WEBVTT - A "Green Transition"? If Only It Were That Simple 0:00:05.080 --> 0:00:09.520 Hello, and welcome back to Drilled. I'm Amy Westerveldt. Today 0:00:09.560 --> 0:00:13.160 we are bringing you another interview in our ongoing series 0:00:13.400 --> 0:00:18.080 Drilling Deep, in which we interview the authors of various 0:00:18.440 --> 0:00:23.560 books coming out on climate, the energy transition, the economy 0:00:23.720 --> 0:00:27.120 and politics surrounding those things and all of the above. 0:00:27.760 --> 0:00:31.319 Usually these interviews are being done by Adam Lowenstein, who 0:00:31.440 --> 0:00:34.159 is written all the books and talking to all authors 0:00:34.240 --> 0:00:37.360 for us, and that is true of this episode as well. 0:00:37.560 --> 0:00:41.000 This time Adam spoke with Jean Baptiste Frasso, who's the 0:00:41.040 --> 0:00:44.920 author of More and More and More and All Consuming 0:00:45.200 --> 0:00:49.000 History of Energy. This book is great. It looks at 0:00:49.080 --> 0:00:55.760 how green innovation and decarbonization are not necessarily the same thing. 0:00:56.400 --> 0:01:00.480 In fact, Frasseau points out that it is perfectly readable 0:01:00.800 --> 0:01:06.440 and more importantly accurate to assume that the consumption of oil, gas, coal, 0:01:06.560 --> 0:01:11.840 and even wood will continue to increase right alongside clean energy. 0:01:12.920 --> 0:01:15.600 I've written about this a bunch lots of other people 0:01:15.720 --> 0:01:19.640 have as well. If we only tackle the energy source 0:01:19.680 --> 0:01:25.400 and we don't tackle our behavior or our attitudes towards consumption, 0:01:26.560 --> 0:01:30.600 then yeah, we're going to end up using too many 0:01:30.720 --> 0:01:35.840 critical earth minerals or creating a bunch of environmental problems 0:01:35.880 --> 0:01:41.480 getting lithium or building a bunch of electric SUVs that 0:01:41.560 --> 0:01:45.280 nobody needs. Friseau shows this is the real story of 0:01:45.480 --> 0:01:50.440 humanity's development and consumption of energy. We keep using more 0:01:50.480 --> 0:01:53.560 and more and more of all kinds of it. And 0:01:53.640 --> 0:01:58.280 while the popular narrative is one of substitution oil replacing coal, 0:01:58.400 --> 0:02:04.080 for example, the real is symbiosis. New energy sources do 0:02:04.200 --> 0:02:08.320 not supplant their predecessors, but rather supplement them. If that 0:02:08.360 --> 0:02:11.200 sounds like a radical argument, it's only because the notion 0:02:11.360 --> 0:02:17.360 of energy transition has become so deeply entrenched. In a 0:02:17.400 --> 0:02:22.960 conversation recorded in September, Adam and Freiso discussed how the 0:02:23.000 --> 0:02:28.640 premise of energy transition became widely accepted as true and inevitable, 0:02:28.919 --> 0:02:33.200 why clean energy innovation is not the same thing as decarbonization, 0:02:33.800 --> 0:02:37.200 how the fossil fuel industry helped launder pipe dreams of 0:02:37.400 --> 0:02:42.240 non existent technologies like carbon capture and storage into mainstream 0:02:42.360 --> 0:02:47.840 climate solutions, and much more and more and more. It's 0:02:47.880 --> 0:02:51.280 a really fascinating conversation. I hope you enjoy it as 0:02:51.360 --> 0:02:55.200 much as I did. That interview is coming up right 0:02:55.240 --> 0:03:03.400 after this quick break. 0:03:13.600 --> 0:03:16.480 It's tax season and at LifeLock, we know you're tired 0:03:16.520 --> 0:03:18.240 of numbers, but here's a big one. 0:03:18.280 --> 0:03:20.000 You need to hear. Billions. 0:03:20.320 --> 0:03:23.040 That's the amount of money and refunds the IRS has 0:03:23.080 --> 0:03:26.760 flagged for possible identity fraud. Now here's another big number, 0:03:27.000 --> 0:03:30.560 one hundred million. That's how many data points LifeLock monitors 0:03:30.600 --> 0:03:34.239 every second. If your identity is stolen, we'll fix it guaranteed. 0:03:34.639 --> 0:03:37.440 One last big number, save up to forty percent your 0:03:37.480 --> 0:03:41.080 first year. Visit LifeLock dot com slash podcast for the 0:03:41.120 --> 0:03:43.320 threats you can't control term supply. 0:03:44.840 --> 0:03:49.080 So I know the US publication was just last month, 0:03:49.120 --> 0:03:51.600 but the book's been out elsewhere for a while, right, 0:03:51.680 --> 0:03:53.320 and it's become quite successful. 0:03:54.200 --> 0:03:56.560 It's been in France. It has been publishing in France 0:03:56.640 --> 0:04:00.440 in January twenty four O reached October twenty for in 0:04:00.480 --> 0:04:05.240 Britain and in Spain it's more the same. So yeah, 0:04:05.280 --> 0:04:07.280 it's been out for a year more than a year, 0:04:07.320 --> 0:04:08.440 at year and a half. 0:04:09.320 --> 0:04:13.320 How has the reception been in America versus where it 0:04:13.360 --> 0:04:14.280 was published previously. 0:04:15.360 --> 0:04:18.920 I mean there was a really warm reception. I got 0:04:19.040 --> 0:04:23.760 severals and people were interested in this, you know, historical 0:04:23.800 --> 0:04:28.800 outlook on this very consensual but strange notion of energy transition. 0:04:30.600 --> 0:04:33.359 I think in the US the reception for the moment 0:04:33.400 --> 0:04:38.240 has been rather quiet. Perhaps it's because the debate about 0:04:38.279 --> 0:04:41.640 climate change in the US has shifted so much to 0:04:41.720 --> 0:04:45.440 the right and to climato skepticism and all that that 0:04:45.560 --> 0:04:48.919 my book is not really you know, adapted for to 0:04:49.000 --> 0:04:53.360 fight for fighting this debate. It's rather a book which 0:04:53.400 --> 0:04:55.680 helped us to understand what it takes to really get 0:04:56.040 --> 0:05:00.000 carbon neutral, right. So, I mean, that's the big difference 0:05:00.040 --> 0:05:02.720 I think that I noticed between the US and Europe 0:05:03.279 --> 0:05:07.240 from what I hear from people working in finance or 0:05:08.200 --> 0:05:12.920 insurance industry. Basically they say that trump reelection is a backlash. 0:05:12.960 --> 0:05:17.400 Also in European finance, for instance, there were a lot 0:05:17.400 --> 0:05:21.720 of commitment of companies going and net zero, having net 0:05:21.800 --> 0:05:26.920 zero strategies and all this now is being reduced and 0:05:27.000 --> 0:05:30.760 you know, so it has effect and bad effects and 0:05:30.880 --> 0:05:33.239 terrible effects on the rest of the world as well. 0:05:34.480 --> 0:05:37.640 But right, we should not be obsessed with the US. 0:05:37.960 --> 0:05:40.719 I think the US now is just like thirteen or 0:05:40.720 --> 0:05:44.560 fourteen percent of theater emissions. What did I say, is 0:05:44.600 --> 0:05:47.159 what's happening in China basically and in Asia in general, 0:05:47.839 --> 0:05:50.960 and there, I mean, there are some good news about 0:05:50.960 --> 0:05:53.480 the development of solar energy, but there are also bad 0:05:53.520 --> 0:05:57.520 news about deployment of new called power plant at the 0:05:57.560 --> 0:06:01.039 same time. And so my book helps usertand why these 0:06:01.040 --> 0:06:04.640 two phenomena can happen at the same time, Why coal 0:06:04.920 --> 0:06:08.320 and sorrow energy are not necessarily in competition. Why we 0:06:08.400 --> 0:06:12.040 have a far too simplistic vision of energy dynamics where 0:06:12.240 --> 0:06:16.960 new energy replace the old ones. But in fact energies 0:06:17.000 --> 0:06:20.240 are in competition, but they're also in symbiosis. So that's 0:06:20.279 --> 0:06:23.760 really what the book explore, the simbiostic relationship between the 0:06:24.279 --> 0:06:25.080 between energies. 0:06:26.200 --> 0:06:29.280 For me, one of the best things reading a book 0:06:29.320 --> 0:06:33.320 can do is completely shift my understanding of how the 0:06:33.360 --> 0:06:36.680 world is, how the world works, and I think this 0:06:36.720 --> 0:06:38.159 is one of those books. And so I want to 0:06:38.200 --> 0:06:41.280 take a sort of a roundabout approach to getting to 0:06:41.360 --> 0:06:45.920 your core argument, because I think it's very simple on 0:06:45.920 --> 0:06:48.920 one hand, but it's such a fundamental transformation and how 0:06:48.960 --> 0:06:52.560 so many of us see the world and understand how 0:06:52.600 --> 0:06:55.239 we got here that I want to kind of ease 0:06:55.279 --> 0:06:57.440 into it to make sure it's clear for folks. So 0:06:57.880 --> 0:07:00.000 the question I want to start with on that front 0:07:00.320 --> 0:07:07.000 is why humanity is still burning so much wood, Because 0:07:07.160 --> 0:07:10.480 the story we've been told is that there was wood, 0:07:10.960 --> 0:07:13.920 and then there was coal, and then there was oil 0:07:14.280 --> 0:07:16.960 and natural gas, and now we're in the midst of 0:07:17.000 --> 0:07:20.600 a transition to green energy. But one of the most 0:07:21.240 --> 0:07:24.680 transformational parts of the book for me is A, that's 0:07:24.720 --> 0:07:27.760 not the case, and B we're still consuming more than ever. 0:07:27.840 --> 0:07:31.960 In fact, indeed, I mean, the world consumption of foods 0:07:32.760 --> 0:07:35.720 right now is four billion cubic mirrors. About how this 0:07:35.800 --> 0:07:40.680 quantity is burned directly to produce heat, I mean, why 0:07:40.720 --> 0:07:44.280 we burn so much food? First of all, because for 0:07:44.360 --> 0:07:46.559 a big part of the population it is a major 0:07:46.640 --> 0:07:49.680 fuel for the poor in the poor world would remain 0:07:49.760 --> 0:07:53.480 extremely important. But actually wood has also increased in the ritual, 0:07:53.920 --> 0:07:57.440 which is probably more surprising. But for instance, wood energy 0:07:57.480 --> 0:08:00.000 is very important for the paper industry, and the paper 0:08:00.080 --> 0:08:03.480 industry is a huge industrial consumer of energy. The forced 0:08:03.880 --> 0:08:08.200 the fourth largest consumer of energy after I mean, the 0:08:08.240 --> 0:08:12.000 first is steel, the second is cement, the third is 0:08:12.080 --> 0:08:15.440 chemical industry, and the fourth is the paper industry. And 0:08:15.560 --> 0:08:18.680 paper industry is using more and more wood just to 0:08:18.800 --> 0:08:24.480 power its production process. And right now the wood energy 0:08:24.480 --> 0:08:27.280 consuming the paper industry in Europe, for instance, it's more 0:08:27.360 --> 0:08:30.000 or less the same as the solar electricity in Europe. 0:08:30.000 --> 0:08:32.040 So we're talking about, you know, a seriouse amount of 0:08:32.080 --> 0:08:35.000 wood energy here. But in a more general way, I 0:08:35.000 --> 0:08:37.640 think it's important to notice that the more you got oil, 0:08:37.760 --> 0:08:40.840 and once you've got oil, wood is becoming cheaper and 0:08:40.920 --> 0:08:46.800 cheaper because with all you've got chainsaws, lumber trucks, all 0:08:46.840 --> 0:08:49.760 sorts of machines which make wood much cheaper. So you 0:08:49.800 --> 0:08:52.280 can burn more wood because you've got access to more wood. 0:08:53.200 --> 0:08:58.000 And another thing is thanks to oil and gas you 0:08:58.040 --> 0:09:01.440 can produce and pesticide and fertilizer, you can produce much 0:09:01.480 --> 0:09:08.320 much more wood on a certain area. I mean the yields, 0:09:08.520 --> 0:09:13.880 the productivity per acres of plantations of forest plantations has 0:09:13.920 --> 0:09:17.880 increased a lot since the nineteen sixties, especially with the 0:09:17.880 --> 0:09:20.440 production of cucalyptus, which is like a kind of a 0:09:20.480 --> 0:09:25.440 miracle tree. Just to give you an example, in Brazil 0:09:26.120 --> 0:09:29.440 eucalyptus plantation they can reach like forty cubic meter per 0:09:29.520 --> 0:09:33.200 year and actar a forest in Europe would be like 0:09:33.280 --> 0:09:36.280 two or three cubic meter per year per rectar. In 0:09:36.320 --> 0:09:38.920 the early twentieth century, so that there is a radical 0:09:38.920 --> 0:09:41.560 transformation of the production of wood, and that makes that 0:09:41.600 --> 0:09:44.400 food energy has increased. For all these reasons, wood energy 0:09:44.400 --> 0:09:48.000 has increased lots in the nineteen in the twentieth century. 0:09:48.520 --> 0:09:51.240 One of the things that you show in this book 0:09:51.320 --> 0:09:55.839 is that different energy systems different materials are symbiotic. Can 0:09:55.880 --> 0:09:59.160 you describe what that means? And maybe using the relationship 0:09:59.160 --> 0:10:01.520 between coal and oil, I think you say it's one 0:10:01.559 --> 0:10:05.920 of the most important relationships in modern history. 0:10:06.000 --> 0:10:09.679 Yes, I mean, basically the history of energy has been 0:10:09.720 --> 0:10:15.240 obsessed with substitution, with transition, with competition. How oil displaced 0:10:16.000 --> 0:10:19.520 coal because of course, when you've got diesel engine, you 0:10:19.520 --> 0:10:21.440 can get I mean, you can get rid of old 0:10:21.440 --> 0:10:25.000 steam engines which are particularly inefficient. But it's just one 0:10:25.000 --> 0:10:28.880 part of the story. In general, energies are in symbiosity, 0:10:29.679 --> 0:10:33.200 that they have symbiotic relationship, they're intertwined. And just to 0:10:33.200 --> 0:10:36.520 give you an example about oil and coal. To produce 0:10:37.080 --> 0:10:40.640 a car in the nineteen thirties, Ford Company, we need 0:10:40.679 --> 0:10:44.720 like seven tons of coal to build an automobile because 0:10:44.800 --> 0:10:48.840 they I mean Ford produced its own steel, it produced 0:10:48.840 --> 0:10:52.840 its own electricity, and seven tons of coal. It means 0:10:52.880 --> 0:10:55.960 that at that time, and automobile is just as much 0:10:56.080 --> 0:10:59.400 a coal technology as an oil technology, because at that 0:10:59.480 --> 0:11:02.160 time the tea would burn more or less seven tons 0:11:02.160 --> 0:11:05.560 of oil during its lifetime. And it's even more than 0:11:05.640 --> 0:11:08.960 that because to use an automobile you need roads obviously, 0:11:09.280 --> 0:11:13.040 and to make road you need cement and steel, and 0:11:13.120 --> 0:11:17.720 these two materials are also called dependent. Right. So that's 0:11:17.760 --> 0:11:20.920 why despite the advance of oil, actually you burn more 0:11:21.000 --> 0:11:24.280 and more coal. I mean, there is no opposition at all. 0:11:24.559 --> 0:11:27.280 And then to extract oil you need a lot of 0:11:27.320 --> 0:11:31.480 steel tubes. When I say a lot, it's really tremendous amount. 0:11:32.400 --> 0:11:34.960 Like the US at the beginning of the twenty first 0:11:35.000 --> 0:11:39.320 century US more still to extract oil than the US 0:11:39.360 --> 0:11:43.800 than the whole US economy used in the early nineteen hundreds. Right, 0:11:43.840 --> 0:11:47.360 So there is really a synthetic expansion of both coal 0:11:47.520 --> 0:11:52.120 and oil, and the two go along very well together. 0:11:53.040 --> 0:11:56.640 Once you start to think energy like this, the idea 0:11:56.640 --> 0:12:01.680 of energy transition, of course, starts to become stranger and stranger. Right. 0:12:02.120 --> 0:12:04.240 So the first part of the book is really an 0:12:04.280 --> 0:12:09.440 explanation of why coal, oil, woods and all energies actually 0:12:09.480 --> 0:12:12.560 are completely into twine and growing symbiotically and the second 0:12:12.600 --> 0:12:14.920 part of the book is how come that this idea 0:12:14.920 --> 0:12:18.880 of energy transition became so you know, natural, whereas it 0:12:18.880 --> 0:12:21.880 shouldn't be. It's a really weird, weird notion. 0:12:23.160 --> 0:12:25.760 Yeah, let's go there actually and talk about where this 0:12:25.920 --> 0:12:30.560 narrative came from. I'm particularly interested in talking about the 0:12:30.679 --> 0:12:35.000 role of industry and the role of intellectuals. Both groups, 0:12:35.200 --> 0:12:37.880 obviously lots of overlap between the two then and now 0:12:38.320 --> 0:12:41.480 are partly responsible. But can you talk about the genesis 0:12:41.520 --> 0:12:44.400 of this narrative which has become so entrenched that a 0:12:44.400 --> 0:12:46.559 lot of us, I think, including me, until I read 0:12:46.600 --> 0:12:49.600 this book, just saw it as again the way things. 0:12:49.360 --> 0:12:52.120 Are, I mean. Or The third thing to note is 0:12:52.160 --> 0:12:55.839 that for a long period of time, nobody talked about 0:12:55.960 --> 0:12:59.880 energy transition because what I just explained was completely self evident. 0:13:00.080 --> 0:13:05.080 For so, they knew that coal would be necessary just 0:13:05.120 --> 0:13:08.719 to produce steel, for instance, like in the nineteen fifties 0:13:08.960 --> 0:13:13.480 American conservationists, you know, they were asking questions such as, 0:13:13.760 --> 0:13:16.040 will there be called in the twenty third or twenty 0:13:16.080 --> 0:13:19.280 fourth century, you know, we should you know, economize call 0:13:19.559 --> 0:13:22.560 because we will need call for a very very long 0:13:22.559 --> 0:13:24.880 period of time in the future. So they did not 0:13:25.000 --> 0:13:30.360 imagine energy system shifting suddenly to another another base. I mean, 0:13:30.440 --> 0:13:33.360 it was not something they had in mind. And then 0:13:33.600 --> 0:13:37.440 there was a small group of scientists experts who started 0:13:37.440 --> 0:13:42.600 to talk about energy transition. Most of them were atomic scientists, 0:13:43.160 --> 0:13:47.680 US atomic scientists who had participated to the man Attan project, 0:13:48.280 --> 0:13:50.160 the creation of the first atomic So. 0:13:50.120 --> 0:13:52.600 We're talking nineteen fifties roughly. 0:13:52.360 --> 0:13:56.440 Yes, I mean right after actually Hiroshima and Nagazaki, right 0:13:56.480 --> 0:13:59.640 after that, they start to imagine, you know, what you 0:13:59.679 --> 0:14:03.440 could do with this tremendous invention. In a way, I 0:14:03.480 --> 0:14:06.560 think that for some of them, they felt guilty about 0:14:07.040 --> 0:14:11.520 the atomic bombing of Japanese series, and they wanted to 0:14:11.559 --> 0:14:14.400 explain that what they had done during the war was 0:14:14.440 --> 0:14:18.920 not just this terrible instrument of destruction, but was also 0:14:19.480 --> 0:14:22.960 the key for the long term survival of humanity. It 0:14:23.120 --> 0:14:26.440 was the only energy that you could project in a far, 0:14:26.560 --> 0:14:30.520 far away future. There is a an atomic scientist called 0:14:30.600 --> 0:14:35.520 Alvin Weinberg who was a participant of the to the 0:14:35.600 --> 0:14:39.280 Mandarin project, and then he became a very important character. 0:14:39.280 --> 0:14:42.920 He was the head of Oakridge National Laboratory after the war, 0:14:43.400 --> 0:14:46.840 and in his biography he explicitly explained, I mean he 0:14:46.880 --> 0:14:51.080 said that I became obsessed with the Breeder reactor. It 0:14:51.200 --> 0:14:54.320 is a certain kind of nuclear reactor or fast nutrient 0:14:54.320 --> 0:14:59.280 reactor which basically opens up a kind of unlimited amount 0:14:59.320 --> 0:15:03.400 of energy or I mean energies for not decades of centuries, 0:15:03.440 --> 0:15:06.840 but for millennia. So it's really it really becomes a 0:15:06.920 --> 0:15:11.080 kind of you know, providential technology. And of course when 0:15:11.080 --> 0:15:14.880 you start to think about energy, not indicate centric, but 0:15:15.200 --> 0:15:17.920 in terms of millennia, then you can imagine all sorts 0:15:17.920 --> 0:15:22.160 of things, and you especially imagine the end of fossil fuels. 0:15:22.360 --> 0:15:27.080 There will be an energy transition because fossil fuels are finite, 0:15:27.760 --> 0:15:30.920 there is a limited amount of them under the ground. 0:15:31.320 --> 0:15:33.960 So there will be a future. There will be a 0:15:34.000 --> 0:15:38.480 time when we have exhausted fossil fuels and the world, 0:15:38.640 --> 0:15:42.320 the world will run on atomic energy and hydrogen because 0:15:42.320 --> 0:15:45.040 they know that you need, you know, like a liquid 0:15:45.080 --> 0:15:48.120 to power sheets or boats or or or cars and 0:15:48.160 --> 0:15:50.680 so on. Right, So that that that's that, that's what 0:15:51.080 --> 0:15:54.480 the vision was. But another important character in this respect 0:15:54.600 --> 0:15:58.280 is actually Mayanking Herbert that I don't know how famous 0:15:58.360 --> 0:16:02.000 is in the US, but is really important. Theoretician of 0:16:02.040 --> 0:16:03.960 peak oil in the nineteen fifties. 0:16:04.240 --> 0:16:08.240 Yeah, there are certain online communities I think where he's 0:16:08.240 --> 0:16:11.080 probably quite well known the peak oil crowd. 0:16:11.400 --> 0:16:15.120 So basically in the nineteen fifties he was explaining that 0:16:15.520 --> 0:16:20.560 the US would reach its peak oil production around nineteen seventy. Actually, 0:16:20.680 --> 0:16:23.160 right now, the US I think is producing fifty percent 0:16:23.200 --> 0:16:26.560 more oil than in nineteen seventy because he could not 0:16:26.720 --> 0:16:33.240 see Shelle oil basically coming. So Minking Herbert in nineteen 0:16:33.280 --> 0:16:36.760 fifty five is recruited by the Atomic Energy Commission and 0:16:36.800 --> 0:16:40.280 he becomes like a prominent voice in defense of the 0:16:40.280 --> 0:16:43.560 Breeder reactor. He writes special reports that are read by 0:16:43.920 --> 0:16:47.680 John Figerald Kennedy about the Breeder reactor, and in his 0:16:47.800 --> 0:16:49.800 work he said that, I mean, we have to develop 0:16:49.840 --> 0:16:53.920 this technology because we need to make a transition from oil, 0:16:54.200 --> 0:16:58.520 coal and gas to nuclear energy. The person coined the 0:16:58.560 --> 0:17:02.760 word energy transition is called Harrison Brown, who is also 0:17:02.800 --> 0:17:06.639 an atomic scientist. And actually when he invents this world 0:17:06.720 --> 0:17:11.160 is recycling a technical term of nuclear physics and energy transition. 0:17:11.240 --> 0:17:14.320 Nuclear physics is the change of an electron around its nucleus, 0:17:14.600 --> 0:17:17.480 and it recycles this world to talk about the future 0:17:17.480 --> 0:17:20.280 of energy, So really this is the beginning of energy 0:17:20.320 --> 0:17:24.080 transition as a kind of you know, expert knowledge. It 0:17:24.400 --> 0:17:27.560 comes from this small group of people. Several things to say. 0:17:27.600 --> 0:17:31.639 First of all, the energy transition seen by the atomic 0:17:31.680 --> 0:17:34.920 scientists of the nineteen fifties. You know, it's a very long, 0:17:35.000 --> 0:17:39.520 dury process. It will take not decade the centuries. According 0:17:39.560 --> 0:17:41.440 to min King her Bed, the head of fossil fuel 0:17:41.480 --> 0:17:45.320 at a global level will be in three or four centuries. 0:17:45.800 --> 0:17:47.760 They know that there is still a lot of coal, 0:17:48.240 --> 0:17:50.119 and they also know that in the poor world at 0:17:50.160 --> 0:17:51.720 a make energy we take a lot of time to 0:17:51.760 --> 0:17:57.000 develop obviously, right. What is problematic is that we recycle 0:17:57.080 --> 0:18:00.520 this idea of energy transition to reflect upon climate change, 0:18:00.960 --> 0:18:03.119 because now we have to do the energy transition not 0:18:03.280 --> 0:18:05.760 in three or four centuries, but in three or four decades, 0:18:06.119 --> 0:18:09.160 and we have to do it whereas fossil fuels are 0:18:09.240 --> 0:18:13.239 rather cheap, I mean, oil is not that expensive and 0:18:13.280 --> 0:18:16.439 coal is cheap, so it's a completely different situation. But 0:18:16.480 --> 0:18:20.399 we recycle the same kind of you know, energy futurelogy, 0:18:20.520 --> 0:18:23.679 I think a very wrong energy futurology, which has played 0:18:24.080 --> 0:18:28.200 a detrimental role in our understanding of the enormity of 0:18:28.240 --> 0:18:30.000 the challenge of solving climate change. 0:18:30.880 --> 0:18:34.360 Can you describe briefly what a futureology is and how 0:18:34.400 --> 0:18:36.080 it applies to this discussion. 0:18:36.880 --> 0:18:40.280 Perhaps I would say forecast to be a better word. 0:18:40.400 --> 0:18:43.760 I'm not sure actly I mean of the futureology is 0:18:43.800 --> 0:18:46.120 a vision of the future, a theory about the future, 0:18:46.800 --> 0:18:49.159 what I do in the future, what will happen. So 0:18:49.200 --> 0:18:53.719 it's all this discussion which is, you know, gear at 0:18:53.760 --> 0:18:57.120 imagining what will be the shape of things to come, 0:18:57.280 --> 0:19:00.520 that I call futureology. But it's actually were they use 0:19:00.560 --> 0:19:03.600 at the time, and it was very fashionable in the 0:19:03.720 --> 0:19:06.320 nineteen fifties. Of course, with the atomic age in the 0:19:06.400 --> 0:19:09.959 nineteen sixties, I mean, futulogy becomes a kind of scientific 0:19:10.280 --> 0:19:13.040 discipline in the in the nineteen sixties, I would say, 0:19:13.240 --> 0:19:15.400 where there is a lot of drurnals that are call 0:19:15.560 --> 0:19:20.719 that are created about technological focusting, about how things technology 0:19:21.160 --> 0:19:25.520 evolve and so on. It is really studied at that period. 0:19:25.640 --> 0:19:29.320 And one of the problem is that most of the 0:19:29.359 --> 0:19:33.720 focusting actually was on technology, the evolution of technologies, and 0:19:33.800 --> 0:19:37.639 it is from this discipline that our understanding of what 0:19:37.720 --> 0:19:41.280 we should do for climate change emerged. The problem is 0:19:41.320 --> 0:19:45.440 that dynamics of technologies are not the same as dynamics 0:19:45.440 --> 0:19:50.640 of materials and energies. I mean, when you talk about technology, 0:19:50.880 --> 0:19:56.680 technologies do become obsolete sometime. Landlines for instance, for telephones, 0:19:56.720 --> 0:20:00.880 you know they are absolute now, But materials are very obsolete. 0:20:01.359 --> 0:20:03.960 It's a very, very trivial thing. But I think it's 0:20:04.040 --> 0:20:07.520 very important to keep that in mind. Despite all the innovations, 0:20:07.560 --> 0:20:10.119 all the new technologies that we got in the twenty 0:20:10.240 --> 0:20:14.240 years and twenty first century, all raw materials have increased. 0:20:14.960 --> 0:20:17.360 That's why, I mean what you just said about how 0:20:17.400 --> 0:20:19.919 come that we burn so much food? Actually you can 0:20:20.000 --> 0:20:23.840 ask the question for every material. It's not just that oil, 0:20:24.040 --> 0:20:28.720 gas and coal are expanding, is that every raw material 0:20:29.440 --> 0:20:33.040 is expanding. There are very few exceptions to this rule. 0:20:34.000 --> 0:20:38.440 One of them is asbestos, which is material which was prohibited. 0:20:38.440 --> 0:20:41.840 I think it's quite interesting to see that prohibition prohibition 0:20:42.000 --> 0:20:44.879 does work. If you want to do something about time change, 0:20:44.880 --> 0:20:49.000 you have to prohibit extraction or consumption. You have to 0:20:49.080 --> 0:20:52.760 really take a decision. You cannot rely on technological obsolescence 0:20:52.800 --> 0:20:56.760 of Passifield. This is really a very it's a losing 0:20:56.800 --> 0:21:00.119 bad basically, it's a losing strategy. The only example of 0:21:00.160 --> 0:21:03.520 a room material that has decreased because of technological obserlizence. 0:21:03.680 --> 0:21:08.600 It is shipwule because it has been displaced by synthetic fibers. 0:21:09.040 --> 0:21:11.560 But it's not a good news Sutch environment, but it 0:21:11.680 --> 0:21:15.680 is one of the very very rare example of such 0:21:15.960 --> 0:21:18.760 a process of material transition. If you wish and chip 0:21:18.760 --> 0:21:21.480 wooll is still consumed, I mean, it does not disappear obviously. 0:21:22.119 --> 0:21:27.760 So once again you cannot overestimate the enormity of what 0:21:27.920 --> 0:21:30.200 we have to do now. It is just I mean, 0:21:30.760 --> 0:21:33.159 we have no historical analogy to what we have to 0:21:33.200 --> 0:21:35.600 do now. We have never done energy transition in the past. 0:21:35.640 --> 0:21:37.520 We don't know how long it takes since we have 0:21:37.600 --> 0:21:41.640 never done an energy transition, and I think it's important 0:21:42.080 --> 0:21:46.160 for people to realize that this is extraordinarily ambitious. It's 0:21:46.200 --> 0:21:48.879 not just a matter of putting some solar panels and windmills. 0:21:48.880 --> 0:21:49.919 It's much deeper than that. 0:21:50.640 --> 0:21:52.520 And I'm just going to plant a flag here for 0:21:52.640 --> 0:21:55.800 us to come back to carbon capture and storage, because 0:21:56.560 --> 0:22:00.320 as you're describing the fact that essentially every energy source 0:22:00.320 --> 0:22:03.280 in the history of humanity has continued to accumulate over time, 0:22:04.080 --> 0:22:07.840 you can see why from the industry's perspective, and also 0:22:07.960 --> 0:22:10.840 from the IPCC or from anyone who would like this 0:22:10.920 --> 0:22:15.040 to be an easier resolution than it requires. Something like 0:22:15.640 --> 0:22:18.840 CCS would be a very seductive option. 0:22:19.480 --> 0:22:20.320 But before we. 0:22:20.359 --> 0:22:22.639 Get to that, I just wanted to see if you 0:22:22.640 --> 0:22:25.080 could talk a bit about how the narrative of the 0:22:25.200 --> 0:22:29.639 energy transition became so persistent and so entrenched, and in 0:22:29.680 --> 0:22:34.280 particular why the fossil fuel industry capitalized on it or 0:22:34.320 --> 0:22:36.800 saw it as such a useful delay tactic. 0:22:37.440 --> 0:22:39.479 To come back to what I was saying before, basically, 0:22:39.520 --> 0:22:41.879 in the nineteen CCS they are just, I mean, a 0:22:41.960 --> 0:22:44.480 small group of people talking about energy transition. There were 0:22:44.960 --> 0:22:48.400 nuclear promoters of nuclear energy or fast freederreactor, a very 0:22:48.480 --> 0:22:52.520 specific kind of technology. But then there was something happened 0:22:52.560 --> 0:22:56.040 to trust the oil shock and the energy crisis. After 0:22:56.119 --> 0:23:02.119 nineteen seventy three, the phrase energy crisis became omnipresent, I 0:23:02.119 --> 0:23:05.040 mean was in every on every mouth, in every mouth, 0:23:05.080 --> 0:23:10.400 It was on talk shows on the New York Times, 0:23:11.200 --> 0:23:14.960 So it was really like an obsession, and energy transition 0:23:15.880 --> 0:23:20.200 actually became natural as a solution for the energy crisis. 0:23:20.680 --> 0:23:24.040 If there is one person that has been really important 0:23:24.119 --> 0:23:29.359 to really normalize this idea. It is a US president 0:23:29.400 --> 0:23:34.280 called Jimmy Cutter. On the eighteenth of April nineteen seventy seven, 0:23:34.640 --> 0:23:38.960 it gave a very important talk on television where it says, 0:23:39.400 --> 0:23:42.240 I mean, in the part the US has done two 0:23:42.359 --> 0:23:45.360 energy transitions, one from good to cold, seven from coal 0:23:45.440 --> 0:23:47.680 to oil, and we have to do a third energy transition. 0:23:48.080 --> 0:23:51.400 It was a very astute way to sell to the 0:23:51.520 --> 0:23:54.959 US public the increase of the coal industry. I mean, 0:23:55.040 --> 0:23:58.640 Jimmy Carter is now remembered for having put some solar 0:23:58.720 --> 0:24:02.840 panels on the roof of the White House. He supported 0:24:02.920 --> 0:24:04.040 solar energy. 0:24:03.920 --> 0:24:06.480 And that actually sounds pretty appealing right now, Yeah, it 0:24:06.520 --> 0:24:09.600 sounds very appealing, and I think it was probably the 0:24:09.840 --> 0:24:12.520 I mean, you know, he wanted to do something about 0:24:12.840 --> 0:24:15.440 solar energy, but he was also not very naive about 0:24:15.440 --> 0:24:16.600 what we could do with sol. 0:24:16.560 --> 0:24:21.040 Energy in nineteen seventy So actually the main basis of 0:24:21.240 --> 0:24:26.160 his energy policy was call. I mean, all is going 0:24:26.200 --> 0:24:28.400 to become more expensive. We have to dig more call 0:24:28.480 --> 0:24:30.879 in the US. We even need to I mean, according 0:24:30.920 --> 0:24:34.480 to him, to liquify call, to transform call into a 0:24:34.520 --> 0:24:38.040 synthetic fuel. And actually it is really at this particular 0:24:38.119 --> 0:24:40.880 moment in history that climate change emerged as a political 0:24:40.920 --> 0:24:44.320 issue in the US in nineteen seventy nine, you have 0:24:44.440 --> 0:24:49.200 the very first addition by the Senate of climatologists, because 0:24:49.240 --> 0:24:52.680 you got two branches in the Democratic Party. One was 0:24:52.760 --> 0:24:56.200 in favor of the energy policy plan of Jimmy Catur 0:24:56.400 --> 0:24:59.119 and then otherwise very critical. So climate change at the 0:24:59.160 --> 0:25:03.760 beginning was a of argument against this energy policy by 0:25:03.800 --> 0:25:08.600