“A terrific book from the sustainability pioneer Lester Brown.”
—Bill Hewitt, FPA's Climate Change Blog Chapter 11. Tools for
Restructuring the Economy: Subsidy Shifting In 1997, the Earth
Council published a study entitled Subsidizing Unsustainable
Development. Its purpose was to identify and tabulate
environmentally destructive governmental subsidies. It found an
astonishing number of examples—at least $700 billion worth per
year. The authors noted, "There is something unbelievable about
the world spending hundreds of billions of dollars annually to
subsidize its own destruction."11 In effect, governments were
spending $700 billion of taxpayers' money a year to encourage
the use of water, the burning of fossil fuels, the use of
pesticides, fishing, and driving. The report documented
countless examples of taxpayers subsidizing the use of water in
countries where water tables are falling. Governments are
spending billions of dollars each year to encourage the use of
fossil fuels at a time when both atmospheri