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All around the world, in cities, towns and villages yesterday hundreds of thousands marched for the climate on the eve of the most important UN conference on the subject that has ever taken place.

I have a strange feeling today in Paris as the UN climate negotiations open in a tense city, shrouded in clouds of terrorist attacks and early winter darkness. That strange feeling? Optimism.

One of the most detailed studies of climate denial has concluded what many researchers have long known - that funding by the fossil fuel industry created a corrosive “ecosystem of influence” on both the content and language of the climate debate, especially in the US.

With less than one week before Paris climate talks, known officially as the 21st Conference of the Parties (COP21), the campaign group Corporate Accountability International has released a report exposing the “filthy” track record of some of the corporations sponsoring the talks.

And so the climate movement marches on. The last couple of months have been pretty amazing for those working towards a healthy climate future. The controversial Keystone XL pipeline is dead; Exxon is being investigated for lying about climate change; Shell and Statoil have pulled out of the Alaska Arctic, and Obama has cancelled further Arctic leases.

There was more good news from the Arctic yesterday, when Norwegian oil company Statoil announced it was “exiting” the region, following recent exploration results in neighbouring oil and gas leases.

In a major set-back for the oil giant, BP’s highly controversial application to drill in one of Australia’s last great wilderness areas, the Great Australian Bight, has been rejected for falling short of environmental standards.

As I pointed out last week, one of the ground-breaking developments in the lead up to the Paris climate talks later this month has been the announcement by the New York Attorney’s office that it was investigating Exxon for misleading the public and shareholders about climate change.

This year, G20 leaders reiterated their same tired commitment to end fossil fuel subsidies, for the seventh time in a row. It’s starting to ring hollow.

The proposed crude-by-rail terminals in the Pacific Northwest would cause climate disaster