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The parallels are unmistakable.
The same practices employed by the tobacco industry to fool us into believing that smoking is harmless are being used today by the fossil fuel industry to convince us that global warming is either a hoax, fake science or a conspiracy perpetrated by the Left to justify government regulations.
Both Big Tobacco and Big Oil are willing to erase, distort and manipulate the truth to prevent concerns about individual and planetary well-being from eating into their profits. The question needs to be asked: Are we willing to be duped a second time?
Here's a little history.
In 2006 a Federal District Court ruled that tobacco companies were guilty of carrying out "a massive 50-year scheme to defraud the public" about the harmful effects of smoking. According to the ruling, "the defendants have falsely denied, distorted and minimized the significant adverse health consequences of smoking for decades."
As a remedy, the court ordered the tobacco companies to make a series of public statements telling the truth about 1) addiction, 2) smoking's adverse health effects, 3) the manipulation of cigarettes' designs to enhance nicotine delivery, 4) the adverse effects of exposure to secondhand smoke, and 5) the lie that light and low-tar cigarettes (developed to keep smokers from quitting) were less hazardous and a so-called healthier choice. Big Tobacco spent the next 11 years wrangling over wording, but recently, the ads have finally begun to appear.
The backstory is important. In 1953 the chief executives of six major tobacco companies called a meeting in response to a report that had just been issued by the American Cancer Society linking smoking to increased mortality. Their response is instructive. All copies of the damning report were destroyed, and a PR company was called in to manage any potential fallout. The PR folks advised the companies to sow doubts about the validity of these reports and, whenever possible, to fund their own research.
Thus began what turned out to be a successful disinformation campaign to convince the public that smoking was neither addictive nor harmful. For more than 40 years, Big Tobacco -- in league with "public relations flacks, corporate lawyers, scientists, politicians, and gullible media" -- worked to maintain the pretense that the link between smoking and cancer was tenuous and unproven. To this end, they established the prestigious-sounding Council for Scientific Research and staffed it with supposed "experts" who were willing to argue that smoking was a personal choice and that any link between smoking and cancer was subject to doubt. In addition, in an effort to recruit ever-younger smokers, they focused their attention on the social climate, arguing that those who opposed smoking were merely enforcers of a puritanical political correctness.
When asked where Big Tobacco crossed the line, an industry insider known only as Veritas answered, "When you commission the research and know the outcome, that's fraudulent. When you market that as the truth, that's evil."
Now examine the parallels between the campaigns waged by Big Tobacco and Big Oil. In both cases:
r Some of the same "experts" worked on these respective campaigns. Both Frederick Seitz and Fred Singer, scientists associated with the conservative think tank, the George C. Marshall Institute, worked for the tobacco industry to cast doubt on the connection between smoking and cancer. Both were also instrumental in attacking the claim made in 1996 by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that "The balance of evidence suggests that there is a discernible human influence on global climate." Both men used the power they had accrued by virtue of their scientific work during the Cold War to promulgate a political agenda that ironically encouraged them to betray their scientific principles.
r The scientific view came to be seen as "alarmist," while that of the deniers was viewed as "objective" and "reasoned."
r A vast network was created and then utilized to sow doubt and promote ideas sympathetic to the interests of industry. (See Dark Money by Jane Mayer, and Merchants of Doubt by Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway.)
r Information was erased, distorted, and only selectively delivered to the American public.
r In an effort to present a "balanced" view, the media gave equal space to scientific fact, on the one hand, and to falsification and politicized dissent, on the other. On issues in which the scientific consensus was/is robust and compelling, media sources have insisted on presenting two sides of a "debate."
And what is perhaps most disturbing: In both cases, the industry in question was aware of the relevant scientific findings early on, and nevertheless persisted in manipulating the data so that the evidence would not negatively impact their profits. Exxon, for one, knew about the damaging effects of fossil fuels on the environment as early as 1977, according to an article in Scientific American. Since that time, the company has spent more than $240 million on public relations and the denial of climate change.
And they are not alone. A memo created by a coalition of fossil fuel companies, discovered by the Union of Concerned Scientists, "pledge(d) basically to launch a big communications effort to sow doubt … there's even a quote in it that says something like 'Victory will be achieved when the average person is uncertain about climate science.' So it's pretty stark."
The differences, of course, are obvious. Big Tobacco spent half a century harming the health of individuals.
Big Oil's impact promises to be planetary. And the American people, with access to an enormous supply of information, are no longer as naive. We may have fallen for these deceptions once, but now we have the resources, and the responsibility, to uncover the truth.
We have no excuse if we have to explain, at some point down the road, that we were able to be fooled a second time.
Karen Elias retired from teaching college English and is now a Lock Haven based freelance writer, activist and volunteer.