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: 2) by ikanreed on Tuesday May 19 2015, @07:51PM
Oh, I didn't mean to imply it was an unsolvable problem.
I'm always down to listen to status-quo aware incentive shift programs. But they still get demonized as unnecessary taxes or entitlements in the public debate. A recent example being cap and trade carbon limitting programs. Very quickly labeled "cap and tax" by the absolutely-no-addressing-problems-allowed crowd.