I think it's hard to estimate how much effort corporations put into getting us to do what they want. If you've ever looked at why the public transportation in the US is shit you'd know there's something suspicious going on with it.

US used to have cities that are great for public transportation, the grid design of the 1920s is excellent or public transportation. Some cities like NY still have that but cities like Detroit spent decades destroying that to build a highway going straight through the city. Suburbs in America are being built in a way that only suits car travel. And not just that, people have been conditioned to think that only poor people would use public transportation. Not only have been people made to believe they don't want public transportation, they couldn't have it even if they wanted to because it would be horribly inefficient.

Who benefits from those decisions? Definitely not the people who are now dependent on owning cars. But I'm pretty sure car manufacturers and oil companies are pretty happy because they get to sell more cars and oil. Now I can't point the finger at that those companies because there's no evidence they influenced this, at least none that I know of. But it's awfully convenient for them that when the car boom happened in the 50s the US government was happy to spend money literally rebuilding cities to make them more car dependent and keep at it, while the same thing was stopped in Europe pretty quickly.

I don't mind giving off some conspiracy theorist vibe, but I don't think it's far fetched that corporations are entities that put money above everything else and if needless polluting let's them make more money they will do it without hesitation. I wouldn't put it past them to deliberately build the narrative that somehow the people are to blame for this polluting. After all EXXON started the "is it even real?" and "is it even man made?" arguments that regular people used for decades to derail the climate change discussions, all with the purpose of shifting attention away from them. It's literally their MO.