UN Chief Calls For Windfall Tax On Fossil Fuel Companies

Countries should impose windfall taxes on fossil fuel companies and divert the money to vulnerable nations suffering worsening losses from the climate crisis, the United Nations secretary general has urged. The Guardian reports: Antonio Guterres said that 'polluters must pay' for the escalating damage caused by heatwaves, floods, drought and other climate impacts, and demanded that it was 'high time to put fossil fuel producers, investors and enablers on notice.' 'Today, I am calling on all developed economies to tax the windfall profits of fossil fuel companies,' Guterres said in a speech to the UN general assembly on Tuesday. 'Those funds should be redirected in two ways -- to countries suffering loss and damage caused by the climate crisis and to people struggling with rising food and energy prices.' Guterres's appeal came in his most urgent, and bleakest, speech to date on the state of the planet, and the will of governments to change course. His first words were: 'Our world is in big trouble.'

'Let's have no illusions. We are in rough seas. A winter of global discontent is on the horizon, a cost-of-living crisis is raging, trust is crumbling, inequalities are exploding and our planet is burning,' he told the assembly. 'We have a duty to act and yet we are gridlocked in colossal global dysfunction. The international community is not ready or willing to tackle the big dramatic challenges of our age.' Under Guterres's proposal, revenue from the taxes would flow to predominantly developing countries suffering 'loss and damage' from global heating, to be invested in early warning systems, mopping up from disasters and other initiatives to build resilience. Vulnerable countries are poised to leverage the UN general assembly week to ask rich nations for a 'climate-related and justice-based' global tax to pay for loss and damage.

But his speech on Tuesday was particularly pointed, delivered on the grand dais of the general assembly and following the secretary general's recent visit to Pakistan, where floods from what he called 'a monsoon on steroids' have submerged a third of the country and displaced millions of people. Governments must stage an 'intervention' to break their addiction to fossil fuels, Guterres said, by targeting not only the extractive companies themselves but the entire infrastructure of businesses that support them. 'That includes the banks, private equity, asset managers and other financial institutions that continue to invest and underwrite carbon pollution,' said the secretary general. 'And it includes the massive public relations machine raking in billions to shield the fossil fuel industry from scrutiny. Just as they did for the tobacco industry decades before, lobbyists and spin doctors have spewed harmful misinformation. Fossil fuel interests need to spend less time averting a PR disaster -- and more time averting a planetary one.' Guterres said it was 'high time to move beyond endless discussions' and deliver finance for vulnerable countries and for wealthy nations to double adaption funding by 2025, as they promised to do at UN climate talks in Scotland last year.

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