Love your Taxes
FoE Germany Popularizing Eco-Taxes
Tax increases are never popular, so
making an additional tax less unpopular is
the aim of FoE Germany´s Pro Ökosteuer (Yes
to Eco-Taxes) campaign.
BUND/FoE Germany has called for an
ecological tax for more than two decades.
In 1999, the current Red-Green government
finally introduced an ecological tax
reform. However, this "Ökosteuer" falls way
short of FoE demands (see LINK 87 &
89). Nonetheless, there are good arguments
for supporting this first tentative step
towards the greening of the German tax
system.
First of all, it is essential to
establish the principal of eco-taxes in
highly industrialized Germany. Furthermore,
any faults in the reform can potentially be
remedied in years to come. And finally,
despite being too low, the eco-tax creates
incentives for investing in
energy-efficient technologies.
Unfortunately, high oil prices led
eighty percent of the German population to
demand that the eco-tax be abolished in the
autumn of 2000. This looming threat was the
catalyst for FoE Germany, supported by a
coalition of seven German NGOs dealing with
environment, traffic and consumer issues,
to launch its pro-ecological tax campaign.
It has been strange and at times
uncomfortable to support the government
against the harsh criticism of a majority
of the population as well as the media. But
step-by-step, the campaign has managed to
elicit positive responses from the press,
activists and the broader public.
The central message of the campaign is
that by conserving energy you can still
save money, although the eco-tax has made
energy more expensive. We have distributed
leaflets and done several actions to show
the public how this can be done. For
example, people are asked to set the
temperature in their refrigerators at seven
degrees Celsius. That´s cold enough!
The campaign has also produced a
web-based "eco-tax-calculator". This
software simulates the effects of the
ecological tax reform on households. After
entering some approximate data about your
resource consumption at home, the programme
tells you how much extra money this has
cost you. At the same time, you are shown
how much money you saved due to reduced
indirect labour costs (funded by the
eco-tax).
Several energy consumption reduction
measures are also displayed on the website.
The user can decide which actions to take
by marking the corresponding boxes. With
the click of a button, the programme then
computes how much money can be saved by
taking these painless steps. This website
has proven extremely popular. A CD-ROM has
been developed with the software programme
and is available from BUND.
After five months of campaigning, the
eco-tax remains unpopular. But we still
have ten months left to make the Germans
love their "Ökosteuer"!
Lars Büthe,
FoE Germany
