Tax-Payer Funded Fossil Fuel Subsidies
I saw this article in The Guardian just this week or last week, and it reminded me again of the whole fossil fuel story. One of the things that really disturbs me about what is particularly going on in Australia, but generally around the world, is the way the fossil fuel industry is supported by our taxpayer money.
This article said, “CO2 emissions to soar by the second-highest rate ever. Carbon dioxide emissions are forecast to jump this year by the second-biggest annual rise in history as global economies pour stimulus cash into fossil fuels in the recovery from the covid-19 recession”. This is a surging use of sources of coal. The dirtiest fossil fuel for electricity is largely driving the emissions to rise, especially across Asia, but also in the US. But in Australia, things aren’t looking that much better.
IMF Report
I am surprised about this report from the IMF and IMF is not left-wing. It’s the International Monetary Fund. They put out a report on global fossil fuel subsidies remain large an update based on country levels and basically the story.
The main part, global subsidies remain large at four point seven trillion US dollars and are projected around. The story goes that about five trillion dollars in the US are paid by governments around the world, including the Australian government, to the fossil fuel industry.
What does that mean?
Five trillion dollars a year equates to ten million dollars per minute. While you’re reading this, which may take three, four, or five minutes, the fossil fuel industry has just received fifty million dollars of subsidies while this is going on. I’m not responsible for it, but I’m just making the time frame here and it goes on every minute of the day, every year, year on year.
One can only imagine what ten million dollars a minute would do to the sustainable energy world, solar energy, and wind energy. If you pumped ten million dollars a minute into putting solar panels on everybody’s roof, we could get somewhere with this.
The Liberal government in Australia is so out of their depth on so many levels but when we hear characters like Matt Canavan making statements like says Australia doesn’t subsidize the fossil fuel industry, but an expert, not him, says they do. How much do they do? Well, they do quite a lot. They do the equivalent of 47 billion dollars a year. Forty-seven billion Australian dollars a year.
Conclusion
We should tell Senator Matt Canavan this because he’s sitting in the Australian parliament and makes these kinds of statements when his own country and the government, to a very large extent, are paying 47 billion dollars a year, which in minute terms equates to five hundred thousand dollars a minute.
Again, for the 5 or 10 minutes of this, we’re talking about 500000 to a million dollars that have been issued or supplied to the fossil fuel industry and how many solar panels could be placed on rooftops to you if you put that kind of money. This kind of frustrates me and for the life of me. I really don’t understand why this subsidy that is reported and has been reported, at least for the last five or six years from the IMF about fossil fuel subsidies doesn’t receive more publicity anyway. That’s what this blog or this healthy bite is about.
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