Fossil fuel companies benefit by $10m a minute every day

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ossil fuel companies are benefitting from global subsidies of $5.3tn (£3.4tn) a year, equivalent to $10m a minute every day, according to a startling new estimate by the International Monetary Fund.

The IMF calls the revelation “shocking” and says the figure is an “extremely robust” estimate of the true cost of fossil fuels. The $5.3tn subsidy estimated for 2015 is greater than the total health spending of all the world’s governments.

The vast sum is largely due to polluters not paying the costs imposed on governments by the burning of coal, oil and gas. These include the harm caused to local populations by air pollution as well as to people across the globe affected by the floods, droughts and storms being driven by climate change.

Read the Guardian story - “Fossil fuels subsidised by $10m a minute, says IMF”.

(“Fantasy” probably best describes any idea that fossil fuel companies will surrender without a fight to the mass application of renewable energy. The fossil fuel industry is clearly the beneficiary of public largesse, something it will not give up without a struggle. Any suggestion that those companies, which presently profit handsomely from myths they portray as fact, will behave altruistically and in a philanthropical manner to relinquish the riches they have tapped is, bluntly a fantasy – Robert McLean).