НЕФТЬ и ЭКОЛОГИЯ. Спасут ли нас электромобили?

The first Russian region to phase out gas-fueled vehicles was named. Volvo announced their decision to phase out internal combustion engines. The UK will have ICE vehicles prohibited by 2030. CEO of Volkswagen stated that the end of internal combustion engines is at hand. The first Russian region to phase out gas-fueled vehicles was named. European manufacturers will only produce electric cars and hybrids. FIAT will stop the production of traditional engine vehicles by 2030. Washington will have gasoline-fueled vehicles banned by 2030. Volkswagen gives up ICE in favor of electric engines. Car manufacturers will stop producing internal combustion engines

by 2025. Germany will place an embargo on ICE vehicles by the year 2030. The last generation of ICE vehicles is to be manufactured in 2026. Thanks, I guess, but I don't want to listen to this nonsense anymore. All of my long time viewers know that I am very skeptical about electric cars. And whenever I hear some eco-friendly bravado from green parties about the environment and the polar bears and whatnot, I honestly can't take them seriously. Apparently it's high time I explain why. Because it's quite common to hear something like... Who do you think you are,

what about- what about our children? They will inherit this world from us and they'll suffocate. They'll have to eat plastic bottles for breakfast and they'll cry. Eat plastic bottles and suffocate. Is this the future you want for your children, you?! What about global warming? What about the carbonara footprint? Or what was that footprint called? The fuck knows what, but I know one thing. It's very-very important! Bitch. And there are like 84 variations of such nonsense constantly uttered by citizens of Moscow and Saint Petersburg who drink their organic latte from recyclable coffee cup. And then the

ones who live in Chelyabinsk and Norilsk take a drag on some factory pipe like it's a cigarette and say: Yeah, go on, tell us about ecology, Instagram kids. Yup. Don't forget to post an ass pic afterwards. At least that'll be useful. And so, dear viewers, obviously there is a reason I laugh at this bigotry. There's no such thing as coincidence in this world and everything has some kind of logic to it. But meanwhile I'll go, fill the entire gas tank with my favorite high-octane gasoline. And with great pleasure I'll then burn it out. And you

better go and fill the entire bowl of snacks. My new rolling r story is a fascinating one. This is what you'll learn today. Why and how steam vehicles and electric cars lost their competition with gas. And why everyone forgot about the alternative for a hundred years. How religious fanatics and pharmacists influenced the energy industry. How the mysterious gas killed workers at General Motors and why they print "unleaded fuel only" on the filler flaps. How only a few words can lead to the collapse of the power industries worldwide and cause global panic. How come gasoline and

exhaust fumes are destroying the humanity. And if the electric cars can save us from the global ecological disaster. Asafiev. Rolling R Stories Divine Integration So... Why have you arrived? I want to buy a car. But I don't know it's history. It may have been cursed or hexed. Maybe you'll look into astral or something. Yes, I can look, but... The spirits need their pay. Take your money and put it here. Then close your eyes. I see, I see. Your metal steed is rushing along the roads. But I can't see it's mileage! The astral won't let me.

It needs more money. Isolda Bling, Don't You Worry a Thing. StopSpell LLC 700 136. Seven hundred thousand what? The price. What's all that now? A miracle! I just wanted to check a car. Like this? Check? It's way faster and safer to buy an Autoteka report. Okay now, off you go. I'm going, I'm going. Autoteka is an Avito service allowing you to check the history of the car you want to buy. So, what car do you need? Nissan Qashqai. Just open the Avito app and check all the matching units. Look, we can already see which lots

were created by the verified owners and whether the car is sold on it's market price or even lower. The app can show you tips on that. So, here's quite an interesting lot. Made in 2018 and the mileage is fine. Fine option, but you'd better see the Autoteka report before you buy it. Not this, but Autoteka report. In the report you'll see all the vehicle characteristics. Down here is the info about the owner. No collaterals, no restrictions. And it only had one owner. Are you okay with that? Yeah. Then we scroll further to see the history

of use. We see that the additional equipment was installed, which the owner stated in the lot description. Plus here, next to the inspection markers, we can see its mileage. It was last inspected earlier this year and repaired by the distributor. And here we see that it is the first time the vehicle is sold. And if we scroll even further, we can see the mileage chart. It looks nice, there are no huge spikes, which is a sign that everything is okay with the car. You should check this car out. I'll give you the link. Call the

seller and buy the car safely. Eenie-meenie-miney-mo, let me in or let me go! Goddamn integrations. Rolling R Stories All in all, from driver's perspective the whole situation looks like this: here in Russia we couldn't care less. It's been literally a couple of years since we got fuses stable enough to handle an electric teapot. In some of the regions at least. And the vastness of our lands? Getting stuck in the middle of the forest where the only hole you can put a charger plug in is your own ass is not a great situation to be in.

Believe me, I know what I'm talking about. Electric cars are just toys for rich people in Europe and Moscow. Be my guest, if that's what turns you on. People in Moscow and Saint Petersburg are out of their heads anyway. Painted some bike lanes in city centers, saying that bicyclists deserve rights too. Such nonsense. And honestly we're taking our time with implementing European standards. Not like Russians care about ecology as much as Europeans do. Technically, we could just let it go and say: "Do as you please, but we're feeling just fine using gasoline and gas. All

our bears are dirty anyway. Who cares. So you just go and put your power plugs wherever you please. Just let us be. We're orthodox and we use gasoline. Bugger off." Well, technically you could say all that. That's it, end of story. Don't forget to subscribe and smash that like button. See you in the next episode. It's going to be even more fascinating. But, whether you like it or not, we're all part of global processes. And when all the corporations will start producing engines powered by electricity, recycled environmentalists or white magic, we won't be able to

escape it. Nobody will consider our problems in their future projects. As a consequence, we'll have the same vehicles as everybody else and Lada Niva Travel. Lada Niva Travel is just like Lenin. Always with us and wants to be buried. That's why the things we'll drive in the foreseeable future and for the rest of our lives depends on international automobile companies. And a number of world leaders. Our future is being decided today. All things follow some kind of logic. Sometimes this logic can be obvious. For example, not messing with the electrical box is quite logical if

you want to live. You touch it - you die. You don't touch it - you get to live another day. While in complex situations like global problems logic is not that obvious, as there are too many chess pieces present on the board. But this logic is still there. So to fully grasp the situation I started seeking this logic in the early days of auto industry. And the first question I needed to answer was: why exactly did internal combustion engine pass the test of time while electric engines and steam-powered cars didn't? Chapter 1. How Steam and

Electricity Lost the Market At the dawn of automobile industry, which was in the 1900s, all the cars had the same price tag. A shitload of money to be exact. By the year 1910, the cheapest automobile on the market was Ford Model T. And in the year 1917 it blew all the competitors out of the water as it costed way cheaper that any other automobile produced by other companies. And for that we should thank good old Henry Ford and his conveyor-belt assembly process. We've already discussed his method and the rise of Ford in our documentary on

Detroit. You should watch it some time. It's quite possible that if Ford put his faith in steam and electricity powered engines, modern world would be different from the one we know. But as we know, there is no "what if" in history. Whatever happened, happened. The only thing I can add... God bless you, Henry Ford, for putting your faith in internal combustion. I hope you're riding a V12 engine in heaven. Ford Model T was first made in 1908. As I hope you already know. And originally the whole assembly process lasted only twelve hours and a half.

It was almost nothing by those times' standards. In two years, by 1910, Ford produced 12,000 copies of Model T, which were used by general public. By the year 1917, Ford's assembly process was beyond competition. In 1908 assembly of one Model T took a bit less than twelve hours and a half. In 1917 instead of twelve hours and a half, or 750 minutes, they could assemble an automobile in 93 minutes. Imagine that in the first decade of the 20th century. How do you compete with that? By the year 1918 every other automobile on the road was

Ford Model T. By that time Ford had stopped buying any advertisement of his automobile at all. There was no need. When your car takes up half of the market and all the competitors are merely a background, there's no point in advertisement. Everyone knows your car and wants to buy it already because half of the market is one hell of a statement. Obviously, Model T got it's popularity from it's price. When your production is so efficient that it only takes an hour and a half to turn a bunch of nuts and bolts into a car... Its

market price won't be much different from its production cost. And necessary parts are dirt cheap when you buy them in bulk. And Ford got the bulk. And his bulk was so bulky that it put any other bulk to shame, if you know what I mean. In the year 1917 alone Ford produced 735,000 Model T's at the absurdly low price of 500 dollars. 500 dollars in 1917 is roughly ten grands today. And 735,000 Model T's is more than all the electric and steam-powered cars produced in the same year by all the other manufacturers combined. So the

internal combustion cars got their first advantage all thanks to Ford's pricing. Just so you understand, let's talk about Ford's competitors. Let's start off with steam-powered vehicles. What's the first thought everyone gets on the mention of steam-powered cars? Here's the furnace, here's some wood and coal. You just throw it in there and let it burn and it starts chugging. But to give you an example, here are the characteristics of one of such cars. Zero to 120 kilometers per hour in ten seconds. Cruising range of 2,000 kilometers in one refill. For perspective, 2,000 kilometers in one refill

is you filling up a tank with 90 liters of water and then driving to Sochi. And you'll still have enough steam to drive around Sochi. No refill stops needed. Those are the characteristics of Doble Model C. This wonder was designed by the Doble brothers - Abner, John, William, and Warren. The secret of such impressive cruise range was in the design of the steam boiler. In 170-meters-long tube, to be exact. It was twisted in such way that it could fit in a tank about this size. The length of a 56-storey building. And a tube of this

length was put inside of such container. This is what it looked like. Such length in a small cross-section resulted in an impressive steam pressure. The amount of water needed was laughable. When the brothers presented their design at the 1917 New York Motor Show, the public was in awe. It was the only steam-powered vehicle at the show and certainly one of the most impressive pieces. Visitors were simply charmed by this model. It's fast, it's quiet and it's easy to use. With reverse travel pedal. Though there were no takesies backsies on this one. If you catch my

drift. It even had the engine start button. In the year 1917. On a steam car. Buttons had just been invented and they already got one. In three months the Doble brothers received 5,390 pre-orders for Model C. The guys cheered. While Ford, may I remind you, was already making 700,000 cars a year. Plus, Doble steam cars costed thousands of dollars. The next model, Doble Model E, costed 12,000 dollars, which is roughly 200,000 dollars today. Comparing to the Ford's pricing, for the price of one Doble Model E you could buy 24 Ford Model T's. Yes, Doble wasn't

the only company producing steam-powered cars. There were cheaper cars. One of the mass-produced vehicles was Stanley, which looked like this. But its production volumes came nowhere near Ford. There were also hundreds of low-production car manufacturers. When you share the market with a product that is almost as convenient, but costs much, much cheaper, competition is virtually impossible. Essentially, Ford single-handedly destroyed steam-powered automobiles by offering a cheaper model to the consumers. The fact that steam-powered cars were inconvenient was not the reason they failed. The main reason was that they were way more expensive than Ford Model T.

Divine Integration I'm okay with my car's power. I can make it roar if I need to. But racing on the public roads is not safe. People can get hurt. And the dose of adrenaline can be found on the racetrack or in the games. The modern steering wheel controller is not just some toy. Best units can cost thousands of dollars. It can help you find some new experiences or new ways to enjoy the games you already know. It's not just some joystick to play around with. The Logitech G923 TrueForce steering wheel is a state of art

gaming simulator. Both fit for new and seasoned gamers. It's made of aluminum, steel and leather. It's has a nice grip to it and doesn't slip from your hands. On the wheel there is a lot of control buttons and the steering indicator. Anything can be set to those buttons - the speeding, the brakes and so on. The pedals that go with it are also close to the real ones. They even react to the pressure level. True Force technology allows you to enhance the virtual driving experience even further. The steering resistance is transmitted to the wheel you

can feel the drifts or driving on gravel even the impact. And all these functions are supported by numerous games. Grit, Grand Turismo Racing and many others. It also has the system of programmable dual clutch. Which imitates driving a race car. So now you could go even faster. If you know a thing or two about the simulators, you can also get the gearbox for better experience. Logitech G-Driving Force Shifter. It has six gears and reverse. There are two options of purchase. The one I have supports Playstation 4 and Playstation 5. The other is for Xbox. Both

are compatible with PC. If you want to learn more about Logitech G-923 True Force, click a link in the description. This is the perfect value for money gadget that will bring you new experiences. And most importantly, it is safe. Rolling R Stories At the time, gasoline powered cars weren't exactly a definition of comfort. Everything's oily, greasy and noisy as hell. There were no mufflers yet, by the way. It also stinks. Here's what the first gasoline cars sounded like. Electric cars, in comparison, looked like a refuge for respectable gentlemen. They made almost no sound, not much

noisier that the modern ones. Easy to use with a comfortable interior they looked more like an elegant carriage than a car. Just so you know, they would often put vases with flowers inside electric cars as a piece of decor. Check it out, this option pack was called "All around me are environment killers and I'm the righteous one smelling roses." All jokes aside, electric cars were way easier to use back then. Not to mention the prestige. That's why bankers, lawyers, doctors and their wives chose electric vehicles. Even Henry Ford's wife drove an electric car made by

Detroit Electric. The most successful electric car company in the US, thank you very much. Yes, you heard me. Henry Ford's wife was a proud owner of an electric car. Henry himself didn't mind the fact that his wife drives a different type of car made by another company. He just knew that he makes the cheapest product for the masses. While his wife is not cheap and not the masses. This electric wonder was designed in 1907 and its mass production lasted up until 1939. Detroit Electric is considered a forefather of all electric cars. At the time it

was the first and only electric car company which sold its product by thousands. Obviously, such comfort was not a cheap one. On average, electric cars costed 2,500 dollars. Yeah, that's not as much as 12,000 for a Model E, but money doesn't grow on trees. Even in the year 1910 with this money you could buy eight Ford Model T automobiles. Even though it's like buying eight blow-up dolls instead of a real woman. Why would you need a real woman when you got a toy, though. One more argument in favor of electric car superiority is their convenience.

There were only two levers inside. One for steering and one to sit one. Just kidding, you sit on both. The second lever which looked like handbrake was responsible for gear-shifting and reverse. Easy to hit from behind. An important feature for all the activists, by the way. The only thing to pick on was its speed. Speed limit was only thirty two kilometers per hour. You didn't need more driving within city limits where everybody drove at that speed. Not that bank owner's wives had anywhere to be. The important thing was that you just get in, press the

button, pull the lever and drive. No voodoo and no extra effort. Though sometimes I wouldn't mind some extra action. But electric car owners don't know anything about libido, so they wouldn't get it. Now you can all be like "Hey, wait a second!" "What are you doing telling us that electric cars were more convenient?" "How do you charge it, where do you plug it?" First of all, where you put a plug is not my business. Second of all, yes, charging them was problematic. It hasn't changed a bit in 120 years. But the situation with gas stations

was exactly the same. At the time, gasoline was sold in pharmacies, just so you know. And it was mostly used as a bleach, not fuel. And not all pharmacies sold it. If you're surprised that gasoline used to be sold at pharmacies, keep in mind that kerosene used to be sold at grocery stores. No joke. Spaghetti, meat, vegetables, kerosene, fruit, bread. No one bat an eye. So if you had an ICE automobile you'd have just as much trouble as electric car owners. And if you keep in mind that the engine and the transmission needs maintenance and

greasing up from time to time, that's even worse. Electric car's design was a winner in that sense. The only things inside it were the electric engine, the battery, the wheels and the desperation in driver's eyes. Enjoy your ride. And considering that electric cars were targeted at people with deep pockets it's not that hard to put all the pieces together and come up with some cool feature for your clients. And Detroit Electric did just that. Modern PR agents, take a note. Detroit Electric built their own exclusive two-storey charging station for their clients. It could simultaneously charge

up to 100 cars. But the company didn't just provide a parking lot with chargers but a whole service around it. For a price of 35 dollars a month your car was taken for daily maintenance where they would wash, polish, repair and charge the battery. And in the morning the car would be driven where the owner wanted it and when they wanted it. S class service. You come home after hard day's work and one of the highly-trained mechanics is already waiting there for you. The company takes your car and in the morning it's already at your

door squeaky clean and charged. 35 dollars then is 1,000 dollars today, though. But such service was worth it even by today's standards. 30 charges, 30 washes and 30 deliveries to the car service and back is a good deal even for 1,000 dollars. If you have cash to spare. Keeping in mind that the car itself costed 2,500 dollars. By comparison, 35 bucks is nothing. Detroit Electric sales peaked in 1914, when they sold 4,500 cars. Yes, it still pales in comparison to Ford's sales, but combined with overnight charging service, electric cars were quite convenient at the time.

And the price tag wasn't much of the problem. First of all, leading in production volumes is not a ticket to a better life. Mercedes is feeling quite fine despite its relatively low production volumes. Second of all, if an electric car manufacturer would have organized their production on Ford's principles, it would have broken the price gap and Ford Model T's only advantage, its cost, wouldn't have really mattered. And, technically, you can't push the competitors out of the market just by pricing if you're one step behind in user-friendliness. May I remind you, you could start an electric

car by just pressing a button. While ICE cars heavily relied on driver's physical abilities. Due to the nature of their design the driver often had to use blunt physical force. That's why it was virtually impossible for women and elderly people to use these cars. Basically, what we have here is a sexist and ageist car. How about that, feminists? To hell with the service and the controls. Even starting the vehicle was an adventure on its own. The older part of the audience knows what hand crank starter is. Or, in garage terms: "Oi, where's the bloody crank."

And for everyone else, let me explain what the hell is that. Basically, it was a curved metal rod that was put in the engine's crankshaft. Cranckshaft is the main spinning thingy which starts the engine and the gearbox and makes the car go. So, the hand crank was put in the crankshaft to manually wind up the engine. Just to start it. This process ignited the compression in the engine and if you spin it fast enough at some point the engine starts working by itself. For example, you've seen people start their lawnmowers or motor boats. By pulling

the rope. Basically, the same crap. That's what we call a rope starter. It makes the cranckshaft spin in the same manner. And if you're good enough at winding up the engine, it starts roaring. It creates two problems. First of all, to start the engine this way you have to spin it swiftly and put some pressure. It's not that simple. An average modern driver is unlikely to handle an exercise like this. Rope starter is way easier since lawnmowers and boats have an engine about this size. You go try and wind up a huge car engine. Let

alone fast enough for it to work. And if you try it in winter when the engine is cold, God bless you. Second of all, when the engine started the crank would go spinning with the cranckshaft since it was put inside it. And this bastard could easily get stuck. If you are not prepared to handle the crank, you could easily break your fingers, dislocate the shoulder or get hit on your meat rod by this steel rod. Simply put, not only is the crank inconvenient, it's also dangerous. And this mechanism was quite an argument in favor of

electric cars. Which even then started by a single press of a button. Press and go. While Ford Model T needed a crank. Spin, freak out, spin again. And then maybe go. By taxi. But there was one thing that changed the whole situation. In the year 1910, a man called Byron Carter wasn't careful enough while starting the engine which led to him getting hit in the head by the crank several times. Resulting in death. I have no punchline for that, the crank handled it just fine. All in all, why make a big deal out of this

death? A random death like that raised much less concern back then than it does today. Especially when it happened around machinery or production sites. But this metal head Byron wasn't just a no-name from the streets, but a close friend of Henry Leland. And Henry Leland is only the founder and the owner of Cadillac Lincoln. And the most important thing that Byron got hit on the head by a Caddie. Leland was obviously very upset. His friend's death could have been avoided and he felt guilty about it. Important to note that Leland was a natural born engineer.

The first Cadillac automobile, type A was designed solely by Leland himself. And obviously, when your brainchild kills your close friend you won't be too happy about it. Especially if the friend owes you. Good news is Leland didn't consort to common practices like posting "thoughts and prayers" on Facebook or recording a sad black and white insta story. Instead he took action to prevent such thing from ever happening again. Not to mention that he didn't have much expendable friends to begin with. Cadillac engineering division started their work but they couldn't come up with anything of value. Well,

they did create a mechanism that could start an engine by itself but it was just too big to fit in the car. Leland knew that he wouldn't be able to solve this problem on his own and outside help was needed. So, after a while he stumbled upon Delco company, which was run by this gentleman. Charles Cattering. This man is very important for our story. We'll come back to him later. At this point we need to know just one thing: Charles's company, Delco, developed different solutions for the car industry. Basically, it was a bunch of engineers

in a garage who invented stuff. And suddenly Leland appears on the horizon. Saying something in the lines of: Hey, mister. I want my car to turn on from just a touch. Your wish is my command. I'll make a note: it should work just like your mother. How is she, by the way? We have one mother. Needless to say, they weren't the first ones to try designing an automatic starter. But nothing of value was present on the market. Nothing worked. Cattering bought one of those unviable patents and started improving it with his boys. And they succeeded.

After a year of development in 1911, Cattering registered his patent US one point one five zero point five two three, which described the design of an electric started for a car engine The funniest thing is that this starter hadn't seen any particular change even to this day. Basically, it's a tiny electric motor powered by a battery of your car. When you turn the key or press a button, the circuit closes and the mechanism starts spinning winding up the engine to its starting point. Basically, a person winding up the engine with a crank was replaced by

a tiny motor. And this seemingly small invention didn't kill people anymore. Instead it killed the main advantage electric cars had over ICEs - manual start with a hand crank. As soon as Leland was informed about the solution He promptly placed an order on 5,000 electric starters. At first, starter technology was exclusive to Cadillac, which greatly increased their car sales. An ICE car which is just as easy to use as an electric one, minus the need of overnight charging? Everyone wanted it. All the other manufacturers were quick to understand that they need that shit too. Some

tried ordering starters from Delco, some tried to come up with an alternative, but GM did the smartest thing. In my documentary on Detroit I mentioned that William Durant, founder of General Motors, expanded his market share by buying literally everything that the car industry could offer in the 1910s. Warehouses, part manufactures, basically, anything that wasn't glued to the floor. He bought it all. So he bought Delco with all of their developments. It all happened five years after the invention of starter, in 1916. And from this point any car that GM produced had an electric starter pre-installed.

In 1919, even Ford started putting it inside Model T's. But since Ford tried keeping it as cheap as possible, the starter was just an option for additional 30 dollars. And somewhere in that period from 1919 to 1920, every single internal combustion car had an electric starter pre-installed or an option to install one. Some manufacturers bought their parts from Delco, some made their own, but that is not important. What's important is that the hand crank, as a phenomenon, faded away. And when internal combustion engine became just as convenient as an electric one when it came to

starting it, electric car manufacturers had no more cards up their sleeves. It was their time to fold. Their cruise range was the same if not lesser, it had to be charged overnight and costed more. Even noise wasn't much of a problem by then because in 1920 all cars had mufflers installed. As for exhaust fumes, people couldn't care less about them back then. So, electric cars had no advantage over ICE cars. And they deserved waving the market goodbye. The supply and demand formula is a fair one. If people don't need it, it shouldn't exist. And that

is exactly what happened to electric cars at the dawn of the 20th century. The world needed a vehicle with an internal combustion engine. And it deserved winning that war. So it turned out that by the beginning of the 1920s, internal combustion engine vehicles were cheaper than other cars and just as convenient to use as the electric ones. It was virtually impossible to compete with the ICE. Manufacturers of this type of cars had unparalleled prices, production volumes and user-friendliness. But the car is not just a product on wheels. It's a whole industry, a whole world built

around it. Just look around in any town and you'll see how the modern world revolves around cars. And when the industry got its volume, when there are just so many cars, they could no longer exist in a vacuum. Electric starters and conveyor belts are good and all, but it's not enough for world domination. That's why studying the history of the car industry separately from the events that occurred in the world and individual countries is wrong. What I'm trying to say is ICE prevailed not only because of the improvements in its design or assembly method. ICE

became an unquestionable leader due to the US alcohol prohibition in 1919. Divine Integration Keeping your workplace clean is important. Just so that nothing gets in your way, everything is on its place and takes up as much space as supposed to. Because sometimes you might miss the fact that something takes up the space which can be used with higher efficiency. Personal computers work the same way. They can be filled with junk that you should have been deleted but never got to it. It is now much simpler to do that. Because we have Avast Cleanup Premium. The

optimization and cleaning software from the developers of a famous antivirus. There are two benefits of using Cleanup Premium. It makes your PC run faster and deletes junk. The optimization functions allow you to find and delete useless software and optimizing the auto-startup by stopping the long forgotten software from running every time you turn on you PC. And also run heavy apps in a special mode that makes them take up less RAM. You can also delete unnecessary extensions, cookies and cache of your browser. And obviously, you can scan your hard drive to delete anything you don't need.

Like the digital junk that is generated by the softwares and takes up useful gigabytes. All that in a press of a button. Also, no file will be deleted without your approval. Don't worry about it. If needed, Avast can clean your system automatically. It will solve any problems like hard drive and registry errors, updating your software and so on. Aside for Windows, this software can also be installed on Mac and Android. It has all the same functions plus the ones designed for your operating system of choice. There is a link to the free trial of Avast

Cleanup Premium waiting for you in the description. Click it, install it and keep your device clean. Chapter 2. Whales, Kerosene and the Prohibition Act So far I've only mentioned gasoline three times. The first time in the intro when I said I would go and fill my car and two more times when I said that it used to be sold in pharmacies. You know why I did that? Because ICE didn't use gasoline. Yup. Ford Model T just like the first Ford engines were originally designed for ethanol. And suffix "ol" in the end as well as the

excessive salivation of all my alcoholic viewers, tells us that it's a kind of spirit. And most of the ICE cars back then used to be fueled by spirit. Basically, just like most of the Saint Petersburg students, cars used to run solely on alcohol. The thing is, ethanol is a spirit made from grains. And any farmer had lots and lots of this stuff. They would make ethanol at home for a low price and then fill their cheap car with it. And that was Ford's plan. It would have been weird of him to design a cheap car

for the masses and make it run on a fuel that costs a lot. And the other cars with a smaller market share mostly ran on kerosene. Which was also quite cheap at the time. gasoline, as I already mentioned, was only used as a bleach. For the most part. And you wouldn't want to use Tide pods as a fuel. So people back then thought the same way about gasoline. To fully understand the logic I need to put you in context of the oil industry of that period. Young environmentalists are not going to be happy about this.

Because I will say that oil usage back then used to save animals. Let's appreciate the sound of them boiling up before I go on. Good stuff. We all know what fish oil is. Well, millennial athletes and instagram models will go it's Omega-Three but normal people call it fish oil. The difference is you can buy fish oil at a pharmacy for fifty rubles while Omega-Three is something they sell on instagram for a grand. And back then people didn't eat it. They weren't as fucked up as we are. Instead it was used as lamp oil for street

lights, torches and all that. And to earn the privilege to have a romantic dinner by the oil lamp people used to slaughter the whales by thousands. People would cut their fat called blubber and used it for their romantic intricacies. What can be more romantic than the smell of a burning whale. Somewhere in the middle of the 19th century humanity as a whole came up with kerosene. I only say that because almost simultaneously different people in different parts of the world decided to start boiling oil. It's not clear who's been the first one and it's not

important. Yes, kerosene production is actually that simple. A tank of crude oil is heated until it starts vaporizing which are then condensed and poured in another tank. And this vapor is called kerosene. Or gasoline. Gasoline has a low boiling temperature while kerosene has a high one. Here. The difference between gasoline and kerosene is that that gasoline is highly flammable and liquid while kerosene has an oily structure and burns slower. And at the time when there were no cars gasoline had virtually no use. You can't fill the lamp with it as it will blow the whole

place up so gasoline is just completely useless. While kerosene was a good substitute for whale fat as it wasn't combustible. But how do you stop people from using the whale fat and start using kerosene. That's right! We need more people on the streets holding "Stop killing whales" posters. Today they get oil from the whales. Tomorrow they will get oil from our women. And when people see those posters, they will obviously stop killing whales. Because our world is as easy as that. Luckily, the world has a bit more logic than activist's brain. That's why to make

whale fat irrelevant you need to find a way to make kerosene cheaper and more accessible. So that one can buy it on every corner and don't become broke. And then the problem would solve itself. That is magic. Which is called Life and Logic. For that reason the first oil well was dug up in Pennsylvania in eighteen fifty nine. And small oil refineries started clustering around it. They were the main manufacturers of kerosene. And then they dug up another hole. And another one. And then they built one more refinery and so on. First batches of oil

from this wells costed 16 dollars per barrel. In today's money it was 440 bucks. In the year 1860 the price dropped to $ 9,5 per barrel and a year after it dropped to 49 cents. Per barrel. It's around 13 dollars in today's money. One barrel equals 158 eight liters. In a nutshell, oil was dirt cheap. Though the whole kerosene situation was peculiar since it costed a lot even though it was made from cheap crude oil. So a liter of kerosene was way more expensive than a liter of oil. And a 20-year-old kid went: "Hmm." Interesting.

I smell money. I present to you, Johnny. By that time Johnny had cash to spare which he earned by selling meat grain and all that. But the most important thing he had is a feeling that kerosene and oil had good prospects. He also had a drive to establish the oil industry. Johnny had a partner in his meat and grain business. His name was Maurice. Together they found Samuel Andrews, the chemist who knew how to make kerosene from oil, so they all decided to establish their own company. They called it Andrews, Clark and Company. Where Andrews

was the chemist, Clark is a business partner and company is Johnny, I guess. Basically, everything these guys did from that point was optimizing and improving all the processes the industry implied. And it had a lot to optimize. First of all, all the kerosene on the market was, well, shit. Refining methods were no good at all. the end product wasn't clean and didn't burn that well. The quality varied from barrel to barrel. To put it simply so anyone could understand, here's what the guys did. As I already mentioned, kerosene was distilled from oil by heating up

the tank until the vapor rises. That vapor is collected and voila, kerosene. But this method implies that the product isn't pure. Because this vapor is mixed with oil particles and the product ends up with tar in it. Tar is an umbrella term for all the waste in the distillation process. It's mostly used for making roofing flux. Our generation also knows what it tastes like. And when kerosene has a lot of tar in it you get a mixture that doesn't burn well and produces fetid smoke. But if you mix this impure kerosene with sulfuric acid, give

it a good stir and then leave it alone for a while, tar and all its components will separate from kerosene and stay at the bottom of the tank. Then just open a vent on the bottom, drain the tar and all the crap close it and here we go - pure kerosene. It burns well and is perfect for the lamps. Everybody wants to buy it. And these guys were the first ones to implement this purification technique on their refinery. Second of all, back then almost 40% of oil got dumped after distillation. Like some waste. You can't

get kerosene from that oil and there's no other use for it. So the leftovers were literally dumped on the corner. I'm starting to get worried about activists. To make these leftovers somewhat useful our guys figured out how to produce gasoline and paraffin wax. General public didn't want gasoline but the guys found use for it at their power plants. That way they reduced the use of coil which saved them some money. While paraffin wax sold quite well since everybody needed candles back then. Basically, the guys got more products from each barrel of crude oil and therefore

more profit. Third of all it's important to note that oil is extracted at the well, then it gets transported to the oil refinery, where stuff is made from it, and only then the final product is transported from this refinery to the warehouses. And then to the customer. And all this transportation was the reason for high kerosene prices. Oil, kerosene and any other liquid stuff was transported in these wooden barrels. Which just couldn't hold all of the liquid product. Because these barrels were made of wood and made poorly. And the freight rates were ridiculous too since

railroads had just started to appear. And were not a common practice, while building them was expensive. So you got to deal with that somehow, hence the high prices. The guys solved the barrel problem quite easily. They just bought some woodland and cut it down, starting their own barrel production. Just for themselves. That way they killed two birds with one stone. One - they reduced the product loss since their barrels had no gaps and cracks the ones bought on the side had. And two - they reduced the price of one barrel from 2,5 dollars to one

dollar. As soon as they got enough volume, Johnny managed to arrange a substantial discount on freight rate as a wholesale distributor. And these three seemingly simple improvements helped the guys to get a colossal advantage over all the other companies on the market. As a result, their products were much cheaper to produce, much cheaper for the customers and was superior. Thereby kerosene became much cheaper for the general masses than its whale fat alternatives. In fact, it blew whale oil out of the water. One gallon of whale fat, which is around 3,4 liters, costed 1,77 dollars. While

a gallon of kerosene costed just 7 cents. For the price of a gallon of whale fat you could buy twenty five gallons of kerosene. Obviously, everybody got off whale's backs and started using kerosene. No posters, no sore activist throats. Though whale fat vendors' throats were sore alright. Cause even whales don't blow as hard as they did. All this led to the company's rapid development. And in three years time after the launch their annual turnover hit two million dollars. Which is a lot by their time standards. Johnny knew that it's only the beginning and there is

an opportunity to take over the whole market by crowing out all the other companies. He contacted some of his relatives and business colleagues to establish a brand new company together. which was basically destined to rule the world. The company was called Standard Oil. By the way, Johnny's last name was Rockefeller. When the company was established in eighteen seventy, Standard Oil controlled 4% of the US oil market. Though even then it was the biggest company since back then there were only 250 other companies in the US. Like dominating the market due to their lowered freight rates

wasn't enough they also started buying up all the wooden barrels available on the money they saved, so that they could jack up the prices for the competitors, ultimately crowing them out. And all this led to Standard Oil controlling 25% of the market by 1874 and 85% by the 1880s. Monopoly in its purest form. By 1885, Standard Oil became the largest company in the world. They had the power, the money, hundreds of thousands workplaces and 20,000 oil wells. And when you control the core of your country's economy you have a huge leverage on the government. Here's

a cartoon drawn around that time depicting Standard Oil as a squid controlling the whole nation. They sponsored presidential campaigns, pledged money to charity and ultimately had every important person in their pockets. It all lasted until the point this fine gentleman became a president. Theodore Roosevelt. Roosevelt knew that monopoly is no good. Monopolists would always jack up the prices to make huge profits and strangle the smaller companies with their resources. While product quality would not improve because why? We own the market. Not to mention that Roosevelt didn't enjoy the idea of such powers influencing the politics.

That's when he decided to tear Standard Oil down. The whole invisible war that occurred behind the scenes in the process is a story for another day. We'll discuss it later, we got enough to talk about. Here's what we need to know now. In 1911 Standard Oil splits into 34 smaller companies. The modern companies which used to be Standard Oil are Esso Exon Mobil, BP and the likes. After the breakup, all the former Standard Oil companies comprised 65% of the market. But the important thing is that they still had to compete each other. Cause now those

companies had their own budgets, incomes and expenses, their own CEOs and such. Still, it's important to note that Rockefeller had a share in all of these subsidiary companies. Even though they competed each other, fought for the market and all that, the beneficiary remained the same. Johnny. And he still had the power and the capital. He just had to be a little more subtle in his actions. Even though the whole break-up deal was unpleasant on itself, it wasn't the main problem of the oil industry. The real problem was a small object that could easily fit in

one's fist. Here. That is the biggest enemy of the oil industry of those times. In the year 1879 Edison invents a lightbulb. His profits weren't such a big deal, but in ten to twenty years lightbulb would completely destroy the kerosene lamp industry. And Rockefeller knew that. And then, when no one expected first cars appear. And some time later Ford appears as well, introducing his Model T that takes over the market. When automobiles start filling the streets, Rockefeller understands that this is his new market. The solution is within his reach. Just like he did with kerosene

thirty years ago, when he just had to establish an infrastructure to ship the product to the people to skyrocket the business, once again he had to figure out the way to supply the fuel in such amounts that it would be sold anywhere and had a reasonable price. And making things cheap and accessible was the whole Rockefeller's thing. The first gasoline selling station had been built in 1907, even before Standard Oil broke up. Then they built another one, and another one. But, before the break up, the expansion of gas station chain was too slow. Just because

the monopoly had no incentive to develop. They were okay with just having the money and the power. But, after the breakup of Standard Oil, its subsidiaries quickly understand that gas station networks is a perfect way to gain even more profit out of a quickly developing car industry. And here we go. In 1921, ten years after the Standard Oil breakup, there had been 12,000 gas stations in the US. In eight years after that the amount increased tenfold to 120,000 stations. Every company that was somehow connected with oil industry started building their own gas stations. That ignited

the war for the most profitable spots near the huge transport arteries. And this massive and highly profitable network made the oil industry even stronger. While the oil industry was developing, The society was plagued by its own problem. The Americans drank too much. The scale of the problem was really serious. At the time, alcohol was extremely cheap since the states had vast agricultural areas. Everybody was drinking. For the US, the 1910s and 1920s were the age of bars, cabaret and hedonism. Good times. If I had a time machine I would gladly go bar hopping there. Though

not everyone was happy about citizens getting drunk non-stop. The so-called Anti-Saloon League was formed as early as 19th century. Saloon is a kind of bar from western movies with doors that were constantly swinging. Just like your ex. Anti-alcohol movements took over the nation with representatives in every state. What's funny is that the most ardent supporters of Prohibition were pharmacists. Their argument was: "Guys, why do you drink, it's bad for you. unlike our tonics and herbal extracts. They contain no alcohol, but they're also very invigorating." And you know what those tonics were made of? Cocaine. Say

hello to John Stith Pinkerton. That's the guy who invented Coca-Cola. One of the most loyal members of Anti-Saloon League. May I remind you, Coca-Cola used to be made from coca leaves back then. And one bottle contained roughly half a line of cocaine. With a straight face John was like "Guys why would you want booze. It's harmful and boring. I chugged two bottles of coke three days ago and haven't slept since." In addition to pharmacists, the church had joined the fight against all evil. The US is quite a religious country, especially back then. And when the

church started meddling with state politics you couldn't just ward them off with a prayer anymore. The church had a huge following at the time. And without fail, almost each and every citizen used to drag their feet to Sunday service. Where the preachers told them that alcohol comes from the devil and that everyone should live a sober life. And that if your lips ever touch alcohol, they'll touch something else in hell. Basically, by the 1910s, the League's influence expanded and it became a force to be reckoned with. Their activists were politicians from two of the major

parties, church members, entrepreneurs, pharmacists and God knows who else. Up until the end the alcohol industry refused to believe that it could be prohibited. The humanity has been drinking for ages. And we all know that we won't stop no matter what prohibition laws they throw at us. That's why the booze industry's defense was sluggish. Not to mention that it was hard to argue with a man of church advocating for the sober way of life. Or to argue with activists who told the boogeyman stories about people losing their jobs and leaving their families due to alcohol.

It was hard to find a positive image of an alcohol consumer. The industry couldn't just go and say: This is Valeriy. At some point he used to have a job. A family. And a bunch of things to worry about. But then Valeriy discovered vodka. And he drank away his job. His family and a bunch of things to worry about. And now Valeriy is vibing. Valeriy, you okay? I said "Valeriy, you okay?" 4Okay. See? Valeriy is okay. Be like Valeriy. This complete shitshow was observed by the oil industry that went like: "What's that?" Alcohol will be

banned and we'll have no competitors. That is some great news. Let's toast! Cheers, mates, we'll show those alcoholics, yes! For quite a while the government had resisted the pressure. Since alcohol tax accounts for a huge share of national budget. But after a couple more years of pressure from the public they finally gave up. The prohibition law goes into effect in 1920 and remains in place until 1933. The law implied the total prohibition of alcohol production, distribution and trade. Which is important, because the law utterly and completely destroyed the idea of ICEs running on spirits. Yes,

that was the age of bootleggers who illegally produced and sold alcohol to underground bars. The alcohol remained. But getting into legal problems just to refill your automobile was too risky. It's way easier to go to a gas station, which everyone did. And if I had to describe this whole story in one sentence: Henry Ford graced the world with an accessible car and conveyor belts, John Rockefeller provided car industry with the infrastructure, and the US government created the environment where the only affordable fuel for the ICE vehicles was gasoline. And just as it happened to whale

oil, people were quick to forget all the ICE alternatives when ICE vehicles became the cheapest product on the market. Not to mention the convenient infrastructure around it. But as soon as this infrastructure grew in volumes another problem came to play. You'd think what problems could there be? Car sales are skyrocketing, with more and more manufacturers appearing every day, gas network is growing like weed and the money is flowing. All's perfect. But, all of a sudden they ran out of oil. Well, almost. According to geologists' and market analysists' estimations the world's supply of oil would run

out in twenty years. Around the forties. Yup. All the noise that we hear each day like "Oil is about to run out, what are we going to do? We have to come up with a better alternative now!" didn't start in the last decades of the 20th century. But in the first one. Almost immediately after the world's car stock became substantial. And back then people were certain that a couple of decades later they will completely run out of fuel. Apparently, we've been driving on oil that ran out 80 years ago. Imagine that. Back then most oil

wells were located in Pennsylvania, USA and Venezuela. By the way, oil in Venezuela was extracted by Standard Oil as well. This branch would later become Exxon. Massive oil reserves in Texas hadn't been discovered by then. And the known reserves would have ended by the forties. All the oil companies invested in the exploration of the new deposits but to no avail. The World War One taught all the nations in the world that a reliable supply of fuel was a matter of security. All the military vehicles needed fuel. And if you have none, you have no military

equipment and no defense potential. And there was no solution. Everyone was anxious and hoped that somebody would find a solution. By the beginning of the thirties the oil situation became a real problem. Firstly, people couldn't imagine life without cars because they became a part of their everyday lives and more importantly a part of economy. If the government, car companies and oil extractors allowed the oil running out the whole system would have collapsed. Both the economy and the power industry. The oil and its products were used to fuel cars which was the main way of transport

for the people and the goods. It was also used to power factories which replaced manual labor with machinery. Not to mention the power plants and central heating that were fueled by oil products. If oil ran out, it wouldn't have meant just the end of automobiles but a total black-out of the whole lifestyle. And when the government and the car companies are given an ultimatum of whether solving the problem or just going down, ecology, world peace and other sentiments are the last thing to worry about. The solution was needed. No matter the cost. Chapter 3. Tetraethyl

Lead There's a thing in the US called the American Petroleum Institute. Basically, it's an organization established by the oil companies to represent their interests on a national level. As soon as an industry becomes a substantial part of economy and generates wealth the government quite understandably desires to gain more control over it and push regulations down its throat while also collecting more tax money. A normal desire. While the industry is interested in maximizing profits maximizing their freedoms and maximizing their own opportunities. And usually such organizations are created by the government But the American Petroleum Institute, API

for short, is the only non-governmental organization of its kind. It was an initiative of private companies by these private companies' own hands. In addition to the government the oil industry was constantly pushed by car companies who believed that low quality fuel would drastically decrease the engine's service life. Back then ethanol was a more efficient and safer alternative. So, to protect itself from this pressure the industry's representatives established an organization to deal with all that crap. All the companies invested in it, established a corporate budget of a few million dollars and let the Institute solve their

problems while they were busy making money. In addition to that, the institute was supposed to oversee the geologists who searched for new oilfields. But the search wasn't quite successful. So they believed that the oil would soon run out. There were two main problems that the institute had to solve here and now. One - the oil running out thing. Two - figuring out what's responsible for the engines breaking down. The oil industry addressed all the complaints about low quality fuel with a statement that their engines are just shit. Which was the reason for them breaking down.

Such "You gay, no you" polemics never ended too well. Fortunately they knew that. They also knew that the truth lies somewhere inbetween. The fuel was bad but the engines were too. The most important thing the petrol institute did was creating the ground and the climate for a constructive discussion. Representatives from both industries gathered at the round table to discuss the matters at hand. And when you create the climate where people can negotiate and come up with a solution together they will definitely find one. And strangely enough, the solution to the whole fuel and engines problem

was found by a car industry representative. Say hello to Charles Kettering Some of you are thinking: "Wait a sec, this face seems familiar." Yes, that's right. You've just passed the attentiveness test. Here's a smooch. Charles Kettering is the man who invented the electric starter. By that time he'd become the head of GM's research department. Remember how I said that GM bought out Delco, the company Kettering established when he invented the starter. Well, Charles was a bonus to that purchase. That was just a perfect deal for Kettering since he was an inventor and the whole business

building and company running gig wasn't his cup of tea. He just wanted to invent stuff. And it's hard to refuse when GM comes to you and says: "Here's our research department." "Do what you want. We'll also pay you for that." In fact, Kettering was one of the brightest American inventors. Throughout his life he received 186 patents for his inventions. Before he established Delco he was working for a telephone company where he came up with a system that allowed the call to be directed to a certain number. When telephone lines were first created if you were

to make a call telephones rang on the whole street. You couldn't have just call a specific person. the whole line was ringing. And Kettering solved that problem when he was just a phone company clerk. Just imagine. If you had to make a call home at the same time you called your neighbors. Hello? Sweetheart. Connect me with all the women in the area. But there's just a retirement community on this street. It's okay. We're going old school. Then Charles worked in the sphere trade automation, where he invented the automatic cash register. You know the classic sound

that cash register makes from all the American movies. Kettering invented it. Then he started working in the car industry and invented the electric starter and a bunch of other stuff. What I'm saying is the guy was a brainiac. When he got into fuel he had a hypothesis that there were two things needed to save oil. One - making a high-octane gasoline which would handle the compression better. Two - designing an engine that would handle high compression ratio without falling apart. All that put together will reduce gasoline consumption while improving the engine's efficiency. To put it

simply, so anyone could understand, here's how it works. We all loosely know how ICE works. A piston moves up compressing the air and the fuel in the cylinder. When it hits max compression at the point where piston stops the compressor air-fuel mix is ignited with a spark. Which starts the combustion. The mix expands, releasing enough energy to push the piston back down. And pistons are connected to the crankshaft. That metal thingy we've already discussed. So by transferring the energy to this cranckshaft they make it spin. Now listen closely. What I'm going to say is not

that simple but I believe in you. If you got the whole stock market story from the last episode compression ratio won't be a problem. The distance that the piston covers from its lowest to its highest position is measured in centimeters. Let's say we have ten centimeters. Ten centimeters is not a sin, as they say. They also measure the gap the piston doesn't cover where the compressed mixture goes. Let's say, it's one centimeter. And the ratio between these lengths is called compression ratio. In our case it's ten to one. Question. Considering we have the same amount

of fuel in which case will the fuel ignition release more energy? When the compression ratio is five to one or when it's ten to one. Think. The right answer is ten to one, because that way you'll compress more air which boosts the combustion. So the more air we have, the better it will burn and the more energy we get. There's one but. When the compression is too rapid and heavy the temperature rises as well. That is where gasoline characteristics come to play. What happens if you push the air and the gas to its limits. At

some point they will explode. Because if you compress anything hard enough the temperature will rise indefinitely. And there's a certain point where gasoline explodes. I hope that is clear. Did you get that? Nice. Now imagine a typical gas station and fueling nozzles with numbers like 92, 95 or 98. Some of you may remember 80 and 72. This number is called octane level. The higher the number the higher the pressure and the temperature this gas can handle without explosion. Understand? The higher the number, the more you can compress the gas. The lower it is, the faster

this gas will explode under pressure. This characteristic only depends on the gasoline quality and the additives it contains. If you fill your high compression engine with low-octane gasoline that couldn't handle higher compression ratio the moment the piston goes up to compress the mix at some point the gasoline will start combusting and exploding. This explosion will create a small shockwave. which will hit the piston and the cylinder's walls. while the piston is still moving up in the direction opposite to it. This shit is called detonation. And it is one of the most notorious engine killers. If

you fill a modern engine with low octane fuel the engine will immediately start falling apart. That's why the fuel type and the characteristics of the engine are parts of an equation car manufacturers constantly play around with. And every car has recommendations printed on it that go "You've got to fuel it with gasoline of such and such quality". If it's higher, the gasoline will handle the compression. If it's lower, say hello to detonation and the car mechanic. I hope it's clear now. Blink if you got it. Well done. Here's another smooch. Who else would kiss you

for knowing what compression ratio is. No one. Only the man with dyed hair. So let's kiss and talk pressure. Blood pressure in my d- The problem is the gasoline back then had octane number somewhere around fifty. And the industry had no interest in making better fuel. Because you'd have to rebuild all the refineries, and that's expensive. It's much cheaper than saying "Go fuck yourself." And the industry did just that. A nice budget option. That's why the engines were loud as hell and fell apart due to detonation. While ethanol had a way higher compression ratio. Which

made it a better alternative to gasoline. Sadly, the prohibition came. So Kettering said "I'll deal with that. I have the brains, easy as cake." His laboratory colleague was this fine gentleman. Thomas Midgley, a young chemist. Together they believed that they could create an additive that could increase the fuel's octane number. So they started pouring everything they had into gasoline to see what happens. At some point they mixed gasoline with iodine and the engine did start running better. So they went "Ooh! That's probably because iodine is red. The red color absorbs the heat." And started pouring

the paint there. Says a lot about the state of chemistry back then. Obviously, not even the paint the color of the coldest ice could decrease the fuel compression heat. but that didn't stop them. They had their fun. Meanwhile GM started panicking. The company was losing money and the market to Ford because William Durant spent most of his budget buying out every company he could without caring much about their efficiency. Durant gets kicked out from the company and Pierre du Pont takes his place. He was a famous entrepreneur and crisis manager. As a crisis manager he

had a clear and simple logic. If something doesn't increase company's profit he got rid of it. Looking through budget reports he find Kettering with his partner and gets them to his office. He told them something along the lines of whether you give us something we can profit off of or file your resignation letters. At the time, the only working thing that Midgley had was ethanol. Personally, he drove his car with a mixture of 40% ethanol and 60% gasoline. Whether he drank these 40% or used it as a fuel is a mystery. They couldn't come up

with anything that implied the use of pure gasoline. And even if the prohibition law would have been lifted, this wouldn't help them much because you can't patent ethanol fuel. Which means you can't profit off of it. While du Pont needed something that GM could patent and sell as their own product to other manufacturers and, ideally, to the whole oil industry. Midgley started to panic. First of all, by the year 1920, the development has already lasted for five years. The guys started their first fuel experiments in 1915. And Thomas was desperate to find a solution. It's

hard to give up when you've been trying to solve a problem for five years. Second of all, he respected Kettering didn't want to let him down because his head would have been the first to roll. As superior's. All that pressure resulted in Midgley starting to experiment with elements of different levels of toxicity. And hail Mary! He quickly found the solution. The wonder element was lead. Adding a few grams of lead to a whole gallon of gasoline neutralized the detonation. And the engine worked smoothly, quietly and suffered no power loss. Plus, lead is cheap. It was

easy to find and the industry was familiar with it since by that time it was already used in the production of pipelines, bullets and even paint. Easy as that. Midgley comes to Kettering and says "Look, here's the thing. It works perfectly but I'm still worried about the lead contents. Potentially, it's not too good for your health." Kettering skims through results analyzes the data and understands that it was their answer. Even better, because it solves the detonation problem, is easy to produce and the formula can also be patented. Who cares about lead. Half the country uses

lead paint. Not a big deal. In 1921 Kettering patents a lead fuel additive called tetraethyl lead. TEL for short. It was recommended to add half a gram of lead to a liter of fuel. Kettering presents the invention to the GM's board of directors. And the American Chemical Society. In the presentation he provided the data and said that the additive increased gasoline's octane number from fifty to ninety five and greatly decreases its consumption. The board was in awe. Everybody cheers, Kettering and Midgley finally got their recognition for solving a problem. The Chemical Society gave them mad

respect, a handshake and a pat on the back. While the GM chiefs are already counting their potential profits. According to their calculations, if they were to take just one fifth of the oil market they would look at the net income of thirty six millions per year. And the market is growing, so the potential income in ten to fifteen years period would have been sky high. In the year 1923 the first tank of leaded gasoline hit the shelves. And a couple of months later GM and Standard Oil established the joint production of leaded gasoline, which was

named Ethyl. The company was to supply fuel to all the country's gas stations. Obviously, they put Kettering in the chair of the plant director, while Midgley became his vice. Success. Time for fireworks. But in all that noise nobody noticed the faint voices of specialists from Yale and Harvard who reported on lead being dangerous. They cited a case with one of their post-grads who experimented on lead died of poisoning. And Thomas Midgley, the inventor of the additive couldn't participate in the Chemical Society award ceremony lying sick in bed. With digestive dysfunction, abnormally low body temperature and

low blood pressure. Which were the symptoms of severe lead poisoning. Chapter 4. Poison on the Conveyor Belt All the cheering about the success of Ethyl manufactory's newest invention has not settled down yet, when the production faced the weird health problems of their workers. At some point some of the workers started to behave funny. Like taking sick leaves abnormally often, compared to all the other factories. And some people stopped showing up at work at all. Midgley, the inventor of TEL and the factory's vice president, promptly rushes to the plant as soon as he gets up on

his feet to figure out what's the reason for all this. And the reason was the following. Throughout 1923, when the plant was opened, several people died of dehydration and organ failure at their homes. And several dozens of workers went to the mental asylum. While the ones still working were shaking on their feet and behaved generally weird. And Midgley was like: "So, apparently we're killing people. Another one. We're definitely killing people. And I'm not even at the plant yet." The toxicity of lead was a well known fact. Chemists have been experimenting on it for the entirety

of modern history because it's so common in nature. And everyone knew that if you mix anything with lead and pour it on something that something is done for. And if you also breathe in the fumes you're as good as dead. For people whose brains are rustling at the idea of metal that can you can pour something and also breathe in, here's the deal. Tetraethyl lead is a volatile liquid. Volatile liquid is any liquid that evaporates fast. Roughly speaking, what would happen if you fill your hookah with, say, wine. You'll get drunk after a couple of

drags. That is clear. And why is that? Because ethanol is a volatile liquid. It's easy to evaporate. And alcohol vapors are instantly absorbed to your bloodstream through lungs. Since the whole reason lungs exist is to instantly and directly absorb oxygen into your bloodstream. And blood transfers alcohol vapors to the entirety of your body and voila, you're drunk. When you drink alcohol it absorbs through your digestive system where it's filtered by the liver and other organs. While lungs are like a direct blood injection. And tetraethyl lead is the shit as volatile as alcohol, but it contains

ethyl chloride, lead and sodium. If you mix these ingredients in certain proportions you get a liquid. And if your brain still rustles from the idea of mixing metal with something or dissolving it here's one more thing. Remember chemistry classes? I know they weren't your favorite, but at least remember you had them. Good job. Do you remember such thing as "hydrochloric acid"? I bet that triggered one hell of a flashback for people who hated chemistry classes. Be brave, I feel you. Basically, hydrochloric acid is hydrogen and chlorine. You can buy that shit literally anywhere. If you

dip aluminum in it, the whole piece of it it will dissolve. Thus, hydrogen in the acid will burst into bubbles and you'll have aluminum chloride left in a vial. Which is a liquid. That used to be a whole piece of metal. So I hope you get the point. Did ya? A nod. Good job. Here's the third smooch. Tetraethyl lead is produced by reacting ethyl chloride with a sodium-lead alloy. None of the three ingredients are good for your body, believe me. In the reaction sodium and chlorine turn into vapors and the only things left are H

- hydrogen, C - carbon, and I. I fucked your mom. No, there's no I in lead. As a result, we get a highly volatile liquid and lead is literally floating in the air. And if you breathe in enough lead vapors, tetraethyl lead will first damage your brain and whole nervous system. Anything that has neural endings is instantly screwed. And neural endings, spoiler, are literally everywhere. The only organ in a human body that doesn't have neural endings is your ex's heart. Mental health deteriorates. You feel general weakness and the entire body starts failing on you as

all of its internal processes are damaged. But we know that now. While back then everyone knew that lead is like not very good but nothing too scary. But what's important is that Midgley knew how dangerous his invention was. He experienced what TEL poisoning felt like firsthand. That's why he wasn't even sure if that additive should be mass produced at all. And when people started dying on his plant he knew he was responsible. He run up to Kettering and said "The peasants! the peasants, my lord, they're dying like flies. Everyone's gone. The flies, the peasants. And

if we get caught, you know what else will be gone? Our anal virginity. Though we shouldn't be worried. We all remember the summer of 1987. Kettering calms him down and tells him that many corporations are working around toxic elements and their workers aren't dying by dozens. It's all about safety regulations. Workers just have to be properly trained and everything will go easy peezy lemon squeezy. It's GM, that's what all of their safety documentation looks like. There's no other explanation for Chevrolet Cruise existence. Anyway, Kettering calmed Midgley down and told him he'll look into that. Though

everything Kettering did was hire another chemist. Robert Kehoe, this guy. He tasked him with making TEL production safe. And also do all the worker training needed. Kehoe confidently agreed and started to work. But the real problem wasn't the deaths on the plant. But the fact the press found out. Because immediately all the big newspapers started printing headlines like "Mysterious gas drives people crazy" "Unknown toxin kills the workers on Ethyl production." "People go insane on the Ethyl factory and who's responsible for all the dead workers and their families? " A year after, in 1924 two more

workers died on site. Plus, a few dozens more were sent to the mental asylum. And according to the press allegations, a few more workers just killed themselves at their homes. The press was tearing down the Ethyl plant, GM and Standard Oil. GM and Standard remained silent while Kettering made releases for the press from time to time to answer their questions. He shouldn't have done that. For example, during one of the press conferences that was held after another death on site, when asked "Why did your employee die on site?" Kettering answered "Uh, he probably worked too

hard." Obviously, such comments made the people hate him even more. The scandal got out of hand and it couldn't have been ignored even on national level. American Health association along with the government officials stops the production and calls the directors saying "What have you done?" Ethyl decided that it wasn't a good idea to let Kettering speak on their behalf because he might say some dumb shit like "We're all born to die" which is just as good as starting to look for a new job. So they sent Robert Kehoe to do the talking. And Kehoe had

his way with words, I tell you. First, he said "Everything we had done was experimental, It's just our first batch and since TEL is brand new we'll figure out a way to optimize the production and everything will be fine, don't worry about the safety, we'll deal with that. I promise." And second, Kehoe was like "Do you have any proof that TEL was the cause of their deaths? Yes, the corpses lying around is a fact, can't argue that. But people die of a lot of things. His wife bought an Opel recently, that's why his engine stalled.

And you want to close our plant. When you have the evidence that people are dying of tetraethyl lead poisoning, then we'll talk. If you want to close us down, then prove it. But now I think that TEL is safe. Because you can't prove me wrong. And that worked. The Health Association had prepared for a three day trial. But the first day after Kehoe's speech the commission went home and approved the plant functioning because they really didn't have any real evidence. And all the rumors and newspaper headlines weren't substantial enough to close down the factory. But

Kehoe wasn't only good at talking the talk, he also walked the walk. He started investigation all the cases of death on site by questioning the sick affected workers, overseeing all the processes on the plant, measuring the gas levels and so on. And he fixed all the problems wherever he found one. First of all, he completely redesigned the plant' ventilation system. and also installed fans at every production bay. Second of all, he designed and implemented special protective gear that protected the skin from contacting chemicals. Third of all, he made it so every worker had to go

through mandatory training before he was allowed to work there. Basically, Kehoe just implemented normal safety regulations. And forced all the workers comply with it. It's a normal thing for modern world but back then few corporations cared about their workers getting harmed on site. Plus, Kehoe bargained with GM and Standard Oil to get the funds for the establishment of the new laboratory which would have done the research on the effects of TEL on human body and carrying out the studies of other toxic materials. Obviously, corporations were glad to sponsor the man who prevented their factory's closure.

But on one condition. Any materials and articles laboratory puts out were to be reviewed by Standard Oil and General Motors specialists before publication. The important thing is that GM and Standard specialists had the right to edit and comment any materials, so corporations still had the final say on whether to publish those materials or not. Basically, it means that the lawyers and executives of these companies, GM and Standard, decided what research to make public and what to classify and hide from everybody. That said, all the materials on TEL were classified from day one. Company executives never

used words like "TEL, toxin and lead" in their personal letters and official documents. All the laboratory documentation like negotiation and meeting reports concerning TEL were declassified just recently. And one of the documents mentions that just a couple of days before the conference with the American Health Association, Kettering and some GM and Standard lawyers paid a personal visit to the head of association. It's hard to say what they discussed, but certainly not the weather. Meanwhile, Kehoe's laboratory was ready with its first results which have shown that each and single one of the factory workers had excessive

content of lead in their blood. No matter whether they worked with TEL directly or just cleaned the neighboring production bays. Even the workers who have never touched TEL in their lives had a shit ton of lead in their blood. And this research made Kehoe come to the conclusion that lead is a natural element for human blood. Every worker has it, yup. Alrightly. Means it's completely normal. Who cares that we didn't test people who don't work for us. We won't mention that. That's just a margin of error. Facts and logic. Conclusion two. If lead is naturally

found in blood then there is a norm for it. Let it be 80 milligrams for a 100 milliliters of blood. Why? Dunno, I just like the number. That is literally how they justyfied it. Just because. And that number implied that if someone had 79 milligrams of lead, he was just fine. And if he had 81, he is screwed and beyond saving. And those were the statements Kehoe made to officials health comissioners, the public and such. Lead is fine, here's the norm and our workers are within it. Any arguments against it? Well, there were none. No

one had any data on lead and for the most part nobody cared. The public settled down and there's that. And tetraethyl lead production went on. And a couple of years later leaded gasoline was sold on every gas station in America and soon, the world. From a broader point of view, leaded gasoline was a good thing for the oil industry. Since he did reduce the gasoline consumption due to better properties and helped preserving the oil. Which was running out, may I remind you. The search for new oilfields was at dead end. It stayed this way from

the year 1919, when the Petroleum Institute was founded, up until 1924, when leaded gasoline hit the market. They just couldn't find the oilfields with substantial volumes of oil. The situation remained the same from 1924 to 1930s. They searched in Pennsylvania and other states, but all they could find were small oil wells that could have postponed the crisis for only two jears. And Standard Oil had no choice. By Standard Oil I mean all its post-breakup subsidiaries. Even though they had different names, their beneficiary still remained the same. But in the year 1933 the phone rang in

one of the company's offices. The caller's name was Carl Twitchell. He was a good friend of some of the subsidiary's executives. Carl called Lloyd Hamilton. This guy. One of the biggest Standard lawyers. Over the telephone Carl told him something like that: "I don't care if you have any plans. You're going to drop whatever you're doing, pack your things, take the damn plane and come to me". Lloyd was a little bit shocked by this approach but asked anyway: "Where do I go to?' The answer was Saudi Arabia. Chapter 5. Thirst for Money The first thing that

comes to mind when someone mentions the first half of the 20th century are the world wars in which half of the world participated. And in addition to the piles of bodies and broken human lives those two wars drastically changed the national borders. Some conquered new territories, some colonies revolted and overthrowed the imperial control, some nations gathered together to unite into one huge country. And through the unification of some regions Saudi Arabia was created. The Arabic penninsula had four regions Najda, Hejaz, Al-Hasa and Al-Qatif. In 1932 they united to form a country named Saudi Arabia. This

dude became the head of the newborn nation. Abdel Aziz the second. In his mother tongue his name was Abdulaziz bin Abdul Rahman Al Saud. It must be cool to be the king of Saudi Arabia. Walk around wrapped in a blanket, here's your harem, here's your hookah, a real tiger. As some of you might think. That might be true, but I must explain what Saudi Arabia looked like in 1932. It looked something like that. There were no crickets even, we edited them in. All there was was sand, camels and arabs. Not arians, which is important to

note considering the time period. If you look around and examine the landscape you can see one problem. There's no water. Not having water is like the whole desert thing. And dying without water is like the whole human body thing. Even if the politicians made the statement that you had to tighten your belts and just be patient because it's no time to drink water, but once we've built communism- Obviously, I'm kidding, but the problem was quite serious. They had no water, no rains to be seen, and Arabia didn't have the money to buy water from other

countries. Now, in the modern days, every other citizen of Saudi Arabia is an ukrainian escort model, who are an important sign of wealth, but back then they had no funds at all. The government knew that they couldn't solve the problem on their own since they had no money, no time and no specialists. There was only a theory that there was water in the desert. And they placed their hopes on it. Aside from sand, there were also rocky areas in the desert and so they hoped that they could dig up some subterranean waters. So the government

invited this guy to do the research. Carl Twitchell, an experienced biologist and oil driller. He agreed to help, gathered an expedition and went on gathering soil samples in the desert and poking around every hole he could find. They found no water, but in every place Carl took samples from he found signs of oil without fail. When the expedition ended, he told Abdul-Aziz something like that: "Boss, I don't know what you're going to drink, but I know what you're going to sell. But I need help. I can't do this alone. I have a couple of friends,

so let me make some calls and I'll arrange everything." At this point Carl called the Standard Oil executives and says that they need to drop everything and come there. As soon as the oil industry big shots smelled money, they were quick to offer Saudi Arabia help in the geophysical investigations and all that, like "We're the real gentlemen, we want to help you discover and develop the oilfields and we're obviously cover all the expenses. Don't you worry one bit, our dear Abdulaziz bin Abdul Rahman Al Saud or whatever your name was. The saudi government that the

west needs oil and fuel, but they had no idea how to extract and refine it, what volumes they needed, how much does cost and so on. They knew everything about camels. One hump, two humps, anything. But jack shit about oil. So it was hard to refuse when a bunch of fine gentlemen from Standard Oil arrive with a big smile telling that they would arrange everything and cover the expenses handing you a brand new hookah. And there was no point in refusal. They could have told everyone to bugger off, but they still had no money to

develop the wells. So no choice. And they made a deal. Standard Oil covers all the expenses like prospecting, developing, facility building, constructing the pipelines and deserves the right to extract oil. But that oil still belongs to Saudi Arabia, so the company has to pay a tax for every barrel they sell. Basically, Saudi Arabia recieved a ton of tax money from the company and then used this money to solve their problems like buying water, filling hookahs with it and living their lives. They held a grand opening ceremony of the first pipeline in 1939. Look at their

happy faces. And like the US who needed oil for their industry wasn't enough, the world war two started the same year. So the demand for fuel and energy sources increased. And that boosted the construction of new refineries, because there were way more oilfields then people originally thought. Not only in Saudi Arabia, but the whole region. In twenty years from the forties to the sixties oil extraction spreads over the whole Middle East. And the whole thing is ruled by so called seven sisters: Exxon, Royal Dutch Shell, Texaco, Chevron, Mobil, Gulf Oil and British Petroleum. What's more

important is that all those companies used to be Standard Oil. And their extraction and development had the same terms. We do everything and pay the tax. And the tax was based on the price per barrel of oil. Due to the immense volumes the oil was much cheaper for the corporations than the one extracted in the US, even with the shipment in mind. The sisters extracted 80% of all the Middle Eastern oil. But even that wasn't enough. Corporations made arrangements with each other deliberately keeping the oil prices down. To keep the tax as low as possible.

In a nutshell, it looked like this. They bought oil from themselves for their own oil refineries. So the low oil price pays off if you make money off of gasoline and other oil products anyway. But you pay less taxes to the countries where you extract oil. Profit. But such state of affairs didn't do for the government of Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait and such. They called up Venezuela, set up a hookah and went "Guys, we have a matter to discuss. They're extracting oil and making money. We're making too, but we want more. Any ideas?" They

figured out that their territories account for 65% of the world's oil deposits. For comparison, Russia has only like 5% of the world's oil. So the guys decided to unite under the motto of "Life's no fun if the homies can't have none" and make a statement by raising the oil prices. So you either comply or bugger off. To make our point we've parked a van full of AK's over there. This was the birth of OPEC. Which means Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries. Originally their only members were Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran, Kuwait and Venezuela. Then they

were joined by United Arabian Emirates, which is a country of its own. Algeria, Qatar and Indonesia which account to almost 75% of all oil in the world. When OPEC made their statement about the only way things were going to be from that point, USA and Europe had no other choice but comply. So they recognized OPEC as a legitimate organization to reckon with. This happened in 1960. Over the next few years OPEC not only took over the control of oil prices, they also started making decisions on the list of countries and the volumes of their export.

They considered it their leverage. But if you look at the oil price chart you can see that nothing changed much in the sixties. Yes, the prices jumped a dollar up a dollar down, but nothing of substance. But in 1973 the chart skyrockets. Here's why. Seventy three was the year when Arab-Israeli conflict began. They've been constantly killing and raping each other, so nothing new. But after the two world wars the whole world was so shocked by the things they've done, that they decided not to let anything like that happen ever again. So all the major countries

sat down and created the UN. The United Nations. The UN is kind of a shitshow that fights all the evils in this world. If something happens in the world and the UN considers it unfair or dangerous, they are quick to interfere and make some noise. When the conflict breaks out, not only the UN and Europe go like: "Arabs are wrong here. We've done the math and decided that jews are the good guys. Go go Jews, as they say." But also the US started to supply the Israel with guns under the guise of humanitarian aid. Sheiks

saw all that and went like: Ey, Salaam alaikum my dear brothers. Making kebabs from the israelis is a long time tradition that just can not be broken! If you're so smart we'll restrict the oil export. Off you go from the hookah place. Is this gas? While Europe and the US were like So they wage the war, but we're the ones to blame? We can't do anything about it. But I still feel some funny taste in my mouth. Yup. Oh. Tastes like d- The real panic began. All the factories, power plants and developed nation economies as

a whole were fueled solely by oil. And when you understand that the export of the only resource that sustains your system is restricted, what do you do? Right. You buy as much as possible beforehand to postpone the economic collapse. And as we all know, when people start panicking and buying up some product, what happens? The prices skyrocket. And the sheikhs were like "Homie, bring another hookah, now we can afford it." As if it wasn't enough that the countries rushed to buy up any oil they could get their hands on, the US and Europe were hit

by a wave of extremely ridiculous restrictions. Britain, for example, closed down the airports, prohibited driving a car on holidays and weekends, and the prime minister asked the citizens to only turn the heater on in one of the bedrooms instead of the whole house. Germany and Italy had a drastic increase in bycicle prices. And due to defficit, there formed a whole black market of bikes in Italy. When the could have made more money on bicycles than on cocaine, mafia gladly accept the job to spread this sinful trade. In Netherland you could have been put to jail

if you exceeded the energy limit per room. While people in France were fined if temperature in their house exceeded twenty degrees celcium. The US didn't suffer such measures, 20% of their gas stations were just completely out of oil. And if your license plate ended on an even number you could have only fueled your car on the even days of the months. And the otehrs on uneven ones. But the funniest thing was that OPEC countries only lowered their exports by 7%. The oil was exported same as it ever was, everyone was just scared shitless. And the

whole world crisis was caused simply by empty threats. Words of mouth. A group of ballsy people said: "We won't give you the oil," and everyone started running around in panic. The 1973 oil crisis was the first time in history when everyone realized that to influence the nations and make half of the world do whatever you want you didn't need the rockets or the whole army of fanatics, you don't even need to get up from your chair. You just need to own the resources and have balls massive enough to use them. And starting from the year

1973, oil went from just some black liquid to something that could bring you to power. Oil and all its products became a very serious a lever of political pressure. which the whole world had to reckon with. Whatever people say, there's no such thing as absolute freedom. Both on a personal level and among nations. Of course, everybody strives tomaximal freedom so that they stay independent and dictate their own rules, but no. Europe doesn't have its own oil. And in any case they depend on OPEC and gas suppliers like Russia no matter how progressive and developed they

are. And the crisis of seventy three illustrated it quite well. And what conclusion is to be made when you face such things as export restrictions and a nation-wide panic. That you need look for alternative energy sources, of course, but it seemed to me that such dry pragmatism is not enough for everyone to suddenly become concerned about alternative energy sources and ecology. What does ecology have to do with it? Back then no one give ecology a thought, but now ecology is the main argument for giving up hydrocarbons. The fact that Europe realized its dependence is okay.

We'll need this fact later. But how come everyone started caring about the environment and the fact that the car is the main enemy of fresh air. It all started as usual. With one dedicated geek. Chapter 6. One-Man Army In the fifties, during the expansion of American oil companies in the Middle East, there was one geek in one of the US laboratories who poked around in a meteor. An actual scientist who had nothing in his life but science. And only thought about science as well. His name was Clair Patterson. One of the most talented geophysicists of

the 20th century. By the year 1953, he was already a famous scientist, since he was one of the the creators of the atomic bomb that was dropped on Japan. When he saw what his warfare research had resulted in, he decided that he will never work in this sphere again. And started doing peaceful stuff, particularly he went to find out how old the Earth was. In the middle of the 20th century, no one knew for sure how old the Earth was as a planet. But Patterson had an idea of how to find this out, and that's

why he needed the mass spectral analysis. If you are wondering why I’m telling you all this and what is it, don’t worry, I’ll explain myself. Just imagine. You're scientist, someone comes to you bringing a stone with them and says: "Tell me what it is, what is it made of and how many grams of each element there are?" What will you do? Aside from being shocked. But you still have to find of what is this stone made of and in what proportions. The reason to find out what is this rock made of should be clear. For

example, it helps looking for mineral deposits. Or just for fun. Why not? People do that sometimes. And if in the past people knew jack shit about finding out what anything was made of, now you can just put the rock in a special device that will tell you everything. On what principles do devices like this work? You take the ion canon, bombard the object with ions and then look where they hit. And depending on the material the object is made of the ion trajectory will differ. Remember shit they told you at school about each molecule beind

comprised of atoms which can be negative and positive and all that? Well, every material has its own molecular magnetic field and knowing how the magnetic fields of each element deviate the ion trajectory you can analyze chemical makeup of any object. Some scientists might get butthurt from an explaination like that but I deliberately simplify stuff since we don't need to go into details. What's important to know is that Patterson did such things. Patterson believed that meteors were the leftower materials from the times solar system had formed. The big bang happened and this crap has been drifting

through cosmos since then. And if you calculate the meteors age, you can find the age of the Earth. Since they should be around the same age. Went to the same school and all that. And the age of a meteor can be derived from its uranium content. Over time, uranium breaks down into lead. And that is the word we are looking for. If you find the ratio of uranium to lead in an object, you can calculate its age through a special equation. As soon as Patterson realised that it can be used to calculate the age of

the Earth, he immediately went to the nearest meteor store to get a meteorite. He brought it to his laboratory and playing with it. The first thing he had to do was getting a clean meteorite sample because in the time it took for the meteor to travel to Earth, then lie around in some field and get transported to the laboratory, a bunch of shit could have stuck to it. And obviously, it was important to clea that shit off. to increase the test's accuracy. But during the first test Clair realized that there's just too much lead. The

results were off the scale. And he was like: "Well, the lead is probably left from the last experiments. I better clean the laboratory." He cleaned the walls wiped all the equipment, washed all the cans and flasks with sterile water then ran the test again with zero results. Lead everywhere. Lead literally oozed from every crack. It was everywhere - the skin, the clothes, even the tap water. And at that moment Clair realized that it was some weird shit. He desinfected the whole laboratory with chemical solution, installed a pneumatic pump in the vent system covered everything with

polythelene and worked in a mask and a labcoat all wrapped around with tape. But the lead contents were still too high. Which prevented him from conducting the experiment. No matter what he did and no matter how hard he tried he could not achieve sterility. Needless to say, no one really worked on the lab sterility in the fifties. Just put on your gloves and you're good to go. That's why everyone was giving Patterson a weird look when he was wrapping his room and his clothes in trash bags. But Patterson was a stubborn guy and if you

methodically hammer the nail long enough you will eventually succeed. It took him five years to build his first sterile laboratory And get a sterile meteor sample after all. Completely free of impurities stuck to it. Then he spent three more years building a new lab to conduct the spectral analysis experiments since the equipment didn't fit in the last one. In ninety fifty six, after eight years of room cleaning and meteor studying, he completes his research and finds out that the Earth is 4,5 billion years old. Rounds of applause recognition and awards. But Patterson didn't care much.

He wanted to understand what was the deal with lead and why it was everywhere. Just so you know, here's what went on in his lab. First, he prohibited wearing regular clothes in its vicinity. all the assistants had to wear special suits just like he did. Second, the building's ventilation system was redesigned in such way that it became completely airtight. At the same time he installed special aerodynamic equipment that supplied air purified from adulderants. Third, all the wiring in the laboratory was replaced. because it had lead solder at the time. And fourth, all the surfaces in

the room were washed with special chemical solutions several times a day. Patterson let nobody in, saying that if someone comes from the street and simply walks into the room, they would bring so much lead on their hair that they would have had to clean the room for days. And Clair didn't know why that happened. He didn't understand whether it was okay or not. Was lead always around in such quantities and we just noticed it because we have spectral equipment or is it some new planetary process? Needless to say, any research costs money. Quite a substantial

sum. And Patterson naturally had none. For example, the budget for his meteor studies were given by the Atomic Energy Comission when he told them that his research would help with the creation of uranium fuel. Which obviously was total bullshit, and Patterson admitted it later. But he wasn't ashame of such methods of sponsorship. Did he study uranium? He did. Does uranium fuel have uranium in it? It does. Here, simple as that. And so he thought that the whole lead thing can be tested in one peculiar way. He could send an expedition to the ocean to collect

samples from different depths and ocean layers and compare their lead contents. And if the content of lead is high everywhere he could relax since it's all natural. So he came to the oil industry representatives and said that his research might help finding new oil fields in the ocean. Like, they would find traces of oil in some oceanic layers and that spot would be great for an oil rig. The guys happily gave him 200,000 dollars and Patterson went to the expedition. The expedition went all the way from the Pacific ocean to the Sargasso Sea. On the

way they collected samples from all the water banks they passed. When they returned, he once again wrapped himself in a plastic bag and starts his research. And that's when his ass hair start tingling. On average, the samples collected at the surface had lead contents about twenty times higher than the deep sea ones. Which means that lead appeared recently. He started studying volcanic eruptions and similar natural disasters to at least find some logic to the increase in lead contents over the past hundred years. There was no logic. All the disasters were regional. But there were equal

amounts of lead everywhere. And completely by chance in his research he stumbles upon some oil industry report on some successful and huge volume productions of leaded gasoline. At this moment he put the pieces together. Tetraethyl lead caused all this. Without asking anyone's permission he wrote a report on his meteor and ocean studies where he says that the lead is everywhere and how all this is clearly the humans' fault. The oil industry's fault, to be exact. He published it in scientific newspapers. The Petroleum Institute starts seeing red. Not only Patterson didn’t warn anyone and didn’t give

his report for review, they were also shat on by their own sponsee. They did give him the ocean research funds after all. Obviously, the funding was immediately cut off. And the Institute of Petroleum people started pushing the management of the university Patterson was working at. "You should immediately stop his nonesense", they said. But it was too late. The important thing had already happened. The scientific community started to discuss the article and everyone realized that it was a real problem. Then the oilmen realised that there's no use in cutting funding. They tried another approach. They sent

their lawyers and representatives to Patterson so that they could convince him to research something else. Like, "Look, mister, we have the money, we can fund it, anything you want. We can even get you a trainful of trash bags, just don't pick on us." But all the guys got was a lecture on the dangers of lead. They left with empty hands. The petroleum instutute didn't know what to do with this geek. He had no businesses, no lucrative patents, so there were no chips to bargain with him. He was just a stubborn geologist. After the whole oil

industry came crashing down on Patterson, he realized that there's no way back. So he published another article where he attacked the generally accepted norms for the lead contents in human body. Specifically he hit Robert Kehoe who set the 80 milligram norm. Robert Kehoe is the dude who once told health association that if they didn't have the proof of TEL being dangerous, they'd better fuck off. And the guy who was also responsible for safety regulations on Ethyl factories. I've already told you that. factories I told you Kehoe, by that point, lets list it, was the founder

and the head of the Environmental Health department at the University of California. Chairman of the American Industrial Hygiene Association Commission President of the American Academy of Occupational Medicine Vice Chairman of the Board of industrial healthcare And the director of the medical department at the Ethyl plant as a part-time gig. Obviously, such a respectable person in the scientific community held some lab scientist in as much regard as dirt on his shoe. Here is his quote "Conclusions regarding the natural lead content in the human body are just naive, I believe. It's a nice example of how wrong

can a person be in his biological postulates and conclusions when he enters the field in which he is so ignorant that he has no idea about the true depth of his ignorance. Which is the reason for his recklesness in his radical conclusions. Obviously, Kehoe was supported by all the well-known toxicologists of that time. "Let's hope that this article will be the first and the last one in the science fiction genre. said toxicologist Herbert Stockenger, one of the most famous figures of that period. A small nuance was that all the people who criticized Patterson either worked

for the Petroleum Institute directly or were simply funded by the oilmen. Such a tiny little nuance. And when all the behemoths of the scientific community although corrupt, start saying that your articles are just madman's scribbles that don't even deserve all the attention, your chances to win are slim. You can be right all you want, if your ideas won't be able to reach the people, there will be no result. No matter how stubborn you are, if no one listens to you, you will accomplish nothing. And such was the situation Patterson faced. He was one hundred percent

sure he was right. But ignored by everyone. Luckily, if Patterson learned anything while working on the sterility of his lab, was the fact that in any case there will be a result sooner or later. If you work methodically and under no circumstances give up. Everyone loves the stories of lone wolf heroes whose sheer stubborness could tear down any walls break any rules and change this world. But in real life there are no lone wolves. There's society. And people in it. And society is a bitch. Cause at a certain period it's only ready to accept a

certain set ideas If Patterson, for example, started caring about the environment in the forties, nobody would have taken him seriously, everyone had things to worry about. They were having their own fun. Therefore, to understand why certain ideas were only heard in a specific period of time you need to understand the context of this period and the things people had on their minds, what worried them and what they discussed behind closed curtains. Luckily, lead wasn't the only problem of the industry that the scientists and the general public worried about. Chapter 7. Father of the Environmentalism In

1948 in a small town called Donora and located in Pennsylvania, there was an occurance that went down in history as the Donora smog. For four days from twenty seventh to thirty first of october the town was entangled by dense smog. One would think, not a big deal, fog is a natural thing. But the very first day it came clear that something was wrong. Local hospitals started to recieve a lot of calls from people complaining about cough and asthma attacks. And by evening, the whole city was panicking, since everyone was struggling to breathe. The ones who

had an opportunity urgently gathered all relatives and fled the town. The rest were left to suffocate in their homes, the whole town looked dead. Empty streets, cafes and shops and only ambulances driving around trying to save at least somebody. This hel only ended because october thirty first on Sunday it started raining. The smog disappeared and the cause was the zinc production plant which was located nearby. There occured the leakage of gaseous fluorine which killed all vegetation on site and also strangled the town. Out of 14,000 residents, 6,000 got sick and 70 people died. December 4,

1952. London. The city is suddenly hit by anticyclone which makes the weather extremely cold and calm, People are trying to keep warm by running their ovens double-time. And back then most houses wew heated by coal. And when coal burns it emits sulfur especially if the coal is low quality. And the British had just that. The city was quickly covered in fog, but no one bats an eye. I mean, it's London. But the fact that 4,000 people died in two days, and in four days the death toll increased to 13,000 was hard to ignore. And in

hospitals and at home there were 25,000 more lying sick in bed. And it all ended thanks to rain that washed away all the sulfur in the air. It seems this town needs a new superhero. And that kind of crap happened all around the globe. Absolutely everywhere close to the large factories, people in the vicinity complained about their health deteriorating. They had lung problems and died prematurely. Medics and climatologists from all the developed countries started researching smog which was a pretty common phenomenon in big cities. One of those researchers, a Frenchman named Eugene Houdry calculated that

from 1915 to 1950 the consumption of gasoline, coal and oil had increased by 25 times and exactly by 25 times had increased the incidence of lung cancer among city residents. And such studies were held out more often each day. All this leads to the fact that the governments of developed countries understand that they need to deal with that problem. Since the US at that time had the most developed industry, they had higher incedence than the others. And since the fifties were the heyday of TV and radio broadcasting, the whole country was aware That some weird

shit is constantly happening near the manufactories. Before that, if something like this happened to Donora, Pennsylvania, the only ones to know it would have been only the residents of Donora, Pennsylvania. Even people from the nearest town wouldn't have known. But now any screw up would have been made public. Naturally, everyone worried about this and the most important thing was that people didn't feel protected by the state. And unhappy people are the people who vote opposition. And something needed to be done. The government held a gathering in 1955, scratched their heads and gave birth to the

air pollution control act that allowed scientists to conduct research on factories, inform the population about possible dangers, find the pollution causes and figure out the way to control it. The law didn't introduce any emission regulations. The only thing it was good for was funding scientists' research, so they slowly started accumulating reliable data. Also it calmed people down. Everything's fine, we're dealing with it, nothing to worry about. The new wave of environmental concerns was fueled by this book. Silent spring, written in 1963. Eight years after the air pollution control act. This book was published by an

activist and biologist Rachel Clarkson, she studied how plants, animals and humans were affect by pesticides that were quite actively used by most farmers. Pesticides are chemicals that are sprayed over the fields to kill rodents, insects and weeds. So that they wouldn't destroy the crops. And the result of her study was quite a logical conclusion. Substances that kill insects rodents and small birds are not very good for human health The government had no control over the agricultural industry as well as manufacturers, so farmers were free to water their fields with whatever they wanted. In her book

Rachel focused on how chemicals affect the child's body They affect organ development, occurrence of chronic diseases, neural system damage and so on. And if you want to hook as many people as possible, you won't find a trigger better than health or the future of the children. And this book covered both subjects. The book quickly swept the nation and caused a storm of unrest no one expected. People started going out to the streets and arranging demonstrations with slogans like "Stop poisoning our children. " Causing general unrest. Plus by this time, the scientists who studied air near

the factories had collected a rather hefty amount of data. The industry and the cars emit harmful substances and solid particles sulfur, lead, nitrogen and carbon. And since the country's industry was doing well, and there were 83 million cars on the roads back then, emissions were substantial. For example, now there are around 60 million cars in Russia. And there were 20 million more in the US 60 years ago. And the US is half the sieze of Russia. In addition to that, we should also consider the fact that in 1963 John Kennedy was killed. The favorite president

of American citizens. And in the country faced a lot of internal problems, while the atmosphere of total distrust and discontent thickened in the air. 1965 is the year the US join the Vietnam war Which was condemned by the whole younger generation. And 1967 was the year Detroit rioted and the black population tore down half of the city so they had to send tanks in. Fun times those were. Politicians understood that control over society was slipping through their fingers and no one knew where to start. The social problems or the racial conflict or the environment or

the war. Who knows. Everything is on fire and trust in the government, just as electoral votes, just vanished, and the power is a thing that can't just dissolve into thin air. If someone loses it, someone else will take it if he is smart enough to turn things into his favor. Meet Edmund Muskie one of the first environmentalist politicians in the US And the entire world. he was a member of the Democratic Party in Maine and Maine is a countryside paradise in the north of the US famous for its lakes, forests and rocky coasts. Like Russian

Karelia. Though the state of Maine is two times smaller in area and two times bigger in population. There are also about 5,000 rivers, lakes and ponds, and most people used to earn a living from cattle breeding and fishing. Muskie gained popularity in his state because he accusedL.Word all the manufacturers of making the nature look like shit with their waste. Like, "These factories are just standing there pouring their waste into our clean rivers. " While the government turns a blind eye and does nothing. As time went, more people shared the position of a young politician, he

traveled throughout the region, and spoke in all the towns in front of the people and in every speech he urged people to wake up and look around. And see how factories pollute our rivers, how refineries fill the air with poison, how they cut down the forest. At such rates they will soon be living on a toxic dump of production waste. Eventually Muskie became the governor of the state in January 1955. And the first thing he did was fulfilling his campaign promises. He gathered a team of like-minded people from the government who shared his point of

view and started to push the idea of creating the Maine Department of Conservation, which would have jurisdiction over forestry, sea and shore fisheries, mineral, water, and other natural resources. It took a while, but what's important is that it worked. And Muskie was alowed to create a comeetee. In for four years Muskie developed the legislation that established emission and waste standards for Maine factories and plants. And instructed the committee to oversee the whole thing. Since this was the very first version of that kind of law, it looked something among the lines of: "Okay, guys, you're making

a bunch of shit At least have some dignity not to spill the waste directly into the lake. Take it to the dump, or at least around the corner. Be my bros." While non-compliance with the standards implied fines which were happily taken by the commitee. Muskie redirected these funds to schools and universities By the late 60s Muskie became a notable politician on a national level. Who also aimed for the Senate. The senate is the central governing body in the US similar to federation council in Russia. There are nuances, but the point is the same. Thanks to

the fact that Muskie continued to meet with the people and didn't hesitate to go into polemics he had a lot of fans. And he finally managed to get into the Senate And that is when Patterson notices him who fought with the entire scientific community with his research on lead. Patterson, who was being destroyed by well-respected scientists stopped caring about scientific journals and just started sending out the results of his research directly to the senate. And naturally, the first to recieve it was Muskie. When the results touched his deck Edmund clung into them like a lifebelt.

Patterson's studies showed that the industry was extremely harmful for the environment and human health. And he couldn't miss such an opportunity. Since Muskie had already been a notable political figure, he succeeded in pushing the government into funding the Water and Air Protection Commitee. and started preparing his own laws on that regard. His logic was unchanged since the state level. You see, we introduce emission norms and penalties for non-compliance, which we will then spend on education. We helped the environment, calmed people down and spent money on education. which made people even happier, here are our brownie

points. Right here. The perfect solution. And in 1963 the world's first law on air pollution appears. Which is effective nation-wide. It applied both to productions and the cars. Speaking about cars, according to this law, the amount of nitrogen and carbon dioxide produced by the car had to be reduced by 85%. How about that? Roughly speaking, and average car emitted 87 grams of carbon dioxide per mile, and they asked 13. How? Nobody knows. The idea of reducing the amount of emissions tenfold sounded ridiculous but fortunately car companies had a solution to comply with the norm without

any risks. This solution was a catalyst. By this time these had already been installed on factories which were coughing up just too much smoke. And in theory they could fit into a car A catalyst is an iron can with metal cells inside which contained special metals which boost chemical reactions In a nutshell, bad air comes in the jar magic happens and the cleaner air comes out. That is all we need to know. I don't want to bombard you with chemistry. No need. Just remember that the catalyst neutralizes any crap the car exhausts. Not completely but

substantially. The problem is that the catalyst was incompatible with leaded gasoline. Lead quickly clogged all the cells and catalysts simply stopped working And car companies went like We're okay with that, It's easy as pie to put catalyst in a car. It just wouldn't work. It's not our problem, go talk to the oilmen. And the oilmen went like. Since the lead was the first thing to deal with, by Muskie and Patterson's initiative, in 1963 the health care institute held the meeting on the dangers of lead gasoline. Aside from Patterson, this meeting was attended by a number

of doctors and scientists who also had the study results on their hands stating that the norm of 80 milligrams of lead per 100 milliliters of blood is bad for human health. Kehoe, the devil's advocate who had been defending lead this whole time, came to the meeting and started playing his old records like: "You have no proof that lead is dangerous, go screw yourselves, here are our lawyers, by the way." But for the first time in his life he was publicly told "Hello? Don't you understand? We have the research." In fact it was the first meeting

held by officials that didn't end with them saying led was okay and safe to use. On the other hand, they didn't take any measures either. Just bullied Kehoe and went home. But Muskie finally decided that he will not get off of leaded gasoline companies' backs. In a year a meeting of the committee on airwater pollution was held, where Muskie participated. He decided to arrange a public cross-poll for Patterson and Kehoe here's the official transcript. Are you out of your fucking minds, you fucking assholes? What the fuck have you done? So your conclusion is that there

was no increase in the lead contents in the athmosphere? Oh, fuck off before I put your mic into your ass! There is no evidence that in this period there occurred any changes at all. Then they brought Patterson who fiercely smashed the health care service and Kehoe to pieces. He showed that tons of lead got in the athmosphere with exhaust fumes, and since it killed people slowly no one notices. He also argued that the health service is obviously conspiring with the oil industry because there could be no other reason for leaded gasoline still not being banned.

TEL is a crime that is being committed against our citizens, that was his main idea. Patterson was finally heard. This meeting was a turning point in the leaded gasoline issue. Muskie finally leaves to prepare the legislative framework for the restriction of additives that can be mixed into fuel and some time later the Department of Conservation comes out with a proposal. Not a ban but a proposal to reduce the lead contents by 60%. The industry goes berserk. They considered this proposal to be extremely radical. But Patterson also goes berserk, because he considered it to be too

light. Patterson, oozing with rage, seeking for more arguments against lead begins to study the bones of ancient people and here's what he gets from different samples. First he took some Peruvian tooth that was 4,500 years old and calculated that the amount of lead in total mass of tooth's calcium was That's the number, believe it or not. Then he took the bone of some Egyptian, who lived 2,200 years ago, How about that? Basically, 12,5 times more than in the Peruvian tooth. And while testing the skeleton of a modern human, of lead in the total mass of

calcium. Think about that as well. Which means that the human body from the 1970s had 50 times more lead than the body of the Egyptian and 600 times more than the body of the Peruvian. After this research the scientific community went like: "Well, that's some heavy stuff. Can't argue with that one." While the industry defended itself with the fact that lead gasoline is the economy's blood. Plus all of its production factories which there were a ton of, created workplaces and generated tax money, and healthcare people knew that while the economic truth is on the side

of manufactories, people are ready to breathe dirty air if they have dirty money in their pockets. While clean air and empty stomach is something nobody wants. Same with smoking. Everyone knows it's bad, but they still smoke cause it feels good. Plus, giving up lead means redesigning all the factories cutting back the current staff, recruiting and training the new workers, development of new technologies and it's all expensive. Plus the oilmen were supported by the car companies, since installing precious metal catalyst in all the cars all cars would have been too expensive for the consumer. And if

services and commitees were still hesitating, Muskie was unstoppable, he pressured the oilmen and car companies from two sides. He limited the use of additives and set exhaust fumes norm. His new version of the law on air and water pollution was was his political bargaining chip, which he flamboyantly used in front of the public. By this time he had already gained such popularity that he was going to run for president. and in one of his campaign speeches he said, quote Detroit told the nation that Americans cannot live without cars. This law will tell Detroit that they

have to design an automobile that Americans could coexist with. He lost the presidential campaign, but he still remained in one the top positions in the country and continued his methodical fight against lead and exhaust fumes In total, the war against leaded gasoline producers went on for almost twenty five years. The first meeting on lead hazard was held in 1965. And the document that completely prohibited the use of lead additives was signed only in 1990. And according to this document, only five years later by December 31, 1995, all gas stations in the US were supposed to

stop selling leaded fuel at all. And car companies were obliged to install catalysts in all of their car models And main hero of this whole story and this victory was Clair Patterson Just a stubborn geologist who wanted to work for the good of people. At the end of his life he was admitted to the National Academy of Sciences of the US. He was also awarded with Tyler Prize, the most prestigious award in the field of environmental sciences. While all the measures he took to make his labs sterile, which were laughed at by his colleagues, have

become standard procedures. Clair Patterson was born June 2, 1922, a year after Kettering had patented tetraethyl lead. Patterson was 25 days away from witnessing the complete ban of lead. He died December 5, 1995. For the second half of life until his last breath, he fought so that lead would forever go away from the air we breathe. Turned out, they've gone together. And the corporations that caused colossal environmental damage got away with it. They were just forced to stop making TEL. The only man who was publically lynched and blamed for everything was Thomas Midgley who invented

tetraethyl lead. Even though his whole life Midgley was just a hired worker in contrast to Kettering, who received dividends from the patents and had Ethyl shares And so on. Midgley didn't make that much money off of TEL. didn't get to a high corporative position, he just received a fixed salary. But when the war on TEL started, he got all the hate from environmentalists and scientists. Although he warned Kettering and the corporation about the dangers of lead. And he didn't profit from it at all. Unlike the GM that made billions. Thanks to Ethyl GM surpassed Ford's

profits mid-century. And giving up TEL would have been a disaster for their budget. Not Midgley but GM and Standard Oil lawyers promoted the use of TEL. Even when scientists had evidence of its danger. But no one cares. Midgley is still considered to be the one who caused great harm to our planet's ecology. While corporations got off scott free. We just produce stuff. We have nothing to do with it, Midgley was the inventor. What's your deal? In the last forty years starting from the eighties, a lot of research was conducted concerning the effect lead has on

humans. Scientists have studied children who were born in the seventies and the eighties observed their lives and their development In broad terms, they was found out that the generation born and raised during the lead gasoline consumption peak, Has lowered IQ, is more irritable, less focused on completing tasks more difficult to train and so on. In twenty thirteen, a large study was completed which revealed a direct link between the contents of lead in blood with crime rates and the numbers of crimes these people commit. Criminals always had more lead in blood than law-abiding citizens. The scientists

also linked it to the hell that was raised in Detroit in the eighties and nineties when the crime rates there were sky high and the city turned from a thriving industrial paradise to nasty ruins which were simply dangerous to live in. Residents of Detroit had the highest amount of lead in their blood compared to the entire country. When the TEL restrictions began, Lead levels started dropping. By 1994, even before the complete ban of lead gasoline, lead content in blood of Americans decreased by 78% compared to the 1970s. And today this number is ridiculously low. And

TEL is one of the most dangerous poisons the industry gave us. It poisoned millions of people worldwide. Corporations and the economy got their billions. While people were getting sick. And for the fact that TEL is no longer a threat we should thank one stubborn scientist. whom no bureaucratic machine could harm. Whether it be corporation or the government. And even though Clair Patterson worked on the creation of the atomic bomb which ended thousands of lives, by the end of his work and his life he saved considerably more lives from slowly succumbing to the invisible poison. He

reedemed his sins in the eyes of humanity. Chapter 8. All for One and One for All After Muskie started a full scale campaign in the US to fight for the conservation of nature. The whole world starts paying more attention to ecology. And keep a closer look to all the events somehow related to it. All that for a reason. The first significant event was the London smog of ninety fifty two which I already mentioned. About four years later in the fifty-sixth Japanese scientists found some new strange mental disorder among residents. Predominantly among children in the city

of Minamata. The hospitals were full of children who moved sluggishly, had speech defects and suffered occasional seizures. First scientists thought that it was some new infection is since the number of cases increased exponentially. Then similar symptoms were found in cats who also had weirdly twitched with convulsions and were generally extremely weak. And when dead crows started ocassionally falling from the sky, even scientists went like Colleague, shouldn't the birds fly in the opposite direction? Must be the new species. Reverse birds. Let's place it in the endangered species list then. We wouldn't want it to die. Having

studied all the victims, scientists found out that they all lived in the fishing villages on the coast of Minamata Bay. Cats too. And the main food in the fishing village is obviously fish. Which was also often found floating belly-up. Probably tired and getting a rest. And when they looked up the stream, they saw a Chissep chemical plant that poured the waste in the water and didn't worry one bit. The chemical analysis of water showed that water had everything in it but water. Lead, mercury, manganese, arsenic, selenium, thallium, and other elements. But the most harmful one

for the health was mercury, and its levels were over-the-top. Official recognition of the Minamata disease happened only 12 years later, in 1968. And only then the authorities took care of the plant by reducing the pollution. Before that, plant management bribed the authorities, forcing people and fishermen to remain silent and shutting all mouths that wanted to argue with a fistful money. After pollution was recognised, its consequences had been neutralized for the next 30 years. By 2001, the plant's official victims list had 2,265 people. 174 of whom died. In 1957 there occurred the first nuclear emergency in

the USSR. It happened on the Mayak chemical plant in Chelyabinsk-forty not to be confused with Chelyabinsk, it's a whole different place. The modern name of this town is Ozyorsk, and to put it symply, a tank full of radioactive waste exploded there. The explosion was tens of tons in trinitrotoluene equivalent and covered the whole region with a radioactive cloud Its aftermath lasted for decades. and now the Eastern Ural Nature Reserve is located on the explosion site. It has a slight nuclear aftertaste. 80,000 people were officially recognized as victims, these were people who lived in the vicinity

as well as radiation liquidators. The only disasters bigger in nuclear contamination were the Chernobyl meltdown and and the Fukushima incident. In 1963 a landslide happened in the Italian Alps. In 45 seconds a local water reservoir was bombarded, according to estimations, with 200 to 300 million cubic meters of soil. Such speed and such volume of rock caused a ninety meters high wave, which was moving at the speed of twelve meters per second. In seven minutes, the wave completely destroyed five villages and caused serious damage to some settlement in the valley. Resulting in 2,500 to 3,000 deaths.

Such events happened by dozens. In different corners of the world there happened either natural disasters, like landslides and earthquakes, or man-made disasters, explosions, chemical contaminations, general pollution. And most importantly, people were dying. And when people die somewhere it is always raises concerns and social unrest. When there was a demand someone who would dealt with environment on a global scale, Everyone looked at the UN. That's what they were made of. To prevent world conflicts, ensure world security and all that noise. And here we have a global problem. We breathe the same air. So it's logical for

the UN to deal with that. Sound logic. The UN happily started creating the ground for the global environmental discussion. Though soon they faced a problem. Everyone told them to fuck off. That is evryone said "Good job. You're doing important work. Our respect. But you can manage without us." It is also important to note that the UN is sponsored by the member countries. It doesn't make any profit by itself. All the countries just donate to a common fund and that's how it works. And when the UN comes to you to talk, this means that after a

row of formalities and hail Marys they will just ask you for money. Just like a teacher who comes to the parenting board meeting. in the end, everything will eventually lead to the fact that the school needs new curtains. Same shit but on the national level. And the seventies were the time where people couldn't have cared less about the UN and their nonsense. The cold war, the oil crisis of seventy three I mentioned, the US Vietnam war intervention, islamists uprising in Syria. the Watergate scandal, resignation of Richard Nixon, The lead seventies in Italy, which was basically

a low-intensity civil war. the cultural revolution in China, the Pinochet's military coup in Chile and the list could still go on. You can just open Wikipedia and freak out at everything that was happening in the world. The whole world was having fun and killing itself any way it can. Nothing new. And the UN with all their "let's discuss air" completely missed the goal. Like a preacher accidentaly walking into an orgy. But they didn't give up. They still wanted to have a proper discussion with the states. So the UN has gathered an assembly and went like

We have a task of bothering all the national governments, trying to convince them that they need to think about the environment, going around the embassies, and generally working non-stop while everyone calls you a retard behind your backs and that you'd better find a real job. Any takers? And while everyone remained silent, one man let out a sigh and said: I guess I'll try. This man was Maurice Strong. And if Edmund Muskie is considered the father of environmentalism in the US, then Strong is the man who made the movement global. The very first thing he did

as ordering a report on the state of the planet's environment. He called it Only one Earth. The care and Maintenance of a Small Planet. This report was comprised of data collected by 158 scientists from 58 countries. Now this report is sold as a book, you can get it from Amazon. Don't mind the authorship of Barbara Ward and Rene Duboe. Strong hired them to write the book because he couldn't do it himself. In 1972 during another UN assembly in Stockholm Strong presents that book and the data it contained. And the data said that everything was bad.

If we don't start looking after the environment right now, we're done for. Everyone puts on their serious faces. They decided that a whole new program is needed to deal with the problem. It would take care of the planet's health and all that. called the program like that The program was called UNEP. Strong was appointed as the chief and went on to conquer the world. I don't really get why it's called a program though. Since it is a separate structural unit of the UN. Like, with their own headquarters, offices, staff, budget and all that. Since the

UN is a diplomatic organization, its senior members... senior members, have the privilege to kick down any embassy's door and appoint a meeting with any country's government. And if the reason for such meeting is a noble cause like fight for all good, it goes without saying that everyone is happy to see you. Which Strong happily took advantage of. He traveled all the significant countries of the world, sought meetings with all leaders and ruling elites showed them the research results and said that they all needed to get together immediately to take joint action. Since working alone won't

do. We all breathe the same air. Meanwhile, a wery important research sees the light. In 1975 an American climatologist Wallace Broecker published an article on climate change. Are we at the brink of global warming? In this article Wallace suggested a possible reversal of the climate trends From the 1940s to the 1970s the trend was general decrease in temperature and Wallace said that in the near future the trend will reverse to heating and we are facing a period of global warming. And this was the first scientific article where this term was mentioned. Once more. Before the

seventies the overall temperature dropped and no one bat an eye. but after it started increasing, everyone clenched their buttcheeks. Wallace also argued that you can not just look into one certain factor and you need to observe the system as a whole. Like the atmosphere, polar ice sheets, the ocean and biosphere, since it's all connected. And is to change simultaniously. Wallace's article stirred the whole scientific community. and a large number of scientists started researching globas processes. As we all know from the whole lead thing, that had only been cancelled after twenty years, bigger politics and bigger

structures are not quick to change. Strong spent twenty years going to personal meetings with different country leaders. He held discussions, showed them the research results persuaded, scared and inspired people. Anything so that the world leaders started thinking about the environment. For twenty years this guy has been hearing: "Bugger off, kid. We got things to do. A whole bunch of people lives here and they're not going to kill themselves, so we're very busy. As a result of Strong's 20-year-long work, the Earth Summit was held in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. Under the same roof gathered 8,000

delegates from different countries, along with 3,000 representatives of international non-governmental organizations. That was the largest event in history dedicated to the environment. Its slogan was: "Our last chance to save the planet." the whole agenda was something along the lines of: Guys, either we- immediately do something or we better go to Mars. Oh wait, we can't go to Mars. We don't have the tech. So we have to do something immediately! Naturally, everyone went like: Apparently we have to do something with the environment. Apparently yes. Human lives are important. I wonder if they know we're going to

bomb the neighboring countries. But if we make a rocket that won't leave a carbon footprint, they won't mind I think. I love caring about environment. I wonder what if we use the rocket to fuck up the penguins? The most importnt thing that went on the Earth Summit, is that people finally understood that they just had to do something for the environment. The Earth Summit of ninety two was the first large-scale event of this kind that didn't just end with smiles and handshakes. But with signing actual documents. During the Summit 180 countries had signed The UN

Framework Convention on Climate Change. This document recognized climate change on a global scale and implied that all the countires will start working together to solve this problem. There were three main areas that needed to be worked on. The first - reducing the toxicity of industrial emissions and completely banning the lead gasoline. In ninety two TEL was still produced, which would stop only three years later. The second, developing alternative energy sources. To replace fossil fuel. Back then most of the world's energy was generated from fossil fuel, oil, coal, and gas. And how do they get energy

from it? By burning it. Yup. That is what technological progress looks like. And when you burn fuel huge volumes a huge volume of environmentalist asses starts burning as well. And to prevent it from happening you need to develop alternatives. The third. Wrong finger. Public transport statushad to be improved. so that people in big cities would start using it instead of personal transport. Less traffic jams, less pollution. The only downside is the bicyclists. But the more bicyclists there are, the less there are. Aside from that they also discussed water supplies. Like, there were too many in

the world but the water supply remained the same, Luckily, we're car lovers. A mentally stable lot, so the only liquid of interest for us is gasoline. Forget about water. Basically, what's important is that they had the course. everyone exchanged handshakes and went to work with serious faces. And in 1997 the Kyoto Protocol was also signed. The protocol was the consequence of the framework convention. Roughly speaking, convention meant that they only persuaded people to do something about the environment, While Kyoto protocol was a document that stated certain responsibilities for each country. Something like that. The main

goal of the Kyoto protocol was the general reduction of the greenhouse gases into the athmosphere of the Earth, Countries came to an agreement that there were six major enemies of the athmosphere. Carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, hydrofluorocarbon, perfluorocarbon and sulfur hexafluoride Surprised I managed to spell all that. mortgage from 1 time of the goods, these This stuff is the biggest part of greenhouse gases. In fact, greenhouse gases are- don't throw anything. Are the only reason we're alive. Those gases present in the air are also a part of our athmosphere. They protect us from the direct

sun radiation. If they didn't exist, there wouldn't have been life on earth. But environmentalists believe that the extra emissions generated by the industries are increasing this protective blanked. Which would create the greenhouse effect. Ultimately leading to global warming. and when the temperature rises the ice sheets melt. and Venice will be completely washed away. Why is it the problem for environmentalists and not the Venice is a question. Although all they have are gondoliers, let them be. Basically, all these agreements led to the creation of modern European standards for emissions. European emission standard is a document which

sets the max level of emissions a car exhausts per kilometer. If some vehicle doesn't fit the norm, it cannot be sold on the territory of the state which adopted the standard. It all started with Euro 1, adopted in 1993, a year after the Earth Summit. In a nutshell, the standard prohibited mechanical carburettors. as they couldn't control the fuel dosage and pour too much, which is a no-no according to Euro 1. Also it introduced mandatory oxygen sensors, AKA lambdas, and fuel vapor recovery systems. Euro 2 implied fuel injection regulations. mono injector was outdated due to its

low accuracy. While Euro 4 implied installing Exhaust gas re-circulation system, That system feeds exhausts back into the engine so that the same air could be used twice. It also implied mandatory phase regulator installment. Today, the Euro 6 standard is active in Europe. And Euro 7 is still in development. It is to be adopted in this decade. And right now, like, today there are discussions and bargainings between car companies and the governments over the exact parameters of Euro 7. The question is put this way: will it be possible for internal combustion engines to mmet the standard's

requirements at all, or not. While the whole logic behind norms is bringing emissions down to zero. Everyone had figured out, that the biggest evil of all is the engine, and it's needed to restrict the hell out of it. So that emission levels would be zero. That is what the restriction looks like. Because it is impossible to make it so the ICE doesn't emmit anything at all. That considered, all the modern engines that fit the Euro 6 norm, are so clean that they generate less solid particles than worn down brake pads or worn out tires. When

you run out of pads, brake discs or rubber that does not mean that they magically evaporated. You just slowly smeared them all over the road you drove your car on. There are more of such solid particles flying off to the athmosphere from your brake discs and pads than the ones that modern internal combustion engines emmit. Even modern diesel engines that fit Euro 6 are way more eco-friendly than your brake system. Do you remember some movie scenes where they would lock somebody up in a car bring the exhaust pipe there and they eventually suffocated? Well, it's

impossible with a modern engine. The only reason for a person to suffocate in such scenario is him using up all the oxygen in the car. But such is the case with any enclosed and unvented place. You could suffocate in your own closet if you make it airtight. So it is physically impossible for the modern engine to kill anybody. Even if you try. But do you think somebody keeps that in mind? Obviously no, common sense and logic are scarce resources. It's easier to put some zeros on the paper and make everyone comply and look for some

magic solution. As of now, the Kyoto protocol was replaced by a newer version called Paris Agreement of the year twenty fifteen. Where countries expanded their fronts in the war on CO-two. And mapped out a zero emission strategy. And the car companies started the development of new electric platforms, new technologies, electric vehicles, hydrogen cars and all that noise. It is quite obvious that Euro 7 is the last norm which requirements could be met by traditional internal combustion engine. And then... There will be something different. Something we will drive in our clean and eco-friendly future. Basically, thanks

to the strength and determination of Maurice Strong, thanks to the UN, thanks to the scientists and all the indiffirent ones, environmental issues are now actively discussed on a global level. Humanity as a whole is thinking about the state of ecology and nature as a whole. And ecology is a very noble cause for the modern world. It's being discussed and debated and it's used as an argument in the debates. At almost every meeting of the world leaders this question is rised one way or another. And ecology is used as a main argument for giving up the

ICE as soon as possible and starting to use some other penguin-friendly type of vehicle. Yup, that's right. I agree with them. I fully support this point of view. There's just one thing. One tiny thing. Which I can't get over. Chapter 9. Last Piece of the Puzzle Year 1981. A lawsuit against a company called ASL resources. was engaged in the sale of oil in Denver, Colorado the company's management was accused of artificially inflating prices of the company's stock before the merging. I hope it's clear why one would inflate stock prices. You inflate the prices, people buy

the stock for more money, you withdraw the cash and voila. And the fact that somebody spent more money on you than you really cost is their problem. And so the AZL management forged all their reports inflated their rates, to make more profit. But happily they were grabbed by their asses and the deal was cancelled. And a formal action was already taken against company's management. Please meet the AZL Resources CEO. Oh, you've already met. It's Maurice Strong. Hey, wait a second, kiddo! Didn'tcha just tell me that this man was a bloody saint? And now it turns

out that the environmentalists can also be fucking liers? Yup. Despite the fact that all the company and its executives' machinations have been exposed, and the merge has failed, another oil company buys AZL. Tosco. And AZL got away with... just a 4,2 million fine. 4,2 million dollars is a very severe punishment for an oil company, yeah. You could collect as much if you look under the couch in the accounting. Here's another class action lawsuit, the state of Colorado, plus the environmentalists, plus some water extracting companies v. AWDI, dating 1992. Not Audi, but AWDI, or American Water

Development, Inc., founded by Maurice Strong. After that deal when AZL managed to sell its asset to Tosco, Maurice left his chair. And purchases a huge ranch in Colorado. which, by some happy coincidence, used to be owned by the Tosco corporation, So, at first this dude tried selling his company at a higher price, he got caught by his ass and fined, then he still manages to sell the company to the other corporation and then, coincidentally comes out of the deal with a plot of land stretching for some puny 65,000 hectares. I'll try to explain what 65,000

hectares are. Imagine a football field. Built according to FIFA recommendations. 105 by 68 meters. Well, 65,000 hectares equals 91,036 of such fields. Not that clear yet. You just know that it's a shit load of land, but the whole extent is unknown. I was born in Veliky Novgorod. Not Nizhny Novgorod, thank you very much. Shoutout to all the Astafievs in Nizhny Novgorod. Anyway, my hometown's area is 90 square kilometers, or 9,000 hectares. So Strong's plot of land was roughly the size of seven Veliky Novgorods. This cis even bigger than the city of Kazan, which covers a

total area of 50,000 hectares. Basically, that is the size of the ranch Strong got himself there. From the deal money. Initially Strong planned to grow high-protein grains there. to ship to the countries struck with famine. Such a noble mission. mission but in the process of construction But during the construction there was a change of plans and by accident they started building a water extraction plant. To extract the water and sell it. When local activists and the environmental protection commitee witnessed the scales of construction, and the planned capacity of the plant, chills ran down their spines.

If the plant was to start working, it would extract water in such volumes that it would have irrevertably damaged the whole region's ecosystem. Just so you understand the scale: at the time there were twenty five water extraction plants. And all them put together extracted less water than the Strong's company planned. Just one company would have sucked the whole state's ecosystem dry. The lawsuit was formod by the whole state. Literally. Well, everyone who knew about this situation. And the court ruled that yes, Strong's company stepped out of line and the plant cannot be opened. Any extraction

is not to be allowed. and also ordered the company to cover the legal fees of three million dollars. Baiscally, legal fees are sum that pays the lawyers' work during the trial and all that accumulated over several years. And the company didn't suffer any fines or other forms of punishment. And while the trial went on, Strong was like "Okay, didn't work '. And just left the company. You know. It's Russia, baby. Oh, wait. But, here's my favorite. The lawsuit against Molten Metal Technology. For the inflation of stock prices and the misuse governmental grants. Inflated stock prices

sound familiar. That's right, Maurice Strong had become the CEO of this company in 1989. The company developed a technology that allowed the recycling of waste by dissolving it in liquid metal. You just throw shit into the molten metal and it just burns there in some way. Completely dissolving. No harmful emissions and garbage. Well, at least the company said so. Somebody has a good smell for big days. was right before the Earth Summit. And the executive of a waste management company using his diplomatic status as a UN missionary, travels around the world to meet the world

leaders and tells them about environmental issues. And casually offers a solution to the waste problem while he's at it. and what does that mean for the company? The fact that just the American department allocated 25 million dollars in grants for waste disposal. The total amount of money the company gathered from all the departments and heads of states is unknown. Everything seems fair. You got the money. You got the waste. Go recycle it. Yes. But the company couldn't fulfill the promised volumes. They had the technology was but it only worked on small test batches. And there

was no way this technology could dispose of higher volumes. And Maurice knew it. But still told people on public events that Molten Metal is a perfect technology. And that his company will be able to solve all waste disposal issues. And the company's stock shares skyrocketed. And Strong himself owned 40,000 shares. While 262,000 shares were held by the companies where Strong was the chairman. Quite an argument to inflate the prices. The moment stock prices peaked at around 49 dollars Strong sells all his Molten Metal shares. And the corporations he controlled dumped their shares too. The market

was like Wait a sec, what was that? And immediately the information was revealed about it being a scam. Yes, they had the technology, but nobody was going to build a plant. And the shares have plummeted from 49 dollars to 13 cents and the company immediately declares its bankruptcy. Because it wasn't able to refund any money. In the end, here is the statement regarding the whole thing. "The case was settled with 11,8 million dollars in damages without filing a legal complaint". It means, somebody just paid 11,8 million dollars to the US budget and no legal complaint

was filed. Where are the 13 million grant money and all the money from the sale of 300,000 shares, that is 15 million dollars more? That's not specified. And no one has any problem with it. The case was settled. Problem solved. Yeah, yup, good job. We've done the same thing with my colleague once. Was he charged with felony though, like we were? Maurice Strong was the senior adviser to the general secretary of the UN assembly, senior adviser to the president of the world bank UNEP founder, head of the Peace Institute, Director of the United Nations African

Hunger Relief Program and the Earth Summit organizer A respectable man, why punish him? After all, he's not Russian. Stop picking on him, god damn it! He's a cool dude, nobody's perfect, what can you do. at least he gathered all those parasites and put them to work at that summit. Or whatever. I agree, he done well. Except all the agreements of the Earth Summit were shat on by everyone. From a high tower. Collectively, I must say. Yes, the US has signed the Kyoto protocol, But they didn't ratify it. Ratification means putting it to work. Basically, by

signing the document the US has promised that they would apply restrictions. But then they gathered at congress and decided - to hell with those agreements. Canada just withdrew from the agreement and other countries kind of signed it, kind of ratified it, but did nothing of substance afterwards. You know why? Because there was no punishment for non-compliance. Not at all. The guys would just look at you disapprovingly. That's it. They could also point fingers at you. Basically, here's what emission restriction agreements are. Let's see what they mean for each individual country. You might think that now

they had to control every production. So that they don't shit in the rivers and pollute the air. Well, not quite. The important thing here is that any restrictions mean a slowdown in economy's development. because you need to rebuild the factories, to close some of them down completely, build the new ones which is expensive. And any expensesthat are aimed not at generating additional profit, but at some third party crap, are the brakes for economical development. Roughly speaking, imagine this. You own a company. You built it, launched a production line and the company started make money where

would you rather spend this money. Obviously, it is logical to spend it on on the construction of another production line. Or spend it on the equipment needed to make a new product. Or create more workplaces. Or buy a new building. Basically, anything that allows you to make more money. So that then you could expand even further. And so on, in theory. But what will happen if you spend all the money you made on planting bushes and trees around the corporate territory. It will be green and beautiful, fact. But at such rates the corporation will quickly

go banckrupt. Because it will lose the market and get crowed out by the competitors. If you don't develop, you die. That's how market economy works. And basically, the whole situation with the countries and the economies is the same. Just on a global level. And the economies of all countries are different. And they shit into the atmosphere differently. For example, the US with its developed industry, all the enterprises and factories polluted the atmosphere way harder over the past century than, say, India. Where the rapid industrial and economical development had only started recently. What do you do

then? Placing the same restrictions on the US and India would be wrong. Because development conditions are unequal. India hadn't polluted the air that much, but will face the same punishment as the US. In that case it turns out that developing countries will never catch up with developed ones. And that is discrimination. And that's what the UN has come up with. all countries have different pace of emissions reduction. Developed countries that have already polluted the air well enough like the US and Europe, should reduce their emmissions immediately. While the developing nations like India, China, Russia and

such, which hadn't fucked up the air that much yet. Are allowed to reduce emissions at a slower pace. And if you start fining countries then it is quite possible that the economy that has the money will pollute the environment anyway, since it could afford a fine. And the developing economy couldn't afford such thing. And that would have been a nation-wide discrimination as well. That's why all the restrictions are voluntary. And the funniest thing is that even if you take this mission responsibly, and start acting strictly according to standards, you can still exceed the emission norms

because you can buy an additional emission package from another country. Which didn't use its quota up completely. I'm not kidding. Emission standards are now subject to trade. If you want to look good in the UN eyes, without slowing the economy down, buy an additional package. And be a good boy. Basically, pay up and they won't care if you shoot polar bears for breakfast. Well, at least those European fags care about their citizens. They build those electric windmills and nuclear power stations and shit. Good guys. Even though they're ga- Yes, but they've been doing this ever

since the oil crisis when OPEC countries grabbed them by the balls. Remember 1973? This whole European green energy obsession traces back to those times. Not the UN and its restrictions. The European Union doesn't have their own oil, their own gas and any other fossil fuel in quantities sufficient enough to allow the adequate way of life. And if they were to only use fossil fuel, they would be dependant on OPEC countries and Russia. Which supplies Europe with gas, for example. And obviously, such a vulnerable position is no good for the EU. And they don't want to

rely on oil and gas exporters. And even if the OPEC countries and Russia would behave like good boys, who wouldn't twist the EU's balls, they still wouldn't want the fossil fuel. When there are limited amounts of a resource, its price will always increase over time, because there would be less and less of it. Here's the oil price chart. Here is the gas price chart. Gold. Silver. Platinum. Open the price chart of any other finite resource, and you'll see the same old picture. Over time, it will become too expensive for the EU to live off of

fossil fuel and their economy just won't be able to handle it. Have you seen the prices of fuel in the EU? It's like that because everybody lives in luxury, it's just that expensive. And will get even more expensive. And at any moment the supplier country can twist your balls by raising the tariff or cutting off export. And your people will die of cold and hunger. Why be so negative? There must be something like- That Edmund! Muskie! Who became the governor He stopped the lead, what a guy! Edmund Muskie was a member of the Democratic Party.

And by the time Muskie has entered the political arena, the country was ruled by Respublicans. And his state of Maine was respublican to the bone. And the only way to beat a powerful party at the campaign is to play on social discontent and promise the people that you would solve their problems. And people back then cared about the environment. Muskie took advantage of it. And when the party saw that one of the local candidates had played the environment card, and he became a governor in a state where he had no support, they started pushing the

same agenda across the nation. And supported the Muskie's rhetorics. Because people hoped and were ready to vote for someone who would take care of their environmental problems. And politicians are the ones who play on people's feelings and trust. With no exception. The real problem Edmund dealt with was the reduction in working-age population. People born during the prosperous 1910s and 1920s were now too close to retirement and very soon they would become an expenditure part of the budget. And there were too little young people born in the thirties and the forties. Since the thirties were the

age of great depression when people just couldn't afford children, and in the forties the war happened. And if this already small stratum of citizens started dying due to the environmental problems, The economy would have collapsed. You only have people to pay pensions to and no workers. And you wouldn't come to the people saying: Guys, here's the thing. I need to figure out the way so that you could carry us a little bit more. So that we make enough dubget money off of you while the new babies are growing. So now we'll just improve your working

and living conditions a little just don't die yet, please. We still need your taxes. People would lynch you if you put it that way. That's why the environment. And caring for the future generations. The lead by the same logic, was only cancelled the moment when there appeared the research, that the new generation that grew up with lead has lower IQ than the last one. And dumb citizens mean the increased agression, increased crime rates which leads to further budget expenses. And you can't profit off of these people because they're dumb. Therefore, several billion lead dollars here

and now became a less profitable option than another generation being lost. And by the same logic, the first deaths at Ethyl plant were ignored by everyone including the government. Several dozens of people dead and a few more mental asylum clients is a reasonable price for the billions of dollars and thousands of workplaces. This is an extremely reasonable price. Now, Patterson... he was a man who genuinely worried about the health of people, But it wasn't the holy righteousness that moved him. It was the immesuarable guilt he felt towards humanity that was eating him from the inside

for that he helped building the nucear bomb that was dropped on Japan. What else do we have? The prohibition law? Any guesses? Remember all the righteous speeches of the holy fathers and activist about America drowning in drunkenness and the cleansing of soul. Who's behind this? Who's the main beneficiary? That's right, Standard Oil. Rockefeller was a proud sponsor of the anti-alcohol movement, because he was a righteous, god-fearing christian, and all that, as he used to say. He openly contributed to the Anti-Saloon League and expressed his support. Plus, he would always visit the sermons of the holy

fathers who supported the dry law, and they held lengthy discussions. He said that they were doing god's work for the good of the nation. Whether Rockefeller's faith in god and sobriety was sincere is up to you, but this man's faith in dollar was unquestionable. And ethanol and all of its products were the largest Standard Oil competitors at the time. Remember how I said ethanol was the alternative? Rockefeller killed this alternative off with the Prohibition Law. With all his power and possibilities, just like this Otto Kepler cartoon, giving almost unlimited funds to the activist movements and

then pushing the law through administrative leverages was a doable task. Well, when you say the word "Rockefeller", a whole bunch of conspiracy theories immediately comes to mind. Masons, reptilians, and crap like that. I don't care about these fairy tales. I always look into what people actually do. And in the 1910s when the anti-alcohol movement was gaining momentum, Rockefeller and his whole family openly stated that they were supporting the activists. But the fact that they were to kill off their competitors in oil and car industry was left out. And you know what the Rockefeller Foundation does

now? They are supporting the development of alternative energy sources. Any way they can. And they happily tell that on every corner. For example, recently Rockefeller Foundation representatives made a statement that they were withdrawing their funds from companies engaged in fossil fuel extraction and transferring them in the development of alternatives. And naturally, it was all served under the sauce of them saving the planet from terrible hydrocarbons. But answering smart people's smart questions in private they said that it was simply no longer profitable to keep their funds in that field. While the alternative sources is a new

and - if I may say so - hype niche, and in perspective it could be more profitable. And if you also create the aura of nobility while you're at it, you're gravy. You know who else invests in the alternatives? OPEC. Sheikhs are now loading all available funds in the development of new energy sources. And do you really think these guys are worried over some piece of ice with penguens? Standard oil is a company that appeared a century and a half ago from a small shittown factory. And then it became a colossus with global power. And

OPEC are the people who had nothing but a camel 80-90 years ago. Now they are equals to all the world elites. And when you rose from some literal shithole and became a global power, would you want to lose it? Obviously no. And since elimination of carbon has already been agreed on and is just a matter of time, the power of the suppliers and exporting countries is a matter of time as well. If they don't do anything about it that is. That's why now everyone rushed headfirst into alternatives. Since the first one to take the niche

will secure dominance and will rule the world. But no one wants to mention that. Just like in the beginning of the 20th century no one mentioned that the Prohibition was just a way to get rid of competitors. When the anti-alcohol movement was gaining momentum, Rockefeller and the oil industry cried on every corner that alcohol was killing us and our future generations. But righteousness was not the case there. It was profit. They wanted the fuel market and ethanol had to be crowed out of it. If you replace alcohol with carbon footprint and the global warning in

the 20th century slogans, and you'll get the same thing. And just as they waged the war on alcohol to win the market, now they wage the war on hydrocarbons for the market. And it's done by the same people. Life is a very ironic thing. Sometimes when you look into the events that unfolded, their reasons and their consequences, and you just start laughing homerically. Because the prohibition law which the authorities and the church promoted, so that America would cleanse its soul and came back to the path of righteousness, led to the fact that the powerful and

world-famous American mafia came to be. The black alcohol market appeared, so the criminals had a lot of resources on their hands, and the corruption levels grew tenfold. Because all underground bars needed police protection. And by the time prohibition was lifted, the alcohol problem had been even worse than by the time it was adopted. Americans started drinking even more and the only man to be a winner was Standard Oil. The gas station network and the car industry. Which grew by leaps. When the prohibition was lifted, Rockefeller had an interview where he said he regretted taking part

in the creation of the prohibition law and apologized to citizens. All in all, one sad interview is not such a big price for market domination. And when I found the next fact, I went like: "Fuck, no." Do you know who was the most prominent participant of the world's politics of all the former Standard Oil companies' representatives? And the spokesperson for the family's interests. Maurice Strong. In his youth he was an oilman. At first he participated in stock trade, and generally studied the oil industry. He met the Standard Oil managers and they pushed him for the

UN. As a volunteer, just so that he would make some acquaintances. In the UN he met one of the chief accountants, who introduced him to David Rockefeller. Johnny's grandson. Maurice told all that himself, by the way. Along with the UN, Strong worked as an assistant to Jack Gallagher's the CEO of an ex-Standard Oil company in Canada. Then Strong worked in Africa. The UN missions on humanitarian aid to the region and all that. And at the same time he managed a branch of Caltex. An African Standard Oil subsidiary. When Strong decided to merge AZL Resources, he

shared the company's board with Standard Oil managers. And the Tosco company, which bought AZL was an ex Standard Oil company in Ohio To which the iron mining plant was attached. Wherever you look in the oil industry, you will always find Standard Oil. As for the 1972 UN summit which led to the creation of the UNEP, Environment Programme and all that, Maurice's presentation speech was written by the Standard Oil PR department. And the headquarters of UNEP that UN conservation program, was built in the city of Nairobi, in which the Caltex office is also located. As well

as Standard's Any questions on why there were so many lawsuits with little to no punishment? I have none. Here's one last fun fact about the father of environmentalism and we'll leave him alone. To hell with him. Strong had died just recently. A few years ago. Obviously, he was buried as the father of the world's environmental movement. The most righteous man who fought for our mother nature. Can you guess, what have this man left behind him aside from his enormous fortune? He left an eco-hotel for his son. It was built in a protected area in Costa-Rica,

Where construction and deforestation are prohibited. You can't cut down nature reserves and start constructions there. But if you're an environmentalist and a respected one do what you want. You're good. But let's get back to the cars. The fourth hour of the documentary is just about time. since the zero emission strategy was adopted after all, we're being robbed of ICE. For the good of the nature. You know. Okay, but what do we get in exchange? Now there are two options. First one are the battery-powered electric cars which must be charged from the outlet. and the second

is hydrogen fuel cell vehicles. Hydrogen vehicles are cars with a chemical generator that works on liquefied hydrogen and generates electricity. Electricity is supplied to the battery that power the electric engine and the car goes. For the user, they will be very similar to a regular car. Fuel it with hydrogen and go. But first let's find out how the energy is generated in our world. Here are the statistics for today Here we see that 85% of the energy is still obtained from carbohydrate combustion. Do not confuse electric energy and the energy. Those are different. Electrical energy

is what you have in your outlets and the energy is all the power that is generated in the entire world. If you only look at the electricity, which is a part of the energy as a whole, the situation is not so different. As of now, 63,3% of all electricity is generated by fossil fuel combustion. Mainly coal. While in the year 2000 fossil fuels made 64,8%. In 21 years the share decreased just by 1,5%. We're making giant leaps to become green, yeah. But let's imagine that there's a solution. They will improve the windmills, solar panels build

more hydroelectric power plants, nuclear plants and all that. Let's also suppose that they are going to get the wires everywhere, so that there would be an outlet on every corner and you could charge your electric car anywhere. Let's move to that fairy world and think what the fuck are we going to do with the batteries. First, let's find out what a battery is. Depending on its type there can be a lot of interesting stuff. For example, the battery that you have under the hood of a gas-fueled car is usually lead-acidic. Which means, if we do

some mental gymnastics, we can tell that it contains lead lead dioxide and sulfuric acid solution. Very eco-friendly. What's especially fun is watching those Indians deal with dead batteries. But these are Indians, they're not human, the important thing is that the acid is not being spilled in Europe. But okay, to hell with the lead-acidic batteries. After all, when they prohibit the ICE they would stop making those as well. Big deal. We're more interested in lithium-ion batteries. Since they are installed in all the electric cars and basically they power modern gadgets. Pocket electronics and everything that can

work autonomously. Obviously, the main element of such battery is lithium. Basically, in the modern world, lithium is the new oil. The demand and the volume of lithium use has been growing exponentially in the last thirty years. The first lithium battery was created in 1991 and now the lithium that no one cared about turned into one of the the most economically demanded materials. Also, the lithium is praised by the people concerned with saving the world from the terrible carbohydrates which are extracted from the depths of our holy Earth-mother. And where the fuck does the lithium come

from? Obviously, it comes from space on the futuristic eco-friendly starship and gets dropped off into the virgin forests. Yeah, right. I was sarcastic, if you didn't catch that yet. Lithium is either mined from the rock enriched with lithium or salt marshes which also contain a lot of lithium. And the largest-scale extraction of lithium, for example, is developed in Chile and Africa. How much rock does it take to mine to extract one ton of lithium? Ten tons? Fifty tons? Yeah, right. To get one ton of lithium, just one, you need 250 tons of rock. If you

extract it from the salt marshes, you need to process 750 tons of salt to get a ton of lithium. Also, lithium can only be purified chemically, which means that the rock and the saline can not be used for any other purposes after the extraction of lithium. It all just goes to waste. When some oil spillage accident happens, it's an ecological disaster. And when someone deliberately spills tons of chemicals from the lithium exctraction, it's the righteous waste for the good of nature. Make notice. Moreover, to mine one tone of lithium you need to evaporate 1,900 tons

of fresh water. And you know who would find a use for that water? Chileans. Farmers in Chile are forced to import water from other countries to water their fields because all the fucking water is used on lithium. And if anything goes wrong, if there is some kind of drought or something like that, Chilean population is immediately left without food and water. Not to mention the amount of CO-two emitted during the lithium extraction. But the entirety of righteous and green Europe is not affected. Lithium plants are not located in Europe, so let these plebeians deal with

its aftermath on their own. While we live an eco-friendly life with a happy face and an eco-badge on the refrigerator. In addition to lithium, there's also cobalt in the batteries Which is a way more rare metal. And almost all of the cobalt in the world is extracted in Congo. It's a poor country in Africa with an unstable power balance, economy and jurisdiction. Cobalt is one of the primary things the country lives off of and it is extracted from mines. And you know who extracts cobalt from these mines? Children. Well, there are adults too, because the

kids need to be overseered. But still, the children work there. Cobalt, just like lithium has been actively extracted for thirty years. And they really used child labor on these mines. Can you guess, what changed over thirty years of the cobalt mining in Congo? Nothing. They just gave birth to more children because the old ones got worn out, that's it. The UN occasionally tries to protest against child labor, but Congo just asks: "Do you need cobalt? " "Yes." "So buy it and leave our children alone." They have a shift tomorrow. Tons of rock processed and thrown

to waste. Food and water shortages, child labor and hellish working conditions is somewhere out there. Not here. Not in Europe. Here we have diesel Passats, that is the real problem. Look at how scary it is. And children are expendable, those guys can get new ones. We're concerned about ecology. But the lithium and cobalt production is half the trouble. Everyone heard that a discarded battery poisons so and so meters of soil. Cubic meters that is. And yes, it does, If you just discard the battery, due to the chemicals it contains it will poison the soil, the

subterranean waters and generally kill all life around it. That is true. And I have a question. What do we do with the batteries? The correct answer is disposal. That's right. Everybody had seen these containers where concerned people collect batteries to then bring them to the right disposal. Do you know what percentage of the total amount of batteries in the world gets recycled? Not in Russia, in the world. The world with all the activists, feminist, LGBT movements and such. So? Two thirds? Okay, that is too much. Half at least, I hope. A half would have been

an improvement. Only 5%. Five fucking percent of the batteries are properly disposed of. All the rest is just thrown to waste Or gets buried. Not because no one collects them. But because there's nowhere to dispose of them. Come on, what are you talking about? You just don't get it. It's just that there are too many batteries, so there is no need for disposal plants. But when they make more, there will be more plants constructed as well. That's it. Yeah, okay, right. Do you know how they dispose of batteries? You don't? They get burned. No joke.

They burn them. Wait, what about the emissions that the battery burning produces? They must be toxic. Yes, that's right. They are. And nobody gives a fuck. Not to mention that you can't burn it completely, by the way. There's still a bunch of shit left after burning. What do they do with it? Any guesses? They bury it, yes. Eco-friendly. That's right. So far there is no efficient battery disposal technology. There's a bunch of experimental technologies, but they're expensive. And not a single one proved to be successful. At this point it all comes down to the molten

metal technology. The one that the whole Strong's fraud revolved around. There are two main methods for battery disposal. And both don't work, by the way. The first one implies burning them, as I said. This method is called pyro-metallurgical. The second one implies dissolving the contents of batteries in chemicals. This method is called hydrometallurgical. But none of the two can be used on industrial scale. Here's why. The whole idea of ​​recycling means that you should be able to disassemble the battery do something to it, and then put the materials you got back into battery production. Like

aluminum cans, for example. Crash a can, melt it and send it back to the conveyor belt. Perfect. But recycling a can is that simple because it's just aluminum. And all the cans are the same. No need to disassemble it. Just crush it and make another. Simple as that. But the thing with an electric car battery is that before you could recycle it you have to at least disassemble it. Here's what the battery looks like. Basically, it is a huge monolithic plate made of smaller batteries. Like a wall that is made of smaller bricks, a battery

is made of the smaller ones. Which are glued to each other with a special glue for greater resistance. And if you were to disassemble the battery, how would you do it? The glue is strong. And all the companies use different ones. Tesla, for instance, uses some kind of secret alloy to fill the space between the cells. And when batteries differ in size and toughness, you can only disassemble it with your own hands. And the modern batteries are manually disassembled before disposal. By the hands of an actual person. Can they suffer chemical burns? They can. Can

they get poisoned? Yes, the working conditions imply it. You can't mechanise this process, A robot wouldn't know if the battery is slightly thicker or slightly tougher or uses different glue. It needs thousands of similar batteries to work efficiently. And that is completely impossible, because all cars are different. All have different attachment points, shape, capacity and so on. But let's assume that a little kid from Africa or China managed to disassemble a battery. What do we do then? To prepare the material for future reuse, we should sort it into piles and purify the impurities. Without damaging

it in the process. And that is the main problem. The burning, the chemical cleaning or any other of the modern methods can give you material pure enough to use in production. Roughly speaking, if you remember the aluminum cans what would happen, if the material had 10% of some other shit after reprocessing? Obviously, no one would accept this material for production, because the technology implies only the use of pure aluminum. Otherwise you can't make a can. Which means that you need another technology to separate these 10% of shit from aluminum and get the pure material. But

the use of additional technologies is expensive. So the end product is more expensive too. As a result, the recycled aluminum would cost much more than the regular aluminum. And who would want such aluminum? That's right, no one. So that is the kind of shit that goes on with the batteries. All the recycled raw materials are not only expensive, but also impure. Nor cobalt, nor lithium nor any other valuable metal turns out to be as pure as freshly mined one. And the mining is much cheaper. Why would you buy the recycled one? That's right, you wouldn't.

And all the batteries that had been produced by this point, are designed in a way that makes them impossible to recycle. They all differ in size and composition, they all differ in materials and design. And there is no technology for their disposal and there can not be one. To be recycled all the batteries need to be identical like two drops of water, like aluminum cans. But that is impossible due to their complex design. All the modern lithium batteries that have been made by this point and the ones to be produced in the next ten to

fifteen years, will either be burned with the remains buried or just buried. No other way. The only option is to put a significant amount of people to work and disassemble them to smaller parts, just to bury them anyway. And the production of such batteries is gaining momentum while the green activists happily clap their hands along with dumbasses who can't see the forest for the trees. And you know what happens to the batteriesy on junkyards? They poison the soil, poisuns the groundwater and kills vegetation. All of the battery contents are reactive and hazardous substances. And if

you leave large amounts of them just lying around, all the living things in the area will quickly perish. And as soon as the sales of electric cars with these non-recycable batteries skyrocket, eventually all these batteries will end up in the ground. It's a matter of time, unfortunately. And giving up modern vehicles with internal combustion engines and all their exhaust fume filtering systems for electric vehicles is about the same as quitting smoking by switching to heroin. And the science community is crying danger as hard as they can. But you think someone is listening to scientists? No.

It's just like with the scientists who once studied the dangers of leaded fuel. And once again, I can not help but notice the irony in the fact that the battery that you have under the hood of your car right now is made out of lead. Lithium-ion batteries are no better in any fucking way. Just as carbon fluorine. Any battery is toxic. But no one cares. They just put on an "eco" badge. Proudly thinking that they are saving the planet. The main idea behind all the restrictions and concerns regarding the environment sound something like this: "Let's

think about the world our children will inhabit. Let's preserve nature for future generations:. And similar populist bullshit. The reality behind all this is actually more like that: "We've experimented enough on our generations, with the lead and exhausts, and the result was not that good. so let's experiment on our children and grandchildren with toxic batteries. We will make some decisions, make some money and brownie-points, and the afthermath of the experiment is for future generations to deal with. Let them think for themselves what they'll do with toxic batteries killing the planet." Why am I telling you all

this? We'll have to give up the traditional ICE, that is a fact. That has already been decided on. But that restriction was dictated not because of some bears or some ice sheets. Oil and gasoline are not just something that we fill our cars with or watch the prices go up on the TV. It's a resource. An important resource that makes the whole economy go round. It's important because it is profitable. And such climate was created deliberately. The people and Standard Oil saw potential in it and decided to make the whole car industry depend on gasoline.

Which they sold to the entire world. Just like during the tetraethyl lead crisis, all authorities and governmental bodies were ready to sacrifice several dozen lives to the industry, Because Standard Oil and GM needed their profit and provided thousands of workplaces. They didn't just profit themselves, they fed thousands of families while also moving the national economy forward. And when scientists swooped don't on them saying that the whole country is covered in lead, lawyers at their meetings said that dirty money are better than an empty stomach. And they were also right. So everything we see today is

just a redistribution of power and resources under the guise of them being so fucking green and compassionate. Modern ecology is a bargaining chip that is played in front of the masses to sooze their brain. The idea of suffering for the sake of future generations is always the argument to justify any bullshit. It is used only then, when there are no other arguments. Remember any dictatorship, remember any of the terrible things that happen in the world. In all cases people were told that it's all for the sake of their children, the freedom and all that... Bullshit.

As I told you in the beginning, in the kerosene and blubber story. The whales were only left alone when cheaper and more convenient fuel appeared The same with ecology. Ecology, the real one, is needed and wanted by everyone only on one condition. If it is profitable. Here and now, in monetary gains. Because even the deaths, no matter how much of a tragedy they are, only concern the governments and the big shots just because of the fact that human casualties are unprofitable. Any person born in any country in the world requires money spent on them. Government

invests in each citizen with health care, education, infrastructure everything else. Anything that you got for free as a citizen, nursery home, kindergarten, school, university, medicine, infrastructure and all that noise, was all paid for by the government with our own taxes. And it's all done with one thing in mind. A healthy educated and able-bodied citizen will work and pay taxes. They will not only return the invested money, but also bring dividends. By paying taxes all their life. That's how economy works. The government only cares about the health of its citizens not because "Coochie-coochie-coo, look at the

big boy we got here. Let me kiss you on the cheek." No. Just because a healthy and educated citizen is profitable. The stupidest that can happen is you investing in someone, helping them and providing social services, just for the bastard to die. Money down the drain. And now you have to raise a new one for another eighteen years. And however cynical it may sound, everything has its price. the productions, the natural disasters, even all of us. We are all wearing a price tag. We just don't see it. And the type of vehicle that will be

profitable to these greens is the one we're going to ride. Not the convenient one. Not the eco-friendly one. And not the one good for polar bears. But the one profitable, And these greens don't need the ICE anymore. In the world, where all the decisions are made, where all the globall issues are resolved, there's only one logic - money. And this logic has no compassion for the suffocating mining town. This logic is not worried about some endangered caterpillar or the amount of snow in a certain place on Earth. Just the cold calculations. And raw monetary gains.

And these green fellows will rob us of our roaring engines, their sound, vibration and everything. The internal combustion engine that brought profits and moved entire economies a hundred years ago is not as profitable anymore. And it is not its own fault. The reason is the global power industry that wants to ditch fossil fuel for more money. And the ecology, the melting ice in Antarctica, and the speech of the teenager with asperger's syndrome is a smokescreen. Blown into your eyes. And the harder they play on your emotions, the more you believe in this smoke but behind

this smoke are power, politics, checks and balances. And money. Well, as always. And that's why electric cars can go fuck themselves. Not as vehicles, but as instruments of the power redestribution. and something to help us solve the environmental issues. They won't solve anything. Maybe even make everything worse. But the consequences of this will be our children's problem. And they don't get a say. Think about it. And I, with you admittion, will go. And empty a tank of gasoline. While I still can. In 2017 one million of electric cars were sold. That means, that by 2032,

their expiration date, we'll have 250,000 tons of non-recyclable batteries. In 2020 three million electric cars were sold. Which is 750,000 more tons of the non-recyclable batteries. By 2030, as analytics say, the electric car pool can reach 145 million of units. Which is 580 million tons of batteries left without proper utilization by 2045. They would have the same mass as 86 Egyptian pyramids or 1,600 Empire State Buildings. We are yet to learn what damage these batteries will do to our planet. Created by Stas Asafiev. Written by Stas Asafiev and Elisa Tsatsurina. Directed by Daniil Gudkov. We're

fucked.