U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres returned to the summit on Monday and said it was “time to go into overdrive, to negotiate in good faith, and rise to the challenge.”

The mood is about to shift, the hours grow longer and the already high sense of urgency somehow amp up even more as the United Nations climate summit heads into its final week.

Negotiators at a critical United Nations climate conference prepared on Wednesday to wrap up their first week of work with moderate progress on some issues, with little time to make a bit more headway before government ministers return for a final week that will shape the planet's path forward in the face of crisis.

After a first-day blur of rare quick action and agreement, negotiators at a critical United Nations climate summit on Wednesday finished up their first week in a more familiar place for them: the murky middle where momentum and roadblocks intertwine.

After days of shaving off the edges of key warming issues, climate negotiators zeroed in on the tough job of dealing with the main cause of what's overheating the planet: fossil fuels.

Don’t trust the oil and gas industry to report their actual carbon pollution, said former U.S. Vice President Al Gore, who added that the man leading the United Nations climate talks runs one of the “dirtiest” oil companies out there.

International climate talks turned to a power game on Friday as dozens of world leaders including the Saudi crown prince and India's prime minister were to speak, but two of the world's most powerful men — President Joe Biden of the U.S. and China's President Xi Jinping — were glaringly absent.

The world is heading for considerably less warming than projected a decade ago, but that good news is overwhelmed by much more pain from current climate change than scientists anticipated, experts said.

The world is off track in its efforts to curb global warming in 41 of 42 important measurements and is even heading in the wrong direction in six crucial ways, a new international report calculates.

After a summer of record-smashing heat, warming somehow got even worse in September as Earth set a new mark for how far above normal temperatures were, the European climate agency reported.