Developing countries ought to prioritize environmental protection over resource extraction

I want to apologize as my last post was misconstrued and was seen as more hostile than I intended. Also, as my last sign posting was seen as too vague, I shall attempt to be even more direct. To offer a brief road map, I will first address the framework clashes, then I will clarify and rebuild my own case, and then I shall move on to address my opponent’s. Value Clash There are three main arguments being addressed under the value clash. 1 – Circular reasoning of morality. My opponent justifies that he is not using circular reasoning with two claims. First, he turns to the definition of “ought” and states that this indicates that we should use morality; however, this actually further perpetuates the circular reasoning argument as the resolution clearly indicates morality, and he is upholding this inherent morality through morality. Second, he states, “I say an action is moral if it is consequential”. This argument is flawed – first of all, “consequential” simply means causes other things to happen8 and he clearly doesn't mean that an action is moral if it has any consequence. Next, this is an incorrect reference to his criterion and given that we are evaluating the value clash here, we ought not to consider the criterion for determining the worth of the value; while related, the value ought to make rational sense on its own. 2 – Broadness. To refute my attack that his value was too abstract, my opponent again turned to his criterion. As above, the criterion doesn’t belong in the value clash as this evaluates the values alone. 3 – Maslow’s Hierarchy. My opponent states, “If safety were to be placed above morality, it could not achieve morality, and therefore, as my opponent states, could not achieve morality.” He misunderstood my point. I stated before that safety is used to determine morality – we say that in the context of this resolution, the moral actions are those that ensure safety. The point of this was to enhance why we ought to value safety, given that morality was already attacked as a value. Basically, with morality out of the equation, we ought to value safety as a way to determine moral worth because it is a basic human need and carries an importance of its own as a pre-requisite to other needs. Criterion 1 – Definitions “My opponent has taken liberties that she does not have the right to, such as modifying my constructive to fit her needs.” This attack is incredibly unwarranted because previously I was not modifying Con’s case, I was clarifying his terminology. In his constructive my opponent stated, “My value criterion for today"s round will be upholding the greatest good for the greatest number, also known as consequentialism.” However, we need to turn to the following7: Consequentialism: “whether an act is morally right depends only on the consequences of that act or of something related to that act” Utilitarianism: “the claim that an act is morally right if and only if that act maximizes the good” By definition, my opponent’s criterion is textbook utilitarianism, so thus throughout his case when he refers to something as moral because of consequentialism, that is incorrect. My opponent then states, “… she states that negating leads better to consequentialism, which therefore achieves morality. As refuting that argument is better suited to be addressed in the contentions, I will discuss this later.” While he never directly readdresses this, see this point as going to who better proves that they “maximize the good” in the consequences of their case. Also, see that given how our points clash, this is also directly related to who best upholds "minimizing the risk of harm". Resolution Analysis My opponent says I attempted to interpret the resolution another way and that, “My opponent does not hold the right to “clarify”, and therefore change the resolution.” True, I cannot force the resolution to be something it’s not; however, my point was to show that what we’re truly evaluating is if resource extraction ought to be placed over environmental protection, because whether or not the countries are warring, this doesn’t alter what we’re truly evaluating. This can be seen in that neither of our points uniquely rely on warring countries, as we both reference violence. All I was attempting to do was to make sure the debate stayed centered on the true conflict of today’s resolution – that which exists between extraction and protection, regardless of whether the countries are at war or not. Having addressed framework I shall now rebuild my two contentions. 1. a) resource extraction fuels violence My opponent states that it’s not extraction that fuels violence but simply the existence of natural resources, claiming my point is invalid simply because it relies upon a false assumption. However, this is not true given that I sourced my information, to further elaborate it shows, “ … that armed violence represents one of several overlapping mechanisms that provide powerful actors with the means to (a) prevail over others in conflicts over natural resource use, extraction, and transport and (b) ensure that natural resources critical to industrial production and state power continue to be extracted and sold in sufficient quantities to promote capital accumulation and state power in the core”3 Therefore, I am proving that extraction causes violence, as opposed to it ending violence as my opponent supposes. b) lowering environmental stress decreases violence Here my opponent completely dismisses the premise of this argument, and attacks this by stating that we are locking up natural resources. Con equates prioritizing protection to excluding extraction (this was also seen when he attacked my criterion). It's not "procrastination" in giving the poor resources as Con claims; but rather, with an emphasis on environmental protection ultimately we are ensuring that the bad of the polluting effects are outweighed by an emphasis on the good of ensuring we have a place to live (thus even upholding my opponent’s criterion). Also, he failed to address the violence point, as he also perpetrated his wrong assumption from his attack on my first point, (that it is not extraction that fuels violence) so this stands. 2. sustainability Again my opponent claims, “environmental protection locks up resources saying that it is justified doing so by sustainability … why not extract it now, and ease the suffering of the poor?” Here Con completely drops my argument about how we need the emphasis to be on environmental protection because this saves the environment. When prioritization goes to getting as many resources as quickly as possible and protecting the environment is lesser, we have harmful global and local effects. This is why we need to prioritize the other, so that we are controlling the resulting effects to the environment by on balance, promoting the positive. Ultimately if we care about ensuring the quality of life for people as my opponent claims to ("ease the suffering of the poor"), we ought to make sure we are protecting the place we live in, which my opponent never addresses. Furthermore, you ought to see that quicker extraction won’t help the poor as it will fuel violence in these areas, as I’ve shown. Therefore, this point also stands. Moving on to address my opponent’s three points. 1. Violence My opponent claims that resource extraction will end the violence; however, this would only occur if all of the resources from an area were extracted and the desire to control that area no longer existed. Encouraging this kind of action leads to environmental depletion which has long-lasting negative effects. While my opponent tries to say that it is natural resources not resource extraction that fuels conflict, this does not stand. Thus this point falls. 2. Extraction Benefits Mankind My opponent only linked defense of this to attacks on my second contention, and having defended that point above, this point also falls. To restate, my opponent seems to assume that prioritization of protection means elimination of extraction, and this does not hold. Rather, by valuing protection, we ensure that the people who want resources and could get some potential benefits from their extraction are saved from extraction's harms. 3. Good of Animals My opponent’s only defense for this is that he stated that the good of animals and the good of mankind are mutually exclusive, so they are. He offers no justification for this claim, and completely disregards the attack that humans also benefit from having a healthy environment to live in. Given that there is a clear link between the goods of these two entities, this point is unsupported and falls. Given that all of my opponents points fall, all of mine stand, that I consequentially win the criterion clash (as above it was stated to based on who best upheld having positive ends, and thus ensured safety) and that I win the value clash I must urge a Pro ballot in today’s debate. Sources 8 - http://www.merriam-webster.com...