Arctic Council Aff

**Arctic Council Aff**

Authors

This product is the file of the hard work done by these students in only a dozen hours of research time;

Gauri Binoy (Wayzata, MN)

Charlie “Baudrillard is Life” Foster (Glenbrook North, IL)

Varun Dabade (Wayzata, MN)

Matt Fishman (Glenbrook North, IL)

Abby Fry (Blue Valley Southwest, KS)

Jeffrey Hu (Wayzata, MN)

Tina Gao (Lexington, MA)

Maggie Li (Glenbrook North, IL)

Mark Werner (Prosper, TX)

Angelo Wong (Kapaun Mt. Carmel, KS)

Danlei Zou (Lowell, CA)

Notes

*Important note re; neg prep – the answers to the Russia Adv are in the Sino-Russia DA

1. Warming + multilat is likely the best version of the 1ac but certainly not the only one. Russia and overfishing are both very good in their own right. They are also included as add-ons at the bottom to answer the CPs. A two-card add-on obviously isn’t perfect but it is easily winnable.

2. The current policy 1ac (multilat/warming) may take you roughly 7:00 if you practice several times and trim it a bit (re-write tags, re-highlight cards, etc.). This is designed to leave roughly a minute for some combo of ‘1ac Extras,’ a pu pu platter of the following:

-- misc K impacts to multilat and/or warming

-- “no war”

-- “link UQ”

-- additional impacts (SCS, disease etc. – these are set up by the Dwyer/Heinenen cards – add-ons available in multilat XTs)

3. Impact filtering is this 1ac’s greatest impact-related strength (mlat solves war, warming outweighs all the things, etc.)

There are a lot of good timeframe claims (Arctic is melting, cooperation on the brink, US has a narrow window as Arctic chair, Brexit, etc.) but they mostly relate to the speed of the internal link and not the speed of the impact. I think focusing on a broader impact framing (degree of risk as established by credible, peer-reviewed evidence along with empiricism and advanced threat assessment) is a much wiser call.

4. The 1ac’s second greatest strength is the quality of versatile solvency lit. The aff’s solvency authors are pretty explicit and the 1ac’s internal links to most things are pretty solid. You can configure the 1ac in a lot of different ways. You could go with some combo of warming/overfishing/multilat and still read no war. You could take out no war and read Russia and Warming. You could arrange things in a few different ways that might help you adapt to and defeat whatever you anticipate the most likely 2NR to be.

5. The K versions of this 1ac still defend the plan but have a much larger ethical/political/academic defense of the 1ac’s performance and its choice to focus on warming or multilateralism.

6. For organizational purposes;

-- Stuff is alphabetical unless stuff is prioritized by utility (for example, the internal links to warming are prioritized roughly in the order you’d want to read them if you were REALLY pushed on ‘does the plan solve warming?’)

-- How to use **

If it’s on the right** : it is an esp. important card to know/have in your 2ac blocks. I tried to flag 2ac cards that were especially good/necessary to be on top of.

**If it’s to the left : it just indicates a new section in the file

1ac—Policy

1ac—Plan

The United States should offer to support and pursue full member status in the Arctic Council for China if China agrees to participate in bilateral cooperative agreements regarding Arctic scientific research, environmental monitoring and environmental policy issues.

1ac—Warming

Advantage One is Warming –

China won’t back Arctic warming initiatives, decking broader US-China warming cooperation – supporting Beijing’s Arctic status is key

Tiezzi, 15—Shannon, Editor at The Diplomat, previously served as a research associate at the U.S.-China Policy Foundation, MA @ Harvard, also studied at Tsinghua University in Beijing. “Why Did China Opt Out of the Arctic Climate Change Statement?” The Diplomat, Sept 1, http://thediplomat.com/2015/09/why-did-china-opt-out-of-the-arctic-climate-change-statement/ --br

On Sunday and Monday, foreign ministers and other international leaders met in Anchorage, Alaska to attend the Conference on Global Leadership in the Arctic: Cooperation, Innovation, Engagement, and Resilience (GLACIER). The State Department described the meeting as “focused on changes in the Arctic and global implications of those changes, climate resilience and adaptation planning, and strengthening coordination on Arctic issues.” The United States is currently the chair of the Arctic Council, a grouping of the eight Arctic States (Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, Sweden, and the United States) plus a dozen states with permanent observers status, including China, India, Japan, South Korea, and Singapore. The U.S. made it clear that the GLACIER conference was not an official Arctic Council event, but said the meetings would “focus attention on the challenges and opportunities that the Arctic Council intends to address.” As a sign of the importance the United States placed on the Alaska forum, President Barack Obama attended. He used the conference as a platform for urging swifter action to combat climate change. “Climate change is no longer some far-off problem; it is happening here, it is happening now,” Obama said. “We’re not acting fast enough.” He also used his speech to focus attention on the need for a global agreement to be reached at this year’s UN climate meeting in Paris: “This year, in Paris has to be the year that the world finally reaches an agreement to protect the one planet that we’ve got while we still can.” After the conference, the representatives of the Arctic Council members signed a joint statement affirming “our commitment to take urgent action to slow the pace of warming in the Arctic.” The Arctic states were joined by 10 of the 12 Arctic Council permanent observers – with China and India as the holdouts. Most of the joint statement contained a litany of climate change-related issues already seen in the Arctic, including statistics on melting glaciers and ice sheets and warming temperatures, as well as the impact on Arctic communities. In terms of state commitments, however, there wasn’t much to see. The signatories affirmed a “strong determination … to achieve a successful, ambitious outcome at the international climate negotiations in December in Paris this year”; acknowledged the importance of reducing black carbon (soot) and methane emissions; and called for “additional research” on how climate change is impacting the Arctic. According to CCTV America, China said that it needed more time to review the document before signing. But RT had a different take, saying that China and India “opted not to sign the document” because “reducing emissions entails huge expenditure and loss of economic effectiveness.” (RT also said that Russia had decided not to sign, contradicting other reports). China is not a member of the Arctic Council, but was added as a permanent observer in 2013. In the two years since then, Beijing has moved rapidly to stake out its interests in the Arctic, particularly when it comes to developing mostly-untapped energy reserves in the region. It is especially interested in being acknowledged as a key actor in the Arctic – though not an Arctic state, China believes the fate of the region is crucial to its national interests. China has begun defining itself as a “near-Arctic state” in the hopes of gaining a larger say in Arctic affairs. Beijing’s decision to abstain from the joint statement on climate change in the Arctic suggests that it viewed the statement as being in conflict with its Arctic interests, potentially setting the stage for later arguments in the Arctic Council itself about how to balance environmental protection with resource extraction and other development activities. China’s reaction to the GLACIER conference also sends a worrisome signal about U.S.-China cooperation on climate change. In addition to refusing to sign the statement, China sent a relatively low-level representative. Former Chinese Ambassador to Norway Tang Guoqiang, billed as a “special representative” to China’s foreign minister, headed the delegation from Beijing; most other countries sent either minister-level or deputy-minister-level officials (Russia was another exception, sending only its ambassador to the United States to the event). Last year, China and the United States surprised the world by unveiling a climate change deal wherein both sides agreed to take concrete steps to move toward clean energy. That, in turn, raised hopes that the December 2015 climate change conference in Paris could successfully unveil a new global roadmap for emissions reductions. Both China and the U.S. have been slow to adopt binding commitments to cut emissions, despite the fact that they are the world’s two largest carbon emitters; their joint cooperation will be crucial to getting a deal done in Paris. China, in particular, has long held that its status as a still-developing country should make it immune to mandatory cuts (a stance also adopted by India, the other hold-out at the GLACIER conference). 2014 marked a remarkable change in China’s willingness to commit to reducing global emissions, a side effect of China’s “war on pollution” domestically. Conversely, the failure to come to an agreement at the GLACIER conference sends a troubling signal for the Paris summit, and for U.S.-China cooperation in general.

Cooperation is on the brink – China’s carefully assessing US signals of commitment

Davenport, 16—Coral, covers energy and climate change policy at The New York Times, previously a fellow with the Metcalf Institute for Marine and Environmental Reporting and covered energy and the environment for National Journal, Politico, and Congressional Quarterly. “Supreme Court’s Blow to Emissions Efforts May Imperil Paris Climate Accord,” New York Times (NYT), Feb 10, http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/11/us/politics/carbon-emissions-paris-climate-accord.html --br

The Supreme Court’s surprise decision Tuesday to halt the carrying out of President Obama’s climate change regulation could weaken or even imperil the international global warming accord reached with great ceremony in Paris less than two months ago, climate diplomats say. The Paris Agreement, the first accord to commit every country to combat climate change, had as a cornerstone Mr. Obama’s assurance that the United States would enact strong, legally sound policies to significantly cut carbon emissions. The United States is the largest historical greenhouse gas polluter, although its annual emissions have been overtaken by China’s. But in the capitals of India and China, the other two largest polluters, climate change policy experts said the court’s decision threw the United States’ commitment into question, and possibly New Delhi’s and Beijing’s. “If the U.S. Supreme Court actually declares the coal power plant rules stillborn, the chances of nurturing trust between countries would all but vanish,” said Navroz K. Dubash, a senior fellow at the Center for Policy Research in New Delhi. “This could be the proverbial string which causes Paris to unravel.” The issue can be overwhelming. The science is complicated. We get it. This is your cheat sheet. The court did not block the rule permanently, but halted it from being carried out in the states until legal challenges against it have been decided, a process that could take a year or more. Legal experts said the justices’ decision to stop work on the rule before any court had decided against it was unprecedented and signaled that the regulation might ultimately be overturned. That could set back the United States’ climate efforts for years, although there would still be a chance for Washington to meet its commitments by 2025. “If the American clean energy plan is overturned, we’ll need to reassess whether the United States can meet its commitments,” said Zou Ji, the deputy director general of China’s National Center for Climate Change Strategy and International Cooperation, a government think tank in Beijing. Mr. Zou, who was an adviser to the Chinese delegation at the Paris negotiations, said by telephone: “It had seemed that with the American commitments, it was possible to get on the right emissions path globally. But without those commitments, that could be a blow to confidence in low-carbon development. In China domestically, there is also resistance to low-carbon policies, and they would be able to say: ‘Look, the United States doesn’t keep its word. Why make so many demands on us?’ ” Inaction by the United States has long been the chief obstacle to meaningful global climate change agreements. Mr. Obama sought to change that with aggressive but politically controversial Environmental Protection Agency rules to cut planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions from coal-fired power plants. With those rules, Mr. Obama won agreements from China and India to enact pollution reduction plans and helped push other countries to sign on to the Paris measure. The top priority for Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India remains to provide cheap electricity to the 300 million Indians without power. If the United States reneges on its commitments, “it really would strengthen the hand of those who say Paris was ineffective and a bad deal for India,” Mr. Dubash said. Under Mr. Obama’s commitment to the Paris Agreement, the United States will cut its emissions 26 percent to 28 percent by 2025, largely through the E.P.A. regulations on power plants and a mix of rules reining in pollution from cars, buildings and other sources. All of those policies were set to be carried out briskly so they would be well underway by the time Mr. Obama left office. White House officials insisted on Wednesday that the rule would eventually be upheld, and that given the timetable for litigation and for meeting the target, the United States could still achieve its Paris commitment. A White House spokesman, Eric Schultz, pointed to other greenhouse gas reduction policies Mr. Obama had established to help meet the 2025 target, including a federal budget agreement late last year that included long-term extensions of tax credits for wind and solar power. Still, the Supreme Court’s decision ensures that climate policy will not be set on Mr. Obama’s watch. The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit will hear oral arguments on the climate rule June 2 and is expected to issue its decision later this year, but an appeal to the Supreme Court is all but certain. If the justices agree to hear the case, a ruling is unlikely before June 2017. If the rule is eventually overturned, the E.P.A. is still required by law to put forth a regulation controlling carbon dioxide emissions. That rule would be shaped by the next president and face its own legal gantlet, pushing action years into the future. The White House and its supporters took hope from announcements that the governors of some states, including California, New York and Washington, would continue to work voluntarily to carry out the rule. But most states are expected to halt their compliance efforts. Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, had already been urging governors to refuse to comply with the plan. “These regulations are, in my view, likely illegal,” Mr. McConnell said Wednesday. “Yesterday’s Supreme Court order is just the latest sign of that. If nothing else, it shows we were right to let governors know their options.” American policy experts said that the Supreme Court decision might be the first of many fractures in the deal. “This pushback is not something that’s unique to the United States,” said John Sterman, a professor of management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who attended the negotiations in Paris. “It’s happening all over the developed world.” Poland and some other coal-reliant countries have resisted the European Union’s commitment under the agreement to more stringently reduce emissions across member states. Already, some people close to the climate talks worry that the events in the United States could lead to a repeat of what happened after the signing of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, the first major climate change treaty. Vice President Al Gore, a staunch environmentalist, negotiated the treaty with other world leaders, but the Senate voted against it. Then President George W. Bush pulled the United States out entirely.