INVENTOR MARSHALL MEDOFF SHOWS OFF HIS IDEAS AND HIS PROCESS TO CREATE FUEL FROM PLANT LIFE, SUNDAY ON “60 MINUTES”
Inspiration Came from Meditation at Walden Pond
Marshall Medoff is not a trained scientist, but that didn’t stop him from embarking on a challenge that has stumped scientists for decades. This unlikely inventor claims to have discovered a novel way to extract sugars from inedible plant life – or biomass – and turn them into environmentally friendly transportation fuel, among other useful products, in a clean and cost-effective way. Lesley Stahl reports on Medoff on the next edition of 60 MINUTES Sunday, Jan. 6 (7:00-8:00 PM, ET/PT) on the CBS Television Network.
Medoff takes Stahl and 60 MINUTES cameras on a tour of his facilities where he transforms the sugars into fuels as well as bioplastic that can be programmed to disintegrate in just weeks.
Medoff says he got his inspiration from Walden Pond, where poet Henry David Thoreau once contemplated man and nature. “I used to run out to Walden, which wasn’t that far away. What I thought was, the reason people were failing [to find a cost-effective process] is they were trying to overcome nature instead of working with it,” he tells Stahl.
CONGRESSWOMAN OCASIO-CORTEZ TELLS “60 MINUTES” 70 PERCENT TAX RATES ON THE VERY RICH WOULD HELP PAY FOR “GREEN NEW DEAL” TO COMBAT CLIMATE CHANGE
The youngest woman ever elected to the U.S. Congress, Rep. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), tells Anderson Cooper that high tax rates on the very rich would help finance an ambitious plan to combat climate change known as the “Green New Deal.” The interview will be broadcast on 60 MINUTES Sunday, Jan. 6 (7:00-8:00 PM, ET/PT) on the CBS Television Network.
In a wide-ranging discussion, the 29-year-old from the Bronx also talks about her life, her political views, the reasons why she attended a protest in House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office shortly after being elected, and her thoughts about President Trump.
Ocasio-Cortez was sworn into the House of Representatives yesterday as the 116th Congress began its work in Washington, D.C. During the Democratic primary in June, she unseated the fourth-highest-ranking Democrat in the House of Representatives. Ocasio-Cortez is a Democratic Socialist. She believes in universal health care, tuition-free public college, and huge government outlays to combat global warming.
An excerpt from the 60 MINUTES interview was broadcast on CBS THIS MORNING. Below is the transcript of that exchange. Please credit 60 MINUTES:
ANDERSON COOPER: You’re talking about zero carbon emissions – no use of fossil fuels within 12 years.
ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ: That is the goal. It’s ambitious. And…
ANDERSON COOPER: How is that possible? Are you talking about everybody having to drive an electric car?
ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ: It’s going to require a lot of rapid change that we don’t even conceive as possible right now. What is the problem with trying to push our technological capacities to the furthest extent possible?
ANDERSON COOPER: This would require, though, raising taxes.
ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ: There’s an element where – yeah. There – people are going to have to start paying their fair share in taxes.
ANDERSON COOPER: Do you have a specific on the tax rate?
ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ: You know, it – you look at our tax rates back in the ‘60s and when you have a progressive tax rate system, your tax rate, you know, let’s say, from zero to $75,000 may be 10 percent or 15 percent, et cetera. But once you get to, like, the tippy tops – on your 10 millionth dollar – sometimes you see tax rates as high as 60 or 70 percent. That doesn’t mean all $10 million are taxed at an extremely high rate, but it means that as you climb up this ladder, you should be contributing more.
ANDERSON COOPER: What you are talking about, just big picture, is a radical agenda – compared to the way politics is done right now.
ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ: Well I think that it only has ever been radicals that have changed this country. Abraham Lincoln made the radical decision to sign the Emancipation Proclamation. Franklin Delano Roosevelt made the radical decision to embark on establishing programs like Social Security. That is radical.
ANDERSON COOPER: Do you call yourself a radical?
ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ: Yeah. You know, if that’s what radical means, call me a radical.
“60 MINUTES” LISTINGS FOR SUNDAY, JAN. 6
CONGRESSWOMAN OCASIO-CORTEZ – Anderson Cooper profiles Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, the youngest woman ever elected to Congress, and already one of the most controversial.
Andy Court and Evie Salomon are the producers.
PRESIDENT EL-SISI – Scott Pelley gets a rare interview with the Egyptian leader whose autocratic rule and repressive tactics have labeled him a dictator in the eyes of the world. Rachael Morehouse is the producer.
THE UNLIKELY INVENTOR – Former Boston lawyer Marshall Medoff wanted to save the world from, among other things, fossil fuel pollution. He has invented a process to produce an environmentally friendly transportation fuel from inedible plant life. Lesley Stahl reports. Sarah Koch is the producer.
WATCH THE INTERVIEW WITH PRESIDENT EL-SISI THE EGYPTIAN GOVERNMENT DOES NOT WANT YOU TO SEE, THIS SUNDAY ON “60 MINUTES”
Government Asked “60 Minutes” Not to Air Interview Touching on the Regime’s Political Prisoners and the Massacre of 800 Civilian Protesters
El-Sisi Confirms Egyptian Military Is Working with Israel Against Terrorism in the Sinai
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi sat down with Scott Pelley to make news on 60 MINUTES and confirmed his military was working with Israel against terrorists in North Sinai. But other questions, including jailing his opponents to maintain his regime and the massacre of 800 civilians by Egypt when he was defense minister, were not the kind of news his government wanted to be broadcast. The 60 MINUTES team was contacted by the Egyptian ambassador shortly after and told the interview could not be aired. The interview will be broadcast on 60 MINUTES Sunday, Jan. 6 (7:00-8:00 PM, ET/PT) on the CBS Television Network.
Asked if this cooperation with Israel was the closest ever between two enemies that once were at war, he responds: “That is correct…We have a wide range of cooperation with the Israelis.” The Egyptians are battling an estimated 1,000 ISIS-affiliated terrorists on its Sinai peninsula that they have allowed the Israelis to attack by air.
El-Sisi became the country’s minister of defense when Mohammad Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood took power after the Arab Spring revolts. A year later, President Morsi was ousted by el-Sisi on live TV. As then-minister of defense, el-Sisi is blamed for the 2013 massacre of nearly 1,000 supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood, who protested the coup. Asked if he gave the order, el-Sisi questioned Pelley’s information and then said, “There were thousands of armed people in the sit-in for more than 40 days. We tried every peaceful means to disburse them.” The government reported that just over a dozen guns were recovered among the thousands in the protest camp.
El-Sisi came to power on a wave of support from an Egyptian public dissatisfied with Morsi. But critics say el-Sisi became even more autocratic than any of his predecessors in Egypt’s modern day history.
Human Rights Watch estimates el-Sisi, a former army general, is holding 60,000 political prisoners. “I don’t know where they got that figure. I said there are no political prisoners in Egypt. Whenever there is a minority trying to impose their extremist ideology, we have to intervene regardless of their numbers,” he tells Pelley.
The U.S. State Department says that killings and torture are carried out in el-Sisi’s prisons today, just as they were before he took power. Pelley speaks with a former prisoner who was jailed for reporting false news while taking pictures of the 2013 massacre. Mohamed Soltan, an American citizen, recalls: “I was targeted because I had a camera. I had a phone and I was tweeting.” After almost two years in prison, the Obama Administration secured his release. Soltan says they used sleep deprivation and isolation to torture him. A strobe light was used to make him convulse. “Guards that were assigned to me…would pass razors under the doorstep, and the officer doctors would say to me, ‘Cut vertically, not horizontally so you can end it faster.’”
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