Nancy Pelosi lectures her Congress colleagues about climate change

A

 customs package that would allow the controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement to go to a straight up-and-down vote in the US Congress failed to pass the House on Friday.

Nancy Pelosi - lectures Congress
about climate change.

Before the vote, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) lectured her colleagues on the importance of climate change and how it relates to the trade agreement.

“You cannot separate commerce and environment,” Pelosi said on the House floor before the vote.

Environmental groups had already opposed the TPP, because under the agreement, corporations will likely be able to sue governments that interfere with their business — even if the interference comes from enforcement of carbon reduction goals and passing environmental legislation.

 But earlier this week, House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) doubled down on the environmental component of the TPP, introducing an amendment to the customs package that would “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.”

Read the ClimateProgress story - “Nancy Pelosi On TPP: ‘You Cannot Separate Commerce From The Environment’”.