Key points of the landmark Paris climate agreement

It was reached after 13 days of gruelling negotiations between almost 200 countries in Paris. And they must commit to limiting the amount of greenhouse gas pollution from human activity to the same levels that trees, soil and oceans are naturally able to absorb before then.

Fabius noted that the compromise aims to fulfil their objective of having a temperature increase well below 2 degrees Celsius and to limit its increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius, which should be enough to reduce the risks linked to climate change.

The agreement also imposes five-yearly reviews of individual country efforts, with a requirement to boost ambition with each new goal.

Clinton, the Democratic front-runner, hailed the agreement in a statement, saying, “I applaud President Obama, Secretary Kerry and our negotiating team for helping deliver a new, ambitious global climate agreement in Paris”.

The deal also builds in global stock-takes to determine how the world is tracking in restricting emissions.

“History will remember this day”, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said after the pact was approved to thunderous applause.

Former US vice president and environmental campaigner Al Gore said: “Years from now, our grandchildren will reflect on humanity’s moral courage to solve the climate crisis”.

The objective is to hold global warming to “well below” two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) over pre-Industrial Revolution levels, and to strive for 1.5C (2.7F) if possible. It notes that, though all the countries expected to sign it have proffered plans to constrain carbon emissions, those plans don’t add up to anything approaching what most scientists say is necessary.

“Senate leadership has already been outspoken in its positions that the United States is not legally bound to any agreement setting emissions targets or any financial commitment to it without approval by Congress”, Inhofe said in a press release. U.N. climate conferences often run over time, because of the high stakes and widely differing demands and economic concerns of countries as diverse as the United States and tiny Pacific island nations.

The main dispute centered over how to anchor the climate targets in a binding global pact, with China and other major developing countries insisting on different rules for rich and poor nations.

Nevertheless the deal has backing from 195 countries, nearly 190 of whom have submitted plans for the action they will take against climate change – with Venezuela bringing the total to 188 when it submitted its pledge on Saturday night after the deal was struck.

The agreement commits all nations to cooperating to address a wide range of ways in which poor and developing nations deal with climate-change effects – whether from extreme storms or “slow onset events” like rising seas – an idea called “loss and damage”.

The US had feared developed countries could be made liable for historical emissions.