Fossil Fuel Subsidies Surged to Record $7T (opens in new tab)

It would be helpful if the artcle mentioned:

- Subsidies for renewables. That is, what are the true costs of each type of energy? It would be foolish to try to make renewables more attractive by...lowering the cost of fossil fuels. That's what's happening, but to what extent?

- Opportunity cost. Effectively, what could $7T buy if those resources were redirected elsewhere? Would we have fusion by now? Certainly we'd be closer. But instead we're subsidizing the energy equivalent of fax machines?

>We estimate that scrapping explicit and implicit fossil-fuel subsidies would prevent 1.6 million premature deaths annually, raise government revenues by $4.4 trillion, and put emissions on track toward reaching global warming targets. It would also redistribute income as fuel subsidies benefit rich households more than poor ones.

The truth is that voters like low fuel prices. The economy depends on low fuel prices. See Germany. See the yellow vest protest in France. See President Biden releasing reserves from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and requesting that Saudi Arabia increase oil production.

Any party that significantly increased fuel prices would probably pretty quickly find itself voted out of power.