NEW YORK — United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres urged world leaders to increase taxes on coal, oil, and natural gas companies in order to mitigate the cost of climate change and provide relief from inflation.
“Today, I am calling on all developed economies to tax the windfall profits of fossil fuel companies,” Guterres said Tuesday. “Those funds should be redirected in two ways: to countries suffering loss and damage caused by the climate crisis, and to people struggling with rising food and energy prices.”
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Guterres’s proposal comes as the European Commission considers a 33% windfall tax that would levy surplus profits notched by European Union energy companies. President Joe Biden‘s proposed 21% surtax did not survive negotiations between Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) this summer when the pair struck a deal for the partisan Inflation Reduction Act. New Conservative British Prime Minister Liz Truss announced this month she would not renew the United Kingdom’s 25% windfall tax, which was introduced in May.
Warning of a “rendezvous with climate disaster” and a “winter of global discontent,” Guterres also used his “state of the world” address to underscore how countries have become “gridlocked in colossal global dysfunction” amid Russia‘s war in Ukraine.
“Our world is in big trouble,” he said. “Divides are growing deeper, inequalities are growing wider, and challenges are spreading farther.” Cooperation and dialogue are the only path forward.”
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Guterres’s speech opened the 77th session of the General Assembly’s annual debate. Biden is scheduled to appear before the body on Wednesday.
