Quote:
Originally Posted by Izzle
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Externalities are those tricky things that are very hard to calculate and whose costs differ depending on the circumstances of the people using the energy. Fossil fuels have a lot of negative, but also lots of positives in that they provide a lot of energy using relatively simple technology and is easily stored which allows for a lot of activities that otherwise wouldn't be possible. Without coal, China doesn't have any other energy source that it could use to develop to the same extent.
And sometimes externalites are just made up purely because of the authors' bias. There's an often cited IMF paper about fossil fuel subsidies of which oil is supposed to get $1.5T globally. But of that amount, $359B is from road congestion, $271B is from traffic accidents, $23B from road damage and $200B from not taxing oil at a high enough rate.
http://www.imf.org/en/Publications/W...ubsidies-42940