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Greg Zimmerman, an environmental activist, was scrolling through the website of a coal industry association when he came across a presentation that startled him: “Survival Is Victory: Lessons From the Tobacco Wars.”

 

What surprised Mr. Zimmerman, the deputy policy director at the Center for Western Priorities, a conservation advocacy organization based in Denver, was that the coal industry was, at least in this presentation, deliberately drawing a comparison between itself and the tobacco companies.

 

That is more typically the argument of environmentalists, who often compare fossil fuel companies to the tobacco industry. They note that the tobacco giants for many years funded trumped-up science and advocacy groups to spread doubt about risks of smoking.

 

Fossil fuel companies, they argue, have engaged in similar efforts, and investigations by state attorneys general have focused on the tactics of Exxon Mobil, which has funded groups that deny the scientific evidence that human activity has increased global warming. Fossil fuel companies and their allies generally ridicule the comparison to tobacco.

 

But here was an internal document from the industry that, as Mr. Zimmerman said, “has sort of done our job for us.”

 

Others have taken note of it as well. After reviewing the presentation, shared with him by a reporter, the state attorney general leading the investigation of Exxon Mobil, Eric T. Schneiderman of New York, called it important. “This is just the latest example of the fossil fuel industry explicitly adopting the Big Tobacco playbook,” he said.

 

Mr. Schneiderman reached a settlement last year with Peabody Energy, the giant coal company, after finding that it had not properly disclosed to the public and its shareholders the risks of climate change and regulation to its business — an investigation similar to Mr. Schneiderman’s efforts to determine whether Exxon Mobil had committed fraud in its public statements about climate change.

 

The 24-slide “Survival Is Victory” presentation was given a year ago at the convention and annual meeting of the Rocky Mountain Coal Mining Institute, an industry group representing coal interests in Western states.

 

The author of the presentation, Richard Reavey, is the vice president for government and public affairs at Cloud Peak Energy, a mining company based in Wyoming. From 1990 to 2007, Mr. Reavey served as an executive with Philip Morris International, working in communications and government affairs.

 

The slides did not acknowledge the scientific consensus on climate change, but stated that public opinion had shifted so substantially that the question was moot.

 

“We need to get out of the binary debate on climate change,” one slide read. “Right, but dead, is not a victory.”

 

The presentation called on the industry to prepare for more stringent regulation, and to build a better future for the industry and its workers by pushing for more research into technology that can capture carbon dioxide from smokestacks, which could extend the use of coal.

Source:NYTimes