What Will Be The Final Cost To Eliminate Fossil Fuels?

The world is spending $300 billion every year to subsidize fossil fuels that pollute the air, wreck the climate ... and run the world's economy.

So what if we, as taxpayers, stopped spending $300 billion on coal, oil and natural gas, and started spending it instead on wind, sun and water?

That's the question at the heart of a new report from the United Nations Environment Program, which concludes that eliminating fuel subsidies would not only reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but might just inspire new economic growth. (Further, it concludes that fossil fuels subsidies sold as a way to help the poor keep the lights on actually do more to help the rich.)

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Related at HuffPost:

::Nader Says Geothermal And An Uneven Playing Field Are The Way
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More at the Huffington Post Environment big news page

Read the whole story here.

Comments

[darthdarcy]

If we Nationalized the American Oil Industry we could cut costs by 30-35% and still have from $60-90 billion per year to fund alternate energy, and develop these along with new technologies....that would create an economic boom that benefits every American, and would promote commerce not kill it, as is happening now..!

[mjt218]

I like the message of this post. Our response to global warming can and should be framed as an economic issue.

The issue is as the poster rightly points out that it is extremely difficult to get countries on board that have an intrinsic resistance to change and have an intrinsic interest in maintaining the status quo.

Perhaps dramatic technological developments are warranted? It seems that the only reason that Russia, China or India would embrace new transportation energy technology would be if it is dramatically cheaper and easier to transition to.

http://www.economist.com/debate/index.cfm?action=hall&debate_id=11&sa_campaign=debateseries/debate11/ads/house/125

[Pquilson]

You say that global warming should be framed as an economic issue. As it is particularly a political issue, the only way it will be received well is an economic issue. it isn't, but the only way people will change from fossil fuels to another form is if it makes economic sense in a microeconomic way.

[KillTheMessenger]

A link to "The Economist"? A journal of self indulging semi-intellectuals who do not even have the courage to tell us their names when they write a piece?

Please!

[mjt218]

And KTM is more of a real name than Charlemagne or Lexington?

[mjt218]

The link isn't to any of the journalistic content, it's to one of their structured online debates. The debate I linked to just happened to be pertinent to this discussion.

[KillTheMessenger]

$300 billion? What a load of nonsense. The US alone spends about a trillion dollars just on oil. Multiply that by four and you are looking at the world. Multiply that by another factor of two and now you are somewhere neat $10 trillion a year for all fossil fuels.

[mjt218]

I think the post is referring to government subsidizing the true cost their citizens pay for the fossil fuel products the citizens use. Example . . . Paying only 30 cents/ gallon for gas in Venezuela, when the true cost of producing the gasoline is higher.

[KillTheMessenger]

And I am referring to the first order true cost of fossil fuels.

If you want to discuss how much it might cost to replace them, shouldn't you tell us first how much we are spending on them rather than to pick some small irrelevant number that has nothing to do with the real order of magnitude of the problem?

Just asking...