Broke, remote and deprived of jobs -- just 25 years ago, the border town of Guessing close to Hungary was one of the poorest in Austria, a forgotten frontier along the Iron Curtain trail.

Yet today, the municipality of 4,000 people has morphed into a global flagship model for green energy, after becoming the first community in the European Union to produce all its heat and power from renewable sources back in 2001.

Medical experts say climate change affects human health in direct ways, by the spread of water- and mosquito-borne diseases for example, and indirectly, such as through hunger.

Here is a snapshot of the problem:

Latin America will demand that the richest and most polluting countries foot the bill for reducing harmful emissions at the world climate summit starting Monday.

Countries in one of the world's poorest and most environmentally diverse regions have failed to agree on many things and do not have a common negotiating position overall going into the talks.

Over the past 15 years – and contrary to popular belief – the world has made tremendous progress in reducing global poverty. One billion fewer people live in extreme poverty today than in 2000. This year, the rate of extreme global poverty is expected to fall below 10%, dropping into single digits for the first time in history. Inclusive economic growth, especially in China and India, has driven this success.

This kind of economic growth, which increases the income of the poorest 40%, is critical to reaching our global goal of ending poverty by 2030.

Even when the Arctic goes dark and cold, thinning ice could keep the North Pole from cooling off.

The loss of insulating ice between the ocean and atmosphere increases the amount of heat-trapping water vapor and clouds in the Arctic air. That extra moisture keeps air temperatures relatively warm during fall and winter and melts even more ice, new climate simulations suggest. This self-reinforcing cycle could partially explain why Arctic warming has outpaced the global average over recent decades, researchers report online November 11 in the Journal of Climate.

Climate change could increase the number of wildlife species found in Britain as birds and insects take refuge from higher temperatures in southern Europe, a study by the RSPB has found.

Dozens of species, including 20 types of waterbird, including the little egret, common crane, purple heron, little bittern, black-winged stilt and mediterranean gull, have already arrived and begun breeding in recent decades. Species that are largely confined to the south coast, such as the dartford warbler, are expected to spread northwards and inhabit a much larger area.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Thursday promised to give $10.6 billion to developing nations by 2020 to help them implement policies against global warming, ahead of the U.N. climate talks in Paris next week.

The decision to offer 1.3-trillion yen ($10.6 billion) came after Japan gave a roughly combined 2.0 trillion yen for the same purpose in 2013 and 2014.

A long list of seemingly harmless everyday actions contribute to emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other climate-altering greenhouse gases.

Driving a car and flipping a light switch have a clear "carbon footprint" -- much less obvious is the harm caused by sending a simple text message or opening a bottle of water.  

There are few films more environmentally infused than the highest grossing one in history, “Avatar” — in which a highly militarized mining company seeks to exploit the resources of the rich forest world of Pandora. But less known is how the film’s director, James Cameron, has also used some of the money made from “Avatar” to champion an array of green causes, even as he’s also using clean energy to power the film’s three planned sequels.

“We put in a 1 megawatt solar array on the roof of the soundstages where we’re doing the ‘Avatar’ sequels, so we’ll be net energy neutral there,” Cameron told The Washington Post recently. “We’ll sell back to the grid and it will balance back over the time when we’re working and when we’re not working.”

Prince Charles has said that climate change may have been one of the causes of the civil war in Syria.

The heir to the throne has long been a passionate campaigner on environmental issues and linked drought in the Middle Eastern nation with the conflict which has left hundreds of thousands dead, created millions of refugees and seen the rise of Islamic State.