Introduction to Debater's Corner
What exactly is this? Well, Debater's Corner is a place for me (and possibly guest columnists) to discuss issues that are common in both Lincoln Douglas and Cross Examination debate (I won't even bother with US parliamentary debate. It's a pastime, an outlet for debaters and Directors of Forensics who don't want to take the time to do research and get deep on issues.). Why? Because it's fun, or because it's often tough to find reasonable analysis that speaks in the same language that debaters do. I've been thinking of the possibility that a debater could stumble on to this page and wonder if there is an ethics issue for cutting evidence. It's definitely fine, for at least three reasons:
1. I am not associated, either formally or informally with any debate team or team member. In fact, I don't know a single active debater whether in college or high school. Thus, there is no risk that I will write cards to order.
2. I will never make up anything. Anything I write in here will be based on logic and analysis, and I will cite authors at least informally as I go along.
3. Hobbsblog II meets every test for a standard publication. I publish a daily edition, with occasional special and weekend editions, and I even have an ISSN pending. It counts as a journal. I remember not so long ago that cutting evidence out of web pages was controversial, which it now isn't. Why would cutting evidence from a web page that has self knowledge of the debate subculture be any different?
With no further ado, the first edition of Debater's corner; on the impact of Species Extinction.Species Extinction as it compares to Nuclear War
My background
The world of competitive debate has evolved (some would say devolved) in the last thirty years to a largely gamesplaying paradigm where the debated impacts are the near sole discussion as to which team wins any particular round. Now, some who are very involved in debate theory will quibble about the definitions of terms, such as "games playing," but the essential point is clear; the debaters in the round typically argue as to which side's plan (or Status Quo, if the negative provides no plan) best avoids real world impacts. I'll leave out the issue of in round impacts for the time being. In most cases, the terminal impact of any affirmative case or negative disadvantage to an affirmative case is war, and typically both sides attempt to claim that the war sparked by or avoided by the plan is a nuclear war. While in debate (1993-1997, for full disclosure) I played the same games, and argued for the same impacts as everyone else, to a point. On many occasions, however, I found myself arguing for a different valuative mechanism than the narrowly focused one so prevalant in cross examination debate; I tried arguing that the loss of biodiversity and species loss was an impact to be valued at or higher than the risk of a nuclear war. This didn't work very often, even though there are many fine authors that argue this directly in evidence. After a while, it became obvious to me that there is a serious mindset against fairly evaluating species impacts within debate rounds.Why Species Extinction Ought to be Valued Higher than Nuclear War
Biologists began recognizing the true impact of species loss as early as the mid 1980s:
In 1986 a group of nine leading American biologists warned that destruction of wildlife habitats and their genetic and species diversity was a threat to civilization "second only to thermonuclear war". The consequences are quite literally incalculable. Life on earth will, at best, take millions of years to
recover. It is now more than ten years later. We have had the Rio convention, yet the forest is burning 34% faster and the seas are being overfished. In the next 25 years, if we don't take decisive action the greatest species extinction for 200 million years will in all probability occur. An irreversible loss which will severely compromise both the future prospects of humanity and the future evolutionary potential of the biosphere, for which we will be condemmned by our descendents for untold centuries to come.
In such evidence, species loss is listed as less important only to "thermonuclear war," a common excuse heard from critics to rate the utterance "nuclear war" in a disadvantage as more important than the species loss impact on the case. Yet this evaluation misses several critical pieces of important analysis.
1. The phrase "thermonuclear war" as used above assumes a mutual exchange of Multiple Independently-targeted Re-entry Vehicle (MIRV) style ICBMS. In the mid eighties, people were still primarily worried about full nuclear extinction via Mutually Assured Destruction with the US and USSR. This will not happen. Most (I'd estimate 99%) nuclear war impacts in debate rounds are speciously linked to articles assuming one or two nuclear warheads in accidental launch or rogue state detonation. This doesn't outweigh species extinction, ever. For nuclear war to outweigh species extinction, a certain burden of proof must exist on those who claim nuclear war would happen. First, this nuclear war must be generalized over a large area or multiple continents. Second, this nuclear war must involve thermonuclear or large fission based bombs, not the relatively small Hiroshima style bombs that rogue states or other new nuclear powers would develop. Third, this nuclear war must have lasting, permanent impacts on the environment as a whole, not just on an ecologically barren megalopolis. This isn't to say the degree of human suffering wouldn't be immense, but it does point to a certain amount of temporal blindness; no single event of either magnitude can only be seen in its impact over a few short years. The bombing of Hiroshima was a truly godawful event; one of the most terrible things to ever befall humanity. But in terms of the planet, which will be more long remembered-this nuclear attack or an extinction event? The planet is under such grievous attack right now that the extinctions caused are comparable to ones only known from fossil records from millions and millions of years ago. Isn't it obvious that the loss of species are more important now than an isolated nuclear detonation, no matter how immense the loss of human life?
2. The level of certainty of impacts is almost never taken into account by critics when weighing these. Sometimes this is backed up by reference to the impact analysis of Daniel Fox, from his 1989 book (sorry, text not in front of me). This zero risk analysis, again assumes a cold war level of risk, in that nuclear war is an infinite impact. Yet, without the possibility of MAD, nuclear war becomes another disaster; locally catastrophic but not infinite. Since the risk isn't infinite, the certainty must be taken into account when evaluating impacts. To not consider the fact that ANY nuclear war impact in a debate round has almost zero risk is to not only commit a fallacy in one's thinking, it also betrays a bias on the part of the evaluator. Only in the solipsistic analysis of a short sighted human could a fraction of a percent of the total of humanity possibly outweigh an entire species' loss.
3. Valuing any risk of nuclear war above species loss highlights the shortsighted undervaluation of non human species. An inherent bias towards humanity is nearly (but not) inevitable in any interaction with members of our own species. I'm not an absolutist in my evaluation of life, and don't share the sentiments of the most hardline of animal rights activists, but it seems clear to me that on some level, life is life. Even the most anthropocentric utilitarians must concede that the advances in biology, specifically genetic engineering, have shown that the masses of unanalyzed genes representing our global biological heritage could have limitless potential in ameliorating diseases and the infirmaties of aging. On this basis alone, protection of non human species ought to be valued highly. If you accept the premise that these species have inherent value, however, that valuation must go up greatly. That being said, it's obvious that those who say that non human species don't have an inherent value betray a dangerous arrogance, one that can't help but blind those expounding it to the disastrous complications of this line of thought. Only by explicitly rejecting this type of thinking can we really bring our thinking to the point where true solutions can be discussed. It becomes the duty of all participants in a debate to base their analysis on morally responsible argumentation, which anthropocentrism definitively is not.
Obviously it's my position that species loss has been undervalued in a debate context. This problem is only partially the fault of the debaters, since those who have chosen to run cases devoted to species loss impacts have quickly learned that reversion to more "typical" case impacts are usually the best way to win. It's my suspicion that many critics are so used to evaluating nuclear war as the terminal impact to debate rounds that many have never adequately paid attention to evidence that contradicts this default position. Perhaps with a concerted effort to both advocate the cause of species and listen to evidence that challenges assumptions, the rhetoric in the world of debate can catch up to the reality of the world we live in.
posted by Nathan Hobbs Tuesday, February 13, 2001
