More than 120 world leaders were joined by business, finance and civil society delegates at the UN headquarters in New York for the climate summit.
U-N Secretary General Ban Ki Moon urged nations to take action for what he's described as one of the defining issues of our time.
“We need a clear vision. The human environmental and financial cost of climate change is fast becoming unbearable. We have never faced such a challenge," he said.
United States President Barack Obama called on all nations, including the developing world, to take meaningful action against climate change.
“This time we need an agreement that reflects economic realities in the next decade and beyond,” he said. “It must be ambitious because that’s what the scale of this challenge demands.”
At a meeting with China’s vice premier Zhang Gaoli on the sidelines of the summit, the pair agreed the world’s two biggest emitters “have a responsibility to lead.”
It’s a view shared by Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop, who attended on behalf of Prime Minister Tony Abbott.
“We are recognising that Australia for around 1.5 per cent of global emissions and that all countries need to act, especially the world’s biggest emitters,” she said.
“Australia is… striking the responsible balance of safeguarding economic growth while taking action on climate change.”
Actor and newly appointed UN Messenger of Peace, Leonardi DiCaprio, also addressed those gathered in New York.
"I play fictitious characters often solving fictitious problems. I believe that mankind has looked at climate change in that same way," DiCaprio said.
"As if pretending that climate change wasn't real would somehow make it go away, but I think we all know better than that now."
DiCaprio urged leaders to stop treating global warming as if it were a fiction.
"...the time to answer humankind's greatest challenge is now. We beg of you to face it with courage and honesty," the Wolf of Wall Street and Titanic star said.
“We need to put a price tag on carbon emissions and eliminate government subsidies for oil, coal and gas companies,” he said.
"We need to end the free ride that industrial polluters have been given in the name of a free market economy. They do not deserve our tax dollars. They deserve our scrutiny for the economy itself will die if our ecosystems collapse."
Non-binding agreements reached in New York include a commitment by countries and investors to raise $200 billion by the end of 2015, halt forest losses by 2030 and improve food production.
The climate summit is the most significant meeting since Copenhagen in 2009, which failed to yield an international climate deal, and comes ahead of a 200-nation summit in Paris in 2015 to finalise an agreement to slow rising greenhouse gas emissions.
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