Geneva, January 25. By Adam Koniuszewski, GCSP Fellow

The Cost of Carbon Pollution

The enormous economic, social and environmental costs of climate change have been widely recognized since Nicholas Stern worked on quantifying them a decade ago. These costs however remain largely unaccounted for in the marketplace. This failure to apply the polluter pays principle distorts prices, encourages carbon pollution, and gives fossil fuels a competitive price advantage over cleaner alternatives.

Pricing Carbon

A number of nations, including Scandinavian countries, Switzerland and Italy, are trying to correct market signals by pricing carbon. In 2016, carbon pricing covered 13% of global emissions; a number that is expected to reach 50% of emissions by 2030. Carbon pricing, in the form of a tax or carbon trading, generated $50 billion in government revenues in 2015.

A “Framework Convention for Carbon Control” 

The author suggests that carbon pricing experiences have produced valuable lessons for more governments to adopt it. In fact, there is now a compelling case for creating a “Framework Convention on Carbon Control” (FCCC) and an independent agency to oversee all aspects of carbon emissions and sequestration. Inspired by the successes of the “Framework Convention for Tobacco Control” (FCTC) in alleviating the smoking epidemic, the carbon control convention would be designed to fix market failures and insufficiencies that create de facto subsidies for carbon pollution.

The author also suggests that by ending fossil subsidies and implementing carbon pricing, nations can generate a revenue base that could be used to reduce corporate and personal income taxes. In addition to supporting national priorities like health and education, carbon finance can also fund the universal goals represented by 2030 sustainable development agenda.

For more see:  Winning the Tax Wars – Tax Competition and Cooperation 

Published by Wolters Kluwer, Jan 2018 (see chapter 9)

About “Winning the Tax Wars”

The book is the outcome of the 2016 TaxCOOP conference at the World Bank in Washington DC on the impacts / solutions to international tax competition. It covers transfer pricing / profit allocation between tax jurisdictions, the need for compliance, investigations and protecting whistleblowers, wealth taxation in an increasingly unequal world, derivatives and hedge-funds, tax investigations, electronic commerce and crypto-currencies, and sin taxes. Its authors, editors and experts include: Brigitte Alepin, Blanca Moreno-Dodson, Louise Otis, Allison Christians, Vanessa Houlder, Lyne Latulippe, Patricio V. Marquez, Richard Murphy, Erika Siu, Eric M. Zolt and Adam Koniuszewski.

About TaxCOOP

TaxCOOP is an international independent and nonpartisan conference on tax competition and the weaknesses of the current tax system in the era of globalisation. Thanks to its various initiatives, TaxCOOP is now recognised as one of the most influential tax initiatives globally.