And in global news…

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!