ericgrimsrud

President Obama has recently been doing his best to get The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) approved by the US Congress.  The members of this international trade agreement would include Australia,  Brunei,  Canada,  Chile,  Japan,  Malaysia,  Mexico,  New Zealand,  Peru,  Singapore,  United States,  Vietnam, and potentially China.

This agreement has been strongly opposed especially by Democrats for very real and defensible reasons – the main one being that it might lead to fewer jobs and lower wages for American workers.  Nevertheless, I favor these types of trade agreements if they could help the entire world address its greatest common problem – the relentless advance of global warming.  As many US critics of forceful action against climate change say “sure we should address climate change, but what about China and the rest of the world?” Indeed, what about them and how can we induce them to also take forceful action?  I think the best answer to that question is to create international financial relationships that put us all in the same boat as much as possible.  This will tend to happen as we all increasingly become part of a shared economic system in which many countries are bound together by tariff-reduced trade relations.  Such agreements will drastically increase the understanding of the inner workings and problems of other member nations and could facilitate solutions to global environmental problems.  And to be more specific, perhaps the only viable solution to the world’s greenhouse gas problem is to install a world-wide carbon tax on the combustion of fossil fuels that gradually becomes stiff enough to cause CO2 emissions to fall to near zero levels within the next couple decades.  If an international group as large as the TPP along with our European allies could accomplish this feat and then charge carbon import duties on goods from non-complying countries, all countries of the world would very likely invoke similar carbon taxes for fossil fuel use.

If, on the other hand, the proposed trade relationships did not include tough measures for reducing global CO2 emissions and combating climate change, I would then be against joining it at the very onset. A free-trade agreement of that type is sure to worsen our climate change problem – as Naomi Cline has clearly explains in her most recent book, “This Changes Everything”.

Another common criticism of the TPP heard especially within the USA is that other countries would then have a greater voice in determining what happens in the USA.  This, I think, is true but also necessary.  We now know very well that the Earth is physically much too small as to allow its many individual countries to do their own thing without regard to impacts on the entire globe.  We all share the same environment and that is literally true with respect to our atmosphere and oceans.  And it is the perturbations of these two entities that are causing our greatest environmental problems – that is, the increasing greenhouse effect of our atmosphere and the increasing acidity in our oceans.

Whether referring to individual human beings or to the only planet we have, if you don’t have your health, you don’t have anything.  While I agree that the TPP might cause some problems for Americans, my take is that we must do what we have to do for planetary survival while also helping those negatively affected by that process. So while I have the greatest respect and admiration for Democratic leader, Elizabeth Warren, on this issue I side with President Obama, who undoubtedly knows what I have said here but for political reasons is hesitant to use the argument. As discussions of the TPP goes forward, note the extent to which forceful action against man-caused global warming is included as component of it.  If that component is strong, the TPP should be supported.