2020 DA: Compiled 9-30-20****



****2020 DA: Compiled 9-30-20****1NC**ShellsWarming Shell---1NCTrump loses now, but there’s still time for a flagship policy to win over undecided votersJackson 8/15 [Chris Jackson is senior vice president and head of polling at Ipsos. “Opinion: Why Trump is unlikely to pull off an election surprise against Biden like he did with Clinton,” MarketWatch, 8/15/20, Accessed 8/17/20]#NCCCan President Donald Trump do it again? Will he be able to convince enough undecided or uncommitted voters to give him another four years in office? At the moment the short answer is “No”. Looking just at the 2020 polls, an election observer could be forgiven for thinking that former Vice President Joe Biden has an easy path to unseating Trump. Yet few prognosticators are proclaiming an impending Biden victory. Perhaps this is because, despite a similar deficit in the summer of 2016, then-candidate Trump surprised everyone with an election night victory over his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton. A big part of that 2016 story is late-deciding voters decisively breaking towards Trump, potentially handing him victory and several swing states. One post-election analysis (APPOR 2016 Post-Election Report) found that Trump gained an average of 1% nationally and 3% in four swing states due to outperforming Clinton among the roughly one-in-eight voters making their decision in the week before Election Day. This same analysis indicates people who said they were undecided or third-party voters in pre-election polls were more likely to say they ended up voting for Trump, contrary to typical historical patterns of undecided voters breaking relatively evenly between candidates. Taken together, this suggests reporting on the early polling in 2016 did not account for those voters who were uncommitted but ended up voting for Trump. By focusing on the topline ballot matchup, early poll coverage exaggerated the margin of Clinton’s lead, contributing to overconfidence in forecasting her (not to be) victory. Indeed, in pre-election analysis of our 2016 Reuters/Ipsos tracking poll, we found evidence that a substantial bloc of undecided voters were sending signals that they were more likely to vote for Trump than Clinton. A deeper look at these Americans uncovered that many of them held particularly unfavorable opinions of President Barack Obama and aligned with Republicans on most issues. Considering that almost one in five 2016 likely voters were “undecided” on Clinton or Trump in the weeks before the election, this bloc was more than sufficiently large to swing the outcome of the election. Taking into account their likelihood to vote and secondary signals, inclusion of this bloc of voters shrunk Clinton’s pre-election lead in the polls from a comfortable six points to a much-closer three points (the final national popular vote gave Clinton a two-point lead). As in 2016, today’s undecided voters make up a substantial bloc of the electorate. In our Reuters/Ipsos tracking polls taken July 6-7, one in five registered voters said they were undecided, voting for someone other than the two parties, or don't know. A total of 1,114 Americans age 18 and up from the continental U.S., Alaska and Hawaii were interviewed online in English and asked: “Overall, do you approve or disapprove of the way Donald Trump is handling his job as president?” A closer look at this group reveals that their composition is slightly different than in 2016. This year, undecided voters are more likely to be female, less likely to have a college degree, more likely to be younger, and are more likely to be a person of color. If we combine this implied support with our regular Reuters/Ipsos tracking survey data, we find that Biden's lead in the polling remains robust. In fact, his lead grows from a solid six-point advantage with registered voters to a “wavelike” 12-point advantage. This is almost the exact opposite of what was observed in 2016 when analysis of undecided voters suggested Clinton’s lead was much smaller than stated in the poll topline. There’s still time for Trump to alter this situation. Undecided voters are, by definition, not fixed on their opinions. Yet views towards the president’s job performance and the direction of the country have tended to be “sticky” and not likely to change. This suggests that in order to boost his reelection chances, Trump is going to have to do more than change his messaging and win a few news cycles. Trump will need to fundamentally alter the trajectory of the country and convince these undecided voters that he is doing right by them. Until then, this analysis suggests that Trump does not have a hidden bloc of support that will miraculously appear and alter his standing in the days before the election. With these undecided voters arrayed against him, he is unlikely to pull a second “inside straight” to win reelection.Plan causes Trump win – 'America First’ won him 2016—the international order is unpopularNye 20 [Joseph S. Nye, Jr., professor at Harvard University, coined the study of ‘soft power’, "American Exceptionalism in the Age of Trump," Project Syndicate, 6-5-2020, , Accessed: 6-21-2020, JD]In my recent study of 14 presidents since 1945,?Do Morals Matter,?I found that Americans want a moral foreign policy, but have been torn over what that means. Americans often see their country as exceptional because we define our identity not by ethnicity, but rather by ideas about a liberal vision of a society and way of life based on political, economic, and cultural freedom. President Donald Trump’s administration has departed from that tradition. Of course, American exceptionalism faced contradictions from the start. Despite the founders’ liberal rhetoric, the original sin of slavery was written into the US Constitution in a compromise that allowed northern and southern states to unite. And Americans have always differed over how to express liberal values in foreign policy. American exceptionalism was sometimes an excuse for ignoring international law, invading other countries, and imposing governments on their people. But American exceptionalism has also inspired liberal internationalist efforts for a world made freer and more peaceful through a system of international law and organizations that protects domestic liberty by moderating external threats. Trump has turned his back on both aspects of this tradition. In his inaugural address Trump declared: “America first … We will seek friendship and good will with the nations of the world, but we do so with the understanding that it is the right of all nations to put their own interests first.” He also said “we do not seek to impose our way of life on anyone, but rather to let it shine as an example.” He had a good point: When the United States sets a good example, it can increase its ability to influence others. There is also an interventionist and crusading tradition in American foreign policy. Woodrow Wilson sought a foreign policy that would make the world safe for democracy. John F. Kennedy called for Americans to make the world safe for diversity, but he sent 16,000 US troops to Vietnam, and that number grew to 565,000 under his successor, Lyndon B. Johnson. Likewise, George W. Bush justified America’s invasion and occupation of Iraq with a National Security Strategy that promoted freedom and democracy. Indeed, since the end of the Cold War, the US has been involved in seven wars and military interventions. Yet, as Ronald Reagan put it in 1982, “regimes planted by bayonets do not take root.” Avoiding such conflicts has been one of Trump’s more popular policies. He has limited the use of American force in Syria, and wishes to withdraw US troops from Afghanistan by election day. Protected by two oceans, and bordered by weaker neighbors, the US largely focused on westward expansion in the nineteenth century, and tried to avoid entanglement in the global balance of power that was centered in Europe. By the beginning of the twentieth century, however, America had become the world’s largest economy, and its intervention in World War I tipped the balance of power. In the 1930s, American opinion believed intervention in Europe had been a mistake and turned inward toward strident isolationism. With World War II, President Franklin Roosevelt, his successor, Harry S. Truman, and others drew the lesson that the US could not afford to turn inward again. They realized that America’s very size had become a second source of exceptionalism. If the country with the largest economy did not take the lead in producing global public goods, no one else would. The post-war presidents created a system of security alliances, multilateral institutions, and relatively open economic policies. Today, this “liberal international order” – the basic foundation of US foreign policy for 70 years – is being called into question by the rise of new powers such as China and a new wave of populism within democracies. Trump successfully tapped this mood in 2016 when he became the first presidential nominee of a major political party to call into question the post-1945 US-led international order, and disdain for its alliances and institutions has defined his presidency. Nonetheless, a recent poll by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs shows that more than two-thirds of Americans want an outward-oriented foreign policy. The US popular mood is to avoid military interventions, but not to withdraw from alliances or multilateral cooperation. The American public is not about to return to the isolationism of the 1930s.Second-term Trump locks in extinction-by-warmingDembicki 20 [Geoff Dembicki, investigative climate reporter. “Here's Exactly How a Trump 2020 Win Would Spark a Nightmare Climate Scenario,” Vice, 2/12/20, ]#NCCLet’s say Donald Trump wins the election in 2020. There’s no doubt some climate advocates will try to put an optimistic spin on it—just like they did when he first won in 2016. Renewable energy is getting cheaper all the time, they’ll argue. Investors are moving rapidly away from fossil fuels. The European Union and China are stepping up to solve the emergency. And so are U.S. states and cities. Young people are becoming a political force to be reckoned with. All of this was true four years ago, and will continue to be accurate if Trump begins a second term. But none of it will change a horrifying reality: a re-elected and emboldened Trump would likely destroy the world’s best-case outcome on climate change, and potentially send us hurtling towards a worst-case scenario. His second term could result in global temperatures roaring past 1.5 degrees Celsius, the danger line identified in the devastating United Nations climate report from 2018, beyond which forests, croplands, freshwater sources and other natural systems that support human life could be irreversibly transformed. We would also likely surpass 2 degrees, the target the world’s nations agreed to in 2015 at Paris, raising the odds of catastrophic tipping points like the melting of all Arctic sea ice. Trump's reelection dramatically increases these risks not only because of the massive additional emissions his fossil fuel-boosting policies could cause—potentially as much as 3.1 gigatons by 2035, which is over four times the entire annual carbon footprint of Canada. A second Trump term could also mean that one by one, countries drop out of the Paris agreement, possibly causing it to unravel completely. In this scenario, keeping temperature rise below 2 degrees would be extremely difficult. “I would say it would make [achieving] it impossible,” said Noah Sachs, a University of Richmond environmental law professor who described in a paper last year what Paris self-destructing could look like. “If Paris fell apart, we would blow right by that target.” That would mean that virtually all the planet’s coral reefs will bleach a sickly white. The world will lose more than 155,000 square miles of coastal wetlands and drylands. The number of people unable to access reliable drinking water could double. Hundreds of millions won’t have enough nutritious food to eat. And Trump, who turns 74 this June, likely won’t even be around to see it happen. The world is on the cusp of climate disaster Global temperature rise above 2 degrees wouldn't mean the imminent collapse of civilization. Nor would it mean the world should give up on cutting emissions. We’re already facing monumental disasters like the Australian bushfires, and the impacts of climate change will get exponentially more destructive and harder to survive with each increase in global temperature. This will make it worth fighting for carbon reductions, no matter how warm the planet gets. But above the 2 degrees goal that countries signed up for in the Paris agreement, damage could come at a scale that’s hard to fathom. In a 1.5 degrees scenario the probability of an ice-free Arctic summer is 3 percent in a given year. At 2 degrees that rises to 16 percent. And at 3 degrees it’s 63 percent. Sea-level rise at that scale means cities such as Miami, Osaka, Alexandria and Shanghai could effectively cease to exist. Meanwhile, there could be disasters like 97 percent of wildfire-sensitive regions in Mediterranean Europe burning every single summer. The chance of the American West going up in flames could increase by 400 percent. The Rhodium Group, a New York-based research firm, calculated in December that for humankind to keep warming below 2 degrees, we need to reduce emissions a colossal one-third from current levels by 2030. They identified five crucial things that could get us globally on track toward closing that gap: the European Union adopting a Green New Deal, Brazil halting its destruction of the Amazon Rainforest, China’s economic growth and the emissions it produces slowing to a more sustainable rate, and demand for electricity in India growing only moderately and being met mainly by renewables. The fifth one is Trump losing in 2020. Trump has already done a significant amount of damage A re-elected Trump would keep dismantling environmental rules—he's slashed 95 in total so far—that limit fossil fuel companies or other polluters of the atmosphere. And he would make the damage much harder to reverse by continuing to stack the courts with conservative judges who tend to rule on the side of greenhouse gas-spewing corporations. There already aren’t many years left to reduce emissions on the scale necessary to avoid further devastation. Trump's second term would at the very least be more wasted time. If the U.S. is to have any hope of meeting the 1.5 degrees goal, its emissions need to be reduced 40 or 50 percent from 2005 levels by 2030. But the Trump administration has wiped out Barack Obama–era emissions standards for cars and trucks, allowed oil and gas producers to release all the methane they want and engaged in many other acts of climate destruction. This would leave only six years to close a massive gap after the end of a second Trump term, after which U.S. emissions cuts might only hit 12 to 19 percent, according to the Rhodium group. And that estimate is based only on existing Trump rollbacks. “If he were elected for an additional four years, it’s very likely that the administration would do more to further erode the progress that the Obama administration made,” said Kate Larsen, a director with Rhodium who leads the group’s international climate and energy research. The increase in U.S. emissions would be a major global setback, given how rapidly the world’s carbon footprint needs to shrink over the next decade. So would the lack of leadership needed to help other countries meet their national goals. “If the Trump administration continues its current policies, the multi-gigaton emissions gap that the world will have to close will be much harder,” Larsen said of keeping global temperature rise below 2 degrees. “Without the U.S. there, it’s hard to see how that would happen.” Trump will send the fossil fuel industry into overdrive Insofar as Trump has any kind of coherent or consistent ideology guiding his presidency, it’s to do as many favors as possible for the fossil fuel companies who have unprecedented access to his administration. Some observers refer to this as Trump’s “energy dominance” agenda. “It really emphasizes maximizing U.S. production of oil and gas, maximizing exports of oil and gas and petroleum products,” said David Goldwyn, a former special envoy to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. “It means rolling back, or revising, or rescinding regulations, which they perceive as putting costs or time delays on fossil energy production.” Goldwyn and his colleague Andrea Clabough described the gifts oil and gas companies could receive from a reelected Trump in a paper this January for the Atlantic Council. These gifts include legislation handicapping the ability of states and tribal authorities to oppose fossil fuel projects, doubling down on efforts to open Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling, and a Federal Energy Regulatory Commission dominated by Republicans, meaning even less environmental oversight of new oil pipelines or liquefied natural gas terminals. Granting the fossil fuel industry’s wildest wish list is an ongoing project—last week, the administration finalized a policy giving energy companies mining access to 5 million acres of previously federally protected wilderness. Trump is also locking in the damage further by appointing conservative judges favorable to these rollbacks. These include Brett Kavanaugh, a longtime opponent of climate regulations. Trump’s administration has already appointed 50 federal appeals judges, compared to the 55 Obama appointed during his entire eight-year presidency, a trend that will continue in Trump’s second term as long as Republicans maintain control of the Senate. If those judges make rulings limiting the government's power to fight climate change, future administrations—Democratic or Republican—could have a difficult time reversing the onslaught of climate-destroying regulations during the dwindling years we have left to hit 1.5 or 2 degrees. “In that respect, the outcome of the election is highly determinative of the future course of [climate and energy] regulation,” Goldwyn explained. Trump will block the government from fighting climate change Even with Trump and his fossil fuel executive allies vandalizing the atmosphere until 2024, Goldwyn said the best-case climate scenario of 1.5 degrees is not out of reach. “Regardless of who wins the U.S. election, the investment in technology that will both reduce the cost and increase the volume of greenhouse gas reduction… I think will continue and intensify,” he argued. “That push is going to continue from private companies, from the innovation space in the United States, from our universities, as well as from the Europeans and from China.” Others aren’t convinced. Though it’s now cheaper to install solar panels or wind turbines than building new coal or natural gas plants in many parts of the world, a trend many analysts expect to continue, technology alone may not be sufficient to solve an emergency. Experts say we need to halt leasing public land to fossil fuel companies, completely change the way we design and build cities, bring in strict laws for protecting carbon-sequestering forests and radically reform the agricultural system. These and other crucial steps require decisions by elected officials and the federal government. Climate advocates contacted by the Washington Post last year had other suggestions: Federal leaders could expand tax credits for buyers of electric vehicles. Pass a ban on food waste. Give financial aid to farmers for more sustainable crop-growing. More strictly regulate factory farms. Price carbon emissions. Pass a Green New Deal. Even a Democratic president might have trouble doing these things, given the structural barriers in Congress, but Trump won’t even try. “You hear this view that it really doesn’t matter what governments do—that climate change will be solved by people seeking profit and by looking for profitable opportunities to reduce emissions,” said Sachs from the University of Richmond. “I’m not so optimistic.” Trump could trigger an international catastrophe Trump already badly damaged the international effort to fight climate change by announcing withdrawal from the Paris Agreement in 2017—a move especially insulting to the rest of the world because the accords were designed to satisfy U.S. demands. For example, Obama pushed for Paris to be voluntary so he could sign on without approval from the Republican-dominated Senate. But four more years of U.S. absence could be a deathblow. “I predict a scenario of dysfunction and dissension and probably a breakdown of the treaty,” Sachs said. The agreement as it stands is insufficient. Plans submitted by countries would ideally only limit temperature rise to 2.7 degrees. In theory, countries are supposed to keep increasing their ambition, submitting ever more transformative plans that reduce the odds of climate impacts becoming cataclysmic. But big emitters are already failing to do so, and with Trump reelected countries like China or India might give up on meeting their already more modest goals. This could set off a chain reaction where other big emitters like Australia withdraw, sending the process into disarray and potentially killing Paris altogether. “Such outcomes would be disastrous and threaten the habitability of many parts of the planet,” Sachs writes. We are already seeing a version of this play out in Brazil, where deforestation of the Amazon rainforest was actually declining in the mid-2000s, but is now accelerating under the far-right presidency of Jair Bolsonaro. “He is largely feeling like he is not beholden to a U.S. president or the international community,” Larsen from the Rhodium Group said. “The signal that a Trump reelection would send about America’s willingness to rejoin the international community on emissions is going to be very important.” That’s an understatement. If Trump wins in November, the climate is screwed.Iran Shell---1NCTrump loses now, but there’s still time for a flagship policy to win over undecided votersJackson 8/15 [Chris Jackson is senior vice president and head of polling at Ipsos. “Opinion: Why Trump is unlikely to pull off an election surprise against Biden like he did with Clinton,” MarketWatch, 8/15/20, Accessed 8/17/20]#NCCCan President Donald Trump do it again? Will he be able to convince enough undecided or uncommitted voters to give him another four years in office? At the moment the short answer is “No”. Looking just at the 2020 polls, an election observer could be forgiven for thinking that former Vice President Joe Biden has an easy path to unseating Trump. Yet few prognosticators are proclaiming an impending Biden victory. Perhaps this is because, despite a similar deficit in the summer of 2016, then-candidate Trump surprised everyone with an election night victory over his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton. A big part of that 2016 story is late-deciding voters decisively breaking towards Trump, potentially handing him victory and several swing states. One post-election analysis (APPOR 2016 Post-Election Report) found that Trump gained an average of 1% nationally and 3% in four swing states due to outperforming Clinton among the roughly one-in-eight voters making their decision in the week before Election Day. This same analysis indicates people who said they were undecided or third-party voters in pre-election polls were more likely to say they ended up voting for Trump, contrary to typical historical patterns of undecided voters breaking relatively evenly between candidates. Taken together, this suggests reporting on the early polling in 2016 did not account for those voters who were uncommitted but ended up voting for Trump. By focusing on the topline ballot matchup, early poll coverage exaggerated the margin of Clinton’s lead, contributing to overconfidence in forecasting her (not to be) victory. Indeed, in pre-election analysis of our 2016 Reuters/Ipsos tracking poll, we found evidence that a substantial bloc of undecided voters were sending signals that they were more likely to vote for Trump than Clinton. A deeper look at these Americans uncovered that many of them held particularly unfavorable opinions of President Barack Obama and aligned with Republicans on most issues. Considering that almost one in five 2016 likely voters were “undecided” on Clinton or Trump in the weeks before the election, this bloc was more than sufficiently large to swing the outcome of the election. Taking into account their likelihood to vote and secondary signals, inclusion of this bloc of voters shrunk Clinton’s pre-election lead in the polls from a comfortable six points to a much-closer three points (the final national popular vote gave Clinton a two-point lead). As in 2016, today’s undecided voters make up a substantial bloc of the electorate. In our Reuters/Ipsos tracking polls taken July 6-7, one in five registered voters said they were undecided, voting for someone other than the two parties, or don't know. A total of 1,114 Americans age 18 and up from the continental U.S., Alaska and Hawaii were interviewed online in English and asked: “Overall, do you approve or disapprove of the way Donald Trump is handling his job as president?” A closer look at this group reveals that their composition is slightly different than in 2016. This year, undecided voters are more likely to be female, less likely to have a college degree, more likely to be younger, and are more likely to be a person of color. If we combine this implied support with our regular Reuters/Ipsos tracking survey data, we find that Biden's lead in the polling remains robust. In fact, his lead grows from a solid six-point advantage with registered voters to a “wavelike” 12-point advantage. This is almost the exact opposite of what was observed in 2016 when analysis of undecided voters suggested Clinton’s lead was much smaller than stated in the poll topline. There’s still time for Trump to alter this situation. Undecided voters are, by definition, not fixed on their opinions. Yet views towards the president’s job performance and the direction of the country have tended to be “sticky” and not likely to change. This suggests that in order to boost his reelection chances, Trump is going to have to do more than change his messaging and win a few news cycles. Trump will need to fundamentally alter the trajectory of the country and convince these undecided voters that he is doing right by them. Until then, this analysis suggests that Trump does not have a hidden bloc of support that will miraculously appear and alter his standing in the days before the election. With these undecided voters arrayed against him, he is unlikely to pull a second “inside straight” to win reelection.Plan causes Trump win—'America first’ won him 2016—the international order is unpopular.Nye 20 [Joseph S. Nye, Jr., professor at Harvard University, coined the study of ‘soft power’, "American Exceptionalism in the Age of Trump," Project Syndicate, 6-5-2020, , Accessed: 6-21-2020, JD]In my recent study of 14 presidents since 1945,?Do Morals Matter,?I found that Americans want a moral foreign policy, but have been torn over what that means. Americans often see their country as exceptional because we define our identity not by ethnicity, but rather by ideas about a liberal vision of a society and way of life based on political, economic, and cultural freedom. President Donald Trump’s administration has departed from that tradition. Of course, American exceptionalism faced contradictions from the start. Despite the founders’ liberal rhetoric, the original sin of slavery was written into the US Constitution in a compromise that allowed northern and southern states to unite. And Americans have always differed over how to express liberal values in foreign policy. American exceptionalism was sometimes an excuse for ignoring international law, invading other countries, and imposing governments on their people. But American exceptionalism has also inspired liberal internationalist efforts for a world made freer and more peaceful through a system of international law and organizations that protects domestic liberty by moderating external threats. Trump has turned his back on both aspects of this tradition. In his inaugural address Trump declared: “America first … We will seek friendship and good will with the nations of the world, but we do so with the understanding that it is the right of all nations to put their own interests first.” He also said “we do not seek to impose our way of life on anyone, but rather to let it shine as an example.” He had a good point: When the United States sets a good example, it can increase its ability to influence others. There is also an interventionist and crusading tradition in American foreign policy. Woodrow Wilson sought a foreign policy that would make the world safe for democracy. John F. Kennedy called for Americans to make the world safe for diversity, but he sent 16,000 US troops to Vietnam, and that number grew to 565,000 under his successor, Lyndon B. Johnson. Likewise, George W. Bush justified America’s invasion and occupation of Iraq with a National Security Strategy that promoted freedom and democracy. Indeed, since the end of the Cold War, the US has been involved in seven wars and military interventions. Yet, as Ronald Reagan put it in 1982, “regimes planted by bayonets do not take root.” Avoiding such conflicts has been one of Trump’s more popular policies. He has limited the use of American force in Syria, and wishes to withdraw US troops from Afghanistan by election day. Protected by two oceans, and bordered by weaker neighbors, the US largely focused on westward expansion in the nineteenth century, and tried to avoid entanglement in the global balance of power that was centered in Europe. By the beginning of the twentieth century, however, America had become the world’s largest economy, and its intervention in World War I tipped the balance of power. In the 1930s, American opinion believed intervention in Europe had been a mistake and turned inward toward strident isolationism. With World War II, President Franklin Roosevelt, his successor, Harry S. Truman, and others drew the lesson that the US could not afford to turn inward again. They realized that America’s very size had become a second source of exceptionalism. If the country with the largest economy did not take the lead in producing global public goods, no one else would. The post-war presidents created a system of security alliances, multilateral institutions, and relatively open economic policies. Today, this “liberal international order” – the basic foundation of US foreign policy for 70 years – is being called into question by the rise of new powers such as China and a new wave of populism within democracies. Trump successfully tapped this mood in 2016 when he became the first presidential nominee of a major political party to call into question the post-1945 US-led international order, and disdain for its alliances and institutions has defined his presidency. Nonetheless, a recent poll by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs shows that more than two-thirds of Americans want an outward-oriented foreign policy. The US popular mood is to avoid military interventions, but not to withdraw from alliances or multilateral cooperation. The American public is not about to return to the isolationism of the 1930s.Perception that Trump’s on-track for reelection causes Iran to leave the nuclear deal and restart their program---Trump responds with strikes Amos Harel 18, writer for Haaretz, 8/17/18, “Analysis Why Iran Thinks It Has an ‘Insurance Policy’ Against an Israeli or U.S. Strike,” cease-fire agreement in Gaza, assuming it holds, will allow the IDF to refocus its attention to the northern arena, and especially to the ongoing military and intelligence battle with Iran. Through conversations with a number of Israeli and American officials over the past weeks, Haaretz has learned of a joint view, shared by both Jerusalem and Washington, of the current strategic situation regarding Iran. According to that view, the regime in Tehran is currently trying to “wait out” President Donald Trump. The Iranians hope that Trump will turn out to be a one-term president, and their strategy until his departure from the White House is to clench their teeth, dig in their heels and wait. The most important component in this Iranian strategy, according to the sources who spoke with Haaretz, is to keep the Iran nuclear deal in place, even if the renewed American sanctions cancel out almost all of the financial benefits that Iran had gained from that agreement. The American sanctions had already caused an exodus of European companies out of Iran, and the Trump administration will soon shift its pressure to Chinese, Indian and Japanese companies. But even if the agreement, down the line, won’t create even a single dollar of revenue for Iran, the Iranian calculation is that it is still vitally important, and worth keeping alive, even “on paper.” The Iranians think the agreement can serve as an “insurance policy” against any attempt by Trump to devise even harsher sanctions with cooperation from the international community, and also against an American or Israeli military strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities. The Iranians believe that politically, it will be impossible for Trump to create international support, and even internal American consensus, for a strike on Iran, as long as the 2015 agreement stands. Israeli officials believe Trump’s comment two weeks ago, when he expressed his willingness to meet Iran’s leaders without preconditions, was not planned by the administration and does not represent a new strategy on behalf of the White House. The Iranian president Hassan Rohani would very much like to have a meeting like that, or even to send his foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, for a meeting with a senior American official, according to the sources who spoke with Haaretz. The Iranian president knows that once the existence of such a meeting is leaked to the press, the value of the Iranian rial will rise, and the frustrated Iranian public will sense some hope for improvement. Yet Rohani will find it difficult to take such action as long as the Iranian Revolutionary Guards and their leader, Qasem Soleimani, object to any return to negotiations. Officials in Israel describe the Iranian dilemma as “national pride versus money.” The Israeli view is that the main difference between the Trump administration’s current policy and that of the Obama administration ahead of the 2015 nuclear agreement, is that Trump is perceived by the Iranians as someone who could actually choose a military strike, given the right conditions. The Iranians view the American president as a madman and an avid supporter of Israel, who would let it take action on its own if it decided to. People around Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hope this combined-threat perception will bring Iran back to the negotiating table. But Iran views the 12 conditions for a new agreement, which were laid out by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo two months ago, as an attempt to change the entire nature of its regime. Mark Dubowitz, an expert on Iran policy at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told Haaretz that former officials from the Obama administration have encouraged the Iranians to “wait out” Trump, until a new president comes into power and returns to the nuclear deal. “Their message to the Iranians has been – don’t give Trump any excuse to escalate things militarily. Just wait him out.” Dubowitz, however, thinks Iran will find this strategy increasingly more difficult to implement, as the pressure of the American sanctions increases. “The sanctions that came back last week are the easier ones, relatively, and Iran is already under immense pressure, with international companies leaving. The next set of sanctions, in November, will target the energy sector and financial institutions, and there will be new sanctions on top of that. It’s easy to say ‘let’s take a bet and wait for two years,’ but it’s hard to actually do that when the economy is collapsing and angry people are in the streets.” Dubowitz thinks Iran might try another strategy at some point, which is to “trap” the Trump administration in negotiations. The Iranian calculation, he says, is that negotiations will help loosen some of the pressure on the economy, thus making it easier to waste time until the end of Trump’s first term. Dubowitz thinks the administration can cancel out that strategy by conditioning negotiations with Iran on a European decision to join America’s sanctions on Iran’s financial sector. “Don’t take down the pressure during the negotiations – increase it,” he says. This, according to Dubowitz, will send a clear message to Iran that “the only way to relieve the pressure is through an agreement, not through dragging out time. And an agreement requires concessions.” Ariane Tabatabai, a policy analyst at the Rand Corporation who recently published a book on Iran’s relations with China and Russia, told Haaretz that the Trump administration’s messaging on the Iranian issue is seen as contradictory by many Iranians. “One signal they are sending is this talk of negotiations without preconditions. The other signal is this talk of regime change. People who are close to Trump participate in events of the MEK (an Iranian opposition group that wants to topple the Islamic Republic and was previously designated in Washington as a terror organization). The regime change message is the one being heard more clearly in Tehran right now.” The Iranian leadership, she adds, is indeed closely following political developments in the United States. “If they see signs that Trump is likely to be a one-term president, that will increase the likelihood of keeping the nuclear deal in place, and waiting for the next president. If it looks like Trump is likely to have a second term, their calculation will have to change, and a new plan will have to be constructed.” This plan could go either in the direction of negotiating a new agreement, or escalating the situation by dropping out of the nuclear deal and pushing ahead with the nuclear program. “There is internal pressure on Rohani to withdraw from the nuclear deal, there are personal attacks on Rohani and other government officials, but so far he is sticking to his position that Iran is better with it than without it.”U.S.-Iran war causes extinction Louis René Beres 17, emeritus professor of international law at Purdue University, 2/10/17, “The Fast Track to Armageddon,” such bewildering calculations, of course, must assume perfect rationality on all sides. If, for example, the new American president should cast all caution to the winds with his own first strike (a strike that would be defended by Washington, in law, as an allegedly legitimate expression of international law-enforcement, or "anticipatory self-defense"), the Iranian response, whether rational or irrational, could expectedly be "proportionate" – that is, comparably massive. In that prospectively escalatory case, any contemplated introduction of nuclear weapons into the ensuing conflagration might not necessarily be dismissed out of hand. At that point, moreover, any such introduction would have to originate from the American and/or Israeli side. This indisputable inference is "true by definition," "simply" because Iran would not yet have become an operationally nuclear power. In such circumstances, Trump, especially in view of his favored argumentum ad baculum stance in virtually all matters, might decide upon a so-called "mad dog" strategy vis-a-vis Iran. Here, the American president would display a last-resort dependence upon a strategy of pretended irrationality, or what I have called in my own latest books and monographs, the "rationality of pretended irrationality." Significantly, any such residual reliance, while intuitively sensible and apparently compelling, could still backfire, thereby opening up an "Armageddon path" to a now unstoppable escalation. If, on the other hand, Trump's "punishing" or defensive initial strike against Iran were conspicuously less than massive, a fully rational Iranian adversary would likely ensure that its chosen reprisal was correspondingly "limited." But if Trump's consciously rational and calibrated attack upon Iran were wittingly or unwittingly launched against an irrational enemy leadership, the Iranian response could then be "roaring missiles," or an all-out retaliation. This presumably unanticipated response, while non-nuclear, could be directed at some as yet undeterminable combination of U.S. and Israeli targets. Cumulatively, it could still inflict very substantial harms. For the moment, at least, any Iranian missile reprisal against U.S. interests and personnel would have to exclude the American homeland. This same limiting prediction, however, cannot be made in reference to any considered Israeli targets. On the contrary, any reciprocal Iranian attack directed against Israel would plausibly target that country's military assets and could also include a significant number of "soft" civilian populations and corollary infrastructures. Even if it is being played only by rational adversaries, the advancing strategic "game" would demand that each contestant relentlessly strive for "escalation dominance." Ominously, it is in the thoroughly unpracticed internal dynamics of any such rivalry that the serious prospect of a genuinely "Armageddon" scenario could sometime be realized. This intolerable outcome could be produced either in unexpected increments of escalation by any or all of the three dominant national players, or instead, by any sudden quantum leap in destructiveness undertaken by Iran, Israel and/or the United States. The only thing that is wholly predictable in usefully deciphering such complex dynamics is that they are all unpredictable. For example, even under the best or optimum assumptions of enemy rationality, all pertinent decision-makers would have to concern themselves with miscalculations, errors in information, unauthorized uses of strategic weapons, mechanical or computer malfunctions, poorly recognized instances of cyberdefense, cyber-war and even adversarial coups d'etats. In the final analysis, informed citizens and participants in these hideously complicated games of strategy will need to recall that it is mathematically meaningless to assign any comforting probabilities to unique events. Because an authentic nuclear war would represent precisely such an event, one with utterly unforeseen intersections, interactions and "synergies," we can never predict with any reassuring degree of precision whether such a conflict would actually be more or less probable. Indeed, should Trump ever proceed to strike Iran on the erroneously nonspecific assumption that his generals have already "got everything covered," he ought then to be reminded of the classic military warning of Carl von Clausewitz: Long before any military planners could even envision a nuclear war, the great Prussian general had cautioned about "friction," or "the difference between war on paper, and war as it actually is." Where it would be minimized or disregarded altogether by Trump, this difference could propel the unsteady Middle East toward an irreversible Armageddon.2NC/1NR**UniquenessBiden Wins---2NCBiden is ahead – Debates and , Sept. 30 ()The Market ReactionWith Trump trailing Biden in the polls, the 1st?debate would have been an opportunity for Trump to close the gap.As Biden went for the President’s obvious failings, however, there was little in response other than the interruptions.If the market reaction was anything to go by, then the 1st?live televised debate would have to go to Biden.In response, the U.S and European futures fell into negative territory after kicking off the day in the green.The market movements also cleared up any uncertainty over which side of the fence the markets are sitting.A 2nd?Term for the U.S incumbent is considered to be market positive. While spending would likely be drastically reduced, there would be no tax hikes. This would support the U.S equity markets should the economic recovery continue.All in all, there was nothing dramatic from the debate that could swing the polls in either direction.At the time of writing, the Dow mini was down by 308 points, with DAX futures down by 68 points. While the risk-off sentiment drove demand for the U.S Dollar, the Japanese Yen also found support. At the time of writing, the Japanese Yen was up by 0.16% to ??105.49. The rest of the major currencies were in the red this morning.The Road AheadWhile the polls put Biden ahead, the current fear is that he may not reach the magic number of 270 college votes. This would bring a period of uncertainty for the U.S. When considering the fact that Trump has vocally stated that he may not concede is another issue.Postal voting has been a hot topic and this may well become a major issue in the event that Biden wins???The markets will now look ahead to the next debate on 7th?October. The vice-president debate may have more to offer the markets. How Kamala Harris performs will be of great importance to the Democrats and Biden???Then the markets can look forward to the 2nd?live presidential candidate debate on 15th?October.Prefer polling averages that show steady support for BidenRupar 8/17 [Aaron Rupar, associate editor, politics & policy. “CNN has Trump nipping at Biden’s heels. ABC has Biden cruising. The truth is in the middle.” Vox, 8/17/20, Accessed 8/20/20]#NCCA new CNN poll released on the eve of the Democratic National Convention indicates that the lead presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden has enjoyed over President Donald Trump in most national polls all but evaporated in recent weeks. But another one released hours later by ABC and the Washington Post illustrated why. It’s important to put any single survey in context. A poll conducted by CNN in June had Biden up by a robust 14 percentage points. But the new poll released Sunday showed his lead among a random national sample of adults slimmed all the way down to just 4 percent — a spread nearly within the poll’s 3.7 percent margin of error. “Across 15 battleground states, the survey finds Biden has the backing of 49 percent of registered voters, while Trump lands at 48 percent,” CNN’s writeup of the poll says, though it doesn’t identify which specific states were included in that set. Some understandably responded to the poll with surprise that a race that seemed Biden’s to lose could suddenly be so close, especially as the coronavirus continues to rampage out of control and with the unemployment rate north of 10 percent. Others, however — like Greg Sargent of the Washington Post — quickly pointed out that the CNN survey has all the makings of an outlier. Sargent’s view was quickly vindicated. The ABC News/Washington Post poll of a random national sample of adults released Monday morning showed Biden with a 12 percentage point lead over Trump (margin of error 3.5 percent) — a spread more in line with the polling averages like RealClearPolitics and FiveThirtyEight showing his advantage in the range of 8 percentage points. So Biden appears to still be favored by voters. But Trump remains in striking range given the structural advantage that the Electoral College gives to Republicans. Biden’s lead has actually stayed remarkably consistent over time Aggregations like those put together by RealClearPolitics and FiveThirtyEight are only as good as the polls they aggregate. But since any single poll can be off by three or four percentage points, the 30,000-foot view polling averages provide is a better way to get a sense of a race than by drawing conclusions from single data points like the CNN survey showing the race in doubt or the ABC/Post poll showing Biden cruising to a blowout. The truth of where the race currently lies is likely somewhere in the middle. With both the CNN and ABC/Post polls included, FiveThirtyEight’s daily polling average shifted from an 8.5 point Biden advantage on Sunday to an 8 point advantage on Monday. In short, Trump may have narrowed the gap slightly, but Biden is still solidly ahead in the polls.Biden is ahead narrowly – best studies proveThe Hill, Sept. 28 ()Democratic presidential nominee?Joe Biden?holds a narrow lead over?President Trump, according to a new Harvard CAPS-Harris poll, released exclusively to The Hill one day before the first presidential debate.?Forty-seven?percent of likely voters said they would vote for Biden if the election were held today, while 45 percent said they would back Trump. The survey marks a 3-point improvement for Trump and a 2-point decline for Biden from the last poll that was conducted in August.?Biden also led with likely voters who said they were unsure of who they were going to vote for, with 52 percent saying they were leaning toward supporting the former vice president at the ballot box and 48 percent leaning toward voting for Trump.?"The poll shows the race closing to 2 points with likely voters and 4 points with leaners as the president showed improvement in the economy that dipped below double-digit unemployment and hit the theme of curbing unrest on which he gained," said Harvard CAPS-Harris Poll director?Mark Penn.The same survey showed Biden with an advantage on likeability, with 44 percent of respondents saying they like the former vice president personally and 38 percent saying they disliked him. Fifty-five percent of respondents said they disliked Trump personally, while 33 percent said they liked him personally.?The findings come as Biden and Trump prepare to meet face-to-face for Tuesday's presidential debate. The?forum is expected to cover a number of topics including the coronavirus pandemic, the economy, Trump's Supreme Court nominee, and the fallout over a New York Times?investigation that found the president paid just $750 in federal income tax in both 2016 and 2017.?Biden Wins---A2: Econ Thumper---2NCEconomic recovery doesn’t lock in Trump victory---voters who care most about the economy are already part of Trump’s base---and economy probably won’t be the number 1 issue in NovemberButchireddygari 7/6 (Likhitha, politics intern at FiveThirtyEight, “Voters Who Think The Economy Is The Country’s Biggest Problem Are Pretty Trumpy. That Might Not Help Him Much.” 7/6/2020, )President Trump could be in trouble. A lot could still change between now and November, but historically, the strength of the economy is correlated with the electoral strength of the incumbent president, and right now, the economy doesn’t look especially good. Between mid-March and the end of May, more than 38 million Americans applied for unemployment insurance. And even though the job market has shown some signs of improvement, many Americans are still out of work, and in June more of the people who lost their jobs were laid off permanently. And if the economic recovery progresses slowly — or halts and starts backsliding — it’s likely to drag down Trump’s reelection chances. At the very least, the downturn takes away what had been perhaps his strongest re-election argument. Even in more normal election years, many voters still worry about the economy. The American National Election Studies, which has tracked public opinion since 1948, has for many years now asked voters what they think is the most important problem facing the country. And in the last three presidential election cycles, Americans have named the economy as their top concern, making it the most frequently cited issue. In 2008 (the last time we had a presidential election amid an economic crisis), 42 percent of Americans said the economy was the most important political problem. Since then, the share citing the economy as their top issue has dropped — it was 32 percent in 2012 and just 11 percent in 2016. So far in 2020, polls show that anywhere from 1 in 5 to 1 in 3 voters rate the economy as their top concern. But let’s return to 2020 in a moment. So what do we know about these voters? To be clear, everyone is an economic voter to some extent, according to Michael Lewis-Beck, a professor of political science at the University of Iowa who studies economic voting and comparative politics. His research has found that the economy frequently ranks as the country’s most important problem unless there’s a big war going on. “It’s always at or near the top of the average voter’s agenda,” Lewis-Beck told me. Many voters factor the state of the national economy into their vote even if it’s not the most important issue to them. But that doesn’t mean all voters prioritize the economy equally. In fact, according to our analysis of ANES data, there are two key traits that tend to correspond with being an economy-minded voter: higher income or a college education. These voters are also more likely to identify as Republican than as Democratic and are more likely to be white or Hispanic than Black.1 First up, as the table below shows, those with household incomes of $100,000 or more have consistently said the economy is the most important problem facing the country at higher rates than those in households making less. In 2008, for instance, only 36 percent of households making less than $50,000 said the economy was the top problem, whereas 51 percent of households making $100,000 or more said the same. In 2016, when all groups were less likely to say the economy was their top concern, that pattern wasn’t as stark, but it was still there. Next, education. These differences are less pronounced than differences by income level — education levels produce at most an 11-point gap in the last three presidential election cycles. But as you can see in the table below, those with at least a bachelor’s degree or some college education have consistently been more likely to name the economy as their top concern than those with a high school diploma or less. The gap here also narrowed quite a bit in 2016. And though the pattern here is a little less consistent here than with either income or education, race and ethnicity also reveal something about which voters care most about the economy. White and Hispanic voters are consistently more likely to put the economy at the top of their list than Black voters. And in 2016, a slightly higher percentage of Hispanic voters than white voters said the economy was their No. 1 issue. Lewis-Beck has found similar trends in his own research, too, describing Hispanics as close to being single-issue voters on the economy. There are also meaningful differences between Democrats and Republicans. Larger shares of Republicans than Democrats have rated the economy as the most important issue facing the U.S., although as you can see in the table below, partisan differences were never huge and were much less pronounced in 2012.2 Ultimately, what we know is this: The group of voters who prioritize the economy tends to skew wealthier and more educated — and, often, white or Hispanic and Republican. But the group’s exact size and makeup changes from election to election. For instance, in 2016, just 11 percent of voters said the economy was the most important issue, and that small group overwhelmingly broke for Trump — 60 percent backed him, while only 32 percent backed Hillary Clinton. Whereas in 2008 and 2012, more voters thought the economy was the most pressing issue (42 percent and 32 percent, respectively), but they broke for the Democratic candidate, Barack Obama — 51 percent to 46 percent in 2008 and 51 percent to 47 percent in 2012. So what do we know about these economy-minded voters and which way they may be leaning in 2020? First, it’s hard to know exactly how many voters think the economy is the top issue this year, as we don’t have a ton of recent polls. But in three polls from June that asked people about the most important issue affecting their vote, we know that: (i) roughly a quarter of Americans are are naming the economy as the top issue, and (ii) Trump still has an advantage with these voters, leading Joe Biden by varying degrees: In a Reuters/Ipsos poll, 20 percent of voters chose the economy as the most important problem facing the country, and these voters narrowly backed Trump, 44 percent to 41 percent.3 An Economist/YouGov poll found 22 percent of voters rated “the economy and jobs” as the most important issue to them, but this survey had Trump with a 44-point lead over Biden (70 percent to 26 percent) with this group.4 And in an Axios/SurveyMonkey poll, Trump had a 27-point lead over Biden (56 percent to 29 percent) among the 33 percent of adults who said that jobs and the economy mattered most to them. More respondents named the economy than any other issue.5 Trump’s advantage with this group of voters makes sense, as polls show they are more likely to be white, higher income and Republican-leaning (just as the ANES survey found in past years); they’re also far more likely to have voted for Trump in 2016, at least according to the SurveyMonkey poll. “Fully 50% of Trump voters single out jobs and the economy as the most critical set of issues right now, more than double the proportion of Biden voters so focused on these concerns,” the pollster wrote of its results. “For Trump voters, no other issue reaches into double-digits.” But it’s not clear how much this advantage among economy-minded voters actually helps Trump. That’s because these voters are already likely to be a part of Trump’s base, according to Alan Abramowitz, a professor of political science at Emory University. “Voters who prioritize the economy tend to be Republicans, so they’re already inclined to support the president,” said Abramowitz. The economy might also be a less powerful influence on people’s vote choice now than it has been in the past due to increased partisanship and the fact that opinions of Trump are pretty baked in at this point, so the state of the economy might not change many minds. All of which means that who you’re supporting may say more about whether you rate the economy as your top concern rather than the other way around. Abramowitz was also skeptical that this “economy-minded” group of voters will expand into a broader coalition because some voters will consider other issues — like the pandemic — more pressing than the economy this year. Voters’ concern about this issue may already be reflected in the fact that health care was either the first or second most popular choice in all three of these recent polls. As we are already seeing, current events may increase the salience of issues that weren’t on as many voters’ radar in past elections, such as racism and police brutality. As Ipsos wrote about their findings, “Similar to the first two weeks in June, the percentage of respondents who say ‘other’ remains higher than average at 17%. When asked to specify, racism, police brutality, partisanship and the current administration are common themes being reported.” In fact, Abramowitz told me, he thinks there’s a chance that Trump could even lose some ground among economy-minded voters. For instance, voters already disinclined to support Trump likely didn’t need an economic downturn to sour on the president — the economy was just one of many factors that shaped their opinion. Take Trump’s overall job approval rating: It continues to hover in the low 40s, and his deficit against Biden in national polls is bigger than ever. So if the coronavirus pandemic worsens — cases and deaths are rising in some places right now — it’s possible that this will hurt Trump’s perceived handling of the crisis and drive away some economy-minded voters who were open to voting for him. Bottom line: It’s not clear what role the economy might play in 2020. In the last three presidential elections, the economy has been the most commonly named top issue for voters (although the share of voters saying its the country’s biggest problem has changed from cycle to cycle). Historically, white voters and voters with higher incomes or more education have been more likely to rank the economy higher than any other issue. But there’s no reason to think the size and makeup of the economy-minded voters group will look like it has in recent general elections. College-educated white voters have moved dramatically toward Democrats in recent years, and many Americans disapproved of Trump even when the economy was booming. Which means that while this group looks a lot like Trump’s base right now, that could be because non-Trump voters are prioritizing other issues, rather than because Trump is gaining supporters among people who are focused on the economy. So it’s still possible that Trump wins these voters but loses the general election. The questions now are: If economic conditions are still bad come November, how much does that actually hurt Trump? And, of course, how many voters will prioritize the economy over other issues, like police brutality and systemic racism, the COVID-19 pandemic or other major issues?Thumper Ans: HackingNo hacking problem—tech and process reforms, Russia’s not tryingMarks ’20 [Joseph Marks, journalist, “The Cybersecurity 202: Election Security Officials Sound Confident About November,” WASHINGTON POST, PowerPost, 8—6—20, , accessed 9-12-20] **NCC Packet 2020**Election security officials are confident they made key changes to make in-person voting safer in November. But lawmakers are farther apart than ever on how best to protect the election that’s just three months away. The Department of Homeland Security’s top election security official, Chris Krebs, ticked off a slew of accomplishments during an address at an online version of the annual Black Hat cybersecurity conference. They include an extensive cybersecurity testing program for state and local election offices and digital sensors that can alert DHS about hacking attempts at thousands of county election offices. “It’s night and day compared to what existed in 2016,” Krebs said. He said he’s confident that “2020 will be the most protected and most secure election in modern history.”Lawmakers, meanwhile, have fallen into partisan bickering with Republicans and Democrats accusing each other of aiding U.S. enemies rather than combating them. That split screen has been a relative constant during the past four years. And it comes as officials are facing a new kind of insecurity – a potentially massive wave of mail-in ballots as fewer people go to physical polling places during the coronavirus pandemic.With some notable exceptions, federal, state and local officials have made steady progress with changes to transition to more secure paper ballots and implement cybersecurity protections and post-election audits. Congress, meanwhile, has failed to pass any significant campaign or election security legislation. It has delivered about $1.2 billion to states to improve cybersecurity and make voting safer during the pandemic, but that’s far less than Democrats have requested and many experts say is necessary. Recently, the congressional wrangling has focused on a Republican investigation into work in Ukraine by Joe Biden’s son Hunter.For the past several weeks, Democrats including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (N.Y.) have warned about a foreign disinformation campaign trying to get Congress to undermine the election — a likely reference to the investigation led by Sens. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) and Charles Grassley (R-Iowa). Biden campaign spokesman Andrew Bates has accused Johnson of “facilitating a foreign influence operation to undermine our democracy” in part to distract from the Trump administration’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic, Paul Sonne, Karoun Demirjian and David L. Stern report. Johnson and Grassley punched back yesterday, arguing it was Pelosi and Schumer who were undermining election security by questioning their investigation. “It is certainly our goal to eradicate foreign influence from our elections. But your use of this issue to knowingly and recklessly promote false narratives for political purposes is completely contrary to that goal,” the lawmakers wrote. Then they got harsher: “Although it is undisputed that Russia interfered in the 2016 elections, as they have done in the past and will continue to do in the future, you have twisted this fact beyond recognition to forge a weapon for the purpose of attacking your political opponents no matter its tenuous relationship with facts or the truth.” So far, Russia doesn't appear to be trying for a repeat of 2016. That year, Russian hackers compromised voter databases in at least two states, though there’s no evidence they changed any information or compromised actual voting infrastructure. They also scanned but did not hack into election systems in dozens of other states in addition to hacking and leaking embarrassing information from the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign. Krebs warned of “a whole lot of scanning” of election-related computer networks by U.S. adversaries this year, a list that might include China and Iran as well as Russia. But there has been “nothing at the directed, focused level of 2016,” he said. That’s good news for election officials who are trying to remain secure against Russian hacking even as they tackle a slew of challenges related to running an election during the pandemic. Hacking’s not a problem --- major upgrades since 2016Brumfield 20 – veteran communications and technology analyst who is currently focused on cybersecurity. She runs a cybersecurity news destination site, , Cynthia, 1/21. “US elections remain vulnerable to attacks, despite security improvements.” **NCC Packet 2020**Certainly, voting security has made great strides since 2016. State and local governments took advantage of a funding boost under the Help America Vote Act to improve their infrastructure and better coordinate among themselves to harden election systems. Congress allocated an additional $425 million as part of a spending compromise that was passed and enacted in late-December, giving election officials even more latitude to make improvements.A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) tells CSO that the agency has seen marked improvements in security over the past few years. “In our work with all 50 states and more than 2,400 local jurisdictions, we’ve seen a maturation in the risk management practices across the sector,” the spokesperson says. “Whether implementing controls like multifactor authentication and intrusion detection systems or exercising incident identification, communications, and response, the progress for election security is real.”Even more improvements to how the country responds to election threats could flow from a decision announced last week by the FBI to alter its policy regarding how it informs state officials about local election security breaches. In the past, the FBI informed state officials of cybersecurity attacks on local election infrastructure after informing local officials, allowing state officials to proceed with vote tallies and other efforts without full information. Now the bureau plans to keep state officials informed in a timelier manner, hoping to improve federal and state cooperation on election security matters.Thumper Ans: Voter SuppressionDemocrats control the voting process in most swing statesFord 20 --- Matt Ford is a staff writer at The New Republic, “The Blue Wave That Saved the Vote”, Soapbox, May 22nd 2020, **NCC Packet 2020**When most people think about the significance of the 2018 midterms, they think about the House of Representatives. Democrats, propelled by voter antipathy toward President Donald Trump, retook the chamber for the first time in eight years. The breakthrough ended two years of complete Republican control of the federal government. It also paved the way for Trump’s eventual impeachment in the Ukraine scandal last fall. As the 2020 election nears, however, it seems like the most decisive result of the last cycle may not have been at the federal level. Voters also went to the polls in 2018 to elect a variety of state and local officials. In certain key states that Trump had won in 2016, they opted to elect Democrats to critical positions—posts crucial to the preservation of voting rights. Democrats ultimately flipped governorships in seven states, as well as the secretary of state’s office in Arizona, Colorado, and Michigan. Those relatively unheralded results will have a profound effect on voting rights ahead of the 2020 election. In some states, the Democratic gains will provide a bulwark against potential degradations of the electoral system in the months leading up to the November vote. In others, they will provide an opportunity for Democrats to push back on restrictive measures and ensure that more Americans might have a voice in choosing their next president. Either way, it could be a grim sign for Trump’s already flagging reelection chances. Trump is increasingly showing signs of fear about greater voter participation in November. In a series of Twitter posts this week, he railed against officials in Nevada and Michigan for their plans to send vote-by-mail applications to every registered voter in their states. “Michigan sends absentee ballot applications to 7.7 million people ahead of Primaries and the General Election,” he wrote on Wednesday. “This was done illegally and without authorization by a rogue Secretary of State. I will ask to hold up funding to Michigan if they want to go down this Voter Fraud path!”Doesn’t impact resultsHoekstra & Koppa 20 --- Mark Hoekstra Texas A&M University, and Vijetha Koppa, Institute of Management Technology, Dubai International Academic City, “Strict Voter Identification Laws, Turnout, and Election Outcomes”, CATO, Feb 19th 2020, **NCC Packet 2020**Results indicate that there is little scope for strict voter identification laws to affect voter turnout. This finding stems directly from the extremely small number of votes cast by individuals without IDs, even in settings where such votes are explicitly allowed and counted. Specifically, we show that a voter identification law would reduce turnout by no more than 0.06 percent in Florida and 0.2 percent in Michigan. This suggests that at least in these two states, very few voters without IDs choose to vote even when they can. Unsurprisingly, the small effects on turnout imply that there are very few elections in our sample that could have been affected by a strict voter ID law. Even under the most extreme assumption — that all votes for the winner (and none for the runner‐?up) cast without an ID would be excluded under strict law — we estimate that a strict law could have changed the outcome in fewer than 0.35 percent of local elections and 0.09 percent of state and national elections in Florida. Similarly, we show that fewer than 0.55 percent of state and national elections in Michigan could have been affected. Estimates under more reasonable assumptions result in even smaller (and likely more accurate) potential electoral impacts. In short, the evidence presented here indicates that even if the worst fears of critics or proponents were true — that all those who would have voted without IDs are fraudulent or that all would be disenfranchised — it would have at most a tiny effect on election turnout and outcomes.A2: Mail-In Voting Attacks---2NCMail-in voting doesn’t favor either partyCornwall 8/26 [Warren Cornwall, freelance journalist & contributing correspondent at Science magazine. “Do Republicans or Democrats benefit from mail-in voting? It turns out, neither,” Science, 8/26/20, Accessed 8/27/20]#NCCIn the United States, the coronavirus crisis has thrust a typically wonky debate—the effectiveness of mail-in voting—into the political spotlight. Republicans, led by President Donald Trump, this week again warned that expanding the use of mail-in ballots could give Democrats an edge in the November elections. Now, two independent studies suggest there’s little historical evidence to support that fear. But scientists warn that by making vote by mail a partisan issue, Republicans could lose mail-in votes and benefit Democrats in the midst of a caustic and pandemic-marred election season. Since 2000, a handful of states have switched almost exclusively to voting by mail, including Oregon, Washington, Utah, Colorado, and Hawaii. Most researchers studied the moves to see whether they led to an increase in voter participation; largely unexplored, says Brigham Young University political scientist Michael Barber, was whether universal mail-in voting benefited one political party over another. That all changed when Republicans warned earlier this year that efforts to expand vote by mail could benefit Democrats. Barber and political scientist John Holbein at the University of Virginia decided to test those claims by comparing voting behavior in counties that switched to universal mail-in voting (175 counties in 2018) with the nearly 3000 counties that didn’t. They also looked at voter behavior before and after each changeover. They found that in presidential and midterm general elections between 1996 and 2018, switching to all-mail voting increased the percentage of residents who voted by 1.8% to 2.9%, they report today in Science Advances. When it came to the Democratic share of the vote, they found a tiny uptick in the share of votes that went to Democratic candidates for Congress, governor, and president—approximately 0.7%. But the difference was so small that the margin of statistical error means it’s possible there was no effect at all, Holbein says. “There might be a teensy, tiny effect on Democratic turnout.” To double check their results, the two analyzed 40 million voting records in Washington and Utah—two states that gradually changed to all-mail voting, with some counties switching earlier than others. Although those records don’t show how someone voted, they do show whether they registered as a Democrat, Republican, or independent, and whether they took part in an election. That let the scientists see whether voters in counties that went to all-mail ballots changed their voting activity compared with counties where people could still go to polling places. And they could see whether people who registered as Republicans acted differently from those registered as Democrats. It also gave them a chance to compare voter behavior in a solidly conservative state, Utah, with Democratic-leaning Washington. Again, they found the switch to mail-in ballots made no statistically significant difference in voting levels by Democrats versus Republicans. The apparent lack of a partisan effect could be because the increase in turnout triggered by mail balloting is relatively small, Holbein says. For such a small number of new voters to have a lopsided impact, they would need to be overwhelmingly affiliated with one party or another. Holbein suspects the new voters are little different from other voters—but that they simply needed the “nudge” of mail-in ballots. The new results mirror work published in June by researchers from Stanford University. In that study, scientists looked for changes in voting as counties in Washington, Utah, and California gradually switched to all-mail ballots in 2006, 2012, and 2018. They found a negligible partisan impact, with turnout by registered Democrats increasing by just 0.1% relative to Republicans, they reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. “The takeaway is really good news: Two independent groups using similar data arrived at the same conclusions,” says Andrew Hall, a Stanford political scientist and co-author of the paper.A2: UQ Overwhelms---2NCBiden’s ahead, but small changes swing itBrownstein 9—15 [Ronald Brownstein, “Why the Stability of the 2020 Race Promises More Volatility Ahead,” CNN, 9—15—20, , accessed 9-16-20] **NCC Packet 2020** Biden by any measure retains the upper hand in the presidential race. He holds a consistent lead in national polls and usually leads in five of the swing states both sides consider the most competitive (Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Arizona and Florida), with the two men usually running about even in the sixth (North Carolina).All of those were states Trump won in 2016; by contrast, the President does not lead in any state that Hillary Clinton carried last time. And polls put Biden within range, to varying degrees, in four other states Trump carried: Iowa and Georgia, especially, but also Ohio and even Texas.But even Democrats acknowledge that Biden's advantage isn't large enough to guarantee him victory in the Electoral College. Because all of the key swing states lean slightly more Republican than the nation overall, even a slight improvement for Trump might put him in position to win 270 Electoral College votes.What's more, Biden's national advantage over Trump isn't meaningfully different than it was a year ago, despite the searing intervening event of a pandemic that soon will have claimed 200,000 American lives. To take one measure, the Real Clear Politics average of national polls last October showed Biden at 50.1% and Trump at 43.4%; the result last weekend was 50.5% to 43% -- virtually unchanged.Biden wins now, but Trump can still rally his base and winSchoen 9—13 [Douglas Schoen, political analyst, “Presidential Race Is Much Closer than Many Now Think,” THE HILL, 9—13—20, , accessed 9-16-20] **NCC Packet 2020**With just over 50 days until the election, most objective observers will tell you that Joe Biden is favored to win. Indeed, Biden leads Donald Trump by more than 7 points nationally, according to Real Clear Politics.However, there is still a clear path to victory for Trump, and this race is actually much closer than many now believe it to be. While Biden leads nationally and in several battleground states, many of his leads in swing states are even tighter than they were for Hillary Clinton in 2016, notably in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Florida, all states that she lost.Some of his leads in battleground states are within margins of error, as in Nevada, where Biden leads by 4 points, and in New Hampshire, where he leads by 3 points, according to polling by the New York Times and Siena College. His lead in Arizona has dropped to 2 points, according to polling from Gravis. Indeed, this past week, the Cook Political Report changed its election forecast, moving Florida from “lean Democrat” to “toss up,” and moving Nevada from “likely Democrat” to “lean Democrat.”The tightening race could be attributed to the fact that margins for Biden are shrinking with the critical constituencies of Hispanic voters and white working class voters. Hispanic voters comprise a significant portion of the eligible population for swing states like Florida and Arizona. As a bloc that votes reliably blue when they do turn out, notably Hispanics not of Cuban descent, Democrats have to turn them out in large numbers in order to be successful. This would take a robust targeted advertising campaign and a significant investment in a major voter outreach operation.While Biden has employed neither strategy to the extent he should, Trump is making inroads with Hispanic voters through targeted advertising along with media, notably within Miami Dade County. Trump has outspent Biden by around $4 million on television commercials in this media market, most of which are Spanish language ads. In addition, the conservative allies are heavily engaged in voter outreach. Such investment is helping Trump gain ground among Cuban American voters, who are receptive about his tough stance toward Havana, cultural conservatism, and likely also his attacks on Democrats for backing policies that lean toward socialism.This clear Hispanic engagement is raising the chances of Trump winning this swing state rich in delegates. Biden still has a lead in Florida, but that has shrunk since last month, and is now at less than 3 points, according to Five Thirty Eight. The challenges for surveying Hispanics include sampling issues and language barriers, Their overall support for Trump in states like Florida and Arizona could even be understated, given that the president is making gains with this core group that is difficult to survey.While Hispanics not of Cuban descent swung for Clinton, turnout among these voters was lower than her campaign anticipated, as it assumed that scathing remarks from Trump about Hispanics would drive these voters to show up for Clinton in 2016. Regrettably, Biden and his campaign seem to run with this same miscalculation. While he leads Trump among Hispanics overall by 16 points in Florida, according to polling by Equis Research, he is trailing those numbers that Clinton had by 11 points. Clinton won these voters by 27 points, even as she still lost the state to Trump.Likewise, Biden is losing ground for Midwestern and Rust Belt states with high populations of white working class voters, such as Pennsylvania and Michigan, which swung for Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012 but then for Trump in 2016. Indeed, the failure of Biden to convey a narrative focused on jobs has likely contributed to his polling lead diminishing in states like Pennsylvania. His polling lead over the president there has fallen by more than 1 point since last month, according to Five Thirty Eight.Further, over the last four years, there has been a critical swing with voter registration toward Republicans in key states such as Pennsylvania, which signals the potential for another victory by Trump in that state. As recent analysis from Politico detailed, Republicans have netted several times as many registered voters for Pennsylvania than Democrats have since 2016. Republicans added nearly 198,000 registered voters in the last four years, while Democrats have gained only 29,000 registered voters.Further, as the New York Times argued, anecdotally and using statistical evidence from past elections, this race could truly be about rural voters across the country, who turned out for Trump in 2016, though Biden has overall ignored them, and it could be part of the undoing of Democrats once more, as it was in 2016. So while Biden is ahead at the moment, a second term for Trump is well within the realm of possibility.Biden is ahead, but the race is tight enough to swingKilgore 9—17 [Ed Kilgore, journalist, “Biden Maintains Electoral College Lead, But Its Fragile,” NEW YORK MAGAZINE, 9—17—20, , accessed 9-18-20] **NCC Packet 2020**Now that we are in the stretch drive of the 2020 presidential election, polls are coming in hot almost every day, and on any given day there’s some good news for both Biden and Trump. The big picture is a bit ambivalent: Biden continues to enjoy a broad advantage in the battleground states that will determine the Electoral College winner, but his margin for error remains small.Biden’s lead in national popular-vote polling is slowly eroding but remains formidable compared to past Democratic candidates, particularly given the fact that most pollsters have already begun applying likely voter screens that usually benefit Republicans. In the FiveThirtyEight polling averages, Biden leads Trump 50.3 to 43.5, or by 6.7 percent (down from a peak of 9.1 percent on August 29). At RealClearPolitics (which averages raw polling data without the weighting and adjustments FiveThirtyEight deploys), Biden’s lead is down to 5.8 percent (likely because a new Rasmussen poll shows Trump actually leading, the first in RCP’s database to show that since February). One national survey that’s been getting a lot of attention is the USC-Dornsife tracking poll, the only major national pollster that consistently showed Trump ahead just prior to Election Day in 2016 (though that meant it was even more inaccurate than some others, since HRC did win the popular vote by 2.1 percent even as the final USC survey showed Trump up by three points). As recently as last week, USC-Dornsife showed Biden with a double-digit lead, but its latest numbers have cut that to under seven points. It does seem to have a pattern of regularly oscillating pro-Biden and pro-Trump trends.But it’s state polls that have drawn the most attention this week, and they provide relatively good news for Biden, as Nate Silver explains in a handy graph showing recent polling trends in all the competitive states:As Geoffrey Skelley explains, the Arizona and Minnesota numbers are particularly significant if they hold:Biden’s improvement in Arizona is particularly noteworthy as Arizona is a cornerstone of most Electoral College maps in which Trump wins. That is, if Trump carries the state, he wins the election 59 percent of time, according to our forecast; but if Biden wins Arizona, Trump has less than a 7 percent chance of winning overall …Meanwhile, Biden’s improvement in Minnesota is also bad news for Trump, as the campaign has long viewed Minnesota as a potential target to expand the map — the president only lost the state by about 2 points in 2016. However, Minnesota seems to be steadily moving away from Trump.Arizona remains close, though: A new Monmouth survey released after Skelley wrote about the state showed Biden up by just two points (48-46) among likely voters if turnout is higher than in 2016 (more likely than not), and tied with Trump at 47 percent if turnout drops (e.g., because of fresh COVID-19 concerns or voter-suppression efforts).Florida’s the most important state providing relatively good news to Team Trump in the last few days, with Biden’s lead in the RCP polling averages declining to 1.4 percent (it’s at 2.1 percent at FiveThirtyEight) and two recent polls (from Florida Atlantic University and NBC News–Marist) showing the race tied. The megatrend in Florida is that Biden is overperforming with the senior voters who went heavily for Trump in 2016, while Trump is posting big margins among South Florida’s intensely anti-communist Latino communities. Florida Democrats took a big hit late last week, however, when a federal appeals court upheld the state GOP’s efforts to halt implementation of a voter initiative reenfranchising ex-felons.The big picture remains: Trump’s Electoral College advantage (as illustrated by his relative standing in battleground state as opposed to national polls) means Biden starts losing a lot of states if his national lead drops to below, say, 3 percent. Above that level, he has a lot of ripe targets in states Trump really must carry.Trump loses now, but it is close enough he could swing itECONOMIST 9—12 [THE ECONOMIST, staff, “Donald Trump Could Still Stage a Comeback (Again),” 9—12—20, , 9-16-20] **NCC Packet 2020**The newest polls and economic data have shored up the president’s odds, though they remain worse than in 2016Every four years, political journalists and prognosticators deem America’s presidential contest the “election of the century”. By definition, each cannot be. But at the risk of causing readers’ eyes to roll backwards, the stakes really do appear higher than usual this time round. In early June The Economist published its own statistical forecasting model for this November’s presidential contest to guide such handicapping. Back then, it gave Donald Trump at best a one-in-five chance of winning a second term. But by July, as unrest and the coronavirus ravaged the nation, his odds had slumped to as low as one-in-ten. There they stayed until the middle of August. Now, our model shows Mr Trump has clawed back a sizeable chunk of support.His nationwide deficit in vote-intentions versus Joe Biden has shrunk from ten points at its peak to just eight on September 9th. And in the key states of Florida and Pennsylvania—the two most likely to provide Mr Trump or Mr Biden with their 270th electoral vote—the president’s deficit has narrowed even more. Sunshine-state voters favoured Mr Biden by eight points at his peak in July. Now, they prefer him by just four. One high-quality pollster, Marist, has the candidates level in Florida (though more polls are surely needed to determine whether this is an outlier). In Pennsylvania, Mr Trump has risen from a nine-point deficit to a six-point one.Other election indicators have also been good for the president of late. Our index of economic growth—which combines annual change in eight different indicators, from the unemployment rate to real personal income and manufacturing output—has been improving steadily since July. The August jobs report, which recorded a nearly two percentage-point drop in unemployment, contributed to a positive trend.Mr Trump’s job-approval ratings have also gone up. In early August we calculated that 15 percentage points more Americans disapproved of the job he was doing as president than approved of it. By September his popularity had improved a bit, to just an 11-point deficit. Taken together, these economic and political variables alone suggest the president will lose the popular vote by five points; up from a negative-six-point projection two months ago.Right now the most likely outcome of the election is still that Mr Trump loses. Our election-forecasting model projects that he will fall about 70 electoral votes shy of winning, though there is enough uncertainty in the election to suggest he could still prevail. We predict a relatively low (but by no means impossible) one-in-seven (14%) chance of a Trump victory. For context, our model would have given him more than twice the chance (37%) at this point in 2016. Because of Mr Trump’s deficit in swing-state polls and the virus-stricken economy, he will have a tough slog to get a second term—despite voters’ marginally improving evaluations of his candidacy.It’s not over yetSilver 8/12 [Nate Silver is the founder and editor in chief of FiveThirtyEight. “It’s Way Too Soon To Count Trump Out,” FiveThirtyEight, 8/12/20, Accessed 8/13/20]#NCCJoe Biden currently has a robust lead in polls. If the election were held today, he might even win in a landslide, carrying not only traditional swing states such as Florida and Pennsylvania but potentially adding new states such as Georgia and Texas to the Democratic coalition. But the election is not being held today. While the polls have been stable so far this year, it’s still only August. The debates and the conventions have yet to occur. Biden only named his running mate yesterday. And the campaign is being conducted amidst a pandemic the likes of which the United States has not seen in more than 100 years, which is also causing an unprecedented and volatile economy. Nor has it been that uncommon, historically, for polls to shift fairly radically from mid-August until Election Day. Furthermore, there are some reasons to think the election will tighten, and President Trump is likely to have an advantage in a close election because of the Electoral College. That, in a nutshell, is why the FiveThirtyEight presidential election forecast, which we launched today, still has Trump with a 29 percent chance of winning the Electoral College, despite his current deficit in the polls. This is considerably higher than some other forecasts, which put Trump’s chances at around 10 percent. Biden’s chances are 71 percent in the FiveThirtyEight forecast, conversely.1Any risk of a link triggers Trump win---he’ll hold onto power if Biden doesn’t win decisively Allison 7-12 [GRAHAM ALLISON?is a former director of the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and a former U.S. assistant secretary of defense for policy and plans. He is the author of?Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides's Trap?, “Trump Might Not Want to Relinquish Power”, 7-12-2020, ] IanMAmerican presidents customarily leave office when voters reject them. Czars, emperors, and would-be prime ministers for life do whatever they can to hold on to power. To extend his rule until 2036, Russian President Vladimir Putin recently held a referendum to amend his country’s constitution. While some Russians publicly opposed the proposal, few had any doubt about the outcome. Two years ago, Chinese President Xi Jinping succeeded in eliminating term limits that had been established after Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution—a period of ideological madness that killed tens of millions of people, including family members of the country’s ruling class. In his grand presidential address of 2017, Xi stated specific objectives for his nation to achieve by 2025, 2035, and 2049, the centennial of the People’s Republic of China—suggesting that he intended to lead China until at least 2035 (when he would be 82). Even in democracies, circumstances sometimes allow deeply compromised leaders to remain in office. Benjamin Netanyahu has already become the longest-serving prime minister in Israel’s history, having survived repeated scandals. He is currently facing an indictment for bribery and fraud brought by Israel’s attorney general. In the past year, even though he could not win a majority of the Israeli Parliament in three successive elections, Netanyahu successfully maneuvered to keep his position on each occasion. Now in the second month of a three-year “deal” with Defense Minister Benny Gantz that allows him to remain prime minister for 18 months, Netanyahu has made a commitment to swap roles for the subsequent 18 months. But many expect him to renege on those terms, or try to renegotiate them, before Gantz takes over. In short, three leaders whom Donald Trump has praised have extended their tenure in office. On this canvas, what could Trump do? Undoubtedly, a whiff of paranoia is evident in many claims of potential skulduggery now swirling about. And yet the fear that Trump may not leave office, no matter what happens in November, has become mainstream. Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee, has called the prospect that “this president is going to try to steal this election” his “single greatest concern.” Putin, Xi, Netanyahu, and Trump all differ from one another in many ways, of course. But each has reasons to avoid relinquishing his hold on power. Putin, Xi, and Netanyahu genuinely have grand ambitions. Each wants to expand his country’s formal borders—Russia’s into Ukraine, Israel’s into the West Bank, China’s to reintegrate Hong Kong and Taiwan. Trump’s signature banner promises to “Make America great again,” and the thought that this could include territorial expansion—specifically the purchase of Greenland—has also occurred to him. The most generous explanation for why these men might believe themselves indispensable is this: Who else can any of them trust to achieve their ambitions? The more cynical questions to ask are: If any of these four leaders leaves office, who could ensure his freedom from arrest and humiliation? Who would guarantee the wealth and well-being of his family and friends? Historically, heads of state clung to power until they died or were overthrown. Of the 23 czars who ruled Russia from 1547 to 1917, how many voluntarily handed over power to a successor? Zero. Fifteen died of natural causes, six were overthrown, and two were assassinated. Over roughly the same four centuries, China had 16 emperors—all but one of whose reigns ended involuntarily: by death or forced abdication. Call it the czar’s dilemma: However daunting the challenges of holding power, the dangers of losing it are even greater. America’s Founding Fathers recognized this dilemma. They created a republic, not a monarchy, with an elected chief executive. Acutely conscious of the abuses of “mad King George,” they designed a Constitution of what the presidential scholar Richard Neustadt called “separated institutions sharing power.” By dividing power among the president, Congress, and the courts—and by giving them separate sources of legitimacy—they created a complex system in which each checks and balances the others. While that has invited a continuous struggle for power that has made governing messy and often ugly, their purpose, as Justice Louis Brandeis famously explained, was “not to promote efficiency but to preclude the exercise of arbitrary authority.” Buttressing constitutional limits on presidential power was the wise precedent that George Washington established when he stepped down after two terms. No one broke that tradition until Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was elected four times during the Great Depression and World War II. As one of his colleagues quipped, the only way he would ever leave the White House was in a coffin. And that’s the way he exited in 1945. Within six years of his death, Congress had passed and three-quarters of the states had ratified the Twenty-Second Amendment, which now limits presidents to two terms. But the amendment does not close off every avenue by which a president could hang on. Lawrence Douglas, the author of Will He Go? Trump and the Looming Election Meltdown in 2020, argues that the current American electoral system has a “Chernobyl-like defect”: Nothing in the Constitution or federal laws guarantees a peaceful transfer of power from a sitting president to his successor. Why would an elected head of state transfer the immense powers of the presidency to an opponent whom he believes could be a threat to his nation, his vision, and even himself? Just because some people claim that the opponent received more votes in an election in which both parties are pointing to irregularities and abuses? Central to the democratic transfer of power is a norm of deference to process. All elections have many inconsistencies and aberrations. But successful democracies require a strong presumption of respect for the legitimacy of the electoral process—indeed, a willingness to accept outcomes that are messy, controversial, and perhaps even perverse. Yet as poisonous partisanship has spread into every aspect of government, claims of voter suppression, fraudulent mail-in ballots, and abuses in disqualifying voters and counting votes are eroding that presumption. And unfortunately, the labyrinthine process between a citizen’s vote and the outcome of a presidential election offers many opportunities for the suspicious or paranoid to claim that the election was rigged or the results a sham. While citizens across the nation will vote for president on November 3, the winner is determined not by the popular vote but by the Electoral College. The process has four steps that, under normal conditions, produce a clear result. First, prior to the election, Electoral College votes are allocated among states according to the decennial U.S. census (which presumes that the census is completed properly). Second, citizens cast their vote for the candidate of their choosing (and the corresponding slate of electors), and each state counts votes according to its own procedures. Third, the electors for the winning candidate in each state meet, vote for the candidate to whom they are pledged, and send that report to Congress. Finally, on January 6, a joint session of Congress certifies states’ electoral votes and declares a winner. To win, a candidate must have 270 electoral votes. But if no candidate reaches that threshold, because some states’ electoral votes are contested or disqualified, the Constitution says that the House of Representatives selects the president and the Senate the vice president. In making these choices, each state casts a single vote. That Democrats have the majority in the House today does not matter. What matters is that in 26 of the 50 states, Republicans hold a majority of the House delegation. If Republicans retain this advantage after the November election, they will elect Trump. Alternatively, if Democrats succeed in wresting a seat or two from Republicans in a few closely divided states, they would then have a majority and elect Biden. If Democrats flip only one state, neither party would reach the minimum 26 votes. The Constitution offers no guidance on what happens next. This November 3 will be unlike any previous presidential election. Some states are requiring in-person voting, while others are allowing mail-in balloting at an unprecedented level. Many are experimenting with new ways to protect the vote from foreign interference. Amid the many possible uncertainties, the outcome of the November vote could be as confused as that of the Iowa caucus in February. Could we see failures in voting systems like the fiasco in the Georgia primary election last month, or the long wait for results like in the more recent congressional primaries in New York and Kentucky? Under a cloud of fraud and abuse allegations, could Americans see both candidates claiming victory? For some readers, the thought of a presidential election without a clear victor may sound fanciful. Yet the United States has endured a number of seriously contested presidential elections, each of which highlights dangers that could arise again this year. In the 1824 contest between John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson, Jackson clearly won the popular vote and had the largest number of votes in the Electoral College—though he fell 32 short of a majority. In what Jackson rightly denounced as a “corrupt bargain,” Adams made a deal with Henry Clay, the House speaker who had himself been a candidate for president but finished fourth in the Electoral College. For throwing his support to Adams, Clay became Adams’s secretary of state.* Although he accepted the loss, Jackson spent the next four years waging a political war against Adams, undercutting his authority in Washington and across America on the grounds that his presidency was illegitimate. And when the two faced off again in 1828, Jackson won by a large margin, ushering in the Jacksonian revolution. A decade after the Civil War, the presidential election of 1876 was even more bitterly contested. The Democratic candidate, Samuel J. Tilden, beat the Republican, Rutherford B. Hayes, in the popular vote, but 20 decisive electoral votes remained in dispute. When neither side could agree on an outcome, the country wobbled on the brink of chaos. Outgoing President Ulysses S. Grant developed contingency plans for martial law, lest the country return to civil war. The election was not resolved until months later, when the parties struck a secret deal. According to the Compromise of 1877, Hayes became president—but in return he agreed to remove federal troops from the South, effectively ending Reconstruction. In 2000, the presidential contest between George W. Bush and incumbent Vice President Al Gore came down to one swing state: Florida. Bush had a significant lead there as Election Night came to a close. But by morning the following day, television networks had to retract their announcements of the victor. Without a win in Florida, neither candidate had the required 270 electoral votes. As Florida began recounting its ballots, disputes arose about whether ballots with “hanging chads” should be disqualified and, eventually, whether and how the recount should continue. The matter finally went to the Supreme Court, which in a 5–4 decision sided with the Republicans—in effect, awarding victory to Bush. In his concession speech, Gore said: “Let there be no doubt, while I strongly disagree with the Court’s decision, I accept it.” Historically, the difference between a would-be U.S. president and a czar has been that the former accepts the possibility of defeat at the ballot box. After a heated campaign one year before the nation dissolved into civil war, Stephen Douglas conceded to Abraham Lincoln with the words “Partisan feeling must yield to patriotism.” Yet that clear principle may wither in the face of a close election—especially if the current president is insistent on holding on to power. If our society remains discombobulated amid a continuing pandemic, if voter-suppression measures keep some Americans from having their say, if mail-in-ballot glitches and foreign interference affect vote counts, and if exit polls suggest that the election is close, nightmare scenarios become more probable. Under these conditions, America’s best hope for escaping the czar’s dilemma is for one candidate to win decisively.**LinkGeneric---2NCWithdrawing from international treaties benefits Trump domestically Tures, LaGrange College Political Science Professor, 5-30-20(John, “Why Ditching the WHO Will Backfire on Trump,” accessed 5-30-20, ) JFNWhen President Donald Trump announced Friday that the United States is cutting ties with the World Health Organization, he relied on an old strategy from the American presidential playbook: attempting to score political points at home by loudly withdrawing from an international body or treaty. The problem? This strategy doesn’t always last: Presidents—or their successors—learn the shortcomings of such noisy departures from world organizations and agreements, realizing that the bluster was often not worth the price. Sometimes, the United States later rejoins the same institution it once left, often quietly, once the folly of abandonment is apparent. We may associate storming out of international organizations with Republicans, but Jimmy Carter showed such actions can be bipartisan. Before he became president, there was already a movement to ditch the U.S. membership in the International Labor Organization. This international institution had been created after World War I to demonstrate the Western world’s concern for workers in order to undercut the Communist appeal. It won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1969. But the ILO had fallen out of favor with American conservatives in the 1970s, and even some U.S. labor unions, as political scientist Richard A. Melanson documented in 1979. The ILO’s critics felt the decision-making structure was helping the Soviets and their allies, the organization was too anti-Israeli and pro-Palestinian, and West European representatives were too lukewarm in plans to condemn the USSR for its labor practices. Plans to leave the ILO began under the Ford administration, but Carter allowed the departure to continue. The U.S. exited the group in his first year of office, 1977. No doubt Carter was influenced by powerful opposition to the ILO from the AFL-CIO and American Jewish groups, both key backers of the Democratic Party. Three years later, it was a different story. “When Carter officials realized there was little more to be gained by their continued absence, they rejoined the ILO,” political scientist Paul Masters wrote in 1996. There were changes in leadership at the AFL-CIO as well as a new understanding that there were limits to what the U.S. could do outside of the international organization. Still, similar mistakes would be repeated in the following decade. Perhaps the best-known case of a president stomping out of an international organization occurred when Ronald Reagan announced the U.S. would leave UNESCO in 1984. Reagan’s rationale for ditching the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization was summed up by the White House: “UNESCO has extraneously politicized virtually every subject it deals with. It has exhibited hostility toward a free society, especially a free market and a free press, and it has demonstrated unrestrained budgetary expansion.” Getting out of UNESCO was part of an overall plan to sideline international organizations, as the U.S. refused to sign the Law of the Sea Treaty and contemplated leaving the Food and Agricultural Organization and UNCTAD conferences as well—moves designed to woo the nationalists in America who made up much of Reagan’s electoral coalition. International relations scholar Steven Livingston argued in 1992 that perceptions of Reagan’s foreign policy as a success were misguided and that his moves actually resulted in a “more constrained U.S. agenda power.”Plan reminds voters of their mortality and allows Trump to paint himself as the nations “protector,” which leads to his reelection Coleman, Columbia Univ. Psychology Prof., 4-7-20(Peter, “How a Pandemic Could Actually Boost Trump’s Reelection Chances,” accessed 4-14-20, ) JFN But a widely studied psychological phenomenon suggests the opposite: that, with the grimness of death hanging in the air, anxious Americans might actually be more likely to support Trump in November because of his dominant leadership style and his claims of offering protection. One of the most germane areas of theory and research on this matter is something called terror management theory. The theory’s original inspiration was anthropologist Ernest Becker’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 1973 book, The Denial of Death, which argues that humans are uniquely cursed by our innate dual capacities to a) really, really want to survive and b) know that we will one day die. This existential reality is, quite simply, terrifying, so humans tend to go to great lengths to deny, deflect and dispose of this fact in order to manage it. Becker went on to claim that much of what humans do throughout our lives—our work, our family life, our religious beliefs, how we vote—is organized around our profound need to manage this most basic terror. In the 1980s, three prominent social psychologists took this idea into the lab to study it. Since that time, they and their colleagues have conducted hundreds of experiments and field studies to investigate the premises of Becker’s work—in particular, the effects of what they call “mortality salience,” a state of awareness of the cold fact that we are going to die. One of the main findings of this research has been that when humans are reminded of their own mortality—such as during a pandemic—they are much more inclined to cling tightly to their cultural worldviews, to derogate and even harm those who are seen as threatening these views, and to support brash, charismatic leaders who claim to protect them. This means that as Americans begin to fixate more on their own mortality, they are likely to become more nationalistic, socially conforming, prejudiced against outgroups and aggressive. They also are more likely to favor dominant leaders who model these inclinations. Mortality salience has played a role in American politics before. In a fascinating set of experimental studies, researchers found that higher levels of mortality salience brought on by reminders of the 9/11 attacks significantly increased support for George W. Bush in 2004—including support for his reelection—and decreased support for his presidential rival, John Kerry. The researchers saw support for Bush stemming from his incumbency, as well as his “image as a protective shield against death, armed with high-tech weaponry, patriotic rhetoric, and the resolute invocation of doing God’s will to ‘rid the world of evil’”—the ultimate salve for a debilitating terror of death. The research on terror management clearly suggests that the more anxious Americans become through the next election cycle, the more likely that Trump’s current disaster bump in the polls will hold, and the greater his chances for reelection. Although Bush and Trump displayed two very different leadership styles (Bush’s plainspoken resolution in the face of a foreign threat or Trump’s act as a “get-it-done” business executive), they both epitomize the tough, no-nonsense, take-no-prisoners unilateralism that the highly anxious seek. Trump’s christening of himself as a “wartime president,” with the inclusion of military officers in fatigues and dress blues standing shoulder-to-shoulder with him (less than 6 feet apart) during news conferences, should fit nicely with America’s need for an invulnerable, symbolic protector.Controversial policies only fuel Trump’s popularity with his base Shafer, Politico Columnist, 5-12-20(Jack, “Why Trump Is Peddling Extra-Strength Conspiracy Theories,” accessed 5-13-20, ) JFNSo he keeps harping on China as the responsible party for the 80,000-plus coronavirus deaths in the United States. While offering absolutely no proof for the charge, Trump obscures his own neglect of the pandemic and misdirects culpability to a foreign country. These techniques might not work on you, but that doesn’t bother Trump. His hardcore supporters are the target of the tweets, speeches, pressers and conspiracy theories. The more he does to make himself look persecuted and reviled by the “elites” and the press, the more heroic he appears to his base.Plan encourages Democrats to fall into the Trump Trap and increases his support and popularity numbers Harris, Politico Editor, 5-21-20(John, “Once Again, Democrats Are Caught In the Trump Trap,” accessed 5-21-20, ) JFN Here is the essence of the Trump Trap. For critics, not speaking out against his provocations could be reasonably interpreted as complicity or cowardice. Speaking out, however, gives those provocations the centrality upon which the Trump movement depends. It’s an old phenomenon. What’s new is the pandemic, which looked for a while like it might make Trump’s brand of politics obsolete. Instead, it has proven the adaptability and durability of Trumpism. His immediate predecessor, like many other Democrats and much of the media, has ratified the achievement. Obama’s return this month is a good window also into an underappreciated dynamic of the Trump years. At first glance, this looks like two powerful political leaders with large followings expressing their disdain for each other on more or less equal terms. But the nature of Obama’s command of the loyalty and affection of his supporters is far different than the nature of Trump’s command of his supporters. This difference is critical to the most important question of 2020 politics: Can Trump survive the pandemic and the astounding disruption it has caused in the economy and the routines of everyday life? Most people who admire Obama, it’s clear, do so in absolute terms. To these people, his character and style represent virtues that approximate the ideal of how they might wish all presidents at all times should act. He’s progressive, even if not quite as much as some admirers want. He values rationality and restraint, a bit more so than many partisans would wish—an elegant and inspirational figure in an inelegant and cynical age. These virtues, by these lights, do not depend primarily on context—on who his opponents are, or what external circumstances he is facing. Most people who admire Trump, in my conversations, do so in a relative way. Context is everything. Yes, they say, Trump is coarse and combative, often outrageous, with a wandering attention span. No, this does not represent their ideal of how a president should act. But these aren’t ideal times—they are infused with double standards and cynicism—and this makes Trump a great leader for these particular times. He calls out institutions (the political parties, the Congress, the media) who his partisans don’t believe deserve their respect or influence. He gratuitously offends liberal pieties. He is not boring, and he’s not afraid. It's often said that Trump’s brand of politics requires him to identify enemies—people want to see who he’s against. What’s overlooked is Trump’s brand of politics requires other people to identify him as the enemy. There’s never a shortage of volunteers, and none more prestigious than a former Democratic president widely respected by his party. Democrats were pleased to hear Obama’s words of condemnation. But Trump was even more pleased. No one could doubt that Obama sincerely believed his comparatively mild rebuke of Trump. No one really doubts that whether Trump believes his broadsides against Obama is secondary to his true objective of drawing lines and creating the kind of chaos in which he has previously thrived. The rejoinder to all this is obvious: Who cares? What relevance do Trump’s grievances and posturing and conspiracy theories have in the middle of a pandemic? Surely there is only one question that matters: Is Trump doing a good job responding to the crisis? But that question immediately leads to the next: Good job, according to who? Trump knows that the likelihood that a sufficient number of people will say he’s doing at least an acceptable job during the pandemic increases the more that certain types of people say he’s a terrible person doing a terrible job. Democrats believe that the pandemic and Trump’s belated and erratic response to it will be his undoing. There is polling to bolster this hope. A Quinnipiac Poll released Wednesday showed Joe Biden leading Trump by 50 percent to 39 percent in a head-to-head matchup—an 11 point national lead that, if it held, likely would put several battleground states out of reach for Trump. But weighing against hope is experience. Democrats have yet to be validated, not after the Billy Bush tape in 2016, not after the Ukraine revelations of 2019, that there is a “this time he’s gone too far” moment that will cause Trump backers to mournfully turn their support away from him. So far, there is no evidence that a galvanizing rhetorical moment—such as Joseph Welsh in 1954 challenging Joseph McCarthy, “Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?”—will derail Trump. There is plenty of evidence, on the other hand, that being told Trump is bad causes some people to think he is good.Plan paves the way for Trump’s reelection because it allows him to make the case he’s getting stuff done Cillizza, CNN Editor At Large, 5-18-20(Chris, “How Donald Trump wins again, in 3 sentences,” accessed 5-23-20, ) JFN But it is still a fact that the only real path for Trump to a second term -- and I continue to believe that path is quite narrow -- is through a message that doesn't try to make people like Trump but rather forces them to acknowledge that he is getting things done. Trump is, quite simply, not likeable. He says and does things on an almost-daily basis that even many of his supporters think are over the line of acceptable conduct for a president or, really, for anyone. Nothing will change that. Or certainly nothing that he can do between now and November. The only way he wins is to make the case that may not be your idea of what a president should look and act like but that he is someone who knows how to make change in Washington. (He also likely needs to disqualify Joe Biden, which his campaign is already working very hard to do.)Trump withdrawing US troops is a proven political winner Thompson, Lexington Institute COO, 2-26-19(Loren, “Why President Trump Will Likely Be Reelected, And What It Means For Global Security,” accessed 5-23-20, ) JFN Third, the nation is at peace. Trump has avoided involvement in new overseas adventures, and is pressing to scale back what is left of the operations he inherited from his predecessor. Critics complain he is too eager to get out of places like Afghanistan and Syria, however the record shows that voters have little patience for foreign military intervention. Unpopular wars are the one issue that can eclipse a good economy in the minds of voters, but at the moment Trump seems to be delivering both peace and prosperity.Plan activates voter anger and that benefits Trump Grossman, Analyst for , 5-19-20(Matt, “Why Anger At Trump May Not Help Democrats Win,” accessed 5-26-20, ) JFNTrump has stoked outrage among his supporters, who have echoed his rhetoric and fury, and his detractors, who have launched anti-Trump resistance protests and helped recruit new congressional candidates in 2018. It has also set the mood for the 2020 election. There’s only one problem for Democrats looking to replicate Barack Obama’s multiracial coalition: The voters most energized by anger are white. According to the book “The Anger Gap” by political scientist Davin Phoenix, white Americans — both Democrats and Republicans — are a lot more likely to be motivated by anger than black Americans and, to a lesser extent, Latino and Asian Americans. White Americans, Phoenix finds, express more anger about politics in public opinion polls, and they’re also more likely to turn out to vote because they are angry. Since 1980, he finds, black Democrats have been seven points less likely to report feeling angry about the Republican presidential candidate than white Democrats, according to data from the American National Election Studies. “The political power leveraged from being mad as hell is largely reserved only for white Americans,” he writes. Many of the underlying reasons, Phoenix argues, are systemic. Simply put, nonwhite voters have far fewer expectations of the political system working for them. Instead, Phoenix found nonwhite voters are more likely to be motivated to vote if they feel pride or hope — as they did in 2008 due to Obama’s historic presidential nomination. Expressing anger is also difficult for nonwhite voters to navigate politically — especially black voters. There is the “potential stigma that comes from the label of being an angry black woman or an angry black man,” Phoenix told me. White Democrats and Republicans, in contrast, haven’t been afraid to publicly display their polarized opinions in the Trump era — on protest signs and in online comments and polls. Increased anger isn’t a new phenomenon, but it is a rising one. Political scientist Steven Webster argues in his book, “American Rage,” that this current moment of partisan rancor is the culmination of a long pattern of increased anger in American politics. Webster finds that politicians in both parties and those who appear on partisan cable news channels increasingly use angry rhetoric, especially in election years, fueling the fire. Public anger, in turn, fuels negative impressions of the other party and declining trust in government. But if 2020 is an election driven primarily by anger, that might backfire on Democrats. Take the 2016 election. One reason former Sen. Hillary Clinton was less successful in mobilizing Obama’s base was because her focus on Trump’s bigoted comments attracted some who shared her views but did not resonate with nonwhite voters. “The Clinton campaign bet big on the strategy of highlighting the racist and xenophobic undertones of the Trump campaign,” Phoenix writes, “but its ‘basket of deplorables’ messaging appeared to engender more of a rise from Trump supporters falling under this label than people of color feeling targeted. … [It was] a severe miscalculation of the way people of color respond to political threats.”Prefer our link evidence because it based upon polling that employs better and more detailed questions Hannah and Gray, Eurasia Group Foundation, 19(Mark and Caroline, “INDISPENSABLE NO MORE? HOW THE AMERICAN PUBLIC SEES U.S. FOREIGN POLICY,” November 2019, Accessed 5-15-20, ) JFN The views of the American people, particularly around issues of war and peace, are as difficult to categorize as the people themselves. Some studies, such as a recent one by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, suggest Americans support robust global engagement.13 Like ours, the Chicago Council study portrays an American public objecting to military interventions. Yet, that study concludes the American public is “rejecting retreat” because majorities believe U.S. military superiority and stationing U.S. troops in allied countries contribute to U.S. safety (though at only 69% and 51% respectively). By asking detailed questions about specific hot button policy issues with more nuanced answer options, our analysis comes to some different conclusions. We are not alone. The Center for American Progress recently found Americans are committed to improving their foreign policy by strengthening their democracy at home, and are surprisingly informed and innovative in their thinking about newer threats we face, such as cyberattacks and drone warfare.14 We also find common ground with the Chicago Council study: Americans don’t want to recoil or retire from global engagement. Voters appear to see engagement in a different light than many in Washington. For voters, engagement is an antonym of, not a synonym for, the threat or use of military force.Alliances---2NCUS public doesn’t support alliances that require US military action or limiting the power of countries like Russia and ChinaMead, Bard College Foreign Affairs Professor, 3-4-19(Walter Russell, “Allies Worry Over U.S. Public Opinion; The gap between voters and foreign-policy elites shows little sign of closing,” WSJ, accessed 5-17-20, p. Factiva) JFN There is no more important question in world politics than this: Will U.S. public opinion continue to support an active and strategically focused foreign policy? During the Cold War and for 25 years after, there was rarely any doubt. While Americans argued—sometimes bitterly—over the country's overseas priorities, there was a broad consensus in both parties that sustained engagement was necessary to protect U.S. interests. That consensus is more fragile today. Questions about the reliability of American commitments keep the lights burning late in foreign and defense ministries around the world. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo insists, as he said in Manila last week, that a Chinese attack on Philippine forces or territory in the South China Sea would activate Article 4 of the U.S.-Philippine Mutual Defense Treaty. But will the American people honor the check that Mr. Pompeo has written on their behalf? The best answer appears to be "maybe." A recent poll from the Chicago Council on Global Affairs found that 70% of Americans want the U.S. to take an "active part" in world affairs in the abstract. But in a 2018 Pew survey, only 32% said limiting China's power should be an important long-term foreign-policy priority for the U.S. Similarly, while a strong majority of Americans support membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, just over half of Americans would support military action in response to a hypothetical Russian invasion of Estonia, according to a recent Eurasia Group Foundation survey. The Kremlin studies such poll results carefully, and so do NATO allies on Russia's borders. Perspectives on defense are especially schizophrenic when partisanship comes into play. While 52% of Democrats believe that limiting Russian power should be a top national priority, most Democrats also say defense spending should be reduced. To the extent that young voters' attitudes forecast the political future, poll numbers suggest a continuing drift from Cold War-era ideas about America's place in the world. Voters in their 20s and 30s are significantly less likely than older Americans to think that the U.S. is an exceptional nation, to support humanitarian interventions abroad or to think the U.S. should seek to limit the power of countries like Russia, China, North Korea and Iran.Multilateral alliances are unpopular with voters Greber, US Reporter for The Australian Financial Review, 2-11-20(Jacob, “Struggling Biden touts experience, vows to rebuild Australia alliance,” accessed 5-10-20, ) JFNMr Buchan said the former vice-president was also trying to differentiate himself from President Donald Trump in that he wants the help of "South Korea and Japan, in addition to the third key ally, Australia, in managing China", Mr Buchan said. While Mr Biden's support for a return to strong US support for multilateral arrangements such as NATO would be welcomed in many western capitals, it's not clear it's the kind of message that will resonate with voters in New Hampshire. Nor would it win a presidential race against Mr Trump, whose aggressive "America first" stance is at the core of this political base.China Debates---2NCChina debates spark divisions on the left Toosi, Politico Reporter, 4-23-20(Nahal, “Biden ad exposes a rift over China on the left,” accessed 4-23-20, ) JFN Joe Biden’s effort to outflank President Donald Trump on China is leading to blowback from within his own political base. Some worry the rhetoric in a new Biden campaign ad could spur anti-Asian bias already on the rise because of the coronavirus pandemic. Others argue that Biden’s effort to sound tougher on China than Trump could backfire diplomatically in the long run. The rifts on the left are far from a serious fracture, but they nonetheless illustrate the challenge the former vice president faces in trying to lay out a U.S.-China policy that has become even more complicated thanks to the might of a tiny virus. The criticism on the left emerged after the Biden team released a digital ad that ripped the president as too willing to accept Chinese government explanations in the early days of the virus. Trump “rolled over for the Chinese,” the ad says, while Biden takes a tougher line, the message delivered over footage including what appear to be Chinese security forces.Japan/South Korea---2NCUS public supports reducing our military presence in Japan and South KoreaHannah and Gray, Eurasia Group Foundation, 19(Mark and Caroline, “INDISPENSABLE NO MORE? HOW THE AMERICAN PUBLIC SEES U.S. FOREIGN POLICY,” November 2019, Accessed 5-15-20, ) JFN When asked which policy they prefer in response to a rising China, the majority favor recalibrating America’s presence downward. They prefer relying more on regional allies in Asia who, with a reduced American military presence, could move toward defending themselves by taking over greater responsibility for security in the region. Fifteen percent fewer thought more troops should be moved onto U.S. bases in allied countries such as South Korea and Japan and increase the naval presence in the Pacific Ocean.US public supports reducing our military presence in Japan and South Korea, even if people believe China is a threat Hannah and Gray, Eurasia Group Foundation, 19(Mark and Caroline, “INDISPENSABLE NO MORE? HOW THE AMERICAN PUBLIC SEES U.S. FOREIGN POLICY,” November 2019, Accessed 5-15-20, ) JFN The second most cited rationale was that China sees the presence of American troops in Asia as a threat and they might respond aggressively which creates an unnecessary risk of war. The fewest people chose the rationale that China is a strong competitor which will naturally seek more influence than the U.S. in the region and the U.S. should accommodate China’s rise by reducing our military footprint. Even respondents who view China as a threat, nevertheless, want to reduce America’s military presence in the region because they believe the burden of security should be shared and a U.S. military presence heightens the security risk. The most cited rationale for increasing America’s military presence in response to China’s growing influence also focuses on U.S. allies in the region. This group believes military power in Asia deters China from attacking America’s Asian allies and if the U.S. withdrew, such allies would engage in a dangerous arms race with China. This was followed by the rationale that China is an expansionist power that could directly harm American interests in Asia. The least popular reason to increase America’s military presence in the region had to do more with the ideological threat China poses to American values. While many have given into “the new red scare,” the majority of respondents still favor reducing America’s military footprint in Asia. They instead call on U.S. allies to help fight off Chinese influence and overreach, sharing the responsibility for regional peace and stability. Like other policy priorities in Washington, American public opinion contrasts with the current national security strategy on how to respond to a rising China.Japan---2NCUS public supports efforts to avoid war with China Chicago Council on Global Affairs, 19(“Rejecting Retreat: Americans Support US Engagement in Global Affairs,” accessed 5-4-20, ) JFN There is also bipartisan consensus about when not to use US troops, particularly when it comes to China. Six in 10 across party lines say they oppose using US troops if China were to invade Taiwan (59%) or initiate a military conflict with Japan over disputed islands (55%). And a majority of Americans oppose using US troops to remove Nicolás Maduro from power in Venezuela (59%). In line with the sentiment that stationing US troops in allied countries increases US safety, majorities of Americans say the United States should increase or maintain its military forces in most countries and regions asked about. That includes Japan (57%) and South Korea (69%), both key allies, as well as the Persian Gulf (60%), an important region for US security. However, Americans are divided over troop levels in Afghanistan, Germany, and Poland—nearly as many say the United States should maintain or increase troops stationed there as say they should decrease them or withdraw entirely. (See Appendix Figure 4 for full results.) While Independents are generally inclined to reduce or withdraw US troops, Democrats and Republicans tend to support maintaining or increasing them.NATO---2NCUS public opposes NATO commitments and pro NATO public opinion polls are flawed because they ignore Article 5 Carpenter, CATO Institute Senior Fellow, 12-4-19(Ted Galen, “NATO’s Dirty Little Secret Is Out,” accessed 5-15-20, ) JFNPro‐?NATO politicians and pundits never tire of citing polls and studies showing that a majority of Americans continue to support the Alliance. Frequently, that argument is presented as part of the larger case that President Trump’s periodic expressions of skepticism about NATO’s relevance are out‐?of‐?touch with the views of the American public. However, the pro‐?NATO case is built on a fundamental deception. Few (if any) surveys of U.S. public opinion about NATO even hint about the extent of the risks Americans incur because of Washington’s obligations under Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty, which commits the signatories to consider an attack on any member as an attack on all. A typical poll question will ask respondents whether the United States should defend country X, if Russia attacks that country. A more honest question would be whether the United States should defend country X from a Russian attack, even if doing so might result in a nuclear war with Russia that could kill millions of Americans. Granted, such an outcome is a worst‐?case scenario, but Washington’s Article 5 obligations bring it into play. The escalation risk is especially relevant with respect to defending Estonia and the other Baltic republics. A 2016 RAND Corporation study concluded that it would be nearly impossible for NATO to defend its Baltic members against a full‐?scale Russian invasion for more than a few days without an extensive upgrade of the Alliance’s existing force deployment. Even after such an upgrade, the outcome of a struggle waged solely with conventional weapons would be uncertain. Escalation to the nuclear level would remain an ever‐?present danger. Even without a robust “truth in advertising” requirement, U.S. public support for NATO is slipping. Mark Hannah, a senior fellow at the Eurasia Group Foundation, concedes that point following a survey his organization recently conducted. He notes: “For a second year in a row, when faced with a hypothetical scenario in which Russia invaded Estonia, a NATO ally, Americans were roughly split on whether they wanted the United States to respond militarily. And that was after respondents were reminded of Article 5, the part of the NATO treaty that obligates the United States to respond to such aggression, and after they were told that U.S. action could be the only way to expel Russia.” In other words, even with wording designed to elicit positive responses—and no disclosure of a potentially dire nuclear risk arising from America’s military obligation to a NATO ally—the survey showed no clear public mandate for defending that ally. Hannah concludes: “It’s not just President Donald Trump who is skeptical of the North Atlantic alliance, in other words. It’s the American people. To the extent that U.S. citizens think about NATO at all, they disagree about whether honoring its commitments would be worth the sacrifice.” He’s correct, and if they were explicitly told about the nuclear risk, it is highly probable that anti‐?NATO sentiment would surge.US public support for NATO commitments is declining Hannah, Eurasia Group Foundation Senior Fellow, 12-3-19(Mark, “It’s Not Just Trump. The American People Are Skeptical of NATO, Too,” accessed 5-15-20, ) JFNBut as the heads of NATO member countries gather this week in London, some of that popular support is in jeopardy. This is one of the conclusions of a national survey that my colleagues and I at the Eurasia Group Foundation recently conducted. For a second year in a row, when faced with a hypothetical scenario in which Russia invaded Estonia, a NATO ally, Americans were roughly split on whether they wanted the United States to respond militarily. And that was after respondents were reminded of Article 5, the part of the NATO treaty that obligates the United States to respond to such aggression, and after they were told that U.S. action could be the only way to expel Russia. It’s not just President Donald Trump who is skeptical of the North Atlantic alliance, in other words. It’s the American people. To the extent that U.S. citizens think about NATO at all, they disagree about whether honoring its commitments would be worth the sacrifice. This wavering commitment likely signals a belief that American protection is no longer necessary for European security or that the United States has different priorities from when NATO was created 70 years ago. If NATO wants to earn the confidence of American citizens—who, after all, elect the American president whom NATO allies deal with—the alliance must rethink its mission for the 21st century. To be sure, most Americans still have a general sense that NATO is important to our country’s security, according to another recent survey by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. But even that survey found the same divide on whether Americans would opt to retaliate against a Russian attack on a NATO ally. As recently as the late 1990s, nearly 70 percent of surveyed Americans supported sending U.S. troops to defend a new NATO member from a military attack. What’s going on? NATO is in the midst of an existential crisis; its original mission is a vestige of an earlier era. Even the current secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, acknowledges that there’s no imminent military threat from Russia (whose economy has dwindled to the size of Italy’s), and the Germans certainly don’t seem intent on territorial expansion. So, Americans who retain a positive impression of the alliance might yet hesitate to sacrifice blood and treasure on a mission they don’t see as vital to their interests.US public is at best split on maintaining US commitments to NATO Hannah and Gray, Eurasia Group Foundation, 19(Mark and Caroline, “INDISPENSABLE NO MORE? HOW THE AMERICAN PUBLIC SEES U.S. FOREIGN POLICY,” November 2019, Accessed 5-15-20, ) JFN For example, we found again in 2019 that, despite the uncritical acceptance of the value of NATO among the Washington establishment, the public is split on whether it would support armed retaliation against Russia if it were to invade a Baltic country that was also a NATO ally of the U.S. We also found the public subscribes more to what EGF board president Ian Bremmer has called an “Independent America” worldview than an “Indispensable America” or “Moneyball America” worldview. 2 And the “Wilsonian” outlook described within a popular typology by Walter Russell Mead, so prevalent within the foreign policy community, finds little support or salience within the public.Most Americans don’t support or value NATO Sanders, YouGov Data Journalist, 4-4-19(Linley, “How does America feel about NATO? Support for alliance falls across key Western nations,” accessed 5-21-20, ) JFNAs the North Atlantic Treaty Organization treaty reaches its 70th anniversary on Thursday, support for the international alliance has fallen among key Western nations, and less than half of Americans (44%) support the United States’ place in the agreement once designed to provide collective security against Russia, formerly called the Soviet Union.Most Republicans don’t value the importance of NATO Sanders, YouGov Data Journalist, 4-4-19(Linley, “How does America feel about NATO? Support for alliance falls across key Western nations,” accessed 5-21-20, ) JFNThat inconstancy is mirrored in American opinions of NATO, as well. When asked whether NATO continues to serve an “important role in the defense of Western countries,” just 38% of Republicans agreed. Members of the GOP are outsized by Democrats (60%) and independent voters (45%), who are also more likely to support the international alliance.Nuclear Umbrella/Nuclear Weapons---2NCUS public opposes the nuclear umbrella Baron and Herzog, Fellow at the USC Korean Studies Institute and Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School Center for Science and International Relations, 4-27-20(Jonathan and Stephen, “Poll: What the American public likes and hates about Trump’s nuclear policies,” accessed 5-20-20, ) JFN Only 34 percent of Americans support the longstanding policy of providing the nuclear umbrella in principle, and that number drops to 27.9 percent for nuclear deployments in Europe. It is no wonder that some experts have speculated that countries like Germany, Japan, and South Korea may soon consider building the bomb. Yet, even with Trump’s rhetoric against these assurances, men and Republicans remain the most supportive of the nuclear umbrella and forward-deployed B61 nuclear bombs. Women, Democrats, and Independents respond less favorably. Additionally, Americans who came of age during the Cold War are more favorable toward these policies than their Millennial and Generation Z counterparts.US public opposes forward deployed nuclear weapons Baron and Herzog, Fellow at the USC Korean Studies Institute and Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School Center for Science and International Relations, 4-27-20(Jonathan and Stephen, “Poll: What the American public likes and hates about Trump’s nuclear policies,” accessed 5-20-20, ) JFN What are the US public’s preferences on nuclear weapons? In the age of “America First,” the public appears increasingly skeptical of taking on risks even on behalf of Washington’s closest allies. It may be time for leaders to articulate why alliances and the nuclear umbrella are important, or to begin reassessing policies like forward-deployed tactical nuclear weapons. The public also opposes the first use of nuclear weapons, even in response to a cyberattack. These findings suggest a need to revisit declaratory policy and the possibility of making a no-first-use pledge. Likewise, Americans emphatically support ratifying the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty and slamming the door on US nuclear explosive tests. Overall, the public dislikes spending significant taxpayer dollars on nuclear weapons but appreciates the value of specific systems. And while nuclear diplomacy with Iran remains in bitter partisan gridlock, many Americans appear to be taking a wait-and-see approach to Trump’s talks with North Korea. Whether presidential candidates heed Americans’ attitudes is up to them and their advisors. However, our study suggests that the US public would be receptive to politicians staking clear positions, even if they involve bold changes to longstanding nuclear doctrine. And if politicians and political parties dislike these public attitudes, then they ought to be held accountable to justify their alternatives.South Korea---2NCTrump will sell the plan as a grand bargain with North Korea that boosts his reelection chances Depetris, Analyst for 38 North, 11-21-19(Daniel, “Troops for Nukes: Should the US Trade Its Forces in South Korea for North Korean Denuclearization?,” accessed 5-22-20, ) JFN Unilaterally removing US forces in the South without getting anything of value in return would be politically impossible and strategically misguided. However, linking such a withdrawal in return for the Kim regime’s nuclear disarmament would at least be more defensible in the court of public opinion. This gambit would also kill two birds with one stone for a president who views diplomacy and relationships in strictly transactional terms: accomplishing the Kim regime’s denuclearization—an achievement he could plausibly tout as vindication of his politically risky, top-down nuclear diplomacy—while extricating the US military from what he views as a costly burden. In fact, it is easy to imagine the president claiming this deal as a great diplomatic triumph and a major campaign promise kept to his core supporters. The question is whether such a bargain would serve US security interests and command domestic support. There is considerable evidence that a US troop departure under any circumstances would be a tough sell domestically and run into serious implementation problems.Plan gives Trump a huge short term political win by enabling him to claim he’s reached a grand bargain with North KoreaDepetris, Analyst for 38 North, 11-21-19(Daniel, “Troops for Nukes: Should the US Trade Its Forces in South Korea for North Korean Denuclearization?,” accessed 5-22-20, ) JFN US-DPRK denuclearization appears to be headed for a train wreck, making a bold move to shake things up attractive to a president who takes pride in being unconventional and is obsessed with winning, and whose decisions are driven by his personality and politics. A troops-for-nukes trade would provide the president with an opportunity to claim success on two of his principal objectives: the Kim regime’s nuclear disarmament and ending a US security contribution in South Korea he has long derided as unfair. But it would be bad policy and even worse strategy and would face enormous implementation problems. In the final analysis, Trump would quickly discover that talking about a US troop withdrawal is much easier than executing it.Plan gives Trump the ability to claim a massive political win Fuchs and Bard, Center for American Progress Senior Fellow and Research Associate, 6-10-19(Michael and Abigail, “The Time Is Right for a Deal With North Korea,” accessed 5-22-20, ) JFN Public opinion also supports diplomacy with North Korea. When North Korea was regularly testing missiles in 2017, for example, the American people were inundated with news about how North Korean weapons could now reach the United States, and concerns were high. Since diplomatic efforts began, however, North Korea as an issue has become less of a concern to Americans. Although 83 percent of Americans see North Korea’s development of nuclear weapons as a critical threat, between the beginning of 2018 and the beginning of 2019, the percentage of Americans who listed North Korea as the greatest enemy of the United States dropped from 51 percent to 14 percent.5 Once diplomacy began in 2018, a Pew Research Center poll showed that 71 percent of Americans supported diplomacy with North Korea.6 If President Trump were to strike an interim deal with Kim Jong Un that included concrete North Korean actions related to halting or rolling back the country’s nuclear program, Trump would likely find significant support in Washington and among the American people. At a minimum, he would not face serious opposition.Treaties---2NCWithdrawing from international treaties benefits Trump domestically Tures, LaGrange College Political Science Professor, 5-30-20(John, “Why Ditching the WHO Will Backfire on Trump,” accessed 5-30-20, ) JFNWhen President Donald Trump announced Friday that the United States is cutting ties with the World Health Organization, he relied on an old strategy from the American presidential playbook: attempting to score political points at home by loudly withdrawing from an international body or treaty. The problem? This strategy doesn’t always last: Presidents—or their successors—learn the shortcomings of such noisy departures from world organizations and agreements, realizing that the bluster was often not worth the price. Sometimes, the United States later rejoins the same institution it once left, often quietly, once the folly of abandonment is apparent. We may associate storming out of international organizations with Republicans, but Jimmy Carter showed such actions can be bipartisan. Before he became president, there was already a movement to ditch the U.S. membership in the International Labor Organization. This international institution had been created after World War I to demonstrate the Western world’s concern for workers in order to undercut the Communist appeal. It won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1969. But the ILO had fallen out of favor with American conservatives in the 1970s, and even some U.S. labor unions, as political scientist Richard A. Melanson documented in 1979. The ILO’s critics felt the decision-making structure was helping the Soviets and their allies, the organization was too anti-Israeli and pro-Palestinian, and West European representatives were too lukewarm in plans to condemn the USSR for its labor practices. Plans to leave the ILO began under the Ford administration, but Carter allowed the departure to continue. The U.S. exited the group in his first year of office, 1977. No doubt Carter was influenced by powerful opposition to the ILO from the AFL-CIO and American Jewish groups, both key backers of the Democratic Party. Three years later, it was a different story. “When Carter officials realized there was little more to be gained by their continued absence, they rejoined the ILO,” political scientist Paul Masters wrote in 1996. There were changes in leadership at the AFL-CIO as well as a new understanding that there were limits to what the U.S. could do outside of the international organization. Still, similar mistakes would be repeated in the following decade. Perhaps the best-known case of a president stomping out of an international organization occurred when Ronald Reagan announced the U.S. would leave UNESCO in 1984. Reagan’s rationale for ditching the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization was summed up by the White House: “UNESCO has extraneously politicized virtually every subject it deals with. It has exhibited hostility toward a free society, especially a free market and a free press, and it has demonstrated unrestrained budgetary expansion.” Getting out of UNESCO was part of an overall plan to sideline international organizations, as the U.S. refused to sign the Law of the Sea Treaty and contemplated leaving the Food and Agricultural Organization and UNCTAD conferences as well—moves designed to woo the nationalists in America who made up much of Reagan’s electoral coalition. International relations scholar Steven Livingston argued in 1992 that perceptions of Reagan’s foreign policy as a success were misguided and that his moves actually resulted in a “more constrained U.S. agenda power.”Trump Base---2NCTrump’s isolationist foreign policy fires up his baseStokes 20 [Bruce Stokes, Non-Resident Transatlantic Fellow. “USA vs. Everybody? Why Foreign Policy Will Be a Backdrop to Domestic Policy in 2020,” The German Marshall Fund of the United States, 4/20/20, Accessed 8/13/20]#NCCPresident Trump has used the health crisis to repeatedly attack others: labeling the disease a ‘Chinese virus,’ threatening to pull out of the World Health Organization, peremptorily banning travel from Europe and attempting to block international trade in medical equipment. In doing so, he is appealing to deep-seated nationalist sentiment long held by his core supporters. Eight-in-ten Republican registered voters believe that other nations take advantage of the United States. Just four-in-ten Democrats agree. So, when President Trump castigates foreigners—be it in the context of the coronavirus or for their trade practices or for NATO allies’ inadequate military expenditures—he is speaking for his domestic base that perceives themselves as victims of the outside world. Republicans’ sense of victimhood should not be underestimated as a factor in the upcoming election. Arguably all Americans are victims of the current health emergency. But many already saw themselves as victims of unsettling change beyond their control. Since 1967, trade as a portion of the U.S. economy has nearly tripled, while the share of the U.S. workforce engaged in well-paid manufacturing has fallen by two-thirds. And the portion of the U.S. population that is foreign born has nearly tripled. It is little wonder then that trade and immigration were major issues in the 2016 election. Six-in-ten people who voted for Donald Trump in 2016 believe the country is changing too quickly. (Seven-in-ten who cast their ballot for Hillary Clinton embrace such change.) So there is fertile ground for a 2020 U.S. presidential campaign where discussion of foreign policy issues are rooted in Republican voters’ views of themselves as not only aggrieved by the pandemic but by a rapidly changing world in general. Expect new attacks on international institutions such as NATO, the UN, and the EU. By almost two-to-one (47 percent to 25 percent) Republicans are more likely than Democrats to say NATO is more important to other nations than it is the United States, suggesting that Trump’s base will be receptive to even more criticism of alliance partners not paying enough for their own defense. At the same time, just 36 percent of self-described conservative Americans have a positive opinion of the EU and 38 percent favor the UN. This compares with 71 percent of liberals who give the EU a thumbs up and 80 percent who are positive toward the UN. Protectionist trade rhetoric was a staple of the Trump campaign in 2016 and a reprise is inevitable. Most Americans think trade is good for the country, but they also think it destroys jobs and lowers wages. Such negative sentiment is most prominent among older white men, the very heart of the Trump constituency. And there are also likely to be periodic attacks on China. Only a third of Americans hold a favorable view of Beijing, including only a quarter of Republicans, the lowest approval in more than four decades. Three-in-ten Republicans also name China as the greatest enemy of the United States, sentiment that has grown (22 percent to 31 percent) in just a year. In contrast, just 12 percent of Democrats classify Beijing as the Unites States’ greatest foe. With regard to all three of these issues—multilateralism, trade, and China—Trump supporters are more negative than Democrats. But Democrats are not much more supportive. So Trump will benefit from going on the attack, while Biden will gain little from mounting a defense of internationalism. In the end, the November U.S. presidential election will not turn on foreign policy issues. Public opinion surveys consistently show that international concerns are among Americans’ least worries. The outcome will hinge on the depth of the recession and voters’ perception of Trump’s handling of the pandemic. But both of those issues only fuel the public’s sense of victimhood. So expect the Trump campaign to fan those flames with a steady drumbeat of attacks on other countries and international institutions to reinforce the president’s supporters' sense of solidarity in an election that will be framed as ‘us against them,’ be it a virus, or an economic downturn, or perfidious foreigners. Victimhood is a powerful political rallying cry.Plan is spun by Trump as a nativist policy that spurs base turnout Zelizer, CNN Political Analyst, 5-2-20(Julian, “President Trump's reelection strategy is taking shape,” accessed 5-12-20, ) JFN Nativism: Just last week, the President took advantage of the pandemic and announced an immigration ban. "In light of the attack from the Invisible Enemy, as well as the need to protect the jobs of our GREAT American Citizens, I will be signing an Executive Order to temporarily suspend immigration into the United States!" he tweeted. The move harkened back to his 2016 campaign promise to build a wall along the southern US border. This time, the President's executive order was much more limited in comparison, with a long list of exceptions. Expect more of the same. Trump believes that anti-immigration rhetoric is one of the easiest ways to mobilize supporters around an imagined threat that unites them behind his candidacy, regardless of what he actually does for them. Trump can be the president of Wall Street, in his mind, and still win the support of rural working-class voters if he plays to their cultural rage. His nativist attacks on immigrants have always been the key to his conservative populism.A2: FoPo Doesn’t Matter---2NCTrump has yet to prove he’s tough on foreign policy – that’s key to the electionMcManus 20 [Doyle McManus is a Washington columnist for the Los Angeles Times and director of the journalism program at Georgetown University. “For Trump, foreign policy has soured, too,” Los Angeles Times, 7/1/20, Accessed 7/23/20]#NCCWASHINGTON — When President Trump launched his reelection campaign, he hoped to run, in part, on a record of foreign policy success. He told voters he was making progress toward a big trade deal with China: “The biggest deal ever,” he promised. He was holding peace talks with North Korea aimed at dismantling Kim Jong Un’s nuclear arsenal and ending a 70-year-old conflict. He even held out hope for a new nuclear deal with Iran — one he said would be better than the pact his predecessor, Barack Obama, signed in 2015. “Our country is respected again,” the president boasted in February. “We were not a respected nation.” That seems a long time ago now. Trump’s diplomatic successes, which were rarely as momentous as he claimed, have mostly evaporated. Foreign policy has become a source of trouble for his reelection campaign instead of a strength. The president’s personal summitry with Kim Jong Un has deadlocked; the North Korean leader is testing missiles and manufacturing nuclear warheads again. His trade agreement with China turned out to be little more than a short-term deal to sell U.S. agricultural products, not the big structural change his China hawks yearned for. The president’s harsh economic sanctions have succeeded in punishing Iran’s economy, but have produced no progress toward a deal to tighten limits on Tehran’s military. As for respect, Trump’s chaotic response to the coronavirus has made the United States a global example of how not to fight a pandemic. This week the European Union announced that it was reopening to tourists from 15 “safe” countries including Canada, Japan, South Korea and Rwanda — but not the United States. Respect? Americans can’t even vacation in Paris anymore. Even worse for a president whose go-to adjective is “strong,” embittered ex-aides and in-house leakers keep suggesting that when Trump gets into negotiations with autocratic chiefs of state, he’s not a tough guy after all. His former national security advisor John Bolton denounced the president for pursuing cozy deals with his favorite autocrats, China’s Xi Jinping, Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan. “There was “no coherent basis, no strategy,” Bolton complained after writing his tell-all book. “There really isn’t any guiding principle that I was able to discern other than what’s good for Donald Trump’s reelection.” This week, reports emerged that one of Putin’s intelligence agencies offered bounties to Afghanistan’s Taliban for killing American troops. The reports reached the desk of Trump’s current national security advisor, Robert C. O’Brien, but the president denied knowing anything. No matter how the controversy turns out, it bolsters the picture of a foreign policy team in disarray. And voters, who rarely pay close attention to foreign policy even without the distraction of a pandemic, appear to have noticed. A Gallup poll in mid-June found that public approval of Trump’s job performance on foreign policy has sagged to 41%, significantly lower than the 47% who approved of his handling of the nation’s economy. Democrats and their presumptive presidential nominee, Joe Biden, have noticed Trump’s vulnerability on these issues, too. Last week, the Democratic National Committee launched a 30-second television commercial in swing states deriding Trump’s performance on trade. “Trump said he’d get tough on China,” a narrator intones. “He didn’t get tough. He got played.” The Trump campaign has fired back with a commercial calling Biden “China’s puppet” and reviving charges that his son, Hunter Biden, was paid suspiciously large sums by a Chinese firm. That’s the closest this race has come to a debate on international affairs — a barroom brawl over who is softer on China. “A presidential campaign is a bad place to look for a serious discussion of foreign policy,” observed Richard N. Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations. China policy won’t be the deciding issue in November’s presidential election — far from it. Voters rank other problems higher on their priority lists, beginning with the pandemic, race relations and the economy. But this argument isn’t about the nuances of foreign affairs; there’s nary a nuance in sight. It’s a slanging match about competence, toughness and strength. Historically, Republicans have had an advantage among voters on national security issues; they’re traditionally the party of military strength and diplomatic toughness. Trump appears to have squandered that advantage. We may be seeing a historical anomaly: a campaign in which voters give the Democratic candidate the benefit of the doubt on toughness in foreign policy.**General Trump ImpactsWar & Warming---2NCRe-election causes extinction---climate change and nuclear conflict.Starr 19 --- Paul Starr, professor of sociology and public affairs at Princeton and a winner of the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction ("Trump’s Second Term," May 2019 Issue, The Atlantic, , accessed 5-4-2019) bmIn short, the biggest difference between electing Trump in 2016 and reelecting Trump in 2020 would be irreversibility. Climate policy is now the most obvious example. For a long time, even many of the people who acknowledged the reality of climate change thought of it as a slow process that did not demand immediate action. But today, amid extreme weather events and worsening scientific forecasts, the costs of our delay are clearly mounting, as are the associated dangers. To have a chance at keeping global warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius—the objective of the Paris climate agreement—the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says that by 2030, CO2 emissions must drop some 45 percent from 2010 levels. Instead of declining, however, they are rising. In his first term, Trump has announced plans to cancel existing climate reforms, such as higher fuel-efficiency standards and limits on emissions from new coal-fired power plants, and he has pledged to pull the United States out of the Paris Agreement. His reelection would put off a national commitment to decarbonization until at least the second half of the 2020s, while encouraging other countries to do nothing as well. And change that is delayed becomes more economically and politically difficult. According to the Global Carbon Project, if decarbonization had begun globally in 2000, an emissions reduction of about 2 percent a year would have been sufficient to stay below 2 degrees Celsius of warming. Now it will need to be approximately 5 percent a year. If we wait another decade, it will be about 9 percent. In the United States, the economic disruption and popular resistance sure to arise from such an abrupt transition may be more than our political system can bear. No one knows, moreover, when the world might hit irreversible tipping points such as the collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, which would likely doom us to a catastrophic sea-level rise. The 2020 election will also determine whether the U.S. continues on a course that all but guarantees another kind of runaway global change—a stepped-up arms race, and with it a heightened risk of nuclear accidents and nuclear war. Trump’s “America first” doctrine, attacks on America’s alliances, and unilateral withdrawal from arms-control treaties have made the world far more dangerous. After pulling the United States out of the Iran nuclear agreement (in so doing, badly damaging America’s reputation as both an ally and a negotiating partner), Trump failed to secure from North Korea anything approaching the Iran deal’s terms, leaving Kim Jong Un not only unchecked but with increased international standing. Many world leaders are hoping that Trump’s presidency is a blip—that he will lose in 2020, and that his successor will renew America’s commitments to its allies and to the principles of multilateralism and nonproliferation. If he is reelected, however, several countries may opt to pursue nuclear weapons, especially those in regions that have relied on American security guarantees, such as the Middle East and Northeast Asia.Trade War/Econ---2NCTrump will keep the trade war going for a 2nd term---he needs to see himself as the winner in this conflictBrennan 19 (David, reporter for Newsweek, “Donald Trump Vows Tougher China Stance ‘If And When I Win’ 2020 Electino, 7/30/19, accessed 8/14/19, )President Donald Trump has warned China that his second term in office would herald a much tougher approach to the ongoing trade war with Beijing. Trump sent his warning via Twitter while gloating about China's economic slowdown, claiming it as evidence that his wide-ranging trade war is working, Reuters reported. Observers and officials have long suggested that the Communist Party regime in Beijing can better afford to play the long game, whether in terms of trade or other aspects of diplomacy and geopolitics. The authoritarian system of government means Chinese leaders have less need to set and deliver on short-term goals to garner greater public approval. But Trump warned Tuesday that delaying any trade deal until after the 2020 election—in the hope that Americans will unseat the president—could backfire for Beijing. Lauding what he said are the effects of his trade war, Trump declared that China "is doing very badly" even as the latest U.S-China trade talks began in Shanghai. "They should probably wait out our Election to see if we get one of the Democrat stiffs like Sleepy Joe," he mused. "Then they could make a GREAT deal, like in past 30 years, and continue to ripoff the USA, even bigger and better than ever before. "The problem with them waiting, however, is that if & when I win, the deal that they get will be much tougher than what we are negotiating now…or no deal at all," the president added. The U.S. has so far imposed tariffs on $250 billion worth of Chinese goods, with China reciprocating with import levies on $110 billion of U.S. goods. Negotiations to find a way out of the confrontation have so far failed. China agreed to increase its purchases of U.S. agricultural goods as a goodwill gesture to reinvigorate talks, but Trump suggested Beijing appeared to be reneging on the pledge. The president said China "was supposed to start buying our agricultural product now - no signs that they are doing so. That is the problem with China, they just don't come through." Earlier this month, fresh economic data indicated that the Chinese economy is growing at its slowest rate since 1992. The country's National Bureau of Statistics said the economy grew 6.2 percent in the second quarter of 2019, slightly below the 6.4 percent growth of the first quarter of the year. Trump was quick to claim credit. "This is why China wants to make a deal with the U.S. and wishes it had not broken the original deal in the first place," he wrote. "In the meantime, we are receiving Billions of Dollars in Tariffs from China, with possibly much more to come." The president also falsely claimed that the tariffs are being paid for by China rather than by U.S. businesses and consumers in the form of higher prices on imported goods.Turns SV---2NCOppressed communities are mobilizing to contest Trump and the GOP at the ballot box in 2020---the left is adopting radical positions that reject centrist Democratic candidates in favor of people from communities of struggle. Maintaining voter enthusiasm and mobilization’s key to roll back the entire white nationalist takeover of the U.S. ---turns the caseGS Potter 17, community educator, advocate and the founder of the Strategic Institute of Intersectional Policy, PhD. from the University of Washington and has worked against police brutality, homelessness and strategic organizing at the grassroots for two decades, 11/13/17, “Impeachment Proceedings Against Donald Trump Could Begin as Early as Next January,” voting blocs, which include organized communities of people of color, people living with disabilities, poor people, members of the LGBTQ community, immigrants and non-Christians have all consistently called for the Democrats to put an end to the Trump Administration and its violent attacks on their communities. But as Democrats have distanced themselves from these communities, they have also distanced themselves from efforts to impeach Trump. As Politico recently reported: “Neither House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi nor the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee have issued guidance to lawmakers or candidates about how to talk about impeachment. But Pelosi’s advice, when requested by colleagues, has been that they should say how they feel and quickly pivot to policy, according to a Democrat familiar with those discussions.” After a year of broken promises, poor leadership, mixed messages, and practically zero efforts to protect “minority” constituents from the ever-increasing attacks from the Republican Party, local and statewide community organizations have begun organizing to fill the void in Democratic Leadership. The Democratic Party’s dramatic victory in last week’s elections serves as evidence of the dramatic shift that is currently taking place within the party. As reported by SIIP immediately following the elections: “…last night’s victory was not just a sound rejection of the white supremacist leadership options presented by the Republican Party?—?but it was also a sound rejection of white domination within the Democratic Party itself. It wasn’t really the old guard of the white led Democratic Party to victory last night?—?it was the “minority” blocs of the Democratic Party that deserve the credit. These voters not only showed up to the polls to put Democrats above Republicans, but they showed up to put their communities in power of white candidates on either side of the aisle. - Vi Lyle won her campaign becoming the first black woman to be elected as mayor of Charlotte, NC - Melvin Carter III was elected as the first mayor of color in St. Paul, MN - Ravi Bhalla of Hoboken, NJ became the first Sikh mayor in the state’s history. - Danica Roem won her seat in the Virginia House of Delegates, becoming the first openly transgender candidate to be elected to serve in a state legislative body. - Andrea Jenkins dominated her opponent for Minneapolis City Council becoming the first transgender woman of color to be elected to a public office - Jenny Durkin won her bid for mayor of Seattle becoming the city’s first lesbian mayor. Zachary DeWolf also became the first school board member from the LGBTQ community. - Kathy Tran became the first Asian-American woman to be elected to the Virginia House of Delegates. And while turnout rates were still unable to match those of the 2016 general election, there was a dramatic increase in comparison with that of the most recent non-Presidential elections. And this rising tide was seen at both the local and state levels. In Virginia, for example, black voters surged to the polls turning over 85% of their votes to Ralph Northam. Black Women continued their reign as the Democrats’ most loyal and active voting block with 94% of their votes going to the Democrats. In New Jersey, it was the Latinx population and the 83% of their votes that propelled Democratic Candidate Phil Murphy to victory. And it was an explosion of early voting, especially amongst voters of color, that propelled Vi Lyle into her position in history and the City Hall of Charlotte to become the first black mayor. It is undeniable that the Blue Wave was led by Black and Brown Voters.” While white leadership in the Democratic party has done more to stand in the way of communities of color than it has to stop the Republican Party, the “minority” communities have begun to take ownership of their political power and are organized to take of Congress and unseat Trump themselves. The plan involves 3 key elements: 1. Rejecting traditional Democratic Candidates such as Pelosi and Schumer in favor of candidates the come from communities of struggle and have a proven track record of political work on behalf of those communities. In other words, candidates they know and candidates they trust. 2. Re-enfranchising voters suppressed by the Republican Party and swept under the rug by the Democrats. 3. Mobilizing turn-out for the 2018 midterm elections. This work has already begun, and Democrats of Color should be cautiously enthusiastic about the success of these recent election outcomes. There is much that needs to be done, though, to ensure that all of the pieces are put into place by November 6, 2018. For example, while voter turnout was high among black and brown voters as compared to previous non-Presidential elections, less than 1\4 of those eligible to vote actually cast a ballot. Midterm elections traditionally suffer from generally low levels of turn out as well. 2018 will be no exception if community organizations aren’t able to mobilize the turnout needed to win through both the local and statewide networks. Voter suppression also presents itself as a challenge. 21 million voters are still being deprived of their Constitutional right to vote because of Voter ID Restrictions. 7 million are kept from the polls because of felony disenfranchisement and voter purging. And tens of millions of poor, disabled and elderly voters have been kept from casting a ballot because of an epidemic of polling place closures and ADA violations. Currently, the focus of the Democratic Party’s electoral reform efforts has been on gerrymandering. Although and end to this practice is welcome, it will not serve to re-enfranchise one single voter. And currently the Democratic Party has rejected calls to direct funding and resources into re-enfranchisement efforts. If community civil rights organizations are supported in their efforts to enforce Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act and the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment in the lower federal courts, though, tens of millions of new voters could be added to the Democratic Party, the efforts to take control of Congress and the movement to impeach Trump. Community members and organizations must also present and get behind candidates that not only optically represent their communities, but have the resumes to back up their rhetoric. People of color have grown tired of token representatives that appear to come from the community, but still carry a white Democratic agenda that doesn’t serve them. In order to incentivize voters and ensure that once in power, the will of the people is actually carried out?—?qualified community representatives must be put on the 2018 ballot. Finally, mobilization for the 2018 Midterm Elections has to begin now. There is less than one year to do the work necessary to take back Congress in 2018. There is less than one year to transform leaders of color into Congressional candidates; re-enfranchise the tens of millions of suppressed voters; and mobilize the turn out necessary ensure victory next November. There is less than one year to end this nightmare once and for all. And while it is almost unthinkable to wait another year to end the reign of the Trump Administration, the only thing more unthinkable is missing what is likely to be our only opportunity to stop Trump until the next presidential election in three more years. Correction: The only thing that would be more unthinkable is doing all of the work to elect Democratic leaders and then watching them refuse to carry out impeachment. But if we join together and focus on the end goal, we can turn Congress back over to the Democratic Party under leadership we can trust to end this white nationalist take-over of the United States. And once we do that, we can begin the impeachment process. Immediately. During the first week of January following the 2018 Midterm Elections.Turns Econ---2NCSecond-term Trump collapses the global economy and causes fast unstable retrenchment from U.S. international commitments Porter 18. [Patrick, Chair in International Security and Strategy at the University of Birmingham, “CRISIS AND CONVICTION: U.S. GRAND STRATEGY IN TRUMP’S SECOND TERM,” War on the Rocks -- August 6 -- ]Thus far, the bottom line about Trump’s presidency is that before he took office, he threatened to govern as an isolationist, but he has not. Instead of addressing the failures of primacy, he is exacerbating them. When running for office, Trump promised to extricate America from unnecessary wars. He toyed with the idea of tolerating others’ nuclear proliferation. He pronounced NATO to be “obsolete.” He took up the slogan of interwar isolationism, “America First.” This worldview persists. He is no convert to the traditional ethos of the Pax Americana. In his contractual view of international affairs, he would prefer to draw down global military deployments. He would prefer not to be bound by alliance commitments. He would rather accommodate other major powers and let them dominate their back yards. He would be content for regional powers to be security providers. And he has no time for the traditional logic that the hegemon pays more than the lion’s share of the defense bill in order to keep allies subordinate.He has not governed this way. Look beyond the tweets to follow the money and the troops. Trump is aggressively reasserting American primacy, not dismantling it. Rather than bringing the legions home, Trump is reinforcing their central importance, emptying the treasury to strengthen them, and even asking for military parades. Thanks to his deficit-financed military build-up plus his extravagant tax cuts, the annual budget deficit has ballooned by 12 percent since last year, and is projected to rise by an additional $100 billion a year. In the Middle East, Trump has doubled down on America’s bid to remain predominant for the foreseeable future, increasing civilian and military deployments by 33 percent (as of November 2017) along with accelerated arms sales, while strengthening ties with the Saudi bloc and Israel to confront and coerce Iran, America’s main rival in the region. In Asia, Trump has pursued the nuclear disarmament of North Korea while increasingly confronting China about Taiwan, trade, and the South China Sea. We can debate what to call this, but it isn’t isolationism.The disjuncture between Trump’s anti-traditionalism and American deeds, indeed between Trump and the policy thrust of the executive branch, is most apparent in U.S.-Russian relations. Trump’s notorious words are often contradicted by the details of actual policy. Trump stands accused of treasonous collaboration with Vladimir Putin’s regime, due not only to allegations of electoral interference and private one-on-one meetings, but deferential statements about Russia’s security interests, congratulating Putin on re-election, and suggesting that Russia be invited back to the G-7. But amid the U.S. foreign policy establishment’s fascination for the extent of Trump’s collusion with Putin, its almost Trumpian fixation with televisual optics, and its fondness for grandiose tracts about “world order,” it neglects the prosaic details of concrete commitments.Consider the totality of American policy towards Russia since January 2017, which is the product of multiple decision-making centers, and some of which is forged despite Trump. Around the infamous Brussels and Helsinki reports, a significant act went under-reported. Before he went to Brussels, Trump addressed the Three Seas Initiative at Warsaw, where he pitched the United States as an alternative energy supplier to Russia, explicitly to break Russia’s gas monopoly, his Energy Secretary presented the United States as an alternative market provider to the Nord Stream 2 pipeline. Moscow noticed with displeasure. Whether or not Trump threatened to quit NATO, its members are spending evermore on defense, which is not a happy result for Russia. Despite protestations, European states retain powerful incentives to stick with Washington. There are no signs of their abandoning the alliance to rearm independently or bandwagon with other powers.Consider too other measures. He has appointed hawkish American primacists and Putin critics to Russia-related official posts. He has expanded sanctions, including an expanded Magnitsky list of targets. The Justice Department has forced Russia Today to register as a foreign agent. Trump has expelled Russian diplomats. Trump has armed Ukraine, Romania and Poland. The U.S. has reinforced NATO’s enhanced forward presence in Poland and the Baltic states with increased troop numbers and more exercises, and presided over the expansion of NATO into Montenegro and Macedonia, against Russian efforts to keep its clients in the Balkans and resist E.U.-NATO enlargement, while courting Ukraine and Georgia as future alliance members. The United States also acquires low-yield nuclear weapons with the explicit rationale of competition against Moscow, to remain “top of the pack” among nuclear powers. Trump twice authorized airstrikes against Syria, Russia’s Middle Eastern client state, against Putin’s protests. He also loosened the rules of engagement in Syria, struck Russian troops and mercenaries there and bragged about it. So far, the U.S. refuses to recognize Crimea as part of Russia. Is this Putin’s dream?Some commentators, like Daniel Vajdich and James Carafano, maintain this confrontational stance is Trump’s own. Carafano attributes Trump’s reassertion of American hegemony to a coherent Trumpian vision, a “large dose of peace through strength: showing strong face to his enemies with military and economic pressure,” while offering them a “chance to stop competing.” This is an elegant explanation. But it overstates the president’s command of the policy process. The picture that emerges is more fraught. A surer verdict must await future archives, but from the pattern of what we can know about the process behind these choices, a reluctant Trump is constrained to maintain a hard-line policy mix. This is despite his public braggadocio and despite his instinctive belief that Washington should delegate anti-Putin countermeasures to Europeans. Similarly, he retains a personal preference for pulling troops out of Afghanistan, South Korea, and Syria. Yet advisors pressed him successfully to maintain the traditional U.S. posture so far. “You guys want me to send troops everywhere,” Trump charged Secretary of Defense Mattis, whose response (“You have no choice”) carried the day.As well as being subject to constant advice to maintain a tough stance on Russian adventurism, domestic criticism of any conciliation of Russia and the Mueller investigation that the foreign policy establishment has encouraged have led Trump to complain that he “can’t put on the charm” or “be president.” Trump acknowledges that he is boxed in: “Anything you do, it’s always going to be… ‘He loves Russia.’” “I just want peace,” he complained when aides pushed him (successfully) to supply lethal aid to the Ukraine. The White House initially invited Putin to visit Washington, but subsequently postponed the occasion, citing the “Russia witch hunt.” If Trump had his way, as one former official put it, he would purse a “much more open and friendly policy with Russia.” So far, he hasn’t had his way on most first order questions. The environment is too resistant. The actor is not determined enough and doesn’t have enough political capital to spend. True, in the field of economics, Trump’s stoking of trade wars and large leaps in protectionism are a departure from post-Cold War policies, though he adheres to the impulse of creating markets open for American business and on American terms. On security questions, though, if it is hard politically to arrange a Putin visit to the White House, the constraints against doing what Moscow would like, negotiating a “Yalta-2” grand bargain to recognize a Russian sphere of influence — or withdraw from Europe — are strong.It is thus premature to argue that Trump is “off the chain,” as Hal Brands does. Brands notes that the constraining influence of Secretary Jim Mattis has waned, now that he has fallen out of favor, and that Trump is increasingly being Trump. Yet none of the concrete policies identified above have lapsed. And to focus on palace intrigue over which appointee is in the ascendancy is to miss the larger pattern. While Trump periodically falls out with just about everyone, the policy ecosystem is dominated by primacists and the primacy consensus. Though Tillerson and McMaster fell from grace and departed, the pool of capable talent from which the president selected appointees remains primacist. As Steve Bannon once observed, once you remove anti-Trump neoconservatives and never-Trumpers, the group of viable conservative candidates for official positions is not a “deep bench.” Accordingly, Trump has replaced estranged hawkish primacists with even more hawkish primacists as his new consiglieres: Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and National Security Advisor John Bolton, alongside U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley who endures as the unapologetic voice of superpower assertion.The Precipice: Trump’s Second TermWe would be wise to entertain the possibility of a second term of Trump. Thus far, it has proven futile for Trump’s critics to seek refuge in wishful expectations that he would go away, a wish found wanting every time it is updated. Recall that critics have hoped Trump wouldn’t win the nomination; that he would lose the election; that he would be impeached; that he will not stand again for office. The hope for a post-Trump return to political normality is similarly vain. After Trump there will likely be more Trumps, given the force of populist revolt that he has stirred, and the general dissatisfaction with the alleged liberal world order, whose breakdown and failures made Trumpism possible in the first place.There are good reasons to expect Trump to be a strong contender for re-election. Since World War II, incumbency has been a strong force in U.S. presidential politics. It has been rare for one of the two major parties to hold the presidency for only one term. Consider too Trump’s standing. His disapproval ratings are at historic highs, yet he also strongly mobilizes his base. Donations to Trump’s re-election campaign flood in. Trump enjoys near record approval from Republican voters, with no sign of mass defections. As things stand, he can campaign for a second term with a contentious but powerful story: a booming economy, low unemployment, a rising stock market, strictly enforced borders and tariff walls, and making peace through tough confrontation of North Korea and Iran. Each of these claims can be unpicked. But rebutting them takes explanation. In politics, if you’re explaining, you’re failing. Trump may be fortunate that his re-election timetable coincides with the right side of an economic “boom bust” cycle. Were he to win a second term, and especially if the margin was more decisive, the conditions of his presidency would change. If he won big, he would have more political capital to spend. He would feel vindicated by the authority of a second mandate. Term limits would mean that he would no longer need fear election failure. It is possible that Trump “Mark 2” would be more willing to tolerate the costs of introducing major change in American grand strategy.Consider further the possibility of a major strategic shock, with an impact comparable to the Wall Street Crash of 1929, the Japanese assault on Pearl Harbor in 1941, or the OPEC oil embargo of 1973. By definition, the shape and outline of the shock is unclear. And we can’t know when it would happen. But if the literature on great power decline is sound, it would likely have military and economic dimensions, featuring some fatal interaction of war and debt. The source of the next financial crisis could lie elsewhere, but Trump’s own policies also make more likely what was an implicit tendency, increasing the debt-deficit load and repeating a familiar pattern, whereby a large deficit-financed military build-up, deficit-financed wars (alongside tax cuts) stimulates demand, creates bubbles of irrational exuberance, overheats the economy, and eventually leads to a loss of confidence in markets. This would be followed by a contraction, but this time without the financial reserves that were available to mitigate the last financial crisis. This process could erupt sooner rather than later.It would take the combination of a strategic shock great enough to discredit the status quo and a determined revisionist president. If so, then these forces might come together, to take the president off the chain, and to create a domestic environment more hospitable to major change. Earlier security shocks, such as the 2008 financial crisis, did not lead in this direction because the Bush administration was averse to retrenching commitments. With Trump or a Trumpian figure in the white house, one response that was once taboo would be on the table: a fundamental retrenchment of overseas commitments, along the lines of Trump’s instincts. It isn’t certain what this will involve, but it would be drastic and imply a different assumption about how to pursue security. It could lead the United States to, for example, withdraw from the Gulf and let Saudi Arabia acquire the bomb, or to acknowledge Russia’s view of its sphere of influence while withdrawing from NATO or decisively repudiating Article 5, or to reduce military expenditure just to the level needed for the United States to deter attacks and defend itself.American “greatness” would still be Trump’s signature tune, but it would be redefined around liberating America from foreign entanglements, investing in and walling off the country, and an industrial renaissance. To be sure, the American foreign policy class would fight back furiously. But like in the era of Vietnam and the oil embargo, its power and confidence would be diminished. Already scarred by the last global financial crisis, stagnating wages and general alienation, the populace would be more receptive. An emboldened and more risk-prone president would be willing to hire outsiders as officials, less experienced and capable but ideologically attuned to the narrower security vision of “America First.”All this might be difficult to imagine. But rapid realignments of grand strategy can happen. As I argued, one example is Great Britain’s postwar abandonment of empire. New conditions were inhospitable to the exhausted country maintaining its colonies. These included the cumulative fiscal pressures of World War II, decolonization resistance, the United States’ dismantling of the economic order of imperial preference and the sterling bloc; and the shock of the Suez crisis of 1956, which revealed Britain’s vulnerability to U.S. coercion. Successive British governments were impelled to bow to these pressures once they became overwhelming. They then redefined Britain’s status around alliances and nuclear weapons, presenting retreat from empire as a graceful management of change and casting the emergence of independent countries as “the crowning achievement of British rule.”If we see a different kind of President Trump unleashed by new conditions, less constrained and more emboldened, in a context where major retrenchment becomes thinkable and attractive, only then will he or his heirs probably try to bring down the priesthood’s temple. If so, as Steve Bannon suggested, the next episode of Trump’s prime-time show will be as “wild as shit.”Turns Trade---2NCTrump reelection turns their trade advantage, and rejecting him solves it – damage to the liberal trade order’s containable as long as he loses in 2020 Sullivan 18 (Jake, Senior Fellow, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace; Former Director of Policy Planning, U.S. Department of State, 4/5/18, “Foreign Affairs Issue Launch: Letting Go: Trump, America, and the World,” )Q: Thank you. Paula Stern, The Stern Group.My question is for you, Jake. The multilateral system, you sounded very optimistic. I didn’t hear the word trade. And we are in the midst of a very active initiative by this president to take unilateral action and to disregard those agreements that we have made, starting with, of course, the TPP was thrown out, et cetera. But now we’re at this 232 steel and the tit for tat with China. I know the liberal order is not a popular word, but maybe rules and playing by the rules might be a little more popular? I’m just wondering where you fit that into what sounds like a rather optimistic view of where the United States and the world order has arrived here in 2018. And I would say, and a question ask you to address the trade issue.SULLIVAN: Yeah. Yeah, for me, you know, the key word is resilience or durability. I guess that’s two key words. (Laughter.) More than it is that I think everything’s going great. Because I think Trump represents a threat to all of these systems that I do think have, by and large, worked to the advantage of the United States. And he is threatening them. But I think the system is resilient in absorbing some of those shocks. That is not going to be true forever, but it’s going to be true to a point.How does trade fit into that? Couple of observations. First, it’s true that Trump pulled out of TPP. It’s also true that the 11 countries in TPP moved forward and reached their agreement with a minimum level of variance from the agreement that the United States had negotiated with them. And did so with a notion that they are now going to take the mantle up of moving forward the rules writing in the Asia-Pacific region that will itself put some pressure on China and other more illiberal actors in the trade space.So then there’s question of NAFTA. I think if the president pulls out of NAFTA, it would be a massive self-inflicted wound. And do we believe that there should be an update to NAFTA? Of course. Now, a lot of that was contained in the TPP. But nonetheless, if this ultimately ends up with some modification, some improvement on NAFTA, fine. If he actually pulls out of it, which I think the Congress will try to stop him from doing, so there’s institutional checks here in the United States, that would be really catastrophic. But I think that there is a reasonable chance the system will be resilient there as well on NAFTA.Then there’s the trade spat over 232 and 201. Here, I think fundamentally this is a test of whether or not my basic observation about resilience is right, or the caveat I offer comes through. Which is, there is a chance this all goes up. I mean, the president holds in his power, both on the security side with starting wars and on the economic side with starting trade wars, to blow the whole thing up if he wants to. But I think there is also a reasonable possibility that a system of constraints will come into play that will keep this from completely going out of control, that they will start working a negotiation, and that we will end up with Trump having done some damage, but not incalculable or irreversible damage. But that could be wrong.My point is, the longer he has to test this proposition, the higher the chance that sometimes goes catastrophically awry. And if the American people reaffirm the Trump approach in 2020, I think that will be fundamentally changing to the way the entire system operates and the set of expectations and relationships that get restructured. But I would argue that for now, if all of us stay focused on trying to hold him accountable from taking the most catastrophic actions, we can have some influence on that. The system can have some influence on that. And it may be that we can get to 2020 and not be in a place where we have to say, well, the America is era is gone, and Trump helped kill it, and now we’re onto something else. But we can get back to the business of doing what we should be doing.Dems support free tradeBacchus 18 (James, Professor of global affairs at the University of Central Florida, adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute. “Democrats Free Trade Is Your Destiny". Wall Street Journal. 12-4-2018. ) As one of the few free-trade Democrats engaged in the public fray, I have a message for my former Democratic colleagues on Capitol Hill: You might not be backing trade, but our base has beat you to it. Most Democratic candidates and officeholders still work under the assumption that Democratic voters oppose free trade. These politicians are spending too much time listening to labor-union lobbyists and antiglobalization activists. They should be spending more time reading opinion polls, which show that Democratic voters overwhelmingly support free trade. In a survey earlier this year by the Pew Charitable Trust, 67% of Democratic voters said free-trade agreements between the U.S. and other countries generally have been good for the U.S. Sixty-two percent of Democrats opposed tariffs, and 72% supported the North American Free Trade Agreement. In another recent poll from Quinnipiac, 73% of Democrats opposed President Trump's steel and aluminum tariffs, and in a poll by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, 74% of Democrats described globalization and greater international economic ties as mostly good for the U.S. In the Pew poll, 60% of black and Hispanic voters -- key Democratic constituencies -- said they believe free-trade agreements have benefited the U.S. To some extent, these results may reflect a visceral reaction against the president. Mr. Trump opposes trade, so some Democratic voters may have turned toward it reflexively. Yet Democratic voters are also responding to the increasingly evident economic harm caused by Mr. Trump's antitrade policies. Ironically, his trade restrictions are showing many voters for the first time how much they benefit from trade. What's more, the damage caused by the trade war is being felt most deeply in areas where Democrats are prevalent. This may be counterintuitive, but the party Democratic leaders and activists see is not what our party has become two decades into the 21st century. For the most part, Democratic voters are not aggrieved workers in smokestack industries who blame foreign trade for their economic woes. Nor are most Democrats ardent antiglobalists wary of the growing interdependence and the encroaching economic integration of the world. Rather, Democrats live mostly in technologically advanced and digitally engaged metropolitan areas and are eager, productive participants in the global economy who benefit from globalization. One example is my hometown, Orlando, Fla., a new Democratic stronghold. Though Hillary Clinton won only one-sixth of all U.S. counties in 2016, those she did win are extensively engaged in trade, accounting for 60% of U.S. exports. Democratic counties are especially overrepresented in services, which comprise 75% of gross domestic product and dominate international markets. When I was in Congress in the 1990s, 100 or so House Democrats voted in favor of proposed trade agreements. Today perhaps a dozen or so can be counted on to do so. Some Democratic leaders still insist they are "for free trade, but . . ." Even so, many more congressional Democrats have spoken in favor of protectionism than against it. As Democrats prepare to regain control of the House in January, they understand that most legislation they propose will be hindered by a Republican Senate and president. Yet on trade as on other issues, it is vital that Democrats let voters know where they stand before the 2020 election. As part of a winning national strategy, Democrats in both houses of Congress should offer America a pro-trade agenda. Propose limitations to the president's unilateral authority to restrict trade. Disavow trade actions that violate international agreements and stand up for continued impartial rulings by World Trade Organization judges. Vote to repeal Mr. Trump's steel and aluminum tariffs, and to repeal auto tariffs if he imposes them. Insist that the "new Nafta" remain a free-trade agreement and not become a tool for managed trade. Publicly support a free-trade deal with Europe. Call for the U.S. to join the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Help workers dislocated by trade and automation build new skills to remain competitive in today's job market. By all means, Democrats must insist that China comply with all WTO rules. Urge the president to bring more WTO cases against China in areas where they violate the current rules, such as stealing trade secrets, illegally subsiding key industries, and forcing transfers of intellectual-property transfer. Encourage Mr. Trump to work with trade partners to reform WTO rules on IP. But in the meantime, insist that the Trump administration stop challenging China by raising tariffs, which often violate international trade rules themselves. Democratic leaders should take advantage of President Trump's newly announced "trade truce" with China to seek solutions with America's largest trading partner within the bounds of civility and WTO rules. And remember that a trade agreement with China that manages trade instead of freeing it would not be a solution. If Democrats want a winning national strategy that will appeal to the rapidly growing segment of voters in the vibrant metropolitan centers, then we must include free trade in our governing philosophy. We must embrace an open economy as an essential part of an open society.**Iran ImpactExtinction---2NCUS-Iran conflict goes nuclearAvery 13 (11/6, John Scales, Lektor Emeritus, Associate Professor, at the Department of Chemistry, University of Copenhagen, Contact Person in Denmark for Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs and received the Nobel Peace Prize for his work, Member of the Danish Peace Commission of 1998, former Technical Advisor, World Health Organization, Regional Office for Europe , former Chairman of the Danish Peace Academy, PhD in Theoretical Chemistry and MSc in Theoretical Physics, “An Attack On Iran Could Escalate Into Global Nuclear War,” )As we approach the 100th anniversary World War I, we should remember that this colossal disaster escalated uncontrollably from what was intended to be a minor conflict. There is a danger that an attack on Iran would escalate into a large-scale war in the Middle East, entirely destabilizing a region that is already deep in problems.? The unstable government of Pakistan might be overthrown, and the revolutionary Pakistani government might enter the war on the side of Iran, thus introducing nuclear weapons into the conflict. Russia and China, firm allies of Iran, might also be drawn into a general war in the Middle East. Since much of the world's oil comes from the region, such a war would certainly cause the price of oil to reach unheard-of heights, with catastrophic effects on the global economy.? In the dangerous situation that could potentially result from an attack on Iran, there is a risk that nuclear weapons would be used, either intentionally, or by accident or miscalculation. Recent research has shown that besides making large areas of the world uninhabitable through long-lasting radioactive contamination, a nuclear war would damage global agriculture to such a extent that a global famine of previously unknown proportions would result.? Thus, nuclear war is the ultimate ecological catastrophe. It could destroy human civilization and much of the biosphere. To risk such a war would be an unforgivable offense against the lives and future of all the peoples of the world, US citizens included.Saudi-Iran War A/O---2NCDIAVOLO says independent of the US --- prolif can trigger Saudi-Iran conflict --- that’s extinction Bucci 15 – Ph. D, Director, Douglas and Sarah Allison Center for Foreign and National Security Policy Steven P., Ph.D, The Conditions are Ripe for a Major Middle Eastern War, years, the great nations of Europe spent huge sums of money to build their military might. They assembled themselves into blocs, all the better to play a dangerous game of power politics. Slowly, surely, they were stumbling toward war.? In June 1914, an assassin shot the heir to the throne of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and the powder keg was lit. The results were disastrous.? The Middle East today looks frighteningly similar to the Europe of the early 20th Century.? For years, the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia have competed—Iran, as the champion of the Shia Islamic world, the House of Saud as the de facto leader of the Sunni world.? Iran has a massive military, as well as major capabilities in unconventional warfare and espionage. It influences or outright controls Hezbollah in Lebanon, Assad in Syria, and the powerful Shia militias in Iraq. Now, Tehran is encouraging—and most likely aiding—the Al Houthis rebelling in Yemen. ? The Saudis, powerful in their own right, have allied with Al Sisi in Egypt, King Abdullah in Jordan, and most of the other Gulf Arab States. They are also allied with the Pakistanis, who have one of the largest militaries in the world, and nuclear weapons to boot. Additionally, there is a growing possibility that the Turks may throw in with the Sunni side. ? It’s a huge amount of fire power, rivalry and armed conflict concentrated in a comparatively small region. And this tinderbox could blow up into a major conflagration, with destructive consequences unparalleled since World War Two.? But, some might say, these opposing blocs have been in place for decades, why the worry now? Quite simply, because America is no longer playing the role it has played in the region for a long, long time. ? For decades, the U.S. served as security guarantor and diplomatic trouble-shooter for our friends in the region. The Saudis, Jordanians, Egyptians, and other friendlies didn’t have to worry that Iran would gain regional hegemony. They knew a strong, assertive America would keep Iran’s ambitions in check. Meanwhile, Iran and its proxies knew they could go only so far before being slowed and stopped by the judicious use of America power. The credible threat of American hard power was enough to keep our friends calm and our enemies quiet. ? That has changed. Our enemies have seen the U.S. “lead from behind” in Libya, then turn its back on our consulate in Benghazi. They’ve seen us draw a “red line” in Syria, then walk away when Assad called our bluff. They’ve seen Russia annex Crimea and bolster the separatists in eastern Ukraine while America refuses to provide military aid to Kiev. They’ve seen us flinch at the thought of putting American boots on the ground in the fight against ISIS. ? Put it all together, and it’s a picture of an America that is timid, or confused, or flaccid—a nation that still talks a good hard-power game, but lacks the will to follow through. ? Moreover, they see an Administration so hungry for a “legacy” deal with Iran, that the Iranians considerable negotiating skills are not even being taxed. In the G5+1 talks in Lausanne Secretary of State John Kerry has made concession after concession with no quid pro quo from Iran—to the point that France is now emerging as the hardliner on our side of the negotiating table.? Our enemies aren’t the only ones who notice these developments. Our friends do, too. What must the Saudis and the others think when they see the administration cast aside regional ally No. 1—Israel? Can their “push out the door” be far off if they get in the way of the Administration’s single-minded drive to appease the Iranian regime? ? Those friends now have reason to fear that the nuclear negotiations with Iran will accelerate the U.S. withdrawal from the region or—even worse—produce an Iranian-American rapprochement at their expense. It is this fear that has led our friends to band together to defend themselves against what they know to be a growing threat: Iran. While the Obama administration may be willing to turn a blind eye to this threat in its pursuit of a nuclear deal, Iran’s neighbors do not have that luxury. ? Since the U.S. has cut back on dispensing its usual antibiotics, our jittery friends in the Middle East now feel that they must counter—strongly and immediately—the local infections promoted and exploited by Iran. And they are sometimes doing so without consulting the U.S.? The result is a Middle East more explosive and unpredictable than ever. The conditions are now ripe for a major Middle Eastern war—one that could spill across the globe, wherever Sunni and Shia Muslims interact. All that remains missing is a spark. ? Impossible you say? That June day in Sarajevo, no experts predicted the horrifying consequences of Garo Princip’s actions. ? Today, the Saudis are massing 150,000 troops on the border with Yemen. The Pakistanis and the Egyptians have promised ground troops. These Sunnis Governments view their alliance as one of self-defense. But it’s a huge threat to Iran’s desires for hegemony, and Tehran may even view it as a threat to the survival of the mullahs’ regime. ? No one wants war, big or little. But among the power blocs of the Middle East, Washington’s misbegotten policies have fueled uncertainty on one side and perceived opportunity on the other. ? In the aftermath of the Second World War, Americans have always dreaded a clash of the superpowers. But the lesson of the First World War is that when large regional powers—especially those driven by sectarian and apocalyptic forces—are poised to fight, any miscalculation can be equally cataclysmic. ? That situation exists today in the Middle East. And the Administration, far from easing the tensions, is actively destabilizing the region through its dealings with Iran.Israel-Iran War A/O---2NCDIAVOLO says independent of the US --- prolif can trigger Israel-Iran conflict --- that’s extinction Reuveny, 10 – professor in the School of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University (Rafael, “Unilateral strike could trigger World War III, global depression” Gazette Xtra, 8/7, - See more at: )A unilateral Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities would likely have dire consequences, including a regional war, global economic collapse and a major power clash.? For an Israeli campaign to succeed, it must be quick and decisive. This requires an attack that would be so overwhelming that Iran would not dare to respond in full force.? Such an outcome is extremely unlikely since the locations of some of Iran’s nuclear facilities are not fully known and known facilities are buried deep underground.? All of these widely spread facilities are shielded by elaborate air defense systems constructed not only by the Iranians but also the Chinese and, likely, the Russians as well.? By now, Iran has also built redundant command and control systems and nuclear facilities, developed early warning systems, acquired ballistic and cruise missiles and upgraded and enlarged its armed forces.? Because Iran is well-prepared, a single, conventional Israeli strike—or even numerous strikes—could not destroy all of its capabilities, giving Iran time to respond.? Unlike Iraq, whose nuclear program Israel destroyed in 1981, Iran has a second-strike capability comprised of a coalition of Iranian, Syrian, Lebanese, Hezbollah, Hamas, and, perhaps, Turkish forces. Internal pressure might compel Jordan, Egypt and the Palestinian Authority to join the assault, turning a bad situation into a regional war.? During the 1973 Arab-Israeli War, at the apex of its power, Israel was saved from defeat by President Nixon’s shipment of weapons and planes. Today, Israel’s numerical inferiority is greater, and it faces more determined and better-equipped opponents. After years of futilely fighting Palestinian irregular armies, Israel has lost some of its perceived superiority—bolstering its enemies’ resolve.? Despite Israel’s touted defense systems, Iranian coalition missiles, armed forces, and terrorist attacks would likely wreak havoc on its enemy, leading to a prolonged tit-for-tat.? In the absence of massive U.S. assistance, Israel’s military resources may quickly dwindle, forcing it to use its alleged nuclear weapons, as it had reportedly almost done in 1973.? An Israeli nuclear attack would likely destroy most of Iran’s capabilities, but a crippled Iran and its coalition could still attack neighboring oil facilities, unleash global terrorism, plant mines in the Persian Gulf and impair maritime trade in the Mediterranean, Red Sea and Indian Ocean.? Middle Eastern oil shipments would likely slow to a trickle as production declines due to the war and insurance companies decide to drop their risky Middle Eastern clients. Iran and Venezuela would likely stop selling oil to the United States and Europe.? From there, things could deteriorate as they did in the 1930s. The world economy would head into a tailspin; international acrimony would rise; and Iraqi and Afghani citizens might fully turn on the United States, immediately requiring the deployment of more American troops.? Russia, China, Venezuela, and maybe Brazil and Turkey—all of which essentially support Iran—could be tempted to form an alliance and openly challenge the U.S. hegemony.? Russia and China might rearm their injured Iranian protege overnight, just as Nixon rearmed Israel, and threaten to intervene, just as the U.S.S.R. threatened to join Egypt and Syria in 1973. President Obama’s response would likely put U.S. forces on nuclear alert, replaying Nixon’s nightmarish scenario.? Iran may well feel duty-bound to respond to a unilateral attack by its Israeli archenemy, but it knows that it could not take on the United States head-to-head. In contrast, if the United States leads the attack, Iran’s response would likely be muted.? If Iran chooses to absorb an American-led strike, its allies would likely protest and send weapons but would probably not risk using force.? While no one has a crystal ball, leaders should be risk-averse when choosing war as a foreign policy tool. If attacking Iran is deemed necessary, Israel must wait for an American green light. A unilateral Israeli strike could ultimately spark World War III.**Warming ImpactTrump I/L---Kills Climate---2NCIt’s try-or-die for the DA – Trump reelection guarantees climate catastropheRoberts 8/27 [David Roberts, writer, energy and climate change. “A second Trump term would mean severe and irreversible changes in the climate,” Vox, 8/27/20, Accessed 8/28/20]#NCCIf Donald Trump is reelected president, the likely result will be irreversible changes to the climate that will degrade the quality of life of every subsequent generation of human beings, with millions of lives harmed or foreshortened. That’s in addition to the hundreds of thousands of lives at present that will be hurt or prematurely end. This sounds like exaggeration, some of the “alarmism” green types are always accused of. But it is not particularly controversial among those who have followed Trump’s record on energy and climate change. “As bad as it seems right now,” says Josh Freed of Third Way, a center-left think tank, “the climate and energy scenario in Trump II would be much, much worse.” The damage has not primarily been done, and won’t primarily be done, by Congress, except through inaction (which is no small thing). Under Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, the Senate has effectively abdicated its duty as a legislative body; it now mostly exists to approve far-right judges to the federal bench. In what follows, I’ll assume that if Trump wins, Republicans keep the Senate — and that the situation remains as is, with Congress divided and gridlocked, unable to pass major legislation or effectively restrain Trump. (It is possible that Trump wins and Democrats take both houses of Congress, but thinking about that breaks my brain.) I’m going to do a quick review of Trump’s record so far on climate and energy. By necessity, it is not comprehensive. The amount of damage done, not only on high-profile issues but through unceasing daily efforts to weaken and degrade the federal bureaucracy, could fill volumes. I’ll just look at the highlights, with a focus on what Trump wants to do and is more likely to get away with in a second term. First, though, let’s talk about the main thing, which is that a Trump victory would make any reasonable definition of “success” on climate change impossible. (Note: I asked lots of people for their thoughts on a second Trump term, and for the most part, they did not want to speak on record or in specifics, for fear of giving Trump ideas. The sense of dread is palpable.) More Trump will ensure the continued escalation of global temperatures We know from the latest IPCC report that the climate target agreed to by nations — no more than a 2° Celsius rise in global average temperatures — is not a “safe” threshold at all. Going from 1.5° to 2° means many more heat waves, wildfires, crop failures, migrations, and premature deaths. We know that every fraction of a degree beyond 2° means more still, along with the increasing risk of tipping points that make further warming unstoppable. Hitting the 1.5° target would require the world to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions 50 percent by 2030 and to net zero by 2050. Doing so would require industrial mobilization beginning immediately. Even hitting 2° would be desperately difficult at this point. There is no longer any time for delay; this is the last decade in which it is still possible. We know that the US doing its part to reach net zero by 2050 would not be enough, in itself, to limit global temperature rise. By the same token, we know it is wildly unlikely that the rest of the world will be able to organize to meet that goal without US leadership. And in the face of active US undermining and opposition, it will be all but impossible. Climate policy is complicated, but in the end, it comes down to replacing everything powered by fossil fuels with zero-carbon alternatives, and we know beyond any doubt that the Trump administration is devoted to the interests of its allies in the fossil fuel industry. Everything the administration has done since taking office reflects a single-minded zeal to release fossil fuel industries from regulatory restraints and to subsidize them through public policy. US carbon emissions have been declining, down roughly 12 percent since 2004. That’s almost entirely due to the market-driven decline of coal in the electricity sector, a trend that analysts expect to continue. The Trump administration disingenuously takes credit for it. But it won’t be enough, on its own, to reduce emissions fast enough to stay on track for net zero by 2050. Not even close. The US needs to completely transition off electricity generated by coal and natural gas, vehicles powered by gasoline and diesel, and buildings heated by natural gas and oil — and quickly. Everything Trump has done pushes in the opposite direction. Four more years of Trump, backed by a Republican Senate, will mean a heavy drag on global efforts to control carbon. Progress on decarbonization will slow in the US, and the example America sets will slow other nations’ progress as well, making the aforementioned 10-year mobilization all but impossible. That is a difference that will reverberate for centuries. Now let’s look at his record. Trump has steadily rolled back regulations on fossil fuel companies “When I think about the horrors of a Trump term two, I think about lock-in of domestic policies,” says Sam Ricketts of Evergreen Action, “buttressed — and in places even made permanent — by his continuing to stack the courts.” In his first term, Trump has blocked, weakened, or rolled back 100 environmental, public health, and worker safety regulations. Among them are virtually all the steps Obama took to address climate change, from the Clean Power Plan for the electricity sector to tighter fuel economy standards for transportation, emissions standards on methane for oil and gas operations, efforts to integrate a “social cost of carbon” for agency decision-making, reform of fossil fuel leasing on public land, and energy efficiency standards on light bulbs. (Trump also wants to go after toilets and showerheads.) Every one of those decisions would have the effect of increasing greenhouse gas emissions. Environmentalists have sued over all of them, and thus far, Trump has lost more cases than he has won. Many of the rule changes pushed through by his agencies are being rejected by courts for being rushed and shoddy. Given another term, Trump’s agencies will have more time to fill out those arguments and resubmit those rules; almost any rule can be justified eventually. Meanwhile, the federal bench will be packed with more sympathetic Trump appointees ready to rubber-stamp those rules. And if federal judges object, the administration can appeal the cases to the Supreme Court, where Trump will almost certainly have had the opportunity to replace a justice or two. With a solid 6-3 or 7-2 majority on the Court, virtually anything the administration wants will end up being approved. For example, Trump’s Department of Interior tried to rescind Obama’s 2016 rules limiting methane emissions from oil and gas operations on public land; the court recently rejected the attempt, calling it “defectively promulgated” and “wholly inadequate.” Given time and a friendlier court, the rule would be doomed. (Here’s a comprehensive tracker of all the rule changes so far, and their status.) The administration is also going after other methane rules on oil and gas operations, and in the process, trying to change the EPA’s rulemaking process to make future regulations more difficult. That brings us to a key point. The Trump administration is stacking the deck to advantage fossil fuels Aside from all the rules the administration has eviscerated, is eviscerating, and plans to eviscerate, it is also pushing several changes to agency procedures that will make it more difficult to regulate in the future. Under administrator Andrew Wheeler, the EPA has proposed to alter the way it does cost-benefit analysis to exclude consideration of a rule’s “co-benefits” — reductions in other pollutants that come as a side effect of reducing targeted pollutants. (A coalition of environmental groups has opposed the change, which violates EPA precedent, statutory intent, and common sense.) If the change goes into effect — as it surely will given another term and friendlier courts — all future air quality rules will be weakened. The EPA has also promulgated a “secret science rule” that would exclude from consideration a wide swath of studies demonstrating the danger of air pollution (including its danger in helping spread Covid-19). Without those studies to rely on, justifying public health regulations would be more difficult going forward. The EPA’s own independent board of science advisers said the change would “reduce scientific integrity” at the agency. Speaking of independent science advisers, starting under Pruitt, the EPA began pushing out science advisers who had received grants from the agency (which includes most of them) and replacing them with fossil fuel cronies. Amusingly, even a science board packed with Trump appointees has said that three of the agency’s major recent rule changes flew in the face of established science. Still, given another term to finish the job, Wheeler could effectively eliminate independent scientific review at the agency. The administration has also gutted the National Environmental Protection Act (NEPA), which requires the federal government to rigorously assess the effects of its actions on the environment and local communities, and is one of the principal avenues through which communities of color and other vulnerable communities communicate their interests to the federal government. In July, the White House Council on Environmental Quality released a proposed rule that would dramatically limit the range of federal agency actions to which NEPA applies, limit consideration of cumulative and indirect impacts (like climate change and environmental justice), and curtail public involvement in the decision-making process and judicial review. Given another term to see the change through, the White House could shape every major federal agency decision going forward. The administration is also trying to revoke California’s waiver under the Clean Air Act, which allows the state to set its own (typically more ambitious) emissions standards. If it succeeds, it would sabotage not only California’s standards but those of the 13 states (and Washington, DC) that have adopted them. And it won’t be the only way a vindictive Trump could go after his perceived enemies. “Blue states will be starved of federal funding, which means massive cuts that inevitably lead to a degradation in environmental enforcement and investment in cleaner energy,” says Freed, “but also likely big reductions in mass transit funding and aid to cities that will push more people into cars and more emissions.” Over at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), Trump appointees have pushed through a Minimum Offer Price Rule (MOPR). It’s quite technical (I explain it here), but the net result is that state policies meant to support clean energy will be cancelled out in regional energy wholesale markets. It would cost consumers billions of dollars and prop up uneconomic coal power plants. The MOPR is also under litigation from multiple groups. Again, given four more years and a compliant Supreme Court, it will probably stick. And FERC’s Republican commissioners have said they want to expand its use. FERC also recently pushed through reforms to PURPA (the Public Utilities Regulatory Policies Act) that would disadvantage small-scale clean energy projects. And it has long pushed an argument for ending net-metering programs (which incentivize rooftop solar) nationwide; that and other steps against distributed energy resources will likely feature in a second term. At least in this term, the administration chose not to go directly after the EPA’s 2009 Endangerment Finding, which classifies greenhouse gases as pollutants subject to the Clean Air Act. Rumors abound that the administration will go after it in a second term, given a friendlier Supreme Court. That would take one of the only major existing regulatory tools against greenhouse gases in the US off the table. Speaking of the Supreme Court, an emboldened conservative majority is likely to go after the Chevron doctrine, which gives federal agencies wide latitude in interpreting congressional directives. “I don’t think it’s a matter of if Chevron would be overturned,” says Lori Lodes, executive director of Climate Power 2020, “just a matter of what case gets them to do it.” Supreme Court Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch have recently been making noise about radically limiting the ability of federal agencies to regulate at all, under a hyper-conservative interpretation of the “nondelegation doctrine.” “It’s impossible to exaggerate the importance of this issue,” my colleague Ian Millhiser writes. “Countless federal laws, from the Clean Air Act to the Affordable Care Act, lay out a broad federal policy and delegate to an agency the power to implement the details of that policy. Under Kavanaugh’s approach, many of these laws are unconstitutional, as are numerous existing regulations governing polluters, health providers, and employers.” There may already be five conservative votes on the court for this radical lurch backward. If Trump gets another two SCOTUS appointments, it is all but a certainty. Land, water, and wildlife are also getting the shaft I’ve mostly been focusing on the EPA and energy, but Trump’s damage is omnidirectional. Earlier this year, the administration gutted Obama’s Waters of the US (WOTUS) rule, removing pollution protections from a wide swathe of wetlands and streams. Over at the Department of Interior, Trump’s first appointee, Ryan Zinke, went on an industry-friendly bender, weakening land and species protections, ramping up oil and gas leasing on public land, and purging senior staff and 4,000 jobs. He eventually resigned amid a hail of ethics investigations — so many the New York Times had to put together a guide — and some are ongoing. Zinke was replaced by oil lobbyist David Bernhardt, who managed to get as far as rolling back a bunch of wildlife protections before also coming under investigation for conflicts of interest. He has held on so far, though, and has a long wish list (there’s a tracker here), with almost every proposed change devoted in one way or another to weakening wildlife protections and expanding oil and gas drilling on public land. A second Trump term will almost certainly see a renewed push for more offshore oil and gas drilling, expanding on the recent opening of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. A plan to open virtually all the nation’s coastal waters to drilling was put “on hold” after pushback from courts and coastal communities last year, but it will return, as will further delays for offshore wind projects. Bernhardt also moved the headquarters of DOI’s Bureau of Land Management to Grand Junction, Colorado (a fossil fuel hub), and gave DC staff 30 days to decide whether to follow. Predictably, and by intent, the move resulted in an enormous brain drain, as about half of the experienced staff left. Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue did something similar, moving the USDA’s Economic Research Service and National Institute of Food and Agriculture — research agencies investigating, among other things, lower-carbon regenerative agriculture — to Kansas City. Critics saw the move as an obvious bid to make filling positions and coordinating with other federal researchers more difficult, thus strengthening the influence of big, carbon-intensive industrial agriculture. There is no telling how many more agencies Trump could gut given four more years. Many staff, at EPA and other agencies, have been holding on to hopes of a new president. If Trump is reelected, there’s likely to be a huge exodus of knowledge and talent from the federal government. Trump’s foreign policy is entirely devoted to fossil fuels Promoting fossil fuels has been one of the few consistent themes of Trump’s foreign policy. He announced early on, amid a flurry of misinformation, that the US would withdraw from the Paris climate agreement. (That decision will go into effect on November 5.) Though some State Department staffers are still attending international climate meetings and participating in lower-level dialogues, top US leadership has spurned the entire process and shows no sign of reengaging. Instead, Trump is trying to manage oil prices by making deals with cartels, bullying other countries to buy US oil, seeking to export liquid natural gas to India, and jostling with Russia and China over trade routes through the melting Arctic. In a second term, Trump is unlikely to rejoin Paris; he’s much more likely to remove the US from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change entirely. It is an open question whether the Paris framework could survive that at all. Four more years of Trump would leave democracy, and hope for a safe climate, in tatters The above constitutes a highly selective list, a small portion of the damage Trump has done to climate and energy progress across federal agencies and international agreements. There are plenty of other examples to cite, including his beloved trade wars, which he will undoubtedly expand in a second term. A recent analysis found that his solar tariffs to date have cost 62,000 jobs in the solar industry and blocked 10.5 gigawatts of new solar from coming online. (If you can stomach a more comprehensive list, check out this piece from the Global Current.) The main bulwark against Trump’s changes so far has been the courts, but that bulwark will not hold against an administration with four more years to bolster its legal cases and appoint sympathetic judges. Under Trump and McConnell, the Senate has already appointed 200 federal judges, almost a quarter of the total number. If McConnell keeps the Senate, the next four years could see half of federal judges being Trump appointees and a 7-2 conservative majority on the Supreme Court. That would likely mean a rapid return to pre-New Deal jurisprudence, radically curtailing the reach of foundational environmental laws. Trump — or, more precisely, the Federalist Society — would be utterly unrestrained. And that’s not even accounting for the possibility that Trump could simply ignore court judgments he doesn’t like, which seems to be the logical next step for an administration that has faced so little accountability for its law-breaking. In a second term, especially if Republicans keep the Senate, there would be few tools left to use against Trump’s march into the fossil fuel past. Big businesses and financial institutions might exert some influence. The EU might impose a border adjustment tax. But most hope would fall on direct activism. Yet activism is only going to get more difficult, as it tends to under authoritarian states. “It’s impossible to separate the massive, vicious assault on democracy and civil rights Trump would prosecute in a second term from the actions he would take on climate and energy,” says Freed. Many states have been passing laws ramping up the scope and severity of penalties for direct activism, increasingly being redefined as “domestic terrorism.” Trump’s use of federal forces to brutalize protesters in Portland is likely a preview of a much more extensive crackdown on civil disobedience in a second term. Some environmental groups are already having serious discussions about how to prepare their members. There’s no sugarcoating it: If Trump wins the election and Republicans keep the Senate, democracy in America might not survive. At the very least, any hope of public policy to rapidly decarbonize the US is off the table. The US will push actively in the opposite direction. I often think about this passage from a 2016 commentary in the journal Nature (signed by 22 noted climate scientists): “Policy decisions made during [coming years] are likely to result in changes to Earth’s climate system measured in millennia rather than human lifespans, with associated socioeconomic and ecological impacts that will exacerbate the risks and damages to society and ecosystems that are projected for the twenty-first century and propagate into the future for many thousands of years.” Thousands of years. Trump’s damage to the climate is not like his damage to the immigration system or the health care system. It can’t be undone. It can’t be repaired. Changes to the climate are, for all intents and purposes, irreversible. They will be experienced by every generation to come. It is a cliché by now to call this the most important election of our lifetimes, but even that dramatic phrasing doesn’t capture the stakes. From the perspective of the human species as a whole, the arc of its life on this planet, it may be the most important election ever.Another Trump win locks in irreversible warming – try or die for the neg.Starr, Princeton Public Affairs Professor, 19[Paul, May 2019, The Atlantic, "Trump’s Second Term" , 12/26/19, JFH]In short, the biggest difference between electing Trump in 2016 and reelecting Trump in 2020 would be irreversibility. Climate policy is now the most obvious example. For a long time, even many of the people who acknowledged the reality of climate change thought of it as a slow process that did not demand immediate action. But today, amid extreme weather events and worsening scientific forecasts, the costs of our delay are clearly mounting, as are the associated dangers. To have a chance at keeping global warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius—the objective of the Paris climate agreement—the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says that by 2030, CO2 emissions must drop some 45 percent from 2010 levels. Instead of declining, however, they are rising.In his first term, Trump has announced plans to cancel existing climate reforms, such as higher fuel-efficiency standards and limits on emissions from new coal-fired power plants, and he has pledged to pull the United States out of the Paris Agreement. His reelection would put off a national commitment to decarbonization until at least the second half of the 2020s, while encouraging other countries to do nothing as well. And change that is delayed becomes more economically and politically difficult. According to the Global Carbon Project, if decarbonization had begun globally in 2000, an emissions reduction of about 2 percent a year would have been sufficient to stay below 2 degrees Celsius of warming. Now it will need to be approximately 5 percent a year. If we wait another decade, it will be about 9 percent. In the United States, the economic disruption and popular resistance sure to arise from such an abrupt transition may be more than our political system can bear. No one knows, moreover, when the world might hit irreversible tipping points such as the collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, which would likely doom us to a catastrophic sea-level rise.Trump win ensures 2-degree warming, Dems solve – it’s not too late, but US reductions and leadership are key – any risk outweighs because of tipping points and non-linear impacts Levitan 19 (Dave, American Science Journalist, MA from NYU’s Science, Health, and Environmental Reporting Program, “Would Trump’s Reelection Doom the Planet?,” 7-26, ) The urgency of climate change is finally dawning on the public. Two-thirds of Democrats now say they view global warming as a “critical threat,” and most call it the most important issue to discuss in presidential debates. The Democratic presidential candidates are paying attention, too. Many have released detailed climate plans; most have promised to refuse campaign contributions from fossil fuel industry executives; and nearly all support having a climate-only debate. This sudden interest is understandable. The climate crisis is playing out before our eyes in ways it never has before, with unprecedented heat waves, flooding, and storms around the globe. Scientists’ warnings have also become more dire in recent years, their worst-case scenarios reading more like dystopian fiction than reality. But the most potent reason for voters to be concerned about climate change this year is that we’re running out of time to prevent some of its worst effects. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has determined that the world could hit 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming—the point at which irreversible damage begins—as soon as 2030. This time crunch has led some to say the 2020 election represents humanity’s last hope. “This is a climate crisis. An emergency,” Washington Governor Jay Inslee said last month during the first Democratic debate. “And it is our last chance in an administration—the next one—to do something about it.” But how important is this election, really? Scientists and policy experts agree that 2020 isn’t literally the last chance to save humanity, but four more years of Trump undoubtedly shrinks our chances to ensure a future safe from catastrophe. U.S. emissions likely wouldn’t reduce at the necessary pace, and the lack of leadership on the international stage could cause countries to decelerate their own energy transitions. The planet wouldn’t be doomed quite yet, but it would be closer to doom than ever before. Climate change is a global problem that must be addressed on a global scale, but the United States has an outsized role in whether that global effort succeeds or fails. Historically, the U.S. has emitted more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than any other country, making it the leading contributor to global warming. Today, it’s the second-largest emitter, after China. In order to maintain a stable climate, according to the IPCC, net global emissions must reach zero by 2050. To achieve that, emissions must start rapidly declining in or around 2020. If Trump is reelected, that “would probably mean a stalling of U.S. emissions,” said Corrine Le Quéré, a climate scientist at the University of East Anglia. That’s already happening under Trump. While most developed countries—including the U.S.—have averaged between 1 and 2 percent emissions reductions per year over the last decade, emissions in the U.S. rose by 3.4 percent in 2018, in part due to Trump’s campaign to dismantle climate regulations. “At this stage, to limit climate change anywhere below two degrees [of] warming, the decreases in emissions in developed countries should be accelerating,” Le Quéré said. Necessary carbon reductions in the U.S. are unlikely to happen if Trump is reelected—and not just because of his deregulatory campaign on behalf of polluters. “I’d say one of the worst things about another four years would be that it would allow the Trump Administration to continue packing the courts with conservative judges,” said Drew Shindell, a professor of earth science at Duke University. Many of the administration’s attempts at regulatory rollbacks—of which there are 83 related to the environment, at last count—end up in the courts. So far, judges have delayed or stopped many of those policy moves, from vehicle emissions standards to efforts at promoting fossil fuel extraction on public lands. But four more years of Trump means four more years of lifetime judicial appointments for conservative judges who might be more inclined to allow the rollbacks. Each individual policy may leave a small mark on the country’s overall emissions picture, but the sum of them would doom reductions in the near term. A Trump win in 2020 could discourage other countries from rapidly reducing their emissions, too. Historically, American political leadership has been hugely influential in international climate negotiations, said Andrew Light, a senior fellow at the World Resources Institute who helped negotiate the Paris Agreement during the Obama administration. “The United States was absolutely instrumental in getting the strong agreement out of Paris,” he said. The Paris agreement, as currently drafted, is not enough to stave off the worst of global warming, but it was intended to be strengthened periodically—and since Trump announced his intention to pull the U.S. out of the agreement in June 2017, the leadership that was so crucial to the initial negotiations has been absent. The next deadline for more aggressive climate targets arrives at the end of 2020. Thus, Light said, “2020 has got to be an inflection point for the world.” Michael Mann, a distinguished professor of atmospheric science at Penn State, feels likewise. “Another four years of Trump would probably render futile any efforts to limit planetary warming to 1.5 [degrees Celsius], which is necessary to avert ever-more catastrophic climate-change impacts,” he said in an email. Others think the effort to limit warming to 1.5 degrees is futile no matter the outcome of the election. “[It’s] hard to say four more years of Trump makes impossible something that seems unlikely either way,” Shindell said. Experts like Le Quéré, however, hope that the target could still be met even if Trump wins, because U.S. emissions are not tethered irrevocably to the occupant of the White House. “The U.S. president alone would probably not completely remove the chance that the [1.5-degree] target is met, but cities and states in the U.S. would need to redouble their actions and other countries would need to work harder,” she said. That means efforts like the U.S. Climate Alliance—a group of governors representing half the states and more than half the population, committed to reaching Paris agreement goals with or without federal government help—would have to ramp up significantly during Trump’s second term. “Those particular four years are extremely important to keep the 1.5-degree limit in sight,” Le Quéré said. No one disputes that. Waiting another four years to take aggressive action on climate change will have real consequences, which may include whether the world, led by the U.S., can keep warming below that limit. But even if warming exceeds that target, each additional fraction of a degree represents more destruction, more death. So in that sense, it will never be too late—not in 2024, not even in 2028—to prevent an even greater toll.Trump I/L---A2: Biden Worse on Climate---2NCBiden will rejoin Paris Commitment Harvey ’17 – (Chelsea Harvey, freelance journalist covering science. She specializes in environmental health and policy June 5, 2017 “Withdrawing from the Paris deal takes four years. Our next president could join again in 30 days.” )While President Trump has vowed to formally withdraw from the Paris climate agreement, sparking international outrage, it doesn’t necessarily mean the end of U.S. involvement forever. A future president could have us back in the agreement in as little as 30 days, legal experts say. Under the rules of the Paris agreement, parties are allowed to exit and reenter as they choose, although withdrawing is a much lengthier legal process than returning. And there are no provisions stipulating how much time has passed after withdrawal before a nation can begin the process of rejoining the agreement. “A subsequent president would thus be able to submit a document stating the United States’ intention to become a party to the Agreement as soon as she or he wanted to,” Michael Burger, executive director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia Law School, said in an email to The Washington Post — although he added that such an action is certainly outside the norm. “Countries don’t typically withdraw from complex international agreements that they led the way in negotiating,” he said. The rules of withdrawal As it is, Trump’s verbal pledge to withdraw, which he revealed in an internationally resounding announcement last week, is not final — yet, anyway. Withdrawal requires a formal process, which will take nearly four years to complete. The earliest a U.S. withdrawal could be finalized is Nov. 4, 2020. According to the rules of the Paris agreement, nations wishing to exit must first submit a document to the United Nations specifying their intent to withdraw. However, this is permitted only after three years have passed since the agreement entered into force — and that date was Nov. 4, 2016. This means that the U.S. can submit its written notice Nov. 4, 2019, at the earliest. After that, the rules specify that the official withdrawal will take effect exactly one year later at the earliest, or potentially on a later date of the party’s choosing. In that intervening year, a nation may decide to cancel its withdrawal at any point, said Maria Manguiat, a climate expert with the United Nations Environment Program’s Law Division. “It doesn’t make the country look very good, but legally it’s entitled to do that,” she told The Washington Post. Altogether, if Trump acted as quickly as possible to withdraw from the agreement, the process could be completed Nov. 4, 2020, at the earliest. That’s the day after the next presidential election. Rejoining the agreement And as Burger pointed out, there’s nothing stopping a future president from adding us right back in. According to the agreement’s rules, parties may officially join in one of two ways. First, they can join by signature and ratification — that is, by participating in the agreement’s original negotiations and then signing on board. This is how the United States originally became a part of the agreement. After the deadline for signature has passed, which occurred April 21 of this year, parties may join through a process called accession, which is essentially the legal term for joining an agreement at a later date, after it has already been negotiated and signed by other nations. Parties that join by accession are subject to all the same conditions as parties that joined by signature, and nothing in the rules prevents a nation from joining by signature, withdrawing and then rejoining by accession. According to Manguiat, the United States could do just that by simply submitting another document to the United Nations, which it may do at any time after withdrawal takes effect — even immediately, if the president so chose. Its reentry would take legal effect just 30 days later. In theory, our next president could start this process immediately upon taking office — potentially right after the Jan. 20, 2021, inauguration, if a transition occurs at that time. And in the meantime, it’s likely that rejoining Paris will feature as a key campaign promise for any liberal candidates running against Trump in 2020. International outrage aside, polls suggested that most Americans wanted the U.S. to remain in the Paris agreement, and it’s likely that many would support an immediate reentry under a new leader.Biden is not worseHussain 20 [Murtaza Hussain is a reporter at The Intercept who focuses on national security and foreign policy. He has appeared on CNN, BBC, MSNBC, and other news outlets. “There’s No One Worse Than Trump on Climate and War,” The Intercept, 5/12/20, Accessed 7/23/20]#NCCEVERY EXPERT has warned that major cuts in emissions need to take place within the next decade in order to avert calamity. An administration interested in even the minimalist goal of keeping civilization functioning in the medium term should feel compelled to register a response. Yet the Trump administration has made it a point of pride to do the opposite of what is necessary as aggressively as possible. Many of its environmental policies seem to have little apparent logic beyond killing endangered species and ramping up CO2 emissions to trigger the libs. The direst warnings from scientists seem incapable of shaking the administration off its current course. And this problem is time-sensitive: Within roughly a decade on our present course, we will have likely passed a point beyond which catastrophic harm is unavoidable. To be fair to Trump, past presidents had environmental policies that also brought us to this point. It’s reasonable to ask, then, whether his approach is meaningfully worse. But, according to climate experts who have tracked this subject for years, it is. Trump’s environmental positions go beyond even those of the conservative establishment and corporate America. They align instead with the most extreme fringe of right-wing activists and libertarians opposed to any type of regulatory action to stave off climate disaster. “In 2012, the Obama administration was doing better on climate policy than a Republican administration would have done. But even Mitt Romney was not completely terrible on climate. He would’ve enacted some policies, he wasn’t totally retrograde or an outright denialist,” said Kert Davies, the founder and director of Climate Investigations Center. “When Trump ditched the Paris accords, many major corporations came out and said that this is a bad idea because they had already begun planning for a reduced-carbon future. It tells you a lot about how fringe the president is on this issue that he’s not even in line with corporate America.” Over the past few years, in part because of the alarm over the Trump administration’s policies, a powerful grassroots movement has grown to force the issue on climate change. It is having an impact. Whereas in previous elections, it was a struggle for activists to get a single question about the issue addressed, climate policy was one of the major topics of discussion during the last set of Democratic primary debates. The current likely Democratic nominee, Joe Biden, has made weaker commitments on this subject so far than some of his challengers and been justly criticized for his shortcomings by activists. But there is significant reason to believe that he or any Democratic president would do more than Trump on climate and also be susceptible to pressure to improve their stance in office. On this issue, even marginal improvements happen to matter a lot. Even with great effort, we are likely pass the red line that scientists have set: 2 degrees Celsius warming above preindustrial levels. But keeping emissions at a point that takes us up to 2.5 degrees, 3 degrees, or even more warming would make a difference — and accelerate the severity of our catastrophe. It’s not hyperbole to say that every marginal increase in emissions means death and misery for millions of the most vulnerable around the world. The absolute intransigence of the Trump administration on climate is particularly galling since there is a lot that could easily be done with a little bit of political will. “There is an ocean of difference between what a Trump presidency and a Biden presidency would do on climate policy,” Davies said. “In one you’d do zero, even continue moving backwards, while on the other we’d at least be moving forward again. Even if people don’t think Biden’s policies are up to Bernie’s” — Biden’s progressive rival, Sen. Bernie Sanders, who ended his presidential campaign in April — “there’s a much higher bar now.” Davies added, “People have woken up on this issue in a way that could not have been foreseen years ago. It is likely that climate policy will be a significant node of the Democratic platform in November, and that it’ll be something beyond getting back into the Paris accords. The dialogue has moved way past that.”Trump I/L---A2: US Not Key---2NCLack of US leadership emboldens broader resistance to UN climate policyHarvey 20 [Fiona Harvey, award-winning environment journalist. “Here’s How Trump Is Emboldening Other Countries’ “Bad Behavior” on the Climate Crisis,” Mother Jones, 8/3/20, Accessed 8/25/20]#NCCThe divisions Trump’s stance has opened up within his own nation have also been starkly in evidence at the annual UN climate talks, where for the last three years, two different American groups have been showing up. One occupies a brightly lit central pavilion hosting prominent politicians, celebrities, business leaders and top investors, attracting big audiences for glitzy presentations on clean technology and green jobs. These are congressional Democrats, state leaders and city mayors, commanding huge budgets and able to slash emissions and foster green schemes, but without the levers of federal power. The real US delegation—the one with the power to vote and veto at the UN—sits down in the hall, in a small drab office with only a diminutive Stars and Stripes and photocopied sign on the firmly shut door, denoting its presence. The official delegation has been as quiet as its understated appearance suggests. Unlike the Bush administration, the Trump White House has made little attempt to disrupt the UN process, and few interventions of any kind. Supporters of Paris have greeted this somnolence with relief, eager to avoid another showdown like Bali. Opponents of Paris have viewed it as an opportunity, however, and that is where the real impact has been felt. Trump’s stance has emboldened other populist leaders and countries with previously veiled hostility to Paris. Last year’s UN climate talks in Madrid sputtered to a close without agreement on the key issues after Brazil held out, with Australia, Saudi Arabia, Russia and India accused of assisting in the obstruction at various points. “There has been bad behavior in the negotiations,” says Jennifer Morgan, executive director of Greenpeace International. “When you have a player as big as the US not moving forward, that enables others to hide behind them.”Paris I/L---A2: Doesn’t Solve Warming---2NCParis is the most important mechanism for mitigation---it can limit warming to below 2 degrees – that solves extinction Salawitch 17 – Ross J. Salawitch, Professor, Department of Atmospheric & Oceanic Science and Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of Maryland, with Timothy P. Canty, Austin P. Hope, Walter R. Tribett, Brian F. Bennett, Paris Climate Agreement: Beacon of Hope, 2017, pp. 87-93[ΔT was changed to “temperature change”]One clear message that emerges from Figs. 2.15 and 2.16 is that to achieve the goal of the Paris Climate Agreement, emissions of GHGs must fall significantly below those used to drive RCP 8.5. The range of ΔT2100 shown in Fig. 2.16b is 1.6–4.7 °C. Climate catastrophe (rapid rise of sea level, large shifts in patterns of drought and flooding, loss of habitat, etc.) will almost certainly occur by end of this century if the emissions of GHGs, particularly CO2, follow those used to drive RCP 8.5.32 The book Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet (Lynas 2008) provides an accessible discourse of the consequences of global warming, organized into 1 °C increments of future ΔT. In the rest of this chapter, policy relevant projections of ΔT are shown, both from the EM-GC framework and CMIP5 GCMs. Figures 2.17 shows the statistical distribution of ΔT2060 from our EM-GC calculations. The EM-GC based projections are weighted by 1/χ2 (i.e., the better the fit to the climate record, the more heavily a particular projection is weighted). The height of each histogram represents the probability that a particular range of ΔT2060, defined by the width of each line segment, will occur. In other words, the most probable value of ΔT in year 2060, for the EM-GC projection that uses RCP 4.5, is 1.2–1.3 °C above pre-industrial, and there is slightly less than 20 % probability ΔT will actually fall within this range. In contrast, the CMIP5 GCMs project ΔT in 2060 will most probably be 2.0–2.2 °C warmer than pre-industrial, with a ~12 % probability ΔT will actually fall within this range. A finer spacing for ΔT is used for the EM-GC projection, since we are able to conduct many simulations in this model framework. Figure 2.18 is similar to Fig. 2.17, except the projection is for year 2100. The collection of histograms shown for any particular model (i.e., either CMIP5 GCMs or EM-GC) on a specific figure is termed the probability distribution function (PDF) for the projection of the rise in GMST (i.e., ΔT). The PDFs shown in Figs. 2.17 and 2.18 reveal stark differences in projections of ΔT based on the EM-GC framework and the CMIP5 GCMs. In all cases, ΔT [temperature change] from the GCMs far exceed projections using our relatively simple approach that is tightly coupled to observed ΔT, OHC, and various natural factors that influence climate. These differences are quantified in Table 2.1, which summarizes the cumulative probability that a specific Paris goal can be achieved. The cumulative probabilities shown in Table 2.1 are based on summing the height of each histogram that lies to the left of a specific temperature, in Figs. 2.17 and 2.18. Time series of ΔT found using the CMIP5 GCM and EM-GC approaches are illustrated in Figs. 2.19 and 2.20, which show projections based on RCP 4.5 and RCP 8.5. The colors represent the probability of a particular future value of ΔT being achieved, for projections computed in the EM-GC framework weighted by 1/ χ2 . Essentially, the red (warm), white (mid-point), and blue (cool) colors represent the visualization of a succession of histograms like those shown in Figs. 2.17 and 2.18. The GCM CMIP5 projections of ΔT (minimum, maximum, and multi-model mean) for RCP 4.5 and RCP 8.5 are shown by the three grey lines. These lines, identical to those shown in Fig. 2.3a (RCP 4.5) and Fig. 2.3b (RCP 8.5), are based on our analysis of GCM output preserved on the CMIP5 archive. The green trapezoid, which originates from Fig. 11.25b of IPCC (2013), makes a final and rather important appearance on these figures. Also, the Paris target (1.5 °C) and upper limit (2 °C) are marked on the right vertical axis of both figures. There are resounding policy implications inherent in Figs. 2.17, 2.18, 2.19, and 2.20. First, most importantly, and beyond debate of any reasonable quantitative analysis of climate, if GHG emissions follow anything close to RCP 8.5, there is no chance of achieving either the goal or upper limit of the Paris climate agreement (Fig. 2.20). Even though there is a small amount of overlap between the Paris targets and our EM-GC projections for year 2100 in Fig. 2.20, this is a false hope. In the highly unlikely event this realization were to actually happen, it would just be a matter of time before ΔT [temperature change] broke through the 2 °C barrier, with all of the attendant negative consequences (Lynas 2008). Plus, of course, 1.5–2.0 °C warming (i.e., the lead up to breaking the 2 °C barrier) could have rather severe consequences. This outcome is all but guaranteed if GHG abundances follow that of RCP 8.5. The second policy implication is that projections of ΔT found using the EM-GC framework indicate that, if emissions of GHGs can be limited to those of RCP 4.5, then by end-century there is: (a) a 75 % probability the Paris target of 1.5 °C warming above pre-industrial will be achieved (b) a greater than 95 % probability the Paris upper limit of 2 °C warming will be achieved As will be shown in Chap. 3, the cumulative effect of the commitments from nations to restrict future emissions of GHGs, upon which the Paris Climate Agreement is based, have the world on course to achieve GHG emissions that fall just below those of RCP 4.5, provided: (1) both conditional and unconditional commitments are followed; (2) reductions in GHG emissions needed to achieve the Paris agreement, which generally terminate in 2030, are continually improved out to at least 2060. The policy implication articulated above differs considerably from the consensus in the climate modeling community that emission of GHGs must follow RCP 2.6 to achieve even the 2 °C upper limit of Paris (Rogelj et al. 2016). We caution those quick to dismiss the simplicity of our approach to consider the emerging view, discussed in Chap. 11 of IPCC (2013) and quantified in their Figs. 11.25 and TS.14, as well as our Figs. 2.3 and 2.13, that the CMIP5 GCMs warm much quicker than has been observed during the past three decades. In support of our approach, we emphasize that our projections of ΔT are bounded nearly exactly by the green trapezoid of IPCC (2013), which reflects the judgement of at least one group of experts as to how ΔT [temperature change] will evolve over the next two decades. Given our present understanding of Earth’s climate system, we contend the Paris Climate Agreement is a beacon of hope because it places the world on a course of having a reasonable probability of avoiding climate catastrophe.We also don’t have to win Paris alone solves warming – Trump destroys the climate through a variety of mechanisms:Broad deregulationJoselow & Aton 19 [Maxine Joselow, reporter covering climate change, energy & transportation. Adam Aton, reporter covering climate change. “Would Trump's reelection lead to climate catastrophe?” E&E News, 11/27/19, Accessed 7/24/20]#NCCRegulatory rollbacks Since taking office, Trump has moved to dismantle a host of regulations aimed at curbing planet-warming emissions from power plants, pipelines and cars. First came the repeal of the Clean Power Plan, Obama's signature effort to reduce pollution from coal-fired power plants. Then came the proposed rollback of clean car standards, Obama's landmark attempt to curb emissions from automobile tailpipes. In addition to carbon dioxide, Trump has sought to ease restrictions on methane, another potent greenhouse gas. His administration has proposed eliminating all federal regulation of methane emissions from both new and existing sources in the oil and gas industry. Many of these major rollbacks have been delayed or tied up in litigation. That means they probably won't take effect unless Trump is reelected to a second term. "Every rulemaking is being followed with litigation," Sgamma said. "Really, to get them all done, they need another term," she added. "We'll see which ones just don't make it over the line." A recent Rhodium Group analysis looked at what would happen to carbon dioxide emissions if all of Trump's major environmental rollbacks took effect in his second term. It found that CO2 emissions would soar by 1.9 to 3.1 gigatons cumulatively from now through 2035 The climate impact of that increase cannot be overstated, said Hannah Pitt, an analyst at the Rhodium Group and the author of the analysis. "That's more than the annual emissions of 70% of countries on Earth combined," Pitt said. "So it's a lot of emissions." Put another way, pumping up to 4.2 gigatons of CO2 into the atmosphere would take the world closer to a temperature increase of 1.5 degrees Celsius, a point at which irreversible climate change could be locked in.Interference in state-level policiesJoselow & Aton 19 [Maxine Joselow, reporter covering climate change, energy & transportation. Adam Aton, reporter covering climate change. “Would Trump's reelection lead to climate catastrophe?” E&E News, 11/27/19, Accessed 7/24/20]#NCCIn the states Not all of Trump's environmental influence comes from sweeping federal policy. He's also trying to curtail liberal states' authority, fulfill red-state wish lists and boost fossil fuel development across the country. In southern Alaska, he's clearing the way for new roads and old-growth logging in the Tongass National Forest, the biggest carbon sink in the United States. Along the coasts, he's moved to bring offshore drilling to virgin shorelines while throwing up extra hurdles for offshore wind farms. In the Arctic, he's opened a wildlife refuge to oil derricks and moved to expand drilling in other remote wilderness areas. In rural areas where wildfires burn, Trump is personally encouraging logging while loosening environmental reviews for timber companies. And in California, he's trying to block the progressive state's authority to issue stringent clean car standards and promulgate a cap-and-trade program with Quebec. Those actions are big on their own, but they also encourage red states to follow suit with their own extractive policies, DellaSala said. Utah, for example, is trying to copy the deregulation of the Tongass. Pitt, the Rhodium Group analyst, said she's been alarmed by "the extent to which [Trump] is willing to go after California and its authority. It seems to go beyond just dismantling Obama's policies." Pitt said there may be "other state-level policies that he could make more challenging for the states to implement," citing California and Washington state's programs to phase out hydrofluorocarbons as well as the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, the Northeast's cap-and-trade program for the power sector.???Joselow & Aton 19 [Maxine Joselow, reporter covering climate change, energy & transportation. Adam Aton, reporter covering climate change. “Would Trump's reelection lead to climate catastrophe?” E&E News, 11/27/19, Accessed 7/24/20]#NCCParis withdrawalMeanwhile, on the international stage, Trump has promised to withdraw the United States from the Paris Agreement on climate change.Under the rules of the agreement, the soonest the United States could formally exit is Nov. 4, 2020 — one day after the presidential election.The good news for climate advocates is that a robust coalition of states, cities and businesses has still pledged to honor the agreement under the slogan "We Are Still In."Together, that coalition represents more than 60% of the U.S. population, providing a strong counterpunch to Trump's withdrawal, said Light, the former climate adviser to Obama."If you took all these entities together, it's over 4,000 states, cities and businesses. If they were their own country, it would be the second-largest economy in the world," said Light, who also serves as a senior fellow at the World Resources Institute.Yet the coalition will only get the United States to a 17% reduction in emissions by 2025, according to projections from the World Resources Institute. The original U.S. pledge under the Paris Agreement was a 26% to 28% reduction by that year.With regard to other countries, a U.S. exit from Paris could send a signal to big emitters like China and India that it's acceptable to continue investing in new coal plants and other fossil fuel infrastructure, said Alden Meyer, director of strategy and policy at the Union of Concerned Scientists."There are obviously forces in those countries that have an interest in continuing fossil fuel production," Meyer said. "And they would make use of the U.S. being out of Paris as an argument for why their countries shouldn't do more."Peter Erickson, a senior scientist at the Stockholm Environment Institute, said U.S. withdrawal from Paris — coupled with four more years of Trump's "energy dominance" agenda — would send the wrong signal to the rest of the world about fossil fuels."For the U.S. to be the world's top fossil fuel producer — top oil producer, top gas producer and expanding — that undermines, unequivocally, global progress on climate," Erickson said."It essentially floods the market with fossil fuels at a time when we need to be going in the other direction. And that matters for prices [and] for markets," he said.At the same time, though, other countries recognize that the markets are inexorably moving toward clean energy. The cost of renewables like wind and solar has declined dramatically in recent years, while electric vehicle batteries have become more affordable.A U.S. exit from Paris "really wouldn't change the interest of countries in trying to benefit from the clean energy economy," Meyer said."China has made no bones about wanting to dominate markets for electric vehicles and other clean energy technologies," he said. "Those interests don't change with who's in the White House."JudiciaryJoselow & Aton 19 [Maxine Joselow, reporter covering climate change, energy & transportation. Adam Aton, reporter covering climate change. “Would Trump's reelection lead to climate catastrophe?” E&E News, 11/27/19, Accessed 7/24/20]#NCCInstitutional changesThe Trump administration's most lasting policies might be personnel.The judiciary has been filled with conservative judges, while agencies have been hollowed out of scientists, economists and the other bureaucrats who make the government work.Trump has elevated to the federal bench more than 150 judges, including at least 44 appellate judges, approaching the same number Obama got confirmed over both his terms.Supreme Court Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh are emblematic of those whom Trump is elevating to the bench — in ideology as well as age. His circuit court nominees have an average age below 50, meaning Trump has already changed one branch of government for a generation.That progress likely would slow in Trump's second term. Trump benefited from more than 100 federal judicial vacancies at the beginning of his term, part of Senate Republicans' plan to minimize Obama's influence.But the recent health problems of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg raise the possibility that Trump could nominate at least one more justice to the high court. A 6-3 conservative majority on the Supreme Court could tempt anti-climate groups to try overturning Massachusetts v. EPA, the landmark decision that put EPA on the hook for regulating carbon dioxide as a pollutant.At the agencies, Trump would begin his second term on a better footing than his first.The biggest difference would be his Cabinet. Some conservatives grew frustrated with the scandals and the false starts of Scott Pruitt and Ryan Zinke, Trump's first EPA administrator and Interior secretary, respectively.Trump likely would begin his second term with his current team of Andrew Wheeler heading EPA, David Bernhardt in charge of Interior and Dan Brouillette at Energy. Each of those men is regarded as an effective operator who avoids — or at least minimizes — the distractions that plagued Trump's first two years."I think it will be less dramatic but more effective," said Alex Flint, executive director of the Alliance for Market Solutions.Meanwhile, the administration has started moving agencies like the Bureau of Land Management out of Washington, D.C. — part of what acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney has described as an effort to get rid of federal workers.That follows years of federal scientists complaining about political meddling in their climate research. Many of them have left their posts during Trump's first term, contributing to a "brain drain" across agencies.These are the folks who are in the trenches crafting and implementing climate policy, Erickson said. Their departure weakens the capacity of Trump's successor to reverse his policies."There's still loyal public servants clinging on in many of these institutions," he said. "But can they survive another four years of Trump? I really don't know."Paris I/L---A2: No Trump Withdrawal---2NCTrump is withdrawing---nothing’s changedHughes 17 9-16 – Trevor Hughes, Reporter at USA Today, “White House Says No Change in Position on Paris Climate Agreement”, USA Today, 2017, White House said Saturday it has not changed its position on the Paris climate accord and will withdraw from the agreement that President Trump has called unfair to the United States unless it can be re-negotiated. The statement came in response to published reports by the Wall Street Journal and AFP that a top European climate official said the U.S. would “not re-negotiate the Paris Accord, but will try to review the terms on which they could be engaged under this agreement." The climate official, Miguel Arias Canete, was meeting with ministers from some 30 countries in Montreal on Saturday to push forward on implementing the Paris deal without the U.S. The White House swiftly denied any change in its stance on the landmark deal. "There has been no change in the United States' position on the Paris agreement,” the White House said in a statement. “As the president has made abundantly clear, the United States is withdrawing unless we can re-enter on terms that are more favorable to our country." Long-term financial success means embracing future-mindedness White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders tweeted: "Our position on the Paris agreement has not changed. @POTUS has been clear, US withdrawing unless we get pro-America terms."Paris I/L---A2: US Not Key---2NCUS reductions commitment key to modelingSchmidt 14 Jake Director of the International Program at the Natural Resources Defense Council, fourteen years’ experience in climate policy development including state, US national, Europe, developing countries, and international negotiations, 11/7/14, “U.S. Can Still Implement Strong International Climate Actions,” opponents of strong U.S. climate action have always complained that if the U.S. acted “unilaterally,” that no one else would act (almost two decades ago they used the catch phrase “It’s not global and it won’t work”). They claimed to support a global response to climate change that requires strong actions by all key countries. Luckily for them this is exactly what the U.S. and other countries are preparing to agree next year. The agreement to be reached next December will have strong commitments from key countries to continue to implement actions to address their climate pollution and to take even bolder steps by 2025. As I discussed recently you can see strong evidence that this is emerging as China will be prepared for bold climate targets next year and Europe has already outlined its next round of climate targets. Similar signs are emerging in other key countries around the world such as India, Mexico, and South Korea. At the same time, international action on climate change is dependent on the actions that countries take at home. When President Obama articulated the Climate Action Plan he boosted U.S. international credibility on climate change as countries have always craved strong U.S. domestic action. As one of the world’s largest economies and major emitter, the actions of the U.S. matter a lot. Following the election we will have to fight back efforts to undermine President Obama’s domestic climate change actions, but what the President is implementing is based upon the laws that Congress has already passed. And as President Obama said: “Congress will pass some bills I cannot sign.” We expect him to veto bills to gut his efforts on climate change (as reported in The Hill). And the new Congress lacks the votes to override him. On the international level, the story is essentially the same. What the U.S. commits to next year as a part of the new international agreement will clearly be based upon the laws enshrined in the U.S. The President has implemented or set in motion strong actions for key sectors of the U.S. economy including the electricity sector, transportation, and hydrofluorocarbons that put the U.S. on a trajectory to meet their current climate target. Through existing law the U.S. can make strong commitments to cut carbon pollution in 2025 that are ambitious, economically achievable, and legally achievable. We expect that the U.S. will lay out an ambitious climate target early next year. U.S. action helps to spur international action on climate change. By acting aggressively at-home the U.S. is in a stronger position to achieve strong commitments from other countries. This creates a positive dynamic where U.S. action helps to solidify even more action. We expect challenges to these efforts from those that want to deny that climate change exists or entities that want to continue to dump unlimited carbon pollution in to the air. But those efforts go against what the American public wants. A recent ABC/Washington Post survey, for instance, found that 7 in 10 Americans view climate change as a serious problem and support federal action to reduce carbon pollution. And a growing group of businesses understand that failure to act on climate change hurts their bottom-line and that taking bold action is achievable (for example see these leading companies). Strong U.S. domestic and international action on climate change is what the American public and businesses want. It is enshrined in the U.S. domestic law. It is what our children and grandchildren need. President Obama can continue to lead on this effort by fully implementing the steps in the Climate Action Plan and helping to secure a strong international agreement next year.Paris I/L---Defo A/O---2NCCommitment to Paris stops global deforestationBueno 15 [Gabriela Bueno PhD candidate in Global Governance and Human Security, University of Massachusetts Boston 12-18-2015 ]The climate change agreement adopted by 195 countries in Paris last week raised the profile of forests in ways never seen before. In past multilateral environmental conferences, deforestation proved too thorny for nations to reach agreement. Now, however, some of the most heavily forested countries in the world have pledged to fight deforestation and promote forest conservation. This is a key shift. Cutting emissions from deforestation by leaving forests standing or promoting reforestation is arguably one of the simplest and most cost-effective ways to address climate change. Forests and climate change are intrinsically related. As they grow, trees capture and store carbon that would otherwise be released into the atmosphere. But they release their stored carbon and become sources of greenhouse gas emissions when they are harvested or burned. Emissions from agriculture and land use change, mainly from cutting down tropical forests, account for about a quarter of the global anthropogenic total. The long path to forest regulation Countries have been discussing proposals for a binding agreement on sustainable forest management since the mid-1980s. However, at the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, negotiations fell through. Developing countries feared that international regulation would violate their sovereign rights to exploit forests and forest resources. In response, a few nongovernmental organizations and countries decided to reframe deforestation as a climate change issue. In 2005, countries started debating forest conservation in developing nations as a climate change mitigation strategy. In 2010, they approved a decision on a mechanism called REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries). This strategy would allow developed countries to compensate developing nations for protecting forests. Until now, global discussions over deforestation have been dominated by a tension between developed countries pushing for better protections against developing countries’ desire to exploit their natural resources. But subsequent REDD debates focused more on how much money countries would earn for conserving forests than on the steps they would take to tackle deforestation. Developing countries continued to resist discussing forest protection at the international level. Forests in Paris In Paris, nations finally achieved some consensus. Article 5 of the Paris Agreement encourages countries to implement and support REDD, as well as activities related to “the role of conservation, sustainable management of forests and enhancement of forest carbon stocks in developing countries.” For many developing nations, land use, land-use change and forestry account for the majority of their greenhouse gas emissions. That makes this sector a logical place for them to start meeting their commitments under the Paris Agreement. Including REDD in the climate agreement is only one step toward recognizing forest protection. Developing nations also launched other initiatives in Paris that addressed deforestation and forest degradation: AFR100: African nations, with support from nongovernment organizations and the German government, launched AFR100 at the Global Landscapes Forum during the Paris meeting. AFR100 is an African Regional initiative to restore forests. Ten African countries (the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Kenya, Liberia, Madagascar, Malawi, Niger, Rwanda, Togo and Uganda) have committed to restore 100 million hectares of forest by 2030; Leaders’ Statement on Forests and Climate Change: Australia, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, France, Gabon, Germany, Indonesia, Japan, Liberia, Mexico, Norway, Peru, United Kingdom and the United States issued a statement committing to “intensifying efforts to protect forests.” Leaders from developing and developed countries also launched specific partnerships to help reduce deforestation. For instance, Brazil and Norway extended to 2020 their partnership to reduce deforestation in the Amazon Forest and Norway committed new financial support. Norway, Germany and the UK also pledged to provide US$5 billion from 2015 to 2020 for REDD programs. National commitments: Some developing countries included action against deforestation in their Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs). For instance, Brazil committed to “strengthening policies and measures with a view to achieve, in the Brazilian Amazonia, zero illegal deforestation by 2030 and compensating for greenhouse gas emissions from legal suppression of vegetation by 2030.” This shift would not have happened without a great deal of behind-the-scenes work by environmental and indigenous groups, scientists and governments. Pressure from these groups raised the status of sustainable forest management in international negotiations. For instance, in 2014 leaders from dozens of countries and various companies, nongovernmental organizations and indigenous communities adopted the [New York Declaration on Forests]( “). This statement included an ambitious pledge to "At least halve the rate of loss of natural forests globally by 2020 and strive to end natural forest loss by 2030.” In September 2015, all United Nations member countries adopted a new set of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This framework will set the development agenda for the next 15 years. Goal 15, target 2 stipulates that “By 2020, [countries should] promote the implementation of sustainable management of all types of forests, halt deforestation, restore degraded forests and substantially increase afforestation and reforestation globally.” As UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon noted at the end of the Paris meeting, “Developing countries have assumed increasing responsibility to address climate change in line with their capabilities.” Now developing countries see themselves as part of the solution and forest protection as an important part of their role. As Peru’s Minister of the Environment Manuel Pulgar-Vidal [observed]((): “Forest countries in partnership with other governments, the private sector and civil society are set for an increased international effort to eliminate natural deforestation and forest degradation in a few decades.” New partnerships between developing and developed countries to address deforestation and restore degraded forest landscapes will help reduce greenhouse gas emissions. In a recent report, the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and Climate Advisers estimated that “if just 12 forest countries, including Brazil and Indonesia, meet their existing forest goals this would cut annual global climate emissions by 3.5 gigatonnes in 2020 – equivalent to the total annual emissions from India and Australia put together.” Forests and sustainable development International support for forest conservation will promote sustainable development and help developing countries move toward less carbon-intensive economies. One remaining challenge will be finding ways to measure and value noncarbon benefits that forests provide. One strategy might be compensating local communities for their forest conservation efforts. Another would be ensuring that REDD activities enhance ecosystem services, such as watershed and biodiversity protection, and erosion control. Moreover, countries are still a long way from proposing a specific plan to fully halt deforestation. This goal is part of both the SDGs and the New York Declaration on Forests. But the Paris conference showed that developing countries are increasingly willing to address deforestation as a global issue. Developed countries should support them by providing funding for forest protection. Global negotiations over the fate of forests are finally moving from resistance to collective action.Deforestation causes extinction Watson 6 [Paul Watson, former member of the Canadian Coast Guard and worked with the Norwegian Consulate. He was on the board of directors of the Sierra Club. Founder of Sea Shepherd Conservation Society (SSCS) – a non-profit, marine conservation organization. 9/17/06, The Politics of Extinction.? ]The destruction of forests and the proliferation of human activity will remove more than 20 percent of all terrestrial plant species over the next fifty years. Because plants form the foundation for entire biotic communities, their demise will carry with it the extinction of an exponentially greater number of animal species -- perhaps ten times as many faunal species for each type of plant eliminated. Sixty-five million years ago, a natural cataclysmic event resulted in extinction of the dinosaurs. Even with a plant foundation intact, it took more than 100,000 years for faunal biological diversity to re-establish itself. More importantly, the resurrection of biological diversity assumes an intact zone of tropical forests to provide for new speciation after extinction. Today, the tropical rain forests are disappearing more rapidly than any other bio-region, ensuring that after the age of humans, the Earth will remain a biological, if not a literal desert for eons to come. The present course of civilization points to ecocide -- the death of nature. Like a run-a-way train, civilization is speeding along tracks of our own manufacture towards the stone wall of extinction. The human passengers sitting comfortably in their seats, laughing, partying, and choosing to not look out the window. Environmentalists are those perceptive few who have their faces pressed against the glass, watching the hurling bodies of plants and animals go screaming by. Environmental activists are those even fewer people who are trying desperately to break into the fortified engine of greed that propels this destructive specicidal juggernaut. Others are desperately throwing out anchors in an attempt to slow the monster down while all the while, the authorities, blind to their own impending destruction, are clubbing, shooting and jailing those who would save us all. SHORT MEMORIES Civilized humans have for ten thousand years been marching across the face of the Earth leaving deserts in their footprints. Because we have such short memories, we forgot the wonder and splendor of a virgin nature. We revise history and make it fit into our present perceptions. For instance, are you aware that only two thousand years ago, the coast of North Africa was a mighty forest? The Phoenicians and the Carthaginians built powerful ships from the strong timbers of the region. Rome was a major exporter of timber to Europe. The temple of Jerusalem was built with titanic cedar logs, one image of which adorns the flag of Lebanon today. Jesus Christ did not live in a desert, he was a man of the forest. The Sumerians were renowned for clearing the forests of Mesopotamia for agriculture. But the destruction of the coastal swath of the North African forest stopped the rain from advancing into the interior. Without the rain, the trees died and thus was born the mighty Sahara, sired by man and continued to grow southward at a rate of ten miles per year, advancing down the length of the continent of Africa. And so will go Brazil. The precipitation off the Atlantic strikes the coastal rain forest and is absorbed and sent skyward again by the trees, falling further into the interior. Twelve times the moisture falls and twelve times it is returned to the sky -- all the way to the Andes mountains. Destroy the coastal swath and desertify Amazonia -- it is as simple as that. Create a swath anywhere between the coast and the mountains and the rains will be stopped. We did it before while relatively primitive. We learned nothing. We forgot. So too, have we forgotten that walrus once mated and bred along the coast of Nova Scotia, that sixty million bison once roamed the North American plains. One hundred years ago, the white bear once roamed the forests of New England and the Canadian Maritime provinces. Now it is called the polar bear because that is where it now makes its last stand. EXTINCTION IS DIFFICULT TO APPRECIATE Gone forever are the European elephant, lion and tiger. The Labrador duck, giant auk, Carolina parakeet will never again grace this planet of ours. Lost for all time are the Atlantic grey whales, the Biscayan right whales and the Stellar sea cow. Our children will never look upon the California condor in the wild or watch the Palos Verde blue butterfly dart from flower to flower. Extinction is a difficult concept to fully appreciate. What has been is no more and never shall be again. It would take another creation and billions of years to recreate the passenger pigeon. It is the loss of billions of years of evolutionary programming. It is the destruction of beauty, the obliteration of truth, the removal of uniqueness, the scarring of the sacred web of life To be responsible for an extinction is to commit blasphemy against the divine. It is the greatest of all possible crimes, more evil than murder, more appalling than genocide, more monstrous than even the apparent unlimited perversities of the human mind. To be responsible for the complete and utter destruction of a unique and sacred life form is arrogance that seethes with evil, for the very opposite of evil is live. It is no accident that these two words spell out each other in reverse. And yet, a reporter in California recently told me that "all the redwoods in California are not worth the life on one human being." What incredible arrogance. The rights a species, any species, must take precedence over the life of an individual or another species. This is a basic ecological law. It is not to be tampered with by primates who have molded themselves into divine legends in their own mind. For each and every one of the thirty million plus species that grace this beautiful planet are essential for the continued well-being of which we are all a part, the planet Earth -- the divine entity which brought us forth from the fertility of her sacred womb. As a sea-captain I like to compare the structural integrity of the biosphere to that of a ship's hull. Each species is a rivet that keeps the hull intact. If I were to go into my engine room and find my engineers busily popping rivets from the hull, I would be upset and naturally I would ask them what they were doing. If they told me that they discovered that they could make a dollar each from the rivets, I could do one of three things. I could ignore them. I could ask them to cut me in for a share of the profits, or I could kick their asses out of the engine room and off my ship. If I was a responsible captain, I would do the latter. If I did not, I would soon find the ocean pouring through the holes left by the stolen rivets and very shortly after, my ship, my crew and myself would disappear beneath the waves. And that is the state of the world today. The political leaders, i.e., the captains at the helms of their nation states, are ignoring the rivet poppers or they are cutting themselves in for the profits. There are very few asses being kicked out of the engine room of spaceship Earth. With the rivet poppers in command, it will not be long until the biospheric integrity of the Earth collapses under the weight of ecological strain and tides of death come pouring in. And that will be the price of progress -- ecological collapse, the death of nature, and with it the horrendous and mind numbing specter of massive human destruction. And where does that leave us, dear reader? Do you intend to remain in your seat, oblivious to the impending destruction? Have you got you face pressed up against the window, watching the grim reapings of progress? Or are you engaged in throwing out anchors, sacrificing the materialistic pleasures of civilization and risking your all, that your planet and your children may live? The choice is unique to this generation. Future generations will not have the chance and those that came before us did not have the vision nor theknowledge. It is up to us -- you and I.Paris I/L---Turns Russia---2NCFailure to lead on Paris alienates allied cooperation that’s vital to check Russian aggression Varun Sivaram 12-20, Douglas Dillon Fellow and Acting Director of the Program on Energy Security and Climate Change at the Council on Foreign Relations. SAGATOM SAHA is a research associate for energy and U.S. foreign policy at the Council on Foreign Relations, “The Trouble With Ceding Climate Leadership to China”, 2016, Foreign Affairs, as the United States appeared poised to take a victory lap after securing a string of successes on climate change, Donald Trump was elected to the U.S. presidency, suggesting that Washington might abandon its leadership role instead. Trump and his advisers have vowed to withdraw the United States from climate accords abroad and to abandon President Barack Obama’s push for clean energy at home.? If the Trump administration keeps those promises, China will probably step into the leadership vacuum left by the United States. At first glance, that might seem like good news, since China is the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases, leads the world in the production and deployment of clean energy, and will probably meet the international climate-action pledges it has made so far.? The trouble is that China would lead on climate-change issues only insofar as doing so would advance its national interests. Some of those interests, such as China’s desire to cultivate foreign markets for clean energy exports and curb domestic air pollution, line up with combatting climate change. Others, such as the incentives the country faces to export coal power plants abroad, could get in the way of reducing emissions. In some cases, it is unclear where China’s interests lie—for example, whether it wants to promote or stunt breakthrough innovations in clean-energy technologies. Still, one thing is certain: ceding climate leadership to China would be disastrous for the United States, whose diplomatic standing and position in the race to supply the world’s clean-energy needs would fall precipitously as a result.? THE COST OF RETREAT? Washington helped shepherd a breakthrough on climate change in late 2015, when 195 countries signed the Paris agreement, under which governments volunteered action plans to control their greenhouse gas emissions. The Obama administration played a crucial role in building the international consensus around that agreement, and it coordinated the deal’s rapid entry into force just a year later, after 115 countries had ratified it. Together with the several ancillary deals that the United States recently helped broker—aimed at limiting refrigerant emissions that warm the earth, curbing the carbon footprint of aviation, and hashing out financial assistance that will help developing countries address climate change—the Paris agreement gave the range of climate accomplishments secured during the Obama administration’s final year a breathtaking scope.? China is now poised to build up an advanced nuclear industry at the United States’ expense.? These successes have earned the United States diplomatic capital, particularly among its European allies, that it would be foolish to squander. Reversing course on climate policy could enrage the United States’ partners across the Atlantic and might make them less willing to cooperate on Washington’s geopolitical interests, such as presenting a unified front against Russian aggression, and its economic ones, such as the repatriation of corporate profits stashed in Europe. Nevertheless, the president-elect’s advisers have exuberantly described Trump’s plans to withdraw the United States from the Paris agreement and possibly even the overarching 1992 international framework for climate diplomacy. On the campaign trail, Trump vowed to cancel payments to UN climate bodies, such as the Green Climate Fund, which provides financial assistance to developing countries. He also pledged to repeal Obama’s Clean Power Plan, thus reducing the likelihood that the United States will uphold its international commitment to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by at least 26 percent relative to 2005 levels before 2025.? In a sign of its willingness to take over the mantle of climate leadership, China has strongly denounced Trump’s promises. Senior Chinese officials have urged the United States to uphold its climate commitments, and Beijing has pledged to make good on its own regardless of what the next administration does.? The opportunity to take over climate leadership from the United States would be a gift to China. Facing international tensions on several fronts, from it posture in the South China Sea to its tacit support for North Korea, Beijing stands to gain prestige and goodwill abroad by leading on climate change. And now that the United States has done the heavy diplomatic lifting of rallying the world to reach an agreement in Paris, China can earn plaudits just by publicly prodding other countries to live up to the pledges they signed up for. China, for its part, will have no problem meeting its own climate pledge—it has promised to reduce its emissions from 2030 onward, and economists forecast that slowing economic growth will naturally lead to a peak in Chinese emissions well before then. Paris I/L---Turns China---2NCParis backsliding crushes U.S.-China relations---removes the one barrier to escalation of disputes like the SCS Cory Scarola 16, writer for Inverse, 12/28/16, “Will American Denial of Climate Change Piss Off China Even More?,” Trump has been the president-elect for mere months, and already he’s begun to charter a poor course when it comes to good relations with China. He has taken a phone call from the president of Taiwan and openly questioned the need for a One China policy, doing more than his fair share to ruffle some feathers across the Pacific. But his biggest slight may be yet to come: abandoning China in the fight against climate change. To do that would place substantial strain on China’s own efforts against climate change, destroy a catalyst for improving relations, and send a message of apathy to a country that stands to lose more than most to rising sea levels. Throughout his campaign and since the election, Trump has signaled he will significantly alter, even reverse, America’s climate policy. He has appointed Rick Perry to head the Department of Energy and Scott Pruitt to run the Environmental Protection Agency. He has also brought up a desire to back out of the Paris Climate Agreement. As the world’s two largest polluters, China and the United States have a huge part to play in that agreement. For the U.S. to back out, to shirk its commitment, would place an even greater burden on China to lower its emissions in order to reach the agreement’s stated goal, so much so that the goal probably wouldn’t be met. This is very bad for China. Many of its coastal cities could be in danger of being overtaken by the ocean as sea levels rise with the temperature. Even if the agreement’s objective, limiting global temperature increases to an average of two degrees Celsius, was met, cities like Shanghai, Tianjin, and Shantou will still see huge swaths of land submerged and large numbers of people displaced. If temperatures rise 4 degrees, the predicated outcome if the Paris Agreement fails and no meaningful action is taken, then some of those cities may disappear completely. If that were to happen, 76 percent of Shanghai’s 24 million people will become climate refugees. The global influence China might gain by becoming the world leader on climate change would be overshadowed by the fact by this disastrous outcome. The cost of dealing with its population crisis would almost certainly hamper its rise to the status of economic superpower. Inaction by Trump would condemn China and the Chinese people to environmental disaster on a massive scale, and this would certainly go a long way toward worsening relations. This abandonment would also occur in the midst of other, deeper conflicts about which America and China do not see eye to eye. The South China Sea is one such dispute, a territorial disagreement in which America claims China is overreaching by declaring islands and waterways there to belong to it. Just this week, the region reentered the spotlight as China sent its aircraft carrier, accompanied by five warships, into the South China Sea to project its power. In fact, the New York Times reports, “In the weeks since Mr. Trump’s election, Beijing has increased pressure on the United States, placing weapons on disputed islands and seizing and underwater United States Navy drone from international waters.” The drone has since been returned, but it’s nevertheless clear to see that China has little interest in a good relationship with Trump’s administration if he maintains his current posture. Climate change denialism might be the last nail in that coffin. For America to deny climate change outright would mean for it to deny the causes of China’s mass displacement, and even death. It would signal a callousness toward the needs of another country and a shift toward a potentially disastrous brand of isolationism. To deny climate change is to tell other countries, “Not only are we willing to hurt ourselves on behalf of our scientific ignorance, we’re willing to hurt you, too.” Furthermore, from an international relations perspective, the biggest benefit to a climate alliance between China and America arguably isn’t even the planet-saving reforms it could produce. Rather, the incentive to cooperate would serve as a catalyst for warming relations between across the board. It’s difficult to be partners in one area and to be diametrically opposed in another. If both make curbing climate change their overriding priority, lesser disagreements will need to be resolved for the sake of preserving that partnership. Indeed, the climate change denialism that Trump is inviting into the White House might also mean an end to the number of other climate initiatives on which America and China are currently cooperating. President Obama went a long way toward using climate change as an avenue to bring America and China closer diplomatically. With Russia posing a rising threat to Europe and the Middle East, the last thing America needs now is a reignited rivalry with China, too. But Trump might not see it that way — or he just might not care. Disregarding climate change, even going so far as to blame it on the Chinese themselves, is a great way to piss off the country and do environmental and economic damage both at home and abroad.Warming !---Extinction---2NCWarming causes extinction---triggers tipping points and positive feedbacks which make the planet uninhabitable---turns the aff because you can’t negotiate with intervening actorsNaomi Klein 14, award-winning journalist, syndicated columnist, former Miliband Fellow at the London School of Economics, member of the board of directors of , This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate, pp. 12-14In a 2012 report, the World Bank laid out the gamble implied by that target. “As global warming approaches and exceeds 2-degrees Celsius, there is a risk of triggering nonlinear tipping elements. Examples include the disintegration of the West Antarctic ice sheet leading to more rapid sea-level rise, or large-scale Amazon dieback drastically affecting ecosystems, rivers, agriculture, energy production, and livelihoods. This would further add to 21st-century global warming and impact entire continents.” In other words, once we allow temperatures to climb past a certain point, where the mercury stops is not in our control.? But the bigger problem—and the reason Copenhagen caused such great despair—is that because governments did not agree to binding targets, they are free to pretty much ignore their commitments. Which is precisely what is happening. Indeed, emissions are rising so rapidly that unless something radical changes within our economic structure, 2 degrees now looks like a utopian dream. And it’s not just environmentalists who are raising the alarm. The World Bank also warned when it released its report that “we’re on track to a 4-C warmer world [by century’s end] marked by extreme heat waves, declining global food stocks, loss of ecosystems and biodiversity, and life-threatening sea level rise.” And the report cautioned that, “there is also no certainty that adaptation to a 4-C world is possible.” Kevin Anderson, former director (now deputy director) of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change, which has quickly established itself as one of the U.K’s premier climate research institutions, is even blunter; he says 4 degrees Celsius warming—7.2 degrees Fahrenheit—is “incompatible with an organized, equitable, and civilized global community.”? We don’t know exactly what a 4 degree Celsius world would look like, but even the best-case scenario is likely to be calamitous. Four degrees of warming could raise global sea levels by 1 or possibly even 2 meters by 2100 (and would lock in at least a few additional meters over future centuries). This would drown some island nations such as the Maldives and Tuvalu, and inundate many coastal areas from Ecuador and Brazil to the Netherlands to much of California and the northeastern United States as well as huge swaths of South and Southeast Asia. Major cities likely in jeopardy include Boston, New York, greater Los Angeles, Vancouver, London, Mumbai, Hong Kong, and Shanghai.? Meanwhile, brutal heat waves that can kill tens of thousands of people, even in wealthy countries, would become entirely unremarkable summer events on every continent but Antarctica. The heat would also cause staple crops to suffer dramatic yield losses across the globe (it is possible that Indian wheat and U.S. could plummet by as much as 60 percent), this at a time when demand will be surging due to population growth and a growing demand for meat. And since crops will be facing not just heat stress but also extreme events such as wide-ranging droughts, flooding, or pest outbreaks, the losses could easily turn out to be more severe than the models have predicted. When you add ruinous hurricanes, raging wildfires, fisheries collapses, widespread disruptions to water supplies, extinctions, and globe-trotting diseases to the mix, it indeed becomes difficult to imagine that a peaceful, ordered society could be sustained (that is, where such a thing exists in the first place).? And keep in mind that these are the optimistic scenarios in which warming is more or less stabilized at 4 degrees Celsius and does not trigger tipping points beyond which runaway warming would occur. Based on the latest modeling, it is becoming safer to assume that 4 degrees could bring about a number of extremely dangerous feedback loops—an Arctic that is regularly ice-free in September, for instance, or, according to one recent study, global vegetation that is too saturated to act as a reliable “sink”, leading to more carbon being emitted rather than stored. Once this happens, any hope of predicting impacts pretty much goes out the window. And this process may be starting sooner than anyone predicted. In May 2014, NASA and the University of California, Irvine scientists revealed that glacier melt in a section of West Antarctica roughly the size of France now “appears unstoppable.” This likely spells down for the entire West Antarctic ice sheet, which according to lead study author Eric Rignot “comes with a sea level rise between three and five metres. Such an event will displace millions of people worldwide.” The disintegration, however, could unfold over centuries and there is still time for emission reductions to slow down the process and prevent the worst. ? Much more frightening than any of this is the fact that plenty of mainstream analysts think that on our current emissions trajectory, we are headed for even more than 4 degrees of warming. In 2011, the usually staid International Energy Agency (IEA) issued a report predicting that we are actually on track for 6 degrees Celsius—10.8 degrees Fahrenheit—of warming. And as the IEA’s chief economist put it: “Everybody, even the school children, knows that this will have catastrophic implications for all of us.” (The evidence indicates that 6 degrees of warming is likely to set in motion several major tipping points—not only slower ones such as the aforementioned breakdown of the West Antarctic ice sheet, but possibly more abrupt ones, like massive releases of methane from Arctic permafrost.) The accounting giant PricewaterhouseCoopers as also published a report warning businesses that we are headed for “4-C , or even 6-C” of warming.? These various projections are the equivalent of every alarm in your house going off simultaneously. And then every alarm on your street going off as well, one by one by one. They mean, quite simply, that climate change has become an existential crisis for the human species. The only historical precedent for a crisis of this depth and scale was the Cold War fear that we were headed toward nuclear holocaust, which would have made much of the planet uninhabitable. But that was (and remains) a threat; a slim possibility, should geopolitics spiral out of control. The vast majority of nuclear scientists never told us that we were almost certainly going to put our civilization in peril if we kept going about our daily lives as usual, doing exactly what we were already going, which is what climate scientists have been telling us for years. ? As the Ohio State University climatologist Lonnie G. Thompson, a world-renowned specialist on glacier melt, explained in 2010, “Climatologists, like other scientists, tend to be a stolid group. We are not given to theatrical rantings about falling skies. Most of us are far more comfortable in our laboratories or gathering data in the field than we are giving interviews to journalists or speaking before Congressional committees. When then are climatologists speaking out about the dangers of global warming? The answer is that virtually all of us are now convinced that global warming poses a clear and present danger to civilization.”Climate change is a system disruptor and a risk amplifier---only mitigation prevents biodiversity loss, marine ecosystem collapse, resource wars, global food scarcity, and extreme weather events. Pachauri & Meyer 15 (Rajendra K. Pachauri Chairman of the IPCC, Leo Meyer Head, Technical Support Unit IPCC were the editors for this IPCC report, “Climate Change 2014 Synthesis Report” IPCC, 2014: Climate Change 2014: Synthesis Report. Contribution of Working Groups I, II and III to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [Core Writing Team, R.K. Pachauri and L.A. Meyer (eds.)]. IPCC, Geneva, Switzerland, 151 pp)SPM 2.3 Future risks and impacts caused by a changing climate Climate change will amplify existing risks and create new risks for natural and human systems. Risks are unevenly distributed and are generally greater for disadvantaged people and communities in countries at all levels of development. {2.3} Risk of climate-related impacts results from the interaction of climate-related hazards (including hazardous events and trends) with the vulnerability and exposure of human and natural systems, including their ability to adapt. Rising rates and magnitudes of warming and other changes in the climate system, accompanied by ocean acidification, increase the risk of severe, pervasive and in some cases irreversible detrimental impacts. Some risks are particularly relevant for individual regions (Figure SPM.8), while others are global. The overall risks of future climate change impacts can be reduced by limiting the rate and magnitude of climate change, including ocean acidification. The precise levels of climate change sufficient to trigger abrupt and irreversible change remain uncertain, but the risk associated with crossing such thresholds increases with rising temperature (medium confidence). For risk assessment, it is important to evaluate the widest possible range of impacts, including low-probability outcomes with large consequences. {1.5, 2.3, 2.4, 3.3, Box Introduction.1, Box 2.3, Box 2.4} A large fraction of species faces increased extinction risk due to climate change during and beyond the 21st century, especially as climate change interacts with other stressors (high confidence). Most plant species cannot naturally shift their geographical ranges sufficiently fast to keep up with current and high projected rates of climate change in most landscapes; most small mammals and freshwater molluscs will not be able to keep up at the rates projected under RCP4.5 and above in flat landscapes in this century (high confidence). Future risk is indicated to be high by the observation that natural global climate change at rates lower than current anthropogenic climate change caused significant ecosystem shifts and species extinctions during the past millions of years. Marine organisms will face progressively lower oxygen levels and high rates and magnitudes of ocean acidification (high confidence), with associated risks exacerbated by rising ocean temperature extremes (medium confidence). Coral reefs and polar ecosystems are highly vulnerable. Coastal systems and low-lying areas are at risk from sea level rise, which will continue for centuries even if the global mean temperature is stabilized (high confidence). {2.3, 2.4, Figure 2.5} Climate change is projected to undermine food security (Figure SPM.9). Due to projected climate change by the mid-21st century and beyond, global marine species redistribution and marine biodiversity reduction in sensitive regions will challenge the sustained provision of fisheries productivity and other ecosystem services (high confidence). For wheat, rice and maize in tropical and temperate regions, climate change without adaptation is projected to negatively impact production for local temperature increases of 2°C or more above late 20th century levels, although individual locations may benefit (medium confidence). Global temperature increases of ~4°C or more 13 above late 20th century levels, combined with increasing food demand, would pose large risks to food security globally (high confidence). Climate change is projected to reduce renewable surface water and groundwater resources in most dry subtropical regions (robust evidence, high agreement), intensifying competition for water among sectors (limited evidence, medium agreement). {2.3.1, 2.3.2} Until mid-century, projected climate change will impact human health mainly by exacerbating health problems that already exist (very high confidence). Throughout the 21st century, climate change is expected to lead to increases in ill-health in many regions and especially in developing countries with low income, as compared to a baseline without climate change (high confidence). By 2100 for RCP8.5, the combination of high temperature and humidity in some areas for parts of the year is expected to compromise common human activities, including growing food and working outdoors (high confidence). {2.3.2} In urban areas climate change is projected to increase risks for people, assets, economies and ecosystems, including risks from heat stress, storms and extreme precipitation, inland and coastal flooding, landslides, air pollution, drought, water scarcity, sea level rise and storm surges (very high confidence). These risks are amplified for those lacking essential infrastructure and services or living in exposed areas. {2.3.2} Rural areas are expected to experience major impacts on water availability and supply, food security, infrastructure and agricultural incomes, including shifts in the production areas of food and non-food crops around the world (high confidence). {2.3.2} Aggregate economic losses accelerate with increasing temperature (limited evidence, high agreement), but global economic impacts from climate change are currently difficult to estimate. From a poverty perspective, climate change impacts are projected to slow down economic growth, make poverty reduction more difficult, further erode food security and prolong existing and create new poverty traps, the latter particularly in urban areas and emerging hotspots of hunger (medium confidence). International dimensions such as trade and relations among states are also important for understanding the risks of climate change at regional scales. {2.3.2} Climate change is projected to increase displacement of people (medium evidence, high agreement). Populations that lack the resources for planned migration experience higher exposure to extreme weather events, particularly in developing countries with low income. Climate change can indirectly increase risks of violent conflicts by amplifying well-documented drivers of these conflicts such as poverty and economic shocks (medium confidence). {2.3.2}Climate change turns every impact and causes extinction. Torres, 16 – affiliate scholar at the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies (Phil, Op-ed: Climate Change Is the Most Urgent Existential Risk, ) Humanity faces a number of formidable challenges this century. Threats to our collective survival stem from asteroids and comets, supervolcanoes, global pandemics, climate change, biodiversity loss, nuclear weapons, biotechnology, synthetic biology, nanotechnology, and artificial superintelligence. With such threats in mind, an informal survey conducted by the Future of Humanity Institute placed the probability of human extinction this century at 19%. To put this in perspective, it means that the average American is more than a thousand times more likely to die in a human extinction event than a plane crash.* So, given limited resources, which risks should we prioritize? Many intellectual leaders, including Elon Musk, Stephen Hawking, and Bill Gates, have suggested that artificial superintelligence constitutes one of the most significant risks to humanity. And this may be correct in the long-term. But I would argue that two other risks, namely climate change and biodiveristy loss, should take priority right now over every other known threat. Why? Because these ongoing catastrophes in slow-motion will frame our existential predicament on Earth not just for the rest of this century, but for literally thousands of years to come. As such, they have the capacity to raise or lower the probability of other risks scenarios unfolding. Multiplying Threats Ask yourself the following: are wars more or less likely in a world marked by extreme weather events, megadroughts, food supply disruptions, and sea-level rise? Are terrorist attacks more or less likely in a world beset by the collapse of global ecosystems, agricultural failures, economic uncertainty, and political instability? Both government officials and scientists agree that the answer is “more likely.” For example, the current Director of the CIA, John Brennan, recently identified “the impact of climate change” as one of the “deeper causes of this rising instability” in countries like Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Libya, and Ukraine. Similarly, the former Secretary of Defense, Chuck Hagel, has described climate change as a “threat multiplier” with “the potential to exacerbate many of the challenges we are dealing with today — from infectious disease to terrorism.” The Department of Defense has also affirmed a connection. In a 2015 report, it states, “Global climate change will aggravate problems such as poverty, social tensions, environmental degradation, ineffectual leadership and weak political institutions that threaten stability in a number of countries.” Scientific studies have further shown a connection between the environmental crisis and violent conflicts. For example, a 2015 paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences argues that climate change was a causal factor behind the record-breaking 2007-2010 drought in Syria. This drought led to a mass migration of farmers into urban centers, which fueled the 2011 Syrian civil war. Some observers, including myself, have suggested that this struggle could be the beginning of World War III, given the complex tangle of international involvement and overlapping interests. The study’s conclusion is also significant because the Syrian civil war was the Petri dish in which the Islamic State consolidated its forces, later emerging as the largest and most powerful terrorist organization in human history. A Perfect Storm The point is that climate change and biodiversity loss could very easily push societies to the brink of collapse. This will exacerbate existing geopolitical tensions and introduce entirely new power struggles between state and nonstate actors. At the same time, advanced technologies will very likely become increasingly powerful and accessible. As I’ve written elsewhere, the malicious agents of the future will have bulldozers rather than shovels to dig mass graves for their enemies. The result is a perfect storm of more conflicts in the world along with unprecedentedly dangerous weapons. If the conversation were to end here, we’d have ample reason for placing climate change and biodiversity loss at the top of our priority lists. But there are other reasons they ought to be considered urgent threats. I would argue that they could make humanity more vulnerable to a catastrophe involving superintelligence and even asteroids. The basic reasoning is the same for both cases. Consider superintelligence first. Programming a superintelligence whose values align with ours is a formidable task even in stable circumstances. As Nick Bostrom argues in his 2014 book, we should recognize the “default outcome” of superintelligence to be “doom.” Now imagine trying to solve these problems amidst a rising tide of interstate wars, civil unrest, terrorist attacks, and other tragedies? The societal stress caused by climate change and biodiversity loss will almost certainly compromise important conditions for creating friendly AI, such as sufficient funding, academic programs to train new scientists, conferences on AI, peer-reviewed journal publications, and communication/collaboration between experts of different fields, such as computer science and ethics. It could even make an “AI arms race” more likely, thereby raising the probability of a malevolent superintelligence being created either on purpose or by mistake. Similarly, imagine that astronomers discover a behemoth asteroid barreling toward Earth. Will designing, building, and launching a spacecraft to divert the assassin past our planet be easier or more difficult in a world preoccupied with other survival issues? In a relatively peaceful world, one could imagine an asteroid actually bringing humanity together by directing our attention toward a common threat. But if the “conflict multipliers” of climate change and biodiversity loss have already catapulted civilization into chaos and turmoil, I strongly suspect that humanity will become more, rather than less, susceptible to dangers of this sort. Context Risks We can describe the dual threats of climate change and biodiversity loss as “context risks.” Neither is likely to directly cause the extinction of our species. But both will define the context in which civilization confronts all the other threats before us. In this way, they could indirectly contribute to the overall danger of annihilation — and this worrisome effect could be significant. For example, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the effects of climate change will be “severe,” “pervasive,” and “irreversible.” Or, as a 2016 study published in Nature and authored by over twenty scientists puts it, the consequences of climate change “will extend longer than the entire history of human civilization thus far.” Furthermore, a recent article in Science Advances confirms that humanity has already escorted the biosphere into the sixth mass extinction event in life’s 3.8 billion year history on Earth. Yet another study suggests that we could be approaching a sudden, irreversible, catastrophic collapse of the global ecosystem. If this were to occur, it could result in “widespread social unrest, economic instability and loss of human life.” Given the potential for environmental degradation to elevate the likelihood of nuclear wars, nuclear terrorism, engineered pandemics, a superintelligence takeover, and perhaps even an impact winter, it ought to take precedence over all other risk concerns — at least in the near-term. Let’s make sure we get our priorities straight.Warming triggers state collapse, war, and environmental destructionKlare 15 [Michael, PhD, professor of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College and defense correspondent for The Nation, “The water wars are coming: Civilization will never survive climate calamity,” 11/5/15, Salon]A failure to cap carbon emissions guarantees another result as well, though one far less discussed. It will, in the long run, bring on not just climate shocks, but also worldwide instability, insurrection, and warfare. In this sense, COP-21 should be considered not just a climate summit but a peace conference — perhaps the most significant peace convocation in history. To grasp why, consider the latest scientific findings on the likely impacts of global warming, especially the 2014 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). When first published, that report attracted worldwide media coverage for predicting that unchecked climate change will result in severe droughts, intense storms, oppressive heat waves, recurring crop failures, and coastal flooding, all leading to widespread death and deprivation. Recent events, including a punishing drought in California and crippling heat waves in Europe and Asia, have focused more attention on just such impacts. The IPCC report, however, suggested that global warming would have devastating impacts of a social and political nature as well, including economic decline, state collapse, civil strife, mass migrations, and sooner or later resource wars. These predictions have received far less attention, and yet the possibility of such a future should be obvious enough since human institutions, like natural systems, are vulnerable to climate change. Economies are going to suffer when key commodities — crops, timber, fish, livestock — grow scarcer, are destroyed, or fail. Societies will begin to buckle under the strain of economic decline and massive refugee flows. Armed conflict may not be the most immediate consequence of these developments, the IPCC notes, but combine the effects of climate change with already existing poverty, hunger, resource scarcity, incompetent and corrupt governance, and ethnic, religious, or national resentments, and you’re likely to end up with bitter conflicts over access to food, water, land, and other necessities of life. The Coming of Climate Civil Wars Such wars would not arise in a vacuum. Already existing stresses and grievances would be heightened, enflamed undoubtedly by provocative acts and the exhortations of demagogic leaders. Think of the current outbreak of violence in Israel and the Palestinian territories, touched off by clashes over access to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem (also known as the Noble Sanctuary) and the inflammatory rhetoric of assorted leaders. Combine economic and resource deprivation with such situations and you have a perfect recipe for war. The necessities of life are already unevenly distributed across the planet. Often the divide between those with access to adequate supplies of vital resources and those lacking them coincides with long-term schisms along racial, ethnic, religious, or linguistic lines. The Israelis and Palestinians, for example, harbor deep-seated ethnic and religious hostilities but also experience vastly different possibilities when it comes to access to land and water. Add the stresses of climate change to such situations and you can naturally expect passions to boil over. Climate change will degrade or destroy many natural systems, often already under stress, on which humans rely for their survival. Some areas that now support agriculture or animal husbandry may become uninhabitable or capable only of providing for greatly diminished populations. Under the pressure of rising temperatures and increasingly fierce droughts, the southern fringe of the Sahara desert, for example, is now being transformed from grasslands capable of sustaining nomadic herders into an empty wasteland, forcing local nomads off their ancestral lands. Many existing farmlands in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East will suffer a similar fate. Rivers that once supplied water year-round will run only sporadically or dry up altogether, again leaving populations with unpalatable choices. As the IPCC report points out, enormous pressure will be put upon often weak state institutions to adjust to climate change and aid those in desperate need of emergency food, shelter, and other necessities. “Increased human insecurity,” the report says, “may coincide with a decline in the capacity of states to conduct effective adaptation efforts, thus creating the circumstances in which there is greater potential for violent conflict.” A good example of this peril is provided by the outbreak of civil war in Syria and the subsequent collapse of that country in a welter of fighting and a wave of refugees of a sort that hasn’t been seen since World War II. Between 2006 and 2010, Syria experienced a devastating drought in which climate change is believed to have been a factor, turning nearly 60% of the country into desert. Crops failed and most of the country’s livestock perished, forcing millions of farmers into penury. Desperate and unable to live on their land any longer, they moved into Syria’s major cities in search of work, often facing extreme hardship as well as hostility from well-connected urban elites. Had Syrian autocrat Bashar al-Assad responded with an emergency program of jobs and housing for those displaced, perhaps conflict could have been averted. Instead, he cut food and fuel subsidies, adding to the misery of the migrants and fanning the flames of revolt. In the view of several prominent scholars, “the rapidly growing urban peripheries of Syria, marked by illegal settlements, overcrowding, poor infrastructure, unemployment, and crime, were neglected by the Assad government and became the heart of the developing unrest.” A similar picture has unfolded in the Sahel region of Africa, the southern fringe of the Sahara, where severe drought has combined with habitat decline and government neglect to provoke armed violence. The area has faced many such periods in the past, but now, thanks to climate change, there is less time between the droughts. “Instead of 10 years apart, they became five years apart, and now only a couple years apart,” observes Robert Piper, the United Nations regional humanitarian coordinator for the Sahel. “And that, in turn, is putting enormous stresses on what is already an incredibly fragile environment and a highly vulnerable population.” In Mali, one of several nations straddling this region, the nomadic Tuaregshave been particularly hard hit, as the grasslands they rely on to feed their cattle are turning into desert. A Berber-speaking Muslim population, the Tuaregs have long faced hostility from the central government in Bamako, once controlled by the French and now by black Africans of Christian or animist faith. With their traditional livelihoods in peril and little assistance forthcoming from the capital, the Tuaregs revolted in January 2012, capturing half of Mali before being driven back into the Sahara by French and other foreign forces (with U.S. logistical and intelligence support). Consider the events in Syria and Mali previews of what is likely to come later in this century on a far larger scale. As climate change intensifies, bringing not just desertification but rising sea levels in low-lying coastal areas and increasingly devastating heat waves in regions that are already hot, ever more parts of the planet will be rendered less habitable, pushing millions of people into desperate flight. While the strongest and wealthiest governments, especially in more temperate regions, will be better able to cope with these stresses, expect to see the number of failed states grow dramatically, leading to violence and open warfare over what food, arable land, and shelter remains. In other words, imagine significant parts of the planet in the kind of state that Libya, Syria, and Yemen are in today. Some people will stay and fight to survive; others will migrate, almost assuredly encountering a far more violent version of thehostility we already see toward immigrants and refugees in the lands they head for. The result, inevitably, will be a global epidemic of resource civil wars and resource violence of every sort. Water Wars Most of these conflicts will be of an internal, civil character: clan against clan, tribe against tribe, sect against sect. On a climate-changed planet, however, don’t rule out struggles among nations for diminished vital resources — especially access to water. It’s already clear that climate change will reduce the supply of water in many tropical and subtropical regions, jeopardizing the continued pursuit of agriculture, the health and functioning of major cities, and possibly the very sinews of society. The risk of “water wars” will arise when two or more countries depend on the same key water source — the Nile, the Jordan, the Euphrates, the Indus, the Mekong, or other trans-boundary river systems — and one or more of them seek to appropriate a disproportionate share of the ever-shrinking supply of its water. Attempts by countries to build dams and divert the water flow of such riverine systems have already provoked skirmishes and threats of war, as when Turkey and Syria erected dams on the Euphrates, constraining the downstream flow. One system that has attracted particular concern in this regard is theBrahmaputra River, which originates in China (where it is known as the Yarlung Tsangpo) and passes through India and Bangladesh before emptying into the Indian Ocean. China has already erected one dam on the river and has plans for more, producing considerable unease in India, where the Brahmaputra’s water is vital for agriculture. But what has provoked the most alarm is a Chinese plan to channel water from that river to water-scarce areas in the northern part of that country. The Chinese insist that no such action is imminent, but intensified warming and increased drought could, in the future, prompt such a move, jeopardizing India’s water supply and possibly provoking a conflict. “China’s construction of dams and the proposed diversion of the Brahmaputra’s waters is not only expected to have repercussions for water flow, agriculture, ecology, and lives and livelihoods downstream,” Sudha Ramachandran writesin The Diplomat, “it could also become another contentious issue undermining Sino-Indian relations.” Of course, even in a future of far greater water stresses, such situations are not guaranteed to provoke armed combat. Perhaps the states involved will figure out how to share whatever limited resources remain and seek alternative means of survival. Nonetheless, the temptation to employ force is bound to grow as supplies dwindle and millions of people face thirst and starvation. In such circumstances, the survival of the state itself will be at risk, inviting desperate measures.Warming !---Extinction---Biodiversity---2NCWarming diminishes biodiversity sufficiently to collapse the environmentMeitei 16Loss of genetic material from crop relatives – weakens crop populations and causes agricultural collapse and food crisisLoss of medicines to respond to pandemics and chemicals to aid in technological adaptationMunal, staff writer for the Sangai Express covering environmental issues, “International Day of Biodiversity 2016,” SMRoughly 1.75 million species have been formally described and given official names. Insects comprise over half of the described species, and three fourths of known faunal species. The number of species in a region is set by a balance between origin through speciation, loss through extinction, and migration of species among regions, all of which operate over long geologic time scales. Large-scale habitat and biodiversity losses mean that species with potentially great economic importance may become extinct before they are even discovered. The vast, largely untapped resource of medicines and useful chemicals contained in wild species may disappear forever. Additionally, the wild relatives of our cultivated crop plants provide an invaluable reservoir of genetic material to aid in the production of new varieties of crops. If all these are lost, then our crop plants also become more vulnerable to extinction. There is an ecological caveat here of course. Whenever a wild species is proved to be economically or socially useful, this automatically translates into further loss of natural habitat. This arises either through large-scale cultivation of the species concerned or its industrial production/ harvesting. Both require space, inevitably provided at the expense of natural habitats. However, we have to realize that most biodiversity losses are now arising as a result of natural competition between humans and all other species for limited space and resources. Now the human populations are still ascending at an exponential net rate of 4.5 persons per second, the atmosphere is warming up at the rate of 0.76?C per decade, the sea level is rising 3.2 mm per year, both tropical and temperate rainforests are being cut at alarming rates of a football ground per minute, and serious pollution is also much more prevalent than admitted previously. From the perspective of biodiversity this means, species are being lost almost not on a daily basis but on minutes, at the rate of one species per 20 minutes. Acknowledgement of these problems, however, means that we can find solutions for them, although most solutions require enormous economic aids which may anchor these coherent problems. Most people would agree that areas with luxuriant vegetation, with full of life forms, are inherently more attractive than burnt, scarred landscapes, or acres of land with buildings. Human well-being is inextricably linked to the natural world. New findings have proved that the loss of biodiversity affects ecosystems as much as climate change, pollution and other major forms of environmental challenges. The study is one of the latest comprehensive efforts to directly compare the effects of biological diversity loss to the anticipated effects of the major human-caused environmental challenges such as global warming and air pollution. Some people have assumed that biodiversity effects are relatively minor compared to other environmental stressors, but a deep study shows that future loss of species has the maximum potential effect to the overall environment just as much as global warming and pollution.Warming !---Extinction---LL---2NCExtinction---action now solvesKlare 15 (Michael. 2015. Professor of Peace and World Security @ Hampshire College. “Tomgram: Michael Klare, Are Resource Wars Our Future?” ) 3/20/16 RKAt the end of November, delegations from nearly 200 countries will convene in Paris for what is billed as the most important climate meeting ever held. Officially known as the 21st Conference of the Parties (COP-21) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (the 1992 treaty that designated that phenomenon a threat to planetary health and human survival), the Paris summit will be focused on the adoption of measures that would limit global warming to less than catastrophic levels. If it fails, world temperatures in the coming decades are likely to exceed 2 degrees Celsius (3.5 degrees Fahrenheit), the maximum amount most scientists believe the Earth can endure without experiencing irreversible climate shocks, including soaring temperatures and a substantial rise in global sea levels. A failure to cap carbon emissions guarantees another result as well, though one far less discussed. It will, in the long run, bring on not just climate shocks, but also worldwide instability, insurrection, and warfare. In this sense, COP-21 should be considered not just a climate summit but a peace conference -- perhaps the most significant peace convocation in history. To grasp why, consider the latest scientific findings on the likely impacts of global warming, especially the 2014 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). When first published, that report attracted worldwide media coverage for predicting that unchecked climate change will result in severe droughts, intense storms, oppressive heat waves, recurring crop failures, and coastal flooding, all leading to widespread death and deprivation. Recent events, including a punishing drought in California and crippling heat waves in Europe and Asia, have focused more attention on just such impacts. The IPCC report, however, suggested that global warming would have devastating impacts of a social and political nature as well, including economic decline, state collapse, civil strife, mass migrations, and sooner or later resource wars. These predictions have received far less attention, and yet the possibility of such a future should be obvious enough since human institutions, like natural systems, are vulnerable to climate change. Economies are going to suffer when key commodities -- crops, timber, fish, livestock -- grow scarcer, are destroyed, or fail. Societies will begin to buckle under the strain of economic decline and massive refugee flows. Armed conflict may not be the most immediate consequence of these developments, the IPCC notes, but combine the effects of climate change with already existing poverty, hunger, resource scarcity, incompetent and corrupt governance, and ethnic, religious, or national resentments, and you’re likely to end up with bitter conflicts over access to food, water, land, and other necessities of life. The Coming of Climate Civil Wars Such wars would not arise in a vacuum. Already existing stresses and grievances would be heightened, enflamed undoubtedly by provocative acts and the exhortations of demagogic leaders. Think of the current outbreak of violence in Israel and the Palestinian territories, touched off by clashes over access to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem (also known as the Noble Sanctuary) and the inflammatory rhetoric of assorted leaders. Combine economic and resource deprivation with such situations and you have a perfect recipe for war. The necessities of life are already unevenly distributed across the planet. Often the divide between those with access to adequate supplies of vital resources and those lacking them coincides with long-term schisms along racial, ethnic, religious, or linguistic lines. The Israelis and Palestinians, for example, harbor deep-seated ethnic and religious hostilities but also experience vastly different possibilities when it comes to access to land and water. Add the stresses of climate change to such situations and you can naturally expect passions to boil over. Climate change will degrade or destroy many natural systems, often already under stress, on which humans rely for their survival. Some areas that now support agriculture or animal husbandry may become uninhabitable or capable only of providing for greatly diminished populations. Under the pressure of rising temperatures and increasingly fierce droughts, the southern fringe of the Sahara desert, for example, is now being transformed from grasslands capable of sustaining nomadic herders into an empty wasteland, forcing local nomads off their ancestral lands. Many existing farmlands in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East will suffer a similar fate. Rivers that once supplied water year-round will run only sporadically or dry up altogether, again leaving populations with unpalatable choices. As the IPCC report points out, enormous pressure will be put upon often weak state institutions to adjust to climate change and aid those in desperate need of emergency food, shelter, and other necessities. “Increased human insecurity,” the report says, “may coincide with a decline in the capacity of states to conduct effective adaptation efforts, thus creating the circumstances in which there is greater potential for violent conflict.” A good example of this peril is provided by the outbreak of civil war in Syria and the subsequent collapse of that country in a welter of fighting and a wave of refugees of a sort that hasn’t been seen since World War II. Between 2006 and 2010, Syria experienced a devastating drought in which climate change is believed to have been a factor, turning nearly 60% of the country into desert. Crops failed and most of the country’s livestock perished, forcing millions of farmers into penury. Desperate and unable to live on their land any longer, they moved into Syria’s major cities in search of work, often facing extreme hardship as well as hostility from well-connected urban elites. Had Syrian autocrat Bashar al-Assad responded with an emergency program of jobs and housing for those displaced, perhaps conflict could have been averted. Instead, he cut food and fuel subsidies, adding to the misery of the migrants and fanning the flames of revolt. In the view of several prominent scholars, “the rapidly growing urban peripheries of Syria, marked by illegal settlements, overcrowding, poor infrastructure, unemployment, and crime, were neglected by the Assad government and became the heart of the developing unrest.” A similar picture has unfolded in the Sahel region of Africa, the southern fringe of the Sahara, where severe drought has combined with habitat decline and government neglect to provoke armed violence. The area has faced many such periods in the past, but now, thanks to climate change, there is less time between the droughts. “Instead of 10 years apart, they became five years apart, and now only a couple years apart,” observes Robert Piper, the United Nations regional humanitarian coordinator for the Sahel. “And that, in turn, is putting enormous stresses on what is already an incredibly fragile environment and a highly vulnerable population.” In Mali, one of several nations straddling this region, the nomadic Tuaregs have been particularly hard hit, as the grasslands they rely on to feed their cattle are turning into desert. A Berber-speaking Muslim population, the Tuaregs have long faced hostility from the central government in Bamako, once controlled by the French and now by black Africans of Christian or animist faith. With their traditional livelihoods in peril and little assistance forthcoming from the capital, the Tuaregs revolted in January 2012, capturing half of Mali before being driven back into the Sahara by French and other foreign forces (with U.S. logistical and intelligence support). Consider the events in Syria and Mali previews of what is likely to come later in this century on a far larger scale. As climate change intensifies, bringing not just desertification but rising sea levels in low-lying coastal areas and increasingly devastating heat waves in regions that are already hot, ever more parts of the planet will be rendered less habitable, pushing millions of people into desperate flight. While the strongest and wealthiest governments, especially in more temperate regions, will be better able to cope with these stresses, expect to see the number of failed states grow dramatically, leading to violence and open warfare over what food, arable land, and shelter remains. In other words, imagine significant parts of the planet in the kind of state that Libya, Syria, and Yemen are in today. Some people will stay and fight to survive; others will migrate, almost assuredly encountering a far more violent version of the hostility we already see toward immigrants and refugees in the lands they head for. The result, inevitably, will be a global epidemic of resource civil wars and resource violence of every sort. Water Wars Most of these conflicts will be of an internal, civil character: clan against clan, tribe against tribe, sect against sect. On a climate-changed planet, however, don’t rule out struggles among nations for diminished vital resources -- especially access to water. It’s already clear that climate change will reduce the supply of water in many tropical and subtropical regions, jeopardizing the continued pursuit of agriculture, the health and functioning of major cities, and possibly the very sinews of society. The risk of “water wars” will arise when two or more countries depend on the same key water source -- the Nile, the Jordan, the Euphrates, the Indus, the Mekong, or other trans-boundary river systems -- and one or more of them seek to appropriate a disproportionate share of the ever-shrinking supply of its water. Attempts by countries to build dams and divert the water flow of such riverine systems have already provoked skirmishes and threats of war, as when Turkey and Syria erected dams on the Euphrates, constraining the downstream flow. One system that has attracted particular concern in this regard is the Brahmaputra River, which originates in China (where it is known as the Yarlung Tsangpo) and passes through India and Bangladesh before emptying into the Indian Ocean. China has already erected one dam on the river and has plans for more, producing considerable unease in India, where the Brahmaputra’s water is vital for agriculture. But what has provoked the most alarm is a Chinese plan to channel water from that river to water-scarce areas in the northern part of that country. The Chinese insist that no such action is imminent, but intensified warming and increased drought could, in the future, prompt such a move, jeopardizing India’s water supply and possibly provoking a conflict. “China’s construction of dams and the proposed diversion of the Brahmaputra’s waters is not only expected to have repercussions for water flow, agriculture, ecology, and lives and livelihoods downstream,” Sudha Ramachandran writes in The Diplomat, “it could also become another contentious issue undermining Sino-Indian relations.” Of course, even in a future of far greater water stresses, such situations are not guaranteed to provoke armed combat. Perhaps the states involved will figure out how to share whatever limited resources remain and seek alternative means of survival. Nonetheless, the temptation to employ force is bound to grow as supplies dwindle and millions of people face thirst and starvation. In such circumstances, the survival of the state itself will be at risk, inviting desperate measures. Lowering the Temperature There is much that undoubtedly could be done to reduce the risk of water wars, including the adoption of cooperative water-management schemes and the introduction of the wholesale use of drip irrigation and related processes that use water far more efficiently. However, the best way to avoid future climate-related strife is, of course, to reduce the pace of global warming. Every fraction of a degree less warming achieved in Paris and thereafter will mean that much less blood spilled in future climate-driven resource wars. This is why the Paris climate summit should be viewed as a kind of preemptive peace conference, one that is taking place before the wars truly begin. If delegates to COP-21 succeed in sending us down a path that limits global warming to 2 degrees Celsius, the risk of future violence will be diminished accordingly. Needless to say, even 2 degrees of warming guarantees substantial damage to vital natural systems, potentially severe resource scarcities, and attendant civil strife. As a result, a lower ceiling for temperature rise would be preferable and should be the goal of future conferences. Still, given the carbon emissions pouring into the atmosphere, even a 2-degree cap would be a significant accomplishment.Warming causes extinctionDr. David McCoy et al. 14, MD, Centre for International Health and Development, University College London, “Climate Change and Human Survival,” BRITISH MEDICAL JOURNAL v. 348, 4-2-14, doi: , The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has just published its report on the impacts of global warming. Building on its recent update of the physical science of global warming [1], the IPCC’s new report should leave the world in no doubt about the scale and immediacy of the threat to human survival, health, and well-being. The IPCC has already concluded that it is “virtually certain that human influence has warmed the global climate system” and that it is “extremely likely that more than half of the observed increase in global average surface temperature from 1951 to 2010” is anthropogenic [1]. Its new report outlines the future threats of further global warming: increased scarcity of food and fresh water; extreme weather events; rise in sea level; loss of biodiversity; areas becoming uninhabitable; and mass human migration, conflict and violence. Leaked drafts talk of hundreds of millions displaced in a little over 80 years. This month, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) added its voice: “the well being of people of all nations [is] at risk.” [2] Such comments reaffirm the conclusions of the Lancet/UCL Commission: that climate change is “the greatest threat to human health of the 21st century.” [3] The changes seen so far—massive arctic ice loss and extreme weather events, for example—have resulted from an estimated average temperature rise of 0.89°C since 1901. Further changes will depend on how much we continue to heat the planet. The release of just another 275 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide would probably commit us to a temperature rise of at least 2°C—an amount that could be emitted in less than eight years. [4] “Business as usual” will increase carbon dioxide concentrations from the current level of 400 parts per million (ppm), which is a 40% increase from 280 ppm 150 years ago, to 936 ppm by 2100, with a 50:50 chance that this will deliver global mean temperature rises of more than 4°C. It is now widely understood that such a rise is “incompatible with an organised global community.” [5]. The IPCC warns of “tipping points” in the Earth’s system, which, if crossed, could lead to a catastrophic collapse of interlinked human and natural systems. The AAAS concludes that there is now a “real chance of abrupt, unpredictable and potentially irreversible changes with highly damaging impacts on people around the globe.” [2] And this week a report from the World Meteorological Office (WMO) confirmed that extreme weather events are accelerating. WMO secretary general Michel Jarraud said, “There is no standstill in global warming . . . The laws of physics are non-negotiable.” [6] Warming is real, anthropogenic, and causes extinctionRichard Schiffman 13, environmental writer @ The Atlantic citing the Fifth Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, “What Leading Scientists Want You to Know About Today's Frightening Climate Report,” The Atlantic, 9/27, polar icecaps are melting faster than we thought they would; seas are rising faster than we thought they would; extreme weather events are increasing. Have a nice day! That’s a less than scientifically rigorous summary of the findings of the Fifth Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report released this morning in Stockholm.? Appearing exhausted after a nearly two sleepless days fine-tuning the language of the report, co-chair Thomas Stocker called climate change “the greatest challenge of our time," adding that “each of the last three decades has been successively warmer than the past,” and that this trend is likely to continue into the foreseeable future.? Pledging further action to cut carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said, "This isn’t a run of the mill report to be dumped in a filing cabinet. This isn’t a political document produced by politicians... It’s science."? And that science needs to be communicated to the public, loudly and clearly. I canvassed leading climate researchers for their take on the findings of the vastly influential IPCC report. What headline would they put on the news? What do they hope people hear about this report?? When I asked him for his headline, Michael Mann, the Director of the Earth Systems Science Center at Penn State (a former IPCC author himself) suggested: "Jury In: Climate Change Real, Caused by Us, and a Threat We Must Deal With."? Ted Scambos, a glaciologist and head scientist of the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) based in Boulder would lead with: "IPCC 2013, Similar Forecasts, Better Certainty." While the report, which is issued every six to seven years, offers no radically new or alarming news, Scambos told me, it puts an exclamation point on what we already know, and refines our evolving understanding of global warming.? The IPCC, the indisputable rock star of UN documents, serves as the basis for global climate negotiations, like the ones that took place in Kyoto, Rio, and, more recently, Copenhagen. (The next big international climate meeting is scheduled for 2015 in Paris.) It is also arguably the most elaborately vetted and exhaustively researched scientific paper in existence. Founded in 1988 by the United Nations and the World Meteorological Organization, the IPCC represents the distilled wisdom of over 600 climate researchers in 32 countries on changes in the Earth’s atmosphere, ice and seas. It endeavors to answer the late New York mayor Ed Koch’s famous question “How am I doing?” for all of us. The answer, which won’t surprise anyone who has been following the climate change story, is not very well at all. ? It is now 95 percent likely that human spewed heat-trapping gases — rather than natural variability — are the main cause of climate change, according to today’s report. In 2007 the IPCC’s confidence level was 90 percent, and in 2001 it was 66 percent, and just over 50 percent in 1995. ? What’s more, things are getting worse more quickly than almost anyone thought would happen a few years back.? “If you look at the early IPCC predictions back from 1990 and what has taken place since, climate change is proceeding faster than we expected,” Mann told me by email. Mann helped develop the famous hockey-stick graph, which Al Gore used in his film “An Inconvenient Truth” to dramatize the sharp rise in temperatures in recent times. ? Mann cites the decline of Arctic sea ice to explain : “Given the current trajectory, we're on track for ice-free summer conditions in the Arctic in a matter of a decade or two... There is a similar story with the continental ice sheets, which are losing ice — and contributing to sea level rise — at a faster rate than the [earlier IPCC] models had predicted.”? But there is a lot that we still don’t understand. Reuters noted in a sneak preview of IPCC draft which was leaked in August that, while the broad global trends are clear, climate scientists were “finding it harder than expected to predict the impact in specific regions in coming decades.”? From year to year, the world’s hotspots are not consistent, but move erratically around the globe. The same has been true of heat waves, mega-storms and catastrophic floods, like the recent ones that ravaged the Colorado Front Range. There is broad agreement that climate change is increasing the severity of extreme weather events, but we’re not yet able to predict where and when these will show up. ? “It is like watching a pot boil,” Danish astrophysicist and climate scientist Peter Thejll told me. “We understand why it boils but cannot predict where the next bubble will be.”? There is also uncertainty about an apparent slowdown over the last decade in the rate of air temperature increase. While some critics claim that global warming has “stalled,” others point out that, when rising ocean temperatures are factored in, the Earth is actually gaining heat faster than previously anticipated.? “Temperatures measured over the short term are just one parameter,” said Dr Tim Barnett of the Scripps Institute of Oceanography in an interview. “There are far more critical things going on; the acidification of the ocean is happening a lot faster than anybody thought that it would, it’s sucking up more CO2, plankton, the basic food chain of the planet, are dying, it’s such a hugely important signal. Why aren’t people using that as a measure of what is going on?”? Barnett thinks that recent increases in volcanic activity, which spews smog-forming aerosols into the air that deflect solar radiation and cool the atmosphere, might help account for the temporary slowing of global temperature rise. But he says we shouldn’t let short term fluctuations cause us to lose sight of the big picture.? The dispute over temperatures underscores just how formidable the IPCC’s task of modeling the complexity of climate change is. Issued in three parts (the next two installments are due out in the spring), the full version of the IPCC will end up several times the length of Leo Tolstoy’s epic War and Peace. Yet every last word of the U.N. document needs to be signed off on by all of the nations on earth. ? “I do not know of any other area of any complexity and importance at all where there is unanimous agreement... and the statements so strong,” Mike MacCracken, Chief Scientist for Climate Change Programs, Climate Institute in Washington, D.C. told me in an email. “What IPCC has achieved is remarkable (and why it merited the Nobel Peace Prize granted in 2007).”? Not surprisingly, the IPCC’s conclusions tend to be “conservative by design,” Ken Caldeira, an atmospheric scientist with the Carnegie Institution’s Department of Global Ecology told me: “The IPCC is not supposed to represent the controversial forefront of climate science. It is supposed to represents what nearly all scientists agree on, and it does that quite effectively.”? Nevertheless, even these understated findings are inevitably controversial. Roger Pielke Jr., the Director of the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research at the University of Colorado, Boulder suggested a headline that focuses on the cat fight that today’s report is sure to revive: "Fresh Red Meat Offered Up in the Climate Debate, Activists and Skeptics Continue Fighting Over It." Pielke should know. A critic of Al Gore, who has called his own detractors "climate McCarthyists," Pielke has been a lightning rod for the political controversy which continues to swirl around the question of global warming, and what, if anything, we should do about it. ? The public’s skepticism of climate change took a dive after Hurricane Sandy. Fifty-four percent of Americans are now saying that the effects of global warming have already begun. But 41 percent surveyed in the same Gallup poll believe news about global warming is generally exaggerated, and there is a smaller but highly passionate minority that continues to believe the whole thing is a hoax. ? For most climate experts, however, the battle is long over — at least when it comes to the science. What remains in dispute is not whether climate change is happening, but how fast things are going to get worse.? There are some possibilities that are deliberately left out of the IPCC projections, because we simply don’t have enough data yet to model them. Jason Box, a visiting scholar at the Byrd Polar Research Center told me in an email interview that: “The scary elephant in the closet is terrestrial and oceanic methane release triggered by warming.” The IPCC projections don’t include the possibility — some scientists say likelihood — that huge quantities of methane (a greenhouse gas thirty times as potent as CO2) will eventually be released from thawing permafrost and undersea methane hydrate reserves. Box said that the threshhold “when humans lose control of potential management of the problem, may be sooner than expected.”? Box, whose work has been instrumental in documenting the rapid deterioration of the Greenland ice sheet, also believes that the latest IPCC predictions (of a maximum just under three foot ocean rise by the end of the century) may turn out to be wildly optimistic, if the Greenland ice sheet breaks up. “We are heading into uncharted territory” he said. “We are creating a different climate than the Earth has ever seen.” ? The head of the IPCC, Rajendra Pachauri, speaks for the scientific consensus when he says that time is fast running out to avoid the catastrophic collapse of the natural systems on which human life depends. What he recently told a group of climate scientist could be the most chilling headline of all for the U.N. report: ? "We have five minutes before midnight."Warming causes extinction- scientific consensusDon Flournoy 12, Citing Feng Hsu, PhD NASA Scientist @ the Goddard Space Flight Center and Don is a PhD and MA from UT, former Dean of the University College @ Ohio University, former Associate Dean at SUNY and Case Institute of Technology, Former Manager for University/Industry Experiments for the NASA ACTS Satellite, currently Professor of Telecommunications @ Scripps College of Communications, Ohio University, “Solar Power Satellites,” January 2012, Springer Briefs in Space Development, p. 10-11In the Online Journal of Space Communication , Dr. Feng Hsu, a NASA scientist at Goddard Space Flight Center, a research center in the forefront of science of space and Earth, writes, “The evidence of global warming is alarming,” noting the potential for a catastrophic planetary climate change is real and troubling (Hsu 2010 ) . Hsu and his NASA colleagues were engaged in monitoring and analyzing climate changes on a global scale, through which they received first-hand scientific information and data relating to global warming issues, including the dynamics of polar ice cap melting. After discussing this research with colleagues who were world experts on the subject, he wrote: I now have no doubt global temperatures are rising, and that global warming is a serious problem confronting all of humanity. No matter whether these trends are due to human interference or to the cosmic cycling of our solar system, there are two basic facts that are crystal clear: (a) there is overwhelming scientific evidence showing positive correlations between the level of CO2 concentrations in Earth’s atmosphere with respect to the historical fluctuations of global temperature changes; and (b) the overwhelming majority of the world’s scientific community is in agreement about the risks of a potential catastrophic global climate change. That is, if we humans continue to ignore this problem and do nothing, if we continue dumping huge quantities of greenhouse gases into Earth’s biosphere, humanity will be at dire risk (Hsu 2010 ) . As a technology risk assessment expert, Hsu says he can show with some confidence that the planet will face more risk doing nothing to curb its fossil-based energy addictions than it will in making a fundamental shift in its energy supply. “This,” he writes, “is because the risks of a catastrophic anthropogenic climate change can be potentially the extinction of human species, a risk that is simply too high for us to take any chances” (Hsu 2010 ).Warming causes extinction – abrupt changes causes short term escalationGillis ‘15Abrupt changes like extreme water shortages or agricultural collapse collapses civilization from warming now.Extinction from refugees, government collapse, plant and animal extinction, and flooding.Products being emitted now create 8 degree warming in the future – makes the earth unable to sustain human civilizationJustin, climate reporter for the New York Times, Winner of the Columbia University Oakes Award for Distinguished Environmental Journalism, Graduate of MIT and Harvard’s Knight Science Journalism Fellowship. 11/28/2015, “Short Answers to Hard Questions About Climate Change,” SMAs of October 2015, the Earth had warmed by about 1.7 degrees Fahrenheit since 1880, when records begin at a global scale. That figure includes the surface of the ocean. The warming is greater over land, and greater still in the Arctic and parts of Antarctica. The number may sound low, but as an average over the surface of an entire planet, it is actually high, which explains why much of the world’s land ice is starting to melt and the oceans are rising at an accelerating pace. The heat accumulating in the Earth because of human emissions is roughly equal to the heat that would be released by 400,000 Hiroshima atomic bombs exploding across the planet every day. Scientists believe most and probably all of the warming since 1950 was caused by the human release of greenhouse gases. If emissions continue unchecked, they say the global warming could ultimately exceed 8 degrees Fahrenheit, which would transform the planet and undermine its capacity to support a large human population. 2. How much trouble are we in? For future generations, big trouble. The risks are much greater over the long run than over the next few decades, but the emissions that create those risks are happening now. Over the coming 25 or 30 years, scientists say, the climate is likely to resemble that of today, although gradually getting warmer. Rainfall will be heavier in many parts of the world, but the periods between rains will most likely grow hotter and therefore drier. The number of hurricanes and typhoons may actually fall, but the ones that do occur will draw energy from a hotter ocean surface, and therefore may be more intense, on average, than those of the past. Coastal flooding will grow more frequent and damaging. Longer term, if emissions continue to rise unchecked, the risks are profound. Scientists fear climate effects so severe that they might destabilize governments, produce waves of refugees, precipitate the sixth mass extinction of plants and animals in Earth’s history, and melt the polar ice caps, causing the seas to rise high enough to flood most of the world’s coastal cities. All of this could take hundreds or even thousands of years to play out, conceivably providing a cushion of time for civilization to adjust, but experts cannot rule out abrupt changes, such as a collapse of agriculture, that would throw society into chaos much sooner. Bolder efforts to limit emissions would reduce these risks, or at least slow the effects, but it is already too late to eliminate the risks entirely.Warming !---Reversible---2NCWarming is reversible---staying below 500PPM is keyStern 15 (Stern studied the Mathematical Tripos and was awarded a is Bachelor of Arts degree in mathematics at Peterhouse, Cambridge, and his DPhilEcon in economics at Nuffield College, Oxford with thesis on the rate of economic development and the theory of optimum planning in 1971 supervised by James Mirrlees, “Why Are We Waiting?: The Logic, Urgency, and Promise of Tackling Climate Change”, MIT Press, Apr 17, 2015)The scale of the problem and the risks we face if we fail to act are potentially immense. It is possible to reduce these risks. Much discussion over recent years has focused on the scale of action required to limit temperature increases to less than 2°C from levels in the mid-nineteenth century. This is a widely accepted target in international discussion as a temperature beyond which climate change is "dangerous," and it is embodied in international agreements such as that of the UNFCCC in Cancun in December 2010. At temperature increases above 2°C, the probabilities of nonlinearities and tipping points are believed to increase greatly. Clearly, a higher probability of success would be preferable (for instance offering us at least a 66% chance of limiting the increase to 2°C). The target is sometimes expressed in terms of 66% but more often in terms of a 50-50 chance of a 2°C increase. We have to use such a formulation because outcomes are not defined with certainty and there is a probability distribution around any central estimate. Indeed, a 50% chance of going above "dangerous" levels is itself worrying, but this has been a standard benchmark. It will be broadly necessary to hold concentrations of GHGs to below 500 ppm CO2e, and reduce from there, to give a reasonable (50%) chance of staying below 2°C. A plausible emissions path would see global emissions fall from around 50 billion tonnes of CO2e in 2013' to under 35 billion tonnes in 2030, and under 20 billion tonnes in 2050. We are actually likely to have to go well under 20 billion tonnes by 2050. We can do less now and more later. For example, with strong assumptions about the ability to go to zero or negative emissions in the second half of the century, the 35 billion tonnes in 2030 might be raised to 42. Figure 1.2 illustrates the range of feasible paths we could follow that are consistent with at least a 50-50 chance of holding temperature increase to 2°C. The message is the same in all: for that objective, the emissions trend needs to change significantly and rapidly. While we can in principle do more earlier and less later, or vice versa, the shape of plausible paths will be similar, and it could be very costly to catch up if we postpone actions. An alternative way of expressing future possible paths is to think of there being only a certain allowance of total cumulative emissions, remaining—a limited "carbon space"—if we are to keep warming to only 2°C. While figure 1.2 shows several emissions trajectories, the area und each curve is similar,' and it is this area that must fit into the "carbon space" remaining. New important reports such as from the IPCC estimates the remaining “space” consistent with 2°C trajectories as being in the region of 1-1.5 trillion tonnes of CO2 emissions. 29 To a rough approximation, 30 this is equivalent at the very most to current annual world CO2 emissions over a 40-year period. Given that emissions rising, that space would be exhausted well before 40 years without strong action. Warming !---Turns Conflict---2NCClimate change magnifies every global conflict—causes prolif, nuclear terrorism, and nuclear warScheffran 16, Professor at the Institute for Geography at the University of Hamburg and head of the Research Group Climate Change and Security in the CliSAP Cluster of Excellence and the Center for Earth System Research and Sustainability, et al., April 2016, “The Climate-Nuclear Nexus: Exploring the linkages between climate change and nuclear threats,” change and nuclear weapons represent two key threats of our time. Climate change endangers ecosystems and social systems all over the world. The degradation of natural resources, the decline of water and food supplies, forced migration, and more frequent and intense disasters will greatly affect population clusters, big and small. Climate-related shocks will add stress to the world’s existing conflicts and act as a “threat multiplier” in already fragile regions. This could contribute to a decline of international stability and trigger hostility between people and nations. Meanwhile, the 15,500 nuclear weapons that remain in the arsenals of only a few states possess the destructive force to destroy life on Earth as we know multiple times over. With nuclear deterrence strategies still in place, and hundreds of weapons on ‘hair trigger alert’, the risks of nuclear war caused by accident, miscalculation or intent remain plentiful and imminent. Despite growing recognition that climate change and nuclear weapons pose critical security risks, the linkages between both threats are largely ignored. However, nuclear and climate risks interfere with each other in a mutually enforcing way. Conflicts induced by climate change could contribute to global insecurity, which, in turn, could enhance the chance of a nuclear weapon being used, could create more fertile breeding grounds for terrorism, including nuclear terrorism, and could feed the ambitions among some states to acquire nuclear arms. Furthermore, as evidenced by a series of incidents in recent years, extreme weather events, environmental degradation and major seismic events can directly impact the safety and security of nuclear installations. Moreover, a nuclear war could lead to a rapid and prolonged drop in average global temperatures and significantly disrupt the global climate for years to come, which would have disastrous implications for agriculture, threatening the food supply for most of the world. Finally, climate change, nuclear weapons and nuclear energy pose threats of intergenerational harm, as evidenced by the transgenerational effects of nuclear testing and nuclear power accidents and the lasting impacts on the climate, environment and public health by carbon emissions. Warming !---Turns Econ---2NCWarming turns growth and creates new poverty traps—extreme weather, sea level rise, damage to crop production collapse the economy.Worland 15 (Justin, Writer for TIME “Climate Change Could Wreck the Global Economy”. )Temperature rise due to climate change may radically damage the global economy and slow growth in the coming decades if nothing is done to slow the pace of warming, according to new research. The researchers behind the study, published in the journal Nature, found that temperature change due to unmitigated global warming will leave global GDP per capita 23% lower in 2100 than it would be without any warming. “We’re basically throwing away money by not addressing the issue,” said Marshall Burke, an assistant professor at Stanford University. “We see our study as providing an estimate of the benefits of reducing emissions.” The economic effects of climate change may be even worse than this study makes them sounds. The research relies on historical data from countries around the world on how temperature increase has affected productivity. This means the study does not account for the economic impact of sea level rise, storms or any of the other expected effects of climate change beyond simple warming. “Sea level rise, increased storm intensity…if you think those things are going to worsen the effects of climate change, then our estimates would be an underestimate of the potential impacts, which is sort of terrifying,” said Burke. This study is far from the first to suggest that climate change will slow economic growth. Big business has been especially keen on highlighting the potential damage. A Citigroup report released last month found that minimizing temperature rises to 2.7?F (1.5?C) could minimize global GDP loss by $50 trillion compared to a rise of 8.1?F (4.5?C) in the coming decades. The study breaks down productivity into agricultural and non-agricultural fields. The effect of agricultural productive is easy to explain: crops grow most productively within a certain temperature range. (The effects of warming on crop productivity have been well documented.) But research still don’t know why warm weather decreases productivity for workers in other fields.Warming !---Turns Heg---2NCTurns hegChuck Hagel 14, US Secretary of Defense, “Department of Defense: FY 2014 Climate Change Adaptation Roadmap,” , DOA: 1-13-15, y2kThe responsibility of the Department of Defense is the security of our country. That requires thinking ahead and planning for a wide range of contingencies. Among the future trends that will impact our national security is climate change. Rising global temperatures, changing precipitation patterns, climbing sea levels, and more extreme weather events will intensify the challenges of global instability, hunger, poverty, and conflict. They will likely lead to food and water shortages, pandemic disease, disputes over refugees and resources, and destruction by natural disasters in regions across the globe. In our defense strategy, we refer to climate change as a “threat multiplier” because it has the potential to exacerbate many of the challenges we are dealing with today – from infectious disease to terrorism. We are already beginning to see some of these impacts. A changing climate will have real impacts on our military and the way it executes its missions. The military could be called upon more often to support civil authorities, and provide humanitarian assistance and disaster relief in the face of more frequent and more intense natural disasters. Our coastal installations are vulnerable to rising sea levels and increased flooding, while droughts, wildfires, and more extreme temperatures could threaten many of our training activities. Our supply chains could be impacted, and we will need to ensure our critical equipment works under more extreme weather conditions. Weather has always affected military operations, and as the climate changes, the way we execute operations may be altered or constrained. While scientists are converging toward consensus on future climate projections, uncertainty remains. But this cannot be an excuse for delaying action. Every day, our military deals with global uncertainty. Our planners know that, as military strategist Carl von Clausewitz wrote, “all action must, to a certain extent, be planned in a mere twilight.”Warming !---A2: Not Real---2NCWarming is real, anthropogenic, represents a global threatMcCoy 14 (Dr. David McCoy et al., MD, Centre for International Health and Development, University College London, “Climate Change and Human Survival,” British Medical Journal v. 348, 4-2-14, doi: ) The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has just published its report on the impacts of global warming. Building on its recent update of the physical science of global warming [1], the IPCC’s new report should leave the world in no doubt about the scale and immediacy of the threat to human survival, health, and well-being. The IPCC has already concluded that it is “virtually certain that human influence has warmed the global climate system” and that it is “extremely likely that more than half of the observed increase in global average surface temperature from 1951 to 2010” is anthropogenic [1]. Its new report outlines the future threats of further global warming: increased scarcity of food and fresh water; extreme weather events; rise in sea level; loss of biodiversity; areas becoming uninhabitable; and mass human migration, conflict and violence. Leaked drafts talk of hundreds of millions displaced in a little over 80 years. This month, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) added its voice: “the well being of people of all nations [is] at risk.” [2] Such comments reaffirm the conclusions of the Lancet/UCL Commission: that climate change is “the greatest threat to human health of the 21st century.” [3] The changes seen so far—massive arctic ice loss and extreme weather events, for example—have resulted from an estimated average temperature rise of 0.89°C since 1901. Further changes will depend on how much we continue to heat the planet. The release of just another 275 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide would probably commit us to a temperature rise of at least 2°C—an amount that could be emitted in less than eight years. [4] “Business as usual” will increase carbon dioxide concentrations from the current level of 400 parts per million (ppm), which is a 40% increase from 280 ppm 150 years ago, to 936 ppm by 2100, with a 50:50 chance that this will deliver global mean temperature rises of more than 4°C. It is now widely understood that such a rise is “incompatible with an organised global community.” [5]. The IPCC warns of “tipping points” in the Earth’s system, which, if crossed, could lead to a catastrophic collapse of interlinked human and natural systems. The AAAS concludes that there is now a “real chance of abrupt, unpredictable and potentially irreversible changes with highly damaging impacts on people around the globe.” [2] And this week a report from the World Meteorological Office (WMO) confirmed that extreme weather events are accelerating. WMO secretary general Michel Jarraud said, “There is no standstill in global warming . . . The laws of physics are non-negotiable.” [6] Warming is real and causes extinctionFlournoy 12?- PhD and MA from the University of Texas, Former Dean of the University College @ Ohio University, Former Associate Dean @ State University of New York and Case Institute of Technology, Project Manager for University/Industry Experiments for the NASA ACTS Satellite, Citing Feng Hsu, PhD NASA Scientist @ the Goddard Space Flight Center (Don, "Solar Power Satellites," p. 10-11)In the Online Journal of Space Communication , Dr. Feng Hsu, a ?NASA scientist at Goddard Space Flight Center, a research center in the forefront of science of space and Earth, writes, “The evidence of global warming is alarming,” noting?the potential for a catastrophic planetary climate change is real and troubling?(Hsu 2010 ) .?Hsu and?his?NASA colleagues?were engaged in monitoring and analyzing climate changes on a global scale, through which they received first-hand scientific information and data relating to global warming issues, including the dynamics of polar ice cap melting. After discussing this research with colleagues who were world experts on the subject, he wrote: I?now have no doubt global temperatures are rising, and that global warming is a serious problem confronting all of humanity. No matter whether these trends are due to human interference or to the cosmic cycling of our solar system, there are two basic facts that are crystal clear: (a)?there is overwhelming scientific evidence showing positive correlations between the level of CO2 concentrations?in Earth’s atmosphere?with respect to?the historical?fluctuations of global temperature?changes;?and?(b)?the overwhelming majority of the world’s scientific community is in agreement about the risks of a potential catastrophic global climate change. That is, if we humans continue to ignore this problem and do nothing,?if we continue dumping huge quantities of greenhouse gases into Earth’s biosphere, humanity will be at dire risk?(Hsu 2010 ) . As a technology risk assessment expert, Hsu says he can show with some confidence that the planet will face more risk doing nothing to curb its fossil-based energy addictions than it will in making a fundamental shift in its energy supply. “This,” he writes, “is because?the risks?of a catastrophic anthropogenic climate change?can be potentially the extinction of human species, a risk that is simply too high for us to take any chances” (Hsu 2010 )?Warming !---A2: Adaptation---2NCEven if some climate change is locked in, rapid mitigation now prevents catastrophic impacts – adaptation alone fails Pancost 16 (Professor Rich Pancost, organic geochemist, biogeochemist and palaeoclimatologist. Director of the interdisciplinary University of Bristol Cabot Institute, August 2, 2016. “Climate Change: Mitigation or adaptation?” )Now, as then, the sole focus on adaptation is deeply flawed. Let’s start with those arguing that either the mitigation opportunity has passed by or that nations will be unwilling to enact the perceived painful policies necessary to limit warming. Aside from the ethical flaws of this argument, it would be naive for investors to assume that an agreement among nearly 200 nations will have no legal or policy consequences; even the INDCs, though they are incomplete measures, will require vast social, economic, and political change. However, the central argument that mitigation remains vital and necessary is scientific. Those suggesting that mitigation has failed or will fail tend to fixate on the 2°C global warming limit at the centre of policy discussions for the past decade and the acute challenge we face in achieving it. There are good reasons to have a 2°C (or lower) limit, as that is the representative temperature when a number of system changes begin to occur, very high sea level rise becomes locked in, and changes in weather, including extreme events, becomes very difficult to predict, all of which will have dramatic economic and social impacts. Climate change, however, is not a binary. We are already experiencing the consequences of anthropogenic climate disruption. These will become more pronounced as the planet approaches 2°C of warming. And they will become even worse at higher CO2 levels and higher global temperatures. The Earth system does have some bimodal features but the tipping points between them occur at a range of temperatures, with great uncertainty, and in complex ways. Sea level rise showcases this well. In the Pliocene era, about 3 million years ago, CO2 levels were 400 to 500 ppm; temperatures were 2°C higher; and the sea level was 5 to 20 metres higher than today. Such changes would be devastating in modern times, with huge infrastructure costs, long-term economic consequences, and unprecedented social displacement. The last time Earth experienced 500 to 1000 ppm CO2, however, temperatures were about 4-5°C higher, and sea level was 70-100 metres higher than today. These represent a long-term Earth system equilibrium so neither scenario is expected for the next several hundred years or more; but they are illustrative of the profound differences between a 2°C and 5°C global warming scenario. Crucially, unabated biomass loss and fossil fuel burning—especially with new technologies allowing unconventional shale gas and tar sands to be exploited—could result in warming of 5 to 6°C, maybe even more depending on how effective we are at tapping new reservoirs, whether climate sensitivity is at the high or low end of our estimates, and whether positive feedbacks in the Earth system will exacerbate our fossil fuel impacts. To the best of our understanding, 5 to 6°C global warming will have vast and devastating impacts on our climate and ecosystems, probably with similarly devastating impacts on society. In short, even if we fail to sufficiently curtail fossil fuel usage to limit global warming to 2°C, we must certainly do so to prevent far more extreme warming. As long as fossil fuel resources exist to tempt us, mitigation will always be a priority. And yet. Even under our most ambitious mitigation strategies, climate change will happen and we must adapt to it. Already, with the Earth having experienced only about 1°C warming, droughts, floods and heat waves—many of which have been directly attributed to global warming—are occurring. When that warming has combined with natural climate variability, which happened with the strong El Ni?o of this past year, local affects are even more pronounced, whether it be global coral bleaching or crippling heat waves in the tropics. These events, in turn, have affected food security, productivity and global security. They could destroy marine ecosystems and in turn one of our most important food sources and one of nature’s most beautiful features. And yet, we are committed to further emissions, further warming, and further climate disruption. It is hoped that if we limit warming to 1.5°C, the most severe aspects of sea level rise, extreme weather and ecosystem disruption will be avoided—but we do not know that and some have argued that we have already locked in up to 4 metres of sea level rise. If we limit warming to 2°C, we will almost certainly have to adapt to sea level rise, human displacement, infrastructure devastation; it will also expose us to feedback risks that could add additional warming beyond our direct influence. There is no choice between avoiding severe climate disruption or adapting to it. We will do both. We will leave fossil fuel assets in the ground and we will adapt to some environmental disruption. The only choices we have are how we balance those two needs, how we do so fairly, and how rapidly we make the inevitable transition.Laundry list of adaptation constraints-IPCC Climate Change Synthesis Report of 2014, published in 2015Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), “Climate Change 2014 Synthesis Report Fifth Assessment Report”, , page 20, DOA 5/31/16, SH)Constraints can interact to impede adaptation planning and implementation (high confidence). Common constraints on? implementation arise from the following: limited financial and human resources; limited integration or coordination of governance;? uncertainties about projected impacts; different perceptions of risks; competing values; absence of key adaptation? leaders and advocates; and limited tools to monitor adaptation effectiveness. Another constraint includes insufficient? research, monitoring, and observation and the finance to maintain them. {3.3}? Summary for Policymakers? 20? SPM? Greater rates and magnitude of climate change increase the likelihood of exceeding adaptation limits (high confidence).? Limits to adaptation emerge from the interaction among climate change and biophysical and/or socio-economic constraints.? Further, poor planning or implementation, overemphasizing short-term outcomes or failing to sufficiently anticipate consequences? can result in maladaptation, increasing the vulnerability or exposure of the target group in the future or the vulnerability? of other people, places or sectors (medium evidence, high agreement). Underestimating the complexity of adaptation? as a social process can create unrealistic expectatiogfr 656 5 6 ns about achieving intended adaptation outcomes. {3.3}Warming !---A2: Not Anthropogenic---2NCWarming is anthropogenicNuccitelli 16 (Dana. 4/19. Dana Nuccitelli is an environmental scientist with a background in astrophysics. He has published climate-related papers on various subjects, from the build-up of heat in the Earth's climate system to the expert consensus on human-caused global warming. Dana has written for since 2010, and for The Guardian since 2013. “Study: humans have caused all the global warming since 1950” ) 6/1/16 RKA new study published in Climate Dynamics has found that humans are responsible for virtually all of the observed global warming since the mid-20th century. It’s not a novel result – in fact, most global warming attribution studies have arrived at the same general result – but this study uses a new approach. The percentage contribution to global warming over the past 50-65 years in two categories: human causes (left) and natural causes (right), from various peer-reviewed studies. The studies are Tett et al. 2000 (T00, dark blue), Meehl et al. 2004 (M04, red), Stone et al. 2007 (S07, green), Lean and Rind 2008 (LR08, purple), Huber and Knutti 2011 (HK11, light blue), Gillett et al. 2012 (G12, orange), Wigley and Santer 2012 (WG12, dark green), Jones et al. 2013 (J13, pink), IPCC AR5 (IPCC, light green), and Ribes et al. 2016 (R16, light purple). The numbers are best estimates from each study. Facebook Twitter Pinterest The percentage contribution to global warming over the past 50-65 years in two categories: human causes (left) and natural causes (right), from various peer-reviewed studies. The studies are Tett et al. 2000 (T00, dark blue), Meehl et al. 2004 (M04, red), Stone et al. 2007 (S07, green), Lean and Rind 2008 (LR08, purple), Huber and Knutti 2011 (HK11, light blue), Gillett et al. 2012 (G12, orange), Wigley and Santer 2012 (WG12, dark green), Jones et al. 2013 (J13, pink), IPCC AR5 (IPCC, light green), and Ribes et al. 2016 (R16, light purple). The numbers are best estimates from each study. Illustration: Dana Nuccitelli Studies attempting to figure out the global warming contributions of various human and natural sources usually use a statistical approach known as ‘linear regression’. This approach assumes we know the pattern of warming that each source (forcing) will cause, but we don’t know how big the resulting warming will be. For example, we know that greenhouse gases cause more warming over land than water, the most in the Arctic, and more warming in response to rising atmospheric carbon dioxide levels. Advertisement As an example of this approach, this animated graphic shows what happens when a 2011 study by Foster & Rahmstorf removed the known natural influences from the observed global surface temperature record, leaving behind the human-caused global warming signal. We have an idea how much warming greenhouse gases will cause, but the range is fairly large (1.5 to 4.5°C in response to a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide). So, the standard approach uses the known patterns from each forcing (greenhouse gases, other human pollutants, the sun, volcanoes, etc.), and without assuming the effectiveness of each, statistically determines how much each pattern has contributed to the observed temperature changes. However, some papers have argued that we do have some knowledge about the effectiveness of each forcing, and should use that information in these statistical studies. Conversely, the patterns of some forcings, like human aerosol pollution, are also uncertain and complicate this approach. As the authors describe it, this new study “basically proposes a symmetric treatment of the magnitude and the pattern of the response to each forcing.” Their statistical model assumes that the temperature influence from several individual forcings will add up to the total temperature influence from all the forcings. They then run various tests to check consistency between the observed warming and the Earth’s natural temperature variability, the expected temperature response from all the forcings, or the expected response from subsets of forcings. The study considered temperature changes for the period of 1951–2010. During that time, global surface temperatures warmed about 0.65°C. During that same period, their statistical approach which combines observations and climate models outputs found that humans have caused 0.67 ± 0.12°C warming, while natural factors have had essentially no effect on global temperatures (-0.01 ± 0.02°C). This result is similar to the conclusion in the latest IPCC report: It is extremely likely [95 percent confidence] more than half of the observed increase in global average surface temperature from 1951 to 2010 was caused by the anthropogenic increase in greenhouse gas concentrations and other anthropogenic forcings together … The best estimate of the human-induced contribution to warming is similar to the observed warming over this period ... The contribution from natural forcings is likely to be in the range of ?0.1°C to 0.1°C, and from internal variability is likely to be in the range of ?0.1°C to 0.1°C. It’s also consistent with numerous previous global warming attribution studies, including those using the aforementioned statistical linear regression approach. Lead author Aurélien Ribes told me: The main outcome of this study is to develop a new method that deals with uncertainty in a more comprehensive way. By using this new method, we hope to further narrow the uncertainty in past and future greenhouse gas-induced warming in the near future. In other words, this new paper adds to the mountain of evidence pointing to humans as the dominant cause of global warming since 1950, using a new statistical approach to answer the question. Disentangling how much warming human carbon pollution has caused from the amount of cooling caused by human aerosol pollution remains a challenging task, but rapid global warming is the net result of human activities. This mountain of scientific and statistical evidence is the reason why there is a 90–100% consensus among climate science experts that humans are responsible for global warming. It’s what scientists call a “knowledge-based consensus”, as described in the video below.Humans are causing rapid climate change- acting now is keyDana Nuccitelli, 16, (2-24-2016, Dana Nuccitelli is an environmental scientist with a background in astrophysics. He has published climate-related papers on various subjects, from the build-up of heat in the Earth's climate system to the expert consensus on human-caused global warming. Dana has written for since 2010, and for The Guardian since 2013. "Earth is warming 50x faster than when it comes out of an ice age", ) 6-1-2016 RKThe Nature Climate Change study didn’t just look at sea level rise; it also looked at global temperature changes. Earth’s sharpest climate changes over the past half million years have occurred when the planet transitions from a ‘glacial’ to ‘interglacial’ period, and vice-versa. Right now we’re in a warm interglacial period, having come out of the last ice age (when New York City and Chicago were under an ice sheet) about 12,000 years ago. During that transition, the Earth’s average surface temperature warmed about 4°C, but that temperature rise occurred over a period of about 10,000 years. In contrast, humans have caused nearly 1°C warming over the past 150 years, and we could trigger anywhere from another 1 to 4°C warming over the next 85 years, depending on how much more carbon we pump into the atmosphere. Atmospheric carbon dioxide levels (top) and average global surface temperature (bottom) from the past 20,000 years to the next 10,000 years in various emissions scenarios. Facebook Twitter Pinterest Atmospheric carbon dioxide levels (top) and average global surface temperature (bottom) from the past 20,000 years to the next 10,000 years in various emissions scenarios. Illustration: Clark et al. (2016), Nature Climate Change. What humans are in the process of doing to the climate makes the transition out of the last ice age look like a casual stroll through the park. We’re already warming the Earth about 20 times faster than during the ice age transition, and over the next century that rate could increase to 50 times faster or more. We’re in the process of destabilizing the global climate far more quickly than happens even in some of the most severe natural climate change events. Advertisement That rapid climate destabilization is what has climate scientists worried. It’s faster than many species can adapt to, and could therefore cause widespread extinctions, among other dangerous climate change consequences. Coastal flooding in places like Florida has already become much more common than it was just 50 years ago, and sea level rise is expected to keep accelerating. As Aaron Goldner, one of the Nature Climate Change study authors told me, the next 10–20 years are critical in determining which path we follow. There’s a big difference between an eventual sea level rise of 1.7 meters and one of 9 meters. The sooner we transition away from fossil fuels and cut our carbon pollution, the better we’ll be able to limit the climate destabilization and associated damages. It’s a sobering thought: our children, grandchildren, and future generations for hundreds, even thousands of years will feel the impacts of the choices we make over the next decade.Warming is anthropogenic and rapid--- temperature data provesDana Nuccitelli, 16, (1-20-2016, Dana Nuccitelli is an environmental scientist with a background in astrophysics. He has published climate-related papers on various subjects, from the build-up of heat in the Earth's climate system to the expert consensus on human-caused global warming. Dana has written for since 2010, and for The Guardian since 2013. "Record hot 2015 gave us a glimpse at the future of global warming", ) 6-1-2016 RK2015 smashed the record for hottest year by about 0.14°C. To put that into perspective, the previous two hottest years (2014 and 2010) only broke the prior records by 0.002°C, according to Berkeley Earth data. The only time the temperature record was shattered by such a large margin was in the monster El Ni?o year of 1998. Various global surface temperature datasets, 1850–2015. Facebook Twitter Pinterest Various global surface temperature datasets, 1850–2015. Illustration: Zeke Hausfather While the current El Ni?o event is also becoming monstrously strong, it’s only now reaching its peak intensity, and there’s an approximately 4-month lag before changes in El Ni?o are reflected in global surface temperature changes. Thus, the El Ni?o of 1998 had a greater warming influence than its 2015 counterpart. 2015 was nevertheless more than 0.2°C hotter than 1998, due to human-caused global warming. As the graphic below shows (animated version here), there’s a consistent warming trend among El Ni?o years, La Ni?a years, and neutral years. Over the past 50 years, there’s a 0.16°C per decade trend among each category, and individual years fall close to those trend lines. That underlying human-caused global warming trend is what’s causing annual temperatures to so frequently break records, with 4 new record-hot years in the past decade. Berkeley Earth average global surface temperatures since 1965 categorized by type of El Ni?o year. Facebook Twitter Pinterest Berkeley Earth average global surface temperatures since 1965 categorized by type of El Ni?o year. Illustration: Dana Nuccitelli As NASA GISS director Gavin Schmidt said, The El Ni?o that we’re seeing is starting at the end of 2015, and so there hasn’t been enough time for that to really have an impact on the annual mean temperatures. So 2015 was warm even though there was an El Ni?o, and it would’ve been a record year even if you abstract out the El Ni?o affect, 2015 would’ve been a record warm year by a long chalk. And due to the aforementioned lag, 2016 could be even hotter yet. Prof Adam Scaife, head of long-range forecasting at the Met Office, said in an interview with Carbon Brief, Given the strength of the current El Ni?o, we expect 2016 to be even warmer globally than 2015. The lagged effects of El Ni?o are already starting to appear in the monthly temperature observations, which are registering more than 0.8 degrees above norm in recent months. This is consistent with our forecast for unprecedented warmth in the coming year. Overall, we expect El Ni?o to contribute around 25% to what will most likely be a new record global temperature in 2016. Much of the rest is down to climate change. If 2016 breaks the temperature record yet again, it will be the first time in the past 150+ years that three consecutive years set a new annual global temperature record. What about the satellite data? Advertisement Contrarians have responded to the news of record-shattering 2015 temperatures by noting that in the satellite data, it was only the third-hottest year on record in the lower atmosphere. There are two main reasons for this. First, atmospheric temperatures are more sensitive to changes in El Ni?o than surface temperatures. As a result, satellites still have 1998 as the hottest year on record, 0.14°C hotter than the second-hottest year of 2010, even though surface temperatures were about 0.07°C hotter in 2010 than 1998, and more than 0.2°C hotter in 2015. Second, there’s an even bigger lag between changes in El Ni?o and changes in atmospheric temperatures, where it’s about 6–7 months. Thus the peak temperature influence of the current monster El Ni?o won’t be reflected in the satellite temperature record until summer 2016. As a result, 2016 is likely to become the hottest year in the satellite record. However, the surface temperature data are more relevant to humans because they reflect temperatures where we live, and are less uncertain and more reliable than indirect satellite temperature estimates. How hot are the oceans? Over 90% of the energy trapped by the increased greenhouse effect goes into warming he oceans. A recent paper led by Peter Gleckler at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory estimated that the oceans have been building up heat at a rate equivalent to 4 Hiroshima atomic bomb detonations per second since 1998. That’s over 2.3 billion atomic bomb detonations worth of heat building up in the oceans over the past 17 years. Widget counting global heat accumulation, up to 2.3 billion atomic bomb detonations since 1998. Widget counting global heat accumulation, up to 2.3 billion atomic bomb detonations since 1998. Illustration: During that time, the oceans accumulated as much heat as they did during the previous 130 years, with 2015 reaching record levels. Ocean heat uptake as a percentage of 1865-2015 change for CMIP5 model average. Large grey cross indicates that 50% of the total uptake occurred in 1997. Source: Gleckler et al. (2016). Facebook Twitter Pinterest Ocean heat uptake as a percentage of 1865-2015 change for CMIP5 model average. Large grey cross indicates that 50% of the total uptake occurred in 1997. Source: Gleckler et al. (2016). Illustration: Nature Climate Change In fact, research by Kevin Trenberth and colleagues suggests even this is an underestimate, and that from 1992 to 2005 the oceans built up heat at a rate of 6 atomic bomb detonations per second. Trenberth believes many other studies have underestimated the rate at which the southern hemisphere oceans are warming. Previous estimates of ocean heat content change have been too conservative in the changes in the southern hemisphere. The absence of data does not mean absence of warming. Several estimates then use zero change in those regions. By better assessing what changes are likely in the no-data regions, based upon the regions where there are data, the ocean heat content changes increase. Encouragingly, on average, climate models are nailing the increase in ocean heat content quite accurately. What happened to the ‘pause’? As the above ocean heat content chart shows, the overall heating of the planet never paused or even slowed down. The warming of surface temperatures did briefly slow, due to a period with more La Ni?a than El Ni?o events since the turn of the century. However, with the apparent return of more El Ni?o events, global surface temperatures are surging, and it’s hard to even see the slowdown anymore. NASA GISS global surface temperatures. Right frame shows smoothing over various time periods. Facebook Twitter Pinterest NASA GISS global surface temperatures. Right frame shows smoothing over various time periods. Illustration: James Hansen. This argument is now relegated to the satellite temperature data, which have greater uncertainty, are more influenced by El Ni?o events, and diverge from direct weather balloon atmospheric temperature measurements. For the global climate as a whole, there wasn’t even a warming slowdown (in fact it’s accelerated, as the Gleckler paper shows), and surface warming only temporarily slowed and is now speeding up again. A glimpse at our hot future As Trenberth wrote, the record heat that we’re seeing now will soon become the norm. What we have seen this past year will likely be routine in about 15 years, although regionally the details will vary considerably. Indeed, we have had a glimpse of the future under global warming. 2014 broke the temperature record without an El Ni?o, and 2015 would have broken it without an El Ni?o as well. Human-caused global warming is taking over. That long-term global warming trend will continue, making the 2015 Paris climate accords all the more crucial in limiting the damages we experience as a result of climate change. As Michael Mann noted in a commentary on new research he published with colleagues on the record heat, The next time you hear someone call into question the threat of human-caused climate change, you might explain to them that the likelihood we would be witnessing the recent record warmth in the absence of human-caused climate change is somewhere between one-in-a-thousand and one-in-a-million. You might ask them: Would you really gamble away the future of our planet with those sorts of odds?Warming is real and anthropogenic---- climate denial studies are bad scienceKelly Dickerson, 15, (9-9-2015, Kelly was a science reporter at Tech Insider, covering space and physics. She graduated from the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism with an M.A. in science and health reporting. She received at B.S. degree in biology and a B.A. degree in communication from Berry College. "Scientists tried to redo 38 climate change-denying studies and discovered some major flaws", ) 6-1-2016 RKAbout 97% of scientists agree not only that climate change is real, but also that human activity, like driving a fossil fuel-burning car, is making it worse. That agreement stems from nearly 4,000 studies that suggest humans are culpable, compared to only about 80 that say we have nothing to do with the problem. Those numbers should leave us pretty confident that humans are indeed fueling climate change. However, you could argue there's a (really) small chance those 2% of studies actually have it right. So, a team of seven climate scientists and meteorologists decided to give climate contrarians the benefit of the doubt, picked half of their more popular studies, and tried to redo them. (The hallmark of a good scientific paper is that it's reproducible, meaning another scientist can do the same experiment and get the same or similar results.) What happened? Beyond being unable to replicate most of the results, the team discovered major flaws in the papers. In fact, many papers left out essential data, and some even ignored basic physics. Dana Nuccitelli, one of the scientists who helped analyze the climate denier papers for the journal Theoretical and Applied Climatology, summed up what his team found in a blog post for The Guardian. Below are the three biggest, most common problems Nuccitelli and the team found with the small minority of studies that dispute human involvement in climate change. Climate change deniers cherry-pick the data Nuccitelli and his colleagues examined 38 widely referenced papers that dispute human involvement in climate change. The team learned that these papers often ignored critical background information or left out big sets of climate data. In one example, the authors of a 2011 paper tried to show the lunar and solar cycle are responsible for climate change, but they ignored 6,000 years' worth of data that didn't jibe with their idea. Nuccitelli summed up the issues well in his post for The Guardian: When we tried to reproduce their model of the lunar and solar influence on the climate, we found that the model only simulated their temperature data reasonably accurately for the 4,000-year period they considered. However, for the 6,000 years’ worth of earlier data they threw out, their model couldn’t reproduce the temperature changes. The authors argued that their model could be used to forecast future climate changes, but there’s no reason to trust a model forecast if it can’t accurately reproduce the past. That 2011 study wasn't alone. Cherry-picking or downright manipulating data to get a desired result — no evidence of human-caused climate change — was the most common flaw among the climate denier papers examined by the team. Climate change deniers ignore basic scientific facts While most papers misconstrued or left out data, some simply ignored core scientific facts. A handful of papers blamed climate change on the orbits of Jupiter and Saturn, but the researchers didn't offer any explanation for how that would be possible in the first place. Other studies argued the greenhouse gases that fuel climate change, including carbon dioxide, don't drive global warming much beyond a particular saturation point — which would let humans off the hook for adding more and more to the atmosphere. However, that idea was disproved as far back as the early 1900s. Climate change deniers can't agree on an alternative theory While 97% of experts agree that humans are worsening climate change, the other 3% couldn't settle on an alternative explanation. Here's Nuccitelli again: [T]he 2–3% of papers that reject that consensus are all over the map, even contradicting each other. The one thing they seem to have in common is methodological flaws like cherry picking, curve fitting, ignoring inconvenient data, and disregarding known physics. The researchers say science is constantly evolving and changing, so no area of research is ever really "finished." However, science is based on evidence. Enough evidence leads to a theory, and a theory survives when it is tested over and over again and the evidence continues to support it. Then the scientific community comes to a consensus on that theory. That's how 97% of experts came to agree on the theory that climate change is fueled by human activity, a conclusion that's been over a century in the making. And right now there is no compelling evidence and no clear theory for an alternative to human-caused climate change, Nuccitelli concludes in his blog post.Most comprehensive analysis of scientific studies flip aff- broad consensus that warming is anthropogenicExpertism good for warmingDana Nuccitelli, 16, (4-1-2016, Dana Nuccitelli is an environmental scientist with a background in astrophysics. He has published climate-related papers on various subjects, from the build-up of heat in the Earth's climate system to the expert consensus on human-caused global warming. Dana has written for since 2010, and for The Guardian since 2013. "It’s settled: 90–100% of climate experts agree on human-caused global warming", ) 6-1-2016 RKThere is an overwhelming expert scientific consensus on human-caused global warming. Authors of seven previous climate consensus studies — including Naomi Oreskes, Peter Doran, William Anderegg, Bart Verheggen, Ed Maibach, J. Stuart Carlton, John Cook, myself, and six of our colleagues — have co-authored a new paper that should settle this question once and for all. The two key conclusions from the paper are: 1) Depending on exactly how you measure the expert consensus, it’s somewhere between 90% and 100% that agree humans are responsible for climate change, with most of our studies finding 97% consensus among publishing climate scientists. 2) The greater the climate expertise among those surveyed, the higher the consensus on human-caused global warming. Expert consensus results on the question of human-caused global warming among the previous studies published by the co-authors of Cook et al. (2016). Facebook Twitter Pinterest Expert consensus results on the question of human-caused global warming among the previous studies published by the co-authors of Cook et al. (2016). Illustration: John Cook Expert consensus is a powerful thing. People know we don’t have the time or capacity to learn about everything, and so we frequently defer to the conclusions of experts. It’s why we visit doctors when we’re ill. The same is true of climate change: most people defer to the expert consensus of climate scientists. Crucially, as we note in our paper: Public perception of the scientific consensus has been found to be a gateway belief, affecting other climate beliefs and attitudes including policy support. That’s why those who oppose taking action to curb climate change have engaged in a misinformation campaign to deny the existence of the expert consensus. They’ve been largely successful, as the public badly underestimate the expert consensus, in what we call the “consensus gap.” Only 12% of Americans realize that the consensus is above 90%. Facebook Twitter Pinterest Lead author John Cook explaining the team’s new consensus paper. Consensus misrepresentations Our latest paper was written in response to a critique published by Richard Tol in Environmental Research Letters, commenting on the 2013 paper published in the same journal by John Cook, myself, and colleagues finding a 97% consensus on human-caused global warming in the peer-reviewed literature. Tol argues that when considering results from previous consensus studies, the Cook 97% figure is an outlier, which he claims is much higher than most other climate consensus estimates. He makes this argument by looking at sub-samples from previous surveys. For example, Doran’s 2009 study broke down the survey data by profession – the consensus was 47% among economic geologists, 64% among meteorologists, 82% among all Earth scientists, and 97% among publishing climate scientists. The lower the climate expertise in each group, the lower the consensus. Scientific consensus on human-caused global warming as compared to the expertise of the surveyed sample. There’s a strong correlation between consensus and climate science expertise. Facebook Twitter Pinterest Scientific consensus on human-caused global warming as compared to the expertise of the surveyed sample. There’s a strong correlation between consensus and climate science expertise. Illustration: John Cook Like several of these consensus surveys, Doran cast a wide net and included responses from many non-experts, but among the experts, the consensus is consistently between 90% and 100%. However, by including the non-expert samples, it’s possible to find low “consensus” values. Advertisement The flaw in this approach is especially clear when we consider the most ridiculous sub-sample included in Tol’s critique: Verheggen’s 2015 study included a grouping of predominantly non-experts who were “unconvinced” by human-caused global warming, among whom the consensus was 7%. The only surprising thing about this number is that more than zero of those “unconvinced” by human-caused global warming agree that humans are the main cause of global warming. In his paper, Tol included this 7% “unconvinced,” non-expert sub-sample as a data point in his argument that the 97% consensus result is unusually high. By breaking out all of these sub-samples of non-experts, the critique thus misrepresented a number of previous consensus studies in an effort to paint our 97% result as an outlier. The authors of those misrepresented studies were not impressed with this approach, denouncing the misrepresentations of their work in no uncertain terms. We subsequently collaborated with those authors in this newly-published scholarly response, bringing together an all-star lineup of climate consensus experts. The following quote from the paper sums up our feelings about the critique’s treatment of our research: Tol’s (2016) conflation of unrepresentative non-expert sub-samples and samples of climate experts is a misrepresentation of the results of previous studies, including those published by a number of coauthors of this paper. Consensus on consensus In our paper, we show that including non-experts is the only way to argue for a consensus below 90–100%. The greater the climate expertise among those included in the survey sample, the higher the consensus on human-caused global warming. Similarly, if you want to know if you need open heart surgery, you’ll get much more consistent answers (higher consensus) if you only ask cardiologists than if you also survey podiatrists, neurologists, and dentists. That’s because, as we all know, expertise matters. It’s easy to manufacture a smaller non-expert “consensus” number and argue that it contradicts the 97% figure. As our new paper shows, when you ask the climate experts, the consensus on human-caused global warming is between 90% and 100%, with several studies finding 97% consensus among publishing climate scientists. There’s some variation in the percentage, depending on exactly how the survey is done and how the question is worded, but ultimately it’s still true that there’s a 97% consensus in the peer-reviewed scientific literature on human-caused global warming. In fact, even Richard Tol has agreed: The consensus is of course in the high nineties. Is the consensus 97% or 99.9%? Advertisement In fact, some believe our 97% consensus estimate was too low. These claims are usually based on an analysis done by James Powell, and the difference simply boils down to how “consensus” is defined. Powell evaluated the percentage of papers that don’t explicitly reject human-caused global warming in their abstracts. That includes 99.83% of papers published between 1991 and 2012, and 99.96% of papers published in 2013. In short, 97% of peer-reviewed climate research that states a position on human-caused warming endorses the consensus, and about 99.9% of the total climate research doesn’t explicitly reject human-caused global warming. Our two analyses simply answer different questions. The percentage of experts and their research that endorse the theory is a better description of “consensus.” However, Powell’s analysis is useful in showing how few peer-reviewed scientific papers explicitly reject human-caused global warming. In any case, there’s really no question that humans are the driving force causing global warming. The experts are almost universally convinced because the scientific evidence is overwhelming. Denying the consensus by misrepresenting the research won’t change that reality. With all of the consensus authors teaming up to show the 90–100% expert consensus on human-caused global warming, and most finding 97% consensus among publishing climate scientists, this paper should be the final word on the subject. ? This footnote was appended on 22 April 2016: Professor Richard Tol disputes a number of assertions made in this article, in particular the claims that he makes his argument by looking at sub-samples from previous surveys (he says his argument is based on whole samples) and that his critique misrepresents previous consensus studies (as earlier results are reproduced exactly). He has also asked us to clarify that the sub-sample referred to above as “ridiculous” is from Verheggen’s 2015 study; it was not created by Tol, though it was used in his critique. He writes more about this on his blog here and here, and his comment in Environmental Research Letters, published in the same edition as the paper described above, can be read here.Its real and anthropogenic —consensus of over 30 scientific organizationsGinger Pinholster 16, Director, Office of Public Programs @ the American Association for The Advancement of Science, 6-28-16, “Thirty-One Top Scientific Societies Speak with One Voice on Global Climate Change,” a consensus letter to U.S. policymakers, a partnership of 31 leading nonpartisan scientific societies today reaffirmed the reality of human-caused climate change, noting that greenhouse gas emissions “must be substantially reduced” to minimize negative impacts on the global economy, natural resources, and human health.? “Observations throughout the world make it clear that climate change is occurring, and rigorous scientific research concludes that the greenhouse gases emitted by human activities are the primary driver,” the collaborative said in its 28 June letter to Members of Congress. “This conclusion is based on multiple independent lines of evidence and the vast body of peer-reviewed science.”? Climate-change impacts in the United States have already included increased threats of extreme weather events, sea-level rise, water scarcity, heat waves, wildfires, and disturbances to ecosystems and animals, the intersociety group reported. “The severity of climate change impacts is increasing and is expected to increase substantially in the coming decades,” the letter added. It cited the scientific consensus of the vast majority of individual climate scientists and virtually every leading scientific organization in the world, including the U.S. Global Change Research Program, the U.S. National Academies, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the American Chemical Society, the American Geophysical Union, the American Meteorological Society, the American Statistical Association, the Ecological Society of America, and the Geological Society of America.? “To reduce the risk of the most severe impacts of climate change, greenhouse gas emissions must be substantially reduced,” the group said, adding that adaptation is also necessary to “address unavoidable consequences for human health and safety, food security, water availability, and national security, among others.”? The 28 June letter, representing a broad range of scientific disciplines, reaffirmed the key climate-change messages in a 2009 letter signed by 18 leading scientific organizations. The letter is being released again, by a larger consortium of 31 scientific organizations, to reassert the scientific consensus on climate change, and to provide objective, authoritative information to policymakers who must work toward solutions.? “Climate change is real and happening now, and the United States urgently needs to reduce greenhouse gas emissions,” said AAAS Chief Executive Officer Rush Holt, executive publisher of the Science family of journals. “We must not delay, ignore the evidence, or be fearful of the challenge. America has provided global leadership to successfully confront many environmental problems, from acid rain to the ozone hole, and we can do it again. We owe no less to future generations.”? The 28 June letter was signed by leaders of the following organizations: AAAS; American Chemical Society; American Geophysical Union; American Institute of Biological Sciences; American Meteorological Society; American Public Health Association; American Society of Agronomy; American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists; American Society of Naturalists; American Society of Plant Biologists; American Statistical Association; Association for the Sciences of Limnology and Oceanography; Association for Tropical Biology and Conservation; Association of Ecosystem Research Centers; BioQUEST Curriculum Consortium; Botanical Society of America; Consortium for Ocean Leadership; Crop Science Society of America; Ecological Society of America; Entomological Society of America; Geological Society of America; National Association of Marine Laboratories; Natural Science Collections Alliance; Organization of Biological Field Stations; Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics; Society for Mathematical Biology; Society for the Study of Amphibians and Reptiles; Society of Nematologists; Society of Systematic Biologists; Soil Science Society of America; University Corporation for Atmospheric Research. Warming real and outweighs---postdating evJustin?Gillis 14,?2014/11/03/world/europe/global-warming-un-intergovernmental-panel-on-climate-change.htmlCOPENHAGEN — The gathering risks of climate change are so profound that they could stall or even reverse generations of progress against poverty and hunger if greenhouse emissions continue at a runaway pace, according to a major new United Nations report.??Despite growing efforts in many countries to tackle the problem, the global situation is becoming more acute?as developing countries join the West in burning huge amounts of fossil fuels,?the Intergovernmental?Panel on?Climate?Change?said?here on Sunday.??Failure to reduce emissions, the group of scientists and other?experts found, could threaten society with food shortages, refugee crises, the flooding of?major cities and entireisland nations, mass extinction?of plants and animals, and a climate so drastically altered it might become dangerous for people to work or play outside during the hottest times of the year.? “Continued emission of greenhouse gases will cause further warming and long-lasting changes in all components of the climate system, increasing the likelihood of severe, pervasive and irreversible impacts for people and ecosystems,” the report found.??In the starkest language it has ever used, the expert panel made clear?how far society remains from having any serious policy to limit global warming.? Doing so would require leaving the vast majority of the world’s reserves of fossil fuels in the ground or, alternatively, developing methods to capture and bury the emissions resulting from their use, the group said.? If governments are to meet their own stated goal of limiting the warming of the planet to no more than 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, or 2 degrees Celsius, above the preindustrial level, they must restrict emissions from additional fossil-fuel burning to about 1 trillion tons of carbon dioxide, the panel said. At current growth rates, that budget is likely to be exhausted in something like 30 years, possibly less.? Yet energy companies have booked coal and petroleum reserves equal to several times that amount, and they are spending some $600 billion a year to find more. Utilities and oil companies continue to build coal-fired power plants and refineries, and governments are spending another $600 billion or so directly subsidizing the consumption of fossil fuels.? By contrast, the report found, less than $400 billion a year is being spent around the world to reduce emissions or otherwise cope with climate change. That is a small fraction of the revenue spent on fossil fuels — it is less, for example, than the revenue of a single American oil company, ExxonMobil.? The new report comes just a month before international delegates convene in Lima, Peru, to devise a new global agreement to limit emissions, and it makes clear the urgency of their task.? Appearing Sunday morning at a news conference in Copenhagen to unveil the report, the United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, appealed for strong action in Lima.? “Science has spoken. There is no ambiguity in their message,” Mr. Ban said. “Leaders must act. Time is not on our side.”? Yet there has been no sign that national leaders are willing to discuss allocating the trillion-ton emissions budget among countries, an approach that would confront the problem head-on, but also raise deep questions of fairness. To the contrary, they are moving toward a relatively weak agreement that would essentially let each country decide for itself how much effort to put into limiting global warming, and even that document would not take effect until 2020.? “If they choose not to talk about the carbon budget, they’re choosing not to address the problem of climate change,” said Myles R. Allen, a climate scientist at Oxford University in Britain who helped write the new report. “They might as well not bother to turn up for these meetings.”? The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is a scientific body appointed by the world’s governments to advise them on the causes and effects of global warming, and potential solutions. The group, along with Al Gore, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007 for its efforts to call attention to the climate crisis.? The new report is a 175-page synopsis of a much longer series of reports that the panel has issued over the past year. It is the final step in a five-year effort by the body to analyze a vast archive of published climate research.? It is the fifth such report from the group since 1990, each finding greater certainty that the climate is warming and that human activities are the primary cause.? “Human influence has been detected in warming of the atmosphere and the ocean, in changes in the global water cycle, in reductions in snow and ice, and in global mean sea-level rise; and it is extremely likely to have been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century,” the report said.? A core finding of the new report is that?climate change is no longer a distant threat, but is being felt all over the world. “It’s here and now,” Rajendra K. Pachauri, the chairman of the panel, said in an interview. “It’s not something in the future.”? The group cited mass die-offs of forests, such as those killed by heat-loving beetles in the American West; the melting of land ice virtually everywhere in the world; an accelerating rise of the seas that is leading to increased coastal flooding; and heat waves that have devastated crops and killed tens of thousands of people.? The report contained the group’s most explicit warning yet about the food supply, saying that climate change had already become a small drag on overall global production, and could become a far larger one if emissions continued unchecked.? A related finding is that climate change poses serious risks to basic human progress, in areas such as alleviating poverty. Under the worst-case scenarios, factors like high food prices and intensified weather disasters would most likely leave poor people worse off. In fact, the report said, that has already happened to a degree.Evidence is undeniable that warming coincided right with human activityProthero 2012 (Donald R, Skeptic Vol 17 issue 2 “How We Know Global Warming is Real and Human Caused.” ) HYPERLINK "" \l "toc" \o " * \"I agree that climate is changing, but I'm skeptical that humans are the main cause, so we shouldn't do anything.\"" "I agree that climate is changing, but I'm skeptical that humans are the main cause, so we shouldn't do anything." This is just fence sitting. A lot of reasonable skeptics deplore the right wing's rejection of the reality of climate change, but still want to be skeptical about the cause. If they want proof, they can examine the huge array of data that points directly to human caused global warming.[?22] We can directly measure the amount of carbon dioxide humans are producing, and it tracks exactly with the amount of increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide. Through carbon isotope analysis, we can show that this carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is coming directly from our burning of fossil fuels, not from natural sources. We can also measure the drop in oxygen as it combines with the increased carbon levels to produce carbon dioxide. We have satellites in space that are measuring the heat released from the planet and can actually see the atmosphere getting warmer.The most crucial evidence emerged only within the past few years: climate models of the greenhouse effect predict that there should be cooling in the stratosphere (the upper layer of the atmosphere above 10 km or 6 miles in elevation), but warming in the troposphere (the bottom layer below 10 km or 6 miles), and that's exactly what our space probes have measured. Finally, we can rule out any other suspects (see above): solar heat is decreasing since 1940, not increasing, and there are no measurable increases in cosmic rays, methane, volcanic gases, or any other potential cause. Face it -- it's our problem.Warming is anthropogenic---- nearly 100 percent consensus among scientistsPowell 15 (James Lawrence. November/December. James Lawrence Powell is author of Four Revolutions in the Earth Sciences (reviewed in our May/June 2015 issue) and The Inquisition of Climate Science. He is executive director of the National Physical Science Consortium. “The Consensus on Anthropogenic Global Warming” ) 5/30/16 RKOn May 16, 2013, President Obama tweeted that “Ninety-seven percent of scientists agree: #climate change is real, man-made and dangerous.” The President is one of countless people who have come to believe that there is a “97% consensus” on anthropogenic global warming (AGW). Since it is inconceivable that any climate scientist today could have no opinion on the subject, if 97 percent accept AGW it follows that 3 percent reject it. To those outside of science, 3 percent may seem an insignificant percentage. However, we scientists know that a small minority has often turned out to be right, otherwise there would have been no scientific revolutions. In the 1950s, for example, the percentage of American geologists who accepted continental drift was likely less than 3 percent. Yet they were right. If there were a 3 percent minority on AGW it would matter, but there is not. The “97% consensus” is false. The percentage of publishing climate scientists who accept AGW is at least 99.9 percent and may verge on unanimity. How, then, has nearly everyone from President Obama on down come to buy the claim of a 97 percent consensus? The figure comes from a 2013 article in Environmental Research Letters by Cook et al. titled “Quantifying the Consensus on Anthropogenic Global Warming in the Scientific Literature.” They reported that “Among abstracts expressing a position on AGW, 97.1% endorsed the consensus position that humans are causing global warming” (emphasis added). The 97 percent figure went viral and, not surprisingly, the qualifying phrase “expressing a position”—the fine print, if you will—got dropped. But those three words expose the false assumption inherent in the Cook et al. methodology. Cook et al. used the Web of Science science-citation research site to review the titles and abstracts of peer-reviewed articles from 1991–2011 with the keywords “global climate change” and “global warming.” They classified the articles into seven categories from “(1) Explicit endorsement with quantification” to “(7) Explicit rejection with quantification.” In the middle was “(4) No position.” The sine qua non of the Cook et al. method is the assumption that publishing scientists who accept a theory will say so—they will “endorse” it in the title or abstract. To count an article as part of the consensus, Cook et al. required that it “address or mention the cause of global warming.” Of the 11,944 articles that came up in their search, 7,970—two thirds—did not. Cook et al. classified those articles as taking no position and thus ruled them out of the consensus. Do we need to know any more to realize that there is something wrong with the Cook et al. method? The consensus is what the majority accept; you cannot rule out a two-thirds majority and still derive the consensus. Moreover, is it true that scientists routinely endorse the ruling paradigm of their discipline? To find out, I used the Web of Science to review articles in three fields: plate tectonics, the origin of lunar craters, and evolution. Of 500 recent articles on “plate tectonics,” none in my opinion endorsed the theory directly or explicitly. Nor did a single article reject plate tectonics. This statement was about as close to an endorsement as any came: “Plate tectonics, which shapes the surface of the Earth, is the result of solid-state convection in Earth’s mantle over billions of years.” What of lunar craters? As recently as 1964, nearly every scientist who had studied the moon believed that its craters were volcanic. Then in July of that year, the first successful Ranger mission returned thousands of photographs showing that the moon exhibits craters ranging in size from the colossal to the microscopic. Except for a few senior holdouts, scientists quickly embraced the meteorite impact theory. A Web of Science search for “lunar craters” today turns up 185 articles stretching back to 1920 (including an overlooked 1921 article by Alfred Wegener that showed convincingly that the craters are due to meteorite impact). I reviewed the abstracts of the most recent 100 articles, which go back to 1997. As with plate tectonics, none explicitly endorsed meteorite impact, nor did any reject it. The closest any came to an endorsement may be this sentence: “It is known that most of the craters on the surface of the Moon were created by the collision of minor bodies of the Solar System.” Do biologists writing about evolution routinely endorse Darwin’s theory? I reviewed the abstracts of articles in the Journal of Evolutionary Biology from 2000 through 2014. Of 303 articles, 261 had abstracts. Not surprisingly, none of the 261 rejected the modern evolutionary synthesis; neither did any endorse it. The closest any came may have been this statement: “A long line of biologists have followed [Darwin] in seeing, in the concept of ‘descent with modification,’ a framework naturally able to incorporate both adaptation and constraint.” Are the sentences quoted in the three preceding paragraphs endorsements or simple statements of fact? To calculate their 97.1 percent result, the Cook et al. study divided the number of abstracts that they said endorsed AGW (3,896, including 2,909 “implicit” endorsements) by the total that expressed a position (4,014, which included the rejecting articles.) Would the method work for plate tectonics, the origin of lunar craters, and evolution? Since none of the authors of the articles I reviewed in those fields reject the theory in question and only a handful, if that, could be said to directly endorse it, the Cook et al. method would wind up classifying the vast majority as taking no position and omit them from the calculation. We would be left dividing a tiny number of perceived implicit endorsements, a highly subjective measure, by the same tiny number and wind up with 100 percent, after having ruled out nearly all the scientific literature. We might be left dividing zero by zero. Remember that to count an article as endorsing, the Cook et al. study required that it “address or mention the cause of global warming.” Climate scientists refer to this as attribution. Some climate articles are about attribution but many are not. Consider these two examples. In 1993, James Hansen and his colleagues published an article in Research & Exploration titled “How Sensitive Is the World’s Climate?” The purpose of the research was to “estimate climate sensitivity from observed climate change.” In other words, not only did Hansen et al. accept AGW, they were gauging how strong it is, reporting a temperature rise of 3 ± 1°C for doubled CO2. The abstract included this sentence: “Observed global warming of approximately 0.5°C in the past 140 years is consistent with anthropogenic greenhouse gases being the dominant climate-forcing in that period.” The sentence is evidently why Cook et al. classified this article in category 1: “explicit endorsement with quantification.” Hansen et al.’s 1992 article “Potential Climate Impact of Mount Pinatubo Eruption” considered the effect of aerosols on global climate, successfully predicting that the injection of sulfur aerosols during the 1991 Mount Pinatubo eruption would temporarily lower global temperature. However, in this article Hansen and colleagues were researching the role of a natural event—volcanic eruptions—rather than the human contribution to global warming. Because of that their abstract did not “endorse the consensus position that humans are causing global warming,” as Cook et al. required. The Cook et al. study classified Hansen et al.’s 1992 article as taking no position and ruled it out of the consensus calculation. James Hansen also had articles in the three endorsing categories and thus is represented in four. But Hansen does not have four different opinions about AGW—he has only one opinion, and we know very well what it is. His articles may use different language according to what he and his colleagues happen to be writing about, i.e., they may seem to “endorse” AGW or not, but these are distinctions without a difference. The Cook et al. classification is not about Hansen’s core belief but about the subject of his articles. Hansen had a total of six articles in Cook et al.’s “no position” category. A number of other prominent climate scientists show up there as well. These include (with the number of articles): R. Bradley (3), K. Briffa (2), E. Cook (5), M. Hughes (2), P. Jones (3), T. Karl (5), M. Mann (2), M. Oppenheimer (3), B. Santer (2), G. Schmidt (3), the late S. Schneider (3), S. Solomon (5), K. Trenberth (7), and T. Wigley (3). Cook et al. ruled them all out of the consensus calculation. Most of these authors, like Hansen, also have articles in one or more of the three endorsing categories. Again, we see that the Cook et al. method is about language and the subject of articles rather than whether their authors accept AGW. If scientists do not endorse the ruling paradigm, can we still quantify the extent of a scientific consensus? Yes, we can. The articles that turned up in the Cook et al. search were not drawn at random but appeared because they answered the search topics “global warming” or “global climate change.” The authors in the Cook et al. database were writing about AGW. Would they have written about a theory that they believe is false yet never say so? We can get a further clue using the research category classification that Cook et al. provided. Of the 7,970 “no position” articles, 56.8 percent were on the impacts of global warming, 18.4 percent on mitigation, 17.1 percent on measurements and modeling methods, and 7.7 percent on paleoclimatology. Would authors write about those aspects of global warming if they believed that AGW is false yet never say so? What would be the point? We know from the history of science that the most important advances come when stubborn facts overthrow the ruling paradigm. This is how scientific reputations are made. It is why we remember Alfred Wegener and not his opponents. A scientist who has evidence that AGW is false will be eager to say so and to present that evidence. Who among us would not love to be that scientist! Putting all this together, I argue that we can judge the extent of the consensus by the number of articles that explicitly reject AGW. Cook et al. found seventy-eight, 0.7 percent, that did so. From that one can infer that the authors of 99.3 percent of the articles in the Cook et al. database accept AGW. This would be the average over the twenty years of their survey. More recently, the percentage of acceptance has grown even higher. I used the Web of Science to review the titles and abstracts of peer-reviewed articles from 2013 and 2014, adding the search topic “climate change” to “global climate change” and “global warming.” Of 24,210 abstracts, only five—one in 4,842 or 0.021 percent—in my judgment explicitly rejected AGW. Two of the articles had the same author, so four authors of 69,406 rejected AGW. That is one in 17,352, or 0.0058 percent. This result would allow the claim that 99.99 percent of scientists publishing today accept AGW. To be conservative, I prefer to say above 99.9 percent. Excluding self-citations, only one of the five rejecting articles has been cited and that article only once. Remember that the 99.9 percent figure does not represent what we usually mean by consensus: agreement of opinion. Rather it is derived from the peer-reviewed literature and thus reflects the evidence therein. It tells us that there is virtually no publishable evidence against AGW. That is why scientists accept the theory. The consensus on anthropogenic global warming is not 97 percent. Instead, publishing scientists are close to unanimous that “global warming is real, man-made, and dangerous,” as President Obama put it.Trending series and robust statistics prove—warming is anthropogenic.Estrada et al 12— Francisco Estrada, Centro de Ciencias de la Atmósfera, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México,Ciudad Universitaria, Pierre Perron, Department of Economics, Boston University. Benjamín Martínez, Institute for Environmental Studies, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, Netherlands. “Statistical evidence about human influence on the climate system” accessed date: 7-16-12 y2kWe use recent methods for the analysis of time series data, in particular related to breaks in trends, to establish that human factors are the main contributors to the secular movements in observed global and hemispheric temperatures series. The most important feature documented is a marked increase in the growth rates of temperatures (purged from the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation) and anthropogenic greenhouse gases occurring for all series around 1955, which marks the start of sustained global warming. Also evidence shows that human interventions effectively slowed global warming in two occasions. The Montreal Protocol and the technological change in agricultural production in Asia are major drivers behind the slowdown of the warming since 1994, providing evidence about the effectiveness of reducing emissions of greenhouse gases other than CO2 for mitigating climate change in the shorter term. The largest socioeconomic disruptions, the two World Wars and the Great Crash, are shown to have contributed to the cooling in the mid 20th century. While other radiative factors have modulated their effect, the greenhouse gases defined the secular movement in both the total radiative forcing and the global and hemispheric temperature series. Deviations from this anthropogenic trend are shown to have transitory effectsTwo main statistical approaches are used for investigating the attribution of climate change: the optimal fingerprinting method which consists in searching for spatial and/or temporal patterns consistent with the anthropogenic forcing signal that are common in both observed and externally forced simulations of climate variables, and the cointegration framework that permits testing for the attribution of climate change directly from observed temperature and radiative forcing data As we shall show, none of the temperature series nor those of the radiative forcing are integrated processes once breaks in the trend are accounted for, rendering the latter approach inappropriate We therefore use recently developed methods for analyzing the properties of trending series We focus on establishing evidence for the presence of breaks in the trend function that are common to observed temperatures and anthropogenic forcing, thereby establishing direct evidence for the effect of human factors in altering the long-run path of global and hemispheric temperatures. Once these breaks are accounted for, all remaining variations in temperature are stationary with different durations that can be accounted for by non-human factors. Our results are robust to different choices for the temperature and mixtures of anthropogenic and natural forcing series. The results provide clear evidence for the attribution of global warming to human activities.Warming is occurring NOW and is anthropogenic—you should prefer peer-reviewed scientific data—scientific consensus is on our side.EDF 12—Environment Defense Fund. “Scientific consensus on global warming Science community concurs warming is happening — and people are the cause” 7-12-12 accessed date: 7-18-12 y2kThe most respected scientific bodies have stated unequivocally that global warming is occurring, and people are causing it by burning fossil fuels and cutting down forests.This conclusion is shared by the national science academies of developed and developing countries (read the statement [PDF]), plus many other organizations, including theIntergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which was established by the United Nations and the?World Meteorological Organization?to provide the world with "a clear scientific view" on climate change.The only real debate is about how fast warming will occur, and how much damage will be done, as a result of human activities that produce heat-trapping CO2 and other greenhouse-gas emissions.Peer review ensures sound scienceClimate scientists, like all scientists, are professional skeptics. They welcome — in fact, rely upon — rigorous challenges to their work from colleagues. Through this process of peer review and independent verification, scientists critique and double- (and triple- and quadruple-) check each others work.This can lead to debate and controversy, but over time, solid research is validated, errors are discarded, and a body of reliable facts is created. In addition, science advances by focusing on what is not yet known. In the case of climate change, for example, there is an extremely good general understanding of the phenomenon, but many details are not yet understood. These gaps in the research, as they come to light, are systematically tackled by the scientific community.In this context, the kind of material used by climate-change skeptics to cast doubt on global warming — whether it be a handful of emails stolen from an East Anglian research facility or a few errors in an IPCC report — are meaningless. The mountain of climate data assembled over decades by the scientific community as a whole is irrefutable. The?records collected and analyzed by independent scientists from many disciplines and thousands of locations, paint a consistent, verifiable picture of a?rapidly warming world.Make no mistake: Science has given us unequivocal warning that global warming is real. The time to start?working on solutions?is now.Warming !---A2: Slow---2NCNo timeframe arguments – risk of abrupt tipping points cause existential changes immediately Carrington 4/21Damian, head of the Environmental Reporting Branch at the Guardian. *quotes Richard Zeebe professor of climate science at the University of Hawaii, WMO secretary-general Petteri Taalas, Peter Stassen, a geologist at the University of Leuven in Belgium. “Carbon emission release rate ‘unprecedented’ in past 66m years,” SMHumanity is pumping climate-warming carbon dioxide into the atmosphere 10 times faster than at any point in the past 66m years, according to new research. The revelation shows the world has entered “uncharted territory” and that the consequences for life on land and in the oceans may be more severe than at any time since the extinction of the dinosaurs. It comes as the World Meteorological Organisation released its Status of the Climate Report detailing a string of weather and climate records that were broken in 2015. “The future is happening now,” said WMO secretary-general Petteri Taalas in a statement released alongside the report. “The alarming rate of change we are now witnessing in our climate as a result of greenhouse gas emission is unprecedented in modern records.” Scientists have already warned that unchecked global warming will inflict “severe, widespread, and irreversible impacts” on people and the natural world. But the new research shows how unprecedented the current rate of carbon emissions is, meaning geological records are unable to help predict the impacts of current climate change. Scientists have recently expressed alarm at the heat records shattered in the first months of 2016. “Our carbon release rate is unprecedented over such a long time period in Earth’s history, [that] it means that we have effectively entered a ‘no-analogue’ state,” said Prof Richard Zeebe, at the University of Hawaii, who led the new work. “The present and future rate of climate change and ocean acidification is too fast for many species to adapt, which is likely to result in widespread future extinctions.” Many researchers think the human impacts on the planet has already pushed it into a new geological era, dubbed the Anthropocene. Wildlife is already being lost at rates similar to past mass extinctions, driven in part by the destruction of habitats. “The new results indicate that the current rate of carbon emissions is unprecedented … the most extreme global warming event of the past 66m years, by at least an order of magnitude,” said Peter Stassen, a geologist at the University of Leuven in Belgium, and who was not involved in the work. The new research, published in the journal Nature Geoscience, examined an event 56m years ago believed to be the biggest release of carbon into the atmosphere since the dinosaur extinction 66m years ago. The so-called Palaeocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) saw temperatures rise by 5C over a few thousand years. But until now, it had been impossible to determine how rapidly the carbon had been released at the start of the event because dating using radiometry and geological strata lacks sufficient resolution. Zeebe and colleagues developed a new method to determine the rate of temperature and carbon changes, using the stable isotopes of oxygen and carbon. It revealed that at the start of the PETM, no more than 1bn tonnes of carbon was being released into the atmosphere each year. In stark contrast, 10bn tonnes of carbon are released into the atmosphere every year by fossil fuel-burning and other human activity. “The consequences are likely to be much more severe,” said Zeebe. “If you kick a system very fast, it usually responds differently than if you nudge it slowly but steadily.” Scientists have warned that climate change may not cause temperature to rise steadily, but that “tipping points” - such as the loss of all Arctic ice or the mass release of methane from permafrost - could see much sharper and more dangerous changes. “If anthropogenic emissions rates have no analogue in Earth’s recent history, then unforeseeable future responses of the climate system are possible,” the researchers concludedWarming !—A2: Too LateWe are near but not at key tipping points – Paris accord key to solveMichael Marshall 9/19/20, The Guardian, “The tipping points at the heart of the climate crisis”, accessed 9/28/20 togThese developments show that the harmful impacts of global heating are mounting, and should be a prompt to urgent action to cut greenhouse gas emissions. But the case for emissions cuts is actually even stronger. That is because scientists are increasingly concerned that the global climate might lurch from its current state into something wholly new – which humans have no experience dealing with. Many parts of the Earth system are unstable. Once one falls, it could trigger a cascade like falling dominoes.Tipping pointsWe have known for years that many parts of the climate have so-called tipping points. That means a gentle push, like a slow and steady warming, can cause them to change in a big way that is wholly disproportionate to the trigger. If we hit one of these tipping points, we may not have any practical way to stop the unfolding consequences.The Greenland ice sheet is one example of a tipping point. It contains enough ice to raise global sea levels by seven metres, if it were all to melt. And it is prone to runaway melting.This is because the top surface of the ice sheet is gradually getting lower as more of the ice melts, says Ricarda Winkelmann of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany. The result is familiar to anyone who has walked in mountains. “If we climb down the mountain, the temperature around us warms up,” she says. As the ice sheet gets lower, the temperatures at the surface get higher, leading to even more melting. “That’s one of these self-reinforcing or accelerating feedbacks.”We don’t know exactly how much warming would cause Greenland to pass its tipping point and begin melting unstoppably. One study estimated that it would take just 1.6C of warming – and we have already warmed the planet 1.1C since the late 19th century.The collapse would take centuries, which is some comfort, but such collapses are difficult to turn off. Perhaps we could swiftly cool the planet to below the 1.6C threshold, but that would not suffice, as Greenland would be melting uncontrollably. Instead, says Winkelmann, we would have to cool things down much more – it’s not clear by how much. Tipping points that behave like this are sometimes described as “irreversible”, which is confusing; in reality they can be reversed, but it takes a much bigger push than the one that set them off in the first place.In 2008, researchers led by Timothy Lenton, now at the University of Exeter, catalogued the climate’s main “tipping elements”. As well as the Greenland ice sheet, the Antarctic ice sheet is also prone to unstoppable collapse – as is the Amazon rainforest, which could die back and be replaced with grasslands.A particularly important tipping element is the vast ocean current known as the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC), which carries warm equatorial water north to the Arctic, and cool Arctic water south to the equator. The AMOC has collapsed in the past and many scientists fear it is close to collapsing again – an event that was depicted (in ridiculously exaggerated and accelerated form) in the 2004 film The Day After Tomorrow. If the AMOC collapses, it will transform weather patterns around the globe – leading to cooler climates in Europe, or at least less warming, and changing where and when monsoon rains fall in the tropics. For the UK, this could mean the end of most arable farming, according to a paper Lenton and others published in January.Tumbling dominoesIn 2009, a second study took the idea further. What if the tipping elements are interconnected? That would mean that setting off one might set off another – or even unleash a cascade of dramatic changes, spreading around the globe and reshaping the world we live in.For instance, the melting of the Greenland ice sheet is releasing huge volumes of cold, fresh water into the north Atlantic. This weakens the AMOC – so it is distinctly possible that if Greenland passes its tipping point, the resulting melt will push the AMOC past its own threshold.“It’s the same exact principles that we know happen at smaller scales,” says Katharine Suding of the University of Colorado, Boulder, who has studied similar shifts in ecosystems. The key point is that processes exist that can amplify a small initial change. This can be true on the scale of a single meadow or the whole planet.However, the tipping point cascade is very difficult to simulate. In many cases the feedbacks go both ways – and sometimes one tipping point can make it less likely that another will be triggered, not more. For example, the AMOC brings warm water from equator up into the north Atlantic, contributing to the melting of Greenland. So if the AMOC were to collapse, that northward flow of warm water would cease – and Greenland’s ice would be less likely to start collapsing. Depending whether Greenland or the AMOC hit its tipping point first, the resulting cascade would be very different.What’s more, dozens of such linkages are now known, and some of them span huge distances. “Melting the ice sheet on one pole raises sea level,” says Lenton, and the rise is greatest at the opposite pole. “Say you’re melting Greenland and you raise the sea level under the ice shelves of Antarctica,” he says. That would send ever more warm water lapping around Antarctica. “You’re going to weaken those ice shelves.”“Even if the distance is quite far, a larger domino might still be able to cause the next one to tip over,” says Winkelmann.In 2018, Juan Rocha of the Stockholm Resilience Centre in Sweden and his colleagues mapped out all the known links between tipping points. However, Rocha says the strengths of the interconnections are still largely unknown. This, combined with the sheer number of them, and the interactions between the climate and the biosphere, means predicting the Earth’s overall response to our greenhouse gas emissions is very tricky.Into the hothouseThe most worrying possibility is that setting off one tipping point could unleash several of the others, pushing Earth’s climate into a new state that it has not experienced for millions of years.Since before humans existed, Earth has had an “icehouse” climate, meaning there is permanent ice at both poles. But millions of years ago, the climate was in a “hothouse” state: there was no permanent polar ice, and the planet was many degrees warmer.‘Hothouse’ conditions will make fires such as this one in the San Gabriel mountains above Azusa, California, in August more frequent.If it has happened before, could it happen again? In 2018, researchers including Lenton and Winkelmann explored the question in a much-discussed study. “The Earth System may be approaching a planetary threshold that could lock in a continuing rapid pathway toward much hotter conditions – Hothouse Earth,” they wrote. The danger threshold might be only decades away at current rates of warming.Lenton says the jury is still out on whether this global threshold exists, let alone how close it is, but that it is not something that should be dismissed out of hand.“For me, the strongest evidence base at the moment is for the idea that we could be committing to a ‘wethouse’, rather than a hothouse,” says Lenton. “We could see a cascade of ice sheet collapses.” This would lead to “a world that has no substantive ice in the northern hemisphere and a lot less over Antarctica, and the sea level is 10 to 20 metres higher”. Such a rise would be enough to swamp many coastal megacities, unless they were protected. The destruction of both the polar ice sheets would be mediated by the weakening or collapse of the AMOC, which would also weaken the Indian monsoon and disrupt the west African one.Winkelmann’s team studied a similar scenario in a study published online in April, which has not yet been peer-reviewed. They simulated the interactions between the Greenland and west Antarctic ice sheets, the AMOC, the Amazon rainforest and another major weather system called the El Ni?o southern oscillation. They found that the two ice sheets were the most likely to trigger cascades, and the AMOC then transmitted their effects around the globe.What to do?Everyone who studies tipping point cascades agrees on two key points. The first is that it is crucial not to become disheartened by the magnitude of the risks; it is still possible to avoid knocking over the dominoes. Second, we should not wait for precise knowledge of exactly where the tipping points lie – which has proved difficult to determine, and might not come until it’s too late.Rocha compares it to smoking. “Smoking causes cancer,” he says, “but it’s very difficult for a doctor to nail down how many cigarettes you need to smoke to get cancer.” Some people are more susceptible than others, based on a range of factors from genetics to the level of air pollution where they live. But this does not mean it is a good idea to play chicken with your lungs by continuing to smoke. “Don’t smoke long-term, because you might be committing to something you don’t want to,” says Rocha. The same logic applies to the climate dominoes. “If it happens, it’s going to be really costly and hard to recover, therefore we should not disturb those thresholds.”“I think a precautionary principle probably is the best step forward for us, especially when we’re dealing with a system that we know has a lot of feedbacks and interconnections,” agrees Suding.“These are huge risks we’re playing with, in their potential impacts,” says Lenton. “This is yet another compulsion to get ourselves weaned off fossil fuels as fast as possible and on to clean energy, and sort out some other sources of greenhouse gases like diets and land use,” says Lenton. He emphasises that the tipping points for the two great ice sheets may well lie between 1C and 2C of warming.“We actually do need the Paris climate accord,” says Winkelmann. The 2016 agreement committed most countries to limit warming to 1.5 to 2C, although the US president, Donald Trump, has since chosen to pull the US out of it. Winkelmann argues that 1.5C is the right target, because it takes into account the existence of the tipping points and gives the best chance of avoiding them. “For some of these tipping elements,” she says, “we’re already in that danger zone.”Cutting greenhouse gas emissions is not a surprising or original solution. But it is our best chance to stop the warning signs flashing red.AFF Answers**UQTrump Wins: 2ACTrump will win – secret Trump supporters Stephens, Sept. 29 (Bret, writer for New York Times, )Anatomy of a secret Trump voterThese voters aren't donning MAGA hats, but there are more of them than you think.Not all Trump voters advertise their support, but their presence will be felt on election day.Chris is a registered Democrat in her 50s who lives in Manhattan. She's well-educated, well-traveled and well-informed. She has voted for candidates of both parties over the years and was enthusiastic for Bernie Sanders in 2016.She's asked me not to publish her last name. It would not go down well for her at the store where she works as a manager if her colleagues knew that she plans to vote for Donald Trump.Chris is also gay. "Being a lesbian who's voting for Trump is like coming out of the closet again," she tells me.Liberal readers who conjure an image of a Trump voter probably think of people like Mark and Patricia McCloskey, the couple who pointed guns at protesters outside their St. Louis home in late June. But if Trump defies current polling and wins again, it will be thanks to a discreet base of support from voters like Chris, who fit into none of the cultural or demographic stereotypes of the Trump base.It's worth understanding where she's coming from.Start with the economy. "I haven't seen double digit [gains] in my 401(k) since the internet boom of the late '90s," she says. "It went up 19.6%" in the year before the pandemic. "Look at the stock market," she says. (Up about 35% from four years ago.)"Look at gas prices." (About the same as what they were when Trump took office, but well below the $3.31 per gallon at the midpoint of the Obama administration.)"This is everyday stuff that affects me," she says. "I don't care about Afghanistan and the Middle East. I care about having a job. I care about having health care through my company. I was out of a job a few years ago. Obamacare priced me out [of private insurance]. It was like, $560 a month. Then Obama's website blew up. He can't get the website right?"Then there's the pandemic. "Is Trump trying to play it down?" she asks. "Yeah. But when this first started, the news media was saying that millions of people were going to die. And look at it: 200,000, compared to the population."What worries her more are the effects of the response to the pandemic in a liberal city like New York."Crime is in my neighborhood now. There's a homeless encampment near me that's growing and growing. They have a living room and a shower curtain and that's where they go to the bathroom. I have a guy who walks in front of the store every day. In a diaper! And there's lawlessness coming into the store every day, with an attitude of 'Who's gonna stop me?' "Regarding Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York, she adds, "I can't put into words how inept this guy is."I ask Chris whether Trump's behavior has ever come close to being a deal breaker for her. She asks me to name some of the lowlights."Grab 'em by the. …""Didn't bother me at all. For every cad out there, there's equally a gold digger who will let you do it."The media as the enemy of the American people:"These days, yeah. Whenever I read a front-page story and I get to a disparaging adjective, I stop reading."The Brett Kavanaugh nomination:"I didn't believe Christine Blasey Ford for one second. Her lack of recollection; the fact that nobody could [contemporaneously] corroborate her account."Trump-Russia:"The Clintons' fingerprints are all over this. I'm really glad we have Bill Barr as AG to look into it."Trump's truculence on the world stage:"Everyone kowtows to Iran because they're crazy. Now we have our own bit of crazy.""Very fine people on both sides":This one stops her. "That was really bad. He didn't think it through but I think he believes himself."So how does Chris feel about the Biden-Harris ticket? "Fifteen years ago, maybe I wouldhave voted for Joe Biden. But he's weak. And what did he do with his 40-odd years in Washington?"As for Kamala Harris, Chris dismisses her outright. "She doesn't know what she believes. She won't be the adult in the room."You don't have to agree with Chris on any of these points. You can note some of the inconsistencies in her views, most of all between her support for Sanders, who as president would have waged war on Wall Street, and her support for Trump, whose pro-Wall Street policies are a big reason that she supports him. And you can easily dismiss Chris as an outlier, an anecdote, a red voter in a blue state.That would be a mistake. If good political analysis were merely a matter of looking at big data, Hillary Clinton would be president today. Analysis also requires us to listen attentively to individual voters. If the Democratic Party and its allies can't hold on to a voter like Chris, who else might they be losing?Trump Wins: ExtTrump will win – Enthusiasm determines Voting Patterns over PollsPolitico, Sept. 13 ()A senior Trump campaign adviser said Sunday he believes it's likely the president will trail in the polls and mail-in voting requests going into Election Day but come from behind to win, similar to his victory in 2016.“I would concede that it's probably going to be a similar scenario where, when we look back retrospectively we will probably see that the president was down into Election Day, and then won Election Day itself by an incredibly wide margin,” senior Trump campaign adviser Steve Cortes said on “Fox News Sunday.”Cortes’ remarks come as Democrats outpace Republicans in mail-in ballot requests, especially in key battleground states. A?new Fox News national pollshows Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden winning 71 percent of likely voters who said they planned to vote by mail.Cortes suggested more Democrats requesting ballots didn't necessarily indicate they would vote for Biden, but said that, regardless, Donald Trump would likely close the gap on Nov. 3.The president has repeatedly attacked mail-in voting, claiming without evidence that it could lead to more instances of ballot fraud.?Appearing on NBC's "Meet the Press," Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel also predicted Trump would prevail, despite Democrats' lead in fundraising."I feel very good about the investment that the RNC's put in place, and I feel very confident in the plan that the campaign has," she said. "The plan, the campaign will have the money and it has the strategy to win."On Fox, Cortes explained his belief in an Election Day win for Trump stemmed in large part from the gap in enthusiasm between Biden and Trump supporters.?Trump has continued to lead Biden in enthusiasm, though the new Fox poll indicated Biden may be bridging that divide: 43 percent of likely Biden voters said they were enthusiastic about voting for Biden, up 12 points from Fox’s June poll.?The Fox News poll of 1,191 likely voters was conducted Sept. 7-10 with a margin of error of plus or minus 2.5 percentage points.Trump wins—five reasons-Incumbency bias-Strength-Economic rebound-Anti-elitism-Outsider biasFeehery 9—8 [John Feehery, partner, EFB Advocacy, “Feehery: How Trump Wins,” THE HILL, 9—8—20, , accessed 9-16-20] **NCC Packet 2020**Most political analysts believe that Joe Biden will beat Donald Trump in the coming election. They are wrong. Here are five reasons why Trump wins reelection:1) Beating an incumbent is hard: Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama won their reelections not because they were great presidents but because they were incumbents. Reagan lost the Senate in 1982 and endured a crippling recession but still was able to bounce back to win a landslide in 1984. Clinton’s first two years were so bad that Democrats lost the House for the first time in 40 years. Bush blundered America into a very unpopular war in Iraq after the devastating attacks on 9/11, and yet was able to beat a hapless John Kerry in 2004. Obama’s response to the fiscal crisis of 2008 was to pass an unpopular health care law while presiding over the worst economic recovery since the Great Depression and yet he was able to beat Trump’s biggest critic, Mitt Romney. The power of incumbency is a huge advantage, which the current occupant of the White House is using very effectively, from handing out aid personally in places like Kenosha, to pardoning convicted prisoners who had turned their lives around, to using the bully pulpit to set the media narrative day after day.2) Strength vs. Weakness: The American people typically like their presidents to exhibit strength. Neither Jimmy Carter nor George H.W. Bush, despite his victory in Iraq in 1991, were seen as exceptionally strong leaders. Carter’s American “malaise” speech backfired on his spectacularly. When Bush looked at his watch during the first town-hall debate with Bill Clinton, he seemed largely uninterested in running for reelection. Reagan showed strength by standing up to the Soviet Union, Clinton showed strength by besting Newt Gingrich, W. showed strength by using his megaphone standing on the debris on 9/11, and Obama showed strength by confronting the Tea Party movement. Trump’s is showing his strength by standing up to the radicals who are destroying many of America’s finest cities. They are the perfect opponent.3) The Economy Stupid: It’s not about the unemployment rate. It’s not about GDP. It’s about where the bulk of the American people perceive things are going for them personally. Under Jimmy Carter and H.W., most Americans felt things were going down the tubes. Under Reagan, Clinton, W. and Obama, there was a general sense that the economy was moving in the right direction. No rational American blames Trump for what COVID-19 did to the economy and indeed, they give the president high marks for how he handled it before the crash. Now, all indications are that unemployment is dropping and people are getting back to work. That usually means good things for the incumbent president.4) The Elites Don’t Have it: Reagan, Clinton, W. and Obama were all perceived to be more in touch with the desires of middle America than their opponents. Reagan, of course, torched Walter Mondale on his desire raise taxes on the working class. Clinton spent his whole presidency cultivating the Bubba vote. W’s campaign mocked John Kerry as an effete flip-flopping windsurfer. And Romney’s career as a vulture capitalist proved easy pickings for the Obama campaign. Donald Trump is most anti-elite president since Andrew Jackson and it will serve him well as a contrast to career politician Joe Biden.5) Insiders lose, Outsiders Win: The last true insider to win a presidential election was George H.W. Bush, and he lost reelection. There is a long litany of political insiders who have lost in their efforts to gain the White House. Mondale, Bob Dole, Al Gore, Kerry, John McCain, and Hillary Clinton were all perceived by the media establishment to have superior resumes and the experience necessary to be successful presidents. None of them won, with Gore coming closest because he was running against another political insider, W. Bush. Joe Biden is actually campaigning on his 50 years of political experience as the man who can make America calm again. But the American people haven’t suddenly fallen in love with the Washington establishment and his efforts will likely meet a similar fate to all the other insiders who have come before.Trump Wins: Norpoth Model—2ACTrump wins—Norpoth modelKLTV 8—21 [KLTV, staff, “Prolific Predicor of Elections Says rump Wins 2020 in Landslide,” 8—21—20, , accessed 9-12-20] **NCC Packet 2020**The chances that President Donald Trump wins re-election in 2020 is near certain, according to a political science professor whose election model has a history of correctly predicting election results.Stony Brook University professor Helmut Norpoth’s Primary Model shows President Trump has a 91-percent chance of winning re-election, according to his interview with Stony Brook News.Norpoth’s model relies on the results of presidential primaries, not polls that are often used as indicators of popularity. According to Norpoth, Biden is in a much weaker position than Trump because of his poor showing in the first two primary races.Norpoth was one of a handful of pollsters who correctly predicted Trump’s victory in 2016, and his Primary Model has predicted five of the six presidential elections since 1996. When applied to previous elections, the model correctly predicted 25 of the last 27 elections, missing only the 2000 election in which George W. Bush defeated Al Gore and the 1960 election in which John F. Kennedy defeated Richard Nixon.“The key to the November election is the primaries,” Norpoth told Fox News in July. “The early primaries are giving us a lot of information. Based on that, Donald Trump won them very easily in his party. Joe Biden, the likely nominee for the Democrats, had a great deal of trouble, pulled it together, but on balance is that stronger performance of primaries that gives Donald Trump the edge in November.“People have forgotten how Joe Biden did in New Hampshire,” Norpoth added during his interview with Stony Brook News. “He was terrible. He got 8.4 percent of the vote, which is unbelievable for a candidate with any aspirations of being president.”As of early August, CNN polled Joe Biden at 51 percent and President Trump at 42 percent. Reuters, ABC/Washington Post, CBS/YouGov, and Fox News polls showed similar results, forecasting Biden between 49 percent and 53 percent of the popular vote. It is important to note that in the U.S., the president is elected by the electoral college, not by the popular vote, and national polls only approximate the popular vote.U Overwhelms: Woodward—2ACUniqueness overwhelms – Woodward’s book dooms TrumpElkind 9/10 – Digital Coordinating Producer for CBS (Elizabeth, “How Woodward's book could put Trump in a "place of vulnerability" ahead of November”, CBS News, , September 10, 2020) **NCC Packet 2020**Newly-released excerpts and audio recordings from journalist Bob Woodward's new book, "Rage," could undo the Trump campaign's efforts to paint a "law and order" portrait of the United States under Donald Trump by returning to a conversation the president had been trying to steer away from — the coronavirus pandemic. "It resurrects the pandemic as an issue," CBS News chief Washington correspondent Major Garrett told "CBS This Morning" Thursday. "These revelations bring the pandemic and all of its complications, all of its disruptions right back front and center. And that is a place of vulnerability for this president." Mr. Trump took part in 18 interviews with Woodward over the course of seven months. In a February audio recording obtained by the Washington Post, the president admitted the severity of the coronavirus even as he held indoor campaign rallies and repeatedly compared the virus to the flu. In the recorded interview, Mr. Trump acknowledged that COVID-19 "goes through air" despite continuing to speak at packed events. "It's also more deadly than your, you know, even your strenuous flus," the president can be heard saying. "This is 5% versus 1% and less than 1%, you know, so this is deadly stuff." In contrast, the Trump campaign has spent months bolstering the White House's response to the pandemic — but according to Garrett, the revelations puncture the president's "confidence and optimism" about the coronavirus in the U.S. He referenced Mr. Trump's March 7 trip to the CDC in Atlanta, where he spoke to doctors and was "essentially projecting to the country, a month after he'd already disclosed to Bob Woodward how serious he knew the virus was, that he knew everything that needed to be known, and it wasn't a big deal." "What did that cost the country? It cost the country the ability to mobilize," Garrett said. By publicly downplaying the virus, Mr. Trump had delayed "a serious national conversation" about containment measures such as masks, social distancing and prioritizing which places should open and what should stay closed, Garrett said. "We did not have that conversation," Garrett said. "It was lost in the president's perpetual optimism about where the virus was and where it was going — that he misread that is an absolute fact and will be on the ballot in November." The pandemic has hit the U.S. harder than any other nation in the world, leading in both number of cases and deaths. With the national death toll climbing past 190,000, Garrett said the president's reelection numbers could slide, even in Mr. Trump's politically safest areas. "Lots of his supporters know that he's optimistic and strong, true. But if that optimism and that strength cost the country things that it wishes it hadn't been cost and imposed difficulties people are so tired of, there's only one person to blame for that — the president of the United States," he said. That uncertainty could prove useful to Mr. Trump's rival, former Vice President Joe Biden, Garrett said. Throughout the pandemic, the Democratic nominee has emphasized the importance of social distancing and mask wearing, as well as listening to scientists whose views often clashes with the president's. "That gives the Biden campaign something it hasn't had in two and a half weeks — a clear shot to reengage the conversation about what this president did, what he knew, and most importantly what he didn't say about the pandemic," Garrett said.Thumper: Hacking—2ACHacking thumpsTHE WEEK ’20 [THE WEEK, staff, “Russia’s 2020 Plan,” 6—8—20, , accessed 9-6-20] **NCC Packet 2020**Will Russia interfere again?It never stopped. The Russian trolls and military hackers who undermined U.S. democracy in 2016 have continued their efforts to confuse and divide Americans, all U.S. intelligence agencies agree. As November approaches, the Kremlin is engaged in a multi-front cyberattack. Russia deployed social media bots to boost Sen. Bernie Sanders' (I-Vt.) presidential campaign, U.S. officials said, and last week, the National Security Agency announced that a hacking group called Sandworm — part of the Russian military unit that stole 50,000 Democratic National Committee emails in 2016 — has launched a campaign to penetrate email servers in the U.S. Security experts were puzzled why Russia didn't wreak more havoc in 2016 after targeting election systems in all 50 states and penetrating Illinois' registration database. It was probably "reconnaissance," Michael Daniel, a cybersecurity expert, told Congress — preparation for an even more ambitious future strike. What's their objective? To sow chaos, inflame existing political divisions, and destroy public faith in elections and democracy. Dezinformatsiya, the tactic of pumping propaganda into rival nations, flourishes on social media, where Russians can easily pose as Americans. Russian deceit, however, is not limited to online activities: Russia infiltrated the National Rifle Association and evangelical groups in 2016 and organized at least 22 political rallies on U.S. soil. Russians tamper with election infrastructure and then exaggerate the success of their efforts, seeking to make Americans believe that election outcomes could be illegitimate. If Hillary Clinton won in 2016, Russia planned to spread the hashtag #DemocracyRIP. What did Russia do in 2016? Four U.S. spy agencies, a GOP-controlled Senate committee, and Special Counsel Robert Mueller all concluded that Moscow ordered the attack in 2016 to spread disinformation and help elect Donald Trump. Russia's cyber operation, directly approved by Russian President Vladimir Putin, employed more than 800 people who created memes, fake accounts, and bogus news articles to stoke Republican fear and anger and to convince Sanders supporters and African Americans that Clinton was corrupt and a racist. The DNC emails Russia stole and selectively published via WikiLeaks showed that party officials wanted Clinton to win the ?primaries — angering Sanders' supporters. In his 22-month investigation, Mueller did not find proof of an explicit criminal conspiracy between the Russians and the Trump campaign, but he did conclude that Russia had interfered "in a sweeping and systematic fashion" and that the Trump campaign had been "receptive" to Russia's help. Some 272 contacts between Trump's campaign and Russia-linked operatives were documented, with 38 in-person meetings. Trump aides overheard Roger Stone — later convicted of obstructing the Mueller probe — discussing coming WikiLeaks dumps with Trump. Trump's campaign manager, Paul Manafort, gave detailed state polling data to a Russian oligarch and later lied about it. Standing beside Putin at a summit meeting in Helsinki in 2018, Trump said, "I don't see any reason" why Russia would have interfered. What's Russia's strategy this year? Disinformation campaigns will be more sophisticated. Russians often did a sloppy job imitating Americans in 2016, posting in broken English from accounts traceable to St. Petersburg. Now Russians are thought to be working from U.S. servers. An analysis of Russia-linked Facebook posts last fall found a focus on stirring up racial resentments, spreading fear of immigrants and Muslims, and inciting gun owners. The accounts targeted battleground states such as Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, Arizona, and Florida. Are election systems vulnerable? The nation's nearly 8,000 local voting jurisdictions use a complex patchwork of websites, databases, and hardware, giving hackers countless potential targets. In the 2018 midterm elections, an estimated one-third of jurisdictions used voting machines that were at least 10 years old. Russia is clearly keen to exploit American weaknesses, and in February, an aide to Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire told Congress that Moscow will try to ensure Trump's re-election. Trump berated Maguire for the briefing and fired him days later. The new DNI, former Rep. John Ratcliffe (R-Texas), is a fierce Trump defender who has questioned whether Russia really favored Trump in 2016.Thumper: Voter Suppression—2ACVote suppression alone thumpsWoodbury & Reddy ’20 [Terrance Woodbury, partner, HIT Strategies and Tanvi Reddy, Research Fellow, HIT Strategies, “Voter Suppression Could Cost Democrats the Election—Here’s What They Should Do,” THE HILL, 5—8—20, , accessed 9-1-20] **NCC Packet 2020**The coronavirus pandemic has upended every facet of American society and left many of us scrambling to adjust to “new normals” in the ways that we interact, work and live. Unfortunately, not enough attention has been given to how the pandemic changes the way we vote. While the foreseeable future remains largely uncertain, there is one certainty that remains — Nov. 3, 2020 will be election day for all 50 states in America. Although it is imperative to alleviate the medical and economic pressures caused by this pandemic, equal attention must be paid to safely and securely administer what is arguably one of the most consequential elections of our lifetimes. Especially, we must center the underserved communities that have been impacted by COVID-19 the hardest and face the most structural barriers to voting. Current attempts to flatten the COVID-19 infection curve are starting to slow the rate of new cases and deaths per day, but the threat of a second wave of infections in the fall has many Americans worried about the safety of voting in the general election. In fact, the majority of Americans believe the pandemic will disrupt voting in November and want safer alternatives to cast their vote. Also, just as the economic and medical impacts of COVID-19 have disproportionately affected young, urban and diverse communities — the base of the Democratic coalition — disruption to voting in November threatens to disenfranchise the exact same communities. With millions of college students displaced from their primary residence, the coronavirus is making many young people unsure of how they will vote in November. Additionally, over half of black voters have never voted by mail. Confusion and misunderstanding around the voting process during this pandemic threaten to suppress turnout among these critical voting blocs. These voters are already cynical towards voting by mail, as younger, minority voters face twice the absentee ballot rejection rate as older, white voters and are more likely to vote on Election Day. The 2020 primary election has already revealed just how disproportionately COVID-19 voting would impact the electorate. In Wisconsin, the Republican legislature blocked an order from Gov. Tony Evers (D) that would have delayed the election to pursue safer alternatives for voting. The result: thousands of poll workers refuse to participate, 6+ hour lines to vote and hundreds of ballots not delivered on time. In Milwaukee County, home to 600,000 people including 70 percent of the state’s African American population, polling locations were reduced from 180 in 2016 to only 5 in 2020 with a 41 percent drop in turnout. Imagine scaling this scenario nationally with over 100 million Americans attempting to cast a vote on the same day — mass disenfranchisement the likes of which we have not seen since the Civil Rights Movement. Republicans around the nation have already begun pursuing more ways to limit access to voting during this pandemic to improve their political odds. Kentucky just passed a new photo-ID law requiring voters to show a valid photo-ID to vote despite the state offices that issue such IDs being indefinitely closed. Trump recently selected a high-ranking RNC fundraiser with no relevant experience to be the Postmaster general for USPS at a time when vote by mail is expected to rise. Moreover, the Republican National Committee has been suing across the country in key swing states including Wisconsin and Pennsylvania to oppose expanding vote access. UQ Overwhelms---2ACEither uniqueness overwhelms or COVID recovery thumpsDouthat 7/21 [Ross Douthat, NYT columnist, conservative political analyst, former senior editor of The Atlantic. “Can Trump come back?” The New York Times, 7/21/20, Accessed 7/23/20]#NCCHere is what Donald Trump can realistically do to right his poll numbers, regain his lost supporters and make the 2020 presidential race close instead of a 10-point Joe Biden blowout. (voice drops to a whisper) Nothing. The word “realistically” is crucial here. On paper, Trump is president of the United States, the most powerful man in the world, possessed of all the advantages of incumbency and all the powers of his office. In theory he could initiate, tomorrow, a new nationwide anti-Covid-19 effort aimed at full suppression of the coronavirus, which if successful could have the economy running hot again by Election Day. In theory he could do many other things as well: barnstorm the country giving eloquent speeches on the American idea and racial reconciliation, launch a dozen clever policy gambits to wrong-foot the Democrats, cruise into Hong Kong’s harbor with a “Free Xinjiang” banner hanging from the presidential yacht. But realistically one need only watch his Sunday interview with Chris Wallace to see that the president is still the man that he has spent his entire life becoming: a character out of C.S. Lewis’s “The Great Divorce,” in which the narrator visits a gray suburb of hell and finds it populated by souls who are self-imprisoned, incapable of freedom, their personalities reduced to grievances and grumbles. A couple of inhabitants go in search of Napoleon, who has “built himself a huge house all in the Empire style — rows of windows flaming with light,” and inside all he does is pace: “Walking up and down — up and down all the time — left-right, left-right — never stopping for a moment. The two chaps watched him for about a year and he never rested. And muttering to himself all the time. ‘It was Soult’s fault. It was Ney’s fault. It was Josephine’s fault. It was the fault of the Russians. It was the fault of the English.’ Like that all the time. Never stopped for a moment. A little, fat man and he looked kind of tired. But he didn’t seem able to stop it.” This is Trump as his first term as president concludes. At least 140,000 Americans are dead in a still-burning pandemic, the unemployment rate is 11 percent, and when asked by Wallace how his presidency will be remembered, all he offered was the old pre-Covid litany of grievance, starting with “I think I was very unfairly treated” and continuing for paragraphs in the same self-pitying vein. So let’s be real: There is no strategy that this president could adopt, no policy choice that he could make, no tweet of himself in a mask that he could issue, that would fundamentally alter his political position. Trump is incapable of normal presidential action, and even if his aides and handlers concocted such a strategy, the man in charge would make sure it would fail. A new suppression program? A vision for economic recovery? Forget it. “It was the media’s fault. It was NeverTrump’s fault. It was Obama’s fault. It was the fault of Robert Mueller. It was the fault of Jeff Sessions. …” But that doesn’t make his defeat inevitable. It only means that to speculate about a Trump comeback is to necessarily speculate about possibilities that are outside the president’s control. Some of these possibilities are outside the realm of easy pundit extrapolation, too. (None of last year’s 2020 punditry predicted the pandemic.) But if we just stick with the two most important issues of the moment, the coronavirus and the protests and unrest in American cities, we can imagine that Trump might benefit politically if the first gets suddenly better and the second gets much worse. This president isn’t going to suppress the pandemic, so he needs it to do what he keeps suggesting, wistfully, that it might do, and simply go away. That’s unlikely, but it’s not quite impossible. Sweden, ground zero for the quest for herd immunity, has seen its caseload decline and its death rate fall without having reached the terrifying fatality rates that you would expect if the virus needed to infect 70 percent of society before burning itself out. New York, our nightmare state three months ago, has partly reopened (and hosted major protests!) while keeping its death curve flat. Both of these case studies are modest evidence for the theory that herd immunity for this virus starts to kick in once around 20 percent of a population is infected, not 60 or 70 percent. The Atlantic’s James Hamblin had a good write-up of these speculations recently: The idea is basically that if there’s a wide variation in susceptibility to a disease, and the sickness burns through most of the high-susceptibility targets in its first big sweep, subsequent sweeps will be much slower, and their case rates and death rates far lower than in a scenario where most people have roughly similar susceptibility. Which could — could — be what we’re seeing in New York and some of the formerly hardest-hit European countries now. More likely, herd immunity is somewhere above 20 percent and below 70 percent, in the vast space between the most-hopeful and the worst-case possibilities. But the 20 percent scenario offers Trump’s best hope for an autumn comeback. It would mean that this summer’s surges need not be replicated in the fall, and that by the time Election Day arrives there could be a feeling of normalization, a recovery of growth, even a safe reopening of schools, that right now seems altogether out of reach. Note that I’m not saying this would save Trump, just that it would clearly help him on a scale far beyond anything he can do himself. At the very least it would help solve one of his leading political problems, which is that a certain number of Republican-leaning voters feel straightforwardly afraid to vote for him again, lest the United States end up stuck in its current viral agony for months or years to come.COVID---A2: Base---1ARTrump Campaign is losing its bedrock voters--- detrimental to 2020 reelection Cox 20 [Daniel A. Cox, holds an MA and a PhD in American government from Georgetown University, research fellow in polling and public opinion at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), "Trump's in danger of losing some of his most faithful voters," American Enterprise Institute - AEI, 6-27-2020, , TRI]It seems clear that Trump’s response to the COVID-19 crisis has hurt him politically. The AEI survey finds that the public has become increasingly critical of Trump’s response to the pandemic, even among his most loyal supporters. In a late March survey, nearly two-thirds (65 percent) of white evangelicals said Trump was handling the coronavirus very well, the new survey, conducted in late May to early June, reveals that only 44 percent of white evangelicals now judge his response very positively. I t’s true that a majority of white evangelical Protestants still approve of Trump’s response to the coronavirus outbreak, but fewer are enthusiastic about his performance. Another reason for Trump’s softening support among white evangelicals is that he continues to struggle with women voters and this weakness is showing up consistently across the electorate. A recent New York Times/Siena College poll shows Biden expanding on his lead with women voters, which now stands at 19-points advantage. The AEI survey reveals a sizable gender gap in the vote preferences of white evangelical Protestants as well. Among registered voters more than three-quarters (76 percent) of white evangelical men say they are supporting Trump compared to 63 percent of white evangelical women. There is another possible explanation that is not about Trump at all. Evidence suggests that Joe Biden does not scare conservatives the way other Democratic candidates do. And it’s not simply his politics. Adam Serwer argues in The Atlantic that Biden presents a unique challenge to Trump because he does not arouse the ire of conservative white Christians in the same way that Clinton and Obama did. “Biden’s electability pitch was not just about being moderate relative to the rest of the primary field, but also about being a straight, Christian, white man, one whom Republicans would find difficult to paint as a dire threat to America as conservative white voters understand it,” Serwer wrote. A recent Fox News poll finds that more than one-in-three (36 percent) white evangelical Protestants report having a favorable view of Joe Biden. In contrast, only 12 percent of white evangelical Protestants expressed a positive view of Clinton in 2016. Presidential elections have traditionally been understood to be referendums on the incumbent’s performance; however, in this case, the fact that white evangelical Protestants dislike Joe Biden far less than Hillary Clinton could prove to be significant. Throughout his presidency, Trump has effectively portrayed a diversifying Democratic Party as an existential threat to conservative Christian culture. And in Trump white evangelical Protestants have seen an advocate and ally for their cause. A recent Pew Research Center survey found that most white evangelical Protestants believe that the Trump administration is actively representing their interests. Perhaps more importantly white evangelical Protestants, who have suffered a series of setbacks in the broader culture war, believe that their side finally has the advantage. White evangelical Protestants believe much of American culture is overtly hostile to their values. They see religion in decline and widespread discrimination against Christians. But under Trump a majority of white evangelicals now believe that “their side” is winning, a dramatic shift over the last couple years. No one should expect white evangelicals to wholesale abandon Trump. White evangelical Protestants are a dedicated Republican constituency and have remained fiercely loyal to Trump. In fact, over the last 10 years they have become much more Republican in their partisan attachments. But clearly enthusiasm for Trump has ebbed. If many wavering white evangelical voters end up supporting Trump in the end, his overall level of support in 2020 may not look that different from 2016, but if Trump’s most loyal supporters are not completely committed to his reelection, he is almost certainly in a perilous position.Trump Cheats---2ACTrump rigs the election – attacks on mail-in voting, voter suppression/intimidation, legal challenges to vote countsRothkopf 8/18 [David Rothkopf, host of “Deep State Radio,” former CEO and editor of Foreign Policy magazine and served as a senior official in the Clinton administration. “Trump's USPS defunding efforts prove 2020 fix is already in. Democrats need to act like it.” NBC News, 8/18/20, Accessed 8/20/20]#NCCFor these reasons, what is unfolding is not simply an election but an existential struggle between two ideas of who we are and what we should be. But, as of now, it is not shaping up as a fair fight. One side has vastly more resources and capabilities and a take-no-prisoners mentality that has it operating outside and perhaps at odds with the law. The other side has strongly worded complaints that it shares on social media. One side is taking action to gain an unfair advantage right now. The other side is at risk of not taking concrete steps to stop it until it is too late, the damage has been done and former Vice President Joe Biden's lead in the polls is lost amid the quirks of our electoral system and a firestorm of vote count challenges. Nowhere is this clearer then in the fight over mail-in voting. Trump and his administration are right now attacking the Postal Service. He is promoting unsubstantiated assertions that voting by mail is suspect. He is pressuring voters to vote in person even as the threat of COVID-19 makes that especially dangerous to the elderly and minorities. The Senate and Trump appointees have failed to create adequate safeguards to prevent Russia from interfering in this election, and they have sought to downplay what U.S. intelligence experts worry are more active measures from Moscow. Trump campaign officials are continuing their efforts at voter suppression. Lawmakers have launched efforts to discredit opponents — including both the Durham investigation and the Senate Ukraine hearings — with the objective of helping the president. And the White House seems to be preparing now to challenge vote totals. The other side has, thus far, done little more than warn that the GOP is not playing fair. But with Attorney General William Barr and the Republican-controlled Senate on Trump's side, Democrats can no longer rely on mechanisms of government that might have, in the past, ensured fairness. Hearings will take place Monday to investigate voting interference. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has recalled lawmakers early to try to pass a bill that would block changes at the Postal Service. Sadly, however, that bill would likely die a swift death in Mitch McConnell's Senate.**No LinkFoPo Doesn’t Matter---2ACForeign policy doesn’t decide electionsHalpin 19 [John Halpin and Brian Katulis, senior fellows, Center for American Progress. Peter Juul, senior policy analyst, Center for American Progress. Karl Agne and Jim Gerstein are principals at GBAO, a public opinion research and strategic consulting firm. Nisha Jain is a vice president at GBAO. “America Adrift: How the U.S. Foreign Policy Debate Misses What Voters Really Want,” Center for American Progress, 5/5/19, Accessed 6/11/20]#NCCConclusion Although this report presents just one study of public opinion on foreign policy and national security issues, the findings strongly suggest that political leaders and foreign policy elites today are missing much of what the American voting public desires in this area. Debates about maintaining the rules-based international order, working with allies through global alliances and multilateral institutions, promoting democracy, and fighting rising authoritarianism are clearly important matters. But they are secondary issues for voters, particularly as currently articulated to the public. In today’s fractured political and media-driven environment, old foreign policy language and ideas no longer penetrate the minds of most voters. Voters do not see how these elite debates relate to their primary concerns around security and terrorism and a strong economy. They do not connect these debates to their shared desire for more domestic investments in infrastructure, education, and health care to make America more competitive in the world. They do not see how these debates are connected to new threats from cyberattacks, chemical weapons, and drones. They do not see these debates leading to a plan for the United States to measure up against China on the global stage.**Link TurnGeneric---2ACDemocrats will use the plan to benefit themselves or attack Trump Ferris and Caygle, Politico Reporters, 4-16-20(Sarah and Heather, “Pandemic scrambles House Democrats' election-year agenda,” accessed 4-16-20, ) JFN Rank-and-file lawmakers say they’re trying to quickly hit the reset button on their strategy. Several Democrats say they’re looking at issues that were once at the heart of the caucus’ mission, like immigration, climate change and rooting out corruption, and tweaking them to reflect the current crisis — with an added focus on health care and the economy. Cuellar, for example, whose district sits on the border with Mexico, introduced a bill that would halt border construction to help protect workers during the pandemic — which he said allowed him to highlight aspects of Trump’s failed policy in a tone that fit the moment. “We have those other issues that might have been No. 1 for some of us, but the health issue has been elevated to No. 1,” Cuellar said. “We’ve still got to bring up those issues that are still important to the district.” Many Democrats say the pandemic will only boost support for priorities like universal health coverage after dramatizing some of the nation’s ugliest health and income disparities. And they say it could translate to other progressive issues, as well. Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) added that the all-hands-on-deck national response to the pandemic amounted to “a dress rehearsal for addressing the catastrophic impacts of climate change.” “That's what this election is going to be about, can the government be an instrument in the common good?” Raskin said in an interview. Some issues Democrats have been talking about for years in their much-touted “For the People” agenda have resurfaced in a new and pressing way: infrastructure, election security and even broadband internet. Yet Republicans also pushed back against Pelosi in March when she insisted on a broad set of goals in the most recent coronavirus relief package, including broadband and infrastructure. “Specific bills, when we are not in session, may be treated differently,” House Democratic Caucus Vice Chair Katherine Clark (D-Mass.) said in an interview Wednesday, dismissing concerns that the pandemic might distract from other priorities they planned to address in 2020. “But all of those issues, immigration policy, climate change, are so interwoven into what we’re seeing and how we’re going to handle the public health crisis and how we handle the recovery,” Clark said. “All of these issues have had their urgency reconfirmed.”Media Focus---2ACAllowing Trump to remain in the media spotlight ensures Biden wins the election Zelizer, Princeton Univ. History Professor, 4-25-20(Julian, “Biden should let Trump self-destruct,” accessed 4-26-20, ) JFN Joe Biden seems to be inching closer to the White House by simply sitting at home. Although much of the nation has barely heard from the presumptive Democratic nominee since early March, President Donald Trump is struggling to maintain his legitimacy after asking his aides on Thursday whether zapping people with light or injecting them with disinfectants could cure Covid-19. The comments prompted even Fox News anchors to tell their viewers: don't try this at home. The situation is bleak for the GOP. Republicans are worried about a devastating election in November that might leave Democrats in control of the White House and both chambers of Congress. After a temporary spike in his approval ratings when the crisis started for many Americans, the President's numbers have dropped. Every day, the nation is exposed to a commander-in-chief who is pressing the gas pedal in a runaway car without control of the wheel. That doesn't mean Joe Biden has an easy road ahead. With traditional campaigning brought to a standstill, and media attention rightly focused on the pandemic, there is simply not that much room for the Democratic candidate to make his case to the nation. Biden has been holed up at home in Delaware trying to find an alternative means to steer the national conversation, whether it's social media livestreams or interviews with the local press. While some of these efforts might be getting through to voters, by and large, Biden has not been very visible on the national stage since Sen. Bernie Sanders dropped out of the race. It might just be that the best thing that Biden can do right now is to lay low and let the President self-destruct — the more that Trump says about the crisis, the worse he looks. Some criticized television networks for airing the daily coronavirus task force press briefings, which the President sometimes treats as campaign rallies. Those criticisms may hold some merit, but the truth is that these appearances are better than any advertisement the Democratic National Committee could pay for. Each press briefing reminds voters how fundamentally broken our leadership in the White House has become and why the nation needs someone else in command. Historically, a president's reelection campaign presents a referendum on his first-term performance. The elections of 1932 and 1980, for example, were as much about the winners as they were a rejection of the incumbent presidents. President Herbert Hoover's disastrous economic policies at the start of the Great Depression contributed to Franklin D. Roosevelt's win in 1932. Similarly, the failure of President Jimmy Carter to free the American hostages held captive in Iran helped tip the election in Ronald Reagan's favor in 1980. In the same way, the 2020 election will be about Trump. This is why it shouldn't be surprising to hear progressives such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez making it clear that they will support the Democratic ticket regardless of their policy differences. Despite the many issues this country faces, nothing will be quite as important on Election Day as how voters feel about having President Trump steer our response to the pandemic and the subsequent recovery for another four years. When the President recommends exploring the efficacy of dangerous and potentially lethal injections of disinfectant, he doesn't inspire much confidence. Biden faces a struggling incumbent who performs poorly each time he is front of the camera. With every press briefing, Trump spews disinformation and inconsistent messaging, reminding voters outside his passionate base that the country is struggling to survive this national crisis without a stable leader up top. Top officials in his own administration are forced to waste precious time trying to work around their boss and to clean up the messes he makes, while state governors — red and blue — have been left to figure things out for themselves. For the time being, the best thing that Biden can do might just be to the stay out of the limelight. Let Trump be Trump, and the odds for a Republican victory are likely to keep plummeting as long as the pandemic continues to pose a threat to the American people. There will be a time when voters need to hear more from Biden to understand who he is and what his platform will be. Even a candidate who has been in the public eye for as long as Biden has needs time to speak directly to voters. But at this moment, nobody is doing more to boost the Democratic campaign than President Trump himself, who flails before our eyes as Americans yearn for their lives to return to normal.Allowing the election to be about Trump ensures Biden wins Enten, CNN Political Analyst, 4-26-20(Harry, “Biden's invisible campaign is winning,” accessed 4-26-20, ) JFN A new Fox News poll from Michigan finds former Vice President Joe Biden leading President Donald Trump by a 49% to 41% margin. Other Fox News polls from Florida and Pennsylvania also showed Biden clearly ahead. In all three cases, Biden's doing better than he is in the long-term polling average in those states. What's the point: A lot of Democrats have been hankering for Biden to try and get out to be more part of the daily media conversation. The latest numbers suggest that these voices are likely wrong. Biden's proving that the less media he receives, the better it is for his electoral prospects. Over the last month and a half, Trump has had the political spotlight shone on him. He's had daily press conferences that the media has extensively covered. Meanwhile, Biden's struggling to attract much of an audience as he is stuck at home. You can see this really well in media mentions in the top paragraph of stories, as measured by . Four years ago from March 20 to April 20, Trump had about 65% of the mentions between Hillary Clinton and him. This year during the same period, Trump's gotten about 90% of the coverage dedicated to Biden or him. That is, Biden's turned a 2:1 disadvantage into a 9:1 disadvantage. You would think that this would be a disaster for Biden. It's not happening. These swing state polls suggest that Biden is in an improved position in the swing states than he was before the coronavirus pandemic took hold. They echo presidential approval rating polls, which show that Trump lost the ground he initially picked up as the crisis has gone on. As I noted last week, Trump had the shortest rally around the flag event in modern presidential history. In this way, 2020 is looking a lot like the 2016 election. Trump likely would have lost the 2016 election had the news focus been on him only. A study of news coverage of that election found that Trump's poll numbers were negatively correlated with how much news he received. Fortunately for him, the final days of the campaign were spent discussing the former director of Federal Bureau of Investigation James Comey's letter. A higher share of Hillary Clinton's coverage in that final week was spent on her alleged scandals than at any other point in the late summer or fall. This is very different from what happened during the 2016 GOP primary. Trump won that at least in part because of all the media he received. The 2020 general election though won't be determined by the Republican base that loves Trump, however. It will be determined by all voters. Over the last three years, Trump's never once had a positive net approval or net favorability rating among the general electorate. A 2020 election about Trump is likely an election Biden wins. We saw it in the 2018 midterms when feelings about Trump correlated extremely well with Democrats taking back the House. Unless something changes dramatically, Biden is likely only to lose if the media attention comes back to him. Trump better hope that Biden starts getting some of the limelight. That won't guarantee a Biden loss, but it'd give Trump a shot.Making the race about Trump ensures Biden win’s Diaz, GOP Political Consultant, 4-28-20(Danny, “‘Smoke-Filled Zoom’: Handicapping Trump vs. Biden in the Middle of a Lockdown,” accessed 4-28-20, ) JFN DANNY DIAZ: I’m a firm believer that the less that people see about Joe Biden, the better it is for Joe Biden. This is a guy that almost every day trips over himself, whether he’s in his library or somewhere else. And from my perspective, I think if this race is a race about Trump to some degree, that’s a pretty good day for Joe Biden. And it’s kind of being exemplified right now: It’s about the president every day behind the rostrum, talking about the coronavirus, and to Beth’s point, Biden’s kind of off the grid. And it’s helping him. If you look at polling the last three or four weeks, it’s been beneficial to him.Pro-China Policies---2ACPro-China policies compromise Trump’s chances at winning the election Lipson, Professor of Political Science Emeritus at the University of Chicago, 4-17-20(Charles, “The More Anger at China, the Worse for Biden,” accessed 4-21-20, ) JFN Vulnerable as Biden is on these comments, the former vice president is even more exposed on how China affects U.S. national security. Voters increasingly consider China a malevolent and menacing adversary. That doesn’t mean either side wants war. It does mean Americans are increasingly skeptical of accommodation and appeasement, which has been Washington’s basic policy since 1972. That policy has intensified since the early 1990s, when the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations helped China join the World Trade Organization. President Trump is adamant about reversing those policies, which were pursued by successive Democratic and Republican administrations. When the U.S. and Europe welcomed China into the WTO, they convinced themselves into believing that Beijing would play by the rules and open a huge internal market to Western firms. Ideally, China would also begin liberalizing politically and edge toward democracy. All wrong, except for the huge internal market. China is becoming more dictatorial, not more democratic. It is stealing intellectual property on a massive scale. The internal market has grown massively, but foreign access to it has been carefully regulated and accompanied by coercive demands for self-censorship, technology transfers, and local partnerships at discount prices. Foreign investors are open to predation, unprotected by the rule of law. By contrast, Chinese firms that invest in America, including state-owned firms, have broad access to the domestic market, as well as legal protection. Trump is clamping down on that access as he reshapes policy toward Beijing. Joe Biden is not responsible for these long-standing American policies, but he is closely associated with them. He championed them for years. The Trump campaign will make sure voters know it. They will imply, rightly, that China would prefer to deal with a pliant President Biden than a battle-hardened Trump. Those are powerful arguments in Midwestern swing states, where manufacturing employment has declined sharply. Many voters blame the losses on outsourcing to China, Mexico, and other low-cost sources.Public anger at China hurts Biden’s chances of victory; plan hurts Trump’s ability to effectively use this strategy Lipson, Professor of Political Science Emeritus at the University of Chicago, 4-17-20(Charles, “The More Anger at China, the Worse for Biden,” accessed 4-21-20, ) JFN For months now, it has been clear that Biden family corruption will be a campaign issue. The impeachment focused attention on ties between the vice president’s son, Hunter, and the corrupt Ukrainian oil and gas giant Burisma. But Hunter had equally close, equally profitable ties to Chinese state-owned banks. Those connections were formed when Joe Biden was leading the Obama administration’s policies toward both China and Ukraine. Cozy, profitable, and possibly corrupt connections with the Chinese government are the last thing Americans want to hear about their politicians right now. Those voters are closeted at home, worried about their future, thanks to a virus that originated in Wuhan. They are mad as hell at Beijing for hiding what it knew, early on, about the pandemic. The Chinese Communist Party knew something terrible was happening, and it refused to share honest information about it. It denied the virus could be spread by human contact, weeks after it knew patients were infecting health care workers, and it hid vital information about the origins and genetic structure of the virus. The World Health Organization spread that misinformation. Beijing’s deception cost lives and livelihoods. Americans are reminded of it every day they are home from work or school under quarantine. This anger at China’s rulers is bad news for Joe Biden. Voters see China as a rising threat and its economic gains as coming out of American pockets. The Trump campaign was already pushing these issues. It won’t have any trouble tying them to Joe Biden and making his family the face of American elites who profit from their insider positions.China---2ACChina bashing is the election wining issue for Trump but the plan takes it away from him Young, 5-25-20(JT, “Biden Has Already Lost on China,” accessed 5-26-20, ) JFNJoe Biden will lose the election on China. America is a divided nation on seemingly every issue, but increasingly unified in opposition to China. But because Biden cannot join this unity of opposition, he is ceding this lopsided issue to President Trump. For America, coronavirus has crystallized years of bad Chinese behavior. Almost 100,000 deaths, 1.7 million cases, 39 million lost jobs, and a locked-down nation have brought back to mind all China’s committed, but overlooked, sins. Last week, the administration delivered to Congress a 16-page letter, which dispassionately outlined China’s past and ongoing transgressions. It puts them into three main categories: China’s challenges to America’s economy, security, and values. It also makes clear that, in contrast with previous administrations, China’s behavior will no longer be accepted: “The Administration’s approach to the PRC reflects a fundamental reevaluation of how the United States understands and responds to the leaders of the world’s most populous country and second largest national economy.” Negative as the White House letter is, it may be less so than the American people’s feelings about China. A February Gallup poll (conducted 2/3-16) found Americans had a 33 to 67 percent favorable/unfavorable view of China. That yawning negative 34 percent gap was double Gallup’sFebruary 2019’s negative 16 percent. A Pew poll in March (conducted 3/3-29) found an even larger negative gap of negative 40 percent. China’s favorability had fallen to just 26 percent, while its unfavorability stayed at two-thirds (66 percent). Both polls recorded their highest negatives ever on China. Significantly, both occurred months ago. Since then, coronavirus has only worsened in America and globally, and China’s known role in it has only increased. Congress did not need a White House letter to see which way the wind was blowing on China. Just last week, the Senate unanimously approved legislation to de-list companies (Chinese) from U.S. security exchanges if they do not allow U.S. review of their audits; it also saw bipartisan legislation introduced aimed at actions that could result from China’s upcoming imposition of tougher rule in Hong Kong. Recently, it had unanimously approved legislation addressing China’s oppression of its Uyghur minorities. Amidst this swelling consensus, is Biden’s unique dissonance. It constitutes a perilously unique threat to his campaign. Biden is prevented from joining America’s growing animosity toward China, while Trump is more than able and willing to do so. It is hard to label any from Biden’s hit parade of gaffes his worst — just wait a day and another entrant joins the litany — but the one with the biggest ramifications is his cavalier dismissal of China. Just a year ago in Iowa, Biden stated, “China is going to eat our lunch? Come on, man. I mean, you know, they’re not bad folks, folks. But guess what? They’re not competition for us.” Breathtaking then, Biden’s remarks are mind-boggling now. Patently wrong, they could not be more out of step with America’s sentiment or resentment. They also keep Biden from stepping up on China now. To do so, he would have to explain away what no one could understand then. And the person least able to explain anything is Joe Biden. The second reason Biden cannot criticize China now is that he strategically cannot afford to. Biden needs to keep his campaign’s focus (such as it is) on Trump. By joining America in shifting the focus onto China, he not only puts himself on the hook (via his earlier China jaw-dropper), he lets Trump off it. The economy serves as case in point for Biden’s problem. Before coronavirus’s impact, the economy was Trump’s reelection résumé. Coronavirus’s economic hit finally gives Biden an opening to criticize what he heretofore could not touch. But criticism of China for coronavirus now means absolving Trump for the current downturn. There is a common quip about untouchable issues in American politics being “motherhood and apple pie” — you cannot oppose them. So, politicians unite on these, because they must, and hasten to others to show their differences. Biden’s biggest problem is that his biggest difference with Trump is also one he has with America: China. Biden is blocked from the most unifying and important issue in American politics. Make no mistake: Trump knows it full well. The letter he sent to Congress was really meant for Biden. All Biden can do is read it and weep.Biden will use the plan to bash Trump Sugeno, Nikkei Asian Review Columnist, 5-9-20(Mikio, “Trump and Biden use antagonism against Beijing to win votes,” accessed 5-31-20, ) JFNYet, Trump's actions are seen by many as simply a plan to whip up support ahead of the U.S. presidential election on Nov. 3, against his Democratic opponent, former Vice President Joe Biden. The coronavirus outbreak has made it hard for both candidates to go on the traditional campaign trail. Trump's handling of the pandemic and his many ill-advised comments about cures have made him a laughingstock to many. He is now cranking up the heat on China's management of the crisis to divert this lurid attention away from himself. A poll conducted in March by the U.S. think tank Pew Research Center found that 66% of Americans surveyed are negative about China, while only 26% are positive. A similar survey when Trump took office in 2017 showed roughly 50-50%. Americans have grown wary of China in large part because the Trump administration has taken a tough stance against it, citing Chinese menace and unfair trade practices. The coronavirus has now claimed more than 75,000 lives in the U.S., higher than the number of Americans killed during the Vietnam War. Trump's approval ratings are falling, in large part due to a weakening U.S. economy and stock price plunges, as well as his questionable initial response to the coronavirus outbreak. In a desperate attempt to turn the situation around, the president is wielding the China card. Trump's Republican Party machinery is doing what it can to fuel that animosity. An internal party memo on the COVID-19 pandemic, obtained by a news media organization, told members: "Don't defend Trump, other than the China travel ban -- attack China." The Republicans are also keeping the heat on Biden with their allegations that his son Hunter had illicitly profited from financial dealings with China. This helps them to paint a picture of Biden as being soft on China. Biden is aware that such a perception could hurt his campaign. In a piece he contributed to Foreign Affairs, he stressed the need to get tough on China, vowing that he would not tolerate Beijing's infringement of intellectual property rights owned by U.S. companies and unfair competitive edge that state-run Chinese enterprises enjoy. Biden has also vowed to increase pressure on China over human rights issues in cooperation with U.S. allies, while stressing that "there is no reason we should be falling behind China" in the high-tech sector. In addition, Biden has also aimed his attack of Trump at his earlier remarks praising Chinese President Xi Jinping's handling of the new coronavirus outbreak and the transparency Beijing showed. Despite these efforts by the Biden side, there remains an idea that he took a conciliatory stance on China while he was in government under former President Barack Obama. As such, Biden cannot afford to show any weakness now in this respect, particularly as it is clear that Trump will stop at nothing to be reelected. China will be the main battleground.China bashing is the central feature of Trump’s campaign Sheng and Geng, Univ. of Hong Kong Fellow and Peking Univ. Professor, 5-28-20(Andrew and Xiao, “Cooperate with China or Suffer,” accessed 5-30-20, ) JFN Amid acute emotional and economic trauma, the desire to identify and punish a culprit can certainly be tempting. For Trump, it has emerged as a central feature of his reelection campaign – and a useful way to avoid blame for his administration’s own failures in responding to the pandemic. But history shows the folly of this approach: policies intended to punish the losers of World War I set the stage for the Great Depression and eventually led to another world war.Coronavirus has made China be perceived as a major national security threat by the US public Continetti, Washington Free Beacon Columnist, 4-17-20(Matthew, “The Viral Center,” accessed 4-19-20, ) JFN A justifiable fear drives public opinion. This anxiety is not limited to the virus. It extends to the economy and to the mechanisms of globalization that spread the disease. Infectious diseases are now the greatest threat in the eyes of the public. Terrorism, nuclear proliferation, and cyberattacks rank second, third, and fourth. China is fifth. The percentage of Americans who identify China as a major threat has risen 20 points in three years. Hawks have thought for a while that Americans would not recognize the danger of China without a showstopping event. Coronavirus is it.China is very unpopular with voters Lawler, Axios Reporter, 4-21-20(Dave, “Poll: Americans' views of China darken dramatically,” accessed 4-21-20, ) JFNTwo-thirds of Americans now view China unfavorably, up from 47% two years ago, according to data from Pew that suggests the increasingly adversarial approach from Washington is spreading throughout the country. The big picture: Americans have tended to view China negatively since 2013, but that sentiment has grown dramatically over the past two years amid the U.S-China trade war and, more recently, the coronavirus pandemic. In that time, the proportion of Americans who view China very unfavorably has more than doubled (15% to 33%). Key findings: The trend is bipartisan, though Republicans (72% unfavorable) are more wary of China than Democrats (62%). Younger people are more likely to view China favorably, with 43% of 18 to 29-year-olds holding positive views compared to 26% of 30 to 49-year-olds and 21% of those older than 50. Confidence in Xi Jinping plummeted over the last year, with 71% of Americans now having no confidence in him, compared with 50% in 2019. Nine-in-10 Americans now view China as a threat, with 62% viewing China as a major threat — up from 48% in 2018. Concerns with China’s impact on the environment and policies on human rights are on the rise, while economic concerns over jobs and the trade deficit are lower than a decade ago. Most Americans view the U.S. as a bigger economic power than China, and 91% say the world is better off with America as the leading superpower, rather than China (4%).American public is intensely anti-China Pavlich, editor for , 4-29-20(Katie, “Joe Biden's China problem,” accessed 4-30-20, ) JFN According to recent Harris polling, 77 percent of Americans believe China, led and controlled by the CCP, is responsible for unleashing the disease on the world. The CCP is being held responsible for the health and economic consequences of the virus. Further, 54 percent of Americans want paid reparations from the country. Given Biden’s record, this spells trouble for him in November.China is the key issue in the 2020 campaign and being perceived as anti-China is a political winner Allen-Ebrahimian, Axios Staff Writer, 4-29-20(Bethany, “Democrats and Republicans have argued about China for 150 years,” accessed 4-30-20, ) JFNChina will likely be a major issue in the 2020 presidential election, as the coronavirus crisis continues to paralyze large swaths of the U.S. economy. But even without a global pandemic ramping up the geopolitical stakes, Democrats and Republicans have long disagreed over how to deal with the world's most populous country. Why it matters: Debates from decades ago still echo in today's partisan divide over China policy, revealing entrenched attitudes that complicate America's search for a sustainable relationship with Beijing. What's happening: Republicans are coming down harder than ever on China, and there are almost no political downsides for them in this campaign season. Administration officials who have pushed for U.S.-China economic decoupling now feel vindicated, as governments around the world are realizing they are dependent on Chinese imports for crucial medical supplies. As the number of coronavirus cases and deaths in the U.S. soar, deflecting blame onto China for the pandemic isn't just expedient, it's almost a necessity. It's an approach with wide appeal, as 9 out of 10 Americans now view China as a threat. Democrats, meanwhile, are experiencing a kind of paralysis. A dramatic rise in anti-Asian racism in the U.S. has led Democrats to rally in support of Asian Americans and to disown rhetoric by leading Republicans that pins blame for the coronavirus on China. But that has made it politically toxic for Democrats to appear tough on Beijing. Many leading Democrats share Republicans' deep concerns over China's increasingly assertive authoritarianism, but China policy is now largely focused on the country's role in the pandemic. Former Vice President Joe Biden campaign's new line of attack — trying to sound tougher than President Trump on China — was widely panned by many on the left as racially inflammatory. Details: Partisan issues dating as far back as the 19th century still inform the national conversation today: The 1870s and 1880s: The Chinese Exclusion Act A wave of anti-Chinese sentiment, tied in part to fear of competition in the labor market, resulted in the first U.S. law barring all Chinese nationals from entry. Republicans, who were "still the party of Lincoln" at this time, opposed the act because they believed in "ideals of racial equality," and many supported an expansion of Pacific trade, Gordon H. Chang, a professor of American history at Stanford University, told Axios in an interview. Democrats, on the other hand, supported the act, because they "represented portions of labor, and more racially prejudiced portions of the population," said Chang. Since Trump's election, Chinese-American groups have pointed to similarities between the political environment in the 1880s and today. The memory is alive in China, too. In early February, shortly after the United States banned entry to Chinese nationals amid the coronavirus pandemic, the Chinese tabloid Global Times published an article comparing the travel ban to the 1882 law and the racist fears of a "yellow peril" that had accompanied it. The 1940s and 1950s: The Chinese Communist victory and the start of the Cold War In the early years of World War II, Democrats and Republicans were united in their support of China's Nationalist government led by Chiang Kai-shek and their opposition to the invading Japanese and the Chinese Communists. But this bipartisanship didn't last. Democrats grew dissatisfied with Chiang's ineffectiveness and his own authoritarian tendencies, and their support for Chiang's government waned. Republicans remained strong Chiang supporters and blamed the Democratic administration for the Chinese Communist Party's victory over the Nationalists in 1949. In an early episode of nascent McCarthyism, Republicans spearheaded an investigation into State Department officials whom they accused of secretly supporting China's Communists, leading to a purge of China experts. That was the moment "China became a sensitive domestic political issue," said Chang. To this day, Democrats have remained deeply fearful of a return to Cold War-era suspicions, which makes them loathe to echo some of the more hardline Republican rhetoric that has become mainstream since 2016. The 1990s: Appeasement after the Tiananmen massacre President George H.W. Bush slapped sanctions on China after its leaders sent in tanks to quell pro-democracy protests in Beijing. But the tough attitude didn't last, and Bush soon worked to open up trade between the two countries. In a well-known 1992 presidential debate, Bill Clinton accused Bush of "appeasing the Butcher in Beijing," said Yafeng Xia, a professor of East Asian and diplomatic history at Long Island University Brooklyn. The criticism stuck and damaged Bush's candidacy. "From that time on, China would become a football in U. S politics," said Xia. The bottom line: The divide between Republicans and Democrats on China policy runs deep.China bashing is a key and successful part of Trump’s reelection strategy Kumar, Politico Reporter, 5-3-20(Anita, “Trump says blame China. His supporters are listening,” accessed 5-3-20, ) JFN President Donald Trump’s decision to focus his coronavirus anger on China, America’s top economic rival, is part of a pivot for Trump’s reelection team as it scrambles to revise a campaign message that had been focused on financial prosperity. Now, with the economy in a coronavirus-induced coma, Trump’s team is working to instead make the 2020 race a referendum on who will be tougher on China — Trump or Joe Biden. In recent days, Trump’s campaign has even dubbed the president’s likely Democrat opponent “Beijing Biden." The message appears to be resonating. John Fredericks, the Virginia talk radio host and Trump supporter, said his callers, many out of work in rural areas, trust Trump to retaliate against China.China bashing is an effective tactic for Trump Kumar, Politico Reporter, 5-3-20(Anita, “Trump says blame China. His supporters are listening,” accessed 5-3-20, ) JFN Polls conducted for the Trump campaign and Republican senators show China will be an effective issue for Republicans in November, according to three people who have seen the numbers, leading the GOP to buy a flurry of TV and Facebook ads, dash off emails to supporters and increase their tough rhetoric. “Unlike Sleepy Joe Biden and the rest of the Crooked Democrats, President Trump keeps his promises, which is why we're not letting China get away with using America as a scapegoat,” one Trump campaign Facebook ad read.China bashing is a successful political strategy for TrumpKumar, Politico Reporter, 5-3-20(Anita, “Trump says blame China. His supporters are listening,” accessed 5-3-20, ) JFN In response, Trump has touted the narrative that China, not him, is at fault. It’s a message that plays into American’s current feelings about China. About two-thirds of the country has an unfavorable view of China, the highest number in 15 years, according to a poll by Pew Research Center. That figure is also up nearly 20 percentage points since Trump was inaugurated in 2017. “The desire for China to be held accountable for the spread of Covid-19 is no longer limited to Trump supporters,” said Brian Swenson, a Republican strategist in Florida who worked for Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), referencing the disease that results from the coronavirus. “There is a growing bipartisan call at the local level for China to be held accountable for their lack of transparency with the world community, their spreading of propaganda and misinformation and for failing to diminish the spread of Covid-19.” Kyle Hupfer, chairman of the Republican party in the red state of Indiana, said residents expect Trump to get to the bottom of the pandemic. “There’s certainly a level of distrust related to what China has done and how they’re approached this,” he said. In recent weeks, Trump has tried to take advantage of those growing feelings of animosity — nicknaming the virus the “Chinese virus,” accusing China of lying about its number of cases and boasting he contained the outbreak by restricting travel from China in January, even though many public health experts say the ban merely bought the U.S. time that Trump did not use to prepare adequately. This week, Trump said his administration was investigating whether China covered up what it knew about the early spread of coronavirus. His aides are discussing ways to penalize the country.China bashing is a key issue for Trump and being consistent is vitalKumar, Politico Reporter, 5-3-20(Anita, “Trump says blame China. His supporters are listening,” accessed 5-3-20, ) JFN Trump’s allies say going after China is a particularly compelling issue for the president because he constantly criticized Beijing while on the campaign trail in 2016, accusing the country of taking U.S. jobs, spying on U.S. businesses and stealing U.S. technology. “He should stay on the message he has had for many years,” said a Republican who speaks to Trump. So far, Trump’s surrogates and aides have stayed on that message, talking about China daily in online campaign events. America First Action, a pro-Trump super PAC, released a new TV ad attacking Biden on China Friday in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. In the coming weeks, Trump’s campaign is expected to launch a similar ad blitz. “Our internal data shows that Joe Biden’s softness on China is a major vulnerability, among many,” said Trump campaign spokesman Tim Murtaugh, though he declined to release the polling numbers. There are growing signs Trump’s strategy is working.International Respect---2ACPolicies that increase US alliances and prestige globally are popular with voters Lawler, Axios Reporter, 4-20-20(Dave, “Poll: Voters worry Trump has made America less respected,” accessed 4-21-20, ) JFNA poll designed to test President Trump’s vulnerabilities on foreign policy finds that 56% of voters in 12 battleground states believe he has made America less respected in the world, compared to 31% who say America is now more respected. By the numbers: Among the 16% of voters who remain undecided ahead of November’s election, 59% agree that Trump is making the U.S. less respected, compared to 16% who say the U.S. is now more respected. The poll was commissioned by National Security Action, a group founded by former Obama administration officials to advise Democrats on foreign policy. Ned Price, the group's director of policy and communications, told Axios that Democrats now need to "connect for voters why the fact that America’s reputation is in the dumpster makes us less safe." Voters were also given 10 possible foreign policy priorities and asked which three were most important to their vote.Military Alliances---2ACUS public overwhelmingly supports maintaining US military alliances Chicago Council on Global Affairs, 19(“Rejecting Retreat: Americans Support US Engagement in Global Affairs,” accessed 5-4-20, ) JFN The upending of US foreign policy under the Trump administration, the revolt against establishment politicians, and the rise of the progressive wing in US politics has led many foreign policy experts to conclude that Americans want to retreat from the world. Much of Washington and its foreign policy elite believe that “Iraq and other debacles” have left Americans wearied, worried, and inclined toward either America First or retrenchment ideas.1 They believe the American public sees the rules-based international order established after World War II as bankrupt. But that is not what the American public actually thinks. Americans may be searching for a new way to make sense of the world. But the 2019 Chicago Council Survey demonstrates that retreating from the world, abdicating international leadership, and abandoning alliances and global institutions is not what the American public has in mind. Whether they identify as Democrats, Independents, or Republicans, large numbers of Americans continue to favor the foundational elements of traditional, post–World War II US foreign policy. They express continued or increased support for security alliances and military deterrence by maintaining superior military capabilities and US bases abroad. They believe international trade is good for the United States and American companies, and that promoting democracy and human rights around the world makes the United States safer. In fact, support for NATO, military alliances, and trade have never been higher in the history of the Chicago Council Survey.Americans support maintaining military alliances Chicago Council on Global Affairs, 19(“Rejecting Retreat: Americans Support US Engagement in Global Affairs,” accessed 5-4-20, ) JFN Solid majorities of Americans say that preserving US military alliances with other countries (74%), maintaining US military superiority (69%), and stationing US troops in allied countries (51%) contribute to US safety. (See Appendix Figure 1.) Fewer say the same about military interventions (27%), suggesting that Americans favor using US military clout to deter aggressive actions by other countries rather than to invade or occupy them. In other words, when it comes to the US military, the public seems to adhere to President Theodore Roosevelt’s admonition to “speak softly and carry a big stick.”Allies---2ACMajority of Americans support compromising with US allies PEW Research Center, 4-2-19(“Large Majorities in Both Parties Say NATO Is Good for the U.S.,” accessed 5-21-20, ) JFN A majority of Americans (54%) say “the U.S. should take into account the interests of its allies even if it means making compromises with them,” while 40% say “the U.S. should follow its own national interests even when its allies strongly disagree.”NATO---2ACUS public supports maintaining NATO commitments Chicago Council on Global Affairs, 19(“Rejecting Retreat: Americans Support US Engagement in Global Affairs,” accessed 5-4-20, ) JFN In addition, even more Americans now than in 2017 say that security alliances in East Asia, Europe, and the Middle East benefit both US allies and the United States (Figure B). This holds true across partisan lines. Asked about NATO specifically, all-time high percentages among Democrats (86%), Independents (68%), and Republicans (62%) believe that NATO is still essential to US security. And 78 percent of Americans overall say that the United States should maintain or increase its current commitment to NATO.US public overwhelmingly support NATO and maintaining the alliance Reinhart, Gallup Analyst, 3-4-19(RJ, “Majorities of Americans See the Need for NATO and the UN,” accessed 5-16-20, ) JFNPresident Donald Trump, who has questioned U.S. support for international organizations with his "America First" foreign policy, has been particularly skeptical of NATO, openly questioning the need for the alliance and expressing his wish to pull the U.S. out of it. A clear majority of Americans (currently 77%) continue to say the alliance should be maintained. These latest data come from Gallup's annual World Affairs survey, conducted Feb. 1-10. The survey was conducted less than a month after media reports broke that Trump publicly questioned the relevance of NATO and repeatedly brought up potentially withdrawing the U.S. from the NATO alliance. In response, European leaders and U.S. senators have been critical of Trump's views. The current 77% of Americans who support maintaining the NATO alliance is little changed from the 80% who said the same the last time Gallup asked the question, in 2017, when Trump began to question its relevance. The current level of support is among the highest Gallup has measured on six occasions since 1989, although the higher support mainly reflects a decline in the percentage not having an opinion rather than a decrease in opposition. Majority support for NATO is seen across political party groups, though Republicans express the lowest level of support, at 70%. Democrats' support is highest, at 88%, while independents fall in between, at 75%. Republicans' support for NATO is not substantially lower under Trump than it has been under other presidents, since 1990. Democrats' support, however, is much higher now than during the 1980s and 1990s, but off of the 97% peak in 2017. For Democrats, this may be a partisan response to Trump's criticisms of NATO.Even if a majority of Americans don’t support NATO, only 10% support withdrawing Sanders, YouGov Data Journalist, 4-4-19(Linley, “How does America feel about NATO? Support for alliance falls across key Western nations,” accessed 5-21-20, ) JFNAs the North Atlantic Treaty Organization treaty reaches its 70th anniversary on Thursday, support for the international alliance has fallen among key Western nations, and less than half of Americans (44%) support the United States’ place in the agreement once designed to provide collective security against Russia, formerly called the Soviet Union. One in ten (10%) Americans oppose NATO membership and 29% are unsure of their position, according to new YouGov RealTime data that surveyed key NATO countries and several prospective members.US public supports Article 5 of NATO Sanders, YouGov Data Journalist, 4-4-19(Linley, “How does America feel about NATO? Support for alliance falls across key Western nations,” accessed 5-21-20, ) JFNA key tenant of the NATO treaty is Article 5, which outlines that an attack on one NATO ally is an attack on all, obliging all member countries to defend one another. Clear majorities of Americans (57%), Britons (66%) and Germans (58%) back the pledge, with around half of French people (53%) also being willing to come to the defense of their allies. Hypothetically, most citizens in key NATO countries believe in the promise—until they are asked about their willingness to defend specific nations. More Americans are willing to use military force to defend other countries against Russia than those who don’t wish to get involved—making it one of the only key NATO allies to uphold the same defense for each nation listed. While pluralities in each country tend to support coming to the aid of most nations, there is particular ambivalence about defending Turkey, despite its status as a NATO member. In fact, only in the US do people tend to think Turkey should be reinforced (36% vs 22%).Majority of Americans have a favorable view of NATO IPSOS, 12-3-19(“NATO Seen As Force For Good, But Support is Low,” accessed 5-21-20, ) JFNFavourability towards NATO is highest in Poland (60%), the US (56%), Canada (55%) and Britain (50%), but low in some key member states: Germany: 30% France: 31% Italy: 35%Spain 29%NATO has robust public support in the US Stoltenberg, NATO Secretary General, 12-3-19(Jens, “Questions and answers: by NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg at the ''NATO Engages: Innovating the Alliance'' conference,” accessed 5-21-20, ) JFN JENS STOLTENBERG: Yes. But I think you just have to realise that that’s a different world. That’s true. But if you look at, for instance, the opinion polls, especially in the United States, it’s record high support for . . . for NATO. And not only in the public opinion in the United States, but also in the Congress. They have stated again and again their strong support for NATO. So there is this big paradox that while people are questioning the strength of the transatlantic bond, on both sides of the Atlantic, actually, there is stronger public popular support for NATO than it has been for many, many, many years in most of the NATO Allied countries, especially in the United States. Second, we are doing more together in North America and Europe than we have done for decades, with more US presence and European Allies stepping up. You know, I’m a politician and I’m used to be criticised for having good rhetoric . . . rhetoric, but bad substance. In NATO it’s the opposite. We have bad rhetoric, but extremely good substance. And . . . and that’s a good thing.Japan---2ACUS public supports our alliance with JapanMead, Bard College Foreign Affairs Professor, 9-16-19(Walter Russell, “China and Trump Are Making Japan Nervous; Tokyo is committed to the Pacific alliance. Can Washington get its act together?,” WSJ, accessed 5-17-20, p. Factiva) JFN The neo isolationist wing of the Trump administration and its counterpart among left-wing Democrats share a common worldview: If the U.S. faces no great-power threats and has no powerful rivals, they ask, why should it invest so heavily in military alliances and order-building? But China's rise is focusing American minds and discrediting this approach. Over time, public opinion is likely to embrace and even demand a more focused and strategic foreign policy. That means the more mature and forward-looking elements of the Trump foreign policy in Asia are likely to persist under both Republican and Democratic administrations, while the more erratic elements in both parties are likely to lose influence. Americans will increasingly appreciate the value of strategic assets like the alliance with Japan—the third-largest economy in the world, a major source of aid and infrastructure spending across Asia and Africa, and a key economic and political competitor with Beijing.US public holds Japan in high regard Armitage, Former Deputy Secretary of State, 7-1-19(Richard, “THE GRANDMASTER: AN INTERVIEW WITH AMBASSADOR RICHARD ARMITAGE,” States News Service, accessed 5-20-20, p. Nexis Uni) JFN Ambassador Armitage: Well, I think look at our own society. Japan is in public opinion polls here extraordinarily highly regarded. The US Congress regards Japan and holds them in the highest esteem I think for their behavior, for their activities post-war, their support for the international institutions, et cetera. So there's a lot to recommend itself in the way Japan is approaching not only Asia but the world, but most importantly, I think, has been the indefatigable diplomacy of Shinzo Abe during this whole time.NATO/South Korea/Japan---2ACUS public supports NATO and our military alliance with South Korea and Japan Chicago Council on Global Affairs, 19(“Rejecting Retreat: Americans Support US Engagement in Global Affairs,” accessed 5-4-20, ) JFN While Americans are more likely to say that US military interventions make the United States less safe (46%) rather than more (27%), there are times when they think military action is appropriate. For example, Americans favor using US troops to take action to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons (70%) and fight violent Islamic extremist groups in Iraq and Syria (59%). Americans also support the use of US troops to defend allies. Majorities across party lines favor committing US troops to defend South Korea from a North Korean invasion (58%) and to defend a NATO ally such as Latvia, Lithuania, or Estonia from a Russian invasion (54%). Bipartisan majorities also prefer to maintain or increase current levels of US military forces in South Korea (69%), Japan (57%), and the Persian Gulf (60%). (See Appendix Figure 4.)NATO/South Korea---2ACUS public supports NATO and our military alliance with South KoreaChicago Council on Global Affairs, 19(“Rejecting Retreat: Americans Support US Engagement in Global Affairs,” accessed 5-4-20, ) JFN Americans broadly support the use of military force to address these top threats. Whether it is to stop Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons (70%), to fight violent Islamic extremist groups in Iraq and Syria (59%), or to defend South Korea if North Korea invades (58%), a majority of Americans across party lines support the use of US troops. Bipartisan majorities also support using US troops to defend a NATO ally such as Latvia, Lithuania, or Estonia (54%) if Russia invades (Figure 8).Japan/South Korea/Germany---2ACUS public supports our military alliances with Japan, South Korea, and Germany Chicago Council on Global Affairs, 19(“Rejecting Retreat: Americans Support US Engagement in Global Affairs,” accessed 5-4-20, ) JFN But the American public does not view all partnerships and alliances equally. When asked whether relations with specific countries strengthen or weaken US national security, there is a clear stratification. Large majorities of Americans believe that relations with longstanding allies such as Japan (78%), Germany (75%), and South Korea (70%) strengthen US national security. Meanwhile, Americans are divided on whether US relations with Turkey and Saudi Arabia strengthen or weaken US national security. And an outright majority believes that the US relationship with Pakistan weakens US security. (See Appendix Figure 2 for full results.)South Korea---2ACUS public supports the security alliance with South KoreaSnyder, Council on Foreign Relations Senior Fellow, 10-24-19(Scott, “South Koreans And Americans Agree On How To Deal With China,” accessed 5-22-20, ) JFN South Korean and American public opinion toward China and toward each other provides an important window through which to measure the impact of rising economic competition and political rivalry between China and the United States. Parallel public opinion polls by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and the Asan Institute for Policy Studies conducted in the summer of 2019 show that both publics strongly support the U.S.-South Korea security alliance as a hedge against China’s rise, while simultaneously supporting policies focused on cooperation rather than confrontation with China. China has come to perceive South Korea as a possible weak link in the American alliance architecture in Northeast Asia. China retaliated against South Korea for the 2017 U.S. deployment of the Terminal High Altitude Air Defense (THAAD) system in the South in response to growing North Korean missile capabilities. Chinese maritime and air patrols are testing South Korea’s exclusive economic zone and the Korean Air Defense Identification Zone with increasing regularity. China’s more muscular approach toward regional security has induced a backlash among the South Korean public, which prior to 2016 held a relatively rosy view of China’s future influence and impact on the region. In the most recent Asan survey, over 78% of South Koreans said their government should prioritize strengthening ties with the United States over China. South Koreans continue to favor the United States over all of their immediate neighbors. Favorability toward the United States remains positive, with a mean score of 6.0 on a 0-10 point scale, while China’s favorability was 3.8, the same as North Korea but higher than Japan, at 3.1. This finding coincides with support among two-thirds of Americans for building up strong relations with Japan and South Korea over relations with China.US public strongly supports the alliance with South KoreaSnyder, Council on Foreign Relations Senior Fellow, 10-24-19(Scott, “South Koreans And Americans Agree On How To Deal With China,” accessed 5-22-20, ) JFN But the underlying significance of the convergence of public views is that there is strong support in both the United States and South Korea for the U.S.-ROK alliance to act as a hedge against expanded Chinese political and economic influence in the region. Public support for cooperation between allies as a hedge against the downsides of China’s rise does not stem from an ambition to pursue confrontation with China, but rather from the desire to engage cooperatively with China from a position of strength.Removing US troops from South Korea is unpopular with the public Depetris, Analyst for 38 North, 11-21-19(Daniel, “Troops for Nukes: Should the US Trade Its Forces in South Korea for North Korean Denuclearization?,” accessed 5-22-20, ) JFN Unilaterally removing US forces in the South without getting anything of value in return would be politically impossible and strategically misguided. However, linking such a withdrawal in return for the Kim regime’s nuclear disarmament would at least be more defensible in the court of public opinion. This gambit would also kill two birds with one stone for a president who views diplomacy and relationships in strictly transactional terms: accomplishing the Kim regime’s denuclearization—an achievement he could plausibly tout as vindication of his politically risky, top-down nuclear diplomacy—while extricating the US military from what he views as a costly burden. In fact, it is easy to imagine the president claiming this deal as a great diplomatic triumph and a major campaign promise kept to his core supporters. The question is whether such a bargain would serve US security interests and command domestic support. There is considerable evidence that a US troop departure under any circumstances would be a tough sell domestically and run into serious implementation problems.Plan would ignite a political firestorm against Trump Depetris, Analyst for 38 North, 11-21-19(Daniel, “Troops for Nukes: Should the US Trade Its Forces in South Korea for North Korean Denuclearization?,” accessed 5-22-20, ) JFN The real-world prospects of a US troop withdrawal from South Korea, even if North Korea’s final and complete denuclearization were part of the equation, are slim at best. No influential political constituency in Washington would support this move. Maintaining a permanent US force presence in South Korea commands a solid, bipartisan majority on Capitol Hill; as a consequence, there would be intense congressional opposition to a US troop withdrawal—and probably any major drawdown in US troop strength. In fact, concerns about Trump making a sudden lurch in this direction prompted Congress to include a provision in the 2019 National Defense Authorization Act preventing the reduction of active-duty US forces below 22,000 unless the president certified that the US national security interest would be served. Resistance would be equally fierce in the executive branch, particularly from the US Department of Defense, and the uniformed military leadership, which believe that the US presence on the Korean Peninsula is critical to preventing Chinese hegemony in Northeast Asia and maintaining a credible deterrent against North Korean aggression. And while it may not matter to Trump, the US Department of State and his key national security advisors in the White House would worry about the detrimental effects of a US troop withdrawal on America’s system of global alliances as well as the potential for nuclear proliferation in the region.**I/L DefenseBiden Won’t Solve FoPo---2ACBiden win maintains current foreign policy – no substantial change means no impact Pletka 20, [Danielle Pletka, Danielle Pletka is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, "Would Biden’s Foreign Policy Really Be Much Different From Trump’s?, 7/24/20, , RH]So now that Biden has improbably landed atop a greased slide to the presidency, what would his foreign policy be? In theory, Uncle Joe will be the anti-Trump. In practice, what that will mean appears to be very little. Consider the president’s signature policies: Not only does Biden agree with Trump’s decision to draw down troops in Afghanistan, he promises to “bring American combat troops in Afghanistan home during [his] first term.” On China, where Trump has arguably led the world in a major shift in perceptions and treatment of the Communist regime, Biden says, “The United States should be pushing back on China's deepening authoritarianism, leading the free world in support of the brave people of Hong Kong as they demand the civil liberties and autonomy promised to them by Beijing. The same is true for the unconscionable detention of over a million Uighurs in western China.” Well, OK. So, the same policy then. On Russia, Biden promises to talk tough, but doesn’t suggest he’ll impose even more sanctions than the Trump administration, which has tightened the economic noose around Putin and his cronies. Biden does seem committed to salvaging the New START arms control agreement, which Trump is prepared to let expire, but don’t hold your breath for the conclusion of new arms control agreements under a Biden administration (Russia’s not interested). He promises to be nicer to Europe than Trump, a low bar for sure, but doesn’t suggest he’ll recommit troops to Germany, where Trump intends to draw down, countering lamely that he will only “review” Trump’s decision. He will also recommit to NATO, which in practice means nothing (though it is more appealing that the prospect of a Trump withdrawal in his second term). Indeed, Biden doesn’t even say he’ll pursue a different policy on North Korea – one of Trump’s signal failures—allowing that he, too, would pursue negotiations with Pyongyang. He’ll also keep in place Trump’s controversial decision to move the U.S. Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. In short, it’s not easy to find areas of substantive disagreement between Trump and nominal Biden foreign policy. Sure, Biden insists he will rejoin the Paris Accords and press for ambitious new targets in reducing emissions, though before COVID, few were actually, ahem, meeting Paris’s voluntary emissions targets. One area that would seem to afford Biden an obvious way to distance himself from Trump is Iran. The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA, better known as the Iran deal) was arguably the signature achievement of the Obama administration, and Trump withdrew in 2018. But Biden promises to get back in only “if Iran moves back into compliance with its nuclear obligations.” There’s a lot of water under that bridge, and the odds of a rapid return to even the limited standards of nuclear compliance in the original Iran deal are far from assured. At least as far as national security is concerned, a Biden presidency may well on balance represent continuity with the Trump administration – a more pleasant, less mercurial, but fundamentally the same U.S. foreign policy. The only question for most is whether the rest of the Democratic Party will permit Joe Biden to decide America’s place in the world. The mainstream of his party has shifted away from him, the left wing radically so, on everything from Iran and Israel to trade and the military. And that, ultimately, is the question voters must consider: At 78, will Biden be the commander in chief, or will others dictate his administration’s policy? As the nation looks for answers from the candidate sequestered in his basement, at the moment it’s hard to say.**Iran Defense**Warming DefenseBiden Can’t Solve---2ACClimate policy inevitably fails, regardless of who winsGoldwyn 20 [David L. Goldwyn is chairman of the Energy Advisory Group and a non-resident senior energy fellow at the Atlantic Council. “Regardless of who is president in 2020, climate change will be at the bottom of the US agenda,” euronews, 1/9/20, Accessed 7/23/20]#NCCA new Democratic president, on the other hand, will likely face a Republican Senate and a conservative Supreme Court. Both will act as limits on new legislation and expansive interpretation of existing authorities (such as those under the Clean Air and Water Acts). For these reasons, the major overarching challenges facing the US (and indeed global) energy markets will, regrettably, remain unresolved. Whichever administration takes office in January 2021, it will not be able to solve the systemic energy transition puzzle that has bedevilled policy makers (and their increasingly angry constituents) the world over. The forces of inertia will limit both the ability of a Trump administration to dismiss climate change and that of a Democratic administration to address it. A rational course would see policymakers consider both a national climate policy and a just energy transition that embraces necessary new infrastructure of all types, while addressing the economic impacts of that transition on all sectors. That pathway is not yet in sight in 2020. As the calendar turns to 2021, volatility in markets and politics remains the only certainty. ................
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