The Tyee: The Petro Elite Were Warned of Climate Calamity in 1959

Among them was Sun Oil head Robert Dunlop, who proceeded to exploit the tarsands of Alberta. Excerpted from ‘The Petroleum Papers.’

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However, Dunlop hinted cryptically at challenges to come: “There are aspects of the future which are clouded by the penetration of non-economic forces into the functioning of an industry which has always performed best in an atmosphere of economic freedom.”

Dunlop didn’t say what storm clouds specifically threatened the expansion of oil and gas. But the next “Energy and Man” speaker did. That speaker vividly described a new and unexpected threat to the industry: its vast and growing emissions of a greenhouse gas called carbon dioxide.

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Depictions of global warming’s impact on human society were also starting to enter popular culture. Several years before Teller attempted to alert his New York audience, an article in Time magazine warned that CO2 building up in the atmosphere could by the early 2000s “have a violent effect on the Earth’s climate.”

One wonders: how much warning do the Liberals think the oil & gas industry needs?