In the history of protecting businesses from the inconvenience of environmental regulation, no example has been more obvious or objectionable than tobacco.

We know, without doubt, that the tobacco companies spiked their product with nicotine to increase its addictive qualities and lied about it. We know that they created phony grassroots organizations, like The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition (TASSC)  to question the motivations of the Environmental Protection Agency and that they paid off scientists to take issue with the science.

We also know that TASSC decided to also take an interest in issues like climate change, just so it wasn’t obvious that they were completely in the pocket of Philip Morris.

Now we know that while all this was going on, the Competitive Enterprise Institute was soliciting money from the Tobacco Institute so it could produce a mini-series that would “set the record straight” on environmental science. This show was to be based on a book, Progress and the Planet, written by think tank-“experts” like the emminently flexible Dennis Avery of the Hudson Institute.

The question, given all we know, is why anybody with a hint of objectivity or integrity still listens to these guys.