Green groups propose ‘Fossil fuel’ tax to cover extremes’ rising costs

KATOWICE, Poland, Dec 10, (RTRS): Taxing the extraction of fossil fuels could help pay for the growing costs of damage from harsher storms, wildfires, floods and rising seas, while providing a stronger incentive to wean the world off carbon-heavy energy, green groups said on Monday.

A “climate damages tax” levied on oil, gas and coal companies could raise $300 billion a year by 2030 to bail out communities bearing the brunt of global warming, said a proposal supported by WWF, Practical Action and others.

The tax would lay the cost of rising disaster losses directly on the industries most responsible for them, they said in a report released at UN climate negotiations in Poland.

Besides assisting those in need overseas, a large share of income from the government-levied tax could help poorer groups at home take up green jobs, energy and transport, backers said.

Spending on social justice measures is seen as crucial to avoiding the kind of protests France has seen in recent weeks over rising living costs, sparked partly by hikes in fuel taxes.

“The injustice of climate change is that the impacts are felt first and hardest by those with the least responsibility for its causes,” Ralph Regenvanu, Vanuatu’s foreign affairs minister, said in a statement.

His Pacific island nation lost 64 percent of its GDP – about $450 million – during Cyclone Pam in 2015, and has struggled to recover financially, he noted.

“New sources of finance are needed to help address this,” he said, adding there was “strong justification” to tax the fossil fuel industry to pay for the climate damage it is causing.