[gottorf]

> stop subsidizing fossil fuels to 7 trillion a year globally

We need to stop bandying about this $7T figure. 80% of it is "implicit subsidies", meaning made-up numbers based on carbon pricing and environmental impacts and whatnot. It's like saying we implicitly subsidize solar power by not accounting for the environmental impacts of covering up square miles of land under panels, or of the pollution from the production of panels. If you go back far enough, it's like telling the caveman not to light sticks on fire to keep himself warm, because of the carbon emissions that aren't being priced in.

Fossil fuels are, with present-day technology, the best source of energy for humanity to develop and maintain high living standards. It's easy to stop using them if we're OK with dialing back our living standards two hundred years. It will be easy to stop using them at some point in the future when we have abundant, clean, cheap energy from a proliferation of nuclear power, or some battery technology breakthrough that will let us economically harness wind and solar energy. However, currently, it's not easy. Oil and gas is profitable because it makes us all richer, let's not forget that.