We present you a study from our partner International Policy Network (UK). While governments around the world pour taxpayers’ money into a whole range of supposedly win-win “green investments”, this paper finds that these waste resources and reduce economic growth without necessarily protecting the environment.
“Green” Subsidies Are Costly for Taxpayers and the Environment – New Study
A study today reveals the hidden costs of so-called “green investments”. The study, from International Policy Network (UK) shows that subsidizing “green jobs” wastes resources and reduces growth without necessarily protecting the environment.
Governments around the world have recently laid out plans to pour taxpayers’ money into “green investments”, claiming that the high costs will be offset by long-term benefits to the economy and the environment. The new study finds that this “win-win” attitude is a delusion. Even the UN admits that a ‘full-fledged [global] green transition’ could cost trillions of pounds. Hidden costs include:
Bureaucracy: In practice, “green investment” gets spent on red tape. “Green jobs” are taken by bureaucrats, siphoning resources away from the productive sectors of the economy.
Waste: For those advocating “green jobs”, inefficiency is a virtue. A United Nations study on green jobs actually calls for fruit to be picked by hand rather than machine. “Green” subsidies effectively pay companies to make everyday items more expensive and scarce, taxing the public twice over.
Debt: Today’s “green investments” are made by increasing national debt, borrowing heavily in the hope of making future generations richer. If the green gamble fails, our children and grandchildren will be left with the bill.
“Green investment” isn’t even a reliable way to improve the environment, the study finds. Steel is one of the world’s most carbon-intensive industries, yet the United Nations Environment Programme counts steelworkers as having “green jobs”, because steel is needed to make wind turbines.
Commenting on the new study Z. Silenas (LFMI) said “It is very important to see through government’s rhetoric. The study is a good illustration that the so-called “green jobs” usually are neither “green”, nor “jobs”, but mere transfers of taxpayers’ money to privileged groups”.
