**Drilling**

1NC Shell
OCS wrecks oceans and the wildlife
DOW ‘12 (DEFENDERS OF WILDLIFE, "OUTER CONTINENTAL SHELF DRILLING",
https://docs.google.com/viewer?
a=vandq=cache:0hRYuUTRu6wJ:www.defenders.org/publications/impacts_of_outer_continenta
l_shelf_drilling.pdf+andhl=enandgl=usandpid=blandsrcid=ADGEESimvF33YzLvIENzYCceMo6rbZB
gGL_qq52L3lPQbQp9oCH-
vySHbDLITJDlQ61o__xCzITqYc56OWssn5OEjL5C7HATlZWYsBP4Ec9SoxALLnh9Rk0NY_ANjAdUgfb
3vh0C-e31andsig=AHIEtbSgOUGu_Q4pEWJM2fsBDGMuNjtfvA
Ocean Floor. Drilling infrastructure permanently alters ocean floor habitats . Drill rig
footprints, undersea pipelines, dredging ship channels, and dumped drill cuttings -- the rock
material dug out of the oil or gas well-- are often contaminated with drilling fluid used to
lubricate and regulate the pressure in drilling operations. The fluid contains petroleum products
and heavy metals. Strewn on the ocean floor, contaminated sediments can be carried by
currents over a mile from the rig, sharply reducing populations of small bottom dwelling
creatures that are important to the rest of the food chain and biomagnifying toxic
contaminants in fish we eat.

Gulf ecosystems are critical biodiversity hotspots and have a key effect on the
world’s oceans
Brenner ‘8 – (Jorge Brenner, “Guarding the Gulf of Mexico’s valuable resources”, SciDevNet, 3-14-2008,
http://www.scidev.net/en/opinions/guarding-the-gulf-of-mexico-s-valuable-resources.html)
The Gulf Of Mexico is rich in biodiversity and unique habitats, and hosts the only known
nesting beach of Kemp's Ridley, the world's most endangered sea turtle. The Gulf's circulation
pattern gives it biological and socioeconomic importance: water from the Caribbean enters
from the south through the Yucatan Channel between Cuba and Mexico and, after warming in
the basin, leaves through the northern Florida Strait between the United States and Cuba to
form the Gulf Stream in the North Atlantic that helps to regulate the climate of western
Europe.

Collapse of ocean ecosystems ends life on Earth

Craig 3 (Robin Kundis, Associate Prof Law, Indiana U School Law, Lexis)

Biodiversity and ecosystem function arguments for conserving marine ecosystems also exist, just as they do for terrestrial ecosystems, but these
arguments have thus far rarely been raised in political debates. For example, besides significant tourism values - the most economically valuable
ecosystem service coral reefs provide, worldwide - coral reefs protect against storms and dampen other environmental fluctuations, services worth
more than ten times the reefs' value for food production. n856 Waste treatment is another significant, non-extractive ecosystem function that intact
coral reef ecosystems provide. n857 More generally, "ocean
ecosystems play a major role in the global
geochemical cycling of all the elements that represent the basic building blocks of living
organisms, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, and sulfur, as well as other less abundant but
necessary elements." n858 In a very real and direct sense, therefore, human degradation of
marine ecosystems impairs the planet's ability to support life. Maintaining biodiversity is often
critical to maintaining the functions of marine ecosystems. Current evidence shows that, in general, an ecosystem's
ability to keep functioning in the face of disturbance is strongly dependent on its biodiversity, "indicating that more diverse ecosystems are more
stable." n859 Coral reef ecosystems are particularly dependent on their biodiversity. [*265] Most ecologists agree that the complexity of interactions
and degree of interrelatedness among component species is higher on coral reefs than in any other marine environment. This implies that the
ecosystem functioning that produces the most highly valued components is also complex and that many otherwise insignificant species have strong
effects on sustaining the rest of the reef system. n860 Thus, maintaining and restoring the biodiversity of marine ecosystems is critical to maintaining
and restoring the ecosystem services that they provide. Non-use biodiversity values for marine ecosystems have been calculated in the wake of marine
disasters, like the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska. n861 Similar calculations could derive preservation values for marine wilderness. However, economic
value, or economic value equivalents, should not be "the sole or even primary justification for conservation of ocean ecosystems. Ethical arguments
also have considerable force and merit." n862 At the forefront of such arguments should be a recognition of how little we know about the sea - and
about the actual effect of human activities on marine ecosystems. The United States has traditionally failed to protect marine ecosystems because it
was difficult to detect anthropogenic harm to the oceans, but we now know that such harm is occurring - even though we are not completely sure
about causation or about how to fix every problem. Ecosystems like the NWHI coral reef ecosystem should inspire lawmakers and policymakers to
admit that most of the time we really do not know what we are doing to the sea and hence should be preserving marine wilderness whenever we can -
especially when the United States has within its territory relatively pristine marine ecosystems that may be unique in the world. We may not know
much about the sea, but we do know this much: if we kill the ocean we kill ourselves, and we will take most of
the biosphere with us.
 2NC Impact Calculus – Timeframe
No risk of OCS being good – any positive effects it at all won’t happen for 7
years after drilling starts
News Star 8/6/08 (“Charity Goshay: Offshore drilling aside, lets reduce oil dependence,” 2008, http://www.news-
star.com/opinions/x1153215671/Charita-Goshay-Offshore-drilling-aside-lets-reduce-oil-dependence)

The current fervor for offshore oil drilling is a lot like taking off your shoes at the airport: It may
offer a measure of comfort, but it really doesn’t fix the problem. Experts say it takes about seven
years to glean any benefit from offshore drilling, so even if it began today, you won’t see
cheaper prices tomorrow; in fact, you may not see any savings. You don’t really expect Big Oil to
foot the bill for it, do you?
 2NC Impact Calculus – Linear Risk
The risk of drilling multiplies with each additional drillers—you must account
for the systemic risk of ecosystem collapse.
Craig 11—Associate Dean for Environmental Programs @ Florida State University [Robin
Kundis Craig, “Legal Remedies for Deep Marine Oil Spills and Long-Term Ecological Resilience: A
Match Made in Hell,” Brigham Young University Law Review, 2011, 2011 B.Y.U.L. Rev. 1863

Systemic risk is as important as individual risk. Notwithstanding the National Environmental Policy Act's requirement that federal
permitting agencies consider cumulative impacts to the environment, n188 we currently
evaluate the risks of offshore
oil drilling primarily with respect to individual oil drilling operations in connection with individual permits

and leases. As the Deepwater Horizon Commission recognized, however, the

larger systemic context of such
drilling is also important, and perhaps arguably more so. From a resilience perspective, a drilling
operation that uses the only oil rig in a pristine marine environment is an inherently different risk
problem than the Deepwater Horizon's situation of being one of thousands of similar rigs in a
pervasively and multiply stressed Gulf. As Clark, Jones, and Holling have suggested, our trial-and-error
experiments with Nature in our first-sense resilience [*1895] dependence mode "now threaten
errors larger and more costly than society can afford." n189 Resilience thinking should more forcibly
insist on multilayered systemic awareness, promoting limit s on how much exploitation should be occurring

simultaneously and encouraging more gradual resource development over longer periods of time.¶ .
Risk to the environment should be presumed, even when all actors follow all best practices .
Our current first-sense resilience dependency produces laws that assume that ecosystems can be fixed—and,
perhaps more importantly, as embodied in the OPA natural resource damages regulations, that natural processes will
often be able to restore themselves without human effort. Resilience thinking , in contrast,
effectively assumes that ecosystems could suddenly shift to a new regime at any time for any
number of reasons that we do not understand and may not even be able to anticipate—the combined potential of the second and
third conceptions of resilience. In the words of Clark, Jones, and Holling, "if
a system has multiple regions of
stability, then Nature can seem to play the practical joker rather than the forgiving
benefactor." n190 To exaggerate the differences in outlook just a bit, our current paradigm presumes that
most ecosystems can cope with most human activities, while resilience thinking presumes that all
changes to an ecosystem are at least potentially completely destabilizing—i.e., inherently risky,
with the outer limits of that risk being potentially massive . To translate this change in presumption into
legalese, full resilience thinking promotes a policy framework where most human activities in

the environment could be—and perhaps should be—considered inherently dangerous activities .¶
[*1896] As every first-year law student learns, engaging in inherently dangerous activities tends to subject the actor to strict and
fairly absolute liability for the kinds of harm that made the activity inherently dangerous. n191 Under
resilience thinking,
those kinds of harmwould include all of the unpredictable and unexpected changes to the
ecosystem that might occur as a result of a disaster like the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, up to and
including a substantial shift in ecosystem regime or ecosystem collapse.¶ While full implementation of an "inherently
dangerous activity" legal regime for all marine activities is unlikely, the case is fairly strong for deep sea oil exploration and drilling. It
is at least worth pondering what such a consequence of resilience thinking might mean for risk assessment and behavioral incentives
in this context. If nothing else, one would predict under such a new view of potential liability that oil companies' insurers might
begin charging premiums that more accurately reflect the potentially catastrophic liability that resilience-minded regulations and
policies would make legally cognizant—and might insist on the much more precautionary and safety-minded approach to offshore
oil drilling that a multitude of commentators and the Deepwater Horizon Commission have sought in the wake of the Deepwater
Horizon disaster.¶ V. Conclusion The second and third senses of resilience, and the socio-ecological risks for humans that they
underscore, should not be foreign concepts in the regulation of the marine environment, including (and perhaps especially) when it
comes to regulating the offshore oil and gas exploration and drilling taking place at ever-increasing depths. Nor should the possibility
that the cumulative stresses to the Gulf of Mexico have pushed its ecosystems to the brink of ecosystem thresholds be ignored in
our regulatory regimes.¶ By acknowledging that ecosystems are dynamic and subject to sudden and
fairly catastrophic (at least from a human perspective) changes, full resilience thinking provides a path away from the trap
of first-sense resilience dependence. Specifically, full resilience thinking recognizes that exploitative
activities that affect the Gulf—not just deep sea oil drilling but also fishing and farming up the Mississippi River—put all of the
human beings who depend on the ecosystem services, as well as the ecosystems themselves, at
collective risk of catastrophic ecosystem collapse . A liability regime based on these unavoidable and potentially
massive environmental risks would likely protect the Gulf of Mexico better than our current regime of natural resource damages,
especially when injury occurs in the Gulf's murky depths.
 2NC Impact Calculus – Turns Case
Environmental disaster destroys demand
Aldhous, 12 -- New Scientist bureau chief and environmental correspondent
(Peter, "Drilling into the Unknown," New Scientist, 1-28-12, l/n, accessed 6-4-12, mss)

So far, evidence that fracking poses serious risks to human health or the environment –; beyond the pollution associated with fossil
fuel extraction –; is scant. But studies are few and hard to interpret, and feelings are running high: neighbours of new
fracking operations complain of problems like breathing difficulties, nausea and headaches. "When the public is confused, the public
is angry," says Bernard Goldstein, an environmental toxicologist at the University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. These
concerns
could even bring the shale gas bandwagon to a halt. "If action is not taken to reduce the
environmental impact there is a real risk of serious environmental consequences causing a loss
of public confidence that could delay or stop this activity," advisers to US energy secretary Steven
Chu concluded late last year.
 Uniqueness – No OCS Drilling
OCS drilling off limits now—plan would massively boost OCS drilling
Institute for 21st Century Energy, 10/19/11, http://www.energyxxi.org/immediately-expand-domestic-oil-
and-gas-exploration-and-production

The Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) is an area of some 1.76 billion acres submerged off the United States’ coasts
controlled by the federal government. Approximately 97% of the OCS is under federal
moratoria preventing any exploration or production of oil and natural gas. The U.S. Department of the Interior
(DOI) estimates that the OCS contains 86 billion barrels of oil and 420 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. Because exploration is
prohibited on the vast majority of the OCS, these estimates are primarily based on survey projections and are likely quite
conservative. Additionally, about 83% of federal lands onshore containing some 28 billion barrels of oil and 207 trillion cubic feet of
natural gas are under moratoria or severely restricted.
 Link – 2NC Ext
Strong correlation between oil drilling, and the loss of biodiversity—expansion
of offshore drilling would further threaten ecosystem diversity
Defenders of Wildlife DOW, 12 IMPACTS TO AIR, WATER, WILDLIFE, COASTAL ECONOMIES AND CLIMATE;
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CB8QFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.defenders.org
%2Fpublications%2Fimpacts_of_outer_continental_shelf_drilling.pdf&ei=1l-5U
j1PMqZqAbatoDIDQ&usg=AFQjCNGqOynlQ8TVdWiYHly4OcNHvDixGg&sig2=qXsn9-tjLFmcaK-wE2jCxg.

Spills pose direct mortality dangers through oiling and poisoning by ingestion as animals try to
clean themselves and as toxins build up in fish-eating birds. In addition, over 200,000 birds die
annually in collisions with oil and gas platforms. Construction of new pipelines will damage
sensitive coastal habitats and marshes. Seismic surveys conducted during oil and gas exploration
cause temporary or permanent hearing loss, induce behavioral changes, and even physically
injure marine mammals such as whales, seals and dolphins . Construction noise from new facilities and
pipelines is also likely to interfere with foraging and communication behaviors of birds and mammals. Risk of collisions with
vessels and exposure to pollutants will also increase. Exposure to petroleum causes tissue
damage in the eyes, mouth, skin and lungs of marine mammals. Because they are at the top of
the food chain, many marine mammals will be exposed to the dangers of bioaccumulation of
organic pollutants and metals. Expansion of offshore drilling activities would further threaten
imperiled species like the manatee. Sea Turtles: Dredging of nesting beaches, collisions, and noise
disruptions are all potential threats to sea turtles. Hatchlings are also particularly susceptible to
oiling because they spend much of their time near the water surface, where spilled oil or tar
accumulates.
 Link – Pipelines
Drilling in the OCS will lead to pipelines that cause massive water pollution that
crush biodiversity
Sierra Club, April 19, 2005
http://www.sierraclub.org/wildlands/coasts/ocs/testimony.asp

Onshore damage: The onshore infrastructure associated with offshore oil or gas causes
significant harm to the coastal zone. For example, OCS pipelines crossing coastal
wetlands in the Gulf of Mexico are estimated to have destroyed more coastal salt marsh
than can be found in the stretch of coastal land running from New Jersey through Maine.
Water pollution: Drilling muds are used to lubricate drill bits, maintain downhole pressure, and
serve other functions. Drill cuttings are pieces of rock ground by the bit and brought up from the
well along with used mud. Massive amounts of waste muds and cuttings are generated by
drilling operations - an average of 180,000 gallons per well. Most of this waste is dumped
untreated into surrounding waters. Drilling muds contain toxic metals, including
mercury, lead and cadmium. Significant concentrations of these metals have been
observed around drilling sites.
A second major polluting discharge is "produced water," the water brought up from a well along
with oil and gas. Offshore operations generate large amounts of produced water. The Minerals
Management Service estimates that each platform discharges hundreds of thousands of gallons
of produced water every day. Produced water typically contains a variety of toxic
pollutants, including benzene, arsenic, lead, naphthalene, zinc and toluene, and can
contain varying amounts of radioactive pollutants. All major field research programs
investigating the fate and effects of produced water discharges have detected petroleum
hydrocarbons, toxic metals and radium in the water column down-current from the discharge.
 Impact – Turns Economy
Loss of Biodiversity has massive negative implications towards the Economy
Open Knowledge 11 (Open knowledge, an Allianz initiative. Allianz (help·info) SE[2] is a German multinational financial
services company headquartered in Munich, Germany. Its core business and focus is insurance. As of 2010, it was the world's 12th-
largest financial services group and 23rd-largest company according to a composite measure by Forbes magazine,[3] as well as the
largest financial services company when measured by 2012 revenue. “Biodiversity loss spells economic crisis “ , May 7, 2011
http://knowledge.allianz.com/environment/food_water/?1486/conservation-biodiversity-loss-economic-crisis-ecosystem) bc
We are living through the greatest mass extinction of life in about 65 million years . We lose
three species an hour to urbanization, deforestation, overfishing, climate change, and invasive
species, reckons the United Nations.It is shocking to think of a world without tigers or orang utans, but species loss is
just the tip of the iceberg .‘Biodiversity’ includes not just species but the genes that make species and the ecosystems that support
them. Therefore biodiversity loss ranges from the eradication of ancient seed varieties to the destruction of coral reefs. What’s
gone unnoticed until recently is how expensive biodiversity loss can be, between 2 and 4.5 trillion
dollars in 2008, according to a landmark UN report The Economics of Ecosystems and
Biodiversity (TEEB).That’s more than the 1.7 trillion dollars in economic costs that the Stern Review calculates will result from
the same year’s planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions .In other words: biodiversity loss will hit the global
economy harder than climate change. That’s because biodiversity provides us with vital ‘ecosystem services’ like
fertile soil and freshwater. Forests, for example, provide flood prevention and drought control services , as
well as nutrients and freshwater for farming, fuel wood for cooking, fodder for cattle,
construction materials and foods. Over a billion of the world's poorest people depend on
these services, which are generally available free.And therein lays the problem.“ The economic invisibility of
nature’s flows into the economy is a significant contributor to the degradation of ecosystems
and the loss of biodiversity,” writes Pavan Sukhdev, leader of the UN's Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity
initiative, in the foreword to TEEB. Markets simply don’t value nature’s bounty accordingly. The
consequences can be catastrophic. Protective measures Decades of mangrove deforestation to make
way for shrimp farms and other developments left victims of the Asian tsunami in 2004 defenseless .
Short-term profits dictated that the mangroves must go; longer-term thinking that valued the
mangroves' protective qualities would have saved lives.When consultants PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC)
surveyed corporate attitudes to biodiversity loss, they found that only 27 percent of 1100 global CEOs said they were concerned or
extremely concerned. “Corporates
need to start thinking about ecosystems as an extension of their
asset base, part of their plant and machinery, and appreciating the value they deliver ,”
commented Jon Williams, partner, sustainability and climate change, PwC. Clearly not many people have noticed that 60 percent of
the planet’s ecosystem services have been degraded in the last 50 years.Nor is anyone doing much about it. "We failed miserably,"
said Jean-Christophe Vie of The International Union for Conservation of Nature in early 2010, referring to the globally agreed target
of slowing the rate of plant and animal extinction by 2010. However, in the autumn the international community tried again at the
UN Convention on Biodiversity in Nagoya, Japan. Delegates agreed to at least halve the rate of loss of natural habitats by 2020 and
to create protected conservation zones in 17 percent of all land areas (currently 13 percent) and 10 percent of all marine areas
(currently 1 percent).In line with this the European Commission has adopted a new strategy to halt biodiversity loss and restore 15
percent of degraded ecosystems in the EU by 2020. Among its main targets are more sustainable agriculture and forestry and better
management of fish stocks. However, as with the Nagoya document, the plan is more a collection of targets and guidelines than a
firm commitment with specific measures. Those will have to come laterAs the EC plan recognizes, we’re not just talking about losing
exotic wild animals and plants. The farm down the road is also threatened.Where are the bees?Consider the strange deaths of
honey bee colonies around the world. Insecticides, parasites, and pollution have been blamed, but whatever the causes the
consequences can be devastating. Pollination is worth about 153 billion Euros annually, representing 9.5 percent of global
agricultural output for human food, according to TEEB. In 2007, the collapse of bee colonies cost agriculture in the United States 15
billion dollars. Soil
erosion, accidentally introduced pests, and overfishing cost the global economy
hundreds of billions of dollars every year. And if coral reefs were to disappear, 152 billion
dollars of annual revenues would go with them. There are huge economic opportunities in biodiversity
conservation. Dynamite fishing may net short-term profits but in the long run if you kill the coral reef
the fish (and the tourists) will disappear. Meanwhile the certified organic food market, which protects biodiversity and ecosystem
services, has mushroomed to over 40 billion dollars annually worldwide. The obvious answer
to biodiversity loss is to
properly value ecosystem services and species: to pay our debt to nature by paying people to protect it. The REDD
(Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) initiative would operate along these lines by paying forest nations
not to cut down their trees. In the United States, investors can get banking credits for protecting wetlands and there are other new
schemes for biodiversity credits in the pipeline. Now the challenge is to persuade businesses, politicians, and the public that nothing
in nature comes for free.
 Impact – Turns Warming
Ocean biodiversity loss turns warming
GBE 12 (Green Building Elements, “Biodiversity Loss Ranks with Climate Change and Pollution in Terms of Impacts to
Environment”, May 10, 2012, http://www.lexisnexis.com.turing.library.northwestern.edu/hottopics/lnacademic/) BC
The "Flume Room" at the University of Michigan is used to assess how species diversity affects water quality in streams. A recent
study published by an international research team working at UC Santa Barbara s National Center for Ecological Analysis and
Synthesis (NCEAS) has found that loss
of biodiversity impacts the environment as significantly as climate
change and pollution. The study, titled, a global synthesis reveals biodiversity loss as a major driver of ecosystem change,
was published May 2 in the journal Nature. For the past 15 years, ecologists have built a rich understanding of the consequences of
humans driving species extinct. What we didn't know before this paper is whether those impacts of species loss rank up there with
those from the major drivers of environmental change, said Jarrett Byrnes, a postdoctoral fellow with NCEAS. Led by Western
Washington University biologist David Hooper, the scientists, including those from institutions in the U.S., Canada, and Sweden,
examined the effects of various environmental stressors on plant growth and decomposition, two crucial processes in any
ecosystem. With data synthesized from almost 200 published studies, they measured the rate of species loss in different
ecosystems, and found that the greater the plant species loss, the higher the negative impact on plant
growth. The effects of biodiversity loss on biomass were similar to the effects from other
environmental stressors, including global warming and pollution. Our work shows that, indeed, the
impacts of species loss look to be on par with many kinds of human-driven environmental
change, said Byrnes. And more intriguingly, it suggests that if environmental change also causes loss of species, ecosystem
functions like productivity could get hit with a 1-2 punch. The news looks bleak, with some projections suggesting that, at the
current rate of biodiversity loss, Earth may face another mass extinction within 240 years . To
combat this scenario, said Byrnes, species loss has to be considered alongside the more prominent
forms of environmental change. Researcher measuring the productivity of algae in a stream. For the researchers, there
is more to be studied, as they plan to dig deeper into the effects of species loss on multiple functions and explicitly link loss of
species to changes in ecosystem services. One thing this study opens up is the need to better understand the interactions between
environmental change and species loss. They’re not independent, and may interact in some particularly unexpected ways, said
Byrnes.
 Impact – Methane Hydrates
OCS drilling will lead to the release of methane hydrates which destroy
biodiversity and spur quick warming
Sierra Club 5 (4/19/05, “LIFTING THE OCS MORATORIUM WILL HAVE DAMAGING CONSEQUENCES FOR OUR ¶ BEACHES, FOR
MARINE LIFE AND THEIR HABITAT, AND FOR THE BROADER ¶ ENVIRONMENT”,
http://www.sierraclub.org/wildlands/coasts/ocs/testimony.asp)

Global Warming pollution: Methane hydrates are ice-like structures formed from frozen
water and methane. These structures are found in Arctic permafrost and beneath the seafloor
of the Outer Continental Shelf where water depths are greater than 500 feet. The Congressional
Research Service reports that "safety problems related to gas hydrates may be anticipated. Oil
and gas operators have recorded numerous drilling and production problems attributed
to the presence of gas hydrates, including uncontrolled gas releases during drilling,
collapse of well casings, and gas leakage to the surface." The report continues that
methane hydrates easily become unstable, potentially triggering seafloor subsidence and
catastrophic landslides. In addition, a single unit of methane hydrate can release 160
times its own volume in gas. As methane is a greenhouse gas more than twenty times
more potent than carbon dioxide in contributing to global warming, this volume of gas
release would be extremely dangerous.

Releasing methane hydrates guarantees rapid warming and climatic instability.

We access runaway warming better—new rigs speed up status quo warming
process.
Dillon, 1990 (Dr. William, US Geological Survey, 07/16/08 http://marine.usgs.gov/fact-
sheets/gas-hydrates/title.html)

Hydrates store immense amounts of methane, with major implications for energy
resources and climate, but the natural controls on hydrates and their impacts on the environment are very poorly
understood. Gas hydrates occur abundantly in nature, both in Arctic regions and in marine sediments. Gas hydrate is a crystalline
solid consisting of gas molecules, usually methane, each surrounded by a cage of water molecules. It looks very much like water ice.
Methane hydrate is stable in ocean floor sediments at water depths greater than 300 meters, and where it occurs, it is known to
The worldwide amounts of carbon
cement loose sediments in a surface layer several hundred meters thick.
bound in gas hydrates is conservatively estimated to total twice the amount of carbon to
be found in all known fossil fuels on Earth. This estimate is made with minimal information from U.S.
Geological Survey (USGS) and other studies. Extraction of methane from hydrates could provide an enormous energy and petroleum
feedstock resource. Additionally, conventional gas resources appear to be trapped beneath methane hydrate layers in ocean
sediments. Recent mapping conducted by the USGS off North Carolina and South Carolina shows large accumulations of methane
hydrates. A pair of relatively small areas, each about the size of the State of Rhode Island, shows intense concentrations of gas hydrates. USGS
scientists estimate that these areas contain more than 1,300 trillion cubic feet of methane gas, an amount representing more than 70 times the 1989
gas consumption of the United States. Some of the gas was formed by bacteria in the sediments, but some may be derived from deep strata of the
Carolina Trough. The Carolina Trough is a significant offshore oil and gas frontier area where no wells have been drilled. It is a very large basin, about
the size of the State of South Carolina, that has accumulated a great thickness of sediment, perhaps more than 13 kilometers. Salt diapirs, reefs, and
faults, in addition to hydrate gas, may provide greater potential for conventional oil and gas traps than is present in other east coast basins. The
immense volumes of gas and the richness of the deposits may make methane hydrates a strong candidate for development as an energy resource.
Because the gas is held in a crystal structure, gas molecules are more densely packed than in conventional or other unconventional gas traps. Gas-
hydrate-cemented strata also act as seals for trapped free gas. These traps provide potential resources, but they can also represent hazards to drilling,
and therefore must be well understood. Production of gas from hydrate-sealed traps may be an easy way to extract hydrate gas because the reduction
of pressure caused by production can initiate a breakdown of hydrates and a recharging of the trap with gas. USGS investigations indicate that gas
hydrates may cause landslides on the continental slope. Seafloor slopes of 5 degrees and less should be stable on the Atlantic continental margin, yet
many landslide scars are present. The depth of the top of these scars is near the top of the hydrate zone, and seismic profiles indicate less hydrate in
the sediment beneath slide scars. Evidence available suggests a link between hydrate instability and occurrence of landslides on the continental margin .
A likely mechanism for initiation of landsliding involves a breakdown of hydrates at the base of the hydrate layer. The effect would
be a change from a semi-cemented zone to one that is gas-charged and has little strength, thus facilitating sliding. The cause of the
breakdown might be a reduction in pressure on the hydrates due to a sea-level drop, such as occurred during glacial periods when
Methane, a "greenhouse" gas, is 10 times more
ocean water became isolated on land in great ice sheets.
effective than carbon dioxide in causing climate warming. Methane bound in hydrates
amounts to approximately 3,000 times the volume of methane in the atmosphere. There
is insufficient information to judge what geological processes might most affect the stability of
hydrates in sediments and the possible release of methane into the atmosphere. Methane
released as a result of landslides caused by a sea-level fall would warm the Earth, as would
methane released from gas hydrates in Arctic sediments as they become warmed during a sea-
level rise. This global warming might counteract cooling trends and thereby stabilize climatic
fluctuation, or it could exacerbate climatic warming and thereby destabilize the climate.
 Impact – Air Pollution
OCS natural gas drilling causes air pollution
DOW ‘12 (DEFENDERS OF WILDLIFE, "OUTER CONTINENTAL SHELF DRILLING", https://docs.google.com/viewer?
a=vandq=cache:0hRYuUTRu6wJ:www.defenders.org/publications/impacts_of_outer_continental_shelf_drilling.pdf+andhl=enandgl=
usandpid=blandsrcid=ADGEESimvF33YzLvIENzYCceMo6rbZBgGL_qq52L3lPQbQp9oCH-
vySHbDLITJDlQ61o__xCzITqYc56OWssn5OEjL5C7HATlZWYsBP4Ec9SoxALLnh9Rk0NY_ANjAdUgfb3vh0C-
e31andsig=AHIEtbSgOUGu_Q4pEWJM2fsBDGMuNjtfvA)
Air Pollution. A 2004 inventory of air pollution in the Gulf of Mexico found that OCS oil and
gas activities account for the overwhelming majority of air pollutants : 89% of carbon
monoxide, 77% of NOx emissions, 72% of volatile organic compounds emissions, 69% of
particulate matter emissions, and 66% of sulfur dioxide.

Air pollution causes extinction

Driesen 3 (David, Associate Professor – Syracuse Univeristy Law, 10 Buff. Envt'l. L.J. 25, Fall/Spring, Lexis)

Air pollution can make life unsustainable by harming the ecosystem upon which all life
depends and harming the health of both future and present generations. The Rio Declaration articulates
six key principles that are relevant to air pollution. These principles can also be understood as goals, because they describe a state of
affairs that is worth achieving. Agenda 21, in turn, states a program of action for realizing those goals. Between them, they aid
understanding of sustainable development's meaning for air quality. The first principle is that "human beings. . . are entitled to a
healthy and productive life in harmony with nature", because they are "at the center of concerns for sustainable development ." 3
While the Rio Declaration refers to human health, its reference to life "in harmony with nature" also reflects a concern about the
natural environment. 4 Since
air pollution damages both human health and the environment, air
quality implicates both of these concerns. 5
 Impact – Food Security
Loss of Biodiversity; Leads to Marine ecosystems collapsing - serious threat to
global food security
Worm 6 (Boris Worm et al. , Dr. Boris Worm is a Marine Research Ecologist and Associate Professor at Dalhousie University,
Canada.[1] He has made scientific contributions to the fields of marine ecology and fisheries conservation. Worm was a postdoctoral
fellow under the late Ransom Myers[2] and now leads his own lab at Dalhousie. The Worm Lab includes students and postdoctoral
fellows engaged in the study of marine biodiversity, its causes, consequences of change, and conservation. “Impacts of Biodiversity
Loss on Ocean Ecosystem Servies, 2006 ” http://kfrserver.natur.cuni.cz/gztu/pdf/WORM_ES_ocean.pdf)
Positive relationships between diversity and ecosystem functions and services were found using experimental (Fig. 1)
and correlative approaches along trajectories of diversity loss (Figs. 2 and 3) and recovery (Fig. 4). Our data
highlight the societal consequences of an ongoing erosion of diversity that appears to be
accelerating on a global scale (Fig. 3A). This trend is of serious concern because it projects the
global collapse of all taxa currently fished by the mid – 21st century (based on the extrapolation of
regression in Fig. 3A to 100% in the year 2048) Our findings further suggest that the elimination of locally
adapted populations and species not only impairs the ability of marine ecosystems to feed a
growing human population but also sabotages their stability and recovery potential in a
rapidly changing marine environment. We recognize limitations in each of our data sources, particularly the inherent
problem of inferring causality from c orrelation in the largerscale studies. The strength of these results rests on the consistent
agreement of theory, experiments, and observations across widely different scales and ecosystems. Our analysis may provide a
wider context for the interpretation of local biodiversity experiments that produced diverging and controversial outcomes ( 1 , 3 ,
24 ). It
suggests that very general patterns emerge on progressively larger scales. High-diversity
systems consistently provided more services with less variability, which has economic and
policy implications. First, there is no dichotomy between biodiversity conservation and long-term economic development;
they must be viewed as interdependent societal goals. Second, there was no evidence for redundancy at high levels of diversity; the
improvement of services was continuous on a log-linear scale (Fig. 3). Third, the buffering impact of species diversity on the
resistance and recovery of ecosystem services generates insurance value that must be incorporated into future economic valuations
and management decisions. By restoring
marine biodiversity through sustainable fisheries
management, pollution control, maintenance of essential habitats, and the creation of marine
reserves, we can invest in the productivity and reliability of the goods and services that the
ocean provides to humanity. Our analyses suggest that business as usual would foreshadow
serious threats to global food security, coastal water quality, and ecosystem stability,
affecting current and future generations.

Global food crises cause nuclear conflict and major power draw in
Brown 11 (Lester R. Brown is the recipient of 26 honorary degrees and a MacArthur Fellowship, the Library of Congress
requested Brown’s personal papers noting that his writings “have already strongly affected thinking about problems of world
population and resources,” while president Bill Clinton has suggested that "we should all heed his advice."In 2003 he was one of the
signers of the Humanist Manifesto. Brown helped pioneer the concept of sustainable development.Since then, he has been the
recipient of many prizes and awards, including, the 1987 United Nations Environment Prize., “The New Geopolitics of Food,” June
2011, http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/04/25/the_new_geopolitics_of_food?page=0,2,)
IN THIS ERA OF TIGHTENING world food supplies, the ability to grow food is fast becoming a
new form of geopolitical leverage, and countries are scrambling to secure their own parochial
interests at the expense of the common good. The first signs of trouble came in 2007, when farmers began having
difficulty keeping up with the growth in global demand for grain. Grain and soybean prices started to climb, tripling by mid-2008. In
response, many exporting countries tried to control the rise of domestic food prices by restricting
exports. Among them were Russia and Argentina, two leading wheat exporters. Vietnam, the
No. 2 rice exporter, banned exports entirely for several months in early 2008. So did several
other smaller exporters of grain. With exporting countries restricting exports in 2007 and
2008, importing countries panicked. No longer able to rely on the market to supply the grain they needed, several
countries took the novel step of trying to negotiate long-term grain-supply agreements with exporting countries. The Philippines, for
instance, negotiated a three-year agreement with Vietnam for 1.5 million tons of rice per year. A delegation of Yemenis traveled to
Australia with a similar goal in mind, but had no luck. In a seller's market, exporters were reluctant to make long-term commitments.
Fearing they might not be able to buy needed grain from the market, some of the more
affluent countries, led by Saudi Arabia, South Korea, and China, took the unusual step in 2008
of buying or leasing land in other countries on which to grow grain for themselves. Most of these
land acquisitions are in Africa, where some governments lease cropland for less than $1 per acre per year. Among the principal
destinations were Ethiopia and Sudan, countries where millions of people are being sustained with food from the U.N. World Food
Program. That the governments of these two countries are willing to sell land to foreign interests when their own people are hungry
is a sad commentary on their leadership. By the end of 2009, hundreds of land acquisition deals had been negotiated, some of them
exceeding a million acres. A 2010 World Bank analysis of these "land grabs" reported that a total of nearly 140 million acres were
involved -- an area that exceeds the cropland devoted to corn and wheat combined in the United States. Such acquisitions also
typically involve water rights, meaning that land grabs potentially affect all downstream countries as well. Any water extracted from
the upper Nile River basin to irrigate crops in Ethiopia or Sudan, for instance, will now not reach Egypt, upending the delicate water
politics of the Nile by adding new countries with which Egypt must negotiate. The
potential for conflict -- and not just
over water -- is high. Many of the land deals have been made in secret, and in most cases, the land
involved was already in use by villagers when it was sold or leased. Often those already farming the land were neither consulted
about nor even informed of the new arrangements. And because there typically are no formal land titles in many developing-country
villages, the farmers who lost their land have had little backing to bring their cases to court. Reporter John Vidal, writing in Britain's
Observer, quotes Nyikaw Ochalla from Ethiopia's Gambella region: "The foreign companies are arriving in large numbers, depriving
people of land they have used for centuries. There is no consultation with the indigenous population. The deals are done secretly.
The only thing the local people see is people coming with lots of tractors to invade their lands." Local hostility toward such land
grabs is the rule, not the exception. In 2007, as food prices were starting to rise, China signed an agreement with the Philippines to
lease 2.5 million acres of land slated for food crops that would be shipped home. Once word leaked, the public outcry -- much of it
from Filipino farmers -- forced Manila to suspend the agreement. A similar uproar rocked Madagascar, where a South Korean firm,
Daewoo Logistics, had pursued rights to more than 3 million acres of land. Word of the deal helped stoke a
political furor that toppled the government and forced cancellation of the agreement.
Indeed, few things are more likely to fuel insurgencies than taking land from people. Agricultural
equipment is easily sabotaged. If ripe fields of grain are torched, they burn quickly. Not only are these deals risky, but foreign
investors producing food in a country full of hungry people face another political question of how to get the grain out. Will villagers
permit trucks laden with grain headed for port cities to proceed when they themselves may be on the verge of starvation? The
potential for political instability in countries where villagers have lost their land and their livelihoods is high. Conflicts could
easily develop between investor and host countries.
 Impact – Pharmaceuticals
Biodiversity key to pharmaceutical advancement—key to disease prevention
Doyle 5 (Alister Doyle, Writer for Reuters, Biodiversity May Help Slow Disease Spread: Experts, 10/26,
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/1026-02.htm)
Better protection for the diversity of the planet's creatures and plants could help shield
humans from diseases like AIDS, Ebola or bird flu and save billions of dollars in health care
costs, researchers said on Tuesday.¶ They said human disruptions to biodiversity -- from roads through the Amazon jungle to
deforestation in remote parts of Africa -- had made people more exposed to new diseases that originate in wildlife.
"Biodiversity not only stores the promise of new medical treatments and cures, it buffers
humans from organisms and agents that cause disease," scientists from the Diversitas international group
said in a statement.¶ "Preventing emerging diseases through biodiversity conservation is far more
cost effective than developing vaccines to combat them later," it said ahead of a November 9-10
conference of 700 biodiversity experts in Oaxaca, Mexico. ¶ Peter Daszak, a scientist who helped find links between Asian bats and
the SARS virus, said the 2003 outbreak of the flu-like disease cost about $50 billion, largely because it cut travel and trade from Asia.
About 800 people died.¶ And AIDS, widely believed to have originated in chimpanzees, killed an estimated 3.1 million people in 2004
and the United Nations estimates that $15 billion will be needed for prevention, treatment and care in 2006 alone. ¶ "Emerging
diseases are causing a crisis of public health," Daszak, executive director of the consortium for conservation medicine at the Wildlife
Trust, New York, told Reuters.¶ WILDLIFE TO PEOPLE¶ Diversitas experts urged governments to work out policies to protect
biodiversity, including tougher regulations on trade, agriculture and travel to reduce chances that diseases like avian flu can jump
from wildlife to people.¶ "We're not saying that we should lock up nature and throw away the key," said Charles Perrings, a
biodiversity expert at Arizona State University. But he said humans
should be more careful about disrupting
areas of rich biodiversity.¶ He said diseases had spread from wildlife to humans throughout history but the risks were
rising because of the impact of growing human populations on habitats.¶ The experts said the preservation of a wider range of
species could also ease the impact of disease.¶ A factor helping the spread of Lyme disease in the eastern United States, for instance,
was the absence of former predators like wolves or wild cats that once kept down numbers of white-footed mice -- a reservoir of the
infection.¶ Lyme disease was also less of a problem for humans in U.S. states where the ticks that transmit the disease had more
potential targets, like lizards or small mammals. ¶ "The value of services provided by nature and its diversity is under-appreciated
until they stop," said Anne Larigauderie, executive director of Paris-based Diversitas, a non-government organization. She said China
had to employ people in some regions to pollinate apple orchards because the over-use of pesticides had killed off bees. "It maybe
takes 10 people to do the work of two beehives," she told Reuters.¶ And the Australian gastric brooding frog had once been seen as
key for anti-ulcer drugs because it bizarrely incubated its young in its stomach after shutting off digestive acids. It has since become
extinct, taking its secrets with it.

Disease Causes Extinction

DUJS 9 (Dartmouth Undergraduate Journal of Science, “Human Extinction: The Uncertainty of Our Fate”, May 22, 2009,
http://dujs.dartmouth.edu/spring-2009/human-extinction-the-uncertainty-of-our-fate#.UfQumb4o7Kp, MS)
A pandemic will kill off all humans .¶ In the past, humans have indeed fallen victim to viruses.
Perhaps the best-known case was the bubonic plague that killed up to one third of the
European population in the mid-14th century (7). While vaccines have been developed for the plague
and some other infectious diseases, new viral strains are constantly emerging — a process
that maintains the possibility of a pandemic-facilitated human extinction. ¶ Some surveyed
students mentioned AIDS as a potential pandemic-causing virus. It is true that scientists have been
unable thus far to find a sustainable cure for AIDS, mainly due to HIV’s rapid and constant
evolution. Specifically, two factors account for the virus’s abnormally high mutation rate: 1. HIV’s use of reverse transcriptase,
which does not have a proof-reading mechanism, and 2. the lack of an error-correction mechanism in HIV DNA polymerase (8).
Luckily, though, there are certain characteristics of HIV that make it a poor candidate for a large-scale global infection: HIV can lie
dormant in the human body for years without manifesting itself, and AIDS itself does not kill directly, but rather through the
weakening of the immune system. ¶ However, for more easily transmitted viruses such as influenza, the
evolution of new strains could prove far more consequential. The simultaneous occurrence of
antigenic drift (point mutations that lead to new strains) and antigenic shift (the inter-species transfer of disease) in
the influenza virus could produce a new version of influenza for which scientists may not
immediately find a cure. Since influenza can spread quickly, this lag time could potentially lead
to a “ global influenza pandemic,” according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (9). The most
recent scare of this variety came in 1918 when bird flu managed to kill over 50 million people
around the world in what is sometimes referred to as the Spanish flu pandemic. Perhaps even more frightening is
the fact that only 25 mutations were required to convert the original viral strain — which
could only infect birds — into a human-viable strain (10).
 AT Resiliency
Resiliency is wrong specifically for the Gulf of Mexico—any shock can be the
tipping point
Craig ’11 – Attorneys’ Title Professor of Law and Associate Dean for Environmental Programs
at Florida State University
(Robin Kundis, “Legal Remedies for Deep Marine Oil Spills and Long-Term Ecological Resilience:
A Match Made in Hell”, Brigham Young University Law Review, 2011,
http://lawreview.byu.edu/articles/1326405133_03craig.fin.pdf)
Ecological resilience and resilience theory acknowledge that ecosystems are dynamic—not, as prior theories had assumed,
inherently stable systems tending toward an equilibrium. 142 Resilience theory recognizes that there are at least three different
ways in which ecosystems experience and respond to change and perturbation—three different aspects of “resilience.” 143 The first
and most common understanding of resilience refers to an ecosystem’s ability to absorb change and persist in function and
relationships. 144 This sense of resilience refers to “the rate or speed of recovery of a system following a shock.” 145 As a practical
matter in the law of natural resource management, the law tends to expect that ecosystems will be resilient in this first sense—that
is, the law assumes that ecosystems will generally successfully absorb any human-induced perturbations of the system. As a result,
natural resources law is what I will term “first sense resilience dependence,” but that dependence reflects a truncated
understanding of ecosystems’ resilience and capacity for change. Importantly, however, the second aspect of resilience theory
acknowledges that ecosystems
can exist in multiple states rather than stabilizing around a single
equilibrium state; as a result, changes and disturbances can “push” ecosystems over
thresholds from one ecosystem state to another. 146 This second sense of resilience “assumes
multiple states (or ‘regimes’) and is defined as the magnitude of a disturbance that triggers a
shift between alternative states.” 147 For example, the boreal forests of Canada can exist in at least two states with
respect to spruce budworms: a “no outbreak” state “characterized by low numbers of budworm and young, fastgrowing trees,” and
an “outbreak” state “characterized by high numbers of budworm and old, senescent trees.” 148 The shift between the two appears
to relate to an increase in canopy volume, which in turn affects bird populations and the birds’ ability to control the pest. 149
Regime-shift models can also help to explain outbreaks of some human diseases. 150 However, natural resources law and
policy generally do not acknowledge this second sense of resilience, and, as a result, it
generally does not incorporate mechanisms for acknowledging, responding to, or even trying
to avoid ecological regime shifts. Finally, resilience theory also acknowledges “the surprising and discontinuous nature
of change, such as the collapse of fish stock or the sudden outbreak of spruce budworms in forests.” 151 In other words, the
long-time persistence of an ecosystem (or collection of multiple ecosystems) like the Gulf Of
Mexico in an apparently stable, productive ecosystem state is absolutely no guarantee that
humans can continue to disturb and abuse the system and expect only a gradual or linear
response. As was true for the second sense of resilience, natural resource law in general and marine resources law in
particular do not deal well with the possibility of sudden and dramatic ecosystem changes.
Nevertheless, such regime shifts have been documented for a number of marine ecosystems. For
example, In Jamaica, the effects of overfishing, hurricane damage, and disease have combined to destroy most corals, whose
abundance has declined from more than 50 percent in the late 1970s to less than 5 percent today. A dramatic phase shift has
occurred, producing a system dominated by fleshy macroalgae (more than 90 percent cover). Immediate
implementation
of management procedures is necessary to avoid further catastrophic damage. 152 Similarly, the
presence or absence of sea otters can significantly influence the structure and function of Alaskan kelp forests because the otters,
when present, control sea urchin populations, allowing for more extensive coral growth. 153 In some locations, moreover, “sea
urchin population changes in response to sea otter predation were rapid and extreme” and could result in “short-term changes in
kelp density.” 154
The current law, policy, and remedy regime for offshore oil drilling effectively
presumes that marine ecosystems have virtually unlimited first-sense resilience with respect
to oil spills—in crudest terms, that restoration will always be possible, and perhaps even
through entirely natural means. 155 Our experience with the last large oil spill in U.S. waters,
however, suggests otherwise.
 AT Better Tech
Even with technological advances OCS drilling will destroy Ocean biodiversity
Sierra Club 5 (4/19/05, “LIFTING THE OCS MORATORIUM WILL HAVE DAMAGING CONSEQUENCES FOR OUR ¶ BEACHES, FOR
MARINE LIFE AND THEIR HABITAT, AND FOR THE BROADER ¶ ENVIRONMENT”,
http://www.sierraclub.org/wildlands/coasts/ocs/testimony.asp)
Lifting the OCS Moratorium will have Damaging consequences for our beaches, for marine life
and their habitat, and for the broader environment . Damage to Marine Life and habitat: While there have
been many advances in oil and gas recovery technologies in recent decades, many serious
consequences still result from exploration and drilling for either oil or gas. Seismic Surveys The first step to
drilling for oil and gas involves doing an inventory of estimated resources. One technology used
for this type of inventory is a "seismic survey." This technology involves ships towing multiple
"airgun" arrays with tens of thousands of high-decibel explosive impulses to gather geologic
profiles of seabed rock structures. These airgun arrays fire regular bursts of sound at frequencies in the range of 20 to
150 Hz, which is within the auditory range of many marine species, including whales. Marked changes in behavior in marine species
in response to loud underwater noises in the ocean have been well documented. Seismic survey devices and military
sonars (which operate at a similar decibel level) have been implicated in numerous whale
beaching and stranding incidents, including a December 2001 mass stranding of 16 whales in the
Bahamas, an incident of Cuviers beaked whales being beached and stranded in the Galapagos
Islands and a more recent stranding in the Canary Islands. The auditory organs of fish are particularly
vulnerable to loud sounds such as those produced by survey airguns. As fish rely on their ability to hear to find
mates, locate prey, avoid predators, and communicate, damage to their ears can seriously
compromise their ability to survive. In addition, mortality is possible in species like salmon that
have swim bladders (the flotation organ that fish use to orient themselves vertically in the water),
which have been shown to rupture on exposure to intense sounds.