F. William Engdahl does an excellent job of providing documentation and history regarding the efforts by countries and corporations to control energy sources and in so doing to control entire nations while reaping enormous profits.
He provides as clear a description of the successful efforts of General Motors, Standard Oil, and Firestone Tire companies to literally derail public transit systems used by 90% of Americans at the end of World War II, purchasing more than 100 such systems across the United States and then burning the trolley cars and ripping up the rails and abandoning rights of ways. Engdahl however, fails to make any mention of the bribes paid to Republicans in Congress so that they would cut federal funding of rail transit (while keeping the WW II 15% tariff on passenger tickets in place as he does mention) and favor instead the construction of a massive network of freeways at a cost of billions of dollars, a cost that was 10-20 times higher per mile to accommodate the weights of freight carrying trucks.
It was illuminating to read how the Rockefellers and their cabal succeeded in getting the Saudi rulers to quadruple the price of oil and in so doing create the gasoline and fuel shortages during the Carter administration. This quadrupled profits for the oil companies and transferred billions of dollars from workers to the owners of these companies.
Engdahl summarizes the involvement of the CIA in regime changes in Iraq and but fails to mention that it was at the request of Winston Churchill who was acting as a spokesperson or lacky of British Petroleum. BP had been taking 92% of the sales of oil from Iraq and the new democratically elected government sought to reduce this to less than 10%. The Dulles brothers, who worked for the Rockefellers before joining the Eisenhower administration as heads of the CIA and the State Department, engineered the overthrow of the Iraqi government in 1953 and the end result was that BP retained 40% of the oil revenue while 40% when to the Rockefeller companies and 14% to Dutch Shell and 6% went to the French oil company, CPF.
Engdahl goes on it recap research done by scientists in the Soviet Union that point to non-biological sources for oil and how it means that in theory, there is no limit to how much can be extracted. But Engdahl then side steps the importance of global warming and its affect on climate change and ignores the melting of the polar ice caps and the prolonged droughts in much of the world and pretend that this all the machinations of the right-wing think tanks controlled by the Rockefellers (and the Koch brothers whom he never mentions in this book published in 2012).
This is where the pro-petroleum bias of Engdahl shows up repeatedly in the book. He quotes a 1979 source that solar energy provide in that year less than 1% of the world’s energy. He fails to mention that in 2011 the United States alone installed one gigawatt of PV capacity or that in 2011 the cost of a solar panel was half of the cost in 2010. Even in Germany where Engdahl resides, solar power output increased 60% in 2011 to 18 billion kilowatt hours. Germany was eager to end its $6 billion a year subsidy of its country’s coal mines (not counting the government’s medical costs for the miners).
So by ignoring global warming and climate change and the tremendous growth in wind and solar renewable energy Engdahl presents a one sided picture of reality. He also fails to mention the trillions of dollars it costs US taxpayers to fund the more than 700 military bases and the weapons systems to protect the oil companies. He also ignores the billions in subsidies to the nuclear power industry at a rate of $12 billion per power plant or the cost of a Chernobyl (1986) or a Fukishima (2011) or an Indian Point nuclear plant meltdown that would create more than 15 million casualties and render New York city and its surroundings uninhabitable for centuries.
Engdahl also chose to ignore the billions of dollars the coal mines enjoy in the USA including taxpayer provided roads and superfund cleanups and health care for the damage done by both mine waste products and by the burning of coal and toxic emissions into the air. Coal related asthma costs the US $12 billion a year in emergency room visits alone.
There is also the matter of fracking which began in 1949 but by 2011 some 2 million wells had been hydraulically (using water pumped from the ground) fractured and the injection of millions of gallons of poisonous chemicals into the ground and the ground water supplies of the United States. Once an aquifer is contaminated by the carcinogenic chemicals used by the oil company frackers it is not going to be providing drinkable water ever in the future – not ever.
I cannot say whether the author has received monies directly or indirectly from the Koch brothers companies or their various organizations that are dedicated to delaying any action on the reduction of carbon emissions but if he was not then he should apply for a grant and based on this book would doubtless get his due.
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