Dr. Matthew Wielicki’s article, “The $7 Trillion Lie,” is a scathing exposé of what may be one of the most brazen accounting tricks in the climate policy playbook. For years, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and its ideological allies have floated the claim that fossil fuels receive a jaw-dropping $7 trillion per year in global subsidies. But as Wielicki makes abundantly clear, this figure is not just inflated—it’s fabricated, repackaged propaganda masquerading as economic analysis.
“It is one of the most effective talking points in the climate activist arsenal… and one of the most dishonest,”
Wielicki states plainly. And he’s right. This dubious figure is the linchpin for green energy slush funds, carbon taxes, and regulatory overreach worldwide. It’s the rhetorical battering ram used to justify some of the most sweeping—and costly—interventions in modern economic history.
To understand the sleight of hand at play, Wielicki unpacks how this $7 trillion myth was born. Only a fraction of that amount—less than one-fifth—is actual government spending. “The rest? That’s where the con begins. It’s a clever sleight of hand…” he writes. Indeed, the majority of the number is built on “implicit subsidies”—a bureaucratic fiction concocted by economists to represent hypothetical costs, like the so-called “social cost of carbon.” These are not checks written to ExxonMobil; they are estimates loaded with assumptions and guesswork.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member