n a May 15 article in The Tyee, Mitchell Anderson – with the help of International Monetary Fund researchers – gave readers a detailed breakdown of Canadian subsidies provided to petroleum, natural gas and coal consumption. These subsidies are a whopping $34 billion each year in direct support to producers and uncollected tax on externalized costs. “The lions share of the $34 billion are uncollected taxes on the externalized costs of burning transportation fuels like gasoline and diesel -- about $19.4 billion in 2011,” Anderson writes. “These externalized costs include impacts like traffic accidents, carbon emissions, air pollution and road congestion.” The proposed Vancouver subway line to the University of British Columbia could be built using less than two months of the subsidies provided every day to the energy sector, he adds. Decisions based on low energy prices can have unintended consequences says Anderson. “If gas is cheap, people will choose to buy cars rather than take transit, clogging both our roads and emergency rooms. Transportation accidents alone cost Canada $3.7 billion each year. Every vehicle bought based on low fuel prices will produce years of carbon emissions, and every owner over the life of that vehicle will have an interest in voting for cheaper gas.” As for jobs, Anderson explains that $34 billion could be used much more wisely. “Adding solar and wind capacity provides some of the best job-generation per dollar of any option available -- more than seven times the employment from an equivalent investment in oil and gas extraction,” he writes. “Extrapolating the findings from a 2012 report on green jobs, $34 billion could create 500,000 person years of employment and install more than 150,000 megawatts of clean generating capacity.”
Posted on: Sun, 26 Oct 2014 20:03:00 +0000
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