Foreign Officials Make Serious Push For Global Climate Taxes Ahead Of Trump’s Second Term

Foreign government officials attending the ongoing U.N. climate change summit are advocating for de facto global climate taxes to fund green energy development in poor countries ahead of President-elect Donald Trump’s return to the White House, according to Financial Times.

Officials from countries including France, Spain and Kenya are pushing to plan so-called “solidarity levies” on various industries at this year’s conference so that a more developed version of the scheme can be presented at next year’s get-together in Brazil, FT reported. The idea is to settle on a plan that would raise $100 billion or more annually to fund climate-related efforts in developing countries by imposing de facto taxes on the shipping and aviation industries, and possibly other sectors as well.

Past discussions on the issue of providing climate cash to poor nations have been fraught, and Trump — who pulled out of the U.N.’s Paris climate agreement in his first term and is primed to do so again — generally opposes routing money to other countries in the name of climate change, so attendees at this year’s summit are getting creative about finding sources of funding, according to FT. Besides the shipping and aviation industries, cryptocurrency trades, fossil fuel production, plastic producers, billionaires and financial transactions could possibly be subject to the “solidarity levies” scheme.

In fact, it is not even clear that the funding generated by the “solidarity levies” would even go directly to poor countries, as officials from some nations have suggested that the money should go to the shipping industry to help it with its decarbonization push, according to FT. The shipping industry’s commitment to cutting emissions is putting more pressure on the aviation industry, which is itself pointing to the oil and gas industry to cough up more money.

Many major airline companies are already party to a global carbon offset pact reached in 2016, but that system is not meant to generate revenues that can then be repurposed, according to FT. The task force assessing the “solidarity levies” concept is eyeing options for building upon duties on plane tickets already in place in 21 countries, which they think could raise as much as $164 billion annually.

Notably, a study published just in advance of the start of this year’s U.N. climate summit, known as COP29, found that well-attended elite confabs like the U.N. climate summits, the Cannes Film Festival and the World Economic Forum produce large amounts of greenhouse gas emissions due to the volume of attendees who choose to travel to and from via private jet.