"Almost 200 nations meet in Mexico this month to try to agree a "green fund" for poor countries and other steps toward an elusive climate treaty amid warnings that inaction is driving up the costs of tackling global warming."

"The Russian energy giant Gazprom has joined a growing list of companies that plan to drill for oil in the waters off Cuba, close to the United States but out of reach of its safety regulators."

"Not only is Earth's surface warming, but the troposphere -- the lowest level of the atmosphere, where weather occurs -- is heating up too, U.S. and British meteorologists reported on Monday." The findings may put to rest a 20-year-old controversy over differences between satellite and surface measurements of warming.

"At the Seoul G-20 Summit [Friday], leaders of the world's 19 most industrialized nations and the EU said they have made 'substantial progress' toward phasing out fossil fuel subsidies in the 14 months since their decision to do so at last year's G-20 Summit in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania."

"The United Nations and its partners have finalized a $164 million plan to support the government of Haiti's response to the current cholera epidemic. To date, more than 12,000 Haitians have been hospitalized, and over 800 people have died, the UN reports."

"The Arab world, one of the driest regions on the planet, will tip into severe water scarcity as early as 2015, a report issued [Nov. 4] predicts."

NDM-1, a gene that gives most gram-negative bacteria a resistance to almost all drugs used to treat them, has been spreading across the globe rapidly since it was discovered in 2008. It has been found in hospital-acquired infections in the U.S. It is bad news.

In a new book, a Dutch researcher says a new class of insecticides, the neonicotinoids, may be causing as much damage to bird populations as the DDT Rachel Carson wrote about in Silent Spring. Some bird populations in Europe are crashing dramatically.

"U.N. climate talks starting in Mexico this month will seek a complex set of interlocking deals to slow global warming but will fall well short of a new treaty, the U.N.'s climate chief said on Wednesday."

Must China really dominate the future world market in rare earth minerals so crucial to a green energy economy?