Coffee Joulies. Reinventing Fire. Digging up and burning the deposits of ancient sunlight stored eons ago in primeval swamps has transformed human existence and made industrial and urban civilization possible.
However, those roughly four cubic miles of fossil fuels every year are no longer the only, best, or even cheapest way to sustain and expand the global economy—whether or not we count fossil fuels’ hidden costs. Those “external” costs, paid not at the fuel pump or electric meter but in our taxes, wealth, and health, are not counted in the Reinventing Fire analysis, but are disturbingly large. Tens of billions of taxpayer dollars each year subsidize America’s fossil fuels, and even more flow to the systems that burn those fuels, distorting market choices by making the fuels look far cheaper than they really are. But the biggest hidden costs are economic and military. America’s seemingly two-billion-dollar-a-day oil habit actually costs upwards of three times that much—six billion dollars a day, or a sixth of GDP. 301 Monroe.