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• Capital Punishment - Is the death penalty ever justified?
• Abortion - Should abortions of any kind be permitted?
• Same sex marriage - Is same sex marriage wrong and should it be illegal?
• Withdrawing from Iraq - Should the US Government immediately withdraw troops from Iraq?
• McCain vs. Obama - Who is the better candidate for president of the United States, John McCain or Barack Obama?
• Tibet independence - Should Tibet seek and gain independence?
• Animal testing - Is it morally acceptable to experiment on animals for human purposes?
• Guantanamo Bay - Is Guantanamo Bay's existence justified, or should it be closed?
• Prostitution - Should prostitution be legalized?
• Nuclear energy - Is nuclear energy worth exploiting?
• Euthanasia - Should euthanasia or assisted suicide be legalized?
• Marijuana, Legalization of - Should marijuana be legalized?
• Polygamy - Should polygamous marriages (to more than one person) be legal?
• Turkey, EU membership - Should Turkey be given membership in the EU?
• Vegetarianism - Should humans stop eating animals and become vegetarians?
• Banning Human Reproductive Cloning - Should human reproductive cloning be banned and punishments put in place against it?
• Banning Muslim head scarves - Should the wearing of Muslim head scarves be banned in schools, public buildings or society in general?

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A daily supply of high quality debates to help you deliberate, take a stand, take action, and back yourself up.

• Solar energy What are the pros and cons of solar energy? Should governments prioritize it? - Posted August 18th, 2008.

Featured argument from today's Daily Debate:

• Solar energy requires too much land, damaging the environment The sun light and its energy hits the earth's surface in a diffuse manner. In other words, in a square meter on Earth's surface, not much sunlight hits the earth's surface. This means that, in order to gather any relevant amount of sun energy, a significant swath of territory must be covered by solar panels. This makes solar energy land-intensive, which creates pressures to clear lands for solar panels. This creates the prospect that trees will be cut-down to create room for solar panels or to reduce shade in certain areas (particularly urban areas) so that solar panels receive more light. Trees are important carbon-sinks, taking carbon dioxide (a greenhouse atmosphere) out of the atmosphere in the process of photosynthesis. For this reason, they are important in the fight against global warming. By having the unintended consequence of clearing trees, therefore, solar energy may have a harmful impact on global warming.

Recent Daily Debate Digest Topics:

• South Ossetia independence - Should South Ossetia be independent? Should states recognize it? - Posted August 15th, 2008.
• Russian vs. Georgian justifications in 2008 South Ossetia war - Were Russia or Georgia's actions in the 2008 South Ossetia war legitimate? - Posted August 13th, 2008.
• Falkland Islands, return of - Should the United Kingdom return the Falkland Islands to Argentina? - Posted August 6th, 2008.
• Obama, meeting with hostile foreign leaders without preconditions - Is Barack Obama justified in his willingness to talk to hostile leaders without preconditions? - Posted July 27th, 2008.
• EU constitution reform treaty (Lisbon Treaty) - Is the EU Constitution reform treaty a good idea? - Posted July 25th, 2008.
• US offshore oil drilling ban - Is the US offshore oil drilling ban justified, or should it be lifted? - Posted July 24th, 2008.

Past Daily Debate Digest topics

Here's a list of debates with tasks you can help with. See the getting started tutorial to learn more about how to edit.

• NATO membership for Georgia - Another new debate with very little content.
• Banning mercenary military contractors in Iraqi - A new debate article.
• Year-round schooling - The first argument on this debate page, "summer learning loss", could be made into an argument page, and supporting articles and quotations could be presented in that page.
• Presidential pardons in the United States - New and needing of many developments.
• International trade reduces conflict - New and needing of many developments.
• Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir as a war criminal - This article is brand new. It first needs a pro/con resources section. See the getting started tutorial.
• Single-Sex Schools - This article needs an expanded pro/con resources section.

• See Editing Tasks for more tasks that you can help with. And see the full list of underdeveloped debates on Debatepedia that you can help develop.

As a wiki like Wikipedia, Debatepedia's content is developed by you. We hope that you will join our active community of editors and help us in our mission to centralize debates and arguments from around the world into a single encyclopedia. Learn how to begin here.