We recently published a two part Tax Justice Focus special on climate crisis and tax justice. This blog reproduces the article by Laura Merrill, in which she outlines how massive direct and indirect state subsidies have overwhelmingly distorted energy markets to favour fossil-fuel consumption, skewing investment decisions and slowing uptake of renewable technologies. Despite vague commitments from G20 countries to phase out subsidies, national governments continue to subsidise their fossil fuel giants, even while mouthing the rhetoric of free-market economics. Click here to download the first and second parts of our Tax Justice Focus special.
Laura Merrill *
Generous government subsidies around the world are, even now, enabling the extraction and burning of fossil fuels that would otherwise remain in the ground. A global technocratic elite that claims to value market forces is blithely ignoring them in a way that could hardly be more ruinous. As
— source taxjustice.net | John Christensen | Jun 3, 2020
