In another puff piece ahead of the Paris UN greenhouse jamboree, OECD has compiled a new inventory comprising 800 subsidy measures for fossil fuels totalling $160-200 billion a year.

It sees no reason to do a similar job on renewables, presumably because renewables don’t create greenhouse gases which the report says will raise global temperatures by 4 degrees this century. With no increase for 15 years the warming needs to get a move on.

Nor has it shown the curiousity to measure the level that taxes levied on fossil fuels over and above the standard tax rates on goods and services.

Four fifths of the value of the identified subsidies are excise tax exemptions to petroleum products, and cheap kerosene and heating oil to consumers in poor countries. Australia is considered to provide high subsidies because of the diesel fuel rebate to farmers and miners – apparently the OECD favours taxing business inputs!

As well as its role in creating greenhouse gases, mining is demonized in this juvenile report for hitting biodiversity and causing land subsidence. Fossil fuel emissions are also said to create local pollution – but the report fails to recognise that in spite of all the increases in fuel use, pollution in terms of sulphur dioxide, particulates and others is at record low levels in almost every developed world city.

We can expect much more of this in the coming months.