July 24, 2020 • 59 mins
For most of modern history, the world has run on oil. In the US and abroad, the price of gasoline is often the subject of intense concern, and prices at the pump vary widely. The difference of a few dollars per gallon can incite widespread unrest. But there's a question rarely asked: How much should gas actually cost? Join Ben, Matt and Noel as they explore the numerous factors, forces, institutions and conspiracies wrapped up in this question -- and why the true cost of gas is all too often Something They Don't Want You To Know.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of I Heart Radio, Welcome back to the show.
(00:25):
My name is Matt, my name is Nol. They call
me Ben. We are joined as always with our super
producer Paul Mission controlled deconds. Most importantly, you are you.
You are here, and that makes this stuff they don't
want you to know. We hope that this episode finds
you well and relatively sane despite all the plot twist
(00:47):
of what is still somehow twenty. Today's episode is inspired
by one of our fellow conspiracy realist and fellow radio man.
Come to find Mike out there in Vancouver. Mike, you
called us to say this, Hi, guys, I'd like to
show a lot. I challenge you to do a show
(01:07):
on the full true cost of gas. For background, UM,
there was a time when all our tanks and jeeps
were painted green. We were defending Europe and maintaining that ability.
Then one day all our tanks and everything started being
painted sand tan color, indication that the military industrial complex
(01:32):
was all about getting oil. I am somebody who specializes
and work in the field of energy efficiency and thinks
it's ridiculous that we're still using oil for energy. Neil
Degrassi Tyson has a quote that said, if aliens landed,
uld be embarrassed to admit that we still use carbon
(01:55):
energy from the ground. The full true cost of gas
on our health care system, on our environment, on the
taxpayers checkbook is astronomical. I challenge you to find that
full true cost gas per for a gallon of gas.
(02:15):
It's around forty dollars easily. Um. Anyway, love your show,
Love to listen to you guys, banter Um, your great
covid Um companions. Take care and all the best to
all of you. Thank you. So this is a This
is a fantastic question, Mike. As any economists can tell us,
(02:38):
the price at your local pump can make a huge
difference in the day to day function of not just
your town, not just your neck of the global woods,
but the state of your nation, and on a macro scale,
the state of the world. Empires have collapsed, they have risen,
they have collapsed again, all to ensure that when you
(02:58):
roll up to your local speedway as the most common
gas station in the us. By the way, you'll be
able to top off that car. And petroleum, of course,
isn't just used for gas. It's used for a multitude
of other things. And electric cars are an increasingly viable alternative.
But the world still has had serious problems moving away
(03:20):
from fossil fuels. And that's not a coincidence. We have
massively powerful vested interest and globe trotting institutions dedicated to
the maintenance and growth of the oil industry. For one
reason or another. This industry employs millions of people, it
generates billions of dollars, and for decades people have been
(03:40):
raising concerns about that Texas t that black gold powering
the world. But today's question, to your point, Mike, how
much does gas actually cost? Here are the facts, so
as often the United States consumed more gasoline than any
other country in the world, uh and the average household
(04:03):
has been about two thousand dollars a year on gas.
Individual drivers used pre pandemic an average of five fifty
seven gallons of gas each year UM and today being
July ten, as we record this, the average cost of
a gallon of gas, which about three point eight leaders
for our metric system focus out there is two dollars
(04:27):
uh and eighteen cents two point one eight four dollars.
That's according to Triple A UM. It's certainly a lot
lower than it's been in recent years. I think when
we saw a decrease in driving um due to the pandemic.
I'm not sure exactly how that supply and demand system works,
but gas prices definitely went way down. UM. So remember
(04:48):
back in twenty eleven when gas was about four dollars
a gallon, And you know, you guys all know that
this definitely varies from state to state, especially out west,
where things tend to be a good bit higher. Yeah,
and there's so much variability in fact, just within the
United States, but there are a lot of other things
that affect that price. We're going to get into a
(05:08):
little bit later. Prices, you know, if you're out west,
tend to be about higher than that national average that
we're talking about here, And specifically if you're in California,
and anyone who has lived there at any point or
lives there now can tell you and assure you that
those prices can be a lot higher, maybe fifty percent
(05:29):
higher than that national average. But you know, and then Again,
if you're traveling around the country, let's say you're in
the Midwest or in the South, the prices actually tend
to be about five to ten percent lower than what
you'd find on the national average. Um. You know, I
think the three the four of us here at stuff
they want, you know, can attest to that part. Um.
(05:50):
If you go to the Northeast, though, prices are only
I mean, you're a little bit higher, maybe about five
percent higher than the national average. So you can really
tell that there's a lot of variants. But there's also
a lot of other stuff, like we said, that goes
into that price. It seems to kind of follow cost
of living type things. You know, our taxes, I mean,
taxes in California are higher in general, and cost of
(06:12):
living in California in general is a lot higher. UM.
I don't know, that's just observationally, it seems to follow
to follow those trends. But there absolutely are a lot
of other factors like economic unrest, global shortages, UH and
even seasonal variations that can really have an impact on
the price that you pay at the pump. And yes,
as you pointed out there, we're going to talk about later, UM,
(06:34):
offsetting the price by paying for gasoline in essentially roundabout
ways or other ways is a major factor in how
cheap gases in the US. And we're going to talk
about that and and let's let's uh, let's admit this
is going to be a bit US centric because we
have so much data there. But we also have to
(06:54):
acknowledge Europe. As you might imagine or have unfortunately experienced,
gasoline or petrol, whatever you wanna call it in Europe
tends to be higher than gas in the States or
in Canada. This is due to higher rates of taxation,
and it makes prices historically around three to four times
higher than in the US. But we can flip it
(07:16):
in other parts of the world. Consider many oil rich countries.
Some other countries have subsidized gas cost that makes it
cheaper for people to buy gas than uh than taxation.
You know, taxation makes it naturally more expensive. Places like
you know, you can already imagine some of these places
off the top of your head, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Egypt, Venezuela,
(07:39):
and so on. They've all subsidized gas at some point.
In the US and the US ecuadors on the list.
Bolivia is on the list, but these are these have
subsidized more well, it's tricky. They have done more direct
subsidization than the US. Perhaps this makes sense to the
leaders of these countries because subsidizing this cost makes it
(08:03):
easier cough cough, cheaper cough cough to transport people and goods.
But it also means that people are going to be
less efficient with gas, and it can spell huge problems
down the line, both in terms of the climate obviously,
but also in terms of the economy. We have to remember,
a country too dependent on a single resource is never
(08:25):
truly safe. And then, of course we did US and Canada,
we did Europe, did oil rich countries. We have to
think about the rest of the world because saying the
cost of gas at the pump is it feels safe
and it feels correct, but it's inaccurate. It's correct been
the price at the pump metric that we're talking about
(08:47):
here doesn't factor in all kinds of things like let's
say a person's income or a famili's households income. So
let's let's make up an example here with some made
up numbers. Let's say gas costs in some made up
country ten dollars per gallon sounds sounds intense. But let's
say ten dollars per gallon for gasoline. Let's say everybody
(09:09):
in this country makes an exact wage of four hundred
thousand dollars a year. Right, Okay, that's seems like a
lot of money to me at least um. But if
you're you know, if you make that much money and
you have to pay ten dollars per gallon, that's not
that big of a deal. It's not going to break
your bank. You're you're not gonna be worried about going
(09:30):
into debt because you have to buy ten dollar gas.
It's all relative, and we really do have to consider
this relationship between how much uh for in this case
we would say a household makes right because there's gonna
be shared income, shared expenses. We really have to consider
that relationship between all the money that a household takes
in and how much they have to expend on gasoline.
(09:53):
So it may be more helpful, I guess, in this instance,
to really think about gasoline in terms of local affordability. Yeah. Yeah,
So there's a there's a really interesting Bloomberg report from
twenty sixteen that looks at not the average price of
gas at the pump around the world, but the most
affordable gas in the world. And they arrive at this
(10:15):
calculation by comparing gas prices in different countries to the
average national paycheck. Right and went back in two before
a lot of things change, Venezuela had the world's most
affordable gas, which is interesting. A lot of people may have,
you know, somewhat plausibly assumed it would be a Middle
(10:36):
Eastern country, But in sixteen, gas in Venezuela was the
equivalent of two cents a gallon two cents US, and
this was in a country where the average daily wage
how they defined paycheck there was about sixteen dollars and
fourteen cents. Obviously this changed as the past few years
have been, to put it diplomatically, incredibly tough on the country.
(10:59):
But just with that we can already see how the
price at any given pump does not tell you the
full story about the cost. So what determines the price
it is spoiler alert, it's definitely not that person working
behind the counter at your local sitco. Please give them
a break. Gas stations make most of their money off
(11:20):
of the snacks and other things that they sell you
the gas is just to get you in the door.
Have you guys ever seen that show Nathan for you?
Oh yeah, there's a really great episode where he you know,
the whole the whole conceit is that he's trying to
you know, improve the earnings of like small businesses or
whatever with these hair brained schemes, and one of them
(11:41):
is that he had He goes to a gas station
and um gets them to like offer an absurdly low
gas price in California, as weep will flock to it.
But you only get that price with a rebate, so
you have to pay the full price. But to get
the rebate, you have to like do this like quest
up to the top of this mountain to find to
(12:02):
find like this box where you put in the rebate.
And it ends up being like, you know, people take
this shuttle to the foot of the mountain, and then
people gradually drop off, and then it ends with him
and like three of the people that stick around kind
of becoming the best of friends, only for him to
come clean and say there is no rebate. But uh, yeah,
that's to your point. But I mean, you know, it's
like it's it's it's all set I actually worked at
(12:23):
a gas station, and you know how we would change
our gas prices. We would look at the other gas
station across the street and just match it or make
it like a cent lower. It was, you know, very
very rudimentary. But no, it's definitely, you know, determined by
a whole lot of factors. Taxes, supply chain, supply and demand,
capacity or refineries and even the time of year, um,
(12:46):
all have huge impacts. Are former parent company, how Stuff
Works has a fantastic article explaining this whole calculation and
how gas prices work, um And here's a quote from that.
Price increases generally occur when the world crude oil market
tightens and lowers inventories. Also, growing demand can sometimes outpaced
(13:06):
refinery capacity. In the spring, refineries perform maintenance, which can
place a pinch on the gasoline market. By the end
of May, refineries are usually back to full capacity. Is
it kind of a similar calculus to like the way
the Fed kind of controls interest rates and stuff like,
when you know, they make a decision to to lower
(13:26):
the interest rate, you know, than than that changes a
lot of things within the system. I mean that that's
sort of a rough example, but it's sort of a
similar Yeah, well, they're definitely um, they're they're definitely interrelated
because when the Fed considers that, they are also considering
crude oil prices. But it's sort of like, uh, at
(13:48):
the risk of offending economists, predicting the actions and results
of systems this large Uh, it's very similar to try
and to figure out what the weather is going to
be like if you're a meteorologist back in the seventies,
you can make good guesses, you can have things you
want to happen, but there's so many intervening variables, and
(14:09):
that's why it's tough to ask ourselves what does gas
actually cost? And then necessarily the question follows what should
it cost? This quickly becomes an expensive, complicated question, and
in some cases this cost also becomes the stuff they
don't want you to know. But who are they will
(14:32):
dive into this after a word from our sponsor. Here's
where it gets crazy. So the true cost of gasoline
depends almost entirely on what we allow to factor into
(14:53):
the equation, and the way people approach or ignore those
factors can create a vast strange of conclusions. Anywhere from
fifteen dollars per gallon too, as you said, Mike, forty
dollars or distressingly more. And there are powerful forces that
(15:13):
in the past and maybe even the present don't want
you to know the full cost of gasoline. And we
we do have to point out here We've talked about
it on this show before. We've talked with people who
know about this kind of thing. In the past, we
have seen that large oil interests have worked together, whether
(15:34):
it's you know, uh in something like OPEC, where it's
a little more forward facing where you can you know,
you can kind of see it happening, or if it's
you know, behind closed doors, they've worked together to downplay
the full cost all the other things that factor into
that oil price. I mean, if you think about it,
there are lobbyists out there, attorneys out there who have
(15:58):
made millions of dollars taking action like this, and they're
also unethical scientists who have cherry picks data. We've seen
that before, we talked about it on a previous episode.
Politicians are out there on television and the radio, spinning
the language, spinning the facts like dervishes from that you
(16:18):
know that Madonna video you remember, which is it really
was great tornado actually wrote that song. Never mind, move on. Yes,
they are tornadoes of slight misinformation. Just think that's the
word looking for. So, so let's let's consider this, because
(16:41):
if we think about the true cost of cast lean,
we have to examine what economists sometimes call externalities. Externalities
is just a fancy it's a fancy word wearing a tie.
That means this associated costs that are born by society
at large, but are not directly included in the price
(17:03):
you pay at the pump. One of the first ones, obviously,
would be the environmental cost we let's let's take an
example from California, since we already mentioned some stuff about
California is higher than average prices. A single gallon of
gas in California produces about twenty five pounds of what
(17:27):
are called greenhouse gasses. Long time listeners, you've heard us
talk about this before. These aren't a conspiracy, uh, but
there have been conspiracies surrounding the degree of their effects
on the environment. Greenhouse gases are things like carbon dioxide, methane,
nitrous oxide, fluorinated gases. Uh, and also just to be
(17:48):
fair water vapor for a fun comparison, UH, think about
this twenty five pounds. It's about the same weight as
a small to medium dog, like a car her spaniel.
It's also it's always crazy to me to think about
these kinds of emissions measured in pounds. It's just like,
you know, because it's relatively If you think of like
(18:10):
the weight of a gas, you think it's like, okay,
that's basically weightless, but it's not. And it's massive amounts
of impact on on the environment and on the atmosphere.
When you think about that number, it's it's pretty mind boggling.
And don't forget that the average US driver buys about
five hundred and fifty seven gallons of gas per year.
(18:30):
Multiply that by two thirty eight million cars, um, you know,
and not to mention like the much less fuel efficient
and more polluting trucks and SUVs and hummers and man,
that's a lot of poundage of this stuff being pumped
out into into the atmosphere day in and day out. Uh,
an absolute crap ton of gas. Yeah. I just wanna
(18:55):
shout out Sarah Terry Cobo and the Center for Investigative
Reporting for making a video about this topic where we're
getting a lot of this information is really just a
great video you can check out right now. It's called
The Price of Gas. Check it out when you get
a chance. Yeah. So, with all of this driving, with
all this gas buying, a single driver on average within
(19:18):
the United States creates or generates, let's say, through that use,
about ten thousand pounds of greenhouse gas pollution each year.
And to continue these whimsical zoological comparisons, uh, ten thousand
pounds is about three thousand pounds less than an African
(19:40):
bush elephant, a male or bull African bush elephant. So
so think of it like, every every year, if you're
an average driver in the US, you're putting out a
small elephants wait worth of greenhouse gas pollution. Doesn't matter
where you drive, how you drive, what kind of vehicle
you drive, And it takes almost an higher acre of
(20:01):
forests to absorb that level of pollution. So uh, for
a cocktail Napkin estimate, let's say for Earth to handle
the annual gas related pollution from cars h plus those
trucks and SUVs. Let's keep in mind that that's just
the daily average um of of driving vehicles in the
United States. It could take a forest the size of
(20:25):
the entire state of California and Nevada and another smaller
state to absorb this level of pollution. So the question becomes,
if we're looking at this hypothetical gallon of gas situation
in California, how did we get here? Um? So why,
Like like all things that we try to do on
the show, let's take it back to the source. Uh,
(20:46):
the source of the oil itself, that crude um in
Saudi Arabia. According to the Center for Investigative Reporting, this
is how the process works. The crude oil which is
which is you know, like the name implies, this has
been unrefined raw material. Uh, you should not put this
stuff in your gas tank. Um. It's pumped into these gigantic,
(21:07):
massive oil tankers. Uh. The biggest one holds I believe,
up to two million barrels of oil. Uh. This process
releases about two pounds of greenhouse gas for every gallon
of what will ultimately become gasoline. That ship travels about
eleven thousand miles to California, the site of our hypothetical situation. Here.
(21:28):
When the crewd reaches a refinery in California, it's mixed
with oil from other parts of the world. Then it's heated, melted,
burned to make different types of fuel and other industrial products,
petroleum based products. So this process creates about three and
a half pounds of greenhouse gas for every gallon of
(21:49):
gas you get at the pump. Uh for comparison here,
Uh you know, I can't come up with an animal
off the top of my head, but uh, it's like
the weight of a maybe a two sliced toaster. So
you so you get a toaster for for every gallont
(22:10):
every one of those two million gallons. Now, now we're
now we're shipping that refined gas from the refinery to
the station, right, Because it doesn't directly go through a
pipe from a refinery to your local Uh, stuckies, I'm
just gonna see how many gas stations I can name
in this in this episode. Uh you Instead, it goes
(22:32):
through a tanker, right, It's transported by a truck. You
see them all the time. On average, these tankers are
going to travel about fifty miles in the US to
deliver the cargo. And when it's transferring the gas from
the tanker to the tank at the gas station, some
of that gas evaporates. It makes more greenhouse gas as
well as benzene, and benzene is one of those things
(22:56):
you smell when you pull up into a gas station
where you were move the gas cap, there's more evaporation.
When you pick up the pump, there's more evaporation. But
now finally you have the gas. You have a small
piece of that gas all the way from Saudi Arabia
and you start driving, maybe to another gas station, like
(23:16):
a quick trip or a circle k. Yeah, and then
you just you know, continue on down the line because
there's always more environmental cost to be paid with this
kind of thing. And it really does depend a lot
on what vehicle you've chosen to drive. You may be
essentially pre paying for some of the environmental costs in
the energy production for your electric car or if you
(23:39):
are in a you know, a gas powered vehicle. Um,
there's gonna be things like the weather that are going
to affect how you're driving, Things like your mood even
or the music you're listening to. I know that sounds strange,
but that might affect how much goes into this. Uh.
And also the type of gas, right, how how refined
is it? Is it regular or is it that premium
(24:01):
good stuff or what's what's the middling one called like, okay,
mid mid grade, I guess the mid stuff. Uh. On average,
when you're looking at this extra environmental cost, you're talking
about a little over nineteen maybe twenty pounds of greenhouse
gas pollution per gallon. And this part, the driving around section,
(24:25):
that's where you're actually letting off the most pollution, around
three three quarters of the total, which is crazy because
you know, often in the past, uh, different factors have
been blamed for the pollution. But we have to keep
in mind it's the daily driver who is burning the fuel,
(24:46):
right It's us. We are three fourths of that cocker
spaniel when we get behind the wheel, which out of
context is a very strange statement to say, but it
holds up. And so when we think about pollution, we
have to remember talking about a long term price. It's
it's almost like a layaway cost. It's something everyone on
(25:07):
earth has to pay for in some way over the
course of their time here, even if they never drive,
never touch a car. Uh. And you know later generations
descendants of this species will pay some part of that
price as well. It just might not feel as steep
right now because the bill doesn't come due immediately. And
it doesn't come due through a single avenue. Yeah, and
(25:30):
it's like, you know, unfortunately, there are coalitions that that
would would have us take these uh these hidden costs
into account and the idea of you know, creating some
kind of consensus globally about how much you know, we
want to put out there, how much greenhouse gases we
want to put out there. But a lot of that
stuff is not enforceable. A lot of that stuff is
(25:52):
just sort of like an on our system kind of situation.
And our country in particular right now, because of leading
ship is moving even further and further away from that. So,
you know, to to our caller's point about aliens coming
and being embarrassed that we're still deriving our energy from
this dinosaur juice that comes out of the ground. Um,
(26:13):
it's kind of true. And and it really does feel
like a lot of it is just stacked against us
because of those corporate interests and because I mean, this
is all kind of stating the obvious. But yeah, and
and and and and you know, Ben, to your point
and once you wrote here in the outline, this isn't
just tree hugger kind of flim flammery. This should not
be just dismissed. There's absolutely a a cost in terms
(26:36):
of human lives, in terms of cost of our environment
and the habitability of our planet. Yeah yeah, and I
think you make a good point about the problems of cooperation.
It also goes into the problems of inequality. Imagine you're
developing nation, right, and other developed nations like the US
or Western Europe are all of a sudden changing the
(26:58):
rules of the game. So now you are not allowed
the same industrial revolution that these other countries encountered earlier.
Of course, you're gonna be irritated at that. That that's
that's halfway through the basketball game or the football game,
someone moves the goal post. It feels a lot like
stack in the odds against you. This works on a
(27:21):
micro economic scale too. It is deceptively easy for someone
in a higher socioeconomic status, someone who can individually bear
the increased costs of a fossil fuel free lifestyle, to
kind of look down their nose at the rest of
the world, a world I should mention in which, by
the way, the average household makes less than the equivalent
(27:42):
of ten thousand dollars US a year. Uh, and look
down their nose. That's people are less fortunate and say, well,
just do better first, that's a dick move, and worse
than being a dick move, it's incorrect. There has to
be some kind of transition, some kind of plan. A
world that found itself suddenly without oil would almost immediately collapse.
(28:05):
And even if you feel pretty secure right now, that
collapse is going to rock your too. No one would
be immune. And honestly, the militaries of the world know this.
That is why, in a very real way, the modern
history of oil is also the modern history of war.
(28:25):
What are we talking about. We'll tell you after a
word from our sponsor, and we're back. So you know,
you've you've probably listened to this show once or twice.
Maybe this is your first time. Congratulations, But uh, if
(28:45):
you've been around for a while, you're probably familiar with
the concept that world militaries, government's large corporations. Uh. There's
a lot of truth to the stereotype, specifically that government
and militaries within those governments are controlled by those governments
are pretty wasteful when it comes to spending at times. Corruption, Uh,
(29:10):
it just runs wild within these organizations. And you know,
especially at the tops and you know, one of the
we've talked about before. One of the major reasons for
that is the need to increase budgets over time. That's
why you'll see what we would consider maybe wasteful spending
because you always have to get a little bit more
(29:31):
for the next time around. Um. And and you can
really apply this thinking and this observation when it comes
to gasoline and oil usage within militaries. It reminds me of, uh,
to your point, Matt, that story about how the Air
Force spent a piece for these like reheating coffee cups
(29:57):
because because they were like poorly bill and their handles
would break. So they just dropped like hundreds and thousands
of dollars, hundreds of thousands of dollars on these things
with absolutely no oversight. And finally, of course, when it,
you know, reaches the public, oh put the we'll we'll
put a stop to that or whatever. But that's that
kind of stuff, unchecked happens, you know, all the time.
(30:18):
And I really want to refer back I've been I've
been wanted to mention this the whole episode. I thought
our callers point about changing the colors of the humvees
and stuff was really interesting, and I never thought of
it that way because I think he's really saying more
on the symbolic level. But I think it's it's apt, right, Like,
so you know, we used to go to war and
like jungle regions and and all of that, and then
(30:39):
our you know, in our in our tanks and stuff,
we're camouflaged green. And now that's that that switched to
the sand colored camouflage really as signified the shift towards
where our motivations truly lie, which is what this section
of the episode is about. I mean, it's it's beyond symbolism,
right because the green the green cameo won't work in
(31:02):
the desert. They could spot you from kilometers away. But
it's I think it's a very I agree with you, guys.
I think it's a very astute observation. Of course, it changed,
and it changed for a reason, and you know, think
about this. So everybody listening now has presumably survived April
(31:23):
and may of hopefully, and if you are listening to
this from beyond the grave, beyond this mortal veil, please
send us an email where conspiracy iHeart radio dot com. Uh,
but if you're alive, then you know full well that
in April of this year, gas prices plummeted. Plummeted is
not even an adequate word, and in some cases crude
(31:47):
for a time, crude oil took on a negative value.
This was a real problem for speculators who control a
lot of the oil and oil futures market because they
were starting to run out of places to store all
this excess oil. No one was driving to your Point
and Old due to a pandemic, and a lot of
businesses were closed. In May of this year, when a
(32:12):
barrel of something like West Texas Intermediate Crew cost around
twenty bucks, uh, twenty bucks twenty bucks for a barrel
that works out about fifty cents US for a gallon,
Uncle Sam was still paying slightly over ten dollars per
gallon for some types of fuel. Now hold on, you
might say, I see the three card Monte SWITCHERU that
(32:35):
you guys just pulled. Armies pay for different types of fuel, right,
some of which is specialized. This is therefore not a
fair comparison. Well, yeah, okay, you caught us. The military
is paying ten dollars and four cents per gallon for
a type of fuel called jp L eight as jet
propulsion fuel eight psyche, as they used to say in
(33:00):
the nineties, kidding again the rascal, we're the rascals. The
global average price for JPL eight isn't supposed to be
ten dollars. It's supposed to be two to three dollars
per gallon. And where does all this money to pay
these inflated gas costs come from? If you pay taxes
(33:20):
in the United States, it comes from you. But unfortunately, UM,
While the problem that we're dealing with in might just
be a symptom of mismanagement and of course corruption and
a lot of these lobbies that we're talking about, the
longstanding problem goes way way deeper, and it's at least
(33:42):
in part a function of all of those logistics and
supply chains and opening up the supply and closing it
down like we were talking about, um with that fed effect.
Uh So, back in oh nine, the Pentagon reported that
the quote fully burdened cost of fuel. I love that
term burden there. It's very telling, um, meaning that cost
(34:03):
once you factor in all of these things, including those
I believe ben including those externalities, right like the cost
of hospital stays and things like that, or no, not necessarily.
They may have. They may have factored it. Actually, they
may have factored in uh maybe cost of injury for
(34:25):
people who are transporting fuel, but probably not. Probably not.
So let's be conservative here and just assume that this
refers mainly to the cost of the refinement process and
for moving it from A to B from where the
crew comes out of the ground to where it gets refined,
to how it's then transported to the pumps and then
into your car. I would say they might they might
(34:48):
bring in the cost of securing certain areas maybe or
military basis. I don't know, just saying that might actually
be a part of it. It's a good it's a
good point. And that's the kind of stuff that we
probably aren't going to see like in ledgers, you know
what I mean, because to your point bent earlier, there
is so much stuff they don't want you to know
about this whole process, uh, for good reasons far as
(35:09):
Uncle Sam's concerned. Um, but that number to backtrack a
little bit, cost of refinement transport and and who knows
what else. But let's just assume that it's refinement transport
and you know, the process of getting it from the
refineries to the actual point of sale would be four
hundred dollars a gallon, wikes. When the you know, the
(35:35):
problem here is if that is true, then how the
heck is that paid for? Right? How how does that
four hundred dollars per gallon turn into to fourteen at
the pump near your house or something? Well, it's um,
it's America. It's the the financial systems within America that
(35:58):
make it go around. That's that who pays for it,
and the average American through taxes in probably the easiest
way to think about it, is paying for that bill. Um.
And you know, the we haven't even got into the
concept of the government subsidizing the oil through taxes to
get that gas at the pump price lower. This is all,
(36:20):
this is all kind of a part of it. It's
very very odd to imagine the way money essentially just
gets kind of moved around. Um, and we pretend that
it's paying for one thing when it's actually paying for another,
and we delay costs by paying in taxes once a year. Well,
it's just very strange. Sure, I mean, corporations do this
(36:42):
as well. That's why different departments or different divisions have
separate accounting lines on their spreadsheet. Right, you you distribute
the cost, or in the case of many corporations, you
distribute the losses and you keep the h you keep
the gains of the profits. But but just just for
(37:04):
some quick math here to pull a compare to walk
these numbers out, Uh, so we can really feel the
impact here. A hum V has a twenty five gallon
fuel tank capacity. So if it's ever in a situation
where the fully burdened cost of of the fuel is
(37:25):
considered here, that means that to fill up one hum
V it could cost ten thous dollars US. And to
your point, Matt, yeah, that that money doesn't fall from
the sky. Uh, it comes from uh, the taxpayers. And
this is just an average. That's the weird thing about
the four hunder dollar mark. In some places, government officials themselves,
(37:48):
people work for the US government, have noted that the
price can climb as high as one thousand dollars per gallon,
you know, like something you have to transport, maybe via
helicopter into an excessable terrain, uh, in the middle of nowhere.
And look, yes, we're using the United States as an example.
But this, to be crystal clear, this is a problem
(38:10):
common to any globe trotting military, any any blue Water Navy,
and long time listeners you already know blue Water, green Water,
brown Water Navy. Blue Water is the one that goes
around the world. So, whether we're talking about Russia, whether
we're talking about China, whether we're talking about International Justice
(38:31):
League type avenger coalitions like UH or some we call
them brotherhoods of evil mutants like NATO UH, we're going
to see the same pattern playing out. As a matter
of fact, you won't see this on mainstream news unless
you dig it kind of deep into some trade publications.
But China just inked, or maybe reinvigorated is a better word,
(38:56):
a a new leg of a secretive, multi decade deal
with Iran, and essentially the too long, didn't read version
of it. Is this in exchange for what amounts to
about a thirty to thirty two percent discount on all
fossil fuel resources produced by Iran, China is going to
take an increasingly larger hold of infrastructure related to refineries
(39:22):
and transport of fossil fuels, as well as having a
closer military partnership. They're moving pieces on the chessboard. The
great game never ever ended. But what it, but in
a similar way, be to the way the United States
has moved in Middle Eastern countries for a long time, right,
(39:42):
just briefly mentioned there, the cost of securing oil supplies
in other countries ends up being a factor, and it's
China making that move in Iran one of the only
places in the Middle East where the United States hasn't
officially invaded and inserted itself. Yeah, good point, Matt. And
pull up the map, folks if you're reading along at home, Uh,
(40:04):
just just do a cursory Internet search on your OS
demon browser choice and and ask how many US bases
are bordering Iran. You will see it's it's literally a ring.
The Strait of Horn moves is one of for a
long time. That's what a lot of people thought would
be the flashpoint for World War three. Again, as you know,
(40:28):
world War three might end up being over water, who knows.
But this this is just an example, right of a
bigger issue. And it's not to pick on China, as
you said, Matt, other countries have done this before in
much and much more uh blatantly belligerent ways, like like
(40:48):
the UK, like Britain in the Middle East. Right, this
all means that if we sincerely seek to understand the
true price of gasoline, at some point we also have
to start factoring in the cost of regional instability, and
we have to factor in the price of war. And this,
(41:09):
I mean, this takes us. This is an incredibly important
point that doesn't get talked about near often enough. But
it's also not the only point. You know, they're they're
a hidden cost. We talked about these long term bills.
What happens when these bills come due, Like, like know,
you mentioned a little bit about whether or not the
pentagon factored in medical care and that fully burdened cost.
(41:34):
Is that another externality? What else is out there? Yes,
so we've talked about these hidden costs, um, these externalities
and and whether or not these are actually factored in
in a meaningful way. Um, But there are other ones
that we haven't mentioned too, that are much more difficult
to quantify. Let's think about oil spills, I mean, in
(41:55):
a very callous and calculated way. I'm sure there are
some money people that consider these the cost of doing business.
You know, the occasional disaster that you have to pay
a lot of money in pr and in cleanup efforts
to get rid of It's ultimately worth it at the
end of the day, considering how much money is generated
from that product that you're having to clean up. Let's
(42:17):
think about things like respiratory illnesses. Let's think about lost
productivity when people in places like California, Los Angeles, Atlanta
that have like things called orange small alerts that literally
the air quality is so bad that if you have
a pre existing condition or some kind of respiratory sensitivity,
you're not gonna be able to go outside. It's just
(42:39):
the reality of the world we live in. And it's
not something that's factored in. And if it is, it's
certainly not factored in a meaningful way. Uh. In in
in my opinion, and I think in Mountain Ben's possibly
as well. UM, but let's give a little bit of
a snapshot here. Uh, let's talk about Los Angeles alone.
Like I mentioned, the overall cost of air pollution a
(43:00):
up to something in the neighborhood of one hundred thousand,
two hundred and fifty dollars per person per year, and
that's because of things like emergency room visits. Uh. That
lost productivity. We talked about lost work or missing school. Um,
for children. So, Ben, do you want to let's extrapolate
something from this, Yeah, if we if we build out
(43:24):
from from these conclusions, a couple of different studies, including
Center for Investigative Reporting that we mentioned earlier, including uh,
some medical nonprofits and so on. It's not a surprise
studies have such a wide range on the cost of
these externalities. One study, in fact, found the concluded that
(43:47):
this per year cost five hundred and fifty billion dollars
Throw up your was it dr evil pinky there? Or
as much as one point seven trillion dollars for most
people is cognitively impossible to think of as a real number. Uh.
And that's in the U S A loan. If you
add that to the price of the pump, that's where
(44:09):
you'll see the conclusions that the true costs breaks down
to something like fifteen dollars per gallon. But again, like
we said, it all depends on your methodology. What what
variables do you admit and what what how do you
factor them? How do you wait them? In countries that
appear that appear to have a higher cost at the
gas station, yes, we're looking at you, Europe. Hello. Then
(44:35):
part of that higher at the pump cost comes from taxation,
and that's interesting to the circle that you're talking about, Matt,
because some of those taxes are in theory at least
dedicated to fighting to mitigating the problems we described above.
So if you're in Germany, you're paying let's say you're
paying eight dollars per gallon, just pulling that out of
(44:57):
the ether here, you're paying eight dollars per gallon. Will
a portion of that is not reflecting maybe the cost
of refineries. It's reflecting the cost of combating greenhouse gas emissions,
for example. And it's interesting because that would theoretically at
least reduce the demand for the gasoline, which should lower
that price further. But you're still seeing, like, you know,
(45:19):
the equivalent of eight dollars or more per gallon in
a lot of those countries. Again, the one of the
major things here, in one of the last crucial things
that we're going to be talking about in this episode,
is that variance. There's so there's so many factors that
go into calculating how much gas actually costs, and when
(45:43):
you're you know, especially when we're trying to research for
this episode, you're looking at contradictions made in how people
in different organizations are calculating these numbers and how they're
getting there. It can be really tough when you're thinking
about all of these different possible factors. Agree. This is
an increasingly fluid situation. I'm sorry, it's terrible and and
(46:07):
uh and they're they're indications fluid. I'm sorry. Oh god,
the reviews are going to kill us, you guys before
before the fossil fuel industry does Uh what if we
get disappeared by people who hate terrible jokes? What a
way to go? I would I would honestly go into
(46:29):
that good night, you know, knowing that we've made a difference.
I would just say, for being the one non Dad
on this show as a host, you make the best
dad jokes been dad game shan I learn. I learned
it from growing up in the dad joke game. Under
you guys, I yeah, we're we're here for your dad
joke needs. As the world burns down, so there is
(46:51):
light at the end of the tunnel, though, kind of
electric vehicles are on the rise. And yet maybe they're
not perfect. Maybe they're not as much of a silver
bullet or panacea as some people would claim, but the
technology is there. It's evolving at a significant pace. More importantly,
the infrastructure to support those vehicles is evolving as well.
(47:12):
Don't remember just a handful of years ago, you wouldn't
see charging stations it like get grocery stores, you know,
and like outside of Atlanta you even see them in
Georgia Now, you know, Um, it's not as much of
like a bougie kind of you know, only for the
rich thing anymore. And even Tesla, the prices are going
down for like a nicer you know, a nicer electric car.
(47:33):
That and they're faster now too, which I think was
a big barrier to some gear heads was like, oh,
I don't want an electric car because it was like,
you know, sort of embarrassing and you couldn't really get
a lot of juice out of them. But some of
these new ones are super powerful. Yeah, but no where
where are you getting all that all that power power
them electrical vehicle batteries? Huh. That's so that's a good
(47:58):
point too. It's a good point, you may, it's all
I mean, that's the problem you guys, with great power
comes great responsibility or black They're right, I mean, it's true.
That's a really that's a that's a really good point.
You know, for for a long time, depending on where
you were in the world, if you drove an electric car,
you were driving a coal powered car, and people didn't
(48:21):
want to admit that. But also, I don't know about
you guys, IM super envious of when I see a
Tesla drive by, especially when when the slick ones but
you know, the car car love aside. We're correct that
forms of alternative energy are increasing in countries across the planet. Yeah,
(48:41):
a lot of them are developed countries, you know, the
socio economic equivalent of the global one percent, and they
can afford to subsidize research and subsidize infrastructure. But still
it's a good time, you know, for for a long time.
Here in the US as well, research into these techno bologies,
deployment of them is stymy by a ton of factors,
(49:04):
industrial political opposition, plain old hard technological limits. Like you
mentioned Noli, who wants to buy a car that doesn't
car very well? Right if we want to make that
a herb We also had had problems figuring out how
best to store solar energy, make a solar battery powering
something to also make it able to work at night
(49:26):
with stored energy. There's this there's also this huge tremendous
cost of making large scale switches from fossil fuel to
something new. Quick question for you, gentlemen, is really quickly
when you say, you know, the processes that go into
making the batteries with the electric cars, you know burns
all kinds of you know, fossil fuels as well. Is
(49:46):
it so much that it's not worth the fact that
you're not having to burn it every time you use it?
You just have to like, you know, there's that, there's
that sunk cost of making it, of the manufacturing process,
and then you've got the thing that presumably will last
you a long time. I don't know the answer. I
don't know if you if you guys know, we're not
talking about manufacturing. We're talking about the actual energy that
(50:10):
goes from the outlet into the battery to charge the
vehicle so that it can drive the energy. Yes, yes,
I'm such a dumby, of course, yeah, of course, no, No,
it's it's I mean, I can totally understand. Manufacturing the
batteries is also not that's and it's also problematic, right
oh god, yeah, all the rare minerals, uh one of
(50:34):
the big things for electric vehicles right now is also
just in terms of efficiency. It's trying to get the
weight of that battery down. That was a huge problem
and it's still you know, it's still a speed bump today.
So altogether, it seems like the old theory of international
politics from Wu Tang holds true, and geopolitics and international
(50:57):
energy infrastructure as well as hip hop cream cash rules
everything around me sounds look, yes, it's a fantastic song,
but it also it's also true. Large scale moves away
from fossil fuel and all the associated costs with fossil
fuel and the associated costs with moving from it only
(51:20):
become more and more likely when there is a financial
benefit to doing so, there's not. There might be a
CEO somewhere who says, ultruistically, I'm gonna move away from
fossil fuel because it's the right thing to do. I
think Louis Pasteur was right, uh to to spread his
(51:40):
innovation around the world. I don't know, call me a pestiment.
I don't think it's gonna happen. I think it's gonna
have to be something in a budget meetium. What do
you guys think, Yeah, unlikely. That's what I would say,
unlikely that somebody goes through and just changes the world
because it's the right thing to do. But it doesn't
(52:02):
have to be the case. If you're listening to this
and you're running a multinational corporation and you've got love
in your heart, you can change the word. Isn't that
song from ghost But don't they use that in Ghostbusters
at the end of Ghostbusters too, when the statue of
liberty is taken from somebody checked that and get back
(52:27):
to us, please. I don't know why I'm looking at No. No,
I'm sorry. I didn't mean to like nominate you to
be in charge of knowing everything about Ghostbusters. I don't
remember this song from the end of Ghostbusters. I actually
my mem my recollections of Ghostbusters two are pretty spotty.
Uh not agree. I like the little I like his
(52:50):
little What am I dead to? You know? I like
his I like his little tody um. I like that
character actor and his his Eastern European accent is hilarious.
But no, I actually don't even know what song you're
talking about. Ben, Put a little Love in your heart,
Put a little love in your heart. Wait, oh wait,
(53:12):
hang on, I think I might be wronged in the world.
You know, Nope, it's the end of Scrooged. Another amazing
Bill Murray. But you know, genuinely, I was thinking about
farting Preacher, and I think he has a line where
he says, if you've got love in your heart, let
it out, and then presumably he farts. Oh. Speaking of which,
(53:34):
you guys everyone out there, pro tip if you have
an Alexa device, Uh, you can make her fart go
crazy and yeah, and she gets into this like crazy
fart loop. Uh. It's very it's very difficult to get
her out of it, like you'll be You'll be like,
please stop. He's like, would you like a wet fart?
(53:56):
What kind of fart do you require? Masta, I'm not kiddy.
And then at the end she tries to sell you
a premium bundle of farts. It's all like an upsell thing.
I felt like I had stumbled upon some sort of
hidden treasure. But then it just wouldn't stop. So Jeff
Bezos is trying to get into the professional flashiles m game.
(54:18):
I'm not I'm not surprised. Don't let people fart. Shame
you folks, either. The average person. Uh, the average person
amits seventeen to twenty three farts per day, and you
actually you actually probably don't notice several of them. Also,
also in your defense, so brain stuff things coming out.
Also in your defense, it's not really you that's farting.
(54:41):
It's your gut flora that lives inside you emitting gas.
So if you want to think about you know, you
hear the argument about um farts from humans or cows
or other mammals producing pollution, it's the gut flora. It's
not you, it's it's them speaking of emissions, right, and
cycles and cycles like like Alexa. Right, we have to
(55:03):
remember they're they're powerful invested interests right, their countries, empires,
global corporations, and in some cases not necessarily naming names
in this episode, impossibly wealthy individuals who owe their entire
current status to the existing fossil fuel energy infrastructure. They
(55:25):
will pay enormous cost to maintain that infrastructure. If they
cannot secure a comparable position in a new energy economy,
they will fight, make no mistake, to keep the status
they currently have. It's kind of a rain in hell
versus uh, you know, having having a middle class job
in heaven kind of thing. Absolutely, So, first of all,
(55:48):
thank you so much Mike for sending us that message
and getting us to look into this entire thing. Um.
I hope you are doing well up there in Vancouver, Washington. Hey,
so what do you think about this whole subject? What
do you think about the true cost of gas? How
much does it cost where you are? And what do
you think it would actually cost if you were paying
(56:11):
for everything at the pump? Um? What's the future of gasoline?
Do you think we're going to continue to you know,
drive these cars around, especially now after you know the
pandemic situation and all of our new at home lives
that we've got going on. Um. And also what do
you think should be factored in at the pump when
(56:31):
you're paying? Is there anything specific that we talked about
today that you think is the most important thing? And
how would we pay for it? We want answers. We're
going to change this whole system from our desks in
our houses, or at least we're gonna advise someone somewhere
listening through your ideas. So please please please write to us.
(56:51):
Find us. You can find us all across social media. Yeah,
where either conspiracy stuff conspiracy stuff show some combination of
those in Instagram and twitch, her and Facebook. You can
find our Facebook group what's called Here's where it gets crazy,
um a lot of fun activity on their UM. Just
have to answer a couple of basic questions to just
prove to us that you're not Russian bots, and then
(57:14):
you're in. Like Flynn, you can also find this as
individual human people on social media. I am at how
now Noel Brown on Instagram and you can find me
at Ben Bolan hsw on Twitter. Where you can find
me at Ben Bolan on Instagram. Anybody conspiracy realists, longtime listeners,
first time listeners, anybody writing the email right now. I
(57:35):
usually never do this on the fly, but it was
important to figure it out. I know that the song
and the Ghostbusters to soundtrack when they're in the Statue
of Liberty is higher and higher. Your love keeps lifting
me higher and higher. Feel like you have to Yeah,
don't feel like you have to send us the Ghostbusters
hate mail about it. We figured it out. The powerful
(57:57):
lobby guys. There are some things that even this show
is not gonna mess with. So you do you have
any idea how many people have not listened to this
part yet, but have already written you a message. Oh God,
don't don't punish. Don't punish us collectively. We we got there.
We got there at the end, and we do want
to hear from you. We do want to hear from you.
(58:18):
If you don't care for social media, that's wholly makes sense.
You can go old school with us. We have a
phone number that you can call literally any any time,
that's right. Our number is one eight three three st
d w y t K. If you don't want to
do that stuff though, but you still want to write
to us with your amazing idea, we're ready for you.
(58:40):
Just send us a good old fashioned email. We are
conspiracy at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff they don't want
(59:05):
you to know is a production of I heart Radio.
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From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
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learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of I Heart Radio, Welcome back to the show.
(00:25):
My name is Matt, my name is Nol. They call
me Ben. We are joined as always with our super
producer Paul Mission controlled deconds. Most importantly, you are you.
You are here, and that makes this stuff they don't
want you to know. We hope that this episode finds
you well and relatively sane despite all the plot twist
(00:47):
of what is still somehow twenty. Today's episode is inspired
by one of our fellow conspiracy realist and fellow radio man.
Come to find Mike out there in Vancouver. Mike, you
called us to say this, Hi, guys, I'd like to
show a lot. I challenge you to do a show
(01:07):
on the full true cost of gas. For background, UM,
there was a time when all our tanks and jeeps
were painted green. We were defending Europe and maintaining that ability.
Then one day all our tanks and everything started being
painted sand tan color, indication that the military industrial complex
(01:32):
was all about getting oil. I am somebody who specializes
and work in the field of energy efficiency and thinks
it's ridiculous that we're still using oil for energy. Neil
Degrassi Tyson has a quote that said, if aliens landed,
uld be embarrassed to admit that we still use carbon
(01:55):
energy from the ground. The full true cost of gas
on our health care system, on our environment, on the
taxpayers checkbook is astronomical. I challenge you to find that
full true cost gas per for a gallon of gas.
(02:15):
It's around forty dollars easily. Um. Anyway, love your show,
Love to listen to you guys, banter Um, your great
covid Um companions. Take care and all the best to
all of you. Thank you. So this is a This
is a fantastic question, Mike. As any economists can tell us,
(02:38):
the price at your local pump can make a huge
difference in the day to day function of not just
your town, not just your neck of the global woods,
but the state of your nation, and on a macro scale,
the state of the world. Empires have collapsed, they have risen,
they have collapsed again, all to ensure that when you
(02:58):
roll up to your local speedway as the most common
gas station in the us. By the way, you'll be
able to top off that car. And petroleum, of course,
isn't just used for gas. It's used for a multitude
of other things. And electric cars are an increasingly viable alternative.
But the world still has had serious problems moving away
(03:20):
from fossil fuels. And that's not a coincidence. We have
massively powerful vested interest and globe trotting institutions dedicated to
the maintenance and growth of the oil industry. For one
reason or another. This industry employs millions of people, it
generates billions of dollars, and for decades people have been
(03:40):
raising concerns about that Texas t that black gold powering
the world. But today's question, to your point, Mike, how
much does gas actually cost? Here are the facts, so
as often the United States consumed more gasoline than any
other country in the world, uh and the average household
(04:03):
has been about two thousand dollars a year on gas.
Individual drivers used pre pandemic an average of five fifty
seven gallons of gas each year UM and today being
July ten, as we record this, the average cost of
a gallon of gas, which about three point eight leaders
for our metric system focus out there is two dollars
(04:27):
uh and eighteen cents two point one eight four dollars.
That's according to Triple A UM. It's certainly a lot
lower than it's been in recent years. I think when
we saw a decrease in driving um due to the pandemic.
I'm not sure exactly how that supply and demand system works,
but gas prices definitely went way down. UM. So remember
(04:48):
back in twenty eleven when gas was about four dollars
a gallon, And you know, you guys all know that
this definitely varies from state to state, especially out west,
where things tend to be a good bit higher. Yeah,
and there's so much variability in fact, just within the
United States, but there are a lot of other things
that affect that price. We're going to get into a
(05:08):
little bit later. Prices, you know, if you're out west,
tend to be about higher than that national average that
we're talking about here, And specifically if you're in California,
and anyone who has lived there at any point or
lives there now can tell you and assure you that
those prices can be a lot higher, maybe fifty percent
(05:29):
higher than that national average. But you know, and then Again,
if you're traveling around the country, let's say you're in
the Midwest or in the South, the prices actually tend
to be about five to ten percent lower than what
you'd find on the national average. Um. You know, I
think the three the four of us here at stuff
they want, you know, can attest to that part. Um.
(05:50):
If you go to the Northeast, though, prices are only
I mean, you're a little bit higher, maybe about five
percent higher than the national average. So you can really
tell that there's a lot of variants. But there's also
a lot of other stuff, like we said, that goes
into that price. It seems to kind of follow cost
of living type things. You know, our taxes, I mean,
taxes in California are higher in general, and cost of
(06:12):
living in California in general is a lot higher. UM.
I don't know, that's just observationally, it seems to follow
to follow those trends. But there absolutely are a lot
of other factors like economic unrest, global shortages, UH and
even seasonal variations that can really have an impact on
the price that you pay at the pump. And yes,
as you pointed out there, we're going to talk about later, UM,
(06:34):
offsetting the price by paying for gasoline in essentially roundabout
ways or other ways is a major factor in how
cheap gases in the US. And we're going to talk
about that and and let's let's uh, let's admit this
is going to be a bit US centric because we
have so much data there. But we also have to
(06:54):
acknowledge Europe. As you might imagine or have unfortunately experienced,
gasoline or petrol, whatever you wanna call it in Europe
tends to be higher than gas in the States or
in Canada. This is due to higher rates of taxation,
and it makes prices historically around three to four times
higher than in the US. But we can flip it
(07:16):
in other parts of the world. Consider many oil rich countries.
Some other countries have subsidized gas cost that makes it
cheaper for people to buy gas than uh than taxation.
You know, taxation makes it naturally more expensive. Places like
you know, you can already imagine some of these places
off the top of your head, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Egypt, Venezuela,
(07:39):
and so on. They've all subsidized gas at some point.
In the US and the US ecuadors on the list.
Bolivia is on the list, but these are these have
subsidized more well, it's tricky. They have done more direct
subsidization than the US. Perhaps this makes sense to the
leaders of these countries because subsidizing this cost makes it
(08:03):
easier cough cough, cheaper cough cough to transport people and goods.
But it also means that people are going to be
less efficient with gas, and it can spell huge problems
down the line, both in terms of the climate obviously,
but also in terms of the economy. We have to remember,
a country too dependent on a single resource is never
(08:25):
truly safe. And then, of course we did US and Canada,
we did Europe, did oil rich countries. We have to
think about the rest of the world because saying the
cost of gas at the pump is it feels safe
and it feels correct, but it's inaccurate. It's correct been
the price at the pump metric that we're talking about
(08:47):
here doesn't factor in all kinds of things like let's
say a person's income or a famili's households income. So
let's let's make up an example here with some made
up numbers. Let's say gas costs in some made up
country ten dollars per gallon sounds sounds intense. But let's
say ten dollars per gallon for gasoline. Let's say everybody
(09:09):
in this country makes an exact wage of four hundred
thousand dollars a year. Right, Okay, that's seems like a
lot of money to me at least um. But if
you're you know, if you make that much money and
you have to pay ten dollars per gallon, that's not
that big of a deal. It's not going to break
your bank. You're you're not gonna be worried about going
(09:30):
into debt because you have to buy ten dollar gas.
It's all relative, and we really do have to consider
this relationship between how much uh for in this case
we would say a household makes right because there's gonna
be shared income, shared expenses. We really have to consider
that relationship between all the money that a household takes
in and how much they have to expend on gasoline.
(09:53):
So it may be more helpful, I guess, in this instance,
to really think about gasoline in terms of local affordability. Yeah. Yeah,
So there's a there's a really interesting Bloomberg report from
twenty sixteen that looks at not the average price of
gas at the pump around the world, but the most
affordable gas in the world. And they arrive at this
(10:15):
calculation by comparing gas prices in different countries to the
average national paycheck. Right and went back in two before
a lot of things change, Venezuela had the world's most
affordable gas, which is interesting. A lot of people may have,
you know, somewhat plausibly assumed it would be a Middle
(10:36):
Eastern country, But in sixteen, gas in Venezuela was the
equivalent of two cents a gallon two cents US, and
this was in a country where the average daily wage
how they defined paycheck there was about sixteen dollars and
fourteen cents. Obviously this changed as the past few years
have been, to put it diplomatically, incredibly tough on the country.
(10:59):
But just with that we can already see how the
price at any given pump does not tell you the
full story about the cost. So what determines the price
it is spoiler alert, it's definitely not that person working
behind the counter at your local sitco. Please give them
a break. Gas stations make most of their money off
(11:20):
of the snacks and other things that they sell you
the gas is just to get you in the door.
Have you guys ever seen that show Nathan for you?
Oh yeah, there's a really great episode where he you know,
the whole the whole conceit is that he's trying to
you know, improve the earnings of like small businesses or
whatever with these hair brained schemes, and one of them
(11:41):
is that he had He goes to a gas station
and um gets them to like offer an absurdly low
gas price in California, as weep will flock to it.
But you only get that price with a rebate, so
you have to pay the full price. But to get
the rebate, you have to like do this like quest
up to the top of this mountain to find to
(12:02):
find like this box where you put in the rebate.
And it ends up being like, you know, people take
this shuttle to the foot of the mountain, and then
people gradually drop off, and then it ends with him
and like three of the people that stick around kind
of becoming the best of friends, only for him to
come clean and say there is no rebate. But uh, yeah,
that's to your point. But I mean, you know, it's
like it's it's it's all set I actually worked at
(12:23):
a gas station, and you know how we would change
our gas prices. We would look at the other gas
station across the street and just match it or make
it like a cent lower. It was, you know, very
very rudimentary. But no, it's definitely, you know, determined by
a whole lot of factors. Taxes, supply chain, supply and demand,
capacity or refineries and even the time of year, um,
(12:46):
all have huge impacts. Are former parent company, how Stuff
Works has a fantastic article explaining this whole calculation and
how gas prices work, um And here's a quote from that.
Price increases generally occur when the world crude oil market
tightens and lowers inventories. Also, growing demand can sometimes outpaced
(13:06):
refinery capacity. In the spring, refineries perform maintenance, which can
place a pinch on the gasoline market. By the end
of May, refineries are usually back to full capacity. Is
it kind of a similar calculus to like the way
the Fed kind of controls interest rates and stuff like,
when you know, they make a decision to to lower
(13:26):
the interest rate, you know, than than that changes a
lot of things within the system. I mean that that's
sort of a rough example, but it's sort of a
similar Yeah, well, they're definitely um, they're they're definitely interrelated
because when the Fed considers that, they are also considering
crude oil prices. But it's sort of like, uh, at
(13:48):
the risk of offending economists, predicting the actions and results
of systems this large Uh, it's very similar to try
and to figure out what the weather is going to
be like if you're a meteorologist back in the seventies,
you can make good guesses, you can have things you
want to happen, but there's so many intervening variables, and
(14:09):
that's why it's tough to ask ourselves what does gas
actually cost? And then necessarily the question follows what should
it cost? This quickly becomes an expensive, complicated question, and
in some cases this cost also becomes the stuff they
don't want you to know. But who are they will
(14:32):
dive into this after a word from our sponsor. Here's
where it gets crazy. So the true cost of gasoline
depends almost entirely on what we allow to factor into
(14:53):
the equation, and the way people approach or ignore those
factors can create a vast strange of conclusions. Anywhere from
fifteen dollars per gallon too, as you said, Mike, forty
dollars or distressingly more. And there are powerful forces that
(15:13):
in the past and maybe even the present don't want
you to know the full cost of gasoline. And we
we do have to point out here We've talked about
it on this show before. We've talked with people who
know about this kind of thing. In the past, we
have seen that large oil interests have worked together, whether
(15:34):
it's you know, uh in something like OPEC, where it's
a little more forward facing where you can you know,
you can kind of see it happening, or if it's
you know, behind closed doors, they've worked together to downplay
the full cost all the other things that factor into
that oil price. I mean, if you think about it,
there are lobbyists out there, attorneys out there who have
(15:58):
made millions of dollars taking action like this, and they're
also unethical scientists who have cherry picks data. We've seen
that before, we talked about it on a previous episode.
Politicians are out there on television and the radio, spinning
the language, spinning the facts like dervishes from that you
(16:18):
know that Madonna video you remember, which is it really
was great tornado actually wrote that song. Never mind, move on. Yes,
they are tornadoes of slight misinformation. Just think that's the
word looking for. So, so let's let's consider this, because
(16:41):
if we think about the true cost of cast lean,
we have to examine what economists sometimes call externalities. Externalities
is just a fancy it's a fancy word wearing a tie.
That means this associated costs that are born by society
at large, but are not directly included in the price
(17:03):
you pay at the pump. One of the first ones, obviously,
would be the environmental cost we let's let's take an
example from California, since we already mentioned some stuff about
California is higher than average prices. A single gallon of
gas in California produces about twenty five pounds of what
(17:27):
are called greenhouse gasses. Long time listeners, you've heard us
talk about this before. These aren't a conspiracy, uh, but
there have been conspiracies surrounding the degree of their effects
on the environment. Greenhouse gases are things like carbon dioxide, methane,
nitrous oxide, fluorinated gases. Uh, and also just to be
(17:48):
fair water vapor for a fun comparison, UH, think about
this twenty five pounds. It's about the same weight as
a small to medium dog, like a car her spaniel.
It's also it's always crazy to me to think about
these kinds of emissions measured in pounds. It's just like,
you know, because it's relatively If you think of like
(18:10):
the weight of a gas, you think it's like, okay,
that's basically weightless, but it's not. And it's massive amounts
of impact on on the environment and on the atmosphere.
When you think about that number, it's it's pretty mind boggling.
And don't forget that the average US driver buys about
five hundred and fifty seven gallons of gas per year.
(18:30):
Multiply that by two thirty eight million cars, um, you know,
and not to mention like the much less fuel efficient
and more polluting trucks and SUVs and hummers and man,
that's a lot of poundage of this stuff being pumped
out into into the atmosphere day in and day out. Uh,
an absolute crap ton of gas. Yeah. I just wanna
(18:55):
shout out Sarah Terry Cobo and the Center for Investigative
Reporting for making a video about this topic where we're
getting a lot of this information is really just a
great video you can check out right now. It's called
The Price of Gas. Check it out when you get
a chance. Yeah. So, with all of this driving, with
all this gas buying, a single driver on average within
(19:18):
the United States creates or generates, let's say, through that use,
about ten thousand pounds of greenhouse gas pollution each year.
And to continue these whimsical zoological comparisons, uh, ten thousand
pounds is about three thousand pounds less than an African
(19:40):
bush elephant, a male or bull African bush elephant. So
so think of it like, every every year, if you're
an average driver in the US, you're putting out a
small elephants wait worth of greenhouse gas pollution. Doesn't matter
where you drive, how you drive, what kind of vehicle
you drive, And it takes almost an higher acre of
(20:01):
forests to absorb that level of pollution. So uh, for
a cocktail Napkin estimate, let's say for Earth to handle
the annual gas related pollution from cars h plus those
trucks and SUVs. Let's keep in mind that that's just
the daily average um of of driving vehicles in the
United States. It could take a forest the size of
(20:25):
the entire state of California and Nevada and another smaller
state to absorb this level of pollution. So the question becomes,
if we're looking at this hypothetical gallon of gas situation
in California, how did we get here? Um? So why,
Like like all things that we try to do on
the show, let's take it back to the source. Uh,
(20:46):
the source of the oil itself, that crude um in
Saudi Arabia. According to the Center for Investigative Reporting, this
is how the process works. The crude oil which is
which is you know, like the name implies, this has
been unrefined raw material. Uh, you should not put this
stuff in your gas tank. Um. It's pumped into these gigantic,
(21:07):
massive oil tankers. Uh. The biggest one holds I believe,
up to two million barrels of oil. Uh. This process
releases about two pounds of greenhouse gas for every gallon
of what will ultimately become gasoline. That ship travels about
eleven thousand miles to California, the site of our hypothetical situation. Here.
(21:28):
When the crewd reaches a refinery in California, it's mixed
with oil from other parts of the world. Then it's heated, melted,
burned to make different types of fuel and other industrial products,
petroleum based products. So this process creates about three and
a half pounds of greenhouse gas for every gallon of
(21:49):
gas you get at the pump. Uh for comparison here,
Uh you know, I can't come up with an animal
off the top of my head, but uh, it's like
the weight of a maybe a two sliced toaster. So
you so you get a toaster for for every gallont
(22:10):
every one of those two million gallons. Now, now we're
now we're shipping that refined gas from the refinery to
the station, right, Because it doesn't directly go through a
pipe from a refinery to your local Uh, stuckies, I'm
just gonna see how many gas stations I can name
in this in this episode. Uh you Instead, it goes
(22:32):
through a tanker, right, It's transported by a truck. You
see them all the time. On average, these tankers are
going to travel about fifty miles in the US to
deliver the cargo. And when it's transferring the gas from
the tanker to the tank at the gas station, some
of that gas evaporates. It makes more greenhouse gas as
well as benzene, and benzene is one of those things
(22:56):
you smell when you pull up into a gas station
where you were move the gas cap, there's more evaporation.
When you pick up the pump, there's more evaporation. But
now finally you have the gas. You have a small
piece of that gas all the way from Saudi Arabia
and you start driving, maybe to another gas station, like
(23:16):
a quick trip or a circle k. Yeah, and then
you just you know, continue on down the line because
there's always more environmental cost to be paid with this
kind of thing. And it really does depend a lot
on what vehicle you've chosen to drive. You may be
essentially pre paying for some of the environmental costs in
the energy production for your electric car or if you
(23:39):
are in a you know, a gas powered vehicle. Um,
there's gonna be things like the weather that are going
to affect how you're driving, Things like your mood even
or the music you're listening to. I know that sounds strange,
but that might affect how much goes into this. Uh.
And also the type of gas, right, how how refined
is it? Is it regular or is it that premium
(24:01):
good stuff or what's what's the middling one called like, okay,
mid mid grade, I guess the mid stuff. Uh. On average,
when you're looking at this extra environmental cost, you're talking
about a little over nineteen maybe twenty pounds of greenhouse
gas pollution per gallon. And this part, the driving around section,
(24:25):
that's where you're actually letting off the most pollution, around
three three quarters of the total, which is crazy because
you know, often in the past, uh, different factors have
been blamed for the pollution. But we have to keep
in mind it's the daily driver who is burning the fuel,
(24:46):
right It's us. We are three fourths of that cocker
spaniel when we get behind the wheel, which out of
context is a very strange statement to say, but it
holds up. And so when we think about pollution, we
have to remember talking about a long term price. It's
it's almost like a layaway cost. It's something everyone on
(25:07):
earth has to pay for in some way over the
course of their time here, even if they never drive,
never touch a car. Uh. And you know later generations
descendants of this species will pay some part of that
price as well. It just might not feel as steep
right now because the bill doesn't come due immediately. And
it doesn't come due through a single avenue. Yeah, and
(25:30):
it's like, you know, unfortunately, there are coalitions that that
would would have us take these uh these hidden costs
into account and the idea of you know, creating some
kind of consensus globally about how much you know, we
want to put out there, how much greenhouse gases we
want to put out there. But a lot of that
stuff is not enforceable. A lot of that stuff is
(25:52):
just sort of like an on our system kind of situation.
And our country in particular right now, because of leading
ship is moving even further and further away from that. So,
you know, to to our caller's point about aliens coming
and being embarrassed that we're still deriving our energy from
this dinosaur juice that comes out of the ground. Um,
(26:13):
it's kind of true. And and it really does feel
like a lot of it is just stacked against us
because of those corporate interests and because I mean, this
is all kind of stating the obvious. But yeah, and
and and and and you know, Ben, to your point
and once you wrote here in the outline, this isn't
just tree hugger kind of flim flammery. This should not
be just dismissed. There's absolutely a a cost in terms
(26:36):
of human lives, in terms of cost of our environment
and the habitability of our planet. Yeah yeah, and I
think you make a good point about the problems of cooperation.
It also goes into the problems of inequality. Imagine you're
developing nation, right, and other developed nations like the US
or Western Europe are all of a sudden changing the
(26:58):
rules of the game. So now you are not allowed
the same industrial revolution that these other countries encountered earlier.
Of course, you're gonna be irritated at that. That that's
that's halfway through the basketball game or the football game,
someone moves the goal post. It feels a lot like
stack in the odds against you. This works on a
(27:21):
micro economic scale too. It is deceptively easy for someone
in a higher socioeconomic status, someone who can individually bear
the increased costs of a fossil fuel free lifestyle, to
kind of look down their nose at the rest of
the world, a world I should mention in which, by
the way, the average household makes less than the equivalent
(27:42):
of ten thousand dollars US a year. Uh, and look
down their nose. That's people are less fortunate and say, well,
just do better first, that's a dick move, and worse
than being a dick move, it's incorrect. There has to
be some kind of transition, some kind of plan. A
world that found itself suddenly without oil would almost immediately collapse.
(28:05):
And even if you feel pretty secure right now, that
collapse is going to rock your too. No one would
be immune. And honestly, the militaries of the world know this.
That is why, in a very real way, the modern
history of oil is also the modern history of war.
(28:25):
What are we talking about. We'll tell you after a
word from our sponsor, and we're back. So you know,
you've you've probably listened to this show once or twice.
Maybe this is your first time. Congratulations, But uh, if
(28:45):
you've been around for a while, you're probably familiar with
the concept that world militaries, government's large corporations. Uh. There's
a lot of truth to the stereotype, specifically that government
and militaries within those governments are controlled by those governments
are pretty wasteful when it comes to spending at times. Corruption, Uh,
(29:10):
it just runs wild within these organizations. And you know,
especially at the tops and you know, one of the
we've talked about before. One of the major reasons for
that is the need to increase budgets over time. That's
why you'll see what we would consider maybe wasteful spending
because you always have to get a little bit more
(29:31):
for the next time around. Um. And and you can
really apply this thinking and this observation when it comes
to gasoline and oil usage within militaries. It reminds me of, uh,
to your point, Matt, that story about how the Air
Force spent a piece for these like reheating coffee cups
(29:57):
because because they were like poorly bill and their handles
would break. So they just dropped like hundreds and thousands
of dollars, hundreds of thousands of dollars on these things
with absolutely no oversight. And finally, of course, when it,
you know, reaches the public, oh put the we'll we'll
put a stop to that or whatever. But that's that
kind of stuff, unchecked happens, you know, all the time.
(30:18):
And I really want to refer back I've been I've
been wanted to mention this the whole episode. I thought
our callers point about changing the colors of the humvees
and stuff was really interesting, and I never thought of
it that way because I think he's really saying more
on the symbolic level. But I think it's it's apt, right, Like,
so you know, we used to go to war and
like jungle regions and and all of that, and then
(30:39):
our you know, in our in our tanks and stuff,
we're camouflaged green. And now that's that that switched to
the sand colored camouflage really as signified the shift towards
where our motivations truly lie, which is what this section
of the episode is about. I mean, it's it's beyond symbolism,
right because the green the green cameo won't work in
(31:02):
the desert. They could spot you from kilometers away. But
it's I think it's a very I agree with you, guys.
I think it's a very astute observation. Of course, it changed,
and it changed for a reason, and you know, think
about this. So everybody listening now has presumably survived April
(31:23):
and may of hopefully, and if you are listening to
this from beyond the grave, beyond this mortal veil, please
send us an email where conspiracy iHeart radio dot com. Uh,
but if you're alive, then you know full well that
in April of this year, gas prices plummeted. Plummeted is
not even an adequate word, and in some cases crude
(31:47):
for a time, crude oil took on a negative value.
This was a real problem for speculators who control a
lot of the oil and oil futures market because they
were starting to run out of places to store all
this excess oil. No one was driving to your Point
and Old due to a pandemic, and a lot of
businesses were closed. In May of this year, when a
(32:12):
barrel of something like West Texas Intermediate Crew cost around
twenty bucks, uh, twenty bucks twenty bucks for a barrel
that works out about fifty cents US for a gallon,
Uncle Sam was still paying slightly over ten dollars per
gallon for some types of fuel. Now hold on, you
might say, I see the three card Monte SWITCHERU that
(32:35):
you guys just pulled. Armies pay for different types of fuel, right,
some of which is specialized. This is therefore not a
fair comparison. Well, yeah, okay, you caught us. The military
is paying ten dollars and four cents per gallon for
a type of fuel called jp L eight as jet
propulsion fuel eight psyche, as they used to say in
(33:00):
the nineties, kidding again the rascal, we're the rascals. The
global average price for JPL eight isn't supposed to be
ten dollars. It's supposed to be two to three dollars
per gallon. And where does all this money to pay
these inflated gas costs come from? If you pay taxes
(33:20):
in the United States, it comes from you. But unfortunately, UM,
While the problem that we're dealing with in might just
be a symptom of mismanagement and of course corruption and
a lot of these lobbies that we're talking about, the
longstanding problem goes way way deeper, and it's at least
(33:42):
in part a function of all of those logistics and
supply chains and opening up the supply and closing it
down like we were talking about, um with that fed effect.
Uh So, back in oh nine, the Pentagon reported that
the quote fully burdened cost of fuel. I love that
term burden there. It's very telling, um, meaning that cost
(34:03):
once you factor in all of these things, including those
I believe ben including those externalities, right like the cost
of hospital stays and things like that, or no, not necessarily.
They may have. They may have factored it. Actually, they
may have factored in uh maybe cost of injury for
(34:25):
people who are transporting fuel, but probably not. Probably not.
So let's be conservative here and just assume that this
refers mainly to the cost of the refinement process and
for moving it from A to B from where the
crew comes out of the ground to where it gets refined,
to how it's then transported to the pumps and then
into your car. I would say they might they might
(34:48):
bring in the cost of securing certain areas maybe or
military basis. I don't know, just saying that might actually
be a part of it. It's a good it's a
good point. And that's the kind of stuff that we
probably aren't going to see like in ledgers, you know
what I mean, because to your point bent earlier, there
is so much stuff they don't want you to know
about this whole process, uh, for good reasons far as
(35:09):
Uncle Sam's concerned. Um, but that number to backtrack a
little bit, cost of refinement transport and and who knows
what else. But let's just assume that it's refinement transport
and you know, the process of getting it from the
refineries to the actual point of sale would be four
hundred dollars a gallon, wikes. When the you know, the
(35:35):
problem here is if that is true, then how the
heck is that paid for? Right? How how does that
four hundred dollars per gallon turn into to fourteen at
the pump near your house or something? Well, it's um,
it's America. It's the the financial systems within America that
(35:58):
make it go around. That's that who pays for it,
and the average American through taxes in probably the easiest
way to think about it, is paying for that bill. Um.
And you know, the we haven't even got into the
concept of the government subsidizing the oil through taxes to
get that gas at the pump price lower. This is all,
(36:20):
this is all kind of a part of it. It's
very very odd to imagine the way money essentially just
gets kind of moved around. Um, and we pretend that
it's paying for one thing when it's actually paying for another,
and we delay costs by paying in taxes once a year. Well,
it's just very strange. Sure, I mean, corporations do this
(36:42):
as well. That's why different departments or different divisions have
separate accounting lines on their spreadsheet. Right, you you distribute
the cost, or in the case of many corporations, you
distribute the losses and you keep the h you keep
the gains of the profits. But but just just for
(37:04):
some quick math here to pull a compare to walk
these numbers out, Uh, so we can really feel the
impact here. A hum V has a twenty five gallon
fuel tank capacity. So if it's ever in a situation
where the fully burdened cost of of the fuel is
(37:25):
considered here, that means that to fill up one hum
V it could cost ten thous dollars US. And to
your point, Matt, yeah, that that money doesn't fall from
the sky. Uh, it comes from uh, the taxpayers. And
this is just an average. That's the weird thing about
the four hunder dollar mark. In some places, government officials themselves,
(37:48):
people work for the US government, have noted that the
price can climb as high as one thousand dollars per gallon,
you know, like something you have to transport, maybe via
helicopter into an excessable terrain, uh, in the middle of nowhere.
And look, yes, we're using the United States as an example.
But this, to be crystal clear, this is a problem
(38:10):
common to any globe trotting military, any any blue Water Navy,
and long time listeners you already know blue Water, green Water,
brown Water Navy. Blue Water is the one that goes
around the world. So, whether we're talking about Russia, whether
we're talking about China, whether we're talking about International Justice
(38:31):
League type avenger coalitions like UH or some we call
them brotherhoods of evil mutants like NATO UH, we're going
to see the same pattern playing out. As a matter
of fact, you won't see this on mainstream news unless
you dig it kind of deep into some trade publications.
But China just inked, or maybe reinvigorated is a better word,
(38:56):
a a new leg of a secretive, multi decade deal
with Iran, and essentially the too long, didn't read version
of it. Is this in exchange for what amounts to
about a thirty to thirty two percent discount on all
fossil fuel resources produced by Iran, China is going to
take an increasingly larger hold of infrastructure related to refineries
(39:22):
and transport of fossil fuels, as well as having a
closer military partnership. They're moving pieces on the chessboard. The
great game never ever ended. But what it, but in
a similar way, be to the way the United States
has moved in Middle Eastern countries for a long time, right,
(39:42):
just briefly mentioned there, the cost of securing oil supplies
in other countries ends up being a factor, and it's
China making that move in Iran one of the only
places in the Middle East where the United States hasn't
officially invaded and inserted itself. Yeah, good point, Matt. And
pull up the map, folks if you're reading along at home, Uh,
(40:04):
just just do a cursory Internet search on your OS
demon browser choice and and ask how many US bases
are bordering Iran. You will see it's it's literally a ring.
The Strait of Horn moves is one of for a
long time. That's what a lot of people thought would
be the flashpoint for World War three. Again, as you know,
(40:28):
world War three might end up being over water, who knows.
But this this is just an example, right of a
bigger issue. And it's not to pick on China, as
you said, Matt, other countries have done this before in
much and much more uh blatantly belligerent ways, like like
(40:48):
the UK, like Britain in the Middle East. Right, this
all means that if we sincerely seek to understand the
true price of gasoline, at some point we also have
to start factoring in the cost of regional instability, and
we have to factor in the price of war. And this,
(41:09):
I mean, this takes us. This is an incredibly important
point that doesn't get talked about near often enough. But
it's also not the only point. You know, they're they're
a hidden cost. We talked about these long term bills.
What happens when these bills come due, Like, like know,
you mentioned a little bit about whether or not the
pentagon factored in medical care and that fully burdened cost.
(41:34):
Is that another externality? What else is out there? Yes,
so we've talked about these hidden costs, um, these externalities
and and whether or not these are actually factored in
in a meaningful way. Um, But there are other ones
that we haven't mentioned too, that are much more difficult
to quantify. Let's think about oil spills, I mean, in
(41:55):
a very callous and calculated way. I'm sure there are
some money people that consider these the cost of doing business.
You know, the occasional disaster that you have to pay
a lot of money in pr and in cleanup efforts
to get rid of It's ultimately worth it at the
end of the day, considering how much money is generated
from that product that you're having to clean up. Let's
(42:17):
think about things like respiratory illnesses. Let's think about lost
productivity when people in places like California, Los Angeles, Atlanta
that have like things called orange small alerts that literally
the air quality is so bad that if you have
a pre existing condition or some kind of respiratory sensitivity,
you're not gonna be able to go outside. It's just
(42:39):
the reality of the world we live in. And it's
not something that's factored in. And if it is, it's
certainly not factored in a meaningful way. Uh. In in
in my opinion, and I think in Mountain Ben's possibly
as well. UM, but let's give a little bit of
a snapshot here. Uh, let's talk about Los Angeles alone.
Like I mentioned, the overall cost of air pollution a
(43:00):
up to something in the neighborhood of one hundred thousand,
two hundred and fifty dollars per person per year, and
that's because of things like emergency room visits. Uh. That
lost productivity. We talked about lost work or missing school. Um,
for children. So, Ben, do you want to let's extrapolate
something from this, Yeah, if we if we build out
(43:24):
from from these conclusions, a couple of different studies, including
Center for Investigative Reporting that we mentioned earlier, including uh,
some medical nonprofits and so on. It's not a surprise
studies have such a wide range on the cost of
these externalities. One study, in fact, found the concluded that
(43:47):
this per year cost five hundred and fifty billion dollars
Throw up your was it dr evil pinky there? Or
as much as one point seven trillion dollars for most
people is cognitively impossible to think of as a real number. Uh.
And that's in the U S A loan. If you
add that to the price of the pump, that's where
(44:09):
you'll see the conclusions that the true costs breaks down
to something like fifteen dollars per gallon. But again, like
we said, it all depends on your methodology. What what
variables do you admit and what what how do you
factor them? How do you wait them? In countries that
appear that appear to have a higher cost at the
gas station, yes, we're looking at you, Europe. Hello. Then
(44:35):
part of that higher at the pump cost comes from taxation,
and that's interesting to the circle that you're talking about, Matt,
because some of those taxes are in theory at least
dedicated to fighting to mitigating the problems we described above.
So if you're in Germany, you're paying let's say you're
paying eight dollars per gallon, just pulling that out of
(44:57):
the ether here, you're paying eight dollars per gallon. Will
a portion of that is not reflecting maybe the cost
of refineries. It's reflecting the cost of combating greenhouse gas emissions,
for example. And it's interesting because that would theoretically at
least reduce the demand for the gasoline, which should lower
that price further. But you're still seeing, like, you know,
(45:19):
the equivalent of eight dollars or more per gallon in
a lot of those countries. Again, the one of the
major things here, in one of the last crucial things
that we're going to be talking about in this episode,
is that variance. There's so there's so many factors that
go into calculating how much gas actually costs, and when
(45:43):
you're you know, especially when we're trying to research for
this episode, you're looking at contradictions made in how people
in different organizations are calculating these numbers and how they're
getting there. It can be really tough when you're thinking
about all of these different possible factors. Agree. This is
an increasingly fluid situation. I'm sorry, it's terrible and and
(46:07):
uh and they're they're indications fluid. I'm sorry. Oh god,
the reviews are going to kill us, you guys before
before the fossil fuel industry does Uh what if we
get disappeared by people who hate terrible jokes? What a
way to go? I would I would honestly go into
(46:29):
that good night, you know, knowing that we've made a difference.
I would just say, for being the one non Dad
on this show as a host, you make the best
dad jokes been dad game shan I learn. I learned
it from growing up in the dad joke game. Under
you guys, I yeah, we're we're here for your dad
joke needs. As the world burns down, so there is
(46:51):
light at the end of the tunnel, though, kind of
electric vehicles are on the rise. And yet maybe they're
not perfect. Maybe they're not as much of a silver
bullet or panacea as some people would claim, but the
technology is there. It's evolving at a significant pace. More importantly,
the infrastructure to support those vehicles is evolving as well.
(47:12):
Don't remember just a handful of years ago, you wouldn't
see charging stations it like get grocery stores, you know,
and like outside of Atlanta you even see them in
Georgia Now, you know, Um, it's not as much of
like a bougie kind of you know, only for the
rich thing anymore. And even Tesla, the prices are going
down for like a nicer you know, a nicer electric car.
(47:33):
That and they're faster now too, which I think was
a big barrier to some gear heads was like, oh,
I don't want an electric car because it was like,
you know, sort of embarrassing and you couldn't really get
a lot of juice out of them. But some of
these new ones are super powerful. Yeah, but no where
where are you getting all that all that power power
them electrical vehicle batteries? Huh. That's so that's a good
(47:58):
point too. It's a good point, you may, it's all
I mean, that's the problem you guys, with great power
comes great responsibility or black They're right, I mean, it's true.
That's a really that's a that's a really good point.
You know, for for a long time, depending on where
you were in the world, if you drove an electric car,
you were driving a coal powered car, and people didn't
(48:21):
want to admit that. But also, I don't know about
you guys, IM super envious of when I see a
Tesla drive by, especially when when the slick ones but
you know, the car car love aside. We're correct that
forms of alternative energy are increasing in countries across the planet. Yeah,
(48:41):
a lot of them are developed countries, you know, the
socio economic equivalent of the global one percent, and they
can afford to subsidize research and subsidize infrastructure. But still
it's a good time, you know, for for a long time.
Here in the US as well, research into these techno bologies,
deployment of them is stymy by a ton of factors,
(49:04):
industrial political opposition, plain old hard technological limits. Like you
mentioned Noli, who wants to buy a car that doesn't
car very well? Right if we want to make that
a herb We also had had problems figuring out how
best to store solar energy, make a solar battery powering
something to also make it able to work at night
(49:26):
with stored energy. There's this there's also this huge tremendous
cost of making large scale switches from fossil fuel to
something new. Quick question for you, gentlemen, is really quickly
when you say, you know, the processes that go into
making the batteries with the electric cars, you know burns
all kinds of you know, fossil fuels as well. Is
(49:46):
it so much that it's not worth the fact that
you're not having to burn it every time you use it?
You just have to like, you know, there's that, there's
that sunk cost of making it, of the manufacturing process,
and then you've got the thing that presumably will last
you a long time. I don't know the answer. I
don't know if you if you guys know, we're not
talking about manufacturing. We're talking about the actual energy that
(50:10):
goes from the outlet into the battery to charge the
vehicle so that it can drive the energy. Yes, yes,
I'm such a dumby, of course, yeah, of course, no, No,
it's it's I mean, I can totally understand. Manufacturing the
batteries is also not that's and it's also problematic, right
oh god, yeah, all the rare minerals, uh one of
(50:34):
the big things for electric vehicles right now is also
just in terms of efficiency. It's trying to get the
weight of that battery down. That was a huge problem
and it's still you know, it's still a speed bump today.
So altogether, it seems like the old theory of international
politics from Wu Tang holds true, and geopolitics and international
(50:57):
energy infrastructure as well as hip hop cream cash rules
everything around me sounds look, yes, it's a fantastic song,
but it also it's also true. Large scale moves away
from fossil fuel and all the associated costs with fossil
fuel and the associated costs with moving from it only
(51:20):
become more and more likely when there is a financial
benefit to doing so, there's not. There might be a
CEO somewhere who says, ultruistically, I'm gonna move away from
fossil fuel because it's the right thing to do. I
think Louis Pasteur was right, uh to to spread his
(51:40):
innovation around the world. I don't know, call me a pestiment.
I don't think it's gonna happen. I think it's gonna
have to be something in a budget meetium. What do
you guys think, Yeah, unlikely. That's what I would say,
unlikely that somebody goes through and just changes the world
because it's the right thing to do. But it doesn't
(52:02):
have to be the case. If you're listening to this
and you're running a multinational corporation and you've got love
in your heart, you can change the word. Isn't that
song from ghost But don't they use that in Ghostbusters
at the end of Ghostbusters too, when the statue of
liberty is taken from somebody checked that and get back
(52:27):
to us, please. I don't know why I'm looking at No. No,
I'm sorry. I didn't mean to like nominate you to
be in charge of knowing everything about Ghostbusters. I don't
remember this song from the end of Ghostbusters. I actually
my mem my recollections of Ghostbusters two are pretty spotty.
Uh not agree. I like the little I like his
(52:50):
little What am I dead to? You know? I like
his I like his little tody um. I like that
character actor and his his Eastern European accent is hilarious.
But no, I actually don't even know what song you're
talking about. Ben, Put a little Love in your heart,
Put a little love in your heart. Wait, oh wait,
(53:12):
hang on, I think I might be wronged in the world.
You know, Nope, it's the end of Scrooged. Another amazing
Bill Murray. But you know, genuinely, I was thinking about
farting Preacher, and I think he has a line where
he says, if you've got love in your heart, let
it out, and then presumably he farts. Oh. Speaking of which,
(53:34):
you guys everyone out there, pro tip if you have
an Alexa device, Uh, you can make her fart go
crazy and yeah, and she gets into this like crazy
fart loop. Uh. It's very it's very difficult to get
her out of it, like you'll be You'll be like,
please stop. He's like, would you like a wet fart?
(53:56):
What kind of fart do you require? Masta, I'm not kiddy.
And then at the end she tries to sell you
a premium bundle of farts. It's all like an upsell thing.
I felt like I had stumbled upon some sort of
hidden treasure. But then it just wouldn't stop. So Jeff
Bezos is trying to get into the professional flashiles m game.
(54:18):
I'm not I'm not surprised. Don't let people fart. Shame
you folks, either. The average person. Uh, the average person
amits seventeen to twenty three farts per day, and you
actually you actually probably don't notice several of them. Also,
also in your defense, so brain stuff things coming out.
Also in your defense, it's not really you that's farting.
(54:41):
It's your gut flora that lives inside you emitting gas.
So if you want to think about you know, you
hear the argument about um farts from humans or cows
or other mammals producing pollution, it's the gut flora. It's
not you, it's it's them speaking of emissions, right, and
cycles and cycles like like Alexa. Right, we have to
(55:03):
remember they're they're powerful invested interests right, their countries, empires,
global corporations, and in some cases not necessarily naming names
in this episode, impossibly wealthy individuals who owe their entire
current status to the existing fossil fuel energy infrastructure. They
(55:25):
will pay enormous cost to maintain that infrastructure. If they
cannot secure a comparable position in a new energy economy,
they will fight, make no mistake, to keep the status
they currently have. It's kind of a rain in hell
versus uh, you know, having having a middle class job
in heaven kind of thing. Absolutely, So, first of all,
(55:48):
thank you so much Mike for sending us that message
and getting us to look into this entire thing. Um.
I hope you are doing well up there in Vancouver, Washington. Hey,
so what do you think about this whole subject? What
do you think about the true cost of gas? How
much does it cost where you are? And what do
you think it would actually cost if you were paying
(56:11):
for everything at the pump? Um? What's the future of gasoline?
Do you think we're going to continue to you know,
drive these cars around, especially now after you know the
pandemic situation and all of our new at home lives
that we've got going on. Um. And also what do
you think should be factored in at the pump when
(56:31):
you're paying? Is there anything specific that we talked about
today that you think is the most important thing? And
how would we pay for it? We want answers. We're
going to change this whole system from our desks in
our houses, or at least we're gonna advise someone somewhere
listening through your ideas. So please please please write to us.
(56:51):
Find us. You can find us all across social media. Yeah,
where either conspiracy stuff conspiracy stuff show some combination of
those in Instagram and twitch, her and Facebook. You can
find our Facebook group what's called Here's where it gets crazy,
um a lot of fun activity on their UM. Just
have to answer a couple of basic questions to just
prove to us that you're not Russian bots, and then
(57:14):
you're in. Like Flynn, you can also find this as
individual human people on social media. I am at how
now Noel Brown on Instagram and you can find me
at Ben Bolan hsw on Twitter. Where you can find
me at Ben Bolan on Instagram. Anybody conspiracy realists, longtime listeners,
first time listeners, anybody writing the email right now. I
(57:35):
usually never do this on the fly, but it was
important to figure it out. I know that the song
and the Ghostbusters to soundtrack when they're in the Statue
of Liberty is higher and higher. Your love keeps lifting
me higher and higher. Feel like you have to Yeah,
don't feel like you have to send us the Ghostbusters
hate mail about it. We figured it out. The powerful
(57:57):
lobby guys. There are some things that even this show
is not gonna mess with. So you do you have
any idea how many people have not listened to this
part yet, but have already written you a message. Oh God,
don't don't punish. Don't punish us collectively. We we got there.
We got there at the end, and we do want
to hear from you. We do want to hear from you.
(58:18):
If you don't care for social media, that's wholly makes sense.
You can go old school with us. We have a
phone number that you can call literally any any time,
that's right. Our number is one eight three three st
d w y t K. If you don't want to
do that stuff though, but you still want to write
to us with your amazing idea, we're ready for you.
(58:40):
Just send us a good old fashioned email. We are
conspiracy at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff they don't want
(59:05):
you to know is a production of I heart Radio.
For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the i
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