CLIMATE ALERT:

Bush’s NAFTA Expansion Is Contributing

to Global Warming!

 

Many people know that NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement, was bad for our economy—but did you know that it was bad for our environment, too? And now Congress and the Bush administration are making the problem worse…

 

Congressional Democrats are conspiring with the Bush administration to pass four NAFTA-style free trade agreements -- with Peru, Panama, South Korea, and Colombia.  Endangered forests ecosystems like the Amazon are at risk as a direct result. The Bush administration and the Democratic leadership in Congress claims these trade agreements will be good for the environment—they are dead wrong.

 

Free trade agreements contribute to global warming in a big way:

- Forcing a heavy corporate agenda for the globalization of a US-style meat centered diet, worsening the deleterious environmental effects of large-scale hog farming, and escalating the amount of livestock emissions- the single biggest source for global warming.
- Inflating use of “factory farm” style agribusiness. Factory farms consume the highest quantities of unhealthy, polluting fossil fuels.

- Ruining sustainable “low-tech” farmers, increasing the labor pool for their polluting industrial projects creating wastelands out of wetlands.
- Destroying the domestic economy for local farmers, who resort to cutting down forests for fuel and new farmland (documented by Oxfam International and the Worldwide Fund for Nature). 25% of global warming can be attributed to deforestation.

- Compromising environmentally selective purchasing agreements under procurement rules that value dollars more than sense.
- Entrenching investor protections for the exploitation of natural resources that make governmental environmental protection too expensive.
- Undermining efforts of ecological friendly “buy local” campaigns with titanic infrastructural construction projects that cut down forests to build roads, promoting vast consumption of fossil fuels during the transportation of products to market via trucks, airplanes, and ships.
- Jeopardize the wellbeing of the many endangered species that pass through threatened ecosystems such as Panamanian mangrove forests

- Moving more middle-class jobs from the U.S. to Developing Nations to exploit egregious disregard of environmental and labor standards.

WHAT YOU CAN DO?

 

• Write, call, fax, and email your Senators and US House Representatives and demand that they publicly oppose free trade agreements with Peru, Panama, Colombia, and South Korea. Let them know that despite recent changes, these agreements will still contribute to global warming and endanger the survival of life on Earth. You can find out who represents you and their contact information at http://tinyurl.com/fk5tm
• Volunteer or intern with Wetlands Activism Collective’s campaign to stop anti-environmental free trade agreements, through lobbying, protest, community education, and the mass media. To learn more, visit http://tinyurl.com/fk5tm.

* For details, visit http://wetlands-preserve.org/?page=internships.

• Make a donation to the campaign. You can contribute using Paypal at http://tinyurl.com/2q982b

or by mail at Wetlands Activism Collective, PO Box 344, NY, NY 10108.

YOU CAN HELP END GLOBAL WARMING!

Wetlands Activism Collective, PO Box 344, NY, NY 10108

Phone: (347) 293-2217 Email: activism@wetlands-preserve.org

Web: http://wetlands-preserve.org