One of the industry’s absolute favorite talking points to come back to time and again is how many things it makes and how dependent the world is on it, not just to keep the lights on but also to keep us swimming in smart phones, TVs, and fast fashion. It’s genius: create a product, create demand for the product and then blame consumers not just for buying it but also for any associated impacts. Which is not to say, of course, that consumers (particularly the wealthiest consumers) are not to blame, just that they don’t hold quite the same culpability as the industry that has been shaping markets and policy for a century.

Brown University environmental sociologist Bob Brulle explains it’s not just that they make your life work even, but that they make your life good. “Connecting the good life to fossil fuel use has been and continues to be a chronic, paradigmatic element of the American Petroleum Institute’s and the fossil fuel industry’s propaganda efforts,” he says. “ And the message from their 1950s movies is not a whole lot different than what you see in their Fueling it Forward commercials that they showed in 2017 at the Super Bowl. So they've been at it a long time.”