by Michael Brune
Judging by the lessons learned from the North American Free Trade Agreement, the Trans-Pacific Partnership would result in lost jobs, increased inequality and environmental degradation. A lesser-known consequence of the pact, however, is its potential to open the floodgates for dangerous fracking in our country. The TPP would require the U.S. Department of Energy to automatically approve all natural gas exports to other countries in the pact, including Japan - the world's largest importer of natural gas - regardless of the harm of fracking causes to American families and neighborhoods.
What are the costs of unchecked natural gas exports? First, to meet foreign demand, the United States would have to do even more fracking—a dangerous practice that pumps undisclosed toxic chemicals into our sources of drinking water, pollutes our air and threatens the health of our families, our communities and our climate.
Moreover, unfettered exports of natural gas would prolong the world’s reliance on dirty fuels and deepen our climate crisis, taking us back toward the Stone Age instead of forward to a clean energy economy. The TPP is the wrong direction for our energy future and for protecting our planet. What we need is a new model of trade that truly reflects the urgency of the climate crisis.
Michael Brune is executive director of the Sierra Club.