The amount of money that IMF Christine Lagarde, head of the International Monetary Fund, said could be raised through emissions taxes on air and ocean freight carriage. That, she said, would be a juicy 25% of the total $100 billion being thrown about as needed “for climate adaptation and mitigation in developing countries.” That in turn has to do with deals that have been discussed for the past several years in which richer nations would help poor ones transition to low emissions economies, or pay them to in effect forego some economic growth. In the end, this means that shippers/importers would be paying for these programs. Wow.

The price advantage on-line rivals often have over Lowes relative to not having to charge sales tax, the company told the Wall Street Journal this week, after it published an article saying that a variety of factors are moving towards ending the tax exemption for on-line merchants. Amazon.com is giving up its fight against the tax, the story said, but probably because its rapidly growing network of DCs means it will have a physical presence in so many states (and thus have to collect sales taxes for orders shipped to those states) that it wants to make sure its rivals also have to pay. This change could alter some of the current e-commerce dynamics – and also put more pressure on e-merchants to wave shipping costs.