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The Tyranny of Oil: The World's Most Powerful Industry--and What We Must Do to Stop It PDF

514 Pages·2008·3.035 MB·English
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1 e Tyranny of Oil   e World’s Most Powerful Industry—and What We Must Do to Stop It   2 To my family, for your unending support: Joseph, Suzanne, Alex, Jenny, Christina, Linda, Paul, Branny, Emma, Eliza, Simone, Gabriel, and Lucky     To the activists, for the hope you spread and the change you create 4 For the ignorance of the public is the real capital of monopoly. —HENRY DEMAREST LLOYD, WEALTH AGAINST COMMONWEALTH, 1894 5 6 Contents   Epigraph 1 Big Oil’s Last Stand 2 e Birth and Breakup of Standard Oil 3 Big Oil Bounces Back: From the Breakup to the Near Reconvergence of Standard Oil 4 Driving the Price of Crude 5 Paying the Price: Consolidation, High Gas Prices, and Contempt 6 Lobbyists, Lawyers, and Elections: How Big Oil Kills Democracy 7 Big Oil’s Big Plans for the Future, Part I: Environmental Destruction 8 Big Oil’s Big Plans for the Future, Part II: Wars for Oil 9 Taking On Big Oil Acknowledgments Notes Searchable Terms 7 About the Author Other Books by Antonia Juhasz Credits Copyright About the Publisher 8 1   9 Big Oil’s Last Stand   W ithin days of the New Year, 2008 began with three landmark events. Oil reached $100 per barrel for only the second time in history as gasoline prices began an ascent toward the highest prices in a generation. And on January 3, Senator Barack Obama became the �rst African American to win the Iowa Caucus. Voter turnout broke records as well, with four times more registered Democrats voting than had turned out in 2000. Senator Obama was reserved yet purposeful as he delivered his historic victory speech. He chose to highlight just a handful of policy issues in the �een-minute address, making his focus on oil all the more signi�cant. Obama forcefully declared that he would free the United States once and for all from “the tyranny of oil” and then pledged to be the president “who ends the war in Iraq and �nally brings our troops home.” An already raucous crowd met these pronouncements with thunderous applause and waves of cheers. “e tyranny of oil” powerfully encapsulates the feelings not only of Americans, but of people the world over. Without viable and accessible alternatives, entire economies suffer when increasing proportions of national budgets must be used to purchase oil. And on an individual level, families, facing the same lack of alternatives, forgo basic necessities when gasoline prices skyrocket. Communities that live where oil is found —from Ecuador to Nigeria to Iraq—experience the tyranny of daily human rights abuses, violence, and war. e tyranny of environmental pollution, public health risks, and climate destruction is created at every stage of oil use, from exploration to production, from transport to re�ning, from consumption to disposal. And the political tyranny exercised by the masters of the oil industry corrupts democracy and destroys our ability to choose how much we will sacri�ce in oil’s name. e masters of the oil industry, the companies known as “Big Oil,” exercise their in�uence throughout this chain of events: through rapidly 10

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Most books are stored in the elastic cloud where traffic is expensive. For this reason, we have a limit on daily download.