Perverse Subsidies: Taxes Undercutting Our Economies and Environments

by Norman Myers, Jennifer Kent

Excerpt from the Executive Subsidies are a prime feature of our economic landscape. That much is well understood. Not so widely recognized are “perverse” subsidies, definable here as exerting adverse effects on both the economy and the environment in the long run. This report documents the problem of perverse subsidies in five main subsidy agriculture, fossil fuels/nuclear energy, road transportation, water and fisheries. Total subsides in these sectors, plus a few others, have long been thought to be around $1 trillion worldwide per year, which means that subsidies play a prime role in the functioning of the global economy. If perverse subsidies amount to a sizeable proportion of subsidies overall, they exert a significantly distortive impact on the global economy.

229 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 1998

About the author

Norman Myers (born 24 August 1934 – 20 October 2019) was a British environmentalist specialising in biodiversity and also noted for his work on environmental refugees. He lived in Kenya for over 30 years and later settled in Headington, Oxford, England. Myers's work has ranged over diverse critical global issues and includes 18 books and over 250 scientific papers [bio sketch copied & shortened from en.wikipedia.org]

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