Spring flowers may arrive as much as three weeks faster over the next century as climate change drives an earlier end to winters in areas of the United States, researchers say in a new report.

The world has a better chance of saving itself from catastrophic global warming now than at any time over the past two decades, according to the scientist behind some of the most alarming predictions ever made for the planet’s future.

Johan Rockström shocked environmentalists in 2009 when he identified nine categories of Nature that were essential for life as we know it, and warned that we had already crossed into dangerous territory on three of them – including climate change.

U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on Monday urged nations to look beyond narrow interests at an upcoming world climate conference, warning that "we don't have a planet B."

Complaining that global talks aimed at curbing climate change have so far been "slow" and "frustrating" due to negotiators focusing on "narrow national perspectives," Ban urged member states to work faster.

The White House on Monday redoubled efforts to enlist U.S. companies in the fight against climate change, announcing dozens more back a global climate deal and pledge to curb emissions.

Ahead of a meeting between President Barack Obama and CEOs later Monday, the White House said 81 companies had committed to concrete mitigation measures.

Pacific island nations have pleaded with wealthy countries to help their people migrate and find work if they are forced to flee their homelands because of the consequences of climate change.

A coalition of low-lying island nations said moving people because of rising sea levels, storms and ruined agriculture was a last resort, but the “calamity” of climate change required industrialized countries to devise a plan.

The world’s oil resources are unlikely to ever be fully exploited, BP has admitted, due to international concern about climate change.

The statement, by the group’s chief economist, is the clearest acknowledgement yet by a major fossil fuel company that some coal, oil and gas will have to remain in the ground if dangerous global warming is to be avoided.

U.N. negotiators opened a final round of talks in Bonn on Monday to thrash out the wording of a universal climate rescue pact to be inked in Paris in December.

Developing nations have objected to the latest, shortened blueprint for the agreement, saying some of their key demands have been dropped.

Malaysia closed schools in several states and the capital Kuala Lumpur on Monday due to choking smoke from Indonesian slash-and-burn farming that has smothered much of Southeast Asia in smog for weeks.

Malaysia has repeatedly ordered students to stay home as a health precaution as the current smog problem -- an annual dry-season occurrence -- has become one of the worst in years, exacerbated by tinder-dry conditions from the El Nino weather phenomenon.

Rich countries and businesses have provided close to two-thirds of the financial assistance pledged to poorer nations as part of the global climate change negotiations, ahead of the Paris conference this December.

The finding by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) is a further clearing of the path to an agreement in Paris, as it helps countries to judge whether pledges made at previous meetings can be trusted.

Finance ministers from the 20 countries most vulnerable to climate change have formed a group to call for greater access to climate finance for adaptation and mitigation in the face of the most devastating effects of global warming.

With a collective population of nearly 700 million, the vulnerable twenty, or V20, range from small Pacific nations,such as Vanuatu, to Bangladesh and the Philippines.