Speaker 1: Curing concrete. Concrete makes up half of all man made
Speaker 1: stuff on our planet, and its use will double in
Speaker 1: part to battle climate threats created by the production of
Speaker 1: concrete itself. Industry can deliver cleaner versions, but how soon
Speaker 1: the answer might lie? With four Indonesians from a tiny
Speaker 1: disappearing island by Ted C. Fishman read aloud by Markleidorf,
Speaker 1: People just don't realize we're still in the Stone Age,
Speaker 1: or that humans will always live in the Stone Age.
Speaker 1: Donald mccoolidge, retired senior paleontologist, University of Illinois at Urbana
Speaker 1: Champaign I first learned about the legal challenge that would
Speaker 1: become as Mania at All versus Wholesome in twenty twenty two.
Speaker 1: I'd been reporting on Wholesome Limited at the company's headquarters
Speaker 1: in Zoog, Switzerland. Wholesome, one of the world's biggest cement makers,
Speaker 1: is both an industry innovator and a major emitter of
Speaker 1: atmospheric carbon dioxide, the gas responsible for roughly two thirds
Speaker 1: of human caused climate change. It had been facing aggressive
Speaker 1: confrontations with climate activists. Protesters had occupied a quarry, blocked
Speaker 1: company trucks, commandeered cement silos, vandalized plants and hurled molotov
Speaker 1: cocktails at police. When I asked Wholesom's head of corporate
Speaker 1: communications who the culprits were, she winced. Rather than uttering
Speaker 1: the names of the bomb throwers, she steered me to
Speaker 1: a group called h e Ks or HEX. It was
Speaker 1: in the tidy, quiet Zurich office of HEX that I
Speaker 1: heard about the suit that would soon be filed in
Speaker 1: Switzerland by four struggling Indonesians, fishers, farmers and hostile operators
Speaker 1: from tiny Piri Island. HEX, despite the witchy ring to
Speaker 1: its name, is a church based, decidedly non violent aid
Speaker 1: organization funded largely by Swiss taxpayers. It's a crucial partner
Speaker 1: in the international coalition that conceived and backed the LA lawsuit.
Speaker 1: Pari Island sits low in the Java Sea, about twenty
Speaker 1: four miles from Jakarta, the overstuffed sinking capital of Indonesia.
Speaker 1: Home to a single rural village, the island is three
Speaker 1: miles long and a third is wide. Small though it is,
Speaker 1: it's one of the biggest islets among the cluster of
Speaker 1: three hundred and forty two constituting Indonesia's thousand islands. The
Speaker 1: islanders argue wholesome played a part in warming the air
Speaker 1: and water around their homes, and thus in stirring storms,
Speaker 1: shifting currents that once routed fish to their nets, killing
Speaker 1: sea crops they once farmed, flooding homes, and robbing their
Speaker 1: children of a future on the island. The changes, they
Speaker 1: say are driving them to desperation. About eleven percent of
Speaker 1: Parri Island has disappeared in recent years. Most of the
Speaker 1: rest is no more than five feet above sea level
Speaker 1: and will likely be gone by twenty sixty. The islander's
Speaker 1: case involves what might be called a perversion of the
Speaker 1: natural carbon cycle around the globe. Carbon is true apped
Speaker 1: in carbonate rock, particularly limestone, which is by far the
Speaker 1: planet's single greatest store of the element. Absent human intervention,
Speaker 1: this carbon is released slowly over geological time. This process
Speaker 1: regulates the distribution of atmospheric carbon and in turn, the
Speaker 1: temperature of the Earth. The industrialized economy has sped this up.
Speaker 1: In the past one hundred and fifty years, hundreds of
Speaker 1: thousands of years worth of atmospheric carbon has been released.
Speaker 1: Cement manufacture isn't the most heat intensive industrial practice, but
Speaker 1: it's one of them. It uses primarily fossil fuels to
Speaker 1: heat giant furnaces to twenty seven hundred degrees fahrenheit, hot
Speaker 1: enough to cook the carbon out of four point five
Speaker 1: billion tons of limestone annually. About forty percent of the
Speaker 1: cement industry's emissions result from its prodigious use of fuels.
Speaker 1: The bigger share comes from the fugitive carbon released by
Speaker 1: the chemical change that transforms limestone into the main ingredient
Speaker 1: in cement. The cement industry produces seven to eight percent
Speaker 1: of all human caused carbon emissions. So far, six of
Speaker 1: the thousand islands are no more twenty will likely drown
Speaker 1: over the next few years. Two. The legal climate as
Speaker 1: Mania at Ol versus Wholesome was filed in twenty twenty three,
Speaker 1: and on December seventeenth, twenty twenty five, a cantonal court
Speaker 1: ruled that the bold legal theories behind the case were
Speaker 1: sound and that a trial was warranted. The ruling was
Speaker 1: a bombshell for a number of reasons. Most significantly, the
Speaker 1: Swiss court accepted that individuals harmed by climate change deserve compensation.
Speaker 1: Defendants in similar cases have in the past argued successfully
Speaker 1: that individuals who suffer harm from climate change don't warrant
Speaker 1: special consideration because everyone in the world deals with the
Speaker 1: same climate reality, so it's a political issue at best.
Speaker 1: The court, however, ruled that because Swiss law protects individual's
Speaker 1: physical integrity, health and personal freedom, the islanders deserved compensation
Speaker 1: for any direct harm they suffered. The court accepted that
Speaker 1: climate policy is a matter for politics, but it ruled
Speaker 1: that private lawsuits complement legislation, and though Wholesome hasn't operated
Speaker 1: in Indonesia since twenty nineteen, the court is allowing the
Speaker 1: argument that the harms of Wholesom's cumulative worldwide emissions were
Speaker 1: unbounded by geography, and that even distant sufferers were entitled
Speaker 1: to compensation from the company. When the case is finally heard,
Speaker 1: the court will weigh the science that connects Wholesom's omissions
Speaker 1: to climate change around Pari Island. At that stage, things
Speaker 1: may not go the islander's way, but the progress already
Speaker 1: made suggests the court's may ring changes from industry where
Speaker 1: political action has faltered. Following the December ruling, thirty nine
Speaker 1: Pakistani farmers filed a lawsuit in Germany against two companies,
Speaker 1: including Wholesom's chief European rival, Heidelberg Materials, seeking partial compensation
Speaker 1: for the loss of homes and livelihoods caused by devastating floods.
Speaker 1: The wholesome case in effect puts the whole world production
Speaker 1: and use of cement and concrete on trial. The vast
Speaker 1: majority of the world's cement is Portland cement, a manufactured
Speaker 1: chemical powder that's the crucial binding ingredient in most modern concrete.
Speaker 1: Cement usually makes up ten percent to fifteen percent of
Speaker 1: the volume in a basic concrete mix. The rest includes
Speaker 1: hard bits called aggregate, usually stones of various sizes, and sand,
Speaker 1: and the ingredient that kicks off the binding of it
Speaker 1: all together. Water. Portland's cement was patented by Joseph Aspden
Speaker 1: in England in eighteen twenty four. Aspden took dubious credit
Speaker 1: for its invention, but he gave the smoky gray material
Speaker 1: its durable name, meant to invoke a posh similarly colored
Speaker 1: stone quarried on the isle of Portland. Today, cement and
Speaker 1: the concrete made with it are the world's most widely
Speaker 1: used human made materials, amounting to a one point four
Speaker 1: trillion dollar global market. They enable modern living. They're deployed
Speaker 1: to address almost every major human and natural challenge and
Speaker 1: deliver immeasurable benefits, including a healthier, longer life for people
Speaker 1: almost everywhere. But this progress has come at a cost
Speaker 1: to the climate. At Wholesom's peak, the company has bought, sold,
Speaker 1: and merged divisions often. It operated in ninety countries and
Speaker 1: was the market leader in forty. The Pyre Islanders and
Speaker 1: their backers assert that the company has produced point forty
Speaker 1: two percent of all industrial CO two emissions since seventeen fifty,
Speaker 1: so they're asking it to pay point forty two percent
Speaker 1: of the damages caused to them and their families. The
Speaker 1: requested sum, around twenty thousand dollars, would be a pittance
Speaker 1: to a company with a market capitalization of fifty one
Speaker 1: billion dollars, but Wholesom's lawyers have argued, using an apt metaphor,
Speaker 1: that a ruling in favor of the plaintiffs would open
Speaker 1: the floodgates to an endless queue of claimants. The islander's
Speaker 1: non financial demands could be far more onerous for Wholesome.
Speaker 1: The suit asks the court to require the company, which
Speaker 1: has committed to eliminating all its carbon emissions by twenty fifty,
Speaker 1: to roughly double the speed of its decarbonization by cutting
Speaker 1: emissions forty three percent by twenty thirty and sixty nine
Speaker 1: percent by twenty forty. Those figures matched the global reduction
Speaker 1: targets established by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Speaker 1: It also asks the court to compel Wholesome to cap
Speaker 1: not only per volume emissions but also overall emissions. Wholesome,
Speaker 1: like other cement makers, measures its success at cutting emissions
Speaker 1: by counting the CO two released for a given volume
Speaker 1: of cement produced. That leaves room for overall emissions to climb.
Speaker 1: If sales of cement outpaced the per volume reductions, the
Speaker 1: suit could impede the company's efforts to sell more cement
Speaker 1: and grab market share amid its industry's ongoing consolidation. Prior
Speaker 1: to the December ruling, Wholesom argued that mandating limits on
Speaker 1: its output would be meaningless for the islanders and the
Speaker 1: climate because other companies would provide the market with what
Speaker 1: Wholesome couldn't. The Court reasoned that the opposite would be true. Rather,
Speaker 1: it said, other co two would probably also have to
Speaker 1: expect to be held accountable for their emissions. The threat
Speaker 1: of an injunction may cause other actors in the cement
Speaker 1: and concrete industry to reduce their emissions. Wholesome is a
Speaker 1: bell weather in its industry. It wields formidable influence in
Speaker 1: the trade associations and with governmental and other bodies that
Speaker 1: set standards for cementing concrete. A final judgment in favor
Speaker 1: of the Islanders would likely set in motion a test
Speaker 1: of whether the cement industry can decarbonize far faster than
Speaker 1: it claims as possible. Some of this could be accomplished
Speaker 1: through new methods of building with less material Some could
Speaker 1: entail accelerating the development of carbon negative materials which absorb
Speaker 1: or sequester co too rather than emit it. That would
Speaker 1: change how the world uses its favorite material. Because of
Speaker 1: the unrivaled scale of its use and the pace of
Speaker 1: innovation in the sector, concrete may prove to be the
Speaker 1: most essential material for dialing back carbon dioxide emissions of
Speaker 1: all kinds. In a twist, the Pari Islanders are suing
Speaker 1: one of the the cement companies that's pushed the hardest
Speaker 1: to decarbonize and spoken the loudest about the economic sense
Speaker 1: of doing so. Over the past five years, Wholesome has
Speaker 1: been remaking its business in service of governmental and corporate
Speaker 1: sustainability goals. The optimistic case for the climate is that,
Speaker 1: rather than handcuffing the company, the four Indonesian Islanders could
Speaker 1: end up propelling its business into a new phase and
Speaker 1: igniting a profound change for the planet. Three tropical Swiss
Speaker 1: Hexa's office is in Cyric's quiet leafy Untustras neighborhood, set
Speaker 1: among a mix of late nineteenth century Art Nouveaux homes,
Speaker 1: mid century apartment houses, and university halls. It's hard to
Speaker 1: walk the streets of a Swiss city and not marvel
Speaker 1: at the country's use of concrete. Its engineers pioneered new
Speaker 1: applications for the material throughout the twentieth century, and modern
Speaker 1: concrete architecture took root there too, including the unfinished or
Speaker 1: brute concrete that Le Corbusier championed, which spurred the rise
Speaker 1: of brutalism. There's nothing brutish about it. Swiss workers are
Speaker 1: among the world's best finishers of concrete, and the surfaces
Speaker 1: on modern homes, schools, and offices are exquisite. The city
Speaker 1: blocks around HEX are dotted with fine examples. HEX is
Speaker 1: headquartered in a linear, blue and white office building circa
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty three, with cargo bicycles at the door. I
Speaker 1: arrived from my first visit back in twenty twenty two
Speaker 1: during a coffee break and was led through angular modern
Speaker 1: offices to a sitting area. There, casually dressed workers sat
Speaker 1: around a low table, quietly enjoying drinks and a bowl
Speaker 1: of pears and grapes. We don't talk about work during
Speaker 1: these breaks, I was told, as the bowl came my way,
Speaker 1: no evidence of bomb throwers here. Had the staff not
Speaker 1: been speaking Swiss German, the office might have been mistaken
Speaker 1: for the city hall of an affluent, progressive town somewhere
Speaker 1: in say, the Pacific Northwest. Following the break, the workers
Speaker 1: headed uninterrupted to their desks. Part of hex's mission is
Speaker 1: to redress inequities between the affluent glos global North and
Speaker 1: the poorer global South. On the office shelves were report
Speaker 1: covers showing people stooping in fields to harvest crops, squatting
Speaker 1: next to wells, wading through floods, carrying food to refugee tents,
Speaker 1: or cupping seeds and beans in their hands. Good works,
Speaker 1: God's work. I was there to discuss hex's views of
Speaker 1: Switzerland's cement industry. I didn't yet know about the Pari
Speaker 1: Island case, and it might have gone unmentioned. Following a
Speaker 1: general overview on the dangers of carbon emissions, I was
Speaker 1: told that HEX viewed Wholesome's green strategies as suspect and
Speaker 1: that the company's public messaging masked a go slow approach.
Speaker 1: On the way out, I noticed a poster of a
Speaker 1: group in Indonesia. They wore the distinctive prints and headscarves
Speaker 1: I knew from living and working in that country on
Speaker 1: and off since the nineteen eighties. I asked about this
Speaker 1: group and heard for the first time the story of
Speaker 1: the Pari Islanders. Last summer, as I prepared for a
Speaker 1: visit to Jakarta, I called Hex to see if anything
Speaker 1: was stirring. My timing was good. I was told a
Speaker 1: hearing was scheduled in soog for September. The Indonesians would
Speaker 1: be coming to Switzerland to face Wholesome in person for
Speaker 1: the first time. I told Hex, I'd like to interview
Speaker 1: the plaintiffs there, but first I'd like to see them
Speaker 1: on Pari Island. I could even speak to them in Indonesian,
Speaker 1: especially if I had a translator for back up. We
Speaker 1: had a deal four David and Goliath, Daoud and Jalout.
Speaker 1: Parid Ridwanoudon was one of my first contacts. Parid is
Speaker 1: a stout, energetic activist with a history of fighting for
Speaker 1: small island fishers whose catches are threatened by mass excavations
Speaker 1: by sand miners feeding the regions in satiable appetites for concrete,
Speaker 1: aggregate and landfill material. There are no hard and fast
Speaker 1: rules for citing Indonesian names in the press. I've adopted
Speaker 1: the names the people themselves prefer. He lives in Jakarta
Speaker 1: and works with the Indonesian Forum for Living Environment or
Speaker 1: While He an environmental organization affiliated with Friends of the
Speaker 1: Earth Internet. When the Swiss case first took shape, he
Speaker 1: was enlisted to work with the Pari Islanders and their
Speaker 1: European backers, organizing a public campaign and acting as an
Speaker 1: English language interpreter for the plaintiffs. The main point of
Speaker 1: the lawsuit is to focus on major carbon emitters, Piede
Speaker 1: told me this is to send a message to the
Speaker 1: global community that the fate of the Pari Islanders has
Speaker 1: a connection to the global climate movement and is linked
Speaker 1: to previous climate lawsuits. For while he Hex and the
Speaker 1: European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights in Berlin, another backer.
Speaker 1: The suit against Wholesome is part of a larger effort
Speaker 1: by global non governmental organizations to hold to account big
Speaker 1: emitters and the governments that failed to sufficiently curb them.
Speaker 1: The case was brought in Switzerland in part because Indonesian
Speaker 1: law leaves little room for climate lawsuits. Targeting a Swiss
Speaker 1: company that no longer does business in Indonesia also allowed
Speaker 1: the activists to sidestep some especially challenging political issues. Indonesia's
Speaker 1: biggest carbon ima, including in the cement sector, are deeply
Speaker 1: connected to the government. Among national legal systems, Indonesia's notoriously
Speaker 1: corrupt courts rank a low sixty ninth in heeding the
Speaker 1: rule of law. According to the World Justice Project. Swiss
Speaker 1: courts might be half a world away, but they rank
Speaker 1: among the least corrupt. When while he and Hex started
Speaker 1: recruiting plaintiffs, many Pari Islanders came forward to volunteer, Slowly,
Speaker 1: most dropped out, and only the four persevered. The story
Speaker 1: is very good with the Daoud and Jalut element, says Pared,
Speaker 1: invoking the Quran's version of David and Goliath. His role
Speaker 1: in the case is to make the most of the
Speaker 1: archetype with a bit of ayoub, the Islamic counterpart to
Speaker 1: job thrown in five. How concrete disappears. Natives of concrete
Speaker 1: places often don't notice how pervasive the stuff is. One
Speaker 1: reason may be that humans are cognitive misers. We're wired
Speaker 1: to edit out complications. We edit out conos crete from
Speaker 1: our view the way we edit out our noses, though
Speaker 1: they're both nearly always in our field of vision. Almost
Speaker 1: every building erected in the past seventy five years in
Speaker 1: an industrialized country has at the least a concrete foundation
Speaker 1: and very likely concrete floors. Concrete can seem the dead
Speaker 1: opposite of sexy architecture. Critic John Goodman notes that in
Speaker 1: its raw form, it presents as primitive, even scatological, oozing
Speaker 1: down the shoot of a mixer truck. Frank Lloyd Wright,
Speaker 1: who used concrete beautifully the Guggenheim, wrestled with the material's
Speaker 1: earth and blandness, calling cement characterless and concrete artificial stone
Speaker 1: at best and a petrified sand heap at worst. Concrete
Speaker 1: can be dull, hard, inert. Paradoxically, these very qualities have
Speaker 1: made it one of the most transformative materials ever created.
Speaker 1: The world has been remade with it. Measured by mass,
Speaker 1: About half of the world's more than one trillion tons
Speaker 1: of human made stuff is concrete. Most of that has
Speaker 1: appeared in the past fifty years. In the late nineteenth century,
Speaker 1: concrete was a niche product compared with other materials. It
Speaker 1: was too expensive and inconsistent for most jobs in a
Speaker 1: largely wood and masonry world. It was reserved mainly for
Speaker 1: infrastructure projects, sewer systems, canals, the base of the Statue
Speaker 1: of Liberty, and kept out of building architecture. Thomas Edison
Speaker 1: helped change that. In nineteen o two, he applied lessons
Speaker 1: from a failed iron milling business to the creation of
Speaker 1: one hundred and fifty foot long rotary kilns that could
Speaker 1: produce cement in large volumes continuously. He then created one
Speaker 1: of the largest cement plants in the world in New Village,
Speaker 1: New Jersey. The Edison Portland Cement Company's new method of
Speaker 1: mass production turned Portland cement from an expensive, uncommon material
Speaker 1: into an industrialized, abundant, affordable one. Edison tried unsuccessfully to
Speaker 1: market single family concrete homes made by pouring the material
Speaker 1: into a house size mold, but the equipment proved too expensive.
Speaker 1: His cement company also failed, in part because a rash
Speaker 1: of cement makers quickly adopted the technology he pioneered, creating
Speaker 1: an oversupply that drove down prices. But the urbanizing, motorized,
Speaker 1: electric and fossil fuel powered economy Edison helped create was
Speaker 1: ripe for concrete. Last year, the world used close to
Speaker 1: four billion tons of cement to produce about thirty billion
Speaker 1: tons of concrete, three to four tons for everyone on
Speaker 1: the planet. If Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, both eighty
Speaker 1: two together were delivered there, per capita allotments, it would
Speaker 1: take thirty four concrete trucks Portland. Cement is produced by
Speaker 1: more than twelve hundred companies and thirty five hundred plants
Speaker 1: in one hundred and sixty three countries, though ten of
Speaker 1: the biggest producers, some state owned in China, account for
Speaker 1: forty percent of the global supply. At the time the
Speaker 1: lawsuit was filed, Wholesome was the biggest non Chinese producer.
Speaker 1: Of most big challenges humankind faces, and you'll find we're
Speaker 1: likely to face them with concrete habitation, of course, as
Speaker 1: more than ninety percent of the world's new homes are
Speaker 1: made with it. Most every office building and factory is
Speaker 1: two pick up. Almost anything that was mass produced mechanically
Speaker 1: a pen, a spoon, a circuit board, a motor, and
Speaker 1: concrete was under the machine that made it. The gargantuan
Speaker 1: machinery in steel mills must be anchored to concrete foundations
Speaker 1: to hold it steady. Reciprocally, about one fifth of the
Speaker 1: world's steel is used to reinforce concrete, and modern transportation
Speaker 1: happens on concrete. There are three hundred and forty thousand
Speaker 1: concrete bridges in the US and more than eight hundred
Speaker 1: thousand in China. Canals, ports and airports are among the
Speaker 1: most concrete intensive structures of all. Concrete is an almost
Speaker 1: miraculous contributor to public health. It enabled the build out
Speaker 1: of municipal systems that deliver safe drinking water and remove
Speaker 1: and process waste. Concrete pipes and storm basins detain rushing
Speaker 1: waters that would otherwise flood streets and homes with road grime, toxins, trash,
Speaker 1: and sewer rats. When in poor neighborhoods and crowded Latin
Speaker 1: American cities, Concrete replaces dirt floors, Parasitic infestations and anemia
Speaker 1: in children both drop by around eighty percent, and cases
Speaker 1: of diarrhea nearly have. A programme in Mexico called Piezoferme
Speaker 1: Solid Floor installed concrete floors in the homes of more
Speaker 1: than two point seven million families. It did more for
Speaker 1: children's overall health than food aid or nutritional supplements. Concrete
Speaker 1: isn't necessary for human reproduction. Indonesian readers kindly resist puns
Speaker 1: with semen your word for cement, but its use in
Speaker 1: hygienic maternity wards lowers infections and infant mortality. The world's
Speaker 1: energy infrastructure, including dams, nuclear plants, and renewables, is heavily concrete.
Speaker 1: It's the only affordable material with enough mass to hold
Speaker 1: the towers of big wind turbines steady against gravity, torque,
Speaker 1: and wind shear. Smaller turbine towers, the kind that dot
Speaker 1: cornfields in the American Midwest each stand in one thousand
Speaker 1: to two thousand tons of concrete. Newer nuclear plants use
Speaker 1: seven hundred thousand tons of concrete. China's Midog hydropower station
Speaker 1: and related infrastructure in Tibet is slated to begin operating
Speaker 1: in twenty thirty three, it will be by far the
Speaker 1: world's largest power plant, generating enough daily power for three
Speaker 1: hundred million people. It will also be the world's most
Speaker 1: massive concrete structure, built with an estimated three hundred million
Speaker 1: tons worth. The security and defense industries depend on concrete. Two.
Speaker 1: In twenty sixteen, the Modern War Institute at West Point
Speaker 1: identified concrete, not weapons or vehicles or computers, as the U. S.
Speaker 1: Army's most important strategic battle asset. The overarching fact about
Speaker 1: concrete is that it's unavoidable, and the more it's used,
Speaker 1: the more its use expands. Concrete is the material that
Speaker 1: networks almost every other built network. Six. Escaping Jakarta. My
Speaker 1: trip to the boat for Pari Island began with an
Speaker 1: early morning taxi ride across Jakarta through a cityscape of
Speaker 1: concrete and little els. Jakarta anchors the world's most populous
Speaker 1: metro region, with forty two million people. Its surpassed Tokyos.
Speaker 1: Although it sits in the tropics, it's wofully short of
Speaker 1: green spaces. Ninety percent of its surface is paved or
Speaker 1: otherwise concretised. Jakarta is the fastest sinking large city in
Speaker 1: the world. It drops ten to thirty centimeters a year,
Speaker 1: depending on the neighborhood. Two thirds of the city's water
Speaker 1: is drawn from the ground below. Draining the groundwater compacts
Speaker 1: the soil. The weight of Jakarta's buildings compacts it even more.
Speaker 1: My car crawled through infamously choked city streets. Jakartans stuck
Speaker 1: in traffic like to say they're study patients. The pace
Speaker 1: finally accelerated as the car climbed a ramp to one
Speaker 1: of the city's elevated highways. Above were the upper floors
Speaker 1: of huge apartment towers, clustered into complexes that house tens
Speaker 1: of thousands of people. Below lay a street level city
Speaker 1: that's a perennially half built crush of homes, shops, mosques,
Speaker 1: big and small food stalls, and the largest collection of
Speaker 1: indoor malls of any city in the world. Across from
Speaker 1: ankoal Port and the boat to the island were both
Speaker 1: soaring modern buildings and the abandoned concrete skeletons of unfinished
Speaker 1: apartment towers. The spongy land beneath couldn't support their weight.
Speaker 1: The city is a hodgepodge of concrete done well and
Speaker 1: concrete squandered locals sometimes crave an escape from the concrete everywhere,
Speaker 1: and Pari Island makes for a quaint time out the boat.
Speaker 1: Trip to the island can take one, two or three hours,
Speaker 1: depending on whether you travel by a small bouncy boat
Speaker 1: with a modest engine, a medium sized boat that makes
Speaker 1: stop at a mall, or a fast boat that crashes
Speaker 1: through the waves, soaks the passengers and is crushingly. Loud
Speaker 1: I took the two hour trip the boat past the
Speaker 1: remains of centuries old derelict Dutch forts that still dominate
Speaker 1: several of the small islands in the chain. From such
Speaker 1: hulking structures, some with walls twelve feet thick, the Netherlands
Speaker 1: subdued its Indonesian colonies for more than three hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty years. The Dutch fashioned a concrete like substance by
Speaker 1: grinding up seashells to make quicklime, similar to that produced
Speaker 1: from limestone in the making of Portland cement today. The
Speaker 1: Dutch also used Indonesia's abundant volcanic ash, a functional double
Speaker 1: of modern cement, and as with modern concrete, combined it
Speaker 1: with sand and rock to make an almost indestructible mass.
Speaker 1: The scenes along the sandy paths that thread through Pirie
Speaker 1: Island appear like a throwback in time to the kind
Speaker 1: of village life ja Cartan families often left behind the
Speaker 1: rural Indonesia of palms, tiny shops, bare feet, no cars.
Speaker 1: Hammocks are slung between palms on the beaches. Seaside stalls,
Speaker 1: many no more than a couple of benches and a
Speaker 1: makeshift table serve grilled fish. Beach volleyball games last past
Speaker 1: dark card games go all night. There are no big
Speaker 1: hotels on the island. Visitors either camp on the beach
Speaker 1: or for twenty five dollars a night, rent a local
Speaker 1: home and fill it with as many family members or
Speaker 1: friends as are willing to pile in. The local term
Speaker 1: for a rented house is homestay. It's odd to think
Speaker 1: of a tourist economy that was borne out of an
Speaker 1: ecological disaster. The shift away from fishing and farming, forced
Speaker 1: by changing seas has brought a measure of low rent
Speaker 1: prosperity to the island, even if the increased flooding brings
Speaker 1: setbacks too. Mustaghfern, locally known as Bobby, is one of
Speaker 1: the four plaintiffs. He's a community leader who as a
Speaker 1: muazin at the local mosque calls worshippers to prayer. He
Speaker 1: was instrumental in kickstarting local tourism worked to keep poshure
Speaker 1: tourism and investors from the island. Bobby lichens Pari Island
Speaker 1: to Jakarta's wartegs or hole in the wall, food stands
Speaker 1: where motorcycle deliverymen, house cleaners, laborers and students sit, smoke
Speaker 1: and linger, ordering curries and satis with their pocket change.
Speaker 1: We're the wartag of resorts, he says. People without a
Speaker 1: lot of money should have a place to go to too.
Speaker 1: Bobby is barely five feet tall, but he's all muscle
Speaker 1: and indefatigable. He created the island's most popular beach by
Speaker 1: himself by clearing brush and debris from about three hundred
Speaker 1: yards of waterfront and creating two more small islands near
Speaker 1: the shore by carting sand over the water as planned.
Speaker 1: The islands are now popular destinations for swimmers and sunset gazers.
Speaker 1: When Bobby tried to collect a voluntary fee equivalent to
Speaker 1: twenty six cents from tourists to help keep the beach tidy,
Speaker 1: he was arrested and jailed for seven months while he
Speaker 1: was prosecuted for extortion. There were rumors that he was
Speaker 1: arrested at the request of developers who considered him an
Speaker 1: impediment to their plans. Bobby was ultimately acquitted. The experience
Speaker 1: proved his metal as a fighter, and for the backers
Speaker 1: of the suit, made him attractive as a plaintiff in
Speaker 1: a battle against Goliath seven. Concrete versus concrete. Until recently,
Speaker 1: Powi Island was all but devoid of concrete, except for
Speaker 1: the fuel that ran the low horsepower motors of the
Speaker 1: island's small fleet of wooden fishing boats, and the fuel
Speaker 1: used to transport the island's crops to Java. The residents
Speaker 1: barely had any carbon footprint at all. Today, however, the
Speaker 1: impact of concrete looms over almost everything on the island,
Speaker 1: a measure of how quickly it can transform a place.
Speaker 1: The islanders have been rushing to elevate their homes, including
Speaker 1: newly built concrete ones, up onto concrete blocks above the
Speaker 1: flood prone ground. Following one of the area's frequent storms,
Speaker 1: Jakarta unleashes an eighteen mile wide flux of filth that
Speaker 1: heads across the open water right toward Pari remnants of
Speaker 1: forty two million residence consumption. Mounds of plastic water bottles,
Speaker 1: old clothes, tires, lengths of rope, tangled fishing net, and
Speaker 1: soggy cardboard creep all over the small island. The garbage
Speaker 1: tide arrives here in part because next door Pulao h
Speaker 1: or h Island has been developed for luxury homes, protected
Speaker 1: by concrete walls that deflect the floe down stream and
Speaker 1: down market. Arrif Pugianto may be the plaintiff, the rising
Speaker 1: seas have punished most. A thin man in his mid
Speaker 1: fifties aref has an angular face, a wispy mustache, and wide,
Speaker 1: bloodshot eyes surrounded by deep character lines marking a lifetime
Speaker 1: of squinting at water under the equatorial sun. He pulls
Speaker 1: his black hair back in a well combed pony tail,
Speaker 1: and often dons a baseball cap. The day we met,
Speaker 1: he wore a football jersey emblazoned with Indonesia's national symbol,
Speaker 1: the bird god Garuda. He walked me over to the
Speaker 1: edge of the beach outside his pleated bamboo house. We
Speaker 1: sat on a concrete bench that was partly wrecked and
Speaker 1: partly buried in the sand. He pointed to a swing
Speaker 1: about one hundred yards out in the water and said
Speaker 1: it used to stand at the shoreline. As a child,
Speaker 1: a reef traveled by sailboat to schools on neighboring islands.
Speaker 1: In his third year of high school, his father fell
Speaker 1: ill and was frequently hospitalized. Outside Jakarta, a reef dropped out.
Speaker 1: When the Indonesian government set up a research station on
Speaker 1: Pari Island. He joined the scientists on the water to
Speaker 1: track fish and shrimp. I did research on coral and
Speaker 1: could see the reefs were in good condition. He said
Speaker 1: the coral supported marine life, including fish. When the government
Speaker 1: transplanted a kind of seaweed from Bali that was valuable
Speaker 1: to the cosmetics industry, areef became a seaweed and seagrass farmer.
Speaker 1: It was, he said, with a smile, a vibrant business,
Speaker 1: and the crops helped forge a strong local community of
Speaker 1: sea farmers. When he described how the currents changed and
Speaker 1: the coral died off, and the farmers tried and failed
Speaker 1: to save their crops, his eyes welled up. He bowed
Speaker 1: his head into his hands, wept, and spent a few
Speaker 1: minutes gaining his composure. We don't have that community anymore,
Speaker 1: he said. In twenty eighteen, then again in twenty twenty one,
Speaker 1: Parie Island was hit by tidal floods so severe that
Speaker 1: Aurife's home was overwhelmed by salt water. Sea rise and
Speaker 1: rising ocean and atmospheric temperatures make tides more erratic and
Speaker 1: floods more frequent and violent. When the water hit Aref's walls,
Speaker 1: they collapsed. The house's rudimentary plumbing fell apart, too, leaving
Speaker 1: the family with no toilet. His fresh water well, like
Speaker 1: many on the island, was inundated and made unusable for weeks.
Speaker 1: The salt water killed the chilies, tomatoes, papayas, and bananas
Speaker 1: he grew on his land, and it overran the shop
Speaker 1: where he sometimes worked as a mechanic. Over five years,
Speaker 1: he said, the beach nearest his home lost nine meters
Speaker 1: or thirty feet of land. When NGOs showed up to help,
Speaker 1: they linked the rising waters and floods to climate change.
Speaker 1: They asked for photos and videos, and a Reef showed
Speaker 1: them many while he asked if the community wanted to
Speaker 1: join a lawsuit, and that is how we started working
Speaker 1: with HEX, he said from the NGO's point of view.
Speaker 1: The Pari Island plaintiffs A Reef and Bobby, plus Asmania,
Speaker 1: a shopkeeper, homestay operator, community organizer and mother, and Ed Mullono,
Speaker 1: who works with and is an advocate for local fishermen,
Speaker 1: have desirable profiles. They've gained little from industrial activity, but
Speaker 1: nonetheless suffer from its consequences. Their minimal contact with the
Speaker 1: carbon economy and their powerlessness against it gave them standing
Speaker 1: to champion a global cause. I asked a Reef whether
Speaker 1: Holsim's point forty two percent share of global carbon emissions
Speaker 1: was really what made his blood boil. He acknowledged it
Speaker 1: wasn't his top concern, but he said no one else
Speaker 1: had come to help except for the Swiss, so we'd
Speaker 1: joined them eight cold stops. In late August twenty twenty five,
Speaker 1: a few days before their court hearing, Aarif and Asmania,
Speaker 1: together with Pared and another while he official, were met
Speaker 1: in Zurich by a team from hex Jetlag had hit
Speaker 1: them hard, and they were ushered to their hotel to rest.
Speaker 1: They'd anticipated that Swiss food would be too heavy and
Speaker 1: bloating for them, so they set up a rice cooker
Speaker 1: in one of the rooms. They had a week before
Speaker 1: their procedural hearing Inzugue, but before then had a full
Speaker 1: schedule of public campaigning. The next day, they stumbled half
Speaker 1: awake into their first meeting, a strategy session at the
Speaker 1: Heck's office. Even in summer, Switzerland felt cold to them,
Speaker 1: as Mania bundled up in a fluffy blue fleece. One
Speaker 1: of the first stops on the islander's publicity tour was
Speaker 1: a snowy outlook at an ecologically threatened UNESCO World Heritage
Speaker 1: site in the Bernese Alps above the Melting Alech Glacier
Speaker 1: in Valais. Reporters and photographers from friendly press outlets followed
Speaker 1: them up for the photoop. The site of frigid Islanders
Speaker 1: who'd lost land drove home the complimentary challenge of landlocked
Speaker 1: Swiss losing water. Later, the group traveled to a fish
Speaker 1: house on a nearby lake and talked through a translator
Speaker 1: to the fishermen there. Arf and Asmania joined the locals
Speaker 1: detangling the day's catch from their nets. The house's gregarious owner,
Speaker 1: who'd traveled to Bali, recited the names of some Indonesian dishes.
Speaker 1: The visitors beamed at the welcome Although The stop was
Speaker 1: meant to link climate change on Pari Island with that
Speaker 1: in Switzerland. The happy host who owned this business said
Speaker 1: the story is mixed. Some fish are disappearing from the waters,
Speaker 1: but the warming of the lake has caused a population
Speaker 1: boom in others that earn him more money. The Indonesians
Speaker 1: had a wonderful time, but as propaganda for climate action,
Speaker 1: the lake visit was a bust. Nine. The hard problem
Speaker 1: the cement plants pumping carbon into the atmosphere vary widely
Speaker 1: in size and output. Volumes from the biggest plants are
Speaker 1: stackering and their production is unremitting. From its recently revamped
Speaker 1: plant in Mitchell, Indiana, Heidelberg Materials can ship out one
Speaker 1: thousand train cars filled with cement every day. The largest
Speaker 1: US plant was built by Wholesome on the Mississippi River
Speaker 1: in Bloomsdale, Missouri. It can now produce five point five
Speaker 1: million tons a year, following a recent one hundred million
Speaker 1: dollar expansion by its current owner, Amrise, which Wholesome spun
Speaker 1: off in twenty twenty five to take over its US
Speaker 1: and Canadian operations. Even before the expansion, the plant's cement
Speaker 1: found its way into one in five US building projects.
Speaker 1: The bigger plants are humblingly complex, looking like a jumble
Speaker 1: of oil refineries, big city elevated train systems, domed sports arenas,
Speaker 1: and mammoth silos. No matter the size or vintage of
Speaker 1: the facility, though the basic chemistry is the same. Put
Speaker 1: in lots of limestone, add a bit of clay and
Speaker 1: gypsum get cement out. Many of the plants, including amorses,
Speaker 1: are situated next to thick bedded limestone deposits to feed
Speaker 1: the cement kilns. Limestone chunks are blasted out of the
Speaker 1: quarry and excavated by huge diggers. The stone is dumped
Speaker 1: into a powerful crusher that reduces the big pieces to chunks,
Speaker 1: which are then fed into a grinder that further reduces
Speaker 1: the stone to a finely powdered product called raw meal.
Speaker 1: That powder, mixed with some clay, is conveyed to the
Speaker 1: top of a steel preheater tower, where it travels through
Speaker 1: several stages designed to drive most of the co two
Speaker 1: out of the rock. Most of this happens by spinning
Speaker 1: the stone and clay in a super hot cyclone that
Speaker 1: cooks it in stages until it goes inside a furnace
Speaker 1: called a calciner. The stone's temperature reaches about eighteen hundred
Speaker 1: degrees fahrenheit, hot enough to release carbon dioxide unless captured,
Speaker 1: the gas heads into the air. This is the process
Speaker 1: that makes cement production so destructive to the environment. The
Speaker 1: remaining solid calcium oxide, also known as quicklime, then travels
Speaker 1: again to a giant tubular rotary kiln amorrhizes is three
Speaker 1: hundred feet long that produces heat as high as twenty
Speaker 1: seven hundred degrees fahrenheit. In time, small gray pellets of
Speaker 1: a new material emerge. This is clinker, the ingredient that
Speaker 1: makes Portland cement reactive. When the clinker is finely ground
Speaker 1: and mixed with gypsum, the Portland cement is finished. Remember
Speaker 1: that ten percent to fifteen per cent of a traditional
Speaker 1: batch of concrete is made up of clinker based Portland cement.
Speaker 1: Because its fabrication process leads to such prolific emissions, industry
Speaker 1: decarbonization efforts most often focus on ways to use less
Speaker 1: clinker in cement and less Portland cement in concrete. The
Speaker 1: shorthand for this is lowering the clinker factor. To environmentalists
Speaker 1: and corporate sustainability chiefs. Decarbonising cement is often called the
Speaker 1: hard problem. There are three particular reasons. For one, there's
Speaker 1: the roughly forty percent of the industry's CO two that
Speaker 1: comes from burning fuel, usually coal, with some mix of
Speaker 1: industrial waste to sustain requisite high temperatures. Efficient furnaces and
Speaker 1: recycled fuels can reduce emissions, but the industry needs new
Speaker 1: supply chains to provide alternative fuels. A second challenge is
Speaker 1: that other sixty percent of emissions the result of the
Speaker 1: chemical transformation of the stone. Although the intense energy required
Speaker 1: to cook cement doesn't rely on electricity, the world's cement plants,
Speaker 1: with their huge everturning crushers, grinders, conveyors, and other equipment,
Speaker 1: drive as much as one point five percent of global
Speaker 1: electricity demand. Electricity, however, isn't considered part of cement's hard
Speaker 1: problem because renewable power sources can eventually meet the industry's needs.
Speaker 1: The third challenge is the vast amount of cement the
Speaker 1: world uses. The production of concrete made with Portland cement
Speaker 1: emits far less CO two for any given volume than
Speaker 1: the production of other major building materials, making steel amits
Speaker 1: thirty eight times more and glass six times more producing
Speaker 1: timber for construction. Yes, timber can in the near term
Speaker 1: also emit more CO two than cement and concrete, especially
Speaker 1: if the wood originates from clear cut forests. The decaying
Speaker 1: material in clear cut boreal forests makes them net emitters
Speaker 1: of greenhouse gases for as long as twenty five years
Speaker 1: before new growth makes the forests net absorbers. In another paradox,
Speaker 1: cement is so widely used because it's so benign. If
Speaker 1: the world consumed equally high volumes of steel, the most
Speaker 1: nightmarish climate change scenarios might already be in full swing.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back with curing concrete. Welcome back to
Speaker 1: curing concrete. Ten it's not a cement truck. One way
Speaker 1: to really rankle someone in the cement business or the
Speaker 1: concrete business is to confuse the two materials. Both trades
Speaker 1: people and executives have reminded me at nauseum that most
Speaker 1: people don't know the difference. Again, cement is a constituent
Speaker 1: of concrete. Concrete is what we build with. About eighty
Speaker 1: percent of the concrete business in the US is in
Speaker 1: what the industry calls ready mix, the poorable variety that
Speaker 1: travels wet and is shaped and finished at the job. Globally,
Speaker 1: about half of all concrete is ready mix. It's usually
Speaker 1: produced in compact industrial yards called batch plants, some of
Speaker 1: which cover several acres and others of which are squeezed
Speaker 1: into city blocks. Batch plants are more like depots than factories.
Speaker 1: They have rows of bins to store raw materials cement,
Speaker 1: sand stone, chemicals and coloring and dispense them into concrete
Speaker 1: mixer trucks, the one with the big rotating barrels. The
Speaker 1: mix comes together with water or sometimes liquid carbon dioxide
Speaker 1: and begins to cure and harden inside the truck's barrels
Speaker 1: as they travel to their destinations. Rary to popular belief,
Speaker 1: concrete doesn't harden because it dries. It hardens because the
Speaker 1: elements are pulled together by the chemistry of hydration. Concrete
Speaker 1: dries because hydration hardens it. In fact, it will continue
Speaker 1: to gain strength for decades as unreacted cement particles within
Speaker 1: the mass continue to slowly hydrate whenever they meet moisture.
Speaker 1: In addition, unfinished concrete, when left open to the elements,
Speaker 1: slowly absorbs carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, which makes the
Speaker 1: material a bit harder. Still, some concrete, like that used
Speaker 1: by ancient Romans to build the Pantheon to millennia ago,
Speaker 1: actually heals its own cracks and can continue to grow
Speaker 1: harder over centuries on its way to becoming rock hard.
Speaker 1: Concrete is highly perishable. It takes about ninety minutes of
Speaker 1: turning in a truck before hydration goes too far and
Speaker 1: concrete becomes too stiff to mold, smooth, or push into place.
Speaker 1: That makes production highly local. In busy cities, dispatch center
Speaker 1: look like air traffic control rooms as forty ton trucks
Speaker 1: are timed and steered through packed streets and around road
Speaker 1: construction and bridges unfit to carry their weight. There are
Speaker 1: seven thousand ready mixed batch plants in the US by
Speaker 1: rough estimate. There are at least one hundred thousand worldwide.
Speaker 1: That's fifteen percent more than all branches of McDonald's and
Speaker 1: Starbucks combined. Half of the world's concrete, though, isn't delivered
Speaker 1: by mixer trucks. It's made from bags of cement that
Speaker 1: are combined with other ingredients on site. The world purchases
Speaker 1: the equivalent of thirty six billion, one hundred and ten
Speaker 1: pound bags of cement annually. Much of that heads into
Speaker 1: small projects in emerging economies, including family home construction. The favellas,
Speaker 1: barrios and shantytowns that hug the developing worlds. Burgeoning big
Speaker 1: cities are filled with makeshift homes that are slowly being
Speaker 1: concretized by their owners. In twenty twenty four, I traveled
Speaker 1: to Metazine, Columbia, to investigate the benefit of replacing dirt
Speaker 1: floors with concrete in the city's poorest neighborhoods. As in Mexico,
Speaker 1: the change was transformative. Cement for ten thousand floors, as
Speaker 1: well as some of the stone and sand needed to
Speaker 1: make concrete, had been donated by Cementos Argos, the country's
Speaker 1: biggest cement producer. While there, I visited Argos's open air
Speaker 1: warehouse for bagged cement. The sacks filled a floor about
Speaker 1: a quarter mile long and three hundred yards wide. The
Speaker 1: warehouse contained a total of about one hundred thousand bags,
Speaker 1: which I was told would all be moved out and
Speaker 1: replenished over the course of three days. The numbers seemed
Speaker 1: inconceivable until I climbed the many miles of new concrete
Speaker 1: stairs in one of the ever expanding slum zones that
Speaker 1: snake up the hillsides on the city's edge. Cars and
Speaker 1: motorbikes can't manage the steep inclines, so the residents joined
Speaker 1: together to build steps connecting their neighborhood internally and to others.
Speaker 1: In addition to making the hillsides habitable, this construction allows
Speaker 1: the people to carry bags of a sa meant up
Speaker 1: to the homes their building or reinforcing argos. Sacks lean
Speaker 1: against half finished houses. One man told me he'd bought
Speaker 1: the bag I saw near his home five years earlier
Speaker 1: and had been building with it since. He said it
Speaker 1: took him so long because he can afford to make
Speaker 1: concrete only with the stones that collect in his wife's
Speaker 1: bucket while she does laundry in a nearby creek. Workers
Speaker 1: in the crews of construction companies building in the more
Speaker 1: prosperous central zones of Metagine often hail from the informal
Speaker 1: communities at the edges of the city. Skills learned at
Speaker 1: work migrate back to their home building projects or those
Speaker 1: of their neighbors. There are roughly two hundred and eighty
Speaker 1: million construction workers in the world, and almost all construction
Speaker 1: involves concrete. The International Finance Corporation estimates that cement and
Speaker 1: concrete's long and diverse supply chain makes up five point
Speaker 1: four percent of all the world's goods and services and
Speaker 1: employs about one in thirteen workers eleven zero progress. Among
Speaker 1: the top ten cement producers, Wholsim, together with Heidelberg Materials,
Speaker 1: has the most comprehensive approach to decarbonizing its business. The
Speaker 1: company nevertheless remains a top historical CO two emitter across
Speaker 1: all industries. It's among the so called carbon Majors one
Speaker 1: hundred twenty two companies that since the mid nineteenth century
Speaker 1: have produced about eighty eight percent of industrial carbon emissions.
Speaker 1: Carbon Majors, an organization that tracks top greenhouse gas emitters,
Speaker 1: ranks Wholseam seventy seventh. Historically, fossil fuel producers dominate the
Speaker 1: top of the list. Wholsim's recent record is better. For
Speaker 1: the year twenty twenty four, the company was one hundred
Speaker 1: and twenty sixth on the Carbon Major's list. Its emissions
Speaker 1: have been dropping, in part because of the ongoing decarbonization
Speaker 1: of its cement production, but in larger part because of
Speaker 1: its spinoff of its North American operations and Amrise and
Speaker 1: its sale of big subsidiaries in Brazil and Egypt for
Speaker 1: seven point three billion dollars. Should one be cynical about
Speaker 1: carbon reductions that result mostly from corporate restructuring rather than
Speaker 1: from actual changes within high emitting divisions. That depends on
Speaker 1: how a company applies the proceeds of the restructuring. Wholesome
Speaker 1: used three point four billion dollars from the sales to
Speaker 1: diversify into roofing the lower carbon industry. It used two
Speaker 1: billion dollars to buy back shares, which has no effect
Speaker 1: on emissions. In many ways. The cement industry has been
Speaker 1: on trial for its carbon emissions since the mid nineteen nineties.
Speaker 1: In nineteen ninety seven, the Kyoto Protocol committed developed nations
Speaker 1: to significant cuts in greenhouse emissions. Around that time, European
Speaker 1: countries were beginning to draft carbon tax laws and carbon
Speaker 1: trading systems, some of which are now in place. The
Speaker 1: twenty fifteen Paris Climate Agreement pushed governments, global institutional investors,
Speaker 1: and big companies to commit to lower carbon emissions. Some
Speaker 1: corporations began to regard climate risks as threats to their
Speaker 1: bottom line. Cement and concrete producers, though, were slow to
Speaker 1: act through the early two thousands. Jezus Subero, formerly head
Speaker 1: of cement research and development at Wholsom, told me all
Speaker 1: the cement majors wanted to ramp up capacity. Innovation was
Speaker 1: not that important. People wanted cement to help concrete, set, harden,
Speaker 1: provide compressive strength, and to never collapse. Cement was seen
Speaker 1: as a commodity for decades. Repeatedly, people in the industry
Speaker 1: told me their product was already making the world better
Speaker 1: in innumerable ways. Building the world we have was a
Speaker 1: huge point of pride for them. Casting their industry as
Speaker 1: a planetary destroyer didn't compute. Eventually, the cement industry assembled
Speaker 1: working groups and initiatives studying sustainability. In twenty twenty one,
Speaker 1: the Global Cement and Concrete Association, an organization created and
Speaker 1: funded by the world's leading cement producers, committed its members
Speaker 1: to being net zero, not emitting any carbon by twenty fifty.
Speaker 1: This made cement the first heavy industry to me make
Speaker 1: a big climate commitment. The largest companies refitted old plants
Speaker 1: to burn fossil fuels such as coal more efficiently and
Speaker 1: use alternative fuels such as used tires and biomass. These
Speaker 1: measures lowered both their costs and the emissions per ton
Speaker 1: of cement, and gave them a claim to some climate action.
Speaker 1: Wholesome calculated that from nineteen ninety to twenty twenty, even
Speaker 1: before the GCCA pledge, it had slashed the CO two
Speaker 1: emitted for every ton of cement by twenty eight percent.
Speaker 1: Much of that reduction was the result of changes in
Speaker 1: its energy diet, Though the carbon accounting used by the
Speaker 1: cement industry is controversial. One issue is whether burning tires
Speaker 1: as fuel is a low carbon strategy. Wholesome and the
Speaker 1: rest of the industry make the case that it is
Speaker 1: because it avoids the decomposition of the tires in landfills,
Speaker 1: where they give off methane and even more potent greenhouse
Speaker 1: gas than carbon dioxide. In any case, the sector's overall
Speaker 1: carbon footprint didn't shrink. It was reaching all time highs
Speaker 1: because the appetite for cement and concrete grew. Concrete producers
Speaker 1: don't need to stick with their customary amounts of Portland
Speaker 1: cement if other formulas reduce the use of Portland cement
Speaker 1: or even eliminate it, but function as well or better
Speaker 1: at a competitive price. The hard problem can be cracked,
Speaker 1: but makers and users of cement and concrete have a
Speaker 1: strong conservative streak. Concrete formulas that rely heavily on Portland
Speaker 1: cement have track records that reach back more than one
Speaker 1: hundred years. Their use is one of modernity's great natural experiments.
Speaker 1: It's tough to simulate in a model or lab one
Speaker 1: hundred years of stress in environmental wear and tear on
Speaker 1: structures made with new, radically innovative materials, but Scotland's glenfen
Speaker 1: And Viaduct from nineteen oh one, famous as the Harry
Speaker 1: Potter Bridge, the locks of the Panama Canal nineteen fifteen
Speaker 1: and the Hoover Dam nineteen thirty six attest to the
Speaker 1: durability of the Portland cement concrete combo. Save for devastation
Speaker 1: prompted by wars and natural disasters, structural failure of concrete
Speaker 1: buildings built to code is statistically rare. New materials must
Speaker 1: prove themselves against this record. Among heavy carbon emitting industries,
Speaker 1: the decarbonization of the cement and concrete sector has fared
Speaker 1: somewhere in the middle. It's been far better at reducing
Speaker 1: its per volume emissions than the fossil fuel industry, but
Speaker 1: notably worse than the power sector, which has been rapidly
Speaker 1: transitioning to renewable sources. Wholesome and Heidelberg Materials have committed
Speaker 1: hundreds of millions of dollars to further driving down their
Speaker 1: emissions with a new generation of carbon capture systems that
Speaker 1: snare carbon from cement plants before it's release into the air.
Speaker 1: Billions in subsidies to the companies from the European Union
Speaker 1: and European national governments and from Canada help foot the bill.
Speaker 1: In June twenty twenty five, Heidelberg Materials open the cement
Speaker 1: industry's first industrial scale carbon capture plant, is attached to
Speaker 1: one of two production lines at a one hundred year
Speaker 1: old cement works in Brevik, Norway. Still considered a pilot,
Speaker 1: the system will capture four hundred thousand tons of carbon
Speaker 1: dioxide a year. The gas will be liquefied and transported
Speaker 1: to the North Sea, where the project's backers say it
Speaker 1: will be permanently stored beneath the seabed. The Norwegian government
Speaker 1: paid close to eighty percent of the plant's four hundred
Speaker 1: and forty million dollar cost. Wholesome pledges to have eight
Speaker 1: new carbon capture plants, also heavily subsidized, live in Europe
Speaker 1: by twenty thirty. With half a megaton captured here and
Speaker 1: a megaton captured there, carbon capture can't yet promise carbon
Speaker 1: reductions close to the scale of the cement industry's one
Speaker 1: point six gigatons of yearly emissions. A gigaton is one
Speaker 1: thousand megatons, and carbon capture still needs huge subsidies, which
Speaker 1: makes the technology vulnerable to fickle politics. Last year, the
Speaker 1: US Department of Energy pulled the plug on a five
Speaker 1: hundred million dollar grant Joe Biden's administration had signaled it
Speaker 1: would fund for carbon capture at Heidelberg cement plant in Indiana.
Speaker 1: In November, the Swedish Energy Agency refused to commit eight
Speaker 1: hundred and seventy million dollars to a long planned project. Then,
Speaker 1: in late May, in a move giving carbon capture an
Speaker 1: enormous boost, the government of Denmark, together with the EU,
Speaker 1: committed more than four billion dollars for a carbon capture
Speaker 1: system for the company Aalborg Portland Holding. One selling point
Speaker 1: for the big outlay was that given the country's commitment
Speaker 1: under the twenty twenty Danish Climate Act to drive down
Speaker 1: carbon emissions. Generally, it could keep its domestic cement production
Speaker 1: only by building the system. Otherwise Denmark would end up
Speaker 1: importing cement and in effect exporting its emissions. The cement
Speaker 1: plant is both the country's biggest industrial emitter and a
Speaker 1: crucial supplier to its industrial base. It's hard to predict
Speaker 1: where support or opposition to climate action will come from.
Speaker 1: In Denmark's support came from conservative industrial quarters and from
Speaker 1: labor unions. The cement industry generally takes a progressive stance
Speaker 1: on climate when it can benefit. During the Biden administration,
Speaker 1: when incentives for sustainable construction were added to the one
Speaker 1: point two trillion dollar Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, Wholesome,
Speaker 1: then still active in the US, had its lobbyist push
Speaker 1: hard for eleven provisions that gave government projects incentives to
Speaker 1: use lower carbon materials. They all passed twelve waste knocked.
Speaker 1: In twenty fifteen, Wholesome merged with the French cement giant LeFarge,
Speaker 1: creating what was then the world's largest cement company outside China.
Speaker 1: LaFarge's research center southeast of Lyone and San Quentin, Fallavier
Speaker 1: came with the deal. It's a standing argument against concrete's
Speaker 1: stigma for ugliness. Renzo Piano, the superstar Genoese architect famed
Speaker 1: for buildings that maximize natural light, feel transparent, and use
Speaker 1: materials sparingly designed the complex. He imbued all those qualities
Speaker 1: in low lying white buildings set on a verdant site
Speaker 1: near an ancient Roman road and recently amazon on France
Speaker 1: logistique warehouses. The complex's primary hall, opened in nineteen ninety four,
Speaker 1: has been redesigned in biophilic green and blue as an
Speaker 1: exhibit of concrete's low carbon future. Behind the front hall
Speaker 1: are the lab buildings where innovations are developed and tested.
Speaker 1: The twenty twenty three reinvention of the complex, now called
Speaker 1: the Wholesome Innovation Hub, was spearheaded by Idelio Burmejo, a
Speaker 1: sturdy French Spanish material scientist with a full head of
Speaker 1: white hair and sapphire eyes. Burmejo has a twenty five
Speaker 1: year history weighing and witnessing the promise and hype of
Speaker 1: hundreds of cement and concrete innovations. Almost every day, startups
Speaker 1: and academic labs announce research results that claim to offer
Speaker 1: materials that are stronger, cleaner, and faster curing. Some materials
Speaker 1: are designed to slot seamlessly into the well established ways
Speaker 1: people use concrete today. Others aim to accelerate more radical
Speaker 1: changes in construction, such as the use of robots that
Speaker 1: leverage digital technology to lower the construction sector's carbon footprint.
Speaker 1: Burmeho's labs vet them, they choose which ones wholesome will
Speaker 1: explore and through the company's venture capital arm invest in.
Speaker 1: When I met Burmeho in early March for a tour,
Speaker 1: he pointed to a small, arched bridge with spans that
Speaker 1: stretched like a rigid cephalopod in four directions. The bridge
Speaker 1: was built with modular concrete blocks that were three D printed.
Speaker 1: They can be dismantled then reconfigured in a new location.
Speaker 1: The most sustainable strategy with materials, after all, isn't to
Speaker 1: make any more at all, but to reuse them. The
Speaker 1: bridge was also built to demonstrate one of Wholsom's more
Speaker 1: speculative Weirder strategies, in which the company would lease modular
Speaker 1: concrete pieces of buildings to their owners and reclaim them,
Speaker 1: perhaps after fifty years or more. When the buildings come down.
Speaker 1: The pieces could then be leased out anew to projects
Speaker 1: yet to come. Burmeho also wanted to highlight the sustainable
Speaker 1: products and services Wholsom was already selling. Walk Through a
Speaker 1: series of colorful physical exhibits designed in the clear, cheerful
Speaker 1: style of a contemporary science museum. There's stuff to see,
Speaker 1: things to touch, and well produced videos that explain technology
Speaker 1: the company is rolling out or developing. The main objective,
Speaker 1: Burmejo said, is to decarbonize cement and to make use
Speaker 1: of as little clinker as possible. But once we have
Speaker 1: reduced clinker as much as possible, we have to build
Speaker 1: better with less and minimize the use of concrete with
Speaker 1: better designs. Burmeho pointed out that carbon emissions don't come
Speaker 1: only from construction materials. For most buildings, the majority of
Speaker 1: emissions result from running the facility, heating it, cooling it,
Speaker 1: lighting it over time. The built environment accounts for about
Speaker 1: forty percent of global carbon emissions, with thirteen percent generated
Speaker 1: by erecting and repairing structures and the rest from their
Speaker 1: ongoing use. Innovative materials are one answer to reducing the
Speaker 1: climate impact of construction. Innovating with old materials is another.
Speaker 1: The big idea is to use the built environment in
Speaker 1: today's cities. As the mines for tomorrow's buildings, crushed concrete
Speaker 1: can be used for stone, there's cement to be mined too.
Speaker 1: In a process called re clinkering, small particles of cement
Speaker 1: or fines that have not fully mixed with the massive
Speaker 1: concrete can be recovered and used to reduce the amount
Speaker 1: of new cement in a mix. Getting the technology to
Speaker 1: produce cement at scale is a work in progress. Urban
Speaker 1: mining with late model recycling plants that can separate and
Speaker 1: process materials so they can be incorporated into products that
Speaker 1: meet modern codes is growing into a big business for
Speaker 1: Wholesome in Europe, where it has one hundred and nine
Speaker 1: plants to recycle building materials. In Western Europe, chronically short
Speaker 1: of space for landfill, construction and demolition, debris historically make
Speaker 1: up about thirty eight percent of all waste that's almost
Speaker 1: one billion tons a scale. Wholesome knows how to handle
Speaker 1: with waste. It earns gate fees for receiving material for
Speaker 1: its recycling plants, and it earns again when it converts
Speaker 1: the waste into low carbon resources for construction. Burmeho saved
Speaker 1: for last a material. Wholesome has high hopes for biochar.
Speaker 1: A charcoal made from heating plant waste in the absence
Speaker 1: of oxygen, leaves, sticks, tree bark, corn, cobs, manure, and
Speaker 1: more can be converted to biochar because plants absorb CO
Speaker 1: two through photosynthesis as they grow. Biochar made from plant
Speaker 1: material contains carbon, making biochar usually but not always, releases
Speaker 1: some CO two, but as much as ten times more
Speaker 1: carbon is sequestered in It lock biochar up in the
Speaker 1: massive concrete, and the carbon is entombed too. It also
Speaker 1: makes concrete stronger, more durable, and more resistant to the
Speaker 1: kind of cracking that afflicts concrete reinforced with steel. What
Speaker 1: excites bur Maho most is that the concrete produced with
Speaker 1: biochar can help make concrete carbon negative, sequestering more carbon
Speaker 1: than is emitted in its production. The company has already
Speaker 1: produced a carbon neutral concrete with three percent biochar made
Speaker 1: from wastewood from tree trimmings and coffee grounds. The mix
Speaker 1: also incorporated some low carbon sementitious materials. A newly patented
Speaker 1: technology developed at Washington State University by Shan Ming Shi
Speaker 1: can pre treat biochar chemically so that a mix with
Speaker 1: ten percent biochar can negate all the co two in
Speaker 1: an otherwise standard Portland cemit concrete. It's yet to be
Speaker 1: tried in the wild Burmejo set. Using biochar has one
Speaker 1: very big catch. There isn't enough of it available. The
Speaker 1: world supply of bio waste is huge, but there's little
Speaker 1: infrastructure to move and process it. In the future, we
Speaker 1: might be saving our lawn waste, coffee grounds and even
Speaker 1: dog feces to send for biochar conversion. Thus, will we
Speaker 1: do our bit to decarbonize construction? Thirteen shopping concrete streaked.
Speaker 1: Watching the Poi Islanders shore up their island with concrete
Speaker 1: feel it's a bit like viewing a time lapse movie
Speaker 1: of how the material spread so quickly around the world.
Speaker 1: Every day, converted wooden fishing boats pull into the island's
Speaker 1: narrow port, where men in shorts, football jerseys and flip
Speaker 1: flops unload bags of cement and aerated lightweight concrete bricks.
Speaker 1: Concrete is the stuff of the islander's aspirations for a
Speaker 1: better life. It's also indispensable to their security. They need
Speaker 1: it to protect Pari from the grip of the sea,
Speaker 1: from the harms of the world. Using ever more of it.
Speaker 1: Almost all of Parri Island's traditional wood and bamboo houses
Speaker 1: have been replaced with small, hard walled, hard floored ones,
Speaker 1: with concrete made from bag cement for the foundations and
Speaker 1: blocks for the walls. Workers can build a sturdy home
Speaker 1: in days. The island's fishermen and farmers can surrender these
Speaker 1: when booked to the growing throngs of frugal Jakarta tourists.
Speaker 1: These people need electrical outlets to charge their phones. They
Speaker 1: want Wi Fi and air conditioning. They expect hard surfaced
Speaker 1: lavatory and walls. Concrete enables those amenities. A future of
Speaker 1: rising seas is also a future of enormous sea walls,
Speaker 1: human made barrier islands, infrastructure for flood control, and resilient
Speaker 1: homes for the world's one billion coastal residents. Population centers
Speaker 1: with threatened coasts are or will be embarking on some
Speaker 1: of the most expensive and concrete intensive projects of all time.
Speaker 1: A recently completed twelve billion dollar network of sea walls
Speaker 1: in Japan is two hundred and fifty miles long, forty
Speaker 1: nine feet high above the water and eighty two feet
Speaker 1: below the seafloor. Over the next fifty to one hundred years. Singapore,
Speaker 1: in the same climate zone as Pari Island, expects to
Speaker 1: spend one hundred billion dollars on defenses, including seawalls, tidal gates,
Speaker 1: pumping stations, and coastal barriers. Other cities, such as New York,
Speaker 1: are in similar need. Both Singapore and New York have
Speaker 1: pledged to use more sustainable concrete mixes. How much cement
Speaker 1: the world will produce in the coming decades is an
Speaker 1: open question. Production has dropped almost ten percent since twenty twenty,
Speaker 1: largely because of the scaling back of Chinese demand, but
Speaker 1: population growth and the expansion of the global middle class
Speaker 1: suggests the reversal runs against the longer term trend. Architecture
Speaker 1: twenty thirty, a research organization that set the climate goals
Speaker 1: for the American Institute of Architects, estimates that by twenty
Speaker 1: sixty the world will have constructed enough new buildings to
Speaker 1: add two point six trillion square feet of floor space.
Speaker 1: That's roughly double the floor area of all buildings that
Speaker 1: exist today. The UN Environment Program estimates the world cities
Speaker 1: will be home to two and a half billion additional
Speaker 1: inhabitants by twenty fifty Extrapolating from that figure, engineering software
Speaker 1: maker Autodesk has calculated that the construction industry will need
Speaker 1: to build an average of thirteen thousand buildings every day
Speaker 1: and construct seven hundred thousand miles of roads and nearly
Speaker 1: ninety thousand bridges every year by mid century. More than
Speaker 1: half the mass of what's coming will likely be concrete,
Speaker 1: and that doesn't include the cement and concrete needed to
Speaker 1: fix what the world has already built. Fourteen alt Rock
Speaker 1: can wholesome decarbonize faster as the Pari Islander's lawsuit demands.
Speaker 1: A universe of natural and post industrial materials already lowers
Speaker 1: the clinker factor in the company's cement and concrete, as
Speaker 1: well as in much of the worlds. Like clinker, these
Speaker 1: materials are cementitious. They react and bind materials in a
Speaker 1: concrete mix in ways that ape Portland cement. These materials don't, however,
Speaker 1: require additional carbon intensive preparation to work. Many of these
Speaker 1: materials are in the broad class called pozzolans, after the
Speaker 1: Italian town of Potswooli, a source of ash for Roman concrete.
Speaker 1: The most used natural pozzolands are some form of volcanic ash.
Speaker 1: They are abundant where volcanoes still erupt and also where
Speaker 1: volcanoes were active in previews as geological ages. Southern Europe
Speaker 1: and the western US are rich in them. Potzolins generally
Speaker 1: can't act like cement on their own, but they take
Speaker 1: on binding powers when mixed with cement and water. A
Speaker 1: potzelan can also be manufactured by kilning kolin clay, including
Speaker 1: varieties already widely used in ceramics and other industrial products.
Speaker 1: The world has an abundant supply of klin clay, even
Speaker 1: in places where limestone is scarce. Raw klin clays don't
Speaker 1: contain carbon, but baking them changes their molecular structure, and
Speaker 1: with the addition of some Portland cement to kick them off,
Speaker 1: makes them reactive in a concrete mix. Once reactive, it's
Speaker 1: called meadow kalin. Not only does it start carbon free,
Speaker 1: but it's processed in kilns heated no higher than fifteen
Speaker 1: hundred and sixty degrees fahrenheit, which means the kilns can
Speaker 1: run on renewable electric power. Even raw, unprocessed limestone, though
Speaker 1: not a pozzolin, can become cementitious when finely ground and
Speaker 1: mixed with Portland cement in Western Europe, ground limestone routinely
Speaker 1: replaces six to thirty five percent of Portland cement. In
Speaker 1: the US, it often replaces five to fifteen percent. A
Speaker 1: recent breakthrough allows a mixture of ground limestone and medocalin
Speaker 1: clay to replace half of Portland cement. Other reactive supplements
Speaker 1: are being created with micronization, a process that grinds materials
Speaker 1: into ultrafine particles. A concrete blockmaker in Brooklyn, New York,
Speaker 1: Glenwood Mason Supply used micronized waste glass to make more
Speaker 1: than a million bricks for one World Trade Center in
Speaker 1: Lower Manhattan. Ozinga Brothers, a large concrete producer based outside Chicago,
Speaker 1: is building America's first large micronizing grinder for slag to
Speaker 1: replace large portions of Portland cement used optimally. Materials on
Speaker 1: the market today can cut the CO two footprint of
Speaker 1: cement and concrete by seventy percent or more for users
Speaker 1: willing to pay ccident. Donald Trump's administration mixed most Biden
Speaker 1: era Buy Clean initiatives for reducing CO two emissions in
Speaker 1: federal construction projects. It also acts one point six billion
Speaker 1: dollars allocated to develop the market in sustainable concrete. Some
Speaker 1: US states, however, including California, Colorado, New York, and Washington,
Speaker 1: specify low carbon concrete for public works. Other influential buyers
Speaker 1: of low carbon materials today are so called hyperscalers alphabet Amazon,
Speaker 1: Web services, meta platforms, Microsoft and Oracle, among others, rushing
Speaker 1: to build huge, concrete heavy data centers for their artificial
Speaker 1: intelligence infrastructure. The US operations of a company such as
Speaker 1: Amrise can sell lower carbon cement to the American projects
Speaker 1: that demand it, and higher carbon cement where clients choose
Speaker 1: that It's possible and probably likely that the global cement
Speaker 1: industry won't get to net zero emissions by twenty fifty. Still,
Speaker 1: there's cause for optimism that decarbonization, not just of cement,
Speaker 1: but more generally, can progress. Concrete will certainly be needed
Speaker 1: if other industries are going to be powered by sources
Speaker 1: other than fossil fuels. The infrastructures of wind energy, nuclear power,
Speaker 1: and hydroelectric power all require enormous amounts of concrete. In
Speaker 1: each case, the carbon emissions associated with the manufacture of
Speaker 1: that concrete is trivial compared with the far greater carbon
Speaker 1: emissions averted fifteen good bones imagine now if concrete were
Speaker 1: far more than a structural material, that it also could
Speaker 1: be used to store and generate renewable energy. Admere Message,
Speaker 1: a leading investigator at the Massachusetts Institute of Technologies Concrete
Speaker 1: sustainability hub lichens concrete to living bones in the body.
Speaker 1: I need bones for strength, he says. They're load bearing,
Speaker 1: but their functions arose after millennia of trial and error,
Speaker 1: and their multifunctional bones channel energy. They give us transportation,
Speaker 1: and they are the engines for blood making. We can
Speaker 1: think about concrete the same way as multifunctional. Massach's work
Speaker 1: on the structure of concrete led him together with MIT
Speaker 1: colleagues Franz Joseph Ulm and Hissam Azari Jafari, to seek
Speaker 1: ways to use the material for energy storage. The idea,
Speaker 1: in effect, is to turn buildings into giant supercapacitors that
Speaker 1: can store energy for renewable sources. Despite its solidity, concrete
Speaker 1: is replete with tiny spaces distributed throughout its mass. These,
Speaker 1: the scientists discovered, can be filled with electrolytes and an
Speaker 1: ultrafined carbon powder called carbon black. Their materials that can,
Speaker 1: for instance, store power generated in the daytime by wind
Speaker 1: and solar sources, then release it at night. The floor
Speaker 1: slab of a typical American basement could hold enough energy
Speaker 1: to power a home for a full day. The bases
Speaker 1: of wind turbines could be turned into batteries roads too.
Speaker 1: Concrete highways impregnated with energy storing carbon can be engineered
Speaker 1: to emit power to charge electric cars as they speed by.
Speaker 1: The concrete in effect becomes a huge wireless power block.
Speaker 1: MIT has set up a new hub to commercialize the innovation.
Speaker 1: Concrete may be the world's most used manufactured product, but
Speaker 1: crushed stone, gravel, and sand are the most used raw
Speaker 1: resources together, totaling forty four to fifty four billion tons
Speaker 1: a year. What if instead of mining limestone, we made
Speaker 1: it from industrial carbon dioxide emissions. Blue Planet Systems, a
Speaker 1: company in California, has patented technology that mimics how organisms
Speaker 1: biomineralize carbon and calcium into shells and exoskeletons that, over
Speaker 1: time turn into the limestone that's out in the wild.
Speaker 1: The aim is to make new limestone that can be
Speaker 1: used as the stone in concrete or distributed in places
Speaker 1: where small rocks serve as a bed covering or barrier,
Speaker 1: such as under roads and railroad tess eyes, in landscaping
Speaker 1: and along waterways. Blue Planet collects the calcium it needs
Speaker 1: from concrete construction waste, and sources CO two from carbon
Speaker 1: capture projects used in concrete. The new stone can make
Speaker 1: that material carbon negative, but Blue Planet is still at
Speaker 1: least five years away from producing at a scale that
Speaker 1: will make a meaningful dent in CO two emissions, and
Speaker 1: it still needs to convince investors and buyers that its
Speaker 1: economics work. Its technology has vast climate healing potential, given
Speaker 1: that each year the world minds about twenty two billion
Speaker 1: tons of gravel. Using captured CO two to replace even
Speaker 1: a moderate fraction of that could negate gigatons thousands of
Speaker 1: megatons of CO two. The company has some big backers,
Speaker 1: including Amorrihise. Marathon Petroleum has also joined to help commercialize
Speaker 1: the technology and bring it to scale sixteen trials ahead.
Speaker 1: The most daunting challenge of taking on global carbon emissions
Speaker 1: is how many parties need to align. Wholesome alone can't
Speaker 1: reverse the fate of Pirie Island, and certainly not by
Speaker 1: paying for only er point forty two percent of the
Speaker 1: damage suffered by four struggling people forcing more aggressive carbon
Speaker 1: goals on the company won't produce any real relief either,
Speaker 1: unless that is as Mania at all. The wholesome does
Speaker 1: open the floodgates to successful litigation and political action against
Speaker 1: other carbon majors. The full trial is expected to begin
Speaker 1: in October. Would the people of Parri Island trade back
Speaker 1: the benefits of concrete for the chance at not having
Speaker 1: to muddle through the stuff's contribution to climate change. They might,
Speaker 1: They might not. Would the world give up on the
Speaker 1: enormous benefits of concrete, including its role in a future
Speaker 1: of renewable, low carbon energy. It cannot. On the narrow
Speaker 1: streets and gangways of Parrie Island today, the basics of
Speaker 1: concrete construction are everywhere. Unopened bags of cement sit lumpish,
Speaker 1: one or two at a time, in small yards or
Speaker 1: sometimes just in the middle of a path where no
Speaker 1: one disturbs them. Shoulder high bins of sharp broken coral
Speaker 1: await their concrete stew Women in dusty aprons and scarves
Speaker 1: improvise concrete defenses against floods. Men on ladders inside newly
Speaker 1: built homes plaster over concrete block walls, wielding knives, trowels
Speaker 1: and long fingernails to craft vaguely Italianate or Arabesque moldings.
Speaker 1: For more than a century. Concrete's combination of solidity and
Speaker 1: plasticity has made it a medium for almost unbounded innovation
Speaker 1: and creativity. Its components mix and match in endless ways.
Speaker 1: Its endless applications require endless problem solving. There are no
Speaker 1: other possible building materials on Earth that could rival concrete
Speaker 1: in scale. By the end of the century, the world's
Speaker 1: population is predicted to grow by two billion to three
Speaker 1: billion people, depending on fertility rates. Many will live in megacities,
Speaker 1: those with at least ten million people. The UK advisory
Speaker 1: company Oxford Economics predicts that today's forty four megacities will
Speaker 1: grow to sixty seven by twenty fifty, and their total
Speaker 1: population will climb by two hundred and sixty six million people.
Speaker 1: Concrete in such places teams and burgeons so quickly it
Speaker 1: can seem like a giant living organism, not only creative
Speaker 1: but procreative. Yet it's all the result of our generative powers.
Speaker 1: The world has all the creativity it needs to marshal
Speaker 1: cement and concrete against the floods on Pari Island and
Speaker 1: the threat of a global climate catastrophe. The task is
Speaker 1: smaller than what's been accomplished with the materials so far.
Speaker 1: The scale of the benefit would dwarf even that of concrete.
Speaker 1: Tedsea Fishman is writing a book for w W. Norton
Speaker 1: about concrete's role shaping modern civilization and our future on
Speaker 1: the planet.