Mark Miodownik

Salt is used in the drilling process of oil.

Salt is at the moment a very cheap ingredient.

A lot of our material wealth is because we've really optimised very cheap ingredients to make all these wonderful materials around us.

But

As soon as you take one of those very cheap ingredients away, the prices of everything will go up.

And that then allows other industries to thrive.

So all the recycling industries will start to thrive, which really could begin a whole new era of sustainable manufacturing.

We will survive.

We will survive.

I don't think it will be long term, but in this interim period before we sort this out...

I think there'll be a whole lot of health crises, unfortunately, in terms of drinking water, because all of that is made safe via chlorine additives, which won't be available.

Healthcare, saline drips.

But humans are ingenious.

That is our hallmark property.

We should prize above everything else, our creativity and our ability to problem solve, because that's really a human trait.