Could Anti-Climate Amendment Torpedo Fast Track?

Environmental groups have long warned of the dangers Fast Track poses to the environment. Now they have solid proof.

With the controversial House Fast Track vote expected to take place Friday, an 11th-hour GOP effort to forbid U.S. trade officials from taking action on climate change has raised the fury of environmental groups and lawmakers, as well as hopes that the unpopular legislation could be torpedoed altogether.

Sponsored by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), chair of the Ways and Means Committee, an amendment was inserted late Tuesday into a customs and trade bill currently being weighed alongside Fast Track legislation, known as Trade Promotion Authority.

The language is designed "to ensure that trade agreements do not require changes to U.S. law or obligate the United States with respect to global warming or climate change."

But political observers see it as a last-ditch attempt to get reticent Republicans on-board.

As the National Journalreports, Ryan is "working hard to win Republican support for the trade bill. Doug Andres, a spokesman for the House Committee on Ways and Means, said that the climate-change amendment acts as an olive branch for House Republicans fearful that the president might use his trade negotiating power to take action on climate change."

Critics say, in the midst of a climate crisis, it is outrageous that Ryan would seek to tie a trade representative's hands, especially given the broad scope of the multiple corporate-friendly deals currently under negotiation: the Trans-Pacific Partnership, Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, and Trade in Services Agreement.

"President Obama needs to make it clear that '21st century trade deals' cannot block climate action," said Luisa Abbott Galvao of Friends of the Earth. "The president should start by telling Republican leadership and the public that the provision in the customs amendment is unacceptable."

"President Obama cannot credibly claim that trade deals will force other countries to raise their environmental standards if he allows the same deals to secure a pass for the U.S. to keep dumping carbon into the planet's atmosphere," Galvao added.

The Fast Track legislation was already opposed by civil society and social movement groups around the U.S. and world--who criticize it as a tool for ramming through secret corporate-friendly deals, at the expense of people and the planet.

Karthik Ganapathy of 350.org said that this latest move could jeopardize Fast Track altogether: "Forbidding U.S. negotiators from ever addressing climate change in trade deals might might win over a couple of votes on the far right, but it'll lose many more in the center and on the left because the new language is a disaster for our climate."

Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.) derided the maneuver, declaring, "Now Republicans want to use [Fast Track] to prevent any new climate change standards in our trade deals."

All eyes are on the vote, expected to take place Friday, with many high-profile politicians, including House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), remaining mum on how they will vote.

Patrick Woodall of Food & Water Watch declared in a press statement Thursday, "With Fast Track for the Trans-Pacific Partnership now on its way to the House floor, it's time for our Representatives to stand up to the so-called free trade attacks on common sense protections for public health, the environment and consumers."