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| Fifty years after the warning, people still don't understand that smoking will kill you. |
People of the world
we warned 50 years ago that smoking would kill them.
However, today one in 10 smokers are oblivious to the
irrefutable evidence that smoking will end their life.
The lessons learned and applied ruthlessly by the tobacco juggernaut
to engineer doubt in the minds of the community has been adopted with
enthusiasm and equal aplomb by the climate change skeptics.
The impact of carbon dioxide has been understood for
centuries, but it was in the eighties that the then head of the NASA Goddard
Institute of Space Studies, James Hansen, warned the U.S. Congress that a
warming world was a reality.
He explained that the continued combustion of fossil fuels,
primarily coal and oil, was increasing the carbon dioxide content in the
atmosphere and because of the greenhouse effect of those gases the earth was
slowly, but critically warming.
Evidence since has illustrated that the former NASA
specialist was correct, but armed with ideas pilfered from the tobacco industry,
the skeptics, funded almost entirely by the fossil fuel industry, have spread
disinformation about the causes and impact of climate change and so engendered
doubt throughout the community.
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| James Hansen - he warned the U.S. congress about climate change in the last 1980s. |
There is, however, a significant difference – tobacco, as
deadly as it is, kills individually while the catastrophic changes that will
result from climate change will kill thousands and if unattended to, puts the
bulk of humanity at risk.
And unlike cigarettes, we can’t afford to wait for it the
window of opportunity in which humanity can react and make some changes to
their behaviour is, if not closed, within years of being so.
A story on the ABC today headed: “Survey finds one in 10 smokers do not link smoking with illness, 50 years after landmark report” said
the smoking rates among adults had more than halved.
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