1. Call it Tom Friedman’s Worst Nightmare: Asia’s already outpacing the United States in clean technology investment by hundreds of billions of dollars — which will mean the U.S. will be importing trillions of dollars in green tech down the road, says a new report. (Hat tip: CleanTechnica.)
2. Call it a Whale’s Worst Nightmare: Japan’s whaling fleet is off to the Southern Ocean for its annual hunt. Dot Earth quotes ocean explorer Sylvia Earle on why eating whale isn’t at all like eating a farm-raised cow, which is what Japanese whaling interests claim.
3. Call it Todd Stern’s Worst Nightmare: Pledges by individual countries to limit their greenhouse gas emissions are multiplying like tribbles, reports The New York Times — and UN climate czar Yvo deBoer is now putting pressure on the Obama administration to release its own proposal.
4. Call it a Gearhead’s Worst Nightmare: Star driver Jeff Gordon has joined with the EPA to warn the public that auto painting causes air pollution and degrades human health, reports Ecopolitology.
5. Call it Ungreen Companies’ Worst Nightmare: GoodGuide releases an iPhone app that scans product barcodes and gives you ratings on the product’s healthy, environmental, and social impacts. (62,000 products in the database so far, says CNET’s Health Tech.)

1. What’s more important than reaching a global agreement in Copenhagen?  Scientific American thinks a U.S.-China deal on energy and climate could be just as big.
2. America’s oil capital is trying to green up its image, says Green Inc.  The city of Houston, home to densely packed highways and headquarters of a number of oil companies, plans to roll out an effort to convert 10 city Priuses (Prii?) into plug-in hybrids, and install vehicle charging stations around the metropolitan area.
3. Coca-Cola, the most recognized consumer brand on the planet, will soon start distributing plastic bottles made with up to 30% plant-based material, reports Triple Pundit.  I’m feeling a little less terrible about my Diet Coke addiction today.
4. At this point, the U.S. climate bill could probably use some divine intervention.  Maybe the Scientists and Evangelicals Initiative, a partnership between evangelical leaders and environmental scientists, can convince the Senate to get moving on climate legislation, says the Guardian’s Environment Blog.
5. If that doesn’t work, maybe this new study will change a few minds– the findings indicate that a “robust” climate bill could boost the U.S. economy by about $111 billion by 2020 and could create nearly two million jobs, according to GreenBiz.

Good news about cow poop. Good news (?) about Copenhagen. Good news for those of you who’ve always dreamed of a dress made of LED lights. Happiness is the smell of a new Cool Green Morning, to paraphrase Don Draper…

1. The rehabilitation of poop continues: The Netherlands has opened its second cow-dung power plant, reports CleanTechnica — to make biogas that will heat more than 1,000 homes.
2. In case you missed it yesterday, President Obama has endorsed a plan to push an ultimate climate change agreement sometime beyond December’s UN meeting in Copenhagen, reports The New York Times. Grist’s Dave Roberts says that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
3. Charlie the Tuna muzzled? Dot Earth says last week’s meeting among fishing countries to reach an agreement on restoring depleted numbers of tuna, shark, turtles and other marine life was missing one thing — a basis in science.
4. Count on Inhabitat to render us speechless — with a dress made of 24,000 LED lights (plus “4,000 hand-applied Swarovski crystals and 40-layers of pleated silk organza crinoline.” When’s it going to hit the shelves at Target?!)
5. Always like to end on good news — this time from the Brazilian Amazon, where deforestation dropped nearly 46 percent from August 2008 to July 2009, says AP. But the “why” is a chicken and egg problem — is it because of the Brazilian government’s promotion of sustainable livelihoods in the region (coupled with enforcement of laws against deforestation), or just a drop in ag commodity prices worldwide?

Feeling unlucky this Friday the 13th? Fortify yourself with the latest in green news — recycled diapers, undersea gliders, a historic comeback and a new way to shut up those global warming skeptics close to you (speaking of superstitious…)

1. So you’re at a family gathering, arguing with Uncle Climate Denier over the reality of climate change — what’s your trump card? How about the huge increase in the ratio of record high temps to record low temps across the United States in the last six decades? Andrew Revkin at Dot Earth says the findings are accepted by scientists across the political spectrum. (I bet Uncle Climate Denier remembers those frozen winter mornings just fine…)
2. Also from Dot Earth — two U.S. senators have proposed giving a prize to anybody with a way to extract CO2 from the atmosphere and sequester it permanently. (Isn’t that called “a forest”? Just asking…)
3. Martha Stewart, eat your heart out — two UK companies are building a plant to recycle diapers into, among other things, wallpaper — and the plant will run on the organic matter in the diapers themselves. Eeewww… (Hat tip: Triple Pundit.)
4. Cool Green Science Alert! A new undersea glider (huh?) is tracking the rare beaked whale off the coast of Hawaii…using only a listening device. (It’s the best way, because the whales are shy and live far off shore. Hat tip: Wired Science.)
5. Score one for the good guys — the brown pelican, once on the endangered species list because DDT weakened its eggs, has been declared “fully recovered” by the U.S. Department of the Interior, reports the LA Times. (Hat tip: Yale Environment 360.)

(Image: Brown pelicans off Morro Bay, California. Credit: mikebaird/Flickr through a Creative Commons license.)

1. Are hybrids more likely to hit pedestrians and bicyclists than other car types, as a new study reports? Treehugger analyzes the data.
2. Andrew Revkin at DotEarth takes a look at the topic of how journalists and scientists can effectively communicate about environmental topics like marine pollution.
3. Did an albatross die so you could eat a tuna sandwich for lunch today? Probably, says Scientific American. A new report says tuna fishing kills an albatross every five minutes.
4. Sure, scientist Stephen Schneider made a mistake back in 1971 when he predicted that aerosol pollution would cause a global cooling effect, but today he’s considered a leading climatologist. Check out this Q&A with him from The New Republic.
5. Thinking about taking a vacation this winter? A new study finds that nature tourism doesn’t necessarily bring more money to the pockets of local people – although the longer the stay, the more benefits for the local economy. 

1. Best headline of the morning award goes to Bright Green Blog: “Surprise!  The world has more trees than you probably think.” New satellite imagery shows that trees actually cover a significant chunk of the world’s farmlands, indicating that maybe agriculture and deforestation don’t always go hand in hand.
2. Ethiopian farmers may soon be able to run carbon offsets operations via text message, according to Green Inc., which could help small farmers significantly increase their profits, in addition to reducing the carbon impact of large emitters. Win-win for everyone.
3. Computer company Dell has “planted” a number of solar trees in its headquarters’ parking lot.  CleanTechnica says that the solar trees will provide 130,000 kilowatts per year to the facility, as well as lots of shade and charging stations for hybrid and electric vehicles.
4. A new report reveals that, thanks to the Pacific garbage patch, the diet of the Pacific albatross now consists of large quantities of plastic, including lighters, fishing line and, in one case, a sealed bottle of face lotion, says Scientific American’s Observations blog. Mmm, just like Mom used to make.
5. The trucking industry is primed for a sparkly green makeover, says GreenBiz. Recent analysis shows that the technology already exists to double the energy efficiency of long-haul trucks, which will ultimately keep operating costs down and increase profits — the industry just needs to get on board.

It’s indeed a bright green morning today, with positive news everywhere: International Climate Day of Action a big success! Smart meters galore! And here’s the big news: a new study shows your personal actions can make a difference in the fight against climate change! Take that, all you climate change pessimists.

1. Bill McKibben says we need to “stop whining and man up” to the fact that we can fight climate change. Grist chatted with him about 350’s International Day of Climate Action on October 24 (see video above), which included thousands of events around the world. Did you participate?
2. If you don’t already have a smart meter in your home, now’s your chance to get one — a government grant for $3.4 billion will install 18 million smart meters into houses across the United States to help improve energy efficiency.
3. And just in case you’re thinking that a smart meter won’t make much of a dent in climate change, a new study found that 33 simple household improvements could reduce national carbon emissions by 7 percent –enough to offset emissions from the petroleum, iron, steel and aluminum industries combined.
4. Can conservationists save the world? It’s the vision and hope of Nature Conservancy President and CEO Mark Tercek. Read a Reuters interview with Tercek about using market forces to protect nature – and how conservation is in everyone’s economic interest.  
5. Scientists have a new tool in the battle to save frogs from a deadly fungus that’s killing them all over the world: a highly-technical protocol for detecting the fungus in frogs is now available online, making it possible for scientists everywhere to have the information they need.

1. The Royal Botanic Gardens in England announces that it’s collected seeds from almost 10 percent of the 300,000 seed-bearing plants on Earth…the first phase of a project to create a seed bank of every plant known to man. (Hat tip: Yale Environment 360.)
2. The Oregonian newspaper reports on controversial scientific findings that Chinook salmon might be adapting to survive dams on the Columbia and Snake rivers in the Pacific Northwest…by delaying their trips up the river a year and growing bigger. (Hat tip: WaterWired.)
3. Could solar panels really be contributing to climate change by reradiating heat because they’re so dark? (Come again?) Ask Pablo of Treehugger punctures the myth, started (Pablo says) by the authors of the book Freakanomics.
4. Climate change reported on TV? Not likely, says a new report in the journal Communications Research, which states people who use the Internet and read newspapers are much more likely to be concerned about global warming. (Hat tip: Mongabay.)
5. Here’s a new one on Cool Green Science: Are conservationists too optimistic? A new study in the journal Biological Conservation says “conservationists are setting population targets too low to give species a decent shot at long-term survival,” reports Journal Watch Online. (You need a miminum of 5,000 adults, say the authors.)

1. Big snakes are becoming a big problem, says the United States Geological Survey.  The group just issued a report concluding that, should the Burmese python and other species of giant constricting snakes continue to make themselves cozy in the U.S., they could completely destabilize ecosystems and wipe out vulnerable native species.  (Hat tip:  dotEarth.)
2. The University of Maryland at College Park and Rio Salado College in Tempe, Arizona will share the title of “America’s Greenest Campus,” reports Green Inc.   In addition to bragging rights, each school gets $5,000 toward new green initiatives.
3. The state of California has legalized “gray water” systems, allowing residents to water their lawns with the runoff from showers, sinks, dishwashers and laundry machines, reports The Vine.  Technically, it’s a huge victory for water conservation, but it turns out a lot of people were already doing it anyway.
4. Does buying green products make you a bad person? According to GreenBiz, a recent report found that people feel better about justifying white lies and other minor infractions after purchasing “green” items– kind of like canceling out a bad behavior with a good one.
5. Keep your chins up, mates!  A new study found that Aussies are losing their enthusiasm for the fight against climate change, and it scarily reflects the current situation in the U.S., says Environmental Capital.

1. You’ve heard of The Sibley Guide to Birds — the serious birder’s bible? Now there’s The Sibley Guide to Trees, and 10,000 Birds says it’s every bit as good as its companion volume.
2. Should we seed the stratosphere with a sulphate gas to cool global temps — an classic geoengineering approach to climate change? A new study in Geophysical Research Letters says that move would reduce sunlight, increase the Antarctic ozone hole and cause the sky to turn a different color. (Hat tip: Climate Feedback.)
3. Would you buy an electric golf cart that tops out at 25 mph for tooling around the neighborhood? Energy Savers says such neighborhood electric vehicles are being tested by the Department of Energy — and these ones have doors and even pickup beds.
4. What do you need to know about the new U.S. Senate climate bill? Eric Haxthausen, the Conservancy’s director for U.S. climate policy (and a blogger for Cool Green Science), gives the lowdown to National Geographic’s The Green Guide.
5. What’s the most bizarre argument so far against the dangers of global warming? Island of Doubt says it’s author H. Leighton Steward’s claim that the concentration of atmospheric CO2 in Navy subs isn’t considered dangerous until 8,000 parts per million, while the Earth’s concentration isn’t much more than 350. (Um, that’s not the argument, Mr. Steward…)