Guest essay by Andy May
I’ve been a subscriber to The Economist for years. It is one of the few mainstream media publications I still read. But, I found a very annoying article in the October 1, 2016 issue. The title and link are “Notes from the undergrowth.” It starts out with a false assertion that is easily debunked, but often stated:
Media myth #1
“DESPITE deluges in the South, droughts in the West and fires throughout national forests this year, the words “climate” and “change” have seldom been uttered together on the campaign trail.”
The UN World Meteorological Organization (WMO), Nature magazine, and the IPCC all have said extreme weather cannot be reliably linked to climate change.
From the WMO:
“There were fewer deaths, even while exposure to extreme events increased as populations grew and more people were living in disaster-prone areas. According to the 2011 Global Assessment Report, the average population exposed to flooding every year increased by 114 per cent globally between 1970 and 2010, a period in which the world’s population increased by 87 per cent from 3.7 billion to 6.9 billion. The number of people exposed to severe storms almost tripled in cyclone-prone areas, increasing by 192 per cent, in the same period.”
Yes, you read that correctly. There were fewer deaths, even though the number of people exposed to serious storms increased.
From the IPCC SREX report on climate change and extreme weather:
“Long-term trends in economic disaster losses adjusted for wealth and population increases have not been attributed to climate change, but a role for climate change has not been excluded…”
Hardly an endorsement for man-made extreme weather. Here is another quote from the same report:
“There is medium confidence that some regions of the world have experienced more intense and longer droughts, in particular in southern Europe and West Africa, but in some regions droughts have become less frequent, less intense, or shorter, for example, in central North America and northwestern Australia”
Finally, from the Nature editorial:
“Better models are needed before exceptional events can be reliably linked to global warming.”
So, pretty easy to completely destroy the initial statement of the article. But, we aren’t through yet, later in The Economist article we read the following:
Media myth #2
“An important step [toward lowering carbon dioxide emissions] was unveiled last year: The Clean Power Plan. This proposes the country’s first national standards to limit carbon dioxide emissions from power plants … Legal challenges from fossil fuel groups and two dozen mostly Republican-led states saw the Supreme Court put it on hold …”
This is almost true as written, but very slanted. There are only 50 states and 27 of them are against this plan by the President and the EPA, an agency that has no congressional oversight. Thus a majority of the states and the Supreme Court ruled against it. We are a republic with a division of powers. The Economist continues:
“Mrs. Clinton is vague about how she would pay for [green energy], but slashing fossil-fuel subsides could be part of the answer. Such handouts came to nearly $38 billion in 2014.”
There are very few, if any, fossil fuel specific subsidies in the United States. The most recent and well researched study of energy subsidies in the US is by the EIA, it was completed in 2015. According to this EIA report total federal energy subsides for energy in the US declined from $38B in 2010 to $29B in 2013. So The Economist mixed up total energy subsidies in 2010 with fossil fuel subsidies and got the date wrong. Of the $29B, the EIA claims 12% went to fossil fuels and 68% went to renewables, including hydropower, nuclear, solar and wind. The remaining 21% went to energy assistance for low income families, mainly through the LIHEAP (Low Income Home Energy Assistance) program. It is interesting that the EIA has computed that fossil fuels produced 84% of the energy consumed in the world in 2012. They forecast that in 2040, fossil fuels will still produce 78% of the world’s energy. In 2012, excluding nuclear, renewables (including biofuels which are mostly wood and dung) produced 12% of the world’s energy. Table 1 summarizes the subsidies discussed in the EIA report.
Table 1, 2013 energy subsidies according to the EIA
The so-called fossil fuel subsidies
Most of the fossil fuel “subsidies” listed by the EIA are not specific to the fossil fuel industry. They are not direct payments to the companies, government loans, industry specific tax “loopholes,” mandates to buy fossil fuel products, or tax deductions for purchasing fossil fuel products (except possibly the alternative fuel mixture deduction, which expired in 2013 anyway). The much larger subsides to wind, solar, and biofuel companies include all of the above. The EIA totals $3.4B in fossil fuel subsidies. The 2016 G20 US self-assessment of fossil fuels tabulates a total fossil fuel subsidy of $8.1B (page 16, Table 1). But, they include LIHEAP and the domestic manufacturing deduction which we consider invalid.
The EIA report only includes what they call “financial interventions and subsidies” that are provided by the federal government and targeted specifically at energy. This seems logical, fossil fuel subsidies or energy subsidies should not include general tax provisions like the domestic manufacturing deduction. This deduction, often listed as a fossil fuel subsidy, is for all manufacturing companies. Gasoline, diesel, ethylene, etc. are manufactured just like cars and televisions. They do not include this provision in this list and they shouldn’t. Also not included are accelerated depreciation (except for the 15-year natural gas pipeline rule), local infrastructure projects like highways, and state and local incentives to get businesses to move to a specific location.
There are other tax provisions often called subsidies, that the EIA wisely did not include. One is the foreign tax credit, especially the dual capacity rule. Another is the publicly traded partnership, used by pipeline companies, cable companies and real estate companies. These are available for all companies and are widely used outside the energy sector. These tax provisions are obviously not energy subsidies. They are large amounts, so they are often used to pad the headline subsidy number.
State and local incentives are not included either. These are mostly for renewable energy. A lot of the local incentives are conservation oriented.
Finally, often lumped in as a subsidy are various safety funds, like the Black Lung Disability Trust Fund, the Nuclear Waste fund, the oil spill liability trust fund, etc. The various funds listed here (there are more listed in EIA report) are funded by the affected industries and have no budgetary impact. Including them (as some do) is the same as taking the payments made by the energy sector and calling them subsidies. How does a company subsidize itself?
Arguing that the tax law favors oil and gas is a little silly because according to the New York Times corporate tax database (2007 to 2012) ExxonMobil, Chevron and ConocoPhillips paid the most taxes overall. The overall average tax rate for the S&P 500 is 29%, oil and gas companies pay 37%. They do not provide numbers for coal, unfortunately. You will see people twist and distort these numbers to fit any agenda they like. The NY Times database is pretty complete and includes all taxes actually paid, so I tend to believe it over other statistics I’ve seen. Some try and say taxes do not affect corporate decision making, which is total nonsense, the NY Times article also makes this point. Reading about this makes one see the wisdom of a flat income tax with no deductions at all.
Of the EIA total fossil fuel subsidy of $3.4B, $0.5B is from the IRS deduction for costs spread over the productive life of a well or mine. The percentage depletion deduction has been in the tax code since 1926. It is available to all mining companies (gold, copper, iron, etc.), small oil and gas companies and royalty owners of oil and gas properties. It is not available for large integrated oil and gas companies like ExxonMobil. Calling this general deduction, that large oil and gas companies are not permitted to use, a fossil fuel subsidy takes big cojones. Under some circumstances, the percentage depletion allowance can exceed the costs of a well or mine. This was deliberate on the part of Congress; they did not want small wells or mines shut down just because of our tax laws. Most wells and mines in the US have very low rates of production and would be closed if this tax provision were eliminated.
Another $0.5B is due to expensing of exploration and development costs, this includes intangible drilling costs (engineering, site preparation, research, etc.). These are legitimate business costs that every other business is allowed to deduct. This provision has been in the tax code since 1913. Again, as with the percentage depletion deduction, large oil and gas companies are specifically singled out to receive a reduced deduction. This is analogous to the development cost for a new drug. The pharmaceutical industry is allowed to deduct research and development costs. It is extremely difficult to call this a subsidy.
The credit for investment in clean coal costs the government $0.2B. This can reasonably be counted as a fossil fuel subsidy. It is specifically for the coal industry. It is the same as wind or solar subsidies, just much smaller.
Other so-called subsidies include treating natural gas pipelines as 15 year properties, amortizing geological and geophysical expenses over two years (equivalent to research, enjoyed by every company), treating coal royalties as capital gains (they aren’t?), and partial expensing of mine safety equipment. These total $0.3B. None sound like a subsidy.
My favorite fossil fuel subsidy is the “Alternative fuel mixture credit” of $0.4B. This applies to natural gas and hydrogen fueled vehicles. I guess it could be called a subsidy and part of it, probably the largest part, is for natural gas. This provision expired at the end of 2013.
In 2013 there was a temporary tax deduction still in effect that allowed 50% expensing of some refining equipment. That amounted to $0.6B. It expired at the end of 2013.
The tax provisions that are called coal subsidies are all related to deductions for installing pollution control equipment or enhancing mine safety. These add up to $0.8B. These are not provisions I would call subsidies, they are reasonable cost recovery for following government regulations.
The largest so-called fossil fuel “subsidy” is the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance (LIHEAP) welfare program. Obviously, in the northern United States winters energy is a life and death matter. When it is 40 degrees below zero outside you need heat to survive. If you live in the north, on the next windless cold night, think about that. I’m sure you will be in favor of fossil fuels then. This is worth $5.4B, more than all of the “subsidies” listed above. The EIA correctly did not call it a fossil-fuel subsidy, but many do. LIHEAP applies to all sources of energy, including renewables.
Conclusions
It’s sad when a major news publication writes an article containing “media myths” that are so easily proven wrong. Unfortunately, this is occurring with increasing frequency. Googling “climate change and extreme weather” on my computer resulted in 4,630,000 hits. Glancing through these shows that many of them state something imprecise, unfalsifiable and non-quantitative like “some extreme events seem to be increasing and this might be due to climate change.” Or, like the EPA, “climate change is increasing the odds…” Quantitative studies like Roger Pielke Jr’s, show that there is no data to support the idea that extreme weather has increased in frequency or severity. As he says, this media-myth of a connection between extreme weather and climate change is “Zombie science.”
These subsidy claims are actually an indictment against our tax laws. They have become so complex that they can be twisted to support any conclusion. This is the real problem and the tax laws are way overdue for reform. The bottom line is that fossil fuel companies (at least the oil and gas companies) pay more in taxes than the average S&P 500 company and they are getting few, if any, special tax breaks. The fossil fuel companies get no government loans, loan guarantees, guaranteed prices, or special tax breaks for any of their products. The only energy companies that get targeted subsidies are wind, solar, biofuel and other renewable energy companies.
Isn’t the financial question really simple:
and:
“Legal challenges from fossil fuel groups and two dozen mostly Republican-led states saw the Supreme Court put it on hold …”
OH, MY !!! REPUBLICANS??? EEEWWWWWW!!!
Shouldn’t the emphasis be on the merits of the case, not on the defendants?
We live in very troubling times. The climatocracy is obsessed with imposing power over us, and corrupting every organization seems to be their main tactic.
I too once subscribed. I was awed by its effortless authoritativeness and reasonableness. And its excellent writing. How it is needed now, when it is missing.
The Economist has joined the scrap pile of publications that have been bought by various organizations and turned into a useless pile of rubbish. Sadly, I remember the days when the Scientific American was about science and not eschatology and the National Geographic was about geography and not propaganda. I used to subscribe to all three. They have long since become a content free zone.
And as their respective readerships have declined to the point they’re no longer sustainable businesses, they blame the internet.
The warmists love to confuse the difference between a subsidy where taxpayers’ money is handed out and a tax reduction where less money is snatched by government. Their other lie is to claim that renewable energy is getting cheaper when fossil fuel energy is being made more expensive by taxes.
Richard Verney makes a good point above. I think we know the answer to that one.
The warmists are like the war machine propagandists, using double speak to brainwash and confuse. For instance in Syria, the U.S. is there illegally, yet it accuses Russia of bombing hospitals there yet refuses to show any evidence or even give the name and location of a hospital they said the Russians bombed. Meanwhile, many hospitals bombed in Aleppo earlier this year blamed on Russians, was done by terrorists on the ground (Al Nusra Front) using homemade cannon launchers behind tractors that throw LPG canisters. Local people took photographs at some risk and meanwhile testified to the fact there had been no planes in their skies. We have to fight this doublespeak at every moment it is used by the elite.
Putin’s apologists are out in force.
I’ve spent a day thinking how much I hate the media. Over the years I’ve dropped subscriptions to magazines and the best newspaper in my country thanks to their dishonest coverage of climate change. Because of their dishonesty, I can’t bear reading them even for free. A while ago I bought a few copies of the Economist and it was also a let down.
Now I’m looking at the storm that is unleashed on Trump due to his stupid words 12 years ago. The media is on overdrive trying to win the election for a lying lowlife piece of manure, whose husband has slept with thousands of women, harassed countless of them and we hear crikets. She has blamed every woman her husband has abused and she has the temerity to be a feminist. Why did you stay with that man for tens of years and let him do that to you? Sure, Trump was not nice in that recording, but Bill is a number of orders of magnitude worse.
SO, now the media is writing about that and O’s bithing and all kinds of irrelevant idiocy instead of asking hard questions on Clinton’s corruption, her serial lying and you name it.
Thanbks to this election I had to drop WSJ too. Now I have nothing left to read, except blogs, the Quadrant etc. Thank you for ruining a whole industry!
“I’ve spent a day thinking how much I hate the media.”
You will hate the Leftwing Media even more when their machinations end up taking away your and my personal freedoms by enabling the election of Hillary Clinton.
The Leftwing Lying Media is the most dangerous organization on Earth. They are an existential threat to the United States and every other western government. We are all in great jeopardy because of these deluded, wrong-thinking Leftist who are creating a false reality in order to gain political power. Which is bad news for those who love freedom.
An aside: I don’t think everyone in the Leftwing Media are conniving, deliberate liars. There are many of those, but there are also many deluded, true-believers who don’t know any better and follow the party line. That doesn’t make them any less dangerous to our freedoms, because true believers end up decieving people, too, by parroting the party line.
One thing about it, the Leftwing Media’s popularity rating is about as low as it can go. Lower than used car salesmen. Lower than Congress. So I guess we are in a race to see if enough of the American people are going to see through the Leftwing Media Lies to prevent the election of Hillary Clinton.
These latest email releases should be devestating to Hillary, if given any coverage, but we can bet the Leftwing Media will be focused solely on Trump’s locker room talk.
Trump can turn the tables on Hillary. She has a LOT more baggage than does Trump. Trump just needs to get it out for the public to hear during the debates. Of course, Hillary and the two debate moderators will be focused on preventing any scrutiny of Hillary.
It’s time for Trump to step up to the plate and hit a home run.
Good one!
Trump is not the risk.
Continuation of authoritarian government is.
Tonight’s debate needs to be a bar fight. Trump needs to be anything but ms. nice guy. He’s going to be asked about his comments about women and he flat out needs to refuse to answercall out the moderators and the media on their hypocrisy. He needs to tell them, that he’ll be happy to answer when they ask Hillary about Bill. He needs to ask, why nobody is asking her why she is still married to a guy, who has molested at least a dozen women and probably had sex with thousands. And how she has the temerity to stand on a soap box and talk about how she is protecting women and doing this for the women, when she has always blamed every woman for Bill’s sins and done her best to destroy their lives. And when he is faced with any question about character, he needs to do the same: Why isn’t Hillary asked about how she calls police pigs and supports a racist organisation, which is dedicated at killing cops. And how she hates half the country and has no problems calling people deplorable.
He needs to say flat out, that if we are going to have a competition about character and dignity and honor here, there really is no competition. No matter what he has said or done, Hillary and Bill have done way, way worse and the media is doing its best to avoid talking about them. So, ladies and gentlemen, if these questions are going to continue to be biased and about nonsense and if you guys are continuing to protect Grandma Fragile here, I’ll be more than happy to do your work too.
Yeah, this evening needs to be about everything that the corrupt media and Queen Corruptia doesn’t want to talk about. And after we have talked about all those things, I’ll be happy to talk to you about the tape, taxes, my favourite food, you name it. But honestly, I’d prefer to talk about policy and what we need to do to this country to make it great again.
You are a brave person. Thinking about the media is something that upsets my equilibrium. Indeed today’s media makes the disinformation of 1984 seem amateurish.
The recent onslaught on Trump is a case in point. The media in a frenzy while ignoring the revelations from Wikileaks that Hillary has lied about her antipathy to many issues simply to attract Bernie voters.
Agree on Quadrant. One of the last sane publications in a propaganderized world.
The worst of the worst media, Hillary’s media: http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2016/10/wikileaks-outs-corrupt-media-list-reporters-taking-marching-orders-hillary/
Me too Vieras.
Which company pays the most taxes worldwide?
Exxon.
In the tax year 2010, Exxon collected, for governments world wide, 80 billion dollars in taxes . The company had a net profit of 30 billion dollars. Making governments the biggest takers and the reason that fuel prices are as high as they are, and that’s just what one company collected. You have to look at this way. Companies don’t pay taxes, the consumer does. You and me. So when you hear somebody or some group calling for these companies to pay more taxes. They are actually wanting them to collect more taxes from you and me.
<blockquote.Companies don’t pay taxes, the consumer does. You and me. So when you hear somebody or some group calling for these companies to pay more taxes. They are actually wanting them to collect more taxes from you and me.
In the UK there is cross political support to crack down on tax evasion and to get companies to pay more tax. the ordinary member of the public does not understand how this is an underhand method in collecting more tax from Joe Public.
I am frequently pointing out that companies do not pay tax, it is the consumer that pays this expense, and that means that every individual will have to pay more putting up the cost of living and inflation . So if you want to make Starbucks or Costa pay taxes, it will put up the price of their coffees say by £0.20p. If you want eBay to pay more tax, then listing pricing will go up, sale price will increase and maybe also paypal buying costs.
Everything will become more expensive and in today’s economic times, it is unlikely that wages will increase to cover the extra cost such that everyone will be worse off.
The job of companies is not to pay tax, but rather to employ people and employ them at a living wage. Governments would be better to address that issue rather than harking on about big corporations paying little in the way of tax.
richard verney commented: “….The job of companies is not to pay tax, but rather to employ people and employ them at a living wage. …”
And all along I thought the purpose of companies was to provide products or services and make money doing it. Who knew?
It’s constantly amazed me also Richard. I’ve never been able to understand why there’s so much heat and light wasted on “corporate” taxation. Then again, I’ve never understood socialists either. It’s possible both groups are the same and that the underlying cause is nothing more complicated than shear stupidity.
The average citizen seems to believe that taxes come out of a companies profits. That if taxes went down, then the only thing that would happen would be profits would go up.
First off, this is wrong. Profit levels are set by the market. Any company that earns sub-par profits will slowly go out of business as they can no longer attract investors. Any company that earns above average profits will attract competitors, until profit levels drop back down to average.
Beyond that. These same citizens seem to believe that a companies profits only benefit rich people. However the biggest block of investors these days, are the various pension funds, followed closely by (in the US) 401ks.
That’s you and me, boys and girls.
Everyone laments the money in politics that poisons our representative republic, but they don’t acknowledge why it is there.
The Federal government uses our own money to manipulate, bribe, and extort its own citizens. I don’t recall seeing that spelled out in the Constitution.
I believe it was PJ O’Rourke who wrote that “As long as government controls buying and selling, the first thing bought and sold will be politicians.”
“As long as government controls buying and selling, the first thing bought and sold will be politicians.”
PJ O’Rouke
I’m tired of hearing wet behind the ears millennial sociologist/journalist progressives who know nothing about physics, chemistry, heat transfer, thermodynamics or how the earth heats and cools, who obviously get their science from the MSM propaganda machine and have happily downed the CAGW Kool-Aid, pontificate on global warming, greenhouse gases and the evils of modern mankind.
Without CO2 there would be no life, what kind of “pollutant” is that, and without fossil fuels we would still be living in caves.
Anthropogenic driven climate change is nothing but a faux science front for a socialistic world order agenda.
All industries are permitted to recover capital costs through depreciation of fixed investments. All natural resource companies ( e.g., timber, mining ) are allowed to recover the replacement cost of their raw materials through the depletion allowance. Are you referring to the deduction of intangible drilling costs? That is, of course, nothing more than a timing issue and, in any event, is only permissible for relatively small operators. The Intangible Drilling Expense deduction is only a form of accelerated depreciation ( the costs of drilling a well to casing point— like any capital expenditure— will be capitalized and subsequently depreciated if the IDE deduction is eliminated ).
“Intangible Drilling Expenses” is the capital invested in drilling a well. It (like all capital expenditures for any company) will eventually be amortized as a deductible expense (either as IDE or the depreciation deduction). Large companies are not permitted to use percentage depletion.
The demagogues fully understand that the groundlings don’t understand this stuff and are, therefore, susceptible to propaganda and sophistry.
To reiterate: the “Intangible Drilling Expense” deduction is only a form of accelerated depreciation ( the costs of drilling a well to casing point— like any capital expenditure— they will be capitalized and subsequently depreciated ).
Why shouldn’t the depletion allowance be permitted? Timber owners receive the same allowance. All owners of mineral interests are permitted to use the depletion allowance. In the oil and gas industry, it is only available to small operators.
Not a tax expert, I have been told that the oil, NG, coal, whatever the fossil fuel industry has tapped into becomes the “Property” of the company that has purchased the mining rights for that fuel. That means that they will be paying “property” tax for the value of the “Property” they declared they have which they “write off” on their income taxes. So, it seems to me that the local municipalities, cities, counties, states are getting a subsidy also. However, this subsidy comes from the fossil fuel companies that are paying those taxes. Would this not be a negative subsidy? Should it not be subtracted from the so called write off subsidy?
Conflating a tax break with a subsidy is the new black. Shout it often enough and some might even swallow it.
No government pays for prospecting, discovery and production, but they do offer a tax break because it’s easy money they wouldn’t have otherwise had.
In a perfect world, government does not provide tax break to an industry because they have some special love for that industry. Tax breaks are applied in one part of an industry in order to stimulate development to provide for a broader tax base generally, thereby increasing the total take.
Unfortunately, lobbying by Big Business has perverted this practice to a degree, but the principle is still generally true nevertheless.
Makes you wonder who or what The Economist thinks is subsidizing the vast Saudi Arabian oil industry to provide the Saudi Princes with their great wealth? Big Sand? They know it’s not the Clinton Foundation.
Nice article Andy, thanks.
If people are prosperous they can withstand a lot. If they are impoverished, anything will knock them down. A case in point is Haiti. More than a thousand people died because their pitiful shacks provided almost no protection. In the Dominican Republic, next door on the same island, about 26 people died. The contrast is stark.
The per capita GNP in the Dominican Republic is $11,630. In Haiti it is $1,720.
More prosperity is better in so many ways.
As far as I can judge with limited knowledge, this is a superb article. I dream that the editors of the “Economist” might see it. I feel the same as the author about the “Economist,” I always enjoyed its seriousness, its level of writing, and its global view. Some years ago, it was still claiming its viewpoint was “classical liberal.” I have seen the magazine move really far away from that, which is said after carrying the banner for a century.
Since the Munich 2015 conference, the Economist has shown what kind of publication it is…
The Economist stopped being about economics a generation ago.
They now push left wing causes, using phony economic arguments as justification.
Media Myth 1: “the words “climate” and “change” have seldom been uttered together on the campaign trail.”
The refutation does not refer to this myth at all.
I have been a subscriber to the Economist since the late 1970’s and I have noticed, especially since the change about two years ago in their managing editor, a distinct leftward tilt which is particularly noticeable in their increasingly uncritical position on CAGW…you will never see any reference to uncertainties in the science, and despite several recent articles about shoddy scientific research which cannot be duplicated or which uses questionable statistics, they never include climate science as a field where questionable work is being done.
Great article Andy. Looking forward to reading more of your work.
The Economist used to be a sensible free trade mag. Now it’s just a leftish leftover. Very sad.
“Fossil fuel companies are benefitting from global subsidies of $5.3tn (£3.4tn) a year, equivalent to $10m a minute every day, according to a startling new estimate by the International Monetary Fund.
The IMF calls the revelation “shocking” and says the figure is an “extremely robust” estimate of the true cost of fossil fuels. The $5.3tn subsidy estimated for 2015 is greater than the total health spending of all the world’s governments.
The vast sum is largely due to polluters not paying the costs imposed on governments by the burning of coal, oil and gas. These include the harm caused to local populations by air pollution as well as to people across the globe affected by the floods, droughts and storms being driven by climate change.”
It’s this stuff that annoys me.
I occasionally pick up the Economist if I need a nap .
Something has happened to many of these publications . They used to at least try and appear to be neutral
but I can only conclude they take on the personal beliefs of the Editors and those are clearly big government
hard left . The Economist bias to the green wash of the Earth Has A Fever promoters brings the whole publication down .
The difference now is there are a lot of informed people on the Net and publications like the Economist have lost their franchise . Instead of matching that reality and upping their game they went the other way too afraid to take a risk . Journalistic integrity trumped by green wash political correctness .
It is what it is . Most of the main street media are in a death spiral and are increasingly less shy about
wanting a “conversation ” about government subsidies . It’s a bit hard to push that agenda if they are peeing in the government climate change corn flakes . Who knows maybe they can get a piece of the carbon tax cheese if they pump selling it enough .
The Economist has a chance to save it’s brand but playing safe politically correct is not going to work .
It is not unusual to be exposed the allegation that fossil fuel energy companies are subsidized by the government, as the mining industry generally, when discussing the ‘virtues’ of renewables with those of the PGL (Progressive Green Left) persuasion.
I think that they view the government’s refusal to tax an industry anything less than 100% of their profits is a ‘subsidy’.
The answer is, as illustrated in the article, to compare the actual tax paid by the fossil fuel companies as compared to other industries.
Control the press – check
Control the schools – check
Control the guns – if KHilarity wins check that too