1AC – Fracking Policy

Advantage
The Advantage is fracking –
Fracking wrecks critical biodiversity – it kills key forest and freshwater species
that are critical to human survival – only ending fracking solves – causes
extinction (45s)
Lohan 19 Tara Lohan is deputy editor of The Revelator and has worked for more than a decade
as a digital editor and environmental journalist focused on the intersections of energy, water
and climate. Her work has been published by The Nation, American Prospect, High Country
News, Grist, Pacific Standard and others. She is the editor of two books on the global water crisis.
"We’re Just Starting to Learn How Fracking Harms Wildlife • The Revelator." Revelator, 2 Oct.
2019, therevelator.org/fracking-wildlife.

-multiple ways of hurting – physical land usage, water contamination, more road usage, building
high-light towns

-biodiversity k2 ecosystem services - extinction

-key to core interior forest bird species – causes forest fragmentation and biomass loss

-and fracking specifically key to brink even accounting for alt causes

-kills water fleas – kills freshwater biod b/c they’re at the bottom of the food chain – spills up
and out

-presume aff – time left to save key biodiversity is small and we’re uncertain of how large it’s
impacts could be
In January 2015 North Dakota experienced one of the worst environmental disasters in its history: A pipeline burst, spilling nearly 3
million gallons of briny, saltwater waste from nearby oil-drilling operations into two creek beds. The wastewater, which flowed all
the way to the Missouri River, contained chloride concentrations high enough to kill any wildlife that encountered it. It wasn’t the
first such disaster in the state. In 2006 a spill of close to 1 million gallons of fracking wastewater into the Yellowstone River resulted
in a mass die-off of fish and plants. Cleanup of that spill was still ongoing at the time of the 2015 spill, nearly a decade later. Spills
like these highlight the dangers that come with unconventional fossil-fuel extraction techniques
that go after hard-to-reach pockets of oil and gas using practices like horizontal drilling and high-
volume hydraulic fracturing (otherwise known as fracking). But events like these massive spills are just
the tip of the iceberg. Other risks to wildlife can be more contained, subtle or hidden. And while
many of the after-effects of fracking have grabbed headlines for years — such as contaminated drinking
water, earthquakes and even flammable faucets — the consequences for wildlife have so far been left out of
the national conversation. But those consequences are very real for a vast suite of animals
including mussels, birds, fish, caribou and even fleas, and they’re as varied as the species
themselves. In some places wildlife pays the price when habitat is destroyed. Elsewhere the
damage occurs when water is sucked away or polluted. Still other species can’t take the traffic,
noise and dust that accompany extraction operations. All this damage makes sense when you
think about fracking’s outsized footprint. It starts with the land cleared for the well pad,
followed by sucking large volumes of water (between 1.5 and 16 million gallons per well) out of rivers, streams or
groundwater. Fracking Doddridge, West Va. Fracking trucks and equipment in Doddridge Co, West Va. (Photo by Tara Lohan) Then
there’s the sand that’s mined for use during the fracturing of underground rock to release natural gas or oil. There are also new
pipelines, compressor stations and other related infrastructure that need to be constructed. And there’s the truck traffic that surges
during operations, or the disposal of fracking wastewater, either in streams or underground. The
cumulative footprint of
a single new well can be as large as 30 acres. In places where hundreds or thousands of wells
spring up across a landscape, it’s easy to imagine the toll on wildlife — and even cases with ecosystem-
wide implications. “Studies show that there are multiple pathways to wildlife being harmed,” says ecologist
Sandra Steingraber, a distinguished scholar in residence at Ithaca College who has worked for a decade compiling research on the
health effects of fracking. “Biodiversity is a determinant of public health — without these wild animals
doing ecosystem services for us, we can’t survive.” Losing Ground The most obvious threats
fracking poses to wildlife comes in the form of habitat loss. As rural areas become industrialized with each
new well pad and its associated infrastructure, vital habitat for wildlife is altered or destroyed. Fields with well
pads Habitat fragmentation in North Dakota’s Bakken shale. (Photo by Tara Lohan) And it’s not just the area containing
the well. The land or water just outside of the operation, known as “edge habitat,” also
degrades with an increase in the spread of invasive plant species, among other concerns. And
large-scale development, such as miles-long pipelines, can change the way species move and hunt, often
resulting in an increase in predation. The oil and gas development in Alberta, Canada, for
example, created “wolf highways” that gave the predators easy access to an endangered herd of
woodland caribou. Roads, another kind of fragmentation, can be particularly dangerous for wildlife. A
single fracked well can be responsible for 3,300 one-way truck trips during its operational
lifespan, and each journey can injure or kill wildlife large and small. After all, it’s hard to get out of the way
of a tanker truck carrying 80,000 pounds of sand. And then there’s the big picture. Drilling within large, “core” forest
areas previously located far from human development can be permanently detrimental for
species such as migratory songbirds. In one study, published in Biological Conservation in 2016, researchers examined
the effects of unconventional gas drilling on forest habits and populations of birds in an area of West Virginia overlaying the
Marcellus and Utica shales. The area has been at the center of the shale gas boom, with the number of unconventional wells in
central Appalachia jumping from 111 in 2005 to 14,022 by the end of 2015. The study found that shale-gas development there
during that period resulted in a 12.4 percent loss of core forest and increased edge habitat by more than 50 percent — and that, in
turn, changed the communities of birds found in the forest. The areas near well pads experienced an overall
decline in “forest specialists” — birds that prefer interior forest habitat, among them the hooded warbler and Kentucky
warbler, which are of high conservation priority, as well as cerulean warblers. These sky-blue endangered migratory songbirds have
been dropping in numbers for decades, but researchers noted that the decline was 15 percent higher in their study area than in the
greater Appalachian Mountains region during the same period. Kentucky warbler Kentucky warblers prefer large core forest habitat
and researchers have found they decline in numbers around shale gas development. (Photo by Andrew Weitzel, CC BY-SA 2.0) “For
migratory songbirds, large blocks of forest are very important,” explains Margaret C. Brittingham, a professor of wildlife resources at
Penn State University who has studied the effects of fracking on wildlife. The birds do best in interior forest habitat with mature
trees. They also serve as an important part of the forest ecosystem, helping to prevent or suppress insect outbreaks that can
damage trees. “They’re co-evolved with the forest, feeding on insects and keeping those forests healthy,” she says. Not all species
declined in numbers from fracking development. The study found an increase in the kinds of birds that do well among humans and
in developed areas — “habitat generalists” such as the American robin, blue jay and brown-headed cowbird, the latter of which are
notorious brood parasites that leave their eggs in nests of other birds. “I think the
most alarming thing about all of
this is what bird declines may indicate about the declining health of overall ecosystems,” says Laura
Farwell, a postdoctoral research associate in the department of Forest and Wildlife Ecology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison
and lead author of the Biological Conservation study. “I
know it’s a cliché, but forest interior birds truly are
‘canaries in the coal mine’ for Appalachian forests experiencing rapid loss and fragmentation.”
Farwell adds that many other kinds of development contribute to habitat loss that result in
biodiversity declines. Fracking is one more added pressure, but the consequences are quite
significant. “It just happens to be disproportionately affecting some of the largest remaining
areas of undisturbed, mature forest left in the eastern U.S., and these forests are incredibly
valuable for biodiversity,” she says. Out West the industry is carving up a different kind of
habitat, and that has other species on the ropes. Greater sage grouse, for example, depend on
large home ranges composed of intact areas of sagebrush. Cattle ranching and development of
all kinds have pushed the grouse near extinction, and continued unbridled oil and gas extraction
in its remaining habitat could tip it over the edge. A 2014 study co-authored by Brittingham found that oil and
gas infrastructure and related disturbances to sage grouse can cause the birds’ populations to decline — or even disappear in areas
with particularly high levels of oil and gas development. Sage grouse have also been shown to exhibit high levels of stress from noise.
Noise poses additional risks for birds that depend on their hearing. A study published in Biological Conservation in 2016 found that
noise from compressor stations, which run 24 hours a day, reduced the ability of northern saw-whet owls to catch prey. The
researchers found that for owls and other “acoustically specialized predators,” noise can cause significant negative impacts on
behavior, like a decreased ability to hunt, and that can ripple through the ecosystem. drilling light Lights on a drilling site in West
Virginia can affect nocturnal wildlife. (Photo by Tara Lohan) Light, too, can be a problem. Oil and gas operations in
some places have turned once-dark rural areas into blazing mini-cities in quick time. A 2012 photo revealed
that gas burned off from wells in North Dakota’s Bakken Shale was so bright it was visible from
space — something not seen just six years before. Light pollution like this can be deadly for
migratory birds and disrupt other nocturnal animals. It’s in the Water The fracking process uses a lot
of water and much of that contaminated H2O returns to the surface, bringing with it heavy metals,
radioactivity, toxic chemicals (many of which are industry trade secrets) and high levels of salinity. Disposing of all that
wastewater has created headaches for the industry and in some cases it’s now proving to
endanger wildlife. Spills or intentional dumping of wastewater or fracking fluid released 180 million gallons into the
environment between 2009 and 2014, according to an investigation by the Associated Press. Unsafe levels of some
contaminants have been found to persist for years, as was the case in North Dakota. Not all spills and
intentional releases of wastewater in streams create noticeable impacts like fish going belly up
— some are more subtle and harder to see — but they may still take a real toll on aquatic life.
A 2019 study in Ecotoxicology and Environmental Safety looked at what happens when
crustaceans called water fleas encounter a fracking-fluid spill. Researchers found that even
when the fluids were diluted in a stream, their high salinity could decrease insect mobility and
survival. The Canadian province of Alberta, the researchers noted, has recorded 100 such large-volume spills. Lowly water
fleas — in this case a species called Daphnia magna — may not seem like animals we should
worry about, but like so many small creatures, they occupy an important niche. “They are the
basis of the freshwater ecosystem,” Steingraber explains. “When the water fleas are gone, the guys
that feed on them are gone — frogs and fish die, and those that feed on them die and suddenly
you have a biodiversity problem because you’ve knocked out a species at the bottom of the
aquatic food chain.” Some of this may already be playing out in other locations. A 2016 study published in
Ecotoxicology that found a decrease in biodiversity of macroinvertebrates in Pennsylvania
streams where fracking was occurring in the watershed — and, even worse, “no fish or no fish
diversity at streams with documented frackwater fluid spills.” In some cases streams that once
contained large numbers of brook trout had none left. The researchers concluded that “fracking
has the potential to alter aquatic biodiversity…at the base of food webs.” brook trout Brook trout have
disappeared from some streams in central Appalachia following fracking spills. (Photo by USFWS) Elsewhere, it’s possible that
contamination of surface waters has already taken a toll on the Louisiana waterthrush (Parkesia motacilla), a bird that breeds along
forest headwater streams and feeds on macroinvertebrates. A 2015 study published in Ecosphere found that shale gas development
had negative effects on the nest survival and productivity of waterthrushes and the researchers posited that “indirect effects on
stream and terrestrial food webs from possible contamination” by the oil and gas industry could be to blame. The research, which
looked at sites in both the Marcellus and Fayetteville shale regions, showed that the birds’ feathers contained elevated levels of
barium and strontium — two heavy metals associated with the drilling process — in areas where fracking had taken place. Much like
when lead shows up in a human’s hair, the presence of these metals in the birds’ feathers is a sign that contaminants in the
environment are making their way into animals’ bodies. And that raises even bigger concerns. As the researchers concluded in their
paper: “Ourfinding of significantly higher levels of barium and strontium also suggests the
possibility of surface water contamination by any of the hundreds of chemicals that may be used
in hydraulic fracturing, including friction reducers, acids, biocides, corrosion and scale inhibitors,
pH adjusting agents and surfactants.” A similar line of inquiry is being pursued by other researchers. Nathaniel Warner,
a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Penn State University, has been using the shells of freshwater mussels to read
the changes in water chemistry in Pennsylvania’s Allegheny River. Mussels record environmental conditions in their shells each year
— much like tree rings. Warner and his colleagues have also found elevated levels of strontium in the shells of mussels living
downstream from a site where treated fracking wastewater was discharged. Strontium, which is found in high concentrations in oil
and gas wastewaters, is a naturally occurring metal with some medical benefits but which in large exposures can cause bone loss
and other side effects. But Warner says they are still trying to determine what the impacts are for
mussels and aquatic ecosystems — not to mention the people who get their dinner from the
river. “We haven’t really gotten to the point where we can say this is harmful or not,” he says. “We really focused on the hard
shell itself. But now we’re looking more at what happens in that soft tissue because muskrats and fish don’t really eat the shell that
much, but they eat the soft tissue. And so what levels of contaminants or pollution ended up in that soft tissue compared to the
shell?” He says that’s probably more important for determining what this really means for wildlife or even human health. University
of Wisconsin’s Farwell says that she’d also like to see more research on what the accumulation of contaminants in the bodies of
waterthrushes means for other wildlife and for humans. “Air pollution is another important issue to consider,” she adds. “I’m not
aware of any current studies that have looked directly at impacts of fracking air pollution on wildlife.” You
can add these
topics to the long list researchers are hoping to explore, but there will still be a lot about how
fracking and other extraction technologies are affecting wildlife that we don’t know. And with
natural gas still projected to be one of the fastest growing energy sources in the United States,
the time to understand its impacts on wildlife grows short. “The industry boomed at such a
rapid pace, researchers and policymakers could barely keep up,” she says. “And in most cases,
we don’t have baseline data at impacted sites to compare with current numbers. Unfortunately,
most of us studying fracking impacts have been playing a game of catch-up since the beginning.”

Fracking decimates our water supply – their evidence doesn’t account for new
data and future wells –consumption will increase 50-fold and it’s lost forever
(30s)
Romm 18 Joseph J. Romm (born June 27, 1960) is an American author, blogger, editor,
physicist[1] and climate expert,[2] who advocates reducing greenhouse gas emissions to limit
global warming and increasing energy security through energy efficiency, green energy
technologies and green transportation technologies.[3] Romm is a Fellow of the American
Association for the Advancement of Science. Romm then attended the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology, where he earned a Bachelor of Science degree in 1982 and a Ph.D. in 1987, both
in physics. "Fracking is destroying U.S. water supply, warns shocking new study." 17 Aug. 2018,
thinkprogress.org/fracking-is-destroying-americas-water-supply-new-study-9cb163923d24.

-new studies are best and only ones to account for new wells which use WAY more water

-more wells coming now, total footprint jumps 50 times

-wells located in water-stressed areas

-permanantly lost – salinity (saltiness), never resurfaces, disposed of in deep injection wells,
totally lost forever

An alarming new study reveals fracking

is quite simply destroying America’s water supply. That means we
are losing potable water forever in many semi-arid regions of the country, while simultaneously producing
more carbon pollution that in turn is driving ever-worsening droughts in those same regions, as fracking expert Anthony Ingraffea, a
professor at Cornell University, explained to ThinkProgress. The
game-changing study from Duke University
found that “from 2011 to 2016, the water use per well increased up to 770 percent.” In addition, the
toxic wastewater produced in the first year of production jumped up to 1440 percent. “Previous
studies suggested hydraulic fracturing does not use significantly more water than other energy
sources, but those findings were based only on aggregated data from the early years of
fracking,” explained co-author Avner Vengosh, a professor of geochemistry and water quality at Duke. Top articles 1/5 READ
MORE Transitioning ThinkProgress “After more than a decade of fracking operation, we now have more
years of data to draw upon from multiple verifiable sources,” said Vengosh. The researchers looked at data
on water used — and oil, gas, and wastewater produced — for over 12,000 wells from 2011 to 2016. Fracking Is Already Straining
U.S. Water Supplies Ingraffea, who was not involved in the study, explained that while
first generation wells used 3 to
5 millions gallons of water, current third generation wells use 10 to 30 million gallons. Ingraffea —
who worked with the fossil fuel industry for three decades and has been co-editor-in-chief of the journal Engineering Fracture
Mechanics since 2005 — noted that the
federal government “forecasts a million more such wells in the
next 20 years.” That would mean trillions of gallons of water used. The Duke study warns that the
water footprint of fracking could jump as much as 50-fold in some areas by 2030, “raising
concerns about its sustainability, particularly in arid or semi-arid regions in western states, or other
areas where groundwater supplies are stressed.” As their analysis shows, some of the fracking sites
that are seeing the biggest jump in water footprint per well — like the Permian and Eagle Ford Basins — are
also located in highly water-stressed areas (see chart below). Some of the biggest fracking sites -- like the Permian
and Eagle Ford Basins -- are in highly water stressed areas. Credit: Duke University. One key point the study makes is that, unlike
other energy sources, much of the water fracking uses is essentially lost to humanity. Either the water
doesn’t escape the shale formation or, when it does come back to the surface, it “is highly
saline, is difficult to treat, and is often disposed through deep injection wells.” Therefore, even though other
forms of energy have a higher intensity of water use, “the permanent loss of water use for hydraulic fracturing
from the hydrosphere” may still be higher. The study also points out that the world has seen “rapidly diminishing
global water resources due to population growth and climate change.” Yet countless studies show that because the fracking
process leaks so much methane — a highly potent greenhouse gas — fracked gas isn’t a climate
solution. In fact, “natural gas could warm the planet as much as coal in the short term,” one major
24-author study from June concluded. So those who continue touting fracked gas as a bridge to a low-carbon future are not keeping
up with the latest science. Gas is flared from California's Monterey Shale where gas and oil are being extracted using hydraulic
fracturing, or fracking. March 22, 2014. CREDIT: David McNew/Getty Images The argument for fracking as a climate solution just
went down in flames And so we have the tragic situation where
we are using up one of our most precious non-
renewable resources, water, to produce oil and gas, which worsens the stress on our water
system. As Ingraffea put it, “shale gas/oil is exchanging absurd volumes of water for absurd volumes
of fossil fuels at a time where using the latter is jeopardizing the availability of the former.” At the
same time, fracking “is exchanging precious volumes of water usable for drinking and farming for toxic volumes of wastewater most
of which has to be transported and injected underground,” at grave risk to underground sources of drinking water. Finally, “most
of what is not transported and injected stays underground, an exchange of H2O for CO2.”
Therefore, almost all of what arrives at a well is forever lost to the water cycle.” Fracking is
truly a Faustian bargain.

Fracking wrecks US agriculture supply – water shortages, chemicals, pollution,

and community damage (35s)
Food and Water Watch 16 "Fracking and the Food System." Food & Water Watch, 16 Sept.
2016, www.foodandwaterwatch.org/insight/fracking-and-food-system.
There are numerous documented cases of fracking contaminating drinking water sources.9 A draft
study by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) surveyed several incidents across the country. Fracking fluid spills at drilling
sites have reached sur-face water. Poorly constructed wells have allowed natural gas to infiltrate aquifers. Faulty pipelines
have spilled toxic wastewater into surface and ground water sources.10 In some regions, contami-nation
may be widespread. In a Texas study, nearly 70 percent of tested water wells located near an oil or gas well tested positive for
chemicals associated with exploration, suggesting that drilling may have led to contamination.11This is problematic because nearly
all rural residents in the United States rely on groundwater for their drinking water, and many farmers also use it to irrigate crops
and raise livestock.12Contaminated groundwater not only puts these communities’ health in jeopardy, but also impacts their
livelihoods. There
have been many instances where groundwater contaminated by fracking
poisoned livestock, causing illness, reproductive issues and death.13 However, there are no
common procedures for isolating livestock exposed to chemicals from the food chain; ISSUE BRIEF •
MAY 2016FRACKING AND THE FOOD SYSTEM 2the animals might be quarantined or not slaughtered for human consumption, but
dead animals sent to a rendering plant could be used for livestock or pet feed.14An overview of livestock exposure to fracking fluids
found that the most common exposure came from contaminated wells and springs.15 Cows
exposed to fracking fluids
have experienced difficulty breeding and higher rates of stillborn and deformed calves.16In two
cases, only part of a herd of beef cattle was exposed to frack-ing wastewater. In each case, many of the exposed cattle died, and
those that survived experienced problems breeding, whereas the unexposed cattle experienced no unusual problems. According to
researchers, these two cases “approach the design of a controlled experiment, and strongly implicate wastewater exposure in the
death, failure to breed, and reduced growth rate of cattle.”17Pets are also victims. In Pennsylvania, a two-year-old boxer had to be
euthanized after lapping up fracking wastewater that was intentionally spread on the nearby road.18Frustratingly, without
baseline testing of water wells before drill-ing takes place, it is difficult for farmers to prove that
drilling contaminated their water.19 Baseline testing is not necessarily required by drilling companies, and adequate
testing is expen-sive for farmers to conduct themselves.20 Additionally, there are at least 692 unique
ingredients that have been used in fracking fluids,21 but baseline tests typically only screen for a
limited number of contaminants associated with drilling.22Air PollutionDrilling, fracking, venting, flaring,
wastewater storage and other activities at well sites generate hazardous air pollution. One peer-reviewed study analyzed air samples
near fracking sites in five states; nearly 40 percent of samples tested positive for toxic chemicals, such as cancer-causing benzene or
formaldehyde, above federal safety standards.23 Hydrogen sulfide, a deadly gas, was found at levels up to hundreds of times what is
considered to be life-threatening.24Studies
have long noted concerns related to the effects of toxic
emissions associated with oil and gas activities on livestock, including a 2001 study that linked flaring with
stillbirths and calf mortality among cattle.25 Fracking is bringing these and other airborne health risks to new regions. In December
2015, six cows were found dead together inside the Cimarron National Grass-lands in Kansas, which also houses an oil field with
fracking wells.26 A seventh cow died apart from the group, and a veteri-narian confirmed that the cows died from toxic
inhalation.27 The Grasslands issued an emergency closure on four sections of the park while they investigated the incident.28 This
investigation may provide evidence of toxic air pollution associated with fracking. Fracking
also contributes to ground-
level ozone (the main component of smog), which can cause respiratory issues, espe-cially
among sensitive populations such as those with asthma.29Fracking has caused ozone levels to spike in some
rural areas — at times exceeding those of smoggy urban areas like the Los Angeles Basin.30 Ozone pollution also reduces crop yield
and makes plants more susceptible to disease.31 According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), “ground-level
ozone causes more damage to plants than all other air pollutants combined.”32Agricultural
Production and Farmer Livelihood The rise of fracking in the Marcellus Shale region of Pennsylva-nia correlates with a sharper
decline in dairy farming. A Penn State Extension study found that in counties with more than 10,000 dairy cows in 2007, those with
more than 150 Marcel-lus Shale wells experienced a 16.3 percent decline in total dairy cows on average between 2007 and 2010,
compared to a 2.7 percent increase in cows in counties with no Marcellus wells.34Researchers speculate a variety of explanations,
from farmers using their royalty monies to retire, to farmers feeling “forced out” due to the negative effect of wells. Regardless of
the reason,
a decline in dairy herds may have a negative economic impact on neighboring
communities.35Farmers also compete with oil companies for water and other agricultural
inputs, including in the semi-arid West, where water is already scarce.36 Using the FracFocus database,
the U.S. EPA estimated that the fracking industry used an average of 44 bil-lion gallons of water annually between 2011 and 2012.37
(The actual volume is likely higher because not all states require com-panies to report to FracFocus.) Farmers can also face increased
What Is Fracking?“Fracking” is short for hydraulic fracturing, the process of injecting a mix of water, sand and chemicals into wells at
high pressure to crack rock formations that hold oil or natural gas. Often combined with horizontal drilling techniques, fracking is
used to extract oil and gas from shale and other “tight” rock formations. Fracking companies use hundreds of thousands to millions
of gallons of water to frack a single well.3For decades, companies have experimented with chemical additives to maximize oil and
gas produc-tion. Fracking generates enormous volumes of salty, to dispose of.4But Isn’t Natural Gas a “Bridge Fuel”?The fracking
industry and its supporters long touted natural gas as a “bridge fuel” to a future powered by renewable energy, since burning
natural gas releases less carbon dioxide than burning oil or coal.5 Howev-er, studies suggest that an abundance of natural gas may
increase consumption of gas, potentially negat-
ˆ˜} Ì…iÃi V•ˆ“>Ìi
Li˜iwÌð6 Additionally, natural gas is mostly methane, a potent greenhouse gas. Meth-
ane emissions from fracking can offset reductions in carbon dioxide that come from burning natural gas instead of oil or coal.7 The
“bridge fuel” theory may sound promising, but in reality, the industry wants to maintain our dependence on natural gas.8 3costs for
inputs like land and labor due to increased competi-tion with the drilling industry.38Fracking
also reduces available
farmland. In the Marcellus gas fields of Pennsylvania, well pads and supporting infrastruc-ture (including
roads and pipelines) have an estimated foot-print of nearly nine acres per well.39 When this
infrastructure covers farmland, it limits the available space for growing crops and raising
livestock. Oil and gas drilling wastewater is increasingly being used to irrigate crops, including in
California where water is scarce. In 2014, half the water used on 45,000 acres in one agricultural region in California was
supplied by oil companies.40 Califor-nia regulations require wastewater to be treated before use as irrigation, but do not address
drilling wastewater specifical-ly.41 Studies have shown that drilling
chemicals can persist in wastewater even
after treatment; one study detected methy-lene chloride — a toxic chemical that affects the
nervous system — in treated wastewater at 5 to 11 times the allowed limit in drinking water.42In
April 2015, the Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board ordered drilling companies with wastewater ponds to test for
chemicals related to drilling and to dis-close the results to state regulators.43 One test sample from a Chevron wastewater pond
detected benzene, a cancer-causing component of crude oil, at levels nearly 500 times California’s allowed limit in drinking water.44
However, in other parts of California, irrigation
with fracking wastewater may be occur-ring without
additional testing. The extent to which contami-nants in the wastewater are being absorbed by
plants and entering the food chain remains unknown. Fracking wastewater is full of toxic materials and salt, and
surface spills can be deadly to vegetation.45 One North Dakota farmer notes that the industry’s wastewater spill from over 50 years
ago contaminated 80 acres of her land, and that land remains unproductive to this day.46TransportationCommunities living near oil
and gas patches know how drill-ing booms significantly increase truck traffic. A synthesis of five national and regional studies found
that each well development requires an average of 2,200 truck trips.47 This
contributes to traffic jams and wreaks
havoc on roadways — as much as $13,000 to $23,000 in costs for each well, according to a
Pennsylvania study.48Farmers also compete with drilling companies for cargo ship-ping
capacity. In North Dakota, the rise in oil transport by rail has caused a backlog in shipments of
grain, costing farmers money when they cannot get their crops to
market.49&RQVXPHU &RQȴGHQFHAs the public becomes
increasingly aware of the dangers of fracking, people are more skeptical about consuming food
from areas where intensive fracking is taking place. In 2015, a bill was introduced into the California legislature
that would have required the labeling of food that was irrigated by oil and gas wastewater, but the bill died before making it to the
floor.50 Currently there is no requirement to label such crops, creating public concern over potential exposure to a host of toxic
chemicals.51Fracking
also threatens consumer confidence in organic agri-culture, as current USDA
organic standards do not explicitly prohibit the use of fracking wastewater for irrigation.52 This
has raised concerns that some organic produce might be ir-rigated in fracking
wastewater.53Fracking companies are finding additional ways to infiltrate our food system. In
February 2016, Antero Resources announced that it would begin deriving food-grade salt from fracking waste.54 Such salt could
contain radioactive materials and therefore be harmful to health.55 However, table salt is consid-ered safe by the Food and Drug
Administration (FDA) under the “Generally Recognized as Safe” rule,meaning that compa-nies can process and market salt without
FDA review.56 A pro-fessor at the University of Cincinnati College of Law petitioned the FDA for an expert opinion in this matter,
hoping that the agency will conclude that salt derived from fracking waste will have to undergo an FDA review before entering the
market.57Fracking Hurts Rural CommunitiesWhen farmers and other rural landowners lease their land for fracking, the gains are
temporary, while the damage can be long-lasting. Scenic vistas are replaced with a landscape of drilling pads, which harms tourism
and recreation industries like hunting and fishing. Traffic accidents and fatalities double or even qua-druple.58
Home values sometimes increase but can also decline due to fears over contamination of
private water sources.59Even after weighing the additional revenue that drilling brings in, local communities sometimes
suffer a net loss from oil and gas development.60 This is because communities must improve roads and other infrastructure worn
away by heavy use and also increase spending on emergency, sewer and social services.61 Ad-ditionally, even when the local
economy benefits from fracking, these benefits are not evenly distributed across the community, leaving some residents with
increased economic insecurity.62)DUPHU 3URŵOH“We’re living in the middle of
hell.”Steve and Jacki Schilke’s cattle ranch is situated in the heart of the North Dakota fracking boom. Since 2008, dozens of fracking
wells were drilled within three miles of the Schilke ranch, and the industry also built a waste disposal pit near the family’s home. The
Schilke’s watched their dog and cattle fall ill, and Jacki herself began to suffer health issues. The state health depart-ment found a
toxic chemical in their well water, and independent air testing found toxic chemicals in the air, both of which likely contributed to
these health issues. The couple began shooting their sick cows to avoid sending potentially contaminated animals to market, hurting
their ranch income.33 4Fracking can also impact a farmer’s ability to get financing and insurance. In
2013, Rabobank announced that it will no longer provide loans to farmers who have active shale gas leases, due toits policy of not
investing in fossil fuel extraction with unknown risks.63 In 2012, Nationwide Mutual Insurance (which provides agricultural
insurance) issued a statement clarifying that “frack-ing-related losses have never been a covered loss under personal or commercial
lines policies,” citing the difficulties in assessing the risks associated with fracking.64 Similarly,
traditional homeowners
insurance doesn’t cover earthquakes, a problem for residents of Oklahoma where fracking
wastewater disposal is linked to a surge in earthquakes.65 Even homeowners with earthquake
insur-ance have had their claims denied when the earthquakes were assumed to be human-
induced.66Negative impacts are not isolated to communities with active oil and gas wells. Each well requires up to
10,000 tons of sand for use in drilling, and frac sand mines exist in the upper Midwest where
fracking is not even taking place.67 These mines can con-sume an enormous amount of water
and expose nearby commu-nities to harmful silica dust.68Additionally, the United States is crisscrossed by
2.5 million miles of pipelines carrying oil, natural gas and other hazardous materials.69 Accidents are occurring at a rate of nearly
two per day,70 putting farmland and drinking water in danger, including in areas without oil and gas drilling. In one major
catastrophe in North Dakota, a pipeline spilled 1 million gallons of fracking wastewater onto the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation.

Food insecurity leads to nuclear war and chemical weapons – the risk is high
and it causes extinction (25s)
Cribb 10-3-19 [Julian Cribb, distinguished science writer with more than thirty
awards for journalism, October 3, 2019. “Food or War.” Cambridge University
Press. https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/food-or-
war/2D6F728A71C0BFEA0CEC85897066DCAF]
Although actual numbers of warheads have continued to fall from its peak of 70,000 weapons in the mid 1980s, scientists
argue the danger of nuclear conflict in fact increased in the first two decades of the twenty first century.
This was due to the modernisation of existing stockpiles, the adoption of dangerous new technologies such as robot delivery
systems, hypersonic missiles, artificial intelligence and electronic warfare, and the continuing leakage of nuclear materials and
knowhow to nonnuclear nations and potential terrorist organisations. In early 2018 the hands of the
‘ Doomsday Clock ’ ,
maintained by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, were
re-set at two minutes to midnight, the highest risk
to humanity that it has ever shown since the clock was introduced in 1953. This was due not only to the
state of the world ’s nuclear arsenal, but also to irresponsible language by world leaders, the growing use of social media to
destabilise rival regimes, and to the rising threat of uncontrolled climate change (see below). 12 In an historic moment on 17 July
2017, 122 nations voted in the UN for the first time ever in favour of a treaty banning all nuclear weapons. This called for
comprehensive prohibition of “ a full range of nuclear-weapon-related activities, such as undertaking to develop, test, produce,
manufacture, acquire, possess or stockpile nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices, as well as the use or threat of use of
these weapons. ” 13 However, 71 other countries– including all the nuclear states– either opposed the ban, abstained or declined to
vote. The Treaty vote was nonetheless interpreted by some as a promising first step towards abolishing the nuclear nightmare that
hangs over the entire human species. In contrast, 192 countries had signed up to the Chemical Weapons Convention to ban the use
of chemical weapons, and 180 to the Biological Weapons Convention. As of 2018, 96 per cent of previous world stocks of chemical
weapons had been destroyed– but their continued use in the Syrian conflict and in alleged assassination attempts by Russia
indicated the world remains at risk. 14 As things stand, the only entities that can afford to own nuclear weapons are nations– and if
humanity is to be wiped out, it will most likely be as a result of an atomic conflict between
nations. It follows from this that, if the world is to be made safe from such a fate it will need to get rid of nations as a structure of
human self-organisation and replace them with wiser, less aggressive forms of self-governance. After all, the nation state really only
began in the early nineteenth century and is by no means a permanent feature of self-governance, any more than monarchies,
feudal systems or priest states. Although many people still tend to assume it is. Between them, nations have butchered more than
200 million people in the past 150 years and it is increasingly clear the world would be a far safer, more peaceable place without
either nations or nationalism. The question is what to replace them with. Although
there may at first glance appear
to be no close linkage between weapons of mass destruction and food, in the twenty first century with
world resources of food, land and water under growing stress, nothing can be ruled out. Indeed,
chemical weapons have frequently been deployed in the Syrian civil war, which had drought,
agricultural failure and hunger among its early drivers. And nuclear conflict remains a distinct
possibility in South Asia and the Middle East, especially, as these regions are already stressed in
terms of food, land and water, and their nuclear firepower or access to nuclear materials is
multiplying. It remains an open question whether panicking regimes in Russia, the USA or even France
would be ruthless enough to deploy atomic weapons in an attempt to quell invasion by tens of
millions of desperate refugees, fleeing famine and climate chaos in their own homelands– but the possibility
ought not to be ignored. That nuclear war is at least a possible outcome of food and climate crises was
first flagged in the report The Age of Consequences by Kurt Campbell and the US-based Centre for Strategic and
International Studies, which stated ‘ it is clear that even nuclear war cannot be excluded as a political
consequence of global warming ’ . 15 Food insecurity is therefore a driver in the preconditions for the use
of nuclear weapons, whether limited or unlimited.
 Solvency
Plan: The United States ought to eliminate subsidies for hydraulic fracturing of
fossil fuels.
Ending federal research and development subsidies for fracking is key – fracking
is unsustainable in the private sector and can shift to renewables
Cha 13 J. Mijin Cha is an expert in environmental justice, climate change, and economic and
political equality. She is a Fellow at The Worker’s Institute, Cornell University, and holds JD, LLM,
and Ph.D. degrees. "Unnatural Gas: How Government Made Fracking Profitable (and Left
Renewables Behind) | Dissent Magazine." Dissent Magazine, 17 June. 2019,
www.dissentmagazine.org/online_articles/unnatural-gas-how-government-made-fracking-
profitable-and-left-renewables-behind.

- only federal subsidies keep it afloat through covering up-front research

-industry circumvented congressional legislation

-no impact on electricity prices

In his much-anticipated speech on climate change, President Obama proposed smart, modest policies that would help decrease greenhouse gas
emissions through support for renewable energy development and increased energy efficiency measures, prepare the country for the climate change
that is already occurring, and lead international climate efforts, including phasing out fossil fuel subsides and stopping funding for new coal plants
overseas. While he stopped short of proposing anything groundbreaking, such as a carbon tax, the measures would be an improvement over the
current climate stalemate. Yet the president’s continued
embrace of natural gas development threatens to
counteract any of his proposed climate initiatives. In the speech, Obama continuously mentioned that we are the leading
producer of natural gas and proposed advancing production of oil and gas in the Bakken formation (a rock formation beneath pa rts of Montana, North
Dakota, and Canada)—code words for expanding hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, operations. Unfortunately, fracking
is not the energy
panacea its supporters claim it is. The environmentally destructive nature of the process negates
any net greenhouse gas benefit from natural gas. Estimates of the amount of available gas that
can be tapped economically widely vary, as highlighted in Timothy Mitchell’s article in Dissent. And while fracking
may release deposits of oil and gas that were previously unavailable, there will ultimately still
come a time when the finite fossil fuel resources run out. Moreover, it is only after decades of
development and government support that fracking operations are now seen as cost-effective.
In contrast, the support for developing renewables has been erratic and only a fraction of that
given to fossil fuel industries. Renewable energy sources are often dismissed as expensive and incapable of meeting the country’s
energy demands. Yet looking at the history of energy development, it is clear that political and corporate interests

deliberately impeded the development and expansion of renewable energy. Fracking is a clear
example of how direct government research and consistent support turned an impractical,
expensive process into one that is now seen as the key to domestic energy independence. The
Role of Federal Support in Fracking Oil and gas companies are extremely profitable and have
been for several decades. Yet much of their current success was the result of not just favorable
tax incentives and subsidies but also direct federal research. Federal energy subsidies began in
1916 and focused almost exclusively on increasing the production of domestic oil and gas until
the 1970s. Over the following three decades, the Department of Energy invested roughly $137 million
in direct gas research, in addition to federal tax credits for drillers that totaled $10 billion
between 1980 and 2002. Natural gas did not become a popular fuel until the 1950s because home use of natural gas required a large
pipeline network for delivery, which was prohibitively expensive. Improvements in metal, welding techniques, and pipe making developed during the
Second World War made pipeline construction more economically feasible, and throughout the 1950s and ’60s an extensive pipeline network was built.
After the network was built, natural gas became more popular and inexpensive. Hydraulic fracturing is different from regular
natural gas recovery production. It requires far more water, sand, and lubricants, as well as
much higher pressures than traditional oil and gas recovery methods, in order to literally fracture geological
formations to release pockets of gas. While examples of hydraulic fracturing date back to the 1940s, modern-day fracking was not

developed until federal research and demonstration efforts in the 1960s and ’70s helped private
industry develop technologies that moved drilling past shale to tap limestone gas deposits.
Earlier federal efforts to fracture shale formations and release gas did not immediately result in
commercially viable technologies, but these efforts showed that diffused gas from shale
formations could be recovered—something the private sector had not been able to establish. Continued federal
demonstrations set technology development on a path that, with continued federal support,
private interests were able to perfect. The case of fracking shows why direct federal support and
research is important: private interests do not invest in time-consuming, uncertain research
because the benefits are too far out and the risks and costs are too high. Federal research
agendas, on the other hand, do not have the same restrictions and need for immediate results.
Without the imperfect technology development, there can be no perfected process. Federal
research provided the platform and time needed to make the mistakes in developing fracking
processes that the private sector could learn from and further refine. In addition to direct federal support and
incentives, regulatory provisions have rarely hampered oil and gas production, particularly fracking.
While the modern oil industry was born in the beginning of the 1900s, the industry did not face meaningful regulations or oversight until the Santa
Barbara oil spill in 1969. After the spill, Congress
tightened regulations on leases and made offshore operators
liable for spill cleanup, but for nearly seventy years the industry was able to operate and expand
with little to no regulatory oversight. Private interests do not invest in time-consuming, uncertain research because the benefits
are too far out and the risks and costs are too high. Federal research agendas, on the other hand, do not have the same restrictions and need for
immediate results. In the case of fracking, regulatory exemption allowed the industry to grow as rapidly as it
has. In 2003, President Bush and Vice-President Cheney backed a sweeping national energy bill that exempted hydraulic fracking from EPA drinking
water regulations, despite the large volume of water used in fracking and the proximity of fracking operations to drinking water supplies. In 2005,
fracking was exempted from the Clean Water Act, and in that same year states started seeing oil and gas booms. These
exemptions do not mean that fracking is safe—in fact, the opposite is likely true. They do show
how the regulatory system can contribute to industry development, despite serious health and
environmental consequences. Do the Investments Pay Off? Natural gas has been a divisive issue for environmentalists. Before the
problems with fracking came to light, natural gas was pushed by many environmental groups as a bridge fuel to move beyond coal. Indeed, once out of
the ground, natural
gas does burn more cleanly than coal and produces far fewer carbon emissions
than coal or petroleum. With the expansion of fracking operations, advocates argued that there was a potential 100-year supply of gas
that could be used to move toward domestic energy independence and provide a time cushion for a transition to a renewable energy future. However,
fracking is not our energy savior. For one, the process still needs refining and the amount of
methane that leaks from fracking operations nearly negates any carbon benefit to natural gas. The
process is also extremely water intensive and uses a chemical concoction whose specific make-up companies are not required to disclose for
proprietary reasons. The
result is that fracking communities across the country are suffering from
mysterious health consequences and water supplies are being contaminated due to improper
disposal of fracking fluids. On top of the environmental and health consequences, the supply of natural gas is vastly overstated. The
Energy Information Administration dropped its estimation of shale gas resources by 40 percent from 2011 to 2012. The Marcellus Shale, one of the
largest deposits in the country, is estimated to have only a six-year supply of gas. Further,
recent reports have shown that
fracking is not as cost-effective as once thought. The vast majority of fracking wells deplete within five years and production
has been on a plateau since December 2011. The high decline rate of fracking wells requires continuous capital

inputs—at least $42 billion per year to drill more than 7,000 wells. There may be gas trapped in
the shale, but the more difficult it becomes to release it, the more expensive the process
becomes. Moreover, while many proponents claim that the large supply of gas released through
fracking would make prices fall, there has been little impact on electricity prices nationwide. The
recent natural gas boom created an overabundance of supply, yet electricity prices have steadily increased. Utilities do set rates
in advance to protect against fuel price spikes, and the cost of delivery is increasing due to investment in electricity infrastructure. But the wholesale
prices of natural gas have significantly decreased, yet no cost savings have been passed on to customers. The Other Side of the Coin: Renewable Energy
Development In the past few years, renewable energy support has become particularly politicized. The Solyndra bankruptcy provided fodder for
continuous conservative attacks against government funding of renewable energy development, and since that time any research funding has been
under heavy scrutiny and opposition. Even basic, long-standing support programs, like production tax credits, have faced strong opposition and been at
risk of not being renewed. Current opposition to renewable energy support seems to be particularly vehement, but historically there has rarely been
strong support for this research. Indeed, renewable energy exploration and development was contemporaneous with oil and gas discovery. The first
commercial oil well was drilled in Pennsylvania in 1859. The first solar-power steam generation system for industrial machinery was developed in 1860.
Ethanol was one of the best-selling chemicals until President Lincoln imposed an extremely high tax on spirits, including ethanol, to finance the war
effort in 1862. After the tax, industrial and fuel ethanol disappeared for forty-five years. In the 1970s, solar-cell technology had advanced to a point
where the cost was reduced from $100 a watt to $20 per watt. At that price point, solar modules were a competitive energy source for situations
where electricity was needed far from power lines, such as off-shore oil rigs that only required warning lights and horns but had no power other than
toxic, short-lived batteries. Ironically, it was the major purchases of solar modules by the oil and gas industry that gave the struggling solar cell industry
the capital needed to survive. Support for renewable energy continued to grow in the 1970s, with President Carter leading a movement toward energy
independence through conservation and increased domestic energy production with a strong emphasis on renewables. Solar funding, for example,
increased from $77,000 in 1970 to $261 million in 1977. Famously, Carter even put solar panels on the White House. The 1970s also saw major
developments in oil and gas production. In 1970 crude oil production reached its highest level in the lower forty-eight states. A few years later, in 1973,
OPEC announced an oil embargo against the United States and other targeted nations and cuts in oil production. As a result, the cost of oil skyrocketed,
leading to gas shortages and rationing. In response to this crisis, the Energy Reorganization Act of 1974 split the responsibilities of the Atomic Energy
Commission into the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which would take over the regulatory aspects of nuclear energy, and the Energy Research and
Development Administration (ERDA), which would eventually become the Department of Energy. The ERDA was charged with bringing together all
energy research and development efforts, including solar and energy efficiency measures. Not surprisingly, the momentum behind renewable
development came to a rapid halt as soon as Ronald Reagan was elected president. Not only did he remove the solar panels atop the White House, he
also gutted funding for solar development and poured billions into developing a dirty synthetic fuel that was never brought to market. This start-and-
stop support hindered the renewable energy industry’s growth. It is a problem that continues today. Uncertain
industry outlook
scares away private investment, which in turn limits the development and expansion of
renewable energy deployment. The momentum behind renewable development came to a rapid halt as soon as Ronald Reagan was
elected president. Not only did he remove the solar panels atop the White House, he also gutted funding for solar development and poured billions
into developing a dirty synthetic fuel that was never brought to market. The bias against renewable funding and support is
clear. Recent analysis found that over the first fifteen years an industry receives a subsidy, nuclear energy received an average of $3.3 billion, oil and
gas averaged $1.8 billion,Fto and renewables averaged less than $0.4 billion. Renewables received less than one-quarter of

the support of oil and gas and less than one-eighth of the support that nuclear received during
the early years of development, when strong investment can make a big difference. Yet even
with this disparity, more of our energy supply now comes from renewables than from nuclear,
which indicates the strength of renewables as a potential energy source. In fact, global solar capacity grew by
74 percent between the end of 2006 and 2011. In the United States, 39 percent of new electric capacity additions in 2011 were from renewable
sources, and in that same year renewables accounted for nearly 12 percent of U.S. primary energy production. Nine states now generate more than 10
percent of their electricity from non-hydro renewable energy and California continues to hit record peaks of solar energy generation. Wind and solar
energy continually outperform expert predictions. Wind power generation has quadrupled between 2006 and 2010. Renewable energy development
also shows how smart, consistent government support can help an industry grow. Wind was the fastest growing source of non-hydroelectric renewable
generation, partly due to a federal production tax credit. In the first few years after the production tax credit was adopted, the industry grew slowly,
but after attracting more investment production rapidly expanded. Unlike tax credits for the oil and gas industry that are written into the tax code, the
production tax credit must be renewed every year, leaving it vulnerable to partisan politics. When it became clear that renewing the production tax
credit would be a fight, the uncertainty resulted in a nationwide slowdown in the wind industry, with investors wary of investing in a market where
future federal support was not predictable. What Is the Proper Role of Government in Developing Industry?
Despite what critics claim, tax credits and mandates for production, like renewable portfolio standards, are not unnecessary government interventions
in market dynamics. On the contrary, federal resources can be leveraged to provide a stable investment outlook to attract private investment. In an
emerging industry, like renewables, predictable market demand through production mandates allows a steady outlook for investment. California, for
example, increased its share of renewable energy from 13 to 20 percent in just three years, in large part because its renewable energy production
target is 33 percent by 2020. On the other hand, tax
credits and mandates for already established industries, like
oil and gas, provide no innovation capital for future growth and only act as a profit subsidy. Oil and
gas companies continually post record profits and any government assistance is not only unnecessary, it diverts resources from struggling industries
that need steady support to expand. Further,
fossil fuels are a finite resource; any research and development
support should go toward new energy sources that can permanently replace fossil fuels, and not
to draining every last bit of oil and gas from the ground. The divergent histories of renewable
energy development and fracking show that it is not the strength of the technology that predicts
success. Rather, it was a deliberate government strategy to develop fracking and advance oil
and gas interests over the development and expansion of renewable energy. If the same level of financial
and research support was targeted toward renewable energy development, we would be free from dependence on oil, foreign and domestic, and make
meaningful carbon reductions to stave off the worst effects of climate change. We can still make the transition to an economy powered by clean
energy, but that window will close soon. It won’t bee too many years until energy supply sources will be the least of our concerns.

Fracking is terminally financially unsustainable even in the short term– the only
thing keeping the industry afloat are subsidies (25s)
Kreps 19 Bart Hawkins Kreps is a long-time bicycling advocate and free-lance writer. His views
have been shaped by work on highway construction and farming in the US Midwest, nine years
spent in the Canadian arctic, and twenty years of involvement in the publishing industry in
Ontario. Currently living on the outermost edge of the Toronto megalopolis, he blogs most often
about energy, economics and ecology "Pulling the Plug on Fossil Fuel Production Subsidies -
Resilience." Resilience, 25 Mar. 2019, www.resilience.org/stories/2019-03-25/pulling-the-plug-
on-fossil-fuel-production-subsidies.

-fracking has always and will always be unprofitable – services, volitaile market, etc.

-long term and short term unsustainable – question of when, not if

-creates “carbon engaglement” which further traps the economy with fracking
Extending this theme to other jurisdictions with high-cost oil – think Canada, for example – the authors of Empty Promises note “the highest cost fields
that benefit most from subsidisation often have higher carbon intensity per unit of fuel produced.”4,5 The
Nature Energy study is
based on an oil price of US$50 per barrel, and says that subsidies may not be so important for
profitability at substantially higher prices. Another recent look at the fracking boom, however,
reveals that the US fracking boom – particularly fracking for crude oil as opposed to natural gas
– has been financially marginal even when prices hovered near $100 per barrel. Bethany McLean’s book
Saudi America6 is a breezy look at the US fracking industry from its origins up to 2018. Her focus is mostly financial: the profitability (or not) of the
fracking industry as a whole, for individual companies, and for the financial institutions which have backed it. Her major conclusion is “ The

biggest reason to doubt the most breathless predictions about America’s future as an oil and gas
colossus has more to do with Wall Street than with geopolitics or geology. The fracking of oil, in
particular, rests on a financial foundation that is far less secure than most people realize.” (Saudi
America, page 17) Citing the work of investment analyst David Einhorn, she writes “Einhorn found that from 2006 to 2014, the fracking firms

had spent $80 billion more than they had received from selling oil and gas. Even when oil was at
$100 a barrel, none of them generated excess cash flow—in fact, in 2014, when oil was at $100 for part of the year, the
group burned through $20 billion.” (Saudi America, page 54-55) It seems sensible to think that if firms can stay solvent when

their product sells for $50 per barrel, surely they must make huge profits at $100 per barrel. But
it’s not that simple, McLean explains, because of the non-constant pricing of the many services
that go into fracking a well. “Service costs are cyclical, meaning that as the price of oil rises and demand for
services increases, the costs rise too. As the price of oil falls and demand dwindles, service
companies slash to the bone in an effort to retain what meager business there is.” (Saudi America, page
90) In the long run, clearly, the fracking industry is not financially sustainable unless each of the

essential services that make up the industry are financially sustainable. That must include, of course, the
financial services that make this capital-intensive business possible. “If it weren’t for historically low interest rates, it’s not clear there would even have
been a fracking boom,” McLean writes, adding that “The
fracking boom has been fueled mostly by overheated
investment capital, not by cash flow.”7 These low interest rates represent opportunity to cash-strapped drillers, and they
represent a huge challenge for many financial interests: “low interest rates haven’t just meant lower borrowing costs for debt-laden companies. The
lack of return elsewhere also led pension funds, which need to be able to pay retirees, to invest massive amounts of money with hedge funds that
invest in high yield debt, like that of energy firms, and with private equity firms—which, in turn, shoveled money into shale companies, because in a
world devoid of growth, shale at least was growing.” (Saudi America, page 91) But if
the industry as a whole is cash-flow
negative, then it can’t end well for either drillers or investors, and the whole enterprise may
only be able to stay afloat – even in the short term – due to producer subsidies. Supply and demand
Many regulatory and fiscal policies designed to reduce carbon emissions have focused on reducing demand. The excellent and wide-ranging book
Designing Climate Solutions by Hal Harvey et al. (reviewed here) is almost exclusively devoted to measures that will reduce fossil fuel demand – though
the authors state in passing that it is important to eliminate all fossil fuel subsidies. The authors of the Nature Energy paper on US producer subsidies
note that “How
subsidies to consumers affect energy decision-making is relatively well studied, in
part because these subsidies have comparatively clear impacts on price …. The impact of
subsidies to fossil fuel producers on decision-making is much less well understood ….” 8 Nevertheless
there has been a strong trend in climate activism to stop the expansion of fossil fuels on the supply side – think of the fossil fuel divestment movement
and the movement to prevent the construction of new pipelines. A 2018 paper in the journal Climatic Change says that policymakers
too
are taking another look at the importance of supply-side measures: “A key insight driving these new approaches
is that the political and economic interests and institutions that underpin fossil fuel production help to perpetuate fossil fuel use and even to increase
it.”9 The issue of “lock-in” is an obvious reason to stop fossil fuel production subsidies – and an obvious reason that large fossil fuel interests, including
associated lending agencies and governments, work behind the scenes to retain such subsidies. Producer
subsidies create perverse
incentives that will tend to maintain the market position of otherwise uneconomic fossil fuel
sources. Subsidies help keep frackers alive and producing rather than filing for bankruptcy.
Subsidies help finance the huge upfront costs of bringing new tar sands extraction projects on
line, and then with the “sunk costs” already invested these projects are incentivized to keep
pumping out oil even when they are selling it at a loss. Subsidy-enabled production can contribute to overproduction,
lowering the costs of fossil fuels and making it more difficult for renewable energy technologies to compete. And subsidy-enabled production increases
the “carbon entanglement” of financial services which are invested in such projects and thus have strong incentive to keep extraction going rather than
leaving fossil fuel in the ground.

The belief that fracking helps oil dependence is a myth – predicting oil markets
is impossible (25s)
Sabri and McLean 18 Sabri (who received his master’s in foreign service from Georgetown
University in 2006) works as a reporter for WAMU 88.5- American University Radio. He
freelances for National Public Radio and when he can, takes on reporting projects in places like
Haiti and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.Bethany Lee McLean (born December 12, 1970)
is an American journalist and contributing editor for Vanity Fair magazine. She is known for her
writing on the Enron scandal and the 2008 financial crisis. "Fracking made the U.S. a major oil
producer, but not energy independent - Marketplace." Marketplace, 12 Sept. 2018,
www.marketplace.org/2018/09/12/economics-fracking.

-fracking not key to broader economy – myth about the boom - more about outside funding of
fossil fuels broadly

-outside events in the world thump oil changes b/c it’s global – means independence is literally
impossible

-oil forecasting is terrible – it always fails, literally every time

The oil shortages of the 1970s triggered laws that banned the export of American crude oil. Those lingering fears of scarcity kept
those laws around for decades. Then came the shale revolution in mid-200os, otherwise known as the fracking boom, which helped
the United States become one of the world’s top oil and gas producers. In her book, “Saudi America: The Truth About Fracking and
How It’s Changing the World,” author and journalist Bethany McLean explores fracking’s nuanced success, but also cautions that this
energy revolution is not the country’s golden ticket to energy independence. She spoke to host Sabri Ben-Achour on Marketplace
Morning Report. Below is an edited transcript of their conversation. Sabri Ben-Achour: Your book opens with the story of a tanker
delivering American crude oil to a port in France about three years ago. Why did you start there? Why was that so significant?
Bethany McLean: Because for about four decades, it was actually against the law to export American oil.
And the basis of this goes back to the 1970s when there was just this desperation about American shortages of oil, and this belief
that we had to hang on to every last drop we could possibly produce because we were going to face looming shortages. And so,
when the shale revolution – fracking as it’s commonly known – began in the mid-2000s, there
were still this huge fear that we were going to be dependent on other countries for our oil
needs for the foreseeable future. Instead, we grew to become the oil and gas powerhouse, so
people are talking about American energy independence. And in the waning years of the Obama administration
he actually overturned the ban on exports so that American oil can now be exported and sold to other countries. It was a huge
moment. Ben-Achour: “Saudi America” is centered on a businessman, Aubrey McClendon, a real person, who is a relentless believer
in fracking. Can you describe him briefly and why he’s so important to the story of American oil and natural gas? McLean: I think
Aubrey McClendon is one of the great characters in American business, love him or hate him, and there are people who do both. But
we wouldn’t be where we are and this story of fracking if it weren’t for McLendon. He was not the guy who came up with how to do
this, technologically speaking. But
he’s the guy who figured out how to bring the other necessary
ingredient to American fracking, and that was capital. He was a pioneer in going around the
world and convincing people to lend him and his company literally billions of dollars in order to
drill for natural gas and eventually oil. And he’s a really controversial guy, and he ends up dying in a fiery car crash in
the spring of [2016], right when it looks like the American fracking industry is dead. And so it’s a punctuation mark on what looks like
the death of the industry. And it turned out that wasn’t quite the case. I found McClendon a really great way to illustrate some of
the complexities and challenges in the fracking revolution. Ben-Achour: That oil explosion that you mention, the
common narrative is that it’s because of fracking. That expanded the access and supply of gas
and oil in the U.S. and then we could export it. But you actually write that it may have less to do
with technology and more to do with the financial crisis. Can you explain that? McLean: Yes, absolutely. So, it
does have to do with fracking, this very controversial method of getting oil and gas out of ground. That’s what has
dramatically changed the picture in the United States, taking us from a decade ago, these
constant and looming fears of shortages, to this belief that we are an oil and gas powerhouse on
par with Saudi Arabia and Russia for the amount of oil and natural gas we can produce. And
fracking is an ugly method in some ways of extracting resources from the ground. And most of the controversy about this
has been focused on the environmental consequences. What I focus on in the book is the financial consequences. Most people
think that chemicals are the key ingredient in fracking but it’s actually capital. And what
fascinated me about this industry is it doesn’t make money. These companies lose billions of
dollars. They’ve never produced free cash flow. They’re really dependent on Wall Street’s
willingness to fund them. And I think that’s a big weakness in this picture of American oil and
natural gas surplus that most people don’t focus on that I think is really important to
understand. Ben-Achour: One of the themes of your book is fragility of the oil and gas industry and the fragility of the concept
of energy independence. You kind of write about it as if it’s a mirage. Why is that? McLean: One of the things that made me so
interested in this book was this conundrum, this idea of American energy independence. Here
we are, beating our chest
about how we don’t need to rely on Saudi [Arabia] or the Middle East anymore because we’re
producing so much of our own oil and natural gas. But then, this idea that these companies don’t
make money. But then I discovered even underneath the idea that the companies don’t make
money, this whole idea of energy independence is really illusionary. And the reason why is that the price
of a barrel of oil is a global price. It’s set by events around the world. We can never be independent of
that the way we were in the 1970s. We can’t control the price of a barrel of oil. So, this notion
of energy independence itself is very fraught and not all that it’s cracked up to be. Ben-Achour: Texas
is set to be the world’s third largest oil producer in the world behind Saudi Arabia and Russia. On the other hand, we are seeing
reports that the shale oil industry is struggling. So, what do you think the future of shale is in America? McLean: So, one of the
things I learned in doing this book is that it is the height of arrogance to try to predict the future
of the oil industry in any way. People do this, and they are routinely wrong. The only consistency
in forecasting the direction of the oil industry is that it’s wrong. So, I decided to be pretty humble about
this. There are a lot of factors that are just so hard to know. Right now, shale producers are struggling and
there’s this big financial overhang on them. But shale has been much more resilient than even its proponents would have ever
dreamed. So, predicting shale oil is kind of, it is calculus, it’s not even algebra. And it’s really complicated.
And I think perhaps a strength of the book is that it’s nuanced and there isn’t an easy conclusion about where it’s
going to go. What I try to do is more tell the story and tell the story through great characters about things we should be thinking
about as we weigh this really important issue for our country.

Earthquakes decimate oil tanks and pipelines and thump econ and politics
disads (33s)
Miles 17 Kathryn Miles is the author of Quakeland: On the Road To America’s Next Devastating
Earthquake (Dutton 2017). "How Man-made Earthquakes Could Cripple the U.S. Economy."
POLITICO Magazine, 14 Sep. 2017, www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/09/14/earthquakes-
oil-us-economy-fracking-215602.

When Hurricane Harvey made landfall in Texas, U.S. oil refining plummeted to record lows. Now,
nearly three weeks later, six key refineries remain shut down and an additional 11 are either struggling
to come back on line or operating at a significantly reduced rate. That slowdown, coupled with
predictions of decreased demand in the wake of Hurricane Irma and the devastating earthquake
that struck Mexico last week, has shifted oil pressures in other places, too. And none may be
quite as vulnerable as the tank farms in Cushing, Oklahoma. Dubbed the “Pipeline Crossroads of the World,”
Cushing is the nexus of 14 major pipelines, including Keystone, which alone has the potential to transport as much as
600,000 barrels of oil a day. The small Oklahoma town is also home to the world’s largest store of oil, which sits in hundreds of
enormous tanks there. Prior to this recent spate of natural disasters, Cushing oil levels were already high. They’ve
increased nearly a million barrels, to nearly 60 million barrels, since Harvey hit. This
concentration of oil, about 15 percent of U.S. demand, is one reason the Department of Homeland Security has
designated Cushing “critical infrastructure,” which it defines as assets that, “whether physical or virtual, are considered
so vital to the United States that their incapacitation or destruction would have a debilitating
effect on security, national economic security, national public health or safety, or any
combination thereof.” The biggest potential cause of that incapacitation? According to Homeland
Security, it’s not terrorism or mechanical malfunction. It’s natural disaster. And here’s the problem: When most of the
Cushing tanks were constructed, the most logical cause of any such disaster seemed like a catastrophic tornado. No one
anticipated swarms of earthquakes. But that’s what began occurring about five years ago, when
wastewater injection and other fracking-related activities changed the seismic face of Oklahoma
in dramatic fashion. Two hours before that deadly quake in Mexico, for instance, a magnitude 4.3 temblor shook Central
Oklahoma, knocking out power for thousands. The earthquake, which had an epicenter just 100 miles northwest of Cushing, was the
186th quake in Oklahoma this year to register a magnitude 3.0 or higher. This man-made seismicity has changed the
landscape of Oklahoma significantly, from a state with one of the lowest seismic rates in the
country to the most seismically active in the lower 48, says Ken Erdmann, senior vice president at Matrix
Engineering, the firm that designs, fabricates and builds many of the tanks in places like Cushing. “It’s not natural. It’s not
Mother-nature based.” That’s a problem, he says, because the statistical analysis used to establish
safe environmental loads is based on historical intervals—both the average and maximums of
events like snowfall or wind or seismic activity. “When those levels become man-made induced
numbers,” says Erdmann, “statistics are no longer really relevant.” But while the number of earthquakes and
their intensity have increased in recent years, the strength of the regulatory apparatus in p\lace to ensure
their safety hasn’t kept pace. Oversight of the tanks has been left to a tiny agency buried inside
the Department of Transportation that was never intended to serve this role. And the safety
standards, which one earthquake expert calls the weakest permissible, were created by an industry trade group
rather than the government agency. For those inclined to contemplate worst-case scenarios, the prospect of an
earthquake rupturing the Cushing tanks would be an environmental catastrophe far greater
than the Exxon Valdez spill. *** When most of these tanks were constructed, seismic activity in Oklahoma was negligible.
In 2011, the state experienced a 5.6 quake. Last year, it had a 5.8—the same magnitude as the quake that rocked Washington, D.C.,
and much of the Eastern seaboard six years ago. That Oklahoma event toppled the exteriors of historic buildings and prompted the
Pawnee nation to declare a state of emergency. Seismologists at
the United States Geological Survey say the
area around Cushing is capable of an even stronger quake—maybe even a 7.0. Earthquake
magnitude is measured exponentially, which means that a 7.0 quake would be 15 times larger
than the biggest one to hit Oklahoma so far. And it would release over 60 times as much energy.
What would it do to the Cushing tanks? I posed that question to each of the five largest oil companies there. Michael
Barnes, senior manager of U.S. Operations and Project Communications at Enbridge, which holds nearly half the oil at Cushing, says
it’s the company’s policy not to comment on speculative questions such as mine “because by their very nature they are hypothetical.”
What he would say is that the company regularly participates in safety drills, workshops and other activities. That includes protocols
preparing for seismic activity. “In the event of an earthquake, procedures are in place to respond quickly and confirm Enbridge tanks
and other facilities were not impacted and can continue to operate safely,” says Barnes. “This includes dispatching technicians and
other experts to perform visual inspections and check instrumentation on tanks, pipes, motors and pumps.” I received a similar
response from the other energy companies with major Cushing holdings: that they have procedures and protocols for natural
disasters, but that they would not comment on the specific designs of their tanks, nor how those tanks would fare in a major
earthquake. Getting an answer out of the government can be just as frustrating. A big part of the problem is the Byzantine system of
governmental agencies regulating these tank farms. This oversight varies from state to state. In Oklahoma, most energy concerns are
controlled by the Oklahoma Corporation Commission. But, says spokesperson Matt Skinner, the OCC only regulates intrastate
pipelines and tanks. “If any part of that oil leaves the state or comes from elsewhere,” says Skinner, “it becomes totally outside of
our jurisdiction.” Determining that jurisdiction is no easy matter. The Environmental Protection Agency regulates “non-
transportation-related oil storage tanks,” but that excludes farms like Cushing, which are tied to pipelines. The official I talked to at
the EPA couldn’t tell me who regulates Cushing, nor could the spokesperson for the Department of Energy, which oversees our
country’s petroleum reserve sites. The Department of Transportation regulates oil and gas pipelines unless they cross federal lands,
in which case they are the purview of the Bureau of Land Management or the military. Gas and oil produced on the outer
continental shelf falls under the Department of the Interior, which works in concert with the Department of Transportation to
regulate its movement. I called those offices as well, asking whether they knew what agency regulated tanks like the ones at Cushing.
No one I spoke to knew—including at the public affairs office of the Department of Transportation. As it turns out, a tiny
office in the DOT known as the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration
regulates the tanks. Established by President George W. Bush in 2004, PHMSA was intended to increase security around the
transportation of hazardous fluids like gas and oil. As such, it was never really meant to govern stationary
storage. I asked its spokesperson what seismic regulations are in place for tank farms like Cushing. He referred me to Appendix C
of the Pipeline Safety Regulations. And it is true that there are seismic considerations there: provisions
regarding safety reporting, any “unintended” or “abnormal” movement of a pipeline, or reduced
capacity of a pipeline because of seismic activity. But none of these considerations mentions
storage tanks per se. I asked that same spokesperson to direct me toward the language relating
to tanks. He has yet to respond. None of this surprises the OCC’s Skinner. “I’ve gone through the
standards a bunch of times,” he says. “I haven’t found any relating to tanks and seismic activity.”
*** If the government isn’t explicitly regulating the ability of the tanks to withstand an
earthquake, then who is? Turns out that what standards do exist are created by the American Petroleum
Institute, a national trade organization representing the oil and gas industry. And the standards
are not overly rigorous, say seismologists. Tom Heaton, professor of geophysics and director of the Earthquake
Engineering Research Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology, says most, if not all, of the tanks in Cushing are
built to the weakest industry design standards. He thinks even a moderate quake could be enough
to violently push the oil from one side of the tank to another. In geological terms, the phenomenon is known
as a seiche: an internal wave or oscillation of a body of water. The more oil in a tank, the more
dangerous that seiche becomes. That makes tank farms like Cushing particularly vulnerable in
the face of other natural disasters like Harvey and Irma as oil and pipeline companies engage in
a kind of shell game for oil storage—full tanks do better in high wind conditions like hurricanes
and tornadoes; they fare far worse in earthquakes. And certainly there is precedent for the kind of damage
Heaton predicts. In the years after the 1994 Northridge earthquake in California, the National Institute of Standards and Technology
found evidence of seismically induced oil-tank damage going back as far as the 1930s and as recently as the 1994 quake, some of
which was catastrophic. But Ken Erdmann is circumspect about just how much damage a major quake might wreak on the Cushing
tank farms. In addition to his role at Matrix, Erdmann also heads up the API committee that creates standards for the tanks. He says
it’s true that the ones in Cushing weren’t built for moderate or severe quakes, and that the shaking
caused by one would almost certainly be “beyond allowable limits” for the API standards utilized at the
Oklahoma farms. Probably, he says, you’d see buckling and deformation of the tanks rather than full failure. The real problem,
he says, would be the pipelines themselves, says Ron Ripple, Mervin Bovaird professor of energy business and finance
at the University of Tulsa. Ripple estimates that an earthquake or other disaster would have to knock out half
those tanks to have a real impact on the market. Of bigger concern to him are the pipelines,
which control a larger volume of oil. He points to the October 2016 explosion of the Colonial
pipeline in rural Alabama as a corollary. The resulting fire kept crews from repairing the pipeline
proper for six days. During that time, oil commodity prices jumped 60 percent—the highest
spike in nearly a decade. Exporters clamored to find work-arounds, including tankers capable of
moving the oil by sea. As a consequence, freight cargo rates increased by nearly 40 percent.
Meanwhile, motorists in Southern states rushed the pumps, elevating prices there, too—forcing
the governor of Georgia to issue an executive order warning about price gouging. It wouldn’t be
unreasonable, says Ripple, to see a similar scenario were the Cushing pipelines to go down. The Colonial
pipeline moves about 100 million gallons of oil and gasoline a day—about the equivalent of the Seaway
pipeline, just one of the more than a dozen that converge on this town. That pipeline was also shut down in late 2016, after
authorities in Cushing noticed a spill. The effect of that shutdown had the opposite effect, pushing the price of U.S. oil below $50 a
barrel, as international traders worried they wouldn’t get their deliveries. “ Prices move
through the markets fairly
quickly,” says Ripple. “We tend to see opportunistic changes in prices right after an event. Some of
those look like a pretty close cause-and-effect relationship between supply and demand. Other times, you’ll see impacts that leave
us all scratching our heads. In the end, you just don’t know how the market and consumers will react.”
Johnson Bridgwater, director of the Oklahoma chapter of the Sierra Club, says he’s mindful of the economic effects of such a spill,
but it’s the impact on the landscape and the people who occupy it that most concerns him. Imagine, says Bridgwater, if Ripple’s
scenario of losing half the tanks came to fruition. “That’s 50 million barrels,” he says. “We’d be looking at our own on-land Exxon
Valdez.” Worse, actually. The Valdez was carrying just over a million barrels of oil. A quarter of that spilled. And light crude, the kind
of oil stored in Cushing, poses particular challenges to an environment, often killing animals or plants on contact and emitting
dangerous fumes that can kill both human and animal residents. “This
would not be a simple cleanup,” says
Bridgwater. “You’d have an uninhabitable community for a long time.”

Spills out internationally – anti-fracking movements are strong but ending US

corporations is key to success and renewables(30s)
Kinniburgh 15 Colin Kinniburgh reporting from France on climate politics and beyond "The
Fracktivists | Dissent Magazine." Dissent Magazine, Summer 2015,
www.dissentmagazine.org/article/anti-fracking-new-york-global-algeria-poland.

The effort is ongoing, backed this year (as in previous years) by several million dollars of federal funding.
Eastern Europe remains one of its key targets, in part because the United States hopes to reduce the region’s
energy dependence on Russia—and bring home some profits in the process. But the fossil fuel industry has hardly
received a warm welcome there. Like their U.S. counterparts, European activists have long felt in their gut what the data
increasingly confirms: that any expansion of fossil fuels—let alone in its “unconventional,” read
extreme, forms—spells disaster both for local communities and for the climate, and that blocking the
industry’s advance has become a basic civic duty. Farmers in Poland responded accordingly when they
learned that their country, said to hold Europe’s largest reserves of shale gas, was the first in the industry’s
crosshairs. Joined by well-known French Green and anti-globalization activist José Bové (fresh from his anti-fracking victory at
home) as well as Polish-American documentary filmmaker Lech Kowalski, farmers, activists, and local politicians in rural Poland
launched a militant campaign against Chevron, the largest player in the country’s shale rush, in the spring of 2011. The company
promised to withdraw but returned two years later, prompting a 400-day blockade labeled
#OccupyChevron. The villagers of Żurawlów, numbering up to 300, blocked potential drilling sites with cars and tractors until
finally, on July 7, 2014, Chevron left the village. It has since canceled its operations in Poland altogether. (Only ConocoPhillips
continues limited drilling operations in the country.) Indeed, UGTEP darling Chevron has faced stiff opposition almost everywhere it
has sought to frack. Even as it faced off with farmers in Poland, the company prompted an analogous movement in Romania when it
installed a rig in the village of Pungesti in late 2013. The company’s PR strategy, reportedly crafted in collaboration with a U.S.
Commerce Department official, failed to convince locals of the benefits of shale gas. The local anti-fracking revolt spread nationwide,
leading Chevron to finally pull out of Romania this January. Welcome to the front lines of the climate
movement—the “roving transnational conflict zone” Naomi Klein calls Blockadia. Blockadia takes many forms. In
its most successful incarnations, it becomes law: France, Bulgaria, and (tentatively, as of this writing) Germany;
three U.S. states (New York, Vermont, and Maryland); and dozens of municipalities across the United States
have responded to activists’ calls by banning fracking outright. But most incarnations of
Blockadia—the ones that pave the way for legislative victories—are more confrontational. From the
Arctic 30 to Idle No More to the Oklahoma grandmother who locked herself to Keystone XL construction machinery, the
activists linking arms, scaling machinery, and blocking construction against fossil fuels are, for
better or worse, the most visible faces of today’s climate movement. To be sure, they are far from its only
faces; equally important are the environmental justice groups fighting pollution in communities of color from the Bronx to
Richmond, California; the
student movement to divest university endowments from fossil fuels and
reinvest them in sustainable energy; strikes by workers in the energy industry, as well as labor-
backed green jobs campaigns; efforts to shift municipalities as large as San Diego entirely to
renewables within twenty years; and, internationally, mass movements for land rights and
sustainable agriculture from Brazil to Mali to Indonesia. But until elected leaders take urgent
steps to block fossil fuel development, the climate movement’s first priority will be to continue
doing it for them. March 5, 2015. Another small town is rocked by a mass protest against fracking. The slogans are
familiar: “Say NO to shale gas!” “Moratorium now!” The setting, to most North American
climate activists, is less so. Ain Salah, Algeria, population circa 35,000, is billed in tourist guides as a
“desert oasis” and former trans-Saharan trade hub. It is also the site of one of the most spirited
anti-fracking movements in the world today. Ain Salah lies about 750 miles south of Algiers on a sensitive aquifer
that irrigates surrounding groves of date palms and fields of fruits and vegetables, a rare sight in the desert. A few thousand feet
below this aquifer, trapped in four major shale formations, lie some of the world’s largest recoverable reserves of shale gas: Algeria’s
estimated reserves, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), rank third in the world, just ahead of the United
States’. In March 2013, the Algerian government (under fourth-term president Abdelaziz Bouteflika) passed a law that would allow
foreign multinationals including Halliburton and Total, as well as Algeria’s state-owned Sonatrach, to begin drilling for the gas. The
announcement was swiftly met by protests in London, where Algerian activists greeted visiting Minister of Energy and Mines Youcef
Yousfi with chants of “Gaz de schiste! C’est fasciste!” (roughly, “shale gas is fascist”). But it was not until last winter, when
authorities announced a successful test drill near Ain Salah, that Algeria’s anti-fracking movement really took off. “Since the start of
January,” noted the Financial Times in March, “thousands of protesters have turned up daily in the rural town of Ain Salah.” In late
January, President Bouteflika condemned the protests in a long speech, asserting that “all energy sources, whether conventional or
not, are a gift from God and it is our duty to use them for the development of the country.”
The protesters were only
further emboldened, and, by late February, their numbers had swelled into the tens of
thousands in Ain Salah, while thousands more joined in Algiers. Women led marches and sit-ins
with children in tow. Civil disobedience was widespread. In early March, a group of protesters
attempted to stage a sit-in at a Halliburton facility, only to be met with tear gas. Things quickly
escalated, and clashes with police in and around Ain Salah left dozens injured and a municipal building burnt to the ground. It wasn’t
until the army was called in that the protests abated. Women of Ain Salah, Algeria, protest shale gas development, January 24, 2015
(Nejma Rondeleux / Flickr) Algeria’s anti-fracking movement, the first of its kind in the Arab world, has been
buoyed by an international perspective and solidarity from European activists. “Everyone in the
world knows that this is dangerous and there are places in the West where this is forbidden,”
teacher and leading activists Fatiha Touni told the Financial Times. “We are not people to be experimented on. All
we have is our water—we need it to water our crops and feed our animals.” Algerian protesters
are confronting not only the threat of groundwater contamination but also what many of them
see as a form of neocolonialism; since France’s ban on fracking has prevented energy giant Total from exploiting shale
gas on its native soil, the company is seeking alternative sources in other countries. It already has major shale operations in the
United States and Argentina, but its turn toward a former French colony has spurred a new level of outrage. French leftists and
environmentalists have echoed this outrage: José Bové and the Parti de Gauche, led by former Socialist minister Jean-Luc
Mélenchon, are among those to have condemned Algeria’s shale gas push and Total’s participation in it. Beyond these
statements of solidarity, active international collaboration helped fuel Algeria’s anti-shale
uprising. As soon as Bouteflika announced his administration was opening the country to shale development, Algerian civil society
groups began discussing resistance strategies with Moroccan, Tunisian, French, and British activists, notably at the World Social
Forum in Tunis in March 2013. But on the ground in Algeria, the movement quickly grew beyond anything its early proponents could
have anticipated. Two years later, Algeria’s popular revolt has fostered a more formal coalition representing two dozen local councils
(wilaya) as well as diaspora groups. Energy minister Yousfi, dubbed “the shale man,” was forced to resign, and fracking operations
remain stalled. What’s more, the protests have drawn attention to broader economic and political conditions, reigniting opposition
to Bouteflika’s heavy-handed rule. Indeed, if
the dispersed, heterogeneous, but increasingly global
movements against fossil fuels hold out a promise beyond our mere survival as a species, it’s a
call for greater democracy—starting with what a growing international cross-section of leftists,
trade unionists, and environmentalists are calling “energy democracy.” As Naomi Klein writes, today’s fight
against global warming “shouldn’t even be referred to as an environmental movement at all, since it is primarily driven by a desire
for a form of democracy . . . that provides communities with real control over those resources that are most critical to collective
survival.” This primarily means shifting power from the fossil fuel industry to more decentralized renewable energy producers. But it
can also translate into a more general fight for democracy. Algeria’s corner of “Blockadia” is showing the stirrings of such a
movement, taking the baton from the country’s 2011 Arab Spring protests. So, too, did Poland’s: as Lech Kowalski put it, “Occupy
Chevron is not just about fracking, it is about corporations forcing a way of life on citizens.” From
Zuccotti Park to Żurawlów, the fight against oil and gas is inextricable from the struggle for a
more just, democratic, and sustainable economy—and while the industry’s relentless rush to
drill tends to put activists on the defensive, this affirmative vision is increasingly evident. Back in
New York, anti-fracking protesters have hardly been resting on their laurels since Cuomo announced the state’s ban on fracking last
December. Activists highlight the fact that while no actual drilling is taking place on New York soil, the state is littered with
infrastructure transporting fracked gas from Pennsylvania and other states into local compressor stations, storage facilities, and
kitchens. These facilities, too, present a wide variety of health and environmental hazards (even the kitchens: given the unusually
high concentrations of radioactive radon in gas from the Marcellus shale, scientists and activists have warned that cooking with
fracked gas could expose residents to elevated risks of lung cancer). Most recently, activists have turned their attention to Port
Ambrose, a liquid natural gas (LNG) facility proposed for construction off the coast of Long Island. The facility is billed as an import
terminal, but activists fear that its ultimate purpose is to export fracked gas from states like Pennsylvania. Coastal LNG terminals—
especially the thirty-odd pending international export terminals, but also facilities like Port Ambrose and Cove Point, Maryland—
represent a critical step towards the global consolidation of the “shale gas revolution.” In the eyes of Republican strategists, natural
gas exports represent a bargaining chip against hostile regimes like Russia, allowing gas-starved Europe to get its fill from the United
States rather than from Gazprom. They would vastly enlarge the market for U.S. gas and allow American producers to benefit from
much higher gas prices abroad, turn a greater profit, and cycle more money into shale gas development at home. In other words,
the gas industry is counting on them. And
the climate movement is equally intent on shutting them
down—not least because the process of liquefying, transporting, and re-gasifying methane
makes LNG 20 to 40 percent more greenhouse-gas intensive than domestic natural gas. On a sunny
afternoon this April, New York City activists once again found themselves outside Governor Cuomo’s office. Joining the core group of
“fracktivists” were dozens of students, artists, and community organizers, not to mention the obligatory brass band. Four
activists carried a model LNG tanker, while others held up windmills, urging the governor to choose a wind farm proposed for the
area over Port Ambrose. The LNG hub’s opponents have attracted support from members of New York City Council, who in May
passed a bill calling on Cuomo to veto the project. The project also drew some 60,000 public comments in the preceding months.
Thanks in part to this outpouring of opposition, the project remains stalled. Meanwhile, the push for a more just,
sustainable local economy is picking up momentum. A labor-green coalition has released a green jobs plan aimed
at meeting the city’s target of reducing emissions by 80 percent by 2050 in a just and equitable way. Another campaign, led by
veterans of the anti-fracking movement and endorsed by more than seventy environmental, labor, and faith groups, calls for New
York state to go 100 percent renewable by 2030, drawing on a study by Cornell and Stanford researchers. Further down the coast,
Maryland lawmakers passed a two-year ban on fracking less than six months after its former governor announced plans to open the
state to the practice. Opposition is building on the West Coast, too, with the largest U.S. anti-fracking rally to date taking place in the
Bay Area in February (albeit directed mostly at oil, not gas, fracking). Campaigns
in key gas-producing states,
however, have had a harder time getting off the ground. In one apparent victory last November,
voters in Denton, Texas, passed their state’s first municipal fracking ban—but a statewide bill
passed in May appears poised to block it (and prevent any such bans elsewhere in Texas). A
similar bill passed in Oklahoma in June, even as a study released only months earlier by
researchers at Southern Methodist University attributed the state’s sudden spike in earthquakes
to the fracking process. In Colorado, several cities and towns have successfully banned fracking,
but proposed ballot initiatives for a statewide ban have been undercut by dealmaking in the
capitol. State and county courts in Ohio and West Virginia have overruled municipal bans there, and a New Mexico county’s
drilling ban was overturned this January by a Shell-led lawsuit. Anti-fracking initiatives in states like Wyoming and Louisiana are even
fewer and farther between. Compared to the multinational fossil fuel interests they’re up against, the
climate justice movement and its anti-fracking offshoots are still small, fragmented, and on
the defensive. Even if activists succeed in blocking East Coast LNG terminals like Port Ambrose and Cove
Point, for example, a dozen export terminals have been approved along the Gulf Coast. Fortunately, when
it comes to unconventional oil and gas, geopolitics has—at least for the time being—aided the fracktivists.
With oil and gas prices too low for most unconventional wells to turn a profit, and analysts consistently
revising downward their estimates of proven gas reserves at home and abroad, U.S. corporations are drastically scaling back their
plans for shale development. But there’s little
doubt that grassroots movements have played a role in
deflating the U.S.-launched global shale gas balloon—and that solidarity across borders has
helped. From New York to Nantes to Pungesti and Ain Salah, activists have quickly learned to take the fight
beyond their own backyards, putting into practice a favorite slogan of French anti-fracking
activists: “Ni ici, ni ailleurs” (neither here nor elsewhere). If you’re looking to join today’s climate
movement, take note. And if you’re wondering where to start, ask yourself: if not in my
backyard, then where?
 Framing
Moral uncertainty means we prevent extinction. (12s)
Bostrom 12, (2012) Nick Bostrom, Future of Humanity Institute, Oxford Martin School &
Faculty of Philosophy
These reflections on moral uncertainty suggest[s] an alternative, complementary way of looking at existential risk.
Let me elaborate. Our present understanding of axiology might well be confused. We may not now know—at least not in
concrete detail—what outcomes would count as a big win for humanity; we might not [or] even yet be able to imagine the best
ends of our journey. If
we are indeed profoundly uncertain about our ultimate aims, then we should
recognize that there is a great option value in preserving—and ideally improving—our ability to
recognize value and to steer the future accordingly. Ensuring that there will be a future version of humanity
with great powers and a propensity to use them wisely is plausibly the best way available to us to increase the probability that
the future will contain a lot of value. To do this, we must prevent any existential catastrophe.

Extinction outweighs---it’s the upmost moral evil and disavowal of the risk
makes it more likely. (17s)
Burns 2017 (Elizabeth Finneron-Burns is a Teaching Fellow at the University of
Warwick and an Affiliated Researcher at the Institute for Futures Studies in
Stockholm, What’s wrong with human extinction?,
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/00455091.2016.1278150?needAccess=true,
Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 2017)
Many, though certainly not all, people might believe that it would be wrong to bring about the end of the human species, and the reasons given for this belief are various. I begin by considering four reasons that could be given against the moral permissibility of
human extinction. I will argue that only those reasons that impact the people who exist at the time that the extinction or the knowledge of the upcoming extinction occurs, can explain its wrongness. I use this conclusion to then consider in which cases human

would prevent
extinction would be morally permissible or impermissible, arguing that there is only a small class of cases in which it would not be wrong to cause the extinction of the human race or allow it to happen. 2.1. It

the existence of very many people happy it is a good One reason of human extinction might be considered to be wrong lies in the value of human life itself. The thought here might be that

thing for people to exist and extinction would deprive more people of enjoying this
and enjoy happy lives good.

The ‘good could be understood in two ways.

’ in this case first at least According to the , one might believe that you benefit a person by bringing them into existence, or at least, that

it is good for that person that they come to exist if humans were to go extinct the . The second view might hold that ,

utility foregone by the billions (or more) of people who could have lived but will now never get
that opportunity , renders allowing human extinction to take place an incidence of wrongdoing. An example of this view can be found in two quotes from an Effective Altruism blog post by Peter Singer, Nick Beckstead and Matt Wage:

billions of people would likely die painful deaths

One very bad thing about human extinction would be that . But in our view, this is by far not the worst thing about human

The worst thing about human extinction is that there would be no future generations
extinction. . Since there could

the value of all those generations together greatly exceeds the value of the
be so many generations in our future,

current generation there is value in human life and something

. (Beckstead, Singer, and Wage 2013) The authors are making two claims. The first is that also

valuable about creating future people which gives us a reason to do so; furthermore, it would be a very bad thing if we did not do so. The second is that, not only would it be a bad thing for there to

be no future people, but it would actually be the worst thing about extinction. Since happy human lives have value, and the number of potential people who could ever exist is far greater than the number of people who exist at any one time, even if the extinction
were brought about through the painful deaths of currently existing people, the former’s loss would be greater than the latter’s. Both claims are assuming that there is an intrinsic value in the existence of potential human life. The second claim makes the further
assumption that the forgone value of the potential lives that could be lived is greater than the disvalue that would be accrued by people existing at the time of the extinction through suffering from painful and/or premature deaths. The best-known author of the
post, Peter Singer is a prominent utilitarian, so it is not surprising that he would lament the potential lack of future human lives per se. However, it is not just utilitarians who share this view, even if implicitly. Indeed, other philosophers also seem to imply that they
share the intuition that there is just something wrong with causing or failing to prevent the extinction of the human species such that we prevent more ‘people’ from having the ‘opportunity to exist’. Stephen Gardiner (2009) and Martin O’Neill (personal
correspondence), both sympathetic to contract theory, for example, also find it intuitive that we should want more generations to have the opportunity to exist, assuming that they have worth-living lives, and I find it plausible to think that many other people

When we talk about future lives being ‘prevented’, we are saying that
(philosophers and non-philosophers alike) probably share this intuition.

a possible person or a set of possible people who could potentially have existed will now never actually come
to exist . To say that it is wrong to prevent people from existing could either mean that a possible person could reasonably reject a principle that permitted us not to create them, or that the foregone value of their lives provides a reason for rejecting any
principle that permits extinction. To make the first claim we would have to argue that a possible person could reasonably reject any principle that prevented their existence on the grounds that it prevented them in particular from existing. However, this is
implausible for two reasons. First, we can only wrong someone who did, does or will actually exist because wronging involves failing to take a person’s interests into account. When considering the permissibility of a principle allowing us not to create Person X, we
cannot take X’s interest in being created into account because X will not exist if we follow the principle. By considering the standpoint of a person in our deliberations we consider the burdens they will have to bear as a result of the principle. In this case, there is no
one who will bear any burdens since if the principle is followed (that is, if we do not create X), X will not exist to bear any burdens. So, only people who do/will actually exist can bear the brunt of a principle, and therefore occupy a standpoint that is owed
justification. Second, existence is not an interest at all and a possible person is not disadvantaged by not being caused to exist. Rather than being an interest, it is a necessary requirement in order to have interests. Rivka Weinberg describes it as ‘neutral’ because
causing a person to exist is to create a subject who can have interests; existence is not an interest itself.3 In order to be disadvantaged, there must be some detrimental effect on your interests. However, without existence, a person does not have any interests so
they cannot be disadvantaged by being kept out of existence. But, as Weinberg points out, ‘never having interests itself could not be contrary to people’s interests since without interest bearers, there can be no ‘they’ for it to be bad for’ (Weinberg 2008, 13). So, a
principle that results in some possible people never becoming actual does not impose any costs on those ‘people’ because nobody is disadvantaged by not coming into existence.4 It therefore seems that it cannot be wrong to fail to bring particular people into
existence. This would mean that no one acts wrongly when they fail to create another person. Writ large, it would also not be wrong if everybody decided to exercise their prerogative not to create new people and potentially, by consequence, allow human
extinction. One might respond here by saying that although it may be permissible for one person to fail to create a new person, it is not permissible if everyone chooses to do so because human lives have value and allowing human extinction would be to forgo a
huge amount of value in the world. This takes us to the second way of understanding the potential wrongness of preventing people from existing — the foregone value of a life provides a reason for rejecting any principle that prevents it. One possible reply to this
claim turns on the fact that many philosophers acknowledge that the only, or at least the best, way to think about the value of (individual or groups of) possible people’s lives is in impersonal terms (Parfit 1984; Reiman 2007; McMahan 2009). Jeff McMahan, for
example, writes ‘at the time of one’s choice there is no one who exists or will exist independently of that choice for whose sake one could be acting in causing him or her to exist … it seems therefore that any reason to cause or not to cause an individual to exist … is
best considered an impersonal rather than individual-affecting reason’ (McMahan 2009, 52). Another reply along similar lines would be to appeal to the value that is lost or at least foregone when we fail to bring into existence a next (or several next) generations of
people with worth-living lives. Since ex hypothesi worth-living lives have positive value, it is better to create more such lives and worse to create fewer. Human extinction by definition is the creation of no future lives and would ‘deprive’ billions of ‘people’ of the
opportunity to live worth-living lives. This might reduce the amount of value in the world at the time of the extinction (by killing already existing people), but it would also prevent a much vaster amount of value in the future (by failing to create more people). Both
replies depend on the impersonal value of human life. However, recall that in contractualism impersonal values are not on their own grounds for reasonably rejecting principles. Scanlon himself says that although we have a strong reason not to destroy existing
human lives, this reason ‘does not flow from the thought that it is a good thing for there to be more human life rather than less’ (104). In contractualism, something cannot be wrong unless there is an impact on a person. Thus, neither the impersonal value of
creating a particular person nor the impersonal value of human life writ large could on its own provide a reason for rejecting a principle permitting human extinction. It seems therefore that the fact that extinction would deprive future people of the opportunity to
live worth-living lives (either by failing to create either particular future people or future people in general) cannot provide us with a reason to consider human extinction to be wrong. Although the lost value of these ‘lives’ itself cannot be the reason explaining the

wrongness of extinction, it is possible the knowledge of this loss might create a personal reason for some existing people. I will consider this possibility later on in section (d). But first I move to the second reason human extinction might be wrong per se. 2.2. It
would mean the loss of the only known form of intelligent life and all civilization and
intellectual progress would be lost A second reason we might think it would be wrong to cause human extinction is the loss that would occur of the only (known) form of rational life and the knowledge
and civilization that that form of life has created. One thought here could be that just as some might consider it wrong to destroy an individual human heritage monument like the Sphinx, it would also be wrong if the advances made by humans over the past few

millennia were lost or prevented from progressing. A related argument is made by those who feel that there is something special about humans’ capacity for rationality which is valuable in
itself . Since humans are the only intelligent life that we know of, it would be a loss, in itself, to the world for that to end. I admit that I struggle to fully appreciate this thought. It seems to me that Henry Sidgwick was correct in thinking that these things are
only important insofar as they are important to humans (Sidgwick 1874, I.IX.4).5 If there is no form of intelligent life in the future, who would there be to lament its loss since intelligent life is the only form of life capable of appreciating intelligence? Similarly, if there
is no one with the rational capacity to appreciate historic monuments and civil progress, who would there be to be negatively affected or even notice the loss?6 However, even if there is nothing special about human rationality, just as some people try to prevent the

extinction of nonhuman animal species, we might think that we ought also to prevent human extinction for the sake of biodiversity . The

thought in this, as well as the earlier examples, must be that it would somehow be bad for the world if there were no more humans even though there would be no one for whom it is bad. This may be so but the only way to understand this reason is impersonally.
Since we are concerned with wrongness rather than badness, we must ask whether something that impacts no one’s well-being, status or claims can be wrong. As we saw earlier, in the contractualist framework reasons must be personal rather than impersonal in
order to provide grounds for reasonable rejection (Scanlon 1998, 218–223). Since the loss of civilization, intelligent life or biodiversity are per se impersonal reasons, there is no standpoint from which these reasons could be used to reasonably reject a principle that

permitted extinction. Therefore, causing human extinction on the grounds of the loss of civilization, rational life or biodiversity would not be wrong. 2.3. Existing people would endure physical
pain and/or painful and/or premature deaths Thinking about the ways in which human extinction might come about brings to the fore two more reasons it might be wrong. It could,
for example, occur if all humans (or at least the critical number needed to be unable to replenish the population, leading to eventual extinction) underwent a sterilization procedure. Or perhaps it could come about due to anthropogenic climate change or a massive

Each scenario would involve significant physical and/

asteroid hitting the Earth and wiping out the species in the same way it did the dinosaurs millions of years ago. of these s or

non-physical harms to existing people and their interests. Physically, people might suffer premature and possibly also painful deaths, for example. It is not hard to imagine examples in which the process of

extinction could cause premature death A nuclear winter that killed everyone or even just every .

woman under the age of 50 is a clear example of such a case . Obviously, some types of premature death themselves cannot be reasons to reject a principle.

Every person dies eventually, sometimes earlier than the standard expected lifespan due to accidents or causes like spontaneously occurring incurable cancers. A cause such as disease is not a moral agent and therefore it cannot be wrong if it unavoidably kills a
person prematurely. Scanlon says that the fact that a principle would reduce a person’s well-being gives that person a reason to reject the principle: ‘components of well-being figure prominently as grounds for reasonable rejection’ (Scanlon 1998, 214). However, it

being
is not settled yet whether premature death is a setback to well-being. Some philosophers hold that death is a harm to the person who dies, whilst others argue that it is not.7 I will argue, however, that regardless of who is correct in that debate,

caused to die prematurely can be reason to reject a principle when it fails to show respect to the
person as a rational agent appreciating the value
. Scanlon says that recognizing others as rational beings with interests involves seeing reason to preserve life and prevent death: ‘

of human life is primarily a matter of seeing human lives as to be respected something , where this involves seeing reasons not to

destroy them, reasons to protect them, and reasons to want them to go well’ (Scanlon 1998, 104). The ‘respect for life’ in this case is a respect for the person living, not respect for human life in the abstract. This means that we can sometimes fail to protect human
life without acting wrongfully if we still respect the person living. Scanlon gives the example of a person who faces a life of unending and extreme pain such that she wishes to end it by committing suicide. Scanlon does not think that the suicidal person shows a lack
of respect for her own life by seeking to end it because the person whose life it is has no reason to want it to go on. This is important to note because it emphasizes the fact that the respect for human life is person-affecting. It is not wrong to murder because of the

impersonal disvalue of death in general, but because taking someone’s life without their permission shows disrespect to that
person . This supports its inclusion as a reason in the contractualist formula, regardless of what side ends up winning the ‘is death a harm?’ debate because even if death turns out not to harm the person who died, ending their life without their consent

if they are killed

shows disrespect to that person. A person who could reject a principle permitting another to cause his or her premature death presumably does not wish to die at that time, or in that manner. Thus,

without their consent, their interests have not been taken into account , and they have a reason to reject the principle that allowed their
premature death.8 This is as true in the case of death due to extinction as it is for death due to murder. However, physical pain may also be caused to existing people without killing them, but still resulting in human extinction. Imagine, for example, surgically

a nuclear bomb that did not kill anyone, but did

removing everyone’s reproductive organs in order to prevent the creation of any future people. Another example could be

painfully render them infertile through illness or injury . These would be cases in which physical pain (through surgery or bombs) was inflicted on existing people and the

extinction came about as a result of the painful incident rather than through death. Furthermore, one could imagine a situation in which a bomb (for example) killed enough people to cause extinction, but some people remained alive, but in terrible pain from
injuries. It seems uncontroversial that the infliction of physical pain could be a reason to reject a principle. Although Scanlon says that an impact on well-being is not the only reason to reject principles, it plays a significant role, and indeed, most principles are likely to
be rejected due to a negative impact on a person’s well-being, physical or otherwise. It may be queried here whether it is actually the involuntariness of the pain that is grounds for reasonable rejection rather than the physical pain itself because not all pain that a
person suffers is involuntary. One can imagine acts that can cause physical pain that are not rejectable — base jumping or life-saving or improving surgery, for example. On the other hand, pushing someone off a cliff or cutting him with a scalpel against his will are
clearly rejectable acts. The difference between the two cases is that in the former, the person having the pain inflicted has consented to that pain or risk of pain. My view is that they cannot be separated in these cases and it is involuntary physical pain that is the
grounds for reasonable rejection. Thus, the fact that a principle would allow unwanted physical harm gives a person who would be subjected to that harm a reason to reject the principle. Of course the mere fact that a principle causes involuntary physical harm or
premature death is not sufficient to declare that the principle is rejectable — there might be countervailing reasons. In the case of extinction, what countervailing reasons might be offered in favour of the involuntary physical pain/ death-inducing harm? One such
reason that might be offered is that humans are a harm to the natural environment and that the world might be a better place if there were no humans in it. It could be that humans might rightfully be considered an all-things-considered hindrance to the world
rather than a benefit to it given the fact that we have been largely responsible for the extinction of many species, pollution and, most recently, climate change which have all negatively affected the natural environment in ways we are only just beginning to
understand. Thus, the fact that human extinction would improve the natural environment (or at least prevent it from degrading further), is a countervailing reason in favour of extinction to be weighed against the reasons held by humans who would experience
physical pain or premature death. However, the good of the environment as described above is by definition not a personal reason. Just like the loss of rational life and civilization, therefore, it cannot be a reason on its own when determining what is wrong and
countervail the strong personal reasons to avoid pain/death that is held by the people who would suffer from it.9 Every person existing at the time of the extinction would have a reason to reject that principle on the grounds of the physical pain they are being forced
to endure against their will that could not be countervailed by impersonal considerations such as the negative impact humans may have on the earth. Therefore, a principle that permitted extinction to be accomplished in a way that caused involuntary physical pain
or premature death could quite clearly be rejectable by existing people with no relevant countervailing reasons. This means that human extinction that came about in this way would be wrong. There are of course also additional reasons they could reject a similar

Existing people could endure non-physical harms

principle which I now turn to address in the next section. 2.4. the fact I said earlier than in itself that

there would not be any future people could is an impersonal reason and can therefore not be a reason to reject a principle permitting extinction. However, this impersonal reason

give rise to a personal reason there could be various

that is admissible. So, the final important reason people might think that human extinction would be wrong is that

deleterious psychological effects There are two main that would be endured by existing people having the knowledge that there would be no future generations.

sources of this trauma The first relates to individual people and the
, both arising from the knowledge that there will be no more people.

undesired negative effect on well-being that would be experienced by those who would have
wanted to have children this is by no means universa it is fair to say that a good proportion
. Whilst l,

of people feel a strong pull towards reproduction and having their lineage continue in some way. Samuel Scheffler describes the pull towards reproduction as a ‘desire for a
personalized relationship with the future’ (Scheffler 2012, 31). Reproducing is a widely held desire and the joys of parenthood are ones that many people wish to experience. For these people knowing that they would not have descendants (or that their descendants
will endure painful and/or premature deaths) could create a sense of despair and pointlessness of life. Furthermore, the inability to reproduce and have your own children because of a principle/policy that prevents you (either through bans or physical interventions)
would be a significant infringement of what we consider to be a basic right to control what happens to your body. For these reasons, knowing that you will have no descendants could cause significant psychological traumas or harms even if there were no associated
 The second is a
physical harm. higher level sense of hopelessness or despair that there will be no
more general,

more humans and that your projects will end with you Even those who did not feel a strong .

desire to procreate themselves might feel a sense of hopelessness that any projects or goals
they have for the future would not be fulfilled . Many of the projects and goals we work towards during our lifetime are also at least partly future-oriented. Why bother continuing the

search for a cure for cancer if either it will not be found within humans’ lifetime, and/or there will be no future people to benefit from it once it is found? Similar projects and goals that might lose their meaning when confronted with extinction include politics,

without the hope

artistic pursuits and even the type of philosophical work with which this paper is concerned. Even more extreme, through the words of the character Theo Faron, P.D. James says in his novel The Children of Men that ‘

of posterity for our race all pleasures of the mind and senses
if not for ourselves, without the assurance that we being dead yet live,

sometimes seem to me no more than pathetic and crumbling defences shored up against our
ruins’ (James 2006, 9). Even if James’ claim is a bit hyperbolic and all pleasures would not actually be lost, I agree with Scheffler in finding it not implausible that the knowledge that extinction was coming and that there would be no more people would have

Both sources of psychological harm are

at least a general depressive effect on people’s motivation and confidence in the value of and joy in their activities (Scheffler 2012, 43).

personal reasons to reject a principle that permitted human extinction . Existing people could therefore reasonably reject the principle for
either of these reasons. Psychological pain and the inability to pursue your personal projects, goals, and aims, are all acceptable reasons for rejecting principles in the contractualist framework. So too are infringements of rights and entitlements that we accept as
important for people’s lives. These psychological reasons, then, are also valid reasons to reject principles that permitted or required human extinction.

Util is the only egalitarian metric---anything else collapses cooperation on

collective action crises and makes extinction inevitable (25s)
Khan 18 (Risalat, activist and entrepreneur from Bangladesh passionate about addressing
climate change, biodiversity loss, and other existential challenges. He was featured by The
Guardian as one of the “young climate campaigners to watch” (2015). As a campaigner with the
global civic movement Avaaz (2014-17), Risalat was part of a small core team that spearheaded
the largest climate marches in history with a turnout of over 800,000 across 2,000 cities. After
fighting for the Paris Agreement, Risalat led a campaign joined by over a million people to stop
the Rampal coal plant in Bangladesh to protect the Sundarbans World Heritage forest, and
elicited criticism of the plant from Crédit Agricolé through targeted advocacy. Currently, Risalat
is pursuing an MPA in Environmental Science and Policy at Columbia University as a SIPA
Environmental Fellow, “5 reasons why we need to start talking about existential risks,”
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/01/5-reasons-start-talking-existential-risks-extinction-
moriori/)

Infinite future possibilities I find the story of the Moriori profound. It teaches me two lessons. Firstly, that human culture is far from
immutable. That we can struggle against our baser instincts. That we can master them and rise to unprecedented
challenges. Secondly, that even this does not make us masters of our own destiny. We can make
visionary choices, but the future can still surprise us. This is a humbling realization. Because faced with an
uncertain future, the only wise thing we can do is prepare for possibilities. Standing at the launch pad of the Fourth Industrial
Revolution, the possibilities seem endless. They range from an era of abundance to the end of humanity,
and everything in between. How do we navigate such a wide and divergent spectrum? I am an optimist. From my bubble of privilege, life feels like a rollercoaster ride full of ever
more impressive wonders, even as I try to fight the many social injustices that still blight us. However, the accelerating pace of change amid uncertainty elicits one fundamental

Among the infinite future possibilities, only one outcome is truly irreversible: extinction.
observation.

Concerns about extinction are often dismissed as apocalyptic alarmism. Sometimes, they are. But repeating that
mankind is still here after 70 years of existential warning about nuclear warfare is a straw man
argument. The fact that a 1000-year flood has not happened does not negate its possibility. And
there have been far too many nuclear near-misses to rest easy. As the World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting in
Davos discusses how to create a shared future in a fractured world, here are five reasons why the possibility of existential
risks should raise the stakes of conversation: 1. Extinction is the rule, not the exception More than
99.9% of all the species that ever existed are gone. Deep time is unfathomable to the human brain. But if
one cares to take a tour of the billions of years of life’s history, we find a litany of forgotten
species. And we have only discovered a mere fraction of the extinct species that once roamed the planet. In the speck of time since the first humans evolved, more than
99.9% of all the distinct human cultures that have ever existed are extinct. Each hunter-gatherer tribe had its own
mythologies, traditions and norms. They wiped each other out, or coalesced into larger formations following the agricultural revolution. However, as major civilizations

emerged, even those that reached incredible heights, such as the Egyptians and the Romans, eventually collapsed. It is only in the very recent past
that we became a truly global civilization. Our interconnectedness continues to grow rapidly. “Stand or fall, we are the last civilization”, as
Ricken Patel, the founder of the global civic movement Avaaz, put it. 2. Environmental pressures can drive extinction More than 15,000 scientists just

issued a ‘warning to humanity’. They called on us to reduce our impact on the biosphere, 25 years after their first such appeal. The warning notes that
we are far outstripping the capacity of our planet in all but one measure of ozone depletion, including emissions, biodiversity, freshwater availability and more. The scientists,
not a crowd known to overstate facts, conclude: “soon it will be too late to shift course away from our failing trajectory, and time is running out”. In his 2005 book Collapse,

JaredDiamond charts the history of past societies. He makes the case that overpopulation and resource use
beyond the carrying capacity have often been important, if not the only, drivers of collapse. Even though we are
making important incremental progress in battles such as climate change, we must still achieve tremendous step changes in our

response to several major environmental crises. We must do this even while the world’s population continues to grow. These pressures
are bound to exert great stress on our global civilization. 3. Superintelligence: unplanned obsolescence? Imagine a monkey society that foresaw the ascendance of humans.
Fearing a loss of status and power, it decided to kill the proverbial Adam and Eve. It crafted the most ingenious plan it could: starve the humans by taking away all their bananas.
Foolproof plan, right? This story describes the fundamental difficulty with superintelligence. A superintelligent being may always do something entirely different from what we,
with our mere mortal intelligence, can foresee. In his 2014 book Superintelligence, Swedish philosopher Nick Bostrom presents the challenge in thought-provoking detail, and

advises caution. Bostrom cites a survey of industry experts that projected a 50% chance of the
development of artificial superintelligence by 2050, and a 90% chance by 2075. The latter date is within the
life expectancy of many alive today. Visionaries like Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk have warned of the existential risks from

artificial superintelligence. Their opposite camp includes Larry Page and Mark Zuckerberg. But on an issue that concerns the future of humanity, is it really
wise to ignore the guy who explained the nature of space to us and another guy who just put a reusable rocket in it? 4. Technology: known knowns and unknown unknowns
Many fundamentally disruptive technologies are coming of age, from bioengineering to quantum computing, 3-D printing, robotics, nanotechnology and more. Lord Martin Rees
describes potential existential challenges from some of these technologies, such as a bioengineered pandemic, in his book Our Final Century. Imagine if North Korea, feeling
secure in its isolation, could release a virulent strain of Ebola, engineered to be airborne. Would it do it? Would ISIS? Projecting decades forward, we will likely develop
capabilities that are unthinkable even now. The unknown unknowns of our technological path are profoundly humbling. 5. 'The Trump Factor' Despite our scientific ingenuity,
we are still a confused and confusing species. Think back to two years ago, and how you thought the world worked then. Has that not been upended by the election of Donald
Trump as US President, and everything that has happened since? The mix of billions of messy humans will forever be unpredictable. When the combustible forces described
above are added to this melee, we find ourselves on a tightrope. What choices must we now make now to create a shared future, in which we are not at perpetual risk of

Throughout history, we have rallied against the ‘other’. Tribes have

destroying ourselves? Common enemy to common cause

overpowered tribes, empires have conquered rivals. Even today, our fiercest displays of unity typically
happen at wartime. We give our lives for our motherland and defend nationalistic pride like a wounded lion. But like the early Morioris, we 21st-
century citizens find ourselves on an increasingly unstable island. We may have a violent past,
but we have no more dangerous enemy than ourselves. Our task is to find our own Nunuku’s Law. Our own
shared contract, based on equity, would help us navigate safely. It would ensure a future that
unleashes the full potential of our still-budding human civilization, in all its diversity. We cannot
do this unless we are humbly grounded in the possibility of our own destruction. Survival is
life’s primal instinct. In the absence of a common enemy, we must find common cause in
survival. Our future may depend on whether we realize this.
 Method
Methodological pluralism is a necessary aspect of critique and proves you
affirm on my index
Bleiker ’14 [Roland, professor of international relations at the university of Queensland.
“International Theory Between Reification and Self-Reflective Critique” International Studies
Review, Volume 16, Issue 2. June 17, 2014]
This book is part of an increasing trend of scholarly works that have embraced poststructural critique but want to ground it in more positive political
foundations, while retaining a reluctance to return to the positivist tendencies that implicitly underpin much of constructivist research. The path that
Daniel Levine has carved out is innovative, sophisticated, and convincing. A superb scholarly achievement. For Levine, the key challenge in international
relations (IR) scholarship is what he calls “unchecked reification”: the widespread and dangerous process of forgetting “the distinction
between theoretical concepts and the real-world things they mean to describe or to which they refer” (p. 15). The dangers are real, Levine stresses,
because IR deals with some of the most difficult issues, from genocides to war. Upholding one
subjective position without critical scrutiny can thus have far-reaching consequences. Following
Theodor Adorno—who is the key theoretical influence on this book—Levine takes a post-positive position and assumes that the world cannot be
known outside of our human perceptions and the values that are inevitably intertwined with them. His ultimate goal is to overcome reification, or, to
be more precise, to recognize it as an inevitable aspect of thought so that its dangerous consequences can be mitigated. Levine proceeds in three
stages: First he reviews several decades of IR theories to resurrect critical moments when scholars displayed an acute awareness of the dangers of
reification. He refreshingly breaks down distinctions between conventional and progressive scholarship, for he detects self-reflective and critical
moments in scholars that are usually associated with straightforward positivist positions (such as E.H. Carr, Hans Morgenthau, or Graham Allison). But
Levine also shows how these moments of self-reflexivity never lasted long and were driven out by the compulsion to offer systematic and scientific
knowledge. The second stage of Levine's inquiry outlines why IR scholars regularly closed down critique. Here, he points to a range of factors and
phenomena, from peer review processes to the speed at which academics are meant to publish. And here too, he eschews conventional wisdom,
showing that work conducted in the wake of the third debate, while explicitly post-positivist and critiquing the reifying tendencies of existing IR
scholarship, often lacked critical self-awareness. As a result, Levine believes that many of the respective authors failed to appreciate sufficiently that
“reification is a consequence of all thinking—including itself” (p. 68). The third objective of Levine's book is also the most interesting one. Here, he
outlines the path toward what he calls “sustainable critique”: a form of self-reflection that can counter the dangers of reification. Critique, for him, is
not just something that is directed outwards, against particular theories or theorists. It is also inward-oriented, ongoing, and sensitive to the
“limitations of thought itself” (p. 12). The challenges that such a sustainable critique faces are formidable. Two stand out: First, if the natural tendency
to forget the origins and values of our concepts are as strong as Levine and other Adorno-inspired theorists believe they are, then how can we actually
recognize our own reifying tendencies? Are we not all inevitably and subconsciously caught in a web of meanings from which we cannot escape?
Second, if one constantly questions one's own perspective, does one not fall into a relativism that loses the ability to establish the kind of stable
foundations that are necessary for political action? Adorno has, of course, been critiqued as relentlessly negative, even by his second-generation
Frankfurt School successors (from Jürgen Habermas to his IR interpreters, such as Andrew Linklater and Ken Booth). The response that Levine has to
these two sets of legitimate criticisms are, in my view, both convincing and useful at a practical level. He starts off with depicting reification not as a
flaw that is meant to be expunged, but as an a priori condition for scholarship. The challenge then is not to let it go unchecked.
Methodological pluralism lies at the heart of Levine's sustainable critique. He borrows from what Adorno
calls a “constellation”: an attempt to juxtapose, rather than integrate, different perspectives. It is in this spirit that Levine advocates multiple

methods to understand the same event or phenomena. He writes of the need to validate “multiple and mutually
incompatible ways of seeing” (p. 63, see also pp. 101–102). In this model, a scholar oscillates back and forth between

different methods and paradigms, trying to understand the event in question from multiple
perspectives. No single method can ever adequately represent the event or should gain the
upper hand. But each should, in a way, recognize and capture details or perspectives that the
others cannot (p. 102). In practical terms, this means combining a range of methods even when—or,
rather, precisely when—they are deemed incompatible. They can range from poststructual
deconstruction to the tools pioneered and championed by positivist social sciences. The benefit of such a
methodological polyphony is not just the opportunity to bring out nuances and new
perspectives. Once the false hope of a smooth synthesis has been abandoned, the very incompatibility of the respective perspectives can then
be used to identify the reifying tendencies in each of them. For Levine, this is how reification may be “checked at the source”
and this is how a “critically reflexive moment might thus be rendered sustainable” (p. 103). It is in this sense that Levine's approach is not really post-
foundational but, rather, an attempt to “balance foundationalisms against one another” (p. 14). There are strong parallels here with arguments
advanced by assemblage thinking and complexity theory—links that could have been explored in more detail.
 UV
1AR theory paradigm issues – a) AFF gets it because otherwise the neg can
engage in infinite abuse, making debate impossible, b) drop the debater – the
1AR is too short for theory and substance so ballot implications are key to
check abuse, c) no RVIs – they can stick me with 6min of answers to a short arg
and make the 2AR impossible, d) competing interps – 1AR interps aren’t
bidirectional and the neg should have to defend their norm since they have
more time. Aff theory first – it’s a much larger strategic loss because 1min is ¼
of the 1AR vs 1/7 of the 1NC which means there’s more abuse if I’m devoting a
larger fraction of time. Procedural fairness is a voter and o/w—a] it’s an
intrinsic good – debate is fundamentally a game and some level of competitive
equity is necessary to sustain the activity, b] it internal link turns every impact –
a limited debate promotes in-depth research and engagement which is
necessary to access all of their education

2] No omissions: violations and K links must come from the text of the AC, not
the absence of doing something i.e. not spec-ing – A] I have a limited time to
speak so it’s an infinite aff burden especially since neg can read bidirectional T
or spec, B] Incentivizes friv uplayering which kills topic ed – o/w since we have
4 years for norms but only 2 months for topic ed

4] Speccing a subset of subsidies is good – A] All subsidies is a bad model since

the neg won’t be able to read specific offense and each one is different – leads
to non-specific debates and no good ground, B] stable advocacy – their interp
means the aff can shift definitions of subsidy, C] applying generics to spec affs
helps you think on your feet and adapt which is key to utilizing real world skills
in new situations

5] Reasonable aff interps—[A] There are multiple T interps the 1NC can read,
like spec good bad, which the aff will always violate — if our interp is okay, you
should default to substance – o/w since topic ed is unique to this resolution for
2 months, [B] There’s only 4 minutes for the 1AR to generate offense, answer
standards, and weigh while still covering substance—reasonable aff interps
allow us to actually get education
6) The negative must check T and theory interps and K links in CX
a) infinite number of indirect things the aff can link to, which means you’d
always have something to read. That also means that you should reevaluate the
aff under their interps if they don’t check
b) norm setting – you’d do the same when going for T-FW