No chance, fossil fuels are subsidized more. A large share of solar growth is from countries like Pakistan who have had some subsidies but total dollar amount of them is trivial.
Pricing fossil fuel pollution at zero is the biggest subsidy in the world bar none. Contrast this with for example nuclear power, where potential pollution risks as well as storage of its spent resources are some of the biggest costs. If they were subsidized equally to fossil fuels, the costs of those would be very low, with the public simply paying the price for any negative health effects.
Oil is directly subsidized in most oil producing countries. Go look at what fuel costs in Saudi Arabia or Nigeria, vs what they could sell it for on international markets. That's a subsidy.
Jet fuel is universally exempt from tax. Try finding any other energy source that is.
> There isn't really an alternative for jet fuel, is there?
But in many cases there is an alternative to air travel, at least for short distances. I don't really understand why railways (at least in the UK) such ridiculously expensive. Return flights from London to Edinburgh start at £30, train tickets between the same cities start at £100. A return ticket from a station in 50 miles from London is more than £65 (peak times).
> There isn't really an alternative for jet fuel, is there? Synfuel still has pollution problem and represents like 0.1% of total jet fuel used.
There isn't an alternative for water, electricity and food. Easy to find places where the former two are taxed, the latter is taxed effectively everywhere.
Jet fuel has alternatives, as noted above SAF / Synfuel which is increasingly being blended into fossil fuel sourced trad "jet fuel" / kerosene (with a twist).
> Synfuel still has pollution problem and represents like 0.1% of total jet fuel used.
is a fairly lightweight critique of a product development path scarcely five years in:
Sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) is an alternative fuel made from non-petroleum feedstocks that reduces air pollution from air transportation. SAF can be blended at different levels with limits between 10% and 50%, depending on the feedstock and how the fuel is produced. According to the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), over 360,000 commercial flights have used SAF at 46 different airports largely concentrated in the United States and Europe.
Worldwide, aviation accounts for 2% of all carbon dioxide (CO2) and 12% of all CO2 from transportation. ICAO's Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation (CORSIA) caps net CO2 from aviation at 2020 levels through 2035. The international aviation industry sets goals for SAF usage globally. SAF presents the best near-term opportunity to meet these goals.
The Sustainable Aviation Fuel Grand Challenge, announced in 2021, brings together multiple federal agencies for the purpose of expanding domestic consumption to 3 billion gallons in 2030 and 35 billion gallons in 2050 while achieving at least a 50% reduction in lifecycle emissions.
So, have some patience and remember the goal here is to reduce the use of fossil fuel as much as possible .. if Synfuel evolves into something that reduces fossil fuel usage by 50% in the aviation sector, that's a win on the path to ideally eventual elimination altogether.
The US oil subsidy currently is projected to increase the Pentagon budget from one trillion to one and half. I bet one could build a lot of solar panels for 500 billion dollars, and you can use them more than once, too.
In the "unpaid cost of climate change and air pollution as a result of burning fossil fuels" etc. sense, not in a cash given to fossil fuel folk sense.
“The education of all children, from the moment that they can get along without a mother's care, shall be in state institutions.”
- Friedrich Engels (The Principles of Communism)
“Give me four years to teach the children,” asserted Lenin, “and the seed I have sown shall never be uprooted.”
Like on HN; I don’t bother to click on NYTimes, Gruaniad, etc…
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