The 10:10 campaign, a big U.K. effort to get ministries and companies to cut their CO2 emissions 10 percent by 2010, recently got an application from the country’s third largest airport, which is creating power with biomass grown and burned on site, installing energy efficient lighting, and buying all of its electricity from renewable sources by 2015. So why did 10:10 turn them down?

The darkest substance in the world is also capable of cleaning up organic pollutants from the surface of water (such as oil and solvents) by absorbing up to 180 times its weight (without absorbing water), we learn from researchers at Beijing’s Tsinghua and Beijing Universities. And once it’s full of toxic liquids, the best part is that you can just wring it and start again. Really, what’s not to love about carbon nanotubes?

In one of the odder charges against the now-bipartisan climate bill, Senator David Vitter (R-LA) has taken to saying that it includes a provision that “…requires President Obama to act like Venezuelan strong man Hugo Chavez” and assume emergency powers if a ‘climate emergency’ is declared by the EPA.” We (and a big conservative blog) are left scratching our heads.

Just as we were getting all excited about carbon nanotubes, we almost puked up our organic breakfast over these photos of Paris Hilton’s $325,000 two-story, air-conditioned, designer furniture-decorated, heated, and black crystal chandelier-boasting McMansion—for her dogs.

For all the new bicyclists in New York City—there are 26 percent more this year —we offer a useful guide to how to get killed on a bike. For instance, try not to ride against traffic, and beware of cars that break traffic rules.

Imagine reducing fuel consumption, traffic, and accidents on the highway—all while taking your hands off the wheel. Brian Merchant looks at the awesome Road Train idea, which is now getting tested in Europe. Will we go for this kind of thing? Or rather, when will we?

The most wasteful season is upon us. We’re already offering up our green holiday guides. And our friends at Planet Green have some tips on how to take back the holiday season, including starting new traditions, making memories of the fun you had rather than all of the shopping you did, and making real choices about to spend your time and resources.

Fresh from the brand-new underground rails of Beijing, Alex Pasternack looks at some of the world’s shiniest, newest subways in the world.

On the anniversary of the fall of the Wall, we checked out the Gorbachev-founded charity Global Green USA’s 10th Sustainable Design Awards gala in New York, where six groups and people were toasted for their contributions to “tearing down this carbon!” And we interview Matt Petersen, the group’s president, about teaming up with Brad Pitt, the sexiest green man there is, to green a neighborhood in New Orleans.

We got excited (and a bit hungry) reading about the Pop Up Lunch project, which is giving street-eaters a place to stop, lunch, munch, and linger—and in the process, giving them a new way to enliven and enjoy public space, build community, and maybe even think more carefully about what they’re eating. When we slow down, actually stopping to eat, we spend more time considering what it is we’re putting in our bodies and might make better food choices. (And when we’re done eating, Lloyd suggest we might take a space-efficient afternoon nap on the Vertical Bed.)

On the conundrum of recyclable packaging that doesn’t often get recycled, Pablo Paster takes another look at TetraPak, the company that makes aseptic milk carton-like packaging that holds everything from wine to soup to tomato sauce.

Walmart’s special software package helps its suppliers screen their chemical ingredients for hazardous materials, and it could blaze a path that U.S. government regulators could follow. But John Laumer wonders if Walmart should be acting as a kind of de facto government regulator?

Even lactose intolerant folks have found they can digest raw milk, and it’s been said to reduce allergies and asthma in children—ailments that are on the rise in the United States. But the stuff’s illegal. The author of a new book discusses the fight for raw milk, “the civil rights movement of food”?

After his list of things he loves about America, Sami Grover takes the other side of the argument, pointing at a distrust of government and a love for the car. Meanwhile, Dan Kessler spends some time in Jakarta, a city where getting around almost always requires an engine.

In his review of James Hoggan’s Climate Cover-up, a book on the “climate change is a hoax” messengers, Lloyd Alter sees a successor to Vance Packard’s Hidden Persuaders, the half-century old expose of the machinations of advertisers and politicians.

Our readers sent in their photos of their “green” Halloweens, and we celebrated 4-year-old Kiva’s milestone of $100 million in microloans.

Windmill wunderkind

Sometimes, in the battle between cars and people, it seems no amount of pedestrian lobbying will do. What we need is a car that automatically stops when it senses pedestrians. Enter Volvo. If the car’s speed is under 25 kilometers per hour, it puts on full brakes. (But what if the car is going faster than that?)

It’s nice to get some perspective—and to get compliments. For all of the marks against it in the eyes of Europe, the United States, reports Briton Sami Grover, has a number of cutting-edge green credentials going for it. Among them, a yen for entrepreneurship, and a vibrant, lively farmers market culture.

Our International Day of Climate Action was all over the map. Our 350—er, 360 degree look began with a gorgeous sunrise in New Zealand and a parade of bicycles in Beijing, continued through Times Square and more, thanks to readers’ photos.

We couldn’t resist a look also at some pretty dark environmental photography too, much of it courtesy of China’s unbridled economic boom. As Nadav Kandar won the Prix Pictet prize for his Yangtze River work and Lu Guang took home the W. Eugene Smith Award for his Industrial Revolution-esque images, deranged landscape godfather Edward Burtynsky released a new series called “Oil”—with nary a drop of the black stuff to be seen within it. To top it off, a reminder of history’s eight worst man-made environmental disasters.

Sixty percent of Americans now support cap and trade, and there’s a veritable climate expert storm on Capitol Hill this week, but it may not matter for Copenhagen: reality (along with John Kerry) is beginning to shift our attentions to a post-climate meeting climate meeting.

We’ve known that cutting back on meat and dairy is one of the most powerful personal steps we can take towards mitigating climate change. But a new report shows that the impact of raising livestock and poultry is much greater than previously thought and actually amounts to approximately 51 percent of human-caused greenhouse gas emissions. Some food for thought

A universal phone charger—just approved by the International Telecommunication Union—isn’t being forced on cell phone makers but rather recommended. But what companies wouldn’t implement the charger, which has a micro USB connector, energy efficient technology, and would cut 51,000 tons of redundant chargers a year out of the waste stream?

On that note, we’re all juiced up over a socket that could easily and seriously cut phantom load, or vampire power. And on that note, some tips to keep your Halloween as DIY as it is scary. Keep in mind that the biggest scary movie in the country right now was made on a budget of $10,000.

This week, TreeHugger spoke to Margaret Atwood, wondered what smart grids will mean for our privacy, learned some new ways of dealing with wayward poop, and watched nervously as bikers, pedestrians, and even clothesline-hangers fought for their rights.

A town of 200 people in the jungle of Colombia has no guns, no police, no cars, no mayor, no church, no priest, no cellphones, no television, no internet. But the solar energy, biofuel use, and enormous reforestation project—and relatively high incomes—has caught the attention of people like Amory Lovins. Can Las Gaviotas survive the creeping influx of globalization and armed guerrillas?

In her new book The Year of the Flood, Margaret Atwood gets dystopian: society has crumbled, climate change and pandemics ravage the planet, and people are forced to rediscover their relationship with the land. Miss Atwood talked to TreeHugger about the God’s Gardeners (the book’s rooftop-gardening eco cult), her pantheon of ecological saints, and the greening of her book tour and her own life.

A new report says that digital music distribution is much greener than traditional methods, slicing carbon emissions and energy use by 40 percent to 80 percent. (No word on how much pollution goes up if you download Michael Buble’s new record.)

Smarts grids and smart appliances can help improve our energy efficiency, but what will they do for our privacy? Since smart meters and appliances will be sending lots of data to utility companies, is this a 21st century version of Big Brother? Maybe it’s time to start making our own power meters.

As an alleged indicator of poverty, clotheslines lower property values, and are banned in many private communities. Meanwhile, running a clothes drier sucks up 6 percent of a household’s energy usage. A fight’s a’brewin’, and even state governments are getting involved.

The ongoing fight on pedestrians and cyclists gets nastier, as the governor of Texas vetoes a bill that would have afforded more protection to non-drivers. Even in America’s new cyclist haven, New York City, things are still looking ugly.

Left on the land, human and dog waste gets carried into streams, ponds, and lakes by storm-water runoff, contaminating beaches and stimulating algae growth. Could flagging doggie doo pollution (as they do in Germany) embarrass dog owners into cleaning up their mess? And could a system of bags and tubes (as they use in Scotland), help campers clean up their poop too?

Recyclable plastic sounds great, but it’s an oil-based product, and still consumes energy during production. None of that energy is replenished by recycling the bottle, a process that itself consumes energy. Our friends at Planet Green examine the greenwashingest word.

The story of toxic Chinese drywall has been festering since at least the beginning of the year, when TreeHugger began covering it while mainstream outlets passed over it. Now the Times reports that thousands of people are sick, many across the Gulf Coast states where post-hurricane construction used the material. Their houses, already corroded from the inside out, will probably need to be rebuilt once again.

Pepsi smeared egg on its face after releasing an iPhone app that guides users on how to score with treehuggers (okay, fine—we’ll go home with you, but you have to promise to recycle that phone the right way).

In the architecture department, we looked at Brad Pitt’s floating house for New Orleans (it’s not as good as it sounds), and the world’s longest solar footbridge, which even provides electricity to the main grid. We also enjoyed some terrific—if sometimes terrifying—treehouses and encouraged architects to relearn their ABCs and designing buildings like letters again.

In the wacky architecture department, a competition to design a new bridge (sponsored in part by an oil company), yielded an innovative proposal for separating cars from pedestrians and cyclists. Not only does it require less infrastructure investment and create a tourist attraction, it uses more gasoline (Careful: not everyone is laughing).

England keeps putting bottled water makers on notice. Hyde Park got a new water fountain, and a set of water dispensing machines refill your reusable bottle. (Then again, Australia’s wonderfully named town of Bundanoon has already banned bottled water outright.)

While a Japanese airline encourages passengers to poop before they board, a Massachusetts company is trying to turn that very same poop into ethanol. (Could the ethanol someday power the plane?)

There’s more interest than ever in connecting the environment to our economy, however controversial an idea that can be. Planet Green looks at nature’s price tag.

Photo by Flickr user oxfam international.

Or if you prefer the picture-book approach to the past week: soot from cremated human bodies has been falling on homes in Ottawa, scientists are solving wind power’s bat-killing problem, Emma covered what’s hot in green fashion at NOW Showcase in New York, while Brian caught up with Make it Right CEO Tom Darden and S. Richard Fedrizzi, the President of the US Green Building Council. Readers meanwhile sent in photos of their composting and vermicomposting systems.

Obama’s climate maven spoke plainly about the prospects of a climate bill passing Congress before Copenhagen (not gon’ happen), but the EPA said it will begin to regulate CO2 anyway. Just in time: a new MIT report says we still have a 50-50 chance at not frying ourselves provided we make the right policy moves.

We know bloggers make peanuts, but that doesn’t matter to one guy in Utah: he’s gone nine years without spending money, living in a cave, dumpster diving and blogging from the public library. And he doesn’t have a book deal or a camera crew following him around.

Treehuggers were all over the map this week: Brian Merchant sat down with Bill Clinton on the sidelines of the Clinton Global Initiative, while Matthew McDermott had breakfast with IPCC Chairman Rajendra Pachauri. On the other end of the spectrum, we contemplated picking up dog poop and the virtues of peeing on our plants (see below).

In the photo department, a few Treehuggers checked in on PARK(ing) Day around the country, Jacob Gordon checked out the sustainable offerings on view at the Frankfurt Auto Show.

After sitting in on a series of somewhat windy grassroots events, speeches at the U.N. Summit on Climate Change (including a promising but vague one by China), film openings and demonstrations, Matthew McDermott wonders if Climate Week was little more than a gigantic exercise in expectation management.

Expectations may be a bit lower this week as the Senate dives into the climate bill. Not lowering expectations is Nicholas Stern, who wants to get past talking about percentage reductions in carbon dioxide output and start measuring carbon cuts in the more important unit of gigatons.

To lower that number, we often think of making power generation and transport more efficient, but Michael Graham Richard points us to a new EPA study that indicates there’s much CO2 to be saved by waste reduction and recycling. If we did what they recommend, we could cut U.S. CO2 emissions by about 354 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent per year. That’s a big “if” of course.

Hoping to avoid the mistakes of compact florescent lightbulbs (the color! the delay!), the Environmental Protection Agency has launched a $10 million contest to find a 60-watt bulb equivalent that only uses 10 watts of electricity. It must also last 25 times as long as a normal lightbulb (roughly 25,000 hours) and be at least 75 percent produced in the United States. Ten million dollars sounds like a lot, but consider the greater benefits of such a lightbulb: national savings of an estimated 5.6 million metric tons of carbon dioxide each year and enough energy to power 17.4 million homes.

As Apple threw a lifecycle analysis of its products on its website, Jacob Gordon interviews the deputy editor of Newsweek about the magazine’s recent (and controversial) list of America’s greenest companies.

John Laumer explains why the U.S. Green Building Council’s new labeling idea may not be such a good idea: apart from the political obstacles and the implications for neighborhood development, the labels would likely either be too vague or too specific, and quickly lose their impact. Perhaps more crucial for the future of green building, writes Brian Merchant: Brad Pitt

What Pitt may be to green building, David Byrne may be to cycling. The Talking Head knows that shifting attitudes towards cyclists—and attitudes about good behavior in general—are inevitable and infectious, and he cites New Yorkers relationship with dog poop as an example.

While we’re on that topic: we knew that peeing in public is generally good for the environment, and doing it in the shower can help save the rainforest. But it’s also good for tomatoes (just don’t pee on your neighbors’ patch). In fact, urine’s one of the best kept secrets of gardening.

In a speed test of 18 different types of transport, covering a distance of about 10 kilometers (more than six miles) during rush hour in Sao Paulo, the winner will be—you guessed it—cyclists. As Paula Alvarado reports, they reached their destination faster than a helicopter. The cyclists, a runner, a bus, and a skater all took less time than the car, which took a nerve-racking 82 minutes.

Google builds its own servers because the commercial ones are too expensive. It’s also building solar panels for the same reason—and by focusing on mirrors, the company thinks it can cut the cost of solar energy by 60 percent. Overachievers. (They’re going to do it, aren’t they?)

While we’re talking about dramatic percentages, an engine developed in England takes up 50 percent of the volume of a regular engine but gives twice the torque for the same power output—making it perfect not just for electric cars but renewable energy generation, aerospace, even electric bikes. And another dramatic percentage: Yanaizu, Japan is apparently 3290 percent efficient, due to its dependence on geothermal energy.

It’s getting easier to make your own stuff: Ponoko, a digital fabricator, has teamed up with ShopBot to form 100K Garages, which will link those who need something made with a community of more than 6,000 fabricators. It’s kind of like a Kinkos for things.

China may be throwing up its hands on keeping a global temperature rise within a critical 2 degrees Fahrenheit, but maybe we can find some solace a bit south, off the coast of Singapore: the world’s largest ghost shipping fleet sits idle—another way the recession is inadvertently keeping CO2 emissions down.

By next year, will those ships traverse the world’s next Suez Canal? Global warming has melted enough ice in the Northeast Passage to open a brand new, long sought-after shipping route, altering the way goods are transported around the world.

Volkswagon showed off a 1-Liter diesel-hybrid concept car, which gets 170 MPG. Then again, in the 19th century, hillside cable cars often ran on water. And in Switzerland, they were powered by sewage.

The craziest new building in New York is also one of its sanest: Thom Mayne’s Cooper Union academic building begins with an airy central atrium, an elevator that only stops on two floors, and some of the best stairs—yes, stairs—we’ve ever seen. And then there’s that spectacular, luminous, energy-saving skin.

Kids don’t walk as much anymore in the United States, but even in a city (with sidewalks and density), it can be hard to find enough space to walk. As Mark Gorton of Streetsblog reminds us, that’s because we give all of our space to the least spatially-efficient or environmentally-friendly mode of transportation.

An updated version of the website e-cycler connects those with recyclable items and no good way of getting rid of them with those who can make some cash off them. And just in time: a new push for new e-waste rules in the United States reminds us that in a metric ton of old cell phones, there’s $15,000 worth of metals.

Why don’t we convert more salt water to potable water in places where it’s needed? Pablo explains the complexities of desalinization, reminding us that the cheapest form of drinking water is the water we save.