1 00:00:02,466 --> 00:00:04,433 - Welcome to University Place Presents. 2 00:00:04,433 --> 00:00:06,300 I'm Norman Gilliland. 3 00:00:06,300 --> 00:00:10,466 On the one hand, it has killed tens of thousands of people 4 00:00:10,466 --> 00:00:13,700 with painful death in wartime. 5 00:00:13,700 --> 00:00:15,833 On the other hand, it has enabled us 6 00:00:15,833 --> 00:00:18,566 to feed billions and billions of people. 7 00:00:18,566 --> 00:00:22,166 It's key in both the good and the bad. 8 00:00:22,166 --> 00:00:23,433 What is it? 9 00:00:23,433 --> 00:00:26,200 We're going to find out from my guest. 10 00:00:26,200 --> 00:00:29,766 He is Dan Egan, the author of the book 11 00:00:29,766 --> 00:00:33,866 The Devil's Element: Phosphorus and a World Out of Balance. 12 00:00:33,866 --> 00:00:36,366 Welcome to University Place Presents. 13 00:00:36,366 --> 00:00:38,133 - Thank you for having me. 14 00:00:38,133 --> 00:00:40,966 - You right away tell some stories in this book 15 00:00:40,966 --> 00:00:42,500 that are remarkable. 16 00:00:42,500 --> 00:00:46,000 I mean, for somebody who's never been particularly afraid 17 00:00:46,000 --> 00:00:48,433 of phosphorus before, [both chuckling] 18 00:00:48,433 --> 00:00:52,166 I have to admit that now, I would steer clear of it, 19 00:00:52,166 --> 00:00:54,500 especially as you tell about it 20 00:00:54,500 --> 00:00:57,133 in a couple of your stories at the get-go. 21 00:00:57,133 --> 00:01:00,800 - Yeah, yeah, it's a bewitching element. 22 00:01:00,800 --> 00:01:02,100 It's the devil's element. 23 00:01:02,100 --> 00:01:05,233 And they call it that because of how poisonous 24 00:01:05,233 --> 00:01:06,766 and explosive it can be. 25 00:01:06,766 --> 00:01:09,833 Also because it was the 13th element discovered. 26 00:01:09,833 --> 00:01:12,366 This was back in the 1600s. 27 00:01:12,366 --> 00:01:13,900 But there's a real paradox there. 28 00:01:13,900 --> 00:01:18,000 It's essential to humanity and it's also very dangerous. 29 00:01:18,000 --> 00:01:20,600 - So a really basic sense, in a really basic sense 30 00:01:20,600 --> 00:01:23,866 it's key to our very existence. 31 00:01:23,866 --> 00:01:27,600 - It is, it's in every living cell on the planet. 32 00:01:27,600 --> 00:01:29,333 Maybe in the universe. 33 00:01:29,333 --> 00:01:31,033 There's no substitute for it. 34 00:01:31,033 --> 00:01:33,533 Isaac Asimov said back in the early '70s, 35 00:01:33,533 --> 00:01:35,033 he called it "life's bottleneck." 36 00:01:35,033 --> 00:01:38,766 And so, yeah, we need the stuff desperately, 37 00:01:38,766 --> 00:01:41,800 but sometimes we mismanage it to ill effect. 38 00:01:41,800 --> 00:01:45,866 - You begin with a story about a pursuit in Florida 39 00:01:45,866 --> 00:01:49,666 where a man is fleeing from the police. 40 00:01:49,666 --> 00:01:51,800 - Yeah. - He jumps over a fence 41 00:01:51,800 --> 00:01:55,066 and decides to escape by jumping into a canal. 42 00:01:55,066 --> 00:01:56,233 And then what? 43 00:01:57,233 --> 00:01:58,933 - Then he almost meets his demise. 44 00:01:58,933 --> 00:02:02,766 Yeah, he was pulled over for drugs in Cape Coral, Florida, 45 00:02:02,766 --> 00:02:04,166 and he made a run for it. 46 00:02:04,166 --> 00:02:06,466 And he ran into the backyards of some homes, 47 00:02:06,466 --> 00:02:10,366 and there's canals in that city lacing the whole area 48 00:02:10,366 --> 00:02:12,933 like nautical alleys. 49 00:02:12,933 --> 00:02:15,366 And he thought he could swim from the police, 50 00:02:15,366 --> 00:02:18,500 and he jumped into this goop that was green as guacamole. 51 00:02:18,500 --> 00:02:21,266 And he soon learned, very toxic. 52 00:02:21,266 --> 00:02:25,766 And yeah, he started retching, he started drowning. 53 00:02:25,766 --> 00:02:28,333 And the police were in no hurry. 54 00:02:28,333 --> 00:02:29,500 They were concerned about him, 55 00:02:29,500 --> 00:02:31,366 but they knew what he had jumped into. 56 00:02:31,366 --> 00:02:34,400 And it was just this stew of toxic blue-green algae, 57 00:02:34,400 --> 00:02:36,366 which is very poisonous stuff. 58 00:02:36,366 --> 00:02:38,533 And so they just started coaxing and coaching him 59 00:02:38,533 --> 00:02:40,300 to get to the shore. 60 00:02:40,300 --> 00:02:41,600 And they finally pulled him out, 61 00:02:41,600 --> 00:02:44,266 and yeah, they washed him off with a hose 62 00:02:44,266 --> 00:02:45,966 and took him off to the emergency room, 63 00:02:45,966 --> 00:02:48,100 and later, I believe, charged him. 64 00:02:48,100 --> 00:02:50,300 But it was, yeah, I thought that was a good way 65 00:02:50,300 --> 00:02:53,033 to open the book because it is a book about phosphorus, 66 00:02:53,033 --> 00:02:54,400 and people are gonna wonder, 67 00:02:54,400 --> 00:02:57,033 "Well, what's a book about phosphorus gonna have for me?" 68 00:02:57,033 --> 00:02:58,200 [Norman laughing] 69 00:02:58,200 --> 00:03:00,200 And so I knew I had to come out hard, 70 00:03:00,200 --> 00:03:02,266 so I came out with this story about what happens 71 00:03:02,266 --> 00:03:05,000 if you accidentally find yourself in this stuff. 72 00:03:05,000 --> 00:03:07,933 - Well, we can imagine maybe that in Florida, 73 00:03:07,933 --> 00:03:10,733 parts of Florida, there would be a lot of canals 74 00:03:10,733 --> 00:03:12,833 and a lot of canals with blue-green algae. 75 00:03:12,833 --> 00:03:15,733 We read about blue-green algae from time to time. 76 00:03:15,733 --> 00:03:18,366 But you have another story that comes right after that, 77 00:03:18,366 --> 00:03:21,233 which takes place in Germany. 78 00:03:21,233 --> 00:03:23,833 - Yeah, yeah, that was phosphorous's birthplace. 79 00:03:23,833 --> 00:03:27,233 And so Germany really just appears throughout the book. 80 00:03:27,233 --> 00:03:30,366 But yeah, the opening chapter starts 81 00:03:30,366 --> 00:03:34,700 with a gentleman in his 70s walking down the beach 82 00:03:34,700 --> 00:03:36,066 on the Baltic coast. 83 00:03:37,600 --> 00:03:41,066 In that area, Baltic amber is like, it's like a thing. 84 00:03:41,066 --> 00:03:43,433 It's people go out harvesting it and selling it 85 00:03:43,433 --> 00:03:46,166 because the region used to be a conifer forest, 86 00:03:46,166 --> 00:03:48,066 so there was a lot of sap up there. 87 00:03:48,066 --> 00:03:50,966 And that sap eventually became amber. 88 00:03:50,966 --> 00:03:52,866 And so people go hunting for it. 89 00:03:52,866 --> 00:03:55,333 Unfortunately for him and for a lot of people, 90 00:03:55,333 --> 00:03:56,633 they don't always find amber. 91 00:03:56,633 --> 00:03:59,500 They find nuggets of elemental phosphorus. 92 00:03:59,500 --> 00:04:00,833 And this is a-- 93 00:04:00,833 --> 00:04:03,933 - Norman: You described it as being, what he picked up, 94 00:04:03,933 --> 00:04:05,733 about the size of a quarter. - Dan: Yeah. 95 00:04:05,733 --> 00:04:07,133 - Norman: An orange... - Dan: Yeah. 96 00:04:07,133 --> 00:04:09,133 - Norman: And since he was looking for a fossil, 97 00:04:09,133 --> 00:04:10,300 it's not very interesting. 98 00:04:10,300 --> 00:04:12,033 - Dan: No, he thought it interesting enough 99 00:04:12,033 --> 00:04:13,233 to bring home to his wife. 100 00:04:13,233 --> 00:04:14,766 So he put it in his pocket. 101 00:04:16,133 --> 00:04:19,333 And then his pants exploded in flames, 102 00:04:19,333 --> 00:04:21,466 and his leg exploded in flames. 103 00:04:21,466 --> 00:04:24,533 And he instinctively went into the Baltic Sea 104 00:04:24,533 --> 00:04:27,100 to put out the flames. 105 00:04:27,100 --> 00:04:28,800 And every time he'd come back out, 106 00:04:28,800 --> 00:04:31,166 his leg would light afire again. 107 00:04:31,166 --> 00:04:33,666 And he had no idea, nor should he have, 108 00:04:33,666 --> 00:04:35,166 what had happened to him. 109 00:04:35,166 --> 00:04:38,133 And he was thinking to himself, "I don't smoke. 110 00:04:38,133 --> 00:04:40,800 "You know, there's no lighter in my pocket. 111 00:04:40,800 --> 00:04:42,766 "There's nothing in my pocket but a rock. 112 00:04:42,766 --> 00:04:45,766 And why has it exploded?" 113 00:04:45,766 --> 00:04:47,000 And that launches the book 114 00:04:47,000 --> 00:04:49,533 and really the story of phosphorus, 115 00:04:49,533 --> 00:04:51,566 and I'll just explain real quickly 116 00:04:51,566 --> 00:04:53,233 that why that nugget was there 117 00:04:53,233 --> 00:04:58,200 was because it was dropped, as with, along with many, many, 118 00:04:58,200 --> 00:05:01,533 many bombs loaded with these phosphorus pebbles 119 00:05:01,533 --> 00:05:04,700 across northern Germany during World War II. 120 00:05:04,700 --> 00:05:06,100 The idea that they were gonna burn, 121 00:05:06,100 --> 00:05:07,966 and they did burn Hamburg down to the ground. 122 00:05:07,966 --> 00:05:11,600 But this phosphorus that was driving the explosions 123 00:05:11,600 --> 00:05:15,033 in these bombs stabilizes when it hits water. 124 00:05:15,033 --> 00:05:16,933 So it's almost like a time capsule. 125 00:05:16,933 --> 00:05:19,900 All these nuggets of phosphorus are in the Elbe River 126 00:05:19,900 --> 00:05:22,966 up in Hamburg, Germany, and along the Baltic coast. 127 00:05:22,966 --> 00:05:24,166 - Left over from, say, 128 00:05:24,166 --> 00:05:25,833 the fire bombing of-- - Fire bombs. 129 00:05:25,833 --> 00:05:28,066 - Dresden being the most famous, but there were more. 130 00:05:28,066 --> 00:05:30,033 - Yeah, and Hamburg was just about as bad. 131 00:05:30,033 --> 00:05:33,533 And so what it looked like at the time, I've described it, 132 00:05:33,533 --> 00:05:34,900 it's just like fireworks. 133 00:05:34,900 --> 00:05:38,133 When you see those glowing globules coming down 134 00:05:38,133 --> 00:05:39,933 from the sky, fireworks. 135 00:05:39,933 --> 00:05:42,866 Those are basically harmless when they land in Lake Mendota 136 00:05:42,866 --> 00:05:44,700 or Lake Michigan or anywhere else. 137 00:05:44,700 --> 00:05:47,000 These are not harmless nuggets. 138 00:05:47,000 --> 00:05:50,266 These are very, very explosive, incendiary nuggets 139 00:05:50,266 --> 00:05:52,400 of elemental phosphorus. 140 00:05:52,400 --> 00:05:54,966 And if they dry out and warm 141 00:05:54,966 --> 00:05:58,433 to just a tick above 80 degrees or so, they explode. 142 00:05:58,433 --> 00:05:59,700 And your pants pocket, 143 00:05:59,700 --> 00:06:02,133 even on the Baltic Coast in December or whenever, 144 00:06:02,133 --> 00:06:04,633 I can't remember the month that this happened, 145 00:06:04,633 --> 00:06:07,200 his pant pocket was warm enough to make this stuff explode. 146 00:06:07,200 --> 00:06:09,933 And he burned, I think, 40% of his body. 147 00:06:09,933 --> 00:06:11,100 He survived. 148 00:06:11,100 --> 00:06:13,133 But they were gonna bring in a helicopter. 149 00:06:13,133 --> 00:06:15,266 They're afraid he'd take down the helicopter 150 00:06:15,266 --> 00:06:16,566 'cause he just kept exploding. 151 00:06:16,566 --> 00:06:18,166 It was crazy. 152 00:06:18,166 --> 00:06:23,333 - It's something that was known before World War II, 153 00:06:23,333 --> 00:06:26,566 what phosphorus could do in those circumstances? 154 00:06:26,566 --> 00:06:29,066 - Well, so here we are in Hamburg, Germany, 155 00:06:29,066 --> 00:06:34,566 and so we open with the fire bombing of Hamburg in 1943. 156 00:06:34,566 --> 00:06:37,566 But Hamburg is also where phosphorus was discovered 157 00:06:37,566 --> 00:06:40,900 in 1669 by an alchemist named Hennig Brand, 158 00:06:40,900 --> 00:06:46,300 who was chasing after the mythical philosopher's stone. 159 00:06:46,300 --> 00:06:49,533 This substance that the early chemists or alchemists 160 00:06:49,533 --> 00:06:52,400 thought they could use to transmute base metals 161 00:06:52,400 --> 00:06:53,800 into something more valuable. 162 00:06:53,800 --> 00:06:56,200 - Norman: Turn lead into gold. - Dan: Lead into gold, yeah. 163 00:06:56,200 --> 00:06:58,266 And nobody knew exactly. 164 00:06:58,266 --> 00:07:01,966 And the theory at the time was "All metals are evolving. 165 00:07:01,966 --> 00:07:05,733 "We just need to find out what's moving that process along 166 00:07:05,733 --> 00:07:08,566 and speed it along, and we'll get rich." 167 00:07:08,566 --> 00:07:10,766 And so this guy thought he could isolate it 168 00:07:10,766 --> 00:07:13,933 from the human waste stream, from urine. 169 00:07:13,933 --> 00:07:19,433 And so Hennig Brand in 1669 started to experiment, 170 00:07:19,433 --> 00:07:21,966 to tinker with tinkle, if you will. 171 00:07:21,966 --> 00:07:26,933 And he ended up basically distilling elemental phosphorus 172 00:07:26,933 --> 00:07:28,300 out of that waste. 173 00:07:28,300 --> 00:07:30,866 So elemental phosphorus doesn't exist 174 00:07:30,866 --> 00:07:32,566 on its own in the natural world. 175 00:07:32,566 --> 00:07:34,533 The element's always bound up with oxygen atoms 176 00:07:34,533 --> 00:07:36,000 so it's stable. 177 00:07:36,000 --> 00:07:38,300 This guy figured out how to isolate it and strip it. 178 00:07:38,300 --> 00:07:39,833 And so that makes it very volatile 179 00:07:39,833 --> 00:07:41,433 because it wants to get back in touch 180 00:07:41,433 --> 00:07:42,600 with those oxygen atoms. 181 00:07:42,600 --> 00:07:43,766 So it explodes. 182 00:07:43,766 --> 00:07:44,966 - Did he have adverse experiences 183 00:07:44,966 --> 00:07:46,133 in his experimenting? 184 00:07:46,133 --> 00:07:47,733 - You know, the historical record doesn't show 185 00:07:47,733 --> 00:07:49,666 that he did himself any great damage, 186 00:07:49,666 --> 00:07:51,566 but others who followed in his footprints did. 187 00:07:51,566 --> 00:07:53,766 There were a lot of people who wouldn't even touch it. 188 00:07:53,766 --> 00:07:55,366 And so when he discovered it, you know, 189 00:07:55,366 --> 00:07:57,566 he didn't really have a use for it 190 00:07:57,566 --> 00:08:00,033 because it wasn't turning anything gold. 191 00:08:00,033 --> 00:08:01,966 It was more just a curiosity 192 00:08:01,966 --> 00:08:07,033 because it was this waxy nugget that, like, glowed, 193 00:08:07,033 --> 00:08:08,766 it was phosphorescent, it glowed in the dark. 194 00:08:08,766 --> 00:08:11,000 And you could sketch it on a wall 195 00:08:11,000 --> 00:08:13,533 and it would glow, the handwriting. 196 00:08:13,533 --> 00:08:17,466 So they used it to just kind of wow the, you know, 197 00:08:17,466 --> 00:08:20,333 the courts of Europe; they would put on performances. 198 00:08:20,333 --> 00:08:22,366 But after about a century, 199 00:08:22,366 --> 00:08:24,433 they realized that there were some other applications, 200 00:08:24,433 --> 00:08:27,200 some good for humanity and some not so good. 201 00:08:27,200 --> 00:08:31,233 - And pretty early on in the history, by which I mean, 202 00:08:31,233 --> 00:08:33,833 well, certainly by the 19th century, early 19th century, 203 00:08:33,833 --> 00:08:40,833 post-Industrial Revolution population explosion, really. 204 00:08:40,833 --> 00:08:44,300 You use England as an example where the population doubled 205 00:08:44,300 --> 00:08:47,600 in a fairly short number of decades. 206 00:08:47,600 --> 00:08:50,400 - Yeah, I don't remember the exact years or decades. 207 00:08:50,400 --> 00:08:56,133 But yeah, so as this element was discovered in the 1600s. 208 00:08:56,133 --> 00:09:01,366 By the 1800s, it was recognized as an essential fertilizer. 209 00:09:01,366 --> 00:09:05,833 And it's kind of a contorted, torturous story 210 00:09:05,833 --> 00:09:09,466 as how they figured out this stuff was phosphorus, 211 00:09:09,466 --> 00:09:12,300 but basically, the English were using anything 212 00:09:12,300 --> 00:09:14,100 they could think of to make a crop grow. 213 00:09:14,100 --> 00:09:15,633 And this is, you know, throughout history, 214 00:09:15,633 --> 00:09:18,833 but it was really dire in the early, early 1800s 215 00:09:18,833 --> 00:09:20,300 during the Little Ice Age. 216 00:09:20,300 --> 00:09:23,400 The famine was ever a threat, if not ever present. 217 00:09:23,400 --> 00:09:26,133 And so the agriculture tinkering began, 218 00:09:26,133 --> 00:09:30,766 and they would put blood on crops, they'd put fabric, 219 00:09:30,766 --> 00:09:32,166 they'd put bones. 220 00:09:32,166 --> 00:09:36,666 And bones really turned out to be a very potent fertilizer. 221 00:09:36,666 --> 00:09:38,300 And they didn't know why at the time, 222 00:09:38,300 --> 00:09:39,633 but they just knew that-- 223 00:09:39,633 --> 00:09:42,166 - What kind of bones are we talking about? 224 00:09:42,166 --> 00:09:44,966 - Any, humans included, you know. 225 00:09:44,966 --> 00:09:46,833 The Battle of Waterloo took place, 226 00:09:46,833 --> 00:09:48,233 I believe, I'm gonna get this wrong-- 227 00:09:48,233 --> 00:09:50,466 - Norman: 1815. - Dan: 1815, thank you. 228 00:09:50,466 --> 00:09:52,933 And some ten, let's see, 229 00:09:52,933 --> 00:09:55,833 in about ten hours, 40,000 soldiers fell, 230 00:09:55,833 --> 00:09:58,766 and along with a lot of horses and other animals. 231 00:09:58,766 --> 00:10:03,200 And if you were to go to the battlefield of Waterloo today, 232 00:10:03,200 --> 00:10:05,433 you would find no remains. 233 00:10:05,433 --> 00:10:06,700 Which I guess isn't surprising 234 00:10:06,700 --> 00:10:08,200 because it's kind of a sacred ground. 235 00:10:08,200 --> 00:10:10,966 And you could think that it would somehow 236 00:10:10,966 --> 00:10:13,066 be turned into a monument, 237 00:10:13,066 --> 00:10:15,166 and maybe the remains moved somewhere. 238 00:10:15,166 --> 00:10:18,166 But if you went to visit the battlefield in 1825, 239 00:10:18,166 --> 00:10:20,566 ten years after the battle, you wouldn't find any bones. 240 00:10:20,566 --> 00:10:22,533 And that's because the British, 241 00:10:22,533 --> 00:10:25,833 in their never-ending pursuit for fertilizer, 242 00:10:25,833 --> 00:10:27,633 realized that bones, and the first bones 243 00:10:27,633 --> 00:10:30,200 they were tinkering with actually came from like a, 244 00:10:30,200 --> 00:10:32,100 I believe it was knife factories. 245 00:10:32,100 --> 00:10:34,566 And the handles, knife handles were used for bones, 246 00:10:34,566 --> 00:10:35,966 and there was a lot of shavings. 247 00:10:35,966 --> 00:10:38,000 And it turned out to be like a Miracle-Gro. 248 00:10:38,000 --> 00:10:42,266 And so that sent the English on the hunt for bones, 249 00:10:42,266 --> 00:10:43,666 and they ended up at Waterloo 250 00:10:43,666 --> 00:10:47,233 and battlefields across Europe, looting them, mining them, 251 00:10:47,233 --> 00:10:50,300 plundering them, you know, both their enemy combatants, 252 00:10:50,300 --> 00:10:51,866 the remains of their enemy combatants 253 00:10:51,866 --> 00:10:53,200 and of their own sons. 254 00:10:53,200 --> 00:10:54,966 - Their own soldiers. - Own soldiers. 255 00:10:54,966 --> 00:10:57,266 So they built mills to grind these bones. 256 00:10:57,266 --> 00:10:59,600 I mean, it was an industrial-scale operation. 257 00:10:59,600 --> 00:11:03,166 - Was this well-known to the people of England? 258 00:11:04,533 --> 00:11:07,766 - You know, I found some historic newspaper accounts 259 00:11:07,766 --> 00:11:10,666 where people were pretty... 260 00:11:10,666 --> 00:11:14,600 The writer of this one article in, I think it was 1821, 261 00:11:14,600 --> 00:11:16,933 was horrified because they had thought 262 00:11:16,933 --> 00:11:18,800 that they were getting a shipment of animal bones, 263 00:11:18,800 --> 00:11:21,000 and they saw some human skeletons in it, 264 00:11:21,000 --> 00:11:24,366 and they were able to deduce where it had come from. 265 00:11:24,366 --> 00:11:28,333 And I don't think people had a big compunction about it 266 00:11:28,333 --> 00:11:31,466 because they were starving or in danger of starving. 267 00:11:31,466 --> 00:11:33,066 So they did what they had to do. 268 00:11:35,766 --> 00:11:37,166 - How long did that go on? 269 00:11:38,166 --> 00:11:40,433 - Well, the bone rush, and that's the story of phosphorus. 270 00:11:40,433 --> 00:11:42,966 So it's really interesting. 271 00:11:42,966 --> 00:11:44,800 They were using bones, and at that point, 272 00:11:44,800 --> 00:11:46,866 they didn't know that it was phosphorus 273 00:11:46,866 --> 00:11:50,733 that made those bones such a potent fertilizer. 274 00:11:50,733 --> 00:11:52,700 They did know that animal waste 275 00:11:52,700 --> 00:11:57,133 was almost uniformly very, very productive as a fertilizer. 276 00:11:57,133 --> 00:11:59,833 And this gets into some weird history. 277 00:11:59,833 --> 00:12:02,100 Justus von Liebig, who's kind of recognized 278 00:12:02,100 --> 00:12:04,766 as the father of modern chemistry, 279 00:12:04,766 --> 00:12:06,366 was scouring the English coast 280 00:12:06,366 --> 00:12:08,466 with some other scientists in the 1820s. 281 00:12:08,466 --> 00:12:11,566 And they came across some skeletal, 282 00:12:11,566 --> 00:12:15,466 or not skeletal, I guess, fossilized remains of dinosaurs 283 00:12:15,466 --> 00:12:20,533 that were so intact, the dinosaurs had fossilized feces 284 00:12:20,533 --> 00:12:22,533 in their digestive tract. 285 00:12:22,533 --> 00:12:24,366 And Liebig, the chemist, thought, 286 00:12:24,366 --> 00:12:27,300 "You know, if human manure 287 00:12:27,300 --> 00:12:30,566 "and animal manure is such an effective fertilizer, 288 00:12:30,566 --> 00:12:32,400 maybe this fossilized manure is." 289 00:12:32,400 --> 00:12:34,633 So he did an analysis and he realized, 290 00:12:34,633 --> 00:12:36,366 he was able to figure out and isolate, 291 00:12:36,366 --> 00:12:38,800 "This is phosphorus that we're after." 292 00:12:38,800 --> 00:12:40,500 So then the hunt got more focused. 293 00:12:40,500 --> 00:12:42,133 - Why the advantage though? 294 00:12:42,133 --> 00:12:45,866 Because fossils are presumably a lot harder to come by 295 00:12:45,866 --> 00:12:47,900 than what they were already using. 296 00:12:47,900 --> 00:12:50,966 - Yeah, but that was the jump they were able to make. 297 00:12:50,966 --> 00:12:53,366 And there was actually a remarkable number of, 298 00:12:53,366 --> 00:12:56,066 they called them bezoas stones, I don't know why, 299 00:12:56,066 --> 00:12:59,533 but they were literally clumps or nuggets 300 00:12:59,533 --> 00:13:02,466 of fossilized dung that were processed similar 301 00:13:02,466 --> 00:13:03,966 to how bones were. 302 00:13:03,966 --> 00:13:07,533 Involved adding acid to release the phosphorus 303 00:13:07,533 --> 00:13:10,866 and the fertilizing properties of it on the crops. 304 00:13:10,866 --> 00:13:13,533 But yeah, they ran out 305 00:13:13,533 --> 00:13:16,066 of dinosaur fossils real quickly, 306 00:13:16,066 --> 00:13:18,033 and that sent them to the other side 307 00:13:18,033 --> 00:13:20,666 of the globe to South America. 308 00:13:20,666 --> 00:13:25,733 - Looking for what would be, in effect phosphate beds? 309 00:13:26,733 --> 00:13:29,733 - Not yet; so they were on their way to realizing 310 00:13:29,733 --> 00:13:31,433 that there are certain rock deposits 311 00:13:31,433 --> 00:13:35,500 that are rich with phosphorus, but they did, 312 00:13:35,500 --> 00:13:37,400 Liebig, I believe, did the analysis. 313 00:13:37,400 --> 00:13:42,066 But bird poop from the guano islands off the coast of Peru 314 00:13:42,066 --> 00:13:45,366 was just an incredibly potent fertilizer. 315 00:13:45,366 --> 00:13:49,066 And the analysis they did, it's been said that the ratio, 316 00:13:49,066 --> 00:13:53,266 so the three primary fertilizing ingredients are nitrogen, 317 00:13:53,266 --> 00:13:54,566 potassium, and phosphorus. 318 00:13:54,566 --> 00:13:55,733 That's NPK. 319 00:13:55,733 --> 00:13:57,733 That's what you'll see on a bag of, you know, 320 00:13:57,733 --> 00:14:00,266 whatever kind of fertilizer you might buy for your garden 321 00:14:00,266 --> 00:14:03,133 or for your crops if you're a farmer. 322 00:14:03,133 --> 00:14:05,433 And that's what this bird poop had. 323 00:14:05,433 --> 00:14:08,500 And you know, we had plenty of potassium at the time, 324 00:14:08,500 --> 00:14:12,566 and we weren't in a danger of having an extreme shortage 325 00:14:12,566 --> 00:14:14,500 of nitrogen at that time. 326 00:14:14,500 --> 00:14:15,666 That would come later. 327 00:14:15,666 --> 00:14:17,466 But we would solve that in a different way. 328 00:14:17,466 --> 00:14:18,866 But phosphorus is what we really needed. 329 00:14:18,866 --> 00:14:21,333 So they started up this phosphorus trade 330 00:14:21,333 --> 00:14:24,900 that went on from the 1830s to the 1880s. 331 00:14:24,900 --> 00:14:28,166 And there were news accounts at the time that these islands, 332 00:14:28,166 --> 00:14:30,400 so the islands were so rich with bird poop 333 00:14:30,400 --> 00:14:33,566 because of the Humboldt Current coming up the western coast 334 00:14:33,566 --> 00:14:39,066 of South America carried with it all sorts of plankton, 335 00:14:39,066 --> 00:14:40,966 which brought in fish, which brought in birds. 336 00:14:40,966 --> 00:14:42,466 And the birds would eat the fish. 337 00:14:42,466 --> 00:14:45,400 And they needed a place to nest and, you know, to poop. 338 00:14:45,400 --> 00:14:47,533 And so they would go to these islands, 339 00:14:47,533 --> 00:14:49,066 and what made these islands unique, 340 00:14:49,066 --> 00:14:52,466 not just being in the middle of the Humboldt Current, 341 00:14:52,466 --> 00:14:56,800 but [clears throat] they're so dry that it never rains. 342 00:14:56,800 --> 00:15:00,333 So normally that waste would get washed back into the sea. 343 00:15:00,333 --> 00:15:02,733 But in this case, it just, it turned into, 344 00:15:02,733 --> 00:15:04,866 over eons or millennia, 345 00:15:04,866 --> 00:15:08,166 turned into mountains of dried bird poop 346 00:15:08,166 --> 00:15:09,933 that was just ready to fertilize 347 00:15:09,933 --> 00:15:11,733 any kind of crop you could imagine. 348 00:15:12,833 --> 00:15:15,800 - You had primarily what the English, 349 00:15:15,800 --> 00:15:17,600 other countries involved at this point, 350 00:15:17,600 --> 00:15:18,966 going for the guano trade? 351 00:15:18,966 --> 00:15:20,133 - The English pioneered it, 352 00:15:20,133 --> 00:15:22,000 but the Americans jumped on board 353 00:15:22,000 --> 00:15:24,733 and so did most of western Europe real quickly. 354 00:15:24,733 --> 00:15:27,900 And yeah, these accounts were like, "This is inexhaustible. 355 00:15:27,900 --> 00:15:31,333 "There is so much poop, so much bird poop down there 356 00:15:31,333 --> 00:15:34,300 that we don't have to worry about running out." 357 00:15:34,300 --> 00:15:36,333 And then within 50 years, they ran out. 358 00:15:36,333 --> 00:15:37,600 That's the story of phosphorus. 359 00:15:37,600 --> 00:15:38,933 We keep hunting for it 360 00:15:38,933 --> 00:15:41,700 and we keep playing out whatever deposits we find of it. 361 00:15:41,700 --> 00:15:44,566 - At this point though, you refer to the circle of life, 362 00:15:44,566 --> 00:15:47,133 and all of this is still part of the circle of life. 363 00:15:47,133 --> 00:15:50,066 The kinda recycling of these materials. 364 00:15:50,066 --> 00:15:52,800 - Yeah, so that's, you know, we were saying earlier 365 00:15:52,800 --> 00:15:56,400 how phosphorus is in every single cell 366 00:15:56,400 --> 00:15:59,633 in every organism on the planet. 367 00:15:59,633 --> 00:16:01,566 And historically, where did this phosphorus 368 00:16:01,566 --> 00:16:02,833 originally come from? 369 00:16:02,833 --> 00:16:06,300 It came from after molten earth congealed, 370 00:16:06,300 --> 00:16:08,433 it was in certain rocks, igneous rocks, 371 00:16:08,433 --> 00:16:09,933 that just slowly eroded 372 00:16:09,933 --> 00:16:12,333 and leached their phosphorus molecules. 373 00:16:12,333 --> 00:16:15,233 They're actually phosphates, the molecule packaged, 374 00:16:15,233 --> 00:16:20,900 or the atoms packaged with phosphorus, with oxygen atoms, 375 00:16:20,900 --> 00:16:23,600 which is actually technically the fertilizing component 376 00:16:23,600 --> 00:16:25,566 that we're talking about here. 377 00:16:25,566 --> 00:16:27,933 But I just call it phosphorus for simplicity's sake. 378 00:16:27,933 --> 00:16:30,133 Anyway, that was a slow trickle of phosphorus 379 00:16:30,133 --> 00:16:31,366 into the living world. 380 00:16:31,366 --> 00:16:32,800 And whatever took up that phosphorus, 381 00:16:32,800 --> 00:16:36,600 whenever it died, that phosphorus did not go away. 382 00:16:36,600 --> 00:16:38,433 It was picked up by something else, 383 00:16:38,433 --> 00:16:41,533 whether it was in the ocean, in the lakes, on the land, 384 00:16:41,533 --> 00:16:43,333 it was circled over and over and over. 385 00:16:43,333 --> 00:16:45,133 - So would you say phosphorus can be neither 386 00:16:45,133 --> 00:16:48,333 created nor destroyed? - Exactly, yeah. 387 00:16:48,333 --> 00:16:50,866 And so it was the governor of life, 388 00:16:50,866 --> 00:16:53,800 and how much phosphorus could leach from these rocks 389 00:16:53,800 --> 00:16:56,000 was how much life Earth could support. 390 00:16:56,000 --> 00:16:57,400 And it was the circle of life. 391 00:16:57,400 --> 00:17:00,233 And you know, this is a real simplification, 392 00:17:00,233 --> 00:17:02,433 but it's actually really accurate. 393 00:17:02,433 --> 00:17:06,566 A good illustration is just a pasture with a cow on it, 394 00:17:06,566 --> 00:17:08,133 an acre, you know, that's basically what 395 00:17:08,133 --> 00:17:10,066 a grazing cow needs. 396 00:17:10,066 --> 00:17:13,033 And that cow eats the grass, that cow poops, 397 00:17:13,033 --> 00:17:14,966 that poop grows grass, that cow eats the grass, 398 00:17:14,966 --> 00:17:18,633 and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, circle of life. 399 00:17:18,633 --> 00:17:22,200 Well, once we figured out that there were certain materials 400 00:17:22,200 --> 00:17:25,233 that were heavily concentrated or had heavy concentrations 401 00:17:25,233 --> 00:17:27,933 of phosphorus, we cracked that circle of life 402 00:17:27,933 --> 00:17:29,933 and turned it into a straight line. 403 00:17:29,933 --> 00:17:34,500 And that line now runs from crop lands into our waters. 404 00:17:34,500 --> 00:17:36,833 And sometimes that's problematic. 405 00:17:36,833 --> 00:17:40,400 But yeah, we broke the circle of life 406 00:17:40,400 --> 00:17:42,200 and we broke it in a real big way 407 00:17:42,200 --> 00:17:45,033 when we made the jump from, we went from bones to bird poop 408 00:17:45,033 --> 00:17:47,066 to finally rock deposits. 409 00:17:47,066 --> 00:17:48,266 And these aren't the rock deposits 410 00:17:48,266 --> 00:17:49,466 I was just talking about. 411 00:17:49,466 --> 00:17:51,666 These are sedimentary rocks. 412 00:17:51,666 --> 00:17:54,533 They're basically just the result 413 00:17:54,533 --> 00:17:58,600 of dead sea life accreting on the sea floor. 414 00:17:58,600 --> 00:18:00,666 And over time, that stuff turns, 415 00:18:00,666 --> 00:18:02,933 the pressure turns it into rocks. 416 00:18:02,933 --> 00:18:07,733 And tectonic forces or whatever, ocean levels sink or climb, 417 00:18:07,733 --> 00:18:13,233 but it becomes accessible on land, where it can be mined. 418 00:18:13,233 --> 00:18:16,200 So we've been mining these phosphorous-rich rocks 419 00:18:16,200 --> 00:18:18,933 since right around 1890. 420 00:18:18,933 --> 00:18:20,666 Right when we started running outta bird poop, 421 00:18:20,666 --> 00:18:22,666 we turned to these rocks. 422 00:18:22,666 --> 00:18:24,266 Those rocks are running out now. 423 00:18:24,266 --> 00:18:26,800 - Well, there was quite a big boom in Florida, I know-- 424 00:18:26,800 --> 00:18:29,233 - There was and there is. - Central Florida in the 1890s. 425 00:18:29,233 --> 00:18:31,900 - Yeah, that was like a gold rush. 426 00:18:31,900 --> 00:18:36,200 I mean, it was, I mean, apocryphal or not, 427 00:18:36,200 --> 00:18:37,533 there was plenty of news accounts 428 00:18:37,533 --> 00:18:40,733 about people shooting each other over pebbles in the street 429 00:18:40,733 --> 00:18:41,933 because they had built streets 430 00:18:41,933 --> 00:18:44,500 in central Florida out of these rocks 431 00:18:44,500 --> 00:18:47,700 before they realized that they were nutritional gold. 432 00:18:47,700 --> 00:18:50,366 So yeah, Florida had a big deposit, 433 00:18:50,366 --> 00:18:52,166 and we rely on that to this day. 434 00:18:52,166 --> 00:18:55,433 I mean, the bread on your table is probably can be traced 435 00:18:55,433 --> 00:18:57,966 back to rocks being mined in Florida. 436 00:18:57,966 --> 00:19:01,500 The problem is, just like bones and bird poop, 437 00:19:01,500 --> 00:19:03,500 we're playing out these deposits, 438 00:19:03,500 --> 00:19:06,066 and it's been estimated 439 00:19:06,066 --> 00:19:10,300 that the deposits down in Florida should be played out 440 00:19:10,300 --> 00:19:11,866 in three or four decades. 441 00:19:11,866 --> 00:19:16,066 There's some smaller deposits out west in Idaho and Utah, 442 00:19:16,066 --> 00:19:17,933 and there's some in North Carolina. 443 00:19:17,933 --> 00:19:20,333 But we're gonna become dependent on other countries 444 00:19:20,333 --> 00:19:23,300 for our nutritional security, which is a lot trickier, 445 00:19:23,300 --> 00:19:25,533 I would argue, than energy security 446 00:19:25,533 --> 00:19:28,100 because we can have workarounds to oil. 447 00:19:28,100 --> 00:19:31,000 There's no workaround to life's bottleneck, phosphorus. 448 00:19:31,000 --> 00:19:35,366 - But it too, is limited. 449 00:19:35,366 --> 00:19:39,333 Takes a very long time to develop any of those deposits 450 00:19:39,333 --> 00:19:41,000 that you talked about. 451 00:19:41,000 --> 00:19:43,800 And also, there's a finite amount of it. 452 00:19:43,800 --> 00:19:46,866 - Yeah, you know, it's a real paradox. 453 00:19:46,866 --> 00:19:48,666 At the same time we're running out of it, 454 00:19:48,666 --> 00:19:50,333 we're overusing it to the point 455 00:19:50,333 --> 00:19:52,233 where we're polluting our waters with... 456 00:19:52,233 --> 00:19:55,300 'Cause the stuff grows, corn, soy, wheat, 457 00:19:55,300 --> 00:19:58,033 anything we want on land, when it gets into the water, 458 00:19:58,033 --> 00:19:59,233 it grows stuff we don't want, 459 00:19:59,233 --> 00:20:01,033 which is the toxic algae we were talking about 460 00:20:01,033 --> 00:20:02,233 at the beginning of the show. 461 00:20:02,233 --> 00:20:06,200 - You have a story that's remarkable about a place 462 00:20:06,200 --> 00:20:08,900 that originally was called Ocean Island. 463 00:20:08,900 --> 00:20:11,500 With these just mountains of deposits. 464 00:20:11,500 --> 00:20:13,400 - Yeah, yeah, and that wasn't bird poop. 465 00:20:13,400 --> 00:20:14,766 That was rock. 466 00:20:14,766 --> 00:20:17,533 And that was around 1910. 467 00:20:17,533 --> 00:20:19,733 We got really good thanks to the chemists of the day 468 00:20:19,733 --> 00:20:22,400 at zeroing in on these rare deposits. 469 00:20:22,400 --> 00:20:27,800 And these islands were rich with rock deposits. 470 00:20:27,800 --> 00:20:30,933 There were, I don't know, probably a dozen or so. 471 00:20:30,933 --> 00:20:34,933 But we literally, Naru and Banaba, 472 00:20:34,933 --> 00:20:38,166 I believe that's how you pronounce that island, Banaba. 473 00:20:38,166 --> 00:20:41,400 We basically stripped those islands to the waterline almost. 474 00:20:41,400 --> 00:20:44,266 And you know, the inhabitants be damned. 475 00:20:44,266 --> 00:20:46,733 Some of them stayed, some of them were exiled. 476 00:20:46,733 --> 00:20:48,100 During World War II, 477 00:20:48,100 --> 00:20:50,166 some of them were enslaved by the Japanese. 478 00:20:50,166 --> 00:20:54,133 And yeah, we destroyed cultures and islands 479 00:20:54,133 --> 00:20:56,233 in the name of putting food on our table. 480 00:20:56,233 --> 00:20:59,466 And when I say we, I mean primarily Western society, 481 00:20:59,466 --> 00:21:01,066 Western civilizations. 482 00:21:01,066 --> 00:21:03,666 - Well, I think you mentioned that the Allies after the war, 483 00:21:04,666 --> 00:21:09,133 Australia, New Zealand, or that particular island, 484 00:21:10,633 --> 00:21:14,800 basically relocated everybody 1,600 miles away. 485 00:21:14,800 --> 00:21:16,200 Very different kind of place. 486 00:21:16,200 --> 00:21:20,466 - Yeah, yeah, and they didn't do really well. 487 00:21:20,466 --> 00:21:23,866 I was gonna go out, COVID interrupted these plans, 488 00:21:23,866 --> 00:21:25,900 but I was gonna go out to, 489 00:21:25,900 --> 00:21:28,166 well, initially I wanted to go to Banaba Island, 490 00:21:28,166 --> 00:21:30,366 but because there's some people who have resettled it, 491 00:21:30,366 --> 00:21:33,233 some of the Indigenous people. 492 00:21:33,233 --> 00:21:34,666 There's no airstrip. 493 00:21:34,666 --> 00:21:37,300 There's a boat that brings medical supplies 494 00:21:37,300 --> 00:21:39,566 and food every three months or so. 495 00:21:39,566 --> 00:21:42,200 So if you wanna go there, you can go for a night 496 00:21:42,200 --> 00:21:44,733 or you have to go for three months. [chuckling] 497 00:21:44,733 --> 00:21:46,600 And so that was making things a little dicey 498 00:21:46,600 --> 00:21:48,300 as far as itineraries. 499 00:21:49,900 --> 00:21:54,566 - Once we get into this post-war period 500 00:21:54,566 --> 00:21:57,900 and people start looking for other sources then, 501 00:21:57,900 --> 00:21:59,266 as they know? 502 00:21:59,266 --> 00:22:04,433 I mean, you point out that there's one person at this point 503 00:22:04,433 --> 00:22:08,066 who controls what, 80% of the known phosphate. 504 00:22:08,066 --> 00:22:09,233 - Well, that's, yeah, 505 00:22:09,233 --> 00:22:11,633 that's kind of what's on the horizon here. 506 00:22:11,633 --> 00:22:15,566 So I was saying these rock deposits are relatively scarce 507 00:22:15,566 --> 00:22:18,400 and they're being mined intensively. 508 00:22:20,166 --> 00:22:25,133 Today, 70% to 80% of the world's phosphate rock reserves 509 00:22:25,133 --> 00:22:28,533 are in Morocco, in the Western Sahara territory 510 00:22:28,533 --> 00:22:29,700 that is occupied. 511 00:22:29,700 --> 00:22:33,100 - You talk about actually a pretty hot war 512 00:22:33,100 --> 00:22:35,100 that very few people know about. 513 00:22:35,100 --> 00:22:37,900 - The War of the Sands, yeah, in the 1970s. 514 00:22:37,900 --> 00:22:41,766 So Spain developed a huge mine in Western Sahara 515 00:22:41,766 --> 00:22:43,166 in the early 1970s. 516 00:22:43,166 --> 00:22:46,266 And then Spain pulled out of... 517 00:22:46,266 --> 00:22:48,266 Western Sahara was a Spanish colony. 518 00:22:48,266 --> 00:22:51,300 Spain pulled out and Morocco filled that vacuum. 519 00:22:51,300 --> 00:22:55,866 And the Native people of the Sahara Desert there 520 00:22:55,866 --> 00:22:57,566 didn't really take too kindly to the idea 521 00:22:57,566 --> 00:22:59,733 of their northern neighbors coming in 522 00:22:59,733 --> 00:23:03,266 and taking over operation of the mine. 523 00:23:03,266 --> 00:23:06,033 They saw that mine and the assets that it was pulling 524 00:23:06,033 --> 00:23:07,200 from the ground as theirs. 525 00:23:07,200 --> 00:23:09,800 And so that started a low-grade war. 526 00:23:09,800 --> 00:23:14,066 And so this was 1974, if my memory serves. 527 00:23:14,066 --> 00:23:16,166 And next door in Algeria, 528 00:23:16,166 --> 00:23:19,700 they built, like, a tent city as a refugee camp. 529 00:23:19,700 --> 00:23:21,700 And the idea was things are gonna cool down 530 00:23:21,700 --> 00:23:24,233 in two or three months and everybody can go home. 531 00:23:24,233 --> 00:23:25,900 Those tent camps still there today, 532 00:23:25,900 --> 00:23:27,700 and they're home to, like, 100,000 people. 533 00:23:27,700 --> 00:23:28,866 They don't have running water. 534 00:23:28,866 --> 00:23:30,100 They don't have, you know, 535 00:23:30,100 --> 00:23:32,700 sanitation in the sense that we do. 536 00:23:33,700 --> 00:23:35,166 They don't have a lot of hope. 537 00:23:35,166 --> 00:23:40,100 And so this war over that mine pretty much flickered out 538 00:23:41,233 --> 00:23:43,433 in the 1990s, but it's flaring up again. 539 00:23:43,433 --> 00:23:48,833 And that mine is protected very heavily by Moroccan forces. 540 00:23:48,833 --> 00:23:51,400 There's berm, a massive berm. 541 00:23:51,400 --> 00:23:53,866 It's like a, I never remember my numbers, 542 00:23:53,866 --> 00:23:56,066 but I think it's like 1,600 miles long, 543 00:23:56,066 --> 00:23:59,533 protecting not just the mine but that part of Western Sahara. 544 00:23:59,533 --> 00:24:01,433 And it's filled with landmines. 545 00:24:01,433 --> 00:24:04,266 And on top of that are, you know, machine guns. 546 00:24:04,266 --> 00:24:07,866 And on the other side of that are people who are, you know, 547 00:24:07,866 --> 00:24:10,033 trying to go home and feeling jilted 548 00:24:10,033 --> 00:24:13,066 because of the way that mine has been exploding 549 00:24:13,066 --> 00:24:15,933 with what they believe is their resource. 550 00:24:15,933 --> 00:24:18,100 The Moroccans have a different side of the story. 551 00:24:18,100 --> 00:24:20,900 - Yeah, it's a pattern that we've seen before, isn't it? 552 00:24:20,900 --> 00:24:25,766 Where the Natives get pushed out, 553 00:24:25,766 --> 00:24:32,066 or at best make a few dollars off of this fortune 554 00:24:32,066 --> 00:24:33,466 that they're sitting on. 555 00:24:33,466 --> 00:24:36,566 - Yeah, and what makes this different from gold and silver 556 00:24:36,566 --> 00:24:39,166 is that it's in a real way, 557 00:24:39,166 --> 00:24:41,033 it's nutrition that they're sitting on. 558 00:24:41,033 --> 00:24:42,233 They're sitting on the one thing, 559 00:24:42,233 --> 00:24:43,433 I mean, we can't-- 560 00:24:43,433 --> 00:24:45,233 - They're sitting on a food supply, in effect. 561 00:24:45,233 --> 00:24:49,300 - They're sitting on, yeah, the Fort Knox of food. 562 00:24:51,200 --> 00:24:56,266 - I think even back in 1938, 563 00:24:56,266 --> 00:24:58,566 Franklin D. Roosevelt, President, 564 00:24:59,666 --> 00:25:04,233 realized the value, the importance, 565 00:25:04,233 --> 00:25:06,833 the crucial significance of phosphates. 566 00:25:06,833 --> 00:25:10,000 - Yeah, he said we needed a national phosphorus policy, 567 00:25:10,000 --> 00:25:11,166 like an energy policy. 568 00:25:11,166 --> 00:25:12,866 He recognized that. 569 00:25:12,866 --> 00:25:14,266 Presidents today don't. 570 00:25:14,266 --> 00:25:17,933 I was at a phosphorus conference in North Carolina last year, 571 00:25:17,933 --> 00:25:22,133 and the organizers were saying their goal will be met 572 00:25:22,133 --> 00:25:25,100 if they can ever get a President of the United States 573 00:25:25,100 --> 00:25:27,533 to publicly acknowledge how dependent 574 00:25:27,533 --> 00:25:30,200 and how dicey our supply of phosphorus, 575 00:25:30,200 --> 00:25:31,433 isn't necessarily today, 576 00:25:31,433 --> 00:25:35,166 but is gonna become in coming decades. 577 00:25:35,166 --> 00:25:36,933 And we need to plan for that. 578 00:25:36,933 --> 00:25:41,766 Now, this mongo deposit in Western Sahara and Morocco, 579 00:25:41,766 --> 00:25:43,466 like I said, it's about 70% or 80% 580 00:25:43,466 --> 00:25:45,600 of the world's proven reserves. 581 00:25:45,600 --> 00:25:48,133 It's been estimated, I mean, some people were a little, 582 00:25:48,133 --> 00:25:50,733 I think, a little alarmist saying that 583 00:25:50,733 --> 00:25:53,733 those deposits could play out in, like, 80 years 584 00:25:53,733 --> 00:25:55,466 and then we're in big trouble. 585 00:25:55,466 --> 00:25:57,500 More reasonable estimates are 300 or 400 years. 586 00:25:57,500 --> 00:25:59,600 But that's not long in the scheme of humanity. 587 00:25:59,600 --> 00:26:02,733 And as I was saying earlier, or that you had mentioned, 588 00:26:02,733 --> 00:26:04,166 it doesn't go away. 589 00:26:04,166 --> 00:26:06,800 It's not like we're throwing this phosphorus away, 590 00:26:06,800 --> 00:26:08,233 we could never get it back. 591 00:26:08,233 --> 00:26:12,133 But we use it as a food nutrient, as a crop nutrient. 592 00:26:12,133 --> 00:26:15,333 And then it just disperses into concentrations 593 00:26:15,333 --> 00:26:18,600 that makes it very difficult to mine like we do today. 594 00:26:18,600 --> 00:26:21,533 And I can't imagine, I mean, we'll figure something out. 595 00:26:21,533 --> 00:26:24,433 Humanity may not be humming along with 10 billion people. 596 00:26:24,433 --> 00:26:25,600 I don't know. 597 00:26:25,600 --> 00:26:27,466 I mean, who knows what's gonna happen tomorrow. 598 00:26:27,466 --> 00:26:29,900 But it'll be very interesting 599 00:26:29,900 --> 00:26:35,633 to see how we manage phosphorus in the coming centuries. 600 00:26:35,633 --> 00:26:39,233 And I think where we're headed is back to the circle of life, 601 00:26:39,233 --> 00:26:41,300 back to being very careful about how we, 602 00:26:41,300 --> 00:26:44,166 how we fertilize with it and how we recapture that 603 00:26:44,166 --> 00:26:45,866 before we let it go into our lakes. 604 00:26:45,866 --> 00:26:47,666 I mean, including Lake Mendota right here. 605 00:26:47,666 --> 00:26:49,300 - Well, that's another part of that. 606 00:26:49,300 --> 00:26:51,200 We haven't really gotten into it too much. 607 00:26:51,200 --> 00:26:54,366 It's one thing to think of phosphate as something 608 00:26:54,366 --> 00:27:02,433 that certainly is crucial and that can do so much, 609 00:27:03,533 --> 00:27:05,800 even though it's gotta be managed 610 00:27:05,800 --> 00:27:07,166 from a content standpoint, 611 00:27:07,166 --> 00:27:11,733 from the amount of it that's available is limited, 612 00:27:11,733 --> 00:27:13,000 that kind of thing. 613 00:27:13,000 --> 00:27:15,266 But we haven't gotten too much into what 614 00:27:15,266 --> 00:27:17,333 you just mentioned there, Dan. 615 00:27:17,333 --> 00:27:20,133 And that is the effect on the environment 616 00:27:20,133 --> 00:27:21,933 of the way this phosphate is being used. 617 00:27:21,933 --> 00:27:24,133 - Yeah, yeah, so the book's organized 618 00:27:24,133 --> 00:27:25,900 in basically the hunt for phosphorus, 619 00:27:25,900 --> 00:27:27,900 which is what we've just been talking about. 620 00:27:27,900 --> 00:27:31,033 And the second part of it is the price. 621 00:27:31,033 --> 00:27:33,900 And the price comes not just from what a farmer has to pay 622 00:27:33,900 --> 00:27:37,033 to put something on his field to make his crops grow. 623 00:27:37,033 --> 00:27:39,166 It comes in the form of polluted waters 624 00:27:39,166 --> 00:27:41,066 because the stuff has been, 625 00:27:41,066 --> 00:27:43,566 since we've figured out these rock deposits are so thick 626 00:27:43,566 --> 00:27:47,166 with phosphorus, we've been able to really hit 'em hard 627 00:27:47,166 --> 00:27:51,566 and unleash into the environment a lot of phosphorus, 628 00:27:51,566 --> 00:27:54,633 you know, on the scale that nature never comprehended. 629 00:27:54,633 --> 00:27:59,300 And the consequences of that are not good, 630 00:27:59,300 --> 00:28:00,566 particularly for our waters 631 00:28:00,566 --> 00:28:02,500 because phosphorus washing off a crop 632 00:28:02,500 --> 00:28:05,633 does what everything else does, it flows downhill. 633 00:28:05,633 --> 00:28:09,433 And downhill, no matter where you are, ends up being in water, 634 00:28:09,433 --> 00:28:12,400 and there, it grows stuff we don't want. 635 00:28:12,400 --> 00:28:14,600 - Now why is that the case? 636 00:28:14,600 --> 00:28:17,333 Why is that the case if the phosphate is being used 637 00:28:17,333 --> 00:28:22,300 to grow a huge ear of corn, why isn't it in the corn? 638 00:28:22,300 --> 00:28:23,700 - Good question. - Why is there 639 00:28:23,700 --> 00:28:25,900 so much running off? - 'Cause we put too much on. 640 00:28:25,900 --> 00:28:29,466 So it's been, so we've been mining it so intensively 641 00:28:29,466 --> 00:28:33,266 and for years, the sea grant or land grant colleges, 642 00:28:33,266 --> 00:28:34,533 you know, across the country, 643 00:28:34,533 --> 00:28:36,766 this being one of them, University of Wisconsin, 644 00:28:36,766 --> 00:28:39,533 for a long time, counseled farmers that, you know, 645 00:28:39,533 --> 00:28:42,266 it's like when you're making soup and something tastes good, 646 00:28:42,266 --> 00:28:44,433 a little's good, a lot's gonna be better. 647 00:28:44,433 --> 00:28:48,833 And so they were taught, like, just as an insurance policy, 648 00:28:48,833 --> 00:28:51,300 in case rains come before the crops, 649 00:28:51,300 --> 00:28:53,700 the roots take hold and the crops start to grow, 650 00:28:53,700 --> 00:28:56,533 you may lose a lot of phosphorus on your landscape. 651 00:28:56,533 --> 00:28:58,166 You better put a lot on. 652 00:28:58,166 --> 00:29:01,000 And so you don't really, I guess the farmer loses it, 653 00:29:01,000 --> 00:29:02,333 but the public also loses 654 00:29:02,333 --> 00:29:03,733 because then it goes into the water 655 00:29:03,733 --> 00:29:05,133 and then it grows this blue-green algae. 656 00:29:05,133 --> 00:29:08,133 - How much of that strategy is just marketing, do you think? 657 00:29:09,133 --> 00:29:10,300 - Well, I don't know. 658 00:29:10,300 --> 00:29:12,100 You know, I didn't do a lot of research 659 00:29:12,100 --> 00:29:14,100 into the history of it, but I think, you know, 660 00:29:14,100 --> 00:29:17,933 miners gotta make money and, you know, I think it was, 661 00:29:17,933 --> 00:29:19,900 nobody really pondered the downside. 662 00:29:19,900 --> 00:29:26,233 I mean, we didn't really get to, like, it's hard to call... 663 00:29:26,233 --> 00:29:29,166 I mean, phosphorus is toxic in its elemental form, 664 00:29:29,166 --> 00:29:32,166 but it has toxic consequences because it grows this algae. 665 00:29:32,166 --> 00:29:35,633 And we just didn't realize the extent 666 00:29:35,633 --> 00:29:38,466 of this problem until the 1960s. 667 00:29:38,466 --> 00:29:41,033 And back then, it wasn't that we were worried 668 00:29:41,033 --> 00:29:45,400 so much about crop runoff, 669 00:29:45,400 --> 00:29:48,100 but it was detergent of all things. 670 00:29:48,100 --> 00:29:50,600 So should I talk a little bit about that? 671 00:29:50,600 --> 00:29:52,666 - Well, yeah, now, what's the connection, 672 00:29:52,666 --> 00:29:55,633 first of all, between crop runoff and detergent? 673 00:29:56,633 --> 00:29:58,033 - They both have phosphorus in them. 674 00:29:58,033 --> 00:29:59,200 That's about it. 675 00:29:59,200 --> 00:30:01,700 But so, think about Lake Erie in the 1960s. 676 00:30:01,700 --> 00:30:02,866 [Norman laughing] - Yeah. 677 00:30:02,866 --> 00:30:04,433 Catching fire. - Yeah. 678 00:30:04,433 --> 00:30:06,033 - The river and that kind of thing. 679 00:30:06,033 --> 00:30:07,233 - The Cuyahoga River catching fire. 680 00:30:07,233 --> 00:30:08,400 - Cuyahoga River, yeah. 681 00:30:08,400 --> 00:30:10,000 - Yeah, and you know, Time or Newsweek 682 00:30:10,000 --> 00:30:12,033 was calling it America's Dead Sea. 683 00:30:12,033 --> 00:30:16,533 Dr. Seuss took a crack at it in The Lorax. 684 00:30:16,533 --> 00:30:20,733 - He did later at the request, about 20 years later, 685 00:30:20,733 --> 00:30:24,300 of some cleanup scientists, changed the line-- 686 00:30:24,300 --> 00:30:25,900 - He did, yeah. - In The Lorax. 687 00:30:25,900 --> 00:30:28,100 - Yeah, but he had, I can't remember the specific line, 688 00:30:28,100 --> 00:30:31,700 but he did not have good things to say about Lake Erie. 689 00:30:31,700 --> 00:30:35,566 And so what Lake Erie was suffering from back then, 690 00:30:35,566 --> 00:30:37,566 wasn't so much crop runoff, 691 00:30:37,566 --> 00:30:41,933 but detergent runoff or detergent waste. 692 00:30:41,933 --> 00:30:44,066 So we didn't really have laundry detergent 693 00:30:44,066 --> 00:30:46,200 until the 1940s and '50s. 694 00:30:46,200 --> 00:30:47,500 We had soap. 695 00:30:47,500 --> 00:30:51,566 And so we invented and concocted detergent 696 00:30:51,566 --> 00:30:53,366 to work with washing machines, 697 00:30:53,366 --> 00:30:55,800 which weren't really prevalent until after World War II 698 00:30:55,800 --> 00:30:57,866 and we could start making fridges and washing machines 699 00:30:57,866 --> 00:31:00,966 instead of tanks and airplanes. 700 00:31:00,966 --> 00:31:02,733 And so they needed to concoct 701 00:31:02,733 --> 00:31:07,533 this supercharged artificial soap. 702 00:31:07,533 --> 00:31:10,800 And it was based largely on phosphorous, 703 00:31:10,800 --> 00:31:12,600 phosphates specifically. 704 00:31:12,600 --> 00:31:14,733 It's what made Tide so potent. 705 00:31:14,733 --> 00:31:16,266 - They advertised heavily. 706 00:31:16,266 --> 00:31:19,600 - They did; they created a whole entertainment industry 707 00:31:19,600 --> 00:31:20,900 with the soap operas. 708 00:31:20,900 --> 00:31:22,466 You know, that's 'cause the detergent formulas 709 00:31:22,466 --> 00:31:23,933 were all pretty similar 710 00:31:23,933 --> 00:31:25,933 and they needed to distinguish themselves somehow. 711 00:31:25,933 --> 00:31:27,600 So that was with marketing. 712 00:31:27,600 --> 00:31:32,766 But yeah, so Lake Erie, it's a dead sea in, say, 1969, '68. 713 00:31:32,766 --> 00:31:36,233 And this is an interesting story in the book as well. 714 00:31:36,233 --> 00:31:38,833 Nobody at the time knew exactly what was turning Lake Erie, 715 00:31:38,833 --> 00:31:40,166 and lakes all across the country 716 00:31:40,166 --> 00:31:42,800 and across the world at that point, so green. 717 00:31:43,800 --> 00:31:45,800 And there were theories, 718 00:31:45,800 --> 00:31:48,633 and the detergent industry, phosphorus 719 00:31:48,633 --> 00:31:50,200 was considered a prime suspect. 720 00:31:50,200 --> 00:31:52,966 But the detergent industry argued ferociously 721 00:31:52,966 --> 00:31:54,266 that they weren't the problem. 722 00:31:54,266 --> 00:31:56,466 It was carbon or it was nitrogen, 723 00:31:56,466 --> 00:31:59,366 or it was something else that was getting into the water 724 00:31:59,366 --> 00:32:02,500 that was making lakes turn so dastardly green 725 00:32:02,500 --> 00:32:06,000 and lifeless, relatively lifeless. 726 00:32:06,000 --> 00:32:07,433 The Canadians had an idea. 727 00:32:07,433 --> 00:32:10,966 They said, "Let's go up into the middle of nowhere, 728 00:32:10,966 --> 00:32:15,100 "find some lakes, and treat 'em like oversized test tubes 729 00:32:15,100 --> 00:32:17,233 or like lab rats." - Pour in the detergent. 730 00:32:17,233 --> 00:32:20,733 - Yeah, or like, so in its simplest form, 731 00:32:20,733 --> 00:32:22,100 they did a bunch of experiments. 732 00:32:22,100 --> 00:32:25,200 But the most famous and the most powerful one was 733 00:32:25,200 --> 00:32:26,866 they took a peanut-shaped lake. 734 00:32:26,866 --> 00:32:29,233 So it had the exact same chemistry on both sides. 735 00:32:29,233 --> 00:32:30,900 And they severed it in half. 736 00:32:31,900 --> 00:32:34,100 And in simple terms, one side got phosphorus 737 00:32:34,100 --> 00:32:35,466 and the other side didn't. 738 00:32:35,466 --> 00:32:38,266 And in two weeks, one side was as green as a golf course 739 00:32:38,266 --> 00:32:39,866 and the other side was as blue as-- 740 00:32:39,866 --> 00:32:41,700 - Norman: Two weeks! - Dan: Two weeks. 741 00:32:41,700 --> 00:32:43,633 So all the scientists at the time 742 00:32:43,633 --> 00:32:45,566 who had been going to state legislatures 743 00:32:45,566 --> 00:32:47,233 across the Midwest and the country, 744 00:32:47,233 --> 00:32:50,633 arguing that we've gotta get a handle on this phosphorus, 745 00:32:50,633 --> 00:32:52,533 that wasn't really resonating when you were showing 746 00:32:52,533 --> 00:32:54,900 micrograms per liter and charts and stuff. 747 00:32:54,900 --> 00:32:58,833 It was this picture, the picture is in the book, 748 00:32:58,833 --> 00:33:02,433 of this severed lake and how different the two sides looked. 749 00:33:02,433 --> 00:33:05,433 And that brought us the Clean Water Act. 750 00:33:05,433 --> 00:33:08,533 And that brought us a recovery of Lake Erie and other lakes 751 00:33:08,533 --> 00:33:10,900 to the point that the Clean Water Act came in 752 00:33:10,900 --> 00:33:14,666 in 1972 and by 1985, Dr. Seuss was pulling that line 753 00:33:14,666 --> 00:33:15,866 from The Lorax. 754 00:33:15,866 --> 00:33:18,166 And people thought, "We've solved this problem." 755 00:33:18,166 --> 00:33:21,600 And we did at that time for detergent. 756 00:33:21,600 --> 00:33:23,500 But today, the problem's back. 757 00:33:23,500 --> 00:33:26,200 Lake Erie's as green as it's ever been in summer. 758 00:33:26,200 --> 00:33:27,500 - Norman: Yeah, and why now? 759 00:33:29,933 --> 00:33:31,700 - Dan: I think it's the cumulative toll 760 00:33:31,700 --> 00:33:34,266 of all the phosphorus we've been putting on the landscape. 761 00:33:34,266 --> 00:33:39,333 I think it's our farms, our dairy farms, livestock. 762 00:33:39,333 --> 00:33:41,666 They've got, the operations have gotten so big, 763 00:33:41,666 --> 00:33:43,633 the concentrated animal feeding operations 764 00:33:43,633 --> 00:33:46,766 where you can now have a farm with 10,000 head of cattle 765 00:33:46,766 --> 00:33:48,733 when a hundred used to be big. 766 00:33:48,733 --> 00:33:50,400 Those cows produce a lot of manure. 767 00:33:50,400 --> 00:33:52,866 And as we were talking earlier about, you know, 768 00:33:52,866 --> 00:33:56,300 the British using anything they could to manure their crops, 769 00:33:56,300 --> 00:33:57,700 to fertilize their crops. 770 00:33:58,833 --> 00:34:02,266 This is having a horrible effect on lakes 771 00:34:02,266 --> 00:34:03,866 and on Lake Erie in particular, 772 00:34:03,866 --> 00:34:06,166 and on Lake Mendota here in Wisconsin. 773 00:34:07,233 --> 00:34:08,466 Why now? 774 00:34:08,466 --> 00:34:10,166 I think it's the size of the farms. 775 00:34:10,166 --> 00:34:11,500 It's the cumulative toll. 776 00:34:11,500 --> 00:34:13,200 And then there's some funky things going on 777 00:34:13,200 --> 00:34:14,633 in the ecology of these lakes. 778 00:34:14,633 --> 00:34:15,866 And I'll say real quickly, 779 00:34:15,866 --> 00:34:17,933 'cause this is getting into the weeds, literally. 780 00:34:17,933 --> 00:34:19,200 [Norman laughing] - Literally. 781 00:34:19,200 --> 00:34:20,600 - But zebra mussels and quagga mussels, 782 00:34:20,600 --> 00:34:22,233 they'll eat anything in the water. 783 00:34:22,233 --> 00:34:23,400 They're filter feeders. 784 00:34:23,400 --> 00:34:24,566 They suck everything out. 785 00:34:24,566 --> 00:34:27,266 And so they're brainless, but they're smart enough 786 00:34:27,266 --> 00:34:30,066 not to eat toxic blue-green algae. 787 00:34:30,066 --> 00:34:32,966 So when you fertilize a lake with all this crop runoff 788 00:34:32,966 --> 00:34:36,933 or manure waste, it creates an algal bloom. 789 00:34:36,933 --> 00:34:39,400 And you know, in earlier times, 790 00:34:39,400 --> 00:34:41,600 that would be an assemblage of a bunch of different species 791 00:34:41,600 --> 00:34:43,000 and they wouldn't necessarily be toxic. 792 00:34:43,000 --> 00:34:46,466 But now in too many places, when you have an algae outbreak, 793 00:34:46,466 --> 00:34:47,766 it's gonna be toxic 794 00:34:47,766 --> 00:34:49,666 because the mussels are selecting for it. 795 00:34:49,666 --> 00:34:51,500 They're taking away the competition. 796 00:34:51,500 --> 00:34:52,833 So this blue-green algae, 797 00:34:52,833 --> 00:34:55,800 microcystis is a very common one, has no competition. 798 00:34:55,800 --> 00:35:00,466 So when a lake blooms, it blooms a toxic bloom. 799 00:35:00,466 --> 00:35:02,100 - Was there then competition 800 00:35:02,100 --> 00:35:06,333 before we had the quagga mussels and zebra mussels, 801 00:35:06,333 --> 00:35:07,500 that there were things 802 00:35:07,500 --> 00:35:09,366 that were actually eating blue-green algae? 803 00:35:09,366 --> 00:35:10,566 - Well, it wasn't the case 804 00:35:10,566 --> 00:35:11,966 of things eating blue-green algae. 805 00:35:11,966 --> 00:35:13,866 It's blue-green algae having competition 806 00:35:13,866 --> 00:35:15,633 with other healthy algae species, 807 00:35:15,633 --> 00:35:18,166 which makes up the bottom of the food chain, you know? 808 00:35:18,166 --> 00:35:20,633 And so this idea of Lake Erie being a dead sea, 809 00:35:20,633 --> 00:35:22,233 it wasn't that it was lifeless. 810 00:35:22,233 --> 00:35:24,400 It was actually that it was too full of life. 811 00:35:24,400 --> 00:35:25,966 It was too full of algae. 812 00:35:25,966 --> 00:35:29,400 And that this, in the 1960s, we're not talking microcystis, 813 00:35:29,400 --> 00:35:30,666 we're not talking blue-green algae. 814 00:35:30,666 --> 00:35:32,333 We're talking about all manner of algae. 815 00:35:32,333 --> 00:35:35,166 Some, you know, we want, beneficial, some not. 816 00:35:35,166 --> 00:35:37,433 But it was, you know, a big assemblage. 817 00:35:37,433 --> 00:35:39,033 But there was so much of it that 818 00:35:39,033 --> 00:35:40,800 when it would inevitably die and decay, 819 00:35:40,800 --> 00:35:44,133 it would burn up so much oxygen in the water 820 00:35:44,133 --> 00:35:46,900 that fish couldn't survive, hence the dead sea. 821 00:35:46,900 --> 00:35:49,533 Fish and slugs were, I mean algae and slugs 822 00:35:49,533 --> 00:35:51,866 were about the only thing living in there. 823 00:35:51,866 --> 00:35:55,566 - Is there any kind of advantage to having 824 00:35:56,900 --> 00:35:59,966 a relatively small number of large farms 825 00:35:59,966 --> 00:36:02,533 as opposed to thousands of smaller ones 826 00:36:02,533 --> 00:36:05,300 in terms of getting reform? 827 00:36:05,300 --> 00:36:07,166 - Well, I think we're in the midway point 828 00:36:07,166 --> 00:36:08,500 of getting to that. 829 00:36:08,500 --> 00:36:12,133 And it's a fraught moment because, you know, 830 00:36:12,133 --> 00:36:14,966 with the size of the family farm back in the, 831 00:36:14,966 --> 00:36:18,500 you know, middle of the 20th century and before, 832 00:36:18,500 --> 00:36:23,566 the manure could be managed, and with today's sized farms, 833 00:36:23,566 --> 00:36:28,233 it really is difficult to, like, not overdose a body of water. 834 00:36:28,233 --> 00:36:32,100 So I was mentioning that we got the Clean Water Act in 1972, 835 00:36:32,100 --> 00:36:35,133 and that really went after, like, the detergent industries 836 00:36:35,133 --> 00:36:37,366 and other industrial pollutants. 837 00:36:37,366 --> 00:36:40,300 They were going after these chemical excrements 838 00:36:40,300 --> 00:36:43,733 by, you know, forcing industries to get permits 839 00:36:43,733 --> 00:36:45,700 to discharge any amount of pollution. 840 00:36:45,700 --> 00:36:49,400 So it really, it basically throttled what was coming 841 00:36:49,400 --> 00:36:50,900 outta smoke stacks and pipes. 842 00:36:50,900 --> 00:36:54,466 But they left alone at the time, in 1972, agriculture. 843 00:36:54,466 --> 00:36:56,366 Because agriculture was still being conducted 844 00:36:56,366 --> 00:36:57,966 on a different scale. 845 00:36:57,966 --> 00:37:01,100 And it was also thought to be not nearly as big of a source 846 00:37:01,100 --> 00:37:06,800 of phosphorus as the detergents and other chemical products. 847 00:37:06,800 --> 00:37:10,833 So they thought, "We can plug a smoke stack, we can, you know, 848 00:37:10,833 --> 00:37:15,033 "cap a pipe, but we can't really squeegee a cornfield. 849 00:37:15,033 --> 00:37:18,466 "So that's, you know, that fruit isn't low-hanging enough. 850 00:37:18,466 --> 00:37:21,666 We need to get what we can get and see how we do." 851 00:37:21,666 --> 00:37:24,500 And they did, and we did really well. 852 00:37:24,500 --> 00:37:25,966 But today, we're not doing so well. 853 00:37:25,966 --> 00:37:28,366 So when you talk about is it better to have a bunch 854 00:37:28,366 --> 00:37:31,033 of big farms as opposed to a bunch of little farms? 855 00:37:32,300 --> 00:37:34,266 In regulatory parlance, what they were calling this 856 00:37:34,266 --> 00:37:38,666 with the Clean Water Act was point source polluters, 857 00:37:38,666 --> 00:37:40,133 that was industries. 858 00:37:40,133 --> 00:37:42,866 And nonpoint source polluters, that was agriculture basically. 859 00:37:42,866 --> 00:37:44,900 And runoff from urban areas. 860 00:37:44,900 --> 00:37:46,166 - Because they were more diffuse. 861 00:37:46,166 --> 00:37:47,633 - More diffuse, yeah. 862 00:37:47,633 --> 00:37:50,466 So now it could be argued 863 00:37:50,466 --> 00:37:53,733 that these big farms are point sources. 864 00:37:53,733 --> 00:37:55,366 You go out to one of these farms 865 00:37:55,366 --> 00:37:57,966 and you see the size of the manure lagoons 866 00:37:57,966 --> 00:38:01,400 and the holding tanks, and you can't help but think, 867 00:38:01,400 --> 00:38:03,166 "Wow, that's a lot of potential pollution 868 00:38:03,166 --> 00:38:04,900 that we need to deal with." 869 00:38:04,900 --> 00:38:06,200 But it's not just pollution; 870 00:38:06,200 --> 00:38:08,333 it's going back to where the English were 871 00:38:08,333 --> 00:38:10,600 at the beginning of this talk. 872 00:38:10,600 --> 00:38:13,133 They would've looked at one of these manure lagoons, 873 00:38:13,133 --> 00:38:16,133 not as a bunch of yuck, but as a bunch of yum, you know. 874 00:38:16,133 --> 00:38:17,500 That's food. - Ultimately. 875 00:38:17,500 --> 00:38:20,166 - Yeah, and that's where we've gotta get back 876 00:38:20,166 --> 00:38:21,333 to this circle of life. 877 00:38:21,333 --> 00:38:23,233 We've gotta engineer it now. 878 00:38:23,233 --> 00:38:25,300 It's not gonna be the natural cycle. 879 00:38:25,300 --> 00:38:28,433 But what on earth isn't left in its natural cycle these days? 880 00:38:28,433 --> 00:38:30,333 But we need to look at that manure, 881 00:38:30,333 --> 00:38:32,233 not as something that needs to be disposed of, 882 00:38:32,233 --> 00:38:34,800 but something that needs to be harvested. 883 00:38:34,800 --> 00:38:36,900 And it's already starting to happen in certain ways 884 00:38:36,900 --> 00:38:38,366 and in certain places. 885 00:38:38,366 --> 00:38:41,000 There was a story about a year, year and a half ago 886 00:38:41,000 --> 00:38:43,433 in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel 887 00:38:43,433 --> 00:38:46,666 about a farm that was about to start making more money 888 00:38:46,666 --> 00:38:49,533 from the methane produced from anaerobic digesters 889 00:38:49,533 --> 00:38:52,000 that it installed to process the manure. 890 00:38:52,000 --> 00:38:54,633 It was gonna make more money in manure and methane sales 891 00:38:54,633 --> 00:38:56,600 from its manure than from milk sales. 892 00:38:57,833 --> 00:39:01,100 - Yeah, milk is notoriously unprofitable. 893 00:39:01,100 --> 00:39:05,766 - It is, and you know, we're gonna find that this manure 894 00:39:05,766 --> 00:39:08,666 can be more profitable if we try to strip 895 00:39:08,666 --> 00:39:10,166 not just the methane out of it, 896 00:39:10,166 --> 00:39:12,133 but the nitrogen and the phosphorus. 897 00:39:12,133 --> 00:39:13,766 And then you can do something with it. 898 00:39:13,766 --> 00:39:16,700 Because right now, the problem is farmer, 899 00:39:16,700 --> 00:39:18,933 you know, farmers aren't getting rich. 900 00:39:18,933 --> 00:39:21,966 And I don't mean to denigrate, disparage the industry that, 901 00:39:21,966 --> 00:39:23,366 you know, is part of our culture 902 00:39:23,366 --> 00:39:26,933 and part of my daily routine in that I eat every day. 903 00:39:26,933 --> 00:39:32,333 But we need to get to the point where 904 00:39:32,333 --> 00:39:35,433 you can't just spread this wherever is convenient. 905 00:39:35,433 --> 00:39:38,166 We need to put this, put whatever nutrients 906 00:39:38,166 --> 00:39:40,233 are in this manure where it needs to be. 907 00:39:40,233 --> 00:39:42,900 And you can only do that in a, you know, 908 00:39:42,900 --> 00:39:48,966 financially workable way by stripping it out 909 00:39:48,966 --> 00:39:52,533 and breaking down these elements in this manure down, 910 00:39:52,533 --> 00:39:54,400 back down to their elemental form. 911 00:39:54,400 --> 00:39:57,533 And then you can move it places and you can store it. 912 00:39:57,533 --> 00:39:58,933 And then you don't have to worry 913 00:39:58,933 --> 00:40:02,100 about Florida's deposits playing out so quickly. 914 00:40:02,100 --> 00:40:04,733 Everything that we, you know, get on the back end from a cow 915 00:40:04,733 --> 00:40:07,033 is gonna be, you know, reserves 916 00:40:07,033 --> 00:40:10,533 that future generations can rely on from Florida 917 00:40:10,533 --> 00:40:12,800 and from other dwindling deposits. 918 00:40:12,800 --> 00:40:14,800 So it is gonna cost money. 919 00:40:14,800 --> 00:40:17,800 It is, but-- - But it's an investment. 920 00:40:17,800 --> 00:40:18,966 - It's an investment. 921 00:40:18,966 --> 00:40:20,966 And there are other costs that, you know, 922 00:40:20,966 --> 00:40:23,233 aren't necessarily on a balance sheet. 923 00:40:23,233 --> 00:40:26,166 And I would say, here at the University of Wisconsin, 924 00:40:26,166 --> 00:40:28,633 we're not far from the student union, which is on the banks 925 00:40:28,633 --> 00:40:31,466 of the shores of Lake Mendota, which is hit 926 00:40:31,466 --> 00:40:34,333 with these horrible algae outbreaks every summer. 927 00:40:34,333 --> 00:40:37,633 And you know, there's a price there 928 00:40:37,633 --> 00:40:39,166 that kids can't swim in the lake. 929 00:40:39,166 --> 00:40:43,666 You know, we did a talk down there back in late August 930 00:40:43,666 --> 00:40:46,466 with Charlie Berens and a couple of guys, 931 00:40:46,466 --> 00:40:48,033 a limnologist from UW. 932 00:40:48,033 --> 00:40:49,300 - The quintessential Wisconsinite. 933 00:40:49,300 --> 00:40:51,000 - Yeah, I thought it might, you know, 934 00:40:51,000 --> 00:40:52,866 bring some awareness to the issue. 935 00:40:52,866 --> 00:40:54,733 And behind us, it was August 31, 936 00:40:54,733 --> 00:40:56,733 I remember it was just a bluebird day. 937 00:40:56,733 --> 00:40:58,233 It was 80 degrees, you know, 938 00:40:58,233 --> 00:41:01,166 it was just the sailboats were gliding back and forth, 939 00:41:01,166 --> 00:41:04,800 and all the kids who are fresh on campus from a summer break 940 00:41:04,800 --> 00:41:07,000 are down by the water, but they're not in the water. 941 00:41:07,000 --> 00:41:09,300 They're on the docks. 942 00:41:09,300 --> 00:41:11,833 And you know, two days later, there were so many of 'em 943 00:41:11,833 --> 00:41:13,966 on the docks that one of 'em collapsed. 944 00:41:13,966 --> 00:41:17,066 And, you know, that was lucky that nobody was hurt or killed 945 00:41:17,066 --> 00:41:18,866 because they easily could have been. 946 00:41:18,866 --> 00:41:21,166 - Just landing in the water, dangerous enough I guess. 947 00:41:21,166 --> 00:41:23,233 - Yeah, but they shouldn't have been on the dock. 948 00:41:23,233 --> 00:41:25,233 They should have been able to swim in that water. 949 00:41:25,233 --> 00:41:27,133 And that's where we gotta get to. 950 00:41:27,133 --> 00:41:30,633 And so I don't think that, you know, clean water, 951 00:41:30,633 --> 00:41:32,366 safe water, and food on the table 952 00:41:32,366 --> 00:41:34,266 are mutually exclusive enterprises. 953 00:41:34,266 --> 00:41:35,666 And I don't think anybody thinks that. 954 00:41:35,666 --> 00:41:37,400 But we're on a path right now 955 00:41:37,400 --> 00:41:39,800 where it's kind of, that is the case. 956 00:41:39,800 --> 00:41:44,700 What can we do to keep farmers making food and in business 957 00:41:44,700 --> 00:41:46,800 and to keep our waters safe? 958 00:41:46,800 --> 00:41:48,466 Because this isn't just, 959 00:41:48,466 --> 00:41:50,966 it's not just a matter of this guy going into the water 960 00:41:50,966 --> 00:41:52,466 and he was vomiting. 961 00:41:52,466 --> 00:41:55,166 But it's a liver toxin, and there's emerging evidence 962 00:41:55,166 --> 00:41:56,500 that it's a neurotoxin. 963 00:41:56,500 --> 00:41:59,233 And there's been some studies, and this is dicey area, 964 00:41:59,233 --> 00:42:02,300 a dicey area because there's been no causation established, 965 00:42:02,300 --> 00:42:03,966 but there is correlation between people 966 00:42:03,966 --> 00:42:06,700 who live by these heavily infested lakes 967 00:42:06,700 --> 00:42:09,666 and neurodegenerative diseases like ALS. 968 00:42:09,666 --> 00:42:12,433 And the idea is you don't even need 969 00:42:12,433 --> 00:42:13,600 to swim in this water. 970 00:42:13,600 --> 00:42:15,000 You don't need to drink the water. 971 00:42:15,000 --> 00:42:16,400 It aerosolizes. - Just breathe it. 972 00:42:16,400 --> 00:42:17,800 - You breathe it in. 973 00:42:17,800 --> 00:42:21,200 So this is serious stuff that is addressable, 974 00:42:21,200 --> 00:42:24,400 but so far, we have not yet gotten on that. 975 00:42:24,400 --> 00:42:26,433 - Well, you mentioned this idea of separating out 976 00:42:26,433 --> 00:42:28,233 the components of the manure, 977 00:42:28,233 --> 00:42:32,800 for example, methane, what's the market for methane? 978 00:42:32,800 --> 00:42:35,500 - I mean, it's natural gas. 979 00:42:35,500 --> 00:42:36,800 There's a big market for it. 980 00:42:36,800 --> 00:42:39,833 You know, the reason why this guy, this Wisconsin guy, 981 00:42:39,833 --> 00:42:42,533 was making so much money was because California's, 982 00:42:42,533 --> 00:42:44,900 I believe it's their alternative fuel mandate, 983 00:42:45,966 --> 00:42:48,033 you know, requires renewable energy. 984 00:42:48,033 --> 00:42:49,966 So they're buying credits out in California 985 00:42:49,966 --> 00:42:53,133 for this methane that just goes into the grid 986 00:42:53,133 --> 00:42:54,533 and it's being used. 987 00:42:54,533 --> 00:42:57,166 But you know, this brings to mind another issue 988 00:42:57,166 --> 00:42:59,566 with how we go forward in a safe way. 989 00:42:59,566 --> 00:43:01,833 And that is, once you start talking about methane, 990 00:43:01,833 --> 00:43:03,333 you start thinking about fuel. 991 00:43:03,333 --> 00:43:05,833 Once you're thinking about fuel, if you're in the Midwest, 992 00:43:05,833 --> 00:43:07,133 you think about ethanol. 993 00:43:07,133 --> 00:43:10,733 And so, ethanol is a big piece of this puzzle, 994 00:43:10,733 --> 00:43:14,166 and it's not being addressed adequately right now. 995 00:43:14,166 --> 00:43:17,166 40% of the corn that we grow in the United States-- 996 00:43:17,166 --> 00:43:20,133 - Is grown for ethanol now? - Is grown for ethanol. 997 00:43:20,133 --> 00:43:22,366 - And of course, that doesn't count worldwide 998 00:43:22,366 --> 00:43:25,500 the forests that are taken out to grow the corn-- 999 00:43:25,500 --> 00:43:27,300 - Yeah, or soy. - For ethanol. 1000 00:43:27,300 --> 00:43:28,733 - Yeah, or sugar cane. 1001 00:43:28,733 --> 00:43:32,733 Yeah, I mean, ethanol is intuitively, 1002 00:43:32,733 --> 00:43:34,400 from my perspective, a great idea, 1003 00:43:34,400 --> 00:43:38,466 but in practice, the only people who are happy with it 1004 00:43:38,466 --> 00:43:42,366 are, like, growing corn or processing corn for fuel. 1005 00:43:42,366 --> 00:43:47,333 You know, it's an energy source that really hasn't proven 1006 00:43:47,333 --> 00:43:49,866 to be the environmental or economic boon 1007 00:43:49,866 --> 00:43:51,900 that people thought it was gonna be 1008 00:43:51,900 --> 00:43:54,433 back when we passed the renewable fuel, 1009 00:43:54,433 --> 00:43:55,700 whatever it's called. 1010 00:43:55,700 --> 00:43:59,033 The ethanol mandate in the mid-1990s. 1011 00:43:59,033 --> 00:44:01,533 - How does the balance sheet look for ethanol then? 1012 00:44:01,533 --> 00:44:04,666 I mean, what are we getting out of it 1013 00:44:04,666 --> 00:44:07,000 and what all is it costing us in the long run? 1014 00:44:07,000 --> 00:44:08,600 - Well, there's been a lot of studies 1015 00:44:08,600 --> 00:44:11,200 that it's just a net loser in any way you look at it. 1016 00:44:11,200 --> 00:44:13,466 I mean, it takes a lot of land. 1017 00:44:13,466 --> 00:44:15,800 I think there's 16 million acres of land 1018 00:44:15,800 --> 00:44:18,333 that's gone into production since the ethanol mandate. 1019 00:44:18,333 --> 00:44:20,266 And how big is that? 1020 00:44:20,266 --> 00:44:21,533 I don't know. 1021 00:44:21,533 --> 00:44:24,166 I mean, Yellowstone National Park is, I don't know, 1022 00:44:24,166 --> 00:44:26,233 it's 16 million acres is a lot. 1023 00:44:26,233 --> 00:44:29,866 I think Yellowstone National Park is 2.1 million acres. 1024 00:44:29,866 --> 00:44:31,233 - Okay, so... - It's big. 1025 00:44:31,233 --> 00:44:32,533 - Several Yellowstones. 1026 00:44:32,533 --> 00:44:36,533 - Yeah, there's a lot of land growing corn 1027 00:44:36,533 --> 00:44:38,533 to put fuel in our tanks at the same time 1028 00:44:38,533 --> 00:44:40,200 that people all around the world are having 1029 00:44:40,200 --> 00:44:42,600 a hard time putting food in their stomachs. 1030 00:44:42,600 --> 00:44:46,200 So the drag on ethanol is the land, 1031 00:44:46,200 --> 00:44:48,066 it's the fuel it takes to plant it, 1032 00:44:48,066 --> 00:44:52,200 and it's the fuel it takes to make the fertilizers 1033 00:44:52,200 --> 00:44:53,966 and it's the fertilizers themselves. 1034 00:44:53,966 --> 00:44:57,266 And it's not just phosphorous that's problematic for this, 1035 00:44:57,266 --> 00:44:58,600 it's nitrogen as well. 1036 00:44:58,600 --> 00:45:01,833 And you know, you see a lot of stories coming out of Iowa 1037 00:45:01,833 --> 00:45:05,266 in recent months about just water contamination 1038 00:45:05,266 --> 00:45:08,566 and, you know, groundwater contamination. 1039 00:45:08,566 --> 00:45:10,800 And, you know, it's largely, 1040 00:45:10,800 --> 00:45:13,833 it's not exclusively by any means driven by ethanol, 1041 00:45:13,833 --> 00:45:16,566 but that's a big part of the problem. 1042 00:45:16,566 --> 00:45:19,533 And that problem doesn't stay contained to Iowa. 1043 00:45:19,533 --> 00:45:23,466 You know, in this book, I take a trip down the Mississippi, 1044 00:45:23,466 --> 00:45:25,333 I go to the Iowa State Fair. 1045 00:45:26,333 --> 00:45:27,666 Well, I was here actually. 1046 00:45:27,666 --> 00:45:30,533 I was over at the Department of Limnology 1047 00:45:30,533 --> 00:45:34,366 on an August day in 2019. 1048 00:45:34,366 --> 00:45:37,566 And I was talking to the scientists over there 1049 00:45:37,566 --> 00:45:39,366 about, you know, how do we fix this lake? 1050 00:45:39,366 --> 00:45:41,366 And I was talking to some of the student researchers, 1051 00:45:41,366 --> 00:45:43,766 and they, one grew up in Madison and said that it was, 1052 00:45:43,766 --> 00:45:45,566 you know, just tragic to go to the beach 1053 00:45:45,566 --> 00:45:48,166 that she went to as a kid and she can't swim in it. 1054 00:45:48,166 --> 00:45:50,433 And so I thought, well, let's follow this, you know, 1055 00:45:50,433 --> 00:45:52,000 the source of this problem. 1056 00:45:52,000 --> 00:45:57,200 And so I drove over to Iowa, and that was during the beginning 1057 00:45:57,200 --> 00:45:58,400 of the presidential campaign. 1058 00:45:58,400 --> 00:46:01,733 And this is a tricky situation. 1059 00:46:01,733 --> 00:46:03,866 If you wanna be President of the United States, 1060 00:46:03,866 --> 00:46:07,400 at least in 2019, you basically had to pledge allegiance 1061 00:46:07,400 --> 00:46:09,400 to ethanol because you have to do well in Iowa, 1062 00:46:09,400 --> 00:46:11,000 and you're not gonna do well in Iowa 1063 00:46:11,000 --> 00:46:12,933 unless you support the renewable fuel mandate. 1064 00:46:12,933 --> 00:46:15,766 - And this was 2019? 1065 00:46:15,766 --> 00:46:19,733 - 2019, so it's a political poison pill to take 1066 00:46:19,733 --> 00:46:21,166 if you go into Iowa and say-- 1067 00:46:21,166 --> 00:46:23,233 - One would think. - "I don't support ethanol." 1068 00:46:23,233 --> 00:46:26,733 But so, and I didn't literally drive down the Mississippi, 1069 00:46:26,733 --> 00:46:31,266 but from Iowa, I went down to New Orleans 1070 00:46:31,266 --> 00:46:35,800 because 2019, it might have been saddled 2019/2020, 1071 00:46:35,800 --> 00:46:37,400 but there was a 12-month period in there 1072 00:46:37,400 --> 00:46:38,800 that it was the wettest on record 1073 00:46:38,800 --> 00:46:40,433 in the Mississippi River Basin. 1074 00:46:40,433 --> 00:46:42,433 And so we flushed a lot of stuff 1075 00:46:42,433 --> 00:46:46,600 from up here down there, including nutrients. 1076 00:46:46,600 --> 00:46:50,066 And so the Gulf of Mexico has a famous dead zone as well today. 1077 00:46:50,066 --> 00:46:51,866 That's because it's salt water, 1078 00:46:51,866 --> 00:46:54,266 that's largely driven by nitrogen. 1079 00:46:54,266 --> 00:46:57,100 One of the, you know, there's three main properties 1080 00:46:57,100 --> 00:47:00,366 to fertilizer: nitrogen, potassium, and phosphorus. 1081 00:47:00,366 --> 00:47:02,500 Nitrogen's a problem in salt water. 1082 00:47:02,500 --> 00:47:04,600 It's usually not a problem on the coasts. 1083 00:47:04,600 --> 00:47:08,400 But in 2019, so much water went down the Mississippi, 1084 00:47:08,400 --> 00:47:11,833 so much waste, nutrient waste, 1085 00:47:11,833 --> 00:47:15,200 that the Gulf Coast of Mississippi, 1086 00:47:15,200 --> 00:47:17,900 it's like some 40 miles of Gulf Coast that they have. 1087 00:47:17,900 --> 00:47:20,733 Every beach was closed because of phosphorus 1088 00:47:20,733 --> 00:47:23,300 because the water was so fresh along the coast, 1089 00:47:23,300 --> 00:47:26,566 relatively fresh, that it could harbor 1090 00:47:26,566 --> 00:47:28,466 this freshwater algae, this microcystis 1091 00:47:28,466 --> 00:47:29,633 that we've been talking about. 1092 00:47:29,633 --> 00:47:31,066 This blue-green algae. 1093 00:47:31,066 --> 00:47:35,833 And so you have, I was talking, like, to this guy who bought, 1094 00:47:35,833 --> 00:47:40,133 like, a fleet of 20 or 30 jet skis to rent for the holiday, 1095 00:47:40,133 --> 00:47:42,333 the holiday season being July and August 1096 00:47:42,333 --> 00:47:43,600 down in Mississippi. 1097 00:47:43,600 --> 00:47:45,600 'Cause if you've ever been down there in the summer, 1098 00:47:45,600 --> 00:47:46,800 you wanna be in the water. 1099 00:47:46,800 --> 00:47:47,966 And every beach was closed. 1100 00:47:47,966 --> 00:47:49,766 And this guy was packing up his jet skis 1101 00:47:49,766 --> 00:47:52,833 and selling 'em in Georgia 'cause he had bills to pay. 1102 00:47:52,833 --> 00:47:54,933 And he said something I found very resonant, 1103 00:47:54,933 --> 00:47:58,700 and he was like, "Why am I being regulated out of business 1104 00:47:58,700 --> 00:48:00,100 "when the source of the problem 1105 00:48:00,100 --> 00:48:02,700 "up the Mississippi River is under-regulated? 1106 00:48:02,700 --> 00:48:04,133 It doesn't make any sense." 1107 00:48:04,133 --> 00:48:07,666 - And you don't, I guess, hear a lot about the source upriver 1108 00:48:07,666 --> 00:48:08,900 from these problems. 1109 00:48:08,900 --> 00:48:10,833 - They're talking about it now down there. 1110 00:48:10,833 --> 00:48:12,800 But yeah, we tend not to 1111 00:48:12,800 --> 00:48:16,266 because it's, you know, it flows away from us. 1112 00:48:16,266 --> 00:48:19,766 - But you would need presumably some kind 1113 00:48:19,766 --> 00:48:22,900 of federal regulation because what's in it for Iowa-- 1114 00:48:22,900 --> 00:48:25,733 - Exactly. - Or Minnesota or Illinois. 1115 00:48:25,733 --> 00:48:27,533 - And manure's driving a lot of this too. 1116 00:48:27,533 --> 00:48:29,333 And you know, the manure and the ethanol, 1117 00:48:29,333 --> 00:48:34,166 those are two pieces of fruit that we could probably pluck. 1118 00:48:34,166 --> 00:48:36,300 And by that, I mean we could manage them better. 1119 00:48:36,300 --> 00:48:40,066 And again, we need food, we need farmers farming, 1120 00:48:40,066 --> 00:48:43,933 but we also need to take care of the waters 1121 00:48:43,933 --> 00:48:45,833 that our lives collectively depend on. 1122 00:48:45,833 --> 00:48:47,933 - Is the problem then mainly phosphorus? 1123 00:48:48,933 --> 00:48:50,933 - For fresh waters, it's phosphorus. 1124 00:48:50,933 --> 00:48:53,266 For salt water, it's nitrogen. 1125 00:48:53,266 --> 00:48:56,700 And then for groundwater with, like, nitrate, you know, 1126 00:48:56,700 --> 00:48:58,800 you hear about wells going bad. - Norman: Yes. 1127 00:48:58,800 --> 00:49:01,500 - That's obviously nitrogen, but that's still manure. 1128 00:49:01,500 --> 00:49:03,333 And so you solve that nitrogen problem, 1129 00:49:03,333 --> 00:49:05,433 you can solve the phosphorus problem as well. 1130 00:49:05,433 --> 00:49:07,900 - Well, is there a way somehow of extracting the phosphorus 1131 00:49:07,900 --> 00:49:11,866 and the nitrogen from the whole bovine process? 1132 00:49:11,866 --> 00:49:14,100 - Yes, but I can't tell you how. [laughing] 1133 00:49:14,100 --> 00:49:16,733 - But it can be done. - It can be done, yeah. 1134 00:49:16,733 --> 00:49:18,933 And you know, it can be every bit, 1135 00:49:18,933 --> 00:49:21,666 you can get food grade phosphorus. 1136 00:49:21,666 --> 00:49:24,033 'Cause phosphorus does go into, like, phosphates, 1137 00:49:24,033 --> 00:49:26,833 you know, like the soda drinks. 1138 00:49:26,833 --> 00:49:29,700 I mean, it is used, phosphorus is used in a lot 1139 00:49:29,700 --> 00:49:31,400 of different products. 1140 00:49:31,400 --> 00:49:35,033 So Hamburg, Germany, okay, we started in Hamburg, Germany, 1141 00:49:35,033 --> 00:49:37,000 and let's go back to Hamburg, Germany. 1142 00:49:38,433 --> 00:49:42,833 In 2022, on the banks of the Elbe River, 1143 00:49:42,833 --> 00:49:44,133 where there's been people, 1144 00:49:44,133 --> 00:49:47,133 I talked to a woman who picked up a nugget 1145 00:49:47,133 --> 00:49:49,266 on the Elbe River as well and it exploded. 1146 00:49:49,266 --> 00:49:53,400 A nugget of phosphorus on the banks of that same river. 1147 00:49:53,400 --> 00:49:56,733 It's not the entire EU, but I think it's more than Germany. 1148 00:49:56,733 --> 00:49:58,666 But anyway, in Germany, they're requiring 1149 00:49:58,666 --> 00:50:04,000 that phosphorus levels in their human sewage be brought down 1150 00:50:04,000 --> 00:50:05,733 to basically, you can never get to zero, 1151 00:50:05,733 --> 00:50:09,600 but as close to zero as technology will allow by 2029. 1152 00:50:09,600 --> 00:50:12,600 So they've built this state-of-the-art 1153 00:50:12,600 --> 00:50:15,033 wastewater treatment plant, like two miles from where 1154 00:50:15,033 --> 00:50:17,733 this guy discovered phosphorus in 1669. 1155 00:50:17,733 --> 00:50:18,900 It's crazy. 1156 00:50:18,900 --> 00:50:21,133 And right where the city was burned to the ground 1157 00:50:21,133 --> 00:50:24,733 by phosphorus, now they called it "phosphorus coming home." 1158 00:50:24,733 --> 00:50:26,900 You know, they're gonna harvest the phosphorus 1159 00:50:26,900 --> 00:50:28,500 from their waste stream. 1160 00:50:28,500 --> 00:50:30,533 It could be turned into phosphoric acid 1161 00:50:30,533 --> 00:50:34,933 that could find its way into food products. 1162 00:50:34,933 --> 00:50:37,433 It's never gonna just for political reasons, 1163 00:50:37,433 --> 00:50:39,800 but it will be fertilizer grade 1164 00:50:39,800 --> 00:50:41,900 and they will be able to grow crops with that. 1165 00:50:41,900 --> 00:50:44,000 And that will preserve, you know, 1166 00:50:44,000 --> 00:50:45,633 whatever deposits they're depending on 1167 00:50:45,633 --> 00:50:47,266 in future generations. 1168 00:50:47,266 --> 00:50:48,433 And that's just the start. 1169 00:50:48,433 --> 00:50:51,600 I mean, if it really takes off there, 1170 00:50:51,600 --> 00:50:53,600 it should take off everywhere else. 1171 00:50:55,033 --> 00:50:58,900 - I can't resist a kind of a little appendix here though, 1172 00:50:58,900 --> 00:51:02,800 because you mentioned in your book Lake Okeechobee. 1173 00:51:02,800 --> 00:51:06,333 And a huge lake, you know, in Florida 1174 00:51:06,333 --> 00:51:10,866 and a bone of contention between, 1175 00:51:10,866 --> 00:51:13,533 well, the Army Corps of Engineers, 1176 00:51:13,533 --> 00:51:16,233 at least previous governors of Florida, 1177 00:51:16,233 --> 00:51:18,766 and then, of course, the people caught in between. 1178 00:51:19,766 --> 00:51:21,366 - Yeah, you know, that's a real, 1179 00:51:21,366 --> 00:51:23,533 there's a chapter on this in the book, 1180 00:51:23,533 --> 00:51:25,000 and it's a real good illustration 1181 00:51:25,000 --> 00:51:26,933 of how sticky this problem can be. 1182 00:51:26,933 --> 00:51:29,000 So Lake Okeechobee in the middle of the state, 1183 00:51:29,000 --> 00:51:31,400 it's really like the wellspring of the Everglades. 1184 00:51:31,400 --> 00:51:34,266 And historically, it was just a big swamp, you know, 1185 00:51:34,266 --> 00:51:36,500 the whole interior of the state. 1186 00:51:36,500 --> 00:51:40,166 And so these flood waters would laze on the flat landscape 1187 00:51:40,166 --> 00:51:42,566 and just kind of drift their way down the peninsula 1188 00:51:42,566 --> 00:51:46,433 and through the Everglades and out to the Gulf of Mexico, 1189 00:51:46,433 --> 00:51:48,166 or the tip of Florida. 1190 00:51:48,166 --> 00:51:51,333 I don't know if that's Atlantic Ocean or Gulf of Mexico, 1191 00:51:51,333 --> 00:51:54,000 but that's the way things worked in their natural state. 1192 00:51:54,000 --> 00:51:56,700 But we don't leave things alone, particularly in Florida, 1193 00:51:56,700 --> 00:51:58,466 at least in their natural state. 1194 00:51:58,466 --> 00:52:02,000 And so we figured we could farm this swampy land. 1195 00:52:02,000 --> 00:52:05,233 So that required basically building up the lake 1196 00:52:05,233 --> 00:52:08,633 so it didn't chronically flood south toward the Everglades. 1197 00:52:08,633 --> 00:52:10,933 So you've got this artificial berm around the lake, 1198 00:52:10,933 --> 00:52:12,800 and it's a berm that was not constructed 1199 00:52:12,800 --> 00:52:15,666 with any kind of modern engineering in mind. 1200 00:52:15,666 --> 00:52:18,266 And this was in the '30s and '40s and '50s. 1201 00:52:18,266 --> 00:52:21,666 So this lake is in danger of bursting through its banks 1202 00:52:21,666 --> 00:52:23,500 and flooding downstream. 1203 00:52:23,500 --> 00:52:24,766 To keep that from happening, 1204 00:52:24,766 --> 00:52:26,733 to keep the water from getting too high 1205 00:52:26,733 --> 00:52:29,233 on the berm surrounding the lake, 1206 00:52:29,233 --> 00:52:31,600 Florida sends that water down canals 1207 00:52:31,600 --> 00:52:33,666 to the Atlantic coast near Stewart, Florida 1208 00:52:33,666 --> 00:52:36,933 and to the Gulf Coast near Fort Myers. 1209 00:52:36,933 --> 00:52:40,633 And those flows are not just water; it's this green sludge 1210 00:52:40,633 --> 00:52:43,266 because all the farm waste is going into the lake. 1211 00:52:43,266 --> 00:52:45,000 That lake is about nine feet deep 1212 00:52:45,000 --> 00:52:46,633 and 30 miles in diameter. 1213 00:52:46,633 --> 00:52:48,233 - Yeah, a huge lake, but very shallow. 1214 00:52:48,233 --> 00:52:50,166 - Very shallow and warm as a hot tub. 1215 00:52:50,166 --> 00:52:53,400 And so that's just a, it's basically like a big incubator 1216 00:52:53,400 --> 00:52:55,000 for blue-green algae. 1217 00:52:55,000 --> 00:52:57,866 So you've got these people who really wouldn't be concerned. 1218 00:52:57,866 --> 00:53:00,200 I don't wanna make too big of a generalization, 1219 00:53:00,200 --> 00:53:03,800 but you'd have people on the Florida, on the Atlantic coast 1220 00:53:03,800 --> 00:53:06,800 who wouldn't necessarily wear the badge 1221 00:53:06,800 --> 00:53:08,800 of environmentalists, but they care what's going on 1222 00:53:08,800 --> 00:53:10,833 in that state because, or in that lake 1223 00:53:10,833 --> 00:53:15,333 because that lake water, you know, toxic as it is, 1224 00:53:15,333 --> 00:53:17,233 is being sent to their beach towns. 1225 00:53:17,233 --> 00:53:21,033 And so they get beach closures because of, you know, 1226 00:53:21,033 --> 00:53:23,300 regulatory failure upstream. 1227 00:53:23,300 --> 00:53:25,500 And this is all, you know, we can push it off 1228 00:53:25,500 --> 00:53:27,266 and just, like, kick, 1229 00:53:27,266 --> 00:53:30,066 I don't know if kick the can is the analogy I want to use. 1230 00:53:30,066 --> 00:53:32,433 We could float the boat down the canal for a while, 1231 00:53:32,433 --> 00:53:35,300 but we've gotta clean up our act. 1232 00:53:35,300 --> 00:53:37,700 - It will come home to roost no matter where you are, 1233 00:53:37,700 --> 00:53:38,900 sooner or later. - It will. 1234 00:53:38,900 --> 00:53:40,066 Yeah, it will. 1235 00:53:41,066 --> 00:53:44,366 - Well, Dan Egan, thank you for just scratching the surface 1236 00:53:44,366 --> 00:53:47,666 in this phenomenon of the devil's element, 1237 00:53:47,666 --> 00:53:51,933 but it's also something that we can't live without. 1238 00:53:51,933 --> 00:53:53,666 - Exactly, and we're gonna have to learn 1239 00:53:53,666 --> 00:53:55,633 to live smarter with it though. 1240 00:53:56,966 --> 00:53:58,233 - I'm Norman Gilliland, 1241 00:53:58,233 --> 00:54:01,233 and I hope you can join me the next time around 1242 00:54:01,233 --> 00:54:03,666 for University Place Presents.