Think of it like an introductory offer in a supermarket. While this may already be clear to those who have made the switch to EVs – with a typical EV costing around €7 to charge from empty to full at home, compared to around €64 for the average tank of petrol – keeping the price of petrol and diesel artificially low is misleading drivers about the long-term affordability of running their vehicle – and hiding the climate implications from them entirely. It is time the Irish press did a better job on reporting on the value of something, not just the cost – and there is no better place to start than fuel duty. This is analogous to the Irish government subsidising the cost of cigarettes in order to keep people smoking, so harmful is the toxicity of greenhouse gases emitted by burning fossil fuels to both human and planetary health. While no data is available for the cost of air pollution to the HSE, or the Irish taxpayer, the World Economic Forum has reported that air pollution has a $2.9 trillion economic cost worldwide, accounting for 3.3% of the world’s GDP. The Irish Government has made it clear that it is willing to fund the same fossil fuels which have made air pollution so bad that 1,300 Irish people die prematurely each year as a direct result. Doing so could bear sizeable climate benefits, as their removal could reduce economy-wide carbon dioxide emissions by 20% by 2030 compared to a business-as-usual scenario”. Let that sink in for a second – the Irish Government spent more on subsiding fossil fuels than these three crucial parts of society.Īddressing this issue in an interview with the Irish Times in 2021, Environmental Pillar said: “We need to eliminate these subsidies as a matter of urgency. (The names of some departments have since changed). That is more than the Irish Government spent on Children and Youth Affairs, Rural and Community Development, and the Department of Communications, Climate Action & Environment as a whole in 2019. In 2019, the Irish Government subsidised fossil fuels to the tune of €2.4bn. Today, we look at how the rise in fuel prices hides the true cost of our addition to oil, and why this context is essential if we are to survive the Climate Crisis. While the increase in fuel cost has received wide and consistent reporting over recent years – with the average price per litre for petrol rising from €1.31 in 2010, to €1.70 in 2022 – little attention has been paid to the broader consequences beyond the financial and taxation impacts. According to a new report from AA Ireland, the price of petrol and diesel rose by 32% in 2021, making Ireland one of the most expensive countries in the world to fuel an internal combustion engine vehicle.
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