Challenge
Poor Spending Distribution Enables Oil Production
The world’s 20 top economies spend more than $400 billion dollars each year propping up fossil fuel production, a practice that threatens to seriously undermine the world’s mitigation of climate change, according to a new report by the environmental advocacy group Oil Change International.
Since 2009, G20 countries have reaffirmed their promise to cut fossil fuel each year – but in most cases there has been little progress, with some countries actually increasing their fossil fuel subsidies over the past six years. The United States, for instance, has increased its fossil fuel subsidies 35 percent since 2009, which has mirrored an increase in domestic fossil fuel production as part of the Obama administration’s “all of the above” energy policy. The Obama administration has attempted to reign in fossil fuel subsidies by proposing cuts in every budget that the administration has sent to Congress, but that strategy has been met with opposition from lawmakers.