UN climate chief sceptical about global carbon tax

Posted 9 hours 40 minutes ago
A top United Nations climate change official has voiced doubt about a global tax on carbon, but says national taxes are possible and laws to cap global warming emissions are better for business.
"I personally am sceptical on the notion of global carbon taxes," said Yvo de Boer, who heads the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.
He said international agreement on such a tax would take a long time and it might take even longer to get the tax proceeds to the United Nations to deal with global warming.
Speaking at a news conference during the first full-scale UN meeting dedicated to climate change, Mr de Boer said individual nations, including the Netherlands, had already put environmentally friendly taxes in place.
However, he said national taxes did not offer predictable progress in curbing the human-generated greenhouse gas carbon dioxide, though they could offer predictable revenues.
He favoured instead so-called cap-and-trade laws, which limit carbon emissions and offer a way for those who emit more than the limit to buy carbon credits from those who emit less.
"What the business community is calling for at the moment is long-term certainty, clear emissions caps imposed by governments so that they know what kind of investment decisions they have to make," Mr de Boer said.
The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has said climate-warming emissions must be reduced by 50 per cent by 2050, but Mr de Boer says without investment to curb climate change, emissions could rise by 50 per cent instead.
Mr de Boer says the world will probably invest $US20 trillion over the next 20 to 25 years to meet the energy demand that goes with economic growth.
To make these investments "green" would require an additional investment of perhaps $US100 billion a year.
- Reuters