Fight climate change--stop the TPP

The United States and eleven other nations just finalized a massive new trade agreement called the Trans-Pacific Partnership or TPP. This deal is the latest and largest in a series of international agreements that have attacked working women and men, fueled mindless and carbon-intensive consumption, and prevented governments from enforcing their own laws to cut greenhouse gas emissions. It's now up to Congress to vote to stop the TPP.

Trade deals such as NAFTA and the TPP bestow corporations with outrageous new powers, including the right to directly challenge participating governments for enacting any measures that jeopardize their profits. These corporate grievances are heard by unelected, unaccountable trade tribunals—and as history has shown, the energy and mining giants will seize on them to try to gut all manner of environmental laws.

The expansion of such agreements has gone hand in hand with the accelerating rise in greenhouse gas emissions. In short, this corporate free trade model that the TPP represents isn't only destabilizing our economies—it's also a key reason why our governments have failed to come to grips with the climate crisis.

If President Obama and the U.S. Congress are going to be serious about climate change, they need to start by rejecting the TPP.