The Ultimate Subsidy: Giving the World Away
George M. Woodwell
There has
been a great deal of discussion of just how we subsidize the various segments of
the fossil fuel business. The basic
assumption is that the energy is a necessary public resource and the
corporations providing it do a public service. Access to the raw material is facilitated at modest cost to
the companies. Taxes are often either not assessed or minimal. And mines and drilling sites are
often not regulated or controlled to protect other resources or even the workers.
In some cases direct subsidies are provided nominally to encourage production. Mines
are notorious for disasters, all of which are predictable and preventable in
well run operations. Similarly, oil and gas drilling are noteworthy for spills
and for air and water contamination as
well as for serious accidents. The BP disaster in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010 was
the worst of many, but was also the product of careless management. These “accidents”
all carry public costs that are not assigned to the industry but are virtually
all accepted by the public as part of the cost of having the industry and the convenience
of cheap energy. They are in fact,
public subsidies paid by all of us, but some more than others..
In other
cases direct financial subsidies have been provided by legislatures, including
the US Congress to encourage local businesses.
But the
largest subsidy of all is the acceptance of the wastes of the industry, the carbon dioxide and methane and black
carbon and noxious hydrocarbons dumped into the atmosphere globally at no cost to
the industry and without limit. The cost
is appearing now: it is the cost to the public of the corruption of climate globally.
Inasmuch as the climates of the earth are both result and cause of the natural
communities that are the biosphere, this
corruption undermines all life on earth.
It threatens human welfare globally, destroys agriculture, increases mortality
rates, and renders increasing areas uninhabitable for part or all of the year.
Worse, the warming triggers feedback systems that speed the warming and
make it more severe. If the warming continues it will melt all the ice on earth
and raise sea level by more than 200
feet. This subsidy is the ultimate in subsidies, the whole earthly environment,
handed free of charge, to the fossil fuel industry to feed industrial profits.
And those industries have not hesitated at all to deny the effects, obscure
them, and insist on continuing the corruption as long as they can.
We have
handed the fossil fuel industry the entire future of the earth and all of human
welfare. And we have done it willingly and openly, accepting the arguments of
the industries that it should be that way.
It is time
now for an abrupt change starting with heavy taxes on fossil fuels as we close
down their use rapidly and totally. Globally.
