Going after the oil companies still targets average taxpayers

As the Oscar-nominated film “There Will be Blood” chronicles well, the discovery of oil in Kern County in the late 19th century triggered a rush of greed, chicanery and, sometimes, violence in the region. Oil made the world go ’round, and the people chasing after it were not always the most savory of characters.

A century later, oil still gets Californians’ blood boiling. Having built a society that is utterly dependent upon the stuff, we still hate it. Oil is dirty, ugly and bad for you. When burned, it pollutes the air and, best we can tell, is warming the earth. Our thirst for oil has entangled us in Middle East affairs we would be better off avoiding.


But oil also has made us fabulously mobile, transforming our society from a difficult agrarian existence to one in which we can drive across the state or fly around the world in a day. That mobility has helped create a dynamic economy that few of us would want to trade for a hard, monotonous life on the farm.

Oil prices