ABOUT THIS TALK
Imagine it's late 1990, and you've just met a nice young man named Tim Berners-Lee, who starts telling you about his proposed system called the World Wide Web. Ian Ritchie was there. And ... he didn't buy it. A short story about information, connectivity and learning from mistakes.
Well we all know the World Wide Web has absolutely transformed publishing, broadcasting, commerce and social connectivity, but where did it all come from? And I'll quote three people: Vannevar Bush, Doug Engelbart and Tim Berners-Lee. So let's just run through these guys.
This is Vannevar Bush. Vannevar Bush was the U.S. government's chief scientific adviser during the war. And in 1945, he published an article in a magazine called Atlantic Monthly. And the article was called "As We May Think." And what Vannevar Bush was saying was the way we use information is broken. We don't work in terms of libraries and catalog systems and so forth. The brain works by association. With one item in its thought, it snaps instantly to the next item. And the way information is structured is totally incapable of keeping up with this process.
And so he suggested a machine, and he called it the memex. And the memex would link information, one piece of information to a related piece of information and so forth. Now this was in 1945. A computer in those days was something the secret services used to use for code breaking. And nobody knew anything about it. So this was before the computer was invented. And he proposed this machine called the memex. And he had a platform where you linked information to other information, and then you could call it up at will.
So spinning forward, one of the guys who read this article was a guy called Doug Engelbart, and he was a U.S. Air Force officer. And he was reading it in their library in the Far East. And he was so inspired by this article, it kind of directed the rest of his life. And by the mid-60s, he was able to put this into action when he worked at the Stanford Research Lab in California. He built a system. The system was designed to augment human intelligence, it was called. And in a premonition of today's world of cloud computing and softwares of service, his system was called NLS for oN-Line System.
And this is Doug Engelbart. He was giving a presentation at the Fall Joint Computer Conference in 1968. What he showed -- he sat on a stage like this, and he demonstrated this system. He had his head mic like I've got. And he works this system. And you can see, he's working between documents and graphics and so forth. And he's driving it all with this platform here, with a five-finger keyboard and the world's first computer mouse, which he specially designed in order to do this system. So this is where the mouse came from as well.
So this is Doug Engelbart. The trouble with Doug Engelbart's system was that the computers in those days cost several million pounds. So for a personal computer, a few million pounds was like having a personal jet plane; it wasn't really very practical.
But spin on to the 80s when personal computers did arrive, then there was room for this kind of system on personal computers. And my company, OWL built a system called Guide for the Apple Macintosh. And we delivered the world's first hypertext system. And this began to get a head of steam. Apple introduced a thing called HyperCard, and they made a bit of a fuss about it. They had a 12-page supplement in the Wall Street Journal the day it launched. The magazines started to cover it. Byte magazine and Communications at the ACM had special issues covering hypertext. We developed a PC version of this product as well as the Macintosh version. And our PC version became quite mature.
These are some examples of this system in action in the late 80s. You were able to deliver documents, were able to do overnight works. We developed a system such that it had a markup language based on html. We called it hml: hypertext markup language. And the system was capable of doing very, very large documentation systems over computer networks.
So I took this system to a trade show in Versailles near Paris in late November 1990. And I was approached by a nice young man called Tim Berners-Lee who said, "Are you Ian Ritchie?" and I said, "Yeah." And he said, "I need to talk to you." And he told me about his proposed system called the World Wide Web. And I thought, well, that's got a pretentious name, especially since the whole system ran on his computer in his office. But he was completely convinced that his World Wide Web would take over the world one day. And he tried to persuade me to write the browser for it, because his system didn't have any graphics or fonts or layout or anything; it was just plain text. I thought, well, you know, interesting, but a guy from CERN, he's not going to do this. So we didn't do it.
In the next couple of years, the hypertext community didn't recognize him either. In 1992, his paper was rejected for the Hypertext Conference. In 1993, there was a table at the conference in Seattle, and a guy called Marc Andreessen was demonstrating his little browser for the World Wide Web. And I saw it, and I thought, yep, that's it. And the very next year, in 1994, we had the conference here in Edinburgh, and I had no opposition in having Tim Berners-Lee as the keynote speaker.
So that puts me in pretty illustrious company. There was a guy called Dick Rowe who was at Decca Records and turned down The Beatles. There was a guy called Gary Kildall who went flying his plane when IBM came looking for an operating system for the IBM PC, and he wasn't there, so they went back to see Bill Gates. And the 12 publishers who turned down J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter, I guess.
On the other hand, there's Marc Andreessen who wrote the world's first browser for the World Wide Web. And according to Fortune magazine, he's worth 700 million dollars. But is he happy?
(Laughter)
(Applause)
Wednesday, October 19, 2011
Pamela Meyer: How to spot a liar
ABOUT THIS TALK
On any given day we're lied to from 10 to 200 times, and the clues to detect those lie can be subtle and counter-intuitive. Pamela Meyer, author of Liespotting, shows the manners and "hotspots" used by those trained to recognize deception -- and she argues honesty is a value worth preserving.
Okay, now I don't want to alarm anybody in this room, but it's just come to my attention that the person to your right is a liar. (Laughter) Also, the person to your left is a liar. Also the person sitting in your very seats is a liar. We're all liars. What I'm going to do today is I'm going to show you what the research says about why we're all liars, how you can become a liespotter and why you might want to go the extra mile and go from liespotting to truth seeking, and ultimately to trust building.
Now speaking of trust, ever since I wrote this book, "Liespotting," no one wants to meet me in person anymore, no, no, no, no, no. They say, "It's okay, we'll email you." (Laughter) I can't even get a coffee date at Starbucks. My husband's like, "Honey, deception? Maybe you could have focused on cooking. How about French cooking?"
So before I get started, what I'm going to do is I'm going to clarify my goal for you, which is not to teach a game of Gotcha. Liespotters aren't those nitpicky kids, those kids in the back of the room that are shouting, "Gotcha! Gotcha! Your eyebrow twitched. You flared your nostril. I watch that TV show 'Lie To Me.' I know you're lying." No, liespotters are armed with scientific knowledge of how to spot deception. They use it to get to the truth, and they do what mature leaders do everyday; they have difficult conversations with difficult people, sometimes during very difficult times. And they start up that path by accepting a core proposition, and that proposition is the following: Lying is a cooperative act. Think about it, a lie has no power whatsoever by its mere utterance. Its power emerges when someone else agrees to believe the lie.
So I know it may sound like tough love, but look, if at some point you got lied to, it's because you agreed to get lied to. Truth number one about lying: Lying's a cooperative act. Now not all lies are harmful. Sometimes we're willing participants in deception for the sake of social dignity, maybe to keep a secret that should be kept secret, secret. We say, "Nice song." "Honey, you don't look fat in that, no." Or we say, favorite of the digiratti, "You know, I just fished that email out of my spam folder. So sorry."
But there are times when we are unwilling participants in deception. And that can have dramatic costs for us. Last year saw 997 billion dollars in corporate fraud alone in the United States. That's an eyelash under a trillion dollars. That's seven percent of revenues. Deception can cost billions. Think Enron, Madoff, the mortgage crisis. Or in the case of double agents and traitors, like Robert Hanssen or Aldrich Ames, lies can betray our country, they can compromise our security, they can undermine democracy, they can cause the deaths of those that defend us.
Deception is actually serious business. This con man, Henry Oberlander, he was such an effective con man British authorities say he could have undermined the entire banking system of the Western world. And you can't find this guy on Google; you can't find him anywhere. He was interviewed once, and he said the following. He said, "Look, I've got one rule." And this was Henry's rule, he said, "Look, everyone is willing to give you something. They're ready to give you something for whatever it is they're hungry for." And that's the crux of it. If you don't want to be deceived, you have to know, what is it that you're hungry for? And we all kind of hate to admit it. We wish we were better husbands, better wives, smarter, more powerful, taller, richer -- the list goes on. Lying is an attempt to bridge that gap, to connect our wishes and our fantasies about who we wish we were, how we wish we could be, with what we're really like. And boy are we willing to fill in those gaps in our lives with lies.
On a given day, studies show that you may be lied to anywhere from 10 to 200 times. Now granted, many of those are white lies. But in another study, it showed that strangers lied three times within the first 10 minutes of meeting each other. (Laughter) Now when we first hear this data, we recoil. We can't believe how prevalent lying is. We're essentially against lying. But if you look more closely, the plot actually thickens. We lie more to strangers than we lie to coworkers. Extroverts lie more than introverts. Men lie eight times more about themselves than they do other people. Women lie more to protect other people. If you're an average married couple, you're going to lie to your spouse in one out of every 10 interactions. Now you may think that's bad. It you're unmarried, that number drops to three.
Lying's complex. It's woven into the fabric of our daily and our business lives. We're deeply ambivalent about the truth. We parse it out on an as-needed basis, sometimes for very good reasons, other times just because we don't understand the gaps in our lives. That's truth number two about lying. We're against lying, but we're covertly for it in ways that our society has sanctioned for centuries and centuries and centuries. It's as old as breathing. It's part of our culture, it's part of our history. Think Dante, Shakespeare, the Bible, News of the World.
(Laughter)
Lying has evolutionary value to us as a species. Researchers have long known that the more intelligent the species, the larger the neocortex, the more likely it is to be deceptive. Now you might remember Koko. Does anybody remember Koko the gorilla who was taught sign language? Koko was taught to communicate via sign language. Here's Koko with her kitten. It's her cute little, fluffy pet kitten. Koko once blamed her pet kitten for ripping a sink out of the wall. (Laughter) We're hardwired to become leaders of the pack. It's starts really, really early. How early? Well babies will fake a cry, pause, wait to see who's coming and then go right back to crying. One-year-olds learn concealment. (Laughter) Two-year-olds bluff. Five-year-olds lie outright. They manipulate via flattery. Nine-year-olds, masters of the cover up. By the time you enter college, you're going to lie to your mom in one out of every five interactions. By the time we enter this work world and we're breadwinners, we enter a world that is just cluttered with spam, fake digital friends, partisan media, ingenious identity thieves, world-class Ponzi schemers, a deception epidemic -- in short, what one author calls a post-truth society. It's been very confusing for a long time now.
What do you do? Well there are steps we can take to navigate our way through the morass. Trained liespotters get to the truth 90 percent of the time. The rest of us, we're only 54 percent accurate. Why is it so easy to learn? There are good liars and there are bad liars. There are no real original liars. We all make the same mistakes. We all use the same techniques. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to show you two patterns of deception. And then we're going to look at the hot spots and see if we can find them ourselves. We're going to start with speech.
(Video) Bill Clinton: I want you to listen to me. I'm going to say this again. I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky. I never told anybody to lie, not a single time, never. And these allegations are false. And I need to go back to work for the American people. Thank you.
Pamela Meyer: Okay, what were the telltale signs? Well first we heard what's known as a non-contracted denial. Studies show that people who are overdetermined in their denial will resort to formal rather than informal language. We also heard distancing language: "that woman." We know that liars will unconsciously distance themselves from their subject using language as their tool. Now if Bill Clinton had said, "Well, to tell you the truth ... " or Richard Nixon's favorite, "In all candor ... " he would have been a dead giveaway for any liespotter than knows that qualifying language, as it's called, qualifying language like that, further discredits the subject. Now if he had repeated the question in its entirety, or if he had peppered his account with a little too much detail -- and we're all really glad he didn't do that -- he would have further discredited himself. Freud had it right. Freud said, look, there's much more to it than speech: "No mortal can keep a secret. If his lips are silent, he chatters with his fingertips." And we all do it no matter how powerful you are. We all chatter with our fingertips. I'm going to show you Dominique Strauss-Kahn with Obama who's chattering with his fingertips.
(Laughter)
Now this brings us to our next pattern, which is body language. With body language, here's what you've got to do. You've really got to just throw your assumptions out the door. Let the science temper your knowledge a little bit. Because we think liars fidget all the time. Well guess what, they're known to freeze their upper bodies when they're lying. We think liars won't look you in the eyes. Well guess what, they look you in the eyes a little too much just to compensate for that myth. We think warmth and smiles convey honesty, sincerity. But a trained liespotter can spot a fake smile a mile away. Can you all spot the fake smile here? You can consciously contract the muscles in your cheeks. But the real smile's in the eyes, the crow's feet of the eyes. They cannot be consciously contracted, especially if you overdid the Botox. Don't overdo the Botox; nobody will think you're honest.
Now we're going to look at the hot spots. Can you tell what's happening in a conversation? Can you start to find the hot spots to see the discrepancies between someone's words and someone's actions? Now I know it seems really obvious, but when you're having a conversation with someone you suspect of deception, attitude is by far the most overlooked but telling of indicators.
An honest person is going to be cooperative. They're going to show they're on your side. They're going to be enthusiastic. They're going to be willing and helpful to getting you to the truth. They're going to be willing to brainstorm, name suspects, provide details. They're going to say, "Hey, maybe it was those guys in payroll that forged those checks." They're going to be infuriated if they sense they're wrongly accused throughout the entire course of the interview, not just in flashes; they'll be infuriated throughout the entire course of the interview. And if you ask someone honest what should happen to whomever did forge those checks, an honest person is much more likely to recommend strict rather than lenient punishment.
Now let's say you're having that exact same conversation with someone deceptive. That person may be withdrawn, look down, lower their voice, pause, be kind of herky-jerky. Ask a deceptive person to tell their story, they're going to pepper it with way too much detail in all kinds of irrelevant places. And then they're going to tell their story in strict chronological order. And what a trained interrogator does is they come in and in very subtle ways over the course of several hours, they will ask that person to tell that story backwards, and then they'll watch them squirm, and track which questions produce the highest volume of deceptive tells. Why do they do that? Well we all do the same thing. We rehearse our words, but we rarely rehearse our gestures. We say "yes," we shake our heads "no." We tell very convincing stories, we slightly shrug our shoulders. We commit terrible crimes, and we smile at the delight in getting away with it. Now that smile is known in the trade as "duping delight."
And we're going to see that in several videos moving forward, but we're going to start -- for those of you who don't know him, this is presidential candidate John Edwards who shocked America by fathering a child out of wedlock. We're going to see him talk about getting a paternity test. See now if you can spot him saying, "yes" while shaking his head "no," slightly shrugging his shoulders.
(Video) John Edwards: I'd be happy to participate in one. I know that it's not possible that this child could be mine, because of the timing of events. So I know it's not possible. Happy to take a paternity test, and would love to see it happen. Interviewer: Are you going to do that soon? Is there somebody -- JE: Well, I'm only one side. I'm only one side of the test. But I'm happy to participate in one.
PM: Okay, those head shakes are much easier to spot once you know to look for them. There're going to be times when someone makes one expression while masking another that just kind of leaks through in a flash. Murderers are known to leak sadness. Your new joint venture partner might shake your hand, celebrate, go out to dinner with you and then leak an expression of anger. And we're not all going to become facial expression experts overnight here, but there's one I can teach you that's very dangerous, and it's easy to learn, and that's the expression of contempt. Now with anger, you've got two people on an even playing field. It's still somewhat of a healthy relationship. But when anger turns to contempt, you've been dismissed. It's associated with moral superiority. And for that reason, it's very, very hard to recover from. Here's what it looks like. It's marked by one lip corner pulled up and in. It's the only asymmetrical expression. And in the presence of contempt, whether or not deception follows -- and it doesn't always follow -- look the other way, go the other direction, reconsider the deal, say, "No thank you. I'm not coming up for just one more nightcap. Thank you."
Science has surfaced many, many more indicators. We know, for example, we know liars will shift their blink rate, point their feet towards an exit. They will take barrier objects and put them between themselves and the person that is interviewing them. They'll alter their vocal tone, often making their vocal tone much lower. Now here's the deal. These behaviors are just behaviors. They're not proof of deception. They're red flags. We're human beings. We make deceptive flailing gestures all over the place all day long. They don't mean anything in and of themselves. But when you see clusters of them, that's your signal. Look, listen, probe, ask some hard questions, get out of that very comfortable mode of knowing, walk into curiosity mode, ask more questions, have a little dignity, treat the person you're talking to with rapport. Don't try to be like those folks on "Law & Order" and those other TV shows that pummel their subjects into submission. Don't be too aggressive, it doesn't work.
Now we've talked a little bit about how to talk to someone who's lying and how to spot a lie. And as I promised, we're now going to look at what the truth looks like. But I'm going to show you two videos, two mothers -- one is lying, one is telling the truth. And these were surfaced by researcher David Matsumoto in California. And I think they're an excellent example of what the truth looks like.
This mother, Diane Downs, shot her kids at close range, drove them to the hospital while they bled all over the car, claimed a scraggy-haired stranger did it. And you'll see when you see the video, she can't even pretend to be an agonizing mother. What you want to look for here is an incredible discrepancy between horrific events that she describes and her very, very cool demeanor. And if you look closely, you'll see duping delight throughout this video.
(Video) Diane Downs: At night when I close my eyes, I can see Christie reaching her hand out to me while I'm driving, and the blood just kept coming out of her mouth. And that -- maybe it'll fade too with time -- but I don't think so. That bothers me the most.
PM: Now I'm going to show you a video of an actual grieving mother, Erin Runnion, confronting her daughter's murderer and torturer in court. Here you're going to see no false emotion, just the authentic expression of a mother's agony.
(Video) Erin Runnion: I wrote this statement on the third anniversary of the night you took my baby, and you hurt her, and you crushed her, you terrified her until her heart stopped. And she fought, and I know she fought you. But I know she looked at you with those amazing brown eyes, and you still wanted to kill her. And I don't understand it, and I never will.
PM: Okay, there's no doubting the veracity of those emotions.
Now the technology around what the truth looks like is progressing on, the science of it. We know for example that we now have specialized eye trackers and infrared brain scans, MRI's that can decode the signals that our bodies send out when we're trying to be deceptive. And these technologies are going to be marketed to all of us as panaceas for deceit, and they will prove incredibly useful some day. But you've got to ask yourself in the meantime: Who do you want on your side of the meeting, someone who's trained in getting to the truth or some guy who's going to drag a 400-pound electroencephalogram through the door?
Liespotters rely on human tools. They know, as someone once said, "Character's who you are in the dark." And what's kind of interesting is that today we have so little darkness. Our world is lit up 24 hours a day. It's transparent with blogs and social networks broadcasting the buzz of a whole new generation of people that have made a choice to live their lives in public. It's a much more noisy world. So one challenge we have is to remember, oversharing, that's not honesty. Our manic tweeting and texting can blind us to the fact that the subtleties of human decency -- character integrity -- that's still what matters, that's always what's going to matter. So in this much noisier world, it might make sense for us to be just a little bit more explicit about our moral code.
When you combine the science of recognizing deception with the art of looking, listening, you exempt yourself from collaborating in a lie. You start up that path of being just a little bit more explicit, because you signal to everyone around you, you say, "Hey, my world, our world, it's going to be an honest one. My world is going to be one where truth is strengthened and falsehood is recognized and marginalized." And when you do that, the ground around you starts to shift just a little bit.
And that's the truth. Thank you.
(Applause)
On any given day we're lied to from 10 to 200 times, and the clues to detect those lie can be subtle and counter-intuitive. Pamela Meyer, author of Liespotting, shows the manners and "hotspots" used by those trained to recognize deception -- and she argues honesty is a value worth preserving.
Okay, now I don't want to alarm anybody in this room, but it's just come to my attention that the person to your right is a liar. (Laughter) Also, the person to your left is a liar. Also the person sitting in your very seats is a liar. We're all liars. What I'm going to do today is I'm going to show you what the research says about why we're all liars, how you can become a liespotter and why you might want to go the extra mile and go from liespotting to truth seeking, and ultimately to trust building.
Now speaking of trust, ever since I wrote this book, "Liespotting," no one wants to meet me in person anymore, no, no, no, no, no. They say, "It's okay, we'll email you." (Laughter) I can't even get a coffee date at Starbucks. My husband's like, "Honey, deception? Maybe you could have focused on cooking. How about French cooking?"
So before I get started, what I'm going to do is I'm going to clarify my goal for you, which is not to teach a game of Gotcha. Liespotters aren't those nitpicky kids, those kids in the back of the room that are shouting, "Gotcha! Gotcha! Your eyebrow twitched. You flared your nostril. I watch that TV show 'Lie To Me.' I know you're lying." No, liespotters are armed with scientific knowledge of how to spot deception. They use it to get to the truth, and they do what mature leaders do everyday; they have difficult conversations with difficult people, sometimes during very difficult times. And they start up that path by accepting a core proposition, and that proposition is the following: Lying is a cooperative act. Think about it, a lie has no power whatsoever by its mere utterance. Its power emerges when someone else agrees to believe the lie.
So I know it may sound like tough love, but look, if at some point you got lied to, it's because you agreed to get lied to. Truth number one about lying: Lying's a cooperative act. Now not all lies are harmful. Sometimes we're willing participants in deception for the sake of social dignity, maybe to keep a secret that should be kept secret, secret. We say, "Nice song." "Honey, you don't look fat in that, no." Or we say, favorite of the digiratti, "You know, I just fished that email out of my spam folder. So sorry."
But there are times when we are unwilling participants in deception. And that can have dramatic costs for us. Last year saw 997 billion dollars in corporate fraud alone in the United States. That's an eyelash under a trillion dollars. That's seven percent of revenues. Deception can cost billions. Think Enron, Madoff, the mortgage crisis. Or in the case of double agents and traitors, like Robert Hanssen or Aldrich Ames, lies can betray our country, they can compromise our security, they can undermine democracy, they can cause the deaths of those that defend us.
Deception is actually serious business. This con man, Henry Oberlander, he was such an effective con man British authorities say he could have undermined the entire banking system of the Western world. And you can't find this guy on Google; you can't find him anywhere. He was interviewed once, and he said the following. He said, "Look, I've got one rule." And this was Henry's rule, he said, "Look, everyone is willing to give you something. They're ready to give you something for whatever it is they're hungry for." And that's the crux of it. If you don't want to be deceived, you have to know, what is it that you're hungry for? And we all kind of hate to admit it. We wish we were better husbands, better wives, smarter, more powerful, taller, richer -- the list goes on. Lying is an attempt to bridge that gap, to connect our wishes and our fantasies about who we wish we were, how we wish we could be, with what we're really like. And boy are we willing to fill in those gaps in our lives with lies.
On a given day, studies show that you may be lied to anywhere from 10 to 200 times. Now granted, many of those are white lies. But in another study, it showed that strangers lied three times within the first 10 minutes of meeting each other. (Laughter) Now when we first hear this data, we recoil. We can't believe how prevalent lying is. We're essentially against lying. But if you look more closely, the plot actually thickens. We lie more to strangers than we lie to coworkers. Extroverts lie more than introverts. Men lie eight times more about themselves than they do other people. Women lie more to protect other people. If you're an average married couple, you're going to lie to your spouse in one out of every 10 interactions. Now you may think that's bad. It you're unmarried, that number drops to three.
Lying's complex. It's woven into the fabric of our daily and our business lives. We're deeply ambivalent about the truth. We parse it out on an as-needed basis, sometimes for very good reasons, other times just because we don't understand the gaps in our lives. That's truth number two about lying. We're against lying, but we're covertly for it in ways that our society has sanctioned for centuries and centuries and centuries. It's as old as breathing. It's part of our culture, it's part of our history. Think Dante, Shakespeare, the Bible, News of the World.
(Laughter)
Lying has evolutionary value to us as a species. Researchers have long known that the more intelligent the species, the larger the neocortex, the more likely it is to be deceptive. Now you might remember Koko. Does anybody remember Koko the gorilla who was taught sign language? Koko was taught to communicate via sign language. Here's Koko with her kitten. It's her cute little, fluffy pet kitten. Koko once blamed her pet kitten for ripping a sink out of the wall. (Laughter) We're hardwired to become leaders of the pack. It's starts really, really early. How early? Well babies will fake a cry, pause, wait to see who's coming and then go right back to crying. One-year-olds learn concealment. (Laughter) Two-year-olds bluff. Five-year-olds lie outright. They manipulate via flattery. Nine-year-olds, masters of the cover up. By the time you enter college, you're going to lie to your mom in one out of every five interactions. By the time we enter this work world and we're breadwinners, we enter a world that is just cluttered with spam, fake digital friends, partisan media, ingenious identity thieves, world-class Ponzi schemers, a deception epidemic -- in short, what one author calls a post-truth society. It's been very confusing for a long time now.
What do you do? Well there are steps we can take to navigate our way through the morass. Trained liespotters get to the truth 90 percent of the time. The rest of us, we're only 54 percent accurate. Why is it so easy to learn? There are good liars and there are bad liars. There are no real original liars. We all make the same mistakes. We all use the same techniques. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to show you two patterns of deception. And then we're going to look at the hot spots and see if we can find them ourselves. We're going to start with speech.
(Video) Bill Clinton: I want you to listen to me. I'm going to say this again. I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky. I never told anybody to lie, not a single time, never. And these allegations are false. And I need to go back to work for the American people. Thank you.
Pamela Meyer: Okay, what were the telltale signs? Well first we heard what's known as a non-contracted denial. Studies show that people who are overdetermined in their denial will resort to formal rather than informal language. We also heard distancing language: "that woman." We know that liars will unconsciously distance themselves from their subject using language as their tool. Now if Bill Clinton had said, "Well, to tell you the truth ... " or Richard Nixon's favorite, "In all candor ... " he would have been a dead giveaway for any liespotter than knows that qualifying language, as it's called, qualifying language like that, further discredits the subject. Now if he had repeated the question in its entirety, or if he had peppered his account with a little too much detail -- and we're all really glad he didn't do that -- he would have further discredited himself. Freud had it right. Freud said, look, there's much more to it than speech: "No mortal can keep a secret. If his lips are silent, he chatters with his fingertips." And we all do it no matter how powerful you are. We all chatter with our fingertips. I'm going to show you Dominique Strauss-Kahn with Obama who's chattering with his fingertips.
(Laughter)
Now this brings us to our next pattern, which is body language. With body language, here's what you've got to do. You've really got to just throw your assumptions out the door. Let the science temper your knowledge a little bit. Because we think liars fidget all the time. Well guess what, they're known to freeze their upper bodies when they're lying. We think liars won't look you in the eyes. Well guess what, they look you in the eyes a little too much just to compensate for that myth. We think warmth and smiles convey honesty, sincerity. But a trained liespotter can spot a fake smile a mile away. Can you all spot the fake smile here? You can consciously contract the muscles in your cheeks. But the real smile's in the eyes, the crow's feet of the eyes. They cannot be consciously contracted, especially if you overdid the Botox. Don't overdo the Botox; nobody will think you're honest.
Now we're going to look at the hot spots. Can you tell what's happening in a conversation? Can you start to find the hot spots to see the discrepancies between someone's words and someone's actions? Now I know it seems really obvious, but when you're having a conversation with someone you suspect of deception, attitude is by far the most overlooked but telling of indicators.
An honest person is going to be cooperative. They're going to show they're on your side. They're going to be enthusiastic. They're going to be willing and helpful to getting you to the truth. They're going to be willing to brainstorm, name suspects, provide details. They're going to say, "Hey, maybe it was those guys in payroll that forged those checks." They're going to be infuriated if they sense they're wrongly accused throughout the entire course of the interview, not just in flashes; they'll be infuriated throughout the entire course of the interview. And if you ask someone honest what should happen to whomever did forge those checks, an honest person is much more likely to recommend strict rather than lenient punishment.
Now let's say you're having that exact same conversation with someone deceptive. That person may be withdrawn, look down, lower their voice, pause, be kind of herky-jerky. Ask a deceptive person to tell their story, they're going to pepper it with way too much detail in all kinds of irrelevant places. And then they're going to tell their story in strict chronological order. And what a trained interrogator does is they come in and in very subtle ways over the course of several hours, they will ask that person to tell that story backwards, and then they'll watch them squirm, and track which questions produce the highest volume of deceptive tells. Why do they do that? Well we all do the same thing. We rehearse our words, but we rarely rehearse our gestures. We say "yes," we shake our heads "no." We tell very convincing stories, we slightly shrug our shoulders. We commit terrible crimes, and we smile at the delight in getting away with it. Now that smile is known in the trade as "duping delight."
And we're going to see that in several videos moving forward, but we're going to start -- for those of you who don't know him, this is presidential candidate John Edwards who shocked America by fathering a child out of wedlock. We're going to see him talk about getting a paternity test. See now if you can spot him saying, "yes" while shaking his head "no," slightly shrugging his shoulders.
(Video) John Edwards: I'd be happy to participate in one. I know that it's not possible that this child could be mine, because of the timing of events. So I know it's not possible. Happy to take a paternity test, and would love to see it happen. Interviewer: Are you going to do that soon? Is there somebody -- JE: Well, I'm only one side. I'm only one side of the test. But I'm happy to participate in one.
PM: Okay, those head shakes are much easier to spot once you know to look for them. There're going to be times when someone makes one expression while masking another that just kind of leaks through in a flash. Murderers are known to leak sadness. Your new joint venture partner might shake your hand, celebrate, go out to dinner with you and then leak an expression of anger. And we're not all going to become facial expression experts overnight here, but there's one I can teach you that's very dangerous, and it's easy to learn, and that's the expression of contempt. Now with anger, you've got two people on an even playing field. It's still somewhat of a healthy relationship. But when anger turns to contempt, you've been dismissed. It's associated with moral superiority. And for that reason, it's very, very hard to recover from. Here's what it looks like. It's marked by one lip corner pulled up and in. It's the only asymmetrical expression. And in the presence of contempt, whether or not deception follows -- and it doesn't always follow -- look the other way, go the other direction, reconsider the deal, say, "No thank you. I'm not coming up for just one more nightcap. Thank you."
Science has surfaced many, many more indicators. We know, for example, we know liars will shift their blink rate, point their feet towards an exit. They will take barrier objects and put them between themselves and the person that is interviewing them. They'll alter their vocal tone, often making their vocal tone much lower. Now here's the deal. These behaviors are just behaviors. They're not proof of deception. They're red flags. We're human beings. We make deceptive flailing gestures all over the place all day long. They don't mean anything in and of themselves. But when you see clusters of them, that's your signal. Look, listen, probe, ask some hard questions, get out of that very comfortable mode of knowing, walk into curiosity mode, ask more questions, have a little dignity, treat the person you're talking to with rapport. Don't try to be like those folks on "Law & Order" and those other TV shows that pummel their subjects into submission. Don't be too aggressive, it doesn't work.
Now we've talked a little bit about how to talk to someone who's lying and how to spot a lie. And as I promised, we're now going to look at what the truth looks like. But I'm going to show you two videos, two mothers -- one is lying, one is telling the truth. And these were surfaced by researcher David Matsumoto in California. And I think they're an excellent example of what the truth looks like.
This mother, Diane Downs, shot her kids at close range, drove them to the hospital while they bled all over the car, claimed a scraggy-haired stranger did it. And you'll see when you see the video, she can't even pretend to be an agonizing mother. What you want to look for here is an incredible discrepancy between horrific events that she describes and her very, very cool demeanor. And if you look closely, you'll see duping delight throughout this video.
(Video) Diane Downs: At night when I close my eyes, I can see Christie reaching her hand out to me while I'm driving, and the blood just kept coming out of her mouth. And that -- maybe it'll fade too with time -- but I don't think so. That bothers me the most.
PM: Now I'm going to show you a video of an actual grieving mother, Erin Runnion, confronting her daughter's murderer and torturer in court. Here you're going to see no false emotion, just the authentic expression of a mother's agony.
(Video) Erin Runnion: I wrote this statement on the third anniversary of the night you took my baby, and you hurt her, and you crushed her, you terrified her until her heart stopped. And she fought, and I know she fought you. But I know she looked at you with those amazing brown eyes, and you still wanted to kill her. And I don't understand it, and I never will.
PM: Okay, there's no doubting the veracity of those emotions.
Now the technology around what the truth looks like is progressing on, the science of it. We know for example that we now have specialized eye trackers and infrared brain scans, MRI's that can decode the signals that our bodies send out when we're trying to be deceptive. And these technologies are going to be marketed to all of us as panaceas for deceit, and they will prove incredibly useful some day. But you've got to ask yourself in the meantime: Who do you want on your side of the meeting, someone who's trained in getting to the truth or some guy who's going to drag a 400-pound electroencephalogram through the door?
Liespotters rely on human tools. They know, as someone once said, "Character's who you are in the dark." And what's kind of interesting is that today we have so little darkness. Our world is lit up 24 hours a day. It's transparent with blogs and social networks broadcasting the buzz of a whole new generation of people that have made a choice to live their lives in public. It's a much more noisy world. So one challenge we have is to remember, oversharing, that's not honesty. Our manic tweeting and texting can blind us to the fact that the subtleties of human decency -- character integrity -- that's still what matters, that's always what's going to matter. So in this much noisier world, it might make sense for us to be just a little bit more explicit about our moral code.
When you combine the science of recognizing deception with the art of looking, listening, you exempt yourself from collaborating in a lie. You start up that path of being just a little bit more explicit, because you signal to everyone around you, you say, "Hey, my world, our world, it's going to be an honest one. My world is going to be one where truth is strengthened and falsehood is recognized and marginalized." And when you do that, the ground around you starts to shift just a little bit.
And that's the truth. Thank you.
(Applause)
Bunker Roy: Learning from a barefoot movement
ABOUT THIS TALK
In Rajasthan, India, an extraordinary school teaches rural women and men -- many of them illiterate -- to become solar engineers, artisans, dentists and doctors in their own villages. It's called the Barefoot College, and its founder, Bunker Roy, explains how it works.
In Rajasthan, India, an extraordinary school teaches rural women and men -- many of them illiterate -- to become solar engineers, artisans, dentists and doctors in their own villages. It's called the Barefoot College, and its founder, Bunker Roy, explains how it works.
Jae Rhim Lee: My mushroom burial suit
ABOUT THIS TALK
Here's a powerful provocation from artist Jae Rhim Lee. Can we commit our bodies to a cleaner, greener Earth, even after death? Naturally -- using a special burial suit seeded with pollution-gobbling mushrooms. Yes, this just might be the strangest TEDTalk you'll ever see ...
So I'm here to explain why I'm wearing these ninja pajamas. And to do that, I'd like to talk first about environmental toxins in our bodies. So some of you may know about the chemical Bisphenol A, BPA. It's a material hardener and synthetic estrogen that's found in the lining of canned foods and some plastics. So BPA mimics the body's own hormones and causes neurological and reproductive problems. And it's everywhere. A recent study found BPA in 93 percent of people six and older. But it's just one chemical. The Center for Disease Control in the U.S. says we have 219 toxic pollutants in our bodies, and this includes preservatives, pesticides and heavy metals like lead and mercury.
To me, this says three things. First, don't become a cannibal. Second, we are both responsible for and the victims of our own pollution. And third, our bodies are filters and storehouses for environmental toxins. So what happens to all these toxins when we die? The short answer is: They return to the environment in one way or another, continuing the cycle of toxicity. But our current funeral practices make the situation much worse. If you're cremated, all those toxins I mentioned are released into the atmosphere. And this includes 5,000 pounds of mercury from our dental fillings alone every year.
And in a traditional American funeral, a dead body is covered with fillers and cosmetics to make it look alive. It's then pumped with toxic formaldehyde to slow decomposition -- a practice which causes respiratory problems and cancer in funeral personnel. So by trying to preserve our dead bodies, we deny death, poison the living and further harm the environment. Green or natural burials, which don't use embalming, are a step in the right direction, but they don't address the existing toxins in our bodies. I think there's a better solution.
I'm an artist, so I'd like to offer a modest proposal at the intersection of art, science and culture. The Infinity Burial Project, an alternative burial system that uses mushrooms to decompose and clean toxins in bodies. The Infinity Burial Project began a few years ago with a fantasy to create the Infinity Mushroom -- a new hybrid mushroom that would decompose bodies, clean the toxins and deliver nutrients to plant roots, leaving clean compost. But I learned it's nearly impossible to create a new hybrid mushroom. I also learned that some of our tastiest mushrooms can clean environmental toxins in soil. So I thought maybe I could train an army of toxin-cleaning edible mushrooms to eat my body.
So today, I'm collecting what I shed or slough off -- my hair, skin and nails -- and I'm feeding these to edible mushrooms. As the mushrooms grow, I pick the best feeders to become Infinity Mushrooms. It's a kind of imprinting and selective breeding process for the afterlife. So when I die, the Infinity Mushrooms will recognize my body and be able to eat it. All right, so for some of you, this may be really, really out there. (Laughter) Just a little.
I realize this is not the kind of relationship that we usually aspire to have with our food. We want to eat, not be eaten by, our food. But as I watch the mushrooms grow and digest my body, I imagine the Infinity Mushroom as a symbol of a new way of thinking about death and the relationship between my body and the environment. See for me, cultivating the Infinity Mushroom is more than just scientific experimentation or gardening or raising a pet, it's a step towards accepting the fact that someday I will die and decay. It's also a step towards taking responsibility for my own burden on the planet.
Growing a mushroom is also part of a larger practice of cultivating decomposing organisms called decompiculture, a concept that was developed by an entomologist, Timothy Myles. The Infinity Mushroom is a subset of decompiculture I'm calling body decompiculture and toxin remediation -- the cultivation of organisms that decompose and clean toxins in bodies.
And now about these ninja pajamas. Once it's completed, I plan to integrate the Infinity Mushrooms into a number of objects. First, a burial suit infused with mushroom spores, the Mushroom Death Suit. (Laughter) I'm wearing the second prototype of this burial suit. It's covered with a crocheted netting that is embedded with mushroom spores. The dendritic pattern you see mimics the growth of mushroom mycelia, which are the equivalent of plant roots.
I'm also making a decompiculture kit, a cocktail of capsules that contain Infinity Mushroom spores and other elements that speed decomposition and toxin remediation. These capsules are embedded in a nutrient-rich jelly, a kind of second skin, which dissolves quickly and becomes baby food for the growing mushrooms. So I plan to finish the mushroom and decompiculture kit in the next year or two, and then I'd like to begin testing them, first with expired meat from the market and then with human subjects. And believe it or not, a few people have offered to donate their bodies to the project to be eaten by mushrooms.
(Laughter)
What I've learned from talking to these folks is that we share a common desire to understand and accept death and to minimize the impact of our death on the environment. I wanted to cultivate this perspective just like the mushrooms, so I formed the Decompiculture Society, a group of people called decompinauts who actively explore their postmortem options, seek death acceptance and cultivate decomposing organisms like the Infinity Mushroom. The Decompiculture Society shares a vision of a cultural shift, from our current culture of death denial and body preservation to one of decompiculture, a radical acceptance of death and decomposition.
Accepting death means accepting that we are physical beings who are intimately connected to the environment, as the research on environmental toxins confirms. And the saying goes, we came from dust and will return to dust. And once we understand that we're connected to the environment, we see that the survival of our species depends on the survival of the planet. I believe this is the beginning of true environmental responsibility.
Thank you.
(Applause)
Here's a powerful provocation from artist Jae Rhim Lee. Can we commit our bodies to a cleaner, greener Earth, even after death? Naturally -- using a special burial suit seeded with pollution-gobbling mushrooms. Yes, this just might be the strangest TEDTalk you'll ever see ...
So I'm here to explain why I'm wearing these ninja pajamas. And to do that, I'd like to talk first about environmental toxins in our bodies. So some of you may know about the chemical Bisphenol A, BPA. It's a material hardener and synthetic estrogen that's found in the lining of canned foods and some plastics. So BPA mimics the body's own hormones and causes neurological and reproductive problems. And it's everywhere. A recent study found BPA in 93 percent of people six and older. But it's just one chemical. The Center for Disease Control in the U.S. says we have 219 toxic pollutants in our bodies, and this includes preservatives, pesticides and heavy metals like lead and mercury.
To me, this says three things. First, don't become a cannibal. Second, we are both responsible for and the victims of our own pollution. And third, our bodies are filters and storehouses for environmental toxins. So what happens to all these toxins when we die? The short answer is: They return to the environment in one way or another, continuing the cycle of toxicity. But our current funeral practices make the situation much worse. If you're cremated, all those toxins I mentioned are released into the atmosphere. And this includes 5,000 pounds of mercury from our dental fillings alone every year.
And in a traditional American funeral, a dead body is covered with fillers and cosmetics to make it look alive. It's then pumped with toxic formaldehyde to slow decomposition -- a practice which causes respiratory problems and cancer in funeral personnel. So by trying to preserve our dead bodies, we deny death, poison the living and further harm the environment. Green or natural burials, which don't use embalming, are a step in the right direction, but they don't address the existing toxins in our bodies. I think there's a better solution.
I'm an artist, so I'd like to offer a modest proposal at the intersection of art, science and culture. The Infinity Burial Project, an alternative burial system that uses mushrooms to decompose and clean toxins in bodies. The Infinity Burial Project began a few years ago with a fantasy to create the Infinity Mushroom -- a new hybrid mushroom that would decompose bodies, clean the toxins and deliver nutrients to plant roots, leaving clean compost. But I learned it's nearly impossible to create a new hybrid mushroom. I also learned that some of our tastiest mushrooms can clean environmental toxins in soil. So I thought maybe I could train an army of toxin-cleaning edible mushrooms to eat my body.
So today, I'm collecting what I shed or slough off -- my hair, skin and nails -- and I'm feeding these to edible mushrooms. As the mushrooms grow, I pick the best feeders to become Infinity Mushrooms. It's a kind of imprinting and selective breeding process for the afterlife. So when I die, the Infinity Mushrooms will recognize my body and be able to eat it. All right, so for some of you, this may be really, really out there. (Laughter) Just a little.
I realize this is not the kind of relationship that we usually aspire to have with our food. We want to eat, not be eaten by, our food. But as I watch the mushrooms grow and digest my body, I imagine the Infinity Mushroom as a symbol of a new way of thinking about death and the relationship between my body and the environment. See for me, cultivating the Infinity Mushroom is more than just scientific experimentation or gardening or raising a pet, it's a step towards accepting the fact that someday I will die and decay. It's also a step towards taking responsibility for my own burden on the planet.
Growing a mushroom is also part of a larger practice of cultivating decomposing organisms called decompiculture, a concept that was developed by an entomologist, Timothy Myles. The Infinity Mushroom is a subset of decompiculture I'm calling body decompiculture and toxin remediation -- the cultivation of organisms that decompose and clean toxins in bodies.
And now about these ninja pajamas. Once it's completed, I plan to integrate the Infinity Mushrooms into a number of objects. First, a burial suit infused with mushroom spores, the Mushroom Death Suit. (Laughter) I'm wearing the second prototype of this burial suit. It's covered with a crocheted netting that is embedded with mushroom spores. The dendritic pattern you see mimics the growth of mushroom mycelia, which are the equivalent of plant roots.
I'm also making a decompiculture kit, a cocktail of capsules that contain Infinity Mushroom spores and other elements that speed decomposition and toxin remediation. These capsules are embedded in a nutrient-rich jelly, a kind of second skin, which dissolves quickly and becomes baby food for the growing mushrooms. So I plan to finish the mushroom and decompiculture kit in the next year or two, and then I'd like to begin testing them, first with expired meat from the market and then with human subjects. And believe it or not, a few people have offered to donate their bodies to the project to be eaten by mushrooms.
(Laughter)
What I've learned from talking to these folks is that we share a common desire to understand and accept death and to minimize the impact of our death on the environment. I wanted to cultivate this perspective just like the mushrooms, so I formed the Decompiculture Society, a group of people called decompinauts who actively explore their postmortem options, seek death acceptance and cultivate decomposing organisms like the Infinity Mushroom. The Decompiculture Society shares a vision of a cultural shift, from our current culture of death denial and body preservation to one of decompiculture, a radical acceptance of death and decomposition.
Accepting death means accepting that we are physical beings who are intimately connected to the environment, as the research on environmental toxins confirms. And the saying goes, we came from dust and will return to dust. And once we understand that we're connected to the environment, we see that the survival of our species depends on the survival of the planet. I believe this is the beginning of true environmental responsibility.
Thank you.
(Applause)
Angela Belcher: Using nature to grow batteries
ABOUT THIS TALK
Inspired by an abalone shell, Angela Belcher programs viruses to make elegant nanoscale structures that humans can use. Selecting for high-performing genes through directed evolution, she's produced viruses that can construct powerful new batteries, clean hydrogen fuels and record-breaking solar cells. At TEDxCaltech, she shows us how it's done.
I thought I would talk a little bit about how nature makes materials. I brought along with me an abalone shell. This abalone shell is a biocomposite material that's 98 percent by mass calcium carbonate and two percent by mass protein. Yet, it's 3,000 times tougher than its geological counterpart. And a lot of people might use structures like abalone shells, like chalk. I've been fascinated by how nature makes materials, and there's a lot of sequence to how they do such an exquisite job. Part of it is that these materials are macroscopic in structure, but they're formed at the nanoscale. They're formed at the nanoscale, and they use proteins that are coded by the genetic level that allow them to build these really exquisite structures.
So something I think is very fascinating is what if you could give life to non-living structures, like batteries and like solar cells? What if they had some of the same capabilities that an abalone shell did, in terms of being able to build really exquisite structures at room temperature and room pressure, using non-toxic chemicals and adding no toxic materials back into the environment? So that's the vision that I've been thinking about. And so what if you could grow a battery in a petri dish? Or, what if you could give genetic information to a battery so that it could actually become better as a function of time, and do so in an environmentally friendly way?
And so, going back to this abalone shell, besides being nano-structured, one thing that's fascinating, is when a male and a female abalone get together, they pass on the genetic information that says, "This is how to build an exquisite material. Here's how to do it at room temperature and pressure, using non-toxic materials." Same with diatoms, which are shone right here, which are glasseous structures. Every time the diatoms replicate, they give the genetic information that says, "Here's how to build glass in the ocean that's perfectly nano-structured. And you can do it the same, over and over again." So what if you could do the same thing with a solar cell or a battery? I like to say my favorite biomaterial is my four year-old.
But anyone who's ever had, or knows, small children knows they're incredibly complex organisms. And so if you wanted to convince them to do something they don't want to do, it's very difficult. So when we think about future technologies, we actually think of using bacteria and virus, simple organisms. Can you convince them to work with a new tool box, so that they can build a structure that will be important to me?
Also, we think about future technologies. We start with the beginning of Earth. Basically, it took a billion years to have life on Earth. And very rapidly, they became multi-cellular, they could replicate, they could use photosynthesis as a way of getting their energy source. But it wasn't until about 500 million years ago -- during the Cambrian geologic time period -- that organisms in the ocean started making hard materials. Before that they were all soft, fluffy structures. And it was during this time that there was increased calcium and iron and silicon in the environment. And organisms learned how to make hard materials. And so that's what I would like be able to do -- convince biology to work with the rest of the periodic table.
Now if you look at biology, there's many structures like DNA and antibodies and proteins and ribosomes that you've heard about that are already nano-structured. So nature already gives us really exquisite structures on the nanoscale. What if we could harness them and convince them to not be an antibody that does something like HIV? But what if we could convince them to build a solar cell for us? So here are some examples: these are some natural shells.
There are natural biological materials. The abalone shell here -- and if you fracture it, you can look at the fact that it's nano-structured. There's diatoms made out of SIO2, and they're magnetotactic bacteria that make small, single-domain magnets used for navigation. What all these have in common is these materials are structured at the nanoscale, and they have a DNA sequence that codes for a protein sequence, that gives them the blueprint to be able to build these really wonderful structures. Now, going back to the abalone shell, the abalone makes this shell by having these proteins. These proteins are very negatively charged. And they can pull calcium out of the environment, put down a layer of calcium and then carbonate, calcium and carbonate. It has the chemical sequences of amino acids which says, "This is how to build the structure. Here's the DNA sequence, here's the protein sequence in order to do it." And so an interesting idea is, what if you could take any material that you wanted, or any element on the periodic table, and find its corresponding DNA sequence, then code it for a corresponding protein sequence to build a structure, but not build an abalone shell -- build something that, through nature, it has never had the opportunity to work with yet.
And so here's the periodic table. And I absolutely love the periodic table. Every year for the incoming freshman class at MIT, I have a periodic table made that says, "Welcome to MIT. Now you're in your element." And you flip it over, and it's the amino acids with the PH at which they have different charges. And so I give this out to thousands of people. And I know it says MIT, and this is Caltech, but I have a couple extra if people want it. And I was really fortunate to have President Obama visit my lab this year on his visit to MIT, and I really wanted to give him a periodic table. So I stayed up at night, and I talked to my husband, "How do I give President Obama a periodic table? What if he says, 'Oh, I already have one,' or, 'I've already memorized it'?" And so he came to visit my lab and looked around -- it was a great visit. And then afterward, I said, "Sir, I want to give you the periodic table in case you're ever in a bind and need to calculate molecular weight." And I thought molecular weight sounded much less nerdy than molar mass. And so he looked at it, and he said, "Thank you. I'll look at it periodically." (Laughter) (Applause) And later in a lecture that he gave on clean energy, he pulled it out and said, "And people at MIT, they give out periodic tables."
So basically what I didn't tell you is that about 500 million years ago, organisms starter making materials, but it took them about 50 million years to get good at it. It took them about 50 million years to learn how to perfect how to make that abalone shell. And that's a hard sell to a graduate student. "I have this great project -- 50 million years." And so we had to develop a way of trying to do this more rapidly. And so we use a virus that's a non-toxic virus called M13 bacteriophage that's job is to infect bacteria. Well it has a simple DNA structure that you can go in and cut and paste additional DNA sequences into it. And by doing that, it allows the virus to express random protein sequences.
And this is pretty easy biotechnology. And you could basically do this a billion times. And so you can go in and have a billion different viruses that are all genetically identical, but they differ from each other based on their tips, on one sequence that codes for one protein. Now if you take all billion viruses, and you can put them in one drop of liquid, you can force them to interact with anything you want on the periodic table. And through a process of selection evolution, you can pull one of a billion that does something that you'd like it to do, like grow a battery or grow a solar cell.
So basically, viruses can't replicate themselves, they need a host. Once you find that one out of a billion, you infect it into a bacteria, and you make millions and billions of copies of that particular sequence. And so the other thing that's beautiful about biology is that biology gives you really exquisite structures with nice link scales. And these viruses are long and skinny, and we can get them to express the ability to grow something like semiconductors or materials for batteries.
Now this is a high-powered battery that we grew in my lab. We engineered a virus to pick up carbon nanotubes. So one part of the virus grabs a carbon nanotube. The other part of the virus has a sequence that can grow an electrode material for a battery. And then it wires itself to the current collector. And so through a process of selection evolution, we went from having a virus that made a crummy battery to a virus that made a good battery to a virus that made a record-breaking, high-powered battery that's all made at room temperature, basically at the bench top. And that battery went to the White House for a press conference. I brought it here. You can see it in this case -- that's lighting this LED. Now if we could scale this, you could actually use it to run your Prius, which is my dream -- to be able to drive a virus-powered car.
But it's basically -- you can pull one out of a billion. You can make lots of amplifications to it. Basically, you make an amplification in the lab. And then you get it to self-assemble into a structure like a battery. We're able to do this also with catalysis. This is the example of photocatalytic splitting of water. And what we've been able to do is engineer a virus to basically take dye absorbing molecules and line them up on the surface of the virus so it acts as an antenna, and you get an energy transfer across the virus. And then we give it a second gene to grow an inorganic material that can be used to split water into oxygen and hydrogen, that can be used for clean fuels. And I brought an example with me of that today. My students promised me it would work. These are virus-assembled nanowires. When you shine light on them, you can see them bubbling. In this case, you're seeing oxygen bubbles come out. And basically by controlling the genes, you can control multiple materials to improve your device performance.
The last example are solar cells. You can also do this with solar cells. We've been able to engineer viruses to pick up carbon nanotubes and then grow titanium dioxide around them -- and use as a way of getting electrons through the device. And what we've found is that, through genetic engineering, we can actually increase the efficiencies of these solar cells to record numbers for these types of dye-sensitized systems. And I brought one of those as well that you can play around with outside afterward. So this is a virus-based solar cell. Through evolution and selection, we took it from an eight percent efficiency solar cell to an 11 percent efficiency solar cell.
So I hope that I've convinced you that there's a lot of great, interesting things to be learned about how nature makes materials -- and taking it to the next step to see if you can force, or whether you can take advantage of how nature makes materials, to make things that nature hasn't yet dreamed of making.
Thank you.
Inspired by an abalone shell, Angela Belcher programs viruses to make elegant nanoscale structures that humans can use. Selecting for high-performing genes through directed evolution, she's produced viruses that can construct powerful new batteries, clean hydrogen fuels and record-breaking solar cells. At TEDxCaltech, she shows us how it's done.
I thought I would talk a little bit about how nature makes materials. I brought along with me an abalone shell. This abalone shell is a biocomposite material that's 98 percent by mass calcium carbonate and two percent by mass protein. Yet, it's 3,000 times tougher than its geological counterpart. And a lot of people might use structures like abalone shells, like chalk. I've been fascinated by how nature makes materials, and there's a lot of sequence to how they do such an exquisite job. Part of it is that these materials are macroscopic in structure, but they're formed at the nanoscale. They're formed at the nanoscale, and they use proteins that are coded by the genetic level that allow them to build these really exquisite structures.
So something I think is very fascinating is what if you could give life to non-living structures, like batteries and like solar cells? What if they had some of the same capabilities that an abalone shell did, in terms of being able to build really exquisite structures at room temperature and room pressure, using non-toxic chemicals and adding no toxic materials back into the environment? So that's the vision that I've been thinking about. And so what if you could grow a battery in a petri dish? Or, what if you could give genetic information to a battery so that it could actually become better as a function of time, and do so in an environmentally friendly way?
And so, going back to this abalone shell, besides being nano-structured, one thing that's fascinating, is when a male and a female abalone get together, they pass on the genetic information that says, "This is how to build an exquisite material. Here's how to do it at room temperature and pressure, using non-toxic materials." Same with diatoms, which are shone right here, which are glasseous structures. Every time the diatoms replicate, they give the genetic information that says, "Here's how to build glass in the ocean that's perfectly nano-structured. And you can do it the same, over and over again." So what if you could do the same thing with a solar cell or a battery? I like to say my favorite biomaterial is my four year-old.
But anyone who's ever had, or knows, small children knows they're incredibly complex organisms. And so if you wanted to convince them to do something they don't want to do, it's very difficult. So when we think about future technologies, we actually think of using bacteria and virus, simple organisms. Can you convince them to work with a new tool box, so that they can build a structure that will be important to me?
Also, we think about future technologies. We start with the beginning of Earth. Basically, it took a billion years to have life on Earth. And very rapidly, they became multi-cellular, they could replicate, they could use photosynthesis as a way of getting their energy source. But it wasn't until about 500 million years ago -- during the Cambrian geologic time period -- that organisms in the ocean started making hard materials. Before that they were all soft, fluffy structures. And it was during this time that there was increased calcium and iron and silicon in the environment. And organisms learned how to make hard materials. And so that's what I would like be able to do -- convince biology to work with the rest of the periodic table.
Now if you look at biology, there's many structures like DNA and antibodies and proteins and ribosomes that you've heard about that are already nano-structured. So nature already gives us really exquisite structures on the nanoscale. What if we could harness them and convince them to not be an antibody that does something like HIV? But what if we could convince them to build a solar cell for us? So here are some examples: these are some natural shells.
There are natural biological materials. The abalone shell here -- and if you fracture it, you can look at the fact that it's nano-structured. There's diatoms made out of SIO2, and they're magnetotactic bacteria that make small, single-domain magnets used for navigation. What all these have in common is these materials are structured at the nanoscale, and they have a DNA sequence that codes for a protein sequence, that gives them the blueprint to be able to build these really wonderful structures. Now, going back to the abalone shell, the abalone makes this shell by having these proteins. These proteins are very negatively charged. And they can pull calcium out of the environment, put down a layer of calcium and then carbonate, calcium and carbonate. It has the chemical sequences of amino acids which says, "This is how to build the structure. Here's the DNA sequence, here's the protein sequence in order to do it." And so an interesting idea is, what if you could take any material that you wanted, or any element on the periodic table, and find its corresponding DNA sequence, then code it for a corresponding protein sequence to build a structure, but not build an abalone shell -- build something that, through nature, it has never had the opportunity to work with yet.
And so here's the periodic table. And I absolutely love the periodic table. Every year for the incoming freshman class at MIT, I have a periodic table made that says, "Welcome to MIT. Now you're in your element." And you flip it over, and it's the amino acids with the PH at which they have different charges. And so I give this out to thousands of people. And I know it says MIT, and this is Caltech, but I have a couple extra if people want it. And I was really fortunate to have President Obama visit my lab this year on his visit to MIT, and I really wanted to give him a periodic table. So I stayed up at night, and I talked to my husband, "How do I give President Obama a periodic table? What if he says, 'Oh, I already have one,' or, 'I've already memorized it'?" And so he came to visit my lab and looked around -- it was a great visit. And then afterward, I said, "Sir, I want to give you the periodic table in case you're ever in a bind and need to calculate molecular weight." And I thought molecular weight sounded much less nerdy than molar mass. And so he looked at it, and he said, "Thank you. I'll look at it periodically." (Laughter) (Applause) And later in a lecture that he gave on clean energy, he pulled it out and said, "And people at MIT, they give out periodic tables."
So basically what I didn't tell you is that about 500 million years ago, organisms starter making materials, but it took them about 50 million years to get good at it. It took them about 50 million years to learn how to perfect how to make that abalone shell. And that's a hard sell to a graduate student. "I have this great project -- 50 million years." And so we had to develop a way of trying to do this more rapidly. And so we use a virus that's a non-toxic virus called M13 bacteriophage that's job is to infect bacteria. Well it has a simple DNA structure that you can go in and cut and paste additional DNA sequences into it. And by doing that, it allows the virus to express random protein sequences.
And this is pretty easy biotechnology. And you could basically do this a billion times. And so you can go in and have a billion different viruses that are all genetically identical, but they differ from each other based on their tips, on one sequence that codes for one protein. Now if you take all billion viruses, and you can put them in one drop of liquid, you can force them to interact with anything you want on the periodic table. And through a process of selection evolution, you can pull one of a billion that does something that you'd like it to do, like grow a battery or grow a solar cell.
So basically, viruses can't replicate themselves, they need a host. Once you find that one out of a billion, you infect it into a bacteria, and you make millions and billions of copies of that particular sequence. And so the other thing that's beautiful about biology is that biology gives you really exquisite structures with nice link scales. And these viruses are long and skinny, and we can get them to express the ability to grow something like semiconductors or materials for batteries.
Now this is a high-powered battery that we grew in my lab. We engineered a virus to pick up carbon nanotubes. So one part of the virus grabs a carbon nanotube. The other part of the virus has a sequence that can grow an electrode material for a battery. And then it wires itself to the current collector. And so through a process of selection evolution, we went from having a virus that made a crummy battery to a virus that made a good battery to a virus that made a record-breaking, high-powered battery that's all made at room temperature, basically at the bench top. And that battery went to the White House for a press conference. I brought it here. You can see it in this case -- that's lighting this LED. Now if we could scale this, you could actually use it to run your Prius, which is my dream -- to be able to drive a virus-powered car.
But it's basically -- you can pull one out of a billion. You can make lots of amplifications to it. Basically, you make an amplification in the lab. And then you get it to self-assemble into a structure like a battery. We're able to do this also with catalysis. This is the example of photocatalytic splitting of water. And what we've been able to do is engineer a virus to basically take dye absorbing molecules and line them up on the surface of the virus so it acts as an antenna, and you get an energy transfer across the virus. And then we give it a second gene to grow an inorganic material that can be used to split water into oxygen and hydrogen, that can be used for clean fuels. And I brought an example with me of that today. My students promised me it would work. These are virus-assembled nanowires. When you shine light on them, you can see them bubbling. In this case, you're seeing oxygen bubbles come out. And basically by controlling the genes, you can control multiple materials to improve your device performance.
The last example are solar cells. You can also do this with solar cells. We've been able to engineer viruses to pick up carbon nanotubes and then grow titanium dioxide around them -- and use as a way of getting electrons through the device. And what we've found is that, through genetic engineering, we can actually increase the efficiencies of these solar cells to record numbers for these types of dye-sensitized systems. And I brought one of those as well that you can play around with outside afterward. So this is a virus-based solar cell. Through evolution and selection, we took it from an eight percent efficiency solar cell to an 11 percent efficiency solar cell.
So I hope that I've convinced you that there's a lot of great, interesting things to be learned about how nature makes materials -- and taking it to the next step to see if you can force, or whether you can take advantage of how nature makes materials, to make things that nature hasn't yet dreamed of making.
Thank you.
Lisa Margonelli: The political chemistry of oil
ABOUT THIS TALK
In the Gulf oil spill's aftermath, Lisa Margonelli says drilling moratoriums and executive ousters make for good theater, but distract from the issue at its heart: our unrestrained oil consumption. She shares her bold plan to wean America off of oil -- by confronting consumers with its real cost.
So I'm going to talk to you about you about the political chemistry of oil spills and why this is an incredibly important, long, oily, hot summer, and why we need to keep ourselves from getting distracted. But before I talk about the political chemistry, I actually need to talk about the chemistry of oil.
This is a photograph from when I visited Prudhoe Bay in Alaska in 2002 to watch the Minerals Management Service testing their ability to burn oil spills in ice. And what you see here is, you see a little bit of crude oil, you see some ice cubes, and you see two sandwich baggies of napalm. The napalm is burning there quite nicely. And the thing is, is that oil is really an abstraction for us as the American consumer. We're four percent of the world's population; we use 25 percent of the world's oil production. And we don't understand what oil is, until you check out its molecules, And you don't really understand that until you see this stuff burn. So this is what happens as that burn gets going. It takes off. It's a big woosh. I highly recommend that you get a chance to see crude oil burn someday, because you will never need to hear another poli sci lecture on the geopolitics of oil again. It'll just bake your retinas. So there it is; the retinas are baking.
Let me tell you a little bit about this chemistry of oil. Oil is a stew of hydrocarbon molecules. It starts of with the very small ones, which are one carbon, four hydrogen -- that's methane -- it just floats off. Then there's all sorts of intermediate ones with middle amounts of carbon. You've probably heard of benzene rings; they're very carcinogenic. And it goes all the way over to these big, thick, galumphy ones that have hundreds of carbons, and they have thousands of hydrogens, and they have vanadium and heavy metals and sulfur and all kinds of craziness hanging off the sides of them. Those are called the asphaltenes; they're an ingredient in asphalt. They're very important in oil spills.
Let me tell you a little bit about the chemistry of oil in water. It is this chemistry that makes oil so disastrous. Oil doesn't sink, it floats. If it sank, it would be a whole different story as far as an oil spill. And the other thing it does is it spreads out the moment it hits the water. It spreads out to be really thin, so you have a hard time corralling it. The next thing that happens is the light ends evaporate, and some of the toxic things float into the water column and kill fish eggs and smaller fish and things like that, and shrimp. And then the asphaltenes -- and this is the crucial thing -- the asphaltenes get whipped by the waves into a frothy emulsion, something like mayonnaise. It triples the amount of oily, messy goo that you have in the water, and it makes it very hard to handle. It also makes it very viscous. When the Prestige sank off the coast of Spain, there were big, floating cushions the size of sofa cushions of emulsified oil, with the consistency, or the viscosity, of chewing gum. It's incredibly hard to clean up. And every single oil is different when it hits water.
When the chemistry of the oil and water also hits our politics, it's absolutely explosive. For the first time, American consumers will kind of see the oil supply chain in front of themselves. They have a "eureka!" moment, when we suddenly understand oil in a different context. So I'm going to talk just a little bit about the origin of these politics, because it's really crucial to understanding why this summer is so important, why we need to stay focused. Nobody gets up in the morning and thinks, "Wow! I'm going to go buy some three-carbon-to-12-carbon molecules to put in my tank and drive happily to work." No, they think, "Uggh. I have to go buy gas. I'm so angry about it. The oil companies are ripping me off. They set the prices, and I don't even know. I am helpless over this." And this is what happens to us at the gas pump. And actually, gas pumps are specifically designed to diffuse that anger. You might notice that many gas pumps, including this one, are designed to look like ATMs. I've talked to engineers. That's specifically to diffuse our anger, because supposedly we feel good about ATMs. (Laughter) That shows you how bad it is.
But actually, I mean, this feeling of helplessness comes in because most Americans actually feel that oil prices are the result of a conspiracy, not of the vicissitudes of the world oil market. And the thing is, too, is that we also feel very helpless about the amount that we consume, which is somewhat reasonable, because, in fact, we have designed this system where, if you want to get a job, it's much more important to have a car that runs, to have a job and keep a job, than to have a GED. And that's actually very perverse.
Now there's another perverse thing about the way we buy gas, which is that we'd rather be doing anything else. This is BP's gas station in downtown Los Angeles. It is green. It is a shrine to greenishness. "Now," you think, "why would something so lame work on people so smart?" Well, the reason is, is because, when we're buying gas, we're very invested in this sort of cognitive dissonance. I mean, we're angry at the one hand, and we want to be somewhere else. We don't want to be buying oil; we want to be doing something green. And we get kind of in on our own con. I mean -- and this is funny. It looks funny here. But in fact, that's why the slogan "beyond petroleum" worked. But it's an inherent part of our energy policy, which is we don't talk about reducing the amount of oil that we use. We talk about energy independence. We talk about hydrogen cars. We talk about biofuels that haven't been invented yet. And so, cognitive dissonance is part and parcel of the way that we deal with oil, and it's really important to dealing with this oil spill.
Okay, so the politics of oil are very moral in the United States. The oil industry is like a huge, gigantic octopus of engineering and finance and everything else, but we actually see it in very moral terms. This is an early-on photograph. You can see, we had these gushers. Early journalists looked at these spills, and they said, "This is a filthy industry." But they also saw in it that people were getting rich for doing nothing. They weren't farmers, they were just getting rich for stuff coming out of the ground. It's the "Beverly Hillbillies" basically. But in the beginning, this was seen as a very morally problematic thing, long before it became funny.
And then, of course, there was John D. Rockefeller. And the thing about John D. is that he went into this chaotic wild-east of oil industry, and he rationalized it into a vertically integrated company, a multinational. It was terrifying. You think Walmart is a terrifying business model now, imagine what this looked like in the 1860s or 1870s. And it also the kind of root of how we see oil as a conspiracy. But what's really amazing is that Ida Tarbell, the journalist, went in and did a big exposé of Rockefeller and actually got the whole antitrust laws put in place. But in many ways, that image of the conspiracy still sticks with us. And here's one of the things that Ida Tarbell said. She said, "He has a thin nose like a thorn. There were no lips. There were puffs under the little colorless eyes with creases running from them." (Laughter) Okay, so that guy is actually still with us. (Laughter) I mean, this is a very pervasive -- this is part of our DNA. And then there's this guy, okay.
So, you might be wondering why it is that, every time we have high oil prices or an oil spill, we call these CEOs down to Washington, and we sort of pepper them with questions in public, and we try to shame them. And this is something that we've been doing since 1974, when we first asked them, "Why are there these obscene profits?" And we've sort of personalized the whole oil industry into these CEOs. And we take it as, you know -- we look at it on a moral level, rather than looking at it on a legal and financial level. And so I'm not saying these guys aren't liable to answer questions, I'm just saying that, when you focus on whether they are or are not a bunch of greedy bastards, you don't actually get around to the point of making laws that are either going to either change the way they operate, or you're going to get around to really reducing the amount of oil and reducing our dependence on oil. So I'm saying this is kind of a distraction. But it makes for good theater, and it's powerfully cathartic, as you probably saw last week.
So the thing about water oil spills is that they are very politically galvanizing. I mean, these pictures -- this is from the Santa Barbara spill. You have these pictures of birds. They really influence people. When the Santa Barbara spill happened in 1969, it formed the environmental movement in its modern form. It started Earth Day. It also put in place the National Environmental Policy Act, the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act. Everything that we are really stemmed from this period. I think it's important to kind of look at these pictures of the birds and understand what happens to us. He we are normally; we're standing at the gas pump, and we're feeling kind of helpless. We look at these pictures, and we understand, for the first time, our role in this supply chain. We connect the dots in the supply chain. And we have this kind of -- as voters, we have kind of a "eureka!" moment. This is why these moments of these oil spills are so important. But it's also really important that we don't get distracted by the theater or the morals of it. We actually need to go in and work on the roots of the problem.
One of the things that happened with the two previous oil spills was that we really worked on some of the symptoms. We were very reactive, as opposed to being proactive about what happened. And so what we did was, actually, we made moratoriums on the east and west coasts on drilling. We stopped drilling in ANWR, but we didn't actually reduce the amount of oil that we consumed. In fact, it's continued to increase. The only thing that really reduces the amount of oil that we consume is much higher prices. As you can see, our own production has fallen off as our reservoirs have gotten old and expensive to drill out. We only have two percent of the world's oil reserves. 65 percent of them are in the Persian Gulf.
One of the things that's happened because of this is that, since 1969, the country of Nigeria, or the part of Nigeria that pumps oil, which is the delta -- which is two times the size of Maryland -- has had thousands of oil spills a year. I mean, we've essentially been exporting oil spills when we import oil from places without tight environmental regulations. That has been the equivalent of an Exxon Valdez spill every year since 1969. And we can wrap our heads around the spills, because that's what we see here, but in fact, these guys actually live in a war zone. There's a thousand battle-related deaths a year in this area twice the size of Maryland, and it's all related to the oil. And these guys, I mean, if they were in the U.S., they might be actually here in this room. They have degrees in political science, degrees in business. They're entrepreneurs. They don't actually want to be doing what they're doing. And it's sort of one of the other groups of people who pay a price for us.
The other thing that we've done, as we've continued to increase demand, is that we kind of play a shell game with the costs. One of the places we put in a big oil project in Chad, with Exxon. So the U.S. taxpayer paid for it; the World Bank, Exxon paid for it. We put it in. There was a tremendous banditry problem. I was there in 2003. We were driving along this dark, dark road, and the guy in the green stepped out, and I was just like, "Ahhh! This is it." And then the guy in the Exxon uniform stepped out, and we realized it was okay. They have their own private sort of army around them at the oil fields. But at the same time, Chad has become much more unstable, and we are not paying for that price at the pump. We pay for it in our taxes on April 15th.
We do the same thing with the price of policing the Persian Gulf and keeping the shipping lanes open. This is 1988. We actually bombed two Iranian oil platforms that year. That was the beginning of an escalating U.S. involvement there that we do not pay for at the pump. We pay for it on April 15th, and we can't even calculate the cost of this involvement. The other place that is sort of supporting our dependence on oil and our increased consumption is the Gulf of Mexico, which was not part of the moratoriums. Now what's happened in the Gulf of Mexico ... as you can see, this is the Minerals Management diagram of wells for gas and oil. It's become this intense industrialized zone. It doesn't have the same resonance for us that the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge has, but it should, I mean, it's a bird sanctuary. Also, every time you buy gasoline in the United States, half of it is actually being refined along the coast, because the Gulf actually has about 50 percent of our refining capacity and a lot of our marine terminals as well. So the people of the Gulf have essentially been subsidizing the rest of us through a less-clean environment.
And finally, American families also pay a price for oil. Now on the one hand, the price at the pump is not really very high when you consider the actual cost of the oil, but on the other hand, the fact that people have no other transit options means that they pay a large amount of their income into just getting back and forth to work, generally in a fairly crumby car. If you look at people who make $50,000 a year, they have two kids, they might have three jobs or more, and then they have to really commute. They're actually spending more on their car and fuel than they are on taxes or on health care. And the same thing happens at the 50th percentile, around 80,000. Gasoline costs are a tremendous drain on the American economy, but they're also a drain on individual families, and it's kind of terrifying to think about what happens when prices get higher.
So, what I'm going to talk to you about now is: what do we have to do this time? What are the laws? What do we have to do to keep ourselves focused? One thing is, we need to stay away from the theater. We need to stay away from the moratoriums. We need to focus really back again on the molecules. The moratoriums are fine, but we do need to focus on the molecules on the oil. One of the things that we also need to do, is we need to try to not kind of fool ourselves into thinking that you can have a green world, before you reduce the amount of oil that we use. We need to focus on reducing the oil.
What you see in this top drawing is a schematic of how petroleum gets used in the U.S. economy. It comes in on the side -- the useful stuff is the dark gray, and the unuseful stuff, which is called the rejected energy, the waste, goes up to the top. Now you can see that the waste far outweighs the actually useful amount. And one of the things that we need to do is, not only fix the fuel efficiency of our vehicles and make them much more efficient, but we also need to fix the economy in general.
We need to remove the perverse incentives to use more fuel. for example, we have an insurance system where the person who drives 20,000 miles a year pays the same insurance as somebody who drives 3,000. We actually encourage people to drive more. We have policies that reward sprawl. We have all kinds of policies. We need to have more mobility choices. We need to make the gas price better reflect the real cost of oil. And we need to shift subsidies from the oil industry, which is at least 10 billion dollars a year, into something that allows middle-class people to find better ways to commute. Whether that's getting a much more efficient car and also kind of building markets for new cars and new fuels down the road, this is where we need to be. We need to kind of rationalize this whole thing, and you can find more about this policy. It's called STRONG, which is "Secure Transportation Reducing Oil Needs Gradually," and the idea is, instead of being helpless, we need to be more strong. They're up at NewAmerica.net. What's important about these is that we try to move from feeling helpless at the pump, to actually being active and to really sort of thinking about who we are, having kind of that special moment, where we connect the dots actually at the pump.
Now supposedly, oil taxes are the third rail of American politics -- the no-fly zone. I actually -- I agree that a dollar a gallon on oil is probably too much, but I think that if we started this year with three cents a gallon on gasoline, and upped it to six cents next year, nine cents the following year, all the way up to 30 cents by 2020, that we could actually significantly reduce our gasoline consumption, and at the same time we would give people time to prepare, time to respond, and we would be raising money and raising consciousness at the same time. Let me give you a little sense of how this would work.
This is a gas receipt, hypothetically, for a year from now. The first thing that you have on the tax is, you have a tax for a stronger America -- 33 cents. So you're not helpless at the pump. And the second thing that you have is a kind of warning sign, very similar to what you would find on a cigarette pack. And what it says is, "The National Academy of Sciences estimates that every gallon of gas you burn in your car creates 29 cents in health care costs." That's a lot. And so this -- you can see that you're paying considerably less than the health care costs on the tax. And also, the hope is that you start to be connected to the whole greater system. And at the same time, you have a number that you can call to get more information on commuting, or a low-interest loan on a different kind of car, or whatever it is you're going to need to actually reduce your gasoline dependence. With this whole sort of suite of policies, we could actually reduce our gasoline consumption -- or our oil consumption -- by 20 percent by 2020. So, three million barrels a day.
But in order to do this, one of the things we really need to do, is we need to remember we are people of the hydrocarbon. We need to keep or minds on the molecules and not get distracted by the theater, not get distracted by the cognitive dissonance of the green possibilities that are out there. We need to kind of get down and do the gritty work of reducing our dependence upon this fuel and these molecules.
Thank you.
(Applause)
我想和大家談談漏油事件的政治化學性質 以及這件事非常重要的原因 冗長，油膩，炎熱的夏天 以及我們必須持續聚焦在這件事情上的原因 在我開始談政治化學之前 我必須先談談石油的化學性質
這是一張我在2002年 造訪阿拉斯加的普拉德霍灣時的照片 我去巡視礦產管理服務 並測試他們的能力 在寒冰上燃燒漏油 在這裡你可以看到一點原油 一些冰塊 看到兩個三明治大小的凝固汽油彈 凝固汽油彈正在燃燒 對於我們這些美國消費者來說 石油是一種抽象過程 我們的人口佔全世界的4％ 我們卻使用了全世界油產的25％ 然而我們卻不了解石油是什麼 除非我們來檢視一下它的分子 在看到這東西燃燒之前，我們也無法徹底了解 這就是石油燃燒的景象 它賤起火花，轟的一聲 我強烈推薦大家有機會的話去看一下原油燃燒的景象 如此一來你便不需要再去聽別的波利科技講座 是有關石油地緣政治學的演講了 它將烘烤你的視網膜 就像這樣, 烘烤視網膜
讓我來講一下石油的化學性質 石油是碳氫化合物分子的混合物 剛開始的時候非常小 1個碳原子,4個氫原子 這就是漂浮在上面的甲烷 然後還有各種的介質混合中等數量的碳 你們可能聽說過苯環，它的致癌性很高 苯環在散佈整個過程中 變成這些大型高厚度的東西 它們包含數百個碳原子以及數百個氫原子 還有釩、重金屬和硫 以及各種瘋狂的東西緊貼在兩側 它們被稱為瀝青質，瀝青的元素 它們在漏油事件裡扮演重要的角色
讓我再來講一下 在水裡的石油化學成分 也是讓石油變成災難的化學成分 石油在水裡不會下沈，而是漂浮在水面 如果它真的下沈了，漏油事件就會變的完全不一樣 而它的另外一個性質是在它碰到水後會散撥出去。 它散播開來，變成薄薄的一層 所以你很難將它網起。 接下來發生的事是 輕烴蒸發 和一些有毒的東西飄進水柱 並殺死魚卵 和較小的魚類等，以及蝦子。 然後還有瀝青質 - 這是關鍵的東西 - 瀝青質被海浪掀起 乳化成泡沫，類似蛋黃醬 面積變成三倍 油膩膩的，骯髒混亂的在水中 這使得它很難處理 這也使得它非常粘稠 當威望沉沒在西班牙海岸 有大的漂浮的沙發墊的大小的靠墊 乳化油 有口香糖一般的濃度及黏稠度 非常困難去清理 而當它散播在水中每一個油有不同的狀況
當油和水的化學性質 也影響到我們的政治 這是相當爆炸性的 這是第一次，美國消費者 將看到石油供應鏈呈現在自己面前 他們目前有一個“eureka！” 當我們突然明白石油在不同的狀況 那麼，我現在就要談論一點點有關這些政治的起源 因為它是讓我們真正的理解至關要件 為什麼今年夏天是如此重要，為什麼我們需要集中精力 沒有人早上起床，然後想著 “哇！我要去買 一些3碳到12碳的分子然後放進我的油箱 和然後愉快地開車去工作。“ 不，他們會認為，“喔不，我必須去購買天然氣。 我真是感到不開心。石油公司像在搶劫我。 我甚至不知道他們什麼時候會調高價格 這樣會讓我很無奈。“ 這就是發生我們在加油站的狀況。 而實際上，加油站有特別的設計去 化解這種憤怒。 您可能會注意到，許多加油站，包括這一個， 設計看起來像自動取款機。 我有和工程師談論過。這是專門設計減低我們的憤怒， 因為據說我們在自動取款機前會感覺良好。 （眾笑） 這表明你是多麼糟糕。
但實際上，我的意思是，這種無奈的感覺 大多數美國人實際感受到 石油價格是一個陰謀的結果 不是世界石油市場所形成的。 而事實上也是 我們也對於我們消費的金額感到很無奈 這是某些理由 因為，事實上，這是我們造成的 在那裡，如果你想找到一份工作， 要有車可以開是很重要的 這樣才能有一份工作，保持一份工作 而這其實是很反常的
現在有另一種有害的東西是有關我們買天然氣 我們寧願做別的 這是BP的加油站 在洛杉磯市中心 它是綠色的。是淺綠色。 現在，你想想，為什麼這東西會如此跛腳 對人卻是這麼聰明？“ 是的，原因是，因為當我們買天然氣 我們非常投入在這樣的認知失調 我的意思是，一方面，我們感到憤怒，我們想要去別處。 我們不想要去買石油 我們希望做一些環保的事 我們被自己哄騙 我的意思是 - 這是很有趣的事 在這裡這件事看起來很有趣 但事實上，這就是為什麼這個口號“超越石油”是有效的。 但在我們的能源政策中它是一個固有的一部分 這我們不談論 減少我們使用石油的數量， 我們談論能源獨立。我們談論氫汽車。 我們談論還沒有發明的生物燃料 因此，認知失調 我們處理石油的方式是不可或缺的一部分， 處理溢油是真正重要的。
OK，政治石油 美國是很不道德的。 石油工業是像一個無底洞 對於工程及財務 和其他一切 但我們真正看到它在道德上。 這是一張早期的照片。你可以看到，我們有這些噴油井。 記者看著這些早期漏油， 他們說，“這是一個骯髒的行業。” 但他們也從中看到了 人們的生活越來越富裕且不勞而獲。 他們不是農民，他們只是得到豐富的東西出自於地底。 這是“暴發戶”基本上是這樣。 但在一開始，這個被認為是一個非常不道德的事情， 不久，就成為笑話。
當然，還有約翰洛克菲勒。 和他有關的的事情是... 他走進這未開發的東部 石油工業， 他合理化它 垂直整合成一個公司，一家跨國公司。 這是非常可怕的。就像你認為沃爾瑪現今是一個可怕的商業模式， 這看上去就像19世紀 60年代或19世紀 70年代。 它也是一種 我們如何看到油作為一個陰謀。 但真正令人驚訝的是， 井田塔貝爾，一位記者， 深入了解並爆料洛克菲勒 並使得反托拉斯法 到位。 但在許多方面， 這種陰謀仍然與我們同在。 而在這有一件事 開發協會塔貝爾說。 她說：“他有一個很細的鼻子像一根刺。 沒有嘴唇。 有無色的小眼睛 皺摺的運行他們。“ （眾笑） 好了，那傢伙實際上仍然和我們在一起。 （眾笑） 我的意思是，這是一個非常普遍的 - 這是我們的DNA的一部分。 然後還有這個傢伙，沒問題。
所以，你可能想知道為什麼它是， 每次我們有高油價或漏油， 我們叫這些老總到華盛頓， 我們與他們在公眾面前談論問題，我們試圖羞辱他們。 這些就是我們一直在做的事情，從1947年起 當我們第一次問他們：“為什麼會賺這些黑心錢？” 我們已經有點個性化的石油行業 就在這些CEO。 你知道的，我們把它當作 我們看它在一個道德水平， 而不是看它的法律和財務方面。 所以我不是說這些人沒有責任回答問題， 我只是想說，當人們關注 無論他們是不是一群貪婪的雜種， 你實際上並不迴避的問題 制定法律要嘛改變運營方式， 否則就會有漏網之魚 真正的石油量減少 並減少對石油的依賴。 所以我說這是一種分散注意力。 這真是一場好戲 它有力的宣洩，你也許看到的最後一周。
因此，對漏油的事件 在政治上是非常狂熱的。 我的意思是，這些照片 - 這是從聖巴巴拉蔓延。 你有這些照片的鳥類。 他們真的影響人。 當漏油發生在聖巴巴拉 1969年， 在當時成了最熱門的環保運動。 這就是地球日的由來。 它也設立了國家環境政策法 清潔空氣法案，清潔水法案。 一切真的是源於這個時期。 我認為，重要的是要種看看這些照片的鳥類 並了解其發生在我們身上。 我們通常 站在加油站，而且感到一絲無奈。 我們看看這些照片， 我們理解，這是第一次，我們的角色在這個供應鏈。 我們連接點的供應鏈。 而且我們有這種 - 作為選民，我們有一種“尤里卡！”時刻。 這就是為什麼這些時刻，這些漏油 是如此重要。 但我們不要分心也很重要 在看這齣劇或它的道德。 我們實際上需要去 與工作有關的問題的根源。
其中一個發生的事情與前兩次漏油 我們真正的工作是針對一些症狀。 我們非常被動的，反對預先處裡 將會發生的事。 我們所做的是， 提出暫停在東部和西部海岸鑽井。 我們停下來鑽 ANWR， 但實際上我們並未減少石油的消耗量 事實上，消耗量仍持續增加 唯一可以真正減少石油消耗量的作法 是將價格抬高 如同您所見到的，我們的產量已經下降 這是因為儲存槽的老化以及昂貴的開採成本 我們只擁有全世界百分之2的石油礦藏。 另外有百分之65在波斯灣。
有一件事即因此而發生 從1969年起 在奈及利亞開採石油的地區， 這個地區是一個三角洲 --比美國馬里蘭州大上兩倍-- 但每年都有無數的石油洩漏出去 意思是，這就如同出口石油外洩 當我們從另一個地方進口石油， 而當地又缺乏嚴謹的環境法規 這就如同Exxon Valdez(阿拉斯加港灣漏油事件)一樣 從1969年起，年復一年。 當然我們清楚了解有關石油外洩的一切 是因為我們在這裡看到了所有相關的資訊。 但事實上，這些人是住在戰區 每年有上千人在這裡死於無情戰火 就在這個面積比馬里蘭州大上兩倍的地區 這些都和石油息息相關 這些人，如果他們都生在美國 他們都有可能會在這裡 他們可能有政治學的學位，也可能會有商學學位 他們更可能是企業家。事實上他們並不想做現在他們正在做的事。 他們其實是另外一群人 另外一群為我們付出無數代價的人
而另外一件我們所做的事 就是我們持續增加對石油的需求 那就像賭博是需要付出代價的 例如在其中一個我們投資了大型石油開採專案的地區 在查德，由Exxon公司負責主導 理所當然，美國納稅人為此專案買單 世界銀行的部分，Exxon則為其支付了所需的款項 我們投入許多精力在這個專案。但這其實是一個非常嚴重的竊盜問題 2003年時我在那裡 我們沿著這條陰暗的道路駕駛前進， 然後那位穿著綠色衣服的人走了出去 我說：「阿哈，就是這個了」 而後又有一個穿著Exxon公司制服的人走了出去 我們知道一切都沒問題了 因為他們擁有私人軍隊駐守在油田周圍 但就在同時 查德的局勢因此變得更加的不穩定 但是我們在加油站加油時並不會因為這些而負擔任何費用 我們只在4月15日納稅時用我們所繳的稅金去支持這個專案
也同樣以這些 作為監管波斯灣的費用 以及維持航道暢通 在1988年 那一年我們炸毀了兩座伊朗的鑽油平台 而且美國對當地的干涉程度正開始逐步上升 但同樣我們在加油站加油時也不會因為這些而額外支付任何費用 我們同樣只在4月15日時以稅金支付 而且我們甚至無法計算這樣的投入中間所需付出的成本 還有另外一個同樣支撐著我們對於石油的依賴 以及不斷增加的消耗量的地區 是墨西哥灣 墨西哥灣並不是暫停開採的地區 而現在墨西哥灣發生了什麼事...就如同你所見到的 這是和礦產管理相關 在天然氣氣井以及石油部分的圖表 這裡已經變成了密密麻麻的工業區 雖然這和我們之間並沒有任何共同點 但與北極國家野生動物保護區卻有 因為這裡原本應該是個鳥類保護區 而且當你每次在美國本土購買汽油 實際上約有一半是沿著墨西哥灣海岸精煉的 因為此海灣大約占了 總生產量的百分之50 且擁有許多碼頭 所以在此海灣生活的人實際上 是在一不太乾淨的環境下工作，來支撐我們對於石油的需求
但其實每一個美國家庭也需要為石油付出代價 一方面，加油站所制訂的汽油價格並不是太高 我指的是在你考慮了所有與石油相關的成本的情況下 但在另一方面 是因為人們沒有其他的交通方式可選擇 意即這些花費占了收入中的一大部分 但只是為了在工作與回家之間往返 而且通常是使用相當低等的車種 如果你看到有人每年賺5萬美元，並有兩個小孩 他們可能會有三個工作，甚至是更多 所以他們需要花費許多時間通勤來回往返 這些人花費於汽車以及燃料的費用 大於他們納稅的金額或是用於身體保健的花費 而且同樣是百分之50 大約是8萬元 其實汽油的耗費 對於美國的經濟而言是一大損失 且對於每個家庭而言也是一筆為數不小的花費 令人只要一想到當汽油價格上漲時發生的情況就感到害怕
所以，現在我要說的是 現在我們需要怎麼做? 有哪些相關法令?又有哪些是我們需要持續關注的? 其中一項就是我們需要暫停 我們需要停止關注那些暫停計畫 我們需要再次注意 石油的分子 雖然延期是好事，但我們仍須注意 石油的分子 我們也必需做一件事 我們必須試著別再欺騙自己 去想像你可以有一個環保的環境 在減少石油用量之前 我們必須集中於減少油品的使用
看這個圖就是一個藍圖 石油在美國經濟中被使用多少 換句話說--有用的物質是深灰色的 而無用的物質 稱為不良能源、廢料 非常地浪費 你可以了解到廢料遠多於 真正能使用的總計 你必須做一件事 就是不單是提升交通工具使用的燃料效率 也使它們更有效率地被使用 但我們也必須使全體的經濟復甦
我們必須屏除「多使用燃料」這種不正當的動機 舉例來說，我們有一種保險制度 有人每年駕駛20000哩的地方 和有人駕駛3000哩的地方付一樣的保險費 我們真心鼓勵人們多開一點車 我們有增加獎勵金的政策，有完整的配套 我們必需擁有更多彈性的選擇 我們必需使瓦斯的價格 能夠更加反映石油的成本 我們必需從製油工廠轉換獎勵金 一年最少100億 來使中產階級找到更好的通勤方式 或是買一輛更節能的車 也像是要建立一個市場 給將來使用新燃料的新車 這就是我們要達成的目標 我們必需合理化全部的東西 你可以找到更多這種政策 它叫做STRONG 是「確實地漸漸減少大眾運輸工具的用油需求」的政策 這個主意是來自於「解決無助的處境，我們必需更堅強」 都在NewAmerica.net.可以找到 重要的是 我們試著去改變 對油井感到無助的想法 去變得非常積極主動 真的去想想我們是誰 給自己一個特別的時間 在政策上做一個有效的結合
恐怕現在的德克薩斯石油 是第三條美國政策--禁飛空域 說真的--我同意一加崙一美元 可能太貴了 但我想如果我們開始一年 用三分錢買一加崙的石油 在隔年又上漲為六分，下一年就會是九分 直至2020年上升到30分錢 我們真的能夠明顯地減少石油的消費 同時我們給人們時間去準備 去做應變措施 我們應該要籌錢同時提高自覺 我來給你認識一下這世界是怎麼運作的
這是一張瓦斯費的收據，假設從現在開始一年 你必需繳的第一張稅單是 一份使美國更繁榮的稅--33分錢 所以在油井，你不是無助的 你第二個擁有的是一個警告標識 和你可能會找到的非常類似 一個香菸盒 總是說「國立的科學學術機關 認定你用的車製造每加侖的瓦斯 會增加29分你身體上的負擔」 這太多了 由此你可以了解到你很少注意 自己的健康成本 也希望 你能開始轉到一個比較好的循環 同時，你可以打一個號碼 取得更多通勤的相關資訊 或是低利率的貸款來支付不同款式的車 不論如何你正需要去 真正的減少你對石油的依賴 用一整套政策 我們可以真正減少我們的石油消費 或是油品的消費 20%在2020 就是一天減少三百萬桶石油
但為了這個目的 有一件事我們真的必需做，就是我們必需記得 我們是由碳水化合物組合成的人類 我們必需記住石油的成分 不要被外界所欺騙 不要被認知所蒙蔽 還有很多環保的可能性 減少對石油的依賴 認真地減少對燃料的依賴
謝謝大家
(拍手)
In the Gulf oil spill's aftermath, Lisa Margonelli says drilling moratoriums and executive ousters make for good theater, but distract from the issue at its heart: our unrestrained oil consumption. She shares her bold plan to wean America off of oil -- by confronting consumers with its real cost.
So I'm going to talk to you about you about the political chemistry of oil spills and why this is an incredibly important, long, oily, hot summer, and why we need to keep ourselves from getting distracted. But before I talk about the political chemistry, I actually need to talk about the chemistry of oil.
This is a photograph from when I visited Prudhoe Bay in Alaska in 2002 to watch the Minerals Management Service testing their ability to burn oil spills in ice. And what you see here is, you see a little bit of crude oil, you see some ice cubes, and you see two sandwich baggies of napalm. The napalm is burning there quite nicely. And the thing is, is that oil is really an abstraction for us as the American consumer. We're four percent of the world's population; we use 25 percent of the world's oil production. And we don't understand what oil is, until you check out its molecules, And you don't really understand that until you see this stuff burn. So this is what happens as that burn gets going. It takes off. It's a big woosh. I highly recommend that you get a chance to see crude oil burn someday, because you will never need to hear another poli sci lecture on the geopolitics of oil again. It'll just bake your retinas. So there it is; the retinas are baking.
Let me tell you a little bit about this chemistry of oil. Oil is a stew of hydrocarbon molecules. It starts of with the very small ones, which are one carbon, four hydrogen -- that's methane -- it just floats off. Then there's all sorts of intermediate ones with middle amounts of carbon. You've probably heard of benzene rings; they're very carcinogenic. And it goes all the way over to these big, thick, galumphy ones that have hundreds of carbons, and they have thousands of hydrogens, and they have vanadium and heavy metals and sulfur and all kinds of craziness hanging off the sides of them. Those are called the asphaltenes; they're an ingredient in asphalt. They're very important in oil spills.
Let me tell you a little bit about the chemistry of oil in water. It is this chemistry that makes oil so disastrous. Oil doesn't sink, it floats. If it sank, it would be a whole different story as far as an oil spill. And the other thing it does is it spreads out the moment it hits the water. It spreads out to be really thin, so you have a hard time corralling it. The next thing that happens is the light ends evaporate, and some of the toxic things float into the water column and kill fish eggs and smaller fish and things like that, and shrimp. And then the asphaltenes -- and this is the crucial thing -- the asphaltenes get whipped by the waves into a frothy emulsion, something like mayonnaise. It triples the amount of oily, messy goo that you have in the water, and it makes it very hard to handle. It also makes it very viscous. When the Prestige sank off the coast of Spain, there were big, floating cushions the size of sofa cushions of emulsified oil, with the consistency, or the viscosity, of chewing gum. It's incredibly hard to clean up. And every single oil is different when it hits water.
When the chemistry of the oil and water also hits our politics, it's absolutely explosive. For the first time, American consumers will kind of see the oil supply chain in front of themselves. They have a "eureka!" moment, when we suddenly understand oil in a different context. So I'm going to talk just a little bit about the origin of these politics, because it's really crucial to understanding why this summer is so important, why we need to stay focused. Nobody gets up in the morning and thinks, "Wow! I'm going to go buy some three-carbon-to-12-carbon molecules to put in my tank and drive happily to work." No, they think, "Uggh. I have to go buy gas. I'm so angry about it. The oil companies are ripping me off. They set the prices, and I don't even know. I am helpless over this." And this is what happens to us at the gas pump. And actually, gas pumps are specifically designed to diffuse that anger. You might notice that many gas pumps, including this one, are designed to look like ATMs. I've talked to engineers. That's specifically to diffuse our anger, because supposedly we feel good about ATMs. (Laughter) That shows you how bad it is.
But actually, I mean, this feeling of helplessness comes in because most Americans actually feel that oil prices are the result of a conspiracy, not of the vicissitudes of the world oil market. And the thing is, too, is that we also feel very helpless about the amount that we consume, which is somewhat reasonable, because, in fact, we have designed this system where, if you want to get a job, it's much more important to have a car that runs, to have a job and keep a job, than to have a GED. And that's actually very perverse.
Now there's another perverse thing about the way we buy gas, which is that we'd rather be doing anything else. This is BP's gas station in downtown Los Angeles. It is green. It is a shrine to greenishness. "Now," you think, "why would something so lame work on people so smart?" Well, the reason is, is because, when we're buying gas, we're very invested in this sort of cognitive dissonance. I mean, we're angry at the one hand, and we want to be somewhere else. We don't want to be buying oil; we want to be doing something green. And we get kind of in on our own con. I mean -- and this is funny. It looks funny here. But in fact, that's why the slogan "beyond petroleum" worked. But it's an inherent part of our energy policy, which is we don't talk about reducing the amount of oil that we use. We talk about energy independence. We talk about hydrogen cars. We talk about biofuels that haven't been invented yet. And so, cognitive dissonance is part and parcel of the way that we deal with oil, and it's really important to dealing with this oil spill.
Okay, so the politics of oil are very moral in the United States. The oil industry is like a huge, gigantic octopus of engineering and finance and everything else, but we actually see it in very moral terms. This is an early-on photograph. You can see, we had these gushers. Early journalists looked at these spills, and they said, "This is a filthy industry." But they also saw in it that people were getting rich for doing nothing. They weren't farmers, they were just getting rich for stuff coming out of the ground. It's the "Beverly Hillbillies" basically. But in the beginning, this was seen as a very morally problematic thing, long before it became funny.
And then, of course, there was John D. Rockefeller. And the thing about John D. is that he went into this chaotic wild-east of oil industry, and he rationalized it into a vertically integrated company, a multinational. It was terrifying. You think Walmart is a terrifying business model now, imagine what this looked like in the 1860s or 1870s. And it also the kind of root of how we see oil as a conspiracy. But what's really amazing is that Ida Tarbell, the journalist, went in and did a big exposé of Rockefeller and actually got the whole antitrust laws put in place. But in many ways, that image of the conspiracy still sticks with us. And here's one of the things that Ida Tarbell said. She said, "He has a thin nose like a thorn. There were no lips. There were puffs under the little colorless eyes with creases running from them." (Laughter) Okay, so that guy is actually still with us. (Laughter) I mean, this is a very pervasive -- this is part of our DNA. And then there's this guy, okay.
So, you might be wondering why it is that, every time we have high oil prices or an oil spill, we call these CEOs down to Washington, and we sort of pepper them with questions in public, and we try to shame them. And this is something that we've been doing since 1974, when we first asked them, "Why are there these obscene profits?" And we've sort of personalized the whole oil industry into these CEOs. And we take it as, you know -- we look at it on a moral level, rather than looking at it on a legal and financial level. And so I'm not saying these guys aren't liable to answer questions, I'm just saying that, when you focus on whether they are or are not a bunch of greedy bastards, you don't actually get around to the point of making laws that are either going to either change the way they operate, or you're going to get around to really reducing the amount of oil and reducing our dependence on oil. So I'm saying this is kind of a distraction. But it makes for good theater, and it's powerfully cathartic, as you probably saw last week.
So the thing about water oil spills is that they are very politically galvanizing. I mean, these pictures -- this is from the Santa Barbara spill. You have these pictures of birds. They really influence people. When the Santa Barbara spill happened in 1969, it formed the environmental movement in its modern form. It started Earth Day. It also put in place the National Environmental Policy Act, the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act. Everything that we are really stemmed from this period. I think it's important to kind of look at these pictures of the birds and understand what happens to us. He we are normally; we're standing at the gas pump, and we're feeling kind of helpless. We look at these pictures, and we understand, for the first time, our role in this supply chain. We connect the dots in the supply chain. And we have this kind of -- as voters, we have kind of a "eureka!" moment. This is why these moments of these oil spills are so important. But it's also really important that we don't get distracted by the theater or the morals of it. We actually need to go in and work on the roots of the problem.
One of the things that happened with the two previous oil spills was that we really worked on some of the symptoms. We were very reactive, as opposed to being proactive about what happened. And so what we did was, actually, we made moratoriums on the east and west coasts on drilling. We stopped drilling in ANWR, but we didn't actually reduce the amount of oil that we consumed. In fact, it's continued to increase. The only thing that really reduces the amount of oil that we consume is much higher prices. As you can see, our own production has fallen off as our reservoirs have gotten old and expensive to drill out. We only have two percent of the world's oil reserves. 65 percent of them are in the Persian Gulf.
One of the things that's happened because of this is that, since 1969, the country of Nigeria, or the part of Nigeria that pumps oil, which is the delta -- which is two times the size of Maryland -- has had thousands of oil spills a year. I mean, we've essentially been exporting oil spills when we import oil from places without tight environmental regulations. That has been the equivalent of an Exxon Valdez spill every year since 1969. And we can wrap our heads around the spills, because that's what we see here, but in fact, these guys actually live in a war zone. There's a thousand battle-related deaths a year in this area twice the size of Maryland, and it's all related to the oil. And these guys, I mean, if they were in the U.S., they might be actually here in this room. They have degrees in political science, degrees in business. They're entrepreneurs. They don't actually want to be doing what they're doing. And it's sort of one of the other groups of people who pay a price for us.
The other thing that we've done, as we've continued to increase demand, is that we kind of play a shell game with the costs. One of the places we put in a big oil project in Chad, with Exxon. So the U.S. taxpayer paid for it; the World Bank, Exxon paid for it. We put it in. There was a tremendous banditry problem. I was there in 2003. We were driving along this dark, dark road, and the guy in the green stepped out, and I was just like, "Ahhh! This is it." And then the guy in the Exxon uniform stepped out, and we realized it was okay. They have their own private sort of army around them at the oil fields. But at the same time, Chad has become much more unstable, and we are not paying for that price at the pump. We pay for it in our taxes on April 15th.
We do the same thing with the price of policing the Persian Gulf and keeping the shipping lanes open. This is 1988. We actually bombed two Iranian oil platforms that year. That was the beginning of an escalating U.S. involvement there that we do not pay for at the pump. We pay for it on April 15th, and we can't even calculate the cost of this involvement. The other place that is sort of supporting our dependence on oil and our increased consumption is the Gulf of Mexico, which was not part of the moratoriums. Now what's happened in the Gulf of Mexico ... as you can see, this is the Minerals Management diagram of wells for gas and oil. It's become this intense industrialized zone. It doesn't have the same resonance for us that the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge has, but it should, I mean, it's a bird sanctuary. Also, every time you buy gasoline in the United States, half of it is actually being refined along the coast, because the Gulf actually has about 50 percent of our refining capacity and a lot of our marine terminals as well. So the people of the Gulf have essentially been subsidizing the rest of us through a less-clean environment.
And finally, American families also pay a price for oil. Now on the one hand, the price at the pump is not really very high when you consider the actual cost of the oil, but on the other hand, the fact that people have no other transit options means that they pay a large amount of their income into just getting back and forth to work, generally in a fairly crumby car. If you look at people who make $50,000 a year, they have two kids, they might have three jobs or more, and then they have to really commute. They're actually spending more on their car and fuel than they are on taxes or on health care. And the same thing happens at the 50th percentile, around 80,000. Gasoline costs are a tremendous drain on the American economy, but they're also a drain on individual families, and it's kind of terrifying to think about what happens when prices get higher.
So, what I'm going to talk to you about now is: what do we have to do this time? What are the laws? What do we have to do to keep ourselves focused? One thing is, we need to stay away from the theater. We need to stay away from the moratoriums. We need to focus really back again on the molecules. The moratoriums are fine, but we do need to focus on the molecules on the oil. One of the things that we also need to do, is we need to try to not kind of fool ourselves into thinking that you can have a green world, before you reduce the amount of oil that we use. We need to focus on reducing the oil.
What you see in this top drawing is a schematic of how petroleum gets used in the U.S. economy. It comes in on the side -- the useful stuff is the dark gray, and the unuseful stuff, which is called the rejected energy, the waste, goes up to the top. Now you can see that the waste far outweighs the actually useful amount. And one of the things that we need to do is, not only fix the fuel efficiency of our vehicles and make them much more efficient, but we also need to fix the economy in general.
We need to remove the perverse incentives to use more fuel. for example, we have an insurance system where the person who drives 20,000 miles a year pays the same insurance as somebody who drives 3,000. We actually encourage people to drive more. We have policies that reward sprawl. We have all kinds of policies. We need to have more mobility choices. We need to make the gas price better reflect the real cost of oil. And we need to shift subsidies from the oil industry, which is at least 10 billion dollars a year, into something that allows middle-class people to find better ways to commute. Whether that's getting a much more efficient car and also kind of building markets for new cars and new fuels down the road, this is where we need to be. We need to kind of rationalize this whole thing, and you can find more about this policy. It's called STRONG, which is "Secure Transportation Reducing Oil Needs Gradually," and the idea is, instead of being helpless, we need to be more strong. They're up at NewAmerica.net. What's important about these is that we try to move from feeling helpless at the pump, to actually being active and to really sort of thinking about who we are, having kind of that special moment, where we connect the dots actually at the pump.
Now supposedly, oil taxes are the third rail of American politics -- the no-fly zone. I actually -- I agree that a dollar a gallon on oil is probably too much, but I think that if we started this year with three cents a gallon on gasoline, and upped it to six cents next year, nine cents the following year, all the way up to 30 cents by 2020, that we could actually significantly reduce our gasoline consumption, and at the same time we would give people time to prepare, time to respond, and we would be raising money and raising consciousness at the same time. Let me give you a little sense of how this would work.
This is a gas receipt, hypothetically, for a year from now. The first thing that you have on the tax is, you have a tax for a stronger America -- 33 cents. So you're not helpless at the pump. And the second thing that you have is a kind of warning sign, very similar to what you would find on a cigarette pack. And what it says is, "The National Academy of Sciences estimates that every gallon of gas you burn in your car creates 29 cents in health care costs." That's a lot. And so this -- you can see that you're paying considerably less than the health care costs on the tax. And also, the hope is that you start to be connected to the whole greater system. And at the same time, you have a number that you can call to get more information on commuting, or a low-interest loan on a different kind of car, or whatever it is you're going to need to actually reduce your gasoline dependence. With this whole sort of suite of policies, we could actually reduce our gasoline consumption -- or our oil consumption -- by 20 percent by 2020. So, three million barrels a day.
But in order to do this, one of the things we really need to do, is we need to remember we are people of the hydrocarbon. We need to keep or minds on the molecules and not get distracted by the theater, not get distracted by the cognitive dissonance of the green possibilities that are out there. We need to kind of get down and do the gritty work of reducing our dependence upon this fuel and these molecules.
Thank you.
(Applause)
我想和大家談談漏油事件的政治化學性質 以及這件事非常重要的原因 冗長，油膩，炎熱的夏天 以及我們必須持續聚焦在這件事情上的原因 在我開始談政治化學之前 我必須先談談石油的化學性質
這是一張我在2002年 造訪阿拉斯加的普拉德霍灣時的照片 我去巡視礦產管理服務 並測試他們的能力 在寒冰上燃燒漏油 在這裡你可以看到一點原油 一些冰塊 看到兩個三明治大小的凝固汽油彈 凝固汽油彈正在燃燒 對於我們這些美國消費者來說 石油是一種抽象過程 我們的人口佔全世界的4％ 我們卻使用了全世界油產的25％ 然而我們卻不了解石油是什麼 除非我們來檢視一下它的分子 在看到這東西燃燒之前，我們也無法徹底了解 這就是石油燃燒的景象 它賤起火花，轟的一聲 我強烈推薦大家有機會的話去看一下原油燃燒的景象 如此一來你便不需要再去聽別的波利科技講座 是有關石油地緣政治學的演講了 它將烘烤你的視網膜 就像這樣, 烘烤視網膜
讓我來講一下石油的化學性質 石油是碳氫化合物分子的混合物 剛開始的時候非常小 1個碳原子,4個氫原子 這就是漂浮在上面的甲烷 然後還有各種的介質混合中等數量的碳 你們可能聽說過苯環，它的致癌性很高 苯環在散佈整個過程中 變成這些大型高厚度的東西 它們包含數百個碳原子以及數百個氫原子 還有釩、重金屬和硫 以及各種瘋狂的東西緊貼在兩側 它們被稱為瀝青質，瀝青的元素 它們在漏油事件裡扮演重要的角色
讓我再來講一下 在水裡的石油化學成分 也是讓石油變成災難的化學成分 石油在水裡不會下沈，而是漂浮在水面 如果它真的下沈了，漏油事件就會變的完全不一樣 而它的另外一個性質是在它碰到水後會散撥出去。 它散播開來，變成薄薄的一層 所以你很難將它網起。 接下來發生的事是 輕烴蒸發 和一些有毒的東西飄進水柱 並殺死魚卵 和較小的魚類等，以及蝦子。 然後還有瀝青質 - 這是關鍵的東西 - 瀝青質被海浪掀起 乳化成泡沫，類似蛋黃醬 面積變成三倍 油膩膩的，骯髒混亂的在水中 這使得它很難處理 這也使得它非常粘稠 當威望沉沒在西班牙海岸 有大的漂浮的沙發墊的大小的靠墊 乳化油 有口香糖一般的濃度及黏稠度 非常困難去清理 而當它散播在水中每一個油有不同的狀況
當油和水的化學性質 也影響到我們的政治 這是相當爆炸性的 這是第一次，美國消費者 將看到石油供應鏈呈現在自己面前 他們目前有一個“eureka！” 當我們突然明白石油在不同的狀況 那麼，我現在就要談論一點點有關這些政治的起源 因為它是讓我們真正的理解至關要件 為什麼今年夏天是如此重要，為什麼我們需要集中精力 沒有人早上起床，然後想著 “哇！我要去買 一些3碳到12碳的分子然後放進我的油箱 和然後愉快地開車去工作。“ 不，他們會認為，“喔不，我必須去購買天然氣。 我真是感到不開心。石油公司像在搶劫我。 我甚至不知道他們什麼時候會調高價格 這樣會讓我很無奈。“ 這就是發生我們在加油站的狀況。 而實際上，加油站有特別的設計去 化解這種憤怒。 您可能會注意到，許多加油站，包括這一個， 設計看起來像自動取款機。 我有和工程師談論過。這是專門設計減低我們的憤怒， 因為據說我們在自動取款機前會感覺良好。 （眾笑） 這表明你是多麼糟糕。
但實際上，我的意思是，這種無奈的感覺 大多數美國人實際感受到 石油價格是一個陰謀的結果 不是世界石油市場所形成的。 而事實上也是 我們也對於我們消費的金額感到很無奈 這是某些理由 因為，事實上，這是我們造成的 在那裡，如果你想找到一份工作， 要有車可以開是很重要的 這樣才能有一份工作，保持一份工作 而這其實是很反常的
現在有另一種有害的東西是有關我們買天然氣 我們寧願做別的 這是BP的加油站 在洛杉磯市中心 它是綠色的。是淺綠色。 現在，你想想，為什麼這東西會如此跛腳 對人卻是這麼聰明？“ 是的，原因是，因為當我們買天然氣 我們非常投入在這樣的認知失調 我的意思是，一方面，我們感到憤怒，我們想要去別處。 我們不想要去買石油 我們希望做一些環保的事 我們被自己哄騙 我的意思是 - 這是很有趣的事 在這裡這件事看起來很有趣 但事實上，這就是為什麼這個口號“超越石油”是有效的。 但在我們的能源政策中它是一個固有的一部分 這我們不談論 減少我們使用石油的數量， 我們談論能源獨立。我們談論氫汽車。 我們談論還沒有發明的生物燃料 因此，認知失調 我們處理石油的方式是不可或缺的一部分， 處理溢油是真正重要的。
OK，政治石油 美國是很不道德的。 石油工業是像一個無底洞 對於工程及財務 和其他一切 但我們真正看到它在道德上。 這是一張早期的照片。你可以看到，我們有這些噴油井。 記者看著這些早期漏油， 他們說，“這是一個骯髒的行業。” 但他們也從中看到了 人們的生活越來越富裕且不勞而獲。 他們不是農民，他們只是得到豐富的東西出自於地底。 這是“暴發戶”基本上是這樣。 但在一開始，這個被認為是一個非常不道德的事情， 不久，就成為笑話。
當然，還有約翰洛克菲勒。 和他有關的的事情是... 他走進這未開發的東部 石油工業， 他合理化它 垂直整合成一個公司，一家跨國公司。 這是非常可怕的。就像你認為沃爾瑪現今是一個可怕的商業模式， 這看上去就像19世紀 60年代或19世紀 70年代。 它也是一種 我們如何看到油作為一個陰謀。 但真正令人驚訝的是， 井田塔貝爾，一位記者， 深入了解並爆料洛克菲勒 並使得反托拉斯法 到位。 但在許多方面， 這種陰謀仍然與我們同在。 而在這有一件事 開發協會塔貝爾說。 她說：“他有一個很細的鼻子像一根刺。 沒有嘴唇。 有無色的小眼睛 皺摺的運行他們。“ （眾笑） 好了，那傢伙實際上仍然和我們在一起。 （眾笑） 我的意思是，這是一個非常普遍的 - 這是我們的DNA的一部分。 然後還有這個傢伙，沒問題。
所以，你可能想知道為什麼它是， 每次我們有高油價或漏油， 我們叫這些老總到華盛頓， 我們與他們在公眾面前談論問題，我們試圖羞辱他們。 這些就是我們一直在做的事情，從1947年起 當我們第一次問他們：“為什麼會賺這些黑心錢？” 我們已經有點個性化的石油行業 就在這些CEO。 你知道的，我們把它當作 我們看它在一個道德水平， 而不是看它的法律和財務方面。 所以我不是說這些人沒有責任回答問題， 我只是想說，當人們關注 無論他們是不是一群貪婪的雜種， 你實際上並不迴避的問題 制定法律要嘛改變運營方式， 否則就會有漏網之魚 真正的石油量減少 並減少對石油的依賴。 所以我說這是一種分散注意力。 這真是一場好戲 它有力的宣洩，你也許看到的最後一周。
因此，對漏油的事件 在政治上是非常狂熱的。 我的意思是，這些照片 - 這是從聖巴巴拉蔓延。 你有這些照片的鳥類。 他們真的影響人。 當漏油發生在聖巴巴拉 1969年， 在當時成了最熱門的環保運動。 這就是地球日的由來。 它也設立了國家環境政策法 清潔空氣法案，清潔水法案。 一切真的是源於這個時期。 我認為，重要的是要種看看這些照片的鳥類 並了解其發生在我們身上。 我們通常 站在加油站，而且感到一絲無奈。 我們看看這些照片， 我們理解，這是第一次，我們的角色在這個供應鏈。 我們連接點的供應鏈。 而且我們有這種 - 作為選民，我們有一種“尤里卡！”時刻。 這就是為什麼這些時刻，這些漏油 是如此重要。 但我們不要分心也很重要 在看這齣劇或它的道德。 我們實際上需要去 與工作有關的問題的根源。
其中一個發生的事情與前兩次漏油 我們真正的工作是針對一些症狀。 我們非常被動的，反對預先處裡 將會發生的事。 我們所做的是， 提出暫停在東部和西部海岸鑽井。 我們停下來鑽 ANWR， 但實際上我們並未減少石油的消耗量 事實上，消耗量仍持續增加 唯一可以真正減少石油消耗量的作法 是將價格抬高 如同您所見到的，我們的產量已經下降 這是因為儲存槽的老化以及昂貴的開採成本 我們只擁有全世界百分之2的石油礦藏。 另外有百分之65在波斯灣。
有一件事即因此而發生 從1969年起 在奈及利亞開採石油的地區， 這個地區是一個三角洲 --比美國馬里蘭州大上兩倍-- 但每年都有無數的石油洩漏出去 意思是，這就如同出口石油外洩 當我們從另一個地方進口石油， 而當地又缺乏嚴謹的環境法規 這就如同Exxon Valdez(阿拉斯加港灣漏油事件)一樣 從1969年起，年復一年。 當然我們清楚了解有關石油外洩的一切 是因為我們在這裡看到了所有相關的資訊。 但事實上，這些人是住在戰區 每年有上千人在這裡死於無情戰火 就在這個面積比馬里蘭州大上兩倍的地區 這些都和石油息息相關 這些人，如果他們都生在美國 他們都有可能會在這裡 他們可能有政治學的學位，也可能會有商學學位 他們更可能是企業家。事實上他們並不想做現在他們正在做的事。 他們其實是另外一群人 另外一群為我們付出無數代價的人
而另外一件我們所做的事 就是我們持續增加對石油的需求 那就像賭博是需要付出代價的 例如在其中一個我們投資了大型石油開採專案的地區 在查德，由Exxon公司負責主導 理所當然，美國納稅人為此專案買單 世界銀行的部分，Exxon則為其支付了所需的款項 我們投入許多精力在這個專案。但這其實是一個非常嚴重的竊盜問題 2003年時我在那裡 我們沿著這條陰暗的道路駕駛前進， 然後那位穿著綠色衣服的人走了出去 我說：「阿哈，就是這個了」 而後又有一個穿著Exxon公司制服的人走了出去 我們知道一切都沒問題了 因為他們擁有私人軍隊駐守在油田周圍 但就在同時 查德的局勢因此變得更加的不穩定 但是我們在加油站加油時並不會因為這些而負擔任何費用 我們只在4月15日納稅時用我們所繳的稅金去支持這個專案
也同樣以這些 作為監管波斯灣的費用 以及維持航道暢通 在1988年 那一年我們炸毀了兩座伊朗的鑽油平台 而且美國對當地的干涉程度正開始逐步上升 但同樣我們在加油站加油時也不會因為這些而額外支付任何費用 我們同樣只在4月15日時以稅金支付 而且我們甚至無法計算這樣的投入中間所需付出的成本 還有另外一個同樣支撐著我們對於石油的依賴 以及不斷增加的消耗量的地區 是墨西哥灣 墨西哥灣並不是暫停開採的地區 而現在墨西哥灣發生了什麼事...就如同你所見到的 這是和礦產管理相關 在天然氣氣井以及石油部分的圖表 這裡已經變成了密密麻麻的工業區 雖然這和我們之間並沒有任何共同點 但與北極國家野生動物保護區卻有 因為這裡原本應該是個鳥類保護區 而且當你每次在美國本土購買汽油 實際上約有一半是沿著墨西哥灣海岸精煉的 因為此海灣大約占了 總生產量的百分之50 且擁有許多碼頭 所以在此海灣生活的人實際上 是在一不太乾淨的環境下工作，來支撐我們對於石油的需求
但其實每一個美國家庭也需要為石油付出代價 一方面，加油站所制訂的汽油價格並不是太高 我指的是在你考慮了所有與石油相關的成本的情況下 但在另一方面 是因為人們沒有其他的交通方式可選擇 意即這些花費占了收入中的一大部分 但只是為了在工作與回家之間往返 而且通常是使用相當低等的車種 如果你看到有人每年賺5萬美元，並有兩個小孩 他們可能會有三個工作，甚至是更多 所以他們需要花費許多時間通勤來回往返 這些人花費於汽車以及燃料的費用 大於他們納稅的金額或是用於身體保健的花費 而且同樣是百分之50 大約是8萬元 其實汽油的耗費 對於美國的經濟而言是一大損失 且對於每個家庭而言也是一筆為數不小的花費 令人只要一想到當汽油價格上漲時發生的情況就感到害怕
所以，現在我要說的是 現在我們需要怎麼做? 有哪些相關法令?又有哪些是我們需要持續關注的? 其中一項就是我們需要暫停 我們需要停止關注那些暫停計畫 我們需要再次注意 石油的分子 雖然延期是好事，但我們仍須注意 石油的分子 我們也必需做一件事 我們必須試著別再欺騙自己 去想像你可以有一個環保的環境 在減少石油用量之前 我們必須集中於減少油品的使用
看這個圖就是一個藍圖 石油在美國經濟中被使用多少 換句話說--有用的物質是深灰色的 而無用的物質 稱為不良能源、廢料 非常地浪費 你可以了解到廢料遠多於 真正能使用的總計 你必須做一件事 就是不單是提升交通工具使用的燃料效率 也使它們更有效率地被使用 但我們也必須使全體的經濟復甦
我們必須屏除「多使用燃料」這種不正當的動機 舉例來說，我們有一種保險制度 有人每年駕駛20000哩的地方 和有人駕駛3000哩的地方付一樣的保險費 我們真心鼓勵人們多開一點車 我們有增加獎勵金的政策，有完整的配套 我們必需擁有更多彈性的選擇 我們必需使瓦斯的價格 能夠更加反映石油的成本 我們必需從製油工廠轉換獎勵金 一年最少100億 來使中產階級找到更好的通勤方式 或是買一輛更節能的車 也像是要建立一個市場 給將來使用新燃料的新車 這就是我們要達成的目標 我們必需合理化全部的東西 你可以找到更多這種政策 它叫做STRONG 是「確實地漸漸減少大眾運輸工具的用油需求」的政策 這個主意是來自於「解決無助的處境，我們必需更堅強」 都在NewAmerica.net.可以找到 重要的是 我們試著去改變 對油井感到無助的想法 去變得非常積極主動 真的去想想我們是誰 給自己一個特別的時間 在政策上做一個有效的結合
恐怕現在的德克薩斯石油 是第三條美國政策--禁飛空域 說真的--我同意一加崙一美元 可能太貴了 但我想如果我們開始一年 用三分錢買一加崙的石油 在隔年又上漲為六分，下一年就會是九分 直至2020年上升到30分錢 我們真的能夠明顯地減少石油的消費 同時我們給人們時間去準備 去做應變措施 我們應該要籌錢同時提高自覺 我來給你認識一下這世界是怎麼運作的
這是一張瓦斯費的收據，假設從現在開始一年 你必需繳的第一張稅單是 一份使美國更繁榮的稅--33分錢 所以在油井，你不是無助的 你第二個擁有的是一個警告標識 和你可能會找到的非常類似 一個香菸盒 總是說「國立的科學學術機關 認定你用的車製造每加侖的瓦斯 會增加29分你身體上的負擔」 這太多了 由此你可以了解到你很少注意 自己的健康成本 也希望 你能開始轉到一個比較好的循環 同時，你可以打一個號碼 取得更多通勤的相關資訊 或是低利率的貸款來支付不同款式的車 不論如何你正需要去 真正的減少你對石油的依賴 用一整套政策 我們可以真正減少我們的石油消費 或是油品的消費 20%在2020 就是一天減少三百萬桶石油
但為了這個目的 有一件事我們真的必需做，就是我們必需記得 我們是由碳水化合物組合成的人類 我們必需記住石油的成分 不要被外界所欺騙 不要被認知所蒙蔽 還有很多環保的可能性 減少對石油的依賴 認真地減少對燃料的依賴
謝謝大家
(拍手)
Justin Hall-Tipping: Freeing energy from the grid
ABOUT THIS TALK
What would happen if we could generate power from our windowpanes? In this moving talk, entrepreneur Justin Hall-Tipping shows the materials that could make that possible, and how questioning our notion of 'normal' can lead to extraordinary breakthroughs.
What would happen if we could generate power from our windowpanes? In this moving talk, entrepreneur Justin Hall-Tipping shows the materials that could make that possible, and how questioning our notion of 'normal' can lead to extraordinary breakthroughs.
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