Hidden costs of cars, how refineries kill

Center for Public Integrity : "There are 141 oil refineries in the United States. Where they are clustered — east and south of Houston, south of Los Angeles, northeast of San Francisco — they are prodigious sources of air pollution and inflict a sort of low-grade misery — rank odors, bright flares, loud noises — on their neighbors.

They also pose an existential threat, as evidenced by the more than 500 refinery accidents reported to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency since 1994. The Anacortes disaster occurred five years after the BP refinery in Texas City, Texas, blew up, killing 15 workers and injuring 180. It came two years before a fire at the Chevron refinery in Richmond, California, sent a plume of pungent, black smoke over the Bay Area, and five years before an explosion at the ExxonMobil refinery in Torrance, California, nearly unleashed a ground-hugging cloud of deadly acid into a city of almost 150,000 people."

Roads destroy nature by carving up the landscape

New map reveals shattering effect of roads on nature | Environment | The Guardian: "Rampant road building has shattered the Earth’s land into 600,000 fragments, most of which are too tiny to support significant wildlife, a new study has revealed."

Another of the many example of the costs of the autosprawl system that are not paid for by those who profit from it. In other words, subsidy. In some cases, even money cannot fix the damage. We pay with a less secure biosphere.

Hidden costs of cars and sprawl

Mapped the last 20 years of big pipeline related accidents. Red dots indicate those that led to fatalities. #NoDAPLhttps://t.co/v7xLFM3uds pic.twitter.com/N2VbS0Haxm

— George Joseph (@georgejoseph94) November 30, 2016

$2 billion showcase for 'clean coal' turns into $6 billion+ boondoogle

dailykos : "The system of checks and balances that are supposed to keep such projects on track was outweighed by a shared and powerful incentive: The company and regulators were eager to qualify for hundreds of millions of dollars in federal subsidies for the plant, which was also aggressively promoted by Haley Barbour, who was Southern’s chief lobbyist before becoming the governor of Mississippi. Once in office, Mr. Barbour signed a law in 2008 that allowed much of the cost of building any new power plants to be passed on to ratepayers before they are built."

Auto subsidy "places enormous costs on our society"

TreeHugger: "From subsidies given to oil companies to produce cheap oil, to government bailouts/ownership of auto manufacturers, to road construction and maintenance on streets that cost nothing to use, to highly subsidized parking spaces, to government health care costs associated with pollution from automobiles, to the detrimental health that results from sedentary lifestyle that cars promote, to the vast government policing forces required to enforce our streets: it is undeniable that driving places enormous costs on our society, and this cost is highly subsidized by our government."

Just for downtown parking $19M not counting subsidy

citizen-times: "City transportation department director Putnam agrees: Parking supply is a matter of consumer perspective. Because parking meters are free after 6 p.m., people seek out those 765 spaces, and they fill up first. Drivers get frustrated looking for street parking, and it seems like there's nowhere to park. Instead, try a parking deck, Putnam said."

The cost to the economy, not counting subsidy, for parking downtown, is $40/yr per person for greater Asheville. Free public transit would end this and free most of the wasted space.

Parking is a hidden cost of the #autosprawl system, an externality not counted in the profits of oil, auto, and sprawl.

Who pays to clean up oil mess? Another case of #autosprawlsubsidy

Fuel Fix: "The problem is forcing states to get creative: Texas regulators now want taxpayers to cover more of the clean-up, supplementing industry payments. Wyoming and Louisiana are riling drillers with steeper fees. Oklahoma is reshuffling money among agencies in the face of a $1.1 billion state budget shortfall, while regulators also grapple with earthquakes linked to oil and gas activities."

Paid to Sprawl: Subsidized Job Flight from Cleveland and Cincinnati

Good Jobs First: "Many Ohio companies were awarded lucrative property tax breaks as they moved facilities around within the Cleveland and Cincinnati metro areas.  The subsidized relocations, affecting an estimated 14,500 workers, were overwhelmingly outward bound and by many measures fueled suburban sprawl and regional inequality. Full Report (11MB)."

Here are the numbers on Canada's direct subsidies to fossil-fuel industry

Oil Change International : "Each year, the Government of Canada hands out an average of $1.8 billion (CAD) in subsidies to oil, gas, and coal companies. The subsidies in the federal budget aren’t the only forms of public support that benefit Canada’s fossil fuel industry: government-owned Export Development Canada provides between $2.7 billion and $5.7 billion (CAD) in government-backed finance to oil and gas projects each year, largely to projects overseas.

That means billions of taxpayer dollars per year are being used to fuel the climate crisis and undermine clean energy development. And while Canada first committed to ending fossil fuel subsidies in 2009 as part of a commitment by all G20 governments, little progress has been made. In 2016, it’s way past time for these handouts to end."

More welfare for sprawl profiteers. Costs that don't come out of their profits.

The Repository - Canton, OH: "The Canton City Health Department and property owners are using such tactics to crack down on illegal dumping and keep hundreds of tires from piling up in yards, garages and living rooms."

The system of autos and sprawl creates a mess. The clean up creates costs that do not come out of the oil, auto, and sprawl profits. That is subsidy. Autosprawlsubsidy.


photo CantonRep.com/Scott Heckel

Let's get cars off welfare

The True Costs of Driving - The Atlantic: "A report published earlier this year confirms, in tremendous detail, a very basic fact of transportation that’s widely disbelieved: Drivers don’t come close to paying for the costs of the roads they use. Published jointly by the Frontier Group and the U.S. PIRG Education Fund, “Who Pays for Roads?” exposes the myth that drivers are covering what they’re using."

Coal industry made millions providing electricity to suburbs, now taxpayers will clean up the mess

dailykos: "Yet one thing that will certainly suffer is the company's ability to meet its obligations to reclaim land despoiled by mining. As Arch Coal begins the bankruptcy process, regulators and elected officials must do more to guarantee taxpayers are not left holding the bag for hundreds of millions of dollars in clean-up costs at Arch's coal mines, which have scarred the landscape, damaged critical watersheds, and added to the carbon pollution problems the Administration is working hard to address."