1NC v Damien PH

OFF
 Framework – 1NC
Interpretation – the negative should not be burdened with the rejoinder against non-
topical affirmatives.

Topical affirmatives must defend a hypothetical plan to substantially increase United

States federal government fiscal redistribution in one of the three topic areas – they
don’t.

The “United States federal government” means 3 branches.

U.S. Legal ’16 [U.S. Legal; 2016; Organization offering legal assistance and attorney access; U.S. Legal,
“United States Federal Government Law and Legal Definition,” https://definitions.uslegal.com/u/united-
states-federal-government/]

The U nited S tates F ederal G overnment is established by the US Constitution. The Federal Government shares sovereignty over the
United Sates with the individual governments of the States of US. The Federal government has three branches: i) the legislature ,
which is the US Congress, ii) Executive , comprised of the President and Vice president of the US and iii) Judiciary . The
US Constitution prescribes a system of separation of powers and ‘checks and balances’ for the smooth functioning of all the three branches of
the Federal Government. The US Constitution limits the powers of the Federal Government to the powers assigned to it; all
powers not expressly assigned to the Federal Government are reserved to the States or to the people.

“Substantially increase” means make considerably greater.

Viviano ’13 [David; July 29; Justice for the Supreme Court of Michigan; Lexis, “People v. Hardy,” 494
Mich. 430]
The phrase begins with the words "conduct designed." HN8 "Designed" means "to intend for a definite purpose."25 Thus, the word "designed"
requires courts to evaluate the intent motivating the defendant's conduct.26 Next, we come to the words " substantially
increase ." "Substantial" means "of ample or considerable amount, quantity, size, etc."27 To " increase "
means "to make greater , as in number, size, strength, or quality; augment."28 Applying these definitions to
the relevant text , we conclude that HN9 it is proper to assess points under OV 7 for conduct that was intended to make a
victim's fear or anxiety greater by a considerable amount .29

Fiscal redistribution is inequality reduction by way of public taxes and transfers.

David K. Jesuit & Vincent A. Mahler 17, Jesuit is with the Department of Political Science & Public
Administration, Central Michigan University; Mahler is with the Department of Political Science, Loyola
University Chicago, “Fiscal Redistribution in Comparative Perspective: Recent Evidence from the
Luxembourg Income Study (LIS) Datacenter,” LIS Working Paper Series, No. 717,
http://www.lisdatacenter.org/wps/liswps/717.pdf
The figures described in this chapter update and extend our “Fiscal Redistribution Data set ,” which has provided data on
a number of aspects of inequality reduction in developed countries by way of taxes and social transfers . The
dataset was first compiled from LIS microdata in 2005. 4 In 2008, it was updated to reflect changes in LIS methodology and to include several
newly available income surveys. 5 Some of our measures were further extended and updated in 2011 in a separate effort by Caminada and
Wang.6 Our revised dataset, as well as that of Caminada and Wang, are available on the LIS website and have been widely used by researchers
interested in income inequality and government redistribution.

The purpose of this chapter is to describe the results of a thorough update of our data on fiscal redistribution that
we have recently undertaken, an update in which we have not only added new figures but also recalculated earlier ones to
reflect recent changes in LIS methodology . For a number of reasons, we believe that this is a good time to update
our data set “ from the ground up .” First, in mid-2011 the LIS implemented a new data template that made a number of changes
in traditional LIS variables. One important revision was a new definition of post-government income, which is now called “disposable household
income” (DHI). The main change is that most non-cash income (but not imputed rent) is now included in market income. This matters most for
developing countries, but it also has some effect on the developed countries that are our focus. Since this new DHI income concept has become
the basis for the LIS’s widely used “Key Figures7 ,” we believed that it was important for us to employ it as well.

Beyond this, there has been a broader effort in the new LIS template to improve standardization of income definitions across countries, and
numerous smaller revisions and corrections have been made to various datasets in the last few years, some initiated by the LIS and others by
the national statistical agencies that supply the original data. Finally, nearly all LIS variable names were changed in 2011, in an effort to develop
a consistent nomenclature. In this revision we will use the new names, which should make it easier for other researchers to replicate, update or
extend our calculations.

Aside from the new template just described, the LIS database has grown considerably since our last calculations. While our original data set
included 59 country-years, the version described here includes 116. One reason for this is that LIS Waves have become more frequent: they are
now conducted approximately every three years instead of every five. Of special interest is the fact that Wave VIII includes surveys conducted
in 2010, after the onset of the 2008 global financial crisis. In addition, the figures described here include no fewer than seven countries that
were not represented in earlier versions, either because the starting point of thenavailable surveys measured income net of direct taxes, or
because they have recently joined the LIS project.

To be specific, this revision includes all currently available (as of June, 2015) LIS “gross income” datasets, that is, data sets whose starting point
is pre-tax income.8 It does not include “net income” datasets, for which it is not possible to account for direct taxes, or “mixed” datasets, for
which coverage of direct taxes is incomplete.9 Furthermore, our coverage is limited to the developed countries; it does not include LIS datasets
for transitional or developing economies. In all, we include 20 countries for an average of 5.8 points in time ranging from 1967 through 2010.
The exact countries and years, along with all data and details on household size equivalization, household weighting, survey weighting, the
treatment of zero income, and top and bottom coding, are available in the on-line Appendix (available at
http://www.lisdatacenter.org/resources/other-databases/).

Measuring Income Inequality and Government Redistribution

The starting point in computing summary figures for income redistribution is to measure the distribution of
private sector income . The most important source is earnings , which are comprised of wages , salaries and
income from self-employment , including (as much as possible) non-cash compensation. To this figure are
added income from property , such as interest and dividends, rental income, royalties , non-cash
income (as much as possible) and pensions received by private and public sector employees. The total of these sources of
income is defined as “ factor income.” Finally, we add to factor income three additional, relatively minor,
sources of private but non-market income: merit-based educational transfers, transfers from non-profit
institution s , and inter-household transfers such as alimony and child support .

In measuring the effect of direct state redistribution via taxes and transfers , it is first necessary to add to private
sector income a number of public sector social transfers. As has been indicated, the coverage of such transfers in LIS income surveys is
quite extensive . The main benefit modes include retirement pensions ; child and family allowances ;
unemployment compensation ; sick pay ; accident pay ; disability pay ; maternity pay ; “other social
insurance ”; and means-tested social assistance of various kinds. After summing private and public sector sources of
income, we arrive at “total gross income.” The final step is to deduct from total gross income the most important taxes that are paid directly by
households: income taxes and mandatory social insurance contributions. When this is done, we arrive at our measure of posttax and -transfer
income, called “disposable household income”—the income households actually receive.

Vote neg –
1. FAIRNESS – Debate is a game – that means fairness is an intrinsic good and key
to access all of debates benefits. Post-facto revision of the topic unlimits the
research burden and eliminates neg ground due to a lack of stable agent or
mechanism. Overstretch makes neg prep impossible and renders ground
concessionary.
2. CLASH – research over points of difference enables refinement, sharpens
advocacy, and promotes skepticism – Predictable limits are key to iterative
testing because it requires well prepared opponents.
 JG CP
The United States should establish a federal jobs guarantee.

Even if the job guarantee in the abstract can be “liberal reformism,” in the context of
our imaginary it is decidedly revolutionary.
Akbar 23 – Visiting Professor of Law at Harvard Law Review, Charles W. Ebersold and Florence
Whitcomb Ebersold Professor of Constitutional Law at The Ohio State University, Moritz College of Law,
JD from the University of Michigan, served as editor-in-chief of the Michigan Law Review, writes and
teaches about the theories and practices of social movements and social change, and policing, race, and
inequality, current or past member of the boards of Ohio Voice, Law for Black Lives, and the Center for
Constitutional Rights. She is affiliated with the Department of Women’s Gender and Sexuality Studies
and Asian American Studies at Ohio State.Her academic work has appeared in Yale Law Journal, Stanford
Law Review, Harvard Law Review Forum, NYU Law Review, California Law Review, Southern Atlantic
Quarterly, Theory and Event, NOMOS, and more [Anna, “Non-Reformist Reforms and Struggles over Life,
Death, and Democracy,” The Yale Law Journal, 132:2497, DKP]
Democratization campaigns shed light on how neoliberalism aims to break social bonds and organization - in particular,

of workers and the poor - and puts the state in service of the market and the prison. They also shed light on the limits of so-called bourgeois or
electoral democracy, with its focus on the vote and its assertion of a division between politics and the economy. A central place where power is being

contested is at work: the place of "private government," where "bosses govern workers" in
extraordinary ways.2 " 3 The powerful worker organizing happening in key areas of the economy-
including on campuses and schools, at hospitals and on railroads, in Amazon warehouses and Starbucks
coffeehouses - speaks to a desire for collective organization against behemoth corporations and
concentrated economic power.2" 4 These campaigns attempt to build pathways for a countervailing force
against oligarchic power, and to shift power away from the concentrated top toward the many. The strike is a key tool against bosses and for more
democratic power at work.255
While many in the left social ecosystem champion the necessity of voting and even engaged in voter-turnout efforts to ensure Trump's 2020
defeat 2560— many campaigns reveal a distinct conception of democracy. Democracy must extend beyond the ballot box, to work, the economy, and a broader set
of social institutions. 25 7 Moreover, democracy requires the pursuit of political equality among people. 258 Reflective of this broad and substantive rather than
procedural approach to democracy, there are a range of campaigns that organize workers at work, and seek greater participation in budgeting, municipal politics,
and more. 259
For socialists and communists, the working class's "structural position in the economy" means that they have a latent power "to disrupt production and exchange" within the market that in turn is a key source of political power.260
The ultimate task is "to help foment and defend the advance of the working-class and other oppressed social sectors in a struggle for democratic socialism."261 This view sees political and economic power as relational rather than
distinct. In turn, it requires organizing for both.

The PRO Act and the Green New Deal. The DSA's twin campaigns for the Green New Deal and the Protect the Right to Organize (PRO) Act illustrates this understanding of a connection of political and economic power.26 2 The DSA
has contrasted its socialist Green New Deal from the resolution introduced in Congress and championed by the Sunrise Movement. 263 Their Green New Deal would "[d]ecarbonize the economy fully by 2030," "[d]emocratize
control over major energy systems and resources," "[c]enter the working class in a just transition," and "decommodify survival by guaranteeing living wages, healthcare, [and] childcare."264 Notice the emphasis on decarbonizing,
democratizing, and decommodifying - latent within this plan is an ambition to remake the economy, transforming our relationship to land, pushing toward public ownership, and assuring basic human needs.

But rather than attempting to reshape the Green New Deal in Congress, after President Biden's election the DSA embraced the PRO Act as its "highest national [legislative] priority."26 5 The PRO Act would promote workers'
abilities to organize, strike, and collectively bargain. It would fertilize the ground for greater alignment between recent polling showing that seventy-one percent of people in the United States approve of unions - the highest
approval rate since 1965- and the fact that only nine to twelve percent of U.S. workers belong to unions. 266 In other words, the PRO Act would roll back a panoply of pro-management laws and expand space for building worker
power.267

It may seem curious to champion a bill designed to facilitate labor organizing in relation to climate legislation. But the DSA argues their prioritization as necessary for building the kind of power required "to take on the bosses" and
to win "a bold transformative plan to avert the climate crisis."268 Their vision of redressing climate crisis requires a transformation of the economy and therefore work and production. As such, the DSA has worked closely with
unions and on building a climate-labor alliance. 269 Organizers with the DSA's Ecosocialist Working Group explain the PRO Act creates "preconditions for massively expanding unionization" that could seed the massive disruption
required-including through secondary climate strikes and labor strikes -to take on the fossil-fuel industry and to remake the economy.270

In this reframe, the struggle for the PRO Act and the Green New Deal takes on non-reformist hues. These are not simply battles
for unionization and
the environmental regulation, but for shifting the balance of power: "put[ting] power back in the hands of the

working-class majority" and transforming the political economy.27 1 The prioritization of these campaigns
reflects a strategic assessment of the roadblocks for worker organizing and for fighting the fossilfuel
industry. Without "a reinvigorated labor movement," there is no "power to reshape the economy"2 7 2 or to "break[] the
corporate stranglehold on our political system."2 73 In other words, the power and organization of workers in the economy is a
touchstone for the power and organization of the working-class within the state and society. One cannot exist without the other. Connecting these legislative
battles, then, partly redresses the long-standing Marxist critique of social movement focused on redistribution without contending for the means of production.
Speaking to the depressed political power of working people, despite the unprecedented popularity of unions within the public, the PRO Act passed the
House in 2021, but never made it out of committee in the Senate.27 4 It was featured in the Biden White House's original version of the 2021 Build Back Better bill-
but was cut before the Inflation Reduction Act and Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act took shape and became law. 275
IV. REORIENTING REFORM

Non-reformist reforms reorient liberal and neoliberal approaches to reform in significant ways. They require
a horizon beyond legalism; they embrace antagonism and conflict rather than depoliticization and neutrality; they aim to shift the balance of power; and they build
mass organization and prepare the people to govern.
A. Beyond Legalism
A "reformist reform" comports with the "rationality and practicability of a given system" as it "rejects those objectives and demands-however deep the need for
them-which are incompatible with the preservation of the system." 276 In contrast, the non-reformist reform gestures beyond the law and what the state allows. In

theRed Nation's conception , the non-reformist reform "fundamentally challenges the existing structure
of power by prioritizing, organizing, and elevating the needs and demands of the masses."27 The organization
goes on: "We don't want to improve the system by implementing policies from the top down, we want to destroy it- either by fire or a million small cuts - in order to

replace it." 2 78 A fundamental characteristic is that the non-reformist reform puts pressure on prevailing
legal arrangements and the power relations they overlay. R ather than conforming to legal logics, non-
reformist reforms must break them. In this sense, non-reformist reforms are beyond legalism, reaching
for alternative possibilities.
Campaigns like Stop Cop City, or to cancel rent or student debt, push beyond conventional reform discourse to reshape and contest the power of the state. But
these campaigns are also beyond legalism in their rejection of formal legal and political processes for their inefficacy - for how those processes are captured by

those with concentrated economic and political power, rather than the people. Campaigns for non-reformist reforms then rely on
"inside" and "outside" strategies. This entails a combination of legal and extralegal strategies and
tactics .2" Inside strategies are those that adhere to and abide by the rules of formal law and politics:
lobbying, litigation, voting. Outside strategies rely, instead, on protest, disruption, strikes, even
mutual-aid networks - the building and exercising of autonomous and unruly power. These strategies disrupt the
rules and institutions of formal law and politics and make new pathways possible . As Cornel West explained in his essay The Role of Law in
Progressive Politics, "significant extraparliamentary social motion [that] brings power and pressure to bear on the prevailing status quo" is necessary for affirmative,

Without it, only defensive work is possible .28 0

progressive, or positive legal work.

Embracing non-reformist reformism forces essential questions about the contradictory place of law in
emancipatory struggle. To accept that reformism is not the horizon but a tool or tactic, one must understand the emancipatory project as one beyond
regulation, legalism, and legal process. For if one fallacy is that law is apolitical or above politics, it is equally untrue that law is all of politics, or that it sets the terms

of politics altogether. The rules under which we live are more capacious than what courts, legislatures, or executives say and do. There is the law of
capital ; the afterlives of slavery ; and power of the prison, the patriarchy, the family, and the church. 281 We should
proliferate our understanding of where law takes shape and in relation to what, who acts on it, who it acts
on, who benefits, who loses, and who resists - and how resistance individual and collective reshapes law . The aim should be

more ambitious than to understand sociologically the life of the law - of where the law lives and the myriad ways it works28 2 - but to understand all
the places where it can be undone and remade.
MMT breaks apart capitalist understandings of money. Instead it’s a limitless public
good that be leveraged to fund universal care through a public jobs guarantee. This
shatters the foundations of the neoliberal social order which has eroded the states
capacity to provision public goods.
Scott Ferguson 15, Research Scholar at the Binzagr Institute for Sustainable Prosperity, 4/17/15, “The
Unheard-of Center: Critique after Modern Monetary Theory,”
https://arcade.stanford.edu/content/unheard-center-critique-after-modern-monetary-theory

Everyone knows that money makes the world go round. Yet MMT shows us that, far
from being a private and finite commodity
or an unwieldy network of global exchange, money operates as a centralized political architecture that
is public , limitless and, above all, answerable to social needs and contestation . Thus critique after MMT
assumes a singular aim, which is to make money’s answerability perceptible .

Both historically and ontologically money arises from the polity that issues it. Government establishes a money
economy, MMT avers, by demanding taxes be paid in a currency that it alone supplies. And because political
governance remains the source of money’s abstract value, there are no limits to how much government can spend
toward the public purpose. As MMTer Warren Mosler will variously put it, demanding to know whence a political
union will procure the funds it requires to support its population is tantamount to the absurdity of
querying a sports referee regarding the source of the points she intends to award during a match . With
this, MMT reveals that every currency-issuing government can “afford” to take care of the peoples and
environs it subsumes and that the cause of modern economic mystification is not money’s mediation of
commodity production, as Karl Marx famously argued, but the commodification of money as such.
(See here, here, and here for MMT’s understanding of so-called hyperinflation. Though multipart and complex, MMT’s argument is that
inflation is always and everywhere a political phenomena, rather than a narrowly economic one, and
that the conventional fear-mongering used to justify interest-rate hikes and spending cuts is as wrong-
headed as it is pernicious .)
MMT is by no means an innocuous description of modern monetary operations, as both its supporters and detractors frequently claim. Rather,
it spells a complete topological inversion of the money form as traditionally conceived. I envision it this way: MMT turns customary economic
reasoning on its head by folding the conventional image of money outside-in. That is to say, whereas
Left and Right orthodoxies
situate money in a quasi-autonomous marketplace and envision the nation-state as a sideline enforcer
of private exchange, MMT positions the state as the grounding center of economic relations and
frames the market as an internal supplement to monetary governance. Money, then, is resolutely interior
to formal political power. A governing body may employ monetary technologies directly or indirectly ,
through immediate public spending or through bank lending and so-called “market mechanisms.” However, in no way should
monetary power be reduced to private power nor should money’s governing center be mistaken for
the market’s decentralizing and often destabilizing effects.
Needless to say, the history of modern money is the history of this center’s ongoing repression. This process begins in the late seventeenth-
century when the English bourgeoisie invents the legal ruse of public debt and continues today with the crushing obligations and austerity
perpetuated by the Troika in the Eurozone. Still, no matter how intensely money’s political interior is neglected or disavowed, MMT reasons,
government continues to condition economic relations and shape their recurrent failures and excesses .
By inverting money’s conventional topology, MMT clears the way for an unprecedented mode of
critique : a practice that reads social formations through money’s political center and does so in order to
make money’s answerability palpable.

Money is an infinite public reserve that has been choked off at its source . The state, on MMT’s view,
maintains the money relation as a variable infrastructure of laws, ledgers, dispensations, qualifications,
and cancellations. This maintenance requires constant retooling in response to extant crises and
antagonisms. Unlike money’s private users, moreover, only government wields the capacity to furnish all persons
with meaningful employment and sufficient access to the common store of wealth. To choke off this power , MMT
insists, is not a de facto consequence of a money economy—there is no such thing as a natural rate of unemployment, for
instance—but, rather, a political decision to maintain populations in conditions of poverty, violence, and

despair .
Critique after MMT must hold open money’s unlimited reserve by tending at once to the political infrastructures that sustain economic activity
and to the social emanations such forms condition.

It is precisely in overlooking money’s political center, meanwhile, that the Marxist critical tradition meets its limit.
Marxism remains indispensable for tracing the contradictions and injustices precipitated by private exchange relations and, for this reason, it
plays a significant role in MMT’s ongoing interventions (see here, here, and here). However, the
Marxist tradition reifies
economic negligence and cruelty every time it declares capital, rather than monetary governance and
public spending , the proletarian’s primary horizon of contestation. One must never condone the brutal history of
what Marx termed primitive accumulation. But we also should not allow our condemnation of state violence to block
the path to a more equitable future .
Folding the conventional image of money outside-in, MMT attunes critique to what I shall henceforth call the unheard-of center of modern life.
(I borrow this expression from Rilke via Martin Heidegger and admittedly turn it toward purposes not originally intended.) By unheard-of
center, I mean money’s deep political architecture and the social expressions to which it variously gives rise and responds. MMT points the way
to this unheard-of center. However, since MMT is essentially an economic discourse and one that, by its own admission, struggles in addressing
the cryptic site where monetary and social production meet, the critical
attunement it makes possible necessitates a total
cultural reorientation: one that turns the entirety of cultural production irreducibly outside-in .

This means resisting the Marxist impulse to reduce the complexities of cultural production to a dance
with private exchange value. Presently, no cultural artifact is a pure effect of decentralized financial technics. Both the artifact and
financial media are paracentric phenomena, conditioned by the deficiencies and excesses of a public utility. This is not wishful thinking, but a
brute operational reality. As economist Zoltan Pozsar has shown, even the so-called “shadow banking” sector operates wholly within state-
insured monetary systems. This sector not only regularly anchors its complex private bets on the security of U. S. Treasury Bills (and ever riskier
instruments fashioned in the image of Treasury Bills), but also immediately circles back to the sovereign monetary base during financial crises.

For this reason, critique after MMT must mind the strivings, irresolutions, and repressions that inhere within money’s centrally-conditioned
social orbits and leverage such discoveries toward a more just future.

The critic animated by MMT assumes that the center does not hold, but insists that it nonetheless persists as so many holding patterns:
patterns that no social actor can presently think or act without. Government austerity , permissive financial laws,
massive private debt , uncompensated care work, racialized incarceration , the phenomenology of CGI
blockbusters, the subtleties of aesthetic criticism: these
forms realize the money relation under neoliberalism and
keep our fallen world afloat . They give us our bearing. They hold us in tension. They condition our futurity . Money’s
holding patterns comprise the grounds in which we dwell and hence constitute the only bases from
which critique can proceed .
I agree with media theorist Steven Shaviro: theonly way out is through. Where I part with this familiar appeal to critical immanence,
however, concerns the aperture through which it imagines itself passing. In holding up private exchange value as a porthole
to the future, Marxist modes of immanent criticism mire us in the contradictions of the global
marketplace, while reducing the riddle of tomorrow to the enigmas found in capital’s fantastical
expressions. Critique after MMT , by contrast, shifts the plane of immanence to the political center that
conditions social expression and treats money’s holding patterns as an interior threshold onto better
days.
No matter how centrifugal or aleatory, every sensuous exchange in modern society bears the mark of the center’s opaque rhythms and sway.
To make money answerable to politics , one must not only mind these historical registrations, but also
problematize how orthodox visions of abstract value have come to order appearance itself .
La nouvelle gauche

By revealing that money is a boundless public reserve, MMT offers means to socialize everything from banking and
electoral campaigns to higher education and non-commercial artmaking. But the lynchpin of MMT’s
intervention is its commitment to full employment and what its adherents call “ the Job Guarantee .”
The appellation “Job Guarantee” is cringeworthy, to be sure. At best, its reduction of social labor to a “job” demonstrates a lack of critical savvy.
At worst, its promised “guarantee” conjures neo-Puritan fantasies of salvation through work.

Yet theimplications of MMT’s ill-termed proposal could not be more radical . MMT’s Job Guarantee involves the
permanent financing of community-organized public works programs, which would give every person
the right to non-corporate living-wage employment , compensate and reorganize much feminized and
unpaid care work, and force service sector employers such as Walmart and McDonalds to outdo the
public sector’s wages and working conditions . Hence, far from a neoconservative prop for capitalist
interests, the J ob G uarantee is designed to involve people in the labor of serving communal and
ecological wellbeing , while transforming the social totality from below.

When a governing body elects to maintain even a small percentage of its population in conditions of
unemployment and moneylessness, it sends capital into global tailspins in search of cheap labor and
profitable investment, shackles disparate classes to unredeemable private debts, prevents alienated
communities from addressing local crises, and debilitates everyone’s capacity to demand a better
world . In its neoliberal instantiation, this Liberal gambit then shores up the fallout with punishing fees
and taxes, paltry welfare checks, an out of control prison industry, and vast informal care networks .

In contrast to this frenzied and inadequate supplementation, MMT’s

Job Guarantee aims to endow local councils with
funds to furnish every market reject with living-wage employment (say $25 per hour plus health care, to start). The
program would expand and contract countercyclically with market fluctuations and would involve its
participants in meaningful social and environmental projects. Drawing upon non-profits and existing informal support
networks, such projects might include child and elderly care facilities that socialize what Marxo-feminist Nancy
Fraser has called capitalism’s hidden abode; sustainable gardens and public beautification services that bring
dignity and vitality to the other side of the tracks; and art and cultural centers that help communities
simultaneously imagine and shape the transformations the Job Guarantee makes possible .
The Job Guarantee would not be beset by financial constraints . Unlike the ludicrous America Works
program proposed by President Underwood on Netflix’s House of Cards, MMT’s proposal does not require
draining funds away from FEMA or dismantling the Social Security System . Instead, the J ob G uarantee
is to be limited only by real resources, the collective imagination, and political will.

Some participants may make a life in the public sector. Others will elect to join the private domain. But no
longer will market activity be predicated upon a moneyless underclass or will it be acceptable to pass
off systemic abandonment as the vagaries of nature .

Undoubtedly, MMT’sJob Guarantee is no cure-all or quick-acting salve. It will not eradicate injustice or turn the
greedy into saints. What the J ob G uarantee will do, however, is introduce a radical new directionality into
the present totality, which shall drastically curtail systemic poverty and shift the structural
foundations of economic life . It will set the agonies and ecstasies of the marketplace atop a resilient
care economy and give every member of society basic access to the combined yields of public and
private labor. It will force today’s low-paying service sector to either offer better wages and working
conditions or risk losing laborers to local public works projects. But the Job Guarantee is by no means a total loss for
capital either. Creating a stable consumer base that in turn increases private profits, the Job Guarantee would soften the blow of its wage
increases, while making socially productive business investments far less risky. With this, the Job Guarantee promises to lessen
the structural need for hazardous speculation and private usury . Surely, this increased stability and
reduction in indebtedness would amplify everyone’s capacity to demand better living conditions .

If such a program were implemented by a global hegemon such as the U nited S tates, moreover, threats of
mass emigration and economic collapse elsewhere would impel other governments to follow suit . The
result will not immediately liberate Chinese factory workers or stop corporations from looting African
mines. Nor will it reign in Wall Street or the City of London overnight. But it will reorganize global supply chains and
multinational finance by confronting them with new pressures and prospects . For example, an international
political economy driven by robust full employment programs would decouple problems of employment
and social welfare from capital’s erratic global trajectories in addition to mitigating the market hazards that condition
such movements in the first place. Supplanting what economist Abba Lerner once termed the myth of world money with an
interdependent politics rooted in strong public spending regimes , the MMT Job Guarantee would thus
turn neoliberal financial capitalism outside-in and expose the constricting paroxysms of present
begin to
social production to more congenial and commodious orbits.

Though seemingly unromantic and bureaucratic, MMT’s

Job Guarantee offers today’s Left an ulterior erotics of struggle, which avoids
the twin pitfalls of “ no alternative” zealousness , on one hand, and the disastrous exits proposed by
accelerationists, autonomists, and communisation advocates, on the other. While neoliberal apologists
promise capitalist renewal with the same monetary imagination in view, radicals imagine bohemian
coalitions leading the multitudes through the rubble to a moneyless beyond . MMT’s proposal lacks
the allure of both visions. Yet as I wish to argue, it courts the future in a manner that is at once more stirring
and far-reaching than either .

Oriented toward a sublime everydayness, the

Job Guarantee promises to arouse the center anew without obliging
quotidian relations to adopt the colors of particular vanguards or to suffer the injuries of infrastructural
disintegration. The excitement of this intervention is that it manages to address the contemporary as an ineluctable
totality, while making room for the stubborn facticity of incongruous ways of getting by and along.
Rather than delimit the future to a neoliberal nightmare or to contingent rebel poetics , then, the erotics of
struggle ushered in by MMT’s Job Guarantee embraces the present totality in all its heterogeneity, horror,
and gaucheness.
 BI CP – 1NC
The United States federal government should provide a basic income.

Unconditional transfers disrupt stereotypes about welfare recipients – growing

consensus shows that providing people money with no strings attached alleviates
poverty and increases economic stability.
Blake 21 [John Blake, journalist, writes about race, religion, politics and other assorted topics.; “Biden
just dethroned the Welfare Queen”; CNN Politics; May 16, 2021;
https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/16/politics/biden-welfare-queen-blake/index.html]//eleanor

The Welfare Queen also is no longer a potent symbol because Biden has taken advantage of a shift in
thinking about how to help the poor.

There is a growing consensus in academic circles that one of the best ways to help the poor is to give
them money with no strings attached . Much of traditional government aid to the poor is built on the assumption that poor
people are morally irresponsible. Recipients of aid often must submit to drug tests, interviews and proof of employment – restrictions that
imply poor people can’t be trusted to make their own decisions.

The city of Stockton, California, recently launched a program that shattered those assumptions. The city sent $500 monthly payments to 125
randomly selected people who were living in neighborhoods with average incomes lower than the city median of $46,000 a year and told them
they could spend the money as they saw fit – no strings attached.

Researchers said that the people who received the free money were able to land full-time jobs at
more than twice the rate of people in another group that did not receive cash. The extra money also
gave recipients more stability to learn new job skills , start businesses and improve their mental
outlook . Other similar experiments around the globe have reached similar conclusions.
Annie Lowrey, a writer at The Atlantic magazine, summed up the key finding of the Stockton experiment when she said:

“The best way to get people out of poverty is just to get them out of poverty; the best way to offer
families more resources is just to offer them more resources.”

Biden’s economic plans reflect this thinking. His American Rescue plan sent direct payments of $1,400
per person to many American households. (Former President Trump sent similar payments during the pandemic to many
Americans.)
 Heg DA
Critiques of hegemony fracture it from within – communicating the message that
hegemony is good is key to avoid global war and shore up assurances
Robert M. Gates 23. PhD in Russian and Soviet History at Georgetown University, MA in History at
Indiana University, former US Secretary of Defense. “The Dysfunctional Superpower.” Foreign Affairs.
November/December 2023. https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/robert-gates-america-china-
russia-dysfunctional-superpower

MEETING THE MOMENT

The epic contest between the United States and its allies on one side and China, Russia, and their fellow
travelers on the other is well underway. To ensure that Washington is in the strongest possible position to deter its adversaries from making additional
strategic miscalculations, U.S. leaders must first address the breakdown in the decades-long bipartisan agreement with respect to the United States’ role in the world. It is not surprising that

job of political
after 20 years of war in Afghanistan and Iraq, many Americans wanted to turn inward, especially given the United States’ many problems at home. But it is the

leaders to counter that sentiment and explain how the country’s fate is inextricably bound up in what
happens elsewhere. President Franklin Roosevelt once observed that “the greatest duty of a statesman is to educate.” But recent presidents, along with most members of
Congress, have utterly failed in this essential responsibility.

Americans need to understand why U.S. global leadership, despite its costs, is vital to preserving
peace and prosperity. They need to know why a successful Ukrainian resistance to the Russian invasion
is crucial for deterring China from invading Taiwan. They need to know why Chinese domination of the
Western Pacific endangers U.S. interests. They need to know why Chinese and Russian influence in the global South matters to American pocketbooks.
They need to know why the United States’ dependability as an ally is so consequential for preserving peace.
They need to know why a Chinese-Russian alliance threatens the United States. These are the kinds of

connections that American political leaders need to be drawing every day.

It is not just one Oval Office address or speech on the floor of Congress that is needed. Rather, a
drumbeat of repetition is required for the message to sink in. Beyond regularly communicating to
the American people directly , and not through spokespersons, the president needs to spend time over drinks and dinners and in small meetings with members of Congress and
the media making the case for the United States’ leadership role. Then, given the fragmented nature of modern-day communications, members of Congress need to carry the message to their
constituents across the country.

What is that message? It is that American global leadership has provided 75 years of great-power peace—the
longest stretch in centuries . Nothing in a nation’s life is costlier than war , nor does anything else represent a greater threat to its security and
prosperity. And nothing makes war likelier than putting one’s head in the sand and pretending that the

United States is not affected by events elsewhere , as the country learned before World War I, World War II, and 9/11. The military power the
United States possesses, the alliances it has forged, and the international institutions it has designed are all
essential to deterring aggression against it and its partners. As a century of evidence should make clear, failing to
deal with aggressors only encourages more aggression. It is naive to believe that Russian success in Ukraine will not lead to further Russian
aggression in Europe and possibly even a war between NATO and Russia. And it is equally naive to believe that Russian success in Ukraine

will not significantly increase the likelihood of Chinese aggression against Taiwan and thus potentially a
war between the United States and China.
A world without reliable U.S. leadership would be a world of authoritarian predators, with all other
countries potential prey . If America is to safeguard its people, its security, and its liberty, it must continue to embrace its global
leadership role. As British Prime Minister Winston Churchill said of the United States in 1943, “The price of greatness is responsibility.”
Rebuilding support at home for that responsibility is essential to rebuilding trust among allies and
awareness among adversaries that the United States will fulfill its commitments. Because of domestic
divisions, mixed messages , and political leaders’ ambivalence about the United States’ role in the world,
there is significant doubt abroad about American reliability. Both friends and adversaries wonder whether Biden’s engagement and
alliance-building is a return to normal or whether Trump’s “America first” disdain for allies will be the dominant thread in American policy in the future. Even the closest of allies are hedging

In a world where Russia and China are on the prowl, that is particularly dangerous.
their bets about America.

Restoring public support for U.S. global leadership is the highest priority, but the United States must take other steps to
actually exercise that role. First, it needs to go beyond “pivoting” to Asia. Strengthening relationships with Australia, Japan, the Philippines, South Korea, and other countries in the region is
necessary but not sufficient. China and Russia are working together against U.S. interests on every continent. Washington needs a strategy for dealing with the entire world—particularly in
Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East, where the Russians and the Chinese are fast outpacing the United States in developing security and economic relationships. This strategy ought not
to divide the world into democracies and authoritarians. The United States must always advocate for democracy and human rights everywhere, but that commitment must not blind
Washington to the reality that U.S. national interests sometimes require it to work with repressive, unrepresentative governments.

American hegemony staves off revisionist quests that go nuclear. Any attempt away
from deterrence ends in great-power conflict.
Stephen Brooks and William Wohlforth 23. Brooks is a Professor of Government at Dartmouth
College, a Guest Professor at Stockholm University, and has a PhD from Yale University. Wohlforth is
Daniel Webster Professor at Dartmouth College, and has a PhD from Yale University. 4-18-2023. "The
Myth of Multipolarity"; Foreign Affairs; https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/china-
multipolarity-myth; Accessed 7-20-2023
ROUGH TIMES FOR REVISIONISM

All this might seem cold comfort, given that even the limited revisionist quests of China and Russia could still spark
a great-power war , with its frightening potential to go nuclear . But it is important to put the system’s
stability in historical perspective. During the Cold War, each superpower feared that if all of Germany fell
to the other, the global balance of power would shift decisively . (And with good reason: in 1970, West Germany’s
economy was about one-quarter the size of the United States’ and two-thirds the size of the Soviet Union’s.) Because each superpower was so
close to such an economically valuable object, and because
the prize was literally split between them, the result was an
intense security competition in which each based hundreds of thousands of troops in their half of
Germany. The prospect of brinkmanship crises over Germany’s fate loomed in the background and occasionally came to the foreground, as
in the 1961 crisis over the status of Berlin.

Or compare the present situation to the multipolar 1930s, when, in less than a decade, Germany went from being a disarmed, constrained
power to nearly conquering all of Eurasia. But Germany was able to do so thanks to two advantages that do not exist today. First, a great power
could build up substantial military projection power in only a few years back then, since the weapons systems of the day were relatively
uncomplicated. Second, Germany had a geographically and economically viable option to augment its power by conquering neighboring
countries. In 1939, the Nazis first added the economic resources of Czechoslovakia (around ten percent the size of Germany’s) and then Poland
(17 percent). They used these victories as a springboard for more conquests in 1940, including Belgium (11 percent), the Netherlands (ten
percent), and France (51 percent). China doesn’t have anything like the same opportunity. For one thing, Taiwan’s GDP is less than five percent
of China’s. For another, the island is separated from the mainland by a formidable expanse of water. As the MIT research scientist Owen Cote
has underscored, because China lacks command of the sea surface, it simply “cannot safeguard a properly sized, seaborne invasion force and
the follow-on shipping necessary to support it during multiple transits across the 100-plus mile-wide Taiwan Straits.” Consider that the English
Channel was a fifth of the width but still enough of a barrier to stop the Nazis from conquering the United Kingdom.

Japan and South Korea are the only other large economic prizes nearby, but Beijing is in no position to
take a run at them militarily, either. And because Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan have economies that are
knowledge-based and highly integrated with the global economy, their wealth cannot be effectively
extracted through conquest . The Nazis could, for example, commandeer the Czech arms manufacturer Skoda Works to enhance the
German war machine, but China could not so easily exploit the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company. Its operation depends on
employees with specialized knowledge who could flee in the event of an invasion and on a pipeline of inputs from around the globe that war
would cut off.

If America came home from Europe or Asia, a more dangerous , unstable world would emerge.

Today’s revisionists face another obstacle: while they are confined to regional balancing, the United States can hit
back globally . For instance, the United States is not meeting Russia directly on the battlefield but is instead
using its global position to punish the country through a set of devastating economic sanctions and a
massive flow of conventional weaponry, intelligence , and other forms of military assistance to Kyiv. The
United States could likewise “ go global ” if China tried to take Taiwan, imposing a comprehensive naval
blockade far from China’s shores to curtail its access to the global economy . Such a blockade would ravage the
country’s economy (which relies greatly on technological imports and largely plays an assembly role in global production chains) while harming
the U.S. economy far less.

Because the United States has so much influence in the global economy, it can use economic levers to
punish other countries without worrying much about what they might do in response. If China tried to conquer
Taiwan , and the United States imposed a distant blockade on China, Beijing would certainly try to
retaliate economically . But the strongest economic arrow in its quiver wouldn’t do much damage. China
could, as many have feared, sell some or all of its massive holdings of U.S. Treasury securities in an attempt to raise borrowing costs in the
United States. Yet the U.S. Federal Reserve could just purchase all the securities. As the economist Brad Setser has put it, “ The
U.S.
ultimately holds the high cards here: the Fed is the one actor in the world that can buy more than
China can ever sell.”

Today’s international norms also hinder revisionists. That is no accident, since many of these standards of
behavior were created by the United States and its allies after World War II . For example, Washington
promulgated the proscription against the use of force to alter international boundaries not only to
prevent major conflicts but also to lock in place the postwar status quo from which it benefited. Russia
has experienced such strong pushback for invading Ukraine in part because it has so blatantly violated
this norm. In norms as in other areas, the global landscape is favorable terrain for the United States and rough
for revisionists .

It solves interventions by providing the US with the freedom of action to avoid ill-
advised fights. BUT retrenchment greenlights proxy conflicts and adventurism.
Noel Thomas Anderson 19. Assistant professor in the Department of Political Science at the University
of Toronto. “Competitive Intervention, Protracted Conflict, and the Global Prevalence of Civil War.”
International Studies Quarterly 63(3): 692-706.
Systemic Dimensions: The Varying Prevalence of Competitive Intervention

The framework articulated above not only provides a comprehensive account of the duration effects of
competitive intervention on civil wars—it also highlights a candidate explanation for the recent decline in the prevalence of
intrastate conflict. Insofar as state decisions to aid combatants are consistent with competitive state policy-making,
temporal variation in geopolitical competition between states should affect trends in the prevalence of
competitive intervention. Variation in the prevalence of competitive intervention should in turn affect temporal trends in the
prevalence of internal conflict through the duration effects described above.

Bipolarity extended the geographic scope of

Consider the pervasiveness of US-Soviet competition during the Cold War.
concern and broadened the range of factors included in the competition between the superpowers.
American and Soviet leaders worried that challenges to the existing distribution of power might raise
doubts about the credibility of their alliance commitments, thereby encouraging their allies to drift toward
neutrality or, worse still, switch sides (Hironaka 2005, 107–11). Because challenges to the status quo were
perceived to threaten the relative balance of power and credibility, they were resisted . Yet, because any
action by one superpower was perceived as an attempt to gain a geostrategic advantage, it demanded a
response . The end result was a prolif eration of US-Soviet competitive intervention , wherein the
superpowers committed resources to opposing government and rebel forces fighting on the periphery of their
spheres of influence.

That many civil wars during the Cold War were superpower proxy wars is a well-rehearsed perspective ,
but what is missing from existing accounts is an explanation for why superpower sponsorship should be associated with longer conflicts. If
foreign civil wars played such a key role in the larger Cold War struggle, why did the superpowers not do what was necessary to help their
respective sides win? The theory outlined above provides an answer: challenges to the relative balance of power and
credibility necessitated reflexive responses, but the impossible stakes of direct confrontation advised caution. While the
superpowers were compelled to intervene, they were simultaneously—and paradoxically—compelled to do so with restraint.

Superpower rivalry also had secondary duration effects . Constrained by the need to both deter and avoid direct confrontation,
Washington and Moscow employed indirect strategies for projecting power . Military aid was an integral
element of their competition for influence, and accordingly, money and weapons diffused not only to
civil wars, but across the international system. This assistance empowered client states, providing a set of Cold
War framings and superpower arms that could be used to justify and implement independent foreign
policy objectives. Notably, the superpowers struggled to control their clients’ adventurism ; by exploiting
fears of defection to the opposing bloc, clients found ways to commandeer superpower aid for their
own self-interested ends (Krause 1991). The net result was a proliferation of interventions by otherwise
weak states in civil wars across the globe .

In the post–Cold War period, by contrast , state clients have a harder time garnering American aid.
Regional powers continue to intervene in civil wars, but they can no longer rely on the reflexive support
of the USSR when conflicts of interest arise vis-à-vis US policy, nor can they threaten defection to the
Soviet-bloc in the face of American sanction. In the unipolar period , the U nited S tates has greater choice
in which state clients it chooses to support, enjoys greater flexibility to discipline adventurism by
weaker powers, and maintains “command of the commons” to restrict flows of economic and military
aid around the globe (Posen 2003). Together, these features of the unipolar system constrain foreign
adventurism by lesser powers relative to the Cold War period, thereby reducing—though not eliminating—the prevalence of
competitive interventions among neighboring states and regional rivals. In this way, the transition from a
bipolar to unipolar system not only terminated superpower proxy warfare , but also decreased the
rate of competitive intervention by lesser powers.
Case
 Presumption – 1NC
Vote negative on presumption – the threshold for voting aff is to solve the harms they
present through a substantial shift in the status quo – they don’t
1.--The affirmative conflates scholarship with praxis – the reading of the 1AC does not
actualize “new” forms of knowledge, but strategically uses academic work to produce
a ballot, which means
a---THIS debate’s insufficient to change community norms because the ballot
does not create change in itself, there is only a risk that debate is worse
because it necessitates negation, not dialogue.
b---it’s already solved because it can be read in other ways through community
outside of competition still inside debate
c--- Signaling---voting AFF doesn’t affirm their scholarship, reading and listening
to the 1AC is sufficient---pretending the ballot is what unlocks AFF solvency
cements placebo activism and creates violent attachments to debate wins
2---The affirmative lacks a telos which means we never know when we have done
“enough” – turns solvency because it maximizes exhaustion and creates no distinction
between action and inaction. Other models allow the aff to win through massive
generalizations of the status quo with no mechanism to resolve it.
 Cap Good – 1NC
Growth is driving clean tech now --- solves sustainability globally
Adam Dorr 23. PhD in Environmental Policy and Planning at UCLA. MSc in Environmental Science at the
University of Michigan. “Brighter transcript: Episode 1 – The future of the environment is brighter than
you think.” 9/4/2023. https://rethinkdisruption.com/brighter-1-the-future-of-the-environment/

there has never been greater cause for optimism about the future of
So, let’s dive right in. The book’s thesis is that
the environment because we are on the cusp of technology disruptions in four foundational sectors:
Energy, Transportation, Food, and Labor. The new clean technologies that are driving these disruptions
will enable us to solve many of our most pressing environmental problems, including climate change.
That’s it. That’s the thesis in a nutshell.
Why We Have Had Such Serious Environmental Problems
Okay, so let’s dig in a little deeper. To start off: Why? We
have we had such serious environmental problems up until
now? Well, it’s because we’ve been stuck with dirty, expensive older technology – fossil fuels, combustion
engine vehicles, animal agriculture. There’s a great deal of pessimism around environmental issues because
most folks are under the false impression that we will continue to be stuck with these old technologies
for decades or centuries to come.
Why be optimistic? Well, it’s because we aren’t stuck. The clean technologies we need to solve our
environmental problems already exist; they’re here today. In energy, the technologies are solar power, wind
power, batteries, and heat pumps. In transportation, it’s electric vehicles, autonomous driving, and ride-
hailing. In food, it’s precision fermentation and cellular agriculture. In labor, it’s artificial intelligence,
automation, and robotics.
CHART OMITTED
These aren’t science fiction anymore. Thirty years ago, they still were, but today they’re science fact. They’re here and they’re
getting cheaper by the minute.
What is Disruption and Why are These Ones So Good?
What do we mean by ‘disruption’? A disruption occurs when new technology emerges that dramatically
outperforms – and therefore out-competes older technology – that rapidly transforms a market, a
segment, an industry, an entire sector of the economy as a result.
Four disruptions: Energy, Transportation, Food, and Labor. Any one of them would be world-changing on
its own, just as the disruption of information and communications by the internet has been world-changing.
But all four of them simultaneously? That’s nothing short of astonishing.
Now, luckily, these disruptions are being driven by clean technologies. That did not have to be the case. We have had dirty
disruptions in the past. Fossil fuels themselves disrupted biofuels in the 19th century, for example.
So why are these four disruptions today such amazingly good news for the environment? There are three key reasons.
First, they
will directly mitigate greenhouse gas emissions. Ninety percent of all emissions today come
from energy, transportation, and food. So disrupting those sectors with clean technologies gets us most
of the way to net zero emissions.
CHART OMITTED
Second, disruptions happen for economic reasons . The new technology is better and cheaper, and so it
outcompetes the older technology. And “better” can mean a lot of different things. It can mean more
efficient, cleaner, higher quality, and so on. But the bottom line is that the new technology offers much
greater value for money.
We’re talking about Energy, Transportation, Food, and Labor here. Those things are cornerstones of the global
economy, of civilization itself. They are foundational because they’re inputs into everything else. What
does that mean? It means that as these four things become cheaper, everything we make with them, everything we do with them, will become
cheaper too.
So, the four disruptions are going to make everything much, much cheaper.
And that’s fantastic news in general, but
it’s especially crucial for the environment. Why? Because the main
reason why solving environmental problems today is difficult is because it’s so expensive. It’s not that
we don’t know how to solve water pollution, deforestation, or soil contamination, or any of those other
challenges we face. It’s that solving these problems is costly.
That means they only get solved today in places where there’s plenty of economic prosperity. Well,
the disruption of Energy, Transportation, Food, and Labor is going to create an explosion of economic
prosperity worldwide. So solving environmental challenges will finally be affordable everywhere, not
just in the wealthiest communities and countries.
Disruptions Happen Fast
And third, disruptions happen fast. They don’t take 50 or 100 years. They only take around fifteen years . We’ve seen this again
and again for technologies of all kinds throughout history, from arrowheads to insulin, from carpenter’s nails to car tires, from fabric dyes to
digital cameras. When a cheaper, better technology comes along, the change naturally happens quickly.
CHART OMITTED
We used horses for transportation for thousands of years, but in most locations, the disruption by cars only took
fifteen years. Kodak was the titan of photography for over a century, but it was bankrupt within a
decade after the first affordable digital camera became available.
So, even the most powerful incumbents are vulnerable. The fossil fuel industry is no exception. It doesn’t
matter how dominant your share of a market is if that market itself collapses because demand shifts to a new alternative instead.
It didn’t matter that coal was a giant industry in a foundational sector of the U.S. economy for 150 years.
It didn’t matter that it was worth tens of billions of dollars and had plenty of political clout. Americans
turned away from coal starting in around 2011 to natural gas and renewables, and a decade later, the
U.S. coal industry had all but collapsed. That’s disruption.

Capitalist growth solves warming through CCS.

Fred Krupp et al. 19. Nathaniel Keohane, and Eric Pooley. *President of Environmental Defense Fund, a United States-
based nonprofit environmental advocacy group. **Vice president for international climate at the Environmental Defense Fund.
He used to be in academia at Yale University and served in the White House as special assistant to President Barack Obama.
***Senior Vice President, Strategy & Communications at the Environmental Defense Fund. 4-1-2019. "Less Than Zero: Can
Carbon-Removal Technologies Curb Climate Change?" Foreign Affairs.
https://search-proquest-com.libproxy2.usc.edu/docview/2186099162/594BA6C689D844ABPQ/13?accountid=14749/. accessed
4-16-2019//JDi

*GHGs = greenhouse gases

*NET = negative emissions technology

When it comes to generating support for climate policy, a warranted sense of alarm is only half the battle. And the other half-a shared belief that the problem is solvable-is lagging far behind.
The newfound sense of urgency is at risk of being swamped by collective despair. A scant six percent of Americans, according to the Yale study, believe that the world "can and will" effectively

carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels having risen by an estimated 2.7 percent in 2018 and
address climate change. With

atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, which will determine the ultimate extent of warming, at their highest level in some three million years,
such pessimism may seem justified-especially with a climate change denier in the White House. But it is not too late to solve the global

climate crisis. A decade of extraordinary innovation has made the greening of the global economy not only
feasible but also likely . The market now favors clean energy: in many U.S. states, it is cheaper to build new renewable
energy plants than to run existing coal-fired power plants. By combining solar power with new, efficient batteries, Arizona and other sunny states will soon be
able to provide electricity at a lower cost per megawatthour than new, efficient natural gas plants. Local, regional, and federal governments, as well as
corporations, are making measurable progress on reducing carbon pollution . Since 2000, 21 countries have
reduced their annual greenhouse gas emissions while growing their economies; China is expected to see emissions peak by 2025, five
years earlier than it promised as part of the negotiations for the Paris climate agreement in 2015. At the UN climate talks held late last year in Poland, countries agreed on rules for how to
report progress on meeting emission-reduction commitments, an important step in implementing the Paris accord. What's more, an entirely new arsenal is emerging in the fight against

climate change: negative emission technologies , or nets. Nets are different from conventional approaches to
climate mitigation in that they seek not to reduce the amount of greenhouse gases emitted into the atmosphere but to remove carbon dioxide
that's already there. These technologies range from the old-fashioned practice of reforestation to high-tech machines that suck carbon out of the sky and store it underground.
The window of opportunity to combat climate change has not closed-and with a push from policymakers, nets can keep it propped open for longer. THE HEAT IS ON How much

time is left to avoid climate catastrophe? The truth is that it is impossible to answer the question with precision. Scientists know
that human activity is warming the planet but still don't fully understand the sensitivity of the climate system to greenhouse
gases. Nor do they fully comprehend the link between average global warming and local repercussions. So far, however, most effects of climate change have been faster and more severe than

the climate models predicted. The downside risks are enormous ; the most recent predictions, ever more dire. The Paris agreement aims to limit the increase in
global average temperatures above preindustrial levels to well below two degrees Celsius, and ideally to no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius. Going above those levels of warming would mean
more disastrous impacts. Global average temperatures have already risen by about one degree Celsius since 1880, with two-thirds of that increase occurring after 1975. An October 2018
special report by the un's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a body of leading scientists and policymakers from around the world, found that unless the world implements "rapid
and far-reaching" changes to its energy and industrial systems, the earth is likely to reach temperatures of 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels sometime between 2030 and 2052.
Limiting warming to that level, the ipcc found, would require immediate and dramatic cuts in carbon dioxide: roughly a 45 percent reduction in the next dozen years. Even meeting the less
ambitious target of two degrees would require deep cuts in emissions by 2030 and sustained aggressive action far beyond then. The ipcc report also warns that seemingly small global
temperature increases can have enormous consequences. For example, the half-degree difference between 1.5 degrees Celsius and two degrees Celsius of total warming could consign twice
as many people to water scarcity, put ten million more at risk from rising sea levels, and plunge several hundred million more people into poverty as lower yields of key crops drive hunger
across much of the developing world. At two degrees of warming, nearly all of the planet's coral reefs are expected to be lost; at 1.5 degrees, ten to 30 percent could survive. The deeper

message of the IPCC report is that there is no risk-free level of climate change . Targets such as 1.5 degrees Celsius or two degrees Celsius are important
political markers, but they shouldn't fool anyone into thinking that nature works so precisely. Just as the risks are lower at 1.5 degrees Celsius than at two degrees Celsius, so are they lower at

To manage
two degrees Celsius than at 2.5 degrees Celsius. Indeed, the latter difference would be far more destructive, since the damages mount exponentially as temperatures rise.

the enormous risks of climate change, global emissions of greenhouse gases need to be cut sharply, and as soon as possible. That
will require transforming energy, land, transport, and industrial systems so they emit less carbon dioxide. It will also require reducing short-lived climate pollutants such as methane, which stay

that will not be enough .

in the atmosphere for only a fraction of the time that carbon dioxide does but have a disproportionate effect on near-term warming. Yet even

To stabilize the total atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases [GHGs],
the world will have to reach net negative emissions- that is, taking more greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere than are being pumped into it.
Achieving that through emission reductions alone will be extremely difficult, since some emissions, such as of methane and nitrous oxide
from agriculture, are nearly impossible to eliminate. Countering the emissions that are hardest to abate, and bring concentrations down to safer

requires technologies that actually remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere . That's where nets come in-not as a
levels,

substitute for aggressive efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions but as a complement. By deploying technology that removes existing

carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, while accelerating cuts in emissions, the world can boost its chances of keeping warming below two degrees
and reduce the risk of catastrophe. Scientists and activists have tended to regard these technologies as a fallback option, to be held in reserve in

case other efforts fail. Many fear that jumping ahead to carbon dioxide removal will distract from the critical need to cut pollution. But the world no

longer has the luxury of waiting for emission-reduction strategies to do the job alone . Far from being a Plan B, nets
must be a critical part of Plan A. What's more, embracing nets sooner rather than later makes economic sense. Because the

marginal costs of emission reductions rise as more emissions are cut, it will be cheaper to deploy nets at the same time as

emission-reduction technologies rather than waiting to exhaust those options first. The wider the solution set, the lower the costs.
And the lower the costs, the easier it is to raise ambitions and garner the necessary political support. THE FUTURE IS NOW Even though removing carbon dioxide

from the atmosphere may sound like the stuff of science fiction, there are already nets that could be deployed at scale today ,
according to a seminal report released by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine in October 2018. One category involves taking advantage of
carbon sinks-the earth's forests and agricultural soils, which have soaked up more carbon dioxide since the Industrial Revolution than has been released from burning petroleum. To date, the
growth of carbon sinks has been inadvertent: in the United States, for example, as agriculture shifted from the rocky soils of the Northeast to the fertile Midwest, forests reclaimed abandoned
farmland, breathing in carbon dioxide in the process. But this natural process can be improved through better forest management-letting trees grow longer before they are harvested and
helping degraded forests grow back more quickly. The large-scale planting of trees in suitable locations around the world could increase carbon sinks further, a process that must go hand in
hand with efforts to curb tropical deforestation and thereby continue to contain the vast amounts of carbon already stored in the earth's rainforests. Farmland provides additional potential for
negative emissions. Around the world, conventional agricultural practices have reduced the amount of carbon in soils, decreasing their fertility in the process. Smarter approaches can reverse
the process. Small and large landholders alike could add agricultural waste to soil, maximize the time that the soil is covered by living plants or mulch, and reduce tilling, which releases carbon

The most technologically

dioxide. All these steps would decrease the amount of carbon that is lost from soil and increase the amount of carbon that is stored in it.

sophisticated net available in the near term is known as "bioenergy with carbon capture and storage," or BECCS . It is also the riskiest. Broadly
defined, beccs involves burning or fermenting biomass, such as trees or crops, to generate electricity or make liquid fuel; capturing the carbon dioxide produced in the process; and
 It is considered a negative emission technology, and not a zero emission technology, because growing the
sequestering it underground.

biomass used in the process removes carbon from the atmosphere. What makes BECCS so exciting is its potential
to remove significantly more carbon from the atmosphere than other approaches do . But it also brings challenges. For one, it is expensive:
electricity generated from beccs could cost twice as much as that generated with natural gas, because biomass is an inefficient fuel source and capturing and sequestering carbon dioxide is
costly. The technology would also require careful monitoring to ensure that the carbon dioxide pumped underground stays there and clear rules for legal liability in the event of leaks. But

the fact that private companies have been successfully injecting carbon dioxide into depleted oil and gas
reservoirs for decades offers good evidence that permanent storage is possible on a large scale. More worrying are the
additional climate risks that BECCS poses. If BECCS drives demand for biomass and more of the carbon that is stored in the forest ecosystem is released as a result, it could end up raising the
level of carbon in the atmosphere rather than reducing it. Another concern is competition for land: converting farms or forests to grow energy crops, something that the large-scale use of
BEccs might require, could drive up the cost of food, reduce agricultural production, and threaten scarce habitats. These problems could be mitigated by using only biomass waste, such as
residues from logging and agriculture, but that would reduce the potential scale. Although BEccs deserves consideration as part of the arsenal, these risks mean that its contribution will likely
end up being smaller than some proponents claim. Taking all these land-based nets together, and factoring in the considerable economic, practical, and behavioral hurdles to bringing them to

scale, the National Academies report concludes that by midcentury, nets could remove as much as five billion tons of carbon
dioxide from the atmosphere annually . Given the significant risks involved, that estimate is probably too bullish. Even if it were not, that's still only half of the ten billion tons of
carbon dioxide that will likely need to be removed each year to zero out the remaining greenhouse gas emissions, even with aggressive cuts. CLOSING THE GAP Removing from the

atmosphere the balance of the carbon dioxide necessary will require perfecting technologies currently in development . Two

deserve particular mention; both are full of promise, although neither is ready for widespread use. The first is called " direct air capture "- essentially, sucking carbon from the

sky. The technology is already being tested in Canada, Iceland, Italy, and Switzerland at pilot plants where massive arrays of fans direct a stream of air toward a special substance
that binds with the passing carbon dioxide. The substance is then either heated or forced into a vacuum to release the carbon dioxide, which is compressed and either stored or used as

feedstocks for chemicals, fuels, or cement. These technologies are real-albeit prohibitively expensive in their current form. As a recent study led by David
Sandalow of Columbia University's Center on Global Energy Policy concludes, taking them to scale means solving a variety of technological

challenges to bring down the costs. Above all, these processes are highly energy intensive, so scaling them would require enormous amounts of low-carbon electricity. (A direct-air-
capture facility powered by coal-fired electricity, for example, would generate more new carbon dioxide than it would capture.) These obstacles are serious, but the surprising progress

of the past decade suggests that they can be overcome in the next one. The second technology, enhanced carbon mineralization, is even further
from being realized, but it is full of even more possibility. Geologists have long known that when rock from the earth's mantle (the layer of the earth

between its crust and its core) is exposed to the air, it binds with carbon dioxide to form carbon-containing minerals. The massive tectonic collisions that
formed the Appalachian Mountains around 460 million years ago, for example, exposed subsurface rock to weathering that resulted in the absorption of substantial amounts of carbon dioxide
from the atmosphere. That took tens of millions of years; enhanced carbon mineralization seeks to fast-forward the process. Scientists are exploring two ways to do this. In one approach,
rocks would be brought to the surface to bind with carbon from the air. Such natural weathering already occurs in mine tailings, the waste left over from certain mining operations. But
mimicking this process on a large scale-by grinding up large quantities of rock containing reactive minerals and bringing it to the earth's surface-would be highly energy intensive and thus

Another potential approach is pumping the carbon dioxide underground to meet the rock. As the
costly, roughly on par with direct air capture.

National Academies report explains, carbon-dioxide-rich fluids injected into basalt or peridotite formations (two kinds of igneous rock that make up

much of the earth's mantle) react with the rock, converting the dissolved carbon dioxide into solid carbon-containing

minerals. Pilot projects in Iceland and the United States have demonstrated that this is possible. There is also evidence for how this could work in the
natural world. Peridotite usually lies deep inside the earth, but some rock formations around the globe contain pockets of it on the surface. For example, scientists are studying how the
surface-level peridotite in Oman's rock formations reacts with the air and absorbs large amounts of carbon. In theory, this approach offers nearly unlimited scale, because suitable rock

formations are widespread and readily accessible. It would also be cheap, because it takes advantage of chemical potential energy in the rock instead of costly energy sources. And since
the carbon dioxide is converted to solid rock, the effect is permanent , and it carries few of the side effects that other nets could bring.
GETTING TO LESS These technologies do not come cheap. The National Academy of Sciences recommends as much as $1 billion annually in U.S. government funding
for research on nets. And indeed, such funding should be an urgent priority. But to
make these technologies economically viable and
scale them rapidly, policymakers will also have to tap into a much more powerful force: the profit motive . Putting a
price on carbon emissions creates an economic incentive for entrepreneurs to find cheaper, faster ways to cut
pollution. Valuing negative emissions-for example, through an emission-trading system that awards credits for carbon removal or a carbon tax that provides
rebates for them-would create an incentive for them to join the hunt for nets. Forty-five countries, along with ten U.S. states, have put in place some mechanism to
price carbon. But only a handful of them offer rewards for converting land into forest, managing existing forests better, or increasing the amount of carbon stored in
agricultural soils, and none offers incentives for other nets. What's needed is a carbon pricing system that not only charges those who emit carbon but also pays

those who remove it. Such a system would provide new revenue streams for landowners who restored forest
cover to their land and for farmers and ranchers who increased the amount of carbon stored in their soils . It
would also reward the inventors and entrepreneurs who developed new, better technologies to capture
carbon from the air and the investors and businesses that took them to scale. Without these incentives, those players will stay on the sidelines. By
spurring innovation in lower-cost nets, incentives would also ease the way politically for an ambitious pollution limit-which,
ultimately, is necessary for ensuring that the world meets it climate goals . Simply put, humanity's best hope is to promise that the next
crop of billionaires will be those who figure out low-cost ways to remove carbon from the sky. The biggest hurdle for such incentives is the lack of a global market
for carbon credits. Hope on that front, however, is emerging from an unlikely place: aviation. Currently responsible for roughly two percent of global greenhouse
gases, aviation's emissions are expected to triple or quadruple by midcentury in the absence of effective policies to limit them. But in 2016, faced with the prospect
that the eu would start capping the emissions of flights landing in and taking off from member states, the un body that governs worldwide air travel, the
International Civil Aviation Organization, agreed to cap emissions from international flights at 2020 levels. The airline industry supported the agreement, hoping to
avoid the messy regulatory patchwork that might result if the eu went ahead and states beyond the eu followed suit with their own approaches. The resulting
program, called the Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation (corsia), requires all airlines to start reporting emissions this year, and it will
begin enforcing a cap in 2021. Once in full swing, at least 100 countries are expected to participate, covering at least three-quarters of the forecast increase in
international aviation emissions. Airlines flying between participating countries will have two ways to comply: they can lower their emissions (for example, by
burning less fuel or switching to alternative fuels), or they can buy emission-reduction credits from companies. Because the technologies for reducing airline
emissions at scale are still a long way off, the industry will mostly choose the second option, relying on carbon credits from reductions in other sectors. It is
estimated that over the first 15 years of corsia, demand for these credits will reach between 2.5 billion and 3.0 billion tons-roughly equal to the annual greenhouse
gas emissions from the U.S. power and manufacturing sectors. With this new option to sell emission-reduction credits to airlines, there is a good possibility that a
pot of gold will await companies that cut or offset their carbon emissions. In short, corsia could catalyze a global carbon market that drives investment in low-
carbon fuels and technologies-including nets. To realize its promise, corsia must be implemented properly, and there are powerful forces working to see that it is not. Some countries,
including ones negotiating on behalf of their state-owned companies, are trying to rig the system by allowing credits from projects that do not produce legitimate carbon reductions, such as
Brazil's effort to allow the sale of credits from huge hydroelectric dams in the Amazon that have already been built and paid for (and thus do not represent new reductions). Allowing such
credits into the system could crowd out potential rewards for genuine reductions. But there are also powerful, sometimes unexpected allies who stand to gain from a global carbon market
that works. For example, some airlines are motivated to act out of a fear that millennials, concerned about their carbon footprint, may eventually begin to shun air travel. The new regulations,
by creating demand for emission reductions and spurring investment in nets to produce jet fuel, could be the industry's best hope of protecting its reputation-and a critical step toward a
broader global carbon market that moves nets from promising pilot projects to a gamechanging reality. Skeptics say that nets are too speculative and a possibility only, perhaps, in the distant
future. It is true that these innovations are not fully understood and that not all of them will pan out. But no group of scholars and practitioners, no matter how expert, can determine exactly
which technologies should be deployed and when. It is impossible to predict what future innovations will look like, but that shouldn't stop the world from pursuing them, especially when the

threat is so grave. The fact remains that many nets are ready to be deployed at scale today, and they might make the difference
between limiting warming to two degrees and failing to do so. Ultimately, climate change will be stopped by creating
economic incentives that unleash the innovation of the private sector-not by waiting for the perfect technology to arrive ready-made,
maybe when it's already too late. No one is saying that achieving all of this will be easy, but the road to climate stability has never been that. Hard does not mean impossible, however, and the

transformative power of human ingenuity offers an endless source of hope.

Warming outweighs all other impacts and results in the deaths of billions – non-linear
feedback loops means you should prioritize worst case scenarios.
Spratt 23 – research director for the Melbourne-based Breakthrough National Centre for Climate Restoration and coauthor of the book
Climate Code Red: The Case for Emergency Action [David, “Faster than forecast, climate impacts trigger tipping points in the Earth system,”
4/19/2023, https://thebulletin.org/2023/04/faster-than-forecast-climate-impacts-trigger-tipping-points-in-the-earth-system/, DKP]

“Could anthropogenic climate change result in worldwide societal collapse or even eventual human
extinction? At present, this is a dangerously underexplored topic … yet there are ample reasons to suspect that climate
change could result in a global catastrophe,” wrote the eminent Australian climate scientist Will Steffen and his colleagues in August 2022 in
“Climate Endgame: Exploring catastrophic climate change scenarios.”
Steffen, who died earlier this year, will be remembered for some of the big, crucial ideas he contributed to the understanding of the Earth system, particularly
planetary boundaries, tipping point vulnerabilities and cascades, risk and nonlinearity, and the
“hothouse Earth” scenario—ideas developed with Tim Lenton, Johan Rockström, Katherine Richardson, Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, and others.
In their 2018 “hothouse” paper, Steffen and his colleagues explored the potential for self-reinforcing feedbacks to push the Earth
System toward a planetary threshold that, if crossed, “could prevent stabilization of the climate at
intermediate temperature rises and cause continued warming on a ‘Hothouse Earth’ pathway even as
human emissions are reduced.”
This challenged the notion that climate warming was a predictable, linear consequence of increasing
levels of greenhouse gases, and instead pointed to critical thresholds, or tipping points, in which a small
change causes a larger, more critical change to be initiated, taking the climate system as a whole or particular systems within it
from one state to a discretely different state. The loss of polar glaciers, or the Amazon rainforest drying and being
replaced by sclerophyll forest, are examples.
The change may be abrupt or non-linear —characterized by sudden change rather than smooth progress

—and irreversible on relevant time frames.

It may also lead to cascading events in which the mutual interaction of individual climate tipping points
and/or abrupt changes lead to more profound changes to the entire system. This is already happening. The
loss of sea ice in the Arctic is adding to regional warming, accelerating ice melt from Greenland, such
that an influx of cold, non-salty water into the North Atlantic is slowing the Gulf Stream, which in turn is
changing the Amazon climate.
Recent research has confirmed that tipping points and cascades are already occurring, not at 1.5 or 2 degrees
Celsius of warming, but right now. In one of his last published pieces, a 2022 book chapter, Steffen said, “it is clear from
observations of climate change-related impacts in Australia alone—the massive bushfires of the 2019-
2020 Black Summer, the third mass bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef in only five years, and long-term
cool-season drying of the country’s southeast agricultural zone—that even a 1.1°C temperature rise has
put us into a dangerous level of climate change.”
While observed warming has been close to climate model projections, the impacts have in many
instances been faster and even more extreme than the models forecasted. William Ripple and his co-researchers show
that many positive feedbacks are not fully accounted for in climate models.
And prominent climate scientist Michael Mann says that when it comes to certain important consequences of warming,
including ice sheet collapse, sea level rise, and the rise in extreme weather events, “ the
[Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)] reports in my view have been overly
conservativ e, in substantial part because of processes that are imperfectly represented in the models.”
In September 2022, Stockholm University’s David Armstrong McKay and his colleagues concluded that even global warming of 1-degree
Celsius risks triggering some tipping points, just one data point in an alarming mountain of research on
tipping points presented in the last year and a half.
Denman Glacier, in East Antarctic, was identified as susceptible to collapse of its ice shelf and inundation
of the glacier itself, which sits on a retrograde base below sea level. Scientists announced that the
Thwaites Glacier ice shelf in West Antarctica was fracturing and likely to result in a speeding up of the
glacier’s flow and ice discharge, possibly heralding the collapse of the glacier itself and triggering similar
increases across the Amundsen Sea glaciers. “The final collapse of Thwaites Glacier’s last remaining ice
shelf may be initiated … within as little as five years,” they said.
In November 2022, the State of the Cryosphere report concluded that more than four meters of additional sea
level rise was locked in “with sections of the West Antarctic ice sheet potentially collapsing even without
any further emissions over the coming centuries.” An ingenious look at the genetic history of Turquet’s octopus
and its population movement across Antarctica in past warm periods led to the conclusion that “even
under global heating of 1.5°C—the most ambitious goal under the global Paris climate agreement—the West Antarctic
Ice Sheet could be consigned to collapse.”
In August, researchers showed that the Arctic has warmed nearly four times faster than the globe since

1979 and concluded it is likely climate models systematically tend to underestimate this amplification .
A few months later, scientists reported that Greenland Ice Sheet glaciers are melting 100 times faster than previously

calculated. At the end of 2021, Professor Jason Box said that the Greenland Ice Sheet has passed a tipping point: “Technically, now [at 1.2°C] Greenland is
beyond its viability threshold… 1.5°C would mean the ‘beyond the threshold’ state is enhanced and the loss [of ice
mass] becomes a complex, non-linear, amplified response guaranteeing the ice sheet remains beyond its
viability threshold.”
Permafrost carbon emissions and the feedback loops they will initiate are not accounted for in most
Earth system models or Integrated Assessment Models, including those which informed the IPCC’s special report
on global warming of 1.5 degrees Celsius, nor are they fully accounted for in global emissions budgets. If carbon-
cycle feedbacks such as tipping points in forest ecosystems and abrupt permafrost thaw are accounted
for, the estimated remaining budget for carbon emissions could disappear altogether.
In a ground-breaking 2021 paper, Northern Arizona University’s Katharyn Duffy and colleagues mapped the relationship between increasing
temperatures and carbon uptake in Amazon forests by analyzing more than 20 years of data on the transfer of carbon
dioxide between plants, land, and the atmosphere; their analysis showed that in recent hot periods the
thermal max imum for photosynthesis had been exceeded. At higher temperatures, the amount of
carbon dioxide absorbed by plants (photosynthesis) will decline sharply, whilst carbon dioxide released
by plants (respiration) will continue to rise.
In addition, recent evidence shows human fossil fuel emissions are still rising and will not likely plateau until
the end of this decade, a far cry from the “carbon law,” which requires halving emissions by 2030 to
keep warming to under a 2-degree Celsius trajectory. Current analysis suggests the world is heading to
around 3 degrees Celsius of warming, or perhaps 3.5 degrees Celsius in a plausible high-end trajectory.
There are fair and reasonable concerns that focusing on worst-case scenarios will cause public despair and paralysis. But when risks are existential ,

it is precisely those high-end possibilities of system collapse, rather than the middle -of-the-road linear
probabilities, that must be the focus of concern and should spur the world to action.
Speaking in 2018, Steffen said that the dominant linear, deterministic framework for assessing climate change is

flawed, especially at higher levels of temperature rise. Model projections that don’t include these feedback and cascading
processes “become less useful at higher temperature levels… or, as my co-author John Schellnhuber says, we are
making a big mistake when we think we can ‘park’ the Earth System at any given temperature rise – say
2°C – and expect it to stay there.”

STATE. Ensures stable markets.

Larry Elliott 21, The Guardian’s Economics editor, 7-30-21, “During the pandemic, a new variant of
capitalism has emerged,” https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jul/30/pandemic-new-
variant-of-capitalism-spending-covid-state
Over the past 18 months, the world has been amazed at how slippery an enemy Covid-19 has proved to be. The virus first detected in China at
the end of 2019 has mutated on a regular basis. Vaccines need to evolve because the virus is changing to survive. The shock to the global
economy from the pandemic has been colossal, but things are now looking up – especially for advanced countries. Some are surprised by the
pace of recovery, but they perhaps shouldn’t be, because alongside new variants of the virus there has been a new variant of global capitalism.
This matters. For decades the Austrian variant of political economy – the small state, non-interventionist, trickle-down, free-trade, low-tax
model based around the ideas of Friedrich von Hayek – was dominant. It replaced the Keynesian variant because in the 1970s a free-market
approach was seen as the answer to the challenges of the time: inflation, weak corporate profitability, and a loss of business dynamism. Not
even the biggest fan of capitalism would say it is a perfect system, merely that – so far at least – it has proved more durable than its rivals. And
the flexibility to adapt to changing circumstances is a big part of that. The
state is now a much more powerful economic
actor than it was before the pandemic, much to the disappointment of the free-market thinktanks which are
home to Hayek’s disciples. Change was coming even before Covid-19. In retrospect, the last hurrah for the Austrian
variant was the aftermath of the 2008-9 financial crisis, a period when the economic orthodoxy insisted on austerity to
balance the books. The upshot was weak growth, low investment, stagnating living standards and a backlash from voters. Central banks found it
impossible to raise interest rates from their rock-bottom levels, because so many people on low incomes were relying on debt to get by, and
higher borrowing costs would have tipped them over the edge. At the other end of the spectrum, corporate and personal taxes were cut, and
the rich got richer. The big tech giants, minnows themselves in their early days, used their market power to prevent new startups from posing a
threat. Voters started to get the impression that the system only really worked for those at the top: and they were right. The populist backlash
was aimed primarily at governments, but the real problem was that capitalism was starting to eat itself. There were signs
of a shift, from the middle of the last decade onwards. Donald Trump was no believer in free trade and was proud to call
himself “tariff man”. The unexpectedly strong performance of Jeremy Corbyn at the UK general election in 2017 – with his powerful
anti-austerity message – moved the dial too. It led then prime minister Theresa May to pledge an end to the policy. Boris
Johnson’s shtick at the 2019 election – and subsequently – has all been about levelling up, not about trickling down. This
process has accelerated since the start of 2020, both at a domestic and global level. Governments of left, right and centre
have intervened in their economies in ways that would have been unthinkable two years ago: paying wages
for furloughed workers; keeping businesses afloat through grants and loans; preventing landlords from evicting
tenants; and generally throwing financial caution to the wind. The world has been fighting a war against Covid, and in
wartime the power of the state always increases. It has not just been about governments spending and borrowing more, though that is part of
the story. Fiscal policy – which covers tax and spending decisions – has taken centre stage for the first time since the Keynesian model ran into
trouble in the mid-1970s. Central banks have become bit-players, and are having to fend off the accusation that their prime role is to print the
money needed to cover the vast sums finance ministries are spending. The European Central Bank, previously tough in acting against the threat
of price rises, has said it will tolerate more inflation before raising interest rates. The
race to the bottom on tax is coming to
an end. US president Joe Biden has said he will pay for his latest spending plans by raising income tax on Americans
earning more than $400,000 (£290,000) a year. At least 130 countries have signed up to plans, put together by the Organisation
for Economic Co-operation and Development, for a minimum global corporate tax rate. Critics say the proposal doesn’t go far enough, but it is a
significant moment nevertheless. Meanwhile, the International Monetary Fund is telling member governments that
they need to tackle the entrenched power wielded by a small number of dominant companies – or risk
stifling innovation and investment. The IMF says the tech giants are a case in point because “the market
disruptors that displaced incumbents two decades ago have become increasingly dominant players”, and they
“do not face the same competitive pressures from today’s would-be disruptors”. But it is not just the tech sector. The IMF says
the same trend towards falling business dynamism can be seen across many industries. The building
blocks of new-variant capitalism are already there. Governments are going to tax and spend more, and they will use
regulatory powers to weaken monopolies. There will be selective use of nationalisation – as happened with UK defence
manufacturer Sheffield Forgemasters this week. Governments will borrow money to invest in infrastructure projects and to increase the budget
for science. Industrial and regional policies will be back in vogue. The
idea is to harness the power of the state with the
dynamism of the private sector and, as was the case with Keynes, to save capitalism from itself. There will
be pushback, and it would be naive to think otherwise. This is evolution not revolution, and many of the weaknesses of the old order –
insecurity at work, for example – remain untouched. Enemies abound. The mixed-economy model is anathema to those who think state
intervention is either unnecessary or harmful, and to those who think the demise of capitalism is merely a matter of time. The
new
variant of capitalism may prove to be a dud, but for now it has things going for it. These are times that
call for a multilateral, collaborative approach, in which rich countries dig deep to help poorer nations,
and themselves in the process. Failings of the old model were exposed in the run-up to the crisis, while
the benefits of a more hands-on approach have been demonstrated during the pandemic response.
Unsurprisingly, there is appetite for a different way of running the economy. The reason a new variant
has emerged is simple: there is a need for something stronger and more resilient than the old model.

No financialization.
Subasat and Mavroudeas 23 [Turan Subasat is Professor at the Muğla Sıtkı Koçman University,
Turkey. His research focuses on development, international and political economics. Stavros
Mavroudeas is Professor of Political Economy at the Department of Social Policy, Panteion University,
Greece.; “Financialization Hypothesis: A Theoretical and Empirical Critique”; World Review of Political
Economy; July 20, 2023;
https://www.scienceopen.com/hosted-document?doi=10.13169/worlrevipoliecon.14.2.0204]//eleanor

Whatever theoretical perspective is taken, financialization must be accompanied by a series of empirical

developments. For example, Fine (2019, 4) suggests that “just a few hundred multinational corporations . . . run the world economy” and “of these, two-
thirds are financial companies.” Further, he associates financialization with “the extraordinary rise of finance” and argues that “the ratio of financial assets to
economic activity increased threefold over the past thirty years.” He asks “why, on average, should it take three times as much finance to produce something as
previously?” According to Sawyer (2016), financialization involves the growth of the financial sector which has become too large. Ashman and Fine (2013) suggest
that finance expands at the expense of real investment. Financialization, therefore, is an important cause of deindustrialization (Palley 2013; Davis 2018). It is often
claimed that financialization is largely due to financial liberalization (Krippner 2011; Soener 2020). And while financialization develops at different paces and forms it

has a global reach and therefore is a global phenomenon (Bonizzi 2014; Sawyer 2016). These are empirically testable claims that will be
reviewed and shown to be largely myths.
It should be noted at the outset that we do not aim to assess all the empirical claims of the financialization thesis which are numerous. The big rise in financial
corporations’ profit as a percentage of the profit of all corporations in the US, for example, could be considered as one measure of the growing role of the financial
sector. While such measures are relevant to the scope of our article, we limit our focus to the ones mentioned above. Hence, our
empirical work
characterizes as myths the specific empirical beliefs that are scrutinized in this article.
Myth 1. Two-Thirds of the Few Hundred Largest Multinational Companies Are Financial

At first glance, the empirical evidence seems to support this claim. Forbes’ (2018) data suggests that eight out of ten (80%) largest multinational companies are
financial (Figure 1A). A closer inspection of the data, however, unfolds a rather different picture.

[FIGURE OMITTED]

First, as the number of the largest companies increases, the share of the financial companies declines
rapidly . The figure declines to 44% for the largest 50 multinational companies, 39% for the largest 100
multinational companies, 31% for the largest 500 multinational companies, and 17% for the largest 1000
multinational companies. The suggestion that two-thirds of the few hundred multinational companies
are financial, therefore, is not supported by the evidence. It is also interesting to note that five out of the eight largest
financial multinational companies are Chinese.

Second, Forbes
uses four different measures to create its ranking, which are assets, sales, profits and
market value. The ranking of the financial multinational companies is heavily influenced by the assets
component , which needs careful elaboration . Figure 1B shows the ranking of multinational companies in
terms of assets and indicates a more favorable ranking for financial multinational companies. This time, nine
out of the ten largest multinational companies are financial. The figure increases to 92% for the largest 50 multinational companies and then declines to 87% for the
largest 100 multinational companies, 33% for the largest 500 multinational companies, and 17% for the largest 1000 multinational companies.

The ranking of multinational companies in terms of assets , however, is problematic because the
largest proportion of banking assets are loans and securities held. In the US for example, loans (52.6%) and
securities (20.7%) held accounted for 73.3% of the banking assets in 2014 (Perez 2015). As opposed to these assets, banks
also have liabilities (i.e., deposits) that need to be considered. The assets component of the Forbes
figures , therefore, exaggerates the real size of the financial multinational companies . This can be seen in Figure 2,
where 39 financial and 61 non-financial multinational companies in the top 100 multinational companies are compared. Assets and market value of

companies are normally expected to be closely linked. This is true for non-financial multinational
companies, where assets are slightly higher than market value. For financial multinational companies,
however, assets are 11.4 times higher than their market value. The ranking of financial multinational

companies in terms of assets is problematic and the inclusion of assets in the final Forbes ranking also
exaggerates the significance of financial multinational companies.
[FIGURE OMITTED]

The ranking of multinational companies in terms of sales (Figure 1C), profits (Figure 1D) and market value (Figure 1E)
provides a much modest share for the financial multinational companies, particularly when Chinese

financial multinational companies are excluded. Figures are as low as 10% and they barely exceed 20%.
They are nowhere near two-thirds of the multinational companies.
The US and the UK come to mind first when considering financialization. Indeed, among the largest 100 financial multinational companies, the US has 40 and the UK
has eight companies. There are some surprising results, however, when countries and regions are ranked by the number of large financial multinational companies.
The ranking of the countries and regions according to the number of financial companies among the top
ten companies will be considered first (Figure 3). Looking at the 28 countries and regions (for which the data is available) reveals that the
mo st financialized countries and regions are neither the US nor the UK, but China , 1 Canada, and the United Arab
Emirates (Figure 3A). According to this ranking, the UK leaves 22 and the US leaves only ten countries and regions behind.

[FIGURE OMITTED]
The ranking of countries and regions changes considerably when the components of the Forbes measure are considered. The US is ranked first in terms of assets but
ranked ninth in terms of profits, 13th in terms of market value, and 23rd in terms of sales. The UK is ranked fourth in terms of assets but ranked eighth in terms of
sales, 14th in terms of market value, and 20th in terms of profits. Surprisingly, these countries and regions fall behind in the rankings.

Considering 11 countries and regions that have data for the largest 40 multinational companies reveals that the
US is ranked second behind
China in terms of assets but ranked eighth in terms of sales, profits and market value (Figure 4). The UK is ranked
fourth in terms of market value, fifth in terms of assets, sixth in terms of sales and profits. Remarkably, regions and countries such as China’s mainland, China’s
Taiwan, and South Korea, which are associated with industrialization are ahead of the US and the UK in this ranking. Even India and Hong Kong SAR of China appear
to have more financial companies than the US and the UK.

[FIGURE OMITTED]

Thus,
the suggestion that two-thirds of a few hundred multinational companies are financial is incorrect,
and the leading countries are not the US and the UK, but China, which is not associated with
financialization.
 Info – 1NC
They obviously link to this --- they present information, which means we are less likely
to agree with and understand your args. Vote neg to reject their information if they
win this arg, which makes us smarter and more capable.
Adam J. Berinsky 7, professor of political science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
“Assuming the Costs of War: Events, Elites, and American Public Support for Military Conflict,” Journal of
Politics, Volume 69, Issue 4, pages 975–997, November 2007
Many political scientists and policymakers argue that unmediated events—the successes and failures on the battlefield—determine whether the mass public will
support military excursions. The public supports war, the story goes, if the benefits of action outweigh the costs of conflict. Other scholars
contend that
the balance of elite discourse influences public support for war. I draw upon survey evidence from
World War II and the current war in Iraq to come to a common conclusion regarding public support for
international interventions. I find little evidence that citizens make complex cost/benefit calculations when evaluating military action. Instead, I
find that patterns of elite conflict shape opinion concerning war. When political elites disagree as to the
wisdom of intervention, the public divides as well. But when elites come to a common interpretation
of a political reality , the public gives them great latitude to wage war. ¶ In recent years, a charitable view of the mass
public has emerged in the public opinion and foreign policy literature. Increasingly, scholars have attributed “rationality” to public opinion concerning war. Many
political scientists and policymakers argue that unmediated events—the successes and failures on the battlefield—determine whether the mass public will support
military excursions. The public supports war, the story goes, if the benefits of action outweigh the costs of conflict and should therefore have a place at the
policymaking table.¶ In this paper, I argue that military events may shape public opinion, but not in the straightforward manner posited by most scholars of public
opinion and war. I draw upon and expand the work of scholars who contend that the balance of elite discourse influences levels of public support for war.

Integrating research on heuristics and shortcuts with information-based theories of political choice , I
demonstrate that patterns of conflict among partisan political actors shape mass opinion on war. It is not the direct influence of wartime events on
individual citizens' decisions that determines public opinion, as “event response” theories of war support claim. Instead, consistent with the “elite cue” theory I

advance in this paper, the nature of conflict among political elites concerning the salience and meaning of those
events determines if the public will rally to war.

To a significant degree citizens determine their positions on war by listening to trusted sources —those politicians who
share their political predispositions.¶ I present evidence from World War II and the Second Iraq war, two cases that
span 65 years of American history , to come to this common conclusion. In both wars, I find that significant segments of
the mass public possessed little knowledge of the most basic facts of these conflicts. Thus, there is little evidence that citizens had the information needed to make

cost/benefit calculations when deciding whether to support or oppose military action. Instead, I find that patterns of elite conflict shaped
opinions both throughout the six years of World War II and during the Iraq conflict. When elites come
to a common interpretation of a political reality, the public gives them great latitude to wage war. But
when prominent political actors take divergent stands on the wisdom of intervention, the public
divides as well. Furthermore, even in cases—such as the Iraq war—where prominent political actors on one side of the partisan divide stay silent, the presence
of a prominent partisan cue giver can lead to divergence in opinion. In sum, while members of the mass public are not lemmings—they have agency to determine
their own opinion and may even, in the aggregate, reasonably react to changing events—in the realm of war, any apparent rationality arises largely through the
process of elite cue taking, not through a reasoned cost/benefit analysis. The mass public is rational only to the extent that prominent political actors provide a
rational lead.
 Racial Cap – 1NC
Capitalism is not intrinsically tied to race – historically inaccurate, contingency and
complexity disprove
Go 21 – Professor and Director of Graduate Studies; Faculty Affiliate in the Center for the Study of Race, Politics & Culture; The Committee
on International Relations; Senior Fellow, Society of Fellows, the College [Julian, “Three Tensions in the Theory of Racial Capitalism,”
Sociological Theory 2021, Vol. 39(1) 38 –47 © American Sociological Association 2020 DOI: 10.1177/0735275120979822]

Necessity, Contingency, Difference

The finaltension within racial capitalism is whether the interconnectedness of racial difference and
capitalism is a logical or contingent necessity.6 If, as the racial capitalism literature suggests, slavery and its associated logics of racism
have been crucial for the development of capitalism, and if global capitalism today remains intertwined with racial stratification, to what extent are these relations
intrinsic to capitalism or accidental? Put differently, is capitalism necessarily racist (Fraser 2019; Lemann 2020)?7
only contingent. Walzer (2020) argued that in some countries, capitalism proceeds along just fine
For some, the relationship is

without racial difference , and if there is racial difference on a global scale, it is historically contingent.
Although the vast majority of workers are nonwhite, Walzer suggested that this is not due to any intrinsic logic of
capitalism but rather the accident of demographics (because most of the world is nonwhite, the majority
of the world’s workers will be nonwhite). For this reason, Walzer suggested we disavow the racial capitalism concept. Alternatively, others
claim that racism is indeed intrinsic to capitalism.8 There are two versions of this claim. One is that racism is necessary to divide the working class and legitimate the
rule of the bourgeoisie. Racism is an ideological necessity of capitalism, justifying its unequal relations (Camp, Heatherton, and Karuka 2019; McCarthy 2016; Taylor
2016). “Capitalism requires inequality,” suggested Gilmore (2015), “and racism enshrines it.” A very different version, coming most predominantly from Fraser
(2019), is that capitalism necessarily entails relations of exploitation and expropriation that feed off each other. Exploitation is the extraction of value from “free
subjects” through wage labor. But expropriation, which includes slavery and colonialism, extracts value from racialized “dependent subjects” and is what enables
exploitation to happen in the first place. Expropriation is “a necessary background condition for the exploitation of ‘workers’” (Fraser 2019) and therefore for
capitalism itself. Capitalism is thus logically dependent upon racism.9
So what is the answer? Again, it helps differentiate between a theory of capital and a theory of capitalism. A theory of capitalism might demonstrate that race has
been historically necessary for capitalist accumulation by reference to empirical reality: historically, capitalism and race have always been intertwined. But
the
claim that race is a logical necessity to capitalism would have to derive from a theory of capital, not from
empirics alone. One would have to deduce, from the categories of Marx’s theory, the necessity of racism or racial
differentiation in society. On this score, the arguments for the logical necessity of capitalism’s
entanglements with race fall short.
Consider the argument that racism is necessary for capitalism because capitalism requires racist
ideology to divide the working class. This is a functionalist argument that is not functionalist enough, for it effaces the logical possibility of
functional substitution. We may find that racism has historically always functioned to divide the working class,
but in theory other “isms” could serve the same function. There is nothing inherent to the logic of
capital that requires race to be the ideology of division (Lebowitz 2006:39).10 Why not ethnicity? Why not sexuality? Consider
Fraser’s argument that expropriation is intrinsic to capitalism and that racial differentiation must be too. It is plausible and indeed persuasive to claim that
expropriation is necessary for capitalism, but it
is less persuasive to claim that racial difference is logically necessary for
expropriation. Gender could easily serve as the main axis of dependent classification (and, to feminist-Marxist
thought, it has served that function), as could ethnicity, religion, sexuality, or citizenship . Fraser would have to show
that expropriation, and hence capitalism, requires a racial classification as opposed to other social
categories. This is a task left unfulfilled.11
 Wilder – 1NC
Their Fiat K disparages concrete utopianism---proposing policies is key to propel new
worlds into existence.
Gary Wilder 8/9/22. Professor of Anthropology, History, and French and Director of the Committee
on Globalization and Social Change at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Concrete
Utopianism: The Politics of Temporality and Solidarity. Fordham University Press. P. 9

By identifying pessimism with radicalism, political realists seek to disparage utopian imagination as naïve
about or complicit with dominant power relations. We need to challenge the ways that realism can wield
the shibboleth of optimism to circumscribe political horizons . The correct insight that new thinking cannot in
itself change the world should not be used as an alibi for renouncing the imperative to imagine
otherwise .

In contrast, I argue that the

opposite of political pessimism is not optimism. It is concrete utopianism. By utopian, I mean
thought and action oriented toward that which appears to be, or is purported to be, impossible when such
impossibility is only a function of existing arrangements. Concrete utopianism is not merely fanciful,
phantasmatic, or speculative . It seeks to identify possibilities for alternative arrangements that may already
dwell within, or be emerging from, the nonidentical order that actually exists . Such utopianism also seeks to identify concrete
interventions that point beyond the logic and framework of the existing order. Consider the ways that prison and police abolition ,
reparations for slavery, collective debt cancellation, or a prohibition against fossil fuels are real
possibilities that cannot be accommodated by the present system, whose realization would crack existing norms.
They are at once possible and impossible. They presuppose a world that does not yet exist even as they
may help to propel into existence just such a world . Following Henri Lefebvre, we may understand concrete utopianism as a
politics of the "possible-impossible."23
1NR v Damien
BI Cp
 BI

Yes solve the aff – breaks down capitalist consciousness and views about money that
people are only deserving of it based on productive activity tied to Capitalism.
Libretti ’18 [Tim; December 19; English Professor at a public university in Chicago; People’s World;
“Universal Basic Income: Ruling class scam or step toward socialism?” People’s World;
https://www.peoplesworld.org/article/universal-basic-income-ruling-class-scam-or-step-toward-
socialism/]

The u niversal b asic i ncome, I would argue, is already beginning to shift our national consciousness in
directions that can direct us on the road to socialism . It is bringing issues of class and inequality more into focus
and making them part of the national conversation, though in theoretically insufficient ways.

Chris Hughes, for example, the co-founder of Facebook, has argued strenuously
for a universal basic income as not
necessarily a comprehensive solution but as at least a moderating analgesic for the severity of income
inequality and poverty in America, asserting, “We talk about inequality—and the economy in general—in terms that make it seem like
these are structural problems that we can’t do anything about. When in reality, we’ve created the rules of the road: the way the economy
works now.”

While he might not fully articulate what a different economic structure or system would look like (he doesn’t say the “S” word), he does
unsettle the notion that capitalism is a fixed and unchangeable thing. He raises the specter that another economy is possible and makes
the important point that people control and build the economy , which means we can, in fact, change it and create it
anew.

As a culture and in our political discourse , we tend to talk about “the economy” in ways that de-historicize it
and make it seem permanent, as if capitalism is the only game in town. We don’t hear many people in talking about
our economy say “the capitalist economy” to distinguish it, say, from feudal or socialist economies. As a culture, this makes it
a lot harder for us to entertain different kinds of economic arrangements.

While Hughes, I’m guessing, does not identify as a Marxist, his intervention in this debate does begin to offer a different
language for talking about our economy and the fact that poverty is not simply the fault or just desert of lazy or feckless people,
but rather a product of capitalist economy. This language opens and orients the national consciousness to a potentially
imaginative conversation about what a socially just and humane economy might look like. It’s an opener, anyway.
Billionaire Mark Zuckerburg, similarly provokes thinking about both the effectiveness and fairness of class society—and by extension capitalism
—in his advocacy for a universal basic income. In a commencement address he delivered at Harvard, he indicated how growing up with
financial security allowed him the freedom to pursue his inventions, explaining, “If I had to support my family instead of having time to code, if I
didn’t know I’d be fine if Facebook didn’t work out, I wouldn’t be standing here today.”

These capitalists point not just to the unfairness, even inhumanity, of capitalism, but they even hint at what Marx stressed in his analysis of the
Capitalism , while it unleashed the creativity feudalism had constrained, it also fetters
history of class society:
human creativity and the forces of production overall, leading to an economy at once inhumane and inefficient.

Secondly, and more importantly, the universal

basic income, in asserting everyone’s right to a material existence ,
accomplishes some important work in our cultural consciousness, in Marxist directions, in terms of dissociating or de-
coupling the work people do from their ability to have their material needs met and, more to the point, to share in the fruits of our collective
labor.
In other words, the implementation of a universal basic income can begin to erode the powerful
meritocratic ideology that, as I have argued elsewhere in the pages of People’s World, is a centrally insidious ideology sustaining
capitalism. As a culture, we are for the most part perfectly happy valuing people’s work unequally, regardless of how essential it is to our lives.
Our capitalist culture makes it seem normal and just that the doctor doing the important work of keeping us healthy deserves a lot more money
—and hence access to more resources—than the farmworker who does the important and essential work of feeding us. As a culture, we
lack a recognition that this very way of valuing work is a product of a capitalist economy , that the way we
determine the “merit” of work grows out a capitalist mentality.

Definitive of Marxism for me is the principle made famous in The Communist Manifesto which Marx reiterates in his Critique of the Gotha
Program, namely the idea: “From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs!” This notion challenges, indeed
explodes, the idea that the work people do should bear any relation to their ability to meet their needs or have
access to the fruits of our collective labor.

The American dominant culture, however, forcefully insists upon not only differentially valuing work but also
linking the work one does to one’s ability to consume or access resources (purchasing power) to live. A vital piece of Marxist thought is

precisely this powerful gesture of de-linking the work people do (or not) from their right to a material
existence .

The u niversal b asic i ncome, as a policy, does this important cultural work of de-linking people’s merit —
people deserving nourishment , housing , healthcare , education , safety , and other basic human rights—from the
type of work they do, how much they work, and even from whether they work or not.

Moving to a socialist culture and imagination means we must recognize and eradicate the capitalist values
infecting us. Meritocracy is a deeply rooted capitalist value many in America do not even recognize as capitalist.
Mayor Michael Tubbs of Stockton, California, however, has been able to implement a universal basic income in his city, with a plan to be piloted
on a small scale beginning in 2019. What motivated him was precisely the socialist imagination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., which he has
invoked explicitly, recalling reading King’s Where Do We Go From here: Chaos or Community, in which King calls for a guaranteed annual
income.

While certainly
no remedy for or alternative to capitalism, the universal basic income can address poverty
and improve lives while at the same time altering our entrenched thought patterns and inspiring an imagination to ease us
on down the road to socialism.
 JG CP
Pessimism is produced by neoliberal presentism---taking the given as unsurpassable is
an self-fulfilling epistemic choice, not real requirement.
Gary Wilder 8/9/22. Professor of Anthropology, History, and French and Director of the Committee
on Globalization and Social Change at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Concrete
Utopianism: The Politics of Temporality and Solidarity. Fordham University Press. P. 104-105

How should we now respond to this persisting and pressing dilemma? Critics like Asad, Berlant, Scott, Hartog, and Traverso might
suggest that the absence of a compelling alternative vision confirms that we are indeed trapped within
an unsurpassable present in which Marxism, socialism, and utopianism are hopelessly, even dangerously, outmoded. But in the
spirit of Benja- min, Hall, and Brown I would suggest that this absence of vision is as much an effect as it the

cause of a retreat into melancholic presentism . Brown warns the Left against surrendering to "a tide of
general despair, this abandoned belief in human capacities to gestate and guide a decent sustainable order."'"

Traverso offers us a rich account of the empowering ways that socialist militants once memorialized political defeat in sustaining ways. But this
practice of working through past loss by linking painful memories, utopian expectations, and renewed commitment to action is the opposite of
melancholy. Traverso rightly underscores the disappearance of a social infrastructure that once sustained and was sustained by Left
utopianism. But why should this lead Left thinkers now into the contradictory task of inventing "good', forms of melancholy? Why
not
renew a commitment to concrete utopian practices through which to invent new sources of sociality
and solidarity that they might sustain and by which they might be sustained? Only then could Benjamin's critical
remembrance be politically effective.

A large number of Left thinkers and actors today experience the present as an impasse . We inhabit a moment when
relations of force favor Right-wing projects worldwide. Interlinked systemic crises somehow function to strengthen the
dominion of capital , racism , and the state. Traditional Marxist and socialist concepts, analyses, and strategies fail us. Prospects
for large-scale emancipatory transformation are grim. In these dark times, the Left has good reason to be pessimistic. It would be pathological
not to struggle with political depression. But
I am concerned with how political pessimism can devolve into a
melancholic presentism that , however unwittingly, regards the real as rational and the given as
unsurpassable .

Left presentism reifies provincial and self-identical notions of now in ways that are as politically limiting as
the provincial and self-identical notions of "here" and "us" employed by Left culturalism. Categorical claims about
cultural incommensurability and temporal unsurpassability often function to reaffirm one another . They
foreclose the orientation to the possible-impossible that Marx figured by calling on militants to draw their revolutionary
poetry from the future or that Benjamin figured as awakening.
Case
Cap Good
 Elliott – Sustainability – 1AR
The only actual warrant is about fictitious growth driven by corporations – but that’s
wrong.
Subasat and Mavroudeas 23 [Turan Subasat is Professor at the Muğla Sıtkı Koçman University,
Turkey. His research focuses on development, international and political economics. Stavros
Mavroudeas is Professor of Political Economy at the Department of Social Policy, Panteion University,
Greece.; “Financialization Hypothesis: A Theoretical and Empirical Critique”; World Review of Political
Economy; July 20, 2023;
https://www.scienceopen.com/hosted-document?doi=10.13169/worlrevipoliecon.14.2.0204]//eleanor

Whatever theoretical perspective is taken, financialization must be accompanied by a series of empirical

developments. For example, Fine (2019, 4) suggests that “just a few hundred multinational corporations . . . run the world economy” and “of these, two-
thirds are financial companies.” Further, he associates financialization with “the extraordinary rise of finance” and argues that “the ratio of financial assets to
economic activity increased threefold over the past thirty years.” He asks “why, on average, should it take three times as much finance to produce something as
previously?” According to Sawyer (2016), financialization involves the growth of the financial sector which has become too large. Ashman and Fine (2013) suggest
that finance expands at the expense of real investment. Financialization, therefore, is an important cause of deindustrialization (Palley 2013; Davis 2018). It is often
claimed that financialization is largely due to financial liberalization (Krippner 2011; Soener 2020). And while financialization develops at different paces and forms it

has a global reach and therefore is a global phenomenon (Bonizzi 2014; Sawyer 2016). These are empirically testable claims that will be
reviewed and shown to be largely myths.
It should be noted at the outset that we do not aim to assess all the empirical claims of the financialization thesis which are numerous. The big rise in financial
corporations’ profit as a percentage of the profit of all corporations in the US, for example, could be considered as one measure of the growing role of the financial
sector. While such measures are relevant to the scope of our article, we limit our focus to the ones mentioned above. Hence, our
empirical work
characterizes as myths the specific empirical beliefs that are scrutinized in this article.
Myth 1. Two-Thirds of the Few Hundred Largest Multinational Companies Are Financial

At first glance, the empirical evidence seems to support this claim. Forbes’ (2018) data suggests that eight out of ten (80%) largest multinational companies are
financial (Figure 1A). A closer inspection of the data, however, unfolds a rather different picture.

[FIGURE OMITTED]

First, as the number of the largest companies increases, the share of the financial companies declines
rapidly . The figure declines to 44% for the largest 50 multinational companies, 39% for the largest 100
multinational companies, 31% for the largest 500 multinational companies, and 17% for the largest 1000
multinational companies. The suggestion that two-thirds of the few hundred multinational companies
are financial, therefore, is not supported by the evidence. It is also interesting to note that five out of the eight largest
financial multinational companies are Chinese.

Second, Forbes
uses four different measures to create its ranking, which are assets, sales, profits and
market value. The ranking of the financial multinational companies is heavily influenced by the assets
component , which needs careful elaboration . Figure 1B shows the ranking of multinational companies in
terms of assets and indicates a more favorable ranking for financial multinational companies. This time, nine
out of the ten largest multinational companies are financial. The figure increases to 92% for the largest 50 multinational companies and then declines to 87% for the
largest 100 multinational companies, 33% for the largest 500 multinational companies, and 17% for the largest 1000 multinational companies.

The ranking of multinational companies in terms of assets , however, is problematic because the
largest proportion of banking assets are loans and securities held. In the US for example, loans (52.6%) and
securities (20.7%) held accounted for 73.3% of the banking assets in 2014 (Perez 2015). As opposed to these assets, banks
also have liabilities (i.e., deposits) that need to be considered. The assets component of the Forbes
figures , therefore, exaggerates the real size of the financial multinational companies . This can be seen in Figure 2,
where 39 financial and 61 non-financial multinational companies in the top 100 multinational companies are compared. Assets and market value of

companies are normally expected to be closely linked. This is true for non-financial multinational
companies, where assets are slightly higher than market value. For financial multinational companies,
however, assets are 11.4 times higher than their market value. The ranking of financial multinational

companies in terms of assets is problematic and the inclusion of assets in the final Forbes ranking also
exaggerates the significance of financial multinational companies.
[FIGURE OMITTED]

The ranking of multinational companies in terms of sales (Figure 1C), profits (Figure 1D) and market value (Figure 1E)
provides a much modest share for the financial multinational companies, particularly when Chinese

financial multinational companies are excluded. Figures are as low as 10% and they barely exceed 20%.
They are nowhere near two-thirds of the multinational companies.
The US and the UK come to mind first when considering financialization. Indeed, among the largest 100 financial multinational companies, the US has 40 and the UK
has eight companies. There are some surprising results, however, when countries and regions are ranked by the number of large financial multinational companies.
The ranking of the countries and regions according to the number of financial companies among the top
ten companies will be considered first (Figure 3). Looking at the 28 countries and regions (for which the data is available) reveals that the
mo st financialized countries and regions are neither the US nor the UK, but China , 1 Canada, and the United Arab
Emirates (Figure 3A). According to this ranking, the UK leaves 22 and the US leaves only ten countries and regions behind.

[FIGURE OMITTED]

The ranking of countries and regions changes considerably when the components of the Forbes measure are considered. The US is ranked first in terms of assets but
ranked ninth in terms of profits, 13th in terms of market value, and 23rd in terms of sales. The UK is ranked fourth in terms of assets but ranked eighth in terms of
sales, 14th in terms of market value, and 20th in terms of profits. Surprisingly, these countries and regions fall behind in the rankings.

Considering 11 countries and regions that have data for the largest 40 multinational companies reveals that the
US is ranked second behind
China in terms of assets but ranked eighth in terms of sales, profits and market value (Figure 4). The UK is ranked
fourth in terms of market value, fifth in terms of assets, sixth in terms of sales and profits. Remarkably, regions and countries such as China’s mainland, China’s
Taiwan, and South Korea, which are associated with industrialization are ahead of the US and the UK in this ranking. Even India and Hong Kong SAR of China appear
to have more financial companies than the US and the UK.

[FIGURE OMITTED]

Thus,
the suggestion that two-thirds of a few hundred multinational companies are financial is incorrect,
and the leading countries are not the US and the UK, but China, which is not associated with
financialization.
 Sustainability Env
Growth solves sustainability; alternatives derails it.
Klaas Lenaerts et al. 22, Klaas Lenaerts is a Research Analyst at Bruegel and holds a Master in
Economics from the KU Leuven and in European Economic Studies from the College of Europe; Simone
Tagliapietra is Senior fellow at Bruegel and Professor of Energy, Climate and Environmental Policy at the
Catholic University of Milan and at The Johns Hopkins University - School of Advanced International
Studies (SAIS) Europe; Guntram B. Wolff served as the CEO of the German Council on Foreign Relations
(DGAP) and Otto-Wolff-Director of its Research Institute since August 2022, also heads the Center for
Geopolitics, Geoeconomics, and Technology, was director of Bruegel until June 2022, a Brussels-based
institute on economic policy in Europe, and teaches at the Solvay School of Economics and Management
of the Université Libre de Bruxelles, “Fighting Climate Change Requires Strong Green Growth Policies
and Trade, Not Degrowth,” Reglobalisation: Changing Patterns, edited by Ernest Gnan et al., 1. Auflage,
facultas, 2022, pp. 265–274
Introduction: the problem of decoupling

To keep global temperature increases to no more than 1.5° C above pre-industrial levels, net global carbon dioxide
emissions must be reduced to zero by mid-century (IPCC, 2018). If emissions do not decline sharply during
this decade, carbon neutrality will need to be reached even earlier to keep cumulative CO2 emissions within the
same carbon budget (IPCC, 2021). Meanwhile, other greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions must be similarly slashed (IPCC, 2018).

Economic growth has so far driven emissions mainly because higher levels of economic activity require
more consumption of energy , of which 79% globally is still produced by burning fossil fuels (IEA, 2021c). The energy sector accounts
for nearly all CO2 emissions and around 73% of global GHG emissions, making it central to solving the climate crisis (Ritchie and Roser, 2020).

This poses a problem best explained by Holdren and Ehrich’s (1974) ‘I=PAT’ identity:
GHG emissions = population * (GDP / population) * (GHG emissions / GDP)

If one considers population growth as a given, then cutting emissions boils down to either reducing gross
domestic product ( GDP ) per capita – as proposed in a vigorous literature on ‘degrowth’ (eg, Kallis et al, 2018; Wiedmann et al,
2020) – or accelerating the decarbonisation of GDP, in other words ‘decoupling’ GDP growth from emissions. A
decline in emissions per unit of real GDP can be driven by improvements in energy efficiency, by behavioural change or an economic shift
towards more services, or notably by a push for renewable energy that decreases the carbon intensity of energy.

Governments and international organisations have long argued that suitable policies that support green investment and technological progress
will permit taking the second path to net zero, sometimes even while boosting GDP growth (Bowen and Hepburn, 2014). Examples of such
policies are carbon prices or taxes that discourage fossil fuel consumption, subsidies and investments in renewables, industrial policies to
accelerate technological change combined with tax reductions or compensations for poor households (eg European Commission, 2019; OECD,
2011; IMF, 2020). This narrative is referred to as ‘green growth’.

On the other hand, degrowth proponents argue that the material size of the global economy and therefore GDP must be scaled down to reduce
emissions. This means acting on the second factor in the identity above, particularly in rich countries (it is important to note here that
degrowers generally do not consider population control as an option, see Cosme et al, 2017). To do so, radical economic reforms are needed
that limit and redirect the supply of labour, natural resources and capital through work sharing, ‘cap-and-share’ systems and possibly the
abolishing of interest and limitations to saving and property rights, which should eliminate the logic of accumulation (Kallis, Kerschner and
Martinez-Alier, 2012). Large scale national and international redistribution is needed to protect the most vulnerable people, especially in
developing countries. A focus on quality of life through more spare time, ‘conviviality’ and social justice reflects an alternative look at prosperity
(Kallis et al, 2018).

2 Green growth or degrowth?

Green growth has clearly not materialised to date . That would require a fast ‘absolute decoupling’ of
global emissions and GDP, meaning that GHG emissions decline while real GDP continues to grow. Instead, there is only ‘relative
decoupling’, whereby global emissions continue to rise but at a slower pace than global GDP, because the carbon intensity of GDP is
declining. This is illustrated in Figure 1, which shows that over the last 100 years energy-related CO2 emissions have risen tenfold despite a
steady decline (about two thirds) in emissions/GDP. This is simply because global economic growth has outpaced the speed of
decarbonisation .

If humanity wants to continue pursuing economic growth while reducing emissions , unprecedented and urgent
efforts will need to be made to accelerate decoupling . Degrowth proponents do not think such a change
is possible , and they rightly highlight the gap between current actions and available technological tools on the one hand and what limiting
climate change requires on the other hand (see IEA, 2021a), as well as policy uncertainties regarding the existence of rebound effects from
energy savings, failing compliance with environmental regulations and burden-shifting whereby one environmental problem is replaced by
another (eg GHG emissions by natural resource depletion for renewable energy infrastructure) (Hickel and Kallis, 2020; Antal and van den
Bergh, 2016).

However, degrowth proposals are as much plagued by uncertainty as green growth policies, if not more .
For example, it is impossible to know how tech nologies will evolve . Successive technological breakthroughs have
disproven alarmist rhetoric about imminent economic collapse , going from Malthus to Paul Ehrlich ’s (1968)
‘population bomb’ and ‘Limits to Growth’ (Meadows et al, 1972). Degrowth may therefore not be necessary to begin with.
Moreover, one could ask whether the systemic changes prescribed by degrowth theory are conducive to
tech nological progress, which will in any case be needed to reduce emissions , or whether poorer societies
will revert to cheaper, less efficient tech nologies, thus offsetting emission savings through a higher third factor in the
I=PAT identity (van den Bergh, 2011). Most importantly, it is unlikely that either advanced or developing economies
would accept and implement the radical and often ideologically driven propositions embedded in the
degrowth literature, which some degrowth authors themselves acknowledge (Kallis et al, 2018). We are also
concerned that, while GDP is a flawed measure of wel fare, alternative conceptions do not diminish the very real welfare effects of a GDP
decline through problems with debt sustainability and social security financing. Because the world is interconnected , it is
unclear what the external implications would be for countries that went down a degrowth path alone .
It therefore seems that, while green growth policies are indeed not guaranteed to result in timely decarbonisation
and unprecedented efforts are required to accomplish it, there might not be a feasible alternative for the world, bar coercion.
It may therefore be better to think about what must be done to maximise the odds of success .
3 Green growth policies needed

Fortunately, there are good reasons to believe that much faster decarbonisation of global energy
production is increasingly feasible . Over the last few decades, the EU, the US and other developed countries put in
place substantial incentive schemes for renewable energy deployment, such as feed-in-tariffs schemes (IEA, 2020a). These
measures have spurred a large-scale deployment of solar and wind energy technology, which pushed their costs
down by 85% and 68% respectively over the last decade, ultimately making them cost-competitive vis-a-vis traditional energy
sources even without subsidies (Figure 2). Both economies have achieved absolute decoupling , even when
ac counting for ‘consumption-based emissions’ abroad , albeit not yet at a sufficient speed (Friedlingstein et al, 2020).
This success story now provides an opportunity to emerging and developing economies to power their economic
growth also on the basis of competitive green technologies (IEA, 2021b).

[FIGURE 2 OMITTED]

Still, massive investment will be needed to decarbonise the energy system and to improve energy efficiency and accelerate
decoupling. The International Energy Agency (2021d) estimated the investment need to be around 5 tn USD per year by 2030 (in
2019 prices), with similar levels for decades after. This is a jump of 2 percent age points of real GDP from today ’s levels, in line
with other estimates (European Commission, 2020; Darvas and Wolff, 2021). To make such an investment increase happen, public investments
and rigorous policy measures such as carbon pricing and enabling financial regulation will be necessary.

Degrowers argue that while investments have to decline in a degrowth scenario, this does not exclude that
sustainable investment grows at the expense of other, unsustainable investments (Kallis et al, 2018).
However, it is difficult to see how a global economy several times smaller than today can generate this sort
of investment alongside other increasing investment needs such as in education , health care or
adaptation to climate change. Moreover, the private sector will have to mobilise most of the required
investments, as government budgets are too limited (Darvas and Wolff, 2021). Undermining property rights and
financial stability by defaulting on debt hardly sounds like a good way to make that happen.

It will also be necessary to accelerate breakthrough innovation to reduce the costs of green technologies
in areas where they are currently not price competitive and economic actors continue to rely on fossil
fuels. Most of the technologies needed in the short term to accelerate decoupling are available. After 2030, however, only 54% of the
necessary emission reductions can be accomplished with current technologies (IEA, 2021d). Green hydrogen, advanced battery storage capacity
and, more controversially, technologies that extract CO2 from exhausts or straight from the atmosphere will be key instruments for
decarbonisation but remain insufficiently developed or prohibitively expensive. More research funding, public-private cooperation, better
functioning capital markets for risk capital and green industrial policy may trigger the much-needed breakthrough innovation (Aghion et al,
2016; Tagliapietra and Veugelers, 2020). Our criticism of degrowth applies here as well.

Finally, we do agree with degrowers that behavioural change will be needed. This must be encouraged through regulation and pricing. Air
travel, for example, will not be carbon neutral any time soon, nor will agriculture and land use, which emit other greenhouse gasses such as
methane. New ways of travelling and providing nutrients will have to be adopted. This could also make the transition to climate neutrality
significantly cheaper (European Commission, 2018).

4 International trade and cooperation

We wrote above that there are several uncertainties and problems with degrowth proposals, including that they are most likely politically
impossible but also undesirable from a social and perhaps even environmental point of view, as they may inhibit the substantial investment and
technological progress that will in any case be needed for a quick decarbonisation. We also briefly referred to problematic effects on external
economic relations (eg, debt repayments), should a single country or region attempt to pursue degrowth policies in a world that sticks to the
growth paradigm. It is difficult to see how such an experiment will not lead to economic isolation. In fact, economic isolation seems to be a
deliberate feature of degrowth, as it also argues for the re-localisation of economies to shorten the distance between consumers and
producers, and the use of regional money (Paech, 2012).
There is much legitimate debate about shorter supply chains and strategic autonomy today, for environmental reasons but also for better
resilience to disruptions, as we saw during the pandemic, and for geopolitical reasons, as most recently in the context of Russia’s invasion of
Ukraine. However, as evidenced by the ‘open’ strategic autonomy advocated by the EU and the recent Global Gateway initiative, it will not be
possible for the world, and especially for Europe, to achieve its aim of limiting climate change without international trade and cooperation
(European Commission, 2021a and 2021b).

Trade is necessary firstly because the push for net zero emissions relies on the deployment of solar panels, wind turbines, li-ion batteries,
electric vehicles etc, all of which require raw material inputs from abroad, since Europe has no significant stocks or processing capacities of its
own. The EU’s dependence on imports is very large: it produces only 3% of the raw materials needed in batteries and fuel cells (JRC, 2020).
Despite efforts to promote the circular economy, which would reduce this dependence, it is likely that Europe’s reliance on China for critical
raw materials will increase, from already very high levels (60% in 2010–2014). Diversification will therefore need to be pursued as much as
possible. Moreover, Europe will still need to import energy from abroad like it does today, but rather than importing gas and oil from countries
like Russia, it might buy electricity and green hydrogen from nearby countries with a high potential for solar energy, like the southern
Mediterranean region (Leonard et al, 2021).

Secondly, the example above suggests that through trade, decarbonisation efforts in Europe and other developed regions can support
environmentally sustainable development in partner countries. The case of Europe’s southern neighbourhood is important, as the region
depends heavily on trade relations with Europe, particularly fossil-fuel exporting countries like Algeria. As Europe consumes less fossil fuels,
turning to exporting renewable energy can compensate for the lower oil and gas revenues in these countries. If, however, European member
states were to implement degrowth proposals, not only would the revenue from fossil fuels export decline, but there would also not be much
new demand for renewable energy to compensate the loss of revenue, or much other demand for exports in fact. The result could be increased
poverty and instability in Europe’s neighbourhood (Leonard et al, 2021).

Thirdly, trade plays an important role in fostering innovation and in the geographical diffusion of technology, though the latter role would likely
be replaced by technology transfers in a degrowth vision. The development of solar PV is a case in point, since international ‘sharing of
responsibility’ for different innovation stages accelerated the development process and created the condi tions for a global supply chain,
economies of scale and ultimately a steep drop in prices (IEA, 2020a).

Aside from trade, the EU and other developed countries also need to cooperate with the rest of the world to achieve global decarbonisation.
Financial support is a key element of this cooperation, as developed countries have committed to providing 100 bn USD per year to developing
countries for mitigation and adaptation. This target has not been reached so far and is still much smaller than the total financing needs for
developing countries’ declared climate plans, which according to the UNFCCC (2021) could run up to a cumulative 5.9 tn USD by 2030. The need
for increased support from rich countries makes political support for degrowth even less likely in our view.

Finally, it is good to note that trade and international cooperation are connected. Countries leading the transition to net zero can use trade
agreements and other tools to encourage climate laggards to do more. For example, the European Commission (2021b) proposed to make
adherence to the Paris Agreement a key condition in any future EU trade agreement. More broadly, countries are incentivised to align to
stringent EU environmental standards to be able to trade freely with the EU (Goldthau, 2021). Moreover, the proposed Carbon Border
Adjustment Mechanism has the dual purpose of preventing carbon leakage by trade and of incentivising other countries to effectively reduce
the carbon footprint of their economies. The strength of all these measures crucially depends on the size of EU’s economy and on trade
opportunities. For that reason, a ‘climate club’ whereby the EU and the US would create a common carbon border tariff could be particularly
helpful in boosting international climate action (Tagliapietra and Wolff, 2021).

5 Conclusion

Global efforts to reduce emissions of GHG are not nearly enough to limit global warming to 1.5°C. As a
consequence, economic growth is still associated with rising emissions . The debate about whether this nexus
can be severed is ongoing and is useful to grasp the significance of the challenge the world faces . However,
even if world-wide green growth still seems a remote prospect, there is even more reason to doubt
whether degrowth proposals will bring solace, if only because they are simply not politically feasible for the
vast majority of societies. European and other developed countries have shown that green policies can
work to combine economic growth and emission reductions, but much more is need ed to mobilise massive
investments in green energy and generate faster tech nological progress , and some behavioural change seems
unavoidable. Trade and international cooperation are also essential. Not least the EU will need to trade to get the necessary inputs for its green
transition, but it can use its trade power and regulatory influence to move reluctant countries towards more climate action.
Growth and resource consumption are sustainable. Innovation will decouple and solve
ecological crises, and a transition fails and causes their impacts.
*responding to the new 2023 “the future is degrowth book by schmelzer et al., as well as most popular
arguments by Hickel, Klein, Kallis, Greenspace, and 350.org

Joseph Grosso 23. Writings have appeared in various places including Counterpunch, Jacobin, The
Humanitist, and Library Journal. Citing Branko Milanovic (visiting presidential professor at the Graduate
Center of the City University of New York and an affiliated senior scholar at the Luxembourg Income
Study,) an Oxfam analysis with the Stockham Environmental Institute, Andrew McAfee (Cofounder and
codirector of the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy at the MIT Sloan School of Management.), and
Zeke Hausfather (Masters degrees in environmental science from Yale University and Vrije Universiteit
Amsterdam and a PhD in climate science from the University of California, Berkeley.). “Growing Small:
The Nihilism of Degrowth” 2/7/23. https://www.sublationmag.com/post/growing-small-the-nihilism-of-
degrowth

Besides minimizing the class factor, degrowth suffers from two interconnected flaws . First, degrowth
underestimates, even ignores, the extent that technology and innovation can decouple economic
growth from material usage. As Engels wrote in his critique of Malthus:

There still remains an element which, admittedly, never means anything to the economist—science—
whose progress is as unlimited and at least as rapid as that of population… Science advances in
proportion to the knowledge bequeathed to it by the previous generation, and thus under the most
ordinary conditions also in a geometrical progression. And what is impossible to science?

Examples of this abound . US crop tonnage has consistently increased for the past 70 years while
precision agriculture has enabled the use inputs such as fertilizer and water to decline the past two
decades and crop acreage (the amount of land used to grow crops) to remain at a steady level. There’s
been the digitization of goods and services . Smart phones have generally replaced cameras, clock
radios, calculators, and camcorders, fitting what used to be numerous material devices into one device
that fits in the palm of a hand. Aluminum cans are 75 percent lighter than they were decades ago.
Building materials are more flexible. As Andrew McAfee describes in his book More from Less, real GDP
growth was symbiotic with the consumption of metals for most of the 20th century. However since
around 1990 the US has been consuming less metals such as steel, copper, and aluminum all while real
GDP growth has continued. Research by Zeke Hausfather , a climate scientist at the Breakthrough
Institute, found a decoupling of emissions and GDP growth happening in 32 countries. The Economist
recently found such decoupling in 33 countries .

A familiar canard that has emerged out of the degrowth movement claims something like “infinite
growth on a finite planet isn’t possible.” “Infinite” is perhaps too much to ask of any planet, however we
don’t appear to be running out of resources in the near future. According to simulations published in
Limits to Growth, even under the most optimistic scenarios, known global reserves of gold would be
used up within 29 years of 1972; silver within 42; copper and petroleum 50; and aluminum 55. It is an
understatement to say these predictions were inaccurate . Despite a half century of additional
consumption, known global reserves of gold are almost 400 percent larger today than in 1972, and
silver reserves are more than 200 percent larger . And we haven’t come close to running out of energy
or copper . As for aluminum , the most plentiful metal on Earth, it need not be a concern: known
reserves are almost 25 times what they were in the early 1970s.

Secondly, and more importantly, degrowth mistakes growth itself with markets, ironically echoing libertarians.
One of the major contradictions within capitalism is that the system can’t help but reproduce social harms if such harms are profitable and
can’t produce necessary social goods if such goods aren’t profitable. There are times when social good coincides with profitability, yet not
nearly enough. Degrowth obviously has sprouted in a time of increased anxiety about global warming and other potential environmental
catastrophes. Fossil fuels are a perfect example of capitalism’s warped incentives. Fossil fuels, with their energy density, fueled the industrial
revolution and helped energetically free us from nature’s dictates. However their continued high use threatens to shift the earth’s temperature
from the range that has enabled human flourishing since the last ice age. Market based solutions to carbon emissions such as carbon trading,
carbon pricing and offsets, and so-called ESG (environment, social, and governance) investing move far too slowly while depending on the very
market incentives that produced the problem in the first place. Carbon pricing, essentially raising the price of energy, also generates
resentment from the working class, as the French Gilets jaunes (Yellow Vests) movement showed.

Norway is the world leader in electric vehicles , reaching around 80 percent of new car sales this year.
Norway is blessed with abundant hydroelectric power , which provides 96 percent of the country’s
electricity (electricity prices in Norway are among the cheapest in the world), yet it was the government’s buildout of a wide network of
charging stations throughout the country, not just in places where stations are most profitable, along with other steps such as free parking, that
accomplished the transition. The largest historical drop in carbon intensity of energy of any economy was
France’s nuclear energy program of the late 1970s and early 1980s, a centralized, government led effort. It was the 1972
Clean Water Act that dramatically cut pollution in U.S. waterways. The Clean Air Act did the same for
U.S. air pollution. The 1987 Montreal Protocol phasing out of Hydrochlorofluorocarbons (then used in
refrigerators and aerosol cans), to this day the only UN treaty ratified by every member state, reversed
ozone layer depletion , once the top environmental concern. The reversal began in the early 2000s and
is on pace to be completed for most of the planet by 2040. These were neither market nor degrowth
solutions . Yet economic growth continued .
Around 3.3. billion people on the planet still live without a consistent source of electricity- in places where per-capita electricity consumption is
less than 1,000 kilowatt-hours per year, or less than the amount used by a decent refrigerator. That includes about a billion people with no
access to electricity at all. Average consumption per person in sub-Saharan Africa is only 185 kilowatt-hours (KWh) a year, compared with
12,000kWh in the U.S. and 6500kWh in Europe. According to a 2018 report by the International Energy Agency, of the 2.8 billion people living in
the hottest parts of the world, only 8 percent had air-conditioners. Earlier this year, the WHO reported that around 2.4 billion people still
cooked using open fires or with inefficient stoves powered by wood or charcoal. Such a method is more carbon intensive than burning coal and
the resulting household air pollution causes an estimated 3.2 million deaths a year.

Global electricity demand figures to double in the next 15-20 years if not sooner. The
bulk of carbon missions now are emitted
by developing countries. By any estimate global mining will have to greatly increase to produce the
lithium, cobalt, vanadium, and other materials needed to achieve an energy transition and decarbonize
the economy. These minerals have to be sourced globally , which puts a dent into the degrowth vision
of locality . This will take growth . In other words, what we need is not degrowth, but planned socialist growth. Mines can be
worker controlled. Public banking can make investments for social goods. Socialist designed cities can return more land to forests.

Degrowth proponents claim that they will allow growth in the Global South but reverse it in the Global
North. It is not at all clear how this miracle can be accomplished . Hard to imagine developing countries
will be willing to suddenly cease economic growth at the point degrowth advocates target. Somehow
balancing growth in the Global South with degrowth in the Global North would seem an impossible
task . As for the Global North, The Future is Degrowth claims “degrowth is about strengthening more
meaningful and less destructive forms of happiness.” Certainly, there is plenty of happiness that can be
considered “less destructive,” yet many more forms require consumption . Airplanes and trains gave us the power
of long distance travel to see the world. These have to be made, as do, bicycles, musical instruments, and flat screen TVs. Despite what it
claims for itself, conservatism is actually never a static force . It grows ever more reactionary. Let it be
left to conservatives . As Trotsky wrote in Literature and Revolution regarding the future of human innovation:
He will point out places for mountains and for passes. He will change the course of rivers and he will lay down rules for oceans. The idealist
simpletons may say this is a bore, but that is why they are simpletons…. Most likely, thickets and forests and grouse and tigers will remain, but
only where man commands them to remain. And man will do it so well the tiger won’t even notice the machine, or feel the change, but will live
as he lived in primeval times. Contrary to the tedious stream of propaganda , the point of socialism is abundance and
prosperity for all. It is a time for thinking big, not growing small .
 ---AT: Jevons
Jevons Paradox is not responsive.
Adam Dorr 22. PhD in Environmental Policy and Planning at UCLA. MSc in Environmental Science at the
University of Michigan. “Rethinking the Jevons Paradox: Why more clean energy efficiency is good for
the environment.” Rethink Disruption. 2/7/2022. https://rethinkdisruption.com/rethinking-jevons-
paradox/

However, The Jevons Effect is commonly invoked – and misinterpreted – in environmental discourse to
mean that new technologies are always worse for the environment than older ones, even if they are
more efficient. This is not the case.
In a narrow technical sense, the Jevons Effect only happens if a technology makes an existing process more efficient – and even then,
only if demand is highly sensitive to prices. But new technology oft obviates the old way of doing things
entirely. Automobiles, for example, did not create a Jevons Effect for horse manure, despite triggering a
10,000-fold increase in freight and passenger miles traveled.
In a looser sense, the Jevons Effect might be taken to mean that new technologies always create new
environmental problems of their own. For example, combustion engine vehicles might have solved the environmental problem of
horse manure, but they created the new problems of air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. (Never mind the fact that we would need
more than 10 trillion horses to move freight and passengers as many miles as we now do with vehicles).
But here again, problems are not inevitable . Digital cameras (and now smartphones) did not create a
Jevons Effect for celluloid film, nor have they caused any other major new environmental problems,
despite triggering a billion-fold increase in image production.
The lesson here is that we cannot make lazy, sweeping generalizations about new technologies. Instead, we
need to examine the environmental implications of technological advancements on a case-by-case basis.
In other words, we need to make decisions about new technology based on reason, not ideology.
Today, the technologies that are driving the disruptions of energy, transportation, and food will not
trigger a Jevons Effect for fossil fuel consumption, greenhouse gas emissions, or other resources because
they are not mere incremental improvements in coal and gas power plants, combustion engines, or
animal agriculture. Rather, they are fundamentally different in nature.
In energy, the three disruptive technologies are solar PV, wind power, and batteries (SWB). Because these
technologies use no fossil fuels or nuclear fuels, they will not cause a Jevons Effect for coal, natural gas,
petroleum, or uranium, nor for the g reen h ouse g asse s or nuclear waste associated with using them. Although SWB do have
other resource input requirements, these are comparable in scale to those of the existing fossil fuel and nuclear power industry. Very
importantly, however, the resources needed for an SWB-based energy system are only needed once .
There is no fuel used, no waste produced, and so after initial construction the maintenance and upkeep
requirements are minimal – especially for solar PV (which can operate for over 50 years) and grid-scale
batteries (which can operate for over 20 years). This means that after the initial pulse of resources needed to
build out SWB, the resource requirements of an SWB-based energy system will be extremely low
compared to today’s energy system based on fossil fuels and nuclear power.
In transportation, the technologies driving the disruption are electric vehicles (EVs), autonomous driving,
and ride sharing that together provides transportation-as-a-service (TaaS). Unlike combustion engine vehicles, EVs
use no fuel. So these technologies will not cause a Jevons Effect for gasoline or diesel fuel, nor the
greenhouse gasses associated with burning them. Moreover, EVs require minimal maintenance and can
last 1 million miles, so each vehicle in a TaaS fleet will be utilized much more than today’s privately-
owned vehicles, which means that there will be a significant decrease in resource intensity per vehicle
mile traveled.
In food, the disruptive technologies are precision fermentation (making proteins, fats, and other food
molecules with microbes) and cellular agriculture (growing animal tissues without the animal), or PFCA.
These technologies will decimate the conventional animal agriculture and seafood industries, slashing
their resource intensity by a factor of 10 to 100, and eliminating their greenhouse gas emissions almost
entirely. The food disruption will also free up over 2.5 billion hectares of land – the size of the United States,
Australia, and China combined – from livestock feed cropping, grazing, and pasturing. This will windfall
of available land will open the door to reforestation, conservation, and rewilding opportunities at an
unprecedented and previously unimaginable scale.
So, for most units of analysis (e.g. number of animals, land area, greenhouse gases, etc.), there will be
no Jevons Effect from the new food technologies. However, even if we examine a unit of analysis that will still be relevant,
such as water intensity per kilogram of protein produced, the food disruption will not cause a Jevons Effect because the efficiency
improvements are too extreme compared to any possible changes in consumption. PFCA is 5 to 50 times more water efficient than livestock per
kilogram of protein produced, depending on the animal species, and consumers are simply never going to eat 5 times more protein no matter
how cheap it gets, let alone 50 times more. (Human wants and needs are not infinite, contrary to another widespread misconception in
environmental discourse).
The Jevons Effect is only a problem if resource utilization still causes harm after switching to a new
technology. Utilizing energy is harmful if that energy comes from coal, but it is harmless if that energy
comes from the sun. Moreover, impacts are only harmful in the aggregate if the rate of degradation
exceeds the rate of restoration. It is possible, for example, to extract timber from a landscape while simultaneously increasing
forest cover, so long as the rate of extraction is lower than the rate of planting and reforestation. In principle, the same is true for many other
forms of environmental impact. This is a crucial consideration looking ahead over the next several decades, because the
same clean
technologies that are beginning to disrupt energy, transportation, and food will also make repairing past
environmental damage and restoring ecological integrity feasible and affordable to an extent that
previous generations of environmental scientists, policymakers, planners, and activists could only dream
of.
The common misconceptions surrounding the Jevons Effect show that we environmentalists need to
rethink our pejorative presumptions about tech nological progress. Astonishing new opportunities for
impact mitigation and ecological restoration of all kinds are now on offer thanks to clean technologies,
but in order to seize them we must relinquish our ideologically-based animosity toward technology in
general. These biases of the past no longer serve the interests of either humanity or the rest of the
natural world. Technology, like any tool, is simply a practical form of knowledge. A stunning new set of tools are now at hand, and we
can make enormous changes for the good – socially, economically, and environmentally – if we choose to use them wisely.