Big oil, like big tobacco, used what it knew to prevent the rest of us from learning the truth about the dangers of their product to us.
https://www.smokeandfumes.org/moments/21946 THE SMOKE AND FUMES COMMITTEE
From the very beginning of the American Petroleum Institute (API) in 1919, the oil industry recognized pollution issues, and the regulatory and liability risks they created, as an area of common concern and common interest. By the 1930s, API had focused particular attention to issues of air pollution. These issues came into sharp focus in the 1940s, as a rapidly growing Los Angeles grappled with the debilitating impacts of smog.
In late 1946, as public concern and media scrutiny mounted, executives from the Western Oil and Gas Association met in Los Angeles to consider a response. They emerged with a plan—and a Committee. Comprised of executives from leading oil companies (including Union Oil, Standard Oil of California (both now part of Chevron), Esso (now ExxonMobil), and Shell), the newly-created Smoke and Fumes Committee would fund scientific research into smog and other air pollution issues and, significantly, use that research to inform and shape public opinion about environmental issues. The express goal of their collaboration was to use science and public skepticism to prevent environmental regulations they deemed hasty, costly, and unnecessary.
Recognizing that the air pollution issues in Los Angeles could foreshadow the emergence of similar risks across the country, the Smoke and Fumes Committee was reorganized with a national mandate in 1952 within the American Petroleum Institute. It continued to operate, under a succession of names—but many of the same people—for the ensuing two decades. The Jones report documents that by 1958 at the latest, the Committee was funding research into the role of fossil fuels in rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide.
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