Between Pushback and Collaboration: The Oil Industry and the Challenges of Environmentalism and Resource Scarcity, 1970s–1980s

This chapter examines how the international oil industry addressed the challenges of environmentalism and resource scarcity in the 1970s and 1980s. While oil companies have more recently become notorious for their greenwashing campaigns and climate denialism, the historical record before the 1990s is more complicated. On the one hand, there were a number of oil executives around Robert O. Anderson and Maurice F. Strong who engaged with environmentalism and shaped seminal events and leading organizations, notably the 1972 Stockholm Conference under the chairmanship of Strong. In doing so, they helped create organizations and institutions that prioritized the role of business in environmental management instead of restrictive regulations, but also raised awareness of environmental problems like global warming. On the other hand, oil companies in general confronted environmental issues not only by pushing back against changes and regulation, but also by collaborating and lowering sulfur dioxide and lead emissions. Moreover, oil companies engaged with the 1972 Limits to Growth report and prepared for the prospect of oil becoming more scarce by investing oil profits in alternative energy technologies like solar, nuclear, and geothermal energy. Building on personal and corporate records, this chapter contributes new insights into the reactions of business to the environmental and resource scarcity challenges that make it necessary to nuance the predominant narrative of the historical oil industry as greenwashing and climate denialist.