Political Quotes

“for this 259th climate speech, I am going to return to the theme of corruption. Before diving into the how, let's start with the why because the scale and the remorselessness of the scheme of corruption the fossil fuel industry has run is hard to comprehend without understanding why. Here is the why. The fossil fuel industry reaps the biggest subsidy in the history of the planet. I will say that again. The fossil fuel industry reaps the biggest subsidy in the history of the planet. The IMF--International Monetary Fund--estimates that the global subsidy for fossil fuel is in the trillions of dollars every year. That is globally. In the United States alone, the fossil fuel industry got a $650 billion--that is with a ``b''--subsidy in 2015, according to the most recent report from the IMF. That is about $2,000 out of the pocket of every man, woman, and child in the United States. Here is that IMF report. Look it up. Read it and weep. Stop for a minute and understand this subsidy. Some of it is favorable tax deals and other direct subsidies that pour public taxpayer money into the pockets of this polluting industry. In recent years, that has been estimated at around $20 billion annually. The vast bulk of this $650 billion is something else. It is people getting hurt. It is the cost of people suffering economic harms. It is the cost of your home burned in a wildfire or swept away in a storm by rising seas.…”