This report on The Hill suggests that market forces would be sufficient to drastically reduce the consumption of fossil fuels. I disagree.

The author argues that the price of fossil fuels is very heavily subsidised by governments, allowing oil, coal and gas to out-compete renewable energy, keeping the world hooked on such polluting resources, and that eliminating these subsidies would make fossil fuels uncompetitive. This is unarguable.

My problems with the suggested approach to rebalancing energy markets using market forces are:

1. It is too slow. It will take time to cancel the subsidies, and will be hard to do because the industry has huge political leverage, and there will be fall-out on employment. This is time that we do not have.
2. Even if fossil fuel usage is drastically reduced, the damage to the environment, health and quality of life has already been done, and the repair of that damage needs to be paid for.
3. The fossil fuel industry deliberately lied to us about the risks of climate change for decades, and they should be punished.

We have never paid the true cost of fossil fuels, because of the subsidies, and because of the costs due to pollution that have always been paid by others (mainly governments and the populace at large).

Paying the true cost means not only removing subsidies, but also charging the industry for the costs to us all of using this source of energy.