Tax Policy Challenges in the 21st Century

S. 193I. Introduction

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change defines climate change as follows: „Climate change refers to a change of climate that is attributed directly or indirectly to human activity that alters the composition of the global atmosphere and that is in addition to natural climate variability observed over comparable time periods.“

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) stated in its last report that the atmosphere and the ocean have warmed, the amounts of snow and ice have diminished, the sea level has risen and the concentration of greenhouse gases (GHG) has increased. The global average temperature has increased by 0.85 degrees since 1985 and it is likely that it will exceed 1.5 degrees by the end of the 21th century. As a further consequence it is, for example, predicted that due to global warming, natural disasters will be more strongly pronounced and will occur more frequently, that an increasing number of species will be threatened with extinction and that world poverty will increase due to droughts and floods. Furthermore, the organization states that it can be said with a 95% certainty human activity is the dominant cause of the obs...