The central character of Big Machine is Thomas Midgley, Jr. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Midgley_Jr. (The show doesn’t really have a protagonist.) Midgley was a mechanical and chemical engineer working for General Motors. He is famous - or infamous - for developing the lead compound used as an anti-knock agent in gasoline, leading to horrible consequences from lead poisoning and air pollution. His later claim to fame was introducing freon as a refrigerant, with similar awful environmental consequences. His Wikipedia biography states that:
Midgley's legacy is tied in with the negative environmental impact of leaded gasoline and freon. Environmental historian J. R. McNeill opined that Midgley "had more adverse impact on the atmosphere than any other single organism in Earth's history", and Bill Bryson remarked that Midgley possessed "an instinct for the regrettable that was almost uncanny". Fred Pearce, writing for New Scientist, described Midgley as a "one-man environmental disaster".
In this scene, Midgely dodges a reporter’s questions about what he hath wrought.
