Hi David, I'm new to ResearchGate but straight away see a question which intrigues me. Of course we should be moving rapidly to wards ecological resource taxation , and high entropy waste taxation. Money however is just a medium of exchange which has been invented by man to enable him to trade better and more widely, if we had a completely localized society and thus economy we could manage with bartering, but when our needs get more complex we have to create a symbolic unit of exchange. In practical terms many people are working on localised alternative/parallel monies (see the transition towns movement) as a move back to more localized economies which make more ecological sense and reduce our footprints.

I agree with your comment on money as an exchange medium but it also has a role as insurance to cover for disasters.

I firmly believe that all present taxation should be replaced with a natural resource tax . mainly in the fact it would be easier to collect from fewer places and therefore reduce collection and administration costs considerably. and this appears to be what the IMF is asking of Greece at present,and that it would create a mind set change in all the populus , based on the fact that all products and services would have their environmental damage credentials embedded in them , so the consumer would be making a real choice and decision based on this.

The tax would also be equal to all, and evenly distributed based on the purchased or services bought and how much environmental damage tax those products and services contain.

http://www.schroders.com/en/sysglobalassets/digital/insights/pdfs/the-impact-of-climate-change-on-the-global-economy.pdf