Clean Start: October 25, 2011

Welcome to Clean Start, ThinkProgress Green’s morning round-up of the latest in climate and clean energy. Here is what we’re reading. What are you?

Hurricane Rina gathered a bit more steam in the Caribbean on Monday, spinning away from the already soaked coffee and sugar growing countries of Central America as it heads to the Mexican resort of Cancun. [Reuters]

The new normal for gasoline prices continues to plague American consumers, at $3.46 a gallon, 22.6% higher than the old record for this week of the year. [LA Times]

Thailand announced a five-day holiday Tuesday to give people the chance to escape floods closing in on Bangkok as authorities ordered the evacuation of a housing estate on the outskirts of the city after a protective wall gave way. [Reuters]

U.S. rice futures surged on expectations that severe flooding will cause significant crop losses in Thailand, the world’s top exporter of the grain. [WSJ]

“There’s an 80 percent probability” that climate change produced the Russian heat wave, based on a statistical probability model by climatologist Stefan Rahmstorf of Germany’s Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. [Wired]

Passenger and cargo airlines would be shielded from a European law making carriers worldwide pay for carbon emissions under legislation approved by the House of Representatives on Monday. [Reuters]

The UK could be primarily powered by a secure and inexhaustible supply of renewable energy by 2030 without the need for new nuclear power plants, according to a report commissioned by WWF. [Guardian]

An endangered Javan rhinoceros found dead in Vietnam last year was the country’s last, rendering the species all but the extinct, WWF reported on Tuesday. [Reuters]