A few years back France and Brazil got together in support of Lula’s proposal to tax international arms sales and create a fund to eradicate world hunger. Sounds like a winning combo to me.
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 8 (IPS)
Despite strong reservations by the United States, Japan and Germany over proposed new global taxes, the United Nations is set to take centre-stage in the longstanding controversy over new sources of innovative funding for the world’s poorer nations.”The debate has already entered the United Nations,” says U.N. Under-Secretary-General Jose Antonio Ocampo, head of the department of economic and social affairs (DESA). ”We have been requested to prepare a study, the results of which will be presented to the General Assembly (in September) this year,” he told IPS.
The proposals on the table include a carbon tax on fuel use, the ‘Tobin tax’ on currency transactions, a levy on international sales of weapons, a global lottery and a tax on international airline travel.
Of course there was the predictable reaction from the US right: “The world community needs to understand that the United States and its citizens view any proposal for global taxation as an unacceptable attack on our sovereignty.”
RECIFE, Brazil, Apr 25 (IPS) – Chile and France will begin in July to charge a special tax in airports which will go towards the purchase of medicines for poor countries afflicted by HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis.
San Jose Mercury News – Bleak U.N. report on global warming derided as too soft
“A new global warming report issued Friday by the United Nations paints a near-apocalyptic vision of Earth’s future: more than a billion people in need of water, extreme food shortages in Africa, a planetary landscape ravaged by floods and millions of species sentenced to extinction.“
Everybody’s talking about what it will do to the poor in Africa and nobody is even thinking about what it will do to the spring break ski vacation:
Skiers against global warming
“Skiers unfurled a protest banner in April snow on Whiteface Mountain on Saturday to kick off a nationwide day of demonstrations aimed at drawing attention to global warming.“
Housing prices and housing sales impact the willingness of developers to build new houses. This in turn impacts lumber markets and limits or expands the economic viability of options available to forest managers.
Here’s a short entertaining video that illustrates where housing values stood in 2006…
“More or less every single day we hear from some one who is stating that we need to save water or cut down on waste, but how on earth are we supposed to know exactly how much water we need to survive? Well the people, who brought us seats made out of recycled egg cartons, think that they have come up with a very useful and practical way to answer that question.”
