Unfortunately these 3 activities appear to be most responsible for collapse or incredible pressure on ecosystems across the globe.
Fossil fuels have to be considered a mature market – usually it is considered that subsidies are required to get a market established, if an established market is still unable to stand on its own two feet (and its survival damages the worlds ecosystems) then surely it is time to let it die.
in 2021 alone, oil and gas production was subsidised around the world to the tune of $64 billion (£53billion), but a further $531 billion (£443 billion) was spent on keeping fossil fuel prices low. If this incredible amount of money was spent instead on transitioning to renewables it would be a good step in the right direction. Now it is true that estimates of full transition are thought to be as high as 62 trillion dollars, however, a large part of this is temporary.
For instance, an electric car is more expensive than a combustion engine car (at the moment) yet by buying that more expensive car, savings can add up to greater than the spend. One example from me, I recently bought an electric car- it was more than 5 times what we had ever spent on a car. However, we were spending roughly the value of the car each year keeping it fuelled! Currently, we are paying off our car loan and charging the car for less than we used to spend on petrol.
Fisheries are similar though getting less subsidies. Much of the subsidies goes to industrial scale fishing – to enhance capacity: we are essentially paying firms to collapse the marine ecosystem.
Farming is no different. In fact, much of the worlds current deforestation is done expressly to create more farmland.
This is insanity. Governments must start changing how they operate. We need a system where buying votes is no longer possible.