Petroleum Subsidies and Renewable Energy
My cousin is an environmental engineer by training and she argues that there shouldn’t be subsidies for petroleum. The artificially low price of petrol only makes people consume more of it, and more importantly, takes the focus off other, renewable, sources of energy.
The government had actually been doing the right thing by gradually reducing petroleum subsidies. Unfortunately this issue has been co-opted by politicians wanting to gain popularity. The reality is that everyone wants cheap fuel, and political mileage aplenty is to be gained by promising to give this to the people. The result is that there is currently zero effort to look into renewable energy, and we’ll only realize our folly when there’s an energy crisis.
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