All international development assistance and investments from the United States will now be required to take into account the potential impacts of climate change, according to a new rule signed Tuesday by President Barack Obama.

Barack Obama will announce at a UN summit Tuesday that he will sign an executive order to ensure that US funds going abroad to poorer nations go to fight global warming. The executive order also will have the US handing out science and technology tools to poorer nations in order to fight it.

A marquee has been erected on the driveway of the United Nations to deprive potential snipers of a line of site, as world leaders lever themselves out of their limousines. Even inside the headquarters building, blue partitions have been put up, presumably to sequester the leaders from the journalists who work here day in day out. With some 140 heads of state and government scheduled to attend, a record-breaking number, leaders' week at the United Nations is like no other.

Climates marches were held across the globe on Sunday, from Paris to Papua New Guinea, and with world leaders gathering at the United Nations on Tuesday for a climate summit meeting, marchers said the timing was right for the populist message in support of limits on carbon emissions. The signs that marchers held were as varied as the movement: “There is No Planet B,” “Forests Not for Sale” and “Jobs, Justice, Clean Energy.”

New global development goals now under negotiation will not help combat climate change and poverty without the political will to implement them – and creating that requires pressure from the grassroots, experts said this week.  Kenya, for instance, has made impressive progress toward adopting renewable energy.

According to interviews, diplomatic cables, and other documents obtained by Mother Jones, American officials—some with deep ties to industry—also helped US firms clinch potentially lucrative shale concessions overseas, raising troubling questions about whose interests the program actually serves.

Since the end of the Cold War, deepening globalization has generated the possibility that science diplomacy may help states solve common challenges - in the areas of food, water, energy, climate, and health - that do not respect territorial boundaries. Science diplomacy refers to the way in which states make use of scientific knowledge to diplomatically represent themselves and their interests in the international arena.

A group of eight WPP agencies have banded together to launch a multimedia campaign for Al Gore and the Climate Reality Project in an effort to prompt global leaders to reduce carbon emissions in the days leading up to the U.N. Climate Summit on September 23.