You can now explore the Amazon, Madagascar, and Sebangau National Forest in Borneo through Google Earth.

On September 25, I wrote about a Google Earth tour (narrated by AL Gore) and new Google Earth tools and layers which help people to look at the possible effects of climate change under three different scenarios. Now, three new tours have been launched that allow the exploration of critical rainforests and real-life success stories.

The tours (embedded below) have a great wealth of information and inspirational stories bound into succinct Google Earth or YouTube videos.

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A new tool in Google Earth shows you the “effect” of climate change in your area.

Using Google Earth, you can look at climate effects under three different scenarios — 1) Confronting Climate Change — “with Al Gore”, 2) IPCC High Emissions Scenario, and 3) IPCC Low Emissions Scenario. Other new tools let you examine other aspects of climate change and how to adapt to climate change.

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Birth Matters of Virginia was inspired by Ricki Lake’s movie The Business of Being Born to host a YouTube video contest (they even got Ricki to help judge it).

As a step toward our goal of educating women about their choices and options during the childbearing years, Birth Matters Virginia solicited short videos about evidence-based maternity and delivery care. With our nation ranking 41st in maternal mortality and our cesarean rate surpassing 30%, it is more important than ever for women to be educated about their options.

We were pleased to have received nearly 40 informative and thoughtful videos on topics ranging from personal birth journeys, the role a doula plays, midwifery care, cesarean sections, birthing in the Amish culture, birth in Ireland, and more. Each video carried a message of the understanding that change needs to occur in our culture related to pregnancy and birth for the well-being of both mothers and babies.

The first place winner was “Prevent Cesarean Surgery” by Ragan Cohen featured above.

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There won’t be only one winner.

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In light of the 40th anniversary of mankind’s first steps on the moon, the Department of Energy (DOE) has launched its own “giant leap” venture. Energy Secretary Steven Chu is taking his small step into the Facebook world (an ever growing, ever consuming world). Chu set up a page that will hopefully make a huge impact on climate change.

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Peter Sinclair is back again with a new installment of his always-insightful podcast “The Climate Denial Crock of the Week.” This time, he tackles the common claim climate change deniers make that thousands of reputable scientists dispute global warming. Check it out!

I meet all kinds of interesting people through my position as editor of this blog, many of whom are actively fighting to protect the planet. I was lucky enough yesterday to receive an email from one such man: Peter Sinclair, the creator of a weekly YouTube series called “Climate Denial Crock of the Week.”

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A few months ago Cleantechnica reported on the new Ford Fusion and Mercury Milan’s graphical display known as SmartGauge. Now Ford has released a video showing the interactive display in action.

Probably the coolest part of the video is where it shows how the driver will get instantaneous driving habits feedback by displaying how efficiently he or she is driving. The gauge does this through a constantly changing display of green leaves — the more green leaves on the display, the better you’re driving. For the less creative among us, that same information can also be displayed in a history graph (fuel economy over the last ten minutes). This is a nice, non-intrusive way to help promote good driving habits and maximizing a driver’s fuel economy.

Video after the break (skip to minute 2 for hybrid-specific graphics and display).

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I’m actually rather excited today though, since one of the accounts I set up and manage on Twitter, @greenmoms just won the 2008 Shorty awards for green. I’m looking forward to going to New York City to accept the award along with the Greenmoms founder, Lynn, from organicmania.

There, are, of course, more and more green social media success stories and today I’d like to talk about one – Paw luxury – their tagline – eco-living for the everyday dog.

Adam and Wendy, live in Williamsport, PA successfully ran YourAuctionCompany, where they sold on eBay for people locally for over 5 years. Adam describes how they got started with Pawluxury and their vision as follows::

… we meet some wonderful people along our journey. So, then we decided that we needed a change and one day we looked at our little boxer girl Lola (our child) and had a light bulb moment. We answered the age old question “What are we passionate about?” We realized we were passionate about the earth, our dog and making a difference in the world.

Evolving from the overwhelming love of our beautiful, loyal, carefree, lovable and cuddly boxer named Lola, Paw Luxury was born. As proud parents we wanted to give Lola the best nature had to offer but found it difficult to find eco-friendly products under one roof. So we went sniffing with Lola, searched high and low and dug a few holes along the way. Then we thought to ourselves why not create a one-stop online destination that caters to the need for healthy alternatives.

As well established users of online media, they entered the social media space and have built up quite a following using a variety of social media tools, starting with Youtube. Adam says:

We use Youtube to create video & viral content that dog owners and animal lovers will enjoy. By creating a profile and including a link to our blog or website in it, the exposure gained on Youtube we create brand awareness and increase traffic to our blog, our online store, other social media outlets, or any other content that we created. We often do video product giveaways, video of Lola, post product reviews of items sold on pawlux.com, how to video, tips etc. We have in the works a podcast we will also be placed on youtube. Youtube is a great way for people to get to know us and our adorable Lola personally and people can put  a face with the company. We want to always be transparent with the social media communities we are proud & lucky to be a part of.

Youtube is only part of their strategy though. Their twitter profile, @pawluxury has over 11,000 followers. They use their Facebook page to enable fans to get updates on PawLuxury happenings, blog post, view pics of Lola, watch other viral funny viral pet related youtube videos & more.

Adam sent me a list of the various social media and social bookmarking sites they have and I spent some time looking through them. Like most of us in social media, they diligently update some and let others fall by the wayside. They keep their Flickr photostream and Linkedin profile updated and have let some of their social bookmarking profiles fall by the wayside. They are also very active Twitter users.

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Companies who miss the importance of the social media ship may actually risk the same fate as companies who thought the Internet was a fad. That sounds extreme, but over half the nation is already on a social network. They upload photos and videos or share shopping reviews. Customers are changing how they want companies to interact with them. The more that happens, the more companies will be left in the dust.

Since many if not most companies only have a hazy idea of how social media works and why in the world they should jump into the fray, some are slow to take the plunge. This is perhaps less true of new and old media companies. You can find Ecopreneurist and Green Options on Twitter, along with the New York Times, CNN and The BBC.

Besides Twitter, there are of course a whole host of ways to reach out to your customers and engage them on a one-to-one basis. There is Facebook and Myspace as well as a fast growing selection of newer sites. There are blogs and blogger networks, as well as, shopping social networking sites. There are community forums for a variety of topics and there are media sharing sites like Flickr and Youtube.

All of these should be considered for a social media campaign, but not all should be used. Why? This depends a lot on the company and product.

For example, as a social media marketing consultant, I focus on green products and on women’s products. I know the Mommy and female blogger and The Mommy and female social media market. I know the green market. What tools they use and where one can find green consumers. I recommend tools that make sense for my clients. Not all of the tools that Liz Strauss or Jeff Pulver suggest do that, though I follow and admire them both, but they often serve different markets.

One thing on which we all agree, though is Twitter. Though less than 2 years old, Twitter is rapidly becoming the go to place for both questions and answers. Have a question on organic food? Direct message @WholeFoods, an early and excellent user of social media. Follow Seventh Generation and find updates answers on a variety of green topics.

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Likewise, the masses see the greening of America, but don’t yet trust that this is a trend here to stay. According to Korhan, there are two things that can happen that could give our current green trend a huge push forward. One is a serious event, such as a severe water shortage or other environmental disaster. The other is for all of us dedicated to the preservation of the earth to join together and form a grassroots effort to educate others.

Yes, there IS hope for your SUV driving, energy wasting neighbor!

The soon to be launched environmental network is partnering with YouTube to hold video auditions to find one student from each major U.S. college to be a correspondent for Mother Nature Network in 2009. MNN’s college reporters will be highlighted contributors able to cover environmental topics in what many expect to be an exciting year for environmental causes once President-elect Obama takes office.

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If I am coming across cloud computing on a daily basis, its clearly become mainstream. But, how exactly is cloud computing green?  Well, Kevin Jackson mused about this on his blog and asserts that The Economist provides the perfect answer:

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I’ve done my share of dumpster diving in my youth. Some of the booty I collected was donuts, a large area rug, and a vintage Singer sewing machine.  I no longer look in dumpsters for freebies, but Americans discard a lot of useful items. These wasteful habits are not good for the enviroment and fuel our consumer culture.

Back in May, we penned the original 10 Ways to Change the World Through Social Media. Though most of those first 10 are still relevant, the pace of innovation and advancement on the social web means many more have emerged in the past five months that deserve attention. These are the tools and resources that individuals, corporations, and nonprofits alike can use to communicate, create, and connect on the social web…for social change.

1. Blog It Out: When the die is cast on social media and final judgments are made, blogging will reign supreme as the single greatest force in Web 2.0. Whereas social networking is broad and shallow, blogging is deep and focused. That’s the power behind Blog Action Day, which takes place this Wednesday, October 15th, 2008. It’s a day when bloggers the world over draw attention to a single issue and (hopefully) inspire action. This year’s topic is poverty. And given the current financial crisis, it would seem many bloggers have gotten a head start.

2. Twitter Green Events: In the first 10 Ways, we wrote about the Twitter greenstream, a tagging mechanism that organizes and aggregates Twitter messages (Tweets) about doing green things. What’s evolved since then is the widespread use of unique Twitter tags at events. Most recently, we covered West Coast Green by tagging our Tweets with #wcg08. This helps people at the event to find and meet up with fellow Twitter folk. It also enables those who aren’t attending the event to follow what’s going on and what’s being said in real time. There are a couple ways to do this. One is to follow through Twitter Search (formerly Summize), where you can track keywords and tags. Another is to send a Tweet as follows: “track word: [insert keyword]“. And then you’ll start receiving all Tweets with that tag or keyword directly into your feed.

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In an unlikely pairing, both Michael Pollan and Monsanto’s CEO Hugh Grant sat down with Google.org and YouTube for a discussion on the world’s food crisis. The two had met and became friends upon visiting the Doomsday Seed Vault in Norway.

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It’s no secret that you can waste many an hour on YouTube. A lot of what is posted there is pretty mindless - entertaining, but mindless. Now the X PRIZE Foundation is making good use of the online video website by asking users to figure out how to benefit humanity through their “crazy green ideas.”

Competitors can submit videos to the contest via YouTube and a $25,000 prize will be awarded for “the best video proposing a new, world-changing X PRIZE in the field of Energy and the Environment.” The submitted videos must be 2 minute long and answer these three questions:

1. What is the specific prize idea?
2. What is the Grand Challenge or world-wide problem that you are trying to solve?
3. How will this prize benefit humanity?

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The McDonald’s has since apologized to the mother, but sadly, this situation is too often repeated, not only in restaurants, malls, and other public places, but on the internet as well — most recently with a mom’s breastfeeding pictures being banned from Facebook.

As evidenced by numerous comments on a YouTube Breastfeeding montage created by the League of Maternal Justice (in protest of the Facebook Photo bannings), people still compare public breastfeeding to public urination and masturbation, and insist that it’s inappropriate for women to expose themselves in order to feed their children.

With a long list of arguments that most breastfeeding mothers and breastfeeding supporters could list, there are still many people in society who are aware and may appreciate the benefits of breastfeeding, when it comes to doing it in public, it’s still amazing how many people in this country specifically are uncomfortable.

It’s apparent that World Breastfeeding Week, along with organizations such as the La Leche League and Breastfeeding is Normal, are essential in the fight to bring the much needed awareness of breastfeeding, most specifically breastfeeding in public, to folks who may not understand that we can’t always just go somewhere and hide when we need to feed our children.

Of course, I can’t help but point out the irony of a woman being asked to leave McDonald’s, a restaurant that is attempting to promote family friendly eating with their new “healthy” menu. Apparently apples and caramel (mmm, healthy!) and juice boxes are cool.

But breastmilk? Not on their list.