Seth Fletcher

This shiny little black car is the first real Chevy Volt—the first of many hand-built but bona-fide production-intent prototypes that will roll out of GM’s pre-production workshop in the coming weeks. This car is the next big step in the production process after the testing of the Volt “mules”—test cars with a Chevy Cruze body and a Volt powertrain. (We drove one of the mules last month; see our full review here.)

Today Mitsubishi unveiled the production version of the iMiEV, the company’s pure-electric car, and announced that it will come to market pretty much right away—next month, in Japan. (No North American launch date has been announced.) Mitsubishi is calling the four-seat minicar the “ultimate eco-car,” the first step toward making EVs 20 percent of its business by 2020.

This year’s New York International Auto Show was quiet, a confab for a shrinking industry. Sales have been tanking steadily for nearly every manufacturer. The corners of the showroom floor occupied by potentially doomed brands, like Hummer, felt a little like mausoleums. Still, plenty of automakers fought through the pain and unveiled interesting cars, which you can check out here.

An interesting theme has begun to emerge in Copenhagen: that the financial crisis might end up saving the world. Sure, it's painful now, this line of thinking goes, but it gives us a chance to build a low-carbon global economy that we might not have had otherwise. And in the meantime, greenhouse-gas emissions could fall sharply as a result of depressed economic activity -- factories closing, less driving, less flying, and so on.

"There is not a lot, if any, good news that will be presented in the coming days," said Katherine Richardson, the University of Copenhagen oceanographer. So began the International Scientific Congress on Climate Change, a gathering in Denmark's capital city of scientists from around the world. The purpose of the conference is to synthesize the latest research on global warming. A summary of the findings will be distributed to the global policymakers who will meet here in December at the United Nations's COP 15 meeting.

Less than two weeks before scientists from around the world gather in Copenhagen to issue recommendations for a new global climate-change treaty, the results from the two-year International Polar Year survey have arrived. They are not pleasant.