Today’s must-read is by Brian Merchant on the true cost of fossil fuels.
“For decades now, fossil fuel company executives and D.C. politicians have worked together to ensure that coal and oil prices stay low enough to keep the American people hooked. In his new book Greedy Bastards, Dylan Ratigan explains how “vampire industries” like oil and coal have forged “an unholy alliance with government based not just on the money that they contribute to political campaigns and spend on lobbying but on their ability to hypnotize us with false prices.”
Industry gets tax breaks, subsidies, military support in volatile regions, the right to use our air and water like a sewer, and assurance that the government will clean up its environmental messes. Politicians get campaign contributions, a steady flow of dirty energy, and a talking point to brandish about how they kept gas affordable.
But the American public just gets screwed.
We get stuck with a dirty, polluting energy regime; one that enriches a few one percenters while making the public sick and hobbling American innovation. As Ratigan puts it in his book, a handful of greedy bastards are fleecing Americans with a “Very Bad Deal”. Fossil fuels seem cheap and convenient now, but when we get hit with the true costs—of a spoiled environment, of missing out on vital future industries like clean energy, of a mounting public health burden, of possible war—we’ll see we were had.
