The sixth mass extinction of life on Earth is unfolding more quickly than feared, scientists have warned.

A monsoon-like rainstorm dumped a record amount of rain on Paris, flooding streets, snarling traffic and briefly forcing the closure of metro stations, officials said Monday.

G20 countries have managed to avoid a total bust-up with Donald Trump over climate change, leaving the door open for Washington to return to the Paris Agreement -- but at the cost of risky concessions.

Activists with the Greenpeace environmental group unfurled a huge banner across the facade of a Trump hotel in Chicago Friday, calling it an act of defiance against the US president's environmental policies.

UNESCO said Thursday its World Heritage Committee (WHC) had decided not to place Australia's Great Barrier Reef on its list of sites "in danger" despite concern over coral bleaching.

Officials in Vietnam's traffic-choked capital Hanoi vowed on Tuesday to banish motorbikes by 2030 to ease environment and congestion woes, a decision that swiftly divided a city where two-wheelers are the main means of transportation.

The U.S. decision to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement has given a "global push" to the deal, as other signatories have strongly recommitted to the landmark accord, U.N. chief Antonio Guterres said Monday.

China is drilling deep into the ocean floor in the hope of tapping vast deposits of a frozen fossil fuel known as "combustible ice" but it will be years before it is part of the global energy mix.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Thursday that Europe was "more determined than ever" to fight climate change after President Donald Trump pulled the United States out of the Paris agreement.

Multinationals worth $3.5 trillion and financial institutions managing $25 trillion in assets pledged on Thursday to follow new guidelines for disclosing exposure to climate change risk in both operations and investments.

Spearheaded by former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg, recommendations by the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures should help shareholders determine if businesses are aligned with the global shift toward a low-carbon economy, and not unduly burdened with assets that could be stranded during that transition.