No, corporations can’t clean it all on their own!

Imposing stringent green regulations on corporations to eliminate fossil fuels from the economic system, combined with price controls on their outputs, could lead to widespread corporate collapse.

Such regulations should require corporations to comply in two key areas:
-Reducing energy consumption throughout their production processes.
-Producing energy-efficient products that consumers can affordably purchase to replace inefficient cars, dirty electricity, and other outdated technologies.

While a few successful corporations might manage the costs of a green transition through gradually enforced regulations, many other corporations and small businesses are merely surviving. These businesses cannot absorb the additional expenses without significant financial strain.

If corporations are not permitted to increase their prices to cover these inherent costs, many will face bankruptcy, leading to the loss of millions of jobs and widespread economic hardship.

Alternatively, allowing corporations to pass on these costs through price increases would lead to sharp rises in the costs of renewable energy, electric vehicles, food, and other essentials, disproportionately affecting those who cannot afford such increases.

Imposing such draconian legislation without careful consideration would likely harm the most vulnerable, potentially triggering a political backlash and resulting in the reversal of green policies. This concern has led governments to impose only moderate regulations on corporations thus far—measures that have had limited success in reducing carbon emissions.

The frequently debated removal of subsidies for oil and coal corporations to discourage fossil fuel use is problematic for a straightforward reason: these subsidies, in reality, do not exist.

What are these supposed subsidies? Some obscure calculations by IMF officials estimate subsidies at 6.5% of GDP by factoring in the environmental impacts of hydrocarbons consumed by the public. Other questionable studies mix unrelated data and conclude that oil and coal corporations receive enormous subsidies.

Should we make the oil and coal industries pay for our pollution or repay these so-called subsidies? In truth, this debate over subsidies serves as a pretext for raising taxes. Eliminating these dubious subsidies is effectively the same as increasing taxes.

Eliminating these so-called “huge” subsidies would force oil and coal corporations to raise prices to maintain profitability, likely passing the additional costs on to consumers. If price ceilings are imposed alongside the removal of subsidies, these industries could face bankruptcy, resulting in significant disruptions due to shortages of coal and gasoline, which are critical for essential services such as food distribution and electricity supply.