Debating the Climate Corporate Tax - Pierre André (Climate Change Graz PostDoc fellow)
Abstract:
Although the creation of a new fund dedicated to climatic loss and damage has
been agreed at COP 27 in 2022, it remains unclear how it will be financed.
Given the current insufficiency of climate finance, new policy instruments may
have to be found. Recently, economist Esther Duflo has proposed the
introduction of a global corporate climate tax in order to fund direct transfers to
the victims of extreme weather events like heat waves, floods and droughts. It
has been presented as a way to discharge the climatic “moral debt” that rich
people in the global North have towards vulnerable people in the global South.
In this paper, I want to assess the fairness of such an instrument. This raises
both normative and empirical questions. On the normative side, there may be a
tension between a corrective approach to corporate responsibility and a
distributive approach to interpersonal justice. On the factual side, the fairness
of a climate corporate tax may also depend on its economic incidence and on
the carbon intensity of corporate profits.
Colloquium
Tuesday, 19th of November
17:00-18:30
SR 129.11 (Hilmgasse 4/1st floor)