Can you spare 1%?*
The negotiators are now at work trying to muster (or resist) a $1 trillion fund to help economically developing countries tackle the climate crisis.
The new collective quantified goal (NCQG) is for climate disaster mitigation, the phase-out of fossil fuels and to develop economies on low-carbon pathways.
The bill payers are those that got rich on the cheap, abundant energy that fuelled industrial revolutions and great economic accelerations. While the affluent world did not know the effect of freely emitting greenhouse gases at the time, they know it now and so must act.
There were rumours of a draft text doing the rounds. The slimline nine-pager was unanimously rejected by global south countries. The message is “do better”.
*$1 trillion is 1% of global GDP*
Solidarity levies are gaining some traction as one way of footing the bill.
These are placed on things that are universally judged to be harmful to the planet – popular targets are cryptocurrency, the ludicrously ultra-rich and frequent flyers.
In numbers:
- Charging $0.045 per kWh for energy using in bitcoin mining could provide $5 billion for climate action
- A 2% wealth tax, such as the one championed by Brazil, would yield $200bn-$250bn a year
- Taxing frequent flyers and business-class airline tickets would also be lucrative, with up to $164bn a year possible
... just $581 billion left to find then!
Yesterday, Climate Action Tracker revealed that even with the stated policies and actions, we are still heading for 2.7 degrees of average warming compared to pre-industrial levels.
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