'Green taxes required for green growth'

Paul Ekins, professor of energy and environment policy at the University College London

Environmental tax reform, also known as a ``green tax,'' is crucial in efforts to solve the world's environmental problems, particularly climate change.

Paul Ekins, a professor of energy and environment policy at University College London, said environmental tax reform shifts taxes from income and social security to carbon use and pollution. 

``What happens is people who use less energy and carbon end up better off because their income and labor taxes have gone down, and people in businesses that use more carbon, they end up paying more... This is a policy mechanism that enables the government to develop the new industries of the future at effectively no cost,'' Ekins told The Korea Times.