This month’s Museletter is my Foreword to Matthieu Auzanneau’s excellent new book Oil, Power, and War: A Dark History published by Chelsea Green Publishing. For information on where to get hold of a copy see the links at the end.
Come and listen to my story ’bout a man named Jed
A poor mountaineer barely kep’ his fam’ly fed
And then one day he was shootin’ at some food
And up through the ground come a-bubblin’ crude.
Oil, that is. Black gold. Texas tea.
Well the first thing you know old Jed’s a millionaire.
The kinfolk said, “Jed, move away from there.”
They said, “Californy is the place you ought to be,”
So they loaded up the truck and they moved to Beverly.
Hills, that is. Swimming pools. Movie stars.
(Paul Henning)
Perhaps the most instantly recallable verse on the subject of petroleum, the theme-song lyric to the hit 1960s television series “The Beverly Hillbillies” tells a tale of sudden wealth. It is a perfect touchstone for the real story of humanity’s experience with liquid hydrocarbons.
In the real story, riches consisted both of the billions accumulated by the great magnates of the petroleum industry—including John D. Rockefeller, J. Paul Getty, H. L. Hunt, and Charles and David Koch—and also the quickly growing economic output of industrial civilization once it came to be fueled by oil. This novel source of energy spawned entire new industries—notably the automotive, aviation, and plastics industries—while revolutionizing existing ones (agriculture, forestry, fishing, shipping, manufacturing, lubricants, chemicals, paints, dyes, cosmetics, road paving, and pharmaceuticals). It propelled humanity into an age of mobility and rising expectations.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
