How can world leaders at the Rio+20 Earth Summit next week show that they are serious about sustainable development and environmental protection? The answer is simple: end fossil fuel subsidies.
Every year, governments around the world give nearly $1 trillion dollars of public money to the fossil fuel industry. Three years ago, the G20 committed to phase-out these handouts to coal, oil and gas companies, but they haven't taken any action since.
Now is the perfect time. This June 18, finance ministers and heads of state from G20 countries will come together in Los Cabos, Mexico. Three days later, more than 100 presidents and prime ministers will join over 50,000 people at the Rio+20 Earth Summit, the largest environmental conference in world history. Both meetings offer a clear opportunity for world leaders to step up to the plate and stop these outrageous handouts.
After all, how can you have a serious discussion about funding sustainable development without taking on the hundreds of billions of dollars handed over to the fossil fuel sector each year? A mere fraction of these subsidies could jumpstart thousands of clean energy projects around the world. Large scale transfers of money from dirty to clean investments could catalyze the type of worldwide energy transformation that is desperately needed.
It's still unclear if leaders will take the type of bold action necessary, but the push to end fossil fuel subsidies is gaining momentum around the world. On June 18, a dozen major groups -- from World Wildlife Fund to Avaaz -- are taking part in a 24-hour "Twitter Storm" to try and flood the online airwaves with the #endfossilfuelsubsidies hashtag. The coalition may even be within striking distance of taking down Justin Bieber's twitter world record for the most tweets on a single hashtag.
The slogan for the Rio+20 meetings is, "The Future We Want." By next week, we'll know if our politicians have lived up to that promise or once again bought into "The Future Exxon Wants," a world where our tax dollars continue to get sucked up by the world's richest corporations so that they can continue to profit from destroying the planet.
Follow Jamie Henn on Twitter: www.twitter.com/agent350
There is no consumption subsidy per IEA provided by any OECD country.
So in other words poorest people in the world will have to now pay for the global warming fiasco. IN parts of India, China and North Africa this will death and mayhem? is this the agenda of RIO-20 to kill off non white people?
If the writer had cared to go to source material (it takes a few minutes) and seen that almost the entirety of this "subsidy" is provided by the third world governments to its people.
I dont see how making cost of living sky rocket for poorest of people is the solution.
Renewable energy of wind and solar has shown it reduces costs of electricity, and variability issues are not a problem up to 20% levels, as shown by analysis of results in areas with higher variable power use. We already have 5 states that get more than 20% of electricity from wind. Wind and solar power are the fastest growing category of jobs in our country, outperforming most other segments, even during the recession. Top 10 for 2011: Wind power achieves many milestones this year | American Wind Energy Association
surpassed investments in fossil fuels.
Renewables cheaper than coal, Michigan regulators say « Midwest Energy News
Discussions of sustainability are to sustain Earth's ecosystems as they not only provide all natural resources, ecosystems also provide mankind with all the reasons he is alive, like oxygen releasing, the integrity of the atmosphere, the natural moderation and regulation of the climate, the natural sequestration of those climate warming, heat trapping gases that will be re-released into the atmosphere when the ecosystem's soil is disturbed and its plant biodiversity killed to make room for those, choke, "clean energies". Kill Earth for clean energies?
What sustains mankind is Earth's ecosystems. To-date, we have killed 43 percent of Earth's ecosystems. Right today, they are scouring the Earth with dead fields of solar [mined from a rare earth mineral] and biodiversity butchering windmills, more roads built for access to these living, life giving ecosystems for the construction of these "clean" but planet devouring energies. Nuclear devours the least of the Earth for the highest energy yield while scientists maintain, pushing extinct biodiversity, like birds and bats, is as safe for mankind as thermonuclear war.
Regulatory Roulette: The NRC's Inconsistent Oversight of Radioactive Releases from Nuclear Power Plants (2010) | Union of Concerned Scientists
The Dangers of Low Dose Radiation 低濃度放射線の危険 :: JapanFocus
Japan's Nightmare Fight Against Radiation in the Wake of the 3.11 Meltdown
Regardless, our modern lifestyle is driving our epidemic of cancers. Many scientists maintain we are experiencing less than historic levels of oxygen today, and they think this might explain all the cancers. Research conducted in ice fields revealed we are experiencing less than historic levels of oxygen.
Eco-science states, man is "suicidal" when he kills ecosystems, and covering the planet with dead solar and windmills is as dead as it gets. Kill the Earth for "clean energies"?