Talking Fossil Fuels with Doug Koplow
March 23, 2023 | Limelight Aspen, 6pm, doors open 5:30pm
The International Monetary Fund reports that globally, there are almost $6 trillion in fossil fuel subsidies. But isn’t this the most profitable industry in the history of commerce? One of the world’s leading experts on fossil fuel subsidies, Doug Koplow, will dig in on this critical, under-the-radar, bipartisan subject. Join Doug as he digs into US fossil fuel subsidies and explores how global subsidies to multiple sectors affect water depletion, overfishing, timbering, and agriculture, and are an important factor in the loss of biodiversity around the world.
Doug Koplow is the founder of Earth Track in Cambridge, MA. For more than three decades, he has worked with environmental groups and international agencies to identify and measure environmentally harmful subsidies to natural resource extraction, and to document their pervasive reach and enormous scale. Redirecting these hundreds of billions of dollars per year is increasingly recognized as an important lever for reducing poverty, transitioning to cleaner energy, and addressing climate change. His recent work has centered on the fossil fuel sector, as well as the role that subsidies to multiple sectors at once pose to global biodiversity. He holds an MBA from the Harvard Business School and a BA in economics from Wesleyan University.