by Joel Gehrke
Commentary Staff Writer
The Washington Examiner
Posted 6/14/2012
Diplomats at the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Conference in Rio de Janeiro next week will consider proposals that would levy taxes on American families and energy industries in order to support international efforts to combat global warming, according to a draft agenda for the conference.
“We recognize that subsidies for non-renewable energy development should be eliminated and replaced with a global tax on the production of energy from non-renewable energy sources,” the UN draft agenda, amended by non-governmental organizations at the invitation of the UN, says. “The income of this tax should be allocated to renewable energy development.” The draft agenda was obtained by the Center for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT), a group skeptical of the UN’s position on global warming.
President Obama has adopted similar policy positions in his discussions of energy and tax policy over recent months. “I am writing to urge you to take immediate action to eliminate unwarranted tax breaks for the oil and gas industry, and to use those dollars to invest in clean energy to reduce our dependence on foreign oil,” Obama said in an April 26 letter to top-ranking members of the House and Senate.
Another proposal would spread the cost of investing in other countries throughout society. “We call for the fulfilment of all official development assistance commitments, including the commitments by many developed countries to achieve the target of 0.7 per cent of gross national product for official development assistance to developing countries by 2015,” the draft says. The proposal would provide “a target of .015 to .020 percent of gross national product for official development assistance to least developed countries.” That plan would cost $1,325 for an American family of four, according to CFACT.
“Rio+20 is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to make real progress towards the sustainable economy of the future,” UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon said at a press conference last week.”We aspire to nothing less than a global movement for generational change.” The draft agenda notes that “views represented in this document do not necessarily represent the views of the Secretariat, who only aggregated the submissions.”
CFACT reported in December that negotiators at the UN conference on climate change in Durban, South Africa, discussed the future implementation of “a new tax on every foreign currency transaction in the world,” that would disproportionately fall on the United States because “transactions within the Eurozone won’t have to pay this new tax.”
This tax would help pay for the Green Climate Fund, “which will eventually gather and disburse finance amounting to $100bn (£64bn) per year to help poor countries develop cleanly and adapt to climate impacts,” according to the BBC.