In a week in which post-Copenhagen recriminations deepened, the European Union accused the United States and China of torpedoing the climate summit and vowed not to back down in its push for a tough, binding accord, Agence France-Presse reported.

Betting that US president Barack Obama would be blamed for the failure, China wrecked the possiblility of a climate deal, Mark Lynas wrote in The Guardian. The outcome, he said, “illustrated a profound shift in global geopolitics”. Lynas’s colleague George Monbiot argued, however, that Obama’s attempt to put China in the frame for the failure had its origins in the absence of US campaign-finance reform. Still, Monbiot noted, too few people had made their voices heard on climate change.

India’s reliance on coal means the country is heading for an energy crisis unless it diversifies its sources of power, the chairman of the UN's climate-change panel predicted, according to Agence France-Presse.

A portion of Alaska’s North Slope coastline is eroding by up to 14 metres a year, posing a threat to oil operations and wildlife, Reuters said, quoting a report by US scientists.

Due to pollution, the world’s oceans are becoming noisier, with potentially harmful effects for whales, dolphins and other marine life, Agence France-Presse reported, citing American research.

The British Antarctic Survey released new photographs of ice fish, octopuses, sea pigs, giant sea spiders, rays and basket stars that live in the waters of Antarctica’s continental shelf.

Three months before an international conference on endangered species, African countries are divided over whether a fresh round of ivory sales should be allowed, said Agence France-Presse.

US officials are promoting the use of a chalky residue from coal-burning power plants as a farm fertiliser, even as regulators consider new rules for the waste, which contains small amounts of toxic metals, according to Yale Environment 360.

In a paper in Natural Hazards Review, scientists in the United States say they have shown the clear relationship between large dams and heavy rainfall.

Brazil declared additional indigenous reserves in vast tracts of Amazon rain forest, totalling an area equivalent to half the size of Portugal, Agence France-Presse reported.

A dilemma for a green Christmas: a real or an artificial tree? Sellers of each type are extolling their environmental benefits, the Los Angeles Times reported. Another option, says The New York Times, is renting a live one.