Earth Matters: Oil subsidies at $7 trillion; PragerU Texas claim busted; UAW meets electrification

Two new studies about the fossil fuel industry were published this past week. The International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) found that the G20 nations pumped $1.4 trillion into explicit subsidies for the industry in 2022. In its study the International Monetary Fund (IMF) put the explicit subsidy level at $1.3 trillion. But the IMF also calculated implicit fossil fuel subsidies. Those include failing to account for environmental and other social costs of fossil fuel burning. Though they are not easy to measure, social costs of extracting, refining, transporting, and burning fossil fuels are real, and when they are added in, total subsidies last year soared to $7 trillion, up by $2 trillion over 2020. All this as the oil giants rake in gobsmacking profits.

This comes as the bulk of the 197 countries that signed onto the 17 United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals at the COP26 climate conference in Glasgow in 2021 are failing to meet one the key goals—speeding up the phaseout of these “inefficient subsidies.” Just how environmentally impactful these subsidies are can be seen in the IMF’s calculation that dropping just the explicit ones and imposing taxes on environmental costs would, by 2030, cut global carbon dioxide emissions by 34% below 2019 levels.

Christopher Beaton, who researches sustainable energy consumption for IISD, told Leslie Kaufman at Bloomberg Green, “We are overflowing with government commitments to phase out support for fossil fuels, but there is a serious drought in implementation. During the last two years, at the international level, we have gone backwards.” 

In June, there was a report from Greenpeace Central and Eastern Europe—“The Dirty Dozen: The Climate Greenwashing of 12 European Oil Companies.” Its authors found that nearly 93% of the investments of six of the world’s largest oil companies are going into exploring for and producing more oil and gas, with just 7.3% going into "low-carbon solutions." 

Kuba Gogolewski, a finance campaigner at Greenpeace CEE, told Jake Johnson at Common Dreams  that "as the world endures unprecedented heat waves, deadly floods, and escalating storms, Big Oil clings to its destructive business model and continues to fuel the climate crisis. Instead of providing desperately needed clean energy, they feed us greenwashing garbage. Big Oil's unwillingness to implement real change is a crime against the climate and future generations. Governments need to stop enabling fossil fuel companies, heavily regulate them, and plan our fossil fuel phase-out now. They will never change on their own."