{"id":1459,"date":"2014-11-11T20:25:29","date_gmt":"2014-11-12T01:25:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=1459"},"modified":"2014-11-11T20:25:29","modified_gmt":"2014-11-12T01:25:29","slug":"and-then-theres-the-things-you-couldnt-even-make-up-the-automatic-earth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=1459","title":{"rendered":"And Then There&#8217;s The Things You Couldn&#8217;t Even Make Up &#8211; The Automatic Earth"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.theautomaticearth.com\/and-then-theres-the-things-you-couldnt-even-make-up\/\">And Then There&#8217;s The Things You Couldn&#8217;t Even Make Up &#8211; The Automatic Earth<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p style=\"outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-size: 13px; text-align: left; padding: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em 0px; border: 0px initial initial;\">There are things in this world which simply look plain stupid, and then there are those that at closer examination prove to be way beyond stupid. How about this one:<\/p>\n<p style=\"outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-size: 13px; text-align: left; padding: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em 0px; border: 0px initial initial;\">1) G20 taxpayers (you, me) subsidize the fossil fuel industry. That in itself is crazy enough, and it should stop as per last week; industry participants must be able to fend for themselves, or fold. That they don\u2019t, speaks to a very unhealthy level of power in and over our political systems. Subsidizing coal and oil is as insane as bailing out Wall Street banks. It\u2019s money that defies gravity, by flowing from the bottom to the top, from the poor to the rich.<\/p>\n<p style=\"outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-size: 13px; text-align: left; padding: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em 0px; border: 0px initial initial;\">2) Then there\u2019s the huge amount of the subsidies: $88 billion a year. That could solve a lot of misery for a lot of people. It adds up to well over $1 trillion in this century alone. Next time you feel good about prices at the pump, please add that number, it should set you straight.<\/p>\n<p style=\"outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-size: 13px; text-align: left; padding: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em 0px; border: 0px initial initial;\">3) But that\u2019s just the start. Those $88 billion go towards exploration for new oil, gas and coal resources which, according to the UN\u2019s IPCC climate panel,\u00a0<b style=\"outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-size: 13px; padding: 0px; margin: 0px; border: 0px initial initial;\">can never even be \u2018consumed\u2019<\/b>lest we go way beyond our \u2013 minimum \u2013 goals for CO2 concentrations and a global 2\u00baC warming limit.<\/p>\n<p style=\"outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-size: 13px; text-align: left; padding: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em 0px; border: 0px initial initial;\">4) And it keeps getting better. For who do you think pays for the research conducted for the IPCC reports? That\u2019s right, the same G20 taxpayer. As in: you and me. We pay for both ends of the divine tragedy. We got it al covered. We pay for exploratory drilling in the Arctic, the Gulf of Mexico and all other ever harder to find, riskier and more polluting resources.<\/p>\n<p style=\"outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-size: 13px; text-align: left; padding: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em 0px; border: 0px initial initial;\">&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>And Then There&#8217;s The Things You Couldn&#8217;t Even Make Up &#8211; The Automatic Earth. There are things in this world which simply look plain stupid, and then there are those that at closer examination prove to be way beyond stupid. How about this one: 1) G20 taxpayers (you, me) subsidize the fossil fuel industry. That [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,3,6],"tags":[328,344,1052,783],"class_list":["post-1459","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-energy-2","category-liberty","tag-fossil-fuels","tag-g20","tag-subsidies","tag-taxes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1459","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1459"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1459\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1460,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1459\/revisions\/1460"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1459"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1459"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1459"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}