What can tobacco teach us about climate change policy?

The Hill ^ | February 16, 2015 | By Stuart Shapiro

[Oldeconomybuyer]

... In some way, tobacco was an easier issue politically than climate change. With tobacco, the job of scientists was to convince people that smoking was harming themselves, not other people (at least until secondhand smoke became an issue). As more and more people had loved ones suffer through lung cancer after a lifetime of smoking, people became convinced of the relationship. With climate change, the victims are members of future generations or people who live near the rising oceans.

Fortunately, science has a way of winning out in the long run, when scientists largely agree as they do on these issues. Data already show that a clear majority of people are concerned about climate change, although they are not yet willing to pay for it. Unlike tobacco, whose impacts were felt at the individual level, the willingness to pay for restrictions on fossil fuel use may require another more major hurricane on the Eastern Seaboard or droughts in the West that extend for decades rather than years in order to change.

When the science is as clear as it is on climate change or tobacco, eventually the public and then their representatives move toward the scientific consensus. The question is how long is "eventually"? For tobacco, resistance to the science cost untold thousands of lives. With climate change, the cost of delay could be even greater.

[Oldeconomybuyer]

Shapiro is an associate professor and director of the Public Policy Program at Rutgers University and a member of the Scholars Strategy Network.

[E. Pluribus Unum]

With tobacco, the job of scientists was to convince people...

Evidently Ms. Shapiro thinks that the purpose of science is to spread state-sponsored propaganda.

[Da Coyote]

If Shapiro believes in climate change, he is most certainly not a scholar in the sciences.

[ClearCase_guy]

Global Warming is an IQ test.

If you believe in it, you are a dumbass.

[stephenjohnbanker]

LOL!

True too

[MeshugeMikey]

what? what is the key issue here.

Not the ambiguous what lacking context as it may have appeared above but THAT do these people plan to DO to fight something as LARGE as any sort of CHANGE in the CLIMATE?

this is Magical Thinking at its most expensive,,and perhaps even most Dangerous.

[Mr. K]

I’ve known people who smoked their whole lives without getting cancer.

Tobacco companies USED TO BE huge Republican donors.

I think if they were huge Democrat donors, we would all be learning in school about the healthful benefits of “bathing your lungs in cleansing smoke”

[SKI NOW]

Actually I have managed to combine cigar smoking and global warming. By smoking a cigar I return some of the carbon dioxide gas back to the Earth as a solid. Just doing my small part.

[headstamp 2]

“Data already show that a clear majority of people are concerned about climate change,”

Horseshit

[eyedigress]

Stuart Shapiro you are a dolt.

It’s Global Warming.

[DiogenesLamp]

Global Warming is an IQ test.

If you believe in it, you are a dumbass.

Not necessarily. It's also a lie detector test.

If you have looked at the evidence and claim to believe in it, you are a liar.

But yeah, for the uninformed, it's an IQ test.

[Colinsky]

I am confident that if/when the effects of climate change arrive, we will cope with them successfully as they arise.

Ever since Brian Williams watched a dead body float by his hotel during Katrina, no more hurricanes have struck the United States. Is this climate change, or is it just a lull?

[TigersEye]

Fortunately, science has a way of winning out in the long run, when scientists largely agree as they do on these issues.

Stuart Shapiro is a bald faced liar.

Global Warming Skeptics Question Authority

Princeton Professor Denies Global Warming Theory

31,000 Scientists Rejecting Global Warming Theory to be Named Monday

German scientists reject man-made global warming

Real Scientist Uncover Serious Flaw In Global Warming Data

Physicist Howard Hayden's one-letter disproof of global warming claims [pre-Climategate]

‘Consensus’ On Man-Made Global Warming Collapses in 2008

Global Warming Petition Project
31,487 American scientists have signed this petition, including 9,029 with PhDs

[dalereed]

those that can do, those that can't teach!!!

The idiots have created 4 generations of idiot, non thinking parrots to promote their falsehoods and convert us to communism!!!

[AlaskaErik]

I believe climate change is real. But I disagree that it is caused by humans. Climate change was around long before there were humans.

[FreedomNotSafety]

This is an easy answer! This what Tobacco teaches us about Climate change policy.

Tobacco is harmful and should be banned. We cannot ban Tobacco but we can tax it to discourage its use. The taxes will go to offset external cost due to Tobacco usage (health care, education, etc). Now that Tobacco taxes fund liberal causes they do not go so high as to chock off revenue. With liberals in control of the tobacco taxes and more importantly the earmarked spending Tobacco usage is tacitly approved once again.

Now just substitute “carbon” for “tobacco”:

Carbon is harmful and should be banned. We cannot ban Carbon but we can tax it to discourage its use. The taxes will go to offset external cost due to Carbon usage (health care, education, etc). Now that Carbon taxes fund liberal causes they do not go so high as to chock off revenue. With liberals in control of the Carbon taxes and more importantly the earmarked spending usage is tacitly approved once again.

[Impala64ssa]

I think if they were huge Democrat donors, we would all be learning in school about the healthful benefits of “bathing your lungs in cleansing smoke”
You may be on to something here:


Typical cigarette ads from the late 30's and post WWII era, FDR, then Truman were in office.

[Impala64ssa]

And who can forget the classic Winston cigarette commercials shown on the Flinstones, these date back to the "era of Camelot", when JFK was C in C.