Clearing the air: new taxation to tackle climate change

Friends of the Earth have a major new report entitled Clearing the Air: Moving on from Carbon Trading to Real Climate Solutions. We are delighted to see, among their main recommendations:

• Financial transaction tax: a new, global tax on cross-border financial transactions could generate additional government revenue of us$400 billion, including us$100 billion for climate finance. the tax is geared towards the global finance industry and would not affect the financial transactions of ordinary consumers.
• Tackling tax evasion: clamping down on tax avoidance in developed countries could provide significant additional government revenue.
  
• Carbon and energy taxation: an eu- wide carbon tax and a graduated ‘starter tax’ in the united states could together bring in us$200 billion per year. Making only a quarter of this available for climate finance could provide more than us$50 billion per year. a levy on international aviation could bring in an additional us$10 billion per year.
  

There is also a set of five demands for global financial integrity, looking at action on trade mispricing, on country-by-country reporting, on beneficial ownership, on automatic information exchange and on money laundering.

Good on them. Read on.