AT Capitalism K - Michigan 7 2023 CFLMP

Aff
Links
Link---AT: UBI
The aff is an essential first step to the alt – we assume their critique
Sculos 18(Bryant W. Sculos Florida International University, “Socialism & Universal Basic Income”, 2018, DOI: 10.25148/CRCP.6.1.007552)//BRownRice
The idea of providing a stipend to every person in a given country—or even across the globe— seems like it would be a project that socialists would love. And while there are certainly a large number of socialists that do or would support the establishment of a universal basic income (UBI), there are many left criticisms of UBI that have produced a great deal of skepticism about the idea. Most of the critics of UBI treat its advocates as though they believe UBI would solve all or most socioeconomic problems, at least in the Global North.1 I have yet to come across any serious UBI advocate who takes such an expansive position. My point here will be to provide reasons for why socialists should support a thick conception of UBI as a kind of radical reform from within capitalism, as part of a broader left agenda.2 In order to make this case, this essay will focus on three main contentions that are generally raised by left critics of UBI: (1) UBI would be used to dismantle existing social welfare programs, leaving the poor worse off than they were before; (2) UBI doesn’t do anything for workers within the workplace; and (3) UBI doesn’t challenge capitalism. (1) First, it is quite true that not all UBI programs would be worth supporting. Any UBI program that would have the likelihood of leaving the poor and vulnerable worse off should certainly be opposed by any socialist or progressive. This kind of welfare-state replacement UBI is the kind that white supremacist and conservative thought-leader Charles Murray and other libertarians often support. 3 However, simply because not all UBI programs are worth supporting, does not mean that there are not thick or expansive conceptions of UBI that absolutely are. An example of a conception of UBI that socialists should support would be one that is—as the acronym requires—universal and also set at or above subsistence. This means that all people, regardless of their ability or willingness to work, would at least be much more likely to live a life without lacking any fundamental necessities. A subsistence (or higher) UBI would likely only be able to achieve the goal of eradicating extreme poverty if it was also combined with a universal health care and tuition-free public higher education system. If the poor still had to pay or go into massive debt to afford basic health care and education, a subsistence UBI would be nearly functionally irrelevant—or worse. (2) Second, it is simply not true that UBI is irrelevant to workers and the workplace—again provided we are discussing a thick version of UBI. There are two key reasons why UBI would help workers in the workplace. First, if workers did not rely entirely on their wage for their subsistence, they would likely be able to take more aggressive positions in collective bargaining (Andy Stern, former president of the SEIU, has referred to UBI as a “national strike fund”). 4 A subsistence UBI would decrease the opportunity-costs of hardline negotiating for higher wages, better benefits, fewer hours, and better working conditions. Workers, in such a position, could also demand greater democratic rights within the workplace. This is not to suggest that wages would cease to be a site of contention. On the contrary, by providing a stronger foundation from which to negotiate wages and benefits, there would be an opportunity for an increase in labor struggles. The second way that UBI would aid workers in the workplace is more speculative. If a subsistence UBI were to be achieved, there is almost no way of imagining this taking place without massive organized support from workers. It would need to be collective demand that itself would require organizing and mobilizing workers, alongside the unemployed and homeless, and even stay-at-home moms and dads. The kind of social solidarity that such a radical policy position like a subsistence-level UBI would require would undoubtedly have important consequences for the organization of the workplace. (3) The idea that an expansive UBI program could not be a direct challenge to capitalism is frankly laughable. There are two main reasons why a subsistence UBI (or higher) could be a challenge to capitalism, but it is important to note that in the very short-term there is the chance of some increase in stability brought to the capitalist system by the Keynesian effects of the policy, if enacted in even a single globally-crucial economy like the US, the EU, or even China or India. 5 This stability would be short-lived and could lead to progress towards socialism, for the reasons that follow. The first reason builds on the points made under the previous section: a subsistence UBI that did not replace existing, or was implemented alongside expanded, social welfare programs would require a mass movement in order to be achieved. It would also take workers in enormous numbers out of the realm of necessity and closer to the realm of freedom (as described by Marx). With a subsistence UBI, workers would no longer be forced to work at low-paying, degrading, unsafe, or mindless jobs. These jobs would then likely become the first sites of full automation. If systematically-compelled wage-labor is the sine qua non of the capitalist mode of production, then a subsistence-or-above UBI would be a direct challenge to the foundation of capitalism. Secondly, a thick UBI could change how people think about their value in society. By declaring, not with mere rhetoric, but with serious policy, that all people, regardless of status, effort, place of birth, gender, race, sexuality, or any other category, are worthy of the dignity of the means to support themselves, society has a powerful opportunity to evolve in a more just and democratic direction. It wouldn’t necessarily be a smooth transition, but it would certainly provide the basis for a practicable transition from capitalism to an egalitarian democratic postcapitalism (i.e., socialism). These two points are in direct opposition to the position articulated by Daniel Zamora in Jacobin. 6 Zamora argues that UBI reinforces the market ideology by simply allowing more people to participate in consumption. What Zamora misses (though this is basically true of most socialist critics of UBI) is the progressive decommodification of work and life in general that UBI can contribute to. If I don’t have to work or don’t want to work under undemocratic or unsafe conditions, I wouldn’t have to. Yes, labor would still be commodified to some degree— but not universally or necessarily. In the same way that we could imagine a world where basic necessities are not commodified but luxury goods could be. With an expansive UBI, I wouldn’t be required to sell my labor to survive. And while there would certainly still be a market for consumer goods at this stage, buying goods in the market is not the defining trait of capitalism. With an expansive UBI, the connection between structurally-coerced labor and one’s ability to live a (decent) life—the foundational relationship of the capitalist mode of production—would be progressively severed.7 Imagine the creative “work” people could participate in of their own accord if they didn’t have to “get a job” to survive. Remember, not all UBI proposals are created equal and therefore not all UBI plans should be supported by those on the left. There are however very good reasons why a thick conception of UBI should be part of any socialist project aiming beyond capitalism but moving forward from within capitalism. There are no guarantees here, and it is imperative to think UBI within a much broader left program. There is, after all, no good reason to think that any one or two policies or demands would ever be successful on their own, especially not without the mass movement any one of them would necessarily need to have behind them in order to be achieved.
Tag
(https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03085147.2022.2131278)//BRownRice
Impact/Sustainability
Impact---Geoengineering---2AC
Capitalist driven geoengineering is good and key to solving warming
1/ CLOUD SEEDING
Jacobo et. al 4/21(Julia Jacobo, Daniel Manzo, and Ginger Zee, 4-21-2023, "These geoengineering technologies could help combat the climate crisis, scientists say," ABC News, https://abcnews.go.com/US/geoengineering-technologies-combat-climate-crisis-scientists/story?id=98476205)//BRownRice
What to do when there isn't enough precipitation
Drought-stricken regions have been left scrambling to ensure water supplies after years of minimal rainfall and snowpack.
One of the techniques already being used in several places in the U.S. is weather modification, or cloud seeding, which involves injecting microscopic particles of silver iodide into the atmosphere to encourage rain and snowfall.
The particles then act like magnets for water droplets and bind together until they are heavy enough to fall as rain or snow.
The practice could boost snowpack by up to 15% in one year, according to a 2020 study authored by Sarah Tessendorf, a researcher at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado. That extra precipitation could be the difference between being able to irrigate agriculture during the last three weeks of the dry season.
While the technique has been around for decades, interest has exploded in the past decade due to the decades-long megadrought plaguing the Western U.S., which houses important bodies of water, Garrett Cammans, president of North American Weather Consultants, one of the largest cloud seeding companies in the country, told ABC News.
There are currently 42 cloud seeding projects across the U.S. with another 200 stations opening up by next season.
The technology is helping to ease the effects of the drought in the American West, which has reduced water levels in the Colorado River, one of the most important river systems in the country.
"We’re now seeing flows of the Colorado River we’ve never seen before since records were kept," Brad Udall, senior water and climate research scientist at Colorado State University, told ABC News.
The Bureau of Reclamation has pledged $2.4 billion in funding for cloud seeding projects to slow the effects of drought on the Colorado River.
2/ SOLAR REFLECTION
Jacobo et. al 4/21(Julia Jacobo, Daniel Manzo, and Ginger Zee, 4-21-2023, "These geoengineering technologies could help combat the climate crisis, scientists say," ABC News, https://abcnews.go.com/US/geoengineering-technologies-combat-climate-crisis-scientists/story?id=98476205)//BRownRice
Alter how much sunlight the Earth absorbs
Solar geoengineering, which would involve pumping aerosols into the atmosphere to reflect sunlight, thus cooling Earth, has been a "controversial" topic in recent years, Paul Wennberg, a professor of atmospheric chemistry and environmental science and engineering at the California Institute of Technology, told ABC News.
The tiny particles are released about 10 miles into the stratosphere and create a "reflective blanket," the idea being to reflect about 1% of total incoming sunlight, Chris Field, director of the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment, told ABC News.
"You could basically cool the Earth down because it's absorbing less sunlight," Wennberg said.
Scientists already know this is possible due to the eruptions of large, sulfur-rich volcanoes, Wennberg said. About a month after large amounts of sulfur gases are emitted from the volcano into Earth's upper atmosphere, the particles that form reflect away a small amount of sunlight, Wennberg said.
Earth's temperature temporarily dropped 1 degree Celsius in 1991 following the large eruption at Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
Solar geoengineering, however, is not considered a viable solution in the long term because the particles will eventually leave the atmosphere and temperatures will return to normal, Wennberg said.
Therefore, adding sulfur and other constituents to the stratosphere would need to be a continuous effort.
"Not only would you have to do it forever, you'd have to do more and more of it over time," Wennberg said. "And if you ever stopped, the Earth would rebound very, very quickly to the state that you would have without those particles."
In addition, the infrared blanket placed over the clouds prevents them from radiating energy upward, which could cause the clouds to break up and lead to strong warming, according to Cal Tech.
Other approaches to solar engineering include increasing the abundance of bright, reflective clouds in coastal areas, which could be more effective because they reflect more sunlight going over a smaller part of the Earth's surface, Field said.
3/ CARBON CAPTURING – capitalist innovation is key
Jacobo et. al 4/21(Julia Jacobo, Daniel Manzo, and Ginger Zee, 4-21-2023, "These geoengineering technologies could help combat the climate crisis, scientists say," ABC News, https://abcnews.go.com/US/geoengineering-technologies-combat-climate-crisis-scientists/story?id=98476205)//BRownRice
Pluck the carbon straight out of the atmosphere
As greenhouse gases continue to be emitted into Earth's atmosphere, carbon sequestration, the process of capturing and storing atmospheric carbon dioxide, is being touted by experts as an effective way to lower temperatures.
The method is aimed "try to clean up the mess we've made," Wennberg said.
"It's effectively trying to do what the Earth will do in a millennium if we were to wait," Wennberg said. "But in this case, we're trying to speed it all up so that we can get back to lower atmospheric carbon levels."
One of the biggest challenges to implementing the technology is cost, Wennberg added.
Last year, the U.S. Energy Department pledged $2.6 billion in funding for the Carbon Capture Demonstration Projects Program, which aims to create storage technologies and infrastructure at major industrial sources of carbon dioxide, such as cement, pulp and paper, iron and steel and chemical production facilities.
Impact---Space---2AC
Capitalist production is key to sustaining space col – that’s solves every existential threat
Kovic 19(Marko Kovic is the co-founder and president of the Zurich Institute of Public Affairs Research, “The future of energy”, March 2019)//BRownRice
Existential risks are risks that might lead to the extinction of humankind[1]. Natural existential risks (such as asteroids that might crash into Earth) are basically constant. The risks of a giant asteroid crashing into Earth today is the same as it was 500 years ago. Anthropogenic, man-made existential risks, on the other hand, are growing in number and severity. They are a side-effect of technological progress: The more we develop technologically, the greater man-made existential risks become. Nuclear weapons, to name only one example, are a direct consequence of scientific and technological progress. There are different approaches to existential risk mitigation. One approach is to develop targeted strategies for specific existential risks. If we want to reduce the existential risk posed by nuclear weapons, then we can and should develop specific strategies for that risk. Another approach is to develop and pursue what can be called meta-strategies that target all existential risks at once. One of most effective meta-strategies for tackling existential risks in general is space colonization: If we manage to establish permanent and self-sustainable human habitats beyond Earth, then our proverbial existential eggs are not all in one basket anymore. For example, if disaster strikes on Earth, but there are billions of humans living on Venus and Mars, humankind would continue to exist even with Earth-humans gone. Because of existential risks, a long-term future in which humankind still exists almost certainly has to be a future in which humankind has succeeded in colonizing space. Today, even though we regularly venture into space, we do not yet have space colonization capabilities. There are a number of technological challenges that we need to overcome in order to become capable of space colonization. One of those challenges is energy. There are several reasons why. First, if we establish permanent and self-sustaining habitats beyond Earth, those habitats will have to power themselves somehow. Even if our goal is to establish only one small colony on Mars that consists of no more than 10’000 people, that colony will have to have a reliable supply of energy at its disposal. Second, habitats beyond Earth will almost certainly be less hospitable than Earth in the early stages of space colonization. There is no planet or moon in the vicinity of our Solar system that is as pleasant as Earth. For example, we can easily survive a couple of days without electricity on Earth. In a colony on Mars, on the other hand, a couple of days without electricity would almost certainly mean swift and, for those affected, horrific death, because Mars is much colder than Earth and contains no breathable air in its atmosphere. In other words: The energy requirements for sustaining one human life are likely to be much greater beyond Earth than they are on Earth. Third, energy sources will also play a role for transit in space. Space colonization means that (many) more humans than today will be voyaging through space. In order to make long-term space voyage possible, we will need to have adequate energy sources available on board, both for the purpose of life support as well as for propulsion. 1.2 Criteria for colonization-conducive energy sources If future energy sources are an important part of space colonization capabilities, what kind of energy sources do we need? Obviously (and unfortunately), we do not know with certainty today what energy sources might be available in the future. But we can specify a set of criteria that future energy sources have to meet as much as possible in order to help achieve the goal of space colonization. There are at least five such criteria: 1. Portability. Future energy sources must be as portable as possible so that they can be used in as many circumstances as possible. For example, a hydroelectric power plant has very low portability. A spaceship could never be powered by a hydroelectric power plant. 2. Availability. The energy sources have to be readily available, both in a geographical and a temporal scope. If, for example, some new form of fuel was very hard to obtain, then that fuel would represent a source of energy with very low availability; almost no one could use it. 3. Sustainability. The energy sources should not be finite and easily depletable, but ideally abundantly available and practically unlimited (or “renewable”). For example, crude oil is not sustainable, because its quantity is limited to the steadily depleting reserves on Earth. 4. Energy Density. Per unit of mass, future energy sources should oer as much energy as possible. For example, a kilogram of wood provides less energy than a kilogram of crude oil. Technically speaking, this criterion is not energy density but specific energy; energy density refers to energy per unit of volume. I use the term “energy density” for the sake of simplicity. In cases where energy density (or specific energy) is not really applicable because to fuel in the traditional sense is used, we can approximate energy density by looking at power density (e.g., wind), the energy output per unit of surface area. 5. Acceptable levels of risk. Future sources of energy should create as few and as small risks as possible. Through the lens of these criteria, we can take a look at existing sources of energy and at potential future sources of energy and assess whether and to what degree they are “future-proof”. The better an energy so

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