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The new documentary springs from the 2010 eponymous book by historians Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway. The film (and the book before it) lays out how the fossil-fuel industry funds talking heads to sow confusion about climate change in a deliberate imitation of the successful doubt-sowing tactics of the tobacco industry. That industry famously employed experts in public relations, starting with venerable PR firm Hill+Knowlton, to cast doubt on the idea that smoking causes lung cancer or that nicotine was addictive, tactics that delayed regulation of the tobacco industry for decades.
Sowing these doubts ensured at least 50 years worth of profits on tobacco and condemned millions of smokers to a premature death in the U.S. The success of that effort has led a host of industries with environmental or health problems—asbestos, chemicals, coal and pharmaceuticals, among others—to adopt this playbook to protect their profits.
There may be no bigger PR problem than climate change. The fossil-fuel industry perceives it as a war on coal and oil. So step one in the successful tobacco playbook is to suggest that more data is needed to confirm any link between the carbon dioxide spewed from fossil-fuel burning and global warming.
More at the link.
