By Dave Johnson and James Boyce of Smoking Politics
What could be more important than dealing with the threat of global warming? Exposing the companies and groups that continue to try and distort the issue for financial gain and holding the media accountable for their role and complicity in the continuing distortion of the truth.
Let’s be perfectly clear. Global warming is a scientific fact – it is not a political issue. But a few corporations are bringing in incredibly high profit margins from the status quo. These profits depend on Americans and people worldwide burning more and more oil instead of working to put less carbon into the air. So they pollute the “marketplace of ideas,” deceiving people by spreading the lie of doubt that global warming is a real problem.
Just as Big Tobacco was willing to spend hundreds of millions of dollars denying for decades that cigarettes caused cancer while hundreds of thousands died from their product each year — spreading the same lie that the science was not clear — so too is Big Oil willing to invest heavily in the global warming deniers.
“Doubt is our product” said the tobacco companies, and citizens continued to die. Now doubt is the product again – and the planet continues to grow hotter.

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