On the eve of the COP26 summit, the German Agency for the Environment (Umweltbundesamt, UBA) went public with a radical call for an end to all state subsidies and tax cuts for the “dirty” sectors of the economy like transportation, agriculture, energy generation. As UBA President Dirk Messner put it, “time is running out for climate protection,” therefore urgent action is required. The UBA presented a paper yesterday, asserting that if subsidies and tax cuts in the range of €65 billion annually are canceled, funds for so-called “renewables” (interruptibles, to be accurate) could be mobilized without having to increase general taxes.
In addition to calling for eliminating tax cuts agriculture’s use of diesel, Messner also proposed taxing meat products and also cutting taxes for non-meat products.
