The Hill News

A newly leaked World Bank report calls on 24 OECD countries to boost tax burdens on their oil and gas sectorsâ€"eventually by as much as $40-$60 billion annuallyâ€"in order to funnel part of the money raised to carbon-trading and other environmental concerns.
 
This would include the World Bank’s Clean Development Mechanismâ€"a program that has even elicited howls of criticism from carbon-emission-trading supporters for not being sufficiently harsh on traditional energy sources. This effort precedes last year’s pledge by G20 countries, including the United States, to scrap so-called fossil fuel “subsidies.”
 
The World Bank should know better that politics and policy often clash when it comes to energy production, having come under fire itself last year when it provided $3.75 billion to finance a giant coal plant in South Africa. U.S. taxpayers also have legitimate questions over how many (or whether any) of their dollars should be sunk into ! multilateral lending institutions associated with the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. And while several developing nations do subsidize fuel consumption through price ceilings on everyday items like cooking oil and gasoline, OECD countries conversely tax oil and gas far more than they subsidize it.

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