Above Photo: From foe.org
Today, June 29, Friends of the Earth, Sierra Club, Food and Water Watch and other environmental advocates delivered more than 500,000 petitions to Congress demanding the rejection of a Trans Pacific Partnership trade deal that promises to ramp up fossil fuel exports, accelerate climate change and encourage deregulation of environmental safeguards across the board.
Among other anti-environment provisions, the Trans Pacific Partnership would offer thousands of new foreign firms virtually the same broad rights included in NAFTA and similar deals that have resulted in an explosion lawsuits before private tribunals successfully challenging safeguards for our air, water and climate.
For example, TransCanada has filed a NAFTA suit, using virtually the same rules included in the TPP, to demand that U.S. taxpayers pay the pipeline company over $15 billion because of the U.S. rejection of the Canadian firm’s environmentally dangerous Keystone XL Pipeline.
Ironically, President Obama is meeting today in Ottawa with NAFTA and TPP partners, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada and Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto, for a North American Leaders’ Summit in Ottawa that allegedly will focus on the environment and trade policy.
Friends of the Earth trade analyst, Bill Waren highlighted the hypocrisy of the Ottawa summit in light of TransCanada’s NAFTA lawsuit on today’s nationally broadcast radio program Loud & Clear with Brian Becker. Listen to the full interview here and Bill’s segment begins at 31:27.