Unfortunately, at this rate, this is just the first summer of oil.

Every time Linda Young takes her dog out for a walk, morning or evening, she can smell it. Young, an environmental activist who lives near the beach in Navarre, next door to Pensacola Beach, said the odor of oil is now a constant part of her life.

If the wind is blowing in from the Gulf of Mexico, she said, "the oil smell is often very strong, too strong to be outside."

In ways big and small, the Deepwater Horizon disaster is reshaping the Gulf Coast. It's doing more than damaging the tourism and fishing industries; it's permeating the air people breathe and the way they think and feel, altering habits formed over a lifetime.

"This is impacting more lives than any hurricane does," said Jack Sanborn, who runs a canoe rental business in the Panhandle called Adventures Unlimited.

Some people are calling it the Summer of Oil, but the oil's impact will continue well beyond August, when a relief well being drilled by BP is supposed to shut down the undersea gusher at last. So much oil has spewed into the gulf that Florida officials say even if the relief well works, the spill is likely to keep tossing goop onto Florida beaches until at least October.

Read the rest of this St. Petersburg Times article, by Craig Pittman, here.

Here's video from Pensacola Beach, Fla., from July 7:

As technologically advanced as our country is, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense when you realize our power grid is based on 1960s technology. It's not efficient and it's not very smart.

That's why, this month, National Geographic is taking a look at what a 21-century power grid might look like. Here's a snippet:

The grid is wondrous. And yet—in part because we've paid so little attention to it, engineers tell us—it's not the grid we need for the 21st century. It's too old. It's reliable but not reliable enough, especially in the United States, especially for our mushrooming population of finicky digital devices. Blackouts, brownouts, and other power outs cost Americans an estimated $80 billion a year. And at the same time that it needs to become more reliable, the grid needs dramatic upgrading to handle a different kind of power, a greener kind. That means, among other things, more transmission lines to carry wind power and solar power from remote places to big cities.

Most important, the grid must get smarter. The precise definition of "smart" varies from one engineer to the next. The gist is that a smart grid would be more automated and more "self-healing," and so less prone to failure. It would be more tolerant of small-scale, variable power sources such as solar panels and wind turbines, in part because it would even out fluctuations by storing energy—in the batteries of electric cars, according to one speculative vision of the future, or perhaps in giant caverns filled with compressed air.

But the first thing a smart grid will do, if we let it, is turn us into savvier consumers of electricity.

Read the entire article here.

Yesterday, NPR's Fresh Air invited the author of the National Geographic article, Joel Achenbach, to explain what's wrong with our current power grid and why it's not good enough for today's highly charged world. He also explains how a smart grid can help us conserve energy and save money through feedback from the power company. Read or listen to his interview here.

Here's some more 1960s technology for ya. Aren't you glad we upgraded?

The cops got radios. POW! Take that, criminals.

Color television was all the rage! Zowie!

We could make long distance calls and pagers (a.k.a. "Bell Boys") only weighed about five pounds. Outta sight!

Kitchen appliances got a snazzy makeover. Shizam.

Further reading: 13 Energy Saboteurs — The Daily Beast

The folks over at EarthJustice have been busy! They've created an easy button for you that enables you to share your thoughts about coal ash with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency without much effort. Press the button here.

In case you're late to the convo, here are a few links that will quickly bring you up to speed:

Coal's Dirty Secret -- Institute for Southern Studies

Is Coal Ash Hazardous Waste, or Isn't it? -- Creative Loafing

North Carolina orders utilities to test groundwater near coal ash ponds -- Institute for Southern Studies

The Catawba Riverkeeper has also compiled a list of links. Check them out here.

To sum up, there are four unlined, high-hazard coal ash ponds near Charlotte on the Catawba River. Two of which are on the edge of Mountain Island lake, which is part of the river and also known as our main drinking water reservoir. Those two ponds are about a dozen miles from the heart of Uptown and just upstream from where Charlotte-Meckenburg Utilities withdraws our drinking water from the lake. See for yourself.

This isn't an issue we're removed from. This is an issue that's affects us all.

EarthJustice has also produced a powerful series of videos about coal ash worth watching. Here they are:

Good news for breathers, the EPA is cracking down on air pollution created by coal plants. And, this is great news for Charlotte, since the city is virtually surrounded by coal plants.

From ThinkProgress.org's Wonk Room:

Today, the Obama administration proposed a sweeping plan to reduce power plant emissions that cross state lines and kill tens of thousands of Americans every year. The proposed Clean Air Transport Rule replaces the Bush administration’s so-called “clean air interstate rule” (CAIR) that was shot down by the courts because it permitted so much interstate emission trading that even some power companies filed suit.

Read more here.

But, what does this mean for Charlotte-based Duke Energy, the company that owns the coal plants surrounding the Queen City? Well, it's a little too early to tell, but there's speculation Duke may have to close some of the company's older plants, like the 80-year-old Riverbend plant that's a mere dozen miles from the heart of Uptown, sooner than anticipated.

So, what does this mean for you? Better health.

According to the EPA's press release:

Today’s action would yield more than $120 billion in annual health benefits in 2014, including avoiding an estimated 14,000 to 36,000 premature deaths, 23,000 nonfatal heart attacks, 21,000 cases of acute bronchitis, 240,000 cases of aggravated asthma, and 1.9 million days when people miss school or work due to ozone- and particle pollution-related symptoms. These benefits would far outweigh the annual cost of compliance with the proposed rule, which EPA estimates at $2.8 billion in 2014.

In case you missed the news over the holiday weekend, you might want to know that Bloomberg Markets magazine is featuring a couple of Charlotte's big banks in their August issue, and not because they're impressed with them:

Just before sunset on April 10, 2006, a DC-9 jet landed at the international airport in the port city of Ciudad del Carmen, 500 miles east of Mexico City. As soldiers on the ground approached the plane, the crew tried to shoo them away, saying there was a dangerous oil leak. So the troops grew suspicious and searched the jet.

They found 128 black suitcases, packed with 5.7 tons of cocaine, valued at $100 million. The stash was supposed to have been delivered from Caracas to drug traffickers in Toluca, near Mexico City, Mexican prosecutors later found. Law enforcement officials also discovered something else.

The smugglers had bought the DC-9 with laundered funds they transferred through two of the biggest banks in the U.S.: Wachovia Corp. and Bank of America Corp., Bloomberg Markets magazine reports in its August 2010 issue.

This was no isolated incident. Wachovia, it turns out, had made a habit of helping move money for Mexican drug smugglers. Wells Fargo & Co., which bought Wachovia in 2008, has admitted in court that its unit failed to monitor and report suspected money laundering by narcotics traffickers -- including the cash used to buy four planes that shipped a total of 22 tons of cocaine.

The admission came in an agreement that Charlotte, North Carolina-based Wachovia struck with federal prosecutors in March, and it sheds light on the largely undocumented role of U.S. banks in contributing to the violent drug trade that has convulsed Mexico for the past four years.

Read the rest of this article, by Michael Smith, here.

Here's the thing that gets me about drugs in America:

Americans demand the drugs, and we're willing to pay top dollar for them. We, therefore, create the market, which is quite lucrative. So our always money-hungry banks assist growers and dealers in their efforts to get the drugs into our hands to meet our unending demand in exchange for our precious dollars.

Then, our courts penalize the growers and dealers and users whenever they're caught. But, that doesn't quell our appetite, and as long as we have the appetite for drugs (and we do and will) and we have the money to buy them (and we do and will) then this shitty cycle will continue.

Meanwhile, the American taxpayer pays the wages of those charged with playing cops and villains throughout every inch of this great land. We then pay to house the villains in prisons after they've been caught and processed through our expensive judicial system. And don't forget, we also pay exorbitant fees at banks that screw us repeatedly while continuing to assist said villains in their villainous trade.

And, what do we call this nonsense? We call it a war. In this "war," we're supposedly the good guys and anyone who's involved in the drug trade (excluding giant banks, apparently) are the bad guys. Meanwhile, all hell breaks loose in Mexico — but not here, so we mostly ignore the problem and pretend we have nothing to do with it (even if we're the ones looking for a bump in the back of the club).

Listen: This is crazy.

THIS IS CRAZY, do you hear me?

We either need to accept that Americans are a bunch of drug-using hypocrites, end the so-called "war" and start treating drugs like any other import; or, we need to get serious about the war and hold these big dogs accountable just like we hold the dealer on the street, the crack whore and the crew hauling in a truckload of snow from the border accountable.

This is not a "them" problem. This is an "us" problem. This may even be a "you" problem. And, we're not going to be able to do a thing about it until we take responsibility for our role in it. Without our money and constant demand for drugs, this would be a non-issue and the murder rate in Mexico, and some American border cities, would be significantly lower.

You know how upbeat BP representatives and the U.S. Coast Guard seem to be about the company's ability to clean up the massive natural disaster their carelessness created in the Gulf of Mexico and along the coasts of every Gulf state?

Yeah, well, they're full of shit.

In the 77 days since oil from the ruptured Deepwater Horizon began to gush into the Gulf of Mexico, BP has skimmed or burned about 60 percent of the amount it promised regulators it could remove in a single day.

The disparity between what BP promised in its March 24 filing with federal regulators and the amount of oil recovered since the April 20 explosion underscores what some officials and environmental groups call a misleading numbers game that has led to widespread confusion about the extent of the spill and the progress of the recovery.

"It's clear they overreached," said John F. Young Jr., council chairman in Louisiana's Jefferson Parish. "I think the federal government should have at the very least picked up a phone and started asking some questions and challenged them about the accuracy of that number and tested the veracity of that claim."

In a March report that was not questioned by federal officials, BP said it had the capacity to skim and remove 491,721 barrels of oil each day in the event of a major spill.

As of Monday, with about 2 million barrels released into the gulf, the skimming operations that were touted as key to preventing environmental disaster have averaged less than 900 barrels a day.

Read the rest of this Washington Post article, by Kimberly Kindy, here.

CNN's Anderson Cooper on how BP is attempting to control the media and prevent us from knowing what's really happening with the oil spill cleanup's progress. What, exactly, is the company trying to hide? And, why isn't our government protecting the First Amendment?

Seen the oily (and, admit it, funny) ad about North Carolina's Sen. Richard Burr and his coffer-filling corporate buds?

Well, Sen. Bur calls the current ad — paid for by the League of Conservation Voters, VoteVets.org Action Fund, the Sierra Club and the Service Employees International Union — "gutter politics" and claims their attempts at "character assassination" won't work.

Of course, he's not denying the truth: He did accept nearly half a million dollars from oil companies. But, I guess that's non-gutter politics in his book. Suppose that depends on who you ask.

Here's the latest oily ad, and a couple more for good measure:

To celebrate — scratch that — lament BP's big milestone, we've created a list of articles you should read about the clusterfuck in the Gulf of Mexico (the headlines, alone, are enough to make you want to scream):

BP spill nears a somber record as Gulf's biggest — MSNBC.com

Day 71: The Latest on the Oil Spill — The New York Times

BP plans to get rid of safety watchdog, sources say — CNN.com

BP joined investigation of itself, contractor — Anchorage Daily News

U.S. fines BP for erroneous reporting — The Los Angeles Times

Gulf oil spill: Suicide of spill worker prompts call for mental health aid — The Los Angeles Times

Oil spill's psychological toll quietly mounts — NewsChannel8, Portland, Ore.

Health of Exxon Valdez cleanup workers was never studied — The Miami Herald

'Almost All of the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Workers are Dead' — The Salem (Oregon) News

Will these critters be endangered by the Gulf gusher? — Grist.org

Oil Spill Imperils Gulf Coast Fishing Industry — Bloomberg Business Week

Gulf Seafood: Who Decides How Safe Is Safe? — AOLnews.com

Bluefin tuna particularly vulnerable to Gulf of Mexico oil leak — The Times-Picayune

Biologists find 'dead zones' around BP oil spill in Gulf — The Guardian

Expert measures human cost of Gulf oil leak — Grist.org

BP Oil Spill Compensation Fund Won’t Cover All Losses — NewsInferno.com

Cleanup Hiring Feeds Frustration in Fishing Town — The New York Times

Beware scammers exploiting BP oil spill — The (Pensacola) News Herald

Further reading: Former Energy Exec Spills On "Why We Hate Oil Companies" — CrossroadsCharlotte.org

What it's like to scuba dive in the Gulf of Mexico today, "It's just globs of death out there."

The Columbia Journalism Review takes a look at who is using the D-word these days. "D" as in "Depression." As in the nightmare that makes your grandma want to bury cash in her backyard.

With Washington still unable to get its act together on a new round of stimulus spending, warnings about the consequences of inaction are taking on a much more serious tone. And while it may not be a full-fledged meme shift, the word “depression” is starting to creep into the coverage.

Paul Krugman looked to the history books in his Monday column and found “only two eras in economic history that were widely described as ‘depressions’ at the time: the years of deflation and instability that followed the Panic of 1873 and the years of mass unemployment that followed the financial crisis of 1929-31.”

Read the rest of this CJR article, by Holly Yeager, to find out who else is mentioning the D-word.

On the obsession with deficits, ignoring the jobless and how the G-20 failed us:

*wild applause*

New Dominion Bank and the recruiting firm Sherpa don't have much in common, but the two Charlotte companies have been in a heated competition since June 1.

The winner will have added the least pollution to the city's air this summer.

The competition began when two Sherpa employees - Kori Renn and Heather Tatum - decided they wanted to step up the company's involvement in Clean Air Works!, a Charlotte-based program helping 116 businesses improve air quality.

Employees gain points for carpooling to work and to lunch, using public transit, swapping old light bulbs for energy-efficient ones, refueling cars after 6 p.m. and using reusable grocery bags.

Combined, the companies' actions have saved 2,985 miles in vehicle usage - by carpooling to work or walking to lunch - and 1,941 grams of nitrogen dioxide, a chemical that adds to the formation of ground-level ozone and can have adverse affects on the respiratory system, Dory said.

An average commute for a Charlotte resident - about 24 miles round-trip - creates 15 grams of nitrogen, according to Mecklenburg County air quality emissions.

Read the rest of this Charlotte Observer article, by Danielle Kucera, here.

Here are some easy ways you, too, can go green: