{"id":2901,"date":"2013-04-10T15:40:04","date_gmt":"2013-04-10T19:40:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/?p=2901"},"modified":"2013-04-10T15:43:44","modified_gmt":"2013-04-10T19:43:44","slug":"fossil-fuels-get-five-times-the-subsidies-of-renewable-solar-and-wind","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2013\/04\/fossil-fuels-get-five-times-the-subsidies-of-renewable-solar-and-wind.html","title":{"rendered":"Fossil fuels get five times the subsidies of renewable solar and wind"},"content":{"rendered":"

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nFossil fuels get more than $70 billion dollars a year in\r\nU.S. government subsidies (tax breaks and direct spending),\r\nwhile solar and wind get only about $12 billion,\r\nso fossil fuels got more than five times as much,\r\nwhile\r\n\r\nnuclear got ten times as much<\/a> (especially \r\nin Georgia<\/a>).\r\nEven corn ethanol, that sounded-like-a-good-idea-at-the-time\r\nboondoggle, gets more subsidies than solar and wind put together.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nThat’s without even going into the \r\nexternalities<\/a>\r\nsuch as healthcare costs due to polution, environmental destruction\r\nthrough mountaintop removal for coal, tar sands oil drilling,\r\nand fracking for natural gas, and wars for oil and uranium.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\n
\r\nGraphic by\r\n\r\nGOOD and Deeplocal<\/a>.\r\nData by Environmental Law Institute<\/a>.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nBack when oil, gas, and nuclear were shiny and new and we didn’t\r\nknow about their downsides like massive pollution, sickness, and climate change,\r\ngovernment support for them made sense and we did support them even\r\nmore massively than we do now, and far more massively than we are\r\nsupporting solar and wind now,\r\nas\r\n\r\nFred noted on ReVision Energy 6 March 2013,<\/a>\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n

\r\nIn a recent study of\r\n\r\nhistorical US Federal Energy Subsidies<\/a>, the\r\nauthors found that “when the first 15 years of subsidy life\r\nare compared, government support for the oil, gas and nuclear\r\nindustries as a percentage of inflation-adjusted federal spending\r\nfar outweighed the support granted to renewables … adjusting for\r\ninflation, between 1918 and 2009, the oil and gas industry received\r\na cumulative $446.96 billion in subsidies compared to just $5.93\r\nbillion given to renewables in the years between 1994 and 2009.\r\nMeanwhile, the nuclear industry benefitted from a cumulative $185.38\r\nbillion in federal subsidies between 1947 and 1999.”\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nLet’s level the playing field, for jobs, for energy independence,\r\nfor clean air and water.\r\nSave money, pop\r\n\r\nthe carbon bubble<\/a>: end fossil fuel subsidies.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n -jsq\r\n<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Fossil fuels get more than $70 billion dollars a year in U.S. government subsidies (tax breaks and direct spending), while solar and wind get only about $12 billion, so fossil fuels got more than five times as much, while nuclear got ten times as much (especially in Georgia). Even corn ethanol, that sounded-like-a-good-idea-at-the-time boondoggle, gets […]","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[47,141,216,14,16,41,6124,559,32,23,24,36],"tags":[8719,8745,8753,8704,8706,6122,6123,165,308,8701,8699,8702,12,3801,562,8782,8715,8713,8714,396,8716],"class_list":["post-2901","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-climate-change","category-co2","category-coal","category-economy","category-environment","category-health-care","category-natural-gas-2","category-oil","category-pollution","category-renewable-energy","category-solar","category-wind","tag-climate-change","tag-co2","tag-coal","tag-economy","tag-environment","tag-erosion","tag-ethanol","tag-fossil-fuels","tag-fracking","tag-georgia","tag-government","tag-lake","tag-lowndes-area-knowledge-exchange","tag-mountaintop-removal","tag-natural-gas","tag-oil","tag-pollution","tag-renewable-energy","tag-solar","tag-subsidies","tag-wind"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-KN","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2901","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2901"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2901\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2904,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2901\/revisions\/2904"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2901"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2901"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2901"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}