Merchants of Doubt
"Merchants of Doubt " tells the story of how a loose-knit group of high-level scientists and scientific advisers, with deep connections in politics and industry, ran effective campaigns to mislead the public and deny well-established scientific knowledge over four decades that link smoking to lung cancer, coal smoke to acid rain, and CFCs to the ozone hole.
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32recommend
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2010–2026years
66% recommend34% neutral
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- Since it doesn't look like anyone has mentioned it yet: the book "Merchants of Doubt" covers this topic quite well.
It's frequently the same literal scientists arguing against the existence or severity or cause of things like cigarette-caused illnesses, acid rain, the hole in the ozone layer, and yes, anthropogenic climate change. And there's a well-established playbook for how they do it too (exploit Fairness Doctrine, abuse inherent shape of scientific method, etc). Really a fascinating read if you care about this stuff.
- I strongly recommend Merchants of Doubt [1], it's fairly clear what happened: learning from the "mistake" of the tobacco industry financing research, the oil industry understood that producing their own honest science was a liability, not a defense. The only way to avoid being held accountable for climate change was to sneakily but relentlessly attack science to discredit it. Keep the controversy alive. Seed doubt in the mind of people.
Not just regarding climate, virtually all of science. Science itself is the target. The overlap between climate change denial and COVID denial (for instance) is documented: same think tanks, same commentators. [2]
- Fossil fuel companies have spent the the last forty years in an organized campaign to prevent the US (and by extension, the world) from taking action against global warming.
There's a great book on the subject called "Merchants of Doubt" by Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway.
- Whether I have a reasonable explanation for this change or not doesn't change the fact that that comment was a simplistic caricature. I never claimed to know the full answer. But I am nearly certain it doesn't begin with those evil corporations literally trying to make people sick. Merchants of Doubt, which is a great book related to this subject, is full of stories about how cigarette and PFAS corporations like Dupont pulled all sorts of shady shit to cover up the harms their products caused consumers. At no point has it ever been suggested, either in that book or anywhere else that I'm aware of, that corporations did it on purpose to make people ill so they could what, make money through the healthcare industry? Touch grass.
- > just a stubborn contrarian pushing against the orthodoxy.
It's not enough to be a contrarian, you also have to be right. Acknowledging that cigarettes are bad isn't "group think", it's an easy consensus because the evidence at every level, scientific, personal is very clear. Just walk up a bunch of stairs with a heavy smoker.
People who constantly act contrarian because they cannot accept that orthodox opinions are, most of the time, established opinion for decent reasons are both annoying and especially these days a blight on public discourse. They don't move science forward (forward progress is by definition only possible if matters are, at some point, actually settled instead of repeated for eternity), they try to get attention by standing out.
And of course companies tend to use these people because they can easily become useful idiots, it's no surprise that there's an entire cottage industry of "heterodox thinkers" these days. The book in the article, Merchants of Doubt, gives some great examples on this in regards to pollution and climate change denial.
- That argument would have far greater credibility if firms did not:
- Manipulate public impressions, through advertising and propaganda (pretty much every commercial concern ever).
- Manipulate legal contexts, particularly of regulation (existence of, aspects of, capture of regulatory bodies) and liability, and seeking preferable competitive
- Engage in extensive and decades-long disinformation campaigns (lead, asbestos, CFCs, tobacco, auto safety, coal, oil, opioids, global warming, ...).
- Engage in direct attacks, surveillance, harassment, and in cases violence and assassination against whistleblowers and public advocates (Rachel Carson, Ralph Nader, Ken Saro-Wiwa, Chico Mendez, Berta Cáceres, Isidro Baldenegro López, Jairo Mora Sandoval, Greta Thunberg, Vandana Shiva, Winona LaDuke, Erin Brockovich, Judi Bari, Wangari Maathai, Siwon Tangnoi, Dilma Ferreira Silva, Dilma Ferreira Silva, Kimberly Wasserman, Marielle Franco, Gustavo Castro Soto, Hilda Lini, Paul Watson, and many, many, many more).
- Engage in monopolistic actions to eliminate competition (Standard Oil, Railroad industry, US Steel, Du Pont, American Tobacco, AT&T, IBM, Microsoft, Google, Apple, Facebook, ...). Quite often aimed at removing more environmentally-benign alternatives.
- Direct conspiracy to eliminate lower-impact solutions (General Motors streetcar conspiracy).
- Directly subverting emissions controls or tests (Volkswagen, many, many manufacturing and chemical concerns).
- Lied, lied, lied, and lied again in countless investigations, court cases, inquisitions, scientific studies, public statements, and far more, over what the truth and actual internal understanding of circumstances surrounding goods, services, processes, and impacts are.
What you're saying in effect is that market processes alone are not sufficient to ensure good-citizen behaviour from commercial institutions, which is what the general economic concept of externalities (both positive and negative) would strongly support. This means that markets alone won't work. Your own suggested approach of a carbon tax has numerous opponents, including most especially the fossil fuels and heavy industries sectors, much of the transportation sector, and others. There is also considerable resistance from the public and less-developed countries both of which fear that impacts of such taxes would disproportionately disadvantage them. There's the further challenge that a carbon tax would have to be substantially global in scope, which is challenging without an effective global governance structure, meaning that implementation would likely have to rely on treaties between major carbon emitters. The current process toward such a goal, the COP (conference of parties) which is going on 30 years without effective progress.
I'll also note that in virtually all cases where negative externalities have been successfully addressed, it has not been through market mechanisms but through regulation, civil action, litigation, and in cases direct violent action. Firms have shown repeatedly that they won't respond to anything else.
Shifting burden from the point sources (manufacturers, retailers, producers, service providers) to the general public also inherently increases overall costs and decreases effectiveness. Having a single point or fewer points of control is inherently advantageous in any attempt to influence outcomes, whether mechanical, technical, political, or economic, simply on an effort / impacts basis. I deny you the high ground here.
Sources are various, but Oreskes and Conway's Merchants of Doubt is a good recent overview of the general dynamic with sources to many more references. Annie Leonard's other writing also makes the case strongly.
Ralph Nader gives an excellent contemporary (1967) account of abuses by US auto manufacturers as well as the harassment, smear, and surveillance campaign against him by GM in this Studs Terkel interview: <https://studsterkel.wfmt.com/programs/ralph-nader-discusses-...>. Direct audio: <https://s3.amazonaws.com/wfmt-studs-terkel/published/11364.m...> (MP3).
