Resolved: It is in the best interest of the United States to keep oil prices low

Resolved: It is in the best interest of the U.S. to keep oil prices low Contention 1: High oil prices maintains dollar hegemony and thus the U.S. economy Stratfor, 1/8/2008. "Annual Forecast 2008," web.stratfor.com/images/writers/STRATFOR_Annual_1_08.pdf. Oil prices sustained strength continues to shove a great deal of cash into the hands of the world's oil exporters — cash that these countries cannot process internally and that therefore will either be stored in dollars or invested in the only country with deep enough capital pools to handle it: the United States. Add in the torrent of exports from the Asian states, which generates nearly identical cash-management problems, and the result is a deep dollarization of the global system even as the U.S. dollar gives ground. The currency steadily shifts from the one of ﬁrst resort to the true foundation of the entire system. Oliver Blanchard, 1/31/2008. The Class of 1941 Professor of Economics, is a former MIT economics department head. "Economist sees US better withstanding high oil prices - Peak oil," Cherry Creek News, The increase in the price of oil helps finance the U.S. current account deficit. The reason is that oil producers know that oil revenues will not last forever, so they save a good part of those revenues. Not having great investment opportunities at home, they are eager to lend outside their country, and, in particular, to lend to the U.S. Such willing creditors allow the U.S. to continue to borrow abroad and to run a large current account deficit. Were it not for oil-producing countries, the demand for U.S. assets would be smaller, and the dollar would be even weaker than it is today. Thus, the only reason the U.S. has the ability to rack up such a debt is because dollar hegemony ensures that countries abroad lend to us. Therefore, keeping oil prices higher ensures that the government can maintain the power of the dollar even with such a debt. Faiting the aff would thus lead to an economic collapse within the U.S. Contention 2: High oil prices incentivizes alternative energy Braml is editor-in-chief of the Yearbook on International Relations at the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP) in Berlin. The Washington Quarterly • 30:4 pp. 117–130. 2007 Can the United States Shed Its Oil Addiction? Higher energy prices will provide strong market incentives to find alternative sources of energy, to develop new technologies, and to improve energy efficiency. For these effects, there is an additional driving force: increasing public concern about environmental damage caused by traditional forms of energy consumption. Bryce '07 [Robert Bryce lives in Austin, Texas and managing editor of Energy Tribune. Cheap crude will short-circuit the push for renewable energy. We've seen this before. The surge in oil prices that occurred after the 1973 oil embargo didn't last. As prices softened, so, too, did the interest in solar power, wind power and other technologies. The best hope for the renewable energy sector is a sustained period of high prices for fossil fuels of all types. THIS SOLVES EXTINCTION: Reynolds June 18 2003 "EARTH 'IS HEADING FOR MASS EXTINCTION IN JUST A CENTURY", The Scotsman THE worst mass extinction in the history of the planet could be replicated in as little as a century if global warming continues, according to new evidence. Researchers at Bristol University have discovered that a six-degree increase in the global temperature was enough to annihilate up to 95 per cent of species which were alive on Earth at the end of the Permian period, 251 million years ago. Up to six degrees of warming is now predicted for the next century by United Nations scientists from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) if nothing is done about emissions of the greenhouse gases, principally carbon dioxide, which cause global warming. The end-Permian extinction event is a good model for what might happen in the future because it was fairly non-specific. "The sequence of what happened then is different from today because then the carbon dioxide came from massive volcanic eruptions, whereas today it is coming from industrial activity. Climate experts and environmentalists said yesterday they were appalled that a disaster of such magnitude could be repeated within this century because of human activities.