Re:US oil lobby launches ad campaign to promote oil as 'vita...
by abdullahkhalids on Thursday January 11, 2024 @04:39PM
(#38959529)
Depends on your political values. Many people think it is mandatory for governments to directly tax products with large negative externalities enough to price in those externalities. If a fossil fuel extraction system poisons a river, that needs to be priced in. If the government fails to tax what is mandatorily society's due, then it is a subsidy. Because we have to pay for the poisoned river in other ways.
> fossil fuels are under-subsidized by trillions of dollars because they are used to power hospitals
Nope. Governments/patients pay hospitals for their services, then hospitals pay power companies the market price for their services.
Re:US oil lobby launches ad campaign to promote oil as 'vita...
by two_handfuls on Thursday January 11, 2024 @09:36PM
(#38962921)
That seems fair to me. Negative externalities are part of the cost we all pay (not the oil companies), just like other forms of subsidy.
Nearly all of that "subsidy" is the lack of taxation of the negative externalities of fossil fuels. Even fossil fuel propaganda isn't this disingenuous with the way it frames things. That's like saying that fossil fuels are under-subsidized by trillions of dollars because they are used to power hospitals and can be used to power hospitals in Africa.