It is profound just how little effort the political leaders of the world are putting into addressing climate change.



Normally, I attribute this lack of effort to the vast, dark power of the hole-digging trinity: the coal, oil and gas industries.

Recent news reinforces this view.

Over the past few days, energy ministers from the G20 met in Beijing and failed to agree on a timetable to end subsidies for the fossil fuel industry.

The highly paid bureaucrats are so incapable of responding to climate change that they couldn't even agree to a timetable!

So how big are these subsidies? They are monstrous.

A 2015 report found that the G20 subsidises fossil fuels by about half a trillion dollars a year. Every year, $444 billion of taxpayer’s money being used to subsidize the annihilation of the living systems on Earth through global warming. See the report here.

Globally, the International Monetary Fund calculates that fossil fuel subsidies amount to $5.3 trillion per annum. That's more than the world's governments spend on health care.

These subsidies come in many forms including tax breaks, excise exemptions, fuel subsidies, and investments in infrastructure such as roads and railways.

The cash handout of your money to the fossil fuel industry is so systemic, it doesn’t require brown paper bags stuffed with money passed under the table. It’s written into law and government policy. No one goes to jail.

This vast transfer of wealth from the regular people to the industrialists hinders the advance of renewable energy technology and takes us, day by day, closer to the climate tipping point.

Guy Lane July, 2016

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