Yes, hello. I just wanted to thank all of the citizens who came out today. I also wanted to emphasize some of these issues of asymmetry and inequality.
In the past 30 or 40 or 50 years, under neo-liberalism, we've seen that global inequality has skyrocketed, so we're no longer in these myths of trickle-down economics creating jobs. We're in a situation where there are super jobs, but people in their twenties and thirties no longer find a place in the economy and see that the fossil economy that we're in today is not only drastically unsustainable and bad for the environment but also that the way we are organizing labour is really at odds with the thermal, dynamic realities of the planet. When we think about these types of deals, we see they really are more in favour of the corporations and the so-called 1%.
Now, I understand that this sort of language might sound alarmist to you. I'm sympathetic to that, but at the same time I do really urge you to realize that we're in a completely different ball game. What would have worked with comparative advantage, trade, and all these sorts of things that go a bit beyond my head has changed. We're in a really different world right now, a world where rising fossil fuel emissions are causing a systemic instability in the heart of the economic system, and we really have to rethink some of the old, tired truth. We want to make sure that we don't lock ourselves into an obsolete framework.
In the sociology literature, we see all the time the talk about how corporate power is eclipsing public power, and I really want to empower you as elected officials and civil servants to think twice about this and about protecting some of the last safeguards that our people, institutions, and environment have in the face of predatory, transnational, fossil-fuel-intensive capital.
Please, I implore you to think more than twice about this agreement.
Thank you.