The world spends 6,000 times more on environmentally harmful subsidies than on carbon offsets

Carbon offsets—the money polluting business spend on projects that benefit the environment—have been growing in recent years, but it’s a long way from catching up to the money governments spend supporting businesses that are harmful to the environment.

A report (pdf) published on Feb. 16 by Earth Track, a Cambridge, MA-based organization that tracks government subsidies, estimated the global value of government support for the most polluting industries—fossil fuels, agriculture, forestry, water, construction, transport, and marine capture fisheries—and found that they totaled at least $1.8 trillion a year...

Earth Track’s report is the first in over a decade to estimate environmentally harmful government subsidies globally, rather than by sector or country, though sectoral comparisons are likewise illustrative of how governments assign value by way of incentives...

Lack of transparency from governments and the businesses receiving the money mean subsidies are notoriously hard to track. Earth Track’s tally is from subsidy data from non-governmental organizations, governments, and intergovernmental organizations that collect the information at the sector and country level. The tally does not include the cost of externalities—like the cost of air pollution and traffic congestion that stem from the fossil fuel industry.

The report argues that environmentally harmful subsidies could be eliminated or redirected towards climate and environment projects, so that public funds could go to businesses that improve climate outcomes rather than worsen them...