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Despite the fact that most industries across the board are feeling the impact of the recession, the oil industry has so far remained more or less immune. Oil giant Exxon-Mobil posted a net profit of $45.2 billion for all of 2008. Still, the fall in oil prices from last year has begun to affect some oil and gas companies. Struggling to find favor with the Obama administration, oil company executives are now publicly accepting that something needs to be done about global warming and, at an industry conference this week, expressed eagerness to do something about climate change. There seems little acknowledgment however, of the fact that doing anything significant about global warming naturally means making the oil industry entirely obsolete. Oil and petroleum products have been the engine of American industrialization and dominate every aspect of global trade and the American lifestyle. With stakes so high, wars are fought over it, and the earth’s destruction ignored. We spend the hour examining the oil industry, and, in light of the recession, tackle new solutions toward a clean, green, and oil-free economy.

Crude Impact is a brand new, far-reaching, award-winning documentary, the story of the interconnection between human domination of the planet and our use of oil. Crude Impact, chronicles our insatiable appetite for oil and how it has collided with the rights and livelihoods of indigenous cultures, as well as animal species, and the air and water on our planet. The film journeys from the West African Delta region to the heart of the Amazon forest, from Washington to Shanghai, and features scientists, analysts, and activists. It explores peak oil production, foreign policy impacts, environmental impacts, and possibilities for change. The film has been an official selection at over 30 film festivals around the world, and has won numerous awards.

Antonia Juhasz is a policy-analyst, author and activist. She is an associate fellow with the Institute for Policy Studies, a fellow with Oil Change International, and a senior analyst for Foreign Policy In Focus. Her book The Tyranny of Oil: the World’s Most Powerful Industry, and What We Must Do To Stop It, is a hard hitting exposé of the oil industry, answering today’s most pressing energy questions: Why did oil and gasoline prices rise and fall so quickly? Where will prices go in the future? Who’s really controlling those prices? How much oil is left? How far will Big Oil go to get it? And at what cost to the economy, environment, human rights, worker safety, public health, democracy, and America’s place in the world? Juhasz answers these questions in a talk she gave recently in Orange County.