A Misguided Advertising Boast
Decades and generations past have left us with advertisements that, at the time, seemed innocuous and uncontroversial but have since aged poorly. The 1962 ad campaign by Humble Oil & Refining Company, later rebranded as Exxon, for its Ecno brand gasoline exemplifies this dynamic. The advertisement proudly boasted about the company’s size and technical efficiency, claiming it could melt millions of tons of glaciers every single day, a claim that, in hindsight, appears misguided and shortsighted.
During an era when the concept of global warming was not widely understood or acknowledged, Humble Oil’s ad seemed like a clever boast, blissfully unaware of the future environmental challenges associated with fossil fuels. Today, with melting polar ice caps posing a significant threat to low-lying coastal areas and billions of lives around the world, the once seemingly harmless advertisement takes on a different and more ominous connotation. The shift in perspective over the years underscores how societal, political, and technological advances can reframe our understanding of seemingly harmless messages from the past, revealing the unintended consequences and the need for a more environmentally conscious approach.