FOSSIL FUEL INDUSTRY: JUST LIKE BIG TOBACCO

It is now common knowledge that smoking is bad for your health.  From the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention:

Cigarette smoking is the leading preventable cause of death in the United States.1

• Cigarette smoking causes more than 480,000 deaths each year in the United States. This is nearly one in five deaths.1,2,3
• Smoking causes more deaths each year than the following causes combined:4
  • Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)
  • Illegal drug use
  • Alcohol use
  • Motor vehicle injuries
  • Firearm-related incidents

• More than 10 times as many U.S. citizens have died prematurely from cigarette smoking than have died in all the wars fought by the United States.1

All the above, even though U.S. cigarette consumption has significantly dropped:

The U.S. now ranks #69 in cigarette consumption/capita, with 1017.  That is almost 3/person/day. However, as now only 14% smoke, those who light up average 20/day.  Incidentally, in 1965, 42.4% of adults smoked.

Leading the world in cigarette consumption per year per person is Andorra with 6398, #2 Luxembourg 6331, #3 Belarus 2911.  China?  #15 with 2043.  Brunei is lowest with 10.  Here is something that, however, will shock you:  Andorra has the highest life expectancy in the world!!!

Further, there are numerous tobacco stores in the country.  A pack of cigarettes sells for $2.75, but $13 in New York, and the cheapest state has it for $5.25.  

What is the explanation for Andorran longevity?  Peace and red wine.  Just like life at 15 Craigside.

Incidentally, one cigarette shortens your life by 11 minutes, or, those who smoke lose ten years of life expectancy.  On the other hand the New England Journal of Medicine reported that those who kick the habit before the age of 40 reduce this risk of death by 90%.

Well, anyway, most of you lost track of smoking statistics, so I thought I'd start this posting with the above data to next go into tobacco control, which began in 1590 by Pope Urban VII.  Parts of Europe invoked smoking restrictions in the late 17th century, and was forbidden in Berlin in 1723.

In 1952 research in Europe proved that smoking caused lung cancer.  New York City in 2002 said "Smoking Kills," and the United Nations came out with the first international public health treaty against smoking.  The U.S. started by restricting sales to minors, passing laws to prevent smoking in certain venues and assessing taxes.

What made control difficult was that the tobacco industry from the 1950's into the 1990's successfully fought off efforts by government and public concern groups.  Southern states, which relied on tobacco revenues, led the lobbying effort in the U.S. Congress.  They knew cigarettes caused lung cancer, but provided mis-information and paid off researchers to challenge this fact.  In 1965 labels warning of cancer were removed by Congress.

All that lobbying, however, began to fray by 1998 amidst growing scientific evidence, and American tobacco companies reacted by expanding their operations abroad.  While tobacco lobbies long remained prominent in Congress, there was a significant drop from 2017.  They donate more to Republican candidates, including Vice President Mike Pence.

Local government interest picked up, and 46 states sued the tobacco companies, in 1998 winning a settlements case referred to as the Master Settlement Agreement.  A sum of $206 billion over the first 25 years was assessed  to compensate for health-care cost.  In 2000 a California jury ordered Philip Morris to pay $51.5 million to a California smoker with inoperable lunch cancer.  A raft of suits followed.  While winning suits are mostly under appeal, by 2015 RJ Reynolds faced verdicts of almost $300 million.

Noting the above, states have returned to action, now against fossil fuel companies.  Much of this actually began in the 1970's:  ExxonMobil engaged in climate research, and later began lobbying, advertising, and grant making, some of which were conducted with the purpose of delaying widespread acceptance and action on global warming.  A decade ago, I personally was attacked on a couple of my articles for The Huffington Post.  I checked into who were making those comments criticizing my point of view, and finally found a link to the Heartland Institute (HI).

HI was involved with Philip Morris (who can forget the call for PM by Johnny Roventini--you'll quit if you can withstand three minutes of him) to discredit the health risks of secondhand smoke, then moved on to global climate change in 2008.  Interestingly enough, I then directly traced HI funding to ExxonMobil.  However, a couple of years later, nothing from fossil fuel companies.  The money came through third party donors, where it is difficult to track exactly how the money entered the misinformation budget.

To quote further from Wikipedia:

From the late 1970s and through the 1980s, Exxon funded internal and university collaborations, broadly in line with the developing public scientific approach. From the 1980s to mid 2000s, the company was a leader in climate change denial, opposing regulations to curtail global warming. ExxonMobil funded organizations critical of the Kyoto Protocol and sought to undermine public opinion about the scientific consensus that global warming is caused by the burning of fossil fuels. Exxon helped to found and lead the Global Climate Coalition of businesses opposed to the regulation of greenhouse gas emissions. More recently it has expressed support for a carbon tax and the Paris agreement.

Note in particular that last sentence.  ExxonMobil now actually, with most American companies, sees value to being part of that global warming remediating agreement.  Two years ago:

On May 10, in an attempt to influence the president’s thinking, 30 CEOs wrote an open letter to Trump, taking out a full-page ad in the Wall Street Journal. The opening reads, “We are writing to express our strong support for the U.S. remaining in the Paris Climate Agreement.” I won’t reprint the whole letter here, but please read it.

Two years later, or today, I haven't seen a retraction, so you got to wonder why President Trump is making such a show of pulling the U.S. out of the Paris Agreement.

But the suits against the fossil industry, particularly ExxonMobil, now seem to be mushrooming in a manner similar to Tobacco Control:

From a trove of internal Exxon documents, a narrative emerged in 2015 that put a spotlight on the conduct of the fossil fuel industry. An investigative series of stories by InsideClimate News, and later the Los Angeles Times, disclosed that the oil company understood the science of global warming, predicted its catastrophic consequences, and then spent millions to promote misinformation.

That evidence ignited a legal clamor that included calls for a federal criminal investigation of Exxon. The challenges gained momentum when attorneys general in New York and Massachusetts subpoenaed the oil giant for internal climate change-related documents. Then some of the country's largest cities entered the fray, seeking billions of dollars to fortify against climate change. 

What will happen?  Well, ExxonMobil went to court last week for the New York lawsuit.  The case for conviction is based on AMERICA MISLED, how the fossil fuel industry deliberately misled Americans about climate change.  The report draws parallels between the tobacco and fossil fuel companies.

It took many decades for smoking to sort out.  Global warming and fossil fuels?  We really can't afford to wait!

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There are two ocean storms in the vicinity of Taiwan, Kalmaegi and Fengshen.  In particular, be watchful about Kalmaegi.

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