EnviroWonks, economists, and experts in global warming have been grumbling about subsidies that artificially suppress fossil fuel prices for a good while, but now we've got some hard figures from the United Nations Environmental Program to back us up: Worldwide, such subsidies total nearly a third of a trillion dollars per year, are responsible for 6 percent of global carbon emissions, and suppress the global GDP by roughly 0.1 percent.

In theory, such subsidies are intended to reduce the burden on consumers, but in practice they usually go to to the industries that produce and refine fossil fuels - which were doing just fine, last time we checked - and end up perpetuating economic inefficiency.

Kaveh Zahedi, UNEP climate change coordinator, pointed out that "Some countries spend more on subsidies than on health and education combined ... they stand in the way of more environmentally friendly technologies." By encouraging demand for artificially cheap fossil fuels, countries suppress demand for alternative technologies and underfund education and healthcare - creating a syndrome that results in higher carbon emissions and a populace unable to afford or prioritize emissions reductions.

The report also encourages tax breaks, feebates, Pigovian taxes, and other market-based measures that encourage conservation and alternative energy, pointing out that cleaner energy embodies fewer hidden costs than fossil fuels and eventually ends up enriching the economy as a whole - potentially enriching the disadvantaged more than simple subsidies.

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Source -- where is it?
written by Patrick Meaney, March 03, 2009

Hi,

This is agreat article, but I am wondering what the source of your statistics are -- there is only one link in the article, and it just goes to the main page of the AP.

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