The USFG Should Substantially Increase Its Exploration of Earths Oceans

Good morning, ladies, gentlemen, fellow debater, and honorable judges. My name is Forever 23 and I will be presenting the second affirmative for todays debate. before we begin the second affirmative, I would like to clarify several things that have come up previously. As I have emphasized numerous times in the first affirmative, the United States is in a vulnerable situation right now. The problem? Rare Earth elements. Or rather, the lack of rare earth elements. China has a monopoly on them, and United States efforts to mine for them on land have been futile. Because of this, my plan will focus on the Arctic Offshore Federal Committee. This committee will further subsidize a company called Freedom Minerals that will specialize in underwater excavation of REEs. Freedom Minerals will hire navigators, captain, excavators, mechanics, repairmen and communications personnel. In addition, they are giving AOC all the resources they excavate in exchange for funding. The committee will have a pristine facility in the aptly named Point Hope, Alaska, for the purpose of storing all the resources excavated and coordinating the fleet of ships. In addition, this center will also contain a repair yard that will do the maintenance on the ships of the fleet. There will be a fleet of 10 naval ships that will serve as excavators of the company. May I note "naval" as to "relating to the sea". These ships will be equipped with state of the art ice-breaking technology, and they are fully equipped for operation in the Arctic environment. Each ship will hold a crew of 600 personnel, ranging from mechanics to navigators. In addition, the repair yard will have 1000 repair men and our center will have 2000 personnel. In total, there will be 9000 people working on our project. So what do we expect from this plan? We will be extracting a total of 50000 metric tons of REEs per years from the nautical area around Alaska. A study by the Alaska Miners Association found that 20000 nautical miles surrounding Alaska, there is a total of 600000 tons of rare earth elements ranging from neodymium to yttrium. We will prioritize selling them to US based companies, since this plan is based around the United States need. The cost of elements will be the average market price, but we estimate from current trends that we will earn 665 million dollars from selling them to US based companies. The United States uses roughly 30000 thousand metric tons of REEs per year (according to the Department of Energy), so this operation will completely satisfy the domestic thirst for rare earth elements. In additions, we will have roughly 20000 metric tons of REE to sell to other nations. That will give us another 411 million dollars. In total, we earn 1106000000 dollars through the transactions of the resources. The elements will be extracted using state of the art technology, the solvent desferrioxamine- B. The German scientists that created diluter claim that they were able to extract at least 80% of rare earth elements from ferromanganese noodles by refining their ore- leaching method. This process is completely environmentally friendly because it only involves non- toxic, biodegradable diluter. Then, metals are extracted using Seafloor Mining Tool that is attached to an individual tube by a ship. Thus, the extraction of the substances has already been tested and proven successful. We will fund this plan by drawing money from the Ocean Exploration 2014 Funding Opportunity. The total fund is 3 billion dollars, but ours shall only utilize 2 billion. This fund was created by the Department of Commerce under the Discretionary Environment Science and Technology category. This grant is renewable every year, and our plan fits perfectly into the description. In addition, the plan also generate 1106000000 dollars because we sell our resources to companies. The USA spent 2310000000 on REEs in 2014 according to Congressional Research center and our plan is in fact cheaper. This is, once again, yet another benefit of our plan. This plan requires very little start up time; it only needs 1 years to set up the center and organize the fleet. Ladies and gentlemen. China has a vice grip on rare earth elements market, and we simply cannot stand by idly as they sap our country of its technological strength. China had signaled its reluctance to comply with America, and they leave us no choice but to mine underwater. Its times for the resurgence of the United States as a world power. It is time the United States to grown independent of China in the REEs sector, and its time to mine. Thank you and I hope you side with the affirmative team.