HONOLULU, Hawaii, Sep 02 (IPS) - A congress billed as the world's largest ever to focus on the environment has opened to warnings that our planet is at a "tipping point" but also with expressions of hope that governments, civil society and big business are learning to work together...

Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. Credit: Flickr/GageSkidmore and HillaryforAmerica

American voters and politicians are now more polarized than ever before across all aspects of climate change  — from the cause, to the science and the impacts — a major new analysis has found...

Pope Francis welcomes the Paris accord but suggests voters might need to take additional action to ensure their governments do not backtrack on the deal. Photograph: Galazka/Sipa/Rex Shutterstock

Pontiff says humans are turning planet into ‘wasteland full of debris, desolation and filth’ in call for urgent action on climate change...

Flash flooding, long periods of sustained drought and even more extreme storm seasons. The impacts of climate change are already being felt here in the U.S. and around the world...

A landscaper mows grass on the roof of the Vancouver Convention Centre. The six-acre roof features 400,000 kinds of indigenous plants and grasses. (Photo: Andy Clark/Reuters)

Researchers find that planting roofs with soil and vegetation helps soak up rainfall and reduces water pollution...

The climate is changing. We know that. But in the Arctic, climate change is in overdrive —  it’s warming twice as fast as the rest of the world, on average...

Governor Jerry Brown of California said the proposed legislation: “This plan gets us the most bang for the buck.”

SACRAMENTO — California Democrats are taking further steps to advance the state’s ambitious climate-change agenda, agreeing to regulate methane emissions from landfills and dairy farms for the first time and approving $900 million in spending on environmental programs...

How do we know our climate is changing permanently, rather than just going through a normal period of flux? Let’s look at 10 major changes scientists have seen in our climate system to help set the record straight....

A melting sea-ice floe in the Southern Ocean in late summer. At the horizon: An ice berg that broke off from the ice shelf of the Antarctic continent. (Image credit: K. Leonard)

The ocean surrounding Antarctica has become substantially less salty over the past couple of decades — and until now, scientists weren’t really sure why. But because changes in the Southern Ocean’s salinity have the potential to affect all kinds of important processes, including ocean circulation and its transport of heat and nutrients around the world, researchers have been eager to figure it out...

(Photo: Ron Holman/The Visalia Times-Delta)

The federal government is stepping up its commitment to the Salton Sea and exploring the possibility of buying geothermal energy from the Imperial Valley, in a series of moves that could help fund restoration projects at California's largest lake and maybe pave the way for a multi-state agreement to use less Colorado River water...

Photographer: Luke Sharett/Bloomberg

Economists agree it can be done, but differ on how much it will cost...

The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA's Terra satellite shows fires around the world. Credit: NASA

This summer, wildfires swept across some 22 regions of Russia, blanketing the country with dense smoke and in some cases destroying entire villages. In the foothills of Boulder, Colo., this month, wildfires exacted a similar toll on a smaller scale...

A house sits submerged in Port Vincent, Louisiana on August 16. Joe Raedle/Getty Images

 The U.S. National Flood Insurance Program, which holds policies for more than 5 million homes, is $23 billion in debt after a string of natural disasters this century. As climate change further strains the program, analysts say it is time to shift its focus from rebuilding to mitigating risk...

This dry-season rice crop in northwest Bangladesh’s Barind region was irrigated using water pumped from wells that sink almost 250 feet deep into the Bengal Aquifer System, which is in South Asia’s Indo-Gangetic Basin. (Photo: WG Burgess)

Scientists find high salt and arsenic concentrations in an aquifer that 750 million people rely on for drinking water and irrigation...

Scientists say that plutonium from nuclear tests, like this one at Bikini Atoll in 1946, could be a signature of a new geological epoch, the Anthropocene. (U.S. Navy via Reuters)

Around 1950, as atomic bombs fell on empty deserts, crowded cities and island atolls; as highways carved concrete paths across the planet; as populations exploded; as consumption skyrocketed; and as the average global temperature began its dangerous upward creep in earnest, Earth entered the epoch of humans...

Nellis Solar Power Plant located within Nellis Air Force Base, northeast of Las Vegas, Nevada, United States. The power plant occupies 140 acres, contains about 70,000 solar panels and generates 14 megawatts of solar power for the base. Photo via Wikimedia Commons.

Electricity generation from wind, solar, and other renewable energy technologies have set monthly records every month so far in 2016, based on data through June released by the U.S. Energy Information Administration yesterday...

Chase Dekker Wild-Life Images | Moment | Getty Images

A group of international insurers with over $1.2 trillion in assets under management have urged the world's governments to commit to the phasing out of fossil fuel subsidies by 2020...

Spain's Gemasolar power plant spied from the historic Solar Impulse round-the-world flight in July (Pic: Solar Impulse)

Luckily for the chances of avoiding global warming, the Paris climate deal isn’t the only game in town. Here’s a rundown of what else is cooking...

CREDIT: AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta

Says “It’s irresponsible.”

Insurers with $1.2 trillion under management called on Tuesday for the Group of 20 to set a timetable to phase out subsidies for fossil fuels by 2020 when they meet at a summit in China this weekend...