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Fossil Fuel Subsidies & Health

On a global scale, the removal of consumer fossil fuel subsidies combined with effective taxation would have positive health impacts. Impacts and timing of subsidies allocated to coal are also important in terms of encouraging overuse with knock-on health effects. Broader externalities from fossil fuels have wide ramifications for human health.

The Public Goods Paradigm and the EU's Common Agricultural Policy

May 17, 2010 | Valentin Zahrnt
From the outside, the European Union's Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) may look immutable. The only major effect of the reform passed by farm ministers in 2009, dubbed the ‘Health Check', was to dissipate more serious ambitions for change for the rest of the EU long-term budget (2007–2013).

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The Tough Politics of Energy Subsidy

October 10, 2009 | David G. Victor
Governments spend staggering sums of money subsidizing energy—in particular fossil fuels, but increasingly also other forms of energy such as renewables.  The latest global assessment, published last year by the International Energy Agency, puts the total energy subsidy at far more than US$300 billion annually.

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Stuck in reverse: recommendations on a long-term solution to a broken-down automobile industry

March 4, 2009 | Peter Wooders , Oshani Perera
The dramatic decline in the demand for cars has been a signature effect of the global economic crisis. Faced with a massive drop in sales - for example, 29 per cent  in the case of Toyota and 49 per cent across the General Motors brands - the United States, France, Germany, Italy, Spain,  and more recently, South Korea, Brazil, Japan and China have concluded that government bail-outs are both justifiable and necessary for the health of their auto sectors.

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