Writing for Beans

Twenty years ago, shayd and I embarked on a new (to us) scholastic endeavor.  Debate.  Oh, we'd been arguing with each other for years.  And, well, ehem, that hasn't really stopped yet.  But senior year, we got a new principal at BHS.  That principal had previously been a debate coach at other schools.  When a classmate (Mary I believe) inquired about forming a team, he sprang into action.   Scott and I were soon recruited.

This, would be Policy debate--as opposed to Lincoln-Douglas debate, something we'd learn about some time later--a form of debate where one side comes up with a plan, and the other side tries to knock it down.  

My vague recollection of that year's resolution was:  Resolve that the US Government should implement a plan to increase the political stability in Latin America.  Then of course, you detail your plan.

At the time, my school joined some weird North Jersey Debate league (as opposed to the NFL, or National Forensic League).   Why was it weird?  Because the league didn't hire judges.  They had students judge.  What that meant was, you would interrupt the school day, and a class of kids would sit and watch you debate.   After my college days as an actual NFL judge, it is so obvious how ludicrous it was to inflict that nonsense on a bunch of kids who really wanted nothing to do with listening to four brainy lawyerish wannabe's hash out at high velocity the intricacies of policy debate.  (Or BSing at as high speed you could manage.)

My partner in crime and I came up with what could be viewed as a "squirrel case."  A case that was far off the beaten track, in which we could become deep "experts" in, and other debaters would have almost no way of disputing, because they certainly wouldn't have the citations to counter our claims.   Our plan?  To combat deforestation in Latin America.   Why?  Because deforestation would lead to the depletion of the ozone layer, which would rapidly transform our Earth into a runaway greenhouse eventually leading to a world something akin to Venus.  Almost no one had any kind of proof to counter our facts as they were.  

Huge tracts of land were being deforested every year, land masses that were larger than our entire home state of New Jersey.   These people were clearing the forest with the worst possible form of destruction, slash and burn, which would release tons of soot and carbon particulates into the air to aid in a runaway greenhouse scenario.  The loss of plant life reduced something known as evapotranspiration, which meant that water was not getting back up into the atmosphere at the same rate.  Thereby reducing the amount of vapor available for rainfall.   When the rain stops falling on rain forest, it stops being a rain forest.  When rain stops falling elsewhere, it begins desertification.  Further, the primary reason, our research said, for all this massive deforestation was for raising cattle.  Apparently, clearing rain forest in this fashion doesn't provide the best soil for long term farming, even for something as simple as pasture land, and so the farmers need to keep clearing new land, for more grazing territory.   And what was worse of all...cows created methane gas, which was released into the atmosphere.  They did so by two rather standard methods, belching and farting.  We had irrefutable proof in black and white, a quote that I don't believe was ever disproved over the course of the debate season.   "Methane was the Primary Chemical Precursor to the destruction of the ozone layer."  (Okay, that's probably not an exact quote, but darn close.  It has been twenty years after all.)

All the other plans, somehow devolved into an argument that if you didn't go along with their ideas, it would lead to nuclear war.  Nuclear war, nuclear war.  Now, those folks older than me, probably considered that bugaboo about the most terrifying possibility.  When I was young, it was talked about too.  But somehow, in the last days of Reagan's presidency, the idea that anyone would actually go through with it when there was Mutually Assured Destruction, seemed rather ludicrous.  Some days, I still think that.  Others, I think all it takes is one nutcase with a bomb to start a whole heap of trouble.  But it seemed far fetched, and because that scenario was popular, we had plenty of counter arguments that didn't rely on my hunches.  I had the hunches of lots of high level policy thinkers, people who put those opinions in print, and that you could use in your arguments, because after all, to some degree or other, it's just my quotes versus your quotes, and then its how persuasive a speaker I am. 

Yet, Scott and I knew our case was on the face of things ludicrous.  Stop deforestation.  Plant more trees.  Encourage more sustainable farming practices.  Subsidize our own beef markets to keep the prices of local beef cheap enough that it would discourage the deforestation.   Come up with bans on slash and burn farming.  All kinds of stuff.  But it was out there, even for us.  It was, dare I say it, even more leftward leaning than either of us were at the time. It was intentionally out there, because we wanted to be provocative and off the wall.  

What strikes me odd, twenty years later, is that our wacky, off-the-wall scenario seems so much more plausible than all the others combined.  What strikes me as stranger yet, is that two high school kids were able to pick up on all those possibilities--the dangerous future that might yet still be.  Twenty years later, its on the news all the time.   Even the bit about the cows belching and farting have made their way onto TV (I saw it not long ago on Bill Maher!)  This is why I don't get it when people try to argue about the whole global warming issue.  This isn't new.  This is old.  It wasn't exactly new when I first learned about it twenty years ago, or else it wouldn't have been getting mentioned in articles in Time, and the NY Times, and Newsweek, etc.   

I used to think Montreal was too cold a place to live.  Perhaps I just have to wait a few more decades, and it'll feel like Jersey.  Just with French accents instead of Italian.