Eco-pragmatism AC

I affirm
Resolved: Developing countries should prioritize environmental protection over resource
extraction when the two are in conflict.

Value: Morality
Morality ought to be measured in this round by the evaluation of different criteria and the
subsequent consequences of implementation and results. Therefore if one system is categorically
victimizing and abusing people, then another system would be preferred. The most moral system
would the system that fosters life and protects against systemic abuses.

Kriterion: Ecopragmatism
Natural capitalism prioritizes the environment while stressing a market-based
system
Paul Hawken 1, business leader, environmentalist, and author, Amory Lovins, and Hunter
Lovins, Co-founders of Rocky Mountain Institute a nonprofit natural-resource think tank, 1999,
http://www.natcap.org/images/other/NCchapter1.pdf, accessed 7/28/03
Natural capitalism and the possibility of a new industrial system are based on a very
different mind-set and set of values than conventional capitalism. Its fundamental
assumptions include the following: . The environment is not a minor factor of production but rather is
an envelope containing, provisioning, and sustaining the entire economy.10 . The
limiting factor to future economic development is the availability and functionality of
natural capital, in particular, life-supporting services that have no substitutes and
currently have no market value. . Misconceived or badly designed business systems, population
growth, and wasteful patterns of consumption are the primary causes of the loss of natural capital, and all three
must be addressed to achieve a sustainable economy. . Future economic progress can best take place

in democratic, market-based systems of production and distribution in which all forms

of capital are fully valued, including human, manufactured, financial, and natural
capital. . One of the keys to the most beneficial employment of people, money, and the environment is radical
increases in resource productivity. . Human welfare is best served by improving the quality and flow of desired
services delivered, rather than by merely increasing the total dollar flow. . Economic and environmental
sustainability depends on redressing global inequities of income and material well-being. . The best long-term
environment for commerce is provided by true democratic systems of governance that are based on the needs of
people rather than business.

And

***Natural capitalism is not a value systemit can allow necessary,

ecosystem-saving actions now without getting lost in debates about policy
Paul Hawken, business leader, environmentalist, and author, Amory Lovins, and Hunter
Lovins, Co-founders of Rocky Mountain Institute a nonprofit natural-resource think tank, 1999,
Natural Capitalism, http://www.natcap.org/images/other/NCchapter1.pdf, accessed 7/28/03
Societies need to adopt shared goals that enhance social welfare but that are not the
prerogatives of specific value or belief systems. Natural capitalism is one such objective.
It is neither conservative nor liberal in its ideology, but appeals to both constituencies. Since
it is a means, and not an end, it doesnt advocate a particular social outcome but rather
makes possible many different ends. Therefore, whatever the various visions different parties or
factions espouse, society can work toward resource productivity now, without waiting to
resolve disputes about policy.

Contention 1: Modern Capitalism does not value

natural capital, and should be rejected
The economics of modern capitalism does not factor living systems into its
analysiscomprehensive change can only occur once we understand and
begin to move away from this mindset
Paul Hawken 2, business leader, environmentalist, and author, Amory Lovins, and Hunter
Lovins, Co-founders of Rocky Mountain Institute a nonprofit natural-resource think tank, 1999,
http://www.natcap.org/images/other/NCchapter1.pdf, accessed 7/28/03
Following Einsteins dictum that problems cant be solved within the mind-set that
created them, the first step toward any comprehensive economic and ecological change
is to understand the mental model that forms the basis of present economic thinking. The
mind-set of the present capitalist system might be summarized as follows: . Economic progress can best occur in
free-market systems of production and distribution where reinvested profits make labor and capital increasingly
productive. . Competitive advantage is gained when bigger, more efficient plants manufacture more products for
sale to expanding markets. . Growth in total output (GDP) maximizes human well-being. . Any resource
shortages that do occur will elicit the development of substitutes. . Concerns for a healthy environment are
important but must be balanced against the requirements of economic growth, if a high standard of living is to be
maintained. . Free enterprise and market forces will allocate people and resources to their highest and best uses.
The origins of this worldview go back centuries, but it took the industrial revolution to establish it as the primary
economic ideology. This sudden, almost violent, change in the means of production and distribution of goods, in
sector after economic sector, introduced a new element that redefined the basic formula for the creation of
material products: Machines powered by water, wood, charcoal, coal, oil, and eventually electricity accelerated
or accomplished some or all of the work formerly performed by laborers. Human productive capabilities began
to grow exponentially.What took two hundred workers in 1770 could be done by a single spinner in the British
textile industry by 1812. With such astonishingly improved productivity, the labor force was able to manufacture
a vastly larger volume of basic necessities like cloth at greatly reduced cost. This in turn rapidly raised standards
of living and real wages, increasing demand for other products in other industries. Further technological

breakthroughs proliferated, and as industry after industry became mechanized, leading

to even lower prices and higher incomes, all of these factors fueled a self-sustaining and
increasing demand for transportation, housing, education, clothing, and other goods,
creating the foundation of modern commerce.7 The past two hundred years of massive
growth in prosperity and manufactured capital have been accompanied by a prodigious body of
economic theory analyzing it, all based on the fallacy that natural and human capital have
little value as compared to final output. In the standard industrial model, the creation of value is
portrayed as a linear sequence of extraction, production, and distribution: Raw
materials are introduced. (Enter nature, stage left.) Labor uses technologies to transform these
resources into products, which are sold to create profits. The wastes from production processes,
and soon the products themselves, are somehow disposed of somewhere else. (Exit waste, stage right.)
The somewheres in this scenario are not the concern of classical economics: Enough
money can buy enough resources, so the theory goes, and enough elsewheres to
dispose of them afterward. This conventional view of value creation is not without its critics. Viewing
the economic process as a disembodied, circular flow of value between production and
consumption, argues economist Herman Daly, is like trying to understand an animal only in

terms of its circulatory system, without taking into account the fact it also has a digestive
tract that ties it firmly to its environment at both ends. But there is an even more
fundamental critique to be applied here, and it is one based on simple logic. The evidence of our
senses is sufficient to tell us that all economic activityall that human beings are, all that they can
ever accomplishis embedded within the workings of a particular planet. That planet is not
growing, so the somewheres and elsewheres are always with us. The increasing removal
of resources, their transport and use, and their replacement with waste steadily erodes
our stock of natural capital.
We have to always look to protecting natural capital, and in turn protecting the environment,
because of our dwindling resources and the exponential decay of our natural capital. In order to
truly create a sustainable society, we have to look to protecting our environment first.

Contention 2: Natural Capital is key to economic

sustainability
The economy can only be sustained by investing in natural capital
Paul Hawken 3, business leader, environmentalist, and author, Amory Lovins, and Hunter
Lovins, Co-founders of Rocky Mountain Institute a nonprofit natural-resource think tank, 1999,
Natural Capitalism, http://www.natcap.org/images/other/NCchapter1.pdf, accessed 7/28/03
When a manufacturer realizes that a supplier of key components is overextended and
running behind on deliveries, it takes immediate action lest its own production lines come to
a halt. Living systems are a supplier of key components for the life of the planet, and
they are now falling behind on their orders. Until recently, business could ignore such
shortages because they didnt affect production and didnt increase costs. That situation
may be changing, however, as rising weather related claims come to burden insurance
companies and world agriculture. (In 1998, violent weather caused upward of $90 billion worth of
damage worldwide, a figure that represented more weather-related losses than were accounted for through the
entire decade of the 1980s. The losses were greatly compounded by deforestation and climate
change, factors that increase the frequency and severity of disasters. In human terms, 300
million people were permanently or temporarily displaced from their homes; this figure includes the dislocations
caused by Hurricane Mitch, the deadliest Atlantic storm in two centuries.)25 If the flow of services from

industrial systems is to be sustained or increased in the future for a growing population,

the vital flow of life-supporting services from living systems will have to be maintained
and increased. For this to be possible will require investments in natural capital.
Protecting natural capital and the environment needs to be prioritized in order for businesses and
resource extraction to continue. If we prioritize resource extraction, well always be stuck in a
mindset of protecting the environment after we destroy it, which then justifies abuse of the
environment and natural capital.

Contention 3: Impacts
An excess of human capital with a lack of natural capital means that there is
an urgent need to drastically increase efficiency or else undermine the earths
web of life
Paul Hawken 4, business leader, environmentalist, and author, Amory Lovins, and Hunter
Lovins, Co-founders of Rocky Mountain Institute a nonprofit natural-resource think tank, 1999,
http://www.natcap.org/images/other/NCchapter1.pdf, accessed 7/28/03
With nearly ten thousand new people arriving on earth every hour, a new and unfamiliar pattern of scarcity
is now emerging. At the beginning of the industrial revolution, labor was overworked and relatively scarce
(the population was about one-tenth of current totals), while global stocks of natural capital were abundant and
unexploited. But today the situation has been reversed: After two centuries of rises in labor

productivity, the liquidation of natural resources at their extraction cost rather than
their replacement value, and the exploitation of living systems as if they were free,
infinite, and in perpetual renewal, it is people who have become an abundant resource,
while nature is becoming disturbingly scarce. Applying the same economic logic that drove the
industrial revolution to this newly emerging pattern of scarcity implies that, if there is to be prosperity in
the future, society must make its use of resources vastly more productivederiving four,
ten, or even a hundred times as much benefit from each unit of energy, water, materials, or
anything else borrowed from the planet and consumed. Achieving this degree of
efficiency may not be as difficult as it might seem because from a materials and energy
perspective, the economy is massively inefficient. In the United States, the materials used by the
metabolism of industry amount to more than twenty times every citizens weight per day more than one
million pounds per American per year. The global flow of matter, some 500 billion tons per year, most

of it wasted, is largely invisible. Yet obtaining, moving, using, and disposing of it is

steadily undermining the health of the planet, which is showing ever greater signs of
stress, even of biological breakdown. Human beings already use over half the worlds accessible surface
freshwater, have transformed one-third to one-half of its land surface, fix more nitrogen than do all natural
systems on land, and appropriate more than two-fifths of the planets entire land-based primary biological
productivity.8 The doubling of these burdens with rising population will displace many of

the millions of other species, undermining the very web of life.

And

Biosphere depletion is having a significant effect on the oceans and coral reefs,
threatening the ability to sustain lifethe threshold to act is rapidly closing
Paul Hawken 5, business leader, environmentalist, and author, Amory Lovins, and Hunter
Lovins, Co-founders of Rocky Mountain Institute a nonprofit natural-resource think tank, 1999,
http://www.natcap.org/images/other/NCchapter1.pdf, accessed 7/28/03
Besides climate, the changes in the biosphere are widespread. In the past half century, the world
has a lost a fourth of its topsoil and a third of its forest cover. At present rates of destruction, we
will lose 70 percent of the worlds coral reefs in our lifetime, host to 25 percent of marine
life.3 In the past three decades, one-third of the planets resources, its natural wealth,

has been consumed. We are losing freshwater ecosystems at the rate of 6 percent a year, marine
ecosystems by 4 percent a year.4 There is no longer any serious scientific dispute that the
decline in every living system in the world is reaching such levels that an increasing
number of them are starting to lose, often at a pace accelerated by the interactions of
their decline, their assured ability to sustain the continuity of the life process. We have
reached an extraordinary threshold.