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Governments give fossil fuel companies $5.3 trillion in subsidies every year — the equivalent of $10 million every minute of every day and more than the world spends on health care, according to a new estimate by the International Monetary Fund.

The Guardian reports:

The vast sum is largely due to polluters not paying the costs imposed on governments by the burning of coal, oil and gas. These include the harm caused to local populations by air pollution as well as to people across the globe affected by the floods, droughts and storms being driven by climate change.

Lord Nicholas Stern, an eminent climate economist at the London School of Economics, said: “This very important analysis shatters the myth that fossil fuels are cheap by showing just how huge their real costs are. There is no justification for these enormous subsidies for fossil fuels, which distort markets and damages economies, particularly in poorer countries.

Stern said that even the IMF’s vast subsidy figure was a significant underestimate: “A more complete estimate of the costs due to climate change would show the implicit subsidies for fossil fuels are much bigger even than this report suggests.”

Continue reading here.

— Posted by Alexander Reed Kelly.

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#climate change#fossil fuels#international monetary fund#oil and gas industry#subsidies