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from the extant-dinosaurs-dealing-in-dead-dinosaurs dept.
Common Dreams reports
Governments are failing to properly tax fossil fuel consumption, with enormous environmental costs, the IMF reports.
The fossil fuel industry receives $5.3 trillion a year in government subsidies, despite its disastrous toll on the environment, human health, and other global inequality issues, a new report by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) published [May 18] has found.
That means that governments worldwide are spending $10 million every minute to fund energy companies--more than the estimated public health spending for the entire globe, IMF economists Benedict Clements and Vitor Gaspar wrote in a blog post accompanying the report (pdf).
[...]Subsidies occur in two ways, IMF Fiscal Affairs Department directors Sanjeev Gupta and Michael Keen explained in a separate blog post published [May 18]:"[Pre-tax]" subsidies--which occur when people and businesses pay less than it costs to supply the energy--are smaller than a few years back. But "post-tax" subsidies--which add to pre-tax subsidies an amount that reflects the environmental, health and other damage that energy use causes and the benefit from favorable VAT or sales tax treatment--remain extremely high, and indeed are now well above our previous estimates.
[...]If anything, the report's findings are "conservative", Steve Kretzmann, executive director of Oil Change International, told Common Dreams. "[It] doesn't include direct subsidies to fossil fuel producers, and it doesn't include things like the cost of military resources to defend Persian Gulf oil."
(Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Tuesday May 19 2015, @06:42PM
environmental damage—including global warming, local pollution, traffic congestion and accidents—from energy consumption is just as real as are traditional supply costs (even if harder to measure) and the prices that consumers pay should reflect these negative “externalities.”
Basically they want them to pay twice. Because the consumers are already paying those costs directly, and its not like the government is every going to step in and pay those expenses for me anytime soon.
So for example, if air pollution from gasoline I buy causes $10 of health damage per year, they want me to continue to pay the $10 I/we are already paying for health care AND also pay the .gov an extra $10 annually in additional taxes on gas for them to do... nothing, I presume.
Their argument is sound although phrased really weirdly in terms of subsidies and stuff, but it boils down to the energy companies are in the good ole american business model of socialize the losses and privatize the gains, its just the IMF thinks it would be great to skim off some taxes because hey why the heck not, .gov can always find a way to spend some money.
it doesn't include things like the cost of military resources to defend Persian Gulf oil
It seems a simple line item to categorize and account for and pay up. Take the DOD percentage of budget spent in the M.E. times the total budget and divide that total cost of oil by the number of imported barrels of oil and slap a simple excise tax on each barrel. This might be an admission that even if the M.E. was oil-free we'd still be doing whatever Israel tells us to do in our position as their client state, so pretending its all only about the oil yet not accounting for it, is overall good P.R. They said "invade Iraq" we said "yes sir" and it doesn't much matter what it costs or how much oil we import, we're still gonna do what they say, when they say it, and how they say it, until they say "stop".
(Score: 3, Insightful) by hash14 on Tuesday May 19 2015, @10:41PM
Basically they want them to pay twice. Because the consumers are already paying those costs directly, and its not like the government is every going to step in and pay those expenses for me anytime soon.
I'm not sure I completely agree with this, assuming I'm understanding your argument correctly. If we take an example: the person who moved into the city to reduce his work commute suffers additional health effects from burning fossil fuels (increased respiratory problems, reduced air quality, higher temperatures, etc.) - it's like that person is being charged twice. Or we could consider someone who lives by a shore and doesn't use any carbon emissions at all, but has to pay for flood damage and eventual eviction. These people aren't necessarily causing the problem, but they pay disproportionately more for its effects.
I know that it's not really practical to exactly quantify the amount of harm caused by burning fossil fuels, but ultimately, the environmental damage is caused by people who are burning the fuels, and the best way to make them compensate for that is by taxing its usage.
(Score: 2) by aclarke on Wednesday May 20 2015, @01:43AM
Well said. The first link reports that China is contributing $2.3 trillion of the $5.6 trillion annual estimate. However, this is a simplistic view of the issue, as obviously the rest of the world is outsourcing our dirty work to China. So really, it's we who are polluting in China, helping to cause those estimated > 1M premature pollution-related deaths per year in China.
I've lately been trying to think through a potential solution that would involve an environmental levy on imported products. The levy would attempt to quantify the environmental cost of the product and then apply that to the product upon import. That money collected would then be placed in an environmental cleanup fund or something, rather than simply being used to fund the government. The problem is that in a global economy there are too many leaks. For example, here in Canada you'd just get people driving over the border to the US and smuggling goods back without paying the levy. However, if it could be properly applied it would significantly level the economic field between locally produced and imported items, as well as providing an incentive for companies to produce items in an environmentally friendly fashion and for countries to clean up their act and tighten their environmental regulations.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday May 20 2015, @11:46AM
These people aren't necessarily causing the problem, but they pay disproportionately more for its effects.
Yes we are in agreement so far, and extending your example into the implementation era, the total cost of public victimization divided by the number of residents works out to $1K/yr (just to make the math easy), which they are currently paying. So the .gov will "helpfully" tax everyone an extra $1K/yr for a total loss of $2K/yr, because they got guns and we don't and the only moral doctrine we operate under is "might makes right" (there seems to be no moral, ethical, or technological argument behind it other than "you have money; we have guns; so we can take your money; say bye to your money"). At that point the residents of the city are $2K/yr poorer, and because we have a failed state of a government, any money it gets will lower the standard of living rather then increase it, so they buy the cops more guns to shoot kids in the back with, or invade yet another helpless country, or whatever other stuff you see in todays headlines just more of it.
So if its not implemented, the city residents on average are $1K/yr poorer, and if we do implement it, the city residents on average are more than $2K/yr worse off. So I'm not exactly looking forward to this.
Is there any other realistic, fact based, historically likely outcomes of the proposal other than making the poor bastards who are currently suffering, suffer even more?
Another aspect that burns me, is the institutionalization and codification and respect of stupidity. You don't want to get flooded by the river, try not living on the river bank. Tired of having to work harder to bail out idiots. Don't care if the river floods once a decade due to mother nature or twice a decade due to man made global warming, what I'm tired of is handing out money to morons repeatedly. You wanna drown? Go ahead, build there, that's a great place to drown. Just stop asking me for money over and over and over and I'm fine with that. You wanna stop being $1K/yr poorer, stop living on a river bank that floods all the time instead of proposing some ridiculous sin-tax scheme that won't do anything anyway because the idiots will still be living on the river bank that floods, they'll just be a little poorer.