I get it, everyone wants a bad guy and they want to use mental associations to trick people into thinking this is "just like cigarettes!"
But it's all lies. Everyone fucking knew about climate change, it's as simple as can be. Carbon dioxide (and other gases) are greenhouse gases. And we're making them from carbon in the ground. It's not fucking rocket science.
Yet you have retards who deny that it does any such thing to this day. Literally people who can't concede even the most basic of science, and they gish gallop absolute nonsense that they believe because the people who are against climate change are "leftists".
Then you have the fact that even if "Big Oil" had, in 1980, said "Sorry guys, we're killing the planet" and stopped producing oil they would have nationalized that shit at gunpoint immediately.
Nobody wants to compromise their standard of living. They want to demonize "Big Oil" to salve their conscience, but look at how people absolutely panic at $5/gallon gas in the US. Imagine $20/gal gas and what it would do to the economy and our standard of living. You are a fucking liar if you think people would stand for that, and the same people crying about oil companies would shriek hysterically about the impact on the poor.
It's all a farce and a made-up narrative where "if nonly Big Oil had told us, we would have stopped!!".