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>The consequence of people resorting to intellectual dishonesty to try and inflate the cost of fossil fuels make people think that proponents of climate change
by Qwertious 7y ago
>The consequence of people resorting to intellectual dishonesty to try and inflate the cost of fossil fuels make people think that proponents of climate change are naive to the economic reality that carbon free energy, especially renewables, are much more expensive to produce.
Except they're not more expensive. The sheer economic damage that greenhouse emissions produceare just as inherent as if your groceries are delivered by a truck that regularly smashes through people's houses on the way.
You can't say the truck delivery is "cheaper" than taking the road route, just because the government hasn't forced the truck driver to pay for the houses that were wrecked. I mean you can, but it's an accounting trick. It only exists on paper.
You could say "it's not subsidy", but semantics aside, what is it called when the government makes something cheaper through its deliberate choice to charge less than normal (or none) for a certain group? In common parlance, if EVs get 50% off their registration fees, people say "the government subsidises EV registration fees", even if technically they're simply not charging the money in the first place. How is this different to fossil fuels? You could say that they reduced the fees from historical pricing, but then Australia had a carbon price that was abolished (for purely political reasons, FYI) - does that count as subsidising fossil fuels?