Car Emission Standards Rollback

• Marathon Petroleum, the largest refining company in the U.S., has run a campaign in 2018 to influence car emission standards. 
• The company worked with oil industry groups and conservative policy makers financed by billionaire Charles Koch to run a stealth campaign using channels such as Facebook.
• The main message from the campaign was that the current oil abondance in the U.S. would allow the country to stop worrying about energy conservation.
• Marathon oil and its partners in the campaign promoted the idea that Americans should be able to choose the car they want, given that oil supply was now guaranteed, without worrying about consumption and the environment.
• Letters were circulated to members of Congress with this type of logic, which then contacted regulators using similar rethoric.
•  Facebook ads financed by other oil companies such as ExxonMobil and Chevron were also used to encourage people to write to regulators to support the change in emission standards, resulting in 12,000 comments adressed to the Department of Transportation.
• This campaign led to a reversal in decades of federal environmental policy.