Experts' Tier FINALE: Environmental Protections vs. Resource Extraction

Rebuttals are saved for the later rounds so ill go ahead and introduce my arguments in this round1) The key to becoming a successful country is a successful economy In this day and age, the most successful nations are often the nations that industrialized the earliest in human history in comparison to other countries, while countries that are only now industrializing or have not begun to industrialize are almost always the worst countries in terms of life expectancy, health, overall wealth, etc. Nations that underwent industrialization fairly quickly (England, Germany, the US, France) have always been powerful players in the world, while nations that didnt start industrializing until much later (Mexico, Nigeria, India) have lagged behind. When you have a developed economy, you have a healthy middle class that can be taxed, with those taxes being used by the government to improve things like education and health (among other things). Nations that are still developing though do not have the ability to tax its population at a high enough rate to improve the status of the people living in the country without crushing them, since there is barely any money to tax in the first place. Nations that are predominantly agricultural in this day and age are also the poorest nations in the world: http://www.fao.org...^ One quick at this list and you can see that nations which depend heavily on agriculture also are the poorest countries in the world. For a nation to ultimately improve the well being of its population, it needs to have a good economy that cannot be based primarily off of agricultural exports. This means that the only solution for these countries to improve the lives of its people is industrialization2) Industrialization is the best way for developing countries to improve their economy substantially and quicklyIndustrialization is basically step 2 of the three step process that nations transition through to have a healthy economy. (It goes from agrarian -> Industrialization -> modernization). You cannot simply skip step two though from agrarian straight to modernization though since there isnt enough money for a developing country to pull that off, so they first transition to industrialization. Only after does a nation become industrialized does it unlock the potential to become modernized, meaning that a country has to become industrialized in order for it to become modernized. Only when a country becomes modernized can it adequately start to address societal ills to improve the living standards of its people. It cannot do that when it is still developing since it does not have the capital to do so. Industrialization is the key, so how do countries become industrialized?3) Resource extraction "Key positive factors (to becoming industrialized) identified by researchers have ranged from favourable politico-legal environments for industry and commerce, through abundant natural resources of various kinds, to plentiful supplies of relatively low-cost[citation needed], skilled and adaptable labour." - http://en.wikipedia.org...Nations that have natural resources are more likely to become industrialized since the extraction of those natural resources sets up a base for industry and commerce, which drastically improves the nations wealth (compared to before) and then that opens the door for their government to really begin to improve life for its people since they have the influence/money to do something about it now. Just about every large economy in the world became industrialized after investing heavily into resource extraction from the environment. The US itself began to become industrialized after it had gained sufficient wealth from the export of timber, furs, iron, limestone, granite, and other ores + natural resources in addition to cash crop exportation. Many nations in the Middle East, most famously The United Arab Emirates, in addition to countries in North Africa and Nigeria reached the ability to become industrialized over time after they began to extract huge amounts of oil from underground http://www.jstor.org...Resource extraction, particularly the right resources, can be instrumental, if not vital, to the development and industrialization of developing countries. At the very least it can give the government a working tax base they can use to start providing for basic human services, and in ideal situations it can allow for countries to completely transform themselves and its economy. 4) Electricity is key for economic growth AND industrialization, and cheap electricity comes from non-renewable resources extracted from the groundOne of the biggest ways for a country to become industrialized is to have the ability to generate large amounts of electricity for its own people. Just about every industrializing nation in the past has relied on coal and other non-renewable resources extracted from the ground to generate electricity, which is why nations that extract large amounts of coal become industrialized quickly. This happened in Great Britain, France, and the US, where coal extraction was used to generate electricity and also to fuel factories and other things that aided industrialization + the growth of the nations economyhttp://www.historylearningsite.co.uk...A big reason China is developing so fast so quickly is in part due to huge strategic amounts of coal and its extraction: http://en.wikipedia.org...The ability to generate electricity is a vital goal that developing nations must achieve in order to really begin to improve the lifestyle of their own people, and cheap electricity comes entirely from burning non-renewable resources such as coal, natural gas, and oil. Since non-renewable resources are far cheaper to use to make electricity than cleaner, renewable resources in the short runhttp://www.solarschools.net... http://www.bbc.co.uk...If a nation were to prioritize environment conservation over resource extraction, it would make it monstrously more difficult for that country to be able to provide electricity to its people, which prevents a whole list of other attempts to try to improve their lives more difficult, if not outright impossible. You cant have hospitals that adequately treat diseases if you dont even have electricity.