The whole
world is watching as world leaders from nearly every country across
the globe meet in Paris this week to set carbon emission reductions
targets to address global climate change.
Unfortunately
representatives of 50 of the same governments are also meeting this
week in Geneva to negotiate binding rules that will seriously
constrain countries' ability to meet those targets.
[...]
The TiSA is
modeled on the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) of the
WTO, which Naomi Klein has documented in her book, This Changes
Everything, has been used extensively against environmental policies.
Yet the point of the TiSA is to go further than the GATS because
corporations see the existing rules as not "ambitious enough."
The financial services, logistics and technological corporations,
largely in the United States and also the EU, are attempting to
expand the WTO's GATS to develop a set of deregulation and
privatization rules that constrain public oversight of how services
operate domestically and globally, setting aside environmental,
labor, and development issues in favor of transnational corporate
rights to operate and profit.
Fortunately,
Wikileaks has come again to the rescue. Today they are publishing
analysis and secret, leaked proposals that would create far-reaching
rules that give corporations rights to access markets and limit
public oversight of environmental and energy services and road
transportation in TiSA member countries.
The analysis
of a proposal for an "Energy Related Services (ERS)" annex
of the TiSA would give "rights" to foreign energy
corporations in domestic markets. Far from mandating reductions in
carbon emissions or promoting access for poor countries to clean
technologies, the proposed TiSA annex would actually limit the
ability of governments (on national, regional, or local levels) to
set policies that differentiate between polluting and carbon-based
energy sources, such as oil and coal, from clean and renewable energy
sources such as wind and solar. This is according to the "principle
of technological neutrality," revealed in the analysis of the
proposed chapter by Victor Menotti published by the Public Services
International (PSI) global union federation today.
Since
reducing the dependence on fossil fuels is the basis of much of
today's climate policy, it is hard to imagine how governments could
achieve the reductions in fossil fuel usage required by the targets
if they are not able to differentiate among energy sources.
Full
report:
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