geographies. Many of these cultural traits are said to be inherited from the Bible lands and ancient Greece and Rome – framed as Europe’s ancestral hearths – though their highest development is said to have been achieved ?rst in imperial England and then the United States of America – hence the term ‘Euro-Americanism’. In these narratives, progress and development ride what James Blaut calls ‘the westbound Orient Express’.
As a consequence of the perceived historical movement of the westbound express, ‘Europe’ has morphed into the ‘West’ and now the ‘Global North’. These ?uid geographic imaginaries may refer to not only Europe and white settler societies like the United States, Canada, and Australia, but also Japan and any other region or group that envisions itself as the possessor or inheritor of European culture, values, and academic, political, and economic systems. At the same time, however, particular places within the West such as the United States are privileged as the source of universal theory, while others like New Zealand are framed as limited by their particularities. Latin America and the Caribbean were colonized by Europeans, but are rarely included in the West. In short, it may not always be clear to what exactly these geographical imaginaries refer, but they are used as though they correspond to a commonsensical external reality. Through their repetition in everyday speech and academic and institutional narratives, that reality is continuously brought into being.
Contention 2 is Framing
This debate represents a significant challenge to hierarchal systems of thought, but the discussion isn’t enough- you should vote aff to legitimate our criticism of Eurocentrism.
Araújo and Maeso, University of Coimbra, Center for Social Studies, 12 (Marta, Silvia, August 31, 2012, “Ethnic and Radical Studies” journal “History textbooks, racism and the critique of Eurocentrism: beyond rectification or compensation” http://peer.ccsd.cnrs.fr/docs/00/72/66/61/PDF/PEER_stage2_10.1080252F01419870.2011.600767.pdf accessed 7-10-13, KR)

It is our view that this liberal tale of a ‘kaleidoscope’ of perspectives has been convincingly  deemed insufficient and inefficient, as the mere inclusion of ‘other’ perspectives is not  sufficient to overcome the hegemony of certain narratives. We thus argue for the need to open up the debate on knowledge and power, engaging with the frames of interpretation within which such perspectives are to be included. Thus, following Cornel West’s argument, this article aims at showing the theoretical and analytical relevance of the notion of Eurocentrism for understanding the ways in which ‘race’ and racism are rendered (in)visible in  the debate on nationhood, citizenship and democracy. We argue that the effectiveness of  Eurocentrism lies not so much in prejudiced representations of the ‘other’, but in the  depoliticisation of power relations that make plausible such (mis)representations. According to Wendy Brown (2006): Depoliticization involves removing a political phenomenon from comprehension of its historical emergence and from a recognition of the powers that produce and contour it. No matter its particular form and mechanics, depoliticization always eschews power and history in the representation of its subjects (p. 15, original emphasis).
We have a responsibility to open up the debate to marginalized people.
Jones, University of Aberdeen, Scotland, International Relations Professor, 4
(Branwen Gruffydd Jones, August 2004, University of Cambridge, “From Eurocentrism to Epistemological Internationalism: power, knowledge and objectivity in International Relation,” http://www.csog.group.cam.ac.uk/iacr/papers/Jones.pdf, accessed July 10, 2013, EK)

A fundamental problem which underlies the origin and reproduction of IR’s eurocentricity is the overwhelming dominance of ideas produced in and by the west, and the wilful and determined silencing of the voices and histories of the colonised. But the result of this fundamental problem is flawed knowledge about the world. Eurocentricity is therefore a dual problem concerning both the authors and the content of knowledge, and cannot be resolved through normative commitments alone. It is not only the voices of the colonised, but the histories of colonialism, which have been glaring in their absence from the discipline of International Relations.
Overcoming eurocentricity therefore requires not only concerted effort from the centre to create space and listen to hitherto marginalised voices, but also commitment to correcting the flaws in prevailing knowledge – and it is not only ‘the Other’ who can and should elaborate this critique. A vitally important implication of objectivity is that it is the responsibility of European and American, just as much as non-American or nonEuropean scholars, to decolonise IR. The importance of objectivity in social inquiry defended here can perhaps be seen as a form of epistemological internationalism. It is not necessary to be African to attempt to tell a more accurate account of the history of Europe’s role in the making of the contemporary Africa and the rest of the world, for example, or to write counter-histories of ‘the expansion of international society’ which detail the systematic barbarity of so-called Western civilisation. It is not necessary to have been colonised to recognise and document the violence, racism, genocide and dispossession which have characterised European expansion over five hundred years.
In the same way that colonization of Latin America ushered in a paradigm shift, it is the logical starting point for a discussion of decolonizing education
Baker, graduate Student, Education and Human Development, University of Rodchester, ‘9
(Michael, Graduate Student at the Warner Graduate School of Education and Human Development at the University of Rodchester, June 2009, Unpublished Paper,“Situating Modern Western Education Within the Modern/Colonial World System,” http://rochester.academia.edu/MichaelBaker, P.14, Accessed: 7/12/13, LPS.)

From Mexico to Argentina, the violence of the European culture of conquest and colonization continued after decolonization in Latin America’s own self-fashioning. The nation-state’s appearance as the agent of civilization in the nineteenth-century involves the reformation of Eurocentric modernity in which the racialized violence linked to capitalism is rationalized as the natural expansion of universal reason and scientific truth (Coronil, 1997, p. 74). ¶ The civilizing alterization experience of Latin America offers a way of thinking differently about the politics and ethics of knowledge, language, and education relevant to the experiences and histories of all locations within the modern/colonial world system, including the system’s origin and center – Western Europe and North America. ¶ The “discovery” of America and the genocide of Indians and African slaves are the very foundations of “modernity,” more so than the French or Industrial Revolutions. Better yet, they constitute the darker and hidden face of modernity, “coloniality.” Thus, to excavate the “idea of Latin America” is, really to understand how the West was born and how the modern world order was founded. (Mignolo, 2005, p. xiii)¶

Tournament: Gonzaga | Round: 9 | Opponent: Erryone | Judge: Erryone
Plan: The United States federal government should substantially increase its investment in bilateral, non combustible renewable energy production and distribution projects with the United Mexican States.

Tournament: Berkeley | Round: 9 | Opponent: Erry1 | Judge: Erry1
Text: The United States federal government should substantially increase its investment in solar and wind energy production and distribution projects with the United Mexican States.