On Monday, at the inauguration of the annual UN summit on climate change, Poland's Prime Minister Donald Tusk called for a new global solidarity to combat the menace.

Representatives from almost every country on the planet are set to start 12 days of tough talks in Poland on Monday, aimed at getting the ball rolling for a new global climate change pact.

Among the many grim predictions of climate change experts, the future fate of The Maldives stands out as a genuine doomsday scenario with the island chain nation facing nothing short of extinction.

Standing in the shadow of a massive windmill, Mayor Tomasz Koprowiak thinks part of the answer to Poland kicking its coal habit is blowing in the wind and growing in farmers' fields.

Lawmakers gave final approval to a bill committing Britain to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 80 per cent by 2050 - the first country to have such a legally binding framework on climate change.

The world geological community is warning that today's seismic activity on our planet is nothing compared with what is to come.

A dirty brown haze sometimes more than a mile thick is darkening skies not only over vast areas of Asia, but also in the Middle East, southern Africa and the Amazon Basin, changing weather patterns around the world and threatening health and food supplies, the UN reported on Thursday.

The leaders also called for policies and financial incentives within a global framework to steer economic growth in a low-carbon direction, thus eliminating or greatly reducing the human-generated greenhouse gases.

Carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere have entered the danger zone and must be reduced if climate disasters are to be averted, according to researchers.

Global warming could free billions of tonnes of carbon concentrated in the world's peat bogs within the coming decades, according to a new analysis of the interplay between peat bogs, water tables and climate change.

"The developed countries have a responsibility and an obligation to respond to global climate change by altering their unsustainable way of life," the Chinese premier was quoted as saying.

Antarctica, which seemed to have largely escaped the global warming affecting the rest of the planet, is melting too, according to a study.

The deepening economic crisis may appear to be the perfect storm for environmentalism, but many in and around the green movement contend the opposite, seeing in it a time of opportunity.

Polar bears are dying out in the remote Arctic region of Chukotka because of melting ice and increased killing by humans, an expert with the International Fund for Animal Welfare warned on Friday.

Owning an electric vehicle requires more than global-cooling ambitions. It takes guile, planning, sharp vision, a silver tongue - and a 50-foot extension cord.

Developed countries are obligated to help poorer nations cope with disasters that may be exacerbated by climate change, a UN-sponsored gathering of legislators in the Philippines said on Saturday.

The challenge posed by climate change could be resolved by a peaceful switch to a low-carbon economy, or alternatively inflict stresses that could include war and desertification of swathes of the US and Australia, a thinktank said on Monday.

Global warming is driving tropical plant and animal species to higher altitudes, potentially leaving lowland rainforest with nothing to take their place, ecologists argue in this week's issue of Science.

Wall Street's sickness and its contagiousness for the world economy are bad news for the already faltering effort to craft a new pact to tackle climate change.

Arctic sea ice melted to its second-lowest level since measurements began in 1979, the Colorado-based National Snow and Ice Data Centre (NSIDC) in the US said on Thursday.

An offbeat suggestion that Australians should eat kangaroos instead of cattle and sheep has been given a scientific stamp of approval by the government's top climate change adviser.

Carbon dioxide is a gas that finds its way from the atmosphere into the ocean, turning seawater acidic. As the carbon dioxide concentration in the air increases due to human activities, seawater is turning more acidic.