Fracking has been a hot-button issue in the minds of politicians, business moguls, and health enthusiasts for the last couple of years. It's an effective (though largely untested) way of extracting natural gas out of the ground which could make some serious investors a lot of money—if they can convince the public it's safe.
What's the best way to get your message out? Go the Don Draper route and market it with PR firms. After all, it worked for cigarette companies during the 50s and 60s. In fact, members of America's Natural Gas Alliance decided to use the same global public relations company that tried to keep the public from linking cigarettes to lung cancer in 1953.
Now in 2014, Hill & Knowlton are at it again, only this time they're taking money from natural gas lobbyists—$80 million, to be exact—to influence people to go pro-fracking. The game plan is the same as it was when defending cigarettes: Raise doubt in the public's mind about fracking's danger. It's pretty easy to see the similarities between the cigarette and fracking strategies, which raises the question, is fracking as dangerous to our health as cigarettes?
