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92 comments on First Principle: End Fossil Fuel Subsidies

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mjacobspaj on November 25, 2006 - 2:57pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Removing subsidies would have the advantage of at least levelling the playing field for renewable energy sources. In many ways this is the most practical suggestion I've seen on this blog in a long while because it doesn't require any new technology to be developed or approved. I expect that carrying it out will lead to one huge political fight.

As a first step, I think that it would be good to pull together a list of all fossil fuel subsidies. Useful things to include in the list would be things like what the subsidy is, how much the subsidy costs per person and in aggregate, and who the subsidy benefits. It is very difficult to get subsidies eliminated if they are hidden.

Good post.

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step back on November 26, 2006 - 6:15am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Before compiling such a list (good idea), we should break it down into categories of use and primary types of fuels:

  1. FF's for transportation (mostly oil)
  2. FF's for manufacturing (natural gas)
  3. FF's for production of electricity (mostly coal)

This is so because the unaccounted-for externalities (a type of subsidy) and actual subsidies differ for each.

Of course for transportaion fuels we have the easy government subsidies to list:

  1. Building and repairing roads, traffic signals exclusively for the benefit of cars & trucks rather than for pedestrians and bicycles --the monies for these coming out of general taxes.
  2. Designing suburbs to favor use of the car
  3. Not accounting for the externality costs of a populace that transports itself via a means that emits noxious gases and particles into the atmosphere (GAAP)
  4. Allowing businesses to expense the leasing of cars & trucks, the purchase of gasoline while not allowing bicycle riders to expense food consumed to power their mode of transport.
  5. (more?)
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