The Secret Love Affair Between Roger Bate and Big Tobacco

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Our latest DeSmog UK epic history post reveals how the once-hidden romance between Roger Bate of the Institute of Economic Affairs and Big Tobacco became a publicย affair.

The relationship between the young Roger Bate and the Big Tobacco companies isย intriguing.

Bate was recruited as head of the Institute of Economic Affairsโ€™ (IEA) Environment Unit. As such, he midwifed British climate scepticism, offering to place stories in the Financial Times and The Wall Street Journal as a representative of a healthย charity.

Yet all the while, he was being paid by Big Tobacco. A free market zealot, Bate acted in the interests of a major international monopoly despite their product being proven to be highly addictive and responsible for killing millions ofย people.

Cancerย Lawsuit

Bate hid his funding from the scientists he worked with and, it seems, was concerned about his office colleagues seeing his letters to the tobaccoย companies.

We only know of his work with tobacco because millions of internal documents were released by American court order after a class-action lawsuit by cancerย sufferers.


Photo: Other Words via Creative Commons

Oil companies, however, have never been forced to disclose their documents in the sameย way.

There are two possibilities: either Bate offered the same clandestine services to Esso, BP and Shell, or he was demonstrating a particular zeal for working withย tobacco.

It would be easy to characterise his behaviour as morally indefensible. But Bate believed that all individuals are merely motivated byย self-interest.

That, in lining his pockets with tobacco money, he was only doing what everyone else would do if they were smart enough. In turn, the oil and tobacco companies were simply protecting their profits and shareholders in the sameย way.

โ€˜War ofย Ideasโ€™

Regulators were just bureaucrats creating a new gravy train, he explained in one press release, and environmentalists were merely clandestine socialists intent on attacking businesses like cigarette companies and ultimately seizing power for their own wickedย ends.

โ€œThe war of ideas fought between socialists and laissez-faire adherents swung decisively to the latter with the demise of the socialist states in the late 1980s,โ€ he argued in an article headlined โ€˜Post-Environmentalismโ€™ published in the IEA journal.

He continued: โ€œThe intellectual battleground has shifted. The Left has retreated and regrouped into its heartland โ€ฆ theย environment.โ€

This logic would fuel Bate as he set out to establish his own organisation, the European Science and Environment Forum (ESEF), to continue fighting the โ€œwar ofย ideasโ€.

Next up on the DeSmog UK epic history series, we look at how the ESEF joined the sceptic’s vitriolic attack on the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climateย Change.

@brendanmontague

Photo: Pixabay via Creativeย Commons

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