Name: 【TED】Lisa Margonelli: The political chemistry of oil (Lisa Margonelli: The political chemistry of oil)
Uploaded: 2017-11-13T05:25:38.000Z
Duration: 18 min 6 s
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So I'm going to talk to you about you about the political chemistry of oil spills

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and why we need to keep ourselves from getting distracted.

But before I talk about the political chemistry,

I actually need to talk about the chemistry of oil.

And what you see here is, you see a little bit of crude oil,

and you see two sandwich baggies of napalm.

The napalm is burning there quite nicely.

oil is really an abstraction for us as the American consumer.

We're four percent of the world's population;

we use 25 percent of the world's oil production.

And we don't really understand what oil is,

And you don't really understand that until you see this stuff burn.

So this is what happens as that burn gets going.

I highly recommend that you get a chance to see crude oil burn someday,

because you will never need to hear another poli sci lecture

Let me tell you a little bit about this chemistry of oil.

Then there's all sorts of intermediate ones with middle amounts of carbon.

You've probably heard of benzene rings; they're very carcinogenic.

to these big, thick, galumphy ones that have hundreds of carbons,

and they have vanadium and heavy metals and sulfur

and all kinds of craziness hanging off the sides of them.

Those are called the asphaltenes; they're an ingredient in asphalt.

It is this chemistry that makes oil so disastrous.

If it sank, it would be a whole different story as far as an oil spill.

And the other thing it does is it spreads out the moment it hits the water.

and some of the toxic things float into the water column

and smaller fish and things like that, and shrimp.

And then the asphaltenes -- and this is the crucial thing --

into a frothy emulsion, something like mayonnaise.

of oily, messy goo that you have in the water,

When the Prestige sank off the coast of Spain,

there were big, floating cushions the size of sofa cushions

with the consistency, or the viscosity, of chewing gum.

And every single oil is different when it hits water.

will kind of see the oil supply chain in front of themselves.

when we suddenly understand oil in a different context.

So I'm going to talk just a little bit about the origin of these politics,

because it's really crucial to understanding

why this summer is so important, why we need to stay focused.

Nobody gets up in the morning and thinks,

some three-carbon-to-12-carbon molecules to put in my tank

No, they think, "Ugh. I have to go buy gas.

I'm so angry about it. The oil companies are ripping me off.

They set the prices, and I don't even know.

And this is what happens to us at the gas pump --

and actually, gas pumps are specifically designed

You might notice that many gas pumps, including this one,

I've talked to engineers. That's specifically to diffuse our anger,

because supposedly we feel good about ATMs.

But actually, I mean, this feeling of helplessness

comes in because most Americans actually feel

that oil prices are the result of a conspiracy,

not of the vicissitudes of the world oil market.

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【TED】Lisa Margonelli: The political chemistry of oil (Lisa Margonelli: The political chemistry of oil)

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