Some of it’s probably genuine. The oil industry has been pushing this particular lie in various forms for about half a century (comically, it’s a claim that they would sometimes make about _nuclear power plants_), and it has sunk deep into the culture.

Of course it is. The campaigning for fossil fuels is very sneaky and uses great talking points. There is always a grain of truth to every such talking point, so they are very difficult to debunk and discuss.