UPDATED: JUN 6, 2007

 “FATAL ADDICTION”

Early in May, Media Matters for America ran two extensive pieces on CNN’s Glenn Beck (May 4, 9, 2007).  (He is one of their few token right-wingers, Mary Matalin’s tag-team partner Bay Buchanan being another.)  Beck has had a number of presentations of the anti-global warming hypothesis, which CNN is treating as if it were a real alternative to the global warming theory (a “theory” being otherwise known as a proven hypothesis).  Beck’s special was called "EXPOSED: The Climate of Fear."  Admitting that "[T]his is not a balanced look at global warming,” Beck featured 10 anti-global warming theory people spokespeople, of whom 8 have direct ties to the energy industry. 

They included: Marlo Lewis, a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), an institution largely funded by the energy industry; Dr. Timothy Ball, Chairman of the Natural Resources Stewardship Project, directly connected to the Canadian Gas Association and the Canadian Electricity Association; Patrick J. Michaels, a senior fellow in environmental studies at the Cato Institute, supported by the coal and oil industries; Patrick Moore, a former Greenpeace activist who since 1991 has worked as an extractive industries lobbyist (more money, I guess); and so on and so forth. “Indeed,” said Media Matters, “Beck relied heavily on people with energy industry ties and others espousing positions on global warming that have been soundly debunked or rejected by the overwhelming majority of scientists studying climate change.”   

“On the May 3 edition of CNN's American Morning,” Media Matters went on, “during a discussion about CNN Headline News . . . co-host Kiran Chetry stated that there is ‘no denying’ global warming is happening, but added, ‘I think the cause and how we can help is something that is up for debate. ’”  Here is a major Earth Event, an occurrence which was first noted at least as far back as 1985 (a noting that Robert Redford helped to bring to light at the time, but it was still largely ignored back then).  It has been proven overwhelmingly to be occurring and to be due in large part to human actions, using scientific techniques (see for example a report from the National Academy of Sciences and the pre-Bush Environmental Protection Administration (http://yosemite.epa.gov/OAR/globalwarming.nsf/content/Climate.html) and of course the reports from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (e.g., IPCC: Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis).  They share the consensus view that, as stated in a June 2006 NAS report, "[H]uman activities are responsible for much of the [planet's] recent warming."  And yet, there is CNN permitting the opponents, not of the report, but of its implications for the industries they represent, act is if there is “another side.” 

There is indeed one, one that is artificially created and fostered by the modern media which want to showcase the “two sides to every question” (except the inconvenient ones, of course, like what really happened on 9/11 and the two sides that were out there when the Georgites were driving the nation into the War on Iraq on entirely false pretenses).  Of course, the “two sides” would not exist otherwise.  And the media do make choices on such challenges to science.  For example, there are still geocentrists who earnestly think that Copernicus was all wrong, don’t you know, and the Sun really does rotate around the Earth.  (Think I’m making this up?  Go to: http://www.geocentrism.com/, which boasts two PhDs as its authorities.)  But those folks don’t get on the air.  (They should complain, don’t you think?)

Interestingly enough, early in May there was an eerie reminder of a similar deadly circumstance in creating a false “two sides” on a scientific matter that took place starting about 50 years ago.  In the May 6 edition of the Sunday New York Times Book Review, there was a review of Prof. Allen Brandt's new book, The Cigarette Century: The Rise, Fall, and Deadly Persistence of the Product That Defined America. The review was written by Jonathan Miles who is, oddly enough, a persistent cigarette smoker.  In contrast with 70% of smokers, he claims that he smokes because he likes it, and implies that that is the reason most smokers smoke.  Mr. Miles apparently knows little about the addictive properties of nicotine: approximately 90% of persons who try cigarettes become addicted to them, especially if they begin smoking at a young age, which is when most smokers begin. 

However, this column is not about the addictive properties of nicotine and how, for example, the nicotine levels in cigarettes have been so cleverly manipulated by the tobacco industry over the years. It is rather about how the industry has so cleverly manipulated the general public and its political representatives and their attitudes towards smoking over the years, and the comparison between the tobacco industry and another big one that trades on an addiction it has created. In so doing, the latter has produced a coming international health and public health crisis far larger than even the one that has been created by the tobacco industry.

As Mr. Miles correctly states: "Smokers . . . are midwifed by an array of potent forces: . . . advertising, peer pressure,   .. .  the addictive properties of nicotine, the industry's pernicious campaign to obfuscate the perils of smoking." He goes on: "Cigarettes were ubiquitous [by the early 20th century]. . . . The tobacco industry . . . . nurtured and exploited that ubiquity. . . . [But then, beginning in mid-century,] faced with damning evidence [of the major and ubiquitous health harms of cigarette smoking], the industry devised a cagey defense: rather than denying the harms of smoking, it insisted there were ‘two sides' to the story, and corralled skeptical scientists . . . to rebut or at least recast doubt upon the medical consensus. Journalists were urged to consider ‘fairness' and ‘balance' in covering the invented ‘controversy.' " 

Oh my. Sound familiar? Consider.  A created "addiction" to the use of a particular fuel, especially in this country made widely available and very cheap to buy. The conversion of rail transport after World War II from coal to oil power, and then of a major chunk of rail transport to truck transport.  (This had a double purpose: sell much more oil, and put out of business the single most powerful militant trade union in the country, the United Mine Workers.) In the case of oil, government was a major factor in this process. The massive subsidization of petroleum-fueled rubber-tired transport that began in the 1950s with the construction of the Interstate Highway system. The "depletion allowance" subsidies to the oil industry. The destruction by Pres. Reagan on his first full day in office of Pres. Jimmy Carter’s Federal alternative energy research program.  And so on and so forth right up to the War on Iraq.

Now we have Global Warming. With it we have, to paraphrase Mr. Miles’ review, the oil industry's "cagey defense: rather than directly denying" the harms of petroleum combustion as the major cause of global warming, it insists that "there [are] ‘two sides' to the story and [has] corralled skeptical scientists . . . to rebut or at least recast doubt upon the [international climatological] consensus." Terrifying and horrifying, isn't it? In 1964 (!), the U.S. Surgeon General's Report on Smoking and Health was first published. It was met with the tobacco industry’s campaign of denial and denigration, extending over three-plus decades, described by Prof. Brandt in his book. Cigarette smoking has been on the decline in the U.S. since the mid-60s, but it is still the number one killer of Americans. Its devastating effects on health will be with us still for decades. As for other countries around the world where the U.S. tobacco industry has so persistently marketed and sold its product (the industry being far and away the largest addictive-drug exporter on earth), the negative effects will persist even longer.

And here we are, fighting the same fight with an economically and politically powerful industry, which if it is not denying that global warming is a reality, then denies that humans contribute very much if anything to its existence. That brings one to wonder if an equivalent internal oil industry memorandum to one found in tobacco industry archives, written in 1961 (!), will see the light of day, say 30 years from now.  At that time, millions of Africans may well be dying from drought and hunger, Bangladesh may have virtually ceased to exist, and New York's Financial District may have already relocated to higher ground.  

Again quoting from Mr. Miles, that 1961 memo states: "‘There are biologically active materials present in cigarette tobacco. These are: a) cancer causing; b) cancer promoting; c) poisonous.' "  Thirty years later, the tobacco industry was still telling us that there was no proof of the harmful effects of cigarette smoking.  For how long, one wonders, will the oil industry be telling us that there is no “proof” of the relationship between burning petroleum products and global warming, when they know for sure that the precise opposite is precisely true. 

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This column is based in part on: “Dr. J.'s Commentary: The Dangers of Addiction,” that was published on BuzzFlash on May 22, 2007.

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