The Subsidy Scandal: How Your Government Wastes Your Money to Wreck Your Environment

by Charlie Pye-Smith

Governments spend trillions every year on subsidies to a whole host of industries, ranging from agriculture to mining, energy to transport. Subsidies are supposed to contribute to the public good, but do they? In the vast majority of cases, the money, much of it derived from public taxes, is not merely wasted, it is used to wreck the environment. All too often, subsidies go to those who least need them -- frequently to corporations and special interest groups which recycle some of the funds to support the politicians who keep the subsidies going.

Charlie Pye-Smith has written a riveting and eye-opening book on this huge racket. Based on research in North America, with examples from Europe and elsewhere, "The Subsidy Scandal" "follows the money" to find out where it goes and what it produces.

Pye-Smith's travels are vibrantly illuminated by interviews with bureaucrats, politicians, loggers, farmers, miners, fishermen, industrialists and environmentalists, and with their help he tells stories of such economic absurdity and environmental vandalism, as would barely be credible if they weren't true.

"The Subsidy Scandal" raises major questions about the way we are governed -- and misgoverned -- and highlights the need for urgent, world-wide reform.

250 pages, Hardcover

First published September 20, 2002

About the author

Charlie Pye-Smith is a writer and broadcaster who has contributed to the BBC, Financial Times, Daily Telegraph and New Scientist, among others. He has written numerous books, including The Facts of Rural Life, The Other Nile, Travels in Nepal, Rebels and Outcasts, In Search of Wild India and The Subsidy Scandal and he co-authored Working the Land and The Wealth of Communities. He is based in London and reports regularly on global farming and environmental issues for international research and development agencies.