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Speaker 1: Petrochemicals has become a kind of mantra for the oil

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Speaker 1: industry that thank goodness for petro chemicals, because that's where

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Speaker 1: all the growth lies.

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Speaker 2: A few years ago, I started to see an explosion

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Speaker 2: in disposable plastic at restaurants, at my kids' school. It

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Speaker 2: was everywhere, and this was even before the pandemic brought

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Speaker 2: more and more of it into our lives. It seemed weird,

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Speaker 2: and it reminded me of what had happened with climate change,

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Speaker 2: where a big environmental problem really seemed like it was

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Speaker 2: being addressed, like people were turning their attention to solving it,

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Speaker 2: and then suddenly everything shifted. I wanted to know what

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Speaker 2: had happened, and when I looked into it, I found fracking.

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Speaker 1: With the fracking of gas, a lot of ethane and propane,

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Speaker 1: and they're considerably cheaper as a feedstock than oil. And

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Speaker 1: all these companies had the bright idea, well, let's turn

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Speaker 1: this ethane into plastic and then we can undercut our

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Speaker 1: competitors and we can make very high superprofits. That's basically

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Speaker 1: was the idea.

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Speaker 2: That was infuriating because I had also just discovered that fracking,

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Speaker 2: on top of creating a whole bunch of environmental problems.

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Speaker 2: Radioactive waste, polluted water had never even been profitable.

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Speaker 3: That's something that I think has actually been in emblematic

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Speaker 3: with the shale industry as a whole, that it's an

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Speaker 3: industry that's been phenomenally successful at producing oil and gas,

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Speaker 3: but has been terrible at producing cash.

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Speaker 2: Now it was fueling a plastics boom, bringing a whole

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Speaker 2: new host of environmental problems.

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Speaker 4: There's a big build out going on in the Gulf

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Speaker 4: Coast as well as in Appalasia, so using gas liquids

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Speaker 4: from fract gas and turning those into plastics and these

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Speaker 4: giant industrial cities.

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Speaker 5: Really the school shut down, there's no school.

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Speaker 2: Promosa is using the school for a training center now,

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Speaker 2: so it's Promosa's town. My community was suffering. People were

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Speaker 2: getting sick, my classmates. I've had several classmates die of

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Speaker 2: rare cancers.

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Speaker 3: We had no big health issues until the insist started

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Speaker 3: to come in.

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Speaker 2: But the fossil fuel industry is still pushing quote unquote

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Speaker 2: natural gas as a climate solution a bridge fuel.

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Speaker 5: Renewables are great, but we need natural gas too. That's

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Speaker 5: what we use now. So when the sun is down,

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Speaker 5: you have a backup.

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Speaker 2: You found just like your granddad.

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Speaker 5: Plus, emissions have gone down because natural gas is the

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Speaker 5: number one electricity, Grandma, American Energy is leading the world.

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Speaker 5: Natural gas equals a cleaner future.

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Speaker 2: And they're fighting like hell against various local and state

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Speaker 2: moves to electrify everything and get off of gas.

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Speaker 3: At the local level, they're trying to make it as

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Speaker 3: miserable as possible for locally elected officials to move forward

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Speaker 3: policy to restrict natural gas.

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Speaker 2: There's too much going on here for anyone's story, So

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Speaker 2: we're doing something a little different with this one. A

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Speaker 2: season in three parts looking at all sides of the

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Speaker 2: fossil gas industry. We're calling it the Bridge to Nowhere.

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Speaker 2: Part one is coming soon. Make sure you're subscribed to

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Speaker 2: Drilled wherever you get your podcasts so you won't miss it.