Tobacco Playbk doubt

belated? redumbdent?

not just doubt eg state level law to overcome local ordinances (soda)

DOUBT CORROLLORY: DELAY IS A WIN  SEE FALLBACKS:

1) it's not real

2) it's real but just natural variation (sunspots, medieval ice age...)

3) it's real and human caused, but too expensive to fix (wreck economy)

3a) Lomborg: more efficient to do Y  (or do evil in the guise/name of green: frack, nuke)

3b: wheeler many decades out, 3rd world clean water (ignores that coal poisons am water/kids, coal ash, arsenic...)

https://www.motherjones.com/environment**/2022/03**/environmentalist-lawyer-fighting-protect-big-oil-litigation-astroturf-phil-goldberg-map/

NO lnx guk?

in the spring of 2019, Phil Goldberg, a lawyer and hired gun for a front organization serving some of America’s most powerful oil firms, spotted an opportunity to serve his masters.

The University of Hawaii was holding a conference about a wave of lawsuits against the oil industry, and Goldberg was alarmed the event failed to include representatives from the energy business. So the day before the symposium, he fired off an email to the university demanding that big oil be heard alongside its critics.

The event was to interrogate the oil industry’s decades-long cover-up involving the climate crisis. But a one-sided debate, Goldberg wrote, “does students and the general public a significant disservice.” He insisted the meeting be postponed.

Denise Antolini, associate dean at the university’s law school who organized the conference, said in her 23-year-career as a law professor, she had never received such demands. “Your request to disrupt our public event was quite surprising, especially coming from far across the continent, from someone I’ve never heard of, on behalf of a private client with an apparently direct financial interest in chilling debate about climate litigation,” she replied.

The conference went ahead, but Goldberg chalked up his intervention as a win. He had managed to pressure Antolini into reciting his objections to the conference in her opening statement. He also convinced the university to post his blogs on its website alongside a letter published by the Honolulu Star-Advertiser denouncing the meeting for daring to suggest there was a solid legal case against the oil companies.

Goldberg is part of a network of enablers working to preserve big oil’s power and reputation as it faces a barrage of litigation. More than two dozen cities, states and municipalities allege the industry lied to Americans for decades by downplaying and outright denying that fossil fuels caused climate change. The lawsuits demand companies use some of their vast profits to help pay for the human toll of the climate crisis, including the damage brought by rising seas and increasingly severe weather disasters.

Big Oil “has this ability to really take command of the societal narrative on a whole level that the tobacco industry just didn’t.”

Desperate to avoid costly settlements, the fossil fuel industry relies on front organizations to discredit the litigation and sway public opinion in its favor. So nearly three years ago, the friends of big oil turned to Goldberg, a former Democratic congressional aide and self-described “committed environmentalist,” HIPPIE CHICK to persuade Americans that the companies responsible for the growing climate disaster are now the ones to fix the problem.

Though Goldberg heads an ostensibly independent initiative called the Manufacturers Accountability Project, much of its funding comes from some of the biggest names in the oil business. MAP hired Goldberg to push back against litigation on the fossil fuel industry’s behalf,allowing oil companies to keep their hands clean in the process.

Goldberg is leading a charge in local media to discredit those suing the fossil fuel industry as a “fringe litigation movement” conspiracy of opportunistic politicians, environmental extremists, and money-grasping lawyers who pose a threat to the American way of life. // ENTINE

“There are two goals of this litigation—drive climate policy and wage a public relations campaign against the energy industry,” Goldberg told the Guardian. “It has no foundation legally and, more to the point, is not the right way to fight climate change.” LOMBORGIAN

Karen Sokol, a law professor at Loyola University who specializes in climate litigation, likens the strategy to that pursued by the tobacco industry when it faced litigation over what it knew about cigarettes causing lung cancer. But, she said, the strategy may prove more successful for big oil.

“The fossil fuel industry has this ability to really take command of the societal narrative on a whole level that the tobacco industry just didn’t because, although we were definitely a cigarette culture for a time, not everybody was so dependent on cigarettes in the same way we are on fossil fuels,” she said.

Kert Davies, founder and director of Climate Investigations Center, is scathing about Goldberg’s part in that. “Phil Goldberg is a useful pawn on a much larger chessboard. If he doesn’t know that, it’s a shame,” Davies said. “If he does know his role, it’s worse.”

Outwardly, Goldberg seems an unusual bearer of the torch to snuff out climate lawsuits. The New Jersey-born lawyer characterizes himself as a “progressive, pro-environmentalist” with a long commitment to Democratic causes. With that, he has positioned himself as a voice of reason as he leads the fossil fuel industry’s campaign to distract Americans from the scene of the crime and embrace big oil as a necessity in the struggle to contain global heating.

But Goldberg is also a former coal lobbyist now working as an attorney for a Kansas City law firm—Shook, Hardy and Bacon—that made its name decades ago as the cigarette industry’s attack dog. The legal practice even gained public notoriety for inspiring the fictional law firm of Smoot, Hawking in the satirical book turned film, Thank You for Smoking.

“What a sad and disquieting chapter in the history of an honorable and often courageous profession.”

Shook, Hardy pioneered a strategy toward avoiding corporate accountability—a denial strategy the oil companies followed not many years later. Starting in the mid-80s, the firm convinced cigarette companies to shut down research into the dangers of nicotine, warning it could be used against them in court. It also hired specialists with advanced scientific degrees to cast doubt on the evidence that smoking causes lung cancer. The firm’s lawyers soon developed a reputation for probing the lives of people who dared to sue the tobacco firms and for using court procedure to draw out cases until plaintiffs ran out of funds.

All of this so disgusted one federaljudge, Gladys Kessler, that in a damning 2006 civil judgment against the cigarette makers she said Shook, Hardy and other firms played “an absolutely central role in the creation and perpetuation” of a 50-year campaign of deceit.

“They devised and coordinated both national and international strategy; they directed scientists as to what research they should and should not undertake; they vetted scientific research papers and reports as well as public relations materials to ensure that the interests of the (tobacco industry) would be protected,” she wrote. “What a sad and disquieting chapter in the history of an honorable and often courageous profession.”

The chapter cemented Shook, Hardy’s reputation for vigorously defending clients and drew other contentious industries to the firm. And since joining Shook, Hardy in 2003, Goldberg has lived up to its reputation for playing hardball.

Throughout his career, Goldberg has developed an expertise at combatting public accountability lawsuits on the behalf of many embattled corporate clients, includingcoal companies, the asbestos industry, and pharmaceutical companies accused of medical malpractice.

Goldberg has also advised the American Legislative Exchange Council on drafting laws to make it harder to sue big corporations.

Simultaneously over the last two decades, he has led a wing of the Democratic think tank, the Progressive Policy Institute, that works to protect corporations from lawsuits and to keep regulatory changes in the hands of politicians who can be influenced by industry money and lobbyists. Goldberg has also advised the right-wing American Legislative Exchange Council on drafting laws to make it harder to sue big corporations.

Goldberg’s current defense of the fossil-fuel industry is equally focused.He deflects questions about Big Oil’s cover-up of its own scientific research on global heating by claiming that raking over the past is not going to help find solutions to the climate crisis. He also avoids answering questions about parallels with the tobacco industry’s actions.

Instead, Goldberg has sought to nurture a progressive image with claims to be dedicated to the climate fight but concerned that suing oil companies is getting in the way of solutions. He goes out of his way to say that he “cares deeply about climate change” and, in his answers, returns repeatedly to “the important work that needs to be done on the climate.”

This image was carried through to the Guardian‘s photographs for this article, which Goldberg agreed to pose for only while riding his bicycle. He declined to remove his helmet for any of the pictures.

Today, Goldberg is at the face of a PR campaign to squash climate litigation against Big Oil. He calls his strategy the “iron triangle defense.” One side of the triangle is dedicated toward shaping the public narrative, the second is for pressuring legislatures to write laws that discourage corporate accountability litigation, and the third side influences the judicial process with amicus briefs in cases that might have a bearing on those lawsuits.

A key part of the iron triangle strategy is that its beneficiaries should not be seen as the ones who are pulling the strings. Corporations fighting legal battles learned long ago that Americans are not particularly trustful of executives in suits. So major industries seek to influence public opinion and political action by funding front organizations to work on the behalf of corporate interests, but under a different name.

It was an obvious move for the fossil-fuel industry to turn toward front groups as it grew increasingly alarmed in recent years at a surge in lawsuits demanding compensation for damage caused by the climate crisis. Oil executives feared a repeat of the tobacco industry’s fate when public opinion turned sharply against the cigarette makers, forcing the largest civil settlement in US history.

“Say a new locality files a suit … Suddenly the local press is infiltrated with Goldberg quotes. He fires out op-eds.”

Major oil firms, including Exxon, Shell and Chevron, looked to the National Association of Manufacturers, one of the US’s most powerful business lobby groups, with a long history of creating front organizations at the behest of various industries, to help“combat frivolous, politically motivated lawsuitsagainst energy manufacturers.”

Four years ago, NAM launched a group, the Manufacturers Accountability Project, to take the campaign in defense of big oil on to the streets and into the local media. A year later, it recruited Goldberg to lead the initiative. While much of their strategy is an attempt to intimidate litigants through the legal process, Goldberg’s role is to take the fight to local communities in an attempt to mold public opinion—and potential jurors—before the cases come to court.

From local newspapers to NPR, Goldberg pushes arguments designed to deflect from the fossil fuel industry’s responsibility for the climate crisis. “Those of us who care deeply about climate change, our economy, and our way of life must focus our elected leaders on game-changing innovations, not these politically-driven litigations,” he wrote in the New Jersey Globe after three New Jersey senators pressed the state to sue Big Oil to pay up for the costs caused by their deceptions.

Goldberg has pursued similar lines after the attorneys general of Vermont and Connecticut filed cases against the oil industry. “We should be fighting climate change instead of each other,” he reasoned in the local press.

Sokol, the law professor and climate litigation specialist, said she saw Goldberg’s intervention tactics everywhere there is a lawsuit against the fossil fuel industry. “Say a new locality files a suit… Suddenly the local press is infiltrated with Goldberg quotes. He fires out op-eds,” she said. “It’s a concerted battle against this litigation, which in many ways is a testament to how powerful the industry suspects this could be if it’s allowed to have its day in court.”

Still, even in Goldberg’s home state, there are plenty who are not buying it. In 2020, three New Jersey state senators pressed the state to sue Big Oil to pay up for the past and present costs caused by their deceptions.

“Rather than alert the public and help usher in the transition to clean energy, big oil took a page out of big tobacco’s playbook and funded and led a decades-long campaign to lie, deceive, and confuse the public about the science of climate change,” two of the senators, one Democrat and one Republican, wrote in USA Today. “It’s only fair that these fossil fuel companies who got rich while igniting the climate crisis are made to pay their fair share of the costs to our communities.”

see lomborg shuffle (clintel covid fight covid not carbon) ALSO SHILLENBERGER

820 aha: this is variant last stage of fallback strategy: 1) not real  2) real but not anthro  3)  agw but too expensive to fix (wreck gnp) 4: we can afford to fix it, but we must be smart/targeted w/ $  4a we cvan't really afford to fix big global warming, but we can do smaller green humanitarian stuff [WHEELER CLEAN WATER IN 3RD WORLD] that will make some ppl's lives better and might let us move incrementally to fix climate [and BTW the worst effect/chaos in in far future if ever]

evil crypto because to promotes denial IN THE NAME OF  humanitarianism/ EJ when in fact poor POC in 3rd world will the hit 1st and worst, and have least ability to cope and made least contribution to the problem

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https://www.desmog.com/2022/12/09/pesticide-industry-science-denial-monsanto-glyphosate-cancer/

As regulators in the United States and European Union prepare to review and potentially reauthorize the controversial weedkiller glyphosate, anew report reveals the stealth tactics and narrative spin deployed by the chemical’s manufacturer to discredit inconvenient science and protect profits.

The report, published by Friends of the Earth and nonprofit investigative organization U.S. Right to Know, uses the case study of Monsanto (now owned by Bayer) and its widely used glyphosate-based product Roundup to illustrate the pesticide industry’sdeceptive tactics and communications strategies — which mirror those of the tobacco and fossil fuel industries.

“The pesticide industry is not just following in the footsteps of Big Tobacco and Big Oil, they co-wrote the playbook,” Stacy Malkan, lead report author and co-founder of U.S. Right to Know, said.

The pesticide industry used this PR strategy, which involves tactics like distorting science and disseminating misleading messaging through third party allies, to convince regulators and the public that its products were safe and necessary, the report explains.

“This case study provides an important window into how one company worked with many partners across the pesticide and processed food industries, academia, PR firms, and various front groups to sell the world on a toxic pesticide,”said author and advocate Anna Lappé, who contributed to the report. “These disinformation tactics are critical to understand because they have been used to push the entwined myths that we need pesticides to ‘feed the world’ and that they are totally safe.”

Despite mounting scientific evidence of their harms to human health and the environment, pesticides have proliferated, withglobal usage up by about 80 percent since 1990. The most widely used pesticide in the world is Roundup, which is alleged to have caused cancers. Litigation over this cancer link is ongoing, spurred by a 2015 finding from the World Health Organization’s cancer research arm classifying the chemical as a probable human carcinogen.

[twt]

the report, released December 5, brings together internal corporate documents revealed through this litigation, as well as documents obtained through public records requests filed by U.S. Right to Know, to illuminate the extensive campaign by one of the world’s leading pesticide manufacturers — Monsanto, acquired by Bayer in 2018 — to disseminate disinformation and manipulate science regarding the health and environmental impacts of glyphosate.

These strategies have been “used by the pesticide industry for decades now and [their] impact on public health is enormous,” Nathan Donley, PhD, environmental health science director at the Center for Biological Diversity, told DeSmog via email.

Litigation concerning the health hazards of various pesticides, including glyphosate, stems from companies hijacking the regulatory process, he explained. “This can happen multiple ways, from pressuring decision makers at the EPA to producing enormous amounts of biased data that guide the actions of regulators. It’s been very effective unfortunately.”

For example, as noted in the report, under pressure from Monsanto in 1986, EPA overturned its own decision made the previous year to classify glyphosate as a possible human carcinogen. To this day, EPA maintains the position that glyphosate is not carcinogenic and does not pose human health risks if used according to its label. However, the agency is planning to conduct a new review of the chemical after a federal appeals courtstruck down EPA’s previous designation of glyphosate as benign. 

The report found that over a five-year period, seven front groups with links to Monsanto spent $76 million “to push corporate disinformation, including attacks on scientists.” During that same period, six industry trade associations that appear in Monsanto PR papers spent $1.3 billion, including on lobbying and PR around glyphosate regulation.

It also argues that the pesticide industry’s current business model “would not be possible if pesticide products were subject to rigorous, independent research and if there were widespread public understanding of the harms and risks of many of these products.”

“It’s clear from this report and all the work that’s been done in this field that corporate influence in science-based decision-making is way too common,” said Genna Reed, director of policy analysis in the Center for Science and Democracy at the Union of Concerned Scientists, and lead author of a2021 study exploring ways to protect scientific integrity from the corporate “disinformation playbook.”

“This isn’t just a wonky policy problem,” Reed added. “This is a massive institutional rot that needs to be fixed to protect public health.”

Fossil Fuel and Pesticide Industry Parallels

In addition to pressuring regulators, Monsanto deployed other strategies to discredit evidence of health and environmental harms of its glyphosate-based product. The report found that Monsanto undermined or even shaped the science, attacked public health experts, bought influence at academic institutions, and used third party messengers to pollute the public discourse. These are the same strategies — and in some instances involved the same actors — that the tobacco and fossil fuel industries used to generate doubt and to deceive the public about the harmful consequences of their products.

According to the report, Monsanto covertly contributed to the scientific literature examining the health risks of glyphosate, ghostwriting papers in toxicology journals, including an influential paper published in April 2000 that concluded that glyphosate-based Roundup “does not pose a health risk to humans.” Internal company emails reveal that Monsanto employees played critical roles in data collection, drafting, editing, and relationship-building with the paper’s authors. In the wake of the 2015 glyphosate classification from the World Health Organization’s cancer research agency, Monsanto ghostwrote scientific manuscripts published in a prestigious journal as an “independent review” on the science of glyphosate. The company also orchestrated a campaign to intimidate cancer researchers and enlist Republican lawmakers to try to defund the World Health Organization’s cancer research arm.  

[twt]

monsanto’s influence extended to academia.The report details how the company funded academics and universities to promote educational messaging supportive of pesticides and genetically engineered organisms (GMOs) — seed traits designed to resist toxic chemicals. Emails obtained from records requests reveal that the University of Florida, for example, “had plans for ‘educating the masses’ about GMOs and pesticides with messaging that was ‘harmonious’ with Monsanto’s,” Malkan explained.

This co-opting of academia was part of a larger pro-pesticide PR strategy. As the report explains, PR firms that helped Monsanto defend glyphosate and promote GMOs have worked with other polluting industries, including tobacco and fossil fuels. For example,FTI Consulting, which has worked extensively with the oil and gas industry, has also worked closely with Monsanto/Bayer to discredit the science on glyphosate.

Furthermore, as the report details, one industry front group that worked to attack cancer scientists and dispute the evidence linking glyphosate to cancer was the Genetic Literacy Project. Its founder Jon Entine has worked in defense of chemicals, plastics, fracking, and oil companies, and the group’s funding sources “trace back to some of the largest, most consistent funders of climate science denial.” These include foundations like Donors Trust, Scaife Foundation, and Charles Koch Foundation. Other institutions that engaged in climate denial — including Competitive Enterprise Institute,Heartland Institute,Cato Institute, andCommittee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT) — also attacked scientists who raised concerns over glyphosate, according to the report.

“This is not surprising since nearly all agricultural chemicals are derived from fossil fuels,” Malkan said, adding that both industries are continuing to mislead the public in portraying their business or products as essential to climate and sustainability solutions.

“Just like Big Oil, pesticide companies are using disinformation tactics to push false solutions for the climate crisis, and stalling action on real solutions,” Malkan added. ADeSmog investigation published in November 2020 described how pesticide companies are now marketing themselves as climate-friendly.

“Pesticide companies are desperately trying to, and in many instances are successfully greenwashing the poisons they make billions of dollars selling,” Lori Ann Burd, senior attorney and environmental health program director at Center for Biological Diversity, said via email. She added that many U.S. government officials have adopted the pesticides industry’s position that their products are necessary.

“USDA, EPA and many members of Congress have largely bought in to industry rhetoric that dangerous pesticides are essential tools for feeding Americans, ignoring the reality that many countries, including Brazil, China and nations within the E.U. continue to eat despite having banned dangerous pesticides that are still widely used in the U.S.,” she explained. UN human rights experts have also pushed back against the claim that pesticides are necessary to feed the world.

Bayer did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the report.

Countering the Disinformation Playbook

The report concludes with some recommendations and steps to take to counter the pesticide industry disinformation playbook. According to this advice, which is aligned with that of other experts in fighting disinformation, exposing the tactics and strategies and enforcing strong disclosure and accountability rules are important steps to mitigate undue industry influence.

“We need to continue to shine a light on these practices and actively work on policies that can serve as firewalls,” Reed of the Union of Concerned Scientists said.

Other recommendations include challenging corporate influence in academia and holding PR firms accountable. Just as there are now campaigns to do just that for fossil fuels, the report calls for similar action and pressure for combatting pesticide industry influence and enablers.

“While the propaganda tactics of Big Oil and Big Tobacco are well-documented and their grave impacts well understood, the pesticide industry’s similar role in widespread disinformation, and its extensive scope and impact, has not been as well documented or publicly understood. We hope this report, and the chorus of recent reporting, will change that,” the report states.

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https://insideclimatenews.org/news/22102015/Exxon-Sowed-Doubt-about-Climate-Science-for-Decades-by-Stressing-Uncertainty/

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2015 report

https://thenarwhal.ca/research-confirms-exxonmobil-koch-funded-climate-denial-echo-chamber-polluted-mainstream-media/

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https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-53640382

no lnx doc

How the oil industry made us doubt climate change

Published

20 September 2020

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Cigarette and oil illustration

By Phoebe Keane

BBC News

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As climate change becomes a focus of the US election, energy companies stand accused of trying to downplay their contribution to global warming. In June, Minnesota's Attorney General sued ExxonMobil, among others, for launching a "campaign of deception" which deliberately tried to undermine the science supporting global warming. So what's behind these claims? And what links them to how the tobacco industry tried to dismiss the harms of smoking decades earlier?

To understand what's happening today, we need to go back nearly 40 years.

Marty Hoffert leaned closer to his computer screen. He couldn't quite believe what he was seeing. It was 1981, and he was working in an area of science considered niche.

"We were just a group of geeks with some great computers," he says now, recalling that moment.

But his findings were alarming.

"I created a model that showed the Earth would be warming very significantly. And the warming would introduce climatic changes that would be unprecedented in human history. That blew my mind."

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A climate change protester outside the New York State Supreme Court building on the first day of the ExxonMobil trial on 22 October, 2019

IMAGE SOURCE,GETTY IMAGES

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A climate change protester outside the New York State Supreme Court during the ExxonMobil trial in October, 2019

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Marty Hoffert was one of the first scientists to create a model which predicted the effects of man-made climate change. And he did so while working for Exxon, one of the world's largest oil companies, which would later merge with another, Mobil.

At the time Exxon was spending millions of dollars on ground-breaking research. It wanted to lead the charge as scientists grappled with the emerging understanding that the warming planet could cause the climate to change in ways that could make life pretty difficult for humans.

Hoffert shared his predictions with his managers, showing them what might happen if we continued burning fossil fuels in our cars, trucks and planes.

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Martin Hoffert

IMAGE SOURCE,COURTESY OF NEW YORK UNIVERSITY

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Martin Hoffert

But he noticed a clash between Exxon's own findings, and public statements made by company bosses, such as the then chief executive Lee Raymond, who said that "currently, the scientific evidence is inconclusive as to whether human activities are having a significant effect on the global climate".

"They were saying things that were contradicting their own world-class research groups," said Hoffert.

Angry, he left Exxon, and went on to become a leading academic in the field.

"What they did was immoral. They spread doubt about the dangers of climate change when their own researchers were confirming how serious a threat it was."

So what changed? The record-breaking hot summer of 1988 was key. Big news in America, it gave extra weight to warnings from Nasa scientist Dr Jim Hansen that "the greenhouse effect has been detected, and is changing our climate now".

Political leaders took notice. Then UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher acknowledged the great new global threat: "The environmental challenge which confronts the whole world demands an equivalent response from the whole world."

In 1989, Exxon's strategy chief Duane Levine drew up a confidential presentation for the company's board, one of thousands of documents in the company's archive which were later donated to The University of Texas at Austin.

Levine's presentation is an important document, often cited by researchers investigating Exxon's record on climate change science.

"We're starting to hear the inevitable call for action," it said, which risked what it called "irreversible and costly draconian steps".

"More rational responses will require efforts to extend the science and increase emphasis on costs and political realities."

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How they made us doubt everything

How they made us doubt everything investigates how some of the world's most powerful interests made us doubt the connection between smoking and cancer, and how the same tactics were used to make us doubt climate change.

Listen to the podcast from BBC Radio 4 here

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Kert Davies has scoured through Exxon's archive. He used to work as a research director at the environmental pressure group Greenpeace, where he looked into corporate opposition to climate change. This inspired him to set up The Climate Investigations Centre. He explains why this Exxon presentation mattered:

"They are worried the public will take this on, and enact radical changes in the way we use energy and affect their business, that's the bottom line."

He says this fear can also be seen in another document from the archive that sets out the so-called "Exxon position", which was to "emphasise the uncertainty" regarding climate change.

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Exxon position

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Researchers argue this was just the start of a decades-long campaign to shape public opinion and to spread doubt about climate change.

In June 2020, the General Attorney of Minnesota Keith Ellison sued ExxonMobil, the American Petroleum Institute (API) and Koch Industries for misleading the public over climate change. The lawsuit claims that "previously unknown internal documents confirm that the defendant well understood the devastating effects that their products would cause to the climate".

It says that despite this knowledge, the industry "engaged in a public-relations campaign that was not only false, but also highly effective," which served to "deliberately [undermine] the science" of climate change.

The accusations against Exxon and others - which the company has called "baseless and without merit" - build on years of painstaking research by people like Kert Davies and Naomi Oreskes, professor of the history of science at Harvard University and co-author of Merchants of Doubt.

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Naomi Oreskes

IMAGE SOURCE,GETTY IMAGES

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Naomi Oreskes

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"Rather than accept the scientific evidence, they made the decision to fight the facts," she said.

But this isn't just about Exxon's past actions. In the same year as the Levine presentation, 1989, many energy companies and fossil fuel dependent industries came together to form the Global Climate Coalition, which aggressively lobbied US politicians and media.

Then in 1991, the trade body that represents electrical companies in the US, the Edison Electric Institute, created a campaign called the Information Council for the Environment (ICE) which aimed to "Reposition global warming as theory (not fact)". Some details of the campaign were leaked to the New York Times.

"They ran advertising campaigns designed to undermine public support, cherry picking the data to say, 'Well if the world is warming up, why is Kentucky getting colder?' They asked rhetorical questions designed to create confusion, to create doubt," argued Naomi Oreskes.

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Global warming

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The ICE campaign identified two groups which would be most susceptible to its messaging. The first was "older, lesser educated males from larger households who are not typically information seekers".

The second group was "younger, low-income women," who could be targeted with bespoke adverts which would liken those who talked about climate change to a hysterical doom-saying cartoon chicken.

The Edison Electric Institute didn't respond to questions about ICE, but told the BBC that its members are "leading a clean energy transformation, and are united in their commitment to get the energy they provide as clean as they can, as fast as they can".

But back in the 1990 there were many campaigns like this.

"Unless 'climate change' becomes a non-issue," says another, leaked to the New York Times in 1997, "there may be no moment when we can declare victory".

To achieve victory, the industry planned to "identify, recruit and train a team of five independent scientists to participate in media outreach".

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Exxon sign

IMAGE SOURCE,GETTY IMAGES

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This important tactic assumed the public would be suspicious if oil industry executives dismissed climate change, but might trust the views of seemingly independent scientists.

These would be put forward to take part in debates on TV, potentially confusing a general audience who would see opposing scientists in white coats arguing about complex technical details without knowing who to believe.

The problem was, sometimes these "white coats" weren't truly independent. Some climate sceptic researchers were taking money from the oil industry.

Drexel University emeritus professor Bob Brulle studied the funding for the climate change "counter movement". He identified 91 institutions which he says either denied or downplayed the risks of climate change, including the Cato Institute and the now-defunct George C Marshall Institute.

He found that between 2003 and 2007, ExxonMobil gave $7.2m (£5.6m) to such bodies, while between 2008 and 2010, the American Petroleum Institute trade body (API) donated just under $4m (£3m).

In its 2007 Corporate Citizenship Report, ExxonMobil said it would stop funding such groups in 2008.

Of course many researchers would argue such money didn't influence their climate contrarian work. It seems some may have been motivated by something else.

Most of the organisations opposing or denying climate change science were right-wing think tanks, who tended to be passionately anti-regulation.

These groups made convenient allies for the oil industry, as they would argue against action on climate change on ideological grounds.

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Jerry Taylor

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Jerry Taylor

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Jerry Taylor spent 23 years with the Cato Institute - one of those right wing think tanks - latterly as vice president. Before he left in 2014, he would regularly appear on TV and radio, insisting that the science of climate change was uncertain and there was no need to act. Now, he realises his arguments were based on a misinterpretation of the science, and he regrets the impact he's had on the debate.

"For 25 years, climate sceptics like me made it a core matter of ideological identity that if you believe in climate change, then you are by definition a socialist. That is what climate sceptics have done."

The BBC asked the Cato Institute about its work on climate change, but it did not respond.

This ideological divide has had far-reaching consequences. Polls conducted in May 2020 showed that just 22% of Americans who vote Republican believed climate change is man-made, compared with 72% of Democrats.

Unfortunately many of the "expert scientists" quoted by journalists to try to offer balance in their coverage of climate change were - like Jerry Taylor - making arguments based on their beliefs rather than relevant research.

"Usually these people have some scientific credentials, but they're not actually experts in climate science," says Harvard historian Naomi Oreskes.

She began digging into the background of leading climate sceptics, including Fred Seitz, a nuclear physicist and former president of the US National Academy of Sciences. She found he was deeply anti-communist, believing any government intervention in the marketplace "would put us on the slippery slope to socialism".

She also discovered that he had been active in the debates around smoking in the 1980s.

"That was a Eureka moment. We realised this was not a scientific debate. A person with expertise about climate change would in no way be an expert about oncology or public health or cardiovascular disease, or any of the key issues associated with tobacco.

"The fact that the same people were arguing in both cases was a clue that something fishy was going on. That's what led us to discover this pattern of disinformation that gets systemically used again and again."

Naomi Oreskes spent years going through the tobacco archive at the University of California at San Francisco. It contains more than 14 million documents that were made available thanks to litigation against US tobacco firms.

A strikingly familiar story emerged. Decades before the energy industry tried to undermine the case for climate change, tobacco companies had used the same techniques to challenge the emerging links between smoking and lung cancer in the 1950s.

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Plaza Hotel (Right), Central Park, New York

IMAGE SOURCE,GETTY IMAGES

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Plaza Hotel (Right), Central Park, New York

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The story began at Christmas 1953. In New York's luxurious Plaza Hotel, the heads of the tobacco companies met to discuss a new threat to their business model.

Details of the night's anxious conversations were recorded in a document written by public relations guru John Hill from Hill and Knowlton.

Widely read mass-market magazines like Readers Digest and Time Life had begun publishing articles about the association between smoking and lung cancer. And researchers like those who had found that lab mice painted with cigarette tar got cancer were attracting increasing attention.

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Cancer by the Carton

IMAGE SOURCE,READER'S DIGEST

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As John Hill wrote in the 1953 document, "salesmen in the industry are frantically alarmed, and the decline in tobacco stocks on the stock exchange market has caused grave concern".

Hill recommended fighting science with science. "We do not believe the industry should indulge in any flashy or spectacular ballyhoo. There is no public relations [medicine] known to us at least, which will cure the ills of the industry."

As a later document by tobacco company Brown and Williamson summarised the approach: "Doubt is our product, since it is the best means of competing with the 'body of fact' that exists in the minds of the general public."

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Cigarette advert, left 1950, right 1944

IMAGE SOURCE,GETTY IMAGES, TOPFOTO

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Naomi Oreskes says this understanding of the power of doubt is vital.

"They realise they can't win this battle by making a false claim that sooner or later would be exposed. But if they can create doubt, that would be sufficient - because if people are confused about the issue, there's a good chance they'll just keep smoking."

Hill advised setting up the "Tobacco Industry Research Committee" to promote "the existence of weighty scientific views which hold there is no proof that cigarette smoking is a cause of lung cancer".

As in the climate change debate decades later, "Project Whitecoat" would pit scientist against scientist.

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Operation Whitecoat

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According to Oreskes, the project targeted those who were already doing research into other causes of cancer or lung conditions - such as asbestos - which the tobacco industry could fund.

"The purpose of these programmes was not to advance scientific understanding, it was to create enough confusion that the American people would doubt the existing scientific evidence."

Journalists were one of the tobacco industry's main targets. The Tobacco Industry Research Committee held meetings in its offices in the Empire State Building for major newspaper editors. It even persuaded one of the most famous broadcast journalists of the time, Edward R Murrow, to interview its experts.

The eventual edition of Murrow's celebrated television programme "See It Now" - broadcast in 1955 -shows Project Whitecoat in action, with tobacco industry funded scientists set against independent researchers.

Ed Murrow

IMAGE SOURCE,GETTY IMAGES

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But as would happen later with climate change, it was difficult for the audience at home to form an opinion when opposing scientists contradicted each other. Even Murrow ended up on the fence. "We have no credentials for reaching conclusions on this subject," he said.

If doubt was the industry's true product, then it appeared to be a roaring success.

For decades, none of the legal challenges launched against the tobacco companies themselves succeeded.

This was partly due to the effectiveness of Project Whitecoat, as an internal memo from tobacco firm RJ Reynolds in May 1979 concludes: "Due to favourable scientific testimony, no plaintiff has ever collected a penny from any tobacco company in lawsuits claiming that smoking causes lung cancer or cardiovascular illness - even though 117 such cases have been brought since 1954."

But pressure on the tobacco companies continued to mount. In 1997, the industry paid $350m (£272m) to settle a class action brought by flight attendants who had developed lung cancer and other illnesses which they argued were caused by second-hand cigarette smoke from passengers.

This settlement paved the way to a landmark ruling in 2006, when Judge Gladys Kessler found US tobacco companies guilty of fraudulently misrepresenting the health risks associated with smoking.

Judge Kessler detailed how the industry "marketed and sold their lethal products with zeal, with deception, with a single-minded focus on their financial success, and without regard for the human tragedy or social costs".

Norma Broin

IMAGE SOURCE,GETTY IMAGES

Image caption,

Flight attendant Norma Broin was the lead plaintiff in the passive smoking class action after developing lung cancer, despite being a non-smoker

The tobacco companies may have eventually lost their battle to hide the harms of smoking, but the blueprint drawn up by John Hill and his colleagues proved to be very effective.

"What he wrote is the same memo we have seen in multiple industries subsequently," says David Michaels, professor of public health at George Washington University, and author of The Triumph of Doubt, which details how the pesticides, plastics and sugar industries have also used these tactics.

"We called it 'the tobacco playbook', because the tobacco industry was so successful.

"They made a product that killed millions of people across the world, and the science has been very strong [about that] for many years, but through this campaign to manufacture uncertainty, they were able to delay first, formal recognition of the terrible impact of tobacco, and then delay regulation and defeat litigation for decades, with obviously terrible consequences."

We asked Hill and Knowlton about its work for the tobacco companies, but it did not respond.

In a statement, ExxonMobil told the BBC that "allegations about the company's climate research are inaccurate and deliberately misleading".

"For more than 40 years, we have supported development of climate science in partnership with governments and academic institutions. That work continues today in an open and transparent way.

"Deliberately cherry-picked statements attributed to a small number of employees wrongly suggest definitive conclusions were reached decades ago."

ExxonMobil added that it recently won the court case brought by the New York Attorney General which had accused the company of fraudulently accounting for the costs of climate change regulation.

But academics like David Michaels fear the use of uncertainty in the past to confuse the public and undermine science has contributed to a dangerous erosion of trust in facts and experts across the globe today, far beyond climate science or the dangers of tobacco.

He cites public attitudes to modern issues like the safety of 5G, vaccinations - and coronavirus.

"By cynically manipulating and distorting scientific evidence, the manufacturers of doubt have seeded in much of the public a cynicism about science, making it far more difficult to convince people that science provides useful - in some cases, vitally important - information.

"There is no question that this distrust of science and scientists is making it more difficult to stem the coronavirus pandemic."

It seems the legacy of "the tobacco playbook" lives on.

===

mashey 2012 fake experts

https://www.desmog.com/wp-content/uploads/files/fake.pdf

0.7 Tobacco Playbook, climate anti-science

Robert Proctor summarized tobacco doubt-creation strategies documented

in his new book [PRO2012 pp.290-291], drawn from LTDL and

elsewhere. His handy list is excerpted here. Proctor notes that tobacco

paid for much real science that was irrelevant, for the sake of confusion.

That seems to happen only rarely for climate, where the more common

tactic tries to slip bad papers past unwary editors.

(0) ‘One of the more common has been simply to assemble and reproduce

statements by authorities willing to deny the hazard. …

1. Publicize statements from scholars skeptical of the hazard. Fund the research

of these scholars to entice them to testify in court or regulatory hearings.

2. Publicize examples of people living to a ripe old age despite decades of

smoking.

3. Raise questions about “anomalies that seem paradoxical. …

4. Redefine terms, Deny there is “tar” in cigarettes and insist on using words like

biological activity or hyperplasia rather than cancer or pre-cancer.

5. Wrap yourself in the authority of science. Contrast the “rush to judgment”

approach of anti-tobacco “fanatics” with the cautious “wait and see” attitude of

the industry. Insist on laboratory proof when faced with statistical evidence,…

6. State that the evidence linking tobacco and disease is merely “statistical” and

then deride statistics as an improper method for reasoning about causality.

Finance your own epidemiology and publish this in engineering journals if

medical journals won’t take it. Then hire experts to say such studies are

“difficult to refute” and make sure such remarks get coverage in the popular

press.

7. Put a positive spin on uncomfortable facts. … body not as weak in the face of

carcinogenic onslaughts but strong in its capacity to resist such onslaughts.

8. Construct graphs and charts in such a way as to make it look like cancer trends

are chaotic (“graphic agnotology”) …

9. Hire journalists to write industry-sympathetic articles in the popular press.

10. Undermine the authority of health organizations such as the American Cancer

Society, the Surgeon General, the American Heart Association, or the National

Cancer Institute. Denigrate these as “advocacy” or “government”

organizations aligned with an anti-tobacco “cause” or “movement” (with an

“agenda,” etc.). Imply that such organizations are irremediably biased ….

11. Hire historians to rewrite history from the industry point of view and then use

such scholars as experts in court. …

12. Proclaim the smoking and health controversy to be “nothing new.”

13. Keep people smoking by reassuring them that the industry is doing everything

it can to make cigarettes as safe as possible.

14. Always keep thinking of new ways to defend the industry.’

adapted:(color in orig)

The following adapts Proctor’s list to climate anti-science:

(0) Petitions: OISM and Singer’s numerous petitions, Open Letters,

Heartland Legislative Guide, Experts lists, NIPCC, ICCCs.

1. Publicize statements from scholars skeptical of AGW. Epidemiology left more

room for real scholars to argue, but the few who deny AGW get quoted often.

2. Publicize examples of people living to a ripe old age despite decades of

smoking. Cherry-pick dates, places cooling, glaciers growing. Ignore others.

3. Raise questions about “anomalies” that seem paradoxical. … Cold winters.

4. Redefine terms, Deny there is “tar” in cigarettes

Claim AGW is not real, for any of numerous conflicting reasons.

5. Wrap yourself in the authority of science. Contrast the “rush to judgment”

approach of climate “alarmists” or “warmists” with the cautious “wait and

see” attitude of “realists”. Insist on laboratory proof …

6. State that there is no evidence linking human activity and warming and try to

challenge basic physics of heat-trapping gases and conservation of energy.

Finance your own climate studies and publish this in Energy&Environment,

OpEds or blogs if Nature and Science won’t take it. Then hire experts to say

such studies are “difficult to refute” and make sure such remarks get coverage

in the popular press, such as Wall Street Journal OpEds.

7. Put a positive spin on uncomfortable facts. … CO2 is good for plants, warming

is good for tourism, the Earth has been warmer long ago, people adapt, etc, etc.

8. Construct graphs and charts in such a way as to make it look like temperature

trends are chaotic (“graphic agnotology”) … §Y.1 on satellites .

9. Hire journalists to write industry-sympathetic articles in the popular press. yes.

10. Undermine the authority of science organizations such as the IPCC, NASA

GISS, UK Hadley Center, climate scientists in general. Denigrate these as

“advocacy” or “government” organizations aligned with an anti-economy

“cause” or “movement” (with an “agenda,” etc.). Imply that such

organizations are irremediably biased or one-sided.

11. Hire any fakexpert to rewrite history from the industry point of view …

12. Proclaim “climate has changed before” or “warmer in MWP.”

13. Keep people using fossil fuels and avoiding even slight motion towards

efficiency or renewables by reassuring them that nothing (mercury, etc) is

harmful and air quality has improved anyway, so no more need be done.

14. Keep thinking of new ways to defend status quo, incl. fossil industry

===

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tobacco_industry_playbook

The tobacco industry playbook, tobacco strategy or simply disinformation playbook^[1] describes a strategy devised by the tobacco industry in the 1950s to protect revenues in the face of mounting evidence of links between tobacco smoke and serious illnesses, primarily cancer.^[2] Much of the playbook is known from industry documents made public by whistleblowers or as a result of the Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement. These documents are now curated by the UCSF Truth Tobacco Industry Documents project and are a primary source for much commentary on both the tobacco playbook and its similarities to the tactics used by other industries, notably the fossil fuel industry. It is possible that the playbook may even have originated with the oil industry.^[3][4]

A 1969 R. J. Reynolds internal memorandum noted, "Doubt is our product since it is the best means of competing with the 'body of fact' that exists in the mind of the general public."^[5]

In Merchants of Doubt, Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway documented the way that tobacco companies had campaigned over several decades to cast doubt on the scientific evidence of harm caused by their products, and noted the same techniques being used by other industries whose harmful products were targets of regulatory and environmental efforts.^[6]

This is often linked to climate change denialism promoted by the fossil fuel industry:^[7][8] the same tactics were employed by fossil fuel groups such as the American Petroleum Institute to cast doubt on climate science from the 1990s^[9] and some of the same PR firms and individuals engaged to claim that tobacco smoking was safe, were later recruited to attack climate science.^[10]

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• :{3:(style="display:table-cell;padding-left:0px;padding-right:0.5em"):}::{References:(style="display:table-cell"):}:
• :{4:(style="display:table-cell;padding-left:0px;padding-right:0.5em"):}::{External links:(style="display:table-cell"):}:

History

The strategy was initiated at a crisis meeting between US tobacco executives and John Hill, of public relations company Hill & Knowlton, at the New York Plaza Hotel, in 1953, following the Reader's Digest's precis of an article from the Christian Herald titled cancer by the carton, highlighting the emergent findings of epidemiologists including Richard Doll and Austin Bradford Hill.^[11] It led to the 1954 publication ofA Frank Statement, an advertisement designed to cast doubt on the science showing serious health effects from smoking.

Tactics included:^[12]

• "Fear, uncertainty and doubt", including funding studies designed to undermine scientific consensus on the health effects of tobacco and characterising findings of harm as "junk science";
• Astroturfing;
• Lobbying and political talking points;
• Emphasising self-regulation and personal responsibility.

Documents such as Bad Science: A Resource Bookwere used to promulgate talking points including:^[13][14]

• Too often, science is manipulated to fulfil a political agenda.
• Government agencies, too often, betray the public trust by violating principles of good science in a desire to achieve a political goal.
• No agency is more guilty of adjusting science to supportpreconceived public policy prescriptions than the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)

Influence

The playbook has been adopted by the fossil fuel industry, in its efforts to stave off global action on climate change,^[1][14] and by those seeking to undermine the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) more generally.^[15] The manufacture and promotion of uncertainty, especially, has been identified as inspired directly by the tobacco industry.^[6][16]

Recognising that it had little or no credibility with the public, and concerned about mounting pressure to act on environmental tobacco smoke (ETS), the tobacco industry actively recruited fellow enemies of the EPA, setting up the "Advancement of Sound Science Coalition" (TASSC), a fake grassroots group.^[15] Its first director was Steve Milloy, previously of APCO, the consultancy firm employed by Philip Morris to set up TASSC. Milloy subsequently set up junkscience.com, a website which equates environmentalists with Nazis and now promotes climate change denial.^[17]

Many of the consultants who worked for the tobacco industry, have also worked for fossil fuel companies against action on climate change. TASSC hired Frederick Seitz and Fred Singer, both now prominent in climate change denial.^[17] Greg Zimmerman found a 2015 presentation titled "Survival Is Victory: Lessons From the Tobacco Wars" by Richard Reavey of Cloud Peak Energy (and formerly of Philip Morris) in which Reavey explicitly acknowledged the parallels and urged fellow coal executives to accept the facts of climate change and work with regulators on solutions that would preserve the industry.^[18][19] Both Fred Singer and Frederick Seitz are prominent figures in climate change denial who previously worked for the tobacco industry.^[20][17]

Environmentalist George Monbiot identifies many groups that were funded by tobacco firms and subsequently by Exxon and other fossil fuel companies, and now actively take part in climate change denial, including the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the Cato Institute, the Heritage Foundation, the Hudson Institute, the Frontiers of Freedom Institute, the Reason Foundation, the Independent Institute, and George Mason University's Law and Economics Centre.^[17]

Opponents of vaping also identify elements of the tobacco playbook in the e-cigarette industry's response to health concerns.^[21][22] Tobacco companies took stakes in soft drinks companies and used the same tactics around colours and flavours that they had used to target young potential smokers.^[23][24] The soft drinks industry's attempts to avoid sugary beverage taxesor other government action to reduce obesity draws upon elements of the tobacco playbook,^[25] including use of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) programs as a PR strategy.^[26] Research contracts issued as part of CSR programmes allow soft drinks manufacturers to bury inconvenient results.^[27]

A 2019 article in the Emory Law Journal made parallels to attempts by the National Football League to downplay the issue of CTE in football,^[28] with the New York Times noting a number of tobacco figures involved in the NFL's defence.^[29]

The World Health Organisation has subsequently published a tobacco control playbook.^[30]

References

1. ^ :{Jump up to::(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^a ^b(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tobacco_industry_playbook#cite_ref-UCS_1-1) "The Disinformation Playbook". Union of Concerned Scientists. Retrieved 2020-04-09.
2. ^ Rowell, Andrew; Evans-Reeves, Karen. "It was Big Tobacco, not Trump, that wrote the post-truth rule book". The Conversation. Retrieved 2020-04-09.
3. ^ Hulac, Benjamin (July 20, 2016). "Tobacco and Oil Industries Used Same Researchers to Sway Public". ClimateWire – via Scientific American.
4. ^ "New Documents Reveal Denial Playbook Originated with Big Oil, Not Big Tobacco" (Press release). Center for International Environmental Law. June 20, 2016.
5. ^ *The cigarette papers*. Berkeley: University of California Press. 1996. pp. 190. ISBN 978-0-520-92099-6. OCLC 42855812.
6. ^ :{Jump up to::(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^a ^b(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tobacco_industry_playbook#cite_ref-Oreskes_6-1) Oreskes, Naomi. (2010). *Merchants of Doubt* (1st U.S. ed.). New York: Bloomsbury Press. ISBN 978-1-59691-610-4. OCLC 461631066.
7. ^ Supran, Geoffrey; Oreskes, Naomi (2017-08-01). "Assessing ExxonMobil's climate change communications (1977–2014)". Environmental Research Letters. 12 (8): 084019. Bibcode:2017ERL....12h4019S. doi:10.1088/1748-9326/aa815f. ISSN 1748-9326.
8. ^ Nuccitelli, Dana (2017-08-23). "Harvard scientists took Exxon's challenge; found it using the tobacco playbook". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2020-04-09.
9. ^ "Climate Change Denial Is the Original Fake News". Retrieved 2020-04-09.
10. ^ "Who are the Deniers?". State of California, Governor's Office of Planning and Research. Retrieved 2020-04-09.
11. ^ Stobbe, Mike. "Historic smoking report marks 50th anniversary". Retrieved 2020-04-09.
12. ^ Brownell, Kelly D; Warner, Kenneth E (March 2009). "The Perils of Ignoring History: Big Tobacco Played Dirty and Millions Died. How Similar Is Big Food?". The Milbank Quarterly. 87 (1): 259–294. doi:10.1111/j.1468-0009.2009.00555.x. ISSN 0887-378X. PMC 2879177. PMID 19298423.
13. ^ "Bad Science: a Resource Book". Tobacco Industry Documents Library. Retrieved 2020-04-09.
14. ^ :{Jump up to::(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^a ^b(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tobacco_industry_playbook#cite_ref-Grauniad-Doubt_14-1) Readfearn, Graham (2015-03-05). "Doubt over climate science is a product with an industry behind it". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2020-04-09.
15. ^ :{Jump up to::(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^a ^b(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tobacco_industry_playbook#cite_ref-WarScience_15-1) Johns, David Merritt; Levy, Karen. "How Trump's war on science is borrowing from the tobacco industry playbook". Washington Post. Retrieved 2020-04-09.
16. ^ Corner, Adam (2014-01-31). "The communication of uncertainty is hindering climate change action". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2020-04-09.
17. ^ :{Jump up to::(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^a ^b(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tobacco_industry_playbook#cite_ref-Monbiot_17-1) ^c(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tobacco_industry_playbook#cite_ref-Monbiot_17-2) ^d(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tobacco_industry_playbook#cite_ref-Monbiot_17-3) Monbiot, George (2006-09-19). "Climate change and Big Tobacco". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2020-04-23.
18. ^ Schwartz, John (2016-08-16). "Feeling Cornered, Coal Industry Borrows From Tobacco Playbook, Activists Say". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2020-04-09.
19. ^ Hulac, Benjamin (August 25, 2016). "Coal Executive Says His Industry Must Confront Climate Change". ClimateWire.
20. ^ "Climate denier Fred Singer complains about Merchants of Doubt". Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education. Retrieved 2020-04-09.
21. ^ "How the Vaping Industry Is Using a Defensive Tactic Pioneered Decades Ago by Big Tobacco". Retrieved 2020-04-09.
22. ^ Bloomberg, Michael R.; Myers, Matt (2019-09-10). "Ban Flavored E-Cigarettes to Protect Our Children". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2020-04-09.
23. ^ Desk, Medibulletin (2019-03-15). "Big tobacco bringing same market strategy into sugary drinks". Retrieved 2020-04-23.
24. ^ "Soft Drink Companies Copy Tobacco Playbook to Lure Young Users".
25. ^ Nestle, Marion (2015-08-11). "Coca-Cola says its drinks don't cause obesity. Science says otherwise". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2020-04-09.
26. ^ Dorfman, Lori; Cheyne, Andrew; Friedman, Lissy C.; Wadud, Asiya; Gottlieb, Mark (2012-06-19). "Soda and Tobacco Industry Corporate Social Responsibility Campaigns: How Do They Compare?". PLOS Medicine. 9 (6): e1001241. doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.1001241. ISSN 1549-1676. PMC 3378589. PMID 22723745.
27. ^ "Contracts give Coca-Cola power to 'quash' health research, study suggests". 2019-05-08.
28. ^ Paolini, Mikayla (2019). "NFL Takes a Page from the Big Tobacco Playbook: Assumption of Risk in the CTE Crisis". Emory Law Journal. 68 (3): 607–642.
29. ^ Schwarz, Alan; Bogdanich, Walt; Williams, Jacqueline (2016-03-24). "N.F.L.'s Flawed Concussion Research and Ties to Tobacco Industry". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2020-04-09.
30. ^ "Tobacco Control Playbook". World Health Organisation. 2020-04-09. Retrieved 2020-04-09.

External links

• Cancer by the carton

Categories: 

• Tobacco industry
• Climate change denial

10/19

https://truenorthresearch.org/report/report-one/

:{

}:

Juul Deploying Big Tobacco Playbook to Preempt Local Control

October 7, 2019

In a new white paper by Local Solutions Support Center (LSSC) and Illumination Investigations, Evan Vorpahl and Lisa Graves document how Juul has flooded statehouses

https://pebbleinthepond.substack.com/p/covid-19-and-big-tobacco-playbook?utm_source=url

Misinformation labelling has been all the rage during the COVID-19 pandemic. It fits in perfectly with the virtue-signaling, cancel-culture society they’ve ushered in through the rise of social media. “Fact-checkers” have been appointed as arbiters of truth and fiction. Just don’t look who signs the Fact-checkers paychecks and you can trust the version of reality they ordain for you.

Before COVID, misinformation or disinformation was not commonplace in everyday language. For many this seems like yet another new word we need to add to the Merriam-Webster dictionary. However, the use of misinformation/disinformation is anything but new.

An apropos disinformation/misinformation effort comes out of the tobacco industry's playbook. In the face of accumulating, seemingly-irrefutable evidence linking lung cancer to smoking cigarettes in the 1950s, "...the tobacco industry would launch a new strategy, largely unprecedented in the history of US industry and business: it would work to erode, confuse, and condemn the very science that now threatened to destroy its prized, highly popular, and exclusive product." Using a PR campaign to co-opt science via the Tobacco Industry Research Committee (TIRC) and the Scientific Advisory Board (SAB), the tobacco industry was a wolf in sheep's clothing for decades.

From a press release announcing the first TIRC chairman:

"It is an obligation of the Tobacco Industry Research Committee at this time to remind the public of these essential points:

1. There is no conclusive scientific proof of a link between smoking and cancer.

2. Medical research points to many possible causes of cancer… .

3. The millions of people who derive pleasure and satisfaction from smoking can be reassured that every scientific means will be used to get all the facts as soon as possible."

Sounds like the underlying (emphasis on LYING) messages regarding COVID-19 from NIH, Fauci, CDC, FDA, etc. over the last 18 months.

Media of course was also targeted to fulfill their agenda. They employed several known successful PR and advertising strategies and all the while "science was treated as the analog of common political debate and social controversy." Face-to-face relations with big media outlets were key to success, as was repetition of core mantras: 1) they understand their responsibility to public health; 2) they pledge deep commitment to scientific research into tobacco health concerns; 3) be skeptical of statistics; & 4) they urge consultation of “independent” experts. Independent, of course, meant TIRC experts. They capitalized on the media principle that controversy sells and even used scientific informants in order to prepare rebuttals against upcoming new scientific findings and reports, often before they were released publicly. Horse paste anyone?

Of course the TIRC could see that the battleground would transition from media and public opinion into legislation and the courts. Heavy-handed lobbying, SAB expert testimonies selected by the TIRC, continued reliance on the "no proof" argument (Fauci’s favorite), and the molasses-esque nature of bureaucracy and legal proceedings all worked to their advantage for decades. A fire escape plan map modeled for this COVID debacle could suggest "You are here."

To me, the parallels are chilling. It's like a decades-long strategy has been condensed and employed over the last 18 months but with a new twist. Since they learned how useful skepticism and debate was to securing their interests, they've gone a step further to disallow this. If their deployment has been so condensed, I only hope the sea change can be proportionally as swift.

In 1995, in response to his observations of the tobacco industry, a Stanford University historian named Robert Proctor coined the term "agnotology" for the study of how ignorance is produced deliberately. I'm sure that's been levied against us, among other tactics, from the get-go with COVID (or likely prior as well). Sadly it's worked so far on a large percentage of our population. Maybe we'll have a field of study on how to deliberately undo purposely engendered ignorance at the end of this.

~Pebble in the Pond

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3490543/

https://seatca.org/commentary-how-the-tobacco-industry-wrote-the-fake-news-playbook/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=commentary-how-the-tobacco-industry-wrote-the-fake-news-playbook

https://www.ucsusa.org/sites/default/files/2021-10/Colorado-Targeted-by-Fossil-Fuel-Industry-Disinformation-Playbook.pdf

40 pp

Colorado Targeted by

Fossil Fuel Industry’s

Disinformation

Playbook

Climate Deception Harms Communities’ Health

and Safety

www.ucsusa.org/resources/colorado-fossil-fuel-industry-disinformation

https://doi.org/10.47923/2021.14291

CONTENTS

Chapter 1 Deceiving the Public: The Disinformation Playbook 4

The Disinformation Playbook and Colorado Oil and Gas Operations 5

Chapter 2 Disinformation Tactic: The Fix 7

Lobbying to Weaken Public Health and Safety Protections and Enhance Fossil Fuel Profits 8

Overwhelming Public Voices to Thwart Ballot Initiatives 9

Table 1. An Example of How Industry Spending Overwhelms Health and Safety 10

Pitting Local Leaders Against the Health and Safety of Their Constituents 11

Influencing Public Policy Positions from Inside and Out 11

Using Proxy Groups to Confuse the Public and Undermine Support for Climate

Accountability Lawsuits 12

Chapter 3 Disinformation Tactic: The Diversion 13

Elevating Industry Interests Above Community Voices 13

Fabricating the Appearance of Local Support 14

Figure 1. Colorado’s Climate Disinformation Complex 15

Greenwashing Your Screens 16

Chapter 4 Disinformation Tactic: The Screen 18

Building Credibility by Hiding Behind Trusted State Institutions 18

Burnishing Industry’s Reputation through Association with Respected Nonprofits 19

Chapter 5 Disinformation Tactic: The Fake 21

Chapter 6 A Litany of Harms: Health and Safety 23

Cancer-Causing and Other Dangerous Chemicals in the Air and Water 24

Poor Air Quality 24

New Research Identifies Even More Dangerous Ozone Problems 25

Figure 2. Fossil Fuel Industry Emissions are Higher in High Racial-Minority Census

Tracts 26

Dangerous Inactive Wells 26

Climate Change Impacts 27

Chapter 7 A Litany of Harms: Economic 28

Bogus Complaints about High Taxes 28

Inflated Jobs Claims 28

Union of Concerned Scientists | 3

Figure 3. Oil and Gas Extraction’s Boom-and-Bust Contribution to the Colorado

Economy 29

Other Harms, Some Difficult To Monetize 29

Chapter 8 Recommendations 31

Acknowledgments 32

...For more than a decade, Colorado oil and gas exploration and development have intensified, often putting dangerous and polluting industrial activities in close proximity to homes, schools, playgrounds, and other public spaces. This report exposes how the fossil fuel industry positions itself as the backbone of the state economy, often framing any community opposition to this industry’s dangerous operations as a fight against local interest in the form of tax revenue, school funding, and jobs. The industry largely glosses over evidence it causes health, economic, or environmental damage, and its clout enables oil and gas extraction and expansion to continue with little regard for those facing the adverse health and economic impacts. In Colorado, the oil and gas industry is comprised of powerful transnational corporations, including ExxonMobil and Chevron, along with companies such as Noble Energy (now owned by Chevron), Anadarko (now owned by Occidental Petroleum), and Suncor (a large Canadian tar-sands operation with close ties to ExxonMobil and Royal Dutch Shell).

The industry’s interests are represented by heavyweight national lobbying outfits like the American Petroleum Institute (API), as well as local trade associations, like the Colorado Oil and Gas Association (COGA). A proliferation of industry-created and backed front groups includes several with ties to the private multinational conglomerate Koch Industries.They often all work together to run the same Disinformation Playbook. Of course, the fossil fuel industry uses similar tactics and wields considerable political clout in other oil- and gas-producing states and at the federal level. Consider its success in stalling any meaningful climate action for more than two decades and its ability to despoil public and Native lands and waters with drilling and pipelines. Or consider the API’s nationwide TV and digital ad campaign, launched ahead of the 2020 elections and targeting not only Colorado, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, and other key oil- and gas-producing states but also Wisconsin, Michigan, and other political swing states (API 2020a; API 2020b)....

Lobbying to Weaken Public Health and Safety Protections and Enhance Fossil Fuel Profits

In the early years of fracking in Colorado, API and its local division, the Colorado Petroleum Council (CPC), pushed the state legislature to enact the little-known ad valorem tax credit, which allows oil and gas companies to deduct local property taxes from the severance tax that fossil fuel companies must pay to the state. As local property taxes have increased, particularly for oil and gas operations, the state’s pool of severance taxes, based on production and profits, has shrunk—even though severance-tax revenues are needed to remediate abandoned and orphaned wells. Such wells are often underground pathways through which toxic fluids and gases migrate upward into air, water, and homes. These wells are also a significant source of leaked methane, a heat-trapping pollutant that has 80 times the warming power of carbon dioxide during the first 20 years after it reaches the atmosphere (Bushkin-Bedient et al. 2020).

Thanks to the ad valorem tax credit, some oil and gas operations have paid nothing to the state in recent years, leaving old wells unremediated and dangerous to residents (Eason 2020; Legislative Council Staff, n.d.; Silbaugh 2020). In April 2017, a house in Firestone, Colorado blew up, killing two residents and seriously injuring a third. The explosion was traced to gas leaking from an old well that had not been disconnected from the wellhead or properly capped (Markus 2018; Osher 2017; Svaldi and Finley 2017).In direct response to the explosion, the legislature took up a science-based bill to require regulators to map oil and gas pipelines throughout the state; a filibuster in the Republican-controlled state Senate killed the proposal. Lobbying disclosure reports and campaign-finance records showed that Anadarko and Noble Energy, both of which opposed the bill, spent significantly in support of Senate Republican candidates in the 2016 election as well as to directly lobby against the bill (Osher 2017; Sirota 2017).

Also in April 2017, the legislature considered a bill mandating that new oil and gas facilities be set back a certain distance from school property. Such a policy is intended to reduce children’s exposure to toxic releases by keeping them a safer distance from potential explosions. By a one-vote margin along party lines, a Senate committee killed the bill to establish a buffer zone separating oil and gas wells and associated facilities from occupied buildings and property lines. COGA, CPC, and other industry representatives led the opposition, arguing that “energy is the cornerstone of [the state’s] prosperity” (Glick and Ray 2017)—overstating the industry’s economic importance while ignoring the value of keeping children safe. An investigative report put oil and gas industry clout into some perspective: “Most of the people who testified in favor of the school setback bill were residents. . . . Virtually all who opposed it were paid lobbyists, most from industry associations” (Glick and Ray 2017).

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With the passage of Senate Bill 181 in 2019, the state got serious about tightening health and safety controls on the oil and gas industry. The industry, which aggressively opposed the bill, lobbied successfully for a late language change that weakened the ability of local governments to protect public health and safety. At the behest of industry lobbyists, the terms “necessary Union of Concerned Scientists | 9 and reasonable” were added as qualifiers to the bill’s text, potentially limiting the ability of cities and counties to require new protective measures (Bloom 2019)....

Overwhelming Public Voices to Thwart Ballot Initiatives

In 2016, aggressive campaigns by Protect Colorado and Coloradans for Responsible Energy Development (CRED)—front groups funded by API, CPC, Noble Energy, and Occidental Petroleum—prevented two grassroots-driven ballot measures from getting in front of voters (Dyer 2016a). One measure would have increased local control over oil and gas expansion, with the aim of putting science at the forefront of decision-making on siting, reporting, and safety requirements designed to protect the communities.

The other measure would have improved community health and safety by requiring fracking operations be set back 2,500 feet from any occupied structure (homes, schools, businesses) or “areas of concern” (drinking water sources, lakes, parks). The current scientific consensus is that a setback of 2,000 to 2,500 feet is needed to protect health and safety, especially that of children (Lewis, Greiner, and Union of Concerned Scientists | 10 Brown 2018; Milton et al. 2014; McKenzie et al. 2012). The setback would have reduced exposure to air and water pollution, lessened noise pollution, and kept children further from potential explosions. Opponents outraised proponents by a ratio of 24–1, with 99.9 percent of the opponents’ nearly $17 million total coming from energy industry companies or front groups; their campaign drowned out the public health and safety arguments at the heart of initiative (Table 1) (Blake 2016; Claypool 2016)....

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/27/upshot/california-banning-soda-taxes-a-new-industry-strategy-is-stunning-some-lawmakers.html

June 27, 2018

For years, the soda industry had an ironclad strategy when a city wanted to enact a soda tax:

Spend a lot of money, rally local businesses, and shoot it down.

That strategy worked again and again, until it didn’t. In 2014, Berkeley, Calif., passed the nation’s first tax on sugary drinks, which have been linked to heart disease, obesity and tooth decay. Since then, eight communities, including three more cities in California, enacted similar bills.

Now the beverage industry has a new approach. Instead of fighting the ordinances city by city, it is turning to states, trying to pass laws preventing any local governments from taxing their products.

In California, the legislature passed a bill Thursday that will pre-empt any new local beverage or food taxes for 12 years.Arizona and Michigan have passed similar laws. In Oregon, the state’s grocers have collected enough signatures to bring a ballot initiative barring any taxes on grocery items. And legislators are considering pre-emption bills in other states, including Pennsylvania, New Mexico and Washington.

“It’s a little bit like, instead of playing a game of whack-a-mole, you could just put a sheet of plywood over all the holes,” said Franco Ripple, a spokesman for the Campaign to Defend Local Solutions, a group that was founded last year to oppose state laws that limit local autonomy.

The beverage industry says the statewide measures are an appropriate way to protect local businesses and consumers from higher taxes. “People across the country are taxed enough, and they can’t afford new taxes on what they eat and drink,” said William Dermody, the vice president for media and public affairs at the American Beverage Association, an industry trade group.

In California, the arrival of the bill to pre-empt soda taxes, which was championed by the soda industry and introduced over the weekend, came as a shock to public health advocates and many state lawmakers. The state has passed more soda taxes than any other, shepherded by progressive lawmakers who see them as a source of revenue for schools and public services and a tool to fight obesity and diabetes. Scott Wiener, a state senator who represents San Francisco and parts of San Mateo County, said the beverage industry had successfully held California “hostage.”

Bill Monning, the Senate majority leader, was one of a handful of Democrats who voted against the bill. He called its passage “unprecedented” and said it would stop cities and counties “from being able to take steps to protect the health of their residents.” But he also said that state lawmakers would redouble their efforts to curb consumption of sugary drinks. He pointed out that the Senate health committee had just voted in favor of a bill that would require warning labels on sugary drinks indicating that they contribute to various health problems.

“It’s a sad day for democracy in California,” he said. “But ever the optimist I think that the outrage of Big Soda blackmailing the state legislature and the people of California is going to boomerang.”

Beverage companies spent at least $7 million to get an initiative on the ballot this November that would have prevented local communities from raising taxes without approval from two-thirds of voters or an elected body, rather than a simple majority. Such a change would have made it much more difficult for localities to pay for police, fire, transit and other public services.

According to several state senators, the industry then went to lawmakers in Sacramento with a proposal: Pass a bill banning soda and food taxes, and the industry would drop its November ballot initiative.

“They sent us a ransom note that they will drop this horrible ballot measure if we put a 12-year moratorium on local soda taxes,” said Mr. Wiener, who has long supported soda taxes and voted against the bill that now bars them. “It’s a classic case of picking your poison. The soda industry has gone completely rogue.”

Several top lawmakers said they opposed the measure banning soft drink taxes, known as Senate Bill 872, but many felt obliged to support it because they were so worried about the effects of the broader ballot initiative.

Nancy Skinner, a state senator who represents Richmond, Calif., as well as three cities that passed soda taxes in 2016, voted against the measure but said she recognized that her colleagues who supported it were in a bind. The law will not overturn soda taxes enacted before 2018, but it will prevent any new ones, including a soda tax on the ballot later this year in Richmond. “It is totally wrong to deny the residents of Richmond a vote,” she said.

Gov. Jerry Brown avoided taking a position on the bill until Thursday but has now signed it into law. Critics of the bill pointed to a photo that shows him posing with executives from Coca-Cola, PepsiCo and the American Beverage Association at a recent private dinner at the governor’s mansion. The governor’s spokesman said the meeting was unrelated to the soda tax measure.

The push for the pre-emption law began to materialize this year when an industry-financed group, the California Business Roundtable, started collecting signatures for the ballot initiative making local tax increases harder. The American Beverage Association California PAC contributed heavily to the effort, raising $6 million from Coke and Pepsi, $1 million from Dr Pepper Snapple and $100,000 from Red Bull.

The deal, reported by The Sacramento Bee on Sunday, which called it “a shakedown,” provoked a fierce outcry  across the state and the country. The American Heart Association, the American Diabetes Association, the American Cancer Society and more than 20 other groups issued a joint statement on Tuesday calling on Mr. Brown to oppose it and chiding the soda industry for “resorting to backroom deals and underhanded efforts to preserve its profits.”

The beverage association, which supported the California legislation, said its turn to pre-emption simply reflected its view that taxes on drinks represented an unfair burden — not just on them, but on retailers, bottlers, shipping companies and consumers.

Mr. Dermody noted that, in several states, the pre-emption bills are backed by a coalition of business interests, including grocery stores, and, in some cases, labor unions.

The California measure is part of a broader national strategy by the beverage industry to head off local soda taxes, which have passed in eight communities. Berkeley’s passage of a major soda tax paved the way for other cities to act. Philadelphia, San Francisco, Oakland, Calif., and the county that includes Chicago  imposed their own such measures in 2016, followed by Seattle in 2017. The soda industry spent at least $38 million fighting the taxesin 2016, which were backed by public health advocates and the billionaires Laura and John Arnold and Michael R. Bloomberg, former mayor of New York, who contributed $20 million to the Bay Area soda tax campaign.

The experience of the places that adopted soda taxes has been mixed. Research in Berkeley, Philadelphia and Mexico, which has a similar tax, shows that the measures appear to increase beverage prices and reduce sugary drink sales.

But there has been backlash. Cook County in Illinois repealed its tax in the face of voter complaints and industry pressure. And Mayor Jim Kenney of Philadelphia has had to back away from his initial claims that beverage tax revenue would provide enough money to pay for a universal prekindergarten program for the city, as revenue has come in below projections. Definitive evidence about public health effects of the bills is still a long way off.

The beverage companies have borrowed a tactic from the tobacco industry, which used state pre-emption laws in the 1980s to ban cigarette taxes and other municipal antismoking ordinances. Republican-controlled state legislatures have also increasingly used state pre-emption laws to prevent cities and towns from adopting a wide range of local measures, including anti-discrimination laws, bans on natural gas fracking, higher minimum wages, and restrictions on the use of plastic bags.

“The irony is that the soda companies screamed very loudly about government overreach when soda taxes began to get passed,” said Kelly Brownell, the dean of the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University. “But now they are looking for the ultimate government overreach when it works in their favor.”

Anahad O’Connor is a staff reporter covering health, science, nutrition and other topics. He is also a bestselling author of consumer health books such as “Never Shower in a Thunderstorm” and “The 10 Things You Need to Eat.”

Margot Sanger-Katz is a domestic correspondent and writes about health care for The Upshot. She was previously a reporter at National Journal and...

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A new frontier in the soda tax war is emerging along the west coast. Industry-funded committees have drawn up ballot measures to preempt voters’ local soda tax initiatives in California, Oregon, and Washington state.

Starting with Berkeley, California in 2014, public health campaigners have succeeded in getting eight localities to enact taxes on sodas and other sugary beverages as a way to crack down on sugar consumption and battle obesity. Four of those localities are in California, and Seattle, Washington passed a tax that became effective at the beginning of 2018.

Now big soda manufactures are fighting back, putting big money behind statewide initiatives that would stop these local democracy efforts in their tracks.

The name of the game is preemption: banning, with a piece of legislation at the state level, cities and counties from democratically enacting soda taxes. The technique was wielded as a weapon by Big Tobacco in the ’80s and ’90s to stop communities from regulating their deadly product by creating smoke-free workplaces. Now 12 states ban smoke-free ordinances and experts say preemption itself is the public health threat.

In a June 2017 article in the American Journal of Public Health, Jennifer Pomeranz of New York University’s College of Global Public Health and Mark Pertschuk of Grassroots Change in Oakland, California called preemption “a significant and quiet threat to public health in the United States” because it leaves municipalities “increasingly unable to address acute public health issues that will have lasting consequences for the health of communities.”

SODA TAXES TACKLE PUBLIC HEALTH CHALLENGES

Rising levels of obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and other serious public health challenges related to the consumption of sugary beverages have galvanized grassroots public health leaders. One tool they can use to address these challenges is a modest sales tax on sodas and sweetened beverages, with revenues going to support public health and education programs. New data show that consuming sugar in liquid form increases risks of serious health conditions such as heart disease, type 2 diabetes, nonalcoholic fatty liver disease, and obesity in a much more significant way than was previously known.

Soda taxes work. Researchers at Drexel University surveyed consumers before and after the implementation of Philadelphia’s tax and found that daily consumption of soda decreased by 40 percent and energy drinks by 64 percent while consumption of bottled water increased by 58 percent. Researchers at UC Berkeley’s School of Public Health found that sugary beverage consumption fell 21 percent in Berkeley after that city’s tax was implemented, while water consumption increased by 63 percent over comparison cities.

There’s a lot at stake for America’s biggest soda companies. Carbonated soft drinks–such as Coke, Fanta, Sprite, and Fresca–make up two-thirds of Coca-Cola’s production, and U.S. soda sales earned the company more than $10 billion in 2015. And PepsiCo’s soda sales – including Pepsi, 7Up, and Mountain Dew – still account for one-quarter of the company’s $38 billion in North American sales, despite a shift toward healthier products. But soda consumption fell to its lowest point in 31 years in the U.S. in 2016, according to Fortune, andCoca-Cola concedes that sweetened beverage taxes “are hurting Coke’s business.”

As cities and counties across the county introduce taxes on sodas and sweetened beverages to counter the public health risks, they are facing sophisticated opposition campaigns funded by these soda giants operating through their deep-pocketed trade group, the American Beverage Association (ABA). The ABA has launched big-dollar TV ad campaigns to fight soda taxes, spent heavily on lobbying state legislatures, sued to block soda taxes, and now is launching massive statewide ballot initiatives to roll back local soda taxes.

The soda industry uses the blandly named trade association to shelter its own brand names from controversy and condemnation, taps small business owners to champion their cause, and spins the tax as a “grocery tax” that will impact all consumers, not just those loading up the shopping cart with Coke and Snapple.

BIG SODA TURNS TO THE BALLOT TO BLOCK LOCAL HEALTH LAWS

Now the industry has latched on to statewide preemption ballot measures up and down the west coast as a way to halt local momentum on soda taxes. California and Washington’s preemption initiatives are seeking enough signatures to get on the ballot and must finish that process by July in order to go before voters in November 2018. Oregon’s initiative has already qualified for the November 2018 ballot.

Coca-Cola Co, PepsiCo, Dr. Pepper Snapple Group, and Red Bull have thrown a combined $3 million at overriding voters’ will in Washington state (proposed initiative 1634), and the ABA has spent more than $7 million so far in the effort to override Californians’ local votes (Attorney General Tracking #17-0050).

California’s proposed initiative would stack the deck for the likes of Coca-Cola and PepsiCo by preventing cities and counties from raising any taxes without the approval of two-thirds of either voters or an elected body. That explains why the industry is throwing so much cash at the current California override attempt, making it potentially the most expensive political contest in the country in 2018.

The American Beverage Association California PAC is by far the largest contributor to the ballot committee (“Californians for Accountability and Transparency in Government Spending, Sponsored by California Businesses”) spearheading the industry’s preemption measure, accounting for nearly 85 percent ($7 million) of its total reported revenues ($8.3 million) as of June 22, 2018. The largest contributors to the ABA CA PAC in 2017 and 2018 are Coca-Cola ($3.4million), PepsiCo ($2.6 million), Dr. Pepper Snapple Group ($1.1 million), and Red Bull ($97,312), as of June 22, 2018.

Similarly, all but less than one percent of the $3 million contributed to Washington’s anti-soda tax “Yes! to Affordable Groceries” initiative committee as of June 18, 2018 was contributed by the soda industry: 47 percent from Coca-Cola, 36 percent from PepsiCo, 15 percent from Dr. Pepper Snapple, and 1 percent from Red Bull. But the committee’s website prominently features the logos of “supporters” such as Teamsters No. 28, the Washington Food Industry Association, and the Washington Farm Bureau.

InOregon, the similarly-named “Yes! Keep Our Groceries Tax Free!” initiative committee has raised over $5.2 million, apparently from retail grocery chains and their regional trade group the Northwest Grocery Association.

Industry efforts in these west-coast states are a “fantastic assault on local democracy, but also on the ability of cities and countries to function,” Pertschuk said. Pertschuk added that California’s initiative in particular “would be so devastating to communities, so far beyond soda taxes, it really would starve communities.”

First published by Salon. a pearson

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tool on health effects

https://grassrootschange.net/preemption-watch/

https://www.exposedbycmd.org/2018/03/28/bills-ban-local-soda-taxes-moving-states-coke-pepsi-borrow-tobacco-playbook

Watch out public health advocates – as soda tax campaigns are bubbling up in cities across the nation to combat obesity, diabetes and other serious health conditions – the beverage industry is working to choke off this expression of local democracy.

A state bill banning localities from taxing food and beverages came out of nowhere in Michigan and was signed into law by Governor Rick Snyder within weeks. Last week, Governor Doug Ducey in Arizona signed a similarly fast tracked bill. These are clear instances of corporate special interests convincing legislators to block local laws that would hurt their profitability.

In Washington State, the soda industry is going a step further. After watching Seattle’s soda tax take effect last month, industry started a state wide ballot initiative campaign that would prevent other cities in the state from implementing a similar tax.

The name of the campaign is not “Coke and Pepsi For Obesity and Diabetes,” it’s “Yes! To Affordable Groceries.” The discrepancy is not just laughable it reveals a key industry tactic in the soda wars – change the topic and talk about anything except the devastating public health impact of sugary beverages.

NEW DATA SHOWS PUBLIC HEALTH IMPACTS OF SUGARY DRINKS

The public health community – pediatricians, dentists, the American Heart Association and more – are energized to take action as never before on soda and other sugary drinks because new data is showing that consuming sugar in liquid form increases risks of serious health conditions, such as heart disease, Type 2 diabetes, nonalcoholic fatty liver disease, and obesity in a much more significant way than was previously known.

If you are a Mountain Dew addict, get ready for this statistic. One study found that consuming just one to two sugary drinks a day increases your risk of developing diabetes a whopping 26 percent. Another study showed that men averaging one can a day of a sugary drink had a 20 percent increased risk of heart attack. Further, more than three-quarters of American adults are considered overweight or obese, and 30 percent of children.

Statistics like these and skyrocketing rates of obesity in Mexico City inspired public health advocates there to champion a soda tax in 2012 that has led to a significant fall in consumption – a 6% drop in the first year after the tax was introduced was followed by a 12% decline the second year.

Berkeley, California was the first U.S. city to follow Mexico’s lead uniting physicians, dentists, school board members, Latino leaders, the NAACP, black churches, teachers unions, farm and food advocates, moms and dads behind a grassroots effort to crack down on “big soda” in 2014. They won a landslide victory, and early data shows that consumption of sugary drinks is down 21% and healthy water consumption is way up.

But as cities and counties in the United States utilize the tools of local democracy to introduce modest tax increases on soda, they are facing sophisticated opposition spearheaded by the American Beverage Association (ABA) the blandly named trade association representing Coke, Pepsi, Dr. Pepper Snapple Group and other producers of sugary drinks.

BIG DOLLAR AD BUYS IN LOCAL INITIATIVE CAMPAIGNS

When they are up to no good, brand name companies like to hide behind their trade association. The American Beverage Association is a 501(c)(6) trade association and a $79 million lobbying powerhouse bankrolled by the largest players in the soft drink industry. Coke brands including, Fanta, Sprite, Fresca, Desani, Honest Tea and Minute Maid represent a $32 billion market. PepsiCo brands including, Gatorade, 7Up, Tropicana, and Mountain Dew represent an $18 billion market.

In every locality that has introduced a soda tax in recent years, the beverage industry has responded with the techniques of a industry that knows it has a big public relations problem. The ABA has set up grassroots-sounding front groups and has blanketed the neighborhood with flyers and messaging. In Richmond in 2012, for instance, the ABA group fighting a soda tax referendum on the ballot was called “Community Coalition Against Beverage Taxes.” In El Monte, the front group was called “El Monte Citizens Against Beverage Taxes.”

The ABA has worked to rebrand the issue and shift the terms of the debate. It doesn’t want to debate a soda tax, so it spins it as a “grocery tax” that harms everyone not just those who drink soda.  It doesn’t want to talk about the rising rates of obesity, it would rather talk about the “high cost of living.” Recent campaign names have included  “Enough is Enough: Don’t Tax Our Groceries” in San Francisco to “Keep Seattle Livable for All.”

In TV and internet ads produced by the trade association, you don’t see the CEOs of Coke and Pepsi making the case against the soda tax. Rather, the ABA puts up a diversity of spokespeople to carry its preferred messaging. San Francisco grocery store owner Abdul Taleb tells the camera “politicians say it is a soda tax, they are lying. This is a tax on groceries.” In Chicago, a professional-looking African American woman tells the camera “we’re being taxed out of Cook County, I’m a single mom. I can’t afford this tax.” In Philadelphia, a hoagie shop owner says “we try to offer the best food at the best price…with that tax the working man can’t afford it anymore.”

The soda industry spent $48.9 million on recent soda tax opposition campaigns in Cook County, IL; Philadelphia, PA; Boulder, CO; San Francisco, CA; Oakland, CA; Seattle, WA, Santa Fe, NM; and Albany, California, according to a November 2017 report by the watchdog group Center for Science in the Public Interest. The ABA does not engage in absolute concealment of their sponsorship, but it does work to shield its brand name companies from responsibility and culpability.

The ABA has won some of these battles, rolling back a soda tax in Chicago and defeating one in Sante Fe, but it has lost more than it has won, so it is shifting the battle ground to state legislatures. In doing so it is following a timeworn path utilized by other industries that are hazardous to public health.

FOLLOWING IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE NRA AND BIG TOBACCO

Cities and counties have long played a valuable role as “laboratories of democracy” for important public policy innovations, including public health policies. When U.S. cities led the way regulating guns in the 1970s, the NRA responded with a raft of bills that prohibit localities from adopting reasonable gun laws tailored to local conditions. Faced with local ordinances to regulate tobacco products or create “tobacco free” work environments in the 1980s,  the industry jumped into action.

“We could never win at the local level… So the Tobacco Institute and tobacco companies’ first priority has always been to preempt the field,” said a tobacco lobbyist. Today, the majority of states have some type of tobacco preemption, twelve states preempt local smoke-free ordinances and eight states have recently moved to ban local regulation of E-cigarettes.

“In 1988, it was Phillip Morris’ Smokers’ Alliance. In 2018, it’s Big Soda’s YES! TO AFFORDABLE GROCERIES. Both are front groups, then the tobacco industry’s and today the American Beverage Association’s,” said Mark Pertschuk. Pertschuk is the Director of a small advocacy organization called Grassroots Change. He is the former President of American for Nonsmokers’ Rights, which battled the tobacco industry for smoke-free workplaces.

Today, Pertschuk’s “Preemption Watch” project tracks effortsthat step on local democracy. There has already been preemption of local ordinances related to nutrition in 11 states, this applies not just to a soda tax, but to menu labelling and other policies. More preemption bills (or statewide referendums) are likely to be introduced in 2018.

In working to “preempt the field” the ABA is getting help from many of the usual suspects. Affiliates of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce have been active in local fights along with restaurant and grocers associations. Front group propagator and master propagandist Richard Berman cut ads in Sante Fe for a State Policy Network “think tank,” prompting an ethics complaint. Other State Policy Network groups have been producing and promoting questionable research saying that the soda tax harms the economy. An ALEC legislator successfully preempted local food and nutrition policies with an ALEC “model bill” in Kansas. And the National Federation of Independent Businesses, which has been battling paid sick leave ordinances, lobbied in favor of soda tax preemption in Michigan.

Grassroots activists know they are up against big institutions and big money, but they also know they have the people on their side. While Congress is universally reviled, local government is almost universally supported. In a recent pollin Pennsylvania conducted by the American Heart Association,  71% of likely voters agreed that “…government closest to the people governs best” and a preemption law that takes away the ability of local governments to solve their own problems is a bad idea.

“The reason we got to 76% of the popular vote in Berkeley is because people believed in this policy. It came from the ground up,” said Sara Soka who was the campaign manager for the Berkeley Healthy Child Coalition.

And that’s why grassroots public health campaigners can still win on this issue and many more.