Food retailers such as McDonald’s, Krispy Kreme, Dunkin Donuts, as well as agribusinesses like Cargill, are among the big companies to recently make zero-deforestation pledges. But do these commitments achieve anything other than PR for food companies? New research indicates they might.

A study published Tuesday in the journal Conservation Letters says that public agreements made by beef suppliers in Brazil have had a real impact on rancher and slaughterhouse behavior in the Amazon. A team led by Holly Gibbs of the University of Wisconsin-Madison observed data on land use in the state of Pará before and after a 2009 agreement by major meatpacking companies to remove deforestation from their supply chain. The researchers found that the deforestation rate among ranch owners they studied has since been cut in half.

From the simplest sketches to the most advanced scientific models, illustrations of mountains pretty much all look the same. Their classic pyramid form, wider at the bottom and narrowing all the way up to the top, has been ingrained in the human mind, and scientists have always assumed that land area in mountain ranges decreases the higher you climb. Until now, that is.

New research published Monday in Nature Climate Change reveals a surprising discovery that not only changes the way we think about mountains but could also have big implications for how we understand, monitor and protect the organisms that call them home.

Last month marked the hottest May in modern history, continuing a troubling trend of rising global temperatures, U.S. government scientists said Thursday.

"This was the warmest May on record," said Derek Arndt, chief of the monitoring branch at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) National Centers for Environmental Information, during a conference call with reporters.

Pope Francis on Thursday urged the world to act quickly to prevent "extraordinary" climate change from destroying the planet and said wealthy countries must bear responsibility for creating the problem and for solving it.

In a radically worded letter addressed to every person on the planet, the leader of the world's 1.2 billion Catholics blames human greed for the critical situation "Our Sister, mother Earth" now finds itself in.

Human activity is leading to the rapid draining of about one third of the planet's largest underground water reserves and it is unclear how much fluid remains in them, two new studies have found.

Consequently, huge sections of the population are using up groundwater without knowing when it will run out, researchers said in findings that will appear in the journal Water Resources Research and were posted online Tuesday.

Countries need to improve pledges on reducing emissions to reach the goal of keeping the increase in average global temperature below 2C by the end of the century, the International Energy Agency said Monday.

Setting out its assessment of various countries' commitments six months ahead of a crunch climate change conference in Paris, the IEA said: "These pledges will have a positive impact on future energy trends but will fall short of the major course correction required to meet the 2C goal."

From the simplest sketches to the most advanced scientific models, illustrations of mountains pretty much all look the same. Their classic pyramid form, wider at the bottom and narrowing all the way up to the top, has been ingrained in the human mind, and scientists have always assumed that land area in mountain ranges decreases the higher you climb. Until now, that is.

New research published Monday in Nature Climate Change reveals a surprising discovery that not only changes the way we think about mountains but could also have big implications for how we understand, monitor and protect the organisms that call them home.

The marathon effort to forge a world pact on climate change now hinges on what happens outside the U.N. arena in the coming months, analysts said after another faltering negotiation round.

Whether the 195-nation U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) can seal the much-vaunted post-2020 deal in Paris six months from now depends greatly on a flurry of meetings by movers and shakers.

The head of Unilever has called on world leaders to raise their game in the battle against climate change.

Chief executive Paul Polman said governments must set clear CO2 targets to force low-carbon innovation.

As the 2016 presidential election clanks into gear, it's a good time to assess the state of climate change politics in the United States.

In short: Things are not so good. Democrats are largely stuck in an ineffective holding pattern, implementing reasonable reforms with one hand and handing victories to oil companies with the other. Meanwhile, conservatives are still effectively denying the problem exists. Though the movement against climate change is making strides, there is a long ways to go yet.