Here are disturbing numbers from the International Energy Agency (IEA) and World on the Edge: How to Prevent Environmental and Economic Collapse, by Lester R. Brown, and its excerpt ‘Governments Spend $1.4 Billion Per Day to Destabilize Climate’ released by Earth Policy Institute on Jan. 19, 2012. First, Culture Change provides critical comment:

It is a public service that Worldwatch Institute founder Lester Brown, now with his Earth Policy Institute, has helped expose the huge, ongoing financial subsidies to fossil fuels industries. Governments’ and corporations’ persisting with this policy — legal corruption of the worst order at a time of out-of-control climate change — is nothing short of insane or criminal.

However, before presenting the IEA’s findings as reported by Lester Brown, a discussion of the underlying agenda or worldview of the orientation of the IEA and Earth Policy Institute ought to be considered. First, the IEA, representing the top 34 industrial economies through its sponsoring group Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, can be said to be waking up to peak oil and the dangers of climate change. So its work is more focused in recent years.

Second, an analyst and advocate such as Brown is so right on so many issues […]