Tournament: Berkeley | Round: 1 | Opponent: All | Judge: All

Part One Is The Framework

The Online Etymology Dictionary says Should c.1200, from Old English sceolde, past tense of sceal (see shall). Preserves the original notion of "obligation" that has all but dropped from shall.

Thus, the resolution questions the obligations of developing countries- more specifically, their governments.

The standard is Net Benefits
Governments must look to net benefits for three reasons:

1. Utilitarianism is the only calculus available to policy makers

Goodin ’95 
Consider, first, the argument from necessity. Public officials are obliged to make
AND
want to use it at all – to chose general rules or conduct.

Regardless of any other obligations, government officials can only act on util. Thus, util trumps all moral and ethical theories.

2. Governments have no act omission distinction because they regulate and prohibit private action

Sunstein and Vermeule ’06  
In our view, any effort to distinguish between acts and omissions goes wrong by
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action, it is not omitting to do anything or refusing to act.

3. Governments must protect the wellbeing of their citizens 
Keenan 08 
Although the bases for arguing that states owe their citizens something (i.e
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perquisites of sovereignty, statehood comes with a set of obligations or burdens.
…The 1933 Montevideo Convention formalized a definition of statehood that continues to define what
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the apparatus that matters; what matters most is that the apparatus exists.

Additionally,
Extinction precedes ethics because existential risk threatens future value. Bostrom ’05
Our present understanding of axiology might well be confused. We may not now know
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of value. To do this, we must prevent any existential catastrophe.

This means that even if the round is evaluated based on an ethical theory that the neg runs, we default to preventing extinction first. 

Part Two is the Plan

A is the Inherency

The Ecuador National Congress recently opened the ITT oil block to drilling, endangering the Yasuni National Park

Alvarez ’14
Environmental activists called on Ecuador’s President Rafael Correa to abandon plans to develop the Ishpingo
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ITT block are currently collecting signatures to request a national referendum on drilling.

B. Thus the plantext: Ecuador will ban further oil drilling within the Yasuni National Park, adjacent intact forest, and the adjacent Waorani ethnic reserve.
I reserve the right to clarify. 

C is the Advantages

Advantage one is biodiversity

The northwestern Amazon is uniquely key to protecting biodiversity

Bass et al ’10
Yasun?´ National Park is one of the most biodiverse places on Earth, whether
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would be needed between Yasun?´ and these parks to allow upslope migrations.

Amazonian biodiversity loss causes extinction by the end of the century assuming famine doesn’t lead to thermonuclear war even earlier.

Takacs ’96
So biodiversity keeps the world running. It has value and of itself, as
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end of the next century - not with a bang but a whimper.

Advantage two is disease

A. Amazon deforestation leads to the release of infectious diseases, empirically verified by multiple studies

Foley et al ’07
Some of the world’s most serious infectious diseases, including malaria, dengue, Leishmaniasis
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-related ecosystem services to the region (Patz et al. 2005).

B. Amazon biodiversity is key to medicine

D is Solvency

Oil extraction in the Yasuni and surrounding areas causes deforestation and threatens biodiversity

Bass 2
Explicit in the messaging of the Yasun?´-ITT Initiative was the recognition of the
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to one of the most intact portions of the Ecuadorian Amazon ~13~.