This Climate One podcast is sponsored by General Motors.

How will we power our future? Can we create a healthy and clean economy?

Climate One at the Commonwealth Club is at the forefront of the global debate about energy, economy, and the environment.

Bringing together the brightest and most provocative leaders of our time, Climate One is the place where big ideas get heard.

With thoughtful and insightful discussions on policy, business, science, and culture,

Climate One founder Greg Dalton, gets to the heart of the matter.

It's our future. It's time to come together.

I'm Greg Dalton, and today on Climate 1, we will compare the stories of the tobacco

and oil industries.

In the 1990s, tobacco company documents leaked to the news media, proved for the first

time that cigarette makers knew their products are addictive and cause cancer.

The documents also demonstrated that the companies

waged a concerted campaign to cover up and distort the science of smoking.

When the American public realized tobacco companies lied to them,

the companies face such political and legal opposition,

they agreed to pay $200 billion in penalties over 25 years.

The companies also agreed to limitations on their advertising, sponsorship, and lobbying activities.

A similar narrative is unfolding in the oil industry today.

The Los Angeles Times and Inside Climate News reported recently that scientists at ExxonMobil

studied global warming as far back as the

1970s. One company scientists told an industry conference in 1991 that melting tundra and sea ice

would reduce the cost of exploring for oil in the seas of Alaska. At the same time that it was

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