Monday, 26 Mar 2007

Turns Out He Does Know Jack

Former Interior deputy pleads guilty to lying in Abramoff investigation

The second in command at the U.S. Interior Department in Bush's first term has pleaded guilty to telling big, fat lies to the Senate during the Jack Abramoff lobbying investigation. That's what the kids call obstruction of justice, and it could have netted J. Steven Griles up to five years in prison, but he'll likely get five months in jail and five months of house arrest. When Gale Norton's former deputy first testified in late 2005, he said -- five times -- that his and Jacko's bond was nothing special. But it seems he was "ready and willing to serve as Jack Abramoff's 'man inside Interior,'" says Inspector General Earl Devaney. And having a man on the inside apparently helped Abramoff convince high-paying Native American clients that he had pull. Griles, says Friends of the Earth, "led a rogues' gallery of oil, gas, and mining lobbyists turned political appointees who used their jobs at Interior to advance the agenda of their former industry clients." Oh, our sweet, sullied innocence.


Texas may not be Oklahoma, but there's still plenty of wind sweepin' down the plains -- and a variety of big guns in the financial world want to take advantage of it. The Lone Star State recently became the biggest wind-power producer in the U.S., helped in large part by Goldman Sachs and other financial powerhouses rushing to get a piece of the world's fastest-growing energy source. Kate Galbraith puts her finger to the wind and reports on the status of the best big investment in Texas.

Unseamly Behavior

Federal judge blocks West Virginia coal-mining permits

Foes of mountaintop-removal mining got a break late Friday when a federal judge blocked four permits for mines in West Virginia. The permits, issued by the Army Corps of Engineers, had said it was A-OK for Massey Energy's subsidiaries to fill valleys with the dirt and other detritus left over from shearing off mountaintops to get at coal seams. But U.S. District Judge Robert Chambers said the Corps had not fully weighed the effects of such dumping on headwater streams -- 1,200 miles of which were damaged by the practice between 1985 and 2001 -- and sent the permits back for further consideration. He also instructed the Corps to stand in a corner and think about what it had done, and said any broccoli left on its plate tonight would still be there at breakfast. Anti-mining advocates like Joe Lovett hoped the verdict marked a shift: "It's clear that the Corps has been permitting the destruction of southern West Virginia without complying with the most fundamental federal environmental laws."


Growing up in Gatlinburg, Tenn., a tourist gateway to the Great Smoky Mountains and now home to Dollywood, Mary Anne Hitt saw commercial development take over the landscape. These days, mountaintop-removal coal mining poses an even bigger threat. As director of Appalachian Voices, Hitt works to solve the major environmental problems threatening the region. And as InterActivist this week, she chats about mourning the mountains, despising the term "clean coal," and more. Send her a question by noon PDT on Wednesday; we'll publish her answers to selected questions on Friday.


You probably have some idea how to make your grocery list and your driving habits greener. But what about the more intimate areas of life? Today a reader asks Umbra Fisk how to reflect one's eco-principles in the bedroom, and our fearless advice maven uncovers the ins and outs of a sex life you can be proud of.

I'm Hot, Sticky Sweet

Vermont's maple-syrup industry braces for climate change

Will warmer winters stop the flow of Vermont maple syrup? That's the question of the day in the Green Mountain State, where folks worry that climate change will make the $200 million industry -- which provides 32 percent of U.S. syrup output -- dry up. "I've always been, 'Oh, global warming, I don't know about that,'" said syrup-maker Doug Rose. "But now I do think we need to start thinking about it, because ... we're seeing production go down, we really are." Some tree-tappers report that the season now starts in January instead of March, and a recent study by the University of Vermont's Proctor Maple Research Center (sweet!) showed that the month-long season has shrunk by about three days over the last 40 years. And since the best syrup comes from warm days followed by below-freezing nights, temperatures play a key role. A hit to the tradition would hurt not only pocketbooks, but pride. "It's like a religion, maple syrup," said one worried observer. "It's the heart and soul of Vermont."