The United Nations is imposing what amounts to a global tax on carbon emissions. They are doing it through shipping. It’s a first and we must not let them have that power.
The Marine Environment Protection Committee (MEPC) convened on Tuesday. They voted for new regulations charging maritime shipping companies for their carbon emissions. The vote was 63 to 16.
They are hurting the United States and giving China a free pass. Maoists now plan to control global shipping using the guise of climate ideology.
The regulation implements a “net-zero framework” (NZF) by requiring all maritime shipping to achieve “net-zero” carbon emissions by 2050, with intermediate targets set for 2030 and 2040. It takes the “cap-and-trade” scheme that limits industrial pollutants and applies it to emissions of carbon dioxide, which is the stuff of life. For carbon emissions above this cap, the IMO would collect what is effectively a carbon tax, to be held in a green energy fund and used on unspecified projects.
The Result:
- Mandatory global fuel standards
- A carbon pricing scheme across the entire industry
- Heavy penalties for noncompliance
- Lots of money for EU wastrels to spend.
Naturally, they give China a free pass.
The First Time The UN Taxes the US
“This is the first instance we can find of the U.N. claiming the ability to levy a tax — the revenues from which will be paid directly into a U.N.-controlled fund,” wrote The Wall Street Journal editors. “That’s bad enough as an invitation to opaque special dealing and corruption. But the IMO also contemplates using the funds for ‘just-transition initiatives in developing countries’ and to ‘mitigate negative impacts’ of climate change on ‘vulnerable States.’ In other words, this is another income redistribution scheme for whatever ideas the U.N. bureaucracy deems worthy.”
The dictator’s club of the UN is taxing Americans without representation. This is so they can redistribute the wealth. It also works well with UN’s dangerous Pact for the Future in which the overall objective is global governance.
In a stark display of globalist overreach, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres delivered a manifesto for dismantling national energy sovereignty. Masked as a climate plea, his speech was a direct assault on economic independence.
Guterres wasn’t just advocating for renewables;… pic.twitter.com/mPf0ipOZWG
— Camus (@newstart_2024) September 23, 2025
They are trying to get an already somewhat crippled shipping industry away from fossil fuels. They will bring us back to sails and solar if they can. Maybe we’ll need slaves to row the boats.
Fuel is one of the primary cost inputs for maritime shipping, which accounts for approximately 90% of international trade. The impact it will have is huge and it’s for the globalist ideology. This has been kept mostly under wraps. Washington rightly worries It will increase the costs of goods American households buy by increasing global shipping costs as much as 10%. That’s only to start. They can weaponize it.
And that’s the idea.
The One Master
The shipping industry would have one master, the UN. It would also include all those wretches who whisper in the ears of the UN communists. There will be lots of opportunities for control and criminal activity.
The statement was signed by most of the world’s shipping industry.
Meanwhile, who will decide when the tax rate needs to increase, and how? This task is left to a 170-plus member “committee” under the aegis of the IMO, and good luck to any voter in Boston, Berlin or Bangkok who wants to influence that debate. It’s a bad sign that the IMO is even pushing this measure, when voters in the U.S. and across Europe are becoming less willing to pay economic costs for net-zero climate policies.
Voters don’t want any part of this.
Many Western governments, especially in Europe, nonetheless support the IMO plan—no doubt because the climate ideology is unpopular. They want to keep it going. It’s an attempt by climate-obsessed politicians to entrench their agenda before voters in democracies can kill it, say the WSJ Editors.
The UN wants everyone to abdicate sovereignty, and leave national decision making to international bodies.
The US Response
In a joint statement, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of Energy Chris Wright, and Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy warned that this is a global carbon tax on Americans. It hands a strategic advantage to China. The regulations also blocks technology where the U.S. leads — liquefied natural gas, biofuels. Instead, it favors fuels not even widely available.
They threatened “actions against nations that support this global carbon tax on American consumers. This would include investigations, regulations to combat anti-competitive practices, imposing visa restrictions, commercial penalties, port fees, and sanctions.
“This will be the first time that a UN organization levies a global carbon tax on the world,” the statement declared. “The Administration unequivocally rejects this proposal before the IMO and will not tolerate any action that increases costs for our citizens, energy providers, shipping companies and their customers, or tourists. The economic impacts from this measure could be disastrous.”
The Trump administration said in a statement of opposition on August 12, that the standards would “conveniently benefit China by requiring the use of expensive fuels unavailable at global scale. These standards would also preclude the use of proven technologies that fuel global shipping fleets, including lower emissions options where U.S. industry leads such as liquified natural gas (LNG) and biofuels.”
The United Nations plans to impose “Net Zero” carbon taxes on global shipping will raise $12 billion per year for a “green projects” slush fund.
UN bureaucrats will be able to spend the money however they want.
We went to war with England over taxation without representation. https://t.co/nt4sYHpGra pic.twitter.com/L2ccdKJFA3
— Wall Street Mav (@WallStreetMav) October 16, 2025
The UN are behaving like dictators, like Kings…