We’re living in an increasingly green world – but that doesn’t mean the green police are coming to take away all of the fun things in life. Or are they? A series of teaser videos from automaker Audi features dorky green police that bust people for environmentally unfriendly actions – including actual police officers idling in their squad car and drinking coffee out of styrofoam cups.

The videos are a preview for a 60-second Audi commercial debuting during the Super Bowl on Sunday to plug the A3 TDI, voted Green Car of the Year by Green Car Journal – a car that’s both green and fun to drive, according to Audi.

Check out these two (the rest are available on Audi’s Green Police YouTube channel).

If you’re on Facebook, you can watch the Super bowl ad in full right now on Audi’s page.

Link [Green Police] via [TheDailyTell]

When it comes to organic food, it’s pretty amazing how many of the seemingly small brands at our local health food stores are actually owned by gigantic corporations. OrganicConsumers.org has a chart [PDF] that shows how various brands are associated with each other, something that many consumers aren’t thrilled with.

But is Big Organic the enemy? Dorothee at OrganicNation.tv spoke to Ken Cook, the President and co-founder of the Environmental Working Group (EWG) during a recent visit to Organic Valley’s Kickapoo Country Fair.

Is BIG Organic the Enemy? from OrganicNation on Vimeo.

Check out more videos at OrganicNation.tv.

Link [OrganicNation.tv]

Inhabitat’s Emily Pilloton appeared on The Colbert Report to discuss Project H Design, the non-profit organization she founded which “connects the power of design to the people who need it most, and the places where it can make a real and lasting difference.”

Pilloton – who appeared on EarthFirst’s Top 25 Hottest Girls in Green – has brought genius inventions like inexpensive, custom ‘adaptive eyecare glasses’ to the world’s poor. These glasses (as demonstrated by Colbert below) have plastic lenses filled with liquid, which the user can adjust with removable syringes, getting just the right prescription.

Watch:

Watch the whole episode at ColbertNation.com.

Link [Colbert Nation] + [Project H Design]

It seems like just yesterday that Michael Pollan was out pushing his book In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto (it was actually 2008 – where did the time go?). But Pollan, renowned professor, journalist and author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma, has yet another food-related book on the shelves, and he took to ‘The Daily Show’ to discuss it with Jon Stewart on Monday night.

Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual offers 64 tools for eating well, including this gem: “avoid edible foodlike substances.”

Watch:

On The Huffington Post yesterday, Pollan wrote about his inspiration for writing the book: the way that doctors responded to his previous tome, In Defense of Food. Pollan says that doctors requested some simple, easy-to-follow, foolproof rules for eating wisely.

“So I decided to take the doctors up on the challenge. I set out to collect and formulate some straightforward, memorable, everyday rules for eating, a set of personal policies that would, taken together or even separately, nudge people onto a healthier and happier path. I solicited rules from doctors, scientist, chefs, and readers, and then wrote a bunch myself, trying to boil down into everyday language what we really know about healthy eating. And while most of the rules are backed by science, they are not framed in the vocabulary of science but rather culture — a source of wisdom about eating that turns out to have as much, if not more, to teach us than nutritional science does.”

Read more at The Huffington Post, or grab a copy of the book at Amazon.com.

Link [The Huffington Post]

Hopes for a viable agreement in Copenhagen may have collapsed, but hope for climate change action that can make a real difference didn’t – especially among the youth of the world. The international youth climate movement has a message for world leaders: you’re not done yet. Neither are we.

Check out this inspiring video:

Link [YouTube]

Twelve solar fans, eleven Brita filters… what other green things did Santa bring this year? Find out in this awesome music video by MC Lars called “I’m Dreaming of a Green Christmas,” featuring Jaret Reddick from Bowling For Soup. The video moves so fast, if you don’t pay close attention, you’ll miss the best parts:

So Happy Festivus, Yule, Kwanzaa, Chanukah, Christmas or whatever it is you may or may not be celebrating this month. Cheers!

Link [YouTube]

So, the last holiday craft you can recall making was that googly-eyed reindeer ornament in the 4th grade. Who cares? The holidays are supposed to be fun, and getting out the glue gun and felt for goofy green DIY projects is a great way to let off some steam. You might actually end up with some cool stuff you’ll be proud to display in your home – or a great gag gift.

Spike the holiday punch bowl and invite some friends over for an ugly Christmas sweater/cheesy ornament-making party, and it might just turn into one of those wacky holiday traditions. Check out these YouTube videos for some ideas:

Make your own geektastic ornaments:

Super-easy ornaments from light bulbs, demonstrated by chick in a Santa bikini:

DIY ideas for gifts, décor, cocktails & more from Threadbanger:

Eco-expert Danny Seo’s eco decorating tips:

Make an origami Christmas tree out of a phone book:

Photo credit: The Daily Green

Annie Leonard’s ‘The Story of Stuff’, an entertaining and poignant look at exactly how all the stuff in our lives affects the world, was celebrated by environmentalists for providing a reality check on consumer culture. But her newest film, ‘The Story of Cap and Trade’, is not receiving quite so warm a welcome. Called “colossally ignorant” by Grist, Leonard’s latest attempts to get to the heart of what cap and trade really means, and whether it would actually solve anything.

Watch the whole film right here:

A snippet of what Grist’s Eric De Place had to say about the film:

The video’s 10 minutes is so loaded with factual inaccuracies and deceptions that it would literally take me hours to unravel them all. It’s really quite a feat.

It’s not just the trading part that she butchers. She comes close to flat out lying about offset programs (and I say this as a card-carrying offsets skeptic), fumbles on allocations, blinks on consumer fairness, and mangles a description of Europe’s experience. In fact, so childish is the video that most of the criticisms are actually directed at “these guys,” a pair of stick figures in pin-striped suits. No kidding, the critique is literally directed at a caricature.

Toward the end, she suggests a handful of policy alternatives. Of course, she doesn’t mention this, but many of these would actually be enhanced by an operational cap-and-trade system (funding renewable energy, for example). But others are almost laughably hackneyed (“concerned citizens around the world need to speak out”). It’s just bizarre.

Leonard responded to the controversy on her blog:

We made The Story of Cap & Trade to encourage a real discussion about how to solve the enormous climate challenges we face. If there was ever an issue that merited broad, even heated public debate, this is it. I’d far rather people argue about cap and trade and other policy options than ignore them or silently go along with the crowd, even when our guts tell us the solution on the table is inadequate…

For all the missteps that it makes, ‘The Story of Cap and Trade’ has certainly prompted discussion about climate change action – and that’s incredibly important. Read more about Leonard’s arguments over at Grist.

Link [The Story of Cap and Trade] + [Grist]

For shiny happy housewives in shiny happy homes, scrubbing bubbles are your best friends when it comes to cleaning the bathroom -–or so advertising execs for household cleaners would have us believe. But after your initial glee at the cute little bubbles that cheerfully dissolve soap scum in your bathtub, you won’t be so happy to have them around.

A new commercial for non-toxic cleaner brand Method features cute little bubbles that turn out to not only be toxic – but disturbingly pervy, too.

The creepy little bubbles lick their ‘lips’ and yell out “Oh, yeah!” as the lady takes a shower. “Use the loofah!”

Link [YouTube]

Winter may be closing in on us, but that doesn’t mean that we have to stop growing our own food, even for those who live in the cold Northeast. The OrganicNation.tv team talked to Yale Sustainable Food Project director Melina Shannon-DiPietro about the project’s unheated greenhouse, which continues producing tasty winter greens well into the coldest time of the year.

Winter Harvest at Yale’s Greenhouse from OrganicNation on Vimeo.

Want to know more about the Yale Sustainable Food Project? Check out Organic Nation’s other video from their visit to the one-acre organic farm founded by Alice Waters and members of the Yale faculty in 2001. Or, visit Yale.edu/SustainableFood.

Link [Organic Nation] + [Yale]