1ac- china 1nc- econ da innovation da consult icj 2nr- econ da innovation da case
Apple Valley
4
Opponent: Amitoj Singh | Judge: Julian Kuffour
1AC- China 1NC- T case 1ar- all 2nr- case
CPS
1
Opponent: Hamilton LR | Judge: Alex Baez
1ac- PTD 1nc- T setcol 1ar- all vague alts bad 2nr- T setcol case 2ar- T setcol case
CPS
4
Opponent: Hamilton AL | Judge: Emmiee Malyugina
1ac- ptd v2 1nc- T K case 1ar- all non governmental action bad 2nr- all 2ar- T theory
CPS
6
Opponent: Troy AP | Judge: Indu Pandey
1ac- PTD 1nc- process cp racial cap case 2nr- all process cps bad 2nr- K theory 2ar- theory
CPS
Octas
Opponent: Harker AS | Judge: panel
1AC- PTD 1NC- NASA DA T Putin DA 1AR- all 2NR- case 2AR- case
CPS
Quarters
Opponent: Mitty AS | Judge: panel
1ac- PTD 1nc- T adv CP space tech DA case 1ar- all 2nr- space tech case 2ar- case da
Cal Invitational
2
Opponent: Monta Vista RD | Judge: Joseph Barquin
1AC- lunar heritage 1NC- artemis da cil cp T- outerspace private actor fiat 1ar- all 2NR- private actor fiat
Cal Invitational
4
Opponent: Harker SS | Judge: Gordon Krauss
1AC - Lunar Heritage 1NC- Innovation DA Trump politics DA China moon base da 2NR- politics moon da 2ar- case disads
Cal Invitational
6
Opponent: Plano East RP | Judge: Andrew Qin
1AC- prag 1NC- set col turtle island case 1ar- all TT aprioris AFC vague alts bad PICs bad 2nr- K theory case 2AR- Truth testing case K
Greenhill
2
Opponent: Marcus JR | Judge: Javier Navarette
1ac -prag 1nc- queerpess case 1ar- prag tt tricks k 2nr- k case
Greenhill
3
Opponent: Harvard-Westlake OF | Judge: Tarun Ratnasabapathy
1ac- evergreening 1nc- abolish wto cp single payer cp innovation da t-leslie case 1ar- all condo 2nr- innovation d a 2ar- da case
Greenhill
6
Opponent: Cabot JB | Judge: Gabby Lea
1ac- evergreening 1nc- innovation da berlant k climate patents da tax cp 1ar- all 2nr- climate patents da innovation da tax cp
Lexington
2
Opponent: Bronx Science KH | Judge: Daniel Shahab-Diaz
1ac- ptd 1nc- T climate da 1ar- all 2nr- all 2ar- all
Lexington
4
Opponent: MSJ SR | Judge: Neda Bahrani
1ac- ptd 1nc- 8 off 1ar- all consult cps bad 2nr- word pic
Loyola
1
Opponent: Solebury LM | Judge: Abhishek Rao
AC- evergreening 1nc- T some weird NC health impact fun cp 1ar- case 2nr- T CP case turns
Loyola
4
Opponent: Stockdale RP | Judge: Brett Cryan
1ac- evergreening 1nc- T-permanent heg k fda enforcement cp 1ar- case 2nr- T K
Loyola
5
Opponent: Sammamish LW | Judge: Ben Cortez
1ac- evergreening 1nc- cap 1ar- all 2nr- cap 2ar- cap good
Meadows
1
Opponent: Westwood AP | Judge: Amy Nyberg
1ac- evergreening 1nc- kant infra da consult who cp 1ar- all 2nr- da case 2ar case da cps that compete off of immediacy bad
Meadows
3
Opponent: Marlborough WR | Judge: Gordon Krauss
1AC- evergreening 1NC- hif cp innovation da t lib k 1ar- all vague alts bad nebel bad 2nr- K shells 2ar- shells
Meadows
5
Opponent: Valley MM | Judge: Michael Harris
1ac- evergreening with large underview 1nc- log con truth testing contracts 1ar- afc calc indicts bad case nc 2nr- truth testing log con 2ar- afc calc indicts theory rob
Meadows
Doubles
Opponent: Lexington CH | Judge: panel
1ac- evergreening 1nc- T kant case 2nr- T
Mid America Cup
4
Opponent: Scarsdale KS | Judge: Scopa
1AC- 32 point underview bs 1NC - two combo shells case 1ar- multi shells bad 1nc shells underview 2nr- combo shell 2ar- multi shells bad negating affirms
Nano Nagle
2
Opponent: Prospect ST | Judge: Lukas Krause
1AC- evergreening 1NC - kant innovation econ da tjfs bad 1ar- all 2nr- induction fails DA case 2ar- case
Nano Nagle
4
Opponent: Garginator | Judge: Felicity Park
1ac- evergreening 1nc- Markush PIC T antitrust CP TRIPs Council CP case 1ar- all condo 2nr- Markush PIC innovation turns case 2ar- case PIC innovation
1AC - evergreening 1NC - HIP CP Liberalism K T nebel econ DA 1ar - all vague alts bad 2NR - HIP CP econ da case 2ar- vague alts bad
Nano Nagle
Doubles
Opponent: San Mateo YR | Judge: panel
1AC- evergreening 1NC - hobbes nc T infra da 1ar- all 2nr- dedev 2ar- case dedev
Peninsula
2
Opponent: Northwood ST | Judge: Sam Larson
1AC - Lunar Heritage 1NC - space col T case 1ar- all 2nr- space col case
Peninsula
4
Opponent: Ayala AM | Judge: Tarun Ratnasabapathy
1AC - Lunar Heritage 1NC- Space Elevators PIC disclosure theory wipeout 1ar- all 2nr- disclosure
Peninsula
5
Opponent: Valley RT | Judge: Asher Towner
1AC - Lunar Heritage 1NC - T outerspace T spec lib nc case 1ar- all 2nr- T-spec case 2ar- case T
Peninsula
Octas
Opponent: Sage MP | Judge: panel
1AC- Lunar Heritage 1NC- EO Sats CP case 1ar- all condo spec status 2nr- theory CP case 2ar- case CP
Tournament of Champions
2
Opponent: Archbishop Mitty AS | Judge: Alexandra Mork
1AC- lunar 1NC- Basing DA Bizcon DA T Dome CP 1AR- all condo 2NR- CP Bizcon case 2AR- case CP DA
UNLV
2
Opponent: Marlborough TZ | Judge: Nikhil Navare
1AC - Lunar Heritage 1NC - private actor fiat bad nasa cp cil cp selection da 1ar- all condo 2nr- condo nasa cp selection da 2ar- cp da case
UNLV
4
Opponent: Marlborough ED | Judge: Gordon Krauss
1AC- Lunar Heritage v3 1NC-private actor fiat bad nasa cp due regard cp settlement da 1ar- all condo 2nr- due regard cp settlement da case 2ar- case cp da
UNLV
6
Opponent: Strake ZD | Judge: Eric Endsley
1AC- lunar heritage 1NC - T-metaphorical nommo black history month theory pess 1ar- all 2NR- black history month theory case
If you don't contact me for disclosure, you don't get any violations. Please don't read graphic descriptions of any kind of violence. If you think something could potentially be triggering, give the content warning at least 30 minutes before the round. If there's anything I can do to ensure a good round for you, please let me know!
NOTE: cites aren't working for a bunch of positions, just check open source
Happy Debating!
4/23/22
0 - Tournament Navigation
Tournament: All | Round: Finals | Opponent: You | Judge: Apple Valley - APPLE VALLEY MINNEAPPLE DEBATE TOURNAMENT
Loyola- LOYOLA INVITATIONAL
Nano Nagle - Nano Nagle Classic and Nano Nagle RR
Valley - Mid America Cup
CPS - College Prep LD Invitational
Meadows - The Meadows Invitational
Lexington - Lexington Winter Invitational
USC - 2021 USC Trojan Invitational
UNLV - GOLDEN DESERT DEBATE TOURNAMENT AT UNLV
Peninsula - Peninsula Invitational
Greenhill - Greenhill Fall Classic
Cal Invitational - Cal Invitational UC Berkeley
4/23/22
JF - Lunar Heritage Aff
Tournament: Peninsula | Round: 2 | Opponent: Northwood ST | Judge: Sam Larson 1AC: Plan Plan - Private entities ought not appropriate lunar heritage sites Harrington 19, Andrea J. "Preserving Humanity's Heritage in Space: Fifty Years after Apollo 11 and beyond." J. Air L. and Com. 84 (2019): 299. (Associate Professor and Director of the Schriever Space Scholars at USAF Air Command and Staff College)Elmer The issue of humanity’s cultural heritage in space has arisen as one of many unanswered questions in space law, with no international agreements specifically addressing it. With the beginning of the space age fifty-six years ago and a series of remarkable achievements in space exploration behind us, it is necessary to determine what should be done regarding the “artifacts” of this exploration. NASA has promulgated their recommendations for spacefaring entities with the goal of protecting the lunar artifacts left behind by the Apollo missions.8 These recommendations establish “keep-out zones” of up to a four kilometer diameter with the aim of protecting the artifacts, particularly from dangerous, fastmoving particles that arise as a result of craft landings.9 Experience has shown that even artifacts that are sheltered by craters can be significantly sandblasted and pitted as a result of the moving particles.10 These recommendations, supposedly drafted in conformity with the Outer Space Treaty, however, are completely nonbinding.11 Legislation that has passed the U.S. Senate and is under consideration by the House of Representatives as of July 2019 would make these recommendations binding on U.S. entities seeking to land on the Moon.12 Accidental damage from unrelated missions, however, is only one of many threats to space artifacts. With the impending return to the Moon, it is likely that individuals and corporations will be looking to turn a profit from space heritage, without concern for the protection of such heritage. Tourists may disrupt sites with careless expeditions and landing sites may be desecrated so that the items can be sold. A Russian Lunakhod lunar rover has already been sold at auction to a private party, though it has not yet been moved from its original position on the Moon.13 While national heritage legislation can protect space artifacts from citizens of their own countries, there is currently no effective means in the present space law regime by which a country can protect its heritage from other countries.14 Both California and New Mexico have added Tranquility Base to their list of protected heritage sites.15 However, this solution, and those proposed in the bill put forth to the U.S. House of Representatives, only serve to restrict the activities of a small subset of the potential visitors to the Moon. Though the Senate bill calls for the President to initiate negotiations for a binding international agreement, there is still a long road from this bill to a potential agreement.16 A solution is needed to prevent the damage, destruction, loss, or private appropriation of our cultural heritage in space. 1AC: Lunar Heritage The Advantage is Lunar Heritage: Global Moon Rush by private actors is coming now. Sample 19 Ian Sample 7-19-2019 “Apollo 11 site should be granted heritage status, says space agency boss” https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/jul/19/apollo-11-site-heritage-status-space-agency-moon (PhD at Queens Mary College)Elmer But protecting lunar heritage may not be straightforward. On Earth, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco) decides what deserves world heritage status from nominations sent by countries that claim ownership of the sites. Different rules apply in space. The UN’s outer space treaty, a keystone of space law, states that all countries are free to explore and use space, but warns it “is not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty”. In other words, space is for all and owned by none. Wörner is not put off and sees no need for troublesome regulations. “My hope is that humanity is smart enough not to go back to this type of earthly protection. Just protect it. That’s enough. Just protect it and have everybody agree,” he said. A no-go zone of 50 metres around Tranquility base should do the job, he added. Martin Rees, the Cambridge cosmologist and astronomer royal, said there was a case for designating the sites so future generations and explorers were aware of their importance. “If there are any artefacts there, they shouldn’t be purloined,” he said. “Probably orbiting spacecraft will provide routine CCTV-style coverage which would prevent this from being done clandestinely.” Beyond the dust-covered hardware that stands motionless on the moon, Lord Rees suspects future activity could drive calls for broader lunar protection. The Apollo 17 astronaut and geologist Harrison Schmidt has advocated strip mining the moon for helium-3, a potential source of energy. The proposal, which Rees suggests has raised eyebrows in the community, could potentially provoke a backlash. “There might be pressure to preserve the more attractive moonscapes against such despoilation, and to try to enforce regulations as in the Antarctic,” he said. Fifty years on from Apollo 11, the moon is still a place to make statements. In January, the Chinese space agency became the first to land a probe on the far side. On Monday, India hopes to launch a robotic probe, the delayed Chandrayaan-2 lander that is bound for the unchartered lunar south pole. Far more is on the cards. Major space agencies, including ESA and Nasa, plan a “lunar gateway”, described by Wörner as a “bus stop to the moon and beyond”. His vision is for a “moon village”, but rather than a sprawl of domes, shops and a cosy pub, it is more an agreement between nations and industry to cooperate on lunar projects. The private sector is eager to be involved. Between now and 2024, at least five companies aim to launch lunar landers. In May, Nasa selected three companies to design, build and operate spacecraft that will ferry scientific experiments and technology packages to the moon. The coming flurry of activity may make protection more urgent. Michelle Hanlon, a space lawyer at the University of Mississippi, co-founded the non-profit organisation For all Moonkind to protect, preserve and memorialise human heritage on the moon. While she conceded that not all of the sites that bear evidence of human activity needed protection, she said many held invaluable scientific and archaeological data that we could not afford to lose. “These sites need to be protected from disruption if only for that reason,” she added. The protection should be far wider, and more formal, than Wörner calls for, Hanlon argues. “It is astounding to me that we wouldn’t protect the site of Luna 2, the very first object humans crashed on to another celestial body, and Luna 9, the very first object humans soft-landed on another celestial body,” she said. The Soviet Luna programme sent robotic craft to the moon between 1959 and 1976. “The director general has a much more optimistic view of human nature than I do,” Hanlon said. “I completely agree that the entities and nations headed back to the moon in the near future will take a commonsense approach and give due regard to the sites and artefacts. However, that is the near future. We have to be prepared for the company or nation that doesn’t care. Or worse, that seeks to return to the moon primarily to pillage for artefacts that will undoubtedly sell for tremendous amounts of money here on Earth.” They’ll beat Governments back to the Moon AND won’t be regulated by government agreements. Tillman 19 Nola Taylor Tillman 7-31-2019 "Will Private Companies Beat NASA to the Moon?" https://www.space.com/nasa-private-companies-moon-race.html (Science Journalist)Elmer With private companies setting their sights on sending humans to the moon in the near future, it's possible that one could touch down on the lunar surface before NASA astronauts do. But the resulting "public versus private" space race isn't one that NASA feels overly competitive about. The space agency's plans to reach the moon involve relying on private corporations rather than challenging them. "The challenges differ for the public and private sector, though they all do come down to money," Wendy Whitman Cobb told Space.com by email. Whitman Cobb, an associate professor at the U.S. Air Force's School of Advanced Air and Space Studies, examines the institutional dynamics of the policymaking behind space exploration. She stressed that her views are her own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Air Force or Department of Defense. "Technology is not a problem for either sector — the ability to get to the moon has existed since the 1960s," Whitman-Cobb said. "What is different is the will to do it." A Worldwide Team NASA's current lunar push kicked into high gear in December 2017, when President Donald Trump signed a space-policy directive to send humans to the moon and establish a sustainable presence there. Earlier this year, Vice President Mike Pence told NASA to put boots on the moon by 2024, rather than the previous goal of 2028. NASA's Artemis program aims to reach that goal. (In Greek mythology, Artemis was the twin sister of Apollo and goddess of the moon.) The agency's Orion spacecraft will carry human explorers to the Gateway outpost, a small space station that NASA plans to start building in lunar orbit in the early 2020s. Landers will then carry astronauts from the Gateway to the lunar surface. The space agency won't be hitting these goals on its own. "We're already partnering with our commercial partners to build these systems, and later on we'll continue to work with our international partners to build up the Gateway," Marshall Smith, director of the human lunar exploration program at NASA's headquarters in Washington, told Space.com by email. The space agency is currently working with 11 companies on Gateway and its associated systems. In May 2019, NASA awarded a contract to Maxar Technologies to build, launch and demonstrate in space the first major Gateway piece — the Power and Propulsion Element. The space agency also announced then that it had signed contracts with three companies to carry experiments to the moon via small robotic landers (though one of those three recently dropped out). In June, NASA asked industry to figure out ways to deliver cargo to the Gateway — much like the companies SpaceX and Northrop Grumman make robotic resupply runs to the International Space Station. In addition to working with private companies, NASA is also cooperating with other countries on the Artemis program. "International partners are a vital part of our lunar plan and will contribute to the goal of creating a sustainable lunar presence by 2028," Smith said. But private industry isn't solely focused on helping NASA make it to the moon. Companies like SpaceX and Blue Origin have stated their intentions to design their own lunar exploration programs. Advertisement Elon Musk's SpaceX is currently working on a 100-passenger vehicle called Starship, which the company envisions carrying people to the moon and Mars. Starship will be lofted off Earth's surface by a huge rocket called Super Heavy. SpaceX already has one Starship-Super Heavy passenger flight planned for 2023. The company hopes to begin commercial operations of the pair as early as 2021, most likely with commercial satellite launches. Blue Origin, operated by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, is working on a big lander called Blue Moon, which will deliver science instruments, lunar rovers and, eventually, astronauts to the lunar surface. Bezos sees many potential customers for Blue Moon other than NASA. "People are very excited about this capability to soft-land their cargo, their rovers, their science experiments on the surface of the moon in a precise way," Bezos said at the lander's unveiling in May 2019. "There is no capability to do that today." Then there's Florida-based company Moon Express, which is working to become the first private enterprise to reach the moon with robotic spacecraft systems. In 2016, it became the first company to receive U.S. government approval to send a robotic spacecraft to the lunar surface. "Our vision is really to expand Earth's economic and social sphere to include the moon," Alain Berinstain, Moon Express' vice president of global development, said last year at a lunar-science workshop at NASA's Ames Research Center in California. "We see the moon as the Earth's eighth continent to explore and to also mine for resources, like we have with every other continent on Earth." Pittsburgh-based Astrobotic planned to launch its Peregrine lander to the moon in 2019, but that date has since been since pushed back to 2020 or 2021. "We're really, at Astrobotic, trying to do this the right way, meaning that we're trying to be as technically rigorous as possible," Dan Hendrickson, vice president of business development at Astrobotic, said at a Washington Space Business Roundtable in February. "We're trying to be very upfront with the entire community about our current status." As with NASA, private industry has sufficient access to the technology to get to the moon, Whitman Cobb said. "They also have to demonstrate that their systems are fundamentally safe and reliable in order to attract paying customers — they are a business, after all," she said. Private companies also tend to have a leaner leadership structure than NASA's 60-year-old legacy brings with it. "NASA's bureaucracy has stagnated since the 1960s," Whitman Cobb said. That makes it "more difficult for NASA to contract, make changes and adapt to new circumstances." On the other hand, private companies have demonstrated the ability to move through technology development at a rapid rate, incorporating design and technology changes "almost immediately," she said. That brings its own advantages. Corporate development, tourism, and looting will destroy scientifically rich Tranquility base artifacts. Fessl 19 Sophie Fessl 7-10-2019 “Should the Moon Landing Site Be a National Historic Landmark?” https://daily.jstor.org/should-the-moon-landing-site-be-a-national-historic-landmark/ (PhD King’s College London, BA Oxford)Elmer When Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon on July 20, 1969, the pictures sent to Earth captured a historical moment: It was the first time that any human set foot on another body in our solar system. Fifty years later, experts are debating how to preserve humankind’s first steps beyond Earth. Could a National Park on the moon be the solution to saving Armstrong’s bootprints for future archaeologists? Flags, rovers, laser-reflecting mirrors, footprint—these are just a few of the dozens of artifacts and features that bear witness to our exploration of the moon. Archaeologists argue that these objects are a record to trace the development of humans in space. “Surely, those footprints are as important as those left by hominids at Laetoli, Tanzania, in the story of human development,” the anthropologist P.J. Capelotti wrote in Archaeology. While the oldest then known examples of hominins walking on two feet were cemented in ash 3.6 million years ago, “those at Tranquility Base could be swept away with a casual brush of a space tourist’s hand.” Fragile Traces Just how fragile humankind’s lunar traces are was seen already during Apollo 12. On November 19, 1969, Charles “Pete” Conrad and Alan Bean manually landed their lunar module in the moon’s Ocean of Storms, 200 meters from the unmanned probe Surveyor 3, which was left sitting on the moon’s surface two years earlier, in 1967. The next day, Conrad and Bean hopped to Surveyor 3. As they approached the spacecraft, they were surprised: The spacecraft, originally bright white, had turned light brown. It was covered in a fine layer of moon dust, likely kicked up by their landing. Harsh ultraviolet light has likely bleached the U.S. flag bright white. Without Apollo 12 upsetting the moon dust, Surveyor 3 would likely have remained stark white. Unlike Earth, the moon has no wind that carries away the dust, no rain to corrode materials, and no plate tectonic activity to pull sites on the surface back into the moon. But the moon’s thin atmosphere also means that solar wind particles bombard the lunar surface, and harsh ultraviolet light has likely bleached the U.S. flag bright white. The astronauts’ first bootprints will likely be on the moon for a long time, and will almost certainly still be there when humans next visit—unless, by tragic coincidence, a meteorite hits them first. Had LunaCorp not abandoned the idea in the early 2000s, the company’s plan to send a robot to visit the most famous sites of moon exploration could have done a lot of damage. And with Jeff Bezos’ recent unveiling of a mock-up of the lunar lander Blue Moon, it is only a matter of time before corporate adventurers and space tourists reach the moon. Historians and archaeologists are keen to avoid lunar looting. Roger Launius, senior curator of space history at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C., warned: “What we don’t want to happen is what happened in Antarctica at Scott’s hut. People took souvenirs, and nothing was done to try to preserve those until fairly late in the game.” On the other hand, there is a legitimate scientific interest in investigating how the equipment that’s on the moon was affected by a decades-long stay there. Private entities are a unique threat to lunar heritage – national governments have active incentives to avoid heritage destruction. - Private Key Card – AT: Alt Causes - AT: Unilat CP - AT: Adv CP - AT: Generic DA - AT: OST DA - Solvency Advocate Hertzfeld and Pace 13 (, H. and Pace, S., 2013. International Cooperation on Human Lunar Heritage. online Cpb-us-e1.wpmucdn.com. Available at: https://cpb-us-e1.wpmucdn.com/blogs.gwu.edu/dist/7/314/files/2018/10/Hertzfeld-and-Pace-International-Cooperation-on-Human-Lunar-Heritage-t984sx.pdf Accessed 18 January 2022 Dr. Hertzfeld is an expert in the economic, legal, and policy issues of space and advanced technological development. Dr. Hertzfeld holds a B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania, an M.A. from Washington University, and a Ph.D. degree in economics from Temple University. He also holds a J.D. degree from the George Washington University and is a member of the Bar in Pennsylvania and the District of Columbia. Dr. Hertzfeld joined the Space Policy Institute in 1992. His research projects have included studies on the privatization of the Space Shuttle, the economic benefits of NASA RandD expenditures, and the socioeconomic impacts of earth observation technologies. He teaches a course in Space Law and a course in microeconomics through the Economics Department at G.W. Dr. Hertzfeld has served as a Senior Economist and Policy Analyst at both NASA and the National Science Foundation, and has been a consultant to many U.S. and international organizations, including a recent project on space applications with the OECD. He is the co-editor of Space Economics (AIAA 1992). Selected other publications include a study of the issues for privatizing the Space Shuttle (2000), an analysis of the value of information from better weather forecasts, an analysis of sovereignty and property rights published in the Journal of International Law (University of Chicago, 2005), and an economic analysis of the space launch vehicle industry (2005). Dr. Hertzfeld has also edited and prepared a new edition of the Study Guide and Case Book for Managerial Economics (Sixth Edition, W.W. Norton and Co.). Dr. Scott N. Pace is the Deputy Assistant to the President and Executive Secretary of the National Space Council (NSpC). He joined the NSpC in August 2017. From 2008-2017, he was the Director of the Space Policy Institute and a Professor of the Practice of International Affairs at George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs. From 2005-2008, he served as the Associate Administrator for Program Analysis and Evaluation at NASA. Prior to NASA, he was the Assistant Director for Space and Aeronautics in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. From 1993-2000, he worked for the RAND Corporation’s Science and Technology Policy Institute, and from 1990-1993, he served as the Deputy Director and Acting Director of the Office of Space Commerce, in the Office of the Deputy Secretary of the Department of Commerce. In 1980, he received a Bachelor of Science degree in Physics from Harvey Mudd College; in 1982, Masters degrees in Aeronautics and Astronautics and Technology and Policy from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; and in 1989, a Doctorate in Policy Analysis from the RAND Graduate School.)-rahulpenu International Cooperation on Human Lunar Heritage The U.S. Apollo Space Program was a premier technological accomplishment of the 20th century. Preserving the six historic landing sites of the manned Apollo missions, as well as the mementos and equipment still on the Moon from those and other U.S. (e.g., Ranger and Surveyor) and Soviet Union (e.g., Luna) missions is important. Some of the instruments on the lunar surface are still active, monitored, and provide valuable scientifi c information. But recent government and private-sector plans to explore and potentially use lunar resources for commercial activity raise questions about the use of the Moon and potential accidental or purposeful threats to the historic sites and scientific equipment there. Although some steps to protect these sites have been proposed, we suggest a better way, drawing on international, not U.S. unilateral, recognition for the sites. Less than 2 years before the fi rst footsteps on the lunar surface on 20 July 1969 (see the image) , the United Nations Outer Space Treaty (OST) was drafted, ratifi ed, and came into force ( 1). Article II of the OST reinforced and formalized the international standard that outer space, the Moon, and other celestial bodies would not be subject to claims of sovereignty from any nation by any means, including appropriation. The OST prohibits ownership of territory or its appropriation by any state party to the treaty, which includes the United States, Russia, and 126 other nations. It does not prohibit the use of the Moon and its resources. In fact, the treaty emphasizes the importance of freedom of access to space for any nation and the importance of international cooperation in space exploration. These principles of the space treaties have enabled gains in science and technology and have contributed to international stability in space. New attention is being focused on the lunar surface. China has an active Moon exploration program and is considering sending astronauts (taikonauts) to the Moon. Private firms are contemplating robotic missions that could land in the vicinity of the historical sites of Apollo and other missions. Although we might assume the best of intentions for such missions, they could irreparably disturb the traces of the first human visits to another world. NASA has taken steps to protect the lunar landing sites and equipment and to initiate a process to create recognized norms of behavior. In July 2011, guidelines were issued for private companies competing in the Google Lunar X Prize that established detailed requirements for avoiding damage to U.S. government property on the Moon ( 2). H.R. 2617, The Apollo Lunar Landing Legacy Act, was introduced into the U.S. Congress on 8 July 2013 ( 3). In essence, it proposes to designate the Apollo landing sites and U.S. equipment on the Moon as a U.S. National Park with jurisdiction under the auspices of the U.S. Department of the Interior. Although the bill acknowledges treaty obligations of the United States, it would create, in effect, a unilateral U.S. action to control parts of the Moon. This would create a direct conflict with international law and could be viewed as a violation of U.S. commitments under the OST. It would be an ineffective way of protecting historical U.S. sites, and it fails to address interests of other states that have visited and will likely visit the Moon. It is legally flawed, unenforceable, and contradictory to our national space policy and our international relations in space ( 4). There is a better way for the United States to protect its historic artifacts and equipment on the Moon. The fi rst step is to clearly distinguish between U.S. artifacts left on the Moon, such as fl ags and scientifi c equipment, and the territory they occupy. The second is to gain international, not unilateral, recognition for the sites upon which they rest. Aside from debris from crash landings (by Japan, India, China, and the European Space Agency), there are only two nations with “soft-landed” equipment on the lunar surface: the United States and Russia. China has plans to soft-land Chang’e 3 on the Moon in December 2013. All three nations (and any others wishing to participate) have much to gain and little or nothing to lose from a multinational agreement based on mutual respect and mutual protection of each other’s historical sites and equipment. Legal Issues Although ownership of planets, the Moon, and celestial bodies is prohibited, ownership of equipment launched into space remains with the nation or entity that launched the equipment, wherever that equipment is in the solar system. Under the OST, that nation is both responsible and liable for any harmful acts that equipment may create in space. There are no prescribed limits on time or the amount of damage a nation may have to pay. The U.S. government therefore still owns equipment it placed on the Moon. Ownership has the associated right of protecting the equipment, subject to using necessary and proportional means for protection. But, because no nation can claim ownership of the territory on which equipment rests, there is an open issue of how to control the spots on the Moon underneath that equipment, because the site is integral to the historical signifi - cance. In H.R. 2617, establishment of Apollo sites as a unit of the U.S. National Park System could be interpreted as a declaration of territorial sovereignty on the Moon, even though ensuing paragraphs specify the Park’s components as the “artifacts on the surface of the Moon” at those sites. This problem needs international legal clarifi cation, achievable via a formal agreement among those nations that have the technological ability to directly access the Moon ( 5). Section 6(a) raises another legal issue. The bill proposes that the Secretary of the Interior shall administer the park in accordance with laws generally applicable to U.S. National Parks. It also requires the Secretary to act in accordance with applicable international law and treaties. The U.S. National Park System Act states that the Parks are “managed for the benefi t and inspiration of all the people of the United States” ( 6). The OST clearly emphasizes that the exploration and use of space by nations is to benefi t all peoples. The laws and space policies of the United States have always emphasized peaceful uses of space and the benefi ts of space for humankind. It may not be possible to implement and execute provisions of this Bill without raising important and fundamental questions about these contradictions between the language of the treaty and the mandates of our National Park Service. A third legal issue is raised in section (6) (c)(2) that allows private donations and cooperative agreements to “provide visitors centers and administrative facilities within reasonable proximity to the Historical Park.” This implies future private use of the Moon under rights granted by the U.S. government. Unilateral granting of lunar territorial rights to private individuals and implicit sovereign protection of that territory violates the OST. Finally, section 8 of the bill requires the Secretary of the Interior to submit the Apollo 11 lunar landing site to the United Nations Educational, Scientifi c, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) for designation as a World Heritage Site. This violates Article II of the OST. All current World Heritage Sites are located on sovereign territory of nations. The only exception is a separate treaty that allows UNESCO to designate underwater sites (such as sunken ships) as protected cultural sites ( 7). These designations are very limited, and although the convention has been ratifi ed by 43 nations, the United States, Russia, and China are not among them. Thus, any new treaty of this type specifi cally for outer space would have little chance of being ratifi ed by the major space-faring nations. A Proposal to Protect Lunar Sites Although a new U.N. treaty for space artifacts of signifi cant cultural and historic importance may be reasonable someday, this would start a very long process with unknown outcomes. Such a treaty could be delayed to a point beyond the time when nations and/or companies may be active on the Moon ( 8). Our suggested alternative is to create a bilateral agreement between the United States and Russia, offered as a multilateral agreement to other nations with artifacts on the Moon. This would be more legally expedient, politically sustainable, and would more likely meet and exceed the stated goals of the bill. It would also emphasize the important role of national laws to implement and enforce these international space agreements. Any nation with assets on the lunar surface will endeavor to protect those assets. This creates a situation where those nations have a timely, current, and common interest incorporating important implications for peaceful uses of outer space; scientific research and the advancement of knowledge; and cultural and heritage value, either presently or in the foreseeable future. The United States, Russia, and China all engage in multilateral cooperative space programs. They share many economic and trade dependencies adding to the international importance of promoting cooperation in space and commerce. In spite of today’s charged political environment, an agreement of the type we propose may still be possible to negotiate because it focuses on the culture of space, the use of space to benefit humankind, and the archaeological record of our civilization. It specifi cally would not touch sensitive issues of real property rights, export controls, human rights, or the weaponization of outer space. Cooperation on recognizing and protecting each other’s interests in historical sites and on equipment and artifacts also has no signifi cant security, prestige, or technological impediments. It reinforces the basic principles of the existing space treaties, avoids declarations of sovereignity on the Moon, and encourages multilateral cooperation resulting in a more stable and predictable environment for private activities on the Moon. The best mechanism for implementing a new agreement would be direct negotiations at highest levels of government in the United States, Russia, and China, with priority to include Russian sites in a proposal that protects U.S. sites. It could be included in meetings of heads of state of those nations, either jointly or sequentially among the three nations. Such an agreement could be executed in a relatively short period of time, setting precedents for peaceful and coordinated research, exploration, and exploitation of the Moon ( 9). An international agreement on lunar artifacts among the United States, Russia, and China would be a far superior and long-lasting solution than the unilateral U.S. proclamation in H.R. 2617. Enforcement of the agreement would be through each nation’s national laws, applying to those entities subject to the jurisdiction or control of the agreement members. Each nation’s property would be protected and preserved. Other nations should be free to join the agreement, and particularly encouraged to do so if they have the ability to access the Moon. An important result would be to develop a new level of trust among nations that could then lead to more comprehensive future cooperative agreements on space, science, exploration, commerce, and the use of the Moon and other celestial bodies. Lack of International Agreements cause Regulatory Gaps – specifically key due to International Race to the Moon. Hanlon 19 Michelle is Co-Director of the Air and Space Law Program at the University of Mississippi School of Law and its Center for Air and Space Law. She is the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Space Law, the world’s oldest law journal dedicated to the legal problems arising out of human activities in outer space and the Faculty Advisor for its sister publication, the Journal of Drone Law and Policy. Astronomy, “The case for protecting the Apollo landing areas as heritage sites,” February 19, 2019, https://astronomy.com/news/2019/02/the-case-for-protecting-the-apollo-landing-areas-as-heritage-sites Proof DR Why did the hominin cross the plain? We may never know. But anthropologists are pretty sure that a smattering of bare footprints preserved in volcanic ash in Laetoli, Tanzania bear witness to an evolutionary milestone. These small steps, taken roughly 3.5 million years ago, mark an early successful attempt by our common human ancestor to stand upright and stride on two feet, instead of four. Nearly 50 years ago, Neil Armstrong also took a few small steps. On the Moon. His bootprints, along with those of fellow astronaut Buzz Aldrin, are preserved in the lunar soil, called regolith, on what Aldrin described as the “magnificent desolation” of the Moon’s surface. These prints, too, bear witness to an evolutionary milestone, as well as humankind’s greatest technological achievement. What’s more, they memorialize the work of the many individuals who worked to unlock the secrets of space and send humans there. And those small steps pay homage to the daring men and women who have dedicated – and those who lost – their lives to space exploration. The evidence left by our bipedal ancestors are recognized by the international community and protected as human heritage. But the evidence of humanity’s first off-world exploits on the Moon are not. These events, separated by 3.5 million years, demonstrate the same uniquely human desire to achieve, explore and triumph. They are a manifestation of our common human history. And they should be treated with equal respect and deference. I’m a professor of aviation and space law and an associate director of the Air and Space Law Program at the University of Mississippi School of Law. My work focuses on the development of laws and guidelines that will assist and promote the successful and sustainable use of space and our transition into a multi-planet species. During the course of my research, I was shocked to discover that the bootprints left on the Moon, and all they memorialize and represent, are not recognized as human heritage and may be accidentally or intentionally damaged or defaced without penalty. Heritage gets no respect On Earth, we see evidence of this type of insensitivity all the time. The Islamic State has destroyed countless cultural artifacts, but it’s not just terrorists. People steal pieces of the Pyramids in Gaza and sell them to willing tourists. Tourists themselves see no harm in grabbing cobblestones that mark roads built by ancient Romans or snapping the thumbs off terra cotta warriors crafted centuries ago to honor a Chinese emperor. And, just last year, Sotheby’s auctioned off a bag – the first bag that Neil Armstrong used to collect the first Moon rocks and dust ever returned to Earth. The sale was entirely legal. This “first bag” ended up in the hands of a private individual after the U.S. government erroneously allowed it to be included in a public auction. Rather than return the bag to NASA, its new owner sold it to the highest bidder for US$1.8 million. That’s a hefty price tag and a terrible message. Imagine how much a private collector would pay for remnants of the first flag planted on the Moon? Or even just some dust from Mare Tranquilitatis? The fact is if people don’t think sites are important, there is no way to guarantee their safety – or the security of the artifacts they host. Had the first bag been recognized as an artifact, its trade would have been illegal. Introducing ‘For All Moonkind’ That’s why I co-founded the nonprofit For All Moonkind, the only organization in the world committed to making sure these sites are protected. Our mission is to ensure the Apollo 11 landing and similar sites in outer space are recognized for their outstanding value to humanity and protected, like those small steps in Laetoli, for posterity by the international community as part of our common human heritage. Our group of nearly 100 volunteers – space lawyers, archaeologists, scientists, engineers, educators and communicators from five continents – is working together to build the framework that will assure a sustainable balance between protection and development in space. Here on Earth, the international community identifies important sites by placing them on the World Heritage List, created by a convention signed by 193 nations. In this way, the international community has agreed to protect things like the cave paintings in Lascaux, France and Stonehenge, a ring of standing stones in Wiltshire, England. There are no equivalent laws or internationally recognized regulations or even principles that protect the Apollo 11 landing site, known as Tranquility Base, or any other sites on the Moon or in space. There is no law against running over the first bootprints imprinted on the Moon. Or erasing them. Or carving them out of the Moon’s regolith and selling them to the highest bidder. Between 1957 and 1975, the international community did dedicate a tremendous amount of time and effort to negotiating a set of treaties and conventions that would, it was hoped, prevent the militarization of space and ensure freedom of access and exploration for all nations. At the time, cultural heritage in outer space did not exist and was not a concern. As such, it is not surprising that the Outer Space Treaty, which entered into force in 1967, doesn’t address the protection of human heritage. Today, this omission is perilous. Because, sadly, humans are capable of reprehensible acts. Back to the Moon Currently there are a comparative trickle of companies and nations with their sights on returning to the Moon. China landed a rover on the far side in January. An Israeli company hopes to reach the Moon in March. At least three more private companies have plans to send rovers in 2020. The U.S., Russia and China are all planning human missions to the Moon. The European Space Agency has its sights on an entire Moon Village. But as history shows, this trickle of explorers could soon become a rush. As we straddle the threshold of true space-faring capability, we have an extraordinary opportunity. We have time to protect our common heritage, humanity’s first steps, on the Moon before it is vandalized or destroyed. If our hominin ancestor had a name, it is lost to history. Conversely, English novelist J.G. Ballard suggested that Neil Armstrong may well be the only human being of our time remembered 50,000 years from now. If we do this right, 3.5 million years from now, not only will his name be remembered, his bootprint will remain preserved and the story of how Tranquility Base became the cradle of our space-faring future will be remembered forever, along with the lessons of tumultuous history that got us to the Moon. These lessons will help us come together as a human community and ultimately advance forward as a species. To allow anything else to happen would be a giant mistake. Heritage Sites are critical for Science research around Dust. OSTP 18 Office of Science and Technology Policy March 2018 “PROTECTING and PRESERVING APOLLO PROGRAM LUNAR LANDING SITES and ARTIFACTS” (The Office of Science and Technology Policy is a department of the United States government, part of the Executive Office of the President, established by United States Congress on May 11, 1976, with a broad mandate to advise the President on the effects of science and technology on domestic and international affairs.)Elmer The Moon continues to hold great significance around the world. The successes of the Apollo missions still represent a profound human technological achievement almost 50 years later and continue to symbolize the pride of the only nation to send humans to an extraterrestrial body. The Apollo missions reflect the depth and scope of human imagination and the desire to push the boundaries of humankind’s existence. The Apollo landing sites and the accomplishments of our early space explorers energized our Nation's technological prowess, inspired generations of students, and greatly contributed to the worldwide scientific understanding of the Moon and our Solar System. Additionally, other countries have placed hardware on the Moon which undoubtedly has similar historic, cultural, and scientific value to their country and to humanity. Three Apollo sites remain scientifically active and all the landing sites provide the opportunity to learn about the changes associated with long-term exposure of human-created systems in the harsh lunar environment. These sites offer rich opportunities for biological, physical, and material sciences. Future visits to the Moon’s surface offer opportunities to study the effects of long-term exposure to the lunar environment on materials and articles, including food left behind, paint, nylon, rubber, and metals. Currently, very little data exist that describe what effect temperature extremes, lunar dust, micrometeoroids, solar radiation, etc. have on such man-made material, and no data exist for time frames approaching the five decades that have elapsed since the Apollo missions. While some of the hardware on the Moon was designed to remain operational for extended periods and successfully telemetered scientific data back to the Earth, much of what is there was designed only for use during the Apollo mission and then abandoned with no expectation of further survivability. How these artifacts and their constituent materials have survived and been altered while on the lunar surface is of great interest to engineers and scientists. The Apollo artifacts and the impact sites have the potential to provide unprecedented data if lunar missions to gather and not corrupt the data are developed. These data will be invaluable for helping to design future long-duration systems for operation on the lunar surface. NASA has formally evaluated the possible effects of the lunar environment and identified potential science opportunities. For example, using Apollo 15 as a representative landing site, the crew left 189 individually cataloged items on the lunar surface, including the descent stage of the Lunar Module, the Lunar Roving Vehicle, the Apollo Lunar Surface Experiments Package, and a wide variety of miscellaneous items that were offloaded by the astronauts to save weight prior to departure. The locations of many of these items are well documented, and numerous photographs are available to establish their appearance and condition at the time they were left behind. Moon Dust Research key to Moon Basing. Smith 19 Belinda Smith 7-18-2019 “Who protects Apollo sites when no-one owns the Moon?” https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2019-07-19/apollo-11-moon-landing-heritage-preservation-outer-space-treaty/11055458 (Strategic Communications Advisor at Department of Education and Training at University of Victoria)Elmer It's not just about history Alongside heritage value, the bits and pieces left on the Moon have enormous scientific significance. Take moon dust. It's a real problem for moon-bound equipment because it's made of fine, super sticky and highly abrasive grains, which have a habit of clogging instruments and spacesuits. But as Armstrong and Aldrin trotted across the surface, the footprints they left behind gave us valuable information into the properties of moon dust, Flinders University space archaeologist Alice Gorman said. "The ridges on the boots were meant to measure how far they sank into the dust. "Then they used the light contrast between the ridges to measure the reflectance properties of the dust." A boot print in grey dust. This iconic photo of Buzz Aldrin's footprint is also a science experiment. (Supplied: NASA) It's data like this that will help if we want a long-term base on the Moon — we need to know how our gear will stand up to lunar conditions. Apart from the sticky, gritty dust, the lunar surface is also peppered with meteorites and cosmic rays. So, Dr Gorman said, one of the very few reasons to revisit a moon site is to collect some of the equipment left behind and see how it fared. "What has happened to this material in 50 years of sitting on the lunar surface? "This is going to be really interesting scientific information because it will help planning for future missions and get an understanding of long-term conditions." And NASA has already done this. The Apollo 12 mission, which landed on the Moon four months after Apollo 11, collected parts from the 1967 Surveyor probe and brought them back to Earth. An astronaut standing next to a piece of equipment on the lunar surface Along with rocks and soil samples, Apollo 12 astronauts collected pieces of the Surveyor 3 probe for analysis back on Earth. (Supplied: NASA) Another reason to preserve the equipment left on the Moon is to prove we really went there, Professor Capelotti said. "There's a lot of people out there who still don't believe it happened. "The stuff on the Moon is a testament to what we did and when we did it." Lunar Basing solves Earth Observatory – specifically Super-Volcanoes and Arctic Aviation. Hamill 16, Patrick. "Atmospheric observations from the moon: A lunar earth-observatory." 2016 Ieee International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium (Igarss). IEEE, 2016. (Department of Physics and Astronomy at San Jose State University)Elmer There are many reasons for placing an Earth atmospheric observatory on the Moon. Perhaps the most obvious reason is that from the Moon one can observe a single location on Earth for a relatively long period of time (hours, rather than seconds for a satellite in LEO). During a 24 hour period, nearly every point on the surface of Earth can be monitored, and during one month, both the sunlit and night sides of the Earth will have been observed. Further, there will have been excellent views of the polar regions. The visible images of the entire illuminated surface of Earth will allow one to evaluate in an unambiguous manner the total cloud fraction of Earth’s atmosphere. The scans will allow one to determine the composition of the Earth’s atmosphere in terms of the major trace gases and aerosols. The polarization of the scattered light will also yield information on the aerosol type. Stellar occultation allows one to determine profiles of extinction from aerosol particles, and the altitude dependence of concentrations of gas species such as O3, CO2, etc. Profiles of stratospheric particle extinctions are of particular interest following energetic volcanic eruptions that inject large amounts of SO2 into the stratosphere. Profiles of O3 allow one to determine the vertical structure of the Antarctic ozone hole and “mini ozone holes” in the Arctic. Stellar occultation is a valuable technique for studying the formation and structure of polar stratospheric clouds. The GOMOS instrument on ENVISAT was operational from 2002 to 2012 and during that time it observed well over 10,000 stellar occultations. Perot et al. 6 present a polar mesospheric climatology based on these measurements. The formation of dust clouds, particularly from regions such as the deserts in Northern Africa and Central Asia, and their atmospheric dispersion is an important scientific and environmental problem. The lunar observations could shed light on the relationship between the presence of dust and the formation of hurricanes in the Atlantic Ocean. The fact that the entire disk of the Earth is visible from the Moon make it an excellent location to measure the radiation balance of the Earth. Consequently, a component of the observatory would be an ERBE/CERES type of radiometer to measure short and longwave radiation 7. The goal would be to monitor, on a continuous basis, the global energy balance, planetary brightness, regional forcings and the net radiative effect of clouds 8. The fact that during the course of a month Earth presents both day and night faces to the Moon allows one to determine emitted and reflected radiation under a variety of solar illuminations. Volcanic plumes are a well-known danger to aircraft. Some regions of Earth that are not well monitored, such as the Arctic regions between North America and Asia, are locations of frequently occurring volcanic eruptions. Monitoring of the Earth from the Moon would offer an early warning system for volcanic plumes reaching aircraft altitudes. The atmosphere above a low earth orbit satellite is tenuous but not entirely negligible. The fact that the Moon has essentially no atmosphere, means there is no interference of measurements of the radiation emitted from the surface of Earth. Natural Disasters are an Existential Event – outweighs Nuclear War. Wright 18 Pam Wright 1-19-2018 "Extreme Weather Events Have Greatest Likelihood of Threatening Human Existence, Experts Say" https://weather.com/science/environment/news/2018-01-19-extreme-weather-threatens-human-existence (M.S. in Meteorology, editor for The Weather Channel)Elmer Extreme weather events are the most likely threat to humanity in the next 10 years, experts say. Each year, nearly 1,000 scientists and decision-makers from around the world take a survey to identify and analyze the most pressing risks facing the planet. This year and for the second year in a row, the results of the 2018 Global Risks Report, released Wednesday at the World Economic Forms, revealed extreme weather as the most likely threat to the world over a 10-year period, topping weapons of mass destruction. These were followed by cyber attacks, data fraud or theft and failure of climate change mitigation and adaptation. “Extreme weather events were ranked again as a top global risk by likelihood and impact. Environmental risks, together with a growing vulnerability to other risks, are now seriously threatening the foundation of most of our commons," Alison Martin, group chief risk officer for the Zurich Insurance Group, said in a press release. The survey looked at five environmental risk categories this year: extreme weather events and temperatures; accelerating biodiversity loss; pollution of air, soil and water; failures of climate change mitigation and adaptation; and risks linked to the transition to low carbon. All ranked high in terms of impact and likelihood. "This follows a year characterized by high-impact hurricanes, extreme temperatures and the first rise in CO2 emissions for four years," the authors wrote in the report. "We have been pushing our planet to the brink and the damage is becoming increasingly clear." The report noted that the 2017 hurricane season, which included hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria, was the most expensive hurricane season on record. The authors noted that extreme rainfall "can be particularly damaging." "Of the 10 natural disasters that caused the most deaths in the first half of 2017, eight involved floods or landslides," the authors added. "Storms and other weather-related hazards are also a leading cause of displacement, with the latest data showing that 76 percent of the 31.1 million people displaced during 2016 were forced from their homes as a result of weather-related events." The report said extreme heat in California, Chile and Portugal resulted in some of the most extensive wildfires ever recorded in those areas. More than 100 deaths were attributed to wildfires in Portugal, according to the report. Extreme weather will also affect agriculture around the world, which may lead to a food crisis, the report said, adding that the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations says more than 75 percent of the world’s food comes from just 12 plants and five animal species. "It is estimated that there is now a one-in-twenty chance per decade that heat, drought, and flood events will cause a simultaneous failure of maize production in the world’s two main growers, China and the United States," the authors wrote. In addition, fears of “ecological Armageddon” are "being raised by a collapse in populations of insects that are critical to food systems." In terms of the potential in having the greatest impact on humanity over the next 10 years, weapons of mass destruction ranked just above extreme weather, followed by natural disasters, failure of climate change mitigation and adaptation and water crisis. The authors noted that the use of weapons of mass destruction would have catastrophic effects but is a relatively unlikely scenario. Martin said in a World Economic Forum release that she fears the world "may squander the opportunity to move towards a more sustainable, equitable and inclusive future." "Unfortunately we currently observe a 'too-little-too-late' response by governments and organizations to key trends such as climate change," she added. "It’s not yet too late to shape a more resilient tomorrow, but we need to act with a stronger sense of urgency in order to avoid potential system collapse." Arctic aviation through Alaska solves nuclear wars. Cooper 12 – Kathleen Cooper, Master’s Degrees in Business Administration from the University of Phoenix and Military Operational Art and Science from Air Command and Staff College, ““North To Alaska”: The Geostrategic Importance of the Last Frontier”, SAASS Thesis, June, https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/1019442.pdf This thesis examines whether Alaska is as strategically important today as when Mitchell made his proclamation in 1935. He stated to the House Military Affairs Committee, “I believe in the future he who holds Alaska will hold the world, and I think it’s the most strategic place in the world.”6 Mitchell was referring to the importance of basing aircraft in Alaska and its decisive proximity to Europe and Asia. Mitchell’s opinion was shaped by his assignment to Alaska as a lieutenant, which exposed him to the wealth of abundant natural resources and the centrality of Alaska to America’s interests in the Pacific theater. This paper will test Mitchell’s claim by analyzing the evolution of Alaskan airpower and the roles of military and civilian aviation from 1913 to 1945. The first chapter shows how airpower transformed Alaska. It also reveals how the colder Alaskan climate shaped the development of the air service’s aircraft and operations. Highlighted is the critical geostrategic location of Alaska during World War II. The Aleutian Campaign against the Japanese and support of the Russians during the Lend Lease program, two operations centered on Alaska, were pivotal in securing an Allied victory in the war. The establishment of air routes and the Alaska-Canada Highway opened access to the Last Frontier and increased US global reach to other nations. Next, an examination of Alaska and the importance of airpower post-World War II, through the Cold War years, provides additional insight to evaluating Mitchell’s claim of Alaska’s strategic importance. The strife between former allies Russia and the US altered the global balance of power for over 40 years. Alaska, next door to the Soviet Union, was in a prime strategic location to support the air and missile defense mission to protect the US homeland. The installation of the Distant Early Warning Line, White Alice Communications System, and the Ballistic Missile Early Warning Site at Clear Air Force Station signaled US resolve to deter Soviet threats. Additional investments in Alaska resulted in much of the infrastructure that remains today, which continues to support US military and commercial interests. Finally, an assessment of contemporary Alaska and Alaskan-based military missions determines if the state’s strategic importance has endured since 1935. With the end of the Cold War, new challenges have emerged such as climate change and rogue nations pursuing possession of nuclear missiles that may potentially threaten the US homeland. The melting of the Arctic polar ice cap may cause increased competition for scarce natural resources and territory. The result of this competition will affect who gets controls of the Northern sea routes. Because of Alaska’s strategic location, the US has a vital interest in the Arctic and a role in resolving these issues. Further, Alaska’s proximity has enabled US air and missile defense missions to adapt to the rogue nation threat by integrating key locations with the US Ballistic Missile Defense System. The conclusion contains a summary of the historic periods and provides recommendations for the future, based on historical analysis and findings contained in the contemporary Alaska chapter. Extensive research and the evidence provided reveal that Mitchell’s claim that Alaska is the “most strategic place in the world” remains true today. The development of this thesis resulted from the review of over 100 primary and secondary sources. Records obtained from the Historical Research Agency at Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama were the foundation of this research. A review of scholarly journals, monographs, online databases, and professional opinions also informed this analysis. Experience at Elmendorf Air Force Base, Alaska on the Eleventh Air Force staff from 2003 to 2005 gave the author a truly unique perspective to the issue and awareness of the strategic importance of Alaska. Additionally, a remote assignment to Clear Air Force Station, Alaska, conducting Missile Warning and Space Surveillance from 2005 to 2006, helped to shape the author’s operational Alaskan perspective. Chapter 1 Alaskan Air Power: 1913-1945 Alaska is the most central place in the world for aircraft and that is true of Europe, Asia or North America. I believe, in the future, he who holds Alaska will hold the world, and I think it is the most strategic place in the world. Brigadier William L. “Billy” Mitchell General William “Billy” Mitchell’s assignment in Alaska from 1901 to 1903 as a young lieutenant was fortuitous. His team established the Washington-Alaska Military Cable and Telegraph System, which “opened up the territory to civilization.”1 His experiences convinced him of the geostrategic importance of Alaska. He would later publicly advocate, in speeches and articles, about the importance of basing aircraft and establishing air routes throughout Alaska. Mitchell was convinced “with the coming of air power, Alaska had become the key point, strategically, of the Pacific.”2 The first introduction of aircraft to Alaskan territory was on 4 July 1913 by Mitchell’s friend James V. Martin.3 He conducted a flight over Fairbanks, Alaska in a Martin Tractor airplane to generate public interest.4 At that time, the people of Alaska relied on sled dogs, wagons, boats and limited automobiles for transportation. A remote and vast territory, Alaska is over 570,640 square miles.5 As Martin demonstrated, air transportation could and eventually would transform Alaska. In 1919, Mitchell wrote a personal letter to Colonel Henry H. Arnold stating “he was very anxious to push through a flight to Alaska with land planes.”6 Mitchell oversaw the Alaska Flying Expedition in 1920.7 Captain St. Clair Streett of the Black Wolf squadron led the round-trip journey from Mitchel Field, New York to Nome, Alaska.8 The official purpose of this flight was establishing an air route, testing the bimotored aircraft (“evolved from modifications in the DH-4 airplane”), and photographing unmapped remote areas of Alaska.9 Captain Streett and the other pilots also had a purpose captured by the saying: “Yesterday a month was required to reach the Yukon; if our expedition exceeds, it will prove that the Yukon is but three days distant—by airplane!”10 Along the air route, the crews experienced flight mishaps, inadequate landing fields, and bad weather. One time en route North, one aircraft landed in a former dump in Portal Field, North Dakota.11 Tires on one plane were cut-up by glass, and another plane’s tail skid broke.12 Fortunately, the innovative crews quickly made the repairs. Part of a Ford axle fixed the tail skid.13 Later in the journey, Captain Streett had an in-flight emergency resulting in him leaving his seat to apply a fire extinguisher, while his mechanic took control of the plane.14 Fog, rain, and hail also made flying difficult and dangerous in the Northwest Territory. The rain combined with darkness made navigation treacherous. On one stormy night, Captain Streett’s “first glimpse of terra firma was a cliff, not below him, but ahead of him!”15 This expedition provided the opportunity for the inhabitants of remote territories to see an airplane for the first time. The people of Jasper County in Canada had their first experience without incident.16 While in Seward, Alaska, one woman, a Mrs. Kemp, was greatly frightened when four planes flew overhead.17 She hid her children in the cellar, covered the trapdoor with a China hutch, and then armed herself with a six-gun and a 30-40 rifle.18 She remained convinced that these were “monsters,” until a US Judge later informed her about the Alaska Flying Expedition.19 The people of Fairbanks were pleasantly surprised at the speed and distance covered by the expedition. During the days of the Gold Rush, the trip normally took over 1 1/2 years through the Yukon River compared to 50 hours by plane.20 The Alaskan Flying Expedition crews flew 4,500 miles in 53 hours and 30 minutes at a maximum speed of 115 miles per hour in DeHavilands (DH-4Bs).21 These were modified vintage World War I airplanes.22 The four airplanes safely arrived in Nome, Alaska on 24 August.23 The crew successfully accomplished the round trip flight, landing at Mitchel Field on 20 October.24 They traveled “9,000 miles in just 112 hours of flying, with the same airplanes, the same motors, and the same spark-plugs.”25 The crews took aerial photographs in only ten hours for $1,500 dollars, saving the US Geological Survey $10,000 dollars and about three years.26 Lieutenant Clifford Nutt, one of the four pilots, stated the mission’s “success would establish a precedent for future military and commercial operations.”27 Airplanes inspired economic dreams in Carl “Ben” Eielson, a former Air Service pilot. He began an air service business in 1922 in Fairbanks based on the former military Curtiss JN-4D airplane, commonly referred to as the “Jenny.”28 His business included transporting, guiding, and mail delivery. He made the first airmail delivery in Alaska on 21 February 1924.29 A delivery that averaged 18 days by sled dog was only three hours by air.30 Eielson encouraged aviation developments and accomplished many firsts leading the way for commercial investments. Eielson and George Hubert Wilkins, an Australian Arctic explorer, achieved much recognition for their Arctic flight from Point Bar 9 the Distinguished Flying Cross.33 Eielson and Wilkins’ achievements demonstrate how military and commercial airpower shaped Alaska. Mitchell’s prediction to Arnold in his letter in 1919 came true. The 1920 flight did “develop into a round-the world flight.”34 In 1924, Mitchell organized the Douglas World Cruisers 4-ship flight.35 “Again, Alaska, because of its strategic location on the air map of the world, would figure prominently in his plans.”36 This around-the-world flight, conducted by the US Army Air Service, began on 6 April 1924 and officially ended almost six months later on 28 September.37 The planes were named the Seattle, Chicago, New Orleans, and Boston.38 The route began in Seattle and then went through Prince Rupert, Sitka, Seward, Chignik, Dutch Harbor, Nazan Bay, Atka, Chichagof Harbor, Attu, across the Kurile Islands to Japan, through southern Asia, Europe, North Atlantic and ended back in Seattle.39 The flight covered 26,345 miles in 363 flight hours and 7 minutes, averaging 72.5 miles per hour.40 Building on the Alaska Flying Expedition lessons and utilizing three of the previous pilots from that expedition as advance crews, Mitchell proved that airpower could extend America’s global reach.41 The Alaska portion of the trip caused numerous difficulties for Major Frederick L. Martin, the mission lead. He experienced engine trouble and an unfortunate meeting with an Alaskan mountain.42 He and his mechanic survived, but that was the end of the Seattle’s journey.43 The Coast Guard cutters USCGC Haida and USCGC Algonquin provided invaluable support recovering Major Martin and aiding the other three crews through the Alaska portion of their trip.44 Mitchell remarked, “These airplanes flew through Alaska and again it was demonstrated to anyone with an eye to the future and conversant with world conditions that it was of the utmost importance for us to establish our airways there at the earliest possible moment. However, conservatism, ignorance, and lack of foresight have prevented it up to this time.”45 Mitchell later wrote, “Since the World Fliers went through the Aleutian Islands and down the Kuriles, the Japanese have paid special attention to the northern route.”46 He stated “they are deathly afraid of an air attack through Alaska,” not an attack through Hawaii or the Philippines.47 Mitchell advocated for a permanent air presence in Alaska and noted that the neither the US Army nor Navy had taken any actions to defend Alaska.48 In one of Mitchell’s reports, he “predicted that Japan would strike the US without warning and the Aleutian Islands would become a major theater of operations.”49 War Plan Orange, originally conceived in 1890, was a Pacific defense plan in case of war with Japan.50 Plan Orange updates included Alaska in a strategic triangle with Panama and Hawaii in 1928, 1938, but then the focus shifted away from Alaska in 1942.51 “American strategy in the Pacific, Brigadier General Stanley D. Embick insisted, should concentrate on holding the strategic triangle, Alaska-HawaiiPanama. Such a course would place the United States in an invulnerable position and permit its military and naval forces to conduct operations in such a manner that will promise success instead of national disaster."52 However, Alaska would remain a low economic priority of the strategic triangle, until a crisis ensued.53 An Alaska tragedy captured the Air Service’s attention and was the impetus for change. In 1929, Eielson and his partner Joe Crosson established Alaska Airways.54 The company provided recovery services for Swenson Fur and Trading Corporation on the Siberian Coast.55 On 9 November 1929, Eielson and his mechanic, Earl Borland died in a plane crash on one of the personnel and fur recovery missions.56 Harsh weather conditions made search and rescue operations difficult. On 27 January 1930 because of the efforts of Alaskan, Canadian, and Russian pilots, the bodies of Eielson and Borland were recovered.57 Despite not being recognized by the US, the Soviet Union still provided assistance.58 Unfortunately, the U.S. Army Air Corps was unable to participate in the recovery efforts.59 The Air Corps had no pilots trained in Arctic operations nor did they have the necessary equipment for cold weather operations.60 On 5 March 1934, Alaskan Delegate Anthony J. Dimond testified before Congress, introducing the “Dimond Bill” highlighting the inability of the Air Service to aid in the recovery of Eielson’s body, the need for cold weather testing and training, and a requirement for equipping Alaska with defenses.61 Dimond’s argument was further strengthened by the Air Corps’ misfortune in delivering mail in 1934, which prompted the War Department to direct the Baker Board.62 Twelve pilots died and fifty-seven aircraft accidents occurred in a four-month period while delivering mail.63 House Speaker Henry Rainy stated, “If the Air Corps was not equal to carrying the mail…how would it carry bombs?”64 The Baker Board “studied and reported on the adequacy and efficiency of the Air Corps in performing its mission in peace and war.”65 Lieutenant Colonel Henry “Hap” Arnold renewed faith in the Air Corps and diverted attention away from the mail tragedy. On 19 July 1934, Colonel Arnold led “The Alaska Flight,” consisting of fourteen officers and sixteen enlisted men in ten Martin B-10 bombers.66 The flight was a round-trip from Bolling Field, Washington D.C. to Fairbanks, Alaska. The mission included surveying and photographing Alaska for future military defenses.67 Alastair McBain asserted that Colonel Arnold “made the flight to prove, it was said, that the maligned Billy Mitchell knew what he was talking about when he said Alaska would be important in the defense of this hemisphere.”68 The 950-mile return flight from Juneau to Seattle along the coastline “demonstrated that a tactical unit could be deployed to Alaska without having to fly over neutral territory” and the first time “Alaska had been linked with the continental United States by a mass non-stop flight of American airplanes.”69 The Alaska Flight traveled 18,000 miles with only one recoverable mishap, at Cook Inlet in Alaska, returning on 20 August.70 Upon his return, Colonel Arnold stated, “We have proved that it is possible to take tactical units of the Air Corps to Alaska quickly and bring them back successfully.”71 In his post-trip report, he recommended the creation of an Air Corps base in Alaska and that a “fair share of public funds” be provided to improve Alaskan air navigation.72 The combination of the harsh climate and inadequate navigation aids was dangerous for pilots.73 Colonel Arnold received the Distinguished Flying Cross and his second Mackay Trophy, an award given for the “year’s most outstanding flight” the Alaskan Flight.74 He personally briefed his findings from the trip and emphasized Alaska’s strategic importance to President Roosevelt.75 The Air Corps Tactical School (ACTS) also investigated the strategic importance of Alaska and provided the classified study Strategic Possibilities of Alaska: 1934-1935. Captain Arthur W. Vanaman, Captain Muir S. Fairchild, Lieutenant Hoyt S. Vandenberg, and Lieutenant Laurence S. Kuter were the Air Corps committee members who prepared the report. The committee concluded that Alaska was “vital to the continued existence of the United States as a first-class power that air bases be established in Alaska with absolutely no delay.”76 Three main considerations shaped the survey recommendations. First, air base establishment in Alaska would protect the US and deny adversaries the ability to expand their air bases into the remote US territory.77 Second, the ACTS committee believed air power was critical and the most effective method to defend the Alaskan Territory and the US.78 Air power would overcome the need for excessive ground troop requirements.79 Finally, air power would be necessary because “naval power would fail in the event of an Atlantic threat.”80 ACTS concluded maintaining US sovereignty of Alaska was important to protect against “hostile seizure” and that the strategic Alaskan territory could serve US homeland defense interests.81 Diplomacy and military power were two methods considered to maintain the economic status quo.82 The ACTS committee reasoned that diplomacy was not a viable option, because of the reduction in the US presence in the Philippines and Guam and Japan’s withdrawl from the League of Nations.83 ACTS stated that the solution to enforcing national policy would then be “achieved by elimination of diplomacy and that air power must be employed.”84 To defend against potential Japanese aggression, ACTS considered the establishment of air bases at Guam and Fairbanks, Alaska.85 However, Guam was not a workable option for either air or naval bases because of the “complacent agreement to leave Guam undefended.”86 The ACTS report indicated that establishing air and naval bases in Guam would be a provocative move and result in a war with Japan.87 Establishing an air base in Fairbanks, they believed, would not trigger Japanese aggression.88 ACTS offered, “Various points in Alaska might be prepared to service this force under the guise of supplementing the restricted means of communication throughout that country.”89 ACTS emphasized the strategic location of Alaska, especially the Aleutian Island of Attu in close proximity to Japan (see Figure 1).90 “The radius of action of an air force based near Attu Island, includes the entire Island Empire of the dominant Asiatic power in the Pacific. Her cities, her industry, her transportation, her royal family, her political center, her military and naval headquarters, her major naval bases and, perhaps, the main portion of her navy, her army, and her air force are within that range.”91 Reinforcing Attu as an airbase would protect the US from a Japanese attack.92 On 17 January 1935, the introduction of the Wilcox Bill advocated for airfield construction in Alaska and five other strategic locations.93 In support of the Wilcox Bill, General Mitchell made his now famous testimony in support of Alaska on 11 February 1935. He stated, “Alaska is the most central place in the world for aircraft and that is true of Europe, Asia or North America. I believe, in the future, he who holds Alaska will hold the world, and I think it is the most strategic place in the world.”94 According to John Cloe, military historian of Alaska, this was one of the last public appearances of General Mitchell prior to his passing on 19 February 1936.95 The Wilcox committee took into account the Dimond Bill, Colonel Arnold’s report, and the Baker Board findings.96 On 12 August 1935, the Wilcox National Air Defense Act became law. Despite not providing funding for construction, this became the “most important piece of legislation … almost all base construction from 1935 through World War II was done under the umbrella of the Wilcox Act.97 As part of the act’s funding for the development of Arctic bases, Congress finally funded a cold weather testing facility near Fairbanks in 1939.98 US international concerns and growing instability reinforced Alaska’s strategic importance. On 1 September 1939, World War II began when Germany invaded Poland. “Japan’s expansionist goals” were also becoming increasingly alarming.99 Then on 17 June 1940, France surrendered to Germany. As a result, military presence and construction of airfields and bases throughout Alaska rapidly increased.100 By February 1941, B-18s and P-36s began arriving at Elmendorf Air Force Base.101 President Roosevelt sought to improve US-USSR relations and support the Allied war effort. In January 1941, President Roosevelt reversed the 1939 embargo, which removed restrictions on aviation related supplies and deliveries to the USSR.102 This embargo was based on the Export Control Act of 1940 created in response to Japanese aggression.103 He made this decision, despite the non-aggression pact between Germany and the USSR.104 “Continued isolation of the USSR seemed increasingly less desirable, and tentative steps were taken to improve relations.”105 To support the Allies, Roosevelt approved the US Lend-Lease Act on 11 March 1941.106 The Soviets complicated matters for the US by entering into a neutrality treaty with Japan on 13 April 1941.107 Japan’s proximity to undefended Alaska threatened US interests. However, one-and-one-half months later the German-Soviet pact dissolved on 22 June 1941, when Germany launched Operation Barbarossa and attacked the Soviet Union.108 Alaskan defenses received another boost after 7 December 1941, when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in Oahu, Hawaii.109 General Arnold agreed to send two more squadrons and provide new P-40s and B-26s.110 However, by the end of January 1942, just 13 of 24 P-40s and 7 of 13 B26s completed the journey to Alaska.111 Outdated navigation aids and harsh weather conditions made flying the aircraft from the US mainland to Alaska difficult and dangerous.112 Colonel William O. “Bruce” Butler, the Fourth Air Force Chief of Staff, devised a successful plan to ship planes by boat from Spokane to Alaska, instead of subjecting pilots to the treacherous air route in the winter.113 The Alaska Communication System (formerly called the Washington-Alaska Military Cable and Telegraph System) proved inadequate for wartime.114 “Alaska’s early warning air defense depended on the visual observation made by ground observers, the majority of whom were Indian agents located in remote villages.” 115 Funding enabled an upgrade to the current system, providing a tactical network by activating existing sea cables permitting secure communications.116 Additional air support services were finally provided.117 The surge in Alaskan forces and increased infrastructure justified a flag rank presence in Alaska.118 As such, Colonel Butler transferred to Anchorage, Alaska and pinned on Brigadier General after assuming command of Eleventh Air Force on 8 March 1942.119 He contended with a lack of pilots and an aircraft shortfall.120 Rear Admiral Robert A. Theobald assumed command of Task Force 8, which Admiral Chester Nimitz, Commander in Chief, Pacific Fleet directed to prepare for the Japanese threat projected in the Aleutians.121 He had operational control over Eleventh Air Force.122 By 21 May 1942, the US became aware of the “objectives of Midway, the approximate strength of the Japanese Northern Area Force and that it would strike on 1 June or shortly after.”123 Admiral Nimitz ordered Theobald “not to his risk his forces unless he was certain of victory.”124 Theobald, Butler, and General Simon Bolivar Buckner, the Alaskan Defense Command chief, met on 27 May 1942 to plan the Aleutian defense.125 The Japanese attacked Dutch Harbor, Alaska on 3 June, followed by their attack at Midway on 4 June 1942.126 There are two reasons for the Japanese strategy. First, the Japanese objective at Dutch Harbor was directing US attention away from the planned main event, the attack at Midway Atoll.127 The Japanese assumed the US would divert their forces away from Midway to protect US territory.128 Secondly, the aftermath of the Doolittle Raid on Tokyo on 18 August 1942 left some Japanese convinced the attack was launched from a “secret base in the western Aleutian Islands,” not the USS Hornet.129 Japanese assumptions proved out to be wrong on both counts. Radar alerted the US in the Aleutians of an impending Japanese attack.130 Despite the fact that the Imperial Japanese Navy lost the Battle of Midway, the Japanese Special Navy Landing Force occupied the Aleutian Islands of Kiska on 6 June and Attu on 7 June.131 This event marked the first time since the War of 1812 that foreign invaders had occupied US North American territory.132 According to Chandonnet, “Because of the Aleutian operation, the Japanese at the crucial Battle of Midway did not have the superiority in air carriers they might have had.”133 Additionally, “If Admiral Yamamoto’s plan had succeeded, Japan would have gained undisputed control of the central and western Pacific.”134 Major Neil Rice prepared a memorandum regarding the situation in the Aleutians dated 11 June 1942.135 The Office of the Chief of Staff at the War Department forwarded Rice’s memorandum to Lieutenant General Arnold. Major Rice stated that the occupation of the islands gave the Japanese control of the western Bering Sea, and insisted the US must maintain Umnak and Dutch Harbor.136 He noted the potential loss of these two islands would provide the Japanese unfettered access to the entire Bering Sea.137 Major Rice recommended Alaska be a separate theater with a designated Commanding General.138 Additionally, he provided a survey of existing airfields and suggested that Army personnel maintain and construct additional Alaskan airfields.139 As the conflict progressed in the Aleutians, the US military recovered a Mitsubishi Zero, the top fighter of the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service, on the Aleutian island of Akutan.140 The salvaged plane was sent to San Diego in July 1942.141 This was the “first complete Zero to fall into US hands.”142 The US repaired the plane and subsequently used it to train Allied pilots and improve flight tactics against the Japanese.143 Progress in the Aleutian Islands and Alaska was overshadowed by higher priority theater requirements.144 By July 1942, General Arnold did not want to send more air assets to Alaska as it “would be a wasteful diversion from other theaters of which are air theaters.”145 However, supporting the Russians through the Lend Lease program gained momentum in American strategy, which provided Alaska another important wartime mission. The Alaska-Siberia (ALSIB) route proposed by the US on 23 April 1942 concerned Stalin.146 He stated, “I’m afraid our friends, the Japanese, won’t like the Alaska-Siberia route.”147 Stalin preferred other Lend Lease route options. The Russians’ first preference was the cumbersome 13,000-mile South Atlantic route requiring shipping and flying the planes.148 The second undesirable Russian preferred route went through the North Atlantic sea-lane to Arctic Russian ports.149 President Roosevelt and Churchill voiced their concerns to Stalin regarding this passage.150 Hitler’s forces reportedly destroyed 30-40 of the North-Russian convoys supporting Lend Lease, “in effect, shutting down the route.”151 German submarines forcefully patrolled the routes suggested by the Russians.152 Despite these German threats, Stalin was not concerned for Allied safety stating, “No major task can be carried out in wartime without risk of loss.”153 On 3 July 1942, Stalin approved the ALSIB air route to transfer planes from the US to Russia.154 The Lend Lease planes moved along the Northwest Staging Route, beginning in Great Falls, Montana and ending in Fairbanks.155 The Soviet pilots trained and received the planes at Ladd Field in Fairbanks and then flew the planes to Krasnoyarsk, Russia. Figure 2 highlights the ALSIB route.156 The military constructed the Alaska-Canada (ALCAN) highway, which enabled ground support of the pilots.157 This vital logistical lifeline began in Dawson Creek, Canada and ended at Delta Junction, Alaska.158 Contract commercial airliners returned the US pilots from Ladd Field to Great Falls, speeding up Lend Lease operations.159 From 11-29 May 1943, US forces successfully fought the Japanese at Attu and took back control of the island.160 15,000 US soldiers mobilized and attacked the 2,500 Japanese soldiers holding the island.161 General Landrum ordered air-dropped requests for the Japanese surrender on 28 May.162 There were 28 Japanese prisoners of war- the rest of the garrison was killed in action or committed suicide.163 The battle resulted in 550 US casualties, 1,150 wounded, and 1,800 that suffered from non-battle related injuries.164 While the battle at Attu progressed, the Japanese troops at Kiska began evacuating the island and returning to the Kurile Islands.165 Once Attu was secured and an operational airfield in place, the US began launching air assaults on Paramushiro, Japan in the Kurile Islands on 10 July 1943.166 The 77th Bomber Squadron sent 8 B-25s equipped with 32 500-pound general-purpose bombs.167 The bombs successfully dropped but cloud cover obstructed targeting.168 This was the “first air attack from an American land base.”169 These attacks continued, while the Japanese quietly vacated Kiska. On 28 July, approximately 5,183 Japanese completely cleared Kiska in 55 minutes.170 Chandonnet stated it was a “brilliant escape under cover of fog.”171 However, the US continued airdropping bombs on Kiska, noting the island appeared deserted and falsely assumed the Japanese were in hiding.172 On 15 August 1943, “nearly 35,000 US and Canadian troops made unopposed landings to reoccupy Kiska. They were astonished as they were relieved to find the Japanese gone.”173 Unfortunately, there were still 31 casualties and 51 wounded, as a result of friendly fire and Japanese booby traps during the unchallenged attack.174 With the departure of the Japanese troops, the US and Canadian troops had accomplished their mission.175 Soon, “Assignments to the Aleutians were looked upon with dread as they often meant enduring foul weather, long periods of darkness, grinding boredom, food shortages, no one-year rotational policy, the feeling of uselessness, and worst of all, very few women.”176 Troops continued aerial reconnaissance missions and occasional bombing of the Kurile Islands.177 The Aleutian Campaign turned into a “Theater of Frustration.”178 On September 11, 1943, Eleventh Air Force launched 7 B-24s and 12 B-25s from Attu to conduct a raid on the Kuriles.179 The Japanese fighters encountered the US bombers.180 This catastrophic air attack resulted in the loss of the majority of Eleventh Air Force bombers due to damage or destruction.181 However, the US crews claimed 13 air victories and 2 possible victories.182 Some bombers did not make it back to Attu and sought sanctuary in Petropavlovsk, Russia.183 US pilots flying from the Aleutians to conduct missions in the Kuriles faced additional hardships, facing internment when forced to divert to Russia.184 The Soviet-Japanese neutrality treaty remained in effect until 8 August 1945.185 In the meantime, the Russians made a secret agreement with the US to return their troops.186 However, of the 80 US aircrews that landed in Russia some claimed they were “treated little better than prisoners of war.”187 By December 1944, “seven B-24s, eleven B-25s, and nine Venturas were diverted to Russia. Nearly 200 American were interned and later released. The Russians kept the bombers.”188 Nevertheless, the US continued to support the Russians through Lend Lease operations based in Alaska. The Russians received approximately 7,926 airplanes on the Alaskan-Siberian Route (see Table 1).189 Heavy bombers were not provided, because the Russians did not want to provoke the Japanese.190 Because of Lend Lease, “the Soviet Air Force was able to quickly expand its obsolete bomber force and transform it into a credible offensive asset against the Luftwaffe.”191 General Arnold stated US troops “worked overtime to get the airplanes in first-class condition so that all the Russians had to do was fly them from Fairbanks to Russia. They never gave us any thanks; they never showed in any way that they were grateful for what we had done to make their stay in Fairbanks happy and pleasant, or regretted the inconvenience to our people.”192 Post-war, the Soviets dismissed these US contributions.193 Source: Bravo 369 Flight Foundation and Top Cover for America Germany surrendered on 7 May 1945 and the Japanese followed on 2 September. “Alaska contributed to the Allied victory, not only against Japan in the Pacific, but also against Germany in Europe.”194 The great global conflict concluded, but almost immediately, US and Soviet tensions increased. Some analysts speculated the Soviets hoarded Lend Lease aircraft and supplies for later use and during the war had used the ALSIB route for spying.195 The Korean War confirmed some of these suspicions, when US troops seized former American Lend Lease equipment, supplied by the Russians and Chinese from surplus war stock.196 The “wartime marriage of the capitalist and communist countries was ending” while a Cold War began.197 Chapter 2 Alaska and the Cold War: 1945-1990 As airpower develops, Alaska will develop as the air crossroads of the Pacific. Brigadier William L. “Billy” Mitchell With the conclusion of World War II in 1945, the growing hostilities between the US and the Soviet Union developed into a Cold War. The divisions of the bipolar world, between the liberal capitalist US and the communist Soviet Union, fueled the Cold War for over four decades. Premier Joseph Stalin in February 1946 stated, “there could be no collaboration between communist countries and ‘the dying, corrupt’ capitalist democracies.”1 Views on the stability of this period vary. Some argued the “near equal distribution of nuclear military power between the USSR and the United States created a bipolar world in which the two superpowers successfully managed stability in order to survive.”2 Others contended the competition between the two superpowers resulted in instability, leading to “arms races and proxy wars in order to keep one or the other from gaining hegemony.”3 Regardless of these arguments, Alaska had a major role in protecting the US from Soviet aggression and would continue to play a key geostrategic role throughout the Cold War. According to Lieutenant General Atkinson, CINCAL, 1953-1956, “since there was no more Japanese Empire -- they had been defeated -- it was obvious that the main threat at that time to us was the Soviet Union.”4 Because of Alaska’s geostrategic location, it again contributed significantly to securing national security objectives during the Cold War. A polar projection map (Figure 3), as opposed to the more commonly used Mercator projection map, signifies Alaska’s strategic location in proximity to Russia.5 At the closest point, just over two miles separate Little Diomede Island, Alaska from Big Diomede Island, USSR. Lieutenant General Breitweiser, CINCAL, 1967-1969, asserted that Mercator projection maps “distort the public mind on distances between key points on the globe.”6 From an Airman’s perspective, a Mercator map provides accurate distance but does not accurately portray the size of the North and South Poles and detracts from the strategic location of Alaska. “Cold Warriors” also favored the polar projection map because it accentuated the size of the USSR, portraying it as a looming giant threatening the US. In 1947, the Joint Chiefs gave control of Alaska to the newly independent Air Force, because “Alaska is a battleground for Airmen.”7 A new post-World War II defensive strategy, which focused on deterring the Soviet Union, resulted in a force restructure in Alaska. Most notably, the Aleutians lost significance and the sector was disestablished in 1946.8 Interviews of former Alaskan Commanders-in-Chief from 1947 to 1969 provide some insight into the change in strategy. In the article “Alaska: Airman’s Theater” in 1950, it was stated the appearance of the Aleutians as “stepping stones from Asia up to the North American continent’s front door, lands to be defended one by one” was deceiving.9 “No map could hint the subzero temperatures that could cripple an army, taunt it with frostbite, hold it to a mile-a-day advance through roadless mountains and plains.”10 Air officers commented the Aleutians were “islands of tundra” where an adversary such as Russia could be isolated and bombed “with no place to march to” if they chose to invade.11 Additionally, these officers did not support the dispersion of aircraft in the formidable Aleutians and wanted them based in the “heartland” of Alaska at Elmendorf Air Force Base, Ladd Field, and Eielson.12 However, concentration of the aircraft at these three bases provided adversaries a concentrated target set, one easier to plan against.13 Lieutenant General Kepner, CINCAL 1950-1953, a deterrence advocate, believed the build-up of the Alaskan military infrastructure would deter adversaries, thus preventing future battles.14 He compared the cost of B-36 bombers that “never dropped a bomb on the enemy” to the costs of investing in Alaskan bases.15 “Their very existence prevents the enemy from deciding to attack at times.”16 General Twining, CINCAL, 47-50, stated in 1950 that “Alaska is a one-shot deal … we have to be prepared to meet a surprise attack the first time or not at all. We don’t have a second chance.”17 General Twining reiterated the need for continued planning to counter “our enemies to the west” 23 years later in 1973.18 Air Defense Alaska became the “eyes for the nation in order to warn the rest of the country if an attack was coming.”19 The establishment of Alaskan Command in 1947 included the missions of defending Alaska and “protecting the North American continent from attacks across the polar regions.”20 Air defense enhancements and force restructuring were necessary. “A new Heartland concept of air defense dominated war planning and eventually redefined the physical locations for units assigned to Alaskan Air Command” (AAC).21 This Heartland contained the bases in Anchorage and Fairbanks.22 “Under the armed forces’ new strategy for defending Alaska, the U.S. was coiling its strength -- its winterized jet fighters, its cadres of weather-wise pilots and its supporting Army troops -- into one tight defense set in the Alaskan heart.”23 Planners at AAC, the Army-Navy Hoge Board, and HQ Air Force conducted separate studies and concluded radar sites for air defense were necessary in Alaska.24 As a result, Congress approved the initial construction of ten radar sites and two control centers.25 On 27 June 1950, an provisional air defense system became operational improving coverage and lessening fears of a Soviet invasion.26 The 10th Air Division at Elmendorf Air Force Base and the 11th Air Division at Ladd Field had responsibility for the air defense system.27 The two divisions oversaw the radar sites operated by the aircraft control and warning (ACandW) squadrons.28 The ACandW system achieved full operational capability status in 1954.29 Figure 4 highlights the division sectors, the ACandW sites, and the Alaskan portion of the Distant Early Warning (DEW) Line system.30 The establishment of the DEW Line system in 1957 was in response to a 1951 Air Force sponsored study regarding Soviet nucleararmed manned bombers.31 The report indicated the air defense network needed improvement to counter this potential threat.32 The consensus was that the polar region was vulnerable to Soviet exploitation. A 1952 Summer Study group, hosted at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, recommended the DEW Line as a potential “critical component of defense against manned bombers attacking across the arctic circle, by providing early detection and warning to a central point in the United States.”33 The group surmised the Air Force “needed three to six hours advanced warning of an attack so that (1) Strategic Air Command bombers could more easily be dispersed to numerous airfields or be airborne to survive an initial onslaught, (2) air defense interceptors could be deployed to maximize the defense, (3) civil aircraft could be better diverted from the more likely target areas, and (4) civil defense measures could be more effectively implemented.”34 Figure 4: Alaskan ACandW and DEW Line System, 1959 Source: John Haile Cloe, Top Cover for America The DEW Line system, codenamed Project 572, consisted of over 50 radar and communication stations spanning 3,000 miles.35 The location of some of the sites had historical significance and illustrated both man’s long presence in the region as well as the dangers of Arctic operations. “One site is within walking distance of the spot where Sir John Franklin perished in 1847 during his ill-fated expedition to find the Northwest Passage; another looks down on the remains of a ship abandoned by Roald Amundsen in the early 1900’s. And more recently, it was near Point Barrow that Wiley Post and Will Rogers died in an airplane crash in 1935.”36 When the DEW Line system detected an aircraft, it was “radioed by high-wave scatter broadcast to be picked up by receivers at Colorado Springs.”37 The “radars reported the location, track direction, and time of bomber detection to NORAD.”38 Aircraft from either Alaska or Canada were then dispatched to intercept the unidentified aircraft. The fighter interceptor squadrons assigned to the 10th and 11th Air Divisions patrolled and protected Alaskan airspace from the Soviet Union.39 In 1950, fighters could be “scrambled” within three minutes of notification, “no easy feat in the heavy cold of Alaskan winter.”40 From 1945 to 1955, AAC was “initially equipped with P-51s, which were replaced in succession by F-80s, F-94s, F-89s, and F-102s.”41 In 1970, the F-102s were exchanged for F-4Es.42 The Soviet threat was real. Prior to the DEW Line system installation, US aircraft experienced one confirmed and one probable attack by Soviet MiG-15s in 1953 and 1955.43 “By 1957, AAC had reached the peak of its air defense strength” with over 150 F-89s assigned to Alaska.”44 The addition of the operational DEW Line system enhanced air defense capability. The DEW Line provided a “radar fix …that fastened the electronic brains of the fighter interceptors” enabling engagement of the unidentified aircraft.45 The Alaskan radar “detected known Soviet bomber tracks as early as 1958, the first intercept wasn’t until 5 December 1961 when two Soviet TU-16 Badgers System in 1958.52 According to Lieutenant General Atkinson, prior to White Alice, the radar sites had the intelligence on incoming aircraft but lacked a continuous capability to notify Elmendorf headquarters.53 Due to the inadequate telephone line system in Alaska, radio was the primary but unreliable means of communication.54 “White Alice” system was an indispensable link in the Air Defense of the United States. It enabled combat centers to receive warnings from remote radar outposts; it made possible effective coordination between various branches of the military establishment which guarded against the approach of hostile aircraft; it gave both the military and civilian organizations a chance to prepare for such an attack; and it provided reliable communications between Americans within Alaska and those within the continental United States.55 This network tied in the DEW Line and the Ballistic Missile Early Warning Station (BMEWS) at Clear, Alaska. Figure 5 highlights the White Alice network distribution throughout Alaska.56 During the late 1950s, “emphasis was switched from defending against not only a bomber attack but also an intercontinental ballistic missile, or ICBM, attack.”57 The current air defense system was insufficient to counter the new ICBM threat.58 Because of Soviet advancements in ICBMs, Clear, Alaska was one of three locations throughout the world selected for a BMEWS.59 In 1961, the completed BMEWS in Alaska was connected to the NORAD Command Operations Center at Ent Air Force Base, Colorado and Strategic Air Command (SAC) Strategic Air Command and Alaska In response to US national policy that “prohibited a first strike philosophy,” SAC continued to “build the sinews of the preventative strike force.”63 The logic at the time was that since “national policy precluded the nation’s taking the offensive, it was suggested the weight of evidence indicated that a posture that can win a general war is by its very nature the kind of posture that can deter both it and lesser conflicts.”64 As such, SAC aircraft forward deployed to Alaska, and other areas outside of the continental United States, under Operation Reflex Action.65 Fifteenth Air Force, assigned to Strategic Air Command, placed tenant units at Eielson and Elmendorf Air Force Bases during the Cold War.66 Strategic Air Command deployed bombers to Eielson Air Force Base on a rotational basis from 1947 to 1963.67 Elmendorf Air Force Base hosted SAC bombers from 1960 to 1966.68 “This ended an era in which Alaska had played an important role by maintaining the strategic retaliatory capabilities of the United States.”69 Most notably, Alaskan Air Command increased support of the SAC Chrome Dome mission during the Cuban Missile Crisis, beginning on 20 October 1962.70 Eielson Air Force Base ensured they could supply additional JP-4 and petroleum, oil, and lubricants for intensified Chrome Dome requirements and made daily reports to SAC from 22 October to 21 November.71 In response to the crisis, Alaskan NORAD region combat forces assumed the highest level of readiness.72 By 27 November, the Alaskan NORAD Region reverted to normal readiness levels.73 In the years leading up to World War II and beyond, it was not just the military that saw the importance of Alaska as an air route to the rest of the word. As commercial aviation began to boom, the airline business looked North to Alaska, too. Commercial Air in Alaska Commercial air in Alaska grew from the early military and bush pilot flights highlighted in Chapter One. The 1929 establishment of Aviation Field, later renamed Merrill Field in 1930, resulted in Anchorage “becoming the leader in air traffic operations and passengers carried within Alaska.”74 Additionally, Charles Lindbergh and his co-pilot wife Anne Morrow Lindbergh, generated attention for Alaskan commercial air with their flight to the Orient in 1931 along the Great Circle Route. In Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s book, North to the Orient, she emphasized that the route to the Far East would show the “indisputable importance of future air-routes between America and Japan, China and Siberia.”75 Their historic flight surveyed unchartered commercial air routes through Canada, Alaska, and the Soviet Union on their way to and from the Orient.76 From 1932 to 1938, commercial aircraft rapidly expanded in number from 31 to 155 air frames, resulting in the establishment of the Civil Aeronautics Authority in Alaska.77 The expansion of commercial aviation into Alaska provided humanitarian and economic benefits. Alaska Airlines in the 1940s was the “largest charter operator in the world.”78 Demonstrating its capability, Alaska Airlines delivered food during the Berlin Airlift and transported refugees resettling in Israel.79 By 1946, Anchorage was advertised as the “shortcut between Europe and the Orient via the Arctic route making the journey from New York to Tokyo two thousand miles shorter than the Central Pacific route through San Francisco.”80 The marketing worked, and in 1947 Anchorage and Shemya became stops for Northwest Orient Airlines on their routes to the Far East.81 Lieutenant General Atkinson noted the increased “commercial activity” and reliance on Elmendorf Air Force Base during this time, since it was the only facility equipped to handle major commercial air operations.82 Merrill Field, located in Anchorage, could not support large commercial operations because city encroachment prevented further airfield expansion.83 In 1948, Congress authorized funds for the construction of “international type” airports in Anchorage and Fairbanks.84 Continued federal and state investments ensured modernization of Alaskan airports and the capacity to support the demands of the jet age.85 By the 1960s, “Anchorage established itself as the ‘Air Crossroads of the World’ hosting seven international carriers that used the Anchorage International Airport as a regular stop-over on routes between Europe, Asia, and the Eastern U.S.”86 However, even with all the air defenses in Alaska, commercial airlines in the region were not immune to the threats of the Cold War. Two Korean Air Line flights unintentionally violated Soviet air space on this northern route and were engaged by interceptors. On 20 April 1978, Flight 902 departed Paris, France en route to Anchorage and was fired on by an SU-15 when failing to respond to commands.87 The plane was initially identified by Soviet air defenses as a reconnaissance Boeing RC-135, but was later confirmed to be a civilian airliner prior to engagement.88 Two passengers died during the incident from “rapid decompression,” while the remaining 107 occupants survived.89 On 1 September 1983, Flight 007 departed Anchorage en route to Seoul and unintentionally got off course twice.90 The first time off course, six Soviet MIG-23s were sent to engage the aircraft, but the airliner had departed their designated air defense sector.91 Upon reentering Soviet airspace, two SU-15s intercepted and fired missiles into the airliner, resulting in the loss of 269 passengers and crew.92 The Soviets assumed that the aircraft was a US RC-135 intelligence aircraft, since one was reported in the area of Kamchatka that same day.93 This type of aircraft routinely flew missions off the Soviet coast.94 Prior to takeoff the pilots inadvertently set the autopilot incorrectly and were unaware they were off course during routine flight communications with air traffic controllers.95 The US RC-135 flight returned to Shemya without Russian knowledge and the Korean airliner was misidentified as the US plane.96 The unfortunate incident was a mistake and the victims were senseless casualties of the Cold War.97 Despite the instability of the Cold War, “Alaska had become one of the ‘flyingest’ places in the world … nearly as many airplanes were registered to private owners as were automobiles” in the 1980s.98 However, improved jets with extended range in the 1990s reduced the number of international passengers stopping in Alaska.99 Fortunately, the cargo and domestic air market thrived.100 “After the Cold War ended, commercial aviation through the Arctic became the reality as Russian government opened the air space over Siberia for international aviation.”101 During the Cold War, US investments in Alaska ensured North America was safe from Soviet air and ICBM threats. The military units and forces assigned to Alaska adapted to the constant Soviet threat. Chapter 3 Contemporary Alaska Alaska’s strategic value increases constantly … the future will prove that its acquisition was one of our greatest investments. General William L. “Billy” Mitchell Airpower and aviation contributed to opening up the Last Frontier. This chapter focuses on highlighting other areas that define Alaska’s strategic importance today. Valuable natural resources located within Alaska and contested areas in the Arctic have gained increased significance. Because of Alaska’s geostrategic location, the US can make sovereignty claims in the Arctic and profit from potential Arctic trade routes. Alaska’s geostrategic location is also ideal for intercepting rogue ballistic missiles from North Korea and the Middle East. Alaskan based airpower and associated forces continue to conduct critical air defense missions that protect the US homeland. Climate Change and Geopolitical Concerns In 2010, President Obama declared the US an “Arctic Nation” in his National Security Strategy.1 Recognition of Alaska’s access to the Arctic, since the US purchase in 1867, has continually increased in significance for nearly a century and a half, furthering US interests. Climate change has captivated international attention, and this environmental phenomenon is melting the polar icecaps and freeing up access to scarce and in-demand natural resources, as well as opening new sea routes across the Arctic Ocean. Figure 6 depicts the impact of climate change on the Arctic ice from 1979 to 2011.2 Figure 6: Average Monthly Arctic Sea Ice Extent Source: National Snow and Ice Data Center Once formidable Arctic passages, ice-bound during the long winters, are now open longer, presenting opportunities for maritime trade and commercial travel. Alaska also contains critical air and missile defense assets vital to US national security. This section focuses on how climate change is enhancing Alaska’s geostrategic importance today and continues to offer opportunities for military operations based in Alaska against threats to the homeland. Alaska’s position in the Arctic enables the US to make territorial and economic claims. Canada, Denmark (Greenland), Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, and Sweden are the other Arctic states (see map in Chapter 2, Figure 3). “All eight countries are positioning themselves to protect their sovereignty, defend their competing territorial claims, and develop significant natural resources. Future disputes could involve shipping routes, potential environmental degradation, and local resident’s concerns, as well as how best to combat to combat terrorism and transnational crimes.”3 Climate change has increased competition for resources among the five primary Arctic states centered on the North Pole. Canada and the United States dispute how to divide the Beaufort Sea and the status of the Northwest Passage but continue to work cooperatively to survey the Arctic continental shelf; Denmark (Greenland) and Norway have made submissions to the Commission on the Limits of the Continental shelf (CLCS) and Russia is collecting additional data to augment its 2001 CLCS submission; record summer melting of sea ice in the Arctic has renewed interest in maritime shipping lanes and sea floor exploration; Norway and Russia signed a comprehensive maritime boundary agreement in 2010.4 The 1982 United Nations Convention Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) is the primary source for resolving international disputes and determining rights. UNCLOS also provides Arctic states exclusive rights to natural resources within their established economic exclusion zones (EEZs).5 Arctic states are actively seeking claims beyond the mandated 200-mile EEZ and must apply to extend claims up to 350 miles from their continental shelf.6 The Lomonosov Ridge, an underwater mountain range, is a point of contention between Canada, Denmark and Russia.7 These states each claim that the Lomonosov Ridge extends from their respective continental shelf, and so is within their larger zones.8 Approval of this claim would expand their EEZ and increase their share of the natural resources.9 Figure 7 illustrates Arctic claims, borders, and highlights the Lomonosov Ridge.10 Figure 7: Arctic Claims Source: BBC News Europe The UN requires costly scientific evidence to support territorial claims, which involves mapping of the underwater continental shelf in areas of dispute.11 Russia filed a claim that “extends from the undersea Lomonosov Ridge and Mendeleev Ridge to the North Pole.”12 In 2001, the UN disapproved the claim.13 However, Russia is gathering evidence to support another claim in the 2012-2013 timeframe.14 In the meantime, Russia has remained assertive in the Arctic. In 2007, Russia boldly placed its flag on the seabed of the North Pole, which is located in the Lomonosov Ridge area.15 Canada and Denmark plan to submit claims to the Lomonosov Ridge as well.16 Canada announced in September 2010 that it had collected sufficient proof to claim the Lomonosov Ridge.17 Part of the Northwest Passage claimed by Canada and Denmark is also located within this contested strategic ridge.18 The outcome of this claim will redefine Arctic rights and affect international maritime traffic. The US does not recognize these claims to extend EEZs.19 “When other nations assert claims contrary to customary international law as reflected in the convention, the United States actively contests such claims through the FON Freedom of Navigation Program. In this manner, the United States has preserved its navigational rights and continues to shape the international law of the sea.”20 Nevertheless, beginning this spring through 2014, the Arctic-5 will bid on territory under the provisions of UNCLOS.21 The US is not among the 162 nations that have ratified the treaty since 1982.22 President Obama stated in May 2010 that the US would “pursue ratification of the United Nations Convention of the Law of the Sea.”23 By ratifying the treaty, the US would have a voice in resolving 50 issues and determining Arctic rights.24 The US remains the “odd man out, legally, because it's the only country with Arctic interests that hasn't signed onto the Law of the Sea.”25 General Jacoby, Commander, US Northern Command, asserted that “as the commander responsible for the Arctic … it would be very helpful to have a seat at the table as we begin the lengthy process of determining the boundaries of the Continental Shelf and all the attributes of the Arctic that competing nations will be interested in.”26 Ratification of UNCLOS has been contentious in the US. President Reagan was the first to oppose ratification due to concerns over deep-sea bed mining provisions.27 President Clinton endorsed the revisions and forwarded them for Senate approval. Since then some argue that the UNCLOS does not support US interests, but places excessive restrictions. Under UNCLOS, the US would be required to provide a portion of gas and oil revenues obtained from the US continental shelf to the International Seabed Authority for redistribution to “developing countries.”28 The US could also be at the mercy of unfavorable determinations made under UNCLOS. Opponents assert the US does not require “UNCLOS membership either to enjoy the freedom of the high seas or to exercise the right of innocent passage through the territorial waters of foreign nations. These rights and freedoms are among the oldest and most widely accepted principles of the law of the sea. They have been codified 51 twice, first in the Convention on the Territorial Sea and Contiguous Zone in 1958 and then in UNCLOS in 1982.”29 The Arctic-5 in 2008 agreed to the Ilulissat Declaration, which committed these states to resolving Arctic territory disputes peacefully.30 However, the Ilulissat Declaration does not account for military alliances and is not applicable to NATO pledges.31 In September 2010, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov “warned that NATO, of which Canada and the three other Arctic powers are members, should not become involved in settling territorial disputes in the Arctic.”32 He stated that negotiation among the Arctic states and established principles were sufficient for conflict resolution.33 The Chiefs of Defense from the eight Arctic states met in a forum for the first time in April 2012 to discuss Arctic challenges.34 The US has not built up forces in the Arctic to contend with the rising Russian Arctic power. According to the Heritage Foundation, the Russian Arctic doctrine released in March 2009 indicates the primary goal is “transforming the Arctic into Russia’s strategic resource base and make Russia a leading Arctic power by 2020.”35 Russia seeks to secure its Arctic interests and protect its borders by increasing its military presence with Arctic brigades.36 The US military has a significant role in the Arctic, because of Alaska’s long coastline on the Arctic Ocean. A realignment of Geographic Combatant Commands territorial boundaries recently took effect. Under the Unified Command Plan for 2011, USNORTHCOM assumed geographical responsibility for Alaska and no longer shares territorial responsibility with US Pacific Command (USPACOM).37 There was no change in Alaskan force alignment as they remain under USPACOM control. Additionally, USNORTHCOM and US European Command both have oversight of designated areas in the Arctic region.38 However, USNORTHCOM is the appointed advocate for securing Arctic capabilities for both Combatant Commands.39 General Jacoby stated in 2012 that one of his priorities is “monitoring the unique and fast-changing domain of the Arctic.”40 The reassignment of priorities must still be determined after the US determines what its Arctic strategy is. Vice Admiral Brian M. Salerno, US Coast Guard (USCG), stated, "We are in many ways an Arctic nation without an Arctic strategy."41 US military forces in Alaska are not equipped to meet the challenges of the Arctic. The end of the Cold War resulted in reduced Department of Defense investments in the Arctic region.42 The Arctic Capabilities Assessment Working Group (ACAWG) stated, “Facilities located below the Arctic Circle, even those in Alaska, provide limited capability to support Arctic missions due to long transits required to reach the operating area.”43 More airpower in the region is needed to support the gradual opening of the Arctic. The ACAWG white paper cited the potential for increased search and requirements and the risk of not having air stations in the Arctic to support these missions.44 The paper recommended the development of air infrastructure, basing of aircraft, and assigning military personnel in North Slope, Alaska.45 Additionally, the US lacks sufficient icebreakers to support and protect interests in the Arctic Ocean. Icebreaking capability enables the government, military, and commercial access to Arctic waters. Additionally, “US-flagged ice-capable ships provide visible US sovereign maritime presence throughout the Arctic region.”46 The US only has three icebreakers, of which only one is operational compared to 34 Russian icebreakers and 16 Canadian icebreakers.47 The USCGC Healy is the sole operational US icebreaker and is based in Seattle, Washington with the other two docked vessels. The USCG told Congress that it requires at least six icebreakers, three medium and three heavy.48 The DoD has chosen to rely on foreign icebreakers for additional support.49 “This situation draws a parallel to the country's lack of space shuttles, which has caused it to rely on Russian Soyuz rockets to reach the International Space Station.”50 A 2011 Department of Defense report to Congress recommended, “Further evaluation of the future operating environment is required before entertaining significant investments in infrastructure or capabilities” and that “existing defense infrastructure (e.g., bases, ports, and airfields) is adequate to meet near- to mid-term US national security interests.”51 As Chapter 1 and 2 illustrated, a crisis is generally required before investments are committed to Alaska. A harsh winter in Nome, Alaska prevented the last fuel shipment of the year in November 2011. As a result, the Russian tanker Renda supplied Nome with 1.5 million gallons of fuel, with the aid of the icebreaker USCGC Healy in January 2012. The two ships departed Dutch Harbor, Alaska on 3 January and arrived in Nome ten days later traveling over 300 miles in ice-packed water. This historic event was the “first time that petroleum products have been delivered by sea to a Western Alaskan community through ice covered waters.”52 US Alaskan Senator Mark Begich commented that Nome's fuel-delivery problem "drives home the nation's need for a strengthened presence in the Arctic. It underscores the reality that despite seasonal reductions in the Arctic ice pack, we still need more icebreaking capacity."53 The Nome crisis brought attention to the dismal state of US icebreaking capacity in the Arctic. The USCGC Healy, a mediumcapacity icebreaker, is more suited to support scientific exploration than heavy-duty commercial or military Arctic operations. Just prior to supporting the Nome mission, the USCGC Healy completed a tour lasting seven months in the Bering Strait and the Arctic, supporting NASA and the National Science Foundation, and also worked with Canada on mapping the Arctic Ocean.54 One icebreaker is insufficient to meet current and expanding future needs. The outcome of the Nome crisis resulted in $8 million allocated in the 2013 budget proposal to begin the process of obtaining a new USCG polar icebreaker.55 Without the proper equipment, the US may encounter difficulties in securing its Arctic interests. One of these key American interests is access to natural resources. Natural Resources The Arctic Ocean is the smallest of the five oceans but is still almost one-and-one-half times the size of the US.56 The Arctic polar region is the second largest desert in the world.57 The Arctic area contains untapped natural resources such as “sand and gravel aggregates, placer deposits, poly-metallic nodules, oil and gas fields, fish, and marine mammals.”58 Figure 8 details the Arctic natural resources from a Russian perspective.59 Because of Alaska’s location in the Arctic, the US also stands to gain more natural resources from the region. Alaska’s economy is dependent on natural resources. As such, the state is positioning itself to promote interest by uncovering additional mineral and energy resources, by conducting geophysical surveys, and by mapping.60 Investors and federal government partnership is required for further exploration. The Alaskan Division of Geological and Geophysical Surveys (DGGS) has 12 mineral and seven energy projects planned or ongoing for Fiscal Year 2012.61 Figure 8: Natural Resources in the Arctic Source: RIA Novosti Minerals According to Mr. Dan Sullivan, the Alaskan Commissioner for the Department of Natural Resources, “Alaska has much to offer the nation in the effort to secure a stable domestic supply of minerals.”62 For 2010, Alaskan mineral exports to China, Japan, Korea, and Spain were valued at $1.3 billion.63 In 2010, the total value of Alaska’s mineral industry was $3.685 billion compared to $2.966 billion in 2009.64 Alaskan minerals may aid in reinvigorating the economy and counterbalance the decline of petroleum production at Prudhoe Bay.65 Currently, there are six large lode mines in Alaska. Teck Resources Ltd.–NANA’s Red Dog Mine, one of the world’s largest zinc producers, received all permits and began mining the Aqqaluk deposit adjacent to the main Red Dog deposit, extending the mine’s life to 2031. Red Dog produced 593,043 tons of zinc, 121,144 tons of lead, and more than 6.7 million ounces of silver. Coeur’s Kensington underground gold mine complex near Juneau began mining on July 3 and produced 43,143 ounces of gold in 2010. Hecla Mining Co.’s Greens Creek Mine near Juneau produced more than 7.2 million ounces of silver in 2010, along with 68,838 ounces of gold, 74,496 tons of zinc, and 25,336 tons of lead. Kinross Gold’s Fort Knox Mine near Fairbanks produced 349,729 ounces of gold, and Sumitomo’s Pogo Mine produced 383,434 ounces of gold. Usibelli Coal Mine produced 2.06 million tons of coal. Placer gold production, from more than 225 operators, was 69,318 ounces.66 These Alaskan resources represent a large portion of the earth’s minerals. • Coal: 17 of the world’s coal, 2nd most in the world • Copper: 6 of the world’s copper, 3rd most in the world • Lead: 2 of the world’s lead, 6th most in the world • Gold: 3 of the world’s gold; 7th most in the world • Zinc: 3 of the world’s zinc; 8th most in the world • Silver: 2 of the world’s silver; 8th most in the world • Rare Earth Minerals: over 150 occurrences67 Alaska contains in-demand rare earth elements (REE), which are valuable strategic minerals. REEs are “indispensable for military and high-technology applications, as well as clean/renewable-energy technologies (such as wind turbines, solar panels, batteries for electric vehicles).”68 REEs transform crude oil into gasoline and create permanent magnets, which supports the miniaturization of electronics.69 The US relies primarily on REE imports from China, placing the nation at a disadvantage.70 China is the leader in the REE market, owns almost half of the world’s REEs, and produces 97 of the global supply.71 “Recent curtailment of REE exports from China and reliance on the Chinese industry for processing and manufacturing critical REE-reliant products has heightened awareness of the fragility of the supply-demand chain for REEs worldwide.”72 China has enacted trade quotas, increased charges on REEs, and announced that it is considerably limiting access to these precious REEs.73 Alaska could be a potential domestic and international supplier of REEs. There are 70 identified areas in Alaska containing REEs (see Figure 9).74 In addition, there are 40 million acres of “high mineral potential” lands in need of assessment.75 The Bokan Mountain/Dotson Ridge property is an area in Alaska that contains a massive supply of rare earth metal oxides.76 Measured in tonnage, this property is the 15th largest mineral supply of these metals in North America.77 Bokan Mountain is unique compared to other US deposits, because it is “enriched with yttrium, dysprosium, and critical Heavy REEs, which are essential for the production of permanent magnets.”78 Alaska is encouraging REE development. The DGGS launched the Rare-Earth Elements and Strategic Minerals Assessment project in 2011. “The goals of this 3-year project are (1) to compile historic and industrydonated data in digital format; (2) to obtain new field and analytical data critical for assessing Alaska’s REE potential; (3) to evaluate the historic and new data to identify areas of Alaska with the highest REE potential, as well as those needing additional geologic evaluation; (4) to communicate the results of our work to the public; and (5) to publish the data and results of our studies on the DGGS website.”79 Securing a share in the market requires investment in locating more REEs and the infrastructure to process these strategic minerals.80 If not, the US will have to rely on China for processing, which, given the criticality of these resources, is strategically unwise.81 Energy Northern Alaska is a “world class petroleum province” and contains valuable gas reserves.82 However, oil and gas production is declining in Alaska. Figure 10 shows oil/gas fields and the exploration wells in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska (NPRA) area.83 The North Slope region includes the NPRA and extends to the border of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). Like minerals, further exploration, mapping, and infrastructure are required to make the NPRA more accessible to potential developers.84 The investment costs are high, but the return can be rewarding. Figure 10: National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska Source: State of Alaska: Division of Geological and Geophysical Surveys The discovery of oil in Prudhoe Bay, Alaska along the Arctic Ocean in 1968 transformed the Alaskan economy.85 The Trans-Alaska Pipeline (TAP), completed in 1977, transfers this oil through an 800-mile long pipeline.86 The TAP system (TAPS) begins in the North Slope region in Prudhoe Bay and ends at the marine terminal in Valdez.87 Crude oil is stowed there and has been loaded onto more than 19,000 tankers at Valdez since 1 August 1977.88 As of 2011, more than 16 billion barrels of oil have passed through TAPS. This system provides about 15 percent of the oil produced in the US.89 The flow of oil through TAPS is slowing down. In 1989, it took only 4-days compared to 14-days today for oil to reach Valdez.90 The Alyeska President testified to the House Finance Committee in May 2011 stating the slow oil problems would worsen over time and expects an annual 5- to- 6 percent decline.91 Figure 11 illustrates the historical oil production and the projected decline.92 Cooler oil temperatures combined with decreased throughput is a major concern.93 Additionally, the original warm oil design of TAP did not account for decreased oil temperatures.94 TAPS provides the Alaskan economy 90 percent of its revenues.95 Figure 11: Alaskan Oil Production in Decline Source: Alyeska Pipeline Service Company Natural gas estimates of 35 trillion cubic feet are contained in the North Slope region.96 On 30 March 2012, ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips, BP and TransCanada announced a partnership to begin preparing for commercialization of the natural gas located in Point Thomson, an area within North Slope.97 This settlement has been highly anticipated by Alaskans. According to Alaskan Governor Sean Parnell, there are 8 trillion cubic feet of natural gas and millions of barrels of oil and gas liquids located in Point Thomson.98 The development of the Alaska Pipeline Project will be similar to the TAPS concept. The future pipeline will enable the gas to reach and compete in the international market. The major components of the settlement include: • Increasing liquids production into the Trans Alaska Pipeline System (TAPS). • Opening the Eastern North Slope to new development opportunities by adding infrastructure and a 70,000 barrels per day common carrier pipeline connecting to TAPS. • Incentivizing and laying out a clear path and alternatives for fullfield development, each of which will require billions of dollars in investment if pursued. • Positioning North Slope gas for a large-scale gas pipeline project. • Providing potential for significant gas volumes for in-state use no later than 2019. • Requiring a commitment to develop a separate oil reservoir within Point Thomson.99 This settlement opens a future Alaskan natural gas market and supports the productivity of TAPS. Trade Routes The Northwest Passage and the Northern Sea Route are the two primary waterways in the Arctic and both pass through the 53-mile long Bering Strait in the proximity of Alaska and Russia.100 Figure 12 captures the northern Arctic water passages and location of the Arctic Bridge.101 This figure also illustrates the receding of the ice in the Arctic region due to climate change. As a result, this strait is accommodating increased maritime traffic with the use of icebreakers. According to Alaskan Lieutenant Governor Mead Treadwell, “$1 billion worth of goods passed through the Bering Strait” in 2010 … “The ships,” he said, “are coming.”102 Figure 12: Polar Shipping Routes Source: J-P Rodrigue, The Geography of Transport Systems These two legendary Arctic routes have a potential to change global shipping patterns. In September 2008, a glimpse of the potential future occurred when for the first time both the Northwest Passage and the Northeast Passage, called the Northern Sea Route today, were simultaneously open.103 The shortcut across the Arctic decreases travel time and translates to significant savings for maritime commercial traffic. Figure 13 contrasts the current trade routes with Arctic routes.104 Figure 13: Sea Trade Routes Source: Hugo Ahlenius, UNEP/GRID-Arendal The Northwest Passage has challenged Arctic explorers for centuries. Roald Amundsen, a Norwegian, was the first Arctic explorer who successfully sailed the Northwest Passage. According to Amundsen’s autobiography, he abruptly departed for this journey when a particularly generous creditor demanded payment within 24 hours and threatened him with charges of fraud.105 As such, Amundsen quickly departed Oslo, Norway in June 1903 with a crew of six and reached Nome, Alaska in September 1906.106 His inspiration for the journey was the writings of Arctic explorer Sir John Franklin.107 Franklin and his crew attempted to navigate the Northwest Passage from 1845-1848.108 However, his two ships froze into the ice, preventing further travels. Eventually every man on the expedition perished.109 In contrast, the success of Amundsen’s journey through the Northwest Passage is an inspiring historic event. The Northwest Passage remains accessible longer each season. According to Steve MacLean, President of the Canadian Space Agency, the route has been open every year for at least six weeks for the past 15 years and expected to remain open for longer periods in the future.110 This passage provides an alternative to the Panama Canal route and easier access to India and China.111 The Northwest Passage route from East Asia and Western Europe is only 13,600 kilometers as compared to 24,000 kilometers using the Panama Canal.112 The Chinese recently sent their icebreaker “Xue Long” through the Northwest Passage. They conducted research in the coastal areas of Alaska and Canada.113 The Chinese are planning a trip along the Northern Sea Route in 2012. Alaskan lawmakers are concerned about “threats posed by an increasingly Arctic-oriented China and an apparent lack of concern by U.S. leaders about the country's obligations as an Arctic nation.”114 An Alaskan news source reported, “The Chinese want to see the Arctic Ocean's energy riches divided up among all nations -- according to their population.”115 Non-Arctic states want a share of the Arctic resources, and China is able to access the Arctic and represent their interests. As noted earlier, some of Canada’s claims do not have the support of the US. Canada claims that portions of the Northwest Passage are internal to its territory and stands to gain the most from the opening of this route.116 However, the US continues to operate as if the passage is an international waterway.117 Because of a few ice-free weeks per year, the Northwest Passage is generating international debate regarding ownership, rights, and access. The Northern Sea Route is receiving the same kind of attention. The Russian government has maintained the Northern Sea Route since 1978, with its growing fleet of ice-breaking ships.118 The route opened in 1991 to international marine traffic.119 The Northern Sea Route from Rotterdam to Yokohama is 8,500 kilometers versus 20,600 kilometers via the Suez Canal.120 According to Alaskan Lieutenant Governor Mead Treadwell, “Russia intends to make the Northern Sea Route, which passes Alaska’s front door, as important to global shipping and commerce as the Suez Canal. Major tanker loads of oil products, gas condensate, and mineral ores have come Alaska’s way already.”121 There are concerns that the Arctic routes may not be as profitable as desired. •First, it is highly uncertain to what extent the receding perennial ice cover is a confirmed trend or simply part of a long term climatic cycle. •Second, there is very limited economic activity around the Arctic Circle, implying that shipping services crossing the Arctic have almost no opportunity to drop and pick-up cargo as they pass through. Thus, unlike other long distance commercial shipping routes there is limited revenue generation potential for shipping lines along the Arctic route, which forbids the emergence of transshipment hubs. This value proposition could improve if resources (oil and mining) around the Arctic are extracted in greater quantities. •The Arctic remains a frontier in terms of charting and building a navigation system, implying uncertainties and unreliability for navigation. This implies that substantial efforts have to be made to insure that navigation can take in place in a safe manner.122 Substantial investments are necessary to make these routes viable for commercial traffic. Additionally, obtaining insurance for trips through the Arctic may not be affordable due to the nature of the environment. This scenario is similar to building the infrastructure and establishing air routes to and through Alaska described in Chapter 1. Air and Missile Defense One of the primary military missions for forces based in Alaska today is Air and Missile Defense. The threats to US national security have changed, while Alaska has remained a key location to protect US interests against potential aggressors. This section details the importance of having US forces in Alaska and the value of investing Federal resources in this state. Air Alaskan-based air defenses continue to respond to potential violators of US airspace, ensuring protection of the homeland. Many of the intercepts of Russian aircraft have occurred in the Alaskan Air Defense Identification Zone, which is a buffer to US airspace.123 Since 1992, there have been more than 66 Russian intercepts, a significant decrease from the Cold War period.124 However, according to NORAD, “its fighters made 45 intercepts of Russian military flights between 2007 and 2010, compared with eight between 1999 and 2006.”125 General Chandler, Commander, Pacific Air Forces, reported that for a 10-month period beginning in June 2007 there were 16 intercepts of Russian bombers off the Alaskan coast.126 This increase in Russian activity was not sustained, but does indicate the need for Alaskan forces to remain flexible and vigilant. Alaskan Command (ALCOM) is the focal point for the modernization of the Joint Pacific Alaska Range Complex (JPARC). Proposed updates to this complex will provide the ideal location for air, land and sea forces to train together and refine their skills. JPARC “will bring together the services’ existing training ranges: the Air Force’s 66,000-square-mile Pacific Alaska Range Complex, home to the Red Flag Alaska exercise; the Army’s new $80 million Battle Area Complex and Combined Arms Combat Training Facility near Fort Greely, Fort Wainwright and Fairbanks, Alaska; and 58,000 square miles of ocean and air space in the Gulf of Alaska.”127 Public support is critical for JPARC modernization approval. As of 30 March 2012, the JPARC environmental impact statement is available for public input until 7 June 2012. According to ALCOM Public Affairs, a record of decision is expected in the 2013-2014 timeframe.128 The proposed JPARC enhancements and expansions would do the following: • Enable realistic joint training and testing to support emerging technologies, • Respond to recent battlefield experiences, and • Enable the Services to train with tactics and new weapons systems to meet combat and national security needs so military personnel can succeed in their mutually supportive combat roles.129 Missile Defense President Ronald Reagan’s “Star Wars” vision has become a different type of Missile Defense reality. Modifications to existing older Alaskan infrastructure supports the ongoing US Missile Defense initiative. Additional investments in Alaska support the robust Ballistic Missile Defense System (BMDS). “Missile defense plays an important role in the broader U.S. international security strategy, supporting both deterrence and diplomacy.”131 Figure 15 illustrates the Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD) elements in Alaska that are part of the BMDS.132 Continuing developments by Iran and North Korea to improve longrange missiles could potentially hold the US homeland at risk.133 “As the threat of missiles launched from Iran, North Korea, or coalitions of hostile parties grows, so does the need for more robust defenses— particularly when no matter where on earth a missile is launched from, it would take 33 minutes or less to hit the U.S. target it was programmed to destroy.”134 BMDS enables the US to respond to ballistic missile threats and defend against limited ICBM assaults. “USNORTHCOM is responsible for directing missile defense operations to protect the homeland from hostile acts while assisting the Missile Defense Agency in developing improved capability.”135 The following section summarizes the critical GMD infrastructure in Alaska. The history of the post at what is now Fort Greely, Alaska began in 1942.136 Fort Greely was a stop along the Lend Lease route during World War II (discussed in Chapter 2). Since then the mission of Fort Greely continues to evolve from supporting cold weather testing and training to becoming an integral part of the BMDS. According to Colonel George Bond, a Missile Defense officer, the location of Fort Greely is ideal to “intercept a missile out of North Korea, and block an ICBM fired out of the Middle East.”137 Currently there are 26 ground-based interceptors (GBIs) at Fort Greely. Vandenberg Air Force Base, California contains another four GBIs. The intent of the GBIs is to “destroy enemy missiles mid-way through flight, essentially at the edge of space.”138 The Alaskan National Guard launch crews at Fort Greely are a Fire Control Node and have the ability to launch the interceptors at Vandenberg Air Force base, too. The back-up Fire Control Node site is located in Colorado Springs. Fort Greely is the “focal point for Ground Based Midcourse Defense” (GMD).139 On 6 August 1955, the post was named after Arctic explorer General Adolphus Washington Greely, because of his contributions to the establishment of the Alaska Communication System in the early 1900s.140 General Mitchell worked for General Greely, ensuring the installation of this system as a young lieutenant. General Mitchell stated, “In new countries the first effort is to get means of communication. In Alaska the telegraph was the wedge which cleft open the country to communications.”141 As such, General Greely’s early influence continues to be felt. Cobra Dane is a radar site located at Eareckson Air Station on the island of Shemya, Alaska along the Aleutian chain. The radar began operating at Shemya in 1977.142 Improvements to Cobra Dane since then enable support of the missile defense mission. “The upgrade improves midcourse BMDS sensor coverage by providing acquisition, tracking, object classification, and data that can be used for cueing, launch of interceptor missiles at Fort Greely and Vandenberg, and course updates of interceptors while retaining the sites legacy intelligence and space track missions.”143 Cobra Dane has the capability to detect objects up to 3000 miles out.144 Eareckson Air Station first supported troops in 1943 during World War II. During the Cold War, this island stop along the Great Circle Route supported commercial and military air refueling.145 The base originally called Shemya Air Force Base was renamed after Colonel William Olmstead Eareckson on 6 April 1993. Colonel Eareckson commanded and flew bombing missions from Shemya during the Aleutian Campaign in WWII. “He introduced low-level skip bombing and forward air control procedures long before they became common practices in other war theaters.”146 The original mechanical radar at Clear Air Force Station, Alaska was replaced with a dual-faced, steady-state, phased-array radar in 2001.147 The radar continues to support the missile warning and space surveillance missions. Ongoing upgrades to the radar will result in the additional missile defense mission and inclusion into the BMDS by Fiscal Year 2017.148 These upgrades will enable the radar at Clear Air Force Base to provide real-time “threat ballistic missile tracking data to commit launch interceptors and to update the target tracks to the interceptor while the interceptor is in flight.”149 Adak, Alaska is the initial designated homeport of the Sea-Based X-Band Radar (SBX).150 The SBX is mobile manned radar that “provides an advanced capability to the overall Ballistic Missile Defense System, greatly increasing the Missile Defense Agency’s ability to conduct operational and realistic testing of the BMDS, while providing an operational capability to the Combatant Commands.”151 SBX provides information and aids in the guiding of the GBIs at Fort Greely and Vandenberg, regardless of from where it is operating.152 Adak is another island in the Aleutians that was critical during World War II. This island was a staging area for the retake of Attu and Kiska islands from the Japanese. Military presence on Adak has not been continuous. Adak’s position was also advantageous during the Cold War, supporting fleet communications, listening posts, and antisubmarine patrol aircraft.153 The GMD element in Alaska is a critical contributor to the BMDS. Figure 16 illustrates how the overall BMDS should operate.154 According to the 2010 Ballistic Missile Defense Review, “the ballistic missile threat is increasing both quantitatively and qualitatively, and is likely to continue to do so over the next decade.”155 Alaska’s natural resources and geostrategic location define the Last Frontier’s importance. As climate change progresses the Arctic will become an additional front that requires a robust US air and sea force presence. Alaskan natural resources are vital to the US economy. Accessing additional resources reduces reliance on foreign suppliers. Airpower projected from Alaska enables the US to protect its territory. Additionally, Alaskan based Missile Defense shields the US from hostile ballistic missiles. Alaska’s significance continues to endure the test of time. Volcano explosions cause Civilizational Collapse – Extinction. Pamlin and Armstrong 15, Dennis, and Stuart Armstrong. "Global challenges: 12 risks that threaten human civilization." Global Challenges Foundation, Stockholm (2015). (Entrepreneur and Founder of 21st Century Frontiers, Senior Associate at Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Visiting Research Fellow at the Research Center of Journalism and Social Development at Renmin University)Elmer 3.2.2.1 Expected impact disaggregation 3.2.2.2 Probability The eruption which formed the Siberian Traps was one of the largest in history. It was immediately followed by the most severe wave of extinction in the planet’s history, 374 the Permian– Triassic extinction event, 375 where 96 of all marine species and 70 of terrestrial vertebrate species died out. Recent research has provided evidence of a causal link: that the eruption caused the mass extinction.376 There have been many other super-volcanic eruptions throughout history.377 The return period for the largest supervolcanoes (those with a Volcanic Explosivity Index378 of 8 or above) has been estimated from 30,000 years379 at the low end, to 45,000 or even 700,000 years380 at the high end. Many aspects of super-volcanic activity are not well understood as there have been no historical precedents, and such eruptions must be reconstructed from their deposits.381 The danger from super-volcanoes is the amount of aerosols and dust projected into the upper atmosphere. This dust would absorb the Sun’s rays and cause a global volcanic winter. The Mt Pinatubo eruption of 1991 caused an average global cooling of surface temperatures by 0.5°C over three years, while the Toba eruption around 70,000 years ago is thought by some to have cooled global temperatures for over two centuries.382 The effect of these eruptions could be best compared with that of a nuclear war. The eruption would be more violent than the nuclear explosions,383 but would be less likely to ignite firestorms and other secondary effects. Unlike nuclear weapons, a super-volcano would not be targeted, leaving most of the world’s infrastructure intact. The extent of the impact would thus depend on the severity of the eruption - which might or might not be foreseen, depending on improvements in volcanic predictions384 - and the subsequent policy response. Another Siberian Trap-like eruption is extremely unlikely on human timescales, but the damage from even a smaller eruption could affect the climate, damage the biosphere, affect food supplies and create political instability. A report by a Geological Society of London working group notes: “Although at present there is no technical fix for averting supereruptions, improved monitoring, awareness-raising and research-based planning would reduce the suffering of many millions of people.” 385 Though humanity currently produces enough food to feed everyone,386 this supply is distributed extremely unevenly, and starvation still exists. Therefore a disruption that is small in an absolute sense could still cause mass starvation. Mass starvation, mass migration, political instability and wars could be triggered, possibly leading to a civilisation collapse. Unless the eruption is at the extreme end of the damage scale and makes the planet unviable, human extinction is possible only as a consequence of civilisation collapse and subsequent shocks.387 Lunar Basing key to Ageing Research – solves Ageing Crisis. Green 10, David A. "How the UK can lead the terrestrial translation of biomedical advances arising from lunar exploration activities." Earth, Moon, and Planets 107.1 (2010): 127-146. (Programme Director, Space Physiology and Health MSc at Kings College London)Elmer Space-faring nations have accumulated much knowledge regarding the acute changes associated with microgravity in human and non-human organisms (Cle´ment and Slenzka 2006). Numerous methods and countermeasures have been devised to ameliorate such changes in an attempt to preserve astronaut and mission capability (Garshnek 1989; Williams 2003). Furthermore, research within the space environment has provided unique insights into areas as diverse as gene expression (e.g. Cogoli and Cogoli-Greuter 1997), immunology (Sonnenfeld and Shearer 2002; Borchers et al. 2002), wound healing (Davidson et al. 1999), bone physiology (e.g. Turner 2000; Vico et al. 2000), musculoskeletal (Narici and de Boer 2010) and cardiovascular regulation (reviews; Hargens and Richardson 2009; Hughson 2009), angiogenesis (Radek et al. 2008), circadian/sleep rhythm and performance (Mallis and DeRoshia 2005) in addition to sensory-motor function (e.g. Kalb and Solomon 2007; Souvestre et al. 2008). ISS studies have shown how fundamental gravity is for functional development (Temple et al. 2002), although most of the work refers to mammalian, or in a broader context, animal development, rather than that of humans, about which we know extremely little in a space environment. It has also provided insights into how we perceive the world around us, and ourselves within it (Lipshits et al. 2005). Intriguingly, whilst ‘normal’ earthbound physiology appears in the main to be negatively affected by a reduction in gravity, viral virulence of certain human pathogenic bacteria increases when compared to their ground based control groups (Wilson et al. 2007). Such findings are not only fascinating but provide a bridge between medicine and biomedical research, and also between space biomedicine and other areas of space biology, including astrobiology. Terrestrial applications of prolonged space environment exposure that the lunar surface offers insights for issues ranging from cardiovascular pathology, e.g. orthostatic intolerance, ageing/disuse/spinal cord (Edgerton et al. 2000; Pavy-Le Traon et al. 2007) pathology such as osteoporosis, falls risk (Cle´ment et al. 2005), radiation/cancer risk, psychology of the individual and the group, human factors and medical devices such as healthcare extension technologies. Space biomedicine has also helped and has the potential to further aid people living in developing countries, for example through telemedicine. Furthermore, space biomedicine has much to tell us about the major causes of mortality in the developed world (Mortimer et al. 2009), such as the metabolic syndrome and cardiovascular disease. It also provides useful models of individualised medicine (Kalow 2002), including pharmacogenetics and genetic-lifestyle interactions (Mattick 2003). In particular, the radiation environment of the Moon could provide unprecedented opportunities for fundamental research in the field of radiation biology (Gridley et al. 2009) and carcinogenesis (Rykova et al. 2008) not possible on Earth (ESA 1992). Whilst ISS has been an undoubted geopolitical success, significant biomedical insights have only recently started to accrue. Key factors include the limited number of astronauts and the high degree of control individual Agency’s maintain, which often results in differential countermeasure adoption. As a consequence, determination of both the true nature of space-related physiological insults, and thus the optimal countermeasures that should be adopted is far from complete (e.g. Cavanagh et al. 2005). Issues surrounding partial gravity are even more unclear and potentially more enlightening than microgravity in terms of biological mechanisms. As such Lunar exploration is emerging as a potential destination to learn about life beyond Earth and to further explore the solar system via a combination of collaboration and competition among space-faring nations (Space report 2009). The Moon of today appears far more viable as a location than it appeared during Apollo missions. For instance, evidence of ice deposits have been discovered within polar craters, which may provide liquid water for colonists and their hydroponic crops and those constituents may be converted into rocket fuel. Such a tightly controlled (and controllable) environment (if sustainable) could be particularly useful in the investigation of countermeasure interaction such as diet/nutritional supplementation and exercise (Convertino 2002). Although subject numbers would initially be low, high levels of motivation and extensive remote monitoring (telemedicine) would facilitate excellent long-term adherence. Space (and thus lunar) habitation has been suggested as a model of ‘accelerated’ ageing (Vernikos and Schneider 2010) and/or disuse pathology (Elmann-Larsen and Schmitt 2003) in view of the resultant similarities including loss of bone density, muscle volume/ strength and cardiorespiratory de-conditioning. As a society we have the moral, social and economic imperative to keep our citizens alive and functional. However, the number of over 60s is forecast to be 1.25 billion by 2025, of which most will suffer at least one chronic disease and 50 two or more, typically complex, challenging and resource intensive. For instance, the US expends 75 of its healthcare resources upon chronic, and 90 upon age-related conditions. Within Europe, 37 have at least one chronic condition, accounting for 77 of the total disease burden, 86 of all deaths, and 70 percent of total health expenditure, particularly expensive if poorly managed. Therefore, similarities to terrestrial medicine and their ‘accelerated’ nature renders lunar space biomedicine the opportunity to offer substantial terrestrial returns in terms of knowledge, health and wellbeing and economic development. Ageing Crisis causes Russia War. Brooks et Al 18, Deborah Jordan, et al. "The demographic transition theory of war: why young societies are conflict prone and old societies are the most peaceful." International Security 43.3 (2018): 53-95. (associate professor in the Department of Government at Dartmouth College)Elmer The third potential way to understand Russia’s recent military assertiveness is based on closing window-of-opportunity dynamics.102 The scale of population aging in Russia has not yet reached its most extreme levels, but analysts predict that it will soon. Nicholas Eberstadt summarizes the scope of Russia’s aging problem as follows: “There is a profound and fundamental difference between the depopulation underway in Russia today and the depopulation facing... affluent Western nations. Germany, Japan, and Italy commonly confront the prospect of population decline in the context of robust and steadily improving levels of public health. The Russian Federation, by contrast, has been seized by an extended mortality crisis—an affliction of historic and truly tragic dimensions.” The result, Eberstadt continues, is that “Russia today is in the grip of an eerie, far-reaching and in some respects historically unprecedented population crisis.”103 Russia’s leaders seem to recognize that their country’s aging problem is likely to soon become even more severe. In his first state-of-the-union address in 2000, for example, President Vladimir Putin warned that if current demographic trends continued, Russia faced “the threat of becoming a senile nation.”104 In 2006, he declared that demography was “Russia’s most acute problem” given the severity of the challenges associated with population aging.105 In an article published during his 2012 presidential campaign, Putin indicated that Russia’s demographic decline, had critical geopolitical consequences: “In a global sense we are facing the risk of turning into an ‘empty space’ whose fate will not be decided by us.” Putin vowed to take measures to reverse Russia’s population decline, and his government has supported pronatalist policies throughout his presidency and premiership.106 If Russia’s leaders understand the severity of their country’s aging problem and the constraints it is likely to create, they may seek to achieve at least some revisionist international objectives before these constraints become even more powerful. Political Dynamics makes Russian-Lash-out goes Nuclear. Thompson 15 Loren Thompson 1-2-2015 “Why Putin's Russia Is The Biggest Threat To America In 2015” https://www.forbes.com/sites/lorenthompson/2015/01/02/why-putins-russia-is-the-biggest-threat-to-america-in-2015/#711522f74636 (COO at Lexington Institute)Elmer A collapsing economy. Much of Putin's popularity within Russia is traceable to the impressive recovery of the post-Soviet economy on his watch. Since he came to power in 2001, the country's gross domestic product has grown sixfold, greatly increasing the size and affluence of the Russian middle class. But that growth has been based in large part on the export of oil and gas to neighboring countries at a time when energy prices reached record highs. Now the price of oil has fallen at the same time that economic sanctions are beginning to bite. The ruble lost nearly half its value against the dollar last year, and the economy has begun to shrink. Putin blames sanctions for 25-30 of current economic hardships. Many Westerns believe a prolonged recession would weaken Putin's support, but because he can blame outsiders, economic troubles might actually strengthen his hand and accelerate the trend toward authoritarian rule. A deep sense of grievance. Blaming outsiders for domestic troubles has a long pedigree in Russian political tradition, and it feeds into a deep-seated sense that Russia has been deprived of its rightful role in the world by the U.S. and other Western powers. Russia may have little past experience with democracy, but it was a major power for centuries prior to the collapse of communism. Like authoritarian rulers in other nations, Putin has built his political base by appealing to nationalism, fashioning a revisionist view of recent events in which Russia is the victim rather that the author of its own misfortunes. He has called the break-up of the Soviet Union a tragedy of epic proportions, and apparently really believes it. By tapping into a deep vein of resentment in Russian political culture, Putin has created a broad constituency for standing up to outsiders even if it means prolonged economic hardship and the danger of war. A vulnerable antagonist. Federal Reserve chair Janet Yellen says America faces little danger from Russia's current troubles, but that's because she thinks in economic terms. In a broader sense, America potentially is in great danger because Putin and his advisors really believe they are the target of a Western plot to weaken their country. The biggest concern is that some new move by Russia along its borders degenerates into a crisis where Moscow thinks it can improve its tactical situation by threatening local use of nuclear weapons, and then the crisis escalates. At that point U.S. policymakers would have to face the reality that (1) they are unwilling to fight Russia to protect places like Ukraine, and (2) they have no real defenses of the American homeland against a sizable nuclear attack. In other words, the only reason Washington seems to have the upper hand right now is because it assumes leaders in Moscow will act "rationally." The unspoken wisdom in Washington today is that if nobody gives voice to such fears, then they don't need to be addressed. That's how a peaceful world stumbled into the First World War a century ago -- by not acknowledging the worst-case potential of a crisis in Eastern Europe -- and the blindness of leaders back then explains most of what went wrong later in the 20th Century. If we want to avoid the risk of reliving that multi-generation lesson, then U.S. policymakers need to do something more than simply wait for Putin to crack. That day will never come. In the near term, Washington needs to work harder to defuse tensions, including taking a more serious look at the history that led to Moscow's move on Crimea. Over the longer term, Washington needs to get beyond its dangerous aversion to building real defenses against long-range nuclear weapons, because it is just a matter of time before some dictator calls America's bluff. Nuke war causes extinction AND outweighs other existential risks PND 16. internally citing Zbigniew Brzezinski, Council of Foreign Relations and former national security adviser to President Carter, Toon and Robock’s 2012 study on nuclear winter in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, Gareth Evans’ International Commission on Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament Report, Congressional EMP studies, studies on nuclear winter by Seth Baum of the Global Catastrophic Risk Institute and Martin Hellman of Stanford University, and U.S. and Russian former Defense Secretaries and former heads of nuclear missile forces, brief submitted to the United Nations General Assembly, Open-Ended Working Group on nuclear risks. A/AC.286/NGO/13. 05-03-2016. http://www.reachingcriticalwill.org/images/documents/Disarmament-fora/OEWG/2016/Documents/NGO13.pdfRe-cut by Elmer Consequences human survival 12. Even if the 'other' side does NOT launch in response the smoke from 'their' burning cities (incinerated by 'us') will still make 'our' country (and the rest of the world) uninhabitable, potentially inducing global famine lasting up to decades. Toon and Robock note in ‘Self Assured Destruction’, in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists 68/5, 2012, that: 13. “A nuclear war between Russia and the United States, even after the arsenal reductions planned under New START, could produce a nuclear winter. Hence, an attack by either side could be suicidal, resulting in self assured destruction. Even a 'small' nuclear war between India and Pakistan, with each country detonating 50 Hiroshima-size atom bombs--only about 0.03 percent of the global nuclear arsenal's explosive power--as air bursts in urban areas, could produce so much smoke that temperatures would fall below those of the Little Ice Age of the fourteenth to nineteenth centuries, shortening the growing season around the world and threatening the global food supply. Furthermore, there would be massive ozone depletion, allowing more ultraviolet radiation to reach Earth's surface. Recent studies predict that agricultural production in parts of the United States and China would decline by about 20 percent for four years, and by 10 percent for a decade.” 14. A conflagration involving USA/NATO forces and those of Russian federation would most likely cause the deaths of most/nearly all/all humans (and severely impact/extinguish other species) as well as destroying the delicate interwoven techno-structure on which latter-day 'civilization' has come to depend. Temperatures would drop to below those of the last ice-age for up to 30 years as a result of the lofting of up to 180 million tonnes of very black soot into the stratosphere where it would remain for decades. 15. Though human ingenuity and resilience shouldn't be underestimated, human survival itself is arguably problematic, to put it mildly, under a 2000+ warhead USA/Russian federation scenario. 16. The Joint Statement on Catastrophic Humanitarian Consequences signed October 2013 by 146 governments mentioned 'Human Survival' no less than 5 times. The most recent (December 2014) one gives it a highly prominent place. Gareth Evans’ ICNND (International Commission on Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament) Report made it clear that it saw the threat posed by nuclear weapons use as one that at least threatens what we now call 'civilization' and that potentially threatens human survival with an immediacy that even climate change does not, though we can see the results of climate change here and now and of course the immediate post-nuclear results for Hiroshima and Nagasaki as well. Framing The standard is consistency with hedonic act utilitarianism. Prefer additionally: 1 Actor specificity – A Aggregation – every policy benefits some and harms others, which also means side constraints freeze action. B No intent-foresight distinction – If we foresee a consequence, then it becomes part of our deliberation which makes it intrinsic to our action since we intend it to happen.
1/23/22
JF - Lunar Heritage Aff v2
Tournament: Peninsula | Round: 5 | Opponent: Valley RT | Judge: Asher Towner 1AC: Plan Plan - Private entities ought not appropriate lunar heritage sites Harrington 19, Andrea J. "Preserving Humanity's Heritage in Space: Fifty Years after Apollo 11 and beyond." J. Air L. and Com. 84 (2019): 299. (Associate Professor and Director of the Schriever Space Scholars at USAF Air Command and Staff College)Elmer The issue of humanity’s cultural heritage in space has arisen as one of many unanswered questions in space law, with no international agreements specifically addressing it. With the beginning of the space age fifty-six years ago and a series of remarkable achievements in space exploration behind us, it is necessary to determine what should be done regarding the “artifacts” of this exploration. NASA has promulgated their recommendations for spacefaring entities with the goal of protecting the lunar artifacts left behind by the Apollo missions.8 These recommendations establish “keep-out zones” of up to a four kilometer diameter with the aim of protecting the artifacts, particularly from dangerous, fastmoving particles that arise as a result of craft landings.9 Experience has shown that even artifacts that are sheltered by craters can be significantly sandblasted and pitted as a result of the moving particles.10 These recommendations, supposedly drafted in conformity with the Outer Space Treaty, however, are completely nonbinding.11 Legislation that has passed the U.S. Senate and is under consideration by the House of Representatives as of July 2019 would make these recommendations binding on U.S. entities seeking to land on the Moon.12 Accidental damage from unrelated missions, however, is only one of many threats to space artifacts. With the impending return to the Moon, it is likely that individuals and corporations will be looking to turn a profit from space heritage, without concern for the protection of such heritage. Tourists may disrupt sites with careless expeditions and landing sites may be desecrated so that the items can be sold. A Russian Lunakhod lunar rover has already been sold at auction to a private party, though it has not yet been moved from its original position on the Moon.13 While national heritage legislation can protect space artifacts from citizens of their own countries, there is currently no effective means in the present space law regime by which a country can protect its heritage from other countries.14 Both California and New Mexico have added Tranquility Base to their list of protected heritage sites.15 However, this solution, and those proposed in the bill put forth to the U.S. House of Representatives, only serve to restrict the activities of a small subset of the potential visitors to the Moon. Though the Senate bill calls for the President to initiate negotiations for a binding international agreement, there is still a long road from this bill to a potential agreement.16 A solution is needed to prevent the damage, destruction, loss, or private appropriation of our cultural heritage in space. 1AC: Lunar Heritage The Advantage is Lunar Heritage: Global Moon Rush by private actors is coming now. Sample 19 Ian Sample 7-19-2019 “Apollo 11 site should be granted heritage status, says space agency boss” https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/jul/19/apollo-11-site-heritage-status-space-agency-moon (PhD at Queens Mary College)Elmer But protecting lunar heritage may not be straightforward. On Earth, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco) decides what deserves world heritage status from nominations sent by countries that claim ownership of the sites. Different rules apply in space. The UN’s outer space treaty, a keystone of space law, states that all countries are free to explore and use space, but warns it “is not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty”. In other words, space is for all and owned by none. Wörner is not put off and sees no need for troublesome regulations. “My hope is that humanity is smart enough not to go back to this type of earthly protection. Just protect it. That’s enough. Just protect it and have everybody agree,” he said. A no-go zone of 50 metres around Tranquility base should do the job, he added. Martin Rees, the Cambridge cosmologist and astronomer royal, said there was a case for designating the sites so future generations and explorers were aware of their importance. “If there are any artefacts there, they shouldn’t be purloined,” he said. “Probably orbiting spacecraft will provide routine CCTV-style coverage which would prevent this from being done clandestinely.” Beyond the dust-covered hardware that stands motionless on the moon, Lord Rees suspects future activity could drive calls for broader lunar protection. The Apollo 17 astronaut and geologist Harrison Schmidt has advocated strip mining the moon for helium-3, a potential source of energy. The proposal, which Rees suggests has raised eyebrows in the community, could potentially provoke a backlash. “There might be pressure to preserve the more attractive moonscapes against such despoilation, and to try to enforce regulations as in the Antarctic,” he said. Fifty years on from Apollo 11, the moon is still a place to make statements. In January, the Chinese space agency became the first to land a probe on the far side. On Monday, India hopes to launch a robotic probe, the delayed Chandrayaan-2 lander that is bound for the unchartered lunar south pole. Far more is on the cards. Major space agencies, including ESA and Nasa, plan a “lunar gateway”, described by Wörner as a “bus stop to the moon and beyond”. His vision is for a “moon village”, but rather than a sprawl of domes, shops and a cosy pub, it is more an agreement between nations and industry to cooperate on lunar projects. The private sector is eager to be involved. Between now and 2024, at least five companies aim to launch lunar landers. In May, Nasa selected three companies to design, build and operate spacecraft that will ferry scientific experiments and technology packages to the moon. The coming flurry of activity may make protection more urgent. Michelle Hanlon, a space lawyer at the University of Mississippi, co-founded the non-profit organisation For all Moonkind to protect, preserve and memorialise human heritage on the moon. While she conceded that not all of the sites that bear evidence of human activity needed protection, she said many held invaluable scientific and archaeological data that we could not afford to lose. “These sites need to be protected from disruption if only for that reason,” she added. The protection should be far wider, and more formal, than Wörner calls for, Hanlon argues. “It is astounding to me that we wouldn’t protect the site of Luna 2, the very first object humans crashed on to another celestial body, and Luna 9, the very first object humans soft-landed on another celestial body,” she said. The Soviet Luna programme sent robotic craft to the moon between 1959 and 1976. “The director general has a much more optimistic view of human nature than I do,” Hanlon said. “I completely agree that the entities and nations headed back to the moon in the near future will take a commonsense approach and give due regard to the sites and artefacts. However, that is the near future. We have to be prepared for the company or nation that doesn’t care. Or worse, that seeks to return to the moon primarily to pillage for artefacts that will undoubtedly sell for tremendous amounts of money here on Earth.” They’ll beat Governments and won’t be regulated by government agreements. Tillman 19 Nola Taylor Tillman 7-31-2019 "Will Private Companies Beat NASA to the Moon?" https://www.space.com/nasa-private-companies-moon-race.html (Science Journalist)Elmer With private companies setting their sights on sending humans to the moon in the near future, it's possible that one could touch down on the lunar surface before NASA astronauts do. But the resulting "public versus private" space race isn't one that NASA feels overly competitive about. The space agency's plans to reach the moon involve relying on private corporations rather than challenging them. "The challenges differ for the public and private sector, though they all do come down to money," Wendy Whitman Cobb told Space.com by email. Whitman Cobb, an associate professor at the U.S. Air Force's School of Advanced Air and Space Studies, examines the institutional dynamics of the policymaking behind space exploration. She stressed that her views are her own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Air Force or Department of Defense. "Technology is not a problem for either sector — the ability to get to the moon has existed since the 1960s," Whitman-Cobb said. "What is different is the will to do it." A Worldwide Team NASA's current lunar push kicked into high gear in December 2017, when President Donald Trump signed a space-policy directive to send humans to the moon and establish a sustainable presence there. Earlier this year, Vice President Mike Pence told NASA to put boots on the moon by 2024, rather than the previous goal of 2028. NASA's Artemis program aims to reach that goal. (In Greek mythology, Artemis was the twin sister of Apollo and goddess of the moon.) The agency's Orion spacecraft will carry human explorers to the Gateway outpost, a small space station that NASA plans to start building in lunar orbit in the early 2020s. Landers will then carry astronauts from the Gateway to the lunar surface. The space agency won't be hitting these goals on its own. "We're already partnering with our commercial partners to build these systems, and later on we'll continue to work with our international partners to build up the Gateway," Marshall Smith, director of the human lunar exploration program at NASA's headquarters in Washington, told Space.com by email. The space agency is currently working with 11 companies on Gateway and its associated systems. In May 2019, NASA awarded a contract to Maxar Technologies to build, launch and demonstrate in space the first major Gateway piece — the Power and Propulsion Element. The space agency also announced then that it had signed contracts with three companies to carry experiments to the moon via small robotic landers (though one of those three recently dropped out). In June, NASA asked industry to figure out ways to deliver cargo to the Gateway — much like the companies SpaceX and Northrop Grumman make robotic resupply runs to the International Space Station. In addition to working with private companies, NASA is also cooperating with other countries on the Artemis program. "International partners are a vital part of our lunar plan and will contribute to the goal of creating a sustainable lunar presence by 2028," Smith said. But private industry isn't solely focused on helping NASA make it to the moon. Companies like SpaceX and Blue Origin have stated their intentions to design their own lunar exploration programs. Advertisement Elon Musk's SpaceX is currently working on a 100-passenger vehicle called Starship, which the company envisions carrying people to the moon and Mars. Starship will be lofted off Earth's surface by a huge rocket called Super Heavy. SpaceX already has one Starship-Super Heavy passenger flight planned for 2023. The company hopes to begin commercial operations of the pair as early as 2021, most likely with commercial satellite launches. Blue Origin, operated by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, is working on a big lander called Blue Moon, which will deliver science instruments, lunar rovers and, eventually, astronauts to the lunar surface. Bezos sees many potential customers for Blue Moon other than NASA. "People are very excited about this capability to soft-land their cargo, their rovers, their science experiments on the surface of the moon in a precise way," Bezos said at the lander's unveiling in May 2019. "There is no capability to do that today." Then there's Florida-based company Moon Express, which is working to become the first private enterprise to reach the moon with robotic spacecraft systems. In 2016, it became the first company to receive U.S. government approval to send a robotic spacecraft to the lunar surface. "Our vision is really to expand Earth's economic and social sphere to include the moon," Alain Berinstain, Moon Express' vice president of global development, said last year at a lunar-science workshop at NASA's Ames Research Center in California. "We see the moon as the Earth's eighth continent to explore and to also mine for resources, like we have with every other continent on Earth." Pittsburgh-based Astrobotic planned to launch its Peregrine lander to the moon in 2019, but that date has since been since pushed back to 2020 or 2021. "We're really, at Astrobotic, trying to do this the right way, meaning that we're trying to be as technically rigorous as possible," Dan Hendrickson, vice president of business development at Astrobotic, said at a Washington Space Business Roundtable in February. "We're trying to be very upfront with the entire community about our current status." As with NASA, private industry has sufficient access to the technology to get to the moon, Whitman Cobb said. "They also have to demonstrate that their systems are fundamentally safe and reliable in order to attract paying customers — they are a business, after all," she said. Private companies also tend to have a leaner leadership structure than NASA's 60-year-old legacy brings with it. "NASA's bureaucracy has stagnated since the 1960s," Whitman Cobb said. That makes it "more difficult for NASA to contract, make changes and adapt to new circumstances." On the other hand, private companies have demonstrated the ability to move through technology development at a rapid rate, incorporating design and technology changes "almost immediately," she said. That brings its own advantages. Corporate development, tourism, and looting will destroy scientifically rich Tranquility base artifacts. Fessl 19 Sophie Fessl 7-10-2019 “Should the Moon Landing Site Be a National Historic Landmark?” https://daily.jstor.org/should-the-moon-landing-site-be-a-national-historic-landmark/ (PhD King’s College London, BA Oxford)Elmer When Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon on July 20, 1969, the pictures sent to Earth captured a historical moment: It was the first time that any human set foot on another body in our solar system. Fifty years later, experts are debating how to preserve humankind’s first steps beyond Earth. Could a National Park on the moon be the solution to saving Armstrong’s bootprints for future archaeologists? Flags, rovers, laser-reflecting mirrors, footprint—these are just a few of the dozens of artifacts and features that bear witness to our exploration of the moon. Archaeologists argue that these objects are a record to trace the development of humans in space. “Surely, those footprints are as important as those left by hominids at Laetoli, Tanzania, in the story of human development,” the anthropologist P.J. Capelotti wrote in Archaeology. While the oldest then known examples of hominins walking on two feet were cemented in ash 3.6 million years ago, “those at Tranquility Base could be swept away with a casual brush of a space tourist’s hand.” Fragile Traces Just how fragile humankind’s lunar traces are was seen already during Apollo 12. On November 19, 1969, Charles “Pete” Conrad and Alan Bean manually landed their lunar module in the moon’s Ocean of Storms, 200 meters from the unmanned probe Surveyor 3, which was left sitting on the moon’s surface two years earlier, in 1967. The next day, Conrad and Bean hopped to Surveyor 3. As they approached the spacecraft, they were surprised: The spacecraft, originally bright white, had turned light brown. It was covered in a fine layer of moon dust, likely kicked up by their landing. Harsh ultraviolet light has likely bleached the U.S. flag bright white. Without Apollo 12 upsetting the moon dust, Surveyor 3 would likely have remained stark white. Unlike Earth, the moon has no wind that carries away the dust, no rain to corrode materials, and no plate tectonic activity to pull sites on the surface back into the moon. But the moon’s thin atmosphere also means that solar wind particles bombard the lunar surface, and harsh ultraviolet light has likely bleached the U.S. flag bright white. The astronauts’ first bootprints will likely be on the moon for a long time, and will almost certainly still be there when humans next visit—unless, by tragic coincidence, a meteorite hits them first. Had LunaCorp not abandoned the idea in the early 2000s, the company’s plan to send a robot to visit the most famous sites of moon exploration could have done a lot of damage. And with Jeff Bezos’ recent unveiling of a mock-up of the lunar lander Blue Moon, it is only a matter of time before corporate adventurers and space tourists reach the moon. Historians and archaeologists are keen to avoid lunar looting. Roger Launius, senior curator of space history at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C., warned: “What we don’t want to happen is what happened in Antarctica at Scott’s hut. People took souvenirs, and nothing was done to try to preserve those until fairly late in the game.” On the other hand, there is a legitimate scientific interest in investigating how the equipment that’s on the moon was affected by a decades-long stay there. Private entities are a unique threat---universal rules key. - Private Key Card – AT: Alt Causes - AT: Unilat CP - AT: Adv CP - AT: Generic DA - AT: OST DA - Solvency Advocate Hertzfeld and Pace 13 (, H. and Pace, S., 2013. International Cooperation on Human Lunar Heritage. online Cpb-us-e1.wpmucdn.com. Available at: https://cpb-us-e1.wpmucdn.com/blogs.gwu.edu/dist/7/314/files/2018/10/Hertzfeld-and-Pace-International-Cooperation-on-Human-Lunar-Heritage-t984sx.pdf Accessed 18 January 2022 Dr. Hertzfeld is an expert in the economic, legal, and policy issues of space and advanced technological development. Dr. Hertzfeld holds a B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania, an M.A. from Washington University, and a Ph.D. degree in economics from Temple University. He also holds a J.D. degree from the George Washington University and is a member of the Bar in Pennsylvania and the District of Columbia. Dr. Hertzfeld joined the Space Policy Institute in 1992. His research projects have included studies on the privatization of the Space Shuttle, the economic benefits of NASA RandD expenditures, and the socioeconomic impacts of earth observation technologies. He teaches a course in Space Law and a course in microeconomics through the Economics Department at G.W. Dr. Hertzfeld has served as a Senior Economist and Policy Analyst at both NASA and the National Science Foundation, and has been a consultant to many U.S. and international organizations, including a recent project on space applications with the OECD. He is the co-editor of Space Economics (AIAA 1992). Selected other publications include a study of the issues for privatizing the Space Shuttle (2000), an analysis of the value of information from better weather forecasts, an analysis of sovereignty and property rights published in the Journal of International Law (University of Chicago, 2005), and an economic analysis of the space launch vehicle industry (2005). Dr. Hertzfeld has also edited and prepared a new edition of the Study Guide and Case Book for Managerial Economics (Sixth Edition, W.W. Norton and Co.). Dr. Scott N. Pace is the Deputy Assistant to the President and Executive Secretary of the National Space Council (NSpC). He joined the NSpC in August 2017. From 2008-2017, he was the Director of the Space Policy Institute and a Professor of the Practice of International Affairs at George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs. From 2005-2008, he served as the Associate Administrator for Program Analysis and Evaluation at NASA. Prior to NASA, he was the Assistant Director for Space and Aeronautics in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. From 1993-2000, he worked for the RAND Corporation’s Science and Technology Policy Institute, and from 1990-1993, he served as the Deputy Director and Acting Director of the Office of Space Commerce, in the Office of the Deputy Secretary of the Department of Commerce. In 1980, he received a Bachelor of Science degree in Physics from Harvey Mudd College; in 1982, Masters degrees in Aeronautics and Astronautics and Technology and Policy from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; and in 1989, a Doctorate in Policy Analysis from the RAND Graduate School.)-rahulpenu International Cooperation on Human Lunar Heritage The U.S. Apollo Space Program was a premier technological accomplishment of the 20th century. Preserving the six historic landing sites of the manned Apollo missions, as well as the mementos and equipment still on the Moon from those and other U.S. (e.g., Ranger and Surveyor) and Soviet Union (e.g., Luna) missions is important. Some of the instruments on the lunar surface are still active, monitored, and provide valuable scientifi c information. But recent government and private-sector plans to explore and potentially use lunar resources for commercial activity raise questions about the use of the Moon and potential accidental or purposeful threats to the historic sites and scientific equipment there. Although some steps to protect these sites have been proposed, we suggest a better way, drawing on international, not U.S. unilateral, recognition for the sites. Less than 2 years before the fi rst footsteps on the lunar surface on 20 July 1969 (see the image) , the United Nations Outer Space Treaty (OST) was drafted, ratifi ed, and came into force ( 1). Article II of the OST reinforced and formalized the international standard that outer space, the Moon, and other celestial bodies would not be subject to claims of sovereignty from any nation by any means, including appropriation. The OST prohibits ownership of territory or its appropriation by any state party to the treaty, which includes the United States, Russia, and 126 other nations. It does not prohibit the use of the Moon and its resources. In fact, the treaty emphasizes the importance of freedom of access to space for any nation and the importance of international cooperation in space exploration. These principles of the space treaties have enabled gains in science and technology and have contributed to international stability in space. New attention is being focused on the lunar surface. China has an active Moon exploration program and is considering sending astronauts (taikonauts) to the Moon. Private firms are contemplating robotic missions that could land in the vicinity of the historical sites of Apollo and other missions. Although we might assume the best of intentions for such missions, they could irreparably disturb the traces of the first human visits to another world. NASA has taken steps to protect the lunar landing sites and equipment and to initiate a process to create recognized norms of behavior. In July 2011, guidelines were issued for private companies competing in the Google Lunar X Prize that established detailed requirements for avoiding damage to U.S. government property on the Moon ( 2). H.R. 2617, The Apollo Lunar Landing Legacy Act, was introduced into the U.S. Congress on 8 July 2013 ( 3). In essence, it proposes to designate the Apollo landing sites and U.S. equipment on the Moon as a U.S. National Park with jurisdiction under the auspices of the U.S. Department of the Interior. Although the bill acknowledges treaty obligations of the United States, it would create, in effect, a unilateral U.S. action to control parts of the Moon. This would create a direct conflict with international law and could be viewed as a violation of U.S. commitments under the OST. It would be an ineffective way of protecting historical U.S. sites, and it fails to address interests of other states that have visited and will likely visit the Moon. It is legally flawed, unenforceable, and contradictory to our national space policy and our international relations in space ( 4). There is a better way for the United States to protect its historic artifacts and equipment on the Moon. The fi rst step is to clearly distinguish between U.S. artifacts left on the Moon, such as fl ags and scientifi c equipment, and the territory they occupy. The second is to gain international, not unilateral, recognition for the sites upon which they rest. Aside from debris from crash landings (by Japan, India, China, and the European Space Agency), there are only two nations with “soft-landed” equipment on the lunar surface: the United States and Russia. China has plans to soft-land Chang’e 3 on the Moon in December 2013. All three nations (and any others wishing to participate) have much to gain and little or nothing to lose from a multinational agreement based on mutual respect and mutual protection of each other’s historical sites and equipment. Legal Issues Although ownership of planets, the Moon, and celestial bodies is prohibited, ownership of equipment launched into space remains with the nation or entity that launched the equipment, wherever that equipment is in the solar system. Under the OST, that nation is both responsible and liable for any harmful acts that equipment may create in space. There are no prescribed limits on time or the amount of damage a nation may have to pay. The U.S. government therefore still owns equipment it placed on the Moon. Ownership has the associated right of protecting the equipment, subject to using necessary and proportional means for protection. But, because no nation can claim ownership of the territory on which equipment rests, there is an open issue of how to control the spots on the Moon underneath that equipment, because the site is integral to the historical signifi - cance. In H.R. 2617, establishment of Apollo sites as a unit of the U.S. National Park System could be interpreted as a declaration of territorial sovereignty on the Moon, even though ensuing paragraphs specify the Park’s components as the “artifacts on the surface of the Moon” at those sites. This problem needs international legal clarifi cation, achievable via a formal agreement among those nations that have the technological ability to directly access the Moon ( 5). Section 6(a) raises another legal issue. The bill proposes that the Secretary of the Interior shall administer the park in accordance with laws generally applicable to U.S. National Parks. It also requires the Secretary to act in accordance with applicable international law and treaties. The U.S. National Park System Act states that the Parks are “managed for the benefi t and inspiration of all the people of the United States” ( 6). The OST clearly emphasizes that the exploration and use of space by nations is to benefi t all peoples. The laws and space policies of the United States have always emphasized peaceful uses of space and the benefi ts of space for humankind. It may not be possible to implement and execute provisions of this Bill without raising important and fundamental questions about these contradictions between the language of the treaty and the mandates of our National Park Service. A third legal issue is raised in section (6) (c)(2) that allows private donations and cooperative agreements to “provide visitors centers and administrative facilities within reasonable proximity to the Historical Park.” This implies future private use of the Moon under rights granted by the U.S. government. Unilateral granting of lunar territorial rights to private individuals and implicit sovereign protection of that territory violates the OST. Finally, section 8 of the bill requires the Secretary of the Interior to submit the Apollo 11 lunar landing site to the United Nations Educational, Scientifi c, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) for designation as a World Heritage Site. This violates Article II of the OST. All current World Heritage Sites are located on sovereign territory of nations. The only exception is a separate treaty that allows UNESCO to designate underwater sites (such as sunken ships) as protected cultural sites ( 7). These designations are very limited, and although the convention has been ratifi ed by 43 nations, the United States, Russia, and China are not among them. Thus, any new treaty of this type specifi cally for outer space would have little chance of being ratifi ed by the major space-faring nations. A Proposal to Protect Lunar Sites Although a new U.N. treaty for space artifacts of signifi cant cultural and historic importance may be reasonable someday, this would start a very long process with unknown outcomes. Such a treaty could be delayed to a point beyond the time when nations and/or companies may be active on the Moon ( 8). Our suggested alternative is to create a bilateral agreement between the United States and Russia, offered as a multilateral agreement to other nations with artifacts on the Moon. This would be more legally expedient, politically sustainable, and would more likely meet and exceed the stated goals of the bill. It would also emphasize the important role of national laws to implement and enforce these international space agreements. Any nation with assets on the lunar surface will endeavor to protect those assets. This creates a situation where those nations have a timely, current, and common interest incorporating important implications for peaceful uses of outer space; scientific research and the advancement of knowledge; and cultural and heritage value, either presently or in the foreseeable future. The United States, Russia, and China all engage in multilateral cooperative space programs. They share many economic and trade dependencies adding to the international importance of promoting cooperation in space and commerce. In spite of today’s charged political environment, an agreement of the type we propose may still be possible to negotiate because it focuses on the culture of space, the use of space to benefit humankind, and the archaeological record of our civilization. It specifi cally would not touch sensitive issues of real property rights, export controls, human rights, or the weaponization of outer space. Cooperation on recognizing and protecting each other’s interests in historical sites and on equipment and artifacts also has no signifi cant security, prestige, or technological impediments. It reinforces the basic principles of the existing space treaties, avoids declarations of sovereignity on the Moon, and encourages multilateral cooperation resulting in a more stable and predictable environment for private activities on the Moon. The best mechanism for implementing a new agreement would be direct negotiations at highest levels of government in the United States, Russia, and China, with priority to include Russian sites in a proposal that protects U.S. sites. It could be included in meetings of heads of state of those nations, either jointly or sequentially among the three nations. Such an agreement could be executed in a relatively short period of time, setting precedents for peaceful and coordinated research, exploration, and exploitation of the Moon ( 9). An international agreement on lunar artifacts among the United States, Russia, and China would be a far superior and long-lasting solution than the unilateral U.S. proclamation in H.R. 2617. Enforcement of the agreement would be through each nation’s national laws, applying to those entities subject to the jurisdiction or control of the agreement members. Each nation’s property would be protected and preserved. Other nations should be free to join the agreement, and particularly encouraged to do so if they have the ability to access the Moon. An important result would be to develop a new level of trust among nations that could then lead to more comprehensive future cooperative agreements on space, science, exploration, commerce, and the use of the Moon and other celestial bodies. Heritage Sites are critical for science research around Dust. OSTP 18 Office of Science and Technology Policy March 2018 “PROTECTING and PRESERVING APOLLO PROGRAM LUNAR LANDING SITES and ARTIFACTS” (The Office of Science and Technology Policy is a department of the United States government, part of the Executive Office of the President, established by United States Congress on May 11, 1976, with a broad mandate to advise the President on the effects of science and technology on domestic and international affairs.)Elmer The Moon continues to hold great significance around the world. The successes of the Apollo missions still represent a profound human technological achievement almost 50 years later and continue to symbolize the pride of the only nation to send humans to an extraterrestrial body. The Apollo missions reflect the depth and scope of human imagination and the desire to push the boundaries of humankind’s existence. The Apollo landing sites and the accomplishments of our early space explorers energized our Nation's technological prowess, inspired generations of students, and greatly contributed to the worldwide scientific understanding of the Moon and our Solar System. Additionally, other countries have placed hardware on the Moon which undoubtedly has similar historic, cultural, and scientific value to their country and to humanity. Three Apollo sites remain scientifically active and all the landing sites provide the opportunity to learn about the changes associated with long-term exposure of human-created systems in the harsh lunar environment. These sites offer rich opportunities for biological, physical, and material sciences. Future visits to the Moon’s surface offer opportunities to study the effects of long-term exposure to the lunar environment on materials and articles, including food left behind, paint, nylon, rubber, and metals. Currently, very little data exist that describe what effect temperature extremes, lunar dust, micrometeoroids, solar radiation, etc. have on such man-made material, and no data exist for time frames approaching the five decades that have elapsed since the Apollo missions. While some of the hardware on the Moon was designed to remain operational for extended periods and successfully telemetered scientific data back to the Earth, much of what is there was designed only for use during the Apollo mission and then abandoned with no expectation of further survivability. How these artifacts and their constituent materials have survived and been altered while on the lunar surface is of great interest to engineers and scientists. The Apollo artifacts and the impact sites have the potential to provide unprecedented data if lunar missions to gather and not corrupt the data are developed. These data will be invaluable for helping to design future long-duration systems for operation on the lunar surface. NASA has formally evaluated the possible effects of the lunar environment and identified potential science opportunities. For example, using Apollo 15 as a representative landing site, the crew left 189 individually cataloged items on the lunar surface, including the descent stage of the Lunar Module, the Lunar Roving Vehicle, the Apollo Lunar Surface Experiments Package, and a wide variety of miscellaneous items that were offloaded by the astronauts to save weight prior to departure. The locations of many of these items are well documented, and numerous photographs are available to establish their appearance and condition at the time they were left behind. Moon Dust Research key to Moon Basing. Smith 19 Belinda Smith 7-18-2019 “Who protects Apollo sites when no-one owns the Moon?” https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2019-07-19/apollo-11-moon-landing-heritage-preservation-outer-space-treaty/11055458 (Strategic Communications Advisor at Department of Education and Training at University of Victoria)Elmer It's not just about history Alongside heritage value, the bits and pieces left on the Moon have enormous scientific significance. Take moon dust. It's a real problem for moon-bound equipment because it's made of fine, super sticky and highly abrasive grains, which have a habit of clogging instruments and spacesuits. But as Armstrong and Aldrin trotted across the surface, the footprints they left behind gave us valuable information into the properties of moon dust, Flinders University space archaeologist Alice Gorman said. "The ridges on the boots were meant to measure how far they sank into the dust. "Then they used the light contrast between the ridges to measure the reflectance properties of the dust." A boot print in grey dust. This iconic photo of Buzz Aldrin's footprint is also a science experiment. (Supplied: NASA) It's data like this that will help if we want a long-term base on the Moon — we need to know how our gear will stand up to lunar conditions. Apart from the sticky, gritty dust, the lunar surface is also peppered with meteorites and cosmic rays. So, Dr Gorman said, one of the very few reasons to revisit a moon site is to collect some of the equipment left behind and see how it fared. "What has happened to this material in 50 years of sitting on the lunar surface? "This is going to be really interesting scientific information because it will help planning for future missions and get an understanding of long-term conditions." And NASA has already done this. The Apollo 12 mission, which landed on the Moon four months after Apollo 11, collected parts from the 1967 Surveyor probe and brought them back to Earth. An astronaut standing next to a piece of equipment on the lunar surface Along with rocks and soil samples, Apollo 12 astronauts collected pieces of the Surveyor 3 probe for analysis back on Earth. (Supplied: NASA) Another reason to preserve the equipment left on the Moon is to prove we really went there, Professor Capelotti said. "There's a lot of people out there who still don't believe it happened. "The stuff on the Moon is a testament to what we did and when we did it." Lunar Basing solves Earth Observation, which is key to Atmospheric Science, specifically key to resolve Super-Volcanoes. Hamill 16, Patrick. "Atmospheric observations from the moon: A lunar earth-observatory." 2016 Ieee International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium (Igarss). IEEE, 2016. (Department of Physics and Astronomy at San Jose State University)Elmer ABSTRACT A telescope placed on the Moon would be valuable tool for studies of the atmosphere and climate. In this paper, we consider an observatory placed on the Moon to make observations of the Earth’s atmosphere. We discuss the properties of such a telescope, the types of observations to be made, the benefits of having a telescope on the lunar surface and difficulties that may be encountered. Index Terms— Lunar Telescope, Atmospheric Science, Climate Studies, Earth Observatory 1. INTRODUCTION Measurements made by a telescope looking at Earth from the surface of the Moon would be beneficial to atmospheric scientists studying weather, atmospheric composition and the climate. Due to the geometry of the system, the entire disk of Earth is always visible from most locations on the Earth-facing side of the Moon. During the 28 day orbital period of the Moon, both the daylight and dark sides of Earth are visible. This allows one to observe the entire disk of the Earth (half of the surface) at any given time, and during one orbital period of the Moon, to observe both the day and night sides. Since the Earth’s rotation rate is much faster than the Moon’s orbital motion, nearly every point on the surface of Earth is in sight during each 24 hour period. It should be noted that a telescope has already been placed on the surface of the Moon, namely, the 15- centimeter UV telescope on Chang’e 3, the Chinese lander that touched down on the lunar surface on December 14, 2013. (See Figure 1.) The telescope was still operational by early 2016. This telescope was designed to monitor bright variable stars in the near UV for periods of up to 12 days and to carry out a near UV sky survey at low Galactic latitude 1. Figure 1. Photograph of the lander of Chang’e-3 taken from the Yutu rover. The DSCOVR satellite (previously known as TRIANA) was placed at the Lagrange L1 point and observes the entire disk of Earth with a 30.5 cm telescope. The primary objective of the DSCOVR mission is to study “space weather,” i.e., the properties of the solar wind and the interplanetary magnetic fields. A secondary objective is to generate data for atmospheric science and climate studies. To accomplish these goals it not only has an optical telescope, but also a cavity radiometer to measure the irradiance reflected and emitted from the face of the Earth. Due to its location in space, between the Sun and Earth, DSCOVR at all times observes the illuminated face of Earth. In 2007 NASA considered sending astronauts to the Moon to establish a moon base and requested that the scientific community suggest scientifically valuable activities. A meeting of the NASA Advisory Council (NAC) in February 2007 considered a variety of suggestions, including proposals for a lunar telescope. However, the idea of manned flights to the Moon and the establishment of a lunar base were later abandoned. Many of the ideas described in this paper are based on concepts described at the NAC meeting 2. As mentioned, a telescope placed on the near side of the Moon can observe the entire disk of Earth. No satellite in low Earth orbit can do this. A satellite in geosynchronous orbit observes one third of the total area, but is limited to the same view at all times. A satellite at the unstable Lagrange point between Earth and Sun (L1) only sees the sunlit side of Earth and cannot be permanent because of the need for continuous orbital corrections leading to the eventual depletion of fuel. L1 is about a million miles from Earth. The Earth-Moon distance is somewhat less than one fourth of this value. From the Moon, over the course of a day as the Earth rotates, all sublunar points are visible. During the course of a month, due to the tilt of the Moon’s orbit by about 5 degrees relative to Earth’s equator, the two poles alternately point towards the Moon, giving excellent coverage of these important regions every 14 days. (As seen from the Moon, Earth exhibits phases, from “new Earth” through “full Earth” to “waning Earth” until it presents its dark side to the Moon. For example, in late spring, an observatory on the Moon would be looking “up” at the Antarctic region during “new” Earth; at “full Earth” it would be over the equator, and as the Earth wanes, the observatory would be looking “down” on the Arctic region.) An interesting feature of the observations of Earth’s night side will be the quantification of artificial illumination related to population growth and industrialization. Over the course of a year, the view of Earth varies in an interesting way as the Sun illuminates the Earth from different angles, due to the 23.5 degree tilt of Earth’s axis of rotation relative to the ecliptic. The varying views of Earth, the visibility of the entire disk, the relatively rapid rotation of Earth and the stability of the lunar surface make the Moon an ideal location for longterm monitoring of the Earth. In Section 2 we consider the expected characteristics of the lunar telescope and the associated sensors, in Section 3 we discuss the benefits that are expected from placing an Earth Observing telescope on the Moon and in Section 4 we consider some difficulties and problems associated with this proposed project. 2. THE INSTRUMENT The Lunar Earth-Observatory is essentially a telescope placed somewhere on the surface of the Moon and focused on the Earth. The observatory would consist of a telescope and a number of standard instruments such as a diffraction grating with an associated CCD array, a CCD camera, a radiometer, and the associated telemetry. The telescope diameter should be between 0.5 and 0.75 meters, this being a compromise between the desire for a small instrument and the desire of high resolution. For the sake of comparison, a telescope with a diameter of only 0.25 meters has a theoretical resolution of about 1km X 1km on the Earth’s surface. The Ozone Measurement Instrument 3 (OMI on AURA) has a nadir pixel of 13km X 24km and it scans the entire Earth once per day. If the Lunar telescope had a resolution of 100km X 100km, and the CCD array were integrated over 1 sec, the entire disk of Earth, could be scanned in about 3.5 hours. The telescope would scan the disk of the Earth and the light from different points on the Earth would be sent through a diffraction grating onto the CCD array. This allows one to determine the column amounts of various atmospheric gases, such as ozone, CO2, SO2, NO2, as well as aerosols. When the opportunity arises, the telescope could be used to track the image of a bright star as it is occulted by Earth 4. Such scans are best carried out as the star descends onto the dark limb of Earth to avoid “earthshine” and to obtain maximum contrast. From the vantage point of a satellite in a 500 km orbit, a star descends through the atmosphere at a speed of about 8 km/sec. From the vantage point of the Moon, a star descends at about 1 km/sec, that is, eight times slower. Thus since stellar occultation is possible from artificial satellites (the GOMOS instrument on ENVISAT 5, for example), it will be even easier from the surface of the Moon. Note that a star is always a point source, so scanning is not required, as in most solar occultation measurements. (One cannot carry out solar occultation from the Moon because it only occurs during “Earth eclipses.”) Infrared measurements usually require cooling instruments with cryogens, but on the lunar surface extremely low temperatures are obtainable by simply shading the instrument during the day. Furthermore, the side of the Moon facing Earth is dark for half of the month, so cycling between extreme cold and extreme heat allows one to consider the possibility of some sort of heat engine operating in (perhaps) a Stirling cycle to power various components. The surface of the Moon is a highly stable platform, so the observatory should be built to operate for a very long time (decades rather than years). This is reasonable when one considers that many satellite observing systems have lasted much longer than their expected lifetimes. (For example, the SAM II system lasted 15 years before it was turned off due to orbit degradation. The instrument was still operational.) Therefore, the instrumentation of the observatory should be standard and well developed rather than innovative. Although the surface of the Moon is certainly a difficult environment, it is perhaps more benign that the environment of an artificial satellite. The Moon is a stable platform not requiring corrections for drift nor subject to the vibrations of satellites. The temperature extremes on the Moon have a periodicity of a month rather than several hours. There are many reasons for placing an Earth atmospheric observatory on the Moon. Perhaps the most obvious reason is that from the Moon one can observe a single location on Earth for a relatively long period of time (hours, rather than seconds for a satellite in LEO). During a 24 hour period, nearly every point on the surface of Earth can be monitored, and during one month, both the sunlit and night sides of the Earth will have been observed. Further, there will have been excellent views of the polar regions. The visible images of the entire illuminated surface of Earth will allow one to evaluate in an unambiguous manner the total cloud fraction of Earth’s atmosphere. The scans will allow one to determine the composition of the Earth’s atmosphere in terms of the major trace gases and aerosols. The polarization of the scattered light will also yield information on the aerosol type. Stellar occultation allows one to determine profiles of extinction from aerosol particles, and the altitude dependence of concentrations of gas species such as O3, CO2, etc. Profiles of stratospheric particle extinctions are of particular interest following energetic volcanic eruptions that inject large amounts of SO2 into the stratosphere. Profiles of O3 allow one to determine the vertical structure of the Antarctic ozone hole and “mini ozone holes” in the Arctic. Stellar occultation is a valuable technique for studying the formation and structure of polar stratospheric clouds. The GOMOS instrument on ENVISAT was operational from 2002 to 2012 and during that time it observed well over 10,000 stellar occultations. Perot et al. 6 present a polar mesospheric climatology based on these measurements. The formation of dust clouds, particularly from regions such as the deserts in Northern Africa and Central Asia, and their atmospheric dispersion is an important scientific and environmental problem. The lunar observations could shed light on the relationship between the presence of dust and the formation of hurricanes in the Atlantic Ocean. The fact that the entire disk of the Earth is visible from the Moon make it an excellent location to measure the radiation balance of the Earth. Consequently, a component of the observatory would be an ERBE/CERES type of radiometer to measure short and longwave radiation 7. The goal would be to monitor, on a continuous basis, the global energy balance, planetary brightness, regional forcings and the net radiative effect of clouds 8. The fact that during the course of a month Earth presents both day and night faces to the Moon allows one to determine emitted and reflected radiation under a variety of solar illuminations. Volcanic plumes are a well-known danger to aircraft. Some regions of Earth that are not well monitored, such as the Arctic regions between North America and Asia, are locations of frequently occurring volcanic eruptions. Monitoring of the Earth from the Moon would offer an early warning system for volcanic plumes reaching aircraft altitudes. The atmosphere above a low earth orbit satellite is tenuous but not entirely negligible. The fact that the Moon has essentially no atmosphere, means there is no interference of measurements of the radiation emitted from the surface of Earth. Volcano explosions cause Civilizational Collapse – Extinction – predicting and mitigating are key. Pamlin and Armstrong 15, Dennis, and Stuart Armstrong. "Global challenges: 12 risks that threaten human civilization." Global Challenges Foundation, Stockholm (2015). (Entrepreneur and Founder of 21st Century Frontiers, Senior Associate at Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Visiting Research Fellow at the Research Center of Journalism and Social Development at Renmin University)Elmer 3.2.2.1 Expected impact disaggregation 3.2.2.2 Probability The eruption which formed the Siberian Traps was one of the largest in history. It was immediately followed by the most severe wave of extinction in the planet’s history, 374 the Permian– Triassic extinction event, 375 where 96 of all marine species and 70 of terrestrial vertebrate species died out. Recent research has provided evidence of a causal link: that the eruption caused the mass extinction.376 There have been many other super-volcanic eruptions throughout history.377 The return period for the largest supervolcanoes (those with a Volcanic Explosivity Index378 of 8 or above) has been estimated from 30,000 years379 at the low end, to 45,000 or even 700,000 years380 at the high end. Many aspects of super-volcanic activity are not well understood as there have been no historical precedents, and such eruptions must be reconstructed from their deposits.381 The danger from super-volcanoes is the amount of aerosols and dust projected into the upper atmosphere. This dust would absorb the Sun’s rays and cause a global volcanic winter. The Mt Pinatubo eruption of 1991 caused an average global cooling of surface temperatures by 0.5°C over three years, while the Toba eruption around 70,000 years ago is thought by some to have cooled global temperatures for over two centuries.382 The effect of these eruptions could be best compared with that of a nuclear war. The eruption would be more violent than the nuclear explosions,383 but would be less likely to ignite firestorms and other secondary effects. Unlike nuclear weapons, a super-volcano would not be targeted, leaving most of the world’s infrastructure intact. The extent of the impact would thus depend on the severity of the eruption - which might or might not be foreseen, depending on improvements in volcanic predictions384 - and the subsequent policy response. Another Siberian Trap-like eruption is extremely unlikely on human timescales, but the damage from even a smaller eruption could affect the climate, damage the biosphere, affect food supplies and create political instability. A report by a Geological Society of London working group notes: “Although at present there is no technical fix for averting supereruptions, improved monitoring, awareness-raising and research-based planning would reduce the suffering of many millions of people.” 385 Though humanity currently produces enough food to feed everyone,386 this supply is distributed extremely unevenly, and starvation still exists. Therefore a disruption that is small in an absolute sense could still cause mass starvation. Mass starvation, mass migration, political instability and wars could be triggered, possibly leading to a civilisation collapse. Unless the eruption is at the extreme end of the damage scale and makes the planet unviable, human extinction is possible only as a consequence of civilisation collapse and subsequent shocks.387 Improved Atmospheric Science solves Natural Disasters. Fox et Al 18 H. Steptoe, S. Jones, and H. Fox 2-28-2018 "Can Atmospheric Science Improve Global Disaster Resilience?" https://eos.org/editors-vox/can-atmospheric-science-improve-global-disaster-resilience (Science Writer at EOS)Elmer Many of the natural disasters that make the news headlines are related to extreme or unusual weather events. In an open-access article recently published in Reviews in Geophysics, Steptoe et al. 2018 examine extreme atmospheric hazards effecting different countries and regions around the world, and their connections with the global climate system. The editor asked the authors to explain more about these hazards and describe how scientific insights can be used by governments, communities and corporations involved in disaster risk reduction. What do you mean by “extreme atmospheric hazards”? Extreme atmospheric hazards are high impact weather events, typically judged by human or financial losses, caused by processes occurring in the Earth’s atmosphere. The atmospheric processes responsible for extreme events are themselves often influenced by some other large-scale component of the Earth’s atmosphere-ocean system, such as ocean-wide changes to sea-surface temperatures. Why is it important to understand regional extreme atmospheric events in the wider context of large scale atmosphere-ocean processes? In atmospheric science, the links that connect large scale changes in the atmosphere or ocean (such as widespread changes in temperature or humidity in an ocean basin) with localized hazards relating to regional weather conditions (such as extremes of rainfall or temperature) are collectively referred to as teleconnections. Most local extreme events may be related to temporal changes in the large scale dynamics of the climate system. Large scale changes are predicted by weather and climate models more skillfully than local extremes so understanding the link is vital to understanding impacts. There are many different kinds of teleconnection, typically named after the geographic location in which they are observed. Because any one teleconnection may influence weather conditions in multiple remote locations, understanding the interplay between regional extremes and teleconnections helps us to understand how different extreme hazards occurring in widely separate locations can have a common origin. In our review, we examined 16 different regional hazards and their interplay with eight different teleconnections. Can you give a specific example of a regional atmospheric hazard and its connection to global teleconnections? In our review, we find that rainfall over China shares the most connections with global drivers. We summarized academic papers that have identified links to six teleconnections including large scale atmosphere-ocean processes in both Northern and Southern Hemispheres. The regional hazard with the strongest single linkage to a teleconnection are windstorms over Europe, and their connection to the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO). The NAO describes a varying pattern in surface pressure across the North Atlantic. For European windstorms, the NAO pattern has a strong steering effect on winds high in the atmosphere, which in turn influences the path stormy weather takes as it approaches Europe. Which is the most significant process that influences multiple hazards across different regions at the same time. Our investigation finds that El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) influence 15 regional hazards. ENSO describes variations in sea-surface temperatures in the equatorial Pacific. In some cases, this connection is relatively well understood (for example, the way it influences rainfall over South Africa) and in other cases work is still being carried out to better understand the connection (such as its influence on Mexican rainfall). How does a scientific understanding of these teleconnections help to understand the risks and prepare for extreme events? Extreme events are the occasions that pose the greatest risk to communities and livelihoods. Hence, understanding the sorts of climatic situations where extremes events are more likely to happen represents one important facet of disaster risk management. By understanding the teleconnections and their associated hazards, it becomes possible to develop mitigation methods tailored to, and in advance of, potential risks. For example, the relationship between rainfall in South and Southeast Asia is driven by connections with the Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) and ENSO. Understanding this complex relationship may offer a predictive insight into rainfall and potential hazards, such as flood or drought, for the coming season. This predictive insight in one aspect the scientific community can contribute to in order to enable advanced planning to mitigate against potential risks. How may these insights influence organizations to better plan for, and respond to, multi-hazard risks? International policies reflect the growing understanding of atmospheric hazards and their interconnectivity. Throughout the UN Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015 – 2030, multi-hazard resilience is a consistent theme, reflected in guidance towards “inclusive and risk-informed” decision making and in the context of managing disaster risk effectively. In practice, these insights have contributed to multi-hazard approaches being adopted in early warning systems across the globe. The Regional Integrated Multi-Hazard Early Warning System for Africa and Asia (RIMES) provides monitoring and data services to local tsunami centers and national meteorological services, as well partnering with research organizations on projects implementing early warning systems in-country, such as early flood warning in Bangladesh. For private sector groups, such as the insurance industry, knowledge of the relationship between teleconnections and hazards can be vitally important when underwriting exposure, as it may increase their risk of multi-hazard losses across different regions. Natural Disasters are an Existential Event – outweighs Nuclear War. Wright 18 Pam Wright 1-19-2018 "Extreme Weather Events Have Greatest Likelihood of Threatening Human Existence, Experts Say" https://weather.com/science/environment/news/2018-01-19-extreme-weather-threatens-human-existence (M.S. in Meteorology, editor for The Weather Channel)Elmer Extreme weather events are the most likely threat to humanity in the next 10 years, experts say. Each year, nearly 1,000 scientists and decision-makers from around the world take a survey to identify and analyze the most pressing risks facing the planet. This year and for the second year in a row, the results of the 2018 Global Risks Report, released Wednesday at the World Economic Forms, revealed extreme weather as the most likely threat to the world over a 10-year period, topping weapons of mass destruction. These were followed by cyber attacks, data fraud or theft and failure of climate change mitigation and adaptation. “Extreme weather events were ranked again as a top global risk by likelihood and impact. Environmental risks, together with a growing vulnerability to other risks, are now seriously threatening the foundation of most of our commons," Alison Martin, group chief risk officer for the Zurich Insurance Group, said in a press release. The survey looked at five environmental risk categories this year: extreme weather events and temperatures; accelerating biodiversity loss; pollution of air, soil and water; failures of climate change mitigation and adaptation; and risks linked to the transition to low carbon. All ranked high in terms of impact and likelihood. "This follows a year characterized by high-impact hurricanes, extreme temperatures and the first rise in CO2 emissions for four years," the authors wrote in the report. "We have been pushing our planet to the brink and the damage is becoming increasingly clear." The report noted that the 2017 hurricane season, which included hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria, was the most expensive hurricane season on record. The authors noted that extreme rainfall "can be particularly damaging." "Of the 10 natural disasters that caused the most deaths in the first half of 2017, eight involved floods or landslides," the authors added. "Storms and other weather-related hazards are also a leading cause of displacement, with the latest data showing that 76 percent of the 31.1 million people displaced during 2016 were forced from their homes as a result of weather-related events." The report said extreme heat in California, Chile and Portugal resulted in some of the most extensive wildfires ever recorded in those areas. More than 100 deaths were attributed to wildfires in Portugal, according to the report. Extreme weather will also affect agriculture around the world, which may lead to a food crisis, the report said, adding that the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations says more than 75 percent of the world’s food comes from just 12 plants and five animal species. "It is estimated that there is now a one-in-twenty chance per decade that heat, drought, and flood events will cause a simultaneous failure of maize production in the world’s two main growers, China and the United States," the authors wrote. In addition, fears of “ecological Armageddon” are "being raised by a collapse in populations of insects that are critical to food systems." In terms of the potential in having the greatest impact on humanity over the next 10 years, weapons of mass destruction ranked just above extreme weather, followed by natural disasters, failure of climate change mitigation and adaptation and water crisis. The authors noted that the use of weapons of mass destruction would have catastrophic effects but is a relatively unlikely scenario. Martin said in a World Economic Forum release that she fears the world "may squander the opportunity to move towards a more sustainable, equitable and inclusive future." "Unfortunately we currently observe a 'too-little-too-late' response by governments and organizations to key trends such as climate change," she added. "It’s not yet too late to shape a more resilient tomorrow, but we need to act with a stronger sense of urgency in order to avoid potential system collapse." Lunar observatory solves warming mitigation. Ding et al. 17 (, Y., Liu, G. and Guo, H., 2017. Moon-based Earth observation: scientific concept and potential applications. online Volume 11, 2018. Available at: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17538947.2017.1356879 Accessed 22 January 2022 Yixing Ding - Institute of Remote Sensing and Digital Earth, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, People’s Republic of China Guang Liu - Institute of Remote Sensing and Digital Earth, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, People’s Republic of China Huadong Guo - Institute of Remote Sensing and Digital Earth, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, People’s Republic of China.)-rahulpenu 4. Scientific goal of moon-based earth observation A basic question for moon-based Earth observation is, ‘What to see?’ According to the characteristics of moon-based Earth observation, the phenomena suitable for Moon-based Earth observation may have at least one of the following features: long-lasting, related to Sun–Earth–Moon motion, requires stable baseline observation, large-scale and describes multiple parameters. In the following sections, we will present several observation objectives to discuss in detail. 4.1. Solid earth dynamics Solid Earth tides, continental plate movement and glacier isostatic adjustment (GIA) are three typical large-scale solid Earth movements (Jiang et al. 2016), the measurement of which is a basic task of geodesy. For a uniform layered Earth, accurately predicting tidal movement can be done theoretically, but complex ocean tides and the inelasticity and heterogeneity of Earth’s interior material make the solid tide of the real Earth difficult to research theoretically. For GIA studies, prior knowledge about ancient ice cover evolution and a large amount of observational data are needed. Plate tectonics theory is a quantitative description of Earth plate movement (Ni et al. 2016). It may well explain the movement of most oceanic plates, but still have some problems to explain the mechanism of strong continental earthquakes, large-scale continental deformation, as well as the movements of other oceanic plates (Bird 2003). Accurately measuring solid Earth dynamics is beneficial to understanding solid Earth tides, continental plate movement and GIA, and provides further support for geodynamics and seismology. Devices such as a superconducting gravimeter and global navigation satellite system are currently used to measure small deformations of solid Earth, but these point-by-point methods are spatially limited to certain regions. Spaceborne InSAR measures deformation continuously, but the swath is not wide enough for mapping large-scale solid Earth movement. The Moon is a vast and stable platform that can provide sufficiently long and stable baseline interferometry. Its movement is easier to predict and the time interval of repeat-pass interferometry could be reduced to one day (Fornaro et al. 2010). In addition, the Moon is one of the main sources of tides on the Earth; so if we compare two measurements at different times, the lunar tide portion can be subtracted, leaving only the solar tide portion. After proper processing, it may help us learn more about the interior structure of Earth’s crust. To measure the large-scale deformation, a Moon-based repeat-pass InSAR system needs to be carefully designed. Except for the general SAR parameters, the critical baseline is a key factor that impacts its performance. The critical baseline Bc leading to a complete spatial decorrelation is given by Bc = BlDem tan ui c . (7) In this equation, the incidence angle ui is related to the observational geometry, while l and B are optional. When the bandwidth is 100 MHz and the incidence angle is 25°, the critical baselines are 14,000, 3300 and 1770 km at the L-band, C-band and X-band, respectively. In order to keep the correlation between two repeat passes, a practical baseline must be smaller than Bc. Therefore, from a practical point of view, the L-band is better than the C-band or X-band. Figure 4 shows the simulation results of one-day interval interferometry, but the side-looking constraints are not involved. In this case, the temporal decorrelation is highly reduced. It is obvious that the interferometric area is larger in the L-band than in X-band. Meanwhile, when the declination of the Moon is near the extremes, the interferometric area becomes larger. When the declination of the Moon is near the equatorial plane, one-day interval repeat-pass interferometry is not feasible, but a half month or one month interval repeat-pass interferometry is available. The magnitude of the solid Earth motion is not large. For example, the typical solid Earth tide amplitude is dozens of centimetres in one day. A resolution of hundreds of metres or even coarser will be enough if the wave is stably scattered. 4.2. Energy budget of earth Fundamentally, climate change depends on Earth’s radiation balance. Observation of both the solar radiation and Earth’s reflection and emission will depend on accurate measurement with space technology. Since the late 1970s, the United States and Europe have launched a number of missions to measure solar and terrestrial radiation, such as NASA’s Active Cavity Radiometer Irradiance Monitor Series programme (ACRIM1, 1980–1989; ACRIM2, 1991–2001; ACRIM3, 2000–present), Earth Radiation Budget Experiment (ERBE, 1984–1994), Clouds and Earth’s Radiant Energy System (CERES, 1997–present), Solar Radiation and Climate Experiment (SORCE, 2003–present) and the French Megha-Tropiques satellite on the Scanner for Radiation Budget (ScaRaB, 2011–present). These missions have greatly improved our understanding of Earth’s energy system. The Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR), placed at the earth–Sun first Lagrangian point, has been designed to measure the outgoing radiation of the sunlit Earth disk with a constant look angle. But in the outgoing radiation, the reflected shortwave radiation is highly affected by albedo and atmospheric conditions, showing obvious anisotropy. Lack of sampling in space and time is vulnerable to uncertainties. The lunar observatory provides large-scale observation with continuously changing angles, enabling it to calibrate the data of satellites in different orbits at different times. Its most important property is that it can provide a very long-term time series from a single orbit platform. In a year, the time series covers all local times, all seasons (different weather pattern) and all Earth phases for all underlying surfaces (Pallé and Goode 2009; Karalidi et al. 2012). The diversity of the surface-weatherphase combination is beneficial to improving the quality of global energy budget data and to the study of regional energy redistribution and its multi-layer coupling effects. The Moon-based data will also provide a direct connection between the data from space technology and the data from ground-based earthshine measurement series, which span almost one hundred years. The system design can consult the DSCOVR satellite, a radiometer measuring irradiance of the Earth phase and an imaging camera taking images of the Earth phase for various Earth sciences purposes. In order to take into account the needs of observing the Earth’s environmental elements, 1 km spatial resolution and 20–30 channels of the camera are suggested. 4.3. Earth’s environmental elements Vegetation is an important part of the global carbon pool and a key element of global carbon cycle. Most vegetation is distributed in middle- and low-latitude regions. A Moon-based optical camera can image global vegetation almost every day. SAR maps not only the horizontal distribution of vegetation, but also extracts forest morphological structure through tomography. The Moon provides multi-baseline accessibility within a single pass to eliminate the tomographic temporal decorrelation, but the imaging temporal decorrelation within a long synthetic aperture time hampers the focusing of forest. Therefore, to validate the feasibility of Moon-based 3D mapping of forest, more imaging methods for unstable scatterer, for example, the time reversal imaging method (Jin and Moura 2007), need to be tested and new methods are also expected. Glaciers are sensitive variables of climate change. The monitoring of glacier area, surface velocity and mass balance plays an important role in understanding the status of glaciers and their response to global change. Remote sensing techniques, such as optical sensors, SAR and altimeter data, provide regular observations of key glacial parameters. A lunar platform would provide continuous three- or four-day temporal coverage per month at the polar regions, but the observation incidence angle would typically be larger than 40° (see Figure 5) due to the relatively small inclination angle of the lunar orbit. For the High Asia area, the average coverage is about 4 h per day with proper incidence angle. The challenges may be the cost of high-resolution mapping for the optical sensor, and the layover problem (Tilley and Bonwit 1989) in heavy gradient area for SAR. Moon-based altimetry faces the same problems as LiDAR mentioned before, and is not recommended. An atmospheric observatory on the Moon can be used to evaluate the cloud fraction in an unambiguous manner, determine the composition in terms of the major trace gas and aerosols (Hamill 2016), and shed light on the relationship between lunar phases and cloudiness or precipitation. Particularly, the Moon offers a good place for occultation observation, which means observing the light or microwave changes emitted by stars or satellites when they are obstructed by atmosphere around the Earth. The Global Ozone Monitoring by Occultation of Stars (GOMOS) instrument on board the Envisat satellite is a typical system using the stellar occultation measurement principle in monitoring ozone and other trace gases in Earth’s stratosphere (Kyrola et al. 2004). Moon-based occultation was proposed in Link (1969), and was considered promising in Moon-based Earth atmosphere monitoring (Hamill 2007, 2016; Guo et al. 2014). The advantage of Moon-based occultation is that a star descends several times slower through the atmosphere than when viewed from a LEO satellite. This helps by increasing the SNR and resolution to some extent, but the practical performance also relies on the system design and the probability of finding an appropriate occultation geometry. 4.4. Earth-space environment Observing the environment of outer space surrounding Earth requires much larger FOV than only observing the solid Earth. The Moon is an ideal place to monitor the interaction between the solar wind and the magnetosphere. Moon-based observation combined with high near-polar Earth orbit or Molniya orbit observations can help us construct the three-dimensional structure of the magnetosphere by X-ray and EUV remote imaging. Images in all meridian planes of the whole plasma layer have already been captured by the EUV camera on the Chang’e 3 lander. Some initial results reflect the basic features of the plasmasphere, and also verified the accessibility of high-quality data of magnetosphere from the Moon (Feng et al. 2014). 5. Conclusion In this paper, we propose the Moon as a platform for Earth observation with long-term, dynamic capabilities, mainly focusing on large-scale geoscience phenomena. The characteristics of a lunar platform, the sensors and the scientific objectives of Moon-based Earth observation are discussed in detail. A lunar platform could observe Earth in quite a different way, and give a long-lasting disk view, a stable baseline and a unique perspective. The proposed sensors include some optical sensors and SAR. LiDAR, altimeters and scatterometers may not be functional on the lunar surface mainly because of the long viewing distance, and Moon-based radiometers may not be necessary if spaceborne radiometers are effective enough. Though the cost is not discussed in this paper, a Moon-based SAR would be extremely expensive and face too many specific technical difficulties to be implemented at the present time. On the contrary, passive optical sensors, such as spectrographs and panchromatic cameras, are much easier to realize. The scientific objectives of Moon-based Earth observation include measuring solid Earth dynamics and the global energy budget, and monitoring Earth’s environment and the surrounding environment of outer space. Moon-based Earth observation will be effective in measuring solid Earth tides, detecting outgoing radiation, and monitoring the magnetosphere and some of Earth’s environmental elements. Finally, we suggest that numerical simulations are indispensable to validate the proposals and to address specific problems. Mitigation is the silver bullet. Letzter 19 (, R., 2019. Are we really running out of time to stop climate change? LiveScience. Available at: https://www.livescience.com/12-years-to-stop-climate-change.html Accessed January 23, 2022. Rafi joined Live Science in 2017. He has a bachelor's degree in journalism from Northwestern University’s Medill School of journalism. You can find his past science reporting at Inverse, Business Insider and Popular Science, and his past photojournalism on the Flash90 wire service and in the pages of The Courier Post of southern New Jersey.)-recut rahulpenu But ultimately, all the researchers Live Science contacted said these problems become less catastrophic with less warming. Holding the world to a 1.5-C warming increase by the end of the century creates much more manageable short- and long-term problems than holding it to 2 C of warming, which is much less harmful to Earth than 3 C, which is much more survivable than 4 C, which is still less catastrophic than 6 C … and so on. None of those possible futures necessarily leads to a charred, lifeless global desert in our lifetimes. But each increase is almost unimaginably more dire for life on this planet than the one preceding it. "It's always worth it to prevent more warming," Mach said. With regard to the spread of mosquito-borne diseases, Carlson said, "We can stop it. Mitigating climate change is truly the silver bullet. Sometimes it is as simple as, 'If we stop climate change, we can stop a lot of the bad health impacts that are coming.'" (Though the devil is in the details, he added. The level of disease reduction will depend on how fast the carbon-mitigation project moves, and its effects won't be felt immediately or equally everywhere.) The science points relentlessly to one reality: The best way to deal with climate change is to start cutting emissions now. It's easier to stop warming by keeping CO2 in the ground now than it is to pull carbon out of the air later. And mitigation makes adaptation much more effective. Prevents extinction. Sears 21 (, N., 2021. Great Powers, Polarity, and Existential Threats to Humanity: An Analysis of the Distribution of the Forces of Total Destruction in International Security. online ResearchGate. Available at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/350500094 Accessed 22 November 2021 Nathan Alexander Sears is a PhD Candidate in Political Science at The University of Toronto. Before beginning his PhD, he was a Professor of International Relations at the Universidad de Las Américas, Quito. His research focuses on international security and the existential threats to humanity posed by nuclear weapons, climate change, biotechnology, and artificial intelligence. His PhD dissertation is entitled, “International Politics in the Age of Existential Threats”)-re-cut rahulpenu Climate Change Humanity faces existential risks from the large-scale destruction of Earth’s natural environment making the planet less hospitable for humankind (Wallace-Wells 2019). The decline of some of Earth’s natural systems may already exceed the “planetary boundaries” that represent a “safe operating space for humanity” (Rockstrom et al. 2009). Humanity has become one of the driving forces behind Earth’s climate system (Crutzen 2002). The major anthropogenic drivers of climate change are the burning of fossil fuels (e.g., coal, oil, and gas), combined with the degradation of Earth’s natural systems for absorbing carbon dioxide, such as deforestation for agriculture (e.g., livestock and monocultures) and resource extraction (e.g., mining and oil), and the warming of the oceans (Kump et al. 2003). While humanity has influenced Earth’s climate since at least the Industrial Revolution, the dramatic increase in greenhouse gas emissions since the mid-twentieth century—the “Great Acceleration” (Steffen et al. 2007; 2015; McNeill and Engelke 2016)— is responsible for contemporary climate change, which has reached approximately 1°C above preindustrial levels (IPCC 2018). Climate change could become an existential threat to humanity if the planet’s climate reaches a “Hothouse Earth” state (Ripple et al. 2020). What are the dangers? There are two mechanisms of climate change that threaten humankind. The direct threat is extreme heat. While human societies possesses some capacity for adaptation and resilience to climate change, the physiological response of humans to heat stress imposes physical limits—with a hard limit at roughly 35°C wet-bulb temperature (Sherwood et al. 2010). A rise in global average temperatures by 3–4°C would increase the risk of heat stress, while 7°C could render some regions uninhabitable, and 11–12°C would leave much of the planet too hot for human habitation (Sherwood et al. 2010). The indirect effects of climate change could include, inter alia, rising sea levels affecting coastal regions (e.g., Miami and Shanghai), or even swallowing entire countries (e.g., Bangladesh and the Maldives); extreme and unpredictable weather and natural disasters (e.g., hurricanes and forest fires); environmental pressures on water and food scarcity (e.g., droughts from less-dispersed rainfall, and lower wheat-yields at higher temperatures); the possible inception of new bacteria and viruses; and, of course, large-scale human migration (World Bank 2012; Wallace-Well 2019; Richards, Lupton and Allywood 2001). While it is difficult to determine the existential implications of extreme environmental conditions, there are historic precedents for the collapse of human societies under environmental pressures (Diamond 2005). Earth’s “big five” mass extinction events have been linked to dramatic shifts in Earth’s climate (Ward 2008; Payne and Clapham 2012; Kolbert 2014; Brannen 2017), and a Hothouse Earth climate would represent terra incognita for humanity. Thus, the assumption here is that a Hothouse Earth climate could pose an existential threat to the habitability of the planet for humanity (Steffen et al. 2018., 5). At what point could climate change cross the threshold of an existential threat to humankind? The complexity of Earth’s natural systems makes it extremely difficult to give a precise figure (Rockstrom et al. 2009; ). However, much of the concern about climate change is over the danger of crossing “tipping points,” whereby positive feedback loops in Earth’s climate system could lead to potentially irreversible and self-reinforcing “runaway” climate change. For example, the melting of Arctic “permafrost” could produce additional warming, as glacial retreat reduces the refractory effect of the ice and releases huge quantities of methane currently trapped beneath it. A recent study suggests that a “planetary threshold” could exist at global average temperature of 2°C above preindustrial levels (Steffen et al. 2018; also IPCC 2018). Therefore, the analysis here takes the 2°C rise in global average temperatures as representing the lower-boundary of an existential threat to humanity, with higher temperatures increasing the risk of runaway climate change leading to a Hothouse Earth. The Paris Agreement on Climate Change set the goal of limiting the increase in global average temperatures to “well below” 2°C and to pursue efforts to limit the increase to 1.5°C. If the Paris Agreement goals are met, then nations would likely keep climate change below the threshold of an existential threat to humanity. According to Climate Action Tracker (2020), however, current policies of states are expected to produce global average temperatures of 2.9°C above preindustrial levels by 2100 (range between +2.1 and +3.9°C), while if states succeed in meeting their pledges and targets, global average temperatures are still projected to increase by 2.6°C (range between +2.1 and +3.3°C). Thus, while the Paris Agreements sets a goal 6 that would reduce the existential risk of climate change, the actual policies of states could easily cross the threshold that would constitute an existential threat to humanity (CAT 2020).
Framing Pleasure and pain are intrinsic value and disvalue – everything else regresses – robust neuroscience. Blum et al. 18 Kenneth Blum, 1Department of Psychiatry, Boonshoft School of Medicine, Dayton VA Medical Center, Wright State University, Dayton, OH, USA 2Department of Psychiatry, McKnight Brain Institute, University of Florida College of Medicine, Gainesville, FL, USA 3Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Keck Medicine University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA 4Division of Applied Clinical Research and Education, Dominion Diagnostics, LLC, North Kingstown, RI, USA 5Department of Precision Medicine, Geneus Health LLC, San Antonio, TX, USA 6Department of Addiction Research and Therapy, Nupathways Inc., Innsbrook, MO, USA 7Department of Clinical Neurology, Path Foundation, New York, NY, USA 8Division of Neuroscience-Based Addiction Therapy, The Shores Treatment and Recovery Center, Port Saint Lucie, FL, USA 9Institute of Psychology, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary 10Division of Addiction Research, Dominion Diagnostics, LLC. North Kingston, RI, USA 11Victory Nutrition International, Lederach, PA., USA 12National Human Genome Center at Howard University, Washington, DC., USA, Marjorie Gondré-Lewis, 12National Human Genome Center at Howard University, Washington, DC., USA 13Departments of Anatomy and Psychiatry, Howard University College of Medicine, Washington, DC US, Bruce Steinberg, 4Division of Applied Clinical Research and Education, Dominion Diagnostics, LLC, North Kingstown, RI, USA, Igor Elman, 15Department Psychiatry, Cooper University School of Medicine, Camden, NJ, USA, David Baron, 3Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Keck Medicine University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA, Edward J Modestino, 14Department of Psychology, Curry College, Milton, MA, USA, Rajendra D Badgaiyan, 15Department Psychiatry, Cooper University School of Medicine, Camden, NJ, USA, Mark S Gold 16Department of Psychiatry, Washington University, St. Louis, MO, USA, “Our evolved unique pleasure circuit makes humans different from apes: Reconsideration of data derived from animal studies”, U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, 28 February 2018, accessed: 19 August 2020, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6446569/, R.S. Pleasure is not only one of the three primary reward functions but it also defines reward. As homeostasis explains the functions of only a limited number of rewards, the principal reason why particular stimuli, objects, events, situations, and activities are rewarding may be due to pleasure. This applies first of all to sex and to the primary homeostatic rewards of food and liquid and extends to money, taste, beauty, social encounters and nonmaterial, internally set, and intrinsic rewards. Pleasure, as the primary effect of rewards, drives the prime reward functions of learning, approach behavior, and decision making and provides the basis for hedonic theories of reward function. We are attracted by most rewards and exert intense efforts to obtain them, just because they are enjoyable 10. Pleasure is a passive reaction that derives from the experience or prediction of reward and may lead to a long-lasting state of happiness. The word happiness is difficult to define. In fact, just obtaining physical pleasure may not be enough. One key to happiness involves a network of good friends. However, it is not obvious how the higher forms of satisfaction and pleasure are related to an ice cream cone, or to your team winning a sporting event. Recent multidisciplinary research, using both humans and detailed invasive brain analysis of animals has discovered some critical ways that the brain processes pleasure 14. Pleasure as a hallmark of reward is sufficient for defining a reward, but it may not be necessary. A reward may generate positive learning and approach behavior simply because it contains substances that are essential for body function. When we are hungry, we may eat bad and unpleasant meals. A monkey who receives hundreds of small drops of water every morning in the laboratory is unlikely to feel a rush of pleasure every time it gets the 0.1 ml. Nevertheless, with these precautions in mind, we may define any stimulus, object, event, activity, or situation that has the potential to produce pleasure as a reward. In the context of reward deficiency or for disorders of addiction, homeostasis pursues pharmacological treatments: drugs to treat drug addiction, obesity, and other compulsive behaviors. The theory of allostasis suggests broader approaches - such as re-expanding the range of possible pleasures and providing opportunities to expend effort in their pursuit. 15. It is noteworthy, the first animal studies eliciting approach behavior by electrical brain stimulation interpreted their findings as a discovery of the brain’s pleasure centers 16 which were later partly associated with midbrain dopamine neurons 17–19 despite the notorious difficulties of identifying emotions in animals. Evolutionary theories of pleasure: The love connection BO Charles Darwin and other biological scientists that have examined the biological evolution and its basic principles found various mechanisms that steer behavior and biological development. Besides their theory on natural selection, it was particularly the sexual selection process that gained significance in the latter context over the last century, especially when it comes to the question of what makes us “what we are,” i.e., human. However, the capacity to sexually select and evolve is not at all a human accomplishment alone or a sign of our uniqueness; yet, we humans, as it seems, are ingenious in fooling ourselves and others–when we are in love or desperately search for it. It is well established that modern biological theory conjectures that organisms are the result of evolutionary competition. In fact, Richard Dawkins stresses gene survival and propagation as the basic mechanism of life 20. Only genes that lead to the fittest phenotype will make it. It is noteworthy that the phenotype is selected based on behavior that maximizes gene propagation. To do so, the phenotype must survive and generate offspring, and be better at it than its competitors. Thus, the ultimate, distal function of rewards is to increase evolutionary fitness by ensuring the survival of the organism and reproduction. It is agreed that learning, approach, economic decisions, and positive emotions are the proximal functions through which phenotypes obtain other necessary nutrients for survival, mating, and care for offspring. Behavioral reward functions have evolved to help individuals to survive and propagate their genes. Apparently, people need to live well and long enough to reproduce. Most would agree that homo-sapiens do so by ingesting the substances that make their bodies function properly. For this reason, foods and drinks are rewards. Additional rewards, including those used for economic exchanges, ensure sufficient palatable food and drink supply. Mating and gene propagation is supported by powerful sexual attraction. Additional properties, like body form, augment the chance to mate and nourish and defend offspring and are therefore also rewards. Care for offspring until they can reproduce themselves helps gene propagation and is rewarding; otherwise, many believe mating is useless. According to David E Comings, as any small edge will ultimately result in evolutionary advantage 21, additional reward mechanisms like novelty seeking and exploration widen the spectrum of available rewards and thus enhance the chance for survival, reproduction, and ultimate gene propagation. These functions may help us to obtain the benefits of distant rewards that are determined by our own interests and not immediately available in the environment. Thus the distal reward function in gene propagation and evolutionary fitness defines the proximal reward functions that we see in everyday behavior. That is why foods, drinks, mates, and offspring are rewarding. There have been theories linking pleasure as a required component of health benefits salutogenesis, (salugenesis). In essence, under these terms, pleasure is described as a state or feeling of happiness and satisfaction resulting from an experience that one enjoys. Regarding pleasure, it is a double-edged sword, on the one hand, it promotes positive feelings (like mindfulness) and even better cognition, possibly through the release of dopamine 22. But on the other hand, pleasure simultaneously encourages addiction and other negative behaviors, i.e., motivational toxicity. It is a complex neurobiological phenomenon, relying on reward circuitry or limbic activity. It is important to realize that through the “Brain Reward Cascade” (BRC) endorphin and endogenous morphinergic mechanisms may play a role 23. While natural rewards are essential for survival and appetitive motivation leading to beneficial biological behaviors like eating, sex, and reproduction, crucial social interactions seem to further facilitate the positive effects exerted by pleasurable experiences. Indeed, experimentation with addictive drugs is capable of directly acting on reward pathways and causing deterioration of these systems promoting hypodopaminergia 24. Most would agree that pleasurable activities can stimulate personal growth and may help to induce healthy behavioral changes, including stress management 25. The work of Esch and Stefano 26 concerning the link between compassion and love implicate the brain reward system, and pleasure induction suggests that social contact in general, i.e., love, attachment, and compassion, can be highly effective in stress reduction, survival, and overall health. Understanding the role of neurotransmission and pleasurable states both positive and negative have been adequately studied over many decades 26–37, but comparative anatomical and neurobiological function between animals and homo sapiens appear to be required and seem to be in an infancy stage. Finding happiness is different between apes and humans As stated earlier in this expert opinion one key to happiness involves a network of good friends 38. However, it is not entirely clear exactly how the higher forms of satisfaction and pleasure are related to a sugar rush, winning a sports event or even sky diving, all of which augment dopamine release at the reward brain site. Recent multidisciplinary research, using both humans and detailed invasive brain analysis of animals has discovered some critical ways that the brain processes pleasure. Remarkably, there are pathways for ordinary liking and pleasure, which are limited in scope as described above in this commentary. However, there are many brain regions, often termed hot and cold spots, that significantly modulate (increase or decrease) our pleasure or even produce the opposite of pleasure— that is disgust and fear 39. One specific region of the nucleus accumbens is organized like a computer keyboard, with particular stimulus triggers in rows— producing an increase and decrease of pleasure and disgust. Moreover, the cortex has unique roles in the cognitive evaluation of our feelings of pleasure 40. Importantly, the interplay of these multiple triggers and the higher brain centers in the prefrontal cortex are very intricate and are just being uncovered. Desire and reward centers It is surprising that many different sources of pleasure activate the same circuits between the mesocorticolimbic regions (Figure 1). Reward and desire are two aspects pleasure induction and have a very widespread, large circuit. Some part of this circuit distinguishes between desire and dread. The so-called pleasure circuitry called “REWARD” involves a well-known dopamine pathway in the mesolimbic system that can influence both pleasure and motivation. In simplest terms, the well-established mesolimbic system is a dopamine circuit for reward. It starts in the ventral tegmental area (VTA) of the midbrain and travels to the nucleus accumbens (Figure 2). It is the cornerstone target to all addictions. The VTA is encompassed with neurons using glutamate, GABA, and dopamine. The nucleus accumbens (NAc) is located within the ventral striatum and is divided into two sub-regions—the motor and limbic regions associated with its core and shell, respectively. The NAc has spiny neurons that receive dopamine from the VTA and glutamate (a dopamine driver) from the hippocampus, amygdala and medial prefrontal cortex. Subsequently, the NAc projects GABA signals to an area termed the ventral pallidum (VP). The region is a relay station in the limbic loop of the basal ganglia, critical for motivation, behavior, emotions and the “Feel Good” response. This defined system of the brain is involved in all addictions –substance, and non –substance related. In 1995, our laboratory coined the term “Reward Deficiency Syndrome” (RDS) to describe genetic and epigenetic induced hypodopaminergia in the “Brain Reward Cascade” that contribute to addiction and compulsive behaviors 3,6,41. Furthermore, ordinary “liking” of something, or pure pleasure, is represented by small regions mainly in the limbic system (old reptilian part of the brain). These may be part of larger neural circuits. In Latin, hedus is the term for “sweet”; and in Greek, hodone is the term for “pleasure.” Thus, the word Hedonic is now referring to various subcomponents of pleasure: some associated with purely sensory and others with more complex emotions involving morals, aesthetics, and social interactions. The capacity to have pleasure is part of being healthy and may even extend life, especially if linked to optimism as a dopaminergic response 42. Psychiatric illness often includes symptoms of an abnormal inability to experience pleasure, referred to as anhedonia. A negative feeling state is called dysphoria, which can consist of many emotions such as pain, depression, anxiety, fear, and disgust. Previously many scientists used animal research to uncover the complex mechanisms of pleasure, liking, motivation and even emotions like panic and fear, as discussed above 43. However, as a significant amount of related research about the specific brain regions of pleasure/reward circuitry has been derived from invasive studies of animals, these cannot be directly compared with subjective states experienced by humans. In an attempt to resolve the controversy regarding the causal contributions of mesolimbic dopamine systems to reward, we have previously evaluated the three-main competing explanatory categories: “liking,” “learning,” and “wanting” 3. That is, dopamine may mediate (a) liking: the hedonic impact of reward, (b) learning: learned predictions about rewarding effects, or (c) wanting: the pursuit of rewards by attributing incentive salience to reward-related stimuli 44. We have evaluated these hypotheses, especially as they relate to the RDS, and we find that the incentive salience or “wanting” hypothesis of dopaminergic functioning is supported by a majority of the scientific evidence. Various neuroimaging studies have shown that anticipated behaviors such as sex and gaming, delicious foods and drugs of abuse all affect brain regions associated with reward networks, and may not be unidirectional. Drugs of abuse enhance dopamine signaling which sensitizes mesolimbic brain mechanisms that apparently evolved explicitly to attribute incentive salience to various rewards 45. Addictive substances are voluntarily self-administered, and they enhance (directly or indirectly) dopaminergic synaptic function in the NAc. This activation of the brain reward networks (producing the ecstatic “high” that users seek). Although these circuits were initially thought to encode a set point of hedonic tone, it is now being considered to be far more complicated in function, also encoding attention, reward expectancy, disconfirmation of reward expectancy, and incentive motivation 46. The argument about addiction as a disease may be confused with a predisposition to substance and nonsubstance rewards relative to the extreme effect of drugs of abuse on brain neurochemistry. The former sets up an individual to be at high risk through both genetic polymorphisms in reward genes as well as harmful epigenetic insult. Some Psychologists, even with all the data, still infer that addiction is not a disease 47. Elevated stress levels, together with polymorphisms (genetic variations) of various dopaminergic genes and the genes related to other neurotransmitters (and their genetic variants), and may have an additive effect on vulnerability to various addictions 48. In this regard, Vanyukov, et al. 48 suggested based on review that whereas the gateway hypothesis does not specify mechanistic connections between “stages,” and does not extend to the risks for addictions the concept of common liability to addictions may be more parsimonious. The latter theory is grounded in genetic theory and supported by data identifying common sources of variation in the risk for specific addictions (e.g., RDS). This commonality has identifiable neurobiological substrate and plausible evolutionary explanations. Over many years the controversy of dopamine involvement in especially “pleasure” has led to confusion concerning separating motivation from actual pleasure (wanting versus liking) 49. We take the position that animal studies cannot provide real clinical information as described by self-reports in humans. As mentioned earlier and in the abstract, on November 23rd, 2017, evidence for our concerns was discovered 50 In essence, although nonhuman primate brains are similar to our own, the disparity between other primates and those of human cognitive abilities tells us that surface similarity is not the whole story. Sousa et al. 50 small case found various differentially expressed genes, to associate with pleasure related systems. Furthermore, the dopaminergic interneurons located in the human neocortex were absent from the neocortex of nonhuman African apes. Such differences in neuronal transcriptional programs may underlie a variety of neurodevelopmental disorders. In simpler terms, the system controls the production of dopamine, a chemical messenger that plays a significant role in pleasure and rewards. The senior author, Dr. Nenad Sestan from Yale, stated: “Humans have evolved a dopamine system that is different than the one in chimpanzees.” This may explain why the behavior of humans is so unique from that of non-human primates, even though our brains are so surprisingly similar, Sestan said: “It might also shed light on why people are vulnerable to mental disorders such as autism (possibly even addiction).” Remarkably, this research finding emerged from an extensive, multicenter collaboration to compare the brains across several species. These researchers examined 247 specimens of neural tissue from six humans, five chimpanzees, and five macaque monkeys. Moreover, these investigators analyzed which genes were turned on or off in 16 regions of the brain. While the differences among species were subtle, there was a remarkable contrast in the neocortices, specifically in an area of the brain that is much more developed in humans than in chimpanzees. In fact, these researchers found that a gene called tyrosine hydroxylase (TH) for the enzyme, responsible for the production of dopamine, was expressed in the neocortex of humans, but not chimpanzees. As discussed earlier, dopamine is best known for its essential role within the brain’s reward system; the very system that responds to everything from sex, to gambling, to food, and to addictive drugs. However, dopamine also assists in regulating emotional responses, memory, and movement. Notably, abnormal dopamine levels have been linked to disorders including Parkinson’s, schizophrenia and spectrum disorders such as autism and addiction or RDS. Nora Volkow, the director of NIDA, pointed out that one alluring possibility is that the neurotransmitter dopamine plays a substantial role in humans’ ability to pursue various rewards that are perhaps months or even years away in the future. This same idea has been suggested by Dr. Robert Sapolsky, a professor of biology and neurology at Stanford University. Dr. Sapolsky cited evidence that dopamine levels rise dramatically in humans when we anticipate potential rewards that are uncertain and even far off in our futures, such as retirement or even the possible alterlife. This may explain what often motivates people to work for things that have no apparent short-term benefit 51. In similar work, Volkow and Bale 52 proposed a model in which dopamine can favor NOW processes through phasic signaling in reward circuits or LATER processes through tonic signaling in control circuits. Specifically, they suggest that through its modulation of the orbitofrontal cortex, which processes salience attribution, dopamine also enables shilting from NOW to LATER, while its modulation of the insula, which processes interoceptive information, influences the probability of selecting NOW versus LATER actions based on an individual’s physiological state. This hypothesis further supports the concept that disruptions along these circuits contribute to diverse pathologies, including obesity and addiction or RDS. 2 – No intent-foresight distinction – if I foresee a consequence, then it becomes part of my deliberation since its intrinsic to my action 3 – Actor spec – governments lack wills or intentions and inevitably deals with tradeoffs – outweighs because agents have differing obligations. 4 -- Extinction outweighs a Moral uncertainty – if we’re unsure about which interpretation of the world is true – we ought to preserve the world to keep debating about it. b Forecloses improvement – we can never improve society because our impact is irreversible. c Turns suffering – mass death causes suffering because people can’t get access to resources and basic necessities. 5 – No act omission distinction – choosing not to act is an action in of itself since you had to make an active decision to omit. Walking past a drowning baby and choosing not to save it is a cognitive decision you were faced with and you actively decided to keep walking b) warranting a distinction gives agents the permissible choice of omitting from any ethical action since omissions lack culpability. UV Interpretation – At all TOC bid tournaments, Debaters must open source all constructive positions within 30 minutes of each debate on the NDCA 2021-2022 LD wiki. Violation: they haven’t disclosed their peninsula neg rounds, a few yale rounds, puget sound rounds, and badgerland rounds. 1 Research- debaters won’t make it an entire topic with the same case unless they update it and frontline nuanced positions—disclosure allows for more specific research and goes into more depth about the topic 2 Accessibility – disclosure is key to smaller school debaters alleviating big school prep outs – they’re able to scout but small school debaters don’t have the teams to figure out the affs being read. Disclosure is inevitable – the question is whether it happens on a mutually accessible forum. Fairness is a voter cause every arg assumes its being evaluated fairly and education is the only reasons school fund debate Drop the debater to deter future abuse and set good norms Competing Interpretations – a Race to the bottom of the worst possible theory norms – B Reasonability bad cause it invites arbitrary judge intervention No Rvis A - Forcing the 1NC to go all in on the shell kills substance education and neg strat which outweighs on timeframe, B - discourages checking real abuse which outweighs on norm-setting and constituvisim
1/23/22
JF - Prag
Tournament: Cal Invitational | Round: 6 | Opponent: Plano East RP | Judge: Andrew Qin cites are not working
2/20/22
ND - China v1
Tournament: Apple Valley | Round: 2 | Opponent: Westwood AR | Judge: Claudia Ribera 1AC
1AC: Plan
Plan – A just government of the People’s Republic of China ought to recognize an unconditional right of workers to strike.
That solves worker liberation, labor reforms, and re-establishes credible Collective Bargaining in China – establishing legal protection for Labor Unions reduces overall labor-related discontent. Dongfang 11 Han Dongfang 4-6-2011 "Liberate China's Workers" https://archive.md/7RvDG#selection-307.0-316.0 (director of China Labour Bulletin, a nongovernmental organization that defends the rights of workers in China.)Elmer HONG KONG — There is no legal right to strike in China, but there
AND
Communist Party’s goal of creating a more prosperous, stable and harmonious society.
1AC: Soft Power Advantage
Lack of Chinese Right to Strike devastates Collective Bargaining – undermines any legal leverage for Strikes. Friedman 17 Eli Friedman 4-20-2017 "Collective Bargaining in China is Dead: The Situation is Excellent" https://www.chinoiresie.info/collective-bargaining-in-china-is-dead-the-situation-is-excellent/ (Assistant Professor of International and Comparative Labour at Cornell University)Elmer For many years reform-oriented labour activists and scholars working in China have seen
AND
will be the necessary prelude to any institutional reform worthy of the name.
Any credible union power is under-cut by detentions of labor activists. Merkley and McGovern 13 Jeff Merkley and James McGovern 12-20-2013 "Detention of Labor Representative Highlights Challenges for Collective Bargaining in China" https://www.cecc.gov/publications/commission-analysis/detention-of-labor-representative-highlights-challenges-for (Representative and Co-Chair of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China)Elmer Authorities in Shenzhen city, Guangdong province, detained migrant worker and labor representative Wu
AND
the “effective recognition” of the right to collective bargaining.16
The Right to Strike re-balances China’s Economy. Roberts 10 Dexter Roberts 8-5-2010 "Is the Right to Strike Coming to China" https://archive.md/hjNI7 (Editor at Bloomberg)Elmer The name gives no hint of the revolutionary changes afoot for mainland workers. Yet
AND
being debated in Guangdong could greatly strengthen the bargaining power of Chinese workers.
Enhanced Unions and Labor Reforms key to sustained Chinese Economic Growth. Haack 21 Michael Haack 2-13-2021 "Could Biden Make US-China Trade Better for Workers?" https://thediplomat.com/2021/02/could-biden-make-us-china-trade-better-for-workers/ (Michael Haack currently a contractor with the China Labor Translation Project, a project of the Chinese Progressive Association. He previously worked with industrial workers in southern China. Michael holds master’s degrees from SOAS, University of London and American University)Elmer Meanwhile, even as China grows, its wealth remains largely with companies and the
AND
unions were allowed to flourish — thus advancing their own stated policy aims.”
, with an almost 17 drop in spending at restaurants last year.
That’s critical for Soft Power Projection BUT authoritarianism regarding activists puts efforts on the brink – re-establishing credibility of governance is important. Albert 18 Eleanor Albert 2-9-2018 "China’s Big Bet on Soft Power" https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/chinas-big-bet-soft-power (a third-year PhD student concentrating in international relations and comparative politics)Elmer China is a powerful international actor as the world’s most populous country and its second
AND
nations so long as it muzzles its best advocates,” writes the Economist.
Chinese leadership solves existential threats. Yamei 18 Shen Yamei 18, Deputy Director and Associate Research Fellow of Department for American Studies, China Institute of International Studies, 1-9-2018, "Probing into the “Chinese Solution” for the Transformation of Global Governance," CAIFC, http://www.caifc.org.cn/en/content.aspx?id=4491 As the world is in a period of great development, transformation and adjustment,
AND
, refugees, climate change and public hygiene by debt forgiveness and assistance.
Chinese Economic Decline leads to all-out War – specifically over Taiwan. Joske 18 Stephen Joske 10-23-2018 “China’s Coming Financial Crisis And The National Security Connection” https://warontherocks.com/2018/10/chinas-coming-financial-crisis-and-the-national-security-connection/ (senior adviser to the Australian Treasurer during the 1997–98 Asian crisis)re-cut by Elmer The biggest national security issues, however, arise from the unpredictable political impact of
AND
stall or even end China’s rise as a global military and political power.
Taiwan goes Nuclear. Talmadge 18 Caitlin, Associate Professor of Security Studies at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, “Beijing’s Nuclear Option: Why a U.S.-China War Could Spiral Out of Control,” accessible online at https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/china/2018-10-15/beijings-nuclear-option, published Nov/Dec 2018re-cut by Elmer As China’s power has grown in recent years, so, too, has the
AND
have considered unthinkable only months earlier. This pattern could unfold again today.
Nuke war causes extinction AND outweighs other existential risks - Checked PND 16. internally citing Zbigniew Brzezinski, Council of Foreign Relations and former national security adviser to President Carter, Toon and Robock’s 2012 study on nuclear winter in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, Gareth Evans’ International Commission on Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament Report, Congressional EMP studies, studies on nuclear winter by Seth Baum of the Global Catastrophic Risk Institute and Martin Hellman of Stanford University, and U.S. and Russian former Defense Secretaries and former heads of nuclear missile forces, brief submitted to the United Nations General Assembly, Open-Ended Working Group on nuclear risks. A/AC.286/NGO/13. 05-03-2016. http://www.reachingcriticalwill.org/images/documents/Disarmament-fora/OEWG/2016/Documents/NGO13.pdfRe-cut by Elmer Consequences human survival 12. Even if the 'other' side does NOT launch in response
AND
course the immediate post-nuclear results for Hiroshima and Nagasaki as well.
Chinese Economic Strength increases Economic Diplomacy Efforts, specifically OBOR, AND decreases need for Military Expansion. Cai 18, Kevin G. "The one belt one road and the Asian infrastructure investment bank: Beijing’s new strategy of geoeconomics and geopolitics." Journal of Contemporary China 27.114 (2018): 831-847. (Associate Professor at Renison University College, University of Waterloo, Canada)Elmer Fourthly, the OBOR and the AIIB were launched by Beijing as a diplomatic and
AND
broader sense, the initiatives could help further strengthen Beijing’s third world diplomacy.
Solves Central Asian and South Asia War. Muhammad et Al 19, Imraz, Arif Khan, and Saif ul Islam. "China Pakistan Economic Corridor: Peace, Prosperity and Conflict Resolution in the Region." (Lecturer, Department of Political Science, University of Buner)Elmer In the twenty first century, the geostrategic importance of South Asia is rising because
AND
peace and stability in the region and secure the CPEC from insecurity.15
Central Asia Instability explodes globally Blank 2k Stephen J. - Expert on the Soviet Bloc for the Strategic Studies Institute, “American Grand Strategy and the Transcaspian Region”, World Affairs. 9-22 Thus many structural conditions for conventional war or protracted ethnic conflict where third parties intervene
AND
5) neither has willing proxies capable of settling the situation.(77)
South Asia War goes Nuclear and causes Extinction. Menon 19 Prakash Menon, The nuclear cloud hanging over the human race, Nov 15, 2019, PhD from Madras University for his thesis “Limited War and Nuclear Deterrence in the Indo-Pak context” https://www.telegraphindia.com/opinion/the-nuclear-cloud-hanging-over-the-human-race/cid/1719608# SM The nuclear cloud hanging over the human race Even a limited India-Pakistan nuclear
AND
for its incredibility and the utter stupidity of the use of nuclear weapons.
Underview
1 1AR theory – a) AFF gets it because otherwise, the neg can engage in infinite abuse which outweighs on severity, b) drop the debater – the short 1AR irreparably skewed from abuse on substance and time investment on theory, c) no RVIs – the 6-minute 2nr can collapse to a short shell and get away with infinite 1nc abuse via sheer brute force and time spent on theory. d) competing interps – 1AR interps aren’t bidirectional and the neg should have to defend their norm since they have more time. E) fairness is a voter- it’s the only reason school’s fund debate. F) education- it gives us portable skills like research and thinking.
1AC: Framing
The standard is maximizing expected wellbeing or act hedonistic util.
Prefer:
1- Pleasure and pain are intrinsic value and disvalue – everything else regresses – robust neuroscience. Blum et al. 18 Kenneth Blum, 1Department of Psychiatry, Boonshoft School of Medicine, Dayton VA Medical Center, Wright State University, Dayton, OH, USA 2Department of Psychiatry, McKnight Brain Institute, University of Florida College of Medicine, Gainesville, FL, USA 3Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Keck Medicine University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA 4Division of Applied Clinical Research and Education, Dominion Diagnostics, LLC, North Kingstown, RI, USA 5Department of Precision Medicine, Geneus Health LLC, San Antonio, TX, USA 6Department of Addiction Research and Therapy, Nupathways Inc., Innsbrook, MO, USA 7Department of Clinical Neurology, Path Foundation, New York, NY, USA 8Division of Neuroscience-Based Addiction Therapy, The Shores Treatment and Recovery Center, Port Saint Lucie, FL, USA 9Institute of Psychology, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary 10Division of Addiction Research, Dominion Diagnostics, LLC. North Kingston, RI, USA 11Victory Nutrition International, Lederach, PA., USA 12National Human Genome Center at Howard University, Washington, DC., USA, Marjorie Gondré-Lewis, 12National Human Genome Center at Howard University, Washington, DC., USA 13Departments of Anatomy and Psychiatry, Howard University College of Medicine, Washington, DC US, Bruce Steinberg, 4Division of Applied Clinical Research and Education, Dominion Diagnostics, LLC, North Kingstown, RI, USA, Igor Elman, 15Department Psychiatry, Cooper University School of Medicine, Camden, NJ, USA, David Baron, 3Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Keck Medicine University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA, Edward J Modestino, 14Department of Psychology, Curry College, Milton, MA, USA, Rajendra D Badgaiyan, 15Department Psychiatry, Cooper University School of Medicine, Camden, NJ, USA, Mark S Gold 16Department of Psychiatry, Washington University, St. Louis, MO, USA, “Our evolved unique pleasure circuit makes humans different from apes: Reconsideration of data derived from animal studies”, U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, 28 February 2018, accessed: 19 August 2020, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6446569/, R.S. Pleasure is not only one of the three primary reward functions but it also defines
AND
these circuits contribute to diverse pathologies, including obesity and addiction or RDS.
2 – No intent-foresight distinction – if I foresee a consequence, then it becomes part of my deliberation since its intrinsic to my action
against the intending-foreseeing distinction when applied to state action than elsewhere.
11/5/21
ND - China v2
Tournament: Apple Valley | Round: 4 | Opponent: Amitoj Singh | Judge: Julian Kuffour 1AC
1AC: Plan
Plan – A just government of the People’s Republic of China ought to recognize an unconditional right of workers to strike.
That solves worker liberation, labor reforms, and re-establishes credible Collective Bargaining in China – establishing legal protection for Labor Unions reduces overall labor-related discontent. Dongfang 11 Han Dongfang 4-6-2011 "Liberate China's Workers" https://archive.md/7RvDG#selection-307.0-316.0 (director of China Labour Bulletin, a nongovernmental organization that defends the rights of workers in China.)Elmer HONG KONG — There is no legal right to strike in China, but there
AND
Communist Party’s goal of creating a more prosperous, stable and harmonious society.
1AC: Soft Power Advantage
Lack of Chinese Right to Strike devastates Collective Bargaining – undermines any legal leverage for Strikes. Friedman 17 Eli Friedman 4-20-2017 "Collective Bargaining in China is Dead: The Situation is Excellent" https://www.chinoiresie.info/collective-bargaining-in-china-is-dead-the-situation-is-excellent/ (Assistant Professor of International and Comparative Labour at Cornell University)Elmer For many years reform-oriented labour activists and scholars working in China have seen
AND
will be the necessary prelude to any institutional reform worthy of the name.
Any credible union power is under-cut by detentions of labor activists. Merkley and McGovern 13 Jeff Merkley and James McGovern 12-20-2013 "Detention of Labor Representative Highlights Challenges for Collective Bargaining in China" https://www.cecc.gov/publications/commission-analysis/detention-of-labor-representative-highlights-challenges-for (Representative and Co-Chair of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China)Elmer Authorities in Shenzhen city, Guangdong province, detained migrant worker and labor representative Wu
AND
the “effective recognition” of the right to collective bargaining.16
The Right to Strike re-balances China’s Economy. Roberts 10 Dexter Roberts 8-5-2010 "Is the Right to Strike Coming to China" https://archive.md/hjNI7 (Editor at Bloomberg)Elmer The name gives no hint of the revolutionary changes afoot for mainland workers. Yet
AND
being debated in Guangdong could greatly strengthen the bargaining power of Chinese workers.
Enhanced Unions and Labor Reforms key to sustained Chinese Economic Growth. Haack 21 Michael Haack 2-13-2021 "Could Biden Make US-China Trade Better for Workers?" https://thediplomat.com/2021/02/could-biden-make-us-china-trade-better-for-workers/ (Michael Haack currently a contractor with the China Labor Translation Project, a project of the Chinese Progressive Association. He previously worked with industrial workers in southern China. Michael holds master’s degrees from SOAS, University of London and American University)Elmer Meanwhile, even as China grows, its wealth remains largely with companies and the
AND
unions were allowed to flourish — thus advancing their own stated policy aims.”
, with an almost 17 drop in spending at restaurants last year.
That’s critical for Soft Power Projection BUT authoritarianism regarding activists puts efforts on the brink – re-establishing credibility of governance is important. Albert 18 Eleanor Albert 2-9-2018 "China’s Big Bet on Soft Power" https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/chinas-big-bet-soft-power (a third-year PhD student concentrating in international relations and comparative politics)Elmer China is a powerful international actor as the world’s most populous country and its second
AND
nations so long as it muzzles its best advocates,” writes the Economist.
Chinese leadership solves existential threats. Yamei 18 Shen Yamei 18, Deputy Director and Associate Research Fellow of Department for American Studies, China Institute of International Studies, 1-9-2018, "Probing into the “Chinese Solution” for the Transformation of Global Governance," CAIFC, http://www.caifc.org.cn/en/content.aspx?id=4491 As the world is in a period of great development, transformation and adjustment,
AND
, refugees, climate change and public hygiene by debt forgiveness and assistance.
Chinese Economic Decline leads to all-out War – specifically over Taiwan. Joske 18 Stephen Joske 10-23-2018 “China’s Coming Financial Crisis And The National Security Connection” https://warontherocks.com/2018/10/chinas-coming-financial-crisis-and-the-national-security-connection/ (senior adviser to the Australian Treasurer during the 1997–98 Asian crisis)re-cut by Elmer The biggest national security issues, however, arise from the unpredictable political impact of
AND
stall or even end China’s rise as a global military and political power.
Taiwan goes Nuclear. Talmadge 18 Caitlin, Associate Professor of Security Studies at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, “Beijing’s Nuclear Option: Why a U.S.-China War Could Spiral Out of Control,” accessible online at https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/china/2018-10-15/beijings-nuclear-option, published Nov/Dec 2018re-cut by Elmer As China’s power has grown in recent years, so, too, has the
AND
have considered unthinkable only months earlier. This pattern could unfold again today.
Nuke war causes extinction AND outweighs other existential risks - Checked PND 16. internally citing Zbigniew Brzezinski, Council of Foreign Relations and former national security adviser to President Carter, Toon and Robock’s 2012 study on nuclear winter in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, Gareth Evans’ International Commission on Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament Report, Congressional EMP studies, studies on nuclear winter by Seth Baum of the Global Catastrophic Risk Institute and Martin Hellman of Stanford University, and U.S. and Russian former Defense Secretaries and former heads of nuclear missile forces, brief submitted to the United Nations General Assembly, Open-Ended Working Group on nuclear risks. A/AC.286/NGO/13. 05-03-2016. http://www.reachingcriticalwill.org/images/documents/Disarmament-fora/OEWG/2016/Documents/NGO13.pdfRe-cut by Elmer Consequences human survival 12. Even if the 'other' side does NOT launch in response
AND
course the immediate post-nuclear results for Hiroshima and Nagasaki as well.
Chinese Economic Strength increases Economic Diplomacy Efforts, specifically OBOR, AND decreases need for Military Expansion. Cai 18, Kevin G. "The one belt one road and the Asian infrastructure investment bank: Beijing’s new strategy of geoeconomics and geopolitics." Journal of Contemporary China 27.114 (2018): 831-847. (Associate Professor at Renison University College, University of Waterloo, Canada)Elmer Fourthly, the OBOR and the AIIB were launched by Beijing as a diplomatic and
AND
broader sense, the initiatives could help further strengthen Beijing’s third world diplomacy.
Solves Central Asian and South Asia War. Muhammad et Al 19, Imraz, Arif Khan, and Saif ul Islam. "China Pakistan Economic Corridor: Peace, Prosperity and Conflict Resolution in the Region." (Lecturer, Department of Political Science, University of Buner)Elmer In the twenty first century, the geostrategic importance of South Asia is rising because
AND
peace and stability in the region and secure the CPEC from insecurity.15
Central Asia Instability explodes globally Blank 2k Stephen J. - Expert on the Soviet Bloc for the Strategic Studies Institute, “American Grand Strategy and the Transcaspian Region”, World Affairs. 9-22 Thus many structural conditions for conventional war or protracted ethnic conflict where third parties intervene
AND
5) neither has willing proxies capable of settling the situation.(77)
South Asia War goes Nuclear and causes Extinction. Menon 19 Prakash Menon, The nuclear cloud hanging over the human race, Nov 15, 2019, PhD from Madras University for his thesis “Limited War and Nuclear Deterrence in the Indo-Pak context” https://www.telegraphindia.com/opinion/the-nuclear-cloud-hanging-over-the-human-race/cid/1719608# SM The nuclear cloud hanging over the human race Even a limited India-Pakistan nuclear
AND
for its incredibility and the utter stupidity of the use of nuclear weapons.
considered a paradox, is actually a logical consequence of the institutional system.
Isolating China as a uniquely unjust state is sinophobic – read China’s rise contextually rather than through Western structural bias. Powers 21 Martin Powers 3-4-2021 "The West portrays itself as a defender of human rights, but does it still have a right to moral leadership?" https://archive.md/blSqg#selection-6315.0-6341.214 (Professor Emeritus at the University of Michigan. He has written three books on the history of social justice in China.)Elmer The term “human rights” is properly a feature of the modern world,
AND
that who gets blamed speaks volumes about how a nation values human life.
1AC: Framing
The standard is maximizing expected wellbeing or act hedonistic util.
Prefer:
1- Pleasure and pain are intrinsic value and disvalue – everything else regresses – robust neuroscience. Blum et al. 18 Kenneth Blum, 1Department of Psychiatry, Boonshoft School of Medicine, Dayton VA Medical Center, Wright State University, Dayton, OH, USA 2Department of Psychiatry, McKnight Brain Institute, University of Florida College of Medicine, Gainesville, FL, USA 3Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Keck Medicine University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA 4Division of Applied Clinical Research and Education, Dominion Diagnostics, LLC, North Kingstown, RI, USA 5Department of Precision Medicine, Geneus Health LLC, San Antonio, TX, USA 6Department of Addiction Research and Therapy, Nupathways Inc., Innsbrook, MO, USA 7Department of Clinical Neurology, Path Foundation, New York, NY, USA 8Division of Neuroscience-Based Addiction Therapy, The Shores Treatment and Recovery Center, Port Saint Lucie, FL, USA 9Institute of Psychology, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary 10Division of Addiction Research, Dominion Diagnostics, LLC. North Kingston, RI, USA 11Victory Nutrition International, Lederach, PA., USA 12National Human Genome Center at Howard University, Washington, DC., USA, Marjorie Gondré-Lewis, 12National Human Genome Center at Howard University, Washington, DC., USA 13Departments of Anatomy and Psychiatry, Howard University College of Medicine, Washington, DC US, Bruce Steinberg, 4Division of Applied Clinical Research and Education, Dominion Diagnostics, LLC, North Kingstown, RI, USA, Igor Elman, 15Department Psychiatry, Cooper University School of Medicine, Camden, NJ, USA, David Baron, 3Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Keck Medicine University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA, Edward J Modestino, 14Department of Psychology, Curry College, Milton, MA, USA, Rajendra D Badgaiyan, 15Department Psychiatry, Cooper University School of Medicine, Camden, NJ, USA, Mark S Gold 16Department of Psychiatry, Washington University, St. Louis, MO, USA, “Our evolved unique pleasure circuit makes humans different from apes: Reconsideration of data derived from animal studies”, U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, 28 February 2018, accessed: 19 August 2020, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6446569/, R.S. Pleasure is not only one of the three primary reward functions but it also defines
AND
these circuits contribute to diverse pathologies, including obesity and addiction or RDS.
Plan – A just government of the People’s Republic of China ought to recognize an unconditional right of workers to strike.
That solves worker liberation, labor reforms, and re-establishes credible Collective Bargaining in China – establishing legal protection for Labor Unions reduces overall labor-related discontent. Dongfang 11 Han Dongfang 4-6-2011 "Liberate China's Workers" https://archive.md/7RvDG#selection-307.0-316.0 (director of China Labour Bulletin, a nongovernmental organization that defends the rights of workers in China.)Elmer HONG KONG — There is no legal right to strike in China, but there
AND
Communist Party’s goal of creating a more prosperous, stable and harmonious society.
1AC: Advantage
Lack of Chinese Right to Strike devastates Collective Bargaining – undermines any legal leverage for Strikes. Friedman 17 Eli Friedman 4-20-2017 "Collective Bargaining in China is Dead: The Situation is Excellent" https://www.chinoiresie.info/collective-bargaining-in-china-is-dead-the-situation-is-excellent/ (Assistant Professor of International and Comparative Labour at Cornell University)Elmer For many years reform-oriented labour activists and scholars working in China have seen
AND
will be the necessary prelude to any institutional reform worthy of the name.
Any credible union power is under-cut by detentions of labor activists. Merkley and McGovern 13 Jeff Merkley and James McGovern 12-20-2013 "Detention of Labor Representative Highlights Challenges for Collective Bargaining in China" https://www.cecc.gov/publications/commission-analysis/detention-of-labor-representative-highlights-challenges-for (Representative and Co-Chair of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China)Elmer Authorities in Shenzhen city, Guangdong province, detained migrant worker and labor representative Wu
AND
the “effective recognition” of the right to collective bargaining.16
The Right to Strike re-balances China’s Economy. Roberts 10 Dexter Roberts 8-5-2010 "Is the Right to Strike Coming to China" https://archive.md/hjNI7 (Editor at Bloomberg)Elmer The name gives no hint of the revolutionary changes afoot for mainland workers. Yet
AND
being debated in Guangdong could greatly strengthen the bargaining power of Chinese workers.
Enhanced Unions and Labor Reforms key to sustained Chinese Economic Growth. Haack 21 Michael Haack 2-13-2021 "Could Biden Make US-China Trade Better for Workers?" https://thediplomat.com/2021/02/could-biden-make-us-china-trade-better-for-workers/ (Michael Haack currently a contractor with the China Labor Translation Project, a project of the Chinese Progressive Association. He previously worked with industrial workers in southern China. Michael holds master’s degrees from SOAS, University of London and American University)Elmer Meanwhile, even as China grows, its wealth remains largely with companies and the
AND
unions were allowed to flourish — thus advancing their own stated policy aims.
China’s Economy is on the brink of collapse – only solving poverty can reverse it. Lopez 10-24 Linette Lopez 10-24-2021 "If China's economy keeps stumbling, it won't just take down Beijing - the whoel world will collapse with it" https://archive.md/M4qjY#selection-2241.0-2250.1 (Linette is the senior finance correspondent at Business Insider, writing a combination of opinions and analysis. She joined BI in the summer of 2011 after graduating from Columbia University's School of Journalism.)Elmer China's economy — the 2nd-largest in the world — is teetering on the
AND
global economic order; we risk the shattering of global peace as well.
Chinese Economic Decline leads to all-out War – specifically over Taiwan. Joske 18 Stephen Joske 10-23-2018 “China’s Coming Financial Crisis And The National Security Connection” https://warontherocks.com/2018/10/chinas-coming-financial-crisis-and-the-national-security-connection/ (senior adviser to the Australian Treasurer during the 1997–98 Asian crisis)re-cut by Elmer The biggest national security issues, however, arise from the unpredictable political impact of
AND
stall or even end China’s rise as a global military and political power.
Taiwan goes Nuclear. Talmadge 18 Caitlin, Associate Professor of Security Studies at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, “Beijing’s Nuclear Option: Why a U.S.-China War Could Spiral Out of Control,” accessible online at https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/china/2018-10-15/beijings-nuclear-option, published Nov/Dec 2018re-cut by Elmer As China’s power has grown in recent years, so, too, has the
AND
have considered unthinkable only months earlier. This pattern could unfold again today.
China won’t go down peacefully – decline ensures war due to foreign pressure.
Declining China is far more dangerous, our evidence is extremely good - Must Read - AT Diversionary War – War comes from pressure from perception of China’s weakness from foreign powers – cause pressure to lash-out - Timeframe Weighing – Speed of Taiwan I/L is now – China is
AND
It’s about to discover that a declining China may be even more dangerous.
Nuke war causes extinction AND outweighs other existential risks - Checked PND 16. internally citing Zbigniew Brzezinski, Council of Foreign Relations and former national security adviser to President Carter, Toon and Robock’s 2012 study on nuclear winter in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, Gareth Evans’ International Commission on Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament Report, Congressional EMP studies, studies on nuclear winter by Seth Baum of the Global Catastrophic Risk Institute and Martin Hellman of Stanford University, and U.S. and Russian former Defense Secretaries and former heads of nuclear missile forces, brief submitted to the United Nations General Assembly, Open-Ended Working Group on nuclear risks. A/AC.286/NGO/13. 05-03-2016. http://www.reachingcriticalwill.org/images/documents/Disarmament-fora/OEWG/2016/Documents/NGO13.pdfRe-cut by Elmer Consequences human survival 12. Even if the 'other' side does NOT launch in response
AND
course the immediate post-nuclear results for Hiroshima and Nagasaki as well.
Chinese leadership solves existential threats and establishes global governance. Yamei 18 Shen Yamei 18, Deputy Director and Associate Research Fellow of Department for American Studies, China Institute of International Studies, 1-9-2018, "Probing into the “Chinese Solution” for the Transformation of Global Governance," CAIFC, http://www.caifc.org.cn/en/content.aspx?id=4491 As the world is in a period of great development, transformation and adjustment,
AND
, refugees, climate change and public hygiene by debt forgiveness and assistance.
Effective global governance prevents unregulated emergent tech – prevents extinction Bailey 18 Robert Bailey, Vision of Earth contributor and computer science masters, 9-5-2018, "Why do we need global governance?," Vision of Earth, https://www.visionofearth.org/social-change/global-governance/ Global governance is necessary because humanity increasingly faces both problems and opportunities that are global
AND
The next step is to determine how effective global governance can be achieved.
1AC—Framing
The standard is maximizing expected well-being or act util. Prefer-
1 Actor spec—governments must use util because they don’t have intentions and are constantly dealing with tradeoffs—outweighs since different agents have different obligations—takes out calc indicts since they are empirically denied.
Extinction first –
1 – Forecloses future improvement – we can never improve society because our impact is irreversible
2 – Turns suffering – mass death causes suffering because people can’t get access to resources and basic necessities
1AC - Theory
Interpretation: Debaters must disclose all constructive positions on open source with the full text of all cards with highlighting on the 2021-22 NDCA LD wiki after the round in which they read them.
Violation –
1 Debate resource inequities—you’ll say people will steal cards, but that’s good—it’s the only way to truly level the playing field for students such as novices in under-privileged programs. Antonucci 05 Michael (Debate coach for Georgetown; former coach for Lexington High School); “eDebate open source? resp to Morris”; December 8; http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/2005-December/064806.html a. Open source systems are preferable to the various punishment proposals in circulation.
AND
-cutter's work than send the KGB after specific counter-revolutionary teams.
2 Evidence ethics – open source is the only way to verify pre-round that cards aren’t miscut or highlighted or bracketed unethically. That’s a voter – maintaining ethical ev practices is key to being good academics and we should be able to verify you didn’t cheat
3 Depth of clash – it allows debaters to have nuanced researched objections to their opponents evidence before the round at a much faster rate, which leads to higher quality ev comparison – outweighs cause thinking on your feet is NUQ but the best quality responses come from full access to a case.
D Voters:
The impact is fairness— it’s an intrinsic good – debate is fundamentally a game and some level of competitive equity is necessary to sustain the activity,
Education is a voter – it gives us portable skills for life like research and thinking.
Drop the debater – a) they have a 7-6 rebuttal advantage and the 2ar to make args I can’t respond to, b) it deters future abuse.
Use competing interps – a) reasonability invites arbitrary judge intervention since we don’t know your bs meter, b) collapses to competing interps – we justify 2 brightlines under an offense defense paradigm just like 2 interps.
12/11/21
ND - China v4
Tournament: USC | Round: 4 | Opponent: Marlborough MJ | Judge: David Dosch 1AC: Plan
Plan – A just government of the People’s Republic of China ought to recognize an unconditional right of workers to strike.
That solves worker liberation, labor reforms, and re-establishes credible Collective Bargaining in China – establishing legal protection for Labor Unions reduces overall labor-related discontent. Dongfang 11 Han Dongfang 4-6-2011 "Liberate China's Workers" https://archive.md/7RvDG#selection-307.0-316.0 (director of China Labour Bulletin, a nongovernmental organization that defends the rights of workers in China.)Elmer HONG KONG — There is no legal right to strike in China, but there
AND
Communist Party’s goal of creating a more prosperous, stable and harmonious society.
1AC: Advantage
Lack of Chinese Right to Strike devastates Collective Bargaining – undermines any legal leverage for Strikes. Friedman 17 Eli Friedman 4-20-2017 "Collective Bargaining in China is Dead: The Situation is Excellent" https://www.chinoiresie.info/collective-bargaining-in-china-is-dead-the-situation-is-excellent/ (Assistant Professor of International and Comparative Labour at Cornell University)Elmer For many years reform-oriented labour activists and scholars working in China have seen
AND
will be the necessary prelude to any institutional reform worthy of the name.
Any credible union power is under-cut by detentions of labor activists. Merkley and McGovern 13 Jeff Merkley and James McGovern 12-20-2013 "Detention of Labor Representative Highlights Challenges for Collective Bargaining in China" https://www.cecc.gov/publications/commission-analysis/detention-of-labor-representative-highlights-challenges-for (Representative and Co-Chair of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China)Elmer Authorities in Shenzhen city, Guangdong province, detained migrant worker and labor representative Wu
AND
the “effective recognition” of the right to collective bargaining.16
The Right to Strike re-balances China’s Economy. Roberts 10 Dexter Roberts 8-5-2010 "Is the Right to Strike Coming to China" https://archive.md/hjNI7 (Editor at Bloomberg)Elmer The name gives no hint of the revolutionary changes afoot for mainland workers. Yet
AND
being debated in Guangdong could greatly strengthen the bargaining power of Chinese workers.
Enhanced Unions and Labor Reforms key to sustained Chinese Economic Growth. Haack 21 Michael Haack 2-13-2021 "Could Biden Make US-China Trade Better for Workers?" https://thediplomat.com/2021/02/could-biden-make-us-china-trade-better-for-workers/ (Michael Haack currently a contractor with the China Labor Translation Project, a project of the Chinese Progressive Association. He previously worked with industrial workers in southern China. Michael holds master’s degrees from SOAS, University of London and American University)Elmer Meanwhile, even as China grows, its wealth remains largely with companies and the
AND
unions were allowed to flourish — thus advancing their own stated policy aims.
China’s Economy is on the brink of collapse – only solving poverty can reverse it. Lopez 10-24 Linette Lopez 10-24-2021 "If China's economy keeps stumbling, it won't just take down Beijing - the whoel world will collapse with it" https://archive.md/M4qjY#selection-2241.0-2250.1 (Linette is the senior finance correspondent at Business Insider, writing a combination of opinions and analysis. She joined BI in the summer of 2011 after graduating from Columbia University's School of Journalism.)Elmer China's economy — the 2nd-largest in the world — is teetering on the
AND
global economic order; we risk the shattering of global peace as well.
Chinese Economic Decline leads to all-out War – specifically over Taiwan. Joske 18 Stephen Joske 10-23-2018 “China’s Coming Financial Crisis And The National Security Connection” https://warontherocks.com/2018/10/chinas-coming-financial-crisis-and-the-national-security-connection/ (senior adviser to the Australian Treasurer during the 1997–98 Asian crisis)re-cut by Elmer The biggest national security issues, however, arise from the unpredictable political impact of
AND
stall or even end China’s rise as a global military and political power.
Taiwan goes Nuclear. Talmadge 18 Caitlin, Associate Professor of Security Studies at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, “Beijing’s Nuclear Option: Why a U.S.-China War Could Spiral Out of Control,” accessible online at https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/china/2018-10-15/beijings-nuclear-option, published Nov/Dec 2018re-cut by Elmer As China’s power has grown in recent years, so, too, has the
AND
have considered unthinkable only months earlier. This pattern could unfold again today.
China won’t go down peacefully – decline ensures war due to foreign pressure.
Declining China is far more dangerous, our evidence is extremely good - Must Read - AT Diversionary War – War comes from pressure from perception of China’s weakness from foreign powers – cause pressure to lash-out - Timeframe Weighing – Speed of Taiwan I/L is now – China is
AND
It’s about to discover that a declining China may be even more dangerous.
Nuke war causes extinction AND outweighs other existential risks - Checked PND 16. internally citing Zbigniew Brzezinski, Council of Foreign Relations and former national security adviser to President Carter, Toon and Robock’s 2012 study on nuclear winter in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, Gareth Evans’ International Commission on Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament Report, Congressional EMP studies, studies on nuclear winter by Seth Baum of the Global Catastrophic Risk Institute and Martin Hellman of Stanford University, and U.S. and Russian former Defense Secretaries and former heads of nuclear missile forces, brief submitted to the United Nations General Assembly, Open-Ended Working Group on nuclear risks. A/AC.286/NGO/13. 05-03-2016. http://www.reachingcriticalwill.org/images/documents/Disarmament-fora/OEWG/2016/Documents/NGO13.pdfRe-cut by Elmer Consequences human survival 12. Even if the 'other' side does NOT launch in response
AND
course the immediate post-nuclear results for Hiroshima and Nagasaki as well.
Chinese leadership solves existential threats and establishes global governance. Yamei 18 Shen Yamei 18, Deputy Director and Associate Research Fellow of Department for American Studies, China Institute of International Studies, 1-9-2018, "Probing into the “Chinese Solution” for the Transformation of Global Governance," CAIFC, http://www.caifc.org.cn/en/content.aspx?id=4491 As the world is in a period of great development, transformation and adjustment,
AND
, refugees, climate change and public hygiene by debt forgiveness and assistance.
Effective global governance prevents unregulated emergent tech – prevents extinction Bailey 18 Robert Bailey, Vision of Earth contributor and computer science masters, 9-5-2018, "Why do we need global governance?," Vision of Earth, https://www.visionofearth.org/social-change/global-governance/ Global governance is necessary because humanity increasingly faces both problems and opportunities that are global
AND
The next step is to determine how effective global governance can be achieved.
Chinese Economic Strength increases Economic Diplomacy Efforts, specifically OBOR, AND decreases need for Military Expansion. Cai 18, Kevin G. "The one belt one road and the Asian infrastructure investment bank: Beijing’s new strategy of geoeconomics and geopolitics." Journal of Contemporary China 27.114 (2018): 831-847. (Associate Professor at Renison University College, University of Waterloo, Canada)Elmer Fourthly, the OBOR and the AIIB were launched by Beijing as a diplomatic and
AND
broader sense, the initiatives could help further strengthen Beijing’s third world diplomacy.
Solves Central Asian and South Asia War. Muhammad et Al 19, Imraz, Arif Khan, and Saif ul Islam. "China Pakistan Economic Corridor: Peace, Prosperity and Conflict Resolution in the Region." (Lecturer, Department of Political Science, University of Buner)Elmer In the twenty first century, the geostrategic importance of South Asia is rising because
AND
peace and stability in the region and secure the CPEC from insecurity.15
Central Asia Instability explodes globally Blank 2k Stephen J. - Expert on the Soviet Bloc for the Strategic Studies Institute, “American Grand Strategy and the Transcaspian Region”, World Affairs. 9-22 Thus many structural conditions for conventional war or protracted ethnic conflict where third parties intervene
AND
5) neither has willing proxies capable of settling the situation.(77)
South Asia War goes Nuclear and causes Extinction. Menon 19 Prakash Menon, The nuclear cloud hanging over the human race, Nov 15, 2019, PhD from Madras University for his thesis “Limited War and Nuclear Deterrence in the Indo-Pak context” https://www.telegraphindia.com/opinion/the-nuclear-cloud-hanging-over-the-human-race/cid/1719608# SM The nuclear cloud hanging over the human race Even a limited India-Pakistan nuclear
AND
for its incredibility and the utter stupidity of the use of nuclear weapons.
1AC—Framing
The standard is maximizing expected well-being or act util. Prefer-
1 Actor spec—governments must use util because they don’t have intentions and are constantly dealing with tradeoffs—outweighs since different agents have different obligations—takes out calc indicts since they are empirically denied.
Extinction first –
1 – Forecloses future improvement – we can never improve society because our impact is irreversible 2 – Turns suffering – mass death causes suffering because people can’t get access to resources and basic necessities
12/12/21
PTD v2
Tournament: Lexington | Round: 2 | Opponent: Bronx Science KH | Judge: Daniel Shahab-Diaz cites are broken
1/15/22
SO - Evergreening v1
Tournament: Loyola | Round: 1 | Opponent: Solebury LM | Judge: Abhishek Rao 1AC 1AC: Innovation Advantage 1 is Innovation We are in an innovation crisis – new drugs are not being developed in favor of re-purposing old drugs to infinitely extend patent expiration. Feldman 1 Robin Feldman 2-11-2019 "‘One-and-done’ for new drugs could cut patent thickets and boost generic competition" https://www.statnews.com/2019/02/11/drug-patent-protection-one-done/ (Arthur J. Goldberg Distinguished Professor of Law, Albert Abramson ’54 Distinguished Professor of Law Chair, and Director of the Center for Innovation)SidK + Elmer Drug companies have brought great innovations to market. Society rewards innovation with patents, or with non-patent exclusivities that can be obtained for activities such as testing drugs in children, undertaking new clinical studies, or developing orphan drugs. The rights provided by patents or non-patent exclusivities provide a defined time period of protection so companies can recoup their investments by charging monopoly prices. When patents end, lower-priced competitors should be able to jump into the market and drive down the price. But that’s not happening. Instead, drug companies build massive patent walls around their products, extending the protection over and over again. Some modern drugs have an avalanche of U.S. patents, with expiration dates staggered across time. For example, the rheumatoid arthritis drug Humira is protected by more than 100 patents. Walls like that are insurmountable. Rather than rewarding innovation, our patent system is now largely repurposing drugs. Between 2005 and 2015, more than three-quarters of the drugs associated with new patents were not new ones coming on the market but existing ones. In other words, we are mostly churning and recycling. Particularly troubling, new patents can be obtained on minor tweaks such as adjustments to dosage or delivery systems — a once-a-day pill instead of a twice-a-day one; a capsule rather than a tablet. Tinkering like this may have some value to some patients, but it nowhere near justifies the rewards we lavish on companies for doing it. From society’s standpoint, incentives should drive scientists back to the lab to look for new things, not to recycle existing drugs for minimal benefit. We control Uniqueness – up to 80 of all new patents are not new drugs but old ones. Feldman 2 Robin Feldman 18, May your drug price be evergreen, Journal of Law and the Biosciences, Volume 5, Issue 3, December 2018, Pages 590–647, https://doi.org/10.1093/jlb/lsy022 Arthur J. Goldberg Distinguished Professor of Law, Albert Abramson ’54 Distinguished Professor of Law Chair, and Director of the Center for Innovation (Study Notes: Presenting the first comprehensive study of evergreening, this article examines the extent to which evergreening behavior—which can be defined as artificially extending the protection cliff—may contribute to the problem. The author analyses all drugs on the market between 2005 and 2015, combing through 60,000 data points to examine every instance in which a company added a new patent or exclusivity.)sid The study results demonstrate definitively that the pharmaceutical industry has strayed far from the patent system's intended design. The patent system is not functioning as a time-limited opportunity to garner a return, followed by open competition. Rather, companies throughout the industry seek and obtain repeated extensions of their competition-free zones. Moreover, the incidence of such behavior has steadily increased between 2005 and 2015, especially on the patent front and for certain highly valuable exclusivities. Most troubling, the data suggest that the current state of affairs is harming innovation in tangible ways. Rather than creating new medicines—sallying forth into new frontiers for the benefit of society—drug companies are focusing their time and effort extending the patent life of old products. This, of course, is not the innovation one would hope for. The greatest creativity at pharmaceutical companies should be in the lab, not in the legal department.115 The following sections describe the results obtained through our analysis in detail, but below are the key takeaways from the study: Rather than creating new medicines, pharmaceutical companies are recycling and repurposing old ones. In fact, 78 of the drugs associated with new patents in the FDA’s records were not new drugs coming on the market, but existing drugs. In some years, the percentage reached as high as 80. Adding new patents and exclusivities to extend the protection cliff is particularly pronounced among blockbuster drugs. Of the roughly 100 best-selling drugs, more than 70 extended their protection at least once, with more than 50 extending the protection cliff more than once. Looking at the full group, almost 40 of all drugs available on the market created additional market barriers by having patents or exclusivities added to them. Many of the drugs adding to the Orange Book are ‘serial offenders’—returning to the well repeatedly for new patents and exclusivities. Of the drugs that had an addition to the Orange Book, 80 of those had an addition to the Orange Book on more than one occasion, and almost half of these drugs had additions to the Orange Book on four or more occasions. The number of drugs with a high quantity of added patents in a single year has substantially increased. For example, the number of drugs with three or more patents added to them in one year has doubled. Similarly, the number of drugs with five or more added patents has also doubled. Overall, the quantity of patents added to the Orange Book has more than doubled, increasing from 349 patents added in the year 2005 to 723 in 2015. The number of drugs that had a patent added to them in the Orange Book almost doubled. There were striking increases in certain exclusivities, such as orphan drug exclusivity, new patient population exclusivity, and new product exclusivity. In particular, the number of drugs with an added orphan drug exclusivity tripled. In addition, the number of times a use code was added to a patent more than tripled, suggesting that this has become a new favored game. To provide a broad sense of the types of metrics we are using, some could be characterized as ‘intensity’ measures, which capture the breadth and depth of patent and exclusivity activity in the industry. Another set of our metrics can be characterized as ‘temporal’ measures, which evaluate whether there are any trends in the behavior under examination across time during our 11-year timeframe from 2005 to 2015. The only major study confirms our Internal Link – Evergreening decimates competition by resulting in functional monopolies Arnold Ventures 20 9-24-2020 "'Evergreening' Stunts Competition, Costs Consumers and Taxpayers" https://www.arnoldventures.org/stories/evergreening-stunts-competition-costs-consumers-and-taxpayers/ (Arnold Ventures is focused on evidence-based giving in a wide range of categories including: criminal justice, education, health care, and public finance)Elmer In 2011, Elsa Dixler was diagnosed with multiple myeloma. That August, she was prescribed Revlimid, a drug that had come on the market six years earlier. By January 2012, she went into full remission, where she has remained since. So long as Revlimid retains its effectiveness, she will take it for the rest of her life. “I was able to go back to work, see my daughter receive her Ph.D, and have a pretty normal life,” said Dixler, a Brooklyn resident who is now 74. “So, on the one hand, I feel enormously grateful.” But Dixler’s normal life has come at a steep financial cost to her family and to taxpayers. Revlimid typically costs nearly $800 per capsule, and Dixler takes one capsule per day for 21 days, then seven days off, and then resumes her daily dose, requiring 273 capsules a year. Since retiring from The New York Times at the end of 2017, she has been on Medicare. Dixler entered the Part D coverage gap (known as the donut hole) “within minutes,” she said. She estimates that adding her deductible, her copayment of $12,000, and what her Part D insurance provider pays totals approximately $197,500 a year. Revlimid should have been subject to competition from generic drug makers starting in 2009, bringing down its cost by many orders of magnitude. But by obtaining 27 additional patents, eight orphan drug exclusivities and 91 total additional protections from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) since Revlimid’s introduction in 2005, its manufacturer, Celgene, has extended the drug’s monopoly period by 18 years — through March 8, 2028. “I cannot fathom the immorality of a business that relies on squeezing people with cancer,” Dixler said, noting her astonishment that Revlimid has obtained orphan drug protections when it treats a disease that is not rare and does not serve a very limited population. She also observed that Revlimid’s underlying drug is thalidomide, which has been around for decades. “They didn’t invent a new drug, rather, they found a new use for it,” she said. “The cost of Revlimid has imposed constraints on our retirement,” Dixler said, “but when I hear other people’s stories, I feel very lucky. A lot of people have been devastated financially.” Revlimid is a case study in a process known as “evergreening” — artificially sustaining a monopoly for years and even decades by manipulating intellectual property laws and regulations. Evergreening is most commonly used with blockbuster drugs generating the highest prices and profits. Of the roughly 100 best-selling drugs, more than 70 percent have extended their protection from competition at least once. More than half have extended the protection cliff multiple times. The true scope and cost of evergreening has been brought into sharper focus by a groundbreaking, publicly available, comprehensive database released Thursday by the Center for Innovation at the University of California Hastings College of Law and supported by Arnold Ventures. The Evergreen Drug Patent Search is the first database to exhaustively track the patent protections filed by pharmaceutical companies. Using data from 2005 to 2018 on brand-name drugs listed in the FDA’s Orange Book — a listing of relevant patents for brand name, small molecule drugs — it demonstrates the full extent of how evergreening has been used by Big Pharma to prolong patents and delay the entry of generic, lower-cost competition. “Competition is the backbone of the U.S. economy,” said Professor Robin Feldman, Director of the UC Hastings Center for Innovation, who spearheaded the database’s creation. “But it’s not what we’re seeing in the drug industry. “With evergreening, pharmaceutical companies repeatedly make slight, often trivial, modifications to drugs, dosage levels, delivery systems or other aspects to obtain new protections,” she said. “They pile these protections on over and over again — so often that 78 percent of the drugs associated with new patents were not new drugs coming on the market, but existing drugs.” Competition is the backbone of the U.S. economy. But it’s not what we’re seeing in the drug industry. Professor Robin Feldman Director of the UC Hastings Center for Innovation In recent decades, evergreening has systematically undermined the Drug Price Competition and Patent Term Restoration Act of 1984, which created the generic drug industry. Commonly known as the Hatch-Waxman Act, it established a new patent and market exclusivity regime in which new drugs are protected from competition for a specified period of time sufficient to allow manufacturers to recoup their investments and earn a reasonable profit. When that protection expires, generic drug makers are incentivized to enter the market through a streamlined regulatory and judicial process. Drug prices typically drop by as much as 20 percent when the first generic enters the market, and with more than one generic manufacturer, prices can plummet by 80 to 85 percent. “Hatch-Waxman created an innovation/reward/competition cycle, but it’s been distorted into an innovation/reward/more reward cycle,” Feldman said. “To paraphrase something a former FDA commissioner once said, the greatest creativity in Big Pharma should come from the research and development departments, not from the legal and marketing departments.” Feldman led the development of the Evergreen Drug Patent Search in response to repeated requests from Congressional committees, members of Congress, state regulators and journalists for information about specific drugs and companies. “We want to make it so anyone can have the question about drug protections at their fingertips whenever they want,” Feldman said. “It’s designed to be easy and user-friendly, and to enhance public understanding about how competition may be limited rather than enhanced through the drug patent system.” The database was created through a painstaking process of combing through 160,000 data points to examine every instance where a pharmaceutical company added a new drug patent or exclusivity. “Most of it was done by hand,” Feldman said, “with multiple people reviewing it at every stage. And along the way we repeatedly made conservative choices. We erred on the side of underrepresenting the evergreen gain to be sure we were as fair and reasonable as possible.” Among the 2,065 drugs covered in Evergreen Drug Patent Search, there are many examples of the evergreening strategy used by pharma to delay the entry of competition, especially generics, often for widely prescribed drugs, including those used to treat heartburn, chronic pain, and opioid addiction. Nexium Before Nexium, there was Prilosec, a popular drug to treat gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD). But its patent exclusivity was due to expire in April 2001. In the late 1990s, with a precipitous drop in revenue looming, Prilosec’s manufacturer, AstraZeneca, decided to develop a replacement drug. Using “one-half of the Prilosec molecule — an isomer of it,” the result was Nexium, which received approval in February 2001. Essentially an evergreened version of Prilosec, Nexium’s exclusivity was then extended by more than 15 years, as AstraZeneca received 97 protections stemming from 16 patents. These included revised dosages, compounds, and formulations. Feldman said that tinkering changes such as Nexium’s do not involve the substantial research and development required for a new drug, nor do they constitute true innovations, yet for a decade and a half, patients and taxpayers were forced to pay far more than was warranted for GERD relief. In fact, in 2016 — one year after patent exclusivity expired — Nexium still topped all drugs in Medicare Part D spending, totaling $1.06 billion. Suboxone Use of this combination of buprenorphine and naloxone for treating opioid addiction has exploded in the wake of the opioid epidemic. Since its approval, Suboxone’s manufacturer, Reckitt Benckiser (now operating as Indivior), extended its protection cliff eight times, gaining nearly two extra decades of exclusivity through early 2030. The drug maker gained six patents for creating a film version of the drug — notably around the time protection was expiring for its tablet version. (The therapeutic benefits of the film and tablet are identical.) An earlier version of Suboxone also obtained an orphan drug designation, despite an opioid epidemic that has expanded Suboxone’s customer base to millions of potential customers. Suboxone generates more than $1 billion in annual revenue and ranks among the 40 top-selling drugs in the U.S. Truvada When Truvada, commonly referred to as PrEP, was approved in 2004, this HIV-prevention drug was a breakthrough. But 16 years later — and 14 years after its original exclusivity was to expire — it retains its monopoly status. Truvada’s manufacturer, Gilead, has received 15 patents and 120 protections since it came on the market, extending its exclusivity for more than 17 years, until July 3, 2024. In countries where generic Truvada is available, PrEP costs $100 or less per month, compared to $1,600 to $2,000 in the U.S. As a result, Truvada is unaffordable to many people who need protection from HIV. Barred from access, they are left vulnerable to infection. “We’re establishing a precedent that a pharmaceutical company can charge whatever it wants even as it allows an epidemic to continue, and the government refuses to intervene,” said James Krellenstein, co-founder of the group PrEP4All. “That should scare every American. If it’s HIV today, it will be another disease tomorrow.” EpiPen First approved in 1987, the EpiPen has saved the lives of countless numbers of people with deadly allergies. But it is protected from competition until 2025 — 38 years after its introduction — because its owner, Mylan, has filed five patents, four since 2010, all involving tweaks to the automatic injector. The actual medication used, epinephrine, has existed for more than a century — the innovation here is in the delivery device. Because these small changes to the injector have maintained its monopoly for so long, the cost of an EpiPen package (containing two injectors) has risen from $94 when Mylan purchased the device to between $650 and $700 today. For many people, especially parents of children with severe reactions to common allergens like peanuts, EpiPen’s increasing price tag imposes an onerous financial burden. What Can Be Done As the Evergreen Drug Patent Search makes clear, the positive impact of Hatch-Waxman has been steadily and severely eroded by a regulatory system vulnerable to increasingly sophisticated forms of manipulation. “You might say that the patent and regulatory system has been weaponized,” Feldman said. “When billions of dollars are at stake, there’s a lot of money available to look for ways to exploit the legal system. And companies have become adept at this, as our work has found.” There are several key steps that Congress could take to restore the balance between innovation and competition that is the key to a successful prescription drug regulatory process. These may include: Imposing restrictions on the number of patents that prescription drug manufacturers can defend in court to discourage the use of anticompetitive patent thickets. Limiting the patentability of so-called secondary patents — which don’t improve the safety or efficacy of a drug — through patent and exclusivity reform. Reforming the 180-day generic exclusivity, which can currently be abused to block other competitive therapies. “The Evergreen Drug Patent Search provides the publicly available, evidence-based foundation that defines the extent of the problem, and it can be used to develop policies that solve the problem of anti-competitive patent abuses,” said Kristi Martin, VP of Drug Pricing at Arnold Ventures. “Our incentives have gotten out of whack,” Martin said. “The luxury of monopoly protection should only be provided to innovations that provide meaningful benefits in saving lives, curing illnesses, or improving the quality of people’s lives. It should not be provided to those gaming the system. If we can change that, we can save consumers, employers, and taxpayers many billions of dollars while increasing the incentives for pharmaceutical companies to achieve breakthroughs." Reject Negative Turns – they’re pharmaceutical lies – the Plan isn’t anti-Patent, just pro-innovation – breaking down secondary patents is key. - AT Advantage CPs to solve Drug Prices Radhakrishnan 16 Priti Radhakrishnan 6-14-2016 "Pharma’s secret weapon to keep drug prices high" https://www.statnews.com/2016/06/14/secondary-patent-gilead-sovaldi-harvoni/ (Priti Radhakrishnan is cofounder and director of the Initiative for Medicines, Access and Knowledge (I-MAK), a US-based nonprofit group of scientists and lawyers working globally to get people lifesaving medicines. Before founding I-MAK, she worked as a health attorney in the US, Switzerland, and India.)Elmer Skyrocketing drug prices are forcing states to take unprecedented measures to rein in health care spending. Vermont just became the nation’s first state to require prescription drug pricing transparency. The New York and Massachusetts attorneys general have launched investigations into major pharmaceutical companies’ and insurers’ drug pricing policies and strategies. These are important steps. But they ignore a key driver of the problem: secondary patents. Familiar to only a few people inside the insular world of intellectual property law, secondary patents work like this: Companies file for additional, defensive patents to thicken the protection around their original base patents. These additional patents rarely represent anything new in terms of science. Instead, their purpose is to prolong a company’s monopoly and, along with that, its ability to charge high prices for its drugs. Some drugs have dozens of secondary patents. Abbott Labs, for example, has over 108 patents on its HIV drug Kaletra. Take the case of Sovaldi, a treatment for hepatitis C developed by Gilead Sciences. In the United States, Gilead prices Sovaldi at up to $1,000 a pill, or about $84,000 for a complete course of treatment. This pricing strategy helped Gilead clear $18 billion in profits last year, while taxpayer-funded Medicaid programs, state health programs, and patients have trouble affording this astronomically priced drug. Sovaldi is comprised of a base compound — sofosbuvir — for which the pharma giant has filed three patents. On top of that, Gilead has pursued an additional 24 patents, with more likely to come. My organization, the Initiative for Medicines, Access and Knowledge (I-MAK), aims to ensure that people with hepatitis C and HIV around the world get the medicines they need to survive and lead healthy lives. We have evaluated Gilead’s patent portfolio and found that, based on US and international patent law, Gilead does not deserve any of its 27 patents for Sovaldi. Both the base and secondary patents for the drug are based on old science and commonly known techniques. Yet because of its defensive patenting strategy, Gilead will maintain an iron lock on its market share and charge exorbitantly high prices to Americans with hepatitis C until well into the 2030s. Harvoni, another medication that treats hepatitis C, combines sofosbuvir and a drug called ledipasvir. Currently, Harvoni has 27 secondary patents. If these were removed, people in the US could access far cheaper versions of the same drug as soon as 10 years earlier. Based on I-MAK’s conservative estimates, this could open access to treatment for millions of people in the US, saving patients and payers like Medicare and Medicaid $5 billion over an eight-year period. In the US, Harvoni is priced at $94,000 for a course of treatment. In middle-income, high-population countries like Argentina, Brazil, and China, people are forced to pay thousands of dollars for sofosbuvir. Stripping away unmerited patents would reduce drug costs and increase access for millions of people in the US and around the world. Pharmaceutical companies love to claim that winnowing their armada of patents would be a disincentive to innovation and would limit research into new drugs. Don’t believe it. The industry devotes shockingly little funding to research and development. Companies spend roughly one-third of their revenues on marketing and only half as much on research and development, while spending big on armies of lawyers to devise and defend secondary patents and other so-called “life cycle management” strategies. Drug research funding has been declining for more than a decade, while strategies of secondary patenting have steadily increased. We support patents — just not those that are unmerited and that unjustly prolong companies’ market power and prevent legitimate competition. Specifically, prevents effective cancer treatment via skyrocketing prices. Kantarjian 15 Hagop Kantarjian, M.D., is the Chair of the Leukemia department at MD Anderson Cancer Center. March 16, 2015. “Why Are Cancer Drugs So Expensive in the United States, and What Are the Solutions?”. https://www.mayoc linicproceedings.org/article/S0025-6196(15)00101-9/fulltext#20 Dhruv Is there a clear trigger for the recent skyrocketing of cancer drug prices? Influenced by the pharmaceutical lobby, the 2003 Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act introduced legislation that forbade Medicare from negotiating drug prices. In addition, the Medicare expansion in 2006 included prescription drug benefits (Medicare Part D). This change resulted in drug companies and distributors being the only parties that decide the prices of the drugs that must be purchased by Medicare without price negotiations for all patients with cancer. This maneuver by lobbyists favored interest groups over citizens’ interests and produced a financial bonanza to companies (skyrocketing profits since 2006, as well as bonuses/salaries to pharmaceutical CEOs). Today, the health care industry is the most profitable industry in the United States, with a return on investment of close to 20. Allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices could save about $40 billion to $80 billion each year. Established oligopolies and preventing Medicare from price negotiations are major factors causing high cancer drug prices. Other contributors include (1) strategies that delay or discourage competition by generic companies, such as “patent evergreening” (eg, creating new/extra patents on expired patents or prolonging patent life on minor variations of the original drug—new forms, new dosages or schedules, new combinations or combination variations) and “pay-for-delay” and “approved generics” (early introduction of generic drugs into the US market saved $1 trillion over 10 years), (2) preventing the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute, which evaluates treatments for coverage by federal programs, from considering cost comparisons and cost-effectiveness, and (3) forbidding importation of drugs from abroad, even for personal use The Canadian government’s Patented Medicine Prices Review Board estimated that US consumers pay 100 more for patented drugs than patients elsewhere. Imatinib is priced at $92,000 per year (in 2012; $132,000 in 2014) in the United States, $46,000 in Canada, and $29,000 in Mexico. A recent example of the effects of “pay-for-delay” strategies is the successful move by Novartis to further delay the entry of generic imatinib into the US market from July 2015 until February 2016. This delay is estimated to cost US consumers and our health care system at least half a billion dollars. These regulations may harm patients, impact the Medicare solvency and our health care system, increase insurance premiums, and hurt taxpayers. Why do they happen? Partly because of the pharmaceutical and health care industry lobbying power (an estimated 2500 lobbyists in 2012 and an estimated $306 million spent). Their spending far exceeds the lobbying spending of the defense, aerospace, and gas and oil companies. Contagious Cancer is a major and legitimate threat AND causes extinction. Johnson 16 George Johnson 2-23-2016 “Scientists Ponder the Prospect of Contagious Cancer” https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/23/science/scientists-ponder-the-prospect-of-contagious-cancer.html?mcubz=0 (columnist and science journalist for the New York Times, M.A. in Journalism and Public Affairs, American University)Elmer For all its peculiar horror, cancer comes with a saving grace. If nothing else can stop a tumor’s mad evolution, the cancer ultimately dies with its host. Everything the malignant cells have learned about outwitting the patient’s defenses — and those of the oncologists — is erased. The next case of cancer, in another victim, must start anew. Imagine if instead, cancer cells had the ability to press on to another body. A cancer like that would have the power to metastasize not just from organ to organ, but from person to person, evolving deadly new skills along the way. While there is no sign of an imminent threat, several recent papers suggest that the eventual emergence of a contagious human cancer is in the realm of medical possibility. This would not be a disease, like cervical cancer, that is set off by the spread of viruses, but rather one in which cancer cells actually travel from one person to another and thrive in their new location. So far this is known to have happened only under the most unusual circumstances. A 19-year-old laboratory worker who pricked herself with a syringe of colon cancer cells developed a tumor in her hand. A surgeon acquired a cancer from his patient after accidentally cutting himself during an operation. There are also cases of malignant cells being transferred from one person to another through an organ transplant or from a woman to her fetus. On each of these occasions, the malignancy went no further. The only known cancers that continue to move from body to body, evading the immune system, have been found in other animals. In laboratory experiments, for instance, cancer cells have been transferred by mosquitoes from one hamster to another. And so far, three kinds of contagious cancers have been discovered in the wild — in dogs, Tasmanian devils and, most recently, in soft shell clams. The oldest known example is a cancer that spreads between dogs during sexual intercourse — not as a side effect of a viral or bacterial infection, but rather through direct conveyance of cancer cells. The state of the research is described in a review, “The Cancer Which Survived,” published last year by Andrea Strakova and Elizabeth P. Murchison of the University of Cambridge. The condition, canine transmissible venereal tumor disease, is believed to have sprung into existence 11,000 years ago — as a single cell in a single dog — and has been circulating ever since. (Why did this happen in dogs and not, say, cats? Perhaps because of what the authors demurely call the dogs’ “long-lasting coital tie” — the half an hour or so that a male and female are locked in intercourse, tearing genital tissues and providing the cancer cells with a leisurely crossing.) Normally a cancer evolves in a single body over the course of years or decades, accumulating the mutations that drive it to power. But to have survived for millenniums, researchers have proposed, canine cancer cells may have developed mechanisms — like those in healthy cells — to repair and stabilize their own malignant genomes. Early on, cancer cells typically flourish by disabling DNA repair and ramping up the mutational frenzy. Somewhere along the way, the age-old canine cells may have reinvented the device to extend their own longevity. There is also speculation that this cancer may have learned to somehow modify canine sexual behavior in ways that promote the disease’s spread and survival. The second kind of contagious cancer was discovered in the mid-1990s in Tasmanian devils, which spread malignant cells as they try to tear off one another’s faces. Though it may be hard to sympathize, devil facial tumor disease threatens the creatures with extinction. With so few examples, transmissible cancer has been easy to dismiss as an aberration. But in December, scientists at the Universities of Tasmania and Cambridge reported in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that Tasmanian devils are passing around another kind of cancer — genetically distinct from the first. It’s weird enough that one such cancer would arise in the species. What are the chances that there would be two? One theory is that the animals are unusually vulnerable. Driven so close to extinction — by climate change, perhaps, or human predators — the species is lacking in genetic diversity. The cells of another devil injected through a vicious wound may seem so familiar that they are ignored by the recipient’s immune system. If some of the cells carry the mutations for the facial cancer, they might be free to flourish and develop into a new tumor. But the scientists also proposed a more disturbing explanation: that the emergence of contagious cancer may not be so rare after all. “The possibility,” they wrote, “warrants further investigation of the risk that such diseases could arise in humans.” Cancer has probably existed ever since our first multicellular ancestors appeared on Earth hundreds of millions of years ago. The life spans of even the longest-lived animals may be just too brief for cancers to easily evolve the ability to leap to another body. Otherwise, contagious cancer would be everywhere. Only innovation now solves AMR super-bugs -- timeframe’s key. Sobti 19 Dr. Navjot Kaur Sobti is an internal medicine resident physician at Dartmouth-Hitchcock-Medical Center/Dartmouth School of Medicine and a member of the ABC News Medical Unit. May 1, 2019. “Amid superbug crisis, scientists urge innovation”. https://abcnews.go.com/Health/amidst-superbug-crisis-scientists-urge-innovation/story?id=62763415 Dhruv The United Nations has called antimicrobial resistance a “global crisis.” With the rise in superbugs across the globe, common infections are becoming harder to treat, and lifesaving procedures riskier to perform. Drug-resistant infections result in about 700,000 deaths per year, with at least 230,000 of those deaths due to multidrug resistant tuberculosis, according to a groundbreaking report from the World Health Organization (WHO). Given that antibiotic resistance is present in every country, antimicrobial resistance (AMR) now represents a global health crisis, according to the UN, which has urged immediate, coordinated and global action to prevent a potentially devastating health and financial crisis. With the rising rates of AMR -- including antivirals, antibiotics, and antifungals -- estimates from the WHO show that AMR may cause 10 million deaths every year by 2050, send 24 million people into extreme poverty by 2030, and lead to a financial crisis as severe as the on the U.S. experienced in 2008. Antimicrobial resistance develops when germs like bacteria and fungi are able to “defeat the drugs designed to kill them,” according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Through a biologic “survival of the fittest,” germs that are not killed by antimicrobials and continue to grow. WHO explains that “poor infection control, inadequate sanitary conditions and inappropriate food handling encourage the spread” of AMR, which can lead to “superbugs.” Those superbugs require powerful and oftentimes more expensive antimicrobials to treat. Examples of superbugs are far and wide, and can range from drug-resistant bacteria like Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Staphylococcus aureus to fungi like Candida. These bugs can cause illnesses that range from pneumonia to urinary tract and sexually transmitted infections. According to the WHO, AMR has caused complications for nearly 500,000 people with tuberculosis, and a number of people with HIV and malaria. The people at the highest risk for AMR are those with chronic diseases, people living in nursing homes, hospitalized in the ICU or undergoing life-saving treatments such as organ transplantation and cancer therapy. These people often develop infections, which can become antimicrobial-resistant, rendering them difficult, if not impossible, to treat. (MORE: Melissa Rivers talks about her father's suicide with Dr. Jennifer Ashton) The CDC notes that “antibiotic resistance has the potential to affect people at any stage of life,” including the “healthcare, veterinary, and agriculture industries, making it one of the world’s most urgent public health problems." AMR can cause prolonged hospital stays, billions of dollars in healthcare costs, disability, and potentially, death. “The most important thing is to understand and embrace the interconnectedness of all of this,” said Dr. Robert Redfield, director of the CDC, in a recent interview with ABC News’ Dr. Jennifer Ashton. It’s not just our countries that are connected.” Research has shown that superbugs like Candida auris “came from multiple places, at the same time. It wasn’t just one organism that evolved” in a single location, Redfield added. Given longstanding concerns about antimicrobial misuse leading to AMR, physicians have embraced a medical approach called antibiotic stewardship. This encourages physicians to carefully evaluate which antibiotic is most appropriate for their patient, and discontinue it once it is no longer medically needed. WHO has also highlighted that the inappropriate use of antimicrobials in agriculture -- such as on farms and in animals -- may be an underappreciated cause of AMR. Noting these trends, the WHO has urged for “coordinated action...to minimize the emergence and spread of antimicrobial resistance.” It urges all countries to make national action plans, with a focus on the development of new antimicrobial medications, vaccines, and careful antimicrobial use. Redfield emphasized the importance of vaccination during the global superbug crisis, stating that “the only way we have to eliminate an infection is vaccination.” He added that investing in innovation is key to solving the crisis. While WHO continues to advocate for superbug awareness, they warn that AMR has reversed “a century of progress in health.” The WHO added that “the challenges of antimicrobial resistance” are “not insurmountable,” and that coordinated action will “help to save millions of lives, preserve antimicrobials for generations to come and secure the future from drug-resistant diseases.” Extinction - generic defense doesn’t apply. Srivatsa 17 Kadiyali Srivatsa 1-12-2017 “Superbug Pandemics and How to Prevent Them” https://www.the-american-interest.com/2017/01/12/superbug-pandemics-and-how-to-prevent-them/ (doctor, inventor, and publisher. He worked in acute and intensive pediatric care in British hospitals)Elmer It is by now no secret that the human species is locked in a race of its own making with “superbugs.” Indeed, if popular science fiction is a measure of awareness, the theme has pervaded English-language literature from Michael Crichton’s 1969 Andromeda Strain all the way to Emily St. John Mandel’s 2014 Station Eleven and beyond. By a combination of massive inadvertence and what can only be called stupidity, we must now invent new and effective antibiotics faster than deadly bacteria evolve—and regrettably, they are rapidly doing so with our help. I do not exclude the possibility that bad actors might deliberately engineer deadly superbugs.1 But even if that does not happen, humanity faces an existential threat largely of its own making in the absence of malign intentions. As threats go, this one is entirely predictable. The concept of a “black swan,” Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s term for low-probability but high-impact events, has become widely known in recent years. Taleb did not invent the concept; he only gave it a catchy name to help mainly business executives who know little of statistics or probability. Many have embraced the “black swan” label the way children embrace holiday gifts, which are often bobbles of little value, except to them. But the threat of inadvertent pandemics is not a “black swan” because its probability is not low. If one likes catchy labels, it better fits the term “gray rhino,” which, explains Michele Wucker, is a high-probability, high-impact event that people manage to ignore anyway for a raft of social-psychological reasons.2 A pandemic is a quintessential gray rhino, for it is no longer a matter of if but of when it will challenge us—and of how prepared we are to deal with it when it happens. We have certainly been warned. The curse we have created was understood as a possibility from the very outset, when seventy years ago Sir Alexander Fleming, the discoverer of penicillin, predicted antibiotic resistance. When interviewed for a 2015 article, “The Most Predictable Disaster in the History of the Human Race, ” Bill Gates pointed out that one of the costliest disasters of the 20th century, worse even than World War I, was the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918-19. As the author of the article, Ezra Klein, put it: “No one can say we weren’t warned. And warned. And warned. A pandemic disease is the most predictable catastrophe in the history of the human race, if only because it has happened to the human race so many, many times before.”3 Even with effective new medicines, if we can devise them, we must contain outbreaks of bacterial disease fast, lest they get out of control. In other words, we have a social-organizational challenge before us as well as a strictly medical one. That means getting sufficient amounts of medicine into the right hands and in the right places, but it also means educating people and enabling them to communicate with each other to prevent any outbreak from spreading widely. Responsible governments and cooperative organizations have options in that regard, but even individuals can contribute something. To that end, as a medical doctor I have created a computer app that promises to be useful in that regard—of which more in a moment. But first let us review the situation, for while it has become well known to many people, there is a general resistance to acknowledging the severity and imminence of the danger. What Are the Problems? Bacteria are among the oldest living things on the planet. They are masters of survival and can be found everywhere. Billions of them live on and in every one of us, many of them helping our bodies to run smoothly and stay healthy. Most bacteria that are not helpful to us are at least harmless, but some are not. They invade our cells, spread quickly, and cause havoc that we refer to generically as disease. Millions of people used to die every year as a result of bacterial infections, until we developed antibiotics. These wonder drugs revolutionized medicine, but one can have too much of a good thing. Doctors have used antibiotics recklessly, prescribing them for just about everything, and in the process helped to create strains of bacteria that are resistant to the medicines we have. We even give antibiotics to cattle that are not sick and use them to fatten chickens. Companies large and small still mindlessly market antimicrobial products for hands and home, claiming that they kill bacteria and viruses. They do more harm than good because the low concentrations of antimicrobials that these products contain tend to kill friendly bacteria (not viruses at all), and so clear the way for the mass multiplication of surviving unfriendly bacteria. Perhaps even worse, hospitals have deployed antimicrobial products on an industrial scale for a long time now, the result being a sharp rise in iatrogenic bacterial illnesses. Overuse of antibiotics and commercial products containing them has helped superbugs to evolve. We now increasingly face microorganisms that cannot be killed by antibiotics, antifungals, antivirals, or any other chemical weapon we throw at them. Pandemics are the major risk we run as a result, but it is not the only one. Overuse of antibiotics by doctors, homemakers, and hospital managers could mean that, in the not-too-distant future, something as simple as a minor cut could again become life-threatening if it becomes infected. Few non-medical professionals are aware that antibiotics are the foundation on which nearly all of modern medicine rests. Cancer therapy, organ transplants, surgeries minor and major, and even childbirth all rely on antibiotics to prevent infections. If infections become untreatable we stand to lose most of the medical advances we have made over the past fifty years. And the problem is already here. In the summer of 2011, a 43-year-old woman with complications from a lung transplant was transferred from a New York City hospital to the Clinical Center at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), in Bethesda, Maryland. She had a highly resistant superbug known as Klebsiella pneumoniae carbapenemase (KPC). The patient was treated and eventually discharged after doctors concluded that they had contained the infection. A few weeks later, a 34-year-old man with a tumor and no known link to the woman contracted KPC while at the hospital. During the course of the next few months, several more NIH patients presented with KPC. Doctors attacked the outbreak with combinations of antibiotics, including a supposedly powerful experimental drug. A separate intensive care unit for KPC patients was set up and robots disinfected empty rooms, but the infection still spread beyond the intensive care area. Several patients died and then suddenly all was silent on the KPC front, with doctors convinced they had seen the last of the dangerous bacterium. They couldn’t have been more mistaken. A year later, a young man with complications from a bone marrow transplant arrived at NIH. He became infected with KPC and died. This superbug is now present in hospitals in most, if not all U.S. states. This is not good. This past year an outbreak of CRE (carbapenem-resistant enterobacteriaceae) linked to contaminated medical equipment infected 11 patients and killed two in Los Angeles area hospitals. This family of bacteria has evolved resistance to all antibiotics, including the powerful carbapenem antibiotics that are often used as a last resort against serious infections. They are now so resilient that it is virtually impossible to remove them from medical tools such as catheters and breathing tubes placed into the body, even after cleaning. Then we have gonorrhea, chlamydia, and other sexually transmitted diseases that we cannot treat and that are spreading all over the world. Anyone who has sex can catch these infections, and because most people may not exhibit any symptoms they spread infections without anyone knowing about it. Sexually transmitted diseases used to be treatable with antibiotics, but in recent years we have witnessed the rise of multi-drug resistant STDs. Untreated gonorrhea can lead to infertility in men and women and blindness and other congenital defect in babies. As is well known, too, we have witnessed many cases of drug-resistant pneumonia. These problems have arisen in part because of simple mistakes healthcare professionals repeatedly make. Let me explain. Neither superbugs nor common bacterial infections produce any special symptoms indicative of their cause. Rashes, fevers, sneezing, runny noses, ear pain, diarrhea, vomiting, coughing, fatigue, and weakness are signs of common and minor illnesses as well as uncommonly deadly ones. Therefore, the major problem for clinicians is to identify a common symptom that may potentially be an early sign of a major infection that could result in an epidemic. We know that dangerous infections in any given geographical area do not start at the same time. They start with one victim and gradually spread. But that victim is only one among hundreds of patients a doctor will typically see, so many doctors will miss patients presenting with infections that are serious. They will probably identify diseases that kill fast, but slow-spreading infections such as skin infections that can lead to septicemia are rarely diagnosed early. In addition, I have seen doctors treating eczema with antibiotic cream, even though they know that bacteria are resistant to the majority of these drugs. This sort of action encourages simple infections to spread locally, because patients are therefore not instructed to take other, more useful precautions. On top of that, some people are frivolous about infections and assume doctors are exaggerating the threat. And some people are selfish. Once I was called to see a passenger during a flight who had symptoms consistent with infection. He boarded the plane with these symptoms, but began to feel much worse during the flight. I was scared, knowing how infections such as Ebola can spread. This made me think about a way to screen passengers before they board a flight. Airlines could refund a traveler’s ticket, or issue a replacement, in case of sickness—which is not the policy now. We currently have no method to block infectious travelers from boarding flights, and there are no changes in the incentive system to enable conscientious passengers to avoid losing their money if they responsibly miss a flight because of illness. Speaking of selfishness, I once saw a mother drop her daughter off at school with a serious bout of impetigo on her face. When I asked her why she had brought her daughter to school with a contagious infection, she said she could not spare the time to keep her at home or take her to the doctor. By allowing this child to contact other children, a simple infection can become a major threat. Fortunately, I could see the rash on the girl’s face, but other kids in schools may have rashes we cannot see. Incorrect diagnosis of skin problems and mistaken use of antibiotics to treat them is common all over the world, and so we are continually creating superbugs in our communities. Similarly, chest infections, sore throats, and illnesses diagnosed as colds that unnecessarily treated with antibiotics are also a major threat. By prescribing antibiotics for viral infections, we are not only helping bacteria develop resistance, but we are also polluting the environment when these drugs are passed in urine and feces. All of this helps resistant bacteria to spread in the community and become an epidemic. Ebola is very difficult to transmit because people who are contagious have visible and unusual symptoms. However, the emerging infections and pandemics of the future may not have visible symptoms, and they could break out in highly populous countries such as India and China that send thousands of travelers all over the world every day. When a person is infected with a contagious disease, he or she can expect to pass the illness on to an average of two people. This is called the “reproduction number.” Two is not that high a number as these things go; some diseases have far greater rates of infection. The SARS virus had a reproduction number of four. Measles has a reproduction number of 18. One person traveling as an airplane passenger and carrying an infection similar to Ebola can infect three to five people sitting nearby, ten if he or she walks to the toilet. The study that highlighted this was published in a medical journal a few years ago, but the airline industry has not implemented any changes or introduced screening to prevent the spread of infections by air travel passengers, a major vehicle for the rapid spread of disease. It is scary to think that nobody knows what will happen when the world faces a lethal disease we’re not used to, perhaps with a reproduction number of five or eight or even ten. What if it starts in a megacity? What if, unlike Ebola, it’s contagious before patients show obvious symptoms? Past experience isn’t comforting. In 2009, H1N1 flu spread around the world before we even knew it existed. The Questions Remains Why do seemingly intelligent people repeatedly do such collectively stupid things? How did we allow this to happen? The answer is disarmingly simple. It is because people are incentivized to prioritize short-term benefits over long-term considerations. It is what social scientists have called a “logic of collective action” problem. Everyone has his or her specialized niche interest: doctors their patients’ approval, business and airline executives their shareholders’ earnings, hospitals their reputations for best-practice hygienics, homemakers their obligation to keep their own families from illness. But no one owns the longer-term consequences for hundreds of millions of people who are irrelevant to satisfying these short-term concerns. Here is an example. At a recent Superbug Super Drug conference in London that I attended, scientists, health agencies, and pharmaceutical companies were vastly more concerned with investing millions of dollars in efforts to invent another antibiotic, claiming that this has to be the way forward. Money was the most pressing issue because, as everyone at the conference knew, for many years pharmaceutical companies have been pulling back from antibiotics research because they can’t see a profit in it. Development costs run into billions of dollars, yet there is no guarantee that any new drug will successfully fight infections. At the same conference Dr. Lloyd Czaplewski spoke about alternatives to antibiotics, in case we cannot come up with new ones fast enough to outrun superbug evolution. But he omitted mention of preventive strategies that use the internet or communication software to help reduce the spread of infections among families, communities, and countries. It is madness that we don’t have a concrete second-best alternative to new antibiotics, because we need them and we need them quickly. Of course, this is why we have governments, which have been known occasionally in the past as commonwealths. Governments are supposed to look out for the wider, common interests of society that niche-interested professionals take no responsibility for, and that includes public health. It is why nearly every nation’s government has an official who is analogous to the U.S. Surgeon General, and nearly every one has a public health service of some kind. Alas, national governments do not always function as they should. Several years ago physician and former Republican Senator Bill Frist submitted a proposal to the Senate for a U.S. Medical Expeditionary Corps. This would have been a specialized organization that could coordinate and execute rapid responses to global health emergencies such as Ebola. Nothing came of it, because Dr. Frist’s fellow politicians were either too shortsighted or too dimwitted to understand why it was a good idea. Or perhaps they simply realized that they could not benefit politically from supporting it. Plenty of mistakes continue to be made. In 2015, a particularly infectious form of bird flu ripped through 14 U.S. states, leading farmers to preventively slaughter nearly 40 million birds. The result of such callous and unnecessary acts is that, instead of exhausting themselves in the host population of birds, the viruses quickly find alternative hosts in which to survive, and could therefore easily mutate into a form that can infect humans. Earlier, during the 1980s, AIDS garnered more public attention because a handful of rich and famous people were infected, and because the campaign to eradicate it dovetailed with and boosted the political campaign on behalf of homosexual rights. Methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) in hospitals, by far the bigger threat at the time, was virtually ignored. Some doctors knew that MRSA would bring us to our knees and kill millions of people worldwide, but pharmaceutical companies and device and equipment manufacturers ignored these doctors and the thousands of patients dying in hospitals as a result of MRSA. They prioritized the wrong thing, and government did not correct the error. And that is partly how antibiotic-resistant infection went from an obscure hospital problem to an incipient global pandemic. Politics well outside the United States plays several other roles in the budding problem that we are confronting. Countries often will not admit they have a problem and request help because of the possible financial implications in terms of investment and travel. Guinea did not declare the Ebola epidemic early on and Chinese leaders, worried about trade and tourism, lied for months in 2002 about the presence of the SARS virus. In 2004, when avian influenza first surfaced in Thailand, officials there displayed a similar reluctance to release information. Hospitals in some countries, including India, are managed and often owned by doctors. They refuse to share information about existing infections and often categorically deny they have a problem. Reporting infections to public health authorities is not mandatory, and so hospitals that fail to say anything are not penalized. Even now, the WHO and the CDC do not have accurate and up-to-date information about the spread of E. coli or other infections, and part of the reason is that for-profit hospitals are reluctant to do anything to diminish their bottom line. Syria and Yemen are among those countries that are so weak and fragmented that they cannot effectively coordinate public healthcare. But their governments are also hostile to external organizations that offer relief. Part of the reason is xenophobia, but part is that this makes the government look bad. Relatedly, most poor-nation governments do not trust the efficacy of international institutions, and think that cooperating with them amounts to a re-importation of imperialism. They would rather their own people suffer and die than ask for needed help. That brings us to the level of international public health governance. Alas, sometimes poor-country governments estimate the efficacy of international institutions accurately. The WHO’s Ebola response in 2014-15 was a disaster. The organization was slow to declare a public health emergency even after public warnings from Médecins Sans Frontières, some of whose doctors had already died on the front line. The outbreak killed more than 28,000 people, far more than would have been the case had it been quickly identified. This isn’t just an issue of bureaucratic incompetence. The WHO is under-resourced for the problems it is meant to solve. Funding comes from voluntary donations, and there is no mechanism by which it can quickly scale up its efforts during an emergency. The result is that its response to the next major disease outbreak is likely to be as inadequate as were its responses to Ebola, H1N1, and SARS. Stakeholders admit that we need another mechanism, and most experts agree that the world needs some kind of emergency response team for dangerous diseases. But no one knows how to set one up amid the dysfunctional global governance structures that presently exist. Maybe they should turn to Bill Frist, whose basic concept was sound; if the U.S. government will not act, perhaps some other governments will, and use the UN system to do so. But as things stand, we lack a health equivalent of the military reserve. Neither government leaders nor doctors can mobilize a team of experts to contain infections. People who want to volunteer, whether for government or NGO efforts, are not paid and the rules, if any, are sketchy about what we do with them when they return from a mission. Are employers going to take them back? What are the quarantine rules? It is all completely ad hoc, meaning that humanity lacks the tools it needs to protect itself. And note, by the way, the contrast between how governments prepare for facing pandemics and how they prepare for making war. War is not more deadly to the human race than pandemics, but national defense against armed aggression is much better planned for than defense against threats to public health. There is a wealth of rules regarding it, too. Human beings study and plan for war, which kills people both deliberately and accidentally, but they do not invest comparable effort planning for pandemics, which are liable to kill orders of magnitude more people. To the mind of a medical doctor, this is strange. Creating Conditions for Infections to Spread Superbug infections spread for several interlocking reasons. Some are medical-epidemiological. Most of the infections of the past thirty years have started in one place and in one family. As already noted, they spread because many infectious diseases are highly contagious before the onset of symptoms, and because it is difficult to prevent patients who know they are sick from going to hospitals, work, and school, or from traveling further afield. But again, one reason for the problem is political, not medical. Many governments have no strategies in place to prevent pandemics because they are unwilling to tell their people how infections spread. They don’t want to worry people with such talk; it will make them, they fear, unpopular. So governments may have mountains of bureaucracy with great heaps of rules and regulations concerning public health, but they are generally unwilling to trust their own citizens to use common sense on their own behalf. This, too, seems very strange. Until now, no one has come forward to help us develop strategies to educate people how to identify and prevent the spread of infection to their families and communities. The majority of stakeholders have also been oblivious to the use of new technologies to help reduce the spread of these infections. There are some exceptions. In a fun blog post called Preparedness 101: Zombie Apocalypse, the CDC uses the threat of a zombie outbreak as a metaphor to encourage people to prepare for emergencies, including pandemics. It is well meaning and insightful, yet when my colleagues and I try to discuss ways of scaling up the CDC’s example with doctors and nurses, they shut down. Nobody plans for an actual crisis partly because it is too scary and hence paralyzing to think about. But it is also because it is not most health professionals’ job; it is not what they are trained and paid to do. It is always someone else’s job, except that it has turned out to be nobody’s job. Worse, the situation is not static. While we sit paralyzed, superbugs are evolving. Epidemiological models now predict how an algorithmic process of disease spread will move through the modern world. All urban centers around the entire globe can become infected within sixty days because we move around and cross borders much more than our ancestors did, thanks to air travel. A new pandemic could start crossing borders before we even know it exists. A flu-like disease could kill more than 33 million people in 250 days.3 Pharma spills-over – has cascading global impacts that are necessary for human survival. NAS 8 National Academy of Sciences 12-3-2008 “The Role of the Life Sciences in Transforming America's Future Summary of a Workshop” Re-cut by Elmer Fostering Industries to Counter Global Problems The life sciences have applications in areas that range far beyond human health. Life-science based approaches could contribute to advances in many industries, from energy production and pollution remediation, to clean manufacturing and the production of new biologically inspired materials. In fact, biological systems could provide the basis for new products, services and industries that we cannot yet imagine. Microbes are already producing biofuels and could, through further research, provide a major component of future energy supplies. Marine and terrestrial organisms extract carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, which suggests that biological systems could be used to help manage climate change. Study of the complex systems encountered in biology is decade, it is really just the beginning.” Advances in the underlying science of plant and animal breeding have been just as dramatic as the advances in genetic can put down a band of fertilizer, come back six months later, and plant seeds exactly on that row, reducing the need for fertilizer, pesticides, and other agricultural inputs. Fraley said that the global agricultural system needs to adopt the goal of doubling the current yield of crops while reducing key inputs like pesticides, fertilizers, and water by one third. “It is more important than putting a man on the moon,” he said. Doubling agricultural yields would “change the world.” Another billion people will join the middle class over the next decade just in India and China as economies continue to grow. And all people need and deserve secure access to food supplies. Continued progress will require both basic and applied research, The evolution of life “put earth under new management,” Collins said. Understanding the future state of the planet will require understanding the biological systems that have shaped the planet. Many of these biological systems are found in the oceans, which cover 70 percent of the earth’s surface and have a crucial impact on weather, climate, and the composition of the atmosphere. In the past decade, new tools have become available to explore the microbial processes that drive the chemistry of the oceans, observed David Kingsbury, Chief Program Officer for Science at the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation. These technologies have revealed that a large proportion of the planet’s genetic diversity resides in the oceans. In addition, many organisms in the oceans readily exchange genes, creating evolutionary forces that can have global effects. The oceans are currently under great stress, Kingsbury pointed out. Nutrient runoff from agriculture is helping to create huge and expanding “dead zones” where oxygen levels are too low to sustain life. Toxic algal blooms are occurring with higher frequency in areas where they have not been seen in the past. Exploitation of ocean resources is disrupting ecological balances that have formed over many millions of years. Human-induced changes in the chemistry of the atmosphere are changing the chemistry of the oceans, with potentially catastrophic consequences. “If we are not careful, we are not going to have a sustainable planet to live on,” said Kingsbury. Only by understanding the basic biological processes at work in the oceans can humans live sustainably on earth. 1AC: Drug Prices Advantage 2 is Drug Prices Evergreening keeps Drug Prices high. Amin 18 Tahir Amin 6-27-2018 "The problem with high drug prices isn't 'foreign freeloading,' it's the patent system" High drug prices caused by US patent system, not 'foreign freeloaders' (cnbc.com) https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/25/high-drug-prices-caused-by-us-patent-system.html (co-founder of nonprofit I-MAK.org)Elmer 'Evergreening' Instead of going to new medicines, the study finds that 74 percent of new patents during the decade went to drugs that already existed. It found that 80 percent of the nearly 100 best-selling drugs extended their exclusivity protections at least once, and 50 percent extended their patents more than once—with the effect of prolonging the time before generics could reach the market as drug prices continued to rise. The strategy is called “evergreening”: drug makers add on new patents to prolong a drug’s exclusivity, even when the additions aren’t fundamentally new, non-obvious, and useful as the law requires. One of the most expensive cancer drugs on the market, Revlimid®, is a case in point: priced at over $125,000 per year of treatment, Celgene has sought 105 patents on Revlimid®, many of which have been granted, extending its monopoly until the end of 2036. That gives the Revlimid® patent portfolio a lifespan of 40 years, which is being used to block or deter generic competitors from entering the market. But a recent I-MAK analysis finds that several of Celgene’s patents are mere add-ons—not fundamentally new to deserve a patent. And because of the thicket of patents around Revlimid®, payers are projected to spend $45 billion in excess costs on that drug alone as compared to what they could be paying if generic competitors were to enter when the first patent expires in 2019. Meanwhile, Celgene is also among the pharmaceuticals that have been recently scolded by the FDA for refusing to share samples with generic makers so they can test their own products against the brands in order to attain FDA approval. In the absence of genuine competition in the U.S. prescription drug market, monopolies are yielding reckless pricing schemes and prohibitively expensive drugs for Americans (and people around the world) who need them. In 2015, for example, U.S. Senators Wyden and Grassley found after an 18-month bipartisan investigation that the notorious $84,000 price tag for the hepatitis C drug made by Gilead was based on “a pricing and marketing strategy designed to maximize revenue with little concern for access or affordability.” Gilead’s subsequent hepatitis C drug Harvoni® was introduced to the market at a still higher cost of $94,500. Who benefits when drugs are priced so high? Not the 85 percent of Americans with hepatitis C who are still not able to afford treatment. That pushes people into poverty – our internal is causal. Hoban 10 Rose Hoban 9-13-2010 "High Cost of Medicine Pushes More People into Poverty" https://www.voanews.com/science-health/high-cost-medicine-pushes-more-people-poverty (spent more than six years as the health reporter for North Carolina Public Radio – WUNC, where she covered health care, state health policy, science and research with a focus on public health issues. She left to start North Carolina Health News after watching many of her professional peers leave or be laid off of their jobs, leaving NC with few people to cover this complicated and important topic. ALSO cites Laurens Niens who is a Health Researcher at Erasmus University Rotterdam)Elmer Health economist Laurens Niëns found that drugs needed to treat chronic diseases could be considered unaffordable for many people in poor countries. Medicines can be expensive and often make up a large portion of any family's health care budget. And the burden can be even greater for people in poor countries, where the cost of vital medicines can push them into poverty. The problem is growing as more people around the world are diagnosed with chronic diseases such as high blood pressure and diabetes. Being diagnosed with a chronic disease usually compells patients to seek treatment for a prolonged period of time. That increases the eventual price tag for health, says health economist Laurens Niëns at Erasmus University in the Netherlands. Niëns examined medication pricing data from the World Health Organization and also looked at data from the World Bank on household income in many countries. Using the data, he calculated how much people need to spend on necessities such as food, housing, education and medicines. "The medicines we looked at are medicines for patients who suffer from asthma, diabetes, hypertension and we looked at an adult respiratory infection," Niëns says. "Three conditions are for chronic diseases, which basically means that people need to procure those medicines each and every day." Niëns focused on the cost of medicine for those conditions. He found the essential drugs could be considered unaffordable for many people in poor countries - so much so that their cost often pushes people into abject poverty. "The proportion of the population that is living below the poverty line, plus the people that are being pushed below the poverty line, can reach up to 80 percent in some countries for some medicines," Niëns says. He points out that generic medicines - which are more affordable than brand-name medications - are often not available in the marketplace. And, according to Niëns, poor government policies can drive up the cost of medications. "For instance, a lot of governments actually tax medicines when they come into the country," he says. "They have no standard for the markups on medicines through the distribution chain. So often, governments think they pay a good price for the medicines when they procure them from the producer. However, before such a medicine reaches a patient, markups are sometimes up to 1,000 percent." Inequality drives diversionary nationalism which sparks international conflict. Solt 11, Frederick. "Diversionary nationalism: Economic inequality and the formation of national pride." The Journal of Politics 73.3 (2011): 821-830. (Ph.D. in Political Science from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, currently Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Iowa, Assistant Professor, Departments of Political Science and Sociology, Southern Illinois at the time of publication)Elmer One of the oldest theories of nationalism is that states instill the nationalist myth in their citizens to divert their attention from great economic inequality and so forestall pervasive unrest. Because the very concept of nationalism obscures the extent of inequality and is a potent tool for delegitimizing calls for redistribution, it is a perfect diversion, and states should be expected to engage in more nationalist mythmaking when inequality increases. The evidence presented by this study supports this theory: across the countries and over time, where economic inequality is greater, nationalist sentiments are substantially more widespread. This result adds considerably to our understanding of nationalism. To date, many scholars have focused on the international environment as the principal source of threats that prompt states to generate nationalism; the importance of the domestic threat posed by economic inequality has been largely overlooked. However, at least in recent years, domestic inequality is a far more important stimulus for the generation of nationalist sentiments than the international context. Given that nuclear weapons—either their own or their allies’—rather than the mass army now serve as the primary defense of many countries against being overrun by their enemies, perhaps this is not surprising: nationalism-inspired mass mobilization is simply no longer as necessary for protection as it once was (see Mearsheimer 1990, 21; Posen 1993, 122–24). Another important implication of the analyses presented above is that growing economic inequality may increase ethnic conflict. States may foment national pride to stem discontent with increasing inequality, but this pride can also lead to more hostility towards immigrants and minorities. Though pride in the nation is distinct from chauvinism and outgroup hostility, it is nevertheless closely related to these phenomena, and recent experimental research has shown that members of majority groups who express high levels of national pride can be nudged into intolerant and xenophobic responses quite easily (Li and Brewer 2004). This finding suggests that, by leading to the creation of more national pride, higher levels of inequality produce environments favorable to those who would inflame ethnic animosities. Another and perhaps even more worrisome implication regards the likelihood of war. Nationalism is frequently suggested as a cause of war, and more national pride has been found to result in a much greater demand for national security even at the expense of civil liberties (Davis and Silver 2004, 36–37) as well as preferences for “a more militaristic foreign affairs posture and a more interventionist role in world politics” (Conover and Feldman 1987, 3). To the extent that these preferences influence policymaking, the growth in economic inequality over the last quarter century should be expected to lead to more aggressive foreign policies and more international conflict. If economic inequality prompts states to generate diversionary nationalism as the results presented above suggest, then rising inequality could make for a more dangerous world. The results of this work also contribute to our still limited knowledge of the relationship between economic inequality and democratic politics. In particular, it helps explain the fact that, contrary to median-voter models of redistribution (e.g., Meltzer and Richard 1981), democracies with higher levels of inequality do not consistently respond with more redistribution (e.g., Bénabou 1996). Rather than allowing redistribution to be decided through the democratic process suggested by such models, this work suggests that states often respond to higher levels of inequality with more nationalism. Nationalism then works to divert attention from inequality, so many citizens neither realize the extent of inequality nor demand redistributive policies. By prompting states to promote nationalism, greater economic inequality removes the issue of redistribution from debate and therefore narrows the scope of democratic politics. 1AC: Plan Plan – The member nations of the World Trade Organization ought to reduce intellectual property protections for medicines by implementing a one-and-done approach for patent protection. The Plan solves Evergreening. Feldman 3 Robin Feldman 2-11-2019 "‘One-and-done’ for new drugs could cut patent thickets and boost generic competition" https://www.statnews.com/2019/02/11/drug-patent-protection-one-done/ (Arthur J. Goldberg Distinguished Professor of Law, Albert Abramson ’54 Distinguished Professor of Law Chair, and Director of the Center for Innovation)SidK + Elmer I believe that one period of protection should be enough. We should make the legal changes necessary to prevent companies from building patent walls and piling up mountains of rights. This could be accomplished by a “one-and-done” approach for patent protection. Under it, a drug would receive just one period of exclusivity, and no more. The choice of which “one” could be left entirely in the hands of the pharmaceutical company, with the election made when the FDA approves the drug. Perhaps development of the drug went swiftly and smoothly, so the remaining life of one of the drug’s patents is of greatest value. Perhaps development languished, so designation as an orphan drug or some other benefit would bring greater reward. The choice would be up to the company itself, based on its own calculation of the maximum benefit. The result, however, is that a pharmaceutical company chooses whether its period of exclusivity would be a patent, an orphan drug designation, a period of data exclusivity (in which no generic is allowed to use the original drug’s safety and effectiveness data), or something else — but not all of the above and more. Consider Suboxone, a combination of buprenorphine and naloxone for treating opioid addiction. The drug’s maker has extended its protection cliff eight times, including obtaining an orphan drug designation, which is intended for drugs that serve only a small number of patients. The drug’s first period of exclusivity ended in 2005, but with the additions its protection now lasts until 2024. That makes almost two additional decades in which the public has borne the burden of monopoly pricing, and access to the medicine may have been constrained. Implementing a one-and-done approach in conjunction with FDA approval underscores the fact that these problems and solutions are designed for pharmaceuticals, not for all types of technologies. That way, one-and-done could be implemented through legislative changes to the FDA’s drug approval system, and would apply to patents granted going forward. One-and-done would apply to both patents and exclusivities. A more limited approach, a baby step if you will, would be to invigorate the existing patent obviousness doctrine as a way to cut back on patent tinkering. Obviousness, one of the five standards for patent eligibility, says that inventions that are obvious to an expert or the general public can’t be patented. Either by congressional clarification or judicial interpretation, many pile-on patents could be eliminated with a ruling that the core concept of the additional patent is nothing more than the original formulation. Anything else is merely an obvious adaptation of the core invention, modified with existing technology. As such, the patent would fail for being perfectly obvious. Even without congressional action, a more vigorous and robust application of the existing obviousness doctrine could significantly improve the problem of piled-up patents and patent walls. Pharmaceutical companies have become adept at maneuvering through the system of patent and non-patent rights to create mountains of rights that can be applied, one after another. This behavior lets drug companies keep competitors out of the market and beat them back when they get there. We shouldn’t be surprised at this. Pharmaceutical companies are profit-making entities, after all, that face pressure from their shareholders to produce ever-better results. If we want to change the system, we must change the incentives driving the system. And right now, the incentives for creating patent walls are just too great. Reforming the Patent Process would lower Drug Prices and incentivize Pharma Innovation by revitalizing the Market. Stanbrook 13, Matthew B. "Limiting “evergreening” for a better balance of drug innovation incentives." (2013): 939-939. (MD (University of Toronto) PhD (University of Toronto))Elmer At issue in the Indian case was “evergreening,” a now widespread practice by the pharmaceutical industry designed to extend the monopoly on an existing drug by modifying it and seeking new patents.2 Currently, half of all drugs patented in Canada have multiple subsequent patents, extending the lifetime of the original patent by about 8 years.3 Manufacturers, in defence of these practices, predictably tout the advantages of new versions of their products, which often represent more potent isomers or salts of the original drugs, longer-lasting formulations or improved delivery systems that make adherence easier or more convenient. But the new versions are by definition “me too” drugs, and demonstration that the resulting incremental benefits in efficacy and safety are clinically meaningful is often lacking. Moreover, the original drugs have often been “blockbusters” used for years to improve the health of millions of patients. It seems hard to argue convincingly why such beneficial drugs require an upgrade, often just before their patents expire. Rather than the marginal benefits accrued from tinkering with already effective agents, patients worldwide are in desperate need of new classes of pharmaceuticals for the great many health conditions for which treatments are presently inadequate or entirely lacking. But developing truly innovative drugs is undeniably a high-risk venture. It is important and necessary that pharmaceutical companies continue to take these risks, because they are usually the only entities with sufficient resources to do so. Therefore, companies must continue to perceive sufficient incentives to continue investing in innovation. Indeed, there is evidence that the prospect of future evergreening has become part of the incentive calculation for innovative drug development.4 But surely it is perverse to extend unpredictably a period of patent protection that the government intended to be clearly defined and predictable, and to maintain incentives that drive companies to divert their drug-development resources away from innovation. Current patent legislation may not be optimal for striking the right balance between encouraging innovation and facilitating profiteering. Given the broad societal importance of patent legislation, ongoing research to enable active governance of this issue should be a national priority. In the last decade, Canada’s laws have been among the friendliest toward evergreening in the world.5 We should now reflect on whether this is really in our national interest. Governments, including Canada’s, would do well to take inspiration from India’s example and tighten regulations that currently facilitate evergreening. This might involve denying future patents for modifications that currently would receive one. An overall reduction in the duration of all secondary patents on a therapy might also be considered. Globally, a more flexible and individualized approach to the length of drug patents might be a more effective strategy to align corporate incentives with population health needs. Limits on evergreening would likely reduce the extensive patent litigation that contributes to the high prices of generic drugs in Canada.3 Reducing economic pressure on generic drug companies may facilitate current provincial initiatives to lower generic drug prices. As opportunities to generate revenue from evergreening are eliminated, research-based pharmaceutical companies would be left with no choice but to invest more in innovative drug development to maintain their profits.
Framing Only pleasure and pain are intrinsically valuable – all others exist in relation Moen 16 Ole Martin Moen, Research Fellow in Philosophy at University of Oslo “An Argument for Hedonism” Journal of Value Inquiry (Springer), 50 (2) 2016: 267–281 SJDI Let us start by observing, empirically, that a widely shared judgment about intrinsic value and disvalue is that pleasure is intrinsically valuable and pain is intrinsically disvaluable. On virtually any proposed list of intrinsic values and disvalues (we will look at some of them below), pleasure is included among the intrinsic values and pain among the intrinsic disvalues. This inclusion makes intuitive sense, moreover, for there is something undeniably good about the way pleasure feels and something undeniably bad about the way pain feels, and neither the goodness of pleasure nor the badness of pain seems to be exhausted by the further effects that these experiences might have. “Pleasure” and “pain” are here understood inclusively, as encompassing anything hedonically positive and anything hedonically negative.2 The special value statuses of pleasure and pain are manifested in how we treat these experiences in our everyday reasoning about values. If you tell me that you are heading for the convenience store, I might ask: “What for?” This is a reasonable question, for when you go to the convenience store you usually do so, not merely for the sake of going to the convenience store, but for the sake of achieving something further that you deem to be valuable. You might answer, for example: “To buy soda.” This answer makes sense, for soda is a nice thing and you can get it at the convenience store. I might further inquire, however: “What is buying the soda good for?” This further question can also be a reasonable one, for it need not be obvious why you want the soda. You might answer: “Well, I want it for the pleasure of drinking it.” If I then proceed by asking “But what is the pleasure of drinking the soda good for?” the discussion is likely to reach an awkward end. The reason is that the pleasure is not good for anything further; it is simply that for which going to the convenience store and buying the soda is good.3 As Aristotle observes: “We never ask a man what his end is in being pleased, because we assume that pleasure is choice worthy in itself.”4 Presumably, a similar story can be told in the case of pains, for if someone says “This is painful!” we never respond by asking: “And why is that a problem?” We take for granted that if something is painful, we have a sufficient explanation of why it is bad. If we are onto something in our everyday reasoning about values, it seems that pleasure and pain are both places where we reach the end of the line in matters of value. Thus, the standard is maximizing expected well-being or act util. Prefer additionally –
1 Death is bad and outweighs – a) agents can’t act if they fear for their bodily security which constrains every ethical theory, b) it destroys the subject itself – kills any ability to achieve value in ethics since life is a prerequisite which means it’s a side constraint since we can’t reach the end goal of ethics without life 2 Actor spec—governments must use util because they don’t have intentions and are constantly dealing with tradeoffs—outweighs since different agents have different obligations—takes out calc indicts since they are empirically denied.
Extinction first – 1 – Forecloses future improvement – we can never improve society because our impact is irreversible 2 – Turns suffering – mass death causes suffering because people can’t get access to resources and basic necessities
Underview 1 a) AFF gets 1AR theory because otherwise the neg can engage in infinite abuse, making debate impossible, b) drop the debater – the 1AR is too short for theory and substance so ballot implications are key to check abuse, c) no RVIs – they can stick me with 6min of answers to a short arg and make the 2AR impossible, no 2nr theory or paradigm issues otherwise the neg gets 6 minutes to dump on this layer which is impossible for a 3 minutes 2ar. d) competing interps – 1AR interps aren’t bidirectional and the neg should have to defend their norm since they have more time
9/4/21
SO - Evergreening v5
Tournament: Meadows | Round: 1 | Opponent: Westwood AP | Judge: Amy Nyberg check os- cites are not working
10/30/21
SO - Evergreening v6
Tournament: Meadows | Round: 5 | Opponent: Valley MM | Judge: Michael Harris 1AC: Innovation
Advantage 1 is Innovation:
Most recent evidence concludes Aff – 78 of New Drugs aren’t innovative but rather repurposed. PFAD 21 Patients for Affordable Drugs 2-3-2021 “BIG PHARMA’S BIG LIE: THE TRUTH ABOUT INNOVATION and DRUG PRICES” https://patientsforaffordabledrugs.org/2021/02/03/innovation-report/ (a patient advocacy and lobbying organisation based in Washington, D.C. founded by David Mitchell who suffers from multiple myeloma. Ben Wakana is the executive director. It focuses on policies to lower drug prices.)Elmer The drug industry talks a lot about how reforms to lower prices threaten cutting-
AND
that delivers meaningful clinical benefit to patients — instead of repurposing old drugs.
The only major study confirms our Internal Link – Evergreening decimates competition by resulting in functional monopolies Arnold Ventures 20 9-24-2020 "'Evergreening' Stunts Competition, Costs Consumers and Taxpayers" https://www.arnoldventures.org/stories/evergreening-stunts-competition-costs-consumers-and-taxpayers/ (Arnold Ventures is focused on evidence-based giving in a wide range of categories including: criminal justice, education, health care, and public finance)Elmer In 2011, Elsa Dixler was diagnosed with multiple myeloma. That August, she
AND
billions of dollars while increasing the incentives for pharmaceutical companies to achieve breakthroughs."
Reject Negative Turns – they’re pharmaceutical lies – the Plan isn’t anti-Patent, just pro-innovation – breaking down secondary patents is key. - AT Advantage CPs to solve Drug Prices Radhakrishnan 16 Priti Radhakrishnan 6-14-2016 "Pharma’s secret weapon to keep drug prices high" https://www.statnews.com/2016/06/14/secondary-patent-gilead-sovaldi-harvoni/ (Priti Radhakrishnan is cofounder and director of the Initiative for Medicines, Access and Knowledge (I-MAK), a US-based nonprofit group of scientists and lawyers working globally to get people lifesaving medicines. Before founding I-MAK, she worked as a health attorney in the US, Switzerland, and India.)Elmer Skyrocketing drug prices are forcing states to take unprecedented measures to rein in health care
AND
are unmerited and that unjustly prolong companies’ market power and prevent legitimate competition.
Extinction - generic defense doesn’t apply. Srivatsa 17 Kadiyali Srivatsa 1-12-2017 “Superbug Pandemics and How to Prevent Them” https://www.the-american-interest.com/2017/01/12/superbug-pandemics-and-how-to-prevent-them/ (doctor, inventor, and publisher. He worked in acute and intensive pediatric care in British hospitals)Elmer It is by now no secret that the human species is locked in a race
AND
like disease could kill more than 33 million people in 250 days.3
Disease is a non-linear, existential risk - encompasses AND outweighs other threats Pamlin and Armstrong 15 Dennis Pamlin and Stuart Armstrong February 2015 “Global Challenges: 12 Risks that threaten human civilization: The case for a new risk category” https://web.archive.org/web/20171006070112/https://api.globalchallenges.org/static/wp-content/uploads/12-Risks-with-infinite-impact.pdf (Dennis Pamlin, Executive Project Manager Global Risks, Global Challenges Foundation, and Stuart Armstrong, James Martin Research Fellow, Future of Humanity Institute, Oxford Martin School, University of Oxford)Re-cut by Elmer 3.1 Current risks Pandemic 3.1.4 Global A pandemic (
AND
5. Whether humans can develop novel and effective anti-pandemic solutions.
We’re on the Brink – new diseases are emerging. Deccan Herald 21 1-4-2021 Deccan Herald "New deadly virus 'Disease X', much more fatal than COVID-19, could affect humans: Scientists" (Indian English language daily newspaper published from the Indian state of Karnataka by The Printers Mysore Private Limited, a privately held company owned by the Nettakallappa family. It has seven editions printed from Bengaluru, Hubballi, Davanagere, Hosapete, Mysuru, Mangaluru, and Kalaburagi)Elmer A woman in a remote town in the Democratic Republic of Congo has been showing
AND
-19 is among those diseases, along with rabies and yellow fever.
Expanding breadth of Pharma Innovation into neglected diseases results in global linkages that revitalizes global health diplomacy. Hotez 16, Peter J. Blue marble health: an innovative plan to fight diseases of the poor amid wealth. JHU Press, 2016. (Sabin Vaccine Institute and Texas Children’s Hospital Center for Vaccine Development, Departments of Pediatrics and Molecular Virology and Microbiology)Elmer We also need to better understand how these NTDs are actually transmitted within US borders
AND
, Burkina Faso, and Niger, as well as Nigeria 11.
Solves hotspot escalation Nang and Martin 17, Roberto N., and Keith Martin. "Global health diplomacy: A new strategic defense pillar." Military medicine 182.1-2 (2017): 1456-1460. (MC, Global Health Division, Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences)Elmer INTRODUCTION: FORCE IF NECESSARY BUT NOT NECESSARILY FORCE The world appears unhinged. Instability
AND
the ability and authority to do so in the national and international interest.
1AC: Plan
Plan – The member nations of the World Trade Organization ought to reduce intellectual property protections for medicines by implementing a one-and-done approach for patent and exclusivity protection for patent originators.
The Plan solves Evergreening. Feldman 3 Robin Feldman 2-11-2019 "‘One-and-done’ for new drugs could cut patent thickets and boost generic competition" https://www.statnews.com/2019/02/11/drug-patent-protection-one-done/ (Arthur J. Goldberg Distinguished Professor of Law, Albert Abramson ’54 Distinguished Professor of Law Chair, and Director of the Center for Innovation)SidK + Elmer I believe that one period of protection should be enough. We should make the
AND
right now, the incentives for creating patent walls are just too great.
Reforming the Patent Process would lower Drug Prices and incentivize Pharma Innovation by revitalizing the Market. Stanbrook 13, Matthew B. "Limiting “evergreening” for a better balance of drug innovation incentives." (2013): 939-939. (MD (University of Toronto) PhD (University of Toronto))Elmer At issue in the Indian case was “evergreening,” a now widespread practice by
AND
choice but to invest more in innovative drug development to maintain their profits.
1AC: Framing
The standard is maximizing expected wellbeing or act hedonistic util.
Prefer:
1- Pleasure and pain are intrinsic value and disvalue – everything else regresses – robust neuroscience. Blum et al. 18 Kenneth Blum, 1Department of Psychiatry, Boonshoft School of Medicine, Dayton VA Medical Center, Wright State University, Dayton, OH, USA 2Department of Psychiatry, McKnight Brain Institute, University of Florida College of Medicine, Gainesville, FL, USA 3Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Keck Medicine University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA 4Division of Applied Clinical Research and Education, Dominion Diagnostics, LLC, North Kingstown, RI, USA 5Department of Precision Medicine, Geneus Health LLC, San Antonio, TX, USA 6Department of Addiction Research and Therapy, Nupathways Inc., Innsbrook, MO, USA 7Department of Clinical Neurology, Path Foundation, New York, NY, USA 8Division of Neuroscience-Based Addiction Therapy, The Shores Treatment and Recovery Center, Port Saint Lucie, FL, USA 9Institute of Psychology, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary 10Division of Addiction Research, Dominion Diagnostics, LLC. North Kingston, RI, USA 11Victory Nutrition International, Lederach, PA., USA 12National Human Genome Center at Howard University, Washington, DC., USA, Marjorie Gondré-Lewis, 12National Human Genome Center at Howard University, Washington, DC., USA 13Departments of Anatomy and Psychiatry, Howard University College of Medicine, Washington, DC US, Bruce Steinberg, 4Division of Applied Clinical Research and Education, Dominion Diagnostics, LLC, North Kingstown, RI, USA, Igor Elman, 15Department Psychiatry, Cooper University School of Medicine, Camden, NJ, USA, David Baron, 3Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Keck Medicine University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA, Edward J Modestino, 14Department of Psychology, Curry College, Milton, MA, USA, Rajendra D Badgaiyan, 15Department Psychiatry, Cooper University School of Medicine, Camden, NJ, USA, Mark S Gold 16Department of Psychiatry, Washington University, St. Louis, MO, USA, “Our evolved unique pleasure circuit makes humans different from apes: Reconsideration of data derived from animal studies”, U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, 28 February 2018, accessed: 19 August 2020, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6446569/, R.S. Pleasure is not only one of the three primary reward functions but it also defines
AND
these circuits contribute to diverse pathologies, including obesity and addiction or RDS.
2 – No intent-foresight distinction – if I foresee a consequence, then it becomes part of my deliberation since its intrinsic to my action
against the intending-foreseeing distinction when applied to state action than elsewhere.
3 – Actor spec – governments lack wills or intentions and inevitably deals with tradeoffs – outweighs because agents have differing obligations.
4 – No act omission distinction – choosing not to act is an action in of itself since you had to make an active decision to omit.
No calc indicts – a) no philosophy actually says that consequences don’t matter at all since otherwise it would indict every theory since b) we don’t need consequences – winning hedonism proves we’re the only one with impacts to it c) they’re blippy nibs that set the aff at an unfair advantage since they only have to win one while we have to beat them all – voting issue for fairness
offset by the prospect of obtaining license fees on their own patents.’
Outweighs –
A Most articles about IP are written through util – means other frameworks can never engage with core questions of the lit and decks predictability – equal topic lit means fair ground.
B TJFs first – substance begs the question of a framework being good for debate
6 Extinction first –
A Forecloses future improvement – we can never improve society because our impact is irreversible
B Turns suffering – mass death causes suffering because people can’t get access to resources and basic necessities
C Moral obligation – allowing people to die is unethical and should be prevented because it creates ethics towards other people
D Objectivity – body count is the most objective way to calculate impacts because comparing suffering is unethical
E Moral uncertainty – if we’re unsure about which interpretation of the world is true – we ought to preserve the world to keep debating about it
1AC: Underview
1 AFF theory is no RVI, Drop the debater, competing interps, under an interp that aff theory is legit A infinite abuse since otherwise it would be impossible to check NC abuse B it would justify the aff never getting to read theory which is a reciprocity issue C Time crunched 1ar means it becomes impossible to justify paradigm issues and win the shell. Evaluate theory after the 1ar and before the 2nr – reciprocity – we both get one speech reject theory on spikes since it would be a contradiction since they indict each other, but prefer mine since they are lexically prior. AFF fairness issues come prior to NC arguments since the 1ar can’t engage on multiple layers if there is a skew since the speech is already time-crunched. All your arguments concede the importance of fairness since you assume your arguments will be evaluated fairly when you enter the round – even fairness impact turns.
2 Interpretation: The negative must concede the affirmative framework if it is not morally repugnant and the advocacy is topical and disclosed
Violation: they didn’t
Prefer-
A Time skew- Winning the negative framework moots 6 minutes of 1AC offense – that outweighs on quantifiability and reversibility – I can’t get back time lost and it’s the only way to measure abuse
B Topic Ed- Every debate would just be a framework debate which means we never get access to core topic lit – that outweighs on time frame – we only have 2 months
3 All K links must be checked in CX A Regress – infinite number of indirect things the aff can link to, which means you’d always have something to read insofar as we don't decide upon the link in CX. B Having a definitive answer lets us gain the benefits of your reps and engage in a debate about them which is key to engagement.
4 All K’s must defend a concrete policy alternative A Critical ed: Policy alts are better for your kritik, it allows us the ability to engage in productive discussions rather than endless critic of each other’s reps without solutions B Engagement: There are a million different reps or things I can do that someone disagrees with C otherwise mental gymnastics which reifies oppression since we don't acknowledge the states inevitability which promotes false hope.
5 Treat each theoretical argument as drop the debater – they have the ability to meet them but chose not to and its key to normset
6 No 2NR “I meet” arguments
A Skews theory ground because they’re each a NIB for me to winning theory which kills my ability to check abuse.
B Skews time, they can make three minutes of blippy I meets that I can’t cover because the 2AR is too short.
7 The neg may not read nibs or OCIs (offensive counterinterps) a) you can up-layer for 7 minutes that I have to answer before I even have access to offense b) inf neg abuse since you would just read 7 mins of auto-negate arguments c) OCIs are just shorter theory args they can blow up. This means they must only line by line aff arguments, since otherwise they function as nibs before I access warrants.