The TPP Would Threaten our Environment

Today, after years of demanding trade transparency, one thing is clear: the Trans-Pacific Partnership threatens our families, our communities, our air, our water, and our clean energy economy.

The words “climate change” don’t even appear in the text. This is a dead giveaway that this isn’t the 21st-century trade deal we’ve been promised. This summer, Pope Francis shined a light on the moral obligation we all share to address the climate crisis that transcends borders and politics — and this international deal completely ignores this reality.

The deal is rife with polluter giveaways that would undermine decades of environmental progress, threaten our climate, and fail to adequately protect wildlife because big polluters helped write the deal.

The TPP would set us back, empowering fossil fuel corporations to challenge our environmental, public health and climate safeguards in unaccountable trade tribunals with the controversial investor-state dispute settlement system.

The TPP’s extraordinary rights for foreign corporations virtually replicate those in past pacts that have enabled more than 600 foreign investor challenges to the policies of more than 100 governments, including clean energy initiatives, bans or moratoriums on dangerous fossil fuel practices — undermining safeguards meant to protect the American people and our clean air and water, all at the expense of taxpayers.

The TPP would open the floodgates to fracking across the U.S. by requiring the Department of Energy to automatically approve all exports of natural gas to countries in the pact. We need to keep dirty fuels in the ground, not frack them and then send them around the world.

Many provisions in the deal’s environment chapter that are being touted by its proponents are in fact toothless. The rules on multilateral environmental treaties even fail to meet the minimum standards established in the “fast-track” law and in the May 2007 agreement between Congressional democrats and the George W. Bush administration.

And many of the conservation rules in the TPP can barely even be called rules. Rather than banning commercial whaling and shark fin trade — major issues in TPP countries like Japan and Singapore — the TPP merely suggests steps that countries should take. No one should expect poachers to stop their dangerous practices because of suggestions.

Rather than prohibiting trade in illegally taken timber and wildlife — major issues in TPP countries like Peru and Vietnam — the TPP only commits countries “to combat” such trade by, for example, “exchanging information and experiences.” In this case, the TPP would have nations trade anecdotes rather than implement real protections.

Any praise for the environmental benefits of the TPP should be taken with not just a grain but a pound of salt. History shows us that any conservation provisions outlined in trade deals are rarely — if ever — enforced. For example, Peru continues to engage in illegal logging and associated trade — without punishment — even though we have a trade deal with them aimed at stopping just that.

That’s not the model of trade we want to replicate. Our trade representatives can talk the talk, but they must also walk the walk and enforce environmental obligations in trade pacts. Instead, the TPP text makes it clear we’d just fall backwards.

The Sierra Club and our 2.4 million members and supporters have a clear message after seeing this text: Congress must stand up for American jobs, clean air and water, and a healthy climate and environment by rejecting the toxic Trans-Pacific Partnership.

To see the Sierra Club’s full analysis of the environment chapter, click here.