[In celebration of Earth Month, please enjoy this article from Mark Mizen, who is part of the C3 (Central Cares for Creation) Team]
At first glance, cigarettes and climate change seem unrelated. The facts couldn’t be more different. Big companies learned to distort science and create doubt even when none existed to prevent restrictions on smoking. Corporations then applied the lessons learned from cigarettes to global warming. Many of the same people and organizations were involved in both efforts.
Scientists are not exempt from the pitfalls of greed, luxury, and the pursuit of power. When the cigarette and oil industries wanted to prevent regulation, they found a few willing collaborators:
- A physicist and former president of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences worked with R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. to discredit health science linking smoking to cancer and later became one of the earliest and loudest climate denial voices, helping launch the Oregon Petition, which falsely claimed thousands of scientists rejected global warming.
- An atmospheric physicist argued against secondhand smoke dangers, often testifying before Congress and in public forums. He became a prolific climate change skeptic, founding the Science and Environmental Policy Project (SEPP), which questioned the validity of climate science.
The goal of these scientists was not to disprove global warming or the harm of cigarettes. Instead, it was to create doubt and argue that more research was needed even when the underlying science was clear. Their objective was to shift blame away from corporate interests and prevent laws that would reduce corporate profits.
Eventually, the legal system prevailed against the cigarette industry, winning lawsuits and creating a favorable environment for laws restricting smoking. We can only hope the same processes will eventually restrain the fossil fuel industry in its pursuit of more profits.
For more details on the relationship between cigarette manufacturers and climate denial, see Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway, Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Climate Change, 2011 (also available on video) and David Lipsky, The Parrot and the Igloo: Climate and the Science of Denial, 2023.