The International Monetary Fund says the numbers are “shocking.” There’s a pretty good chance you’ll agree.
The world’s governments are going to hand fossil fuel companies a $5.3 trillion “subsidy” this year, which is way more than their combined spending on health care, IMF experts reported this week.
And by subsidy, they mean a whole lot of things. It’s not only the direct funds for coal, oil and gas companies. In their new paper the IMF analysts are also gauging what consumers pay versus the actual cost of fuel — environmental and health side effects included. Hence the trillions.
GlobalPost broke down some of the new IMF estimates, along with a few numbers from the World Health Organization, into a series of charts to put this shocker into perspective.
