Climate change agreement signed at UN headquarters

Representatives from 175 of the 196 countries that concluded the Paris agreement to fight climate change last December gathered at UN headquarters in New York yesterday for a signing ceremony.

"This is a moment of history," said UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon.   "Never before have so many countries signed an agreement on the same day."

Other records, for high temperatures, were also being broken, Mr Ban warned.  “We are in a race against time . . . the era of consumption without consequences is over.”

The leaders of China, the US, India and Russia, all big polluters, did not attend the ceremony. President Barack Obama was in London, but his secretary of state, John Kerry, promised the US would "join the agreement" this year.

The Paris accord could not be called a treaty because that would have required ratification by the Republican-controlled US Senate.

There are fears that if Donald Trump is elected in November, he will rescind US support for the agreement.

As host to the Paris COP21 climate conference, French president François Hollande made the first speech.  The conclusion of the agreement was “an emotional moment, rare in the lives of politicians and leaders”, he said.

Carbon price

Mr Hollande called on leaders to establish a carbon price and raise $100 billion (€89 billion) to help developing countries make the transition to clean energy, goals not achieved in Paris.

Mr Hollande said France would ratify the agreement before summer, and called on the EU to do so this year.

The agreement will not take effect until it is ratified by 55 countries representing 55 per cent of the world’s greenhouse emissions.  China said it would ratify before the G20 summit in China in September. Twenty-eight EU member states must agree how much carbon each will cut, then ratify individually.

The signing took place on Earth Day.

“I was a young organiser and speaker at the first Earth Day in 1970, and I was a young senator and advocate at the first Earth Summit in Rio in 1992,” Mr Kerry said.  “This is a moment to recommit ourselves to winning this war.”

Actor Leonardo DiCaprio, a “UN messenger for peace”, gave the closing speech.  Over two years, he said, he’d seen pollution in Beijing, flooding in India and “glaciers disappearing well ahead of predictions.  All that I have seen has absolutely terrified me.”

Climate change “has become a runaway freight train,” Mr DiCaprio added. “Our planet cannot be changed unless we leave fossil fuels in the ground where they belong.”

Children from the 196 countries party to the agreement stood in the aisles of the general assembly hall while a horn and trumpets played the Shaker hymn Simple Gifts.

“I now declare the Paris agreement for climate change open for signature,” Mr Ban said, striking the lectern with his gavel. Mr Hollande signed first. Thirteen countries that ratified the agreement yesterday, including islands threatened by rising seas, followed.

When Mahmoud Abbas was introduced as president of "the state of Palestine," the audience applauded.