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posted by martyb on Saturday October 09 2021, @11:13PM   Printer-friendly

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.


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  • (Score: 2) by mcgrew on Wednesday October 13 2021, @01:41PM (6 children)

    by mcgrew (701) <publish@mcgrewbooks.com> on Wednesday October 13 2021, @01:41PM (#1186644) Homepage Journal

    You would be surprised to see how much Illinois is like Missouri, despite the fact that one is deep red and one deep blue. The biggest differences are that here in Illinois, weed is legal, and people in Missouri are so racist that the NAACP gave a travel warning about Missouri. Illinois has the distinction that of all Illinois governors this century who completed their terms, half went to prison for felonies (one a Republican and one a Democrat).

    But when it comes to crazy, California is far, far less insane than Texas or Florida. Only an idiot puts politics before public health.

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  • (Score: 2) by Reziac on Wednesday October 13 2021, @04:24PM (5 children)

    by Reziac (2489) on Wednesday October 13 2021, @04:24PM (#1186690) Homepage

    I consider your views of Missouri to suffer from rectocranial inversion, but hey, we can't all think alike or the world would look like THX. If the NAACP issues such a warning, they should perhaps consider a tour of St.Louis, being how that city is a major influence on Missouri politics, to see exactly which people they're decrying as racist. Hint: it's majority nonwhite.

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    • (Score: 2) by mcgrew on Thursday October 14 2021, @05:56PM (4 children)

      by mcgrew (701) <publish@mcgrewbooks.com> on Thursday October 14 2021, @05:56PM (#1187047) Homepage Journal

      The CITY of St. Louis is majority non-white, as is East St. Louis, Cahokia, and Maryville across the river. The St. Louis area spans both states and is representative of neither, and large majority white. If you want to see Missouri, try Poplar Bluff (7% nonwhite) or the Ozarks; Branson, maybe.

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      • (Score: 2) by Reziac on Thursday October 14 2021, @06:09PM (3 children)

        by Reziac (2489) on Thursday October 14 2021, @06:09PM (#1187052) Homepage

        Point was Missouri politics are driven by the cities. The white-majority areas have little say in how the state is run. (There's one particular issue I've paid attention to there, and the divide is stark.)

        Me, I live up in the Northern Wastes, and feel no need to visit Missouri any time soon.

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        • (Score: 2) by mcgrew on Saturday October 16 2021, @04:09PM (2 children)

          by mcgrew (701) <publish@mcgrewbooks.com> on Saturday October 16 2021, @04:09PM (#1187500) Homepage Journal

          ??? Missouri is as racist red as Texas. If the cities ran things, all their politicians wouldn't be Republican.

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          • (Score: 2) by Reziac on Saturday October 16 2021, @04:57PM (1 child)

            by Reziac (2489) on Saturday October 16 2021, @04:57PM (#1187516) Homepage

            I suspect your definition of "racist" is entirely different from mine.

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