Your Opinion: Make incentives to reduce fossil fuel use

Dear Editor:

Annually we pay $20.5 billion in corporate welfare taxes to subsidize U.S. fossil fuel production (oil, gas and coal). There are some tax subsidies for renewable energy production but at a much lower level than for fossil fuels. Most of the renewable energy production tax credits are set to phase out over the next five years. By comparison, most fossil fuel subsidies are permanent. One, called the intangible drilling oil and gas deduction (worth over $2.3 billion annually) has been lining the pockets of Big Oil for over a century.

Temporary tax subsidies may make sense to incentivize the development of new technologies and energy sources or to safeguard resources/industries crucial for the national defense. Coal fits neither category. Nor can subsidies for oil and gas be justified whenever gas is selling at very profitable margins (anytime it brings over $50/barrel).

There is also this problem of "global warming"/"climate change"/"sea level rise" which are tied to fossil fuel use. Some deny this accumulating catastrophe. I have experienced directly minor aspects of the phenomenon the armadillo who took up residence near my home and whose nightly yard digs were reminders of mid-Missouri's warming. I have friends who live on the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland. Sea level rise is real and with it the bay level has risen. In the last few years their home has been threatened as never before by storm surge. Last time we visited vast stretches of woodland next to the coastlines have died due to the rise in salty bay water. There are now many homes on the bay that a few years ago were prime real estate worth hundreds of thousands that now cannot be sold due to these changes. Entire, centuries-old bay communities (Tangier Island) are rapidly becoming uninhabitable.

Citizen Climate Lobby has proposed a market-based approach to incentivize reduced fossil fuel use and encourage cleaner energy production/use. The proposal would attach a fee to fossil fuel production that would make fossil fuels a bit more costly. Consumers would receive these dollars back through a dividend payment. Tax dollars estimated to be about $6 billion per year would be required to administer this program. However, Congress could fashion this program to be revenue neutral by reducing corporate welfare fossil fuel production subsidies by $6 billion (or even more).