2073

Haunting, powerful and mysterious, 2073 creates, as Morpheus would say, a splinter in your mind as the asides of societal collapse, combined with global warming and fascism up close and personal, is scary as hell and it should be as climate change is real and its impact on society will be profound and dangerous to the nth degree as civilization moves further into the 21st century.

Big Oil knew as early as 1954

New evidence shows that the oil industry was warned about the climate dangers
of fossil fuels in 1954 — but chose to prioritize “industry interests.”

Big Oil companies were warned about the climate dangers of fossil fuels as early as 1954, according to new evidence that could boost efforts to hold the fossil fuel industry accountable in court. The unearthed documents, first reported on by DeSmog, are one of the earliest examples of the oil and gas industry’s knowledge that the pollution from their products could result in a climate crisis.

Following public concern about smog blanketing Los Angeles in the 1940s and 50s, the Western States Petroleum Association (WSPA) — then known as the Western Oil and Gas Association — created and funded a research front group called the Air Pollution Foundation, which in turn funded a Caltech study about the sources of Los Angeles’s air pollution. The $1.3 million in funding — equivalent to about $14 million in 2024 dollars — came from WSPA’s members including Shell and gas companies later bought by or merged with ExxonMobil, BP, Chevron, Sunoco, and ConocoPhillips. 

The 1954 Caltech study determined that “a changing concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere with reference to climate” may “ultimately prove of considerable significance to civilization,” citing coal, oil, and gas as CO2 sources. WSPA and its members were formally alerted to the study findings in March 1955, archival documents show.