Nicolas Sarkozy is on a roll. A couple of weeks ago, he announced a new domestic fuel tax as part of France’s well-publicized drive to take the vanguard in the fight against global warming. Starting as soon as 2010, the nation’s long-suffering families and companies (and France is one of the most highly taxed countries in the world, according to a recent Forbes report — see my blog here) will be asked to shoulder a “green” tax of 17 euros levied on each metric ton of CO2 produced by fossil fuels such as oil, natural gas, and coal.

Now Mr. Sarkozy has talked German Chancellor Angela Merkel into signing on to his plan for an E.U.-wide carbon tax on imports from countries that fail to meet what he regards as acceptable carbon emissions standards.

In a letter to U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, Sarkozy and Merkel note that in the struggle to curb global warming, “all countries, except the poorest, must be engaged financially according to the level of their emissions and their capacity to pay.” Referring to an upcoming climate summit scheduled for December in Copenhagen, they suggest that “appropriate adjustment measures” should be imposed on countries that don’t sign on to whatever deal emerges.

As this AFP report points out, the idea probably won’t go down too well with developing countries like India and China, which are always quick to point out (with impeccable logic) that it’s old-industrial countries like France that got us into this climate-change mess in the first place. And if the developing nations respond to perceived “eco-imperialism” with retaliatory import taxes of their own … ?

With the global economy still shaky, that should be the last thing anyone wants to see. ###