We read a lot here at Corn Car, and there are a number of books out there that deal with the issues we blog about, from the specificities of ethanol and alternative fuels to more general issues like environmentalism and conservation. Many of them are textbooks, yes, and they’re by definition on the dry side, but these issues have wormed their way into novels as well. Hell, there’s been plenty of dystopian sci-fi set in the wake of unsustainable consumption at the expense of finite natural resources. Here, then, is a reading list for anyone interested in the greener side of edutainment. And in case you’ve still got holiday gift cards to burn, we’ve included links to buy the books online.

Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, for example, is widely credited with bolstering the environmentalist movement. While there are occasional drawbacks to the book’s legacy, it got other authors thinking about ecological change and its consequences. Silent Spring focused on the use of pesticides and their role in pollution, and JFK directed his Science Advisory Committee to investigate her claims, which were found to be legitimate. Take THAT, American Cyanamid!

One of the books taking Carson’s work to heart was Dune, by Frank Herbert, often referred to as “the first planetary ecology novel.” Characters must compromise with the ecosystems they live in, and Herbert’s depiction of a planet as a complex mega-organism synced up with the first images of earth from space being published at that time. Because of this, Dune strongly influenced environmental movements and reportedly had a hand in establishing the international Earth Day. Modern conservation efforts owe a lot to Dune. More recently, the Dune franchise has broadened into a series of books, movies, TV shows, board games, and other stuff that will brand you as a nerd forever, but the original novel’s legacy is not to be shrugged aside.

More on the informative side (and more relevant to this blog), permaculturist David Blume’s Alcohol Can Be a Gas!: Fueling an Ethanol Revolution for the 21st Century is one of the most readable textbooks on the subject. It is also one of the only textbooks on the subject. It lays out the process of building and maintaining an ethanol plant, and summarizes the history of ethanol from the Whiskey Rebellion to about three years ago, outlining the century-old struggle between ethanol advocates and their petroleum-soaked opposition in an entertaining and provocative fashion. We’re pretty sure he’s not related to Judy Blume, but if it turns out that he is, expect Are You There, God? It’s Me, Ethanol to hit bookshelves soon.

There, that should get you started. We’ll add more to our reading list on Friday. Stay tuned!

So Porsche has officially said no to proposed hybrid versions of the 911 or the Boxster - hybrid components, they claim, would add too much weight, and sports cars aren’t meant for city driving anyway. Debatable point, but whatever. The good news is that Porsche does want to make an all-electric sports car, assuming it could meet the performance standards of a regular engine. Or, more likely, when the corporate yuppie fartbags who drive Porsches can be convinced to go electric.

But hybrids are making progress elsewhere. Peugeot is still in production for its 2011 diesel-hybrid vehicle, the 3008 Hybrid4 Concept, and both Mercedes-Benz and GM are following suit. “Both cars are mild hybrids,” says Fox News’ website, “meaning the electric motor adds power to that of the combustion engine, as well as restarting it from stops. But they are not capable of running in all-electric mode, like…the Toyota Prius.” That was…surprisingly vitriol-free for Fox. Huh.

Anyway, hybrids and other green cars have been a hit for American automakers, whose finances are still delicate after Detroit’s 2007-08 freefalling crash - The Daily Green reports that “Ford’s hybrid sales were up 147% for the year,” adding that “the Ford Fusion Hybrid is a hit.” Ford has been recouping its losses, ending 2009 with a full percentage point gain in US market share, and their stock price is now 10 times improved. Their success could partly explain why GM is gunning for hybrid and diesel-hybrid vehicle production in the coming year - both GM and Chrysler are still struggling. Then again, Ford could go nowhere but up - owners of the ‘93 Taurus understand what we mean here.

Still, this is all promising news for 2010. Keep sending us stories, folks, and we’ll keep reporting ‘em. There might be a list in the works, too…

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.

Say what you want about Henry Ford (Hitler-admiring, right-wing extremist asshole is a good place to start), but the man knew cars. He practically invented them, in the American sense of it. And as it turns out, he was an early and passionate advocate of biofuels, according to the Examiner. An article about Ford’s support of biofuels, specifically hemp, was posted on their website back in September, and it links to excerpts of Ford’s fuel philosophies (provided by Hempcar).

“The fuel of the future,” Ford told a NYT reporter, “is going to come from…apples, weeds, sawdust — almost anything…there is fuel in every bit of vegetable matter that can be fermented.” Ford is talking about cellulosic ethanol here, and this interview was conducted back in 1925. That’s like hearing Clara Bow predicting celebrity sex tapes or something.

Similar sentiments (about hemp fuel, not sex tapes) have been espoused by ex-Dead Kennedys frontman and political gadfly Jello Biafra, whose “Grow More Pot” speech gives an entertaining summary of American hemp culture and highlights its use as a sustainable fuel source (pt. 1 and pt. 2, courtesy of Youtube).

Granted, the discourse has been hijacked by goofy stoners since Ford’s time and Jello panders to that element a little much, but the larger point is that sustainable fuels are not a trivial, passing fad; they were, in Ford’s time, part of a larger proposal for a broad movement for scientific research to revitalize a then-struggling economy on the verge, as it turned out, of a major depression. We’re kind of in the same position now. But it’s a new year, and that means new opportunities to promote biofuels and sustainable energy that were seriously considered even at the birth of the automobile.

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!