Big Oil Tax Could Boost Global Loss and Damage Fund by 2000%

"The damages resulting from the industry’s operations are disproportionately borne by people who did not cause the crisis," said one campaigner.


Activists protest for loss and damage reparations outside the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP27) in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt on November 11, 2022.
(Photo: Dominika Zarzycka/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)

Eloise Goldsmith
Nov 18, 2024
COMMON DREAMS

A modest tax on the world's seven largest oil and gas companies could generate hundreds of billions of dollars by the end of the decade to assist poor and vulnerable communities with the impact of the climate crisis, according to a new analysis out Monday from the groups Greenpeace International and Stamp Out Poverty.

The groups found that a tax on fossil fuel extraction, which would increase each year, combined with additional taxes on excess profits would grow the UN's Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage by more than 2,000%.

The loss and damage fund was created two years ago during the COP27 summit in Egypt with the aim of helping vulnerable countries confront the risings costs of climate disasters. Last year, a group of nations that included the United States made their first financial pledges to the fund—though the size of the U.S. pledge was panned as "paltry" by climate justice advocates. As one of the world's largest fossil fuel emitters, the initial pledge of $17.5 million was miniscule relative to the hundreds of billions in fossil fuel subsidies the U.S. government handed out in 2022.

Total commitments to the loss and damage fund currently hover at around $720 million, according toThe New York Times.

This year, at COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan, boosting the money in the fund is top of mind for a number of UN leaders.

"The $700 million is obviously insufficient," Jorge Moreira da Silva, the executive director of the United Nations Office for Project Services, toldthe Times.

"In an era of climate extremes, loss & damage finance is a must. And we must get serious about the level of finance required. At #COP29, I urged governments to deliver. In the name of justice," U.N. Sectary-General António Guterres wrote on X as the summit kicked off last week.

The joint analysis—which focused on world's largest publicly traded oil and gas companies, a group that includes ExxonMobil, Shell, Chevron, TotalEnergies, BP, Equinor, and Eni—illustrates how major polluters could be tapped to support the fund.

Stamp Out Poverty researchers have "found that home government collection of volume-based [climate damages tax] is feasible, with many countries already collecting volume-based revenue from oil and gas producers," according to the report.

The briefing notes that the Climate Damages Tax "would be a fee on the extraction of each tonne of coal, barrel of oil or cubic metre of gas, calculated at a consistent rate based on how much CO2e [carbon dioxide equivalent] is embedded within the fossil fuel."

To illustrate the impact of this tax, Greenpeace and Stamp Out Poverty looked at the estimated costs associated with multiple extreme weather events in 2024 alongside the hypothetical tax revenue.

Hurricane Beryl, which impacted multiple Caribbean islands, Mexico and the U.S. Gulf Coast, caused at least $6.6 billion in estimated damages and losses, according to the report. Meanwhile, imposing a hypothetical Climate Damages Tax on the 2023 carbon emissions from ExxonMobil alone would raise enough money to cover nearly half of that price tag.

ExxonMobil made $38.6 billion in adjusted earnings for 2023, so levying a tax of $5 per tonne of CO2e in 2023 would yield $3.19 billion. Over the first year, the combined revenue from all seven companies would be over $15 billion. As the levy was increased over the two following years, that annual figure would grow to over $37 billion. The analysis, according to its authors "contributes to the growing civil society call for long term tax on fossil fuel extraction."

The report comes on the heels of two weeks of worldwide protests by Greenpeace activists and allies, during which some demonstrators confronted fossil fuel executives about their role in fueling climate disaster and demanded that they "pay for the climate damage they cause."

Could Trump 2.0 End the American Century?

ITS ALREADY ENDED

IT WAS LAST CENTURY 

Trump’s second term will almost certainly be one of imperial decline, increasing internal chaos, and a further loss of global leadership.



Alfred W. Mccoy
Nov 20, 2024

TomDispatch

Some 15 years ago, on December 5, 2010, a historian writing for TomDispatch made a prediction that may yet prove prescient. Rejecting the consensus of that moment that U.S. global hegemony would persist to 2040 or 2050, he argued that “the demise of the United States as the global superpower could come... in 2025, just 15 years from now.”

To make that forecast, the historian conducted what he called “a more realistic assessment of domestic and global trends.” Starting with the global context, he argued that, “faced with a fading superpower,” China, India, Iran, and Russia would all start to “provocatively challenge U.S. dominion over the oceans, space, and cyberspace.” At home in the United States, domestic divisions would “widen into violent clashes and divisive debates… Riding a political tide of disillusionment and despair, a far-right patriot captures the presidency with thundering rhetoric, demanding respect for American authority and threatening military retaliation or economic reprisal.” But, that historian concluded, “the world pays next to no attention as the American Century ends in silence.”

Now that a “far-right patriot,” one Donald J. Trump, has indeed captured (or rather recaptured) the presidency “with thundering rhetoric,” let’s explore the likelihood that a second Trump term in office, starting in the fateful year 2025, might actually bring a hasty end, silent or otherwise, to an “American Century” of global dominion.
Making the Original Prediction

Let’s begin by examining the reasoning underlying my original prediction. (Yes, of course, that historian was me.) Back in 2010, when I picked a specific date for a rising tide of American decline, this country looked unassailably strong both at home and abroad. The presidency of Barack Obama was producing a “post-racial” society. After recovering from the 2008 financial crisis, the U.S. was on track for a decade of dynamic growth—the auto industry saved, oil and gas production booming, the tech sector thriving, the stock market soaring, and employment solid. Internationally, Washington was the world’s preeminent leader, with an unchallenged military, formidable diplomatic clout, unchecked economic globalization, and its democratic governance still the global norm.

Looking forward, leading historians of empire agreed that America would remain the world’s sole superpower for the foreseeable future. Writing in the Financial Times in 2002, for instance, Yale professor Paul Kennedy, author of a widely read book on imperial decline, argued that “America’s array of force is staggering,” with a mix of economic, diplomatic, and technological dominance that made it the globe’s “single superpower” without peer in the entire history of the world. Russia’s defense budget had “collapsed” and its economy was “less than that of the Netherlands.” Should China’s high growth rates continue for another 30 years, it “might be a serious challenger to U.S. predominance”—but that wouldn’t be true until 2032, if then. While America’s “unipolar moment” would surely not “continue for centuries,” its end, he predicted, “seems a long way off for now.”

Writing in a similar vein in The New York Times in February 2010, Piers Brendon, a historian of Britain’s imperial decline, dismissed the “doom mongers” who “conjure with Roman and British analogies in order to trace the decay of American hegemony.” While Rome was riven by “internecine strife” and Britain ran its empire on a shoestring budget, the U.S. was “constitutionally stable” with “an enormous industrial base.” Taking a few “relatively simple steps,” he concluded, Washington should be able to overcome current budgetary problems and perpetuate its global power indefinitely.

After the steady erosion of its global power for several decades, America is no longer the—or perhaps even an—“exceptional” nation floating above the deep global currents that shape the politics of most countries.

When I made my very different prediction nine months later, I was coordinating a network of 140 historians from universities on three continents who were studying the decline of earlier empires, particularly those of Britain, France, and Spain. Beneath the surface of this country’s seeming strength, we could already see the telltale signs of decline that had led to the collapse of those earlier empires.

By 2010, economic globalization was cutting good-paying factory jobs here, income inequality was widening, and corporate bailouts were booming—all essential ingredients for rising working-class resentment and deepening domestic divisions. Foolhardy military misadventures in Iraq and Afghanistan, pushed by Washington elites trying to deny any sense of decline, stoked simmering anger among ordinary Americans, slowly discrediting the very idea of international commitments. And the erosion of America’s relative economic strength from half the world’s output in 1950 to a quarter in 2010 meant the wherewithal for its unipolar power was fading fast.

Only a “near-peer” competitor was needed to turn that attenuating U.S. global hegemony into accelerating imperial decline. With rapid economic growth, a vast population, and the world’s longest imperial tradition, China seemed primed to become just such a country. But back then, Washington’s foreign policy elites thought not and even admitted China to the World Trade Organization (WTO), fully confident, according to two Beltway insiders, that “U.S. power and hegemony could readily mold China to the United States’ liking.”

Our group of historians, mindful of the frequent imperial wars fought when near-peer competitors finally confronted the reigning hegemon of their moment—think Germany versus Great Britain in World War I—fully expected China’s challenge would not be long in coming. Indeed, in 2012, just two years after my prediction, the U.S. National Intelligence Council warned that “China alone will probably have the largest economy, surpassing that of the United States a few years before 2030” and this country would no longer be “a hegemonic power.”

Just a year after that, China’s president, Xi Jinping, drawing on a massive $4 trillion in foreign-exchange reserves accumulated in the decade after joining the WTO, announced his bid for global power through what he called “the Belt and Road Initiative,” history’s largest development program. It was designed to make Beijing the center of the global economy.

In the following decade, the U.S.-China rivalry would become so intense that, last September, Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall warned: “I’ve been closely watching the evolution of [China’s] military for 15 years. China is not a future threat; China is a threat today.”
The Global Rise of the Strongman

Another major setback for Washington’s world order, long legitimated by its promotion of democracy (whatever its own dominating tendencies), came from the rise of populist strongmen worldwide. Consider them part of a nationalist reaction to the West’s aggressive economic globalization.

At the close of the Cold War in 1991, Washington became the planet’s sole superpower, using its hegemony to forcefully promote a wide-open global economy—forming the World Trade Organization in 1995, pressing open-market “reforms” on developing economies, and knocking down tariff barriers worldwide. It also built a global communications grid by laying 700,000 miles of fiber-optic submarine cables and then launching 1,300 satellites (now 4,700).

By exploiting that very globalized economy, however, China’s industrial output soared to $3.2 trillion by 2016, surpassing both the U.S. and Japan, while simultaneously eliminating 2.4 million American jobs between 1999 and 2011, ensuring the closure of factories in countless towns across the South and Midwest. By fraying social safety nets while eroding protection for labor unions and local businesses in both the U.S. and Europe, globalization reduced the quality of life for many, while creating inequality on a staggering scale and stoking a working-class reaction that would crest in a global wave of angry populism.

Riding that wave, right-wing populists have been winning a steady succession of elections—in Russia (2000), Israel (2009), Hungary (2010), China (2012), Turkey (2014), the Philippines (2016), the U.S. (2016), Brazil (2018), Italy (2022), the Netherlands (2023), Indonesia (2024), and the U.S. again (2024).

Set aside their incendiary us-versus-them rhetoric, however, and look at their actual achievements and those right-wing demagogues turn out to have a record that can only be described as dismal. In Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro ravaged the vast Amazon rainforest and left office amid an abortive coup. In Russia, Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine, sacrificing his country’s economy to capture some more land (which it hardly lacked). In Turkey, Recep Erdogan caused a crippling debt crisis, while jailing 50,000 suspected opponents. In the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte murdered 30,000 suspected drug users and courted China by giving up his country’s claims in the resource-rich South China Sea. In Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu has wreaked havoc on Gaza and neighboring lands, in part to stay in office and stay out of prison.
Prospects for Donald Trump’s Second Term

After the steady erosion of its global power for several decades, America is no longer the—or perhaps even an—“exceptional” nation floating above the deep global currents that shape the politics of most countries. And as it has become more of an ordinary country, it has also felt the full force of the worldwide move toward strongman rule. Not only does that global trend help explain Trump’s election and his recent reelection, but it provides some clues as to what he’s likely to do with that office the second time around.

In the globalized world America made, there is now an intimate interaction between domestic and international policy. That will soon be apparent in a second Trump administration whose policies are likely to simultaneously damage the country’s economy and further degrade Washington’s world leadership.

As the world shifts to renewable energy and all-electric vehicles, Trump’s policies will undoubtedly do lasting damage to the American economy.

Let’s start with the clearest of his commitments: environmental policy. During the recent election campaign, Trump called climate change “a scam” and his transition team has already drawn up executive orders to exit from the Paris climate accords. By quitting that agreement, the U.S. will abdicate any leadership role when it comes to the most consequential issue facing the international community while reducing pressure on China to curb its greenhouse gas emissions. Since these two countries now account for nearly half (45%) of global carbon emissions, such a move will ensure that the world blows past the target of keeping this planet’s temperature rise to 1.5°C until the end of the century. Instead, on a planet that’s already had 12 recent months of just such a temperature rise, that mark is expected to be permanently reached by perhaps 2029, the year Trump finishes his second term.

On the domestic side of climate policy, Trump promised last September that he would “terminate the Green New Deal, which I call the Green New Scam, and rescind all unspent funds under the misnamed Inflation Reduction Act.” On the day after his election, he committed himself to increasing the country’s oil and gas production, telling a celebratory crowd, “We have more liquid gold than any country in the world.” He will undoubtedly also block wind farm leases on Federal lands and cancel the $7,500 tax credit for purchasing an electrical vehicle.

As the world shifts to renewable energy and all-electric vehicles, Trump’s policies will undoubtedly do lasting damage to the American economy. In 2023, the International Renewable Energy Agency reported that, amid continuing price decreases, wind and solar power now generate electricity for less than half the cost of fossil fuels. Any attempt to slow the conversion of this country’s utilities to the most cost-effective form of energy runs a serious risk of ensuring that American-made products will be ever less competitive.

To put it bluntly, he seems to be proposing that electricity users here should pay twice as much for their power as those in other advanced nations. Similarly, as relentless engineering innovation makes electric vehicles cheaper and more reliable than petrol-powered ones, attempting to slow such an energy transition is likely to make the U.S. auto industry uncompetitive, at home and abroad.

Calling tariffs “the greatest thing ever invented,” Trump has proposed slapping a 20% duty on all foreign goods and 60% on those from China. In another instance of domestic-foreign synergy, such duties will undoubtedly end up crippling American farm exports, thanks to retaliatory overseas tariffs, while dramatically raising the cost of consumer goods for Americans, stoking inflation, and slowing consumer spending.

Reflecting his aversion to alliances and military commitments, Trump’s first foreign policy initiative will likely be an attempt to negotiate an end to the war in Ukraine. During a CNN town hall in May 2023, he claimed he could stop the fighting “in 24 hours.” Last July, he added: “I would tell [Ukraine’s president] Zelenskyy, no more. You got to make a deal.”

Just two days after the November election, according toThe Washington Post, Trump reputedly told Russian President Vladimir Putin in a telephone call, “not to escalate the war in Ukraine and reminded him of Washington’s sizable military presence in Europe.” Drawing on sources inside the Trump transition team, The Wall Street Journalreported that the new administration is considering “cementing Russia’s seizure of 20% of Ukraine” and forcing Kyiv to forego its bid to join NATO, perhaps for as long as 20 years.

With Russia drained of manpower and its economy pummeled by three years of bloody warfare, a competent negotiator (should Trump actually appoint one) might indeed be able to bring a tenuous peace to a ravaged Ukraine. Since it has been Europe’s frontline of defense against a revanchist Russia, the continent’s major powers would be expected to play a significant role. But Germany’s coalition government has just collapsed; French president Emmanuel Macron is crippled by recent electoral reverses; and the NATO alliance, after three years of a shared commitment to Ukraine, faces real uncertainty with the advent of a Trump presidency.
America’s Allies

Those impending negotiations over Ukraine highlight the paramount importance of alliances for U.S. global power. For 80 years, from World War II through the Cold War and beyond, Washington relied on bilateral and multilateral alliances as a critical force multiplier. With China and Russia both rearmed and increasingly closely aligned, reliable allies have become even more important to maintaining Washington’s global presence. With 32 member nations representing a billion people and a commitment to mutual defense that has lasted 75 years, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is arguably the most powerful military alliance in all of modern history.

Yet Trump has long been sharply critical of it. As a candidate in 2016, he called the alliance “obsolete.” As president, he mocked the treaty’s mutual-defense clause, claiming even “tiny” Montenegro could drag the U.S. into war. While campaigning last February, he announced that he would tell Russia “to do whatever the hell they want” to a NATO ally that didn’t pay what he considered its fair share.

Right after Trump’s election, caught between what one analyst called “an aggressively advancing Russia and an aggressively withdrawing America,” French President Macron insisted that the continent needed to be a “more united, stronger, more sovereign Europe in this new context.” Even if the new administration doesn’t formally withdraw from NATO, Trump’s repeated hostility, particularly toward its crucial mutual-defense clause, may yet serve to eviscerate the alliance.

In the Asia-Pacific region, the American presence rests on three sets of overlapping alliances: the AUKUS entente with Australia and Britain, the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (with Australia, India, and Japan), and a chain of bilateral defense pacts stretching along the Pacific littoral from Japan through Taiwan to the Philippines. Via careful diplomacy, the Biden administration strengthened those alliances, bringing two wayward allies, Australia and the Philippines that had drifted Beijing-wards, back into the Western fold. Trump’s penchant for abusing allies and, as in his first term, withdrawing from multilateral pacts is likely to weaken such ties and so American power in the region.

Although his first administration famously waged a trade war with Beijing, Trump’s attitude toward the island of Taiwan is bluntly transactional. “I think, Taiwan should pay us for defense,” he said last June, adding: “You know, we’re no different than an insurance company. Taiwan doesn’t give us anything.” In October, he toldThe Wall Street Journal that he would not have to use military force to defend Taiwan because China’s President Xi “respects me and he knows I’m f—— crazy.” Bluster aside, Trump, unlike his predecessor Joe Biden, has never committed himself to defend Taiwan from a Chinese attack.

Should Beijing indeed attack Taiwan outright or, as appears more likely, impose a crippling economic blockade on the island, Trump seems unlikely to risk a war with China. The loss of Taiwan would break the U.S. position along the Pacific littoral, for 80 years the fulcrum of its global imperial posture, pushing its naval forces back to a “second island chain” running from Japan to Guam. Such a retreat would represent a major blow to America’s imperial role in the Pacific, potentially making it no longer a significant player in the security of its Asia-Pacific allies.
A Silent U.S. Recessional

Adding up the likely impact of Donald Trump’s policies in this country, Asia, Europe, and the international community generally, his second term will almost certainly be one of imperial decline, increasing internal chaos, and a further loss of global leadership. As “respect for American authority” fades, Trump may yet resort to “threatening military retaliation or economic reprisal.” But as I predicted back in 2010, it seems quite likely that “the world pays next to no attention as the American Century ends in silence.”

© 2023 TomDispatch.com


Alfred W. Mccoy is professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison is the author of "In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power". Previous books include: "Torture and Impunity: The U.S. Doctrine of Coercive Interrogation" (University of Wisconsin, 2012), "A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation, from the Cold War to the War on Terror (American Empire Project)", "Policing America's Empire: The United States, the Philippines, and the Rise of the Surveillance State", and "The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade".
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Column: China’s export tax bombshell rocks aluminum market

Reuters | November 19, 2024 | 

Aluminum processing facility. Stock image.

(The opinions expressed here are those of the author, Andy Home, a columnist for Reuters)


China’s announcement that it will end tax rebates on exports of aluminum semi-manufactured products caused market mayhem on Friday and may have major long-term ramifications for the global aluminum supply chain.

The Shanghai price sank and the London price surged as traders factored in the potential annual loss of over 5 million metric tons of Chinese products in the international market.

That’s a worst-case scenario and the reality may turn out to be less dramatic, depending on how China’s aluminum processors cope with what for many is a loss of vital income.

China’s exports of semi-manufactured products

Financial lifeline

The Ministry of Finance’s elimination of the 13% VAT refund effective Dec. 1 also applies to exports of copper products.

China’s shipments of copper products are not insignificant at around 700,000 tons a year but aluminum volumes are on a different scale.

The country’s exports of semi-manufactured products such as bars, sheet and tubes totalled a massive 5.2 million tons in 2023. They will be higher still this year. Outbound shipments grew by 17% in the first nine months of 2024.

Just about all of that tonnage qualifies for the VAT refund, which acts as a financial life-line for many smaller product manufacturers in a ferociously competitive market.

Aluminum price to average 6% higher in 2024 on strong demand: Fitch

There will be a predictable rush to export before the Dec. 1 deadline and those processors that can will no doubt look to pass on some of the cost hit to international buyers.

The market reaction has been to open a financial arbitrage window to facilitate continued flows of aluminum product from east to west.

The most likely outcome is a sharp drop in export volumes next year followed by some stabilization as exporters adjust to the new financial reality. This is what happened to galvanized steel exports after the authorities eliminated the tax rebate for plate and sheet in 2020.

Much, though, will depend on Chinese processors’ ability to operate without the VAT lifeline.

China’s mid-stream aluminum processing sector is plagued by over-capacity with utilization rates typically below 65% and as low as 40% in some sectors, according to research house AZ Global.

Not everyone is going to survive.

LME and ShFE aluminum year-to-date rebased relative performance
International tensions

Why has China pulled the tax trigger? And why now?

The decision appears to be motivated by both international and domestic considerations.

China’s exports of aluminum products have long been a point of tension with Western trading partners, who have accused the country of unfair subsidies and damaging trade practices.

Removing the tax export booster may be a pre-emptive concession at a time when the diplomatic heat is rising.

China has been locked in talks with the European Union over the bloc’s imposition of tariffs of up to 45% on Chinese exports of electric vehicles with both sides keen to avoid a broader trade war.

Meanwhile, the prospect of a new US administration promises more tariff trouble for China given Donald Trump’s threat to impose import duties of up to 60% on all Chinese products entering the United States.


It’s worth noting that Friday’s announcement also included a cut in the VAT refund for both photovoltaic cells and batteries, two other major sources of international trade tension.
Domestic realignment

Reducing exports of aluminum products may also address a fundamental tension in China’s domestic supply chain.

The government has imposed a capacity cap of 45 million tons on its smelting sector. National output of primary metal is currently running at an annualized rate of 43.5 million tons, suggesting little further growth potential.

Yet China is going to need more aluminum, a metal that is closely tied to the clean energy revolution in the form of packaging for solar panels and electric vehicle bodies.

Rising demand and static output imply an ever tighter domestic market balance as long as 5 million tons of product are shipped overseas.

Incentivizing the sector for that material to stay at home is one way of ensuring self-sufficiency over the coming years, a key goal for Chinese policymakers across the commodities board.
Global no more

The short-term impact of the tax rebate removal may not be as bad as the market fears, but it marks another big step in the fracturing of what was until recently a globalized marketplace.

The United States has been erecting ever higher trade barriers on Chinese aluminum, most recently in the form of a 25% import tariff. Canada has done the same while Mexican shipments to the United States must now come with evidence they haven’t been fabricated from Chinese metal.

The EU has imposed import tariffs on some Chinese aluminum products and a bigger barrier is coming in the form of the bloc’s carbon border adjustment mechanism.

China’s move to limit exports merely adds to the sense that the global aluminum market is breaking down into distinctive regional markets defined by trade barriers.

Western smelters, many of them shuttered due to low prices, and product manufacturers may be the eventual winners from a reduction in Chinese exports.

To what extent, however, depends on how hard the Ministry of Finance’s tweaks to its tax code hit China’s domestic operators.

(By Andy Home, Editing by Emelia Sithole-Matarise)

G20 host Brazil launches alliance to end ‘scourge’ of hunger

By AFP
November 18, 2024

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who grew up in poverty, is championing an anti-hunger alliance - Copyright AFP Ludovic MARIN

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva opened a G20 summit in Rio by launching an alliance to curb world hunger, which he called a “scourge that shames humanity.”

The Global Alliance Against Hunger and Poverty marks an early summit success for left-wing Lula, with a total of 81 countries signing on to it.

Argentina was the only one of the 19 countries in the G20 not to sign on to the initiative.

Its participation was still “under negotiation,” a Brazilian government source said.

The charity Oxfam said the global alliance “could be a turning point in the battle against hunger and extreme poverty” but urged the initiative to go further by instituting changes in agriculture, supporting land rights and confronting “the weaponization of hunger.”

The decision not to join by Argentina — led by right-wing President Javier Milei, a big fan of Donald Trump — deepened a political gap with neighboring Brazil.

Milei has imposed radical austerity measures in Argentina to bring down high inflation.

The policies sent the poverty rate in the country soaring to 52.9 percent in the first half of this year, 11 percentage points higher than in the previous six-month period.

Milei was the first world leader to see Trump after the Republican’s win in the US presidential election. He attended a gala at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Florida estate last Thursday.

The Argentine leader has several times labeled Lula a “communist” and “corrupt.”

The Global Alliance Against Hunger and Poverty also has the support of international organizations such as the European Union and the African Union — both G20 members — as well as financial institutions and NGOs, bringing the total number of signatories to 147.

The initiative’s goal is ambitious: to reduce world hunger which affected 733 million people last year — nine percent of the global population — according to the UN.

For Lula, who grew up in poverty before becoming a steelworker, a trade unionist and eventually president of Latin America’s biggest economy, the initiative is dear to the heart.

At a national level, his leftwing policies have already lifted millions of Brazilians out of poverty.



– ‘Political will’ –



The global alliance on hunger is an effort to widen that push by putting international financing behind it, and replicating successful national programs in other countries.

“Eradicating hunger and poverty is not so hard, and the cost is not exorbitant,” Wellington Dias, Brazil’s minister for social development, said in a statement announcing the alliance.

“It’s just a question of political will.”

Negotiations on the initiative had gone on for months, with concrete commitments already made.

The Inter-American Development Bank on Friday announced a $25 billion contribution to programs fighting hunger and poverty over the next five years.

The alliance especially aims for improved nutrition for early childhood, free school canteens and supporting small farms. The goal is to improve food access and quality for 150 million children by the end of the decade.

Nigeria, which already has the biggest school meals program in Africa, has vowed to double the number of children benefiting from it to 20 million.

Indonesia, from January 2025, will start a new program of free canteens, with the aim of reaching 78 million school children in 2029.

Five takeaways from the G20 summit in Rio


By AFP

November 18, 2024

One of the issues dearest to President Lula was forging a global alliance against hunger - Copyright AFP Mauro PIMENTEL

G20 leaders met in Rio de Janeiro on Monday for talks on climate change, ongoing wars in Ukraine, Gaza and Lebanon, and more, at a forum that highlighted differences between world powers but also delivered some successes.

Here are five key takeaways from the summit:



– No climate breakthrough –



Hopes were high that G20 leaders would jumpstart stalled UN climate talks taking place in Azerbaijan.

In their final declaration, however, they merely recognized the need for “substantially scaling up climate finance from billions to trillions from all sources.”

Crucially, they did not say who would provide the trillions.

They also did not reiterate a commitment made at the COP28 climate talks in Dubai last year for a “just, orderly, and equitable transition” away from fossil fuels.

“They haven’t stepped up to the challenge,” Mick Sheldrick, co-founder of the Global Citizen campaign group said.



– Ukraine war –



The war in Ukraine dominated discussions at the G20, a day after the United States gave Kyiv the green light to strike Russian territory with American-supplied long-range missiles.

Russia vowed a “response” if hit.

Chinese President Xi Jinping, who together with Brazil has been pushing for Kyiv to enter peace talks with Russia, urged the G20 to help “cool” the war.

In their final statement, G20 leaders said they welcomed “all relevant and constructive initiatives that support a comprehensive, just, and durable peace” in Ukraine.

While condemning, as at last year’s G20 summit, the “threat or use of force to seek territorial acquisition,” they made no mention of Russian aggression.



– Lebanon, Gaza ceasefire calls –



The leaders of the G20 — which mixes steadfast Israel allies such as the United States and Argentina with countries like Turkey that are more supportive of Palestinians — called for “comprehensive” ceasefires in both Gaza and Lebanon.

They said the Gaza ceasefire should be in line with a US-proposed UN resolution calling for a permanent ceasefire in the territory in return for the release of all hostages by Hamas.

It also called for a Lebanon ceasefire “that enables citizens to return safely to their homes on both sides of the Blue Line” that separates Lebanese and Israeli armed forces.



– Tax the super-rich –



The G20 endorsed the idea of cooperating to make sure “ultra-high-net-worth individuals are effectively taxed,” delivering a victory to summit host Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

It said though that such cooperation should be “with full respect to tax sovereignty” and involve “debates around tax principles” as well as coming up with anti-avoidance mechanisms.

An economist specializing in inequalities who was tapped by the Brazilian G20 presidency to write a report on the issue, Gabriel Zucman, hailed the “historic decision.”



– Alliance against hunger –



One of the issues dearest to President Lula was forging a global alliance against hunger, and he received an early success by launching that initiative at the start of the summit, getting 82 countries to sign on.

The alliance aims to unite international efforts to provide financing in the campaign against hunger, and to replicate programs that have proved successful in some countries.

The goal is to reach half a billion people by the end of the decade, reducing what Lula — who grew up in poverty — has called a preventable “scourge that shames humanity.”


China’s Xi urges G20 to help ‘cool’ Ukraine crisis


By AFP
November 18, 2024

Chinese President Xi Jinping urged leaders to help 'cool the Ukraine crisis and seek a political solution' - Copyright AFP Mauro PIMENTEL

Chinese President Xi Jinping urged G20 leaders Monday to support efforts to de-escalate the war in Ukraine and reach a “political solution,” state media reported.

His remarks at the G20 summit in Brazil come shortly after Ukraine received a US green light to launch long-range missiles provided by Washington against targets inside Russia.

“The G20 should support the United Nations and its Security Council in playing a greater role, and support all efforts conducive to the peaceful settlement of crises,” Xi said, according to Chinese state broadcaster CCTV.

He called for leaders to avoid “spillovers” from battlefields and escalation of fighting, and to help “cool the Ukraine crisis and seek a political solution.”

War in Ukraine continues to rage since Russia’s invasion in 2022.

China presents itself as a neutral party in the war and says it is not sending lethal assistance to either side, unlike the United States and other Western nations.

But it remains a close political and economic ally of Russia. NATO members have branded Beijing a “decisive enabler” of the war, which it has never condemned.

Following the long-range missile policy shift by US President Joe Biden, who leaves office in January, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said Monday his country was sending Ukraine 4,000 AI-guided drones.

Xi, in his speech Monday, also called for efforts to shore up multilateral trade systems and warned against “politicizing economic issues” without naming any specific countries.

His comments come before US President-elect Donald Trump reenters the White House in January, after campaigning on pledges to enact sweeping tariffs on China and others.

Washington also unveiled sharp tariff hikes this year on Chinese goods, notably on products like electric vehicle batteries and solar cells, as the United States tries to grow its domestic clean energy sectors.

“We must avoid politicizing economic issues, artificially dividing the global market, and avoid practicing protectionism in the name of green and low-carbon development,” Xi said.

In seeking cooperation on artificial intelligence, he added that this should not become “a game of rich countries and the wealthy.”

Xi called for “all sides to stop fighting” in Gaza as well, saying the war between Israel and Hamas has “brought heavy suffering,” CCTV reported.

Billionaires, frequent flyers, oil and gas: Who could fund COP29’s $1tn finance target?

Copyright AP Photo/Peter Dejong

By Euronews Green

Published on 18/11/2024 - 

“It makes common sense to tax mega polluters and the mega-rich to ensure that we have the money needed for climate action at home and globally” according to one campaigner.

Who should foot the climate finance bill - from loss and damage funds to new funding targets - has become an enduring controversy at recent COPs.

Experts have said that at least $1 trillion (€948 billion) needs to flow to developing nations by 2030 and a new climate finance goal known as the new collective quantified goal (NCQG) hangs in the balance in Baku.

Rich countries are calling for the pool of contributors to be widened. As developing nations deal with the growing frequency and scale of climate disasters, the urgency for these funds increases.

There are big gaps that rich nations will need to fill with innovative forms of finance. From levies on high carbon activities to wealth taxes, what are some of the alternative ideas on the table for raising this cash?

Simple solutions or difficult diplomacy?

A study published by civil society group Oil Change International in September found that rich countries could raise five times the money developing nations are demanding in climate finance with a series of what it calls “simple measures”.

According to the study, a combination of wealth and corporate taxes, taxes on fossil fuel extraction and a crackdown on subsidies could generate $5 trillion (€4.7 trillion) a year - five times what developing nations say they need.

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Stopping fossil fuel subsidies alone could free up $270 billion (€256 billion) in rich countries and a tax on fossil fuel extraction could raise $160 billion (€152billion). A frequent flyer levy could total $81 billion (€77 billion) a year from the rich world and increasing wealth taxes on multimillionaires and billionaires would raise a staggering $2.56 trillion (€2.43 trillion). In total, the list of measures it proposes would raise $5.3 trillion (€5.02 trillion) a year.

Some of these options are likely to be easier to implement than others. While adding a levy for frequent fliers doesn’t seem that controversial, money talks and strong opposition from billionaires could stop a wealth tax in its tracks.

Another proposal, redistributing 20 per cent of public military spending to raise $260 billion (€246 billion), could also prove tricky in a world of growing geopolitical instability.

Could a billionaire tax help pay the climate finance bill?

In July, a meeting of G20 finance ministers in Rio agreed to a "dialogue on fair and progressive taxation, including of ultra-high-net-worth individuals”. Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva is hoping to progress talks on this potential billionaire tax at the G20 meeting this week.

The baseline proposal from the finance ministers of Brazil, Germany, Spain and South Africa earlier this year recommended a 2 per cent tax on roughly 3,000 individuals with a net worth of more than $1 billion (€946 million). This would raise around €230 billion a year to fight poverty, inequality - and the climate crisis.

It has broad public support in G20 nations with an Ipsos poll from June showing that 70 per cent of people back the idea that wealthy people should pay higher income tax rates. But as G20 leaders meet in Brazil this week, there are reports that negotiators from Argentina’s new right-wing government are trying to undo progress made on this agreement.

A coin reading "Tax billionaires, tax polluters, $$$ for climate" 

on Leblon beach as part of a protest to draw attention to climate

 issues on the sidelines of the G20 Summit

AP Photo/Dhavid Normando

“There is huge popular support in the G20 countries for a tax on the super-rich and it is important that the European countries in the G20 rally behind the Brazillian President to protect the unprecedented agreement on taxing extreme wealth achieved by the finance ministers in July,” says Kate Blagojevic, associate director of Europe campaigns at 350.org.

“It makes common sense to tax mega polluters and the mega-rich to ensure that we have the money needed for climate action at home and globally, which can prevent and repair damage from extreme weather like we have seen in Spain and in Central America over the last few weeks.”

Other countries have not been keen to criticise the proposal in public but many fear that announcing such a tax would cause these ultra-wealthy individuals to flee to nations with more attractive tax policies.

Spain's economy minister Carlos Cuerpo urged countries on Monday before the G20 meeting to "be brave" and "do things that you are convinced are right".

Could taxing big oil help pay the climate finance bill?

A small tax on just seven of the world’s biggest oil and gas companies would grow the UN’s Loss and Damage fund by more than 2,000 per cent, according to a new analysis published today by Greenpeace International and Stamp Out Poverty.

It says that introducing what it calls a Climate Damages Tax across OECD countries could play an essential role in financing climate action. This is described as a fossil fuel extraction charge applied to the carbon dioxide equivalent emissions of each tonne of coal, barrel of oil or cubic metre of gas produced.

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A tax starting at $5 (€4.74) - and increasing year-on-year - per tonne of carbon emissions based on the volumes of oil and gas extracted by each company would raise an estimated $900 billion (€853 billion) by 2030, it finds. The two groups say this money would support governments and communities around the world as they face growing climate impacts.

Who should pay? This is fundamentally an issue of climate justice and it is time to shift the financial burden for the climate crisis from its victims to the polluters behind it.
Abdoulaye Diallo
Co-head of Greenpeace International’s Stop Drilling Start Paying campaign

“Who should pay? This is fundamentally an issue of climate justice and it is time to shift the financial burden for the climate crisis from its victims to the polluters behind it,” says Abdoulaye Diallo, co-head of Greenpeace International’s Stop Drilling Start Paying campaign.

Diallo adds that the analysis lays bare the scale of the challenge posed by the requirement for loss and damage funding “and the urgent need for innovative solutions to raise the funds to meet it”.

Could taxing frequent fliers help Europe raise climate finance funds?

In Europe, a tax on frequent fliers could raise €64 billion and slash emissions by a fifth, according to a report from environmental campaign groups Stay Grounded and the New Economics Foundation (NEF) published in October.

Currently, regardless of how many times a year you fly, you pay the same amount of aviation tax. But the report proposes an increasing level of tax for each flight a person takes in a year.

It would be added to all trips departing from the European Economic Area (EEA) and the UK, excluding the first two journeys. There would also be a surcharge on the most polluting medium and long-haul flights as well as business and first-class seats.

For the first and second flights taken in a year, a €50 surcharge would be applied to medium-haul and €100 to long-haul, business and first-class flights. For the third and fourth flights, a €50 levy would be added to every ticket plus an additional €50 surcharge for medium-haul and €100 for longer distances and comfort classes.

For fifth and sixth flights, the levy would rise to €100 per flight, plus the additional surcharges. For seventh and eighth flights the levy would be €200, rising to €400 for every flight thereafter.

In a way, this is also a kind of wealth tax. Five per cent of households earning over €100,000 take three or more return flights a year versus just 5 per cent of households earning less than €20,000.

A portion of these funds, according to senior researcher at NEF Sebastian Mang, should be ringfenced for the EU’s contribution to lower and middle-income countries dealing with the sharp end of the climate crisis.

 

Tax on world's wealthiest billionaires faces resistance at G20

Copyright Bruna Prado/Copyright 2024 The AP

By Paula Soler

Published on 18/11/2024 - 

G20 leaders are meeting in Brazil on Monday and Tuesday to agree on a global tax on the world’s 3,300 richest individuals, which could raise up to $250 billion.

Brazil's plan for a new tax on the world's wealthiest billionaires is facing some last-minute opposition at a two-day meeting of G20 leaders in Rio de Janeiro.  

In remarks made to reporters ahead of the meeting, Brazil's Environment Minister Marina Silva said there were "some objections on issues related to the climate agenda, the financial agenda and especially the tax on the super-rich," as she attempts to pull together a common declaration.

At a July meeting also held in Rio, all 20 finance ministers recognised that wealth and income inequalities undermine economic growth and social cohesion.

They agreed for the first time to “engage cooperatively to ensure that ultra-high-net-worth individuals are effectively taxed” – but that commitment still needs to be firmed up and translated into action.

Silva did not name which countries are now raising qualms, but there are reports that Argentina's President Javier Milei is taking an increasingly hardline stance on the issue.

Faced with such a scenario, Brazil could adjust the wording of the 20-country joint communiqué, or sign it on behalf of 19 countries with a paragraph explaining the dissenting country's position, sources close to negotiations told Euronews.    

Argentina has already refused to sign a ministerial declaration on women's empowerment at the G20, and withdrew on the third day of the COP29 climate summit in Baku, Azerbaijan.

Countries such as Spain, which alongside France and South Africa have been the main public supporters of Brazil's proposal, are putting pressure on other leaders to show courage on the issue.

"There is this moment where you have to be brave and where you just have to do things that you are convinced are right," Spain's finance minister Carlos Cuerpo urged his counterparts during a visit to London on Monday.

“There is an element here of redistribution of wealth that, if we listen carefully to the results of many of the elections that have taken place over the last years, has been demanded by our citizens. So we have to somehow respond," he added.

Cuerpo has previously stressed that the first step would be to create a database of the income and assets of individuals considered internationally to be ultra-rich.  

The plans to tax the world's 3,000 richest billionaires are based on a proposal made last year by French economist Gabriel Zucman, who argues that closing the loophole via a 2% wealth levy could raise as much as $250 billion (€230 billion).   

Oxfam estimates that the top 1% in the G20 countries now account for 31% of total wealth, up from around a quarter (26%) two decades ago. 

“Leaders at the Rio Summit can end the decades-long assault on taxation that’s been waged by the ultra-rich. Only then can we begin to heal the rifts of inequality tearing apart our societies,” Oxfam Brazil Executive Director Viviana Santiago said ahead of the meeting.