"The worst decline was among populations of freshwater species, which fell by 76 percent over the four decades to 2010, while marine and terrestrial numbers both fell by 39 percent."

"The woman cowers inside a phone booth as a fury of birds tears through town. Demented seabirds hurl themselves at the windows, cracking the glass. Outside, beaks and claws swirl over bloody bodies in the streets."

"An excruciating mosquito-borne illness that arrived less than a year ago in the Americas is raging across the region, leaping from the Caribbean to the Central and South American mainland, and infecting more than 1 million people. Some cases have already emerged in the United States."

"Brazil has refused to sign up to a pact setting a deadline for ending deforestation entirely by 2030."

"Ellesmere Island, Nunavut — It’s August, and there’s snow on the ground. The six-week summer has already passed; our 24-hour daylight will drop to 16 in just a month’s time. Small, brittle leaves crunch underfoot as I walk across tundra that’s already beginning to freeze for the long winter ahead. The top of the world is a cold place. I’ve been at a field camp here in the Canadian high Arctic gathering climate change data from one of the most remote and isolated regions of the planet. It is barren, wild and beautiful. Yet this place is not beyond the reach of our carbon emissions."

"Moving to halt a powerful contributor to climate change, the United States has joined more than 110 corporations, civil society groups and governments to launch a global initiative to reduce deforestation sharply over the next 15 years, with the goal of eliminating the practice by 2030."

"Climate change poses risks to human health just as pollution and lack of sanitation did a century ago, says a medical journal editorial that details the potential harmful health effects and the benefits of reducing greenhouse gas emissions."

"NEW YORK -– To combat climate change, a global Compact of Mayors from cities across the world was launched today at the UN Secretary-General’s Climate Summit today at UN Headquarters."

"China has pledged for the first time to take firm action on climate change, telling a UN summit that its emissions, the world's highest, would soon peak."

"French President Francois Hollande on Tuesday announced that France will contribute $1 billion to a near-empty global fund to help poor countries adapt to the effects of climate change as he addressed the United Nation's summit on climate change."