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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: 2) by mcgrew on Thursday October 14 2021, @05:56PM (4 children)
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.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Thursday October 14 2021, @06:09PM (3 children)
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.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Saturday October 16 2021, @04:09PM (2 children)
??? Missouri is as racist red as Texas. If the cities ran things, all their politicians wouldn't be Republican.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Saturday October 16 2021, @04:57PM (1 child)
I suspect your definition of "racist" is entirely different from mine.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Monday October 18 2021, @05:30PM
My definitions all match Webster's. Maybe the British OED has a different definition.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org