Gore: Polluters like big tobacco

Former Vice President Al Gore, citing tobacco industry campaigns of years past, told CBS that disinformation from industrial polluters has made achieving political agreement on climate change more difficult.

“Some of the largest carbon polluters have been vigorous and try to convince people — as the tobacco industry did years ago on the link between smoking cigarettes and lung disease — that there really isn’t a link between global warming pollution and global warming,” Gore said in an interview broadcast Thursday on CBS’s “The Early Show.”

“But the power of that kind of lobbying and advertising does have an impact,” Gore added.

Gore is among the world’s most prominent advocates of requiring cuts in greenhouse gas emissions and transitioning quickly to low-carbon power sources.

Legislation to impose emissions curbs is moving slowly in the U.S. Senate after passing the House in June, and faces uncertain prospects next year.

Gore also expressed hope that energy security and economic arguments could help advance climate policy. “Even naysayers understand that it is dangerous for the United States of America to continue growing more and more dependent every day on foreign oil controlled by sovereign governments, many of which are not friendly,” he said.

But many members of the GOP caucus and other opponents of climate legislation say Democratic plans could have the opposite effect. For instance, they say that U.S. refiners would face competitive disadvantages that lead to increased gasoline imports.