❝ The United States has spent more subsidizing fossil fuels in recent years than it has on defense spending, according to a new report from the International Monetary Fund.
The IMF found that direct and indirect subsidies for coal, oil and gas in the U.S. reached $649 billion in 2015. Pentagon spending that same year was $599 billion.
❝ Oil, gas and coal companies — and their stooges in public office — have long argued that making consumers pay for the full impacts of fossil fuel use would cripple the economy. The IMF experts call bullshit on this idea, revealing that the world would, in fact, be more prosperous. Eliminating subsidies for fossil fuels would have created global “net economic welfare gains” in 2015 of “more than $1.3 trillion, or 1.7 percent of global GDP…”
Between stooging for corporations killing us with fossil fuels and the military-industrial complex pouring money down the death and destruction rathole, that’s well over a trillion dollar$ a year in wasted money. Funds that could have been spent on healthcare, improved public education, any number of programs designed to benefit the working folks of America.
via Fossil fuel subsidies even greater than military industrial complex — Eideard
The Most Revolutionary Act 
“The military is the linchpin, playing a pivotal role intensifying the climate crisis.
Consider the basic facts. The US military is:
+ The single largest institutional consumer of fossil fuel in the world;
+ The most powerful global force securing oil and protecting oil infrastructure;
+ The leading director — along with the big bankers and fossil fuel giants — of the elites’ plans for dealing with the coming crisis. The military and big corporations are not in climate denial — they are in control — and plan to keep it that way as the climate deteriorates.
+ The war machine’s enormous consumption and strategic capture of fossil fuels and their behind-the-scenes management of the crisis hints at its true role: sponsor of big oil and co-creator of the climate crisis.
The dominance of fossil fuels and the supremacy of the US empire rely not on victory in war or on market savvy or “value added” to the economy but on their political power. That power makes destructive and wasteful industries extremely profitable. The Oil Empire relies on massive public funding, carefully crafted exemptions to law and immunity from the economic, social and environmental damages they inflict.
The military can only maintain the fiction that it protects our security by concealing its role as destroyer of the very things we really need to survive: a healthy environment and a democratic society. ”
https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/05/17/the-interlocking-crises-war-and-climate-chaos/
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Thanks for the link, Teri. It all makes for an extremely ugly picture.
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Hope you don’t mind but I reblogged your comment, Teri, using copy and paste!
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Thanks for reblogging Sha’Tara
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I’m not easily surprised but this surprised me. I wonder if that includes the massive amounts of $$$ spent by the military and “security forces” to support and protect the fossil fuel industry in its rampaging over and raping of, the planet?
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Interesting Sha’Tara, Tubularsock has noticed that that is the ONLY purpose for the military ‘s existence! Isn’t that what “protect American interests” means?
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Yup, ever since Washington chopped down cherry trees and went fishing on the Potomac.
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Same here, Tube. And I can’t believe I was so slow in realizing that America was really an empire occupying hundreds of other countries around the world. By the time I woke up to this fact, neocons themselves were referring to the American empire.
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The Rolling Stone article seems to define “subsidy” quite liberally Sha’Tara. They seem to be including clean up and other environmental costs that get charged to the taxpayer instide of the fossil fuel companies. Lord knows what that includes. Yet they seem to be quoting the IMF in that assessment – which I find interesting.
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In other words, a quagmire of rape of the planet, incestuous relationship with politicians and military leaders and grand theft of gargantuan proportions upon the masses – of all nations. Ya gotta love ’em, such sweethearts, dem’s are!
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The military US consumes as much fossil fuel as half the world combines. Also as much as the US. quadrilllions of gallons anually
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Indeed, Gloria. As I understand, the US military is also the biggest polluter.
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Regardless of the magnitude, I would say the U.S. government should stop providing subsidies to both. Both are being encouraged to indirectly rob the taxpayer blind. For what? To fund the implements of nation building campaigns?To provide a handout to an inherently lucrative industry?
https://invertedlogicblog.wordpress.com/2019/07/25/paragraph-polemics8-the-warfare-state-is-the-welfare-state/
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I agree totally, invertedlogic. Both industries only serve the corporate elite at the expense of the great majority of Americans.
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