To support our nonprofit environmental journalism, please consider disabling your ad-blocker to allow ads on Grist. The result is what we have today: energy that looks cheap because most of its costs are hidden from view. The burden is moved from energy companies to the public. Fossil-fuel subsidies don’t reduce costs, they shift costs. The externalized health and ecological costs of fossil fuels are paid by the public, with money taken from elsewhere in the economy. Surely a conservative ought to know that money government spends on energy subsidies is taken from elsewhere in the economy. Why? Says Gingrich, “a low-cost energy regime is essential to our country.” That is one doozy of a non-sequitur. Yet Gingrich and his acolyte defend these subsidies. This massive interference in global energy markets by heavy-handed government bureaucrats ought to offend proponents of free-market capitalism or small-government conservatism. Another report found that between 20, American taxpayers alone lavished $72.5 billion on fossil-fuel subsidies, and that’s not counting implicit subsidies like military deployments to defend energy supplies, health costs from respiratory and circulatory ailments caused by fuel combustion, ecological damage like in the Gulf of Mexico, and damage from climate change. Here at the end of the week, I have a few final thoughts on my carbon debate with Steve Everley of American Solutions (see: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday) and Amanda Little’s interview with Newt Gingrich, Steve’s boss.Ī recent report from the International Energy Agency revealed a stunning fact: Worldwide, fossil-fuel energy corporations receive $550 billion a year in subsidies.
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