subsidies
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IEA stunner: global subsidies to dirty energy top $550 billion a year
File this one under “news that ought to be the top headline across the world but will likely be ignored.” An early draft of a comprehensive new study from the International Energy Agency reveals that total global subsidies to dirty fossil-fuel energy amount to $550 billion a year — about 75 percent more than previously […]
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Climate bill aside, there are lots of smaller bills that could get us moving
The Obama administration hasn’t done much to use the BP Gulf oil disaster to push good energy policy. The best we’ve gotten is yesterday’s press conference, where Obama included a pro forma paragraph “calling on” Congress to pass the American Power Act, the climate and clean-energy bill in the Senate. (No threats, no anger, not […]
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Good news for Earth Day: We can reduce climate pollution and boost the economy, all at once
Putting a price on carbon pollution is an important part of tackling climate change. It’s a way of leveling the playing field, removing an unfair advantage that fossil fuels have always had over clean alternatives. However! Pricing carbon is not the only part of tackling climate change. It’s not even necessarily the most important part, […]
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Taxpayer dollars subsidizing destruction
One way to correct market failures is tax shifting — raising taxes on activities that harm the environment so that their prices begin to reflect their true cost and offsetting this with a reduction in income taxes. A complementary way to achieve this goal is subsidy shifting. Each year the world’s taxpayers provide at least […]
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Bizarre ag policy, ethanol cage match, and more
When my info-larder gets too packed, it’s time to serve up some choice nuggets from around the Web. —————- Get ’em while they’re hot. • Time’s Michael Grunwald on a truly absurd twist in U.S. farm/trade policy: in order to maintain subsidies to U.S. cotton farmers and avoid a trade war with Brazil, the U.S. […]
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Blanche Lincoln’s dismal school-lunch bill
Blanche Lincoln, chair of the Senate Ag Committee. Tight purse strings for kids and conservation; loose ones for large-scale farmers. Remember when Obama rolled out his proposal for increasing the school-lunch budget, and lots of folks, including me, groaned that it wasn’t nearly enough? In his budget proposal earlier this year, Obama called for an […]
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Should electric bike sales be subsidized?
Photo: Flickr via Imnop88aAs I argued in part 2, electric bikes could be forerunners for electrifying the whole transportation sector. They’re sweeping into urban areas in China by the tens of millions. New technologies are improving e-bike performance. And powerful institutions are aligning to speed battery innovations. Many observers now believe e-bikes will grow rapidly […]
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Big Oil uses fake ‘Americans’ to attack fake ‘energy taxes’
Cross-posted from the Wonk Room. Big Oil is using fake “Americans” to defend billions in tax subsidies. The American Petroleum Institute is running full-page ads in Politico and Roll Call that attack Congress for “new energy taxes”: Congress will likely consider new taxes on America’s oil and natural gas industry. These new energy taxes will […]
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Obama administration celebrates clean energy investments, reaffirms support for cap-and-trade
On Thursday the Obama administration released its annual Economic Report of the President, which assesses the nation’s economic progress, the challenges ahead, and the administration’s domestic and international priorities. There is a meaty chapter on “Transforming the Energy Sector and Addressing Climate Change” (PDF). Its most striking feature is that it doesn’t back off, at […]
