SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Fossil fuel industry gets subsidies of $11m a minute, IMF finds:
Fossil fuelsFossil fuel industry gets subsidies of $11m a minute, IMF finds
The fossil fuel industry benefits from subsidies of $11m every minute, according to analysis by the International Monetary Fund.
The IMF found the production and burning of coal, oil and gas was subsidised by $5.9tn in 2020, with not a single country pricing all its fuels sufficiently to reflect their full supply and environmental costs. Experts said the subsidies were “adding fuel to the fire” of the climate crisis, at a time when rapid reductions in carbon emissions were urgently needed.
Explicit subsidies that cut fuel prices accounted for 8% of the total and tax breaks another 6%. The biggest factors were failing to make polluters pay for the deaths and poor health caused by air pollution (42%) and for the heatwaves and other impacts of global heating (29%).
Setting fossil fuel prices that reflect their true cost would cut global CO2 emissions by over a third, the IMF analysts said. This would be a big step towards meeting the internationally agreed 1.5C target. Keeping this target within reach is a key goal of the UN Cop26 climate summit in November.
Agreeing rules for carbon markets, which enable the proper pricing of pollution, is another Cop26 goal. “Fossil fuel price reform could not be timelier,” the IMF researchers said. The ending of fossil fuel subsidies would also prevent nearly a million deaths a year from dirty air and raise trillions of dollars for governments, they said.
“There would be enormous benefits from reform, so there’s an enormous amount at stake,” said Ian Parry, the lead author of the IMF report. “Some countries are reluctant to raise energy prices because they think it will harm the poor. But holding down fossil fuel prices is a highly inefficient way to help the poor, because most of the benefits accrue to wealthier households. It would be better to target resources towards helping poor and vulnerable people directly.”
[...] The G20 countries emit almost 80% of global greenhouse gases. More than 600 global companies in the We Mean Business coalition, including Unilever, Ikea, Aviva, Siemens and Volvo Cars, recently urged G20 leaders to end fossil fuel subsidies by 2025.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by FatPhil on Sunday October 10 2021, @11:35AM (2 children)
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 10 2021, @07:21PM (1 child)
Absolutely no matter what exists in theory, when prices are shooting up in practice. Theories do not heat homes and do not light up nights.
As to atomic nuclei, aren't greenies fighting tooth and nail to shut down the few nuclear plants still in operation?
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Tuesday October 12 2021, @05:56AM
It's election time here, and we've got two parties who are explicitly running with a "green" manifesto: The "Greens", who are anti-nuclear, and pro- any leftist issue that issues-obsessived leftiest unthinkingly get obsessive about, no matter if it's sensible or not; and a technologically progressive party with an explicit long-term perspective, and they're quite nuclear friendly. We have none at the moment, to even hear it debated is progress. Which in a country that isn't currently self-sufficcient is terrible. We should have been looking into this decades back.
There's nuts everywhere. I'm extremely green, I probably have one of the lowest carbon footprints of anyone I know, and very pro-nuclear. Don't judge everyone to whome a label applies by the attitudes of merely a subset of that group. Some countries' green parties have now started to come out in favour of nuclear, IIRC.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves