Tobacco Causing Cancer, Acid Rain, Criticizing SDI, the Ozone Hole, Global Warming and Banning DDT -- All Liberal Commie Plots!!!!

Really interesting interview with Naomi Oreskes:


Based on this book-- Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming.

Wikipedia on the book:

The book states that Seitz, Singer, Nierenberg and Robert Jastrow were all fiercely anti-communist and they viewed government regulation as a step towards socialism and communism. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, they looked for another great threat to free market capitalism and found it in environmentalism. They feared that an over-reaction to environmental problems would lead to heavy-handed government intervention in the marketplace and intrusion into people's lives.[10] However, the strategy of denying the reality of environmental problems (such as global warming, acid rain, and ozone destruction) does not make them go away. Oreskes and Conway state that the longer the delay the worse these problems get, and the more likely it is that governments will need to take the draconian measures that conservatives most fear. They say that Seitz, Singer, Nierenberg and Jastrow denied the scientific evidence, contributed to a strategy of delay, and thereby helped to bring about the situation they most dreaded.

Basically, there were four key cold war scientists who were rabid anti-communists, that started the business of professional scientific denial of important political issues. They used tactics pioneered by the tobacco industry, to basically protect industry and the powers that be and fuck over the rest of humanity. Using their credibility as "scientists", they cast doubt on all kinds of issues that they deemed harmful to American capitalism and American supremacy.

This is certainly a meme that still exists very strongly today in the modern GOP-- that environmentalism is a type of communist plot, and not a real threat, and attempts to regulate business and protect the environment are harmful to America.

It's all very sickening to me, considering how out of control industry and pollution has gotten, and how a few deluded/brainwashed/evil scientists have thwarted the ability of humanity to live on a clean, healthy planet. We're practically doomed as a species, and in part we can blame these anti-communists fuckwads. But mostly we can blame this on greedy corporations, and ultimately, the evil ultimate PTB.