The Tyranny of Oil

Investigates the true state of the US oil industry, uncovering its virtually unparalleled influence over our elected officials, its lack of regulatory oversight, and the highest profit rates in corporate history. This book offers a formula for reining in the industry, while reducing global dependence on oil. Who's really driving oil and gas prices? How much oil is left? How far will Big Oil go to get it, and at what cost to the environment, human rights, the economy, worker safety, public health, and democracy? Here, at last, are the answers we've been looking for—and the inside story on Big Oil. In The Tyranny of Oil, Antonia Juhasz investigates the true state of the companies collectively known as "Big Oil," uncovering their unparalleled global financial power, their political dominance, and their increasingly destructive plans for the future. And she tells us what we can do about it. A tool for meaningful change that blends history, original investigative research and reporting, candid interviews with key insiders, and a unique focus on activism, The Tyranny of Oil is required reading for every concerned global citizen. Antonia Juhasz, a leading activist and expert on corporations and globalization, investigates the true state of the U.S. oil industry, uncovering its virtually unparalleled influence over our elected officials, its lack of regulatory oversight, and the highest profit rates in corporate history. She offers an immediate call to action - a formula for reining in the industry, cutting down its governmental powers, environmental destruction, and movement toward war while reducing global dependence on oil - and proposes a bold yet viable answer: break up the nation's leading oil companies. Drawing on her own detailed historical research, Juhasz explores the parallels between today's companies and Standard Oil, the most powerful corporation of the early 20th century, whose stranglehold on the economy and government was broken only by the vision and persistence of activists and like-minded politicians.