Obama Undermines Climate Efforts in Solar Trade Dispute:

[Kittycat]

1. Corporate rights: NAFTA & TPP

Further down

The WTO ruling comes on the heels of a major trade-related attack on U.S. attempts to address climate change. Last month, TransCanada sued the U.S. for $15 billion under special corporate rights provisions of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), charging that the Obama Administration’s rejection of the controversial Keystone Pipeline was unfair and discriminatory. The Keystone XL pipeline would have transported tar sands oil extracted from Alberta, Canada through rural land in Montana, South Dakota and Nebraska into Steele City, where it connects to existing pipelines to send tar sands oil to refineries in the Gulf Coast.

The special corporate rights provision in NAFTA, known as the Investor State Dispute Settlement, also exists in the proposed 12-nation Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP). The TPP would give an additional 9,000 foreign corporations the right to challenge U.S. laws and regulations, like TransCanada, according to Public Citizen. These types of corporate rights cases under regional trade agreements are becoming more frequent—with a series of recent corporate wins under NAFTA which successfully challenged government decisions to limit environmentally destructive mining and fracking.

- See more at: http://www.iatp.org/blog/201602/obama-undermines-climate-efforts-in-solar-trade-dispute#sthash.I45tWMAQ.dpuf