TPP would be a raw deal for the climate

Common Dreams - The TransPacific Partnership is a "polluter-friendly" deal that "poses a panoply of threats to our climate and environment," a new report from the Sierra Club finds.

Released as the United Nations COP21 climate summit in Paris is underway, A Dirty Deal: How the Trans-Pacific Partnership Threatens Our Climate details how the TPP would erect barriers to a needed clean energy transition while bolstering corporate power and interests.

While the final text of the deal that includes the U.S. and 11 Pacific Rim nations was released last month, the environmental organization describes its report as "the first comprehensive review of the TPP’s climate implications."

"After years of extraordinary secrecy," the report states, "it’s finally clear what TPP negotiators were trying to hide: The TPP is a raw deal for communities and our climate."

With the words "climate change" entirely absent from the 6,000-page deal, it offers "a clear sign it is not 'a 21st-century trade agreement.'" Not only would the deal not address climate change—it would actually make it worse, the publication states.

The group's analysis finds that, if approved, the TPP would: empower fossil fuel corporations to attack climate policies in private tribunals; lock in dirty fossil fuel production by expediting natural gas exports; increase climate-disrupting emissions by shifting U.S. manufacturing overseas; and impose new limits on government efforts to combat climate disruption.