In 2010, the words “earthquake swarm” entered the lexicon in Oklahoma. That same year, a trove of Michael Jackson memorabilia—including his iconic crystal-encrusted white glove—was sold at auction for over $1 million to a guy who was, officially, just the lowly forestry minister of the tiny nation of Equatorial Guinea. And in 2014, Ukrainian revolutionaries raided the palace of their ousted president and found a zoo of peacocks, gilded toilets, and a floating restaurant modeled after a Spanish galleon. Unlikely as it might seem, there is a thread connecting these events, and Rachel Maddow follows it to its crooked source: the unimaginably lucrative and equally corrupting oil and gas industry.
With her trademark black humor, Maddow takes us on a switchback journey around the globe, revealing the greed and incompetence of Big Oil and Gas along the way, and drawing a surprising conclusion about why the Russian government hacked the …
In 2010, the words “earthquake swarm” entered the lexicon in Oklahoma. That same year, a trove of Michael Jackson memorabilia—including his iconic crystal-encrusted white glove—was sold at auction for over $1 million to a guy who was, officially, just the lowly forestry minister of the tiny nation of Equatorial Guinea. And in 2014, Ukrainian revolutionaries raided the palace of their ousted president and found a zoo of peacocks, gilded toilets, and a floating restaurant modeled after a Spanish galleon. Unlikely as it might seem, there is a thread connecting these events, and Rachel Maddow follows it to its crooked source: the unimaginably lucrative and equally corrupting oil and gas industry.
With her trademark black humor, Maddow takes us on a switchback journey around the globe, revealing the greed and incompetence of Big Oil and Gas along the way, and drawing a surprising conclusion about why the Russian government hacked the 2016 U.S. election. She deftly shows how Russia’s rich reserves of crude have, paradoxically, stunted its growth, forcing Putin to maintain his power by spreading Russia’s rot into its rivals, its neighbors, the West’s most important alliances, and the United States. Chevron, BP, and a host of other industry players get their star turn, most notably ExxonMobil and the deceptively well-behaved Rex Tillerson. The oil and gas industry has weakened democracies in developed and developing countries, fouled oceans and rivers, and propped up authoritarian thieves and killers. But being outraged at it is, according to Maddow, “like being indignant when a lion takes down and eats a gazelle. You can’t really blame the lion. It’s in her nature.”
Blowout is a call to contain the lion: to stop subsidizing the wealthiest businesses on earth, to fight for transparency, and to check the influence of the world’s most destructive industry and its enablers. The stakes have never been higher. As Maddow writes, “Democracy either wins this one or disappears.”
The pitch seems to be that oil explains a lot about modern politics. That's not really what's delivered. Instead, we get a collection of well-researched and well-reported little stories about oil which don't quite fit together into an explanatory narrative. This is no Dictator's Handbook: it doesn't give you a useful framework for understanding things. Maddow seems to have edited this book to emphasize how outrageous each individual fact is — and they really are, reported in Maddow's signature style. I think that this focus on the things the reader should find unacceptable comes at the cost of creating a tight-knit coherent explanation. It ends up being a bit Pepe Silvia. Perhaps oil does explain a lot about geopolitics, but this book doesn't put the pieces together to usefully convey that underlying truth.
Anyone interested in the last 10 years or so of Russia, its relation to gas, oil, fracking, corruption, and US democracy should read this book and will probably love it! And it goes into some of the actual specifics on Russia's involvement in the 2016 presidential election. Wow!
This book tells the story of how money corrupts everything basically. And when we are talking money and oil (and, today, natural gas) we are talking mountains and mountains of money. Maddow tells the story of just how much money and just how corrupt it turns everything it touches.
For instance the tiny country of Equatorial Guinea hit it rich. Well, not the country unfortunately, but rather its iron fisted ruler and his family, who proceeded to have a global spending spree of billions of dollars, while the rest of the country got along with $100 per year and the infrastructure crumbled. Exxon Mobil was happy to pay out the money for the offshore drilling, because it was to just one person who had an absolute rule, way cleaner than worrying about a "democracy".
But even here she tells the story of Oklahoma and its hundreds, even thousands of earthquakes, …
This book tells the story of how money corrupts everything basically. And when we are talking money and oil (and, today, natural gas) we are talking mountains and mountains of money. Maddow tells the story of just how much money and just how corrupt it turns everything it touches.
For instance the tiny country of Equatorial Guinea hit it rich. Well, not the country unfortunately, but rather its iron fisted ruler and his family, who proceeded to have a global spending spree of billions of dollars, while the rest of the country got along with $100 per year and the infrastructure crumbled. Exxon Mobil was happy to pay out the money for the offshore drilling, because it was to just one person who had an absolute rule, way cleaner than worrying about a "democracy".
But even here she tells the story of Oklahoma and its hundreds, even thousands of earthquakes, caused by fracking for natural gas, while the companies made money hand over fist and the state went bankrupt.
In general, it is just a litany of failures, from Gulf Oil spills (and no, the Deepwater Horizon is not the worst one that has happened), to, of course, Russian oil and natural gas, which all lead to just plain corruption. A few pleas for some kind of regulation, but it all seems so hopeless in the face of so much money.
I am not sure we really needed Blowout. I don't think anyone with half a brain thinks that all this money isn't an awful influence on everything and it is just so darned depressing. It's also a bit scattershot, as she jumps from one ugly scene to another, back and forth, until you just want it to end. Not her fault of course, but I am not really sure she adds much to the conversation. If we can even have one these days, that is.
I am going to go back and read [b:The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power|169354|The Prize The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power|Daniel Yergin|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1403025725l/169354.SY75.jpg|163531], the Pulitzer Prize winning history of oil. While Maddow does cover it a bit (and gives a shout out to The Prize), I think it might be less painful to read a history of it. I read about 1/3 of it once upon a time and I guess the new ebook version has some kind of update.
I had no idea that Rachel Maddow was such an in-depth researcher! There is so much mind-blowing history in this book - it's an incredibly important book that needs to be read by as many people as possible.
