Ex-UK PM demands wealthiest oil states to pay climate tax
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Gordon Brown urges imposing a global windfall tax on the world's wealthiest oil-producing countries to assist poorer nations in addressing the climate crisis.
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Former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown arrives at the Institute for Government in central London on November 12, 2018. (AFP)
Former Prime Minister Gordon Brown has proposed that the wealthiest oil-producing nations should pay a global windfall tax to assist poorer countries in combatting climate change.
Brown contended that countries like Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, and Norway profited significantly from the oil price surge last year, characterizing it as a "lottery-style bonanza". He suggested a $25 billion (£20.4 billion) levy, aiming to enhance the prospects of reaching an agreement on a climate fund for underprivileged nations.
Brown's input coincides with the upcoming COP28 Summit scheduled for November in Dubai. During last week's Climate Ambition Summit at the United Nations in New York, Secretary-General Antonio Guterres expressed concern that world leaders were inadequately addressing carbon emissions reduction efforts, emphasizing the need for major carbon emitters to establish a climate solidarity pact to cut emissions and assist emerging economies.
Gordon Brown further claimed that his proposal aims to prevent a deadlock or potential failure during COP28 in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), one of the world's wealthiest oil-producing nations.
He underscored that "petro-states" had experienced "almost unimaginable profits" due to the recent surge in oil prices, with the five wealthiest nations, including Kuwait, doubling their oil revenues in 2022. Citing data from the International Energy Agency (IEA), he highlighted the remarkable increase in global oil and gas revenues, rising from $1.5 trillion (£1.2 trillion) before the COVID-19 pandemic to an unprecedented $4 trillion (£3.3 trillion).
"To put these extraordinary figures into context, $4tn is 20 times the entire global aid budget. It is an income so big that it exceeds the entire GDP of the United Kingdom," he said.
"These producer states have done literally nothing to earn this unprecedented windfall. It represents one of the biggest ever transfers of wealth from poor to rich nations," he added.
Brown also pointed out that the elevated prices of oil and gas had been the primary factor that could potentially force an additional 141 million individuals globally into conditions of extreme poverty. This aligns with the upper limit of an estimate derived from a scientific study conducted earlier in the year.
Climate hypocrisy
Rich nations have been resisting increasing their financial engagement to support West-imposed roadmaps on how to battle climate change, claiming that it would take time to determine whether such a fund was necessary and how it would function.
Although $100 billion a year was pledged in 2009 at the UN by rich countries for developing countries under a roadmap to fight climate change, it was never upheld by the parties that announced their commitment.
Another failed scheme is a 2021 pledge made by G20 members to rechannel $100 billion in IMF special drawing rights (SDR) from rich states to impoverished economies.
The Center for Global Development (CGD) revealed last year that CO2 emissions produced by people in the West are astronomically larger than those produced by individuals in the Global South.
According to a CGD study, in just the first two days of January 2022, the average UK citizen was already responsible for more carbon dioxide emissions than someone from the Democratic Republic of the Congo would produce in an entire year.
The director for energy and development at the California-based Breakthrough Institute, Vijaya Ramachandran, revealed in a study published in November 2021 that the West is practicing a form of "colonialism" against poor nations when pressuring a total ban on fossil fuel projects, which will only lead to more poverty without leaving no actual impact on the world's carbon dioxide emissions.
"It’s very easy for rich countries to impose fossil fuel financing bans on poor countries, while at the same time increasing their own consumption of fossil fuels," Ramachandran said. "It’s rank hypocrisy and it’s devastating for poor countries as they need a wide range of energy to fuel development."
"It’s well known renewable energy is intermittent and needs to be backed up by other sources. Telling African countries they just need solar is completely hypocritical and colonial," Ramachandran added.
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