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High fossil fuel prices are good for the planet – here’s how to keep them high while avoiding riots or hurting the poor
The Conversation ^

Posted on 06/21/2022 6:18:23 AM PDT by TigerClaws

In the UK, it now costs more than £100 to fill up a typical family car with petrol, and oil prices could rise even further. But are such high prices for fossil fuels a bad thing? While attention is focused on measures to tackle the global cost of living crisis, there has been much less focus on a very uncomfortable truth – that solving the climate crisis requires fossil fuel prices for consumers to stay high forever.

Saying such a thing may seem tone deaf. Millions of households in rich countries are facing a choice between heating and eating. In poorer countries, the situation is immeasurably worse. Rising prices for gas have dramatically increased the cost of fertiliser, while the war in Ukraine is hampering the export of its wheat.

Together these are leading to spiralling food prices globally, triggering a surge in inflation and worsening the already dire food security situation in places such as Yemen, the Horn of Africa and Madagascar. We are already witnessing widespread foot riots just like those between 2008 and 2011, when citizens around the world protested the failure of their states to deliver their most basic right – the right to eat.

To mitigate the impact of high prices, we have seen a screeching reversal of energy policies around the world. In November 2021, governments at the COP26 climate conference in Glasgow pledged to tax carbon and eliminate fossil fuel subsidies. But faced with dramatic increases in the cost of fuel and electricity, those same governments have scrambled to slash taxes on energy, put in place price caps and introduce new subsidies.

Do experts have something to add to public debate?

We think so. Yet keeping global warming to under 1.5°C will require a dramatic reduction in the use of fossil fuels, starting now. The unfortunate reality is that one of the most effective ways of getting people to use less fossil fuel is to ensure they are expensive.

Of course, the best way of moving away from fossil fuels is for there to be better (and preferably cheaper) alternatives. But investment in these renewable alternatives will only happen if people are clearly switching to them, and that requires consumer prices for fossil fuels to remain high.

Fuelling riots

Of course, high fossil fuel prices are typically unpopular and can even lead to riots. Between 2005 and 2018, 41 countries had at least one riot directly associated with popular demand for fuel. In 2019 alone, there were major protests related to energy in Sudan, France, Zimbabwe, Haiti, Lebanon, Ecuador, Iraq, Chile and Iran – many of which turned into riots.

Man walks in street with burning tyres behind Riots in Haiti in 2019 caused by a fuel shortage. Jean Marc Herve Abelard / EPA Colleagues and I recently published research showing that these riots are caused by price spikes, often after fuel subsidies have been removed. These price spikes triggered fuel riots when citizens felt they had no other options for voicing their anger over government policies and actions (or when states attempted to violently suppress them from doing so).

High prices, happy citizens

Is it possible to keep fossil fuel prices high without triggering riots? The key is to keep consumer prices high by increasing fuel taxes when international oil and gas prices do eventually fall. Making this politically acceptable requires two things to happen.

First, consumers will not accept high prices if it means high profits for fossil fuel companies. Maintaining high prices for consumers must be complemented by a radical overhaul of the taxation regime facing fossil fuel companies, not just one-off windfall taxes. Those taxes would maintain high consumer prices even though the fossil fuel companies wouldn’t actually receive very much – enough to cover reasonable costs, but not enough to invest in further fossil fuel production. As the International Energy Agency has pointed out, to achieve net zero by 2050, the amount of investment needed in new oil and gas production is zero.

Second, consumers will be much more willing to accept higher prices for fossil fuels if the additional tax they pay is returned to citizens as an equal carbon grant. Alaska has done something similar, putting a share of oil revenues into a “permanent fund” which it then distributes through a cheque to every household each year (though this approach can go wrong – in Alaska politicians ended up cutting public services to maintain payments from the state fund).

Getting an annual payment, equal to the taxes imposed to keep fossil fuel prices high, would cushion the hurt from higher prices. It would also be progressive, since those who consume the most fossil fuels would pay more in tax, while those who consume little would pay less but receive the same payment from the fund and therefore end up in profit. There might also need to be additional compensation for poor groups with high fossil fuel usage, such as people on lower incomes who have to use their cars for work.

Soaring energy costs are a disaster for poor consumers worldwide. But ironically, they also provide an opportunity to shift the world from its fossil fuel addiction. If we take this chance to make fossil fuel prices permanently high, we can accelerate the transition to cleaner energy in a way that is fair for all, and avert deeper crises in the years ahead.


TOPICS:
KEYWORDS: alamy; energy; fossilfuel; fuel; inflation; maureenmclean
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To: Tilted Irish Kilt
Only an incompetent ideologue would abruptly change from a petroleum based fuel economy, into an electric energy economy, with no allowance for "transition",

My problem isn’t so much with alternative sources of energy for fossil fuels, but trying to force transition to them before they are feasible.

61 posted on 06/21/2022 12:12:47 PM PDT by metmom (...fixing our eyes on Jesus, the Author and Perfecter of our faith….)
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To: Tilted Irish Kilt

I figure we’re going to need fossil fuels for at least the next 20 to 30 years, and some folks figure the timeline is more like a century. But Butt-Head wants us off them by 2030 or some such.


62 posted on 06/21/2022 12:17:45 PM PDT by Tolerance Sucks Rocks (Bus No. 2525)
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To: TigerClaws

High fuel prices are one of the primary drivers of inflation. The premise that high fuel prices are good is in error.


63 posted on 06/21/2022 12:30:12 PM PDT by taxcontrol (The choice is clear - either live as a slave on your knees or die as a free citizen on your feet.)
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To: Carl Vehse
"Go nuclear power."

You don't need a special education, government or institutional title to recognize this.

Excess nuclear power generators should already be constructed and presently being brought into the power system as coal and gas generated power is phased out.

Someone ought to be shot over what is presently happening to power generation in the world. Science solved it decades ago...it's nuclear generated energy.

There are ulterior motives here.

64 posted on 06/21/2022 1:53:23 PM PDT by blam
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To: blam

The length of time it takes for a power company to decide to build a nuclear reactor until the nuclear plant starts generating electricity has been extended so many years by leftist DeepStaters with numerous required public hearings and legalistic delay tactics, that a timely return on investment is rarely feasible.

The nuclear waste repository requirement bait-and-switch was another way to stop the growth of nuclear power. Demonstrating underground spent fuel storage would be safe for 10,000 years is difficult enough, but then changing the demonstration requirement to one million years was a joke. An ice age, supervolcano or large asteroid is possible before then.


65 posted on 06/21/2022 2:12:27 PM PDT by Carl Vehse (A proud member of the LGBFJB community)
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To: Carl Vehse
I saw a one hour documentary on the reactor below. It looks like it could be the answer...supposedly uses 'spend rods' so it would be cleaning up past nuclear waste. Anyway...Our present position is complete bullcrap!

Bill Gates, Warren Buffett Building Nuclear Reactor In Wyoming

66 posted on 06/21/2022 2:36:21 PM PDT by blam
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To: TigerClaws

Show up at the author Maureen McLean’s house, and make sure she’s not using any sort of modern energy source.


67 posted on 06/21/2022 2:42:49 PM PDT by kiryandil (China Joe and Paycheck Hunter - the Chink in America's defenses)
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To: TigerClaws

That pretty much says it. Tax oil products higher, but don’t give the money to oil producers. Instead give it to government to develop “green” energy & then the tax will never end.


68 posted on 06/21/2022 4:54:39 PM PDT by oldtech
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To: TigerClaws
We think so. Yet keeping global warming to under 1.5°C will require a dramatic reduction in the use of fossil fuels, starting now.

Zero measurable "global" warming in nearly twenty years. Locally we are experiencing the coolest June I can remember. Good for the lettuce and peas, but a slow start for the tomatoes.

This author seems to have forgotten that the narrative is now "climate change".

69 posted on 06/22/2022 8:58:10 AM PDT by JimRed (TERM LIMITS, NOW! Militia to the border! TRUTH is the new HATE SPEECH.)
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To: TigerClaws
First, consumers will not accept high prices if it means high profits for fossil fuel companies. Maintaining high prices for consumers must be complemented by a radical overhaul of the taxation regime facing fossil fuel companies, not just one-off windfall taxes. Those taxes would maintain high consumer prices even though the fossil fuel companies wouldn’t actually receive very much – enough to cover reasonable costs, but not enough to invest in further fossil fuel production. As the International Energy Agency has pointed out, to achieve net zero by 2050, the amount of investment needed in new oil and gas production is zero.

Remember, the same elites who insist upon an end to fossil fuels are the ones who want Earth's population reduced by 95%, and will use the remainder as their loyal serfs. Killing them off now would be preemptive self-defense.

70 posted on 06/22/2022 9:05:45 AM PDT by JimRed (TERM LIMITS, NOW! Militia to the border! TRUTH is the new HATE SPEECH.)
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To: The Great RJ
Forcing the people to give up their freedom to travel without any truly viable alternatives is tyranny.

(A very loud BANG followed by a dull thud) Sic semper tyrannis!

71 posted on 06/22/2022 9:08:11 AM PDT by JimRed (TERM LIMITS, NOW! Militia to the border! TRUTH is the new HATE SPEECH.)
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To: blam
There are ulterior motives here.

Correct. The elites want themselves lording over a half-billion serfs, and about eight billion of us dead.

72 posted on 06/22/2022 9:14:06 AM PDT by JimRed (TERM LIMITS, NOW! Militia to the border! TRUTH is the new HATE SPEECH.)
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To: BenLurkin

The problem with this so called analysis is that it neglects the fact that fossil hydrocarbons are the cornerstone of the world economy. These resources are not just used for gasoline, diesel and jet fuel for transportation, they are the base stocks for plastics, fertilizers, pesticides, cosmetics, medicine, textiles, rubber products, computer chips, batteries, fibers for clothing, carbon, kevlar and glass fiber for composites, resins for composites, adhesives, weatherstrips, architectural coatings, asphalt and paving materials and much more. The Biden Admin policies make the raw materials twice as expensive, add in twice the energy cost to manufacture from raw materials and and much more to transport the raw materials to the factory and then transport the finished goods to vendors. The cost escalation factors are going to be really hard to deal with.On a positive note, this will expose the fraud of the Green Economy as high oil gas and coal prices expose how much of these resources are used to manufacture the green energy systems. In most cases, more fossil fuels are burned to manufacture and install wind turbines and solar cells than they ever produce during their operational lives.


73 posted on 06/22/2022 2:44:34 PM PDT by rdcbn1
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To: TigerClaws

Libs are retarded


74 posted on 06/22/2022 2:52:56 PM PDT by Fledermaus (With Trans Republicans like McCarthy and McConnell do we really want them to win Congress in 2022?)
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To: TigerClaws
Yep, this one really does boil down to "how do we keep them quiet while we're forcing them to do our bidding?" And unsurprisingly, world socialism is the only answer. This sort of idiot "expertise" is what got us where we are and more of the same will only make things worse.

A comfortable modern society requires electricity; a comfortable feudal society where only the elite are so blessed requires a lot less. So transform society through lies and other social control. Easy, see? They'll eat cake or bugs or nothing if we tell them to, so long as we tell them the right things and they don't have an alternative. Now, what to tell them?

That attitude put an awful lot of heads on pikes.

75 posted on 06/22/2022 3:08:18 PM PDT by Billthedrill
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To: Billthedrill

The only cure for failed socialism is ... more socialism.

That’s how they think. Stuck on stupid and real-world experiences don’t change their course.


76 posted on 06/22/2022 3:17:34 PM PDT by TigerClaws
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