1232 Ch. 30 • Global Challenges

dependence on oil, too, has increased, with prices rising and falling, ofter
in tune with international events. The dizzying rise in the price of oil ir
2008 jolted world economies, contributing to rapid inflation.
To its critics, globalization could be identified with corporate greed anc
indifference to the fate of the poor of the Third World. A French farmei
(who had spent part of his childhood in California), Jose Bove (1953- )
became a symbol of protest when in 1999 he led an attack on a McDonald’s
in a southern French town, damaging the fast-food restaurant as a means oi
calling attention to globalization. Cases of corporate greed and deception­
such as that of the giant Enron corporation in the United States, whose
corporate officers had lied and deceived, then unloaded their shares before
the fall, leaving employees with virtually nothing—cast a shadow over bi£
multinational corporations. Demonstrations became riots during the meet­
ing of the World Trade Organization in Seattle in 1999, and in Nice in 200C
during the European Union summit meetings. During the summer of 2001
protesters demonstrated and some battled police at the summit in Gothen­
burg (Sweden) and then in Genoa (Italy), the site of the G7 meeting, ar
informal association of the world’s leading industrial nations.
Damage to the environment is itself linked to global interconnectedness
The oceans have become veritable highways for the shipment of oil in huge
tankers, a good many of which are old and badly maintained. Periodic oi

The 1999 meeting of the World Trade Organization in Seattle, Washington, was

greeted with protests against the negative effects of globalization.