Author Archives: Elva Diller

Headed for a reckoning: A look inside NYT Magazine’s climate issue

This Sunday, subscribers to New York Times Magazine will receive a noteworthy issue in their mailboxes. Its theme is climate change, marking the second time in eight months that the magazine has dedicated an entire issue to the pressing problem.

The first was Nathaniel Rich’s “Losing Earth,” which took up an entire issue last August and was reportedly the longest article ever published in the magazine. The 30,000-word piece covered the decade between 1979 and 1989 when humanity had a decent chance at putting a serious dent in the climate problem. (That article was recently turned into a book.)

This time, the so-called Climate Issue features several shorter articles instead of a single massive one, and those pieces look at the present and the future, rather than back at the past. It amounts to the Times’ most comprehensive look to date at the economics of climate change. Some highlights from the forthcoming issue:

“The Next Reckoning: Capitalism and Climate Change”

When the “Losing Earth” issue came out, it received some criticism for letting oil companies off the hook for their role in fomenting the political indecision that continues to plague Congress. Lo and behold, the new issue features a second article by Rich that offers a scathing rebuke of corporations for their ruthless pursuit of easy profits.

“It has become commonplace to observe that corporations behave like psychopaths,” he writes, calling out ExxonMobil by name. “They are self-interested to the point of violence, possess a vibrant disregard for laws and social mores, have an indifference to the rights of others and fail to feel remorse.” He wonders whether capitalism is fundamentally at odds with climate action and ends his piece with the assertion that coercion — economic, political, or moral — “must be the remedy” to whipping corporations into shape.

“The Problem With Putting a Price on the End of the World”

Another article from Sunday’s issue evaluates the obstacles to putting a price on climate change. Opinion columnist David Leonhardt, with help from a couple of prominent economists, weighs the pros and cons of carbon pricing and tries to uncover why that particular policy for reducing emissions is losing favor in the public square. The central question, he writes, “is whether any policy is both big enough to matter and popular enough to happen.”

“Climate Chaos Is Coming — and the Pinkertons Are Ready”

Journalist Noah Gallagher Shannon’s piece about a private security contractor prepping for climate fallout paints a bleak and fascinating picture of a future in which huge corporate clients turn to third parties to protect themselves against upheaval.

Turns out, that world is already here. Pinkerton, an agency originally formed in the mid-1800s “in response to the lawlessness of the frontier,” is rebranding itself as disaster-security-for-hire prepared to mitigate the risks of climate change for its clients: hurricanes, mass migration, violence, food shortages, and more.

Shannon observed a talk by Pinkerton’s senior vice president in charge of the Americas: “‘You’re going to turn to desperate measures,’ he said. Everybody will. The other Pinkertons nodded.”

What services, exactly, do the Pinkertons offer? “Armed warehouse defense, executive extraction, 24-hour surveillance, chartered helicopters and planes, escorted cargo shipments.” As Shannon writes, “Pinkerton sells safety.” Climate change is the new threat.

Whereas the New York Times Magazine’s previous climate-themed issue focused on a single narrative, its second foray into the world of climate writing puts a lineup of articles in conversation with one another about the economic, political, and moral feasibility of reigning in climate change.

In sum, the Climate Issue gives you a good idea of where humanity is headed if a policy that is both “big enough to matter and popular enough to happen” doesn’t come around soon: nowhere good.

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Headed for a reckoning: A look inside NYT Magazine’s climate issue

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Travels Through India’s Sexual Revolution

Mother Jones

In late 2012, Jyoti Singh, a 23-year-old medical student, boarded a bus in Delhi headed towards home. She never made it to her destination. While on the bus, she was gang-raped by six men who left her with fatal injuries.

But unlike in the past, when Singh’s story might have remained hushed, tens of thousands of men and women poured into the streets to protest the rape. This public pressure led to the passage of a bill that criminalized stalking, voyeurism, and sexual harassment (though it falls short of criminalizing marital rape). The January 2013 anti-rape uprisings are part of a socio-sexual revolution unfolding in India, argues journalist Sally Howard in her book The Kama Sutra Diaries: Intimate Journeys Through Modern India, which hit American shelves in May.

Anti-rape protests in India Courtesy Sally Howard

Originally from the UK, Howard has been traveling to India for the past 15 years, writing for Indian and British publications like the Telegraph, the

Guardian, and the Sunday Times. India is a land steeped in contradiction, observes Howard; a place which gave the world the revolutionary Kama Sutra, but remains hooked on the idea of arranged marriages; “where families bow down to a graphic depiction of a conjoined phallus and vagina, the Shivaling, but where couples are routinely attacked by the police for the indiscretion of holding hands in public,” she writes in The Kama Sutra Diaries.

But over the last decade, Howard argues that a sexual revolution has begun in India, one with very different characteristics than the West’s transformation during the 1960s. “While the Western sexual revolution was propelled by contraception and feminism,” she tells me, “India’s revolution has more to do with a young generation rediscovering sex, and pushing up against parental expectations.” Today, more than half of India’s population is under the age of 25, with 65 percent of the population under 35. “And these young are saying we’ve had enough, we want to have sex. They’re telling their parents ‘I don’t want the life you have ascribed to me,'” says Howard.

Kama Sutra temples in Madhya Pradesh Kirat Sodhi

Howard’s travel partner Dimple, a 32-year-old Delhiite who left a loveless arranged marriage, exemplifies this social shift. “I was married at 21 by arrangement to a man I didn’t know,” Dimple told Howard. “The consummation of my marriage was like being hit with a cricket bat. Now I’m 32 and I’m a divorcée. My mother, who was herself very unhappy, and my grandmother, couldn’t think of getting divorced. So this is a big change for my generation.”

Over the course of two years, Howard and Dimple journey to the Kama Sutra temples of Madhya Pradesh, the hillside station at Shimla where Indians had a history of sexual escapades with the colonial British, and to Delhi, rocked by the recent rape uprisings. In Gujarat, Howard interviews a gay prince who is setting up a retirement home for gay and hijra (third gender) Indians, many of whom don’t have families to rely on for support as they age.

Manvendra Singh Gohil, a gay prince who established a retirement home for eunuchs Hemant Bhavsar

Howard’s journey voyage helps her uncover some shifts in sexual attitudes across the country. “Middle class Indians are getting more flexibility in choosing their own mate, and finding the space to be together and experimenting,” she tells me. And aided by new digital tools, Indians seem more piqued by sex. Over the past decade, Google searches for the word “porn” in India have increased fivefold. In 2012, people in New Delhi searched for the word “porn” at a higher rate than anywhere else in the world. A survey by India Today showed that 35 percent of Indian women consume porn as opposed to 13 percent a decade ago. Fifty percent of women disapprove of pre-marital sex, as opposed to 64 percent in 2003. But remnants of a misogynist past still linger. The same India Today survey revealed that 36 percent of men blamed women’s revealing clothes for India’s rape crisis.

Not surprisingly, Howard notes, the shift in thinking about sex is happening mostly with younger generations. But that doesn’t mean the past is trivial. In fact, India’s ancient texts may better inform contemporary lust than America’s Puritanical roots. “I hope that the new sexual story the land of the Kama Sutra tells itself will feature some of the depths of romantic feeling of the old courtly poets—that it might rediscover the deep sentiments that gave the world its finest physical embodiment of romantic love: the Taj Mahal.”

The Kama Sutra Diaries is equal parts travelogue and cultural analysis, blending vivid characters with upbeat prose and humor. With this entertaining read, Howard pushes past taboo to give us a more exposed India.

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Travels Through India’s Sexual Revolution

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Yet another oil train explodes, this time in New Brunswick, Canada

Yet another oil train explodes, this time in New Brunswick, Canada

Zach Bonnell

Looking for a way to warm yourself through this bitter North American cold snap? Just huddle around the nearest train tracks in hopes that one of the countless oil-hauling trains traversing the continent will pass by and combust.

It hadn’t even been two weeks since a derailed train laden with crude exploded in North Dakota when a similar accident occurred last night near the village of Plaster Rock in New Brunswick, Canada, just beyond the Maine border.

Of the 15 rear cars that jumped the tracks, four were carrying crude oil and four were carrying propane. Derailed cars burned through the night, and emergency responders were unwilling to get close enough to figure out which of the carriages were ablaze. About 45 nearby homes were evacuated after the accident. Fortunately, no injuries have been reported.

Here is Reuters with a reminder of just how common this kind of accident has become:

A series of disastrous derailments has reignited the push for tougher regulation. A surge in U.S. oil production has drastically increased the number of oil trains moving across the continent as pipelines fail to keep up with growing supply. …

There have been five major accidents in the past year involving a train carrying crude oil. The most devastating occurred in Quebec in July last year, when a runaway train derailed and exploded in the heart of the town of Lac Megantic, killing 47.

So long as North America’s oil-drilling boom continues, these kinds of disasters will likely continue — but there are hopes that new U.S. federal rules expected this year will see the most puncture-prone models of oil-hauling train cars phased out or retrofitted.


Source
Train carrying oil derails, catches fire in New Brunswick, Canada, Reuters

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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Yet another oil train explodes, this time in New Brunswick, Canada

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Will the U.S. lift its 38-year ban on crude oil exports?

Will the U.S. lift its 38-year ban on crude oil exports?

Shutterstock

The U.S. could start sharing the crude spoils of its environment-ravaging drilling boom with other nations.

The country banned crude exports after the oil shocks of the 1970s. But oil producers and oil-loving politicians alike are starting to push for that export ban to be lifted. Oil companies last year began preparing a legal challenge to the ban, which may argue that it violates international law. And last month, Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz suggested that it may be time to consider lifting the ban. “Those restrictions on exports were born, as was the Department of Energy and the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, on oil disruptions,” he said at an energy forum.

FuelFix explains the growing disquiet over the export ban:

As a new year dawns in the nation’s capital, the Obama administration and Congress find themselves grappling with a scenario that was unthinkable just a short time ago: What to do with the domestic oil flowing out of West Texas, North Dakota and other states?

The climb in domestic crude production has created a dilemma for both lawmakers and the White House, who are facing new pressure from oil companies to relax the nation’s 38-year-old ban on exports of the unprocessed product. …

[T]here is a growing glut of light, sweet crude that is unearthed in the U.S., and barred from export. Many U.S. refineries, particularly along the Gulf Coast, were designed to process heavier supplies from Venezuela, Saudi Arabia and Canada, and while some have adapted to handle more of the light, sweet domestic product, bigger changes are unlikely soon.

And here is some nice context from InsideClimate News:

Emboldened by the recent boom in U.S. crude production, oil company executives and others closed the year by launching a highly public push for the right to freely export U.S. crude oil. The move is a 180-degree change from 40 years of telling Americans that the country needs all the oil it can get to achieve energy independence and to protect consumers and the economy from oil and gasoline price shocks.

It’s a particularly dicey appeal to make right now because the call for oil exports — and the industry’s rationale for it — run counter to the arguments that oil companies and politicians are still using to justify a host of industry-backed initiatives, including the controversial Keystone XL pipeline project that would import oil from Canada.

What’s more, for the American public, every discussion about oil policy ultimately boils down to one question: What would it do to gasoline prices? On that front, unrestricted oil exports would be a difficult sell.

Lifting the ban would encourage still more drilling, which would be bad news for the environment in the U.S. and for the global climate.

Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) will be fighting to keep the export ban in place. “Clearly Big Oil’s push for increased domestic drilling has nothing to do with increasing our nation’s security, or else the industry wouldn’t be seeking to export U.S. crude oil abroad,” he said.


Source
Oil glut stirs debate over US crude exports, FuelFix
2014: Export of American Oil Is Contentious Industry Goal After 4-Decade Federal Ban, InsideClimate News

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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Will the U.S. lift its 38-year ban on crude oil exports?

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Forget golf course views; new subdivisions are being built around farms

Forget golf course views; new subdivisions are being built around farms

Bellisimo

Historic barn and outbuildings are being rehabbed as part of the Bucking Horse housing development in Colorado.

Unless you’re a wealthy white man, you probably don’t play golf. So a home overlooking a water-hogging, pesticide-doused golf course from which players might accidentally strike tiny, hard balls in your direction is probably not your cup of tea.

But since you read Grist, chances are you care about food and like to eat local.

Developers are starting to realize that a lot of Americans like you might prefer to live near a farm than near a golf course. Nebraska’s NPR and PBS affiliate chronicles the growing number of subdivisions that are being built around farms, replete with livestock and crops:

It’s called development-supported agriculture, a more intimate version of community-supported agriculture — a farm-share program commonly known as CSA. In the planning process of a new neighborhood, a developer includes some form of food production — a farm, community garden, orchard, livestock operation, edible park — that is meant to draw in new buyers, increase values and stitch neighbors together.

“These projects are becoming more and more mainstream,” said Ed McMahon, a fellow with the Urban Land Institute, who estimates more than 200 developments with an agricultural twist already exist nationwide. …

In Fort Collins, Colo., developers are currently constructing one of the country’s newest development-supported farms. At first blush, the Bucking Horse development looks like your average halfway-constructed subdivision. But look a bit closer and you’ll see a rustic red farm house and a big white barn enclosed by the plastic orange construction fencing.

“When we show it, people are either like, ‘You guys are crazy, I don’t see the vision here at all,’ or they come and they’re like, ‘This is going to be amazing,’” said Kristin Kirkpatrick, who works for Bellisimo, Inc., the developer that purchased this 240-acre plot of land in 2010 to turn it into a neighborhood totally devoted to local food.

Kirkpatrick is in charge of leasing at the Jessup Farm Artisan Village, the commercial space at Bucking Horse. Work is underway to rehab the historic barn, farm house, loafing shed, saddle shop and chicken coop. Plans for the Village include a farm-to-fork restaurant, wine maker, coffee roaster and yoga studio.

We’re getting hungry just thinking about it.


Source
Forget The Golf Course, Subdivisions Build Around Farms, NET

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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Forget golf course views; new subdivisions are being built around farms

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Support for a $10 Minimum Wage Is Surprisingly High

Mother Jones

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I’m not super interested in the latest poll results about whether Obama’s approval is up or down a point or two, or whether Obamacare is up or down a point or two. It’ll all shake out soon enough. But the Wall Street Journal’s latest poll asked about raising the minimum wage, and the results were pretty interesting:

So 63 percent were in favor of raising the minimum wage to $10.10. That’s surprisingly high. Hell, 43 percent even favor raising it to $12.50. I don’t imagine that this support is especially deep or passionate, but it’s still pretty high. As Damon Silvers of the AFL-CIO says, “If I was a House Republican, I’d be concerned about opposing anything that polled at 63%.”

Of course, gun registration polls at better than 63 percent, and so do higher taxes on the rich, just to name a couple of examples. That doesn’t seem to have caused very many Republicans to start quaking in their boots. Still, it’s encouraging news.

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Support for a $10 Minimum Wage Is Surprisingly High

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Democrats Finally Getting Ready to Kill the Filibuster

Mother Jones

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Republicans have now made clear that they’re willing to filibuster all of President Obama’s nominees to the DC circuit court. This is not because they have any specific objections to them, but simply because they want to preserve the court’s conservative majority even though they lost the election. Greg Sargent reports that this is such a sweeping position that Harry Reid no longer thinks there’s any chance of brokering a compromise on the matter. The only option left, according to a senior leadership aide, is to go nuclear and do away with the filibuster entirely:

“Reid has become personally invested in the idea that Dems have no choice other than to change the rules if the Senate is going to remain a viable and functioning institution,” the aide says….Asked if Reid would drop the threat to go nuclear if Republicans green-lighted one or two of Obama’s judicial nominations, the aide said: “I don’t think that’s going to fly.”

Reid has concluded Senate Republicans have no plausible way of retreating from the position they’ve adopted in this latest Senate rules standoff, the aide says. Republicans have argued that in pushing nominations, Obama is “packing” the court, and have insisted that Obama is trying to tilt the court’s ideological balance in a Democratic direction — which is to say that the Republican objection isn’t to the nominees Obama has chosen, but to the fact that he’s trying to nominate anyone at all.

Reid believes that, having defined their position this way, Republicans have no plausible route out of the standoff other than total capitulation on the core principle they have articulated, which would be a “pretty dramatic reversal,” the aide continues.

But does Reid have the votes? The New York Times reports that Republican obstruction has finally gotten so outrageous that even previously cautious Democrats are now supporting Reid’s position:

Mr. Reid, of Nevada, has picked up crucial support from some of his more reluctant members recently. Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont and the longest-serving member of the Senate today, who is chairman of the Judiciary Committee, has endorsed putting limits on the filibuster despite his history of being protective of Senate institutions. The two senators from California, Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, said separately on Tuesday that they were leaning toward a rules change.

….The stakes seem higher this time for many Democrats. Many of them strongly believe that if Mr. Obama is not able to appoint any judges to the court — Republicans have rejected four of the five nominees he has submitted — it will retain its conservative bent for decades. It is a crucially important court for any White House because it often decides cases that relate to administration or federal agency policies.

At various points over the past year, Republicans have refused to confirm any nominees to the NLRB so that it would lose its quorum and be unable to pass new rules; they have refused to confirm any chairman of the CFPB in order to prevent it from functioning at all; they have threatened to destroy America’s credit unless Obamacare was defunded; and now they’re refusing to confirm any nominees to the DC circuit court in order to preserve its conservative tilt. Reid eventually managed to cut deals on the NLRB, the CFPB, and Obamacare, but as Feinstein says, “We left with a very good feeling there would be a new day. Well, the new day lasted maybe for a week.”

Add all this up—the NLRB, the CFPB, the debt ceiling extortion, and the DC court filibusters—and it’s now clear that Republicans have no intention of allowing Obama to govern normally. Instead, they have adopted a routine strategy of trying to nullify legislation they don’t like via procedural abuse. As Sargent puts it:

The GOP position is not grounded in an objection to Obama’s nominees or to the function of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals; it’s grounded in the argument that Obama should not have the power to make these appointments to the court at all. As Jonathan Chait argues, Republicans may not have even thought through the full implications of the position they’ve adopted. But Dems have, and taking it to its logical conclusion, they believe Republicans have presented them with a simple choice: Either they change the rules, or they accept those limits on Obama’s power. And that really leaves only one option.

Yep.

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Democrats Finally Getting Ready to Kill the Filibuster

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Assemble Solar Panels If You Already Have No Experience

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