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2003-4 Ocean Policy Topic Guide

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Introduction

Traditionally, efforts to protect natural reduces and to reduce pollution have relied on command and control regulations to reduce pollution.  Command and control regulations are laws and regulations that articulate a specific prohibition or directly require industries and individuals to engage in certain practices.  Failure to comply usually results in a penalty, such as a fine or imprisonment.

Directives and punishments are not, however, the only means to get industries to reduce pollution and protect marine natural resources.  The other basic approach is to provide them with incentives and rewards. 

According to the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) report, U.S. EXPERIENCE WITH ECONOMIC INCENTIVES FOR PROTECTING THE ENVIRONMENT (1997), there are a number of different types of incentives that can be utilized.

1. Pollution charges, fees, and taxes.  Rather than levying a fine on companies that pollute, this approach simply charges companies a fee when they pollute.  This fee can take the form of a tax.  The more pollution, the greater the fee that companies have to pay.
   2. Deposit-refund systems,  This is the approach that you are probably the most familiar with.  When business use a resource they need to make a deposit. If they don’t return the resource to its original state (or close to it), they do not get their deposit back.
   3. Trading programs,  Trading programs are usually discussed in the context of climate control. In this system, industries are each allowed X units of pollution.  Those that don’t pollute, or pollute very little, can sell their units to other companies. 
   4. Subsidies for pollution control,  Under this approach, industries that reduce pollution are given financial subsidies to do so or financial rewards after the effect.
   5. Liability approaches.  Under this approach, industries that undertake efforts to reduce pollution are protected by liability laws in the event that they do.  For example, an oil company that undertakes serious efforts to reduce oil pollution may be immune, or partially immune, from a suit if an oil spill occurs. 
   6. Information disclosure,  This encourages industries to disclose times when they pollute in exchange for reduced prosecution.
   7. Voluntary programs. Voluntary programs simply ask industries to reduce pollution and/or protect marine natural resources in exchange for positive publicity.

A “voluntary” counterplan takes advantage of these approaches to encourage industries to protect marine natural resources rather than requiring them to do so. 

Counterplan Competition.

The counterplan claims its competition from the argument that “protection” requires that affirmative to adopt command and control regulations that literally will protect marine natural resources.  In some debates, the negative will need to win that the affirmative plan uses these command and control regulations and/or that they need to use them to be topical. In this instance, evidence is included that the LOS treaty requires parties to adopt these regulations.

The negative will argue that these approaches are net-beneficial relative to the affirmative plan because business oppose regulations (Business Confidence) and because command and control regulations often increase pollution due to their inefficiency and problems caused by technology lock-in.

Winning the Counterplan

To win the counterplan, the negative will need to win a number of arguments.

Competition.  The negative will need to win that the affirmative is a command and control regulation, that these command and control regulations are undesirable for reasons of business confidence or solvency are undesirable and that they are still undesirable even if combined with incentives (the permutation). There is some good evidence that trying to combine the two is bad because penalties discourage industry compliance, that the command and control regulations still cause technology lock-in, and the inflexible nature of regulations undermines the flexibility of voluntary approaches.

A specific mechanism.  The counterplan that is included here is relatively vague as to how it encourages industry to protect marine natural resources without actually requiring it to do so.  You may wish, however, to specify one of the particular mechanisms discussed above and defend its workability against a more general negative attack.

Solvency. The trick to winning this counterplan on the negative after you’ve established its competitiveness is to win that the counterplan solves as well as a direct mandate on businesses.  You shouldn’t have much trouble winning that it links less to the business confidence disadvantage and solvency turns, but you will need to direct substantial energy into winning that it solves as well as a direct mandate.

Defeating the Counterplan

Attack the competitiveness.  In order to effectively attack the competitiveness of the counterplan, you should try to avoid specifying how your plan is implemented since the competitiveness of the counterplan really stems from the implementation of the plan.  This may get you into trouble on “protect” topicality, but the negative may not ever run that argument and if they do you can always describe your plan as a command and control regulation in the 2AC!

Beyond fighting the negative on how your plan is implemented, you can also argue that it is net-beneficial to combine incentive-based approaches with command and control regulations.  There is some good evidence for this and there it is also logical to argue that if you provide incentives such as subsidies that the costs to industries will be substantially less.

Attack the solvency. Since solvency is the weakest part of the counterplan, the best way to attack the counterplan is to argue it doesn’t solve. There are no guarantees that industries will voluntarily comply or that even if a few do that will solve as well as all industries being required to comply.

Conclusion

Although this topic is about “ocean policy,” it is more largely really about environmental policy.  The ultimate question really isn’t should we protect our ocean marine natural resources but how should we protect those resources. This counterplan challenges the question that is more difficult to answer and thus puts the negative on more solid argumentative footing.

Study Questions

1.      Why does the counterplan have a lot of strategic utility?

2.      What are all of the possible net-benefits to the counterplan?

3.      What net-benefit do you think people will usually go for?

4.      Is it possible to have the courts rule on ridiculous grounds to implement the affirmative plan?

5.      List and explain four answers to a negative counterplan to implement your plan on ridiculous grounds.

6.      List and explain four answers to the “case and controversy” argument.

7.      Explain three disadvantages to the counterplan.  Write a one paragraph explanation of each.  You can use the essays in the disadvantage section if you think they will help you.

8.      Why will this counterplan apply to only a limited number of affirmatives?

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