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imglorptoday at 1:16 PM3 repliesview on HN

Oh that's not nearly the amount of fossil subsidies. Some say it's $31b/yr direct. If you factor in indirect costs like climate damage, health expenses, oil wars, etc, it's much higher. Renewables are much, much cheaper regardless of a little incentive, if there are any left.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/sep/09/fossil-f...


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TheOtherHobbestoday at 1:51 PM

Globally, fossil tax breaks and implicit subsidies are at least $6tn.

The entire sector is a catastrophic, institutionally corrupt scam.

https://www.imf.org/en/topics/climate-change/energy-subsidie...

WalterBrighttoday at 4:12 PM

> Oh that's not nearly the amount of fossil subsidies.

Consider the taxes on gasoline.

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winter_bluetoday at 2:10 PM

It’s kind of amazing and horrifying at the same time that a democratic country like the U.S. is doing all these shenanigans like blocking clean zero carbon energy, while a communist authoritarian country is massively moving towards clean energy.

Based on what our media and our education system teaches us, one would have assumed that common sense and sound logic would prevail in a democracy, but rather what we see is insane nonsense, paranoia, and misinformation (including about vaccines) prevail in the U.S., to the point of burning piles of money (including the 1.2B in this case) just to satisfy a childish and bully like need to spite and trigger the progressive side (like talking about causing more pollution with the goal of “owning the libs” or triggering “delicious liberal tears”). And we’re talking about massive negative externalities with increased pollution. This kind of childish bully behavior is as though you had a neighbor who cared about not littering in public and the streets being clean, and you just threw garbage on the streets to upset her. A ridiculous level of immaturity, truly.

Meanwhile, we have totalitarian dictatorships (like the Emirates which has heavily moved toward zero carbon electricity sources like solar and nuclear) behaving far more logically, rationally, and soundly with a view towards the long-term rather than the short-term.

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