Regarding a persistent global warming propaganda myth

A major climate change propaganda myth that oil giant BP and other major pollution for profit corporations popularized decades ago still persists. The myth is that dealing with global warming is a personal matter, not a political issue. That false idea still poisons millions of people’s thinking about how to deal with global warming. An analysis of survey data from 2025 indicates that many Americans are very concerned but still do not see climate change as political.

Decades ago, BP hired the propaganda firm Ogilvy & Mather to create one of the first large‑scale personal carbon footprint calculators, as part of a global propaganda campaign. The strategic aim was to shift public attention from corporate to individual responsibility and make climate change a personal responsibility problem, not a fossil‑fuel production and lack of regulation problem. It was a brilliant bit of deceit and deflection. It successfully kept a lot of public attention away from major climate change corporations. 

Sociologist Robert Brulle argues that the myth of individual responsibility has deep roots in about 40 years of US politics and ideology, especially from the Republican Party. The GOP fostered a social order or mindset fixated on individualism. That led many people to not see government as a necessary instrument to deal with climate change. Research on the climate science denial and delay industry clearly shows that fossil‑fuel corporations, conservative (now authoritarian) think tanks, and allied political non-profits coordinated propaganda narratives that prompted personal responsibility framing along with outright denial. The special interest's propaganda effort has successfully blocked serious policy responses to this day.