World leaders take historic action on Climate Change

World leaders are taking historic action Friday at the United Nations to try to slow the effects of climate change and fix some of its damage.

More than 60 presidents and prime ministers, as well as dozens of other top officials from more than 130 countries are gathered in New York to sign the climate change deal reached in Paris in December.

French President Francois Hollande was the first to sign the accord.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry hailed the agreement as powerful in his remarks before the signing.

“The power of this agreement is the opportunity that it creates, the power is the message that it sends to the marketplace,” he said. “It is the unmistakable signal that innovation, entrepreneurial activity, the allocation of capital, the decisions that governments make. All of this is what we now know definitively is what is going to define the new energy future—a future that is already being defined but even yet to be discovered.”

Kerry said the U.S. looked forward to signing the accord and called on international partners to follow suit.

The agreement works to limit global temperature rise to well below 2 degrees Celsius. It also lays out a road map for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and mitigating the effects of a warming planet.

While leaders hammered out the details in Paris, in New York Friday they will sign and signal their readiness to start implementing the agreement.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon hailed the Paris accord as a “turning point” in the world’s response to climate change.

“For the first time, every country in the world pledged to curb their emissions, strengthen resilience and join in common cause for the common good,” he said recently. “In Paris, governments demonstrated that by acting together, they can achieve something none could achieve alone.”

The agreement will enter into force 30 days after 55 countries either ratify or deposit their instruments of ratification with the U.N. chief. Those 55 countries must also account for at least 55 percent of total global greenhouse gas emissions.

The target date is 2020, but if enough countries ratify, officials say the agreement could enter into force much sooner — this year or early 2017.

China and the United States — which together account for about 40 percent of the world’s emissions — were represented at the signing ceremony. They have been using their political influence to urge an early implementation of the accord.

“So that’s a signal – significant signal, really — of continued commitment and momentum coming from the two largest emitters, which together account for virtually 40 percent of global emissions,” a senior U.S. State Department official said.