“When you look at it globally, when you look at it across Asia, when you look at the large parts of economies which have been exempted from carbon taxes, even in many of the advanced economies, it’s just not coming. The political economy doesn’t encourage it,” says Tharman in his keynote address at the inaugural Financing Asia’s Transition (FAST) Conference on June 8.
Carbon taxes are the most logical and rational way to incentivise companies to act on reducing their emissions, but countries have been slow to introduce them because they are politically unpopular, says Senior Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam.
Thus, carbon taxes have to be “significantly higher” than where they are today, adds Tharman, and he does not see them “coming in time” to meet global net-zero targets.
