Unlike many of their neighbors living near the banks of the River Thames in southwest England, Martin and Joanna worry little about their charming country home being engulfed by floods.

Wary of the dangers posed by climate change and a history of disastrous flooding in this pretty part of Oxfordshire, an hour's drive from London, the couple have opted for a home built half a meter off the ground on 27 steel pillars.

Nicolas Denieul plants his spade in the ground and turns over a clod of soil to reveal a mass of earthworms seething around plant roots -- fat ones and thin ones, delicate translucent violet and dark brown.

"That is magnificent. Ten years ago, I never thought I'd see anything like that!" said Denieul, a cheerful French farmer, his hands full of earth in the biting wind.

Negotiators from 195 nations will race Saturday to complete a four-year mission by delivering a blueprint to secure humanity from the consequences of rampant emissions of climate-altering greenhouse gases.

Despite being riddled with conflicting proposals, the draft to be submitted by lunchtime will form the skeleton of the most complex and consequential global accord ever attempted.

U.S. billionaire Michael Bloomberg will lead an unprecedented push for  corporations worldwide to reveal their financial exposure to climate change to investors, a banking watchdog announced Friday.

Climate experts warn of huge financial consequences if humanity fails to curb emissions of climate-altering carbon gases, tipping Earth towards a future of rising seas, floods, storms and killer droughts.

Brazil thinks it has the sweet solution to ridding the world of reliance on fossil fuels for cars and other vehicles: sugar cane ethanol 2.0.

Ethanol -- fuel derived from agricultural products -- is already well established in Brazil, where more than 60 percent of 36 million vehicles run on ethanol or ethanol-fuel flex systems, rather than straight petrol or diesel.

High in the sky, a satellite passes over the equatorial forest of west Africa, the Earth's second largest "lung" after the Amazon.

In Ntoum, a village about 30 kilometers (18 miles) from Gabon's capital Libreville, a giant satellite dish slowly swings into action, capturing key data on Africa's environmental health.

U.S. House Republicans voted Tuesday to block President Barack Obama's regulations on reducing greenhouse gas emissions -- a move certain to spark his veto -- as negotiators work on a global climate deal in Paris.

The two measures, rolling back the Environmental Protection Agency's new emission rules for power plants, passed the chamber largely along party lines.

Bill Gates will announce the creation of a multibillion-dollar clean energy fund on Monday at the opening of a Paris summit meeting intended to forge a global accord to cut planet-warming emissions, according to people with knowledge of the plans.

U.S. President Barack Obama warned Tuesday global warming posed imminent security and economic risks, as negotiators embarked on an 11-day race to seal a U.N. pact aimed at taming climate change.

But, speaking after attending an historic climate summit with 150 other leaders, Obama voiced confidence mankind would make the tough decisions to brake rising temperatures.

Weather-related disasters in the past two decades have killed more than 600,000 people and inflicted economic losses estimated at trillions of dollars, the United Nations said on Monday, warning that the frequency and impact of such events was set to rise.

The figures were released before a United Nations-backed climate meeting, starting next Monday in Paris, at which more than 120 national leaders will try to rein in greenhouse gas emissions and slow the rise in global temperatures.