NAFTA tribunal rules against MTBE in California!

[cascadiance]

Some good news on this front. This is one case where folks in Vancouver, Canada are the bad guys and the good guys win, unlike many other situations these days.

International tribunal ruled against Vancouver company Methanex that had filed claim against California's laws to ban MTBE, saying it was illegal under NAFTA laws.

Well, we finally got the NAFTA courts to side with our laws and didn't lose the sovereignty of our laws against environmental pollution. And we get compensated for court costs as well (much needed for our state government now!).

Read here:

http://www.sacbee.com/content/business/story/13387078p-14228606c.html

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Canadian firm loses MTBE case
Claim under NAFTA sought payment for chemical ban.

By Dale Kasler -- Bee Staff Writer
Published 2:15 am PDT Wednesday, August 10, 2005
Story appeared in Business section, Page D1

An international tribunal Tuesday sided with California's decision to ban the gasoline additive MTBE, rejecting a Canadian chemical manufacturer's $1 billion claim that the ban was illegal under the North American Free Trade Agreement.

The claim by Vancouver-based Methanex Corp. was a high-profile test of NAFTA's free-trade rules and whether a company must be compensated if a government action prevents it from selling a product across borders.

California officials hailed the ruling, saying it keeps companies from using NAFTA to undermine a state's environmental regulations.

"Today's decision is a resounding victory for the rights of Californians to keep their drinking water safe and clean," state Attorney General Bill Lockyer said in a prepared statement.

...

[papau]

1. Good News - congrats! :-) n/t

:-)

[SteppingRazor]

2. The battle won, the war is not.

Chapter 11 of NAFTA gives corporations the right to sue governments if that government passes a law that would impeded that corporation's business (i.e. profits). This is why Methanex was able to sue in the first place.
Chapter 11 was probably the worst thing about NAFTA -- even worse than it's neoliberal globalization that meant poorer workers everywhere. In essence, government ceded a portion of its sovereignty to the corporate world. Utterly, utterly tragic. We won't win this war until thos portion of NAFTA, and preferably the whole treaty, is recinded.

[cascadiance]

3. Agree totally!...

But this would be a good case to point to in trying to win the war of how unfair this is to sovereign governments to lose it to the corporate world, which has no accountability to "citizens" everywhere (just to shareholders, and only controlling shareholders at that).

[Oerdin]

4. The NAFTA law says...

That corporations can try to sue but the corporations must prove that the damage is intended to cause protectionism not just that environmental laws affected them negatively. The main reason people laugh at us and discount what we say is because people like you play cavalierly with the truth. Please try to make your criticism more truthful in the future so that our enemies cannot so easily disregard what we say.