Further to the $7 trillion mostly being implicit subsidy, the explicit subsidy element is also basically misinformation.
I've read similar articles where its implied that western governments give huge tax breaks to oil producers, but upon investigation, they are complaining that capital expenditure is tax deductible. It does happen that power stations and oil refineries represent a lot of capital, energy is the most capital intensive sector (along with semi-conductors). However, the rule also hugely benefits green infrastructure, so it seems misguided to attack it.
This article gets it right but it really stands in contrast to MYs recent article on inflation where he seems to argue that it’s ok for some groups to use a completely incorrect framing of inflation as long as the serious policy institutes don’t do it. I think “lying to people is bad” is a better take.
As a right winger (according to this audience), I've complained about this for years. First spurred by a friend who had returned from 3 years in the UK claiming US fuel subsidies were obscene -- I was surprised an looked into it. (reality -- we just tax less) This was back when people were only claiming direct subsidies. What I found: the only true direct subsidy was home heating oil subsidies for lower income residents of the Northeast. OK. Not huge $. Plus they're cold. The other "direct" subsidies were permitting oil companies to deduct amortization payments for exploration and other cap ex. Literally every industrial company in the world deducts amortization in calculating their taxes. The other big bucket (from memory) was under market land leases for oil exploration and drilling. Maybe they were getting to the externality point, but these leases come up for bid every few years. Anyway, fossil fuels are cost effective so there is a green desire to paint them as unfair. Times have changed and now green alternatives can compete on cost without making up the subsidy myth.
I am a biased source for this perspective, given that I consult for Juul Labs on tobacco harm minimization, but I would submit that much of the discussion of nicotine and vaping could be included among the topics where trustworthy sources seem to be taking advantage of the public's trust to mislead.
As a person who society deems a conservative, I thank you as “someone who knows Democratic politics” for your political conceits on behalf of liberals/Democrats. As a human, I thank you for the personal admission.
For my admissions, trickle down economics probably doesn’t work (unless you’re a caring small business owner, as my wife and friend are in their respective businesses, and you’ll pay fair wages with very generous bonuses even to hourly workers) and I shit myself at my little league 11-12 All-Star game. (I was so dehydrated it was basically a hard ball that rolled down and out my uniform pants leg, like a slow grounder to 3rd, with nearly no mess so no one knew! Huzzah!
The real story of the spurious increase in maternal mortality is more interesting and shows that elite misinformation can go both ways. Until the 1990s, US states used a measure of maternal mortality that led to severe undercounting. Over time, they all moved to an internationally standardised method that counted all deaths within 42 days of childbirth unless they had an obvious accidental cause, like a car crash. The new measure was about twice as high as the old one. Because states report separately, this appeared as a gradual increase.
If this had been reported correctly, it would have been "US maternal deaths, which already looked terrible compared to other rich countries, actually more comparable to Third World".
That might not have had quite the same impact as "death rates doubled" but it would have been seen as pretty bad news.
None of the debunking articles I've seen, including this one, spell this out. Rather, they call out the incorrect interpretation, then go on to imply "nothing to see here, move on". In my view, that's more misleading than the original error.
Thanks for highlighting the IMF's redefinition of the word "subsidy"! I've been complaining about that for years, ever since I found out about it while volunteering at anti-climate-science-denial orgs (SkepticalScience, Denial101x).
I'm actually inclined to call it lying. Not only is "failure to fully tax/penalize externalities" not the dictionary definition of "subsidy", it's not what anyone expects either. It's not a complicated word. It just means "a sum of money granted by the government or a public body to assist an industry or business..." (Oxford). The IMF's definition would probably count failed states among the greatest countries "subsidizing fossil fuels" as a percent of GDP, even if they produce no oil. It's absurd.
To me, being anti-denial is all about doing the opposite of what the dismissives (they hate being called "deniers") do. Their bad behavior is what leads them to wrong conclusions, so if you do the same you should expect to be wrong too. It seems to me that the IMF does good and important work too, which makes their behavior all the worse. Why would the IMF throw away valuable reputation for this?
The worst part, now that I think of it, is that the IMF gets away with this because media people keep declining to complain about it or even point it out in a timely fashion. Their misuse of "subsidy" belongs in the first paragraph, not the ninth. We need way more media that cares about truth enough to point out when someone *on their own side of the political spectrum* is misleading people.
During the pandemic I didn't pay much attention to talking heads or officials like Fauci, but from listening to my antivax dad it's clear that the right wing made a big deal about early 2020 statements that weren't true. I never sweated it because obviously people will get some things wrong at first when the virus wasn't well-understood. But while, on the whole, the right wing seems pretty far gone, I do wonder how many false statements there were that the media could've easily investigated and conspicuously flunked/questioned to gain some credibility among independents and Reagan Republicans.
“ one thing that comes through is that the bulk of American intelligence agencies genuinely believed that Iraq had an advanced nuclear weapons program”
“ You can dupe people into a one-off, like the invasion of Iraq”
How are these two statements consonant? Perhaps they have nothing in common except being about the same war. The first is a research finding. The second is a political ploy.
I think the idea is to have activists say that there are trillions of fossil fuel subsidies (there aren't) so that voters get riled up into ending the subsidies (which don't exist) and then politicians get to say they successfully ended the subsidies (which was not a thing.)
So activists got to yell, voters got to feel important, and politicians score an easy win. All movement and no action, basically.
Thanks for this super-important take. This hits some very sensitive nerves for me, as an environmental science prof. When I hear people say "believe the scientist" I sympathize, but I also think scientists under-rate our own responsibility to talk with a level of sincerity that is builds respect, and that is itself respectful and self-aware.
In the past, public trust in scientists, as honest authorities who are not easily bought, has provided a gravitas that was vital to good environmental management - it was needed to balance the very skilled advocates who can be hired by companies with deep pockets.
20-ish years ago, I was lucky to hang out with some top up-and-coming climate scientists. Back then, advocates were casting doubt on anthropogenic climate by manipulating the scientific practice of emphasizing uncertainties. This insincere manipulation made most scientists angry, and some concluded that they should emphasize uncertainties less. These scientists weren't dishonest, or even trying to mislead - the point was to prevent misrepresentation. Still, over decades, scientists have developed increasingly intricate and speculative models while emphasizing the uncertainties in forecasts less (this is not a reason to ignore climate change - so far, many forecasts have underestimated changes, and the biggest and most important uncertainties are on the bad side). I always thought de-emphasizing uncertainties was a bad idea, because I thought the most important thing in the long term was protecting the high levels of public trust in scientists. So, in my own work, I've tried for decades to limit myself to relatively solid science (there's plenty), and to emphasize uncertainties.
When I developed Covid symptoms in Feb 2020, while attending a conference, I wondered whether I should wear a mask on the flight home. So I spent a day reading news articles quoting medical professionals, and a few scientific papers these articles cited, and the rough consensus was: "Don't wear masks, because they don't work and health-care workers might need them". The fear diving this was understandable, but decades of effort by to build trust in science are wasted if some experts give this level of priority to public trust. More than that, this example shows the contempt some experts have for the intelligence of the general public.
I think many feel this contempt, and hate it. In Fairbanks, while on a research trip, I was eating dinner when I couldn't help hearing a drunk oil-company worker tell everyone in the bar how angry he was about a debate he'd gotten into with a climate scientist (not me). He kept repeating over and over that the person he was arguing with had said "well, I'm a scientist..." Why did that phrase make the worker so angry? I suspect it might be this: people get angry if they're in an argument and they feel that someone is trying to pull rank on them (which is fair enough). I don't think climate scientists have been dishonest, but I do think this sort of resentment might be related to a broader view of experts. Scientists and other experts have minimal power if their statements are not respected, and respect is a two-way street.
One final pet concern: I worry that the required respect may not be possible given US educational polarization (I suspect educational funding might be more unequal in the US than in Canada or New Zealand, where I've also lived; a person's highest educational qualification is more determined by their parents than is their ranking in income or even wealth, and this generates cultural isolation; highly educated folks are over-represented in political power and journalism; isolated, powerful cultures tend to be unfairly disrespectful to other cultures).
I agree that the notion of "misinformation" is largely overhyped, but doesn't the claim that the 2020 election was stolen provide an important counterexample?
One of the biggest elite misinformation is how technology companies work. Apart from most people not understanding Section 230*, the fact that most tech journalists believe that Google and Facebook sell your data makes them unable to understand the difference between Facebook and TikTok. Google and Facebook make money from you data but they are not selling YOUR data in any sense (in contrast to a company like Experian or LexisNexus who do in fact sell YOUR data). While there are security risks where you can expose information about a user by target ads, this is generally limited in specificity unless you are a High Value Target (in which case you should reconsider your approach to the web). A related issues is security vs functionality tradeoffs. It is possible to encrypt a users data so that it is only accessible with their password but if the user forgets their password than recovery is impossible and for a large portion of the population the ability to recover their data is way more important than preventing your employees from being able to read their data (it's not an all or nothing tradeoff here, companies like Google and Facebook should have strong policies/controls around who can look at and modify a customers data). Even the Cambridge Analytica scandal is based on a policy that many of the tech commentators want (why can't I take my social graph to a different platform).
*Section 230 allows a company to moderate content without being liable for other content on their site. While I have become more concerned about some of the algorithmic ranking choices, in general most people assume that there is a neutral ranking choice that could be used and fail to appreciate that many of the people who complain about the secrecy around the algorithms are trying to game the algorithm.
I'd say that net neutrality was more a case that it *could* be really bad, but then it turned out not to be bad. But the possibility of providers deliberately throttling traffic remains. So I think the concerns remain warranted, with the caveat that you can't tell the future. But making educated guesses about the future and trying to prevent bad outcomes is good, even if you're wrong sometimes.
The one I'm really mad about is chevron deference, which I was told our entire regulatory system depended on, and then when it fell, not only did nothing happen, but none of the people who told me to worry about it cared. I think I might have first heard about it on The Weeds too. 🤔
Similarly, what are the chances that the Comstock Act will actually make it illegal to mail abortion pills? I genuinely don't know. But I think this is a case where even if it's unlikely to have an effect, the consequences could be so dire it's worth worrying about.
One other factor is people being just too ignorant to even understand the argument so they claim they were lied to. My favorite example, “They lied saying Hillary had an 80% chance of winning!” She did have an 80% chance of winning. If I have a five sided dice with 4 pics of Hillary and one of Trump I can safely say I have an 80% chance I’ll roll a Hillary. And if I roll a Trump well things with a 20% chance of happening happen all time. That’s…how it all works.
I spent time on a trip last weekend with a young couple in their 20s who mentioned some friends who had just gotten married, but didn't intend to have kids, because "Who wants to bring kids into a world with all these terrible problems?" To which I said, sure, the world is a scary place... but the world has never been a better place than it is right now. They looked at me like I had just grown a second head.
The idea that reasonably well-off, liberal, American couples in the 20s are not having kids because the state of the world is so awful means, to me, that elite misinformation is genuinely a problem. Their biggest issue was climate change, and I can't help but wonder if climate change activists would hear this story and think, "Good, the world needs fewer people. Our plans are working."
If you don't have kids, are you a "free rider"? On the one hand, you are paying taxes for schools that you won't be using, but down the road you are relying on other people's kids to staff the golf courses and nursing homes.
I actually do think climate change is a legitimate concern, though I don't know if it would keep me from having children. Children born today will be alive in 2100. The climate will continue to warm even if we stopped carbon emissions tomorrow, and globally, we are still emitting more every year.
Or they don’t want kids and it’s easier to say the world’s terrible to fill you in on the actual reason. I mean if the real reason was they think kids are obnoxious and obscenely expensive do you think they would have shared that with you?
My brother-in-law and his wife decided long ago they didn't want kids because kids are super expensive and they liked their childless lifestyle too much. And kids are certainly obnoxious... well, maybe that's just my kids. Anyway, they were happy to share their reasoning, so I don't know if there's a stigma around it. I don't think people should feel obligated to have kids, and there genuinely are big issues out there (including climate change), but thinking the apocalypse is right around the corner?
Further to the $7 trillion mostly being implicit subsidy, the explicit subsidy element is also basically misinformation.
I've read similar articles where its implied that western governments give huge tax breaks to oil producers, but upon investigation, they are complaining that capital expenditure is tax deductible. It does happen that power stations and oil refineries represent a lot of capital, energy is the most capital intensive sector (along with semi-conductors). However, the rule also hugely benefits green infrastructure, so it seems misguided to attack it.
This article gets it right but it really stands in contrast to MYs recent article on inflation where he seems to argue that it’s ok for some groups to use a completely incorrect framing of inflation as long as the serious policy institutes don’t do it. I think “lying to people is bad” is a better take.
As a right winger (according to this audience), I've complained about this for years. First spurred by a friend who had returned from 3 years in the UK claiming US fuel subsidies were obscene -- I was surprised an looked into it. (reality -- we just tax less) This was back when people were only claiming direct subsidies. What I found: the only true direct subsidy was home heating oil subsidies for lower income residents of the Northeast. OK. Not huge $. Plus they're cold. The other "direct" subsidies were permitting oil companies to deduct amortization payments for exploration and other cap ex. Literally every industrial company in the world deducts amortization in calculating their taxes. The other big bucket (from memory) was under market land leases for oil exploration and drilling. Maybe they were getting to the externality point, but these leases come up for bid every few years. Anyway, fossil fuels are cost effective so there is a green desire to paint them as unfair. Times have changed and now green alternatives can compete on cost without making up the subsidy myth.
I am a biased source for this perspective, given that I consult for Juul Labs on tobacco harm minimization, but I would submit that much of the discussion of nicotine and vaping could be included among the topics where trustworthy sources seem to be taking advantage of the public's trust to mislead.
One example, focused on CDC, can be explored here (from journalist Marc Gunther, writing on Medium): https://medium.com/the-great-vape-debate/the-cdcs-evali-screwup-ff09f4c3e187
The more recent Audible podcast, Backfired, does a solid job of digging in to these issues: https://www.audible.com/pd/Backfired-The-Vaping-Wars-Audiobook/B0D23Y5KXP
As a person who society deems a conservative, I thank you as “someone who knows Democratic politics” for your political conceits on behalf of liberals/Democrats. As a human, I thank you for the personal admission.
For my admissions, trickle down economics probably doesn’t work (unless you’re a caring small business owner, as my wife and friend are in their respective businesses, and you’ll pay fair wages with very generous bonuses even to hourly workers) and I shit myself at my little league 11-12 All-Star game. (I was so dehydrated it was basically a hard ball that rolled down and out my uniform pants leg, like a slow grounder to 3rd, with nearly no mess so no one knew! Huzzah!
The real story of the spurious increase in maternal mortality is more interesting and shows that elite misinformation can go both ways. Until the 1990s, US states used a measure of maternal mortality that led to severe undercounting. Over time, they all moved to an internationally standardised method that counted all deaths within 42 days of childbirth unless they had an obvious accidental cause, like a car crash. The new measure was about twice as high as the old one. Because states report separately, this appeared as a gradual increase.
If this had been reported correctly, it would have been "US maternal deaths, which already looked terrible compared to other rich countries, actually more comparable to Third World".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_maternal_mortality_ratio
That might not have had quite the same impact as "death rates doubled" but it would have been seen as pretty bad news.
None of the debunking articles I've seen, including this one, spell this out. Rather, they call out the incorrect interpretation, then go on to imply "nothing to see here, move on". In my view, that's more misleading than the original error.
Thanks for highlighting the IMF's redefinition of the word "subsidy"! I've been complaining about that for years, ever since I found out about it while volunteering at anti-climate-science-denial orgs (SkepticalScience, Denial101x).
I'm actually inclined to call it lying. Not only is "failure to fully tax/penalize externalities" not the dictionary definition of "subsidy", it's not what anyone expects either. It's not a complicated word. It just means "a sum of money granted by the government or a public body to assist an industry or business..." (Oxford). The IMF's definition would probably count failed states among the greatest countries "subsidizing fossil fuels" as a percent of GDP, even if they produce no oil. It's absurd.
To me, being anti-denial is all about doing the opposite of what the dismissives (they hate being called "deniers") do. Their bad behavior is what leads them to wrong conclusions, so if you do the same you should expect to be wrong too. It seems to me that the IMF does good and important work too, which makes their behavior all the worse. Why would the IMF throw away valuable reputation for this?
The worst part, now that I think of it, is that the IMF gets away with this because media people keep declining to complain about it or even point it out in a timely fashion. Their misuse of "subsidy" belongs in the first paragraph, not the ninth. We need way more media that cares about truth enough to point out when someone *on their own side of the political spectrum* is misleading people.
During the pandemic I didn't pay much attention to talking heads or officials like Fauci, but from listening to my antivax dad it's clear that the right wing made a big deal about early 2020 statements that weren't true. I never sweated it because obviously people will get some things wrong at first when the virus wasn't well-understood. But while, on the whole, the right wing seems pretty far gone, I do wonder how many false statements there were that the media could've easily investigated and conspicuously flunked/questioned to gain some credibility among independents and Reagan Republicans.
“ one thing that comes through is that the bulk of American intelligence agencies genuinely believed that Iraq had an advanced nuclear weapons program”
“ You can dupe people into a one-off, like the invasion of Iraq”
How are these two statements consonant? Perhaps they have nothing in common except being about the same war. The first is a research finding. The second is a political ploy.
Great article this is why I subscribe.
I think the idea is to have activists say that there are trillions of fossil fuel subsidies (there aren't) so that voters get riled up into ending the subsidies (which don't exist) and then politicians get to say they successfully ended the subsidies (which was not a thing.)
So activists got to yell, voters got to feel important, and politicians score an easy win. All movement and no action, basically.
I think it is more:
1. Convince Voters that the government is writing big fat checks to Polluters
2. ???
3. Carbon Tax passes
Thanks for this super-important take. This hits some very sensitive nerves for me, as an environmental science prof. When I hear people say "believe the scientist" I sympathize, but I also think scientists under-rate our own responsibility to talk with a level of sincerity that is builds respect, and that is itself respectful and self-aware.
In the past, public trust in scientists, as honest authorities who are not easily bought, has provided a gravitas that was vital to good environmental management - it was needed to balance the very skilled advocates who can be hired by companies with deep pockets.
20-ish years ago, I was lucky to hang out with some top up-and-coming climate scientists. Back then, advocates were casting doubt on anthropogenic climate by manipulating the scientific practice of emphasizing uncertainties. This insincere manipulation made most scientists angry, and some concluded that they should emphasize uncertainties less. These scientists weren't dishonest, or even trying to mislead - the point was to prevent misrepresentation. Still, over decades, scientists have developed increasingly intricate and speculative models while emphasizing the uncertainties in forecasts less (this is not a reason to ignore climate change - so far, many forecasts have underestimated changes, and the biggest and most important uncertainties are on the bad side). I always thought de-emphasizing uncertainties was a bad idea, because I thought the most important thing in the long term was protecting the high levels of public trust in scientists. So, in my own work, I've tried for decades to limit myself to relatively solid science (there's plenty), and to emphasize uncertainties.
When I developed Covid symptoms in Feb 2020, while attending a conference, I wondered whether I should wear a mask on the flight home. So I spent a day reading news articles quoting medical professionals, and a few scientific papers these articles cited, and the rough consensus was: "Don't wear masks, because they don't work and health-care workers might need them". The fear diving this was understandable, but decades of effort by to build trust in science are wasted if some experts give this level of priority to public trust. More than that, this example shows the contempt some experts have for the intelligence of the general public.
I think many feel this contempt, and hate it. In Fairbanks, while on a research trip, I was eating dinner when I couldn't help hearing a drunk oil-company worker tell everyone in the bar how angry he was about a debate he'd gotten into with a climate scientist (not me). He kept repeating over and over that the person he was arguing with had said "well, I'm a scientist..." Why did that phrase make the worker so angry? I suspect it might be this: people get angry if they're in an argument and they feel that someone is trying to pull rank on them (which is fair enough). I don't think climate scientists have been dishonest, but I do think this sort of resentment might be related to a broader view of experts. Scientists and other experts have minimal power if their statements are not respected, and respect is a two-way street.
One final pet concern: I worry that the required respect may not be possible given US educational polarization (I suspect educational funding might be more unequal in the US than in Canada or New Zealand, where I've also lived; a person's highest educational qualification is more determined by their parents than is their ranking in income or even wealth, and this generates cultural isolation; highly educated folks are over-represented in political power and journalism; isolated, powerful cultures tend to be unfairly disrespectful to other cultures).
I agree that the notion of "misinformation" is largely overhyped, but doesn't the claim that the 2020 election was stolen provide an important counterexample?
One of the biggest elite misinformation is how technology companies work. Apart from most people not understanding Section 230*, the fact that most tech journalists believe that Google and Facebook sell your data makes them unable to understand the difference between Facebook and TikTok. Google and Facebook make money from you data but they are not selling YOUR data in any sense (in contrast to a company like Experian or LexisNexus who do in fact sell YOUR data). While there are security risks where you can expose information about a user by target ads, this is generally limited in specificity unless you are a High Value Target (in which case you should reconsider your approach to the web). A related issues is security vs functionality tradeoffs. It is possible to encrypt a users data so that it is only accessible with their password but if the user forgets their password than recovery is impossible and for a large portion of the population the ability to recover their data is way more important than preventing your employees from being able to read their data (it's not an all or nothing tradeoff here, companies like Google and Facebook should have strong policies/controls around who can look at and modify a customers data). Even the Cambridge Analytica scandal is based on a policy that many of the tech commentators want (why can't I take my social graph to a different platform).
*Section 230 allows a company to moderate content without being liable for other content on their site. While I have become more concerned about some of the algorithmic ranking choices, in general most people assume that there is a neutral ranking choice that could be used and fail to appreciate that many of the people who complain about the secrecy around the algorithms are trying to game the algorithm.
I'd say that net neutrality was more a case that it *could* be really bad, but then it turned out not to be bad. But the possibility of providers deliberately throttling traffic remains. So I think the concerns remain warranted, with the caveat that you can't tell the future. But making educated guesses about the future and trying to prevent bad outcomes is good, even if you're wrong sometimes.
The one I'm really mad about is chevron deference, which I was told our entire regulatory system depended on, and then when it fell, not only did nothing happen, but none of the people who told me to worry about it cared. I think I might have first heard about it on The Weeds too. 🤔
Similarly, what are the chances that the Comstock Act will actually make it illegal to mail abortion pills? I genuinely don't know. But I think this is a case where even if it's unlikely to have an effect, the consequences could be so dire it's worth worrying about.
One other factor is people being just too ignorant to even understand the argument so they claim they were lied to. My favorite example, “They lied saying Hillary had an 80% chance of winning!” She did have an 80% chance of winning. If I have a five sided dice with 4 pics of Hillary and one of Trump I can safely say I have an 80% chance I’ll roll a Hillary. And if I roll a Trump well things with a 20% chance of happening happen all time. That’s…how it all works.
I spent time on a trip last weekend with a young couple in their 20s who mentioned some friends who had just gotten married, but didn't intend to have kids, because "Who wants to bring kids into a world with all these terrible problems?" To which I said, sure, the world is a scary place... but the world has never been a better place than it is right now. They looked at me like I had just grown a second head.
The idea that reasonably well-off, liberal, American couples in the 20s are not having kids because the state of the world is so awful means, to me, that elite misinformation is genuinely a problem. Their biggest issue was climate change, and I can't help but wonder if climate change activists would hear this story and think, "Good, the world needs fewer people. Our plans are working."
If you don't have kids, are you a "free rider"? On the one hand, you are paying taxes for schools that you won't be using, but down the road you are relying on other people's kids to staff the golf courses and nursing homes.
I actually do think climate change is a legitimate concern, though I don't know if it would keep me from having children. Children born today will be alive in 2100. The climate will continue to warm even if we stopped carbon emissions tomorrow, and globally, we are still emitting more every year.
Or they don’t want kids and it’s easier to say the world’s terrible to fill you in on the actual reason. I mean if the real reason was they think kids are obnoxious and obscenely expensive do you think they would have shared that with you?
My brother-in-law and his wife decided long ago they didn't want kids because kids are super expensive and they liked their childless lifestyle too much. And kids are certainly obnoxious... well, maybe that's just my kids. Anyway, they were happy to share their reasoning, so I don't know if there's a stigma around it. I don't think people should feel obligated to have kids, and there genuinely are big issues out there (including climate change), but thinking the apocalypse is right around the corner?