Revealed: Big Oil told 70 years ago that fossil fuel emissions could impact ‘civilization’

April 6, 1955, was a perfect spring day in Los Angeles. Downtown, the skies were unusually smog-free as Lauren B. Hitchcock, president of the Air Pollution Foundation, made his way up the marble steps of the city’s exclusive California Club for a meeting with some of the West Coast’s most powerful businessmen. Waiting inside the club’s oak-paneled rooms were top executives from California’s major oil companies. They were the Air Pollution Foundation’s largest funders, and they were not happy.  

As the foundation’s president, it was Hitchcock’s job to oversee a research program aimed at solving Southern California’s escalating smog crisis—a crisis that had provoked mass protests throughout Los Angeles County only a few months before. Determined to tackle every possible source of smog, Hitchcock was investigating the region’s numerous oil and gas refineries. On top of this, he was publicly demanding action to curtail air pollution across the state, angering the members of the industry’s oldest lobby group, the Western States Petroleum Association (WSPA), then known as the Western Oil and Gas Association (WOGA). Several weeks earlier, the foundation had also published a report containing the bombshell warning that carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from fossil fuels could have considerable long-term consequences for “civilization.” Displeased, WSPA’s senior leaders summoned Hitchcock to the California Club where they reprimanded him, spelling out in no uncertain terms exactly what they expected in return for their hefty financial contributions. 

Over lunch, WSPA’s oilmen criticized Hitchcock for supporting pollution controls across California, for drawing “attention” to refinery pollution, and for conducting “too broad a program” of research. Instead, they told him they had formed the Air Pollution Foundation to be “protective,” that Hitchcock should serve as “the research director for the oil industry” and the foundation should publish “findings which would be accepted as unbiased” where the oil industry’s findings were not seen as trustworthy. 

This frank exchange, reported in detail by Hitchcock in a never-before-seen memo, unmasks the strategic motivations behind Big Oil’s sponsorship of air pollution research. Alongside dozens of other newly obtained documents, the memo shows that 1950s L.A. was ground zero for a tactic that has since become a key element of the oil industry’s PR playbook: funding a third-party community front group to sponsor and publicize research aimed at downplaying or denying the harmful impacts of burning fossil fuels. 

Following Big Oil’s intervention, the Air Pollution Foundation’s reports referred to CO2 as “innocuous.” 

Since the 1950s, oil and gas companies have repeatedly used front groups to influence public opinion, block clean air regulation, and stall climate action.

This deceptive tactic, rooted in California history, is a major focus of climate litigation currently progressing through the state’s courts.

Ironically, this strategy, designed to protect oil and gas producers from local air pollution controls, led to WSPA members being informed in 1954 of a far greater potential danger resulting from their operations: global climate change. 

This month, the 70th anniversary of researchers warning Big Oil about the risks of climate change, atmospheric carbon dioxide is 50 percent higher than before the Industrial Revolution. Record-breaking heat waves, violently destructive storms, wildfires, drought, and flooding are all increasing due to the effects of greenhouse-gas-induced climate change. Yet, in meetings held behind closed doors over multiple decades, oil and gas executives have consistently decided to deny, dismiss, or downplay the risk of burning fossil fuels to protect their business—just like WSPA’s oilmen of the 1950s. Compelling new evidence shows this pattern of behavior was already hardwired into the industry’s DNA by 1955 and persists today. 

An ‘air pollution siege’

“Outraged L.A. Citizens Still Suffer from Smog,” a Los Angeles Times headline in December 1952 cried out. That fall had seen Southern California experience its “most prolonged air pollution siege,” suffering five straight weeks of smog that pushed public anger to the “boiling point.” Thick, acrid, and irritating to the eyes and lungs, smog had plagued Los Angeles’ once idyllic corner of the southwestern U.S. since 1943 when, during World War II, the sudden arrival of a blanket of noxious fumes had been mistaken for an enemy gas attack. Obscuring the sun, smog reduced visibility to less than a few blocks, caused fatal traffic accidents, halted movie productions, confined children indoors, and canceled sporting events. On bad smog days, emergency rooms saw higher numbers of deaths from heart or lung diseases, and rates of asthma and bronchitis increased. Smog also damaged property and ruined crops. 

Angry citizens soon demanded action, pointing to the highly visible stack gases emitted daily by Los Angeles County’s many oil refineries. To deflect blame away from the industry, in 1947 WSPA established an internal Smoke and Fumes Committee chaired by William L. Stewart, Jr., a vice president of Union Oil (now Chevron). Through the committee, WSPA sponsored smog studies at the Stanford Research Institute (SRI), downplaying the industry’s role. 

By 1950, however, Caltech chemist Arie Haagen-Smit had identified hydrocarbon pollution from “oil fields, refineries, filling stations, automobiles, etc.” as the primary sources of smog. Using this emerging science, county authorities developed plans to enforce pollution controls. In response, oil industry leaders dialed up their anti-regulatory counteroffensive, dismissing Haagen-Smit’s findings as “unproved speculation,” and citing their own SRI research to claim that the substances responsible for smog had “not been positively identified.” WSPA, now aided by the oil industry’s national association, the American Petroleum Institute (API), argued to delay regulatory action, and recommended expanding research into the causes of smog instead. 

Meanwhile, the smog crisis intensified. Taking matters into their own hands, a group of independent L.A. citizens established the Pure Air Committee, holding public meetings that sought “legal remedies” to combat air pollution. Big Oil’s strategy of relying on SRI’s industry-funded research to stem the tide of bad publicity and prevent regulation was failing. “The policeman is coming!” an executive of Union Oil, warned the API at the group’s mid-year meeting. 

Foundation for war on smog

It was out of this battleground that WSPA formed the Air Pollution Foundation (APF). In September 1953, an official account of the foundation’s origins stated that a group of unnamed “civic leaders” gathered to discuss what they could do to eliminate smog. According to this official version of events, “It was obvious that more facts concerning the nature and origin of smog were necessary before proper controls could be invoked.”

However, Hitchcock’s confidential memo, written in the aftermath of his 1955 California Club meeting, reveals that senior WSPA officials and oil industry executives were among this group of “civic leaders” and that the APF was, in fact, intended as a vehicle for publishing supposedly “unbiased” findings. 

By filtering information “concerning the nature and origin of smog” through a foundation staffed with reputable scientists as well as its own representatives, WSPA hoped to win public credibility among L.A.’s angry residents, stall regulation, and protect the industry’s bottom line. This was a tactic that the U.S.’s heavy industries had used since the 1930s to fight worker health and safety reforms. However, the oil and gas industry, finding themselves directly in the regulatory firing line, now repurposed the same technique for their own agenda. At first, everything seemed to go according to plan. 

“Foundation Set Up For War On Smog,” a November 7, 1953, L.A. Times headlinestated, heralding the APF’s official launch. The paper reported that more than “75 businessmen, industrialists, civic leaders, churchmen and government officials” had announced a “community-wide, long-range” program for tackling the smog crisis. A list of the APF’s trustees revealed a cross-section of the city’s most influential figures including the heads of southern California’s most prestigious academic institutions, retail magnates, founders of the state’s leading banks, and the presidents of  SoCalGas, Southern California Edison, and Union Oil (acquired by Chevron in 2005).

According to the foundation’s “Statement of Policy,” these board members who represented “polluting industries” had a particular responsibility to ensure that they would be “parties to all facts and evidence brought to light on the problem” so that they and their colleagues in the fossil fuel industry could “continue their best efforts toward the abatement of air pollution.”  In reality, these efforts would fall short but, for the moment, WSPA’s prototype front group received a warm welcome in the press, which heralded the APF as a “Citizens’ Group.”

Follow the money 

Behind the scenes, documents show that the oil and gas industry was the APF’s largest funder by far, making annual contributions of approximately $200,000 (equivalent to $2.4 million today). In 1955, “oil companies” contributed $200,000 out of the foundation’s total income of $348,000. Throughout the foundation’s six-year existence, WSPA members contributed over a third of the APF’s total income, totaling $1.3 million (around $14 million today).

But which companies were behind WSPA’s funding of the APF? A November 1954 APF press release is the only surviving document revealing the identity of these individual oil and gas companies. The list includes General Petroleum and Humble Oil (ExxonMobil); Richfield Oil (BP); Shell; Southern California Edison; Southern California Gas Company (SoCalGas); Sunray Oil (Sunoco); Tidewater (ConocoPhillips); and Standard Oil of California, the Texas Company, Union Oil, and Western Gulf (all now Chevron). 

With the money came influence, starting with the APF’s choice of president. The chairman of Standard Oil of Indiana (now BP) scouted universities for recommendations, but it was an APF trustee with ties to Standard Oil of California (Chevron) who eventually recruited Lauren B. Hitchcock, the East Coast chemical engineer and World War I Naval Aviation Corps veteran, to serve as president of the APF.

With his track record of working for the chemical industry, Hitchcock likely appeared a safe pair of hands to run a front group for Big Oil. Unanimously approved by the APF’s trustees, he relocated his family from New York to Los Angeles, where he began formulating the APF’s research program. From the start of Hitchcock’s tenure, oil and gas industry representatives were omnipresent in the foundation’s operations, as consultants or members of important APF committees. However, despite these guardrails, Hitchcock would turn out to be more independent-minded than the oil industry had hoped.

Meanwhile, as each month passed, the air pollution crisis in southern California deepened. “Crowd Overflows Smog Meeting,” warned an October 1954 L.A. Times headline. Ten consecutive days of smog had resulted in mass civic protests in the region and on October 20, a crowd of 4,500 “smog-weary citizens” attended a meeting at the Pasadena Civic Auditorium where speakers outlined plans for a citizens’ movement. 

A few weeks later, on November 16, 1954, Hitchcock unveiled the foundation’s ambitious “Twelve-Month Research Program.” Billed as “unprecedented in scope,” the program focused on investigating the fundamental causes of smog and developing technology to reduce pollution from automobiles. Among the dozens of research projects listed, only one related specifically to exploring refinery emissions—even though refineries in the area contributed an estimated 33 percent to L.A.’s total air pollution.

CO2 and climate change

Tucked away at the end of the “Twelve-Month Research Program,” under the category of “Fundamental Research in Physics, Meteorology and Chemistry” the APF quietly listed a project that would lead to one of the most important scientific discoveries of the 20^th century: “Study of Carbon Isotopes.” 

A few months earlier, in September 1954, the APF’s Research Committee had asked Caltech to submit a proposal for studying the source of aerial carbon compounds, hoping it would determine whether “gasoline combustion products” or “the burning of rubbish” were responsible for LA’s carbon pollution. If burning trash proved to be the major source of the city’s carbon pollution, the fossil fuel industry might not be blamed for the smog problem. 

Responding to the APF’s request on November 15, 1954, Caltech’s Samuel Epstein, associate professor of geochemistry, submitted a research proposal outlining how recent scientific advances, applied to carbon dioxide samples, might tell researchers more about the sources of air pollution. 

But what the APF got from Epstein may have been more than they bargained for. As well as offering a possible “contribution to the solution of the smog problem,” Epstein’s proposal outlined how Caltech’s study could be used to predict the future. Increasing concentrations of atmospheric CO2 by burning fossil fuels might affect the Earth’s climate, wrote Epstein, describing the “concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere” as a matter “of well recognized importance to our civilization.” He emphasized that “the possible consequences of a changing concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere with reference to climate” may “ultimately prove of considerable significance to civilization.” 

Epstein proposed “a thorough investigation.” To do this, a Caltech researcher would gather atmospheric samples of CO2 “over the ocean, over mountain areas, and from industrial localities similar to the Los Angeles Basin.” 

As previously revealed by Desmog, APF funding of this project underwrote the earliest studies on CO2 conducted in 1955 and 1956 by Charles David Keeling, then a young postdoctoral researcher at Caltech. This research paved the way for Keeling’s later revelatory findings on global atmospheric CO2, and the publication of the iconic “Keeling Curve,” which charts how the level of atmospheric CO2 is rising due to the effects of burning fossil fuels. Keeling’s work, which has been used by climate researchers from James Hansen, who testified to Congress in the 1980s about global warming, to Michael Mann, creator of the famous “Hockey Stick” graph showing temperature rises from burning fossil fuels during the Industrial era, underpins our understanding of man-made climate change.

WSPA knew

In late 1954, Caltech’s research proposal moved quickly up the foundation’s chain of command, informing oil and gas industry representatives of CO2’s potential climate danger at each stage of the approval process. 

First, the APF’s Research Committee, which included SoCalGas president F. M. Banks, endorsed the study. Next, the APF’s Board of Trustees, with its representatives from Union Oil (Chevron) and Southern California Edison, approved the proposal’s funding. 

A few months later, in March 1955, the APF shared Caltech’s CO2 warning widely among its supporters in a First Technical Progress Report, repeating the message that CO2 emissions from burning fossil fuels could seriously impact the atmosphere. According to President Hitchcock’s official annual statement later that year, copies of all the Foundation’s reports printed to date, which were also available to the public, had been sent to its “trustees and contributors.” 

This shows that WSPA and its major dues-paying members, including Shell, SOCAL Gas, and Southern California Edison, as well as the companies owned or later acquired by Chevron, ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips and BP, were all warned 70 years ago that the product they profited from could pose a threat to the stability of the Earth’s climate.  

During the mid-1950s scientific understanding of the “greenhouse effect” was increasing among climate researchers, who published their findings outside of academia in publications such as The New York Times and Time magazine. However, these APF documents are the first to show that the oil industry was directly informed of the link during this period.  Nevertheless, it seems this information was something the industry might ultimately have preferred to keep private.

California Club showdown 

In the months prior to his California Club summons Hitchcock had been busy. In February 1955, he had urged state leaders to take action on refinery pollution, encouraging the Bay Area “to start an air pollution control program” built on knowledge gained from Los Angeles’s smog problem.

Then, in March 1955, the APF First Technical Progress Report outlined the possible climate risk caused by burning fossil fuels and featured an APF refinery emissions audit showing higher pollution levels than those previously reported by the WSPA-sponsored SRI. And, in early April, during a hearing of the California State Senate in Sacramento, Hitchcock publicly  testified in favor of state-funded “fact-finding efforts on air pollution.” 

Two days later, frustrated WSPA leaders summoned him to the California Club. 

At the meeting, Philip S. Magruder, chairman of WSPA’s Smoke and Fumes Committee and executive vice president of General Petroleum (ExxonMobil), told Hitchcock the committee was “questioning the advisability” of the foundation “calling attention” to refinery stack gases “or publicizing them.”

Next, George Davidson, vice president of the Standard Oil Company of California (Chevron), stated it was his understanding that sulfur dioxide (SO2) from refineries was “actually beneficial to plants and people” in the amounts presently emitted. This even though by 1955 scientists had already identified SO2 as  harmful to plants and human health—sometimes even lethal. Davidson endorsed Magrudger’s view that the foundation should not investigate such refinery emissions, criticizing Hitchock’s San Francisco speech for calling “attention to a growing Bay Area air pollution problem.”

Finally, WSPA brought out their big gun, William L. Stewart, Jr., vice president of Union Oil (Chevron), now chairman of the national Smoke and Fumes Committee for the API, who revealed some important truths about the oil industry’s sponsorship of the foundation.

First, Stewart complained that the APF was attempting to cover “too broad a program” of research before divulging that “he and others present had been part of the group which formed the Foundation.” As chairman of WSPA’s Smoke and Fumes Committee at the time the APF had been created, Stewart told Hitchcock it was WSPA’s “understanding that, in diverting substantial funds to the Foundation,” the APF would “serve as the research department for the oil industry,” that it would “be of a ‘protective’ nature,” publishing “findings which would be accepted as unbiased,” whereas the industry’s own findings were seen as favorable to its interests. In short, he conveyed that WSPA did not want the APF to concern itself with refinery emissions, but should just “stick to research.” As for Hitchcock’s own role, Stewart told Hitchcock that WSPA expected the APF president to act as “the research director for the oil industry.” 

Surprised and disappointed, Hitchcock referred the matter to the foundation’s Executive Committee, requesting they consider how WSPA’s “basic misunderstanding of the Foundation’s purposes” might be resolved.

The resolution came soon enough but not as Hitchcock had hoped. Another recently recovered set of documents, written less than a week after the meeting, shows Union Oil executive, Vance N. Jenkins, condemning the APF’s entire research program. In a memo sent to Stewart, Jenkins denigrated every single APF project except for one: its proposal to establish a “first-class public information bureau” to give the public so-called “definite facts” (approved by oil industry executives) about the smog problem. According to Jenkins, this was the “purpose for which the Foundation was established” and the only aspect of its activity he could “fully recommend.” The following day, president of Union oil and APF Trustee, Reese H. Taylor, submitted Jenkins’ damning memo to the foundation’s Executive Committee.

The goal of establishing the APF was to create a “first-class public information bureau” to give the public so-called “definite facts” about the air pollution problem, approved by oil industry executives.

Vance N. Jenkins, President, Union Oil, 1955

Records show that WSPA’s efforts hit their target. From this point on, the oil industry exerted tighter control over the APF’s activities. At a special meeting of the Executive Committee on April 13, 1955, unnamed participants put forward a proposal for a new “scientific sub-committee” to advise on “technical matters” whose members should be selected from “organizations such as the American Petroleum Institute, the Western Oil and Gas Association.” By July, the APF had duly installed this new Technical Advisory Committee, which included representatives from the API and Richfield Oil (BP).

In line with Union Oil’s suggestions, APF research projects were scaled back, focusing exclusively on automobile emissions, often conducted jointly with the API. After 1955, APF-sponsored research was increasingly used to lobby County authorities against clean air regulations or to boost the oil and gas industry’s public image. APF newsletters and reports also emphasized the high cost of pollution control, arguing that regulation would have negative economic impacts, and repeated the mantra that more research was necessary before regulatory action should be taken. Additionally, from March 1956, records show that WSPA issued a series of direct requests that the APF focus exclusively on public relations instead of air pollution research. 

Finding himself increasingly sidelined to a fundraising role and at odds with WSPA’s intentions, Hitchcock resigned as president and managing director in September 1956. 

His successor, W. L. Faith, had ties to the API and would steer the foundation in line with WSPA’s demands.

After resigning, Hitchcock moved back east, where he joined the faculty at the University of Buffalo’s engineering school and founded his own air pollution consulting firm.

‘Harmless’ carbon dioxide  

Following WSPA’s California Club intervention, APF publications reviewed by DeSmog made no further reference to CO2’s potential impact on the Earth’s climate. These subsequent APF reports also did not explain the implications of Keeling’s Caltech findings for advancing scientific understanding of the atmospheric changes caused by burning fossil fuels, even though APF members had been explicitly warned that these changes might “ultimately prove of considerable significance to civilization.” While APF publications reported some of Keeling’s findings—principally that CO2 in the L.A. atmosphere “increased mainly as a direct result of combustion” and that approximately two-thirds of this overall CO2 was “traceable to the combustion of petroleum products”—these APF reports did not mention the potential long-term impacts of fossil-fuel-generated CO2 emissions. 

Moreover, in what might be some of the earliest known examples of climate denial, APF reports that followed declared CO2 to be “innocuous.” Additionally, individual industry representatives affiliated with WSPA also denied the potential harmfulness of CO2, setting a precedent for an oil industry practice that would be repeated over the following decades.

At the U.S. Public Health Service’s November 1958 National Conference on Air Pollution in Washington, D.C., Shell executive Charles A. Jones, a WSPA and API air pollution expert who had formerly served on the APF’s Technical Advisory Sub-Committee, publicly described CO2 as “harmless.” In stark contrast, one of the conference’s keynote speakers had earlier that same day discussed the potential climate consequences of CO2 emissions—such as global warming, the melting of polar ice caps, and rising sea levels.

Asked about Jones’ statement, Shell told DeSmog the company had “nothing to add.”

Legacy

The APF disbanded at the end of 1960 without fanfare. According to its official history, the foundation had “fulfilled its mission,” despite its failure to resolve the smog problem in California. In reality, however, by 1961, air pollution regulation was expanding across the U.S., turning the oil and gas industry’s pollution-control problem into a national issue. Consequently, the industry’s national trade association, the API, became increasingly active in both air pollution research and in working to prevent emissions-limiting regulation of the oil industry.

From the 1950s up to today, the oil and gas industry has used the playbook that it first deployed through the APF, funding apparently ‘independent’ research via third-party community groups to fight against air pollution legislation and climate action. These efforts have repeatedly stalled clean air and climate regulations. At the same time, oil and gas companies have leveraged this research spending to boost their public image as a responsible partner in the search for climate or clean air solutions, and to promote voluntary measures or technological fixes in place of legally mandated pollution controls.

WSPA’s member companies, including BP, Chevron, ExxonMobil, and Shell, funded outright climate denial via their membership in the Global Climate Coalition (GCC), which operated from 1989 to 2001. The GCC built on the APF legacy by sponsoring its own “independent research” and using industry-funded studies to promote climate denial, lobbying the UN’s official scientific advisory body the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). This derailed international efforts to prevent the catastrophic impacts of climate change.

In 1998, an API, Exxon, and Chevron-approved “Global Climate Science Communications Action Plan” included forming a Global Climate Science Data Center, which bore an even closer resemblance to the APF. According to the plan, the Center would function as “a non-profit educational foundation with an advisory board of respected climate scientists . . . staffed initially with professionals on loan from various companies and associations with a major interest in the climate issue,” who would fund research designed to “fill the gaps in climate science.”

“Victory will be achieved when average citizens ‘understand’ (recognize) uncertainties in climate science,” announced the “Action Plan,” echoing the APF’s 1954 declaration that “while there is much we don’t know about smog, there are some definite facts which have not been made clear to the public. We should inform them fully as to all that is really known.” 

Even in the 21st century, WSPA and its member companies continue to influence public opinion and block clean air regulations and state climate initiatives through third-party front groups like Californians for Energy Independence and Californians Against Higher Taxes, which have used industry-sponsored research to battle even modest reforms.

Even in the 21st century, WSPA and its member companies continue to influence public opinion and block clean air regulations and state climate initiatives through third-party front groups like Californians for Energy Independence and Californians Against Higher Taxes, which have used industry-sponsored research to battle even modest reforms. In 2014, a leaked PowerPoint presentation revealed WSPA support for more than a dozen front groups, with many still actively opposing climate policy a decade later.  Last month, WSPA was named as a defendant in an Oregon climate lawsuit for its support of front groups listed in the leaked presentation. The complaint alleges that WSPA funded the front groups as part of a “multimillion dollar public relations campaign to further the oil industry’s propaganda machine.”

Today, some 70 years after the Air Pollution Foundation’s launch, the communities surrounding Los Angeles’ refineries persistently suffer severe public health impacts from fossil fuel emissions. At the same time, the region continues to experience some of the country’s worst air quality. As a state, California is also the second-highest emitter of CO2 in the U.S.

Nationally, oil industry-funded groups like Natural Allies for a Clean Energy Future or the Partnership to Address Global Emissions advocate for using ‘natural’ (methane) gas by sponsoring and publicizing industry-friendly research boosting gas as a climate solution. 

These new Air Pollution Foundation documents show how WSPA and its member companies played a central role in establishing the tradition of the oil industry’s deceptive tactics. Now, five major oil companies (Chevron, ExxonMobil, BP, ConocoPhillips, and Shell), as well as the API, are being sued for the use of such tactics in the landmark California v. Big Oillawsuit, part of the landscape of litigation launched by former presidential candidate Kamala Harris. Despite functioning as a pioneer in the evolution of these tactics, WSPA has not been named as a defendant in the California suit. 

Commenting on the lawsuit, a Shell spokesperson told DeSmog that the company does “not believe the courtroom is the right venue to address climate change, but that smart policy from government and action from all sectors is the appropriate way to reach solutions and drive progress.”

Neither WSPA nor API  responded to a request for comment by DeSmog.