Free Seven Elements That Have Changed the World by John Browne Page B

these ‘new eyes’, the Braggs transformed our view of the elements, just as John Dalton’s atomic theory and Mendeleev’s periodic table had done in the century before. 3
    As a teenager growing up in southern Iran, where my father was stationed, I was surrounded by oil and its awe-inspiring industry. I was thrilled by watching the huge machinery which drilled the wells that produced the oil. As I had learnt from Bragg’s lectures, oil is composed of hydrogen and carbon. ‘Under the proper stimulus and in the presence of oxygen,’ wrote Bragg, ‘the atoms rush into fresh combination, developing great heat in doing so.’ 4 I was fascinated by the process of transformation which produced the energy to transform society. Carbon, in the form of hydrocarbons, brought people heat, light and mobility, and so created freedom and new ways of life.
    Nowhere was that more evident than in China. On my first visit in 1979 only three years after the death of Mao, the country was poor, bleak and bland. There were hardly any motor vehicles on the streets, merely a monochrome sea of miserable men and women in grey-green suits travelling by foot or by bicycle. Today China feels like the centre of the world, overflowing with skyscrapers and cars and bustling with people. Hundreds of millions of people have found prosperity in this transformation, a transformation that has been fuelled by carbon-based energy, of which China is now the world’s largest consumer. 5
    In Azerbaijan, at the other end of Asia, I saw how hydrocarbons could bring great benefits to a country. The most visible beneficiaries appeared to be the ruling elite associated with allegations of corruption and the abuse of power, but there were real economic benefits to its citizens. The oil pipeline from Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan on the CaspianSea, to Ceyhan on the shore of the Turkish Mediterranean, completed in 2005, stretches for a thousand miles, through three countries and the lands of more than a hundred ethnic groups. More than 30,000 contracts were signed to secure the rights of the local people. As a result, the pipeline and the oil that flows through it have provided many benefits to the people of Azerbaijan, tripling the average income over the last decade. 6
    China and Azerbaijan are just two examples of how hydrocarbons, our primary fuel source since the Industrial Revolution, can transform our way of life for the better. But there and elsewhere, I saw carbon bring pollution and pain alongside prosperity.
    En route to Anchorage, Alaska, in 1989, I looked out of the window of the plane to see below us the Exxon Valdez that had earlier run aground. Oil was flowing out of her side, coating the water and the white ice in satin black. It was an extraordinarily powerful image, which remains with me to this day, of the harmful impact that hydrocarbons can have on the natural world.
    Elsewhere, greed, fuelled by carbon, has caused more than physical hurt to people and the environment; it has changed people’s very nature, bringing out their darkest side. In the 1990s, I was responsible for a huge Colombian oilfield, located in the foothills of the Llanos Mountains in an area rife with drug lords, paramilitaries and bandits who were drawn to the oil like flies to a carcass. To protect ourselves we built a tall barbed-wire fence and surrounded ourselves with armed guards. People outside the fence soon grew to despise us and kidnappings and attacks became frighteningly common. They saw us profiting from a natural resource that they believed belonged to them, and they wanted a share of the returns to remain in their community. We responded by building taller fences, travelling everywhere by helicopter and bringing in the Colombian army. All sides were overcome with fear, anger and greed, fuelling human division, hatred and ultimately war. 7
    But carbon is not my only focus. Of the ninety-eight naturally occurring chemical elements on the periodic table, there are