“The industry is nuking the planet,” Maddow remarked. Maddow described the oil spill response used in the 1960s, which involved low-tech containment, a method that continues to be used to this day, and in some cases the clean up even resorts to using paper towels.īeyond localized environmental destruction and conventional pollution, the fossil fuel industry is driving an unfolding global catastrophe. “What they’re really good at is getting governments of all shapes and sizes to serve their interests.”īut when it comes to cleaning up their toxic messes, fossil fuel corporations have an abysmal track record. “The oil and gas industry makes its own political weather,” Maddow said.

Money, Power, and Pollutionīlowout, as the subtitle spells out, is as much about corrupted democracy and “rogue state Russia” as it is the “richest, most destructive industry on Earth.” Oil and gas giants like ExxonMobil, Maddow explained, are “the richest corporations in the history of corporations.” With all that money comes incredible political power and a tendency to evade responsibility. “The week comes out, the president starts getting impeached,” she said, eliciting laughter from the crowd. The oil and gas industry is tied into the Russia-Ukraine conflict and the circumstances and Trump associates in the orbit of the impeachment inquiry - a development that Maddow did not foresee when writing Blowout. That path inevitably led to the industry at the heart of Russia’s stunted economy.Īccording to Maddow, Russia’s desperation to maximize its petroleum-based influence in global politics was part of what drove Putin to risk interference in America’s last presidential election. Indeed, the host of MSNBC’s “The Rachel Maddow Show” said her initial inclination was to look into why Russia interfered in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. “I didn’t set out to write about the oil and gas industry,” Rachel Maddow told the audience at Mount Holyoke College on Sunday, November 17 in what was the final stop on a nationwide tour for her new book Blowout. As public hearings in the Trump impeachment inquiry headed into their second week, one of the nation’s top political cable news hosts was connecting the dots between the rise of authoritarianism, challenges to democracy, and the corrupting power of the oil and gas industry.

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