In a new and disturbing report from researchers at the International
Monetary Fund, the world's governments are providing subsidies to the
highly profitable oil industry to the tune of trillions…
Most Americans should know by now that Republicans despise
‘entitlements’ that they errantly consider is anything Americans
receive; even if it is theirs to begin with. They hate the idea of
retired Americans receiving their Social Security and Medicare after
paying into them their entire working lives, and they hate Americans
working at slave-wage jobs receiving nutrition assistance because they
earn too little to survive. What they do not hate, and indeed fight
ferociously for, are taxpayer-funded entitlements that go to
corporations in the form of tax loopholes and particularly entitlements
for the oil industry in the form of subsidies.
According to the oil industry, the very idea of
ending billions-of-dollars in taxpayer subsidies for the profitable
industry is un-American; a position that Republicans embrace with
religious passion. However, it is not just Republicans that believe the
oil industry deserves to be paid for being a highly-profitable business;
the world’s governments are handing outlandish amounts of the
population’s money to the industry that is driving the Earth’s climate
catastrophe.
In a new and disturbing
report
from researchers at the International Monetary Fund, the world’s
governments are providing subsidies to the highly profitable oil
industry to the tune of an astonishing $5.3 trillion in benefits per
year. Another way of looking at just how much the world pays the oil
industry that bears responsibility for decimating the Earth’s
environment; imagine they receive $10 million per minute. That is $10
million every minute, every day, of every month, of every year. Those
mind-boggling entitlements have grown over the past couple of decades
and are increasing every year.
What that also means is that every minute the
world’s population is paying $10 million to help the fossil fuel
industry pump climate-changing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. All
the while, in America Republicans are either denying that the Earth’s
climate is warming, or debating whether global warming is caused by
man’s propensity to pump carbon emissions into the atmosphere. If that
is not bad enough, Republicans are fighting tooth and nail to preserve
America’s billions in oil industry subsidies while crusading to abolish
any and all environmental regulations and eliminate efforts to find new
and less costly clean energy alternatives. It is true the world’s
population will continue depending on fossil fuels for their energy
needs long into the future, but that does not mean seeking and
developing existing clean and renewable energy sources needs to be put
off; particularly when the intent is to create more wealth for the oil
industry.
What most Americans may be surprised to learn, if
they even care, is that the IMF report revealed that besides the obvious
cash “subsidies” being regularly “gifted” to the oil industry of a
collective
$88 billion from the G-20 nations alone, are the horrific consequences
of burning fossil fuels that very few nations, including the
Koch-American government, are even willing to address. These are
consequences such as the permanent and prohibitively costly health and
environmental impacts affecting both local regions such as air and water
pollution, and the more dangerous global consequences such as melting
glaciers, rising sea levels, and extreme weather events wreaking havoc
on the entire world.
Actually, it is the effects of pouring billions of
tons of climate changing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere that
accounts for nearly three-quarters of the final $5.3 trillion annual
figure arrived at by IMF researchers. According to a
statement
from Benedict Clements representing the IMF’s fiscal affairs
department; “While the large size of our new estimates may be
surprising, it is important to put in perspective just how many health
problems are linked to energy consumption and air quality.” According to
conservative
estimates
of the World Health Organization (WHO), “One in eight global deaths are
attributable just to air pollution.” Obviously it does not included the
deaths from drought-related food shortages, lack of water, extreme and
deadly weather events, or any of the other consequences of anthropogenic
global climate change caused by burning fossil fuels. The WHO strongly
suggests that even beyond the global climate benefits of the entire
world working in concert to eliminate the highly-profitable oil
industry’s entitlements, any one nation’s efforts to keep fossil fuels
in the ground and out of the atmosphere “will carry very significant
health and economic benefits at the local level.”
The IMF’s report revealed that ending oil industry
entitlements would cut by half the number of deaths attributed to
outdoor air pollution alone and save about 1.6 million human lives each
year. Besides, the level of money being paid to the oil industry for
nothing would be better spent on healthcare, education, and
infrastructure improvements and relieve the crushing poverty plaguing
third world nations like America and drive robust economic growth. Part
of that spending naturally includes investing in more cost-effective and
money-saving projects like clean and renewable energy and research and
development of more energy-efficient uses for oil and gas.
To his credit, President Obama has made efforts to
scale back America’s contribution to destroying the Earth’s climate, and
in fact joined Democrats’ one attempt at putting an end to
taxpayer-funded entitlements to the oil industry. But this is the Koch
brothers’ America and although Republicans will never allow the
entitlements to stop flowing to their favorite campaign donors, the
President could do much more to alert Americans that while their roads,
bridges, hospitals, and schools are crumbling around them, Republicans
continue spending taxpayer dollars to bolster the profitable oil
industry’s bottom line.
It is noteworthy that although the President did
veto the Republican attempt to circumvent his Constitutional authority
over the Canadian Keystone XL pipeline, he made peace, at least
temporarily, with the Koch brothers and fossil fuel industry by granting
them
permission to start drilling for oil in the Arctic. Obviously President Obama had a
good reason to
give big oil more opportunities to wipe out the climate and destroy the
pristine Arctic environment, but it is a secret he felt was too
dangerous for the American people to learn. He said it was because “we
can’t prevent oil exploration completely in the region, so we’re setting
the highest possible standards.” However, Americans have witnessed, for
far too long, exactly how effective those “highest possible standards”
are; especially since the Koch brothers own the federal government.
The President sent a mixed message about his
commitment to combat global climate change and committed America to
adding to the $5.3 trillion in subsidies for the fossil fuel industry;
likely to keep up with other world governments that, like America, will
not bother to invest even a fraction of that astounding amount in
protecting their population’s health or the environment. If nothing
else, it appears that to maintain its status as “exceptional,” America
will not be outspent by other governments in providing big oil’s
entitlements any more than it will make any significant attempt to
combat anthropogenic climate change; not while the Kochs own the
government. And make no mistake, the Kochs and big oil do own the
government lock, stock, and barrel.
It
is a sad state of affairs, but the rest of the world’s population, like
the American people, are going to have to come to grips with the tragic
fact that they are contributing to the $5.3 trillion annual oil
subsidies to destroy the environment and the Earth’s climate whether
they like it or not. The lack of outrage in the population informs that
obviously, most Americans do like it and that, in itself, is incredibly
discouraging.
