Elemental Business: Carbon Energy
Business Daily
BBC
4.4 • 816 Ratings
🗓️ 16 July 2014
⏱️ 26 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In our series examining the world economy from the perspective of the chemical elements, we look at how the industrial revolution was really an energy revolution driven by carbon-based fossil fuels. Chemistry professor Andrea Sella of University College London and his geology colleague professor Mark Maslin explain the chemical wizardry that makes carbon the ultimate fuel. We hear from Dr Paul Warde an industrial historian at the University of East Anglia, about how the 'C' element has powered the longest and most sustained economic boom in the history of humanity. But how long can it last? Can we expect the mother of all crashes when the carbon crunch finally comes?
Two former oil men, Chris Mottershead, former head of energy security at BP and now vice principal for research at King's College in London and John Hofmeister, former president of Shell Oil, give us their perspectives on the whether the world is ready to tackle its addiction to fossil fuels, before the fuel runs out and in time to avert a looming climate change disaster.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is a BBC podcast. You can get all our podcasts and our terms of use at BBCworldservis.com |
| 0:07.2 | slash podcasts. |
| 0:10.3 | Hello and welcome to Business Daily. I'm Justin Rowlatt. Today we have the latest in our series |
| 0:20.5 | looking at the world economy |
| 0:21.7 | from the perspective of the chemical elements, and we are getting to grips with carbon. It's the |
| 0:27.4 | source of the power that's shaped the modern economy, because the industrial revolution was really |
| 0:32.8 | an energy revolution. When previously a horse could only give you one horsepower, |
| 0:41.0 | we now have industrial machines that can give you tens of thousands of horsepower, |
| 0:42.8 | and at its limits, a Saturn 5 rocket, |
| 0:47.3 | 160 million horsepower to deliver you off the surface of the earth. |
| 0:50.3 | But the fossil fuels that powered the Industrial Revolution are now warming our world. |
| 0:52.5 | So can we wean ourselves off them? |
| 0:54.7 | The world is still committed to hydrocarbon energy. There is not the political will or the |
| 1:00.3 | political courage to go in another direction. Global challenges on Business Daily from the BBC. |
| 1:09.4 | Just as with so much else in life, some of the chemical elements are simply more important and, how shall I put this, more charismatic than others. |
| 1:18.5 | Boron and renium just don't have the cachet or clout of the element we're focusing on this week, carbon. Carbon is such a big deal. We've decided to split it over two |
| 1:29.4 | programs. It's the fundamental building block of all life on the planet and also plays a crucial |
| 1:34.8 | role in storing and releasing energy in organic matter. And today, it's carbon's role in energy |
| 1:41.2 | that we're focusing on. So what is it about carbon that makes it so important? |
| 1:45.6 | Why not phosphorus or silicon or hydrogen? To find out, I headed to the labs of University College London |
| 1:52.4 | to meet our favourite chemistry expert, Professor Andrea Seller. |
| 2:00.1 | So what is that strange noise? Well, the strange noise is actually a lump of dry ice, pure solid |
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