Federal government can’t solve alone

EXT - 2NC Victor

Sharing solves

Victor 2007 (David G. Victor – professor at the Graduate School of International Relations and Pacific Studies and director of the School’s new Laboratory on International Law and Regulation, The National Interest, 2007, “What Resource Wars?” http://irps.ucsd.edu/dgvictor/publications/Faculty_Victor_Article_2007_What%20Resource%20Wars_The%20National%20Interest.pdf)

While there are many reasons to fear global warming, the risk that such dangers could cause violent conflict ranks extremely low on the list because it is highly unlikely to materialize. Despite decades of warnings about water wars, what is striking is that water wars don't happen - usually because countries that share water resources have a lot more at stake and armed conflict rarely fixes the problem. Some analysts have pointed to conflicts over resources, including water and valuable land, as a cause in the Rwandan genocide, for example. Recently, the UN secretary-general suggested that climate change was already exacerbating the conflicts in Sudan. But none of these supposed causal chains stay linked under close scrutiny - the conflicts over resources are usually symptomatic of deeper failures in governance and other primal forces for conflicts, such as ethnic tensions, income inequalities and other unsettled grievances. Climate is just one of many factors that contribute to tension. The same is true for scenarios of climate refugees, where the moniker "climate" conveniently obscures the deeper causal forces.

AT: Oil Wars

No resource wars – peak oil flawed

Mills No Date (Robin Mills – masters in Geological sciences, economics manager for Emirates National Oil Company, no date, Articlebiz.com, “Debunking the Myth of Oil Crisis”, http://www.articlebiz.com/article/244365-1-debunking-the-myth-of-the-oil-crisis/)//JS

The opening years of the 21st century are marked by milestones in the world of oil: the war in Iraq, the Shell reserves downgrade, Hurricane Katrina, and the breaking of the once unthinkable $100 per barrel barrier. Many have seized on these events as evidence that we are crossing the threshold of 'peak oil'. Behind us, a century and a half of abundant, cheap oil that fuelled industrial civilization and brought unparalleled prosperity to a fortunate global minority. Ahead of us, permanent declines in oil production, scarce and unaffordable energy, wars over dwindling resources, disastrous climate change, perhaps the collapse of modern society. But these ideas are based on misconceptions, flawed reasoning, and excessive pessimism. The world has abundant oil and gas for decades to come, geopolitical conflicts can be avoided by adroit policies, and we can learn to use hydrocarbons without unacceptable environmental damage. We have been here before. In 1865, the economist William Jevons warned that Britain’s global supremacy would shortly be ended by the exhaustion of its coal mines. The pioneering conservationist Gifford Pinchot wrote in 1910 that "our supplies of iron ore, mineral oil and natural gas are being rapidly depleted, and many of the great fields are already exhausted". There were further predictions of imminent oil decline from industry geologists in 1885, 1919 and 1956, from Jimmy Carter in 1977, from the US government in 1980. A prominent 'peak oiler', Colin Campbell, claimed in 1989 that oil output had peaked; another, Kenneth Deffeyes, put the peak date, rather precisely, at December 16th 2005. The current high prices certainly seem to give some credibility to the idea that we are approaching some fundamental limit of oil resources. But we should remember how we arrived at this situation, since the culprit is not constraints on oil in the ground: it is the long 1986-98 period of low prices and under-investment. Low prices decimated the oil industry, while the rise of energy-hungry new powers in Asia, combined with robust demand in the developed world and geopolitical upsets in major producers, stealthily ate up spare production capacity. The inevitable result, perhaps amplified by ‘speculation’ and market nervousness, has been a so-far inexorable rise in the oil price. This price rise is not driven, then, primarily by geology. But many commentators outside the energy business, and some within it, believe high oil prices vindicate their often-repeated claims that 'peak oil' is imminent. Supporters of this view point to the work of the American geologist M. King Hubbert, whose seminal 1956 paper prophesied a peak in US output by 1965-1970 (the actual year was 1970), a success often taken to prove that oil depletion must follow 'Hubbert's Curve'. Yet when applied to other countries, 'Hubbert's Curve' and its variants are at best approximately right, but frequently wildly wrong. Predictions of the date of 'peak oil' require some estimate of the amount of oil reserves known today, and the quantity to be found in the future. Believers in imminent depletion state that global reserves, particularly in the OPEC countries, are heavily over-stated, that exploration success is falling well short of replacing production, and that technology does not unlock significant new oil. These assumptions imply that we are on the cusp of producing half of our ultimate total of oil. Hubbert’s method therefore predicts imminent decline.

AT China Resource Wars

China oil wars won’t happen

Victor 07 (David G. Victor – professor at the Graduate School of International Relations and Pacific Studies and director of the School’s new Laboratory on International Law and Regulation, The National Interest, 2007, “What Resource Wars?” http://irps.ucsd.edu/dgvictor/publications/Faculty_Victor_Article_2007_What%20Resource%20Wars_The%20National%20Interest.pdf)

Among the needed resources, oil has been the most visible. Indeed, Chinese state-owned oil companies are dotting Africa, Central Asia and the Persian Gulf with projects aimed to export oil back home. The overseas arm of India's state oil company has followed a similar strategy-unable to compete head-to-head with the major Western companies, it focuses instead on areas where human- rights abuses and bad governance keep be major oil companies at bay and where India's foreign policy can open doors. To a lesser extent, Malaysia engages in the same behavior. The American threat industry rarely sounds the alarm over Indian and Malaysian efforts, though, in part because those firms have less capital so splash around and mainly because their stories just don't compare with fear of the rising dragon. These efforts to lock up resources by going out fit well with the standard narrative for resource wars--a zero-sum struggle for vital supplies. But ? To be sure, the struggle over resources has yielded a wide array of commercial conflicts as companies duel for con- tracts and ownership. State-owned China National Offshore Oil Corporation's (CNOOC) failed bid to acquire U.S.-based Unocal-and with it Unocals valuable oil and gas supplies in Asia-is a recent example. But that is hardly unique to re- sources-similar conflicts with tinges of national security arise in the control over ports, aircraft engines, databases laden with private information and a growing array of advanced technologies for which civilian and military functions are hard to distinguish. These disputes win and lose some friendships and contracts, but they do not unleash violence. Most importantly, China's going-out strategy is unlikely to spur resource wars because it simply does not work, a lesson the Chinese are learning. Oil is a fungible commodity, and when it is sourced far from China it is better to sell (and buy) the oil on the world market. The best estimates suggest that only about one-tenth of the oil produced overseas by Chinese investments (so-called "equity oil") actually makes it back to the country. So, thus far, the largest beneficiaries of China's strategy are the rest of the world’s oil consumers-first and foremost the Unit- ed States-who gain because China subsidize: production. . Until recently, the strategy of going out for oil looked like a good bet for China's interests. But, despite threat-industry fear-mongering, we need not worry that it will continue over the long term because Chinese enterprises are already poised to follow a new strategy that is less likely to engender conflict. The past strategy rested on a trifecta of passing fads. One fad was the special access that Chinese state enterprises had to cheap capital from the government and by retaining their earnings. The ability to direct that spigot to political projects is diminishing as China engages in reforms that expose state enterprises to the real cost of capital and as the Chinese state and its enterprises look for better commercial returns on the money they invest. Second, nearly all the equity-oil investments overseas have occurred since the late 1990s, as prices have been rising. Each has looked much smarter than the last because of the surging value of oil in the ground. But that trend is slowing in many places because the cost of discovering and developing oil resources is rising.

No south china oil conflict

Reuters 6/20 (Reuters, June 20, 2014, “China urges peaceful development of seas, says conflict leads to “disaster””, http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/06/21/us-southchinasea-china-idUSKBN0EW07L20140621) //JS

China, involved in a growing dispute with its neighbors over the energy-rich South China Sea, wants to promote peaceful development of the oceans, Premier Li Keqiang said, warning conflicts in the past had only brought "disaster for humanity". China claims almost the entire ocean, rejecting rival claims to parts , the Philippines, Taiwan, Malaysia and Brunei in one of Asia's most intractable disputes and a possible flashpoint. It also has a long-running dispute with Japan in the East China Sea. "China will unswervingly follow the path of peaceful development and firmly oppose any act of hegemony in maritime affairs," Li said at a maritime summit in Greece on Friday in comments carried by China's Foreign Ministry website on Saturday. "Developing the oceans through cooperation has helped many nations flourish, while resorting to conflict to fight over the sea has only brought disaster for humanity." Concern over China's motives has risen in the region after China sent four more oil rigs into the South China Sea, less than two months after it positioned a giant drilling platform inwaters claimed by Vietnam around the Paracel Islands. The lack of any breakthrough in the dispute suggests China and Vietnam are far from resolving one of the worst breakdowns in relations since they fought a brief war in 1979. Among the obstacles is Beijing's demand for compensation for anti-Chinese riots that erupted in Vietnam after the drilling platform was deployed at the beginning of May. Speaking at a forum in Beijing on Saturday, China's top diplomat, State Councillor Yang Jiechi, who visited Vietnam this week to discuss the rig dispute, said China had both the patience and sincerity to push for talks to resolve such spats.

China will use peaceful means – no conflict scenario

Pennington 11 (James Pennington – University of Leeds, How Peaceful is China's Rise? The Use of Soft and Hard Power in China's Energy Security Strategy in Central Asia” http://www.polis.leeds.ac.uk/assets/files/students/student-journal/ug-winter-11/james-pennington.pdf)//JS

This paper will argue that, since becoming an energy importing country, China has ¶ concentrated vast reserves on enhancing its soft power in energy exporting nations, in order ¶ to build an ESC, using a variety of means with notable success. Simultaneously, ¶ securitisation of the issue by hardliners in the Chinese ruling elite has lead to a build-up of ¶ hard power reserves intended to maintain energy security, which, as yet, are incapable of ¶ impacting global security, but are steadily increasing. This analysis will first be approached ¶ from a general perspective, constructing a model of the various soft and hard elements of ¶ China's global ESS with reference to securitisation and energy security communities. This ¶ will then be applied to an empirical case study in Central Asia, with special reference to ¶ Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan. The argument will conclude that both the energy realist's and ¶ energy liberal's predictions relating to soft and hard power in China's energy security are too ¶ simplistic, and a more balanced assessment will be put forward using a constructivist ¶ analytical framework. This will state that due to securitisation of energy in China, hard power ¶ resources are of increasing importance to China's ESS, but that currently, due to its goal of ¶ building ESCs with exporting countries, soft power plays a more developed and important ¶ role in China's ESS. What is more, many facets of this soft power strategy, such as the access ¶ it gains to resources, economic integration and involvement in international institutions, also¶ negate the use of hard power, further integrating China into the international system.

AT Terrorists Will Target Energy Supply

No impact to energy terror – reserves and diffuse production

Matthew Hulbert 11/26/12 (Lead Analyst for European Energy Review and consultant to numerous governments and institutional investors, most recently as Senior Research Fellow at Clingendael International Energy Programme, “A Terrorist Guide To Energy Carnage” http://www.forbes.com/sites/matthewhulbert/2012/11/16/a-terrorist-guide-to-energy-carnage/)

Well, the bad news for you guys is that you’re against the clock. This is a very hard time to be a terrorist with global ambitions in the energy world. We’ve added 200bn barrels of potential reserves oil over the past few years from unconventional plays, with gas reserves believed to be up to 28, 0000 trillion cubic feet. Obviously what’s in the ground and what’s produced are two very different things, but if oil and gas production increases, markets will not just become far more fungible and deep, but coming from every point on the compass. Resources are no longer the preserve of the Gulf, but span Latin America, East Africa, Australasia, Russia, the Caspian and especially North America. You’ll have no clue what you should be blowing up, and more’s the point, it won’t have much impact if you do. You’ll merely highlight AQ’s increasing structural irrelevance to the energy world.

No impact and attacks inevitable

Matthew Hulbert 11/26/12 (Lead Analyst for European Energy Review and consultant to numerous governments and institutional investors, most recently as Senior Research Fellow at Clingendael International Energy Programme, “A Terrorist Guide To Energy Carnage” http://www.forbes.com/sites/matthewhulbert/2012/11/16/a-terrorist-guide-to-energy-carnage/)

If that’s the threat, then fear not NATO, the actual risk of it happening isn’t nearly so grim. Obviously if AQ managed to pull any of this off the impacts would be profound, but capabilities appear down, and imagination, limited. Saudi Arabia and Qatar both take hydrocarbon security very seriously (at least against perceived external threats), and the U.S. 5th fleet maintains a strong presence off Bahrain. European naval deployments over in the Gulf of Aden could also quickly shift geographical focus if needed. Do keep tabs on it, but you need to think more broadly about what role you can play on day to day terrorist problems. Global jihad is the flashy end of the business, but local insurgency gripes tend to be the standard fayre.¶ Now, don’t get us wrong, the ‘energy security experts’ who think every bomb and minor attack on pipelines in strange places matter couldn’t be more wrong. The market has already priced it in – be it in Yemen, Iraq – or Sudan. Sure, ‘stranded’ energy isn’t free, but neither is security provision. Everything you do should be based on cost-benefit analysis, accepting you can’t lock down every piece of energy infrastructure (not even close), and accept that the commercial energy world is exclusively predicated on a risk vs. reward basis. That means being bright – very bright – about locating where insurgency strikes actually matter for market and political dynamics to be of genuine use.