Fossil Fuel Subsidies & Health

A report from a coalition of Canadian environmental organizations has called on the Province of Ontario to eliminate subsidies and the health and environmental costs externalized to the rest of society as a result of burning coal, which benefit the generation of electricity.

The European Commission's recommendations for reforming the EU's Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) - the so-called "Health Check" -have come under criticism from European governments and environmental campaigners, albeit for different reasons. On 20 November the EC unveiled proposals for the next phase of changes to European agricultural policy.

Direct payments were introduced during the CAP reform of 1992, allowing a transition from the earlier production-oriented CAP toward policies intended to promote rural restructuring and the positive externalities that can result from farm-related activities. Direct payments introduced in 1992, as farm income support instruments, were subsidies per hectare of crops or per head of animal.

Fuel prices, fuel taxation and subsidies for petrol and diesel fuel rank high on the world's political agenda, particularly after the spectacular increases in world market prices for crude oil (up to USD 75 a barrel in August 2006) and the subsequent slide in price to around USD 54 a barrel in January 2007.

The last round of World Trade Organization (WTO) trade talks, the Uruguay Round, broke new ground by broadening the scope of world trade rules to cover areas never before subject to multilateral disciplines, and the services sector was without doubt where such broadening was most significant in economic terms.