Climate change and the carbon emissions seem inextricably linked. However, new research published in BioMed Central’s open access journal Carbon Balance and Management suggests that this may not always hold true, although it may be some time before we reach this saturation point.

Three million of them were built; they stimulated a boom in employment and turned a nation of shop keepers into a nation of home owners.

As well as cutting our fossil fuel emissions, planting new forests, or managing existing forests or agricultural land more effectively can capitalise on nature’s ability to act as a carbon sink. Research published online in the open access journal Carbon Balance and Management shows that although planting trees alone is unlikely to solve our climate problems, large-scale plantations could have a significant effect in the longer term.

The University of Bristol is planning to develop two state-of-the-art energy centres that will cut its carbon emissions by nearly a quarter and dramatically increase its energy efficiency.

Cohousing offers a low-carbon lifestyle, and developers are poised for a market that could soon burgeon in the US, according to a new study. Until now, cohousing has occupied a niche market in the US, but the paper by Dr Jo Williams at UCL (University College London) suggests the situation is changing.

The Energy Supply Association of Australia (ESAA) says the Government should not force the electricity industry to use selected technologies as it attempts to reduce carbon emissions.

Black carbon, a form of particulate air pollution most often produced from biomass burning, cooking with solid fuels and diesel exhaust, has a warming effect in the atmosphere three to four times greater than prevailing estimates, according to scientists in an upcoming review article in the journal Nature Geoscience.

A national policy to cut carbon emissions by as much as 40 percent over the next 20 years could still result in increased economic growth, according to an interactive website that reviews 25 of the leading economic models used to predict the economic impacts of reducing emissions.

The rise of oxygen and the oxidation of deep oceans between 635 and 551 million years ago may have had an impact on the increase and spread of the earliest complex life, including animals, according to a study reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences online Early Edition during the week of February 25 – 29.

More than 30 scientists will embark next week on a research mission to the Southern Ocean. Researchers will battle the elements to study how gases important to climate change move between the atmosphere and the ocean under high winds and seas.

Meeting the world's demand for electricity and reducing pollution from coal-fired electric generating plants is a major topic at the annual conference sponsored by Cambridge Energy Research Associates, or CERA in Houston this week. Costs for building new plants are going up dramatically, as VOA's Greg Flakus reports from Houston.

Although the Bush Administration has not signed the Kyoto Protocol — a UN-sponsored treaty ratified by 176 other countries to reduce harmful carbon emissions — hundreds of American cities are voluntarily taking action on their own. More than 770 communities have joined a program known as Cool Cities. Erika Celeste visits one of the latest cities considering signing up: Tupelo, Mississippi.