Fossil Fuel “subsidies” are NOT fossil fuel subsidies

My helpful little chart to show what’s happening
(The numbers are purely notional, no relation to reality)

I got an email from the Australian Conservation Foundation (of which I’ve been a member since 1970) telling me of the shocking amount of subsidies that the Australian government is paying to the horrid fossil fuel companies. This must stop! Would I please add my signature to the petition to stop it! (Signing a petition being the easy way to show one’s virtue).

But the figures the ACF directed me to are not subsidies. As defined by the World Trade Organisation, a “subsidy” is a payment to a producer that makes the price of the product below the market price. 

What’s happening in Australia is that the government is taking all sorts of taxes and surcharges from the fossil fuel companies, including a direct tax (“surcharge”) on the fuel to the final consumer. 

In some cases this is rebated, to give the consumer which is also a producer using the fuel as an input, access to fossil fuels at closer to -- but not below -- the market price. This is to help with their competitiveness. 

Note: this in no way helps — or is a “subsidy” to — the Fossil Fuel Company. Nor does it help the Distributor. It just makes the final producer pay a bit less, because the government has seen fit to skim off just a bit less of this whole process of wealth creation.

I doubt this will make any difference to the ACF. The story, the narrative, that Fossil Fuel companies = BAD is just too powerful and emotional. That we must stop them from producing any more, is a matter of faith. No matter that the fossil fuels we extract from the earth allow us to produce virtually everything that we need in a modern society. Not just our electricity. Look around you. From the house you live in, to the clothes you wear, to the bicycle you ride, or the car you drive, to the food you eat, to the paint you paint and the plots you plant… all use horrid old fossil fuels. All of it. Oil of it (heh)!