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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.

Commentary: A case for paying the full cost of energy: an interview with Norman Myers

Norman Myers, an environmental scientist, is the author of the book Perverse Subsidies: Tax $s Undercutting our Economies and Environments Alike. He is currently completing a new book called How Institutions Block Our Road to Sustainability. He also serves as a member of the High-Level Advisory Group of the Global Subsidies Initiative. The GSI reached Mr. Myers at his home in Oxford, England.

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Commentary: The Affordable Medicines Facility - Malaria: A Healthy Subsidy

On World Malaria Day (25 April), the United Nations Secretary General posited a vision of halting malaria deaths by ensuring that effective control measures be available to everyone by the end of 2010. The interventions are, broadly, prevention with long-lasting insecticidal bed nets; spraying interior walls of dwellings with insecticides; and treatment with effective drugs.

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Commentary: The True Price of Energy in Asia: Pricing Non-Costed Externalities

There are signs aplenty in rural Asia of the profligate use of energy - electrical and fossil fuel - but little evidence that such use is being assessed against its true costs. This is because supplying cheap power (and in some cases free power) is a valuable political lever. In rural Asia, the value of such 'support' can be judged by the scale of popular opposition to its withdrawal.

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Commentary: The Nano-flyover syndrome

When the world's richest Indian, Lakshmi Mittal, recently visited Kolkata, the city of his youth, he was thrilled to see change. Mittal told the media that the biggest difference he saw was the many flyovers dotting the city skyline and "disciplined traffic". This is great progress, he told journalists, who promptly reported that the tycoon had given the city's road and traffic management a big thumbs up.

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