Much has been made of the role of airlines and oil companies in the fight against climate change, but few think of the built environment. Yet property is thought to account for nearly half of all carbon emissions and about half of those come from commercial buildings. Last year's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report highlighted the construction sector as that with the most potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and in the most cost effective way.

President Bush called Wednesday for the United States to stop the growth of greenhouse gas emissions by 2025 and challenged other countries, including major polluters like China and India, to abandon trade barriers on energy-related technology and commit to goals of their own. Dot Earth: The [Annotated] Climate SpeechThe White House cast Mr. Bush's announcement in the Rose Garden as an ambitious effort by a president determined to lead on the climate change issue, even with just nine months left in office.

US President George W Bush plans on Wednesday to call for halting the growth of greenhouse gas emissions by 2025. The three candidates vying to succeed him have made more ambitious proposals. Here is what they are saying about environmental and energy issues: * CLIMATE CHANGE New York Sen. Hillary Clinton, Democrat - Cut US greenhouse gas emissions to 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050 through cap-and-trade system; require all publicly traded US companies to file report on climate change risks with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

President George W Bush on Wednesday called for halting the growth of US greenhouse gas emissions by 2025, but drew quick criticism for offering few ideas on how to do so before his term ends next year. While trying to shape global climate change talks in Paris this week and the debate in the US Congress later this year, Bush's cautious approach on global warming falls far short of European goals and lawmakers' proposals.

Global oceans are soaking up less carbon dioxide, a development that could speed up the greenhouse effect and have an impact for the next 1,500 years, scientists said on Wednesday. Research from a five-year project funded by the European Union showed the North Atlantic, which along with the Antarctic is of the world's two vital ocean carbon sinks, is absorbing only half the amount of CO2 that it did in the mid-1990s.

Greenhouse gas curbs on industries such as steel and cement could help a UN-led drive to fight global warming despite fears they would be hard to implement, delegates at a US-led conference said on Wednesday. Developing nations objected at the 17-nation talks that such sectoral industrial schemes might throttle their inefficient energy-intensive businesses and said the burden for curbs should fall instead on rich nations.

Developing nations objected on Wednesday to possible curbs on greenhouse gases produced by industries such as steel or cement, telling US-led climate talks that too strict standards could throttle their companies. Other countries expressed worries that such targets, championed by Japan as a possible element of a planned new UN climate treaty beyond 2012, should only be a complement to big cuts in emissions of gases led by industrial nations.

Air quality regulators in the San Francisco Bay Area appear set to begin charging hundreds of businesses in the region for their emissions of heat-trapping gases. It is believed to be the first time in the country that any government body would charge industries directly for emissions that contribute to climate change. The regional agency that is considering the fee, the Bay Area Air Quality Management District, would be effectively leapfrogging the continuing debate in Sacramento and Washington over how to control emissions.

The Stern report on climate change underestimated the risks of global warming, its author said on Wednesday, and should have presented a gloomier view of the future. "We underestimated the risks ... we underestimated the damage associated with temperature increases ... and we underestimated the probabilities of temperature increases,' Lord Stern, former chief economist at the World Bank, told the Financial Times on Wednesday.