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A review by phidgt
Blowout by Rachel Maddow
informative
medium-paced
4.0
"Oil is the excrement of the devil."
If you have ever watched Rachel Maddow's show on MSNBC you already have experience with her in depth reporting. You already know how she can go off on seemingly unrelated topics and then bring it all together at the end. This book is no different and , as is turns out, Rachel Maddow is quite the writer and she brings her dark sense of humor with her.
We always hear about "Big Oil & Gas" in the news; Exxon Mobil, Shell, BP, etc. Oftentimes there is some sort of ecological catastrophe happening with tens of thousands of barrels of oil leaking into the ocean somewhere. These stories are generally followed up with people trying to clean up said oil from the beaches and local waterfowl. For a short while there is outrage and calls for regulations because oil companies bad.
But how does this global industry actually work? How does it seemingly get away with destroying the planet? And what in the hell can we do about it?
For me, this book was eye opening. Maddow takes us on a world tour from Oklahoma to Equatorial New Guinea to Russia to shed light on the deep corruption of governments, world leaders and the men who stand to make billions upon billions of dollars. The main focus is Exxon Mobil and Rex Tillerson's dealings with foreign governments - mainly Russia and the race to drill in the Arctic.
"The oil and gas industry - left to its own devices - will mindlessly follow its own nature. It will make tons of money. It will corrode and corrupt and sabotage democratic governance. It will screw up and - in the end - fatally injure the whole freaking planet. And yes, it will also provide oil and gas along the way! And jobs for the workers who produce those things for it. The end times battle that we're engaged in now is to figure out how to get along without oil and gas - and we're plugging away but still a ways off from that - and, in the meantime, commit to a whole new level of constraint and regulatory protection against this singularly destructive industry to minimize its potential harm."
If you have ever watched Rachel Maddow's show on MSNBC you already have experience with her in depth reporting. You already know how she can go off on seemingly unrelated topics and then bring it all together at the end. This book is no different and , as is turns out, Rachel Maddow is quite the writer and she brings her dark sense of humor with her.
We always hear about "Big Oil & Gas" in the news; Exxon Mobil, Shell, BP, etc. Oftentimes there is some sort of ecological catastrophe happening with tens of thousands of barrels of oil leaking into the ocean somewhere. These stories are generally followed up with people trying to clean up said oil from the beaches and local waterfowl. For a short while there is outrage and calls for regulations because oil companies bad.
But how does this global industry actually work? How does it seemingly get away with destroying the planet? And what in the hell can we do about it?
For me, this book was eye opening. Maddow takes us on a world tour from Oklahoma to Equatorial New Guinea to Russia to shed light on the deep corruption of governments, world leaders and the men who stand to make billions upon billions of dollars. The main focus is Exxon Mobil and Rex Tillerson's dealings with foreign governments - mainly Russia and the race to drill in the Arctic.
"The oil and gas industry - left to its own devices - will mindlessly follow its own nature. It will make tons of money. It will corrode and corrupt and sabotage democratic governance. It will screw up and - in the end - fatally injure the whole freaking planet. And yes, it will also provide oil and gas along the way! And jobs for the workers who produce those things for it. The end times battle that we're engaged in now is to figure out how to get along without oil and gas - and we're plugging away but still a ways off from that - and, in the meantime, commit to a whole new level of constraint and regulatory protection against this singularly destructive industry to minimize its potential harm."