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The Inconvenient Truth About Reaching Net Zero · Merryn Talks Money

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Speaker 1: John, ma'am, if I were arrested, would you send me flowers?
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Speaker 2: I've missed this story I have for you.
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Speaker 1: You totally missed it. Okay, I'm going to read you
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Speaker 1: a little bit from The Herald, one of my favorite newspapers.
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Speaker 1: Speaking to reporters in Hollyrood, Keith Brown, the party's deputy editor,
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Speaker 1: that'll be the s MP, said it was an expression
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Speaker 1: of the group support for their ex leader, given what
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Speaker 1: she has been through over recent days. Yes, Nicholasturton's colleagues
0:31
Speaker 1: are sending her flowers because she's been arrested. Anyway, we're
0:34
Speaker 1: not going to talk about that that anymore. I just
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Speaker 1: wanted to know from you if I were arrested, I'd
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Speaker 1: obviously be completely innocent. But if I were arrested, would
0:42
Speaker 1: you send me flowers?
0:44
Speaker 2: I mean certainly we'd send you. I get out of
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Speaker 2: Jill soon, can't.
0:50
Speaker 3: Excellent.
0:50
Speaker 1: And if my morgage rate went up to six percent,
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Speaker 1: would you send me flowers as as you wouldn't be all.
1:00
Speaker 2: I just had to refinance my mortgage earlier this year,
1:02
Speaker 2: and even though my interest rate doubled, I now feel
1:06
Speaker 2: relieved because it's going up an half a percentage point
1:10
Speaker 2: at least since then fixed for John, fixed for five years.
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Speaker 1: But I'm now listen, this is really important. I mean,
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Speaker 1: this is really important. There was a time We've talked
1:21
Speaker 1: about this several times already. There was a period when
1:23
Speaker 1: everyone thought that Bank of England rates would peak at
1:26
Speaker 1: four percent. That is that that ship was long, long sail.
1:29
Speaker 1: There's not four percent, not four and a half, not five,
1:31
Speaker 1: not five and a half.
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Speaker 2: It might be six, yes, and that's quite scary really
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Speaker 2: And also I mean I've got met it. So it's
1:40
Speaker 2: higher than actually even I would have thought, and you
1:44
Speaker 2: know me and you have thought inflation was going to
1:45
Speaker 2: be a problem for a long time. But I mean,
1:49
Speaker 2: if I'm being honest, the main reason I would have
1:51
Speaker 2: thought the Bank of England it can't get to six
1:53
Speaker 2: percent is because I would have thought that the economy
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Speaker 2: would have collapsed a long time before that, and I can.
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Speaker 2: And the resilience has also been so nonder how.
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Speaker 1: Long it takes, I mean, everyone keeps forgetting you know,
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Speaker 1: it takes a year to eighteen months for interest rate
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Speaker 1: rises to feed through. It takes longer when a lot
2:12
Speaker 1: of debt is fixed, which it is so that the
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Speaker 1: economy has not collapsed. It should not be a surprise.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's a good point. A lor then
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Speaker 2: you sort of think, so are we just going to
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Speaker 2: get what usually happens where the these rates a bit
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Speaker 2: too far and then they kind of push off the
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Speaker 2: northern a cliff.
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Speaker 1: Yes, okay, but don't you think I mean, we have
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Speaker 1: a Bank of England. That is a conversation for another time,
2:45
Speaker 1: but next week we might talk about whether the Bank
2:47
Speaker 1: of England really should be independent or not. Has independent
2:50
Speaker 1: led to a really intense outbreak of groupthink that has
2:54
Speaker 1: brought us to where we are. Bank of England did
2:58
Speaker 1: not raise rates fast enough at the beginning, kept them
3:00
Speaker 1: low for far too long, totally failed to normalize, and
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Speaker 1: now is caught up in a position where they have
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Speaker 1: to prove that they're like super macho to get to
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Speaker 1: the other side of it. So it's almost inevitable that
3:11
Speaker 1: they will go too far.
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Speaker 2: I mean, the thing that's true. I think by now
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Speaker 2: they're politically so embarrassed a bit having been caught and up,
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Speaker 2: and so they will keep pushing up breaks regardless of
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Speaker 2: whether it looks like things are going down or not.
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Speaker 2: And I mean whether or not that would be the
3:29
Speaker 2: case if they weren't technically independent anymore. I still think
3:35
Speaker 2: independence are sort of something that just came about because
3:38
Speaker 2: of the nature of the backdrop, the economic backdrop. But
3:42
Speaker 2: it would be more accountable, I suppose, if you have
3:44
Speaker 2: to think harder about the elected it, then maybe you
3:48
Speaker 2: would make better decisions.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, because a lot of people are going to suffer
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Speaker 1: an enormous man of financial paint as a direct result
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Speaker 1: of that.
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Speaker 2: Well, yet this is the other thing that I do.
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Speaker 2: I am wondering about paid rises and how much that
4:00
Speaker 2: will go to offset, and because one of the things
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Speaker 2: is that obviously there's a slightly the portion of the
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Speaker 2: population that's been able to afford a house, certainly in
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Speaker 2: the last five years or so has been the better off,
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Speaker 2: and an awful lot of people now own their properties
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Speaker 2: outright that didn't before. And I think where the real
4:24
Speaker 2: weak point in the market is just now, which is
4:27
Speaker 2: not necessarily, you know, such a bad thing as the
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Speaker 2: buy to let market. I mean, I do actually genuinely
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Speaker 2: feel quite sorry for people who bought properties in good
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Speaker 2: faith and now say you should well, you know, I mean,
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Speaker 2: they can't. I do think that I can see why
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Speaker 2: George Osbourne changed the tax allowances. By the end of
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Speaker 2: the day, a mortgage interest is a business cost, and
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Speaker 2: it's treated as a kind of cost business cost for
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Speaker 2: any other type of business. And if you decide to
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Speaker 2: make an exception for buy to let landlords because they're
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Speaker 2: suddenly politically unpopular, then that's fundamentally quite unfair to help.
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Speaker 1: Them when they're gone, aren't we I mean, I mean.
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Speaker 2: You need line lots. My experience and saying and experiences
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Speaker 2: of the rental market is that it could do with
5:13
Speaker 2: being regulated a lot more aggressively.
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Speaker 1: And John Tek argues for more regulation.
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Speaker 2: I'm going to write that down suddenly in terms of
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Speaker 2: the quality rather than the the you know, the sorts
5:27
Speaker 2: of stuff that is allowed to be down to in
5:31
Speaker 2: the round. Tenants, right, we need to talking.
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Speaker 1: We can't talk anymore. Why we're talking anymore, it's because
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Speaker 1: we've got a really excellent time quite long interview this week.
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Speaker 1: I just want to finish talking to you John by
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Speaker 1: saying I'm glad you're going to send me flower if
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Speaker 1: I'm arrested and Ephinam, maybe we'll just send some flowers
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Speaker 1: to the Bank of England.
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Speaker 2: Or send them a jail.
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Speaker 1: Got that. Welcome to Maren Talk's Money, the podcast in
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Speaker 1: which people who know the markets explain the markets. I'm
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Speaker 1: Maren sumset Web. This week our guest is Ed Conway,
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Speaker 1: economic editor of Sky News, and he joined me to
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Speaker 1: discuss his new book out this very week. Ed, thank
6:14
Speaker 1: you so much for joining us today. We usually appreciate it.
6:17
Speaker 3: Thank you. It's exciting.
6:19
Speaker 1: Now you have written possibly one of the most interesting
6:22
Speaker 1: books I have read in a really, really long time.
6:24
Speaker 1: You have no idea, and listen as I'm looking for
6:27
Speaker 1: sympathy here. You have no idea. How many nonfiction books
6:30
Speaker 1: pass my desk. God, most of them are boring, so boring,
6:34
Speaker 1: And most of them. I read the introduction, I read
6:35
Speaker 1: the conclusion. I pretend I've read the whole thing. It's
6:37
Speaker 1: almost never true. But on this occasion, I've had this
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Speaker 1: book for less than twenty four hours and I've read
6:42
Speaker 1: I would say a good half of it already and
6:44
Speaker 1: the rest I'll be reading the second Ed and I
6:46
Speaker 1: stopped talking. It's absolutely brand So before we go any further,
6:49
Speaker 1: it's called Material World, A Substantial Story of Our Past
6:52
Speaker 1: and Future by Ed Conway. Go out by it right now.
6:55
Speaker 1: You can't get it physically in America until November, but
6:58
Speaker 1: you can get it physically in the UK and Europe now,
7:01
Speaker 1: and of course you can probably get it on a
7:02
Speaker 1: Kendle in the US. Go out and buy it. You
7:04
Speaker 1: will learn a lot.
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Speaker 3: Now.
7:06
Speaker 1: The first thing I want to do is talk a
7:08
Speaker 1: little bit about this distinction that you make in the
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Speaker 1: introduction when you talk about the difference between the ethereal
7:13
Speaker 1: world and the material world and how shocking it was
7:16
Speaker 1: to you to find that you had been inadvertently living
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Speaker 1: in only one of them for the majority of your life.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, so it kind of started. You know,
7:26
Speaker 3: I'm a journalist. I had this idea of this ethereal
7:30
Speaker 3: world that many of us live in doing kind of
7:32
Speaker 3: service sector jobs where we were using our brain power.
7:35
Speaker 3: And we're all told, aren't we repeatedly that that is
7:39
Speaker 3: the kind of apergy of human achievements. You know, to
7:42
Speaker 3: use your brain and really all you need is a
7:44
Speaker 3: good idea, make an app and then you can change
7:47
Speaker 3: the world. And that feels like part of the story
7:51
Speaker 3: that we've been told over the last kind of ten
7:53
Speaker 3: twenty years or so, and you know, to a great
7:56
Speaker 3: to it if you extend it further things like finance.
7:59
Speaker 3: You know you and I know a lot of people
8:01
Speaker 3: who work in finance. It is ultimately kind of financial intermediation.
8:04
Speaker 3: It's not necessarily kind of making stuff. And I had
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Speaker 3: this kind of profound expert not that it's not important,
8:09
Speaker 3: I should say, I mean, it's incredibly important, but this
8:12
Speaker 3: is to make a distinction with this other world. I
8:16
Speaker 3: went out to this gold mine in Nevada a few
8:18
Speaker 3: years ago, and I was filming a piece for Sky
8:21
Speaker 3: News about Brexit. But the thing that really stayed with
8:23
Speaker 3: me staring at this mine was just how much of
8:28
Speaker 3: this mountain. It was, this enormous mountain they were tearing
8:31
Speaker 3: down in order to get a really tiny amount of gold.
8:34
Speaker 3: It took about ten jumbo jets, so ten a three
8:39
Speaker 3: eighties worth of AWE to get one gold bar. So
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Speaker 3: the scale of exploitation of what you need to do
8:48
Speaker 3: to the earth to get what you need was just
8:50
Speaker 3: kind of way beyond what I kind of expected. It
8:53
Speaker 3: was just staggering, and so from that I kind of
8:55
Speaker 3: found myself thinking, well, hang on, what do we need
8:58
Speaker 3: to do. If that's what we need to do a
9:00
Speaker 3: bar of gold, what do we need to do to
9:01
Speaker 3: get the stuff that we really need, because obviously, you know,
9:04
Speaker 3: gold we need in certain respects, but you know, we're
9:06
Speaker 3: not going to literally kind of drop down dead if
9:08
Speaker 3: we don't have gold, Whereas if we don't get you know, fertilizer,
9:11
Speaker 3: if you don't have steel, if you don't have concrete,
9:14
Speaker 3: if you don't have copper to electrify the world, then
9:18
Speaker 3: that's a different story. And so that kind of set
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Speaker 3: me off down this this other road of trying to
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Speaker 3: explore what the materials are that we really really need
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Speaker 3: and what does it take to kind of get them
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Speaker 3: out of the ground convert them into the things that
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Speaker 3: we use. And as I kind of delve deeper into it,
9:35
Speaker 3: it just, yeah, it struck me that there is this
9:38
Speaker 3: entirely different world where engineering is key, where physics is key,
9:44
Speaker 3: where science is genuinely not just an abstract term, but
9:47
Speaker 3: it's actually being applied every day. You know, you look
9:50
Speaker 3: at kind of what's happening with the manufacturer of semiconductors,
9:54
Speaker 3: and this felt like, you know, I called it the
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Speaker 3: material world. It felt like a different universe, and it
10:00
Speaker 3: felt like an inspiring and exciting place, but most of all,
10:03
Speaker 3: it just felt unfamiliar. And I think that's partly because,
10:07
Speaker 3: particularly in the UK, but also to some extent the US,
10:10
Speaker 3: to some extent some parts of Europe, we've increasingly outsourced
10:14
Speaker 3: the production of stuff. We've outsourced the getting of things
10:18
Speaker 3: from the ground, and everything pretty much that we're touching
10:22
Speaker 3: on a daily basis is either growing, but for the
10:23
Speaker 3: most part it is mind It comes out of the ground,
10:26
Speaker 3: but we just don't do as much of it in
10:28
Speaker 3: this country, and as a result, we don't think about
10:31
Speaker 3: it that much. We don't think about the pragmatic realities
10:34
Speaker 3: of how the world around us actually came to be.
10:37
Speaker 3: And it's partly something about, you know, our lack of
10:40
Speaker 3: awareness in the real world, and that lack of awareness
10:45
Speaker 3: I think is quite important because it's partly because we
10:48
Speaker 3: didn't have to think about this stuff. It's partly because
10:50
Speaker 3: we outsourced a lot of it to China that I
10:52
Speaker 3: think we're not as aware of both the challenges, so
10:57
Speaker 3: the particular challenges of carbon emission. You know, where where
11:01
Speaker 3: does that carbon frooc come from? It comes from everything,
11:03
Speaker 3: It comes from pretty much every process you can care
11:05
Speaker 3: to imagine, but also the challenges. You know, there is
11:09
Speaker 3: no single switch we'll ever be able to flick which
11:12
Speaker 3: can suddenly turn out those those carbon emissions. And the
11:16
Speaker 3: book is a bit of an exploration into both of
11:18
Speaker 3: those sides. You know, how we're actually making staff, you know,
11:21
Speaker 3: how does a semiconductor get made? And you know plenty
11:24
Speaker 3: is being written about semiconductors, by the way, but I think,
11:26
Speaker 3: I am this is the first book which actually goes
11:29
Speaker 3: tells the story of how you make a semiconductor from
11:31
Speaker 3: the quarry all the way through to the fab Okay,
11:34
Speaker 3: lots has been written about fabs, but not so much
11:36
Speaker 3: has been written about how you make polysilicon, or how
11:39
Speaker 3: you make silicon metal, or how you make the actual
11:42
Speaker 3: kind of wafer itself. That stuff is that's fascinating, and
11:46
Speaker 3: that's half of the journey of the supply chain before
11:48
Speaker 3: it gets to TSMC or indeed any of those other
11:51
Speaker 3: fabrication plants. So partly is a story of wonder, but
11:54
Speaker 3: partly is also like, let's just think about the world
11:57
Speaker 3: pragmatically for a change.
11:58
Speaker 1: It's empesting, isn't it. You're going to tell listeners what
12:02
Speaker 1: are the six materials that you focus on. It's sand, salt, iron, copper, oil,
12:08
Speaker 1: and lithium. So we'll talk about a few of those
12:11
Speaker 1: there is. There's a lot of what you just said
12:12
Speaker 1: to unpack in it. There's a whole other podcast to
12:15
Speaker 1: be had about how ESG itself relates to the actual
12:19
Speaker 1: material world as opposed to the theoretical material world that
12:22
Speaker 1: most investors live in. I mean, you just said that
12:24
Speaker 1: the mine you went to see, the gold mine tacked
12:26
Speaker 1: every box but was still a bloody great hole in
12:28
Speaker 1: the ground, destroying a real environmental whatever around it, right
12:31
Speaker 1: say nothing of the impact it might have on local communities,
12:33
Speaker 1: et cetera. And I'm guessing I've seen pictures of minds
12:36
Speaker 1: like that that anyone standing next to a mind like
12:38
Speaker 1: that would be amazed to think that it took to
12:40
Speaker 1: any ESG box at all, or certainly any e box.
12:43
Speaker 1: Although obviously all these things are going to take s
12:46
Speaker 1: boxes and that's very important as well. So well, if
12:49
Speaker 1: we have time, we'll come back to ESG. Although actually
12:52
Speaker 1: it's all about ESG, isn't it. So let's talk about
12:54
Speaker 1: because this really is a book. It's a book about
12:56
Speaker 1: energy in lots of ways, isn't it. Because one of
12:58
Speaker 1: the things that you were saying, it's about turning sand
13:01
Speaker 1: into this AsSalt, into this and iron into this, etc.
13:04
Speaker 1: But that turning is a story of energy. So one
13:08
Speaker 1: of the things that I think you touched on in
13:09
Speaker 1: pretty much every chapter along the way in the book
13:12
Speaker 1: is how we are doing something or attempting to do
13:14
Speaker 1: something extraordinary. I suspect will fail. What we are attempting
13:17
Speaker 1: to do something extraordinary, which is go through the first
13:20
Speaker 1: ever energy transition that does not involve transitioning to a
13:25
Speaker 1: better and more intense fuel for the first time, we're
13:28
Speaker 1: trying to transition to a fuel that is effectively in
13:31
Speaker 1: terms of intensity, worse than the one we're leaving behind.
13:34
Speaker 1: So one of the things that you talk about is
13:36
Speaker 1: that there are a lot of inconvenient truths in here
13:39
Speaker 1: that our attempt to switch to net zero is much
13:44
Speaker 1: more difficult than most people even begin to imagine it
13:47
Speaker 1: will be, and possibly impossible.
13:49
Speaker 3: It's a real I mean, it's an enormous challenge. And
13:51
Speaker 3: I think that's the issue, is that no one doubts
13:56
Speaker 3: the importance of what we are a mean to do.
14:00
Speaker 3: You know, at the moment. What's interesting, Maren, I feel
14:03
Speaker 3: like over the past ten years is that you know
14:06
Speaker 3: that debate about some of the science about what's happening
14:09
Speaker 3: with andthropogenic global warming. That seems to have been more
14:13
Speaker 3: or less settled. What hasn't really been settled is the
14:17
Speaker 3: solution and how we get there and how much of
14:20
Speaker 3: a compromise there's going to be in order for us
14:22
Speaker 3: to fulfill these goals. A lot of governments, you know,
14:25
Speaker 3: the UK was the first, have signed into law acts
14:29
Speaker 3: that say we must get to net zero by a
14:31
Speaker 3: certain time, mostly twenty fifty, without really thinking about what
14:35
Speaker 3: that actually involves.
14:37
Speaker 1: And also about how if you get anywhere near it,
14:40
Speaker 1: how might do those emissions you have to have to
14:42
Speaker 1: ask other people to take on for you.
14:44
Speaker 3: Well, I mean, that's that's what we've done in the UK.
14:46
Speaker 3: You know, we are the global champion to some extent
14:49
Speaker 3: in the G seven at least at reducing our carbon emissions.
14:51
Speaker 3: And we've done that, not entirely, but we've done that
14:53
Speaker 3: partly by de industrializing faster than any other major economy.
14:57
Speaker 3: We just don't make stuff anymore, and that is that's
15:00
Speaker 3: that's a good way of do industrializing, you know, look
15:02
Speaker 3: at but not a good way of growing. It's not
15:04
Speaker 3: a good way of growing. And I think, you know,
15:06
Speaker 3: I think, and I kind of touched on this a
15:08
Speaker 3: little bit towards the end of the book, because again
15:10
Speaker 3: it's a bit of a journey for me, and you say,
15:12
Speaker 3: you know, as you say, a lot of it's about energy.
15:14
Speaker 3: I didn't really expect at the start of it that
15:16
Speaker 3: there would be so much about energy. But yes, if
15:18
Speaker 3: you're looking at the conversion of anything, any raw material
15:21
Speaker 3: into something else, then a lot of energy is spent there.
15:24
Speaker 3: That's straightforward thermodynamics. And as a result, then you need
15:28
Speaker 3: to think about how you're going to do it differently,
15:29
Speaker 3: because right now, carbon emissions are everywhere. I mean a
15:35
Speaker 3: good example of this is to make a to make
15:38
Speaker 3: a silicon chip or a solar panel, you need to
15:41
Speaker 3: take silicon out of the ground, but you need to
15:44
Speaker 3: then turn that into a form of metal. In order
15:46
Speaker 3: to do that, you smelt it, so you're smelting it,
15:49
Speaker 3: not unlike how you would smelt iron in an electric
15:53
Speaker 3: arc furnace. And in order to smelt it you need coal.
15:58
Speaker 3: So in order to make the silicon metal that we
16:01
Speaker 3: make our solar panels out of and our silicon chips
16:04
Speaker 3: out of, you need coal, coking coal right now at least,
16:08
Speaker 3: And that is one tiny example of a way in
16:12
Speaker 3: which carbon is kind of integral to pretty much every
16:16
Speaker 3: product you touch on a daily basis. And while there's
16:19
Speaker 3: been plenty of imagination and thought given into how we
16:22
Speaker 3: are going to deal with certain processes where we're going
16:25
Speaker 3: to change our power generation, for instance, but you know,
16:28
Speaker 3: as you've said many times before, even that hasn't really
16:31
Speaker 3: been thought through as deeply as it really ought to be.
16:34
Speaker 3: That the industrial side of it, you know, how you're
16:37
Speaker 3: going to make I mean, people talk a little bit
16:39
Speaker 3: about cement, but cement is just absolutely enormous. How are
16:43
Speaker 3: you going to do that? How you're going to get
16:44
Speaker 3: your copper without creating cobbon? How are you going to
16:46
Speaker 3: get your lithium without carbon emissions along the way?
16:50
Speaker 1: And your steel? I mean, you can't, you can't. You
16:52
Speaker 1: can't make steel without without coal. But it's a lot harder,
16:55
Speaker 1: and the majority of steel is still.
17:00
Speaker 3: Even electric. Art furnaces still use a fair bed of coal,
17:02
Speaker 3: and they use a bit of gas as well, and
17:03
Speaker 3: so you're still you're still kind of emitting carbon. But
17:06
Speaker 3: the point is, you know, the point is not to
17:09
Speaker 3: treat that as a kind of a reason for defeatism.
17:13
Speaker 3: It's just to say that the challenge is greater than
17:14
Speaker 3: people appreciate. I think that's the thing a lot of
17:17
Speaker 3: people would say, oh god, it's impossible. It might not
17:21
Speaker 3: be impossible, but it's just like, it's definitely harder than
17:24
Speaker 3: you think.
17:25
Speaker 1: It probably going to take us long longer than we think.
17:29
Speaker 3: It's like it being a really good example. O is hydrogen.
17:32
Speaker 3: This is something I think I've got leg towards the
17:34
Speaker 3: end of the book. So green hydrogen, a lot of
17:36
Speaker 3: people hope will be that the future because that will
17:38
Speaker 3: solve a lot of problems. If you have a lot
17:40
Speaker 3: of green hydrogen, you basically can run all your wind turbines.
17:44
Speaker 3: They can take that power, turn it into hydrogen that
17:47
Speaker 3: you can then store under the ground by the way,
17:49
Speaker 3: in salt caverns, which comes back to salt anyway, in
17:52
Speaker 3: order to make this hydrogen okay, which is going to
17:55
Speaker 3: be the solution to everything, because it means you can
17:57
Speaker 3: just burn that hydrogen when the wind's not blowing, when
17:59
Speaker 3: the sun's not shining. It is your backup. It solves everything.
18:02
Speaker 3: You can put it into trucks theoretically and run them
18:05
Speaker 3: around instead of using diesel. In order to create that
18:09
Speaker 3: hydrogen okay, the amount of energy you need is stupendous
18:14
Speaker 3: to run through those electrolyzers. And I'll give you an example.
18:18
Speaker 3: We at the moment in the UK, we've got a
18:20
Speaker 3: couple of fertilizer plants. Actually neither of them are running
18:22
Speaker 3: right now because gas is so expensive to run one
18:26
Speaker 3: of those fertilizer plants. It's a kind of a medium
18:28
Speaker 3: sized plant doesn't create enough ammonia for the UK at
18:32
Speaker 3: the moment. It takes natural gas in and fertilizer comes out,
18:36
Speaker 3: So it uses the natural gas as the process that
18:39
Speaker 3: creates that ammonia fertilizer. It's one of the most important
18:42
Speaker 3: processes in the modern world. Without these plants, we are
18:46
Speaker 3: all dead, or at least fifty percent of us are dead,
18:49
Speaker 3: because fifty percent of the world is alive today thanks
18:52
Speaker 3: to nitrogen fertilizer we get from natural gas. Almost entirely
18:56
Speaker 3: from natural gas, although in China they use coal. Still,
19:00
Speaker 3: if you wanted to replace that fertilizer plant, as I say,
19:04
Speaker 3: pretty medium sized fertilizer plant with green hydrogen, which which
19:10
Speaker 3: you could then turn into ammonia. Because you can take
19:12
Speaker 3: that green hydrogen turn it into ammonia, you would need
19:15
Speaker 3: the entire output of the biggest offshore wind farm in
19:20
Speaker 3: the world. So there's one off the UK called Dogger Bank.
19:23
Speaker 3: There's another called Hornsey too. You would need their entire output,
19:27
Speaker 3: which was enough for about a million homes, just to
19:31
Speaker 3: power that plant and get green hydrogen and thense green ammonia.
19:37
Speaker 1: So yeah, then you'd also need a cool backup plant
19:40
Speaker 1: when the wind wasn't blowing.
19:41
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, you know, you see the thing, it's
19:43
Speaker 3: the scale it is that's one tiny that is one
19:46
Speaker 3: tiny part of the picture that very few people have
19:49
Speaker 3: considered and never enters that the dialogue when we're talking
19:51
Speaker 3: about net zero and just underlines that the scale of
19:55
Speaker 3: what we need to achieve is far greater. And also
19:57
Speaker 3: what that underlines as well, Marin, isn't it is that
20:00
Speaker 3: energy density thing. You know, natural gas is incredibly energy
20:04
Speaker 3: dence compared with you know, trying to get the energy
20:06
Speaker 3: out of a wind turbine and electeralize it and waste
20:08
Speaker 3: a lot of energy along the way and turn that
20:10
Speaker 3: into hydrogen. It is a very different world. It's a
20:13
Speaker 3: very different challenge we're facing. It's far greater than you
20:16
Speaker 3: possibly could have imagined. But by the same token, there
20:19
Speaker 3: is hope here because there's opportunities. You know, we need
20:22
Speaker 3: so many more innovations. It's not just innovations, you know,
20:26
Speaker 3: to try and crack all of those different little kind
20:28
Speaker 3: of things that we've heard about, whether it's kind of
20:31
Speaker 3: improving lithiumon batteries. It's all along the industrial chain, all
20:35
Speaker 3: the way from the mind through to the products that
20:36
Speaker 3: we're using today. It's through to petrochemicals, it's through to ammonia.
20:40
Speaker 3: Like I say, there are so many different opportunities here,
20:44
Speaker 3: all of them pretty damn difficult. But that to me
20:48
Speaker 3: spells an interesting, exciting time.
20:53
Speaker 1: Yeah, that definitely exists. And one of the things that
20:55
Speaker 1: I got, the slight sense surprised you but a little
20:58
Speaker 1: when I was reading the chapter on oil is the
21:00
Speaker 1: extent to which fossil fuel still do fuel the world,
21:03
Speaker 1: and that number of eighty percent of global energy coming
21:06
Speaker 1: from fossil fuels just doesn't go down. I mean a
21:08
Speaker 1: reflects the fact that we're becoming more efficient at using
21:11
Speaker 1: all the fossil fuels that we do, but also that
21:13
Speaker 1: demand is constantly rising, so getting it below eighty eighty percent,
21:17
Speaker 1: so it fields like whatever we do, we're not really
21:20
Speaker 1: moving very fast in the end, and possibly if policy
21:23
Speaker 1: makers made more effort come to terms with that, they'd
21:25
Speaker 1: find it easier to make policy going forward.
21:28
Speaker 3: It's very easy to just try and look for enemies
21:31
Speaker 3: and to look for villains, and to some extent, you know,
21:35
Speaker 3: fossil fuels in particular, oil has been cast as one
21:38
Speaker 3: of the villains. I mean coal obviously as well. But
21:42
Speaker 3: even so, when you listen to protesters like just stop Oil,
21:46
Speaker 3: for instance in the UK, and similar protesters around the world,
21:50
Speaker 3: one of the things they frequently point to is that
21:52
Speaker 3: the International Energy Agency has said that we don't necessarily
21:55
Speaker 3: need any new licenses for oil exploration in the future.
22:00
Speaker 3: Even that same i EA framework, even that same forecast,
22:06
Speaker 3: still presumes that we're going to be consuming a lot
22:08
Speaker 3: of oil come twenty twenty fifty. We're still going to
22:12
Speaker 3: be consuming a lot of oil come twenty sixty as well.
22:14
Speaker 3: We still rely on a lot of oil and a
22:17
Speaker 3: lot of gas because right now there are still things
22:21
Speaker 3: that we can't really do very well without them, you know,
22:24
Speaker 3: fertilizers being another being a pretty good example.
22:26
Speaker 1: Well, fertilizer seems that an example that you know, so
22:29
Speaker 1: many people don't quite grasp. One of the I was
22:31
Speaker 1: looking a photo of just stop oil holding up something
22:34
Speaker 1: on the other the other day, and one of them
22:35
Speaker 1: was holding a big banner saying you can't eat oil.
22:39
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's we literally, well yeah, kind of do.
22:42
Speaker 1: That's what we eat?
22:43
Speaker 3: Well gas, yeah, we'll not that is eating oil.
22:46
Speaker 1: But we are eating photol fules all the time, every day.
22:49
Speaker 1: All of this.
22:50
Speaker 3: I mean, I think them down, we're munching them down.
22:52
Speaker 3: And it's partly because it's the fertilized, the most important bit,
22:55
Speaker 3: but also actually random things like I don't know if
22:57
Speaker 3: you've recently eaten salt and vinegar crisps. A lot of
23:00
Speaker 3: the time the vinegar tasting crisps actually comes from from
23:04
Speaker 3: from petrochemicals. Did you know that it's the vinegar?
23:09
Speaker 1: And I mean it depends umber, chicken, fass are.
23:16
Speaker 3: Vegan, it's everywhere, it's everywhere, and and and I think
23:23
Speaker 3: that we won't we won't do ourselves any favors by
23:26
Speaker 3: just demonizing kind of processes that we depend on to survive.
23:32
Speaker 3: I mean, that's that's not to say we shouldn't be
23:34
Speaker 3: finding ways of diminishing our reliance on that which we're
23:38
Speaker 3: doing and which we have plans to do. But everyone
23:41
Speaker 3: is after just easy answers. Everyone is after villains and heroes.
23:46
Speaker 3: Everyone is after silver bullets and the way. One of
23:49
Speaker 3: the reasons that I've been, you know, kind of focused
23:51
Speaker 3: on this, and my background is slightly more in economics
23:53
Speaker 3: and you know, other kind of reporting, but one of
23:55
Speaker 3: the reasons I've been drawn into this is that it
23:58
Speaker 3: felt like an area where too few people talking about
24:03
Speaker 3: the nuance of complexity and the gray areas. It's too
24:07
Speaker 3: easy to just do kind of coverage of the green
24:10
Speaker 3: you know, the energy transition and climate just in terms
24:13
Speaker 3: of villains and in terms of you know, heroes. But
24:16
Speaker 3: that's not the way the world works. And you know,
24:19
Speaker 3: I wanted to try to explain a little bit more
24:21
Speaker 3: about the basics of how the world works. I should
24:24
Speaker 3: say it wasn't the reason I started writing book. The
24:25
Speaker 3: reason I started writing book was I just wanted I
24:27
Speaker 3: wanted to get I wanted to understand how the products
24:30
Speaker 3: that I was using every day actually got into my hand.
24:32
Speaker 3: I wanted to understand the journey that a semiconductor or
24:35
Speaker 3: the steel frame of my phone had been in before
24:36
Speaker 3: it arrived in my hands. But then along that way,
24:39
Speaker 3: You're like, well, there is this whole world and populated
24:43
Speaker 3: by amazing people, you know, engineers, scientists, physicists, manufacturers making
24:49
Speaker 3: this stuff that we rely on every day, whereas this
24:53
Speaker 3: you know, commentorati are living in this entirely separate universe
24:59
Speaker 3: and they're.
24:59
Speaker 2: Just going to Now.
25:00
Speaker 1: I was looking for work experience for my daughter, and
25:04
Speaker 1: everything that I could find that I looked at for
25:06
Speaker 1: her involved watching other people typing on computer. And you know,
25:10
Speaker 1: we had this exact conversation at home, how can we
25:13
Speaker 1: find you work experience that allows you to actually see
25:16
Speaker 1: stuff being made, stuff being done, stuff being dug out
25:19
Speaker 1: of the ground, that allows you to see something other
25:22
Speaker 1: than people making spreadsheets and typing blogs. It's, you know,
25:26
Speaker 1: entry into that world if you're not in it, not
25:28
Speaker 1: necessarily the easiest thing.
25:30
Speaker 3: Well that's I mean, actually, that's another kind of interesting point,
25:32
Speaker 3: which is that one of the wonders of the modern world,
25:36
Speaker 3: I suppose, is that we have managed to and this
25:41
Speaker 3: is why we've managed to reduce the number of people
25:43
Speaker 3: it takes to get a lump of iron or copper
25:47
Speaker 3: or whatever it is out of the ground. You know,
25:49
Speaker 3: back back in the day, you needed thousands of people
25:52
Speaker 3: working at these mines these days, so much of the
25:55
Speaker 3: process is automated that there's so few people are needed
25:58
Speaker 3: to get the stuff out of the ground. And this
26:00
Speaker 3: is part of the explanation. I kind of think of
26:02
Speaker 3: it as people are really sniffy about things like resource exploitation.
26:06
Speaker 3: They're sniffy about it because it's not like semiconductors. You
26:09
Speaker 3: don't have Moore's law when it comes to copper or iron,
26:13
Speaker 3: do you? But actually you do. You do because if
26:17
Speaker 3: you look at the price of copper, not just in
26:19
Speaker 3: terms of it's kind of real value of inflation adjusted value,
26:24
Speaker 3: but if you look at it in terms of the
26:25
Speaker 3: labor hours that are needed to go into it, you've
26:28
Speaker 3: had an extraordinary rise in productivity in the mining sector.
26:33
Speaker 3: We've got so much better at getting stuff out of
26:35
Speaker 3: the ground thanks to you know, big trucks. Those they've
26:39
Speaker 3: allowed us to get so much of this stuff out
26:41
Speaker 3: of the ground and keep the price low to allow
26:44
Speaker 3: countries like China and India to start to industrialize. If
26:48
Speaker 3: it wasn't for this amazing productivity miracle, this undertold miracle,
26:54
Speaker 3: then you wouldn't have had the kind of progress we've had.
26:56
Speaker 3: You wouldn't have had the sheer number of people rising
26:58
Speaker 3: out of the poverty numbers that we had. So there
27:00
Speaker 3: was an amazing story here, But the corollary of that
27:03
Speaker 3: story is that there are fewer people than ever before
27:07
Speaker 3: working in the material world. It's not just economics, obviously,
27:11
Speaker 3: is it. It's also then they've got the kind of
27:13
Speaker 3: national security question. You've got do we want to be
27:15
Speaker 3: so reliant on China? Because in a sense that kind
27:18
Speaker 3: of the shadow hero protagonist of this book is also China,
27:22
Speaker 3: because in every single one of these materials, it's basically
27:25
Speaker 3: pretty dominant. And so do you still want to be
27:28
Speaker 3: kind of so reliant? What do you want to do
27:29
Speaker 3: about that? We're all kind of aware of how reliant
27:33
Speaker 3: we are on China for stuff, perhaps we're not even
27:37
Speaker 3: aware of just how great that is. And so again,
27:41
Speaker 3: whether it's green tech, whether it's plastics, whether it's copper.
27:47
Speaker 3: You know, almost half of all of the world's copper
27:50
Speaker 3: is refined in China. You're a lot of people talk
27:51
Speaker 3: about rare earth materials and how look, it's terrible. China
27:55
Speaker 3: has a massive stranglehold, which they do copper. You know,
27:59
Speaker 3: the majority of the world's copper concentrate, which comes out
28:02
Speaker 3: of the mind. So there's two types of that. You
28:03
Speaker 3: get the kind of some refined copper, but you also
28:05
Speaker 3: get copper concentrate, which is less refined. The majority of
28:08
Speaker 3: that gets shipped over to China from all over the world.
28:10
Speaker 3: So it's you know, in and Easier, It's it's Chili,
28:13
Speaker 3: it's it's pappened in the Guinea, it's all of these places,
28:16
Speaker 3: and then it gets sent to China, and China is
28:19
Speaker 3: right at the heart of that supply chain now and
28:22
Speaker 3: without an incredible increase in the amount of copper that
28:25
Speaker 3: we have, we are not going to fulfill anything. We're
28:28
Speaker 3: not going to be able to build enough wind turbines,
28:30
Speaker 3: we're not gonna be able to make enough solar panels,
28:32
Speaker 3: we're not gonna be able to make enough electric cars
28:35
Speaker 3: and so, and.
28:36
Speaker 1: We're not also going to be able to upgrade our
28:38
Speaker 1: grids to even begin to cope with the many intermittent
28:42
Speaker 1: sources of energy that come in. Right, that's also a
28:46
Speaker 1: major part of it.
28:47
Speaker 3: Yeah, you need copper. You need a lot of aluminium
28:49
Speaker 3: for that as well, but particularly copper and copper and iron.
28:53
Speaker 3: You need electrical steel and copper for transformers. Transformers are
28:57
Speaker 3: one of the most exciting things in the world. No
29:00
Speaker 3: one talks about transformers, but these, you know, these boxes
29:04
Speaker 3: of copper and iron that sit somewhere and no one
29:08
Speaker 3: pays any attention to them and allow us to modulate
29:10
Speaker 3: between AC and DC and change the frequency are one
29:14
Speaker 3: of the most important things in the world. And for them,
29:17
Speaker 3: like you say, we need we need a lot of copper.
29:19
Speaker 3: We need a lot of copper for that. And we
29:21
Speaker 3: need to upgrade all our grids in the UK massively,
29:24
Speaker 3: in the US as well across much of Europe. And
29:27
Speaker 3: there you run into another issue, okay, which is that
29:30
Speaker 3: the UK is a really good example of that. We
29:32
Speaker 3: need to we need to build a lot more pylons
29:35
Speaker 3: to get us the power that we need for all
29:37
Speaker 3: these electric cars and stuff, but also to get it
29:39
Speaker 3: from the places where we're generating that power right now. Yeah,
29:43
Speaker 3: what's fascinating about this material world filled with companies you've
29:47
Speaker 3: never heard of, you know, companies making polysilicon, and companies
29:52
Speaker 3: making kind of random products that turn out to be
29:55
Speaker 3: the basis for Apple's entire business, and you know Tela's
29:59
Speaker 3: entire business. Anyway, one company that's kind of interesting to me.
30:03
Speaker 3: It's called prismium and they make I'm not this this
30:06
Speaker 3: is I have no idea about what's going on the core.
30:08
Speaker 1: This is not an investment. This is not investment advice,
30:10
Speaker 1: just to be clear.
30:11
Speaker 3: Yeah, just fascinating because they make the cables that go
30:15
Speaker 3: under the sea. Okay, you know you've probably seen some
30:17
Speaker 3: of the diagrams of these cables. Copper in the middle,
30:21
Speaker 3: shielded with various different kind of bits of steel on
30:24
Speaker 3: the outside.
30:25
Speaker 1: And huge, right, the diameter these things is whopping.
30:29
Speaker 3: Fiber roptics are smaller, but yeah, copper is coppera is
30:32
Speaker 3: is thick, particularly for an under sea for a high
30:34
Speaker 3: voltage under sea cable, and we're going to have to
30:37
Speaker 3: make so many more of them. Were don't have to
30:38
Speaker 3: lay so much cable in the coming years. And it's
30:42
Speaker 3: interesting there is this company that basically dominate both the
30:44
Speaker 3: manufacturer of those cables and the laying of them, which
30:48
Speaker 3: again you find quite a few of these, these companies
30:51
Speaker 3: which dominate this world. Back to what I think it's
30:55
Speaker 3: inspiring about this. There was that that was it Peter
30:58
Speaker 3: Teel who said, you know where's my flying car? You know,
31:02
Speaker 3: you gave me one hundred and sixty character or two
31:03
Speaker 3: hundred and forty characters. But where's my flying car?
31:06
Speaker 1: Yep?
31:06
Speaker 3: Totally fair, Yeah, well it is. But here we are again.
31:10
Speaker 3: We're starting with we are. We are building stuff. It's
31:13
Speaker 3: beginning to happen. And in order to fulfill that zero,
31:15
Speaker 3: one of the inspiring and exciting things about it is
31:18
Speaker 3: it involves one of the biggest infrastructure opportunities challenges that
31:22
Speaker 3: we have that we've had for many, many decades, both
31:25
Speaker 3: in this country and elsewhere. We need to do it
31:27
Speaker 3: all over again again. You know, imagine if we did
31:29
Speaker 3: have a global electricity grid, so you could have power
31:33
Speaker 3: from Morocco sent through to Europe, solar power from there,
31:38
Speaker 3: you kind of win power from elsewhere. That's quite an
31:41
Speaker 3: exciting story. But in order for it to happen, you
31:43
Speaker 3: need a lot more infrastructure, You need a lot more copper,
31:45
Speaker 3: you need a lot more of these cables to go
31:47
Speaker 3: down under sea. And again, right now, it's quite hard
31:51
Speaker 3: to persuade anyone to open new mine and new copper mine,
31:54
Speaker 3: and so the question is whether whether people are going
31:57
Speaker 3: to be willing enough to actually do the mine that
32:00
Speaker 3: we need to do in order to get to net zero.
32:03
Speaker 1: Well, this is one of the big conversations in the
32:05
Speaker 1: investment markets in that historically everyone always says that the
32:09
Speaker 1: cure for high prices in the commodity market is high
32:11
Speaker 1: prices because it has to go up and then you
32:13
Speaker 1: have more exploration, more minds opening, and that brings prices down.
32:17
Speaker 1: But of course, at the moment you look around the
32:19
Speaker 1: world and prices go up, and who's going to open
32:21
Speaker 1: a new mind in this environment? As you say, it's
32:23
Speaker 1: incredibly difficult. Across the developed world, it's difficult in Chile.
32:27
Speaker 1: I've been reading a lot about that. There's a lot
32:29
Speaker 1: of concern there about the lithium in particular in Chili
32:32
Speaker 1: red So you know, as prices go up, who's going
32:35
Speaker 1: to be the one who approves the new minds. It's
32:39
Speaker 1: a very difficult argument to make, as you say, because
32:42
Speaker 1: there isn't enough nuance in the debate, Whereas the argument
32:45
Speaker 1: really should be, if you want to move to an
32:47
Speaker 1: environmentally superior world, you've got to dig the minds first.
32:50
Speaker 3: I think that's it, and I think I think the
32:52
Speaker 3: difficulty that the frustration I sometimes feel is when you
32:55
Speaker 3: talk to people who can very earnestly want us to
32:59
Speaker 3: reduce carbon emissions and to fulfill all of these objectives.
33:02
Speaker 3: One of the things they also don't like is new mines.
33:05
Speaker 3: They don't they don't like the mines and they don't
33:07
Speaker 3: want the extra mining. But there is is just implausible
33:11
Speaker 3: to see. And then the argument is, then, oh, well,
33:14
Speaker 3: we should just consume less. And of course that's true.
33:16
Speaker 3: You know, we in this country and elsewhere could certainly
33:20
Speaker 3: consume a bit less. You know, we could seem a
33:22
Speaker 3: lot could maybe consume a lot less. But even if
33:26
Speaker 3: we did that, it still wouldn't kind of make the difference.
33:31
Speaker 1: It's still well, it wouldn't begin to move the dial globally.
33:34
Speaker 1: That's the key thing. What we do here makes no
33:36
Speaker 1: difference globally. No, And maybe we should just dig up
33:39
Speaker 1: all of Cornwall. I mean, there's been a lot of
33:40
Speaker 1: copper and lithium in Cornwall, right and there are talks
33:43
Speaker 1: about reopening minds. We could just dig the whole thing up, yes,
33:45
Speaker 1: and that would be the environmentally friendly thing to do
33:48
Speaker 1: right now.
33:48
Speaker 3: Ye'll to dig up Cornwall, yeah, totally, because the grades
33:51
Speaker 3: that some of the grades there are better than some
33:53
Speaker 3: of the grades you get in Chili, no joke, No, joke.
33:55
Speaker 3: I mean, there's you know, but I don't know if
33:57
Speaker 3: anyone really wants to dig up all those holiday homes.
34:01
Speaker 3: But having been to a copper mine, actually a few
34:03
Speaker 3: copper mines, you need to create some pretty enormous holes
34:07
Speaker 3: in the ground in order to do it, and so
34:09
Speaker 3: our you know, willingness to do that does start to
34:12
Speaker 3: diminish when it's in nice, pretty places.
34:15
Speaker 2: But that's right.
34:15
Speaker 1: We'd rather dig up somebody else's country, wouldn't we totally?
34:18
Speaker 3: And on the other side of the world, in a
34:19
Speaker 3: place like the Attakama Desert where no one comes there
34:21
Speaker 3: and no one looks at it. But god, those holds
34:24
Speaker 3: a massive They're canyons. They are man made canyons. So
34:27
Speaker 3: one of the great productivity achievements of the past few
34:30
Speaker 3: decades has been that we have managed to be even
34:32
Speaker 3: better at getting copper out of the ground. And as
34:34
Speaker 3: a result of that, all those those doom laden predictions
34:38
Speaker 3: about how we were going to run out of materials. Remember,
34:41
Speaker 3: you know, this is not the first time that there's
34:42
Speaker 3: been this dialogue. The Club of Rome Limits to Growth
34:45
Speaker 3: the nineteen seventies was all about how we were going
34:48
Speaker 3: to run out of stuff, and we were going to
34:49
Speaker 3: destroy the world. That didn't happen. It didn't happen because
34:52
Speaker 3: we became so much better at getting ever more copper
34:57
Speaker 3: out of ever less promising all so the grades of
35:01
Speaker 3: the rock that we get out of the ground have
35:03
Speaker 3: become less promising, and the stuff that we previously would
35:06
Speaker 3: have said as junk now turns out to be legitimate
35:08
Speaker 3: copper or And the upshot is these holes have got
35:11
Speaker 3: even deeper. The question is whether we can have another
35:14
Speaker 3: one of those leaps again. If we can, then maybe
35:16
Speaker 3: we can do kind of get a bit squeeze a
35:18
Speaker 3: bit more out of the existing minds. But I think
35:20
Speaker 3: even if you make all the most optimistic assumptions about that,
35:25
Speaker 3: you still need a shed load nor more copper minds.
35:28
Speaker 3: And right now the pipeline isn't promising enough on copper.
35:33
Speaker 1: Okay, well that's optimistic realism as well. I'm going to
35:35
Speaker 1: put you down as an optimistic realist.
35:38
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's exciting, but it's exciting, it's exciting, and it's
35:42
Speaker 3: energizing because we can make stuff we.
35:44
Speaker 1: Haven't talked, and we want to talk briefly about lithium.
35:47
Speaker 1: It's the last chapter in your book and it's the
35:49
Speaker 1: metal I think of what all the substance material that
35:52
Speaker 1: when people run down the contents, when they get to lithium,
35:54
Speaker 1: it'll be the first one they'll think to themselves, lithium
35:57
Speaker 1: is that really as important as oil and salt and sand?
36:01
Speaker 1: But it is for the future as opposed to historically, Yeah.
36:05
Speaker 3: It is. Lithium is still incredibly, incredibly important. It is
36:10
Speaker 3: there at the heart of pretty much every battery chemistry
36:12
Speaker 3: you're talking about. It's not the only thing. We need nickel,
36:16
Speaker 3: we need manganese cobos in some places. But our ability
36:20
Speaker 3: to get enough lithium out of the ground is going
36:22
Speaker 3: to be one of the most telling questions in whether
36:26
Speaker 3: we can achieve the other part of net zero, which
36:28
Speaker 3: is electrifying road transport and also you know, providing the
36:32
Speaker 3: lithium that we're using for talking on devices like this,
36:35
Speaker 3: and the process of getting that lithium out of the ground, well,
36:39
Speaker 3: it's kind of fascinating. So I went out to Chile
36:41
Speaker 3: to go to the lithium ponds where it is where
36:46
Speaker 3: it has got from under the ground, so that the
36:48
Speaker 3: Saladieta camera is this kind of crazy place in the
36:51
Speaker 3: dry one of the dryest does it's where's the dryest
36:53
Speaker 3: desert in the world where you can stand on this
36:56
Speaker 3: salt flat? And I did, and a few meat beneath
37:00
Speaker 3: your feet. It's slightly terrifying because I was told later
37:03
Speaker 3: I shouldn't have said on the salt flat, because a
37:05
Speaker 3: few meters beneath your feet there is this gigantic underground
37:10
Speaker 3: reservoir of brine and it's just been sitting there. It's
37:13
Speaker 3: this strange kind of spooky thing. You think about water
37:16
Speaker 3: have been constantly in motion, but there's this underground well
37:20
Speaker 3: where lithium has been there for millions of years, and
37:23
Speaker 3: then we pump up the brine and then gradually precipitate
37:27
Speaker 3: away the other different salts in it. It's funny thing
37:30
Speaker 3: is when you know, if you read the book in sequence,
37:33
Speaker 3: there's there's a large section on salt, and it turns
37:35
Speaker 3: out that the way the way we make lithium, at
37:37
Speaker 3: least from these from these brine deposits, is basically the
37:40
Speaker 3: same as the way that we make salt. So you're
37:43
Speaker 3: evaporating away in those large ponds over a long period.
37:48
Speaker 3: And again, the interesting thing in future is going to
37:52
Speaker 3: be whether we can get enough of it right now
37:56
Speaker 3: there's far more lithium coming out of the ground in
37:57
Speaker 3: Australia because you can mine as a hard rock and
38:01
Speaker 3: then ship it off to China to get refined and
38:04
Speaker 3: then you can just get more out of the ground
38:05
Speaker 3: that way, whereas in Chile you're basically having to wait
38:07
Speaker 3: for the sun to do its work so evaporate it
38:09
Speaker 3: over the course of a year or so, and so
38:12
Speaker 3: again we fall back on our reliance on on China.
38:16
Speaker 3: And you know it is there's there's all of the
38:19
Speaker 3: same issues here, the environmental question. You know, we're using
38:23
Speaker 3: the deploying water in one of the driest regions of
38:26
Speaker 3: the world, getting it's a totally pristine ecosystem. We have
38:31
Speaker 3: no idea what we're doing to it, yet we're doing it.
38:35
Speaker 3: And then the locals, the locals really don't like it
38:37
Speaker 3: at all. But they don't and that's happened. And that's
38:40
Speaker 3: that's We're only at the start of this for lithium.
38:42
Speaker 3: So you know, that's that's that's pretty kind of profound.
38:46
Speaker 3: I think I don't think we're going to have it.
38:48
Speaker 3: I think we're going to be able to get enough
38:49
Speaker 3: of this stuff. But what's interesting with lithium as opposed
38:52
Speaker 3: to the other kind of materials. I look at the book.
38:54
Speaker 3: Is it's just that it's new. You know, we've got
38:56
Speaker 3: hundreds of years of about thousands of years of experience
38:59
Speaker 3: of mining copper. We only, you know, very recently decided
39:03
Speaker 3: that we like lithium for good reason. It's it's about
39:05
Speaker 3: the best thing you can put in a battery. But
39:07
Speaker 3: we don't have much experience of mining it and how
39:10
Speaker 3: we do that, and how we deal with the world
39:12
Speaker 3: which is less into mining. Now for this grand new
39:15
Speaker 3: beginning of exploitation is going to be a kind of
39:19
Speaker 3: an interesting one. I'm not sure where that's going to
39:21
Speaker 3: kind of end up.
39:23
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, well, hopefully not digging up all of cornwall,
39:27
Speaker 1: but we'll see me.
39:29
Speaker 3: You know, I'm up for digging parts of cornwall because
39:32
Speaker 3: there's there's loads of copper. And wouldn't it be great
39:34
Speaker 3: if we could make cop We've got lots of titanium.
39:36
Speaker 3: I think there's titan or tungs in the UK.
39:40
Speaker 1: Yeah, we could live with that bottoming more really goodn't we? Hey?
39:45
Speaker 3: Mas?
39:45
Speaker 1: The usual exer, thank you carry on it.
39:49
Speaker 3: We we do, we do. We've got lithium in cornwall,
39:52
Speaker 3: so there's there's. But the thing is the UK is always,
39:55
Speaker 3: you know, relied on other people to get to get
39:58
Speaker 3: its kind of metals. I think the interesting one interesting thing. Okay,
40:02
Speaker 3: so when when we were in those early days of
40:07
Speaker 3: crossing the world with those cables, so the copper cables
40:11
Speaker 3: that were our first telecommunications network, the boats that the
40:16
Speaker 3: ships that were doing that discovered when they were dragging
40:19
Speaker 3: their kind of their sounders across the across the bottom
40:23
Speaker 3: of the Atlantic, they discovered these things called polymetallic nodules.
40:28
Speaker 1: Very I was reading about those the other day.
40:30
Speaker 3: Well, the other frontier. So polymetallic nodules. Actually, I think
40:35
Speaker 3: they found them in the Pacific, because that's where most
40:37
Speaker 3: of them are. Are these little rocks that you find
40:39
Speaker 3: on the seabed which are very dense, very very high
40:42
Speaker 3: grades of a lot of the metals that people quite
40:45
Speaker 3: want these days, so cobalt and copper and a few
40:47
Speaker 3: other things besides nicol. I think, and one of the
40:51
Speaker 3: big questions in the coming years again is whether we
40:55
Speaker 3: are going to start mining under the sea. And so
40:57
Speaker 3: I have a whole chapter on this because actually it
40:59
Speaker 3: turns out there might be a whole lot more copper
41:02
Speaker 3: in those deposits under the sea than anyone who has
41:05
Speaker 3: accounted for at the moment, even in the official numbers.
41:08
Speaker 3: And if we don't want to mine on land, are
41:13
Speaker 3: we going to be any more likely to want to
41:15
Speaker 3: mine under the sea. Probably not, because that's another that's
41:17
Speaker 3: an even more pristine ecosystem.
41:19
Speaker 1: But not only that, that's an ecosystem that we don't
41:21
Speaker 1: know nearly as much about yet. And at least, if
41:24
Speaker 1: we're mining on land, we know what we're doing, we
41:27
Speaker 1: know what we're destroying as we go. We understand these
41:29
Speaker 1: ecosystems relatively well, whereas on the ocean bottom we don't
41:33
Speaker 1: understand really anything about those ecosystems. We only just discovered
41:37
Speaker 1: these nodules. We have no idea what would happen if
41:39
Speaker 1: we had to scrape them off off the seabird.
41:42
Speaker 3: Totally totally and I mean like we I'd say the
41:44
Speaker 3: mainly one exception to that is just that things like
41:47
Speaker 3: the salt the salad data camera in Chili, where we
41:49
Speaker 3: really don't know much about how that, how that really functions.
41:51
Speaker 3: But under the sea, under the sea totally pristine, we
41:57
Speaker 3: know so little about it. What we do know is
41:59
Speaker 3: that whenever we go into a new habitat and plunder it.
42:02
Speaker 3: There are consequences, and yet that is where a lot
42:07
Speaker 3: of people are racing towards right now. I mean, I
42:10
Speaker 3: think it's probably less likely. I think what's much more
42:12
Speaker 3: likely is that we just get better at mining the
42:14
Speaker 3: stuff from terrestrial minds. But even so, the hunger for
42:19
Speaker 3: minerals is so great now that people are looking in
42:24
Speaker 3: all sorts of places to find this stuff. And the
42:27
Speaker 3: reluctance amongst many people on land to have mining near
42:32
Speaker 3: them is such that you know, if you're not going
42:35
Speaker 3: to let them mine on land, then maybe you're going
42:38
Speaker 3: to find the path of lease resistance. And right now
42:40
Speaker 3: that is actually a part of least resistance, because you know,
42:43
Speaker 3: you've got places like the International Seabird Authority which are
42:47
Speaker 3: in the process of laying down the rules to allow
42:52
Speaker 3: deep sea mining. We don't know. That's an ongoing conversation
42:55
Speaker 3: right now, but it's within a kind of regulatory body
42:58
Speaker 3: which no one's ever heard of, Frank, and there's very
43:01
Speaker 3: little oversight. I went there. I went to Jamaica where
43:04
Speaker 3: the International Seabed Authority is based. They're the guys, you know,
43:06
Speaker 3: who decide who is allowed to mine on the seabed,
43:09
Speaker 3: and it's this sleepy place on the on the seafront
43:13
Speaker 3: in Kingston. It's rather delightful, but it feels like a
43:16
Speaker 3: kind of you're going into a time capsule. It's an
43:18
Speaker 3: old nineteen seventies bond set for like the Roger Moore era.
43:23
Speaker 3: But they've still got the kind of phone booths with
43:24
Speaker 3: the nineteen seventies era of phones that you could kind
43:27
Speaker 3: of pick up and still work functioning. That is the
43:30
Speaker 3: front line for deep sea mining right now, and no
43:34
Speaker 3: one is quite sure what they're going to come up
43:36
Speaker 3: with right now. So we are in a really interesting
43:39
Speaker 3: moment where we're testing our kind of limits of reluctance
43:45
Speaker 3: or willingness as to how much exploitation we're going to
43:48
Speaker 3: be doing.
43:50
Speaker 1: Ed last question, because I've had you for too long,
43:52
Speaker 1: I must let you go. But how long before we
43:55
Speaker 1: can mine all these minerals in space and we can
43:57
Speaker 1: start worrying about all these conversations.
43:59
Speaker 3: Well, I mean even less likely than under the sea.
44:03
Speaker 3: I think even less likely. Although I suppose you don't
44:06
Speaker 3: have to worry about the kind of ecosystem thing.
44:07
Speaker 1: But the well we think we don't We have no
44:10
Speaker 1: idea either.
44:11
Speaker 3: Do we actually maybe that's yeah, I know, blithely go
44:14
Speaker 3: out there and accidentally discover life and then destroy it.
44:18
Speaker 3: The thing I definitely kind of learned in the process
44:21
Speaker 3: of kind of under you know, exploring more about mining
44:24
Speaker 3: and not just mining, but the transformations we do to
44:27
Speaker 3: turn one thing into another is that you know, in
44:30
Speaker 3: the end, you do need to be able to do
44:32
Speaker 3: it in a way that isn't going to bankrupt everyone,
44:35
Speaker 3: because part of human progress is about making these things cheaper,
44:38
Speaker 3: you know, making copper cheaper, making concrete cheaper so that
44:42
Speaker 3: you can concrete in places, and you know, lives are
44:45
Speaker 3: saved thanks to concrete because concrete floors in a house
44:49
Speaker 3: rather than mud floors are just far better for the inhabitants.
44:55
Speaker 3: So our ability to get this stuff at scale and
44:59
Speaker 3: at reasonable is everything. Right now, we in the developed
45:05
Speaker 3: world have about a lot of people kind of look
45:07
Speaker 3: at development statistics and they focus on GDP per capita.
45:10
Speaker 3: My favorite is steel per capita. So if you look
45:13
Speaker 3: at the amount of steel that we have per head
45:17
Speaker 3: in most developed economies like the UK and the US,
45:19
Speaker 3: it's kind of about fifteen tons per capita. In China
45:23
Speaker 3: it's about seven eight tons per capita. And bear in
45:28
Speaker 3: mind that when we're talking about the steel per capita,
45:30
Speaker 3: what does that mean. That means the steel around you
45:33
Speaker 3: in your life. It means your car, most of your
45:35
Speaker 3: car is still made from stel, even though bits and
45:36
Speaker 3: pieces are made from aluminium. Still steel. It's the building
45:40
Speaker 3: that you're you know, you're probably in right now. It's
45:42
Speaker 3: the infrastructure, the high speed rail, the rails themselves, the trains,
45:46
Speaker 3: it's the machines that make the things that you use.
45:49
Speaker 3: Because everything, if it's not made of steel, it's made
45:52
Speaker 3: with steel. So you need a hell of a lot
45:54
Speaker 3: of steel to have a developed economy, to have hospitals,
45:58
Speaker 3: to have infrastructure, to have the trappings that we all
46:01
Speaker 3: feel we deserve. You need those fifteen tons of steel
46:04
Speaker 3: per capita, okay, And we're more or less flat at
46:06
Speaker 3: fifteen tons. It's not going up, so that's kind of
46:09
Speaker 3: something we're not increasing our consumption per capita of still.
46:11
Speaker 3: But in the developing world and in the emerging economies,
46:15
Speaker 3: you know, that amount of steel per capita is more like,
46:17
Speaker 3: well I said, in middle income it's more like kind
46:19
Speaker 3: of seven six six tons. In parts of Africa, sub
46:23
Speaker 3: Saharan Africa, it's one ton or less. And if those
46:28
Speaker 3: economies are going to develop and become middle and then
46:31
Speaker 3: developing develops economies mid income and then high income economies,
46:35
Speaker 3: they will need more steel. Yeah, and infrastrate. If you're
46:38
Speaker 3: gonna build out kind of highways you need stell, you
46:40
Speaker 3: need still reinforcement for them. If you're gonna build out
46:43
Speaker 3: kind of rail, if you're gonna build hospitals, you need still.
46:46
Speaker 3: If you're gonna build schools, you need steel. And making
46:49
Speaker 3: steel is massively carbon intensive, but it's also something we
46:52
Speaker 3: do at scale, so you know that's your question. Yeah,
46:56
Speaker 3: maybe at the margin, there might be some mining of
46:58
Speaker 3: asteroids for certain rare materials, but what really matters fundamentally
47:03
Speaker 3: is being able to get this supposedly basic stuff and
47:08
Speaker 3: turn it into the life saving and life sustaining apparatus
47:13
Speaker 3: that has around all of us all the time. And
47:16
Speaker 3: we need to do more of it. And right now
47:17
Speaker 3: that's massively carbon intensive. But who, you know, who are
47:20
Speaker 3: we to say to people in sub Saharan Africa that
47:24
Speaker 3: you need to be constraining your natural demand for extra things,
47:30
Speaker 3: you know, for.
47:31
Speaker 1: A natural demand for your natural demand for higher living standards,
47:35
Speaker 1: say that they shouldn't have them.
47:36
Speaker 3: Exactly, and that's reflected in the amount of steel that
47:39
Speaker 3: we're all consuming. It's not you know so, and to
47:42
Speaker 3: make steel is really carbon intensive right now, and if
47:46
Speaker 3: you're going to try and do it in a less
47:47
Speaker 3: carbon intensive way, it is far more expensive. And so
47:50
Speaker 3: who are we again to say you're going to have
47:52
Speaker 3: to spend more for your steel than we would have
47:54
Speaker 3: to spend or that we had to spend when we
47:56
Speaker 3: were developing. Those are knotty issues. They're notty trick issues
48:01
Speaker 3: with no straightforward answer, which is why it's interesting. But unfortunately,
48:05
Speaker 3: you know a lot of people would much rather think
48:07
Speaker 3: in just terms of easy questions, easy answers, black and white,
48:10
Speaker 3: heroes and villains. It's not the way the world works,
48:13
Speaker 3: certainly not the kind of pragmatic material world that I'm
48:16
Speaker 3: trying to describe that.
48:18
Speaker 1: You have described very well, Ed, I think we have
48:21
Speaker 1: to leave it there. Thank you so much for your
48:23
Speaker 1: nu ancewer to optimism, and as I say, everybody, please
48:26
Speaker 1: go ad and by edsbook. It will change the way
48:28
Speaker 1: you look at so many things, and you probably need
48:31
Speaker 1: the way you look at so many things change just
48:33
Speaker 1: a little bit.
48:34
Speaker 3: Ed. Thank you Thank you.
48:39
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to this week's Marin Talks Money. We
48:41
Speaker 1: will be back next week in the meantime. If you
48:43
Speaker 1: like our show, rate review, and subscribe wherever you listen
48:46
Speaker 1: to podcasts. This episode was hosted by me Maren Sumset Web.
48:50
Speaker 1: It was produced by Samasadi and Muhammad Faruk. Additional editing
48:53
Speaker 1: by Blake Maple's Bettel. Thanks to Ed Conway and to
48:56
Speaker 1: John Steppek, and of course our weekly reminder do sign
48:59
Speaker 1: up John Sale newsletter Money distilled the linkers in the
49:02
Speaker 1: show notes, and do not forget my Ed's book. It's
49:05
Speaker 1: really very good.