The Seven Sisters oil companies—now consolidated into ExxonMobil, BP, Shell, and Chevron—relied on imperial concessions throughout much of the global south to maintain their cartel over some 85 percent of the world’s oil resources through much of the twentieth century. When local governments threatened that control, the companies turned to the CIA to help protect their property.
Gas is more expensive than ever before — but it’s not just at the pump where we are taking the hit. What many don’t know is Canadians are also paying more for gas through our tax dollars. And when we consider the environmental impacts, that cost is even greater.
In fact, as we waste time complaining about how much it costs to fill our tanks, the Canadian government is busy pumping billions of our tax dollars into fuelling global warming. By subsidizing not only oil and gas but also animal agriculture and other harmful industries, we’re essentially financing our own destruction.
Roberts' review of various estimates of US subsidies to fossil fuels included a section, excerpted below, on the analysis jointly done by SEI and Earth Track that was published in Nature Energy in 2017:
..."The effects of consumption subsidies are fairly well-understood, as it is fairly easy to aggregate consumer decisions and find patterns. But the effects of production subsidies are trickier to pin down; it is difficult to tie particular background subsidies to particular investment decisions by producers.
"A package of legislation that represents a last chance to avoid severe climate crisis impacts was dramatically defanged late last week by conservative West Virginia Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin...
Despite Manchin’s cost-conscious approach — he has demanded a reduced $1.5 trillion price tag for the bill — he has fought to preserve domestic fossil fuel industry subsidies. On the potential repeal of international oil and gas subsidies put into place during the Trump administration, Manchin has been silent.
The world is spending at least $1.8-trillion every year, equivalent to 2% of GDP, on subsidies that are destroying nature, new research released on Thursday has found.
The study, titled Protecting Nature by Reforming Environmentally Harmful Subsidies: The Role of Business, was co-funded by The B Team and Business for Nature, and is the first estimate in 10 years of the total value of environmentally harmful subsidies (EHS) across key sectors including energy, agriculture, transport and forestry.
From 2010 to 2021, the United States’ major trade and development finance institutions, the U.S. Export Import Bank (EXIM) and U.S. International Development Finance Corporation (DFC), provided almost five
times as much support to fossil fuels as to renewables – USD 51.6 billion compared to USD 10.9 billion.
Industry-specific reviews of government subsidies have been much more common than analyses examining several natural resource sectors at once. Yet there is a great deal of overlap across sectors. Indeed, it is the combination of support provided by multiple levels of government and government programs, across numerous natural resource areas, that can accelerate resource depletion, pollution, or habitat loss in particular regions.
The United States has supported the development of its oil and gas industry since the early twentieth century. Despite repeated pledges to phase out 'inefficient' fossil fuel subsidies, US oil and gas production continues to be subsidized by billions of dollars each year. In this study, we quantify how 16 subsidies and regulatory exemptions individually and altogether affect the economics of US oil and gas production in 2020–2030 under different price and financial risk outlooks.
Export credit agencies are little-known government-backed financial institutions that provide loans, guarantees, and insurance with the aim of supporting exports of goods or services from their country to outside markets. This report from Oil Change International and Friends of the Earth U.S. shows that since the Paris Agreement was made, G20 countries have used their export credit agencies to provide nearly 12 times more finance to fossil fuels than to clean energy.
