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More Pombo taint

The ethics (or, rather, the lack thereof) buzz around Rep. Richard "Dick" Pombo (R-Calif.) is getting louder. The latest has to do with over $6,000 in taxpayer money he used to rent an RV and drive his family around on a two-week vacation to various national parks, which he assures us was all official business. Several of the park officials he claimed to have met, however, are struggling to recall ever seeing him. Must have slipped their minds.

For more, see ThinkProgress and Environmental Action.

Some background and some thank-you’s

As the lead editor on Poverty & the Environment, I can say that the tough thing about putting together a series like this isn't what goes into it; it's what doesn't go in -- the great stories that wind up on the cutting room floor because you run out of time, or run out of money, or the journalist goes into labor a month early, or your awe-inspiring colleagues finally say, "we'd love to but we've already worked 96 hours this week."

This chronic editorial dilemma was particularly acute with the current series. Given the subject matter, "embarrassment of riches" is exactly the wrong phrase, but it is certainly (and sadly) the case that there's no shortage of important stories to be told about the relationship between environmental and economic injustice. (That's one reason I encourage all of you to use this discussion forum to share your own ideas and experiences, as well as your reactions to what you read here.)

We at Grist owe our familiarity with these issues to a great many people who took the time, early on in this process, to talk to us about their work and their vision for this series. That input was so valuable that I want to post some of it here; where we have not been able to incorporate it into the rest of the series, we can at least share it directly with our readers.

Herewith, then, a very abbreviated list of heartfelt thank-yous, helpful advisors, and important ideas:

Aw, Mom, Not Whaleloaf Again!

Japanese government trying to unload surplus whale meat Japan’s “research” whaling has led to a market glutted with whale meat. Burdened by 2,700 tons of whale heading for freezer burn, […]

What Doesn’t Krill Me Makes Me Stronger

Smaller number of gray whales migrating south to breed, says researcher Fewer gray whales are migrating from North Pacific feeding grounds to warm Mexican lagoons to breed this year. British […]

Public Land Enemy No. 1

White House wants to auction off 300,000 acres of public land The Bush administration has proposed a sell-off of over $1 billon worth of public land over the next five […]

Poverty & the Environment

Grist launches a seven-week special series In much of popular and political culture, the environmental movement is dismissed as the pet cause of white, well-off Americans. And yet, the population […]

A virtual walking tour of Columbia, Miss., with Charlotte Keys of Jesus People Against Pollution

In 1977, a factory in Columbia, Miss., that had been manufacturing Agent Orange was rocked by an explosion. The owner, Reichhold Chemical Inc., shuttered the facility and abandoned or buried […]

Now on to humans!

At least public transportation is catching on somewhere.

(via BB)

Gulf oil production remains hobbled

Oil spills in the Gulf of Mexico didn't get much attention during the 2005 hurricane season. Thankfully none were so catastrophic as to overtake any of the catastrophes unfolding on land during Katrina and Rita. But as the folks at SKYTRUTH document, there were still plenty of spills.

And according to the Minerals Management Service (the part of the Department of the Interior responsible for overseeing production in federal waters), Katrina and Rita were the greatest natural disasters to oil and gas development in the history of the Gulf.

Furthermore, the impact hasn't stopped. Due to the oil infrastructure wreckage, three boats have been damaged, including one that led to a massive spill back in November.

Klare on the permanent energy crisis

Energy analyst Michael T. Klare has been busy lately. There was his great piece on natural gas in The Nation, an op-ed in the L.A. Times this weekend about how it's not just us but the whole world that's addicted to oil, and -- most deserving of your attention -- a new piece on Tom's Dispatch arguing that the world is on the brink of a more-or-less permanent energy crisis:

Although we cannot hope to foresee all the ways such forces will affect the global human community, the primary vectors of the permanent energy crisis can be identified and charted. Three such vectors, in particular, demand attention: a slowing in the growth of energy supplies at a time of accelerating worldwide demand; rising political instability provoked by geopolitical competition for those supplies; and mounting environmental woes produced by our continuing addiction to oil, natural gas, and coal. Each of these would be cause enough for worry, but it is their intersection that we need to fear above all.

Yup.

Read the whole thing.