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A few things: 1) That's not what was spent, it's what this paper projected was spent. 2) I think this paper is defining subsidy in a way that we don't usually

A few things: 1) That's not what was spent, it's what this paper projected was spent. 2) I think this paper is defining subsidy in a way that we don't usually use that word. They're calling the costs associated with anthropogenic climate change and pollution "subsidies", most people would just call those things "costs." Using the word "subsidy" implies that governments are actively taking tax dollars and giving it to fossil fuel companies and consumers. That doesn't appear to be what's going on for the most part. Look at Figure 4, the bulk of the so-called "subsidies" are "global warming" and "local pollution" those aren't what most people would call subsidies, they're costs. I'm saying this just to clarify things, personally I am supportive of massive tax increases on carbon and massive subsidies for renewables.

WhompingWindows 7y ago
This feels like definition-specific and ultimately, it's semantics. If you say subsidy is giving tax dollars to fossil fuel companies, isn't not taking tax dollars from them for their costly pollution effectively the same outcome? The important point is that fossil fuels receive far more government support than renewables do.
gridlockd 7y ago
> That's not what was spent, it's what this paper projected was spent. It's not even what was actually spent, but what the projected economic cost was due to externalities such as excess mortality from air pollution. So, if someone from the US dies due to air pollution, that's 6.1 million dollars down the drain. The report puts that rate at 4.9 deaths per thousand, which is absurdly high in my estimation.
mikeash 7y ago
It’s an unconventional way to use “subsidy,” but I think it fits. Imagine a garbage company. The government pays them so they can buy land where they dump their garbage. Obviously a subsidy. Now, let’s say the government buys the land themselves then gives it to the company for dumping. No money changes hands but this is still pretty clearly a subsidy. Instead of giving the company land, the government retains ownership, but lets the company dump there for free. Still a pretty clear subsidy. Instead of buying the land, the government just takes it. Now no money is involved at all, but it’s still a subsidy. Instead of taking the land, the government just declares that it’s legal for the garbage company to dump trash on other people’s land, and the owners just have to deal with it. This is quite different in the details from the original subsidy, but the overall effect is essentially the same. Polluters are in a situation that’s exactly like this last scenario. They get to dump their trash on everyone’s property and don’t have to pay for the privilege. They’re being subsidized in an amount equal to whatever payment it would take to get everyone to willingly accept this trash.
- kortilla 7y ago
  What a tortured analogy. It’s just an externality. We have a word for a it already, no need to try to change another word. The only reason the paper authors called it a subsidy is because people sadly don’t care about externalities nearly as much as subsidies.
  - mikeash 7y ago
    It’s not an analogy at all, let alone a tortured one. Polluters are allowed to dump their trash on my (and everyone else’s) property without paying for it. Now, if you object to it being called a subsidy, fine. (Although I’d like to know which step in my story stops qualifying as one.) But “a tortured analogy”? No way.
    - hn_throwaway_99 7y ago
      But it is tortured because the numbers are made up. Yes, there is very strong scientific consensus global warming is bad, and getting worse, but pinpointing an exact number and calling it a "subsidy" implies they know a lot more about the future than they actually do. It's untruthful and plays into the hands of those screaming "fake news!" who try to deny climate change.
      - Dylan16807 7y ago
        "Your logic is right, but I doubt the exact number you used." is very far from saying an analogy is "tortured". It's an agreement that the analogy is correct.
      - mikeash 7y ago
        I didn’t use any numbers at all. Perhaps you meant to reply to a different comment.
    - crumpets 7y ago
      >It’s not an analogy at all Then why are you talking about a garbage company? Your whole comment is building an analogy. >Although I’d like to know which step in my story stops qualifying as one. This is where it stops qualifying: >Instead of taking the land, the government just declares that it’s legal for the garbage company to dump trash on other people’s land, and the owners just have to deal with it. This is quite different in the details from the original subsidy, but the overall effect is essentially the same. The government saying "it's legal to do X" and all companies in any industry and any individual (what we're talking about is CO2 emissions) are allowed to do it, it's not a subsidy. It's just behavior with an externality that the government doesn't tax.
reitzensteinm 7y ago
The use of the word subsidy is a sleight of hand to double count the environmental impact of fossil fuels. Not penalizing harmful externalities is bad policy. Subsidizing them is lunacy.
- colechristensen 7y ago
  It's not lunacy, it is being done for foreign policy reasons. Manipulating the global energy market by making the US very competitive (or just able to compete in the market) means that Saudia Arabia, Venezuela, Russia, Iran, etc. can't push us or anyone else around by threatening our energy supply. No matter how supportive you are of renewable energy, the very solid reality is that we aren't there yet and we still very much need oil. When it comes down to it, much of US foreign policy revolves around convincing everyone else that we could win WWIII - explicitly so it does not happen. The nuclear deterrent is weakening as time goes by as people are less and less confident that their own leaders and the leaders of their adversaries would ever actually be willing to press the "destroy the world" button. Then they get to thinking there could actually be a shooting war that didn't turn into apocalypse (we don't need nukes any more, we have precision weapons that can take out a single room in a house being fired on the other side of the planet, being able to destroy a city doesn't really seem that helpful in war any more) The world is a more complicated place than most people really want to think about, and the wonderful period of peace we are experiencing is the result of a complex game that is being played around the world. People grew up in peaceful times and just assume everyone will be nice forever, it's just not true. If there is some way for a player to take advantage of another, eventually it will happen, it should be obvious by now that general human decency isn't guaranteed. War is prevented by eliminating weakness, the United States adopted all sorts of policies after WWII to ensure it had no weakness and no comparable adversary. (why do we spend such a huge portion on military when our NATO allies spend so little? we want them to spend little so that military conflict within NATO isn't even a hint of an idea) Energy would be a huge source of weakness which could not just be magically fixed over night (or in a decade or five) by renewables. Our oil policy is a power policy, not an environmental one. Pour money into energy companies to make sure that we have a huge refinery capacity here, to make sure that we have and actively develop fossil fuel resources and maintain the expertise to continue doing so)
buboard 7y ago
Using this terminology is manipulative because the costs are arbitrarily defined. As a massive supporter of renewables, i d prefer if they listed the real-market distance between renewables and the rest
UnFleshedOne 7y ago
This is problematic, it means I can't just send this to a pro-fossil guy I know. He would rightly dismiss it on those grounds (he is on "CO2 is not a pollutant, it is plant food" level at the moment) and will be even more convinced by his side.
- davidgerard 7y ago
  If he's really on "CO2 is not a pollutant, it is plant food" level, he's not listening anyway and swaying him shouldn't be a serious consideration.
  - ticmasta 7y ago
    "he" is a huge powerful collective of similar viewpoints. If you don't feel the need to win them over how do you expect to ever affect change? "he" is not just some evil, fat-cat oil company exec; they are entire communities and large groups of broad-based people "he" is not an absolute position that global warming doesn't exist; it's a broad spectrum of opinions ranging from climate deniers to those concerned with the painful impact of treatment that may be widely ineffective. in short: discount huge portions of the population at your own peril; don't expect them to rally to your cause if they're beneath your consideration.
    - icebraining 7y ago
      > "he" is not an absolute position that global warming doesn't exist; it's a broad spectrum of opinions ranging from climate deniers to those concerned with the painful impact of treatment that may be widely ineffective. No, you can't simply shift the ideological division line. Someone who is convinced that climate is changing doesn't believe "CO2 is not a pollutant", regardless of how concern they are with the impact of the treatment, and it's disrespectful to put them in the same bag.
- bluecalm 7y ago
  Which brings another point: I think it would be more productive to focus on direct damage to environment and health than on CO2. "You will be more likely to die from cancer and your children are going to be less intelligent if they grow up here" has more appeal than: "in 25 years there will be serious food/arable land shortage mainly at the other part of the world".
hannob 7y ago
> They're calling the costs associated with anthropogenic climate change and pollution "subsidies", most people would just call those things "costs." This is totally reasonable. You're usually expected to fix the things you damage in any activity you do. The fact that fossil fuel users are not expected to do so is clearly a subsidy.
- ticmasta 7y ago
  1. Their using the word subsidy to trigger an emotional response; when we determine economic cost this is not what the word means and they know it 2. By calling it a subsidy they treat the cost as a precise quantifiable value which is most certainly is not. The authors have taken a completely justifiable position and then thrown away their legitimacy by misrepresenting the data in an attempt to strengthen their position. You can agree with the top-level premise and agenda but how we get their is important.
  - shkkmo 7y ago
    > The authors have taken a completely justifiable position and then thrown away their legitimacy by misrepresenting the data in an attempt to strengthen their position That is completely inaccurate. The very first line of the summary of the referenced article says: >> This paper updates estimates of fossil fuel subsidies, defined as fuel consumption times the gap between existing and efficient prices (i.e., prices warranted by supply costs, environmental costs, and revenue considerations), for 191 countries.
- Steven_Vellon 7y ago
  Do we make solar PV companies to pay into funds for people who get sick from heavy metal poisoning (which does happen and is expected to continue happening, it turns out solar is cheaper if you ship the waste to a third world country)? Do hydroelectric dams pay for water loss from evaporation? I don't disagree that the externalities are worse for fossil fuels than other energy sources, and that's a good reason to decarbonize our energy supply. But externalities are exactly that: impacts external to the cost of power generation. When someone says "we subsidized X industry by $Y" to me it means that $Y worth of goods and services was given to that industry. In reality, the fossil fuel industry received nowhere near that amount of money. This "subsidy" is really a speculative cost of externalities. Especially when the projected cost of externalities vary widely, equating externalities with subsidies comes off as intellectually dishonest. If externalities account for effectively the entirety of this so called subsidy, you're better off calling it an externality rather than trying to redefine a term.
SilasX 7y ago
I’m fine with the study’s definition if we’re willing to be consistent about it. For example, what’s the cost of all violent/property crime, including jail and prosecution? Are you willing to say that any portion of that not paid for by criminals is a “subsidy to criminals”? If so, then you’re at least using your terms in good faith. If not, you’re applying the label unfairly.
- ClumsyPilot 7y ago
  You can call it that, but where does the argument go? Do you propose we tax them?
  - SilasX 7y ago
    The ad absurdum there is that you have to say that seizing all assets from convicted criminals and forcing them to work off their debts is merely “ending the crime subsidy”. Most people would feel a little dissonance at that kind of label.
    - ClumsyPilot 7y ago
      I think the silliness comes from trying to apply idea of subsidies to people, the concept is meant for companies operating in a market. It's meant to address fairness of one company competing with another.
      - SilasX 7y ago
        Yes, if you arbitrarily decide that “I don’t have to be consistent with regard to that issue”, you get to weasel out of all kinds of inconsistencies.
        ClumsyPilot 7y ago
        It's not arbitrary, companies and countries sue each other in WTO to address different level of subsidies. I never heard of criminals doing the same. I think we are not looking to optimise rates of car theft with market forces. Do you? Companies are different entities entirely, we don't talk about profit when we educate schoolkids, and I can't write off expenses before paying income tax, while companies can.
WalterBright 7y ago
> I am supportive of massive tax increases on carbon and massive subsidies for renewables. I've been advocating that for the last 20 years. Finally getting some traction! It's also time to start taxing pesticides, plastics, and raw land development.
shkkmo 7y ago
> those aren't what most people would call subsidies, they're costs Says who? There are plenty of people who term untaxed externalities as 'implicit subsidies', it isn't just this paper. Wikipedia lists "environmental externalities" under its "Types of subsidides". So while I think there is clarity added by saying "Note that this paper includes 'implicit subsidies' such as...", there is very little value gained by telling people they cannot use the term "subsidy" when talking about this issue.

WhompingWindows 7y ago

This feels like definition-specific and ultimately, it's semantics. If you say subsidy is giving tax dollars to fossil fuel companies, isn't not taking tax dollars from them for their costly pollution effectively the same outcome? The important point is that fossil fuels receive far more government support than renewables do.

gridlockd 7y ago

> That's not what was spent, it's what this paper projected was spent. It's not even what was actually spent, but what the projected economic cost was due to externalities such as excess mortality from air pollution. So, if someone from the US dies due to air pollution, that's 6.1 million dollars down the drain. The report puts that rate at 4.9 deaths per thousand, which is absurdly high in my estimation.

mikeash 7y ago

It’s an unconventional way to use “subsidy,” but I think it fits. Imagine a garbage company. The government pays them so they can buy land where they dump their garbage. Obviously a subsidy. Now, let’s say the government buys the land themselves then gives it to the company for dumping. No money changes hands but this is still pretty clearly a subsidy. Instead of giving the company land, the government retains ownership, but lets the company dump there for free. Still a pretty clear subsidy. Instead of buying the land, the government just takes it. Now no money is involved at all, but it’s still a subsidy. Instead of taking the land, the government just declares that it’s legal for the garbage company to dump trash on other people’s land, and the owners just have to deal with it. This is quite different in the details from the original subsidy, but the overall effect is essentially the same. Polluters are in a situation that’s exactly like this last scenario. They get to dump their trash on everyone’s property and don’t have to pay for the privilege. They’re being subsidized in an amount equal to whatever payment it would take to get everyone to willingly accept this trash.

kortilla 7y ago
What a tortured analogy. It’s just an externality. We have a word for a it already, no need to try to change another word. The only reason the paper authors called it a subsidy is because people sadly don’t care about externalities nearly as much as subsidies.
- mikeash 7y ago
  It’s not an analogy at all, let alone a tortured one. Polluters are allowed to dump their trash on my (and everyone else’s) property without paying for it. Now, if you object to it being called a subsidy, fine. (Although I’d like to know which step in my story stops qualifying as one.) But “a tortured analogy”? No way.
  - hn_throwaway_99 7y ago
    But it is tortured because the numbers are made up. Yes, there is very strong scientific consensus global warming is bad, and getting worse, but pinpointing an exact number and calling it a "subsidy" implies they know a lot more about the future than they actually do. It's untruthful and plays into the hands of those screaming "fake news!" who try to deny climate change.
    - Dylan16807 7y ago
      "Your logic is right, but I doubt the exact number you used." is very far from saying an analogy is "tortured". It's an agreement that the analogy is correct.
    - mikeash 7y ago
      I didn’t use any numbers at all. Perhaps you meant to reply to a different comment.
  - crumpets 7y ago
    >It’s not an analogy at all Then why are you talking about a garbage company? Your whole comment is building an analogy. >Although I’d like to know which step in my story stops qualifying as one. This is where it stops qualifying: >Instead of taking the land, the government just declares that it’s legal for the garbage company to dump trash on other people’s land, and the owners just have to deal with it. This is quite different in the details from the original subsidy, but the overall effect is essentially the same. The government saying "it's legal to do X" and all companies in any industry and any individual (what we're talking about is CO2 emissions) are allowed to do it, it's not a subsidy. It's just behavior with an externality that the government doesn't tax.

reitzensteinm 7y ago

The use of the word subsidy is a sleight of hand to double count the environmental impact of fossil fuels. Not penalizing harmful externalities is bad policy. Subsidizing them is lunacy.

colechristensen 7y ago
It's not lunacy, it is being done for foreign policy reasons. Manipulating the global energy market by making the US very competitive (or just able to compete in the market) means that Saudia Arabia, Venezuela, Russia, Iran, etc. can't push us or anyone else around by threatening our energy supply. No matter how supportive you are of renewable energy, the very solid reality is that we aren't there yet and we still very much need oil. When it comes down to it, much of US foreign policy revolves around convincing everyone else that we could win WWIII - explicitly so it does not happen. The nuclear deterrent is weakening as time goes by as people are less and less confident that their own leaders and the leaders of their adversaries would ever actually be willing to press the "destroy the world" button. Then they get to thinking there could actually be a shooting war that didn't turn into apocalypse (we don't need nukes any more, we have precision weapons that can take out a single room in a house being fired on the other side of the planet, being able to destroy a city doesn't really seem that helpful in war any more) The world is a more complicated place than most people really want to think about, and the wonderful period of peace we are experiencing is the result of a complex game that is being played around the world. People grew up in peaceful times and just assume everyone will be nice forever, it's just not true. If there is some way for a player to take advantage of another, eventually it will happen, it should be obvious by now that general human decency isn't guaranteed. War is prevented by eliminating weakness, the United States adopted all sorts of policies after WWII to ensure it had no weakness and no comparable adversary. (why do we spend such a huge portion on military when our NATO allies spend so little? we want them to spend little so that military conflict within NATO isn't even a hint of an idea) Energy would be a huge source of weakness which could not just be magically fixed over night (or in a decade or five) by renewables. Our oil policy is a power policy, not an environmental one. Pour money into energy companies to make sure that we have a huge refinery capacity here, to make sure that we have and actively develop fossil fuel resources and maintain the expertise to continue doing so)

buboard 7y ago

Using this terminology is manipulative because the costs are arbitrarily defined. As a massive supporter of renewables, i d prefer if they listed the real-market distance between renewables and the rest

UnFleshedOne 7y ago

This is problematic, it means I can't just send this to a pro-fossil guy I know. He would rightly dismiss it on those grounds (he is on "CO2 is not a pollutant, it is plant food" level at the moment) and will be even more convinced by his side.

davidgerard 7y ago
If he's really on "CO2 is not a pollutant, it is plant food" level, he's not listening anyway and swaying him shouldn't be a serious consideration.
- ticmasta 7y ago
  "he" is a huge powerful collective of similar viewpoints. If you don't feel the need to win them over how do you expect to ever affect change? "he" is not just some evil, fat-cat oil company exec; they are entire communities and large groups of broad-based people "he" is not an absolute position that global warming doesn't exist; it's a broad spectrum of opinions ranging from climate deniers to those concerned with the painful impact of treatment that may be widely ineffective. in short: discount huge portions of the population at your own peril; don't expect them to rally to your cause if they're beneath your consideration.
  - icebraining 7y ago
    > "he" is not an absolute position that global warming doesn't exist; it's a broad spectrum of opinions ranging from climate deniers to those concerned with the painful impact of treatment that may be widely ineffective. No, you can't simply shift the ideological division line. Someone who is convinced that climate is changing doesn't believe "CO2 is not a pollutant", regardless of how concern they are with the impact of the treatment, and it's disrespectful to put them in the same bag.
bluecalm 7y ago
Which brings another point: I think it would be more productive to focus on direct damage to environment and health than on CO2. "You will be more likely to die from cancer and your children are going to be less intelligent if they grow up here" has more appeal than: "in 25 years there will be serious food/arable land shortage mainly at the other part of the world".

hannob 7y ago

> They're calling the costs associated with anthropogenic climate change and pollution "subsidies", most people would just call those things "costs." This is totally reasonable. You're usually expected to fix the things you damage in any activity you do. The fact that fossil fuel users are not expected to do so is clearly a subsidy.

ticmasta 7y ago
1. Their using the word subsidy to trigger an emotional response; when we determine economic cost this is not what the word means and they know it 2. By calling it a subsidy they treat the cost as a precise quantifiable value which is most certainly is not. The authors have taken a completely justifiable position and then thrown away their legitimacy by misrepresenting the data in an attempt to strengthen their position. You can agree with the top-level premise and agenda but how we get their is important.
- shkkmo 7y ago
  > The authors have taken a completely justifiable position and then thrown away their legitimacy by misrepresenting the data in an attempt to strengthen their position That is completely inaccurate. The very first line of the summary of the referenced article says: >> This paper updates estimates of fossil fuel subsidies, defined as fuel consumption times the gap between existing and efficient prices (i.e., prices warranted by supply costs, environmental costs, and revenue considerations), for 191 countries.
Steven_Vellon 7y ago
Do we make solar PV companies to pay into funds for people who get sick from heavy metal poisoning (which does happen and is expected to continue happening, it turns out solar is cheaper if you ship the waste to a third world country)? Do hydroelectric dams pay for water loss from evaporation? I don't disagree that the externalities are worse for fossil fuels than other energy sources, and that's a good reason to decarbonize our energy supply. But externalities are exactly that: impacts external to the cost of power generation. When someone says "we subsidized X industry by $Y" to me it means that $Y worth of goods and services was given to that industry. In reality, the fossil fuel industry received nowhere near that amount of money. This "subsidy" is really a speculative cost of externalities. Especially when the projected cost of externalities vary widely, equating externalities with subsidies comes off as intellectually dishonest. If externalities account for effectively the entirety of this so called subsidy, you're better off calling it an externality rather than trying to redefine a term.

SilasX 7y ago

I’m fine with the study’s definition if we’re willing to be consistent about it. For example, what’s the cost of all violent/property crime, including jail and prosecution? Are you willing to say that any portion of that not paid for by criminals is a “subsidy to criminals”? If so, then you’re at least using your terms in good faith. If not, you’re applying the label unfairly.

ClumsyPilot 7y ago
You can call it that, but where does the argument go? Do you propose we tax them?
- SilasX 7y ago
  The ad absurdum there is that you have to say that seizing all assets from convicted criminals and forcing them to work off their debts is merely “ending the crime subsidy”. Most people would feel a little dissonance at that kind of label.
  - ClumsyPilot 7y ago
    I think the silliness comes from trying to apply idea of subsidies to people, the concept is meant for companies operating in a market. It's meant to address fairness of one company competing with another.
    - SilasX 7y ago
      Yes, if you arbitrarily decide that “I don’t have to be consistent with regard to that issue”, you get to weasel out of all kinds of inconsistencies.
      - ClumsyPilot 7y ago
        It's not arbitrary, companies and countries sue each other in WTO to address different level of subsidies. I never heard of criminals doing the same. I think we are not looking to optimise rates of car theft with market forces. Do you? Companies are different entities entirely, we don't talk about profit when we educate schoolkids, and I can't write off expenses before paying income tax, while companies can.

WalterBright 7y ago

> I am supportive of massive tax increases on carbon and massive subsidies for renewables. I've been advocating that for the last 20 years. Finally getting some traction! It's also time to start taxing pesticides, plastics, and raw land development.

shkkmo 7y ago

> those aren't what most people would call subsidies, they're costs Says who? There are plenty of people who term untaxed externalities as 'implicit subsidies', it isn't just this paper. Wikipedia lists "environmental externalities" under its "Types of subsidides". So while I think there is clarity added by saying "Note that this paper includes 'implicit subsidies' such as...", there is very little value gained by telling people they cannot use the term "subsidy" when talking about this issue.