Local opinion: Fossil fuel companies take a page from tobacco

Generation Z is the first generation to feel the impact of climate change and the last generation able to do something about it.

They are justifiably worried. Already the entire world is experiencing unprecedented wildfires, drought, flooding, heatwaves, climate migration, and social upheaval. Despite the known clear link between fossil fuel use and rising global temperature, the 2026 Climate Change Conference did not even mention fossil fuels. It is akin to not mentioning smoking at a conference on preventing lung cancer. That’s not a coincidence. Fossil fuel companies took a page from tobacco companies who denied and delayed actions to eliminate smoking. It’s a page from the same book with the title changed.

For over 50 years, oil companies have funded campaigns to spread misinformation and disinformation and downplay the climate risks from burning fossil fuels. They ignored climate information from their own scientists, and directly and indirectly lobbied governments by funding political campaigns. Their advertising promoted actions to reduce climate change as our responsibility rather than theirs. They promoted unproven and improbable solutions like carbon capture and storage, solutions rather like putting a filter on a cigarette to make it safe. Neither one works.

Smoking was never safe; it always caused lung cancer and emphysema. Fossil fuels are worse, causing disastrous climate change to the entire planet. This has been known for over 50 years, and that knowledge has become widespread, and public anger is growing. Fearing that knowledge, they helped to fund a presidential administration that is actively working to promote greater use of fossil fuels. It is shameful.

Trump’s 2024 campaign explicitly solicited $1 billion from oil and gas leaders, promising policy favors such as tax breaks, deregulation, and faster permitting. After Trump was elected, they continued to fund Trump’s political operations, including $11.8 million to his inauguration fund and $25 million from Energy Transfer Partners to his super PAC after the election

In return, the Trump administration has consistently blocked clean energy projects. A wind farm that would have produced enough energy to power 5 million homes was denied permitting and decided it was politically wiser to invest over a billion dollars in liquefied natural gas and natural gas turbines. Any leak of that liquefied natural gas (methane) is 80 times more damaging to the climate than CO2 emissions. Trump’s administration has sought to open national monuments to uranium mining. French company TotalEnergies is getting nearly a billion dollars in leasing refunds from wind energy permits if they will invest that refund in fossil fuels. Bluepoint Wind and Golden State Wind agreed to end their wind leases and were reimbursed 900 million if they invested in fossil fuels instead of wind. It is, in the words of Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, “Trump’s sneaky way of getting regular families to pay off his fossil fuel donors.

Those are your taxes being used to harm you as wildfires destroy communities, historic drought dries up reservoirs, tornadoes and hurricanes become more dangerous, driven not by natural weather variation, but by the enormous amount of heat now stored in the ocean and the atmosphere from burning fossil fuels.

We can’t reverse what we’ve done, but we can stop making it worse. We can demand that anyone running for public office support a rapid transition to clean energy. As for tobacco executives, fossil fuel executives, and this corrupt presidency, they leave behind a legacy of calumny, shame, and infamy.