Countries should impose windfall taxes on fossil fuel companies and divert the money to vulnerable nations suffering worsening losses from the climate crisis, the\u00a0United Nations\u00a0secretary general has urged.<\/p>\n
Ant\u00f3nio Guterres said that \u201cpolluters must pay\u201d for the escalating damage caused by heatwaves, floods, drought and other climate impacts, and demanded that it was \u201chigh time to put fossil fuel producers, investors and enablers on notice\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cToday, I am calling on all developed economies to tax the windfall profits of fossil fuel companies,\u201d Guterres said in a speech to the UN general assembly on Tuesday. \u201cThose funds should be redirected in two ways \u2013 to countries suffering loss and damage caused by the climate crisis and to people struggling with rising food and energy prices.\u201d<\/p>\n
Guterres\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
His first words were: \u201cOur world is in big trouble.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cLet\u2019s 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,\u201d he told the assembly. \u201cWe 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
The lacerating speech, delivered at the UN headquarters in New York, echoes calls from activists,\u00a0and the European Union, to tax major oil and gas firms currently enjoying record profits in the wake of Russia\u2019s invasion of Ukraine. In July, Exxon announced it had made a record quarterly profit of $17.8bn, while Chevron unveiled its own three-month record profit, of $11.6bn. BP, meanwhile, made a $8.5bn profit in the same period.<\/p>\n
Under Guterres\u2019s proposal, revenue from the taxes would flow to predominantly developing countries suffering \u201closs and damage\u201d 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\u00a0to ask rich nations for a \u201cclimate-related and justice-based\u201d global tax\u00a0to pay for loss and damage.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"menu_order":2,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[177],"tags":[324,1919],"region":[26],"source":[424],"country":[1920],"state":[],"city":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.icsf.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newss\/97799"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.icsf.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newss"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.icsf.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/newss"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.icsf.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.icsf.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newss\/97799\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":97800,"href":"https:\/\/www.icsf.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newss\/97799\/revisions\/97800"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.icsf.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=97799"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.icsf.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=97799"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.icsf.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=97799"},{"taxonomy":"region","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.icsf.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/region?post=97799"},{"taxonomy":"source","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.icsf.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/source?post=97799"},{"taxonomy":"country","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.icsf.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/country?post=97799"},{"taxonomy":"state","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.icsf.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/state?post=97799"},{"taxonomy":"city","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.icsf.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/city?post=97799"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}