Sierra Club Ad Buy in California Exposes Environmental Threat of the Trans-Pacific Partnership

The Sierra Club launched a targeted ad campaign in the San Diego area this week, exposing the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal for its secrecy and threat to the environment. The purpose of these ads is to educate San Diegans about the trade deal’s lack of transparency and the deal’s provisions that would give broad new powers to corporations and big polluters to attack clean air, water, and climate safeguards. The media buy includes online advertisements and radio advertisements in Spanish and English that will run in May and June.

The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), currently under negotiation between the United States and 11 other Pacific Rim nations behind closed doors, would have a monumentus effect on our quality of life. As such, it has drawn criticism from labor unions, environmental activists, leaders in Congress like Senator Elizabeth Warren, food safety groups, consumer rights groups, healthcare professionals, open internet advocates, and more.

More specifically, environmental groups are concerned that multinational corporations, including some of the world’s biggest polluters, will use the TPP’s investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) rules to sue governments in private trade courts over laws and policies that they claimed would reduce their profits. This means that even new California laws put in place to protect air, and water, climate could be threatened as a result of the TPP.

“San Diegans need to know that their clean air and water could be at risk as a result of the Trans-Pacific Partnership,” said Davin Widgerow, a volunteer leader of the San Diego Chapter of the Sierra Club. “Corporations have no right to threaten our air and water just because their profits may be affected. These advertisements around San Diego serve to educate people left in the dark, and sound a rallying cry across areas that could be the most affected by this trade deal.”

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