Extracting Black Gold | History of Oil

Video Statistics and Information

Video
Captions Word Cloud
Reddit Comments

For anybody wondering if KB actually takes Reddit's feedback seriously (assuming he wasn't already working on this project before I posted):

https://www.reddit.com/r/KnowingBetter/comments/fz8ch8/video_idea_the_economics_of_oil/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share

👍︎︎ 39 👤︎︎ u/OllieUnited18 📅︎︎ May 27 2020 đź—«︎ replies

I have a question, I'm sorry if its dumb. Why does the usa both import and export oil to canada??

👍︎︎ 10 👤︎︎ u/TonyZS 📅︎︎ May 27 2020 đź—«︎ replies

Feels like this video should have been much longer or split into multiple videos. The historical narrative doesn't flow well when you're jumping from Standard Oil to coups to OPEC.

I know they're all tied together, but it would have been a much longer video to explain it properly. Maybe you could have spent less time giving Prager U attention?

👍︎︎ 8 👤︎︎ u/justcasty 📅︎︎ May 27 2020 đź—«︎ replies

Hank Hill: why am I wearing the hat...

👍︎︎ 6 👤︎︎ u/tweak0 📅︎︎ May 27 2020 đź—«︎ replies

KB did you watch that netflix series History 101, this sounds very familiar with their oil episode lol.

👍︎︎ 4 👤︎︎ u/[deleted] 📅︎︎ May 27 2020 đź—«︎ replies

This is an endlessly interesting topic. Especially when you look at the global history of it especially the Nixon Administration. The US is also the leader when it comes to extraction as far as I know and that Keeps Us in another position of holding power over other countries. It's not that difficult to speculate on what the shift will do to countries like Venezuela and Russia but I think the US still has the coin in the air. Though I do disagree with you on the obligation of developing countries to use non fossil fuel energy sources. They have reasonable access to technology which isn't something you could say about the West at the start. I guess it depends on exactly what you mean by developing countries. Are we talking about Uganda and Chile or India and China?

👍︎︎ 10 👤︎︎ u/tweak0 📅︎︎ May 27 2020 đź—«︎ replies

We always hear the trusts like Standard Oil were broken up, but its cool to see the actual break down of how it was split.

👍︎︎ 3 👤︎︎ u/BlueWolf934 📅︎︎ May 27 2020 đź—«︎ replies

Hey KB that tax deduction know the first 20 percent is meant to make the market more competitive by lowering the barriers of entry

👍︎︎ 2 👤︎︎ u/scourgeoftheeast 📅︎︎ May 28 2020 đź—«︎ replies

The video was great! I only have a doubt about the claim that Teflon is carcinogenic. I'm asking because Adam Ragusea made a video about this where he says the cancer risks from Teflon cookware have been greatly exaggerated. Now, he could could be wrong, but that was one point which from further online reading, I actually found to be rather disputed. https://youtu.be/5FNNKhVoUu8

👍︎︎ 2 👤︎︎ u/indian_kulcha 📅︎︎ May 28 2020 đź—«︎ replies
Captions
The Taming of the Frontier! Brought to you by Goop Psychic Vampire Repellent – keep those vampires at bay, with Goop. Today’s episode: The Quest for Water! When we last left our intrepid frontiersman, he had just finished manifesting his own destiny and built his log cabin. Uh oh, looks like he needs that most precious of resources – water! Better get out your trusty spade and divining rod. Once you’ve found the right spot, begin digging your well. C’mon KB, put your back into it! Oh no! Tough luck friend, looks like you’ve hit oil! This land is basically useless without a water source, you probably should have checked that before building your cabin! Time to pack up and move camp - we’ll catch you next time on The Taming of the Frontier! Brought to you by Goop. This video was actually brought to you by CuriosityStream and Nebula. Up until the turn of the century, most people burned wood or coal to heat their homes and whale oil was the most common lamp fuel. Which is why we nearly hunted them to extinction. Coal was the primary fossil fuel used in steam engines, which is what powered the railroads and started the Industrial Revolution. America is often described as the Saudi Arabia of coal. In 1901, the Hamill brothers struck oil at Spindletop, Texas; while oil rigs had existed for decades at that point, they didn’t hold a candle to Spindletop. They expected 50 barrels a day, but ended up getting 80,000. It was basically the Sutter’s Mill of oil and even caused a wave of migration to the area. And later, a football team named for the same reason. Oil was a mostly-useless commodity up until then, people would curse their luck if they found it on their land, it was too expensive, too rare, and too dirty to do anything practical with. It had to be refined into something more useful. At this point, the most common derivative product was kerosene, everything else was a waste byproduct that was dumped into the nearest river. Hold that thought, we’ll come back to it. In 1870, John D. Rockefeller founded Standard Oil, named that way specifically to make everyone think this was the standard all other companies followed. By 1904, it controlled 85% of the oil market in the US. Standard Oil even expanded into foreign markets, giving away free lamps to people in China, knowing that they’d be the only source of fuel. Creating their own returning customers. But, this was still a fairly small industry until the invention of the automobile. And even more specifically, the Ford Model T. The internal-combustion engine was invented in 1876, but it didn’t become popular until Ford’s assembly line production made cars affordable, practical, and stylish. Coming in a wide variety of shades of black. In the same way that giving away lamps created customers for kerosene, the mass production of cars drastically increased the demand for one of those previously wasted byproducts - gasoline. Yes, they used to dump gasoline into the rivers, there were no regulations back then. The petroleum that you dig up from the ground is first known as crude oil, which is a thick sludge full of impurities. Sweet crude has few impurities, while sour has more. To turn oil into gasoline, you have to distill it, which is a complicated scientific process that I am again going to oversimplify. Basically, you boil it and as the temperature rises, it separates out into different components, that are then captured and condensed. Different temperatures boil off different components in different amounts depending on where you extracted the crude oil from geographically. Some can contain more bitumen, which is turned into asphalt, or naphtha, which is turned into plastic. Since kerosene was the main product and boiled off around 400 degrees, the distillation process first separates out gasoline, which boils at a much lower temperature. This is why it was such an abundant waste product early on. Diesel, on the other hand, boils off at a much higher temperature. The compression-ignition engine was invented in 1892 by Rudolf Diesel and used diesel fuel instead of gasoline. Diesel is the Pepsi to gasoline’s Coke, and while it may be a more efficient fuel for certain circumstances, every attempt to market it as better to the average consumer has been an objective lie. Diesel engines use high pressure and glow plugs to ignite the fuel in the cylinder, driving the pistons. Which is why you typically have to warm up the engine before driving. Gasoline can vaporize at normal environmental temperatures and uses a spark to cause an explosion in the cylinder. Premature explosions are known as knocking. Charles Kettering experimented with different additives to try and reduce the frequency of engine knocking and he eventually found one, but it was far too common and unable to be patented, he wanted something proprietary. So, in 1924, he went with tetraethyllead – or simply, lead. Scientists warned of the dangers of spewing leaded exhaust into the air we breathe, but as I said, regulations weren’t a thing back then. Inhaling or ingesting lead permanently reduces your cognitive ability. It took 52 years for the EPA to phase out lead and replace it with that first chemical he discovered – ethanol. Which is primarily derived from corn. Nowadays, all gasoline in the United States is required to contain at least 10% ethanol, otherwise known as E10 or “gasohol.” Because America is the Saudi Arabia of corn. Rewinding a bit to 1911, Standard Oil had an effective monopoly on the petroleum industry through a number of unfair business practices – it even owned the railroads its competitors used. So the federal government ordered its breakup under the Sherman Antitrust Act. It broke up into 34 different companies. Standard Oil of New Jersey was the largest and eventually became known simply by the initials S.O. for Standard Oil. People said it so often that it rebranded as Esso, and later, Exxon. Standard Oil of New York became known as Socony – for Standard Oil Company of New York, and later Mobil. These two companies merged in 1998 to form ExxonMobil, which is currently the largest petroleum company in the United States. Standard Oil of California, or SoCal, used this logo… you might see where I’m going with this already, but if not, this shape is known as a Chevron, and the company rebranded accordingly. Several other companies that were bought up by these two also have portmanteau names, like the Continental Oil Company, or Conoco. The Southern United States Oil Company, or Sunoco, and so on. Standard Oil was never able to capture the market in Texas, but the two largest companies located there, Texaco and Gulf Oil, were later bought by BP. Marathon was a Texan oil company that was bought by Standard Oil, but then split off during the 1911 break up and remains the fourth largest oil company in the US. In sum, a monopoly was broken up and over the course of a century, merged into an oligopoly of only four companies, which dominate the US market. Globally, at least until the 1960s, the petroleum industry was controlled by a group of corporations known as the Seven Sisters. Which included Exxon, Texaco, and international names like Royal Dutch Shell. In the years after World War 2, a few countries were no longer happy with being colonies and having their vast oil reserves controlled by foreign corporations, so they decided to nationalize their oil industries after they gained independence. The messiest and most famous example of this involved Britain and Iran. Once oil was discovered in Iran in 1908, it was bought and controlled by the British via the Anglo-Persian Oil Company. Which was renamed the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company in 1935. In 1951, the Prime Minister of Iran decided that Iran’s oil industry should be controlled by Iran and after nationalizing it, kicked the British out. Britain depended on that oil during WW2 and was unwilling to part with it, They appealed to Eisenhower’s anti-communist sentiments and secured the help of the CIA, together they orchestrated what is commonly described as a coup in order to get the Shah to remove the Prime Minister. Which he was constitutionally allowed to do. The CIA didn’t install some hand-picked pro-Western Shah, or re-install some long-since deposed monarch, he was already in power. They just helped him get rid of a democratically elected prime minister. Since this wouldn’t have happened without the help of clandestine foreign powers who were motivated by economic self-interest, coup is still probably the most accurate term to use here. In any case, Anglo-Iranian was back and a year later they renamed themselves British Petroleum or BP. We are deeply sorry. Similar to how the British controlled Iran’s oil through BP, they were hardly the only ones interested in foreign oil fields, America partially controlled the fields in Saudi Arabia through ARAMCO, the Arabian-American Oil Company. France had areas of North Africa through the… that. The largest corporations had formed a group known as the Seven Sisters, which controlled 83% of the world’s proven oil reserves until the 1960s. Then, several other countries decided to do what Iran attempted to do. In 1960, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, more commonly known as OPEC, was founded to take control of the oil industry from multinational corporations and give it to national governments. It’s founding members include Iran – which successfully nationalized its oil during the Islamic Revolution of 1979, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Venezuela. About a dozen other countries have joined or left over the years, but all together, they now control 73% of the world’s oil reserves. And almost all of them price their oil in US dollars – why? In 1971, President Nixon took the United States off of the gold standard, and in order to keep the dollar stable, decided to pin its value to oil. Ladies and Gentlemen, please put on your tin foil hats now. In 1973, the United States made an agreement with Saudi Arabia: in exchange for military defense of its oil fields, Saudi Arabia agreed to price its oil in dollars. Meaning that if France or Australia want to buy oil from them, they would need to do it using US dollars. It didn’t take very long for other countries to catch on and within a few years, the dollar became the de facto world currency. This is known as the petrodollar – and we don’t take too kindly to countries that don’t use the petrodollar. Over the last few decades, a few countries have tried to sell their oil in different currencies and… well… let’s see if you can find a common thread. Iraq tried in the year 2000, but then reverted back to the dollar in 2003 for some reason. Libya tried it briefly in 2011, but also stopped mysteriously. Iran started in 2003 and Venezuela started in 2006, both continue to this day. Venezuela even created a cryptocurrency known as the Petro. Maybe that’s why they’re still under all the sanctions. Ladies and Gentlemen, you may now remove your tin foils hats. Since OPEC operates as a single cartel with such a huge market share, it’s a monopoly on par with the Seven Sisters or Rockefeller’s Standard Oil. But instead of corporations – it’s countries. And they work together to keep the price of oil high and relatively stable. To illustrate how this works, we need a supply and demand graph, we’ll start with our axes, price and quantity. The demand curve slopes downward, as the price drops, the quantity of that product that people are willing to buy increases. The only real way to increase demand is through creating new customers, either through advertising or expanding into new markets. Then we can graph the supply curve, which is the inverse of demand, the higher the price, the more companies are willing to produce. This curve is much easier to control, and it’s what OPEC and the various domestic oil corporations manipulate to change the price. Say the demand for oil decreases because suddenly, for reasons that shall not be mentioned, nobody is driving anymore… OPEC can reduce the overall supply of oil and try to keep the price stable. So when you ask yourself why the price of gasoline is $2 a gallon rather than $1, it’s because they’ve kept the supply artificially low for decades. Just like diamonds. So how did the price of a barrel of oil drop to negative forty dollars a few weeks ago? Well, OPEC isn’t the only cartel in the game. OPEC only has thirteen member countries as of the making of this video, led primarily by Saudi Arabia. To compete with OPEC, ten smaller oil producing countries have banded together to form what is commonly referred to as OPEC+, with Russia as the symbolic leader. Technically, OPEC+ refers to the overall agreement between OPEC and these non-OPEC countries. So again, let’s say that demand suddenly decreases for some unknown reason and OPEC decides to cut back on supply. While OPEC decreased their production to keep the price high, Russia and the other OPEC+ countries ramped it up… to the point that it exceeded the demand and for a brief moment. They had to pay people to take the excess supply off their hands. We have a number of systems in the United States that are meant to fulfill the same purpose – keeping the price of oil relatively stable. Like the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. After the various oil crises in the 70s, the United States decided to keep a stockpile of crude oil that could be released whenever there was a supply disruption. Like after a hurricane or during a war. If the supply drops, the price increases – so the government uses oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to boost supply and keep the price stable. The stockpile currently holds 641 million barrels of oil or thirty-four days’ worth at our current consumption levels, though it has a limited withdrawal capacity and would take five months to empty completely. There are other ways to control the price though – like subsidies. Let’s say a company wants to sell a product for $5 because that’s the price most consumers are willing to pay – but, it costs $7 to make. This is where the government steps in with a $2 subsidy, so that the company can still price their product at $5 and still make a profit. But what if this product is essential and you can’t afford the $5? Easy, the government steps in with a $2 subsidy for the consumer – though we usually call this a tax credit or some form of welfare. Regardless of the scenario, the producer is still getting $7, whether it comes from the consumer, the government, or both. Fossil fuels, and specifically oil, have all kinds of producer and consumer subsidies that don’t exist outside of that industry. You know how the first $10,000 you make isn’t taxed? Well, depending on which specific product they’re extracting or refining and where, the first 20% or so of their corporate profits aren’t taxed. They call this the Depletion Allowance. There’ve been several attempts to repeal or modify the Depletion Allowance since it started in 1926, but as you might have guessed, they’ve all failed. Because it’s always framed as “raising taxes.” The Intangible Drilling Cost Deduction allows them to write off the cost of exploration and development and has also existed for almost a century. After that long it’s no longer a temporary subsidy, but a fixed feature. For all of these reasons and more, American oil companies like ExxonMobil haven’t paid any federal taxes in years, I don’t know why any of you think they would magically start now if we introduced a carbon tax. They also haven’t been profitable in years. During the 80s and 90s, most of the conversation on fossil fuels centered on the idea that we’d run out in the next few decades. We were also “addicted to foreign oil.” Let’s take care of that myth right now – around half of our oil is produced domestically and we import almost as much as we export. Who do we import from? Canada, by far. Mexico is in a distant second place, followed by Saudi Arabia, Russia, and Colombia. For the sake of being thorough, these are the top five countries we export oil to… we are not and have never really been dependent on foreign oil. Ending our addiction to foreign oil was just code for increasing domestic production. The problem was that all of the easily extractable, and therefore profitable, oil had already been tapped. So the industry lobbied for more off-shore drilling and the exploration of federal lands, like the Alaska Wildlife Refuge. Along with environmentally friendly off-shore production, we do need to drill here and drill now. Now you can chant the “Drill baby, drill!” So that’s the direction that the big oil companies went. With several high-profile blunders like the Exxon Valdez spill in 1989 and the Deepwater Horizon explosion in 2010, more commonly known as the BP Oil Spill. We’re sorry. While this was going on, an entirely new form of fossil fuel extraction was becoming profitable. Hydraulic fracturing, more commonly known as fracking. Fracking is usually associated with methane, or natural gas, because America is the Saudi Arabia of natural gas too – but it works just as well for petroleum, which we call shale oil. Large companies like ExxonMobil completely missed the shale oil boom. Instead, all of that money they spent on off-shore exploration and tar sands development went to waste and the sites were written down as losses because fracking is so much more profitable. And significantly more hazardous. Hydraulic fracturing involves the injection of water and chemicals into the ground to fracture the layers of shale that hold compressed gas or oil. Fracturing all of this rock turns a hundred tiny pockets of fossil fuels into one large one, which can then be extracted under pressure. People who live near these sites have had their local well water ruined and nearly a third of all wells leak methane and other chemicals into the air – for more on this, and fracking in general, I recommend the documentary Gasland. In order to survive, the fossil fuel industry has lobbied for a continuation of those century-long subsidies and deregulation. You see, stopping wells from leaking is expensive. How can petroleum and natural gas extraction be profitable if we can’t continue to dump carbon into the atmosphere and chemicals into the water? That’s right, he said continue. When the EPA was first founded in 1970, it asked the industry for a list of all the hazardous chemicals they produced. So they could figure out what to regulate. The Dupont chemical company decided to leave one of their most profitable compounds off that list and continued to use it in their products for decades – while knowing full well that it was incredibly toxic to people, including the end-consumer. I’m talking about Teflon, a product most of us have come into contact with at some point and will have in our blood forever. It’s so carcinogenic that I’m surprised they didn’t try to weaponize it. Why am I talking about Dupont in a video about oil? Because while 70% of petroleum eventually becomes fuel, like gasoline and diesel, 25% of it is turned into petrochemicals and plastics. Another industry fighting for deregulation. The plastics industry didn’t really take off until World War 2, up until then most consumer products were built to last and made out of wood and metal. Plastic, made from oil, offered a cheap alternative. The problem was that this also made it extremely abundant and in the minds of consumers, disposable. Before carbon emissions took center stage, most of our environmental fears were about trash – and how we’d eventually be overrun with it. Which is why, in the 80s and 90s, the plastics industry spent millions of dollars convincing you to recycle. Remember those recycling campaigns in the 90s? That was them! Ladies and Gentlemen, please put on your tin- No! No, this one actually happened – I mean, so did the other one, but this one is real. The plastics industry knew that by convincing you that plastic was recyclable… You’d actually use more of it. It’s basically renewable, you just set it aside in this second, identical container and a truck comes to whisk it away to a magical factory where it’s turned into a tote bag or something. If you didn’t know this already, recycling was a huge scam. Did you feel like they cared more about selling plastic than they did about making recycling work? Making recycling work was a way to keep their products in the marketplace. It was a way to sell plastic. Yes. A case could be made for recycling metals like aluminum and copper, but plastics recycling has never been profitable, it’s way cheaper to just make a new product from scratch. While making aluminum requires a supernova. The vast majority of plastic you’ve sent off to be recycled… wasn’t, even if it had the recycling number on it, it just ended up in a landfill somewhere. Usually in some developing country like China or the Philippines. We were sold on the idea, even though the industry knew it wouldn’t work, because they thought maybe, in the future, they’d figure out a way to make it profitable. Well now it is the future and they didn’t. So we’re here to showcase our first-of-its-kind recyclable tube. So if you put this in your curbside tonight, do you think that this tube would be recycled? We need more work, we’re working with other organizations to get the word out- So not yet. Not yet. Instead, they’ve managed to shift the blame onto you, the consumer. If only you would’ve paid more attention to the other Rs and reduced, we wouldn’t have this problem. Stop using plastic straws. And don’t use plastic bags from the grocery store, buy these reusable tote bags instead. Actually, now that you’ve spent like a decade collecting them, we’re going to lobby the government to ban their use… because they bring bacteria and viruses into the store, never mind the rest of you, it’s the bag that’s the problem. Let’s go back to single-use plastic bags… and wrap all of our fruit and vegetables in plastic. All of this consumer-blame messaging about pollution is a way to shift responsibility and cost away from the corporations and onto you. I’m all for reduction being the goal, rather than elimination. But when just 100 companies are responsible for 71% of global emissions, your individual reduction is relatively minor. These are the final gasps of a dying industry. I know that last part may sound difficult to believe, fossil fuels and plastics seem like they’re everywhere these days. But financially, it’s a different story. Demand for single-use plastics has been steadily decreasing and over 120 countries have restricted their use or banned them entirely. Including some cities and states in the US. Fossil fuel companies like ExxonMobil have gone hundreds of billions of dollars into debt in order to continue to pay out their dividends. Owing mostly to overexpansion and reduced demand, oil and gas stock prices were at their lowest level in a decade before recent events. Most banks and financial institutions have completely divested from the fossil fuel industry. The end is neigh and they know it. Because of that, there are some people who are arguing for the increased use of fossil fuels, even if the fossil fuel industry won’t argue that themselves. Transforming ancient dead plants into the energy of life, in a way that maximizes benefits and minimizes risks, is an activity that the industry should be proud of, and we should be proud to use its product. Unfortunately, the fossil fuel industry has, in recent decades, not believed that, or at least has refused to say it. It has conceded to its environmentalist opponents that fossil fuels are an addiction, just a temporarily necessary one. Last year, I wrote an open letter to executives in the fossil fuel industry criticizing them for this conduct and asking them to join me in making a moral case for their industry. When I started making this video, I looked for any coherent pro-fossil fuel argument I could find, which is somewhat more difficult than you might expect these days. But eventually I stumbled upon Alex Epstein, a right-wing provocateur who likes to crush the libs by holding impromptu debates with unprepared college students at climate change rallies. His one claim to fame is that he wrote a book called “The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels” and he’s been invited to talk on such reputable shows as the Rubin Report, Glenn Beck, and PragerU – FIVE times. I’m Alex Epstein, author of The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels, for Prager University. Prager University is not a university, it’s a right-wing YouTube channel. But since he’s been on their channel so many times to talk about his book, he’s had time to refine his arguments. Fossil fuels don’t take a naturally safe and make it dangerous. They empower us to take a naturally dangerous environment and make it cleaner and safer. Fossil fuel energy has not taken a naturally safe climate and made it unnaturally dangerous. It’s taken our naturally dangerous climate and made it unnaturally safe. Basically, according to him, fossil fuel use has three effects we should consider. The first is the Greenhouse Effect. But aren’t things bound to get worse? Haven’t scientists established that CO2 is a greenhouse gas with a warming influence on the planet? Yes, but that’s only a small part of the big picture. Although CO2 causes some warming, it’s much less significant than we’ve been told. He’s not a climate change denier, or even a skeptic, he’s a… minimizer. Similar to other soft denial narratives, he isn’t denying that it happens, he just doesn’t accept the magnitude or scale of what we’ve been told. The Greenhouse Effect is real, it’s just a tiny side effect according to him. He even has a video on his channel asking people to stop calling him a denier… Almost in no case is their viewpoint, I deny that CO2 has any influence on the atmosphere – any warming influence. That’s not the position. The position is that warming is a side effect of fossil fuels and that that side effect is far less significant in its impact on human life than the positives on fossil fuels. So, what are the supposed positives he brings up? To counter the Greenhouse Effect, which he admits exists but doesn’t think is that dangerous, he brings up the Fertilizer Effect. That idea that CO2 will fertilize the world. It also correlates with significant global greening, because CO2 is plant food. That would be true if we were growing new forests to soak up all that carbon, but that hasn’t been the case. We’ve been cutting them down more than anything. So, enough with the science-y climate change effects, let’s get to his third argument, which is far more philosophical: the Energy Effect. Which is really the “moral argument” for fossil fuels. Fossil fuels are not an existential threat, they’re an existential resource, because they increase something much more important than the level of CO2 in the atmosphere. The level of human empowerment. Increased life expectancy, income, health, leisure time, and education are all tightly linked to access to fossil fuels. Some of what he just said is opinion, but some of it is undeniably true. Fossil fuels have increased human quality of life. But then he tries to connect a few dots that are just… watch. But let’s look at the data. Here’s a graph you’ve probably never seen: the correlation between use of fossil fuels and access to clean water. More fossil fuel. More clean water. Okay, so, PragerU is pretty famous for its deceptive graphs, but this one takes the cake. They’re using two different y-axes at two different scales to make you think that the more fossil fuels are used, the cleaner our water. You look at the numbers on the left, which start around 40, and end around 80 or 90 on the right. Yay fossil fuels! But no. Fossil fuel use is basically flat and so is the percentage of people with clean water now that we’re looking at it. And he isn’t just pointing out a correlation, he says it’s the cause. Am I saying the more that we that we have used fossil fuel, the cleaner our water has become? Yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying. Here he is doing it again with sanitation… Take a look at this graph. More fossil fuel. Better sanitation. Again, the axes and scales are different to give you the impression that there is a causal relationship. This next one has more to do with climate change than quality of life, but I can’t leave it out… Here’s a graph of the air pollution trends in the United States over the last half century based on data from the Environmental Protection Agency. Note the dramatic downward trend in emissions, even though we use more fossil fuel than ever. How was this achieved? By leaving CO2 off of the graph – this isn’t a typo, this is deliberate. They have no problem talking about rising CO2 emissions elsewhere. What he’s really trying to say is that fossil fuels improve the environment for humans… in industrialized countries. And that’s the only standard we should care about. That’s the moral argument, that when it comes to fossil fuels, we should stop focusing on the environment and instead focus on human quality of life. Or as he calls it, the human standard of value. He doesn’t deny the negative environmental impacts of fossil fuels, he just doesn’t think they’re that dangerous, and he thinks the positive effects on human quality of life should be more important. To the exclusion of anything else. Here, in a sentence, is the moral case for fossil fuels; the single thought to empower us to empower the world: Mankind’s use of fossil fuels is supremely virtuous, because human life is the standard of value and because using fossil fuels transforms our environment to make it wonderful for human life. That’s an argument I can at least understand, even if I don’t agree with it. Fossil fuels are the reason we have all of this. Cheap, durable products shipped from all over, air conditioning, electricity, the internet… videos on the internet… documentaries… Which you can see by going to curiositystream.com/knowingbetter. CuriosityStream is a subscription streaming service that offers thousands of documentaries and non-fiction titles that you can access across multiple platforms. Want to learn more about oil? Check out the documentary Crude, which tells you about the chemistry and life cycle of hydrocarbons, even following a single carbon atom as it is exhaled and becomes oil. If you sign up using the link below, you’ll also get access to Nebula, the new streaming service built by fellow youtubers. My channel is on there, as well as a few of your other favorites, and we occasionally make original content – like my South Park episode of Working Titles. Check it out on Nebula by also signing up for CuriosityStream with the link below. If you use the promocode knowingbetter at check out, you’ll get the first month for free, you’ll also be supporting the channel. Alex Epstein says that we should stop looking at fossil fuels through the lens of environmental impact and start looking at its impact on human life… but only the positive, near-term impact. He’s not too concerned with the far future. This is a binary worldview and, in my opinion, an unnecessary one. We can have it both ways. He appropriately attributes the benefits of industrialization and the modern world to fossil fuels, but inappropriately assumes that no other energy source can provide that. Admittedly, it is the one that got us here. It is the most abundant, quickest, and cheapest way to provide energy to a population, which is why developing countries are currently building more fossil fuel power plants. But we already have that infrastructure. We’re not building interstate highways and powerlines anymore, so we have a responsibility to shift away to cleaner sources. Yes, it really is on us. We can’t expect developing countries to skip from A to Z when we’ve spent the last 150 years burning through the alphabet. We’re holding them to a standard we’ve never held ourselves. If they’re going to be increasing their use and we know the negative impacts of our continued use, we have the moral obligation to transition to something more sustainable, because now, we know better. Hey! Take the subscriber survey linked down below! I’d also like to give a shout out to my newest Golden Fork patrons, Michael, bitreign, Dan, and Jon. If you’d like to add your name to this list of intrepid frontiersmen, head on over to patreon.com/knowingbetter, or for a one-time donation, paypal.me/knowingbetter. Don’t forget to extract that subscribe button or the join button if you want to be part of my cartel. Check out the merch at knowingbetter.tv, follow me on Twitter and Facebook, and join us on the subreddit!
Info
Channel: Knowing Better
Views: 380,958
Rating: 4.9107313 out of 5
Keywords: knowing better
Id: 7kLYqyThX_4
Channel Id: undefined
Length: 31min 59sec (1919 seconds)
Published: Wed May 27 2020
Related Videos
Note
Please note that this website is currently a work in progress! Lots of interesting data and statistics to come.