Economically Perverse and Ecologically Damaging:

Can we end our addiction to fossil fuels?

Subsidies to the industry paradoxically increases our addiction in many ways. Despite the fact that the International Monetary Fund and The Economist has been urging the end to the subsidies for several years, last year, countries spent $1 trillion subsidizing fossil fuels, according to the International Energy Agency. This is double what they spent the year before.

But it gets worse. When IMF researchers included the indirect costs of fossil fuel subsidies in a 2021 study, the bill went up to $5.9 trillion.

This is global madness, as these incentives are both ecologically damaging and economically perverse. Why economically, because they continue the current development path and thereby crowd out the potential for new innovations, by perpetuating the same old, same old. Think about it, would the rapid adoption of the internal combustion engine been possible in our world today?