New York pact signing kick starts world's emissions control push

Secretary of State John Kerry signed the Paris
 climate accord on Friday at the United Nations,
with his 2-year-old granddaughter, Isabel. 

Governments of 175 nations marked Earth Day at the United Nations on Friday by signing the landmark Paris Agreement on the climate crisis. This sets in motion an unexpectedly swift process that the treaty's supporters hope will hasten its coming into force well before its target date in 2020.

Their urgency stems from danger signs that the planet is headed rapidly toward unusually high climate risks. Never in the record books has the world's temperature risen so high, nor the blanket of carbon dioxide causing the warming been so thick.

Still, treaty advocates struck mainly positive notes, citing a "Paris effect" that optimists say is driving government policies, energy choices, and investments in a new, low-carbon direction. For example, for the first time, growth of the world's economies seems to have been decoupled from growth in emissions of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas.

But everyone recognizes, as they did in December when the accord was signed in Paris, that the pledges are far short of what is needed

Read the Inside Climate News story - “Climate Pact Signing Kick-Starts the World's Push to Reduce Emissions.”