NEG – Mexican THA – HSS 13

Notes/to do

Notes:

For the Mexican PTX disads – tax reform is the stronger scenario, and the link is unique – the THA was approved by Mexico during Calderon’s (the previous president) administration and wasn’t linked to Nieto’s agenda.

Even if Nieto’s agenda includes reform, it’ll be preemptively stopped if the US refuses to sign the THA.

To cut:

1) SEC shields the link to US politics.

2) Renewables DA?

***CASE***

ADV – Mexico instability

1NC – Mexico instability

PEMEX instability inevitable for several reasons – these cumulative risks to the industry crush the advantageMartin and Longmire 11 – Jeremy Martin is Director of the Energy Program at the Institute of the Americas, Sylvia Longmire is a Mexico Security Expert & President, Longmire Consulting (Jeremy Martin and Sylvia Longmire, Journal of Energy Security, “The Perilous Intersection of Mexico’s Drug War & Pemex”, March 22, 2011, http://www.borderlandbeat.com/2011/03/perilous-intersection-of-mexicos-drug.html) // CB

Pemex exposed and impactedAs discussed previously, oil theft from Pemex pipelines, money laundering by way of service stations, and , worst of all, provocative kidnappings of the company’s executives and those of service companies working with the state firm, are all on the rise.

Unofficial figures place thefts from the Pemex network at roughly $2 billion annually . And security experts point to this as an important source of revenue for drug cartels —especially as the Mexican government

continues to crack down on them. Thefts from t he Pemex network are not new , but the increase and the strain it is placing on the already-taxed company is important. And the illegal tapping has grown significantly in the areas where the drug war is the most pervasive.

The spike in fuel thefts and illegal trading, as well as kidnappings, has led some to question whether Pemex is fully in charge of all its facilities across the nation.

For some experts following the situation, the answer is a resounding no. Indeed, many analysts indicate that the physical security and monitoring of pipelines belonging to Pemex are severely lacking . According to Mexican daily El

Universal, oil looting has occurred in almost every state in Mexico, while the Wall Street Journal, citing Pemex statistics,

indicated that between January and November 2010, Pemex discovered 614 illegal siphons—368 in liquid fuels pipelines, 196 in oil pipelines, and 50 in liquefied petroleum gas ducts. Pemex has begun installing systems to detect declines in pressure in some oil product pipelines but the project is expected to take years to complete.Kidnappings send shuddersKidnappings of Pemex executives and subcontractors , including workers from international firms, have taken place across the country but most notably in Tabasco, Tamaulipas and Nuevo Leon, send ing shudders throughout the company and Mexico.

The kidnappings have terrorized a community where, according to a Los Angeles Times story, jobs on the oil rigs and at the gas wells are handed down, father to son, for generations. “How is it,” asked a relative of a kidnapped

worker, “that Pemex, supposedly the backbone of the nation, can be made to bow down like this?”One analysis, published by Grupo Reforma highlighted the oil town of Reforma, Chiapas, where at least 30 Pemex employees—ranging from executives to laborers—have been kidnapped over the past year.Mexico Weekly has also reported on other forms of violence that have flared in prime Pemex production zones, such as the Burgos Basin, site of Mexico's biggest natural gas field in Tamaulipas. Last spring, gunmen seized the Gigante Uno gas plant and kidnapped five Pemex

workers. Increasingly unsafe conditions are severely hindering Pemex’s ability to produce natural gas in the Burgos Basin.The Burgos Basin stretches across the northern border state of Tamaulipas, where the Gigante Uno plant is located, and spills into the states of Nuevo León and Coahuila. All three states are experiencing extremely high levels of drug-related violence, especially along these states’ border with Texas. The stretch from Nuevo Laredo to Matamoros is in the midst of a bloody conflict between the Gulf cartel and Los Zetas, former paramilitaries and enforcers for the Gulf cartel who are now one of the more vicious DTOs in their own right. Los Zetas are viewed as largely responsible for the kidnapping of Pemex employees in that region.

“Once Pemex … comes under regular attack from the cartels, rather than just random, disorganized thugs, then you have far more serious national security problems – much worse in the government's eyes than a bunch of homicides in the slums of Ciudad Juárez," said Malcolm Beith, author of The Last Narco, a book about the hunt for Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzmán Loera.Regrettably, Burgos is becoming synonymous with the perilous intersection of Mexico’s raging drug war with Pemex’s efforts to produce the critical energy supplies the nation and region demand.The Murphy Energy case

One case of fuel theft from Pemex that’s winding its way through the justice system provides a unique insight into that part of the problem the company is confronting.According to MarketWatch, federal documents released in August 2010 revealed a Texas chemical plant, owned by German chemical company BASF Corp., bought $2 million worth of petroleum products that had been stolen from Pemex and smuggled across the US border. The documents also showed the stolen condensate passed through several companies' hands before arriving on a barge at the BASF facility in Port Arthur, Texas.The actual transport of stolen oil from Mexican pipelines into US corporate hands is complicated at best. Donald Schroeder, former president of Trammo Corp., testified that in January 2009, two companies, Murphy Energy Corp. and Continental Fuels, contacted him. Both wanted to sell him stolen condensate. Apparently he agreed to buy it, and the transfers began. “Unnamed import companies” would sell the condensate to intermediary companies like Continental (which has since shuttered its headquarters in Houston). Those import companies would smuggle the condensate across the border and store it in Continental facilities. No details were available on how those trucks managed to successfully cross the US Mexico border. These piecemeal transfers would continue until there was enough oil in the storage facility to fill a barge and ship to BASF.Jim McAlister, an Assistant US Attorney, said he has no reason to believe that BASF has any involvement in the alleged wrongdoing. The President and founder of Murphy Energy Corp., Matt Murphy, said the company did not know that the condensate was stolen. Josh Crescenzi, the vice president of Continental Fuels, has not been indicted in the case, nor has anyone else from Continental.This particular case has been a success, resulting in the handover of $2.4 million by US customs authorities to the Mexican government. But the extent of corruption in Mexico—within Pemex, in particular—and the ease with which oil can be stolen from pipelines makes the mitigation of oil looting an almost insurmountable challenge. Adding to the problem is the fact that Mexican cartels are involved. According to Reuters, the Mexican government believes the cartels use stolen jet fuel in their aircraft to cover up any evidence of illicit flights. In August 2009, Mexico’s federal police commissioner Rodrigo Esparza said Los Zetas used false import documents to smuggle at least $46 million worth of oil in tankers to unnamed US refineries. President Felipe Calderón has said that DTOs in northern Mexico are responsible for most oil theft.On some levels Pemex is not just a victim of oil-thieving DTOs; sometimes, it’s directly involved. In February 2010, Mexican military units seized more than four tons of marijuana at Pemex installations in Reynosa, Tamaulipas. The discovery was made after Pemex security alerted officials that armed men were removing Pemex employees from a fuel supply station. In response, a Mexican Naval helicopter was dispatched to the scene but retreated after receiving heavy weapons fire from the ground. When military units arrived on the ground, they found the marijuana loaded on trucks abandoned at the site.These alarming facts have led to perhaps the most ominous question of all: Is the company being infiltrated by the perpetrators of the nation’s drug business? In light of the increasing number of incidents President Calderón has acknowledged, there may well be internal operatives at Pemex aiding and abetting the DTOs.For its part, Pemex is soliciting the help of the Mexican people to try to put a stop to oil looting. Last August, the Mexican government posted a Pemex press release, in which exhorts that oil looting is not just an unpatriotic crime against the company and the government, but against the Mexican people. It also offers the number of a hotline where individuals can anonymously report pipeline breaches.Why the perilous intersection mattersThe relevance of what is happening in Mexico matters on a variety of levels, but in particular, there are three broad reasons that bear discussion.

First, and as best portrayed in Figure 2, Pemex has seen its oil production drop precipitously since 20 04. The firm has been struggling for the better part of the last decade to deal with a burdensome tax straitjacket , poor planning at its largest field, a lack of new discoveries of oil and production, and an inability to implement serious reform . Moreover, by the nature of being dragged into—and becoming part of—Mexico’s massive drug war,

Pemex is clearly suffering from the additional strain and havoc wrought by the myriad elements of the conflict on its business. From huge financial losses to the increasing inability to control its network and prevent theft to the more serious kidnapping threats , the evidence is only becoming clear er .The second reason concerns Mexico’s fiscal dependency on oil and Pemex. As assorted struggles impact the company's and the nation’s fiscal well-being, broader and longer term economic growth and employment discussions become ever more complicated for policy makers. These issues are particularly critical as the nation appears far from passage of the necessary and far-reaching national tax and fiscal reforms that could ameliorate some of the burden on Pemex and the nation’s oil dependency.

Third, all of the above leads to the real potential for further erosion of Mexico’s critical role as a secure and constant energy supplier for the U nited States and the Western Hemisphere. As oil prices steadily rise in early

2011, it is quite rational to revisit the significant energy security aspects of Mexico’s persistent energy woes, which are now

clearly exacerbated by the overflow of drug war violence and corruption .On the heels of yet another State of the Union address in the United States that included elegant rhetoric about the country’s energy imbalance and energy security risks, a comprehensive, all of the above approach and solution remains far from reach.ConclusionClearly oil, and energy more broadly, is not a sector of the economy where Mexico needs any further impediments. Pemex’s huge hurdles derive largely from its inability to replace declining oil production and navigate a burdensome nationalistic legacy. What is now added to the combustible mix is an increasing drain on the company’s finances and, worse, a sense of trepidation among executives in the field. Threats against its executives and loss of its resources are surely not a useful element as the company makes efforts to reform itself.

Macroeconomic factors and political stability are improving – and current growth is sustainableHogue 12 – Joseph Hogue 5-30-2012; provides investment research and analysis through his firm, Efficient Alpha. He has appeared as a guest on BloombergTV for his analysis of Latin American securities and holds the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) designation.Mexican economy in contrast to its negative stereotypes http://emergingmoney.com/mexico/mexican-economy-eww/

The diverse Mexican economy has been growing at a sustainable pace of 3.5-5.5% over the past three years. The political mood seems to be shifting incrementally in the direction of further liberalization . Ties to

relatively strong neighbors – the U.S. and the rest of Latin America – position the Mexican economy well relative to other emerging markets more dependent on floundering Europe or slowing China. The drug killings may even simmer down with the expected return t o power this July of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI ) . U.S. investors willing to

look past stereotypes will find a range of modern industries in Mexico issuing easily tradable American Depository Receipts (ADRs). The composition of the iShares MSCI Mexico Investable Market ETF (EWW, quote) offers a snapshot of the Mexican economy excluding oil, which remains largely

nationalized. Consumer staples account for 32% of the ETF’s holdings, telecommunications 24% and materials 15%.A number of large transportation firms are also publicly traded . The macroeconomic and political outlooks for Mexico are both positive. This means the Mexican economy should outperform other emerging markets over the next 12 months, though probably underperforming the Andean region of Latin America. Inflation was running at 3.5% annually as of April 2012, near the bottom of Mexico’s historical range . That means the usually conservative central bank is considering stimulus measures if global growth weakens further. The expected victory of the PRI in the July presidential poll (and return to power after a lame-duck period in December) also looks positive for investors. The PRI’s 70-year rule was interrupted under charges of widespread corruption in 2000. The party’s roots are socialist, but it has in recent

decades embraced market reforms and moved to the center. Its presidential candidate, Enrique Peña Nieto, has run on a platform of

reforms including partial privatization of state oil monopoly PEMEX, along the lines of Brazil’s Petrobras. Nieto also supports liberalizing employment laws. While the full extent of promised reforms is doubtful, Nieto’s pro-market rhetoric is welcome. Opening the oil sector to more private contractors could increase capital spending on infrastructure and accelerate GDP growth for the Mexican economy . The caveat is that these effects will be longer-term, while equity performance over the next year remains more dependent on growth in the United States and global headline risks.

No production decline – Mexico has plenty in reservesCampbell 12 – Robert Campbell, 5-22-2012; Reuters Market Analyst, Mexico is no longer an oil basketcase: Campbell http://www.petroleumworld.com/storyt12052302.htm

The following may be taken as heresy by oil perma-bulls but let's get it out in the open: it's time to scrap, or at the very least rigorously question, the assumption that Mexican oil production will dramatically fall sometime this decade. A predicted sharp fall in Mexican oil output has long underpinned part of one of the bullish theses behind strong oil prices :

non-OPEC crude oil output is weak and getting weaker. Of course, Mexico is not the only part of the non-OPEC supply picture. But it is a big player. The country

remains one of the world's biggest oil producers and exporters . The decline of nearly 25 percent in Mexican crude oil

production capacity between 2004 and 2008 was a watershed event for oil supplies. But the problem is that analysts still assume that similar

declines must inevitably come in the future. A glance at market balances uniformly assume sharp declines in Mexican oil output over the

next decade, projecting forward a rerun of the dramatic fall in production experienced by Mexico between 2006-08 onto the future. Consider the facts. Mexican crude oil production, while still a far cry from its peak, has been fairly stable , oscillating between 2.5 million and 2.6 million barrels per day since mid-2009. Total liquids production, which adds condensates and

natural gas liquids to crude output, has edged down, to just over 2.9 million bpd, but is off only 40,000 bpd from 2010 levels. Yet forecasters still assume steep drops in Mexican output. For instance, the 2010 Annual Energy Outlook published by the U.S. Energy Information Administration forecast Mexican liquids production would be only 2.31 million bpd in 2012.The EIA's 2011 forecast revised these views, but still assumes a decline in Mexican liquids output. The reference case calls for 2012 production to fall to 2.7 million bpd, or 2.8 million bpd in the high oil price scenario. Yet looking forward in the 2011 EIA forecast, steep declines are still projected, with output falling below 2 million bpd by 2019. The 2012 forecast again revises its view of Mexican output higher, in some cases

sharply, but the medium-term forecast still calls for steep declines. The EIA is not alone. Similar forecasts have been made (and revised) in recent years by the International Energy Agency and private oil market analysts. OUT OF INTENSIVE CARE At least for now, the narrative on Mexico remains the same. Whatever state oil monopoly Pemex has done to keep production flat for the last three years is really just a pause in the inevitable decline. Of course this is not to

say that all is well in Mexico's oil industry. Pemex remains grossly overstaffed, inefficient, bureaucratic and subject to political interference. Proven oil reserves continue to decline , albeit at a far slower pace than a few years ago.

High oil prices overcome revenue shortfallsMarket News International 11 – 5-9-2011; High Oil Prices Lift Pemex Profits, Challenges Remain http://imarketnews.com/node/30466

MEXICO CITY (MNI) - State oil company Petroleos Mexicanos (Pemex) is reaping huge earnings due to rising world oil prices, but analysts and company officials agree that steep challenges remain due to the government's tax take,

meeting promised production increases, money losing subsidiaries and attracting companies via its new contract model. Mexico's basket of oil sold at $110.86 late last week, up from $80.60 at the end of last year, and $71.45 in early May 2010.

But the increase was largely caused by factors which have little to do with Mexico.

Investors are stampeding into commodities as low interest rates allow them to borrow in developed economies and park the money in appreciating goods. Meanwhile, the Pemex quarterly report released last week showed production, at 2.57 million barrels per day actually fell 1% compared with the first quarter of 2010, although

average exports rose 10% to 1.37 million bpd. Still, with prices on the rise, the company posted net earnings of 4.2 billion in the first quarter, up from 1 billion during the same period year earlier.

Mexican economic instability inevitable – pervasiveness of monopoliesVoxxi 3/15 – news agency, cites OECD study (Shannon K O’Neil, “Road to stability for Mexico’s economy”, March 15, 2013, http://www.voxxi.com/road-to-stability-for-mexicos-economy/) // CB

A lack of competition pervades Mexico’s economy , as one or a few companies dominate sectors as

diverse as glass, cement, flour, soft drinks, sugar and tortilla flour, not to mention the state’s control of energy and electricity. This hits consumers’ bottom lines —an OECD study estimates that it increases the costs of basic goods for households by some 40 percent. It hurts Mexico’s working and middle classes the most, as

they must spend a larger proportion of what they earn on these goods and services . It also hits the burgeoning manufacturing sector, which has to pay more for raw materials and basic inputs .The dominance of a few companies has hurt Mexico’s economy Few question the need to reform telecommunications and broadcasting , as the dominance of a few companies has hurt Mexico’s broader economy and , at times, warped its politics. Consumers and businesses alike pay far more for their phone calls than the OECD average (over 30 percent and 80 percent, respectively), even though Mexico’s telecom investment lags all other OECD countries. And Mexico trails not just China or Russia, but even Bosnia in broadband access.

No instability – reject media hypeSeelee and Shirt 10 – director of the Mexico Institute at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars AND fellow at the center and an associate professor at the University of San Diego (Andrew Selee, David Shirk, 3/27/10, " Five myths about Mexico's drug war ", Washington Post, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/26/AR2010032602226.html)

The country has certainly seen a big rise in drug violence , with cartels fighting for control of major narcotics shipment routes -- especially at the U.S. border and near major seaports and highways -- and branching into kidnapping, extortion and other illicit activities. Ciudad Juarez, in particular, has been the scene of major battles between two crime organizations and accounted for nearly a third of drug-linked deaths last year.

But the violence is not as widespread or as random as it may appear. Though civilian s with no evident ties to the drug trade have been killed in the crossfire and occasionally targeted, drug -related deaths are concentrated among the traffickers. (Deaths among military and police personnel are an estimated 7 percent of the total.) A major reshuffling of leaders and alliances is occurring among the top organized crime groups, and, partly because of government efforts to disrupt their activities, violence has jumped

as former allies battle each other. The bloodshed is also geographically concentrated in key trafficking corridors , notably in the states of Sinaloa, Chihuahua and Tamaulipas.

While the violence underscores weaknesses in the government's ability to maintain security in parts of the country, organized crime is not threatening to take over the federal government. Mexico is not turning into a failed state .

Instability’s inevitable—drug traffickingGrudgings 09 – (Stuart, Rueters, Latin America ex-leaders urge reform of US drug war, http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSN11358345)

RIO DE JANEIRO, Feb 11 (Reuters) - The war against drugs is failing and the U.S. government should break with "prohibition" policies that

have achieved little more than cram its prisons and stoke violence, three former Latin American presidents said on

Wednesday. The respected former presidents urged the United States and Latin American governments to move away from jailing drug users to debate the legalization of marijuana and place more emphasis on the treatment of addicts. Former Colombian President Cesar Gaviria said there was no meaningful debate over drugs policy in the United States, despite a broad consensus that current policies had failed. "The problem today in the U.S. is that narco-trafficking is a crime and so any politician is fearful of talking about narco-trafficking or talking about policies because they will be called soft," he said. Gaviria has joined with former Brazilian President Fernando Henrique

Cardoso and former Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo to try to change the debate on drugs in Latin America, where trafficking gangs have killed tens of thousands of people and weakened democracies through corruption. From Mexico's gang wars to the drug-funded FARC guerrilla group in Colombia and daily shoot-outs between gangs and police in Rio de Janeiro's shantytowns, much of the region is scarred by drug violence and many believe U.S. policies have failed. A United Nations meeting in Vienna next month will frame international drugs policy for the next 10 years, and the three former presidents, whose group is called the Latin American Commission on Drugs and Democracy, said it is time for change. They pointed to falling street prices for cocaine and still high levels of consumption in the United States despite decades of policies focused on punishing users and cutting supplies from Latin American countries such as Colombia. 'PREJUDICES, FEARS' The presidents' commission released a report calling on governments to refocus policies toward treating users, move toward decriminalizing marijuana, and invest more in education campaigns. It said current policies were rooted in "prejudices, fears and ideological visions" that inhibited debate. Even as the group met in Rio on Wednesday, police arrested 51 people in a major operation in the city and other states against a suspected

drug smuggling ring that sent cocaine to Europe and brought back synthetic drugs like Ecstasy. Organized crime has flourished around drugs and is now threatening the stability of Mexico , where a spiraling war between rival gangs killed more than 5,700 people last year. Cardoso, one of Latin America's most respected figures, said U.S. leadership was essential to break the cycle of

drug-related crime and violence. "It will be almost impossible to solve Mexico's problems and other countries' problems without a more ample, comprehensive set of policies from the U.S . government, " he said. Despite winning power on broad promises of change, drugs policy featured little in U.S. President Barack Obama's election campaign and there are few indications that he will embark on a major overhaul. Ga

2NC – Alt causes to instability

Alt cause to Mexico instability—migration barriersLittlefield 09 – (Edward, Council on Hemispheric Affairs, "As Mexico’s Problems Mount: The Impact of the Economic Recession on Migration Patterns from Mexico")

As migration from, and remittances to, Mexico have decreased as a result of the current recession, the Mexican economy ominously worsens - Migration, remittances, and the national economy should be considered as integral components in the debate over whether

Mexico deserves to be classified as a “failed state,” and what should be United States policy The Mexican economy and many of its national institutional structures may be on the brink of collapse. While drug war violence has dominated the recent news about the possible irreversible status as a society beyond remediation, the topic of immigration has been either

marginalized or used to further promote fears that the conflict may spread to the United States. Drugs, national security, and economic recession have replaced immigration reform on the United States’ policy agenda. However, the current financial crisis, and its impact south of the border, is intricately linked to matters of immigration, security, and Mexico’s very cohesion.

2NC – Status quo solves reform

[this conflicts with your Mexican PTX disads]

Partial privatization solves PEMEX reformPeixe 12 – Joao Peixe 7-15-2012; writer for Oilprice.com Can Enrique Peña Nieto's Energy Reforms Make Mexico a Major Oil Exporter? http://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/Can-Enrique-Pea-Nietos-Energy-Reforms-Make-Mexico-a-Major-Oil-Exporter.html

All oil reserves are state property, and Mexico has huge potential, however, the only company, Petróleos Mexicanos (PEMEX), with the rights for exploration, processing, and selling of the oil, do not have the resources to maximise extraction. Since 2004 Mexican oil output has fallen by 25%, which is a problem as the government

receives nearly a third of its revenue from the oil industry. Peña Nieto has decided to encourage growth in the sector by opening it up to foreign investors, specifically Brazil’s Petrobras. In an interview with the

Financial Times back in 2011 he said that PEMEX “can achieve mor e, grow more and do more through alliances with the private sector .” In order to open the industry to private investors such

as Petrobras, Peña Nieto must pass a reform agenda through the nation’s congress; a congress

where his party does not hold a majority. This means that he will rely upon support from opposition parties to gain the necessary two-thirds vote that he needs to achieve his plans.

Ongoing PEMEX reform opens up shale and deepwater oil to exploration – that solves production issuesEric Martin and Carlos Manuel Rodriguez, 7-13-2012; reporters for Bloomberg Businessweek in Mexico City, Mexico May Finally Get a Modern Oil Industry http://interamericansecuritywatch.com/mexico-may-finally-get-a-modern-oil-industry/

Opening up the oil sector may boost g ross d omestic p roduct by as much as 0.8 percent a year , according to

research firm Capital Economics. Combined with the discovery of significant amounts of shale gas in northern Mexico, tapping deepwater oil could create an era of low energy costs for the country . Inviting outsiders to invest in Pemex could also transform the psychology of business in Mexico . To change Pemex, Peña Nieto will have to challenge entrenched interests, from the unions to local officials, who have all benefited from Pemex’s largesse. If he succeeds he could tackle other monopolies and duopolies in power generation, telecom, and cable television that make life so expensive for Mexicans.

Reforms allow foreign tech and efficiency that solves rising PEMEX costsSantamarina-Steta 3-1-2011; (law firm), Legal Update March 1, 2011 A New Legal Framework on Oil Matters? http://www.theworldlawgroup.com/files/file/docs/Mexico%20Oil.pdf

The Mexican government pushed for an energy reform , ideally allowing for private participation -both domestic and foreign - in aspects of crude oil extraction and production . On November 28, 2008, seven decrees forming the so called energy reform were published in the Federal Official Gazette, including amendments to existing regulation, a new law for PEMEX and new statute for the

use of renewable energy, among others. As a consequence of the above, there is some room for the private sector to participate with PEMEX in its modernization process, as a contractor of the Mexican oil company . Such participation has by no means been as fast and as open as required; new regulations were enacted by the executive branch in an effort to implement the purposes

of the reform, affording the possibility for PEMEX to improve and somehow soften its contracting ability with the private sector. This includes the possibility for PEMEX to enter into incentivized contracts with players offering high performance through the use of high-technology, greater efficiencies and lower costs , among others .

2NC – No hurt revenue

High prices overcome investor confidence issuesMarket News International 5-9-2011; High Oil Prices Lift Pemex Profits, Challenges Remain http://imarketnews.com/node/30466

MEXICO CITY (MNI) - State oil company Petroleos Mexicanos (Pemex) is reaping huge earnings due to rising world oil prices, but analysts and company officials agree that steep challenges remain due to the government's tax take, meeting promised production increases, money

losing subsidiaries and attracting companies via its new contract model. Mexico's basket of oil sold at $110.86 late last week, up from $80.60 at

the end of last year, and $71.45 in early May 2010. But the increase was largely caused by factors which have little to do with Mexico. Investors are stampeding into commodities as low interest rates allow them to borrow in developed economies and park the money in appreciating goods . Meanwhile, the Pemex quarterly report released last

week showed production, at 2.57 million barrels per day actually fell 1% compared with the first quarter of 2010, although average exports rose 10%

to 1.37 million bpd. Still, with prices on the rise , the company posted net earnings of 4.2 billion in the first quarter, up from 1 billion during the same period year earlier .

Everybody wants in – privatization would invite a wave of investorsEric Martin and Carlos Manuel Rodriguez, 7-13-2012; reporters for Bloomberg Businessweek in Mexico City, Mexico May Finally Get a Modern Oil Industry http://interamericansecuritywatch.com/mexico-may-finally-get-a-modern-oil-industry/

Incoming President Enrique Peña Nieto has declared that overhauling Pemex will be his “signature issue .” His Institutional

Revolutionary Party-led alliance wants outside oil companies to invest in Pemex’s exploration and development activities. “He knows it would be an extraordinary step forward, as extraordinary as was Nafta ,” says historian

Enrique Krauze, referring to the North American Free Trade Agreement, which was implemented in 1994. Nafta spurred a sixfold increase in Mexican sales to the U.S. The prospect of Peña Nieto allowing outside investment in Mexico’s oil fields has caught the attention of companies such as ExxonMobil (XOM). Mexico needs to open up to “partnerships and collaborations and bringing technology” to bear on its resources, ExxonMobil chief Rex Tillerson said on June 27. “The interest would be huge from the international standpoint, similar to Iraq,” says Jeremy Martin, an oil specialist at the Institute of the Americas in La Jolla, Calif.

2NC – Reject pre-election ev

Old evidence doesn’t apply – new president and agenda after elections will change the gameJoao Peixe 7-15-2012; writer for Oilprice.com Can Enrique Peña Nieto's Energy Reforms Make Mexico a Major Oil Exporter? http://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/Can-Enrique-Pea-Nietos-Energy-Reforms-Make-Mexico-a-Major-Oil-Exporter.html

Mexico’s latest presidential elections have been making headlines around the world due to charges of corruption, yet for all intents and purposes Mexico has elected its next President. We must now look to how Enrique Peña Nieto and his PRI (Partido Revolucionario Institucional) government can realise the ambitious reforms that he promised. Peña Nieto promised that he would make Mexico more productive and more competitive in order to create faster economic growth and development ; throughout his campaign he said that this will start with the nation’s energy sector.

ADV – Oil dependence

1NC – Oil dependence

Status quo solves the advantage – new energy policy and US energy boom specifically solve hegemonyDonilon 6/15 – National Security Advisor 2010-2013 in the Obama administration, worked as Executive Vice President for Law and Policy at Fannie Mae (Tom Donilon, “Energy and American Power”, June 15, 2013, http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/139509/tom-donilon/energy-and-american-power) // CB

Energy is a profoundly important aspect of U.S. national security and foreign policy : the availability of reliable, affordable energy is essential to economic strength at home, which is the foundation of U.S. leadership in the world. Scarce resources have driven both commerce and conflict since time immemorial -- and still do

today. Energy supplies present strategic leverage and disposable income for countries that have them. The

challenge of accessing affordable energy is shared by people and businesses in every country -- young democracies,

emerging powers, and developing nations -- allies and adversaries alike. Disruptions in supply in one location can have global economic impacts .

Energy shapes national interests and i nternational r elations . It influences politics , development,

governance, and the security and stability of the environment. For all these reasons and more, increasing global access to secure, affordable, and clean energy is a national interest of the United States and a top priority for those of us entrusted with U.S. national security. Two recent developments have changed Washington’s approach toward energy: first, the substantial increase of affordable energy resources within the United States affects the country’s economic growth, energy security, and geopolitical position. Second, climate change, driven by the world’s use of energy, presents not just a transcendent challenge for the world but a present-day national security threat to the United States. Both forces should push the United States and other countries toward cleaner, more sustainable energy solutions.The current optimism about the U.S. energy picture is a relatively new development. Even as recently as 2008, when President Barack Obama took office, energy experts predicted that the United States would need to double its imports of liquefied natural gas (LNG) over the next five years. However, thanks to U.S. innovation and technology, nearly all of those estimates have been turned on their head. U.S. oil consumption peaked in 2005 and has been declining since and alternative energy sources are being developed. Domestic oil and natural gas production has increased every year Obama has been in office -- now at seven million barrels of oil per day, the highest level in over two decades. The International Energy Agency projects that the United States could be the world’s largest oil producer by the end of the decade. And the United States is already the top natural gas producer in the world.

Meanwhile, natural gas imports are down almost 60 percent since 2005, and the U.S. now exports more natural gas than ever to Mexico and Canada. In addition, for the first time in over 60 years, the United States is exporting more refined petroleum products than it is importing . And U.S. energy-related g reen h ouse g as emissions have also fallen to 19 94 levels due in large part to Obama’s success over the past four years in doubling electricity from renewables , switching from coal to natural gas in power generation, and improving energy efficiency .

The new U.S. energy posture and outlook will directly strengthen the nation’s economy . As Obama has said, a country’s political and military primacy depends on its economic vitality . Strength at home is critical to strength in the world, and the U.S. energy boom has proven to be an important driver for the country’s economic recovery -- boosting jobs, economic activity, and government revenues. In North Dakota, for example, unemployment has dropped to near three percent, the lowest in the country, and the state has a $3.8 billion budget surplus, largely due to

increased unconventional gas and oil production. IHS Cambridge Energy Research Associates estimates that the shale gas industry directly or indirectly employed 600,000 Americans in 2010, a number that could double by 2020.

Natural gas production has also sparked a domestic manufacturing revival . Manufacturers in energy- intensive sectors, including chemical, steel, plastics, and glass companies, have announced up to $95 billion investments across the United States to take advantage of low-cost natural gas. Furthermore, as a result of U.S. investments in clean energy, tens of thousands of Americans have jobs and the U nited States is now home to some of the largest wind and solar farms in the world. Domestic economic developments like these improve the country’s world standing and send a powerful message that the U nited States has the resources, as well as the resolve , to remain a preeminent power for years to come.

The U nited States’ new energy posture allows Washington to engage in international affairs from a position of strength . Increasing U.S. energy supplies acts as a cushion that helps reduce the country’s vulnerability to global supply disruptions and price shocks. It also affords Washington a stronger hand in pursuing and implementing its international security goals . For example, the U nited States is engaged in a

dual-track strategy that marshals pressure on Iran in pursuit of constructive engagement that addresses global concerns about Iran’s nuclear program. As part of the pressure track, the United States has engaged in tireless diplomacy to persuade relevant nations to end or significantly reduce their consumption of Iranian oil while emphasizing to suppliers the importance of keeping the world oil market stable and well supplied.

The substantial increase in oil production in the United States and elsewhere means that international sanctions and U.S. and allied efforts could remove one million barrels per day of Iranian oil from the market while minimizing the burden on the rest of the world. The same approach is being used in Syria today and was used in Libya in 2011.

Heg doesn’t solve warPreble 10 – director of foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute (Christopher, “U.S. Military Power: Preeminence for What Purpose?” August 2010, http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/u-s-military-power-preeminence-for-what-purpose/)

Most in Washington still embraces the notion that America is , and forever will be, the world’s indispensable nation. Some scholars , however, questioned the logic of hegemonic stability theory from the very beginning. A number continue to do so today. They advance arguments diametrically at odds with the primacist consensus. Trade routes need not be policed by a single dominant power; the international economy is complex and resilient. Supply disruptions are likely to be temporary , and the costs of mitigating their effects should be borne by those who stand to lose — or gain — the most. Islamic extremists are scary, but hardly comparable to the threat

posed by a globe-straddling Soviet Union armed with thousands of nuclear weapons. It is frankly absurd that we spend more today to fight Osama bin Laden and his tiny band of murderous thugs than we spent to face down Joseph Stalin and Chairman Mao . Many factors have contributed to the dramatic decline in the number of wars between nation-states; it is unrealistic to expect that a new spasm of global conflict would erupt if the U nited S tates were to modestly refocus its efforts, draw down its military power, and call on other countries to play a larger role in their own defense , and in the security of their respective regions. But while there are credible alternatives to the U nited S tates serving in its current dual role as world policeman / armed social worker, the foreign policy establishment in Washington has no interest in exploring them. The people here have grown accustomed to living at the center of the earth, and indeed, of the universe. The tangible benefits of all this military spending flow disproportionately to this tiny corner of the United States while the schlubs in fly-over country pick up the tab.

1NC – Heg bad

Hegemony is terminally unsustainable and fails – encourages soft-balancing, hard-balancing, free-riding, and aggressive intervention which facilitates great power conflictPosen 13 – Ford International Professor of Political Science and Director of the Security Studies Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Barry R Posen, “Pull Back”, January/February 2013, http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/138466/barry-r-posen/pull-back) // CB

The United States' activism has entailed a long list of ambitious foreign policy projects . Washington has tried to rescue failing states, intervening militarily in Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, Kosovo, and Libya, variously attempting to defend human rights, suppress undesirable nationalist movements, and install democratic regimes. It has also tried to contain so-called rogue states that oppose the United States, such as Iran, Iraq under Saddam Hussein, North Korea, and, to a lesser degree, Syria. After 9/11, the struggle against al Qaeda and its allies dominated the agenda, but the George W. Bush administration defined this enterprise broadly and led the country into the painful wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Although the United States has long sought to discourage the spread of nuclear weapons, the prospect of nuclear-armed terrorists has added urgency to this objective, leading to constant tension with Iran and North Korea. In pursuit of this ambitious agenda, the United States has consistently spent hundreds of billions of dollars per year on its military -- far more than the sum of the defense budgets of its friends and far more

than the sum of those of its potential adversaries. It has kept that military busy: U.S. troops have spent roughly twice as many

months in combat after the Cold War as they did during it. Today, roughly 180,000 U.S. soldiers remain stationed on foreign soil, not counting the tens of thousands more who have rotated through the war zones in Afghanistan and Iraq. Thousands of American and allied soldiers have lost their lives, not to mention the countless civilians caught in the crossfire.

This undisciplined , expensive , and bloody strategy has done untold harm to U.S. national security . It makes enemies almost as fast as it slays them, discourages allies from paying for their own defense , and convinces powerful states to band together and oppose Washington's plans , further raising the costs o f carrying out its foreign policy. During the 1990s, these consequences were manageable because the United States enjoyed such a favorable power position and chose its wars carefully. Over the last decade, however, the country's relative power has deteriorated, and policymakers have made dreadful choices concerning which wars to fight and how to fight them. What's more, the Pentagon has come to depend on continuous infusions of cash simply to retain its current force structure -- levels of spending that the Great

Recession and the United States' ballooning debt have rendered unsustainable .

It is time to abandon the United States' hegemonic strategy and replace it with one of restraint. This

approach would mean giving up on global reform and sticking to protecting narrow national security interests. It would mean transforming the military into a smaller force that goes to war only when it truly must. It would mean removing large numbers of U.S. troops from forward bases, creating incentives for allies to provide for their own security. And because such a shift would allow the United States to spend its resources on only the most pressing international threats, it would help preserve the country's prosperity and security over the long run.ACTION AND REACTIONThe United States emerged from the Cold War as the single most powerful state in modern times, a position that its diversified and immensely productive economy supports. Although its share of world economic output will inevitably shrink as other countries catch up, the United States will continue for many years to rank as one of the top two or three economies in the world. The United States' per capita GDP stands at $48,000, more than five times as large as China's, which means that the U.S. economy can produce cutting-edge products for a steady domestic market. North America is blessed with enviable quantities of raw materials, and about 29 percent of U.S. trade flows to and from its immediate neighbors, Canada and Mexico. The fortuitous geostrategic position of the United States compounds these economic advantages. Its neighbors to the north and south possess only miniscule militaries. Vast oceans to the west and east separate it from potential rivals. And its thousands of nuclear weapons deter other countries from ever entertaining an invasion. Ironically, however, instead of relying on these inherent advantages for its security, the U nited States has acted with a profound sense of insecurity , adopting an unnecessarily militarized and forward-leaning foreign policy. That strategy has generated predictable pushback . Since the 1990s, rivals have resorted to what

scholars call "soft balancing" -- low-grade diplomatic opposition. China and Russia regularly use the rules of liberal international institutions to delegitimize the United States' actions. In the UN Security Council, they wielded their

veto power to deny the West resolutions supporting the bombing campaign in Kosovo in 1999 and the

invasion of Iraq in 2003, and more recently, they have slowed the effort to isolate Syria. They occasionally work together in other venues, too, such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. Although the Beijing-Moscow relationship is unimpressive compared with military alliances such as NATO, it's remarkable that it exists at all given the long history of border friction and hostility between the two countries. As has happened so often in history, the common threat posed by a greater power has driven unnatural partners to cooperate.

American activism has also generated hard er forms of balancing. China has worked assiduously to improve its military, and Russia has sold it modern weapons , such as fighter aircraft, surface-to-air missiles, and diesel-

electric submarines. Iran and North Korea, meanwhile, have pursued nuclear programs in part to neutralize the United States' overwhelming advantages in conventional fighting power. Some of this pushback would have occurred no matter what; in an anarchic global system, states acquire the allies and military power that help them look after themselves. But a country as large and as active as the United States intensifies these responses.Such reactions will only grow stronger as emerging economies convert their wealth into military power. Even though the economic and technological capacities of China and India may never equal those of the United States, the gap is destined to narrow . China already has the potential to be a serious competitor . At the peak of the Cold War, in the mid-1970s, Soviet GDP, in terms of purchasing power parity, amounted to 57 percent of U.S. GDP. China reached 75 percent of the U.S. level in 2011, and according to the International Monetary Fund, it is projected to match it by 2017. Of course, Chinese output must support four times as many people, which limits what the country can extract for military purposes, but it still provides enough resources to hinder U.S. foreign policy. Meanwhile, Russia, although a shadow of its former Soviet self, is no longer the hapless weakling it was in the 1990s. Its economy is roughly the size of the United Kingdom's or France's, it has plenty of energy resources to export, and it still produces some impressive weapons systems. FIGHTING IDENTITYJust as emerging powers have gotten stronger, so, too, have the small states and violent substate entities that the United States has attempted to discipline, democratize, or eliminate. Whether in Somalia, Serbia,

Afghanistan, Iraq, or Libya, the U.S. military seems to find itself fighting enemies that prove tougher than expected. (Consider the fact that Washington spent as much in real terms on the war in Iraq as it did on the war in Vietnam, even though the Iraqi insurgents enjoyed little external support, whereas China and the Soviet Union lent major support to the Vietcong and the North Vietnamese.) Yet Washington seems unable to stay out of conflicts involving substate entities, in part because their elemental nature assaults the internationalist values that U.S. grand strategy is committed to preserving. Having trumpeted the United States' military superiority, U.S. policymakers have a hard time saying no to those who argue that the country's prestige will suffer gravely if the world's leader lets wars great and small run their course.

The enduring strength of these substate groups should give American policymakers pause, since the United States' current grand strategy entails open-ended confrontation with nationalism and other forms of identity politics that insurgents and terrorists feed off of. These forces provide the organizing energy for groups competing for power within countries (as in Bosnia, Afghanistan, and Iraq), for secessionist movements (as in Kosovo), and for terrorists who oppose the liberal world order (mainly al Qaeda). Officials in Washington, however, have acted as if they can easily undercut the power of identity through democratic processes, freedom of information, and economic development, helped along by the judicious application of military power. In fact, identity is resilient, and foreign peoples react with hostility to outsiders trying to control their lives. The Iraq war has been a costly case in point . Officials in the Bush administration convinced themselves that a quick application of overwhelming military power would bring democracy to Iraq, produce a subsequent wave of democratization across the Arab world, marginalize al Qaeda, and secure U.S. influence in the region. Instead, Shiites, Sunnis, and Kurds stoked the violence that the United States

labored to suppress, and Shiite and Sunni factions fought not only each other but also the U.S. military. Today's Shiite-dominated government in Baghdad has proved neither democratic nor effective. Sunni terrorists have continued to carry out attacks. The Kurdish parts of Iraq barely acknowledge their membership in the larger state. By now, it is clear that the United States has worn out its welcome in Afghanistan, too. The Taliban continue to resist the U.S. presence, drawing their strength largely from Pashtun nationalism, and members of the Afghan security forces have, in growing numbers, murdered U.S. and other NATO soldiers who were there to assist them. Instead of simply punishing the Taliban for their indirect role in 9/11 and hitting al Qaeda as hard as possible, true to its global agenda, the Bush administration pursued a costly and futile effort to transform Afghanistan, and the Obama administration continued it.FRIENDS WITHOUT BENEFITS

Another problematic response to the United States' grand strategy comes from its friends: free-riding. The Cold

War alliances that the country has worked so hard to maintain -- namely, NATO and the U.S.-Japanese security agreement

-- have provided U.S. partners in Europe and Asia with such a high level of insurance that they have been able

to steadily shrink their militaries and outsource their defense to Washington . European nations have cut their military spending by roughly 15 percent in real terms since the end of the Cold War, with the exception of the United Kingdom, which will soon join the rest as it carries out its austerity policy. Depending on how one counts, Japanese defense spending has been cut, or at best has remained stable, over the past decade. The government has unwisely devoted too much spending to ground forces, even as its leaders have expressed alarm at the rise of Chinese military power -- an air, missile, and naval threat.Although these regions have avoided major wars, the United States has had to bear more and more of the burden of keeping the peace. It now spends 4.6 percent of its GDP on defense, whereas its European NATO allies collectively spend 1.6 percent and Japan spends 1.0 percent. With their high per capita GDPs, these allies can afford to devote more money to their militaries, yet they have no incentive to do so. And so while the U.S. government considers draconian cuts in social spending to restore the United States' fiscal health, it continues to subsidize the security of Germany and Japan. This is welfare for the rich. U.S. security guarantees also encourage plucky allies to challenge more powerful states, confident that Washington will save them in the end -- a classic case of moral hazard. This phenomenon has caused the United States to incur political costs, antagonizing powers great and small for no gain and encouraging them to seek opportunities to provoke the United States in return. So far, the United States has escaped getting sucked into unnecessary wars, although Washington dodged a bullet in Taiwan when the Democratic Progressive Party of Chen Shui-bian governed the island, from 2000 to 2008. His frequent allusions to independence, which ran counter to U.S. policy but which some Bush administration officials reportedly encouraged, unnecessarily provoked the Chinese government; had he proceeded, he would have surely triggered a dangerous crisis. Chen would never have entertained such reckless rhetoric absent the long-standing backing of the U.S. government.

2NC – Energy independence inev

Horizontal drilling solves energy independenceHamm 7/4 – CEO of Continental Resources, energy advisor to Mitt Romney (Harold Hamm, 7/4/13, “Happy (Energy) Independence Day” http://www.forbes.com/sites/christopherhelman/2013/07/04/happy-energy-independence-day/) // CB

By unlocking oil and natural gas resources that were once thought to be unrecoverable, horizontal drilling has sparked an American energy renaissance that will revolutionize everything from job creation to balance of trade to national security. This advanced tech nology allows us to drill two miles down, turn right, go another two miles, and hit a target the size of a lapel pin. With technological advances in horizontal drilling, oil imports have dropped 26% since 20 08 and the U nited States is likely to overtake Saudi Arabia as the world’s largest oil producer by 2017 .Some may say this new abundance in oil and gas is due to hydraulic fracturing . However, fracking technology has been

consistently in use for more than 60 years. What is new is horizontal drilling. In 2000, there were less than 50 horizontal drilling rigs in the U.S. and experts believed we had reached peak oil. In 2009, the Domestic Energy Producers Alliance issued its Declaration of Energy Independents due to the

phenomenal turnaround caused by horizontal drilling. By the end of 2012, there were nearly 1,200 horizontal drilling rigs in the U.S. and Raymond James, Citi and the I nternational E nergy A gency had all released reports declaring the reality of American energy independence by 2020 .

Just as the American Revolution changed the world in 1776, so too will this modern-day American oil and gas revolution. Energy independence means we no longer have to rely on oil from the Middle East, it means the creation of more than a million high-paying jobs, and

it means a solution to the U.S. debt crisis through a shift in balance of trade .

Horizontal drilling has forged the path to energy independence , freeing us from unfriendly nations and financial disaster. On this Independence Day, as we look to the future of U.S. oil and gas production, we can once again celebrate the best of American

innovation and perseverance brought to you by Americans at their best.

2NC – Heg fails

No relationship between US capabilities and peace—no impact to hegemonyFettweis 10 – Professor of national security affairs at U.S. Naval War College (Christopher J., “Threat and Anxiety in US Foreign Policy,” Informaworld, Survival, Volume 52, Issue 2 April 2010 , pages 59 – 82)

One potential explanation for the growth of global peace can be dismissed fairly quickly: US actions do not seem to have contributed much. The limited evidence suggests that there is little reason to believe in the stabilizing power of the US hegemon, and that there is no relation between the relative level of American activism and international stability. During the 1990s, the United States cut back on its defense spending fairly substantially. By 1998, the United States was spending $100 billion less on defense in real terms than it had in 1990, a 25% reduction.29 To internationalists, defense hawks and other believers in hegemonic stability, this irresponsible 'peace dividend' endangered both national and global security. 'No serious analyst of American military capabilities', argued neo-conservatives William Kristol and Robert Kagan in 1996, 'doubts that the defense budget has been cut much too far to meet America's responsibilities to itself and to world peace'.30 And yet the verdict from the 1990s is fairly plain: the world grew more peaceful while the U nited S tates cut its forces. No state seemed to believe that its security was endangered by a less-capable US military , or at least none took any action that would suggest such a belief. No militaries were enhanced to address power vacuums; no security dilemmas drove insecurity or arms races; no regional balancing occurred once the stabilizing presence of the US military was diminished. The rest of the world acted as if the threat of international war was not a pressing concern, despite the reduction in US military capabilities . Most of all, the United States was no less safe . The incidence and magnitude of global conflict declined while the U nited States cut its military spending under President Bill Clinton, and kept declining as the George W. Bush administration ramped the spending back up. Complex statistical analysis is unnecessary to reach the conclusion that world peace and US military expenditure are unrelated.

Solvency

1NC – Solvency

Plan fails – laundry listBooth and Miroff 5/7 (William, Nick, 5/7/13, “To power Mexico forward, Peña Nieto looks to energy reform,” http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2013-05-07/world/39073749_1_energy-industry-foreign-oil-petroleos-de-mexico)//DR. H

Lifting the restrictions on foreign oil companies through a constitutional amendment would require a two-thirds majority in Mexico’s Congress and the endorsement of more than half of the country’s state governors. Peña Nieto is expected to face considerable political wrangling from the powerful oil workers union, left-leaning lawmakers and interest groups, which are content with their slice of the status quo, even as overall production has slipped.

Analysts say that unless Mexico can offer foreign drillers a share of the crude, rather than the fee-per-service

contracts that Pemex offers, the country will have a hard time attracting the capital and expertise it needs. Because multinational oil companies raise money from investors based on the estimated amount of oil they own the rights to, and Mexico’s prevailing model affords them no ability to claim, or “book,” reserves, there’s little incentive to drill there.Then there is the problem of Pemex’s creaky infrastructure and poor safety record, underscored by a Jan. 31 explosion caused by a gas leak at the company’s Mexico City headquarters that killed 38 people and injured 120.Ownership concernsMexico’s three major political parties have signed a broadly written “Pact for Mexico,” whose energy- related provisions concur that all hydrocarbons should remain state-controlled and that Pemex needs to be a competitive, modern and profitable company with ramped-up production.

No American investment – disclosure agreementsSimmons 4/30 (Daniel, Director of Regulatory and State Affairs at the Institute for Energy Research, BA in economics from Utah State University, J.D. from George Mason University School of Law, Master Resource: A free-market energy blog, April 30, 2013, “U.S.-Mexico Transboundary Hydrocarbons Agreement: A Rare Victory for Oil and Gas in the Obama Era,” http://www.masterresource.org/2013/04/u-s-mexico-transboundary-hydrocarbons-agreement/, alp)

In an otherwise good agreement, one potential problem is a conflict between Article 20 of the agreement and the Security and Exchange Commission’s Rule 13q-1 regarding Resource Extraction Payments. Article 20 states: To the extent consistent with their national laws, the Parties shall maintain confidential, and obligate their

Licensees to maintain confidential, all Confidential Data and other information obtained from the other Party or its

Licensees in accordance with this Agreement. Together with Rule 13q-1, requiring “resource extraction issuers” to disclose

payments made to foreign governments, Article 20 can create an impossible situation for American companies operating on transboundary hydrocarbon resources. For example, Mexican confidentiality requirements may forbid the disclosure of the very information that Rule 13q-1 requires American companies to disclose. This would lead to a situation where companies regulated by the SEC have, at very least,

uncertainty about compliance with both Mexican and American disclosure laws. This uncertainty and potential

disclosure conflict would place foreign state-owned oil companies, who are not regulated by the SEC, at a competitive advantage to the companies which operate in the United States are regulated by the SEC. Because much of the

transboundary area is deepwater, it would require multi-billion dollar investments to produce the hydrocarbon resources. Any legal uncertainty brought about by disclosure law could easily dissuade American companies from undertaking what is already an expensive decision, in turn reducing opportunities for new jobs for Americans.

Rule 13q-1 also creates a different type of competitive disadvantage for American companies operating in the Gulf of

Mexico Transboundary area. The rule would allow foreign state-owned oil companies with a competitive advantage to consider business-sensitive information about American companies’ operations. If Mexico

were to allow foreign-owned companies to extract oil along the deepwater transboundary area, there could very well be competition between U.S. private companies and foreign-state owned companies. Even though the

deepwater technology was developed in the U.S. deepwater, the U.S. companies would be at a disadvantage. This is like playing poker but being required to show your cards to your fellow card-players.

***COUNTERPLANS***

CP – SEC booking

1NC

Text: The Securities and Exchange Commission should allow international oil corporations to book reserves of untapped crude oil in the Gulf of Mexico.

The CP solves – leads to private cooperation with PEMEXLugar 12 (Richard J., former US Senator, Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, One Hundred and Twelfth Congress, Second Session, December 21, 2012, “OIL, MEXICO, AND THE TRANSBOUNDARY AGREEMENT,” http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CPRT-112SPRT77567/html/CPRT-112SPRT77567.htm, alp)

Any number of management, regulatory, and financial reforms could be beneficial to Mexico's energy future, but putting oil production on a sustainable growth path will require IOC investment and expertise. Many interlocutors expressed that another incremental reform would not be worth the political effort; as

one observer stated, ``If there's anything we've learned on energy reforms in Mexico, it is that if reforms are incremental, they don't work.'' The 2008 reforms, for example, have received mixed reviews with some proponents pointing to

subsequent deep offshore oil discoveries and opponents bemoaning politically-appointed but nominally

independent board members lacking in accountability. Politically, however, most interlocutors credit the 2008 reform with

helping to pave the path of public acceptance for bolder reforms now. Large-scale IOC investment is likely to come to Mexico if those companies are able to “book'' reserves with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, a financial accounting that increases the value of the company, which does not exclude joint ventures with PEMEX. In some jurisdictions, that means taking ownership and marketing the physical barrels of oil, but other options may be viable, such as selling the IOC share of oil to PEMEX at the wellhead so that IOCs never physically take possession of the oil.

CP – Thorium

1NC

Text: The United States federal government should substantially increase its investment in a national network of liquid fluorine thorium nuclear energy reactors.

The plan solves fossil fuel dependence – expertise and empirics proveCowan 10 (Aaron, The Examiner, internally cites Dr. Carlo Rubbia, an Italian particle physicist who won the 1984 Nobel Prize in Physics, graduate of Scuola Normale in Italy, PhD in physics from Columbia University, former President of the National Agency for Atomic Energy, August 30, 2010, “Thorium could replace oil and coal in five years says Nobel prize winner,” http://www.examiner.com/article/thorium-could-replace-oil-and-coal-five-years-says-nobel-prize-winner, alp)

Particle physicist and Nobel prize winner Carlo Rubbia claims that mankind could get all its power from a special type of nuclear reactor fuelled by the element thorium, eliminating the need for coal and oil for

power generation in as little as five years, if the political will and economic commitment existed, according to reporting on

August 30, 2010. Thorium has long been viewed as a promising fuel source for nuclear power generation compared to uranium. For one thing, by weight, one can extract several hundred times more energy from thorium than uranium ores, because only certain isotopes of uranium can be used for fission. Furthermore, thorium is more plentiful than uranium, the latter of which can require complicated and expensive refinement and enrichment processes. Thorium,

by contrast often is a waste material left over from other heavy metal extraction processes. Because of its high availability, it is less likely for the supply of this fuel source to be disrupted. In Rubbia's scheme,

additional fuel could also be made by using thorium to power a particle accelerator to breed a manmade form of uranium called U233. However, these materials still w ould not be as easy to turn into weapons as materials from present day reactors, and would be fully compliant with Non-Proliferation

Treaty agreements. Rubbia's designs call networks of small reactors each generating less than a gigawatt each, unlike the more monolithic nuclear plants online today. These reactors would be buried underground for

safety and security reasons, reducing many of the current attendant costs. Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque,

New Mexico actually proposed and designed a similar, small, manufactured thorium reactor that would only produce a few hundred megawatts per unit, just last year, and is looking at commercializing it. Therefore these types of ideas have been revived, to an extent, perhaps due to the government's current willingness to provide funding for nuclear projects again.

Broad consensus errs neg – it’s a limitless supplyEvans-Pritchard 10 (Ambrose, The Telegraph, internally cites Dr. Rubbia and Kirk Sorensen, former NASA aerospace engineering and chief nuclear technologist at Teledyne Brown, August 29, 2010, “Obama could kill fossil fuels overnight with a nuclear dash for thorium,” http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/7970619/Obama-could-kill-fossil-fuels-overnight-with-a-nuclear-dash-for-thorium.html, alp)

Muddling on with the status quo is not a grown-up policy. The International Energy Agency says the world must invest $26 trillion (£16.7 trillion) over the next 20 years to avert an energy shock. The scramble for scarce fuel is already leading to

friction between China, India, and the West. There is no certain bet in nuclear physics but work by Nobel laureate Carlo Rubbia at CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research) on the use of thorium as a cheap, clean and safe alternative to uranium in reactors may be the magic bullet we have all been hoping for, though we have barely begun to crack

the potential of solar power. Dr Rubbia says a tonne of the silvery metal – named after the Norse god of thunder, who also gave us

Thor’s day or Thursday - produces as much energy as 200 tonnes of uranium, or 3,500,000 tonnes of coal. A mere fistful would light London for a week. Thorium burns the plutonium residue left by uranium reactors, acting as an eco-cleaner. "It’s the Big One," said Kirk Sorensen, a former NASA rocket engineer and now chief nuclear technologist at

Teledyne Brown Engineering. "Once you start looking more closely, it blows your mind away. You can run civilisation on thorium

for hundreds of thousands of years, and it’s essentially free. You don’t have to deal with uranium cartels," he said.

Thorium is so common that miners treat it as a nuisance, a radioactive by-product if they try to dig up rare earth metals. The US and Australia are full of the stuff. So are the granite rocks of Cornwall. You do not need much:

all is potentially usable as fuel, compared to just 0.7pc for uranium. After the Manhattan Project, US physicists in the late 1940s were tempted by thorium for use in civil reactors. It has a higher neutron yield per neutron absorbed. It does not require isotope separation, a big cost saving. But by then America needed the plutonium residue from uranium to build bombs. Brussels turned to its technical experts, who happened to be French

because the French dominate the EU’s nuclear industry. "They didn’t want competition because they had made a huge investment in the old technology," he said. Another decade was lost. It was a sad triumph of vested interests over scientific progress. "We have very little time to waste because the world is running out of fossil fuels. Renewables can’t replace them. Nuclear fusion is not going work for a century, if ever," he said. The Norwegian group Aker Solutions has bought Dr Rubbia’s patent for an accelerator-driven sub-critical reactor, and is working on his design for a thorium version at its UK operation. Victoria Ashley, the project manager, said it could lead to a network of pint-sized 600MW reactors that are lodged underground, can supply small grids, and do not require a safety citadel. It will take £2bn to build the first one, and Aker needs £100mn for the next test phase. The global

energy crunch needs equal "action". If it works, Manhattan II could restore American optimism and strategic leadership at a stroke: if not, it is a boost for US science and surely a more fruitful way to pull the US out of perma-slump than scattershot stimulus.

AT: Boundary conditions

Try or die for the CP – oil is unsustainable Sorensen 10 (Kirk, founder and chief technologist of Flibre Energy Inc., chief nuclear technologist of Teledyne Brown Engineering, former NASA Goddard aerospace engineer, MS in aerospace engineering from Georgia Tech., May 29, 2010, Speech at the Second Thorium Energy Alliance Conference, http://thoriumenergyalliance.com/downloads/TEAC2_KirkSorensen.pdf, alp)

All of these factors combine together to create what I like to think of as “boundary conditions”. If any of you suffered through a math class in differential equations like I did in college, you remember that boundary conditions establish where you start and where you might end, and they have everything to do with how your solution might come out. Here’s our boundary conditions as I see

them. First, we can’t keep using fossil fuels. They’re destroying our environment and exporting wealth away from our country. But those who control the fossil fuels have vast amounts of power and money and can make life very difficult for those of us trying to establish a new energy source. Third, we have to do something about the cost of bringing new nuclear energy online. The old way is slow and expensive. We need a new way that’s better, safer, simpler , and costs

less. Fortunately all of these things don’t have to be mutually exclusive.

AT: Safety

No safety considerations – answers your laundry listStenger 12 (Victor, adjunct professor of philosophy at the University of Colorado and professor emeritus of physics and astronomy at the University of Hawaii (ret. 2000), PhD in physics from UCLA, with more than 40 years of research and 10 published books, January 9, 2012, “LFTR: A Long-Term Energy Solution?,” http://www.huffingtonpost.com/victor-stenger/lftr-a-longterm-energy-so_b_1192584.html, alp)

Currently the liquid fluoride thorium reactor (LFTR) is having a resurgence of interest worldwide. Let me list the advantages of an electrical power plant based on LFTR compared to conventional nuclear and fossil-fuel plants: • Thorium is plentiful and inexpensive. One ton costing $300,000 can power a 1,000-megawatt plant for a year. One pound of thorium yields as much power as 300 pounds of uranium or 3.5 million tons of coal. • Unlike conventional high-pressure water reactors,

LTFR operates at atmospheric pressure, obviating the need for a large, expensive containment dome and having little danger of explosion. • LFTRs cannot melt down since the normal operating state is already molten. • LFTRs are stable to rising temperatures since salt expands slowing the reaction. A salt plug kept solid by cooling coils will automatically melt

if external power is lost and the fluid drain out to a safe dump tank. • Salts used are solid at 100 F or higher, so any spilled fuel solidifies instead of escaping into the environment. • Liquid fuel can be continually cycled through so all the available energy is used, unlike solid fuels that must be removed before they have generated 1-3 percent of the available energy because of damage. • The radiative waste is much less than from conventional plants and far more manageable. • Air-cooling possible where

water is scarce. • Should be cheaper than coal, especially if CO2 is sequestered. • Proliferation resistant. Can't use to build bombs. • Smaller size and lower cost. • Could provide the world's energy needs carbon-free for a thousand years. The gamma rays from U-232 are not a problem for reactors since unlike nuclear weapons they are already sufficiently shielded.

AT: Meltdown

LFTR tech prevents meltdownStenger 12 (Victor, adjunct professor of philosophy at the University of Colorado and professor emeritus of physics and astronomy at the University of Hawaii (ret. 2000), PhD in physics from UCLA, with more than 40 years of research and 10 published books, January 9, 2012, “LFTR: A Long-Term Energy Solution?,” http://www.huffingtonpost.com/victor-stenger/lftr-a-longterm-energy-so_b_1192584.html, alp)

Of course, the disasters at Three-Mile-Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima has greatly chilled public acceptance of nuclear power. But if these plants had used LFTRs, no radiation would have escaped to the environment. Work

on LFTR is going on worldwide, with research being done in China, France, the Czech Republic, Japan, Russia, Canada,

and the Netherlands. The only significant U.S. research is on molten salt reactors, but with no emphasis on thorium. The U.S. may end up buying LFTRs from China. Perhaps WalMart will sell them cheap.

AT: Nuclear waste

There’s barely any wasteStenger 12 (Victor, adjunct professor of philosophy at the University of Colorado and professor emeritus of physics and astronomy at the University of Hawaii (ret. 2000), PhD in physics from UCLA, with more than 40 years of research and 10 published books, January 9, 2012, “LFTR: A Long-Term Energy Solution?,” http://www.huffingtonpost.com/victor-stenger/lftr-a-longterm-energy-so_b_1192584.html, alp)

Although far less of a problem than U-235 and Pu-239, waste from U-233 still has to be stored someplace. Here a comparison can be made with carbon sequestration in which waste CO2 is pumped into the ground, which is being talked

about as a solution to problem of coal pollution. The amount of underground space needed to store a year's CO2 output from a single coal power plant is equivalent to 600 football fields filled to a height of ten yards. By comparison,

one football field filled to the same height is required for all the waste from the entire civilian nuclear program .

AT: Chernobyl rhetoric

No link – different process prevents ChernobylSorensen 10 (Kirk, founder and chief technologist of Flibre Energy Inc., chief nuclear technologist of Teledyne Brown Engineering, former NASA Goddard aerospace engineer, MS in aerospace engineering from Georgia Tech., May 29, 2010, Speech at the Second Thorium Energy Alliance Conference, http://thoriumenergyalliance.com/downloads/TEAC2_KirkSorensen.pdf, alp)

Taking this approach has helped us in many ways, but it has also created enemies and easy ways to stir up the public against nuclear fission. One of the most commonly employed is the spectre of catastrophic disaster. While

many of us know that such events are not possible in well-built, Western-style reactors, it takes a few moments to explain the defense-in-depth approach of our reactors to a regular person, while it only takes a fraction of a second for anti-nuclear forces to say “Chernobyl!” and stoke fear. Another potent source of anti-nuclear anger surrounds the issue of so-called “nuclear waste”. We tend not to call it that because many of us realize that it’s simply spent nuclear fuel, with valuable materials inside that can be utilized to generate energy or provide benefit to society. As much as I’d like to think that our message is getting across, I still find over and over again that spent nuclear fuel is demonized as a toxic, dangerous, poisonous substance that will last forever and is intractable to solution.

AT: Links to politics

Thorium tech is politically popularMartin 09 (Richard, science journalist for WIRED magazine, December 21, 2009, “Uranium Is So Last Century — Enter Thorium, the New Green Nuke,” http://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/12/ff_new_nukes/all/1, alp)

The concept of nuclear power without waste or proliferation has obvious political appeal in the US , as well. The

threat of climate change has created an urgent demand for carbon-free electricity , and the 52,000 tons of spent,

toxic material that has piled up around the country makes traditional nuclear power less attractive. President Obama

and his energy secretary, Steven Chu, have expressed general support for a nuclear renaissance. Utilities are investigating several next-gen alternatives, including scaled-down conventional plants and “pebble bed” reactors, in which the nuclear fuel is inserted into small graphite balls in a way that reduces the risk of meltdown.

Economic competition means no backlashDove 11 (September 23, Justin, Investment U – Investment Research with a Contrarian Point of View, “The Future of Nuclear: Is Thorium a True Threat to Uranium?,” http://www.investmentu.com/2011/September/thorium-the-future-of-nuclear-power.html, alp)

Nuclear power took a huge public relations hit in the wake of the Fukushima disaster. A supposed “clean” energy, it

caused massive devastation and left miles of land uninhabitable for thousands of years. At least 25 reactors in Europe were shut down or cancelled since the triple meltdown in March. But what if nuclear power could produce more power with less material, while being incredibly less risky? There’s a growing sentiment that it may be possible with a little-known

radioactive metal called thorium. An article in the latest issue of Los Alamos Laboratories’ National Security Science opened with this

introduction: “Imagine an element that when used in a nuclear reactor is so safe that it may never lead to the possibility of the type of catastrophic meltdown that threatened the reactors in Japan. Picture one ton of such an element producing as much energy as 200 tons of uranium or 3,500,000 tons of coal.” But now that China announced they’re trying to develop thorium nuclear technology, the radioactive metal may regain political support.

***DISADVANTAGES***

DA – US politics

Link

1NC – Executive agreement

The plan passes via executive agreement – normal means – causes backlashLugar 12 (Richard J., former US Senator, Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, One Hundred and Twelfth Congress, Second Session, December 21, 2012, “OIL, MEXICO, AND THE TRANSBOUNDARY AGREEMENT,” http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CPRT-112SPRT77567/html/CPRT-112SPRT77567.htm, alp)

An executive agreement would not require the two-thirds vote necessitated by a treaty, but instead it would be approved in the same form as a statute, requiring passage by majority in both the Senate and the House of Representatives. Legislation approving the agreement, necessary implementing authorities, and clarifications regarding certain provisions of the TBA could be subject to amendment, including by items unrelated to the TBA itself, thus possibly miring the TBA in other political fights.

DA – Mexican politics – tax reform

1NC

Tax reform will pass – experts – key to the Mexican and US economies Hughes 4/20 (Krista, Reuters, April 20, 2013, “Mexico finance minister says tax reform will be "large”,” http://uk.reuters.com/article/2013/04/20/uk-mexico-economy-videgaray-idUKBRE93J0ER20130420, alp)

(Reuters) - Mexico is making good progress towards a "large" reform of its inefficient taxation system, with

details of the overhaul expected this fall, Finance Minister Luis Videgaray said on Saturday. Mexico's budget relies heavily on funding from such sources as oil-industry revenue because it takes in so little in taxes, a phenomenon credit rating

agencies have cited as a barrier to a higher rating. Many investors see a tax system restructuring as the most important reform element for Latin America's second largest economy. "We have some very good progress on what we are planning to do on fiscal reform .. (but) we are not talking about it yet," he said in an interview with Reuters on the sidelines of meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank. Asked if he could reassure investors that the reform would be sweeping, he said: "It will be large." Experts have said Mexico needs to increase its tax take, currently the lowest in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) as a proportion of gross domestic product, by 6 to 8 percentage points of GDP. The new government, which took power in December, has promised to review both direct and indirect taxes, combat a large informal economy, encourage states to levy more taxes and tackle the current system of exemptions and preferential treatment to boost the efficiency of tax collection. Videgaray also expressed disappointment that Group of 20 countries did not commit to exchange information on profits by multinational corporations, which would help combat tax avoidance. Instead of insisting members sign up to an international deal by the next G20 meeting in September, the bloc of advanced and developing nations only said they "encourage" joining. The G20 also backed down from calls to make advanced economies commit to hard targets on getting public finances in order after countries such as the United States argued against setting a specific goal for debt and deficits. Videgaray, who met with U.S. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew during his visit to Washington,

agreed this was reasonable in the face of worries about a slowing of U.S. economic growth. "We are quite concerned about a low-growth scenario in the U.S., our economy is significantly more linked to the U.S. than to any other economy, so it's in our best interests for the U.S. to continue growing," he

said. "While Mexico is in a much better position itself on the fiscal front, you need to be careful not to hamper the growth prospects of advanced economies, particularly the United States." The G20 also promised to be mindful of the impact of policy stimulus on developing nations, particularly stimulus by central banks to pump extra liquidity into markets - some of which finds its way into emerging markets. Optimism about economic reforms has helped boost foreign capital flows into Mexico, pushing the peso to 20-month highs, although it eased to 12.2590 per dollar on Friday.

The plan cranks Nieto’s agendaLugar 12 (Richard J., former US Senator, Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, One Hundred and Twelfth Congress, Second Session, December 21, 2012, “OIL, MEXICO, AND THE TRANSBOUNDARY AGREEMENT,” http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CPRT-112SPRT77567/html/CPRT-112SPRT77567.htm, alp)

Mexico's need for oil and natural gas reform is widely acknowledged amongst leaders in Mexico. The primary question remains whether domestic political conditions will allow reform to advance. Oil has a privileged status in Mexican identity and politics akin to the third rail of Social Security in the United

States: it basically works for now, is widely acknowledged to not work in the future, and any attempts to reform it may jeopardize a politician's future. Having achieved incremental energy reforms in 2008, the now opposition National Action Party (PAN) leadership appears poised to support broader oil and natural gas reform if offered by the PRI. Previously, some observers had raised concern that the PAN may hinder reform, as the PRI had done under the Calderon administration, to frustrate the new Presidential administration. In addition, some interlocutors indicated that the leftist Revolutionary Democratic Party (PRD) could attempt to undermine oil sector reform, including by staging public demonstrations against any initiative. While the general contours of political distinctions can be surmised even now, the exact lines of debate will be determined

only when the government offers the actual scope of their proposed reform initiative. It is evident that the current government budgetary reliance on PEMEX makes it extremely difficult to leave more capital within the company to make necessary investments. That will be all the more difficult since President Pena Nieto has made several campaign promises related to expansion of the social safety net in Mexico. Reportedly, for example, President Pena Nieto will reduce PEMEX's 2013 budget by over a billion dollars compared to expectation. If it is to come, financial autonomy for PEMEX will likely have to be tied with government fiscal reform measures.

It’s a fine balancing act – PC is keyGraham 5/7 (Dave, XE exchange rates, May 7, 2013, “FACTBOX-Political risks to watch in Mexico,” http://www.xe.com/news/2013-05-07%2006:15:00.0/3339489.htm, alp)

The 'Pact for Mexico,' which Pena Nieto struck with leaders of the main opposition parties, has been the cornerstone of a legislative agenda that seeks to overcome years of deadlock in Congress, where no party has had a majority since 1997. The accord has already helped to pass major bills on education and the telecommunications market,

but some cracks have appeared as parties limber up for the first major round of state elections in Mexico

since last July's presidential vote. Opposition leaders threatened to walk away from the pact after videos were leaked showing officials from Pena Nieto's Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, advocating the use of government funds for vote-buying in Veracruz state. The conservative National Action Party, or PAN, and the leftist Party of the Democratic Revolution, or PRD, put a banking reform negotiated under the pact on ice because they were unhappy with Pena Nieto's response to the scandal in Veracruz, one of 14 states that votes in July. The pact still appears to be intact, but if Pena Nieto loses the support of the opposition leaders, his two most ambitious reforms could be in jeopardy.

Economic decline turns every impactO Hanlon et al, 12O’Hanlon 12 Kenneth G. Lieberthal, Director of the John L. Thornton China Center and Senior Fellow in Foreign Policy and Global Economy and Development at the Brookings Institution, former Professor at the University of Michigan [“The Real National Security Threat: America's Debt,” Los Angeles Times, July 10th, http://www.brookings.edu/research/opinions/2012/07/10-economy-foreign-policy-lieberthal-ohanlon]

Alas, globalization and automation trends of the last generation have increasingly called the American dream into question for the working classes. Another decade of underinvestment in what is required to remedy this situation will make an isolationist or populist president far more likely because much of the country will question whether an internationalist role makes sense for America — especially if it costs us well over half a trillion dollars in defense spending annually yet seems correlated with more job losses. Lastly, American economic weakness

undercuts U.S. leadership abroad . Other countries sense our weakness and wonder about our purport 7ed decline. If this perception becomes more widespread, and the case that we are in decline becomes more persuasive, countries will begin to

take actions that reflect their skepticism about America's future . Allies and friends will doubt our

commitment and may pursue nuclear weapons for their own security, for example; adversaries will

sense opportunity and be less restrained in throwing around their weight in their own neighborhoods. The

crucial Persian Gulf and Western Pacific regions will likely become less stable . Major war will become more likely. When

running for president last time, Obama eloquently articulated big foreign policy visions : healing America's breach with the Muslim world, controlling global climate change , dramatically curbing global poverty through

development aid, moving toward a world free of nuclear weapons . These were, and remain, worthy if

elusive goals. However, for Obama or his successor, there is now a much more urgent big-picture

issue: restoring U.S. economic strength. Nothing else is really possible if that

fundamental prerequisite to effective foreign policy is not reestablished .

Uniqueness

2NC – UQ wall

Will pass – lobbying and momentum MX News 6/17 (The News, MX, June 17, 2013, “SAT on board with tax reform,” http://thenewsonline.mx/index.php/mexico-articulos/10861-sat-on-board-with-tax-reform-, alp)

MEXICO CITY – Mexico’s reform agenda shows no signs of losing steam as pace gathers behind a tax reform bill that will join recent telecommunications and education reform bills put before Congress. Tax Administration Service (SAT) head Aristóteles Núñez Sánchez said on Sunday that the proposed reform, to be presented in the coming months, has already been discussed by members of President Enrique Peña Nieto’s “Pact for Mexico”

agreement. Núñez Sánchez said that the reform would simplify tax payments, broaden the tax base, bypass the informal economy and eliminate a number of loopholes that have blighted the current system. “In the coming weeks and months there will be a revision of our tax system’s legal framework. ... We hope that all political parties

will act in consensus to achieve a fiscal reform that benefits all Mexicans,” Núñez Sánchez said. He added that tax collection would be a key part of the reform but that the reform would also contain measures that would simplify the tax-paying process. Núñez

Sánchez said that the SAT would help draft the bill, giving feedback on the strengths and weaknesses of the current system.

Coalitions exist nowGutierrez 6/12 (Miguel, Reuters via CNBC, June 12, 2013, “Mexico Congress to hold special sessions, buttressing reforms,” http://www.cnbc.com/id/100811810, alp)

MEXICO CITY, June 12 (Reuters) - Congressional leaders of Mexico's main parties said on Wednesday they had agreed to hold two special sessions of Congress in July and August to tackle outstanding initiatives, paving the way for key energy and fiscal reforms to move forward in the autumn. President Enrique Pena Nieto plans to send measures aimed at boosting Mexico's paltry tax take and overhauling ailing state-oil monopoly Pemex to Congress during the second regular session of Congress, which begins in September. But an overhang of outstanding initiatives from the first congressional session, which ended in April, threatened to push back the much anticipated reforms. The two extraordinary sessions agreed to on Wednesday would be held in the second halves of July and August respectively, said Emilio Gamboa, who heads the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) in the Senate. Representatives of the leftist Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) and the conservative National Action

Party (PAN) also agreed to the plan. In the July session, lawmakers will discuss measures that would give more power to the transparency institute, regulate state debt, appoint a new leader for the election authority and create a new anti-corruption body. In August, the legislators plan to draw up secondary laws to implement recently approved measures aimed at improving education and boosting competition in the telecoms sector, which is dominated by billionaire Carlos Slim. Both special sessions are due to take place after charged regional elections in 14 states slated for July 7.

Will pass now – broad analyses agreeTorres and Arce 12 (Noe and Jean, Reuters, July 6, 2012, “Mexico's Pena Nieto 'likely' to win tax reform by end-2013,” http://uk.reuters.com/article/2012/07/06/uk-mexico-reforms-idUKBRE8650PL20120706, alp)

Incoming president Enrique Pena Nieto won last Sunday's vote after promising a clutch of fiscal, energy, labour and competition reforms which aim to lift Mexico's economic growth to 6 percent a year. According to the median of 13 analysts polled by Reuters, the new administration, which will take office on December 1, should make fiscal and energy reforms its top priority. Pena Nieto's Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, will not have a majority in either the lower house of Congress or the Senate, the latest projections show, meaning he will have to negotiate with

opposition parties on reforms. Fiscal reform is seen as "likely" during the first year of Pena Nieto's term,

along with the establishment of a new state bank, but analysts thought other reforms would take longer. "The mandate in Congress is not very strong and Pena Nieto will have trouble negotiating the reforms," said Pedro Tuesta, an analyst at consultancy

4Cast in Washington. Mexico desperately needs to jump-start growth after its economy languished behind other

emerging markets during the last decade.

Partisan agreement’s keySchtulmann and Broholm 2/18 (Alejandro and Sergio, EconoMonitor, February 18, 2013, “Mexico’s Tax Reform in the Works: Preview and Initial Considerations,” http://www.economonitor.com/blog/2013/02/mexicos-tax-reform-in-the-works-preview-and-initial-considerations/, alp)

According to Videgaray and other PRI officials, the tax package is being delayed to give the administration more time to negotiate its components internally as well as with opposition leaders and the private sector. This is to ensure the bill has strong inter-partisan support before it is officially presented to Congress and to avoid a drawn out congressional debate.

AT: Mexico’s already signed it

Doesn’t affect Nieto’s PC – it was signed during the Calderon administration and hasn’t gone into effect yet – our link is outcome based, not process based.

[maybe read the card in the block below – AT: PEMEX reform thumps]

AT: PEMEX reform thumps

Failure to pass the TBA prevents Mexican oil reformLugar 12 (Richard J., former US Senator, Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, One Hundred and Twelfth Congress, Second Session, December 21, 2012, “OIL, MEXICO, AND THE TRANSBOUNDARY AGREEMENT,” http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CPRT-112SPRT77567/html/CPRT-112SPRT77567.htm, alp)

First, the TBA will, for the first time, allow U.S.-listed IOCs to work in partnership with PEMEX, not including service contracts. Many observers are optimistic that the TBA is the metaphorical camel's nose under the tent, paving the way to broader reform in Mexico. There is no guarantee of such an outcome, however, failure for the U.S. to approve the TBA may put a drag on Mexican domestic energy reform

momentum. The TBA helps demonstrate that Mexico's oil patrimony can be protected in a joint production regime with U.S. companies. It was suggested by some senior officials that passage of the TBA could help prompt broader domestic energy reform in Mexico.

Internal link

2NC – PC key

Election scandals create a brink – Nieto’s balancing the opposition now but it can change at any timeGraham 7/4 (Dave, Reuters, July 4, 2013, “Mexican reforms hostage to opposition in local elections,” http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/07/04/us-mexico-elections-idUSBRE9630GP20130704, alp)

Falling short of a majority when he won, Pena Nieto crafted an informal coalition with the opposition to help realize his economic vision, two key parts of which - opening up state oil giant Pemex to private capital and boosting the tax take - he is planning to send to Congress by September. That accord, known as the Pact for Mexico, has

yielded a major education shake-up and a landmark bill to spur more competition in the telecommunications industry - but it

has also given the opposition leverage over the government. Anxious to preserve their autonomy, opposition leaders have kept up a steady barrage of criticism on Pena Nieto's Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, accusing it of seeking to steal or buy its way to victory on July 7. Throughout, both the conservative National

Action Party, or PAN, and the leftist Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) have threatened to quit the pact if the PRI does not play fair. Madero's insistence that the PRI cannot be trusted may make it hard for him to back down if results do not go

his way. Should the PAN go empty-handed and take out its frustration on the pact, Pena Nieto's hopes for cross-party consensus on Pemex and how to strengthen Mexico's weak tax take will suffer.

2NC – Opposition parties key

Coalitional agreements key – empirics – it’s on the brink because of previous battlesJackson 12 (Allison, Global Post, December 1, 2012, “Pena Nieto: Mexico’s new president faces an uphill battle on key reforms,” http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/americas/mexico/121130/mexican-president-enrique-pena-nieto-inauguration, alp)

“The political capital of a new president is generally the highest in the first year of presidency and the incoming president has stated his willingness to pursue energy and fiscal reforms in 2013,” said Shelly

Shetty, head of Latin America sovereigns at Fitch Ratings. Luckily for Pena Nieto, he is inheriting the "best economic environment" in decades for Mexico, said Carlos Ramirez, a Mexico analyst at Eurasia Group in

Washington. Latin America’s second-largest economy is expected to grow by nearly 4 percent this year and unemployment is back

below 5 percent. Pena Nieto has said he wants to boost economic growth to 6 percent partly by opening up the

state-controlled oil giant Pemex to greater private investment and closing gaping tax loopholes — which members of his PRI party, unions and big business have balked at. Another key part of his agenda is shifting the security focus from tackling the drug cartel leaders head-on — the aggressive strategy favored by outgoing President Felipe Calderon over the past six years — to reducing the rates of murder, kidnapping, extortion and other crimes that affect ordinary people in their everyday lives. But to do all this he will need the support of the outgoing administration’s National Action Party (PAN), whose candidate came third in

the July presidential race but which still retains a significant presence in the congress. Pena Nieto will be relying on the good graces of the PAN to back his reform plans. But there’s a twist: Some of those very reforms are similar to ones put forward by the center-right PAN during its 12 years in office, only to be repeatedly blocked by Pena Nieto’s PRI.

2NC – Tax reform k2 econ

Tax reform boosts the Mexican economy Hughes 6/26 (Krista, Reuters, June 26, 2013, “Mexico aims to bring shadow economy into the light,” http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/06/26/us-mexico-economy-informal-idUSBRE95P09C20130626, alp)

Six in 10 Mexican workers, or 30 million people, live in the informal economy, eroding Mexico's already-low tax base and hindering plans to set up a universal social security system. "The country loses 3 or 4 percentage points of GDP every year because 60 percent of its workers don't generate any taxes and also don't have social security benefits," Labor Minister Alfonso Navarrete said on Tuesday. "If there are no real incentives to make it attractive for informal workers to turn formal ... it's difficult to get this group to migrate." Tax reform, along with an overhaul of the state-dominated

energy sector, is a key plank of the reform agenda promised by President Enrique Pena Nieto, whose plans to boost growth to 6 percent a year have captured the imagination of investors.

Link

2NC – AMLO

Successful energy reform triggers huge political backlash from AMLO – prevents passageSchtulmann and Broholm 2/18 (Alejandro and Sergio, EconoMonitor, February 18, 2013, “Mexico’s Tax Reform in the Works: Preview and Initial Considerations,” http://www.economonitor.com/blog/2013/02/mexicos-tax-reform-in-the-works-preview-and-initial-considerations/, alp)

In addition to the imminent legislative hurdles, Peña Nieto will face tough opposition from Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO) and his nascent party, Morena. AMLO has already announced plans to lead a public awareness campaign against Peña Nieto’s future energy reform. Seeking to polarize the tax

debate , AMLO will hold a similar campaign against tax reform over the summer. Despite his ups and downs, AMLO

still has tens of thousands of diehard supporters, clustered mainly in Mexico City and surrounding states. These people are willing to take to the streets at AMLO’s beck and call. As such, AMLO remains a wildcard factor to consider in this

debate. The political considerations listed in this article are of particular importance in the context of Mexico’s reform agenda. Peña Nieto must ensure broad inter party support in order to minimize damage to his political persona, maintain good standing in Congress and keep his party’s electoral outlook strong. In

the past, Peña Nieto has demonstrated a strong aversion to political confrontation and a desire to have strong inter-partisan support for legislative issues before presenting them to Congress. This thinking has so far worked on

less complex legislative issues like education and labor reform, however, some level of political confrontation is inevitable when it comes to tax and energy reform.

2NC – Pact for Mexico

The plan breaks the Pact for Mexico – prevents passage of tax reformGraham 7/4 (Dave, Reuters, July 4, 2013, “Mexican reforms hostage to opposition in local elections,” http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/07/04/us-mexico-elections-idUSBRE9630GP20130704, alp)

Opening up Pemex to foreign capital is a touchy subject in Mexico, and the PRD has already said it sees no need for constitutional changes to improve national crude oil output, which has fallen by a quarter since 2004.

Pemex has been a symbol of Mexican pride since the PRI nationalized the oil industry in 1938, and

previous attempts to reform the company have foundered on populist opposition. Though PRD officials have said

in private the party may be willing to discuss tweaks to the constitution, Pena Nieto looks increasingly likely to depend on the PAN for a constitutional reform that would require a two-thirds majority in Congress. If Pena Nieto does pursue a shake-up of Pemex without the PRD, he is sure to face major street protests mobilized by the left - a prospect that has made the ruling party nervous. Speaking on condition of anonymity, one senior PRI lawmaker said Mexico risks inviting the kind of demonstrations that have rocked Brazil and Turkey in recent weeks if it ignores the

PRD. Some 65 percent of Mexicans are opposed to foreign investment in Pemex, a survey last month

showed. Still, parts of the oil industry already benefit from foreign investment. Dropping the PRD would also suggest that the Pact for Mexico was reaching the end of its natural lifespan. That would not mean the PAN, which has been pushing for a major overhaul of Pemex for years, would stop supporting economic reforms it believed in, said PAN senator Laura Rojas. But it would bring the government off the ambitious timetable the pact had laid out for its plans. Both the energy and fiscal reforms were scheduled to be passed this year. "If the pact does break ... it's going to cost the government a lot more work to pass its reforms," Rojas said.

2NC – Public backlash

The plan wrecks his support baseEstevez 6/26 (Dolia, Forbes, June 26, 2013, “Most Mexicans Oppose President Peña Nieto's Plans To Open Up Pemex To Private Investment,” http://www.forbes.com/sites/doliaestevez/2013/06/26/most-mexicans-oppose-president-pena-nietos-plans-to-open-up-pemex-to-private-investment/, alp)

But Mexicans are less than ready to support Peña Nieto’s most ambitious and controversial reform to date. A new poll by the Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas (CIDE), a research institute, shows that 65 out of every 100 Mexicans are against opening up Pemex, the world’s seventh-largest oil producer with annual sales of more than $100 billion.

“Energy, particularly oil, continues to be the stronghold of Mexican nationalism,” said CIDE.

That directly influences his political capital – empirics Archibold 3/22 (Randal, New York Times, March 22, 2013, “New Leader Taps Mexican Discontent to Press Agenda of Change,” http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/23/world/americas/new-leader-taps-mexican-discontent-to-press-reform-agenda.html, alp)

It is that well of popular frustration — over poor cellphone service, limited programming on television, flagging schools — that

President Enrique Peña Nieto has tapped in a series of attention-getting moves that he promises will “transform Mexico” and accelerate growth in an economy that has expanded too slowly to lift the country out of the

developing world. But it seems clear that Mr. Peña Nieto has banked substantial political capital and bolstered his popularity, which may add momentum to thornier changes he plans, including opening up the state oil monopoly,

long a source of national pride, to private investment. “He is trying to gain credibility and popularity,” said Helena Varela

Guinot, a political scientist at the Ibero-American University in Mexico City. “He is saying, ‘I am a president that gets results, this is a government that is efficient, takes risks and goes after the big problems,’ although it is not clear in reality if his reforms will achieve the desired results.”

Specifically it catalyzes broad coalitions to oppose his agendaEstevez 6/26 (Dolia, Forbes, June 26, 2013, “Most Mexicans Oppose President Peña Nieto's Plans To Open Up Pemex To Private Investment,” http://www.forbes.com/sites/doliaestevez/2013/06/26/most-mexicans-oppose-president-pena-nietos-plans-to-open-up-pemex-to-private-investment/, alp)

Peña Nieto is counting on the Pact for Mexico, an alliance of the country’s top three political parties, to try to get the reform passed. The proposal, which is expected to involve reforming the Constitution, will need two-thirds support from

Mexico’s Congress; the PRI, his party, does not hold a simple majority in either house. Peña Nieto reported that he’s negotiating to get the political support he needs to break the state monopoly. However, some analysts believe that the Pacto, which succeeded in getting through a monopoly-busting telecom reform in May, will not hold up this time. The left-leaning Party of the Democratic Revolution, or PRD, warned that they will oppose Pemex’s reform.

Marcelo Ebrard, a popular former mayor of Mexico City and likely PRD Presidential candidate in 2018, challenged Peña Nieto to a televised debate on the oil overhaul. Former PRD Presidential candidate Cuauhtémoc

Cárdenas, Lazaro Cárdenas’ son, presented a counter proposal to “modernize” Pemex without changing Article 27 of the Constitution to undo the historical ban on privatizing the company. His proposal was endorsed Tuesday

by top PRD politicians, including Ebrard and Mexico City Mayor Miguel Angel Mancera, and the party’s congressional leaders.

2NC – US involvement

US involvement is uniquely controversialArchibold et. al. 4/30 (Randal C., Damien Cave, Ginger Thompson, New York Times, April 30, 2013, “Mexico’s Curbs on U.S. Role in Drug Fight Spark Friction,” http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/01/world/americas/friction-between-us-and-mexico-threatens-efforts-on-drugs.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0, alp)

But shortly after Mexico’s new president, Enrique Peña Nieto, took office in December, American agents got a clear message that the dynamics, with Washington holding the clear upper hand, were about to change. In another clash,

American security officials were recently asked to leave an important intelligence center in Monterrey, where they had worked side by side with an array of Mexican military and police commanders collecting and analyzing tips and intelligence on drug gangs. The Mexicans, scoffing at the notion of Americans’ having so much contact with different agencies, questioned the value of the center and made clear that they would put tighter reins on the sharing of drug intelligence. There have long been political sensitivities in Mexico over allowing too much American involvement. But the

recent policy changes have rattled American officials used to far fewer restrictions than they have faced in years.

Impact

2NC – Econ UQ

Mexican economy declining now – losing revenue sourcesThe Economist 5/25 (The Economist, May 25, 2013, “Reality bites: Lacklustre growth shows the need for reform,” http://www.economist.com/news/americas/21578440-lacklustre-growth-shows-need-reform-reality-bites, alp)

INVESTORS who were starry eyed about Mexico’s economic potential at the start of the year are now having misgivings. From a record high then, the stockmarket fell to an eight-month low on May 21st. Just to rub it in, stocks

in Brazil, which Mexico views as its main regional rival, have recently been performing much better. The immediate catalyst for the change of mood is the economy. In December, just as President Enrique Peña Nieto came to power promising to increase Mexico’s

growth potential, the country’s strong recovery from the 2008-09 global financial crisis hit the skids. In the first quarter of 2013 sluggish sales to the United States, by far Mexico’s largest export market, helped reduce growth to a modest 0.8% compared with the same period in 2012. A fall in public spending as a new party took power contributed to the dip. Other economic data in recent days have added to the worries. Foreign direct

investment last year plunged to $12.7 billion, from an average of around $23 billion during the past decade,

according to CEPAL, a UN-linked research organisation. It said the figure was affected by one-offs, such as a decision by Spain’s Banco Santander to list its Mexican subsidiary, raising $4 billion. That counted as an outflow of foreign investment. Some economists pointed to concerns that high levels of drug-related crime may also be taking a toll on investment, notably in tourism. Last year Mexico slipped out of the top ten of global tourist destinations.

2NC – Turns case

Turns and solves their PEMEX good impactSchtulmann and Broholm 2/18 (Alejandro and Sergio, EconoMonitor, February 18, 2013, “Mexico’s Tax Reform in the Works: Preview and Initial Considerations,” http://www.economonitor.com/blog/2013/02/mexicos-tax-reform-in-the-works-preview-and-initial-considerations/, alp)

The goals of comprehensive tax reform are to strengthen the government’s revenues and tax base,

while creating a fairer tax system. According to the Finance Ministry, the Mexican government collected 9.8% of GDP in taxes in 2012 and is expected to collect 9.7% of GDP in 2013. Even including revenue from Pemex and other government-run companies, Mexico collects a smaller percentage of its GDP in taxes than any other country in the OECD (19.7% in 2011). The average OECD country collects a third of its GDP in public revenue. For the Mexican government to meaningfully reduce its dependence on Pemex, it must increase its non-oil tax revenue by at least 6% of GDP.

2NC – Education/poverty d-rules

Tax reform is key to poverty reduction, health care, and educationCotis No date (Jean Philippe, senior official and French economist, former Director General of the National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies, former professor of economic policy at the University of Paris, OECD, no date, “WHAT ARE THE OECD’S VIEWS ABOUT THE MEXICAN TAX REFORM,” http://www.oecd.org/mexico/22425199.pdf, alp)

A well designed tax system can bring about the additional public revenues which are needed to finance extra spending on strategic areas such as education and infrastructures. Importantly, it can do so with minimal

economic distortions and in ways that better insulate the tax base from the vagaries of the business cycle and oil price fluctuations. Having a larger and more stable tax base is indeed crucial to secure the higher level of taxes and public spending that Mexico currently requires to boost its potential growth. All in all a well designed tax system can support growth, via higher and more predictable spending on infrastructure, human capital development, basic health programmes and targeted poverty relief, provided the overall size of the government is not excessive. In Mexico,

the tax/GDP ratio is very low and because of weaknesses in the tax design the associated economic distortions are unnecessarily large (Figure 1). This has imposed constraints on public spending. As mentioned before, the areas where more and better public spending would be conducive to faster economic development are: The

education and training system, which is a case on its own. Additional resources could be used to address some of the shortcomings,

including a backlog in investment, but as importantly, efforts should focus on using more effectively the resources that are being channeled to the system. Spending on physical infrastructure should be at a higher level; and the financing should not be subject to stop and go behaviour. Although effective in meeting budget targets “cyclical cuts”, caused by volatile financing, almost certainly affect programmes which are essential for Mexico’s development, thus jeopardizing the effectiveness of expenditure. Additional spending on basic health care

would also contribute to improving human capital. And preserving social programmes, including targeted poverty relief (known as

PROGRESA/Oportunidades), from drastic cuts is also important.

Preserving education is a d-ruleUNESCO No date (UNESCO, United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization, “The Right to Education,” no date, http://www.unesco.org/new/en/education/themes/leading-the-international-agenda/right-to-education/, alp)

Education is a fundamental human right and essential for the exercise of all other human rights. It promotes individual freedom and empowerment and yields important development benefits. Yet millions of children and adults remain deprived of educational opportunities, many as a result of poverty. Normative instruments of the United Nations and UNESCO lay down international legal obligations for the right to education. These instruments promote and develop the right of every person to enjoy access to education of good quality, without discrimination or exclusion. These instruments bear witness to the great importance that Member States and the international community attach to normative action for realizing the right to education. It is for governments to fulfil their obligations both legal and political in regard to providing education for all of good quality and to implement and monitor more effectively education strategies. Education is a powerful tool by which economically and socially marginalized adults and children can lift themselves out of poverty and participate fully as citizens.

Poverty prevention is a d-rule – outweighs the affBissio 12 (Roberto, executive director of the Third World Institute, journalist, SocialWatch, September 6, 2012, “ERADICATING POVERTY: FROM MORAL DUTY TO LEGAL OBLIGATION,” http://www.socialwatch.org/node/15326, alp)

Before signing international trade or investment treaties or designing fiscal policies, governments should ensure the compatibility of these policies with their human rights obligations, while avoiding measures “that create, sustain or increase poverty, domestically or extraterritorially”. This is necessary to conciliate the human rights

international regulations with the reality of poverty in which most part of the world population lives. The World Bank has a monetary definition of poverty and has set the poverty line on income below one-dollar a day (now adjusted to one dollar and twenty-five cents). According to the human rights approach, poverty is, in turn, “a human condition characterised by the sustained or chronic deprivation of resources, capabilities, choices, security and power”. Poverty, says the preface to the “principles” which have been declared final by Sepúlveda, is “both a cause and a consequence of human rights violations”. Poor people “experience many interrelated and mutually reinforcing deprivations –including dangerous work conditions, unsafe housing, lack of nutritious food, unequal access to justice, lack of political power and limited access to health care– that prevent them from realizing their rights and perpetuate their poverty”. Thus, the first principle proposed is that of human dignity, together with “the indivisibility, interrelatedness and interdependece of all rights”. The other principles are equality against all discrimination, which “includes the right to be protected from the negative stigma attached to conditions of poverty”, equality between men and women, the rights of the child, the agency and autonomy of persons living in extreme poverty, participation and empowerment, transparency and access to information and accountability. Based on these principles, States should adopt national strategies to reduce poverty and achieve social integration, with clear

reference points and deadlines, and well-defined plans of action. Public policies should give “due priority” to poor people and the “facilities, goods and services required for the enjoyment of human rights” should be “accessible, available, adaptable, affordable and of good quality”. States have the already mentioned

obligation to be coherent, request international assistance when their efforts are not sufficient and provide assistance if they are in a position to do so, being accountable for their interventions. “In a world characterised by an unprecedented level of economic development, technological means and financial resources,

that millions of persons are living in extreme poverty is a moral outrage”, reads the preface of the paper. When it becomes

approved, eradicating extreme poverty shall not only be a moral duty but also a legal obligation.

2NC – Failed states

Economic collapse causes poverty and social revolutions – leads to a failed stateFriedman 8/21 (George, STRATFOR, August 21, 2012, “Mexico's Strategy,” http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/mexicos-strategy, alp)

Discussion of national strategy normally begins with the question of national security. But a discussion of Mexico's strategy must begin with economics. This is because Mexico's neighbor is the United States, whose military power

in North America denies Mexico military options that other nations might have. But proximity to the United States does not deny Mexico economic options. Indeed, while the United States overwhelms Mexico from a national security standpoint, it offers

possibilities for economic growth. Mexico is now the world's 14th-largest economy, just above South Korea and just below Australia. Its gross domestic product was $1.16 trillion in 2011. It grew by 3.8 percent in 2011 and 5.5 percent in 2010. Before a major contraction of 6.9 percent in 2009 following the 2008 crisis, Mexico's GDP grew by an average of 3.3 percent in the five years between 2004 and 2008. When looked at in terms of purchasing power parity, a measure of GDP in terms of

actual purchasing power, Mexico is the 11th-largest economy in the world, just behind France and Italy. It is also

forecast to grow at just below 4 percent again this year, despite slowing global economic trends, thanks in part to rising

U.S. consumption. Total economic size and growth is extremely important to total national power. But

Mexico has a single profound economic problem: According to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and

Development, Mexico has the second-highest level of inequality among member nations. More than 50 percent of Mexico's population lives in poverty, and some 14.9 percent of its people live in intense poverty, meaning they

have difficulty securing the necessities of life. At the same time, Mexico is home to the richest man in the world,

telecommunications mogul Carlos Slim. The primary strategic problem for Mexico is the potential for internal instability driven by inequality. Northern and central Mexico have the highest human development index, nearly on the European level, while the mountainous, southernmost states are well below that level. Mexican inequality is geographically defined, though even the wealthiest regions have significant pockets of inequality. We must remember that this is not Western-style gradient inequality, but cliff inequality where the poor live utterly different lives from even the middle class.

DA – Mexican politics – cartels

1NCPolice reform will pass now – Nieto’s PC is key – it’s on the brink – solves cartel violenceStewart 5/16 (Scott, vice president of analysis, STRATFOR center, May 16, 2013, “Understanding Pena Nieto's Approach to the Cartels,” http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/understanding-pena-nietos-approach-cartels, alp)

As in the United States, the law enforcement and intelligence agencies in Mexico have terrible problems with coordination and information sharing. The current administration is attempting to correct this by centralizing the anti-cartel efforts at the federal level and by creating coordination centers to oversee operations in the various regions. These regional centers will collect information at the state and regional level and send it up to the

national center. However, one huge factor inhibiting information sharing in Mexico -- and between the Americans and

Mexicans -- is the longstanding problem of corruption in the Mexican government. In the past, drug czars, senior police officials and very senior politicians have been accused of being on cartel payrolls. This makes trust

critical, and lack of trust has caused some Mexican and most American agencies to restrict the sharing of intelligence to only select, trusted contacts. Centralizing coordination will interfere with this selective information flow in the short term, and it is going to take time for this new coordination effort to earn the trust of both Mexican and American agencies. There remains fear that consolidation will also centralize corruption and make it easier for the cartels to gather intelligence. Another attempt at command control and coordination is in the Pena Nieto administration's current efforts to implement police consolidation at the state level. While corruption has reached into all levels of the Mexican government, it is unquestionably the most pervasive at the municipal level, and in past government operations entire municipal police

departments have been fired for corruption. The idea is that if all police were brought under a unified state command, called "Mando Unico" in Spanish, the police would be better screened, trained and paid and therefore the force would be more professional. This concept of police consolidation at the state level is not a new idea; indeed, Calderon sought to do so under his administration, but it appears that Pena Nieto might have the political capital to make this happen, along with some other changes that Calderon wanted to implement but could not quite pull off. To date, Pena

Nieto has had a great deal of success in garnering political support for his proposals, but the establishment of Mando Unico in each of Mexico's 31 states may perhaps be the toughest political struggle he has faced yet. If realized, Mando Unico will be an important step -- but only one step -- in the long process of institution building for the police at the state level.

The plan cranks his agenda – it’s the third rail of politics Lugar 12 (Richard J., former US Senator, Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, One Hundred and Twelfth Congress, Second Session, December 21, 2012, “OIL, MEXICO, AND THE TRANSBOUNDARY AGREEMENT,” http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CPRT-112SPRT77567/html/CPRT-112SPRT77567.htm, alp)

Mexico's need for oil and natural gas reform is widely acknowledged amongst leaders in Mexico. The primary question remains whether domestic political conditions will allow reform to advance. Oil has a privileged status in Mexican identity and politics akin to the third rail of Social Security in the United

States: it basically works for now, is widely acknowledged to not work in the future, and any attempts to reform it may jeopardize a politician's future. Having achieved incremental energy reforms in 2008, the now opposition National Action Party (PAN) leadership appears poised to support broader oil and natural gas reform if offered by the PRI. Previously, some observers had raised concern that the PAN may hinder reform, as the PRI had done under the Calderon administration, to frustrate the new Presidential administration. In addition, some interlocutors indicated that the leftist Revolutionary Democratic Party (PRD) could attempt to undermine oil sector reform, including by staging public demonstrations against any initiative.

While the general contours of political distinctions can be surmised even now, the exact lines of debate will be determined only when the government offers the actual scope of their proposed reform initiative. It is evident that the current government budgetary reliance on PEMEX makes it extremely difficult to leave more capital within the company to make necessary investments. That will be all the more difficult since President Pena Nieto has made several campaign promises related to expansion of the social safety net in Mexico. Reportedly, for example, President Pena Nieto will reduce PEMEX's 2013 budget by over a billion dollars compared to expectation. If it is to come, financial autonomy for PEMEX will likely have to be tied with government fiscal reform measures.

An inability to suppress the cartels causes Latin American instabilityBonner 10 (Robert C., Foreign Affairs, July/August 2010, “The New Cocaine Cowboys,” http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/66472/robert-c-bonner/the-new-cocaine-cowboys, alp)

The recent headlines from Mexico are disturbing: U.S. consular official gunned down in broad daylight;

Rancher murdered by Mexican drug smuggler; Bomb tossed at U.S. consulate in Nuevo Laredo. This wave of violence is

eerily reminiscent of the carnage that plagued Colombia 20 years ago, and it is getting Washington's attention. Mexico is in the throes of a battle against powerful drug cartels, the outcome of which will determine who controls the country's law enforcement, judicial, and political institutions. It will decide whether the state will destroy the cartels

and put an end to the culture of impunity they have created. Mexico could become a first-world country one day, but it will never achieve that status until it breaks the grip these criminal organizations have over all levels of government and strengthens its law enforcement and judicial institutions. It cannot do one without doing the other. Destroying the drug cartels is not an impossible task. Two decades ago, Colombia was faced with a similar -- and in

many ways more daunting -- struggle. In the early 1990s, many Colombians, including police officers, judges, presidential

candidates, and journalists, were assassinated by the most powerful and fearsome drug-trafficking organizations the world has ever seen: the Cali and Medellín cartels. Yet within a decade, the Colombian

government defeated them, with Washington's help. The United States played a vital role in supporting the Colombian government, and it should do the same for Mexico. The stakes in Mexico are high. If the cartels win, these criminal enterprises will continue to operate outside the state and the rule of law, undermining Mexico's democracy. The outcome matters for the United States as well -- if the drug cartels succeed, the United States will share a 2,000-mile border with a narcostate controlled by powerful transnational drug cartels that threaten the stability of Central and South America.

Impact

2NC – Failed states

Continued drug violence makes Mexico a failed state – anti-drug measures keyLunhow and Cordoba 09 (David and Jose, Wall Street Journal, February 21, 2009, “The Perilous State of Mexico,” http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123518102536038463.html, alp)

Much as Pakistan is fighting for survival against Islamic radicals, Mexico is waging a do-or-die battle with the world's most powerful drug cartels. Last year, some 6,000 people died in drug-related violence here, more than twice the number killed the previous year. The dead included several dozen who were beheaded, a chilling echo of the scare tactics used by Islamic radicals. Mexican drug gangs even have an unofficial religion: They worship La Santa Muerte, a Mexican version of the Grim Reaper. The parallels between Pakistan and Mexico are strong enough that the U.S. military singled them out recently as the two countries where there is a risk the government could suffer a swift and catastrophic collapse, becoming a failed state. Pakistan is the greater worry because the

risk of collapse is higher and because it has nuclear weapons. But Mexico is also scary: It has 100 million people on the southern doorstep of the U.S., meaning any serious instability would flood the U.S. with refugees. Mexico is

also the U.S.'s second biggest trading partner. Mexico's cartels already have tentacles that stretch across the border.

The U.S. Justice Department said recently that Mexican gangs are the "biggest organized crime threat to the United

States," operating in at least 230 cities and towns. Crimes connected to Mexican cartels are spreading across the Southwest. Phoenix had more than 370 kidnapping cases last year, turning it into the kidnapping capital of the U.S. Most of the victims were illegal aliens or linked to the drugs trade. Former U.S. antidrug czar Barry McCaffrey said Mexico risks becoming a "narco-state" within five years if things don't improve. Outgoing CIA director Michael Hayden listed Mexico alongside Iran as a possible top challenge for President Obama. Other analysts say the risk is not that the Mexican state collapses, but rather becomes like Russia, a state heavily influenced by mafias. "The Mexican state is in danger," says

Gerardo Priego, a deputy from Mr. Calderon's ruling center-right party, known as the PAN. "We are not yet a failed state, but if we don't take action soon, we will become one very soon."

That causes WMD terrorismAnderson 08 bachelor’s degree in journalism, @ University of Kentucky; legal affairs, justice department, and congressional reporter @ Associated Press, Curt Anderson, October 08, 2008, USA Today, “US officials fear terrorist links with drug lords,” http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/nation/2008-10-08-805146709_x.htm)

MIAMI — There is real danger that Islamic extremist groups such as al-Qaida and Hezbollah could form alliances with wealthy and powerful Latin American drug lords to launch new terrorist attacks, U.S. officials said Wednesday. Extremist group operatives have already been identified in several Latin American countries, mostly involved in fundraising and finding logistical support. But Charles Allen, chief of

intelligence analysis at the Homeland Security Department, said they could use well-established smuggling routes and

drug profits to bring people or even weapons of mass destruction to the U.S. "The presence of these people in the region leaves open the possibility that they will attempt to attack the United States," said Allen, a veteran CIA analyst. " The threats in this hemisphere are real. We cannot ignore them." Added

U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration operations chief Michael Braun: "It is not in our interest to let that potpourri of scum to come together." Their comments came at a two-day conference on the illegal drug threat in the Americas hosted by the U.S. Southern Command and the 35,000-member AFCEA International, a trade group for communications, intelligence and national security companies. Much as the Taliban tapped Afghanistan's heroin for money, U.S. officials say the vast profits available from Latin American cocaine could provide al-Qaida and others with a ready source of income. The rebel group known as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, has long used drug money to pay for weapons, supplies and operations -- and is also designated as a terrorist organization by the U.S. "We've got a hybrid that has developed right before our eyes," Braun

said. Latin America's drug kingpins already have well-established methods of smuggling, laundering money, obtaining false documents, providing safe havens and obtaining illicit weapons, all of which would be attractive to terrorists who are facing new pressures in the Middle East and elsewhere.

DA – China SOI

1NC

China’s sphere of influence in Mexico is increasing nowPerrault 6/6 (Mike, 6/6/13, “President Xi uses trip to increase China's influence,” http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2013/06/06/presidential-china-summit-sunnylands/2397129/)//DR. H

When Chinese President Xi Jinping's four-nation tour of the Americas comes here Friday for a two-day summit with President Barack

Obama, area economists and economic development officials say China already will have take n fresh steps to bolster its economic influence in nations such as Costa Rica, Mexico, and Trinidad and Tobago.

Xi took office in March and has used the trip to expand China's exports and relations: • Friday, the Chinese leader met with Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar of the Caribbean Republic of Trinidad and Tobago — a nation rich in liquefied natural gas — where they announced they had discussed ways to cooperate in key areas of energy, minerals, infrastructure development, telecommunications and agriculture.• Monday, Xi met Costa Rican President Laura Chinchilla to discuss commercial and energy projects, including upgrading the Central American country's oil refineries and developing a free-trade zone.• Tuesday, in Mexico, President Enrique Pena Nieto and business leaders met with Chinese delegates to determine ways to reduce Mexico's large trade deficit while strengthening trade links . Mexican officials said while $57 billion of Mexico's imports — 15% — came from China last year, Mexico only exported $5.7 billion — 1.5% — to China."The bottom line is everybody is looking for export markets," said Chapman University economist Esmael Adibi, director of the A. Gary Anderson Center for Economic Research in Orange, Calif. "They're asking, 'Where are the markets that are not fully utilized?' and they're putting their efforts there."Last year, China eclipsed the United States to become the world's biggest trading nation, as measured by total exports and imports of goods (excluding services), according to figures both countries released earlier this year.Chinese exports and imports reached $3.87 trillion last year, the Chinese customs administration reported. The U.S. exports and imports combined for $3.82 trillion in 2012, the Commerce Department said.China's latest efforts to boost export markets in places such as Latin America and Africa don't surprise Wes Ahlgren, chief operating officer for the Coachella Valley Economic Partnership in Palm Springs, Calif. Ahlgren has traveled to China and Europe on trade missions to promote this area's renewable energy and clean technology opportunities.During a recent conference call with U.S. state, trade and commerce officials who were in Africa at the time,

Ahlgren said it was clear China has already made substantial investments in Latin America and Africa, and China continues to look for markets, resources and ways to expand its influence."Similarly, the U.S. foreign policy includes a large component of economic development, foreign military sales, direct investment, support for NGOs (non-government organizations), etc.," Ahlgren said. "Perhaps they are taking a page from our playbook and modeling it to their own vision."At a time when the USA is under financial pressure and has had to cut aid internationally, China is opening its wallet." Because (China) is so rich with foreign currency and surplus, they are willing to make direct investments in these countries to improve their ties," Adibi said. "Whereas we have budgetary constraints."Chinese officials announced last week they would loan Trinidad and Tobago $250 million to build a children's hospital, for instance.During his visit to Costa Rica, the Chinese president signed an agreement to grant Costa Rica a $400 million line of credit for energy and infrastructure projects, the countries announced. They also formalized a $900 million loan enabling Costa Rica to upgrade its main oil refinery to process 65,000 barrels a day.Economists said China needs oil not only for the growing number of cars for its middle class but to fuel all facets of its expanding economy.Unlike the United States, where some 70% of the economy centers around consumer spending, countries such as China and Japan rely far more heavily on exports , Adibi said.

As Latin American ministers and presidents, business executives and others increasingly recognize China's rapidly growing impact on the world economy, countries such as Argentina, Brazil and Chile have expanded bilateral ties , economists said.

Mexico was among the last of the major Latin American countries to sign free-trade agreements with Beijing, which meant it lost out as China became the principal trade partner to regional competitors such as Brazil and Peru.

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US influence directly trades off with China – every barrel of oil purchased is a barrel lostFergusson 12 (Robbie, e-International Relations, 7/23/12, “The Chinese Challenge to the Monroe Doctrine,” http://www.e-ir.info/2012/07/23/does-chinese-growth-in-latin-america-threaten-american-interests/)//DR. H

American concerns over displacementThe U.S has some reason to be concerned by the economic implications of China’s resource drive in Latin America because “while the United States has traditionally looked to Latin America as its source of numerous raw materials and a market for its finished products, China is fast replacing the United States in these roles.” [37] The United States has no intention of being usurped in its role as chief beneficiary of the regions energy

resources, but “ for every barrel of oil that China purchases from Latin America, there is potentially one

less barrel available for the U.S” [38] It is of course extremely premature to be using words such as usurped as China’s

involvement in the region is at a very early stage and its energy interests are not overly well defined, but already, “China’s total consumption of the five basic commodities – grain, meat, oil, coal and steel – has already surpassed that of the USA in all but oil,” [39] leading many analysts such as Hutton to wonder how the global supply of energy can cope with the emergence of such a hungry economy without conflict over increasingly scarce resources. [40]

The development of China and its interests in the region is therefore key. Roett & Paz argue that “ what matters most… for Sino- Latin American energy relations is not where China is today but how it compares with its position in the world at the start of the twenty-first century and where it is likely to be in 2030.” [41] Due to the triangular relationship

between China, the U.S, and Latin America, any shift of the equilibrium towards China cannot fail to

impact upon the United States. Bajpaee moots the idea:

While not a zero-sum game, growing inter-linkages and interdependence between China and Latin America is likely to come at the cost of the United States’ relations with its neighbours , which will only undermine U.S ability to access the region’s energy resources. This will force the U.S to rely on energy resources from more remote and less stable regions, such as West Africa, the Caspian and the Middle East. [42]

That causes US-China warFergusson 12 (Robbie, e-International Relations, 7/23/12, “The Chinese Challenge to the Monroe Doctrine,” http://www.e-ir.info/2012/07/23/does-chinese-growth-in-latin-america-threaten-american-interests/)//DR. H*note: consistent with Security K – says US threat constructs china and attacks.

Washington has long asserted that it is the sole overlord of the Western Hemisphere and will not tolerate any perceived outside interference in the region’s affairs. The Monroe Doctrine of 1823 stated that Latin America and the Caribbean were not to be considered by the European imperialist powers as areas ripe for colonization. Since then, the

region has been under the political, cultural and economic leadership of the United States of America, despite resurgent colonial interest from Spain, and laterally, the attempted ideological infusion of the Soviet Union.Fast forward 178 years since the signing of the treaty, and there is a new potential adversary for the United States in the region. Chinese Premier Jiang Zemin’s 2001 visit to Latin America signified a new Chinese interest in the continent. He promised support, investment, and the deepening of trade links, as a growing China sought natural resources, political allies, and new markets

for its rapidly expanding industrial sector. While more attention has been paid to China’s burgeoning relationship with African states, China has quietly built up its presence in Latin America, and the United States has begun to take notice and worry about the implications of this rise. Why China?However, before we get to details about Chinese involvement in Latin America, a simple question has to be asked first: Why the American pre-occupation with China? The answer is the concept of the ‘China threat’ theory , a theory which is as elusive as it is controversial. In this chapter we will examine parts of the China threat theory in an attempt to explain why the U.S feels so anxious about the rise of the PRC, and we will discuss how the theory applies to Chinese involvement in Latin America.The China threat in theory: ‘othering’In international politics, quite often we define who we are, by who we are not. This process, known as othering, is endemic in international politics as a whole, and is particularly prevalent in the thinking of the U nited S tates. Pan notes that “after the demise of the Soviet Union, the vacancy of other was to be filled by China, the ‘best

candidate’ the United States could find in the post-Cold War, unipolar world.” [1] Without something to project against, the U.S loses some of its own sense of identity, as defender of the free world and chief exponent of democracy. Pan

goes on to argue therefore that “ the ‘truism’ that China presents a growing threat is not so much an objective reflection of contemporary global reality, per se, as it is a discursive construction of otherness that acts to bolster the hegemonic leadership of the United States in the post-Cold War world.” [2] From this we understand two things – that any ‘China threat’ is a matter of perspective, and that part of the United States consciousness needs to believe in the reality of this threat to justify its own behaviour. Essentially, this means that “so long as the United States continues to stake its self-identity on the realization of absolute security, no amount of Chinese cooperation would be enough,” [3] suggesting the potential permanence of the American reaction to the rise of China.The Importance of PotentialAnother key element in the discussion of China as a threat is potential. This is important for the realist argument, which deals only with capabilities, rather than intentions. China’s potential is multi-faceted, political, economic, and military, and it is the realisation of this potential that worries American policy makers. Indeed, “much of today’s alarm about the “rise of China” resolves around the phenomenal development of the Chinese economy during the past twenty-five years.”[4] An increasing number of American scholars are focusing on how this rise might manifest itself. A congress report found that “even if its international outreach is entirely benign and centred on economic growth, the PRC’s potential to expand quickly to consumption and production levels comparable to those of the United States presents profound challenges to American and global interests.”[5] The prescription then, is dealing with China as could be, rather than dealing with it as is. The obvious flaw in this reasoning is that political forecasting is notoriously unreliable, and dealing with capabilities often gives undue authority to speculation. Subsequently, within reason, the potential of a ‘China threat’ can be whatever you want or need it to be.The China threat in practiceLatin America represents a good example of the China threat realised in practice. As Chinese involvement in

the region is at a very early stage, analysis tends to focus on its goals which are described as “economic, geostrategic, and irredentist ”[6] and its capabilities, with an eye to the worst possible repercussions for the U.S because Beijing is portrayed as “unhappy with the United States’ role as the sole global superpower,”[7] and many conclude that it “ultimately intends a direct challenge to U.S global power.”[8] In practice, this means “ Beijing’s growing political and economic presence is increasingly perceived by the United States as a serious intrusion.“[9] Thi s intrusion will not be ignored by Washington because it will be viewed as a fundamental challenge to its hegemony.The United States is worried that the presence of China will destabilize the region “by presenting an alternative political and economic model – rapid economic growth and modernization alongside political authoritarianism.”[10] As it views itself as the defender of Democracy, Washington is irate that China presents a ‘no strings attached’ approach to Latin America n trade and resource dealings, because it “undermines the U.S agenda to advance political reform, human rights and free trade in the region.”[11] The hegemon is not interested in alternatives to its rule – since the Monroe Doctrine, Latin America has remained “firmly within its sphere of influence.”[12] There are specific issues that Washington has genuine fears about, in particular, the rise of China is seen as complicating U.S efforts to “control illegal immigration, weapons shipments, the drug trade and money laundering because China is cooperating with Latin countries that are not especially friendly toward those efforts.”[13] The accuracy and validity of the claim is questionable but the fear behind the speculation is genuine. China is also often judged by the company it keeps, in particular it comes under fire for its close political and economic relationships with American adversaries old and new, Cuba and Venezuela, who “may try to use the Chinese alternative to challenge U.S hegemony . ”[14]

China may find itself guilty by association. The US A has a tendency to see things in black and white – to paraphrase, you are either with them, or against them.

1NC – US lashout impact

US starts the conflict – self-fulfilling prophecyFergusson 12 (Robbie, e-International Relations, 7/23/12, “The Chinese Challenge to the Monroe Doctrine,” http://www.e-ir.info/2012/07/23/does-chinese-growth-in-latin-america-threaten-american-interests/)//DR. H

The problem with Sino-Latin American military relations is that they are distorted by perception and portrayal. A more apt assessment would focus less on the formation of anti-American alliances and accept that “military relations are not the cause that propels Sino-Latin American relations; rather, they are one effect of those relations.” [116] R.E. Ellis suggests that there doesn’t even need to be evidence of a China threat or

military build up – the mere presence of China at all in the region is fundamentally unacceptable to the U.S. [117] But agitating China and treating it as a threat may ironically be the biggest military threat to the U.S from the region. A

strong argument can be made that “counsel to treat China as a major threat to U.S interests is designed to justify huge U.S military budgets and is more likely to bring about conflict with China than to deter it”

[118] and that fear of China as a military threat, and treating it as a military threat, may become a self

fulfilling prophecy. Whether the United States is willing to accommodate Chinese interests in the region is another question altogether.

Uniqueness

2NC – UQ wall

China’s Sphere of Influence over Mexico high now – 4 reasonsZeal 6/5 (New, a reporter’s actual name, June 5, 2013, “The Encirclement Gathers Pace: China Enters Into a “Strategic Partnership” With Mexico,” http://beforeitsnews.com/opinion-conservative/2013/06/the-encirclement-gathers-pace-china-enters-into-a-strategic-partnership-with-mexico-2657822.html)//DR.H

Chinese President Xi Jinping and his Mexican counterpart Enrique Pena Nieto Tuesday announced to upgrade the bilateral relationship to a comprehensive strategic partnership.The Chinese president arrived in Mexico City earlier in the day for a three-day state visit aimed at lifting the China-Mexico strategic partnership to a higher level, and held talks with Pena Nieto on bilateral cooperation.During the talks, the two presidents agreed that strengthening the China-Mexico long-term friendly cooperation serves the fundamental interests of the two countries and two peoples, and helps promote unity and cooperation among developing countries.Xi said the decision to upgrade the bilateral relationship is a realistic requirement, and it also sets a clear target for the development of bilateral relations.Pena Nieto, for his part, said the upgrade of the Mexico-China ties indicates that bilateral cooperation has entered a new stage.The Mexican side is ready to work with China to constantly improve cooperation at higher levels and through more effective mechanisms so as to achieve common development, he said.The two heads of state agreed to push forward the China-Mexico comprehensive strategic partnership by working jointly in the following four aspects.Firstly, the two sides will view their relations from a strategic and long-term perspective and improve political mutual trust. The two countries will accommodate each other’s concerns, and show mutual understanding and support on issues concerning each other’s core interests.China and Mexico will maintain exchanges between high-level leaders, political parties and legislatures, give full play to

the existing consultation and dialogue mechanisms, and improve coordination on each other’s development strategies.

Secondly, the two sides will improve practical cooperation in accordance with their development strategies, and agree to increase mutual investment in key areas such as energy, mining, infrastructure and high technology.In order to promote trade balance, China supports the increase of imports from Mexico, while Mexico welcomes Chinese enterprises to invest here and promises to create favorable conditions for Chinese investors.Thirdly, as two major countries with rich cultural traditions, China and Mexico will improve cultural exchanges. Both countries will encourage more exchanges between art troupes, promote tourism and strengthen communication among students, academics, journalists and athletes.China will build a Chinese cultural center in Mexico City, the first in Latin America and the Caribbean, and Mexico will establish a Mexican cultural center in Beijing as well.Fourthly, China and Mexico will improve multilateral coordination based on their common interests and responsibilities on major international issues.The two countries will maintain close communication and coordination on global economic governance, energy security, food safety and climate change.They will help developing countries gain a bigger voice in the international community, and safeguard the common interests of the two countries and the developing nations.China and Mexico support the establishment of the China-Latin America forum and promote the overall cooperation between China and Latin America at a higher level.After their talks, Xi and Pena Nieto signed a joint statement between the two countries, witnessed the signing of a host of agreements and jointly met the press.Pena Nieto said at the ceremony that China has become a major global economic engine and an important balancing power in international relations.

As two emerging powers, Mexico and China are each other’s important strategic cooperative partners, and the Mexican side is ready to forge closer ties with the Chinese side to achieve common development, the Mexican president said.China is ready to work with Mexico to constantly enrich the content of bilateral strategic partnership, promote mutually beneficial cooperation and contribute to world peace, stability and prosperity, he said.Xi said his visit to Mexico aims to deepen mutual trust, expand cooperation and enhance friendship. “I believe with our joint efforts,China-Mexico relations will enter a new stage,” he said.

Latin America is rapidly becoming a Chinese sphere of influence. This latest development can only

accelerate this unhealthy trend.

Link

2NC – Hydrocarbons

Hydrocarbons are key – China’s on the huntFergusson 12 (Robbie, e-International Relations, 7/23/12, “The Chinese Challenge to the Monroe Doctrine,” http://www.e-ir.info/2012/07/23/does-chinese-growth-in-latin-america-threaten-american-interests/)//DR. H

China’s thirst for resourcesWith the fastest growing large economy in the world, China’s hunger for resources is extraordinary, its “oil demand increased by more than 55 percent between 2000 and 2006.”[15] Despite possessing great oil

reserves of its own, for the first time ever, China “became a net importer of oil in 1993 – and its energy demands are expected to continue increasing at an annual rate of 4–5 percent through at least 2015, compared to an annual rate of about

1 percent in industrialized countries.”[16] Professor of Strategy at the National War College in Washington Cynthia Watson notes that “China has a targeted need to find energy resources,” [17] because the subsequent shortfall in demand versus consumption has to be made up by the acquisition of resources from external sources. For the most part, much of this shortfall has been made up by importing from Russia, and importing from OPEC allies such as Oman.However, as in any business, diversification is key to protect yourself from the turbulence of the open market and “volatility in the Middle East combined with growing uncertainty in oil-rich neighbouring countries such as Russia have led China to seek investment opportunities in other regions, particularly Africa and

Latin America.” [18] While it would be a caricature to describe China as insular, particularly since the reforms of Deng Xiaoping, it would

be fair to summarise that its forays into Africa and the Americas represent its first real extra-regional political excursions. As its thirst for resources is not going to be quenched in the near future, “China can be

expected to continue its determined quest for hydrocarbons and … will be venturing into the United

States’ traditional zones of influence.” [19] This is the crucial point of discussion from the point of viewpoint of this essay. While China has made many more seemingly significant steps in its relationship with Africa, for the most part, the countries with whom it deals are not U.S allies. The table below shows where China imports its oil from.

2NC – Zero sum

It’s a zero-sum between the U.S. and China – resources, purchasing power and geographic proximityValencia 6/24 (Robert, Contributing Writer at Global Voices Online and the World Policy Institute, 6/24/13, “US and China: The Fight for Latin America,” http://www.worldpolicy.org/blog/2013/06/24/us-and-china-fight-latin-america)//DR. H

During the first weekend of June, U.S. President Barack Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping met in California to

discuss cyber espionage and territorial claims in the Pacific Rim. While tension on these topics has hogged the headlines, the fight for influence in another area could be even more important—Latin America. Other emerging markets in Africa, where China has an

overwhelming influence due to foreign direct investment in mining and oil, also offer economic opportunities, but Latin America has an abundance of natural resources, greater purchasing power, and geographic proximity to the United States, which has long considered Latin America as its “backyard.”The key question now is will Latin American countries lean more toward China or the United States, or will it

find a way to balance the two against each other? Right now, Latin American countries are increasingly confident thanks to burgeoning economic and political integration by way of trading blocs, and they're demanding to be treated as an equal player.As a sign of its growing importance, China and the United States have courted Latin America more than usual. In May, President Barack Obama visited Mexico and Costa Rica while Vice President Joe Biden visited Colombia, Brazil,

and Trinidad and Tobago. Shortly after these trips, President Xi went to Mexico and Costa Rica to foster economic cooperation.

China’s active involvement in Latin American geopolitics can be traced back to 2009. Chinalco, China’s largest mining company, signed a $2.2 billion deal with Peru to build the Toromocho mine and a $70 million wharf in the Callao port. Since then, Peru has sent 18.3 percent of its exports to China, making China Peru’s largest trading partner. China’s imports to Peru, however, rank second with 13.7 percent of the market while the United States holds first place with 24.5 percent.China has the upper hand with the Latin American leftist countries in terms of infrastructure and technology. In 2009, Chinese telephone manufacturer ZTE played an instrumental role in assembling the first mobile phone in Venezuela known as “El Vergatario” (Venezuela slang for optimal). Former President Hugo Chávez introduced this new phone to low-income families making it the world’s cheapest phone ($6.99 for a handset). Additionally, China landed rail construction projects in Argentina and Venezuela and has become a major buyer of farm products and metal in South America. Between 2011 and 2012, China purchased nearly 58.02 million tons of soy from Argentina, up from 52 million in 2011 and 2010.

U.S. neglect and China’s low cost-less politicized appeal creates a zero sum relationshipFergusson 12 (Robbie, e-International Relations, 7/23/12, “The Chinese Challenge to the Monroe Doctrine,” http://www.e-ir.info/2012/07/23/does-chinese-growth-in-latin-america-threaten-american-interests/)//DR. H

The Chinese economic threat to the U.S in the regionThe U.S is still the most important economic partner for Latin America, but recently many in the region have felt neglected by Washington, whose focus on terrorism and the middle east and ‘rigid U.S. foreign policy toward Latin America has left regional leaders with no option but to look for other patrons. Net foreign direct investment in Latin America has fallen from $78 billion in 2000 to $36 billion in 2003.” [71] This economic neglect is exacerbating the political grievances of the likes of Hugo Chavez, but the more moderate social democratic governments of Argentina, Brazil, and Chile, recently extended the designation of Market Economy Status (MES) to China, something the U.S and the E.U have still denied. MES “substantially diminishes the effect of anti-dumping legislation under World Trade Organization rules. Given the preponderance of non-market factors in the P.R.C.’s economy… there can be little doubt that the three countries made their decision almost exclusively on the basis of China’s growing political and economic influence.” [72] This highlights the politico-economic independence of the U.S that Latin America is exerting.

This is also symptomatic of a deep paradox in the American thinking about how to deal with China. On one hand, tying the nominally communist state to the world economy is expected to bring about economic maturity and gradual political change, but on the other, China is still a U.S rival whose influence China is competing against. The situation is reciprocal, as China views the U.S as “[using] its economic leverage to exert political pressure on China, which is one reason that China seeks to diversify its economic relationships.” [73] In this respect, the

U.S has what it wants – China is intrinsically tied to the ideals of the open market – as a lower cost, less politicized alternative to the United States.

Impact

2NC – Turns case

China buys Mexico oil – solves PEMEXFergusson 12 (Robbie, e-International Relations, 7/23/12, “The Chinese Challenge to the Monroe Doctrine,” http://www.e-ir.info/2012/07/23/does-chinese-growth-in-latin-america-threaten-american-interests/)//DR. H

Where the US leads, China follows close behind. Or is that vice versa? The question is especially pertinent in Latin America, where China’s president, Xi Jinping, is midway through a regional tour that culminates in Mexico before he meetsBarack Obama in California. What makes Mr Xi’s trip noteworthy is that it follows a similar regional tour by Joe Biden, the US vice-president.For fans of a multi-polar world, Mr Xi’s trip illustrates how fast the world is changing – and how China is prepared to pay to expand its sphere of influence too: in Trinidad & Tobago, Mr Xi stumped up $3bn in loans.

Competing with China’s cheque book isn’t easy for the fiscally-constrained US. Latin American exports to China have also grown 20-fold since 2000 to around $90bn today. Moreover, China is often prepared to assume the risk of

lending to countries that the US and/or private investors are not – such as Venezuela. But the competition for influence gets especially tough when US officials put their foot in it. Two months ago John Kerry, the US secretary of state, called Latin America“our backyard”. China used to feel deferential to that position, as did, sometimes, parts of Latin America. Clearly, that is not the case any more.Still, one can overplay the two powers’ tussle for influence in the region. Take Mr Xi’s trip to Mexico, which ends on Wednesday. The two countries are major competitors in the production and export of manufactured goods. That is why Mexico was the last holdout to China’s accession to the World Trade Organisation in 2001. In 2011, former president Felipe Calderon even met with the Dalai Lama in Mexico’s presidential palace – quite a snub to Beijing.Today, by contrast, the two countries are pledging a relationship based on sweetness and light. President

Enrique Peña Nieto even visited China in April as part of the reset, much of which is surely based on the expected liberalisation of Mexico’s energy sector – a key attraction for energy-hungry China. Even as the Mexican economy becomes ever more closely entwined with North American supply chains, there is also talk by Mexican government officials that the two countries could become strategic allies in that they are both opposed to protectionism for the goods they produce.

Also, key to the Mexican economyTao 4/28 (Zhang, 4/28/13, “Mexico building bridges with China,” Market Watch, http://www.marketwatch.com/story/mexico-building-bridges-with-china-2013-04-28?pagenumber=1)//DR. H

Pena Nieto: Mexico is now working to promote its economic growth, more infrastructure and more opportunity for investment.Yes, the trade flow is in deficit for Mexico. First of all we should be bringing Mexico to the attention of China, so that we have more productive investment from China, which is only about $300 million today, and more productive investment also from Mexico to China, which is just over $90 million.What I’d try to discuss with president Xi is that in this relaunch of the relationship we may find institutional mechanisms with more capacity to resolve any obstacle we might have had in the past, so that we may facilitate trade exchange.This is a general interest of Mexico to boost the relationship with China, and for China to find in Mexico an opportunity of growth with the very broad market that Mexico has been able to build through free trade agreements with 44 nations. We can complement each other.Caixin: China and Mexico compete in a number of export categories. How do you view this competition?Pena Nieto: More than it being a competition, I think we should now see that in this new relationship and find complementarity in our productive capacities. In this way, we can have value-added on production in both Mexico and China, and for this to be generated for the whole world.I think we could establish a linkage in a chain of greater value for production. We should also take advantage of the strengths that we have in different fields of the economy.

Caixin: In recent years, China has increased its involvement in Latin America via investment and infrastructure projects. In your view, what has China brought to this region?Pena Nieto: Asia today is a region with important economic growth in a sustaining manner. It is also generating wealth for the world. China is the great engine of the economic growth in this region and of the rebalancing throughout the world.Mexico is now working on structural reforms that will allow us to take advantage of having a stable macro-economic condition, low inflation and low level of public debt. It allows us to speed up the pace of economic growth.Latin America is a region which is also growing, and Mexico is part of the region as a major gateway of access to two important marketplaces: the Latin American marketplace, which is the region that we are a part of, and also the North America market, with which we have a free trade agreement.

Solves Mexican oil internal linksRatliff 09 (William, research fellow and curator of Americas Collection at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, specializing in Latin America and China, 4/2/09, “Is a “Win-Win” Relationship in the Cards for China and Mexico?” http://www.jamestown.org/single/?no_cache=1&tx_ttnews%5Btt_news%5D=34793#.UdGeLvmgWuk)//DR. H

China is interested in oil anywhere and Mexico has a lot, mostly sold to the United States. The Chinese company

Sinopec in particular has tried to become involved in this oil through the Mexican national company, Pemex, but without success. Blog comments by a journalist who accompanied Xi suggest both surprise and deep frustration among Chinese

that Mexico turned them down, though also some satisfaction that the United States is not allowed to be involved either [10]. The result,

however, given maturing fields, declining reserves, corruption and stodgy thinking within Pemex, has made this business one of the least efficient in the world.

2NC – China war

US-China war over Latin America escalates globallyFergusson 12 (Robbie, e-International Relations, 7/23/12, “The Chinese Challenge to the Monroe Doctrine,” http://www.e-ir.info/2012/07/23/does-chinese-growth-in-latin-america-threaten-american-interests/)//DR. H

We have detailed China’s growing challenge to US dominance in Latin America, dealing for the most part in economic terms, but “some believe that China’s economic challenge inevitably gives rise to a simultaneous military threat.” [97]

Denny Roy suggests that:If China fulfils its expected potential, it will soon be a power in the class of 19th century Britain, the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, Pacific War Japan, and 20th century America. Each of those countries used its

superior power to establish some form of hegemony to protect and promote its interests. There is no convincing reason to think China as a great power will depart from this pattern. [98]

This is a central tenet of the China threat, that a rising power will seek – to borrow a phrase – its ‘place in the sun’ at the expense of global stability. The history of the world suggests that “prosperity and advancement will naturally strengthen China’s military power – something that worries the United States.” [99]

The U.S is worried because in our current unipolarity, global stability is intrinsically linked to the permanence of the hegemon. The Director of the Asian Studies Centre at the Heritage Foundation, Peter Brookes, has been quoted

as saying that “China’s grand strategy was to gather as many friends and allies as possible to counter U.S dominance in the region” [100] in an attempt to “balance against US power.” [101] The idea that China is trying to create an anti-U.S coalition is a frequently cited one, as many pundits think that China’s aim is “undermining the United States around the world and raising China to a position of dominant international political and military power.” [102] This point of view is held by a vocal minority who choose to interpret Chinese actions as designed against the United States.Military build up and U.S concernsThe U.S is concerned with the potential for China to attain a forward base from which to disrupt key U.S interests. The Commander of the Southern Command General Bantz J. Craddock told a hearing of the House Armed Service Committee that:The PRC’s growing dependence on the global economy and the necessity of protecting access to food, energy, raw materials and export markets has forced a shift in their military strategy. The PRC’s 2004 Defence Strategy White Paper departs from the past and promotes a power-projection military, capable of securing strategic shipping lanes and protecting its growing economic interests abroad. [103]The key idea here is that China might begin to exert itself and the U.S may find that it is not the only player in the Latin American equation. To give you an idea of how alien and disturbing a concept this is to the U.S, the Western hemisphere is not even considered a part of the ‘game board’ in grand strategy analyst Zbigniew Brzezinski’s ‘The Grand Chessboard’ [104].

2NC – Oil security

US-China competition allows China to create an anti-American alliance – isolates US economy and cuts off oil suppliesFergusson 12 (Robbie, e-International Relations, 7/23/12, “The Chinese Challenge to the Monroe Doctrine,” http://www.e-ir.info/2012/07/23/does-chinese-growth-in-latin-america-threaten-american-interests/)//DR. H

This is a recurring theme for some analysts, who portray Chinese involvement in Latin America as purely on an ‘arms for oil’ basis [106], but there remains significant worry about the perceived Sino-Venezuelan-Cuban axis, and how it will develop as China seeks to protect its investments. One potential justification would be the protection of overseas Chinese. Lafargue notes that “in Venezuela, several Chinese expatriates have recently been killed. Such

actions could enable Beijing to justify a more assertive military presence.” [107] This military presence would be perceived as directly threatening to the United States, not least because combined with the PRC’s “human and commercial infrastructure in Latin America… [China] would be well placed to disrupt and distract the United States in the hemisphere and to collect intelligence data against U.S forces operating in the region” [108] in the event of any possible U.S military conflict with China.Espionage is not the only U.S. strategic worry, many analysts fret that a Chinese led anti American alliance could “potentially isolate and undermine the U.S economy… and seek to engage in a form of asymmetric warfare against the United States by cutting off vital oil supplies,” [109] further evidence of why the U.S. is so concerned by forward Chinese progress in securing Latin American resources. Nor is the fact China’s armed forces will not attain serious power projection capabilities any time soon a comfort to the U.S. We go back to the ‘China threat’ idea of potential capability rather than intentions. Denny Roy surmises that “the point is not what China can deploy now, but in a decade or two, with a much advanced economic and technological base.” [110] Still, there are issues even in 2008 that the United States considers worrying.

2NC – Chinese nuclear power

Chinese sphere of influence is key to Chinese nuclear powerWise 09 (Carol, Associate Professor of International Relations at the University of Southern California, 2009, “China in Latin America: The Whats and Wherefores,” http://es.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2013/02/19/es.kht015.full)//DR. H

At the same time, as China’s commercial and political relationship with the countries in the region continues to grow, so will the influence of Chinese communities, businesses, and organizations now present in Latin America . Here, a good deal of diplomatic footwork remains to be done on both sides. Ellis cites the numerous conflicts between Chinese oil companies and indigenous groups, Ecuador being a prime example; the Argentine truck drivers’ strike against Chinese shop owners in 2006 is cited as further evidence of a troublesome trend underway in the region. The question of China’s ability to continue treading lightly with the United States is another potential problem. China’s improvement of its military capabilities through the acquisition of new technology is now a reality, as is the PRC’s willingness to form partnerships with various Latin American countries in this realm. This development is likely to be met with increased uneasiness in the United States, as is China’s propensity to increase technology cooperation in

areas such as aerospace, biotechnology, and nuclear power.

Chinese nuclear power’s key to energy securityLyons et al. ‘9 (([Blythe J. Lyons, John R. Lyman, Mihaela Carstei, and General Richard L. Lawson (USAF), “United States-China Cooperation On Nuclear Power: An Opportunity for Fostering Sustainable Energy Security”, Atlantic Council, 3-4/3-6 2009, http://www.acus.org/files/publication_pdfs/65/AtlanticCouncil-USChinaNuclearPower.pdf, Based on the Dialogue Sponsored by the Atlantic Council and the U.S./China Energy and Environment Technology Center

Both the U.S. and China are pursuing activities to develop advanced nuclear power reactor technology. The 2005 Energy Policy Act created a program for the U.S. at the Idaho National Laboratory to demonstrate a next generation light water reactors. China intends to develop an indigenous advanced nuclear reactor based on the technology being transferred by the Consortium. Both the U.S. and China are pursuing R&D on high temperature gas reactors that can be used for both electricity production as well as hydrogen production due to its high temperatures. The latter program offers a significant opportunity for collaboration between the U.S. and China. Looking to the future, advanced fuel cycle technologies will be needed. Given the difficulty of establishing waste repositories, fuel cycle technologies that can minimize the volume and heat load of the waste forms will be at a premium. Increasing proliferation resistance and maximizing the energy from uranium will also drive their development. GIF and GNEP programs specifically address these concerns. Specifically, the Chinese dialogue participants commented that there is a significant need for R&D on advanced fuels that can be remotely fabricated (regardless whether China chooses between an open or closed fuel cycle). It also calls for the development of advanced recycling technologies (through the GIF program activities) with cost effectiveness in mind. There are a number of major challenges facing Gen IV R&D programs and opportunities for international cooperation, including: Complexity of the technologies: As the complexity of the technology increases, the difficulty of achieving success increases. Innovative R&D is very time-consuming, requires huge amounts of capital, as well as demonstration facilities. Fuel cycle and resource requirements: Several Gen IV reactor systems will require a closed fuel cycle foundation, which is not uniformly supported by all key policy makers in the U.S. system. While each country will choose its preferred fuel cycle option on the basis of many factors, economics will be particularly important. (Many Dialogue participants discussed the need to factor ways to make advanced technologies more affordable into the R&D decision-making process.) The economics of reprocessing, a key element of an advanced closed fuel cycle technology, is sensitive to high plant throughput. Regional or international centers that provide either sensitive services, or cradle to grave services, could take advantage of the economies of scale that will be needed for the advanced fuel cycles to be competitive. Intellectual property: International, as well as national, laws and practices are needed to protect intellectual property. This becoming an even more important issue as a result of multinational collaboration on RD&D. 4 .4 Regardng Commercal Deployment of Small-Scale Nuclear Reactors While most of the Dialogue was devoted to issues related to the deployment of large-scale nuclear power plants, recent advancements towards the commercialization of smallscale nuclear power plants was also reviewed. There are several potential opportunities for advanced, small, modular reactor technologies to be used in both distributed and gridconnected applications. Such facilities are seen as increasing the flexibility and security of electricity grids. Some note that the smaller-scale designs might provide terrorists with less attractive targets than large-scale nuclear facilities. Small sized reactors also have several uses in addition to base load electric supply, for example, in providing site power for remote oil and gas production or high demand applications like desalination. In addition, they could provide emergency backup to critical facilities in the event of an attack on the electric grid, such as secure/on-site power plant at military sites or for critical industrial complexes. Additional factors driving the small-sized reactor market include potential bottlenecks in the supply chain for large reactors and the difficulties obtaining a large qualified workforce to build and operate a large reactor. Another intriguing possibility is to utilize self-contained, easily moved

small nuclear power plants in less developed countries. In many developing countries, 1000 MWe plus size reactors are simply not compatible with countries’ transmission grids. Billions of people currently live without access to electricity and without adequate water supplies. The utilization of distributed nuclear power could provide a major new power option in many less developed countries. There are various proposals for various types of small-sized reactors that have potential applications in developed and developing countries alike. As noted in section 3.2, the Chinese are interested in commercial application of small modular pebble bed reactors. The Hyperion Power Module, based on reactor technology developed at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, is a sealed, 27 MWe reactor using uranium hydride fuel, which can be delivered on the back of a flat-bed truck at a cost currently estimated (by the reactor developer) at $25 million per unit beginning in 2014. The Babcock & Wilcox Company reports that it has provided nuclear power plants for U.S. government applications and maintains the industrial capability to offer modular reactors in the 100 MWe range to commercial entities. It was noted that since China and the U.S. have an Agreement for Cooperation and as required by U.S. law, the DOE 810 technology transfer approvals 17 , B&W and China could cooperate on further commercial development and marketing of such reactors. Some liability issues would, however, have to be resolved first. NuScale Power is also interested in commercializing this type of technology. It is in the process of commercializing a modular, scalable 40 MWe light water reactor plant. It features a combined containment vessel and reactor system, and an integrated turbine-generator set. It is scalable in that as many as one to 24 units could be tied together within a single facility, with the ability to take out one unit at a time for servicing. NuScale make use of testing facilities at the Oregon State University to benchmark vendor and NRC safety evaluation models and is seeking certification by the NRC. T hroughout the dialogue, participants called for ways to accelerate commercial nuclear power cooperation between the U.S. and China on a government-togovernment level and throughout the commercial sector. Given the importance of developing nuclear trade between the two countries, and the necessity of ensuring safe and reliable plant operations, pragmatic and integrated cooperation is needed. In addition, global acceptance of nuclear power over the long term will depend upon viable solutions to nuclear waste and the creation of (even more) proliferation resistant technologies. Both China and the U.S. have the capability of leading in the creation of solutions to these issues. Specific recommendations coming from the dialogue include: 1 . As it becomes more clear that nuclear power will be an important part of China’s and the U.S.’s energy portfolio throughout this century and well into the next, so too does the need for adequate planning. To make the right decisions, energy policy makers need to expand their horizons to consider the longer term, i.e., past 2050, and what fuel cycle R&D must be initiated now. 2 . This dialogue represented a good first step to bring together some of the key players in the U.S. and Chinese nuclear sectors. At a future meeting, the Dialogue could be enhanced by broadening participation. For example, the meetings should include Chinese counterparts to attending U.S. organizations, a diverse range of Chinese utilities, other U.S. reactor design vendors and representatives from U.S. national laboratories The U.S. government should continue to promote U.S.Sino cooperation, especially in the nuclear area. Such cooperation would be supportive of the ongoing efforts to expanded cooperation on fossil fuel and climate change efforts that will not only benefit each country, but also developing countries such as India and Indonesia. 4 . The U.S. nuclear industry is mature; many lessons have been learned with regard to how to structure a robust commercial program. China could benefit from the U.S.’s experience to create viable utilities, vendors, a worldclass regulator as well as supporting universities and institutes. 5 . Commercial nuclear power deployment is a truly global endeavor demanding absolute quality assurance without compromise. There were several suggestions as to how it can be fostered: Increased engineering and construction cooperation by sharing best practices, utilizing 3D and 4D design techniques, better information management (taking advantage of communications devices such as “blackberries”), and adopting standardized barcodes. Assisting with the cultivation of China’s human resources by increasing opportunities for U.S. experts to do on-site training in China as well as for Chinese workers to come to the U.S. for training at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and utility facilities to witness U.S. “best policy and practices”. Developing a mindset of management and operational excellence by collaboration with organizations such as the World Association of Nuclear Operators (WANO.) The Chinese might best profit from the WANO experience by all Chinese organizations participating in the same WANO center. Steps are needed by the Chinese government to raise the profile of the profession and encourage the universities to improve the number and quality of their degree-programs. The industry must continue to coordinate with the universities regarding their needs. China should be encouraged to implement establishment of independent testing labs as is now apparently authorized under the auspices of the Institute of New and Nuclear Energy Technology. 6 . The U.S. NRC should continue to aid China’s National Nuclear Safety Administration (NNSA) in the development of its regulatory system and training of regulators. A follow-on dialogue should focus on obtaining more information to how China plans to ramp up its regulatory structure to meet the demands of a rapid deployment of commercial nuclear power across the spectrum of reactors it is currently planning. 7 . As the Chinese nuclear power industry matures, there will be opportunities for Chinese companies to provide services such as uprating, refueling, maintenance and outage control services. Efforts to establish such cooperation should be initiated in the near term. 8 . To improve the commercial nuclear plant supply chain, China should consider establishing a qualified supplier list. In the process, Chinese companies fabricating components need better training with regard to the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) standards code. 9 . Commercial entities in both the U.S. and China can take advantage of their competitive edges for mutual benefit. The U.S. has technical competitive edges and China has geographic edges vis-à-vis the developing market for nuclear power. U.S. and Chinese companies can jointly exploit these competitive edges to develop the South East Asian markets. 10 . One of the roadblocks to the development of cooperative opportunities is the U.S. visa issuance system. The Atlantic Council was encouraged to ask the U.S. Department of State to improve its processing of visa applications to significantly shorten the time needed for Chinese nationals involved in nuclear power to obtain a visa for travel to the U.S. Consider, for example, that France provides a dedicated consulate. It is important to recognize that U.S. authorities must take into consideration the security of nuclear facilities but that a better balance can be reached. This is a problem that can be solved. 11 . There is an opportunity for international cooperation on the development of a nuclear waste repository based on the experience the U.S. has already gained through 10 years of operation at the Waste Isolation Pilot Project (WIPP) facility and through its Yucca Mountain site characterization and licensing activities. 12 . China’s 10 MWe High Temperature Gas Reactor (HTGR) scheduled to be in operation by November 2013 in Shandong Province, could serve as an international experimental facility. The currently operating test pebble bed reactor has provided an opportunity for international collaboration. 13 . Cooperation on the development of advanced fuel cycle technologies, already underway in U.S.-China working groups, will provide significant opportunities to share rather than duplicate knowledge and funding. Generation IV (Gen IV) international collaboration on R&D is necessary and beneficial for all participants to share costs, facilities and experience. Specific fuel cycle

R&D opportunities proposed by the State Nuclear Power Technology corporation (SNPTC) include the following: Advanced fuel, such as mixed oxide (MOX) fuel, and metal fuel; Transmutation technology, such as fast reactor and accelerator driven systems; Reprocessing technologies, such as MOX spent fuel reprocessing, dry processing, on-site recycle; and, Repository design technology. 14 . The Generation IV International Forum (GIF) will provide a good framework to deal with intellectual property issues. If prototype or demonstration plants were to be built under the aegis of the GIF, it could also provide experience in dealing with legal and regulatory issues. Issues such as design ownership, who would build the facility, cost sharing would have to be addressed. As countries have vested interests in certain types of technologies, resolution of such issues may be difficult. 15 . The Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP): The U.S., which led the way in establishing the international collaborative effort to develop proliferation-resistant technologies and institutions, should take advantage of its leadership position to nurture and expand GNEP’s international activities. As in GIF, there are advantages to sharing technical expertise and pooling financial resources. GNEP is already in place and the Obama Administration can take advantage of the years of effort it took to set up the framework for international collaboration while adapting GNEP goals to current realities and domestic nuclear development policies. Consistency in U.S. nuclear energy policies, especially in relation to international efforts, is crucial to foster global acceptance of a safe, secure and sustainable nuclear power. The

time for debate about the winners and losers in the supply of energy is over. Nuclear energy is needed more than ever as a non-carbon emitting source of electric supply and it can play a role in providing a secure, sustainable, affordable energy supply. The bottom line is that both the U.S. and China need a diversified energy production platform and technology portfolio, including a vibrant nuclear industry. Given the necessity of using all the forms of energy at our disposal while transitioning to a de-carbonized portfolio relying increasingly on renewables, integrated solutions are needed. Recognizing that this is not an either-or world, cooperation on nuclear energy can lead to expanded cooperation on other energy programs such as clean coal technology and renewable energy R&D. As the scientists and engineers begin to work together on nuclear programs, both will find ways to start other joint efforts. Together the U.S. and China have the ability to set the standards for world’s upcoming climate negotiations. With 2 billion people in the world suffering from a lack of energy and facing increasing shortages of adequate water supplies, developed countries are in a position to spread the benefits of electricity around the globe. To do this, every available source of electric supply must be deployed, and the U.S. and China, who will have the world’s two largest nuclear power programs in approximately 20 years, and who may also be the world’s top two economies, will be able to lead the way This Dialogue provided a very good information base and an excellent platform to help the U.S. and China to work together to bring the benefits of nuclear energy to our nations and to the others in this world suffering from a lack of the basics for life. The U.S. and China are the world’s largest energy consumers—and the world’s two largest emitters of greenhouse gasses. Both countries must increase their use of nuclear power to help meet energy demands in a carbon-constrained environment. Relevant government agencies and key stakeholders must educate their publics about the parameters involved in producing a diverse energy supply in order to understand the worth of sacrifices that will be needed. Cooperation between the U.S. and China will be mutually beneficial. It is to the U.S.’s benefit that China designs and operates a safe nuclear power program. China is a significant market for the U.S. nuclear industry and provides an opportunity to maintain its manufacturing capabilities until its first new U.S. orders get underway. U.S. industry presence in China also increases relationships and communications thus improving U.S. security. The unprecedented transfer of nuclear technology to the Chinese will, in turn, help them develop clean sources of electricity sorely needed to address the fast growing needs of its economy and public. As Chinese capabilities grow, the nuclear supply chain is reinforced, supporting further opportunities for U.S. companies to expand reactor sales abroad. American and Chinese companies together can take advantage of their mutual competitive edges in technology and geography to expand into new markets. Cooperation and leadership are key and complimentary components in the U.S.’s and China’s efforts to ensure nuclear power’s contribution to meeting energy demand . Cooperation on technology development, human resources, security and safety will form the basis for their leadership on the world stage . Their combined actions will matter greatly in providing a quality environment with adequate energy supplies. The world is watching ! The Chinese participants signaled their desire to improve both government-to-government cooperation and commercial sector ties. It appears that the U.S. government is equally interested in working with China to tackle the overarching challenges of developing a safe and secure commercial nuclear fuel cycle. By supporting and participating in this Dialogue, U.S. industry and government participants have demonstrated their commitment to dealing with the challenges to realize the burgeoning nuclear trade between the two countries.

Solves multiple scenarios for warRichardson ’12 (Michael Richardson, visiting senior research fellow at the Institute of South East Asian Studies in Singapore, 6-7-12, [“Thirst for energy driving China's foreign policy,” Japan Times, http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/eo20120607mr.html] E. Liu

SINGAPORE — The United States and China, the world's top users of energy, are heading in opposite directions. It is a trend that has major geostrategic implications for the Asia-Pacific region. The U.S. is more certain that most of its future oil and gas will be produced at home. It is becoming less reliant on imported oil and natural gas as it ramps up domestic output and consumes fewer liquid fuels because of falling demand and energy saving advances, particularly in transport and industry. Meanwhile, China is becoming ever more dependent

on oil and gas shipped or piped into the country, mainly from faraway sources of supply that are often in politically

volatile parts of world, including the Middle East, Africa and Central Asia . As a result, Beijing's sense of insecurity about future energy supplies is rising. China is modernizing its armed forces not just to reclaim Taiwan

by military means if necessary. China wants to protect its maritime trade routes and secure access to offshore energy,

mineral and fisheries resources in nearby seas, including the East China Sea — where it faces conflicting claims to jurisdiction from Japan — and the South China Sea , where its claims to jurisdiction are contested by the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Taiwan, Indonesia and Brunei. China also wants to enhance its security by establishing an offshore zone of influence that it will be able dominate, instead of the U.S. and regional allies. Despite America's recently declared strategic "pivot" to Asia, its relative power and influence is declining. This is unlikely to change even if China's growth slows somewhat. As America gains energy security in a time of cost-cutting, it will have less incentive to continue expensive military protection of maritime supply lines in increasingly contested areas such as the seas off China's coast, the oil and gas-rich Persian Gulf, and around the Middle East and Africa, prompting China to extend its own military reach into the Indian Ocean, through which so much of its imported oil and gas comes. This will heighten tensions with India. Stephen Walt, a professor of international affairs at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government has projected the outcome of U.S.-China economic, military and energy trends in this way: "If China is like all previous great powers, including the U.S., its definition of 'vital' interests will grow as its power increases — and it will try to use its growing muscle to protect an expanding sphere of influence. "Given its dependence on raw-material imports (especially energy) and export-led growth, prudent Chinese leaders will want to make sure that no one is in a position to deny them access to the resources and markets on which their future prosperity and political stability

depend. "This situation will encourage Beijing to challenge the current U.S. role in Asia. Over time, Beijing will try to convince

other Asian states to abandon ties with America, and Washington will almost certainly resist these efforts. An intense security competition will follow ." The most recent sign of this regional struggle for supremacy is in the South China Sea where China and the Philippines, an ally of the U.S., have been at loggerheads for nearly two months over ownership and control of Scarborough Shoal, a reef and fishing ground that is far closer to the Philippines than to China. Such disputes can be contained. Or they can

lead to China prevailing over weaker, less determined opponents. Or they can result in armed conflict. If the U.S. or its ally Japan became involved, there could be a wider war that would destabilize Asia . Is there a way for China to emulate the U.S. and become substantially less dependent on foreign oil and gas? Until 1993, China produced enough crude oil to meet its needs. But as growth surged, oil imports rose. China now imports 55 percent of its oil consumption, a ratio that is set to increase. Natural gas, the least polluting of fossil fuels, is on a similar trend line. By 2020, China's gas imports by pipeline and sea will make up nearly 33 percent of demand, up from around 20 percent now and none in early 2006, when China cease to be self-sufficient in gas.

2NC – Bioterror

Chinese sphere of influence is key to biotechWise 09 (Carol, Associate Professor of International Relations at the University of Southern California, 2009, “China in Latin America: The Whats and Wherefores,” http://es.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2013/02/19/es.kht015.full)//DR. H

At the same time, as China’s commercial and political relationship with the countries in the region continues to grow, so will the influence of Chinese communities, businesses, and organizations now present in Latin America . Here, a good deal of diplomatic footwork remains to be done on both sides. Ellis cites the numerous conflicts between Chinese oil companies and indigenous groups, Ecuador being a prime example; the Argentine truck drivers’ strike against Chinese shop owners in 2006 is cited as further evidence of a troublesome trend underway in the region. The question of China’s ability to continue treading lightly with the United States is another potential problem. China’s improvement of its military capabilities through the acquisition of new technology is now a reality, as is the PRC’s willingness to form partnerships with various Latin American countries in this realm. This development is likely to be met with increased uneasiness in the United States, as is China’s propensity to increase technology cooperation in

areas such as aerospace, biotechnology, and nuclear power.

Further Chinese biotechnology innovations solve bioterrorZhao et al 06 China National Center for Biotechnology Development (Qinghua, Qing Li, Yihong Hu, Hongguang Wang, 2006, “Biotechnology and bioeconomy in China,” pdf)//DR. H

It will be important to establish and perfect the technical system to meet an emergency for the defense against bioterrorism and the prevention and treatment of the major epidemic diseases, ensuring

people’s health and social stability; to develop the vaccines and medications directed against the major bioterrorist factors is the utmost goal. Breakthrough is made in monitoring and detecting biotechniques with rigorous monitoring network and standard protocols and laboratories founded. The physical protection and equipment reaches the international advanced level.Breakthrough is made in the surveillance, warning and defense techniques of foreign invading organisms to contain them efficiently.The evaluation and monitoring techniques of the safety of transgenic plants and their products are standardized and applied to provide technical support for guaranteeing the safety of transgenic plants.Advanced bio-safety laboratories (P3, P4) and standardization of the administration procedures and criteria, providing the bases for R&D of the prevention and treatment of the major infectious diseases, and of defense against bioterrorism have to be established. The code of life ethics for biotherapy stem cell research and cloning techniques, bringing the research, development and application of BT into the legal system has to be established and perfected.

Bioweapons spread rapidly, are easy to produce, and cause extinction—9 hour timeframeDiscovery 09 – Chandra: Published over 350 peer-reviewed journals, Director of the Cardiff Centre for Astrobiology, former professor at multiple prestigious universities Award-winning source of credible, unbiased, and easy-to-understand explanations of how the world actually works (How Stuff Works, February 19, 2009, “10 Ways the World Might End: A Monster Plague,” http://videos.howstuffworks.com/science/10-ways-the-world-will-end-videos-playlist.htm)//DR. H

[Narrator:] Conventional science holds the deadly viruses that typically originate in other species, and then jump to humans. Some scientists believe the biggest threat from plague could come from outer space.

[Dr. Chandra Wickramisinghe:] Looking at the…the pattern of diseases and the how they extract the earth, I would say that every new strain of virus, new subtype of virus, it has a space connotation to it.[Narrator:] If Chandra is right, it is possible an asteroid could one day deliver a deadly new strain of plague. [Dr. Chandra Wickramisinghe:] There is the possibility that sometime in the future, there will be a strain of virus or bacteria that we have not encountered throughout evolution history that could cause absolute devastation.[Narrator:] A killer plague from outer space isn’t the only concern. Deadly new bioweapons are also being developed in the barges around the world . Fringe cults, and apocalyptic madmen could right now be developing such bioweapons. As deadly as atomic bombs, and far cheaper to produce , infection with a few particles could mean a slow, agonizing death. It might only take one moment of madness from an absent minded buffet to release such a deadly new strain of plague. Once out of the lab, this grotesque killer would quickly begin to spread . [Guest] Anywhere in the world, infection is on our doorstep, or moving around the world, within nine hours , that virus could

arrive here in London, or anywhere else. [Narrator:] No one will be safe, as the deadly invisible assassin will swiftly bring entire cities to a standstill. [Guest] There’s two features, of actually meeting your cad. And what we ask is, how long is the incubation period. That’s the time between the time you get infected, and the time you show symptoms. And the other thing we look for is what’s called its reproductive number, and its reproductive number is basically how many people are going to be infected by one person with that virus. If the reproductive number is high, and the incubation period is short, then you’ve got a problem on your hands. [Narrator:] This monster plague, will bring death on an unprecedented scale, economies will collapse , the medical system will be unable to cope, no one will be spared a terrible, ugly death.

2NC – ABSM

Chinese sphere of influence is key to aerospaceWise 09 (Carol, Associate Professor of International Relations at the University of Southern California, 2009, “China in Latin America: The Whats and Wherefores,” http://es.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2013/02/19/es.kht015.full)//DR. H

At the same time, as China’s commercial and political relationship with the countries in the region continues to grow, so will the influence of Chinese communities, businesses, and organizations now present in Latin America . Here, a good deal of diplomatic footwork remains to be done on both sides. Ellis cites the numerous conflicts between Chinese oil companies and indigenous groups, Ecuador being a prime example; the Argentine truck drivers’ strike against Chinese shop owners in 2006 is cited as further evidence of a troublesome trend underway in the region. The question of China’s ability to continue treading lightly with the United States is another potential problem. China’s improvement of its military capabilities through the acquisition of new technology is now a reality, as is the PRC’s willingness to form partnerships with various Latin American countries in this realm. This development is likely to be met with increased uneasiness in the United States, as is China’s propensity to increase technology cooperation in

areas such as aerospace, biotechnology, and nuclear power.

Strong Chinese aerospace industry fosters ASBM development- will be finished by 2012 if it remains on scheduleStokes 9- Defense department country director for the PRC and Taiwan. Asia pacific regional planner for USAF, Major contributor to the Strategic Studies Institute(Mark, “China’s Evolving Conventional Strategic Strike Capability,” 9/14/09, http://project2049.net/documents/chinese_anti_ship_ballistic_missile_asbm.pdf, CJC)In the near term, the chances of success in fielding conventional ballistic and cruise missiles able to strike moving targets in the Western Pacific Ocean and South China Sea out to a range of 2,000 km are high.

Manufacturing facilities for solid rocket motors associated with an initial ASBM variant, designated as the DF-

21D, appear to have been constructed in 2009. Given the successful track record of its space and missile industry , the PRC could demonstrate early operational capability of an ASBM before 2012 . There are also indications of investment into research and development of a maritime variant of existing extended range land attack cruise missiles, such as the Donghai-10 (DH-10). Research on many of the key enabling technologies for an

ASBM and other extended range conventional strike capabilities began in 1986 under the auspices of the 863 Program, China’s answer to the U.S. Strategic Defense Initiative(SDI).

Taiwan war is inevitable, only Chinese ASBM prevents it from escalating and drawing in outside powersStokes 9- Defense department country director for the PRC and Taiwan. Asia pacific regional planner for USAF, Major contributor to the Strategic Studies Institute(Mark, “China’s Evolving Conventional Strategic Strike Capability,” 9/14/09, http://project2049.net/documents/chinese_anti_ship_ballistic_missile_asbm.pdf, CJC)An ASBM is the most relevant in a future scenario involving U.S. intervention in the event of PRC use of force against Taiwan. Since entering the inventory of the PLA in the early 1990s, conventional ballistic missiles have been one of the most effective tools of political and military coercion of the PRC . As a symbolic metric of intent,

the PRC’s expanding arsenal of conventional ballistic missiles across the Taiwan Strait is intended to deter political support in Taiwan for de jure independence and coerce the island’s population to support unification with China on Beijing’s terms. In order to deter moves toward de jure independence, Beijing

has made conventional ballistic and land attack cruise missiles a visible and central element of its Taiwan strategy.

2NC – BMD

Chinese sphere of influence is key to aerospaceWise 09 (Carol, Associate Professor of International Relations at the University of Southern California, 2009, “China in Latin America: The Whats and Wherefores,” http://es.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2013/02/19/es.kht015.full)//DR. H

At the same time, as China’s commercial and political relationship with the countries in the region continues to grow, so will the influence of Chinese communities, businesses, and organizations now present in Latin America . Here, a good deal of diplomatic footwork remains to be done on both sides. Ellis cites the numerous conflicts between Chinese oil companies and indigenous groups, Ecuador being a prime example; the Argentine truck drivers’ strike against Chinese shop owners in 2006 is cited as further evidence of a troublesome trend underway in the region. The question of China’s ability to continue treading lightly with the United States is another potential problem. China’s improvement of its military capabilities through the acquisition of new technology is now a reality, as is the PRC’s willingness to form partnerships with various Latin American countries in this realm. This development is likely to be met with increased uneasiness in the United States, as is China’s propensity to increase technology cooperation in

areas such as aerospace, biotechnology, and nuclear power.

Weak Chinese aerospace industry increases their use of ballistic missilesStokes 10 - Executive Director of the Project 2049 Institute., 20-year U.S. Air Force veteran(Mark, May 20, “China’s Emergent Military Aerospace and Commercial Aviation Capabilities” US China Economic and Review Commission)//DR. H So with that in mind in terms of some of the reasons why they're problematic, why is the PRC relying upon ballistic and land attack cruise missiles? Well, the first reason has to do with the relative shortcomings of the aviation industry . This does not mean that the aviation industry and the PLA Air Force are not modernizing. They are. But in a relative sense, under a program where they've emphasized nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles and satellites, aviation industry in the past has not had this much emphasis as a space and missile industry. When you say aerospace industry, of course, in China, they're neatly divided between aviation and space and missile. But it also offers an inexpensive means , a relatively inexpensive means, to be able to achieve their operational objectives. That's the second reason.

That causes nuclear warStokes 10 - Executive Director of the Project 2049 Institute., 20-year U.S. Air Force veteran(Mark, May 20, “China’s Emergent Military Aerospace and Commercial Aviation Capabilities” US China Economic and Review Commission)//DR. H The centrality of theater ballistic and ground launch cruise missiles in PRC political and military strategy is problematic . Filling the vacuum created by the U.S.-Soviet Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) Treaty, the PRC has relied on theater missiles to compensate for shortcomings in its conventional air forces. In

addition to modernizing existing short range (SRBM) variants, China is expanding its medium range ballistic and ground launch cruise missile infrastructure. The conventional theater missile build-up has the potential to create strategic competitions that increase the risks of conflict in the future. China's successes in

fielding advanced ballistic and land attack cruise missiles also dilutes international efforts to stem

proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and their means of delivery.

2NC – Chinese econ

Chinese sphere of influence is key to aerospaceWise 09 (Carol, Associate Professor of International Relations at the University of Southern California, 2009, “China in Latin America: The Whats and Wherefores,” http://es.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2013/02/19/es.kht015.full)//DR. H

At the same time, as China’s commercial and political relationship with the countries in the region continues to grow, so will the influence of Chinese communities, businesses, and organizations now present in Latin America . Here, a good deal of diplomatic footwork remains to be done on both sides. Ellis cites the numerous conflicts between Chinese oil companies and indigenous groups, Ecuador being a prime example; the Argentine truck drivers’ strike against Chinese shop owners in 2006 is cited as further evidence of a troublesome trend underway in the region. The question of China’s ability to continue treading lightly with the United States is another potential problem. China’s improvement of its military capabilities through the acquisition of new technology is now a reality, as is the PRC’s willingness to form partnerships with various Latin American countries in this realm. This development is likely to be met with increased uneasiness in the United States, as is China’s propensity to increase technology cooperation in

areas such as aerospace, biotechnology, and nuclear power.

Aerospace competitiveness exponentially grows the Chinese economy – GDP and trickle downSpace Daily 5(Oct 24, “Successful Manned Space Mission Triggers Booming Aerospace Economy” http://www.spacedaily.com/news/china-05zzzzzzzzzzb.html)

The recent successful journey of China's Shenzhou-6 spacecraft has boosted the aerospace economy in the country, with share prices at 10 listed astronautic companies rising by 7 percent in one week. "The launching of the Shenzhou-6 spacecraft at the end of the 10th Five-Year Plan period (2001-2005) will have a far-reaching impact upon China's macro-economy as well as the next Five-Year Plan," Professor Han Liyan of the Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics was quoted by the Economic Information Daily as saying. Xu Dazhe, deputy general manager of the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp., which developed Shenzhou-6, revealed that the launching of Shenzhou-6 cost 900 million yuan (approximately 110 million US dollars), solely provided by the government. "It will bring tremendous economic benefits to the country," he said. Han Liyan estimated that China's aerospace project has involved a chain of industries worth 120 billion yuan (14.8 billion US dollars).

The Shenzhou-6 project and the aeronautic industry will boost the national economy both in the long run and short term, he said. Inaugurated in 1992, China's manned space program is solely dependent on its own technology, involving hundreds of up and down-stream enterprises and research institutions and thousands of cooperative working units in the country, Vice Minister Ma Songde of Science and Technology was quoted by the Economic Information Daily newspaper as saying. The manned space program will stimulate the rapid development of new materials, telecommunications and the biological industry, he said. According to international practice, the one-dollar investment in the aerospace program will bring about an 8 to 14-dollar benefit to the whole society, the newspaper said . During the first ten years of this century, 650 to 800 billion US dollars of investment are expected to flow into the global aerospace industry. By 2020, the output of the US space industry will account for 10 to 15 percent of its GDP, according to the newspaper. On the day when Shenzhou-6 was launched, the advertisement price on China Central Television (CCTV) was around 2 million yuan (246,610 US dollars) per five seconds, the newspaper said. The successful space tour has lifted up the share prices of three companies, namely Astronautic Machinery and Electronics, Astronautic Science and Technology and Astronautic Power, by over 10 percent in one week, when most other shares listed in Chinese stock markets remained stable. The United States created 2 trillion US dollars of profit through the industrialization of space technology, and the revenue of the French space industry is close to 20 billion euros annually, Zhang Qingwei, general manager of the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp., told the newspaper.

China is speeding up its industrialization process of space technology. The China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp. expects its total assets to hit 100 billion yuan (12 billion US dollars) by the end of 2005 and total revenue to hit 100 billion yuan by 2010. Although it is still hard to calculate the exact profit and revenue brought by the space program, it is true that ordinary people's lives are connected with aerospace technology, said Xu Dazhe. "The successful of Shenzhou-6 is of great significance for elevating China's prestige in the world, promoting China's economic, scientific and national defense capabilities and consolidating the national cohesiveness ,"

Chinese top legislator Wu Bangguo said at the Beijing Aerospace Command and Control Center in a congratulatory message.

Chinese growth eliminates Asian conflict – specifically a cross-strait warGriswold 03, Director of the Center for Trade Polict Studies at the Cato Institute, ’03 (Daniel, September 15, “Why Trade with the PRC?” http://www.freetrade.org/pubs/articles/dg-9-15-03)

Second, even if we could slam the brakes on China’s economic growth, would we want to? A dramatic slowdown would cause hardship for hundreds of millions of Chinese families and condemn millions of children to lives of perpetual poverty without the hope of further education and upward mobility. A poor, stagnant, and frustrated China would be more unstable and hostile to American interests than an energetic and prosperous one. A policy of disengagement from China would probably create the very enemy its proponents claim to be protecting us from. China’s burgeoning commercial ties have already moderated its international behavior. The incident surrounding the downing of a surveillance plane over China early in President Bush’s term was resolved quickly in some measure due to China’s growing commerce with the United States. And, China is finally playing a constructive role in policing Asia’s true problem child, North Korea, in part because South Korea is now among its top five trading partners. Its equally huge trade and investment ties to Taiwan give the Chinese government a powerful reason to avoid military conflict over the island .

ExtinctionStrait Times 2k (June 25, “Regional Fallout: No one gains in war over Taiwan”, Lexis;)

THE DOOMSDAY SCENARIO THE high-intensity scenario postulates a cross-strait war escalating into a full-scale war between the US and China. If Washington were to conclude that splitting China would better serve its national interests, then a full-scale war becomes unavoidable Conflict on such a scale would embroil other countries far and near and -- horror of horrors -- raise the possibility of a nuclear war . Beijing has already told the US and Japan privately that it considers any country providing bases and logistics support to any US forces attacking China as belligerent parties open to its retaliation. In the region, this means South Korea, Japan, the Philippines and, to a lesser extent, Singapore. If China were to retaliate, east Asia will be set on fire. And the conflagration may not end there as opportunistic powers elsewhere may try to overturn the existing world order. With the US distracted, Russia may seek to redefine Europe's political landscape. The balance of power in the Middle East may be similarly upset by

the likes of Iraq. In south Asia, hostilities between India and Pakistan , each armed with its own nuclear arsenal, could enter a new and dangerous phase. Will a full-scale Sino-US war lead to a nuclear war? According to General Matthew Ridgeway, commander of the US Eighth Army which fought against the Chinese in the Korean War, the US had at the time thought of using nuclear weapons against China to save the US from military defeat.In his book The Korean War, a personal account of the military and political aspects of the conflict and its implications on future US foreign policy, Gen Ridgeway said that US was confronted with two choices in Korea -- truce or a broadened war, which could have led to the use of nuclear weapons. If the US had to resort to nuclear weaponry to defeat China long before the latter acquired a similar capability, there is little hope of winning a war against China 50 years later, short of using nuclear weapons. The US estimates that China possesses about 20 nuclear warheads that can destroy major American cities. Beijing also seems prepared to go for the nuclear option. A Chinese military officer disclosed recently that Beijing was considering a review of its "non first use" principle regarding nuclear weapons. Major-General Pan Zhangqiang, president of the military-funded Institute for Strategic Studies, told a gathering at the Woodrow Wilson

International Centre for Scholars in Washington that although the government still abided by that principle, there were strong pressures from the military to drop it. He said military leaders considered the use of nuclear weapons mandatory if the country risked dismemberment as a result of foreign intervention. Gen Ridgeway said that

should that come to pass, we would see the destruction of civilization. There would be no victors in such a war. While the prospect of a nuclear Armageddon over Taiwan might seem inconceivable, it cannot be ruled out entirely, for China puts sovereignty above everything else.

2NC – East Asian stability

Chinese sphere of influence is key to aerospaceWise 09 (Carol, Associate Professor of International Relations at the University of Southern California, 2009, “China in Latin America: The Whats and Wherefores,” http://es.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2013/02/19/es.kht015.full)//DR. H

At the same time, as China’s commercial and political relationship with the countries in the region continues to grow, so will the influence of Chinese communities, businesses, and organizations now present in Latin America . Here, a good deal of diplomatic footwork remains to be done on both sides. Ellis cites the numerous conflicts between Chinese oil companies and indigenous groups, Ecuador being a prime example; the Argentine truck drivers’ strike against Chinese shop owners in 2006 is cited as further evidence of a troublesome trend underway in the region. The question of China’s ability to continue treading lightly with the United States is another potential problem. China’s improvement of its military capabilities through the acquisition of new technology is now a reality, as is the PRC’s willingness to form partnerships with various Latin American countries in this realm. This development is likely to be met with increased uneasiness in the United States, as is China’s propensity to increase technology cooperation in

areas such as aerospace, biotechnology, and nuclear power.

Chinese aerospace ensures regional security and prevents regional conflictErickson 4 - Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Politics at Princeton University.(Andrew, “Seizing the Highest High Ground: China’s Aerospace Development and its Larger Implications” February 21, http://www.eastwestcenter.org/fileadmin/stored/pdfs/IGSCwp003.pdf)

Beijing’s aerospace focus is normal for a rising great power. All states seek security; potential great powers seek security through aerospace. Countries of significant size, population, and development level naturally compete for great

power status: contingent on regional domination, it confers significant security. Regional domination hinges on military superiority, especially capacity to determine the nature of conflict and to deter it before it occurs (e.g. satellite detection of enemy military deployment followed by threats of sanctions if troops were not withdrawn). Military capacity and societal support for governmental grand strategy demand economic growth. Dual use potential of most technology unites military and economic sectors. Therefore, both current and aspiring great powers strive to seize the ‘technological high ground’.

Conflict in Asia escalates to nuclear war – extinctionLanday 2k National Security and Intelligence Correspondent, Top Administration Officials Warn Stakes for U.S. Are High in Asian Conflicts, Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service, Lexis

Few if any experts think China and Taiwan, North Korea and South Korea, or India and Pakistan are spoiling to fight. But even a minor miscalculation by any of them could destabilize Asia, jolt the global economy and even start a nuclear war . India, Pakistan and China all have nuclear weapons, and North Korea may have a few, too. Asia lacks the kinds of organizations, negotiations and diplomatic relationships that helped keep an uneasy peace for five decades in Cold War Europe. “Nowhere else on Earth are the stakes as high and relationships so fragile ,” said Bates Gill, director of

northeast Asian policy studies at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank. “We see the convergence of great power interest overlaid with lingering confrontations with no institutionalized security mechanism in place. There are elements for potential disaster.” In an effort to cool the region’s tempers, President Clinton, Defense Secretary William S. Cohen and National Security Adviser Samuel R. Berger all will hopscotch Asia’s capitals this month. For America, the stakes could hardly be higher. There are 100,000 U.S. troops in Asia committed to defending Taiwan, Japan and South Korea, and the United States would instantly become embroiled if Beijing moved against Taiwan or North Korea attacked South Korea. While Washington has no defense commitments to either India or Pakistan, a conflict between the two could end the global taboo against using

nuclear weapons and demolish the already shaky international nonproliferation regime. In addition, globalization has made a stable Asia with its massive markets, cheap labor, exports and resources indispensable to the U.S. economy. Numerous U.S. firms and millions of American jobs depend on trade with Asia that totaled $600 billion last year, according to the Commerce Department.

DA – Gulf biodiversity

1NC

Gulf’s recovering from the BP spill nowHaner 2/13 (Judy, Marine and Freshwater Programs Director for The Nature Conservancy in Alabama, “Reflecting on Gulf Milestones,” http://blog.nature.org/science/2013/02/13/reflecting-on-gulf-milestones/)//DR. H

In today’s news cycle, 2010 seems a long time ago.But the Deepwater Horizon oil spill is still making headlines. Are we any closer to recovery? The year opened in a frenzy of renewed media attention on the Gulf Coast. A judge approved the BP criminal settlement from the spill and the headlines told the story: “BP to Pay Record Fines for Gulf Oil Spill”, “BP Oil Spill Settlement Payments Exceed $1B Mark”, “BP Criminal Fines Could be a Game Changer.”As a result of this settlement, the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation is entrusted with administering nearly $2.4 billion to fund restoration work in the Gulf. Of course, the resolution of civil fines and penalties under the Clean Water Act is still pending and that trial is currently set to start in Louisiana later this month.Like everything in the Gulf, the mechanisms of restitution and recovery are, well, complicated, and likely to play out over years.But even in the midst of the swirl, one point rises above everything else: the appetite and the vision for restoring the Gulf continue to gain clarity, momentum, and most importantly, broad-based support.The milestones of progress and the importance of community-based restoration are clear.Milestone: Passage of the RESTORE ActNormally, a large portion of fines from human-made disasters or accidents are set aside for response to the next eventual event and the rest goes into the general revenue fund, but that’s not the case with the Deepwater Horizon.Due to the size of the spill, the magnitude of anticipated fines and the enormous extent of restoration needed were unparalleled in U.S. history.For most people, returning the fines and penalties to the Gulf was a simple matter of fairness and there was an outcry for the funds to be used for recovery of the Gulf, rather than sit waiting for the next disaster.Thus, the RESTORE Act was born. In July, the RESTORE Act passed Congress, directing 80% of the Clean Water Act fines eventually

levied for the 2010 Deepwater Horizon Spill to federal and state efforts to help the people and environment of the Gulf of Mexico.With the five Gulf state delegations working across the political aisle, this bipartisan effort was led by Senators Richard Shelby (R-AL), Bill Nelson (D-FL) and Mary Landrieu (D-LA).These funds will help restore and protect coastal habitats that are the nursery areas for fish and shellfish, reviving the seafood industry that provides the majority of the nation’s seafood.It will also boost the recreation and tourism industries that employ some 600,000 people and contribute $20 billion a year to the country’s economy.Passage of the RESTORE Act confirms the economic and environmental importance of the Gulf of Mexico to the nation.The people of the Gulf have proven their resilience time and again. As a Gulf resident, I find it extremely heartening that people are finding a way to turn this terrible tragedy into what is likely the biggest opportunity of our lifetime to “pay it forward” in the Gulf of Mexico and make a lasting investment in ourselves, our future, our children’s future and our grandchildren’s future. Milestone: Community ResilienceCoastal Storms have quite simply put community resilience on the forefront.Hurricane Isaac came ashore and crept slowly along the Mississippi-Alabama-Florida shoreline in late August, stacking up water on the coast for more than a week. Rivers and bays merged across roadways. Historic floodplains reconnected. Barrier islands were breached.Two months later, Super Storm Sandy devastated the Northeast coast. In the aftermath of these storms, we realized that areas with a natural first line of defense – such as beach dunes and oyster reefs — fared better that those without.Local leaders came together across party lines to make smart decisions as they began to rebuild their communities and a stronger public awareness of the role of nature in making communities safer emerged. The passage of Milestone: Passage of Forever WildForever Wild protects land for conservation and recreation, and, inadvertently, protects the Gulf.Alabama’s Forever Wild land acquisition program, Amendment 1, passed the state ballot with around 75% of the vote, extending funding for the program for another 20 years.The renewal of Forever Wild ensures the continued protection and restoration of Alabama’s rich natural heritage. The fact that Amendment 1 succeeded despite the tough economy is affirmation that conservation is a mainstream value of people everywhere.

Less than two months after this success, the Alabama chapter closed on over 11,000 acres in the Paint Rock River watershed known as Jacobs Mountain, one of our all-time greatest conservation accomplishments, as beautifully shown on Alan Cressler’s Flickr site.Long-term conservation of these critical areas protects not only the Southern Appalachian forests and unique cave

habitats, but also the freshwater headwaters that feed coastal Alabama and other areas along the Gulf of Mexico.Most folks in Montgomery, Birmingham and Huntsville don’t consider themselves “coastal” managers, but their activities, decisions and actions affect the coast as much or more than those living close to the Gulf.Looking AheadAs we ponder and contemplate the possibilities that 2013 may hold, I’d like to consider some ideas for coastal Alabama for the next year that build on our often forgotten successes:To accelerate oyster reef restoration to make our communities and natural resources as resilient as our people.To work side-by-side with local leaders to invest RESTORE funds for our future.To convince communities across Alabama and our watersheds of their link to the Gulf of Mexico.I think “thirteen” (as in 2013) will be a lucky number for coastal Alabama and the entire Gulf. Now more than ever, there is an awareness of the need to restore our coastal habitats, boost our local economies and rebuild coastal communities to make them “better than before.”

Plan kills the environment – multiple waysGreenpeace 12 (an international organization that works for environmental conservation and the preservation of endangered species, February 22, 2012, “Transboundary agreement spells disaster for the Gulf,” http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/en/media-center/news-releases/Transboundary-agreement-spells-disaster-for-the-Gulf/)//DR. H

In response to the United States and Mexico signing an agreement to develop oil and gas reservoirs that cross the international maritime boundary between the two countries in the Gulf of Mexico Greenpeace United States and Mexico have signed their own transboundary agreement.Greenpeace US and Mexico signed the agreement concerning their governments continued obsession with helping the gas and oil industry profit off polluting the climate and devastating the Gulf of Mexico. “The US and Mexican governments say their agreement is “designed to enhance energy security in North America,” an impossibility given the continued support for fossil fuel production over secure, renewable energy sources. President Obama's failure to permanently reject the Keystone XL pipeline, his expanding coal mining on public lands, and approval of oil exploration in the Arctic lay the groundwork for this new policy,” said Greenpeace US Climate Campaigner Kyle Ash.“This agreement opens new areas to dangerous, expensive, and controversial offshore drilling techniques. This is what led to the deaths of eleven workers and over 200 million gallons of oil spewing into the Gulf just two years ago,’

said Mr Ash. “The US-Mexican joint statement called for “the highest degree of safety and environmental standards,” which the US Congress has failed to improve since the Deepwater disaster. A recent report from

the National Research Council reaffirmed that deepwater drilling remains unsafe.”Drilling could take place in the Gulf at depths typically greater than 8,500 feet, deeper than at any drilling site in the world. The BP Deepwater Horizon catastrophe occurred in water 5,000 feet deep“Deepwater exploration is a huge risk to the environment and a waste of resources for the country. Each oil spill at sea disrupts the ecosystem, causing ecological disturbances, some temporary, others permanent. State-owned oil company Pemex has a history of oil spills off the coast of Tamaulipas, Veracruz, Tabasco and Campeche and now with plans for deepwater exploration in the Gulf of Mexico, the potential for disaster increases exponentially,” said Greenpeace Mexico Climate Campaigner Beatriz Olivera.

“To bet on difficult and expensive oil extraction is a waste of public resources for Mexico’s goverment. The border area is classified as a high risk area for deep levels. Drilling a single well in the border region means additional indebtedness of over $ 150 million (1) for Pemex” said Ms Olivera.“This joint declaration by the governments of President Obama and President Calderon is part of an historic trend of North American governments doing the bidding of the oil industry. Greenpeace Mexico and Greenpeace United States will do everything they can to change their governments' policies that destroy the climate and keep North America energy insecure,” said Mr Ash.

That’s a global biodiversity hot spotPlatt 7/30 (William, Biology Professor at LSU, PhD from Cornell, 7/30/13, “The North American Coastal Plain: a Global Biodiversity Hotspot.” http://www.botanyconference.org/engine/search/index.php?func=detail&aid=22)//DR. H

The North American Coastal Plain region ranks among the world's 36 biodiversity hotspots. The Atlantic

and Gulf geological coastal plains, which extend from southeastern Massachusetts to southern Florida and westward along the Gulf

of Mexico to Tamaulipas and Nuevo Leon in northeastern Mexico, contain ~8250 species of vascular plants, of which 6170 are native and 1748 (21%) are endemic. A subset, the Coastal Plain Floristic Province, supports 5397 native vascular plants (1588 endemic). The Coastal Plain also contains 1133 vertebrates, of which 203 (18%) are endemic at the species level and 392 (32%) at the subspecies level. High vegetation diversity, despite small geological diversity (elevations are <250m), reflects both deep phylogenetic diversity within many groups of plants and major ecological adaptation to a range of subtly different fire-frequented environments. Over ½ of the endemic species of plants are associated with longleaf pine savannas, reflecting the long evolutionary history of these habitats and ecological diversification in environments that range from xeric sand and clay hills to wet prairies and marshes. This region has experienced extensive destruction and degradation (>75%) from conversion to agriculture, forestry, fire suppression, and human development. Existing conservation efforts, focused on larger somewhat intact areas (e.g., national forests, military bases), have been hampered by slow development and application of adaptive fire and soil management based in scientific studies. This biodiversity hotspot is also at high risk from sea level rise anticipated if global climate change continues unabated.

That destroys agriculture, medical advances, and ecosystems resulting in extinction – hotspots are keyMittermeier 11 (et al, Dr. Russell Alan Mittermeier is a primatologist, herpetologist and biological anthropologist. He holds Ph.D. from Harvard in Biological Anthropology and serves as an Adjunct Professor at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. He has conducted fieldwork for over 30 years on three continents and in more than 20 countries in mainly tropical locations. He is the President of Conservation International and he is considered an expert on biological diversity. Mittermeier has formally discovered several monkey species. From Chapter One of the book Biodiversity Hotspots – F.E. Zachos and J.C. Habel (eds.), DOI 10.1007/978-3-642-20992-5_1, # Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2011. This evidence also internally references Norman Myers, a very famous British environmentalist specialising in biodiversity. available at: http://www.academia.edu/1536096/Global_biodiversity_conservation_the_critical_role_of_hotspots)

Extinction is the gravest consequence of the biodiversity crisis, since it is¶ irreversible. Human activities have elevated the rate of species extinctions to a¶ thousand or more times the natural

background rate (Pimm et al. 1995). What are the¶ consequences of this loss? Most obvious among them may be the lost opportunity¶ for future resource use. Scientists have discovered a mere fraction of Earth’s species¶ (perhaps fewer than 10%, or even 1%) and understood the

biology of even fewer¶ (Novotny et al. 2002). As species vanish, so too does the health security of every ¶ human.

Earth’s species are a vast genetic storehouse that may harbor a cure for¶ cancer, malaria, or the next new pathogen – cures waiting to be discovered.¶ Compounds initially derived from wild species account for more than half of all¶ commercial medicines – even more in developing nations (Chivian and Bernstein¶ 2008). Natural forms, processes, and ecosystems provide blueprints and inspiration¶ for a growing array of new materials, energy sources, hi-tech devices, and¶ other innovations (Benyus 2009). The current loss of species has been compared¶ to burning down the world’s libraries without knowing the content of 90% or¶ more of the books. With loss of species, we lose the ultimate source of our crops¶ and the genes we use to improve agricultural resilience, the

inspiration for¶ manufactured products, and the basis of the structure and function of the ecosystems¶ that support humans

and all life on Earth (McNeely et al. 2009). Above and beyond¶ material welfare and livelihoods, biodiversity contributes to security, resiliency,¶ and freedom of choices and actions (Millennium Ecosystem Assessment 2005).¶ Less tangible, but no less important, are the cultural, spiritual, and moral costs¶ inflicted by species extinctions. All societies value species for their own sake,¶ and wild plants and animals are integral to the fabric of all the world’s cultures¶ (Wilson 1984). The road to extinction is made even more perilous to people by the loss of the broader ecosystems that underpin our livelihoods, communities, and economies(McNeely et al.2009). The loss of coastal wetlands and

mangrove forests, for example, greatly exacerbates both human mortality and economic damage from tropical cyclones (Costanza et al.2008; Das and Vincent2009), while disease outbreaks such as the 2003 emergence of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome in East Asia have been directly connected to trade in wildlife for human consumption(Guan et al.2003). Other consequences of biodiversity loss, more subtle but equally damaging, include the deterioration of Earth’s natural capital. Loss of biodiversity on land in the past decade alone is estimated to be costing the global economy $500 billion annually (TEEB2009). Reduced diversity may also reduce resilience of ecosystems and the human communities that depend on them. For example, more diverse coral reef communities have been found to suffer less from the diseases that plague degraded reefs elsewhere (Raymundo et al.2009). As Earth’s climate changes, the roles of species and ecosystems will only increase in their importance to humanity (Turner et al.2009).¶ In many respects, conservation is local. People generally care more about the biodiversity in the place in which they live. They also depend upon these ecosystems the most – and, broadly speaking, it is these areas over which they have the most control. Furthermore, we believe that all biodiversity is important and that every nation, every region, and every community should do everything possible to conserve their living resources. So, what is the importance of setting global priorities? Extinction is a global phenomenon, with impacts far beyond nearby administrative borders. More practically, biodiversity, the threats to it, and the ability of countries to pay for its conservation vary around the world. The vast majority of the global conservation budget – perhaps 90% – originates in and is spent in economically wealthy countries (James et al.1999). It is thus critical that those globally flexible funds available – in the hundreds of millions annually – be guided by systematic priorities if we are to move deliberately toward a global goal of reducing biodiversity loss.¶ The establishment of priorities for biodiversity conservation is complex, but can be framed as a single question.

Given the choice, where should action toward reducing the loss of biodiversity be implemented first ? The field of

conservation planning addresses this question and revolves around a framework of vulnerability and irreplaceability (Margules and Pressey2000). Vulnerability measures the risk to the species present in a region – if the species and ecosystems that are highly threatened are not protected now, we will not get another chance in the future. Irreplaceability measures the extent to which spatial substitutes exist for securing biodiversity. The number of species alone is an inadequate indication of conserva-tion priority because several areas can share the same species. In contrast, areas with high levels of endemism are irreplaceable. We must conserve these places because the unique species they contain cannot be saved elsewhere. Put another way, biodiversity is not evenly distributed on our planet. It is heavily concentrated in certain areas, these areas have exceptionally high concentrations of endemic species found nowhere else, and many (but not all) of these areas are the areas at greatest risk of disappearing because of heavy human impact.¶ Myers’ seminal paper (Myers1988) was the first application of the principles of irreplaceability and vulnerability to guide conservation planning on a global scale. Myers described ten tropical forest “hotspots” on the basis of extraordinary plant endemism and high levels of habitat loss, albeit without quantitative criteria for the designation of “hotspot” status. A subsequent analysis added eight additional hotspots, including four from Mediterranean-type ecosystems (Myers 1990).After adopting hotspots as an institutional blueprint in 1989, Conservation Interna-tional worked with Myers in a first systematic update of the hotspots. It introduced two strict quantitative criteria: to qualify as a hotspot, a region had to contain at least 1,500 vascular plants as endemics (¶ >¶ 0.5% of the world’s total), and it had to have 30% or less of its original vegetation (extent of historical habitat cover)remaining. These efforts culminated in an extensive global review (Mittermeier et al.1999) and

scientific publication (Myers et al.2000) that introduced seven new hotspots on the basis of both the better-defined criteria and

new data. A second systematic update (Mittermeier et al.2004) did not change the criteria, but revisited the set of hotspots based on new data on the distribution of species and threats, as well as genuine changes in the threat status of these regions. That update redefined several hotspots, such as the Eastern Afromontane region, and added several others that were suspected hotspots but for which sufficient data either did not exist or were not accessible to conservation scientists outside of those regions. Sadly, it uncovered another region – the East Melanesian Islands – which rapid habitat destruction had in a short period of time transformed from a biodiverse region that failed to meet the “less than 30% of original vegetation remaining” criterion to a genuine hotspot.

Link

2NC – Oil spills

Offshore drilling in the Gulf – empiricsCBD 10 (Center for Biological Diversity.org, 9/2/10, “Latest Gulf of Mexico Explosion Again Illustrates Danger of Offshore Drilling, Urgent Need for Moratorium on All Operations,” http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/news/press_releases/2010/gulf-disaster-09-02-2010.html)//DR. H

Today’s explosion in the Gulf of Mexico serves as another tragic reminder of the inherent danger of offshore drilling and the urgent need for a large-scale moratorium on all offshore oil and gas drilling operations until human safety and protection of the environment can be ensured. The explosion —

which injured at least one of the 13 people who were forced to escape into the ocean — comes less than five months after BP’s Deepwater Horizon disaster and as the Obama administration considers lifting a moratorium on deepwater drilling. That moratorium covered only a small fraction of the more than 3,600 oil and gas production operations in the Gulf.

“Sadly, today’s news comes as no surprise. Offshore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico is like playing Russian

roulette. It’s not a matter of if something will go wrong, it’s a matter of when,” said Kierán Suckling, executive director of the Center for Biological Diversity.“It’s time the government put all offshore oil and gas operations — whether they’re exploratory wells or production

operations — on hold until we know they’re safe. The price we’ve already paid for BP’s Deepwater Horizon is too high. We cannot risk any more disasters.”Today’s explosion was at a platform owned by Mariner Energy in about 340 feet of water. It’s about 100 miles off Louisiana’s coast and 200 miles west of where the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded April 20, leading to the spill of some 200 million gallons of oil in the Gulf. The Obama administration has been under intense political pressure to lift the moratorium put in place after the spill began.“Clearly, this is not the time to let this industry return to business as usual. BP’s catastrophe certainly made the case for that, and this morning’s explosion only drives the point home,” said Suckling.

AT: Warming alt cause

Climate change doesn’t affect biodiversity – consensusSchiermier 11 (Quirin, editor for nature.com [fun fact: my biology textbook was on nature.com], 3/20/11, “Biodiversity's ills not all down to climate change,” http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110320/full/news.2011.170.html)//DR. H

Climate change is affecting the world in many ways. But attempts to directly link local changes in species distribution and biodiversity to climate warming hold little promise, ecologists warn in Nature Climate Change1. First author Camille

Parmesan, a population biologist at the University of Texas in Austin, explains why. You argue that attempts to attribute the degree of local changes, for example declines in individual plant and animal species, specifically caused greenhouse warming are misguided. Why? It is important to look at all the different things that could cause a decline, including climate change. But when it comes to managing and conserving species and ecosystems, trying to figure out exactly how much of any one

particular decline is due to greenhouse gases is not necessarily helpful, and may actually not be possible. You can, of course,

attribute various individual biological changes to climate events, and even climate change, provided you have long-term studies. But linking observed changes to the man-made component of climate change requires a different scale. That level of attribution is best done for large areas — the size of northern Europe or the western United States. The more local a scale you look at, the harder it is to link single events to greenhouse-gas-driven global climate change. Take the endangered Quino checkerspot butterfly [Euphydryas editha quino] of Southern California. We do know that climate change is important: if you dry and warm the butterfly's habitat it will cause increased starvation and extinction. But many populations are also affected by an invasive geranium from the Mediterranean which is out-competing the butterfly's host plant. This is further aided by air pollution from Los Angeles and San Diego, as nitrogen fertilization helps the exotic geranium take over. It just doesn't make any sense to ask what percentage of the decline is due to anthropogenic climate change — from a scientific standpoint it doesn't have much value. What you would be better off doing instead is manage for invasive geranium, lower the nitrogen pollution and set up new reserves that anticipate climate change — that is, placed in areas the butterflies can colonize as climate shifts. So how is climate change affecting Earth's flora and fauna? Climate change is impacting biodiversity worldwide. Spring comes, on average, two weeks earlier. Almost two-thirds of species, including many birds, frogs, butterflies, trees and grassland flowers, breed or bloom earlier. More than 50% are changing where they live. There is a consistency in the global pattern of more than 1,700 species we are studying which tells us that the changes are linked to some common global force and are consistent with what

you would expect from a warming world. So we can say with confidence that, for example, the date of flowering in northern Europe has

advanced by two weeks. But we cannot be sure that global warming is the reason a local butterfly or wild flower species is becoming extinct or expanding northwards? Yes. Phenology signals are clearer than changes in species distribution. Plants and animals often respond to rising winter temperatures — whether due to climate change or to increased urbanization, which also causes warming. In a local area — a given park or reserve — conservation managers need to know what they can do to manage for a complex set of changes that may include habitat fragmentation, pollution, presence or absence of certain predators, and so on. It does partly depend on how climate sensitive a species is. But we shouldn't focus too much on how a species is impacted by climate change on its own, that's much too narrow a focus. Other factors are often far more important and the ultimate impact of climate change on any given population is going to be dependent upon how stressed that population is by these other problems. Scientists have previously linked the extinction of Costa Rica's iconic mountaintop golden toad [Bufo periglenes] to climate change. Was that premature? No — I believe that was a correct assessment. The golden toad was endemic to Costa Rica's Monte Verde preserve. It went through three major population declines — each preceded by an extremely dry and hot year2. The third such event was followed by toad extinction. What has happened looks like a clear case of extinction driven by three extreme years. So yes, climate did cause the extinction, but we have only 17 years of data. To say whether the extreme dryness was caused by rising greenhouse gases requires looking at the region as a whole and asking whether — or by how much — such events are more likely under a greenhouse-gas-driven global climate. This may appear a subtle distinction, but it is this distinction that we are trying to express. Species distributions are also shifting. The long-spined sea urchin [Centrostephanus rodgersii], for example, has moved from the warming seas off mainland Australia and has invaded more temperate waters off Tasmania. Likewise, many terrestrial plants and insects are moving or expanding pole-wards. Are these not clear fingerprints of climate change? Sure, the sea urchin is probably shifting due to warming waters. As it shifts, it's been devastating local ecosystems. But it may not have become invasive if humans had not already over-fished the rock lobster off Tasmania — we'll never know. So there's an interaction between climate change and overfishing. Same with coral reefs: the fact that many are dying after high ocean temperature events may have something to do with humans stressing them with pollution, dynamite fishing, recreational activities and coastal development. Death rates may not have been so dire if the reefs were not overstressed by other things humans are doing — again, we'll never know. Some people want to deconstruct any observed biological change

into separate causes and put percentage figures on them. In my opinion that's not worth spending the time on.

Because in real systems, all these things interact, we just can't know exactly how much of a local change is due to greenhouse warming. If you have data over a large area — like our butterfly study of all of Europe3 — then you can definitely say the northward shifts of two-thirds of European butterflies in the UK, France, Sweden, Finland and Estonia are linked to long-term climate warming in Europe. But if you go to one population in the UK and see that, at a single site, there have been new populations formed further north, you will have a harder time making the greenhouse-gas link and you probably just shouldn't try. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) supports an ever-more-detailed approach to biological attribution — not least to inform conservation efforts. Do you think there is a better way to approach conservation?

No warming – models failWatts 4/5 (Anthony, 4/5/13, “Freeman Dyson speaks out about climate science, and fudge,” http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/04/05/freeman-dyson-speaks-out-about-climate-science-and-fudge/)//DR. H

Freeman Dyson is a physicist who has been teaching at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton since Albert Einstein was there. When Einstein died in 1955, there was an opening for the title of “most brilliant physicist on the planet.” Dyson has filled it. So when the global-warming movement came along, a lot of people

wondered why he didn’t come along with it. The reason he’s a skeptic is simple, the 89-year-old Dyson said when I phoned him. “I think any good scientist ought to be a skeptic,” Dyson said. … Then in the late 1970s, he got involved with early research on climate change at the Institute for Energy Analysis in Oak Ridge, Tenn. That research, which involved scientists from many

disciplines, was based on experimentation. The scientists studied such questions as how atmospheric carbon dioxide

interacts with plant life and the role of clouds in warming. But that approach lost out to the computer-modeling approach favored by climate scientists. And that approach was flawed from the beginning, Dyson said. “I just think they don’t understand the climate,” he said of climatologists. “Their computer models are full of

fudge factors.” A major fudge factor concerns the role of clouds. The greenhouse effect of carbon dioxide on its own is limited. To get to the apocalyptic projections trumpeted by Al Gore and company, the models have to include assumptions that CO-2 will cause clouds to form in a way that produces more warming. “The models are extremely oversimplified,” he said. “They don’t represent the clouds in detail at all. They simply use a fudge factor to represent the clouds.” Dyson said his skepticism about those computer models was borne out by recent reports of a study by Ed Hawkins of the University of Reading in Great Britain that showed global temperatures were flat between 2000 and 2010 — even though we humans poured record amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere during that decade. That was vindication for a man who was termed “a civil heretic” in a New York Times Magazine article on his contrarian views. Dyson embraces that label, with its implication that what he opposes is a religious movement. So does his fellow Princeton physicist and fellow skeptic, William Happer. “There are people who just need a cause that’s bigger than themselves,” said Happer. “Then they can feel virtuous and say other people are not virtuous.” To show how uncivil this crowd can get, Happer e-

mailed me an article about an Australian professor who proposes — quite seriously — the death penalty for heretics such as Dyson. As did Galileo, they can get a reprieve if they recant. I hope that guy never gets to hear Dyson’s most heretical assertion:

Atmospheric CO2 may actually be improving the environment. “It’s certainly true that carbon dioxide is good for vegetation,” Dyson said. “About 15 percent of agricultural yields are due to CO2 we put in the atmosphere. From that point of view,

it’s a real plus to burn coal and oil.” In fact, there’s more solid evidence for the beneficial effects of CO2 than the negative effects, he said. So why does the public hear only one side of this debate? Because the media do an awful job of reporting it. “They’re absolutely lousy,” he said of American journalists. “That’s true also in Europe. I don’t know why they’ve been brainwashed.” I know why: They’re lazy. Instead of digging into the details, most journalists are content to repeat that mantra about “consensus” among climate scientists. The problem, said Dyson, is that the consensus is based on those computer models. Computers are great for analyzing what happened in the past, he said, but not so good at figuring out what will happen in the future. But a lot of scientists have built their careers on them. Hence the hatred for dissenters.

AT: Not a hotspot

Gulf of Mexico is a biodiversity hotspotBrenner 8 Jorge Brenner, 3-14-2008, "Guarding the Gulf of Mexico's valuable resources," SciDev, www.scidev.net/en/opinions/guarding-the-gulf-of-mexico-s-valuable-resources.html

Rich in biodiversity and habitats¶ The Gulf of Mexico is rich in biodiversity and unique habitats , and hosts the only known nesting beach of Kemp's Ridley, the world's most endangered sea turtle . ¶ The Gulf's circulation pattern gives it biological and socioeconomic importance: water from the Caribbean enters from the south through the Yucatan Channel between Cuba and Mexico and , after warming in the basin, leaves through the northern Florida Strait between the United States and Cuba to form the Gulf Stream in the North Atlantic that helps to regulate the climate of western Europe .