To his credit, President Obama's fiscal year 2011 budget proposal would end $36 billion in giveaways to fossil fuels, a good start in following through on his pledge at the G-20 summit in September to eliminate all fossil fuel subsidies. (For more information on what these oil and gas industry giveaways are and how they can be ended, see Friends of the Earth’s 2008 analysis (pdf).) The policy benefits of ending these giveaways are clear: Slashing subsidies that line the pockets of big oil and gas corporations will not only help to curb the carbon emissions causing global warming, it will enable our country to invest more money in real priorities -- people, reduced deficits and the blocks of a clean, energy-efficient economy. The giveaways to fossil fuel industries that President Obama seeks to slash dwarf the investments our government makes in clean, renewable energy and the infrastructure needed to deploy it. An analysis by the Environmental Law Institute found that over fiscal years 2002-2008, fossil fuels benefited from more than $72 billion in subsidies, while renewable fuels received only $29 billion in federal support. Over half of this latter total was targeted at corn ethanol, a biofuel that does more to damage than protect the environment. It's time to make investments in truly clean, renewable energy sources more than afterthoughts. It's also time to stop wasting the tax dollars of struggling American families to pad the already staggering, multi-billion-dollar profits of corporations like Exxon Mobil and Shell. There's reason to think the time is ripe to finally end these giveaways. Last year, President Obama proposed to end a similar array of oil and gas subsidies in his budget, only to see his recommendations dismissed by Congress. This year, the growing attention being paid to deficits makes the political climate one in which Congress is more likely to actually follow through. But, of course, with oil and gas interests setting new spending records for lobbying and providing so much campaign cash to members of Congress from both parties, it still won't be an easy fight to win. Big oil and gas are not the only dirty energy industries that enjoy too much taxpayer backing. While President Obama's proposed cuts to fossil fuel subsidies have garnered widespread support, he has also proposed tripling taxpayer-backed loan guarantees for the nuclear industry. The president's budget would make up to $55 billion available to bail out the nuclear industry if it defaults on loans for risky new nuclear reactor projects. The reason the nuclear industry needs these taxpayer-backed loan guarantees is that even Wall Street sees new nuclear projects as too risky an investment. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office predicts that more than 50 percent of loans for such projects result in default. Taxpayers for Common Sense analyzed the four reactor projects in the final stages of review for up to $18.5 billion in loan guarantees already available and found that "proposed reactors have been riddled with cost overruns, delays and significant design problems, all of which can easily lead to taxpayers losing billions of dollars if and when these risky projects default." Betting billions in taxpayer dollars on an industry that is far from clean and that isn't financially viable on its own would not only be fiscally irresponsible, it would be a highly inefficient way to generate low-carbon energy. As a November 2009 report by Environment America found, investments in clean energy sources like wind and solar could provide as much as five times more pollution-cutting bang for the buck as nuclear. President Obama may be able to appeal to a few Republican members of Congress by pushing nuclear, but this pandering approach is also likely to further disenchant the progressive base of voters Democrats need to come out in force in the 2010 elections. In a real-time dial test run by MoveOn during President Obama's State of the Union address, the 10,000 participating members gave the lowest ratings of any line in his speech to this one: "That means building a new generation of safe, clean nuclear power plants in this country. It means making tough decisions about opening new offshore areas for oil and gas development.” As Mike Lux wrote on Open Left last week, restoring fiscal sanity to government and investing in progressive priorities can go hand in hand, and a perfect place to start would be to stop rewarding the sectors of our economy doing the most damage. Ending subsidies to big oil and gas corporations and keeping additional taxpayer money out of the black hole of the nuclear industry would be significant strides towards shifting the balance federal investment away from dirty, dead-end energy sources and towards clean technologies. And with this sensible realignment in priorities, we'd be sending a strong message to polluting special interests and deficit-leery voters alike that the federal budget for energy is not for sale to the corporations with the biggest lobbies and most powerful cronies on Capitol Hill, but that it will be used to build the safest, cleanest supply of power possible for the public. |
