Saturday 15 October 2011

Food or Fuel taxes?

It is undisputed that our consumption of goods - including sometimes wasted food - is contributing to global warming. On the other hand CO2-taxation mainly focuses on the energy consumption and on passenger cars in most countries. It is now time to discuss an overarching taxation for goods and energy. Goods might consume energy or contain energy in grey form from the craddle to the product in the warehouse shelf. The point is now whether we should tax each good related to a calculated CO2-emission or pure taxation of energy will suffice. INMHO it would be sufficient to define goods which lets say consume 10-times the production energy and set up CO2 taxation for them. For all other products including food taxation of energy shall be the only CO2-related steering. There might be some exemptions however to close gaps. This relates to transport for example or energy intensive exterior production. So for example PV-panels from China which were produced using power from brown coal should have import duties related to their CO2-emission in China. Same applies to imported fruits or wines because shipping and air-transport on an international level is seldom taxed for CO2. WTO with the help of science now should elaborate standards for international CO2-related import duties.

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