Nobel Economist Tells G-20 to Slap Climate Tax on Billionaires

  • Duflo wants to raise $500 billion to mitigate climate effects
  • Rich nations have ‘moral debt’ to poor countries, she argues
Esther DufloPhotographer: Joel Saget/AFP/Getty Images

Brazil has demanded that wealthy nations spend more to combat global warming. Now, as the rotating president of the Group of 20 nations, it is promoting a Nobel-winning economist’s plan to tax billionaires and corporations to alleviate the pain climate change has caused the planet’s poorest citizens.

Esther Duflo, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor who won the 2019 Nobel Prize in economics for her research into poverty reduction, will on Wednesday present her proposal for a global minimum tax on billionaires and increased corporate levies to G-20 finance chiefs gathered in Washington.