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Even with the Arctic out, offshore drilling isn’t slowing down

by choneqjxs Posted on May 11, 2016

Even with the Arctic out, offshore drilling isn’t slowing down

By on May 11, 2016Share

The oil industry just lost its chance at finding a fossil fuel goldmine in the U.S. Arctic. On Tuesday, Royal Dutch Shell formally gave up on its decade-long attempt of striking oil in the Arctic’s icy waters, relinquishing all but one of its oil and gas leases off of Alaska’s northwest coast. Last fall, the company abandoned its drilling plans in the Chukchi Sea for the “foreseeable” future, and President Barack Obama’s canceled new oil and gas leases there, too.

But that doesn’t mean offshore drilling is slowing down.

The Gulf of Mexico, long an epicenter of offshore drilling, is still wide open — and its oil and gas production is growing. There are currently more than 5,000 offshore active oil and natural gas leases in the Gulf of Mexico, according to the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM). More than two-thirds of these leases are for deep water drilling.

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) is hammering out the final details for its five-year leasing plan, which will determine offshore areas that are fair game for oil exploration from 2017 to 2022. Right now, BOEM has proposed 10 new lease sales in the Gulf. The 45-million-acre area, said to contain the eighth-largest carbon reserve on Earth, will remain open to drilling unless the Obama administration changes its gameplan.

“The Gulf drilling is not going to cease unless another catastrophic disaster happens,” said Tyler Priest, a University of Iowa environmental historian who studies oil and energy, referring to the 2010 Deepwater Horizon spill that dumped 4.2 million barrels of oil into the Gulf. According to the Energy Information Administration, the Gulf supplies 17 percent of the country’s total crude oil.

So why is the oil business thriving in the Gulf while it’s largely faltered in the Arctic?

The reasons for the Gulf’s successes, according to Priest, can be attributed to the wealth of infrastructure already in place, the extensive network of pipelines and coastal refineries, and the seemingly endless stream of new oil reserve discoveries.

“It’s a totally different region from the Arctic, which is a long way away from infrastructure,” he told Grist, adding that companies can’t drill year-round in the Arctic. “But the Gulf just keeps on giving.”

Offshore oil has dominated for nearly 80 years. In 1938, Pure Oil and Superior Oil Company, now part of ExxonMobil, propped up the first oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico — a freestanding wooden deck — about a mile off the shore of Creole, La.

Offshore oil enterprises in the Gulf are relatively protected from oil prices fluctuating than other energy sources, Priest explained, because the infrastructure needed to support them is already so well-developed. So while oil prices are cheap and taking a toll on oil prospects nationwide, oil and gas production in the Gulf is expected to hit a record 1.82 million barrels per day in 2016 and 2017.

But there is one other variable that could put a stopper on the oil streaming out of the Gulf. Protesters have been attending offshore drilling auctions lately, demanding BOEM to cancel its leases. The idea that a group of activists could cut off one of the most lucrative, longest-running oil rigs in the United States may be a long shot — but it’s not like it hasn’t happened before.

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Even with the Arctic out, offshore drilling isn’t slowing down

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Non-Stick Cookware Alternatives That Won’t Give You Cancer

by GarnetTca476 Posted on February 5, 2016

Research has shown that cooking with Teflon-type cookware could expose you to toxic chemicals that might cause cancer.

What can you cook with instead? Here’s a list of your best options, all of which are available in kitchen stores as well as big box and department stores or online.

Cast Iron – For decades I’ve been using cast iron for five reasons: it’s indestructible, it’s inexpensive, it’s easy to clean, it’s versatile and it works! Once cast iron is properly seasoned, you can cook absolutely anything in it, though you wouldn’t really need to use it for dishes that require boiling water. But it’s great for sauteeing, frying, braising, stewing and cooking something as simple as scrambled eggs. Plus, it works as well on the stovetop as it does in the oven. In fact, if you’re cooking a dish that needs to be browned on the top, you can easily move your cast iron skillet or casserole from the range to the oven broiler without missing a beat.

Clean it with a simple scrub brush or Brillo-type pad and hot soapy water, then either dry it with a towel, or just put it back on the range for a minute and let the heat evaporate whatever water remains. One downside is that cast iron is heavy. But I personally like the exercise I get using it and find that other than a 10-qt Dutch oven, it’s never too much to handle.

Stainless Steel – Stainless steel is excellent for boiling potatoes, rice and pasta, or for browning and sauteeing foods. Stainless steel can tolerate high heats, reports TwoKitchenJunkies.com in The Ultimate Guide to Healthy Cookware, unlike nonstick pans, which are unsafe when exposed to high heats. And as long as the stainless cookware (or any cookware, for that matter) doesn’t have plastic handles, it can go from the range to the oven. The downside of stainless is that food can quickly burn if the heat gets too high or the pan gets too dry. Then, the pan can be difficult to scrub clean. The denser or heavier the pan is, the better it will be at conducting heat and the easier it will be to clean.

Aluminum – Aluminum cooks a lot like stainless steel, but is a bit lighter. Cooking at high heat won’t emit toxic fumes, like Teflon-type pots and pans. But there is some concern that aluminum can leach into food and potentially have human health problems. I have aluminum 9×13 baking pans that I used to also bake lasagna in. However, I noticed that the lasagna would sometimes pick up an aluminum taste, because the acidic tomato sauce in the lasagna reacted with the aluminum in a corrosive way.

TheKitchn.com recommends using non-reactive cookware like stainless steel whenever your dish contains acidic or alkaline ingredients. Aluminum is good for boiling water, sauteeing vegetables and searing meatthough don’t deglaze the pan with an acid-based liquid! That said, you can buy anodized aluminum, which creates a leach-resistant, non-stick surface. The price will be similar to stainless steel.

Stoneware & Ceramics – Stoneware and ceramics can make good casserole dishes. However, beware of those glazed inside with materials that could contain lead or other toxic chemicals. Contra Costa (CA) Health Services warns against using traditional glazed terra cotta (clay) dishware from Mexico and other Latin American countries, as it is likely contaminated with lead. Similarly, the Department of the Environment in Australia warns against using highly decorated traditional dishes from some Asian countries,and antique pots and pans that are heavily decorated.

Glass – Glass is terrific for cookware, though it’s primarily available as a pot, rather than a skillet, and as baking pans, pie pans and casserole dishes. It’s non reactive, affordable and can go from the oven to the table, as long as you set it on a potholder or non-metal trivet until it cools down. One downside is that if you put hot glass on a cool metal surface, like the top of a stove range or a metal trivet, it could shatter into a thousand pieces. So use glassbut use it carefully, and pay attention to extreme temperature shifts.

If you currently use non-stick cookware and want to get rid of it, don’t donate it to someone else. Either send it back to the manufacturer, or just throw it away. If you must continue cooking with it, use it on very low heat and only for boiling water or other tasks that have little chance of burning. Do not use metal utensils, like spatulas or stirring spoons, as those could scratch the nonstick coating off and into the food you’re cooking.

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may not reflect those of Care2, Inc., its employees or advertisers.

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Non-Stick Cookware Alternatives That Won’t Give You Cancer

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Will the British Government Ban Donald Trump from the UK?

by Matt08Xxxvbjmtl Posted on December 1, 2015

Mother Jones

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These days Donald Trump has his eye on acquiring a certain high-end and unique property in Washington, DC. But should he want to take a break from the campaign trail for a quick jaunt across the pond to visit his luxury golf resort in the Aberdeen area of Scotland, he might encounter a problem. At least, that’s what one British anti-Trump activist is hoping to engineer.

Suzanne Kelly, an Aberdeen local who has opposed the development of Trump’s golf course (which was built atop environmentally sensitive dunes), recently cooked up a plan to tar the globe-trotting tycoon who now leads the GOP presidential race. She submitted a petition to the British government requesting that it block Trump from entering the UK due to his harsh campaign rhetoric—deriding Mexican immigrants as rapists, talking about tracking Muslims—which she equates with hate speech. Her petition reads:

The signatories believe Donald J Trump should be banned from UK entry for his continued, unrepentant hate speech and unacceptable behaviour. His unacceptable behaviour is well documented, and we feel it foments racial, religious and nationalistic intolerance which should not be welcome in the UK.

The UK has banned entry to many individuals for hate speech. This same principle should apply to Donald J Trump. We cannot see how the United Kingdom can condone his entry to the country when many people have been barred for less.

Kelly may be more than tilting at Trump’s windmill, for under the British system of interactive government, any citizen or resident can go to the Parliament’s website and submit a petition. If five other people support a submitted petition, the government’s petitions committee will review the petition and decide whether to publish it. If the petition goes up and draws 10,000 signatures, the government will respond. If 100,000 people sign, the measure will be considered for debate in Parliament.

There are potential obstacles to the Trump petition.The Parliament’s petition committee can reject a petition at the start. The guidelines for that are spelled out on the government’s petitions website. Here’s a partial list of the reasons for saying no:

We’ll only reject your petition if it’s:

not clear what you’re asking for
about something that the UK Government or Parliament is not responsible for
about a purely personal issue
confidential, libellous, false or defamatory
contains language that may cause offence, or is provocative or extreme in its views deceptive or misleading
nonsensical, or a joke

Is this a joke? Kelly says, of course not. She certainly is clear on what she is requesting, and the British government has in the past blocked the entry of persons deemed purveyors of hate. For instance, in 2009, the UK barred an anti-Islamic Dutch lawmaker from entering the country to screen his film that called the Koran a “fascist book.” (This move was denounced by free speech advocates.) But there may be some wiggle room for the petitions committee to tell Kelly to take a hike, especially if the British government does not want to embarrass Trump.

If the petition goes forward, is it hard to imagine 10,000 or 100,000 signers? As of Tuesday afternoon, a petition calling for the UK to accept more asylum seekers and increase support for refugee migrants in the country had 445,000 signatures. Another to stop all immigration and close the UK borders until ISIS is defeated had 440,000 signatures. Meanwhile, Kelly’s petition is now undergoing the committee’s review. She hopes it will be live within a few days.

At the same time, Kelly is pushing another petition calling on the Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen to strip Trump of the honorary degree it granted him. This petition, which has only been posted on a site for activists, reads:

We feel that Donald Trump’s unrepentant, persistent verbal attacks on various groups of people based on nationality, religion, race and physical abilities are a huge detriment to RGU. Hate speech must not have a place in academia, in politics or on the world stage. We are confident RGU will agree with the petitioners, and act swiftly.

So far it has drawn 1,200 signatures.

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Will the British Government Ban Donald Trump from the UK?

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Here’s Why Greece Is Having Such a Hard Time Getting European Agreement to Europe’s Own Proposal

by AthenaTurriff8 Posted on July 11, 2015

Mother Jones

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The Greek austerity proposal has been approved by parliament, and since it’s essentially identical to the European demands of two weeks ago, everything should now be hunky dory, right? The Europeans will accept the Greek capitulation and move on.

Um, no. Emergency talks in Brussels are being held around the clock this weekend, and there are still a couple of big sticking points.

First: The new proposal is much bigger than the previous one. Back in June, Greece was asking for about €7 billion in loans that would cover its needs for a few months. Now it’s asking for €53 billion over three years, and European experts think even that number is too optimistic. Greece will really need about €74 billion—plus additional funds to recapitalize Greek banks, which have basically disbursed all their cash over the past couple of weeks. This raises several concerns:

The European proposal in June was meant to set conditions for releasing the final €7 billion in loans in Greece’s second round of bailouts. But the new Greek proposal essentially wants to use these same conditions as the basis for a third round of bailouts that would be bigger and longer-lasting. European finance ministers are skeptical, with many suggesting that the June proposal was never meant to cover a whole new round of bailouts. Something tougher is now required.
The fact that Greece estimates its needs at €53 billion and European technocrats estimate it at €74 suggests to many Europeans that Greece still can’t get its finances straight. This does little to boost confidence in the Syriza government.

Second: No one trusts Greece even slightly. The Europeans have never trusted the Greeks to implement the deals they agree to, and they still don’t. “What guarantees can Greece give they are actually going to implement what they propose?” Austrian finance minister Hans Jorg Schelling asked bluntly, echoing similar questions from the Dutch finance minister and others. Even Greek allies like France need to be convinced of Greek goodwill. “Confidence has been ruined by every Greek government over many years which have sometimes made promises without making good on them at all,” said French finance minister Michel Sapin.

After the events of the past two weeks, the issue of trust is even worse. Dutch state secretary Eric Wiebes notes that the commitment of the Greek government is a key concern. “That has been the weak point because, after all, we are discussing a proposal from the Greek government that was fiercely rejected a week ago.” And to make things worse, although the Greek parliament approved the latest proposal, it caused a serious schism in the Syriza party, with many members voting against it. “The parliamentary majority of the government now in Athens is being eroded,” Irish finance minister Michael Noonan said, “and they may not have the capacity to implement the measures they have agreed as time goes by.”

Things have now degraded to such a dire point that German finance minister Wolfgang Schauble has even floated the idea of a “temporary” five-year Greek exit from the euro. This is so batty that almost everyone else at today’s talks—including some of Greece’s strongest skeptics—thinks it’s both ridiculous and probably illegal too. But even though it’s not likely to be taken seriously, it does indicate just how frosty the Germans are toward any new bailout deal with Greece. It also gives ammunition to Greek critics who have maintained for weeks that Germany’s real goal is to kick Greece out of the euro.

So there you have it. The June proposal from the Europeans may have been OK two weeks ago, but it’s now past its sell-by date. Getting European buy-in to a new, third bailout for Greece continues to be a very delicate and knotty problem. Stay tuned.

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Here’s Why Greece Is Having Such a Hard Time Getting European Agreement to Europe’s Own Proposal

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Should oil companies have a seat at the climate negotiating table?

by ShannonDanis Posted on June 2, 2015

Should oil companies have a seat at the climate negotiating table?

By on 2 Jun 2015commentsShare

U.N. negotiators are meeting in Bonn, Germany, this week to continue to hash out the global climate deal that will (hopefully) be signed in Paris later this year. And, just in time for these negotiations, a new coalition is calling on governments to get some carbon-pricing mechanisms in place. This coalition, however, has an unusual membership: CEOs of major, Europe-based oil companies.

Chief executives of the U.K.’s BP and BG Group, British/Dutch Shell, Italy’s Eni, Norway’s Statoil, and France’s Total sent a letter to the U.N. stating that “we need governments across the world to provide us with clear, stable, long-term, ambitious policy frameworks. … We believe that a price on carbon should be a key element of these frameworks.” Earlier in the letter, the six companies “acknowledge that the current trend of greenhouse gas emissions” would fail to “limit the temperature rise to no more than 2 degrees above pre-industrial levels.”

“The challenge is how to meet greater energy demand with less CO2,” the letter continues. “We stand ready to play our part.”

Of course, not everyone is eager for the companies who for years resisted regulations like carbon pricing to plop down at the negotiating table.

“I think what these corporations are looking to do is to change the conversation from one of global emissions standards and top-down governmental enforcement of standards to one … where these corporations can buy and sell pollution and find different ways to continue to do what they’re doing, which is contributing to climate change in a very real way,” said Jesse Bragg of Corporate Accountability International, a group that’s trying to keep corporate players away from the climate negotiations.

“We need long-term solutions,” he told Grist. “So the solution here is find ways to keep it in the ground and replace our energy needs with renewables. And any conversation about finding ways to use more natural gas and oil is a distraction from the actual solution.”

CAI and a number of prominent environmental groups, including Greenpeace USA, 350.org, and the League of Conservation Voters, recently petitioned the U.N. to keep polluting corporations away from climate change negotiations. The groups say that the industry “interferes at all levels,” including by providing sponsorship for the talks themselves.

The U.N. climate change leadership, however, has called for more cooperation between polluting industries and proponents of a climate deal. “Bringing them with us has more strength than demonizing them,” Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, said in May.

Not all green groups are cynical about the intention of the letter; some are enthusiastic about the progress it represents. “This is a symbolic moment, and demonstrates an important if not universal shift,” said Mark Kenber, CEO of The Climate Group, an international NGO. “It helps increase the likelihood of a positive outcome at COP21 by sending a signal to the wider business community, and showing that the direction of travel is towards comprehensive and effective regimes regulating carbon emissions.”

Even CAI sees the letter as an encouraging sign: “Many of the NGOs I’ve spoken with see this as a sign of them running scared, in a way,” said Bragg. “In terms of the movement, this is a good sign because it means that this work is having an effect and creating a need for them to respond and regroup and create a strategy … In that letter, the gas and oil industry took a couple shots at the coal industry, trying to differentiate themselves: ‘At least we’re not coal.’”

Some major oil companies were conspicuously absent from the letter, including U.S.-based ExxonMobil and Chevron. An industry source told Reuters that the two companies knew about the initiative, but didn’t want to sign on. “It’s clear that there is a difference of views on each side of the Atlantic,” Patrick Pouyanne, CEO of the French oil company Total, told reporters. He said the European companies were still chatting with Exxon and Chevron, and hoped they too would sign the letter soon.

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Kayaktavists Take Over Seattle’s Port to Protest Shell Oil’s Arctic Drilling Rig

by PrestonKirk347 Posted on May 17, 2015

Mother Jones

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Seattleites took a dramatic stand, er paddle, against Arctic oil drilling on Saturday afternoon. Against the backdrop of the Pacific Northwest city’s skyline, around 200 activists, local Native Americans, and concerned citizens took to kayak and canoe and surrounded a giant, Arctic-bound Royal Dutch Shell oil drilling rig currently making a layover in the Port of Seattle.

Despite the oil giant’s rocky history in the Arctic region, last Monday the Obama administration conditionally approved Shell’s summer plans to drill for oil in the Chukchi Sea, north of Alaska. Environmentalists are not happy, and neither are many in Seattle, whose port has become a home base for the two Shell oil rigs’ operations. The Port of Seattle’s commissioners took heat for their controversial decision to lease one of its piers to Shell, tying the progressive city to fossil fuel extraction and the potential for environmental catastrophe in the Arctic.

As the first of the towering oil rigs arrived in Elliott Bay late last week, a group of “activists, artists, and noisemakers” calling themselves ShellNo organized a series of protests to welcome the oil company. The “Paddle in Seattle” yesterday drew an impressive flotilla of kayaks, canoes, and boats into the Duwamish River, which feeds into the Elliott Bay, to surround the Cost-Guard-protected rig. Below is a roundup of Tweeted pictures taken by people on the scene:

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Kayaktavists Take Over Seattle’s Port to Protest Shell Oil’s Arctic Drilling Rig

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How to Trick a Child Into Eating a Vegetable

by AshleyAragon Posted on May 7, 2015

Mother Jones

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Michelle Obama has gotten a lot of flak for her efforts to improve the nutritional value of school lunches and reduce the rate of childhood obesity. On Twitter, for instance, kids have been using the hashtag #ThanksMichelleObama to complain that new lunch standards she spearheaded have resulted in less appetizing meals.

By some accounts, the First Lady’s school lunch program seems to be working. A 2014 study from Harvard University’s School of Public Health found that compared to 2011, kids eating school lunches were selecting 23 percent more fruit overall after the guidelines were imposed in 2012. What’s more, vegetable consumption per student rose 16 percent. The problem is that the amount of food left uneaten and thrown away seems to have increased considerably, as well. According to a study from the School Nutrition Association, schools reported an 81 percent increase in the amount of food left on plates, with vegetables making up the majority of the waste.

The fact that kids (and many adults) generally don’t like vegetables isn’t exactly an earth-shattering discovery. Parents and policy makers have long struggled over the question of how to get children to eat their broccoli. But Traci Mann, a health psychologist who has spent much of her career studying our eating habits, has come up with a simple solution. “Just put the vegetable in a competition it can actually win,” said Mann on a recent episode of the Inquiring Minds podcast.

Of course, in a contest between vegetables and, say, mac and cheese, the veggies don’t stand much of a chance. But Mann has an elegant strategy for improving the odds. “As far as I can tell,” she says, “the only competition a vegetable can routinely win is the competition between a vegetable and nothing.” Mann first discovered this kernel of wisdom by observing the behavior of her own children. In a Los Angeles deli, when her kids were 3 and 6, she watched them happily consume sauerkraut while waiting for their meals to arrive. “After much scholarly effort,” writes Mann in her newly released book Secrets from the Eating Lab, “I developed a highly technical theory about why they ate the sauerkraut: They ate it because it was there.”

And, being a scientist, Mann decided to put this theory to the test. Using schoolchildren as subjects, Mann and her colleagues conducted two field studies in an elementary school where most of the students were eligible for free or reduced-cost lunches. In one study, the scientists first figured out what the baseline consumption rate was for a reasonably well tolerated vegetable—in this case, carrots. Then, the scientists waited three months for the exact same menu to be served again. This time, as the children waited at their class tables before receiving their full meals, they had access to small paper cups filled with baby carrots. Once the meal was over, the scientists painstakingly weighed all the leftover carrots in cups, on the floor, on trays, and anywhere else they could be found. Sure enough, kids ate more carrots when they were left alone with them at their tables than they did on a normal day. The result, wrote the researchers, was an “increase in carrot consumption of over 430% that was almost entirely driven by many students eating carrots from the cups before entering the line.”

Encouraged by these findings, the scientists then conducted a follow-up field study in which broccoli was the prized vegetable. On a regular day, broccoli was among the foods that the children could select as they went through the cafeteria line. But on the study days, the students were handed cups of broccoli while they waited for the rest of their meal. Once again, the experiment worked. The students as a whole consumed far more broccoli when that was the first food they had access to.

Mann and her colleagues even tested the “veggies first” theory on college students, comparing their consumption of baby carrots and M&Ms while manipulating which snack was offered first. Undergraduates not only ate more carrots when that was the first option, but they also then ate fewer M&Ms.

“For most of us, the main obstacle to eating a vegetable is that we don’t like them as much as the other stuff,” says Mann. And most of us are also pretty lazy. Since vegetables in general require more preparation than many other foods, and are not as tasty, we tend to eat less of them than is good for us.

But there’s an upside to our laziness: If the goal is to limit consumption of an unhealthy food, even a minor obstacle can make a difference. On Inquiring Minds, Mann describes a Dutch study of M&M consumption. “They showed that if you have a bowl of M&Ms on the table right by you, you’ll eat a lot,” says Mann. That’s not surprising. But if you place that bowl farther away, requiring you to get up from your desk to grab a handful, consumption decreases significantly. “Here’s the even more amazing thing,” adds Mann. “Take that same bowl of M&Ms, put it on the same table that you’re sitting at—except instead of right by your hand, put it two feet across the table.” Within-reach, but requiring a bit of stretching. It turns out that you’ll consume just as few M&Ms as if they were across the room.

Adding obstacles, even tiny ones, is so effective at reducing unhealthy food intake that even a simple manipulation in Google’s New York offices made headlines recently. When M&Ms were put in opaque rather than glass containers, and healthier alternatives such as figs and nuts were made more visible, Google employees consumed 3.1 million fewer calories from M&Ms over seven weeks, according to the Washington Post.

One of Mann’s experiments shows just how much of an impact the visibility of food can have. In another effort to get school kids to eat more veggies, her team placed photographs of green beans and carrots into two of the compartments on the children’s lunch trays. With this simple manipulation, they found that twice as many kids served themselves green beans and nearly three times as many took carrots, compared with what happened on a typical day.

Mann attributes the success of the photos to the social forces that impact our eating habits. It’s not effective to simply tell a kid to eat his vegetables. But putting photos on the trays, according to Mann, sends the message that other kids are choosing those veggies and placing them in those two compartments. And, as any parent knows, fitting in can be a powerful motivator.

To listen to our full interview with Mann, click below.

Inquiring Minds is a podcast hosted by neuroscientist and musician Indre Viskontas and Kishore Hari, the director of the Bay Area Science Festival. To catch future shows right when they are released, subscribe to Inquiring Minds via iTunes or RSS. You can follow the show on Twitter at @inquiringshow and like us on Facebook.

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How to Trick a Child Into Eating a Vegetable

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Toni Morrison Knows All About the "Little Drop of Poison" in Your Childhood

by DewayneScheffel Posted on April 21, 2015

Mother Jones

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Photo: Timothy Greenfield-Sanders

Toni Morrison is no stranger to historical fiction. Her last novel, Home, whisked readers into the shoes of a struggling Korean War veteran. A Mercy, the one before that, pictured life through the eyes of teenage bondswomen on a 17th-century Anglo-Dutch farm. And who could forget Beloved, her wrenching tale of a mother’s radical attempt to save her child from slavery in the mid-1800s?

But when the octogenarian author sat down to compose her 11th and latest novel, God Help the Child, she faced a new challenge. “I was nervous because I didn’t have a handle on the contemporary,” she told me. “It’s very fluid.” Leave it to Morrison, a recipient of the 1993 Nobel Prize in Literature and the Presidential Medal of Freedom, to find a way. Through Bride, her “blue-black” protagonist—who shines in the beauty industry but flails in her relationships—Morrison boldly examines the ways in which a hellish childhood undermines a person’s sense of self.

Mother Jones: How did the Bride character come to you?

Toni Morrison: I started the book before I wrote Home, but I was unsure of how to do it. And then I began to just look around at what people were doing and saying about themselves: You know, everybody’s naked, everybody’s gorgeous. I was very keenly aware of the new, wide-open, in many cases very healthy but certainly very aggressive sexuality. That becomes the success, particularly of a woman. Having looked at part of the Oscars, it was even more obvious. Laughs.

MJ: What about them?

TM: The clothes. The slits are higher, the breasts are prominent, which they always were, but now it’s just about nipples—the only part you cannot show. It just seems hysterical, because that’s the first thing any human gets in his mouth! I don’t know. I’m 84, so you can imagine how many phases of this I have witnessed.

MJ: Bride capitalizes on her unique looks to get ahead, but under the surface something’s not right.

TM: She’s very successful—you know, the “panther in snow.” But in her brain, she’s returning to that despised little black girl her mother didn’t even like.

MJ: Her “You Girl” makeup line is marketed for “girls and women of all complexions, from ebony to lemonade to milk.” Which seems empowering, and yet people fetishize Bride’s blackness. Was this an intentional jab at the beauty industry?

TM: In a way, but the interesting thing for me was that she was instructed by an industry mentor to never wear makeup. Her beauty is beyond makeup—and so she feels perfect. That’s not enough for me. You have to be a complete human being, and that has to do with your generosity. That’s what I wanted for her to encounter.

MJ: Bride’s mother thinks her daughter’s dark skin will be her doom. But didn’t your own dark great-grandmother view herself as purer than you light-skinned kids?

TM: She was very, very black. What she said was we were impure and tampered with. And we were little girls! The only other time I noticed what we call skin privileges was at Howard University. It’s a brilliant school. However, there was something called the “paper bag test”—whether your skin is darker or lighter than a paper bag. There were whole sororities that were proud that they had the lightest skin color. It was shocking to me. I wanted Bride’s mother Sweetness to make explicit the advantages of being a light-skinned Negro. She was under the impression that she had to protect her very black child from these insults. But inside, she shared that kind of revulsion.

MJ: Sweetness says: “Nowadays blue blacks are all over TV and fashion magazines, commercials, even starring in movies.” Do you see Hollywood growing up, featuring more dark-skinned women?

TM: I think the audiences have grown up in making demands, so Hollywood has followed. They don’t much care, so long as it works.

MJ: The new book contains moments of magical realism. What inspired your literary fondness for the magical and the supernatural?

TM: My childhood was full of ghost stories, and I was very taken with Gabriel García Márquez’s first book, One Hundred Years of Solitude. It was a revelation that you can do those things—that you could have ghosts. That made a big difference in the way I could conceive of characters, so that it was perfectly logical for the dead girl in Beloved to come back. She was the only one who could judge her mother. None of us could.

MJ: I’m curious whether the title of your new book is an allusion to Billie Holiday’s “God Bless the Child”?

TM: No. I had an entirely different title, which everyone hated. I’m not even gonna tell you what it was.

MJ: What was it?

TM: Laughs. No, I’m not going to tell you! I ended up with God Help the Child because Sweetness has the last word, which is, “You’re gonna be parents? Uh-huh, okay.” Parenting changes you. You have different concerns. It’s not all kitchy-kitchy-koo.

MJ: Why did you decide to focus on childhood trauma?

TM: The ideas come to me, I don’t search for them. In the process of putting together characters and their language and their interior lives, it shapes itself. I just began with a vague notion of what it must be like to be traumatized for something that has nothing to do with you. I mean, you didn’t kill anybody. You didn’t drop somebody on their head. You’re innocent. But you still have to deal with it—and how do you deal with it?

Even when you think you’ve had a wonderful childhood, I suspect there’s always some little drop of poison—that you can get rid of, but sometimes it just trails in the blood and it determines how you react to other people and how you think.

MJ: You evoke some disturbing, violent, sexual crimes in this novel and others. Does writing about such things affect you emotionally?

TM: It does, but I have the wonderful pleasure of finishing the book and closing it. And I don’t read them later.

MJ: Have you ever wanted to write more about your own life?

TM: My editor suggested that I change a two-book contract to one novel and a memoir. And I said okay, and then I thought, “I don’t think so.” A memoir? What’s interesting is the invention, the creative thing. Writing about myself was a yawn.

MJ: You’ve worked on operas, children’s books, lyrics, and plays. Is there any other form you’re eager to try?

TM: When you say it like that, I get suddenly exhausted! Laughs. I don’t think so. I think I’ll do what pleases me most, and what most challenges me, which is the novel.

MJ: How about a novel set in the future?

TM: No. I can barely deal with now.

Follow this link – 

Toni Morrison Knows All About the "Little Drop of Poison" in Your Childhood

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The wind turbine could get a snazzy green facelift, thanks to Dutch architects

by FreemanHpu Posted on February 24, 2015

Reinventing the wheel

The wind turbine could get a snazzy green facelift, thanks to Dutch architects

By on 24 Feb 2015commentsShare

The Netherlands just keeps one-upping the rest of the world. Recently, a Dutch construction firm installed a solar panel bike lane and then engineers went ahead and made another bike path glow-in-the-dark. Not that we’re keeping score or anything.

Now, the Dutch Windwheel Corporation has plans to build a 570-foot structure in Rotterdam that would be equal parts architectural marvel and green-tech wünderkind. Basically, the project would turn the wind turbine* into a high-tech real-estate development.

Here’s Smithsonian with the science:

The Wind Wheel’s design, made of two massive rings and an underwater foundation, plans to incorporate other green technologies, including solar panels, rainwater capture and biogas creation. The biogas will be created from the collected waste of residents of the 72 apartments and 160 hotel rooms that are planned for the inner ring.

The outer ring is set to house 40 cabins that move along a rail like a roller coaster, giving tourists a view of the city and the surrounding countryside, much like the London Eye or Las Vegas’ High Roller, which became the world’s tallest observation wheel when it opened in 2014. The cabins have glass “smart walls” that project information — the current weather, for example, and the heights and architects of buildings — onto the panorama. A restaurant and shops are also planned within the proposed structure.

Another plus: The wind wheel would also be a hub for new green technology businesses and an opportunity to create more jobs in the country.

Sounds sweet, right?

Well, here’s the catch: The technology needed to complete the project is still in the works. More from Smithsonian:

While aspects of the Wind Wheel’s design seem futuristic, the technology will have several years to advance before final construction gets underway. Duzan Boepel, the project’s principal architect, says that the Wind Wheel is still in its beginning phases. … He says if they prove that the wheel’s bladeless turbine tech can be scaled up for use in the Wind Wheel, the building may be finished by 2025.

Yeah, we will all be dreaming about this for the next decade. And yes, the Netherlands could win another batch of green points.

*We originally referred to a Wind Wheel as a windmill, not a wind turbine. Like grist to the mill, windmills are for grinding. Grist regrets the error and has sentenced the author to grinding the grain for an entire stroopwafel by hand.

Source:
This Dutch Wind Wheel Is Part Green Tech Showcase, Part Architectural Attraction

, Smithsonian.

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The wind turbine could get a snazzy green facelift, thanks to Dutch architects

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Renewable Fuels: Creating Jobs and Spurring Innovation

by Posted on February 3, 2015

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Renewable Fuels: Creating Jobs and Spurring Innovation

Posted 3 February 2015 in

National

Since its passage in 2005, the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) has sparked innovation and investment in communities across the United States. More than just spurring growth in the traditional ethanol industry though, the RFS has also accelerated and encouraged the development of the next generation of clean, renewable fuel.

As an op-ed in Roll Call notes, at a time when overall foreign direct investment was falling in the United States, projects in the biofuels sector were attracting hundreds of millions of dollars from around the world. These investments were on the verge of launching a whole new era of economic growth for rural communities across the United States when the EPA threatened to change the way it administers the RFS.

Though the EPA has since delayed that decision, the uncertainty has led foreign investors to pause as they wait to see whether the Obama administration will recommit to a strong RFS.

The impact of this uncertainty has been immediate and damaging for this growing industry.

Despite the successful completion of a $500 million production facility in Kansas, Abengoa, a Spanish company, is no longer considering additional investments in cellulosic ethanol in the U.S.
After investing some $500 million in R&D and production in California, Nebraska, and North Carolina, Novozymes, a Danish biotech company, is not planning further investment in the U.S. advanced biofuels market.
After opening a cellulosic plant in Iowa with American partner POET, DSM, a Dutch company, now sees China as the best place to invest.

These projects show the promise and possibility of sustained commitment to cellulosic ethanol in the U.S. Now, more than ever, we need President Obama to stand up for a strong RFS.

It’s not too late to get the final rule right and to make sure the United States is the leader in producing the cleanest fuels in the world.

Read the Roll Call column.

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Renewable Fuels: Creating Jobs and Spurring Innovation

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