"Government subsidies of gasoline, electricity and other energy sources amount to about $1.9 trillion a year and should be ended or offset with taxes used to battle climate change and pay for social programs, the International Monetary Fund said Wednesday in a major foray into the global warming debate. From top energy users such as the United States and China to the poorest of the poor, the fund said countries should be more aggressive in developing energy tax and pricing policies that reflect the true cost of fossil fuel use, including such “externalities” as pollution and the steps needed to mitigate the effects of a warming climate."

Pretty much what the IMF is saying is the cost of continuing to depend on fossil fuels should include a tax that takes into consideration the damage to the environment we have done and continue to do through our dependence on them.

I assume they feel that drastically raising the cost of using fossil fuels will create a more dramatic and expedient move away from them. I would say they are on the surface correct but I don't think this needs to be done through taxes and I don't think you could count on the fact that those taxes would go toward climate change initiatives and social programs. Not in the United States where many on the right still believe climate change is a myth, social programs are "a method of redistributing wealth" and the poor and unfortunate should do us all a favor and "die to decrease the surplus population."

I will say it is sort of sad that it took this long for the IMF to dip their globally warmed toes into the whole climate change issue.

Not to make this a right and left thing again but it must make the right wingers want to puke when they read that the IMF believes that taxes should go toward social programs and the climate change crisis.

What do you think of the IMF and their report, Ross, because that report is really not about subsidies but rather about the fact that they feel we have a rather gigantic climate change crisis on our hands that will in the very near future devastate many countries?