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Oil Conspiracy Essay

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Oil Conspiracy It is common knowledge these days that major oil companies are among the most wealthy and powerful entities in the world. Their massive incomes contribute enormously to economies all over the world and this gives them massive pull in these economies. It is no wonder then that conspiracy theories and myths of large scale evil plots surround these major oil producers. They range from the ridiculous to quite believable. Every thing from the deletion of alternative energies from ever making it into the market to wars has been blamed on these major oil companies. Some of them are very believable while others seem a stretch of the truth. Are oil companies really behind these vast conspiracies? Have they really been …show more content…

As it turns out there was in fact big oil in these decisions. The trolley case of California is a classic example. Until the thirties an efficient electric trolley line was in place in many of the major cities in the U.S. the most famous case of this is the Los Angeles lines that were the largest in the country. “all this went out the window starting in 1939, when GM got together with Standard Oil of California (now Chevron), Firestone, and other auto-related firms to set up a holding company that bought up trolley lines, dismantled them, and replaced them with buses” (Straight Dope). Chevron did in fact have a large hand in this. Eliminating these trolleys created a fossil fuel dependent system of busses and increased demand for oil driven autos. This was not the only case however, “1974 one Bradford Snell, a staff attorney for the U.S. Senate antitrust subcommittee, advanced the startling proposition that GM had sabotaged energy-efficient electric transit systems in 45 cities around the country” (ibid). They were actually found guilty of conspiracy “Government attorney Bradford Snell has written that in 1949 GM and its partners in NCL were convicted in U.S. District Court in Chicago of criminal conspiracy in this matter and fined $5,000 each for anti-trust violations (contracts in restraint of trade, i.e. forcing subsidiaries to buy products from their owners: GM buses, Firestone tires, Standard and Phillips

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