Newly unearthed documents contain warning from head of Air Pollution Foundation, founded in 1953 by oil interests
Major oil companies, including Shell and precursors to energy giants Chevron, ExxonMobil and BP, were alerted about the planet-warming effects of fossil fuels as early as 1954, newly unearthed documents show.
The warning, from the head of an industry-created group known as the Air Pollution Foundation, was revealed by Climate Investigations Center and published Tuesday by the climate website DeSmog. It represents what may be the earliest instance of big oil being informed of the potentially dire consequences of its products.
“Every time there’s a push for climate action, [we see] fossil fuel companies downplay and deny the harms of burning fossil fuels,” said Rebecca John, a researcher at the Climate Investigations Center who uncovered the historic memos. “Now we have evidence they were doing this way back in the 50s during these really early attempts to crack down on sources of pollution.”
In the 1990s, we all knew. And we had enough time and the technology to stop it.
That technology was nuclear, since solar and wind just weren’t developed enough back then.
But we collectively decided that nuclear power was too risky, so now we are here today.
We didn’t collectively decide anything lol. Hilarious you think thats how our society works.
