World leaders pledged last week to step up efforts to reach a U.N. deal to fight climate change, but they will have to match rhetoric with rapid action to break a crippling deadlock before a December deadline.

South Korea and China lead the world's 20 largest economies in the percentage of economic stimulus money they invest in environmental projects, the U.N. Environment Program reported on Thursday.

Other members of the Group of 20 leading economic powers, including the United States, trail behind in percentage of green investment from stimulus money, the agency found.

Scientists are surprised at how extensively coastal ice in Antarctica and Greenland is thinning, according to a study Wednesday that could help predict rising sea levels linked to climate change.

Environment Ministers from about 190 nations gather in Copenhagen at the end of the year to try and agree to a broader global pact to fight climate change

partly spurred by scientists' bleak findings in 2007 about likely heatwaves, floods, desertification and rising sea levels.

Like most large international conferences, the United Nations climate summit meeting in New York this week generated a hefty dose of greenhouse gas emissions.

The Environmental Protection Agency said on Tuesday that it would require the nation

Recession has set the stage for the sharpest fall in world greenhouse gas emissions in 40 years, an estimate Monday showed, as world leaders gathered in New York to seek a way forward on a new climate change treaty.

London: Greenhouse gas emissions have fallen thanks to the global downturn, handing the world a chance to move away from high-carbon growth, a report said on Monday, citing an International Energy Agency study.