Grangemouth oil refinery in Scotland. The report authors say the proposed levy could be easily administered within existing tax systems. Photograph: Murdo Macleod/The Guardian
A new tax on fossil fuel companies based in the world’s richest countries could raise hundreds of billions of dollars to help the most vulnerable nations cope with the escalating climate crisis, according to a report.
The Climate Damages Tax report, published on Monday, calculates that an additional tax on fossil fuel majors based in the wealthiest Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries could raise $720bn (£580bn) by the end of the decade.
The authors say a new extraction levy could boost the loss and damage fund to help vulnerable countries cope with the worst effects of climate breakdown that was agreed at the Cop28 summit in Dubai – a hard-won victory by developing countries that they hope will signal a commitment by developed, polluting nations to provide financial support for some of the destruction already under way.
David Hillman, the director of the Stamp Out Poverty campaign and co-author of the report, said it “demonstrates that the richest, most economically powerful countries, with the greatest historical responsibility for climate change, need look no further than their fossil fuel industries to collect tens of billions a year in extra income by taxing them far more rigorously. This is surely the fairest way to boost revenues for the loss and damage fund to ensure that it is sufficiently financed as to be fit for purpose.”
In the first study of its kind, published in the journal Science, scientists from dozens of research institutes reviewed 665 trials of conservation measures, some from as far back as 1890, in different countries and oceans and across species types, and found they had had a positive effect in two out of every three cases.
A TORY MP clashed with protesters after arriving at his office to find it plastered with posters and swathed in police “crime scene” tape over his support for a new coalmine in Cumbria.
Police were called as Workington MP Mark Jenkinson challenged Just Stop Oil campaigners outside his office this morning.
Plans for a coalmine in Cumbria have sparked repeated protests including by environment campaign Friends of the Earth and Mr Jenkinson’s own constituents.
Government approval for the mine was given in 2022.
Mr Jenkinson is an outspoken supporter of the project, arguing that it is needed to supply the steel industry.
Protester Alison Parker, 41, who is one of Mr Jenkinson’s constituents, said: “I am sick of Mark Jenkinson telling constituents like me that the coalmine is needed by the steel industry, and that it will be carbon-neutral.
A newly revealed research proposal from 1971 shows that Richard Nixon’s science advisors embarked on an extensive analysis of the potential risks of climate change. Credit: Oliver Atkins/National Archives
A 1971 plan for a global carbon dioxide monitoring network never came to fruition. The proposal is detailed in a document newly unearthed by the National Security Archive.
In 1971, President Richard Nixon’s science advisers proposed a multimillion dollar climate change research project with benefits they said were too “immense” to be quantified, since they involved “ensuring man’s survival,” according to a White House document newly obtained by the nonprofit National Security Archive and shared exclusively with Inside Climate News.
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It has long been known that Nixon’s advisers warned him of the risks of global warming. A tranche of documents released by the Nixon Presidential Library in 2010 showed that his then-adviser Daniel Patrick Moynihan urged his administration to engage with the issue as early as 1969. Moynihan, who later served 24 years as U.S. Senator from New York, noted that sea level rise of 10 feet was possible with a 7-degree Fahrenheit (3.9-degree Celsius) temperature increase. “Goodbye, New York,” he wrote. “Goodbye Washington, for that matter.”
But the newly revealed Dec. 20, 1971, research proposal by the White House Office of Science and Technology shows for the first time that Nixon’s science advisors embarked on an extensive analysis of the potential risks of climate change and an assessment of the data needs.
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“No analysis is feasible. Benefits are immense, but not quantifiable, since this element contributes to ensuring man’s survival.”
Under a section marked “cost-benefit analysis,” the authors wrote, “No analysis is feasible. Benefits are immense, but not quantifiable, since this element contributes to ensuring man’s survival.”
Nixon’s aides proposed that the government embark on development of new instruments using lidar, or light-detecting and remote sensing—a technology then less than a decade old—to better measure carbon in the atmosphere. They were correct on the advantages of lidar, but it would be more than four decades until scientists at NASA and around the world began to implement its use to study not just the concentration of carbon dioxide, but its global distribution and daily variations.
“I felt like this document was really ahead of its time,” Santarsiero said.
Decades before a scientific consensus emerged on climate change, Nixon’s science advisers conveyed an understanding of the risks. Research, they wrote, would assist in “taking of protective measures against potential natural disasters such as large-scale inundation of low-lying coastal regions, broad extensions of ice sheets and severe health hazards.”
During a demonstration at Citibank’s headquarters in Manhattan on Wednesday, 33 protesters were taken into custody, including Rachel Rivera (center), a board member with New York Communities for Change. Credit: Keerti Gopal/Inside Climate News
Campaigners pressuring Citibank say they see the bank as potentially movable on its funding of fossil fuels, citing the company’s commitments to sustainability.
NEW YORK—Climate demonstrators blocked entrances to Citibank’s headquarters in Manhattan at the start of the workday on Wednesday and Thursday, part of a series of Earth Week actions pressuring the bank to end its financing of fossil fuels. On both mornings, it took the New York Police Department less than 10 minutes to start making arrests.
Climate activists, citing Citibank as the second largest financier of fossil fuels in the world, are engaged in a multi-year campaign to pressure the bank to stop financing oil, gas and coal projects. The week’s protests follow a mock environmental justice hearing at a New York church on Monday, where advocates spoke about the health harms and human rights violations of Citibank-financed fossil fuel projects in Peru, Canada and domestically. The New York demonstration was timed alongside actions in Seoul, South Korea, Melbourne, Australia, Jakarta, Indonesia, Belfast, Northern Ireland, and Dallas that also targeted Citibank’s financing of coal, oil, natural gas and military projects.
At about 8:15 Wednesday morning, activists holding four large white banners that together read “Stop Funding Fossil Fuels” blocked the main entrance to Citibank’s headquarters while smaller groups of demonstrators stood outside other entrances to the building. Police began taking protesters into custody at 8:30 and arrested approximately 33 activists for disorderly conduct at Wednesday’s protest, according to activists and the office of NYPD’s deputy commissioner of public information.
Protesters barricaded the main entrance to Citibank’s headquarters in Manhattan on Wednesday morning. Credit: Keerti Gopal/Inside Climate News
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Campaigners have said that, since 2016, Citibank has provided $332 billion in fossil fuel financing, and calculate that the bank has given $1.85 billion in financing to oil and gas operations in the Amazon since 2009 and $1.78 billion in financing to ConocoPhillips, the company behind the contentious Willow Project.
