The Full Cost of Fossil Fuels

A new report from the Center for Health and the Human Environment demonstrates clearly that the low price of fossil fuels hides the true cost of the environmental and social damage they cause. The focus of the report is on coal, but the same analysis can be made for oil, natural gas, or other fossil fuels. The environmental, social, and economics costs are immense, as detailed in a 2009 report by Environment America. This does not include the costs to national security and foreign relations, where America's strategic interests are intimately tied to its fossil fuel dependence.

Economic arguments against a concerted and rapid move toward renewable energy sources essentially fall flat when we take these full costs into consideration. And these arguments are only half of the story: minimizing costs has never been and never should be the sole or overriding consideration for how we use energy. As people of faith, we are keenly aware of the moral and spiritual consequences and motivations of our decisions and behavior, and these considerations should weigh just as heavily as economics on our thinking and action. But as this new report shows, translating these considerations into the realm of economics shows just how expensive fossil fuels really are to our environment, our health, and frankly, to our souls.