Conflict and armaments waste money and frequently damage the environment: the Gulf War threatened to cause global environmental change through torched oil wells, and defoliation in Vietnam is still having marked impacts three decades later.
Failure to resolve resource sharing and environmental problems have the potential to cause warfare. Little more than a hundred years ago few people in the UK or the USA would have imagined the widespread acceptance of payment of income taxes, purchase taxes, airport tax and so forth. Now, such levies are commonplace in developed countries, often levied at more than 30 per cent of gross income. There is hope that people can accept taxation for investing in the global environment and in assisting the poor; it should be possible to levy taxes on richer citizens and business for environmental management worldwide – even a tax of 1 or 2 per cent on developed country incomes would give huge revenue and offer more security and chance of sustainable development for all nations. If advertising can convince people to invest significant portions of their income in pointless and even harmful activities, it surely has the potential to ‘sell’ such global taxes.