Crude and the BP oil spill

The Guardian called for the nationalization of the Western oil industry instead (and mentioned my book Crude in their argument). Check it out, below.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/jun/15/obama-bp-nationalise-oil

Obama: stop baying for BP blood. Nationalise oil instead
The US president’s scapegoating of BP is a distraction; the only way to clean up the oil industry is to put it [...]

A band-aid, not a cure: Obama’s offshore drilling plan

OK, I don’t like Obama’s proposal to open up vast areas of the Atlantic coast, Gulf of Mexico and Alaskan coast for offshore drilling. There isn’t much oil and gas there–not enough to feed our oil-thirst for more than a few years at best–and many of these areas are already completely despoiled and need to be protected, not ravaged once again. Oil and gas companies will certainly be happy to bid on the new blocks, nevertheless.

Crude translations…

I was pleased to find a commentary about CRUDE in the Athens daily Kathemerini this morning, in part because I could honestly say, it is all Greek to me….My crude translation (ha!) suggests a fairly positive summary, but if anyone out there can say for sure, please drop a line: sonia@soniashah.com. Check it out here

Sepia Mutiny on CRUDE

The Sepia Mutiny, a very witty blog run mostly by second-generation Indian Americans (like myself) posted a lovely piece about my involvement in CRUDE (the movie) and CRUDE (the book). I’d never read Sepia Mutiny before so took the opportunity to browse and laughed out loud several times. I doubt I’m hip enough to write [...]

Crude: the movie

Crude: The Movie!
A few years ago, a documentary fillmmaker from the ABC in Sydney (that’s the Australian public television network) spent a day with me in Boston, talking about oil politics. His film, which he dubbed “Crude” (after kindly discussing it with me), came out in Australia a few years ago, and won a slew [...]

Bicultural feminism revisited

Today I randomly came across a long thoughtful pieceabout an essay I wrote over a decade ago…about  the issues thatoccupied me for the first five years of my writing life–biculturalism,feminism, and sexuality. Who knew those old essays were still makingthe rounds?
Canada.cominterviewed the curator of a new exhibit on energy and oil, who verykindly mentioned my [...]

My review in Washington Post (Lives per gallon)

From my Washington Post review of a new book by Terry Tamminen, former head of the California EPA, which ran today:
“The corollary to the new truism that Americans are “addicted” to oil is that we can kick the habit just as we did with Big Tobacco — by penalizing the producers of the drug. So [...]

peak oil, deprivation and inequity

Today the New York Times reports on weekly consumer reports conducted by University of Michigan. According to director Richard T. Curtin, many people are suffering from pricey oil–and are changing their spending because of it: just not the rich.
“Cutbacks in spending have been concentrated among households with less than $50,000 in annual income, according to [...]

New cornucopian book….

Enviro Bill McKibben has written a new book which, according to Publishers Weekly “contends that there is no boundary to human ambition or desire or to what our very inventions may make possible.” Bill McKibben is very smart and writes beautifully–and I haven’t read his new book-but I have an opinion anyway. (A bad habit [...]