This Week's Climate News: Protests, Military Greening, and Kangaroo Meat-- 8/8

Here are some of this week's climate news stories that didn't make it onto the mainstream media teleprompters.

Environmentalists, lawmakers, and academics have been protesting the building of the U.K.’s first new coal-fired plant in 30 years in a week-long Climate Camp. If built, this coal plant would emit at least 60 million tons of CO2/year, as well as pave the way for six more coal-fired plants.

Coal is and will continue to be a feature of the U.K.’s electricity mix, declared U.K.’s Business Secretary John Hutton.

The protestors gathered in a tent city near the station disagreed, calling for more wind and solar power.

A lot of us are ready to break the law, because sometimes that’s necessary, stated a spokeswoman for Camp Climate.

Last week, protestors superglued themselves to the front door of the royal bank of Scotland and are currently planning a land, sea, and air invasion of Kingsworth’s existing power station to shut it down.

Coal has not been the only thing on the minds of environmentalists, but corn, as well. A coalition of both oil refiners and environmental groups have been fighting a recent mandate that billions of gallons of ethanol and biodiesel be blended into gasoline to meet a national Renewable Fuels Standard. The EPA has denied a request by Texas to cut federal ethanol requirements for the nation’s fuel supply because while "the agency recognizes that a number of factors have contributed to high corn, food, and fuel prices as a nation," it does not believe that the renewable fuels requirement is "causing severe economic harm" to Texas. According to the government affairs director for the Environmental Working Group:

America should be focusing on viable clean energy solutions like conservation, solar and wind. Instead the misguided corn ethanol mandate is forcing farmers to plow up marginal land and wildlife habitat while increasing global warming and dumping toxic fertilizers and pesticides into our precious water sources.

But coal and corn aside, the military may hold the key to producing and perpetuating such viable, clean energy solutions. If all goes well, the Defense Department hopes to derive 25% of the military’s energy from renewable sources by 2025. The military is also developing machines and methods to help the rest of America tackle global warming.

The military has ramped up its wind, solar, and geothermal program since 2006 in order to reduce casualties. According to Alan Shaffer, who leads the Pentagon’s research and engineering arm,

Cost matters. Lives matter more. Every time we have to send a convoy out to refuel tanks…it puts people’s lives at risk.

The military may present a big step in reducing America’s GHG emissions, but kangaroos offer quite the leap for Australia. Kangaroo meat may be the answer to climate change that Australia’s been waiting for. Well, sort of. A scientific study published in Conservation Letters has proposed that Australia reduce its stock of sheep and cattle by 30% and instead…farm kangaroos, potentially reducing the country’s carbon emissions by 3% and save hundreds of millions of dollars.

Such a reduction would create enough pasture for an increase in kangaroo population to 175 million.

Kangaroos not only produce far less methane than sheep and cattle, but their paws are less hazardous to the soil and vegetation than the livestock’s hard hooves, potentially improving soil conservation, increasing vegetation, and improving water quality.

Back in Arizona, however, researchers are rediscovering the basics, or what they thought were the basics. Arizona State University researchers have made a breakthrough in understanding the effect on climate change of a key component of urban pollution.

They’ve concluded that climate change effects can be more accurately predicted if scientists measure brown carbon, an overlooked pollution particle that behaves differently from the carbon and soot used in most climate-change models.

Brown carbon occurs in large enough amounts that it could influence the results of a forecast.

What have we missed? Give us your comments.