Sorry this post is so late, but for the uninformed, the Southeast/Mid-Atlantic areas were mercilessly pummeled by snow over the weekend. Virginia, which is where we were, got 20 inches of snow in a little more than a day. And since most cities in VA aren’t prepared for anything except the Rapture, plowing the roads took forever. So did digging our cars out of that miserable hellfrost - it might as well have been archaeology, considering how long we were out there.

But! We’ve still got some last minute holiday tips for those planning on a green Christmas this year. First up are some fun pro-ethanol gifts courtesy of CafePress - shirts, sweatshirts, mugs, and even clocks abound. You could also grab some LED holiday lights for around the house and yard; we personally think LED lights look awesome. Finally, here are some tips from Renewable DIY Energy about keeping Christmas fun, and good for the planet.

It’s been an interesting, and often disappointing, year for biofuel/renewable energy supporters, but the idea that we should conserve and protect our environment keeps gaining momentum among ordinary people. That it took a near collapse of the world economy to bring this stuff into sharper focus is unfortunate (and many current woes in the ethanol industry come from sudden lack of available funding), but the transition from people being aware of renewable energy to actually caring about it is being made right now. Whether the legislation to back us up appears or not has yet to be determined, but there’s certainly a lot of dirt stirring up on the ground, both literally and figuratively.

And the ethanol industry is preparing to come back hard in 2010, backed by improving operating plant margins and the EPA’s tentative approval of a higher ethanol blend in gasoline; Click the Car to read more about that. For now, we’re going to drink more organic egg nog and offer tribute to Ullr, Norse god of snow, so that he might spare us another freak blizzard. Merry holidays, all!

Back to China for the bajillionth time, as they’re building, according to NPR, “the world’s biggest wind power project,” which will produce 12 times the power of Texas’ Roscoe Wind Farm upon completion. NPR notes the curious paradox of China supplementing their wind power with coal-fired power stations, but also notes the intense pride shared between the business interests behind the project and the locals building it; they really do feel like this work is important, and that China has a real chance to lead the renewables industry. Granted, their government would probably have them killed if they felt any differently, but the fact remains that they’re taking “going green” much more seriously as a longterm prospect than we are.

So is France, for that matter. French President Nikolas Sarkozy is staking his political career on taxing businesses and individual households “according to their carbon footprint.” France is the largest European country to implement a carbon tax, and the tax (set for January 2010) is already weathering fierce criticism. Planting it in the middle of a global recession was questionable timing, certainly, but Sarkozy’s speeches defending the tax are ripe with the concession that we don’t have the choice of ignoring global warming and conservation anymore. He also claims that the taxes will be refunded directly or subsidized through other tax reductions, but time will tell whether or not he means that. Ours aren’t the only politicians who lie, after all.

Our recent look at international efforts to conserve energy and lower dependence on oil isn’t an attempt to fear-monger, by the way, nor is it our intention to shit on America from within. But it is an attempt to get readers to understand what serious, proactive stances on alt. energy look like, and they are models that the US is fully capable of adopting and molding to its specific needs and geography. We’re also not guaranteeing that every foreign idea will work, either. But the fact that they’re trying at all instead of dicking around and stalling at the behest of their corporate overlords, which they also have, is very telling of how seriously we’re taking renewable energy innovation.

For a look at what India’s been up to, Click the Car.

Short update today, but a worthwhile one: the New York Times has an interesting and sobering article (free registration required) on America’s sluggish green energy development. While some geothermal and wind stuff is being done, overall progress is lagging behind Europe, China, and India (as we all know), and it’s reaching the point where mud hut-dwelling peasants in the ass end of nowhere are going to beat us to a workable green energy program.

Part of the problem is money - banks aren’t lending to alt-energy projects, and existing companies don’t want to invest in new equipment before relevant legislation kicks in. And part of the problem lies at the feet of contentious fartbags like Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who still doesn’t believe that greenhouse gases hurt anything and calls any regulations on them “onerous” and based on “manipulated data.” What will convince him of something that’s already demonstrably true is a mystery. And unfortunately, his fellow Republicans aren’t much more reasonable - their tendency towards anti-everything political hypochondria is just clouding the issue.

The Apollo Alliance’s Cathy Calfo puts it best; “As a country, we need to make a decision that we do or don’t want to be a leader in this area.” Right now, it’s looking like we don’t. And that’s going to cost us dearly in the future. Hell, it already is in the present.

But to cheer us all up, Click the Car for an article about Denmark’s electric car ambitions.

Well, Baltimore officially welcomes December by possibly seeing its mayor lose her office over $630 worth of stolen gift cards. If only there were some way to convert her myriad indictments into ethanol…

Oh well. We’ve got bigger fish to fry today, and the heat might be coming from outer space: Japan is investing in space-based solar technology, which is something we mentioned a while ago with great excitement, because we are basically children when it comes to the idea of things beaming down from space. This isn’t totally surprising, though, as Japan is a tiny country with few domestic energy resources, and they’ve been longtime proponents of solar energy.

But this is especially ambitious; their proposed Space Solar Power System (SSPS), would put huge photovoltaic dishes “in geostationary orbit outside the Earth’s atmosphere.” They would capture solar energy there (to quote researchers at Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, “the sun’s rays abound in space”), and beam it down through clusters of lasers or microwaves. Like China and India, Japan is investing heavily in new ideas to reduce their country’s carbon footprint, and this is yet another sign that America needs to spearhead some innovation of its own.

Meanwhile, normally pacifistic Sweden is having something of a rabbit problem - rabbits are not native to their country and have been, as is customary for them, overbreeding and feasting on Stockholm’s local crops. And while it’s more than legal to hunt the little bastards, it’s definitely illegal to toss them into landfills once they’re dead. So Sweden has been turning dead rabbits into fuel. Apparently they, and other dead animals, are “crushed, ground and then pumped into a boiler where it is burned together with wood chips, peat or other waste to produce heat.” Critics of this system think it’s disgusting and claim that it doesn’t solve the basic overpopulation problem; rather, it tries to build an industry from it. And we agree with them - although it’s hard to condone their idea of using rabbit-repellent pesticides, comments like “we can’t give them bunny birth control pills, so we have to put the rabbits away,” come off as cold, rapacious, and sociopathic, even from people who think lye is a garnish.

Anyway, enough about dead bunnies. Click the Corn Car logo for a more pleasant article about how some American scientists want to turn trees into carbon banks. Happy December, everyone!