A Taxing Topic: Introducing the February 2016 NSDA PF Topic

The February 2016 NSDA Public Forum topic reads "Resolved: The United States federal government should adopt a carbon tax." This topic is an interest, economics-heavy topic that will introduce debaters to the complicated world of energy policy. Precisely because so much rides on the energy future of the United States, there is a rich and diverse literature discussing the wisdom (and perhaps the lack thereof) of carbon taxes. This Article will introduce the topic by offering a global overview of advice, then focusing on a clause I think most debaters will neglect: the actor clause.

Global Overview

I have three core pieces of advice to offer debaters on this topic: avoid statistics spew, be simple, and remember the two focal points of the debate. The former two pieces of advice are stylistic, while the latter deals with the substantive burdens involved in proving the topic true or false.

The first piece of advice I have deals with the evidence debaters are likely to cite to prove the topic. Plenty of studies have been conducted on the economic and environmental impact of carbon taxes, and debaters will inevitably cite these studies to support their arguments. This is undoubtedly a good thing; evidence-based argumentation is educational, and leads debaters to become literate in the concepts discussed in the literature. However, there is an unfortunate trend in Public Forum of reducing arguments to statistics. I have judged countless rounds where smart students give rebuttals that are essentially rote recitations of economic studies. These debaters list study after (sometimes contradictory) study, as if a larger quantity of studies is the deciding factor for judges.

The problem with such an approach is not the mere citation to empirical studies. Instead, the problem is the reliance on such studies to the exclusion of other analysis or argumentation. Since the topic already lends itself to heavy citation to studies, it will likely exacerbate the troubling trend of substituting evidence for argument. Debaters who are conscious of that risk and avoid it by supplementing their evidence with analysis are likely to be the most successful.

The second piece of advice deals with the way debaters present evidence and arguments. Undoubtedly, carbon taxes involve complicated economic concepts that may take debaters - who have an enormous amount of motivation to understand them - time to digest. Parent (and even flow) judges who are exhausted at the end of a tournament may not have the same level of motivation or enthusiasm to understand dry, complex, or boring-but-true arguments. That is especially true when both teams ultimately impact to economics (or where both rely on economics internal links to some other impact). Debaters who succeed on this topic will make their arguments simple, and combine them with a persuasive narrative.

Decision fatigue^[1] is a phenomena where progressively making more and more decisions - even related decisions - leaves the deciding judge less and less mental space to make new decisions. Ironically, this means the latest elimination rounds receive proportionately less qualified judges,^[2] because even excellent judges who have judged repeatedly are not at the top of their judging game. Decision fatigue combined with a topic that might make for preternaturally bored, exhausted, or tired judges means that debaters who are both well-researched and engaging are going to be the most successful.

The final piece of advice deals with the burden the affirmative must meet. The topic has two major loci for clash - the action (carbon taxes) and the actor (the federal government). If the affirmative fails to prove both, then they lose. For example, if the affirmative proves that carbon taxes are a good idea, but the negative proves that they should be implemented in a decentralized or customized fashion by individual states, then the affirmative loses. Similarly, if the affirmative proves that the federal government should take the lead on addressing the energy crisis, but fails to prove that carbon taxes are the best way to do so, then the affirmative loses. Negative teams can strategically pick one locus of debate and focus especially on that one, because the affirmative constructive has to defend both and thus cover each individual point to a lesser degree.^[3] To do so, negatives should write (at least) two categories of case: cases focusing on carbon taxes, and cases focusing on the federal government. I do not recommend arguing both issues in any given case (though perhaps it might be appropriate to in rebuttals, depending on the way the round develops), because doing so cedes the strategic advantage the negative has on this topic: issue specific time allocation. If an affirmative reads a four minute case, with two minutes of justifications for carbon taxes and two minutes of justifications for the federal government, a negative that reads a case spending four minutes criticizing the federal government as an actor has gained a net two-minutes of time on an issue that is independently fatal to the affirmative.

With those global observations in mind, this Article will now examine the different phrases in the resolution and offer strategic advice on defending or attacking each phrase.

Whither the Federal Government?

The United States federal government has been the actor in every high school and college policy debate topic for the past several decades, including the 2009 high school policy topic that dealt with alternative energy incentives. I mention that as a preliminary matter because teams with access to alternative energy backfiles can find evidence on carbon taxes (and defenses / attacks on the federal government as a specific actor) produced by some of the smartest minds in debate. For debaters who do not have access to the 2009 files specifically, the open evidence project^[4] has generic criticisms of the federal government that teams can use as a starting point for case work.

There are two common justifications for the federal government acting as opposed to other actors (such as the individual states or just one branch of the federal government as opposed to the entire federal government). The first is coordination, and the second is perception. The former argument suggests that when any actor with a reach smaller than the federal government acts, the result is a patchwork of confusing, potentially contradictory regulations that discourage business growth and investment (and potentially lead to costly litigation). If a company must pay 10 dollars per ton of carbon in Maine, but 50 dollars per ton of carbon in Florida, the businesses in Florida are going to suffer a disadvantage unrelated to their actual competitiveness relative to the businesses in Maine. Some places - such as southern areas that still resist the concept of global warming - might not implement carbon taxes at all. For companies that do business in multiple states, the cost of juggling different forms of compliance is likely prohibitive.

A federal carbon tax avoids that problem by insisting on uniformity - or at least, a uniform base. For example, the federal minimum wage is $7.25 and while states may exceed that (a state minimum wage of 8 dollars is permissible), they may not go below it (a 6 dollar minimum wage is not). A guaranteed carbon tax prevents drastic disparities (e.g. "no carbon tax" versus "yes carbon tax") even if it permits of mild differences (e.g. carbon tax and slightly higher carbon tax) - and it may not even permit differences (federal patent law pre-empts any state patent law, for example).^[5] That likely destabilizes the economy less by introducing an even - or relatively even - change across industries and markets.

A second justification for federal action deals with the perception of government action by actors abroad. Foreign nations likely watch the actions of the U.S. Congress, but likely do not watch the actions of any individual state legislature. So if France - or China - are waiting on U.S. action before they take action, action by state legislatures is relatively less likely to spur bandwagoning than a single, unified action by the federal government. On issues that are transnational in nature - such as global warming, energy prices, and energy supply - international coordination is especially important. One of the biggest obstacles to political action on global warming is the question of who goes first - which state incurs the potential disadvantages and difficulties with reducing emissions first? If the United States were to take the lead - a concept often termed "climate leadership" in the literature^[6] - then it is likely that other nations would follow. That lead must be public and conspicuous, however, to spur action - and individual, uncoordinated state action is neither especially public nor especially conspicuous to the leaders of foreign countries who have their own domestic concerns. For those of you who have a general awareness of Chinese politics and leadership, how many can name a local energy policy specific to Guangdong? Sichuan? Jiangsu?^[7] Nobody?

Even those with relatively substantial knowledge of foreign affairs are unlikely to pay attention to local policy actions because there are simply too many minute details. While macro-level policies at the federal level (what you may recognize as a headline beginning with "China changes policy on _____") are easily perceived because they are both more significant and more limited in number, local domestic policies simply fall below the radar for most people abroad.

Combating federal government key warrants?

Debaters who wish to advocate against federal action can emphasize the value and significance of decentralization and flexibility.^[8] Flexibility arguments function as an impact turn to uniformity arguments because they suggest uniform, one-size-fits-all policies are actually less predictable and less valuable than customized, specific local policies. The amount of money flowing through businesses in New York is massively different than the amount of money flowing through businesses in rural Montana, in part because cost of living and population differences mean there are different local requirements for profitability and sustainability. A federal carbon tax strong enough to incentivize New York businesses to change might be so strong that it sinks businesses in Montana. And a federal carbon tax soft enough to leave rural Montana businesses safe and sound is likely to be easily brushed off big capital businesses in New York markets.

Instead of federally set carbon taxes, individual states and municipalities should be given the opportunity to set locally appropriate carbon taxes (or to take other locally appropriate policies - perhaps, for example, a carbon tax in not as effective as a tax credit in places that already have high tax burdens).

That solvency argument - that local policies are key - can then be weighed against any perception based offense from the affirmative's case while simultaneously being used as a takeout to the perception arguments. If a federal carbon tax is destined to fail spectacularly because of its lack of customization, there is no real example for China and other big emitters to follow. If anything, such a massive failure might be used by foreign leaders as a justification for delaying action on global warming.^[9] Thus, the solvency argument takes out perception (perceiving a failure is bad) and is likely outweighed by the risk of the negative's solvency offence (better to actually solve domestic emissions and thus solve global warming than be perceived as a global do-gooder).

Conclusion

February is always a fun topic because February is home to some of the numerically biggest tournaments of the year - Harvard, for example, has consistently broken to triple octofinals (when unencumbered by inclement weather) because of the massive size of their field. Thus, as a numerical matter, debaters are likely to encounter more creativity than they would in other months. I hope this Article inspires some debaters to take creative case approaches!

---

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/21/magazine/do-you-suffer-from-decision-fatigue.html

[2] This, of course, assumes that the judges in late elimination rounds have judged throughout the tournament, instead of being saved for specific rounds.

[3] Affirmatives who do not cover both points expose an immediate and substantial vulnerability; for example, an affirmative who only defends carbon taxes abstractly and without reference to the federal government should trigger a negative team to read a federal government specific negative case, rather than reading a negative case focused on carbon taxes.

[4] http://www.debatecoaches.org/resources/open-evidence-project/

[5]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_preemption

[6] Protip: scholars who write awesome impact cards use this term.

[7] Guangdon, Sichuan, and Jiangsu are all Provinces in China, which are the functional equivalent of states in the U.S.

[8] Both of those are keywords likely to turn up cards in the literature.

[9] "We shouldn't act on global warming; look how big a failure it was when you did!"