Poor will pay for carbon tariffs
timesofindia.indiatimes.com/blogs
To tackle climate change, rich nations are promising to end fossil fuel use in 29 years. That will be costly, says Bjørn Lomborg.achieved in 2020 with the global lockdowns. This year, we will need the equivalent of two global lockdowns. We’ll need three in 2022, and 11 every year from 2030. This will cost tens of trillions of dollars annually. Rich countries want to make the world’s poor pay the costs through carbon tariffs – the UK is pushing the idea as akey priority of its G7 presidency. The idea is to stop businesses fleeing across borders as energy costs are driven up. But such tariffs will also make it harder for the developing world to compete because most rich countries use carbon more sparingly – they will be a form of “back-door protectionism” for the rich. Economic models show that a cut in emissions of 20% will cost the rich world $310bn ayear. Using carbon tariffs, the rich world can instead end up $400bn better off while imposing more than $500bn in extra costs on the poor. The hope is that the burden will force poor countries to adopt their own costly climate policies. The more likely result is a growing resentment of the rich world, tariff wars, and the developing world forming separate free-trade blocs.
