Resolved: Developing countries should prioritize environmental protection over resource extraction w

CON's CASE I Value Life, defined as the state of being alive. It is the primary object of any good government to ensure that its citizens are physically safe and have access to their basic needs. The Criterion that we can look to then is Utility. Whatever action best promotes the value is the action developing nations should take. Prof. Gary Woller explains why an ends-based standard is needed when referencing governmental actors: "Appeals to a priori moral principles...often fail to acknowledge that public policies inevitably entail trade-offs among competing values. Thus since policymakers cannot justify inherent value conflicts to the public in any philosophical sense...the policymakers' duty to the public interest requires them to demonstrate that"their policies are somehow to the overall advantage of society." Contention One: Resource extraction is key for poverty reduction. Sub-point A: Poverty kills millions. Prof. James Gilligan asserts, "The 14 to 18 million deaths a year caused by poverty compare with about 100,000 deaths per year from armed conflict. Comparing this frequency of deaths...to the frequency of those caused by major military and political violence, such as World War II [where] an estimated 49 million military and civilian deaths, including those caused by genocide--or about eight million per year, [occurred]...In other words...every single year, two to three times as many people die from poverty throughout the world as were killed" in WWII. Sub-point B: Extraction reduces poverty. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development reports that industries like "mining can contribute to economic development in several ways: "direct investment (DI), employment, government revenues, foreign exchange earnings, innovation and development of related sectors. Minerals' supply is essential to modern economies and minerals exploitation represents the major part of DI flows in many developing countries, often dwarfing aid flows." Additionally, The World Bank states, "natural resource extraction is capital-intensive, with annual global investments approaching $1 trillion, hence offering the potential for rapid infrastructure development and structural transformation in developing economies." The World Bank, after a meta-analysis of more than 50 nations, concludes that "poorest and least-poor quartiles obtain about 18 percent of their income from [extraction], while middle-income groups obtain more. Across all income quartiles, dependence on resources is much lower in resource-scarce areas than in resource-rich areas." Contention Two: Resource extraction reduces conflict. Sub-point A: Extraction reduces War Harvard Hegre of the International Peace Institute holds that "development has made the trading world increasingly more attractive to states...development alters four variables that are crucial to the calculations of the leader of a state: it increases the potential gains from trade, the economic costs of war, and the political costs of war, as well as decreasing the utility of occupying territories relative to the pursuit of trade policies." Prof. Michael Mousseau furthers, asserting, "economic development affects the costs associated with interstate violence. War waged on territory with the vast investments in plants equipment and infrastructure associated with development is apt to be costly in absolute terms, and it is likely to destroy a larger fraction of a state"s productive resources." Sub-point B: Extraction reduces ethnic cleansing. Michael Armacost of the Brookings Institute claims, "culture wars...are markedly less lethal in prosperous societies than in poor ones. It is easier for rival cultures to share power when not competing over basic resources. Economic growth has dampened ethnic violence in places like Quebec and Ireland"just as economic decline has aggravated it in countries like Indonesia and Yugoslavia." Contention Three: Resource extraction reduces famine. Consider, the World Bank estimates that every 3.6 seconds someone dies from hunger, and 90% of those going hungry are in Africa, Southeast Asia, and India. According to Indur Goklany, "economic development reduces the level of undernourishment. Cross-country data show that both crop yield and per capita food supply...both increase with income. Crop yields increase because richer countries are better able to afford yield- and productivity-enhancing technologies, such as fertilizers, pesticides, better seeds, and tractors. But even if a country has poor yields or insufficient production, if it is rich it can import its food needs. Hence"the richer the country, the greater its available food supplies." REBUTTAL V: Morality - incredible vague. Because the value is so subjective, we cannot determine if we have achieved it. Thus, prefer Life. Also, morality is not inherent in the resolution. Consider the following: if I say "I should go to the mall to buy that shirt I want," I'm not making a moral judgment. Here it's indicating utility. Should =/= morality. C: Categorical Imperative - This resolution concerns government actors. Governments should act pragmatically as per my Woller evidence, not morally. Cross-apply it here. C1: Moral Obligations My advocacy meets 6 of the 7 points Con mentions. He uses this UN evidence to argue that nations have moral obligations to their people. Frankly, it's setting goals that countries should meet--it's not imposing moral injunctions upon states. Secondly, nowhere is this contention do you offer any reasoning why nations have a moral obligation--you simply assume that it exists. Thirdly, if you plan on making a social contract argument, why is a contractual obligation necessarily a moral one? Additionally, just because I want to prioritize resource extraction, does not mean I want to eliminate environmental protections. Clearly, limited protections could be used to obviate many of the extreme Pro cites (e.g. wasteland conditions). Finally, this whole contention has nothing to do with Pro's Criterion; it's all utilitarian in nature. I will show later how I out-impact and out-solve Pro. C2: Immoral Acts Sub. A: Corruption Pro fails to show causality. Look at places like Italy and Spain--ranked as corrupt as Guinea and Malaysia respectively by Transparency International. Also, in many nations, resource extraction takes place safely. Rather, the cause is simply a lack of proper oversight, not extraction itself. I can fix oversight in my world as well as extract resources. Also, unless Pro is stopping extraction altogether, his world would have corruption too. Sub. B: Environment The Imperative (and Kantian philosophy) is about rational agents. Trees and cows aren't rational, so we can treat them as mere things. Also, my case shows positive benefits to extraction. Moreover, oil spills and disasters are rare, and don't outweigh. Thus, I negate. Aff has the floor...