The House narrowly passed an ambitious climate bill yesterday that would establish national limits on greenhouse gases, create a complex trading system for emission permits and provide incentives to alter how individuals and corporations use energy.

People displaced by global warming -- one estimate puts the number at one billion by 2050 -- could dwarf the nearly 10 million refugees and almost 25 million internally displaced people already fleeing wars and oppression.

Climate change is claiming 300,000 lives a year and costing the global economy $125 billion annually, with the damage set to escalate rapidly, according to the first study of the immediate effects of global warming.

U.S. emissions of carbon dioxide related to energy use fell 2.8 percent last year, driven down by high oil prices and the sagging economy. The drop in carbon dioxide emissions was the steepest since 1982.

Global warming is shrinking Europe's alpine glaciers with such dramatic acceleration that Italy and Switzerland must now redraw their mountain borders, says a proposed law approved by the lower house of the Italian parliament at the end of April.

Emergency organisations could be overwhelmed within seven years by the rising number of people in poor countries affected by floods, droughts, heatwaves, wild fires, storms, landslides and other climate hazards.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency shifted course and deemed carbon dioxide a health risk on Friday, in a turnabout important to global warming-related regulation.

The global warming situation has become so dire that Barack Obama's  chief scientific adviser has raised with the president the possibility of massive-scale technological fixes to alter the climate known as  "geo-engineering."

Lord Nicholas Stern, the economist who produced the single most influential political document on climate change, says he underestimated the risks of global warming and the damage that could result from it. The situation, he added, was worse than he had thought when he completed his review two-and-a-half years ago, but politicians still do not grasp the magnitude of the threat.

An opinion poll in 11 countries has produced what organisers term a "global mandate" for action on climate change. About half of the respondents wanted governments to play a major role in curbing emissions, but only a quarter said their leaders were doing enough.

Just as the world seemed poised to combat global warming more aggressively, the economic slump and plunging prices of coal and oil are upending plans to wean businesses and consumers from fossil fuel. From Italy to China, the threat to jobs, profits and government tax revenues posed by the financial crisis has cast doubt on commitments to cap emissions or phase out polluting factories.

As a new administration committed to addressing climate change takes office, intelligence and defense officials are laying plans to address the national security implications of a warmer planet. In recent months, U.S. military planners have discussed the impact on personnel, equipment and installations of extreme weather events, rising ocean temperatures, shifts in rainfall patterns and stresses on natural resources.

The Western world needs to rethink its rush to biofuels, which has done more harm pushing up food prices than it has good by reducing greenhouse gases, a United Nations report said.

Underscoring the magnitude of the challenge posed by global warming, new U.S. government data estimates that worldwide emissions of carbon dioxide have gone up 38% since 1992, when the United Nations agreed to a framework for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

For poorer countries, climate change "could be the straw that breaks the camel's back," while the United States will face "Dust Bowl" conditions in the parched Southwest. U.S. intelligence agencies have accepted the consensual scientific view of global warming, including the conclusion that it is too late to avert significant disruption over the next two decades.

The Bush administration has decided not to take any new steps to regulate greenhouse gas emissions before the president leaves office, despite pressure from the Supreme Court and broad accord among senior federal officials that new regulation is appropriate now.

Biofuels have forced global food prices up by 75% - far more than previously estimated - according to a confidential World Bank report obtained by the Guardian. The damning unpublished assessment is based on the most detailed analysis of the crisis so far, carried out by an internationally-respected economist at global financial body.  

The figure contradicts the US government's claims that plant-derived fuels contribute less than 3% to food-price rises.

U.S. intelligence experts believe fallout from global climate change over the next 20 years will boost global instability and may place new burdens on U.S. military forces.

Billions of pounds are being wasted in paying industries in developing countries to reduce climate change emissions, according to two analyses of the UN's carbon offsetting programme.

Australia's government plans to spend about $2.9 billion to buy river water from farmers in a bid to address the country's worst drought in a century. "Climate change means most Australian cities and towns have less water and we can no longer rely on local rainfall to supply all our drinking water," said an Australian official.

As many as one billion people could lose their homes by 2050 because of the devastating impact of global warming, scientists and political leaders were warned today by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.

Members of the Rockefeller family, who founded ExxonMobil's corporate predecessor, announced they would seek a "major change" in the company's environmental policies.

Climate change could spawn the next Osama bin Laden unless industrialized nations aggressively reduce emissions and help those suffering the brunt of weather catastrophes, a new international security report warns. From Bangladesh to Indonesia, sub-Saharan Africa to the Maldives, Muslim countries are in some of the most water-stressed regions of the world. As sea levels rise, the study from a top U.K. think tank predicts, so will tensions with the West.

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," said Stern, former chief economist at the World Bank.

The collapse of Australia's rice production is one of several factors contributing to a doubling of rice prices in the last three months -- increases that have led the world's largest exporters to restrict exports severely, spurred panicked hoarding in Hong Kong and the Philippines, and set off violent protests in countries including Cameroon, Egypt, Ethiopia, Haiti, Indonesia, Italy, Ivory Coast, Mauritania, the Philippines, Thailand, Uzbekistan and Yemen.

Almost all biofuels used today cause more greenhouse gas emissions than conventional fuels if the pollution caused by producing these "green" fuels is taken into account, two studies published Thursday have concluded.

A meeting of delegates from the nations that emit the most pollutants ended without concrete targets for slashing greenhouse gas emissions, but participants praised what they saw as a new willingness by the United States to discuss possible solutions.

Nearly nine in 10 businesses do not rate climate change as a priority. Nearly twice as many see climate change as imposing costs on their business as those who believe it presents an opportunity to make money. And the report's publishers believe that big business will concentrate even less on climate change as the world economy deteriorates.

We humans are having such a dramatic impact on our planet that some leading scientists think the current era needs a new name. We're no longer in the Holocene epoch, they say. We're now well into what they are calling the Anthropocene.

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Stephen L. Johnson yesterday denied California's petition to limit greenhouse gas emissions from cars and trucks, overruling the unanimous recommendation of the agency's legal and technical staffs.

The US delegation at a UN climate change summit said Thursday they would not commit to deep greenhouse gas emissions cuts at the key meeting in Indonesia, despite growing pressure. Harlan Watson, head of the US delegation, said that neither a recent US Senate committee move to limit greenhouse gas emissions or the decision by Australia to ratify the Kyoto Protocol would influence their stance.

A new UN report warns that progress toward prosperity in the world's poorest regions will be reversed unless rich countries promptly begin curbing emissions linked to global warming while also helping poorer ones leapfrog to energy sources that pollute less than coal and oil. The world's poorest regions will also need much more help to avoid what one commentator called "adaptation apartheid."

A sizable fraction of the international business community launched an effort to press for mandatory cuts in greenhouse gas emissions yesterday, on the eve of a major round of climate negotiations set to begin Monday in Bali.

Unless the international community agrees to cut carbon emissions by half over the next generation, climate change is like to cause large-scale ecological catastrophes, a United Nations report says.The UN Human Development report issued one of the strongest warnings yet of the lasting impacts of climate change on living standards and a strong call for urgent collective action.

More than four times the number of natural disasters are occurring now than did two decades ago, British charity Oxfam said in a study that largely blamed global warming.

Britain's prime minister hopes to push the nation to the forefront of global efforts to tackle climate change, calling Monday for an 80 percent cut in emissions by 2050.

Six Midwestern governors and the premier of Manitoba will sign an accord in Milwaukee today that will commit those states to working together to slash emissions linked to global warming over the coming decades.