The suburb of Vauban in the German town of Freiburg has taken a bold move to reduce its air and noise pollution; it's removed all the cars from the streets. If you want to own a car you have to pay €20,000 for a space to park it in a garage on the outskirts of the district. Over half the residents have sold a car in favour of the very efficient tram service that will take them to the centre of Frieburg within 15 minutes.

Somewhat of an eco experiment the Vauban project sounds like a great idea for towns where public transport is good and an enthusiasm to tackle climate change by reducing community CO2 emission head on. For holidays or shifting things people can hire a car, become a member of a car club (like Streetcar) or share a vehicle with others.

The suburb was revamped somewhat from it's former army barracks into quite the eco-conscious and sustainable community. Sixty architects were commissioned to recreate Vauban as an alternative to nuclear power.

The sign at entrance to the suburb ‘we are creating the world we want' says a lot about the green intentions of Vauban. Some of the eco-friendly technology that is used in the buildings includes triple-glazed windows, an intricate ventilation system fitted with heat exchangers, solar panels, biological toilets that compost waste, co-generator engines that run on wood chips and 35cm thick walls for superb insulation where just one extra person in an apartment can change the internal temperature.

Heating for a four roomed house costs €114 a year to heat, which is what some neighbouring areas buildings pay in a month. It's no surprise then that Vauban produce excess electricity that they sell to the power companies that run the national electricity grids. Just another benefit of going green.

Researchers at the University of California have found that children up to the age of 7 are more susceptible to the toxic effect of some pesticides. The reason being they lack a particular enzyme called paraoxonase which helps to protect most of us from some of these toxins by neutralizing and then eliminating them from the body.

This enzyme increases as we grow but it does take those young formative years to be effective in helping the body fight off toxins. Organophosphate pesticides are the prime suspects; extremely toxic and banned from home use they are still used widely in agriculture.

These pesticides affect the nervous system of insects but could also have a similar effect on children. Studies have shown that mothers exposed to the pesticide during pregnancy have children with significantly lower IQs.

It's not just kids that are more susceptible. A person's genes can determine how affected they are as genes are responsible for deciding how effective the enzyme is at breaking down the toxins. Variations of the paraoxanase gene will affect the quantity and quality of the paraoxanase enzyme and thus a person's natural ability to fight the pesticides.

Our best defence is to avoid pesticides where we can. Go organic and grow your own, make your own. It's the best way to avoid these body disruptors.

The first real plan for reducing greenhouse emissions has been formulated by the government. The target in the new Low Carbon Transition Plan for farming is to reduce emissions by 6% over the next decade. Many say this is not high enough, others believe it is a achievable goal to reach for.

The Soil Association say this is a considerably ‘modest' target and a short-term when considering the huge reductions we must make by 2050. They point out that the ‘farming industry risks having to make massive cuts of over 70% between 2020 and 2050' if they start a slow 6% now. What's more the proposed reductions of carbon emissions from farming will only contribute 4% of the total the Government are hoping to save by 2020.

The Government say that their Transition Plan will ‘help protect the equivalent of over 37 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide that is currently locked into natural reservoirs of carbon in our soils and forests'. But there is nothing in this plan that reduces the loss of carbon from agricultural soils.

The Rodale Institute (a non-profit organisation which researches organic farming) in the US points out that conventional farming adds 925 billion pounds of CO2 to the atmosphere each year whilst organic farming can reduce CO2 by 1.1 trillion pounds per year by sequestering CO2 and reducing fossil fuel energy (ie commercial fertilizers which require a lot of energy to produce and distribute)

They also say that on a global scale, soils hold more than twice as much carbon as terrestrial vegetation and ‘practices like reduced tillage, the use of cover crops, and incorporation of crop residues can dramatically alter the carbon storage of arable lands'.

Perhaps more incentives for organic farming from the Government may help the agricultural industry surpass this meagre 6% target.

Part 3... A Model for a Greener City?

Now may be a good time to bring up the-man-that-burns part of Burning Man. A man does indeed burn but tis of the woody structural kind rather than the flesh and bones variety. At the end of this week-long festival the great man, which stands at the centre of the desert camp, is lit up as a symbol of release (emotional, spiritual or whatever you'd like it to represent). But of course, as the burning of things does require, it also releases a whole lot of carbon into the atmosphere.

This festival/community/city is perhaps not yet a model for green living but it does provide a very real and experimental arena to educate yourself on how to improve and sustain certain aspects of your life in your ‘other home'.

We cannot escape climate change any longer. Changes of another kind must happen if we are to improve our planets potentially dire affair. Which is why, perhaps, the Burning Man school of eco education may be about to get a whole lot greener... in a philosophical kind of way. The theme of this year's burn is Evolution. Here, as the Burning Man web team puts forward to us, is the idea behind this theme:

Nature never made a plan, nor does it seem to copy very well. No living thing is ever quite the same as others of its kind. Charles Darwin called this Natural Variation. There is a kind of subtle chaos, a supple element of chance and change, residing at the core of living things. Our theme this year prompts three related questions: What are we as human beings, where have we come from, and how may we adapt to meet an ever-changing world?

I'll report back in a few weeks to let you know if I come up with any answers. In the mean time for more details and images of this extremely (in all senses of the world) extraordinary festival visit www.burningman.com.

Part 2... The Green Man of Burning Man

This is my second Burning Man so I know something of what I'm in for. Two years ago I went to the 2007 Burning Man where the art theme the year was ‘The Green Man' (a big incentive for me to attend in itself). This year the community delved into exploring the self-sustaining ethos and eco credentials of Burning Man - which, as you may have gathered, is a burning, carbon-emitting event.

One word - MOOP - gives you an idea of the ecological ideals of this festival. Matter Out Of Place is everyone's responsibility - reuse it, recycle it, as a last resort, bin it. But you won't find bins scattered all over this desert. No, this is truly the Nevada Desert, not some theme-park-the-cleaners-will-deal-with-later place. Burning Man is a Leave No Trace Event and everyone is expected to clean up their own act. It can be a hard reality of sustainable living - dealing with your own... errr... rubbish. Here, every little bit of scrap you create or bring you must also take home! After a week of desert shenanigans the potential to take home a trailer load is possible if you don't plan well.

Bicycles and art cars are the only form of transport other than your own two feet to get around. Thankfully this desert playa is hard clay not soft sand. Riding a bike around the desert is something else. You feel like a cross between a Mad Max movie extra and a Traveling Wilbury. You can ride from the dusty desert roller skating rink to the Crude Awakening art piece within minutes on your trusty bike. There's just so much to explore that two wheels can help no end.

Always working to reduce the environmental impact, The Green Man, took the opportunity to find solutions to improve it further. Burning Man is a place of experimentation as much as it is play and survival, and tends to attract some of the worlds most innovative, progressive thinkers. For example one year hundreds of pastel green bikes were gifted to the community and spread around the playa for anyone to pick up, borrow and re-lend anytime, anywhere (very handy and ingenious idea indeed). Rumour has it was the founder of a certain giant search engine (rhymes with boogle), a burner himself, who made the drop.

Some of the ingenious green inventions and eco highlights at 2007's Green Man were the solar photovoltaic panels to power the Green Pavilion (an all-eco education area under the man); 11,000 gallons of petroleum were replaced with reclaimed veggie oil from nearby Reno to power 85% of the cities generators; experimental biofuel technologies, including a greenhouse-gas eating algae; and The Mechabolic, a trash-to-fuel land speed racer art car that produces a potent carbon fertilizer by feeding it organic matter (in other words, it runs on food scraps).

Another green project inspired by the earth guardian ethos of Burning Man is the Cooling Man. Initiated by an environmental scientist and an economist, this project aims to encourage burners to buy ‘carbon offsets' to cancel out the greenhouse gas emissions generated during the festival. It has been estimated that if every burner offsets 0.7 tons of carbon then Black Rock City would be the first carbon-neutral city in the world.