Last week, we sent our supporters the Institute’s new America Is Not Broke report, which explains how the nation could raise more than $800 billion dollars annually through a tax on Wall Street and other popular measures. My IPS colleagues Sarah Anderson and Janet Redman have spent years helping to build a coordinated campaign in the United States, Europe, and other countries to back a “financial transactions tax.”

This week, Janet is in Durban, South Africa, where she’s rallying other groups at the global climate talks to support this tax to help fund poor countries making the leap into a clean energy future. In the dispatches Janet is writing from South Africa, she reports that the UN estimates it will cost poorer nations close to $1 trillion annually to address climate change in the coming years. A significant share of this could come from a financial transactions tax.

Janet has pulled together a rainbow of global groups to do an action, press conference, and sign-on letter to South African President Jacob Zuma to support this Robin Hood effort. Sarah reports that it is likely that Europe will adopt this tax next year.

IPS is committed to bringing the momentum in Europe and elsewhere into the U.S. debate in the coming months, and turning this Occupy moment into a time of real change. In the face of growing pressure, the Obama administration has dropped its active opposition to new taxes on financial transactions. The door is now open for a win that both reins in the Wall Street casino and raises substantial funds for vital issues like climate.

The Institute is also releasing a Main Street jobs agenda report this week with YES! Magazine and our other allies in the New Economy Working Group. In this report, we explain how to create millions of jobs by shifting the locus of our economy from the Wall Street to a vibrant, green Main Street economy.