I think there’s plenty of common ground between free-market types and environmentalist types. Yesterday, during a UN climate conference in Rio, enviros launched a twitter campaign with the hashtag #EndFossilFuelSubsidies.
While I think the Left often has too broad a definition of “oil subsidy,” there are real fossil fuel subsidies in the U.S., and many more overseas. Matt Yglesias hit on this back in January.
What if I told you that we could obtain half the reduction in carbon emissions needed to stave off climate disaster not with new government interventions in the economy but simply by removing existing interventions?
…in 2010 the world spent $409 billion on subsidizing the production and consumption of fossil fuels, dwarfing the word’s $66 billion or so of subsidies for renewable energy.
Far and away the biggest problem seems to be that misguided sense that countries that are large producers of certain kinds of fuels ought to subsidize domestic consumption of the fuel in question. Thus Saudi Arabia spends more than $30 billion a year on gas consumption subsidies while Russia spends $17 billion on natural gas subsidies. Iran, which produces both, subsidizes both, spending $66 billion in total plus an additional $14.4 billion on electricity consumption subsidies. Large-population developing countries such as China, India, and Indonesia are also important players in the subsidy game. In no case do these subsidies make sense.
…in 2010 the world spent $409 billion on subsidizing the production and consumption of fossil fuels, dwarfing the word’s $66 billion or so of subsidies for renewable energy.
Far and away the biggest problem seems to be that misguided sense that countries that are large producers of certain kinds of fuels ought to subsidize domestic consumption of the fuel in question. Thus Saudi Arabia spends more than $30 billion a year on gas consumption subsidies while Russia spends $17 billion on natural gas subsidies. Iran, which produces both, subsidizes both, spending $66 billion in total plus an additional $14.4 billion on electricity consumption subsidies. Large-population developing countries such as China, India, and Indonesia are also important players in the subsidy game. In no case do these subsidies make sense.
