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World Bank Group finance for projects that included fossil fuel exploration was highest in FY2013, at nearly $1 billion out of $2.7 billion total for fossil fuel projects in 2013.

As the West scrambles for a diplomatic solution to the crisis in Crimea, they know that as they try and negotiate with Russian President, Vladimir Putin, he holds one of the aces in the pack: Russian gas supplies to the west.

According to a report commissioned for the hearings into health impact caused by the tar sands, some local doctors are reluctant to treat patients who draw connections between the industry and their personal health problems.

The letter, with 21 signatories, suggests that fracking can be done safely with proper regulation, and that the economic benefits of fracking up California outweigh the inherent risks to the environment of the extraction practice. But even a very quick analysis of the signatories and the arguments they put forward will show another story. In short, this letter from scientists was made possible by the oil industry.

Today, the British Foreign Secretary William Hague is one of the first European politicians to visit Azerbaijan, a country with an appalling human rights record, since widely condemned Presidential elections.

Slowly but surely the concept of “stranded assets” is taking hold and dirty coal looks likely to take the first big hit from a huge Norwegian pension fund.

In spite of a heightened institutional focus on combating climate change, the World Bank increased its lending for fossil fuels over the last year. Meanwhile, the World Bank also has a ways to go in terms of tackling its objective of supporting universal access to energy, as only 8 percent of the Bank’s energy portfolio last year targeted the world’s poorest.

Two U.S. initiatives to provide Africans with electricity seem likely to lead to large, climate-polluting projects rather than the locally sourced renewable energy rural Africa needs.

One of the most influential economists of his generation, Lord Stern, has rebuked the British Prime Minister David Cameron over his claim that fracking will bring down gas prices in the UK.

Paying lip service to climate science and then running full speed ahead down the fossil fuel pathway to climate chaos is just another form of climate denial. We need our leaders to wake up and make some hard choices, commensurate with the difficult climate reality we face.