An anti-fossil fuel activist group claimed Tuesday that the oil industry, not the tobacco industry, is to blame for originating Exxon Mobil’s “denial and deception” tactics.
Environmentalist group Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL) wrote in a press statement Tuesday that public documents show , “the tobacco and fossil fuel industries used a shared playbook, but also suggests that playbook originated not with tobacco—as long assumed—but with the oil industry itself.”
CIEL, a group partially funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, unearthed public documents from the Tobacco Industry Archives that highlight the oil industry’s initial development of so-called denial and deception tactics.
“More than 100 industry documents drawn from the Tobacco Industry Archives demonstrate not only the legitimacy of the comparison between big oil and tobacco, but also reveal direct connections between these industries that go back far earlier than previously thought,” the group said in the press statement.
CIEL President Carroll Muffett said in the statement that the tobacco industry and the oil industry often used the same public relations firms to defend their positions.