Feature Article

How big is the energy challenge of climate change? The technological advances needed to stabilize carbon dioxide emissions may be greater than we think, argue Roger Pielke Jr, Tom Wigley and Christopher Green.

The irreconcilable differences between David S. Reay's Book Review of The Hot Topic (Nature 452, 31; 2008) and mine, expressed in Nature Reports Climate Change (see http://www.nature.com/climate/2008/0804/full/climate.2008.23.html), go to the heart of why there is now a crisis in climate policy. Reay seems to believe that agreement with a normative agenda precludes the need for rigorous evaluation of evidence or of proposed policy actions, and so falls into the same traps as Gabrielle Walker and David King, the authors whom he praises. (Correspondence)

Low- and zero-energy buildings could have a huge impact on energy use and carbon emissions. We have the technologies, but if they are to mitigate climate change, green-building design must hit the mass market : a report.

Last month, The Washington Post reported that President George W. Bush had personally intervened to weaken new regulations to control smog just as they were about to be announced by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). In response, advocates of tighter standards predictably charged that the president had overturned a scientific judgement. Carol Browner, who headed the EPA under President Bill Clinton, put the matter starkly, telling the Post that the Clean Air Act creates "a moral and ethical commitment that we're going to let the science tell us what to do'.

The budding carbon-offsets market could already be on its last legs, industry representatives say, if the latest European proposals are agreed. European negotiators went into a United Nations climate meeting in Bangkok this week warning developing countries that they need to step up to the challenge of climate change if they are to see additional money flowing into clean-development projects.

Glaciers are the coolers of the planet earth and the lifeline of many of the world's major rivers. The interaction between glaciers and climate represents a particularly sensitive approach. 2006

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has grossly underestimated the challenges of reducing and stabilizing greenhousegas emissions, according to an influential group of climate-policy experts.

How much energy, and of what sort, should we expect the world to be generating in the decades to come? This is a question of crucial importance to economics, development and the management of climate change. (Editorial)

Human-wildlife conflict (HWC) is an increasingly significant obstacle to
the conservation of wildlife. The growing body of HWC literature tends
to focus on biological, economic and local aspects associated with HWC.
The factors driving HWC at the local level are, however, shaped in turn by

Global warming is one of the most devastating problems of the new millennium. The Kyoto Protocol is the first step towards an international strategy to limit greenhouse gas emissions which in turn helps to mitigate the global climate change. A decision was made in Marrakech Conference of Parties (2001), to include the afforestation and reforestation as the only eligible activities of the CDM.