Fossil fuel companies should be hit with windfall profits taxes to help rich nations pay developing nations compensation for climate disasters, global climate talks in Egypt have been told.

“The oil and gas industry continues to earn almost $US3 billion [$4.6 billion] daily in profits,” Gaston Browne, Prime Minister of Antigua and Barbuda, said.

“It is about time that these companies are made to pay a global carbon tax on their profits as a source of funding for loss and damage.

“Profligate producers of fossil fuels have benefited from extortionate profits at the expense of human civilisation. While they are profiting, the planet is burning.”

United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres backed taxing fossil giants, calling on governments to redirect super profits into the hands of those suffering from climate catastrophes as part of what he called a Climate Solidarity Pact.

“Humanity has a choice: co-operate or perish. It is either a Climate Solidarity Pact – or a Collective Suicide Pact,” he said.

“The deadly impacts of climate change are here and now. Loss and damage can no longer be swept under the rug. It is a moral imperative. It is a fundamental question of international solidarity – and climate justice. Those who contributed least to the climate crisis are reaping the whirlwind sown by others.”

Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley, whose fierce climate advocacy saw her named by Time magazine as of the 100 most influential people this year, made the case for loss and damage funding to developing nations on ground of both justice and practicality.

“We were the ones whose blood, sweat and tears financed the industrial revolution,” she said. “Are we now to face double jeopardy by having to pay the cost as a result of those greenhouse gases from the industrial revolution? That is fundamentally unfair.”