New Zealand urgently needs to plant huge areas of trees to help combat climate change and boost a green economy, a business think-tank says.

COMMENT: From rising sea levels to flooded rivers, from drought to wildfire - scientists list the impacts of climate change.

With a historic global climate agreement about to be signed in New York, a new report has laid bare how New Zealand will be affected by climate change.

New Zealand is being accused of cheating to fulfil its international climate change obligations.

Climate Change Minister Paula Bennett will head to New York next week to sign New Zealand up to a historic climate agreement.

Big industrial emitters of greenhouse gases will lose their right under the emissions trading scheme to offset only half of their emissions, Climate Change Minister Paula Bennett told an international energy conference in Wellington.

What if we could fight climate change by capturing emissions and locking them away? It sounds good, but the obstacles are huge, reports Chris Mooney.

As the climate heats up, the forecast is also calling for more rain. Think downpours. Cats and dogs. Or just "extreme rain", as the scientists call it.

Many suspect the design of ETS, with no price floor and emissions cap, was never intended to make a difference to our climate changing emissions.

While climate change presents one of the greatest challenges of our time, it's also one of the biggest economic opportunities.

A sense of 'alarm and panic' is being felt at the Pacific Climate Change Conference as rising sea levels threaten small nations.

Sam Judd writes, "Today I thought that a story about how awesome the New Zealand coastline is would be appropriate, because what is not to love out here?"

Global temperatures will continue to soar over the next year as rising levels of greenhouse gas emissions and the effect of El Nino.

Actor Leonardo DiCaprio greets the Pope in Italian and discusses the environment.

Mike Hosking says when it comes down to it, what country is a genuine nuclear threat right now? This doom and gloom attitude needs to stop.

Call it extreme geology: a team of Kiwi scientists is venturing to a remote part of Antarctica to dig up ancient evidence of a warmer world.

The utterings of our leaders demonstrate how global warming has moved from a scientific theory where integrity matters, to a political movement where it doesn't, writes Robin Grieve.

In Europe the daffodils are in bloom and ski fields are bare in the warmest December ever. John Vidal asks how worrying is the world's strange weather.

The choices we make in the next five years will determine our climate future, writes Len Brown.

The Paris Agreement on climate change ticked one essential box from a narrow national point of view: it countenances the use of international trading in carbon credits to meet countries' emissions targets.

Severe climate change and global warming is already "baked in" even if carbon emissions ended tomorrow. Dangerous climate change is unpreventable, writes Winston Peters.

It's good news, but not a reason to be complacent; global emissions actually fell in 2015.

At present, the atmosphere resembles a wild, uncontrolled rubbish dump. Polluters are free to sink their carbons into the atmosphere simply because they can, writes Klaus Bosselmann.

In the final days of the Paris talks, officials walked a diplomatic high wire as the pact's fortunes rose and fell.

Laurent Fabius was directly involved with the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior, now he's the world's foremost climate negotiator.

Getting so many nations, including "developing" nations such as China, to sign on to emissions reductions certainly makes the agreement historic.

Nearly 200 countries strike deal on how to combat climate change, but it's what the energy companies do next that could make or break the agreement.

A global climate change deal has been hailed in New Zealand as a historic step, but scientists and environmentalists say the deal now needs to be backed with action.

The word "historic", already being used to describe the just-accepted Paris climate agreement, is more than warranted.