Heard of the “polluter pays” principle? Well, it turns out that governments around the world are “paying the polluters” instead. Government policies waste more than $500 billion a year of consumers' and taxpayers' money to subsidize deforestation, overfishing, and other environmentally destructive activities, according to a new report by the Worldwatch Institute, the organization that publishes the annual State of the World reports.

Entitled, Paying the Piper: Subsidies, Politics, and the Environment, the report by David Malin Roodman claims that eliminating these subsidies would make it possible to cut the global tax burden of $7.5 trillion a year by some 7 percent, encourage job creation and investment, and also reduce the economic damage caused by these subsidies — ranging from hospital bills for lung disease to the contamination of valuable water supplies.

The report is the first ever to examine environmentally harmful subsidies on a world scale. Not surprisingly, the U.S. government turns out to be a big subsidizer. For instance, the report says that American taxpayers pay $111 billion a year in road and driving related costs above and beyond what drivers pay in gas, car, and road taxes — a subsidy worth 70 cents for every gallon of gas or diesel fuel sold.

Also targeted are U.S. taxpayer funded resource extraction subsidies — such as for mining and logging — that are vestiges of another era and kept in place only by special interests. These outmoded subsidies were once given to small-time operators, but are now handed out to profitable multinational corporations.

The story of the farming sector is no different. Despite original intentions to support small family farms, 58 percent or $6.5 billion of U.S. agricultural support payments went to the top 15 percent of farms in 1991, those grossing over $100,000 a year. Farmers grossing between $50,000 and $100,000 received 26 percent or $2.9 billion of subsidies. The remaining 17 percent of the money, worth $1.9 billion, went to the smaller farms.

For press inquiries contact Mary Caron at Worldwatch at (202) 452-1992 x527. For a copy of the report call (202) 452-1992 x541. A press release is available on the Worldwatch web site at http://www.worldwatch.org/worldwatch

Landslide vote stops Barney Circle bridge

For now, this dinosaur is dead! On December 3, the D.C. City Council rejected by a vote of 12 to 1 a $15 million contract to begin construction of the $200 million Barney Circle Interstate bridge. The proposed project was one of 22 targeted in the Road to Ruin report co-released by TC$, Friends of the Earth and U.S. PIRG.