Petrochemicals and Plastics: A Fossil Fuel Lifeline?
A Matter of Degrees
Dr. Leah Stokes, Dr. Katharine Wilkinson
4.8 • 533 Ratings
🗓️ 15 December 2022
⏱️ 43 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The fossil fuel industry is banking its future on petrochemicals — the toxic precursor to plastics. In this episode, Katharine and Leah speak with activists who are fighting back against petrochemicals in "sacrifice zones" across America, from the Ohio River Valley to the Gulf Coast. Learn where petrochemicals come from, how they harm people, places, and the climate, and why the fossil fuel industry wants them as a lifeline.
We hear from three guests who are leading us to a world beyond petrochemicals and plastics: Michele Fetting, program director at the Breathe Project in Pittsburgh; Shilpi Chhotray, co-founder and executive director of People Over Plastics, a BIPOC storytelling and environmental justice power-building collective; and Yvette Arellano, founder and director of a Houston-based environmental justice organization, Fenceline Watch.
Katharine mentions the Clean Air Council's fact sheet on the Shell Appalachia Ethane Cracker plant and cites data from the OECD on projected global plastic emissions. Leah references a study on cancer rates in Louisiana's "Cancer Alley." If you want to dive deeper on the many problems with plastics, explore the bounty of resources from Beyond Plastics. Check out the comprehensive policy solutions proposed in the Break Free From Plastic Pollution Act.
Next time, we'll bring you a special holiday episode, featuring an audio essay from the bestselling anthology All We Can Save: "Indigenous Prophecy and Mother Earth" by Sherri Mitchell. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and don't miss a single episode this season!
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The first time you see this plant in person, especially at night, it's just mind-boggling. |
| 0:10.2 | It's massive. |
| 0:11.0 | It's like a small city. |
| 0:12.6 | It lights up like Las Vegas. |
| 0:15.0 | And the community that lives around this plant feel like it's daylight, 24 hours a day. And it's a monstrosity. It's just, |
| 0:23.7 | it's frightening. It's like Morgdor, you know. It kind of represents doom for a lot of people |
| 0:31.5 | that have to look at it every day. And it hasn't even started operations yet. |
| 0:37.7 | That's the view according to Michelle Fedding, |
| 0:40.5 | program director for the Breathe Project, |
| 0:42.7 | an organization focused on air quality |
| 0:44.8 | in southwestern Pennsylvania. |
| 0:46.9 | And the eerie, glowing structure |
| 0:48.8 | that Michelle describes as something reminiscent |
| 0:51.4 | of the fiery wasteland of Tolkien's imagination? |
| 0:55.0 | Well, that's an ethane cracker plant, specifically Shell's newest cracker plant, |
| 1:00.6 | recently constructed on the banks of the Ohio River, just 30 miles outside of Pittsburgh in Beaver County. |
| 1:07.0 | And if you're thinking that an ethane cracker plant sounds like a place where they make the grossest, |
| 1:11.2 | most inedible food, you're kind of right. |
| 1:14.4 | It's certainly revolting. |
| 1:16.8 | Cracker plants take so-called natural gas and expose it to temperatures up to 900 degrees Celsius. |
| 1:23.9 | It's so hot that the ethane, a chemical compound, abundant in gas, breaks down. |
| 1:29.8 | So the ethane's molecular bonds crack apart and produce ethylene. |
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