Brazil has just put its ten millionth flex-fuel car on the road. Ten million of them. Really. It almost boggles the mind to read a figure like that. Likewise, it is staggering to behold the full bloom of their progress on that front; “almost all vehicles sold in Brazil are flex-fuel capable…and some are even compatible with 100% ethanol…Every gas station in the country sells E85 and almost all sell E100. This has all been accomplished without government subsidies.” Brazil is not, by the way, a wealthy country. But they caught the potential for this technology early and made a real investment in it, and now their ethanol industry is self-sustaining. Whatever else you may want to say (or hear from us) about that industry’s blemishes, they’ve done a lot more to lessen their dependence on fossil fuels than we have.

We, by the way, are still trying to shore up votes on how much we should even care, at the federal level, about the environment at all. Cap-and-trade is dead, and Democrats are scrambling to come up with something else. What they’ve come up with - “different types of limits for different sectors of the economy, beginning with electric utilities and then turning later to manufacturers such as chemical plants and pulp and paper mills” - isn’t terrible, but it does include built-in stall time while industry negotiates with the government. In the meantime, industry will be gobbling up resources and polluting with their usual gusto. Which is bad enough without so-called “green-savvy” politicians having no sense of urgency about broadening our energy sources or shrinking our carbon footprint. To quote one of our more loyal readers, this latest effort, while noble, will most likely “remain viable until the next round of ignorant talking points are developed.”

Happy March, everyone! Say goodbye to universally crappy February and hello to the month when Coca-Cola, pancakes, the rubber band, and the parachute were invented. None of those things directly relate to ethanol or green energy, granted, but the world would be in pretty sad shape without pancakes. Or rubber bands, quite frankly.

As it is, we’re living in weird times. The relationship between Democrats and Republicans has gotten more caustic and spiteful than ever, to the point where ANY legislation sent to Congress will run aground, energy legislation being no exception. But state governments, hoping to reverse a wheezing economy and ballooning unemployment, “are increasingly courting renewable energy companies with stringent new rules mandating that a share of their state’s electricity come from renewable sources.” Generally, these “renewable portfolio standards” require that utilities either produce or buy renewable energy. Specific percentages and timelines are left to the individual states: New York wants 24% green energy by 2013, while Michigan only wants 10% by 2015. Maine, ever the overachiever, has its sights set on 40% by 2017.

This move towards green energy is rooted in studies finding that “almost 300,000 clean energy jobs could be created nationwide by 2025.” It’s not quite the 800,000 jobs we lost a year ago, but it’s still an impressive figure from a field wide open for innovation and growth. The most common sources of green energy are wind and solar power, but everything from ethanol production (yay!) to dredging up geothermal energy to torching biomass is being considered. Even the clean coal people are still building castles in the air. It’s so wide open that CO Democrat Max Tyler and FL Republican Lee Constantine are pushing for almost the exact same green energy bill for their respective states - their mandates only differ by 10%.

Finally! We’ve been cheerleading the economic benefits of green energy production for what seems like ever, and so have a lot of other, more prominent bloggers and public figures and people with good sense. Hopefully Washington won’t let things get too desperate before acting on the states’ momentum.

There’s a lot to be said about Timothy Geithner, and little of it is complimentary at this point; many see him as the the banking/financial industry’s chief administrative finger puppet. But he’s also one of Obama’s point men in the president’s renewed drive to take his ideas on the road, which is why Geithner toured Minnesota’s much-touted “green economy” yesterday.

Indeed, the Land of 10,000 Lakes has capitalized on the fact that it’s essentially a desolate, windswept prairie by building turbines and developing a solid wind energy industry. It was also one of the first states to push ethanol as an additive for motor fuel, which surprises people who don’t realize that Minnesota is a progressive-minded state with high numbers of healthy, literate people, a demographic that tends to support renewables. And while no one’s immune to economic woes - the company Joe Biden endorsed as a triumph of stimulus spending laid off 300 people last year - hopes are still high that green jobs will prevail in 2010. Which, we imagine, is what Geithner was there to determine. Hopefully he’ll decide that funding growing companies is as important as eternally propping up their badly-run counterparts. Our hopes aren’t high - nor should they be, to judge by his performance as Treasury Secretary up to now - but both Obama and Joe Biden have pledged money towards green jobs and high-speed rail, so he can only backslide so far.

For more about high-speed rail plans, Click the Car. As a bonus, you’ll see a typically childish, obstructionist response from the Wisconsin GOP. Seeya next week!

Hello? Is this thing on? We’ve been without Internet for a couple of days, but it looks like we’re back, and with a stronger Mbps rate, to boot. We’ve also been slacking on the cool, eco-friendly things Baltimore has been doing as of late, so let’s pause for an update.

Before Mayor Dixon resigned, the city introduced a fleet of DesignLine 2009 EcoSaver buses called the Charm City Circulator as part of an on-going plan to revitalize the city’s public trans., and there’s lots of rooftop gardening and urban sustainability projects going on locally, as well. B’More Green, the Baltimore Sun’s environmental blog, brought up a recent interview with Gov. O’Malley where he talked about doing more to strengthen solar power development and offer tax breaks for electric cars. The article also mentions the major budget crunch hampering many of the state’s green efforts, so who knows how far any of O’Malley’s plans will go. Hopefully he’ll do better for Baltimore as a governor than a mayor, not that we have much room to complain about his mayoral legacy in light of our current, rudderless City Hall.
But before we all go patting ourselves on the back about eco-friendliness, there’s also a story about how far the city still has to go: turns out local woman Maxine Taylor was cited last year for “having a driveway and parking pad made out of wood chips.” The city’s zoning codes still insist that parking areas have to be “dustless” asphalt, brick, concrete or stone block,” even as Baltimore’s Sustainability Plan hopes to engage residents in making the city a cleaner, greener place. Oops.

We’ll stop here, just short of jinxing our repaired Internet connection, but we’ll post again later in the week.

According to the Environmental Law Institute, energy subsidies are “black, not green.” Approximately $72 billion in fossil fuel subsidies was handed out over ELI’s seven-year study period; renewable fuels only got $29 billion. Half of the renewable subsidies went to corn ethanol production, interestingly enough, but that’s still only $15 billion or so compared to $72 billion for fossil fuels, despite overwhelming evidence that we need to cut our dependence on it for environmental and geopolitical reasons.

Little wonder, then, that ethanol plants keep losing money and shutting down. Articles like New American’s “The Ethanol Fiasco” miss the point because, clearly, the government hasn’t really invested much of anything in renewable fuels yet. But then again, pro-oil shills missed the point for most of 2009, and will continue missing it as long as they dismiss renewables out of hand without noticing how other countries - Brazil, China, India - are capitalizing on them.

But let’s not get too glum, here: Click the Car for an article about the Eco-Smart Zeta ethanol fireplace (which we wrote about last April) that’ll keep you warm during the record cold fronts sweeping the country right now.

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.

Has it really been 9 days since our last update? Where does the time go? Oh yeah, to work and grad school. Right.

Anyway, we do have some good news to report for once: a taxpayer-owned garbage-to-ethanol plant is in the works for rural Schneider, Indiana. This is good news for Indiana, whose ethanol industry has hit some major snags thanks to the economic downturn.

Land negotiations between Indiana Ethanol Power LLC and Lake County waste management officials actually began last year, but Schneider locals have recently been concerned as to the politics behind the plant - former state Democratic Party chairman Michael Pannos did legal work to help secure the land it was built on - but local waste management swears up and down that he doesn’t have a controlling stake in the plant.

In fact, Lake County Solid Waste Management District Director Jeffrey Langbehn took time to “reassure the public that…the county waste district will own the land and buildings as protection against its being abused by anyone for private gain at public expense.” And we here at Corn Car can certainly trust a man with such an ostentatious job title. He must print his business cards on bookmarks. Sheesh.

Anyway, we agree with Green Car Congress’ followers about this being a fabulous local/regional energy solution. It may seem like a trivial story to follow, but if larger, dirtier cities like Chicago or Baltimore tried this, it could really catch on. Hell, there’s probably enough junk at the bottom of the Chesapeake Bay right now to keep Charm City’s lights on for decades.

Well, the global warming bill has been approved by the Democrats on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, but the New York Times doesn’t take that as a sign that the bill itself is going anywhere. Their reasoning, as quoted by the Charleston Gazette, is that “rising joblessness has amplified attacks from critics who deride [President] Obama’s energy policy as a big-government ‘cap and tax’ plan.” In other words, the Democrats are once again hobbled by baseless criticism from the peanut gallery. The bewildering resistance to this bill is explained further, and perhaps better, by the Center for Public Integrity’s Stalemate In Copenhagen project, which shines a light on “fossil fuel industries and other heavy carbon emitters” who’ve been trying to gum up the works. Coal is a big one here, as evidenced by Don Blankenship’s Appalachian Friends of America rallies, where attendees listen to country music and “learn how environmental extremists and corporate America are both trying to destroy your jobs.”

And even if that wasn’t an issue, actual debate on global warming legislation probably won’t start until next year anyway; according to Sen. John Rockefeller, “some people are talking about not doing it until after the 2010 election.” Sounds like what a lot of them tell their wives, actually.

In times like these, there’s only one thing most citizens who aren’t lobbyists and therefore still count as human beings can do: nag the hell out of your representatives’ office staff. Find out who to write/call at USA.gov and get to work! We did elect them to represent us, after all - maybe they need to be reminded of that.

Well, while Democrats try to force the global warming bill through the Senate and Republicans threaten to kill it in committee with a boycott, F.O. Licht’s World Ethanol 2009 12th annual conference is being held in Paris this week. Countries like the United States, Brazil, India, France, and Nigeria are being represented and sharing their views on global ethanol development. One of our representatives, Renewable Fuels Association CEO/President Bob Dinneen,  will look at “expanding ethanol markets and addressing unsubstantiated claims about the environmental impact of ethanol.” So at least SOMEONE can address the topic like an adult.

Meanwhile, the rest of us get Barbara Boxer and George Voinovich interrupting each other over a retarded semantics disagreement and conservative pundits smearing anyone who speaks up about the issue as a fanatic hippie moonbat. And that’s not even counting the Midwestern contingent who can’t debate this issue for more than ten seconds without tripping over their own dicks trying to monopolize it for political points.

Anyway, now that we’ve thoroughly bummed ourselves out, we’re gonna stop here and hope for the best. But we need something to cheer us up. Some hot chicks posing next to an electric car should do it.