It is impossible to ignore the evidence of the harm caused by big oil and gas companies. Turning to them to decrease dependency on fossil fuels is like asking the tobacco industry for advice on how to stop smoking, Anna Gilmore writes.
ADVERTISEMENTFor decades, the tobacco industry misused science to hide the harms of its products and create confusion about the interventions needed to reduce that harm; it lobbied to avoid regulation and shape policies in its favour.
Growing evidence shows that the fossil fuel industry not only uses exactly the same techniques but has also worked jointly with the tobacco industry to shape regulatory rules in their shared interest.
Yet, the two industries are treated entirely differently when it comes to policy-making: while there are rules protecting policymaking from the tobacco industry — a firewall known as Article 5.3 — no such equivalent exists for fossil fuel companies, even if the damage they provoke is more significant.
Members of the European Parliament were going to vote on such a measure this week, but it was defeated thanks to a lack of political support from the centre-right.
Last February, in response to a petition from the Fossil Free Politics Coalition, the European Parliament held the first cross-party public hearing to assess the fossil fuel industry's responsibility for exacerbating the cost-of-living crisis.
Asked to give evidence at this hearing, I argued that the fossil fuel industry needs the same kind of firewall as the tobacco industry.
Learning from the past: The case of the tobacco industry
The parallels between the misconduct of the tobacco and fossil fuel industries are clear. For example, from the 1950s onwards, the tobacco industry poured funds into academic research at prestigious universities to back its arguments.
Fossil fuel industries copied this playbook to cast doubt about global warming.
Another strategy used by the tobacco industry was to profoundly alter rules on policymaking.
These rules, now known as “better” or “smart” regulation, require early consultation with affected stakeholders and make a business-oriented impact assessment of each policy mandatory.
In other words, they give the businesses affected by regulation a key say in that regulation and specifically require an assessment of how that business will be impacted.
Internal tobacco industry documents made public through litigation show that British American Tobacco and its corporate allies pushed for these rules because they anticipated they would make it harder to pass policies that protect public health and the environment.
It all went up in smoke
Yet, the need to protect people's health from the harms of the tobacco industry led to the establishment, in 2005, of the World Health Organization Framework Convention of Tobacco Control (WHO FCTC) — the tobacco equivalent of the Paris Agreement.
This legally binding treaty includes a specific obligation — Article 5.3 — to protect policy from the “vested interests of the tobacco industry”.
It recognises that when it comes to developing public health policies which could impact sales of tobacco, the tobacco industry is clearly conflicted.
This means not only that the tobacco industry is excluded from treaty negotiations, but that all 182 parties to the treaty, including the EU, have to protect their policies from tobacco industry influence.
Contrary to misleading tobacco industry claims, the subsequent measures have helped advance public interest policymaking in tobacco and should apply to other industries, including the fossil fuel industry.
An Article 5.3, except for fossil fuels
The urgent need for an Article 5.3 for fossil fuels is illustrated by the European Commission’s response to the energy crisis after the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
ADVERTISEMENTRather than turn to independent experts, the Commission sought advice on reducing Europe's dependency on Russian gas from the very gas companies with an interest in maintaining the continent’s gas dependence more broadly.
In the 12 months after the invasion, there were over 200 meetings between gas companies and top European Commission personnel and the “expert group” the Commission established contained no actual experts, just industry executives.
Unsurprisingly, the European response to the crisis favoured the fossil fuel industry interests over those of the public.
Instead of implementing the windfall taxes and price caps that could have brought down energy bills, companies like Shell, BP, TotalEnergies, Chevron, and ExxonMobil recorded excess profits while millions in Europe facing unnecessarily costly bills could not afford to heat their homes.
In short, the absence of a firewall and a failure to recognise the clear conflict of interest in asking gas companies to shape the response meant the European Commission made poor policy decisions.
ADVERTISEMENTIt is impossible to ignore the evidence of the harm caused by big oil and gas companies. Turning to them to decrease dependency on fossil fuels is like asking the tobacco industry for advice on how to stop smoking.
That’s why the fossil fuel industry urgently needs a tobacco-style lobby regulation. Only with such a firewall can we hope to counter the power of the fossil fuel lobby and ensure we start to see the public interest policymaking in this area that is urgently needed.
Anna Gilmore is Professor of Public Health at the University of Bath and Director of the Tobacco Control Research Group.
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