Editor’s note: This commentary is by Deborah Messing, of Montpelier, who is retired after working at Hunger Mountain Co-op for a couple of decades as the wine and cheese buyer.
[D]oes anyone remember that CNN interview way back on Sept. 7, after Florida got slammed by Hurricane Irma, when EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt said, “To discuss the cause and effect of these storms, there’s the … place (and time) to do that, and it’s not now,” and “to use time and effort to address it at this point is very, very insensitive to people in Florida.”
Is it time yet? Has enough time passed that we can have a discussion without being “very very insensitive to people in Florida”? Or Texas, Puerto Rico and California? Our administration apparently thought it was timely back in September to weigh in on the subject by dissolving the EPA’s climate change adaptation staff, the team empowered to prepare for sea-level rise and extreme weather.
But now this is old news. Forget about discussing “the cause and effect of recent storms.” Now it’s time to read about the new tax code.
But I suggest that before we turn away from a discussion of climate change, as much of the media seems to be doing, we should focus on one area where the tax code and the changing climate concerns intersect: the subject of fossil fuel subsidies.
The fossil fuel industry has dozens of subsidies permanently ingrained in the tax code from decades of successful lobbying, unlike renewable energy incentives, which periodically expire and require Congress to approve extensions. A recent study by the environmental group Oil Change International estimates that as of October 2017 United States fossil fuel exploration and production subsidies are $20.5 billion annually.
Scientists tell us that we need to keep two-thirds of the discovered oil in the ground to avoid irreversible damage to the climate, yet our tax money is being used to fund exploration and production of even more sources of oil, including in the fragile Arctic National Wildlife Refuge which was was created, according to contemporary scientists, “to conserve fish and wildlife populations and habitats in their natural diversity.”
So we are spending billions of taxpayer money on already profitable, polluting industries. Exxon, for example, reported a surge in profits in its latest quarter and is No. 13 on Forbes’ 2017 Global 2000 list of the world’s biggest and most powerful public companies. Yet analyses by Oil Change International conclude that Exxon receives between $700 million and $1billion annually in government giveaways.
Add to this the fact that Exxon spent on average $16 million per year over the last decade lobbying Congress and federal agencies to keep public money flowing to make their oil and gas projects profitable.
And, while Congress voted to phase out solar and wind subsidies by 2020, there are no such plans for fossil fuel subsidies.
There have been a number of legislative attempts to remove these subsidies, but as of yet none have been successful. The Repeal Big Oil Tax Subsidies Act, sponsored by Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., was debated and defeated by the Senate for two years running, 2012-2014, and would have eliminated $2.4 billion in annual tax deductions for the five major oil companies: BP, Exxon, Chevron, Shell and ConocoPhillips.
President Barack Obama had proposed cutting fossil fuel subsidies every year that he was in office. The projections for savings varied slightly each year but always hovered around $4 billion annually. But Congress never even proposed voting on any of them. In 2015 Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn., introduced the End Polluter Welfare Act, which would eliminate $11.3 billion fossil fuel subsidies annually. This bill has also not been voted on.
Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, D-Hawaii, introduced H.R.3671 also known as Off Fossil Fuels for a Better Future “to justly transition away from fossil fuel sources of energy to 100 percent clean energy by 2035.” The bill would amend the Internal Revenue Code to: (1) terminate specified fossil fuel subsidies, (2) permanently extend renewable electricity production tax credits for electricity generated from wind,
This is similar to a Senate bill introduced in May 2017 by Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., which has a similar agenda but a different timeline and which included an end to fossil fuel subsidies.
The biggest obstacle to change is political. The oil and gas industry have contributed more than two-thirds of their campaign contributions to Republican candidates since the 1990 election cycle. For a list of top contributors and their recipients during 2017, see here.
According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, the new tax bill would threaten the climate by leaving billions of dollars of fossil fuel subsidies intact while changing the tax code in ways that would jeopardize the financing of numerous clean energy projects under construction and discourage future clean energy investments in wind and solar.
