More Green Investment Necessary if America is to kick fossil fuel habit

America has a nasty addiction to fossil fuels. This addiction harms our health by spewing toxic chemicals into the air, and undercuts income mobility by disproportionately hurting poor communities and those who lack political power.

By exacerbating our trade deficit, American oil imports drag on domestic economic growth. Our dependence on fossil fuels also undermines our national security by sending hundreds of millions of dollars every day to undemocratic, sometimes hostile regimes.

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It threatens our very survival, as we march closer and closer to the tipping point past which we irreversibly change the planet’s climate. And remember, there is a finite supply of fossil fuels — technology can expand extraction, but we cannot manufacture more coal, natural gas, or petroleum.

Simply put, we must kick our fossil fuel habit, and this means drastically increasing the amount of energy produced from clean renewable sources.

Luckily, this is an entirely reachable goal, requiring that we eliminate fossil fuel subsidies, put a price on carbon (either through a carbon tax or cap-and-trade), and increase investments in green technology and infrastructure. This creates a carrot-and-stick effect: eliminating fossil fuel subsidies and the carbon pricing makes fossil fuel energy more expensive, and the investments make the alternative — that is, clean renewable energy — cheaper. And this approach it doesn’t even have to have a budget cost because revenues from the subsidies and carbon pricing can be used to fund investments in renewable energy and more efficient energy infrastructure.

Some defenders of fossil fuels oppose these measures, arguing that we shouldn’t pick winners and losers, and instead we should let the free market decide how energy is produced. Here’s why they’re wrong.

Despite the presence of green investments and subsidies, the playing field is heavily stacked against renewable energy in favor of fossil fuels. Between 2002 and 2008, federal fossil fuel subsidies totaled $72 billion, nearly 2 ½ times more than subsidies for renewable energy. Read Environmental Law Institute report on energy subsidies.

President Obama has pushed to eliminate many of these fossil fuel subsidies, only to be rebuffed by the same conservatives in Congress that also argue for “free market” solutions.

Furthermore, the historical dominance of fossil fuels creates an entrenched anti-competitive barrier to market entry for renewable energies.

If research came out finding that having driver’s seats on the right side of cars and driving on the left side of the road was far safer than the current arrangement, would the market naturally react? Of course not. We have an entire infrastructure in place predicated on driving on the right side of the road. More importantly, government itself made this decision.



Source: Market Watch  to comment on or read the original article click here

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