Aff Brazil Ethanol

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Index
Brazilian Ethanol 1AC (1/6)

Contention 1: The Status Quo
Despite current bills in Congress the 54 cent tariff on imported Brazilian ethanol
is likely to continue
Reuters 6/7
[http://in.reuters.com/article/oilRpt/idINN0646681420080606?sp=true]
A new Senate bill to cut the U.S. tariff on ethanol imports has little chance of clearing Congress as
there is not much time left on the legislative clock and it is too hot a political issue to take up in an
election year, congressional aides say. Senators Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat, and Judd
Gregg, a New Hampshire Republican, introduced legislation this week to lower the tariff to bring it in
line with U.S. ethanol blending subsidies, which a recently enacted farm bill lowered to 45 cents per
gallon from 51 cents per gallon. The bill would cut import tariffs to 45 cents per gallon from the
current level of 54 cents per gallon, and require Congress to lower tariffs again if blending subsidies
are cut even further. The bill has been referred to the Senate Finance Committee, where it is likely to
sit.
And, loopholes are irrelevant- tariff still blocks Brazilian ethanol

Lytle 2007
[Kaylan, JD Candidate, 28 Energy Law Journal 69, Lexis]
Another argument is that the tariff is unnecessary because Brazilian ethanol is already being imported
duty-free. The ethanol duty is not imposed on every import, as Congress creates legislation to exempt
certain countries. These exemptions are used in order to stimulate a country's economic development
or buttress its trade with the United States. n119 Such legislation takes the form of bilateral agreements
or unilateral trade preference initiatives. n120 The Caribbean Basin Economic Recovery Act (CBERA)
is an example of an exception to the ethanol tariff in the form of a unilateral trade preference program.
n121 The CBERA took effect on August 5, 1983, n122 and is subject to periodic analysis by the
Secretary of Labor. n123 The CBERA allows "the President [to] proclaim duty-free treatment (or other
preferential treatment) for all eligible articles from any beneficiary country" in order to rejuvenate the
Caribbean region. n124 [*706] This is a symbiotic plan, as it guarantees the United States continued
access to certain imported items while strengthening the economy of troubled nations. To date, twenty-
one countries or territories are eligible for the benefits of the CBERA. n125 The beneficiary countries
are chosen based on a litany of economic, social, and political factors. n126 The President is granted
the discretion to remove a country that does not satisfy the requirements of the Act. This is also
advantageous for the government as it causes the beneficiary countries to strive to remain in the good
graces of the United States. n127 Similarly, the CBERA only grants duty-free treatment to the items
that meet certain requirements in order to ensure that it fulfills the purpose of assisting the chosen
countries. n128 However, the CBERA may inadvertently provide preferential treatment to a larger
country using a beneficiary country as a clearinghouse. While countries have taken advantage of the
CBERA, there are limitations. The CBERA will allow ethanol to come into the United States duty-free
so long as a certain amount of the product is produced in the beneficiary country. n129 For example,
Brazil may take advantage of the CBERA to filter ethanol through a beneficiary country but only at a
maximum amount equaling "7 percent of the U.S. production" from the year before. n130

Plan: The United States Federal Government should rescind all tariffs placed
upon sugar cane based ethanol imported from Brazil

Contention 2: Environment
Removing the tariff ends the expansion of corn production to cover ethanol
demand- this checks bad farming practices which result in soil erosion and
massive pesticide use
De Armas 07
[Marcel, JD Candidate at American University, 7 Sustainable Dev. L. and Pol’y 25, Lexis]
The United States is recognizing the value and importance of energy diversification, but it may also be
creating greater environmental harm in the process. n1 If America decreases its dependence on foreign
oil it will create greater economic security for itself, reduce its current account deficit, provide less
financing for tyrannical leaders and terrorists with American petro-dollars, and improve its
environmental credentials. n2 To reduce America's craving for oil, the government encourages
domestic ethanol production; the United States is behind only Brazil, the world's largest producer of
ethanol, and combined the two produce over 70 percent of the world's ethanol. n3 Currently the U.S.
domestic ethanol industry is growing as a result of alternative fuels becoming politically popular, and
the addition of a subsidy and tariff applied to ethanol. n4 However, arguably the ethanol tariff and
subsidy do not provide any substantial environmental benefits for the United States or the world. n5
The United States grants a 54 cent tax credit for each gallon of ethanol in a qualified mixture, which is
a mixture of alcohol and gasoline. n6 Additionally, the government provides extra protection to the
ethanol industry from foreign competition by imposing a 2.5 percent ad valorem tax and 14.27 cents
per liter tax on imported ethanol from countries with normal trade relations. n7 Proponents of the tariff
argue that it protects and promotes a domestic industry, prevents the government from subsidizing
foreign ethanol production, and encourages the development of cleaner technology. n8 On closer
inspection, ethanol produced from corn may generate as much pollution as the fossil fuels it replaces
and may create new environmental problems. n9 Due to the growing demand for ethanol, farmers
intend to plant an estimated 88 million acres of corn this year, the equivalent of covering Florida,
Georgia, and South Carolina in corn. n10 In addition, farmers will likely reduce crop rotation and
replant fallow fields, which will increase the use of fertilizers and insecticides and result in greater
pollution run-off into our water system. n11 To replace the United States' current dependence on
gasoline (140 billion gallons per year) would take approximately 350 million acres of corn (assuming
400 gallons per acre per year of ethanol). n12 Since greater ethanol production results from plants with
higher cellulose content, switchgrass or sugar cane should be used to produce ethanol, and thus,
minimize the amount of land cultivated. n13 Besides having a higher cellulose content, sugar cane
offers several advantages over corn in the production of ethanol. First, unlike corn, farmers plant sugar
cane once every four to seven years but harvest it yearly resulting in less soil erosion. Second, sugar
cane requires less fertilizers since it can obtain some of its nitrogen from the air. Third, the energy to
power the transformation from sugar cane to ethanol comes from burning the sugar cane's waste
product and not from oil, gas, or the electrical grid as with corn. n14 Unfortunately with our current
technology, even if the United States produced most of its ethanol from sugar cane or other crops with
higher cellulose content it still would require excessive amounts of land for cultivation. n15 To protect
its environment the United States should eliminate the current ethanol tariff and subsidy, or at least
focus the subsidy on crops with high cellulose contents. In particular, eliminating the tariff on ethanol
will promote the growth of an ethanol distribution system because more imports would enter the
country increasing the market for ethanol. n16 In addition, eliminating the ethanol tariff would increase
the demand for sugar cane, and thus, reduce third world countries' excess supply. As a result, the price
of sugar cane would increase providing additional revenue to the third world sugar cane producers. n17
The additional sugar cane revenue entering these third world countries could foster the development of
a middle class interested in protecting their own environment and promoting sustainable development.
n18 Finally, the elimination of the tariff and subsidy could rekindle the trade negotiations for a Free
Trade Area of the Americas that stalled over agriculture and service industry differences between
Brazil and the United States. n19

Soil erosion levels are steady now- not switching from entirely corn based
ethanol to fill demand results in environmental disaster
Avery 06
[Dennis, Senior Fellow and Director of the Center for Global Food Issues,
http://www.cgfi.org/2006/05/08/do-we-need-ethanol-more-than-topsoil/]
If we turn the crop stalks into ethanol, we’ll have the only problem that could be bigger than an energy
shortage—a topsoil shortage. That would throw the First World’s societies into the same sort of
downward hunger and erosion spiral that bad farming has already forced upon Africa. The good news
is that American farms are fully sustainable for the first time in history—precisely because they’re
putting their crop residues back on the soil surface in no-till farming systems. The corn stalks and
wheat straw form billions of tiny dams on the soil surface, which prevent howling winds and explosive
raindrops from carrying soil particles away. The stalks left on the soil surface in no-till farming also
guarantee a year-round supply of food for subsoil microbes and earthworms. Thus the subsoil critters
proliferate, aerating the soil and permitting rainfall to sink in rather than running off. That protects the
crop roots from drought, even as it protects the streams from silt and pollution. In 1999 Hurricane
Floyd lashed crop fields in Virginia with up to 19 inches of rain in 24 hours—and without any runoff
or erosion on no-till fields. In the highly erodable Loess Hills of the upper Mississippi, soil erosion
today is only 6 percent of what it was during the “black blizzards” of the 1930s Dust Bowl days,
thanks largely to fertilizer, crop rotation, and low-till farming. If we turn the crop stalks into ethanol,
however, it’s back to serious erosion problems. The current energy bill mandates the production of 7.5
billion gallons of ethanol per year. That would force America to use 22 percent of its corn crop to
supply 4 percent of its auto fuel—without bringing down the price of gasoline. The current subsidy is
51 cents per gallon of ethanol. However, since ethanol contains 15 percent less energy than gasoline,
the real subsidy is 77 cents per gallon worth of gasoline. More to the point, America’s farmers sold
record amounts of corn last year for corn flakes, tacos and livestock feed. With both population and
incomes rising, world demand for these items will more than double in the next 40 years. The world is
already farming one-third of the Earth’s land area, including almost all of the land worth planting to
crops. If we burn the corn in our cars, what will we and the livestock eat? In the long run, every gallon
of ethanol produced in America is likely to mean more soil erosion if it’s made from crop stalks, or
more forest cleared if it’s made from corn. We could cut the deforestation in half if we made the
ethanol from sugarcane, which produces ethanol far more efficiently. But America can’t grow
sugarcane, except in the Florida Everglades.

And this makes your ethanol disads inevitable- soil erosion causes agriculture
collapse
IPCC Third Assessment Report, Habiba Gitay et al, Research School of Biological Sciences Institute
of Advanced Studies, Australian National University, Climate Change 2001: Working Group II:
Impacts, Mitigation and Adaptation, Chapter 5: Ecosystems and Their Goods and Services, 2001,
www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/wg2/pdf/TARchap5.pdf, p. 253 (HARVOC2005)
Degradation of natural resources - taken here as soils, forests, marine fisheries, air and water -
diminishes agricultural production capacity (Pinstrup-Anderson and Pandya-orch, 1998). Soil
degradation emerges as one of the major challenges for global agriculture. It is induced via erosion,
chemical depletion, water saturation, and solute accumulation. In the post-World War II period,
approximately 23% of the world's agricultural land, permanent pastures, forests and woodland were
degraded as defined by the United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP). Various estimates put the
annual loss of land at 5-10 Mha yr (Scherr and Yadav, 1997). Although irrigated land accounts for only
16% of the world's cropland, it produces 40% of the world's food. There are signs of a slowing in the
rate of expansion of irrigation: 10-15% of irrigated land is degraded to some extent by waterlogging
and salinization (Alexandratos, 1995). Degradation of natural resources is likely to hinder increases in
agricultural productivity and could dim optimistic assessment of the prospects of satisfying growing
world food demand at acceptable environmental cost.
Soil erosion results in extinction

Robbins 97 [John, author of the Pulitzer Prize-nominated Diet for a New America, "The Ground
Beneath Our Feet," accessed on 12/24/04. pg.
http://www.animalsvoice.com/PAGES/invest/robbins1.html] (PDAF3122)
It is becoming increasingly apparent that our world is in deep peril. Hardly a day goes by that we don't
learn of some new misfortune to the ecosystem: The accelerating greenhouse effect, the erosion of topsoil, the
decimation of forests and habitats, the widening hole in the ozone layer, the pollution of air, water, and soil, the
tidal wave of extinction sweeping over the globe. It is becoming increasingly inescapable that the very biological
fabric on which all human and other forms of life depend is coming unravelled. And the reason? Livestock today
consume 80% of the corn, 95% of the oats, and almost all of the soybeans grown in the United States. They
consume enough grain and soybeans to feed more than five times the entire human population of the country. If
people ate the grains directly, instead of cycling them through livestock, the benefits to the ecosystem would be
staggering. So much more efficient is a more vegetarian diet that less than one half the current agricultural acreage
would be needed. The rest could revert to the wild, producing enormous savings in water and energy. We would
not have to cut down forests and destroy habitats to create land on which to grow feed for livestock. We wouldn't
have to force our acreage to produce and squeeze every last possible yield from it. We could dispense with
synthetic fertilizers and toxic pesticides, and still have vast surpluses of food. Our world would be a far
greener one, with far less pollution, cleaner air and cleaner water, and a more stable climate. In fact, it
is hard to conceive how much we have environmentally to gain by switching to a more vegetarian diet.
There is not a single aspect of the ecological crisis that would not be immediately and profoundly
improved by such a transformation. From dust we came and to dust we return. Archaeologists tell us
that soil erosion has played a determining role in the decline and demise of many great civilizations,
including those of the ancient Egyptians, Greeks and the Mayans. Wherever soil erosion has destroyed
the fertility base on which civilizations have been built, these civilizations have perished. Two hundred
years ago, most of America's croplands had at least 21 inches of topsoil. Today, most of it is down to
around six inches, and the rate of topsoil loss is accelerating. We have already lost 75 percent of what
may well be our most precious natural resource.The U.S. Soil Conservation Service reports that more
than four million acres of cropland are being lost to erosion in this country every year. That's an area
the size of Connecticut. Of this staggering loss, 85 percent is directly associated with livestock raising.
Without a diet-style change, we are well on our way to losing what many scientists feel has always
been the basis of our strength as a nation.
Mass starvation and World War III is the results
Calvin,’98
(Neurophysiologist at the University of Washington, Atlantic Monthly, January)
The population-crash scenario is surely the most appalling. Plummeting crop yields would cause some
powerful countries to try to take over their neighbors or distant lands – if only because their armies,
unpaid and lacking food, would go marauding, both at home and across the borders. The better-
organized countries would attempt to use their armies, before they fell apart entirely, to take over
countries with significant remaining resources, driving out or starving their inhabitants if not using
modern weapons to accomplish the same end: eliminating competitors for the remaining food. This
would be a worldwide problem – and could lead to a Third World War – but Europe’s
vulnerability is particularly easy to analyze.

Contention 3: Energy Cooperation
Cooperation results in tech and research that allows ethanol to go global
Fletcher and Pierce 07
[Megan and Lauren, Interamerican Dialogue,
http://www.thedialogue.org/page.cfm?pageID=32&pubID=168]
"Ethanol is the answer for reducing dependence on oil rich countries," asserted former Brazilian
commerce and industry minister Roberto Gianetti da Fonseca. He and Marcos Jank, president of the
Institute for International Trade Negotiations in Sao Paulo, spoke at a congressional staff briefing on
biofuels, energy strategies and U.S.-Brazil relations. The event was co-sponsored by the Inter-
American Dialogue, the Brazil Information Center, and the Woodrow Wilson Center for International
Scholars. Sharp increases in U.S. demands for ethanol-a renewable energy source that is cleaner than
fossil fuels-have caused a shortage in ethanol supply. President Bush has responded by calling for
increased domestic production of corn-based ethanol. Reducing dependence on foreign oil does not
mean that the United States must be energy self-sufficient, Gianetti argued. The United States should
diversify its sources of energy supply and partner with Brazil, he continued. It is more cost-effective
for the United States to fill the ethanol supply-demand gap with sugar-based ethanol imports from
Brazil rather than to increase corn-based ethanol production in the States. Corn-based ethanol is nearly
twice as expensive to produce as sugar-based ethanol and nearly six times less efficient in the quantity
of energy produced per unit of volume, Jank explained. In addition, increased corn-based ethanol
production in the United States will cause corn prices in the world market to continue rising. Prices
have shot up more than twofold since January 2006. Thirty percent of U.S. corn produced in 2006 was
used to make ethanol. Jank and Gianetti cited a growing consensus that U.S. and Brazilian ethanol
production should not be in competition with one another. Indeed, Brazil seeks to work with the United
States to expand the international market for ethanol. The two countries could collaborate in research,
logistics, and technical development, as well as the establishment of international standards for the
ethanol market.
Trade barriers are preventing ethanol cooperation between the US and Brazil-
ending the tariff is necessary for the US to take the lead in expanding ethanol
globally
Downie 07
[Andrew, Writer for Time, http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1596848,00.html]
That doesn't make sense to Brazilians, and not only because prices of corn and corn-based foodstuffs
are rising in the U.S. as producers devote more and more of their crop to fuel rather than food.
President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva pointed out that for a country eager to promote free trade such
tariffs are a hypocritical barrier to the rapid development of alternative fuel sources. "The high tariff
that the United States imposes on ethanol makes no sense," Lula said earlier this week, in a clear
message to his visitor. "[The Americans] talk a lot about free trade but they like to protect their own
products." Brazilian producers will continue to push the U.S. for a tariff reduction, or at least some sort
of favored nation status. But until they get a positive response, they will take their expertise elsewhere.
With a solid background in ethanol production — Brazilian gasoline is 23% ethanol and two out of
every three cars sold are Flex models that can run on either gas or ethanol — Brazil is in the driver's
seat. Lula wants to export more ethanol to consumers and more expertise to governments — especially
in Africa, Asia and Latin America — that want to start their own ethanol industries. Brazil recently
built ethanol plants in Jamaica and Nigeria. It is in talks with more than a dozen governments in countries as
diverse as El Salvador and South Africa to build others. At home, it is set to spend $14.6 billion on 90 new ethanol
plants over the next five or six years. It expects to up annual production to 35.7 billion liters (9.4 billion gallons) in
2013 from 17 billion litres (4.5 billion gallons) today, according to figures from the National Agency for Industrial
Development. Brazil also hopes to export equipment, machinery and personnel as well as increase its ethanol
exports sixfold within the same period, said Roberto Giannetti, the director of Foreign Trade at the Federation of
Industries of Sao Paulo state. "Brazil is keen to transfer technology and help those countries produce
ethanol for internal use and for export," Giannetti said. "I think Brazil is conscious of the situation and
it is willing to invest."
1AC: Warming Module (1/9)

Scenario __: Warming
Expansion of Brazils sugar cane model creates energy independence and cuts
back on greenhouse gas emissions curbing global warming
Goldemberg 07
[Jose, University of Sao Paulo and Secretary for the Environment in Sau Paulo, Science Vol. 315 no.
5813]
A sustainable energy future depends on an increased share of renewable energy, especially in

developing countries. One of the best ways to achieve such a goal is by replicating the large Brazilian
program of sugar-cane ethanol, started in the 1970s. The World Commission on Environment and
Development (WCED) in 1987 defined "sustainable development" as development that "meets the needs of the
present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs" (1). The elusiveness of
such a definition has led to unending discussions among social scientists regarding the meaning of "future
generations." However, in the case of energy, exhaustible fossil fuels represent 80% of the total world energy
supply. At constant production and consumption, the presently known reserves of oil will last around 41 years,
natural gas 64 years, and coal 155 years (2). Although very simplified, such an analysis illustrates why fossil fuels
cannot be considered as the world's main source of energy for more than one or two generations. Besides the issue
of depletion, fossil fuel use presents serious environmental problems, particularly global
warming. Also, their production costs will increase as reserves approach exhaustion and as more
expensive technologies are used to explore and extract less attractive resources. Finally, there are
increasing concerns for the security of the oil supply, originating mainly from politically unstable
regions of the world. Except for nuclear energy, the most likely alternatives to fossil fuels are renewable sources
such as hydroelectric, biomass, wind, solar, geothermal, and marine tidal. Figure 1 shows the present world energy
use. Fossil fuels (oil, coal, and gas) represent 80.1% of the total world energy supply, nuclear energy 6.3%, and
renewables 13.6%. The largest part is traditional biomass (8.5% of total primary energy), which is used mainly in
inefficient ways, such as in highly pollutant primitive cooking stoves used by poor rural populations, leading in
many cases to deforestation. The "new renewable energy sources" amount to 16 exajoules (1 EJ = 1018 J), or 3.4%
of the total. Table 1 shows a breakdown of the contribution of new renewables, which include small hydropower
plants. Many of these technologies are still undergoing large-scale commercial development, including solar,
wind, geothermal, and modern biomass. The largest part (1.9% of the total) is modern biomass, which refers to
biomass produced in a sustainable way and used for electricity generation, heat production, and transportation of
liquid fuels. It includes wood and forest residues from reforestation and/or sustainable management, as well as
rural (animal and agricultural) and urban residues (including solid waste and liquid effluents). Table 1. "New
renewables," by source in 2004 (15); updated with data from (4, 16). Assumed average conversion efficiency: for
biomass heat, 85%; biomass electricity, 22%; biomass combined heat and power (CHP), 80%; geothermal
electricity, 10%; all others, 100%. From the perspective of sustainable energy development, renewables
are widely available, ensuring greater security of the energy supply and reducing dependence on oil
imports from politically unstable regions. Renewables are less polluting, both in terms of local
emissions (such as particulates, sulfur, and lead) and green-house gases (carbon dioxide and methane)
that cause global warming. They are also more labor-intensive, requiring more workforce per unit of energy
than conventional fossil fuels (3). Although technologically mature, some of the renewable sources of energy are
more expensive than energy produced from fossil fuels. This is particularly the case for the "new renewables."
Traditional biomass is frequently not the object of commercial transactions and it is difficult to evaluate its costs,
except the environmental ones. Cost continues to be the fundamental barrier to wide-spread adoption of traditional
biomass despite its attractiveness from a sustainability perspective. A number of strategies have been adopted by
governments in the industrialized countries and international financial institutions to encourage the use of "new
renewables," and there have been several successes, based on the use of tax breaks, subsidies, and renewable
portfolio standards (RPS). Examples are the large growth (of more than 35% per year, "albeit" from a low base
value) for wind and solar photovoltatics in industrialized countries such as Denmark, Germany, Spain, and the
United States (4). These technologies are slowly spreading to developing countries through several strategies. In
developing countries, the best example of a large growth in the use of renewables is given by the
sugarcane ethanol program in Brazil. Today, ethanol production from sugarcane in the country is 16 billion
liters (4.2 billion gallons) per year, requiring around 3 million hectares of land. The competition for land use
between food and fuel has not been
substantial: Sugarcane covers 10% of total cultivated land and 1% of total land available for agriculture in the
country. Total sugarcane crop area (for sugar and ethanol) is 5.6 million hectares. Production of ethanol from
sugarcane can be replicated in other countries without serious damage to natural ecosystems.
Worldwide, some 20 million hectares are used for growing sugarcane, mostly for sugar production (5).
A simple calculation shows that expanding the Brazilian ethanol program by a factor of 10 (i.e., an
additional 30 million hectares of sugarcane in Brazil and in other countries) would supply enough
ethanol to replace 10% of the gasoline used in the world. This land area is a small fraction of the more than
1 billion hectares of primary crops already harvested on the planet. What was the process that established firmly
the ethanol program in Brazil? In the late 1970s, the Brazilian Federal Government mandated the mixture of
anhydrous ethanol in gasoline (blends up to 25%) and encouraged car makers to produce engines running on pure
hydrated ethanol (100%). Brazilian adoption of mandatory regulations determining the amount of ethanol to be
mixed with gasoline (basically a Renewable Portfolio Standard for fuel) was essential to the success of the
program. The motivation was to reduce oil imports that were consuming one-half of the total amount of hard
currency from exports. Although it was a decision made by the federal government during a military regime, it
was well accepted by the civil society, agricultural sector, and car manufacturers. Similar policies are being
considered by the European Union, Japan, and several states in the United States. Such a policy decision created a
market for ethanol, and production increased rapidly. Ethanol costs declined along a "learning curve" (6) as
production increased an average 6% per year, from 0.9 billion gallons in 1980 to 3.0 billion gallons in 1990 and to
4.2 billion gallons in 2006. The cost of ethanol in 1980 was approximately three times the cost of gasoline, but
governmental cross-subsidies paid for the price difference at the pump. The subsidies came mostly from taxes on
gasoline and were thus paid by automobile drivers. All fuel prices were controlled by the government. Overall
subsidies to ethanol are estimated to be around US$30 billion over 20 years (7), but were more than offset by a
US$50 billion reduction of petroleum imports as of the end of 2006. Since the 1990s subsidies have been
progressively removed, and by 2004 ethanol became fully competitive with gasoline on the international markets
without government intervention. Subsidies for ethanol production are a thing of the past in Brazil (Fig. 2),
because new ethanol plants benefit from the economies of scale and the modern technology available today, such
as the use of high-pressure boilers that allow cogeneration of electricity, with surpluses sold to the electric power
grid. The Brazilian ethanol program started as a way to reduce the reliance on oil imports, but it was
soon realized that it had important environmental and social benefits (8). Conversion to ethanol
allowed the phasing-out of lead additives and MTBE (methyl tertiary butyl ether) and reduced sulfur,
particulate matter, and carbon monoxide emissions. It helped mitigate greenhouse gas emissions
efficiently, by having a net positive energy balance (renewable energy output versus fossil fuel inputs);
also, sugarcane ethanol in Brazil costs less than other present technologies for ethanol production
(Table 2) and is competitive with gasoline in the United States, even considering the import duty of US$0.54
Continues…

per gallon and energy-efficiency penalties (30% or less with modern flexible fuel vehicle technologies) (9). The
summer wholesale price of gasoline in the United States is about $1.9 per gallon; the corn ethanol wholesale price
is around US$2.5 per gallon (10). Cellulose ethanol is a promising option in the long term, but is not being
produced on a commercial scale.
The longer-term target is as low as 60 cents per gallon, but this will require major advances in producing,
collecting, and converting biomass. A more realistic research target is to reduce the cost of production to US$1.07
per gallon until 2012 (11). The development of other biomass-derived fuels in Brazil or elsewhere could benefit
from such insights. Promising candidates along those lines are the following: 1. The production of ethanol from
cellulosic materials, which still requires considerable R&D effort before reaching the production stage. If the
technology for such conversion is firmly established, it would open enormous opportunities for the use of all kinds
of wood and other biomass feedstocks for ethanol production. 2. The enhanced use of biogas produced from
microbial conversion in landfills of municipal solid wastes, wastewater, industrial effluents, and manure wastes
will abate a considerable share of greenhouse gases that would be released to the atmosphere, replacing also fossil
fuels for heat and electricity production. 3. The use of planted forests for the production of electricity either by
direct combustion or by gasification and use of highly efficient gas turbines will also replace efficiently coal,
natural gas, oil, and even nuclear sources. Reforested wood can also reduce the need for deforested fuel wood,
controlling efficiently releases of green-house gases through market-friendly initiatives. The ethanol program in
Brazil was based on indigenous technology (both in the industrial and agricultural areas) and, in contrast to wind
and solar photovoltaics, does not depend on imports, and the technology can be transferred to other developing
countries. Until breakthrough technologies become commercially viable, an alternative already exists: Many
developing countries have suitable conditions to expand and replicate the Brazilian sugarcane program,
supplying the world'sgasoline motor vehicles with a renewable, efficient fuel.
International trade of Brazilian ethanol needed to slow down the process of

warming
Tolgfors 2007
[Sten, Minister of Trade of the King of Sweden,
http://ec.europa.eu/external_relations/energy/biofuels/speeches.htm]
All political fields must contribute, if we are to make a difference. Until now, international trade has
not been fully used to support climate policy ambitions. On the contrary, domestic approaches in the
field of bio fuels have often been based on market access restrictions. Tariffs and other trade distorting
measures have restrained market access, and limited the supply of renewable fuels, such as bio diesel
and ethanol. National subsidies and lack of commonly accepted standards have also led to inefficient
production. This has made bio fuels more expensive than necessary. And it has restrained present and
potential future production countries from using their natural comparative advantages in bio fuel
production. As a result it has become more difficult and more expensive to replace fossil fuels by
renewable fuels. We must aim for a change in this policy, if we are to use the full potential of trade in
halter global warming. Ethanol produced in Brazil comes at almost half the cost of European-produced
ethanol. Yet it is met by a tariff that evens out the price levels. The value of the tariff is currently up to
55 per cent, depending on the price of ethanol. This can be compared with the tariff on petrol, which is
only 5 per cent. It seems very inconsistent to prevent imports of cost-effective ethanol at a time when
the EU is trying to expand use of this kind of fuel. Tariff rules also differ in between ethanol as a
chemical product, when it is blended in gasoline, or as an agricultural product. Ethanol produced from
grain is not as good for the climate as ethanol produced from sugar cane. Brazilian sugar cane-based
ethanol is more efficient in reducing carbon dioxide emissions than both grain or sugar beet-based
ethanol production. The reason being that the energy content differs, as well as the energy needed for
production. Still, every litre of fossil fuel replaced by renewable fuels of any kind is a good thing for
the climate. I am convinced that we need to create a world market for bio fuels and dismantle any and
every market distortion.
Unfettered access to Brazilian ethanol will reverse climate change- it is both

carbon neutral and sustainable
Drexler 08
[Madeline, Boston-based science journalist and author. She has a visiting appointment at the Harvard
School of Public Health,
http://www.hks.harvard.edu/ksgpress/bulletin/08winter/features/biofuels.html]
WILL BIOFUELS help reverse climate change? Will they course through a global pipeline, as oil does
today? Robert Lawrence, professor of international trade and investment, sees unfettered biofuel trade
as key to enlightened climate policy. Today the United States slaps a tariff on cheap, climate-friendly
Brazilian sugar-based ethanol, while bestowing tax breaks to U.S. producers of environmentally
dubious corn ethanol, on top of federal subsidies to corn growers. "If you really care about the
environment, you'd want people to consume as much biofuels in their gas as you could. You wouldn't
put a tariff on imports from Brazil," Lawrence said. Added Hausmann, "U.S. policy reflects the idea
that ethanol competes with American farmers -- not that ethanol competes with Gulf oil." Center for
International Development Senior Research Fellow and co-chair of the Global Bioenergy Partnership
Corrado Clini takes this view a step further, noting that "'carbon neutral' and sustainable bioenergy can
contribute both in meeting the increasing energy demand in the short medium term, and in reducing the
global carbon emissions. Taking into account that the tropics are the most suitable area for the effective
and sustainable development of biofuels, the world should facilitate the free trade of biofuels,
overcoming the present barriers while driving the economic growth of the developing countries."

Fossil fuel consumption is driving the rate of anthropogenic global warming–
satellite data, computer models, and climate archives confirm.
Gelbspan ‘04
(Ross, environmental editor at the Washington Post, Boiling Point, p.24-32)
That argument was first answered in 1995 by the world's community of climate scientists when they
determined that the warming is, undeniably, due to human activities. Since that 1995 declaration, a
succession of new findings has strengthened the case for. human-induced climate change beyond a
doubt. This is not the hypothesis of a few researchers. The finding that human beings are changing the
climate comes from more than 2,000 scientists from 100 countries reporting to the United Nations in
what is the largest and most rigorously peer-reviewed scientific collaboration in history. In 1988, the
United Nations created the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to find out why the planet is
warming: Was it attributable to the natural variability of the climate, or was it due to human activities?
Seven years later, the IPCC declared that the scientific panel had found-in the conservative language of
science a "discernible human influence" on the climate. After reviewing the scientific literature on
climate change, the IPCC found that the heating of the planet was due to the buildup of greenhouse
gases-primarily carbon dioxide from our burning of coal and oil-in our atmosphere. That 1995
consensus declaration was based on a number of findings, including three critical research efforts. That
year, a team of researchers led by Dr. Benjamin Santer of the Lawrence Livermore Lab examined the
pattern of heating in the atmosphere. That pattern of warming over land and water and warm and cold
areas-produced a very specific pattern, one that matches the pattern projected by computer models of
"greenhouse gas," plus sulfate warming. When the vertical structure of the warming was examined, it
was found to be graphically different from the structure produced by natural warming. A second
"smoking gun" was published in 1995 when a team of scientists at NOAA's National Climatic Data
Center verified an increase of extreme weather events in the United States. They concluded the
growing weather extremes are due, by a probability of 90 percent, to rising levels of greenhouse gases.
Those extremes-which reflect an intensification of the planet's hydrological cycle from atmospheric heating-are
not consistent with natural warming and, instead, resemble the changes that were projected for emissions from
fossil fuels. The researchers declared the climate in the United States is becoming more "greenhouse-like"-with
more intense rain and snowfalls, more winter precipitation, more droughts, floods, and heat waves. It concluded:
"[T]he late-century changes recorded in U.S. climate are consistent with the general trends anticipated from a
greenhouseenhanced atmosphere." A third contribution to our understanding of the global climate appeared that
same spring when David J. Thomson, a signals analyst at AT&T Bell Labs, evaluated a century of
summer and winter temperature data. Whereas some scientific skeptics had attributed this century's
atmospheric warming to solar variations, Thomson discovered the opposite: The accumulation of
greenhouse gases had overwhelmed the relatively weak effects of solar cycles on the climate. He also
discovered that since the beginning of World War II, when accelerating industrialization led to a skyrocketing of
carbon dioxide emissions, the timing of the seasons had begun to shift. Since 1940, he wrote in the journal
Science, the seasonal patterns "of the previous 300 years began to change and now appear to be changing at an
unprecedented rate." Since the IPCC's 1995 declaration, a succession of studies has profoundly strengthened the
case for human-induced global warming. In 1997, a research team led by David Easterling of NOAA's National
Climatic Data Center found that the nighttime and wintertime low temperatures are rising nearly twice as fast as
the daytime and summertime high temperatures. Easterling called the findings a "fingerprint" study of
"greenhouse warming." That research, based on data from 5,400 observing stations around the world, showed that
"[t]he rise in [minimum temperatures] is due to higher humidity and more water vapor, especially in the winter in
northern latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere. In an increasingly `greenhouse' world this is the kind of rise you'd
expect to see," Easterling wrote. He added that if the warming were natural, and not driven by fossil fuel
emissions, the high and low temperatures would more or less rise and fall in parallel. In 1999, a team of British
meteorologists studied all the factors that influence changes in the climate-solar activity, volcanic
eruptions, emissions of sulfur particulates, and greenhouse gases. According to an editorial in the
journal Nature, "The researchers' findings were unambiguous: `The temperature changes over the
Twentieth Century cannot be explained by any combination of natural internal variability and the
response to natural forcings alone,' they conclude. Rather, it seems necessary to include some human-
induced component in the climate forcing throughout the century. . . ." "Thus the rise in temperature of
about a quarter of a degree since the 1940s seems to be due mainly to increases in greenhouse gases ...
All in all," the editorial concluded, "it seems we can lay to rest the idea that recent climate warming is
just a freak of nature." A year later, Thomas Crowley at Texas A&M University concluded that 75
percent of the warming of the twentieth century was due to human activities-and that the rate of
warming exceeded any similar time period in the last 1,000 years. The Crowley findings affirmed a
groundbreaking study published two years earlier by a team of scientists who essentially reconstructed the history
of the global climate over the previous 1,000 years. Michael Mann, Raymond Bradley, and Malcolm Hughes
published their findings in the peer-reviewed journal Geophysical Research Letters. The reconstruction involved
examinations of tree rings, ice cores, and sediments that contain information about earlier climatic periods. They
found that since the year 1000, the decade of the 1990s was the hottest in history-and that 1998 was the warmest
year at least in the millennium. Their research, captured in a famous "hockey-stick" graph, showed that from about
the year 1,000 to the mid-nineteenth century, the climate was actually cooling very slightly-about onefourth of a
degree. But in the last 150 years, beginning with the widespread industrialization of the late nineteenth century, the
temperature has shot upward at a rate unseen in the last 10,000 years. Those studies-which used computer
models and physical climate "archives"-were corroborated for the first time by direct evidence from
satellites in 2001.
Continues

Continued
That year, scientists studying the escape of longwave radiation from Earth into the outer atmosphere discovered
there had been a marked change between 1970 and 1997. Using data gathered by satellites in those two years, the
scientists found that radiation from greenhouse gases had increased significantly over the twenty-seven-year
period. The satellite radiation readings, according to researchers, provided the first direct experimental evidence
"for a significant increase in the Earth's greenhouse effect that is consistent with concerns over radiative forcing of
climate." Those concerns were heightened in 2000 when scientists determined that the rate of heating had
skyrocketed in the latter part of the twentieth century. In early 2000, scientists declared that the earth's
surface is warming at an "unprecedented rate" that was not expected to be seen until well into the
twenty-first century. According to an analysis by a team of climatologists, led by Tom Karl of the
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, although warming for most of the twentieth
century was progressing at the rate of I 'C per century, that changed in the mid-1970s. Since 1976, the
earth has been warming at a rate of about 3°C per century. Karl speculated that the planet may have
experienced a "change point" at which the rate of warming suddenly accelerated. Said Jonathan
Overpeck, director of the University of Arizonas Institute for the Study of Planet Earth: "There is no
known precedent of natural forces that could have given rise to the temperatures of the last decade."
That heating was apparent not only in atmospheric studies but in measurements of the deep oceans as
well. In 2001, two studies indicated that the warming was penetrating to far deeper levels-with
potentially irreversible consequences. That year, two teams of researchers, one headed by Sydney
Levitus of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the other by Tim Barnett of the
Scripps Institute of Oceanography, found that the world's oceans had warmed by about one-tenth of 1
°C down to a depth of 3,000 meters-almost two miles-in the last fifty years. Said Levitus: "I believe
our results represent the strongest evidence to date that the Earth's climate system is responding to
human-induced forcing." Levitus and his colleagues calculated the average of how much the oceans had
warmed by compiling millions of deep ocean temperature measurements from 1948 through 1995. But initially
they couldn't say for sure whether the heat came from greenhouse warming or from a natural swing in the climate
cycle. To solve that riddle, Levitus and Barnett each used a different computer model of the earth's climate to
simulate how ocean temperature should respond to current levels of greenhouse gases and other modern
atmospheric conditions. The amount of warming predicted by both models matched the warming that had been
physically measured. The Scripps team ran their model with-and withoutthe extra greenhouse gases and sulfate
aerosols produced by combustion of coal and oil. "What we found is that the signal is so bold and big that you
don't have to do any fancy statistics to beat it out of the data. It's just there, bang," said Dr. Barnett. He added that
the findings "will make it much harder for naysayers to dismiss predictions from climate models." The findings
of the Levitus team also answered a major question posed by "greenhouse skeptics." The skeptics
contended that if the climate models were accurate, the atmosphere should have warmed considerably
more than it has. But the findings from deep ocean measurements showed that a substantial portion of
that heat had been absorbed by the world's oceans. "We've shown that a large part of the `missing
warming' has occurred in the ocean," said Levitus, who added: "The whole-Earth system has gone into
a relatively warm state." By 2003, the science had become so robust that even the most conservatively
spoken scientists were adamant about the fact that humans, primarily through their burning of fossil
fuels, are heating the atmosphere. "Modern climate change is dominated by human influences, which are now
large enough to exceed the bounds of natural variability. The main source of global climate change is human-
induced changes in atmospheric composition ... Anthropogenic climate change is now likely to continue for many
centuries. We are venturing into the unknown with climate, and its associated impacts could be quite disruptive,"
wrote Thomas Karl and Kevin Trenberth in the journal Science. Putting the various strands of temperature
research together, the picture that emerges is profoundly ominous. It begins with bare physical measurements-
independent of computer models. Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere traps in heat. For the last 10,000 years, the
amount of C02 remained constant at about 280 parts per million-until the late nineteenth century, when the world
began to industrialize using coal and oil. Today, that 280 is up to 379 parts per million. That is a level the planet
has not experienced for 420,000 years. The most direct consequence of this buildup of atmospheric carbon is in
the relentless rise of global temperatures. Seventeen of the eighteen hottest years on record have occurred
since 1980. The period from 1991 to 1995 constitutes the hottest five-year period on record. The year
1998 replaced 1997 as the hottest year in human history, and 2001 replaced 1997 as the second-hottest
year. Then 2001 was replaced by 2002. The decade of the 1990s was the hottest at least in this last
millennium. And the planet is heating at a rate faster than at any time in the last 10,000 years. Senior
scientist Tom M.L. Wigley of the National Center for Atmospheric Research put the coming changes in
perspective in a letter to Senators Tom Daschle (D-ND) and William Frist (R-TN) in July 2003: There
is only one chance in 100 that the rate of warming will be less than double the warming rate of the last
100 years-and a 99 percent probability that it will exceed double the past warming rate ... The most
likely estimate of warming between [now] and 2100 is 5.5 degrees F This is five times the warming rate
experienced over the past 100 years. At the high end, there is a five percent chance that the warming could be
more than eight times the warming rate of the past century. Our climate is capable of immense and wildly
disruptive surprises. Every day, those surprises seem progressively more likely than not. Not only are we gambling
with our future, we are gambling with our eyes blindfolded. We can't even read the cards we've been dealt.
Ice core data proves.
McKenna et al. ‘07
(Phil, environmental studies fellow at MIT, Catherine Brahic, New Scientist environmental reporter,
David Chandler of the National Ass’n of Science Writers, Michael Le Page of the Centre for Child
Health Research, Fred Pearce environmental consultant, “Climate Myths,” New Scientist, 5-19, lexis)
Our planet's climate is anything but simple. It depends on the interplay of many factors, from massive events in
the sun to microscopic creatures in the oceans. Yet a clear picture has emerged, supported by an
overwhelming amount of evidence: the world is warming, this warming is due to increasing levels of
greenhouse gases caused by human activity, and if emissions continue unabated the warming will too, with
ever more serious consequences. True, there are big uncertainties in some predictions, but these swing both ways:
the response of clouds might slow warming or could speed it up instead, for instance. With so much at stake, the
last thing we need is for the real issues to be obscured by discredited arguments and wild theories. We must act
now to avoid the worst effects. So for those who are not sure what to believe, here's our guide to climate myths
and misconceptions. Decide for yourself. BYLINE: Catherine Brahic, David L. Chandler, Michael Le Page, Phil
McKenna, Fred Pearce SECTION: FEATURES; Cover Story; Pg. 34-42 LENGTH: 3233 words
Myth: Carbon dioxide levels only rose after the start of warm periods, so CO2 does not cause warming
SAMPLES of ice dating back hundreds of thousands of years have been extracted from the sheets
covering Antarctica and Greenland. These cores show that at the end of recent ice ages, the level of
CO2 in the atmosphere often did not start to rise until temperatures had already been climbing for
some time. There is uncertainty about the precise timing, partly because the air trapped in the cores is younger
than the ice itself, but it appears the lags might sometimes have been 800 years or more. These lags show that
rising CO2 did not trigger the initial warming at the end of these ice ages - but then, no one claims it did. They do
not undermine the idea that more CO2 in the atmosphere warms the planet. We know CO2 is a greenhouse gas
because it absorbs and emits infrared. Fairly basic physics proves that such gases will trap heat radiating from
Earth, and that the planet would be a lot colder if this did not happen. This does not mean that there will be a
perfect correlation between past temperature and past CO2 levels. Many other factors also affect the climate: when
there are big changes in these factors, the relationship between CO2 and temperature will be obscured. So why,
over the past million years or so, has Earth repeatedly switched between ice ages and warmer periods? The long-
held theory is that this is due to variations in Earth's orbit - known as Milankovitch cycles - that change the
amount and location of solar energy reaching Earth. These correspond with most - but not all - climate transitions .
However, their direct heating or cooling effect is small, and does not fully explain the temperature switches. This
suggests that some kind of feedback effect amplified the initial changes in temperatures. The ice itself is one
contender here. As vast ice sheets started to shrink, less of the sun's energy would have been reflected back into
space, accelerating the warming. The possibility that CO2 also plays a role was suggested more than a century
ago. The ice cores show that there is a remarkable correlation between CO2 levels and temperature over
the past half-million years. It takes about 5000 years for an ice age to end and, after the initial lag, temperature
and CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere rise together for at least 4000-odd years. What seems to have happened
at the end of ice ages is that an initial warming due to orbital shifts led to more CO2 being released into the
atmosphere, resulting in further warming that caused still more CO2 to be released and so on. As the area of ice
shrank, temperatures rose still higher. Where did the extra CO2 come from? The evidence suggests it was from the
oceans. The gas is less soluble in warmer water, so warmer seas release it into the air, but this can explain only a
little of the increase. Another factor may have been biological: phytoplankton in the seas soak up CO2 as they
grow and fall to the ocean floor, but as the world warmed changes in winds, currents and salinity would have cut
the phytoplankton's growth. While CO2 was only a secondary player in the ice ages, further back in time there are
examples of warming triggered by rises in CO2 (see below). What the ice ages tell us is that temperature can
influence CO2 levels as well as vice versa, which is a cause for concern. At the moment, the oceans are soaking up
40 per cent of the extra CO2 we are emitting. If they switch to emitting CO2 instead, cuts in human emissions will
make little difference. Half-truth: It has been warmer in the past, so what's the big deal? FIRST, it needs to be said
that everything we think we know about global temperatures before about 150 years ago is an estimate - a
reconstruction based on second-hand evidence such as ice cores and a set of assumptions. The further back we
look, the greater the uncertainties. It is certainly true that Earth has experienced some extremes that were warmer
than today. In some cases the main factors that caused these climatic variations are well understood, though not in
all. From 750 million to 580 million years ago, Earth was in the grip of an ice age more extreme than any since. At
times the whole planet may have been covered in ice and snow, a phenomenon known as Snowball Earth. Why did
this happen? The balance between two opposing effects may have been crucial. The growth of ice sheets can lead
to extra cooling as more of the sun's heat gets reflected back into space. However, ice on land blocks the
weathering of rocks, a process that removes CO2 from the atmosphere. Snowball Earth may have come about
because the continents were then clustered on the equator: weathering would have continued to remove CO2 even
as ice sheets spread from the poles. Only when most of the land was iced over would greenhouse gases have
started to build up. After this deep freeze, there were long periods when both greenhouse gas levels and
temperatures were higher than they are today, though there is great uncertainty about the details . The warmest
period was probably the Palaeocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) about 55 million years ago. During this
event, which coincided with mass extinctions, global temperatures may have warmed by 5 to 8 °C within a few
thousand years. The Arctic Ocean reached 23 °C. Isotope levels in fossil plankton show the warming was caused
by the release of massive amounts of methane or CO2. The latest theory is that this was due to lava from a massive
volcanic eruption heating coal deposits. In other words, this may be an example of catastrophic global warming
caused by the sudden release of massive quantities of fossil carbon into the atmosphere. The warm period lasted
200,000 years. Over the past few million years Earth has switched between ice ages and warmer interglacials.
These periodic changes seem to be triggered by oscillations in the planet's orbit that alter the amount of solar
radiation reaching Earth . In between ice ages, there have been several temperature peaks, notably during the
Eemian interglacial around 125,000 years ago. At this time, temperatures may have been 1 to 2 °C warmer than
today, and the sea level was 5 to 8 metres higher than it is now. After the last ice age, there was another peak
around 6000 years ago called the Holocene Climatic Optimum. This warming appears to have been largely
regional, though, and temperatures were probably not much higher than in recent decades, if at all. Do these past
periods of natural warming mean we can dismiss the rapid warming over the past few years as more of the same?
The answer is no. Natural factors such as changes in the amount of solar energy reaching the Earth can
explain only a small part of the recent warming. Nor does the fact that it has been warmer in the past
mean that future warming is nothing to worry about. The sea level has been tens of metres higher
during past warm periods - enough to submerge many major cities. Half-truth: Human carbon dioxide
emissions are tiny compared with natural sources YES, it's true that CO2 emissions due to human
activity are small compared with most natural sources. Yet ice cores show that levels in the atmosphere
have remained fairly steady at between 180 and 300 parts per million for the past half-million years,
only to shoot up to more than 380 ppm since the industrial age began. How is this possible? The
answer is that natural sources are balanced by natural sinks . The breakdown of organic matter, for
instance, releases huge quantities of CO2, but growing plants soak up just as much. CO2 levels have
risen because slightly more of the gas has been entering the atmosphere each year than can be soaked
up by natural sinks. How can we be sure that we are responsible for the extra CO2? There are several lines of
evidence. For instance, fossil fuels contain virtually no carbon-14, because this unstable isotope, formed when
cosmic rays hit the atmosphere, has a half-life of around 6000 years. Nearly all the carbon-14 in a fossil fuel will
have long decayed by the time we burn the fuel, so the resulting CO2 will contain almost no carbon-14 too.
Studies of tree rings have shown that the proportion of carbon-14 in the air dropped by about 2 per cent between
1850 and 1954 (after 1954, nuclear tests released large amounts of carbon-14). Finally, claims that volcanoes
emit more CO2 than human activities are simply not true. CO2 levels around the world do not rise
after major eruptions. Total emissions from volcanoes on land are estimated to average just 0.3
gigatonnes of CO2 each year - about a hundredth of human emissions - and are balanced by the carbon
carried under tectonic plates in subducted ocean sediments.
There is an overwhelming scientific consensus.

De Gaetano and Marcell ‘7
(Art, Earth and Atmospheric Science prof at Cornell, and Kristin of the Hudson River Estuary Program
on climate change, and “Climate change & New York's future," New York State Conservationist,
v62n1, August 1, lexis)
Is climate change real? Yes, say more than 3,700 scientific experts from 130 countries who make up
the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). A recent IPCC report, concluded that the
earth has warmed during the last century, that warming is changing the planet's climate, and that much
of the warming comes from burning fossil fuels (coal, oil, natural gas) to generate electricity and to
power vehicles and buildings. Yes, say scientists in the Northeast Climate Impacts Assessment and the
U.S. Global Change Research Program, both of which focus on climate change in the northeastern
United States. They conclude that we can head off the worst effects of climate change in our area by
improving the way we produce and use energy.
Why is the earth getting warmer? Greenhouse gases that naturally occur in the earth's atmosphere act
like a pane of glass. Energy coming in from the sun passes through the atmosphere and warms the
earth's surface. But when heat radiates back out from the earth, these same gases prevent it from
escaping.
Newest computer models prove global warming isn’t within natural variation.
New Scientist ‘7
(“Nowhere to turn for climate change deniers,” 4-14, lexis)
WRIGGLE-ROOM shrank this week for those who believe that global warming is not caused by
human activity. The latest report from the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change shows
that the world is already changing in line with forecasts from computer models that include greenhouse
gases as an integral factor. Everything from the increasing numbers of glacial lakes to the poleward
shifts in the ranges of animals and plants is almost certainly down to global warming. The IPCC also
finds that natural variation is "very unlikely" to be the sole cause of such changes. Models that include
only natural influences on temperature, such as volcanoes and solar activity, are significantly
outperformed by models that also include greenhouse gases. Why shouldn't we take these results at
face value? Assuming there is no "groupthink" here (see above), or a global scientific conspiracy, the
only other occasionally voiced argument is that IPCC scientists have staked so much on greenhouse
gases that they are unwilling to brook any alternative. This notion runs so completely counter to what
science is about that it is as likely as a global conspiracy. Scientific ideas are judged by their ability to
explain the natural world, and the best ones win. No amount of polemic or political influence will
change that, or make a wrong idea right. Some scientists are challenging our ideas on climate change,
which is vital if we are to progress. But to overturn present thinking will need very strong evidence
because, as the IPCC states, confidence in the idea that anthropogenic warming is changing our world
has never been higher.

Subpoint (B): The Impacts
First, runaway warming – Multiple positive feedbacks will cause rapid warming
and extinction.
Edwards ‘01
(David, Division for Ocean Circulation and Climate, “Happiness is Dissent – The Truth About
‘Looking After Number 1,’” August, http://www.medialens.org/articles_2001/de_number_one.html)
Evidence for Shantideva's assertion is all around us. Climate scientists are now warning that the
world's giant forests, which have so far absorbed a large proportion of man-made greenhouse gas
emissions, will soon be saturated. As a result, this great natural brake on global warming will begin to
be released, and temperatures will begin to rise much more rapidly. One consequence will be that
rainfall patterns over great carbon sinks such as the Amazon rainforest will likely be disrupted, making
them arid and vulnerable to fire - around the world the giant carbon sinks that have so far protected us,
will die back and burn, becoming giant pumps spewing greenhouse gas into the atmosphere. This in
turn may cause temperatures around the Arctic Ocean to increase by as much as 8 degrees, such that
warming seas unleash billions of tones of methane hydrates lying frozen on the seabed. Methane is
sixty times more warming than carbon dioxide - the result would be simply catastrophic. As climate
scientist Peter Cox says, "It's difficult to know what in the world around us could survive this kind of
warming." This apocalypse could happen within our lifetimes and certainly before the end of the
century.
Any delay will multiplies the risk of the impact.

Reuters ‘7
(1-18, “Crunch year for planet earth”
http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/science/01/18/climate.crunch.reut/index.html)
LONDON, England (Reuters) -- This will be a crunch year for action on the climate crisis, a leading
environmental lobbyist said on Wednesday.
Never have the opportunities been better and the danger from failure greater, Friends of the Earth chief
Tony Juniper said in an interview with Reuters. "There is an urgency that wasn't there before," Juniper
said. "The science is there, the economics is there and the politics is there ...If they don't take this
opportunity then we really should start to think about the future of life on earth." The scientists who
mind the "Doomsday Clock" moved it forward two minutes on Wednesday to five minutes until
midnight, symbolizing the growing risk of the annihilation of civilization, and for the first time said
global warming was a threat. (Full story) Early next month the International Panel on Climate Change will
produce the first of four key reports this year assessing the latest scientific knowledge on global warming. This
will be followed by a report in April on adaptation, one in May on mitigation and a final overview in November. A
European Union-United States summit in April is expected to focus on energy security, and a Group of Eight
summit in early June will highlight energy and climate.Sources close to the diplomatic process say British Prime
Minister Tony Blair, seeking a lasting legacy from his decade in power before he stands down mid-year, wants the
G-8 summit to agree an outline plan for further climate action. Most scientists agree temperatures will rise by
between 2 and 6 degrees Celsius this century, mainly because of increasing carbon emissions from
burning fossil fuels for power and transport, putting millions of lives at risk from flood and
famine.Former World Bank chief economist Nicholas Stern said in October that urgent action on global
warming was vital, and that delay would multiply the cost 20 times.
Also – warming makes every major flashpoint for war inevitable.

The New American, ‘7 (11/7 http://www.thenewamerican.com/node/6153)
Climate change acts as a threat multiplier for instability in some of the most volatile regions of the
world. Projected climate change will seriously exacerbate already marginal living standards in many
Asian, African, and Middle Eastern nations, causing widespread political instability and the likelihood of
failed states. Unlike most conventional security threats that involve a single entity acting in specific ways and
points in time, climate change has the potential to result in multiple chronic conditions, occurring globally within
the same time frame. Economic and environmental conditions in already fragile areas will further erode as food
production declines, diseases increase, clean water becomes increasingly scarce, and large populations move in
search of resources. Weakened and failing governments, with an already thin margin for survival, foster the
conditions for internal conflicts, extremism, and movement toward increased authoritarianism and radical
ideologies. The U.S. may be drawn more frequently into these situations, either alone or with allies, to
help provide stability before conditions worsen and are exploited by extremists. The U.S. may also be
called upon to undertake stability and reconstruction efforts once a conflict has begun, to avert further
disaster and reconstitute a stable environment.

Second, agriculture -- Climate oscillations from warming destroy agriculture
and collapses the global economy killing billions
Milbrath ‘94
(Lester, poli sci prof at State U of NY, The Futurist, Climate and Chaos: Societal Impact of Sudden
Weather Shifts, p. 27-8)
Another scenario suggests that there could be an extended period, perhaps a decade or two, when there
is oscillation-type chaos in the climate system. Plants will be especially vulnerable to oscillating chaos,
since they are injured or die when climate is too hot or too cold, too dry or too wet. And since plants
make food for all other creatures, plant dieback would lead to severe declines in agricultural
production. Farm animals and wildlife would die in large numbers. Many humans also would starve.
Several years of climatic oscillation could kill billions of people. The loss of the premise of continuity
would also precipitate collapse of world financial markets. That collapse would lead to sharp declines
in commodity markets, world trade, factory output, retail sales, research and development, tax income
for governments and education. Such nonessential activities as tourism, travel, hotel occupancy,
restaurants, entertainment, and fashion would be severely affected. Billions of unemployed people
would drastically reduce their consumption, and modern society’s vaunted economic system would
collapse like a house of cards.
Economic collapse causes nuclear war.

Mead ‘92
(Walter Russell, Senior Fellow – Council on Foreign Relations, New Perspectives Quarterly, Summer,
p. 30)
The failure to develop an international system to hedge against the possibility of worldwide
depression- will open their eyes to their folly. Hundreds of millions-billions-of people around the
world have pinned their hopes on the international market economy. They and their leaders have
embraced market principles-and drawn closer to the West-because they believe that our system can
work for them. But what if it can't? What if the global economy stagnates, or even shrinks? In that
case, we will face a new period of international conflict: South against North, rich against poor. Russia.
China. India-these countries with their billions of people and their nuclear weapons will pose a much
greater danger to world order than Germany and Japan did in the 1930's.
CO2 independently undermines plant genetic diversity and destroys global

agriculture.
Raeburn ‘95
(Paul, science writer and agricultural expert, The Last Harvest: The Genetic Gamble That Threatens to
Destroy American Agriculture, December)
Fakhri A. Bazzaz of Harvard University maintains a small cluster of greenhouses on the Harvard campus.
Each is isolated from the others, and the air inside them contains differing amounts of carbon dioxide. After years
of growing plants inside those greenhouses and comparing the results, he has shown that different species of plants
respond differently to increasing levels of carbon dioxide. Rising levels of carbon dioxide—even if they do
not produce substantial temperature increases—could have a profound effect on agriculture, Bazzaz
has found. Certain crops, such as soybeans, might be able to compete better against weeds in a carbon
dioxide-rich environment. But other crops, such as corn and sugarcane, would fare poorly in the
competition with weeds as carbon dioxide levels rise. The increased competition from weeds could
cause yields to drop, Bazzaz said. He also concluded that rising carbon-dioxide levels are likely to
wipe out many endangered plant species, further eroding the world’s genetic diversity and further
limiting plant breeders’ options. “It is clear that high carbon dioxide levels will have wide-ranging
consequences for the natural world,” Bazzaz said. “And it is clear that the carbon dioxide fertilization effect does
not guarantee a lush, green future of agricultural abundance….Such an atmosphere will not help lessen the planet’s
environmental and demographic woes. This atmosphere may induce climatic modification that could
undermine the integrity of the biological systems on which all Homo sapiens depend.” The critical
point is that rising levels of carbon dioxide—which are a measurable fact, not a prediction—can affect
plants dramatically even without any rise in global temperatures. If the dire predictions of global warming
are wrong, climate may not change dramatically. But agriculture is certain to change.

Mass starvation would result in WWIII.
Calvin, ‘98
(Neurophysiologist at the University of Washington, Atlantic Monthly, January)
The population-crash scenario is surely the most appalling. Plummeting crop yields would cause some
powerful countries to try to take over their neighbors or distant lands -- if only because their armies,
unpaid and lacking food, would go marauding, both at home and across the borders. The better-
organized countries would attempt to use their armies, before they fell apart entirely, to take over
countries with significant remaining resources, driving out or starving their inhabitants if not using
modern weapons to accomplish the same end: eliminating competitors for the remaining food. This
would be a worldwide problem -- and could lead to a Third World War -- but Europe's vulnerability
is particularly easy to analyze.
1AC: Regional Influence Module (1/4)

Scenario __: Regional Influence
Current cooperation falls short- need to end the tariff for “ethanol diplomacy”
to work
Seelke and Yacobucci 07
[Clare, Analyst in Latin American Affairs at Foreign Affairs, and Brent D., Specialist in
Environmental/Energy Policy, CRS Report, Lexis]
The United States and Brazil, the world's largest ethanol producers, have recently agreed to work
together to promote the use and production of ethanol and other biofuels throughout the Western
hemisphere. Increasing U.S.-Brazil energy cooperation was a top agenda issue when President Bush
visited Brazil and when President Lula visited CampDavid earlier this year. On March 9, 2007, the two
countries signed an agreement to (1) advance research and development bilaterally, (2)help build
domestic biofuels industries in third countries, and (3) work multilaterally to advance the global
development of biofuels. (2) Many Bush Administration officials and Members of Congress note that
the new biofuels partnership with Brazil may help improve the U.S.image in Latin America and
diminish the influence of President Chavez in the region. In the past few months, the U.S.-Brazil
biofuels agreement has already had a significant political effect in Latin America. "Ethanol diplomacy"
appears to be helping Brazil reassert regionalleadership relative to oil-rich Venezuela under Hugo
Chavez. (3) Increasing biofuels cooperation with Brazil and other countries inLatin America may
prompt challenges to existing U.S. trade, energy, and agriculture policies. For example, U.S.
tariffs on foreign ethanol imports may prove to be an obstacle to U.S.-
Brazil energy cooperation. In the 109th Congress, legislation was introduced that would
haveeliminated current tariffs on foreign ethanol. While some Members support ending the ethanol
tariffs, other Members of Congress support further extensions of the ethanol import tariffs. Some have
also proposed using tariff duties collected on foreign ethanol imports to fund advanced ethanol
research and production within the United States.

Rescinding the tariff removes influence from Chavez and Cuba will promoting
Brazils model regionally
Llosa 2007
[Alvaro Vargas, Senior Fellow at the Center on Global Prosperity,
http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=1953]
If the United States wants to boost ethanol consumption and reduce oil-dependency, it needs to make a
simple decision—eliminate its 54-cents-a-gallon tariff. Experts tell us that corn-based ethanol, the kind
being produced in the United States, is eight times less efficient than Brazil's sugarcane version of the
biofuel. Alessandro Teixeira, Brazil's point man for his country's ethanol strategy, insists that “we are
the world leader, and if people really want to benefit from our ethanol industry, they have to embrace it
in practice, not in theory.” Precisely because corn is much less efficient than sugarcane, the U.S. has
been able to replace only about 3 percent of its oil consumption despite a huge government biofuel
program. The second way in which current policy defeats the purpose of the ethanol alliance has to do
with Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro. Clearly, the Bush administration wants to entice Central American
and Caribbean countries that benefit from Venezuelan oil subsidies to adopt biofuels in order to
become independent of Caracas. The idea is to encourage Brazil to export its technology to those
countries and help them build distilleries—such as the one recently constructed in Jamaica—for
ethanol production. But there is a hitch: Due to various preferential trading arrangements, Caribbean
and Central American countries don't face the tariffs that currently hurt Brazilian exports to the U.S.
So, while Brazil might take some pride in exporting its technology and eventually getting some cash
incentives from Washington to help the Caribbean basin liberate itself from Chavez, Lula's real interest
lies in exporting to the American and the European markets, both of which are now protected.
Incidentally, ethanol is making Chavez and Castro nervous. One proof is the hysterical article Castro
wrote for Granma, Cuba's official newspaper, lashing at those who want “to convert food into
combustibles” and accusing them of wanting to condemn to “premature death and thirst more than 3
billion people of the world.” Although the article was purportedly aimed at President George W. Bush,
its real target was Lula, who was about to embark on his trip to Washington just a few weeks after
Bush had visited him in Brasilia. But unless there is a major change in policy, Castro need not worry
too much about ethanol. In order for the U.S. ethanol program to achieve, say, what Brazil has
achieved—namely, replacing 40 percept of oil consumption—the country would need to make
available massive amounts of new farmland on which to grow more corn and, given how inefficient
that crop is as a source of energy, waste colossal amounts of capital transforming it. True, the U.S.
could help start a sugarcane-based ethanol industry in Florida. But then it would need to protect the
Floridians from Brazilian competition, which would not exactly thrill the other member of the ethanol
alliance. One final caveat. It is hard to see how the new ethanol alliance will boost the Doha Round of
world trade talks, as some commentators are claiming. The principal stumbling block is the fact that
developing countries are using American and European protectionism as an excuse to maintain their
own barriers in areas such as services. The U.S. ethanol program already has caused an artificial rise in
the price of cereals, giving new arguments to developing nations who want to blame the United States
for impoverishing them. It makes me nervous when governments, rather than investors and consumers,
decide what we should invest in and what we should consume. But if the ethanol partners want their
grand schemes to have a chance at success, then they at least need to start by being consistent.
Otherwise, the Cuban tyrant's next article might actually be titled “I told you so!”
Chavez will use his expanded influence to bring down regional economic
markets by imposing communism and promoting terrorist attacks
Nyquist 2003
[J.R., expert on Russian and Communist military and foreign policy. He is currently an independent
journalist and writer based in Eureka, California. He has previously worked for World Net Daily and
News Max dot com, http://www.financialsense.com/stormwatch/geo/pastanalysis/2003/0109.html]
RN: How long were you a pilot for President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela? DIAZ: I did one year as
Chavez’s pilot and another year as operations chief for the Air Force. JRN: Did President Hugo Chavez
offer money to the Taliban? Is that correct? DIAZ: Yes, that is correct. JRN: How did this come about?
DIAZ: This came about as the result of a directive from the president who wanted to put Venezuelan
troops into Afghanistan [on the side of the Taliban]. Also, in addition, he wanted to bring in
humanitarian aid, medicines and clothes, and this was going to be done with the Venezuelan Air Force
on top of the financial aid that was offered. JRN: When was this aid offered? DIAZ: After the middle
of September 2001. JRN: Chavez wanted to send troops to Afghanistan? DIAZ: The initial order from
Chavez was to send troops in Venezuelan planes [to help the Taliban], but economically this was
unfeasible. Also, it was operationally unfeasible because the United States had an air blockade in effect
against Afghanistan. JRN: President Chavez went to see Saddam Hussein in Iraq about two years ago.
Is that right? DIAZ: Correct. JRN: Do you know anything about that trip? DIAZ: Yes. President
Chavez made some comments to his entourage at the time. He praised Saddam Hussein’s leadership
and also as an example of someone who fights the United States. JRN: So President Chavez hates the
United States? DIAZ: President Chavez publicly stated that the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States
were the fault of the United States. He said it was a good thing the United States was attacked, that these
attacks were long overdue. And also, in private, President Chavez was very impressed with the terrorist operation
of Sept. 11. JRN: Is President Chavez a communist? DIAZ: Openly. JRN: So when the foreign press describes him
as other than a communist they are mistaken? DIAZ: What Hugo Chavez says is one thing, what he does is
another. JRN: So the reason the soldiers in the Plaza Altamira are protesting is because they have seen the real face
of Hugo Chavez? DIAZ: Yes. In the Plaza Altamira there are many military officials who initially trusted Hugo
Chavez, but when they discovered the real Chavez they left him. JRN: And these soldiers must be in grave danger
to stand against such a man. DIAZ: Yes, we are in danger but we are determined. Our objective is to remove
Chavez from office and alert the rest of the American continent about the danger that he represents. JRN: If Hugo
Chavez is a communist then why would he support Muslim fundamentalists? DIAZ: Hugo Chavez has
many different ideas in his head. Always, these ideas are very dangerous. Sometimes these ideas
change, sometimes they don’t. JRN: We in the United States don’t know this man, Hugo Chavez. What
kind of person is he? DIAZ: Here is the important thing to know: Hugo Chavez is working to form a
bloc of countries to fight the United States. For Hugo Chavez the United States is the enemy. And he is
convinced that by forming a bloc of countries he can attack the United States in various ways. One
way would be an economic attack. And on top of this he is not only looking for an alliance with a bloc
of countries but also an alliance with terrorist groups because this will give him a direct way to attack
the United States. He sees in the terrorists a force with a defined intention to attack the United States.
He has criticized many many times the economic ideals of the United States. He has said that the United
States are neo-liberal and he has demonized the United States. JRN: Are the officers in the Plaza Altamira
receiving support from neighboring countries or other countries? DIAZ: We have to remember that Lula da Silva
has just won the presidency of Brazil [the largest country in the region] and Lula da Silva was helped by Chavez in
a financial way, and in other ways. Lula da Silva owes a lot to Chavez. And it is very suspicious that Lula da Silva
is beginning to form Brazil’s government in the very way that Chavez formed his government, bringing military
people into the government. Lula da Silva has been influenced a lot by Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro. JRN: Is it
true that the Cubans are supporting Hugo Chavez in Venezuela? DIAZ: I went many times to Cuba on trips. I
coordinated transport operations to and from there. JRN: And these transport operations involved the movement of
Cubans into Venezuela? DIAZ: Cubans to Venezuela and Venezuelans to Cuba. JRN: And is there any Chinese
involvement in this? DIAZ: This is a different program, but we have evidence that the Chinese have a lot of
influence on the Chavez government. Chavez has had very good relations with Chinese communist leaders. JRN:
You mentioned Chavez’s intention to wage economic warfare against the United States. What ways would he
attack other than economic? DIAZ: Other types of attack would become possible once he forms an
ideological bloc [of countries] opposite to the ideology of the United States. JRN: Would this bloc
include China, Iraq, Iran and Cuba? DIAZ: Yes. All this is part of a grand scheme, a grand system of
connections on the international level. And also Brazil is part of this. JRN: How much success has Hugo
Chavez had in working with these other countries? DIAZ: Good question. The first country in this grand scheme
was Venezuela, after Cuba. Fidel Castro gave Chavez a lot of aid. This was financial aid, including advisors. The
second objective was Brazil and Ecuador, and this objective has been attained. Now they are working on
Argentina. JRN: Ecuador is part of this? DIAZ: Yes, in Ecuador the new president was elected with help from
Hugo Chavez and we are waiting for him to follow Chavez’s model. JRN: In the United States we have heard
reports about Hugo Chavez helping the communist rebels in Colombia. Are these reports true? DIAZ: We have
proof that Chavez has aided the Colombian guerrillas in a big way. Hugo Chavez’s aspiration is that the guerrillas
will soon take power in Colombia and join the anti-U.S. Latin American bloc. JRN: Is there a serious prospect that
the communists will take over Colombia? DIAZ: Yes, there is a prospect that this will happen. That is why I am
here in the United States trying to alert the United States that they have a big enemy in Chavez. JRN: This
sounds like a widespread communist revolution through stealth and subversion. Would this be the right
characterization? DIAZ: Yes, but it is only a revolution of a minority. It is not a revolution of the
people. When the people first elected Chavez they thought he was someone else. Now they realized
who he is and they don’t want him anymore. JRN: So he used trickery to get into power? DIAZ: Yes he
did, and he is still tricking the world.

Terrorists attacks result in extinction
Alexander, Inter-University Terrorism Studies Professor, Aug 28 2k2
Washington Times
Last week's brutal suicide bombings in Baghdad and Jerusalem have once again illustrated dramatically that the
international community failed, thus far at least, to understand the magnitude and implications of the
terrorist threats to the very survival of civilization itself.
Even the United States and Israel have for decades tended to regard terrorism as a mere tactical nuisance or irritant
rather than a critical strategic challenge to their national security concerns.
It is not surprising, therefore, that on September 11, 2001, Americans were stunned by the unprecedented tragedy
of 19 al Qaeda terrorists striking a devastating blow at the center of the nation's commercial and military powers.
moribund peace process through the now revoked cease-fire arrangements [hudna].
Why are the United States and Israel, as well as scores of other countries affected by the universal nightmare of
modern terrorism surprised by new terrorist "surprises"?
There are many reasons, including misunderstanding of the manifold specific factors that contribute to terrorism's
expansion, such as lack of a universal definition of terrorism, the religionization of politics, double standards of
morality, weak punishment of terrorists, and the exploitation of the media by terrorist propaganda and
psychological warfare.
Unlike their historical counterparts, contemporary terrorists have introduced a new scale of violence in
terms of conventional and unconventional threats and impact.
The internationalization and brutalization of current and future terrorism make it clear we have entered an Age
of Super Terrorism [e.g. biological, chemical, radiological, nuclear and cyber] with its serious
implications concerning national, regional and global security concerns.
And, the economic attacks result in nuclear war

Bearden, 2K
(Retired from the military or some business like that, http://www.seaspower.com/EnergyCrisis-Bearden.htm)
History bears out that desperate nations take desperate actions. Prior to the final economic collapse, the
stress on nations will have increased the intensity and number of their conflicts, to the point where the
arsenals of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) now possessed by some 25 nations, are almost
certain to be released. As an example, suppose a starving North Korea {[7]} launches nuclear weapons upon
Japan and South Korea, including U.S. forces there, in a spasmodic suicidal response. Or suppose a desperate
China — whose long-range nuclear missiles (some) can reach the United States — attacks Taiwan. In addition to
immediate responses, the mutual treaties involved in such scenarios will quickly draw other nations into the
conflict, escalating it significantly.
Strategic nuclear studies have shown for decades that, under such extreme stress conditions, once a few nukes
are launched, adversaries and potential adversaries are then compelled to launch on perception of
preparations by one's adversary. The real legacy of the MAD concept is this side of the MAD coin that is
almost never discussed. Without effective defense, the only chance a nation has to survive at all is to launch
immediate full-bore pre-emptive strikes and try to take out its perceived foes as rapidly and massively
as possible.
As the studies showed, rapid escalation to full WMD exchange occurs. Today, a great percent of the
WMD arsenals that will be unleashed, are already on site within the United States itself {[8]}. The resulting
great Armageddon will destroy civilization as we know it, and perhaps most of the biosphere, at
least for many decades.
1AC: Food Prices Module (1/2)

Brazilian ethanol decrease food prices- takes up less land and is more efficient
then other products
Knight Ridder 4/30/08
[Lexis]
The message doesn't seem to be getting through. As world alarm grows over rising food prices and
shortages, many are blaming expanding biofuel production for hogging farmland that used to produce
food, and Brazilian leaders have found themselves on the defensive about their celebrated biofuel. The
Brazilians have hit back by pointing out that sugar cane-based ethanol and the U.S., corn-based variety
are worlds apart, and the problem is corn, not sugar. Science is on their side. Because producers can
use the entire stalk of the sugar plant to make biofuel, instead of just the kernels of the corn plant, an
acre of sugar cane in Brazil produces about 800 gallons of ethanol, while an acre of corn produces 328
gallons. The starch from corn also must be converted into sugar before it can be turned into ethanol, an
extra step that requires a bigger investment in energy. As a result, sugar-cane ethanol produces 8 units
of energy for every 1 unit of fossil fuels invested in its production, while the ratio for corn ethanol is
1.3 to 1. Not only is producing sugar cane-based ethanol more efficient, Brazilian officials say, very
little of the country's farmland is used to produce it. Sugar is grown only on 2 percent of Brazil's arable
land, industry figures show. That means sugar isn't kicking out food crops in Brazil and hasn't
contributed to rising food prices, said Ricardo Dornelles, a renewable fuels director for Brazil's mines
and energy ministry. "We want to give the world confidence in our product," Dornelles said. "Whoever
buys the product has the right to name the conditions of its production. But this can't mean imposing
something that doesn't match reality."
Domestic protectionism is causing a shortage of grains for food- this inflates

prices
Daily News (South Africa) 6/26/2008
[Lexis]
Current international biofuel policies have contributed up to 30% to the worldwide increase in food
prices, and have dragged more than 30 million people into poverty, the international anti-poverty
organisation Oxfam has claimed. In a new hard-hitting report, Oxfam blamed the world's rush to turn
bio-ethanol and bio-diesel into viable alternatives for petroleum products for being a major contributor
to food insecurity and inflation. But their claims have already been described as half-truths by
economists and researchers, who say the oil price is the real culprit, and that the biofuels industry
marks potential for new technology that would neither require the use of food crops nor additional
agricultural land to produce the new fuels. The author of the report, Oxfam's biofuel policy adviser
Rob Bailey, said: "Biofuel policies are actually helping to accelerate climate change and deepen
poverty and hunger. Rich countries' demands for more biofuels in their transport fuels are causing
spiralling production and food inflation. If the fuel value for a crop exceeds its food value, then it will
be used for fuel instead. Thanks to generous subsidies and tax breaks, that is exactly what is
happening. Grain reserves are now at an all-time low."
Specifically- it is driving up cereal and grain based prices, Brazilian ethanol

solves
Hutchinson 2008
[Martin, English-born banker and journalist June 5, Live Mint.com/Wall St. Journal
http://www.livemint.com/2008/06/05234451/Don8217t-blame-biofuels-alo.html]
The US biofuels effort has, of course, diverted some cereal supplies from the world market, driving up
prices. However, US agriculture subsidies generally encourage excessive food production, and much
of the land devoted to corn-for-ethanol was previously uncultivated. So, although US biofuel subsidies
are counter-productive to producing ethanol efficiently, they may only have pushed world cereal prices
higher at the margin. Outside the US and the European Union (EU), biofuel programmes have little
effect on world hunger. The Brazilian scheme produces ethanol efficiently from sugar cane, which is
marginal in providing nutrients for the hungry. If the US allowed free sugar cane imports, tropical
production of sugar cane for biofuel use would increase, providing livelihoods for marginally
employed poor people while having little impact on food production.
1AC: Food Prices Module (2/2)

Ethanols impact on prices will cause food market collapse
Brown 08
[Lester R., Founder and President of Earth Policy Institute,
http://www.earthpolicy.org/Updates/2008/Update72.htm]
The chronically tight food supply the world is now facing is driven by the cumulative effect of several
well established trends that are affecting both global demand and supply. On the demand side, the
trends include the continuing addition of 70 million people per year to the earth’s population, the desire
of some 4 billion people to move up the food chain and consume more grain-intensive livestock
products, and the recent sharp acceleration in the U.S. use of grain to produce ethanol for cars. Since
2005, this last source of demand has raised the annual growth in world grain consumption from
roughly 20 million tons to 50 million tons. Meanwhile, on the supply side, there is little new land to be
brought under the plow unless it comes from clearing tropical rainforests in the Amazon and Congo
basins and in Indonesia, or from clearing land in the Brazilian cerrado, a savannah-like region south of
the Amazon rainforest. Unfortunately, this has heavy environmental costs: the release of sequestered
carbon, the loss of plant and animal species, and increased rainfall runoff and soil erosion. And in
scores of countries prime cropland is being lost to both industrial and residential construction and to
the paving of land for roads, highways, and parking lots for fast-growing automobile fleets. New
sources of irrigation water are even more scarce than new land to plow. During the last half of the
twentieth century, world irrigated area nearly tripled, expanding from 94 million hectares in 1950 to
276 million hectares in 2000. In the years since then there has been little, if any, growth. As a result,
irrigated area per person is shrinking by 1 percent a year. Meanwhile, the backlog of agricultural
technology that can be used to raise cropland productivity is dwindling. Between 1950 and 1990 the
world’s farmers raised grainland productivity by 2.1 percent a year, but from 1990 until 2007 this
growth rate slowed to 1.2 percent a year. And the rising price of oil is boosting the costs of both food
production and transport while at the same time making it more profitable to convert grain into fuel for
cars. Beyond this, climate change presents new risks. Crop-withering heat waves, more-destructive
storms, and the melting of the Asian mountain glaciers that sustain the dry-season flow of that region’s
major rivers, are combining to make harvest expansion more difficult. In the past the negative effect of
unusual weather events was always temporary; within a year or two things would return to normal. But
with climate in flux, there is no norm to return to. The collective effect of these trends makes it more
and more difficult for farmers to keep pace with the growth in demand. During seven of the last eight
years, grain consumption exceeded production. After seven years of drawing down stocks, world grain
carryover stocks in 2008 have fallen to 55 days of world consumption, the lowest on record. The result
is a new era of tightening food supplies, rising food prices, and political instability. With grain stocks at
an all-time low, the world is only one poor harvest away from total chaos in world grain markets.
This fuels poverty and state collapse which threatens civilization

Brown 08
[Lester R., Founder and President of Earth Policy Institute,
http://www.earthpolicy.org/Updates/2008/Update72.htm]
Business-as-usual is no longer a viable option. Food security will deteriorate further unless leading
countries can collectively mobilize to stabilize population, restrict the use of grain to produce
automotive fuel, stabilize climate, stabilize water tables and aquifers, protect cropland, and conserve
soils. Stabilizing population is not simply a matter of providing reproductive health care and family
planning services. It requires a worldwide effort to eradicate poverty. Eliminating water shortages
depends on a global attempt to raise water productivity similar to the effort launched a half-century ago
to raise land productivity, an initiative that has nearly tripled the world grain yield per hectare. None of
these goals can be achieved quickly, but progress toward all is essential to restoring a semblance of
food security. This troubling situation is unlike any the world has faced before. The challenge is not
simply to deal with a temporary rise in grain prices, as in the past, but rather to quickly alter those
trends whose cumulative effects collectively threaten the food security that is a hallmark of
civilization. If food security cannot be restored quickly, social unrest and political instability will
spread and the number of failing states will likely increase dramatically, threatening the very stability
of civilization itself.
2AC- Warming Internal

Brazilian ethanol is more efficient than corn based ethanol and massively
reduces world emissions
Sotero 3/11/08
[Paulo, Director of the Brazil Institue Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Capital Hill
Testimony, Lexis]
The energy balance of Brazilian ethanol is 4-and-a-half times better than that of ethanol produced from
wheat or sugar beet, and almost seven times better than corn ethanol. As a result, Brazilian ethanol
achieves a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions of up to 90% compared to gasoline today. Ethanol
from sugarcane also offers higher productivity than other alternatives. Brazil already produces 7,000
liters of ethanol per hectare (or, about 750 gallons per acre) on average. New varieties of sugarcane
developed for Brazil and improved processing techniques will double yields. The result is that without
any increases in land use, these technological improvements can double the production of sugarcane in
Brazil. Sugarcane currently occupies only 2.3% of Brazil's total arable land. Half of that is dedicated to
the production of ethanol. This means that with about just above 1 % of the country's arable land,
Brazil has replaced nearly half of our gasoline consumption. As you know, the Brazilian territory is
larger than continental United States. Nearly 85% of all the sugarcane grown is harvested in the south-
central region; the remaining production comes from the northeastern coast. Both production areas are
well over 1,000 miles from the Amazon rainforest. Future expansion of sugarcane production will
occur in south-central Brazil, particularly on degraded pastures, further improving our efforts to reduce
greenhouse gas emissions. In a world faced with the challenge of climate change, sugarcane ethanol is
a particularly attractive renewable source of energy. It is not only economically profitable, but it is also
environmentally sound. Because of efficiency gains, the current price of ethanol in Brazil is just 30%
of what it was three decades ago, when the country decided on its large-scale use. Today, Brazilian
ethanol is competitive with gasoline when the price of oil is at $40 dollars a barrel or higher, making it
viable without any government subsidies. The process of ethanol production has the added advantage,
compared with other biofuels, of being a net source of electric power. Bioelectricity is produced by
burning sugarcane's byproduct: bagasse and straw, in steam boilers. The power generated from this
process not only makes our processing mills 100% self-sufficient but they also sell surplus electricity
into the national electricity grid.
Removing the tariff on Brazilian ethanol imports allows the US to meet its
renewable energy goals and curb global warming
Margolis 2007
[Mac, Writer for Newsweek, http://www.newsweek.com/id/35620?tid=relatedcl]
Though any clever scientist can turn biomass into alcohol, doing it efficiently and cheaply is another
story. This is where Brazil stands alone. It is shaping up to be the world's biggest supplier of biofuels
from sugar cane for years to come. It took three decades of government investment, trial and error, and
stubborn research by clever agronomists and planters to make Brazil a showcase for biofuel. Some 44
percent of its liquid fuel—and 13.5 percent of the total energy consumed—comes from sugarcane.
Today, without a cent in subsidies, Brazilian producers brew ethanol so competitively it could trump
oil at around $30 to $35 a barrel. Brazilian distillers now turn sugar into ethanol at just 22 cents a liter,
compared to 30 cents for corn and 54 cents for beets. "Brazil has the soils, the sun, and the climate, not
to mention a 25 year running start on everybody else," says Sergio Thompson Flores, CEO of Infinity
Bio-Energy, a UK based startup which plans to spend $1 billion on Brazilian ethanol through 2010.
The trend may have global-warming alarmists cheering, but guardians of the Amazon are worried.
They fear an anschlüss of sugar cane rolling all the way to the Amazon basin. But with an estimated 80
million hectares left to till outside the rainforest—one of the planet's largest agricultural frontiers—
Brazil would seem to have be plenty of room for fuel, food and forests. For now, Brazil's real obstacle
appears not to be land but lobbies. The United States could easily meet Bush's renewable fuel mandate
through imports, but as a sop to corn farmers, Congress recently extended the surtax on imported
ethanol to 2009. Unless there's a climate change in Washington, the drive for a viable source of green
energy may be thwarted.
2AC: Warming- Neg Authors Biased

Negative authors are paid off, and have no standing in the scientific community
Gelbspan ‘4
During the 1990s, that effort had been spearheaded by Fred Palmer, who, around the time of the Bush
election, was hired as chief lobbyist for Peabody Energy. Prior to his hiring by Peabody, Palmer headed
up the Western Fuels Association, a $400-million coal consortium that had funded a tiny handful of
industry-funded "greenhouse skeptics" who had long been dismissed by the mainstream scientific
community. Throughout the 1990s, Palmer directed an extensive and extremely successful public
relations offensive funded by the coal industry that used such prominent "greenhouse skeptics" as Fred
Singer, Pat Michaels, Sherwood Idso, and Robert Balling, among others. One campaign, which sent
three of these "skeptics" around the country to do media interviews, was crafted, according to its
strategy papers, "to reposition global warming as theory rather than fact" and, more specifically, was
designed to target "older, less-educated men ... and young low-income women" in districts that get
their electricity from coal and preferably have a member on the House Energy Committee, according
to the strategy papers for the campaign. Over the last ten years, those skeptics received more than a
million dollars, either directly or indirectly, from coal and oil interests. Their strategy was quite simple-
continue to raise doubts about the science in order to preempt any public demand for action. Their
funding by the fossil fuel lobby was never disclosed publicly until it was published in The Heat Is On
in 1997. (The issue of financial disclosure is not a small one. Industry-funded research can be neutral-
and it can be good or bad. But disclosure is critical so that the work in question can be reviewed with
an eye to commercial bias. If, for instance, a medical researcher's work is funded by a pharmaceutical
company, that funding must be declared in the tag line as a condition of publication. Unfortunately,
those same guidelines do not apply to climate science. And-most damning-few journalists who have
written about this issue have ever bothered to ask about funding.) What is especially telling about the
industry-funded "greenhouse skeptics" is their lack of standing in the scientific community. In a review
of Michaels's work, Tom M.L. Wigley, a preeminent climate modeler at the National Center for
Atmospheric Research, concluded it was so flawed that not only would it fail to pass the scrutiny of
qualified climate scientists, it would not even be accepted for peer review. As for Singer, he has been
unable to publish anything in the peer-reviewed literature in the last twenty years except for one
technical comment. Singer's recklessness transcends his deeply flawed scientific pronouncements. It
involves at least one public lie about his own funding. In early 2001, Singer was accused of having his
work funded by the oil industry. In response, Singer wrote in a letter to the Washington Post that he
had not received any oil industry money for at least twenty yearswhen he had done a consulting job for
the industry. In fact, Singer received at least $10,000 and as much as $75,000 from ExxonMobil in
1998 alone, according to information on the oil giant's own Web site. (Shortly after that information
was published in the Nation, ExxonMobil withdrew the page from its Web site.)
2AC: Warming- Ice Age

Warming shuts down the Gulf Stream causing an ice age and extinction
Dyer ‘03
(Gwynne, PhD in military and Middle Eastern history from the University of London, 7-4, Hamilton
Spectator, lexis)
The problem is that global warming was the first aspect of climate change to catch the public's attention and, for
the vast majority of people, it remains the only threat - if indeed it is a threat. After all, warmer isn't necessarily
worse, and anyway, it's a gradual process and we'll all probably be safely dead before it gets too serious. Climate
researchers have known this is untrue for about 20 years, since the evidence of the Greenland ice-cores became
available, but it has still not affected the public debate. Those cores go down two miles into the ice-cap
and bring up evidence of weather from up to 250,000 years ago. What shocked researchers realised
when they examined the cores is climate change - real climate change - is not gradual at all. It's a
threshold phenomenon, a sudden flip into a radically different state, that may then persist for a very
long time. The real danger we face is that gradual warming of the sort we are experiencing now will
trigger a sudden cooling that could drop average global temperatures by 5C (41F) in 10 years. The
sudden cooling, and the accompanying droughts, would destroy most of the agriculture that now
sustains six billion of us, and at least 90 per cent of the human race would be killed by famine and war
in a matter of a decade or so. These abrupt climate changes could herald the beginning of the next Ice
Age - but climatic flips like this can also occur for lengthy periods - even in the midst of warm-and-
wet interglacial periods like the present. WE do still live in the Ice Age, of course. For the past three million
years, ever since continental drift closed the channel between North America to South America and changed the
ocean currents, glaciers have covered more than a third of the planet's surface, almost 90 per cent of the time. The
recent pattern has been around 100,000 years of freeze, followed by a much shorter warm period. The previous
interglacial era, which ended 117,000 years ago, was only 13,000 years long, so at 15,000 years we're already into
overtime on this one - but we don't even need a major Ice Age to do the damage. The process by which the climate
flips is now fairly well understood. The trigger is a phase of gradual warming that, either through glacial
melting or just more rainfall, increases the amount of fresh water on the ocean surface between
Labrador, Greenland and Norway. This critical part of the North Atlantic is where the Gulf Stream's
water, having become salty and dense, sinks to the bottom and flows back south - but, if it is diluted by
too much fresh water on the surface, it doesn't sink and the circuit is broken. The whole global climate
suddenly flips into a cool, dry phase that can last for many centuries before warmer conditions return:
There have been two such episodes, at 12,500 years ago and 8,500 years ago, even since the end of the last Ice
Age. Or the cool, dry phase could last for 100,000 years if other conditions, like the shape of the earth's orbit and
the tilt of its axis, have already put us on the brink of a new Ice Age. The flips of the past were caused by
natural warming of one kind or another but, by adding man-made warming to the problem, we are making it
far more dangerous. We have built entire human civilisations, and increased our population a
thousandfold since the last cool, dry episode. All of that is at risk if the climate flips, and yet the public
debate is still about gradual change.
2AC: Warming- Biodiversity

Warming crushes bio-d
Gelbspan ‘04
The report came a year after a similar study was published by a team of German scientists. That study
found that ecosystems around the globe are showing the effects of climate warming. Earlier arrival of
migrant birds, earlier appearance of butterflies, earlier spawning in amphibians, earlier flowering of plants-spring
has been coming sooner every year since the 1960s, researchers reported. `Although we are only at an early
stage in the projected trends of global warming, ecological responses to recent climate change are
already clearly visible, " wrote Gian-Reto Wlalther of the University of Hanover, Germany. "There is
now ample evidence that these recent climatic changes have affected a broad range of organisms with
diverse geographical distributions, " Walther and his team reported. "The implications of such large scale,
consistent responses to relatively low average rates of climate change are large, " the researchers warned, adding
that "the projected warming for the coming decades raises even more concern about its ecological and
socio-economic consequences. " In Britain, a recent study found in the fall of 2002 that British seasons are
becoming increasingly muddled. Spring arrived three weeks early that year. Oak trees changed color more than a
week late, while beech trees lost their leaves twelve days later than usual. People in certain parts of the United
Kingdom found they had to mow their lawns all year-round. What most startled officials was the rapidity with
which the change is takingplace. Dr. Tim Sparks of the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology said the most
astonishing finding was how much earlier spring came in 2002 compared with 2001. "The majority of climate
scientists would agree that there are already signs of a warming climate and this is having a knock-on effect on
ourplants and animals," he told the BBC. The change in the timing of the seasons may seem of small consequence.
On reflection, it is profoundly sobering. As the writer Bill McKibben put it. "What this means is that, by accident,
we are changing the rhythms of nature by which we have lived our lives and planted our crops and written our
poetry for 10,000 years. " As growing numbers of plants, animals, birds, insects, and fish are becoming imperiled,
their past and future habitats face an equally bleak outlook. On landmasses around the world, habitats are
being rapidly altered. According to one report, one-third of the world's habitats could disappear or change
beyond recognition by the end of this century. In Russia, Canada, and Scandinavia, up to 70 percent of habitats
could be lost. In the United States, much of the spruce and fir forests of New England and New York state may be
wiped out if carbon dioxide emissions are not reduced, according to the World Wide Fund for Nature. "This
is not some slow, controlled change we're talking about. It's fast, it's unpredictable and it's
unprecedented during human civilization, " said Adam Markham, a co-author of the report. The study was
based on a `moderate"projection that concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will double from pre-
industrial levels during this century. These forecasts were underscored at the beginning of2004 by a study in the
journal Nature by nineteen researchers from seven countries, warning that rising temperatures could
doom more than one-third of the planet's species to extinction by 2050.
Human extinction results

California Academy of Sciences ‘04
(last modified 8/21/2004 (http://www.calacademy.org/research/library/biodiv.htm)
Currently, more than 10,000 species become extinct each year and while precise calculation is difficult, it is
certain that this rate has increased alarmingly in recent years. The central cause of species extinction is destruction
of natural habitats by human beings. Human survival itself may depend upon reversing this accelerating
threat to species diversity. Among the millions of undescribed species are important new sources of
food, medicine and other products. When a species vanishes, we lose access to the survival strategies
encoded in its genes through millions of years of evolution. We lose the opportunity to understand
those strategies which may hold absolutely essential options for our own future survival as a species.
2AC- Global Ethanol Advantage X

Global sugar ethanol production promotes economic expansion and stability in
the Caribbean and Africa
Drexler 08
[Madeline, Boston-based science journalist and author. She has a visiting appointment at the Harvard
School of Public Health,
http://www.hks.harvard.edu/ksgpress/bulletin/08winter/features/biofuels.html]
IN ALL THESE STUDIES, one conclusion is inescapable: Biofuels will change the paradigm of
agriculture. Today's worldwide surplus of arable land will suddenly become more precious. More
pointedly, the economies of fuel and food will be closely tethered. Food prices will rise, and trade
patterns will change. In the United States, corn ethanol is the darling of corporate planters and
agriculture state lobbyists. But because of fossil fuels used in growing, processing, and transporting it,
corn ethanol barely shaves off net carbon emissions, compared with petroleum-based fuels. It produces
only two-thirds of the energy of conventional gasoline. And an exploding corn ethanol industry means
higher prices for dairy and livestock farmers, whose animals feed on the grain. By contrast, ethanol
made from sugar cane produces more energy and far less greenhouse gas than corn. In Brazil, the
world's largest exporter of both sugar and ethanol, sugar-based ethanol is a major industry. If sugar
ethanol becomes the preferred first-generation fuel, many parts of the developing world could reap the
benefits. In the Caribbean and Africa, where American and European protectionism forced industries to
disinvest from sugar cane, a hot market for sugar ethanol could persuade leaders to enlarge their
agricultural frontier. Demand for biofuels could also lift the prospects of west African nations, such as
the Democratic Republic of Congo, which are blessed with land but have neither the governance nor
infrastructure to launch a biofuels industry today. "For some of these countries, biofuels could
represent exports that are larger than their current total exports," Hausmann explained. "And it's a
renewable industry -- not like diamonds, gold, or oil."
Ending tariff is necessary to promote a regional switch to ethanol and promotes

energy independence
Sotero 3/11/08
Testimony, Lexis]
It is for the reasons listed above that Brazilians have become promoters of ethanol- for themselves and
the rest of the world. Sugarcane ethanol is far superior than ethanol made from other feedstock in terms
of energy balance, environmental efficiency, productivity and cost-effectiveness. Its production should
be expanded, and its international trade encouraged. There is ample room for such expansion and trade
beyond Brazil. More than one hundred countries - including the United States - grow sugarcane around
the world, most of them emerging nations in tropical and sub-tropical regions. Switching from gasoline
to sugarcane ethanol would increase their energy independence and provide energy security for
countries that import ethanol because the number of suppliers would not only substantially increase in
quantity, but also diversity. In this scenario, one hundred developing countries could supply biofuels to
the world, instead of the twenty oil producing countries that do so now, most of them located in
volatile regions. Sugarcane can make a significant contribution to development by turning many of
these countries into producers and exporters of ethanol. The potential positive geopolitical implications
of such effort should be obvious. In a recent visit to Nicaragua, the Brazilian president heard from his
Nicaraguan counterpart, Daniel Ortega, that he would like to see his country more reliant on sugarcane
ethanol and less dependent on oil, which today comes mostly from Venezuela. Sugarcane ethanol has
all the prerequisites to become a global commodity. This will not happen, however, until developed
countries, starting with the United States, abandon the perverse logic now in place, which raises
barriers to the free trade of biofuels and allows fossil fuels-based products to move freely around the
globe, unimpeded by trade or any other barriers. If we are serious about climate change and energy
security, we should end this distortion.
2AC- Regional Influence Internal X

Ending tariff over ethanol increase US leverage within the region and checks
back Chavez
On March 9, 2007, the United States and Brazil, which together produce almost 70% of the world's
ethanol, signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to promote greater cooperation on ethanol
and other biofuels in the Western Hemisphere. The countries agreed to (1) advance research and
development bilaterally, (2) help build domestic biofuels industries in third countries, and (3) work
multilaterally to advance the global development of biofuels. Many analysts maintain that the United
States would benefit from having more energy producers in the region, while Brazil stands to further
its goal of developing ethanol into a globally traded commodity.In addition to these economic benefits,
some analysts think that an ethanol partnership with Brazil could help improve the U.S. image in Latin
America and lessen the influence of oil-rich Venezuela under Hugo Chavez. However, obstacles to
increased U.S.-Brazil cooperation onbiofuels exist, including current U.S. tariffs on most Brazilian
ethanol imports.
2AC- Trade Internal

Tariffs block trade relations now- removal causes regional energy cooperation
While some Members of Congress have been supportive of energy cooperation efforts like the U.S.-
Brazil MOU, others might not support any initiatives that they feel will adversely affect U.S. corn-
based ethanol producers. Indeed, the U.S.-Brazil MOU does not address two key issues that many
Brazilians feel are significant obstacles to expanding bilateral and regional biofuels cooperation,
namely the current subsidies and tariffs that protect U.S. corn-based ethanol producers. Since many
Members strongly favor extending the current subsidy programs for corn producers and tariffs on
foreign ethanol, these issues may be obstacles to maintaining expanded U.S.-Brazil biofuels
cooperation. In addition, Members who feel that Brazil's positions on agricultural trade during the
failed Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) and in the World Trade Organization (WTO)
negotiations have adversely affected U.S. interests may also be opposed to the MOU on biofuels. On
the other hand, some may see energy cooperation as an issue on which a positive U.S.-Brazil agenda
can be based, presenting a unique opportunity to overcome past trade disputes.
Plan results in a rekindling of FTAA negotiations

De Armas 07
[Marcel, JD Candidate at American University, 7 Sustainable Dev. L. and Pol’y 25, Lexis]
To protect its environment the United States should eliminate the current ethanol tariff and subsidy, or
at least focus the subsidy on crops with high cellulose contents. In particular, eliminating the tariff on
ethanol will promote the growth of an ethanol distribution system because more imports would enter
the country increasing the market for ethanol. n16 In addition, eliminating the ethanol tariff would
increase the demand for sugar cane, and thus, reduce third world countries' excess supply. As a result,
the price of sugar cane would increase providing additional revenue to the third world sugar cane
producers. n17 The additional sugar cane revenue entering these third world countries could foster the
development of a middle class interested in protecting their own environment and promoting
sustainable development. n18 Finally, the elimination of the tariff and subsidy could rekindle the trade
negotiations for a Free Trade Area of the Americas that stalled over agriculture and service industry
differences between Brazil and the United States. n19
Tariff restricts free trade initiatives- despite current progress countries point to
the tariff to justify their own protectionism collapsing deals
Llosa 2007
[Alvaro Vargas, Senior Fellow at the Center on Global Prosperity,
http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=1953]
One final caveat. It is hard to see how the new ethanol alliance will boost the Doha Round of world
trade talks, as some commentators are claiming. The principal stumbling block is the fact that
developing countries are using American and European protectionism as an excuse to maintain their
own barriers in areas such as services. The U.S. ethanol program already has caused an artificial rise in
the price of cereals, giving new arguments to developing nations who want to blame the United States
for impoverishing them.
2AC- Brazil Ethanol Industry Internal

Removing tariff will expand Brazils ethanol industry and make it a major
exporter
[Lexis]
The ethanol giants of southeastern Brazil have transformed how 185 million residents of this South
American nation power their cars and trucks. Now, they say they're ready to start the same ethanol
revolution in the rest of the world, if only the world will let them. That, however, is where Brazil's
ethanol leaders are hitting problems. They already churn out what many consider to be the world's
cheapest and most efficient mass-produced biofuel and say they can export billions of gallons more.
Yet the rest of the world doesn't seem to want what the Brazilians have. In the United States, a 54 cent-
per-gallon tax blocks most Brazilian ethanol from reaching U.S. consumers. Similar tariffs also block
access to Europe, China and other major energy markets. Getting rid of such tariffs, Brazilian
producers argue, would give the world what it needs _ cheap, clean and environmentally friendly
alternative fuel. Ending the trade barriers also would ignite Brazil's ethanol industry and turn the
country into a major biofuel exporter, said Jose Goldemberg, one of the founders of Brazil's national
ethanol program. Instead, the United States continues to block Brazilian ethanol while boosting
production of ethanol made from corn, which produces much less ethanol per acre than sugar does,
cuts into food supplies and does little to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions. Other countries also have
avoided Brazilian ethanol, instead experimenting with wheat, rapeseed and other crops that also
produce less biofuel per acre. "It doesn't make much sense to produce ethanol from corn," Goldemberg
said. "What the United States needs to do if it wants to solve its energy problems is very simple. It
needs to import ethanol from Brazil."
A2- Plan è Deforestation

No risk of deforestation or warming- sugar production produces carbon credit
[Lexis]
U.S. critics have made the most noise about the possible effects of ethanol production on Brazil's
fragile rainforests and other ecosystems, criticisms that Brazilian producers call absurd. The reasoning
goes that growing more sugar cane would replace other crops such as soybeans, which would force
farmers to cultivate those other crops in freshly cleared forest or savannah, said Timothy Searchinger, a
U.S. scientist who headed an influential study on land-use changes sparked by ethanol production.
Cutting down forest for biofuels would release tons of carbon into the atmosphere and erase any
greenhouse-gas benefits of using the biofuel over fossil fuels, Searchinger said. "People have thought
ethanol was a win-win-win situation," he said. "And Brazil has the potential to be really quite good,
but today, producing more ethanol there would still push the expansion of farmlands." Brazilian
officials scoff at such criticisms, saying sugar producers don't knock down forests but instead expand
into degraded pastures. They say the country's beef industry, which on average grazes one head of
cattle for every 2.5 acres, could double that rate and free up to about 260 million acres for other uses,
including sugar production. "Sugar is not growing in the forest," said Marcos Jank, president of the
country's biggest sugar industry group UNICA. "You don't destroy forest to grow sugar. You actually
produce a carbon credit and not a carbon deficit."
No Link- Sugar crops are produced outside of the Amazon on already cultivated
land
Sotero 3/11/08
Testimony, Lexis]
One issue raised about the potential negative impact of sugarcane ethanol production is its indirect
impact on the Amazon in particular, and on land use in Brazil in general. Outside of the Amazon
region, Brazil has 200 million hectares (or, 500 million acres) of under-utilized pasture land, much of it
degraded. Recent scientific, independent research showed that the use of degraded pastures for
sugarcane production in Brazil generates a "carbon credit," because sugarcane captures larger amounts
of carbon than the quantities of carbon that are stocked in these degraded pastures. On the other hand,
none of the available models today provide a sound assessment of changes in agricultural production
that might be taking place in the world as a result of expanded feedstock production in major biofuels
producing countries.
A2- Oil DA
No Link- Ethanol is already being imported from Brazil- should have already
triggered the link
Removing tariff has no effect on oil prices
Platts Commodity News 2006
[Factiva, 9/6]
The removal of the 54 cent/gal import tariff on Brazilian ethanol would have only a "very marginal
effect" on US gasoline prices, Keith Collins, chief economist at the US Department of Agriculture, told
a US Senate panel Wednesday. Removal of the tariff "could help, particularly along the coasts, but
would have little" impact nationwide since the amount of ethanol that could be imported from Brazil
would be only a tiny fraction of the ethanol produced in the US, Collins told the Senate Environment
and Public Works Committee, which was conducting a hearing on the US' renewable fuels program.
For example, lifting of the tariff could result in "a couple of hundred percent" increase Brazilian
imports, Collins said, but imports now are only about 80 million gallons per year, compared with US
production of around 5 billion gallons per year. Collins noted, however, that if US ethanol prices
remained strong, lifting of the tariff might encourage Brazil to expand its sugar cane production, which
could eventually boost its exports to the US. All non-Caribbean Basin ethanol is subject to the 54
cent/gal import tariff. Last April, when US gasoline prices were spiking as the industry was removing
MTBE from gasoline supplies and replacing it with ethanol, several lawmakers suggested removing, or
at least temporarily suspending, the tariff on Brazilian imports in hopes of cutting gasoline prices.
No link- plan doesn’t end oil consumption. Ethanol will only be 10% of a gallon
of gas.
Turn- Economy
Current prices will collapse the economy
Luft ‘8
(Gal, executive director of Institute for the Analysis of Global Security, PhD in strategic studies from
Johns Hopkins, The Cutting Edge, 1-28, “Bush begs the Saudis,”
http://www.thecuttingedgenews.com/index.php?article=294)
President Bush’s appeal to the Saudis to increase oil production is more pitiful than understandable. At
$100 a barrel, the United States bleeds over a billion dollars per day in order to finance its petroleum
import needs. The result: ballooning trade deficits, growing unemployment, a weakened dollar and
crumbling financial institutions like Citigroup and Merrill Lynch now forced to beg Persian Gulf
monarchies for cash infusions. At current oil prices, the U.S. economy is melting faster than the ice
caps.
And, Oil will hit 200 by year end

Schlossberg ‘8
(Boris, Sr. Currency Strategist, Daily FX, “$1000 Gold? $100 Oil? One May Glitter While The Other
Turns to Sludge,” 1-10,
http://www.dailyfx.com/story/topheadline/_1000_Gold___100_Oil__One_1199968093530.html)
Oil has been the other great commodity story of 2007. In fact as 2008 opens for business the fastest-
growing bet in the oil market these days is that the price of crude will double to $200 a barrel by the
end of the year. According to Bloomberg, “Options to buy oil for $200 on the New York Mercantile
Exchange rose 10-fold in the past two months to 5,533 contracts, a record increase for any similar
period. These contracts – which are the cheapest way to speculate in energy markets - appreciated 36
percent since early December as crude futures reached a record $100.09 on Jan. 3.” But are oil traders
getting ahead of themselves? The demand for crude has been predicated on two key drivers –geo-
political risk and global growth.
A2- Oil DA
This makes a price collapse inevitable – the only way to avoid their impact is to
moderate prices now
Douthwaite ‘03
(Richard, economist and founder of the economic think tank Foundation for the Economics of
Sustainability “Oil and the Irish Economy,”
http://www.constructireland.ie/articles/0210douthwaite.php)
The bank referred to a ‘spike’ because prices could not stay at the $100 level for more than a few
months without causing the collapse of the world economy. This would happen because we would all
be spending so much more to buy our oil that we would be unable to carry on buying other things at
the rate we do at present, particularly as the prices of other fuels would rise in step with that of oil. As a
result of the diversion of our spending, factories around the world would find they had spare capacity.
They would lay off staff and cancel expansion projects and, as construction work is so energy
intensive, its cessation would cause oil demand to fall rapidly. This is exactly what happened the last
time its price went significantly above the $20 level in 1972 money. Millions of people would become
unemployed and cut their spending to the bare minimum, causing other people to lose their jobs too. A
global depression could develop in which the lack of activity in the world economy could cause the
price of oil in today’s money to plummet from $100 back to around $15 a barrel again.
Our impact is empirically true – another oil spike will crash the global economy
Dyer ‘07
(Gwynne, London-based independent journalist whose articles are published in 45 countries, Canberra
Times, 8-6, lexis)
NINE of the last 10 serious downturns in the world economy followed a spike in the price of oil, and
we are heading for another spike, with oil back up near the peak of $US78.40 a barrel that it reached
almost exactly a year ago. A record number of options contracts are now being sold that entitle
customers to buy oil in the future at $US100 a barrel. That tells you where the inside players think the
price of oil is heading, since those options will only be of value if the price were actually above
$US100 a barrel. That is the price that Goldman Sachs, the world's biggest brokerage house, predicted
oil would reach by 2009. However, one big negative headline further disruption of supplies from
Nigeria or Iraq, say and oil could be trading at more than $US100 a barrel by next month. But the
concern is not really about oil prices. It's about what more expensive oil will do to the world economy,
and the professional optimists are still optimistic.
Your impact is empirically false – oil prices dropped 18 dollars last fall
Halligan ‘06
(Liam, economics editor for The Sunday Telegraph (London), “Winds of change shake forecasts,” 10-
22, lexis)
Since July, oil prices have fallen from $78 to $60 ( pounds 41 to pounds 32) a barrel - the biggest drop
for 15 years. Over the same period, the Middle East has been relatively quiet - with the US tempering
its Iran rhetoric and fighting in Lebanon on hold.
A2- Russian Oil

Dutch disease is crippling the Russian economy – Putin is mishandling revenue –
and reserves mean Russia can withstand a price fall to 50 dollars
Evans-Pritchard ‘8
(Ambrose, Int'l Business Editor for The Telegraph (London), "Russian economy succumbs to the oil
curse," 2-5, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2008/02/04/ccview104.xml)
This is the curse of commodity wealth, the "Dutch Disease" that eats at the competitive foundations of
an economy and incubates a parasite culture. No doubt Russia's scientists, engineers, and cyber talent,
will enrich the country, but first it must overcome the toxic effects of oil at $90 a barrel. "We can no
longer afford to buy Russian equipment," said Yevgeny Ivanov, head of Polyus Gold. "The prices here
are one and a half times higher than abroad so we're having to break our rigid rule and turn to foreign-
made machinery. It is bad news for Russian firms. The commodity super-cycle is catching up with us
through higher prices. It is a disheartening picture," he said. "There's no infrastructure, no power, no
roads. Electricity costs twice what they pay in Alaska and Canada. We face a Soviet bureaucracy
passing decrees that make you weep," he said. The government has declared an infrastructure
emergency. Russia has hit the limits of durable growth on today's rickety foundations. China has
built 25,000 miles of highways since 1988, Russia a few hundred. President Vladimir Putin has ordered a $1
trillion blitz on ports, highways, power grids, and water plants over seven years. Some 2,600 miles of road are
planned each year, starting with the St Petersburg "High-Speed Diameter" and the $3bn Helsinki Expressway.
Bouygues and Bechtel are battling for the first tender. Around $200bn is to come from state coffers: the rest from
industry and banks. Taken together, the scheme is the biggest project in the world outside China. Finance minister
Alexei Kudrin said the railways alone would need $440bn by 2030. "We are prepared to guarantee foreign
investors a high level of return," he said. Hence the pinstripe and Blackberry brigade descending on Moscow.
There were no visible tourists on my BA flight from London. Two thirds of the aircraft was business class, a
telling sign. The infrastructure edict comes late. The economy is already over-heating. Inflation has hit
12pc, despite Soviet price controls on food. Factory gate prices are up 25pc. Yet the all-conquering
rouble rises, strapped to oil. This is double strangulation. "The government must bring down
inflation, there is no other way," said Andrew Bosomworth, head of PIMCO in Europe. "Interest rates
[7pc] are negative in real terms. It will encourage borrowing until the cows come home," he said. Car
sales rose 67pc last year to $53bn, imported Audis and Renaults by the look of it. The current account
surplus will shrivel to 2.6pc of GDP this year, down from 9.5pc two years ago. The oil bonanza is
draining into shopping malls. "We believe the trade surplus will disappear before the end of 2009,"
said Danske Bank. The slippage is ominous with oil, gas, and metals near historic highs. They make up
80pc of exports. "Russia has all the classical symptoms of the Dutch Disease," said a World Bank
report. "Firms have largely exhausted the productivity gains derived from idle capacity and labour shedding
after the 1998 crisis," it said. This feels like the late phase of the 1970s oil boom, when Mexicans briefly thought
they walked on water. The sequel was not happy. Eighty cents on every dollar above $27 a barrel goes to the state.
Energy rents fund 48pc of the budget. Yet the fiscal surplus has halved in two years. Plans are now afoot to lavish
funds on long-suffering pensioners. One sympathises, but this is how macro-blunders occur. Mr Kudrin is
chopping his figures as fast as Alistair Darling. The budget surplus will be 2.8pc in 2007, not 4.8pc as expected. If
a US-British-Club Med-Japanese recession knocks oil down to $50, Russia faces a crunch. Ex-premier
Yegor Gaidar said Russia is ready this time. "It won't be a catastrophe. We can easily adjust because of
our accumulated reserves," he said. Perhaps, but the credit markets are sniffing Russia-risk. Even
Gazprom is paying much higher spreads. "The bond market effectively shut down in October," said
Commerzbank. The Oil Stabilization Fund was supposed to inoculate Russia against the curse by
siphoning revenues out the domestic economy. Certainly it helps. There will be no repeat of 1998
default. Russia has paid off its foreign debt. The oil fund ($157bn) and foreign reserves ($470bn) are
enough to deflect anything short of financial cataclysm.
A2- Russian Oil

High prices are increasing inflation and prevent reform – and Russian oil
production will decrease in the next 5 years
Weafer 11-28-7
(Chris, chief strategist at UralSib oil, Prime-Tass, Moscow News Service, 11-28-07, "$100 Oil and
Russia: Sinking or Swimming in a sea of cash," http://www.prime-
tass.com/news/show.asp?topicid=65&id=430430)
But high average oil prices also bring problems that, if not handled properly, have the potential to
negate the benefits of higher revenues. As the government now moves from a period of sanitizing oil
revenues (via the stabilization fund) to a more active spending phase, the pressure on an already-rising
inflation base will increase. Higher revenues that translate into higher spending levels will push the
inflation rate much higher. That could kill off, or severely reduce, the growth trend, as the economy
becomes increasingly less competitive. Higher oil prices will make the government's plan to allow
ruble appreciation in 2008 easier, but will also make the ruble even more attractive to speculative
investors. A rising volume of speculative capital inflows can provide a short-term boost to the
economy, and some asset types, but ultimately it will severely destabilize the economy. This is what
happened in South East Asia in the mid 1990s. High oil revenues that make spending programmes
easier to fund have historically slowed the pace of reform in oil-producing countries. While high oil
revenues can fund growth in other sectors, the real danger is that the budget and economy actually
increase reliance on these high revenue flows, which increase the vulnerability of an economy to future
oil price shocks. For Russia's investment case, the optimum oil price per barrel is around $75 p/bbl, or
about $10 p/bbl higher than the price average assumed in government investment plans. Despite the
sharp rise in the price of oil since the late spring, there is considerable uncertainty as to where the price
will head in 2008. A slide of the US economy into recession, dragging the rest of the world with it, is
the biggest downside threat, while a supply cut over Iran is the biggest on the upside. But there are
other clear and contradictory drivers that will affect the price. One of those is the fact that Russia's oil
production looks set to plateau sometime over the next five years, while export volumes will inevitably
fall. The almost zero growth in production is due to the low level of capital expenditure in the industry
and a deliberate Kremlin policy of not making available any new hydrocarbon deposits for
development. At the same time, domestic demand for oil products, particularly gasoline, has been
rising steadily, because of the expanding economy and the more than 2 mln new cars sold in Russia
annually. Until recently, the growth in demand for fuel has been matched by efficiency gains. But that
is now over. It is estimated that in the next 4 to 5 years, Russia will reduce the volume of oil exports by
an annualized 250,000 bbl/d. By 2012, therefore, Russia's export volume of crude and oil products will
be between 1.0 and 1.3 million barrels per day lower than current export volumes.
A2- Russian Oil

Oil is not key to the Russian economy
Baker ‘7
(Dean, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in DC and PhD in economics from
U Mich, “Russia's "Oil-Driven" Economic Resurrection,” July 1, 2007,
http://www.prospect.org/csnc/blogs/beat_the_press_archive)
Russia's "Oil-Driven" Economic Resurrection. That's what the Washington Post calls Russia's growth
spurt under Putin, but the numbers don't really support this claim. Russia is not Saudi Arabia. It has a
lot of oil, but its also a big economy. It does not live by oil alone. Russia exports approximately 7
million barrels a day, which comes to 2.6 billion barrels a year. If we say that the oil price run-up of
recent years has added a preimum of $30 per barrel compared to the pre-Iraq war level, this implies an
dividend for Russia of $78 billion a year. According to the CIA Factbook, Russia's exchange rate GDP
(the appropriate measure here -- the exports are paid for in foreign currency) was $730 billion in 2006.
That puts the oil premium at 10.7 percent of GDP. The IMF data puts average GDP growth in Russia
since 2000 at 6.8 percent annually for a cumulative increase of more than 58 percent thus far this
decade. The oil dividend certainly helped this growth, but it can hardly explain such a strong and
sustained performance. The more obvious explanation is that Russia broke out of the economic
straightjacket that the United States and the IMF had imposed when it devalued its currency and
temporarily suspended payments on its debt in the middle of 1998. This move was portrayed as a
disaster for Russia at the time, as the IMF and the financial team in the Clinton administration (dubbed
at the time "the Committee to Save the World") did everything they could to keep Russia from taking
this route. It turned out that the Clinton administration's failure in Russia (mourned by Robert Rubin in
his book), was the basis for Russia's economic revival. The jump in world oil prices has helped, but
Russia's change in economic policies was far more important.
Resource depletion and heavy taxes means oil will turn negative soon
Zhdannikov ‘8
(Dmitry, correspondent for Reuters, “Russia oil firms need to shape up to grow abroad,” Reuters, 2-5,
http://www.forbes.com/)
Heavy taxation has crimped growth in Russian oil production while Kremlin orders for higher social
spending and large missions abroad for state energy champions are burdening firms such as Gazprom
and Rosneft. “Depletion of oil and gas resources means that far more efficient cost management and
more investment in exploration and new production is necessary if Russia wants not only to grow but
even to maintain its current level of production,” said Vladimir Melnikov from MMD, a Moscow-based
consultancy. President Vladimir Putin, hugely popular at home, has picked Gazprom chairman and First Deputy
Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev as his preferred candidate for the March 2 presidential elections, making
Medvedev’s victory virtually certain. Putin plans to become prime minister under Medvedev and is largely
expected to retain political influence and keep the role of arbiter to prevent infighting between rival Kremlin clans.
Medvedev, 42, will take over the $1.3tn economy after a nine year-long economic boom, which saw the world’s
second-largest oil exporter raise oil output by over 60%. He will also have to look after much bigger state firms,
which control half of the oil industry compared to just 10% before Putin came to power and embarked on a large
renationalisation including the landmark Yukos takeover. Gazprom and Rosneft have benefited most from the
moves, which drew parallels with resource nationalism in countries like Venezuela. Both also piled up heavy debts
for acquisitions. They are now leading industry-wide calls for lighter taxes, a plea which has become more
insistent after a steady appreciation of the rouble against the US dollar over the past five years has threatened the
competitiveness of exporters. “Taxes are too high. Something must be done in the next three to four years,
otherwise we will see negative surprises,” said Ron Smith from Alfa Bank. Oil and gas production is expected
to remain flat in Russia in the years to come. Rosneft is growing much faster than the industry and
Gazprom has in the pipeline a number of potential value-added projects, but they still need to persuade
Western shareholders to stick to their increasingly expensive stocks. “The Russian state hydrocarbon
sector is still to meet the production effectiveness of Western firms,” says Melnikov. That could prove
to be an uphill task. “Occasionally, Gazprom or Rosneft will be requested to do something which they
would never do for purely economic reason,” said Smith. Those requests could include connecting
remote Russian regions to the gas network or building new pipelines such as last month’s Kremlin-
brokered deal between Gazprom and Serbia. Belgrade agreed to sell control of its national oil company
in return for a Gazprom pledge to route a big new gas pipeline through Serbia, making the country a
major distribution hub. Vladimir Milov from the Institute of Energy Policies said the Serbian deal was
politically driven and raised a lot of questions. “I think it would be much cheaper to agree with
Ukraine on better transit terms,” he said. He adds that a sudden decline in the oil price will not only
hamper development plans by Gazprom and Rosneft, which together owe more than $70bn to credit
institutions, but put at risk the Kremlin’s entire social development plan. Even if the price remains
high, the Russian oil industry’s free cash flow would turn negative from 2011 if taxes are kept at
current levels, according to predictions by BP’s Russian joint venture TNK-BP.
1AR Russia – Dutch Disease

High oil prices cause the economy to overheat and wreck growth in other sectors
Oomes and Kalcheva ‘7
(Nienke and Katerina, of the Bank of Finland – Institute for Economies in Transition, “Diagnosing
Dutch disease: Does Russia have the symptoms?” July, http://www.bof.fi/NR/rdonlyres/F9A915B5-
39DE-45BB-92F2-B4C0ADFFE684/0/dp0707.pdf)
Oil and gas exports have contributed significantly to recent output growth in Russia. Crude oil, oil
products, and gas together account for almost 60 percent of Russia’s total export revenues,4 and for an
estimated 20–25 percent of Russia’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP).5 In recent years, record high oil
prices have generated significant windfall revenues, have put the real exchange rate on an appreciation
path, and have stimulated the economy to the point of overheating (Oomes and Dynnikova, 2006).
However, in spite of record high oil prices, crude oil output and export growth have recently slowed
significantly (Figure 1). In 2005 and 2006, oil output grew by only about 2½ percent year-on-year,
following much higher growth rates of around 10 percent in both 2003 and 2004. There are several
reasons for the slowdown. First, the recent increase in state ownership created significant uncertainty
in the sector. Second, increases in oil sector taxation and bottlenecks in the distribution network have
raised production and transportation costs. Third, there appear to be diminishing returns to existing oil
extraction, implying that further growth is possible only with significant new investment in the
exploration and development of new fields and the necessary export infrastructure. In addition to the
constraints on fuel sector growth, the experience of other resource- rich countries suggests that natural
resource wealth may lead to lower growth in thenon-resource sector as well. The notion that there may
be such a “natural resource curse” is based on the empirical finding that resource-rich economies, on
average, experience lower growth rates than resource-poor economies (Sachs and Warner, 1995, 2001).
One explanation for this is that the large windfall revenues from natural resources tend to give rise to
rent-seeking behavior and fights over the distribution of these revenues, which in turn impede growth,
as productive resources are drawn into non-productive activities. A second explanation is that resource
rents tend to be volatile, which is bad for growth. A third explanation— the one we will focus on in this
paper—is that of “Dutch Disease,” the hypothesis that windfall revenues from natural resources give
rise to real exchange rate appreciation, which in turn reduces the competitiveness of the manufacturing
sector.6
A2- Domestic Ethanol Econ DA

Impact empirically denied- given high oil prices and the Caribbean countries
loophole large amounts of Brazilian ethanol are already entering the US
Impact is inevitable and only Brazilian ethanol can solve- 3 Reasons
Soil erosion and pesticides used in the domestic market will reduce arable land
and cause a collapse of the industry
Runaway warming kills the adaptive ability of crops- causes a failure in
production and distribution
Food Prices- Waning food crops and high prices means the price is on a bubble
now- domestic ethanol expansion collapses the market
No collapse of the ethanol industry unless oil drops to 50 bucks
Babcock 5/7/08
[Bruce A., Center for Agricultural and Research Development at Iowa State University,
http://www.marketresearchanalyst.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/corn_and_ethanol.pdf]
In conclusion, there is no doubt that the growth of the ethanol industry is an important factor in the
run-up in agricultural commodity prices. But this does not imply that a change in Federal policy would
reverse this growth. My testimony about the long-term impacts on the price of corn and related
commodities is based on simple arithmetic: existing ethanol plants will operate at nearly full capacity
if they can cover their operating costs; under-construction plants will get finished if it makes financial
sense to finish them; and new plants will be constructed if market prices dictate. Thus, unless we have
a return to $40 or $50 crude oil, we can expect the price of corn to be well above historical levels for
the foreseeable future even if all support for corn ethanol were eliminated.
Current demand exceeds supply- Brazil ethanol doesn’t hurt the industry and
cooperation advantage means we stay competitive
Severinghaus 2005
[Joel, IFBF International Trade Analyst, Iowa Farm Bureau,
http://www.iowafarmbureau.com/programs/commodity/information/pdf/Trade%20Matters%20column
%20050714%20Brazilian%20ethanol.pdf.]
So why are we importing Brazilian ethanol? Simple economics: U.S. ethanol demand now exceeds
U.S. ethanol supply, so imports will make up the difference. And Brazil can produce ethanol from
sugarcane more cheaply than we can make it from Iowa corn. Last year, the Brazilians could export
ethanol for less than $0.90 per gallon, whereas the production cost for Iowa ethanol plants is
somewhere around $1.10 per gallon. Half our 2004 ethanol imports came directly from Brazil without
duty-free reprocessing the Caribbean, even paying the full 2.5 percent plus 54 cents per gallon import
tariff. If the world price of oil is high enough, and the price of ethanol in the U.S. is high enough, it
will apparently be profitable for someone to import ethanol from Brazil. Economists will tell you that
imports aren’t cause for alarm. On the contrary, imports are a sign of a strong growing economy, where
we can afford to buy imports that let us consume more than we could produce domestically. And a
situation where demand exceeds supply usually implies higher prices for producers. We may not like
import competition for home-grown commodities like ethanol, but if we want increased access to
foreign markets for our farm exports, we can’t have it both ways. Our challenge will be to compete
with lower-cost producers, such as Brazil, on terms of technological innovation (cellulosic ethanol
made from cornstalks rather than grain) Page 4 and improved efficiency (high-starch corn varieties
specifically for ethanol, enzymes that improve ethanol yield) rather than merely on price. In the
meantime, some small percentage of ethanol in U.S. gas pumps, particularly on the coasts, may
continue to come from the sugarcane fields of Brazil.
A2- Generic Econ DA

Warming will collapse the economy-transitioning to renewables creates a
massive amount of jobs
Ross Gelbspan, author of The Heat is On, March 1, 2004 (Dollars & Sense, l/n)
Even from the perspective of capitalist financial institutions, this plan should make perfect sense.
Recently, Swiss Re-Insurance said it anticipates losses from climate impacts to reach $ 150 billion a
year within this decade. Munich Re, the world's largest reinsurer, estimates that within several decades,
losses from climate impacts will reach $ 300 billion a year. Climate change will destroy property;
raise health care costs; ruin crops; and damage energy, communications and transportation
infrastructures. It will likely wound the insurance and banking sectors in the process. Last year,
the largest re-insurer in Britain said that unchecked climate change could bankrupt the global
economy by 2065. And its effects hit poor countries hardest--not because nature discriminates against
the poor, but because poor countries can't afford the kinds of infrastructure needed to buffer its
impacts. By contrast, a worldwide energy transition would create a dramatic expansion of the overall
wealth in the global economy. It would raise living standards in the South without compromising those
in the North. Rewiring the planet with clean energy in time to meet nature's deadline will generate a
staggering number of new jobs for the global labor force. By blocking a transition to clean energy,
the coal and oil industries are hindering a huge surge in new jobs all over the world.
A2- Generic Econ DA: Non Uniques

Expert consensus is that we’re in a recession
McGee and Soat 3-24
(Marianne and Joan, Information Week, “Recession and You,” lexis)
Like Mathews, business technology leaders need to get ahead of the downturn. Earlier this month, 71%
of the 55 economists in a Wall Street Journal poll said the United States is in a recession, and, on
average, they gave it a 48% chance of being worse than the downturns in 2001 and 1990. Most IT and
business pros in our survey also see a recession upon us or looming. When the usually upbeat tech
managers join economists in seeing tough times ahead, it's time to prepare for the worst, even if you
hold out hope for the best.
Housing, unemployment, food and energy costs, and spending mean the economy is
tanked
Bloomberg News 3-28
(reported in the Boston Globe,
http://www.boston.com/business/articles/2008/03/28/economy_barely_grows_in_4th_quarter/)
WASHINGTON - The US economy grew at an annual pace of 0.6 percent from October though
December, weakened by a deepening housing slump that may be bringing an end to the six-year
expansion. The gain in gross domestic product followed a 4.9 percent third-quarter growth rate, the Commerce
Department said yesterday. Measures of inflation were revised down and corporate profits dropped. Claims for
jobless benefits over the past month were at the highest level in more than two years, a separate report
showed, indicating a rise in firings that may further slow consumer spending. With declines in business
investment and construction, the world's largest economy may not grow from January through March.
"It's hard to see any good news at all," said Nariman Behravesh, chief economist at Global Insight Inc.,
a Lexington, Mass., forecasting firm. "Housing is still dropping like a stone and now the consumer is
slowing, too. That's the big difference" from last quarter. Yesterday's report was the final of three estimates
provided by the government. The advance reading on first-quarter growth is due April 30. Economists forecast a
final GDP reading of 0.6 percent, according to the median projection in a Bloomberg News survey. The figures
yesterday included a first look at corporate profits for the quarter. Earnings dropped 3.3 percent, a second straight
decline, to an annual rate of $1.57 trillion. The drop may even be understated because the government doesn't take
into account asset write-downs and loan-loss provisions in calculating current-quarter profits. Financial firms still
recorded a 15 percent drop in profits last quarter, even without reflecting those losses. For all of last year, profits
were up 2.7 percent, the smallest gain since a decline in 2001. The average number of Americans filing first-time
claims for unemployment benefits over the last four weeks rose to 358,000, the highest since October 2005. The
figures indicate employers are cutting jobs or delaying hiring. "That's a pretty good indication of the softness in
the labor markets," said Stephen Gallagher, chief US economist at Societe Generale SA in New York. "Businesses
are nervous and are cautious." Companies continue to pare jobs. Western Union Co., the biggest US money
transfer business, said last week it'll close offices in Missouri and Texas, cutting 650 union jobs. A weaker
economy and tighter immigration controls have limited domestic money transfers and remittances to Mexico,
hurting the Englewood, Colo.-based company. Employers cut 85,000 jobs in the first two months of this year, the
most in nearly five years, Labor Department figures showed this month. The GDP report showed prices rose at a
2.4 percent pace in the last three months of 2007, down from the 2.7 percent estimated previously. Excluding food
and fuel, consumers paid 2.5 percent more for goods and services at an annual rate, down from the 2.7 percent
projected last month. Consumer spending, which accounts for more than two-thirds of the economy, rose at a 2.3
percent annual rate in the fourth quarter, revised up from the 1.9 percent increase previously estimated, according
to yesterday's report. Spending rose 2.8 percent in the third quarter. The weakening labor market, combined
with higher food and energy costs and the ongoing slump in housing, has unnerved consumers this
quarter. The Conference Board said this week its confidence index fell to a five-year low in March.
Subprime, consumer spending, housing, and dollar depreciation mean recession is

inevitable
Huiwen 3-28
(Yang, The Straits Times (Singapore) “US economy expected to worsen before it gets better” lexis)
IT WILL be a slow and painful road to recovery for the United States economy, as its sub-prime write-
downs and credit crisis deepen, according to the British Chamber of Commerce's resident economic
spokesman in Singapore. Mr Roman Scott told the chamber's first biannual economic briefing
yesterday that total write-downs had amounted to about $195US billion ($269S.5 billion), but this
could be just 'the tip of the iceberg'. He said further write-downs for other associated credit losses
could eventually bring the total bill to as much as $500US billion. 'It is very misleading to say it's a
short-term problem. It is not a shallow recession, not a passing blink,' said Mr Scott, who is also the
managing director of Calamander Capital, a Singapore-based investment and advisory firm. He added
that it would take two to three years to clear up the credit mess. The credit crunch and the spectre of a
recession coupled with inflation and the massive depreciation of the US currency - each a big problem
in itself - are, in combination, something of a perfect financial storm, said Mr Scott. 'The US has been
an accident waiting to happen for a long time,' he said. The Federal Reserve's rate cuts will help ailing
banks by reducing their cost of money, but these will be ineffective in staving off a recession, which
is consumer- and household-driven.
A2- Generic Econ DA: Non Uniques

Economy is on a downward spiral – it’ll get worse before it gets better
Stafford 3-27
(Diane, reporter for the Kansas City Start, http://www.kansascity.com/business/story/549652.html)
The U.S. real gross domestic product increased at an annual rate of 0.6 percent in the fourth quarter of
2007, the Bureau of Economic Analysis said Thursday. That growth rate — the same as earlier
preliminary estimates — adds another signal of a slowing economy. Real GDP in the third quarter had
increased at a 4.9 percent rate. Real GDP is the output of goods and services produced by labor and property in the
United States. The bureau said the fourth-quarter deceleration “primarily reflected a downturn in
inventory investment and decelerations in exports, in federal government spending, and in personal
consumption expenditures.” Real personal consumption spending increased 2.3 percent in the fourth quarter,
compared with an increase of 2.8 percent in the third quarter. The bureau’s report also noted that corporate profits
from current production decreased $52.9 billion in the fourth quarter, compared with a decrease of $20.5 billion in
the third quarter. Another sign of a slowdown, published Thursday, was a further dip in the Conference
Board’s Help-Wanted Advertising Index, a measure of job offerings in 51 major metropolitan
newspapers around the country. “More regions of the country are experiencing economic distress, and
the impact is now evident in the labor markets,” said Ken Goldstein, labor economist at the business
research organization. “There’s been very little profit growth, and virtually no job growth in the past
three months. Businesses are cautious about investing and hiring.” The board’s proprietary index, which
measures print advertising volume, now stands at 21, nine points lower than the same time last year. It should also
be noted, though, that print help-wanted ads have been trending down in the last year as employers turn to online
job recruitment tools. Goldstein commented on the ripple effect: “The lack of job growth sours consumer
attitudes and spending plans. The lack of spending causes businesses to retrench. This is the downward
spiral we are on.”
A2- Generic Econ DA: Case Outweighs

Turn-- Costs of failure to act outweigh the costs of acting
Environmental Law, Winter 2008, p. 180-1
Carbon emissions trading, one of the Kyoto Protocol's flexible mechanisms, presents a promising tool
to limit global emissions of greenhouse gases that cause climate change. Questions still remain
whether carbon markets provide a cost-efficient and environmentally effective method for reducing
GHG emissions. Ideally, emissions trading reduces the cost of meeting emissions obligations by
placing a monetary value on GHG emissions and using the flexibility of the market to allow
participants to decide whether it is cheaper to reduce emissions or to purchase excess allowances from
others. Emissions trading holds the promise to correct a market failure that allows "companies [to be]
rewarded financially for maximizing externalities in order to minimize costs." Currently, business
decisions do not incorporate the true external cost of climate change because there is no
incorporated production cost for the environmental effects of emitting GHG emissions into the
commons. Sir Nicholas Stern, a former chief economist of the World Bank, recognizes this
market problem and estimates that if climate change goes unabated, the total cost of climate
change could top $ 5.5 trillion, or twenty percent of the world's economic output, approximately
equal to the cost to the economy suffered during the Great Depression. In contrast, "an
investment of one percent [$ 350 billion] of total world economic output would suffice to avert
the direst consequences of global warming." Emissions trading promises to incorporate
environmental externalities and to "enable capital markets to achieve their intended purpose - to
consistently allocate capital to its highest and best use for the good of the people and planet." If an
emissions trading system adequately limits the supply of emissions allowance through a sufficient cap
to prevent anthropogenic climate change, a carbon market will force participants to find cost-efficient
ways to either reduce emissions or acquire reduction credits as cheaply as possible to meet their
obligation.
A2- Reduce Tariff CP

Permutation- do the counterplan
Pics bad- Voting Issue
A. Steals Aff Ground - PICS force the affirmative to debate against themselves
and give an unfair advantage to the Neg.
B. Infinite Regression - They justify the penny saved is a penny Earned CP.
C. Causes Vague Plan Writing - Flips Back all of the Reasons why Pics are good
No Offense - The net benefits can be run as disads.
Doesn’t Solve the aff- Complete removal of the tariff is necessary to end the
signal of protectionism in the ethanol market- this is key
Necessary to promote Brazilian imports that check back bad farming
practices
Allows cooperation that expands the market globally- checks global
warming
Latin America is criticizing US hypocritical policies- prevents energy
diplomacy that is key to contain Chavez and Castro
Full removal of the tariff is the only way to make the markets competitive
Loris 6/26/08
[Nick, ditorial intern at Townhall.com while pursuing his masters in economics at George Mason
University. http://blog.heritage.org/2008/06/26/biofuels-the-world%E2%80%99s-regressive-tax/]
The rise in gas prices is reducing the American consumer’s disposable income, forcing a choice
between filling up the tank and going out to dinner or taking a trip to the movie theater. But policy
implementations in developed countries are doing much more damage internationally, like pushing 30
million people into poverty. That’s the latest number, according to Oxfam International, a
confederation of 13 organizations that seek to alleviate poverty worldwide. It boils down to a
combination of special interest politics and simple economics, says Oxfam’s biofuel policy adviser
Rob Bailey: If the fuel value for a crop exceeds its food value, then it will be used for fuel instead.
Thanks to generous subsidies and tax breaks, that is exactly what is happening.” Even worse, Members
of Congress have blocked the importation of Brazilian ethanol through protectionist tariffs. Given the
fact that Brazilian ethanol is much less damaging to global food security, the tariff only exacerbates the
problem. Removing all mandates and lifting all barriers is a necessary step to allow the food value to
compete with ethanol’s fuel value. The critics of biofuel policy continue to build and now far outweigh
the supporters. Before we push millions more into poverty, Congress should take a hard, honest look at
America’s ethanol policy, and the mandate should be repealed, along with the tax breaks and
protectionist tariffs.
***NEG***
A2- Soil Erosion
Plan doesn’t solve soil erosion- corn ethanol still produced at competitive prices
Turn- Corn ethanol byproducts reverse soil erosion- higher nitrogen levels
Science Daily 04
[http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2004/10/041011075459.htm]
In the first study of its kind, an Agricultural Research Service scientist has shown that the byproduct of
ethanol fermentation from corn stover can increase the structural stability and organic matter content of
soil, particularly of highly eroded soil. "Stover" refers to the plant parts remaining in the field after
harvesting corn. The corn stover ethanol byproduct has three times the concentration of nitrogen as the
original cornstalks. It consists of stalk parts too tough for digesting by alcohol fermentation microbes
and has a compost-like consistency, according to Jane Johnson, a soil scientist with the ARS North
Central Soil Conservation Research Laboratory in Morris, Minn. Applying this byproduct to the land
may partially offset the risks associated with harvesting crop biomass for conversion to biofuel. The
main risks from harvesting the biomass are possibly increasing soil erosion, as well as depriving the
soil of carbon and nutrients it might have derived from the biomass. Another consideration is the safety
of applying the fermentation byproduct to farm fields.
Doesn’t assume different production methods

Morris, No Date Given
[Dave, ILSR Vice-President and New Rules Project Director, http://www.newrules.org/drdave/13-
ethanol.html]
Some critics worry about the possible negative impact of the large-scale use of ethanol on soil erosion
and fertilizer runoff into streams and rivers. These problems, however, stem from cultivation practices,
not from the use of ethanol. For example, soil erosion from corn is reduced by some 80 percent with no
and low till cultivation practices. Fertilizer use is reduced dramatically when crops are rotated and
when fertilize is applied only when and where needed.
Criticism is misplaced- generic corn production is the problem, plan doesn’t

solve
Morris and Hill 2006
[Mike and Amanda, NCAT Energy Specialists, http://attra.ncat.org/attra-pub/ethanol.html]
The growth of the ethanol industry and the prospect of increased corn production raise serious
concerns about soil depletion and water quality. Large-scale corn production in the U.S.
unquestionably uses large amounts of pesticides and fertilizers, and these chemicals are well-known to
contribute to water pollution. Industrial corn production also contributes to erosion and soil nutrient
depletion. According to a 1994 USDA study, approximately 12,000 pounds of topsoil were being lost
per-acre per year on land farmed with large-scale techniques. (USDA, 1994) Some ethanol critics
calculate and report pounds of topsoil lost per gallon of ethanol produced.
Ethanol’s supporters often reply that these criticisms are really complaints about corn-growing
techniques, not about ethanol. Ethanol can be made from raw materials other than corn. Corn can also
be grown more sustainably, using techniques such as “conservation tillage” to reduce erosion, as well
as crop rotations, compost, and manures (both animal and plant) to maintain and enhance soil quality.
A2: Energy Coop

Current tariff stimulates industry growth in the US and Brazil
Reuters 2007
[Factiva, March 16]
A U.S. tariff on ethanol imports aids the growth of its local market, but also benefits Brazilian
producers, Paulo Diniz, vice president of finance at Brazil's largest sugar and ethanol producer Cosan
said Friday. Despite a 54 cents a gallon tariff, the United States was Brazil's biggest ethanol export
market in 2006, taking about half of its total shipments of 3.6 billion liters. "In the short and medium
term, it's important to stimulate the growth and awareness of a U.S. ethanol market," Diniz told a
telephone conference on the group's quarterly results. Brazil, the world's biggest ethanol exporter, is
trying to develop an international market for the renewable, clean burning fuel. Diniz said that removal
of the import tariff would paralyse many projects to build distilleries in the United States. He added
that Brazil, the world's biggest ethanol exporter, didn't have enough supplies to meet U.S. demand "this
year, next year or any other year."
A2- Venezuela Advantage

Brazil checking Venezuela now- no risk of impact
St. Petersburg Times 1/16/08
[http://www.sptimes.com/2008/01/16/State/Brazil_s_outreach_to_.shtml]
Washington is acutely aware of the close ties between Venezuela's Chavez and Castro. Having Brazil
raise its economic profile in Cuba may be no bad thing for the United States, as it potentially dilutes
the influence of Chavez at a time when Castro's star appears to be waning. Castro, who has not been
seen in public for 17 months since he underwent intestinal surgery, was strong enough Tuesday to meet
with Lula in Havana. Castro's brother, defense minister and acting President Raul Castro, is considered
a less ideological figure by some observers. So far, he has adopted a far less hostile tone toward
Washington. And he does not appear to share his brother's effusive enthusiasm for Chavez. Relations
between Venezuela and Brazil have also cooled of late, almost to freezing. Brazil is frustrated by
Chavez's political meddling in the region, especially with Bolivia, a key supplier of natural gas to
Brazilian industry. Lula's visit to Cuba can thus be seen as a new assertion of Brazilian confidence in
its regional role.
Venezuela cant stop ethanol spread in central America- they are bandwagoning
El Universal 2007
[http://www.gkcaracas.um.dk/da/menu/Eksportraadgivning/Markedsmuligheder/SidsteNyt/VenezuelaF
acesCoexistenceWithEthanol.htm?wbc_purpose=ba&WBCMODE=Presentatio]
VENEZUELA FACES COEXISTENCE WITH ETHANOL Venezuela plans to produce "the strictly
necessary ethanol". A number of analysts attending the South American Energy Summit in the Island
of Margarita, eastern Venezuela, where eight Heads of State met, believe Venezuela is virtually
unlikely to stop the momentum ethanol development has gathered in the region. However, the
Venezuelan delegation threw the dices and put a bet on a moderate growth of ethanol -a combustible
alcohol the industrial manufacture of which requires sowing million hectares of sugar cane or corn, thus using
fertile lands many countries need to ensure food security. As part of the so-called South American Energy Treaty
President Hugo Chávez presented before his counterparts in the summit, a research was conducted on the ethanol
needs Venezuela may have, not only domestically but also abroad, in the neighbor countries where Caracas is
undertaking joint investments in the areas of oil refining and petrochemicals. Based on this survey, in order to mix
ethanol with the 1.57 million bpd of gasoline state oil giant Pdvsa plans to produce in seven foreign countries,
157,000 bpd of ethanol are required. Therefore, 1.38 million hectares of corn or sugar cane need to be sown. This
calculation assumes that ethanol will be mixed with gasoline in a proportion of 10 percent. While for many nations
this proportion means a significant and sufficient amount, it pales in comparison to Brazil's intent to multiply
ethanol production. Brazil is currently producing 400,000 bpd of ethanol, which is added to gasoline in a
proportion of 25 percent. Besides, Brazil has started manufacturing cars using 100 percent ethanol. Reduced
borders Following divergences over biofuels -even before the summit- Bolivian President Evo Morales, with some
objections, initialed the Declaration of Margarita. In the document, the references to biofuels were toned down.
Additionally, President Chávez publicly offered to remove import tariffs from Brazilian ethanol
shipments to Venezuela, and even vowed to start joint ethanol production projects in Ecuador, for
instance. Since lead tetraethyl substitution in the Venezuelan domestic market, Pdvsa in mid-2005
entered into a supply agreement with the Brazilian Government to import ethanol and start tests for use
of this biofuel nationwide. However, high corrosion levels caused by ethanol in tanks and lines with
low water content have prevented the use of ethanol from spreading. Since mid-2005, Venezuela has
imported small amounts of ethanol -less than 30,000 bpd - from Brazil. But according to Chávez'
statements, the accord will not be terminated. On April 16, the Venezuelan ruler asked his Brazilian
counterpart Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva to renew this agreement for a minimum of two years. During this
term, progress should be made in the construction of the 11 ethanol manufacturing plants to be built
jointly with Cuba. Venezuela also seized the opportunity to ask for Brazilian mediation before
Washington for the United States to remove import tariffs on ethanol, as Pdvsa's refining branch in the
US Citgo's imports of ethanol are increasingly expensive. Therefore, following Brazil-US alliance on
biofuels, Venezuela's stance on this issue translates into limited ethanol production, provided use of
raw materials do not endanger food production. "We have coined a term: the strictly necessary
ethanol," said Chávez. He added that "the United States holds five percent of the world population, but
its energy consumption is 20 percent of global energy production and has small reserves. In 50 years,
they have virtually depleted what they had. (US President George W.) is even talking about using wood
(to produce fuels). Fortunately this little gentleman has little time left; otherwise, he would raze
everything." According to Venezuelan Minister of Energy and Petroleum, 10 percent is the maximum
proportion of ethanol Venezuela is willing to develop.
Reduced Tariff CP
Text- The United States should require a 20 percent duty-free quota on imported
Brazilian ethanol
Contention 1: Competition- The counterplan excludes removing the tariff and
through net benefits
Contention 2- Solvency
This solves the demand gap
Fletcher and Pierce 07
[Megan and Lauren, Interamerican Dialogue,
http://www.thedialogue.org/page.cfm?pageID=32&pubID=168]
Jank and Gianetti cited a growing consensus that U.S. and Brazilian ethanol production should not be
in competition with one another. Indeed, Brazil seeks to work with the United States to expand the
international market for ethanol. The two countries could collaborate in research, logistics, and
technical development, as well as the establishment of international standards for the ethanol market.
Jank and Gianetti advocated cooperation between the United States and Brazil to reduce import
barriers. Rather than urge U.S. lawmakers to eliminate the current 54 cents-per-gallon tariff on ethanol
imports (65 percent of which come from Brazil), Gianetti proposed that the United States create a
duty-free quota that allows 20 percent more Brazilian ethanol into the United States to fuel the supply-
demand gap.
Reduce Tariff CP-2NC Overview

Counterplan leaves the current 54 cent tariff in place but allows 20% of ethanol
imported from Brazil enter the country tax free. This solves for all of the
advantages because it allows competition in the market and cooperation between
Brazil.
Moreover this doesn’t link to the economy disadvantage because it doesn’t put
the ethanol industry in an uncompetitive position. Prices and demand for US
product will remain static. Also means that it doesn’t link to the oil DA- Doesn’t
decrease price of ethanol products within the US or cause a massive shift,
demand will be static.
Reduce Tariff CP: A2- Doesn’t Solve Coop

Simply reducing the tariff solves- builds enough cooperation
Sotero and Alden 2007
[Paulo, Director of the Brazil Institute at the Woodrow Wilson International Center, and Edward,
Senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations,
http://www.cfr.org/publication/12803/building_a_biofuels_alliance.html]
But the political obstacles to removing the protections should not discourage more farsighted
lawmakers. A modified tariff scheme well short of a full repeal could still turn ethanol from Brazil and
other Latin sources into a stabilizer of renewable fuel supplies in the United States and strengthen
economic integration in the hemisphere. To its credit, Brazil has stopped complaining about U.S.
protection for ethanol, seeing greater potential in collaboration to develop new markets worldwide.
That is a generous offer, and one the Bush administration and Congress should seize.
Cellulose CP
The United States should incentivize cellulose ethanol- doesn’t trade off with
food supply and is more efficient
Daily News (South Africa) 6/26/2008
[Lexis]
But researcher Prof Emile van Zyl of the University of Stellenbosch said Oxfam's concerns were based
on only part of the biofuels story.
"Research into the production of bio-ethanol and bio-diesel from cellulose waste has progressed to the
point where it is only about three years from being commercially viable at a price considerably lower
than the current price of oil," he said. "And one of the major benefits of this is that cellulose as a
feedstock for biofuels does not require the use of edible crops, or expanded monoculture." Van Zyl, a
biochemist and current SA National Energy Research Institute chair of alternative fuels, said rather
than benefiting from a government subsidy, cellulose biofuel research and investment had come from
private venture capital and even some large oil companies. International research had shown that
cellulose in any case offered a greater production of biofuels by mass than food crops, and was already
the direction of choice in the biofuels industry. Van Zyl said examples of the waste products to be used
were wood chips from the timber industry, the sugarcane waste called bagasse and straw, as well as
various naturally occurring grass species. Dr Bruce Dale, of Michigan State University, said biofuels
competed much more with animal feed than with human food. In an article for the Journal of
Agricultural and Food Chemistry in the US, Dale said about 75% of corn in the US and almost the
entire world's production of soya bean protein meal was being consumed by animals. "Even most of
our (US) grain exports are consumed by animals," he said.
Econ D/A- Ethanol Link

Increasing Brazilian ethanol will tank the domestic corn ethanol market
Energy Washington Week 5/30/07
[Lexis]
The combination of a record harvest and low world sugar prices, aided by the de facto lack of an
import tariff, may lead to a surge of cheap Brazilian ethanol imports, challenging a U.S. ethanol
industry already seeing softening prices and rapidly growing supply, traders and Brazilian sugar
industry officials say. In the face of surging domestic production, top U.S. policymakers are raising
serious concerns about the ability of the domestic fuels market to absorb all the oncoming supply over
the next few years. An influx of cheap Brazilian ethanol could further erode U.S. ethanol prices,
already half of what they were this time last year.
Ethanol industry key to US economy

Ben Nelson and Conrad Burns PAC Ethanol across America, “Economic
Impacts of Ethanol Production” 2006
The impact of ethanol production and use goes far beyond Rural America. Virtually every sector of the
U.S. economy benefits from the rapidly expanding ethanol industry. From the technology sector which
provides software for sophisticated plant operations, to the manufacturing sector, which provides plant
components, ethanol production stimulates economic activity. Economists continue to measure the
impact of ethanol production at the local and national level. A variety of econometric models are used
to calculate this rapidly expanding business activity. This publication examines a variety of ways in
which the ethanol industry affects the U.S. economy and local communities. As this largely
Midwestern industry expands across the continent, these economic impacts are projected to have an
ever expanding effect from coast to coast.
2NC- Ethanol Link

Ending the tariff devastates the domestic ethanol market- drops prices and sends
the signal the US is backing the program
Lytle 2007
One argument is that the removal of the tariff will have a chilling effect on the ethanol industry. n131
The ethanol industry desperately needs continued investment in order to conduct crucial research and
development. Investors may be wary to support an industry that appears to have lost the backing of the
government. Opponents argue that the removal of the tariff will be "the wrong signal to send just as
America's ethanol industry is picking up steam." n132 Representative Boswell (D-IA) introduced
legislation in the House on May 19, 2006, seeking to extend the temporary ethanol tariff until January
1, 2011. n133 Representative Boswell is a supporter of the tariff, as domestic ethanol production is
important to his constituency. According to Representative Boswell, "the tariff has helped America's
ethanol producers succeed and it's simply not the time to halt its progress at a time when the ethanol
industry is picking up speed." n134 Similarly, Senator Grassley (R-IA) views the potential removal of
the tariff as undermining the purpose of the RFS in the EPAct. n135 Senator Grassley, the Chairman of
the Senate Committee on Finance, argues that removing the tariff will not lower prices for consumers
but will only counteract the progress made in the domestic ethanol industry. n136
2NC- Ethanol Internal

Ethanol production key to investor confidence
EPIC (Ethanol Production and Information Council) 2008
http://www.drivingethanol.org/ethanol_facts/why_ethanol.aspx
You might choose fuel enriched with ethanol at the pump because you know it delivers great engine
performance and is gentler on the environment. Did you know that ethanol also plays a big part in
boosting the American economy? Ethanol production generates capital investment, economic
development and job creation throughout the U.S. it also boosts every family's personal economy by
lowering the cost of gasoline to consumers.
Energy Dependency DA
Brazilian ethanol would undermine the stability of Middle Eastern energy
suppliers
Lytle 2007
A major opponent of the tariff is the President of the United States. n110 This may conflict with his
goals to increase domestic ethanol production. In the 2006 State of the Union, President Bush
announced a goal to make "ethanol practical and competitive within six years." n111 In this speech, the
President stressed the need for alternative fuel as a means of attaining energy independence. Similarly,
upon signing the EPAct in 2005, President Bush emphasized how the Act is a step towards energy
independence. When discussing the RFS portion of the EPAct, President Bush touted it as
accomplishing many things, including reducing dependency on foreign energy. n112 The emphasis,
however, is specifically placed on being independent from Middle Eastern energy sources. n113 If
President Bush's goal is to reduce dependency solely on the Middle East, the ethanol tariff need not be
renewed. The subsequent influx of alternative fuels from more "friendly" nations will not undermine
his goals. However, Latin America, like the Middle East, has a history of political instability. If energy
independence in general is President Bush's goal, it is questionable whether being less dependent on
foreign oil is worth being more dependent on foreign ethanol.
A2- Energy Independence Advantage

Removing the tariff doesn’t solve energy dependence- supplies can still be shut
off and disrupts domestic production
Lytle 2007
A second argument is that the EPAct mandates represent the country's desire to obtain energy
independence. The tariff, therefore, serves as an example of the government's determination to promote
the growth of the domestic industry rather than support foreign industries. Senator Thune (R-SD)
supported the EPAct as a way for the federal government to reduce foreign dependency as well as
invest in existing state ethanol programs. n137 Senator Obama (D-IL) supported the RFS portion of the
EPAct primarily because of the possibility of reducing dependency on foreign oil. n138 [*708] Since
Brazil is already exporting some ethanol duty-free through the CBERA, Senator Brownback (R-KS)
argues that removing the tariff will only improve foreign access to the U.S. market without benefits or
reciprocity. n139 The tariff, therefore, serves as a necessary roadblock to ensure that the domestic
industry has the resources to continue to grow. Investing in the ethanol industry requires the
government to secure demand for the domestic product. The desire to achieve greater energy
independence also serves as an impetus for state action. State leaders realize that bolstering the ethanol
industry can have a tremendous effect on a state's economy. n140 In September of 2006, Florida
sponsored a summit to create an alternative fuel strategy for the state. n141 Florida officials are
pushing to make the state a key player in "25/25," a "national goal set by the agricultural industry to
produce 25 percent of the energy consumed in the United States by 2025." n142
Bush Good- Link

Sugar industry wants tariff- they are extremely powerfull
Murray 2008
[Iain, a Senior Fellow at CEI, specializing in global climate change and environmental science,
http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/]
Importing Brazilian (or Caribbean) sugar ethanol are fine by me. We should get rid of the entry
barriers. The chances of this happening are, however, extremely remote. The sugar lobby is among the
most powerful in the country. If we could break the sugar lobby's power, then the price of sugar would
tumble, we wouldn't have to use corn syrup to sweeten things and the price of a lot of food would fall.
So, why don’t free-marketeers and our national-security friends work together to help break that
lobby? Then we can talk about using imported sugar ethanol for fuel. Before that event, it is premature.
No Solvency
Loopholes and sunset rule functionally eliminates tariff now
Energy Washington Week 5/30/07
[Lexis]
This should not come as good news to the U.S. ethanol industry that enjoyed astronomical prices this
time last year, in some cases more than $5 per gallon, but has seen prices recede to the $2 per gallon
range and less recently. At the same time rapidly growing ethanol production has sent corn prices
significantly higher. Brazilian sugar-based ethanol production costs are well below those for U.S. corn-
based ethanol production. The price for Brazilian ethanol currently stands at about 35-cents per gallon
and is projected to fall to even lower levels as Brazilian production increases. The hit to U.S. ethanol
producers of Brazilian imports is exasperated by what is in essence the de facto elimination of the 54-
cent per gallon import duty. In a strange quirk of U.S. trade law, ethanol importers are able to recoup
almost all of the tariff paid by exporting jet fuel. Ethanol traders say almost all, if not all, ethanol
imported directly from Brazil -- more than 400 million gallons last year -- ultimately escapes the
imposition of a tariff. Ethanol proponents on Capitol Hill are adamant about preserving the tariff before
it sunsets in a few years, and sources say there is very little enthusiasm for plugging the drawback
loophole. A member of the Senate Finance Committee explained, too many companies are making too
much money importing cheap, duty-free Brazilian ethanol (and at one point last summer Chinese
ethanol). Ethanol lobbyists say there are greater priorities. An attorney who has spent years working on
biofuels issues explains, even though few if any ethanol importers pay the import tariff, if it were to
lapse, World Trade Organization protocols would make it nearly impossible to reinstate.

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Brazilian Ethanol 1AC (1/6)

And, loopholes are irrelevant- tariff still blocks Brazilian ethanol

Brazilian Ethanol 1AC (2/6)

Brazilian Ethanol 1AC (3/6)

Brazilian Ethanol 1AC (4/6)

Brazilian Ethanol 1AC (5/6)

Soil erosion results in extinction

Brazilian Ethanol 1AC (6/6)

1AC: Warming Module (1/9)

A sustainable energy future depends on an increased share of renewable energy, especially in

1AC: Warming Module (2/9)

International trade of Brazilian ethanol needed to slow down the process of

Unfettered access to Brazilian ethanol will reverse climate change- it is both

1AC: Warming Module (3/9)

1AC: Warming Module (4/9)

1AC: Warming Module (6/9)

There is an overwhelming scientific consensus.

1AC: Warming Module (7/9)

Any delay will multiplies the risk of the impact.

Also – warming makes every major flashpoint for war inevitable.

1AC: Warming Module (8/9)

Economic collapse causes nuclear war.

CO2 independently undermines plant genetic diversity and destroys global

1AC: Warming Module (9/9)

1AC: Regional Influence Module (1/4)

1AC: Regional Influence Module (2/4)

1AC: Regional Influence Module (4/4)

And, the economic attacks result in nuclear war

1AC: Food Prices Module (1/2)

Domestic protectionism is causing a shortage of grains for food- this inflates

Specifically- it is driving up cereal and grain based prices, Brazilian ethanol

1AC: Food Prices Module (2/2)

This fuels poverty and state collapse which threatens civilization

2AC- Warming Internal

2AC: Warming- Neg Authors Biased

2AC: Warming- Ice Age

2AC: Warming- Biodiversity

Human extinction results

2AC- Global Ethanol Advantage X

Ending tariff is necessary to promote a regional switch to ethanol and promotes

2AC- Regional Influence Internal X

2AC- Trade Internal

Plan results in a rekindling of FTAA negotiations

2AC- Brazil Ethanol Industry Internal

A2- Plan è Deforestation

And, Oil will hit 200 by year end

A2- Russian Oil

A2- Russian Oil

A2- Russian Oil

1AR Russia – Dutch Disease

A2- Domestic Ethanol Econ DA

A2- Generic Econ DA

A2- Generic Econ DA: Non Uniques

Subprime, consumer spending, housing, and dollar depreciation mean recession is

A2- Generic Econ DA: Non Uniques

A2- Generic Econ DA: Case Outweighs

A2- Reduce Tariff CP

Doesn’t assume different production methods

Criticism is misplaced- generic corn production is the problem, plan doesn’t

A2: Energy Coop

A2- Venezuela Advantage

Reduce Tariff CP-2NC Overview

Reduce Tariff CP: A2- Doesn’t Solve Coop

Econ D/A- Ethanol Link

Ethanol industry key to US economy