The air and water are public assets that everybody has a right to and nobody has the right to diminish his or her use or enjoyment. In 1970, we had the first Earth Day in this country because we realized that although we were going to get a benefit from industry in the form of employment, the costs that were imposed on the public were not worth that benefit. Over the next ten years we passed 28 major environmental laws in this country that protected our air, water, endangered species, food and wet lands. Those laws imposed the cost on industry and reduced profit margins. In response to that, industry developed a series of sophisticated weaponry in order to combat the application of these new pollution laws.
Junk science is one of the main tools used against environmental regulation.
The pioneer in this new strategy was the tobacco industry. They utilized what environmentalists call green washing in order to hide the harmful effects of their products. In 1958, at the behest of Philip Morris Co., the tobacco institute was created to produce phony scientific papers on the effects of smoking. As a result, for 40 years the industry was shielded from governmental regulation and scrutiny, while killing one out of five of its customers. The attacks on Rachel Carson's book Silent Spring are another example of the above strategy employed by a chemical company.