Pumped Up: How Canada Subsidizes Fossil Fuels at the Expense of Green Alternatives
KAIROS’ 60 page 2011 study “Pumped Up: How Canada Subsidizes Fossil Fuels at the Expense of Green of Green Alternatives” demonstrates that the fossil fuel industry receives subsidies amounting to 1billion dollars a year from the federal government — resources that could be used to offset the costs of transitioning to a green economy.
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“The global economy is utterly dependent upon the use of oil and other fossil fuels.
Paradoxically, the same resource that is vital to our economy is also killing us, sometimes
quickly as a result of the intensified conflict over the control and use of fossil
fuels, and sometimes slowly through the degradation of the air that we breathe and
the ecosystems on which we all depend.
Yet even as we begin to recognize the dim future of the fossil fuel economy, we search
frantically for new sources of oil. We are in a bind: our appetite for oil is killing us,
but we need more. And, as Pumped Up demonstrates, as a nation we spend more
money to support multinational corporations in their search for oil (and profit) than
we do in building a green, sustainable, and just energy economy.
Are there alternatives? KAIROS is encouraging Canadians to Re-energize: to look at
the role oil plays in our individual and community lives, to see where we can make
changes in our own practice to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels, and to encourage
our government to examine those same questions and support viable alternatives.
Pumped Up is an important contribution to the individual and collective analysis that
we must take if we are truly committed to building a just and sustainable energy future.”
