Two days after the largest People’s Climate March in history, more than 120 world leaders gathered in New York City for a one-day United Nations climate summit. Tuesday’s meeting took place ahead of the larger, 200-nation summit in Paris in 2015, when delegates will attempt to finalize an agreement to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions. In a series of speeches, world leaders made nonbinding agreements to slow global warming and keep the rise in ocean temperatures below two degrees. Several leaders from the most carbon-polluting nations skipped the climate summit, including China, India and Russia. In one commitment to come out of the summit, more than 30 countries set a deadline to end deforestation by 2030. If successful, this could reduce carbon emissions by an estimated eight billion tons per year — the equivalent of emissions by all of the world’s one billion cars. But Brazil, which has the largest continuous rainforest in the world, refused to sign on, saying the plan conflicts with its own laws and targets.

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