The Transformative Potential of Responding to Climate Change: Towards a Dynamic Global Tax

Abstract

A worldwide greenhouse gas tax is a global-Keynesian solution to the aporia of the climate crisis. We argue that taxes should be preferred to trading and that there is a need for a global organisation and coordination of this taxation. A global greenhouse tax can be simultaneously a practice of governance and subversion, of regulation and resistance. We envision a coordinated, accountable, and democratic global institution that is adequate for such a purpose. The building is a process: a global greenhouse gas tax can be created by a coalition of willing and advocated by the climate movement. A border levy is defendable as a part of an increasingly inclusive global system, while a democratic global fund may constitute the beginning of world domestic economic policy.