Study: Does enduring extreme weather make you vote liberal? On the heels of a disastrous weather year in the USA, and with the long presidential campaign season looming, a new study finds that people who have endured extreme weather events are more likely to support environmental legislation, even if it means restricting individual freedoms. [News Source]

Mild weather redefines winter landscape. At the National Arboretum, the white petals of snowdrops — normally an early spring flower — have unfurled. In Maine’s Acadia National Park, lakes still have patches of open water instead of being frozen solid. [News Source]

Brazil, short of biofuel, can’t open spigot to US. Three factors have converged to push Brazil's ethanol distilleries to the limit. Sugarcane production fell this year for the first time in a decade, reducing supplies; global demand for sugar has remained strong; and domestic motor-fuel demand has surged, straining local gasoline and ethanol supply. [News Source]

California flood plan calls for up to $17B in repairs. The first statewide flood plan follows a call by Gov. Jerry Brown to refocus state efforts on preparing for the effects of a warming climate as floods from a faster-melting snowpack already place increased strain on the state's aging levees. [News Source]

Global hunger for plastic packaging leaves waste solution a long way off. Five hundred tonnes of Christmas tree lights and at least 25m bags of plastic sweet wrappers, turkey coverings, drinks bottles and broken toys will be thrown away by UK homes this Christmas and new year. But only a tiny proportion of this waste will be recycled. [News Source]

Alaska village to vote on school relocation. Voters in one of Alaska's most storm-eroded coastal villages will decide next week whether to build a new school seven miles away — a project one local official believes could hasten efforts to relocate the crumbling community. [News Source]

Ecuador vows to push Yasuni jungle protection plan. Ecuador has vowed to press ahead with a plan to shield the Yasuni reserve in the Amazon jungle from oil companies, saying that by not extracting the heavy oil under Yasuni, some 400 million tonnes of carbon dioxide will not be released into the atmosphere, and a jungle area with more tree species than North America will be better protected. [News Source]

Planting the seeds for a greener world. As a man whose religious practice tells him to care about the fate of the earth, John Sykes of Lewes was disappointed by this week's news that plans for a wind farm off the Delaware coast have been scrapped for now. [News Source]

Arnold Schwarzenegger’s green road back. In recent weeks, Schwarzenegger has begun to return to the spotlight, making public appearances at renewable energy and climate change events, advocating for green technology and touting his energy achievements in the Golden State. [News Source]

Gingrich kills chapter on climate change in upcoming book. Newt Gingrich says he has killed a chapter on climate change in a post-election book of essays about the environment. But the intended author of the chapter, Texas Tech atmospheric scientist Katharine Hayhoe, says that's news to her. [News Source]

Nature strikes back. This has been a year of droughts, floods, storms and earthquakes. Can humanity band together to address the increasingly erratic weather patterns? [News Source]