These calculations are made up from more or less arbitrary numbers and assumptions. Let me make a similar spurious calculation, but from the other side of the f

These calculations are made up from more or less arbitrary numbers and assumptions. Let me make a similar spurious calculation, but from the other side of the fence: Renewable subsidies in the US cost 14 billion/year, which could be spent on cancer research instead. The average cancer drug costs 1,4 billion dollars to develop, so renewable subsidies are equivalent to 10 cancer drugs. Let's say that there's 30,000 cases of cancer annually that each of these drugs can treat successfully. Let's take the "mortality value" of $6,1 million per US citizen straight out of the IMF report: That's 10 x 30,000 x 6.1million = 1.83 trillion dollars. In other words, by using the same kind of spurious reasoning, fossil fuel subsidies in the US alone would account for almost two trillion dollars.