Contention one - Climate Change

AFF

My (dope partner) and I affirm the resolution resolved: The United States federal government should adopt a carbon tax.

FRAMEWORK: The affirmative does not need to prove implementing a carbon tax is possible, but just if it is a good idea.

CONTENTION ONE: CLIMATE CHANGE

        The current system " is one of the worst ways we could do it," says John Reilly. Henry Jacoby, an economist at MIT's business school, there's really just one thing you need to do to solve the problem: Tax carbon emissions. A tax that would be increased by two percent per year could cut U.S. emissions by at least 40 percent by 2025 – a reduction far greater than what the United States has pledged to achieve through regulatory changes over the same period. It is widely accepted that global emissions have to begin to decline by 2020 in order to avoid the worst impacts of climate change. A Carbon Tax solves the threat posed by climate change.

IMPACT ONE: BIO-DIVERSITY

By 2050, rising temperatures exacerbated by carbon dioxide could send more than a million of Earth's plants and animals down the road to extinction, according to a recent study says John Roach of Natural Geographic. "Climate change now represents a great a threat to the number of species surviving on Earth as habitat-destruction and modification," said Chris Thomas, a conservation biologist at the University of Leeds. According to the researchers' collective results, the predicted range of climate change by 2050 will place 15 to 35 percent of the 1,103 species studied at risk of extinction. The numbers are expected to hold up when extrapolated globally. What is really chilling about the catastrophes occurring with increasing frequency across the globe is that they have happened, after a warming of only 0.6C over the past century.

IMPACT TWO: ECONOMIC DETERIORATION

In October a report spelt out the gloomiest prediction so far of the impact of global warming on the world economy.  Former World Bank chief economist Nicholas Stern said failure to tackle climate change would risk economic and social upheaval comparable to the great depression of the 1930s.  It could shrink the world economy by 20 per cent, equivalent to an estimated 6.95 trillion dollars by 2050. "Without action, droughts, floods and rising sea levels would mean that up to 200 million people could be displaced and become refugees.