MAJOR industrialized economies are far off track in helping the world meet the UN’s global warming target, a monitoring group said yesterday.

Carbon pledges made by 31 economies — members of the Group of Seven and the European Union — mean that by 2030 they will contribute only 30 percent of the effort they should, it said.

IKEA, the world's biggest furniture retailer, plans to spend 1 billion euros ($1.13 billion) on renewable energy and steps to help poor nations cope with climate change, the latest example of firms upstaging governments in efforts to slow warming.

Chief Executive Peter Agnefjall said the measures would "absolutely not" push up prices at the Swedish group's stores. The investments will be "good for customers, good for the climate and good for IKEA too," he told Reuters.

A new IRENA report released today at an event in Merida, Mexico finds the country can increase the amount of renewable energy in its energy mix from 4.4% in 2010 to 21% by 2030.

Renewable Energy Prospects: Mexico also finds that Mexico could generate up to 46 per cent of its electricity by 2030 from renewable sources including wind, solar, hydropower, geothermal and biomass – a six fold increase from today’s levels.

The actor Charlize Theron, who takes a leading role in the new Mad Max movie as a one-armed warrior driving five sex slaves to safety, has expressed her fears that a bleak future awaits the planet unless global warming is addressed.

Charlize Theron joins Hardy’s lone wolf ex-cop in George Miller’s deliriously strange action adventure, a rollicking Grand Theft Auto revamped by Hieronymus Bosch

The insurance company Axa has said it will remove around €500m (£355m) of coal investments from its portfolio, in a move that reflects long-term concerns in the insurance industry over climate change.

The company has also pledged to triple its investments in green technologies and services to more than €3bn by 2020 and provide investors with more information on the risk to its investments from climate change.

“Renewables will do close to nothing to contribute to overcoming unemployment.”

“Renewables will create massive job losses in other industries.”

An MIT report has found that regular solar panels like the ones used today could supply much of the world with power. They believe terawatts of energy could be produced by 2050 and say that investment, not technology, could be the biggest hurdle.

The world’s population currently consumes 15 terawatts of power from various energy sources, according to the Economist. Despite making up less than 5 percent of the world’s population, Americans use 26 percent of the world’s power.

Most of the glaciers in the Mount Everest region will disappear or drastically retreat as temperatures increase with climate change over the next century, according to a group of international researchers.

The estimated 5,500 glaciers in the Hindu Kush-Himalayan (HKH) region – site of Mount Everest and many of the world’s tallest peaks – could reduce their volume by 70%-99% by 2100, with dire consequences for farming and hydropower generation downstream, they said.

Earth’s polar regions are in the midst of a stunning transformation. As global warming accelerates, evidence of change is perhaps most obvious in our planet’s ice.

More than a decade ago, scientists watched in awe as Antarctica’s Larsen B Ice Shelf shattered almost completely in just six weeks. No one had ever seen such a large mass of ice vanish so quickly.

India has recently ramped up attacks on environmental and development organizations that work on climate, clean energy and sustainability issues. The world’s largest democracy has frozen bank accounts, restricted international donations, and in some cases prevented the organizations’ staffers from traveling abroad.

The actions come just seven months ahead of international climate treaty talks in Paris in December, and are inspired by fear that foreign interests are trying to curb the nation's economic growth. India is the world's third largest emitter of carbon dioxide, behind China and the United States, and home to millions of the world's people most vulnerable to global warming impacts such as flooding, extreme heat and sea level rise. As a result, India will play a crucial role in the negotiations. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has stressed in recent international speeches that his nation must take a leadership role in the "pressing global problem" of climate change.