French President Calls for Global Tax Increases To Combat Effects of Climate Change

The president of France, Emmanuel Macron, wants to impose global taxes on everything from financial transactions to airplane tickets and funnel the proceeds to countries in the developing world dealing with the impacts of climate change.Speaking at a gathering of international finance chiefs and economists at Paris, the Summit for a New Global Financing Pact, Mr. Macron suggested that he was going to “make others follow us and mobilize” in favor of such new levies across the globe.“I’m in favor of an international taxation to finance efforts that we have to make to fight poverty and in terms of climate,” Mr. Macron said at a press conference Friday at the end of the two-day summit, according to France24. “It doesn’t work when you do it alone, the [financial] flows go elsewhere.”America’s Treasury Secretary, Janet Yellen, called Mr. Macron’s suggestion a “very constructive suggestion” and said the United States would consider such an option. “I think I would agree with President Macron’s description of the logic of why it would be appropriate, and it’s something that the United States will look at,” she said.The summit ended Friday with no formal announcement on Mr. Macron’s proposal, but a measure calling for a global tax on greenhouse gasses emitted by the shipping industry has been gaining traction and could be adopted as soon as next month during a meeting of the United Nations’ International Maritime Organization. The tax on global shipping, which Mr. Macon said is currently untaxed, could raise as much as $100 billion a year.China and the United States are said to be resisting such a plan, he said. “If China and the US and several key European countries are not on board, then you would put a tax in place that would not have any impact,” he added.France has already adopted new taxes on financial transactions and airline tickets as part of its own effort to combat climate change, but he said such measures are largely ineffective unless they are carried out on a global basis. French economists have been pushing for a national wealth tax on top of those levies in order to facilitate the country’s transition to greener energy sources.Attending the meeting on behalf of the United States besides Ms. Yellen was President Biden’s climate envoy, John Kerry, as well as Germany’s chancellor, Olaf Scholz. Other attendees included China’s Prime Minister Li Qiang, Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, World Bank head Ajay Banga and IMF President Kristalina Georgieva.Climate change activists attending the meeting had pressed representatives from the industrialized West to consider a range of other taxes — including additional levies on fossil fuel companies — and debt relief for developing countries in order to mitigate what they say is the existential threat to humanity presented by climate change. One of those activists, Ugandan Patience Nabukala, promised that there will be “no climate justice without making the polluters pay.”

French President Calls for Global Tax Increases To Combat Effects of Climate Change

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