The paper discusses the benefits of imposing a global “green tax” or environmental tax (e.g. taxing carbon emissions) as a means of financing the MDGs, addressing global poverty and environmental degradation. Like any tax policy evaluation, the paper looked at the objectives and the framework of the tax, its design, and the institutional arrangement needed for its implementation. The paper points out that the creation of the latter through international instruments like the Kyoto Protocol is the most difficult step, considering the opposition of some industrialized countries, specifically, the US.