Allowing deep water offshore oil drilling is in the best interest of the United States

I accept all of my opponents definitions, emphasizing the definition of Deep water offshore oil drilling; the important part being the defining factor of "below 1000 meters". Now, let's begin with the top of the affirmative case. [REBUTTAL OF PRO CASE] Obs. 1: My opponent claims that we don't have to deal with the long term effects because the US can change; this is a ridiculous claim, it's like saying I can take any action I want and not worry about the impacts because I can fix it later. If I launch a nuclear weapon, I doubt that I can solve it; if I choose to run a communist government (e. g. Russia, China) I will feel the impacts long after I change. Obs. 2: I'm perfectly fine with that; this will be critical in the round. Now, to the beef of the case. Contention 1: My opponent seeks to solve for economic problems by saving the jobs in the deepwater-offshore-oil-drilling sector. He then provides stats that by 2011, the number of workers will increase by 30% in offshore oil fields. Consider the following responses. 1- He says that the rigs employ hundreds; given 79 rigs, a 30% increase would only add several thousand jobs to the economy that is millions of jobs deficient. [3] The impact is not significant enough to look to in the round. 2- The 30% increase is in "offshore oil"; notice how his lack-of-a-source doesn't specify that it is in DEEPWATER offshore oil. The impact isn't even applicable to my opponents advocacy. 3- His claim that unemployment will increase "drastically" is unwarranted; rather, I contend that offshore oil drilling would NOT produce any new jobs, and advocate the following: we should take the money used on deepwater offshore oil drilling and spend it on green energy and traditional fuels [1] Looking to his second contention, we go foreign. His argument is contingent upon a very shaky link- that is, the allowance of deepwater offshore oil drilling will decrease our dependency on foreign oil noticeably. The problem is, or rather, the problems are, numerous and rampant in this argument. 1- The Huffington Post article is not unique to DEEPWATER offshore oil drilling. He can't claim the impacts of the argument. 2- The "competition" with China seems to be a negative impact. .. My opponent doesn't clarify what we are competing with China in. The from MSNBC says that China is a monstrous oil consumer, so I would rationally assume that my opponent wants us to compete with China's oil consumption. Unfortunately, deepwater offshore oil drilling won't provide much- like he said, we only have 79 rigs. Moreover, if we allowed offshore oil drilling (again, not unique to deepwater) we would only decrease our dependence by 2.5%. With only the deepwater rigs, the number is even LESS. [1] 3- Our reliance on foreign oil can only be solved either by reverting to alternative energy OR tapping into our largest reserves- which are on land. 200 billion barrels of oil we sit upon, untapped, in the Northwest US. [2] This would far outweigh the impacts of deepwater drilling. My opponents 3rd contention is unstable. He makes a claim, that "banning deep water drilling. .. damages US businesses. " Then he provides a testimony from a whiny old man who had no clients. Poor Mr. Marston. Meanwhile, US businesses are in no way affected given my opponents data/source. The link is unstable, and given that my opponent has the burden of proof in his third contention, I can safely drop it from the debate. To provide a few arguments against the resolution. [CON CASE] Contention 1: Deepwater offshore oil drilling is insignificant. As my opponent provided, we only have 79 deepwater rigs. The millions of dollars that go into maintaining a rig could, like mentioned before, be used much more efficiently in other sectors. Contention 2: We can rely on shallow water drilling and on land drilling. Deepwater is unnecessary and has significant potential problems. [4] The environmental problems outweight the economic potential benefits, which my opponent has scarcely provided for. We can look to the BP spill and see that, as my opponent claimed in his Obs. 1, the US cannot make changes that easily. The environmental impacts will plague us for years, and we can't do anything about it; and just that one blast has cost dozens of billions of dollars [5]. We don't need to look far to see that deepwater offshore oil drilling is NOT in the best interest of the United States. The resolution is negated. [SOURCES] ______________________________________________________________________________________________ Sorry they were presented in a random order in the round :P [1] . http://na.oceana.org...... [2] . http://www.nextenergynews.com...... [3] . http://www.ogj.com...... [4] . http://www.environmentflorida.org...... [5] . http://news.yahoo.com......