[whatever1]

Fossil fuels are irreplaceable for what they offer at the price they ask.

Don’t ask the West. Ask India that had the choice to leapfrog fossil fuels and be energy independent, at higher cost.

People don’t care about our opinions. They want the cheapest options.

The only way to transition out of fossils for energy, is to make the alternatives cheaper and easily accessible. US transitioned from coal to gas within 10 years when the economics became favorable.

[bluejekyll]

It really depends on how you calculate this, but fossil fuels are not cheap by any means. The IMF has some staggering numbers for direct and indirect subsidies of fossil fuels, https://www.imf.org/en/Blogs/Articles/2023/08/24/fossil-fuel...: “… explicit subsidies (undercharging for supply costs) more than doubled to $1.3 trillion.” If we just got rid of those subsidies, we’d see a faster shift.

Then there are all the externalities that are not part of the cost of fossil fuel costs today, start charging for the pollution and make the real costs explicit. The next thing, stop subsidizing road construction and maintenance for car drivers, and make only car owners pay the costs of all the roads, people would again see more explicitly how much more expensive cars are, which would get people to shift to other options (the vast majority of which are not EVs and won’t be for a long time). People might opt to bike for anything shorter than a 3 mile errand, deeming the car to be too expensive, or use the local bus or transit system…

Point being, these fossil fuels are supported directly by our governments and many of the primary users of those fuels are also supported by our governments (some more than others like here in the US).

[vel0city]

You're misquoting with your explicit subsidies. Undercharging is an implicit, not explicit. The vast majority of these subsidies are implicit subsidies. "Getting rid of" these subsidies means taxing an extra trillion dollars not scaling back something handing the oil companies a trillion dollars.

If you want to argue we should levy a trillion dollar tax on fossil fuels that's fine but let's at least be direct about it instead of the somewhat misleading statement that it's a subsidy, like it's some giant pile of cash the state is handing to the oil companies. It's not even that it's giving tax breaks (that would be an explicit subsidy), it's that these taxes didn't exist at all.

You're essentially arguing not being taxed to oblivion as being directly supported by the government.

[bluejekyll]

Am I misquoting that? I read that report as saying that the implicit costs are about $7 trillion dollars, and the explicit subsidies are $1.3 trillion, which is the number I used in the quote because, I agree, the implicit costs are harder to understand.

[vel0city]

I double checksd the source and you're right that isn't a misquote, but it isn't quite accurate in the end. A lot of the "undercharging" is essentially not making new taxes. Most of the explicit subsidies are subsidies that pretty much any large business gets, nothing special about the oil industry there. Things like local tax deferments for plants that supposedly bring jobs to an area are common for just about any large employer. Maybe we shouldn't be doing this in general, but it's not something special to oil industries.

We should probably just end all of those "subsidies" and loopholes in general.

Sorry for misunderstanding and missing what you were quoting. My overall point still kind of stands though, a lot of these "the government is subsidizing the oil industry trillions of dollars" is usually talking about these implicit costs that aren't taxed like they'd like.

[paulryanrogers]

Cheaper by some narrow definitions. Expensive considering inconvenient externalities.

[andix]

I live in "the west" and I can contribute to change there. So I do. Try to change what you can change, instead of thinking about what you can't change and not doing anything.

[somsak2]

problem is, unlike other issues that can have positive local impacts, the biggest downsides to climate change are global. doesn't really matter that as the US/EU our emissions have been flat for decades now if china and India are shooting up like crazy.

[jabradoodle]

Well, yes it does.

The USA is still the biggest polluter, even with 1/5 the population of China.

Also, making the technology viable and proving it so is the only solution.

[vel0city]

The US is not the largest GHG polluter. China is, by a large measure.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/271748/the-largest-emitt...

Sure, if you're talking per capita, US people emit more carbon dioxide but with your "even with 1/5th" and "the biggest polluter" it suggests you're thinking total not per capita.

[jabradoodle]

Should have fact checked myself on that one.

[andix]

The US were for a long time. But now it’s China. Although they already are the biggest producer of green energy world wide. They produce more green energy than all other countries combined. I don’t know if their strategy will drastically reduce their carbon emissions soon, for now they are still rising. In Europe and the US they are going down a while already (also because we moved a lot of our industry to china).

[jabradoodle]

India and China are both investing heavily in renewables, this is a tired trope.

Renewable energy is also cost effective compared to fossil fuels in many cases and has been for years. This also excludes the massive externalities of fossil fuels.

True, making it cheaper is the best way, which should involve not subsidising fossil fuels and subsidising renewables.

Alas, none of this has anything to do with fossil fuel companies advertising to children, not sure if your a contrarian or a shill but your take is totally off topic.

[whatever1]

Not even sure if I am a shill. My Tech employer has bold commitments for carbon neutrality by buying credits from the Big Oil.

[aaomidi]

Or, here’s another idea: a tax on carbon.

We are subsidizing fossil fuels by deferring their actual real cost to the future. We can and should stop doing that.

[whatever1]

Who can impose this global tax you dream of? India currently is smuggling oil out of Russia because they offered a better price.

[aaomidi]

It doesn’t need to be global? It can be within your borders applying to domestic production and imports.

You can require an implementation and oversight of a carbon tax as part of a trade deal.

We’ve literally enforced a thousand different rules on the world as a collective species. Stop pretending this one is different.

[jppittma]

So, in any tragedy of the commons are we just going to accept that the only solutions are going to be to change the concrete circumstances that make it a one?

If not climate change, then there'll be other instances like this where what's good for the individual (country) is bad for the world.

[Timon3]

In 2021, 136 countries agreed to implement a 15% global minimum tax rate. It's not yet implemented, but it should start in ~2025.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_minimum_corporate_tax_r...

A couple of years ago, this was touted as impossible - "who can impose this global tax you dream of?" was said back then as well. Why should it be impossible for countries to come together like this, with agreements to implement tariffs against countries outside the agreement?

[tekmate]

we've tried nothing and we're all out of ideas

[TheLoafOfBread]

> Or, here’s another idea: a tax on carbon.

So more tax on food and energy to the poor. Great idea how to start a riot.

[aaomidi]

Have you heard of subsidies before?

[TheLoafOfBread]

Let's make a carbon tax and negate its effect via subsidies. More bureaucracy, no result.

[merdaverse]

Right, let's just leave it to the free market to make the transition when economically viable. The invisible hand has been working great so far in preventing a global ecosystem catastrophe. /s

[whatever1]

No we should do what we are doing today. Help to change the economics with investments and subsidies.

And do it in a way that the poor people do not revolt and topple the governments because of the crazy high prices in goods.

The valid debate is how fast can we go towards this direction(aka how much should we ask people to pay to fund the transition). And there is no single right answer for this.