Shock Report: Your Taxes Will Subsidize Dirty Oil Corporations By $5.3 TRILLION This Year

A recent paper released by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) should shock all of us who believe in a green future based on renewable energy. Despite stark warnings from scientists, fossil fuel subsidies continue to grow: this year alone, it is estimated that dirty coal and energy corporations will receive a staggering $5.3 trillion from governments worldwide.

To put this into perspective, the sum is more than the healthcare budget of all the countries in the world combined. It works out at $600 million per hour, $10 million per minute, and $200,000 per second. Just imagine what we could do with that kind of money. We could eradicate poverty, invest in clean energy, boost health and education systems, start a food revolution, and create more jobs in these industries as a result. Instead of the logical option, our governments choose to spend our tax dollars on propping up the same corporations that are poisoning us and the planet (while making ridiculously huge profits at the same time).

If you’re a US taxpayer, you should be doubly pissed about this news. Whether you know it or not, you are helping the likes of ExxonMobil, Shell, and Marathon Petroleum- and not just when you fill up at the pump. In 2014 alone, US taxpayers subsidized fossil fuel exploration and production by $21 billion. Think that’s bad? This year the sum will be an estimated $700 billion.

In addition to all this lunacy, a separate investigation by the Guardian newspaper in London has highlighted the trail of dirty money connecting these enormous subsidies and political sponsorship. They report:

• Shell made an annual profit of $26.8bn in 2012, and yet that very same year it won a deal to receive $1.6bn more in taxpayer’s money for its Pennsylvania refinery over the next few years.
• ExxonMobil is set to receive $119m for its Baton Rouge plant according to a deal signed in 2011, even though the corporation made a staggering $41bn profit that year.
• In 2011, Marathon Petroleum made $2.4bn, but still needed more to keep ticking along, so a jobs subsidy scheme in Ohio subsidized the corp by $78m.

“Big oil, gas, and coal have huge influence on politicians and governments and they get that influence the old fashioned way: they buy it,” Stephen Kretzmann, executive director of Oil Change International, told the Guardian last month.

“Through campaign finance, lobbying, advertising and superpac spending, the industry has many ways to influence candidates and government officials seeking re-election.” Kretzmann added: “Every single well, pipeline, refinery, coal and gas plant in the country is heavily subsidized. Big Fossil’s lobbyists have done their jobs well for the last century.”

The IMF don’t say much about that, but the paper explains this blatant hijacking of public funds with some irrelevant technicalities: ‘The projected gains for 2015 are about $2.9 trillion (3.6 percent of global GDP). The revenue gain is quite a lot lower than the post-tax energy subsidy, as it accounts for the price-induced reduction in energy use and implicitly assumes tax rebates are used to promote adoption of emission control technologies for coal, which lowers net revenue.’

Clearly, fossil fuel energy prices are well below levels that reflect their true costs. Nicholas Stern, a climate economist at the London School of Economics, told the Guardian in May: “There is no justification for these enormous subsidies for fossil fuels, which distort markets and damages economies, particularly in poorer countries.” Stern also voiced concerns that the IMF estimate was actually much lower than the real figures, saying that it hadn’t accounted for “implicit”, or hidden, subsidies.

The $5.3 trillion figure given accounts for 6.5% of the global GDP; just over half the figure is the money governments are forced to spend treating the victims of air pollution and the income lost because of ill health and premature deaths caused by dirty energy. Coal is the dirtiest fuel in terms of both local air pollution and climate-warming carbon emissions and is therefore gets the most subsidies, with just over half the total amount. Oil, heavily used in transport, gets about a third of the subsidy, and gas the rest. Subsidies are also used to fund exploration for more oil- a great example of  humanity’s madness, greed, and disconnection with nature.

In April, the president of the World Bank called for the subsidies to be scrapped immediately as poorer nations were feeling “the boot of climate change on their neck”. Even the IMF itself appeared to be shocked over the latest estimates for 2015. They called the number “shocking”, acknowledging the estimate was accurate and “extremely robust”. The IMF has previously stated that ending subsidies for fossil fuels would cut global carbon emissions by 20%, so why haven’t world leaders committed to this yet?

“Climate science is clear that the vast majority of existing reserves will have to stay in the ground,” Kretzmann said. “Yet our government spends many tens of billions of our tax dollars – every year – making it more profitable for the fossil fuel industry to produce more.”

The authors of the paper claim that ending dirty energy subsidies, we would prevent 1.6 million (50%) of deaths by air pollution, reduce poverty and increase economic growth by investing in health and education and cutting taxes.However, the reforms they recommend involve increased energy taxation for regular people (and they also suggest that if these changes are pushed through now, we are less likely to make any noise about it):

‘Low international energy prices provide a window of opportunity for countries to eliminate pre-tax subsidies and raise energy taxes as the public opposition to reform is likely to be somewhat more muted.’

Maybe instead of hiking the prices at the pump, we could hike corporate taxes instead? Maybe we could choose to keep the oil in the ground (see the Guardian campaign), and divert energy subsidies from fossil fuels to wind, solar and tidal power. Sadly, global investment in green energy has been falling since 2011; in 2013, the figure for renewable energy was a relatively small $214 billion.

Senator Bernie Sanders announced in April he will be running in the next US presidential elections, and has proposed an End Polluter Welfare Act, which he says would cut $135bn of US subsidies for fossil fuel companies over the next decade. Sanders spoke out against the corruption: “At a time when scientists tell us we need to reduce carbon pollution to prevent catastrophic climate change, it is absurd to provide massive taxpayer subsidies that pad fossil-fuel companies’ already enormous profits.”

First published here.

If You Were Waiting For A Planetary Wake Up Call, This Is It

Why climate change deniers need to get real…

In case you missed the biggest news story of the decade last week, we´re all doomed. A long-awaited paper on global warming and its effects was published on Monday by the UN´s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and it makes for very grim reading. The message in the latest report gave humanity its starkest warning yet: we are facing a very dark and terrifying future, and the time for fixing it may have already passed.

Key findings

The report warns that melting sea ice and permafrost threaten to sink entire cities, ocean acidification is killing our precious coral reefs, and extreme weather patterns and mega disasters such as heat waves, droughts, floods, typhoons and wildfires will continue to worsen. When you throw into the mix dangerously high air pollution, the effects of fracking (sinkholes, earthquakes, groundwater contamination and even birth defects), and the ongoing mass extinction of wildlife due to human stupidity, we can conclude that things are not looking good for our grandchildren. “Nobody on this planet is going to be untouched by the impacts of climate change,” were the dark words of Rajendra Pachauri, chair of the IPCC.

A Somali woman flees drought. Reuters/Thomas Muko

Food shortages, riots and rising grocery bills

The report, released every six years since the panel was set up in 1988, was a joint effort by more than 300 scientists. By far the most alarming edition to date, it took three years to compile and runs to 2,600 pages and 32 volumes. It tells us that even if we´re lucky enough to escape death from natural disasters, the future of agriculture is so bleak that millions of people face starvation and displacement. Global wheat and corn stocks are in great danger, and even staple groceries like rice and soy could become expensive luxury items.

Other food sources are also under threat. Fish catches in some areas of the tropics are projected to fall by between 40% and 60%, affecting millions of people for whom seafood is a source of livelihood and survival- and this scarcity of food could also cause widespread political instability and rioting, as well as other related social problems.

In conclusion, the experts say that man-made climate change is no longer up for debate. As Richard Schiffman wrote in the Guardian : “There are few climate-change skeptics amongst those who grow the world’s food. Farmers don’t have to read UN reports to know how radically their weather is changing. And consumers don’t need academic studies or bullet points to know that food prices are steadily rising.”

Incredible Edible Free Food Project Replicated Worldwide

Schoolchildren planting in an old boat

 

In the small town of Todmorden in the north of England, fresh organic produce is growing everywhere. There are sweet-smelling herbs at the railway station, vegetables sprouting in the public car park, and an apothecary garden next to the local Health Centre. This is the Incredible Edible movement, a grassroots campaign to provide healthy fresh food to the whole community, while promoting local produce and educating people on the joys of cultivating veggies.

Todmorden in bloom

Incredible Edible co-founder Pam Warhurst explained how she and her friends sat around a kitchen table six years ago, brainstorming ways to make positive change in the world. They began with a simple question: Can we find a unifying language that cuts across age, income and culture, that will help people themselves find a new way of living? Then came the thunderbolt. Food is a basic human need, but fresh, healthy organic food is a basic human right. “None of this is rocket science, but it is inclusive,” Pam says. Ultimately, this is a movement for everyone. We say, ´if you eat, you´re in´.”

What followed was a public meeting, where Pam and her associates received a standing ovation after presenting their plan. It was an ambitious, idealistic project which not only addressed the issue of what we eat, but where we spend our money and what we teach our children.

Pam and friend at a local food event

“I wondered if it was possible to take a town like Todmorden and focus on local food to re-engage people with the planet we live on, create the sort of shifts in behaviour we need to live within the resources we have, stop us thinking like disempowered victims, and to start taking responsibility for our own futures,” Pam explains.

Three key areas are covered: planting free food for the whole community, supporting and promoting farmers and other local food producers rather than supermarkets, and rolling out an extensive educational network to directly involve residents and students with the project.

Incredible Edible is run by unpaid volunteers and began with the planting of some small herb gardens and the launch of a local seed bank. Now, every school (and church) in the area is involved with the movement. They have provided chickens, planted orchards, and installed a fish farm at the local high school, which was such a success that a course in agriculture has since been launched. The group also offers free staff training for primary school teachers on issues of food awareness and cultivation, as well as adult learning schemes through ties with the college. All the children in Todmorden can now recognize a tomato plant, and have benefited greatly from getting their hands dirty in the community gardens.

Romanian Farmers Tell Chevron To ‘Frack off’

Credit: Sasha Y Kimel, Flickr

In the sleepy rural village of Pungesti, Romania, life has changed very little in generations. There is not a car in sight: birdsong is broken only by the clip-clop of horses’ hooves and the trundle of cart wheels, as farmers with weather-beaten faces drive their animals over rolling green pastures. Old women in headscarves and tattered long skirts cook simple meals of fried cabbage and meat inside dark concrete shacks, and the ultra-conservative village priests of the Orthodox church still play a vital role in these traditional, tight-knit communities.

These colorful characters may not look like your typical environmental protesters, but many of them have reinvented themselves as guerilla activists in the fight against fracking.

Last year, oil giant Chevron began scoping out fracking sites in the Eastern European country, bringing T-shirts and yoghurts in a cynical bid to win over the people. Romania, one of the poorest countries in the E.U, is sitting on an estimated 51 trillion cubic feet of shale gas. This means big bucks for companies like Chevron and the Romanian government, who have given the green light to fracking companies in three remote villages despite widespread public anger.

Organic Urban Gardening For Beginners

Being self sufficient in a small space is much easier (and enjoyable) than you might think!

A few years ago, I knew nothing about gardening. It seemed like a useful but time-consuming hobby: too much hard work and too much information to take in. Then I moved to a small farming community in the mountains of southern Spain, where old men wearing flat caps still use mules to plough the earth, and everyone in the village has their own vegetable garden, or huerto.