In an op-ed for the Los Angeles Times, Bill McKibben, Middlebury College professor and founder of the global climate campaign 350.org, highlights the irrationality of U.S. subsidies to fossil-fuel producers by comparison with a type of support that most people are more familiar with - low-interest college loans and scholarships.

Using this analogy, McKibben expounds five general rules that should be applied to the fossil-fuel industry:

• "Don't subsidize those who already have cash on hand"; just as we do not give education subsidies to the students of rich families.
   
• "Don't subsidize people forever"; we don't provide financial support to students who want to repeat the same qualifications over and over.
   
• "Don't abandon important subsidies just because in one instance they didn't work out"; some renewable energy subsidies have gone to firms that subsequently went bankrupt - this doesn't mean that all support for renewable energy is a bad thing, in the same way that some students will receive financial support and drop out, while others go on to succeed.
   
• "Don't subsidize something you want less of"; we don't target education subsidies at subjects we consider to be socially harmful.
   
• "Don't give subsidies to people who have given you cash"; we don't allow parents to make 'cash donations' to the financial aid officers who will decide who gets subsidies and how much.

McKibben laments the apathy among the United States' citizenry that has led another attempt to end fossil-fuel subsidies for big oil producers: "We should be outraged, but there's a problem: the very word "subsidies" makes American eyes glaze over... But bring yourself to focus on fossil-fuel subsidies for just a minute, and you will realize just how loony our policy is."