Oil subsidies

This is a topic we covered ages ago. Kate Sheppard, writing at Ezra's WaPo blog, discusses the subsidies that flow to the exploiters of fossil fuels.

Even that [$39 billion over 10 years that would result from Obama-proposed cuts to subsidies] would only be a fraction of what we hand over to fossil fuels every year. The government spent $72.5 billion on fossil fuels between 2002 and 2008, an analysis from the Environmental Law Institute found last year. The government directly spent $16.3 billion on petroleum, natural gas, and coal products, and gave the industry another $53.9 billion in the form of tax breaks.